Tent Life in Siberia Part 11

Enc.u.mbered with heavy furs, I extricated myself with difficulty; and as I at last emerged with three pints of snow down my neck, I saw the round, leering face of my late driver grinning at me through the bushes on the edge of the bluff. "Ooma," he hailed. "Well," replied the snowy figure standing waist-high in the drift.--"Amerikanski nyett dobra kaiur, eh?" [American no good driver]. "Nyett sofsem dobra" was the melancholy reply as I waded out. The sledge, I found, had become entangled in the bushes near me, and the dogs were all howling in chorus, nearly wild with the restraint. I was so far satisfied with my experiment that I did not desire to repeat it at present, and made no objections to the Korak's a.s.suming again his old position. I was fully convinced, by the logic of circ.u.mstances, that the science of dog-driving demanded more careful and earnest consideration than I had yet given to it; and I resolved to study carefully its elementary principles, as expounded by its Korak professors, before attempting again to put my own ideas upon the subject into practice.

As we came out of the ravine upon the open steppe I saw the rest of our party a mile away, moving rapidly toward the Korak village of Kuil (Koo-eel'). We pa.s.sed Kuil late in the afternoon, and camped for the night in a forest of birch, poplar, and aspen trees, on the banks of the Paren River.

We were now only about seventy miles from Gizhiga. On the following night we reached a small log _yurt_ on a branch of the Gizhiga River, which had been built there by the government to shelter travellers, and Friday morning, November 25th, about eleven o'clock, we caught sight of the red church-steeple which marked the location of the Russian settlement of Gizhiga. No one who has not travelled for three long months through a wilderness like Kamchatka, camped out in storms among desolate mountains, slept for three weeks in the smoky tents, and yet smokier and dirtier _yurts_ of the Koraks, and lived altogether like a perfect savage or barbarian---no one who has not experienced this can possibly understand with what joyful hearts we welcomed that red church steeple, and the civilisation of which it was the sign. For almost a month we had slept every night on the ground or the snow; had never seen a chair, a table, a bed, or a mirror; had never been undressed night or day; and had washed our faces only three or four times in an equal number of weeks! We were grimy and smoky from climbing up and down Korak chimneys; our hair was long and matted around our ears; the skin had peeled from our noses and cheek-bones where it had been frozen; our cloth coats and trousers were grey with reindeer hairs from our fur _kukhlankas_; and we presented, generally, as wild and neglected an appearance as men could present, and still retain any lingering traces of better days. We had no time or inclination, however, to "fix up"; our dogs dashed at a mad gallop into the village with a great outcry, which awakened a responsive chorus of howls from two or three hundred other canine throats; our drivers shouted "Khta! khta! hoogh! hoogh!" and raised clouds of snow with their spiked sticks as we rushed through the streets, and the whole population came running to their doors to ascertain the cause of the infernal tumult. One after another our fifteen sledges went careering through the village, and finally drew up before a large, comfortable house, with double gla.s.s windows, where arrangements had been made, Kerrillof said, for our reception. Hardly had we entered a large, neatly swept and scrubbed room, and thrown off our heavy frosty furs, than the door again opened, and in rushed a little impetuous, quick-motioned man, with a heavy auburn moustache, and light hair cut short all over his head, dressed in neat broadcloth coat and trousers and a spotless linen s.h.i.+rt, with seal rings on his fingers, a plain gold chain at his vest b.u.t.ton, and a cane. We recognised him at once as the ispravnik, or Russian governor. Dodd and I made a sudden attempt to escape from the room, but we were too late, and saluting our visitor with "zdrastvuitia," [Footnote: "Good health," or "Be in health," the Russian greeting.] we sat down awkwardly enough on our chairs, rolled our smoky hands up in our scarlet and yellow cotton handkerchiefs, and, with a vivid consciousness of our dirty faces and generally disreputable appearance, tried to look self-possessed, and to a.s.sume the dignity which befitted officers of the great Russian-American Telegraph Expedition! It was a pitiable failure. We could not succeed in looking like anything but Wandering Koraks in reduced circ.u.mstances. The ispravnik, however, did not seem to notice anything unusual in our appearance, but rattled away with an incessant fire of quick, nervous questions, such as "When did you leave Petropavlovsk? Are you just from America? I sent a Cossack. Did you meet him? How did you cross the tundras; with the Koraks? _Akh!_ those _proclatye_ Koraks! Any news from St. Petersburg? You must come over and dine with me. How long will you stay in town? You can take a bath now before dinner. Ay! _lodee!_ [very loud and peremptory]. Go and tell my Ivan to heat up the bath quick! _Akh Chort yeekh! vazmee!_"

and the restless little man finally stopped from sheer exhaustion, and began pacing nervously across the room, while the Major related our adventures, gave him the latest news from Russia, explained our plans, the object of our expedition, told him of the murder of Lincoln, the end of the Rebellion, the latest news from the French invasion of Mexico, the gossip of the Imperial Court, and no end of other news which had been old with us for six months, but of which the poor exiled ispravnik had never heard a word. He had had no communication with Russia in almost eleven months. After insisting again upon our coming over to his house immediately to dine, he bustled out of the room, and gave us an opportunity to wash and dress.

