into two parties–one to go around the mountains by water with the whale-boat and heavy baggage, and one over them with twenty unloaded horses. The road over the mountains was supposed to lie near the seacoast, so that the land party would be most of the time within signalling distance of the whale-boat, and in case either party met with any accident or found its progress stopped by unforeseen obstacles the other could come to its assistance. Near the middle of the mountainous tract, just west of the principal ridge, there was said to be a small river called the Samanka (sa-mahn’-kah), and the mouth of this river was agreed upon as a rendezvous for the two parties in case they lost sight of each other during storms or foggy weather. The Major decided to go with Dodd in the whale-boat, and gave me command of the land party, consisting of our best Cossack, Viushin, six Kamchadals, and twenty light horses. Flags were made, a code of signals was agreed upon, the heavy baggage was transferred to the whale-boat and a large sealskin canoe, and early on the morning of October 4th I bade the Major and Dodd good-bye at the beach, and they pushed off. We started up our train of horses as the boats disappeared around a projecting bluff, and cantered away briskly across the valley toward a gap in the mountains, through which we entered the “wilderness.” The road for the first ten or fifteen versts was very good; but I was surprised to find that, instead of leading us along the seashore, it went directly back into the mountains away from the sea, and I began to fear that our arrangements for cooperation would be of little avail. Thinking that the whale-boat would not probably get far the first day under oars and without wind, we encamped early in a narrow valley between two parallel ranges of mountains. I tried, by climbing a low mountain back of our tent, to get a sight of the sea; but we were at least fifteen versts from the coast, and the view was limited by an intervening range of rugged peaks, many of which reach the altitude of perpetual snow. It was rather lonely to camp that night without seeing Dodd’s cheerful face by the fireside, and I missed more than I thought I should the lively sallies, comical stories and good-humoured pleasantry which had hitherto brightened the long hours of camp life. If Dodd could have read my thoughts that evening, as I sat in solitary majesty by the fireside, he would have been satisfied that his society was not unappreciated, nor his absence unfelt. Viushin took especial pains with the preparation of my supper, and did the best he could, poor fellow, to enliven the solitary meal with stories and funny reminiscences of Kamchatkan travel; but the venison cutlets had lost somehow their usual savour, and the Russian jokes and stories I could not understand. After supper I lay down upon my bearskins in the tent, and fell asleep watching the round moon rise over a ragged volcanic peak east of the valley.
On the second day we travelled through a narrow tortuous valley among the mountains, over spongy swamps of moss, and across deep narrow creeks, until we reached a ruined subterranean hut nearly half way from Lesnoi to the Samanka River. Here we ate a lunch of dried fish and hardbread, and started again up the valley in a heavy rain-storm, surrounded on all sides by rocks, snow-capped mountains, and extinct volcanic peaks. The road momentarily grew worse. The valley narrowed gradually to a wild rocky canon, a hundred and fifty feet in depth, at the bottom of which ran a swollen mountain torrent, foaming around sharp black rocks, and falling over ledges of lava in magnificent cascades. Along the black precipitous sides of this “Devil’s Pass” there did not seem to be footing for a chamois; but our guide said that he had been through it many times before, and dismounting from his horse he cautiously led the way along a narrow rocky ledge in the face of the cliff which I had not before noticed. Over this we carefully made our way, now descending nearly to the water’s edge, and then rising again until the roaring stream was fifty feet below, and we could drop stones from our outstretched arms directly into the boiling, foaming waters. Presuming too much upon the sagacity of a sure-footed horse, I carelessly attempted the passage of the ravine without dismounting, and came near paying the penalty of my rashness by a violent death. About half way through, where the trail was only eight or ten feet above the bed of the torrent, the ledge, or a portion of it, gave way under my horse’s feet, and we went down together in a struggling mass upon the rocks in the channel of the stream. I had taken the precaution to disengage my feet from the treacherous iron stirrups, and as we fell I threw myself toward the face of the cliff so as to avoid being crushed by my horse. The fall was not a very long one, and I came down uppermost, but narrowly escaped having my head broken by my animal’s hoofs as he struggled to regain his feet. He was somewhat cut and bruised, but not seriously hurt, and tightening the saddle-girth I waded along through the water, leading him after me until I was able to regain the path. Then climbing into the saddle again, with dripping clothes and somewhat shaken nerves, I rode on.
Just before dark we reached a point where further progress in that direction seemed to be absolutely cut off by a range of high mountains which ran directly across the valley. It was the central ridge of the Samanka Mountains. I looked around with a glance of inquiring surprise at the guide, who pointed directly over the range, and said that there lay our road. A forest of birch extended about half way up the mountain side, and was succeeded by low evergreen bushes, trailing-pine, and finally by bare black rocks rising high over all, where not even the hardy reindeer-moss could find soil enough to bury its roots. I no longer wondered at the positive declaration of the Kamchadals, that with loaded horses it would be impossible to cross, and began to doubt whether it could be done even with light horses. It looked very dubious to me, accustomed as I was to rough climbing and mountain roads. I decided to camp at once where we were, and obtain as much rest as possible, so that we and our horses would be fresh for the hard day’s work which evidently lay before us. Night closed in early and gloomily, the rain still falling in torrents, so that we had no opportunity of drying our wet clothes. I longed for a drink of brandy to warm my chilled blood, but my pocket flask had been forgotten in the hurry of our departure from Lesnoi, and I was obliged to content myself with the milder stimulus of hot tea. My bedding, having been wrapped up in an oilcloth blanket, was fortunately dry, and crawling feet first, wet as I was, into my bearskin bag, and covering up warmly with heavy blankets, I slept in comparative comfort.
Viushin waked me early in the morning with the announcement that it was snowing. I rose hastily and putting aside the canvas of the tent looked out. That which I most dreaded had happened. A driving snowstorm was sweeping down the valley, and Nature had assumed suddenly the stern aspect and white pitiless garb of winter. Snow had already fallen to a depth of three inches in the valley, and on the mountains, of course, it would be deep, soft, and drifted. I hesitated for a moment about attempting to cross the rugged range in such weather; but my orders were imperative to go on at least to the Samanka River, and a failure to do so might defeat the object of the whole expedition. Previous experience convinced me that the Major would not let a storm interfere with the execution of his plans; and if he should succeed in reaching the Samanka River and I should not, I never could recover from the mortification of the failure, nor be able to convince him that Anglo-Saxon blood was as good as Slavonic. I reluctantly gave the order therefore to break camp, and as soon as the horses could be collected and saddled we started for the base of the mountain range. Hardly had we ascended two hundred feet out of the shelter of the valley before we were met by a hurricane of wind from the northeast, which swept blinding, suffocating clouds of snow down the slope into our faces until earth and sky seemed mingled and lost in a great white whirling mist. The ascent soon became so steep and rocky that we could no longer ride our horses up it. We therefore dismounted, and wading laboriously through deep soft drifts, and climbing painfully over sharp jagged rocks, which cut open our sealskin boots, we dragged our horses slowly upward. We had ascended wearily in this way perhaps a thousand feet, when I became so exhausted that I was compelled to lie down. The snow in many places was drifted as high as my waist, and my horse refused to take a step until he was absolutely dragged to it. After a rest of a few moments we pushed on, and after another hour of hard work we succeeded in gaining what seemed to be the crest of the mountain, perhaps 2000 feet above the sea. Here the fury of the wind was almost irresistible. Dense clouds of driving snow hid everything from sight at a distance of a few steps, and we seemed to be standing on a fragment of a wrecked world enveloped in a whirling tempest of stinging snowflakes. Now and then a black volcanic crag, inaccessible as the peak of the Matterhorn, would loom out in the white mist far above our heads, as if suspended in mid-air, giving a startling momentary wildness to the scene; then it would disappear again in flying snow, and leave us staring blindly into vacancy. A long fringe of icicles hung round the visor of my cap, and my clothes, drenched with the heavy rain of the previous day, froze into a stiff crackling armour of ice upon my body. Blinded by the snow, with benumbed limbs and chattering teeth, I mounted my horse and let him go where he would, only entreating the guide to hurry and get down somewhere off from this exposed position. He tried in vain to compel his horse to face the storm. Neither shouts nor blows could force him to turn round, and he was obliged finally to ride along the crest of the mountain to the eastward. We went down into a comparatively sheltered valley, up again upon another ridge higher than the first, around the side of a conical peak where the wind blew with great force, down into another deep ravine and up still another ridge, until I lost entirely the direction of our route and the points of the compass, and had not the slightest idea where we were going. I only knew that we were half frozen and in a perfect wilderness of mountains.
I had noticed several times within half an hour that our guide was holding frequent and anxious consultations with the other Kamchadals about our road, and that he seemed to be confused and in doubt as to the direction in which we ought to go. He now came to me with a gloomy face, and confessed that we were lost. I could not blame the poor fellow for losing the road in such a storm, but I told him to go on in what he believed to be the direction of the Samanka River, and if we succeeded in finding somewhere a sheltered valley we would camp and wait for better weather. I wished to caution him also against riding accidentally over the edges of precipices in the blinding snow, but I could not speak Russian enough to make myself understood.
We wandered on aimlessly for two hours, over ridges, up peaks, and down into shallow valleys, getting deeper and deeper apparently into the heart of the mountains but finding no shelter from the storm. It became evident that something must be done, or we should all freeze to death. I finally called the guide, told him I would take the lead myself, and opening my little pocket compass, showed him the direction of the sea-coast. In that direction I determined to go until we should come out somewhere. He looked in stupid wonder for a moment at the little brass box with its trembling needle, and then cried out despairingly, “Oh, Barin! How does the come-_pass_ know anything about these accursed mountains? The come-_pass_ never has been over this road before. I’ve travelled here all my life, and, God forgive me, I don’t know where the sea is!” Hungry, anxious, and half frozen as I was, I could not help smiling at our guide’s idea of an inexperienced compass which had never travelled in Kamchatka, and could not therefore know anything about the road. I assured him confidently that the “come-_pass_” was a great expert at finding the sea in a storm; but he shook his head mournfully, as if he had little faith in its abilities, and refused to go in the direction that I indicated. Finding it impossible to make my horse face the wind, I dismounted, and, compass in hand, led him away in the direction of the sea, followed by Viushin, who, with an enormous bearskin wrapped around his head, looked like some wild animal. The guide, seeing that we were determined to trust in the compass, finally concluded to go with us. Our progress was necessarily very slow, as the snow was deep, our limbs chilled and stiffened by their icy covering, and a hurricane of wind blowing in our faces. About the middle of the afternoon, however, we came suddenly out upon the very brink of a storm-swept precipice a hundred and fifty feet in depth, against the base of which the sea was hurling tremendous green breakers with a roar that drowned the rushing noise of the wind. I had never imagined so wild and lonely a scene. Behind and around us lay a wilderness of white, desolate peaks, crowded together under a grey, pitiless sky, with here and there a patch of trailing-pine, or a black pinnacle of trap-rock, to intensify by contrast the ghastly whiteness and desolation of the weird snowy mountains. In front, but far below, was the troubled sea, rolling mysteriously out of a grey mist of snowflakes, breaking in thick sheets of clotted froth against the black cliff, and making long reverberations, and hollow, gurgling noises in the subterranean caverns which it had hollowed out. Snow, water, and mountains, and in the foreground a little group of ice-covered men and shaggy horses, staring at the sea from the summit of a mighty cliff! It was a simple picture, but it was full of cheerless, mournful suggestions. Our guide, after looking eagerly up and down the gloomy precipitous coast in search of some familiar landmark, finally turned to me with a brighter face, and asked to see the compass. I unscrewed the cover and showed him the blue quivering needle still pointing to the north. He examined it curiously, but with evident respect for its mysterious powers, and at last said that it was truly a “great master,” and wanted to know if it always pointed toward the sea! I tried to explain to him its nature and use, but I could not make him understand, and he walked away firmly believing that there was something uncanny and supernatural about a little brass box that could point out the road to the sea in a country where it had never before been!
We pushed on to the northward throughout the afternoon, keeping as near the coast as possible, winding around among the thickly scattered peaks and crossing no less than nine low ridges of the mountain range.
I noticed throughout the day the peculiar phenomenon of which I had read in Tyndall’s _Glaciers of the Alps_–the blue light which seemed to fill every footprint and little crevice in the snow. The hole made by a long slender stick was fairly luminous with what appeared to be deep blue vapour. I never saw this singular phenomenon so marked at any other time during nearly three years of northern travel.
