Keep Your Eyes Open
On the road, pay attention to everything.
I traveled the two versts9 between the harbor and the Alek- sandrovsk Post on a superlative road. In comparison with Siberian roads, this clean, smooth highway—with ditches and lampposts—is an utter luxury. Alongside it runs the railway. The natural landscape, however, is striking in its bareness. The mountaintops and hills flanking Aleksandrovsk Valley through which the Duyka River flows bristle with charred stumps and larches killed by the wind and the fires that project like porcupine quills, while down below, in the valley, hummocks and sorrel are all that remains of the once impassable swamps. The freshly dug ditches expose muddy, scorched soil with a paltry half-inch of chernozem110 still clinging to it. Not a spruce, oak, or maple in sight: there are only larches—emaciated, pitiful, and gnawed-looking—those same larches that in Russia ornament woodlands and parks, and here signal the presence of poor, marshy soil and a harsh climate. The Aleksandrovsk Post, or Aleksandrovsk for short, is a small, attractive town of the Siberian type, with a population of some three thousand. It has no stone structures; everything—the church, houses, and sidewalks—is made of wood, mainly larch. Here is the island commandant's residence, the very center of Sakhalin civilization. The prison is situated close to the main street; from the outside, it resembles an army barracks, which is chiefly why Aleksan- drovsk lacks that gloomy prison atmosphere that I expected to find here.
Go on Excursions
Travel by foot, in company, and make detours.
On August 27, General Kononovich arrived. He was accompanied by the director of the Tymovsk district and another official, a young man. All three were intelligent and interesting people. The four of us ventured on a short excursion, which, however, entailed so much discomfort that it felt more like a parody of an expedition than an actual excursion. To begin with, it was pouring rain. The footing was muddy, slippery; everything one touched was wet. Water seeped inside our collars and down our backs. Our boots were cold and wet. Lighting a cigarette turned out to be a complicated, difficult undertaking that required the combined efforts of the entire group. We got into a boat near Debrinskoye and set off down the Tym River. . The current ran swift. The four rowers and the steersman worked in harmony. Thanks to the speed and the frequent bends in the river, the scenery changed every minute. We were carried along on a mountain taiga river, but I would gladly have exchanged its wild charms, green banks, steep hills, and the motionless forms of the fishermen for a warm room and a pair of dry boots, especially since the scenery ended up being monotonous and offered me nothing novel, and, to make matters worse, was shrouded in a gray, rainy mist. A. M. Butakov sat in front with his rifle and kept taking shots at the wild ducks that we startled by our passage.
.. .Shortly after this, there came a ferocious stench of rotting fish. We were approaching the Ghiliak village Usk-vo, now called Uskovo. On the bank we were met by Ghiliak men, their wives, children, and dock-tailed dogs, none of them showing the sort of amazement that the late Polyakov's arrival had produced. Even the dogs and the children looked at us with complete indifference.
.After a rest, at about five in the afternoon, we set off to walk back to Voskresenskoye. The distance was insignificant, some six versts in all, but because of my inexperience with walking in the taiga, I was fatigued after only the first mile. A heavy rain kept falling. Right after leaving Uskov we had to negotiate a stream about ten feet wide spanned by three narrow, crooked logs; everyone managed to cross, but I slipped and water got into my boot. Ahead of us, through the forest, lay a long, straight cut for the future road. It was impossible to make one's way without losing one's balance or stumbling: hillocks, holes full of water, bushes as stiff as wire, roots lurking under the water to trip one up like a doorstep, and— worst and most annoying of all—the windthrow and the piles of logs that had been cut down for the road. You conquer one heap, drenched with sweat, and slog on through the swamp, and then another pile looms up ahead of you, and there's no getting around this one and as you're hauling yourself up the side your companions start shouting that you're going the wrong way, you should take a left or a right around the pile, etc. At first, I tried to focus on keeping my other boot dry, but then decided to give it up and resigned myself to whatever chance might throw my way. I could hear the labored breathing of the three colonists struggling to keep up with us as they hauled our belongings. The suffocating
weather, the shortness of breath, the thirst were oppressive
We took off our caps to make the going easier.
Wheezing, the general lowered himself on a large log. We sat down beside him. We offered each of the colonists a cigarette, but they did not dare sit.
"Phew! It's hard going!"
"How many miles to Voskresenskoye?"
"Two maybe."
.Halfway there, we noticed the light was starting to fade and soon we were in total darkness. I despaired of seeing the end of the excursion and made my way by feel, blundering through knee-high water and stumbling over logs. Here and there, will-o'-the-wisps flickered and glimmered around my companions and me; pools of water and huge rotting trees glowed with phosphorescent light, and my boots sparkled with moving specks that shone like fireflies.
At last, praise God, a light—not phosphorescence, but an actual light—appeared far ahead of us. Someone shouted, we shouted back; the warden came into view carrying a lantern. He took big strides across the pools, the water reflecting his lantern, and guided us to his warden's hut across the whole of Voskresenskoye, now barely visible in the dark.11 My companions had brought a change of clothing, which they put on as soon as we reached the warden's hut. I, however, though literally soaked to the bone, had nothing dry. We filled up on tea, chatted, and then bedded down for the night. There was only one bed in the hut and the general took it, while we mere mortals stretched out on the hay that was piled up on the floor.
Get Help
Get help, especially when you lack the power or the resources for doing something on your own.
I was tired or maybe just lazy and was not working as hard in the south as I had been in the north. I often spent whole days hiking and going on picnics, and no longer felt like visiting huts, so whenever anyone kindly offered help, I did not refuse it. I made my first trip to the Okhotsk Sea in the company of a Mr. Bely, who wanted to show me his region. Later, when conducting my census, I always had the company of the settlement inspector N. N. Yartsev.