Two hours afterward, in all the splendour of blue coats, bra.s.s b.u.t.tons, and shoulder-straps, with shaven faces, starched s.h.i.+rts, and polished leather boots, the "First Siberian Exploring Party" marched over to the ispravnik's to dine. The Russian peasants whom we met instinctively took off their frosty fur hoods and gazed wonderingly at us as we pa.s.sed, as if we had mysteriously dropped down from some celestial sphere. No one would have recognised in us the dirty, smoky, ragged vagabonds who had entered the village two hours before. The grubs had developed into blue and golden b.u.t.terflies! We found the ispravnik waiting for us in a pleasant, s.p.a.cious room furnished with, all the luxuries of a civilised home. The walls were papered and ornamented with costly pictures and engravings, the windows were hung with curtains, the floor was covered with a soft, bright-coloured carpet, a large walnut writing-desk occupied one corner of the room, a rosewood melodeon the other, and in the centre stood the dining-table, covered with a fresh cloth, polished china, and glittering silver. We were fairly dazzled at the sight of so much unusual and unexpected magnificence. After the inevitable "fifteen drops" of brandy, and the lunch of smoked fish, rye bread, and caviar, which always precedes a Russian dinner, we took seats at the table and spent an hour and a half in getting through the numerous courses of cabbage soup, salmon pie, venison cutlets, game, small meat pies, pudding, and pastry, which were successively set before us, and in discussing the news of all the world, from the log villages of Kamchatka to the imperial palaces of Moscow and St. Petersburg. Our hospitable host then ordered champagne, and over tall, slender gla.s.ses of cool beaded Cliquot we meditated upon the vicissitudes of Siberian life. Yesterday we sat on the ground in a Korak tent and ate reindeer meat out of a wooden trough with our fingers, and today we dined with the Russian governor, in a luxurious house, upon venison cutlets, plum pudding, and champagne. With the exception of a noticeable but restrained inclination on the part of Dodd and myself to curl up our legs and sit on the floor, there was nothing I believe in our behaviour to betray the barbarous freedom of the life which we had so recently lived, and the demoralising character of the influences to which we had been subjected. We handled our knives and forks, and leisurely sipped our champagne with a grace which would have excited the envy of Lord Chesterfield himself. But it was hard work. No sooner did we return to our quarters than we threw off our uniform coats, spread our bearskins on the floor and sat down upon them with crossed legs, to enjoy a comfortable smoke in the good old free-and-easy style. If our faces had only been just a little dirty we should have been perfectly happy!

The next ten days of our life at Gizhiga were pa.s.sed in comparative idleness. We walked out a little when the weather was not too cold, received formal calls from the Russian merchants of the place, visited the ispravnik and drank his delicious "flower tea" and smoked his cigarettes in the evening, and indemnified ourselves for three months of rough life by enjoying to the utmost such mild pleasures as the little village afforded. This pleasant, aimless existence, however, was soon terminated by an order from the Major to prepare for the winter's campaign, and hold ourselves in readiness to start for the Arctic Circle or the west coast of the Okhotsk Sea at a moment's notice. He had determined to explore a route for our proposed line from Bering Strait to the Amur River before spring should open, and there was no time to be lost. The information which we could gather at Gizhiga with regard to the interior of the country was scanty, indefinite, and unsatisfactory. According to native accounts, there were only two settlements between the Okhotsk Sea and Bering Strait, and the nearest of these--Penzhina--was four hundred versts distant.

The intervening country consisted of great moss tundras impa.s.sable in summer, and perfectly dest.i.tute of timber; and that portion of it which lay north-east of the last settlement was utterly uninhabitable on account of the absence of wood. A Russian officer by the name of Phillippeus had attempted to explore it in the winter of 1860, but had returned unsuccessful, in a starving and exhausted condition. In the whole distance of eight hundred versts between Gizhiga and the mouth of the Anadyr River there were said to be only four or five places where timber could be found large enough for telegraph poles, and over most of the route there was no wood except occasional patches of trailing-pine. A journey from Gizhiga to the last settlement, Anadyrsk, on the Arctic Circle, would occupy from twenty to thirty days, according to weather, and beyond that point there was no possibility of going under any circ.u.mstances. The region west of Gizhiga, along the coast of the Okhotsk Sea, was reported to be better, but very rugged and mountainous, and heavily timbered with pine and larch. The village of Okhotsk, eight hundred versts distant, could be reached on dog-sledges in about a month. This, in brief, was all the information we could get, and it did not inspire us with very much confidence in the ultimate success of our enterprise. I realised for the first time the magnitude of the task which the Russian-American Telegraph Company had undertaken. We were "in for it," however, now, and our first duty was obviously to go through the country, ascertain its extent and nature, and find out what facilities, if any, it afforded for the construction of our line.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AN OLD MAN OF THE SETTLED KORAKS Photograph in The American Museum of Natural History]

The Russian settlements of Okhotsk and Gizhiga divided the country between Bering Strait and the Amur River into three nearly equal sections, of which two were mountainous and wooded, and one comparatively level and almost barren. The first of these sections, between the Amur and Okhotsk, had been a.s.signed to Mahood and Bush, and we presumed that they were already engaged, in its exploration.

