There is no residcnt priest at the church; when one is required, a priest comcs from Mariinsk. Good weather is as rare here as in Nikolayevsk. They say that a surveying com- mission worked here this past spring and that thcre were only three sunny days during all of May. How can anyone work without thc sun!
At sca we passed the naval vessels Borb and Ttmnis and two torpedo boats.
I recall still another detail. Wc had scarcely dropped anchor when the sky darkened, thunder clouds gathered and the water turned an unusual, bright green. The Baikal had to unload 4,^^ poods of government cargo and therefore we remained at De Kastri overnight. To pass the time more quickly, the machinist and I fished from the deck and we caught some very large, fat-headed gobies, the like of which I had never caught either in the Black Sea or in the Sea of Azov. We also caught some plaice.
The unloading of cargo from ships is always tiresomely slow, accompanied by exasperation and bad blood. Further- more, this is the bitter lot of all our eastern ports. At De Kastri the cargo is unloaded on small barges which can only reach the shore during high tide and therefore the loaded barges often run aground on the sand. Sometimes because of this the ship must sit and wait out the tide for the sake of a few hundred pounds of flour.
In Nikolayevsk everything was even more inefficient. While standing on the deck of the Baikal, I saw a tugboat, which was towing a large bargc with 200 soldiers, lose its tow rope. The barge floated out with the tide and headed straight for the anchor chain of a steamship which was anchored close to us. With sinking hearts we awaited the next moment, when the barge would be ait in half by the chain, but, fortunately, some good people caught the tow ropc in time and the soldiers only suffered from severe fright.
1 A flower of the astcr family with a distinctive odor—TRANS.
On the Baikal and on the Amur ships the prisoners generally stay on deck with third-class passengers. Once when I went up on the forecastle at dawn to stretch my legs I saw soldiers, women, children, two Chinese and convicts in shackles sleeping soundly, all huddled together; dew fell on them and it was chilly. The guard was standing amid the heap of bodies, asleep and holding his rifle in his hands.
3 La Perouse wrote that they called their island Choko, but the Gilyaks were probably referring to another place with this name and he did not understand them. On a map drawn by our Krash- cheninnikov ( 1752) the Chukha River is shown on the western coast of Sakhalin. Chukha appears to be quite similar to Choko. Le Perouse says that when the Gilyak drew the island and called it Choko, he also drew a small river. Choko means "we."
Regarding this, I would like to cite Nevelskoy's observation: the natives usually draw a line between the shores to show that the opposite shores can be reached by boat—in other words, that a strait actually exists between the shores.
a» The fact that three serious explorers made exactly the same mistake speaks for itself. If they did not find the entrance to the Amur, it is because they had the most meager means for explora- tion at their disposal and also because they were talented people who had certain misgivings and almost guessed at the truth, while failing to reckon with all the evidence. The fact that the isthmus and the Sakhalin peninsula are not myths, but at one time actu- ally existed, has now been proved.
A detailed history on the exploration of Sakhalin is contained in A. M. Nikolsky, Sakhalin island and lts Fau,/a of Vertebrate Animals. This book also contains an extensive bibliography on Sakhalin.
The details can be found in Nevelskoy's book: The Exploits of Russian Naral 0/ficers in the Easternmost Part of Russia (1R49- 55).
' On her journey from Russia to join her husband, although ill, Nevelskoy's wife, Ekatcrina Ivanovna, rode 1,1 oo versts on horse- back in 23 days over swamps, through wild, mountainous tai.cas, and over the glaciers of the Okhotsk route. The most capable of Nevelskoy's associates, N. K. Boshnyak, who discovered Imperial Harbor [a town on the mainland opposite Uglegorsk, now known as Soviet Harbor—TRANS.] whcn he was only 20 years old, "a dreamer and a child"—as he is called by one of his colleagues— related in his notes: "We ail went together to Ayan on the trans- port Baikal, and thcre we transferred to the decrepit barque Shelekhov. When the barque started to sink, nobody could con- vince Mme. Nevelskaya to be the first to leave the barquc. 'The commander and the officers are the last to leave,' she said. 'I too will leave the ship only when there isn't a single woman or child left on board.' And that's exactly what she did. The barque was already lying on its side. . . ." Boshnyak writes further that al- though they were often in Mmc. Nevelskaya's company, he and his friends "never hcard a word of complaint or reproach—on the contrary, there was often observed a calm and proud awareness of that bitter but lofty position which was predestined for her by Providcnce." She usually passed the winter alone since the men were out on various missions. The temperature in her quarters was
When provision ships did not arrive from Kamchatka in 1852, they were all in a desperate position. There was no milk for nurs- ing babies, there was no fresh food for the sick, and several per- sons died of scurvy. Nevelskaya arranged that milk from her cow should be given to all of them. She conducted herself towafd the natives with such simplicity and paid so much attention to them that even the uncouth savages noticed it. And she was then only 19 years old" (Lieutenant Boshnyak, "Expedition into the Amur Countryside," Naval Collection, 1859, II). Her husband also men- tions her touching treatment of the Gilyaks in his notes. He writes: "Ekaterina lvanovna sat them [the Gilyaks] down on the floor in a circle ncar a large urn filled with gruel or tea in the one room in our quarters which served as reception room, sitting room and dining room combined. Enjoying more of the same hospitality, they very often slapped their hostess on the back, sending her to get tamcha [tobacco] or tea."
Nouvel Atlas de la Chine, de la Tartaire, Chinoise et de Thibet (1737).
In 1 8o8, when the Japanese surveyor Mamia-Rinzo sailed along the western bank of the island, he reached the Tatar shore at the very mouth of the Amur and made thc journey from the island to the mainland and back many times. He was the first to prove that Sakhalin is an island. The Russian naturalist F. Shmidt praised his map highly, saying it was "altogether admirable since it was obviously based on independent surveys."
The present and future importance of this bay is described in K. Skalkovskoy, Russkaya Torgovlya v Tikhom Okeane [Russian Commerce in the Pacific Ocean], p. 7 5.
JI A Short Geography - Arrival in Northern Sakhalin - Fire - The Pier - In the Village - Dinner with Mr. L. - Acq11aintances - General Kononovich - The Arrival of the Governor- General - Dinner and the Illumination
sakhalin lies in the Okhotsk Sca, protecting almost a thousand vcrsts of castcrn Sibcrian shorclinc as wcll as thc emrancc imo the mauth of the Amur from thc ocean. It is long in form, running from north to south; its shapc in the opinion of one author suggests a sturgeon. Its geographic location is from 45*54' to 54*53' latitude and from 141 °40' to 144 "53' longitudc. The northcrn scction of Sakhalin, which is crossed by a belt of permafrost, can be compared with Ryazan guberniya, the southcrn scction with the Crimea. Thc island is 900 vcrsts long, its widest ponion measuring 125 vcrsts and its narrowcst 25 versts. It is twice as largc as Grcccc and onc and a half timcs thc sizc of Dcnmark.