George Kennan

“ To be awakened in the morning by a paroxysm of coughing, caused by the thick, acrid smoke of a low-spirited fire—to crawl out of a skin bedroom six feet square into the yet denser and smokier atmosphere of the tent—to eat a breakfast of dried fish, frozen tallow, and venison out of a dirty wooden trough, with an ill-conditioned dog standing at each elbow and disputing one's right to every mouthful, is to enjoy an experience which only Korak life can afford, and which only Korak insensibility can long endure. ”

“ Mikina was only a copy of Kamenoi on a smaller scale. It had the same hour-glass houses, the same conical balagáns elevated on stilts, and the same large skeletons of sealskin baideras (bai'-der-ahs') or ocean canoes were ranged in a row on the beach. We climbed up the best-looking yurt in the village—over which hung a dead disembowelled dog, with a wreath of green grass around his neck—and slid down the chimney into a miserable room filled to suffocation with blue smoke, lighted only by a small fire on the earthen floor, and redolent of decayed fish and rancid oil. ”

“ Leaving our drivers to get the reindeer and sledges across as best they could, the Major, Dodd, and I started on foot, picking our way between huge irregular blocks of clear green ice, climbing on hands and knees over enormous bergs, falling into wide, deep crevices, and stumbling painfully across the chevaux-de-frise of sharp splintered fragments into which the ice had been broken by a heavy sea. We had almost reached the other side, when Dodd suddenly cried out, "Oh, Kennan! Your nose is all white; rub it with snow—quick!" ”

“ Leet himself was ready to admit that this storm on the Viliga would not compare unfavourably with anything of the kind that he had ever seen in California. As we rounded the end of a protecting bluff on the edge of the ravine, the gale burst upon us in all its fury, blinding and suffocating us with dense clouds of driving snow, which blotted out instantly the sun and the clear blue sky, and fairly darkened the whole earth. The wind roared as it sometimes does through the cordage of a ship at sea. ”

“ CHAPTER XXX AN ARCTIC AURORA—ORDERS FROM THE MAJOR—ADVENTURES OF MACRAE AND ARNOLD WITH THE CHUKCHIS—RETURN TO GIZHIGA—REVIEW OF WINTER'S WORK Among the few pleasures which reward the traveller for the hardships and dangers of life in the Far North, there are none which are brighter or longer remembered than the magnificent auroral displays which occasionally illumine the darkness of the long polar night, and light up with a celestial glory the whole blue vault of heaven. No other natural phenomenon is so grand, so mysterious, so terrible in its unearthly splendour as this. ”

“ In the hut of a Christianised but ignorant native near Anadyrsk, I once saw an engraved portrait, cut from Harper's Weekly, of Major General Dix, framed, hung up in a corner of the room and worshipped as a Russian saint! A gilded candle was burning before his smoky features, and every night and morning a dozen natives crossed themselves and said their prayers to a major-general in the United States Army! It is the only instance, I believe, on record, where a major-general has been raised to the dignity of a saint without even being dead. ”

“ The traveller at first sight imagines that driving a dog-sledge is just as easy as driving a street-car, and at the very first favourable opportunity he tries it. After being run away with within the first ten minutes, capsized into a snow-drift, and his sledge dragged bottom upward a quarter of a mile from the road, the rash experimenter begins to suspect that the task is not quite so easy as he had supposed, and in less than one day he is generally convinced by hard experience that a dog-driver, like a poet, is born, not made. ”

“ You may sit by your open window and read until twelve o'clock, inhaling the fragrance of flowers which is brought to you on the cool night wind, listening to the murmur and plash of the river in the valley below, and tracing the progress of the hidden sun by the flood of rosy light which streams up in the North from behind the purple mountains. It is broad daylight, and yet all Nature is asleep, and a strange mysterious stillness, like that of a solar eclipse, pervades heaven and earth. You can even hear the faint roar of the surf on the rocky coast ten miles away. ”

“ Winter in most parts of north-eastern Siberia begins to break up in May, and summer advances with rapid strides upon its retreating footsteps, covering instantly with grass and flowers the ground that it reclaims from the melting snow-drifts of winter. Hardly is the snow off the ground before the delicate wax-like petals of the blueberry and star-flower, and the great snowy clusters of labrador tea begin to whiten the mossy plains ”

“ At Kuil, on the coast of Penzhinsk Gulf, I was compelled to leave my good-humoured Cossacks and take for drivers half a dozen stupid, sullen, shaven-headed Koraks, and from that time I was more lonesome than ever. I had been able to talk a little with the Cossacks, and had managed to pass away the long winter evenings by the camp-fire in questioning them about their peculiar beliefs and superstitions, and listening to their characteristic stories of Siberian life; but now, as I could not speak the Korak language, I was absolutely without any resource for amusement. ”

