Permitting convicts to be used as servants by private persons is in complete contradiction with the point of view of a legislator concerned with evaluating punishment. This is not penal servitude, it is serfdom, since the convict does not serve the government but is in the employ of a private individual who has no connection whatsoever with cor- rective measures or with the concept of proportionality of punishment. He is not sentenced to penal servitude but to slavery, subordinated to the will of the head of the house- hold and his family, gratifying their whims and participat- ing in kitchen squabbles.
On becoming a settler, he is nothing more than a serv- ant on a country estate, who knows how to clean boots and fry cutlets but is incapable of working the soil and there- fore goes hungry, at the mercy of fate. Permitting convict women to go into domestic service has its own special drawbacks in addition to all the others. This is aside from the fact that within the environment of forced labor, fa- vorites and kept women always give rise to a rottenness which is utterly degrading to human dignity; in particular, they completely distort discipline. One of the priests told me that there were instances on Sakhalin when free women or soldiers in service were forced, under well-known cir- cumstances, to clean up and carry out the mess left by a convict woman.5
What is grandly called the ''factory industry" in Alex- androvsk is well organized in its outward aspects, but to date has been of no serious significance. In the foundry, which is run by a self-taught mechanic, I saw bells, wheels for carriages and wheelbarrows, a hand mill, a lace-making machine, faucets, stove appliances, etc., but all of these gave the impression of being playthings. The articles are excel- lent but there is no market for them. It would certainly be more advantageous to procure them for local consumption from the mainland or from Odessa than to set up their own steam engines and hire a complete staff of paid employees.
Naturally, there would be no regret at such expenditures if the shops were schools where the convicts could learn trades. In fact, it is not the convicts who work in the foundry and machine shops but experienced settler artisans who are junior supervisors with a salary of eighteen rubles per month. Enthusiasm over an article is very evident here. The wheels go round and the hammers pound and the steam whistles blow in honor of the quality and salability of their work. Commercial and artistic considerations have no connection whatsoever with punishment. Meanwhile, on Sakhalin, as well as everywhere else where there is penal servitude, every undertaking should be directed toward the immediate and long-term consideration of criminal reform. Local factories should not strive to market stove doors and faucets on the mainland, but should attempt to develop useful and well-trained artisans.
The steam mill, the lumberyard and the blacksmith's shop are kept in excellent order. The people work happily, probably because they recognize the usefulness of their work. But even here the work is mainly carried out by spe- cialists who were millers, blacksmiths and so on in private life, and not by those who did not know how to work be- fore they came here. They knew nothing then, and now, more than others, they require experience in the mills and at the blacksmith's forges, where they could be trained to develop their skills.6
1 A very fine description of Russian prisons in general was given by N. V. Muravyev in his article ''Our Prisons and the Penal Question," Ruuky Vestnik 1878, Vol. IV. To learn about the Siberian prisons which were the protoypes of those on Sakha- lin, see the report by S. V. Maximov, "Siberia and Penal Servi- tude."
2 Maidan, from a Persian word meaning a public square or market place. In Russia it meant a privately owned and semi- clandestine commissary patronized by prisoners.—^^NS.
3 A package of nine or ten cigarettes costs one kopeck; a small loaf of white bread, two kopecks; a bottle of milk, eight to ten kopecks; a piece of sugar, two kopecks. The sale is made for cash, or on credit, or by barter. The maidan also sells vodka, cards and candle ends for playing cards secretly at night. It also rents cards.
4 "Working Conditions for Construction Work, According to the Imperial Edict of April i 7, i 869" (Petersburg, i 887). When assignments are given for various types of work, the following must be considered: the physical strength of the laborer, and his experience. The law gives the number of working hours per day, conforming to the time of year and the region of Russia. Sakhalin is regarded as being equivalent to the central part of Russia. The maximum working hours are twelve and a half hours per day in May, June and July; the minimum, seven hours in December and January.
Vlasov writes in his report: "The strange relationship berneen an officer, a convict woman who is his mistress, and a soldier who acts as her coachman, cannot but evoke astonishment and regret." They say that this evil is permitted only because it is impossible to obtain servants from among those who are free. But this is not true. First, the number of servants can be limited; officers find that it is quite possible to get along with the services of only one orderly. Second, the officials here on Sakhalin receive a good salary and can hire servants from among the settlers, from peas- ants who were formerly convicts, and from free women, the majority of whom are impoverished and would therefore not refuse to earn some money. This thought probably occurred to the administration, for there is an order which permitted one woman settler, since she was incapable of farming, "to obtain means of livelihood by entering the service of officials" (Order No. 44, i 889).
6 The mill and the locksmith shop are housed in one building and the machinery is driven by a single steam engine. The mill contains four sets of millstones with a production of 1,500 poods of grist a day. An old steam engine brought here by Prince Shakhovskoy is in operation in the lumberyard. It is fired by sawdust. The blacksmith shop works night and day; six forges operate in two shifts. A total of 105 workers are employed in the shop. Convicts in Alexandrovsk also work in the coal mines, but it is doubtful whether this undertaking will ever be success- ful. The coal from local mines is far worse than the coal in Due. It looks dirtier and is mixed with slate. It is not inexpensive since a permanent staff of miners works the mine under the supervision of a mining engineer. The local mines are scarcely necessary, since Due is not far away and excellent coal can be obtained from there at any time. However, the local mines were opened up with the beneficent aim of providing jobs for future settlers.
Yegor's Story
the doctor with whom I had been lodging left for the mainland soon after being retired from service, and I took lodgings with a young and very decent official. He had only one servant, an old Ukrainian woman, and once a day a convict named Yegor came by. He hauled the fire- wood, but was not considered to be the official's servant; he brought the wood "out of respect," removed the kitchen slops and did all the chores which were too difficult for the old woman. Sometimes when I was reading or writing something, I suddenly heard a rustling and panting noise, and felt something heavy moving under the table at my feet. It was Yegor, barefoot, picking up scraps of news- paper from the floor or dusting it.
He was about forty years old, a clumsy, doltish fellow, with a simple and at first glance stupid face, and with a mouth as wide as an eelpout's. His hair was red, his beard scanty, his eyes small. He did not answer questions imme- diately, but first squinted at you sideways and said, "What?" or "Who do you want?" He called me "your worship," and addressed me in the second person singular. He could not sit still for a minute without doing something, and he always found work to do. He would be talking to you, and all the time his eyes would be wandering around looking for something to clean or tidy up. He took catnaps two or three {imes a day, because he never had time for sleep. On holidays he usually stood on a street corner, wearing a jacket over a red shirt, his stomach pushed out, his feet wide apart. He called this "having a good time."
Here, in penal servitude, he built his own cabin, made buckets, tables and crude cupboards. He could make all sorts of furniture, but only "for his own pleasure," that is, for his own use. He was never in a fight and had never been thrashed except in his childhood when his father punished him because he let the rooster into the pea patch when he was supposed to be guarding it.
One day I had the following conversation with him:
"Why were you sent here?" I asked him.
"What's that, your worship?"
"Why were you sent to Sakhalin?"
"For murder!"
"Tell me what happened, from the very beginning."
Yegor leaned against the doorjamb, hands behind his back, and began:
"We worked for Baron Vladimir Mikhailich as wood- cutters, and we sawed the wood and delivered it to the station. Good. We finished and went home. We hadn't gone far from the village when they sent me to the office to witness the paper. I was on horseback. On the way to the office Andryukha turned me back: there was a flood, it was impossible to get through. He said, 'Tomorrow I shall be riding to the office about my lease rent and I will have the paper witnessed.' Good. Then we went on together, I on horseback and the others on foot. We reached Para- khino. The muzhiks went to the tavern for a smoke and Andryukha and I lagged behind on the sidewalk nearby. Then he says, Say, my friend, you wouldn't have a five- kopeck piece on you, would you? I'd like a drink.' And I said, 'Well, friend, you're the kind of man who will go in for a five-kopeck drink and come out drunk.' And he answered, 'No, I won't get drunk; I'll have my drink and go home.' We went to the crowd, agreed on a quart, col- lected enough money all round, went to the tavern and bought a quart of vodka. We all sat down at a table to drink."
"Make ic shorter," I said.
"Wait a minute, don't interrupt, your worship. So then we drank the vodka and he, that's Andryukha, bought a half-pint of pepper brandy. He poured a glass for himself and for me. We drank the glass together. Then all the people left the tavern and went home, and we left, follow- ing them. I got tired of riding horseback, got off, and sat down near the riverbank. I sang songs and told jokes. There were no disagreements between us. Then we got up and left."
"Tell me about the murder," I interrupted him.
"Wait a minute! At home I went to bed and slept until morning, when they awakened me: 'Get up. Which one of you beat up Andrey?' They had already brought Andrey home, and an official had arrived. The official began ques- tioning everyone; nobody admitted he had done it. But Andrey was still alive and said, 'You, Sergukha, you hit me with a club and I don't remember anything else.' S..rgukha didn't confess. \Y./e all thought it was Sergukha and began to watch him so he would not harm himself. Andrey died the next day.
"Sergey's family, his sister and father-in-law all advised him, 'Don't deny it, Sergey, it doesn't make any difference. Confess, and implicate everyone, anyone who was around. You'll be let off!' As soon as Andrey died, all of us went to the village elder and denounced Sergey. We interrogated him, but he wouldn't admit anything. Later they let him go home for the night. Some men stood guard so he wouldn't harm himself. He owned a gun. It wasn't safe.
"In the morning they discovered he was gone. \Y./e made up a search party; we searched the village and ran around the fields looking for him. Then someone came from the police station and said Sergey was already there. They be- gan to pull us in at the station. Sergey threw himself on his knees before the district police officer and the constable and began to inform against us, saying the Yefremov boys had been planning to beat up Andryukha for the past three years. 'We were walking along the road together, the three of us, Ivan, Yegor and I, and we all of us agreed to beat him up.' He said, 'I hit him with a stick and then Ivan and Yegor started beating him.' And then he said, 'I got frightened and ran back to join the rest.' After that they took us to jail in the town—Ivan, Kirsha, Sergey and me."
"And who are Ivan and Kirsha?"
"My own brothers. Pyotr Mikhailich, the merchant, came to the jail and went bail for us. We stayed with him on bail until the Feast of Our Lady of Perpetual Succor. We lived well, safe and sound. On the second day of the Feast we were tried in the town. Kirsha had witnesses—the men who had brought up the rear testified for him. As for me, my friend, I really got it. I told the court exactly what I just told you, but rhe court didn't believe me. Everyone says they're innocent and they cross their hearts, but it's all lies.' So they sentenced us and scm us to jail. \X'c lived under lock and key in jail, but I was in charge of the chamber pot, swept the cells and served thc dinners. For this service each prisoner gave me a portion of bread a month. It was about three pounds per person. When we heard we were about to leave, we sent a telegram home. It was just before the Feast of St. Nicholas. My wife and my brother Kirsha came to visit us and brought some clothing and other things. My wife howled, but nothing could be done. Whcn she left I gave her two portions of bread as a gift. Wc cried and sent our greetings to thc children and to all Christian people.
"On the way we were handcuffed together. \Y/e walked two by two. I walked with Ivan. In Novgorod they took our pictures, put us in irons and shaved our heads. Then on to Moscow. While we were in prison in Moscow we kept sending out petitions for a pardon. I don't remember how we gat to Odessa. The trip was uneventful. In Odessa we were taken to a doctor, stripped bare and examined. Later they got us togcthcr and herded us on a ship. Cossacks and soldiers accompanied us up the gangway and put us below. We sat down on rhe bunks and that was that. Each person had his own place. Five of us sat on thc tap bunk. At first we didn't understand, and then they said, 'We've started, we've started!' We sailed on and on and then it began to roll. The heat was so intense, the people stripped off their dothing. Some vomited, othcrs were quiet. Naturally, al- most everyone was lying down. It was a real storm. It threw us in all directions. We sailed and sailed and then we struck something. Something banged into us. The day was foggy. It turned dark. \X'hen we were hit, the ship stopped and rolled on the rocks. We thought a big fish was rolling under us, turning the boat over.1 The engines jerked forward, and kept jerking, but it wouldn't move. Then they tried mov- ing backward. Then they jerked backward and there was a hole in the ship's bottom. They tried to stuff the hole with sailcloth; they stuffed and stuffed, but it was useless. The water rose up to the floor of the hold where the people were sitting, and then it came through the ship's plates.
"They were saying, 'Don't let us perish, your worship!' At first he said, 'Don't try to break loose, don't beg, I won't let anyone perish.' The water reached the lower bunks. The Christian folk were pleading and struggling to get away. The master said, 'Well, boys, I'll let you out, but don't riot or I'll shoot all of you!' They let us out. We prayed to God that He would make the sea quiet and not permit us to perish. We prayed on our knees. After we prayed, they issued biscuits and sugar, and the sea grew quiet. The next day they began taking the people to shore on barges. We again prayed on the shore. Later they transferred us to another ship of the Voluntary Fleet, a Turkish ship,2 and brought us here to Alexandrovsk.
"They took us to the dock before nightfall, but kept us there a long time and we left the pier in pitch dark. The Christian folk staggered out one after another, and to make matters worse, some suffered from night blindness. We clung to one another. Some could see, others could not— and so we held on to one another. I had dozens of Christian folk following me. They brought us to the prison yard and began to assign us to the barracks. They placed us in any old order, and we ate the food we had with us before go- ing to sleep, and the next day they gave us our due. We rested two days, had a bath on the third, and on the fourth they marched us off to work.
"The very first thing, we dug ditches for a building where the hospital now stands. We rooted out stumps, dragged them away, dug holes, and so it went on for a week or two, or maybe a month. Then we carried logs from near Mikhailovka. We dragged them for maybe three versts and dumped them in piles at the bridge. Then they sent us into the kitchen gardens to dig for water. When hay-cutting time came, they began gathering the Christian folk, asking who knew how to mow hay; whoever admitted he could do it would be sent out to mow. They issued bread, groats and meat to the whole group, and sent us with a guard to mow hay at Armudan. I was Jiving all right, God gave me health and I mowed well. The guards thrashed some of the fellows, but I didn't get one bad word. The fellows kept arguing with me, asking why I was walking so briskly; so, what's the difference!
"During my free time or when it rained I wove bast sandals for myself. Folks would lie down and sleep, while I sat over my weaving. I sold the sandals for two rations of beef a pair, worth four kopecks. When the mowing was over, we went home. On reaching home we were put in jail again. Later I was sent to work for the settler Sashka in Mikhailovka. There I did all kinds of farm work: I sowed, reaped, threshed, dug potatoes, and in return Sashka hauled the logs for making traps. We ate everything we trapped. I worked two months and four days. Sashka prom- ised to pay me, but gave me nothing. He did give me 40 pounds of potatoes. Sashka brought me back to the prison. They gave me an ax and a rope for hauling firewood. I took care of seven stoves. I lived in a yurt and did the jailer's work, carrying the water and sweeping. I guarded the maidan for the Tatar called Magzy.-1
"When I returned from work he turned his maidan over to me. I was the salesman and he paid me 1 5 kopecks a day. In the spring, when the days were longer, I started to weave bast sandals. I charged 10 kopecks. In the sum- mer I fished out of the river. I amassed a large pile
and sold it to the Jewish bathhouse keeper. I also cut up logs and sold them at 15 kopecks each. And so I've lived tolerably well, with Gods help. But, your worship, I have no time to talk with you. I must fetch some water." "Will you become a settler soon?" "In five years." "Do you miss your home?"
"No! I'm only sorry for the children. They are stupid children."
"Tell me, Yegor, what were you thinking about when they were taking you to the ship in Odessa?" "I was praying to God." "For what?"
"That He should put sense in the children's heads." "Why didn't you bring your wife and children to Sa- khalin?"
"Because they're well off at home."
The reference is to the shipwreck of the Kostroma on the western coast of Sakhalin in 1886.
The steamer Vladivostok of the Voluntary Fleet.
In Chinese, Manza.
VII The Lighthouse - Korsakovskoye - The Collection of Dr. P. I. Suprunenko - The Meteorological Station - The Climate of the Alexandrovsk Region - Novo-Mikhaylovka - Potemkin - Ex-executioner Tersky - Krasny Yar - Butakovo
my strolls around Alexandrovsk and its environs with the postmaster, the author of "Sakhalino," left a pleasant impression.
Our favorite stroll was up to the lighthouse which stands high above the valley on Cape Zhonkiyer. \'\'hen you gaze up at the lighthouse during the day, you see a tiny white house with a mast and lantern. In the dark of night it shines brilliantly, and it seems then that penal servitude peers at the world with its beautiful eye. The road to the lighthouse is steep, running in a spiral around the mountain amid ancient larches and firs. The higher you climb, the freer you breath. The sea spreads out before your eyes, and slowly thoughts come into your mind which have nothing in common with the prison, nor with penal servi- tude, nor with the exile colony, and only here do you recog- nize how boring and difficult is life below.
The convicts and settlers bear their punishment from day to day while free people talk from morning to night about who was flogged, who escaped, who was caught and who will be flogged. And it is strange that in a week one grows accustomed to these conversations and preoccupa- tions, and on waking in the morning the first thing you do is to read avidly the general orders—the local daily news- paper—and then all day long you listen to and speak about who escaped, who was shot, etc. But on the mountain, in sight of the sea and the beautiful ravines, all this becomes utterly trivial and vulgar, as indeed it is.
They say that at one time there were benches on the road to the lighthouse, but they had to remove them be- cause convicts and settlers wandering along the path took to writing on them or carving lampoons and obscenities. There are many fanciers of smut living in freedom, but the cynicism of people sentenced to penal servirude is incom- parable. There are disgusting scribbles on benches and backyard walls, and there are also love letters. It is remark- able that a man should write and carve all kinds of nasty things on benches while feeling that he is abandoned by the world, an outcast, and extremely unfortunate. An old man declares that he is tired of the world and it is time for him to die, he has severe rheumatism and cannot see very well, but with what gusto he employs endless gutter talk with long strings of choice invectives and highfalutin nonsense, including incantations against fevers. If he is literate and living in an isolated place, he has difficulty in stifling the urge or resisting the temptation to scratch dirty words with his fingernails.
A vicious dog is struggling against his chain near the little house. A cannon and a bell are nearby. They say that a foghorn will soon be installed, and the inhabitants of Alexandrovsk will be filled with melancholy. If you stand under the lantern of the lighthouse and look down to the sea and on "The Three Brothers," where the waves break in shimmering foam, your head begins to spin and you are terror-stricken. The Tatar Strait can barely be seen from the lighthouse and even the entrance to De Kastri Bay is scarcely visible. The lighthouse keeper says that sometimes he can see ships entering and leaving De Kastri. The wide, sun-drenched, shimmering sea roars dully below; and the far shore tempts you away, and you become overwhelmed with melancholy and anxiety, feeling that you will never be able to get away from Sakhalin. Gazing at the opposite shore, I feel that if I were a convict, I would escape imme- diately, whatever the consequences.
Behind Alexandrovsk, along the Duyka River, lies the Korsakovskoye settlement, founded in 1881 and named after the former Governor-General of Eastern Siberia, M. S. Korsakov. It is interesting to learn that in Sakhalin they name settlements after the governors of Siberia, prison guards and assistant surgeons, but completely forget such explorers as Nevelskoy, the sea captain Korsakov, Bosh- nyak, Polyakov and many others whose memory has earned greater respect and regard than, for example, a jailer like Derbin, who was murdered for his cruelty.*
Korsakovskoye has 272 inhabitants, i 53 male and i i 9 female. A total of 58 households. In the composition of its householders, 26 of whom are called peasants and only 9 convicts, and in the number of females, meadowland, live- stock, etc., Korsakovskoye differs little from the prosperous Alexandrovsk suburb. Eight householders own 2 homes each, and there is i bathhouse for every 9 houses. Horses are kept by 45 householders, who have bctween 4 and 9 cows. Many have 2 horses and 3 or 4 cows. In Eastern Sakhalin ir has the largest number of old inhabitams, 43 having lived there since the founding of rhe settlement. During my census I found 8 who came to Sakhalin in 1870, and i back in 1866. A large percentage of old inhabit- ants is a good sign.
