Chapter 75

A PLUNGE INTO CIVILISATION--THE NOBLES' BALL--SHOCKING LANGUAGE-- SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLISH--THE GREAT SIBERIAN ROAD--PASSING TEA CARAVANS--RAPID TRAVEL--FIFTY-SEVEN HUNDRED MILES IN ELEVEN WEEKS--ARRIVAL IN ST. PETERSBURG

At Irkutsk, we plunged suddenly from a semi-barbaric environment into an environment of high civilisation and culture; and our attempts to adjust ourselves to the new and unfamiliar conditions were attended, at first, with not a little embarrassment and discomfort. As we were among the first Americans who had been seen in that Far Eastern capital, and were officers, moreover, of a company with which the Russian Government itself had been in partnership, we were not only treated with distinguished consideration, but were welcomed everywhere with warm-hearted kindness and hospitality; and we found it necessary at once to exchange calls with high officials; accept invitations to dinner; share the box of the Governor-General's chief of staff at the theatre, and go to the weekly ball of the "noble-born" in the hall of the "Blagorodnaya Sobrania," (Assembly of Nobles). The first difficulty that we encountered, of course, was the lack of suitable clothing. After two and a half years of campaigning in an arctic wilderness, we had no raiment left that was fit to wear in such a city as Irkutsk, and--worse than that--we had little money with which to purchase a new supply. The two hundred and fifty dollars with which we left Okhotsk had gradually dribbled away in the defrayment of necessary expenses along the road, and we had barely enough left to pay for a week's stay at the hotel. In this emergency we fell back upon our telegraph-company uniforms. They had been soaked in the Lena, frozen into masses of ice, and stretched all out of shape in the process of wringing and drying at Krestófskaya; but we got an Irkutsk tailor to press them and polish up the tarnished gilt buttons, and after spending most of the money we had left in the purchase of new fur overcoats to replace the dirty, travel-worn _kukhlankas_ in which we had arrived, we got ourselves up in presentable form to call on the Governor-General.

The severest ordeal through which we had to pass, however, was the dance at the hall of the Blagorodnaya Sobrania to which we were escorted by General Kukel (koo'-kel), the Governor-General's chief of staff. The spacious and brilliantly lighted apartment, draped with flags and decorated with evergreens; the polished dancing-floor; the crash and blare of the music furnished by a military band; the beautiful women in rich evening toilettes; and the throng of handsome young officers in showy and diversified uniforms, simply overwhelmed us with feelings of mingled excitement and embarrassment. I felt, myself, like a uniformed Eskimo at a Charity Ball, and should have been glad to skulk in a corner behind the band! All I wanted was an opportunity to watch, unobserved, the brilliant picture of colour and motion, and to feel the thrill of the music as the band swept, with wonderful dash, swing, and precision, through the measures of a spirited Polish mazurka. General Kukel, however, had other views for us, and not only took us about the hall, introducing us to more beautiful women than we had seen, we thought, in the whole course of our previous existence, but said to every lady, as he presented us: "Mr. Kennan and Mr. Price, you know, speak Russian perfectly." Price, with discretion beyond his years, promptly disclaimed the imputed accomplishment; but I was rash enough to admit that I did have some knowledge of the language in question, and was forthwith drawn into a stream of rapid Russian talk by a young woman with sympathetic face and sparkling eyes, who encouraged me to describe dog-sledge travel in north-eastern Asia and the vicissitudes of tent life with the Wandering Koraks. On this conversational ground I felt perfectly at home; and I was succeeding, as I thought, admirably, when the girl suddenly blushed, looked a trifle shocked, and then bit her lip in a manifest effort to restrain a smile of amusement not warranted by anything in the life that I was trying to describe. She was soon afterward carried away by a young Cossack officer who asked her to dance, and I was promptly engaged in conversation by another lady, who also wanted "to hear an American talk Russian." My self-confidence had been a little shaken by the blush and the amused smile of my previous auditor, but I rallied my intellectual forces, took a firm grip of my Russian vocabulary, and, as Price would say, "sailed in." But I soon struck another snag. This young woman, too, began to show symptoms of shock, which, in her case, took the form of amazement. I was absolutely sure that there was nothing in the subject-matter of my remarks to bring a blush to the cheek of innocence, or give a shock to the virgin mind of feminine youth, and yet it was perfectly evident that there was something wrong. As soon as I could make my escape, I went to General Kukel and said: "Will you please tell me, Your Excellency, what's the matter with my Russian?"

