62 A SHOOTING TRIP TO KAMCHATKA 



horse. The streets are broad, and the houses mostly 

 low and wooden. A few brick buildings stood at the 

 top of the hill, viz. the Government House and the 

 Natural History Museum, which we visited. We were 

 struck by the number of Chinamen and Coreans, out- 

 numbering the Russian population, which consists 

 chiefly of former convicts. Our cabman, a Caucasian 

 by birth, did not seem in the least embarrassed in 

 giving us an account of his experiences on the Island 

 of Sakhalin, where he had stayed over three years. 

 He had been condemned to ten years' hard labour for 

 having, in a drunken state, stabbed two of his country- 

 men, and his sentence had been mitigated owing to 

 his oood conduct. He still had four more vears to 

 serve at Khabarovsk, where he settled down as a cab- 

 driver, before being allowed to return to his home in 

 the Caucasus, where his wife and child awaited him. 



We slept that night on board the launch, and started 

 next morning at eight a.m. by the passenger train. 

 The line runs parallel to the Ussuri River, in a south- 

 easterly direction. Strange types of natives crowded 

 the stations. The country was low and undulated on 

 either side, exceedincrlv wooded, and covered with 

 dense underwood veoetation. Timers are said to 

 swarm in the Ussuri district, and, as I was told, had 

 oiven oreat trouble durino- the construction of the 



