_THE LENA._
History of Russian invasion.--Former travellers to Okhotsk.--Cochrane,
Erman, and Hill.--Down the Lena to Yakutsk.--Prevalence
of goitre.--The Upper Lena and its tributaries.--The
Lower Lena.--Discoveries of mammoths.--New Siberian
islands.--Nordenskiöld’s passage.
When, at the beginning of the 17th century, the Cossack conquerors
of Siberia had crossed the Yenesei, and had pushed on as far as
Lake Baikal, they were met by the numerous and warlike tribe of
the Buriats, who opposed the invaders with considerable force. Not
waiting, therefore, for their entire subjection (which took 30 years
to accomplish), the Cossacks turned northwards to the basin of the
Lena, and descended the river more than half-way to the Arctic Sea,
where, coming in 1632 to the principal town of the Yakutes, they built
a fort and founded the city of Yakutsk. After this they crossed the
Aldan mountains, and, seven years later, reached the Sea of Okhotsk.
For two centuries this was the route followed by those who would cross
Siberia from the Urals to the Pacific, or _vice versâ_. In the present
day there are two other roads. All must go by the route we travelled
from Tomsk to Irkutsk, but from thence the Pacific can be reached
either by crossing the Mongolian desert to Peking, or by traversing the
Buriat steppe, and so descending the Amur. The second of these routes
is now the best, but not briefly to mention the old route would be to
omit much interesting information concerning the Lena, with its native
population and fossilized remains, as well as to miss the opportunity
of hearing a little of some of the most daring and adventurous journeys
of previous travellers.[1]
The most remarkable of these was an Englishman named John Dundas
Cochrane, a captain in the Royal Navy, who, in 1820, proposed to the
Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty that they should give their
sanction and countenance to his undertaking alone a journey into
the interior of Africa, with a view to ascertaining the course and
determination of the river Niger. This they declined, whereupon he
procured two years’ leave of absence, and resolved to attempt “a
walking tour” round the globe, as nearly as could be done by land,
crossing from Northern Asia to America at Behring’s Straits, his
leading object being to trace the shores of the Polar Sea along
America by land, as Captain Parry was at the time attempting it
by sea. Accordingly he left London with his knapsack, crossed the
Channel to Dieppe, and then set out. This gentleman was endowed with
an unbounded reliance upon his own individual exertions, and his
knowledge of man when unfettered by the frailties and misconduct of
others. One man, he said, might go anywhere he chose, fearlessly and
alone, and as safely trust himself in the hands of savages as among
his own friends. His favourite dictum was that an individual might
travel throughout the Russian empire, except in the _civilized_ parts
between the capitals, so long as his conduct was becoming, without
necessaries failing him. He put his principle rather severely to the
test, and it must be allowed that he did so with very general success,
for he states that in travelling from Moscow to Irkutsk (4,000 miles
by his route) he spent less than a guinea. From Irkutsk he descended
the Lena to Yakutsk, from whence, accompanied by a single Cossack, he
penetrated in a north-easterly direction almost to the shores of the
Ice Sea at Nijni Kolimsk, where, having altered his plans, he turned
back by a most difficult route to Okhotsk. From this place he sailed
to Kamchatka, and married a native, whom he brought by sea back to
Okhotsk, and then in winter crossed the Aldan mountains to Yakutsk,
whence the happy pair proceeded to Irkutsk, and at length reached
England, where Mrs. Cochrane, as I learn from the daughter of one who
knew her, was carefully educated, and passed as a lady in good society.
For enterprise and bravery this captain, I take it, easily bears off
the palm from all Siberian travellers.[2]
The writer who has added most, perhaps, to our scientific knowledge of
the valley of the Lena is M. Adolph Erman, who crossed Siberia in 1828,
in conjunction, though not in company, with Professor Hansteen, the
first professor at the Magnetic Observatory at Christiania, in Norway,
and famous for his researches in terrestrial magnetism. They both
travelled for the purpose of making magnetic and other observations;
but, on arriving at Irkutsk, Professor Hansteen returned to Europe,
whilst Erman continued down the Lena to Yakutsk, crossed to the Sea of
Okhotsk, and so continued round the world.[3]
Later on, one more Englishman has reached the Pacific by way of the
Lena, namely, Mr. S. S. Hill, who did so in 1848, and it is not
unlikely that he may, for some time, be the last of the intrepid
travellers who have accomplished this feat, since the Amur is now
open to the Russians, and presents a far easier way of crossing the
continent.
