TUNGUSE AND KORAK HOSPITALITY.
My Korak host—"Bear!"—I shoot my first arctic fox—My Tunguse guide—Twenty-two persons sleep in a twelve-foot tent—Tunguse family prayers—The advent of Howka—Chrisoffsky once more.
I struck what I thought to be a straight course toward our destination. The going was much better than it had been a few weeks before, because of the hard frost which held everything solid till ten o'clock in the morning. Then the sun would melt the ice and make it very hard to travel; for the broken ice would cut our boots, which meant wet feet for the rest of the day.
On the second day we struck a small water-course and saw many signs of reindeer. Soon we found a tiny trail, and, following it down the valley, I turned around a bend in the creek, and saw before me six large deerskin tents, while on the surrounding hillsides were hundreds of reindeer. As we neared the village a dozen curs came rushing out; some of them were hobbled so as to prevent their chasing the deer. They attacked us savagely, as is the custom of these ugly little mongrels. We had to make a counter attack with stones to keep them off. The noise aroused the natives, who hurried out and received us with the hospitable "drosty."
Village of Christowic, Okhotsk Sea.
These people were pure Koraks,[1] a little under the medium size, in which they resemble the Japanese. I was led into the largest of the tents, and a wooden bowl containing boiled reindeer meat was placed before me. To the delight of my host, I went to my pack and produced some tea. I also displayed some sugar and black bread, which firmly established me in their good graces. I was greatly surprised to see my host bring out a box, from which he produced half a dozen china cups, heavily ornamented with gilt, and bearing such legends as "God Bless Our Home," "To Father," and "Merry Christmas." He must have secured them from an American whaling vessel on one of his annual trips to the coast. So, in the midst of this wilderness, I drank my tea from a fine mustache cup, originally designed to make the recipient "Remember Me." These cups were the heirloom of the family, and were brought out only on state occasions.
When tea was finished I produced some tobacco and filled my pipe and that of my host, much to his gratification. The sequel was embarrassing; for when our pipes were smoked out he insisted on filling them again with his own tobacco. This was rough on me, but I set my teeth on the pipe-stem and bravely went through with it to the end. I can say nothing worse of it than that it was as bad as a cheap American cigarette.
My host was a genial old fellow, and later on he became my bosom friend. He was the wealthiest man in his district, and owned upward of ten thousand reindeer. Of course I had great difficulty in talking to him, but by a liberal use of signs, I made him understand where I had come from, and that I would like to have him kill some reindeer and carry them back to the camp where I had left Alek, and, if possible, bring him to this village. I made a rough sketch of the position of the camp, and he understood perfectly, as shown by the fact that he carried out my instructions to the letter on the next day. I asked him the way to Ghijiga and pointed in the direction that I had supposed it lay. This was approximately correct, but he promised to give me a guide to take me to town.
That evening there was another surprise in store for me. They served for supper the boiled flesh of unborn reindeer. It is accounted a specially choice viand among the Koraks. This seemed worse than smoking the old man's tobacco, but I laid aside all squeamishness and found that, after all, it was a palatable dish. My bed that night was a pile of skins, a foot deep, in a corner of the tent.
The next morning we set out with our guide, a mere boy dressed in a close-fitting suit of brown buckskin. He carried in his hand an ugly looking bear spear with a blade a foot long and sharpened on both edges. It was artistically inlaid with copper scroll-work and was a fine example of genuine Korak art. The shaft was a good eight feet long. All day we pushed ahead without adventure or misadventure until about seven o'clock in the evening, when, as we were passing down a gentle incline through thick bushes, with the Korak guide in the lead and I behind, my notice was attracted by a mound of fresh earth a few steps from the path. I went to investigate, and was greeted by a terrific roar. I brought my gun to position and cocked both barrels, but could see nothing beyond a tremendous shaking of the bushes. Looking around, I saw the little guide with his eyes blazing and his spear in readiness for an attack. He exclaimed "Medvait!" which in Russian means "bear." As my gun was loaded only with bird shot, I decided that discretion was the better part of valor, and slowly backed out of the dense undergrowth. When I reached the open, whatever remnant of hunting instinct a hard day's tramp had left in me asserted itself. Hastily reloading my gun with shells loaded with buckshot, I circled around the bushes to get a shot at the fellow. I saw where the bushes were being beaten down by his hasty retreat, but could not catch sight of the brute. I sent a charge of buckshot after him as an inducement to come out and show himself, but the argument worked just the other way, and he made off at his best speed. The strangest thing about the whole affair was that we had passed within ten feet of the animal without the horse showing any signs of uneasiness. Nothing will so frighten a horse as the smell of a bear. But I learned afterward that this particular horse was afraid of nothing. I had named him "Bill," and we had many a hard day together.