The other two sections, comprising all the region between Okhotsk and Bering Straits, were to be divided between the Major, Dodd, and myself. In view of the supposed desolation of the unexplored territory immediately west of Bering Strait, it was thought best to leave it unsurveyed until spring, and perhaps until another season. The promised co-operation of the Anadyr River party had failed us, and without more men, the Major did not think it expedient to undertake the exploration of a region which presented so many and so great obstacles to midwinter travel. The distance which remained to be traversed, therefore, was only about fourteen hundred versts from Okhotsk to the Russian outpost of Anadyrsk, just south of the Arctic Circle. After some deliberation the Major concluded to send Dodd and me with a party of natives to Anadyrsk, and to start himself on dog-sledges for the settlement of Okhotsk, where he expected to meet Mahood and Bush. In this way it was hoped that we should be able in the course of five months to make a rough but tolerably accurate survey of nearly the whole route of the line. The provisions which we had brought from Petropavlovsk had all been used up, with the exception of some tea, sugar, and a few cans of preserved beef; but we obtained at Gizhiga two or three _puds_ (poods) [Footnote: One _pud_ = 36 lbs.] of black rye-bread, four or five frozen reindeer, some salt, and an abundant supply of _yukala_ or dried fish. These, with some tea and sugar, and a few cakes of frozen milk, made up our store of provisions. We provided ourselves also with six or eight _puds_ of Circa.s.sian leaf tobacco to be used instead of money; divided equally our little store of beads, pipes, knives, and trading-goods, purchased new suits of furs throughout, and made every preparation for three or four months of camp life in an arctic climate. The Russian governor ordered six of his Cossacks to transport Dodd and me on dog-sledges as far as the Korak village of Shestakova, and sent word to Penzhina by the returning Anadyrsk people to have three or four men and dog-teams at the former place by December 20th, ready to carry us on to Penzhina and Anadyrsk. We engaged an old and experienced Cossack named Gregorie Zinovief as guide and Chukchi interpreter, hired a young Russian called Yagor as cook and aid-de-camp (in the literal sense), packed our stores on our sledges and secured them with las.h.i.+ngs of sealskin thongs, and by December 13th were ready to take the field. That evening the Major delivered to us our instructions. They were simply to follow the regular sledge road to Anadyrsk via Shestakova and Penzhina, to ascertain what facilities it offered in the way of timber and soil for the construction of a telegraph line, to set the natives at work cutting poles at Penzhina and Anadyrsk, and to make side explorations where possible in search of timbered rivers connecting Penzhinsk Gulf with Bering Sea. Late in the spring we were to return to Gizhiga with all the information which we could gather relative to the country between that point and the Arctic Circle. The Major himself would remain at Gizhiga until about December 17th, and then leave on dog-sledges with Vius.h.i.+n and a small party of Cossacks for the settlement of Okhotsk. If he made a junction with Mahood and Bush, at that place, he would return at once, and meet us again at Gizhiga by the first of April, 1866.

CHAPTER XXIII

DOG-SLEDGE TRAVEL--ARCTIC MIRAGES--CAMP AT NIGHT--A HOWLING CHORUS--NORTHERN LIGHTS

The morning of December 13th dawned clear, cold, and still, with a temperature of thirty-one degrees below zero; but as the sun did not rise until half-past ten, it was nearly noon before we could get our drivers together, and our dogs harnessed for a start. Our little party of ten men presented quite a novel and picturesque appearance in their gaily embroidered fur coats, red sashes, and yellow foxskin hoods, as they a.s.sembled in a body before our house to bid good-bye to the ispravnik and the Major. Eight heavily loaded sledges were ranged in a line in front of the door, and almost a hundred dogs were springing frantically against their harnesses, and raising deafening howls of impatience, as we came out of the house into the still, frosty atmosphere. We bade everybody good-bye, received a hearty "G.o.d bless you, boys!" from the Major, and were off in a cloud of flying snow, which stung our faces like burning sparks of fire. Old Paderin, the chief of the Gizhiga Cossacks, with white frosty hair and beard, stood out in front of his little red log house as we pa.s.sed, and waved us a last good-bye with his fur hood as we swept out upon the great level steppe behind the town.

It was just midday; but the sun, although at its greatest alt.i.tude, glowed like a red ball of fire low down in the southern horizon, and a peculiar gloomy twilight hung over the white wintry landscape. I could not overcome the impression that the sun was just rising and that it would soon be broad day. A white ptarmigan now and then flew up with a loud whir before us, uttered a harsh "querk, querk, querk" of affright, and sailing a few rods away, settled upon the snow and suddenly became invisible. A few magpies sat motionless in the thickets of trailing-pine as we pa.s.sed, but their feathers were ruffled up around their heads, and they seemed chilled and stupefied by the intense cold. The distant blue belt of timber along the Gizhiga River wavered and trembled in its outlines as if seen through currents of heated air, and the white ghost-like mountains thirty miles away to the southward were thrown up and distorted by refraction into a thousand airy, fantastic shapes which melted imperceptibly one into another, like a series of dissolving views. Every feature of the scenery was strange, weird, arctic. The red sun rolled slowly along the southern horizon, until it seemed to rest on a white snowy peak far away in the south-west, and then, while we were yet expecting day, it suddenly disappeared and the gloomy twilight deepened gradually into night. Only three hours had elapsed since sunrise, and yet stars of the first magnitude could already be plainly distinguished.

[Ill.u.s.tration: YURT AND DOG-TEAM OF THE SETTLED KORAKS.

From a painting by George A. Frost]

We stopped for the night at the house of a Russian peasant who lived on the bank of the Gizhiga River, about fifteen versts east of the settlement. While we were drinking tea a special messenger arrived from the village, bringing two frozen blueberry pies as a parting token of regard from the Major, and a last souvenir of civilisation.

