Dressed in short fur, heavily laden with knapsack, weapons, and ammunition, we set off on the 29th of July, leaving our boat in the charge of two of our company. Painfully we tramped, gasping under our burdens, stopping every hour and half hour, and at length every thousand paces, but finding no rest on account of the mosquitoes, which tortured us day and night without ceasing. We ascended countless hills, and traversed as many valleys, we waded through as many marshes and morasses; we passed by hundreds of nameless lakes, and crossed a multitude of swamps and streams.
As it happened, the tundra could not well have been more inhospitable. The wind beat the drizzling rain into our faces; drenched to the skin we lay down on the soaking soil, without roof to cover us, or fire to warm us, and unceasingly tormented by mosquitoes. But the sun dried us again, gave us new courage and strength, and on we went. A piece of good news did us more good than sun or sleep. Our followers discovered two tshums, and with our field-glasses we distinctly saw the reindeer around them. Heartily delighted, we already pictured ourselves stretched comfortably in the sledge, the only possible vehicle in such a district, and we seemed to see the quickly-stepping antlered team. We reached the tshum and the reindeer; a dismal sight met our eyes. For among the herds splenic fever was raging—the most dreadful, and for man also the most dangerous of plagues, the most inexorable messenger of death, unsparing and merciless. Against its ruin-bringing attacks man is powerless; it reduces peoples to poverty, and claims its victims as surely from among men as among beasts.[81]
I counted seventy-six dead reindeer in the immediate neighbourhood of the tshum. Wherever the eye turned it lighted on carcasses or on beasts, both young and old, lying at their last gasp. Others came, with death at their heart, to the sledges already loaded for departure, as if they hoped to find help and safety in the neighbourhood of man. They would not be driven away, but remained stock-still for a couple of minutes with staring eyes and crossed fore-legs, then swayed from side to side, groaned and fell; a white foam issued from mouth and nose, a few convulsions, and another was dead. Milk-giving mothers and their calves separated themselves from the herd; the mothers succumbed with similar symptoms; the calves looked on curiously, as if amazed at their mother’s strange behaviour, or grazed unconcernedly beside the death-bed. When they came near, and found instead of their devoted mother a corpse, they snuffed at this, recoiled in terror, and hastened away, straying hither and thither and crying. They sought to approach one or other of the adults, but were repulsed by all, and continued lowing and searching until they found what they did not seek—death, from an arrow sped by the hand of their owner, who sought to save at least their skin. Death was equally unsparing of old and young; before the destroying angel the strongest and stateliest stags fell as surely as the yearlings of both sexes.
Schungei, the owner of the herd, his relatives and servants, hurried to and fro among the dead and dying beasts, seeking with mad eagerness to save whatever was possible. Although not unaware of the dreadful danger to which they exposed themselves if the minutest drop of blood or a particle of the infected foam should enter their system, knowing well that hundreds of their race had died in agony from the incurable plague, they worked with all their strength skinning the poisoned corpses. A blow from a hatchet ended the sufferings of the dying deer, an arrow killed the calves, and in a few minutes the skin—which for weeks is quite capable of spreading the infection—was off and lying beside the others. With blood-stained hands the men dipped morsels cut from the bodies of the calves into the blood collected in the chest-cavity, and swallowed them raw. The men seemed like executioners, the women like horrible harpies, and both like blood-smeared hyænas wallowing in carrion. Careless of the sword of death which hung over their heads, rather by a gossamer thread than by a hair, they grubbed and wallowed, helped even by their children, from half-grown boys down to a little girl hardly more than a suckling.
The tshums were shifted to an adjacent hill. The unfortunate herd, which had started from the Ural two thousand strong, and had now dwindled to a couple of hundred, whose path was marked by a line of carcasses, was collected afresh around the tshum; but next morning there were again forty corpses around the resting-place.
We knew the danger of infection from animals with splenic fever or anthrax, but we had not adequately appreciated its extent. Thus we bought some fresh, apparently quite healthy reindeer, harnessed them to three sledges, loaded these with our baggage, and striding beside them went on our way lightened. The plague forbade us from getting reindeer flesh to eat, as we had hoped, and we began to look around more carefully and anxiously for some small game, a willow grouse, a great snipe, a golden plover, or a duck. Sparing our slender supplies to the utmost, we crouched around the miserable fire, whenever the least of Diana’s nymphs had been propitious, and collectively roasted our paltry spoil as best we might. Of satisfying our hunger there was no longer any possibility.
After we had crossed the way of death which Schungei had followed, we reached the first goal, the Bodarata. There we had the inestimable good fortune to find more tshums and reindeer. Thus aided we made for the sea, but we were forced to turn without setting foot on the shore. For before us lay not only a pathless morass, but again a countless heap of reindeer carcasses; we were once more on the path by which Schungei had fled homewards, and our new acquaintance, the herdsman Zanda, would not dare to cross it.
For in his herd also death had been busy with his scythe; the destroyer had visited his house, and yet more disastrously those of his neighbours. The man who had been his companion on his wanderings had eaten of an infected fat reindeer which he had hastily killed, and he had paid for his rashness with his own life and that of his family. Thrice had the herd Zanda shifted his tshum, and thrice he had dug a grave among the corpses of the reindeer. First, two children fell victims to the dread disease, then the thoughtless man’s servant, on the third day the man himself. Another child was still ill, groaning in its agony, when we set out on our journey to the sea; its cries were silenced when we returned to the tshum, for the grave had received a fifth victim. And this was not to be the last.
One of our men, the Ostiak Hadt, a willing, cheerful fellow, who had endeared himself to us, had been complaining since the day before of torturing pains which became ever more severe. He complained especially of an increasing sensation of cold. We had placed him on one of the sledges when we reached the herdsman’s tshum, and thus we bore him when the tshum was shifted for the fifth time. He lay at the fire moaning and whining in our midst. From time to time he raised himself and bared his body to the warmth of the fire. Similarly he pushed his numb feet against the flames, and seemed to care not that they singed. At length we fell asleep, perhaps he did also, but when we awoke next morning his bed was empty. Outside, in front of the tshum, he sat quietly leaning on a sledge, with his face to the sun, whose warmth he sought. Hadt was dead.
Some hours later we buried him according to the customs of his people. He was a true “heathen”, and in heathenish fashion he should be buried. Our “orthodox” companions hesitated to do this; our “heathen” followers helped us in the ceremony, which, though not Christian, was at any rate dignified and human. The grave received its sixth victim.