OFF FOR BERING SEA--THE TCHUKTCHES
The Tchuktches are the Apaches of Siberia--Their hospitality
to Americans and their hostility to Russians--Wherein my
experiences differ from those of Mr. Harry DeWindt--Result
of licking a piece of stone with the thermometer at 45°
below zero--Konikly--Power of moral suasion in dealing with
a rebellious Korak--The cure of a dying woman and the
disgust of her husband--Poll-tax and the Tchuktches.
Immediately upon our arrival at the village of Kaminaw I began looking
about for dog-teams to take me on the long trip around by the shore of
Bering Sea. I found it very difficult to get good dogs there, but
after four days of patient search I secured two strong young natives,
each with a team of twelve dogs. I contracted with them to accompany
me all the way from that point, a distance of over fifteen hundred
miles, for fifty pounds of tobacco and twenty pounds of sugar, all of
which I paid in advance.
Thus equipped I left Kaminaw, and pushed toward the northeast,
following the line of mountains, and examining the rivers and creeks,
the cañons and the gulches for the precious metal. We generally found
Korak villages in which to lodge, but we suffered greatly with the
excessive cold. Not infrequently we had to go without any fire at all,
and at such times we found raw meat preferable to empty stomachs.
The next few weeks we worked our way toward the coast, one day
succeeding another in the monotonous iteration of camping and breaking
camp, and digging down into bed-rock in a fruitless search for paying
gold. As we approached the coast for the first time, we fell in with
members of the Tchuktche tribe. This name is generally spelled
Tchou-tchour, but I found the name invariably pronounced T'chuk-tche,
the apostrophe signifying that the initial T is pronounced separately.
These people are generally supposed to be a rather ugly lot, and the
Russians have never been able to subdue them as they have the other
Siberian tribes. They are the Apaches of Siberia, and when attacked
they retire to their mountain fastnesses, where it is next to
impossible to reach them. They are purely nomadic, and subsist solely
upon their immense herds of reindeer. They are much taller and broader
in the shoulder than is characteristic of any of the other tribes
that I have seen. Many of them stand five feet and eleven inches. The
women, too, are tall and well-formed.
I had been warned by the Russian authorities at Ghijiga to be on my
guard when I fell in with these fierce people, but I found the warning
entirely unnecessary. They had a clear knowledge of the difference
between a Russian and an American. Their preference for the American
lies in the fact that the Russians have tried to make them pay
tribute, and have carried on a desultory war with them for fifty
years, while the American whalers bring them articles of trade of
which they stand in need. They took the greatest interest in me, and
did everything in their power to make me comfortable. In their sledges
they would take me on long drives up the water-courses to look for
gold, and in countless other ways showed their good will. They were
the only people in Siberia with whom we could not bargain for meat or
transport. They simply would not listen to my offers of pay, and it
was only with difficulty that I could get them to take presents of
tobacco or tea. They smilingly told me that I had better keep all
those things till I went south into Kamchatka, "where all the people
are thieves." I felt so safe among the Tchuktches that never once did
I take my guns from the pack and bring them into the tent with me.
One instance will illustrate the manner in which these good people
treated me. At one point I had to take a three-days' trip over the
mountains. It required twenty-five reindeer and five drivers. The
village chief insisted on carrying my baggage, leaving my dog-teams to
come on behind, unloaded. For this service I succeeded in making him
take twenty cartridges.
[Illustration: One of the Tchuktches--an unconquered Race.]
Mr. Harry DeWindt crossed over from the American side, and reported
later that he had been captured by the natives, and, after undergoing
great hardships, was rescued by a man-of-war. In view of my
experiences among this people it is very difficult to understand the
treatment that Mr. DeWindt received. I traveled all along the coast to
the same places visited by him, and was always treated as an honored
guest by the natives. On the whole, they are the finest race of
savages that it has ever been my lot to meet.
The trip had been barren of results, as far as gold was concerned. Not
long after leaving Kaminaw I struck a sandstone formation, and lost
all traces of the yellow metal. And now I was approaching the coast,
though I had not as yet caught sight of it. On the eighth of March we
reached the foot of a range, and one of the Koraks, pointing to a
distant summit, said that from that point we would be able to see the
ocean. With renewed courage we pushed on. Each of the dogs wore on his
feet soft deerskin moccasins, and the teams were being very carefully
handled, for they were sadly worn by the long journey. They now needed
constant urging. We no longer rode on the sledges, but walked beside
them, pulling on the bow to relieve the dogs. When the hills were too
steep, we had to double up the teams and make two trips, which
lengthened the journey materially. During this period I was compelled
to keep my beard trimmed close to my face, because I found, by hard
experience, that my mustache would freeze down to my beard in such
fashion that I had a mass of ice depending from my face, which had
frequently to be cut away with a knife. In ordinary cold weather a
beard is a protection from the cold, but under those circumstances I
found that it added greatly to my discomfort.
