I will not detain the reader long with the first part of our journey from Anadyrsk to the Pacific Coast, as it did not differ much from our previous Siberian experience. Riding all day over the ice of the river, or across barren steppes, and camping out at night on the snow, in all kinds of weather, made up our life; and its dreary monotony was relieved only by anticipations of a joyful meeting with our exiled friends and the exciting consciousness that we were penetrating a country never before visited by civilised man. Day by day the fringe of alder bushes along the river bank grew lower and more scanty, and the great steppes that bordered the river became whiter and more barren as the river widened toward the sea. Finally we left behind us the last vestige of vegetation, and began the tenth day of our journey along a river which had increased to a mile in width, and amidst plains perfectly destitute of all life, which stretched away in one unbroken white expanse until they blended with the distant sky. It was not without uneasiness that I thought of the possibility of being overtaken by a ten days' storm in such a region as this. We had made, as nearly as we could estimate, since leaving Anadyrsk, about two hundred versts; but whether we were anywhere near the seacoast or not we had no means of knowing. The weather for nearly a week had been generally clear, and not very cold; but on the night of February 1st the thermometer sank to -35°, and we could find only just enough small green bushes to boil our teakettle. We dug everywhere in the snow in search of wood, but found nothing except moss, and a few small cranberry bushes which would not burn. Tired with the long day's travel, and the fruitless diggings for wood, Dodd and I returned to camp, and threw ourselves down upon our bearskins to drink tea. Hardly had Dodd put his cup to his lips when I noticed that a curious, puzzled expression came over his face, as if he found something singular and unusual in the taste of the tea. I was just about to ask him what was the matter, when he cried in a joyful and surprised voice, "Tide-water! The tea is salt!" Thinking that perhaps a little salt might have been dropped accidentally into the tea, I sent the men down to the river for some fresh ice, which we carefully melted. It was unquestionably salt. We had reached the tide-water of the Pacific, and the ocean itself could not be far distant. One more day must certainly bring us to the house of the American party, or to the mouth of the river. From all appearances we should find no more wood; and anxious to make the most of the clear weather, we slept only about six hours, and started on at midnight by the light of a brilliant moon.
[Illustration: A MAN OF THE YUKAGIRS]
On the eleventh day after our departure from Anadyrsk, toward the close of the long twilight which succeeds an arctic day, our little train of eleven sledges drew near the place where, from Chukchi accounts, we expected to find the long-exiled party of Americans. The night was clear, still, and intensely cold, the thermometer at sunset marking forty-four degrees below zero, and sinking rapidly to -50° as the rosy flush in the west grew fainter and fainter, and darkness settled down upon the vast steppe. Many times before, in Siberia and Kamchatka, I had seen nature in her sterner moods and winter garb; but never before had the elements of cold, barrenness, and desolation seemed to combine into a picture so dreary as the one which was presented to us that night near Bering Strait. Far as eye could pierce the gathering gloom in every direction lay the barren steppe like a boundless ocean of snow, blown into long wave-like ridges by previous storms. There was not a tree, nor a bush, nor any sign of animal or vegetable life, to show that we were not travelling on a frozen ocean. All was silence and desolation. The country seemed abandoned by God and man to the Arctic Spirit, whose trembling banners of auroral light flared out fitfully in the north in token of his conquest and dominion. About eight o'clock the full moon rose huge and red in the east, casting a lurid glare over the vast field of snow; but, as if it too were under the control of the Arctic Spirit, it was nothing more than the mockery of a moon, and was constantly assuming the most fantastic and varied shapes. Now it extended itself laterally into a long ellipse, then gathered itself up into the semblance of a huge red urn, lengthened out to a long perpendicular bar with rounded ends, and finally became triangular. It can hardly be imagined what added wildness and strangeness this blood-red distorted moon gave to a scene already wild and strange. We seemed to have entered upon some frozen abandoned world, where all the ordinary laws and phenomena of Nature were suspended, where animal and vegetable life were extinct, and from which even the favour of the Creator had been withdrawn. The intense cold, the solitude, the oppressive silence, and the red, gloomy moonlight, like the glare of a distant but mighty conflagration, all united to excite in the mind feelings of awe, which were perhaps intensified by the consciousness that never before had any human being, save a few Wandering Chukchis, ventured in winter upon these domains of the Frost King. There was none of the singing, joking, and hallooing, with which our drivers were wont to enliven a night journey. Stolid and unimpressible though they might be, there was something in the scene which eventheyfelt and were silent. Hour after hour wore slowly away until midnight. We had passed by more than twenty miles the point on the river where the party of Americans was supposed to be; but no sign had been found of the subterranean house or its projecting stove-pipe, and the great steppe still stretched away before us, white, ghastly, and illimitable as ever. For nearly twenty-four hours we had travelled without a single stop, night or day, except one at sunrise to rest our tired dogs; and the intense cold, fatigue, anxiety, and lack of warm food, began at last to tell upon our silent but suffering men. We realised for the first time the hazardous nature of the adventure in which we were engaged, and the almost absolute hopelessness of the search which we were making for the lost American party. We had not one chance in a hundred of finding at midnight on that vast waste of snow a little buried hut, whose location we did not know within fifty miles, and of whose very existence we were by no means certain. Who could tell whether the Americans had not abandoned their subterranean house two months before, and removed with some friendly natives to a more comfortable and sheltered situation? We had heard nothing from them later than December 1st, and it was now February. They might in that time have gone a hundred miles down the coast looking for a settlement, or have wandered far back into the interior with a band of Reindeer Chukchis. It was not probable that they would have spent four months in that dreary, desolate region without making an effort to escape. Even if they were still in their old camp, however, how were we to find them? We might have passed their little underground hut unobserved hours before, and might be now going farther and farther away from it, from wood, and from shelter. It had seemed a very easy thing before we left Anadyrsk, to simply go down the river until we came to a house on the bank, or saw a stove-pipe sticking out of a snow-drift; but now, two hundred and fifty or three hundred miles from the settlement, in a temperature of 50° below zero, when our lives perhaps depended upon finding that little buried hut, we realised how wild had been our anticipations, and how faint were our prospects of success. The nearest wood was more than fifty miles behind us, and in our chilled and exhausted condition we dared not camp without a fire. We must go either forward or back—find the hut within four hours, or abandon the search and return as rapidly as possible to the nearest wood. Our dogs were beginning already to show unmistakable signs of exhaustion, and their feet, lacerated by ice which had formed between the toes, were now spotting the snow with blood at every step. Unwilling to give up the search while there remained any hope, we still went on to the eastward, along the edges of high bare bluffs skirting the river, separating our sledges as widely as possible, and extending our line so as to cover a greater extent of ground. A full moon now high in the heavens, lighted up the vast lonely plain on the north side of the river as brilliantly as day; but its whiteness was unbroken by any dark object, save here and there little hillocks of moss or swampy grass from which the snow had been swept by furious winds.
