Arkovsky Cordon is close to a Gilyak village. Pre- viously it was a guard post for the soldiers who hunted escaped prisoners. It now houses a warden who seems to be the supervisor of the setdements. First Arkovo is two versts from the Cordon. It has but one street and can only grow lengthwise, not crosswise, owing to the local condi- tions. When the three Arkovos at last join together, Sakha- lin will have a very large village possessing only one tre- mendously long street.
First Arkovo was founded in 1883. It has 136 inhabit- ants, 83 males and 53 females. There are 28 householders, all of whom are married except for the female convict Pavlovska, a Catholic, whose cohabitant, the acrual house- holder, had recendy died. She earnesdy entreated me, "Find me a master for the house." Three of the homesteaders own two homes each.
Second Arkovo was founded in 1884. It has 92 inhabit- ants, 46 males and 46 females. It contains 24 households. Everyone is married. Two of them own two houses each. Third Arkovo was founded at the same time as Second Arkovo, which shows how anxious the authorities were to setde the Arkovo valley. It has 41 inhabitants, 19 males and 22 females. There are ten households, one of which has a co-owner. Nine are married.
The arable land held by the homesteaders in the three Arkovos varies between one-half and two desyatins. One owner has three desyatins. They sow small quantities of wheat, barley and rye, and plant potatoes. The majority have cattle and poultry. If one were to judge by the figures given on the homestead list prepared by the settlement supervisor, you would think that all three Arkovos were showing sig- nificant improvements in agriculture in a short time. No wonder one anonymous author describes the local farming in this way: "The work is abundantly rewarding, because the local soil is extremely favorable for farming, as may be clearly demonstrated by the luxurious growths of timber and the vegetation."
In fact this is not true. All three Arkovos belong to the poorest settlements in Northern Sakhalin. There is arable land and cattle, but there has never been a harvest. In addition to the unfavorable conditions prevalent through- out Sakhalin, the local homesteaders encounter another strong enemy in the peculiarities of the Arkovo valley, and especially in the soil so highly praised by our anonymous author. The topsoil is humus, the subsoil pebbly. On hot days the earth heats up and the plant roots dry up; in the rainy season moisture cannot seep down because of the clay, and the roots rot. On soil like this the only plants that can be successfully cultivated are those with strong, deep roots such as burdock. Edible roots like turnips and pota- toes can also be cultivated, for the soil can be worked better and deeper for them than for cereals. I have already men- tioned the disasters caused by the stream. There are no hayfields. Hay is either mown on the patches of taiga, or it is cut with scythes wherever they find it. The more prosperous people buy it in the Tymovsky district. I have been told of families which did not have one piece of bread during the entire winter; they existed on turnips.
Just before my arrival the settler Skorin died of starva- tion in Second Arkovo. According to his neighbors, he had eaten only a pound of bread during the last three days of his life; this had been going on for a long time. "The same fate awaits all of us," said one of the neighbors, terrified by the man's death. And as I record these things I remem- ber three women weeping.
In one unfurnished hut with a dark dismal stove taking up half the room, children were wailing and chickens cackling around the housewife. She went on the street, and the children and the chickens followed her. Looking at them, she began laughing and crying and apologizing to me for the weeping and the noise of the chickens. She said it was due to hunger, and she was waiting for her husband to return from the city where he had gone to sell blueberries and buy bread. She cut off some cabbage leaves for the chickens. They greedily picked at the leaves, and feeling deceived, they began to cackle even louder.
In one hut there lives a peasant as hairy as a spider, with hanging eyebrows; he is a convict, and very filthy. With him there is another exactly like him, just as hairy and filthy. Both have large families. In the hut, as the saying goes, it is appallingly barren and poverty-stricken; they do not even own a nail. There was all this weeping and clucking, and then there are deaths like Skorin's, and you find yourself thinking about all the various indirect expressions of hunger and want.
In Third Arkovo the hut of the settler Petrov stands closed because he has been confined in the Voyevodsk prison, where he is held for "negligence in homesteading and the willful slaughter of a calf for meat." Obviously the calf was slaughtered because he was poor; and he had sold the meat in Alexandrovsk. The seeds taken on credit from the prison storehouse are recorded as sown in the home- stead list, but in fact half of them are eaten: the settlers make no effort to conceal this in their talk. Their cattle, too, has been taken on credit from the prison stockyard, and they are fed in the same way. The farther you go into the forest, the more trees you will find! All the Arkovo people are in debt, and their indebtedness grows with each annual sowing, with every new head of cattle. In some cases it has reached an impossible figure—two and even three hundred rubles per person.
Between Second and Third Arkovo is the Arkovsky Stanok, where horses are changed on the road to the Tymovsky district. It is a postal station and an inn. Meas- ured by our Russian arshins, two or three helpers would be sufficient to take care of the stanok supervisor. How- ever, on Sakhalin people do everything on a grand scale. In addition to the supervisor, the stanok houses a clerk, an errand boy, a stableman, two bakers, three woodsmen and four additional workers who answered my question about what they do by saying, "I carry hay."
If a traveling artist should happen to visit Sakhalin, I would highly recommend a visit to the Arkovsky. valley. In addition to its beautiful location, it is so extraordinarily colorful that it is difficult not to compare it with a multi- colored carpet or a kaleidoscope. Here are dense, opulent stretches of greenery with gigantic burdocks glistening with raindrops from the recent rains; nearby in a small area no more than three sazhens wide there is a patch of green rye, then a patch of barley, then again burdocks, followed by some oats, and a row of potatoes and two small sun- flowers with drooping heads; and then a patch of thick green hemp; and here and there are umbrella plants like candelabra, towering proudly over all of them; and all this variety is interspersed with tOuches of rose, bright-red and crimson poppy flowers.
Along the road you see women wearing tremendous burdock leaves like three-cornered neckerchiefs to protect them from the rain. They look like green beetles. Moun- tains risc above the valley, and although they are not the Caucasus Mountains, still they arc mountains.
Six tiny settlements nestle along the western shore above the mouth of the Arkaya. I did not visit any of them, but obtained the pertinent data from the list of homesteads and the Confessional Book. They were situated on capes jutting into the sea or at the mouths of the streams from which they received their names. They began as picket posts, sometimes with four or five men. After a while, it was discovered that these outposts alone were inadequate, and so they decided (in 1882) to settle the largest capes between Due and Pogobi with reliable settlers, preferably with families. Their aim in founding these settlements and the cordons was: "To permit mail carriers, passengers and men driving dog sleighs from Nikolaycvsk to obtain shel- ter and protection during their journey and to establish police surveillance along the shore line, which is the only ( ?):! possible route for escaped prisoners and for import- ing contraband alcohol." There is no road yet to these shore settlements. They can only be reached along the coast on foot at ebb tide and by dog sleigh in winter. They can also be reached by rowboats and steam cutters, but only when good weather permits. From south to north, these settlements are as follows: