Through Siberia

History of Russian invasion.—Former travellers to Okhotsk.—Cochrane, Erman, and Hill.—Down the Lena to Yakutsk.—Prevalence of goitre.—The Upper Lena and its tributaries.—The Lower Lena.—Discoveries of mammoths.—New Siberian islands.—Nordenskiöld’s passage.

When, at the beginning of the 17th century, the Cossack conquerors of Siberia had crossed the Yenesei, and had pushed on as far as Lake Baikal, they were met by the numerous and warlike tribe of the Buriats, who opposed the invaders with considerable force. Not waiting, therefore, for their entire subjection (which took 30 years to accomplish), the Cossacks turned northwards to the basin of the Lena, and descended the river more than half-way to the Arctic Sea, where, coming in 1632 to the principal town of the Yakutes, they built a fort and founded the city of Yakutsk. After this they crossed the Aldan mountains, and, seven years later, reached the Sea of Okhotsk. For two centuries this was the route followed by those who would cross Siberia from the Urals to the Pacific, or vice versâ. In the present day there are two other roads. All must go by the route we travelled from Tomsk to Irkutsk, but from thence the Pacific can be reached either by crossing the Mongolian desert to Peking, or by traversing the Buriat steppe, and so descending the Amur. The second of these routes is now the best, but not briefly to mention the old route would be to omit much interesting information concerning the Lena, with its native population and fossilized remains, as well as to miss the opportunity of hearing a little of some of the most daring and adventurous journeys of previous travellers.⁠[1]

The most remarkable of these was an Englishman named John Dundas Cochrane, a captain in the Royal Navy, who, in 1820, proposed to the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty that they should give their sanction and countenance to his undertaking alone a journey into the interior of Africa, with a view to ascertaining the course and determination of the river Niger. This they declined, whereupon he procured two years’ leave of absence, and resolved to attempt “a walking tour” round the globe, as nearly as could be done by land, crossing from Northern Asia to America at Behring’s Straits, his leading object being to trace the shores of the Polar Sea along America by land, as Captain Parry was at the time attempting it by sea. Accordingly he left London with his knapsack, crossed the Channel to Dieppe, and then set out. This gentleman was endowed with an unbounded reliance upon his own individual exertions, and his knowledge of man when unfettered by the frailties and misconduct of others. One man, he said, might go anywhere he chose, fearlessly and alone, and as safely trust himself in the hands of savages as among his own friends. His favourite dictum was that an individual might travel throughout the Russian empire, except in the civilized parts between the capitals, so long as his conduct was becoming, without necessaries failing him. He put his principle rather severely to the test, and it must be allowed that he did so with very general success, for he states that in travelling from Moscow to Irkutsk (4,000 miles by his route) he spent less than a guinea. From Irkutsk he descended the Lena to Yakutsk, from whence, accompanied by a single Cossack, he penetrated in a north-easterly direction almost to the shores of the Ice Sea at Nijni Kolimsk, where, having altered his plans, he turned back by a most difficult route to Okhotsk. From this place he sailed to Kamchatka, and married a native, whom he brought by sea back to Okhotsk, and then in winter crossed the Aldan mountains to Yakutsk, whence the happy pair proceeded to Irkutsk, and at length reached England, where Mrs. Cochrane, as I learn from the daughter of one who knew her, was carefully educated, and passed as a lady in good society. For enterprise and bravery this captain, I take it, easily bears off the palm from all Siberian travellers.⁠[2]

The writer who has added most, perhaps, to our scientific knowledge of the valley of the Lena is M. Adolph Erman, who crossed Siberia in 1828, in conjunction, though not in company, with Professor Hansteen, the first professor at the Magnetic Observatory at Christiania, in Norway, and famous for his researches in terrestrial magnetism. They both travelled for the purpose of making magnetic and other observations; but, on arriving at Irkutsk, Professor Hansteen returned to Europe, whilst Erman continued down the Lena to Yakutsk, crossed to the Sea of Okhotsk, and so continued round the world.⁠[3]

Later on, one more Englishman has reached the Pacific by way of the Lena, namely, Mr. S. S. Hill, who did so in 1848, and it is not unlikely that he may, for some time, be the last of the intrepid travellers who have accomplished this feat, since the Amur is now open to the Russians, and presents a far easier way of crossing the continent.

