The name of Kamchatka is generally associated with snow-fields,
glaciers, frozen mountains, and ice-bound shores. Its winters are long
and severe; snow falls to a great depth, and ice attains a thickness
proportioned to the climate. But the summers, though short, are
sufficiently hot to make up for the cold of winter. Vegetation is
wonderfully rapid, the grasses, trees and plants growing as much in a
hundred days as in six months of a New England summer. Hardly has the
snow disappeared before the trees put forth their buds and blossoms,
and the hillsides are in all the verdure of an American spring. Men
tell me they have seen in a single week the snows disappear, ice break
in the streams, the grass spring up, and the trees beginning to bud.
Nature adapts herself to all her conditions. In the Arctic as in the
Torrid zone she fixes her compensations and makes her laws for the
best good of her children.
It was midsummer when we reached Kamchatka, and the heat was like that
of August in Richmond or Baltimore. The thermometer ranged from
sixty-five to eighty. Long walks on land were out of question, unless
one possessed the power of a salamander. The shore of the bay was the
best place for a promenade, and we amused ourselves watching the
salmon fishers at work.
Salmon form the principal food of the Kamchadales and their dogs. The
fishing season in Avatcha Bay lasts about six weeks, and at its close
the salmon leave the bay and ascend the streams, where they are caught
by the interior natives. In the bay they are taken in seines dragged
along the shore, and the number of fish caught annually is almost
beyond computation.
Some years ago the fishery failed, and more than half the dogs in
Kamchatka starved. The following year there was a bountiful supply,
which the priests of Petropavlovsk commemorated by erecting a cross
near the entrance of the harbor. The supply is always larger after a
scarcity than in ordinary seasons.
The fish designed for preservation are split and dried in the sun. The
odor of a fish drying establishment reminded me of the smells in
certain quarters of New York in summer, or of Cairo, Illinois, after
an unusual flood has subsided. One of our officers said he counted
three hundred and twenty distinct and different smells in walking half
a mile.
In 1865 one of the merchants started the enterprise of curing salmon
for the Sandwich Island market. He told me he paid three roubles,
(about three greenback dollars,) a hundred (in number) for the fresh
fish, delivered at his establishment. Evidently he found the
speculation profitable, as he repeated it the following year.
[Illustration: A SCALY BRIDGE.]
When the salmon ascend the rivers they furnish food to men and
animals. The natives catch them in nets and with spears, while dogs,
bears, and wolves use their teeth in fishing. Bears are expert in this
amusement, and where their game is plenty they eat only the heads and
backs. The fish are very abundant in the rivers, and no great skill
is required in their capture. Men with an air of veracity told me they
had seen streams in the interior of Kamchatka so filled with salmon
that one could cross on them as on a corduroy bridge! The story has a
piscatorial sound, but it _may_ be true.
House gardening on a limited scale is the principal agriculture of
Kamchatka. Fifty years ago, Admiral Ricord introduced the cultivation
of rye, wheat, and barley with considerable success, but the
inhabitants do not take kindly to it. The government brings rye flour
from the Amoor river and sells it to the people at cost, and in case
of distress it issues rations from its magazines.
When I asked why there was no culture of grain in Kamchatka, they
replied: “What is the necessity of it? We can buy it at cost of the
government, and need not trouble ourselves about making our own
flour.”
There is not a sawmill on the peninsula. Boards and plank are cut by
hand or brought from California. I slept two nights in a room ceiled
with red-wood and pine from San Francisco.
On my second evening in Asia I passed several hours at the governor’s
house. The party talked, smoked, and drank tea until midnight, and
then closed the entertainment with a substantial supper. An
interesting and novel feature of the affair was the Russian manner of
making tea. The infusion had a better flavor than any I had previously
drank. This is due partly to the superior quality of the leaf, and
partly to the manner of its preparation.
The “samovar” or tea-urn is an indispensable article in a Russian
household, and is found in nearly every dwelling from the Baltic to
Bering’s Sea. “Samovar” comes from two Greek words, meaning ‘to boil
itself.’ The article is nothing but a portable furnace; a brazen urn
with a cylinder two or three inches in diameter passing through it
from top to bottom. The cylinder being filled with coals, the water in
the urn is quickly heated, and remains boiling hot as long as the fire
continues. An imperial order abolishing samovars throughout all the
Russias, would produce more sorrow and indignation than the expulsion
of roast beef from the English bill of fare. The number of cups it
will contain is the measure of a samovar.
