On our return to the village we were surprised to find one of our old Norfolk Sound friends, Lieutenant Davidoff, who had arrived at the harbor in command of the little new vessel built at Sitcha, and called the Awos. He had left the Sound in August, accompanied by the Juno, under the command of Lieutenant Schwostoff, and having Baron von Resanoff on board to be carried to Ochotsk. He had parted with them off the Kurile Islands. About the middle of November Lieutenant Schwostoff made his appearance with the Juno. After landing his Excellency about Ochotsk, he received orders to proceed to one of the southernmost of the Kurile Islands, and break up a Japanese settlement reported to have been established there. He found at the place four Japanese, with a large stock of goods for trade with the islanders, consisting of rice, tobacco, fish-nets, lacquered ware, salt, cotton, silk, and many other articles; all of which he seized without opposition, and brought Japanese, goods, and all to Kamtchatka. Thus we met our old friends in a very unexpected manner. As we were doomed to pass another winter in this region, their company was very pleasant, and to have the Juno in sight again was especially agreeable to me.
I now took lodgings in a shanty owned and occupied by a very clever old man, named Andra, and his wife and little boy. I called him in a familiar way Starruk, that is old man, and his wife Starruke, old woman. He was quite thrifty for the place, and was one of the few in the village who owned and kept a cow. This was a fortunate circumstance, for good milk was a rarity in that section. His shanty was warm and comfortable, and was divided into three apartments. In one corner of the largest they made a bunk for me, and curtained it round. My man Parker slept in the same room on a movable bed. In the next room, which was the cooking-room, there was a large brick oven, or furnace, and on the top of this slept Starruk, his wife, and little boy. The third apartment was devoted to the cow and her fodder. At this place I took my meals at night and morning, but dined by general invitation at the Company’s table, at the house of the Superintendent. Comfortably settled in my new quarters, I prepared for a long winter’s siege.
It was necessary to be provided with a set of good dogs and a sledge. With the assistance of Starruk I was soon possessed of five of the best animals of the kind, and had them tied up near the house, that they might get accustomed to me, and be ready for use. In the spring of the year the dogs are turned loose, and left to provide for themselves, in the best way they can. Hence they are great thieves until the herring season comes, when they have an abundant supply of food, which they go into the water and catch for themselves, until they become very fat, and unfit for use.[31] At that season, too, great quantities of the herring are caught by the owners of the dogs, and split and dried in the sun, to feed them in the winter, when they give them nothing else.
I also purchased a first-rate sledge, at once light and handsome, fur garments, Kamtchatka boots, bear-skin, and everything needed to make my equipage complete; and, now fully prepared, I waited impatiently for the snow. There had been already several squalls, but about the last of November the ground was well covered and the winter set in. My dogs were in good travelling condition, and I now made my first essay, with three of them to begin with. The style in which they tumbled me about in the snow was “a caution,” as Paddy says, and furnished great amusement to the villagers. But I persevered, with a determination to make myself master of the business, and at the end of a week was quite an adroit performer. The sledges were so constructed, that it required nearly as much skill and practice to keep in equilibrium as in skating; but when well understood, they afforded a most splendid recreation and agreeable exercise. Being soon able to harness and manage my five dogs with dexterity, we used frequently to make a party, consisting of Langsdorff, Schwostoff, Davidoff, and Miasnikoff, and go out on excursions to the neighboring villages, from ten to twenty miles distant. When the weather was unfavorable, we had balls and parties; and in this way the weeks and months of the long winter passed off quite cheerfully.
About the 1st of January, 1807, the Governor-General, Koscheleff, who resides at Nischney, which is the capital of Kamtchatka, made his annual visit of inspection to all the military posts on the peninsula. His entrance into Petropowlowsk with a long handsome sledge, a Kamtchadale on each side, as conductors, and a string of twenty dogs, was quite a new and pleasing sight to me. During his stay of five days, we had royal feastings and visitings; and when he left, half the village accompanied him to the distance of ten or fifteen miles, myself among the number. We made a string nearly a mile long.
