FIRST FROST-BITE--THE SETTLED KORAKS HOUR-GLASS YURTS--CLIMBING
DOWN CHIMNEYS--YURT INTERIORS--LEGS AS FEATURES--TRAVELLING BY
"PAVOSKA"--BAD CHARACTER OF SETTLED KORAKS
On the morning of November 23d, in a clear, bracing atmosphere of
twenty-five degrees below zero, we arrived at the mouth of the large
river called the Penzhina, which empties into Penzhinsk Gulf, at the
head of the Okhotsk Sea. A dense cloud of frozen mist, which hung over
the middle of the gulf, showed the presence there of open water; but
the mouth of the river was completely choked up with great hummocks,
rugged green slabs, and confused masses of ice, hurled in by a
south-westerly storm, and frozen together in the wildest shapes of
angular disorder. Through the grey mist we could see dimly, on a high
bluff opposite, the strange outlines of the X-shaped _yurts_ of the
Kamenoi Koraks.
Leaving our drivers to get the reindeer and sledges across as best
they could, the Major, Dodd, and I started on foot, picking our way
between huge irregular blocks of clear green ice, climbing on hands
and knees over enormous bergs, falling into wide, deep crevices, and
stumbling painfully across the _chevaux-de-frise_ of sharp splintered
fragments into which the ice had been broken by a heavy sea. We had
almost reached the other side, when Dodd suddenly cried out, "_Oh_,
Kennan! Your nose is all white; rub it with snow--quick!" I have not
the slightest doubt that the rest of my face also turned white at this
alarming announcement; for the loss of my nose at the very outset of
my arctic career would be a very serious misfortune. I caught up a
handful of snow, however, mixed with sharp splinters of ice, and
rubbed the insensible member until there was not a particle of skin
left on the end of it, and then continued the friction with my mitten
until my arm ached. If energetic treatment would save it, I was
determined not to lose it that time. Feeling at last a painful thrill
of returning circulation, I relaxed my efforts, and climbed up the
steep bluff behind Dodd and the Major, to the Korak village of
Kamenoi.
The settlement resembled as much as anything a collection of titanic
wooden hour-glasses, which had been half shaken down and reduced to a
state of rickety dilapidation by an earthquake. The houses--if houses
they could be called--were about twenty feet in height, rudely
constructed of driftwood which had been brought down by the river, and
could be compared in shape to nothing but hour-glasses. They had no
doors, or windows of any kind, and could be entered only by climbing
up a pole on the outside, and sliding down another pole through the
chimney--a mode of entrance whose practicability depended entirely
upon the activity and intensity of the fire which burned underneath.
The smoke and sparks, although sufficiently disagreeable, were trifles
of comparative insignificance. I remember being told, in early
infancy, that Santa Claus always came into a house through the
chimney; and although I accepted the statement with the unreasoning
faith of childhood, I could never understand how that singular feat
of climbing down a chimney could be safely accomplished. To satisfy
myself, I felt a strong inclination, every Christmas, to try the
experiment, and was only prevented from doing so by the consideration
of stove-pipes. I might succeed, I thought, in getting down the
chimney; but coming out into a room through an eight-inch stove-pipe
and a narrow stove-door was utterly out of the question. My first
entrance into a Korak _yurt_, however, at Kamenoi, solved all my
childish difficulties, and proved the possibility of entering a house
in the eccentric way which Santa Claus is supposed to adopt. A large
crowd of savage-looking fur-clad natives had gathered around us when
we entered the village, and now stared at us with stupid curiosity as
we made our first attempt at climbing a pole to get into a house.
Out of deference for the Major's rank and superior attainments, we
permitted him to go first. He succeeded very well in getting up the
first pole, and lowered himself with sublime faith into the dark
narrow chimney hole, out of which were pouring clouds of smoke; but
at this critical moment, when his head was still dimly visible in the
smoke, and his body out of sight in the chimney, he suddenly came to
grief. The holes in the log down which he was climbing were too small
to admit even his toes, covered as they were with heavy fur boots;
and there he hung in the chimney, afraid to drop and unable to climb
out--a melancholy picture of distress. Tears ran out of his closed
eyes as the smoke enveloped his head, and he only coughed and
strangled whenever he tried to shout for help. At last a native on the
inside, startled at the appearance of his struggling body, came to
his assistance, and succeeded in lowering him safely to the ground.
Profiting by his experience, Dodd and I paid no attention to the
holes, but putting our arms around the smooth log, slid swiftly down
until we struck bottom. As I opened my tearful eyes, I was saluted
by a chorus of drawling "zda-ro'-o-o-va's" from half a dozen skinny,
greasy old women, who sat cross-legged on a raised platform around the
fire, sewing fur clothes.
