Tent Life in Siberia Part 13

CHAPTER XXVII

NEWS FROM THE ANADYR PARTY--PLAN FOR ITS RELIEF--THE STORY OF A STOVE-PIPE--START FOR THE SEACOAST

Immediately after our arrival at Anadyrsk we I had made inquiries as to the party of Americans who were said to be living somewhere near the mouth of the Anadyr River; but we were not able to get any information in addition to that we already possessed. Wandering Chukchis had brought the news to the settlement that a small band of white men had been landed on the coast south of Bering Strait late in the fall, from a "fire-ship" or steamer; that they had dug a sort of cellar in the ground, covered it over with bushes and boards, and gone into winter quarters. Who they were, what they had come for, and how long they intended to stay, were questions which now agitated the whole Chukchi nation, but which no one could answer. Their little subterranean hut had been entirely buried, the natives said, by the drifting snows of winter, and nothing but a curious iron tube out of which came smoke and sparks showed where the white men lived. This curious iron tube which so puzzled the Chukchis we at once supposed to be a stove-pipe, and it furnished the strongest possible confirmation of the truth of the story. No Siberian native could ever have invented the idea of a stove-pipe--somebody must have seen one; and this fact alone convinced us beyond a doubt that there were Americans living somewhere on the coast of Bering Sea--probably an exploring party landed by Colonel Bulkley to cooperate with us.

The instructions which the Major gave me when we left Gizhiga did not provide for any such contingency as the landing of this party near Bering Strait, because at that time we had abandoned all hope of such cooperation and expected to explore the country by our own unaided exertions. The engineer-in-chief had promised faithfully, when we sailed from San Francisco, that, if he should leave a party of men at the mouth of the Anadyr River at all, he would leave them there early in the season with a large whale-boat, so that they could ascend the river to a settlement before the opening of winter. When we met the Anadyrsk people, therefore, at Gizhiga, late in November, and learned that nothing had been heard of any such party, we of course concluded that for some reason the plan which Colonel Bulkley proposed had been given up. No one dreamed that he would leave a mere handful of men in the desolate region south of Bering Strait at the beginning of an arctic winter, without any means whatever of transportation, without any shelter, surrounded by fierce tribes of lawless natives, and distant more than two hundred miles from the nearest civilised human being. What was such an unfortunate party to do? They could only live there in inactivity until they starved, were murdered, or were brought away by an expedition sent to their rescue from the interior. Such was the situation when Dodd and I arrived at Anadyrsk. Our orders were to leave the Anadyr River unexplored until another season; but we knew that as soon as the Major should receive the letters which had pa.s.sed through our hands at Shestakova he would learn that a party had been landed south of Bering Strait, and would send us orders by special courier to go in search of it and bring it to Anadyrsk, where it would be of some use. We therefore determined to antic.i.p.ate these orders and hunt up that American stove-pipe upon our own responsibility.

Our situation, however, was a very peculiar one. We had no means of finding out where we were ourselves, or where the American party was.

We had not been furnished with instruments for making astronomical observations, could not determine with any kind of accuracy our lat.i.tude and longitude, and did not know whether we were two hundred miles from the Pacific coast or five hundred. According to the report of Lieutenant Phillippeus, who had partially explored the Anadyr River, it was about a thousand versts from the settlement to Anadyr Bay, while according to the dead reckoning which we had kept from Gizhiga it could not be over four hundred. The real distance was to us a question of vital importance, because we should be obliged to carry dog-food for the whole trip, and if it was anything like a thousand versts we should in all probability lose our dogs by starvation before we could possibly get back. Besides this, when we finally reached Anadyr Bay, if we ever did, we should have no means of finding out where the Americans were; and unless we happened to meet a band of Chukchis who had seen them, we might wander over those desolate plains for a month without coming across the stove-pipe, which was the only external sign of their subterranean habitation. It would be far worse than the proverbial search for a needle in a haystack.

