Part 8 (1/2)
(yoo'-kah-lah).
It is astonis.h.i.+ng to see in what countless numbers and to what great distances these fish ascend the Siberian rivers. Dozens of small streams which we pa.s.sed in the interior of Kamchatka, seventy miles from the seacoast, were so choked up with thousands of dying, dead, and decayed fish, that we could not use the water for any purpose whatever. Even in little mountain brooks, so narrow that a child could step across them, we saw salmon eighteen or twenty inches in length still working their way laboriously up stream, in water which was not deep enough to cover their bodies. We frequently waded in and threw them out by the dozen with our bare hands. They change greatly in appearance as they ascend a river. When they first come in from the sea their scales are bright and hard, and their flesh fat and richly coloured; but as they go higher and higher up stream; their scales lose their brilliancy and fall off, their flesh bleaches out until it is nearly white, and they become lean, dry, and tasteless. For this reason all the fis.h.i.+ng-stations in Kamchatka are located, if possible, at or near the mouths of rivers. To the instinct which leads the salmon to ascend rivers for the purpose of depositing its sp.a.w.n, is attributable the settlement of all north-eastern Siberia. If it were not for the abundance of fish, the whole country would be uninhabited and uninhabitable, except by the Reindeer Koraks. As soon as the fis.h.i.+ng season is over, the Kamchadals store away their dried _yukala_ in _balagans_ and return to their winter quarters to prepare for the fall catch of sables. For nearly a month they spend all their time in the woods and mountains, making and setting traps. To make a sable-trap, a narrow perpendicular slot, fourteen inches by four in length and breadth, and five inches in depth, is cut in the trunk of a large tree, so that the bottom of the slot will be about at the height of a sable's head when he stands erect. The stem of another smaller tree is then trimmed, one of its ends raised to a height of three feet by a forked stick set in the ground, and the other bevelled off so as to slip up and down freely in the slot cut for its reception. This end is raised to the top of the slot and supported there by a simple figure-four catch, leaving a nearly square opening of about four inches below for the admission of the sable's head. The figure-four is then baited and the trap is ready. The sable rises upon his hind legs, puts his head into the hole, and the heavy log, set free by the dropping of the figure-four, falls and crushes the animal's skull, without injuring in the slightest degree the valuable parts of his skin. One native frequently makes and sets as many as a hundred of these traps in the fall, and visits them at short intervals throughout the winter. Not content, however, with this extensive and well organised system of trapping sables, the natives hunt them upon snow-shoes with trained dogs, drive them into holes which they surround with nets, and then, forcing them out with fire or axe, they kill them with clubs.
The number of sables caught in the Kamchatkan peninsula annually varies from six to nine thousand, all of which are exported to Russia and distributed from there over northern Europe. A large proportion of the whole number of Russian sables in the European market are caught by the natives of Kamchatka and transported by _American_ merchants to Moscow. W.H. Bordman, of Boston, and an American house in China--known, I believe, as Russell & Co.--practically control the fur trade of Kamchatka and the Okhotsk seacoast. The price paid to the Kamchadals for an average sable skin in 1867 was nominally fifteen rubles silver, or about eleven dollars gold; but payment was made in tea, sugar, tobacco, and sundry other articles of merchandise, at the trader's own valuation, so that the natives actually realised only a little more than half the nominal price. Nearly all the inhabitants of central Kamchatka are engaged directly or indirectly during the winter in the sable trade and many of them have acquired by it a comfortable independence.
Fis.h.i.+ng and sable-hunting, therefore, are the serious occupations of the Kamchadals throughout the year; but as these are indications of the nature of the country rather than of the characteristics of its inhabitants, they give only an imperfect idea of the distinctive peculiarities of Kamchadals and Kamchadal life. The language, music, amus.e.m.e.nts, and superst.i.tions of a people are much more valuable as ill.u.s.trations of their real character than are their regular occupations.