"What makes you think there's anything the matter with it?" he replied evasively, but with a twinkle of amusement in his eyes.

"It doesn't seem to go very well," I said, "in conversation with women. They appear to understand it all right, but it gives them a shock. Is my pronunciation so horribly bad?"

"You speak Russian," he said, "with quite extraordinary fluency, and with a-a-really interesting and engaging accent; but--excuse me please--shall I be entirely frank? You see you have learned the language, under many disadvantages, among the Koraks, Cossacks, and Chukchis of Kamchatka and the Okhotsk Sea coast, and--quite innocently and naturally of course--you have picked up a few words and expressions that are not--well, not--"

"Not used in polite society," I suggested.

"Hardly so much as that," he replied deprecatingly. "They're a little queer, that 's all--quaint--bizarre--but it's nothing! nothing at all! All you need is a little study of good models--books, you know--and a few months of city life."

"That settles it!" I said. "I talk no more Russian to ladies in Irkutsk."

When, upon my arrival in St. Petersburg, I had an opportunity to study the language in books, and to hear it spoken by educated people, I found that the Russian I had picked up by Kamchatkan camp-fires and in Cossack _izbas_ on the coast of the Okhotsk Sea resembled, in many respects, the English that a Russian would acquire in a Colorado mining camp, or among the cowboys in Montana. It was fluent, but, as General Kukel said, "quaint--bizarre," and, at times, exceedingly profane.

I was not the only person in Irkutsk, however, whose vocabulary was peculiar and whose diction was "quaint" and "bizarre." A day or two after the ball of the Blagorodnaya Sobrania we received a call from a young Russian telegraph operator who had heard of our arrival and who wished to pay his respects to us as brother telegraphers from America. I greeted him cordially in Russian; but he began, at once, to speak English, and said that he would prefer to speak that language, for the sake of practice. His pronunciation, although queer, was fairly intelligible, and I had little difficulty in understanding him; but his talk had a strange, mediaeval flavour, due, apparently, to the use of obsolete idioms and words. In the course of half an hour, I became satisfied that he was talking the English of the fifteenth century--the English of Shakespeare, Beaumont, and Fletcher--but how he had learned such English, in the nineteenth century and in the capital of eastern Siberia, I could not imagine. I finally asked him how he had managed to get such command of the language in a city where, so far as I knew, there was no English teacher. He replied that the Russian Government required of its telegraph operators a knowledge of Russian and French, and then added two hundred and fifty rubles a year to their salaries for every additional language that they learned. He wanted the two hundred and fifty rubles, so he began the study of English with a small English-French dictionary and an old copy of Shakespeare. He got some help in acquiring the pronunciation from educated Polish exiles, and from foreigners whom he occasionally met, but, in the main, he had learned the language alone, and by committing to memory dialogues from Shakespeare's plays. I described to him my recent experience with Russian, and told him that his method was, unquestionably, better than mine. He had learned English from the greatest master of the language that ever lived; while I had picked up my Russian from Cossack dog-drivers and illiterate Kamchadals. He could talk to young women in the eloquent and impassioned words of Romeo, while my language was fit for backwoodsmen only.

At the end of our first week in Irkutsk, we were ready to resume our journey; but we had no money with which to pay our hotel bill, still less our travelling expenses. I had telegraphed to Major Abaza repeatedly for funds, but had received no reply, and I was finally compelled to go, in humiliation of spirit, to Governor General Sheláshnikoff, and borrow five hundred rubles.