We were all suffering severely from cold, and our fur hoods and the breasts of our fur coats were masses of white frost which had been formed by our breaths. I had put on two heavy reindeerskinkukhlankasweighing in the aggregate about thirty pounds, belted them tightly about the waist with a sash, drawn their thick hoods up over my head and covered my face with a squirrelskin mask; but in spite of all I could only keep from freezing by running beside my sledge. Dodd said nothing, but was evidently disheartened and half-frozen, while the natives sat silently upon their sledges as if they expected nothing and hoped for nothing. Only Gregorie and an old Chukchi whom we had brought with us as a guide showed any energy or seemed to have any confidence in the ultimate discovery of the party. They went on in advance, digging everywhere in the snow for wood, examining carefully the banks of the river, and making occasional détours into the snowy plain to the northward. At last Dodd, without saying anything to me, gave his spiked stick to one of the natives, drew his head and arms into the body of his fur coat, and lay down upon his sledge to sleep, regardless of my remonstrances, and paying no attention whatever to my questions. He was evidently becoming stupefied by the deadly chill, which struck through the heaviest furs, and which was constantly making insidious advances from the extremities to the seat of life. He probably would not live through the night unless he could be roused, and might not live two hours. Discouraged by his apparently hopeless condition, and exhausted by the constant struggle to keep warm, I finally lost all hope and reluctantly decided to abandon the search and camp. By stopping where we were, breaking up one of our sledges for firewood, and boiling a little tea, I thought that Dodd might be revived; but to go on to the eastward seemed to be needlessly risking the lives of all without any apparent prospect of discovering the party or of finding wood. I had just given the order to the natives nearest me to camp, when I thought I heard a faint halloo in the distance. All the blood in my veins suddenly rushed with a great throb to the heart as I threw back my fur hood and listened. Again, a faint, long-drawn cry came back through the still atmosphere from the sledges in advance. My dogs pricked up their ears at the startling sound and dashed eagerly forward, and in a moment I came upon several of our leading drivers gathered in a little group around what seemed to be an old overturned whale-boat, which lay half buried in snow by the river's bank. The footprint in the sand was not more suggestive to Robinson Crusoe than was this weather-beaten, abandoned whale-boat to us, for it showed that somewhere in the vicinity were shelter and life. One of the men a few moments before had driven over some dark, hard object in the snow, which he at first supposed to be a log of driftwood; but upon stopping to examine it, he found it to be an American whale-boat. If ever we thanked God from the bottom of our hearts, it was then. Brushing away with my mitten the long fringes of frost which hung to my eyelashes, I looked eagerly around for a house, but Gregorie had been quicker than I, and a joyful shout from a point a little farther down the river announced another discovery. I left my dogs to go where they chose, threw away my spiked stick, and started at a run in the direction of the sound. In a moment I saw Gregorie and the old Chukchi standing beside a low mound of snow, about a hundred yards back from the river-bank, examining some dark object which projected from its smooth white surface. It was the long talked-of, long-looked-for stove-pipe! The Anadyr River party was found.
The unexpected discovery, at midnight, of this party of countrymen, when we had just given up all hope of shelter, and almost of life, was a God-send to our disheartened spirits, and I hardly knew in my excitement what I did. I remember now walking hastily back and forth in front of the snow-drift, repeating softly to myself at every step, "Thank God!" "Thank God!" but at the time I was not conscious of anything except the great fact that we had found that party. Dodd, who had been roused from his half-frozen lethargy by the strong excitement of the discovery, now suggested that we try to find the entrance to the house and get in as quickly, as possible, as he was nearly dead from cold and exhaustion. There was no sound of life in the lonely snow-drift before us, and the inmates, if it had any, were evidently asleep. Seeing no sign anywhere of a door, I walked up on the drift, and shouted down through the stove-pipe in tremendous tones, "Halloo the house!" A startled voice from under my feet demanded "Who's there?"
"Come out and see! Where's the door?"
My voice seemed to the astounded Americans inside to come out of the stove—a phenomenon which was utterly unparalleled in all their previous experience; but they reasoned very correctly that any stove which could ask in good English for the door in the middle of the night had an indubitable right to be answered; and they replied in a hesitating and half-frightened tone that the door was "on the south-east corner." This left us about as wise as before. In the first place we did not know which way south-east was, and in the second a snow-drift could not properly be described as having a corner. I started around the stove-pipe, however, in a circle, with the hope of finding some sort of an entrance. The inmates had dug a deep ditch or trench about thirty feet in length for a doorway, and had covered it over with sticks and reindeerskins to keep out the drifting snow. Stepping incautiously upon this frail roof I fell through just as one of the startled men was coming out in his shirt and drawers, holding a candle above his head, and peering through the darkness of the tunnel to see who would enter. The sudden descent through the roof of such an apparition as I knew myself to be, was not calculated to restore the steadiness of startled nerves. I had on two heavykukhlankaswhich swelled out my figure to gigantic proportions; two thick reindeerskin hoods with long frosty fringes of black bearskin were pulled up over my head, a squirrelskin mask frozen into a sheet of ice concealed my face, and nothing but the eyes peering out through tangled masses of frosty hair showed that the furs contained a human being. The man took two or three frightened steps backward and nearly dropped his candle. I came in such a "questionable shape" that he might well demand "whether my intents were wicked or charitable!" As I recognised his face, however, and addressed him again in English, he stopped; and tearing off my mask and fur hoods I spoke my name. Never was there such rejoicing as that which then took place in that little underground cellar, as I recognised in the exiled party two of my old comrades and friends, to whom eight months before I had bid good-bye, as theOlgasailed out of the Golden Gate of San Francisco. I little thought when I shook hands with Harder and Robinson then, that I should next meet them at midnight, in a little snow-covered cellar, on the great lonely steppes of the lower Anadyr. As soon as we had taken off our heavy furs and seated ourselves beside a warm fire, we began to feel the sudden reaction which necessarily followed twenty-four hours of such exposure, suffering, and anxiety. Our overstrained nerves gave way all at once, and in ten minutes I could hardly raise a cup of coffee to my lips. Ashamed of such womanish weakness, I tried to conceal it from the Americans, and I presume they do not know to this day that Dodd and I nearly fainted several times within the first twenty minutes, from the suddenness of the change from 50° below zero to 70° above, and the nervous exhaustion produced by anxiety and lack of sleep. We felt an irresistible craving for some powerful stimulant and called for brandy, but there was no liquor of any kind to be had. This weakness, however, soon passed away, and we proceeded to relate to one another our respective histories and adventures, while our drivers huddled together in a mass at one end of the little hut and refreshed themselves with hot tea.
The party of Americans which we had thus found buried in the snow, more than three hundred versts from Anadyrsk, had been landed there by one of the Company's vessels, some time in September. Their intention had been to ascend the river in a whale-boat until they should reach some settlement, and then try to open communication with us; but winter set in so suddenly, and the river froze over so unexpectedly, that this plan could not be carried out. Having no means of transportation but their boat, they could do nothing more than build themselves a house, and go into winter quarters, with the faint hope that, some time before spring, Major Abaza would send a party of men to their relief. They had built a sort of burrow underground, with bushes, driftwood, and a few boards which had been left by the vessel, and there they had been living by lamp-light for five months, without ever seeing the face of a civilised human being. The Wandering Chukchis had soon found out their situation and frequently visited them on reindeer-sledges, and brought them fresh meat, and blubber which they used for lamp-oil; but these natives, on account of a superstition which I have previously mentioned, refused to sell them any living reindeer, so that all their efforts to procure transportation were unavailing. The party originally consisted of five men—Macrae, Arnold, Robinson, Harder, and Smith; but Macrae and Arnold, about three weeks previous to our arrival, had organised themselves into a "forlorn hope," and had gone away with a large band of Wandering Chukchis in search, of some Russian settlement. Since that time nothing had been heard from them, and Robinson, Harder, and Smith had been living alone.
Such was the situation when we found the party. Of course, there was nothing to be done but carry these three men and all their stores back to Anadyrsk, where we should probably find Macrae and Arnold awaiting our arrival. The Chukchis came to Anadyrsk, I knew, every winter, for the purpose of trade, and would probably bring the two Americans with them.
After three days spent in resting, refitting, and packing up, we started back with the rescued party, and on February 6th we returned in safety to Anadyrsk.