Pretending to fear that something might happen to these delicacies if we should attempt to carry them with us, Dodd, as a precautionary measure, ate one of them up to the last blueberry; and rather than have him sacrifice himself to a mistaken idea of duty by trying to eat the other, I attended to its preservation myself and put it for ever beyond the reach of accidental contingencies.

On the following day we reached the little log _yurt_ on the Malmofka, where we had spent one night on our way to Gizhiga; and as the cold was still intense we were glad to avail ourselves again of its shelter, and huddle around the warm fire which Yagor kindled on a sort of clay altar in the middle of the room. There was not s.p.a.ce enough on the rough plank floor to accommodate all our party, and our men built a huge fire of tamarack logs outside, hung over their teakettles, thawed out their frosty beards, ate dry fish, sang jolly Russian songs, and made themselves so boisterously happy, that we were tempted to give up the luxury of a roof for the sake of sharing in their out-door amus.e.m.e.nts and merriment. Our thermometers, however, marked 35 below zero, and we did not venture out of doors except when an unusually loud burst of laughter announced some stupendous Siberian joke which we thought would be worth hearing. The atmosphere outside seemed to be just cool enough to exert an inspiriting influence upon our lively Cossacks, but it was altogether too bracing for unaccustomed American const.i.tutions. With a good fire, however, and plenty of hot tea, we succeeded in making ourselves very comfortable inside the _yurt_, and pa.s.sed away the long evening in smoking Circa.s.sian tobacco and pine bark, singing American songs, telling stories, and quizzing our good-natured but unsophisticated Cossack Meranef.

It was quite late when we finally crawled into our fur bags to sleep; but long afterward we could hear the songs, jokes, and laughter of our drivers as they sat around the camp-fire, and told funny stories of Siberian travel.

We were up on the following morning long before daylight; and, after a hasty breakfast of black-bread, dried fish, and tea, we harnessed our dogs, wet down our sledge-runners with water from the teakettle to cover them with a coating of ice, packed up our camp equipage, and, leaving the shelter of the tamarack forest around the _yurt_, drove out upon the great snowy Sahara which lies between the Malmofka River and Penzhinsk Gulf. It was a land of desolation. A great level steppe, as boundless to the weary eye as the ocean itself, stretched away in every direction to the far horizon, without a single tree or bush to relieve its white, snowy surface. Nowhere did we see any sign of animal or vegetable life, any suggestion of summer or flowers or warm suns.h.i.+ne, to brighten the dreary waste of storm-drifted snow.

White, cold, and silent, it lay before us like a vast frozen ocean, lighted up faintly by the slender crescent of the waning moon in the east, and the weird blue streamers of the aurora, which went racing swiftly back and forth along the northern horizon. Even when the sun rose, huge and fiery, in a haze of frozen moisture at the south, it did not seem to infuse any warmth or life into the bleak wintry landscape. It only drowned, in a dull red glare, the blue, tremulous streamers of the aurora and the white radiance of the moon and stars, tinged the snow with a faint colour like a stormy sunset, and lighted up a splendid mirage in the north-west which startled us with its solemn mockery of familiar scenes. The wand of the Northern Enchanter touched the barren snowy steppe, and it suddenly became a blue tropical lake, upon whose distant sh.o.r.e rose the walls, domes, and slender minarets of a vast oriental city. Ma.s.ses of luxuriant foliage seemed to overhang the clear blue water, and to be reflected in its depths, while the white walls above just caught the first flush of the rising sun. Never was the illusion of summer in winter, of life in death, more palpable or more perfect. One almost instinctively glanced around to a.s.sure himself, by the sight of familiar objects, that it was not a dream; but as his eyes turned again to the north-west across the dim blue lake, the vast tremulous outlines of the mirage still confronted him in their unearthly beauty, and the "cloud-capped towers and gorgeous palaces" seemed, by their mysterious solemnity, to rebuke the doubt which would ascribe them to a dream. The bright apparition faded, glowed, and faded again into indistinctness, and from its ruins rose two colossal pillars sculptured from rose quartz, which gradually united their capitals and formed a t.i.tanic arch like the grand portal of heaven. This, in turn, melted into an extensive fortress, with, ma.s.sive bastions and b.u.t.tresses, flanking towers and deep embrasures, and salient and re-entering angles whose shadows and perspective were as natural as reality itself. Nor was it only at a distance that these deceptive mirages seemed to be formed. A crow, standing upon the snow at a distance of perhaps two hundred yards, was exaggerated and distorted beyond recognition; and once, having lingered a little behind the rest of the party, I was startled at seeing a long line of shadowy dog-sledges moving swiftly through the air a short distance ahead, at a height of eight or ten feet from the ground. The mock sledges were inverted in position, and the mock dogs trotted along with their feet in the air; but their outlines were almost as clear as those of the real sledges and real dogs underneath. This curious phenomenon lasted only a moment, but it was succeeded by others equally strange, until at last we lost faith in our eyesight entirely, and would not believe in the existence of anything unless we could touch it with our hands. Every bare hillock or dark object on the snow was a nucleus around which were formed the most deceptive images, and two or three times we started out with our rifles in pursuit of wolves or black foxes, which proved, upon closer inspection, to be nothing but crows. I had never before known the light and atmosphere to be so favourable to refraction, and had never been so deceived in the size, shape, and distance of objects on the snow.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A WOMAN FEEDING A DOG-TEAM IN GIZHIGA From a painting by George A. Frost]

The thermometer at noon marked -35, and at sunset it was -38, and sinking. We had seen no wood since leaving the _yurt_ on the Malmofka River, and, not daring to camp without a fire, we travelled for five hours after dark, guided only by the stars and a bluish aurora which was playing away in the north. Under the influence of the intense cold, frost formed in great quant.i.ties upon everything which was touched by our breaths. Beards became stiff tangled ma.s.ses of frozen iron wire, eyelids grew heavy with long white rims of frost, and froze together when we winked, and our dogs, enveloped in dense clouds of steam, looked like snowy polar wolves. Only by running constantly beside our sledges could we keep any sensation of life in our feet.

About eight o'clock a few scattered trees loomed up darkly against the eastern sky, and a joyful shout from our leading drivers announced the discovery of wood. We had reached a small stream called the Usinova (Oo-seen'-ova), seventy-five versts east of Gizhiga, in the very middle of the great steppe. It was like coming to an island after having been long at sea. Our dogs stopped and curled themselves up into little round b.a.l.l.s on the snow, as if conscious that the long day's journey was ended, while our drivers proceeded to make rapidly and systematically a Siberian half-faced camp. Three sledges were drawn up together, so as to make a little semi-enclosure about ten feet square; the snow was all shovelled out of the interior, and banked up around the three closed sides, like a snow fort, and a huge fire of trailing-pine branches was built at the open end. The bottom of this little snow-cellar was then strewn to a depth of three or four inches with twigs of willow and alder, s.h.a.ggy bearskins were spread down to make a warm, soft carpet, and our fur sleeping-bags arranged for the night. Upon a small table extemporised out of a candle-box, which stood in the centre, Yagor soon placed two cups of steaming hot tea and a couple of dried fish. Then stretching ourselves out in luxurious style upon our bearskin carpet, with our feet to the fire and our backs against pillows, we smoked, drank tea, and told stories in perfect comfort. After supper the drivers piled dry branches of trailing-pine upon the fire until it sent up a column of hot ruddy flame ten feet in height, and then gathering in a picturesque group around the blaze, they sang for hours the wild melancholy songs of the Kamchadals, and told never-ending stories of hards.h.i.+p and adventure on the great steppes and along the coast of the "Icy Sea." At last the great constellation of Orion marked bedtime. Amid a tumult of snarling and fighting the dogs were fed their daily allowance of one dried fish each, fur stockings, moist with perspiration, were taken off and dried by the fire, and putting on our heaviest fur _kukhlankas_ we crawled feet first into our bearskin bags, pulled them up over our heads, and slept.

A camp in the middle of a clear, dark winter's night presents a strange, wild appearance. I was awakened, soon after midnight, by cold feet, and, raising myself upon one elbow, I pushed my head out of my frosty fur bag to see by the stars what time it was. The fire had died away to a red heap of smouldering embers. There was just light enough to distinguish the dark outlines of the loaded sledges, the fur-clad forms of our men, lying here and there in groups about the fire, and the frosty dogs, curled up into a hundred little hairy b.a.l.l.s upon the snow. Away beyond the limits of the camp stretched the desolate steppe in a series of long snowy undulations, which blended gradually into one great white frozen ocean, and were lost in the distance and darkness of night. High overhead, in a sky which was almost black, sparkled the bright constellations of Orion and the Pleiades--the celestial clocks which marked the long, weary hours between sunrise and sunset. The blue mysterious streamers of the aurora trembled in the north, now shooting up in clear bright lines to the zenith, then waving back and forth in great majestic curves over the silent camp, as if warning back the adventurous traveller from the unknown regions around the Pole. The silence was profound, oppressive. Nothing but the pulsating of the blood in my ears, and the heavy breathing of the sleeping men at my feet, broke the universal lull. Suddenly there rose upon the still night air a long, faint, wailing cry like that of a human being in the last extremity of suffering. Gradually it swelled and deepened until it seemed to fill the whole atmosphere with its volume of mournful sound, dying away at last into a low, despairing moan. It was the signal-howl of a Siberian dog; but so wild and unearthly did it seem in the stillness of the arctic midnight, that it sent the startled blood bounding through my veins to my very finger-ends. In a moment the mournful cry was taken up by another dog, upon a higher key--two or three more joined in, then ten, twenty, forty, sixty, eighty, until the whole pack of a hundred dogs howled one infernal chorus together, making the air fairly tremble with sound, as if from the heavy ba.s.s of a great organ. For fully a minute heaven and earth seemed to be filled with yelling, shrieking fiends.

Then one by one they began gradually to drop off, the unearthly tumult grew momentarily fainter and fainter, until at last it ended as it began, in one long, inexpressibly melancholy wail, and all was still.

One or two of our men moved restlessly in their sleep, as if the mournful howls had blended unpleasantly with their dreams; but no one awoke, and a death-like silence again pervaded heaven and earth.

Suddenly the aurora shone out with increased brilliancy, and its waving swords swept back and forth in great semicircles across the dark starry sky, and lighted up the snowy steppe with transitory flashes of coloured radiance, as if the gates of heaven were opening and closing upon the dazzling brightness of the celestial city.