To follow the older route, the first portion had to be traversed by
post vehicles from Irkutsk, a distance of 160 miles in a north-easterly
direction. The road crosses the water-parting of the Lena basin at or
near the station Khogotskaya, which is about 90 geographical miles from
Irkutsk. The traveller journeys through a hilly country, where there
is abundant pasture, and where the land is to some extent cultivated,
to the village of Kachugskoe, situated on the banks of the Lena. Here
various sorts of merchandise are embarked in large flat-bottomed boats,
which are floated down the river. These goods are exchanged with the
natives for furs, the boats at the end of the journey being broken
up in districts where timber is scarce, and the furs brought back in
smaller craft.[4]
The descent of the Upper Lena to Yakutsk by water was undertaken by
Mr. Hill in spring, and by Captain Cochrane in autumn, but Mr. Erman
accomplished it on the ice in winter, by a 20 days’ sledge journey
of nearly 1,900 miles. As he passed along he observed, first in the
village of Petrovsk, several of the women largely affected with
goitre, and learned with surprise that this malady, which in Europe
characterises the valleys of the Alps, is frequent on the Lena. As
he proceeded he found goitre in men also, and asking an exile at
Turutsk, who appeared the only healthy person in the place, how he
had protected himself from goitre, was told that adults arriving
from Europe were never attacked by the disease, but that the goitre
was born with the children of the district, and grew up with them.
Medical men in Switzerland say that goitre proceeds from deposits in
chemical combination, washed down by mountain streams that supply the
inhabitants of the neighbourhood with drinking water, and that it
attacks children on account of their mucous membranes being very tender
and easily distended. Mr. Erman inquired carefully, as he went on,
respecting the prevalency of goitre, and having made barometrical and
other observations along the way, he came at length to the conclusion
that the disease was traceable, in part, to the formation and altitude
of various places along the valley of the river, where the air, being
confined, is, in summer, heated to an extraordinary degree, and loaded
with moisture.
With regard to the stream of the Upper Lena, its head waters have their
sources spread out for 200 geographical miles along the counter slopes
of the hills that form the western bank of Lake Baikal, and the main
stream rises within seven miles of the lake.
At Kachugskoe, about 60 geographical miles from the Baikal, and not
less than 75 geographical miles in a straight line from its source,
the Lena measures about the width of the Thames in London. The water,
deep and clear, has in spring a very rapid current, though Captain
Cochrane speaks of the rate lower down, in autumn, as only 1½ or 2
knots per hour. The next station after Kachugskoe is Vercholensk, a
town of 1,000 inhabitants, the first of that size on the north-east
of Irkutsk, and is the chief town of the uyezd. After flowing 500
miles further through a hilly country, with high banks always on one
and sometimes on both sides, on which are 35 post-stations and more
villages, the river passes Kirensk, which again is the chief town of
an uyezd, and has a population of 800.[5] Here cultivation practically
ceases, except for vegetables. At this point, too, the river receives
on its right the Kirenga, which has run nearly as long a course as
the Lena. The stream thus enlarged now flows on for 300 miles more to
Vitimsk, where it is joined by its second great tributary, the Vitim,
from the mountains east of Lake Baikal. Another stretch of 460 miles,
through a country still hilly, but with villages less frequent, brings
the traveller to Olekminsk, the capital of another uyezd, a town of 500
inhabitants; there the Lena receives from the south the Olekma, which
rises near the Amur river. It then continues for 400 miles through a
sparsely-populated district, till it reaches Yakutsk, where it is 4
miles wide in summer, and 2½ in winter, the river being usually frozen
about the 1st October, and not free from ice till about May 25th.
Hitherto the course of the river has been to the north-east, but at
Yakutsk the stream makes a bend and runs due north, receiving on its
right, 100 miles below Yakutsk, one of its largest tributaries, the
Aldan, which rises in the Stanovoi range bordering on the Sea of
Okhotsk. Yakutsk is only 270 feet above the sea, and the current of the
river henceforth is sluggish. About 50 miles further the Lena receives
its largest tributary from the left, the Vilui, and then proceeds
majestically through a flat country with an enormous body of water to
the Arctic Ocean, into which it enters among a delta of islands formed
of the _débris_ brought down by the river.
