First of all, it was pouring. It was muddy and slippery; everything you touched was soaking wet. Water leaked through our collars after running down our necks; our boots were cold and wet. To smoke a cigarette was a com- plicated, difficult affair which was accomplished only when we all helped one another. Near Derbinskoye we got into a rowboat and went down the Tym. On the way we stopped to inspect the fisheries, a water mill and plowland belong- ing to the prison. I will describe the fishing elsewhere; we all agreed the water mill was wonderful; and the fields were nothing special, being interesting only because they were so small; a serious homesteader would regard them as child's play.
The river was swift, and the four rowers and the steersman worked in unison. Because of the speed and frequent bends in the river, the scenery changed every minute. We were floating along a mountain taiga river, but all of its wild charms, the green banks, the steep hills and the lone motionless figures of the fishermen, I would have enthusiastically exchanged for a warm room and dry shoes, especially since the landscape was monotonous, not novel to me, and, furthermore, it was covered with gray, rainy mist. A. M. Butakov sat on the bow with a rifle and shot at wild ducks which were startled at our approach.
Northeast from Derbinskoye along the Tym there are only two settlements to date, Voskresenskoye and Uskovo. To settle the Tym up to its mouth would require at least thirty such settlements with ten versts between each of them. The administration plans to set up one or two every year, connecting them with a road which will eventually span the distance between Derbinskoye and Nyisky Bay. The road will bring life and stand guard over a whole series of settlements. As we came close to Voskresenskoye, a guard stood at attention, obviously expecting us. A. M. Butakov shouted to him that on returning from Uskovo we would spend the night there and that he should prepare more straw.
A little while later, the air was strongly permeated with the stench of rotting fish. We were approaching the Gilyak village of Usk-vo, the former name of the present Uskovo. We were met on shore by Gilyaks, their wives, children and bobtailed dogs, but our coming was not regarded with the same amazement as the corning of the late Polyakov. Even the children and the dogs looked at us calmly.
The Russian colony is two versts from the riverbank. In Uskovo the same conditions exist as in Krasny Yar. The street is wide with many tree trunks still to be uprooted, full of hillocks, covered with forest grass, and on each side stand unfinished huts, felled trees and piles of rubble. All new construction on Sakhalin gives the impression of having been destroyed by an enemy or else of being long since abandoned. Only the fresh, bright colors of the hut frames and the shavings give evidence that something quite opposite to destruction is taking place.
Uskovo has 77 inhabitants, 59 male and 18 female, 33 householders and 20 other persons—in other words, co- owners. Only nine have families. When the people of Uskovo gathered around the jail, where we were taking tea, and when the women and children, being more curious, came up from, the crowd looked like a gypsy camp. Among the women there were actually several dark-skinned gypsies with sly, hypocritically sorrowful faces, and almost all the children were gypsies. Uskovo has a few convict gypsies whose bitter fate is shared by their families, who followed them voluntarily. I was slightly acquainted with two or three of the gypsy women. A week before my arrival at Uskovo I had seen them in Rykovskoye with rucksacks on their backs begging at people's windows.8
The Uskovo inhabitants live very poorly. Only eleven desyatins of land are cultivated for grain and kitchen gardens—that is, almost one-fifth of a desyatin per home- stead. All live at government expense, receiving prison rations which are not acquired cheaply because they have to carry them on their backs over the roadless taiga from Derbinskoye.
After a rest, we set out at five o'clock in the afternoon on foot for Voskresenskoye. The distance is short, only six versts, but because of my inexperience in walking through the taiga I began to feel tired after the first verst. It was raining heavily. Immediately after leaving Uskovo we had to cross a stream about a sazhen wide on thin, crooked logs.
My companions crossed safely, but I slipped and got my boot full of water. Before us lay a long, straight road cut through the forest for a projected highway. There was literally not one sazhen which you could walk without being thrown off balance or stumbling: hillocks, holes full of water, stiff tangles of bushes or roots treacherously con- cealed under the water, and against these you stumble as against a doorstep. The most unpleasant of all were the windfalls and the piles of logs cut down in order to carve out the road. You climb up one pile, sweat, and go on walking through the mud, and then you find another pile of logs and there is no way of bypassing it. So you start climbing again, while your companions shout that you are going the wrong way, it should be either left or right of the pile, etc. At the beginning I tried not to get my other boot full of water, but soon 1 gave up and resigned myself to it. 1 could hear the labored breathing of the three settlers who were following behind, carrying our belong- ings. I was fatigued by the oppressive weather, shortness of breath and thirst. We walked without our service caps; it was easier.
The breathless general sat down on a thick log. We sat down beside him. \VIe gave a cigarette to each of the settlers, who dared not sit down.
"Well, it's hard going!"
"How many versts to Voskresenskoye?"
"Three more."
A. M. Butakov walked the most briskly. He had for- merly covered tremendous distances over the taiga and rundra, and a six-verst hike was nothing to him. He de- scribed his trip along the Poronay River and around Ter- peniya Bay. The first day you are exhausted, all your strength gone, the second day your entire body aches but it is already becoming easier to walk; on the third and fol- lowing days you feel you have sprouted wings, you are not walking but are being carried along by some unknown force, although your legs continue to get entangled in the merciless marsh grass and sruck in swamps.
Halfway it began to grow dark and soon we were sur- rounded by pitch darkness. I gave up hope that we would ever end our trip, and just groped ahead, splashing in water to my knees, and bumping inta logs. Here and there the will-a'-the-wisps gleamed and flickered; entire pools and tremendous rouing trecs were lit with phosphorescent colors and my boots were covered with moving sparks which shimmered like the glowworms on a midsummer night.
But, thank God, at last a light shone in from of us, and was not phosphorescent, but a real light. Someone shouted at us, and we answered. The warden appeared with a lantern. Across pools brighdy lit by his lantern, he came with large strides to lead us across the whole of Voskresen- skoye, which was barely visible in the darkness, until at last we reached his quartcrs.8
My companions had brought with them a change of clothing. When they reached the warden's quarters they hastened to change. But I had nothing with me, although I was literally soaked through. We drank some tea, talked a bit and wem to sleep. There was only one bed in the warden's quarters, and this was taken by the general, while we ordinary mortals wcm to sleep on straw heaped on the floor.
Voskrescnskoye is twice as large as Uskovo. Inhabitants, 183: 175 male and 8 female. There are 7 free families but not one lcgally married. There arc few children in the setdemem and only one litdc girl. It has 97 homesteaders and 77 co-owners.
Four years lacer L. I. Shrenk uaveled along the Tym to che eastern shore and back. He also journeyed during the winter when the river was covered with snow.