Anyone who wants to become thoroughly acquainted with the Gilyaks should consult an ethnographic specialist, L. I. Shrenk.7 I will limit myself to discussing some of the characteristics of local natural conditions, which may be useful as direct or indirect guidance for new colonists.
The Gilyak has a strong, stocky build, and he is of medium or short stature. Height would be of no advantage to him in the taiga. His bones are thick and distinguished by the strong development of his limbs from rowing and tramping over the hills. This exercise strengthens the muscles, and they indicate powerful musculature and a perpetual, intense struggle against nature. His body is lean, without fat. There are no stout or corpulent Gilyaks. All his fat is used for the warmth which a man on Sakhalin must generate in his body in order to compensate for the heat loss caused by the low temperature and the excessive humidity. It is understandable that a Gilyak should require a good deal of fat in his diet. He eats fatty seal meat, salmon, sturgeon and whale fat. He also eats rare meat in large quantities in raw, dry and frozen form, and because he eats coarse food his chewing muscles are unusually well- developed and all his teeth are badly worn. His food con- sists exclusively of meat but on rare occasions, at home or while carousing, they add Manchurian garlic or berries to their menus. According to Nevelskoy, the Gilyaks consider agriculture a grievous transgression; whoever plows the land or plants anything will soon die. But they eat the bread which the Russians introduced to them with relish, as a delicacy, and it is not unusual to see a Gilyak in Alex- androvsk or Rykovskoye carrying a loaf of bread under his arm.
The Gilyak's clothing has been adapted to the cold, damp and rapidly changing climate. In the summer he wears a shirt of blue nankeen or daba cloth with trousers of the same material. Over his back, as insurance against changing weather, he wears either a coat or a jacket made of seal or dog fur. He puts on fur boots. In winter he wears fur trousers. All this warm clothing is cut and sewn so as not to impede his deft and quick movements while hunting or while riding with his dogs. Sometimes, in order to be in fashion, he wears convict overalls. Eighty-five years ago Krusenstern saw a Gilyak dressed in a magnificent silk costume "with many flowers woven into it." Today you will not find such a peacock on Sakhalin if you search with a lamp.
As to Gilyak yurts, these again answer the demands of a damp and cold climate. There are both summer and win- ter yuns. The first are built on stilts, the second are dug- outs with timber walls having the form of a truncated pyramid. The outside is covered with sod. These
yuns are made of cheap material which is always at hand, and when the necessity arises they have no regret at leaving them. They are warm and dry, and are certainly far superior to the damp and cold huts made of bark in which our con- victs live when they are working on roads or in the fields. These summer yurs should positively be recommended for gardeners, charcoal makers, fishermen and all convicts and setders who work outside the prison and not in their homes.
Gilyaks never wash, with tne result that even ethnog- raphers find it difficult to ascertain the color of their skins. They never wash their underclothing, and their furs and boots look exactly as if they had just been stripped off a dead dog. The Gilyaks themselves exude a heavy, sharp odor and the close proximity of their dwellings is indi- cated by the foul, almost unbearable odor of drying fish and rotting fish wastes. Usually near every yurt there is a drying contrivance which is filled to the top with flanened fish, which from afar, especially in the sunshine, looks like strings of coral. Krusenstern found huge masses of tiny maggots an inch thick on the ground surrounding these fish driers. In the winter the yurts are full of pungent smoke issuing from the hearth. In addition, the Gilyak men, their wives and even the children smoke tobacco.
Nothing is known of the diseases and mortality of the Gilyaks, but it may be supposed that the unhealthy, un- hygienic circumstances are detrimental to their health. This may be the cause of their short stature, bloated faces, the sluggishness and laziness of their movements; and this is perhaps why the Gilyaks always have weak resistance to epidemics. The devastation on Sakhalin caused by smallpox is well known.
Krusenstern found twenty-seven houses on Sakhalin's northernmost point, between the Elizaveta and Maria capes.
In 1860, P. P. Glen, a participant in a wonderful Siberian expedition, found only traces of the settlement, while in other parts of the island, he tells us, he found evidence that there was once a considerable population. The Gilyaks told him that during the past ten years—i.e., after 1850— the population had been radically reduced by smallpox. It is certain that the terrible smallpox epidemics which dev- astated Kamchatka and the Kurile Islands did not bypass Sakhalin. Naturally this was not due to the virulence of the smallpox itself but to the Gilyaks' poor ability to resist it. If typhus or diphtheria are brought into the penal colony and reach the Gilyak yurts, the same effect will be achieved as by the smallpox. I did not hear of any epidemics on Sakhalin; it seems there were none for the past twenty years with the exception of an epidemic of conjunctivitis, which can be observed even now.
General Kononovich gave permission to the regional hospitals to accept non-Russian patients at government expense (Order No. 335, 1890). \'V'e have no exact ob- servations of Gilyak diseases, but some inferences can be drawn as to the causes of their diseases: dirtiness, exces- sive use of alcohol, intercourse with Chinese and Japanese,:; constant closeness to dogs, traumas, etc., etc.
There is no doubt they have frequent illnesses and require medical assistance, and if circumstances permit them to take advantage of the new order granting them admission to the hospitals, the local doctors will have the opportunity of studying them more closely. Medicine can- not arrest their yearly mortality, but perhaps the doctors may discover the circumstances under which our inter- ference with the lives of these people will be least harmful.
The character of the Gilyaks is described in different ways by different authors, but all agree that they are not aggressive, dislike brawls and quarrels, and live peacefully with their neighbors. \X'hen strangers appear, they are always suspicious and apprehensive; nevertheless, they greet them courteously, without any protest, and sometimes they will lie, describing Sakhalin in the worst possible light, hoping in this way to discourage strangers from the island. They embraced Krusenstern's companions, and when L. I. Shrenk became ill, the news quickly spread among the Gilyaks and evoked the deepest sympathy.
They lie only when they are trading or when speaking to someone they look upon with suspicion, who is there- fore in their eyes dangerous, but before telling a lie they always look at one another—a distinctive childish trait. All other lying and boasting in daily life, outside of trading, is repugnant to them.
The following incident occurred early one evening. Two Gilyaks, one with a beard and the other with a swollen feminine face, lay on the grass in front of a settler's hut. I was passing by. They called out to me and started begging me to enter the hut and bring out their outer clothing, which they had left at the settler's that morning. They themselves did not dare to go in. I told them I had no right to go into someone's hut in the absence of the owner. They grew silent.