In the region of the Lower Lena, and to the westward, have been found
the remains of a huge rhinoceros, and an elephant larger than that now
existing--the _elephas primigenius_, popularly called the mammoth. It
is so named from the Russian _mamont_, or Tatar _mamma_ (the earth),
because the Yakutes believed that this animal worked its way in the
earth like a mole; and a Chinese story represents the _mamentova_ as
a rat of the size of an elephant which always burrowed underground,
and died on coming in contact with the outer air. The tusks of the
mammoth are remarkable for exhibiting a double curve, first inwards,
then outwards, and then inwards again; and Professor Ramsay gives
it me as the opinion of several able naturalists that the so-called
mammoth is of the same species as the Indian elephant, only much
altered by the change of climatic conditions. The Samoyedes say that
the mammoth still exists wandering upon the shores of the Frozen
Ocean, and subsisting on dead bodies thrown up by the surf. As for the
rhinoceros, they say it was a gigantic bird, and that the horns which
the ivory-merchants purchase were its talons. Their legends tell of
fearful combats between their ancestors and this enormous winged animal.
A trade in mammoth ivory has been carried on for hundreds of years
between the tribes of Northern Asia and the Chinese; but it was a long
time before European naturalists took a marked interest in the evidence
of an extinct order of animals which these remains undeniably recorded.
The Siberian mammoth agrees exactly with the specimens unearthed in
various parts of England, especially at Ilford in the valley of the
Thames, near London, and on the coast of Norfolk; but whereas on
European soil there remain but fragments of the skeleton, there have
been found in Siberia bones of the rhinoceros and mammoth covered with
pieces of flesh and skin. These discoveries date back more than a
century.[6]
In 1865 the captain of a Yenesei steamer learnt that some natives had
discovered the preserved remains of a mammoth in latitude 67°, about
100 versts west of the river. Intelligence was sent to Petersburg,
and Dr. Schmidt was commissioned to go and examine into the matter.
Accordingly he proceeded down the Yenesei to Turukhansk, and thence to
the landing-place nearest the mammoth deposit, hoping to obtain the
animal’s stomach, and, from the character of the leaves within, infer
the creature’s _habitat_, since it is known that the beast lived upon
vegetable food, but of what exact character no one has yet determined.
Unfortunately the stomach was wanting.
In examining, under the microscope, fragments of vegetable food picked
out of the grooves of the molar teeth of the Siberian rhinoceros at
Irkutsk, naturalists have recognised fibres of the pitch-pine, larch,
birch, and willow, resembling those of trees of the same kind which
still grow in Southern Siberia. This seems to confirm the opinion,
expressed long ago, that the rhinoceros and other large pachyderms
found in the alluvial soil of the north used to inhabit Middle
Siberia, south of the extreme northern regions where their skeletons
are now found; but Mr. Knox, who travelled for some distance with
Schmidt on his return journey, says that the doctor estimated that the
beast had been frozen many thousands of years, and that his natural
dwelling-place was in the north, at a period when perhaps the Arctic
regions were warmer than they now are. Covered with long hair, the
animal could certainly resist an Arctic climate; but how on the tundras
of the north could the animal have found the foliage of trees necessary
for its subsistence? Must we conclude that formerly the country was
wooded, or that the mammoth did not live where its skeletons are now
found, but further south, whence its carcase has been carried northward
by rivers, and frozen into the soil? These are questions debated among
geologists, and still awaiting solution.
The fact, however, remains, that mammoth ivory is still an important
branch of native commerce, and all travellers bear witness to the
quantities of fossil bones found throughout the frozen regions of
Siberia.[7]
Each year, in early summer, fishermen’s barques direct their course
to the New Siberian group, to the “_isles of bones_”; and, during
winter, caravans drawn by dogs take the same route, and return charged
with tusks of the mammoth, each weighing from 150 lbs. to 200 lbs. The
fossil ivory thus obtained is imported into China and Europe, and is
used for the same purposes as the ordinary ivory of the elephant and
hippopotamus.
