and happily hit the boat. The Cossack jumped into the lap of a sailor and received a variety of epithets for his carelessness. There are fourteen ways in the Russian language of calling a man a—— fool, and I think all of them were used.
Illustration: ASCENDING THE BAY. Click to view.
Wind and tide opposed each other and tossed us rather uncomfortably. The waves breaking over the bow saturated the Cossack and sprinkled some of the sailors. At the stern we managed to protect ourselves, though we caught occasionally a few drops of spray. Wrapped in my overcoat and holding a bear-skin on my knees, I studied the summer night in that high northern latitude. At midnight it seemed like day break, and I half imagined we had wrongly calculated the hours and were later than we supposed. Between sunset and sunrise the twilight crept along the horizon from Occident to Orient. Further north the inhabitants of the Arctic circle were enjoying the light of their long summer day. What a contrast to the bleak night of cold and darkness that stretches with faint glimmerings of dawn through nearly half the year. The shores of the bay were high perpendicular banks, sharply cut like the bluffs at Vicksburg. There are several head-lands, but none project far enough to form harbors behind them. The bottom furnishes good anchoring ground, but the bay is quite open to southerly winds.
Captain Lund dropped his chin to his breast and slept soundly. Anossoff raised his coat collar and drew in his head like a tortoise returning into his shell, but with all his efforts he did not sleep. I was wakeful and found that time dragged slowly. The light-house had no light and needed none, as the darkness was far from profound. In approaching the mouth of the river we discovered a cluster of buildings, and close at hand two beacons, like crosses, marking the direction of the channel.
There was a little surf breaking along the beach as our keel touched the ground. Our blankets came dripping from the bottom of the boat, and my satchel had taken water enough to spoil my paper collars and a dozen cigars. My greatest calamity on that night was the sudden and persistent stoppage of my watch. An occurrence of little moment in New York or London was decidedly unpleasant when no trusty watchmaker lived within four thousand miles.
Major Abasa and the Ispravnik of Ghijiga escorted us from the landing to their quarters, where we soon warmed ourselves with hot tea, and I took opportunity and a couple of bearskins and went to sleep. Late in the day we had a dinner of soup, pork and peas, reindeer meat, and berry pudding. The deer's flesh was sweet and tender, with a flavor like that of the American elk.
In this part of Siberia there are many wide plains (tundras) covered with moss and destitute of trees. The blueberry grows there, but is less abundant than the "maroska," a berry that I never saw in America. It is yellow when ripe, has an acid flavor, and resembles the raspberry in shape and size. We ate the maroska in as many forms as it could be prepared, and they told us that it grew in Scotland, Scandinavia, and Northern Russia.
Illustration: TAKING THE CENSUS. Click to view.
The ordinary residents at the mouth of Ghijiga river were the pilot and his family, with three or four Cossacks to row boats on the bay. The natives of the vicinity came there occasionally, but none were permanent citizens. The arrival of the Variag and Clara Bell gave unusual activity to the settlement, and the Ispravnik might have returned a large population had he imitated the practice of those western towns that take their census during the stay of a railway train or a steamboat. There was once, according to a rural historian, an aspiring politician in Tennessee who wanted to go to Congress. There were not inhabitants enough in his district to send him, and so he placed a couple of his friends at the railway station to take the names of passengers as they visited the refreshment saloon and entered or left the depot. In a short time the requisite constituency was secured and sworn to, so that the aspirant for official honor accomplished the wish of his heart.
Illustration: LIGHT-HOUSE AT GHIJIGA. Click to view.
The light-house on the promontory is a hexagonal edifice ten feet in diameter and height; it is of logs and has a flat top covered with dirt, whereon to kindle a fire. The interior is entered by a low door, and I found it floored with two sticks of wood and a mud puddle. One could reach the top by climbing a sloping pole notched like an American fence-post. The pilot resides at the foot of the bluff, and is expected to visit this beacon daily. A cannon, old enough to have served at Pultawa, stands near the light-house, in a condition of utter helplessness.
The houses were furnished quite primitively. Beds were of bearskins and blankets, and the floor was the only bedstead. There were rustic tables of hewn boards, and benches without backs. In a storehouse there was a Fairbanks' scale, somewhat worn and rusty, and I found a tuneless melodeon from Boston and a coffee mill from New York.
The town of Ghijiga is on the bank of the river, twelve miles from the light-house, and the route thither was overland or by water, at one's choice. Overland there was a footpath crossing a hill and a wet tundra. The journey by water was upon the Ghijiga river; five versts of rowing and thirteen of towing by men or dogs. As it was impossible to hire a horse, I repudiated the overland route altogether, and tried a brief journey on the river, but could not reach the town and return in time for certain engagements. Ghijiga has a population of less than three hundred, and closely resembles Petropavlovsk. Two or three foreign merchants go there annually with goods to exchange for furs which the Russian traders gather. The inhabitants are Russians or half breeds, the former predominating. The half breeds are said to possess all the vices of both races with the virtues of neither.
Mr. Bilzukavitch, the Ispravnik of Ghijiga, was a native of Poland, and governed seventy-two thousand square miles of territory, with a population of sixteen hundred taxed males. His military force comprised thirty Cossacks with five muskets, of which three were unserviceable. The native tribes included in the district of Ghijiga are the Koriaks and Chukchees; the Koriaks readily pay tribute and acknowledge the Russian authority, but the Chukchees are not yet fairly subdued. They were long in open war with the Russians, and though peace is now established, many of them are not tributary. Those who visit the Russian towns are compelled to pay tribute and become Imperial subjects before selling or purchasing goods. The Ispravnik is an artist of unusual merit, as evinced by an album of his sketches illustrating life in Northern Siberia. Some of them appeared like steel engravings, and testified to the skill and patience of the man who made them.
On my second day at Ghijiga I tried a river journey with a dog team. The bottom of the boat was on the 'dug-out' principle, and the sides were two planks meeting in sharp and high points at the ends. I had a seat on some bearskins on the plank flooring, and found it reasonably comfortable. One man steered the boat, another in the bow managed the towline, and a third, who walked on land, drove the dogs. We had seven canines—three pairs and a leader—pulling upon a deerskin towline fastened to a thole-pin. It was the duty of the man in the bow to regulate the towline according to circumstances. The dogs were unaccustomed to their driver, and balky in consequence. Two of them refused to pull when we started, and remained obstinate until persuaded with sticks. The driver used neither reins nor whip, but liberally employed the drift wood along the banks. Clubs were trumps in that day's driving. The team was turned to the left by a guttural sound that no paper and ink can describe, and to the right by a rapid repetition of the word 'ca.'
Illustration: TOWED BY DOGS. Click to view.
Occasionally the path changed from one bank to the opposite. At such times we seated the dogs in the bow of the boat and ferried them over the river. In the boat they were generally quiet, though inclined to bite each other's legs at convenient opportunities. One muddy dog shook himself over me; I forgave him, but his driver did not, the innocent brute receiving several blows for making his toilet in presence of passengers.
The Koriaks have a habit of sacrificing dogs to obtain a fortunate fishery. The animals are hung on limbs of trees, and the sacrifice always includes the best. Major Abasa urged them to give only their worthless dogs to the evil spirit, assuring them the
