Tent Life in Siberia. George F. Kennan
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condensed into fog by the cold north-west winds from Siberia. It is the most disagreeable feature of our voyage.
Our life has finally settled down into a quiet monotonous routine of eating, smoking, watching the barometer, and sleeping twelve hours a day. The gale with which we were favoured two weeks ago afforded a pleasant thrill of temporary excitement and a valuable topic of conversation; but we have all come to coincide in the opinion of the Major, that it was a "curious thing," and are anxiously awaiting the turning up of something else. One cold, rainy, foggy day succeeds another, with only an occasional variation in the way of a head wind or a flurry of snow. Time, of course, hangs heavily on our hands. We are waked about half-past seven in the morning by the second mate, a funny, phlegmatic Dutchman, who is always shouting to us to "turn out" and see an imaginary whale, which he conjures up regularly before breakfast, and which invariably disappears before we can get on deck, as mysteriously as "Moby Dick." The whale, however, fails to draw after a time, and he resorts to an equally mysterious and eccentric sea-serpent, whose wonderful appearance he describes in comical broken English with the vain hope that we will crawl out into the raw foggy atmosphere to look at it. We never do. Bush opens his eyes, yawns, and keeps a sleepy watch of the breakfast table, which is situated in the captain's cabin forward. I cannot see it from my berth, so I watch Bush. Presently we hear the humpbacked steward's footsteps on the deck above our heads, and, with a quick succession of little bumps, half a dozen boiled potatoes come rolling down the stairs of the companionway into the cabin. They are the forerunners of breakfast. Bush watches the table, and I watch Bush more and more intently as the steward brings in the eatables; and by the expression of Bush's face, I judge whether it be worth while to get up or not. If he groans and turns over to the wall, I know that it is only hash, and I echo his groan and follow his example; but if he smiles, and gets up, I do likewise, with the full assurance of fresh mutton-chops or rice curry and chicken. After breakfast the Major smokes a cigarette and looks meditatively at the barometer, the captain gets his old accordion and squeezes out the Russian National Hymn, while Bush and I go on deck to inhale a few breaths of pure fresh fog, and chaff the second mate about his sea-serpent. In reading, playing checkers, fencing, and climbing about the rigging when the weather permits, we pass away the day, as we have already passed away twenty and must pass twenty more before we can hope to see land.
AT SEA, NEAR THE ALEUTIAN ISLANDS. August 6, 1865.
"Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground, ling, heath, broom, furze, anything," except this wearisome monotonous waste of water! Let Kamchatka be what it will, we shall welcome it with as much joy as that with which Columbus first saw the flowery coast of San Salvador. I am prepared to look with complacency upon a sandbar and two spears of grass, and would not even insist upon the grass if I could only be sure of the sand-bar. We have now been thirty-four days at sea without once meeting a sail or getting a glimpse of land.
Our chief amusement lately has been the discussion of controverted points of history and science, and wonderful is the forensic and argumentative ability which these debates have developed. They are getting to be positively interesting. The only drawback to them is, that in the absence of any decisive authority they never come to any satisfactory conclusion. We have now been discussing for sixteen days the uses of a whale's blow-holes; and I firmly believe that if our voyage were prolonged, like the Flying Dutchman's, to all eternity, we should never reach any solution of the problem that would satisfy all the disputants. The captain has an old Dutch History of the World, in twenty-six folio volumes, to which he appeals as final authority in all questions under the heavens, whether pertaining to love, science, war, art, politics, or religion; and no sooner does he get cornered in a discussion than he entrenches himself behind these ponderous folios, and keeps up a hot fire of terrific Dutch polysyllables until we are ready to make an unconditional surrender. If we venture to suggest a doubt as to the intimacy of the connection between a whale's blow-holes and the History of the World, he comes down upon us with the most withering denunciations as wrongheaded sceptics who won't even believe what is printed—and in a Dutch history too! As the captain dispenses the pie, however, at dinner, I have found it advisable to smother my convictions as to the veracity of his Teutonic historian, and join him in denouncing that pernicious heretic Bush, who is wise beyond what is written. Result—Bush gets only one small piece of pie, and I get two, which of course is highly gratifying to my feelings, as well as advantageous to the dispersion of sound historical learning!
I begin to observe at dinner an increasing reverence on Bush's part for Dutch histories.
[Illustration: Snow Scrapers]
CHAPTER III
THE PICTURESQUE COAST OP KAMCHATKA—ARRIVAL IN PETROPAVLOVSK
BRIG "OLGA," AT SEA, 200 MILES FROM KAMCHATKA. August 17, 1865.
Our voyage is at last drawing to a close, and after seven long weeks of cold, rainy, rough weather our eyes are soon to be gladdened again by the sight of land, and never was it more welcome to weary mariner than it will be to us. Even as I write, the sound of scraping and scrubbing is heard on deck, and proclaims our nearness to land. They are dressing the vessel to go once more into society. We were only 255 miles from the Kamchatkan seaport of Petropavlovsk (pet-ro-pav'-lovsk) last night, and if this favourable breeze holds we expect to reach there to-morrow noon. It has fallen almost to a dead calm, however, this morning, so that we may be delayed until Saturday.
AT SEA, OFF THE COAST OF KAMCHATKA. Friday, August 18, 1865.
We have a fine breeze this morning; and the brig, under every stitch of canvas that will draw, is staggering through the seas enveloped in a dense fog, through which even her topgallant sails show mistily. Should the wind continue and the fog be dissipated we may hope to see land tonight.
11 A.m.
I have just come down from the topgallant yard, where for the last three hours I have been clinging uncomfortably to the backstays, watching for land, and swinging back and forth through the fog in the arc of a great circle as the vessel rolled lazily to the seas. We cannot discern any object at a distance of three ships' lengths, although the sky is evidently cloudless. Great numbers of gulls, boobies, puffin, fish-hawks, and solan-geese surround the ship, and the water is full of drifting medusae.
NOON.
Half an hour ago the fog began to lift, and at 11.40 the captain, who had been sweeping the horizon with a glass, shouted cheerily, "Land ho! Land ho! Hurrah!" and the cry was echoed simultaneously from stem to stern, and from the galley to the topgallant yard. Bush, Mahood, and the Major started at a run for the forecastle; the little humpbacked steward rushed frantically out of the galley with his hands all dough, and climbed up on the bulwarks; the sailors ran into the rigging, and only the man at the wheel retained his self-possession. Away ahead, drawn in faint luminous outlines above the horizon, appeared two high conical peaks, so distant that nothing but the white snow in their deep ravines could be seen, and so faint that they could hardly be distinguished from the blue sky beyond. They were the mountains of Villuchinski (vil-loo'-chin-ski) and Avacha (ah-vah'-chah), on the Kamchatkan coast, fully a hundred miles away. The Major looked at them through a glass long and eagerly, and then waving his hand proudly toward them, turned to us, and said with a burst of patriotic enthusiasm, "You see before you my country—the great Russian Empire!" and then as the fog drifted down again upon the ship, he dropped suddenly from his declamatory style, and with a look of disgust exclaimed, "Chort znaiet shto etta takoi [the Devil only knows what it means]—it is a curious thing! fog, fog, nothing but fog!"
In five minutes the last vestige of "the great Russian Empire" had disappeared, and we went below to dinner in a state of joyful excitement, which can never be imagined by one who has not been forty-six days at sea in the North Pacific.
4 P.m.
We have just