128 ALASKA INDUSTRIES. • 



in the China-Russian station, a brief description of Kiachta may be 

 interesting. 



Prior to 1722 the Russians enjoyed a treaty with China which sanc- 

 tioned the individual traveling of Muscovitic traders direct from the 

 frontier to Peking. After a period of three and thirtj^ years the Rus- 

 sians were abruptly and entirely deprived of those coveted commer- 

 cial privileges. After all intercourse between the two countries had 

 ceased for five years, the Russians obtained a new treaty in 1728, by 

 which, in order to prevent future misunderstandings, the interna- 

 tional trade, as far at least as private individuals were concerned, 

 should be conducted on the boundary line, exactly uj)on the same spot 

 where this new treaty was negotiated. Here Kiachta was built, 

 though she still had a rival in Peking; for, by the provisions of the 

 new treaty, government trading caravans were allowed to penetrate to 

 the capital of the Chinese empire. But, in 1762, Catharine II relin- 

 quished this imperial monopoly, and that action at once rendered this 

 little town the grand and sole emporium of commerce between Russia 

 and China. 



Description of Kiachta. — Kiachta, then as now, stands on a riv- 

 ulet of tlie same name, which, rising in Siberia and crossing the 

 frontier line, washes the foundations of Mairaatschin, a China town 

 only a few miles away. Taken by itself, it is beset on all sides by 

 rugged mountains; and the streamlet which forms a bond of union 

 between these large empires of Asia is so tinj^ that, even bj^ the aid 

 of damming, it often fails to afford an adequate supply of water to the 

 four or five thousand dwellers on its banks. These two small settle- 

 ments, Kiachta and Maimatschin, are situated as nearly as possible 

 on the fiftieth parallel of latitude, being about 1,000 miles from 

 Peking and 4,000 from Moscow. Though the Chinese route is much 

 the shortest on the map, it is practicallj' as hard a journey; for at a 

 distance of about a week's march from Peking the Chinese have a 

 forty days' tramp, and upward, over a dismal desert of table-land. 

 It is Inarched with heat during one-half of the j^ear and covered with 

 snow during the other. The Russians, however, whether they come 

 from the west with manufactured goods, or from the north and east 

 with furs, enjoy the advantages of a peopled country and of navigable 

 waters nearly all the way to Irkutsk, and when they have met at this, 

 the common center of all the lines of communication, they may, and 

 often do, prosecute the rest of their journey to the very neighborhood 

 of Kiachta by crossing Lake Baikal and ascending its principal tribu- 

 tary, the Selenga River. 



Character of the trade. — The Russian traders bring chiefly 

 furs, woolens, cottons, and linens, while the Chinese bring teas prin- 

 cipally, also silks, and sugar candj^; thus the seal skins of Alaska 

 were wont to go first from the seal islands to Sitka; there they were 

 assorted and put up into square bales, about 3 feet by 2, jDressing 

 the bundles in an old-fashioned hand-lever press, and cording them 

 while under this pressure; then envelopes of green walrus hide 

 were sewed over them, and the jiackages, duly numbered, went to the 

 Okhotsk by ship, then to Kiachta by pack horses, where the buyers 

 of Pekin finally inspected and purchased them, giving in exchange 

 the celebrated black teas of Maimatschin, the finest brands in all 

 Mongolia, and produced onlj^ in the north of China, and which can 

 be more clieai)ly transported from thence to Siberia than to Canton. 



Chinese disposition of fur-seal peltries. — The Chinese buy- 

 ers sent their Pribilof peltries down to their home markets on camels, 



