THE LOWER KOLYMA RIVER

“Why don’t you try to escape,” I once asked an exile at Sredni-Koylmsk, “and make your way across Bering Straits to America?” For I was aware that, once in the United States, a Russian “political” is safe from the clutch of the bear.

“You do not know the coast,” was the reply, “or you would not ask me the question.” My friend was right. A month later I should certainly not have done so.

Indeed, had I been aware, at this stage of the journey, of the formidable array of obstacles barring the way to the north-easternmost extremity of Asia, I might perhaps even now have hesitated before embarking upon what eventually proved to be the most severe and distressing of all my experiences of travel. It does not look much on the map, that strip of coast-line which extends from the Kolyma River to Bering Straits (especially when viewed from the depths of a cosy armchair); and yet I don’t think there is a mile throughout its length which is not associated in my mind with some harassing anxiety, peril or privation.

Provisions of all kinds had become so scarce that a special permit from the ispravnik was necessary in order to enable us to purchase even a pound of flour. Luckily a relief convoy had arrived from Yakutsk during the week preceding our departure or a total lack of food must have brought the expedition to a final standstill. However, after endless difficulties and a lavish expenditure of rouble-notes, I managed to procure provisions enough to last us on short rations, with the addition of our own remaining stores, for about three weeks. I also secured a cask of vodka (or rather pure alcohol) to trade with the Tchuktchis, for a sum which, in England, would have stocked a moderate-sized cellar. Within three weeks I hoped to reach the first native settlement, said to be six hundred miles distant. Should we fail to do so starvation seemed unpleasantly probable, or death from exposure, our sole shelter being a flimsy canvas tent more suitable for a Thames picnic than an Arctic clime. And so we set out from Sredni-Kolymsk with seven men, five sleds and sixty-four dogs. One of the sleds was loaded down with provisions, our precious cask of vodka, and sundry deal cases containing clasp-knives, cheap revolvers, glass beads, wooden pipes, &c., for the natives, who do not use money. A sack of mahorka was also taken along for the same purpose. This is a villainous leaf tobacco so rank and sour that it must be soaked in warm water before smoking; and yet, long before we reached the Straits, it became far too precious to waste on the Tchuktchis! Another sled was packed with dog-food, consisting of inferior salt-fish, which we were also compelled to share with the teams before Tchaun Bay was reached. My greatest anxiety, next to the food supply, was regarding fuel. Every drop of oil had been exhausted some days before reaching Sredni-Kolymsk, where no more was procurable, so that artificial heat, that essential of Arctic travel, would have to be entirely derived from the sodden drift-wood occasionally found on the shores of the Polar Sea. I did not care to think much about what would happen if this commodity failed us for any length of time. All things considered, it is no exaggeration to say that my expedition was about as suitably equipped for the work before it as a man who, in England, goes out duck shooting in the depth of winter in a silk night-shirt!

Here, as at Verkhoyansk, our departure was witnessed by officials, exiles and natives. Even the politicals took an active interest in this hitherto unattempted journey, although perhaps this was partly due to the fact that certain sealed missives, destined for Europe, were snugly concealed about my person. Poor Strajevsky, whom I had learned to regard more as a friend than as an acquaintance, made a sketch of our departure which he promised to forward to me, but of course the drawing never reached its destination. Where is now, I often wonder, the unfortunate artist? He had lived for some time at Montrouge, in Paris, in order to study the French language, but I was unable to trace any of the friends there to whom he sent messages announcing his terrible fate.