The sledging in Kamtchatka is not without some adverse casualties to the best of managers. One occurred to me which I will narrate. I was coming from Melka, an interior village, with a load of frozen salmon, in company with my landlord, Starruk, and, my dogs being better than his, I got several miles ahead of him. The snow was deep, but the top was crusted, and the underbrush all covered. The surface was perfectly smooth, but interrupted by numerous large trees; and to avoid them our track was serpentine. At last we came to an inclined plane of a mile or so in length, and, my sledge being heavily laden, it became necessary for me to be constantly on my guard, and keep a sharp lookout. Accordingly I took the usual preliminary precaution in such cases, of sitting sideways, with the left hand hold of the fore part, left foot on the runner, and my right leg extended; my foot, slipping over the snow, operated as a sort of an outrigger. The dogs at the same time, fearful lest the sledge should run on to them, went down the declivity like lightning. The trees seemed to grow thicker and thicker, and to avoid them it soon became hard up and hard down with me. At last, coming to a sharp curve to the right, the sledge, shearing to the other side, struck with such force as to scatter my whole establishment, and I received such a blow on the head that it stunned me and laid me out on the snow unconscious. When I came to a little, and looked up, I saw my sledge was partly a wreck, four of my dogs had broken from their harness and gone on, while one, left fast in his gear, was sitting on his haunches, and watching me with wonder, as much as to say, “How came you here?” It was not long before Starruk came up. He asked me what was the matter. I replied that some one in passing had run foul of me. “No,” said he, “I guess you run foul of that tree”; which, on collecting my scattered thoughts I found to be the fact. But as there were no bones broken, I brightened up, and, with the old man’s assistance, caught my dogs again, repaired damages and pursued my journey, not a little worse for my tumble.
SLEDGE AND EQUIPMENTS IN KAMTCHATKA
I will mention another circumstance which occurred to me,—not that there was anything extraordinary in it, but merely to show the sagacity of dogs, and the convenience of travelling with them. I was coming from a village about ten miles distant. It was dusk when I started, and night soon closed in with Egyptian darkness and an arctic snow-storm. I could not see even my dogs. The new snow soon covered and obliterated the old track. It was difficult to tell whether I was going ahead or standing still, without putting my foot through the new-fallen snow down to the old crust. In this way I went on for an hour or so, the dogs making very slow progress, and very hard work of it. Not being able to see anything, I somehow or other became persuaded that the dogs had inclined to the left of the beaten track, and consequently I kept urging them to the right. Thus I went on for some time, until I found myself in a forest of large trees, and had much difficulty in keeping clear of them. At last I became decidedly bewildered, but convinced that I had lost my way. Not knowing whither I was going, and fearing that I might wander, the Lord knew where, during the long night, I concluded to halt, and make my dogs fast to a tree. I then sat awhile on my sledge, and listened, to see if I could hear anybody, and finally prepared my bear-skin and fur garments for a night’s bivouac. I had not lain more than an hour before I heard the howling of dogs; my own immediately answered them. I found they were approaching, and when I judged them to be within hailing distance, I called out. A man called out in return, and soon drove up. It was a Kamtchadale coming from Petropowlowsk. It appeared that I had urged the dogs a considerable distance from the proper track, which, with the new-comer’s assistance, I regained. He told me not to attempt to guide the dogs, but to let them pick their own way. I accordingly sat on my sledge for an hour or so, scarcely realizing that I was moving, till at last I turned my eyes up, and found myself right under the light of my own window.
These little mishaps occurred while I was yet a novice in the art of sledging; but I soon became acquainted with the habits and dispositions of my dogs, and they became accustomed to me, so that I travelled fearlessly, alone or in company, and made excursions to all the villages in the southern part of the peninsula within a hundred miles of Petropowlowsk. While I was amusing myself in the southern, the Doctor was traversing the northern part of Kamtchatka all by himself, and collecting specimens of natural history.