OFF FOR THE TUNDRA--A NATIVE FAMILY
Hard traveling--The native women--A mongrel
race--Chrisoffsky's home and family and their ideas of
domestic economy--Boiled fish-eyes a native
delicacy--Prospecting along the Ghijiga.
We set out at nine o'clock on the sixth of September. Fortunately for
us, the sharp frosts had already killed off all the mosquitos. The
path through the tundra was very difficult. We stepped from tuft to
tuft of moss, between which were deep mud and slush. When we could
keep in the river-bed, where it was dry, we had tolerably good going;
so we kept as near the river as possible. Often I would have to mount
the back of my faithful Kim to cross some tributary of the main
stream. We were continually wet to the knee or higher, and were tired,
muddy, and bedraggled beyond belief.
Toward night, we saw the welcome smoke from the village of the
Chrisoffskys. A crowd of small urchins came running out to greet their
grandfather, and soon we were in the midst of the village. The old
gentleman, my guide, took my hand and led me into his house, where,
after I had kissed every one (drawing the line at the men), one of the
daughters sat down on the floor, unlaced my boots, took off my wet
socks, and replaced them by soft, fur-lined deerskin boots. She then
looked my boots over very carefully, and finding a little seam ripped,
she got out a deer-sinew and sewed it up. All my men were similarly
attended to. The boots were then hung up to dry. In the morning, they
would have to be oiled. This attention to the foot-gear is an
essential part of the etiquette of this people. Any stitch that is to
be taken must be attended to before the boot is dry and stiff. Even
here the samovar reigned supreme. The women were strong, buxom
creatures, and they wore loose calico gowns of gaudy colors. The hair,
which is never luxuriant in the women of the North, was put up in two
slender braids crossed at the back and brought around to the front of
the head and tied up. Their complexions were very dark, almost like
that of a North American Indian. Most of them had very fine teeth.
These people are of a mongrel race, having a mixture of Korak,
Tunguse, and Russian blood. Chrisoffsky himself was one fourth
Russian. They speak a dialect that is as mixed as their blood; for it
is a conglomerate of Korak, Tunguse and Russian. They are very
prolific, six and eight children being considered a small family.
The death-rate among them is very high, and, as might be expected,
pulmonary diseases are responsible for a very large proportion of the
deaths.
[Illustration: House of Theodosia Chrisoffsky, Christowic.]
This house into which I had come as guest consisted of a kitchen, a
small living-room, and a tiny bedroom. The old gentleman's wife was
fifty-five years old, and was still nursing her fifteenth child,
which, at night, was swung from the ceiling, while the father and
mother occupied a narrow bed. Three of the smaller children slept on
the floor beneath the bed. The room was eight feet long and six feet
wide. The fireplace in the living-room was a huge stone oven, which
projected through the partition into the bedroom. Every evening its
capacious maw was filled with logs, and this insured heat in the heavy
stone body of the stove for at least twenty-four hours. In the mouth
of this oven the kettles were hung. This house was far above the
average; for, in truth, there were only twelve others as good in the
whole immense district.
For dinner, the first course was a startling one. It consisted of a
huge bowl of boiled fish-eyes. This is considered a great delicacy by
the natives of the far North. When the dish was set before me, and I
saw a hundred eyes glaring at me from all directions and at all
angles, cross, squint, and wall, it simply took my appetite away. I
had to turn them down, so that the pupil was not visible, before I
could attack them. The old gentleman and I ate alone, the rest of the
family not being allowed to sit down with us. This was eminently
satisfactory to me, as we ate from the same dish; in fact, I could
have dispensed with my host too. The second dish consisted of
fish-heads. I found on these a sort of gelatin or cartilage that was
very good eating. Then came a kind of cake, fried in seal-oil, of
which the less said the better. For dessert, we had a dish of yagada,
which is much like our raspberry, except that it is yellow and rather
acid.
The rest of the family, together with my men, squatted on the floor of
the kitchen, and ate from tables a foot high by three feet square. In
the center of each table was set a large bowl of a kind of
fish-chowder. Each person wielded a spoon made from the horn of the
mountain sheep, and held in the left hand a piece of black bread.
After dinner they all had tea. No sugar is put in the tea, but a small
lump is given to each person, and he nibbles it as he sips his tea. It
is the height of impoliteness to ask for a second piece of sugar. Many
of these people drink as many as sixty cups of tea in a single day.
They seldom, if ever, drink water.
