ARRIVAL OF BARK "PALMETTO"--DRIVEN ASHORE BY GALE--DISCHARGING
CARGO UNDER DIFFICULTIES--NEGRO CREW MUTINIES--LONELY TRIP TO
ANADYRSK--STUPID KORAKS--EXPLOSIVE PROVISIONS
The brief excitement produced by the arrival of the _Varag_ and the
_Clara Bell_ was succeeded by another long, dreary month of waiting,
during which we lived as before in lonely discomfort at the mouth of
the Gizhiga River. Week after week passed away without bringing any
tidings from the missing ships, and at last the brief northern summer
closed, snow appeared upon the mountains, and heavy long-continued
storms announced the speedy approach of another winter. More than
three months had elapsed since the supposed departure of the _Onward_
and _Palmetto_ from San Francisco, and we could account for their
non-appearance only by the supposition that they had either been
disabled or lost at sea. On the 18th of September, Major Abaza
determined to send a messenger to the Siberian capital, to telegraph
the Company for instructions. Left as we were at the beginning of a
second winter without men, tools, or materials of any kind, except
50,000 insulators and brackets, we could do nothing toward the
construction of the line, and our only resource was to make our
unpleasant situation known to the Company. On the 19th, however,
before this resolution could be carried into effect, the long-expected
bark _Palmetto_ arrived, followed closely by the Russian
supply-steamer _Saghalin_, from Nikolaievsk. The latter, being
independent of wind and drawing very little water, had no difficulty
in crossing the bar and gaining the shelter of the river; but the
_Palmetto_ was compelled to anchor outside and await a higher tide.
The weather, which for several days had been cold and threatening,
grew momentarily worse, and on the 22d the wind was blowing a
close-reefed-topsail gale from the south-east, and rolling a
tremendous sea into the unprotected gulf. We felt the most serious
apprehensions for the safety of the unfortunate bark; but as the water
would not permit her to cross the bar at the mouth of the river,
nothing could be done until another high tide. On the 23d, it became
evident that the _Palmetto_--upon which now rested all our hopes--must
inevitably go ashore. She had broken her heaviest anchor, and was
drifting slowly but surely against the rocky, precipitous coast on the
eastern side of the river, where nothing could prevent her from being
dashed to pieces. As there was now no other alternative, Captain
Arthur slipped his cable, got his ship under way, and stood directly
in for the mouth of the river. He could no longer avoid going ashore
somewhere, and it was better to strike on a yielding bar of sand than
to drift helplessly against a black perpendicular wall of rock, where
destruction would be certain. The bark came gallantly in until she
was only half a mile distant from the lighthouse, and then grounded
heavily in about seven feet of water. As soon as she struck she began
pounding with tremendous violence against the bottom while the seas
broke in great white clouds of spray entirely over her quarter-deck.
It did not seem probable, that she would live through the night. As
the tide rose, however, she drove farther and farther in toward the
mouth of the river until, at full flood, she was only a quarter of
a mile distant. Being a very strongly built ship, she suffered less
damage than we had supposed, and, as the tide ran out, she lay high
and dry on the bar, with no more serious injury than the loss of her
false keel and a few sections of her copper sheathing.
As she was lying on her beam-ends, with her deck careened at an angle
of forty-five degrees, it was impossible to hoist anything out of her
hold, but we made preparations at once to discharge her cargo in boats
as soon as another tide should raise her into an upright position.
