YURT ON THE TOPOLOFKA--THE VALLEY OF TEMPESTS--RIVER OF THE
LOST--STORM BOUND--ESCAPE BY THE ICE-FOOT--A SLEEPLESS NIGHT--LEET
REPORTED DEAD--YAMSK AT LAST
"Kennan! Oh, Kennan! Turn out! It's day light!" A sleepy grunt and a
still more drowsy "Is it?" from the pile of furs lying on the rough
plank floor betrayed no very lively interest on the part of the
prostrate figure in the fact announced, while the heavy, long-drawn
breathing which soon succeeded this momentary interruption proved that
more active measures must be taken to recall him from the land of
dreams. "I say! Kennan! Wake up! Breakfast has been ready this
half-hour." The magic word "breakfast" appealed to a stronger feeling
than drowsiness, and, thrusting my head out from beneath its covering
of furs, I took a sleepy, blinking view of the situation, endeavouring
in a feeble sort of way to recollect where I was and how I came there.
A bright crackling fire of resinous pine boughs was burning on the
square log altar in the centre of the hut, radiating a fierce heat to
its remotest corner, and causing the perspiration to stand in great
beads on its mouldy logs and rough board ceiling. The smoke rose
lazily through the square hole in the roof toward the white,
solemn-looking stars, which winked soberly at us between the dark
overhanging branches of the larches. Mr. Leet, who acted as the Soyer
of our campaign, was standing over me with a slice of bacon impaled
on a bowie-knife in one hand, and a poker in the other--both of which
insignia of office he was brandishing furiously, with the intention
of waking me up more effectually. His frantic gesticulations had the
desired result. With a vague impression that I had been shipwrecked on
the Cannibal Islands and was about to be sacrificed to the tutelary
deities, I sprang up and rubbed my eyes until I gathered together my
scattered senses. Mr. Leet was in high glee. Our travelling companion,
the postilion, had manifested for several days an inclination to shirk
work and allow us to do all the road-breaking, while he followed
comfortably in our tracks, and by this strategic manoeuvre had
incurred Mr. Leet's most implacable hatred. The latter, therefore, had
waked the unfortunate man up before he had been asleep five hours, and
had deluded him into the belief that the aurora borealis was the first
flush of daylight. He had accordingly started off at midnight and was
laboriously breaking a road up the steep mountain side through three
feet of soft snow, relying upon Mr. Leet's promise that we would be
along before sunrise. At five o'clock, when I got up, the voices of
the postilion's men could still be heard shouting to their exhausted
dogs near the summit of the mountain. We all breakfasted as slowly as
possible, in order to give them plenty of time to break a road for us,
and did not finally start until after six o'clock.
It was a beautifully clear, still morning when we crossed the mountain
above the _yurt_, and wound around through bare open valleys, among
high hills, toward the seacoast. The sun had risen over the eastern
hill-tops, and the snow glittered as if strewn with diamonds, while
the distant peaks of the Viliga, appeared--
"Bathed in the tenderest purple of distance
Tinted and shadowed by pencils of air"--
as calm and bright in their snowy majesty as if the suspicion of
a storm had never attached to their smooth white slopes and sharp
pinnacles. The air, although intensely cold, was clear and bracing;
and as our dogs bounded at a gallop over the hard, broken road, the
exhilarating motion caused the very blood in our veins
"--to dance
Blithe as the sparkling wine of France."
About noon we came out of the mountains upon the sea beach and
overtook the postilion, who had stopped to rest his tired dogs. Our
own being fresh, we again took the lead, and drew rapidly near to the
valley of the Viliga.
I was just mentally congratulating myself upon our good fortune in
having clear weather to pass this dreaded point, when my attention was
attracted by a curious white cloud or mist, extending from the mouth
of the Viliga ravine far out over the black open water of the Okhotsk
Sea. Wondering what it could be, I pointed it out to our guide, and
inquired if it were fog. His face clouded up with anxiety as he
glanced at it, and replied laconically, "Viliga dooreet," or "The
mountains are fooling." This oracular response did not enlighten me
very much, and I demanded an explanation. I was then told, to my
astonishment and dismay, that the curious white mist which I had taken
to be fog was a dense driving cloud of snow, hurled out of the mouth
of the ravine by a storm, which had apparently just begun in the upper
gorges of the Stanavoi range. It would be impossible, our guide said,
to cross the valley, and dangerous to attempt it until the wind should
subside. I could not see either the impossibility or the danger, and
as there was another _yurt_ or shelter-house on the other side of the
ravine, I determined to go on and make the attempt at least to cross.
