Tent Life in Siberia Part 12

"We're Gizhigintsi, also going to Penzhina; what you coming down the river for?"

"We're trying to find the village, devil take it; we've been travelling all night and can't find anything!"

Upon this Dodd burst into a loud laugh, and as the mysterious sledges drew nearer we recognised in their drivers three of our own men who had separated from us soon after dark, and who were now trying to reach Penzhina by going down the river toward the Okhotsk Sea. We could hardly convince them that the village did not lie in that direction. They finally turned back with us, however, and some time after midnight we drove into Penzhina, roused the sleeping inhabitants with a series of unearthly yells, startled fifty or sixty dogs into a howling protest against such untimely disturbance, and threw the whole settlement into a general uproar.

In ten minutes we were seated on bearskins before a warm fire in a cozy Russian house, drinking cup after cup of fragrant tea, and talking over our night's adventures.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Ladle made of Caribou antler]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Woman's knife for cutting meat]

CHAPTER XXV

PENZHINA--POSTS FOR ELEVATED ROAD--FIFTY-THREE BELOW ZERO--TALKED OUT--ASTRONOMICAL LECTURES--EATING PLANETS--THE HOUSE OF A PRIEST

The village of Penzhina is a little collection of log houses, flat-topped _yurts_, and four-legged _balagans,_ situated on the north bank of the river which bears its name, about half-way between the Okhotsk Sea and Anadyrsk. It is inhabited princ.i.p.ally by _meshchans_ (mesh-chans'), or free Russian peasants, but contains also in its scanty population a few "Chuances" or aboriginal Siberian natives, who were subjugated by the Russian Cossacks in the eighteenth century, and who now speak the language of their conquerors and gain a scanty subsistence by fishing and trading in furs. The town is sheltered on the north by a very steep bluff about a hundred feet in height, which, like all hills in the vicinity of Russian settlements, bears upon its summit a Greek cross with three arms. The river opposite the settlement is about a hundred yards in width, and its banks are heavily timbered with birch, larch, poplar, willow, and aspen. Owing to warm springs in its bed, it never entirely freezes over at this point, and in a temperature of 40 below zero gives off dense clouds of steam which hide the village from sight as effectually as a London fog.

We remained at Penzhina three days, gathering information about the surrounding country and engaging men to cut poles for our line. We found the people to be cheerful, good-natured, and hospitable, and disposed to do all in their power to further our plans; but of course they had never heard of a telegraph, and could not imagine what we were going to do with the poles which we were so anxious to have cut.

Some said that we intended to build a wooden road from Gizhiga to Anadyrsk, so that it would be possible to travel back and forth in the summer; others contended with some show of probability that two men, even if they _were_ Americans, could not construct a wooden road, six hundred versts long, and that our real object was to build some sort of a huge house. When questioned as to the use of this immense edifice, however, the advocates of the house theory were covered with confusion, and could only insist upon the physical impossibility of a road, and call upon their opponents to accept the house or suggest something better. We succeeded in engaging sixteen able-bodied men, however, to cut poles for a reasonable compensation, gave them the required dimensions--twenty-one feet long and five inches in diameter at the top--and instructed them to cut as many as possible, and pile them up along the banks of the river.

I may as well mention here, that when I returned from Anadyrsk in March I went to look at the poles, 500 in number, which the Penzhina men had cut. I found, to my great astonishment, that there was hardly one of them less than twelve inches in diameter at the top, and that the majority were so heavy and unwieldy that a dozen men could not move them. I told the natives that they would not do, and asked why they had not cut smaller ones, as I had directed. They replied that they supposed I wanted to build some kind of a road on the tops of these poles, and they knew that poles only five inches in diameter would not be strong enough to hold it up! They had accordingly cut trees large enough to be used as pillars for a state-house. They still lie there, buried in arctic snows; and I have no doubt that many years hence, when Macaulay's New Zealander shall have finished sketching the ruins of St. Paul's and shall have gone to Siberia to complete his education, he will be entertained by his native drivers with stories of how two crazy Americans once tried to build an elevated railroad from the Okhotsk Sea to Bering Strait. I only hope that the New Zealander will write a book, and confer upon the two crazy Americans the honour and the immortality which their labours deserved, but which the elevated railroad failed to give.