When we made known to the people of Anadyrsk our intention of going to the Pacific coast, and called for volunteers to make up a party, we met with the most discouraging opposition. The natives declared unanimously that such a journey was impossible, that it had never been accomplished, that the lower Anadyr was swept by terrible storms and perfectly dest.i.tute of wood, that the cold there was always intense, and that we should inevitably starve to death, freeze to death, or lose all our dogs. They quoted the experience of Lieutenant Phillippeus, who had narrowly escaped starvation in the same region in 1860, and said that while he started in the spring we proposed to go in midwinter, when the cold was most intense and the storms most severe. Such an adventure they declared was almost certain to end in disaster. Our Cossack Gregorie, a brave and trustworthy old man, had been Lieutenant Phillippeus's guide and Chukchi interpreter in 1860, had been down the river about a hundred and fifty miles in winter, and knew something about it. We accordingly dismissed the natives and talked the matter over with him. He said that as far as he had ever gone towards Anadyr Bay there was trailing-pine enough along the banks of the river to supply us with firewood, and that the country was no worse than much of that over which we had already travelled between Gizhiga and Anadyrsk. He said that he was entirely willing to undertake the trip, and would go with his own team of dogs wherever we would lead the way. The priest also, who had been down the river in summer, believed the journey to be practicable, and said he would go himself if he could do any good. Upon the strength of this encouragement we gave the natives our final decision, showed them the letter which we brought from the Russian governor at Gizhiga authorising us to demand men and sledges for all kinds of service, and told them that if they still refused to go we would send a special messenger to Gizhiga and report their disobedience. This threat and the example of our Cossack Gregorie, who was known to be an experienced guide from the Okhotsk Sea to the Arctic Ocean, finally had the desired effect. Eleven men agreed to go, and we began at once to collect dog-food and provisions for an early start. We had as yet only the vaguest, most indefinite information with regard to the situation of the American party, and we determined to wait a few days until a Cossack named Kozhevin (ko-zhay'-vin), who had gone to visit a band of Wandering Chukchis, should return. The priest was sure that he would bring later and more trustworthy intelligence, because the wandering natives throughout the whole country knew of the arrival of the mysterious white men, and would probably tell Kozhevin approximately where they were. In the meantime we made some additions to our heavy suits of furs, prepared masks of squirrelskin to be worn over the face in extremely low temperatures, and set all the women in the village at work upon a large fur tent.

On Sat.u.r.day, Jan. 20th, N.S., Kozhevin returned from his visit to the Chukchis north of Anadyrsk, bringing as we expected later and fuller particulars with regard to the party of exiled Americans south of Bering Strait. It consisted, according to the best Chukchi intelligence, of only five men, and was located on or near the Anadyr River, about one day's journey above its mouth. These five men were living, as we had previously been told, in a little subterranean house rudely constructed of bushes and boards, and entirely buried in drifted snow. They were said to be well supplied with provisions, and had a great many barrels, which the Chukchis supposed to contain vodka, but which we presumed to be barrels of salt-beef. They made a fire, the natives said, in the most wonderful manner by burning "black stones in an iron box," while all the smoke came out mysteriously through a crooked iron tube which turned around when the wind blew!

In this vivid but comical description we of course recognised a coal stove and a pipe with a rotary funnel. They had also, Kozhevin was told, an enormous tame black bear, which they allowed to run loose around the house, and which chased away the Chukchis in a most energetic manner. When I heard this I could no longer restrain a hurrah of exultation. The party was made up of our old San Francisco comrades, and the tame black bear was Robinson's Newfoundland dog! I had petted him a hundred times in America and had his picture among my photographs. He was the dog of the expedition. There could no longer be any doubt whatever that the party thus living under the snow on the great steppes south of Bering Strait was the long talked of Anadyr River exploring party, under the command of Lieutenant Macrae; and our hearts beat fast with excitement as we thought of the surprise which we should give our old friends and comrades by coming upon them suddenly in that desolate, G.o.dforsaken region, almost two thousand miles away from the point where they supposed we had landed. Such a meeting would repay us tenfold for all the hardships of our Siberian life.

Everything, by this time, was ready for a start. Our sledges were loaded five feet high with provisions and dog-food for thirty days; our fur tent was completed and packed away, to be used if necessary in intensely cold weather; bags, overstockings, masks, thick sleeping-coats, snow-shovels, axes, rifles, and long Siberian snow-shoes were distributed around among the different sledges, and everything which Gregorie, Dodd, and I could think of was done to insure the success of the expedition.

On Monday morning, Jan. 22d, the whole party a.s.sembled in front of the priest's house. For the sake of economising transportation, and sharing the fortunes of our men, whatever they might be, Dodd and I abandoned our _pavoskas_, and drove our own loaded sledges. We did not mean to have the natives say that we compelled them to go and then avoided our share of work and hardships. The entire population of the village, men, women, and children, turned out to see us off, and the street before the priest's house was blocked up with a crowd of dark-faced men in spotted fur coats, scarlet sashes, and fierce-looking foxskin hoods, anxious-faced women running to and fro and bidding their husbands and brothers good-bye, eleven long, narrow sledges piled high with dried fish and covered with yellow buckskin and lashings of sealskin thongs, and finally a hundred and twenty-five s.h.a.ggy wolfish dogs, who drowned every other sound with their combined howls of fierce impatience.

Our drivers went into the priest's house, and crossed themselves and prayed before the picture of the Saviour, as is their custom when starting on a long journey; Dodd and I bade good-bye to the kind-hearted priest, and received the cordial "s' Bokhem" (go with G.o.d), which is the Russian farewell; and then springing upon our sledges, and releasing our frantic dogs, we went flying out of the village in a cloud of snow which glittered like powdered jewel-dust in the red sunshine.