Night was now upon us, and so we made our camp in some dry grass beside a brook. The guide slept on a single deerskin, with no covering but the clothes he wore. In the morning I ascended a little knoll, and with my glasses could see a mountain near the town of Ghijiga, so the guide left me, and went back. That afternoon I killed my first arctic fox. The little fellow, about as large as a coyote, came running toward us. We stopped short, and the inquisitive animal approached to within a hundred feet and paused to inspect us. I killed him with a ball through the chest.
Mr. Vanderlip on "Bill."
That night as Kim and I sat beside a roaring fire of birch logs a little animal leaped suddenly into the firelight opposite. It was a young arctic fox, the prettiest sight I have ever seen. He would jump to one side and then the other, and crouch, and strike attitudes like a kitten at play. Then he would lift his nose in the air and sniff this way and that, raising one of his paws meanwhile. The thought of killing the little thing would never have entered my head if Kim, the matter-of-fact, had not whispered, "Strelite," which means "shoot." Instinctively my hand crept toward my gun, but the little fox saw the movement and was gone like a flash. I was heartily glad of it, too.
In this district are to be found almost all the different varieties of foxes—the red, fiery, blue, chestnut, black, and white. But it should be remembered that, with the exception of the white and red, these are not exactly different species. For instance, a black fox may be found in a litter of the common red fox in any country. He is simply a freak of nature, just as one might find a black kitten among a litter of gray ones. The foxes are caught by poison or traps. There are two kinds of traps, one of which seizes the animal by a leg or around the neck, and the other is made with a bow and arrow so set that as the fox goes along the path the slightest touch of the foot will discharge the arrow. Formerly these animals were so common that when the dogs were fed the foxes would come and try to steal part of the food, and had to be driven away with clubs. At that time the natives valued their pelts hardly more than dogskins, but as the foreign demand increased the foxes became worth catching.
We had four days of hard work traveling across the tundra, which was frozen hard in the morning, but was soft in the afternoon. Many times a day we were up to the waist in the mud and water, working to get Bill out of the mire. On the fourth day, just as night fell, we struck the trail between Ghijiga and old Chrisoffsky's little hamlet. I did not know just how far we were from the village, and as we were tired out we camped for the night. In the morning, what was our chagrin to find that we were within a quarter of a mile of Ghijiga. Bill doubtless knew, and if he could have talked he would have saved us one night in the open.
The days now grew rapidly colder, with flurries of snow that heralded the coming of winter. As it was now possible to use dog-sleds, I engaged some of the natives to go to the Korak village and bring down my camping outfit, which I thought must long since have arrived at that place. At this season the dogs could travel only at night, when the ground was hard, but even so they covered between thirty and forty miles a day without difficulty.
Meanwhile I loaded up Bill with all he could carry, and, in company with Kim, started out to find the head waters of the Turumcha River, where gold was reported to have been discovered. This trail led west from Ghijiga, but it was first necessary to go up the valley of the Ghijiga a short distance before crossing over into the other valley. I had, therefore, to pass Chrisoffsky's place again. We arrived there the first evening and received a hearty welcome. I tried to get the old gentleman to go with me and to furnish horses and dogs, but he could do neither. His dogs were engaged by the trading company on the coast, and his horses were in too poor a condition to undertake the journey which I contemplated. So I was reduced to the melancholy necessity of walking, Bill carrying our camp outfit.