We left Penzhina on the 31st day of December for Anadyrsk. After travelling all day, as usual, over a barren steppe, we camped for the night near the foot of a white isolated peak called Nalgim, in a temperature of 53 below zero. It was New Year's Eve; and as I sat by the fire in my heaviest furs, covered from head to foot with frost, I thought of the great change which a single year had made in my surroundings. New Year's Eve, 1864, I had spent in Central America, riding on a mule from Lake Nicaragua to the Pacific coast, through a magnificent tropical forest. New Year's Eve, 1865, found me squatting on a great snowy plain near the Arctic Circle, trying, in a temperature of 53 below zero, to eat up my soup before it froze solidly to the plate. Hardly could there have been a greater contrast.

Our camp near Mount Nalgim abounded in trailing-pine and we made a fire which sent up a column of ruddy flame ten feet in height; but it did not seem to have much influence upon the atmosphere. Our eyelids froze together while we were drinking tea; our soup, taken hot from the kettle, froze in our tin plates before we could possibly finish eating it; and the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of our fur coats were covered with a white rime, while we sat only a few feet from a huge blazing camp-fire. Tin plates, knives, and spoons burned the bare hand when touched, almost exactly as if they were red-hot; and water, spilled on a little piece of board only fourteen inches from the fire, froze solid in less than two minutes. The warm bodies of our dogs gave off clouds of steam; and even the bare hand, wiped perfectly dry, exhaled a thin vapour when exposed to the air. We had never before experienced so low a temperature; but we suffered very little except from cold feet, and Dodd declared that with a good fire and plenty of fat food he would not be afraid to try fifteen degrees lower. The greatest cause of suffering in Siberia is wind. Twenty degrees below zero, with a fresh breeze, is very trying; and a gale of wind, with a temperature of -40, is almost unendurable. Intense cold of itself is not particularly dangerous to life. A man who will eat a hearty supper of dried fish and tallow, dress himself in a Siberian costume, and crawl into a heavy fur bag, may spend a night out-doors in a temperature of -70 without any serious danger; but if he is tired out, with long travel, if his clothes are wet with perspiration, or if he has not enough to eat, he may freeze to death with the thermometer at zero.

The most important rules for an arctic traveller are: to eat plenty of fat food; to avoid over-exertion and night journeys; and never to get into a profuse perspiration by violent exercise for the sake of temporary warmth. I have seen Wandering Chukchis in a region dest.i.tute of wood and in a dangerous temperature, travel all day with aching feet rather than exhaust their strength by trying to warm them in running. They would never exercise except when it was absolutely necessary to keep from freezing. As a natural consequence, they were almost as fresh at night as they had been in the morning, and if they failed to find wood for a fire, or were compelled by some unforeseen exigency to travel throughout the twenty-four hours, they had the strength to do it. An inexperienced traveller under the same circ.u.mstances, would have exhausted all his energy during the day in trying to keep perfectly warm; and at night, wet with perspiration and tired out by too much violent exercise, he would almost inevitably have frozen to death.

For two hours after supper, Dodd and I sat by the fire, trying experiments to see what the intense cold would do. About eight o'clock the heavens became suddenly overcast with clouds, and in less than an hour the thermometer had risen nearly thirty degrees. Congratulating ourselves upon this fortunate change in the weather, we crawled into our fur bags and slept away as much as we could of the long arctic night.

Our life for the next few days was the same monotonous routine of riding, camping, and sleeping with which we were already so familiar.

The country over which we pa.s.sed was generally bleak, desolate, and uninteresting; the weather was cold enough for discomfort, but not enough so to make outdoor life dangerous or exciting; the days were only two or three hours in length and the nights were interminable.

Going into camp early in the afternoon, when the sun disappeared, we had before us about twenty hours of darkness, in which we must either amuse ourselves in some way, or sleep. Twenty hours' sleep for any one but a Rip Van Winkle was rather an over-dose, and during at least half that time we could think of nothing better to do than sit around the camp-fire on bearskins and talk. Ever since leaving Petropavlovsk, talking had been our chief amus.e.m.e.nt; and although it had answered very well for the first hundred nights or so, it was now becoming a little monotonous and our mental resources were running decidedly low.