We felt little hope of being able to save the ship, but it was
all-important that her cargo should be discharged before she should go
to pieces. Captain Tobézin, of the Russian steamer _Saghalin_, offered
us the use of all his boats and the assistance of his crew, and on the
following day we began work with six or seven boats, a large lighter,
and about fifty men. The sea still continued to run very high; the
bark recommenced her pounding against the bottom; the lighter swamped
and sank with a full load about a hundred yards from shore, and a
miscellaneous assortment of boxes, crates, and flour-barrels went
swimming up the river with the tide. Notwithstanding all these
misfortunes, we kept perseveringly at work with the boats as long as
there was water enough around the bark to float them, and by the time
the tide ran out we could congratulate ourselves upon having saved
provisions enough to insure us against starvation, even though the
ship should go to pieces that night. On the 25th, the wind abated
somewhat in violence, the sea went down, and as the bark did not seem
to be seriously injured we began to entertain some hope of saving both
ship and cargo. From the 25th until the 29th of September, all the
boats of the _Saghalin_ and of the _Palmetto_, with the crews of both
vessels, were constantly engaged in transporting stores from the bark
to the shore, and on the 30th at least half of the _Palmetto's_ cargo
was safely discharged. So far as we could judge, there would be
nothing to prevent her from going to sea with the first high tide
in October. A careful examination proved that she had sustained no
greater injury than the loss of her false keel, and this, in the
opinion of the _Saghalin's_ officers, would not make her any the
less seaworthy, or interfere to any extent with her sailing. A new
difficulty, however, presented itself. The crew of the _Palmetto were_
all negroes; and as soon as they learned that Major Abaza intended to
send the bark to San Francisco that fall, they promptly refused to go,
declaring that the vessel was unseaworthy, and that they preferred
to spend the winter in Siberia rather than risk a voyage in her to
America. Major Abaza immediately called a commission of the officers
of the _Saghalin_, and requested them to make another examination
of the bark and give him their opinion in writing as to her
seaworthiness. The examination was made, and the opinion given that
she was entirely fit for a voyage to Petropavlovsk, Kamchatka, and
probably to San Francisco. This decision was read to the negroes,
but they still persisted in their refusal. After warning them of the
consequences of mutiny, the Major ordered their ringleader to be put
in irons, and he was conveyed on board the _Saghalin_ and imprisoned
in the "black hole"; but his comrades still held out. It was of vital
importance that the _Palmetto_ should go to sea with the first high
tide, because the season was already far advanced, and she must
inevitably be wrecked by ice if she remained in the river later than
the middle of October.
Besides this, Major Abaza would be compelled to leave for Yakutsk on
the steamer _Saghalin_, and the latter was now ready to go to sea. On
the afternoon of the 1st, just as the _Saghalin_ was getting up steam
to start, the negroes sent word to the Major that if he would release
the man whom he had caused to be put in irons, they would do their
best to finish unloading the _Palmetto_ and to get her back to San
Francisco. The man was promptly released, and two hours afterwards
Major Abaza sailed on the _Saghalin_ for Okhotsk, leaving us to do the
best we could with our half-wrecked stranded ship and her mutinous
crew.
The cargo of the bark was still only half discharged, and we
continued for the next five days to unload in boats, but it was hard,
discouraging work, as there were only six hours in the twenty-four
during which boats could reach the ship, and those six hours were from
eleven o'clock P.M. to five in the morning. At all other times the
ship lay on her beam-ends, and the water around her was too shallow to
float even a plank. To add, if possible, to our difficulties and to
our anxiety, the weather became suddenly colder, the thermometer fell
to zero, masses of floating ice came in with every tide and tore off
great sheets of the vessel's copper as they drifted past, and the
river soon became so choked up with icy fragments that we were obliged
to haul the boats back and forth with ropes. In spite of weather,
water, and ice, however, the vessel's cargo was slowly but steadily
discharged, and by the 10th of October nothing remained on board
except a few hogsheads of flour, some salt-beef and pork which we
did not want, and seventy-five or a hundred tons of coal. These we
determined to let her carry back to San Francisco as ballast. The
tides were now getting successively higher and higher every day, and
on the 11th the _Palmetto_ floated for the first time in almost three
weeks. As soon as her keel cleared the bar she was swung around into
the channel, head to sea, and moored with light kedge-anchors, ready
for a start on the following day. Since the intensely cold weather of
the previous week, her crew of negroes had expressed no further
desire to spend a winter in Siberia, and, unless the wind should veer
suddenly to the southward, we could see nothing to prevent her from
getting safely out of the river. The wind for once proved favourable,
and at 2 P.M. on the 12th of October the _Palmetto_ shook out her
long-furled courses and topsails, cut the cables of her kedge-anchors,
and with a light breeze from the north-east, moved slowly out into the
gulf. Never was music more sweet to my ears than the hearty "Yo heave
ho!" of her negro crew as they sheeted home the topgallant sails
outside the bar! The bark was safely at sea. She was not a day too
soon in making her escape. In less than a week after her departure,
the river and the upper part of the gulf were so packed with ice that
it would have been impossible for her to move or to avoid total wreck.
