THROUGH DARKEST SIBERIA
Let the reader picture the distance, say, from London to Moscow as one
vast undulating plateau of alternate layers of ice and snow, and he has
before him the region we traversed between the so-called towns of
Verkhoyansk and Sredni-Kolymsk. Twelve hundred miles may not seem very
far to the railway passenger, but it becomes a different proposition
when the traveller has to contend against intense cold, scanty shelter,
and last, but not least, sick reindeer. For the first seven or eight
hundred versts we passed through dense forests, which gradually dwindled
away to sparse and stunted shrubs until the timber line was crossed and
vegetation finally disappeared. The so-called _stancias_, filthier, if
possible, than those south of Verkhoyansk, were now never less than two
hundred miles apart. There were also _povarnias_ every eighty miles or
so, but these were often mere shapeless heaps of timber rotting in the
snow. Throughout the whole distance there was no track of any kind and
the sledges were steered like ships at sea, our course being shaped by
compass and an occasional rest-house or _povarnia_, and these were
easily passed unnoticed on a dark night, or after a heavy snow-fall had
concealed their low log walls.
"League on league on league of desolation,
Mile on mile on mile without a change"
aptly describes the long, dreary expanse that stretches from the Yana
River to the Polar Sea, for I doubt if there is a more gloomy, desolate
region on the face of this earth. So sparsely is it peopled that even a
small town can moulder away here into non-existence and no one be the
wiser for years after its disappearance. The authenticity of the
following anecdote is vouched for by Mr. George Kennan, the American
traveller, who quotes from Russian official statistics.[31]
[Footnote 31: "Siberia and the Exile System," by George Kennan.]
"In the year 1879 there was living in the city of Pultava a poor
apothecary named Schiller, who was banished as a political offender to
the village of Varnavin, in the Province of Kostroma. Schiller, finding
a forced residence in a village to be irksome and tedious, and having no
confidence in petitions, changed his location without asking leave of
anybody, or in other words ran away. About this time the Tsar issued a
command directing that all exiles found absent from their places of
banishment without leave should be sent to the East Siberian Province of
Yakutsk. When, therefore, Schiller was rearrested in a part of the
Empire where he had no right to be, he was banished to Irkutsk, and the
Governor-General of Eastern Siberia was requested to put him under
police surveillance in some part of the territory named in the Imperial
command. Governor-General Anuchin, who had then recently come to
Irkutsk, and who had not had time apparently to familiarise himself with
the vast region entrusted to his care, directed that Schiller be sent
to the district town of Zashiversk, which was (supposed to be) situated
on the River Indigirka, a few miles south of the Arctic Circle. A
century, or a century and a half, ago Zashiversk was a town of
considerable importance, but for some reason it lost its pre-eminence as
a fur-trading centre, fell gradually into decay, and finally ceased to
exist. Its location was still marked by two concentric circles on all
the maps, its name continued to appear regularly in the annals of the
Governor-General's Office, and I have no doubt that a coterie of
'Tchinovniks'[32] in Irkutsk were dividing and pocketing every year the
money appropriated for repairs to its public buildings; but, as a matter
of fact, it had not contained a building or an inhabitant for more than
half a century, and forest trees were growing on the mound that marked
its site. Poor Schiller, after being carried three or four times up and
down the Rivers Lena and Indigirka in a vain search for a non-existent
Arctic town, was finally brought back to Yakutsk, and a report was made
to the Governor-General that Zashiversk had ceased to exist! The
Governor-General therefore ordered that the prisoner be taken to
Sredni-Kolymsk, another 'town' of forty-five houses, situated on the
River Kolyma north of the Arctic Circle, 3700 miles from Irkutsk and
7500 miles from the capital of the Empire. When, after more than a year,
the unfortunate druggist reached the last outpost of Russian power in
North-Eastern Asia, and was set at liberty, he made his way to the
little log church, entered the belfry, and proceeded to jangle the
church bells in a sort of wild, erratic chime. When the people of the
town ran to the belfry in alarm and inquired what was the matter,
Schiller replied, with dignity, that he wished the whole population to
know that 'by the Grace of God, Herman Schiller, after long and perilous
wanderings, had reached, in safety, the town of Sredni-Kolymsk!' Months
of fatigue, privation and loneliness had probably deprived the poor
fellow of his reason, a not unusual occurrence in this isolated portion
of the great Russian Empire. But the local police reported to the
Governor-General that the exile Schiller was disorderly and turbulent,
and that he had caused a public scandal before he had been in
Sredni-Kolymsk twenty-four hours, and upon receipt of this information
the Governor-General endorsed an order to remove the offender to some
place at least twelve versts distant from the town. His idea was
probably to have Schiller sent to some small suburban village in the
general neighbourhood of Sredni-Kolymsk. Unfortunately there was no
suburban village within a hundred miles in any direction, and the local
authorities, not knowing what else to do, carried the wretched druggist
about twelve versts out into the primaeval wilderness, erected a log
cabin for him, and left him there. What eventually became of him I don't
know."[33]
[Footnote 32: Petty officials.]
