IO6 Bulletin American Museum of Natural History. [Vol. XIX, 



Chinese trouble reached us. This caused the company to 

 declare the sailing of this vessel off, and made them unde- 

 cided about sending the one scheduled for July 24, as all 

 ships were being pressed into the government transport ser- 

 vice. Then followed for us an anxious and exciting month, 

 as inhabitants of a Russian fortified port in active war times. 

 Thousands of soldiers arrived daily from the interior and 

 departed in transports for the front; missionaries and mer- 

 chants came from Manchurian points up the Amoor River; 

 the Chinese stopped work and fled the city; martial law was 

 proclaimed, and commerce came almost to a standstill. Fi- 

 nally we were assured that the * Khabarovsk ' would leave July 

 23, and on that date our party took passage on it. Our 

 course lay north along the coast .between the mainland and 

 Saghalin Island, and our voyage was without incident until 

 the 28th, when we went aground in the shallow, tortuous 

 channel off the mouth of the Amoor River. After waiting 

 three days for an abatement of the wind and a high tide, the 

 water-ballast tanks were pumped out and we floated again. 

 August 2 we came to anchor in Udskoi Bay, back of Great 

 Shantai Island, discharged a small amount of cargo for the lit- 

 tle settlement there, and were soon under way again for Ay an. 



The small number of sea-birds observed along the Siberian 

 coast, as compared with the large number one encounters on 

 the Alaska side in the same latitude, is very striking. 



August 3. Anchored in the beautiful little harbor of Ay an 

 this evening. This place, possessing the only harbor on the 

 Okhotsk Sea, is nicely situated at the toe of a small horseshoe- 

 shaped indentation in the rugged coast-line. The settlement 

 consists of a few large log storehouses and small dwellings 

 and the inevitable blue-domed church. During the palmy 

 days of the whaling industry it was used by the Americans as 

 a recruiting place, and as a landing place for vast quantities 

 of birch tea, which was sent from there inland to the settle- 

 ments along the Kolyma River by reindeer during the winter 

 months. Now, since the whalers no longer visit these waters, 

 and the shorter and better route from Ola was discovered, it 

 has lost its importance and the few inhabitants are mostly 