On the 13th of December, we were again posting furiously along the Great Siberian Road, past caravans, of tea from Hankow; detachments of Cossacks convoying gold from the placers of the Lena; parties of hard-labour convicts on their way to the mines of the trans-Baikal; and hundreds of sleighs loaded with the products or manufactures of Russia, Siberia, and the Far East.

For the first thousand miles, our progress was retarded and our rest greatly broken--particularly at night--by tea caravans. With the establishment of the winter road, in November, hundreds of low, one-horse sledges, loaded with hide-bound boxes of tea that had come across the desert of Gobi from Peking, left Irkutsk, every day, for Nizhni Novgorod. They moved in solid caravans, a quarter of a mile to a mile in length, and in every such caravan there were from fifty to two hundred sledges. As the tea-horses went at a slow, plodding walk, their drivers were required, by law, to turn out for private travellers and give the latter the road; but they seldom did anything of the kind. There were only twelve or fifteen of them to a caravan of a hundred sledges; and as they usually curled up on their loads at night and went fast asleep, it was practically impossible to arouse them and get the caravan out of the middle of the road. In order to pass, therefore, we ourselves had to turn out and drive three quarters of a mile, or possibly a mile, through the deep soft snow on one side of the beaten track. This so exasperated our driver that he would give every horse and every sleeping teamster in the whole caravan a slashing cut with his long rawhide whip, shouting, in almost untranslatable Russian, "Wake up!" (Whack.) "Get a move on you!" (Whack.) "What are you doing in the middle of the road there?" (Whack.) "Akh! You ungodly Tartar pagans!" (Whack.) "GO TO SLEEP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, WILL YOU?" (Whack, whack.) Meanwhile, the strongly braced outrigger of our _pavoska_, on the caravan side, would strike every one of the tea-sledges, as we passed, and the long series of violent shocks, combined with the rolling and pitching of our vehicle, as it wallowed through the deep snow, would be enough to awaken a man from anything except the last sleep of death. Usually, we were aroused by our driver's preliminary shouts when we first came in sight of a caravan; but sometimes we were in such a stupor of sleep that we did not awake until the outrigger collided with the first load of tea and brought us suddenly to consciousness with a half-dazed impression that we had been struck by lightning, or hit by a falling tree. If we had had to undergo this experience only once or twice in the course of the night, it would not have been so bad; but we sometimes passed half a dozen caravans between sunset and dawn; threw every one of them into disorder and confusion with outrigger and whip; and left behind us a wake of Russian and Tartar profanity almost fiery enough to be luminous in the dark. Shortly after leaving Tomsk, however, we passed the vanguard of these tea caravans and saw them no more.

The road in western Siberia was hard and smooth, and the horses were so good that we made very rapid progress with comparatively little discomfort. We stopped only twice a day for meals, and every night found us 175 or 200 miles nearer our destination than we had been the night before. We succeeded in getting across the Urals before the end of the year, and on the 7th of January, after twenty-five days of almost incessant night-and-day travel, we drew up before a hotel in the city of Nizhni Novgorod, which, at that time, was the eastern terminus of the Russian railway system. We sold our sleigh, fur bag, pillows, tea-equipment, and the provisions we had left, for what they would bring--a beggarly sum; took a train the same day for St. Petersburg; and reached the Russian capital on the 9th of January, eleven weeks from the Okhotsk Sea by way of Yakutsk, Irkutsk, Tomsk, Tiumen, Ekaterineburg, and Nizhni Novgorod. In the eleven weeks we had changed dogs, reindeer, or horses more than two hundred and sixty times and had made a distance of five thousand seven hundred and fourteen miles, nearly all of it in a single sleigh.

