At the same time I worked a great deal for the Russian Geographical
Society in my capacity of secretary to its section of physical
geography.
Great interest was taken then in the exploration of Turkestan and the
Pamírs. Syévertsoff had just returned after several years of travel. A
great zoologist, a gifted geographer, and one of the most intelligent
men I ever came across, he, like so many Russians, disliked writing.
When he had made an oral communication at a meeting of the Society he
could not be induced to write anything beyond revising the reports
of his communication, so that all that has been published under his
signature is very far from doing full justice to the real value of
the observations and the generalizations he had made. This reluctance
to put down in writing the results of thought and observation is
unfortunately not uncommon in Russia. His remarks on the orography of
Turkestan, on the geographical distribution of plants and animals,
and especially on the part played by hybrids in the production of new
species of birds, which I have heard him make, or on the importance of
mutual support in the progressive development of species which I have
found just mentioned in a couple of lines in some report of a meeting,
bore the stamp of more than an ordinary talent and originality; but he
did not possess the exuberant force of exposition in an appropriately
beautiful form, which might have made of him one of the most prominent
men of science of our time.
Miklúkho Makláy, well known in Australia, which towards the end of his
life became the country of his adoption, belonged to the same order
of men--the men who have had so much more to say than they have said
in print. He was a tiny, nervous man, always suffering from malaria,
who had just returned from the coasts of the Red Sea, when I made his
acquaintance. A follower of Hæckel, he had worked a great deal upon
the marine invertebrates in their life surroundings. The Geographical
Society managed next to get him taken on board a Russian man-of-war
to some unknown part of the coast of New Guinea, where he wanted to
study the most primitive savages. Accompanied by one sailor only, he
was left on this inhospitable shore, the inhabitants of which had the
reputation of being cannibals. A hut was built for the two Robinsons,
and they lived eighteen months or more by the side of a native village
on excellent terms with the natives. Always to be straightforward
towards them, and never to deceive them--not even in the most trifling
matters--not even for scientific purposes--was his ethics. On this
point he was most scrupulous. When he was travelling some time later
on in the Malayan peninsula he had with him a native who had entered
into his service on the express condition of never being photographed.
The natives, as everyone knows, consider that something is taken out
of them when their likeness is taken by photography. Makláy, who was
collecting anthropological materials, confessed that one day, when the
man was fast asleep, he was awfully tempted to photograph him, the
more so as he was a typical representative of his tribe and he would
have never known that he had been photographed. But Makláy remembered
his promise and never did it. When he left New Guinea the natives
made him promise to return; and a few years later, although he was
severely ill, he kept his word and did return. This remarkable man has,
however, published only an infinitesimal part of the truly invaluable
observations he had made.
Fédchenko, who had made extensive travels and zoological observations
in Turkestan--in company with his wife, Olga Fédchenko, also a
naturalist--was, as we used to say, a ‘West European.’ He worked hard
to bring out in an elaborated form the results of his observations; but
he was, unfortunately, killed in climbing a mountain in Switzerland.
Glowing with youthful ardour after his journeys in the Turkestan
mountains, and full of confidence in his own powers, he undertook an
ascent without proper guides, and perished in a snowstorm. His wife,
happily, completed the publication of his ‘Travels’ after his death,
and I believe she has now a son who continues the work of his father
and mother.
I also saw a great deal of Prjeválsky, or rather Przewalski, as his
Polish name ought to be spelt, although he himself preferred to appear
as a ‘Russian patriot.’ He was a passionate hunter, and the enthusiasm
with which he made his explorations of Central Asia was almost as much
the result of his desire to hunt all sorts of difficult game--bucks,
wild camels, wild horses, and so on--as of his desire to discover lands
new and difficult to approach. When he was induced to speak of his
discoveries he would soon interrupt his modest descriptions with an
enthusiastic exclamation: ‘But what game there! What hunting! ...’ and
he would describe passionately how he crept such and such a distance
to approach a wild horse within shooting range. No sooner was he back
at St. Petersburg than he schemed a new expedition, and parsimoniously
laid aside all his money, trying to increase it by Stock Exchange
operations, for a new expedition. He was the type of a traveller
by his strong physique and his capacity for enduring the life of a
mountain hunter, full of privations. He delighted in leading such a
life. He made his first journey with only three comrades, and always
kept on excellent terms with the natives. However, as his subsequent
expeditions took a more military character, he began unfortunately to
rely upon the force of his armed escort in preference to a peaceful
intercourse with the natives, and I heard it said in well-informed
quarters that if he had not died at the very start of his Tibet
expedition--so admirably and peacefully conducted after his death by
his companions, Pyevtsóff, Roboróvsky, and Kozlóff--he very probably
would not have returned alive.
