Through Siberia

The Upper Primorsk.—History of north-eastern maritime discovery.—Travellers in the Upper Primorsk.—The Sea of Okhotsk and fisheries.—Bush’s journey.—Okhotsk and its natives.—Kamchatka.—Its volcanoes, earthquakes, springs.—Garden produce and animals.—Kamchatdales.—Their number and character.—The Koriaks.—Their warlike spirit.—Houses of settled and wandering Koriaks.—Food.—Herds of deer.—Marriage customs.—Putting sick and aged to death.—The Chukchees.—Their habitat.—Diminution of fur animals.—Vegetation.—Intoxicating plants.—Nordenskiöld on the Chukchee coast.—Onkelon antiquities.

North-eastern Siberia, or the Upper Primorsk, is to be the subject of this chapter, for which I have chosen the title of Kamchatka as best recalling the locality. Unlike the Amur, of which we have been treating, this portion of the Sea-coast province cannot be spoken of as new; for its discovery dates back more than a century. Of late years, all eyes have been turned in this direction by the maritime achievements of Professor Nordenskiöld, who, having completed his wonderful travel by water, was being fêted at Yokohama, whilst I was lying weather-bound off the coast.⁠[1]

During my stay at Nikolaefsk, I was further north than the capital of Kamchatka, and Petropavlovsk was distant only a few days’ sail. Intervening, however, was the Sea of Okhotsk, the mention of which so often recurs in connection with the north-eastern parts of Siberia.⁠[2] Formerly it was much frequented by whales. The captain of the Tunguse told me at Nikolaefsk that, as a young man, he used to go to the Okhotsk Sea in a whaler; but so many of these animals had been killed, he said, that during one season they caught only three of them, which he thought poor. At Vladivostock, however, I met with Mr. Lindholm, who has a steamer and a sailing-ship engaged in the whale trade, and from him I gathered that at the present high price of whalebone, it answers well if, during a season, a boat takes two large whales.⁠[3] The whales feed on the molluscs of the Okhotsk Sea, some of which Erman mentions as being eaten by the Chinese.⁠[4] Whether the molluscs are less abundant than of yore, or whether so many whales have been killed that few remain, the diminution of the trade was impressed on my mind by meeting in the Primorsk several Finlanders who had left their fatherland in the expectation of speedily making their fortunes by whaling in the Okhotsk Sea; but their project proved a bubble.⁠[5]

The only man, I believe, other than an aboriginal, who has travelled round the Okhotsk Sea, starting from Nikolaefsk, by land, is Mr. Bush, the author of “Reindeer, Dogs, and Snow-shoes,” all three of which he certainly had ample opportunity of becoming acquainted with. Nothing, perhaps, in his journey would appear more remarkable to those unacquainted with the records of Arctic travel than his sleeping, night after night, in the open air of a Siberian winter, between a couple of ordinary blankets, lined with deerskin, between which, on awaking, he sometimes found himself buried, as were his dogs, beneath recently-fallen snow. Proceeding round the coast, the first village we approach after leaving the Amur is Udskoi, with 150 inhabitants. It is situated on the river Ud, and was one of the earliest Cossack stations. Further north is Port Ayan, to which, in 1844, the American Company transferred their station for trading in fish and furs.

On the Okhota, further north, is the town of Okhotsk, which has given its name to the adjoining sea. Its population was never large, though it had a certain amount of activity before 1807, when the burdens of many thousands of horses passed through to the Russian settlements on the Pacific. It is a sorry-looking place of 200 inhabitants, though many a traveller has been glad to reach it after a severe journey from Yakutsk. The only animals kept at Okhotsk, says Mr. Knox, are cows and dogs. In summer the dogs are shrewd enough to go into the water and catch their own salmon, wading into the stream and standing, like storks, till the fish appear. The natives living on this western coast are the Lamuti, a seafaring Tunguse tribe, said to be uncorrupted from their primitive simplicity, either by the tricks of the Russian merchants or those of the aboriginal Yakutes. From Okhotsk to Nikolaefsk is a voyage of 400 miles, but there is no road by land: hence the remarkable nature of Bush’s journey.

