“We had been three long hours in this position, and still the mass of ice beneath us held together, when suddenly it was caught by the storm, and hurled against a large field of ice; the crash was terrific, and the mass beneath us was shattered into fragments. At that dreadful moment, when escape seemed impossible, the impulse of self-preservation, implanted in every living being, saved us. Instinctively we all sprang at once on the sledges, and urged the dogs to their full speed. They flew across the yielding fragments to the field on which we had been stranded, and safely reached a part of it of firmer character, on which were several hummocks, where the dogs immediately ceased running, conscious, apparently, that the danger was past. We were saved! We joyfully embraced each other, and united in thanks to God for our preservation from such imminent peril.”
But their misfortunes did not end here; they were cut off from the deposit of their provisions; they were 360 versts from their nearest magazines, and the food for the dogs was now barely sufficient for three days. Their joy may be imagined when, after a few versts’ travelling, they fell in with Matiuschkin and his party, bringing with them an abundant supply of provisions of all kinds.
To leave nothing undone which could possibly be effected, Wrangell advanced to the eastward along the coast, past Cape North, seen in Cook’s last voyage, and proceeded as far as Koliutschin Island, where he found some Tchuktchi, who had come over from Bering’s Straits to trade.
With this journey terminated Wrangell’s labors on the coasts, or on the surface of the Polar Sea, and, at the beginning of the following winter, we find him taking a final leave of Nishne-Kolymsk. On January 10, 1824, he arrived at Jakutsk, and a few months later at Petersburg. If we consider the difficulties he had to encounter, and his untiring zeal and courage in the midst of privations and dangers, it is only fair to admit that his name deserves to be ranked among the most distinguished explorers of the Arctic world.
CHAPTER XXI.
THE TUNGUSI.
Their Relationship to the Mantchou.—Dreadful Condition of the outcast Nomads.—Character of the Tungusi.—Their Outfit for the Chase.—Bear-hunting.—Dwellings.—Diet.—A Night’s Halt with Tungusi in the Forest.—Ochotsk.
Though both belonging to the same stock, the fate of the Tungusi and Mantchou has been very different; for at the same time when the latter conquered the vast Chinese Empire, the former, after having spread over the greatest part of East Siberia, and driven before them the Jakuts, the Jukahiri, the Tchuktchi, and many other aboriginal tribes, were in their turn subjugated by the mightier Russians. In the year 1640 the Cossacks first encountered the Tungusi, and in 1644 the first Mantchou emperor mounted the Chinese throne. The same race which here imposes its yoke upon millions of subjects, there falls a prey to a small number of adventurers. However strange the fact, it is, however, easily explained, for the Chinese were worse armed and less disciplined than the Mantchou, while the Tungusi had nothing but bows and arrows to oppose to the Cossack fire-arms; and history (from Alexander the Great to Sadowa) teaches us that victory constantly sides with the best weapons.
In their intellectual development we find the same difference as in their fortunes between the Mantchou and the Siberian Tungusi. Two hundred and fifty years ago the former were still nomads, like their northern kinsfolk, and could neither read nor write, and already they have a rich literature, and their language is spoken at the court of Peking; while the Tungusi, oppressed and sunk in poverty, are still as ignorant as when they first encountered the Cossacks.
According to their occupations, and the various domestic animals employed by them, they are distinguished by the names of Reindeer, Horse, Dog, Forest, and River Tungusi; but although they are found from the basins of the Upper, Middle, and Lower Tunguska to the western shores of the Sea of Ochotsk, and from the Chinese frontiers and the Baikal to the Polar Ocean, their whole number does not amount to more than 30,000, and diminishes from year to year, in consequence of the ravages of the small-pox and other epidemic disorders transmitted to them by the Russians. Only a few rear horses and cattle, the reindeer being generally their domestic animal; and the impoverished Tunguse, who has been deprived of his herd by some contagious disorder or the ravages of the wolves, lives as a fisherman on the borders of a river, assisted by his dog, or retires into the forests as a promyschlenik, or hunter. Of the miseries which here await him, Wrangell relates a melancholy instance. In a solitary hut in one of the dreariest wildernesses imaginable, he found a Tunguse and his daughter. While the father, with his long snow-shoes, was pursuing a reindeer for several days together, this unfortunate girl remained alone and helpless in the hut—which even in summer afforded but an imperfect shelter against the rain and wind—exposed to the cold, and frequently to hunger, and without the least occupation. No wonder that the impoverished Tungusi not seldom sink into cannibalism. Neither the reindeer nor the dogs, nor the wives and children of their more fortunate countrymen, are secure from the attacks and voracity of these outcasts, who, in their turn, are treated like wild beasts, and destroyed without mercy. A bartering trade is, however, carried on with them, but only at a distance, and by signs; each party depositing its goods, and following every motion of the other with a suspicious eye.