[Footnote 33: No wonder Zashiversk figures to this day on most English
maps, when it is shown on an official map of the Russian General Staff
published as late as 1883!]
The first stage out from Verkhoyansk, one of a hundred and fifty versts,
was rapidly accomplished in less than twenty-four hours. This was
wonderful travelling, but the snow was in perfect condition, indeed as
hard and slippery as ice, for at the first _stancia_ the cold was
greater than any we experienced throughout the whole journey from France
to America, the thermometer registering 78 deg. below zero (Fahr.). We
remained here for some hours waiting for reindeer, but the heat and
stench of the rest-house produced such nausea that more than once during
the night I was compelled to don my furs and brave a temperature that
rendered even inhalation painful, and instantly congealed the breath
into a mass of ice. To make matters worse, the hut was crowded with
Yakutes of loathsome exterior and habits, and a couple of cows and some
calves also occupied the foul den, which, of course, swarmed with
vermin. And so did we, after passing the night here, to such an extent
as to cause actual pain for some days afterwards whenever we left the
outer air for a warmer temperature. Oddly enough, these rest-houses were
usually crowded with people, who presumably never left them, for in the
open we never encountered a solitary human being, nor indeed a single
animal or bird, with the exception of a dead ermine which had been
caught in a trap and which our Yakute drivers, with characteristic
greed, promptly took from the snare and pocketed. Talking of ermine, the
district of Sredni-Kolymsk has always been famous as a fruitful
breeding-place of this pretty little creature, and they used to be
obtainable there at an absurdly low price, from sixpence to a shilling
apiece. A friend had therefore commissioned me to procure him as many
skins as we could conveniently carry, intending to make a mantle for as
many halfpence as the garment would have cost him pounds in England.
But we found that ermine had become almost as costly in Sredni-Kolymsk
as in Regent Street. The price formerly paid for a score would now
barely purchase one, for the Yakutsk agents of London furriers had
stripped the district to provide furs for the robes to be worn at the
Coronation of his Majesty the King of England. Far-reaching indeed are
the requirements of royalty!
It was impossible to procure food of an eatable kind here, or indeed at
any other _stancia_ throughout this part of the journey. The _ispravnik_
at Verkhoyansk had assured me that deer-meat would always be
forthcoming; and so it was, in a putrid condition which rendered it
quite uneatable. There was nothing else obtainable but frozen milk
(generally black with smoke and filth), so we were compelled to subsist
solely on the meat from Yakutsk, so long as it lasted, and on
"Carnyl,"[34] a kind of palatable pemmican brought from England and
intended only for use on the Coast. And we afterwards nearly perished
from starvation in consequence of this premature indulgence in our
"emergency rations."
[Footnote 34: "Carnyl" (invented by Dr. Yorke-Davies) is a patent food I
can heartily recommend to Arctic explorers, as it is not only sustaining
but very palatable.]
Shortly after leaving Aditscha, we crossed the river of that name, which
flows into the Yana below Verkhoyansk. The former stream is noted for
its abundance of fish, which, in summer time, is salted and exported in
large quantities to the various settlements throughout the district.
Travelling steadily for forty-five versts we crossed the Tabalak
mountains (or rather hills), and from here under fifteen versts brought
us to Tostach, where the accommodation was a shade less atrocious than
at Aditscha, and where we again had to pass the night to await a relay.
Stepan tried the effect of threats, and then of kicks, but even the
latter failed to arouse the postmaster to any great extent, for the
Yakutes add laziness to their other numerous vices, which include an
arrant cowardice. Treat one of these people with kindness and he will
insult you; thrash him soundly, and he will fawn at your feet. This
constant delay in the arrival of the deer now began to cause me some
anxiety, for Stepan said that he had frequently had to wait three or
four days for these animals at a _stancia_.