We could not think of a single subject about which we knew anything that had not been talked over, criticised, and discussed to the very bone. We had related to each other in detail the whole history of our respective lives, together with the lives of all our ancestors as far back as we knew anything about them. We had discussed in full every known problem of Love, War, Science, Politics, and Religion, including a great many that we knew nothing whatever about, and had finally been reduced to such topics of conversation as the size of the army with which Xerxes invaded Greece and the probable extent of the Noachian deluge. As there was no possibility of arriving at any mutually satisfactory conclusion with regard to either of these important questions, the debate had been prolonged for twenty or thirty consecutive nights and the questions finally left open for future consideration. In cases of desperate emergency, when all other topics of conversation failed, we knew that we could return to Xerxes and the Flood; but these subjects had been dropped by the tacit consent of both parties soon after leaving Gizhiga, and were held in reserve as a "dernier ressort" for stormy nights in Korak _yurts_. One night as we were encamped on a great steppe north of Shestakova, the happy idea occurred to me that I might pa.s.s away these long evenings out of doors, by delivering a course of lectures to my native drivers upon the wonders of modern science. It would amuse me and at the same time instruct them--or at least I hoped it would, and I proceeded at once to put the plan into execution. I turned my attention first to astronomy. Camping out on the open steppe, with no roof above except the starry sky, I had every facility for the ill.u.s.tration of my subject, and night after night as we travelled northward I might have been seen in the centre of a group of eager natives, whose swarthy faces were lighted up by the red blaze of the camp-fire, and who listened with childish curiosity while I explained the phenomena of the seasons, the revolution of the planets around the sun, and the causes of a lunar eclipse. I was compelled, like John Phoenix, to manufacture my own orrery, and I did it with a lump of frozen, tallow to represent the earth, a chunk of black bread for the moon, and small pieces of dried meat for the lesser planets. The resemblance to the heavenly bodies was not, I must confess, very striking; but by making believe pretty hard we managed to get along. A spectator would have been amused could he have seen with what grave solemnity I circulated the bread and tallow in their respective orbits, and have heard the long-drawn exclamations of astonishment from the natives as I brought the bread into eclipse behind the lump of tallow. My first lecture would have been a grand success if my native audience had only been able to understand the representative and symbolical character of the bread and tallow. The great trouble was that their imaginative faculties were weak. They could not be made to see that bread stood for the moon and tallow-for the earth, but persisted in regarding them as so many terrestrial products having an intrinsic value of their own. They accordingly melted up the earth to drink, devoured the moon whole, and wanted another lecture immediately. I endeavoured to explain to them that these lectures were intended to be _as_tronomical, not _gas_tronomical, and that eating and drinking up the heavenly bodies in this reckless way was very improper.

Astronomical science I a.s.sured them did not recognise any such eclipses as those produced by swallowing the planets, and however satisfactory such a course might be to them, it was very demoralising to my orrery. Remonstrances had very little effect, and I was compelled to provide a new sun, moon, and earth for every, lecture. It soon became evident to me that these astronomical feasts were becoming altogether too popular, for my audience thought nothing of eating up a whole solar system every night, and planetary material was becoming scarce. I was finally compelled, therefore, to use stones and s...o...b..a.l.l.s to represent celestial bodies, instead of bread and tallow, and from that time the interest in astronomical phenomena gradually abated and the popularity of my lectures steadily declined until I was left without a single hearer.

The short winter day of three hours had long since closed and the night was far advanced when after twenty-three days of rough travel we drew near our final destination--the _ultima Thule_ of Russian civilisation. I was lying on my sledge nearly buried in heavy furs and half asleep, when the distant barking of dogs announced our approach to the village of Anadyrsk. I made a hurried attempt to change my thick fur _torba.s.sa_ and overstockings for American boots, but was surprised in the very act by the drawing up of my sledge before the house of the Russian priest, where we intended to stop until we could make arrangements for a house of our own.

A crowd of curious spectators had gathered about the door to see the wonderful Amerikanse about whom they had heard, and prominent in the centre of the fur-clad group stood the priest, with long flowing hair and beard, dressed in a voluminous black robe, and holding above his head a long tallow candle which flared wildly in the cold night air.

As soon as I could disenc.u.mber my feet of my overstockings I alighted from my sledge, amid profound bows and "zdrastvuitias" from the crowd, and received a hearty welcome from the patriarchal priest. Three weeks roughing it in the wilderness had not, I fancy, improved my personal appearance, and my costume would have excited a sensation anywhere except in Siberia. My face, which was not over clean, was darkened by three weeks' growth of beard; my hair was in confusion and hung in long ragged locks over my forehead, and the fringe of s.h.a.ggy black bearskin around my face gave me a peculiarly wild and savage expression of countenance. The American boots which I had hastily drawn on as we entered the village were all that indicated any previous acquaintance with civilisation. Replying to the respectful salutations of the Chuances, Yukagirs, and Russian Cossacks who in yellow fur hoods and potted deerskin coats crowded about the door, I followed the priest into the house. It was the second dwelling worthy the name of house which I had entered in twenty-two days, and after the smoky Korak _yurts_ of Kuil, Mikina, and Shestakova, it seemed to me to be a perfect palace. The floor was carpeted with soft, dark deerskins in which one's feet sank deeply at every step; a blazing fire burned in a neat fireplace in one corner, and flooded the room with cheerful light; the tables were covered with bright American table-cloths; a tiny gilt taper was lighted before a ma.s.sive gilt shrine opposite the door; the windows were of gla.s.s instead of the slabs of ice and the smoky fish bladders to which I had become accustomed; a few ill.u.s.trated newspapers lay on a stand in one corner, and everything in the house was arranged with a taste and a view to comfort which were as welcome to a tired traveller as they were unexpected in this land of desolate steppes and uncivilised people.