Externally Korsakovskoye gives the illusion of a charm- ing Russian village, but a completely backward one, which has not yet been touched by civilization.
I came here for the first time after dinner on Sunday. The weather was calm and warm, and the people seemed to be taking a holiday. The peasants were either sleeping in the shade or drinking tea. At the gates and under the windows the women searched each other's heads for lice. Flowers grew profusely in the small front yards and in the gardens; geraniums bloomed in the windows. There were many children playing soldiers or horses on the street, or riding on well-fed dogs who would rather have been sleep- ing. When a herdsman, an old vagrant, drove in a herd of more than I 50 head of cattle and the air became filled with summer sounds, the lowing of cattle, the cracking of whips, the shouts of women and children who were driv- ing the calves, the solid smack of bare feet and hoofs along the dusty dung-filled road, and when the smell of milk filled the air, the illusion was complete. Even the Duyka is lovely here. In places it flows along the backyards near the gardens; its banks are green, overgrown with willows and sedge. When I saw it, evening shadows were falling upon the completely smooth surface. The river was calm and seemed to be dozing.
Here, as in the wealthy Alexandrovsk Slobodka, we find a high percentage of old inhabitants, women and literate people. A large number of the women are free and it has almost the same "past history," with its clandestine sale of alcohol, thieving by rich peasants, etc. They explain that in former times favoritism played an important role in setting down homesteads here. In those days the administration readily gave cattle, seeds and even alcohol on credit. This was all the easier because the inhabitants of Korsakovskoye were always clever politicians and carefully arranged that the smallest officials should be greeted as "your worship." However, in contrast to the Alexandrovsk Slobodka, the main reason for its prosperity is neither the sale of alcohol, nor favoritism, nor its proximity to the Sakhalin Paris, but the undoubted success it has achieved in farming. While a fourth of the homesteaders in Slobodka have no arable land and another fourth have very little, here in Korsakov- skoye all the homesteaders till the soil and sow grain; al- though half of the homesteaders in Slo^^ka have no cattle, they are still well fed; and here almost all of the home- steaders consider it necessary to have cattle.
For many reasons Sakhalin agriculture must be viewed with skepticism, but we must also admit that in Korsakov- skoye agriculture is taken seriously and gives comparatively good results. It would be unfair to say that Korsakovskoye people plant two thousand poods of grain annually only because they are obstinate or because they desire to please the administration. I have no accurate figures on the yield and one cannot believe the statements of the people them- selves, but on the basis of certain signs—as, for example, the large number of cattle, the external appearance of their life and the fact that the local peasants are not anxious to leave for the mainland although they achieved this right a long time ago—you are led to the conclusion that the grain yields not only feed the population but even bring some profits which incline the settler toward a settled life.
It is not difficult to explain why these people are suc- cessful farmers, when the inhabitants of neighboring settle- ments suffer dire privation due to an entire series of crop failures and have despaired of ever eating their own bread. Korsakovskoye lies in a valley, where the Duyka River is at its widest. From the very beginning, when they first settled here, the people of Korsakovskoye had a vast tract of land at their disposal. They were not only able to settle on the land, but even to choose their own plots. At the present time 20 homesteaders have 3 to 6 desyatins of land under tillage; rarely does anyone have less than 2 desyatins. If the reader wishes to compare the local plots with our own peasant plots, he should keep in mind that the local arable land never lies fallow but is yearly sown to the last inch, and therefore their 2 dcsyatins arc equal to our 3 dcs- yatins. The secret of the success of the people of Korsakov- skoye lies in their utilizing the exceptionally large plots of land to the utmost.
With the twofold or threefold yield at harvest time on Sakhalin, there is only enough grain if there is enough land. In Korsakovskoyc they have a great deal of land, a large reserve of seed and cheap, free labor. During the years when there is no good harvest, the people of Korsa- kovskoye rely on their produce of fruit and potatoes, which covers a considerable area, some 33 desyatins.
Because the penal colony is so recent and has a small transient population, there has not been time to collect any accurate statistics. The meager figures available to date can only lead to conclusions based on guesswork and conjecture. If one is pardoned for one's haste in drawing up conclu- sions and applying the facts concerning Korsakovskoye to the entire colony, one may say that as a result of the insig- nificant yields on Sakhalin, each homesteader must have more than two desyatins of arable land in addition to hay- fields and land for orchards and potatoes so that his work will be profitable and he will be able to feed himself. It is impossible to set a more definite norm at this time, but in all probability it should be about four desyatins.
Incidentally, according to the "Report on the Status of Agriculture in 1889," on Sakhalin the average arable land for each householder is only half a desyatin.
In Korsakovskoye there stands a house which in its dimensions, pretty roofwork and charming garden resem- bles a medium-size landowner's country home. The owner, the director of the medical unit, Dr. P. I. Suprunenko, had departed in the spring to participate in a prison exhibition and remained in Russia. In the abandoned rooms I found only the remnants of a splendid zoological collection amassed by the doctor. I do not know the present where- abouts of this collection, or who is employing it for re- search on the Sakhalin fauna, but from the few remaining specimens, which are most beautifully mounted, and from what I heard, it is possible to guess the size of the collec- tion and to realize how much knowledge, labor and love went into this useful activity. Dr. Suprunenko began his collection in i881, and in ten years was able to gather specimens of almost all the vertebrates on Sakhalin as well as a great deal of anthropological and ethnographical ma- terial. If his collection had remained on the island, it could have served as the basis for an excellent museum.
Next to his house is a meteorological station. Until recently it was under the supervision of Dr. Suprunenko. Now an agricultural inspector is in charge. Observations made in my presence by a clerk, the convict Golovatsky, a sensible and amiable fellow, provided me with meteorologi- cal tables.
Conclusions can already be based on observations made during the past nine years and I will attempt to give some idea of the climate of the Alexandrovsk region. The mayor of Vladivostok once told me that "there is absolutely no climate" in Vladivostok and on the entire eastern seaboard generally. About Sakhalin, they like to say there is no climate; they say there is "bad weather," or the island has the worst weather in all Russia. I do not know how accu- rate the last statement is. It was a very lovely summer when
So
I was there, but meteorological tables and the brief reports of other writers present a general picture of exceptionally bad weather.
The Alexandrovsk region has a maritime climate which is distinctive in its capriciousness, that is, in its significant vacillation in the yearly mean temperature,2 the number of days with precipitation, etc. Its chief peculiarities are its low yearly mean temperature and the large number of days with precipitation and fog. As a comparison I will take the mean monthly temperature of the Alexandrovsk region as against that of the Cherepovetsky district in Novgorodskaya guberniya, whose "climate is grim, humid, unstable and unhealthy."3
Alexandrovjk Cherepovetsky Region District
January
- 18.9
- I I .0
February
- i 5.1
- 8.2
March
- IO.I
- 1.8
April
. O.I
. 2.8
May
. 59
• I 2.7
June
• I I.O
• I 7 -5
July
• 16.3
• I 8.5
August
, i 7.0
• I 35
September
• i 1.4
. 6.8
October
. 3-7
. 1.8
November
- 55
- 57
December
-I 3.8
- I 2.8
The average mean temperature in the Alexandrovsk region is «o.i°, almost o"; in the Chcrepovctsky district it is »2.7 The winter in the Alexandrovsk region is more severe than in Arkhangelsk, the spring and summer are like Finland, and autumn is like St. Petersburg. The mean yearly temperature is the same as in the Solovetsky Islands, where it also equals o°. There is eternal frost in the Duyka valley. Polyakov found it to be three-quarters of an arshin deep [twenty-one inches] on June 20. Even on July 14 he found snow under piles of rubbish and in hollows near the moun- tains, and the snow only melted at the end of July. On July 24, 1889, snow fell in the mountains, which are low here, and everyone donned a sheepskin coat. In nine years of observation the earliest the ice broke on the Duyka was April 23, and the latest May 6. During the entire nine years there was no thaw. In only one year there are 189 days when it freezes; on i 5 i days a cold wind blows. All this is of practical importance. In the Cherepovetsky dis- trict, where the summer is warmer and longer, according to Chernov, buckwheat, cucumbers and wheat cannot ripen properly, while in the Alexandrovsk region the local agri- cultural inspector insists that there has never been a year when the temperature was sufficiently high for oats and wheat to ripen.
The local excessive humidity commands the close atten- tion of agronomists and hygienists. Every year there is an average of 189 days with precipitation: 107 days with snow, and 82 days with rain (in the Cherepovetsky district there are 81 days with rain and 82 with snow). For weeks at a time the sky is covered with leaden clouds and the desolate weather which drags on from day to day seems endless to the inhabitants. Such weather causes oppressive thoughts and drunkenness due to despondency. Many people suffering from the cold seem to become brutal, and many a good soul and many with weak spirits forever lose all hope of a better life after failing to see the sun for weeks and months on end.
Polyakov writes that in June, 1881, there were no bright days during the entire month. From the agricultural inspector's report covering a four-year period, it is clear that there are no more than an average of eight bright days between May 18 and September 1. Fogs are a frequent phenomenon here, especially at sea, where they are a real misery for sailors. Salt-laden sea fogs, they tell me, are destructive to all vegetation along the coast, both trees and ground growth. Later I shall describe the settlements which have ceased sowing grain as a result of the fog, and instead they have planted all their arable land with potatoes. One bright sunny day I saw a milky-white fog bank rolling in from the sea. It was like a white curtain dropping from heaven to earth.
The meteorological station is furnished with instru- ments which have been checked and acquired from the Central Physical Observatory in Petersburg. It has no li- brary. As well as Galovatsky and his wife, whom I have already mentioned, I recorded six male workers and one female. I do not know what they do.
Korsakovskoye has a school and a chapel. It used to have a medical center where fourteen syphilitics and three lunatics were housed together. One of the latter became infected with syphilis. They also tell me that the syphilitics produced hawsers for ships and lim for the surgical depart- ment. However, I was not able to visit this medieval estab- lishment because it had been closed in September by a young military doctor. If they made bonfires of lunatics by order of the prison doctors, this would not astonish me: hospital conditions here arc at least two hundred years behind civilized times.
In one hut I found a forty-year-old man dressed in a pea jacket, his trousers unbuttoned, his chin clean shaven, wearing a dirty, unstarched shirt and something that looked like a necktie. To all appearances he was one of the privi- leged class. He sat on a low stool and was eating bacon and potatoes from a clay cup. He gave a surname with a ky ending and for some reason I felt I saw before me a former officer, who also had a name ending in ky, and who had been scm to penal servitude for some infraction of disci- pline.
"Are you a former officer?" I asked.
"Not at all, your worship, I am a priest," he said.
I do not know why he was sent to Sakhalin. I did not even ask him. When a man stands before you who until recently was called Father loan and Batiushka [Little Father], and whose hands had been kissed by the people, when such a man stands before you in a pitifully worn jacket, you do not think of his crime.
In another hut I observed the following scene. A young, dark-complexioned convict, with an unusually sorrowful face, dressed in an immaculate blouse, sits at a table clutch- ing his head in his hands. A convict woman clears the samovar and the cups from the table. When I ask him if he is married, the young man answers that his wife and daughter have voluntarily followed him. However, it is two months since she left with the child for Nikolayevsk and has not returned, although he sent her a number of telegrams. "And she won't come back," says the convict woman maliciously. "What can she do here? Perhaps she hasn't seen your Sakhalin, eh? It's not easy!" He remains silent, and again she says, "She won't come back. She is a young woman, free, why should she? She took off like a bird and flew away, and not a sign of her. She's not like you and me. If I hadn't murdered my husband and if you hadn't been a firebrand, we too would still be free. And now you sit and wait hopelessly for your wife, and your heart is breaking." He is suffering. Obviously his soul is as heavy as lead, but shc keeps on nagging and nagging him. I leave the hut and can still hear her voice.
I was accompanied on my visits to the huts in Korsa- kovskoye by a very strange convict, Kislyakov. The court reporters have probably not forgotten him. This is the same Kislyakov, a military clerk, who battered his wife to death with a hammer on Nikolayevskaya Street in Peters- burg and reported his crime to the authorities. He said his wife had been a beauty and he had loved her madly, but once when he quarreled with her, he vowed before the icon that he would kill her. Since that time up to the actual murder an evil spirit seemed to whisper constantly, "Kill, kill!" He was detained in the St. Nikolay Hospital until his trial, which is probably why he considers himself a psychopath and explains why he kept asking me to use my influence with the authorities to have him ruled insane and committed to a monastery.
His only penal work in the prison consists of making wooden pegs for strengthening the brackets for holding loaves of bread. The work is not difficult, but he hires someone else to do it and "gives lessons," which means he does nothing. He is dressed in a canvas suit and presents a pleasant appearance. He is a dim-witted fellow, but loquacious and a philosopher. "Where there are fleas, there are children," he says in a sweet, velvety baritone whenever he sees children. When they asked me in his presence why I am taking a census, he answered, "So they can send us all to the moon. Do you know where the moon is?" During our walk back to Alexandrovsk each evening he often repeated to nobody in particular, "Revenge is the most noble sensation."
Farther along the Duyka lies the Novo-Mikhaylovka settlement, founded in 1872, and so named because Mitsui's first name was Mikhail. Many authors call it Verkhnoye Urochyshche [Upper Boundary], while the settlers call it Pashnya [Plowland]. It contains 520 settlers, 287 males and 233 females. There are 133 households, of which two have cohouseholders. Arable land is possessed by all the householders according to the records; there are eighty-four head of livestock. Nevertheless, with a few exceptions, the huts are depressingly impoverished and the inhabitants unanimously declare "there is no way" to survive on Sa- khalin. They told me that in former years when the poverty in Novo-Mikhaylovka was acute, a path was trod- den to Due by the convicts and free women who wanted to sell themselves to the prisoners in Due and Voyevodsk for copper pennies. I can testify that the path is still not overgrown.
The settlers here, like those of Korsakovskoye, have larger plots of arable land, from three to six and even eight desyatins, and they are not impoverished. However, there are only a few of them and with each passing year they grow fewer. At the present time more than half of the settlers have only one-eighth to one and a half desyatins, which means that agriculture to them is a complete loss. The experienced old settlers only sow barley and plant potatoes on their land.
The land here is discouraging and not conducive to settling. No householders remain of those who were settlers in the first years of the settlement's existence. There are nine who have been here since 1876; seven since 1877; two
since 1878; four since 1879. The remainder are newcomers.
Novo-Mikhaylovka contains a telegraph station, a school, a prison for the destitute and the skeleton of an unfinished wooden church. It has a bakery where bread is baked for the convicts building roads in the Novo- Mikhaylovka region. The bread is made without any official supervision and is abominable.
Everyone passing through Novo-Mikhaylovka is bound to meet the local peasant, formerly-an-exile, Potemkin. If any important person comes to Sakhalin, Potemkin presents the traditional bread and salt. When they wish to prove that the agricultural colony is a success, they use Potemkin as an example. The homestead list shows that he owns 20 horses and 9 head of cattle, but people say he has twice as many horses. He owns a store here, and another in Due which is run by his son. He gives the impression of being a businesslike, intelligent and prosperous sectarian. His chambers are clean, the walls are wallpapered, and on the wall hangs a picture: "Marienbad, Sea Bathing near Libov."
He and his wife are sober, judicious and politically minded. When I was taking tea with them, they told me that it is possible to live on Sakhalin and that the land is fertile. The problem is that the people today are lazy, spoiled and do not work hard enough. I asked him whether it was true that he had served watermelon and muskmelon from his own gardens to an important guest. Without bat- ting an eye he said, "That's true. At times melons ripen here."4
There is another Sakhalin celebrity in Novo-Mikhay- lovka—the settler Tersky, a former executioner. He coughs, hugs his chest with pale, bony hands and complains that he is ruptured. He began coughing on the day when, by order of the administration, he was flogged by the present execu- tioner, Komelev. Komelev did such a good job that he had "almost knocked the soul out of him." But one day it was Tersky's turn. He gave full rein to his whip and beat his colleague so mercilessly and vengefully that to this day people say his body is still rotting. They say that if you place rwo venomous executioners together in one room they will devour each other.
Until 1888, Novo-Mikhaylovka was the last settlement along the Duyka, but today we also find Krasny Yar and Butakovo. A road is being built to these settlements from Novo-Mikhaylovka. I traveled half the way to Krasny Yar, three miles, over a smooth new road, straight as a ruler; the second half I rode over a picturesque path cut through the taiga, where the tree stumps had already been re- moved and the ride was as easy and pleasant as though we were traveling along a good country road. Large construc- tion timbers had already been cut down, but the taiga was still imposing and beautiful. Birches, aspens, poplars, wil- lows, ashes, elders, bird cherries, spiraeas and hawthorns abound. Among them were grasses which grew man-high and higher; gigantic ferns and burdocks, whose leaves were more than an arshin in diameter, merged with the bushes and trees into a dense and impenetrable thicket, a sanctuary for bears, sables and deer. On both sides where the valley ends and the foothills begin, there arc coniferous forests of silver firs, pines and larches forming a green wall, while above thcm again lies a deciduous forest, and the tops of the mountains arc bald or covcrcd with bushes. I never saw such enormous burdocks in Russia as those I found here, and it is primarily due to thcsc leaves that the local thickets, the forest glades and the meadows take on a spe- cial aspect. I have already written that at night, especially in the moonlight, they look fantastic. This display is sup- plemented by another magnificent plant of the umbellifer- ous family which does not seem to have a name in Russian. It has a straight stem some ten feet tall and about three inches thick; it is purple-red in its upper part and carries an umbrella about a foot in diameter. Around this main umbrella are grouped four to six smaller umbrellas which make the plant look like a candelabrum. In Latin this plant is called Angelophyllum ursinuvi [bear root].!i
Krasny Yar has only been in existence over a year. It has one wide street, still uncleared. The inhabitants go from hut to hut over hillocks, over heaps of clay and wood chips, and jump over logs, stumps and ditches filled with stagnant brown water. The huts are not yet completed. One homesteader makes bricks, another plasters the stove, a third drags a log across the street. It contains a total of 51 householders. Three of them, including a Chinese Pen- Ogi-Tsoy, abandoned their unfinished huts, took off, and nobody knows where they went. The seven local Cau- casians have stopped working, and they huddle together in one hut and are already shivering with cold, although it is only August 2.
The figures show that the settlers are young and are barely beginning their life. There are 90 inhabitants, twice as many males as females. Three families are legally mar- ried, 20 are living as cohabitants. Nine children are younger than five years of age. Three householders have horses, nine have cows. At present all the householders are receiving prison rations. Nobody knows how they will sur- vive in the future. There is little hope for agriculture. Only 24Y2 desyatins have been located and cleared for tillage and potatoes, which means that each household gets less than of a desyatin. There are no hayfields. Since the valley is narrow and enclosed on both sides by mountains which are completely barren, and since the administration acts indiscriminately when it must get rid of people, and will probably settle tens of new householders here, the till- able soil will probably remain at and of a desyatin
or even less. I do not know who selected the Krasny Yar site, but it is evident that it was entrusted to incompetent people who never saw a village, and had no concept of an agricultural colony. This place does not even have decent water. When I asked where they obtain drinking water, they pointed to the ditch.
All the huts are identical, with two windows, con- structed of poor-quality raw timber, the sole aim being to survive the prison term and return to the mainland. The administration has no building code, probably because nobody among the officials knows how to build a hut and make a stove. An architect is listed on the Sakhalin staff,
88
but he was absent during my visit and in any case he is concerned only with prison structures.