Where we were the weather was perfectly calm and still; a candle
would have burned in the open air without flickering; and I could
not realise the tremendous force of the hurricane which, only a mile
ahead, was vomiting snow out of the mouth of that ravine and carrying
it four miles to sea. Seeing that Leet and I were determined to cross
the valley, our guide shrugged his shoulders expressively, as much as
to say, "You will soon regret your haste," and we went on.
As we gradually approached the white curtain of mist, we began to feel
sharp intermittent puffs of wind and little whirlwinds of snow, which
increased constantly in strength and frequency as we drew nearer and
nearer to the mouth of the ravine. Our guide once more remonstrated
with us upon the folly of going deliberately into such a storm as this
evidently would be; but Leet laughed him to scorn, declaring in broken
Russian that he had seen storms in the Sierra Nevadas to which this
was not a circumstance--"Bolshoi storms, you bet!" But in five minutes
more Mr. Leet himself was ready to admit that this storm on the Viliga
would not compare unfavourably with anything of the kind that he had
ever seen in California. As we rounded the end of a protecting bluff
on the edge of the ravine, the gale burst upon us in all its fury,
blinding and suffocating us with dense clouds of driving snow, which
blotted out instantly the sun and the clear blue sky, and fairly
darkened the whole earth. The wind roared as it sometimes does through
the cordage of a ship at sea. There was something almost supernatural
in the suddenness of the change from bright sunshine and calm still
air to this howling, blinding tempest, and I began to feel doubtful
myself as to the practicability of crossing the valley. Our guide
turned with a despairing look to me, as if reproaching me with my
obstinacy in coming into the storm against his advice, and then urged
on with shouts and blows his cowering dogs. The sockets of the poor
brutes' eyes were completely plastered up with snow, and out of many
of them were oozing drops of blood; but blind as they were they still
struggled on, uttering at intervals short mournful cries, which
alarmed me more than the roaring of the storm. In a moment we were at
the bottom of the ravine; and before we could check the impetus of our
descent we were out on the smooth glare ice of the "Propashchina," or
"River of the Lost," and sweeping rapidly down toward the open water
of the Okhotsk Sea, only a hundred yards below. All our efforts to
stop our sledges were at first unavailing against the force of the
wind, and I began to understand the nature of the danger to which our
guide had alluded. Unless we could stop our sledges before we should
reach the mouth of the river we must inevitably be blown off the ice
into three or four fathoms of water. Precisely such a disaster had
given the river its ominous name, Leet and the Cossack Paderin, who
were alone upon their respective sledges, and who did not get so far
from the shore in the first place, finally succeeded with the aid of
their spiked sticks in getting back; but the old guide and I were
together upon one sledge, and our voluminous fur clothes caught so
much wind that our spiked sticks would not stop or hold us, and
our dogs could not keep their feet. Believing that the sledge must
inevitably be blown into the sea if we both clung to it, I finally
relinquished my hold and tried to stop myself by sitting down, and
then by lying down flat upon my face on the ice; but all was of no
avail; my slippery furs took no hold of the smooth, treacherous
surface, and I drifted away even faster than before. I had already
torn off my mittens, and as I slid at last over a rough place in
the ice I succeeded in getting my finger-nails into the little
corrugations of the surface and in stopping my perilous drift; but I
hardly dared breathe lest I should lose my hold. Seeing my situation,
Leet slid to me the sharp iron-spiked _oerstel_, which is used to
check the speed of a sledge in descending hills, and by digging this
into the ice at short intervals I crept back to shore, only a short
distance above the open water at the mouth of the river, into which my
mittens had already gone. Our guide was still sliding slowly and at
intervals down stream, but Paderin went to his assistance with another
_oerstel_, and together they brought his sledge once more to land. I
would have been quite satisfied now to turn back and get out of the
storm; but our guide's blood was up, and cross the valley he would if
we lost all our sledges in the sea. He had warned us of the danger and
we had insisted upon coming on; we must now take the consequences.
As it was evidently impossible to cross the river at this point, we
struggled up its left bank in the teeth of the storm almost half a
mile, until we reached a bend which put land between us and the open
water. Here we made a second attempt, and were successful. Crossing a
low ridge on the west side of the "Propashchina," we reached another
small stream known as the Viliga, at the foot of the Viliga Mountains.
