Save the broad, kindly Slavic faces, the only Russian thing I saw about the place was a _samovar_, and I sipped a mug of tea from this peacefully purring old friend while I endeavoured to find out whether any of them knew anything of the whereabouts of a certain Montana metropolis called Billings. They appeared to be trying to assure me that they had heard of such a place, and there also seemed to be some unanimity on the score of its being somewhere down river. But just how far it was by river they couldn't get together on, and even if they had had any real knowledge of the course of the stream they appeared not to have the language to express it. Certainly an estimate in _versts_ wasn't going to help a lot. As I thanked them and turned to go the whole family trooped down to the landing to see me off. Pointing eastward to the low line of a distant bluff one of the boys delivered himself of a laconic "Dam--lookout!" I assured him I had already been warned of the dam of the local power company, and would be keeping just that kind of a good lookout for it. That gave them their cue. They were all ejaculating or registering "Dam--good--lookout!" as the current bore me away into the deepening dusk. That last half-hour's run was an intensely trying one, though I was never in serious trouble any of the time. I kept going wrong on channels every few minutes, with the result that I found every now and then that the Yellowstone had gone off and left me on a streak of wet rocks and gravel. With a heavy boat I should have been marooned for the night a dozen times, but it was never very difficult to drag my little tin shallop on to where there was enough water trickling to lead the way back to the main channel. When an increasing frequency of lights indicated I was nearing the outskirts of a town I found the current to be running so swiftly along what appeared to be a levee on the left bank that a landing was rather too precarious to risk in the dark. I was skirting the bank for a favourable eddy when the rounding of a densely wooded bend brought me out into a stretch of slackening water directly above the dam. The long-striven-for bluff appeared to rise abruptly from the water on my right, while on my left there was a stretch of gravel bar running back to a strip of trees and the levee. The roar of the dam was not the less impressive after bouncing off the bluff on its way to my ears, and I took no more time than was necessary to pull in and land upon the white stretch of beach. As rain was still threatening I decided to seek the town for shelter. Dragging the skiff well above high-water mark, I stacked my stuff in it, shouldered my packsack and climbed the levee. After an hour's bootless wanderings in the sloughs beyond I came back and followed the levee a half mile down-stream to the power-house below the dam. And so to town.