The Kamchadal language is to me one of the most curious of all the wild tongues of Asia; not on account of its construction, but simply from the strange, uncouth sounds with which it abounds, and its strangling, gurgling articulation. When rapidly spoken, it always reminded me of water running out of a narrow-mouthed jug! A Russian traveller in Kamchatka has said that ”the Kamchadal language is spoken half in the mouth and half in the throat”; but it might be more accurately described as spoken half in the throat and half in the stomach. It has more guttural sounds than any other Asiatic language that I have ever heard, and differs considerably in this respect from the dialects of the Chukchis and Koraks. It is what comparative philologists call an agglutinative language, and seems to be made up of permanent unchangeable roots with variable prefixes. It has, so far as I could ascertain, no terminal inflections, and its grammar seemed to be simple and easily learned. Most of the Kamchadals throughout the northern part of the peninsula speak, in addition to their own language, Russian and Korak, so that, in their way, they are quite accomplished linguists.
It has always seemed to me that the songs of a people, and especially of a people who have composed them themselves, and not adopted them from others, are indicative to a very great degree of their character; whether, as some author supposed, the songs have a reflex influence on the character, or whether they exist simply as its exponents, the result is the same, viz., a greater or less correspondence between the two. In none of the Siberian tribes is this more marked than in the Kamchadals. They have evidently never been a warlike, combative people. They have no songs celebrating the heroic deeds of their ancestors, or their exploits in the chase or in battle, as have many tribes of our North American Indians. Their ballads are all of a melancholy, imaginative character, inspired apparently by grief, love, or domestic feeling, rather than by the ruder pa.s.sions of pride, anger, and revenge. Their music all has a wild, strange sound to a foreign ear, but it conveys to the mind in some way a sense of sorrow, and vague, unavailing regret for something that has for ever pa.s.sed away, like the emotion excited by a funeral dirge over the grave of a dear friend. As Ossian says of the music of Carryl, ”it is like the memory of joys that are past--sweet, yet mournful to the soul.” I remember particularly a song called the Penzhinski, sung one night by the natives at Lesnoi, which was, without exception, the sweetest, and yet the most inexpressibly mournful combination of notes that I had ever heard. It was a wail of a lost soul, despairing, yet pleading for mercy. I tried in vain to get a translation of the words. Whether it was the relation of some b.l.o.o.d.y and disastrous encounter with their fiercer northern neighbours, or the lament over the slain body of some dear son, brother, or husband, I could not learn; but the music alone will bring the tears near one's eyes, and has an indescribable effect upon the singers, whose excitable feelings it sometimes works up almost to the pitch of frenzy. The dancing tunes of the Kamchadals are of course entirely different in character, being generally very lively, and made up of energetic staccato pa.s.sages, repeated many times in succession, without variation. Nearly all the natives accompany themselves upon a three-cornered guitar with two strings, called a _ballalaika_ (bahl-lah-lai'-kah), and some of them play quite well upon rude home-made violins. All are pa.s.sionately fond of music of every kind.
The only other amus.e.m.e.nts in which they indulge are dancing, playing football on the snow in winter, and racing with dog-teams.
The winter travel of the Kamchadals is accomplished entirely upon dog-sledges, and in no other pursuit of their lives do they spend more time or exhibit their native skill and ingenuity to better advantage.
They may even be said to have made dogs for themselves in the first place, since the present Siberian animal is nothing more than a half-domesticated arctic wolf, and still retains all his wolfish instincts and peculiarities. There is probably no more hardy, enduring animal in the world. You may compel him to sleep out on the snow in a temperature of 70 below zero, drive him with heavy loads until his feet crack open and stain the snow with blood, or starve him until he eats up his harness; but his strength and his spirit seem alike unconquerable. I have driven a team of nine dogs more than a hundred miles in a day and a night, and have frequently worked them hard for forty-eight hours without being able to give them a particle of food.
In general they are fed once a day, their allowance being a single dried fish, weighing perhaps a pound and a half or two pounds. This is given to them at night, so that they begin another day's work with empty stomachs.
The sledge, or _nart_, to which they are harnessed is about ten feet in length and two in width, made of seasoned birch timber, and combines to a surprising degree the two most desirable qualities of strength and lightness. It is simply a skeleton framework, fastened together with las.h.i.+ngs of dried sealskin, and mounted on broad, curved runners. No iron whatever is used in its construction, and it does not weigh more than twenty pounds; yet it will sustain a load of four or five hundred pounds, and endure the severest shocks of rough mountain travel. The number of dogs harnessed to this sledge varies from seven to fifteen, according to the nature of the country to be traversed and the weight of the load. Under favourable circ.u.mstances eleven dogs will make from forty to fifty miles a day with a man and a load of four hundred pounds. They are harnessed to the sledge in successive couples by a long central thong of sealskin, to which each individual dog is attached by a collar and a short trace. They are guided and controlled entirely by the voice and by a lead-dog who is especially trained for the purpose. The driver carries no whip, but has instead a stick about four feet in length and two inches in diameter, called an _oerstel_ (oar'-stel). This is armed at one end with a long iron spike, and is used to check the speed of the sledge in descending hills, and to stop the dogs when they leave the road, as they frequently do in pursuit of reindeer and foxes. The spiked end is then thrust down in front of one of the knees or uprights of the runners, and drags in that position through the snow, the upper end being firmly held by the driver. It is a powerful lever, and when skilfully used brakes up a sledge very promptly and effectively.
