Directory_and_Chronicle_1850 — Page 333

1850

Notices of the Sagalien River.

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culture except in the bottoms; and rain and snow are far from abun- dant. The elevation has never been ascertained, but the fact that in the latitude of Paris ice is seen in the streams nearly half the year shows that it must be great. The country about the Ingoda is less severe, and when the Cossacks conquered the tribes dwelling here a century since, they found them cultivating the land to a great extent, perhaps more than it is at present, as their exactions obliged whole tribes to migrate into Chinese territory, and settle in and about the valley of the Naun.

The country east of the Inner Hingan has a less elevation, and though the ranges dividing the valleys of the Naun, Songari, Hurba, Usuri, and Sagalien, attain a great height, these rivers flow through arable tracts, and a higher temperature prevails. Forests of oak, hazel, linden and cherry, replace the fir and larch of the Humari, and crops of barley, rye, wheat, hemp and buckwheat furnish food for man, with meadows for cattle. The policy of the Chinese govern- ment in banishing criminals to these regions, and compelling them to cultivate land, has tended to improve the region and its nomadic inhabitants. Chinese civilization has hardly extended to the Pacific shore, and the tribes there are probably no better known to the geogra- phers at Peking than they are to us.

The Ghiliaks constitute the largest tribe, and range over the whole region between the Sagalien and the Hingan, living by fishing and hunting. Cottrell says the Russians from Yakutsk occasionally meet them in hunting, but little is known of their origin or language. The Humari, Solons, Ducheri, and other tribes mentioned on maps, are we think branches of this greater one, called Fiatta or Fiyaks

by the Chinese. Their country was conquered by the Cossacks early in the seventeenth century, and a fort built at Yacsa or Albasyne, to overawe the tribes and collect the tribute or yassak of firs. The position of this post was favorable, the country sheltered by the Daurian Mts., the climate temperate, and soil fertile, but the Russians were obliged to retire beyond the Shilka.

The lands cultivated when the fort was occupied still produce grain. The Chinese now collect the peltry from these hunters at Sagalien hotun. The tribes upon the Usuri, and between it and the ocean, are collectively called Yupí Táh-tsz'

7.

or

Fish-skin Tartars by Du Halde, and subdivided into the Orochi, Bichi, Fiyaks, and Kiching; but too little is known of them to render these distinctions of the least value. They are all described by the Chinese as "tribes who pay tribute of martin furs."