[Illustration: Stone Hatchet for cutting edible grass]
All the inhabitants of the settlement were in the streets to meet us when we returned; but we were disappointed not to see among them the faces of Macrae and Arnold. Many bands of Chukchis from the lower Anadyr had arrived at the village, but nothing had been heard of the missing men. Forty-five days had now elapsed since they left their camp on the river, and, unless they had died or been murdered, they ought long since to have arrived. I should have sent a party in search of them, but I had not the slightest clue to the direction in which they had gone, or the intentions of the party that had carried them away; and to look for a band of Wandering Chukchis on those great steppes was as hopeless as to look for a missing vessel in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and far more dangerous. We could only wait, therefore, and hope for the best. We spent the first week after our return in resting, writing up our journals, and preparing a report of our explorations, to be forwarded by special courier to the Major. During this time great numbers of wild, wandering natives—Chukchis, Lamutkis (la-moot'-kees) and a few Koraks—came into the settlement to exchange their furs and walrus teeth for tobacco, and gave us an excellent opportunity of studying their various characteristics and modes of life. The Wandering Chukchis, who visited us in the greatest numbers, were evidently the most powerful tribe in north-eastern Siberia, and impressed us very favourably with their general appearance and behaviour. Except for their dress, they could hardly have been distinguished from North American Indians—many of them being as tall, athletic, and vigorous specimens of savage manhood as I had ever seen. They did not differ in any essential particular from the Wandering Koraks, whose customs, religion, and mode of life I have already described.
[Illustration: A MAN OF THE WANDERING CHUKCHIS]
The Lamutkis, however, were an entirely different race, and resembled the Chukchis only in their nomadic habits. All the natives in north-eastern Siberia, except the Kamchadals, Chuances, and Yukagirs, who are partially Russianised, may be referred to one or another of three great classes. The first of these, which may be called the North American Indian class, comprises the wandering and settled Chukchis and Koraks, and covers that part of Siberia lying between the 160th meridian of east longitude and Bering Strait. It is the only class which has ever made a successful stand against Russian invasion, and embraces without doubt the bravest, most independent savages in all Siberia. I do not think that this class numbers all together more than six or eight thousand souls, although the estimates of the Russians are much larger.
The second class comprises all the natives in eastern Siberia who are evidently and unmistakably of Mongolian origin, including the Tunguses, the Lamutkis, the Manchus, and the Gilyaks of the Amur River. It covers a greater extent of ground probably than both of the other classes together, its representatives being found as far west as the Yenesei, and as far east as Anadyrsk, in 169° E. long. The only branches of this class that I have ever seen are the Lamutkis and the Tunguses. They are almost exactly alike, both being very slenderly built men, with straight black hair, dark olive complexions, no beards, and more or less oblique eyes. They do not resemble a Chukchi or a Korak any more than a Chinaman resembles a Comanche or a Sioux. Their dress is very peculiar. It consists of a fur hood, tight fur trousers, short deerskin boots, a Masonic apron, made of soft flexible buckskin and elaborately ornamented with beads and pieces of metal, and a singular-looking frock-coat cut in very civilised style out of deerskin, and ornamented with long strings of coloured reindeer hair made into chenille. You can never see one without having the impression that he is dressed in some kind of a regalia or uniform. The men and women resemble each other very much in dress and appearance, and by a stranger cannot be distinguished apart. Like the Chukchis and Koraks, they are reindeer nomads, but differ somewhat from the former in their mode of life. Their tents are smaller and differently constructed and instead of dragging their tent-poles from place to place as the Chukchis do, they leave them standing; when they break camp, and either cut new ones or avail themselves of frames left standing by other bands. Tent-poles in this way serve as landmarks, and a day's, journey is from one collection of frames to another. Few of the Tunguses or Lamutkis own many deer. Two or three hundred are considered to be a large herd, and a man who owns more than that is regarded as a sort of millionaire. Such herds as are found among the Koraks in northern Kamchatka, numbering from five to ten thousand, are never to be seen west of Gizhiga. The Tunguses, however, use their few deer to better advantage and in a greater variety of ways than do the Koraks. The latter seldom ride their deer or train them to carry packs, while the Tunguses do both. The Tunguses are of a mild, amiable disposition, easily governed and easily influenced, and seem to have made their way over so large an extent of country more through the sufferance of other tribes than through any aggressive power or disposition of their own. Their original religion was Shamanism, but they now profess almost universally the Greco-Russian faith and receive Christian names. They acknowledge also their subjection to the authority of the Tsar, and pay a regular annual tribute in furs. Nearly all the Siberian squirrelskins which reach the European market are bought by Russian traders from Wandering Tunguses around the Okhotsk Sea. When I left the settlement of Okhotsk, in the fall of 1867, there were more than seventy thousand squirrelskins there in the hands of one Russian merchant, and this was only a small part of the whole number caught by the Tunguses during that summer. The Lamutkis, who are first cousins to the Tunguses, are fewer in number, but live in precisely the same way. I never met more than three or four bands during two years of almost constant travel in all parts of north-eastern Siberia.
The third great class of natives is the Turkish. It comprises only the Yakuts (yah-koots') who are settled chiefly along the Lena River from its head-waters to the Arctic Ocean. Their origin is unknown, but their language is said to resemble the Turkish or modern Osmanli so closely that a Constantinopolitan of the lower class could converse fairly well with a Yakut from the Lena. I regret that I was not enough interested in comparative philology while in Siberia to compile a vocabulary and grammar of the Yakut language. I had excellent opportunities for doing so, but was not aware at that time of its close resemblance to the Turkish, and looked upon it only as an unintelligible jargon which proved nothing but the active participation of the Yakuts in the construction of the Tower of Babel. The bulk of this tribe is settled immediately around the Asiatic pole of cold, and they can unquestionably endure a lower temperature with less suffering than any other natives in Siberia. They are called by the Russian explorer Wrangell, "iron men," and well do they deserve the appellation. The thermometer at Yakutsk, where several thousands of them are settled,averagesduring the three winter months thirty-seven degrees below zero; but this intense cold does not seem to occasion them the slightest inconvenience. I have seen them in a temperature of -40°, clad only in a shirt and one sheepskin coat, standing quietly in the street, talking and laughing as if it were a pleasant summer's day and they were enjoying the balmy air! They are the most thrifty, industrious natives in all northern Asia. It is a proverbial saying in Siberia, that if you take a Yakut, strip him naked, and set him down in the middle of a great desolate steppe, and then return to that spot at the expiration of a year, you will find him living in a large, comfortable house, surrounded by barns and haystacks, owning herds of horses and cattle, and enjoying himself like a patriarch. They have all been more or less civilised by Russian intercourse, and have adopted Russian manners and the religion of the Greek Church. Those settled along the Lena cultivate rye and hay, keep herds of Siberian horses and cattle, and live principally upon coarse black-bread, milk, butter, and horse-flesh. They are notorious gluttons. All are very skilful in the use of the "topor" or short Russian axe, and with that instrument alone will go into a primeval forest, cut down trees, hew out timber and planks, and put up a comfortable house, complete even to panelled doors and window-sashes. They are the only natives in all north-eastern Siberia who can do and are willing to do hard continuous work.
[Illustration: TUNGUSE MAN AND WOMAN IN BEST SUMMER DRESS]
These three great classes, viz., American Indian natives, Mongolian natives, and Turko-Yakut natives, comprise all the aboriginal inhabitants of north-eastern Siberia except the Kamchadals, the Chuances, and the Yukagirs. [Footnote: There are a few Eskimo-like natives living in permanent habitations near Bering Strait, but we did not see them.] These last have been so modified by Russian influence, that it is hard to tell to which class they are most nearly allied, and the ethnologist will shortly be relieved from all further consideration of the problem by their inevitable extinction. The Chuances and Yukagirs have already become mere fragments of tribes, and their languages will perish with the present generation.