Dodd, who was driving his own sledge, had not yet arrived; but from the door we could hear a voice in the adjoining forest singing "Won't I be glad when I get out of the wilderness, out o' the wilderness, out o' the wilderness," the musician being entirely unconscious that he was near the village, or that his melodiously expressed desire to "get out o' the wilderness" was overheard by any one else. My Russian was not extensive or accurate enough to enable me to converse very satisfactorily with the priest, and I was heartily glad when Dodd _got_ out of the wilderness, and appeared to relieve my embarra.s.sment.

He didn't look much better than I did; that was one comfort. I drew mental comparisons as soon as he entered the room and convinced myself that one looked as much like a Korak as the other, and that neither could claim precedence in point of civilisation on account of superior elegance of dress. We shook hands with the priest's wife--a pale slender lady with light hair and dark eyes,--made the acquaintance of two or three pretty little children, who fled from us in affright as soon as they were released, and finally seated ourselves at the table to drink tea.

Our host's cordial manner soon put us at our ease, and in ten minutes Dodd was rattling off fluently a highly coloured account of our adventures and sufferings, laughing, joking, and drinking vodka with the priest, as unceremoniously as if he had known him for ten years instead of as many minutes. That was a peculiar gift of Dodd's, which I often used to envy. In five minutes, with the a.s.sistance of a little vodka, he would break down the ceremonious reserve of the severest old patriarch in the whole Greek Church, and completely carry him by storm; while I could only sit by and smile feebly, without being able to say a word. Great is "the gift o' gab."

After an excellent supper of _shchi_ (shchee) or cabbage-soup, fried cutlets, white bread and b.u.t.ter, we spread our bearskins down on the floor, undressed ourselves for the second time in three weeks, and went to bed. The sensation of sleeping without furs, and with uncovered heads, was so strange, that for a long time we lay awake, watching the red flickering firelight on the wall, and enjoying the delicious warmth of soft, fleecy blankets, and the luxury of unconfined limbs and bare feet.

CHAPTER XXVI

ANADYRSK--AN ARCTIC OUTPOST--SEVERE CLIMATE CHRISTMAS SERVICES AND CAROLS--A SIBERIAN BALL--MUSIC AND REFRESHMENTS--EXCITED DANCING HOLIDAY AMUs.e.m.e.nTS

The four little Russian and native villages, just south of the Arctic Circle, which are collectively known as Anadyrsk, form the last link in the great chain of settlements which extends in one almost unbroken line from the Ural Mountains to Bering Strait. Owing to their peculiarly isolated situation, and the difficulties and hardships of travel during the only season in which they are accessible, they had never, previous to our arrival, been visited by any foreigner, with the single exception of a Swedish officer in the Russian service, who led an exploring party from Anadyrsk toward Bering Strait in the winter of 1859-60. Cut off, during half the year, from all the rest of the world, and visited only at long intervals by a few half-civilised traders, this little quadruple village was almost as independent and self-sustained as if it were situated on an island in the midst of the Arctic Ocean. Even its existence, to those who had no dealings with it, was a matter of question. It was founded early in the eighteenth century, by a band of roving, adventurous Cossacks, who, having conquered nearly all the rest of Siberia, pushed through the mountains from Kolyma to the Anadyr, drove out the Chukchis, who resisted their advance, and established a military post on the river, a few versts above the site of the present settlement. A desultory warfare then began between the Chukchis and the Russian invaders, which lasted, with varying success, for many years. During a considerable part of the time Anadyrsk was garrisoned by a force of six hundred men and a battery of artillery; but after the discovery and settlement of Kamchatka it sank into comparative unimportance, the troops were mostly withdrawn, and it was finally captured by the Chukchis and burned. During the war which resulted in the destruction of Anadyrsk, two native tribes, Chuances and Yukagirs, who had taken sides with the Russians, were almost annihilated by the Chukchis, and were never able afterward to regain their distinct tribal individuality. The few who were left lost all their reindeer and camp-equipage, and were compelled to settle down with their Russian allies and gain a livelihood by hunting and fishing. They have gradually adopted Russian customs and lost all their distinctive traits of character; and in a few years not a single living soul will speak the languages of those once powerful tribes. By the Russians, Chuances, and Yukagirs, Anadyrsk was finally rebuilt, and became in time a trading-post of considerable importance. Tobacco, which had been introduced by the Russians, soon acquired great popularity with the Chukchis; and for the sake of obtaining this highly prized luxury they ceased hostilities, and began making yearly visits to Anadyrsk for the purpose of trade. They never entirely lost, however, a certain feeling of enmity toward the Russians who had invaded their territory, and for many years would have no dealings with them except at the end of a spear. They would hang a bundle of furs or a choice walrus tooth upon the sharp polished blade of a long Chukchi lance, and if a Russian trader chose to take it off and suspend in its place a fair equivalent in the shape of tobacco, well and good; if not, there was no trade.