The traveller who, from Okhotsk, wishes to visit Kamchatka may reach Petropavlovsk by sea through the Kuriles, or continue round the coast by road. The latter course takes him through Yamsk to Ghijiga, at the north of the bay, a distance of 1,100 miles. He then descends along the western coast of Kamchatka to Tigil, 760 miles further, at which point he strikes inland to a valley lying below active volcanoes, and so reaches Petropavlovsk, on the shore of the North Pacific, a land journey from Okhotsk of 2,540 miles, accomplished by deer, horses, and dogs.

Kamchatka is so called after the name of its principal river. The peninsula is 800 miles long, and from 30 to 120 miles wide; its total area being about 80,000 square miles, or five times the size of Switzerland. The southern extremity, called Cape Lopatka, is a low, narrow tongue of land, which, as it proceeds northwards, widens and rises into rocky and barren hills, with small valleys timbered with willow and stunted birch. Two degrees north the range divides, one portion running nearly due north and the other taking a north-easterly direction. In the fork formed by these two chains lies the valley of the river Kamchatka. The western chain rarely rises above 3,000 feet, but the eastern chain has many high volcanoes, among them Kluchevsky, which is somewhat higher than Mont Blanc, and not far from the sea.⁠[6]

Earthquakes are more frequent, perhaps, in Kamchatka than in any other country. The number of shocks felt at Petropavlovsk averages eight annually.⁠[7]

The climate of Kamchatka is much milder than in the eastern parts of the mainland. The frost sets in about the middle of October, but up to December the temperature rarely falls 10° below the freezing point of Fahrenheit, though in severe winters the thermometer sometimes sinks to 25° below zero. Snow-storms with wind, called poorgas, are prevalent in February and March. They sometimes take up whole masses of snow, and form drifts several feet deep in a few minutes, burying, it may be, travellers, dogs, and sledges, who remain thus till the storm is over. Dogs begin to howl at the approach of a poorga, and try to burrow in the snow if the wind is cold or violent.

About 50 miles west of Petropavlovsk is a remarkable warm spring, into which when you enter, says Mr. Collins, the sensation is as if the skin would be removed, whilst the stones and mud on the bottom fairly burn the feet, added to which the steam and gas, ascending from this natural caldron, fairly take away the breath. In a short time, however, bathers become red like lobsters, and find the temperature enjoyable. The water is very buoyant. It is used by the natives for all sorts of diseases.

The valley watered by the Kamchatka is composed of fine mould, and has abundant natural productions—fir, birch, larch, poplar, willow, cedar, and juniper, and that of larger size than in the same latitude elsewhere in Asia. Raspberries, strawberries, whortleberries, currants, and cranberries abound; and flowers are seen in spring in almost tropical luxuriance. There is much grass in the lower lands, and Mr. Hill records an extraordinary phenomenon in a place he visited respecting the growth and preservation of potatoes.⁠[8] There grows, likewise, a plant in the country called by the natives krapeva, from which they make a coarse but very durable cloth. It resembles our stinging-nettle, but is of larger growth and stronger fibre.

Among the animals of Kamchatka there is none with which the traveller becomes more familiar than the dog, which is found wild on the hills. The color is usually buff or silver-grey, and in nature and disposition he resembles the mastiff and the wolf, sleeping, like the latter, more by day than by night. He is intelligent as regards his work, but not affectionate, as may be said of the steppe dogs, and has to be ruled by the rod. It is not usually safe to leave these dogs loose, for they kill fowls, deer, smaller dogs, and sometimes even children.⁠[9] As on the Amur, they are usually fed on fish, particularly the salmon, besides which there are caught in Kamchatka, or off its coasts, the cod, herring, smelt, as also whales, walruses, and seals. The country abounds with geese, ducks, and a variety of wild fowl.