Beyond the two or three hundred miles of snowy desert which lay before us we could see, in imagination, a shadowy stove-pipe rising out of a bank of snow--the "San greal" of which we, as arctic knights-errant, were in search.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Ceremonial Masks of Wood]

CHAPTER XXVIII

A SLEDGE JOURNEY EASTWARD--REACHING TIDE-WATER--A NIGHT SEARCH FOR A STOVE-PIPE--FINDING COMRADES--A VOICE FROM A STOVE--STORY OF THE ANADYR PARTY

I will not detain the reader long with the first part of our journey from Anadyrsk to the Pacific Coast, as it did not differ much from our previous Siberian experience. Riding all day over the ice of the river, or across barren steppes, and camping out at night on the snow, in all kinds of weather, made up our life; and its dreary monotony was relieved only by antic.i.p.ations of a joyful meeting with our exiled friends and the exciting consciousness that we were penetrating a country never before visited by civilised man. Day by day the fringe of alder bushes along the river bank grew lower and more scanty, and the great steppes that bordered the river became whiter and more barren as the river widened toward the sea. Finally we left behind us the last vestige of vegetation, and began the tenth day of our journey along a river which had increased to a mile in width, and amidst plains perfectly dest.i.tute of all life, which stretched away in one unbroken white expanse until they blended with the distant sky. It was not without uneasiness that I thought of the possibility of being overtaken by a ten days' storm in such a region as this. We had made, as nearly as we could estimate, since leaving Anadyrsk, about two hundred versts; but whether we were anywhere near the seacoast or not we had no means of knowing. The weather for nearly a week had been generally clear, and not very cold; but on the night of February 1st the thermometer sank to -35, and we could find only just enough small green bushes to boil our teakettle. We dug everywhere in the snow in search of wood, but found nothing except moss, and a few small cranberry bushes which would not burn. Tired with the long day's travel, and the fruitless diggings for wood, Dodd and I returned to camp, and threw ourselves down upon our bearskins to drink tea. Hardly had Dodd put his cup to his lips when I noticed that a curious, puzzled expression came over his face, as if he found something singular and unusual in the taste of the tea. I was just about to ask him what was the matter, when he cried in a joyful and surprised voice, "Tide-water! The tea is salt!" Thinking that perhaps a little salt might have been dropped accidentally into the tea, I sent the men down to the river for some fresh ice, which we carefully melted. It was unquestionably salt. We had reached the tide-water of the Pacific, and the ocean itself could not be far distant. One more day must certainly bring us to the house of the American party, or to the mouth of the river. From all appearances we should find no more wood; and anxious to make the most of the clear weather, we slept only about six hours, and started on at midnight by the light of a brilliant moon.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A MAN OF THE YUKAGIRS]

On the eleventh day after our departure from Anadyrsk, toward the close of the long twilight which succeeds an arctic day, our little train of eleven sledges drew near the place where, from Chukchi accounts, we expected to find the long-exiled party of Americans. The night was clear, still, and intensely cold, the thermometer at sunset marking forty-four degrees below zero, and sinking rapidly to -50 as the rosy flush in the west grew fainter and fainter, and darkness settled down upon the vast steppe. Many times before, in Siberia and Kamchatka, I had seen nature in her sterner moods and winter garb; but never before had the elements of cold, barrenness, and desolation seemed to combine into a picture so dreary as the one which was presented to us that night near Bering Strait. Far as eye could pierce the gathering gloom in every direction lay the barren steppe like a boundless ocean of snow, blown into long wave-like ridges by previous storms. There was not a tree, nor a bush, nor any sign of animal or vegetable life, to show that we were not travelling on a frozen ocean.

All was silence and desolation. The country seemed abandoned by G.o.d and man to the Arctic Spirit, whose trembling banners of auroral light flared out fitfully in the north in token of his conquest and dominion. About eight o'clock the full moon rose huge and red in the east, casting a lurid glare over the vast field of snow; but, as if it too were under the control of the Arctic Spirit, it was nothing more than the mockery of a moon, and was constantly a.s.suming the most fantastic and varied shapes. Now it extended itself laterally into a long ellipse, then gathered itself up into the semblance of a huge red urn, lengthened out to a long perpendicular bar with rounded ends, and finally became triangular. It can hardly be imagined what added wildness and strangeness this blood-red distorted moon gave to a scene already wild and strange. We seemed to have entered upon some frozen abandoned world, where all the ordinary laws and phenomena of Nature were suspended, where animal and vegetable life were extinct, and from which even the favour of the Creator had been withdrawn. The intense cold, the solitude, the oppressive silence, and the red, gloomy moonlight, like the glare of a distant but mighty conflagration, all united to excite in the mind feelings of awe, which were perhaps intensified by the consciousness that never before had any human being, save a few Wandering Chukchis, ventured in winter upon these domains of the Frost King. There was none of the singing, joking, and hallooing, with which our drivers were wont to enliven a night journey. Stolid and unimpressible though they might be, there was something in the scene which even _they_ felt and were silent. Hour after hour wore slowly away until midnight. We had pa.s.sed by more than twenty miles the point on the river where the party of Americans was supposed to be; but no sign had been found of the subterranean house or its projecting stove-pipe, and the great steppe still stretched away before us, white, ghastly, and illimitable as ever. For nearly twenty-four hours we had travelled without a single stop, night or day, except one at sunrise to rest our tired dogs; and the intense cold, fatigue, anxiety, and lack of warm food, began at last to tell upon our silent but suffering men. We realised for the first time the hazardous nature of the adventure in which we were engaged, and the almost absolute hopelessness of the search which we were making for the lost American party. We had not one chance in a hundred of finding at midnight on that vast waste of snow a little buried hut, whose location we did not know within fifty miles, and of whose very existence we were by no means certain. Who could tell whether the Americans had not abandoned their subterranean house two months before, and removed with some friendly natives to a more comfortable and sheltered situation? We had heard nothing from them later than December 1st, and it was now February. They might in that time have gone a hundred miles down the coast looking for a settlement, or have wandered far back into the interior with a band of Reindeer Chukchis.