Natives will pay more for short-haired dogs, for, in the case of the
long-haired dog, the moist breath, as it flows back from his nostrils,
soon covers him with a mass of icicles. With the short-haired dog this
is impossible.
One day, shortly before we reached the coast, we camped at noon, and,
about half a mile away, I saw a peculiar outcrop of white rock.
Thinking that it might be worth prospecting, I put on my snow-shoes
and walked over to it, while the men were getting dinner ready. The
thermometer stood at forty-five below zero. I found that there was
only a soda-like incrustation on the rock. And then, without thinking
of the after effects, I took up a piece, about two pounds in weight,
and put it to my mouth to taste it. Of course my tongue stuck to it,
and an excruciating pain shot through that organ. I had taken a
generous lick, and the whole surface of my tongue was fastened firmly
to the stone. I managed to get back to the camp, still holding the
stone to my face. For a moment, the men gazed at me in wonder; then
one of them hurried to bring a kettle of warm water, which he
attempted to dash in my face, but it did not reach the right spot. For
what he next did I shall be grateful always. He took a large mouthful
of the warm water, and then, with careful aim, squirted it between the
stone and my face, and we soon had the encumbrance removed. With it
came away a piece of the skin of my tongue, as large as a silver
quarter. This escapade was wholly inexcusable, as I had already had
sad experience in handling naked guns with bare, moist hands, and all
my weapons were wrapped in buckskin, with only the sights exposed.
Our teams were now so exhausted that several of the dogs dropped out
entirely, to crawl along after us as best they might. Looking back,
from time to time, I could see them trying desperately to keep up, for
they seemed to know that their only chance of life was to reach the
camp before night, to get some of the dog-food, which was running very
low. They were quite useless in the collar, for they not only did not
draw, but held back the other dogs who were able to pull. I had
started with fourteen good, strong animals, but now was reduced to
eight; and even these looked like skeletons. However, these eight were
game to the backbone, and would pull till they fell dead in the
harness. "Old Red," still my right-hand dog, would occasionally look
over his shoulder with pitiful eyes when I called, "Hyuk, hyuk!" and
then he would put down his head and strain at his collar, while his
breath came in coughing gasps. The ravens followed us for the last
five days, seeming to know that if the dogs gave out they would have a
feast. As for us men, we were in no danger, for we could easily have
walked to the coast.
At last, one memorable day, we dragged ourselves to that last summit,
and there, before us, were the waters of the sea, stretching out far
to the east, with the pack-ice extending fifteen miles out from the
shore. Below us, ten miles away, we could see the black dots that
stood for the "hour-glass" huts, where we knew there was warmth,
food, and rest for ourselves and our dogs. Since that day I have been
able to sympathize keenly with Xenophon and his ten thousand, when
they caught sight of the waters of the Euxine, and raised that glad
shout of "Thalassa, thalassa!"
[Illustration: Summit of Kamchatka--First Sight of Bering Sea.]
Though the dogs were very weak and worn, we went in with a rush, as
usual. But the moment we stopped, the poor fellows dropped in their
tracks and went to sleep, without a thought of food. Their utter
exhaustion was due to the fact that for the last ten days we had been
crossing a stretch of uninhabited country, and it had been impossible
to secure for them the necessary amount of food.
We were much relieved to find ourselves once more in "civilization,"
and we were in no hurry to move on. The people received us so
hospitably, and with such genuine kindness, that we spent a week with
them, resting and getting the dogs into condition again. Every day we
were regaled with frozen fish, dried fish, dainty bits of walrus
blubber, and frozen blueberries.
Some of the people of this tribe have curly hair, a thing that I had
not seen before in Siberia. They speak with one of those peculiar
"clicks" that are so baffling to the Western tongue, and which I had
always supposed were confined to the languages of Africa.
The village was composed of a mixed race in whose veins was mingled
Tchuktche, Korak, and Kamchatkan blood, in about equal proportions.