The southern part of the peninsula is inhabited by the Kamchatdales, which is the name the Russians give them; but they are called Konchalo by their neighbours the Koriaks. They have large round faces, prominent cheek-bones, small sunken eyes, flattened noses, black hair, and tawny complexions. Their language, very guttural, is largely inflexional, or composed of invariable root forms modified by prefixes. The poverty of the language may be inferred from their having but one word for the sun and moon (khiht), but still more from the circumstance that it has scarcely any names for fish or birds, which are merely distinguished by the moon in which they are most plentiful. The language is spoken in the south among the Kuriles, and in the extreme north about Penjinsk. Otherwise it is fast dying out, as is also the race. In certain parts the people are almost Russified. When Captain Cochrane travelled in Siberia, he surprised his friends by taking home a Kamchatdale wife, but this did not surprise me after meeting at Nikolaefsk, at dinner, a Kamchatdale lady who had married a Russian officer. I saw, too, at Khabarofka, and on the steamer, another Kamchatdale, of less presentable appearance—a cleric, wearing his hair in a queue, perhaps for convenience in travel. He was taken, as a boy of 10 years old, to Irkutsk to be educated; afterwards sent to be minister in a church in Russian America, and subsequently became priest of Okhotsk. He is now near Blagovestchensk, and when I saw him was sick. He looked a poor miserable creature, and was pointed out to me by Baron Stackelberg, of whom he had openly asked an alms, as “ce pauvre diable.” He appeared much pleased with some books I gave him, but was altogether about the poorest specimen of a priest I saw in Russia.

The number of the Kamchatdales, strictly so called, is estimated at 3,000. Their capital is Petropavlovsk, the only town on the eastern coast of the peninsula.⁠[10] The little town points with pride to its two monuments, erected, one to Behring and the other to La Perouse, and its old fortifications, now covered with grass and flowers, serve to recall the defeat of the English and French allies, who attacked this village during the Crimean War.

The Kamchatdales are a people of much amiability and honesty. Their houses are always open to the stranger, whom they never weary of waiting upon, and from whom they soon forget an injury.⁠[11] They have given up, to a large extent, their Shamanism, though they still take care, when hunting an animal, not to pronounce its name, lest they should be visited by ill luck. The Kamchatdales have not the heroic character of their neighbours the Koriaks. Their plaintive songs do not celebrate battles, but love, sledge travels, fishing, and hunting. In their dances they mimic admirably the movements of animals, bounding like the deer, running like the fox, and even entering the water to swim like the seal.

The northern half of the peninsula, and the mainland up to the 65th parallel, are inhabited by the Koriaks, their district extending laterally from the 130th meridian to Behring’s Sea, and north of this region to the Frozen Ocean live the Chukchees.⁠[12]

The Anadir is the one river of this region worth mentioning; but flowing as it does on the polar circle, and near the limit where trees cease to grow, it traverses only solitudes without towns. The Russian garrison was obliged to abandon the small fort of Anadirsk, constructed on its banks for a fur depôt, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and the Chukchees set it on fire. It is now replaced by four little villages, with a united population of about 200, consisting of aborigines and Cossacks living a half-savage life, though speaking Russ. The Anadir, like the rest of the rivers in the Chukchee and Kamchatdale countries, is so full of fish at the breeding season that the water seems alive with them. When the shoals of salmon mount the river, the water rises like a bank, and the fish are so pressed together that they can be taken by hand. The water ceases to be drinkable, and its smell and taste become intolerable, by reason of the millions of its inhabitants in a state of decomposition.

The Koriaks seem to be related to the Chukchees, and speak a dialect approaching theirs. They are divided into settled and wandering Koriaks, the former occupying themselves in fishing, the latter as reindeer keepers and hunters. Their southern limit in Kamchatka is the village of Tigil, whither they go once a year to exchange their commodities. Travellers do not speak well of the settled Koriaks. Deprived of their herds of reindeer, they have no resource but fishing and traffic with foreign sailors and Russian dealers. The first are said to have taught them drinking and debauchery, and the second lying and stealing. They are eaten up with misery and vice, and are the most degraded of the Siberian tribes. Only the women tattoo their faces, thinking thereby to arrest the ravages of time. Their winter yourts may be classed among the most extraordinary of human habitations. They are built somewhat like a huge wooden hour-glass, 20 feet high, in the shape of the letter X, and are entered by climbing a pole on the outside, and then sliding down another through the “waist” of the hour-glass, which waist serves for door, window, and chimney. Holes are cut in the logs for climbing, but they are too small for the heavily-clad fur boots of a novice, who has, therefore, amid sparks and smoke, to hug the pole, slide down, and as best he can avoid the fire at the bottom. The interior presents a strange appearance, lighted only from above. The beams, rafters, and logs are smoked to a glossy blackness. A wooden platform, raised about a foot from the earth, extends out from the walls on three sides, to a width of six feet, leaving an open spot 8 or 10 feet in diameter in the centre for the fire, and a huge copper kettle of melting snow, in which is usually simmering fish, reindeer meat, dried salmon, or seals’ blubber with rancid oil; these make up the Koriaks’ bill of fare. When any one enters the yourt, the inmates are apprised of the fact by a total eclipse of the chimney hole. Among the wandering Koriaks an entrance to the tent is effected by creeping on the ground through a hole into a large open circle, which forms the interior. A fire burns upon the ground in the centre, and round the inner circumference of the yourt are constructed apartments called pologs, which are separated one from another by skin curtains, and combine the advantages of privacy with warmth and fugginess! These pologs are about four feet high and eight feet square. They are warmed and lighted by a burning fragment of moss floating in a wooden bowl of seal oil, which vitiates the air and creates an intolerable stench.