It was not probable that they would have spent four months in that dreary, desolate region without making an effort to escape. Even if they were still in their old camp, however, how were we to find them?

We might have pa.s.sed their little underground hut un.o.bserved hours before, and might be now going farther and farther away from it, from wood, and from shelter. It had seemed a very easy thing before we left Anadyrsk, to simply go down the river until we came to a house on the bank, or saw a stove-pipe sticking out of a snow-drift; but now, two hundred and fifty or three hundred miles from the settlement, in a temperature of 50 below zero, when our lives perhaps depended upon finding that little buried hut, we realised how wild had been our antic.i.p.ations, and how faint were our prospects of success. The nearest wood was more than fifty miles behind us, and in our chilled and exhausted condition we dared not camp without a fire. We must go either forward or back--find the hut within four hours, or abandon the search and return as rapidly as possible to the nearest wood. Our dogs were beginning already to show unmistakable signs of exhaustion, and their feet, lacerated by ice which had formed between the toes, were now spotting the snow with blood at every step. Unwilling to give up the search while there remained any hope, we still went on to the eastward, along the edges of high bare bluffs skirting the river, separating our sledges as widely as possible, and extending our line so as to cover a greater extent of ground. A full moon now high in the heavens, lighted up the vast lonely plain on the north side of the river as brilliantly as day; but its whiteness was unbroken by any dark object, save here and there little hillocks of moss or swampy gra.s.s from which the snow had been swept by furious winds.

We were all suffering severely from cold, and our fur hoods and the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of our fur coats were ma.s.ses of white frost which had been formed by our breaths. I had put on two heavy reindeerskin _kukhlankas_ weighing in the aggregate about thirty pounds, belted them tightly about the waist with a sash, drawn their thick hoods up over my head and covered my face with a squirrelskin mask; but in spite of all I could only keep from freezing by running beside my sledge. Dodd said nothing, but was evidently disheartened and half-frozen, while the natives sat silently upon their sledges as if they expected nothing and hoped for nothing. Only Gregorie and an old Chukchi whom we had brought with us as a guide showed any energy or seemed to have any confidence in the ultimate discovery of the party.

They went on in advance, digging everywhere in the snow for wood, examining carefully the banks of the river, and making occasional detours into the snowy plain to the northward. At last Dodd, without saying anything to me, gave his spiked stick to one of the natives, drew his head and arms into the body of his fur coat, and lay down upon his sledge to sleep, regardless of my remonstrances, and paying no attention whatever to my questions. He was evidently becoming stupefied by the deadly chill, which struck through the heaviest furs, and which was constantly making insidious advances from the extremities to the seat of life. He probably would not live through the night unless he could be roused, and might not live two hours.

Discouraged by his apparently hopeless condition, and exhausted by the constant struggle to keep warm, I finally lost all hope and reluctantly decided to abandon the search and camp. By stopping where we were, breaking up one of our sledges for firewood, and boiling a little tea, I thought that Dodd might be revived; but to go on to the eastward seemed to be needlessly risking the lives of all without any apparent prospect of discovering the party or of finding wood. I had just given the order to the natives nearest me to camp, when I thought I heard a faint halloo in the distance. All the blood in my veins suddenly rushed with a great throb to the heart as I threw back my fur hood and listened. Again, a faint, long-drawn cry came back through the still atmosphere from the sledges in advance. My dogs p.r.i.c.ked up their ears at the startling sound and dashed eagerly forward, and in a moment I came upon several of our leading drivers gathered in a little group around what seemed to be an old overturned whale-boat, which lay half buried in snow by the river's bank. The footprint in the sand was not more suggestive to Robinson Crusoe than was this weather-beaten, abandoned whale-boat to us, for it showed that somewhere in the vicinity were shelter and life. One of the men a few moments before had driven over some dark, hard object in the snow, which he at first supposed to be a log of driftwood; but upon stopping to examine it, he found it to be an American whale-boat. If ever we thanked G.o.d from the bottom of our hearts, it was then. Brushing away with my mitten the long fringes of frost which hung to my eyelashes, I looked eagerly around for a house, but Gregorie had been quicker than I, and a joyful shout from a point a little farther down the river announced another discovery. I left my dogs to go where they chose, threw away my spiked stick, and started at a run in the direction of the sound. In a moment I saw Gregorie and the old Chukchi standing beside a low mound of snow, about a hundred yards back from the river-bank, examining some dark object which projected from its smooth white surface. It was the long talked-of, long-looked-for stove-pipe! The Anadyr River party was found.