Presently it faded away again to a faint diffused glow in the north, and one pale-green streamer, slender and bright as the spear of Ithuriel, pushed slowly up toward the zenith until it touched with its translucent point the jewelled belt of Orion; then it, too, faded and vanished, and nothing but a bank of pale white mist on the northern horizon showed the location of the celestial armory whence the arctic spirits drew the gleaming swords and lances which they shook and brandished nightly over the lonely Siberian steppes. Crawling back into my bag as the aurora disappeared, I fell asleep, and did not wake until near morning. With the first streak of dawn the camp began to show signs of animation. The dogs crawled out of the deep holes which their warm bodies had melted in the snow; the Cossacks poked their heads out of their frosty fur coats, and whipped off with little sticks the ma.s.s of frost which had acc.u.mulated around their breathing-holes; a fire was built, tea boiled, and we crawled out of our sleeping-bags to s.h.i.+ver around the fire and eat a hasty breakfast of rye-bread, dried fish, and tea. In twenty minutes the dogs were harnessed, sledges packed, and runners covered with ice, and one after another we drove away at a brisk trot from the smoking fire, and began another day's journey across the barren steppe.

In this monotonous routine of riding, camping, and sleeping on the snow, day after day slowly pa.s.sed until, on December 20th, we arrived at the Settled Korak village of Shestakova, near the head of Penzhinsk Gulf. From this point our Gizhiga Cossacks were to return, and here we were to wait until the expected sledges from Penzhina should arrive.

We lowered our bedding, pillows, camp-equipage, and provisions down through the chimney hole of the largest _yurt_ in the small village, arranged them as tastefully as possible on the wide wooden platform which extended out from the wall on one side, and made ourselves as comfortable as darkness, smoke, cold, and dirt would permit.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Korak Adzes]

CHAPTER XXIV

DISMAL SHELTER--ARRIVAL OF A COSSACK COURIER AMERICANS ON THE ANADYR--ARCTIC FIREWOOD A SIBERIAN BLIZZARD LOST ON THE STEPPE

Our short stay at Shestakova, while waiting for the Penzhina sledges, was dismal and lonesome beyond expression. It began to storm furiously about noon on the 20th, and the violent wind swept up such tremendous clouds of snow from the great steppe north of the village, that the whole earth was darkened as if by an eclipse, and the atmosphere, to a height of a hundred feet from the ground, was literally packed with a driving mist of white snowflakes. I ventured to the top of the chimney hole once, but I was nearly blown over the edge of the _yurt_, and, blinded and choked by snow, I hastily retreated down the chimney, congratulating myself that I was not obliged to lie out all day on some desolate plain, exposed to the fury of such a storm. To keep out the snow, we were obliged to extinguish the fire and shut up the chimney hole with a sort of wooden trap-door, so that we were left to total darkness and a freezing atmosphere. We lighted candles and stuck them against the black smoky logs above our heads with melted grease, so that we could see to read; but the cold was so intense that we were finally compelled to give up the idea of literary amus.e.m.e.nt, and putting on fur coats and hoods, we crawled into our bags to try to sleep away the day. Shut up in a dark half-underground dungeon, with a temperature ten degrees below the freezing-point, we had no other resource.

It is a mystery to me how human beings with any feeling at all can be satisfied to live in such abominable, detestable houses as those of the Settled Koraks. They have not one solitary redeeming feature.

They are entered through the chimney, lighted by the chimney, and ventilated by the chimney; the suns.h.i.+ne falls into them only once a year--in June; they are cold in winter, close and uncomfortable in summer, and smoky all the time. They are pervaded by a smell of rancid oil and decaying fish; their logs are black as jet and greasy with smoke, and their earthen floors are an indescribable mixture of reindeer hairs and filth dried and trodden hard. They have no furniture except wooden bowls of seal oil, in which burn fragments of moss, and black wooden troughs which are alternately used as dishes and as seats. Sad is the lot of children born in such a place. Until they are old enough to climb up the chimney pole they never see the outside world.

The weather on the day after our arrival at Shestakova was much better, and our Cossack Meranef, who was on his way back to Tigil, bade us good-bye, and started with two or three natives for Kamenoi.

Dodd and I managed to pa.s.s away the day by drinking tea eight or ten times simply as an amus.e.m.e.nt, reading an odd volume of Cooper's novels which we had picked up at Gizhiga, and strolling along the high bluffs over the gulf with our rifles in search of foxes. Soon after dark, just as we were drinking tea in final desperation for the seventh time, our dogs who were tied around the _yurt_ set up a general howl, and Yagor came sliding down the chimney in the most reckless and disorderly manner, with the news that a Russian Cossack had just arrived from Petropavlovsk, bringing letters for the Major. Dodd sprang up in great excitement, kicked over the teakettle, dropped his cup and saucer, and made a frantic rush for the chimney pole; but before he could reach it we saw somebody's legs coming down into the _yurt_, and in a moment a tall man in a spotted reindeerskin coat appeared, crossed himself carefully two or three times, as if in grat.i.tude for his safe arrival, and then turned to us with the Russian salutation, "Zdrastvuitia."--"At kooda?"--"Where from?" demanded Dodd, quickly. "From Petropavlovsk with letters for the _Maiur_,"

(mai-oor'), was the reply; "three telegraph s.h.i.+ps have been there, and I am sent with important letters from the American _nachalnik_ [Footnote: Commander.]; I have been thirty-nine days and nights on the road from Petropavlovsk." This was important news. Colonel Bulkley had evidently touched at the southern end of Kamchatka on his return from Bering Sea, and the letters brought by the courier would undoubtedly explain why he had not landed the party at the mouth of the Anadyr River, as he had intended. I felt a strong temptation to open the letters; but not thinking that they could have any bearing upon my movements, I finally concluded to send them on without a moment's delay to Gizhiga, in the faint hope that the Major had not yet left there for Okhotsk. In twenty minutes the Cossack was gone, and we were left to form all sorts of wild conjectures as to the contents of the letters, and the movements of the parties which Colonel Bulkley had carried up to Bering Strait. I regretted a hundred times that I had not opened the letters, and found out to a certainty that the Anadyr River party had not been landed. But it was too late now, and we could only hope that the courier would overtake the Major before he had started from Gizhiga, and that the latter would send somebody to us at Anadyrsk with the news.