On our second day there I was glad to see the dogs that had dropped
behind dragging themselves in. They were tied up in their old places,
and fed generously on seal blubber and hot fish-soup, which might be
called a kind of fish and oil chowder. They were all suffering badly
from the need of fatty foods, and it was interesting to see the
avidity with which they would bolt huge pieces of clear blubber. At
the end of our week of rest, they were all fat again, their feet were
healed up, and they were eager for the road once more. Some of the
dogs that had shown less endurance than the others were traded off and
better ones secured. The best medium of exchange seemed to be the
little skeins of sewing-silk which I had been careful to bring. Skeins
that were bought in Vladivostok for two and a half cents apiece
readily brought a dollar here. I would have sold it cheaper, but they
pushed the price of the dogs up from five dollars to twenty, and I was
obliged to follow suit. The silk was in all the colors of the rainbow;
it was a study to see the faces of these natives as they devoured the
gaudy stuff with their eyes, especially the women. They use the silk
to embroider the bottoms of their fur cloaks, some of which are true
works of art. Traders have been known to pay as high as two hundred
dollars for a single coat. The amount of needlework on them is simply
enormous. Sometimes they cut out little pieces of skin a quarter of an
inch square, of all colors and shades, and make a genuine mosaic of
them, and around the bottom of each garment is a wide fringe of silk.
The natives laughed at the prices that I asked, and good-naturedly
expostulated with me, saying that they could get the same thing in
Ghijiga much cheaper; to which I laughingly answered that they were at
liberty to go and get it. Whenever I left a house, I presented the
women each with a few needles, which in that country is a very
substantial tip.
This village was not composed of pure Tchuktches, and these mongrel
people are looked down upon by the clean Tchuktche stock, who
frequently raid them and carry off their best-looking women.
It was now my purpose to turn south along the coast, and examine the
beach sands and the rivers running into Bering Sea, as far down as the
neck of the Kamchatkan peninsula, or Baron Koff Bay. As I was still in
a sandstone country, there seemed little likelihood of finding gold in
the beach sands, and unless the geologic formation changed as I went
south, I should push right on without stopping, except to rest.
Bidding good-by to the friends who had treated us so kindly, we set
out one morning, on our way southward, keeping to the smooth snow just
above the beach line. Once, and only once, I tried to shorten the
journey by crossing an arm of the sea on the ice. Here I had my first
taste of what it must be like to attempt to reach the Pole across the
frozen sea. Not once could I go fifty feet in a straight line. It was
an unspeakable jumble of hummocks and crevasses. We covered eight
arduous miles that day, and the dogs were so exhausted that we had to
stop two days to recuperate. Time and again, that miserable day, I got
into the water up to my waist, which necessitated an immediate change
of clothes. About once an hour the dogs would fall into the water and
have to be hauled out, after which a tedious detour would be made to
find a more likely route across the wilderness of ice.
The sixth day out we reached Baron Koff Bay. It is a long, narrow
inlet lying southeast and northwest; and at its head I found the
little Korak village where it was decided that I should secure a guide
to take me to the sulphur deposits, which were supposed to exist in an
extinct volcano in the vicinity. These people were of the same
mixed blood as those of the village I had so lately left, but they did
not live in the hour-glass houses. They simply had the underground
room, with a hole leading down into it. The one I entered was fifteen
feet wide by ten in height.
[Illustration: Kassegan, half-caste Russian trader, and Korak wife,
living at Boeta, Baron Koff Bay, Kamchatka.]
In this village seal-catching is the principal pursuit. The seal is
such an important animal to these people that they go through a
peculiar ceremony every year in its honor--a ceremony that is
characteristically childish and built upon superstitions.
Near this point is an immense deposit of coal which had been
discovered by a Russian man-of-war some twenty years before. The coal
is of poor quality, but could be used for steaming if necessary. The
coal-measures come right down to the water's edge. In the cliff beside
the water I found three veins of coal, with an aggregate thickness of
eighty feet.
This was a "dog" village, as distinguished from a "deer" village, and
it was amusing to see half a dozen dogs lying about each of the
entrance-holes of their underground houses, with their heads hanging
over the edge, so that they could better appreciate the smell of food
that rose with the smoke of the fire below. Of course I was always on
the lookout for good dogs, and while I was in this village I came upon
the finest specimen of a Siberian sledge-dog that it was ever my
fortune to see. He was tawny or light-brown in color, with a splendid
head, back, and shoulders. Clean-limbed, muscular, and straight-eared,
his tail curved up over his back in the most approved style. He
whipped our best dog in less than a minute. His name was Konikly,
meaning "One of Two," and his stuffed skin can be seen to-day in the
American Museum of Natural History. I presented him to the Jessup
Expedition, in charge of which was Mr. Buxton, whom I afterward met in
Vladivostok on his way to the north. I tried to obtain this dog, but
found, to my chagrin, that he had been marked for sacrifice, and could
not be bought. After bidding in vain up to fifty dollars in tea,
sugar, and silk, I came to the sad conclusion that the animal was not
on the market. But Snevaydoff, my right-hand man, said to me in
Russian, "There is a better way. We must simply take him and leave
behind sufficient compensation." This, of course, I hesitated to do
until I found that the natives would gladly sell him, but did not dare
to do so, for fear of angering the deity to whom he had been vowed in
sacrifice. If, however, we took the dog by force they would not be to
blame, and could demand the price as compensation. So I left the
matter with Snevaydoff to arrange as diplomatically as he could.
