Incidentally, according to the "Report on the Status of Agriculture in 1889," on Sakhalin the average arable land for each householder is only half a desyatin.
In Korsakovskoye there stands a house which in its dimensions, pretty roofwork and charming garden resem- bles a medium-size landowner's country home. The owner, the director of the medical unit, Dr. P. I. Suprunenko, had departed in the spring to participate in a prison exhibition and remained in Russia. In the abandoned rooms I found only the remnants of a splendid zoological collection amassed by the doctor. I do not know the present where- abouts of this collection, or who is employing it for re- search on the Sakhalin fauna, but from the few remaining specimens, which are most beautifully mounted, and from what I heard, it is possible to guess the size of the collec- tion and to realize how much knowledge, labor and love went into this useful activity. Dr. Suprunenko began his collection in i881, and in ten years was able to gather specimens of almost all the vertebrates on Sakhalin as well as a great deal of anthropological and ethnographical ma- terial. If his collection had remained on the island, it could have served as the basis for an excellent museum.
Next to his house is a meteorological station. Until recently it was under the supervision of Dr. Suprunenko. Now an agricultural inspector is in charge. Observations made in my presence by a clerk, the convict Golovatsky, a sensible and amiable fellow, provided me with meteorologi- cal tables.
Conclusions can already be based on observations made during the past nine years and I will attempt to give some idea of the climate of the Alexandrovsk region. The mayor of Vladivostok once told me that "there is absolutely no climate" in Vladivostok and on the entire eastern seaboard generally. About Sakhalin, they like to say there is no climate; they say there is "bad weather," or the island has the worst weather in all Russia. I do not know how accu- rate the last statement is. It was a very lovely summer when
So
I was there, but meteorological tables and the brief reports of other writers present a general picture of exceptionally bad weather.
The Alexandrovsk region has a maritime climate which is distinctive in its capriciousness, that is, in its significant vacillation in the yearly mean temperature,2 the number of days with precipitation, etc. Its chief peculiarities are its low yearly mean temperature and the large number of days with precipitation and fog. As a comparison I will take the mean monthly temperature of the Alexandrovsk region as against that of the Cherepovetsky district in Novgorodskaya guberniya, whose "climate is grim, humid, unstable and unhealthy."3
Alexandrovjk Cherepovetsky Region District
January
- 18.9
- I I .0
February
- i 5.1
- 8.2
March
- IO.I
- 1.8
April
. O.I
. 2.8
May
. 59
• I 2.7
June
• I I.O
• I 7 -5
July
• 16.3
• I 8.5
August
, i 7.0
• I 35
September
• i 1.4
. 6.8
October
. 3-7
. 1.8
November
- 55
- 57
December
-I 3.8
- I 2.8
The average mean temperature in the Alexandrovsk region is «o.i°, almost o"; in the Chcrepovctsky district it is »2.7 The winter in the Alexandrovsk region is more severe than in Arkhangelsk, the spring and summer are like Finland, and autumn is like St. Petersburg. The mean yearly temperature is the same as in the Solovetsky Islands, where it also equals o°. There is eternal frost in the Duyka valley. Polyakov found it to be three-quarters of an arshin deep [twenty-one inches] on June 20. Even on July 14 he found snow under piles of rubbish and in hollows near the moun- tains, and the snow only melted at the end of July. On July 24, 1889, snow fell in the mountains, which are low here, and everyone donned a sheepskin coat. In nine years of observation the earliest the ice broke on the Duyka was April 23, and the latest May 6. During the entire nine years there was no thaw. In only one year there are 189 days when it freezes; on i 5 i days a cold wind blows. All this is of practical importance. In the Cherepovetsky dis- trict, where the summer is warmer and longer, according to Chernov, buckwheat, cucumbers and wheat cannot ripen properly, while in the Alexandrovsk region the local agri- cultural inspector insists that there has never been a year when the temperature was sufficiently high for oats and wheat to ripen.
The local excessive humidity commands the close atten- tion of agronomists and hygienists. Every year there is an average of 189 days with precipitation: 107 days with snow, and 82 days with rain (in the Cherepovetsky district there are 81 days with rain and 82 with snow). For weeks at a time the sky is covered with leaden clouds and the desolate weather which drags on from day to day seems endless to the inhabitants. Such weather causes oppressive thoughts and drunkenness due to despondency. Many people suffering from the cold seem to become brutal, and many a good soul and many with weak spirits forever lose all hope of a better life after failing to see the sun for weeks and months on end.
Polyakov writes that in June, 1881, there were no bright days during the entire month. From the agricultural inspector's report covering a four-year period, it is clear that there are no more than an average of eight bright days between May 18 and September 1. Fogs are a frequent phenomenon here, especially at sea, where they are a real misery for sailors. Salt-laden sea fogs, they tell me, are destructive to all vegetation along the coast, both trees and ground growth. Later I shall describe the settlements which have ceased sowing grain as a result of the fog, and instead they have planted all their arable land with potatoes. One bright sunny day I saw a milky-white fog bank rolling in from the sea. It was like a white curtain dropping from heaven to earth.
The meteorological station is furnished with instru- ments which have been checked and acquired from the Central Physical Observatory in Petersburg. It has no li- brary. As well as Galovatsky and his wife, whom I have already mentioned, I recorded six male workers and one female. I do not know what they do.
Korsakovskoye has a school and a chapel. It used to have a medical center where fourteen syphilitics and three lunatics were housed together. One of the latter became infected with syphilis. They also tell me that the syphilitics produced hawsers for ships and lim for the surgical depart- ment. However, I was not able to visit this medieval estab- lishment because it had been closed in September by a young military doctor. If they made bonfires of lunatics by order of the prison doctors, this would not astonish me: hospital conditions here arc at least two hundred years behind civilized times.
In one hut I found a forty-year-old man dressed in a pea jacket, his trousers unbuttoned, his chin clean shaven, wearing a dirty, unstarched shirt and something that looked like a necktie. To all appearances he was one of the privi- leged class. He sat on a low stool and was eating bacon and potatoes from a clay cup. He gave a surname with a ky ending and for some reason I felt I saw before me a former officer, who also had a name ending in ky, and who had been scm to penal servitude for some infraction of disci- pline.