Along this there extended a narrow strip of dense timber, and in this
timber, somewhere, stood the _yurt_ of which we were in search. Our
guide seemed to find the road by a sort of instinct, for the drifting
clouds of snow hid even our-leading dogs from sight, and all that we
could see of the country was the ground on which we stood. About an
hour before dark, tired and chilled to the bone, we drew up before
a little log hut in the woods, which our guide said was the Viliga
_yurt_. The last travellers who had occupied it had left the chimney
hole open, and it was nearly filled with snow, but we cleared it out
as well as we could, built a fire on the ground in the centre, and,
regardless of the smoke, crouched around it to drink tea. We had seen
nothing of the postilion since noon, and hardly thought it possible
that he could reach the _yurt_; but just as it began to grow dark we
heard the howling of his dogs in the woods, and in a few moments he
made his appearance. Our party now numbered nine men--two Americans,
three Russians, and four Koraks--and a wild-looking crowd it was, as
it squatted around the fire in that low smoke-blackened hut, drinking
tea and listening to the howling wind. As there was not room enough
for all to sleep inside the _yurt_, the Koraks camped out-doors on the
snow, and before morning were half buried in a drift.
[Illustration: THE YURT IN THE "STORMY GORGE OF THE VILIGA" From a
painting by George A. Frost]
All night the wind roared a deep, hoarse bass through the forest which
sheltered the _yurt_, and at daylight on the following morning there
was no abatement of the storm. We knew that it might blow without
intermission in that ravine for two weeks, and we had only four days'
dog-food and provisions left. Something must be done. The Viliga
Mountains which blocked up the road to Yamsk were cut by three gaps
or passes, all of which opened into the valley, and in clear weather
could be easily found and crossed. In such a storm, however, as the
one which had overtaken us, a hundred passes would be of no avail,
because the drifting snow hid everything from sight at a distance of
thirty feet, and we were as likely to go up the side of a peak as up
the right pass, even if we could make our dogs face the storm at all,
which was doubtful. After breakfast we held a council of war for the
purpose of determining what it would be best to do. Our guide thought
that our best course would be to go down the Viliga River to the
coast, and make our way westward, if possible, along what he called
the "pripaika"--a narrow strip of sea ice generally found at the
water's edge under the cliffs of a precipitous coast line. He could
not promise us that this route would be practicable, but he had heard
that there was a beach for at least a part of the distance between the
Viliga and Yamsk, and he thought that we might make our way along this
beach and the _pripaika_, or ice-foot, to a ravine, twenty-five or
thirty miles farther west, which would lead us up on the tundra beyond
the mountains. We could at least try this shelf of ice under the
cliffs, and if we should find it impassable we could return, while if
we went into the mountains in such a blizzard we might never get back.
The plan suggested by the guide seemed to me a bold and attractive one
and I decided to adopt it. Making our way down the river, in clouds of
flying snow, we soon reached the coast, and started westward, along a
narrow strip of ice-encumbered beach, between the open water of the
sea and a long line of black perpendicular cliffs, one hundred and
fifty to three hundred feet in height. We were making very fair
progress when we found ourselves suddenly confronted by an entirely
unexpected and apparently insurmountable obstacle. The beach, as far
as we could see to the westward, was completely filled up from the
water's edge to a height of seventy-five or a hundred feet by enormous
drifts of snow, which had been gradually accumulating there throughout
the winter, and which now masked the whole face of the precipice, and
left no room for passage between it and the sea. These snow-drifts,
by frequent alternations of warm and cold weather, had been rendered
almost as hard and slippery as ice, and as they sloped upward toward
the tops of the cliffs at an angle of seventy-five or eighty degrees,
it was impossible to stand upon them without first cutting places for
the feet with an axe. Along the face of this smooth, snowy escarpment,
which rose directly out of two or three fathoms of water, lay our only
route to Yamsk. The prospect of getting over it without meeting with
some disaster seemed very faint, for the slightest caving away of
the snow would tumble us all into the open sea; but as there was no
alternative, we fastened our dogs to cakes of ice, distributed our
axes and hatchets, threw off our heavy fur coats, and began cutting
out a road.