The natives of whom we saw most at Anadyrsk were, as I have already said, the Chukchis. They frequently called upon us in large parties, and afforded us a great deal of amusement by their naïve and childlike comments upon Americans, American instruments, and the curious American things generally which we produced for their inspection. I shall never forget the utter astonishment with which a band of them once looked through my field-glass. I had been trying it one clear cold day out-of-doors, and quite a crowd of Chukchis and Yukagirs had gathered around me to see what I was doing. Observing their curiosity, I gave the glass to one of them and told him to look through it at another native who happened to be standing out on the plain, at a distance of perhaps a hundred yards. The expression of blank, half-incredulous surprise which gradually came over his features as he saw that native brought up, apparently within a few feet, was irresistibly comical. He did not dream for a moment that it was a mere optical illusion; he supposed that the wonderful instrument had actually transported the man physically from a distance of a hundred yards up to the place where he stood, and as he held the glass to his eyes with one hand, he stretched out the other to try to catch hold of him. Finding to his great astonishment that he could not, he removed the glass, and saw the man standing quietly as before, a hundred yards away. The idea then seemed to occur to him that if he could only get this mysterious instrument to his eyes quickly enough, he would surprise the man in the very act of coming up—catch him perhaps about half-way—and find out how it was done. He accordingly raised the glass toward his face very slowly (watching the man meanwhile intently, to see that he took no unfair advantage and did not start too soon) until it was within an inch of his eyes, and then looked through it suddenly. But it was of no use. The man was right beside him again, but how he came there he didn't know. Perhaps he could catch him if he made a sudden dash, and he tried it. This, however, was no more successful than his previous experiments, and the other natives looked at him in perfect amazement, wondering what he was trying to do with all these singular motions. He endeavoured to explain to them in great excitement that the man had been brought up apparently within arm's length, and yet he could not touch him. His comrades of course denied indignantly that the man had moved at all, and they engaged in a furious dispute as to whether this innocent and unconscious man had been anywhere near them or not. The native who maintained the affirmative appealed to me; but, convulsed with laughter, I could make no reply, and he started off at a run, to see the man and find out whether he had been brought up or not, and how it felt to be transported over a hundred yards of space in an instant of time! We who are familiar with these discoveries of science can hardly realise how they appear to a wholly uneducated savage; but if a superior race of beings should come from the planet Mars and show us a mysterious instrument which enabled a man to be in two different places at the same time, we should understand the sensations of a Chukchi in looking through a field-glass.
Soon after this I happened to be encamped one night on a great plain near Anadyrsk, with a party of these same natives; and having received a note from Dodd by a special messenger, I was engaged in reading it by the camp-fire. At several humorous passages I burst into a loud laugh; whereupon the natives nudged one another with their elbows and pointed significantly at me, as much as to say, "Just look at the crazy American! What's the matter with him now?" Finally one of them, an old grey-haired man, asked me what I was laughing at. "Why," said I, "I am laughing at this," and pointed to the piece of paper. The old man thought about it for a moment, compared notes with the others, and they all thought about it; but no one seemed to succeed in getting any light as to the cause of my incomprehensible laughter. In a few moments the old man picked up a half-burned stick which was lying by the fire and said: "Now suppose I should look at this stick for a minute and then laugh; what would you think?" "Why," said I candidly, "I should think you were a fool." "Well," he rejoined with grave satisfaction, "that's just exactly what I think of you!" He seemed to be very much pleased to find that our several opinions of such insane conduct so exactly coincided. Looking at a stick and laughing, and looking at a piece of paper and laughing, seemed to him equally absurd. The languages of the Chukchis and Koraks have never-been reduced to writing; nor, so far as I know, do either of those tribes ever attempt to express ideas by signs or pictures. Written thought is to many of them an impossible conception. It can be imagined, perhaps, with what wonder and baffled curiosity they pore over the illustrated newspapers which are occasionally given to them by the sailors of whaling vessels which visit the coast. Some of the pictures they recognise as representations of things with which they are acquainted; but by far the greater number are as incomprehensible as the hieroglyphics of the Aztecs. I remember that a Korak once brought to me an old tattered fashion-plate fromFrank Leslie's Illustrated Newspapercontaining three or four full-length figures of imaginary ladies, in the widest expansion of crinoline which fashion at that time prescribed. The poor Korak said he had often wondered what those curious objects could be; and now, as I was an American, perhaps I could tell him. He evidently had not the most remote suspicion that they were intended to represent human beings. I told him that those curious objects, as he called them, were American women. He burst out into a "tyée-e-e-e!" of amazement, and asked with a wondering look, "Areallthe women in your country as big as that at the bottom?" It was a severe reflection upon our ladies' dress, and I did not venture to tell him that the bigness was artificial, but merely replied sadly that they were. He looked curiously down at my feet and then at the picture, and then again at my feet, as if he were trying to trace some resemblance between the American man and the American woman; but he failed to do it, and wisely concluded that they must be of widely different species.
[Illustration: A TUNGUSE SUMMER TENT]
The pictures from these papers are sometimes put to curious uses. In the hut of a Christianised but ignorant native near Anadyrsk, I once saw an engraved portrait, cut fromHarper's Weekly, of Major General Dix, framed, hung up in a corner of the room and worshipped as a Russian saint! A gilded candle was burning before his smoky features, and every night and morning a dozen natives crossed themselves and said their prayers to a major-general in the United States Army! It is the only instance, I believe, on record, where a major-general has been raised to the dignity of a saint without even being dead. St. George of England, we are told, was originally a corrupt army contractor of Cappadocia, but he was not canonised until long after his death, when the memory of his contracts was no more. For Major-General Dix was reserved the peculiar privilege of being at the same time United States Minister in Paris and a saint in Siberia!
[Illustration: Woman's fur lined Hood]
Among the few pleasures which reward the traveller for the hardships and dangers of life in the Far North, there are none which are brighter or longer remembered than the magnificent auroral displays which occasionally illumine the darkness of the long polar night, and light up with a celestial glory the whole blue vault of heaven. No other natural phenomenon is so grand, so mysterious, so terrible in its unearthly splendour as this. The veil which conceals from mortal eyes the glory of the eternal throne seems drawn aside, and the awed beholder is lifted out of the atmosphere of his daily life into the immediate presence of God.
On the 20th of February, while we were all yet living together at Anadyrsk, there occurred one of the grandest displays of the arctic aurora which had been observed there for more than fifty years, and which exhibited such unusual and extraordinary brilliancy as to astonish and frighten even the natives. It was a cold, dark, but clear winter's night, and the sky in the earlier part of the evening showed no signs of the magnificent illumination which was already being prepared. A few streamers wavered now and then in the north, and a faint radiance like that of the rising moon shone above the dark belt of shrubbery which bordered the river; but these were common occurrences, and excited no notice or remark. Late in the evening, just as we were preparing to go to bed, Dodd happened to go outside for a moment to look after his dogs; but no sooner had he reached the outer door of the entry than he came rushing back, his face ablaze with excitement, shouting: "Kennan! Robinson! Come out, quick!" With a vague impression that the village must be on fire, I sprang up, and without stopping to put on my furs, fan hastily out, followed closely by Robinson, Harder, and Smith. As we emerged into the open air there burst suddenly upon our startled eyes the grandest exhibition of vivid dazzling light and colour of which the mind can conceive. The whole universe seemed to be on fire. A broad arch of brilliant prismatic colours spanned the heavens from east to west like a gigantic rainbow, with a long fringe of crimson and yellow streamers stretching up from its convex edge to the very zenith. At intervals of one or two seconds, wide, luminous bands, parallel with the arch, rose suddenly out of the northern horizon and swept with a swift, steady majesty across the whole heavens, like long breakers of phosphorescent light rolling in from some limitless ocean of space.