This plan guaranteed absolute security against fraud, for there was not a Russian in all Siberia who dared to cheat one of these fierce savages, with the blade of a long lance ten inches from his breast bone. Honesty was emphatically the best policy, and the moral suasion of a Chukchi spear developed the most disinterested benevolence in the breast of the man who stood at the sharp end. The trade which was thus established still continues to be a source of considerable profit to the inhabitants of Anadyrsk, and to the Russian merchants who come there every year from Gizhiga.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHUKCHIS a.s.sEMBLING AT ANADYRSK FOR THE WINTER FAIR]

The four small villages which compose the settlement, and which are distinctively known as "Pokorukof," "Osolkin," "Markova," and "The Crepast," have altogether a population of perhaps two hundred souls.

The central village, called Markova, is the residence of the priest and boasts a small rudely built church, but in winter it is a dreary place. Its small log houses have no windows other than thick slabs of ice cut from the river; many of them are sunken in the ground for the sake of greater warmth, and all are more or less buried in snow. A dense forest of larch, poplar, and aspen surrounds the town, so that the traveller coming from Gizhiga sometimes has to hunt for it a whole day, and if he be not familiar with the net-work of channels into which the Anadyr River is here divided, he may not find it at all.

The inhabitants of all four settlements divide their time in summer between fishing, and hunting the wild reindeer which make annual migrations across the river in immense herds. In winter they are generally absent with their sledges, visiting and trading with bands of Wandering Chukchis, going with merchandise to the great annual fair at Kolyma, and hiring their services to the Russian traders from Gizhiga. The Anadyr River, in the vicinity of the village and for a distance of seventy-five miles above, is densely wooded with trees from eighteen to twenty-four inches in diameter, although the lat.i.tude of the upper portion of it is 66 N. The climate is very severe; meteorological observations which we made at Markova in February, 1867, showed that on sixteen days in that month the thermometer went to -40, on eight days it went below -50, five days below -60, and once to -68. This was the lowest temperature we ever experienced in Siberia. The changes from intense cold to comparative warmth are sometimes very rapid. On February 18th, at 9 A.M., the thermometer stood at -52, but in twenty-seven hours it had risen seventy-three degrees and stood at +21. On the 21st it marked +3 and on the 22d -49, an equally rapid change in the other direction. Notwithstanding the climate, however, Anadyrsk is as pleasant a place to live as are nine tenths of the Russian settlements in north-eastern Siberia, and we enjoyed the novelty of our life there in the winter of 1866 as much as we had enjoyed any part of our previous Siberian experience.

The day which succeeded our arrival we spent in resting and making ourselves as presentable as possible with the limited resources afforded by our sealskin trunks.

Thursday, January 6th, N.S. was the Russian Christmas, and we all rose about four hours before daylight to attend an early service in the church. Everybody in the house was up; a fire burned brightly in the fireplace; gilded tapers were lighted before all the holy pictures and shrines in our room, and the air was fragrant with incense. Out of doors there was not yet a sign of daybreak. The Pleiades were low down in the west, the great constellation of Orion had begun to sink, and a faint aurora was streaming up over the tree-tops north of the village.