We waited a day or so for a Korak named Myela, who was to guide us to
the sulphur deposits, and when he arrived we made ready to start the
next morning. Everything was loaded the night before, and some time in
the night my Korak drivers hitched up the dogs, taking Konikly with
them, and drove out of the village. When morning came, the owner of
the dogs seemed much surprised to find that his dog was missing, and
he very naturally surmised that my men had taken him. He demanded that
I should pay for the stolen animal. Of course I protested, but in the
end paid the full price, and then every one was happy and satisfied.
After these ethical gymnastics, we drove out of the village, and made
our way southward to the mouth of a river near which point the sulphur
deposits were supposed to be; but I found, to my disgust, that the
place was twenty miles inland, up an unnavigable river, and through a
very rough country. I saw at a glance that it could never be a good
mining venture, but I determined to go and examine the deposit, in
order to be able to give a thorough report of the case.
That night we arrived at Myela's home, which was an isolated house or
hole in the ground. For the last twelve miles we had been gradually
ascending the valley, and the next morning we saw, eight miles away,
the extinct crater in which the sulphur lay. We unloaded the sledges,
and, taking only our picks and shovels, found ourselves, two hours
later, on the summit of the volcano. The crater was partly filled with
snow, but on one side, where it had been wind-swept, it was not deep.
We carefully descended the steep side of the crater until Myela
stopped us, and said, "Dig here." After going down through six feet of
snow to the ground I found it strewn with detached boulders, covered
with a thin film of sulphur, evidently a late solfataric deposit from
the crater which had been lately active, and the indications did not
promise large quantities; but even if the deposit proved to be rich, I
could see very well that mining it would never pay. The distance from
the coast, the roughness of the country, and the complete absence of
timber made it out of the question. A careful examination of the place
was, therefore, unnecessary.
I was then ready to start for Cape Memaitch, on the western coast of
the peninsula, but I perceived that if I went all the way back to
Baron Koff Bay to make a new start, considerable time would be lost.
One of my Koraks was tired of the trip, and insisted on going back
home by the shortest route, rather than by way of Cape Memaitch. He
absolutely refused to cross the range of mountains, as the spring sun
was now beating down on the snow, and he feared that, at any time,
we would be engulfed in an avalanche. I had already learned that this
route would not be really dangerous till three weeks later, and that
if we pushed right through we should be quite safe. So on the morning
of starting I sent off the other Korak with one of the sledges, and
then turned to the unwilling one and asked whether he would go with me
over the mountains. He still said no. I drew my revolver, and told him
that his only chance of seeing home again was to hitch those dogs up
instantly and obey me to the letter. He stood for a moment looking
into that compelling muzzle, and then turned, sullenly, and began
harnessing up. I had no more trouble with him after that.
[Illustration: In Crater of Extinct Volcano, digging for Sulphur.
Baron Koff Bay, Kamchatka.]
Two reindeer sledges were engaged to show us the way across the
mountains, and to break the track wherever necessary. They started a
mile in advance, so as to keep out of sight of the dogs. It was easy
work to follow, for it was simply an all-day chase for the dogs; each
one had his nose to the ground, and was fondly imagining that he would
soon enjoy the unparalleled delight of jumping at a reindeer's throat.
Myela led us before night to a Korak village of three yourtas. As we
approached it I saw a crowd huddled about something on the ground. It
proved to be a middle-aged woman, lying on a deerskin, and she seemed
to be dying. I asked why they did not take her inside, and was told
that she had asked to be brought out. I studied her symptoms, and
decided that she was suffering from the grippe, and that her case
demanded heroic treatment. She had not slept for three nights, so I
gave her twenty grains of quinine, two cathartic pills, and one-tenth
grain of morphine. She woke up the next morning with her eyes
brighter, and feeling better in every way. I gave her ten more grains
of quinine, and that afternoon she sat up, and dipped her hand into
the dish of meat and "spinach," and ate her full share. I thought her
cure was something of a triumph, for when I saw her she seemed to be
_in articulo mortis_. As I was about to leave, the husband of this
woman, a man of many reindeer, asked me if I had not forgotten
something, and intimated that I had not paid for the meat that my dogs
had eaten. I asked him if he did not think that my curing of his wife
was compensation enough; nevertheless, I paid him his full price and
departed. My Korak men told me later that the old fellow was angry
because I had saved the woman, as he had already picked out a young
and pretty girl to be her successor. Alas! I had unwittingly come
between man and wife, and had wrecked (at least his) domestic bliss.
