THE LOWER KOLYMA RIVER
"Why don't you try to escape," I once asked an exile at Sredni-Koylmsk,
"and make your way across Bering Straits to America?" For I was aware
that, once in the United States, a Russian "political" is safe from the
clutch of the bear.[46]
[Footnote 46: A political exile escaping to the United States can become
(in ten years) an American citizen.]
"You do not know the coast," was the reply, "or you would not ask me the
question." My friend was right. A month later I should certainly not
have done so.
Indeed, had I been aware, at this stage of the journey, of the
formidable array of obstacles barring the way to the north-easternmost
extremity of Asia, I might perhaps even now have hesitated before
embarking upon what eventually proved to be the most severe and
distressing of all my experiences of travel. It does not look much on
the map, that strip of coast-line which extends from the Kolyma River to
Bering Straits (especially when viewed from the depths of a cosy
armchair); and yet I don't think there is a mile throughout its length
which is not associated in my mind with some harassing anxiety, peril or
privation.
Provisions of all kinds had become so scarce that a special permit from
the _ispravnik_ was necessary in order to enable us to purchase even a
pound of flour. Luckily a relief convoy had arrived from Yakutsk during
the week preceding our departure or a total lack of food must have
brought the expedition to a final standstill. However, after endless
difficulties and a lavish expenditure of rouble-notes, I managed to
procure provisions enough to last us on short rations, with the addition
of our own remaining stores, for about three weeks. I also secured a
cask of _vodka_ (or rather pure alcohol) to trade with the Tchuktchis,
for a sum which, in England, would have stocked a moderate-sized cellar.
Within three weeks I hoped to reach the first native settlement, said to
be six hundred miles distant. Should we fail to do so starvation seemed
unpleasantly probable, or death from exposure, our sole shelter being a
flimsy canvas tent more suitable for a Thames picnic than an Arctic
clime. And so we set out from Sredni-Kolymsk with seven men, five sleds
and sixty-four dogs. One of the sleds was loaded down with provisions,
our precious cask of _vodka_, and sundry deal cases containing
clasp-knives, cheap revolvers, glass beads, wooden pipes, &c., for the
natives, who do not use money. A sack of _mahorka_ was also taken along
for the same purpose. This is a villainous leaf tobacco so rank and sour
that it must be soaked in warm water before smoking; and yet, long
before we reached the Straits, it became far too precious to waste on
the Tchuktchis! Another sled was packed with dog-food, consisting of
inferior salt-fish, which we were also compelled to share with the teams
before Tchaun Bay was reached. My greatest anxiety, next to the food
supply, was regarding fuel. Every drop of oil had been exhausted some
days before reaching Sredni-Kolymsk, where no more was procurable, so
that artificial heat, that essential of Arctic travel, would have to be
entirely derived from the sodden drift-wood occasionally found on the
shores of the Polar Sea. I did not care to think much about what would
happen if this commodity failed us for any length of time. All things
considered, it is no exaggeration to say that my expedition was about as
suitably equipped for the work before it as a man who, in England, goes
out duck shooting in the depth of winter in a silk night-shirt!
Here, as at Verkhoyansk, our departure was witnessed by officials,
exiles and natives. Even the politicals took an active interest in this
hitherto unattempted journey, although perhaps this was partly due to
the fact that certain sealed missives, destined for Europe, were snugly
concealed about my person. Poor Strajevsky, whom I had learned to regard
more as a friend than as an acquaintance, made a sketch of our departure
which he promised to forward to me, but of course the drawing never
reached its destination. Where is now, I often wonder, the unfortunate
artist? He had lived for some time at Montrouge, in Paris, in order to
study the French language, but I was unable to trace any of the friends
there to whom he sent messages announcing his terrible fate.
From Sredni-Kolymsk, which we left on March 22, our way lay along the
Kolyma River[47] to Nijni-Kolymsk,[48] an almost deserted collection of
log huts surrounding a ruined wooden chapel. Our sleds were now lightly
built, uncovered contrivances to carry two men, about a dozen dogs being
harnessed to each. With a good team one may cover a long distance during
the day over level ground, but our poor half-starved brutes travelled so
slowly that my heart sank when I thought of the distance before them.