From Sredni-Kolymsk, which we left on March 22, our way lay along the Kolyma River to Nijni-Kolymsk, an almost deserted collection of log huts surrounding a ruined wooden chapel. Our sleds were now lightly built, uncovered contrivances to carry two men, about a dozen dogs being harnessed to each. With a good team one may cover a long distance during the day over level ground, but our poor half-starved brutes travelled so slowly that my heart sank when I thought of the distance before them. Throughout that dismal time America used to seem as unattainable as the North Pole itself! I now directed that the sleds should travel in a certain order. Mine was the leading narta, and Nos. 2, 3 and 4 were occupied by de Clinchamp, Harding and Stepan respectively. Numbers 4 and 5 were provision-sleds which should have headed, not brought up the rear of the caravan, although I did not discover this mistake, which nearly cost us dearly, until after the passage across Tchaun Bay.

Harding and Stepan each drove a sled, the three other drivers being half-breed Kolyma-Russians, of whom two were of the usual stolid, sulky type. The third, who accompanied me, was a character. A squat little bundle of furs, with beady black eyes twinkling slyly from a face to which incessant cold and bad brandy had imparted the hues of a brilliant sunset. Local rumour gave Mikouline forty years, but he might have been any age, certainly an octogenarian in such primitive vices as were feasible within the restricted area of his Arctic home. Mikouline had once travelled some distance down the coast, and was therefore installed as guide. He and the other drivers agreed to accompany us as far as the first Tchuktchi settlement, where I hoped to procure assistance and transport from the natives. And at first I believed in my driver, for he was a cheery, genial little fellow, so invariably facetious that I often suspected his concealment of a reserve stock of vodka. And although Mikouline’s casual methods concerning time and distance were occasionally disquieting, he was a past master in the art of driving dogs, which is not always an easy one. The rudiments of the craft are soon picked up, but, as I afterwards found to my cost, a team will discover a change of driver the moment the latter opens his mouth, and become accordingly unmanageable. Illustrations of dog-sleds in the Arctic generally depict the animals as bounding merrily away at full speed, to be restrained or urged on at the will of their driver, but this is a pure fallacy, for a sled-dog’s gallop is like a donkey’s, short and sweet. The average gait is a shuffling trot, covering from five to seven miles an hour over easy ground; and even then desperate fights frequently necessitate a stoppage and readjustment of the traces. There are no reins, the dogs being fastened two abreast on either side of a long rope. To start off you seize the sled with both hands, give it a violent wrench to one side, and cry “Petak!” when the team starts off (or should start off) at full gallop, and you jump up and gain your seat as best you may. To stop, you jab an iron brake into the snow or ice and call out “Tar!” But the management of this brake needs some skill, and with unruly dogs an inexperienced driver is often landed on his back in the snow, while the sled proceeds alone upon its wild career. Laplanders and the Eskimo have each their method of dog driving, but the above was that practised by ourselves and by the Tchuktchis on the Siberian coast.

The journey of three hundred miles to Nijni-Kolymsk was accomplished in five days, and it was pleasant enough, for every night was passed in the hut of some fisherman or trapper who regaled us with tea and frozen fish. The Kolyma settler is generally a half-breed; an uncouth but hospitable being who leads a queer existence. During the short summer his days are passed on the river in canoes, fishing and trapping, but in winter furs are donned and dog-sled and rifle become a means of livelihood. Fish is the staple article of food, and when the summer catch has been a poor one a winter famine is the invariable result, and this is what had marred our progress. Nevertheless, a famine here is generally due to laziness, for the river teems with fish of all kinds, sturgeon and salmon-trout predominating, and there is also the tchir, a local delicacy. The busiest fishing season is in the early autumn, when herrings ascend the river in such shoals that forty or fifty thousand are frequently taken in a couple of days with a single net. Our dogs were fed on this fish, which appeared to be much larger than the European species. In the spring-time the Kolyma settler can revel in game, for swans, geese, duck and snipe abound, although weapons here are very primitive and the muzzle-loader prevails. Elk and Polar bear are occasionally shot in the winter, but the former have become scarce, and the latter only frequent the sea-coast.