INDEX

A

Abaza, Major S., appointed superintendent of Siberian division; forms plan of operations; starts northward from Petropavlovsk; scares up a bear; falls ill at Lesnoi; leaves Gizhiga for Okhotsk; orders from; returns to Gizhiga; makes trip to Anadyrsk; sails for Okhotsk; visits Yakutsk; comes to Yamsk; returns to Yakutsk; starts for St. Petersburg; letter from. Agaricus muscarius, Korak intoxicant. Air-hole, driving into Aklán, river Aldan, river Amur, river Anadyr, river; work on. Anadyr River party; finding of; experience of; orders concerning. Anadyrsk, village; arrival at; priest's house in; history and description of; climate of; ball at; character of inhabitants; famine at. Anadyrsk sickness Animals, of Kamchatka Anóssof, Russian commissioner Arnold, member of Anadyr River party Astronomical lectures Atlantic cable, failure of first; final success of. Aurora borealis; remarkable display of. Aurora of the sea Avacha, bay Avacha, river Avacha, village Avacha, volcano

B

"Baideras," Korak skin boats "Balagáns," fish storehouses Ball, at Anadyrsk; at Irkutsk. "Ballalaikas," Siberian guitars "Barabans," Korak drums Baths, "black," Kamchatkan steam baths Bear hunts Bears Bering, monument to, in Petropavlovsk Berries Bickmore, A.S., reference to Korak marriage ceremony Birds Bivouacs, Kamchatkan Blueberries Bollman, merchant in Petropavlovsk Bordman, W.H. Bowsher, member of Sandford's party Bragan, Nicolai, guide Bragans, Kamchatkan traders British Columbia British Government, concessions from Bulkley, Colonel Charles S. Bush, Richard J., becomes member of Siberian party; sails for Amur River; meeting with, at Gizhiga; put in command of Northern District; bad news from; night meeting with; experience in summer of 1866 Buttercups

C

Cable, Atlantic, failure of first; final success of Camp, a winter Camps Canoe travel Canticle, a driver's Christmas, in a storm; in Anadyrsk Christmas carols Chuances Chukchis Church, Greek, architecture and color; services Cinquefoil _Clara Bell_, bark Climate Clover Cold, Asiatic pole of; phenomena of; on Myan River; lowest temperature observed; in Stanavoi mountains Collins, P. McD., suggests overland telegraph to Europe Congress, of U. S., promises assistance Cossack waltz Cossacks Cows Cowslips Crimean war, connection of Petropavlovsk with Crinoline, Korak comment on Crows

D

Dall, W. H. Dances, Siberian Distance, Korak ideas of Divide, Kamchatkan, crossing of Dix, Major General, worshipped as a saint Dodd, James, engaged as member of party in Petropavlovsk; goes to Tigil; left in Gizhiga Dogs, ancestry: endurance; food; sledges; loads; driving of; first experiment in driving; howling of, in chorus; rest; cutting of feet by ice "Dole," arctic desert Dranka, village Dress; of Kamchadals; of Wandering Koraks; of Zamutkis and Tunguses Drunkenness, from poisonous toadstool Ducks

E

Eagles English, Shakespearian, in Irkutsk Equipment, in San Francisco; in Petropavlovsk; in Lesnoi; in Gizhiga; in Anadyrsk; in Yakutsk Escape, narrowest Eskimo-like natives Ethnology, of Siberian natives Evil spirits, propitiation of Exploration, plans for

F

Famines Fashion-plate, Korak comment on Field glass, Chukchi experiments with Fish-hawks Fish savings banks Flowers, in Gizhiga; in Petropavlovsk; in Kamchatka Fluger, German merchant in Petropavlovsk Fly agaric, as intoxicant Food, of Kamchadals Fort St. Michael _Frank Leslie's_, fashion-plate from; pictures from Frazer River Fritillaria; bulbs eaten Fronefield, American in Petropavlovsk Frost, George A. Fruits, of Kamchatka Fur trade, of Kamchatka

G

Gale, in North Pacific Geese Genal, valley Genal, village Gilyaks Gizhiga, village; arrival at; first days in; departure from; return to, from Anadyrsk; spring in; climate of; dancing parties in _Golden Gate_, bark, wreck of Goldsmith, Oliver, reference to Korak intoxicant Grouse "teteer" Gulls