Tea pots are of porcelain or earthenware. The tea pot is rinsed and
warmed with hot water before receiving the dry leaf. Boiling water is
poured upon the tea, and when the pot is full it is placed on the top
of the samovar. There it is kept hot but not boiled, and in five or
six minutes the tea is ready. Cups and saucers are not employed by the
Russians, but tumblers are generally used for tea drinking, and in the
best houses, where it can be afforded, they are held in silver sockets
like those in soda shops. Only loaf sugar is used in sweetening tea.
When lemons can be had they are employed to give flavor, a thin slice,
neither rolled nor pressed, being floated on the surface of the tea.
[Illustration: RUSSIAN TEA SERVICE.]
The Russians take tea in the morning, after dinner, after lunch,
before bed-time, in the evening, at odd intervals in the day or night,
and they drink a great deal of it between drinks.
In rambling about Petropavlovsk I found the hills covered with
luxuriant grass, sometimes reaching to my knees. Two or three miles
inland the grass was waist high on ground covered with snow six weeks
before. Among the flowers I recognized the violet and larkspur, the
former in great abundance. Earlier in the summer the hills were
literally carpeted with flowers. I could not learn that any skilled
botanist had ever visited Kamchatka and classified its flora. Among
the arboreal productions the alder and birch were the most numerous.
Pine, larch, and spruce grow on the Kamchatka river, and the timber
from them is brought to Avatcha from the mouth of that stream.
The commercial value of Kamchatka is entirely in its fur trade. The
peninsula has no agricultural, manufacturing, or mining interest, and
were it not for the animals that lend their skins to keep us warm, the
merchant would find no charms in that region. The fur coming from
Kamchatka was the cause of the Russian discovery and conquest. For
many years the trade was conducted by individual merchants from
Siberia. The Russian American Company attempted to control it early in
the present century, and drove many competitors from the fields. It
received the most determined opposition from American merchants, and
in 1860 it abandoned Petropavlovsk, its business there being
profitless.
In 1866 I found the fur trade of Kamchatka in the control of three
merchants: W.H. Boardman, of Boston, J.W. Fluger, of Hamburg, and
Alexander Phillipeus, of St. Petersburg. All of them had houses in
Petropavlovsk, and each had from one to half a dozen agencies or
branches elsewhere. To judge by appearances, Mr. Boardman had the
lion’s share of the trade. This gentleman’s father began the Northwest
traffic sometime in the last century, and left it as an inheritance
about 1828. His son continued the business until bought off by the
Hudson Bay Company, when he turned his attention to Kamchatka.
Personally he has never visited the Pacific Ocean.
Mr. Fluger had been only two years in Kamchatka, and was doing a
miscellaneous business. Boardman’s agent confined himself to the fur
trade, but Fluger was up to anything. He salted salmon for market,
sent a schooner every year into the Arctic Ocean for walrus teeth and
mammoth tusks, bought furs, sold goods, kept a dog team, was attentive
to the ladies, and would have run for Congress had it been possible.
He had in his store about half a cord of walrus teeth piled against a
back entrance like stove wood. Phillipeus was a roving blade. He kept
an agent at Petropavlovsk and came there in person once a year. In
February he left St. Petersburg for London, whence he took the Red Sea
route to Japan. There he chartered a brig to visit Kamchatka and land
him at Ayan, on the Ohotsk Sea. From Ayan he went to Yakutsk, and from
that place through Irkutsk to St. Petersburg, where he arrived about
three hundred and fifty days after his departure. I met him in the
Russian capital just as he had completed the sixth journey of this
kind and was about to commence the seventh. If he were a Jew he should
be called the wandering Jew.
Trade is conducted on the barter principle, furs being low and goods
high. The risks are great, transport is costly, and money is a long
time invested before it returns. The palmy days of the fur trade are
over; the product has greatly diminished, and competition has reduced
the percentage of profit on the little that remains.
There was a time in the memory of man when furs formed the currency of
Kamchatka. Their employment as cash is not unknown at present,
although Russian money is in general circulation.
[Illustration: CHANGE FOR A DOLLAR]
There is a story of a traveler who paid his hotel bill in a country
town in Minnesota and received a beaver skin in change. The landlord
explained that it was legal tender for a dollar. Concealing this novel
cash under his coat, the traveler sauntered into a neighboring store.
“Is it true,” he asked carelessly, “that a beaver skin is legal tender
for a dollar?” “Yes, sir,” said the merchant; “anybody will take it.”
“Will you be so kind, then,” was the traveler’s request, “as to give
me change for a dollar bill?”
“Certainly,” answered the merchant, taking the beaver skin and
returning four muskrat skins, current at twenty-five cents each.
The sable is the principal fur sought by the merchants in Kamchatka,
or trapped by the natives. The animal is caught in a variety of ways,
man’s ingenuity being taxed to capture him. The ‘yessak,’ or
‘poll-tax’ of the natives is payable in sable fur, at the rate of a
skin for every four persons. The governor makes a yearly journey
through the peninsula to collect the tax, and is supposed to visit all
the villages. The merchants go and do likewise for trading purposes.
Mr. George S. Cushing, who was long the agent of Mr. Boardman in
Kamchatka, estimated the product of sable fur at about six thousand
skins annually. Sometimes it exceeds and sometimes falls below that
figure. About a thousand foxes, a few sea otters and silver foxes, and
a good many bears, may be added, more for number than value. Silver
foxes and otters are scarce, while common foxes and bears are of
little account. A black fox is worth a great deal of money, but one
may find a white crow almost as readily.
Bears are abundant, but their skins are not articles of export. The
beasts are brown or black, and grow to a disagreeable size. Bear
hunting is an amusement of the country, very pleasant and exciting
until the bear turns and becomes the hunter. Then there is no fun in
it, if he succeeds in his pursuit. A gentleman in Kamchatka gave me a
bearskin more than six feet long, and declared that it was not
unusually large. I am very glad there was no live bear in it when it
came into my possession.
There is a story of a man in California who followed the track of a
grizzly bear a day and a half. He abandoned it because, as he
explained, “it was getting a little too fresh.”
One day, about two years before my visit, a cow suddenly entered
Petropavlovsk with a live bear on her back. The bear escaped unhurt,
leaving the cow pretty well scratched. After that event she preferred
to graze in or near the town, and never brought home another bear.
[Illustration: COW AND BEAR.]
Kamchatka without dogs would be like Hamlet without Hamlet. While
crossing the Pacific my _compagnons du voyage_ made many suggestions
touching my first experience in Kamchatka. “You won’t sleep any the
first night in port. The dogs will howl you out of your seven senses.”
This was the frequent remark of the engineer, corroborated by others.
On arriving, we were disappointed to find less than a hundred dogs at
Petropavlovsk, as the rest of the canines belonging there were
spending vacation in the country. About fifteen hundred were owned in
the town.
Very few Kamchadale dogs can bark, but they will howl oftener, longer,
and louder than any ‘yaller dog’ that ever went to a cur pound or
became sausage meat. The few in Petropavlovsk made much of their
ability, and were especially vocal at sunset, near their feeding time.
Occasionally during the night they try their throats and keep up a
hailing and answering chorus, calculated to draw a great many oaths
from profane strangers.
In 1865 Colonel Bulkley carried one of these animals to California.
The dog lifted up his voice on the waters very often, and received a
great deal of rope’s ending in consequence. At San Francisco Mr.
Covert took him home, and attempted his domestication. ‘Norcum,’ (for
that was the brute’s name,) created an enmity between Covert and all
who lived within hearing distance, and many were the threats of
canicide. Covert used to rise two or three times every night and
argue, with a club, to induce Norcum to be silent. While I was at San
Francisco, Mr. Mumford, one of the Telegraph Company’s directors,
conceived a fondness for the dog, and took him to the Occidental
Hotel.
On the first day of his hotel life we tied Norcum on the balcony in
front of Mumford’s room, about forty feet from the ground. Scarcely
had we gone to dinner when he jumped from the balcony and hung by his
chain, with his hind feet resting upon a cornice.
A howling wilderness is nothing to the noise he made before his
rescue, and he gathered and amused a large crowd with his performance.
He passed the night in the western basement of the hotel, and spoiled
the sleep of a dozen or more persons who lodged near him. When we left
San Francisco, Norcum was residing in the baggage-room at the
Occidental, under special care of the porters, who employed a great
deal of muscle in teaching him that silence was a golden virtue.
The Kamchadale dogs are of the same breed as those used by the
Esquimaux, but are said to possess more strength and endurance. The
best Asiatic dogs are among the Koriaks, near Penjinsk Gulf, the
difference being due to climate and the care taken in breeding them.
Dogs are the sole reliance for winter travel in Kamchatka, and every
resident considers it his duty to own a team. They are driven in odd
numbers, all the way from three to twenty-one. The most intelligent
and best trained dog acts as a leader, the others being harnessed in
pairs. No reins are used, the voice of the driver being sufficient to
guide them.
[Illustration: A KAMCHATKA TEAM.]
Dogs are fed almost entirely upon fish. They receive their rations
daily at sunset, and it is always desirable that each driver should
feed his own team. The day before starting on a journey, the dog
receives a half ration only, and he is kept on this slender diet as
long as the journey lasts. Sometimes when hungry they gnaw their
reindeer skin harnesses, and sometimes they do it as a pastime. Once
formed, the habit is not easy to break. Two kinds of sledges are
used, one for travel and the other for transporting freight. The
former is light and just large enough for one person with a little
baggage. The driver sits with his feet hanging over the side, and
clings to a bow that rises in front. In one hand he holds an
iron-pointed staff, with which he retards the vehicle in descending
hills, or brings it to a halt. A traveling sledge weighs about
twenty-five pounds, but a freight sledge is much heavier.
A good team will travel from forty to sixty miles a day with favorable
roads. Sometimes a hundred a day may be accomplished, but very rarely.
Once an express traveled from Petropavlovsk to Bolcheretsk, a hundred
and twenty-five miles, in twenty-three hours, without change of dogs.
Wolves have an inconvenient fondness for dog meat, and occasionally
attack travelers. A gentleman told me that a wolf once sprang from the
bushes, seized and dragged away one of his dogs, and did not detain
the team three minutes. The dogs are cowardly in their dispositions,
and will not fight unless they have large odds in their favor. A pack
of them will attack and kill a single strange dog, but would not
disturb a number equaling their own.
Most of the Russian settlers buy their dogs from the natives who breed
them. Dogs trained to harness are worth from ten to forty roubles
(dollars) each, according to their quality. Leaders bring high prices
on account of their superior docility and the labor of training them.
Epidemics are frequent among dogs and carry off great numbers of them.
Hydrophobia is a common occurrence.
The Russian inhabitants of Kamchatka are mostly descended from
Cossacks and exiles. There is a fair but not undue proportion of half
breeds, the natural result of marriage between natives and immigrants.
There are about four hundred Russians at Petropavlovsk, and the same
number at each of two other points. The aboriginal population is about
six thousand, including a few hundred dwellers on the Kurile Islands.
No exiles have been sent to Kamchatka since 1830. One old man who had
been forty years a colonist was living at Avatcha in 1866. He was at
liberty to return to Europe, but preferred remaining.
In 1771 occurred the first voyage from Kamchatka to a foreign port,
and curiously enough, it was performed under the Polish flag. A number
of exiles, headed by a Pole named Benyowski, seized a small vessel and
put to sea. Touching at Japan and Loo Choo to obtain water and
provisions, the party reached the Portuguese colony of Macao in
safety. There were no nautical instruments or charts on the ship, and
the successful result of the voyage was more accidental than
otherwise.
Close by the harbor of Petropavlovsk there is a monument to the memory
of the ill-fated and intrepid navigator, La Perouse. It bears no
inscription, and was evidently built in haste. There is a story that a
French ship once arrived in Avatcha Bay on a voyage of discovery. Her
captain asked the governor if there was anything to commemorate the
visit of La Perouse.
“Certainly,” was the reply; “I will show it to you in the morning.”
During the night the monument was hastily constructed of wood and
sheet iron, and fixed in the position to which the governor led his
delighted guest.
Captain Clerke, successor to Captain Cook, of Sandwich Island memory,
died while his ships were in Avatcha Bay, and was buried at
Petropavlovsk. A monument that formerly marked his grave has
disappeared. Captain Lund and Colonel Bulkley arranged to erect a
durable memorial in its place. We prepared an inscription in English
and Russian, and for temporary purposes fixed a small tablet on the
designated spot. Americans and Russians formed the party that listened
to the brief tribute which one of our number paid to the memory of the
great navigator.
In the autumn of 1854, a combined English and French fleet of six
ships suffered a severe repulse from several land batteries and the
guns of a Russian frigate in the harbor. Twice beaten off, their
commanders determined an assault. They landed a strong force of
sailors and marines, that attempted to take the town in the rear, but
the Kamchadale sharpshooters created a panic, and drove the assailants
over a steeply sloping cliff two hundred feet high.
[Illustration: REPULSE OF THE ASSAILANTS.]
Naturally the natives are proud of their success in this battle, and
mention it to every visitor. The English Admiral committed suicide
early in the attack. The fleet retired to San Francisco, and returned
in the following year prepared to capture the town at all hazards, but
Petropavlovsk had been abandoned by the Russians, who retired beyond
the hills. An American remained in charge of a trading establishment,
and hoisted his national colors over it. The allies burned the
government property and destroyed the batteries.
There were five or six hundred dogs in town when the fleet entered the
bay. Their violent howling held the allies aloof a whole day, under
the impression that a garrison should be very large to have so many
watch-dogs.