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Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar Life, by Thomas Wallace Knox

OVERLAND THROUGH ASIA. PICTURES OF SIBERIAN, CHINESE, AND TARTAR LIFE.

ISSUED BY SUBSCRIPTION ONLY, AND NOT FOR SALE IN THE BOOK STORES. RESIDENTS OF ANY STATE DESIRING A COPY SHOULD ADDRESS THE PUBLISHERS, AND AN AGENT WILL CALL UPON THEM.

HARTFORD, CONN:

AMERICAN PUBLISHING COMPANY.

F. 6. GILMAN & CO., CHICAGO, ILLS.; NETTLETON & CO., CINCINNATI, OHIO.

H. H. BANCROFT & CO., SAN FRANCISCO, CAL.

PREFACE

Fourteen years ago Major Perry McD. Collins traversed Northern Asia, and wrote an account, of his journey, entitled "A Voyage Down the Amoor." With the exception of that volume no other work on this little known region has appeared from the pen of an American writer. In view of this fact, the author of "Overland Through Asia" indulges the hope that his book will not be considered a superfluous addition to the literature of his country.

The journey herein recorded was undertaken partly as a pleasure trip, partly as a journalistic enterprise, and partly in the interest of the company that attempted to carry out the plans of Major Collins to make an electric connection between Europe and the United States by way of Asia and Bering's Straits. In the service of the Russo-American Telegraph Company, it may not be improper to state that the author's official duties were so few, and his pleasures so numerous, as to leave the kindest recollections of the many persons connected with the enterprise.

The orthography of geographical names is after the Russian model. The author hopes it will not be difficult to convince his countrymen that the shortest form of spelling is the best, especially when it represents the pronunciation more accurately than does the old method. A frontier justice once remarked, when a lawyer ridiculed his way of writing ordinary words, that a man was not properly educated who could spell a word in only one way. On the same broad principle I will not quarrel with those who insist upon retaining an extra letter in Bering and Ohotsk and two superfluous letters in Kamchatka.

Among those not mentioned in the volume, thanks are due to Frederick Macrellish, Esq., of San Francisco, Hon. F.F. Low of Sacramento, Alfred Whymper, Esq., of London, and the many gentlemen connected with the Telegraph Expedition. There are dozens and hundreds of individuals in Siberia and elsewhere, of all grades and conditions in life, who have placed me under numberless obligations. Wherever I traveled the most uniform courtesy was shown me, and though conscious that few of those dozens and hundreds will ever read these lines, I should consider myself ungrateful did I fail to acknowledge their kindness to a wandering American.

T.W.K.

ASTOR HOUSE, N.Y., Sept. 15, 1870.

Off from New York--Around the world by steam--Value of a letter of credit--A cure for sea sickness--Doing the Isthmus--An exciting porpoise race--Glimpse of San Francisco--Trip to the Yo Semite Valley--From the Golden Gate into the Pacific

A strange company--Difficulties of sea life--A tall man and a short room--How the dog went to sleep--A soapy cabin--Catching a booby--Two Sundays together--A long lost wreck--Incidents at sea--Manner of catching whales in Alaska--A four footed pilot--Dog stories--How to take an observation--Coast of Asia--Entering Avatcha bay--An economical light keeper

In a Russian port--Hail Columbia--Petropavlovsk--Volcanoes and earth-quakes--Directions for making a Russian town--A Kamchadale wedding--Standing up with the bride--A hot ceremony--A much married pope--Russian religious practices--Drinking with the priest and what came of it

Vegetation in Kamchatka--Catching salmon--A scaly bridge--An evening on shore--Samovars and tea drinking--The fur trade--Bear hunting--What a cow brought home one day--Siberian dogs--A musical town--The adventures of Norcum--Training a team--Sledges and how to manage them--A voyage under the Polish flag--Monument to Captain Clerke--The allied attack--The battle of Petropavlovsk