[Ill.u.s.tration: TOWARD NIGHT; A TIRED DOG-TEAM From a painting by George A. Frost]
The art of driving a dog-team is one of the most deceptive in the world. The traveller at first sight imagines that driving a dog-sledge is just as easy as driving a street-car, and at the very first favourable opportunity he tries it. After being run away with within the first ten minutes, capsized into a snow-drift, and his sledge dragged bottom upward a quarter of a mile from the road, the rash experimenter begins to suspect that the task is not quite so easy as he had supposed, and in less than one day he is generally convinced by hard experience that a dog-driver, like a poet, is born, not made.
The dress of the Kamchadals in winter and summer is made for the most part of skins. Their winter costume consists of sealskin boots or _torba.s.ses_ worn over heavy reindeerskin stockings and coming to the knee; fur trousers with the hair inside; a foxskin hood with a face border of wolverine skin; and a heavy _kukhlanka_ (kookh-lan'-kah), or double fur overs.h.i.+rt, covering the body to the knees. This is made of the thickest and softest reindeerskin, ornamented around the bottom with silk embroidery, trimmed at the sleeves and neck with glossy beaver, and furnished with a square flap under the chin, to be held up over the nose, and a hood behind the neck, to be drawn over the head in bad weather. In such a costume as this the Kamchadals defy for weeks at a time the severest cold, and sleep out on the snow safely and comfortably in temperatures of twenty, thirty, and even forty degrees below zero, Fahr.
Most of our time during our long detention at Lesnoi was occupied in the preparation of such costumes for our own use, in making covered dog-sledges to protect ourselves from winter storms, sewing bearskins into capacious sleeping-bags, and getting ready generally for a hard winter's campaign.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Root Digger]
CHAPTER XVII
A FRESH START--CROSSING THE SAMANKA MOUNTAINS--DESCENT ON A KORAK ENCAMPMENT--NOMADS AND THEIR TENTS--DOOR-HOLES AND DOGS--POLOGS--KORAK BREAD
About the 20th of October a Russian physician arrived from Tigil, and proceeded to reduce the little strength that the Major had by steaming, bleeding, and blistering him into a mere shadow of his former robust self. The fever, however, abated under this energetic treatment, and he began gradually to amend. Sometime during the same week, Dodd and Meranef returned from Tigil with a new supply of tea, sugar, rum, tobacco, and hardbread, and we began collecting dogs from the neighbouring settlements of Kinkil and Polan for another trip across the Samanka Mountains. Snow had fallen everywhere to a depth of two feet, the weather had turned clear and cold, and there was nothing except the Major's illness to detain us longer at Lesnoi. On the 28th he declared himself able to travel, and we packed up for a start. On November 1st we put on our heavy fur clothes, which turned us into wild animals of most ferocious appearance, bade good-by to all the hospitable people of Lesnoi, and set out with a train of sixteen sledges, eighteen men, two hundred dogs, and forty days' provisions, for the territory of the Wandering Koraks. We determined to reach Gizhiga this time, or, as the newspapers say, perish in the attempt.
Late in the afternoon of November 3d, just as the long northern twilight was fading into the peculiar steely blue of an arctic night, our dogs toiled slowly up the last summit of the Samanka Mountains, and we looked down from a height of more than two thousand feet upon the dreary expanse of snow which stretched away to the far horizon. It was the land of the Wandering Koraks. A cold breeze from the sea swept across the mountain-top, soughing mournfully through the pines as it pa.s.sed, and intensifying the loneliness and silence of the white wintry landscape. The faint pale light of the vanis.h.i.+ng sun still lingered upon the higher peaks; but the gloomy ravines below us, s.h.a.ggy with forests of larch and dense thickets of trailing-pine, were already gathering the shadows and indistinctness of night. At the foot of the mountains stood the first encampment of Koraks. As we rested our dogs a few moments upon the summit, before commencing our descent, we tried to discern through the gathering gloom the black tents which we imagined stood somewhere beneath our feet; but nothing save the dark patches of trailing-pine broke the dead white of the level steppe. The encampment was hidden by a projecting shoulder of the mountain.
