Korean Miners.
For my own use I laid in a goodly supply of Armour's canned beef, canned fruits, dried fruits, lime-juice, bacon, three thousand pounds of beans, canned tomatoes, tinned butter, coffee, German beef-tea put up in capsules an inch long by half an inch thick (which proved extremely fine), and canned French soups and conserves. Besides these things, and more important than all, I took two tons of black bread—the ordinary hard rye bread of Russia, that requires the use of a prospecting hammer or the butt of a revolver to break it up. This was necessary for barter as well as for personal use.
Judging from my experiences in Australia, Burma, Siam, and Korea, as well as from my reading of Nansen, I thought it best not to encumber myself with any liquors excepting four bottles of brandy, which were carried in the medicine-chest and used for medicinal purposes only. My medical outfit consisted of four main articles, quinine, morphine, iodoform, and cathartic pills. With these four one can cope with almost anything that is likely to happen. The chest contained also bandages, absorbent cotton, mustard leaves, a hot-water bottle, two small surgeon's knives, and a pair of surgical scissors.
After a prolonged search for really good pack-saddles, I concluded that such things were unknown in Siberia; so, calling in a Chinese carpenter, I gave him a model of an Arizona pack-saddle, with instructions to turn out a dozen at the shortest possible notice. I proposed to teach my Koreans how to throw the "diamond hitch," but I found later, to my humiliation, that what the Korean does not know about packing is not worth knowing. Either Kim or Pak could do it quicker and better than I. Two thousand years of this sort of thing have left little for the Korean to learn.
Mining-tools were of course a necessity. Even in Vladivostok I could not secure what I wanted. I therefore took what I could get. I purchased drills, hammers, a crow-bar, a German pump which was guaranteed to pump sand (but which I found later would pump nothing thicker than pure water), a quantity of blasting powder called "rack-a-rock," picks, shovels, wire, nails, and other sundries. The Russian shovel is an instrument of torture, being merely a flat sheet of iron with a shank for the insertion of a handle, which latter is supposed to be made and fitted on the spot. As there is no bend at the neck of the shovel, the lack of leverage makes it a most unwieldy and exasperating utensil. As for the Russian pick, it has but one point, and in its construction is clumsy beyond belief. Even the Korean picks are better. I also carried a simple blow-pipe outfit, an aneroid, a compass, gold-screens, and gold-pans, with other necessary appliances for prospecting. These preparations were made very hurriedly, as the Cosmopolite was the only steamer going north during the season.
Tourists sometimes ask if it would not be possible to secure passage on this annual steamer and take the trip along the coast to Bering Sea and back. There is nothing to prevent it. The trip of three months, stopping at ten or twelve points along the coast, could be made for about three hundred roubles, a rouble representing fifty cents in gold. But the trip would be of little value or interest, because, in the first place, the natives bring down their furs to the trading stations during the winter, when the ice makes traveling possible, so that one would have very little opportunity of seeing anything of native life, or of securing any of the valuable furs that come out of this region each year. It would be impossible for the tourist to pick up any good ones in summer. Outside of natives and furs, it is difficult to see what interest there could be in such a trip, unless the tourist is studying the habits of mosquitos and midges, in which case he would strike a veritable paradise.