The unexpected discovery, at midnight, of this party of countrymen, when we had just given up all hope of shelter, and almost of life, was a G.o.d-send to our disheartened spirits, and I hardly knew in my excitement what I did. I remember now walking hastily back and forth in front of the snow-drift, repeating softly to myself at every step, "Thank G.o.d!" "Thank G.o.d!" but at the time I was not conscious of anything except the great fact that we had found that party. Dodd, who had been roused from his half-frozen lethargy by the strong excitement of the discovery, now suggested that we try to find the entrance to the house and get in as quickly, as possible, as he was nearly dead from cold and exhaustion. There was no sound of life in the lonely snow-drift before us, and the inmates, if it had any, were evidently asleep. Seeing no sign anywhere of a door, I walked up on the drift, and shouted down through the stove-pipe in tremendous tones, "Halloo the house!" A startled voice from under my feet demanded "Who's there?"

"Come out and see! Where's the door?"

My voice seemed to the astounded Americans inside to come out of the stove--a phenomenon which was utterly unparalleled in all their previous experience; but they reasoned very correctly that any stove which could ask in good English for the door in the middle of the night had an indubitable right to be answered; and they replied in a hesitating and half-frightened tone that the door was "on the south-east corner." This left us about as wise as before. In the first place we did not know which way south-east was, and in the second a snow-drift could not properly be described as having a corner. I started around the stove-pipe, however, in a circle, with the hope of finding some sort of an entrance. The inmates had dug a deep ditch or trench about thirty feet in length for a doorway, and had covered it over with sticks and reindeerskins to keep out the drifting snow.

Stepping incautiously upon this frail roof I fell through just as one of the startled men was coming out in his shirt and drawers, holding a candle above his head, and peering through the darkness of the tunnel to see who would enter. The sudden descent through the roof of such an apparition as I knew myself to be, was not calculated to restore the steadiness of startled nerves. I had on two heavy _kukhlankas_ which swelled out my figure to gigantic proportions; two thick reindeerskin hoods with long frosty fringes of black bearskin were pulled up over my head, a squirrelskin mask frozen into a sheet of ice concealed my face, and nothing but the eyes peering out through tangled ma.s.ses of frosty hair showed that the furs contained a human being. The man took two or three frightened steps backward and nearly dropped his candle.

I came in such a "questionable shape" that he might well demand "whether my intents were wicked or charitable!" As I recognised his face, however, and addressed him again in English, he stopped; and tearing off my mask and fur hoods I spoke my name. Never was there such rejoicing as that which then took place in that little underground cellar, as I recognised in the exiled party two of my old comrades and friends, to whom eight months before I had bid good-bye, as the _Olga_ sailed out of the Golden Gate of San Francisco. I little thought when I shook hands with Harder and Robinson then, that I should next meet them at midnight, in a little snow-covered cellar, on the great lonely steppes of the lower Anadyr. As soon as we had taken off our heavy furs and seated ourselves beside a warm fire, we began to feel the sudden reaction which necessarily followed twenty-four hours of such exposure, suffering, and anxiety. Our overstrained nerves gave way all at once, and in ten minutes I could hardly raise a cup of coffee to my lips. Ashamed of such womanish weakness, I tried to conceal it from the Americans, and I presume they do not know to this day that Dodd and I nearly fainted several times within the first twenty minutes, from the suddenness of the change from 50 below zero to 70 above, and the nervous exhaustion produced by anxiety and lack of sleep. We felt an irresistible craving for some powerful stimulant and called for brandy, but there was no liquor of any kind to be had.

This weakness, however, soon pa.s.sed away, and we proceeded to relate to one another our respective histories and adventures, while our drivers huddled together in a ma.s.s at one end of the little hut and refreshed themselves with hot tea.