About an hour after dark we rode down into a deep lonely valley, which came out, our guide said, upon the sea beach near the mouth of the Samanka River. Here no snow had fallen, but it was raining heavily. I thought it hardly possible that the Major and Dodd could have reached the appointed rendezvous in such a storm; but I directed the men to pitch the tent, while Viushin and I rode on to the mouth of the river to ascertain whether the whale-boat had arrived or not. It was too dark to see anything distinctly, but we found no evidence that human beings had ever been there, and returned disappointed to camp. We were never more glad to get under a tent, eat supper, and crawl into our bearskin sleeping-bags, than after that exhausting day’s work. Our clothes had been either wet or frozen for nearly forty-eight hours, and we had been fourteen hours on foot and in the saddle, without warm food or rest.
[Illustration: Wooden Cup]
CHAPTER XV
CUT OFF BY STORM–STARVATION THREATENED–RACE WITH A RISING TIDE–TWO DAYS WITHOUT FOOD–RETURN TO LESNOI
Early Saturday morning we moved on to the mouth of the valley, pitched our tent in a position to command a view of the approaches to the Samanka River, ballasted its edges with stones to keep the wind from blowing it down, and prepared to wait two days, according to orders, for the whale-boat. The storm still continued, and the heavy sea, which dashed sullenly all day against the black rocks under our tent, convinced me that nothing could be expected from the other party. I only hoped that they had succeeded in getting safely landed somewhere before the storm began. Caught by a gale under the frowning wall of rock which stretched for miles along the coast, the whale-boat, I knew, must either swamp with all on board, or be dashed to pieces against the cliffs. In either case not a soul could escape to tell the story.
That night Viushin astonished and almost disheartened me with the news that we were eating the last of our provisions. There was no more meat, and the hardbread which remained was only a handful of water-soaked crumbs. He and all the Kamchadals, confidently expecting to meet the whale-boat at the Samanka River, had taken only three days’ food. He had said nothing about it until the last moment, hoping that the whale-boat would arrive or something turn up; but it could no longer be concealed. We were three days’ journey from any settlement, and without food. How we were to get back to Lesnoi I did not know, as the mountains were probably impassable now, on account of the snow which had fallen since we crossed, and the weather did not permit us to indulge a hope that the whale-boat would ever come. Much as we dreaded it, there was nothing to be done but to attempt another passage of the mountain range, and that without a moment’s delay. I had been ordered to wait for the whale-boat two days; but circumstances, I thought, justified a disobedience of orders, and I directed the Kamchadals to be ready to start for Lesnoi early the next morning. Then, writing a note to the Major, and enclosing it in a tin can, to be left on the site of our camp, I crawled into my fur bag to sleep and get strength for another struggle with the mountains.
The following morning was cold and stormy, and the snow was still falling in the mountains, and heavy rain in the valley. We broke camp at daylight, saddled our horses, distributed what little baggage we had among them, as equally as possible, and made every preparation for deep snow and hard climbing.
Our guide, after a short consultation with his comrades, now came to me and proposed that we abandon our plan of crossing the mountains as wholly impracticable, and try instead to make our way along the narrow strip of beach which the ebbing tide would leave bare at the foot of the cliffs. This plan, he contended, was no more dangerous than attempting to cross the mountains, and was much more certain of success, as there were only a few points where at low water a horse could not pass with dry feet. It was not more than thirty miles to a ravine on the south side of the mountain range, through which we could, leave the beach and regain our old trail at a point within one hard day’s ride of Lesnoi. The only danger was in being caught by high water before we could reach this ravine, and even then we might save ourselves by climbing up on the rocks, and abandoning our horses to their fate. It would be no worse for them than starving and freezing to death in the mountains. Divested of its verbal plausibility, his plan was nothing more nor less than a grand thirty-mile race with a high tide along a narrow beach, from which all escape was cut off by precipitous cliffs one and two hundred feet in height. If we reached the ravine in time, all would be well; but if not, our beach would be covered ten feet deep with water, and our horses, if not ourselves, would be swept away like corks. There was a recklessness and dash about this proposal which made it very attractive when compared with wading laboriously through snow-drifts, in frozen clothes, without anything to eat, and I gladly agreed to it, and credited our guide with more sense and spirit than I had ever before seen exhibited by a Kamchadal. The tide was now only beginning to ebb, and we had three or four hours to spare before it would be low enough to start. This time the Kamchadals improved by catching one of the dogs which had accompanied us from Lesnoi, killing him in a cold-blooded way with their long knives, and offering his lean body as a sacrifice to the Evil Spirit, in whose jurisdiction these infernal mountains were supposed to be. The poor animal was cut open, his entrails taken out and thrown to the four corners of the earth, and his body suspended by the neck from the top of a long pole set perpendicularly in the ground. The Evil Spirit’s wrath, however, seemed implacable, for it stormed worse after the performance of these propitiatory rites than it did before. This did not weaken at all the faith of the Kamchadals in the efficacy of their atonement. If the storm did not abate, it was only because an unbelieving American with a diabolical brass box called a “come-_pass’_” had insisted upon crossing the mountains in defiance of the _genius loci_ and all his tempestuous warnings. One dead dog was no compensation at all for such a sacrilegious violation of the Evil Spirit’s clearly expressed wishes! The sacrifice, however, seemed to relieve the natives’ anxiety about their own safety; and, much as I pitied the poor dog thus ruthlessly slaughtered, I was glad to see the manifest improvement which it worked in the spirits of my superstitious comrades.
About ten o’clock, as nearly as I could estimate the time without a watch, our guide examined the beach and said we must be off; we would have between four and five hours to reach the ravine. We mounted in hot haste, and set out at a swinging gallop along the beach, overshadowed by tremendous black cliffs on one side, and sprinkled with salt spray from the breakers on the other. Great masses of green, slimy seaweed, shells, water-soaked driftwood, and thousands of medusas, which had been thrown up by the storm, lay strewn in piles along the beach; but we dashed through and over them at a mad gallop, never drawing rein for an instant except to pick our way among enormous masses of rock, which in some places had caved away from the summit of the cliff and blocked up the beach with grey barnacle-encrusted fragments as large as freight-cars.
We had got over the first eighteen miles in splendid style, when Viushin, who was riding in advance, stopped suddenly, with an abruptness which nearly threw him over his horse’s head, and raised the familiar cry of “Medveidi! medveidi! dva.” Bears they certainly seemed to be, making their way along the beach a quarter of a mile or so ahead; but how bears came in that desperate situation, where they must inevitably be drowned in the course of two or three hours, we could not conjecture. It made little difference to us, however, for the bears were there and we must pass. It was a clear case of breakfast for one party or the other. There could be no dodging or getting around, for the cliffs and the sea left us a narrow road. I slipped a fresh cartridge into my rifle and a dozen more into my pocket; Viushin dropped a couple of balls into his double-barrelled fowling-piece, and we crept forward behind the rocks to get a shot at them, if possible, before we should be seen. We were almost within rifle range when Viushin suddenly straightened up with a loud laugh, and cried out, “Liudi”–“They are people.” Coming out from behind the rocks, I saw clearly that they were. But how came people there? Two natives, dressed in fur coats and trousers, approached us with violent gesticulations, shouting to us in Russian not to shoot, and holding up something white, like a flag of truce. As soon as they came near enough one of them handed me a wet, dirty piece of paper, with a low bow, and I recognised him as a Kamchadal from Lesnoi. They were messengers from the Major! Thanking God in my heart that the other party was safe, I tore open the note and read hastily:
Sea Shore, 15 versts from Lesnoi, October 4th. Driven ashore here by the storm. Hurry back as fast as possible.
S. Abaza.
The Kamchadal messengers had left Lesnoi only one day behind us, but had been detained by the storm and bad roads, and had only reached on the previous night our second camp. Finding it impossible to cross the mountains on account of the snow, they had abandoned their horses, and were trying to reach the Samanka River on foot by way of the sea beach. They did not expect to do it in one tide but intended to take refuge on high rocks during the flood, and resume their journey as soon as the beach should be left bare by the receding water. There was no time for any more explanations. The tide was running in rapidly, and we must make twelve miles in a little over an hour, or lose our horses. We mounted the tired, wet Kamchadals on two of our spare animals, and were off again at a gallop. The situation grew more and more exciting as we approached the ravine. At the end of every projecting bluff the water was higher and higher, and in several places it had already touched with foam and spray the foot of the cliffs. In twenty minutes more the beach would be impassable. Our horses held out nobly, and the ravine was only a short distance ahead–only one more projecting bluff intervened. Against this the sea was already beginning to break, but we galloped past through several feet of water, and in five minutes drew rein at the mouth of the ravine. It had been a hard ride, but we had won the race with a clear ten minutes to spare, and were now on the southern side of the snowy mountain range, less than sixty miles from Lesnoi. Had it not been for our guide’s good sense and boldness we should still have been floundering through the snow, and losing our way among the bewildering peaks, ten miles south of the Samanka River. The ravine up which our road lay was badly choked with massive rocks, patches of trailing-pine, and dense thickets of alder, and it cost us two hours’ more hard work to cut a trail through it with axes.
Before dark, however, we had reached the site of our second day’s camp, and about midnight we arrived at the ruined _yurt_ where we had eaten lunch five days before. Exhausted by fourteen hours’ riding without rest or food, we could go no farther. I had hoped to get something to eat from the Kamchadal messengers from Lesnoi, but was disappointed to find that their provisions had been exhausted the previous day. Viushin scraped a small handful of dirty crumbs out of our empty bread-bag, fried them in a little blubber, which I suppose he had brought to grease his gun with, and offered them to me; but, hungry as I was, I could not eat the dark, greasy mass, and he divided it by mouthfuls among the Kamchadals.
The second day’s ride without food was a severe trial of my strength, and I began to be tormented by a severe gnawing, burning pain in my stomach. I tried to quiet it by eating seeds from the cones of trailing-pine and drinking large quantities of water; but this afforded no relief, and I became so faint toward evening that I could hardly sit in my saddle.
About two hours after dark we heard the howling of dogs from Lesnoi, and twenty minutes later we rode into the settlement, dashed up to the little log house of the _starosta_, and burst in upon the Major and Dodd as they sat at supper. Our long ride was over.
Thus ended our unsuccessful expedition to the Samanka Mountains–the hardest journey I ever experienced in Kamchatka.
Two days afterward, the anxiety and suffering which the Major had endured in a five days’ camp on the sea beach during the storm, brought on a severe attack of rheumatic fever, and all thoughts of farther progress were for the present abandoned. Nearly all the horses in the village were more or less disabled, our Samanka mountain guide was blind from inflammatory erysipelas brought on by exposure to five days of storm, and half my party were unfit for duty. Under such circumstances, another attempt to cross the mountains before winter was impossible. Dodd and the Cossack Meranef (mer-ah’-nef) were sent back to Tigil after a physician and a new supply of provisions, while Viushin and I remained at Lesnoi to take care of the Major.
[Illustration: Stone Lamps]
CHAPTER XVI
KAMCHATKAN NIGHTS’ ENTERTAINMENTS–CHARACTER OF PEOPLE–SALMON-FISHING– SABLE-TRAPPING–KAMCHADAL LANGUAGE–NATIVE MUSIC–DOG-DRIVING–WINTER DRESS
After our unsuccessful attempt to pass the Samanka Mountains, there was nothing for us to do but wait patiently at Lesnoi until the rivers should freeze over, and snow fall to a depth which would enable us to continue our journey to Gizhiga on dog-sledges. It was a long, wearisome delay, and I felt for the first time, in its full force, the sensation of exile from home, country, and civilisation. The Major continued very ill, and would show the anxiety which he had felt about the success of our expedition by talking deliriously for hours of crossing the mountains, starting for Gizhiga in the whale-boat, and giving incoherent orders to Viushin, Dodd, and myself, about horses, dog-sledges, canoes, and provisions. The idea of getting to Gizhiga, before the beginning of winter, filled his mind, to the exclusion of everything else. His sickness made the time previous to Dodd’s return seem very long and lonesome, as I had absolutely nothing to do except to sit in a little log room, with opaque fish-bladder windows, and pore over Shakespeare and my Bible, until I almost learned them by heart. In pleasant weather I would sling my rifle across my back and spend whole days in roaming over the mountains in pursuit of reindeer and foxes; but I rarely met with much success. One deer and a few arctic ptarmigan were my only trophies. At night I would sit on the transverse section of a log in our little kitchen, light a rude Kamchadal lamp, made with a fragment of moss and a tin cup full of seal oil, and listen for hours to the songs and guitar-playing of the Kamchadals, and to the wild stories of perilous mountain adventure which they delighted to relate. I learned during these Kamchatkan Nights’ Entertainments many interesting particulars of Kamchadal life, customs, and peculiarities of which I had before known nothing; and, as I shall have no occasion hereafter to speak of this curious little-known people, I may as well give here what account I can of their language, music, amusements, superstitions, and mode of life.