Every portion of the vast arch was momentarily wavering, trembling, and changing colour, and the brilliant streamers which fringed its edge swept back and forth in great curves, like the fiery sword of the angel at the gate of Eden. In a moment the great auroral rainbow, with all its wavering streamers, began to move slowly up toward the zenith, and a second arch of equal brilliancy formed directly under it, shooting up a long serried row of slender, coloured lances toward the North Star, like a battalion of the celestial host presenting arms to its commanding angel. Every instant the display increased in unearthly grandeur. The luminous bands revolved swiftly, like the spokes of a great wheel of light, across the heavens; the streamers hurried back and forth with swift, tremulous motion from the ends of the arches to the centre; and now and then a great wave of crimson would surge up from the north and fairly deluge the whole sky with colour, tingeing the white snowy earth far and wide with its rosy reflection. But as the words of the prophecy, "And the heavens shall be turned to blood," formed themselves upon my lips, the crimson suddenly vanished, and a lightning flash of vivid orange startled us with its wide, all-pervading glare, which extended even to the southern horizon, as if the whole volume of the atmosphere had suddenly taken fire. I even held my breath a moment, as I listened for the tremendous crash of thunder which it seemed to me must follow this sudden burst of vivid light; but in heaven or earth there was not a sound to break the stillness of midnight save the hastily muttered prayers of the frightened native at my side, as he crossed himself and kneeled down before the visible majesty of God. I could not imagine any possible addition which even Almighty power could make to the grandeur of the aurora as it now appeared. The rapid alternations of crimson, blue, green, and yellow in the sky were reflected so vividly from the white surface of the snow, that the whole world seemed now steeped in blood, and then quivering in an atmosphere of pale, ghastly green, through which shone the unspeakable glories of the two mighty crimson and yellow arches. But the end was not yet. As we watched with upturned faces the swift ebb and flow of these great celestial tides of coloured light, the last seal of the glorious revelation was suddenly broken, and both arches were simultaneously shivered into a thousand parallel perpendicular bars, every one of which displayed in regular order, from top to bottom, the primary colours of the solar spectrum. From horizon to horizon there now stretched two vast curving bridges of coloured bars, across which we almost expected to see, passing and repassing, the bright inhabitants of another world. Amid cries of astonishment and exclamations of "God have mercy!" from the startled natives, these innumerable bars began to move back and forth, with a swift dancing motion, along the whole extent of both arches, passing one another from side to side with such bewildering rapidity that the eye was lost in the attempt to follow them. The whole concave of heaven seemed transformed into one great revolving kaleidoscope of shattered rainbows. Never had I even dreamed of such an aurora asthis, and I am not ashamed to confess that its magnificence for a moment overawed and almost frightened me. The whole sky, from zenith to horizon, was "one molten mantling sea of colour and fire;—crimson and purple, and scarlet and green, and colours for which there are no words in language and no ideas in the mind—things which can only be conceived while they are visible." The "signs and portents" in the heavens were grand enough to herald the destruction of a world; flashes of rich quivering colour, covering half the sky for an instant and then vanishing like summer lightning; brilliant green streamers shooting swiftly but silently up across the zenith; thousands of variegated bars sweeping past one another in two magnificent arches, and great luminous waves rolling in from the inter-planetary spaces and breaking in long lines of radiant glory upon the shallow atmosphere of a darkened world.
With the separation of the two arches into bars the aurora reached its utmost magnificence, and from that time its supernatural beauty slowly but steadily faded. The first arch broke up, and soon after it the second; the flashes of colour appeared less and less frequently; the luminous bands ceased to revolve across the zenith; and in an hour nothing remained in the dark starry heavens to remind us of the aurora, except a few faint Magellan clouds of luminous vapour.
The month of February wore slowly away, and March found us still living in Anadyrsk, without any news from the Major, or from the missing men, Arnold and Macrae. Fifty-seven days had now elapsed since they left their camp on the lower Anadyr, and we began to fear that they would never again be seen. Whether they had starved, or frozen to death on some great desolate plain south of Bering Strait, or been murdered by the Chukchis, we could not conjecture, but their long absence was a proof that they had met with some misfortune.
I was not at all satisfied with the route over which we had passed from Shestakóva to Anadyrsk, on account of its barrenness, and the impossibility of transporting heavy telegraph poles over its great snowy steppes from the few wooded rivers by which it was traversed. I accordingly started from Anadyrsk with five dog-sledges on March 4th, to try to find a better route between the Anadyr and the head-waters of the Penzhina River. Three days after our departure we met, on the road to Penzhina, a special messenger from Gizhiga, bringing a letter from the Major dated Okhotsk, January 19th. Enclosed were letters from Colonel Bulkley, announcing the landing of the Anadyr River party under Lieutenant Macrae, and a map showing the location of their camp. The Major wrote as follows: "In case—what God forbid—Macrae and party have not arrived at Anadyrsk, you will immediately, upon the receipt of this letter, do your utmost to deliver them from their too long winter quarters at the mouth of the Anadyr, where they were landed in September. I was told that Macrae would be landedonly in case of perfect certaintyto reach Anadyrsk in boats, and I confess I don't like such surprises as Colonel Bulkley has made me now. For the present our duty consists in doing our utmost to extricate them from where they are, and you must get every dog-sledge you can, stuff them with dog-food and provisions, and go at once in search of Macrae's camp." These directions I had already anticipated and carried out, and Macrae's party, or at least all I could find of it, was now living in Anadyrsk. When the Major wrote this letter, however, he did not suppose that Dodd and I would hear of the landing of the party through the Wandering Chukchis, or that we would think of going in search of them without orders. He knew that he had told us particularly not to attempt to explore the Anadyr River until another season, and did not expect that we would go beyond the last settlement. I wrote a hasty note to Dodd upon the icy runner of my overturned sledge—freezing two fingers in the operation—and sent the courier on to Anadyrsk with the letters. The mail also included letters to me from Captain Scammon, commander of the Company's fleet, and one from my friend W.H. Dall, who had returned with the vessels to San Francisco, and had written me while stopping a few days at Petropavlovsk. He begged me, by all the sacred interests of Science, not to let a single bug or living thing of any kind escape my vigilant eye; but, as I read his letter that night by the camp-fire, I thought with a smile that snowy Siberian steppes and temperatures of 30° and 40° below zero were not very favourable to the growth and dispersion of bugs, nor to efforts for their capture and preservation.
I will not go into a detailed account of the explorations which Lieutenant Robinson and I made in search of a more practicable route for our line between the Penzhina River and Anadyrsk. We found that the river system of the Anadyrsk was divided from that of the Penzhina only by a low mountain ridge, which could be easily passed, and that, by following up certain tributaries of the latter, crossing the watershed, and descending one of the branches of the Anadyr, we should have almost unbroken water communication between the Okhotsk Sea and Bering Strait. Along these rivers timber was generally abundant, and where there was none, poles could be distributed easily in rafts. The route thus indicated was everything which could be desired; and, much gratified by the results of our labours, we returned on March 13th to Anadyrsk.
We were overjoyed to learn from the first man who met us after we entered the settlement that Macrae and Arnold had arrived, and in five minutes we were shaking them by the hand, congratulating them, upon their safe arrival, and overwhelming them with questions as to their travels and adventures, and the reasons of their long absence.
For sixty-four days they had been living with the Wandering Chukchis, and making their way slowly and by a circuitous route towards Anadyrsk. They had generally been well treated, but the band with which they travelled had been in no hurry to reach the settlement, and had been carrying them at the rate of ten or twelve miles a day all over the great desolate steppes which lie south of the Anadyr River. They had experienced great hardships; had lived upon reindeer's entrails and tallow for weeks at a time; had been alive almost constantly with vermin; had spent the greater part of two long months in smoky Chukchipologs, and had despaired, sometimes, of ever reaching a Russian settlement or seeing again a civilised human being; but hope and courage had sustained them through it all, and they had finally arrived at Anadyrsk safe and well. The sum-total of their baggage when they drove into the settlement was a quart bottle of whisky wrapped up in an American flag! As soon as we were all together, we raised the flag on a pole over our little log house, made a whisky punch out of the liquor which had traversed half north-eastern Siberia, and drank it in honour of the men who had lived sixty-four days with the Wandering Chukchis, and carried the stars and stripes through the wildest, least known region on the face of the globe.