The interior of a Korak _yurt_--that is, of one of the wooden _yurts_
of the _settled_ Koraks--presents a strange and not very inviting
appearance to one who has never become accustomed by long habit to its
dirt, smoke, and frigid atmosphere. It receives its only light, and
that of a cheerless, gloomy character, through the round hole, about
twenty feet above the floor, which serves as window, door, and
chimney, and which is reached by a round log with holes in it, that
stands perpendicularly in the centre. The beams, rafters, and logs
which compose the _yurt_ are all of a glossy blackness, from the smoke
in which they are constantly enveloped. A wooden platform, raised
about a foot from the earth, extends out from the walls on three sides
to a width of six feet, leaving an open spot eight or ten feet in
diameter in the centre for the fire and a huge copper kettle of
melting snow. On the platform are pitched three or four square skin
_pologs_, which serve as sleeping apartments for the inmates and as
refuges from the smoke, which sometimes becomes almost unendurable.
A little circle of flat stones on the ground, in the centre of the
_yurt_, forms the fireplace, over which is usually simmering a kettle
of fish or reindeer meat, which, with dried salmon, seal's blubber,
and rancid oil, makes up the Korak bill of fare. Everything that you
see or touch bears the distinguishing marks of Korak origin--grease
and smoke. Whenever any one enters the _yurt_, you are apprised of the
fact by a total eclipse of the chimney hole and a sudden darkness, and
as you look up through a mist of reindeer hairs, scraped off from the
coming man's fur coat, you see a thin pair of legs descending the pole
in a cloud of smoke. The legs of your acquaintances you soon learn to
recognise by some peculiarity of shape or covering; and their faces,
considered as means of personal identification, assume a secondary
importance. If you see Ivan's legs coming down the chimney, you feel a
moral certainty that Ivan's head is somewhere above in the smoke; and
Nicolai's boots, appearing in bold relief against the sky through the
entrance hole, afford as satisfactory proof of Nicolai's identity as
his head would, provided that part of his body came in first. Legs,
therefore, are the most expressive features of a Korak's countenance,
when considered from an interior standpoint. When snow drifts up
against the _yurt_, so as to give the dogs access to the chimney, they
take a perfect delight in lying around the hole, peering down into the
_yurt_, and snuffing the odours of boiling fish which rise from
the huge kettle underneath. Not unfrequently they get into a grand
comprehensive free fight for the best place of observation; and just
as you are about to take your dinner of boiled salmon off the fire,
down comes a struggling, yelping dog into the kettle, while his
triumphant antagonist looks down through the chimney hole with all
the complacency of gratified vengeance upon his unfortunate victim. A
Korak takes the half-scalded dog by the back of the neck, carries
him up the chimney, pitches him over the edge of the _yurt_ into a
snow-drift, and returns with unruffled serenity to eat the fish-soup
which has thus been irregularly flavoured with dog and thickened
with hairs. Hairs, and especially reindeer's hairs, are among the
indispensable ingredients of everything cooked in a Korak _yurt_, and
we soon came to regard them with perfect indifference. No matter what
precautions we might take, they were sure to find their way into our
tea and soup, and stick persistently to our fried meat. Some one was
constantly going out or coming in over the fire, and the reindeerskin
coats scraping back and forth through the chimney hole shed a perfect
cloud of short grey hairs, which sifted down over and into everything
of an eatable nature underneath. Our first meal in a Korak _yurt_,
therefore, at Kamenoi, was not at all satisfactory.
