THE STEAMER “BAIKAL,”
September 11, 1890.
Greetings! I am sailing on the Gulf of Tartary from the north of Sahalin to
the south. I am writing; and don’t know when this letter will reach you. I
am well, though I see on all sides glaring at me the green eyes of cholera
which has laid a trap for me. In Vladivostok, in Japan, in Shanghai,
Tchifu, Suez, and even in the moon, I fancy--everywhere there is cholera,
everywhere quarantine and terror.... They expect the cholera in Sahalin and
keep all vessels in quarantine. In short, it is a bad lookout. Europeans
are dying at Vladivostok, among others the wife of a general has died.
I have spent just two months in the north of Sahalin. I was received by the
local administration very amicably, though Galkin had not written a single
word about me. Neither Galkin nor the Baroness V., nor any of the other
genii I was so foolish as to appeal to for help, turned out of the
slightest use to me; I had to act on my own initiative.
The Sahalin general, Kononovitch, is a cultivated and gentlemanly man. We
soon got on together, and everything went off well. I am bringing some
papers with me from which you will see that I was put on the most agreeable
footing from the first. I have seen _everything_, so that the question is
not now _what_ I have seen, but how I have seen it.
I don’t know what will come of it, but I have done a good deal. I have got
enough material for three dissertations. I got up every morning at five
o’clock and went to bed late; and all day long was on the strain from the
thought that there was still so much I hadn’t done; and now that I have
done with the convict system, I have the feeling that I have seen
everything but have not noticed the elephants.
By the way, I had the patience to make a census of the whole Sahalin
population. I made the round of all the settlements, went into every hut
and talked to everyone; I made use of the card system in making the census,
and I have already registered about ten thousand convicts and settlers. In
other words, there is not in Sahalin one convict or settler who has not
talked with me. I was particularly successful with the census of the
children, on which I am building great hopes.
I dined at Landsberg’s; I sat in the kitchen of the former Baroness
Gembruk.... I visited all the celebrities. I was present at a flogging,
after which I dreamed for three or four nights of the executioner and the
revolting accessories. I have talked to men who were chained to trucks.
Once when I was drinking tea in a mine, Borodavkin, once a Petersburg
merchant who was convicted of arson, took a teaspoon out of his pocket and
gave it to me, and the long and the short of it is that I have upset my
nerves and have vowed not to come to Sahalin again.
I should write more to you, but there is a lady in the cabin who giggles
and chatters unceasingly. I haven’t the strength to write. She has been
laughing and cackling ever since yesterday evening.
This letter will go across America, but I shall go probably not across
America. Everyone says that the American way is duller and more expensive.
To-morrow I shall see Japan, the Island of Matsmai. Now it is twelve
o’clock at night. It is dark on the sea, the wind is blowing. I don’t
understand how the steamer can go on and find its direction when one can’t
see a thing, and above all in such wild, little-known waters as those in
the Gulf of Tartary.
When I remember that I am ten thousand versts away from my world I am
overcome with apathy. It seems I shall not be home for a hundred years....
God give you health and all blessings. I feel dreary.
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