To follow the older route, the first portion had to be traversed by post vehicles from Irkutsk, a distance of 160 miles in a north-easterly direction. The road crosses the water-parting of the Lena basin at or near the station Khogotskaya, which is about 90 geographical miles from Irkutsk. The traveller journeys through a hilly country, where there is abundant pasture, and where the land is to some extent cultivated, to the village of Kachugskoe, situated on the banks of the Lena. Here various sorts of merchandise are embarked in large flat-bottomed boats, which are floated down the river. These goods are exchanged with the natives for furs, the boats at the end of the journey being broken up in districts where timber is scarce, and the furs brought back in smaller craft.⁠[4]

The descent of the Upper Lena to Yakutsk by water was undertaken by Mr. Hill in spring, and by Captain Cochrane in autumn, but Mr. Erman accomplished it on the ice in winter, by a 20 days’ sledge journey of nearly 1,900 miles. As he passed along he observed, first in the village of Petrovsk, several of the women largely affected with goitre, and learned with surprise that this malady, which in Europe characterises the valleys of the Alps, is frequent on the Lena. As he proceeded he found goitre in men also, and asking an exile at Turutsk, who appeared the only healthy person in the place, how he had protected himself from goitre, was told that adults arriving from Europe were never attacked by the disease, but that the goitre was born with the children of the district, and grew up with them. Medical men in Switzerland say that goitre proceeds from deposits in chemical combination, washed down by mountain streams that supply the inhabitants of the neighbourhood with drinking water, and that it attacks children on account of their mucous membranes being very tender and easily distended. Mr. Erman inquired carefully, as he went on, respecting the prevalency of goitre, and having made barometrical and other observations along the way, he came at length to the conclusion that the disease was traceable, in part, to the formation and altitude of various places along the valley of the river, where the air, being confined, is, in summer, heated to an extraordinary degree, and loaded with moisture.

With regard to the stream of the Upper Lena, its head waters have their sources spread out for 200 geographical miles along the counter slopes of the hills that form the western bank of Lake Baikal, and the main stream rises within seven miles of the lake.

At Kachugskoe, about 60 geographical miles from the Baikal, and not less than 75 geographical miles in a straight line from its source, the Lena measures about the width of the Thames in London. The water, deep and clear, has in spring a very rapid current, though Captain Cochrane speaks of the rate lower down, in autumn, as only 1½ or 2 knots per hour. The next station after Kachugskoe is Vercholensk, a town of 1,000 inhabitants, the first of that size on the north-east of Irkutsk, and is the chief town of the uyezd. After flowing 500 miles further through a hilly country, with high banks always on one and sometimes on both sides, on which are 35 post-stations and more villages, the river passes Kirensk, which again is the chief town of an uyezd, and has a population of 800.⁠[5] Here cultivation practically ceases, except for vegetables. At this point, too, the river receives on its right the Kirenga, which has run nearly as long a course as the Lena. The stream thus enlarged now flows on for 300 miles more to Vitimsk, where it is joined by its second great tributary, the Vitim, from the mountains east of Lake Baikal. Another stretch of 460 miles, through a country still hilly, but with villages less frequent, brings the traveller to Olekminsk, the capital of another uyezd, a town of 500 inhabitants; there the Lena receives from the south the Olekma, which rises near the Amur river. It then continues for 400 miles through a sparsely-populated district, till it reaches Yakutsk, where it is 4 miles wide in summer, and 2½ in winter, the river being usually frozen about the 1st October, and not free from ice till about May 25th.

Hitherto the course of the river has been to the north-east, but at Yakutsk the stream makes a bend and runs due north, receiving on its right, 100 miles below Yakutsk, one of its largest tributaries, the Aldan, which rises in the Stanovoi range bordering on the Sea of Okhotsk. Yakutsk is only 270 feet above the sea, and the current of the river henceforth is sluggish. About 50 miles further the Lena receives its largest tributary from the left, the Vilui, and then proceeds majestically through a flat country with an enormous body of water to the Arctic Ocean, into which it enters among a delta of islands formed of the débris brought down by the river.

In the region of the Lower Lena, and to the westward, have been found the remains of a huge rhinoceros, and an elephant larger than that now existing—the elephas primigenius, popularly called the mammoth. It is so named from the Russian mamont, or Tatar mamma (the earth), because the Yakutes believed that this animal worked its way in the earth like a mole; and a Chinese story represents the mamentova as a rat of the size of an elephant which always burrowed underground, and died on coming in contact with the outer air. The tusks of the mammoth are remarkable for exhibiting a double curve, first inwards, then outwards, and then inwards again; and Professor Ramsay gives it me as the opinion of several able naturalists that the so-called mammoth is of the same species as the Indian elephant, only much altered by the change of climatic conditions. The Samoyedes say that the mammoth still exists wandering upon the shores of the Frozen Ocean, and subsisting on dead bodies thrown up by the surf. As for the rhinoceros, they say it was a gigantic bird, and that the horns which the ivory-merchants purchase were its talons. Their legends tell of fearful combats between their ancestors and this enormous winged animal.