As I was about to start, a native Tunguse arrived at Chrisoffsky's. He was the first of that tribe that I had seen. Chrisoffsky told me that this young man was going the same road as I, and that his yourta, or hut, was near the stream along which I intended to prospect. He willingly agreed to act as my guide at a wage of one brick of tea a day. He answered to the euphonious name of Fronyo. He was five feet high and weighed only one hundred and ten pounds, but was prodigiously strong and wiry. He was dressed in old tanned buckskin, with a gaudy apron trimmed with beads in geometric patterns and with a fringe. According to the custom of his tribe, he wore a long, ugly knife strapped to his thigh, the point reaching to the knee, while the handle lay at the hip. These knives are fashioned by the Koraks, who sell them to the Tunguses. On his feet were moccasins with seal-hide soles.
I found that he could speak a little broken Russian, and as I had acquired a few Russian expressions we got along famously. So we set out, Fronyo leading off with his long bear spear but no fire-arms. It was a straight three days' trip across the tundra, and without special incident. At night we arrived in good season at a skin yourta on the banks of a tributary of the Ghijiga. On our approach a dozen dogs rushed out with the full intention of tearing us to pieces, but changed their minds when they found that we were equally determined to defend ourselves. The dogs were followed by the denizens of the place, ten or twelve in number, including Fronyo's father, mother, brothers, and sisters.
Their greeting consisted in grasping right hands, throwing out the lips as far as possible and touching the two cheeks and lips of the friend. I pretended ignorance of the ceremony. In truth, they were so unconscionably dirty that it was impossible to tell the color of their skin, and besides, I could not distinguish the men from the women. But I learned later that the dress of the two sexes does differ slightly, for the women have a little fringe about the bottom of the skirt, which is split up the back precisely like our frock-coats.
The Pride of the Family.
The flap of the tent was drawn aside and we crept in, only to find ourselves buried in a dense cloud of smoke, which came from an open fire burning in the middle of the tent, and which escaped through a hole at the top, as in the wigwam of the North American Indian. On sitting down, I discovered that near the ground the air was comparatively clear. Because of this smoke, the natives suffer severely from sore eyes.
Among the Tunguses the guest is always supposed to provide the tea, so I had Kim bring out a brick, and it was brewed and served with bread and sugar. For supper I had a splendid salmon-trout spitted before the fire, and it seemed the most delicious morsel I had ever tasted. Then we lighted our pipes and took our ease. I noticed that the women carried pipes. The little brass pipe-bowls are bought from the Russian traders and are fitted with reed stems about eight inches long. Some of the pipe-stems were made of two pieces of wood grooved down the center and then bound together with deer thong. They mix Manchu tobacco with the dried inner bark of the fir tree.
When it came time to retire, several logs were added to the fire in the center of the tent, the deerskins were spread, and each lay down in the clothes he or she had worn all day. The tent was twelve feet in diameter, and in that space twenty-two persons slept; three of them were infants who were swung from the top and just below the smoke fine. Indeed we lay like matches in a box, and certain grave misgivings I had relative to living mementoes of the occasion were later verified.
But before retiring I witnessed a scene that would have put to shame not a few of the homes in America. These Tunguses are, many of them, adherents of the Greek Church. There was an icon in the tent, and before and after eating they crossed themselves before it. Now as we were about to retire the family shook hands and kissed one another. They came and shook my hand and said, "Pleasant sleep." Then the old man turned his face upward, closed his eyes and said, "O God, do not forget our home to-night." Considering the surroundings, it was the most impressive thing I had ever witnessed.
On our departure the next day we made the old people happy with the gift of several bricks of tea. Snow had fallen during the night to the depth of six inches. Winter was on us in full force. As we left we were followed from the yourta by a beautiful black dog the size of a fox. I was to become well acquainted with him later. We camped that night on the banks of the Turumcha where I was to commence my work. The stream was only sixty feet wide, but it was swift and turgid and filled with floating ice.