We sat and talked a couple of hours over the samovar, and then the
blankets were spread for the night. The large room was reserved for
me. Three huge bearskins were first placed on the floor, and then my
blankets were spread over them. It made a luxurious bed, and quite
free from vermin; for a bedbug will never approach a bearskin. In the
kitchen, I fear, they were packed like sardines. They slept on
deerskins or bearskins, anything that came handy being used for a
covering. Curiously enough, these people all prefer to sleep on a
steep incline, and to secure this position they use heavy pillows or
bolsters. Before retiring, each person came into my room and bowed and
crossed himself before the icon in the corner. I had to shake hands
with them all, and kiss the children, which operation I generally
performed on the forehead, as handkerchiefs are unknown luxuries in
that country.
The next morning, while partaking of a sort of French breakfast of
bread, tea, and sugar, I noticed that my party were the only ones that
made use of a comb and brush. When I stepped outside the door to clean
my teeth, I was surrounded by twenty or more, who had come to witness
this strange operation. They were brimming over with laughter. The
tooth-brush was passed around from hand to hand, and I had to keep a
sharp lookout, lest some of them tried it themselves.
Finally, I lined them all up to take their photograph. I placed my
camera on the ground, and turned to direct them how to stand. I had no
need to ask them to look pleasant, for they were all on a broad grin.
I was at a loss to account for their mirth till I turned and saw that
the village dogs were treating my camera in a characteristically
canine fashion. Then it was I who needed to be told to look pleasant.
At last we were on the road again. For the first five miles our way
led up the bed of the river, sometimes in the water, and sometimes on
the bank in grass as high as the horses' shoulders. When, at last, we
came out on to the tundra, to the north, a hundred and fifty miles
away, I could see the tops of the mountains among which the Ghijiga
River has its source. They are about ten thousand feet high. To the
northeast, about sixty miles away, I could see the foothills of a
range of mountains in which rises the Avecko River, which enters the
Okhotsk Sea within a mile of the mouth of the Ghijiga. Reaching the
summit of the water-shed between the two rivers, I discovered that
between me and these foothills the land was low and abounded in tundra
lakes. To avoid these, I bore to the left and kept on the summit of
the water-shed. By noon we had covered only eight miles. We halted for
dinner, unpacked the horses, and turned them out to feed upon the
rich grass while we made our dinner of fish, bread, and other viands
which we had brought ready prepared from the house. At eight that
night we camped on a "tundra island," a slight rise in the general
flatness on which grew a few tamarack trees. As the nights were now
very cold, we built a roaring fire. My koklanka, or great fur coat,
with its hood, now proved its utility. After supper, which consisted
of several brace of fat ptarmigan, brought down that afternoon with my
shotgun, each man took his deerskin and spread it on a pile of elastic
tamarack boughs. With our feet shod in dry fur boots, with our
koklankas about us and great pillows under our heads, we slept as
soundly and as comfortably as one could desire.
[Illustration: Start from Ghijiga, Summer-time. Theodosia Chrisoffsky
and Family--Fourteen Children.]
In the morning we found ourselves covered with white frost. The start
was very difficult, for an all-day tramp in the bog the day before had
made our joints stiff. For the first half hour, walking was so painful
that I found myself frequently counting the steps between objects
along the way. But after a time the stiffness wore off, and I began to
find the pace of the horses too slow. When at last we came to higher
ground and better going, I examined the streams for gold. The pan
showed several "small colors," for we were in a granite country, but
as yet there were no signs of any gold-bearing float rock.
On the thirteenth day we arrived at our destination which was a
certain creek indicated by a Russian engineer named Bugdanovitch. I
liked the looks of the country very much. The creeks were filled with
quartz float. So I determined to stop here two or three weeks and
explore the adjacent hills and creeks for gold. At this point my
guide's contract expired and I reluctantly let him go, as well as five
of the six horses. I was thus left in the wilderness with Kim and
Alek.
I pitched camp in a favorable place and went to work in good spirits.
I thoroughly prospected the hills and ravines and made repeated trials
of the creek beds, but though I found more or less show of gold, I was
at last obliged to confess that there was nothing worth working.
This being the case, it behooved me to be on my way back to
headquarters at Ghijiga. I thought there could be no difficulty about
it, as the water all flowed in one direction. I did not want to go
back by the way we had come. I suspected that there was a shorter way,
and that the guide had purposely brought me a longer distance in order
to secure more pay. So I decided to make a "bee line" for Ghijiga.
Already we had had a slight flurry of snow, which had made me a trifle
uneasy. We had only thirty days' provisions with us, and it would not
do to be snowed in. As we had only one horse, we could not, of
course, take back with us all our camp equipage, so I left Alek at the
camp and started out for Ghijiga with Kim and our one horse, intending
to send back dog-sledges for the things. A more timid man than Alek
would have hesitated before consenting to be left behind in this
fashion, but he bore up bravely and in good cheer sent us off.