From every chimney rose a column of smoke and sparks, which showed that the inhabitants were all astir. We walked over to the little log church as quickly as possible, but the service had already commenced when we entered and silently took our places in the crowd of bowing worshippers. The sides of the room were lined with pictures of patriarchs and Russian saints, before which were burning long wax candles wound spirally with strips of gilded paper. Clouds of blue fragrant incense rolled up toward the roof from swinging censers, and the deep intonation of the gorgeously attired priest contrasted strangely with the high soprano chanting of the choir. The service of the Greek Church is more impressive, if possible, than that of the Romish; but as it is conducted in the old Slavonic language, it is almost wholly unintelligible. The priest is occupied, most of the time, in gabbling rapid prayers which n.o.body can understand; swinging a censer, bowing, crossing himself, and kissing a huge Bible, which I should think would weigh thirty pounds. The administration of the sacrament and the ceremonies attending the transubstantiation of the bread and wine are made very effective. The most beautiful feature in the whole service of the Greco-Russian Church is the music. No one can listen to it without emotion, even in a little log chapel far away in the interior of Siberia. Rude as it may be in execution, it breathes the very spirit of devotion; and I have often stood through a long service of two or three hours, for the sake of hearing a few chanted psalms and prayers. Even the tedious, rapid, and mixed-up jabbering of the priest is relieved at short intervals by the varied and beautifully modulated "Gospodi pameelui" [G.o.d, have mercy!] and "Padai Gospodin" [Grant, O Lord!] of the choir. The congregation stands throughout even the longest service, and seems to be wholly absorbed in devotion. All cross themselves and bow incessantly in response to the words of the priest, and not unfrequently prostrate themselves entirely, and reverently press their foreheads and lips to the floor.

To a spectator this seems very curious. One moment he is surrounded by a crowd of fur-clad natives and Cossacks, who seem to be listening quietly to the service; then suddenly the whole congregation goes down upon the floor, like a platoon of infantry under the fire of a masked battery, and he is left standing alone in the midst of nearly a hundred prostrate forms. At the conclusion of the Christmas morning service the choir burst forth into a jubilant hymn, to express the joy of the angels over the Saviour's birth; and amid the discordant jangling of a chime of bells, which hung in a little log tower at the door, Dodd and I made our way out of the church, and returned to the house to drink tea. I had just finished my last cup and lighted a cigarette, when the door suddenly opened, and half a dozen men, with grave, impa.s.sive countenances, marched in in single file, stopped a few paces from the holy pictures in the corner, crossed themselves devoutly in unison, and began to sing a simple but sweet Russian melody, beginning with the words, "Christ is born." Not expecting to hear Christmas carols in a little Siberian settlement on the Arctic Circle, I was taken completely by surprise, and could only stare in amazement--first at Dodd, to see what he thought about it, and then at the singers. The latter, in their musical ecstasy, seemed entirely to ignore our presence, and not until they had finished did they turn to us, shake hands, and wish us a merry Christmas. Dodd gave each of them a few kopecks, and with repeated wishes of merry Christmas, long life, and much happiness to our "High Excellencies," the men withdrew to visit in turn the other houses of the village. One band of singers came after another, until at daylight all the younger portion of the population had visited our house, and received our kopecks. Some of the smaller boys, more intent upon the acquisition of coppers than they were upon the solemnity of the ceremony, rather marred its effect by closing up their hymn with "Christ is born, gim'me some money!"

but most of them behaved with the utmost propriety, and left us greatly pleased with a custom so beautiful and appropriate. At sunrise all the tapers were extinguished, the people donned their gayest apparel, and the whole village gave itself up to the unrestrained enjoyment of a grand holiday. Bells jangled incessantly from the church tower; dog-sledges, loaded with girls, went dashing about the streets, capsising into snow-drifts and rushing furiously down hills amid shouts of laughter; women in gay flowery calico dresses, with their hair tied up in crimson silk handkerchiefs, walked from house to house, paying visits of congratulation and talking over the arrival of the distinguished American officers; crowds of men played football on the snow, and the whole settlement presented an animated, lively appearance.

On the evening of the third day after Christmas, the priest gave in our honour a grand Siberian ball, to which all the inhabitants of the four villages were invited, and for which the most elaborate preparations were made. A ball at the house of a priest on Sunday night struck me as implying a good deal of inconsistency and I hesitated about sanctioning so plain a violation of the fourth commandment. Dodd, however, proved to me in the most conclusive manner that, owing to difference in time, it was Sat.u.r.day in America and not Sunday at all; that our friends at that very moment were engaged in business or pleasure and that our happening to be on the other side of the world was no reason why we should not do what our antipodal friends were doing at exactly the same time. I was conscious that this reasoning was sophistical, but Dodd mixed me up so with his "longitude," "Greenwich time," "Bowditch's _Navigator_," "Russian Sundays" and "American Sundays," that I was hopelessly bewildered, and could not have told for my life whether it was today in America or yesterday, or when a Siberian Sunday did begin. I finally concluded that as the Russians kept Sat.u.r.day night, and began another week at sunset on the Sabbath, a dance would perhaps be sufficiently innocent for that evening. According to Siberian ideas of propriety it was just the thing.