Throughout that dismal time America used to seem as unattainable as the
North Pole itself! I now directed that the sleds should travel in a
certain order. Mine was the leading _narta_, and Nos. 2, 3 and 4 were
occupied by de Clinchamp, Harding and Stepan respectively. Numbers 4 and
5 were provision-sleds which should have headed, not brought up the rear
of the caravan, although I did not discover this mistake, which nearly
cost us dearly, until after the passage across Tchaun Bay.
[Footnote 47: The River Kolyma, like the Indigirka, has its source in
the Stanovoi Mountains.]
[Footnote 48: "Sredni" signifies "Middle," and "Nijni" "Lower" Kolymsk,
according to their situations on the Kolyma River.]
Harding and Stepan each drove a sled, the three other drivers being
half-breed Kolyma-Russians, of whom two were of the usual stolid, sulky
type. The third, who accompanied me, was a character. A squat little
bundle of furs, with beady black eyes twinkling slyly from a face to
which incessant cold and bad brandy had imparted the hues of a brilliant
sunset. Local rumour gave Mikouline forty years, but he might have been
any age, certainly an octogenarian in such primitive vices as were
feasible within the restricted area of his Arctic home. Mikouline had
once travelled some distance down the coast, and was therefore installed
as guide. He and the other drivers agreed to accompany us as far as the
first Tchuktchi settlement, where I hoped to procure assistance and
transport from the natives. And at first I believed in my driver, for he
was a cheery, genial little fellow, so invariably facetious that I often
suspected his concealment of a reserve stock of _vodka_. And although
Mikouline's casual methods concerning time and distance were
occasionally disquieting, he was a past master in the art of driving
dogs, which is not always an easy one. The rudiments of the craft are
soon picked up, but, as I afterwards found to my cost, a team will
discover a change of driver the moment the latter opens his mouth, and
become accordingly unmanageable. Illustrations of dog-sleds in the
Arctic generally depict the animals as bounding merrily away at full
speed, to be restrained or urged on at the will of their driver, but
this is a pure fallacy, for a sled-dog's gallop is like a donkey's,
short and sweet. The average gait is a shuffling trot, covering from
five to seven miles an hour over easy ground; and even then desperate
fights frequently necessitate a stoppage and readjustment of the traces.
There are no reins, the dogs being fastened two abreast on either side
of a long rope. To start off you seize the sled with both hands, give it
a violent wrench to one side, and cry "Petak!" when the team starts off
(or should start off) at full gallop, and you jump up and gain your seat
as best you may. To stop, you jab an iron brake into the snow or ice and
call out "Tar!" But the management of this brake needs some skill, and
with unruly dogs an inexperienced driver is often landed on his back in
the snow, while the sled proceeds alone upon its wild career.
Laplanders and the Eskimo have each their method of dog driving, but the
above was that practised by ourselves and by the Tchuktchis on the
Siberian coast.
The journey of three hundred miles to Nijni-Kolymsk was accomplished in
five days, and it was pleasant enough, for every night was passed in the
hut of some fisherman or trapper who regaled us with tea and frozen
fish. The Kolyma settler is generally a half-breed; an uncouth but
hospitable being who leads a queer existence. During the short summer
his days are passed on the river in canoes, fishing and trapping, but in
winter furs are donned and dog-sled and rifle become a means of
livelihood. Fish is the staple article of food, and when the summer
catch has been a poor one a winter famine is the invariable result, and
this is what had marred our progress. Nevertheless, a famine here is
generally due to laziness, for the river teems with fish of all kinds,
sturgeon and salmon-trout predominating, and there is also the _tchir_,
a local delicacy. The busiest fishing season is in the early autumn,
when herrings ascend the river in such shoals that forty or fifty
thousand are frequently taken in a couple of days with a single net. Our
dogs were fed on this fish, which appeared to be much larger than the
European species. In the spring-time the Kolyma settler can revel in
game, for swans, geese, duck and snipe abound, although weapons here are
very primitive and the muzzle-loader prevails. Elk and Polar bear are
occasionally shot in the winter, but the former have become scarce, and
the latter only frequent the sea-coast.
