In Search of a Siberian Klondike Part 1

In Search of a Siberian Klondike.

by Homer B. Hulbert.

PREFACE

The following pages are the result of one of those delightful partnerships in which the party of the first part had all the adventures, pleasant and otherwise, while the party of the second part had only to listen to their recital and put them down on paper. The next best thing to seeing these things for one's self is to hear of them from the lips of such a delightful raconteur as Mr. Vanderlip.

Whatever defects may be found in these pages must be laid at the door of the scribe; but whatever is entertaining and instructive is due to the keen observation, the retentive memory, and the descriptive powers of the main actor in the scenes herein depicted.

H. B. H.

SEOUL, KOREA, December, 1902.

IN SEARCH OF A SIBERIAN KLONDIKE IN SEARCH OF A SIBERIAN KLONDIKE

CHAPTER I

OUTFIT AND SUPPLIES

Rumor of gold in northeastern Asia--Plan to prospect through Kamchatka and north to Bering Strait--Steamer _Cosmopolite_--Russian law in the matter of liquor traffic--I make up my party and buy supplies--Korean habits of dress--Linguistic difficulties.

When the rich deposits of gold were found on the Yukon River, and later in the beach sands of Cape Nome, the question naturally arose as to how far these deposits extended. Sensational reports in the papers, and the stories of valuable nuggets being picked up along the adjacent coast of Asia, fired the imagination of the Russians, who hoped, and perhaps not without reason, to repeat the marvelous successes which had been met with on the American side. The existence of valuable gold deposits in other parts of Siberia lent color to the belief that the gold-bearing belt extended across from America to Siberia, and that consequently the Asiatic sh.o.r.es of Bering Sea ought to be well worth prospecting.

No people were ever more alive to the value of mineral deposits than the Russians, and none of them have been keener in the search for gold. As evidence of this we have but to point to the vast, inhospitable wilderness of northern Siberia, where gold has been exploited in widely separated districts and under conditions far more trying than those which have surrounded any similar undertaking, with the exception of the Klondike.

I had left Chittabalbie, the headquarters of the Oriental Consolidated Mining Company,--an American firm that is successfully exploiting the gold deposits of northern Korea,--and being enamoured of a wandering life, I found myself one morning entering the magnificent harbor of Vladivostok, the eastern terminus of the Siberian Railway and the princ.i.p.al Russian distributing center on the Pacific coast.

I believed that as the northeastern extremity of Asia was as yet virgin ground to the prospector, there would be no better opportunity for the practice of my profession than could be found in the town of Vladivostok. The surmise proved correct, and I was almost immediately engaged by a Russian firm to make an extended prospecting tour in Kamchatka, through the territory north of the Okhotsk Sea and along the sh.o.r.es of Bering Sea. This arrangement was made with the full cognizance and approval of the Russian authorities. I carried a United States pa.s.sport. The Russians gave me another at Vladivostok, and through the Governor-general at that place I secured an open letter to all Russian magistrates in eastern Siberia, instructing them to give me whatever help I might need in the procuring of food, sledge-dogs, reindeer, guides, or anything else that I might require. Not only were no obstacles put in my way, but I was treated with the utmost courtesy by these officials, who seemed to realize the possible value of the undertaking.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Map showing the territory covered by Mr. Vanderlip in his search for a Siberian Klondike.]

My instructions were to go first to the town of Petropaulovsk, on the southern point of the peninsula of Kamchatka, and explore the surrounding country for copper. The natives had brought in samples of copper ore, and it was also to be found in the beach sands near Petropaulovsk, as well as in a neighboring island, called Copper Island, where the Russians had opened up a mine some seventy years before, but without success. I was next to go north to Baron Koff Bay, on the eastern coast of the peninsula, near its neck, and examine some sulphur deposits which were supposed to exist in that vicinity and which the government was very desirous of working. From that point I was to cross the neck of the peninsula by reindeer sledge to the head of the eastern branch of the Okhotsk Sea, my objective point being Cape Memaitch, where I was to prospect for gold. It had been reported that on two successive years an American schooner had touched at this point and carried away full cargoes of gold ore to San Francisco. I was then to pa.s.s around the head of the Okhotsk Sea to the important trading town of Ghijiga. This was the headquarters, some thirty years ago, of the Russo-American Telegraph Company, with which Mr. George Kennan was connected and where he spent one winter.

Making this my headquarters, I was to work out in various directions in search of the yellow metal, and finally I was to use my own judgment as to whether I should strike northeast to Bering Strait, following the Stenova range of mountains, or southward to Ola, where a steamship could stop and take me off the following summer. As we shall see, the main points of this plan were carried out, though not in the order here given.

