I.

On July 5, 1890, I arrived by steamer in the town of Nikolayevsk, one of the easternmost points of our fatherland. The Amur is very wide here, with only 27 versts approx. 18 miles/29 kilometers remaining to the sea. The place is majestic and beautiful, but memories of this region's past, stories from fellow travelers about the fierce winter and the equally fierce local customs, the proximity of the katorga penal labor colony, and the very appearance of the abandoned, dying city completely take away any desire to admire the landscape.

Nikolayevsk was founded not long ago, in 1850, by the renowned Gennady Nevelskoy, and this is perhaps the only bright spot in the city’s history. In the fifties and sixties, when culture was being planted along the Amur without sparing soldiers, convicts, or settlers, Nikolayevsk was the residence of the officials who governed the region. Many kinds of Russian and foreign adventurers would stop here, and settlers would take up residence, enticed by the extraordinary abundance of fish and game. Apparently, the city was not alien to human interests, as there was even an instance where a visiting scholar found it necessary and possible to give a public lecture here at the club. Now, however, nearly half the houses have been abandoned by their owners, are half-ruined, and their dark, frame-less windows stare at you like the eye sockets of a skull. The inhabitants lead a sleepy, drunken life and, in general,