Having now accomplished all that could be done in the way of exploration, we began making preparations for a return to Gizhiga. The Major had directed me to meet him there with Macrae, Arnold, Robinson, and Dodd, as soon as the first of April, and the month of March was now rapidly drawing to a close.
[Illustration: A CHUKCHI RUG OF REINDEER SKIN]
On the 20th we packed up our stores, and bidding good-bye to the kind-hearted, hospitable people of Anadyrsk, we set out with a long train of sledges for the coast of the Okhotsk Sea.
Our journey was monotonous and uneventful, and on the second of April, late at night, we left behind us the white desolate steppe of the Paren, and drew near the little flat-toppedyurton the Malmofka, which was only twenty-five versts from Gizhiga. Here we met fresh men, dogs, and sledges, sent out to meet us by the Major, and, abandoning our loaded sledges and tired dogs, we took seats upon the lightnartsof the Gizhiga Cossacks, and dashed away by the light of a brilliant aurora toward the settlement.
About one o'clock we heard the distant barking of dogs, and in a few moments we rushed furiously into the silent village, and stopped before the house of the Russian merchant Vorrebeof (vor'-re-be-off') where we had lived the previous fall, and where we expected to find the Major. I sprang from my sledge, and groping my way through the entry into a warm dark room I shouted "Fstavaitia!" to arouse the sleeping inmates. Suddenly some one rose up from the floor at my feet, and, grasping me by the arm, exclaimed in a strangely familiar voice, "Kennan, is that you?" Startled and bewildered with half-incredulous recognition, I could only reply, "Bush, is that you?" and, when a sleepy boy came in with a light, he was astonished to find a man dressed in heavy frosty furs embracing another who was clad only in a linen shirt and drawers.
There was a joyful time in that log house when the Major, Bush, Macrae, Arnold, Robinson, Dodd, and I gathered around a steaming samovar or tea-urn which stood on a pine table in the centre of the room, and discussed the adventures, haps, and mishaps of our first arctic winter. Some of us had come from the extremity of Kamchatka, some from the frontier of China, and some from Bering Strait, and we all met that night in Gizhiga, and congratulated ourselves and one another upon the successful exploration of the whole route of the proposed Russian-American telegraph line from Anadyr Bay to the Amur River. The different members of the party there assembled had, in seven months, travelled in the aggregate almost ten thousand miles.
The results of our winter's work were briefly as follows: Bush and Mahood, after leaving the Major and me at Petropavlovsk, had gone on to the Russian settlement of Nikolaievsk, at the mouth of the Amur River, and had entered promptly upon the exploration of the west coast of the Okhotsk Sea. They had travelled with the Wandering Tunguses through the densely timbered region between Nikolaievsk and Aian, ridden on the backs of reindeer over the rugged mountains of the Stanavoi range south of Okhotsk, and had finally met the Major at the latter place on the 22d. of February. The Major, alone, had explored the whole north coast of the Okhotsk Sea and had made a visit to the Russian city of Yakutsk, six hundred versts west of Okhotsk, in quest of labourers and horses. He had ascertained the possibility of hiring a thousand Yakut labourers in the settlements along the Lena River, at the rate of sixty dollars a year for each man, and of purchasing there as many Siberian horses as we should require at very reasonable prices. He had located a route for the line from Gizhiga to Okhotsk, and had superintended generally the whole work of exploration. Macrae and Arnold had explored nearly all the region lying south of the Anadyr and along the lower Myan, and had gained much valuable information concerning the little-known tribe of Wandering Chukchis. Dodd, Robinson, and I had explored two routes from Gizhiga to Anadyrsk, and had found a chain of wooded rivers connecting the Okhotsk Sea with the Pacific Ocean near Bering Strait. The natives we had everywhere found to be peaceable and well disposed, and many of them along the route of the line were already engaged in cutting poles. The country, although by no means favourable to the construction of a telegraph line, presented no obstacles which energy and perseverance could not overcome; and, as we reviewed our winter's work, we felt satisfied that the enterprise in which we were engaged, if not altogether an easy one, held out at least a fair prospect of success.
The months of April and May, owing to the great length of the days and the comparative mildness of the weather, are the most favourable months in north-eastern Siberia for outdoor work and travel; and as the Company's vessels could not be expected to arrive at Gizhiga before the early part of June, Major Abaza determined to make the most of the intervening time. As soon as he had recovered a little, therefore, from the fatigue of his journey, he started with Bush, Macrae, and the Russian governor, for Anadyrsk, intending to engage there fifty or sixty native labourers and begin at once the construction of station-houses and the cutting and distribution of poles along the Anadyr River. My own efforts to that end, owing to the laziness of the Anadyrsk people, had been unsuccessful; but it was hoped that through the influence and cooperation of the civil authority something might perhaps be done.
Major Abaza returned by the very last winter road in May. His expedition had been entirely successful; Mr. Bush had been put in command of the Northern District from Penzhina to Bering Strait, and he, together with Macrae, Harder, and Smith, had been left at Anadyrsk for the summer. As soon as the Anadyr River should open, this party was directed to descend it in canoes to its mouth, and there await the arrival of one of the Company's vessels from San Francisco, with reinforcements and supplies. In the meantime fifty native labourers from Anadyrsk, Osolkin, and Pokorukof, had been hired and placed at their disposal, and it was hoped that by the time the ice should be out of the river they would have six or eight station-houses prepared, and several thousand poles cut, ready for distribution in rafts between the settlements of Anadyrsk and the Pacific coast. Having thus accomplished all that it was possible to accomplish with the limited means and force at his disposal, Major Abaza returned to Gizhiga, to await the arrival of the promised vessels from America with men, material, and supplies, for the prosecution of the work.
The season for dog-sledge travel was now over; and as the country afforded no other means of interior transportation, we could not expect to do any more work, or have any further communication with our outlying parties at Anadyrsk and Okhotsk until the arrival of our vessels. We therefore rented for ourselves a little log house overlooking the valley, of the Gizhiga River, furnished it as comfortably as possible with a few plain wooden chairs and tables, hung up our maps and charts on the rough log-walls, displayed our small library of two books—Shakespeare and the New Testament—as advantageously as possible in one corner, and prepared for at least a month of luxurious idleness.
It was now June. The snow was rapidly disappearing under the influence of the warm long-continued sunshine; the ice in the river showed unmistakable signs of breaking up; patches of bare ground appeared here and there along the sunny hillsides, and everything foretold the speedy approach of the short but hot arctic summer. Winter in most parts of north-eastern Siberia begins to break up in May, and summer advances with rapid strides upon its retreating footsteps, covering instantly with grass and flowers the ground that it reclaims from the melting snow-drifts of winter. Hardly is the snow off the ground before the delicate wax-like petals of the blueberry and star-flower, and the great snowy clusters of labrador tea begin to whiten the mossy plains; the birches, willows, and alders burst suddenly into leaf, the river banks grow green with a soft carpet of grass, and the warm still air is filled all day with the trumpet-like cries of wild swans and geese, as they come in great triangular flocks from the sea and pass high overhead toward the far North. In three weeks after the disappearance of the last snow all Nature has put on the garments of midsummer and rejoices in almost perpetual sunshine. There is no long wet, lingering spring, no gradual unfolding of buds and leaves one by one as with us. The vegetation, which has been held in icy fetters for eight long months, bursts suddenly its bonds, and with one great irresistible sweep takes the world by storm. There is no longer any night; one day blends almost imperceptibly into another, with only a short interval of twilight, which has all the coolness and repose of night without its darkness. You may sit by your open window and read until twelve o'clock, inhaling the fragrance of flowers which is brought to you on the cool night wind, listening to the murmur and plash of the river in the valley below, and tracing the progress of the hidden sun by the flood of rosy light which streams up in the North from behind the purple mountains. It is broad daylight, and yet all Nature is asleep, and a strange mysterious stillness, like that of a solar eclipse, pervades heaven and earth. You can even hear the faint roar of the surf on the rocky coast ten miles away. Now and then a song-sparrow hidden in the alder thicket by the river bank dreams that it is morning and breaks out into a quick unconscious trill of melody; but as he wakes he stops himself suddenly and utters a few "peeps" of perplexity, as if not quite sure whether it be morning, or only last evening, and whether he ought to sing or go to sleep again. He finally seems to decide upon the latter course, and all becomes silent once more save the murmur of the river over its rocky bed and the faint roar of the distant sea. Soon after one o'clock a glittering segment of the sun appears between the cloud-like peaks of the distant mountains, a sudden flash of golden light illumines the green dewy landscape, the little sparrow in the alder thicket triumphantly takes up again his unfinished song, the ducks, geese, and aquatic birds renew their harsh discordant cries from the marshy flats along the river, and all animated nature wakes suddenly to a consciousness of daylight as if it were a new thing. There has been no night—but it is another day.