H

_Hallie Jackson_, brig Hamilton, captain of whaling bark _Sea Breeze_ Harchina, village Harder, member of Anadyr River party _Harper's Weekly_, pictures from Heck, member of Sandford's party _Herald, N.Y._, correspondent of Horseback travel Horse-express, Siberian Houses, Kamchadal Hunter, American in Petropavlovsk

I

_Illustrated London News_, as wall paper Imperator and operator Indian type, of Siberian native Intoxicant, Korak Irkutsk, city "Ispravnik," local governor of Petropavlovsk; of Gizhiga; of Okhotsk

J

Jelly-fish; luminous "Jerusalem," village

K

Kamchadals, character; food; language; music; numbers; physique; religion; sable trapping; summer settlements; transportation Kamchatka, animals; berries; birds; climate; first impressions; first view of coast; flowers; fruits; government; mail; population; scenery; topography; transportation; volcanoes Kamchatka River; raft, life on; valley of Kamchatkan Divide, crossing of Kamchatkan lily Kamchatkan mountains Kamenoi Kazarefski, village "Kazarm," a Russian barrack "Kedrovnik," see "Pine" Kennicott, leader of Alaskan exploring party Kirinsk, town on Lena River Kluchei, village Kluchefskoi volcano Knox, Colonel T. W., correspondent of _N.Y. Herald_ Kolyma, mosquitoes in Korak, village Koraks, Settled, appearance; experiments with American food; in Kamenoi; stupidity and ugliness; yurts Koraks, Wandering, arrival at first encampment; appearance; character; comment on dress of American woman; food; geographical range; intoxicant; language; marriage ceremony; monotonous life; old and sick killed; pologs; reindeer; relation to Chukchis; relieve starving Anadyrsk people; religion; social organisation; superstitions; tents Koratskoi, volcano Krestofskaya, village Kristi, village Kuil, village of Settled Koraks Kukel, General "Kukhlanka" fur overshirt

L

Labrador tea Lamutkis Land, longing for Language, "American"; Russian difficulty of learning; grammar of; specimen; experience with, in Irkutsk La Perouse, monument to, in Petropavlovsk Lecky, W.H., reference to religion of terror Lectures, astronomical Leet, American brought by bark _Onward_; suicide of Lesnoi, village Letovies, summer settlements Lewis, Richard, telegraph operator brought by bark _Onward_ Lily, Kamchatkan "Lodkas," Siberian skiffs

M

Macrae, leader of Anadyr River party Macrae and Arnold, go with Chukchis; no news from; arrive in Anadyrsk; experience with Chukchis; first winter's work Magpies Mahood, Captain James A. Mahood and Bush Maidel, Baron Malchanski Malqua, village Manchus "Manyalla," Korak bread Marriage ceremonies, Russian Korak Matches, Koraks see for first time Matuga, island Maximof, Kamchatkan driver Medusae; luminous Mikina, village Milkova, village Mirages Mongolian type of natives "Moroshkas," berries Mosquitoes Moss steppe Mountains, Kamchatkan "Muk-a-moor," Korak intoxicant Music, American, in Kamchatka; of Kamchadals; of Greek Church; on corvette _Varag_ Myan, river

N

Nalgim, mountain "Nart," Siberian dog-sledge _New York Herald_, correspondent of Nights, in summer Nikolaievsk, town Nizhni Novgorod Northern District, famine in; work in Norton, forearm of pole-cutting party Norton, sound

O

"Oerstel," a spiked stick Okhotsk Sea; coast of; temperatures of; phosphorescence of Okuta, village _Olga_, brig, passage engaged on; inspection of; sails from San Francisco; life on; sails for Amur River _Onward_, bark Operator and imperator