On the whole, I am not sure but that it would have been kinder to have
let her die.
Our way led up a succession of cañons, and then over high mesas until
we reached the summit of the range. As we were passing up through
these cañons, we frequently ran under the edges of enormous
overhanging drifts, and I looked up anxiously, but nothing fell except
a little light snow and a few small pebbles. After passing the summit
I determined to take no chances at all, and so restricted traveling to
the night-time, when, of course, everything was frozen stiff.
It was now well into April, and the sun was climbing up into the
heavens at noon. The surface of the snow grew a little too soft to
make day travel quite comfortable. On this side of the mountains I
found considerable float coal, especially in the beds of the creeks.
The whole country was a sandstone formation, which, of course, meant
no gold. At last, far in the distance, we saw the blue waters of the
Okhotsk Sea flashing under the rays of the western sun, and we came
down rapidly to the shore. I saw below us a few of the hour-glass
huts, and at the mouth of a shallow stream a long promontory running
far out into the sea. This was Cape Memaitch,--whither I was bound
because the Russians had heard reports of a United States schooner
touching at this point and taking away full cargoes of ore to San
Francisco.
The first question I asked was whether or not it was true that such a
vessel had actually stopped there, and was answered in the
affirmative. A villager offered to guide me to the spot from which the
ore had been taken. I was naturally elated, for there was now a
prospect of finding something that would benefit my employers. The
next morning we started out along the shore. The guide led me to the
face of a sandstone bluff, and said, "Here is the place from which
they took the ore." To say that I was dumfounded would be to put it
mildly. When I had recovered sufficiently to fairly get my breath, I
asked why this stuff had been loaded on the vessel, and the guide
calmly replied that it had been done to keep the ship from turning
over. It appeared that the vessel was a Russian, and not an American,
after all. This place had been a favorite rendezvous for traders, and
the schooner had come to exchange the products of civilization for the
skins offered by the natives. Of course, when the vessel was unloaded
it was necessary to secure ballast, and for this purpose the sandstone
had been brought into requisition. I shrugged my shoulders, and tried
to take it philosophically.
Our next move was to start on the return trip around the head of the
Okhotsk Sea to Kaminaw. We had a beautiful road over the smooth
tundra. Konikly was now leading with "Old Red," and every time we
stopped, the two would fight, for the latter was very loath to share
my affection with Konikly, whom he considered a parvenu.
[Illustration: Killing Deer for Dog Food.]
As we were speeding along the beaten track the Koraks would break out
in a wild strain of music; then Snevaydoff would sing one of the
Russian peasant-songs, and occasionally, not to be outdone, I would
give them a few bars of some such touching lyric as "A Hot Time," or
"After the Ball." Thus we whiled away the long hours on the road.
Every few hours we changed places, letting each team lead in turn, for
only the driver of the head team had any work to do. The others could
even lie down and go to sleep if they wished, for the dogs drew as
steadily and as patiently as mules. It seemed second nature to them. I
used to sit and wonder how they could be trained to undergo such
severe labor. I found out that, when only four months old, they are
put into the hands of the small boys to train. They make up little
teams of pups, with the mother dog, perhaps, as leader, and bring in
water from the neighboring stream or drag in the firewood. By the time
they are a year old they are ready to be turned over to a grown-up,
who hitches up one or two of the young dogs with some steady old
fellows, and it is not long before the training is complete. This
method not only trains the dogs, but it teaches the boys how to handle
them, so that by the time they are young men they are expert drivers.
After several days of fine going we arrived at Kaminaw, where I found
the Ghijiga magistrate, who had come on his annual collecting tour.
Each of the Koraks pays an annual poll-tax of four and a half dollars'
worth of skins. These are taken to Ghijiga, and there auctioned off to
the highest bidder. All these northern natives pay this tax, except
the Tchuktches, who refuse to pay a cent. I found the magistrate in
one of the huts, reclining on several bearskins, and kindly and
affable as ever. Over him was arranged a sort of canopy to protect him
from particles of dust or dirt that might fall from between the
rafters of the building. He was dressed in his full regimentals of
green and gold, with a sword at his side. He gave me a fine cup of
coffee, and made me take a pound of the fragrant berry to cheer me on
my way in to Ghijiga. I jealously guarded it, and made the grounds do
duty three or four times over till every particle of the caffein had
been extracted.