When he went into the half of the house where his wife and children were sleeping, I went out on the street. It was a perfectly quiet, starry night. A watchman was knocking somewhere, and close by, a brook babbled. I stood for a long time and looked at the sky and then at the huts, and it seemed that it was due to some magic that I was 10,000 versts from home, somewhere in Palevo, at the end of the earth where no one can remember the days of the week, and where they really do not have to remember because it makes no difference whether it is Wednesday or Thurs- day . . . .
Farther south along the projected post road is the Valzy settlement, founded in 1889. It has forry men and not one woman. A week before my arrival in Rykovskoye, three families had been sent farther south to establish the Lon- gari settlement along one of the tributaries of the Poronaya River. I will leave these two settlements which have barely begun to exist to some other writer, who has the oppor- tunity to visit them over a good road and will be able to examine them closely.
To conclude my survey of the Tymovsk district settle- ments, there remain only two: the Malo-Tymovo and the Andreye-lvanovsko. Both are situated on the Malo Tym River, which starts near the Pilinga and falls into the Tym near Derbinskoye. The first, the oldest settlement in the Tymovsk district, was founded in 1877. Formerly, when they crossed the Pilinga, the road to the Tym crossed this settlement. It now has 190 inhabitants: I 1 I male and 79 female. Together with co-owners, there are 67 home- steaders. Previously Malo-Tymovo was the chief settle- ment and central part of what is now the Tymovsk district; today it has no great importance and resembles an un- important village where all life has come to a standstill. Its former importance is evident only in the small prison and in the house where the prison warden resides.
At present the post of prison warden is held by K., an intelligent and kindly young man from Petersburg who is obviously pining for Russia. The large prison quarters with their big, high-ceilinged rooms resounding with his solitary footsteps, and the wearisome days with nothing to do, oppress him to the point that he feels that he is himself in prison. Quite deliberately this young man rises early, at four or five o'clock in the morning. Then he drinks some tea and visits the prison—and then, what is there to do? He paces within the labyrinth, gazing at the oakum-packed wooden walls, then he paces some more, and pours out tea, and he hears nothing but his own footsteps and the wail- ing wind.
Malo-Tymovo has many old inhabitants. Among them I met the Tatar Furazhiyev, who had accompanied Polyakov to Nyisky Bay. He fondly recalls both Polyakov himself and the expedition.
One of the old men, Bogdanov, is probably interesting in the way he lives. He is a sectarian and a pawnbroker. He did not permit me to enter for a long time and after open- ing the door he expounded on the theme that all kinds of people are walking around—if you let them in they steal anything worthwhile.
The Andreye-lvanovsko settlement is named after a settler of the same name. It was settled in 1885 on a marsh. It has 382 inhabitants: 277 male and 105 female. Together with co-owners it has 2 3 i homesteaders, although, as in Palevo, 50 would be sufficient. The type of settlers is also unfortunate. As in Palevo there is a surplus of city folk and intelligentsia who have never farmed and there are many who arc not of the Orthodox faith: there are 47 Catholics, the same number of Muhammadans and i 2 Lutherans. Among the Orthodox arc a number of foreigners, including Georgians.3
Such a variegated population gives the settlement a riffraff character and prevents it from merging into an agricultural society.
At Rykovskoye prison the draft is achieved in the following way: stoves are lit in the structure over the cesspool, their interior doors hermetically sealed; the air current needed for combustion is obtained from the pit, which is connected to the stoves by a pipe. Thus all fetid gases rise from the pit into the stove and escape by the smokestack. The latrine itself is kept warm by means of the stoves; the air enters the pit through the seat aper- tures and thence into the smokestack. A match flame held at a toilet seat is noticeably drawn downward.
The story by Vsevolod Mikhailovich Garshin ( 1855-88) describes the experiences of a young volunteer in an infantry division during the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-78. Captain Vemzel was extremely brutal toward his men.—TRANS.
3 The former noblemen from Kutais, the brothers Alexey and Teymuras Chikovani, live here. There was a third brother, but he died of consumption. They have no furniture in their hut and only a featherbed lies on the floor. One of them is ill.
XJ A Projected District - The Stone Age - Was There Free Colonization? - The Gilyaks - Their Numerical Composition, Appearance, Physique, Food, Clothing, Dwellings, Hygiene - Their Character - Attempts at Their Russification - Orochi
both of the northern districts, as the reader may readily see from my survey of the settlements, cover an area equal to a small Russian district. It is impossible to compute the area of bath of them because there are no northern and southern boundaries. Between the administrative centers of bath districts, the Alexandrovsk Post and Rykovskoyc, there is a distance of 6o versts by the shorter route which crosses the Pilinga, while across thc Arkovskaya valley it is 74 versts. In this kind of country these arc large distances. Without considering Tangi and Vangi, even Palcvo is con- sidered a distant scttlcmcnt. Meanwhile the newly founded senlcmcnts to the south of Palcvo on thc Poronaya tribu- taries raise thc question of whether a new district will have to be cstablishcd.
As an administrative unit, a Sakhalin district corre- sponds to a Russian district. According to the Siberian way of thinking, this term can only be applied to a pastal dis- tance which cannot be traveled in under a month, as for example the Anadyrsky district. To a Siberian official working alone in an area of 200 to 300 versts, the break- ing up of Sakhalin inta small districts would be a luxury. The Sakhalin population, however, lives under exceptional conditions and the administrative mechanism is far more complicated than in the Anadyrsky district. The need to break up the penal colonies into small administrative units has been shown by experience, and this has proved, in addi- tion to other maners to be explained later, that the shorter the distances in the penal colony, the easier and more effec- tive is the administration. Also, a breakup into smaller districts has the effect of enlarging the number of offi- cials, and the result is an influx of new people who in- evitably have a beneficial influence on the colony. And so with a quantitative increase of intelligent people on the staff, there occurs a significant increase in quality.
When I arrived in Sakhalin I heard a great deal of talk about a newly projected district. They described it as the Land of Canaan, because the plan called for a road which would cross the entire region southward along the Poro- naya River. It was believed that the convicts at Due and Voyevodsk would be transferred to the new district, and these horrifying places would become nothing more than a memory. Also, the mines would be taken away from the "Sakhalin Company," which had long since broken its con- tract, and then the mines would be worked by convicts and settlers as a collective enterprise.1
Before completing my report on Northern Sakhalin, I feel I should discuss briefly a people who have lived here at different times and continue to live here outside the penal colony.
In the Duyka valley Polyakov found chipped obsidian knives, stone arrows, grinding stones, stone axes and other objects. He came to the conclusion that a people who did noc use metal lived in the Due valley in ancient times; they belonged to the Stone Age. Shards, the bones of dogs and bears, sinkers from large fishing nets, which were found in these formerly inhabited areas, indicate that they made pottery, hunted bear, went fishing and had hunting dogs. Clearly they derived flint from their neighbors on the main- land and on the neighboring islands, because flint does not exist on Sakhalin. Probably the dogs played the same role in their migration as they do now; they are used for draw- ing sleighs. In the Tym valley Polyakov found the remnants of primitive strucrures and crude weapons. He concluded that in Northern Sakhalin "it is possible for tribes to sur- vive on a relatively low level of intellectual development; the people who lived here for centuries developed ways to protect themselves from cold, thirst and hunger. In all probability these ancient people lived in relatively small communities and were not a completely settled people."