We cannot leave the Lower Lena and the neighbouring shores of the
Arctic Ocean without alluding to the wonderful sight those shores
witnessed in 1878, for the first time in the history of the world. It
was no less a sight than that of two steam vessels that had ploughed
their way from Europe round Cape Cheliuskin. One of them was the
_Vega_, in which was Professor Nordenskiöld, whose intention had been
to anchor off the mouth of the Lena, but a favourable wind and an open
sea offered so splendid an opportunity of continuing his voyage that he
did not neglect it. He sailed away, therefore, on the 28th of August,
direct for Fadievskoi, one of the New Siberian islands, where he
intended to remain some days, and to examine scientifically the remains
of mammoths, rhinoceroses, horses, aurochs, bisons, sheep, etc., with
which these islands are said to be covered. The _Vega_ made excellent
progress, but though, on the 30th, Liakov Island was reached, the
professor was unable to land, owing to the rotten ice which surrounded
it, and the danger to which the vessel would have been exposed in case
of a storm in such shallow water.
After the _Vega_, with Nordenskiöld on board, had left its sister
ship the _Lena_, the latter vessel, under the command of Captain
Johannesen, started to ascend the river of its own name. A pilot
had been engaged to descend the river and await the arrival of the
_Lena_, but as neither he nor his signals were visible, the captain,
after considerable difficulty, from the shallowness of the water, made
his way through the delta, and on the 7th September reached the main
stream, where the navigation was less difficult. Yakutsk was reached on
the 21st September, dispatches were sent on to Irkutsk, and from thence
it was telegraphed to Europe that the rounding of Cape Cheliuskin and
the navigation of the Lena by a steamer from the Atlantic had been
accomplished.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] I allude to the accounts of Strahlenberg, De Lesseps, Billings,
Ledyard, Dobell, Gordon, Cochrane, Erman, Cotterill, and Hill.
Strahlenberg was a Swedish officer, who, at the beginning of the 18th
century, was banished for 13 years to Siberia. He collected a vast
amount of information concerning the country generally, and compiled
polyglot tables of aboriginal languages, and amongst them that of the
Yakutes inhabiting the valley of the Lena, of whose Pagan condition he
gives many illustrations.
M. de Lesseps was French Consul and interpreter to Count de la Perouse,
the well-known circumnavigator. De Lesseps entered the country at
Kamchatka in 1788, and wrote an account of his travels across Siberia
and Europe to Paris.
Captain Billings was an Englishman, who, after sailing with the
celebrated Captain Cook, was employed by the Empress Katharine II. to
make discoveries on the north-east coast of Siberia, and among the
islands in the Eastern Ocean stretching to the American coast. For this
purpose he proceeded to North-Eastern Siberia in 1785, sailed down the
river Kolima, explored a portion of the country eastward, and then
returned by way of Yakutsk.
Another of Captain Cook’s officers, John Ledyard, had the most romantic
enthusiasm for adventure, perhaps, of any man of his time. He conceived
the project of travelling across Europe, Asia, and America as far as
possible on foot, and to this end he set out from London with about
£50 only in his pocket. He reached Yakutsk, where he met with Captain
Billings, and with him was hoping to proceed to America, when, by order
of the Russian Court, Ledyard was arrested on suspicion of being a
French spy, and was taken off to Moscow.
Another journey across Northern Asia was made after the time of
Billings by Peter Dobell, a counsellor of the Court of His Imperial
Majesty the Emperor of Russia. Dobell landed in Kamchatka in 1812, and
from thence proceeded overland to Europe.
[2] Another journey from Okhotsk up the Lena to Irkutsk and Kiakhta,
and then across Siberia to Europe, was made about 1820 by a merchant
named Peter Gordon; but his notes are very short, and appear only in
his “Fragment of a Tour through Persia.”
[3] Professor Erman received the Patron’s gold medal of the Royal
Geographical Society of London in 1844, for his scientific researches
in physical geography, meteorology, and magnetism around the globe
in 1828-30. His researches in Northern Asia were of especial value,
particularly in Eastern Siberia and Kamchatka.
