Write Up the Notes
Write the parts that do not rely on field research, using the material from your readings, notes, and summaries; consult maps to describe how perceptions of an area have changed over time.
Letter to Alexei Suvorin, March 22, 1890
I have already started writing about Sakhalin. I have about five pages on the history of exploration. They have turned out quite well, perhaps even intelligent and authoritative. I have also made a stab at the geography, the degrees and latitudes and promontories.
In June 1787, the renowned French navigator Count de La Pйrouse landed on the western shore of Sakhalin, above the 48th parallel, and came into contact with the indigenous people. There, by his account, he found the Ainu had settled on the seashore, as well as the Ghiliak who had come to trade, and who had an excellent knowledge of Sakhalin and the Tartar coast. Drawing on the sand, they explained to him that the land they had settled was an island and that this island was separated from the continent and from Yezo (Japan) by several straits He expected that by sailing further north along the western shore, he would find a passage from the Sea of Japan into the Sea of Okhotsk, thereby significantly cutting the time it took to reach Kamchatka. As he progressed farther north, however, the strait became increasingly shallow, the depth decreasing by about seven feet per mile of distance. He continued north as long as his vessel permitted and, advancing to a depth of about eight fathoms, cast anchor. The gradual and regular rise in the level of the seafloor as well as the nearly imperceptible current suggested that they had entered a bay rather than a strait, and that an isthmus connected Sakhalin to the mainland. In De Castries, he again came into contact with the Ghiliaks. As he was making them a drawing to show how the island was detached from the mainland, one of the Ghiliaks took his pencil out of his hand and, tracing a line across the strait, indicated that the Ghiliaks occasionally dragged their boats across the isthmus, which, moreover, was sometimes even covered with grass, as La Pйrouse understood them to be saying. This convinced the navigator even more firmly that Sakhalin was a peninsula.9
In 1710, under order of the Chinese emperor, missionaries from Beijing produced a map of Tartaria that could only have been based on Japanese maps, since at the time only the Japanese knew the Tartar straits to be navigable. This information was relayed to France and was disseminated through the atlas of the geographer D'Anville.10
THE REPORT
The mind of a scientist is always placed, as it were, between two observations: one which serves as a starting point for reasoning, and the other which serves as conclusion.
—claude bernard
Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine (1865)
prerequisites
Good Shoes
Do not scrimp on boots.
Letter to Maria Chekhova, May 14—17, 1890
I think going barefoot must be better than wearing cheap boots. You cannot imagine my suffering! Now and then, I crawl out of my carriage, get down on the wet ground, and pull off my boots to give my heels a break. A rare pleasure in the freezing cold! I ended up buying felt boots1 in Ishim.. .and wore them until they fell apart from the damp and the mud
We set off.... Mud, rain, a piercing cold wind.. .and felt boots on my feet. Do you know what felt boots are like when they are wet? Gelatin. We drive along and suddenly right in front of my eyes there is a huge lake with a few patches of land and some bushes sticking out here and there—and this turns out to be flooded grasslands. Across the far horizon stretches the steep bank of the Irtys River; it's white with snow.... We start across the lake. We ought really turn back, but one of those fits of obstinacy comes over me, just like the time in the middle of the Black Sea when I dove off the yacht and all those other times when my stubborn streak made me do all sorts of stupid things
At last, we reach a tiny island on which there is a little hut without a roof.. There are wet horses shuffling in the wet manure. A peasant comes out of the hut with a long pole in his hand and offers to show us the way.. He uses the pole to sound the depth of the water and test the footing. . God grant him health..
We continue on our way. . My boots are wetter than a toilet and make a snuffling sound, like socks blowing their noses.
Notebook
Always keep a notebook on hand to jot down facts, observations, turns of phrase, and to record statements and interviews.
The prison is badly ventilated, and there is little air for each inmate. My diary entry reads: "Barrack No. 9. Volume of air—1,309 cubic feet. There are 65 inmates." And this in the summer, when only half the inmates spend the night in- doors.2
[A compulsive card player] told me that when he is playing shtoss3 he feels "electricity in his veins"; the tension cramps his hands. He loves to reminisce about how as a young man he won a watch from the chief of police. Talking about shtoss fills him with rapture. I remember he pronounced the word "Missed!" with the despair of a hunter whose gun misfired. I have noted down some of his expressions for the benefit of amateurs: "Transport's done! Ready! Arm! A ruble a point! Aim! Color and suit! Artillery: fire!"
When I appeared before the Governor General with paper in hand, he proceeded to outline for me his views on the Sakhalin penal system and colony and proposed I take down everything he said, which I, of course, most readily agreed to do. He suggested I give the following title to the notes: "A Description of the Life of the Unfortunates." Everything he said in our last conversation and what he dictated to me persuaded me that while he might have been a magnanimous and noble human being, he knew less about the "life of the unfortunates" than he gave himself credit for knowing. Here, for example, are some examples of his observations: "No one is deprived of the hope of becoming fully enfranchised; there is no life imprisonment. An indefinite sentence is limited to twenty years. Penal labor is not oppressive. It is not because it is physically difficult, but because it gives the worker no personal gain that involuntary labor is oppressive. There are no chains, no guards, no shaved heads."
Be Ready to Revise Your Opinions
Be ready to revise opinions based on readings and expectations.
I had read a great deal about the gales and the ice floes in the Tatar Strait, and so on board the Baikal I expected to meet hoarse whalers spitting tobacco juice with every word. In fact, the people I met were quite cultivated. Mr. L, the ship's captain, a native of a western country, had been sailing in the northern seas for over thirty years and had crossed them from end to end. He has seen many marvelous things in his time, knows a great deal, and has a most interesting way of telling stories. After half a lifetime of sailing around Kamchatka and the Kurile Islands, he can compete with Othello in speaking of "Tempests themselves, high seas, and howling winds, / The gutter'd rocks and congregated sands."4 I owe him a considerable debt for much of the information contained in these notes. He had three assistants: a Mr. B, nephew of the famous astronomer B, and the Swedes Ivan Martynich and Ivan Veniaminych, both fine and affable men.