The party of Americans which we had thus found buried in the snow, more than three hundred versts from Anadyrsk, had been landed there by one of the Company's vessels, some time in September. Their intention had been to ascend the river in a whale-boat until they should reach some settlement, and then try to open communication with us; but winter set in so suddenly, and the river froze over so unexpectedly, that this plan could not be carried out. Having no means of transportation but their boat, they could do nothing more than build themselves a house, and go into winter quarters, with the faint hope that, some time before spring, Major Abaza would send a party of men to their relief. They had built a sort of burrow underground, with bushes, driftwood, and a few boards which had been left by the vessel, and there they had been living by lamp-light for five months, without ever seeing the face of a civilised human being. The Wandering Chukchis had soon found out their situation and frequently visited them on reindeer-sledges, and brought them fresh meat, and blubber which they used for lamp-oil; but these natives, on account of a superst.i.tion which I have previously mentioned, refused to sell them any living reindeer, so that all their efforts to procure transportation were unavailing. The party originally consisted of five men--Macrae, Arnold, Robinson, Harder, and Smith; but Macrae and Arnold, about three weeks previous to our arrival, had organised themselves into a "forlorn hope," and had gone away with a large band of Wandering Chukchis in search, of some Russian settlement. Since that time nothing had been heard from them, and Robinson, Harder, and Smith had been living alone.

Such was the situation when we found the party. Of course, there was nothing to be done but carry these three men and all their stores back to Anadyrsk, where we should probably find Macrae and Arnold awaiting our arrival. The Chukchis came to Anadyrsk, I knew, every winter, for the purpose of trade, and would probably bring the two Americans with them.

After three days spent in resting, refitting, and packing up, we started back with the rescued party, and on February 6th we returned in safety to Anadyrsk.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Stone Hatchet for cutting edible gra.s.s]

CHAPTER XXIX

CLa.s.sIFICATION OF NATIVES--INDIAN TYPE, MONGOLIAN TYPE, AND TURKISH TYPE--EASTERN VIEW OF WESTERN ARTS AND FASHIONS--AN AMERICAN SAINT

All the inhabitants of the settlement were in the streets to meet us when we returned; but we were disappointed not to see among them the faces of Macrae and Arnold. Many bands of Chukchis from the lower Anadyr had arrived at the village, but nothing had been heard of the missing men. Forty-five days had now elapsed since they left their camp on the river, and, unless they had died or been murdered, they ought long since to have arrived. I should have sent a party in search of them, but I had not the slightest clue to the direction in which they had gone, or the intentions of the party that had carried them away; and to look for a band of Wandering Chukchis on those great steppes was as hopeless as to look for a missing vessel in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and far more dangerous. We could only wait, therefore, and hope for the best. We spent the first week after our return in resting, writing up our journals, and preparing a report of our explorations, to be forwarded by special courier to the Major.

During this time great numbers of wild, wandering natives--Chukchis, Lamutkis (la-moot'-kees) and a few Koraks--came into the settlement to exchange their furs and walrus teeth for tobacco, and gave us an excellent opportunity of studying their various characteristics and modes of life. The Wandering Chukchis, who visited us in the greatest numbers, were evidently the most powerful tribe in north-eastern Siberia, and impressed us very favourably with their general appearance and behaviour. Except for their dress, they could hardly have been distinguished from North American Indians--many of them being as tall, athletic, and vigorous specimens of savage manhood as I had ever seen. They did not differ in any essential particular from the Wandering Koraks, whose customs, religion, and mode of life I have already described.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A MAN OF THE WANDERING CHUKCHIS]

The Lamutkis, however, were an entirely different race, and resembled the Chukchis only in their nomadic habits. All the natives in north-eastern Siberia, except the Kamchadals, Chuances, and Yukagirs, who are partially Russianised, may be referred to one or another of three great cla.s.ses. The first of these, which may be called the North American Indian cla.s.s, comprises the wandering and settled Chukchis and Koraks, and covers that part of Siberia lying between the 160th meridian of east longitude and Bering Strait. It is the only cla.s.s which has ever made a successful stand against Russian invasion, and embraces without doubt the bravest, most independent savages in all Siberia. I do not think that this cla.s.s numbers all together more than six or eight thousand souls, although the estimates of the Russians are much larger.

The second cla.s.s comprises all the natives in eastern Siberia who are evidently and unmistakably of Mongolian origin, including the Tunguses, the Lamutkis, the Manchus, and the Gilyaks of the Amur River. It covers a greater extent of ground probably than both of the other cla.s.ses together, its representatives being found as far west as the Yenesei, and as far east as Anadyrsk, in 169 E. long. The only branches of this cla.s.s that I have ever seen are the Lamutkis and the Tunguses. They are almost exactly alike, both being very slenderly built men, with straight black hair, dark olive complexions, no beards, and more or less oblique eyes. They do not resemble a Chukchi or a Korak any more than a Chinaman resembles a Comanche or a Sioux.

Their dress is very peculiar. It consists of a fur hood, tight fur trousers, short deerskin boots, a Masonic ap.r.o.n, made of soft flexible buckskin and elaborately ornamented with beads and pieces of metal, and a singular-looking frock-coat cut in very civilised style out of deerskin, and ornamented with long strings of coloured reindeer hair made into chenille. You can never see one without having the impression that he is dressed in some kind of a regalia or uniform.

