OFF FOR THE TUNDRA—A NATIVE FAMILY
Hard traveling—The native women—A mongrel race—Chrisoffsky's home and family and their ideas of domestic economy—Boiled fish-eyes a native delicacy—Prospecting along the Ghijiga.
We set out at nine o'clock on the sixth of September. Fortunately for us, the sharp frosts had already killed off all the mosquitos. The path through the tundra was very difficult. We stepped from tuft to tuft of moss, between which were deep mud and slush. When we could keep in the river-bed, where it was dry, we had tolerably good going; so we kept as near the river as possible. Often I would have to mount the back of my faithful Kim to cross some tributary of the main stream. We were continually wet to the knee or higher, and were tired, muddy, and bedraggled beyond belief.
Toward night, we saw the welcome smoke from the village of the Chrisoffskys. A crowd of small urchins came running out to greet their grandfather, and soon we were in the midst of the village. The old gentleman, my guide, took my hand and led me into his house, where, after I had kissed every one (drawing the line at the men), one of the daughters sat down on the floor, unlaced my boots, took off my wet socks, and replaced them by soft, fur-lined deerskin boots. She then looked my boots over very carefully, and finding a little seam ripped, she got out a deer-sinew and sewed it up. All my men were similarly attended to. The boots were then hung up to dry. In the morning, they would have to be oiled. This attention to the foot-gear is an essential part of the etiquette of this people. Any stitch that is to be taken must be attended to before the boot is dry and stiff. Even here the samovar reigned supreme. The women were strong, buxom creatures, and they wore loose calico gowns of gaudy colors. The hair, which is never luxuriant in the women of the North, was put up in two slender braids crossed at the back and brought around to the front of the head and tied up. Their complexions were very dark, almost like that of a North American Indian. Most of them had very fine teeth.
These people are of a mongrel race, having a mixture of Korak, Tunguse, and Russian blood. Chrisoffsky himself was one fourth Russian. They speak a dialect that is as mixed as their blood; for it is a conglomerate of Korak, Tunguse and Russian. They are very prolific, six and eight children being considered a small family. The death-rate among them is very high, and, as might be expected, pulmonary diseases are responsible for a very large proportion of the deaths.
House of Theodosia Chrisoffsky, Christowic.
This house into which I had come as guest consisted of a kitchen, a small living-room, and a tiny bedroom. The old gentleman's wife was fifty-five years old, and was still nursing her fifteenth child, which, at night, was swung from the ceiling, while the father and mother occupied a narrow bed. Three of the smaller children slept on the floor beneath the bed. The room was eight feet long and six feet wide. The fireplace in the living-room was a huge stone oven, which projected through the partition into the bedroom. Every evening its capacious maw was filled with logs, and this insured heat in the heavy stone body of the stove for at least twenty-four hours. In the mouth of this oven the kettles were hung. This house was far above the average; for, in truth, there were only twelve others as good in the whole immense district.
For dinner, the first course was a startling one. It consisted of a huge bowl of boiled fish-eyes. This is considered a great delicacy by the natives of the far North. When the dish was set before me, and I saw a hundred eyes glaring at me from all directions and at all angles, cross, squint, and wall, it simply took my appetite away. I had to turn them down, so that the pupil was not visible, before I could attack them. The old gentleman and I ate alone, the rest of the family not being allowed to sit down with us. This was eminently satisfactory to me, as we ate from the same dish; in fact, I could have dispensed with my host too. The second dish consisted of fish-heads. I found on these a sort of gelatin or cartilage that was very good eating. Then came a kind of cake, fried in seal-oil, of which the less said the better. For dessert, we had a dish of yagada, which is much like our raspberry, except that it is yellow and rather acid.
The rest of the family, together with my men, squatted on the floor of the kitchen, and ate from tables a foot high by three feet square. In the center of each table was set a large bowl of a kind of fish-chowder. Each person wielded a spoon made from the horn of the mountain sheep, and held in the left hand a piece of black bread. After dinner they all had tea. No sugar is put in the tea, but a small lump is given to each person, and he nibbles it as he sips his tea. It is the height of impoliteness to ask for a second piece of sugar. Many of these people drink as many as sixty cups of tea in a single day. They seldom, if ever, drink water.