Bering's voyages--Discovery of Alaska--Shipwreck and death of Bering--The Russian-American Company--The first governor of Alaska--Promushleniks--Russian settlement in California--Account of Russian explorations--Character of the country--Its extent and resources--Advantages and disadvantages of the Alaska purchase

Leaving Kamchatka--Farewell to the ladies--A new kind of telegraph--Entering the Ohotsk sea--From Steam to sail--Sleeping among chronometers--Talking by-signs--A burial at sea--A Russian funeral--Land in sight--Ghijiga bay

Baggage for shore travel--Much wine and little bread--A perplexing dilemma--How to take the census--Siberian beds--Towed by dogs--Encounter with a beast--Coaxing a team with clubs--The Koriaks--Their manners and customs--Comical cap for a native--A four footed currency--Yourts and Balagans--Curious marriage ceremony--Lightening a boat in a storm--Very strong whisky--Riding on a reindeer--An intoxicating mushroom--An electric devil--a Siberian snow storm--How a party was lost

How a pointer became a bull dog--Coral in high latitudes--Sending Champagne to Neptune--Arrival at Ohotsk--Three kinds of natives--A lunch with the ladies--A native entertainment--A mail once a year--A lover's misfortune--An astonished American--Hunting a bear and being hunted--An unfortunate ride

At sea again--Beauties of a Northern sky--Warlike news and preparing for war--The coast of Japan--An exciting moment--A fog bell of sea lions--Ready for fight--De Castries' bay--A bewildered fleet--Goodbye to the Variag--In the straits of Tartary--A difficult sleeping place--A Siberian mirage--Entering the Amoor river

On shore at Nicolayevsk--An American Consul--Visiting the Governor--Machine shops on the Amoor with American managers--The servant girl question--A Gilyak boat full of salmon--An unfortunate water carrier--The Amoor Company--Foreign and native merchants--Raising sheep among tigers--Rats eating window glass--Riding in a cart

Up the Amoor--Seeing off a friend--A Siberian steamboat--How the steamboats are managed--Packages by post--Curiosities of the Russian mail service--An unhappy bride--Hay barges--Gilyak villages--Visiting a village--Bad for the nose--Native dogs--Interviewing a Gilyak lady--A rapid descent

The monastery of Eternal Repose--Curious religious customs--Features of the scenery--Passengers on our boat--An adventurous merchant--Captured by the Chinese--A pretty girl and her fellow passenger--Wooding up--An Amoor town--The telegraph--How it is built and operated--A native school--Fighting the tiger--Religious practices of the Gilyaks--Mistaken kindness

Stepanoff and his career--A Manjour boat--Catching salmon--A sturgeon pen--The islands of the Amoor--A night scene at a wooding station--A natural cathedral--The birds of the Amoor--The natives of the country--Interviewing a native Mandarin

Entering a Goldee house--Native politeness--What to do with a tame eagle--An intelligent dog team--An exciting race--A Mongol belle--Visiting a Goldee house at night--A reception in a shirt--Fish skin over-coats--Curious medical custom--Draw poker on the Amoor river--Curiosity--Habarofka--"No turkey for me"--A visit on shore--Experience with fleas

First view of China--A beautiful region--Petrovsky--Women in the water--An impolite reception--A scanty population--Visiting a military post--Division of labor for a hunting excursion--The Songaree--A Chinese military station--Resources of the Songaree--Experience of a traveler--Hunting a tiger--A perilous adventure

Ekaterin--Nikolskoi--The Province of the Amoor--Character of the Cossack--The Buryea Mountains--A man overboard--Passing a mountain chain--Manjour boats--Bringing pigs to market--Women in the open air--A new tribe of natives--Rest for a bath--Russian caviar--How it is made--Feeding with a native--A heavy drink--A fleet of fishing boats

Scenery on the middle Amoor--A military colony--Among the Manjours--A Manjour temple--A Chinese naval station--A crew of women--Strange ways of catching fish--The city of Igoon--Houses plastered with mud--Visiting a harem--Talking pigeon-Chinese--Visiting the prison