The men and women resemble each other very much in dress and appearance, and by a stranger cannot be distinguished apart. Like the Chukchis and Koraks, they are reindeer nomads, but differ somewhat from the former in their mode of life. Their tents are smaller and differently constructed and instead of dragging their tent-poles from place to place as the Chukchis do, they leave them standing; when they break camp, and either cut new ones or avail themselves of frames left standing by other bands. Tent-poles in this way serve as landmarks, and a day's, journey is from one collection of frames to another. Few of the Tunguses or Lamutkis own many deer. Two or three hundred are considered to be a large herd, and a man who owns more than that is regarded as a sort of millionaire. Such herds as are found among the Koraks in northern Kamchatka, numbering from five to ten thousand, are never to be seen west of Gizhiga. The Tunguses, however, use their few deer to better advantage and in a greater variety of ways than do the Koraks. The latter seldom ride their deer or train them to carry packs, while the Tunguses do both. The Tunguses are of a mild, amiable disposition, easily governed and easily influenced, and seem to have made their way over so large an extent of country more through the sufferance of other tribes than through any aggressive power or disposition of their own. Their original religion was Shamanism, but they now profess almost universally the Greco-Russian faith and receive Christian names. They acknowledge also their subjection to the authority of the Tsar, and pay a regular annual tribute in furs.

Nearly all the Siberian squirrelskins which reach the European market are bought by Russian traders from Wandering Tunguses around the Okhotsk Sea. When I left the settlement of Okhotsk, in the fall of 1867, there were more than seventy thousand squirrelskins there in the hands of one Russian merchant, and this was only a small part of the whole number caught by the Tunguses during that summer. The Lamutkis, who are first cousins to the Tunguses, are fewer in number, but live in precisely the same way. I never met more than three or four bands during two years of almost constant travel in all parts of north-eastern Siberia.

The third great cla.s.s of natives is the Turkish. It comprises only the Yakuts (yah-koots') who are settled chiefly along the Lena River from its head-waters to the Arctic Ocean. Their origin is unknown, but their language is said to resemble the Turkish or modern Osmanli so closely that a Constantinopolitan of the lower cla.s.s could converse fairly well with a Yakut from the Lena. I regret that I was not enough interested in comparative philology while in Siberia to compile a vocabulary and grammar of the Yakut language. I had excellent opportunities for doing so, but was not aware at that time of its close resemblance to the Turkish, and looked upon it only as an unintelligible jargon which proved nothing but the active partic.i.p.ation of the Yakuts in the construction of the Tower of Babel.

The bulk of this tribe is settled immediately around the Asiatic pole of cold, and they can unquestionably endure a lower temperature with less suffering than any other natives in Siberia. They are called by the Russian explorer Wrangell, "iron men," and well do they deserve the appellation. The thermometer at Yakutsk, where several thousands of them are settled, _averages_ during the three winter months thirty-seven degrees below zero; but this intense cold does not seem to occasion them the slightest inconvenience. I have seen them in a temperature of -40, clad only in a shirt and one sheepskin coat, standing quietly in the street, talking and laughing as if it were a pleasant summer's day and they were enjoying the balmy air! They are the most thrifty, industrious natives in all northern Asia. It is a proverbial saying in Siberia, that if you take a Yakut, strip him naked, and set him down in the middle of a great desolate steppe, and then return to that spot at the expiration of a year, you will find him living in a large, comfortable house, surrounded by barns and haystacks, owning herds of horses and cattle, and enjoying himself like a patriarch. They have all been more or less civilised by Russian intercourse, and have adopted Russian manners and the religion of the Greek Church. Those settled along the Lena cultivate rye and hay, keep herds of Siberian horses and cattle, and live princ.i.p.ally upon coa.r.s.e black-bread, milk, b.u.t.ter, and horse-flesh. They are notorious gluttons. All are very skilful in the use of the "topor" or short Russian axe, and with that instrument alone will go into a primeval forest, cut down trees, hew out timber and planks, and put up a comfortable house, complete even to panelled doors and window-sashes.

They are the only natives in all north-eastern Siberia who can do and are willing to do hard continuous work.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TUNGUSE MAN AND WOMAN IN BEST SUMMER DRESS]

These three great cla.s.ses, viz., American Indian natives, Mongolian natives, and Turko-Yakut natives, comprise all the aboriginal inhabitants of north-eastern Siberia except the Kamchadals, the Chuances, and the Yukagirs. [Footnote: There are a few Eskimo-like natives living in permanent habitations near Bering Strait, but we did not see them.] These last have been so modified by Russian influence, that it is hard to tell to which cla.s.s they are most nearly allied, and the ethnologist will shortly be relieved from all further consideration of the problem by their inevitable extinction. The Chuances and Yukagirs have already become mere fragments of tribes, and their languages will perish with the present generation.