The prospects of the enterprise at the opening of the second winter
were more favourable than they had been at any time since its
inception. The Company's vessels, it is true, had been very late in
their arrival, and one of them, the _Onward_, had not come at all;
but the _Palmetto_ had brought twelve or fourteen more men and a full
supply of tools and provisions, Major Abaza had gone to Yakutsk to
hire six or eight hundred native labourers and purchase three hundred
horses, and we hoped that the first of February would find the work
progressing rapidly along the whole extent of the line.
As soon as possible after the departure of the _Palmetto_, I sent
Lieutenant Sandford and the twelve men whom she had brought into the
woods on the Gizhiga River above the settlement, supplied them with
axes, snow-shoes, dog-sledges, and provisions, and set them at work
cutting poles and building houses, to be distributed across the
steppes between Gizhiga and Penzhinsk Gulf. I also sent a small party
of natives under Mr. Wheeler to Yamsk, with five or six sledge-loads
of axes and provisions for Lieutenant Arnold, and despatches to be
forwarded to Major Abaza. For the present, nothing more could be done
on the coast of the Okhotsk Sea, and I prepared to start once more
for the north. We had heard nothing whatever from Lieutenant Bush
and party since the first of the previous May, and we were of course
anxious to know what success he had met with in cutting and rafting
poles down the Anadyr River, and what were his prospects and plans for
the winter. The late arrival of the _Palmetto_ at Gizhiga had led us
to fear that the vessel destined for the Anadyr might also have
been detained and have placed Lieutenant Bush and party in a very
unpleasant if not dangerous situation. Major Abaza had directed me,
therefore, when he sailed for Okhotsk, to go by the first winter road
to Anadyrsk and ascertain whether the Company's vessels had been at
the mouth of the river, and whether Bush needed any assistance. As
there was no longer anything to detain me at Gizhiga, I packed up my
camp-equipage and extra fur clothes, loaded five sledges with tea,
sugar, tobacco, and provisions, and on November 2d started with six
Cossacks for my last journey to the Arctic Circle.
In all my Siberian experience I can recall no expedition which was so
lonely and dismal as this. For the sake of saving transportation, I
had decided not to take any of my American comrades with me; but by
many a silent camp-fire did I regret my self-denying economy, and
long for the hearty laugh and good-humoured raillery of my "fidus
Achates"--Dodd. During twenty-five days I did not meet a civilised
being or speak a word of my native language, and at the end of that
time I should have been glad to talk to an intelligent American dog.
"Aloneness," says Beecher, "is to social life what rests are to
music"; but a journey made up entirely of "aloneness" is no more
entertaining than a piece of music made up entirely of rests--only a
vivid imagination can make anything out of either.
[Illustration: A YURT OF THE SETTLED KORAKS IN MIDWINTER]
At Kuil, on the coast of Penzhinsk Gulf, I was compelled to leave
my good-humoured Cossacks and take for drivers half a dozen stupid,
sullen, shaven-headed Koraks, and from that time I was more lonesome
than ever. I had been able to talk a little with the Cossacks, and
had managed to pass away the long winter evenings by the camp-fire in
questioning them about their peculiar beliefs and superstitions, and
listening to their characteristic stories of Siberian life; but now,
as I could not speak the Korak language, I was absolutely without any
resource for amusement.
My new drivers were the ugliest, most villainous-looking Koraks that
it would have been possible to select in all the Penzhinsk Gulf
settlements, and their obstinacy and sullen stupidity kept me in
a chronic state of ill-humour from the time we left Kuil until we
reached Penzhina. Only by threatening them periodically with a
revolver could I make them go at all. The art of camping out
comfortably in bad weather they knew nothing whatever about, and in
vain did I try to teach them. In spite of all my instructions and
illustrations, they would persist night after night in digging a deep
narrow hole in the snow for a fire, and squatting around the top of it
like frogs around the edge of a well, while I made a camp for myself.