Every hut, or even shed, we passed on the Kolyma had a name, which duly appears on the table of distances in the Appendix, but there are only two so-called villages between Middle and Lower Kolymsk, Silgisit and Krest, making the stages of the journey 90, 180, and 240 miles respectively. A little drive like the final stage of, say, London to Durham with such short rests would probably knock up an English horse, but even our weakly teams were fit to continue after twenty-four hours at Lower Kolymsk. Krest, so named from a large wooden cross which stands amidst a few log huts, was reached on March 24, and here we were hospitably entertained by the inhabitants, who all appeared to live in one house, the interior of which was cosy enough; and I here noticed for the first time that the windows were made, not of ice, but of fish skin. The other huts were deserted, for Krest is a fishing village only fully populated in summer-time. There seemed to be a fair lot of cattle and horses about the inhabited dwelling, where we shared the usual evening meal of frozen fish, to which a goodly portion of roast deer had been added in our honour. The meat would have been excellent had it not reeked of wild thyme, a favourite ingredient on the Kolyma, but the frozen berries served with it as a compote were delicious. These were a species of bilberry, but my host informed me that a dozen edible kinds are found within a couple of miles of the village, a kindly provision of nature, as vegetables are here unknown. There were also edible roots, one of which I tasted, but have no desire to repeat the experiment. I was surprised at the sleek appearance of my host’s cattle, but he told me that the plains around Krest afforded good, but coarse, pasturage, and sufficient hay to last throughout the winter months.

When we left Krest the night was bitterly cold, but clear and starlit, and that evening is memorable on account of a strange dream which disturbed my slumbers as I lay snugly ensconced in the sleeping-bag which was now my nightly couch. Perhaps the roast deer and bilberries had transported my astral self to the deck of a P. and O. liner at Colombo, where the passengers were warmly congratulating me on a successful voyage across Asia. “You have now only Bering Straits to get over,” said one, pledging me in champagne, and the geographical inconsistency did not strike me until a captain in gold lace, with the face of a Yakute, pointed out the little difference of several thousand miles lying between Ceylon and our projected goal. The shock of this discovery awoke me in terror, to shiver until dawn, yet heartily thankful that Colombo and I were still where we should be! Not that a short interval of tropical warmth would have been unwelcome that night, for although the cold was not so severe as it had been inland, I found on halting for breakfast that a mirror in a small bag under my pillow was coated with a thin film of ice.

Grey skies and frequent snow-flurries were experienced as we neared Nijni-Kolymsk, and as each mile was covered the vegetation on either side grew scantier, for even at Srendi-Kolymsk the pine forests had lost their grandeur. Here they dwindled away to scanty fir-trees, stunted larches and grey-green willows drooping in the snow. There is no sadder sight in creation than a sunset in these regions, when the heart seems to sink in sympathy with the dying day, and a dull despair to deaden the mind, as darkness creeps over a frozen world.

On the morning of Friday, March 28, we reached Nijni-Kolymsk, about thirty log huts in various stages of decay. This settlement, which was founded by Cossacks about the middle of the seventeenth century, is surrounded by low scrub, and, as at Sredni-Kolymsk, the buildings left standing are so low that they are invisible from the level of the river, which is here about two miles wide. The surroundings, however, are more picturesque than those of Middle Kolymsk, for a picturesque chain of mountains breaks the horizon to the eastward, although the remainder of the landscape consists of level and marshy tundra. In the reign of the Empress Catherine Nijni-Kolymsk contained over five hundred sturdy Cossacks and their families; it was peopled at the time of our visit by about fifty poor souls, whose gaunt and spectral appearance told of a constant struggle against cold, hunger and darkness. Nijni-Kolymsk had once apparently boasted of a main street, but the wooden huts had fallen bodily, one by one, till many now formed mere heaps of mud and timber; those still erect being prevented from utter collapse by wooden beams propped against them.