The natives of whom we saw most at Anadyrsk were, as I have already said, the Chukchis. They frequently called upon us in large parties, and afforded us a great deal of amus.e.m.e.nt by their nave and childlike comments upon Americans, American instruments, and the curious American things generally which we produced for their inspection. I shall never forget the utter astonishment with which a band of them once looked through my field-gla.s.s. I had been trying it one clear cold day out-of-doors, and quite a crowd of Chukchis and Yukagirs had gathered around me to see what I was doing. Observing their curiosity, I gave the gla.s.s to one of them and told him to look through it at another native who happened to be standing out on the plain, at a distance of perhaps a hundred yards. The expression of blank, half-incredulous surprise which gradually came over his features as he saw that native brought up, apparently within a few feet, was irresistibly comical. He did not dream for a moment that it was a mere optical illusion; he supposed that the wonderful instrument had actually transported the man physically from a distance of a hundred yards up to the place where he stood, and as he held the gla.s.s to his eyes with one hand, he stretched out the other to try to catch hold of him. Finding to his great astonishment that he could not, he removed the gla.s.s, and saw the man standing quietly as before, a hundred yards away. The idea then seemed to occur to him that if he could only get this mysterious instrument to his eyes quickly enough, he would surprise the man in the very act of coming up--catch him perhaps about half-way--and find out how it was done. He accordingly raised the gla.s.s toward his face very slowly (watching the man meanwhile intently, to see that he took no unfair advantage and did not start too soon) until it was within an inch of his eyes, and then looked through it suddenly. But it was of no use. The man was right beside him again, but how he came there he didn't know. Perhaps he could catch him if he made a sudden dash, and he tried it. This, however, was no more successful than his previous experiments, and the other natives looked at him in perfect amazement, wondering what he was trying to do with all these singular motions. He endeavoured to explain to them in great excitement that the man had been brought up apparently within arm's length, and yet he could not touch him. His comrades of course denied indignantly that the man had moved at all, and they engaged in a furious dispute as to whether this innocent and unconscious man had been anywhere near them or not. The native who maintained the affirmative appealed to me; but, convulsed with laughter, I could make no reply, and he started off at a run, to see the man and find out whether he had been brought up or not, and how it felt to be transported over a hundred yards of s.p.a.ce in an instant of time! We who are familiar with these discoveries of science can hardly realise how they appear to a wholly uneducated savage; but if a superior race of beings should come from the planet Mars and show us a mysterious instrument which enabled a man to be in two different places at the same time, we should understand the sensations of a Chukchi in looking through a field-gla.s.s.

Soon after this I happened to be encamped one night on a great plain near Anadyrsk, with a party of these same natives; and having received a note from Dodd by a special messenger, I was engaged in reading it by the camp-fire. At several humorous pa.s.sages I burst into a loud laugh; whereupon the natives nudged one another with their elbows and pointed significantly at me, as much as to say, "Just look at the crazy American! What's the matter with him now?" Finally one of them, an old grey-haired man, asked me what I was laughing at. "Why," said I, "I am laughing at this," and pointed to the piece of paper. The old man thought about it for a moment, compared notes with the others, and they all thought about it; but no one seemed to succeed in getting any light as to the cause of my incomprehensible laughter. In a few moments the old man picked up a half-burned stick which was lying by the fire and said: "Now suppose I should look at this stick for a minute and then laugh; what would you think?" "Why," said I candidly, "I should think you were a fool." "Well," he rejoined with grave satisfaction, "that's just exactly what I think of you!" He seemed to be very much pleased to find that our several opinions of such insane conduct so exactly coincided. Looking at a stick and laughing, and looking at a piece of paper and laughing, seemed to him equally absurd. The languages of the Chukchis and Koraks have never-been reduced to writing; nor, so far as I know, do either of those tribes ever attempt to express ideas by signs or pictures. Written thought is to many of them an impossible conception. It can be imagined, perhaps, with what wonder and baffled curiosity they pore over the ill.u.s.trated newspapers which are occasionally given to them by the sailors of whaling vessels which visit the coast. Some of the pictures they recognise as representations of things with which they are acquainted; but by far the greater number are as incomprehensible as the hieroglyphics of the Aztecs. I remember that a Korak once brought to me an old tattered fashion-plate from _Frank Leslie's Ill.u.s.trated Newspaper_ containing three or four full-length figures of imaginary ladies, in the widest expansion of crinoline which fashion at that time prescribed. The poor Korak said he had often wondered what those curious objects could be; and now, as I was an American, perhaps I could tell him. He evidently had not the most remote suspicion that they were intended to represent human beings. I told him that those curious objects, as he called them, were American women. He burst out into a "tyee-e-e-e!" of amazement, and asked with a wondering look, "Are _all_ the women in your country as big as that at the bottom?" It was a severe reflection upon our ladies' dress, and I did not venture to tell him that the bigness was artificial, but merely replied sadly that they were. He looked curiously down at my feet and then at the picture, and then again at my feet, as if he were trying to trace some resemblance between the American man and the American woman; but he failed to do it, and wisely concluded that they must be of widely different species.