When I reached home, I found mother in a very nervous state of mind. Some one had spread the report of our trip across the border, and in her anxiety she imagined all sorts of terrible things to be happening to us. No sooner did she see me than she put down my baby sister, who had fallen asleep in her arms, and embraced me. A moment after she still further relieved her wrought up feelings by giving me a sound whipping, and still later, after I had washed myself and had had my dinner, both she and my older sister listened with many questions to very minute particulars of our little adventure. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: More properly Kozak or Kazak.] [Footnote 2: In the spring of 1857, a regiment of three sotnias of Cossacks from the Transbaikal region were chosen by lot to settle with their families along the Amur River. Here they were divided into small villages or _stanitsas_ (Cossack posts) about fifteen miles apart. The land was then for the most part a wilderness. There were forests to be cleared and marshes to be drained. In addition to doing this pioneer work the Cossacks had to defend the frontier toward China and provide postal communications between the Amur and the section from which they had come.--THE EDITOR.] [Footnote 3: Members of organized bands of Chinese robbers.] [Footnote 4: Northern Chinese for "Hello."] [Footnote 5: Not good.] CHAPTER II THE FIRST DEER OF THE SEASON It was April. Winter was over, but the sun had not yet had time to melt the ice in our part of the river when the alarm was given that the Ussuri had broken loose a hundred miles above us and was rushing toward our village at tremendous speed. This news was brought by an officer who had been sent to give orders that the river be dynamited at once to remove the ice blockade. I was awakened that night by a terrible noise resembling hundreds of guns shot in rapid succession. My first impression was that the officer and his assistants were blowing up the ice, but I soon learned differently. When I had dressed and come out, I could see that it was caused entirely by the breaking of the ice. All the village, including babes in arms, were already on the banks. It was not light enough to see the whole picture, but in the half darkness the moving white field of ice blocks resembled now a herd of mysterious animals, fighting among themselves, jumping on one another, and roaring, as they rushed headlong toward the north, or then again more like spirits driven from paradise, and making their way into the unknown with cries and wails, in desperate panic and fear.