As to the means for reaching Kamchatka I had no choice. There is no royal mail steamship route to these boreal regions. A "tramp"

steamship is annually chartered by the great firm of Kunst and Albers in Vladivostok, and rechartered by them to the Russian government, to take the Governor-general on his annual visit to Saghalien and the trading posts in Kamchatka, and even as far northward as Anadyr, situated inland from Bering Sea on the Anadyr River. At each of these trading posts is a Russian magistrate, or _nitcheilnik_, and a guard of about twenty Cossacks. The annual steamer carries the supplies for these officials and for the traders, as well as the goods which are used in trade. On her return, the steamer brings back the furs of the Russian Chartered Company, who hold all the furring rights of northeastern Siberia.

In the summer of 1898 the steamer _Cosmopolite_ was scheduled to make the annual voyage. She was a German tramp steamer of one thousand tons. Besides the captain there was but one other foreign officer. The crew was Chinese. In addition to the annual mails she carried a full cargo of tea, flour, sugar, tobacco, and the thousand and one articles that make the stock in trade of the agents of the Chartered Company.

She was allowed to carry no wines or liquors, with the exception of sixty bottles of vodka for each trader, and that for his private use only. He is strictly forbidden to sell a drop to the natives. For a first offense he is heavily fined, and for a second he serves a term of penal servitude on the island of Saghalien. This law is in brilliant contrast to the methods of other governments in respect to liquors. Africa and the Pacific Islands bear witness to the fact that, from the standpoint both of humanity and mere commercial caution, the Russian government is immeasurably ahead of other powers in this respect. The sale of intoxicants demoralizes the natives and "kills the goose that lays the golden egg." Of course there is an occasional evasion of the law. The natives of Siberia are pa.s.sionately fond of spirits of any kind, and, having tasted a single gla.s.s, will sell anything they have--even their wives and daughters--for another.

When they are in liquor a single winegla.s.s of vodka will induce them to part with furs which in the London market would bring ten pounds.

Besides this annual steamship, two Russian men-of-war cruise north along the coast, looking for American whalers who bring alcoholic liquors to exchange for skins.

I decided to take with me two Koreans from Vladivostok. They were gold-miners from southern Siberia. Being expert horse-packers and woodsmen and speaking a little Russian, they were sure to be of great use to me. They were named Kim and Pak respectively; both are among the commonest family names in Korea, the Kim family having originated at least as early as 57 B.C. Kim was thirty years old and was possessed of a splendid physique. He could take up four hundred pounds of goods and carry them a quarter of a mile without resting. Koreans are taught from childhood to carry heavy weights on their backs. They use a chair-like frame, called a _jigi_, which distributes the weight evenly over the shoulders and hips and enables them to carry the maximum load with the minimum of fatigue. Kim was always good-natured even under the most discouraging circ.u.mstances, and he was fairly honest. Pak was thirty-eight, tall and thin, but enormously strong. He enjoyed the possession of only one eye, for which reason I promptly dubbed him "d.i.c.k Deadeye." He was a cautious individual, and always "packed" his money in his clothes, sewed up between the various thicknesses of cloth; and whenever he had a bill to pay and could not avoid payment, he would retire to a secluded place, rip himself open, and return with the money in his hand and a mysterious look on his face, as if he had picked the money off the bushes.

Having secured the services of this precious pair, I promptly marched them off to the store of one Enoch Emory to exchange their loose Korean clothes for something more suited to the work in hand. This Enoch Emory, by the way, is a character unique in Siberian history.

When sixteen years old he came out from New England as cabin-boy on a sailing vessel which had been sent by an American company to establish trading stations on the Amur. He left the vessel and went into one of the company's stores. He now "owns" the company and is one of the wealthiest merchants in Siberia. The company operates immense stores in Nikolaievsk, Blagovestchensk, and Khabarovka, with a large receiving store at Vladivostok. Emory always favors American goods and sells immense numbers of agricultural implements and of other things in the manufacture of which America excels. This is the only great American firm in Siberia. Emory makes his home in Moscow and comes out once a year to inspect his stores. He is a typical Yankee of the David Harum stamp.

When my two proteges came to change Korean dress for American it was difficult to decide just where the dress left off and the man began.

The Korean bathing habits are like those of the medieval anchorite, and an undergarment, once donned, is lost to memory. Besides the two Koreans, I engaged the services of a Russian secretary named Nicolai Andrev. He was an old man and not by any means satisfactory, but he was the only one I could get who knew the Russian mining laws and who could make out the necessary papers, in case I should have occasion to stake out claims. As it turned out, he hampered the movements of the party at every turn; he could not stand the hard knocks of the journey, and I was obliged to drop him later at the town of Ghijiga.