We sat and talked a couple of hours over the samovar, and then the blankets were spread for the night. The large room was reserved for me. Three huge bearskins were first placed on the floor, and then my blankets were spread over them. It made a luxurious bed, and quite free from vermin; for a bedbug will never approach a bearskin. In the kitchen, I fear, they were packed like sardines. They slept on deerskins or bearskins, anything that came handy being used for a covering. Curiously enough, these people all prefer to sleep on a steep incline, and to secure this position they use heavy pillows or bolsters. Before retiring, each person came into my room and bowed and crossed himself before the icon in the corner. I had to shake hands with them all, and kiss the children, which operation I generally performed on the forehead, as handkerchiefs are unknown luxuries in that country.
The next morning, while partaking of a sort of French breakfast of bread, tea, and sugar, I noticed that my party were the only ones that made use of a comb and brush. When I stepped outside the door to clean my teeth, I was surrounded by twenty or more, who had come to witness this strange operation. They were brimming over with laughter. The tooth-brush was passed around from hand to hand, and I had to keep a sharp lookout, lest some of them tried it themselves.
Finally, I lined them all up to take their photograph. I placed my camera on the ground, and turned to direct them how to stand. I had no need to ask them to look pleasant, for they were all on a broad grin. I was at a loss to account for their mirth till I turned and saw that the village dogs were treating my camera in a characteristically canine fashion. Then it was I who needed to be told to look pleasant.
At last we were on the road again. For the first five miles our way led up the bed of the river, sometimes in the water, and sometimes on the bank in grass as high as the horses' shoulders. When, at last, we came out on to the tundra, to the north, a hundred and fifty miles away, I could see the tops of the mountains among which the Ghijiga River has its source. They are about ten thousand feet high. To the northeast, about sixty miles away, I could see the foothills of a range of mountains in which rises the Avecko River, which enters the Okhotsk Sea within a mile of the mouth of the Ghijiga. Reaching the summit of the water-shed between the two rivers, I discovered that between me and these foothills the land was low and abounded in tundra lakes. To avoid these, I bore to the left and kept on the summit of the water-shed. By noon we had covered only eight miles. We halted for dinner, unpacked the horses, and turned them out to feed upon the rich grass while we made our dinner of fish, bread, and other viands which we had brought ready prepared from the house. At eight that night we camped on a "tundra island," a slight rise in the general flatness on which grew a few tamarack trees. As the nights were now very cold, we built a roaring fire. My koklanka, or great fur coat, with its hood, now proved its utility. After supper, which consisted of several brace of fat ptarmigan, brought down that afternoon with my shotgun, each man took his deerskin and spread it on a pile of elastic tamarack boughs. With our feet shod in dry fur boots, with our koklankas about us and great pillows under our heads, we slept as soundly and as comfortably as one could desire.
Start from Ghijiga, Summer-time. Theodosia Chrisoffsky and Family—Fourteen Children.
In the morning we found ourselves covered with white frost. The start was very difficult, for an all-day tramp in the bog the day before had made our joints stiff. For the first half hour, walking was so painful that I found myself frequently counting the steps between objects along the way. But after a time the stiffness wore off, and I began to find the pace of the horses too slow. When at last we came to higher ground and better going, I examined the streams for gold. The pan showed several "small colors," for we were in a granite country, but as yet there were no signs of any gold-bearing float rock.
On the thirteenth day we arrived at our destination which was a certain creek indicated by a Russian engineer named Bugdanovitch. I liked the looks of the country very much. The creeks were filled with quartz float. So I determined to stop here two or three weeks and explore the adjacent hills and creeks for gold. At this point my guide's contract expired and I reluctantly let him go, as well as five of the six horses. I was thus left in the wilderness with Kim and Alek.
I pitched camp in a favorable place and went to work in good spirits. I thoroughly prospected the hills and ravines and made repeated trials of the creek beds, but though I found more or less show of gold, I was at last obliged to confess that there was nothing worth working.
This being the case, it behooved me to be on my way back to headquarters at Ghijiga. I thought there could be no difficulty about it, as the water all flowed in one direction. I did not want to go back by the way we had come. I suspected that there was a shorter way, and that the guide had purposely brought me a longer distance in order to secure more pay. So I decided to make a "bee line" for Ghijiga. Already we had had a slight flurry of snow, which had made me a trifle uneasy. We had only thirty days' provisions with us, and it would not do to be snowed in. As we had only one horse, we could not, of course, take back with us all our camp equipage, so I left Alek at the camp and started out for Ghijiga with Kim and our one horse, intending to send back dog-sledges for the things. A more timid man than Alek would have hesitated before consenting to be left behind in this fashion, but he bore up bravely and in good cheer sent us off.