The most cheerful and attractive building is the gov- ernment dwelling which houses the prison warden Ubi- yennykh [the Overwhelmed], a small, puny soldier with an expression which completely matches his surname. This might be caused by his mistress, a tall, plump settler who lives with him in one room and has presented him with numerous offspring. He is now receiving the top super- visory salary. His entire work consists of reporting to visitors that everything is wonderful in this world. But he, too, dislikes Krasny Yar and wants to leave Sakhalin. He asked me whether they would permit his mistress to leave with him when he retires and departs for the mainland. This question is most disquieting to him.
I did not visit Butakovo.n From data in the homestead list, a portion of which I was able to check, supplementing the information from the priest's Confessional Book, it contains 39 people, only 4 of whom are adult females. It has 22 homesteaders. Only 4 houses have been completed, while the remainder are still in the framework stage. Only 4 desyatins of land are under tillage and potatoes. None of the householders have livestock or poultry.
After visiting the Duyka valley I went on to visit the Arkay River. Along this river there are three settlements. The Arkay valley was chosen for settlement not because it was better surveyed than the others nor because it satisfied the colony's needs, but quite arbitrarily, because it was closer to Alexandrovsk than the other valleys.
1 The greatest benefactors in the penal colony so far were two men: M. S. Mitsul and M. N. Galkin-Vrasky, both notable for their constructiveness and attitude of responsibility. A tiny, im- poverished temporary settlement of ten households has been named in honor of Mitsul. A settlement which has long since borne the name of Siyantsy appears on some maps as Galkino-Vraskoye. The name of M. S. Korsakov was given to a settlement and a large post, not because of any personal merits or sacrifices he endured, but because he was the Governor-General and could evoke fear.
89
The yearly mean temperature varies between + i .2 ° and _ i .2 The number of days with precipitation varies between 102 and 209. There were only thirty-five calm, windless days in i 881; in 1884, there were three times as many—i i 2.
P. Gryaznov, "Results of a Comparative Srudy of the Hygienic Conditions of Peasant Life and the Medico-Topography of the Cherepovetsky District" (1880). I have transposed the Reaumur readings used by Gryaznov into Centigrade.
Potemkin arrived on Sakhalin a wealthy man. Dr. Augustino- vich, who saw him three years after his arrival in Sakhalin, writes that "of all the prisoners' homes Potemkin's is the best." If the convict Potemkin was able to build a beautiful home in three years, own horses and marry his daughter off to a Sakhalin official, I believe that agriculture had nothing to do with it.
Most writers disapprove of the local scenery. This is because they arrived on Sakhalin still under the influence of the Ceylonese, Japanese or Amur landscapes and because they began their trips from Alexandrovsk and Due, where narure is indeed pathetic. The local weather is also at fault. No matter how beautiful and original the Sakhalin scenery might be, if it is hidden for weeks at a time by fog or rain, it is difficult to evaluate its worth.
0 This settlement is named in honor of A. M. Butakov, the superintendent of the Tymovsky district.
VIII The Arkay Stream - Arkovsky Cordon - First, Second and Third Arkovo - The Arkovo Valley - The IVestern Bank Settlements, Mgachi, Tangi, Khoe, Trambaus, Viakhty and Vangi - The Tunnel - The Cable House - Due - Barracks for Families - The Due Prison - Coal Mines - Voyevodsk Prison - Prisoners in Balls and Chains
THE ARKAY STREAM falls into the Tatar Strait some eight to ten versts north of the Duyka. Not long ago it was a real river where humpback salmon were caught. Then as a result of forest fires and deforestation, it became shallow and now it dries up completely in the summer. However, during severe rainstorms it o\erflows and rages wildly with tremendous noise. Many times the gardens along its banks have been washed away, and all the crops and the hay have been carried down to the sea. It is impos- sible to prevent this devastation because the valley is narrow and the only escape from the river is up the mountains.1
At the very mouth of the Arkay as it turns into the valley there stands the Gilyak village of Arkay-vo, the old name for Arkovsky Cordon, and the three settlements First, Second and Third Arkovo. Two roads lead to the Arkovo valley from Alexandrovsk—the first, a mountain road which I could not use because the bridges had burned during some forest fires, and the second, a road along the seashore which could be used only at low tide. On my first trip I left for Arkovo on July 31 at 8:oo A.M.
The ebb tide had just begun. It smelled of rain. The gloomy sky, the sea empty of sails, and the craggy clay shore were grim; the waves roared thunderously and mournfully. Stunted, sickly trees gazed downward from the high banks. Here in the open they were all waging a fierce batde against frosts and freezing winds. During the long terrible fall and winter nights they sway restlessly from side to side, cringe toward the earth, creak mournfully, and nobody hears their laments.
Arkovsky Cordon is close to a Gilyak village. Pre- viously it was a guard post for the soldiers who hunted escaped prisoners. It now houses a warden who seems to be the supervisor of the setdements. First Arkovo is two versts from the Cordon. It has but one street and can only grow lengthwise, not crosswise, owing to the local condi- tions. When the three Arkovos at last join together, Sakha- lin will have a very large village possessing only one tre- mendously long street.
First Arkovo was founded in 1883. It has 136 inhabit- ants, 83 males and 53 females. There are 28 householders, all of whom are married except for the female convict Pavlovska, a Catholic, whose cohabitant, the acrual house- holder, had recendy died. She earnesdy entreated me, "Find me a master for the house." Three of the homesteaders own two homes each.
Second Arkovo was founded in 1884. It has 92 inhabit- ants, 46 males and 46 females. It contains 24 households. Everyone is married. Two of them own two houses each. Third Arkovo was founded at the same time as Second Arkovo, which shows how anxious the authorities were to setde the Arkovo valley. It has 41 inhabitants, 19 males and 22 females. There are ten households, one of which has a co-owner. Nine are married.
The arable land held by the homesteaders in the three Arkovos varies between one-half and two desyatins. One owner has three desyatins. They sow small quantities of wheat, barley and rye, and plant potatoes. The majority have cattle and poultry. If one were to judge by the figures given on the homestead list prepared by the settlement supervisor, you would think that all three Arkovos were showing sig- nificant improvements in agriculture in a short time. No wonder one anonymous author describes the local farming in this way: "The work is abundantly rewarding, because the local soil is extremely favorable for farming, as may be clearly demonstrated by the luxurious growths of timber and the vegetation."
In fact this is not true. All three Arkovos belong to the poorest settlements in Northern Sakhalin. There is arable land and cattle, but there has never been a harvest. In addition to the unfavorable conditions prevalent through- out Sakhalin, the local homesteaders encounter another strong enemy in the peculiarities of the Arkovo valley, and especially in the soil so highly praised by our anonymous author. The topsoil is humus, the subsoil pebbly. On hot days the earth heats up and the plant roots dry up; in the rainy season moisture cannot seep down because of the clay, and the roots rot. On soil like this the only plants that can be successfully cultivated are those with strong, deep roots such as burdock. Edible roots like turnips and pota- toes can also be cultivated, for the soil can be worked better and deeper for them than for cereals. I have already men- tioned the disasters caused by the stream. There are no hayfields. Hay is either mown on the patches of taiga, or it is cut with scythes wherever they find it. The more prosperous people buy it in the Tymovsky district. I have been told of families which did not have one piece of bread during the entire winter; they existed on turnips.
Just before my arrival the settler Skorin died of starva- tion in Second Arkovo. According to his neighbors, he had eaten only a pound of bread during the last three days of his life; this had been going on for a long time. "The same fate awaits all of us," said one of the neighbors, terrified by the man's death. And as I record these things I remem- ber three women weeping.
In one unfurnished hut with a dark dismal stove taking up half the room, children were wailing and chickens cackling around the housewife. She went on the street, and the children and the chickens followed her. Looking at them, she began laughing and crying and apologizing to me for the weeping and the noise of the chickens. She said it was due to hunger, and she was waiting for her husband to return from the city where he had gone to sell blueberries and buy bread. She cut off some cabbage leaves for the chickens. They greedily picked at the leaves, and feeling deceived, they began to cackle even louder.
In one hut there lives a peasant as hairy as a spider, with hanging eyebrows; he is a convict, and very filthy. With him there is another exactly like him, just as hairy and filthy. Both have large families. In the hut, as the saying goes, it is appallingly barren and poverty-stricken; they do not even own a nail. There was all this weeping and clucking, and then there are deaths like Skorin's, and you find yourself thinking about all the various indirect expressions of hunger and want.
In Third Arkovo the hut of the settler Petrov stands closed because he has been confined in the Voyevodsk prison, where he is held for "negligence in homesteading and the willful slaughter of a calf for meat." Obviously the calf was slaughtered because he was poor; and he had sold the meat in Alexandrovsk. The seeds taken on credit from the prison storehouse are recorded as sown in the home- stead list, but in fact half of them are eaten: the settlers make no effort to conceal this in their talk. Their cattle, too, has been taken on credit from the prison stockyard, and they are fed in the same way. The farther you go into the forest, the more trees you will find! All the Arkovo people are in debt, and their indebtedness grows with each annual sowing, with every new head of cattle. In some cases it has reached an impossible figure—two and even three hundred rubles per person.
Between Second and Third Arkovo is the Arkovsky Stanok, where horses are changed on the road to the Tymovsky district. It is a postal station and an inn. Meas- ured by our Russian arshins, two or three helpers would be sufficient to take care of the stanok supervisor. How- ever, on Sakhalin people do everything on a grand scale. In addition to the supervisor, the stanok houses a clerk, an errand boy, a stableman, two bakers, three woodsmen and four additional workers who answered my question about what they do by saying, "I carry hay."
If a traveling artist should happen to visit Sakhalin, I would highly recommend a visit to the Arkovsky. valley. In addition to its beautiful location, it is so extraordinarily colorful that it is difficult not to compare it with a multi- colored carpet or a kaleidoscope. Here are dense, opulent stretches of greenery with gigantic burdocks glistening with raindrops from the recent rains; nearby in a small area no more than three sazhens wide there is a patch of green rye, then a patch of barley, then again burdocks, followed by some oats, and a row of potatoes and two small sun- flowers with drooping heads; and then a patch of thick green hemp; and here and there are umbrella plants like candelabra, towering proudly over all of them; and all this variety is interspersed with tOuches of rose, bright-red and crimson poppy flowers.
Along the road you see women wearing tremendous burdock leaves like three-cornered neckerchiefs to protect them from the rain. They look like green beetles. Moun- tains risc above the valley, and although they are not the Caucasus Mountains, still they arc mountains.
Six tiny settlements nestle along the western shore above the mouth of the Arkaya. I did not visit any of them, but obtained the pertinent data from the list of homesteads and the Confessional Book. They were situated on capes jutting into the sea or at the mouths of the streams from which they received their names. They began as picket posts, sometimes with four or five men. After a while, it was discovered that these outposts alone were inadequate, and so they decided (in 1882) to settle the largest capes between Due and Pogobi with reliable settlers, preferably with families. Their aim in founding these settlements and the cordons was: "To permit mail carriers, passengers and men driving dog sleighs from Nikolaycvsk to obtain shel- ter and protection during their journey and to establish police surveillance along the shore line, which is the only ( ?):! possible route for escaped prisoners and for import- ing contraband alcohol." There is no road yet to these shore settlements. They can only be reached along the coast on foot at ebb tide and by dog sleigh in winter. They can also be reached by rowboats and steam cutters, but only when good weather permits. From south to north, these settlements are as follows:
mgachi has 38 inhabitants, 20 males and 18 females; 14 homesteaders. Thirteen families are legally married, only two illegally. Each has about 12 desyatins of arable land, but for the last 3 years no grain has been sown and all the land has been planted with potatoes. There are I i homesteaders who are the original settlers, 5 of them already having gained the status of peasants. Profits are good, which ex- plains their reluctance to leave for the mainland. Seven are engaged in renting dog sleighs, which carry mail and pas- sengers in the winter. One is a professional hunter. As for the fishing mentioned in the central prison administration records for 1889, there is no trace of it.
tangi. Inhabitants, 19: i i male and 8 female; home- steaders, 6. There are some three desyatins of arable land, but as in Mgachi, as a result of frequent sea fogs which make grain culture impossible, only potatoes are raised. Two householders have rowboats and engage in fishing.
khoe is situated on the cape bearing the same name which juts deeply into the sea and is visible from Alexan- drovsk. Inhabitants, 34: 19 male and 15 female; house- holders, i 3. Here the people have not yet become disen- chanted and they continue to sow wheat and barley. Three are hunters.
trambaus. Inhabitants, 8: 3 male and 5 female. Happy is the settlement which has more women than men. Householders, 3.
viakhty is on the Viakhty River, which links a lake with the sea and is reminiscent of the Neva. They say that gangfish and sturgeon can be caught in the lake. Inhabit- ants, I 7:9 male, 8 female; households, 7.
vangi, the northernmost settlement. Inhabitants, i 3: 9 male, 4 female; households, 7.
Scientists and travelers say that the farther north you go, the poorer and more dismal the landscape. Beginning with Trambaus, the entire northern third of the island is a flat tundra on which the main watershed ridge that runs along the entire length of Sakhalin looks like low undu- lating elevations. Some authors consider it to have arisen from the alluvia of the Amur River. Along the reddish- brown level marshland here and there you can find areas of ragged coniferous trees. The trunk of the larch is not more than a foot tall and its crown lies on the ground like a green pillow, while the stem of the cedar bush lies along the earth, and between the sparse trees grow lichens and mosses. As in the Russian tundra, we find all kinds of coarse berries, tart or extremely astringent in taste: the mossberry, the whortleberry, the kostenika and the cran- berry. Only at the northernmost section of the plain, where the land again becomes hilly, is there an area where nature seems to desire to smile in farewell at the very brink of the eternally frozen sea. Kruscnstcrn's map of this area shows an excellent larch forest.
Notwithstanding the grimness and paucity of nature here, it is the belief of some authorities that the inhabitants of the shore settlements live comparatively better than the inhabitants of Arkovo or Alcxandrovsk.
This is explained by the fact that there arc few inhabit- ants, and the blessings available to them are shared among not too many people. They are not obliged to till the soil and harvest. They arc left to their own devices and choose their own occupations and trades. The winter road from Alexandrovsk to Nikolayevsk passes through the settlements. Gilyaks and Yakuts arrive in winter to trade and the settlers sell to and trade with them directly with- out commissioners acting as middlemen. There are no shop- keepers, no maidanshchiks, no Jewish second-hand dealers, and there are no office workers who exchange alcohol for costly furs and later display them with blissful smirks to their guests.
No new settlements are being formed toward the south. There is only one inhabited region along the western shore south of Alexandrovsk. This is Due, an appallingly ugly and absolutely horrible city where only saints or utterly depraved people could live voluntarily. It is a post, but the inhabitants call it a port. It was founded in 1857. The name Due, or Dui, has a long history and referred generally to that portion of the shore where the Due mines are now situated. Through the narrow valley flows a small river, the Khoyndzhi.
Two roads lead to Due from Alexandrovsk, one over the mountains and the other along the shore. The huge mass of Cape Zhonkiyer covers the entire shoreline, which would be impassable if a tunnel had not been constructed. They drilled the tunnel without any knowledge of engineering and without engineering skills. As a result it is dark, crooked and filthy. This construction was very costly, and as it turned out quite unnecessary, for there were moun- tain roads already in existence and there was no need to take the shore road, which could be used only at low tide and was useless at high tide. This tunnel is an excellent example of the Russian inclination to expend one's last resources on all kinds of evasions, while the most urgent necessities are ignored. The tunnel was being burrowed, the supervisors of the work rode up and down the rails in a railroad car bearing the sign alexandrovsk—port, while the convicts lived in filthy, damp yurts because there were not enough people to build barracks.
At the exit of the tunnel on the shore road there stands a salt works and the little cable house from which the telegraph cable descends, and crosses over the sand to enter the sea. A convict carpenter, a Pole, lives there with his mistress, who, they tell me, gave birth at twelve years of age after having been raped by some prisoner at a convict way station.
Along the entire road to Due the steep, sheer shore is crumbling away; here and there black blotches and streaks can be seen, an arshin to a sazhen wide. This is coal. These layers of coal, according to the specialists, are compressed by layers of sandstone, shale, slaty clay and clayey sand. They are raised, curved, shifted by, or combined with, layers of basalt, diorite and porphyry, which jut out in large masses in many places. All this may be very beautiful in its own way, but my prejudices were by now so deep-seated that I regarded not only the people but also the plants with sorrow, because they were growing up in this terrible place rather than elsewhere.
Seven versts along the bank there is a ravine. This is the Voyevodsk Gap; and here stands the lone, formidable Voyevodsk prison, in which infamous criminals are incar- cerated, among them convicts shackled to iron balls. Sen- tries guard the prison; and there is no other living creature in sight, so that they seem to be guarding some extraordi- nary treasure in the desert wastes.
A verst farther the coal breaks begin; you travel another verst along a bare, desolate shore and finally you reach still another gap, where you find Due, the former capital of penal servitude in Sakhalin. In the first minutes as you drive into the street, Due gives the impression of a small, antiquated fortress. The street is straight and smooth—a good drill ground; there are clean white cottages, a striped hut, striped posts. All that is lacking to complete the im- pression is the roll of drums. The military commander, the warden of the Due prison, a priest, officers and others oc- cupy these houses. A gray wooden church stands across the end of the short street which bars from the viewer the un- official section of the post. Here the gap divides into two parts resembling a Y, sending out gorges to the right and left.
To the left is a suburb without a name, formerly called Zhydovskaya (Jewtown}, and to the right there are all kinds of prison buildings and another nameless suburb. In both, especially in the left, it is crowded, dirry, uncom- fortable; here there are no more clean cottages; the little huts are dilapidated, without courryards, without greenery, without porches; they cling to the road without order, up the mountain and along the mountaintop. In Due, the plots of arable land, if this is what they can be called, are tiny. In the household census I recorded that four house- holds have only four square sazhens each. It is so packed that an apple can find no place to fall, but still the Due executioner, Tolsrykh, found a small plot in this crowded, stinking place and is building himself a house.
Not counting the officers, the free population and the prison, Due contains 291 inhabitants, 167 males and 124 females. There are 46 householders and 6 cohouseholders. The majority are convicts. What impels the administra- tion to settle them and their families here in the gap in- stead of elsewhere is incomprehensible. The household records show that there is only one-eighth of a desyatin of arable land in Due, and no hayfields whatsoever.
Let us assume that the men are kept busy with hard labor; but what do the eighty adult women do? How do they pass their time when, by reason of poverty, the foul weather, the never-ending clank of chains, the unchanging view of barren mountains, and the roar of the sea, the moaning and wailing often heard from the prison when punishment is meted out with lashes and birch rods, time must seem far longer and more tormenting than in Russia? The women spend their days in total inactivity. In one hut, consisting usually of a single room, you will find a convict family, and with it a soldiers family, two or three convict boarders or guests. You will find some teen-agers, two or three cradles in the corners, chickens and a dog. On the street near the hut there are piles of garbage and pud- dles from slops. There is nothing to do, they have nothing, they are tired of talking and arguing; it is boring to go out on the street because everything is equally cheerless and dirty. What an agony!
At night the convict husband returns home from work. He wants to eat and sleep, but the wife begins crying and nagging: "You have destroyed us, curse you! Ruined is my little head, ruined are the children!" "She's howling again!" grumbles the soldier on the stove. Everyone has gone to sleep, the children have cried themselves out and they have been asleep for a long time, but the woman does not sleep. She thinks and listens to the roaring of the sea. She feels compassion for her husband and despises herself for not having restrained herself instead of reproaching him. The next day the story is repeated.
If we may judge Due by only one factor, the agricul- tural colony on Sakhalin is overburdened by a surplus of women and convict families. Because of insufficient space in the huts, twenty-seven families are living in old struc- tures condemned long ago for demolition, filthy and repul- sive in the highest degree. They are called "barracks for families." There are no rooms here, only wards with plank beds and chamber pots. The composition of the inhabitants is extremely diversified.