His lack of teeth rendered his p.r.o.nunciation of Russian so peculiar that he was no help to me in acquiring the language, which is not easy to learn even under the best of circ.u.mstances. I was also accompanied by a young Russian naturalist named Alexander Michaelovitch Yankoffsky. As this name was quite too complicated for everyday use, I had my choice of paring it down to "Alek," "Mike," or "Yank," and while my loyalty to Uncle Sam would naturally prompt me to use the last of these I forbore and Alek he became. He did not take kindly to it at first, for it is _de rigueur_ to address a Russian by both his first and second names, the latter being his father's name with _vitch_ attached. This was out of the question, however, and he succ.u.mbed to the inevitable.

So our complete party consisted of five men, representing three languages. None of my men knew any English, and I knew neither Russian nor Korean, beyond a few words and phrases. But before two months had elapsed, I had, by the aid of a pocket dictionary, my little stock of Korean words, and a liberal use of pencil and paper, evolved a triglot jargon of English, Korean, and Russian that would have tried the patience of the most charitable philologist.

The steamer was to sail in eight days, and this necessitated quick work in making up my outfit. For guns I picked a twelve-bore German fowling-piece with a rifle-barrel beneath, in order to be equipped for either small or large game without being under the necessity of carrying two guns at once; a Winchester repeating rifle, 45-90; an .88 Mannlicher repeating rifle; and two 45-caliber Colt revolvers. As money is little used among the natives of the far North, it was necessary to lay in a stock of goods to use in trade. For this purpose I secured one thousand pounds of Moharka tobacco. It is put up in four-ounce packages and costs fifteen rouble cents a pound. I procured also two thousand pounds of sugar both for personal use and for trade.

This comes in solid loaves of forty pounds each. Next in order came two thousand pounds of brick-tea. Each brick contains three pounds, and in Hankau, where it is put up, it costs twelve and a half cents a brick. It is made of the coa.r.s.est of the tea leaves, twigs, dust, dirt, and sweepings, and is the kind universally used by the Russian peasantry. I also secured one hundred pounds of beads, a.s.sorted colors, and a goodly stock of needles, together with ten pounds of colored sewing-silks which the natives use to embroider the tops of their boots and the edges of their fur coats. Then came a lot of pipe-bowls at a cent apiece, a.s.sorted "jewelry," silver and bra.s.s rings, silk handkerchiefs, powder and shot, and 44-caliber cartridges. The last mentioned would be useful in dealing with the natives near the coast, who commonly use Winchester rifles. Those further inland use the old-fashioned musket exclusively.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Korean Miners.]

For my own use I laid in a goodly supply of Armour's canned beef, canned fruits, dried fruits, lime-juice, bacon, three thousand pounds of beans, canned tomatoes, tinned b.u.t.ter, coffee, German beef-tea put up in capsules an inch long by half an inch thick (which proved extremely fine), and canned French soups and conserves. Besides these things, and more important than all, I took two tons of black bread--the ordinary hard rye bread of Russia, that requires the use of a prospecting hammer or the b.u.t.t of a revolver to break it up. This was necessary for barter as well as for personal use.

Judging from my experiences in Australia, Burma, Siam, and Korea, as well as from my reading of Nansen, I thought it best not to enc.u.mber myself with any liquors excepting four bottles of brandy, which were carried in the medicine-chest and used for medicinal purposes only. My medical outfit consisted of four main articles, quinine, morphine, iodoform, and cathartic pills. With these four one can cope with almost anything that is likely to happen. The chest contained also bandages, absorbent cotton, mustard leaves, a hot-water bottle, two small surgeon's knives, and a pair of surgical scissors.

After a prolonged search for really good pack-saddles, I concluded that such things were unknown in Siberia; so, calling in a Chinese carpenter, I gave him a model of an Arizona pack-saddle, with instructions to turn out a dozen at the shortest possible notice. I proposed to teach my Koreans how to throw the "diamond hitch," but I found later, to my humiliation, that what the Korean does not know about packing is not worth knowing. Either Kim or Pak could do it quicker and better than I. Two thousand years of this sort of thing have left little for the Korean to learn.

Mining-tools were of course a necessity. Even in Vladivostok I could not secure what I wanted. I therefore took what I could get. I purchased drills, hammers, a crow-bar, a German pump which was guaranteed to pump sand (but which I found later would pump nothing thicker than pure water), a quant.i.ty of blasting powder called "rack-a-rock," picks, shovels, wire, nails, and other sundries. The Russian shovel is an instrument of torture, being merely a flat sheet of iron with a shank for the insertion of a handle, which latter is supposed to be made and fitted on the spot. As there is no bend at the neck of the shovel, the lack of leverage makes it a most unwieldy and exasperating utensil. As for the Russian pick, it has but one point, and in its construction is clumsy beyond belief. Even the Korean picks are better. I also carried a simple blow-pipe outfit, an aneroid, a compa.s.s, gold-screens, and gold-pans, with other necessary appliances for prospecting. These preparations were made very hurriedly, as the _Cosmopolite_ was the only steamer going north during the season.

Tourists sometimes ask if it would not be possible to secure pa.s.sage on this annual steamer and take the trip along the coast to Bering Sea and back. There is nothing to prevent it. The trip of three months, stopping at ten or twelve points along the coast, could be made for about three hundred roubles, a rouble representing fifty cents in gold. But the trip would be of little value or interest, because, in the first place, the natives bring down their furs to the trading stations during the winter, when the ice makes traveling possible, so that one would have very little opportunity of seeing anything of native life, or of securing any of the valuable furs that come out of this region each year. It would be impossible for the tourist to pick up any good ones in summer. Outside of natives and furs, it is difficult to see what interest there could be in such a trip, unless the tourist is studying the habits of mosquitos and midges, in which case he would strike a veritable paradise.

CHAPTER II

SAGHALIEN AND THE CONVICT STATION AT KORSAKOVSK

Departure of the expedition--Arrival at Korsakovsk--Condition of convict station--Freedom allowed prisoners, most of whom are murderers--Wreck of the steamer and loss of outfit--Gold lace and life-preservers--Return to Korsakovsk--Russian table manners--The Russian's nave att.i.tude toward bathing--Some results of the intermarriage of criminals--How Yankee shrewdness saved some confiscated photographs--Pleasant sensations on being shaved by a murderer--Predominance of American goods.

At six o'clock in the afternoon of July 22, 1898, the Governor-general with his wife and suite, resplendent in gold lace and b.u.t.tons, came aboard in the rain. The anchor was heaved up and we pointed southward toward the open sea, which is reached by way of a pa.s.sage from half a mile to three miles wide and twelve miles long. The sh.o.r.e on either side bristles with armaments which, together with the narrowness of the pa.s.sage, make Vladivostok entirely impregnable from the sea.

There is a story, however, which the Russians never like to hear. One morning, after a night of dense fog, as the sun cleared away the mist, four big British men-of-war were found anch.o.r.ed within two hundred yards of the city, and could have blown it skyward without a shot from the batteries, being safe from the line of fire. Since then big guns have been mounted to cover the inner harbor. Reaching open water, we turned to the northeast and set our course toward the southern point of the island of Saghalien, for the Governor-general was to inspect the convict station of Korsakovsk.

Three days of uneventful steaming at ten knots an hour brought the sh.o.r.es of Saghalien above the horizon. We saw a long, curved beach backed by low-lying hills covered with fields and woodland. As the place could boast no harbor, we dropped anchor in the open roadstead a mile from sh.o.r.e. Our whistle had long since waked to life an asthmatic little steam-launch, which soon came alongside. We forthwith invaded her stuffy little cabin and she waddled sh.o.r.eward.

As we approached the rough stone quay, we had our first glimpse of Russian convict life. A gang of prisoners were at work mending the seawall. Some of them wore heavy iron b.a.l.l.s at their ankles, which they had to lift and carry as they walked, else they dragged ponderously along the ground. These b.a.l.l.s would weigh about a hundred pounds apiece. The convicts seemed to be well fed, but were excessively dirty and unkempt. They appeared to be men of the very lowest grade of mental development. It must be remembered that no political convicts are confined on the island of Saghalien. They are kept in the far interior of Siberia, where the chances of escape are much less, and where there is no possibility of contact with others than their own jailers. The convicts on Saghalien are almost all desperate criminals. As there is no such thing as capital punishment in Siberia, Saghalien is the terrestrial Valhalla of these doomed men, a sort of ante-mortem purgatory.

We stepped out upon the quay and walked up into the town. The street was about fifty feet wide, with a neat plank walk on either side. The houses were all log structures, but not the kind we are accustomed to a.s.sociate with that name. The Russian makes the best log house in the world. The logs are squared and carefully fitted together. The windows are mostly double, and the houses, all of one story, are warm enough to be habitable. The streets are lined with small shops and stores.

The entire population outside of the officials consists of convicts, most of whom enjoy almost complete freedom within the limits of the town. It gives one a queer feeling to walk through the streets of a town and know that all the storekeepers, carpenters, blacksmiths, clerks, butchers, and bakers are or have been desperate criminals.

This town of Korsakovsk contains about two thousand people, of whom nine tenths are convicts.