The people themselves I have already described as a quiet, inoffensive, hospitable tribe of semi-barbarians, remarkable only for honesty, general amiability, and comical reverence for legally constituted authority. Such an idea as rebellion or resistance to oppression is wholly foreign to the Kamchadal character _now_, whatever it may have been in previous ages of independence. They will suffer and endure any amount of abuse and ill-treatment, without any apparent desire for revenge, and with the greatest good-nature and elasticity of spirit. They are as faithful and forgiving as a dog. If you treat them well, your slightest wish will be their law; and they will do their best in their rude way to show their appreciation of kindness, by anticipating and meeting even your unexpressed wants. During our stay at Lesnoi the Major chanced one day to inquire for some milk. The _starosta_ did not tell him that there was not a cow in the village, but said that he would try to get some. A man was instantly despatched on horseback to the neighbouring settlement of Kinkil, and before night he returned with a champagne-bottle under his arm, and the Major had milk that evening in his tea. From this time until we started for Gizhiga–more than a month–a man rode twenty miles every day to bring us a bottle of fresh milk. This seemed to be done out of pure kindness of heart, without any desire or expectation of future reward; and it is a fair example of the manner in which we were generally treated by all the Kamchadals in the peninsula.
The settled natives of northern Kamchatka have generally two different residences, in which they live at different seasons of the year. These are respectively called the “zimovie” or winter settlement, and the “letovie” (let’-o-vye) or summer fishing-station, and are from one to five miles apart. In the former, which is generally situated under the shelter of timbered hills, several miles from the seacoast, they reside from September until June. The _letovie_ is always built near the mouth of an adjacent river or stream, and consists of a few _yurts_ or earth-covered huts, eight or ten conical _balagans_ mounted on stilts, and a great number of wooden frames on which fish are hung to dry. To this fishing-station the inhabitants all remove early in June, leaving their winter settlement entirely deserted. Even the dogs and the crows abandon it for the more attractive surroundings and richer pickings of the summer _balagans._ Early in July the salmon enter the river in immense numbers from the sea, and are caught by the natives in gill-nets, baskets, seines, weirs, traps, and a dozen other ingenious contrivances–cut open, cleaned, and boned by the women, with the greatest skill and celerity, and hung in long rows upon horizontal poles to dry. A fish, with all the confidence of sea life, enters the river as a sailor comes ashore, intending to have a good time; but before he fairly knows what he is about, he is caught in a seine, dumped out upon the beach with a hundred more equally unsophisticated and equally unfortunate sufferers, split open with a big knife, his backbone removed, his head cut off, his internal arrangements scooped out, and his mutilated remains hung over a pole to simmer in a hot July sun. It is a pity that he cannot enjoy the melancholy satisfaction of seeing the skill and rapidity with which his body is prepared for a new and enlarged sphere of usefulness! He is no longer a fish. In this second stage of passive unconscious existence he assumes a new name, and is called a “yukala” (yoo’-kah-lah).
It is astonishing to see in what countless numbers and to what great distances these fish ascend the Siberian rivers. Dozens of small streams which we passed in the interior of Kamchatka, seventy miles from the seacoast, were so choked up with thousands of dying, dead, and decayed fish, that we could not use the water for any purpose whatever. Even in little mountain brooks, so narrow that a child could step across them, we saw salmon eighteen or twenty inches in length still working their way laboriously up stream, in water which was not deep enough to cover their bodies. We frequently waded in and threw them out by the dozen with our bare hands. They change greatly in appearance as they ascend a river. When they first come in from the sea their scales are bright and hard, and their flesh fat and richly coloured; but as they go higher and higher up stream; their scales lose their brilliancy and fall off, their flesh bleaches out until it is nearly white, and they become lean, dry, and tasteless. For this reason all the fishing-stations in Kamchatka are located, if possible, at or near the mouths of rivers. To the instinct which leads the salmon to ascend rivers for the purpose of depositing its spawn, is attributable the settlement of all north-eastern Siberia. If it were not for the abundance of fish, the whole country would be uninhabited and uninhabitable, except by the Reindeer Koraks. As soon as the fishing season is over, the Kamchadals store away their dried _yukala_ in _balagans_ and return to their winter quarters to prepare for the fall catch of sables. For nearly a month they spend all their time in the woods and mountains, making and setting traps. To make a sable-trap, a narrow perpendicular slot, fourteen inches by four in length and breadth, and five inches in depth, is cut in the trunk of a large tree, so that the bottom of the slot will be about at the height of a sable’s head when he stands erect. The stem of another smaller tree is then trimmed, one of its ends raised to a height of three feet by a forked stick set in the ground, and the other bevelled off so as to slip up and down freely in the slot cut for its reception. This end is raised to the top of the slot and supported there by a simple figure-four catch, leaving a nearly square opening of about four inches below for the admission of the sable’s head. The figure-four is then baited and the trap is ready. The sable rises upon his hind legs, puts his head into the hole, and the heavy log, set free by the dropping of the figure-four, falls and crushes the animal’s skull, without injuring in the slightest degree the valuable parts of his skin. One native frequently makes and sets as many as a hundred of these traps in the fall, and visits them at short intervals throughout the winter. Not content, however, with this extensive and well organised system of trapping sables, the natives hunt them upon snow-shoes with trained dogs, drive them into holes which they surround with nets, and then, forcing them out with fire or axe, they kill them with clubs.
The number of sables caught in the Kamchatkan peninsula annually varies from six to nine thousand, all of which are exported to Russia and distributed from there over northern Europe. A large proportion of the whole number of Russian sables in the European market are caught by the natives of Kamchatka and transported by _American_ merchants to Moscow. W.H. Bordman, of Boston, and an American house in China–known, I believe, as Russell & Co.–practically control the fur trade of Kamchatka and the Okhotsk seacoast. The price paid to the Kamchadals for an average sable skin in 1867 was nominally fifteen rubles silver, or about eleven dollars gold; but payment was made in tea, sugar, tobacco, and sundry other articles of merchandise, at the trader’s own valuation, so that the natives actually realised only a little more than half the nominal price. Nearly all the inhabitants of central Kamchatka are engaged directly or indirectly during the winter in the sable trade and many of them have acquired by it a comfortable independence.
Fishing and sable-hunting, therefore, are the serious occupations of the Kamchadals throughout the year; but as these are indications of the nature of the country rather than of the characteristics of its inhabitants, they give only an imperfect idea of the distinctive peculiarities of Kamchadals and Kamchadal life. The language, music, amusements, and superstitions of a people are much more valuable as illustrations of their real character than are their regular occupations.
The Kamchadal language is to me one of the most curious of all the wild tongues of Asia; not on account of its construction, but simply from the strange, uncouth sounds with which it abounds, and its strangling, gurgling articulation. When rapidly spoken, it always reminded me of water running out of a narrow-mouthed jug! A Russian traveller in Kamchatka has said that “the Kamchadal language is spoken half in the mouth and half in the throat”; but it might be more accurately described as spoken half in the throat and half in the stomach. It has more guttural sounds than any other Asiatic language that I have ever heard, and differs considerably in this respect from the dialects of the Chukchis and Koraks. It is what comparative philologists call an agglutinative language, and seems to be made up of permanent unchangeable roots with variable prefixes. It has, so far as I could ascertain, no terminal inflections, and its grammar seemed to be simple and easily learned. Most of the Kamchadals throughout the northern part of the peninsula speak, in addition to their own language, Russian and Korak, so that, in their way, they are quite accomplished linguists.
It has always seemed to me that the songs of a people, and especially of a people who have composed them themselves, and not adopted them from others, are indicative to a very great degree of their character; whether, as some author supposed, the songs have a reflex influence on the character, or whether they exist simply as its exponents, the result is the same, viz., a greater or less correspondence between the two. In none of the Siberian tribes is this more marked than in the Kamchadals. They have evidently never been a warlike, combative people. They have no songs celebrating the heroic deeds of their ancestors, or their exploits in the chase or in battle, as have many tribes of our North American Indians. Their ballads are all of a melancholy, imaginative character, inspired apparently by grief, love, or domestic feeling, rather than by the ruder passions of pride, anger, and revenge. Their music all has a wild, strange sound to a foreign ear, but it conveys to the mind in some way a sense of sorrow, and vague, unavailing regret for something that has for ever passed away, like the emotion excited by a funeral dirge over the grave of a dear friend. As Ossian says of the music of Carryl, “it is like the memory of joys that are past–sweet, yet mournful to the soul.” I remember particularly a song called the Penzhinski, sung one night by the natives at Lesnoi, which was, without exception, the sweetest, and yet the most inexpressibly mournful combination of notes that I had ever heard. It was a wail of a lost soul, despairing, yet pleading for mercy. I tried in vain to get a translation of the words. Whether it was the relation of some bloody and disastrous encounter with their fiercer northern neighbours, or the lament over the slain body of some dear son, brother, or husband, I could not learn; but the music alone will bring the tears near one’s eyes, and has an indescribable effect upon the singers, whose excitable feelings it sometimes works up almost to the pitch of frenzy. The dancing tunes of the Kamchadals are of course entirely different in character, being generally very lively, and made up of energetic staccato passages, repeated many times in succession, without variation. Nearly all the natives accompany themselves upon a three-cornered guitar with two strings, called a _ballalaika_ (bahl-lah-lai’-kah), and some of them play quite well upon rude home-made violins. All are passionately fond of music of every kind.
The only other amusements in which they indulge are dancing, playing football on the snow in winter, and racing with dog-teams.
The winter travel of the Kamchadals is accomplished entirely upon dog-sledges, and in no other pursuit of their lives do they spend more time or exhibit their native skill and ingenuity to better advantage. They may even be said to have made dogs for themselves in the first place, since the present Siberian animal is nothing more than a half-domesticated arctic wolf, and still retains all his wolfish instincts and peculiarities. There is probably no more hardy, enduring animal in the world. You may compel him to sleep out on the snow in a temperature of 70 deg. below zero, drive him with heavy loads until his feet crack open and stain the snow with blood, or starve him until he eats up his harness; but his strength and his spirit seem alike unconquerable. I have driven a team of nine dogs more than a hundred miles in a day and a night, and have frequently worked them hard for forty-eight hours without being able to give them a particle of food. In general they are fed once a day, their allowance being a single dried fish, weighing perhaps a pound and a half or two pounds. This is given to them at night, so that they begin another day’s work with empty stomachs.
The sledge, or _nart_, to which they are harnessed is about ten feet in length and two in width, made of seasoned birch timber, and combines to a surprising degree the two most desirable qualities of strength and lightness. It is simply a skeleton framework, fastened together with lashings of dried sealskin, and mounted on broad, curved runners. No iron whatever is used in its construction, and it does not weigh more than twenty pounds; yet it will sustain a load of four or five hundred pounds, and endure the severest shocks of rough mountain travel. The number of dogs harnessed to this sledge varies from seven to fifteen, according to the nature of the country to be traversed and the weight of the load. Under favourable circumstances eleven dogs will make from forty to fifty miles a day with a man and a load of four hundred pounds. They are harnessed to the sledge in successive couples by a long central thong of sealskin, to which each individual dog is attached by a collar and a short trace. They are guided and controlled entirely by the voice and by a lead-dog who is especially trained for the purpose. The driver carries no whip, but has instead a stick about four feet in length and two inches in diameter, called an _oerstel_ (oar’-stel). This is armed at one end with a long iron spike, and is used to check the speed of the sledge in descending hills, and to stop the dogs when they leave the road, as they frequently do in pursuit of reindeer and foxes. The spiked end is then thrust down in front of one of the knees or uprights of the runners, and drags in that position through the snow, the upper end being firmly held by the driver. It is a powerful lever, and when skilfully used brakes up a sledge very promptly and effectively.