We worked hard all day, and by six o'clock in the evening had cut a
deep trench three feet in width along the face of the escarpment to a
point about a mile and a quarter west of the mouth of the Viliga. Here
we were again stopped, however, by a difficulty infinitely worse than
any that we had surmounted. The beach, which had previously extended
in one unbroken line along the foot of the cliffs, here suddenly
disappeared, and the mass of snow over which we had been cutting a
road came to an abrupt termination. Unsupported from beneath, the
whole escarpment had caved away into the sea, leaving a gap of open
water about thirty-five feet in width, out of which rose the black
perpendicular wall of the coast. There was no possibility of getting
across without the assistance of a pontoon bridge. Tired and
disheartened, we were compelled to camp on the slope of the escarpment
for the night, with no prospect of being able to do anything in the
morning except return with all possible speed to the Viliga, and
abandon the idea of reaching Yamsk altogether.
A wilder, more dangerous location for a camp than that which we
occupied could hardly be found in Siberia, and I watched with the
greatest uneasiness the signs of the weather as it began to grow dark.
The huge sloping snow-drift upon which we stood rose directly out of
the water, and, so far as we knew, it might have no other foundation
than a narrow strip of ice. If so, the faintest breeze from any
direction except north would roll in waves high enough to undermine
and break up the whole escarpment, and either precipitate us with
an avalanche of snow into the open sea, or leave us clinging like
barnacles to the bare face of the precipice, seventy-five feet above
it. Neither alternative was pleasant to contemplate, and I determined,
if possible, to find a place of greater security. Leet, with his usual
recklessness, dug himself out what he called a "bedroom" in the snow
about fifty feet above the water, and promised me "a good night's
sleep" if I would accept his hospitality and share his cave; but under
the circumstances I thought best to decline. His "bedroom," bed, and
bedding might all tumble into the sea before morning, and his "good
night's sleep" be indefinitely prolonged. Going back a short distance
in the direction of the Viliga, I finally discovered a place where a
small stream had once fallen over the summit of the cliff, and had
worn out a steep narrow channel in its face. In the rocky, uneven bed
of this little ravine the natives and I stretched ourselves out for
the night, our bodies inclined at an angle of forty-five degrees--our
heads, of course, up-hill.
If the reader can imagine himself camping out on the steep sloping
roof of a great cathedral, with a precipice a hundred feet high over
his head and three or four fathoms of open water at his feet, he will
be able, perhaps, to form some idea of the way in which we spent that
dismal night.
With the first streak of dawn we were up. While we were gloomily
making preparations to return to the Viliga, one of the Koraks who
had gone to take a last look at the gap of open water came hurriedly
climbing back, shouting joyfully, "Mozhno perryékat, mozhno
perryékat!"--"It is possible to cross." The tide, which had risen
during the night, had brought in two or three large cakes of broken
ice, and had jammed them into the gap in such a manner as to make a
rude bridge. Fearing, however, that it would not support a very heavy
weight, we unloaded all our sledges, carried the loads, sledges, and
dogs across separately, loaded up again on the other side, and
went on. The worst of our difficulties was past. We still had some
road-cutting to do through occasional snow-drifts; but as we went
farther and farther to the westward the beach became wider and higher,
the ice disappeared, and by night we were thirty versts nearer to our
destination. The sea on one side, and the cliffs on the other, still
hemmed us in; but on the following day we succeeded in making our
escape through the valley of the Kánanaga River.
The twelfth day of our journey found us on a great steppe called the
Málkachán, only thirty miles from Yamsk; and although our dog-food and
provisions were both exhausted, we hoped to reach the settlement
late in the night. Darkness came on, however, with another blinding
snow-storm, in which we again lost our way; and, fearing that we might
drive over the edges of the precipices into the sea by which the
steppe was bounded on the east, we were finally compelled to stop. We
could find no wood for a fire; but even had we succeeded in making a
fire, it would have been instantly smothered by the clouds of snow
which the furious wind drove across the plain. Spreading down our
canvas tent upon the ground, and capsizing a heavy dog-sledge upon one
edge of it to hold it fast, we crawled under it to get away from the
suffocating snow. Lying there upon our faces, with the canvas flapping
furiously against our backs, we scraped our bread-bag for the last few
frozen crumbs which remained, and ate a few scraps of raw meat which
Mr. Leet found on one of the sledges. In the course of fifteen or
twenty minutes we noticed that the flappings of the canvas were
getting shorter and shorter, and that it seemed to be tightening
across our bodies, and upon making an effort to get out we found that
we were fastened down. The snow had drifted in such masses upon the
edges of the tent and had packed there with such solidity that it
could not be moved, and after trying once or twice to break out we
concluded to lie still and make the best of our situation. As long as
the snow did not bury us entirely, we were better off under the tent
than anywhere else, because we were protected from the wind. In half
an hour the drift had increased to such an extent that we could no
longer turn over, and our supply of air was almost entirely cut off.