Tostach was only outwardly cleaner than Aditscha, for when the inmates
of the _stancia_ had retired to rest, the warmth and firelit silence
brought out such overwhelming legions of vermin that I rose and,
lighting a candle, proceeded to beguile the hours until the dawn with a
"Whitaker's Almanack," which, with a Shakespeare and "Pickwick," now
composed our library. And here an incident occurred which might well
have startled a person with weak nerves, for the most practical being
scarcely cares to be suddenly confronted, at dead of night, with a
ghostly apparition unpleasantly suggestive of graveyards. On this
occasion the spectre might have dropped from the clouds, for I looked up
from my book for an instant, and noiselessly as a shadow it appeared
before me, a shapeless thing in rags with a pale and gibbering face
framed in tangled grey locks. A tinkling sound accompanied every
movement of the creature, and I then saw that the figure was adorned
from head to heel with scraps of iron, copper coins, rusty nails, and
other rubbish, including a couple of sardine-tins which reassured me as
to the material nature of the unwelcome visitor. When, however, the
intruder showed signs of friendliness and nearer approach, I aroused
Stepan, who sprang to his feet, and, with one heave of his mighty
shoulders, sent the intruder flying into the darker recesses of the
_stancia_. "It's only a Shaman," muttered the Cossack with a yawn, as he
rolled back into the dirty straw, and I then regretted that I had not
more closely examined this High Priest of, perhaps, the weirdest faith
in existence, for an hour afterwards, when the rekindled fire had once
more rendered objects clearly visible, the "Shaman" had left the hut as
silently and mysteriously as he had entered it.
[Illustration: A VISITOR.]
Shamanism is strictly prohibited by the Russian Government, although
many Yakutes practise its rites in secret, and the Tunguses[35] know no
other faith. Only few Europeans have beheld the weird ceremonies
performed by these people, generally at night in the depths of the
forest or out on the lonely "Tundra," far from the eye of officialdom.
The most lucid description of Shamanism which I have been able to obtain
is that given by Mr. J. Stadling, the Swedish explorer, who led a few
years ago an expedition through Northern Siberia in search of Monsieur
Andre. Mr. Stadling writes: "The Universe, according to the Shamans,
consists of a number of layers, or strata, which are separated from each
other by some kind of intermediate space or matter. Seven upper layers
constitute the kingdom of light, and seven or more lower layers the
kingdom of darkness. Between these upper or lower layers, the surface of
the earth, the habitation of mankind, is situated, whence mankind is
exposed to the influence both of the upper and the lower world--_i.e._,
the powers of light and of darkness. All the good divinities, spirits
and genii, which create, preserve and support the weak children of men,
have their abode in the upper layers, in the world of light. In the
layers of the lower world the evil divinities and Spirits lurk, always
seeking to harm and destroy mankind. In the highest layers (the 'Seventh
Heaven'), the Great Tangara, or 'Ai-Toion,' as he is called in Northern
Siberia, is enthroned in eternal light. He is perfect and good, or
rather is exalted above both good and evil, and seems to meddle very
little with the affairs of the Universe, caring neither for sacrifices
nor prayers. In the fifth or ninth layer of the lower world, the fearful
Erlik-Khan, the Prince of Darkness, sits on a black throne, surrounded
by a court of evil spirits and genii. The intermediate layers are the
abode of divinities and spirits of different degrees of light and
darkness; most of them are the spirits of deceased men. All spirits
exert influence on the destiny of man for good or evil; the children of
men are unable to soften or to subdue these spiritual beings, whence the
necessity of Shamans or Priests, who alone possess power over the
spiritual world."[36]
[Footnote 35: The Tunguses number about 12,000 to 15,000, and inhabit
the region lying to the north-west and north-east of Yakutsk.]
[Footnote 36: "Through Siberia," by J. Stadling. London, 1901.]
I met some years ago at Tomsk, in Western Siberia, a fur-trader who had
once secretly witnessed a Shaman ceremony, which he thus described to
me: "Half a dozen worshippers were gathered in a clearing in a lonely
part of the forest and I came on them by accident, but concealed myself
behind some dense undergrowth. In a circle of flaming logs I saw the
Shaman, clad in pure white and looking considerably cleaner than I had
previously thought possible. Round his neck was a circular brass plate
signifying the sun, and all over his body were suspended bits of metal,
small bells, and copper coins, which jingled with every movement. The
ceremony seemed to consist of circling round without cessation for
nearly an hour, at the end of which time the Shaman commenced to howl
and foam at the mouth, to the great excitement of his audience. The
gyrations gradually increased in rapidity, until at last the Priest fell
heavily to the ground, face downwards, apparently in a fit. The meeting
then dispersed and I made my escape as quickly and as silently as
possible, for had I been discovered my life would not have been worth a
moment's purchase."
The museum at Yakutsk contains some interesting relics pertaining to
Shamanism, amongst others some articles found near the Lena, in the tomb
probably of an important personage, for the grave contained valuable
jewellery, arms and personal effects. I observed that everything, from
garments down to a brass tobacco-box, had been punctured with some sharp
instrument, and Mr. Olenin explained that all articles buried with
persons of the Shaman faith are thus pierced, generally with a dagger,
in order to "kill" them before interment. About twenty miles north-east
of Tostach we came across the tomb of a Shaman which, judging by its
appearance, had been there about a century, and the shell with the
remains had long since disappeared.
The deer were a long time coming at Tostach; one of our drivers
accounted for the delay by the fact that wolves had been unusually
troublesome this year, and when Stepan suggested that the wolves were
two-legged ones, did not appear to relish the joke. For the man was a
Tunguse, a race noted for its predatory instincts and partiality for
deer-meat. Reindeer in these parts cost only from twelve to fifteen
roubles apiece, but farther north they fetch forty to fifty roubles
each, and the loss of many is a serious one.
We managed to get away from Tostach that afternoon (March 5) in a dense
snowstorm, although on the preceding day the sun had blazed so fiercely
into the sleds that we could almost have dispensed with furs. The
weather, however, was mostly bright and clear all the way from the Lena
to the coast, which was fortunate, for with sunshine and blue sky we
could generally afford to laugh at cold and hunger, while on dull, grey
days the spirits sank to zero, crushed by a sense of intolerable
loneliness, engendered by our dismal surroundings and the daily
increasing distance from home. The stage from Tostach was perhaps the
hardest one south of the Arctic, for we travelled steadily for twelve
hours with a head-wind and driving snow which rendered progress slow and
laborious. Finally, reaching the _povarnia_ of Kurtas[37] in a miserable
condition, with frost-bitten faces and soaking furs, we scraped away
the snow inside the crazy shelter and kindled a fire, for no food had
passed our lips for sixteen hours. But time progressed, and there were
no signs of the provision-sled which, as usual, brought up the rear of
the caravan. Ignorance was bliss on this occasion, for the knowledge
that the vehicle in question was at that moment firmly fixed in a drift
ten miles away, with one of its team lying dead from exhaustion, would
not have improved matters. When our provisions reached Kurtas, we had
fasted for twenty-four hours, which, in North-Eastern Siberia, becomes
an inconvenience less cheerfully endured than in a temperate climate.
Beyond Kurtas the track was almost overgrown, and our _narta_ covers
were almost torn to pieces by branches on either side of it. There were
places where we had literally to force our way through the woods, and
how the drivers held their course remains a mystery. Nearing the
Tashayaktak[38] mountain, however, we travelled along the Dogdo River
for some distance; but here, although the road was clear, constant
overflows compelled us to travel along the centre of the stream, which
is about ten times the width of the Thames at Gravesend. Here the sleds
occasionally skated over perilously thin ice, and as night was falling I
was glad to reach _terra firma_. The Tashayaktak range is at this point
nowhere less than three thousand feet in height, and I was anticipating
a second clamber over their snowy peaks when Stepan informed me that the
crossing could be easily negotiated by a pass scarcely five hundred
feet high. Fortunately the wind had now dropped, for during gales the
snow is piled up in huge drifts along this narrow pass, and only the
previous year two Yakutes had been snowed up to perish of cold and
starvation. However, we crossed the range without much difficulty,
although boulders and frozen cataracts made it hard work for the deer,
and another one fell here to mark our weary track across Siberia. And we
lost yet another of the poor little beasts, which broke its leg in the
gnarled roots of a tree, before reaching the _povarnia_ of Siss, a
hundred and thirty versts from Tostach. Here both men and beasts were
exhausted, and I resolved to halt for twelve hours and recuperate.
[Footnote 37: When the letter "u" is surmounted by two dots it is
pronounced like that in "Curtain."]
[Footnote 38: The names of places between Verkhoyansk and Sredni-Kolymsk
were furnished by Stepan Rastorguyeff.]
The _povarnia_ of Siss was more comfortable than usual, which means that
its accommodation was about on a par with an English cow-shed. But we
obtained a good night's rest, notwithstanding icy draughts and melted
snow. The latter was perhaps the chief drawback at these places, for we
generally awoke to find ourselves lying inch-deep in watery slush
occasioned by the warmth of the fire. At Siss the weather cleared, and
we set out next day with renewed spirits, which the deer seemed to
share, for they, too, had revelled in moss, which was plentiful around
the _povarnia_, while, as a rule, they had to roam for several miles in
search of it. Siberian reindeer seem to have an insatiable appetite;
whenever we halted on the road (often several times within the hour)
every team would set to work pawing up the snow in search of food, with
such engrossed energy that it took some time to set them going again.
And yet these gentle, patient beasts would labour along for hours,
girth-deep in heavy snow, their flanks going like steam-engines, and
never dream of stopping to take a rest unless ordered to do so.
It would weary the reader to enumerate in detail the events of the next
few days. Suffice it to say that half a dozen _povarnias_ were passed
before we reached Ebelach, a so-called village consisting of three
mud-huts. Ebelach is more than seven hundred versts from Verkhoyansk,
and we accomplished the journey in under a week. Only one place, the
_povarnia_ of Tiriak-Hureya, is deserving of mention, for two reasons:
the first being that it exactly resembled the valley of Chamonix,
looking down it from Mont Blanc towards the Aiguilles. I shall never
forget the glorious sunset I witnessed here, nor the hopeless feeling of
nostalgia instilled by the contemplation of those leagues of forest and
snowy peaks, the latter gradually merging in the dusk from a delicate
rose colour to bluish grey. Only the preceding summer I had stood on the
principal "place" of the little Swiss town and witnessed almost exactly
the same landscape, and the contrast only rendered our present
surroundings the more lonesome and desolate. No wonder the Swiss are a
homesick race, or that Napoleon, on his distant campaigns, prohibited,
from fear of desertion, the playing of their national airs. Smoky cities
could be recalled, even in this land of desolation, without yearning or
regret, but I could never think of the sunlit Alps or leafy boulevards
without an irresistible longing to throw reputation to the winds and
return to them forthwith!
The other circumstance connected with Tiriak-Hureya is that the
_povarnia_, measuring exactly sixteen feet by fourteen feet, was already
tenanted by a venerable gentleman of ragged and unsavoury exterior, his
Yakute wife, or female companion, three children, and a baby with a
mysterious skin disease. We numbered sixteen in all, including drivers,
and that night is vividly engraven on my memory. It was impossible to
move hand or foot without touching some foul personality, and five hours
elapsed before Stepan was able to reach the fire and cook some food. But
notwithstanding his unspeakably repulsive exterior the aged stranger
excited my curiosity, for his careworn features and sunken eyes
suggested a past life of more than ordinary interest. He was an exile,
one of the few who have lived to retrace their steps along this "Via
Dolorosa." I addressed the poor old fellow, who told us that he had once
spoken French fluently, but could now only recall a few words, and these
he unconsciously interlarded with Yakute. Captain ----, once in the
Polish Army, had been deported to Sredni-Kolymsk after the insurrection
of 1863, and had passed the rest of his life in that gloomy settlement.
He was now returning to Warsaw to end his days, but death was plainly
written on the pinched, pallid face and weary eyes, and I doubt whether
the poor soul ever lived to reach the home he had yearned for through so
many hopeless years.
Nearing Ebelach the forest became so dense that we travelled almost in
darkness, even at midday. Snow had fallen heavily here, and the drifts
lay deep, while the trees on every side were weighted down to the earth
with a soft, white mantle, that here and there assumed the weirdest
resemblance to the shapes of birds and animals. I have never seen this
freak of nature elsewhere, although it is mentioned by ancient explorers
as occurring in the forests of Kamtchatka. And as we advanced northward
optical delusions became constantly visible. At times a snow hillock of
perhaps fifty feet high would appear a short distance away to be a
mountain of considerable altitude; at others the process would be
reversed and the actual mountain would be dwarfed into a molehill. These
phenomena were probably due to rarefied atmosphere, and they were most
frequent on the Arctic sea-board.
A number of small lakes were crossed between the last _povarnia_ and
Ebelach. There must have been quite a dozen of these covering a distance
of twenty miles, and fortunately the ice was well covered with snow or
it must have considerably impeded the deer. These lakes vary in size,
ranging from about one to four miles in diameter, and are apparently
very shallow, for reeds were visible everywhere sprouting through the
ice. Swamps would, perhaps, better describe these shoaly sheets of
water, which in summer so swarm with mosquitoes that deer and even the
natives sometimes die from their attacks.
Ebelach was reached on March 9, and as the _stancia_ here was a fairly
clean one, I decided, although reindeer were in readiness, to halt for
twenty-four hours. For even one short week of this kind of work had left
its mark on us, and the catarrh, from which we now all suffered, did not
improve the situation. When I look back upon the daily, almost hourly,
fatigues and privations of that journey from the Lena River to Bering
Straits, I sometimes marvel that we ever came through it at all; and yet
this part of the voyage was a mere picnic compared to the subsequent
trip along the Arctic coast. And indeed this was bad enough, for in
addition to physical hardships there were hundreds of minor discomforts,
a description of which would need a separate chapter. Vermin and bodily
filth were our chief annoyances, but there were other minor miseries
almost as bad as these. One was the wet inside the sleds at night. You
lay down to sleep, and in a short time your breath had formed a layer of
ice over the face, and the former melting in the warmer region of the
neck gradually trickled down under your furs, until by morning every
stitch of underclothing was saturated. On very cold nights the eyelids
would be frozen firmly together during sleep, and one would have to
stagger blindly into a _stancia_ or _povarnia_ before they could be
opened. Again, on starting from a _stancia_ at sunset, the hood of the
sled is closed down on its helpless occupant, who must remain in this
ambulant ice-box for an indefinite period, until it is re-opened from
the outside, for no amount of shouting would ever attract the attention
of the driver. The midnight hours were the worst, when we lay awake
wondering how long it would be before the last remnant of life was
frozen out of us. Two or three times during the night there would be a
halt, and I would start up and listen intently in the darkness to the
low sound of voices and the quick nervous stamp of the reindeer seeking
for moss. Then came an interval of suspense. Was it a _povarnia_, or
must I endure more hours of agony? But a lurch and a heave onward of the
sled was only too often the unwelcome reply. At last the joyous moment
would arrive when I could distinguish those ever-pleasant sounds, the
creaking of a door followed by the crackling of sticks. A _povarnia_ at
last! But even then it was generally necessary to yell and hammer at the
sides of your box of torture for half an hour or so, the drivers having
fled to the cosy fireside intent upon warming themselves, and oblivious
of every one else. No wonder that after a night of this description we
often regarded even a filthy _povarnia_ as little less luxurious than a
Carlton Hotel.
The cold was so great that I had not slept for thirty-six hours before
reaching Ebelach, but we soon made up for it here, where everything was
fairly clean and even the ice windows were adjusted with more than usual
nicety. Glazing is cheap in these parts. When the ponds are frozen to a
depth of six or eight inches blocks of ice are cut out and laid on the
roof of the hut out of reach of the dogs. If a new window is required
the old melted pane is removed, and a fresh block of ice is fitted on
the outside with wet snow, which serves as putty and shortly freezes. At
night-time boards are placed indoors against the windows to protect them
from the heat of the fire, but the cold in these regions is so intense
that one ice window will generally last throughout the winter. The light
filters only very dimly through this poor substitute for glass, which is
almost opaque. By the way, here as in every other _stancia_ a wooden
calendar of native construction was suspended over the doorway. Some
superstition is probably attached to the possession of these, for
although I frequently tried to purchase one at a fancy price the owners
would never sell this primitive timekeeper which was generally warped
and worm-eaten with age. I never saw a new one.
After a square sleep of twelve hours we awoke to find the inmates of the
_stancia_ discussing a dish of fine perch caught from the adjacent lake.
They had simply thawed the fish out and were devouring it in a raw
state, but we managed to secure a portion of the welcome food, which,
when properly cooked, was delicious, and a welcome change from _Carnyl_
and the beef (or horse) from Yakutsk, which had lasted us until now.
Every lake in this region teems with fish, which are never salted here
for export, but only used for local consumption.
The postmaster's family was a large and thriving one. I noticed that the
politeness of these natives increased as we proceeded northward, and
that at the same time their mental capacity diminished. For instance,
two of the people at Ebelach were hopeless idiots and I was prepared for
the terrible percentage of insane persons which I afterwards found
amongst the exiles of Sredni-Kolymsk by the large number of Yakutes of
feeble intellect whom we encountered at the rest-houses beyond
Verkhoyansk. Nearly every one contained one or more unmistakable
lunatics, and it afterwards struck me that in a land where even the
natives go mad from sheer despondency of life, it is no wonder that men
and women of culture and refinement are driven to suicide from the
constant dread of insanity. Idiocy, however, is more frequent amongst
the natives, and in one _povarnia_ we found a poor half-witted wretch
who had taken up his quarters there driven away from the nearest
_stancia_ by the cruelty of its inmates. This poor imbecile had laid in
a store of putrid fish and seemed quite resigned to his surroundings,
but we persuaded him to return to his home with us. This was an
exceptional case, for the Yakutes are generally kind and indulgent
towards mental sufferers, their kindness perhaps arising to a certain
extent from fear, for in these parts mad people are credited with occult
powers which enable them to take summary vengeance on their enemies.
Leaving Ebelach the lakes became so numerous that the country may also
be described as one vast sheet of water with intervals of land. We must
have crossed over a hundred lakes of various sizes between the _stancia_
of Khatignak and Sredni-Kolymsk, a distance of about five hundred
versts. The majority were carpeted with snow, and afforded good going;
but smooth black ice formed the surface of others, swept by the wind,
and these worked sad havoc amongst our deer, of which four, with broken
legs, had to be destroyed. Nearing Khatignak we crossed the
Indigirka[39] river, which rises in the Stanovoi range and flows through
many hundred miles of desolation to the Arctic Ocean. The country here
is more hilly, but sparse forests of stunted bushes and withered looking
pine-trees were now the sole vegetation, and these were often replaced
by long stretches of snowy plain. A long stage of seventy-five versts
without a break brought us to Khatignak, where another reindeer dropped
dead from exhaustion before the door of the _stancia_.
[Footnote 39: The now obsolete town of Zashiversk was situated on the
right bank of this river.]
Some miles beyond Khatignak another chain of mountains was crossed,
although downs would more aptly describe the Alazenski range. But the
snow lay deep and we were compelled to make the ascent on foot, a hard
walk of five hours in heavy furs under a blazing sun. On the summit is a
wooden cross marking the boundary between the Kolyma and Verkhoyansk
districts. The cross was hung with all kinds of rubbish, copper coins,
scraps of iron, and shreds of coloured cloth suspended by horse-hair,
which had been placed there by Yakute travellers to propitiate the gods
and ensure a prosperous journey. The cross, as a Christian symbol, did
not seem to occur to the worshippers of the Shaman faith, who had left
these offerings. We slept on the northern side of the mountain at a
_povarnia_ renowned even amongst the natives for its revolting
accommodation. In the Yakute language "Siss-Ana" signifies literally
"one hundred doors," and the name was given to this sieve-like structure
on account of the numberless and icy draughts which assail its
occupants. The place is said to be accursed, and I could well believe
it, for although a roaring fire blazed throughout the night, the walls
and ceiling were thickly coated with rime in the morning, and towards
midnight a bottle of "Harvey's Sauce" exploded like a dynamite shell,
not ten feet from the hearth! The condiment was far too precious to
waste, so it was afterwards carried in a tin drinking-cup, in a frozen
state, and not poured out, but bitten off, at meals!
Between Siss-Ana and the _stancia_ of Malofskaya the country becomes
much wilder, and forests dwindle away as we near the timber line.
Occasionally not a tree would be visible from sled to horizon, only a
level plain of snow, which under the influence of wind, sunshine and
passing clouds would present as many moods and aspects as the sea. On
one day it would appear as smooth and unbroken as a village pond, on
another the white expanse would be broken by ripples, solid wavelets
stirred up by a light breeze, while after a storm, billows and rollers
in the shape of great drifts and hillocks would obstruct our progress.
As we neared the frozen ocean many storms were encountered, and
approaching Sredni-Kolymsk these occurred almost daily as furious
blizzards. On such occasions we always lay to, for it was impossible to
travel against the overwhelming force of the wind. Frequently these
tempests occurred in otherwise fine weather, and on such days the snow
did not fall but was whirled up from the ground in dense clouds, and
during the lulls, a momentary glance of sunshine and blue sky had a
strange effect. And, as we gradually crept further and further north, a
sense of unspeakable loneliness seemed to increase with every mile we
covered. Let the reader try and realise that during the journey from
Verkhoyansk of over one thousand miles, we had seen perhaps fifty human
beings and--a dead ermine! When at Irkutsk I spoke of journeying to
Sredni-Kolymsk I was regarded as a lunatic by the majority of my
hearers. Yakutsk was their end of the world! And now that cold,
monotony and silence were gradually telling upon the brain and nerves, I
sometimes questioned, in moments of despondency, whether my Irkutsk
friends were not right when they exclaimed: "You are mad to go there."