The mouth of the Zeya--Blagoveshchensk--Kind reception by the governor--Attending a funeral--A polyglot doctor and his family--Intercourse with the Chinese--A visit to Sakhalin-Oula--A government office--A Chinese traveling carriage--Visiting a Manjour governor--A polite official--A Russian Mongol reception--Curiosities of the Chinese police system--Advice to the Emperor of China

A deer-hunting picnic--Russian ploughing--Nursing a deer gazelle--A shot and what came of it--The return and overturn--The Siberian gazelle--A Russian steam bath--How to take it--On a new steamer--The cabin of the Korsackoff--A horse opera--An intoxicated priest--Private stock of provisions--The dove a sacred bird--Emigrant rafts--A Celestial guard house

A hotel at Stratensk--A romantic courtship--Starting overland--A difficult ferry--A Russian posting carriage--Good substitute for a trunk--"Road Agent" in Siberia--Rights of travelers--Kissing goes by favor--Captain John Franklin's equipage--Value of a ball--Stuck in the mud--The valley of the Nertcha--Reaching Nerchinsk

An extensive house--A Russian gold miner--Stories of the exiles--Polish exiles--"The unfortunates"--The treatment of prisoners--Attempts to escape--Buying a tarantass--Light marching order--A bad road--Sleeping on a stove--The valley of the Ingodah--Two hours in a mud hole--Recklessness of drivers--Arrival at Chetah

Location of Chetah--Prisoners in chains--Ingenuity of the exiles--Learning Hail Columbia in two hours--A governor's mansion--A hunting party--Siberian rabbits--Difficulties of matrimony--Religion in Siberia--An artillery review--Champagne and farewells--Crossing a frozen stream--Inconvenience of traveling with a dog--Crossing the Yablonoi Mountains--Approaching the Arctic Ocean

A cold night--Traveling among the Mongols--The Bouriats and their dwellings--An unpleasant fire--The Bhuddist religion--Conversions among the natives--An easy way of catching sheep--A Mongol bell--A Mongol belle--A late hour and a big dog--Bullocks under saddle--An enterprising girl--Sleeping in a carriage--Arrival at Verkne Udinsk--Walking in the market place--Stories of Siberian robbers--An enterprising murderer--Gold and iron mines on the Selenga

Crossing a river on the ice--A dangerous situation--Dining on soup and caviar--Caravans of tea--The rights of the road--How the drivers treat each other--Selenginsk--An old exile--Troubled by the nose--Lodged by the police--A housekeeper in undress--An amateur concert--Troitskosavsk and Kiachta--Crossing the frontier--Visiting the Chinese governor

In the Chinese empire--A city without a woman--A Chinese court of justice--Five interpretations--Chinese and Russian methods of tea making--A Chinese temple--Sculpture in sand stone--The gods and the Celestials--The Chinese idea of beauty--The houses in Maimaichin--Chinese dogs--Bartering with the merchants--The Chinese ideas of honesty--How they entertained us--The Abacus

Russian feast days--A curious dinner custom--Novel separation of the sexes--The wealth of Kiachta--The extent of the tea trade--Dodging the custom house--Foreign residents of Kiachta--Fifteen dogs in one family--The devil and the telegraph--Russian gambling--Dinner with the Chinese governor--Chinese punishments--Ingredients of a Chinese dinner--Going to the theatre in midday--Two dinners in one day--Farewell to Kiachta

Trade between America and China--The first ship for a Chinese port--Chinese river system--The first steamboat on a Chinese river--The Celestials astonished--A nation of shop-keepers--Chinese insurance and banking systems--The first letters of credit--Railways in the empire--The telegraph in China--Pigeon-English--The Chinese treaty

The great cities of China--Pekin and its interesting features--The Chinese city and the Tartar one--Rat peddlers, jugglers, beggars, and other liberal professionals--The rat question in China--Tricks of the jugglers--Mendicants and dwarfs--"The house of the hen's feathers"--How small feet became fashionable--Fashion in America and China--Gambling in Pekin--An interesting lottery prize--Executions by lot--Punishing robbers--Opposition to dancing--The temple of Confucius--Temples of Heaven and Earth--The famous Summer Palace--Chinese cemeteries--Coffins as household ornaments--Calmness at death

