place
Ust-Kara
also: Усть-Кара
A settlement on the Shilka/Amur river route in Transbaikalia, site of gold mines worked by convict labor and a katorga (convict) prison; the "Yermak" stopped there to put ashore five or six convicts, one of the letter's few direct, unembellished glimpses of the penal system Chekhov was traveling to study on Sakhalin itself.