A part.i.tion was removed in our house, the floor made bare, the room brilliantly illuminated with candles stuck against the wall with melted grease, benches placed around three sides of the house for the ladies, and about five o'clock the pleasure-seekers began to a.s.semble.

Rather an early hour perhaps for a ball, but it seemed a very long time after dark. The crowd which soon gathered numbered about forty, the men being all dressed in heavy fur _kukhlankas,_ fur trousers, and fur boots, and the ladies in thin white muslin and flowery calico prints. The costumes of the respective s.e.xes did not seem to harmonise very well, one being light and airy enough for an African summer, while the other seemed suitable for an arctic expedition in search of Sir John Franklin. However, the general effect was very picturesque.

The orchestra which was to furnish the music consisted of two rudely made violins, two _ballalaikas_ (bal-la-lai'-kahs) or triangular native guitars with two strings each, and a huge comb prepared with a piece of paper in a manner familiar to all boys. Feeling a little curiosity to see how an affair of this kind would be managed upon Siberian principles of etiquette, I sat quietly in a sheltered corner and watched the proceedings. The ladies, as fast as they arrived, seated themselves in a solemn row along a wooden bench at one end of the room, and the men stood up in a dense throng at the other.

Everybody was preternaturally sober. No one smiled, no one said anything; and the silence was unbroken save by an occasional rasping sound from an asthmatic fiddle in the orchestra, or a melancholy toot, toot, as one of the musicians tuned his comb. If this was to be the nature of the entertainment, I could not see any impropriety in having it on Sunday. It was as mournfully suggestive as a funeral. Little did I know, however, the capabilities of excitement which were concealed under the sober exteriors of those natives. In a few moments a little stir around the door announced refreshments, and a young Chuancee brought round and handed to me a huge wooden bowl, holding about four quarts of raw frozen cranberries. I thought it could not be possible that I was expected to eat four quarts of frozen cranberries! but I took a spoonful or two, and looked to Dodd for instructions. He motioned to me to pa.s.s them along, and as they tasted like acidulated hailstones, and gave me a toothache, I was very glad to do so.

The next course consisted of another wooden bowl, filled with what seemed to be white pine shavings, and I looked at it in perfect astonishment. Frozen cranberries and pine shavings were the most extraordinary refreshments that I had ever seen--even in Siberia; but I prided myself upon my ability to eat almost anything, and if the natives could stand cranberries and shavings I knew I could. What seemed to be white pine shavings I found upon trial to be thin shavings of raw frozen fish--a great delicacy among the Siberians, and one with which, under the name of "struganini" (stroo-gan-nee'-nee), I afterward became very familiar. I succeeded in disposing of these fish-shavings without any more serious result than an aggravation of my toothache. They were followed by white bread and b.u.t.ter, cranberry tarts, and cups of boiling hot tea, with which the supper finally ended. We were then supposed to be prepared for the labours of the evening; and after a good deal of preliminary sc.r.a.ping and tuning the orchestra struck up a lively Russian dance called "kapalooshka." The heads and right legs of the musicians all beat time emphatically to the music, the man with the comb blew himself red in the face, and the whole a.s.sembly began to sing. In a moment one of the men, clad in a spotted deerskin coat and buckskin trousers, sprang into the centre of the room and bowed low to a lady who sat upon one end of a long crowded bench. The lady rose with a graceful courtesy and they began a sort of half dance half pantomime about the room, advancing and retiring in perfect time to the music, crossing over and whirling swiftly around, the man apparently making love to the lady, and the lady repulsing all his advances, turning away and hiding her face with her handkerchief. After a few moments of this dumb show the lady retired and another took her place; the music doubled its energy and rapidity, the dancers began the execution of a tremendous "break-down," and shrill exciting cries of "Heekh! Heekh! Heekh!

