‘Wooding up’ was not performed with American alacrity.  To bring the steamer to land she was anchored thirty feet from shore, and two men in a skiff carried a line to the bank and made it fast.  With this line and the anchor the boat was warped within ten feet of the shore, another line keeping the stern in position.  An ordinary plank a foot wide made the connection with the solid earth.  These boats have no guards and cannot overhang the land like our Western craft.  Wood was generally piled fifty, a hundred, or five hundred feet from the landing place, wherever most convenient to the owner.  No one seems to think of placing it near the water’s edge as with us; they told me that this had been done formerly, and the freshets had carried the wood away.  The peasants, warned by their loss, are determined to keep on the safe side.

When all was ready the deck hands went very leisurely to work.  Each carried a piece of rope which he looped around a few sticks of wood as a boy secures his bundle of school books.  The rope was then slung upon the shoulder, the wood hanging over the back of the carrier and occasionally coming loose from its fastenings.  No man showed any sign of hurrying, but all acted as if there were nothing in the world as cheap as time.  One day I watched the wooding operation from beginning to end.  It took an hour and a half and twelve men to bring about four cords of wood on board.  There was but one man displaying any activity, and he was falling from the plank into the river.

[Illustration:  WOODING UP.]

The Russian measure of wood is the sajene (fathom.) and a sajene of wood is a pile a fathom long, wide, and high.  The Russian marine fathom measures six feet like our own, but the land fathom is seven feet.  It is by the land fathom that everything on solid earth is measured.  A stick seven feet long is somewhat inconvenient, and therefore they cut wood half a fathom in length.

We landed our first freight at Nova Mihalofski, a Russian village on the southern bank of the river.  The village was small and the houses were far from palatial.  The inhabitants live by agriculture in summer, sending their produce to Nicolayevsk, and by supplying horses for the postal service in winter.  I observed here and at other villages an example of Russian economy.  Not able to purchase whole panes of window glass the peasants use fragments of glass of any shape they can get.  These are set in pieces of birch bark cut to the proper form and the edges held by wax or putty.  The bark is then fastened to the window sash much as a piece of mosquito netting is fixed in a frame.

Near Springfield, Missouri, I once passed a night in a farmer’s house.  The dwelling had no windows, and when we breakfasted we were obliged to keep the door open to give us light, though the thermometer was at zero, with a strong wind blowing.  “I have lived in this house seventeen years,” said the owner; “have a good farm and own four niggers.”  But he could not afford the expense of a window, even of the Siberian kind!