P

_Palmetto_, bark Paren, river "Pavoskas," travelling sleighs or sledges Penzhina, river Penzhina, village Penzhinsk Gulf Petropavlovsk Phillippeus, trip down the Anadyr; boat of Phosphorescence, of the sea Pierce, American in Petropavlovsk Pine, trailing or "Kedrovnik" Plans, at Gizhiga Plover "Podorozhnaya," order for post-horses "Pologs," skin bedrooms Pope, leader of Alaskan party Porte Crayon, sketches of, in Kamchatka Post-road to Irkutsk Povorotnoi, cape Price, telegraph operator, brought by _Onward_ Primroses "Pripaika," ice-foot Propashchina, River of the Lost "Protoks," arms of stream Ptarmigan Puffin "Purgas," blizzards Pushchin, village

R

Raft, Kamchatkan Raft travel Raselskoi, volcano Ravens Reception, Kamchatkan Reindeer catching; driving; food; guarding; habits; of Koraks; of Tunguses; stampede; superstition about sale of; uses Reindeer Koraks, see "Koraks, Wandering" Reindeer-sledge travel Religion, of Kamchadals; of Wandering Koraks Reveries, seasick River of the Lost Roads Robinson, member of Anadyr River party Roses, wild Route of line Routes from Kluchei Russell and Co. Russian-American Telegraph Co. organisation of failure of Russian Government Russian language

S

Sables, trapping; trade in skins _Saghalin_, Russian supply steamer St. Petersburg Sale, a bargain Salmon, catching and curing; failure of; frozen; dependence of Siberians upon Samanka Mountains Samanka River Sandford, Lieut., foreman of pole-cutting party "Sastrugi," permanent drifts of snow Scammon, Captain, commander of Company's fleet Scenery of Kamchatka Scenery, Siberian, in winter Schwartz _Sea Breeze_, whaling bark Sea life "Selánka," Kamchatkan soup Send-off, a Siberian Shamanism "Shchi," cabbage soup Sheláshnikoff, Governor-General Sherom, village Shestakóva, village Sidanka, village Smith, member of Anadyr River party Sparrow song Spring, in Gizhiga Squirrel skins Stanavoi Mountains Star-flower "Starosta," head man of village Steeplechase, to Sidanka Stock, of Western Union Extension Co. Storm in Northern Pacific; on the Viliga River; on the Málkachán steppe; in Gizhiginsk Gulf Stovepipe, search for; finding of "Struganini," frozen fish Sugar, used instead of money Sulkavoi, captain of port of Petropavlovsk Sutton, captain of bark _Clara Bell_ Suveilich, volcano Swallows Swans Sword-bearer

T

"Taiyon," Korak chief "Tarantas," Siberian travelling carriage Tea, used instead of money "Tea caravans," Telega, four-wheeled Siberian wagon Tents, of Koraks, life in "Teteer," Russian grouse Thrushes Tide, a race with Tigil, village Time, expedients to pass away Tobacco, used instead of money Tobézin, captain of steamer, _Saghalin_ Topolofka, river "Topor," Russian axe "Torbasses," fur boots Trances, in Anadyrsk sickness Trailing-pine. See "Pine" Transportation, means of, in Kamchatka Tundras, mossy plains Tunguses; encampments Turkish type of natives

U

Ural Mountains Usinova, brook

V

Valerian _Varag_, Russian corvette Verkholénsk, town on Lena River Victoria Viliga, stormy gorge of; mountains Villages, Kamchatkan, descriptions Villuchinski, volcano Vitimsk, town on Lena River Volcanoes of Kamchatka Vorrebeoffs, Kamchatkan traders,

W

Wages, paid Yakut laborers Wedding, in Petropavlovsk; in Korak tent Western Union Extension Co. Western Union Telegraph Co. Wheeler, sent to Yamsk Whymper, book of Wild-rose petals, as food Women, American, Korak comment on dress of Work accomplished up to March 1886 Writing, Korak and Chukchi, ignorance of

Y

Yakuts Yakutsk; winter temperatures Yamsk, village; trip to, in March "Yassak," a tax on furs Yolofka, pass Yolofka, river, canoe travel on Yolofka, village "Yukola," dried fish "Yurts," Asiatic habitations; of settled Koraks,

Z

"Zimovie," winter settlement Zinovief, Gregorie, Cossack guide