[Ill.u.s.tration: WANDERING KORAKS WITH THEIR REINDEER AND SLEDGES From a painting by George A. Frost]
The rising moon was just throwing into dark, bold relief the s.h.a.ggy outlines of the peaks on our right, as we roused up our dogs and plunged into the throat of a dark ravine which led downward to the steppe. The deceptive shadows of night, and the ma.s.ses of rock which choked up the narrow defile made the descent extremely dangerous; and it required all the skill of our practised drivers to avoid accident.
Clouds of snow flew from the spiked poles with which they vainly tried to arrest our downward rush; cries and warning shouts from those in advance, multiplied by the mountain echoes, excited our dogs to still greater speed, until we seemed, as the rocks and trees flew past, to be in the jaws of a falling avalanche, which was carrying us with breathless rapidity down the dark canon to certain ruin. Gradually, however, our speed slackened, and we came out into the moonlight on the hard, wind-packed snow of the open steppe. Half an hour's brisk travel brought us into the supposed vicinity of the Korak encampment, but we saw as yet no signs of either reindeer or tents. The disturbed, torn-up condition of the snow usually apprises the traveller of his approach to the _yurts_ of the Koraks, as the reindeer belonging to the band range all over the country within a radius of several miles, and paw up the snow in search of the moss which const.i.tutes their food. Failing to find any such indications, we were discussing the probability of our having been misdirected, when suddenly our leading dogs p.r.i.c.ked up their sharp ears, snuffed eagerly at the wind, and with short, excited yelps made off at a das.h.i.+ng gallop toward a low hill which lay almost at right angles with our previous course. The drivers endeavoured in vain to check the speed of the excited dogs; their wolfish instincts were aroused, and all discipline was forgotten as the fresh scent came down upon the wind from the herd of reindeer beyond. A moment brought us to the brow of the hill, and before us in the clear moonlight, stood the conical tents of the Koraks, surrounded by at least four thousand reindeer, whose branching antlers looked like a perfect forest of dry limbs. The dogs all gave voice simultaneously, like a pack of foxhounds in view of the game, and dashed tumultuously down the hill, regardless of the shouts of their masters, and the menacing cries of three or four dark forms which rose suddenly up from the snow between them and the frightened deer. Above the tumult I could hear Dodd's voice, hurling imprecations in Russian at his yelping dogs, which, in spite of his most strenuous efforts, were dragging him and his capsized sledge across the steppe. The vast body of deer wavered a moment and then broke into a wild stampede, with drivers, Korak sentinels, and two hundred dogs in full pursuit.
Not desirous of becoming involved in the melee, I sprang from my sledge and watched the confused crowd as it swept with shout, bark, and halloo, across the plain. The whole encampment, which had seemed in its quiet loneliness to be deserted, was now startled into instant activity. Dark forms issued suddenly from the tents, and grasping the long spears which stood upright in the snow by the doorway, joined in the chase, shouting and hurling la.s.sos of walrus hide at the dogs, with the hope of stopping their pursuit. The clattering of thousands of antlers dashed together in the confusion of flight, the hurried beat of countless hoofs upon the hard snow, the deep, hoa.r.s.e barks of the startled deer, and the unintelligible cries of the Koraks, as they tried to rally their panic-stricken herd, created a Pandemonium of discordant sounds which could be heard far and wide through the still, frosty atmosphere of night. It resembled a midnight attack of Comanches upon a hostile camp, rather than the peaceful arrival of three or four American travellers; and I listened with astonishment to the wild uproar of alarm which we had unintentionally aroused.
The tumult grew fainter and fainter as it swept away into the distance, and the dogs, exhausting the unnatural strength which the excitement had temporarily given them, yielded reluctantly to the control of their drivers and turned toward the tents. Dodd's dogs, panting with the violence of their exertions, limped sullenly back, casting longing glances occasionally in the direction of the deer, as if they more than half repented the weakness which had led them to abandon the chase.