There was considerable activity at that time in the Geographical
Society, and numerous were the geographical questions in which our
section, and consequently its secretary, took a lively interest. Most
of them were too technical to be mentioned in this place, but I must
allude to the awakening of interest in navigation, in the fisheries
and trade in the Russian portion of the Arctic Ocean, which took place
in these years. A Siberian merchant and goldminer, Sídoroff, made the
most persevering efforts to awaken that interest. He foresaw that
with a little aid in the shape of naval schools, the exploration of
the Norman Coast and the White Sea, and so on, the Russian fisheries
and Russian navigation could be largely developed. But unfortunately
that little had to be done all through St. Petersburg, and the ruling
portion of that courtly, bureaucratic, red-tapist, literary, artistic,
and cosmopolitan city could not be moved to take an interest in
anything ‘provincial.’ Poor Sídoroff was simply ridiculed for his
efforts. Interest in our far North had to be enforced upon the Russian
Geographical Society from abroad.
In the years 1869-71 the bold Norwegian seal-hunters had quite
unexpectedly opened the Kara Sea to navigation. To our extreme
astonishment we learned one day at the Society that the sea which lies
between the island of Nóvaya Zemlyá and the Siberian coast, and which
we used confidently to describe in our writings as ‘an ice cellar
permanently stocked with ice’, had been entered by a number of small
Norwegian schooners and crossed by them in all directions. Even the
wintering place of the famous Dutchman Barentz, which we believed to
be concealed for ever from the eyes of man by ice-fields hundreds of
years old, had been visited by these adventurous Norsemen.
‘Exceptional seasons and an exceptional state of the ice’ was what our
elder navigators said. But to a few of us it was quite evident that,
with their small schooners and their small crews, the bold Norwegian
hunters, who feel at home amid the ice, had ventured to pierce the
floating ice which usually bars the way to the Kara Sea, while the
commanders of Government ships, hampered by the responsibilities of the
naval service, had never risked doing so.
A general interest in Arctic exploration was awakened by these
discoveries. In fact, it was the seal-hunters who opened the new era of
Arctic enthusiasm which culminated in Nordenskjöld’s circumnavigation
of Asia, in the permanent establishment of the north-eastern passage
to Siberia, in Peary’s discovery of North Greenland, and in Nansen’s
‘Fram’ expedition. Our Russian Geographical Society also began to move,
and a committee was appointed to prepare the scheme of a Russian Arctic
expedition, and to indicate the scientific work that could be done
by it. Specialists undertook to write each of the special scientific
chapters of this report; but, as often happens, a few chapters
only--botany, geology, and meteorology--were ready in time, and I,
as secretary of the committee, had to write the remainder. Several
subjects, such as marine zoology, the tides, pendulum observations, and
terrestrial magnetism, were quite new to me; but the amount of work
which a healthy man can accomplish in a short time, if he strains all
his forces and goes straight to the root of the subject, no one would
suppose beforehand--and so my report was ready.
It concluded by advocating a great Arctic expedition, which would
awaken in Russia a permanent interest in Arctic questions and Arctic
navigation, and in the meantime a reconnoitring expedition on board
a schooner chartered in Norway with its captain, pushing north or
north-east of Nóvaya Zemlyá. This expedition, we suggested, might
also try to reach, or at least to sight, an unknown land which must
be situated at no great distance from Nóvaya Zemlyá. The probable
existence of such a land had been indicated by an officer of the
Russian navy, Baron Schilling, in an excellent but little known paper
on the currents in the Arctic Ocean. When I read this paper, as also
Lütke’s ‘Journey to Nóvaya Zemlyá,’ and made myself acquainted with the
general conditions of this part of the Arctic Ocean, I saw at once that
the supposition must be correct. There must be a land to the north-west
of Nóvaya Zemlyá, and it must reach a higher latitude than Spitzbergen.