In the first ward, with the broken windows, there are a convict and his free wife; a convict, his free wife and daughter; another convict, his settler wife and daughter; still another convict and his free wife; a Polish settler and his convict cohabitant; with all of their possessions they live in one ward and sleep in a row on one continuous plank bed.
In the second ward: a convict, his free wife and son; a Tatar convict woman and her daughter; a Tatar convict, his free wife and two little Tatars in skullcaps; a convict, his free wife and son; a settler who spent thirty-five years in penal servitude but is still youthful, with a black mustache; he walks barefoot because he owns no shoes, but is a pas- sionate card player.3 Next to him on the plank is his con- vict mistress, a flabby, sleepy and sorry-looking creature; further on, a convict, his free wife and three children; a single convict; a convict, his free wife and two children; a settler; a convict, an immaculate old man with a shaven face. A piglet wanders around the ward and slobbers; the floor is covered with slimy muck, the ward stinks of bed- bugs and something sour; they say the bedbugs never give you any rest.
In the third ward: a convict, his free wife and 2 chil- dren; a convict, his free wife and daughter; a convict, his free wife and 7 children—one daughter is 16, another 15; a convict, his free wife and son; another convict with his free wife and son; a convict, his free wife and 4 children.
In the fourth ward: a noncommissioned jailer, his eighteen-year-old wife and a daughter; a convict and his free wife; a settler, a convict; etc., etc.
From these barabaric premises and their atmosphere where fifteen- and sixteen-year-old girls are forced to sleep beside convicts, the reader can judge in what disrespect and con- tempt women and children are held. They voluntarily fol- lowed their husbands and fathers into penal servitude, but how cheaply they are valued and how little thought is given to the agricultural colony!
The Due prison is smaller, older and far dirtier than that of Alexandrovsk. Here also are common wards and continuous plank beds, but the conditions are poorer and the situation is worse. The walls and floors are equally grimy and have become so blackened from time and damp that they could not be cleaned even if they were scrubbed. According to information in the medical report of 1889, there are 1.12 cubic sazhens of air per prisoner. If in the summer, with the doors and windows wide open, it smells of slops and the latrine, then I can imagine what hell it is in winter when every morning they find frost and icicles in the prison.
The prison superintendent here is a former military surgeon's assistant from Poland who had served as an office worker. In addition to the Due prison, he is also in charge of Voyevodsk prison, the mines and the Due Post. The distances involved are not at all compatible with his rank.
The Due cells hold hard-bitten offenders, for the most part habitual criminals, and prisoners under investigation. These were the most unexceptional-looking people, with good-natured, stupid faces expressing only curiosity and the desire to answer me as respectfully as possible. The crimes of most of them were no more intelligent or clever than their faces. They are usually sent here for five or ten years for murder committed during a fight; they escape, are caught, again escape, and so on until they receive life terms as incorrigible convicts. The crimes of almost all of them are terribly dull, ordinary, without interest, and I purposely included "Yegor's Tale" so that the reader may judge how colorless and barren were those hundreds of similar stories, autobiographies and anecdotes which I heard from pris- oners and from other people who are intimate with the penal colony.
One gray-haired old man called Terekhov, sixty to sixty-five years old, sat by himself in a dark cell and looked like a real scoundrel. Just before my arrival he had been beaten with lashes and when he spoke of them he showed me his buttocks, livid with bruises. According to stories told by other prisoners, this old man murdered sixty peo- ple in his time. This was the way he operated: he sought out newly arrived prisoners who were affluent and he con- vinced them to escape with him. Then he robbed them and murdered them in the taiga and in order to cover all traces of the crime, he cut up the corpses and threw them in the river. The last time he was caught he defended him- self with a cudgel against the guards. Looking at his dull gray eyes and large half-shaven skull, sharp as a cobblestone, I was ready to believe all these stories.
A Ukrainian who was also sitting alone in a dark cell moved me with his frankness. He asked the guard to return the 195 rubles which were taken from him when he was searched. "Where did you get the money?'' asked the guard. "I won it at cards," he answered, and took an oath on it. Turning to me, he explained that this is not at all strange, since almost everyone in the prison plays cards and among the card-playing convicts it is not unusual to find some who have 2,000 and 3,^x1 rubles at their disposal.
In the cells I saw a vagrant who had chopped off two of his fingers. The wounds were wrapped in a filthy rag. Another vagrant had a shotgun wound through his body. The bullet had fortunately entered along the external edge of his seventh rib. His wound was also bandaged with a dirty rag.4
It is always quiet in Due. The ear soon becomes accus- tomed to the measured clang of chains, the roar of the surf and the hum of the telegraph wires, and because of these sounds the impression of dead silence becomes even stronger. The aspect of grimness is not only due to the striped posts. If someone unexpectedly happened to laugh out loud on the street, it would sound shrill and unnatural. From the very beginning of Due, local life took on a form which can only be expressed by these inexorably brutal and hopeless sounds and the fiercely bitter wind blowing from
103
the sea into the gap during the cold nights, which alone sings what it must.
It is therefore strange when in the silence you suddenly hear the singing of the Due eccentric Shkandyba [Limper]. He is a convict, an old man, who from the very first day of his arrival on Sakhalin refused to work and every con- ceivable measure was used to break his unconquerable, com- pletely untamable spirit. They put him in dark cells, beat him innumerable times, but he stoically endured his pun- ishments and after each flogging he would say, "I still won't work!" They took a lot of trouble to try to change him, and finally abandoned the endeavor. Now he strolls around Due and sings.5
As I already stated, coal is mined one verst from the post. I was in the mine. They led me through dark, damp corridors and courteously informed me about methods of production, but not being a specialist, I find it very diffi- cult to describe them. However, anyone interested can read the special work by Keppen, the mining engineer who formerly supervised the mines here.6
At the present time the Due mines are exclusively owned by a private company called Sakhalin, whose repre- sentatives or owners live in St. Petersburg. According to the twenty-four-year contract signed in 1875, the company derives profit from a strip of land two versts long by one verst deep along the western bank of Sakhalin. It is pro- vided without charge with convenient areas for coalyards in the Primorskaya region and on the adjacent islands. The company also receives free of charge all construction mate- rial for buildings and labor; the transportation of all articles needed for technical and agricultural work and in the con- struction of mines is provided duty free. For every pood of coal purchased by the Navy, the company receives fifteen to thirty kopecks.
Every day no less than 400 convicts are commandeered to work for the company's benefit; if less than this number are sent out ro work, for each missing worker the treasury pays a fine to the company of one ruble per day. The re- quired number of people can also be supplied to the com- pany for night shifts.
In order to fulfill the agreed obligations and to protect the company's interests, the treasury maintains two prisons near the mines, the Due and the Voyevodsk, plus a military detachment of 340 soldiers, the annual expenditure on which is 150,000 rubles. If then the owners of the com- pany living in St. Petersburg number only five people, the treasury guarantees them annual profits of 30,000 rubles each. This takes no account of the fact that in order to maintain these profits, putting aside all the problems of the agricultural colony and the complete mockery of ordinary rules of hygiene, the treasury must maintain more than 700 convicts, their families, soldiers and officials in such terrifying holes as the Voyevodsk and Due gaps. Nor does it take account of the fact that in releasing convicts to serve a private company for financial gain, the administra- tion sacrifices the aims of reform to industrial considera- tions, which mean.s that it is repeating the old mistake, one which it has always condemned.
The company, on the other hand, must fulfill three chief obligations. It must develop the Due mines properly and maintain a mining engineer at Due to supervise their proper exploitation. Twice annually rem must be paid for the coal and for the services of the convicts. In working the mines, convict labor must be used exclusively. These thret: obligations exist only on paper, and obviously they have long ago been forgotten. The mines are worked unscrupu- lously, on the kulak or tough peasant-owner principle. "No improvements in production techniques nor modifications for assuring a stable future have been made," we read in the report of one officiaL "The different kinds of work, insofar as they consist of economic production, have all the earmarks of plunder, and the last report of the regional engineer concurs."
The mining engineer which the company is obliged to furnish does not exist, and the mines are supervised by an ordinary foreman. As to payments, we are reminded of the report I have just mentioned: the official says it has "all the earmarks of plunder." The company profits from the mines without paying anything. It is obliged to pay, but for some reason it.does not pay.
The representatives of the other side should have called on the authorities long ago in view of such blatant disre- gard of the law, but for some reason they have been delay- ing, and what is worse, they are continuing to expend i 50,000 rubles a year to guarantee the company's profits, and both sides conduct themselves in such a manner that it is difficult to say when these abnormal attitudes will termi- nate. The company has entrenched itself as securely as Foma7 in the village of Stepanchikovo, and, like Foma, is implacable.
As of January i, 1890, it owed the treasury 194,337 rubles, I 5 kopecks; a tenth of this money by law goes to the convicts as wages. I do not know when and how they pay off the convicts, who pays them or whether they get anything.
Some 350 to 400 convicts are assigned to work every day, while the remaining 350 to 400 living in the Due and Voyevodsk prisons form a reserve force. There must be a reserve, because the contract calls for convicts "capable of work" to be supplied every day. Assignments for work in the mine are made at five o'clock in the morning at a so- called dispatch meeting. The convicts enter the presence of the mining administration, which consists of a small group of private persons who make up "'the office."
On the discretion of "the office" depends their assign- ment, the daily amount and load of labor for each indi- vidual convict. For this reason "the office" is supposed to see that the prisoners' sentences are distributed propor- tionally. The prison administration itself is only concerned with controlling their behavior and preventing escapes. It washes its hands of everything else.
There are two mines: the old and the new. The con- victs work in the new mine, where the height of the coal strip is about two arshins; the width of the shafts is the same. The distance from the mine entrance to the present mining area is about 150 sazhens. A worker dragging a sled weighing a pood crawls up along a dark and dank corridor; this is the most difficult part of the work. Later, after loading his sled, he returns. At the entrance the coal is loaded into coal cars and sent by rail to the coalyards. Each convict must crawl up with his sled not less than thirteen times a day, and here we deduce a lesson. In 1889-90, each convict mined on the average of 10.8 poods a day, 4.2 poods below the norm established by the mining adminis- tration. In general the mine production and the results of convict mining are not great; they vary between 1,500 and 3,000 poods daily.
Settlers are also hired for labor in the Due mines. They work under far worse conditions than the convicts. In the old mine the coal layer is no more than one arshin wide; the working area is now 230 sazhens from the entrance. The upper layer sweats profusely, which forces them to work in a continually damp atmosphere. They live at their own expense, in premises far worse than the prison. In spite of all this, their labor is more productive than that of the convicts by 70 and even 100 percent. So great are the advantages of free hired labor over forced labor! Hired workers are more convenient to the company than those they must maintain under contract, and therefore if, ac- cording to the custom here, a convict hires a settler or another convict to take his place at work, the mining ad- ministration enthusiastically agrees to such irregularities. Hence the third obligation has long ago split at the seams.
Since Due's inception it appears that paupers and simple people work for themselves as well as for ochers, while cheats and loan sharks drink tea during working hours, play cards, or wander around the port clanking their chains and conversing with the guards they have bribed.
Revolting scenes are everlastingly being played here. A week before my arrival a prisoner, a former Petersburg merchant sentenced for arson, was beaten with birch rods for refusing to work. He is a stupid man who does not know how to conceal his money and he has constantly bribed the guards. Finally he grew tired of giving the guard five rubles and the executioner three rubles, and for some reason, choosing the wrong time, he flatly refused to give them any money. The guard complained to the warden that a certain prisoner refused to work, the inspector ordered thirty strokes with birch rods, and the executioner naturally employed his best efforts. When he was being beaten the merchant kept screaming, "I was never beaten before!" After the beating he changed his mind, paid off the guard and the executioner, and as though nothing had happened, he continues to hire a settler to work in his place.
The exceptionally heavy work in the mines is not due to having to work underground in the dark and damp shafts, always crawling and sliding. Construction and road building in raw and powerful winds require far more phys- ical strength. Whoever is acquainted with conditions in the Donets shafts will not consider the Due mine so terrible. The exceptionally hard labor is not in the work itself, but in the existing conditions and in the stupidity and un- scrupulous behavior of all the minor officials, while at every step the convicts must suffer insolence, injustice and arbi- trariness. The rich drink tea, while the poor work and the guards openly dupe their superiors. The inevitable quarrels between the mine and prison administrations result in con- stam mockery, scandal and all sorts of minor disturbances, the burden of which is borne primarily by the forced laborers. According to the proverb, the masters fight and the boys get rapped over the head.
Moreover, no matter how depraved and contemptible the convict is, he loves fairness above all, and if it does not exist among his superiors, then he becomes more and more malevolent and vicious with every passing year. So many of them become pessimistic, morose old men endlessly dis- cussing people, the officials, and a better life with angry, thoughtful faces! The prison listens and bursts into laugh- ter, because it all sounds very funny.
Work in the Due mines is also difficult because for many long years without interruption the only things the convict sees are the mine, the road to the prison, and the sea. His whole life is confined to this narrow coastline be- tween the marshy shore and the sea.
Near the mine office there is a barracks for settlers who work in the mine. It is a small old barn which has been set up as a dormitory. I was there at five o'clock in the morning when the settlers had just woken up. What a stench, what drabness, what overcrowding! Their heads were disheveled! Brawling had been going on all night and their yellowish-gray sleepy faces looked sick or insane. It was obvious they had slept in their clothes and boots, packed closely together, some on the plank bed, others under it on the filthy sod floor. According to the physician who accompanied me that morning, there is only one cubic sazhen of air for every three or four men. Moreover, it was the time when cholera was expected on Sakhalin and a quarantine had been placed on all vessels.
That same morning I visited the Voyevodsk prison. It was built in the '70S. To acquaint you with the terrain I must explain that it was necessary co level the high banks of the gap over an area of 480 square sazhens. At the present time it is the most infamous of all the Sakhalin prisons. It has completely resisted reforms and can serve as an exact illustration to describe the old order and the old prisons which have so aroused men's loathing and terror.
Voyevodsk prison consists of three main buildings and one small one containing individual cells. Naturally, there is nothing good to say about the cubic content of air or the ventilation. When I entered the prison, they were just finishing washing down the floors, and the humid foul air had not yet dissipated from the night and it hung there heavily. The floors were wet and unpleasant to look at. The first thing I heard was complaints about bugs. You cannot live with them. At one time they were killed with chlorated lime, or they were frozen to death during intensely cold weather, but now nothing helps. The prison guards' quar- ters smell of latrines and sourness; they also complain about the bugs.
In the Voyevodsk prison convicts are fettered with balls and chains. There are eight fettered convicts here. They live in the common ward with the other prisoners and pass their time in absolute idleness. In any event, in the Report on Assigning Various Kinds of Work to the Forced Labor Convicts, those who are kept in balls and chains are num- bered among the unemployed. Each is chained with man- acles and feners. From the middle of the manacles there hangs a long chain about three to four arshins long which is attached to the bottom of a small iron ball. The chains and ball constrain the prisoner and he moves as little as possible, which undoubtedly affects his musculature. Their hands become so accustomed to this that each slightest movement is made with a feeling of heaviness and when the prisoner finally is released from his ball and chain his hands retain their clumsiness and he makes excessively strong, sharp movements. \X'hen he takes a cup, for ex- ample, he spills his tea as though he were suffering from St. Vitus's dance. At night, while sleeping, the prisoners keep the ball under the plank bed. To facilitate this, the prisoner is usually placed at the end of the bed.
All eight men were incorrigible; they had been con- victed a number of times during their lives. One of them, an old man of sixty, was chained for trying to escape, or as he himself says, "for stupidity." He is obviously ill, con- sumptive, and the former prison warden out of compassion ordered him to have a place closer to the stove.
Another, a former railroad conductor, was convicted for sacrilege, and began forging twenty-five-ruble notes on Sakhalin. When someone walking around the ward teased him for robbing a church, he answered, "So what? God doesn't need money!" Noticing that the other prisoners were not laughing and that his words had displeased them, he added, "That's why I didn't murder people."
A third, a former sailor, was sent to Sakhalin for a disciplinary transgression: he attacked an officer with clenched fists. In prison he attacked everyone in the same way. The last time was when he assaulted the prison warden, who ordered him to be beaten with birches. At the court-martial his lawyer explained that he attacked people because he was ill. The court ordered the death sentence, but Baron Korf commuted it to life imprisonment, a flog- ging and chains. The others were all chained for murder.
The morning was raw, gloomy, cold. The sea roared turbulently. I recall that on the road from the old mine to the new we stopped for a minute near an old Cauca- sian who lay on the sand in a dead faint. Two of his coun- trymen held his hands; they kept looking around helplessly and disconcertedly. The old man was pale, his hands icy, his pulse slow. We spoke to them and went our way without giving him any medical aid. When I mentioned to the phy- sician who was with me that it would not harm to give the old man at least some valerian drops, he said that the Voyevodsk prison assistant surgeon had no medicine what- soever.
Five years ago an importam official spoke to the settlers about agriculture and offered them advice, saying: "Bear in mind that the Finlanders sow grain on mountain slopes." But Sakhalin is not Finland. The climate and especially the condition of the soil pre- clude any agriculture on the mountains. The agricultural inspector advised them to raise sheep, which would "easily make use of the sparse but numerous pastures along the slopes, where the cattle cannot graze." This advice is impracticable, however, since sheep could "make usc of' the pastures only during the short summer and they would starve to death during the long wimer.
The question mark is inserted by Chekhov.—trans.
He told me that when playing faro he "feels electricity in his veins," his hands shake from ncrvousness. One of his most pleasant memories is of the time when in his youth he stole the watch of a chief of police. He speaks with excitement about playing faro. I remember his words: "You can push it, and it doesn't go in the right place," which he said with the despair of a hunter who has missed a shot. For card lovers I recorded some of his expressions: "The transport is devoured! nape! naperipe! corner! smear the eye with a ruble! in the color and in the suit, artillery!"
I met a number of wounded and ulcerated prisoners, but not once did I smell iodoform, although more than twenty pounds of it are dispensed on Sakhalin annually.
s Due has an exaggeratedly bad reputation among people. I was told that when the Baikal dropped anchor near Due, one passen- ger, an older high official, examined the shore for a long time, and finally he said, "Tell me, please, where is the scaffold on which the convicts are hanged, and their corpses thrown into the sea?"
Due is the cradle of Sakhalin penal servitude. The opinion exists that this particular spot was chosen for a penal colony by the convicts themselves. Supposedly a man called Ivan Lapshin, serving time for parricide in Nikolayevsk, petitioned to be sent to Sakhalin, and in September, 1858, was landed here. Settling nor far from Due, he began raising garden products and grains, and according to Vlasov, he served his sentence here. He was probably not sent to the island alone, because in i 858 coal was being mined by convicts near Due. (See "From the Amur and the Shores of the Great Ocean" in Moskovskiye Vedomosti [Mos- cow News], 1874, No. 207.) Vysheslavtsen writes in his book Notes Written with a Pen and Pencil that in April, 1859, he found some forty men in Due, with two officers and an engineer- ing officer in charge of the work. "What beautiful gardens," he writes rapturously, "surround these comfortable, clean cottages! Vegetables ripen twice in the summer."
The period of the rise of Sakhalin penal servitude begins with the '6os, when the disorganization in our deportation system was at its highest. The times were such that the officer in charge of a branch of the Police Executive Department, the councillor Vlasov, scandalized by everything he encountered in penal servi- tude, stated flatly that the regime and the system are actually increasing the number of serious criminal offenses and debasing civic morals. Approximate, on-the-spot investigations of forced labor convinced him that in Russia it is practically nonexistent (see his Short Outline of Disorganization Existing in Penal Servi- tude). The Prison Administrative Headquarters, making a critical survey of penal servitude in its ten-year report, notes that in the period under survey, penal servitude ceased being a higher puni- tive measure. Indeed, it was the gravest possible disorganization ever engendered by ignorance, callousness and brutality.