[Ill.u.s.tration: INTERIOR OF A YURT OF THE SETTLED KORAKS]

There were no signs yet of the Penzhina sledges, and we spent another night and another long dreary day in the smoky _yurt_ at Shestakova, waiting for transportation. Late in the evening of December 2d, Yagor, who acted in the capacity of sentinel, came down the chimney with another sensation. He had heard the howling of dogs in the direction of Penzhina. We went up on the roof of the _yurt_ and listened for several minutes, but hearing nothing but the wind, we concluded that Yagor had either been mistaken, or that a pack of wolves had howled in the valley east of the settlement. Yagor however was right; he had heard dogs on the Penzhina road, and in less than ten minutes the long-expected sledges drew up, amid general shouting and barking, before our _yurt_. In the course of conversation with the new arrivals, I thought I understood one of the Penzhina men to say something about a party who had mysteriously appeared near the mouth of the Anadyr River, and who were building a house there as if with the intention of spending the winter. I did not yet understand Russian very well, but I guessed at once that the long-talked-of Anadyr River party had been landed, and springing up in considerable excitement, I called Dodd to interpret. It seemed from all the information which the Penzhina men could give us that a small party of Americans had mysteriously appeared, early in the winter, near the mouth of the Anadyr, and had commenced to build a house of driftwood and a few boards which had been landed from the vessel in which they came. What their intentions were, who they were, or how long they intended to stay, no one knew, as the report came through bands of Wandering Chukchis, who had never seen the Americans themselves, but who had heard of them from others. The news had been pa.s.sed along from one encampment of Chukchis to another until it had finally reached Penzhina, and had thus been brought on to us at Shestakova, more than five hundred miles from the place where the Americans were said to be.

We could hardly believe that Colonel Bulkley had landed an exploring party in the desolate region south of Bering Strait, at the very beginning of an arctic winter; but what could Americans be doing there, if they did not belong to our expedition? It was not a place which civilised men would be likely to select for a winter residence, unless they had in view some very important object. The nearest settlement--Anadyrsk--was almost two hundred and fifty miles distant; the country along the lower Anadyr was said to be wholly dest.i.tute of wood, and inhabited only by roving bands of Chukchis, and a party landed there without an interpreter would have no means of communicating even with these wild, lawless natives, or of obtaining any means whatever of transportation. If there were any Americans there, they were certainly in a very unpleasant situation. Dodd and I talked the matter over until nearly midnight, and finally concluded that upon our arrival at Anadyrsk we would make up a strong party of experienced natives, take thirty days' provisions, and push through to the Pacific Coast on dog-sledges in search of these mysterious Americans. It would be an adventure just novel and hazardous enough to be interesting, and if we succeeded in reaching the mouth of the Anadyr in winter, we should do something never before accomplished and never but once attempted. With this conclusion we crawled into our fur bags and dreamed that we were starting for the Open Polar Sea in search of Sir John Franklin.

On the morning of December 23d, as soon as it was light enough to see, we loaded our tobacco, provisions, tea, sugar, and trading-goods upon the Penzhina sledges, and started up the shallow bushy valley of the Shestakova River toward a mountainous ridge, a spur of the great Stanavoi range, in which the stream had its source. We crossed the mountain early in the afternoon, at a height of about a thousand feet, and slid swiftly down its northern slope into a narrow valley, which opened upon the great steppes which bordered the river Aklan. The weather was clear and not very cold, but the snow in the valley was deep and soft, and our progress was provokingly slow. We had hoped to reach the Aklan by night, but the day was so short and the road so bad that we travelled five hours after dark, and then had to stop ten versts south of the river. We were rewarded, however, by seeing two very fine mock moons, and by finding a magnificent patch of trailing-pine, which furnished us with dry wood enough for a glorious camp-fire. The curious tree or bush known to the Russians as _kedrovnik_ (keh-drove'-nik), and rendered in the English translation of Wrangell's Travels as "trailing cedar," is one of the most singular productions of Siberia. I hardly know whether to call it a tree, a bush, or a vine, for it partakes more or less of the characteristics of all three, and yet does not look much like any of them. It resembles as much as anything a dwarf pine tree, with a remarkably gnarled, crooked, and contorted trunk, growing horizontally like a neglected vine along the ground, and sending up perpendicular branches through the snow. It has the needles and cones of the common white pine, but it never stands erect like a tree, and grows in great patches from a few yards to several acres in extent. A man might walk over a dense growth of it in winter and yet see nothing but a few bunches of sharp green needles, sticking up here and there through the snow. It is found on the most desolate steppes and upon the rockiest mountain-sides from the Okhotsk Sea to the Arctic Ocean, and seems to grow most luxuriantly where the soil is most barren and the storms most severe. On great ocean-like plains, dest.i.tute of all other vegetation, this trailing-pine lurks beneath the snow, and covers the ground in places with a perfect network of gnarled, twisted, and interlocking trunks. For some reason it always seems to die when it has attained a certain age, and wherever you find its green spiny foliage you will also find dry white trunks as inflammable as tinder.

