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Our progress up the Amour was slow but not sure. Time after time the experience described in the last chapter would be repeated. We would touch bottom, scrape on the sand, the engines would make desperate efforts to pull us off into deep water, but would finally give up in despair, slow down, stop altogether, and for one hour, or ten, or twenty, we must possess our souls in patience, until, with infinite pains, our craft was floated once more.
We were told before starting that the journey from Blagavestchensk to Stretinsk would not take more than seven days, or seven days and one-half; but seven times twenty-four hours passed and Stretinsk was still four hundred miles away, and not half the distance had been traversed. The alarming tale was circulated that the water was falling at the rate of two inches a day. The usual story about this being an extraordinary season was current -- "not for thirteen years had the water been so low," etc. I am inclined to think that every year on the Amour is "extraordinary," and that, especially in the month of June, those who essay this journey must count on spending as much time on the sand-banks as in deep water.