Here are the main reasons for the disorganization:
a} Neither those who wrote the laws for convicts nor those who enforced them had any clear conception of the meaning of penal servitude, what it should comprise and why it was neces- sary. And practice, irrespective of its long duration, neither de- vised a system nor furnished material for a legal definition of penal servitude.
b] Various economic and financial considerations reacted ad- versely on reformatory and penal aims. A convict was considered a laborer obliged to produce profit for the state treasury. If the work was not gainful or was produced at a loss, they preferred to keep him in prison doing nothing. Unprofitable idleness was given preference over unprofitable labor. It was also necessary to reckon with the aims of colonization.
Lack of knowledge of local conditions and therefore the absence of a definite point of view about the character and nature of types of work can be observed from the recently abolished assignment of work in mines, factories and fortresses. In practice, a convict sentenced to an indefinite term in the mines sat idle in the prison, a convict with a four-year sentence was ordered to work in the factories, but in fact went to work in the mines. In the Tobolsk penal prison the convicts were set to work moving stones from one place ro another, reshoveling sand, etc. This point of view became predominant in society and to some extent in litera- ture: the severest and most humiliating penal punishment can only be administered in the mines. If Nekrasov's hero in To a Russian Woman had caught fish for the prison or was a woodchopper rather than a miner, the reading public would have been left unsatisfied.
The backwardness of our criminal code. It does not answer the numerous questions which arise daily and present a broad field for arbitrary interpretations and illegal actions. It is often a com- pletely worthless book when the need arises to solve the most difficult situations, and this is probably one of the reasons why Vlasov failed to find the code book in some administrative offices in the penal prisons.
The absence of uniformity in administering penal servitude.
/] The remoteness of penal servitude from St. Petersburg and
the complete lack of publicity. Official reports have only been published since the recent establishment of the Prison Adminis- trative Headquarters.
g] The temper of our society was also greatly responsible for hindering the regulation of the practices of exile and penal servi- tude. When society does not possess a specific viewpoint on some- thing, it is necessary to consider its mood. Society was always indignant about prison regulations, but at the same time it pro- tested at every step taken to improve the lot of the prisoners, saying, for example, "It is not right for a peasant to live better in prison than at home." If a peasant often lives worse off at home than in prison, it follows logically that penal servitude should be hell. When prisoners in trains were given kvass• instead of water, this was called "coddling murderers and firebrands," etc. However, as though to counterbalance such a mood, it was noted that the better Russian writers tended to idealize convicts, vagrants and escapees.
In 1863 a committee was organized by royal decree with the aim of investigating and suggesting measures for organizing penal labor on a more sensible basis. The committee declared that it
• A sweet-sour drink made of malt and black bread.—^^NS.
was imperative "to exile serious offenders to a distant colony to be employed in forced labor, with the aim of settling them by preference in the place of exile." Choosing among the distant colonies, the eyes of the committee fell on Sakhalin. A priori it defended its choice of Sakhalin with the following:
1 ) The geographical location safeguards the mainland from escapees;
The sentence is endowed with adequate repressive force, since exile to Sakhalin may be considered irrevocable;
There is a large enough space for the activities of a prisoner who resolves to begin a new working life;
From the poinr of view of benefiting the country, the con- centration of convicts on Sakhalin is a guarantee for strengthening our position as owners of the island;
The coal deposits can be easily exploited to satisfy the huge coal requirements. It was also assumed that the concentra- tion of the entire contingent of convict exiles on the island would cut costs for their upkeep.
(1 Sakhaltn Island, Its Coal Deposits and Its Developing Coal Industry ( 187 5). In addition to Keppen, works on coal were written by the mining engineers: I. Nosov, ''Notes on Sakhalin Island and the Coal Beds Being Worked," Mining ĵoumal ( 1859), No. 1. I. A. Lopatin, Extract from a letter. A supplement to the Report of the Siberian Division of the Imperial Russian Geographic Society for 1868. Ibid., "Report to the Governor- General of Eastern Siberia," Mining Journal (1870), No. 10. Deykhman, "Sakhalin Island with Respect to the Coal Industry," Mining journal (187 i), No. 3. Z. K. Skalkovsky, "Russian Trade in the Pacific Ocean" ( i883). The quality of Sakhalin coal was described at various times by the commanders of the ships of the Siberian fleet in their reports published in the Naval Miscellany. To complete the list I might as well mention the articles by Y. N. Butkovsky: "Sakhalin Island," Historical News ( 1882), X, and "Sakhalin and Its Significance," Naval Miscellany (1874), No. 4.
7 A character in Dostoyevsky"s novel The Village of Stepanchi- kovo attd Its Jnhabitants.—TRANS.
JX Tym or Tymi - Lieutenant Boshnyak - Polyakov - Upper Armudan - Lower Armtdan - Derbinskoye - A Journey on the Tym - Uskovo - The Gypsies - A Journey into the Taiga - Voskresenskoye
the second district of Northern Sakhalin is lo- cated on the other side of a ridge of the mountain range and is called Tymovsk, because its settlements lie along the Tym River, which falls into the Okhotsk Sea. As you drive from Alexandrovsk to Novo-Mikhaylovka, the moun- tain ridge rises before you and blocks out the horizon, and what you see from there is called the Pilinga. From the top of the Pilinga a magnificent panorama opens out with the Duyka valley and the sea on one side, and on the other a vast plain which is watered by the Tym and its tributaries for more than 200 versts. This plain is far more interesting than Alexandrovsk. The water, the many kinds of timber forests, the grasses which grow higher than a man, the fabulous abundance of fish and coal deposits suggest the possibility of a satisfying and pleasant life for a million people. That is the way it should be, but the frozen currents of the Okhotsk Sea and the icc floes floating on the eastern shore even in June attest with incontrovertible clarity to the fact that when nature created Sakhalin man and his welfare was the last thing in her mind. If it were not for the mountains, the plain would be a tundra, colder and bleaker than around Viakhty.
The first person to visit the Tym River and describe it was Lieutenant Boshnyak. In 1852 he was sent here by Nevelskoy to verify information obtained from Gilyaks about coal deposits and to cross the island all the way to the shore of the Okhotsk Sea, where there was said to be a beautiful harbor. He was given a dog team, hardtack for thirty-five days, tea and sugar, a small hand compass and a cross. With these came Nevelskoy's parting words of en- couragement: "As long as you have hardtack to quieten your hunger and a mug of water to drink, then with God's help you will find it possible to do your job."
Having made his way down the Tym to the eastern shore and back, he somehow reached the western shore, completely worn out and famished, and with abscesses on his legs. The starving dogs refused to go any farther. He spent Easter day huddled in the corner of a Gilyak yurt, utterly exhausted. His hardtack was gone, he could not communicate with the Gilyaks, his leg was giving him agonies of pain. What was most interesting about Bosh- nyak's explorations was, quite obviously, the explorer him- self, his youth—he was only twenty-one years old—and his supremely heroic devotion to his task. At the time the Tym was covered with deep snow, for it was March. Nevertheless, his journey provided some very interesting data which were recorded in his report.1
In i88i the zoologist Polyakov^ carried out some seri- ous and extensive explorations of the Tym from a scientific and practical point of view. He left Alexandrovsk on July 24, driving oxen, and crossed the Pilinga with the greatest difficulty. There were only footpaths, and these were climbed by convicts carrying provisions on their backs from the Alexandrovsk district to the Tymovsk. The elevation of the ridge is 2,ooo feet. On a Tym tributary, the Admvo, close to the Pilinga, stood the Vedernikovsky way station, of which only one position has survived, the office of the station guard.3
The Tym tributaries are fast flowing, tortuous and full of rapids. It is impossible to use boats. Therefore it was necessary for Polyakov to go by oxen to the Tym River. From Derbinskoye he and his companion used a boat throughout the whole length of the river.
It is tiresome to read his account of this journey because of the exactitude with which he recorded all the rapids and sandbanks. In the 272 versts from Derbinskoye to the sea he was forced to overcome I io obstacles: i i rapids, 89 sandbanks and 10 places where the water was dammed by drifting trees and bushes. This means that on the average of every two miles the river is either shallow or choked up. Near Derbinskoye it is 2o-25 sazhens wide: the wider the river, the shallower. The frequent bends and turns, the rapid flow and the shallows offer no hope that it will ever be navigable in the real sense of the word. In Polyakov's opinion it would probably be used only for floating rafts. Only the last 70 to 100 versts from the mouth of the river, where it is least favorable for coloniza- tion, are deeper and straighter. Here the flow is slower, and there are no rapids or sandbanks. A steam cutter or even a shallow-draft tugboat could use this part of the river.
When the rich fisheries in the neighborhood fall into the hands of capitalists, serious attempts will probably be made to clear and deepen the waterway. Perhaps a railroad will be built along the river to its mouth, and there is no doubt that the river will repay all these expenditures with interest. But this is far in the future. Under existing con- ditions, when we consider only the immediate future, the riches of the Tym are almost an illusion. It offers disap- pointingly little to the penal colony. The Tymovsk settler lives under the same starvation conditions as the Alexan- drovsk settler.
According to Polyakov, the Tym River valley is dotted with lakes, bogs, ravines and pits. It has no straight and level expanses overgrown with nutricious fodder grasses, it has no fertile meadows watercd by spring floods, and only rarely are sedge-covcred meadows found—these are islands overgrown with coarse grass. A thick coniferous forest covers the slopes of the hill. On these slopes we find birches, willows, elms, aspens and entire stands of poplars. The poplars are extremely tall. They are undermined at the banks and fall into the water, where they look like bushes and beaver dams. The bushes here are the bird cherry, the osier, the sweetbrier, the hawthorn. . . . Swarms of mosquitoes are everywhere. There was frost on the morning of August 1.
The closer you get to the sea, the sparser the vegetation.
Slowly the poplar vanishes, the willow tree becomes a bush; the general scene is dominated by the sandy or turfy shore with whortleberries, cloudberries and moss. Gradually the river widens to 75-100 sazhens; now the tundra has taken over, the coastline consists of lowlands and marshes. . . . A freezing wind blows in from the ocean.
The Tym falls into Nyisky Bay, or the Tro, a small watery wasteland which is the doorway to the Okhotsk Sea, or, which is the same thing, into the Pacific Ocean. The first night Polyakov spent on the shores of the bay was bright and chilly, and a small twin-tailed comet glistened in the sky. Polyakov does not describe the thoughts which crowded in upon him as he enjoyed the sight of the comet and listened to the sounds of the night. Sleep overtook him. On the next day fate rewarded him with an unexpected spectacle. At the mouth of the bay stood a dark ship with some white strakes; the rigging and deckhouse were beau- tiful; a tied live eagle sat on the prow.'
The shore of the bay made a dismal impression on Polyakov. He calls it a typically characteristic example of a polar landscape. The vegetation is meager and malformed. The bay is separated from the sea by a long, narrow sandy congue of land created by dunes, and beyond this slip of land the morose, angry sea has spread itself boundlessly for thousands of versts. \'X'hen a little boy has been reading Mayne Reid and his blanket falls off during the night, he starts shivering, and it is then that he dreams of such a sea. It is a nightmare! The surface is leaden, over it there hangs a monotonous gray sky, and the savage waves batter the wild treeless shore. The waves roar, and once in a great while the black shape of a whale or a seal flashes through them.5
Today there is no need to cross the Pilinga by climbing over steep hills and through gulleys in order to reach the Tymovsk district. I have already stated that people nowa- days travel from Alexandrovsk to the Tymovsk district through the Arkovo valley and change horses at the Arkovo way station. The roads here are excellent and the horses can travel swiftly.
The first settlement of the Tymovsk region lies sixteen miles past the Arkovo way station bearing the Oriental- fairy-tale name of Upper Armudan. It was founded in 1884 and consists of two parts which have spread along the slopes of the mountain near the Armudan River, a tributary of the Tym. It has 178 inhabitants: 123 male and 55 female. There are 78 homesteads with 28 co-owners. Settler Vasilyev even has cwo co-owners. In comparison with Alexandrovsk, the majority of the Tymovsk settle- ments, as the reader will see, have many co-owners or half- owners, few women and very few legally married families. In Upper Armudan, of 48 families, only 9 are legal. There are only three free women who followed their husbands, and it is the same in Krasny Yar or Butakovo, which arc no more than a year old. This insufficiency of women and families in the Tymovsk settlements is often ascounding, and docs not conform with the average number of women and families on Sakhalin. It cannot be explained by any local or economic conditions, but by the fact that newly arrived prison parties are sorted out in Alcxandrovsk, and the local authorities, according to the proverb that "your own shirt is nearest to your retain the majority of the women
in their own district and "keep the bcst for themsclves; the worst they send to us," as a Tymovsk official told me.
The huts in Upper Armudan arc either thatched or cov- ered with tree bark; some windows have no panes or are completely boarded up. The poverty is terrible. Twenty of the men do not live at home. They have gone elsewhere co earn a livelihood. Only dcsyatins of land have been cultivated for all 75 homesteads and 28 co-owners; 183 poods of grain have been sown, which is less than 2 p^^s per household. It is beyond my understanding how grain can bc grown here, however much is sown. The settlement is high above sea level and is not protected from northern winds; the snow melts cwo weeks later than in the neigh- boring settlement of Malo-Tymovo. In order to fish, they travel 20 to 25 versts to the Tym River in the summer. They hunt fur animals more for sport than for gain, and so little accrues to the economy of the settlement that it is scarcely worth talking about.
I found the householders and the members of their households at home; none of them were occupied even though it was not a holiday, and it seemed that during the warm August weather all of them, from the youngest to the oldest, could have found work either in the field or on the Tym, where the periodic fish was running. The house- holders and their cohabitants were obviously bored and eager to sit down and discuss anything at all. They laughed from boredom and sometimes cried. They are failures, and most of them are neurasthenics and whiners, "alienated persons." Forced idleness has slowly become a habit and they spend their time waiting for good sea weather, be- come fatigued, have no desire to sleep, do nothing, and are probably no longer capable of doing anything except shuf- fling cards. It is not strange that card-playing flourishes in Upper Armudan and the local players are famous all over Sakhalin. Because of lack of money they play for small stakes, but make up for this by playing continually, as in the play Thirty Years, or the Life of a Card Player.e I had a conversation with one of the most impassioned and inde- fatigable card-players, a settler called Sizov:
"Your worship, why don't they send us to the main- land?" he asked.
"Why do you want to go there?" I asked jokingly. "You'll have no one to play cards with."
"That's where the real games are."
"Do you play faro?" I asked, and held my tongue.
"That's right, your worship, I play faro."
Later, upon leaving Upper Armudan, I asked my con- vict driver:
"Do they play for winnings?"
"Naturally, for winnings."
"But what do they lose?"
"What do you mean? Why, they lose their government rations, their smoked fish! They lose their f^^ and clothing and sit about in hunger and cold."
"And what do they eat?"
"Why, sir, when they win, they eat; when they lose, they go to sleep hungry."
Along the lower reaches of the same tributary there is a smaller settlement, Lower Armudan. I arrived late at night and slept in a garret in the jail because the jailer did not permit me to stay in a room. "It's impossible to sleep here, your worship; the bugs and cockroaches win all the time!" he said helplessly, spreading his hands wide. "Please go up to the tower." I climbed to the tower on a ladder, which was soaked and slippery from the rain. When I descended to get some tobacco I saw the "winning crea- tures," and such things are perhaps only possible on Sakha- lin. It seemed as though the walls and ceiling were covered with black crepe, which stirred as if blown by a wind. From the rapid and disorderly movements of portions of the crepe you could guess the composition of this boiling, seething mass. You could hear rustling and a loud whisper- ing, as if the insects were hurrying off somewhere and carrying on a conversation.7
There are ioi settlers in Lower Armudan: 76 male and 25 female. There arc 47 homesteaders with 23 co-owners. Four families are married; 1 5 live as cohabitants. There are only two free women. There arc no inhabitants between I 5 and 20 years of age. The people live in dire poverty. Only six of the houses are covered with planking; the rest arc covered with tree bark and, as in Upper Armudan, some have no windowpanes or are boarded up. My records in- clude not a single laborer. Obviously the householders do nothing. In order to find work, 2 i of them have left. Since 1884, when the settlement was founded, only 37 dcsyatins of arable land have been cleared—i.e., one-half desyatin per homestead. One hundred eighty-three ^^s of winter grain and summer corn have been sown. The settlement in no way resembles an agricultural village. The local inhabitants are a disorganized rabble of Russians, Poles, Finns and Georgians, starving and ragged, who came together not of their own volition but by chance, after a shipwreck.
The next settlement along the route lies on the Tym. Founded in 1880, it was named Derbinskoye in honor of the jailer Derbin, who was murdered for his cruelty. He was still young, but a brutish, stern and implacable fellow. The people who knew him recall that he always walked around the prison and on the streets with a stick which he used for beating people. He was murdered in the bakery. He defended himself and fell into the fermenting bread baner, bloodying the dough. His death was greeted with great rejoicing by the convicts, who donated a purse of 6o rubles to the murderer.
There is nothing else amusing in Derbinskoye. It lies on a flat and narrow piece of land, once covered with a thick birch and ash forest. Below, there is a wide stretch of marshland, seemingly unfit for settlement, once thickly cov- ered with fir and deciduous trees. They had scarcely finished cuning down the forest and clearing stumps in order to build the huts, the jail and the government storehouse, and draining the area, when they were forced to battie with a disaster which none of the colonizers had foreseen. During the spring, the high water of the Amga stream flooded the entire settlement. They had to dig another bed and re- channel it. Now Derbinskoye has an area of more than a square verst and resembles a real Russian village.
You enter by a splendid wooden bridge; the stream babbles, the banks are green with willows, the streets are wide, the huts have plank roofs and gardens. There are new prison buildings, all kinds of storehouses and ware- houses, and the house of the prison warden stands in the middle of the settlement, reminding you not so much of a prison as of a manorial estate. The warden is continually going from warehouse to warehouse, and he clanks his keys exactly like a landlord in the good old days who guards his stores day and night. His wife sits near the house in the from garden, majestic as a queen, and she sees that order is kept. Right in from of her house, in an open hothouse, she can see her fully ripened watermelons. The convict gardener Karatayev tends them with indulgence and with a slavish diligence. She can see the convicts fishing in the river, bringing back healthy, choice salmon called sere- bryanka [silver fish], which are then cured and given to the officials; they are not given to the convicts. Near the garden play little girls dressed like angels. A convict dressmaker, convicted for arson, sews their clothes. There is a feeling of quiet contentment and ease. These people walk softly like cats, and they also express themselves softly, in diminu- tives: little fish, little cured fish, little prison rations. . . .
There are 739 inhabitants in Derbinskoye, 442 male and 297 female. Altogether, including the prison popula- tion, there is a total of about I,ooo. There arc 250 house- holders and 58 co-owners. In its outward aspects as well as in the age groups of the inhabitants and, generally, in all the statistics concerning the place, it is one of the few settlements on Sakhalin which can seriously be called a settlement and not a haphazard rabble of people. It has i 2 i legitimate families. Twelve of them arc free, and among the legally married, free women predominate. There arc 103 free women. Children comprise one-third of the popu- lation.
However, in attempting to understand the economic status of the Dcrbinskoye inhabitants, you have to con- front the various chance circumstances, which play their major and minor roles as they do in other Sakhalin settle- ments. Here natural law and economic laws appear to take second place, ceding their priority to such accidental vari- ables as the greater or lesser number of uncmployables, the number of sick people, the number of robbers, the number of former citizens forced to become farmers, the number of old people, their proximity to the prison, the personality of the warden, etc., etc., and all of these conditions can change every five years or even less than five years. Those who completed their sentences prior to i 88 i were the first to settle here, carrying on their backs the bitter past of the settlcment, and they suffered, and gradually took over the better land and homesteads. Those who arrived from Russia with money and families are able to live well. The 220 desyatins of land and the yearly production of 3,000 poods of fish, as shown in the records, obviously pertain to the economic position of these homesteaders. The remainder of the inhabitants, more than one-half of the population of
Derbinskoye, are starving, in rags, and give the impression of being useless and superfluous; they are hardly alive, and they prevent others from living. In our own Russian vil- lages even fires produce no such sharp distinctions.