Mr. Kennan gives a humorous description of his first supper among the wandering Koriaks, and their substitute for bread, called manyalla, of which the original elements are clotted blood, tallow, and half-digested moss taken from the stomach of the reindeer, where it is supposed to have undergone some change fitting it for second-hand consumption. These curious ingredients are boiled with a few handfuls of dried grass, and the dark mass is then moulded into small loaves and frozen for future use. As a mark of special attention, the host bites off a choice morsel from a large cube of venison in his greasy hand, and then, taking it from his mouth, offers it to his guest.

The wandering Koriaks necessarily move their habitation frequently; for a herd of 4,000 or 5,000 deer (Mr. Bush mentions one Koriak as possessing 15,000 of them) paw up the snow, and in a very few days eat all the moss within a mile of the encampment. This independent kind of life has given to the Koriaks the impatience of restraint, independence of civilization, and perfect self-reliance, which distinguish them from the Kamchatdales and other settled inhabitants of Siberia. They are most hospitable, and the best of husbands and fathers. Mr. Kennan, during his sojourn of 2½ years among them, never saw a Koriak strike any of his belongings. They treat their animals with kindness, and will on no account sell a deer alive. A slain deer may be had for a pound of tobacco. Among the Koriaks the animal costs 10s., at Okhotsk from 20s. to 30s., and on the Amur £5.

Like the Kamchatdales, the Chukchees are obliged to earn their wives by working a year or more in the service of the prospective father-in-law, and even then the lover may be refused. In any case, at the wedding ceremony he has to pursue the object of his devotion through the pologs of a tent, the bridesmaids doing all they can to facilitate the passage of the bride, and, by keeping down the curtains and whipping him with switches, to hinder the progress of the bridegroom. The lover usually overtakes the maiden, however, in the last polog but one, and there they remain together for seven days and seven nights.

The treatment of the sick and aged in these regions is remarkable, for they put them to death to avoid protracted suffering. I heard the same alleged of the Gilyaks, but it was afterwards contradicted. The Koriaks look upon this as the natural end of their existence; and when they think the time come, they choose in what manner the last office of affection shall be rendered. Some ask to be stoned, and some to be killed by the hatchet or knife. All the young Koriaks learn the art of giving the fatal coup de grace as painlessly as possible.

Sometimes the younger request the old to wait a bit; but in any case immediately after death the corpse is burnt, to allow the spirit to escape into the air. Formerly, infanticide was common among them, and of twins one was always sacrificed. None of the Siberian tribes have shown such bravery in resisting the Russians as have the Koriaks and Chukchees, and some of these still retain their independence.

The Chukchee coast extends from Chaunskaia Bay, round Behring’s peninsula, to the Anadir river. The fauna of this part of Siberia is richer than in the west. Probably some of the American animals have crossed the ice of Behring’s Straits, and are mingled with those of Asia. The Alpine hare, the bear, the marmot, the weasel, the otter, are common, and wild deer roam in herds of thousands. Snakes, frogs, and toads are not found in North-Eastern Siberia nor in Kamchatka. In the latter country, however, are lizards, which are regarded as of evil omen, and when found are cut up in pieces, that they may tell no one who killed them. The country teems with lemmings, which from time to time migrate in myriads, crossing in a straight line rivers, lakes, even arms of the sea, though decimated on the way by shoals of hungry fish. Travellers are sometimes stayed for hours, waiting the marching-past of these huge armies.⁠[13]