“ Sometimes we bivouacked at night in a wild mountain gorge and lighted up the snow-laden forest with the red glare of a mighty camp-fire; sometimes we shovelled the drifted snow out of one of the empty yurts, or earth-covered cabins, built by the government along the route to shelter its postilions, and took refuge therein from a howling blizzard. Hardened as we were by two previous winters of arctic travel, and accustomed as we were to all the vicissitudes of northern life, the crossing of the Stanavoi range tried our powers of endurance to the uttermost. ”

“ No daily paper, with its fresh material for thought and discussion, comes to enliven the long blank evenings by the tent fire; no wars or rumours of wars, no coup d'état of diplomacy, no excitement of political canvass ever agitates the stagnant intellectual atmosphere of Korak existence. Removed to an infinite distance, both physically and intellectually, from all of the interests, ambitions, and excitements which make up our world, the Korak simply exists, like a human oyster, in the quiet waters of his monotonous life. ”

“ It would seem like a preposterous idea to invite people to dance the Russian jig in a room which was too low to permit a man of average stature to stand upright; but it did not seem at all so to these enthusiastic pleasure-seekers in Gizhiga, and night after night they would go hopping around a seven-by-nine room to the music of a crazy fiddle and a two-stringed guitar, stepping on one another's toes and bumping their heads against the ceiling with the most cheerful equanimity imaginable. ”

“ Surrounding the tent in every direction were the deer belonging to the band, some pawing up the snow with their sharp hoofs in search of moss, others clashing their antlers together and barking hoarsely in fight, or chasing one another in a mad gallop over the steppe. Near the tent a dozen men with lassos arranged themselves in two parallel lines, while twenty more, with a thong of sealskin two or three hundred yards in length, encircled a portion of the great herd, and with shouts and waving lassos began driving it through the narrow gantlet. ”

“ Eight months of nomadic camp life had given us a taste for adventure and excitement which nothing but constant travel could gratify, and as soon as the first novelty of idleness wore off we began to tire of our compulsory inactivity, and became impatient for work. We had exhausted all the amusements of Gizhiga, read all the newspapers which had been brought by the Jackson, discussed their contents to the minutest details, explored every foot of ground in the vicinity of the settlement, and tried everything which our ingenuity could devise to pass away the time, but all to no avail. ”

“ Bells jangled incessantly from the church tower; dog-sledges, loaded with girls, went dashing about the streets, capsising into snow-drifts and rushing furiously down hills amid shouts of laughter; women in gay flowery calico dresses, with their hair tied up in crimson silk handkerchiefs, walked from house to house, paying visits of congratulation and talking over the arrival of the distinguished American officers; crowds of men played football on the snow, and the whole settlement presented an animated, lively appearance. ”

“ The arrival of a ship in that remote and unfrequented part of the world is an event of no little importance; and the rattling of our chain cable through the hawse-holes created a very perceptible sensation in the quiet village. Little children ran bareheaded out of doors, looked at us for a moment, and then ran hastily back to call the rest of the household; dark-haired natives and Russian peasants, in blue shirts and leather trousers, gathered in a group at the landing; and seventy-five or a hundred half-wild dogs broke out suddenly into a terrific chorus of howls in honour of our arrival. ”

“ The mist, which for a week had hung in grey clouds around the mountains, had now vanished, and the first object which met my eyes through the open door of the tent was the great white cone of Villuchinski gleaming spectrally through the greyness of the dawn. As the red flush in the east deepened, all nature seemed to awake. Ducks and geese quacked from every bunch of reeds along the shore; the strange wailing cries of sea-gulls could be heard from the neighbouring coast ”

“ Alone and almost unsheltered on a great ocean of snow, each man squats down in his frail beehive of a hut, and spends the long winter nights in watching the magnificent auroras, which seem to fill the blue vault of heaven with blood and dye the earth in crimson, listening to the pulsating of the blood in his ears and the faint distant howls of his enemies the wolves. Patiently he endures cold which freezes mercury and storms which sweep away his frail shelter like chaff in a mist of flying snow. ”

“ In three weeks after the disappearance of the last snow all Nature has put on the garments of midsummer and rejoices in almost perpetual sunshine. There is no long wet, lingering spring, no gradual unfolding of buds and leaves one by one as with us. The vegetation, which has been held in icy fetters for eight long months, bursts suddenly its bonds, and with one great irresistible sweep takes the world by storm. There is no longer any night ”

“ A little to the right was the huge volcano of Avacha, with a long banner of golden smoke hung out from its broken summit, and the Raselskoi (rah'-sel-skoi) volcano puffing out dark vapour from three craters. Far down the coast, thirty miles away, stood the sharp peak of Villúchinski, with the watch-fires of morning already burning upon its summit, and beyond it the hazy blue outlines of the coast range. Shreds of fleecy mist here and there floated up the mountain sides, and vanished like the spirits of the night dews rising from earth to heaven in bright resurrection. ”