[Illustration: TOWARD NIGHT; A TIRED DOG-TEAM From a painting by George A. Frost]
The art of driving a dog-team is one of the most deceptive in the world. The traveller at first sight imagines that driving a dog-sledge is just as easy as driving a street-car, and at the very first favourable opportunity he tries it. After being run away with within the first ten minutes, capsized into a snow-drift, and his sledge dragged bottom upward a quarter of a mile from the road, the rash experimenter begins to suspect that the task is not quite so easy as he had supposed, and in less than one day he is generally convinced by hard experience that a dog-driver, like a poet, is born, not made.
The dress of the Kamchadals in winter and summer is made for the most part of skins. Their winter costume consists of sealskin boots or _torbasses_ worn over heavy reindeerskin stockings and coming to the knee; fur trousers with the hair inside; a foxskin hood with a face border of wolverine skin; and a heavy _kukhlanka_ (kookh-lan’-kah), or double fur overshirt, covering the body to the knees. This is made of the thickest and softest reindeerskin, ornamented around the bottom with silk embroidery, trimmed at the sleeves and neck with glossy beaver, and furnished with a square flap under the chin, to be held up over the nose, and a hood behind the neck, to be drawn over the head in bad weather. In such a costume as this the Kamchadals defy for weeks at a time the severest cold, and sleep out on the snow safely and comfortably in temperatures of twenty, thirty, and even forty degrees below zero, Fahr.
Most of our time during our long detention at Lesnoi was occupied in the preparation of such costumes for our own use, in making covered dog-sledges to protect ourselves from winter storms, sewing bearskins into capacious sleeping-bags, and getting ready generally for a hard winter’s campaign.
[Illustration: Root Digger]
CHAPTER XVII
A FRESH START–CROSSING THE SAMANKA MOUNTAINS–DESCENT ON A KORAK ENCAMPMENT–NOMADS AND THEIR TENTS–DOOR-HOLES AND DOGS–POLOGS–KORAK BREAD
About the 20th of October a Russian physician arrived from Tigil, and proceeded to reduce the little strength that the Major had by steaming, bleeding, and blistering him into a mere shadow of his former robust self. The fever, however, abated under this energetic treatment, and he began gradually to amend. Sometime during the same week, Dodd and Meranef returned from Tigil with a new supply of tea, sugar, rum, tobacco, and hardbread, and we began collecting dogs from the neighbouring settlements of Kinkil and Polan for another trip across the Samanka Mountains. Snow had fallen everywhere to a depth of two feet, the weather had turned clear and cold, and there was nothing except the Major’s illness to detain us longer at Lesnoi. On the 28th he declared himself able to travel, and we packed up for a start. On November 1st we put on our heavy fur clothes, which turned us into wild animals of most ferocious appearance, bade good-by to all the hospitable people of Lesnoi, and set out with a train of sixteen sledges, eighteen men, two hundred dogs, and forty days’ provisions, for the territory of the Wandering Koraks. We determined to reach Gizhiga this time, or, as the newspapers say, perish in the attempt.
Late in the afternoon of November 3d, just as the long northern twilight was fading into the peculiar steely blue of an arctic night, our dogs toiled slowly up the last summit of the Samanka Mountains, and we looked down from a height of more than two thousand feet upon the dreary expanse of snow which stretched away to the far horizon. It was the land of the Wandering Koraks. A cold breeze from the sea swept across the mountain-top, soughing mournfully through the pines as it passed, and intensifying the loneliness and silence of the white wintry landscape. The faint pale light of the vanishing sun still lingered upon the higher peaks; but the gloomy ravines below us, shaggy with forests of larch and dense thickets of trailing-pine, were already gathering the shadows and indistinctness of night. At the foot of the mountains stood the first encampment of Koraks. As we rested our dogs a few moments upon the summit, before commencing our descent, we tried to discern through the gathering gloom the black tents which we imagined stood somewhere beneath our feet; but nothing save the dark patches of trailing-pine broke the dead white of the level steppe. The encampment was hidden by a projecting shoulder of the mountain.
[Illustration: WANDERING KORAKS WITH THEIR REINDEER AND SLEDGES From a painting by George A. Frost]
The rising moon was just throwing into dark, bold relief the shaggy outlines of the peaks on our right, as we roused up our dogs and plunged into the throat of a dark ravine which led downward to the steppe. The deceptive shadows of night, and the masses of rock which choked up the narrow defile made the descent extremely dangerous; and it required all the skill of our practised drivers to avoid accident. Clouds of snow flew from the spiked poles with which they vainly tried to arrest our downward rush; cries and warning shouts from those in advance, multiplied by the mountain echoes, excited our dogs to still greater speed, until we seemed, as the rocks and trees flew past, to be in the jaws of a falling avalanche, which was carrying us with breathless rapidity down the dark canon to certain ruin. Gradually, however, our speed slackened, and we came out into the moonlight on the hard, wind-packed snow of the open steppe. Half an hour’s brisk travel brought us into the supposed vicinity of the Korak encampment, but we saw as yet no signs of either reindeer or tents. The disturbed, torn-up condition of the snow usually apprises the traveller of his approach to the _yurts_ of the Koraks, as the reindeer belonging to the band range all over the country within a radius of several miles, and paw up the snow in search of the moss which constitutes their food. Failing to find any such indications, we were discussing the probability of our having been misdirected, when suddenly our leading dogs pricked up their sharp ears, snuffed eagerly at the wind, and with short, excited yelps made off at a dashing gallop toward a low hill which lay almost at right angles with our previous course. The drivers endeavoured in vain to check the speed of the excited dogs; their wolfish instincts were aroused, and all discipline was forgotten as the fresh scent came down upon the wind from the herd of reindeer beyond. A moment brought us to the brow of the hill, and before us in the clear moonlight, stood the conical tents of the Koraks, surrounded by at least four thousand reindeer, whose branching antlers looked like a perfect forest of dry limbs. The dogs all gave voice simultaneously, like a pack of foxhounds in view of the game, and dashed tumultuously down the hill, regardless of the shouts of their masters, and the menacing cries of three or four dark forms which rose suddenly up from the snow between them and the frightened deer. Above the tumult I could hear Dodd’s voice, hurling imprecations in Russian at his yelping dogs, which, in spite of his most strenuous efforts, were dragging him and his capsized sledge across the steppe. The vast body of deer wavered a moment and then broke into a wild stampede, with drivers, Korak sentinels, and two hundred dogs in full pursuit.
Not desirous of becoming involved in the melee, I sprang from my sledge and watched the confused crowd as it swept with shout, bark, and halloo, across the plain. The whole encampment, which had seemed in its quiet loneliness to be deserted, was now startled into instant activity. Dark forms issued suddenly from the tents, and grasping the long spears which stood upright in the snow by the doorway, joined in the chase, shouting and hurling lassos of walrus hide at the dogs, with the hope of stopping their pursuit. The clattering of thousands of antlers dashed together in the confusion of flight, the hurried beat of countless hoofs upon the hard snow, the deep, hoarse barks of the startled deer, and the unintelligible cries of the Koraks, as they tried to rally their panic-stricken herd, created a Pandemonium of discordant sounds which could be heard far and wide through the still, frosty atmosphere of night. It resembled a midnight attack of Comanches upon a hostile camp, rather than the peaceful arrival of three or four American travellers; and I listened with astonishment to the wild uproar of alarm which we had unintentionally aroused.
The tumult grew fainter and fainter as it swept away into the distance, and the dogs, exhausting the unnatural strength which the excitement had temporarily given them, yielded reluctantly to the control of their drivers and turned toward the tents. Dodd’s dogs, panting with the violence of their exertions, limped sullenly back, casting longing glances occasionally in the direction of the deer, as if they more than half repented the weakness which had led them to abandon the chase.
“Why didn’t you stop them?” I inquired of Dodd, laughingly. “A driver of your experience ought to have better control of his team than that.”
“Stop them!” he exclaimed with an aggrieved air. “I’d like to see _you_ stop them, with a rawhide lasso round your neck, and a big Korak hauling like a steam windlass on the other end of it! It’s all very well to cry ‘stop ’em’; but when the barbarians haul you off the rear end of your sledge as if you were a wild animal, what course would your sublime wisdom suggest? I believe I’ve got the mark of a lasso round my neck now,” and he felt cautiously about his ears for the impression of a sealskin thong.
As soon as the deer had been gathered together again and a guard placed over them, the Koraks crowded curiously around the visitors who had entered so unceremoniously their quiet camp, and inquired through Meranef, our interpreter, who we were and what we wanted. A wild, picturesque group they made, as the moonlight streamed white and clear into their swarthy faces, and glittered upon the metallic ornaments about their persons and the polished blades of their long spears. Their high cheek-bones, bold, alert eyes, and straight, coal-black hair, suggested an intimate relationship with our own Indians; but the resemblance went no further. Most of their faces wore an expression of bold, frank honesty, which is not a characteristic of our western aborigines, and which we instinctively accepted as a sufficient guarantee of their friendliness and good faith. Contrary to our preconceived idea of northern savages, they were athletic, able-bodied men, fully up to the average height of Americans. Heavy _kukh-lankas_ (kookh-lan’-kas), or hunting-shirts of spotted deerskin, confined about the waist with a belt, and fringed round the bottom with the long black hair of the wolverine, covered their bodies from the neck to the knee, ornamented here and there with strings of small coloured beads, tassels of scarlet leather, and bits of polished metal. Fur trousers, long boots of sealskin coming up to the thigh, and wolfskin hoods, with the ears of the animal standing erect on each side of the head, completed the costume which, notwithstanding its _bizarre_ effect, had yet a certain picturesque adaptation to the equally strange features of the moonlight scene. Leaving our Cossack Meranef, seconded by the Major, to explain our business and wants, Dodd and I strolled away to make a critical inspection of the encampment. It consisted of four large conical tents, built apparently of a framework of poles and covered with loose reindeerskins, confined in their places by long thongs of seal or walrus hide, which were stretched tightly over them from the apex of the cone to the ground. They seemed at first sight to be illy calculated to withstand the storms which in winter sweep down across this steppe from the Arctic Ocean; but subsequent experience proved that the severest gales cannot tear them from their fastenings. Neatly constructed sledges of various shapes and sizes were scattered here and there upon the snow, and two or three hundred pack-saddles for the reindeer were piled up in a symmetrical wall near the largest tent. Finishing our examination, and feeling somewhat bored by the society of fifteen or twenty Koraks who had constituted themselves a sort of supervisory committee to watch our motions, we returned to the spot where the representatives of civilisation and barbarism were conducting their negotiations. They had apparently come to an amicable understanding; for, upon our approach, a tall native with shaven head stepped out from the throng, and leading the way to the largest tent, lifted a curtain of skin and revealed a dark hole about two feet and a half in diameter, which he motioned to us to enter.
Now, if there was any branch of Viushin’s Siberian education upon which he especially prided himself, it was his proficiency in crawling into small holes. Persevering practice had given him a flexibility of back and a peculiar sinuosity of movement which we might admire but could not imitate; and although the distinction was not perhaps an altogether desirable one, he was invariably selected to explore all the dark holes and underground passages (miscalled doors) which came in our way. This seemed to be one of the most peculiar of the many different styles of entrance which we had observed; but Viushin, assuming as an axiom that no part of his body could be greater than the (w)hole, dropped into a horizontal position, and requesting Dodd to give his feet an initial shove, crawled cautiously in. A few seconds of breathless silence succeeded his disappearance, when, supposing that all must be right, I put my head into the hole and crawled warily after him. The darkness was profound; but, guided by Viushin’s breathing, I was making very fair progress, when suddenly a savage snarl and a startling yell came out of the gloom in front, followed instantly by the most substantial part of Viushin’s body, which struck me with the force of a battering-ram on the top of the head, and caused me, with the liveliest apprehensions of ambuscade and massacre, to back precipitately out. Viushin, with the awkward retrograde movements of a disabled crab, speedily followed.
“What in the name of Chort [Footnote: The Devil.] is the matter?” demanded Dodd in Russian, as he extricated Viushin’s head from the folds of the skin curtain in which it had become enveloped. “You back out as if Shaitan and all his imps were after you!”–“You don’t suppose,” responded Viushin, with excited gestures, “that I’m going to stay in that hole and be eaten up by Korak dogs? If I was foolish enough to go in, I’ve got discretion enough to know when to come out. I don’t believe the hole leads anywhere, anyhow,” he added apologetically; “and it’s all full of dogs.” With a quick perception of Viushin’s difficulties and a grin of amusement at his discomfiture, our Korak guide entered the hole, drove out the dogs, and lifting up an inner curtain, allowed the red light of the fire to stream through. Crawling on hands and knees a distance of twelve or fifteen feet through the low doorway, we entered the large open circle in the interior of the tent. A crackling fire of resinous pine boughs burned brightly upon the ground in the centre, illuminating redly the framework of black, glossy poles, and flickering fitfully over the dingy skins of the roof and the swarthy tattooed faces of the women who squatted around. A large copper kettle, filled with some mixture of questionable odour and appearance, hung over the blaze, and furnished occupation to a couple of skinny, bare-armed women, who with the same sticks were alternately stirring its contents, poking up the fire, and knocking over the head two or three ill-conditioned but inquisitive dogs. The smoke, which rose lazily from the fire, hung in a blue, clearly defined cloud about five feet from the ground, dividing the atmosphere of the tent into a lower stratum of comparatively clear air, and an upper cloud region where smoke, vapours, and ill odours contended for supremacy.
The location of the little pure air which the _yurt_ afforded made the boyish feat of standing upon one’s head a very desirable accomplishment; and as the pungent smoke filled my eyes to the exclusion of everything else except tears, I suggested to Dodd that he reverse the respective positions of his head and feet, and try it–he would escape the smoke and sparks from the fire, and at the same time obtain a new and curious optical effect. With the sneer of contempt which always met even my most valuable suggestions, he replied that I might try my own experiments, and throwing himself down at full length on the ground, he engaged in the interesting diversion of making faces at a Korak baby. Viushin’s time, as soon as his eyes recovered a little from the effects of the smoke, was about equally divided between preparations for our evening meal, and revengeful blows at the stray dogs which ventured in his vicinity; while the Major, who was probably the most usefully employed member of the party, negotiated for the exclusive possession of a _polog_. The temperature of a Korak tent in winter seldom ranges above 20 deg. or 25 deg. Fahr., and as constant exposure to such a degree of cold would be at least very disagreeable, the Koraks construct around the inner circumference of the tent small, nearly air-tight apartments called _pologs_, which are separated one from another by skin curtains, and combine the advantages of exclusiveness with the desirable luxury of greater warmth. These _pologs_ are about four feet in height, and six or eight feet in width and length. They are made of the heaviest furs sewn carefully together to exclude the air, and are warmed and lighted by a burning fragment of moss floating in a wooden bowl of seal oil. The law of compensation, however, which pervades all Nature, makes itself felt even in the _pologs_ of a Korak _yurt_, and for the greater degree of warmth is exacted the penalty of a closer, smokier atmosphere. The flaming wick of the lamp, which floats like a tiny burning ship in a miniature lake of rancid grease, absorbs the vital air of the _polog_, and returns it in the shape of carbonic acid gas, oily smoke, and sickening odours. In defiance, however, of all the known laws of hygiene, this vitiated atmosphere seems to be healthful; or, to state the case negatively, there is no evidence to prove its unhealthfulness. The Korak women, who spend almost the whole of their time in these _pologs_, live generally to an advanced age, and except a noticeable tendency to angular outlines, and skinniness, there is nothing to distinguish them physically from the old women of other countries. It was not without what I supposed to be a well-founded apprehension of suffocation, that I slept for the first time in a Korak _yurt_; but my uneasiness proved to be entirely groundless, and gradually wore away.
[Illustration: A MAN OF THE WANDERING KORAKS]
With a view to escape from the crowd of Koraks, who squatted around us on the earthen floor, and whose watchful curiosity soon became irksome, Dodd and I lifted up the fur curtain of the _polog_ which the Major’s diplomacy had secured, and crawled in to await the advent of supper. The inquisitive Koraks, unable to find room in the narrow _polog_ for the whole of their bodies, lay down to the number of nine on the outside, and poking their ugly, half-shaven heads under the curtain, resumed their silent supervision. The appearance in a row of nine disembodied heads, whose staring eyes rolled with synchronous motion from side to side as we moved, was so ludicrous that we involuntarily burst into laughter. A responsive smile instantly appeared upon each of the nine swarthy faces, whose simultaneous concurrence in the expression of every emotion suggested the idea of some huge monster with nine heads and but one consciousness. Acting upon Dodd’s suggestion that we try and smoke them out, I took my brier-wood pipe from my pocket and proceeded to light it with one of those peculiar snapping lucifers which were among our most cherished relics of civilisation. As the match, with a miniature fusillade of sharp reports, burst suddenly into flame, the nine startled heads instantly disappeared, and from beyond the curtain we could hear a chorus of long-drawn “tye-e-e’s” from the astonished natives, followed by a perfect Babel of animated comments upon this diabolical method of producing fire. Fearful, however, of losing some other equally striking manifestation of the white men’s supernatural power, the heads soon returned, reenforced by several others which the report of the wonderful occurrence had attracted. The fabled watchfulness of the hundred-eyed Argus was nothing compared with the scrutiny to which we were now subjected. Every wreath of curling smoke which rose from our lips was watched by the staring eyes as intently as if it were some deadly vapour from the bottomless pit, which would shortly burst into report and flame. A loud and vigorous sneeze from Dodd was the signal for a second panic-stricken withdrawal of the row of heads, and another comparison of respective experiences outside the curtain. It was laughable enough; but, tired of being stared at and anxious for something to eat, we crawled out of our _polog_ and watched with unassumed interest the preparation of supper.
Out of a little pine box which contained our telegraphic instruments, Viushin had improvised a rude, legless mess-table, which he was engaged in covering with cakes of hardbread, slices of raw bacon, and tumblers of steaming tea. These were the luxuries of civilisation, and beside them on the ground, in a long wooden trough and a huge bowl of the same material, were the corresponding delicacies of barbarism. As to their nature and composition we could, of course, give only a wild conjecture; but the appetites of weary travellers are not very discriminating, and we seated ourselves, like cross-legged Turks, on the ground, between the trough and the instrument-box, determined to prove our appreciation of Korak hospitality by eating everything which offered itself. The bowl with its strange-looking contents arrested, of course, the attention of the observant Dodd, and, poking it inquiringly with a long-handled spoon, he turned to Viushin, who, as _chef-de-cuisine_, was supposed to know all about it, and demanded:
“What’s this you’ve got?”
“That?” answered Viushin, promptly, “that’s _kasha_” (hasty pudding made of rice).
“_Kasha_!” exclaimed Dodd, contemptuously. “It looks more like the stuff that the children of Israel made bricks of. They don’t seem to have wanted for straw, either,” he added, as he fished up several stems of dried grass. “What is it, anyhow?”
“That,” said Viushin again, with a comical assumption of learning, “is the celebrated ‘Jamuk chi a la Poosteretsk,’ the national dish of the Koraks, made from the original recipe of His High Excellency Oollcot Ootkoo Minyegeetkin, Grand Hereditary Taiyon and Vwisokee Prevoskhodeetelstvo–“
“Hold on!” exclaimed Dodd, with a deprecating gesture, “that’s enough, I’ll eat it”; and taking out a halfspoonful of the dark viscid mass, he put it to his lips.
“Well,” said we expectantly, after a moment’s pause, “what does it taste like?”
“Like the mud pies of infancy!” he replied sententiously. “A little salt, pepper, and butter, and a good deal of meat and flour, with a few well selected vegetables, would probably improve it; but it isn’t particularly bad as it is.”
Upon the strength of this rather equivocal recommendation I tasted it. Aside from a peculiar earthy flavour, it had nothing about it which was either pleasant or disagreeable. Its qualities were all negative except its grassiness, which alone gave character and consistency to the mass.
The mixture, known among the Koraks as _manyalla,_ is eaten by all the Siberian tribes as a substitute for bread, and is the nearest approximation which native ingenuity can make to the staff of life. It is valued, we were told, more for its medicinal virtues than for any intrinsic excellence of taste, and our limited experience fully prepared us to believe the statement. Its original elements are clotted blood, tallow, and half-digested moss, taken from the stomach of the reindeer, where it is supposed to have undergone some essential change which fits it for second-hand consumption. These curious and heterogeneous ingredients are boiled up together with a few handfuls of dried grass to give the mixture consistency, and the dark mass is then moulded into small loaves and frozen for future use. Our host was evidently desirous of treating us with every civility, and, as a mark of especial consideration, bit off several choice morsels from the large cube of venison in his grimy hand, and taking them from his mouth, offered them to me. I waived graciously the implied compliment, and indicated Dodd as the proper recipient of such attentions; but the latter revenged himself by requesting an old woman to bring me some raw tallow, which he soberly assured her constituted my only food when at home. My indignant denials, in English were not, of course, understood; and the woman, delighted to find an American whose tastes corresponded so closely with her own, brought the tallow. I was a helpless victim, and I could only add this last offence to the long list of grievances which stood to Dodd’s credit, and which I hoped some time to settle in full.
Supper, in the social economy of the Koraks, is emphatically the meal of the day. Around the kettle of _manyalla_, or the trough of reindeer meat; gather the men of the band, who during the hours of daylight have been absent, and who, between mouthfuls of meat or moss, discuss the simple subjects of thought which their isolated life affords. We availed ourselves of this opportunity to learn something of the tribes that inhabited the country to the northward, the reception with which we should probably meet, and the mode of travel which we should be compelled to adopt.
[Illustration: Small Adze with bone headpiece]
CHAPTER XVIII
WHY THE KORAKS WANDER–THEIR INDEPENDENCE–CHEERLESS LIFE–USES OF THE REINDEER–KORAK IDEAS OF DISTANCE–“MONARCH OF THE BRASS-HANDLED SWORD”
The Wandering Koraks of Kamchatka, who are divided into about forty different bands, roam over the great steppes in the northern part of the peninsula, between the 58th and the 63d parallels of latitude. Their southern limit is the settlement of Tigil, on the west coast, where they come annually to trade, and they are rarely found north of the village of Penzhina, two hundred miles from the head of the Okhotsk Sea. Within these limits they wander almost constantly with their great herds of reindeer, and so unsettled and restless are they in their habits, that they seldom camp longer than a week in any one place. This, however, is not attributable altogether to restlessness or love of change. A herd of four or five thousand reindeer will in a very few days paw up the snow and eat all the moss within a radius of a mile from the encampment, and then, of course, the band must move to fresh pasture ground. Their nomadic life, therefore, is not entirely a choice, but partly a necessity, growing out of their dependence upon the reindeer. They _must_ wander or their deer will starve, and then their own starvation follows as a natural consequence. Their unsettled mode of life probably grew, in the first place, out of the domestication of the reindeer, and the necessity which it involved of consulting first the reindeer’s wants; but the restless, vagabondish habits thus produced have now become a part of the Korak’s very nature, so that he could hardly live in any other way, even had he an opportunity of so doing. This wandering, isolated, independent existence has given to the Koraks all those characteristic traits of boldness, impatience of restraint, and perfect self-reliance, which distinguish them from the Kamchadals and the other settled inhabitants of Siberia. Give them a small herd of reindeer, and a moss steppe to wander over, and they ask nothing more from all the world. They are wholly independent of civilisation and government, and will neither submit to their laws nor recognise their distinctions. Every man is a law unto himself so long as he owns a dozen reindeer; and he can isolate himself, if he so chooses, from all human kind, and ignore all other interests but his own and his reindeer’s. For the sake of convenience and society they associate themselves in bands of six or eight families each; but these bands are held together only by mutual consent, and recognise no governing head. They have a leader called a _taiyon_ who is generally the largest deer-owner of the band, and he decides all such questions as the location of camps and time of removal from place to place; but he has no other power, and must refer all graver questions of individual rights and general obligations to the members of the band collectively. They have no particular reverence for anything or anybody except the evil spirits who bring calamities upon them, and the “shamans” or priests, who act as infernal mediators between these devils and their victims. Earthly rank they treat with contempt, and the Tsar of all the Russias, if he entered a Korak tent, would stand upon the same level with its owner. We had an amusing instance of this soon after we met the first Koraks. The Major had become impressed in some way with the idea that in order to get what he wanted from these natives he must impress them with a proper sense of his power, rank, wealth, and general importance in the world, and make them feel a certain degree of reverence and respect for his orders and wishes. He accordingly called one of the oldest and most influential members of the band to him one day, and proceeded to tell him, through an interpreter, how rich he was; what immense resources, in the way of rewards and punishments, he possessed; what high rank he held; how important a place he filled in Russia, and how becoming it was that an individual of such exalted attributes should be treated by poor wandering heathen with filial reverence and veneration. The old Korak, squatting upon his heels on the ground, listened quietly to the enumeration of all our leader’s admirable qualities and perfections without moving a muscle of his face; but finally, when the interpreter had finished, he rose slowly, walked up to the Major with imperturbable gravity, and with the most benignant and patronising condescension, patted him softly on the head! The Major turned red and broke into a laugh; but he never tried again to overawe a Korak.
Notwithstanding this democratic independence of the Koraks, they are almost invariably hospitable, obliging, and kind-hearted; and we were assured at the first encampment where we stopped, that we should have no difficulty in getting the different bands to carry us on deer-sledges from one encampment to another until we should reach the head of Penzhinsk Gulf. After a long conversation with the Koraks who crowded around us as we sat by the fire, we finally became tired and sleepy, and with favourable impressions, upon the whole, of this new and strange people, we crawled into our little _polog_ to sleep. A voice in another part of the _yurt_ was singing a low, melancholy air in a minor key as I closed my eyes, and the sad, oft-repeated refrain, so different from ordinary music, invested with peculiar loneliness and strangeness my first night in a Korak tent.
To be awakened in the morning by a paroxysm of coughing, caused by the thick, acrid smoke of a low-spirited fire–to crawl out of a skin bedroom six feet square into the yet denser and smokier atmosphere of the tent–to eat a breakfast of dried fish, frozen tallow, and venison out of a dirty wooden trough, with an ill-conditioned dog standing at each elbow and disputing one’s right to every mouthful, is to enjoy an experience which only Korak life can afford, and which only Korak insensibility can long endure. A very sanguine temperament may find in its novelty some compensation for its discomfort, but the novelty rarely outlasts the second day, while the discomfort seems to increase in a direct ratio with the length of the experience. Philosophers may assert that a rightly constituted mind will rise superior to all outward circumstances; but two weeks in a Korak tent would do more to disabuse their minds of such an erroneous impression than any amount of logical argument. I do not myself profess to be preternaturally cheerful, and the dismal aspect of things when I crawled out of my fur sleeping-bag, on the morning after our arrival at the first encampment, made me feel anything but amiable. The first beams of daylight were just struggling in misty blue lines through the smoky atmosphere of the tent. The recently kindled fire would not burn but would smoke; the air was cold and cheerless; two babies were crying in a neighbouring _polog_; the breakfast was not ready, everybody was cross, and rather than break the harmonious impression of general misery, I became cross also. Three or four cups of hot tea, however, which were soon forthcoming, exerted their usual inspiriting influence, and we began gradually to take a more cheerful view of the situation. Summoning the _taiyon,_ and quickening his dull apprehension with a preliminary pipe of strong Circassian tobacco, we succeeded in making arrangements for our transportation to the next Korak encampment in the north, a distance of about forty miles. Orders were at once given for the capture of twenty reindeer and the preparation of sledges. Snatching hurriedly a few bites of hardbread and bacon by way of breakfast, I donned fur hood and mittens, and crawled out through the low doorway to see how twenty trained deer were to be separated from a herd of four thousand wild ones.
[Illustration: TENTS AND REINDEER OF THE WANDERING KORAKS]
Surrounding the tent in every direction were the deer belonging to the band, some pawing up the snow with their sharp hoofs in search of moss, others clashing their antlers together and barking hoarsely in fight, or chasing one another in a mad gallop over the steppe. Near the tent a dozen men with lassos arranged themselves in two parallel lines, while twenty more, with a thong of sealskin two or three hundred yards in length, encircled a portion of the great herd, and with shouts and waving lassos began driving it through the narrow gantlet. The deer strove with frightened bounds to escape from the gradually contracting circle, but the sealskin cord, held at short distances by shouting natives, invariably turned them back, and they streamed in a struggling, leaping throng through the narrow opening between the lines of lassoers. Ever and anon a long cord uncoiled itself in air, and a sliding noose fell over the antlers of some unlucky deer whose slit ears marked him as trained, but whose tremendous leaps and frantic efforts to escape suggested very grave doubts as to the extent of the training. To prevent the interference and knocking together of the deer’s antlers when they should be harnessed in couples, one horn was relentlessly chopped off close to the head by a native armed with a heavy sword-like knife, leaving a red ghastly stump from which the blood trickled in little streams over the animal’s ears. They were then harnessed to sledges in couples, by a collar and trace passing between the forelegs; lines were affixed to small sharp studs in the headstall, which pricked the right or left side of the head when the corresponding rein was jerked, and the equipage was ready.
Bidding good-by to the Lesnoi Kamchadals, who returned from here, we muffled ourselves from the biting air in our heaviest furs, took seats on our respective sledges, and at a laconic “tok” (go) from the _taiyon_ we were off; the little cluster of tents looking like a group of conical islands behind us as we swept out upon the limitless ocean of the snowy steppe. Noticing that I shivered a little in the keen air, my driver pointed away to the northward, and exclaimed with a pantomimic shrug, “Tam _shipka_ kholodno”–“There it’s awful cold.” We needed not to be informed of the fact; the rapidly sinking thermometer indicated our approach to the regions of perpetual frost, and I looked forward with no little apprehension to the prospect of sleeping outdoors in the arctic temperatures of which I had read, but which I had never yet experienced.
This was my first trial of reindeer travel, and I was a little disappointed to find that it did not quite realise the expectations that had been excited in my boyish days by the pictures of galloping Lapland deer in the old geographies. The reindeer were there, but they were not the ideal reindeer of early fancy, and I felt a vague sense of personal injury and unjustifiable deception at the substitution of these awkward, ungainly beasts for the spirited and fleet-footed animals of my boyish imagination. Their trot was awkward and heavy, they carried their heads low, and their panting breaths and gaping mouths were constantly suggestive of complete exhaustion, and excited pity for their apparently laborious exertions, rather than admiration for the speed which they really did exhibit. My ideal reindeer would never have demeaned himself by running with his mouth wide open. When I learned, as I afterward did, that they were compelled to breathe through their mouths, on account of the rapid accumulation of frost in their nostrils, it relieved my apprehensions of their breaking down, but did not alter my firm conviction that my ideal reindeer was infinitely superior in an aesthetic point of view to the real animal. I could not but admit, however, the inestimable value of the reindeer to his wandering owners. Besides carrying them from place to place, he furnishes them with clothes, food, and covering for their tents; his antlers are made into rude implements of all sorts; his sinews are dried and pounded into thread, his bones are soaked in seal oil and burned for fuel, his entrails are cleaned, filled with tallow, and eaten; his blood, mixed with the contents of his stomach, is made into _manyalla_; his marrow and tongue are considered the greatest of delicacies; the stiff, bristly skin of his legs is used to cover snow-shoes; and finally his whole body, sacrificed to the Korak gods, brings down upon his owners all the spiritual and temporal blessings which they need. It would be hard to find another animal which fills so important a place in the life of any body of men, as the reindeer does in the life and domestic economy of the Siberian Koraks. I cannot now think of one which furnishes even the four prime requisites of food, clothing, shelter, and transportation. It is a singular fact, however, that the Siberian natives–the only people, so far as I know, who have ever domesticated the reindeer, except the Laps–do not use in any way the animal’s milk. Why so important and desirable an article of food should be neglected, when every other part of the deer’s body is turned to some useful account, I cannot imagine. It is certain, however, that no one of the four great wandering tribes of north-eastern Siberia, Koraks, Chukchis, Tunguses, and Lamutkis, uses in any way the reindeer’s milk.
By two o’clock in the afternoon it began to grow dark, but we estimated that we had accomplished at least half of our day’s journey, and halted for a few moments to allow our deer to eat. The last half of the distance seemed interminable. The moon rose round and bright as the shield of Achilles, and lighted up the vast, lonely _tundra_ with noonday brilliancy; but the silence and desolation, the absence of any dark object upon which the fatigued eye could rest, and the apparently boundless extent of this Dead Sea of snow, oppressed us with new and strange sensations of awe. A dense mist or steam, which is an unfailing indication of intense cold, rose from the bodies of the reindeer and hung over the road long after we had passed. Beards became tangled masses of frozen iron wire; eyelids grew heavy with white rims of frost and froze together when we winked; noses assumed a white, waxen appearance with every incautious exposure, and only by frequently running beside our sledges could we keep any “feeling” in our feet. Impelled by hunger and cold, we repeated twenty times the despairing question, “How much farther is it?” and twenty times we received the stereotyped but indefinite answer of “cheimuk,” near, or occasionally the encouraging assurance that we would arrive in a minute. Now we knew very well that we _should not_ arrive in a minute, nor probably in forty minutes; but it afforded temporary relief to be _told_ that we would. My frequent inquiries finally spurred my driver into an attempt to express the distance arithmetically, and with evident pride in his ability to speak Russian, he assured me that it was only “dva verst,” or two versts more. I brightened up at once with anticipations of a warm fire and an infinite number of cups of hot tea, and by imagining prospective comfort, succeeded in forgetting the present sense of suffering. At the expiration, however, of three-quarters of an hour, seeing no indication of the promised encampment, I asked once more if it were much farther away. One Korak looked around over the steppe with a well assumed air of seeking some landmark, and then turning to me with a confident nod, repeated the word “verst” and held up _four fingers_! I sank back upon my sledge in despair. If we had been three-quarters of an hour in losing two versts, how long would be we in losing versts enough to get back to the place from which we started. It was a discouraging problem, and after several unsuccessful attempts to solve it by the double rule of three backwards, I gave it up. For the benefit of the future traveller, I give, however, a few native expressions for distances, with their numerical equivalents: “cheimuk”–near, twenty versts; “bolshe nyet”–there is no more, fifteen versts; “sey chas priyedem”–we will arrive this minute, means any time in the course of the day or night; and “dailoko”–far, is a week’s journey. By bearing in mind these simple values, the traveller will avoid much bitter disappointment, and _may_ get through without entirely losing faith in human veracity. About six o’clock in the evening, tired, hungry, and half-frozen, we caught sight of the sparks and fire-lit smoke which arose from the tents of the second encampment, and amid a general barking of dogs and hallooing of men we stopped among them. Jumping hurriedly from my sledge, with no thought but that of getting to a fire, I crawled into the first hole which presented itself, with a firm belief, founded on the previous night’s experience, that it must be a door. After groping about some time in the dark, crawling over two dead reindeer and a heap of dried fish, I was obliged to shout for assistance. Great was the astonishment of the proprietor, who came to the rescue with a torch, to find a white man and a stranger crawling around aimlessly in his fish storehouse. He relieved his feelings with a ty-e-e-e of amazement, and led the way, or rather crawled away, to the interior of the tent, where I found the Major endeavouring with a dull Korak knife to cut his frozen beard loose from his fur hood and open communication with his mouth through a sheet of ice and hair. The teakettle was soon simmering and spouting over a brisk fire, beards were thawed out, noses examined for signs of frost-bites, and in half an hour we were seated comfortably on the ground around a candle-box, drinking tea and discussing the events of the day.
Just as Viushin was filling up our cups for the third time, the skin curtain of the low doorway at our side was lifted up, and the most extraordinary figure which I ever beheld in Kamchatka crawled silently in, straightened up to its full height of six feet, and stood majestically before us. It was an ugly, dark-featured man about thirty years of age. He was clothed in a scarlet dress-coat with blue facings and brass buttons, with long festoons of gold cord hung across the breast, trousers of black, greasy deerskin, and fur boots. His hair was closely shaven from the crown of his head, leaving a long fringe of lank, uneven locks hanging about his ears and forehead. Long strings of small coloured beads depended from his ears, and over one of them he had plastered for future use a huge quid of masticated tobacco. About his waist was tied a ragged sealskin thong, which supported a magnificent silver-hilted sword and embossed scabbard. His smoky, unmistakably Korak face, shaven head, scarlet coat, greasy skin trousers, gold cord, sealskin belt, silver-hilted sword, and fur boots, made up such a remarkable combination of glaring contrasts that we could do nothing for a moment but stare at him in utter _amazement_. He reminded me of “Talipot, the Immortal Potentate of Manacabo, Messenger of the Morning, Enlightener of the Sun, Possessor of the Whole Earth, and Mighty Monarch of the Brass-handled Sword.”