The next morning we were obliged to ford it; so, tying a lariat about Bill's neck and leaving the end of it in Kim's hands, I mounted and forced the horse into the water. At the deepest point it came well up to his shoulders and he found it hard to keep his feet, but we got safely over. Kim pulled the horse back by the lariat and the guide came across. That long-suffering brute had to make four round trips before we and our effects were all across the river. When Kim started across, the dog began to howl piteously, but finally sprang into the water after us. When in mid-stream he encountered a floating cake of ice. He climbed upon it and was whirled down-stream and out of sight. He got across, however, and caught up with us two hours later.
We followed up the bed of the stream, stopping often to examine it for signs of gold. We sunk shafts here and there and panned the gravel in the icy water of the stream, always getting a few "colors" but nothing of particular interest. Each night we camped in some sheltered nook, often in heavy timber, and our first move always was to change our wet boots. One night I spread out my deerskin bed, put on my heavy fur coat and cap, lay down as usual with the canvas tarpaulin over all, and was soon asleep. About four o'clock in the morning I felt something warm moving at my side. I put out my hand and found that it was the black dog which had followed us. We called him Howka. When I stirred he offered to leave, but I patted him and coaxed him to remain, which he was quite willing to do. Afterward I bought him, and for a year he was my constant companion. Once, during a long period of semi-starvation, he saved my life by hunting sea-gulls' nests, from which I took the eggs.
After working my way up to the headwaters of the stream without finding gold in paying quantities, I determined to cross over the divide into another section, but my guide, Fronyo, begged me to go one day's trip farther up the little brook to a place which he described as "white walls with little sparkling points like the stars." I said to myself, "Probably quartz with sulphurets" (bisulphide of iron). So on we went and came at last to the shiny wall. It proved to be a large vein of low grade gold ore crossing the brook at right angles. Panning below I found nothing of particular value; so breaking off fragments of the rocks we piled them up beside the stream, making a little monument to mark the spot, should I wish to revisit it. I appeared to be now in a mineral country. We went on up the brook, panning continually, but nowhere on the bed-rock found gold in paying quantities.
Mr. Vanderlip crossing Turumcha River.
We had now reached the top of the divide, and so crossed over into a district called Toloffka, with a stream of the same name, where we spent several days. The cold was intense. The thermometer registered ten degrees below zero. The streams were all ice-bound, except where they were very swift. The snow was about a foot deep, and Bill was faring badly. His only food was the tops of the grass that stuck up through the snow or that could be found on wind-swept places. He was so weak that he could only pack sixty pounds, and that with difficulty. All our food was gone except rice and tea. Our tobacco had long ago given out, and, as a substitute, we used brick tea mixed with pine bark. It made a smoke—and that was all. The rough work had destroyed my boots. I had used one pair to mend the soles of the other. My guide made a needle of a fish bone, and with thread from the fiber of a vine sewed the soles on for me. It was evidently time for us to be turning our faces homeward. We went straight for the yourta where Fronyo's family lived, and of course made it in far less time than it had taken us to come. I found that the whole trip had covered just one month. Bill came very near giving out on the home trip, but by a heroic effort pulled through and was rewarded at the journey's end by getting all the provender he could stow away.
As Bill had to carry the pack and as my feet were not in the best condition, Fronyo proposed that I ride to Ghijiga on a reindeer. A fine big bull of about five hundred pounds was brought out and I looked him over. I had some misgivings, but at last decided to accept the offer. The saddle was made with reindeer bones for a foundation. These were securely bound together, padded with moss, and covered with rawhide. The antlers of the deer had a spread of five feet, and there were so many prongs that I never tried to count them. Much to my surprise, I found that the motion of my steed was a smooth and gliding one, even more comfortable than the gait of a single-footer. It had taken us three days to walk up from Chrisoffsky's to the yourta. It took just eight hours to make the same trip in the other direction.
Chrisoffsky's house was on the left bank of the stream, while we were on the right. It would have been death to the deer to have taken him within scent of the dogs. So I dismounted two miles from the house, tethered the deer, and made my way in on foot. The stream was not solidly frozen, so I fired off my gun and brought out the whole settlement. A boat was found, and presently I was seated again at old Chrisoffsky's fireside.