fence in front of the house.

Borasdine had business at the telegraph station, whither I accompanied
him. The operator furnished a blank for the despatch, and when it was
written and paid for he gave a receipt. The receipt stated the hour
and minute when the despatch was taken, the name of the sender, the
place where sent, the number of words, and the amount paid. This form
is invariably adhered to in the Siberian telegraph service.

The telegraph on the lower Amoor was built under the supervision of
Colonel Romanoff and was not completed at the time of my visit. It
commenced at Nicolayevsk and followed the south bank of the Amoor to
Habarofka at the mouth of the Ousuree. At Mariensk there was a branch
to De Castries, and from Habarofka the line extended along the Ousuree
and over the mountains to Posyet and Vladivostok. From Habarofka it
was to follow the north bank of the Amoor to the Shilka, to join the
line from Irkutsk and St. Petersburg. Arrangements have been made
recently to lay a cable from Posyet to Hakodadi in Japan, and thence
to Shanghae and other parts of China. When the cable proposed by Major
Collins is laid across the Pacific Ocean, and the break in the Amoor
line is closed up, the telegraph circuit around the globe will be
complete.

The telegraph is operated on the Morse system with instruments of
Prussian manufacture. Compared to our American instruments the
Prussian ones are quite clumsy, though they did not appear so in the
hands of the operators. The signal key was at least four times as
large as ours, and could endure any amount of rough handling. The
other machinery was on a corresponding scale.