It furnishes almost the only firewood of the Wandering Koraks and Chukchis, and without it many parts of north-eastern Siberia would be absolutely uninhabitable by man. Scores of nights during our explorations in Siberia, we should have been compelled to camp without fire, water, or warm food, had not Nature provided everywhere an abundance of trailing-pine, and stored it away under the snow for the use of travellers.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DOG-TEAMS DESCENDING A STEEP MOUNTAIN SLOPE]

We left our camp in the valley early on the following morning, pushed on across the large and heavily timbered river called the Aklan, and entered upon the great steppe which stretches away from its northern bank toward Anadyrsk. For two days we travelled over this barren snowy plain, seeing no vegetation but stunted trees and patches of trailing-pine along the banks of occasional streams, and no life except one or two solitary ravens and a red fox. The bleak and dreary landscape could have been described in two words--snow and sky. I had come to Siberia with full confidence in the ultimate success of the Russian-American Telegraph line, but as I penetrated deeper and deeper into the country and saw its utter desolation I grew less and less sanguine. Since leaving Gizhiga we had travelled nearly three hundred versts, had found only four places where we could obtain poles, and had pa.s.sed only three settlements. Unless we could find a better route than the one over which we had been, I feared that the Siberian telegraph line would be a failure.

Up to this time we had been favoured with unusually fine weather; but it was a season of the year when storms were of frequent occurrence, and I was not surprised to be awakened Christmas night by the roaring of the wind and the hissing sound of the snow as it swept through our unprotected camp and buried up our dogs and sledges. We were having a slight touch of a Siberian _purga_ (poor'-gah = blizzard). A fringe of trees along the little stream on which we were camped sheltered us in a measure from the storm, but out on the steppe it was evidently blowing a gale. We rose as usual at daylight and made an attempt to travel; but no sooner did we leave the cover of the trees than our dogs became almost unmanageable, and, blinded and half suffocated with flying snow, we were driven back again into the timber. It was impossible to see thirty feet, and the wind blew with such fury that our dogs would not face it. We ma.s.sed our sledges together as a sort of breastwork against the drifting snow, spread our fur bags down behind them, crawled in, covered up our heads with deerskins and blankets, and prepared for a long dismal siege. There is nothing so thoroughly, hopelessly dreary and uncomfortable, as camping out upon a Siberian steppe in a storm. The wind blows with such violence that a tent cannot possibly be made to stand; the fire is half extinguished by drifting snow, and fills the eyes with smoke and cinders when it burns at all; conversation is impossible on account of the roaring of the wind and the beating of the snow in one's face; bearskins, pillows, and furs become stiff and icy with half-melted sleet, sledges are buried up, and there remains nothing for the unhappy traveller to do but crawl into his sleeping-bag, cover up his head, and s.h.i.+ver away the long, dismal hours.

We lay out on the snow in this storm for two days, spending nearly all the time in our fur bags and suffering severely from the cold during the long, dark nights. On the 28th, about four o'clock in the morning, the storm began to abate, and by six we had dug out our sledges and were under way. There was a low spur of the Stanavoi Mountains about ten versts north of our camp, and our men said that if we could get across that before daylight we should probably have no more bad weather until we reached Penzhina. Our dog-food was entirely exhausted, and we must make the settlement within the next twenty-four hours if possible. The snow had been blown hard by the wind, our dogs were fresh from two days' rest, and before daylight we had crossed the ridge and stopped in a little valley on the northern slope of the mountain to drink tea. When compelled to travel all night, the Siberian natives always make a practice of stopping just before sunrise and allowing their dogs to get to sleep. They argue that if a dog goes to sleep while it is yet dark, and wakes up in an hour and finds the sun s.h.i.+ning, he will suppose that he has had a full night's rest and will travel all day without thinking of being tired. An hour's stop, however, at any other time will be of no use whatever. As soon as we thought we had deluded our dogs into the belief that they had slept all night, we roused them up and started down the valley toward a tributary of the Penzhina River, known as the Uskanova (Oo-skan'-o-vah). The weather was clear and not very cold, and we all enjoyed the pleasant change and the brief two hours of suns.h.i.+ne which were vouchsafed us before the sun sank behind the white peaks of Stanavoi. Just at dark we crossed the river Kondra, fifteen miles from Penzhina, and in two hours more we were hopelessly lost on another great level steppe, and broken up into two or three separate and bewildered parties. I had fallen asleep soon after pa.s.sing the Kondra, and had not the slightest idea how we were progressing or whither we were going, until Dodd shook me by the shoulder and said, "Kennan, we're lost." Rather a startling announcement to wake a man with, but as Dodd did not seem to be much concerned about it, I a.s.sured him that I didn't care, and lying back on my pillow went to sleep again, fully satisfied that my driver would find Penzhina sometime in the course of the night.

Guided by the stars, Dodd, Gregorie, and I, with one other sledge which remained with us, turned away to the eastward, and about nine o'clock came upon the Penzhina River somewhere below the settlement.

We started up it on the ice, and had gone but a short distance when we saw two or three sledges coming down the river. Surprised to find men travelling away from the village at that hour of the night, we hailed them with a "Halloo!"

"Halloo!"

"Vwe kooda yaydetia?"--"Where are you going?"

"We're going to Penzhina; who are you?"