It was raining, cold and muddy when I arrived in Derbinskoye and visited the huts. Because of his own small quarters, the warden gave me lodging in a new, recently completed warehouse, which was stored with Viennese fur- niture. They gave me a bed and a table, and put a latch on the door so that I could lock myself in from inside.
All evening to two o'clock in the morning I read or copied data from the list of homesteads and the alphabeti- cal list of the inhabitants. The rain fell continually, rattling on the roof, and once in a while a belated prisoner or soldier passed by, slopping through the mud. It was quiet in the warehouse and in my soul, but I had scarcely put out the candle and gone to bed when I heard a rustling, whis- pering, knocking, splashing sound, and deep sighs. Rain- drops fell from the ceiling omo the latticework of the Viennese chairs and made a hollow, ringing sound, and after each such sound someone whispered in despair: "Oh, my God, my God!" Next to the warehouse was the prison. Were the convicts coming at me through an underground passage? But then there came a gust of wind, the rain rattled even more strongly, somewhere a tree rustled—and again, a deep, despairing sigh: "Oh, my God, my God!"
In the morning I wem out on the steps. The sky was gray and overcast, the rain continued to fall, and it was muddy. The warden walked hurriedly from door to door with his keys.
'Tll give you such a ticket you'll be scratching your- self for a week," he shouted. "I'll show you what kind of ticket you'll get!"
These words were intended for a group of twenty prisoners who, from the few phrases I overheard, were pleading to be sent to the hospital. They were ragged, soaked by the rain, covered with mud and shivering. They wanted to demonstrate in mime exactly what ailed them, but on their pinched, frozen faces it somehow came out false and crooked, although they were probably not lying at all. "Oh, my God, my God!" someone sighed, and my nightmare seemed to be continuing. The word "pariah" comes to mind, meaning that a person can fall no lower. During my entire sojourn on Sakhalin only in the settlers' barracks near the mine and here, in Derbinskoye, on that rainy, muddy morning, did I live through moments when I felt that I saw before me the extreme limits of man's degradation, lower than which he cannot go.
In Derbinskoye there is a convict, a former baroness, whom the local women call "the working baroness." She Jives a simple, laborer's life, and they say she is content with her circumstances. One former Moscow merchant who once had a shop on Tverskaya-Yamskaya told me with a sigh, "The racing season is on in Moscow," and then, turn- ing to the settlers, he began to explain what kind of races they were and how many people go on Sundays to the racecourse along Tverskaya-Yamskaya. "Believe me, your worship," he said, his excitement mounting as he discussed the racecourse, "I would give everything, my whole life, if I could see not Russia, not Moscow, but the Tverskaya!"
In Derbinskoye there Jive two people called Emelyan Samokhvalov, who are related to one another, and I remem- ber that in the yard of one of them I saw a rooster tied up by its legs. l1ie people of Derbinskoye are amused by the fact that these two Emelyan Samokhvalovs were by a strange and very complex combination of events brought together from the opposite ends of Russia to Derbinskoye, bearing the same name and being related to one another.
On August 27, General Kononovich arrived in Derbin- skoye with the commandant of the Tymovsk district, A. M. Butakov, and another young official. All three were intelli- gent and interesting people. The four of us went on a small trip. From beginning to end we were beset with so much discomfort that it turned out to be not a trip at all; it was a parody of an expedition.
First of all, it was pouring. It was muddy and slippery; everything you touched was soaking wet. Water leaked through our collars after running down our necks; our boots were cold and wet. To smoke a cigarette was a com- plicated, difficult affair which was accomplished only when we all helped one another. Near Derbinskoye we got into a rowboat and went down the Tym. On the way we stopped to inspect the fisheries, a water mill and plowland belong- ing to the prison. I will describe the fishing elsewhere; we all agreed the water mill was wonderful; and the fields were nothing special, being interesting only because they were so small; a serious homesteader would regard them as child's play.
The river was swift, and the four rowers and the steersman worked in unison. Because of the speed and frequent bends in the river, the scenery changed every minute. We were floating along a mountain taiga river, but all of its wild charms, the green banks, the steep hills and the lone motionless figures of the fishermen, I would have enthusiastically exchanged for a warm room and dry shoes, especially since the landscape was monotonous, not novel to me, and, furthermore, it was covered with gray, rainy mist. A. M. Butakov sat on the bow with a rifle and shot at wild ducks which were startled at our approach.
Northeast from Derbinskoye along the Tym there are only two settlements to date, Voskresenskoye and Uskovo. To settle the Tym up to its mouth would require at least thirty such settlements with ten versts between each of them. The administration plans to set up one or two every year, connecting them with a road which will eventually span the distance between Derbinskoye and Nyisky Bay. The road will bring life and stand guard over a whole series of settlements. As we came close to Voskresenskoye, a guard stood at attention, obviously expecting us. A. M. Butakov shouted to him that on returning from Uskovo we would spend the night there and that he should prepare more straw.
A little while later, the air was strongly permeated with the stench of rotting fish. We were approaching the Gilyak village of Usk-vo, the former name of the present Uskovo. We were met on shore by Gilyaks, their wives, children and bobtailed dogs, but our coming was not regarded with the same amazement as the corning of the late Polyakov. Even the children and the dogs looked at us calmly.
The Russian colony is two versts from the riverbank. In Uskovo the same conditions exist as in Krasny Yar. The street is wide with many tree trunks still to be uprooted, full of hillocks, covered with forest grass, and on each side stand unfinished huts, felled trees and piles of rubble. All new construction on Sakhalin gives the impression of having been destroyed by an enemy or else of being long since abandoned. Only the fresh, bright colors of the hut frames and the shavings give evidence that something quite opposite to destruction is taking place.
Uskovo has 77 inhabitants, 59 male and 18 female, 33 householders and 20 other persons—in other words, co- owners. Only nine have families. When the people of Uskovo gathered around the jail, where we were taking tea, and when the women and children, being more curious, came up from, the crowd looked like a gypsy camp. Among the women there were actually several dark-skinned gypsies with sly, hypocritically sorrowful faces, and almost all the children were gypsies. Uskovo has a few convict gypsies whose bitter fate is shared by their families, who followed them voluntarily. I was slightly acquainted with two or three of the gypsy women. A week before my arrival at Uskovo I had seen them in Rykovskoye with rucksacks on their backs begging at people's windows.8
The Uskovo inhabitants live very poorly. Only eleven desyatins of land are cultivated for grain and kitchen gardens—that is, almost one-fifth of a desyatin per home- stead. All live at government expense, receiving prison rations which are not acquired cheaply because they have to carry them on their backs over the roadless taiga from Derbinskoye.
After a rest, we set out at five o'clock in the afternoon on foot for Voskresenskoye. The distance is short, only six versts, but because of my inexperience in walking through the taiga I began to feel tired after the first verst. It was raining heavily. Immediately after leaving Uskovo we had to cross a stream about a sazhen wide on thin, crooked logs.
My companions crossed safely, but I slipped and got my boot full of water. Before us lay a long, straight road cut through the forest for a projected highway. There was literally not one sazhen which you could walk without being thrown off balance or stumbling: hillocks, holes full of water, stiff tangles of bushes or roots treacherously con- cealed under the water, and against these you stumble as against a doorstep. The most unpleasant of all were the windfalls and the piles of logs cut down in order to carve out the road. You climb up one pile, sweat, and go on walking through the mud, and then you find another pile of logs and there is no way of bypassing it. So you start climbing again, while your companions shout that you are going the wrong way, it should be either left or right of the pile, etc. At the beginning I tried not to get my other boot full of water, but soon 1 gave up and resigned myself to it. 1 could hear the labored breathing of the three settlers who were following behind, carrying our belong- ings. I was fatigued by the oppressive weather, shortness of breath and thirst. We walked without our service caps; it was easier.
The breathless general sat down on a thick log. We sat down beside him. \VIe gave a cigarette to each of the settlers, who dared not sit down.
"Well, it's hard going!"
"How many versts to Voskresenskoye?"
"Three more."
A. M. Butakov walked the most briskly. He had for- merly covered tremendous distances over the taiga and rundra, and a six-verst hike was nothing to him. He de- scribed his trip along the Poronay River and around Ter- peniya Bay. The first day you are exhausted, all your strength gone, the second day your entire body aches but it is already becoming easier to walk; on the third and fol- lowing days you feel you have sprouted wings, you are not walking but are being carried along by some unknown force, although your legs continue to get entangled in the merciless marsh grass and sruck in swamps.
Halfway it began to grow dark and soon we were sur- rounded by pitch darkness. I gave up hope that we would ever end our trip, and just groped ahead, splashing in water to my knees, and bumping inta logs. Here and there the will-a'-the-wisps gleamed and flickered; entire pools and tremendous rouing trecs were lit with phosphorescent colors and my boots were covered with moving sparks which shimmered like the glowworms on a midsummer night.
But, thank God, at last a light shone in from of us, and was not phosphorescent, but a real light. Someone shouted at us, and we answered. The warden appeared with a lantern. Across pools brighdy lit by his lantern, he came with large strides to lead us across the whole of Voskresen- skoye, which was barely visible in the darkness, until at last we reached his quartcrs.8
My companions had brought with them a change of clothing. When they reached the warden's quarters they hastened to change. But I had nothing with me, although I was literally soaked through. We drank some tea, talked a bit and wem to sleep. There was only one bed in the warden's quarters, and this was taken by the general, while we ordinary mortals wcm to sleep on straw heaped on the floor.
Voskrescnskoye is twice as large as Uskovo. Inhabitants, 183: 175 male and 8 female. There are 7 free families but not one lcgally married. There arc few children in the setdemem and only one litdc girl. It has 97 homesteaders and 77 co-owners.
Four years lacer L. I. Shrenk uaveled along the Tym to che eastern shore and back. He also journeyed during the winter when the river was covered with snow.
He is now dead. He died soon after his tour of Sakhalin. Judging from his hastily written and sketchy notes, he was a talented and erudite person. His articles include: "Journey on Sakhalin Island i 881-1882" (Letters to the Secretary of the Sociery) included in Vol. XIX of Reports of the Imperial Ruuian Geographical Society (1883); "Report on Explorations on Sa- khalin Island and in the Yuzhno-Ussuruysky Kray," Supplement
i 29
No. 6, Vol. XLVIII of Notes o/ the Imperial Academy of Science ( 1884); and "On Sakhalin," News ( 1885), No. 1.
With regard to this station, the guard acts somewhat like a former king toward his obligations, having nothing whatsoever to do with them.
A two-sazhen pole could not reach bottom at the river's mouth. A large boat could anchor in the bay. If shipping developed on the Okhotsk Sea near Sakhalin, ships would find calm and com- pletely safe anchorage in this bay.
Mining Engineer Lopatin saw the sea covered with ice here in the middle of June. The ice remained until July. The water in the teakettle froze on St. Peter's Day [June 29].
A novel written by the French novelist Victor Henri Ducange ( 1783-1853) .—TRANS.
The people of Sakhalin believe the insects and cockroaches come from the moss, which is brought from the forest and used here to caulk the dwellings. This belief arises from the fact that the insects and cockroaches appear in the chinks when they have barely finished caulking the walls. Obviously it is not due to the moss. The carpenters who sleep in the prison or in the settlers' huts bring the insects with them.
A writer who was on Sakhalin two years after me found an entire drove of horses near Uskovo.
It took us three hours to walk the six versts from Uskovo to Voskresenskoye. If the reader can imagine a hiker loaded down with flour, bacon and other government stores, or a sick person who must walk from Uskovo to Rykovskoye to the hospital there, he will understand the meaning of the common Sakhalin phrase, "There is simply no road." It is impossible to go by wagon or horseback. There have been occasions when those who attempted to go on horseback failed, because the horses broke their legs.
Rykovskoye - The Local Prison - The Meteorological Station of M. N. Galkin-Vrasky - Palevo - Mikryukov - Valzy and Longari - Malo-Tymovo - Andreye-lvanovskoye
in the upper reaches of the Tym River, especially in its southernmost watershed, we encountered a more developed life. Here, whatever else there is, the climate is warmer, nature's tints are softer, and starving, freezing man finds more favorable natural conditions than in the middle or lower reaches of the river. Here the scenery is remi- niscent of Russia. This resemblance, so enchanting and moving to the convict, is especially noticeable in the plain surrounding the Rykovskoye settlement. This is the admin- istrative center of the Tymovsk region, and the plain is about six versts wide. A low mountain range shelters it somewhat from the easternwinds, while in the west the spurs of a tremendous watershed show blue in the distance. There are no hills or elevations. It is a completely flat and familiar Russian plain with plowlands, meadows, pastures and green groves. Polyakov first saw it when the entire valley was covered with hillocks, pits and water-filled hol- lows, and with little lakes and rivulets flowing into the river Tym. He rode horseback, and his horse floundered through knee-high and breast-high swamps. Now the area has been completcly cleared and drained, and from Derbin- skoye to Rykovskoye there stretches an exemplary road, 14 versts long, amazing in its smoothness and straightness.
Rykovskoye, or Rykovo, was setded in 1878; it was hap- pily chosen and designated as the site of a setdement by the prison warden, a noncommissioned officer called Rykov. It is distinguished by its rapid growth, unusual even for a Sakhalin setdement. The area and population have quad- rupled in the past five years. At present it covers 3 square versts and contains 1,368 inhabitants: 831 male and 537 female. Including the prison and the military detach- ment, there are over 2,000 people. It does not resemble the Alexandrovsk Post. It is a small town, a small Babylon, containing gambling houses and even family bath houses maintained by a Jew. It is a real, raw Russian village with no pretensions to culmre.
As you ride or walk down the street, which stretches for three versts, you soon become bored with its monotonous length. Roads are not called slobodkas, Siberian fashion, as in Alexandrovsk, but streets, and the majority retain names given them by the settlers themselves. There is a Sizovskaya Street, so called from the hut of the woman settler Sizo- vaya which stands on the corner; there is a Khrebtovaya [Backbone] Street, and a Malorossyskaya [Little Russian] Street.
There are many Ukrainians living in Rykovskoye and therefore in no other settlement will you probably come across such exquisite surnames as: Zheltonog [Yellow Foot] and Zheludok [Stomach]. There are nine people called Bezbozhny [Godless]. Also Zaryvay [Buried], Reka [River], Bublyk [Doughnut], Sivokobylka [Gray Filly], Koloda [Fetter], Zamozdrya [Behind Mortared Walls], etc.
In the middle of the settlement there stands a wooden church, surrounded not with shops as in our villages but with prison buildings, offices and the officials' living quar- ters. As you walk across the square you seem to be on a noisy, happy fairground; you hear the loud voice of the Uskovo gypsies trading horses, you smell tar, manure and smoked fish, you hear lowing cows, and the shrieking of accordions mixed with drunken songs. But the peaceful scene comes to an end when you suddenly hear the clang of chains and the shuffling feet of the prisoners and guards making their way back to prison across the square.
Rykovskoye has 335 householders and 189 half-owners jointly working the homesteads. The half-owners consider themselves householders. There are 195 legally married families, and 91 cohabitants. The majority of the legal wives are free women who followed their husbands. There are i 55 of them. These figures are high, but they are no cause for joy or enthusiasm, for they promise little good. The large number of half-owners, those supernumerary householders, indicates the large proportion of deprived people who have no means or possibility to work their own homesteads. It shows how crowded and famished the place is.
The Sakhalin administration sets the people down on small plots of land without any order, giving no considera- tion to existing conditions and without looking to the future. Their methods of creating new setdements and homesteads are so inefficient that those which are in the comparatively favorable situation of Rykovskoye eventually come to present an appearance of vast poverty, as bad as Upper Armudan. With the existing amount of arable land in Rykovskoye, and under local conditions of productivity, assuming some possible profit, two hundred homesteads would be a magnificent accomplishment. In fact, there are over 500, including the supernumeraries, and yearly the administration continues to add to the number.
The prison in Rykovskoye is new. It is built like all Sakhalin prisons: wooden barracks, cell blocks, filth, dire poverty and discomfort, all those things which arc in their very nature inevitable in the gregarious existence within a Sakhalin prison. Recently, for reasons which are quite ob- vious, the Rykovskoye prison was beginning to be regarded as the best prison in Northern Sakhalin. For my own pur- poses, coo, it was better. I was obtaining information from prison records and employing the services of literate people in all the prisons of the region, and I could noc help notic- ing from the beginning that throughout the entire Tym area, especially in Rykovskoye, there were local clerks who were well trained and disciplined. They worked as though they had all attended a specialized school. The homestead lists and the alphabetical lists of settlers were in exemplary order. Later, when I visited the prison, I found the cooks and bakers and all the rest equally disciplined, and even the older jailers did not seem so satiated, so grossly stupid and so callous as those in Alexandrovsk or Due.
In the parts of the prison where cleanliness can be maintained, the rule of tidiness was obviously strictly ob- served. In the kitchen and the bakery, for example, the premises themselves, the very air, the furnishings, dishes and clothing of the employees are so immaculate that they would pass the most rigid sanitary inspection. Quite obvi- ously there is constant supervision for cleanliness, and this is done without any regard for expected visitors.
When I visited the kitchen they were cooking fish soup, a most unhealthy food, for the convicts get bad cases of intestinal flu from the migratory fish caught in the upper- most reaches of the river. Nevertheless, the entire process is so arranged that the convict would appear to receive the full amount of food to which he is entitled by law. Be- cause the work of supervisors, overseers and others inside the prison has attracted privileged exiles responsible for the quantity and quality of the food, I believe that the really terrible features do not arise, and that evil-smelling cabbage soup and bread made from clay are not possible here. I took several loaves of bread from the huge number being prepared and weighed them; and each weighed over three pounds.
The latrine here is constructed in the usual way: it is a cesspool, but it is not maintained in the same way as in other prisons. The demand for cleanliness is so strict that it is probably embarrassing for the prisoners; the latrine is warm, but has no odor. This is achieved by special ventila- tion described in the famous textbook of Professor Erisman and is brought about by an inverse draft.1
The warden of the Rykovskoye prison is Mr. Livin, a talented, experienced man, full of initiative. All the good things at the prison are mainly due to him. Unfortunately he is strongly partial to the use of birch rods, a circum- stance which once nearly cost him his life. A convict fell upon him with a knife, as upon a wild beast, with fatal results for the attacker. Mr. Livin's constant concern for the welfare of the people and his simultaneous wielding of birch rods, his ecstatic delight in corporal punishment, and other forms of brutality provide an entirely incongruous and inexplicable combination. Captain Ventzel in Garshin's Notes of Private Ivanov2 was obviously not a fantasy.
Rykovskoyc has a school, a telegraph office, a hospital and a meteorological station named after M. N. Galkin- Vrasky, unofficially in the charge of a privileged convict, a former midshipman who is marvelously industrious and kind. He is also the churchwarden. Not too much data has been gathered during the four years of the station's existence, but there is an obvious difference between the two northern districts. While the climate of the Alexan- drovsk district is coastal, the Tymovsk climate is conti- nental, although there are only 70 versts between the 2 stations. Temperature changes and the number of days with precipitation are not as marked in Tymovsk. The sum- mer is warmer, the winter more severe; the mean annual temperature is below zero, which is even lower than on Solovetsky Island.
The Tymovsky district is at a greater height above sea level than Alexandrovsk, but because the place is encircled with mountains and lies in a circular valley, it has an average of over 6o calm days and less than 20 days of bitter winds. A small difference is also evident in days with precipitation: Tymovsky has more—I 16 days of snow and 76 of rain. The amount of precipitation in both regions is quite different, almost by 300 millimeters; however, Alexandrovsk has the greater amount of humidity.
