The Tym falls into Nyisky Bay, or the Tro, a small watery wasteland which is the doorway to the Okhotsk Sea, or, which is the same thing, into the Pacific Ocean. The first night Polyakov spent on the shores of the bay was bright and chilly, and a small twin-tailed comet glistened in the sky. Polyakov does not describe the thoughts which crowded in upon him as he enjoyed the sight of the comet and listened to the sounds of the night. Sleep overtook him. On the next day fate rewarded him with an unexpected spectacle. At the mouth of the bay stood a dark ship with some white strakes; the rigging and deckhouse were beau- tiful; a tied live eagle sat on the prow.'
The shore of the bay made a dismal impression on Polyakov. He calls it a typically characteristic example of a polar landscape. The vegetation is meager and malformed. The bay is separated from the sea by a long, narrow sandy congue of land created by dunes, and beyond this slip of land the morose, angry sea has spread itself boundlessly for thousands of versts. \'X'hen a little boy has been reading Mayne Reid and his blanket falls off during the night, he starts shivering, and it is then that he dreams of such a sea. It is a nightmare! The surface is leaden, over it there hangs a monotonous gray sky, and the savage waves batter the wild treeless shore. The waves roar, and once in a great while the black shape of a whale or a seal flashes through them.5
Today there is no need to cross the Pilinga by climbing over steep hills and through gulleys in order to reach the Tymovsk district. I have already stated that people nowa- days travel from Alexandrovsk to the Tymovsk district through the Arkovo valley and change horses at the Arkovo way station. The roads here are excellent and the horses can travel swiftly.
The first settlement of the Tymovsk region lies sixteen miles past the Arkovo way station bearing the Oriental- fairy-tale name of Upper Armudan. It was founded in 1884 and consists of two parts which have spread along the slopes of the mountain near the Armudan River, a tributary of the Tym. It has 178 inhabitants: 123 male and 55 female. There are 78 homesteads with 28 co-owners. Settler Vasilyev even has cwo co-owners. In comparison with Alexandrovsk, the majority of the Tymovsk settle- ments, as the reader will see, have many co-owners or half- owners, few women and very few legally married families. In Upper Armudan, of 48 families, only 9 are legal. There are only three free women who followed their husbands, and it is the same in Krasny Yar or Butakovo, which arc no more than a year old. This insufficiency of women and families in the Tymovsk settlements is often ascounding, and docs not conform with the average number of women and families on Sakhalin. It cannot be explained by any local or economic conditions, but by the fact that newly arrived prison parties are sorted out in Alcxandrovsk, and the local authorities, according to the proverb that "your own shirt is nearest to your retain the majority of the women
in their own district and "keep the bcst for themsclves; the worst they send to us," as a Tymovsk official told me.
The huts in Upper Armudan arc either thatched or cov- ered with tree bark; some windows have no panes or are completely boarded up. The poverty is terrible. Twenty of the men do not live at home. They have gone elsewhere co earn a livelihood. Only dcsyatins of land have been cultivated for all 75 homesteads and 28 co-owners; 183 poods of grain have been sown, which is less than 2 p^^s per household. It is beyond my understanding how grain can bc grown here, however much is sown. The settlement is high above sea level and is not protected from northern winds; the snow melts cwo weeks later than in the neigh- boring settlement of Malo-Tymovo. In order to fish, they travel 20 to 25 versts to the Tym River in the summer. They hunt fur animals more for sport than for gain, and so little accrues to the economy of the settlement that it is scarcely worth talking about.
I found the householders and the members of their households at home; none of them were occupied even though it was not a holiday, and it seemed that during the warm August weather all of them, from the youngest to the oldest, could have found work either in the field or on the Tym, where the periodic fish was running. The house- holders and their cohabitants were obviously bored and eager to sit down and discuss anything at all. They laughed from boredom and sometimes cried. They are failures, and most of them are neurasthenics and whiners, "alienated persons." Forced idleness has slowly become a habit and they spend their time waiting for good sea weather, be- come fatigued, have no desire to sleep, do nothing, and are probably no longer capable of doing anything except shuf- fling cards. It is not strange that card-playing flourishes in Upper Armudan and the local players are famous all over Sakhalin. Because of lack of money they play for small stakes, but make up for this by playing continually, as in the play Thirty Years, or the Life of a Card Player.e I had a conversation with one of the most impassioned and inde- fatigable card-players, a settler called Sizov:
"Your worship, why don't they send us to the main- land?" he asked.
"Why do you want to go there?" I asked jokingly. "You'll have no one to play cards with."
"That's where the real games are."
"Do you play faro?" I asked, and held my tongue.
"That's right, your worship, I play faro."
Later, upon leaving Upper Armudan, I asked my con- vict driver:
"Do they play for winnings?"
"Naturally, for winnings."
"But what do they lose?"
"What do you mean? Why, they lose their government rations, their smoked fish! They lose their f^^ and clothing and sit about in hunger and cold."
"And what do they eat?"
"Why, sir, when they win, they eat; when they lose, they go to sleep hungry."
Along the lower reaches of the same tributary there is a smaller settlement, Lower Armudan. I arrived late at night and slept in a garret in the jail because the jailer did not permit me to stay in a room. "It's impossible to sleep here, your worship; the bugs and cockroaches win all the time!" he said helplessly, spreading his hands wide. "Please go up to the tower." I climbed to the tower on a ladder, which was soaked and slippery from the rain. When I descended to get some tobacco I saw the "winning crea- tures," and such things are perhaps only possible on Sakha- lin. It seemed as though the walls and ceiling were covered with black crepe, which stirred as if blown by a wind. From the rapid and disorderly movements of portions of the crepe you could guess the composition of this boiling, seething mass. You could hear rustling and a loud whisper- ing, as if the insects were hurrying off somewhere and carrying on a conversation.7
There are ioi settlers in Lower Armudan: 76 male and 25 female. There arc 47 homesteaders with 23 co-owners. Four families are married; 1 5 live as cohabitants. There are only two free women. There arc no inhabitants between I 5 and 20 years of age. The people live in dire poverty. Only six of the houses are covered with planking; the rest arc covered with tree bark and, as in Upper Armudan, some have no windowpanes or are boarded up. My records in- clude not a single laborer. Obviously the householders do nothing. In order to find work, 2 i of them have left. Since 1884, when the settlement was founded, only 37 dcsyatins of arable land have been cleared—i.e., one-half desyatin per homestead. One hundred eighty-three ^^s of winter grain and summer corn have been sown. The settlement in no way resembles an agricultural village. The local inhabitants are a disorganized rabble of Russians, Poles, Finns and Georgians, starving and ragged, who came together not of their own volition but by chance, after a shipwreck.
The next settlement along the route lies on the Tym. Founded in 1880, it was named Derbinskoye in honor of the jailer Derbin, who was murdered for his cruelty. He was still young, but a brutish, stern and implacable fellow. The people who knew him recall that he always walked around the prison and on the streets with a stick which he used for beating people. He was murdered in the bakery. He defended himself and fell into the fermenting bread baner, bloodying the dough. His death was greeted with great rejoicing by the convicts, who donated a purse of 6o rubles to the murderer.