There were compensations, notwithstanding, for a lover of Nature--the
sapphire skies and dazzling sunshine, the marvellous sunsets under which
the snowy desert would flash like a kaleidoscope of delicate colours,
and last, but not least, the glorious starlit nights, when the little
Pleiades would seem to glitter so near that you had but to reach out a
hand and pick them out of the inky sky.
On March 14 a large caravan hove in sight, composed of perhaps a score
of horse-sleds, which, as we neared it, halted, and a European emerged
from the leading sled to greet us. This bearded giant in tattered furs
proved to be the Russian naturalist, Yokelson, returning to Europe after
a two years' exploration in North-Eastern Siberia--principally in the
neighbourhood of Kamtchatka and the Okhotsk Sea. From Gijiga, Yokelson
had struck in a north-westerly direction to Sredni-Kolymsk, and was
bringing home a valuable collection for the society which had employed
him in the United States. The Russian could only give us the worst of
news from the Kolyma, where my expedition was expected by the
_ispravnik_, although the latter had assured Yokelson that our projected
journey to Bering Straits was out of the question. A famine was still
raging, there were very few dogs, and those half starved and useless,
and neither this official nor any one else in the place knew anything
about the country east of Sredni-Kolymsk. Three years previously a
Russian missionary had started with a driver on a dog-sled to travel
from the Kolyma along the coast to the nearest Tchuktchi settlement,
about 600 miles away, and the pair had never been heard of since. This
was the cheerful information which, happily, the Russian traveller
imparted to me in strict privacy.
Shortly after leaving Yokelson we crossed the Utchingoikel, or
"Beautiful Lake," so called from its picturesque surroundings in summer
time. At Andylach horses were harnessed to the sleds and we used no more
deer, there being no moss between here and Sredni-Kolymsk. The change
was not a desirable one, for the Yakute horse is a terrible animal.
"Generally he won't move until your sled is upset, and then he runs away
and it's impossible to stop him." So wrote Mr. Gilder, the American
explorer, and his experience was ours. But Gilder was compelled to ride
several stages and thus graphically describes his sufferings: "The
Yakute horse can scarcely be called a horse, he is a domesticated wild
animal. A coat or two was placed under the wooden saddle, so that the
writer was perched high in the air like on a camel. The stirrups were of
wood, and it was an art to mount, for they depended immediately from the
pommel. When you mounted ten to one that you fell in front of the
pommel, and as you could not get back over a pommel ten inches high you
slid over the horse's head to the ground and tried again. Yakute horses
are docile, provokingly so, for they have not enough animation to be
wicked. The favourite gait is a walk so slow and deliberate that you
lose all patience, and, if possible, raise a trot which is like nothing
known to the outside world; your horse rises in the air and straightens
out his legs and then comes down upon the end which has the foot on it,
the recoil bouncing you high up from your seat just in time to meet the
saddle as it is coming up for the next step. It's like constant bucking,
and yet you don't go four miles an hour!"
I could sympathise with the writer of the above, for during the first
day's work with these brutes I was upset five times, and felt towards
evening like an invalid after a hard day with hounds.
Crossing lake after lake (this is a Siberian Finland) with intervals of
forest and barren plain, we reached the last _stancia_ of any size,
Ultin. This is about two hundred miles from Sredni-Kolymsk, and the
rest-house showed signs of approaching civilisation, or rather Russian
humanity. For the floor was actually clean, there was a table and two
chairs, and a cheap oleograph of his Majesty the Emperor pinned to the
plank wall. The place seemed palatial after the miserable shelters we
had shared, and I seized the opportunity of a wash in warm water before
confronting the authorities at Sredni-Kolymsk.
On March 17 Atetzia was reached. This is, indeed, a land of
contradictions, for, although only ten miles from Sredni-Kolymsk, the
_povarnia_ here was the filthiest we entered throughout the journey from
Verkhoyansk. It contained two occupants, an old and ragged Yakute woman
and a dead deer in an advanced state of decomposition. The former lay
upon the mud floor groaning and apparently in great pain, with one arm
around the neck of the putrid carcase beside her, and I inferred that
she had been poisoned by partaking of the disgusting remains, probably
in a raw condition, for there were no signs of a fire. But the
medicine-chest alleviated her sufferings, and we left the poor wretch
full of gratitude and in comparative comfort. The same afternoon we
reached our destination, having accomplished the journey from
Verkhoyansk in eighteen days, although four months had been freely
predicted as its probable duration!