A trade in mammoth ivory has been carried on for hundreds of years between the tribes of Northern Asia and the Chinese; but it was a long time before European naturalists took a marked interest in the evidence of an extinct order of animals which these remains undeniably recorded. The Siberian mammoth agrees exactly with the specimens unearthed in various parts of England, especially at Ilford in the valley of the Thames, near London, and on the coast of Norfolk; but whereas on European soil there remain but fragments of the skeleton, there have been found in Siberia bones of the rhinoceros and mammoth covered with pieces of flesh and skin. These discoveries date back more than a century.⁠[6]

In 1865 the captain of a Yenesei steamer learnt that some natives had discovered the preserved remains of a mammoth in latitude 67°, about 100 versts west of the river. Intelligence was sent to Petersburg, and Dr. Schmidt was commissioned to go and examine into the matter. Accordingly he proceeded down the Yenesei to Turukhansk, and thence to the landing-place nearest the mammoth deposit, hoping to obtain the animal’s stomach, and, from the character of the leaves within, infer the creature’s habitat, since it is known that the beast lived upon vegetable food, but of what exact character no one has yet determined. Unfortunately the stomach was wanting.

In examining, under the microscope, fragments of vegetable food picked out of the grooves of the molar teeth of the Siberian rhinoceros at Irkutsk, naturalists have recognised fibres of the pitch-pine, larch, birch, and willow, resembling those of trees of the same kind which still grow in Southern Siberia. This seems to confirm the opinion, expressed long ago, that the rhinoceros and other large pachyderms found in the alluvial soil of the north used to inhabit Middle Siberia, south of the extreme northern regions where their skeletons are now found; but Mr. Knox, who travelled for some distance with Schmidt on his return journey, says that the doctor estimated that the beast had been frozen many thousands of years, and that his natural dwelling-place was in the north, at a period when perhaps the Arctic regions were warmer than they now are. Covered with long hair, the animal could certainly resist an Arctic climate; but how on the tundras of the north could the animal have found the foliage of trees necessary for its subsistence? Must we conclude that formerly the country was wooded, or that the mammoth did not live where its skeletons are now found, but further south, whence its carcase has been carried northward by rivers, and frozen into the soil? These are questions debated among geologists, and still awaiting solution.

The fact, however, remains, that mammoth ivory is still an important branch of native commerce, and all travellers bear witness to the quantities of fossil bones found throughout the frozen regions of Siberia.⁠[7]

Each year, in early summer, fishermen’s barques direct their course to the New Siberian group, to the “isles of bones”; and, during winter, caravans drawn by dogs take the same route, and return charged with tusks of the mammoth, each weighing from 150 lbs. to 200 lbs. The fossil ivory thus obtained is imported into China and Europe, and is used for the same purposes as the ordinary ivory of the elephant and hippopotamus.

We cannot leave the Lower Lena and the neighbouring shores of the Arctic Ocean without alluding to the wonderful sight those shores witnessed in 1878, for the first time in the history of the world. It was no less a sight than that of two steam vessels that had ploughed their way from Europe round Cape Cheliuskin. One of them was the Vega, in which was Professor Nordenskiöld, whose intention had been to anchor off the mouth of the Lena, but a favourable wind and an open sea offered so splendid an opportunity of continuing his voyage that he did not neglect it. He sailed away, therefore, on the 28th of August, direct for Fadievskoi, one of the New Siberian islands, where he intended to remain some days, and to examine scientifically the remains of mammoths, rhinoceroses, horses, aurochs, bisons, sheep, etc., with which these islands are said to be covered. The Vega made excellent progress, but though, on the 30th, Liakov Island was reached, the professor was unable to land, owing to the rotten ice which surrounded it, and the danger to which the vessel would have been exposed in case of a storm in such shallow water.

After the Vega, with Nordenskiöld on board, had left its sister ship the Lena, the latter vessel, under the command of Captain Johannesen, started to ascend the river of its own name. A pilot had been engaged to descend the river and await the arrival of the Lena, but as neither he nor his signals were visible, the captain, after considerable difficulty, from the shallowness of the water, made his way through the delta, and on the 7th September reached the main stream, where the navigation was less difficult. Yakutsk was reached on the 21st September, dispatches were sent on to Irkutsk, and from thence it was telegraphed to Europe that the rounding of Cape Cheliuskin and the navigation of the Lena by a steamer from the Atlantic had been accomplished.