Vallai-i-i! Ne fstavai-i-i!" resounded from all parts of the room, together with terrific tootings from the comb and the beating of half a hundred feet on the bare planks. My blood began to dance in my veins with the contagious excitement. Suddenly the man dropped down upon his stomach on the floor at the feet of his partner, and began jumping around like a huge broken-legged gra.s.shopper upon his elbows and the ends of his toes! This extraordinary feat brought down the house in the wildest enthusiasm, and the uproar of shouting and singing drowned all the instruments except the comb, which still droned away like a Scottish bagpipe in its last agonies! Such singing, such dancing, and such excitement, I had never before witnessed. It swept away my self-possession like the blast of a trumpet sounding a charge. At last, the man, after dancing successively with all the ladies in the room, stopped apparently exhausted--and I have no doubt that he was--and with the perspiration rolling in streams down his face, went in search of some frozen cranberries to refresh himself after his violent exertion. To this dance, which is called the "Russki"

(roo'-ski), succeeded another known as the "Cossack waltz," in which Dodd to my great astonishment promptly joined. I knew I could dance anything he could; so, inviting a lady in red and blue calico to partic.i.p.ate, I took my place on the floor. The excitement was perfectly indescribable, when the two Americans began revolving swiftly around the room; the musicians became almost frantic in their endeavours to play faster, the man with the comb blew himself into a fit of coughing and had to sit down, and a regular tramp, tramp, tramp, from fifty or sixty feet, marked time to the music, together with encouraging shouts of "Vallai! Amerikansi! Heekh! Heekh! Heekh!"

and the tumultuous singing of the whole crazy mult.i.tude. The pitch of excitement to which these natives work themselves up in the course of these dances is almost incredible, and it has a wonderfully inspiriting effect even upon a foreigner. Had I not been temporarily insane with unnatural enthusiasm, I should never have made myself ridiculous by attempting to dance that Cossack waltz. It is regarded as a great breach of etiquette in Siberia, after once getting upon the floor, to sit down until you have danced, or at least offered to dance, with all the ladies in the room; and if they are at all numerous, it is a very fatiguing sort of amus.e.m.e.nt. By the time Dodd and I finished we were ready to rush out-doors, sit down on a snow-bank, and eat frozen fish and cranberry hailstones by the quart.

Our whole physical system seemed melting with fervent heat.

As an ill.u.s.tration of the esteem with which Americans are regarded in that benighted settlement of Anadyrsk, I will just mention that in the course of my Cossack waltz I stepped accidentally with my heavy boot upon the foot of a Russian peasant. I noticed that his face wore for a moment an expression of intense pain, and as soon as the dance was over, I went to him, with Dodd as interpreter, to apologise. He interrupted me with a profusion of bows, protested that it didn't hurt him _at all_, and declared, with an emphasis which testified to his sincerity, that he regarded it as an honour to have his toe stepped on by an American! I had never before realised what a proud and enviable distinction I enjoyed in being a native of our highly favoured country! I could stalk abroad into foreign lands with a reckless disregard for everybody's toes, and the full a.s.surance that the more toes I stepped on the more honour I would confer upon benighted foreigners, and the more credit I would reflect upon my own benevolent disposition! This was clearly the place for unappreciated Americans to come to; and if any young man finds that his merits are not properly recognised at home, I advise him in all seriousness to go to Siberia, where the natives will regard it as an honour to have him step on their toes.

Dances interspersed with curious native games and frequent refreshments of frozen cranberries prolonged the entertainment until two o'clock, when it finally broke up, having lasted nine hours. I have described somewhat in detail this dancing party because it is the princ.i.p.al amus.e.m.e.nt of the semi-civilised inhabitants of all the Russian settlements in Siberia, and shows better than anything else the careless, happy disposition of the people.

Throughout the holidays the whole population did nothing but pay visits, give tea parties, and amuse themselves with dancing, sleigh-riding, and playing ball. Every evening between Christmas and New Year, bands of masqueraders dressed in fantastic costumes went around with music to all the houses in the village and treated the inmates to songs and dances. The inhabitants of these little Russian settlements in north-eastern Siberia are the most careless, warmhearted, hospitable people in the world, and their social life, rude as it is, partakes of all these characteristics. There is no ceremony or affectation, no "putting on of style" by any particular cla.s.s. All mingle unreservedly together and treat each other with the most affectionate cordiality, the men often kissing one another when they meet and part, as if they were brothers. Their isolation from all the rest of the world seems to have bound them together with ties of mutual sympathy and dependence, and banished all feelings of envy, jealousy, and petty selfishness. During our stay with the priest we were treated with the most thoughtful consideration and kindness, and his small store of luxuries, such as flour, sugar, and b.u.t.ter, was spent lavishly in providing for our table. As long as it lasted he was glad to share it with us, and never hinted at compensation or seemed to think that he was doing any more than hospitality required.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ANADYRSK IN WINTER]

With the first ten days of our stay at Anadyrsk are connected some of the pleasantest recollections of our Siberian life.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Woman's Mittens of Elk skin]