I am sailing down the Shilka, which runs into the Amur at the Pokrovskaya Stanitsa. The river is not broader than the Psyol, it is even narrower. The shores are stony: there are crags and forests. It is absolutely wild.... We tack about to avoid foundering on a sandbank, or running our helm into the banks: steamers and barges often do so in the rapids. It’s stifling. We have just stopped at Ust-Kara, where we have landed five or six convicts. There are mines here and a convict prison. Yesterday we were at Nertchinsk. The little town is nothing to boast of, but one could live there. And how are you, messieurs and mesdames? I know positively nothing about you. You might subscribe twopence each and send me a full telegram. The steamer will stay the night at Gorbitsa. The nights here are foggy, sailing is dangerous, I shall send off this letter at Gorbitsa. ... I am going first class because my companions are in the second. I have got away from them. We have driven together (three in one chaise), we have slept together and are sick of each other, especially I of them. * * * * * My handwriting is very bad, shaky. That is because the steamer rocks. It’s difficult to write. I broke off here. I went to my lieutenants and had tea. They have both had a long sleep and were in a very cordial mood. One of them, Lieutenant N. (the surname jars upon my ear), is in the infantry; he is a tall, well-fed, loud-voiced Courlander, a great braggart and Hlestakov, who sings songs from every opera, but has no more ear than a smoked herring, an unlucky fellow who has squandered all the money for his travelling expenses, knows all Mickiewicz by heart, is ill-bred, far too unreserved, and babbles till it makes you sick. Like me, he is fond of talking about his uncles and aunts. The other lieutenant, M., a geographer, is a quiet, modest, thoroughly well-educated fellow. If it were not for N., I could travel with the other for a million versts without being bored. But with N., who intrudes into every conversation, the other bores me too.... I believe we are reaching Gorbitsa. To-morrow I will make up the form of a telegram which you must send me to Sahalin. I will try to put all I want to know in thirty words, and you must try and keep strictly to the pattern. The gad-flies bite. TO N. A. LEIKIN. GORBITSA, June 20, 1890. Greetings, dear Nikolay Alexandrovitch! I wrote you this as I approached Gorbitsa, one of the Cossack settlements on the banks of the Shilka, a tributary of the Amur. This is where I have got to. I am sailing down the Amur.