A journey through Mongolia--Chinese dislike to foreign travel--Leaving Pekin--How to stop a mule's music--The Nankow Pass--A fort captured because of a woman--The great wall of China--Loading the pack mules--Kalgan--Mosques and Pagodas--A Mongol horse fair--How a transaction is managed--A camel journey on the desert--How to arrange his load--A Mongolian cart--A brisk trade in wood for coffins

Entering the desert of Gobi--Instincts of the natives--An antelope hunt--Lost on the desert--Discovered and rescued--Character of the Mongols--Boiled mutton, and how to eat it--Fording the Tolla river--An exciting passage--Arrival at Urga--A Mongol Lamissary--The victory of Genghis Khan--Chinese couriers--Sheep raising in Mongolia--Holy men in abundance--Inconvenience of being a lama--A praying machine--Arrival at Kiachta

Departure from Kiachta--An agreeable companion--Making ourselves comfortable--A sacred village--Hunting a wild boar--A Russian monastery--Approaching Lake Baikal--Hunting for letters--"Doing" Posolsky--A pile of merchandise--A crowded house--Rifle and pistol practice--A Russian soudna--A historic building--A lake steamer in Siberia--Exiles on shore--A curious lake--Wonderful journey over the ice--The Holy Sea--A curious group--The first custom house--Along the banks of the Angara--A strange fish--Arrival at Irkutsk

Turned over to the police--Visiting the Governor General--An agreeable officer in a fine house--Paying official visits--German in pantomime--The passport system--Cold weather--Streets, stores, and houses at Irkutsk--Description of the city--The Angara river--A novel regulation--A swinging ferry boat--Cossack policeman--An alarm of fire--"Running with the machine" in Russia--Markets at Irkutsk--Effects of kissing with a low thermometer

Society in Irkutsk--Social customs--Lingual powers of the Russians--Effect of speaking two languages to an infant--Intercourse of the Siberians with Polish exiles--A hospitable people--A ceremonious dinner--Russian precision--A long speech and a short translation--The Amoorski Gastinitza--Playing billiards at a disadvantage--Muscovite superstition--Open house and pleasant tea-parties--A wealthy gold miner

Preparing to leave Irkutsk--Change from wheels to runners--Buying a suit of fur--Negotiations for a sleigh--A great many drinks--Peculiarities of Russian merchants--Similarities of Russians and Chinese--Several kinds of sleighs--A Siberian saint--A farewell dinner--Packing a sleigh--A companion with heavy baggage--Farewell courtesies--Several parting drinks--Traveling through a frost cloud--Effect of fog in a cold night--A monotonous snow scape--Meals at the stations--A jolly party--An honest population--Diplomacy with the drivers

A Siberian beverage--The wine of the country--An unhappy pig--Tea caravans for Moscow--Intelligence of a horse--Champagne frapp?--Meeting the post--How the mail is carried--A lively shaking up--Board of survey on a dead horse--Sleeping rooms in peasant houses--Kansk--A road with no snow--Putting our sleighs on wheels--A deceived Englishman--Crossing the Yenesei--Krasnoyarsk--Washing clothes in winter--A Siberian banking house--The telegraph system--No dead-heads--Fish from the Yenesei--A Siberian Neptune--Going on a wolf hunt--How a hunt is managed--An exciting chase and a narrow escape

Beggars at Krasnoyarsk--A wealthy city--Gold mining on the Yenesei--Its extent and the value of the mines--How the mining is conducted--Explorations, surveys, and the preparation of the ground--Wages and treatment of laborers--Machines for gold washing--Regulations to prevent thefts--Mining in frozen earth--Antiquity of the mines--The native population--An Eastern legend--The adventures of "Swan's Wing"--Visit to lower regions--Moral of the story

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