[9] While writing this book, I have been struck by the curious faith of the Gilyaks, one of the tribes to be found on that dark spot on the face of the earth, the Island of Sakhalin. Mr. Charles Hawes, in his book, In the Uttermost East, says that the Gilyaks believe that the spirits of the dead hold communication with their living relatives. They may come to give counsel, or to warn of impending misfortune. No human eye can see them, nor can the senses of the living detect their presence. Only to dogs is it given to know of their approach, and this knowledge they show by a peculiar howling. Mr. Hawes, who in normal health was, as his book shows, a man of strong common sense and iron nerves, as any visitor to Sakhalin needs to be, thus tells of his experience. “My conversion took place ... on the Okhotsk coast, where my interpreter and I lay awake one night in the tent of an Orotchon.... At about 2 A. M. a low howl began, echoed and varied by thirty or forty other members of the canine race, a low peculiar cry of pain growing into a long, drawn-out wail, rising and swelling until at last it ended in almost a scream.” “An unholy, ill-omened proceeding which surely nought earthly could account for,” is Mr. Hawes’ reflection on the occurrence, but he adds, “perhaps the fact that we were ill with ptomaine poisoning may have predisposed us to thoughts of Inligh-vo” (a village in the centre of the earth to which the spirits of the departed go). It is curious to note that in the beliefs of these wild people, the spirits of the murdered and suicides fly to tlo (heaven) direct, without a preliminary sojourn in the happy hunting grounds of Inligh-vo.
[10] Personal and Literary Letters of Robert, 1st Earl of Lytton, edited by Lady Betty Balfour.
[11] Simla Village Tales, by Alice Elizabeth Dracott.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.