While we were talking and I was having some tea and seal meat the first of the two Russians that we had met came in and at his invitation I went with him back to his aranga. Here we had a genuine meal—Russian bread, salmon, tea and milk. I explained to him what we were doing and how the ship was lost. At East Cape, he said, he had a brother who would look after us and make us comfortable; he gave me a letter of introduction to his brother. Their name was Caraieff. As for himself he was bound further westward on a trading trip to Cape Jakan. In ten days he would be back again at Cape North and he urged me to wait until then; he had two fine teams of dogs that would be of great assistance to us. I declined his invitation, however, for I was anxious to get on and had an idea that after I got to East Cape I should go to Anadyr and send my message to Ottawa from the Russian wireless station there, mentioned on my chart. If I had known enough about the Siberian coast I could have gone direct from Cape North to Anadyr southeast across the Chukchi Peninsula in about the time that it took me to get from Cape North to East Cape.
I spent a very comfortable night in the aranga occupied by Mr. Caraieff. It was rather warm but I shed some of my clothing and lay down on a deer-skin, spread out on the bed-platform. Mr. Caraieff and I attempted to converse before dropping off to sleep but he spoke very little English and I no Russian whatever, so I am afraid neither gathered much information about the other.
I have often wondered at the courteous willingness of the Russians and Chukches whom we met along our way to take entirely for granted our presence among them. They showed no impertinent curiosity and did not subject us to any unpleasant inquisition; they required no custom-house examination, no passports, no letters of recommendation! We were not traders, yet we were obviously strangers with strange travelling gear, and it was hardly likely that we were taking a walk for our health. In more than one semicivilized country shipwrecked mariners have from the earliest times been considered fair prey for the natives. We had our charts, to be sure, but shipwrecked mariners who go ashore driving a team of dogs are not common, even in the Arctic. Yet all the way along we were received without question, greeted hospitably, made comfortable and guided on our way with no consideration of payment; we might have been city cousins visiting around among country relatives.
Cape North, which was first seen and named by the famous English voyager, Captain Cook, in the Resolution, in 1778, is a point of considerable importance on the Siberian coast. Of the eleven arangas several were occupied by deer men, the men who look after herds of reindeer in the interior and come out to the coast at intervals to exchange their reindeer meat for seal and walrus meat, and for blubber for their oil lamps. Baron Kleist, whom I met later on at East Cape, told me that he had been in reindeer camps where two men owned four thousand reindeer. He had seen these men out in the open, under the necessity of looking after their herds constantly day and night for thirty-six hours, without shelter of any kind, and their faces, he said, were literally burned black from the frost and wind.
Before we went to sleep that night, Mr. Caraieff made tea, and as he had sugar and milk for it and some Russian bread to eat we had a very pleasant supper party. The Chukch who owned the aranga had a four-year-old grandson who ate his share of decayed walrus meat and drank his full allowance of tea with four lumps of sugar for each small cupful.
My eyes were affected a good deal by the irritation of the overheated atmosphere, with its almost complete lack of ventilation. I found occasional relief by lifting the edge of the curtain and letting the cold air play upon my eyes. The temperature out-of-doors was about fifty below zero and bitterly cold, much more so, Mr. Caraieff said, than we should find it nearer East Cape.
When I put my head outside of the aranga, about seven o’clock the next morning, I found that the wind was blowing almost a hurricane from the west and sweeping the snow into heavy drifts. Mr. Caraieff told me that he would be unable to travel against it but as it would be at our backs I decided to start. For breakfast I went around to the aranga occupied by the other Russian and made a first rate meal of frozen bear meat, flapjacks and cocoa, topping off with three pipefuls of American tobacco. About ten o’clock we started on our way. We had not gone far before the weather cleared and the wind died down, so that we had a beautiful, clear, cold day and made good progress along the tundra. At sunset we built our igloo, had our pemmican and some deer meat that Kataktovick had procured at Cape North and turned in. Long since we had used up our supply of ship’s biscuit, most of which had got damaged beyond use by salt water on the way across the ice from Wrangell Island.
At daylight on April 10 we left our igloo and by the time we got away the sun had risen. It was a fine, clear day, with a light easterly wind, which was very cold. Kataktovick complained of his hands and feet and I suffered a good deal of pain in my arms. The dogs were working badly and were able to travel only with the greatest difficulty, though our sledge-load was getting lighter and lighter as the days went by.
At noon we came to a place where there were two arangas. The men were all away, gathering driftwood. I tried to make the women understand that I wanted a dog. I pointed to our dogs and held up four fingers, then I took one of the dogs and held its head down as if to indicate that three of our dogs were practically dead. I held up one finger and pointed to show that I wanted one more dog. The women failed to understand this lucid pantomime, for which I could hardly blame them, and we proceeded on our way, hopeful that we could find another aranga where we could make our needs intelligible.