Many fur-bearing animals in Kamchatka and the Chukchee country have greatly diminished in number since the advent of the Russian hunters, as is the case in the neighbouring seas, where some of the species have altogether disappeared.⁠[14]

The aspect on the two sides of Behring’s Straits is very different. America is wooded, whilst the Chukchee country has no vegetation but lichens and mosses, and from a distance looks completely bare. Among the flora, however, of North-Eastern Siberia is a peculiar mushroom spotted like a leopard, and surmounted with a small hood—the fly agaric, which here has the top scarlet, flecked with white points. In other parts of Russia it is poisonous. Among the Koriaks it is intoxicating, and a mushroom of this kind sells for three or four reindeer. So powerful is the fungus that the native who eats it remains drunk for several days, and by a process too disgusting to be described, half-a-dozen individuals may be successively intoxicated by the effects of a single mushroom, each in a less degree than his predecessor. The natives dig for roots and tubers, which serve for food or making intoxicating drinks. They eat also the green bark of the birch mixed with caviar.

In certain valleys, especially in those of Kamchatka, the grass exceeds the height of a man, and the Russian settlers make hay three times a year. The culture of cereals is of little profit; oats thrive best. Hemp has been grown, but not in sufficient quantities to replace the nettle as a textile thread. In fact, gardening has succeeded better than agriculture, and now the natives cultivate in hundreds of gardens cabbages, potatoes, beetroot, turnips, carrots, and other vegetables introduced by the Russians in the last century. All these, however, added to their other kinds of food, barely give sustenance enough to the Kamchatdales and their dogs, without which it would be almost impossible for them to leave their huts at certain times of the year. During the four months of summer they must lay up dry fish to provide for eight months of winter, and the normal amount of winter food for a pack of half-a-dozen Kamchatdale dogs is 100,000 herrings. Besides this the owner’s family must be nourished, and hence, if a bad season comes, and the fishing or hunting fails, death is certain; for to the greater part of the natives who have no deer, winter and want are synonymous terms.

It was on the Chukchee coast that the vessel of Professor Nordenskiöld—the Vega—was frozen in. The ship had continued her eastward course to the 28th September, and had arrived to within a few miles of the open water of Behring’s Straits. New ice had, however, begun to form, and the ship had passed into a narrow and shallow channel, where the crew made fast for the night, hoping to disentangle themselves in the morning without difficulty, especially as whalers had sometimes remained in these parts till the middle of October. They were disappointed, however. For at least a month the wind blew from the north, and by the 25th of November the new ice was two feet thick, so that there was no hope of getting free till the following summer. The Vega’s winter harbour was at the northernmost part of Behring’s Straits, a mile from land, and only about two miles from the point where the straits open into the Pacific, for the passage of which a single hour’s steam at full speed would have sufficed. This was disappointing to the professor’s party, but they built a magnetic observatory, made what discoveries they could in the interest of science, and formed acquaintance with the Chukchees. They describe the natives’ tents as kept at so great a heat that the children were usually naked. The women wore only a girdle, and the children sometimes ran from one tent to another without shoes or clothing in a temperature below freezing point.

Some of the party made excavations in the neighbourhood of dwelling-places of a race that was driven by the Chukchees hundreds of years ago to islands in the Polar Sea. The people were called Onkelon. Their houses were in groups, and built, or at least partly so, of whale-bones and driftwood, covered with earth, and connected by long passages with the open air and with one another. The kitchen middens contained bones of whale, walrus, seal, reindeer, etc., together with stone and bone implements, fastened by leather thongs to wooden handles.

The language of the Chukchees and Koriaks has not been reduced to writing, nor do these people attempt to express ideas by signs or pictures. The Russians, however, have attempted something towards Christianizing them, and the first missionary arrived so far back as 1704, though baptism did not become general among them till 1800. Some of the Chukchees, notwithstanding their savage and independent spirit (which has become somewhat softened in the few who have received baptism), are just and honest; and though implacable to an enemy, are staunch and true to a friend. They are only nominal subjects of Russia, and it will apparently take long before the Russian Government can hope to Christianize and civilize them.