Of the art of cooking they were equally ignorant, and the mystery of
canned provisions they could never fathom. Why the contents of one can
should be boiled, while the contents of another precisely similar
can should be fried--why one turned into soup and another into a
cake--were questions which they gravely discussed night after
night, but about which they could never agree. Astounding were the
experiments which they occasionally tried upon the contents of these
incomprehensible tin boxes. Tomatoes they brought to me fried into
cakes with butter, peaches they mixed with canned beef and boiled for
soup, green corn they sweetened, and desiccated vegetables they broke
into lumps with stones. Never by any accident did they hit upon
the right combination, unless I stood over them constantly and
superintended personally the preparation of my own supper. Ignorant as
they were, however, of the nature of these strange American eatables,
they always manifested a great curiosity to taste them, and their
experiments in this way were sometimes very amusing. One evening, soon
after we left Shestakóva, they happened to see me eating a pickled
cucumber, and as this was something which had never come within the
range of their limited gastronomical experience, they asked me for
a piece to taste. Knowing well what the result would be, I gave the
whole cucumber to the dirtiest, worst-looking vagabond in the party,
and motioned to him to take a good bite. As he put it to his lips his
comrades watched him with breathless curiosity to see how he liked it.
For a moment his face wore an expression of blended surprise, wonder,
and disgust, which was irresistibly ludicrous, and he seemed disposed
to spit the disagreeable morsel out; but with a strong effort he
controlled himself, forced his features into a ghastly imitation
of satisfaction, smacked his lips, declared it was "akhmel
nemélkhin"--very good,--and handed the pickle to his next neighbour.
The latter was equally astonished and disgusted with its unexpected
sourness, but, rather than admit his disappointment and be laughed at
by the others, he also pretended that it was delicious, and passed it
along. Six men in succession went through with this transparent farce
with the greatest solemnity; but when they had all tasted it, and all
been victimised, they burst out into a simultaneous "ty-e-e-e" of
astonishment, and gave free expression to their long-suppressed
emotions of disgust. The vehement spitting, coughing, and washing out
of mouths with snow, which succeeded this outburst, proved that the
taste for pickles is an acquired one, and that man in his aboriginal
state does not possess it. What particularly amused me, however, was
the way in which they imposed on one another. Each individual Korak,
as soon as he found that he had been victimised, saw at once the
necessity of getting even by victimising the next man, and not one of
them would admit that there was anything bad about the pickle until
they had all tasted it. "Misery loves company," and human nature is
the same all the world over. Dissatisfied as they were with the result
of this experiment, they were not at all daunted, but still continued
to ask me for samples of every tin can I opened. Just before we
reached Penzhina, however, a catastrophe occurred which relieved
me from their importunity, and inspired them with a superstitious
reverence for tin cans which no subsequent familiarity could ever
overcome. We were accustomed, when we came into camp at night, to set
our cans into a bed of hot ashes and embers to thaw out, and I had
cautioned my drivers repeatedly not to do this until after the cans
had been opened. I could not of course explain to them that the
accumulation of steam would cause the cans to burst; but I did tell
them that it would be "atkin"--bad--if they did not make a hole in the
cover before putting the can on the fire. One evening, however, they
forgot or neglected to take this precaution, and while they were all
squatting in a circle around the fire, absorbed in meditation, one of
the cans suddenly blew up with a tremendous explosion, set free an
immense cloud of steam, and scattered fragments of boiling hot mutton
in every direction. Had a volcano opened suddenly under the camp-fire,
the Koraks could not have been more dismayed. They had not time to get
up and run away, so they rolled over backward with their heels in the
air, shouted "Kammuk!"--"The Devil!"--and gave themselves up for lost.
My hearty laughter finally reassured them, and made them a little
ashamed of their momentary panic; but from that time forward they
handled tin cans as if they were loaded percussion shells, and could
never again be induced to taste a morsel of their contents.
Our progress toward Anadyrsk after we left the coast of the Okhotsk
Sea was very slow, on account both of the shortness of the days, and
the depth and softness of the freshly fallen snow. Frequently, for ten
or fifteen miles at a stretch, we were compelled to break a road on
snow-shoes for our heavily loaded sledges, and even then our tired
dogs could hardly struggle through the soft powdery drifts. The
weather, too, was so intensely cold that my mercurial thermometer,
which indicated only -23°, was almost useless. For several days the
mercury never rose out of the bulb, and I could only estimate the
temperature by the rapidity with which my supper froze after being
taken from the fire. More than once soup turned from a liquid to a
solid in my hands, and green corn froze to my tin plate before I could
finish eating it.
On the fourteenth day after leaving Gizhiga we reached the native
settlement of Penzhina, two hundred versts from Anadyrsk. Ours was
the first arrival at that place since the previous May, and the whole
population of the village--men, women, children, and dogs--turned out
_en masse_ to meet us, with the most joyful demonstrations. Six months
had elapsed since they last saw a strange face or heard from the
outside world, and they proceeded to fire a salute from half a dozen
rusty old muskets, as a faint expression of their delight.