The traveller who has never before experienced an arctic summer, and who has been accustomed to think of Siberia as a land of eternal snow and ice, cannot help being astonished at the sudden and wonderful development of animal and vegetable life throughout that country in the month of June, and the rapidity of the transition from winter to summer in the course of a few short weeks. In the early part of June it is frequently possible to travel in the vicinity of Gizhiga upon dog-sledges, while by the last of the same month the trees are all in full leaf, primroses, cowslips, buttercups, valerian, cinquefoil, and labrador tea, blossom everywhere upon the higher plains and river banks, and the thermometer at noon frequently reaches 70° Fahr. in the shade. There is no spring, in the usual acceptation of the word, at all. The disappearance of snow and the appearance of vegetation are almost simultaneous; and although thetundrasor moss steppes, continue for some time to hold water like a saturated sponge, they are covered with flowers and blossoming blueberry bushes, and show no traces of the long, cold winter which has so recently ended. In less than a month after the disappearance of snow in 1860, I collected from one high plain about five acres in extent, near the mouth of the Gizhiga River, more than sixty species of flowers. Animal life of all kinds is equally prompt in making its appearance. Long before the ice is out of the gulfs and bays along the coast, migratory birds begin to come in from the sea in immense numbers. Innumerable species of ducks, geese, and swans—many of them unknown to the American ornithologist—swarm about every little pool of water in the valleys and upon the lower plains; gulls, fish-hawks, and eagles, keep up a continual screaming about the mouths of the numerous rivers; and the rocky precipitous coast of the sea is literally alive with countless millions of red-beaked puffin or sea-parrots, which build their nests in the crevices and upon the ledges of the most inaccessible cliffs, and at the report of a pistol fly in clouds which fairly darken the air. Besides these predatory and aquatic birds, there are many others which are not so gregarious in their habits, and which, consequently, attract less notice. Among these are the common barn and chimney swallows, crows, ravens, magpies, thrushes, plover, ptarmigan, and a kind of grouse known to the Russians as "teteref." Only one singing-bird, as far as I know, is to be found in the country, and that is a species of small ground-sparrow which frequents the drier and more grassy plains in the vicinity of the Russian settlements.
The village of Gizhiga, where we had temporarily established our headquarters, was a small settlement of perhaps fifty or sixty plain log houses, situated upon the left bank of the Gizhiga River, eight or ten miles from the gulf. It was at that time one of the most important and flourishing settlements upon the coast of the Okhotsk Sea, and controlled all the trade of north-eastern Siberia as far north at the Anadyr and as far west as the village of Okhotsk. It was the residence of a local governor, the headquarters of four or five Russian merchants, and was visited annually by a government supply steamer, and several trading vessels belonging to wealthy American houses. Its population consisted principally of Siberian Cossacks and the descendants of compulsory emigrants from Russia proper, who had received their freedom as compensation for forcible expatriation. Like all othersettledinhabitants of Siberia and Kamchatka, they depended for their subsistence principally upon fish; but as the country abounded in game, and the climate and soil in the valley of the Gizhiga River permitted the cultivation of the hardier kinds of garden vegetables, their condition was undoubtedly much better than it would have been in Russia proper. They were perfectly free, could dispose of their time and services as they chose, and by hiring themselves and their dog-sledges to Russian traders in the winter, they earned money enough to keep themselves supplied with the simpler luxuries, such as tea, sugar, and tobacco, throughout the year. Like all the inhabitants of Siberia, and indeed like all Russians, they were extremely hospitable, good-natured, and obliging, and they contributed not a little to our comfort and amusement during the long months which we were obliged to spend in their far-away isolated settlement.
The presence of Americans in a village so little frequented by strangers as Gizhiga had a very enlivening influence upon society, and as soon as the inhabitants ascertained by experiment that these distinguished sojourners did not consider it beneath their dignity to associate with theprostoi narod, or common people, they overwhelmed us with invitations to tea-parties and evening dances. Anxious to see more of the life of the people, and glad to do anything which would diversify our monotonous existence, we made it a point to accept every such invitation which we received, and many were the dances which Arnold and I attended during the absence of the Major and the Russian governor at Anadyrsk. We had no occasion to ask our Cossack Yagór when there was to be another dance. The question was rather, "Where is the dance to be tonight?" because we knew to a certainty that there would be one somewhere, and wished only to know whether the house in which it was to be held had a ceiling high enough to insure the safety of our heads. It would seem like a preposterous idea to invite people to dance the Russian jig in a room which was too low to permit a man of average stature to stand upright; but it did not seem at all so to these enthusiastic pleasure-seekers in Gizhiga, and night after night they would go hopping around a seven-by-nine room to the music of a crazy fiddle and a two-stringed guitar, stepping on one another's toes and bumping their heads against the ceiling with the most cheerful equanimity imaginable. At these dancing parties the Americans always received a hearty welcome, and were fed with berries, black-bread, and tea, until they could eat and dance no more. Occasionally, however, Siberian hospitality took a form which, to say the least, was not altogether pleasant. For instance, Dodd and I were invited one evening to some kind of an entertainment at the house of one of the Cossacks, and, as was customary in such cases, our host set before us a plain lunch of black-bread, salt, raw frozen fish, and a small pepper-sauce bottle about half full of some liquid which he declared to be vodka. Knowing that there was no liquor in the settlement except what we had, Dodd inquired where he had obtained it. He replied with evident embarrassment that it was some which he had bought from a trading vessel the previous fall, and which he had reserved for cases of emergency! I didn't believe that there was a Cossack in all north-eastern Siberia who was capable ofreservinga bottle of liquor for any such length of time, and in view of his evident uneasiness we thought best to decline to partake of the liquid refreshments and to ask no further questions. It might be vodka, but it was not free from suspicion. Upon our return home I called our boy and inquired if he knew anything about the Cossack's liquor—how he obtained it, and where it came from at that season of the year, when none of the Russian merchants had any for sale. The boy hesitated a moment, but upon being questioned closely he explained the mystery. It appeared that the liquor was ours. Whenever any of the inhabitants of the village came to call upon us, as they frequently did, especially upon holidays, it was customary to give each one of them a drink. Taking advantage of this custom, our friend the Cossack used to provide himself with a small bottle, hang it about his neck with a string, conceal it under his fur coat, and present himself at our house every now and then for the ostensible purpose of congratulating us upon some Russian holiday. Of course we were expected to reward this disinterested sociability with a drink. The Cossack would swallow all he could of the fiery stuff, and then holding as much as possible in his mouth he would make a terrible grimace, cover his face with one hand as if the liquor were very strong, and start hurriedly for the kitchen to get some water. As soon as he was secure from observation he would take out his bottle, deposit in it the last mouthful of liquor which he hadnotswallowed, and return in a few-moments to thank us for our hospitality—and our vodka. This manoeuvre he had been practising at our expense for an unknown length of time, and had finally accumulated nearly a pint. He then had the unblushing audacity to set this half-swallowed vodka before us in an old pepper-sauce bottle, and pretend that it was some that he had reserved since the previous fall for cases of emergency! Could human impudence go farther?