[4] It was in one of these flat-bottomed boats that Mr. Hill descended
the stream, in company with a Russian merchant, accomplishing the
journey to Yakutsk in 21 days, with no worse mishaps by water than
occasionally being driven on sand or mud banks, or into a forest of
trees, all but submerged by the height of the spring floods.
Captain Cochrane chose a more independent course. Being furnished with
a Cossack, he drove from Irkutsk to the Lena, and, having procured
an open canoe and two men, paddled down the stream. Proceeding day
and night, they usually made from 100 to 120 miles a day, finding
hospitable villages at intervals of from 15 to 18 miles, as far
as Kirensk, and so arrived on the eighth day at Vitimsk. It was
now late in the autumn, and the ice began to come down the river,
which sometimes compelled the natives to strip, and, up to their
waists in water, to track the boat, and this with the thermometer
below freezing-point. At length the captain, in consequence of the
difficulties of boating, was requested at one of the villages to
proceed on horseback, which he did, and, being unable at the next
station to get either horses or boat, he had to shoulder his knapsack
and walk; and so, by means of walking, riding, and paddling, he reached
Olekminsk. From thence to Yakutsk is about 400 miles, which, excepting
the two last stages, the captain completed in a canoe, arriving on the
6th October. The weather was cold, snow was falling, and on approaching
Yakutsk the canoe was caught in the ice, so that he was compelled to
make the remainder of his journey on foot.
[5] The difference of latitude, as pointed out by Mr. Trelawney
Saunders, between Verko (or upper) Lensk (54° 8′) and Kirensk (57° 47′)
is only 3° 39′, or 219 geographical miles. The latter place is but
little east of north from the former, so that the 500 miles must be
mainly due to the windings of the stream.
[6] In December, 1771, a party of Yakutes hunting on the Vilui,
near its junction with the Lower Lena, discovered an unknown animal
half-buried in the sand, but still retaining its flesh, covered with a
thick skin. The carcase was too much decomposed to allow of more than
the head and two feet being forwarded to Irkutsk; but they were seen by
the great traveller and naturalist, Peter Simon Pallas, who pronounced
the animal a rhinoceros, not particularly large of its kind, which
might perchance have been born in Central Asia.
In the year 1799 a bank of frozen earth near the mouth of the Lena
broke away, and revealed to a Tunguse, named Schumachoff, the body of
a mammoth. Hair, skin, flesh and all had been preserved by the frost;
and seven years later Mr. Adams, of the Petersburg Academy, hearing of
the discovery at Yakutsk, visited the spot. He found, however, that
the greater part of the flesh had been eaten by wild animals and the
dogs of the natives, though the eyes and brains remained. The entire
carcase measured 9 ft. 4 in. high, and 16 ft. 4 in. from the point of
the nose to the end of the tail, without including the tusks, which
were 9 ft. 6 in. in length if measured along the curves. The two tusks
weighed 360 lbs., and the head and tusks together 414 lbs. The skin was
of such extraordinary weight that ten persons found great difficulty in
carrying it. About 40 lbs. of hair, too, were collected, though much
more of this was trodden into the sand by the feet of bears which had
eaten the flesh. This skeleton is now in the Museum of the Academy at
Petersburg.
Again, in 1843, M. Middendorf found a mammoth on the Taz, between the
Obi and the Yenesei, with some of the flesh in so perfect a condition
that it was found possible to remove the ball of the eye, which is
preserved in the Museum at Moscow.
[7] It has been suggested that the abundant supplies of ivory which
were at the command of the ancient Greek sculptors came by way of
the Black Sea from the Siberian deposits. So far back as the time of
Captain Billings, Martin Sauer, his secretary, tells us of one of the
Arctic islands near the Siberian mainland, that “it is a mixture of
sand and ice, so that when the thaw sets in and its banks begin to
fall, many mammoth bones are found, and that all the isle is formed
of the bones, of this extraordinary animal.” This account is to some
extent corroborated by Figuier, who tells us that New Siberia and the
Isle of Liakov are for the most part only an agglomeration of sand,
ice, and elephants’ teeth; and at every tempest the sea casts ashore
new quantities of mammoths’ tusks. Réclus speaks of an annual find of
15 tons of mammoth ivory, representing about 200 mammoths; and, about
1840, Middendorf estimated the number of mammoths discovered up to that
time at 20,000.