Part 49 (1/2)
[Footnote 276: Lutke says (Erman's _Archiv_, iii. p. 464) that the peaceful relations with the Chukches begin after the conclusion of a peace which was brought about ten years after the abandonment of Anadyrsk, where for thirty-six years there had been a garrison of 600 men, costing over a million roubles. This peace this formerly so quarrelsome people has kept conscientiously down to our days with the exception of some market brawls, which induced Treskin, Governor-General of Eastern Siberia, to conclude with them, in 1817, a commercial treaty which appears to have been faithfully adhered to, to the satisfaction and advantage of both parties (_Dittmar_, p.
128). ]
[Footnote 277: Muller has likewise saved from oblivion some other accounts regarding the Chukches, collected soon after at Anadyrsk.
When we now read these accounts, we find not only that the Chukches knew the Eskimo on the American side, but also stories regarding the Indians of Western America penetrated to them, and further, through the authorities in Siberia, came to Europe, a circ.u.mstance which deserves to be kept in mind in judging of the writings of Herodotus and Marco Polo. ]
[Footnote 278: Sauer, _An Account_, &c., pp. 255 and 319. Sarytschev, _Reise, ubersetzt von Busse_, ii. p. 102. ]
[Footnote 279: _uber die Koriaken und die ihnen sehr nahe verwandten Tschuktschen_ (Bulletin historico-philologique de l'Academie de St.
Petersbourg, t. xiii., 1856, p. 126.) ]
[Footnote 280: That the Chukches burn their dead with various ceremonies is stated by Sarytschev on the ground of communications by the interpreter Daurkin, who lived among the reindeer-Chukches from 1787 to 1791, in order to learn their language and customs, and to announce the arrival of Billings' expedition (Sarytschev's _Reise_, ii. p. 108). The statement is thus certainly quite trustworthy. The coast population with whom Hooper came in contact, on the other hand, laid out their dead on special stages, where the corpses were allowed to be eaten up by ravens or to decay (_loc.
cit._ p. 88). ]
[Footnote 281: If the runners are not shod with ice in this way the friction between them and the hard snow is very great during severe cold, and the draught accordingly exceedingly heavy. ]
[Footnote 282: Nearly all the travellers from a great distance who pa.s.sed the _Vega_ had their dogs harnessed in this way. On the other hand, Sarytschev says that at St. Lawrence Bay all the dogs were harnessed abreast, and that this was the practice at Moore's winter quarters at Chukotskojnos is shown by the drawing at p. 71 of Hooper's work, already quoted. We ought to remember that at both these places the population were Eskimos who had adopted the Chukch language. The Greenland Eskimo have their dogs harnessed abreast, the Kamchadales in a long row. Naturally dogs harnessed abreast are unsuitable for wooded regions. The different methods of harnessing dogs mentioned here, therefore, indicate that the Eskimo have lived longer than the Chukches north of the limit of trees. ]
[Footnote 283: An exhaustive treatise on the food-substances which the Chukches gather from the vegetable kingdom, written by Dr.
Kjellman, is to be found in _The Scientific Work of the Vega Expedition_. Popov already states that the Chukches eat many berries, roots, and herbs (_Muller_, iii. p. 59). ]
[Footnote 284: Already, in the beginning of the eighteenth century, all the Siberian tribes, men and women, old and young, smoked pa.s.sionately (_Hist. Genealog. des Tartares_, p. 66). ]
[Footnote 285: Dr. John Simpson gives good information regarding the American markets in his _Observations on the Western Esquimaux_. He enumerates three market places in America besides that at Behring's Straits. At the markets people are occupied also with dancing and games, which are carried on in such a lively manner that the market people scarcely sleep during the whole time. Matiuschin gives a very lively sketch of the market at Anjui, to which, in 1821, the Chukches still went fully armed with spears, bows, and arrows (Wrangel's _Reise_, i. p. 270), and a visit to it in 1868 is described by C. von Neumann, who took part as Astronomer in von Maydell's expedition to Chukch Land (_Eine Messe im Hochnorden; Das Ausland_ 1880, p. 861). ]
[Footnote 286: I have seen such pins, also oblong stones, sooty at one end, which, after having been dipped in train-oil, have been used as torches, laid by the side of corpses in old Eskimo graves in north-western Greenland. ]
[Footnote 287: In the accounts which were collected regarding the Chukches at Anadyrsk in the beginning of the eighteenth century, it is also stated that they lived without any government On the contrary, in M. von Krusenstern's _Voyage autour du monde, 1803-1806_ (Paris, 1821, ii. p. 151), a report of Governor Koscheleff is given on some negotiations which he had with a ”chief of the whole Chukch nation”. I take it for granted that the chiefs.h.i.+p was of little account, and Koscheleff's whole sketch of his meeting with the supposed chief bears an altogether too lively European romantic stamp to be in any degree true to nature. At the same place it is also said that a brother of Governor Koscheleff, in the winter of 1805-1806, made a journey among the Chukches, on which, after his return, he sent a report, accompanied by a Chukch vocabulary, to von Krusenstern. ]
[Footnote 288: The originals of the drawings reproduced in the woodcuts are made on paper, part with the lead pencil, part with red ochre. The different groups represent _on the first page_--1, a dog-team; 2, 3, whales; 4, hunting the Polar bear and the walrus; 5, bullhead and cod; 6, man fis.h.i.+ng; 7, hare-hunting; 8, birds; 9, wood-chopper; 10, man leading a reindeer; 11, walrus hunt--7 and 9 represent Europeans. _On the second page_--1, a reindeer train; 2, a reindeer taken with a la.s.so by two men; 3, a man throwing a harpoon; 4, seal hunt from boat; 5, bear hunt; 6, the man in the moon; 7, man leading a reindeer; 8, reindeer; 9, Chukch with staff and an archer; 10, reindeer with herd; 11, reindeer; 12, two tents, man riding on a dog sledge, &c. ]
CHAPTER XIII.
The development of our knowledge of the north coast of Asia-- Herodotus--Strabo--Pliny--Marco Polo--Herberstein's map-- The conquest of Siberia by the Russians--Deschnev's voyages-- Coast navigation between the Lena and the Kolyma--Accounts of islands in the Polar Sea and old voyages to them-- The discovery of Kamchatka--The navigation of the Sea of Okotsk is opened by Swedish prisoners-of-war--The Great Northern Expedition--Behring--Schalaurov--Andrejev's Land--The New Siberian islands--Hedenstrom's expeditions--Anjou and Wrangel --Voyages from Behring's Straits westward--Fict.i.tious Polar voyages.
Now that the north-eastern promontory of Asia has been at last circ.u.mnavigated, and vessels have thus sailed along all the coasts of the old world, I shall, before proceeding farther in my sketch of the voyage of the _Vega_, give a short account of the development of our knowledge of the north coast of Asia.
Already in primitive times the Greeks a.s.sumed that all the countries of the earth were surrounded by the ocean. STRABO, in the first century before Christ, after having shown that HOMER favoured this view, brings together in the first chapter of the First Book of his geography reasons in support of it in the following terms:--
”In all directions in which man has penetrated to the uttermost boundary of the earth, he has met the sea, that is, the ocean. He has sailed round the east coast towards India, the west coast towards Iberia and Mauritia, and a great part of the south and north coast. The remaining portion which has not yet been sailed round in consequence of the voyages which have been undertaken from both sides not having been connected, is inconsiderable. For those who have attempted to circ.u.mnavigate the earth and have turned, declare that their undertaking did not fail in consequence of their having met with land, but in consequence of want of provisions and of complete timidity.
At sea they could always have gone further. This view (that the earth is surrounded by water) also accords better with the phenomena of the tides, for as the ebb and flow are everywhere the same, or at least do not vary much, the cause of this motion is to be sought for in a single ocean.”[289]
But if men were thus agreed that the north coast of Asia and Europe was bounded by the sea, there was for sixteen hundred years after the birth of Christ no actual knowledge of the nature of the Asiatic portion of this line of coast. Obscure statements regarding it, however, were current at an early period.
While HERODOTUS, in the forty-fifth chapter of his Fourth Book, expressly says that no man, so far as was then known, had discovered whether the eastern and northern countries of Europe are surrounded by the sea, he gives in the twenty-third and twenty-fourth chapters of the same book the following account of the countries lying to the north-east:--
”As far as the territory of the Scythians all the land which we have described is an uninterrupted plain, with cultivable soil, but beyond that the ground is stony and rugged. And on the other side of this extensive stone-bound tract there live at the foot of a high mountain-chain men who are bald from their birth, both men and women, they are also flat-nosed and have large chins. They speak a peculiar language, wear the Scythian dress and live on the fruit of a tree. The tree on which they live is called _Ponticon_, is about as large as the wild fig-tree, and bears fruit which resembles a bean, but has a kernel. When this fruit is ripe, they strain it through a cloth, and the juice which flows from it is thick and black and called _aschy_.
This juice they suck or drink mixed with milk, and of the pressed fruits they make cakes which they eat, for they have not many cattle because the pasture is poor. As far as to these bald people the land is now sufficiently well known, also the races on this side of them, because they are visited by Scythians. From them it is not difficult to collect information, which is also to be had from the Greeks at the port of the Borysthenes and other ports in Pontus. The Scythians who travel thither do business with the a.s.sistance of seven interpreters in seven languages. So far our knowledge extends. But of the land on the other side of the bald men none can give any trustworthy account because it is shut off by a separating wall of lofty trackless mountains, which no man can cross. But these bald men say--which, however, I do not believe--that men with goat's feet live on the mountains, and on the other side of them other men who sleep six months at a time. The latter statement, however, I cannot at all admit. On the other hand, the land east of the bald men, in which the Issedones live, is well known, but what is farther to the north, both on the other side of the bald men and of the Issedones, is only known by the statements of these tribes. Above the Issedones live the one-eyed men, and the gold-guarding griffins. This information the Scythians have got from the Issedones and we from the Scythians, and we call the one-eyed race by the Scythian name Arimaspi, for in the Scythian language _arima_ signifies one and _spou_ the eye.
The whole of the country which I have been speaking of has so hard and severe a winter, that there prevails there for eight months an altogether insupportable cold, so that if you pour water on the ground you will not make mud, but if you light a fire you will make mud. Even the sea freezes, and the whole Cimmerian Bosphorus, and the Scythians who live within the trench travel on the ice and drive over it in waggons. . . . Again, with reference to the feathers with which the Scythians say the air is filled, and which prevent the whole land lying beyond from being seen or travelled through, I entertain the following opinion. In the upper parts of this country it snows continually, but, as is natural, less in summer than in winter. And whoever has seen snow falling thick near him will know what I mean.
For snow resembles feathers, and on account of the winter being so severe the northern parts of this continent cannot be inhabited. I believe then that the Scythians and their neighbours called snow feathers, on account of the resemblance between them. This is what is stated regarding the most remote regions.”