On July 24, 1889, a morning frost killed the Derbin- skoye potato blooms. On August 18, all the potato plants in the entire district were killed by frost.
South of Rykovskoye, on the site of a former Gilyak village called Palevo, on a tributary of the Tym bearing the same name, there stands the Palevo settlement, founded in 1886. A good country road leads from Rykovskoye over a flat plain along groves and fields which were very suggestive of Russia, perhaps because I came here during excellent weather. The road is 14 versts long. A telegraph and post road, projected some time ago from Rykovskoye to Palevo, will soon unite Northern and Southern Sakhalin. The road is now under construction.
Palevo has 396 inhabitants, 345 male and 51 female. It has 183 homesteaders and 137 co-owners, although the local conditions warrant no more than 50 home- steaders. It would be difficult to find another such settle- ment on Sakhalin containing so many varied and unfavor- able conditions for an agricultural colony.
The soil is pebbly. According to older people, the Tungus pastured their reindeer at the site of lower Palevo. The settlers also say that in ancient times it was a sea bottom, and the Gilyaks still find parts of ships in the area. Only 108 desyatins of land have been cultivated for pasture, gardens and meadows, while there are over 300 householders. There are only 30 adult females, one for every 10 males, and as though to emphasize the melancholy significance of this proportion with a joke, death recently visited Palevo and struck down 3 females in a few days.
Before their conviction, a third of the convicts were former city dwellers, and did no farming. Unfortunately the list of unfavorable conditions does not end here. For some reason, probably in order to iJlustrate the old proverb "A really unfortunate man will drown in a teacup," no other Sakhalin settlement has so many thieves as this greatly suffering, unlucky Palevo. Every night there are robberies; on the eve of my arrival three men were put in irons for stealing rye grain. Together with those who steal from hunger, Palevo also has many "mischief makers," who do harm because it amuses them. For no reason at all they will slaughter livestock at night, uproot unripened potatoes and break windowpanes. All this causes severe damage and brings ruin to the wretched, impoverished homesteads. What is even more serious is that it forces the population to live in constant fear.
The living conditions describe poverty and nothing else. The roofs are covered with bark and straw; there are no yards or outbuildings; 49 of the houses are still un- finished and have obviously been abandoned by the owners, 17 of whom have left in search of work.
When I visited the huts in Palevo I was constantly followed by a settler guard named Pskovich. I recall that I asked whether it was Wednesday or Thursday. He an- swered:
"I can't remember, your worship."
A retired quartermaster, Karp Yerofeyich Mikryukov, the oldest Sakhalin guard, lives in the prison house. He arrived in Sakhalin in 1860, when the Sakhalin penal col- ony was just being organized. Of all the people on Sakhalin he is the only one who could write its entire history. He is loquacious and answers questions with evident relish and, as is customary with old men, he talks at vast length. His memory is beginning to fail and he can recall accurately only events that happened in the remote past. His furnish- ings arc decem, completely homelike; he even has two oil paintings—one of himself, the other of his deceased wife wearing a flower at her breast. He was born in Vyatskaya gttberniya. He closely resembles the late writer Fct. He conceals his true age, says he is only sixty-one, but actually is over seventy. He took the daughter of a settler for his second wife; he has six children ranging from one to nine years of age with this young woman. The youngest is still breast-feeding.
My conversation with Karp Yerofcyich lasted past mid- night, and all the stories he told me were concerned with penal servitude and its heroes. He told me about the prison superintendent Selivanov who angrily smashed door locks with his fist and was eventually murdered by the convicts for his brutality.
When he went into the half of the house where his wife and children were sleeping, I went out on the street. It was a perfectly quiet, starry night. A watchman was knocking somewhere, and close by, a brook babbled. I stood for a long time and looked at the sky and then at the huts, and it seemed that it was due to some magic that I was 10,000 versts from home, somewhere in Palevo, at the end of the earth where no one can remember the days of the week, and where they really do not have to remember because it makes no difference whether it is Wednesday or Thurs- day . . . .
Farther south along the projected post road is the Valzy settlement, founded in 1889. It has forry men and not one woman. A week before my arrival in Rykovskoye, three families had been sent farther south to establish the Lon- gari settlement along one of the tributaries of the Poronaya River. I will leave these two settlements which have barely begun to exist to some other writer, who has the oppor- tunity to visit them over a good road and will be able to examine them closely.
To conclude my survey of the Tymovsk district settle- ments, there remain only two: the Malo-Tymovo and the Andreye-lvanovsko. Both are situated on the Malo Tym River, which starts near the Pilinga and falls into the Tym near Derbinskoye. The first, the oldest settlement in the Tymovsk district, was founded in 1877. Formerly, when they crossed the Pilinga, the road to the Tym crossed this settlement. It now has 190 inhabitants: I 1 I male and 79 female. Together with co-owners, there are 67 home- steaders. Previously Malo-Tymovo was the chief settle- ment and central part of what is now the Tymovsk district; today it has no great importance and resembles an un- important village where all life has come to a standstill. Its former importance is evident only in the small prison and in the house where the prison warden resides.
At present the post of prison warden is held by K., an intelligent and kindly young man from Petersburg who is obviously pining for Russia. The large prison quarters with their big, high-ceilinged rooms resounding with his solitary footsteps, and the wearisome days with nothing to do, oppress him to the point that he feels that he is himself in prison. Quite deliberately this young man rises early, at four or five o'clock in the morning. Then he drinks some tea and visits the prison—and then, what is there to do? He paces within the labyrinth, gazing at the oakum-packed wooden walls, then he paces some more, and pours out tea, and he hears nothing but his own footsteps and the wail- ing wind.
Malo-Tymovo has many old inhabitants. Among them I met the Tatar Furazhiyev, who had accompanied Polyakov to Nyisky Bay. He fondly recalls both Polyakov himself and the expedition.
One of the old men, Bogdanov, is probably interesting in the way he lives. He is a sectarian and a pawnbroker. He did not permit me to enter for a long time and after open- ing the door he expounded on the theme that all kinds of people are walking around—if you let them in they steal anything worthwhile.
The Andreye-lvanovsko settlement is named after a settler of the same name. It was settled in 1885 on a marsh. It has 382 inhabitants: 277 male and 105 female. Together with co-owners it has 2 3 i homesteaders, although, as in Palevo, 50 would be sufficient. The type of settlers is also unfortunate. As in Palevo there is a surplus of city folk and intelligentsia who have never farmed and there are many who arc not of the Orthodox faith: there are 47 Catholics, the same number of Muhammadans and i 2 Lutherans. Among the Orthodox arc a number of foreigners, including Georgians.3
Such a variegated population gives the settlement a riffraff character and prevents it from merging into an agricultural society.
At Rykovskoye prison the draft is achieved in the following way: stoves are lit in the structure over the cesspool, their interior doors hermetically sealed; the air current needed for combustion is obtained from the pit, which is connected to the stoves by a pipe. Thus all fetid gases rise from the pit into the stove and escape by the smokestack. The latrine itself is kept warm by means of the stoves; the air enters the pit through the seat aper- tures and thence into the smokestack. A match flame held at a toilet seat is noticeably drawn downward.
The story by Vsevolod Mikhailovich Garshin ( 1855-88) describes the experiences of a young volunteer in an infantry division during the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-78. Captain Vemzel was extremely brutal toward his men.—TRANS.
3 The former noblemen from Kutais, the brothers Alexey and Teymuras Chikovani, live here. There was a third brother, but he died of consumption. They have no furniture in their hut and only a featherbed lies on the floor. One of them is ill.
XJ A Projected District - The Stone Age - Was There Free Colonization? - The Gilyaks - Their Numerical Composition, Appearance, Physique, Food, Clothing, Dwellings, Hygiene - Their Character - Attempts at Their Russification - Orochi
both of the northern districts, as the reader may readily see from my survey of the settlements, cover an area equal to a small Russian district. It is impossible to compute the area of bath of them because there are no northern and southern boundaries. Between the administrative centers of bath districts, the Alexandrovsk Post and Rykovskoyc, there is a distance of 6o versts by the shorter route which crosses the Pilinga, while across thc Arkovskaya valley it is 74 versts. In this kind of country these arc large distances. Without considering Tangi and Vangi, even Palcvo is con- sidered a distant scttlcmcnt. Meanwhile the newly founded senlcmcnts to the south of Palcvo on thc Poronaya tribu- taries raise thc question of whether a new district will have to be cstablishcd.
As an administrative unit, a Sakhalin district corre- sponds to a Russian district. According to the Siberian way of thinking, this term can only be applied to a pastal dis- tance which cannot be traveled in under a month, as for example the Anadyrsky district. To a Siberian official working alone in an area of 200 to 300 versts, the break- ing up of Sakhalin inta small districts would be a luxury. The Sakhalin population, however, lives under exceptional conditions and the administrative mechanism is far more complicated than in the Anadyrsky district. The need to break up the penal colonies into small administrative units has been shown by experience, and this has proved, in addi- tion to other maners to be explained later, that the shorter the distances in the penal colony, the easier and more effec- tive is the administration. Also, a breakup into smaller districts has the effect of enlarging the number of offi- cials, and the result is an influx of new people who in- evitably have a beneficial influence on the colony. And so with a quantitative increase of intelligent people on the staff, there occurs a significant increase in quality.
When I arrived in Sakhalin I heard a great deal of talk about a newly projected district. They described it as the Land of Canaan, because the plan called for a road which would cross the entire region southward along the Poro- naya River. It was believed that the convicts at Due and Voyevodsk would be transferred to the new district, and these horrifying places would become nothing more than a memory. Also, the mines would be taken away from the "Sakhalin Company," which had long since broken its con- tract, and then the mines would be worked by convicts and settlers as a collective enterprise.1
Before completing my report on Northern Sakhalin, I feel I should discuss briefly a people who have lived here at different times and continue to live here outside the penal colony.
In the Duyka valley Polyakov found chipped obsidian knives, stone arrows, grinding stones, stone axes and other objects. He came to the conclusion that a people who did noc use metal lived in the Due valley in ancient times; they belonged to the Stone Age. Shards, the bones of dogs and bears, sinkers from large fishing nets, which were found in these formerly inhabited areas, indicate that they made pottery, hunted bear, went fishing and had hunting dogs. Clearly they derived flint from their neighbors on the main- land and on the neighboring islands, because flint does not exist on Sakhalin. Probably the dogs played the same role in their migration as they do now; they are used for draw- ing sleighs. In the Tym valley Polyakov found the remnants of primitive strucrures and crude weapons. He concluded that in Northern Sakhalin "it is possible for tribes to sur- vive on a relatively low level of intellectual development; the people who lived here for centuries developed ways to protect themselves from cold, thirst and hunger. In all probability these ancient people lived in relatively small communities and were not a completely settled people."
When sending Boshnyak to Sakhalin, Nevelskoy asked him to verify the rumor about people who had been left on Sakhalin by Lieutenant Khvostov and who had lived, according to the Gilyaks, on the Tym River.2
Boshnyak was successful in discovering traces of these people. In one Tym River settlement the Gilyaks exchanged four pages torn from a prayerbook for three arshins of nankeen cloth, saying the prayerbook had been the property of Russians who had once lived there. On the title page, in barely legible script, were the words: "We, Ivan, Danilo, Pyotr, Sergey and Vasily, were landed in the Aniva settle- ment of Tomari-Aniva by Khvostov on August 17, 1805. We moved to the Tym River in 1810 when the Japanese arrived in Tomari." Later, exploring the area where the Russians had lived, Boshnyak concluded that they had lived in three huts and cultivated gardens. The natives told him that the last of the Russians, Vasily, died recently, that they were fine people, that they went fishing and hunting with the natives and dressed native fashion except for cutting their hair. Elsewhere the natives informed him that two of the Russians had had children with native women. Today the Russians left by Khvostov on Northern Sakha- lin have been forgotten and nothing is known of their children.
Boshnyak adds that as a result of his constant inquiries concerning any Russians settled on the island, he learned from natives in the Tangi settlement that some thirty-five or forty years ago there had been a shipwreck, the crew were saved and they built themselves first a house and later a boat. They made their way across La Perouse to the Tatar Strait by boat and they were again shipwrecked near the village of Mgachi. This time only one man was saved. His name was Kemets. Not long afterward two Russians came from the Amur. Their names were Vasily and Nikita, and they joined Kemets and built themselves a house in
Mgachi. They hunted game professionally and traded with the Manchurians and Japanese.
One Gilyak showed Boshnyak a mirror supposedly given to his father by Kemets. The Gilyak would not sell the mirror at any price, saying that he was keeping it as a precious memento of his father's friend. Vasily and Nikita were terrified of the Tsar, and it is obvious that they had escaped from his prisons. All three died on Sakhalin.
The Japanese Mamia-Rinzo3 learned in 1808 on Sakha- lin that Russian boats often appeared on the western side of the island, and the piracy practiced by the Russians eventually forced the natives to expel one group of Russians and to massacre another. Mamia-Rinzo names these Rus- sians as Kamutsi, Simena, Momu and Vasire. "The last three," says Shrenk, "are easily recognizable as the Russian names Semyon, Foma and Vasily. Kamutsi is quite similar to Kemets," in his opinion.
This short history of eight Sakhalin Robinson Crusoes exhausts all the data concerning the free colonization of Northern Sakhalin. If the extraordinary fate of five of Khvostovs sailors, Kemets and the two refugees from prison resembles an attempt at free colonization, this at- tempt must be regardcd as insignificant and completely un- successful. The really important fact is that they all lived on Sakhalin for a long time, and to the end of their lives not one of them engaged in agriculture. They lived by fish- ing and hunting.
To round out the picture I must mention the local indigenous population—the Gilyaks. They live on the west- ern and eastern banks of Northern Sakhalin and along the rivers, especially the Tym.4
The villages are old; their names, mentioned in the writings of old authors, have come down without change. However, their way of life cannot be called completely settled, because a Gilyak feels no ties toward his birthplace or to any particular place. They often leave their yurts to practice their trades, and to wander over Northern Sakha- lin with their families and dogs. But as to their wander- ings, even when they are forced to take long journeys to the mainland, they remain faithful to the island, and the Sakhalin Gilyak differs in language and customs from the Gilyak living on the mainland no less than the Ukrainian differs from the Muscovite.
In view of this, it seems to me that it would not be very difficult to count the number of Sakhalin Gilyaks without confusing them with those who come for trading purposes from the Tatar shore. There would be no harm in taking a census of them every five to ten years; otherwise the im- portant question of the influence of the penal colony on their numbers will long remain open and will be solved in a quite arbitrary fashion.
According to data gathered by Boshnyak in 1856, there were 3,270 Gilyaks on Sakhalin. Fifteen years later Mitsul found only 1 ,500, and the latest data which I obtained from the prison copy of Statistical Records of Foreigners, 1889, showed there were only 320 Gilyaks in both regions. If these figures hold true, not one Gilyak will remain in tcn or fifteen years' time. I cannot judge the correctness of the figures given by Boshnyak and Mitsul, but the official figure of 320 can have no significance whatsoever. There are several reasons for this. Statistics on foreigners are cal- culated by clerks who have neither the educational back- ground nor the practical knowledge to do it, and they are given no instructions. When they gather information at the Gilyak settlements, they naturally conduct themselves in an overbearing manner. They are rude and disagreeable, in contrast to the polite Gilyaks, who do not permit an arro- gant and domineering attitude toward people. Because they are averse to any kind of census or registration, consider- able skill is needed in handling them. Also, the data is gathered by the administration without any definite plan, only in passing, and the investigator uses no ethnographic map but works in his own arbitrary fashion. The data on the Alexandrovsk district includes only those Gilyaks who live south of the Vangi settlement, while in the Tymovsky district they counted only those they found near the Rykov- skoye settlement. Actually they do not live in this settle- ment, but pass through it on their way to other places.
Undoubtedly the number of Sakhalin Gilyaks is con- scantly decreasing, and this judgment can be made simply by eye-counc. How large is this decrease? Why is it taking place? Is it because Gilyaks are becoming extinct, or be- cause they are moving co the mainland or farther north on the island? Due co the lack of actual statistics (and our figures on the destructive influence of Russian colonization can be based only on analogies) it is quite possible that up co the present day Russian influence has been insignificant, almost zero, since the Sakhalin Gilyaks live by preference along the Tym and the eastern shores of the island, which the Russian settlements have not yet reached.';
The Gilyaks are neither Mongols nor Tungus, but be- long to some unknown race which may once have been powerful and ruled all of Asia. Now, living out their last centuries on a small patch of land, they are only a small remnant. Yet they are a wonderful and cheerful people. Because of their unusual sociability and mobility, the Gil- yaks long ago succeeded in having relations with all the neighboring peoples, and so it is almost impossible to find a pure-blooded Gilyak without Mongol, Tungus or Ainu elements.
A Gilyak's face is round, flat, moonlike, of yellowish cast, with prominent cheekbones, dirty, with slanting eyes and a barely visible beard. His hair is smooth, black, wiry, gathered into a braid at the nape of the neck. His facial expression is not savage; it is always intelligent, gentle, naively attentive; he is either blissfully smiling or thought- fully mournful, like a widow. When he stands in profile with his sparse beard and braid, with a soft, womanish expression, he could be a model for a picture of Kuteykin,6 and it becomes almost understandable why some travelers regard the Gilyaks as belonging to the Caucasian race.
Anyone who wants to become thoroughly acquainted with the Gilyaks should consult an ethnographic specialist, L. I. Shrenk.7 I will limit myself to discussing some of the characteristics of local natural conditions, which may be useful as direct or indirect guidance for new colonists.
The Gilyak has a strong, stocky build, and he is of medium or short stature. Height would be of no advantage to him in the taiga. His bones are thick and distinguished by the strong development of his limbs from rowing and tramping over the hills. This exercise strengthens the muscles, and they indicate powerful musculature and a perpetual, intense struggle against nature. His body is lean, without fat. There are no stout or corpulent Gilyaks. All his fat is used for the warmth which a man on Sakhalin must generate in his body in order to compensate for the heat loss caused by the low temperature and the excessive humidity. It is understandable that a Gilyak should require a good deal of fat in his diet. He eats fatty seal meat, salmon, sturgeon and whale fat. He also eats rare meat in large quantities in raw, dry and frozen form, and because he eats coarse food his chewing muscles are unusually well- developed and all his teeth are badly worn. His food con- sists exclusively of meat but on rare occasions, at home or while carousing, they add Manchurian garlic or berries to their menus. According to Nevelskoy, the Gilyaks consider agriculture a grievous transgression; whoever plows the land or plants anything will soon die. But they eat the bread which the Russians introduced to them with relish, as a delicacy, and it is not unusual to see a Gilyak in Alex- androvsk or Rykovskoye carrying a loaf of bread under his arm.
The Gilyak's clothing has been adapted to the cold, damp and rapidly changing climate. In the summer he wears a shirt of blue nankeen or daba cloth with trousers of the same material. Over his back, as insurance against changing weather, he wears either a coat or a jacket made of seal or dog fur. He puts on fur boots. In winter he wears fur trousers. All this warm clothing is cut and sewn so as not to impede his deft and quick movements while hunting or while riding with his dogs. Sometimes, in order to be in fashion, he wears convict overalls. Eighty-five years ago Krusenstern saw a Gilyak dressed in a magnificent silk costume "with many flowers woven into it." Today you will not find such a peacock on Sakhalin if you search with a lamp.
As to Gilyak yurts, these again answer the demands of a damp and cold climate. There are both summer and win- ter yuns. The first are built on stilts, the second are dug- outs with timber walls having the form of a truncated pyramid. The outside is covered with sod. These
yuns are made of cheap material which is always at hand, and when the necessity arises they have no regret at leaving them. They are warm and dry, and are certainly far superior to the damp and cold huts made of bark in which our con- victs live when they are working on roads or in the fields. These summer yurs should positively be recommended for gardeners, charcoal makers, fishermen and all convicts and setders who work outside the prison and not in their homes.