The steady position of the ice at the west of Nóvaya Zemlyá, the mud
and stones on it, and various other smaller indications confirmed the
hypothesis. Besides, if such a land were not located there, the ice
current which flows westward from the meridian of Behring Strait to
Greenland (the current of the ‘Fram’s’ drift) would, as Baron Schilling
had truly remarked, reach the North Cape and cover the coasts of
Laponia with masses of ice, just as it covers the northern extremity of
Greenland. The warm current alone--a feeble continuation of the Gulf
Stream--could not have prevented the accumulation of ice on the coasts
of Northern Europe. This land, as is known, was discovered a couple of
years later by the Austrian expedition, and named Franz Josef Land.
The Arctic report had a quite unexpected result for me. I was offered
the leadership of the reconnoitring expedition, on board a Norwegian
schooner chartered for the purpose. I replied, of course, that I had
never been to sea; but I was told that by combining the experience of a
Carlsen or a Johansen with the initiative of a man of science something
valuable could be done; and I should have accepted had not the Ministry
of Finance at this juncture interposed with its veto. It replied that
the Exchequer could not grant the three or four thousand pounds which
would be required for the expedition. Since that time Russia has taken
no part in the exploration of the Arctic seas. The land which we
distinguished through the subpolar mists was discovered by Payer and
Weyprecht, and the archipelagoes which must exist to the north-east of
Nóvaya Zemlyá--I am even more firmly persuaded of it now than I was
then--remain undiscovered.
Instead of joining an Arctic expedition I was sent out by the
Geographical Society on a modest tour in Finland and Sweden, to explore
the glacial deposits; and that journey drifted me in a quite different
direction.
The Russian Academy of Sciences sent out this summer two of its
members--the old geologist General Helmersen and Friedrich Schmidt, the
indefatigable explorer of Siberia--to study the structure of those long
ridges of drift which are known as _åsar_ in Sweden and Finland, and
as _esker_, _kames_, and so on, in the British Isles. The Geographical
Society sent me to Finland for the same purpose. We visited, all three,
the beautiful ridge of Pungaharju and then separated. I worked hard
during this summer. I travelled a great deal in Finland, and crossed
over to Sweden, where I spent many happy hours in the company of A.
Nordenskjöld. Already then (in 1871) he mentioned to me his schemes
of reaching the mouths of the Siberian rivers, and even the Behring
Strait, by the northern route. Returning to Finland I continued my
researches till late in the autumn, and collected a mass of most
interesting observations relative to the glaciation of the country.
But I also thought a great deal during this journey about social
matters, and these thoughts had a decisive influence upon my subsequent
development.
All sorts of valuable materials relative to the geography of Russia
passed through my hands in the Geographical Society, and the idea
gradually came to me of writing an exhaustive physical geography of
that immense part of the world. My intention was to give a thorough
geographical description of the country, basing it upon the main lines
of the surface structure which I began to disentangle for European
Russia; and to sketch in that description the different forms of
economic life which ought to prevail in different physical regions.
Take, for instance, the wide prairies of Southern Russia, so often
visited by droughts and failures of crops. These droughts and failures
must not be treated as accidental calamities: they are as much a
natural feature of that region as its position on a southern slope,
its fertility, and the rest; and the whole of the economic life of the
southern prairies ought to be organized in prevision of the unavoidable
recurrence of periodical droughts. Each region of the Russian Empire
ought to be treated in the same scientific way, as Karl Ritter treated
parts of Asia in his beautiful monographs.
But such a work would have required plenty of time and full freedom for
the writer, and I often thought how helpful to this end it would be
were I to occupy some day the position of secretary to the Geographical
Society. Now, in the autumn of 1871, as I was working in Finland,
slowly moving on foot toward the sea coast along the newly built
railway, and closely watching the spot where the first unmistakable
traces of the former extension of the post-glacial sea would appear, I
received a telegram from the Geographical Society: ‘The council begs
you to accept the position of secretary to the Society.’ At the same
time the outgoing secretary strongly urged me to accept the proposal.
My hopes were realized. But in the meantime other thoughts and other
longings had pervaded my mind. I seriously thought over the reply, and
wired, ‘Most cordial thanks, but cannot accept.’