Every hut, or even shed, we passed on the Kolyma had a name, which duly
appears on the table of distances in the Appendix, but there are only
two so-called villages between Middle and Lower Kolymsk, Silgisit and
Krest, making the stages of the journey 90, 180, and 240 miles
respectively. A little drive like the final stage of, say, London to
Durham with such short rests would probably knock up an English horse,
but even our weakly teams were fit to continue after twenty-four hours
at Lower Kolymsk. Krest, so named from a large wooden cross which stands
amidst a few log huts, was reached on March 24, and here we were
hospitably entertained by the inhabitants, who all appeared to live in
one house, the interior of which was cosy enough; and I here noticed for
the first time that the windows were made, not of ice, but of fish skin.
The other huts were deserted, for Krest is a fishing village only fully
populated in summer-time. There seemed to be a fair lot of cattle and
horses about the inhabited dwelling, where we shared the usual evening
meal of frozen fish, to which a goodly portion of roast deer had been
added in our honour. The meat would have been excellent had it not
reeked of wild thyme, a favourite ingredient on the Kolyma, but the
frozen berries served with it as a _compote_ were delicious. These were
a species of bilberry, but my host informed me that a dozen edible kinds
are found within a couple of miles of the village, a kindly provision of
nature, as vegetables are here unknown. There were also edible roots,
one of which I tasted, but have no desire to repeat the experiment. I
was surprised at the sleek appearance of my host's cattle, but he told
me that the plains around Krest afforded good, but coarse, pasturage,
and sufficient hay to last throughout the winter months.
When we left Krest the night was bitterly cold, but clear and starlit,
and that evening is memorable on account of a strange dream which
disturbed my slumbers as I lay snugly ensconced in the sleeping-bag
which was now my nightly couch. Perhaps the roast deer and bilberries
had transported my astral self to the deck of a P. and O. liner at
Colombo, where the passengers were warmly congratulating me on a
successful voyage across Asia. "You have now only Bering Straits to get
over," said one, pledging me in champagne, and the geographical
inconsistency did not strike me until a captain in gold lace, with the
face of a Yakute, pointed out the little difference of several thousand
miles lying between Ceylon and our projected goal. The shock of this
discovery awoke me in terror, to shiver until dawn, yet heartily
thankful that Colombo and I were still where we should be! Not that a
short interval of tropical warmth would have been unwelcome that night,
for although the cold was not so severe as it had been inland, I found
on halting for breakfast that a mirror in a small bag under my pillow
was coated with a thin film of ice.
Grey skies and frequent snow-flurries were experienced as we neared
Nijni-Kolymsk, and as each mile was covered the vegetation on either
side grew scantier, for even at Srendi-Kolymsk the pine forests had lost
their grandeur. Here they dwindled away to scanty fir-trees, stunted
larches and grey-green willows drooping in the snow. There is no sadder
sight in creation than a sunset in these regions, when the heart seems
to sink in sympathy with the dying day, and a dull despair to deaden the
mind, as darkness creeps over a frozen world.
On the morning of Friday, March 28, we reached Nijni-Kolymsk, about
thirty log huts in various stages of decay. This settlement, which was
founded by Cossacks about the middle of the seventeenth century, is
surrounded by low scrub, and, as at Sredni-Kolymsk, the buildings left
standing are so low that they are invisible from the level of the river,
which is here about two miles wide. The surroundings, however, are more
picturesque than those of Middle Kolymsk, for a picturesque chain of
mountains breaks the horizon to the eastward, although the remainder of
the landscape consists of level and marshy tundra. In the reign of the
Empress Catherine Nijni-Kolymsk contained over five hundred sturdy
Cossacks and their families; it was peopled at the time of our visit by
about fifty poor souls, whose gaunt and spectral appearance told of a
constant struggle against cold, hunger and darkness. Nijni-Kolymsk had
once apparently boasted of a main street, but the wooden huts had fallen
bodily, one by one, till many now formed mere heaps of mud and timber;
those still erect being prevented from utter collapse by wooden beams
propped against them.