I had confidently expected when I left Gizhiga that I should meet
somewhere on the road a courier with news and despatches from Bush;
and I was very much disappointed and a little alarmed when I reached
Penzhina to find that no one had arrived at that place from Anadyrsk,
and that nothing had been heard from our party since the previous
spring. I felt a presentiment that something was wrong, because Bush
had been expressly directed to send a courier to Gizhiga by the first
winter road, and it was now late in November.
On the following day my worst anticipations were realised. Late in the
evening, as I was sitting in the house of one of the Russian peasants
drinking tea, the cry was raised that "Anadyrski yaydoot"--"Some one
is coming from Anadyrsk"; and running hastily out of the house I met
the long-haired Anadyrsk priest just as he stepped from his sledge in
front of the door. My first question of course was, "Where's Bush?"
But my heart sank as the priest replied: "Bokh yevo znaiet"--"God
only knows." "But where did you see him last?--Where did he spend the
summer?" I inquired. "I saw him last at the mouth of the Anadyr River,
in July," said the priest, "and since that time nothing has been heard
from him." A few more questions brought out the whole dismal story.
Bush, Macrae, Harder, and Smith had gone down the Anadyr River in June
with a large raft of station-houses, intended for erection along its
banks. After putting up these houses at necessary points, they had
gone on in canoes to Anadyr Bay, to await the arrival of the Company's
vessels from San Francisco. Here the priest had joined them and had
lived with them several weeks; but late in July their scanty supply
of provisions had given out, the expected ships had not come, and the
priest returned to the settlement, leaving the unfortunate Americans
in a half-starving condition at the mouth of the river. Since that
time nothing had been heard from them, and, as the priest mournfully
said, "God only knew" where they were and what had happened to them.
This was bad news, but it was not the worst. In consequence of the
entire failure of the salmon fisheries of the Anadyr River that
season, a terrible famine had broken out at Anadyrsk, part of the
inhabitants and nearly all the dogs had died of starvation, and the
village was almost deserted. Everybody who had dogs enough to draw a
sledge had gone in search of the Wandering Chukchis, with whom they
could live until another summer; and the few people who were left in
the settlement were eating their boots and scraps of reindeerskin to
keep themselves alive. Early in October a party of natives had gone in
search of Bush and his comrades on dog-sledges, but more than a month
had now elapsed since their departure and they had not yet returned.
In all probability they had starved to death on the great desolate
plains of the lower Anadyr, as they had been compelled to start with
only ten days' provisions, and it was doubtful whether they would meet
Wandering Chukchis who could supply them with more.
Such was the first news which I heard from the Northern District--a
famine at Anadyrsk, Bush and party absent since July, and eight
natives and dog-sledges missing since the middle of October. I did
not see how the state of affairs could be any worse, and I spent a
sleepless night in thinking over the situation and trying to decide
upon some plan of operations. Much as I dreaded another journey to the
mouth of the Anadyr in midwinter, I saw no way of avoiding it. The
fact that nothing had been heard from Bush in four months proved that
he had met with some misfortune, and it was clearly my duty to go to
Anadyr Bay in search of him if there was a possibility of doing so. On
the following morning, therefore, I began buying a supply of dog-food,
and before night I had collected 2000 dried fish and a quantity of
seals' blubber, which I felt sure would last five dog teams at least
forty days. I then sent for the chief of a band of Wandering Koraks
who happened to be encamped near Penzhina, and prevailed upon him to
drive his herd of reindeer to Anadyrsk, and kill enough to supply the
starving inhabitants with food until they could get other help. I also
sent two natives back to Gizhiga on dog-sledges, with a letter to the
Russian governor, apprising him of the famine, and another to Dodd,
directing him to load all the dog-sledges he could get with provisions
and send them at once to Penzhina, where I would make arrangements for
their transportation to the famine-stricken settlement.
I started myself for Anadyrsk on November 20th with five of the best
men and an equal number of the best dog-teams in Penzhina. These men
and dogs I intended to take with me to the mouth of the Anadyr River
if I heard nothing from Bush before I reached Anadyrsk.
[Illustration: Box for holding cups and teapot]