“Who are you?” suddenly demanded the Major, in Russian. A low bow was the only response. “Where in the name of Chort did you come from?” Another bow. “Where did you get that coat? Can’t you say something? Ay! Meranef! Come and talk to this–fellow, I can’t make him say anything.” Dodd suggested that he might be a messenger from the expedition of Sir John Franklin, with late advices from the Pole and the North-west Passage, and the silent owner of the sword bowed affirmatively, as if this were the true solution of the mystery. “Are you a pickled cabbage?” suddenly inquired Dodd in Russian. The Unknown intimated by a very emphatic bow that he was. “_He_ doesn’t understand anything!” said Dodd in disgust; “where’s Meranef?” Meranef soon made his appearance, and began questioning the mysterious visitor in a scarlet coat as to his residence, name, and previous history. For the first time he now found a voice. “What does he say?” asked the Major; “what’s his name?”
“He says his name is Khanalpooginuk.”
“Where did he get that coat and sword?”
“He says ‘the Great White Chief’ gave it to him for a dead reindeer.” This was not very satisfactory, and Meranef was instructed to get some more intelligible information. Who the “Great White Chief” might be, and why he should give a scarlet coat and a silver-hilted sword for a dead reindeer, were questions beyond our ability to solve. Finally, Meranef’s puzzled face cleared up, and he told us that the coat and sword had been presented to the Unknown by the Emperor, as a reward for reindeer given to the starving Russians of Kamchatka during a famine. The Korak was asked if he had received no paper with these gifts, and he immediately left the tent, and returned in a moment with a sheet of paper tied up carefully with reindeer’s sinews between a couple of thin boards. This paper explained everything. The coat and sword had been given to the present owner’s father, during the reign of Alexander I., by the Russian Governor of Kamchatka as a reward for succour afforded the Russians in a famine. From the father they had descended to the son, and the latter, proud of his inherited distinction, had presented himself to us as soon as he heard of our arrival. He wanted nothing in particular except to show himself, and after examining his sword, which was really a magnificent weapon, we gave him a few bunches of tobacco and dismissed him. We had hardly expected to find in the interior of Kamchatka any relics of Alexander I., dating back to the time of Napoleon.
[Illustration: Iron Skin Scraper]
CHAPTER XIX
THE SNOW-DRIFT COMPASS–MARRIAGE BY CAPTURE–AN INTOXICATING FUNGUS–MONOTONY OF KORAK LIFE
On the following morning at daybreak we continued our journey, and rode until four hours after dark, over a boundless level steppe, without a single guiding landmark to point the way. I was surprised to see how accurately our drivers could determine the points of the compass and shape their course by simply looking at the snow. The heavy north-east winds which prevail in this locality throughout the winter sweep the snow into long wave-like ridges called _sastrugi_ (sas-troo’-gee), which are always perpendicular to the course of the wind, and which almost invariably run in a north-west and south-east direction. They are sometimes hidden for a few days by fresh-fallen snow; but an experienced Korak can always tell by removing the upper layer which way is north, and he travels to his destination by night or day in a nearly straight line.
We reached the third encampment about six o’clock, and upon entering the largest tent were surprised to find it crowded with natives, as if in expectation of some ceremony or entertainment. Inquiry through our interpreter elicited the interesting fact that the ceremony of marriage was about to be performed for, or rather by, two members of the band; and instead of taking up our quarters, as we at first intended, in another less crowded tent, we determined to remain and see in what manner this rite would be solemnised by a wholly uncivilised and barbarous people.
The marriage ceremony of the Koraks is especially remarkable for its entire originality, and for the indifference which it manifests to the sensibilities of the bridegroom. In no other country does there exist such a curious mixture of sense and absurdity as that which is dignified in the social life of the Koraks with the name of marriage; and among no other people, let us charitably hope, is the unfortunate bridegroom subjected to such humiliating indignities. The contemplation of marriage is, or ought to be, a very serious thing to every young man; but to a Korak of average sensibility it must be absolutely appalling. No other proof of bravery need ever be exhibited than a certificate of marriage (if the Koraks have such documents), and the bravery rises into positive heroism when a man marries two or three times. I once knew a Korak in Kamchatka who had four wives, and I felt as much respect for his heroic bravery as if he had charged with the Six Hundred at Balaklava.
The ceremony, I believe, has never been described; and inadequate as a description may be to convey an idea of the reality, it will perhaps enable American lovers to realise what a calamity they escaped when they were born in America and not in Kamchatka. The young Korak’s troubles begin when he first falls in love; this, like Achilles’ wrath, is “the direful spring of woes unnumbered.” If his intentions are serious, he calls upon the damsel’s father and makes formal proposals for her hand, ascertains the amount of her dower in reindeer, and learns her estimated value. He is probably told that he must work for his wife two or three years–a rather severe trial of any young man’s affection. He then seeks an interview with the young lady herself, and performs the agreeable or disagreeable duty which corresponds in Korak to the civilised custom of “popping the question.” We had hoped to get some valuable hints from the Koraks as to the best method which their experience suggested for the successful accomplishment of this delicate task; but we could learn nothing that would be applicable to the more artificial relations of civilised society. If the young man’s sentiments are reciprocated, and he obtains a positive promise of marriage, he goes cheerfully to work, like Ferdinand in _The Tempest_ for Miranda’s father, and spends two or three years in cutting and drawing wood, watching reindeer, making sledges, and contributing generally to the interests of his prospective father-in-law. At the end of this probationary period comes the grand “experimentum crucis,” which is to decide his fate and prove the success or the uselessness of his long labour.
At this interesting crisis we had surprised our Korak friends in the third encampment. The tent which we had entered was an unusually large one, containing twenty-six _pologs_, arranged in a continuous circle around its inner circumference. The open space in the centre around the fire was crowded with the dusky faces and half-shaven heads of the Korak spectators, whose attention seemed about equally divided between sundry kettles and troughs of _manyalla_, boiled venison, marrow, frozen tallow, and similar delicacies, and the discussion of some controverted point of marriage etiquette. Owing to my ignorance of the language, I was not able to enter thoroughly into the merits of the disputed question; but it seemed to be ably argued on both sides. Our sudden entrance seemed to create a temporary diversion from the legitimate business of the evening. The tattooed women and shaven-headed men stared in open-mouthed astonishment at the pale-faced guests who had come unbidden to the marriage-feast, having on no wedding garments. Our faces were undeniably dirty, our blue hunting-shirts and buckskin trousers bore the marks of two months’ rough travel, in numerous rips, tears, and tatters, which were only partially masked by a thick covering of reindeer hair from our fur _kukhlankas._ Our general appearance, in fact, suggested a more intimate acquaintance with dirty _yurts_, mountain thickets, and Siberian storms, than with the civilising influences of soap, water, razors, and needles. We bore the curious scrutiny of the assemblage, however, with the indifference of men who were used to it, and sipped our hot tea while waiting for the ceremony to begin. I looked curiously around to see if I could distinguish the happy candidates for matrimonial honours; but they were evidently concealed in one of the closed _pologs_. The eating and drinking seemed by this time to be about finished, and an air of expectation and suspense pervaded the entire crowd. Suddenly we were startled by the loud and regular beating of a native _baraban_ or bass drum, which fairly filled the tent with a great volume of sound. At the same instant the tent opened to permit the passage of a tall, stern-looking Korak, with an armful of willow sprouts and alder branches, which he proceeded [Illustration: DRAWINGS OF THE KORAKS. ILLUSTRATIVE OF THEIR MYTHS.] to distribute in all the _pologs_ of the tent. “What do you suppose that’s for?” asked Dodd in an undertone. “I don’t know,” was the reply; “keep quiet and you’ll see.” The regular throbs of the drum continued throughout the distribution of the willow sticks and at its close the drummer began to sing a low, musical recitative, which increased gradually in volume and energy until it swelled into a wild, barbarous chant, timed by the regular beats of the heavy drum. A slight commotion followed, the front curtains of all the _pologs_ were thrown up, the women stationed themselves in detachments of two or three at the entrance of each polog, and took up the willow branches which had been provided. In a moment a venerable native, whom we presumed to be the father of one of the parties, emerged from one of the _pologs_ near the door, leading a good-looking young Korak and the dark-faced bride. Upon their appearance the excitement increased to the pitch of frenzy, the music redoubled its rapidity, the men in the centre of the tent joined in the uncouth chant, and uttered at short intervals peculiar shrill cries of wild excitement. At a given signal from the native who had led out the couple, the bride darted suddenly into the first _polog_, and began a rapid flight around the tent, raising the curtains between the _pologs_ successively, and passing under. The bridegroom instantly followed in hot pursuit; but the women who were stationed in each compartment threw every possible impediment in his way, tripping up his unwary feet, holding down the curtains to prevent his passage, and applying the willow and alder switches unmercifully to a very susceptible part of his body as he stooped to raise them. The air was filled with drum-beats, shouts of encouragement and derision, and the sound of the heavy blows which were administered to the unlucky bridegroom by each successive detachment of women as he ran the gantlet. It became evident at once that despite his most violent efforts he would fail to overtake the flying Atalanta before she completed the circuit of the tent. Even the golden apples of Hesperides would have availed him little against such disheartening odds; but with undismayed perseverance he pressed on, stumbling headlong over the outstretched feet of his female persecutors, and getting constantly entangled in the ample folds of the reindeerskin curtains, which were thrown with the skill of a matador over his head and eyes. In a moment the bride had entered the last closed _polog_ near the door, while the unfortunate bridegroom was still struggling with his accumulating misfortunes about half-way around the tent. I expected to see him relax his efforts and give up the contest when the bride disappeared, and was preparing to protest strongly in his behalf against the unfairness of the trial; but, to my surprise, he still struggled on, and with a final plunge burst through the curtains of the last _polog_ and rejoined his bride. The music suddenly ceased, and the throng began to stream out of the tent. The ceremony was evidently over. Turning to Meranef, who with a delighted grin had watched its progress, we inquired what it all meant. “Were they married?”–“Da’s,” was the affirmative reply. “But,” we objected, “he didn’t catch her.”–“She waited for him, your honour, in the last _polog_, and if he caught her there it was enough.”–“Suppose he had _not_ caught her there, then what?”–“Then,” answered the Cossack, with an expressive shrug of commiseration, “the _beidnak_ [poor fellow] would have had to work two more years.” This was pleasant–for the bridegroom! To work two years for a wife, undergo a severe course of willow sprouts at the close of his apprenticeship, and then have no security against a possible breach of promise on the part of the bride. His faith in her constancy must be unlimited. The intention of the whole ceremony was evidently to give the woman an opportunity to marry the man or not, as she chose, since it was obviously impossible for him to catch her under such circumstances, unless she voluntarily waited for him in one of the _pologs_. The plan showed a more chivalrous regard and deference for the wishes and preferences of the gentler sex than is common in an unreconstructed state of society; but it seemed to me, as an unprejudiced observer, that the same result might have been obtained without so much abuse of the unfortunate bridegroom! Some regard ought to have been paid to his feelings, if he _was_ a man. I could not ascertain the significance of the chastisement which was inflicted by the women upon the bridegroom with the willow switches. Dodd suggested that it might be emblematical of married life–a sort of foreshadowing of future domestic experience; but in view of the masculine Korak character, this hardly seemed to me probable. No woman in her senses would try the experiment a second time upon one of the stern, resolute men who witnessed that ceremony, and who seemed to regard it _then_ as perfectly proper. Circumstances would undoubtedly alter cases.
Mr. A.S. Bickmore, in the _American Journal of Science_ for May, 1868, notices this curious custom of the Koraks, and says that the chastisement is intended to test the young man’s “ability to bear up against the ills of life”; but I would respectfully submit that the ills of life do not generally come in that shape, and that switching a man over the back with willow sprouts is a very singular way of preparing him for future misfortunes of any kind.
Whatever may be the motive, it is certainly an infringement upon the generally recognised prerogatives of the sterner sex, and should be discountenanced by all Koraks who favour masculine supremacy. Before they know it, they will have a woman’s suffrage association on their hands, and female lecturers will be going about from band to band advocating the substitution of hickory clubs and slung-shots for the harmless willow switches, and protesting against the tyranny which will not permit them to indulge in this interesting diversion at least three times a week. [Footnote: It is now well known that this ceremony is a form of “marriage by capture” which is widely prevalent among barbarous peoples.–G.K. (1909).]