We found the entire community, consisting of half-breeds, Yakutes and Tunguses, gathered outside the hut of the only Russian in the place, one Jacob Yartsegg, who was banished here for life for smuggling rifles for revolutionary purposes into Russia. Yartsegg, a tall elderly man in ragged deerskins, informed me that the village possessed no ispravnik but himself, at which I could scarcely restrain a smile. There was something so “Gilbertian” in the idea of a prisoner acting as his own jailer! This man spoke a little English and apologised for the damp and darkness of the only hut he had to offer us. And in truth it was a piteous hovel half filled with snow, which was soon melted by the heat of our fire, rendering the floor, as usual, a sea of mud. There was not a mouthful of food to spare in the place, and we ate from our own stores. Yartsegg’s dwelling was shared by a miserable creature who had lost a hand and leg in a blizzard the previous year. The wounds, with no treatment, had not even yet healed, and it made me shudder to think of the agony the poor fellow must have endured, with cold and hunger to add to his misery. But although the sufferer was a young man, now maimed for life, he never complained save when pain in the festering limbs became excruciating. Under such conditions a European would probably have succumbed in a few weeks, but Arctic Siberia must be visited to thoroughly realise the meaning of the words “suffering” and “patience.”

The cold is not generally so severe at Nijni-Kolymsk as at the settlement up river (Yartsegg’s record showed 42 deg. F. as the minimum temperature of the month of March), but the climate here is less endurable on account of violent snowstorms which occasionally occur even in summer, and dense fogs which, during spring and autumn, continually sweep in from the Polar Sea. The sun remains above the horizon for fifty-two days, and the rest of the year varies from twilit nights in June to almost complete darkness in midwinter. The village was certainly not an attractive one, and as its occupants evinced a decided tendency to encroach on our provisions I resolved to remain in it only a couple of days. But here occurred the first of a series of contretemps which dogged my footsteps throughout the coast journey, for the drivers now refused to carry out their contract, urging that even if a Tchuktchi settlement were safely reached the natives there would certainly murder us. Here was an apparently insurmountable difficulty, for Mikouline, who acted as spokesman, simply snapped his fingers at Yartsegg’s authority. Threats were therefore useless, and kindness equally futile where this little scoundrel was concerned. In vodka lay my sole hope of victory, and the “exile-jailer” luckily possessed a limited store, some of which I purchased, and set to work to subjugate the unruly Mikouline by the aid of alcohol; an immoral proceeding no doubt, but no other course was open. For I knew that my driver’s example would at once be followed by the others who, like sheep, blindly followed him in everything. It would weary the reader to describe my hopes and fears during the ten interminable days and nights that the war was waged. But he will appreciate what they meant to the writer from the fact that every day, even every hour, was now of utmost importance, owing to the late season and probable break up of the sea-ice at no distant date. Also we were rapidly consuming the provisions which were to form our sole subsistence in the desolate Arctic. It therefore became necessary to place each man on half rations, consisting of two frozen fish, one pound of black bread and a quarter of a pound of Carnyl per diem. My triumph over Mikouline cost me several gallons of vodka, to say nothing of hours of disgust and annoyance passed in close companionship with the now maudlin, now abusive, little half-breed. To make matters worse, the weather during that wasted fortnight was still, clear, and perfect for travelling, and the very morning of our departure it broke up with a gale and blinding snowstorm which occasioned another irksome delay down river. Just as we were starting, the now sober Mikouline again showed symptoms of weakening, until I plied him with bumpers of vodka. So long as “the spirit moved him” my driver was all right; but alas! the Vodka would not last for ever, and where should we be then?

Yartsegg begged me to visit some of his relatives in New York and acquaint them of his existence, but although furnished with their address I could never trace these people, and the exile talked so wildly at times that my failure to execute the commission was perhaps due to his impaired mind and memory. But half-witted and almost repulsive as this poor fellow had become, it went to my heart to leave him in that God-forsaken settlement, when on the morning of April 2nd we again set out, in the teeth of a biting north-easter, for the shores of the Arctic Ocean.