This is a seagoing ship of medium size, a trading vessel, which was quite bearable after the Baikal and Amur boats. It travels between Nikolayevsk, Vladivostok and Japanese pons, carries mail, soldiers, convicts, passengers and freight, especially government freight. On contract to the Treasury, which pays it a considerable subsidy, it is obliged to voyage to the island of Sakhalin several times each summer, put- ting in at the Alexandrovsk and the southern Korsakov posts. The tariff is extremely high and is probably not to be matched anywhere else in the world. It is completely incomprehensible why such high tariffs are exacted when colonization primarily requires freedom and ease of travel.
The wardroom and the cabins on the Baikal were small but clean and were completely furnished in European style; there was even a piano. The members of the crew were Chinese, wearing long queues; they are called "boy" in the English manner. The chef is also Chinese but his cuisine is Russian, although all the food is bitter with curry and smells somewhat like corilopsis.1
Having read a great deal about the storms and ice floes in the Tatar Strait, I expected to meet on the ship hoarse- voiced whalers spitting out tobacco juice as they talked. In fact I met fully cultured people. L., the ship's captain, a native of a western country, has been sailing the northern seas for over thirty years and has crossed them lengthwise and crosswise. During his lifetime he has seen many won- derful things, is very knowledgeable and recounts events interestingly. Having spent half of his life around Kam- chatka and the Kurile Islands, he could speak perhaps with greater authority than Othello of barren wastes, terrifying chasms, insurmountable cliffs. I am obliged to him for a great deal of information included in this journal. He had three assistants—the nephew of an eminent astronomer and two Swedes, Ivan Martynich and Ivan Venyaminich, both fine and affable persons.
The Baikal gat under way on July 8 before dinner. Traveling with us were 300 soldiers under the command of an officer, and several prisoners. One prisoner was accom-
panied by his five-year-old daughter, who clung to his
shackles as he came up the gangway. One woman convict attracted attention because her husband was voluntarily fol- lowing her into penal servitude.2
In addition to myself and the officer there were several first-class passengers of both sexes and even one baroness. The reader should not be amazed at such a number of cul- tured people here in the wilderness. Along the Amur and in the Primorskaya region the percentage of intellectuals is quite large with respect to the generally small population, and there are relatively more intellectuals here than in any Russian guberniya. On the Amur there is one city with six- teen active and inactive generals. Perhaps there are even more today.
The day was calm and bright. It was hot on deck and stuffy in the cabins; the temperature of the water was + i8°. Such weather would rather be expected on the Black Sea. On the right bank a forest was on fire. The dense green mass belched scarlet flames; clouds of smoke merged into an elongated, black, stationary column which hung over the forest. The conflagration was enormous, but all around was quiet and tranquil; nobody cared that the forests were being destroyed. Obviously the green wealth belongs to God alone.
We arrived at Cape Pronge after dinner, at six o'clock. Asia comes to an end. One could say the Amur flows into the Pacific Ocean here, if Sakhalin Island did not bar its passage. The estuary spreads out broadly before your eyes. Scarcely visible ahead is a hazy strip of land; this is the penal island. To the left, dropping away in its own convo- lutions, the shore disappears into the haze on its way to the unknown North. This seems to be the end of the world, and there is nowhere else to go. The soul is seized with the same emotion which Odysseus must have experienced when he sailed an unknown sea, filled with melancholy forebod- ings of encounters with strange creatures. On the right, where the river falls into the estuary and a Gilyak village stands sheltered on the bank, strange creatures were rowing out to us in two boats, yelling in an unknown language and waving something at us. It was difficult to see what they were holding in their hands, but when they approached closer I recognized some gray birds. "They want to sell us live geese," someone said.
We turned to the right. Markers indicated the waterway along the entire course. The captain did not leave the bridge nor did the engineer come up from the engine room The Baikal began to go slower and slower, and practically groped its way forward. Great care was required because it was extremely easy to get caught on a sandbank. The ship drew i 2 Y2/2 feet of water and in some spots it had only 14 feet in which to navigate. There was even a moment when we heard the keel scrape the sand. This shallow waterway and the peculiar contours of the Tatar and Sakhalin coasts were the main reasons for the long-held belief in Europe that Sakhalin was a peninsula.
In June, 1787, the famous French navigator Count de la Perouse landed on the western bank of Sakhalin, above 48° longitude, and talked with the natives. We learn from his nates that he found not only Ainus but also Gilyaks who came as traders, and they were experienced people well acquainted with Sakhalin and the Tatar shore. Drawing a sketch on the sand, they taid him the land where they lived was an island and the island was separated from the main- land and Iesso (Japan) by the straits.3
Later, while sailing farther north along the western bank, he expected to find a passage from the North Japa- nese Sea into the Okhotsk Sea and thus to shorten consider- ably the distance to Kamchatka. But the farther north he sailed, the more shallow became the strait. The depth de- creased by one sazhen each mile. He sailed northward as far as the dimensions of his ship permitted and stopped on reaching a depth of 9 sazhens. The gradual rise of the bot- tom and the almost imperceptible current in the strait convinced him that he was not in a strait but in a bay and that Sakhalin is connected with the mainland by an isth- mus.
In De Kastri he again encountered Gilyaks. When he drew a sketch of the island for them on paper, one of them took the pencil and, drawing a line across the strait, ex- plained that at times the Gilyaks must portage their boats across this isthmus and that grass even grows on it: that was La Perouse' understanding. This made him even more certain that Sakhalin was a peninsula.4
The Englishman V. Broughton visited the Tatar Strait nine years after La P^rouse. He had a small ship which drew no more than 9 feet of water, thus enabling him to sail farther north than La P^rouse. Stopping at two sazhens, he sent his assistant to take soundings farther north. On his trip the latter found deep water among the shallows but they gradually decreased and kept leading him alternately, back and forth, to the Sakhalin shore and then to the low sandy shores of the other side. The picture he obtained was that both shores seem to merge. It seemed that the bay ended here and that there was no through passage. There- fore Broughton also was forced to the same conclusion as La Perousc.
Our own celebrated Krusenstern, who explored the shores of the island in 1805, fell into the same error. He sailed to Sakhalin with a preconceived notion, since he was using La P^rouse' map. He sailed along the eastern coast and, after passing Sakhalin's northern capes, he entered the strait, sailing from north to south. It seemed that he was very close to solving the riddle, but the gradual decrease of soundings to 3Y2 sazhens, the specific gravity of the water and especially his preconceived notion also forced him to admit the existence of an isthmus which he was unable to find. But his conscience bothered him. He wrote: "It is obvious that Sakhalin was previously an island and perhaps even in not too distant times." He returned with a restless spirit. When he first saw Broughton's notes in China, he was "quite overjoyed."-r'