I will relate one other incident which took place during the first month of our residence at Gizhiga, and which illustrates another phase of the popular character, viz. extreme superstition. As I was sitting in the house one morning, drinking tea, I was interrupted by the sudden entrance of a Russian Cossack named Kolmagórof. He seemed to be unusually sober and anxious about something, and as soon as he had bowed and bade me good-morning, he turned to our Cossack, Viushin, and began in a low voice to relate to him something which had just occurred, and which seemed to be of great interest to them both. Owing to my imperfect knowledge of the language, and the low tone in which the conversation was carried on, I failed to catch its purport; but it closed with an earnest request from Kolmagórof that Viushin should give him some article of clothing, which I understood to be a scarf or tippet. Viushin immediately went to a little closet in one corner of the room, where he was in the habit of storing his personal effects, dragged out a large sealskin bag, and began searching in it for the desired article. After pulling out three or four pair of fur boots, a lump of tallow, some dogskin stockings, a hatchet, and a bundle of squirrelskins, he finally produced and held up in triumph one-half of an old, dirty, moth-eaten woollen tippet, and handing it to Kolmagórof, he resumed his search for the missing piece. This also he presently found, in a worse state of preservation, if possible, than the other. They looked as if they had been discovered in the bag of some poor rag-picker who had fished them up out of a gutter in the Five Points. Kolmagórof tied the two pieces together, wrapped them up carefully in an old newspaper, thanked Viushin for his trouble, and, with an air of great relief, bowed again to me and went out. Wondering what use he could make of such a worn, dirty, tattered article of clothing as that which he had received, I applied to Viushin for a solution of the mystery.
"What did he want that tippet for?" I inquired; "it isn't good for anything."
"I know," replied Viushin, "it is a miserable old thing; but there is no other in the village, and his daughter has got the 'Anadyrski bol'" (Anadyrsk sickness).
"Anadyrski bol!" I repeated in astonishment, never having heard of the disease in question; "what has the 'Anadyrski bol' got to do with an old tippet?"
"Why, you see, his daughter has asked for a tippet, and as she has the Anadyrsk sickness, they must get one for her. It don't make any difference about its being old."
This struck me as being a very singular explanation of a very curious performance, and I proceeded to question Viushin more closely as to the nature of this strange disease, and the manner in which an old moth-eaten tippet could afford relief. The information which I gathered was briefly as follows: The "Anadyrski bol," so called from its having originated at Anadyrsk, was a peculiar form of disease, resembling very much the modern spiritual "trance," which had long prevailed in north-eastern Siberia, and which defied all ordinary remedies and all usual methods of treatment. The persons attacked by it, who were generally women, became unconscious of all surrounding things, acquired suddenly an ability to speak languages which they had never heard, particularly the Yakut language, and were gifted temporarily with a sort of second sight or clairvoyance which enabled them to describe accurately objects that they could not see and never had seen. While in this state they would frequently ask for some particular thing, whose appearance and exact location they would describe, and unless it were brought to them they would apparently go into convulsions, sing in the Yakut language, utter strange cries, and behave generally as if they were insane. Nothing could quiet them until the article for which they had asked was produced. Thus Kolmagórof's daughter had imperatively demanded a woollen tippet, and as the poor Cossack had nothing of the sort in the house, he had started out through the village to find one. This was all the information that Viushin could give me. He had never seen one of these possessed persons himself, and had only heard of the disease from others; but he said that Paderin, the chief of the Gizhiga Cossacks, could undoubtedly tell me all about it, as his daughter had been similarly afflicted. Surprised to find among the ignorant peasantry of north-eastern Siberia a disease whose symptoms resembled so closely the phenomena of modern spiritualism, I determined to investigate the subject as far as possible, and as soon as the Major came in, I persuaded him to send for Paderin. The chief of the Cossacks—a simple, honest old fellow, whom it was impossible to suspect of intentional deception—confirmed all that Viushin had told me, and gave us many additional particulars. He said that he had frequently heard his daughter talk the Yakut language while in one of these trances, and had even known her to relate events which were occurring at a distance of several hundred miles. The Major inquired how he knew that it was the Yakut language which his daughter spoke. He said he did not know certainly that it was; but it was not Russian, nor Korak, nor any other native language with which he was familiar, and it sounded very much like Yakut. I inquired what was done in case the sick person demanded some article which it was impossible to obtain. Paderin replied that he had never heard of such an instance; if the article asked for were an uncommon one, the girl always stated where it was to be found—frequently describing with the greatest minuteness things which, so far as he knew, she had never seen. On one occasion, he said his daughter asked for a particular spotted dog which he was accustomed to drive in his team. The dog was brought into the room, and the girl at once became quiet; but from that time the dog itself became so wild and restless as to be almost unmanageable, and he was finally obliged to kill him. "And do you believe in all this stuff?" broke in the Major impatiently, as Paderin hesitated for a moment.
"I believe in God and in our Saviour Jesus Christ," replied theCossack, as he crossed himself devoutly.
"That's all right, and so you ought," rejoined the Major; "but that has nothing whatever to do with the 'Anadyrski bol.' Do you really believe that these women talk in the Yakut language, which they have never heard, and describe things which they have never seen?"
[Illustration: TUNGUSES ON REINDEER-BACK MOVING THEIR ENCAMPMENTPhotograph in The American Museum of Natural History]
Paderin shrugged his shoulders expressively and said that he believed what he saw. He then proceeded to relate to us further and still more incredible particulars as to the symptoms of the disease, and the mysterious powers which it developed in the persons attacked, illustrating his statements by reference to the case of his own daughter. He was evidently a firm believer in the reality of the sickness, but would not say to what agency he ascribed the phenomena of second sight and the ability to speak strange languages, which were its most remarkable symptoms.
During the day we happened to call upon the ispravnik or Russian governor, and in course of conversation mentioned the "Anadyrski bol," and related some of the stories which we had heard from Paderin. The ispravnik—skeptical upon all subjects, and especially upon this—said that he had often heard of the disease, and that his wife was a firm believer in it, but that in his opinion it was a humbug, which deserved no other treatment than severe corporal punishment. The Russian peasantry, he said, were very superstitious and would believe almost anything, and the "Anadyrski bol" was partly a delusion and partly an imposition practised by the women upon their male relatives to further some selfish purpose. A woman who wanted a new bonnet, and who could not obtain it by the ordinary method of teasing, found it very convenient as adernier ressortto fall into a trance state and demand a bonnet as a physiological necessity. If the husband still remained obdurate, a few well-executed convulsions and a song or two in the so-called Yakut language were generally sufficient to bring him to terms. He then related an instance of a Russian merchant whose wife was attacked by the "Anadyrski bol," and who actually made a winter journey from Gizhiga to Yamsk—a distance of 300 versts—to procure a silk dress for which she had asked and which could not be elsewhere obtained! Of course the women do not always ask for articles which they might be supposed to want in a state of health. If they did, it would soon arouse the suspicions of their deluded husbands, fathers, and brothers, and lead to inconvenient inquiries, if not to still more unpleasant experiment, upon the character of the mysterious disease. To avoid this, and to blind the men to the real nature of the deception, the women frequently ask for dogs, sledges, axes, and other similar articles of which they can make no possible use, and thus persuade their credulous male relatives that their demands are governed only by diseased caprice and have in view no definite object. Such was the rationalistic explanation which the ispravnik gave of the curious delusion known as the "Anadyrski bol"; and although it argued more subtlety on the part of the women and more credulity on the part of the men than I had supposed either sex to be capable of, I could not but admit that the explanation was a plausible one, and accounted satisfactorily for most of the phenomena.