After the conclusion of the ceremony we removed to an adjacent tent, and were surprised, as we came out into the open air, to see three or four Koraks shouting and reeling about in an advanced stage of intoxication–celebrating, I suppose, the happy event which had just transpired. I knew that there was not a drop of alcoholic liquor in all northern Kamchatka, nor, so far as I knew, anything from which it could be made, and it was a mystery to me how they had succeeded in becoming so suddenly, thoroughly, hopelessly, undeniably drunk. Even Ross Browne’s beloved Washoe, with its “howling wilderness” saloons, could not have turned out more creditable specimens of intoxicated humanity than those before us. The exciting agent, whatever it might be, was certainly as quick in its operation, and as effective in its results, as any “tanglefoot” or “bottled lightning” known to modern civilisation. Upon inquiry we learned to our astonishment that they had been eating a species of the plant vulgarly known as toadstool. There is a peculiar fungus of this class in Siberia, known to the natives as “muk-a-moor,” and as it possesses active intoxicating properties, it is used as a stimulant by nearly all the Siberian tribes. [Footnote: _Agaricus muscarius_ or fly-agaric.] Taken in large quantities it is a violent narcotic poison; but in small doses it produces all the effects of alcoholic liquor. Its habitual use, however, completely shatters the nervous system, and its sale by Russian traders to the natives has consequently been made a penal offence by Russian law. In spite of all prohibitions, the trade is still secretly carried on, and I have seen twenty dollars’ worth of furs bought with a single fungus. The Koraks would gather it for themselves, but it requires the shelter of timber for its growth, and is not to be found on the barren steppes over which they wander; so that they are obliged for the most part to buy it, at enormous prices, from the Russian traders. It may sound strangely to American ears, but the invitation which a convivial Korak extends to his passing friend is not, “Come in and have a drink,” but, “Won’t you come in and take a toadstool?” Not a very alluring proposal perhaps to a civilised toper, but one which has a magical effect upon a dissipated Korak. As the supply of these toadstools is by no means equal to the demand, Korak ingenuity has been greatly exercised in the endeavour to economise the precious stimulant, and make it go as far as possible. Sometimes, in the course of human events, it becomes imperatively necessary that a whole band shall get drunk together, and they have only one toadstool to do it with. For a description of the manner in which this band gets drunk collectively and individually upon one fungus, and keeps drunk for a week, the curious reader is referred to Goldsmith’s _Citizen of the World_, Letter 32. It is but just to say, however, that this horrible practice is almost entirely confined to the settled Koraks of Penzhinsk Gulf–the lowest, most degraded portion of the whole tribe. It may prevail to a limited extent among the wandering natives, but I never heard of more than one such instance outside of the Penzhinsk Gulf settlements.
Our travel for the next few days after leaving the third encampment was fatiguing and monotonous. The unvarying routine of our daily life in smoky Korak tents, and the uniform flatness and barrenness of the country over which we journeyed, became inexpressibly tiresome, and we looked forward in longing anticipation to the Russian settlement of Gizhiga, at the head of Gizhiginsk Gulf, which was the Mecca of our long pilgrimage. To spend more than a week at one time with the Wandering Koraks without becoming lonesome or homesick, requires an almost inexhaustible fertility of mental resource. One is thrown for entertainment entirely upon himself. No daily paper, with its fresh material for thought and discussion, comes to enliven the long blank evenings by the tent fire; no wars or rumours of wars, no _coup d’etat_ of diplomacy, no excitement of political canvass ever agitates the stagnant intellectual atmosphere of Korak existence. Removed to an infinite distance, both physically and intellectually, from all of the interests, ambitions, and excitements which make up our world, the Korak simply exists, like a human oyster, in the quiet waters of his monotonous life. An occasional birth or marriage, the sacrifice of a dog, or, on rare occasions, of a man to the Korak Ahriman, and the infrequent visits of a Russian trader, are the most prominent events in his history, from the cradle to the grave. I found it almost impossible sometimes to realise, as I sat by the fire in a Korak tent, that I was still in the modern world of railroads, telegraphs, and daily newspapers. I seemed to have been carried back by some enchantment through the long cycles of time, and made a dweller in the tents of Shem and Japheth. Not a suggestion was there in all our surroundings of the vaunted enlightenment and civilisation of the nineteenth century, and as we gradually accustomed ourselves to the new and strange conditions of primitive barbarism, our recollections of a civilised life faded into the unreal imagery of a vivid dream.
[Illustration: Ice scratcher used in stalking seals]
CHAPTER XX
THE KORAK TONGUE–RELIGION OF TERROR–INCANTATIONS OF SHAMANS–KILLING OF OLD AND SICK–REINDEER SUPERSTITION–KORAK CHARACTER
Our long intercourse with the Wandering Koraks gave us an opportunity of observing many of their peculiarities, which would very likely escape the notice of a transient visitor; and as our journey until we reached the head of Penzhinsk Gulf was barren of incident, I shall give in this chapter all the information I could gather relative to the language, religion, superstitions, customs, and mode of life of the Kamchatkan Koraks.
There can be no doubt whatever that the Koraks and the powerful Siberian tribe known as Chukchis (or Tchucktchis, according to Wrangell) descended originally from the same stock, and migrated together from their ancient locations to the places where they now live. Even after several centuries of separation, they resemble each other so closely that they can hardly be distinguished, and their languages differ less one from the other than the Portuguese differs from the Spanish. Our Korak interpreters found very little difficulty in conversing with Chukchis; and a comparison of vocabularies which we afterward made showed only a slight dialectical variation, which could be easily accounted for by a few centuries of separation. None of the Siberian languages with which I am acquainted are written, and, lacking a fixed standard of reference, they change with great rapidity. This is shown by a comparison of a modern Chukchi vocabulary with the one compiled by M. de Lesseps in 1788. Many words have altered so materially as to be hardly recognisable. Others, on the contrary, such as “tin tin,” ice, “oottoot,” wood, “weengay,” no, “ay,” yes, and most of the numerals up to ten, have undergone no change whatever. Both Koraks and Chukchis count by fives instead of tens, a peculiarity which is also noticeable in the language of the Co-Yukons in Alaska. The Korak numerals are:–
Innin, One.
Nee-ak deg.h, Two.
Nee-ok deg.h, Three.
Nee-ak deg.h, Four.
Mil-li-gen, Five.
In-nin mil-li-gen, Five-one. Nee-ak deg.h ” Five-two.
Nee-ok deg.h ” Five-three. Nee-ak deg.h ” Five-four.
Meen-ye-geet-k deg.hin, Ten.
After ten they count ten-one, ten-two, etc., up to fifteen, and then ten-five-one; but their numerals become so hopelessly complicated when they get above twenty, that is would be easier to carry a pocketful of stones and count with them, than to pronounce the corresponding words.
Fifty-six, for instance, is
“Nee-akh-khleep-kin-meen-ye-geet-khin-par-ol-in-nin-mil-li-gen,” and it is only fifty-six after it is all pronounced! It ought to be at least two hundred and sixty-three millions nine hundred and fourteen thousand seven hundred and one–and then it would be long. But the Koraks rarely have occasion to use high numbers; and when they do, they have an abundance of time. It would be a hard day’s work for a boy to explain in Korak one of the miscellaneous problems in Ray’s Higher Arithmetic. To say 324 x 5260 = 1,704,240 would certainly entitle him to a recess of an hour and a reward of merit. We were never able to trace any resemblance whatever between the Koraki-Chukchi language and the languages spoken by the natives on the eastern side of Bering Strait. If there be any resemblance, it must be in grammar rather than in vocabulary.
[Illustration: A KORAK GIRL]
The religion of all the natives of north-eastern Siberia, wandering and settled, including six or seven widely different tribes, is that corrupted form of Buddhism known as Shamanism. It is a religion which varies considerably in different places and among different people; but with the Koraks and Chukchis it may be briefly defined as the worship of the evil spirits who are supposed to be embodied in all the mysterious powers and manifestations of Nature, such as epidemic and contagious diseases, severe storms, famines, eclipses, and brilliant auroras. It takes its name from the shamans or priests, who act as interpreters of the evil spirits’ wishes and as mediators between them and man. All unnatural phenomena, and especially those of a disastrous and terrible nature, are attributed to the direct action of these evil spirits, and are considered as plain manifestations of their displeasure. It is claimed by many that the whole system of Shamanism is a gigantic imposture practised by a few cunning priests upon the easy credulity of superstitious natives. This I am sure is a prejudiced view. No one who has ever lived with the Siberian natives, studied their character, subjected himself to the same influences that surround them, and put himself as far as possible in their places, will ever doubt the sincerity of either priests or followers, or wonder that the worship of evil spirits should be their only religion. It is the only religion possible for such men in such circumstances. A recent writer [Footnote: W.E.H. Lecky, _History of Rationalism in Europe_.] of great fairness and impartiality has described so admirably the character of the Siberian Koraks, and the origin and nature of their religious belief, that I cannot do better than quote his words:–
“Terror is everywhere the beginning of religion. The phenomena which impress themselves most forcibly on the mind of the savage are not those which enter manifestly into the sequence of natural laws, and which are productive of most beneficial effects; but those which are disastrous and apparently abnormal. Gratitude is less vivid than fear, and the smallest infraction of a natural law produces a deeper impression than the most sublime of its ordinary operations. When, therefore, the most startling and terrible aspects of Nature are presented to his mind–when the more deadly forms of disease or natural convulsion desolate his land, the savage derives from them an intensely realised perception of diabolical presence. In the darkness of the night; amid the yawning chasms and the wild echoes of the mountain gorge; under the blaze of the comet or the solemn gloom of the eclipse; when famine has blasted the land; when the earthquake and the pestilence have slaughtered their thousands; in every form of disease which refracts and distorts the reason, in all that is strange, portentous, and deadly, he feels and cowers before the supernatural. Completely exposed to all the influences of Nature, and completely ignorant of the chain of sequence that unites its various parts, he lives in continual dread of what he deems the direct and isolated acts of evil spirits. Feeling them continually near him, he will naturally endeavour to enter into communion with them. He will strive to propitiate them with gifts. If some great calamity has fallen upon him, or if some vengeful passion has mastered his reason, he will attempt to invest himself with their authority, and his excited imagination will soon persuade him that he has succeeded in his desire.”
These pregnant words are the key to the religion of the Siberian natives, and afford the only intelligible explanation of the origin of shamans. If any proof were needed that this system of religion is the natural outgrowth of human nature in certain conditions of barbarism, it would be furnished by the universal prevalence of Shamanism in north-eastern Siberia among so many diverse tribes of different character and different origin. The tribe of Tunguses for instance, is certainly of Chinese descent, and the tribe of Yakuts is certainly Turkish. Both came from different regions, bringing different beliefs, superstitions, and modes of thought; but, when both were removed from all disturbing agencies and subjected to the same external influences, both developed precisely the same system of religious belief. If a band of ignorant, barbarous Mahometans were transported to north-eastern Siberia, and compelled to live alone in tents, century after century, amid the wild, gloomy scenery of the Stanavoi Mountains, to suffer terrific storms whose causes they could not explain, to lose their reindeer suddenly by an epidemic disease which defied human remedies, to be frightened by magnificent auroras that set the whole universe in a blaze, and decimated by pestilences whose nature they could not understand and whose disastrous effects they were powerless to avert–they would almost inevitably lose by degrees their faith in Allah and Mahomet, and become precisely such Shamanists as the Siberian Koraks and Chukchis are today. Even a whole century of partial civilisation and Christian training cannot wholly counteract the irresistible Shamanistic influence which is exerted upon the mind by the wilder, more terrible manifestations of Nature in these lonely and inhospitable regions. The Kamchadals who accompanied me to the Samanka Mountains were the sons of Christian parents, and had been brought up from infancy in the Greek Church; they were firm believers in the Divine atonement and in Divine providence, and prayed always night and morning for safety and preservation; yet, when overtaken by a storm in that gloomy range of mountains, the sense of the supernatural overcame their religious convictions, God seemed far away while evil spirits were near and active, and they sacrificed a dog, like very pagans, to propitiate the diabolical wrath of which the storm was an evidence. I could cite many similar instances, where the strongest and apparently most sincere convictions of the reality of Divine government and superintendence have been overcome by the influence upon the imagination of some startling and unusual phenomenon of Nature. Man’s actions are governed not so much by what he intellectually believes as by what he vividly realises; and it is this vivid realisation of diabolical presence which has given rise to the religion of Shamanism.
The duties of the shamans or priests among the Koraks are, to make incantations over the sick, to hold communication with the evil spirits, and to interpret their wishes and decrees to man. Whenever any calamity, such as disease, storm, or famine, comes upon a band, it is of course attributed to some spirit’s displeasure, and the shaman