The main character of the book, an officer of the Russian army, Yakov Vasilyevich Dyachenko, is the first builder of the military post Khabarovka, a border guard, and a military diplomat. After creative activity in Khabarovsk, his further path passed through the village of Kazakevicheva, where he commanded a Cossack battalion, to intense service in the Novgorod post (South Primorye). There, in the difficult military-political situation of the second half of the 60s of the XIX century, he simultaneously served as the head of the guard team, a civilian official and a border commissioner in the vast territory of the Suifun district, which now includes the city of Vladivostok and several rural areas. Colonel Ya, V. Dyachenko, in terms of the scale and content of the tasks to be solved, was undoubtedly a figure of a Far Eastern scale.