“ Amid loud rumblings, and dull reverberations from the interior, the molten lava began to flow in broad fiery rivers down the snow-covered mountain side, until for half the distance to its base it was one glowing mass of fire which lighted, up the villages of Kristi, Kazerefski, and Kluchei like the sun, and illuminated the whole country within a radius of twenty-five miles. This eruption is said to have scattered ashes over the peninsula for three hundred versts to a depth of an inch and a half. ”

“ Everything that you see or touch bears the distinguishing marks of Korak origin—grease and smoke. Whenever any one enters the yurt, you are apprised of the fact by a total eclipse of the chimney hole and a sudden darkness, and as you look up through a mist of reindeer hairs, scraped off from the coming man's fur coat, you see a thin pair of legs descending the pole in a cloud of smoke. ”

“ For the past two weeks we have been sailing continually in a dense, wet, grey cloud of mist, so thick at times as almost to hide the topgallant yards, and so penetrating as to find its way even into our little after-cabin, and condense in minute drops upon our clothes. It rises, I presume, from the warm water of the great Pacific Gulf Stream across which we are passing, and whose vapour is condensed into fog by the cold north-west winds from Siberia. It is the most disagreeable feature of our voyage. ”

“ At the sight of two swarthy strangers in blue hunting-shirts, top-boots, and red caps, with pistols belted around their waists, and knives dangling at their girdles, charging down upon them like Mamelukes at the battle of the Pyramids, the poor Kamchadals flung away their axes and fled for their lives to the woods. Except when I was dragged off my horse, we never once drew rein until our animals stood panting and foaming in the village. If you wish to draw a flash of excitement from Dodd's eyes, ask him if he remembers the steeplechase to Sidanka. ”

“ You think nothing can be more beautiful than the delicate tender colour, like that of a wild-rose leaf, which tinges its snows as the sun sinks in a swirl of red vapours in the west; but "visit it by the pale moonlight," when its hood of mist is edged with silver, when black shadows gather in its deep ravines and white misty lights gleam from its snowy pinnacles, when the host of starry constellations seems to circle around its lofty peak, and the tangled silver chain of the Pleiades to hang upon one of its rocky spires—then say, if you can, that it is more beautiful by daylight. ”

“ Every detail of the scene is strange, wild, arctic,—even to the fur-clad, frost-whitened men who come riding up to the tents astride the shoulders of panting reindeer and salute you with a drawling "Zdar-o-o-va!" as they put one end of their balancing poles to the ground and spring from their flat, stirrupless saddles. You can hardly realise that you are in the same active, bustling, money-getting world in which you remember once to have lived. ”

“ By stopping where we were, breaking up one of our sledges for firewood, and boiling a little tea, I thought that Dodd might be revived; but to go on to the eastward seemed to be needlessly risking the lives of all without any apparent prospect of discovering the party or of finding wood. I had just given the order to the natives nearest me to camp, when I thought I heard a faint halloo in the distance. All the blood in my veins suddenly rushed with a great throb to the heart as I threw back my fur hood and listened. ”

“ The unvarying routine of our daily life in smoky Korak tents, and the uniform flatness and barrenness of the country over which we journeyed, became inexpressibly tiresome, and we looked forward in longing anticipation to the Russian settlement of Gizhiga, at the head of Gizhiginsk Gulf, which was the Mecca of our long pilgrimage. To spend more than a week at one time with the Wandering Koraks without becoming lonesome or homesick, requires an almost inexhaustible fertility of mental resource. One is thrown for entertainment entirely upon himself. ”

“ The entire population of the village, men, women, and children, turned out to see us off, and the street before the priest's house was blocked up with a crowd of dark-faced men in spotted fur coats, scarlet sashes, and fierce-looking foxskin hoods, anxious-faced women running to and fro and bidding their husbands and brothers good-bye, eleven long, narrow sledges piled high with dried fish and covered with yellow buckskin and lashings of sealskin thongs, and finally a hundred and twenty-five shaggy wolfish dogs, who drowned every other sound with their combined howls of fierce impatience. ”

“ A dense mist or steam, which is an unfailing indication of intense cold, rose from the bodies of the reindeer and hung over the road long after we had passed. Beards became tangled masses of frozen iron wire; eyelids grew heavy with white rims of frost and froze together when we winked; noses assumed a white, waxen appearance with every incautious exposure, and only by frequently running beside our sledges could we keep any "feeling" in our feet. Impelled by hunger and cold, we repeated twenty times the despairing question, "How much farther is it?" ”