In Search of a Siberian Klondike

by Washington Baker Vanderlip; Homer B. Hulbert

Summit of Kamchatka—First Sight of Bering Sea.

Though the dogs were very weak and worn, we went in with a rush, as usual. But the moment we stopped, the poor fellows dropped in their tracks and went to sleep, without a thought of food. Their utter exhaustion was due to the fact that for the last ten days we had been crossing a stretch of uninhabited country, and it had been impossible to secure for them the necessary amount of food.

We were much relieved to find ourselves once more in "civilization," and we were in no hurry to move on. The people received us so hospitably, and with such genuine kindness, that we spent a week with them, resting and getting the dogs into condition again. Every day we were regaled with frozen fish, dried fish, dainty bits of walrus blubber, and frozen blueberries.

Some of the people of this tribe have curly hair, a thing that I had not seen before in Siberia. They speak with one of those peculiar "clicks" that are so baffling to the Western tongue, and which I had always supposed were confined to the languages of Africa.

The village was composed of a mixed race in whose veins was mingled Tchuktche, Korak, and Kamchatkan blood, in about equal proportions.

On our second day there I was glad to see the dogs that had dropped behind dragging themselves in. They were tied up in their old places, and fed generously on seal blubber and hot fish-soup, which might be called a kind of fish and oil chowder. They were all suffering badly from the need of fatty foods, and it was interesting to see the avidity with which they would bolt huge pieces of clear blubber. At the end of our week of rest, they were all fat again, their feet were healed up, and they were eager for the road once more. Some of the dogs that had shown less endurance than the others were traded off and better ones secured. The best medium of exchange seemed to be the little skeins of sewing-silk which I had been careful to bring. Skeins that were bought in Vladivostok for two and a half cents apiece readily brought a dollar here. I would have sold it cheaper, but they pushed the price of the dogs up from five dollars to twenty, and I was obliged to follow suit. The silk was in all the colors of the rainbow; it was a study to see the faces of these natives as they devoured the gaudy stuff with their eyes, especially the women. They use the silk to embroider the bottoms of their fur cloaks, some of which are true works of art. Traders have been known to pay as high as two hundred dollars for a single coat. The amount of needlework on them is simply enormous. Sometimes they cut out little pieces of skin a quarter of an inch square, of all colors and shades, and make a genuine mosaic of them, and around the bottom of each garment is a wide fringe of silk. The natives laughed at the prices that I asked, and good-naturedly expostulated with me, saying that they could get the same thing in Ghijiga much cheaper; to which I laughingly answered that they were at liberty to go and get it. Whenever I left a house, I presented the women each with a few needles, which in that country is a very substantial tip.

This village was not composed of pure Tchuktches, and these mongrel people are looked down upon by the clean Tchuktche stock, who frequently raid them and carry off their best-looking women.

It was now my purpose to turn south along the coast, and examine the beach sands and the rivers running into Bering Sea, as far down as the neck of the Kamchatkan peninsula, or Baron Koff Bay. As I was still in a sandstone country, there seemed little likelihood of finding gold in the beach sands, and unless the geologic formation changed as I went south, I should push right on without stopping, except to rest.

Bidding good-by to the friends who had treated us so kindly, we set out one morning, on our way southward, keeping to the smooth snow just above the beach line. Once, and only once, I tried to shorten the journey by crossing an arm of the sea on the ice. Here I had my first taste of what it must be like to attempt to reach the Pole across the frozen sea. Not once could I go fifty feet in a straight line. It was an unspeakable jumble of hummocks and crevasses. We covered eight arduous miles that day, and the dogs were so exhausted that we had to stop two days to recuperate. Time and again, that miserable day, I got into the water up to my waist, which necessitated an immediate change of clothes. About once an hour the dogs would fall into the water and have to be hauled out, after which a tedious detour would be made to find a more likely route across the wilderness of ice.

The sixth day out we reached Baron Koff Bay. It is a long, narrow inlet lying southeast and northwest; and at its head I found the little Korak village where it was decided that I should secure a guide to take me to the sulphur deposits, which were supposed to exist in an extinct volcano in the vicinity. These people were of the same mixed blood as those of the village I had so lately left, but they did not live in the hour-glass houses. They simply had the underground room, with a hole leading down into it. The one I entered was fifteen feet wide by ten in height.