Gilyaks never wash, with tne result that even ethnog- raphers find it difficult to ascertain the color of their skins. They never wash their underclothing, and their furs and boots look exactly as if they had just been stripped off a dead dog. The Gilyaks themselves exude a heavy, sharp odor and the close proximity of their dwellings is indi- cated by the foul, almost unbearable odor of drying fish and rotting fish wastes. Usually near every yurt there is a drying contrivance which is filled to the top with flanened fish, which from afar, especially in the sunshine, looks like strings of coral. Krusenstern found huge masses of tiny maggots an inch thick on the ground surrounding these fish driers. In the winter the yurts are full of pungent smoke issuing from the hearth. In addition, the Gilyak men, their wives and even the children smoke tobacco.
Nothing is known of the diseases and mortality of the Gilyaks, but it may be supposed that the unhealthy, un- hygienic circumstances are detrimental to their health. This may be the cause of their short stature, bloated faces, the sluggishness and laziness of their movements; and this is perhaps why the Gilyaks always have weak resistance to epidemics. The devastation on Sakhalin caused by smallpox is well known.
Krusenstern found twenty-seven houses on Sakhalin's northernmost point, between the Elizaveta and Maria capes.
In 1860, P. P. Glen, a participant in a wonderful Siberian expedition, found only traces of the settlement, while in other parts of the island, he tells us, he found evidence that there was once a considerable population. The Gilyaks told him that during the past ten years—i.e., after 1850— the population had been radically reduced by smallpox. It is certain that the terrible smallpox epidemics which dev- astated Kamchatka and the Kurile Islands did not bypass Sakhalin. Naturally this was not due to the virulence of the smallpox itself but to the Gilyaks' poor ability to resist it. If typhus or diphtheria are brought into the penal colony and reach the Gilyak yurts, the same effect will be achieved as by the smallpox. I did not hear of any epidemics on Sakhalin; it seems there were none for the past twenty years with the exception of an epidemic of conjunctivitis, which can be observed even now.
General Kononovich gave permission to the regional hospitals to accept non-Russian patients at government expense (Order No. 335, 1890). \'V'e have no exact ob- servations of Gilyak diseases, but some inferences can be drawn as to the causes of their diseases: dirtiness, exces- sive use of alcohol, intercourse with Chinese and Japanese,:; constant closeness to dogs, traumas, etc., etc.
There is no doubt they have frequent illnesses and require medical assistance, and if circumstances permit them to take advantage of the new order granting them admission to the hospitals, the local doctors will have the opportunity of studying them more closely. Medicine can- not arrest their yearly mortality, but perhaps the doctors may discover the circumstances under which our inter- ference with the lives of these people will be least harmful.
The character of the Gilyaks is described in different ways by different authors, but all agree that they are not aggressive, dislike brawls and quarrels, and live peacefully with their neighbors. \X'hen strangers appear, they are always suspicious and apprehensive; nevertheless, they greet them courteously, without any protest, and sometimes they will lie, describing Sakhalin in the worst possible light, hoping in this way to discourage strangers from the island. They embraced Krusenstern's companions, and when L. I. Shrenk became ill, the news quickly spread among the Gilyaks and evoked the deepest sympathy.
They lie only when they are trading or when speaking to someone they look upon with suspicion, who is there- fore in their eyes dangerous, but before telling a lie they always look at one another—a distinctive childish trait. All other lying and boasting in daily life, outside of trading, is repugnant to them.
The following incident occurred early one evening. Two Gilyaks, one with a beard and the other with a swollen feminine face, lay on the grass in front of a settler's hut. I was passing by. They called out to me and started begging me to enter the hut and bring out their outer clothing, which they had left at the settler's that morning. They themselves did not dare to go in. I told them I had no right to go into someone's hut in the absence of the owner. They grew silent.
"You are a politician?" asked the feminine-looking Gil- yak in bad Russian.
"No."
"That means you are a pishi-pishi?" [pisar means clerk] he said, seeing some paper in my hands.
"Yes, I write."
"How much salary do you get?"
I was earning about 300 rubles a month. I told them the figure. You should have seen the disagreeable and even painful expressions which my answer produced. Both Gilyaks suddenly grabbed their stomachs, and throwing themselves on the ground, they began rolling around exactly as though they had severe stomach cramps. Their faces expressed despair.
"How can you talk that way?" they said. "Why did you say such an awful thing? That's terrible! You shouldn't do that!"
"What did I say that was bad?" I asked.
"Butakov, the regional superintendent, well, he's a big man, gets 200, while you are not even an official—a clerk —amounts to nothing, and you get 300! You spoke un- truth! You shouldn't do that!"
I tried to explain that a regional superintendent re- mains in one place and therefore only gets 200 rubles. Although I am just a "pishi-pishi," I have come a long way—io,ooo versts away. My expenses are greater than Butakov's and therefore I need more money. This calmed the Gilyaks. They exchanged glances, spoke together in Gilyak, and stopped suffering. Their faces showed that they finally believed me.
"It's true, it's true!" said the bearded Gilyak briskly. "That's fine. You may leave now!"
"It's true," nodded the other. "You may go!"
When a Gilyak accepts an obligation, he fulfills it properly. There has never been a single case of a Gilyak dumping mail along the road or embezzling the property of others. Polyakov, who had dealings with Gilyak boatmen, wrote that they were most punctilious in fulfilling an obligation, and this is characteristic of them today when we find them unloading government freight for the prisons.
They are clever, intelligent, cheerful, brash, and arc never shy in the society of strong and rich men. They do not accept authority, and they do not even understand the meaning of "older" and "younger." In The History of Siberia, by I. Fisher, we read that the renowned Polyakov visited the Gilyaks, who were then "under no foreign domination." They have a word, dzhanchin, which denotes "your excellency," and they use it equally to a general or to a rich trader who has a great deal of nankeen and to- bacco. Seeing Nevelskoy's picture of the Tsar, they said he must be a strong man who distributes much nankeen and tobacco.
The commandant of the island possesses vast and ter- rifying powers. Nevertheless, when I was riding with him from Verkhny Armudan to Arkovo, a Gilyak had no com- punction about shouting at us imperiously: "Stop!" Then he asked if we had seen his white dog along the road.
As it is often said and written, Gilyaks have no respect for family seniority. A father does not believe he is senior to his son, and a son does not respect his father, but lives as he pleases. An old mother has no more authority in the yurt than a teen-age daughter. Boshnyak wrote that he often saw a son beat his mother and chase her out of the house and no one dared say a word against him. The male members of a family are equal to one another. If you treat Gilyaks to vodka, it must also be served to the very young- est males.
The females are equally without rights, whether it is a grandmother, mother or breast-fed baby girl. They are treated as domestic animals, as chattels, which can be thrown out, sold or kicked like a dog. The Gilyaks pet their dogs, but women—never. Marriage is considered nonsense— much less important, for example, than a drinking bout. It is not accompanied by any religious or superstitious rites. A Gilyak exchanges a spear, a boat or a dog for a young girl, drives her to his yurt and lies down with her on a bearskin—and that is all there is to it. Polygamy is per- mitted but is not widespread, although there are obviously more women than men. Contempt for women as for a lower creature or possession has come to such a pass that the Gilyak does not consider slavery, in the exact and coarse meaning of the word, as reprehensible. As Shrenk witnessed, the Gilyaks often bring Ainu women home with them as slaves. Plainly a woman is an object of barter, like tobacco or daba cloth. Strindberg, that famous misogy- nist, who thought women should be slaves of men's desires, follows the Gilyak pattern. If he happened to visit North- ern Sakhalin, they would embrace him warmly.
General Kononovich told me he wants to Russify the Sakhalin Gilyaks. I don't know why this is necessary. Fur- thermore, Russification had already begun long before the general's arrival. It began when some prison wardens, re- ceiving very small salaries, began acquiring expensive fox and sable cloaks at the same time that Russian water jars appeared in Gilyak yurts.9
As time passed, the Gilyaks were hired to help in track- ing down prisoners who escaped from the prison. There was a reward for capturing them, dead or alive. General
Kononovich ordered Gilyaks to be hired as jailers. One of his orders says this is being done because of the dire need for people who are well acquainted with the countryside, and to ease relations between the local authorities and the non-Russians. He told me personally that his new ruling is also aimed at their Russification.
The fim ones approved as jailers were the Gilyaks Vaska, Ibalka, Orkun and Pavlinka (Order No. 308, 1889). Later, Ibalka and Orkun were discharged "for continuous failure to appear at the administrative office to receive their orders," and they then approved Sofronka (Order No. 426, 1889). I saw these jailers; they wore tin badges and re- volvers. The most popular and the one who is seen most often is the Gilyak Vaska, a shrewd, sly drunkard. One day I went to the shop supported by the colonization fund and met a large group of the intelligentsia. Someone, pointing at a shelf full of bottles, said that if you drank them all down you would really get drunk, and Vaska smirked fawn- ingly, glowing with the wild joy of a tippler. Just before my arrival a Gilyak jailer on duty killed a convict and the local sages were concerned with only one question: whether he was shot in the chest or in the back—that is, whether to arrest the Gilyak or not.
That their proximity to the prison will not Russify but eventually alienate the Gilyaks does not have to be proved. They arc far from understanding our requirements, and there is scarcely any opportunity to explain to them that convicts are caught, deprived of their freedom, wounded and killed not because of caprice, but in the interests of justice. They regard this as coercion, a display of bestiality, and probably consider themselves as hired killers.10
If it is absolutely necessary to Russify them and if it cannot be avoided, I believe that when we choose our methods, our primary concern should not be our own needs, but theirs. The order permitting them to become patients in our hospitals, the distribution of aid in the form of flour and groats, as was done in 1886 when the Gilyaks were starving, and the order not to confiscate their property for debt, and the remission of their debts (Order No. 204, 1890), and all similar measures will probably achieve this aim more quickly than tin badges and revolvers.
In addition to the Gilyaks, there are a small number of Oroki, or Orochi, of the Tungus tribe living in Northern Sakhalin. Since they are barely heard of in the colony and since no Russian settlements exist in this area, I merely mention them here.
Among the orders issued by General Kononovich there is one which refers to the long-desired abolition of the Due and Voye- vodsk prisons:
"After inspecting the Voyevodsk prison I became personally convinced that neither the location nor the significance to be artached to the prisoners who are held in it—most of them are long-term convicts or else they are recidivists—can justify the conditions at thc prison, or, more accurately, the complete lack of supervision which has been characteristic of the prison from the beginning. The present situation is as follows: the prison stands in a narrow valley one and a half versts north of the Due Post. Communication with the post exists only along a shore road which is drowned by the tide twice every twenty-four hours, while com- munication over the mountains is difficult in the summer, and impossible in the winter. The prison warden lives in Due;so docs his assistant. The local garrison supplies the sentries and a number of convoy guards, and they are sent out on various jobs by arrangement with the "Sakhalin Company," which is stationed at the post. Meanwhile there are only a few jailers in the prison, and there is one guard, who is changed daily; the military authori- ties do not supervise him closely or over a long period of time. Without entering into a discussion of the circumstances which brought about the construction of a prison in such an unlikely locality, where there is no possibility of direct supervision, and before raising the question of whether the Due and Voyevodsk prisons should be abolished and moving them elsewhere, I must at least partially correct the existing deficiencies," etc. (Order No. 348, 1888).
See Davydov's The Two/old ]oumey to America of the Naval Officers Khvostov and Davydov, Written by the Latter. With a Foreuord by Shishkov (1810). In his foreword, Admiral Shishkov states that "Khvostov combined two opposed traits within his soul: the gentleness of a lamb and the ferocity of a lion." He says that Davydov "was more hot-tempered than Khvostov, but was his inferior in toughness and courage." This lamblike gendeness did not prevent Khvostov in 1806 from devastating Japanese ware- houses and capturing four Japanese on the shore of the Aniva in Southern Sakhalin. In 1807, together with his friend Davydov, he destroyed Japanese factories on the Kurile Islands and again pillaged Southern Sakhalin. These valiant officers fought against Japan without the government's knowledge and with full confi- dence in their impunity. They ended their lives in an unusual fashion. They were hurrying across a bridge in St. Petersburg at the moment when it was being raised, and they were drowned in the river Neva. Their exploits, which caused quite a sensation at the time, stimulated interest in Sakhalin society; it was discussed and, who knows, perhaps the destiny of this afflicted, terrifying island was even then predetermined. In his foreword Shishkov offers his unfounded belief that the Russians wanted to take pos- session of the island in the previous century and had actually organized a colony to achieve that purpose.
3 His work is called To-tats Ki Ko. I did not read it myself but used the quotations of L. I. Shrenk, the author of Non-Russians in the Amur Region.
• The Gilyaks live in small tribes on both banks of the lower Amur, beginning with Sofyska, then along the Liman, and along the adjacent bank of the Okhotsk Sea and in the northern section of Sakhalin. Existing historical records, dating back rwo hundred years, show no significant change in their boundaries. The pre- sumption is that Sakhalin was the Gilyak homeland and they later migrated to the nearest part of the mainland, neighboring the Ainu to the south, who were struggling against the Japanese, and also living close to the Japanese.
5 Sakhalin has an official Gilyak and Ainu translator. Since the translator does not know one word of Gilyak or Ainu, and most of the Gilyaks and Ainu do not understand Russian, this unneces- sary official may serve as a useful adjunct to the aforementioned inspector of the nonexistent Vedernikovsky way station. If there were an official who knew something about ethnography and sta- tistics instead of a translator, the matter would be handled far better.
0 Kuteykin was a character in the comedy The Semiliterate, by Denis Fonvizin ( 1745-92).—TRANS.
His excellent work Non-Russians in the Amur Region contains an ethnographic map and two drawings by Mr. Dmitriyev-Oren- burgsky. One of them depicts a Gilyak.
Our Amur non-Russians and those on Kamchatka were infected with syphilis by the Chinese and Japanese. It was not the fault of the Russians. One Chinese merchant, a great devotee of opium, toid me he has one babushka, or wife, living at home in China and another Gilyak babushka near Nikolayevsk. Under such con- ditions it is not difficult to infect the whole of the Amur and Sakhalin region.
The warden of the Due Post, Major Nikolayev, told a cor- respondent in 1866: "I don't have dealings with them in the summer, but in the winter I often buy furs from them and buy them quite cheaply. You can obtain a fine pair of sables for a bottle of vodka or a loaf of bread."
A correspondent was amazed at the huge number of furs he saw at the home of the major (see Lukashevich, "My Acquaint- ances in Due, on Sakhalin," The Kronstadt News, 1868, Nos. 47, 49). I will speak of this legendary major on a later occasion.
to They have no court and do not know the meaning of justice. How difficult it is for them to understand our way of life may be seen from the fact that they have not yet completely understood the purpose of roads. Even where roads have already been built, they continue to travel over the taiga. Often you will see them, their families and dogs laboriously making their way in single file through the marshes beside the road.
XII My Departure for the South - A jovial - The Western Shore - The Flux - Mauka - Krilon - Aniva - The Korsakov Post - New Acquaintances - A Northeaster - The Climate of Southern Sakhalin - The Korsakov Prison - The Fire Wagons
on september 10 I sailed on the Baikal, already famil- iar to the reader, for Southern Sakhalin. I departed with the greatest pleasure, because I was weary of the North and eager for new impressions. The Baikal cast anchor at ten o'clock at night. It was very dark. I stood alone on the stern, looking back and bidding farewell to that gloomy little world guarded from the sea by The Three Brothers, which could scarcely be discerned above the water, re- sembling in the darkness three black monks. Over the noise of the ship I could hear the waves smashing against the reefs.
Soon Zhonkiyer and The Three Brothers were left far behind, vanishing in the gloom, and I would never see them again. The roar of the breaking waves, expressing an impotent, evil yearning, slowly stilled. We had sailed eight versts when we saw fires gleaming. \VIe were passing the dreadful Voyevodsk prison; a little farther on we saw the fires of Due. But soon all this vanished, and all we could see was the darkness, and there was a horrible feeling as though we had come out of a terrifying nightmare.
Below deck I came upon a cheerful company. There were several passengers in the wardroom as well as the ship's commander and the officers. These were a lady, a young Japanese, a commissary official, the priest-monk Irakly, a Sakhalin missionary who was following me south so that we could travel to Russia together. The lady was the wife of a naval officer. She had fled from Vladivostok in fear of the cholera, and now, somewhat calmer, she was going back. She possessed an enviable character. For the simplest reason she would break out in the most sincere, joyful gales of lively laughter, leading to exhaustion, to tears. She starts explaining something in a guttural voice and suddenly she laughs, her joy bursting like a fountain, and, looking at her, I too begin laughing, and then Father Irakly laughs, and then it is the turn of the Japanese. Finally the commander says, "Well, now," and he also breaks out into laughter. Probably there has never been as much laughter on the normally angry Tatar Strait. The next morning we met on deck for conversation, the priest-monk, the lady, the Japanese and I. And again laughter; all that was needed was that the whales with their heads in the air should laugh when they saw us.
As though on purpose, the weather turned warm, calm and bright. To our left Sakhalin showed green, like a wil- derness in this primitive region not yet touched by the penal colony. On the right, in the clear, transparent air the Tatar shore could be dimly seen. Here the strait is more like a sea and the water is not so muddy as it is near Due. Here everything was more spacious and it was easier to breathe.
The lower third of Sakhalin corresponds geographically to France, and if it were not for the freezing currents, it would be a delightful country where others besides Shkan- dybas and Bezbozhnys would live.
The cold currents which wash both sides of Sakhalin flow down from the northern islands, where even at the end of summer there are ice floes. The eastern bank, being more open to the currents and the icy winds, takes the full brunt of the buffeting. Here nature is absolutely grim; the flora is polar. The western bank is more fortunate, for the influence of the cold current is softened by the warm Japanese current known as the Kuro-Sivo. There is no doubt that the farther south you go, the warmer it is, and the southern section of the western coast has comparatively far richer flora. Nevertheless, it is far from being like France or Japan.1
lt is remarkable that while the Sakhalin colonizers have been sowing wheat in the tundra for the past thirty-five years and building fine roads to places where only the low- est species of mollusks can survive, the warmest area of the island, the southern part of the western shore, is com- pletely disregarded. With or without binoculars you can see from the ship the fine timber forests and the sloping shores covered with bright-green grass, probably succulent, but there are no dwellings, and not a living soul in sight. On our second day out the commander called my attention to a small group of huts and sheds and said, "That is Mauka."
In Mauka the sea cabbage, which is eagerly bought by the Chinese, has been harvested for a long time. Since this is a serious business venture and has been profitable for many Russians and non-Russians, the location is very popular on Sakhalin. It is 400 versts south of Due at 47° latitude and enjoys a comparatively good climate. At one time the enterprise was in Japanese hands. In Mitsui's day there were 30 Japanese houses occupied by 40 in- habitants of both sexes. In the spring, another 300 persons arrived from Japan. They worked with the Ainus, who made up the main working population. Today the cabbage business is owned by a Russian trader, Semenov, whose son resides permanently in Mauka. The work is supervised by a Scotsman, Demby, an older man and obviously knowl- edgeable. He has a house in Nagasaki, Japan, and when I made his acquaintance and said I would probably be in Japan in the autumn, he kindly invited me to be his house guest.
ТЕЛЕГРАМКанал с обзорами, анонсами новинок и книжными подборками
Книжный Вестник
Бот для удобного поиска книг (если не нашлось на сайте)
Поиск книг
Свежие любовные романы в удобных форматах
Любовные романы
Детективы и триллеры, все новинки
Детективы
Фантастика и фэнтези, все новинки
Фантастика
Отборные классические книги
Классика
ВКОНТАКТЕБиблиотека с любовными романами, которая наверняка придётся по вкусу женской части аудитории
Любовные романы
Библиотека с фантастикой и фэнтези, а также смежных жанров
Фантастика
Самые популярные книги в формате фб2
Топ фб2
книги