[Illustration: HOUR-GLASS HOUSES OF THE SETTLED KORAKS From a model in
The American Museum of Natural History]
We had not been twenty minutes in the settlement before the _yurt_
that we occupied was completely crowded with stolid, brutal-looking
men, dressed in spotted deerskin clothes, wearing strings of coloured
beads in their ears, and carrying heavy knives two feet in length in
sheaths tied around their legs. They were evidently a different class
of natives from any we had yet seen, and their savage animal faces did
not inspire us with much confidence. A good-looking Russian, however,
soon made his appearance, and coming up to us with uncovered head,
bowed and introduced himself as a Cossack from Gizhiga, sent to meet
us by the Russian governor at that place. The courier who had preceded
us from Lesnoi had reached Gizhiga ten days before us, and the
governor had despatched a Cossack at once to meet us at Kamenoi, and
conduct us through the settled Korak villages around the head of
Penzhinsk Gulf. The Cossack soon cleared the _yurt_ of natives, and
the Major proceeded to question him about the character of the country
north and west of Gizhiga, the distance from Kamenoi to the Russian
outpost of Anadyrsk, the facilities for winter travel, and the time
necessary for the journey. Fearful for the safety of the party of men
which he presumed to have been landed by the engineer-in-chief at the
mouth of the Anadyr River, Major Abaza had intended to go directly
from Kamenoi to Anadyrsk himself in search of them, and to send Dodd
and me westward along the coast of the Okhotsk Sea to meet Mahood
and Bush. The Cossack, however, told us that a party of men from the
Anadyr River had arrived at Gizhiga on dog-sledges just previous to
his departure, and that they had brought no news of any Americans
in the vicinity of Anadyrsk or on the river. Col. Bulkley, the
chief-engineer of the enterprise, had promised us, when we sailed from
San Francisco, that he would land a party of men with a whale boat at
or near the mouth of the Anadyr River, early enough in the season so
that they could ascend the river to the settlement of Anadyrsk and
open communication with us by the first winter road. This he had
evidently failed to do; for, if a party had been so landed, the
Anadyrsk people would certainly have heard something about it. The
unfavourable nature of the country around Bering Strait, or the
lateness of the season when the Company's vessels reached that point,
had probably compelled the abandonment of this part of the original
plan. Major Abaza had always disapproved the idea of leaving a
party near Bering Strait; but he could not help feeling a little
disappointment when he found that no such party had been landed, and
that he was left with only four men to explore the eighteen hundred
miles of country between the strait and the Amur River. The Cossack
said that no difficulty would be experienced in getting dog-sledges
and men at Gizhiga to explore any part of the country west or north of
that place, and that the Russian governor would give us every possible
assistance.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF A KORAK YURT. GETTING FIRE WITH THE FIRE
DRILL Photograph in The American Museum of Natural History]
Under these circumstances there was nothing to be done but to push on
to Gizhiga, which could be reached, the Cossack said, in two or three
days. The Kamenoi Koraks were ordered to provide a dozen dog-sledges
at once, to carry us on to the next settlement of Shestakóva; and the
whole village was soon engaged, under the Cossack's superintendence,
in transferring our baggage and provisions from the deer-sledges of
the Wandering Koraks to the long, narrow dog-sledges of their settled
relations. Our old drivers were then paid off in tobacco, beads,
and showy calico prints, and after a good deal of quarrelling
and disputing about loads between the Koraks and our new Cossack
Kerrillof, everything was reported ready. Although it was now almost
noon, the air was still keen as a knife; and, muffling up our faces
and heads in great tippets, we took seats on our respective sledges,
and the fierce Kamenoi dogs went careering out of the village and down
the bluff in a perfect cloud of snow, raised by the spiked _oerstels_
of their drivers.
The Major, Dodd, and I were travelling in covered sledges, known to
the Siberians as "pavoskas" (pah-voss'-kahs), and the reckless driving
of the Kamenoi Koraks made us wish, in less than an hour, that we had
taken some other means of conveyance, from which we could escape more
readily in case of accident or overturn. As it was, we were so boxed
up that we could hardly move without assistance. Our _pavoskas_
resembled very much long narrow coffins, covered with sealskin,
mounted on runners, and roofed over at the head by a stiff hood just
large enough to sit up in. A heavy curtain was fastened to the edge
of this top or hood, and in bad weather it could be pulled down and
buttoned so as to exclude the air and flying snow. When we were seated
in these sledges our legs were thrust down into the long coffin-shaped
boxes upon which the drivers sat, and our heads and shoulders
sheltered by the sealskin hoods. Imagine an eight-foot coffin mounted
on runners, and a man sitting up in it with a bushel basket over his
head, and you will have a very correct idea of a Siberian _pavoska_.
Our legs were immovably fixed in boxes, and our bodies so wedged in
with pillows and heavy furs that we could neither get out nor turn
over. In this helpless condition we were completely at our drivers'
mercy; if they chose to let us slide over the edge of a precipice
in the mountains, all we could do was to shut our eyes and trust in
Providence. Seven times in less than three hours my Kamenoi driver,
with the assistance of fourteen crazy dogs and a spiked stick, turned
my _pavoska_ exactly bottom side up, dragged it in that position until
the hood was full of snow, and then left me standing on my head, with
my legs in a box and my face in a snow-drift, while he took a smoke
and calmly meditated upon the difficulties of mountain travel and
the versatility of dog-sledges! It was enough to make Job curse his
grandmother! I threatened him with a revolver, and swore indignantly
by all the evil spirits in the Korak theogony, that if he upset me in
that way again I would kill him without benefit of clergy, and carry
mourning and lamentation to the houses of all his relatives. But it
was of no use. He did not know enough to be afraid of a pistol, and
could not understand my murderous threats. He merely squatted down
upon his heels on the snow, puffed his cheeks out with smoke, and
stared at me in stupid amazement, as if I were some singular species
of wild animal, which exhibited a strange propensity to jabber and
gesticulate in the most ridiculous manner without any apparent cause.
Then, whenever he wanted to ice his sledge-runners, which was as often
as three times an hour, he coolly capsized the _pavoska_, propped it
up with his spiked stick, and I stood on my head while he rubbed the
runners down with water and a piece of deerskin. This finally drove
me to desperation, and I succeeded, after a prolonged struggle, in
getting out of my coffin-shaped box, and seated myself with indignant
feelings and murderous inclinations by the side of my imperturbable
driver. Here my unprotected nose began to freeze again, and my time,
until we reached Shestakóva, was about equally divided between rubbing
that troublesome feature with one hand, holding on with the other, and
picking myself up out of snow-drifts with both.
The only satisfaction I had was in seeing the state of exasperation
to which the Major was reduced by the stupidity and ugliness of his
driver. Whenever he wanted to go on, the driver insisted upon stopping
to take a smoke; when he wanted to smoke, the driver capsized
him skilfully into a snow-drift; when he wanted to walk down a
particularly steep hill, the driver shouted to his dogs and carried
him to the bottom like an avalanche, at the imminent peril of his
life; when he desired to sleep, the driver intimated by impudent
gestures that he had better get out and walk up the side of a
mountain; until, finally, the Major called Kerrillof and made him tell
the Korak distinctly and emphatically, that if he did not obey orders
and show a better disposition, he would be lashed on his sledge,
carried to Gizhiga, and turned over to the Russian governor for
punishment. He paid some attention to this; but all our drivers
exhibited an insolent rudeness which we had never before met with in
Siberia, and which was very provoking. The Major declared that when
our line should be in process of construction and he should have force
enough to do it, he would teach the Kamenoi Koraks a lesson that they
would not soon forget.
We travelled all the afternoon over a broken country, perfectly
destitute of vegetation, which lay between a range of bare white
mountains and the sea, and just before dark reached the settlement of
Shestakóva, which was situated on the coast, at the mouth of a small
wooded stream. Stopping there only a few moments to rest our dogs, we
pushed on to another Korak village called Mikina (Mee-kin-ah), ten
miles farther west, where we finally stopped for the night.
[Illustration: A WOMAN ENTERING A YURT OF THE SETTLED KORAKS]
Mikina was only a copy of Kamenoi on a smaller scale. It had the same
hour-glass houses, the same conical _balagáns_ elevated on stilts, and
the same large skeletons of sealskin _baideras_ (bai'-der-ahs') or
ocean canoes were ranged in a row on the beach. We climbed up
the best-looking _yurt_ in the village--over which hung a dead
disembowelled dog, with a wreath of green grass around his neck--and
slid down the chimney into a miserable room filled to suffocation with
blue smoke, lighted only by a small fire on the earthen floor, and
redolent of decayed fish and rancid oil. Viushin soon had a teakettle
over the fire, and in twenty minutes we were seated like cross-legged
Turks on the raised platform at one end of the _yurt_, munching
hardbread and drinking tea, while about twenty ugly, savage-looking
men squatted in a circle around us and watched our motions. The
settled Koraks of Penzhinsk Gulf are unquestionably the worst,
ugliest, most brutal and degraded natives in all north-eastern
Siberia. They do not number more than three or four hundred, and live
in five different settlements along the seacoast; but they made us
more trouble than all the other inhabitants of Siberia and Kamchatka
together. They led, originally, a wandering life like the other
Koraks; but, losing their deer by some misfortune or disease, they
built themselves houses of driftwood on the seacoast, settled down,
and now gain a scanty subsistence by fishing, catching seals, and
hunting for carcasses of whales which have been killed by American
whaling vessels, stripped of blubber, and then cast ashore by the
sea. They are cruel and brutal in disposition, insolent to everybody,
revengeful, dishonest, and untruthful. Everything which the Wandering
Koraks are they are not. The reasons for the great difference between
the settled and the Wandering Koraks are various. In the first place,
the former live in fixed villages, which are visited very frequently
by the Russian traders; and through these traders and Russian peasants
they have received many of the worst vices of civilisation without any
of its virtues. To this must be added the demoralising influence of
American whalers, who have given the settled Koraks rum and cursed
them with horrible diseases, which are only aggravated by their diet
and mode of life. They have learned from the Russians to lie, cheat,
and steal; and from whalers to drink rum and be licentious. Besides
all these vices, they eat the intoxicating Siberian toadstool in
inordinate quantities, and this habit alone will in time debase and
brutalise any body of men to the last degree. From nearly all these
demoralising influences the Wandering Koraks are removed by the very
nature of their life. They spend more of their time in the open air,
they have healthier and better-balanced physical constitutions, they
rarely see Russian traders or drink Russian vodka, and they are
generally temperate, chaste, and manly in their habits. As a
natural consequence they are better men, morally, physically, and
intellectually, than the settled natives ever will or can be. I have
very sincere and hearty admiration for many Wandering Koraks whom I
met on the great Siberian tundras but their settled relatives are the
worst specimens of men that I ever saw in all northern Asia, from
Bering Strait to the Ural Mountains.