We must either get out or be suffocated. I had drawn my sheath-knife
fifteen minutes before in expectation of such a crisis, and as it was
already becoming difficult to breathe, I cut a long slit in the canvas
above my head and we crawled out. In an instant eyes and nostrils were
completely plastered up with snow, and we gasped for breath as if the
stream of a fire-engine had been turned suddenly in our faces. Drawing
our heads and arms into the bodies of our _kukhlankas_, we squatted
down upon the snow to wait for daylight. In a moment I heard Mr. Leet
shouting down into the neck-hole of my fur coat, "What would our
mothers say if they could see us now?" I wanted to ask him how this
would compare with a gale in his boasted Sierra Nevadas, but he was
gone before I could get my head out, and I heard nothing more from him
that night. He went away somewhere in the darkness and squatted down
alone upon the snow, to suffer cold, hunger and anxiety until
morning. For more than ten hours we sat in this way on that desolate
storm-swept plain, without fire, food, or sleep, becoming more and
more chilled and exhausted, until it seemed as if daylight would never
come.
Morning dawned at last through gray drifting clouds of snow, and,
getting up with stiffened limbs, we made feeble attempts to dig out
our buried sledges. But for the unwearied efforts of Mr. Leet we
should hardly have succeeded, as my hands and arms were so benumbed
with cold that I could not hold an axe or a shovel, and our drivers,
frightened and discouraged, seemed unable to do anything. By Mr.
Leet's individual exertions the sledges were dug out and we started.
His brief spasm of energy was the last effort of a strong will to
uphold a sinking and exhausted body, and in half an hour he requested
to be tied on his sledge. We lashed him on from head to foot with
sealskin thongs, covered him up with bearskins, and drove on. In about
an hour his driver, Padarin, came back to me with a frightened look in
his face, and said that Mr. Leet was dead; that he had shaken him and
called him several times, but could get no reply. Alarmed and shocked,
I sprang from my sledge and ran up to the place where he lay, shouted
to him, shook him by the shoulder, and tried to uncover his head,
which he had drawn down into the body of his fur coat. In a moment, to
my great relief, I heard his voice, saying that he was all right and
could hold out, if necessary, until night; that he had not answered
Padarin because it was too much trouble, but that I need not be
alarmed about his safety; and then I thought he added something about
"worse storms in the Sierra Nevadas," which convinced me that he
was far from being used up yet. As long as he could insist upon the
superiority of Californian storms, there was certainly hope.
Early in the afternoon we reached the Yamsk River and, after wandering
about for an hour or two in the timber, came upon one of Lieutenant
Arnold's Yakut working-parties and were conducted to their camp, only
a few miles from the settlement. Here we obtained some rye bread and
hot tea, warmed our benumbed limbs, and partially cleared the snow out
of our clothing. When I saw Mr. Leet undressed I wondered that he had
not died. While squatting out on the ground during the storm of the
previous night, snow in great quantities had blown in at his neck,
had partially melted with the warmth of his body, and had then frozen
again in a mass of ice along his whole spine, and in that condition he
had lived to be driven twenty versts. Nothing but a strong will and
the most intense vitality enabled him to hold out during these last
six dismal hours. When we had warmed, rested, and dried ourselves at
the camp-fire of the Yakuts, we resumed our journey, and late in the
afternoon we drove into the settlement of Yamsk, after thirteen
days of harder experience than usually falls to the lot of Siberian
travellers, Mr. Leet so soon recovered his strength and spirits that
three days afterwards he started for Okhotsk, where the Major wished
him to take charge of a gang of Yakut labourers. The last words that I
remember to have ever heard him speak were those which he shouted to
me in the storm and darkness of that gloomy night on the Málkachán
steppe: "What would our mothers say if they could see us now?" The
poor fellow was afterwards driven insane by excitements and hardships
such as these which I have described, and probably to some extent
by this very expedition, and finally committed suicide by shooting
himself at one of the lonely Siberian settlements on the coast of the
Okhotsk Sea.
I have described somewhat in detail this trip to Yamsk because it
illustrates the darkest side of Siberian life and travel. It is not
often that one meets with such an experience, or suffers so many
hardships in any one journey; but in a country so wild and sparsely
populated as Siberia, winter travel is necessarily attended with more
or less suffering and privation.
[Illustration: Iron Skin Scraper]