We found the entire community, consisting of half-breeds, Yakutes and
Tunguses, gathered outside the hut of the only Russian in the place, one
Jacob Yartsegg, who was banished here for life for smuggling rifles for
revolutionary purposes into Russia. Yartsegg, a tall elderly man in
ragged deerskins, informed me that the village possessed no _ispravnik_
but himself, at which I could scarcely restrain a smile. There was
something so "Gilbertian" in the idea of a prisoner acting as his own
jailer! This man spoke a little English and apologised for the damp and
darkness of the only hut he had to offer us. And in truth it was a
piteous hovel half filled with snow, which was soon melted by the heat
of our fire, rendering the floor, as usual, a sea of mud. There was not
a mouthful of food to spare in the place, and we ate from our own
stores. Yartsegg's dwelling was shared by a miserable creature who had
lost a hand and leg in a blizzard the previous year. The wounds, with no
treatment, had not even yet healed, and it made me shudder to think of
the agony the poor fellow must have endured, with cold and hunger to add
to his misery. But although the sufferer was a young man, now maimed for
life, he never complained save when pain in the festering limbs became
excruciating. Under such conditions a European would probably have
succumbed in a few weeks, but Arctic Siberia must be visited to
thoroughly realise the meaning of the words "suffering" and "patience."
The cold is not generally so severe at Nijni-Kolymsk as at the
settlement up river (Yartsegg's record showed 42 deg. F. as the minimum
temperature of the month of March), but the climate here is less
endurable on account of violent snowstorms which occasionally occur even
in summer, and dense fogs which, during spring and autumn, continually
sweep in from the Polar Sea. The sun remains above the horizon for
fifty-two days, and the rest of the year varies from twilit nights in
June to almost complete darkness in midwinter. The village was certainly
not an attractive one, and as its occupants evinced a decided tendency
to encroach on our provisions I resolved to remain in it only a couple
of days. But here occurred the first of a series of _contretemps_ which
dogged my footsteps throughout the coast journey, for the drivers now
refused to carry out their contract, urging that even if a Tchuktchi
settlement were safely reached the natives there would certainly murder
us.[49] Here was an apparently insurmountable difficulty, for Mikouline,
who acted as spokesman, simply snapped his fingers at Yartsegg's
authority. Threats were therefore useless, and kindness equally futile
where this little scoundrel was concerned. In _vodka_ lay my sole hope
of victory, and the "exile-jailer" luckily possessed a limited store,
some of which I purchased, and set to work to subjugate the unruly
Mikouline by the aid of alcohol; an immoral proceeding no doubt, but no
other course was open. For I knew that my driver's example would at once
be followed by the others who, like sheep, blindly followed him in
everything. It would weary the reader to describe my hopes and fears
during the ten interminable days and nights that the war was waged. But
he will appreciate what they meant to the writer from the fact that
every day, even every hour, was now of utmost importance, owing to the
late season and probable break up of the sea-ice at no distant date.
Also we were rapidly consuming the provisions which were to form our
sole subsistence in the desolate Arctic. It therefore became necessary
to place each man on half rations, consisting of two frozen fish, one
pound of black bread and a quarter of a pound of _Carnyl_ per diem. My
triumph over Mikouline cost me several gallons of _vodka_, to say
nothing of hours of disgust and annoyance passed in close companionship
with the now maudlin, now abusive, little half-breed. To make matters
worse, the weather during that wasted fortnight was still, clear, and
perfect for travelling, and the very morning of our departure it broke
up with a gale and blinding snowstorm which occasioned another irksome
delay down river. Just as we were starting, the now sober Mikouline
again showed symptoms of weakening, until I plied him with bumpers of
_vodka_. So long as "the spirit moved him" my driver was all right; but
alas! the _Vodka_ would not last for ever, and where should we be then?
[Footnote 49: The Kolyma Russians have apparently always held this tribe
in great awe, for as far back as 1820 Von Wrangell wrote: "Our
sled-drivers were certainly not free from the deeply-rooted fear of
these people (the Tchuktchis), generally entertained by the inhabitants
of Kolymsk."]
Yartsegg begged me to visit some of his relatives in New York and
acquaint them of his existence, but although furnished with their
address I could never trace these people, and the exile talked so wildly
at times that my failure to execute the commission was perhaps due to
his impaired mind and memory. But half-witted and almost repulsive as
this poor fellow had become, it went to my heart to leave him in that
God-forsaken settlement, when on the morning of April 2nd we again set
out, in the teeth of a biting north-easter, for the shores of the Arctic
Ocean.