In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Dnieper Cos- sacks constantly harassed the Turks, whose main seaport was Ochakiv, on the Black Sea.—TRANS.
At one time the Muravyevsky mines were located here. They were worked by post soldiers under arrest, which means that the post had its own small penal prison. The local administrators assigned them to work as punishment "for insignificant transgres- sions" (Mitsui). No one knows who would have benefited from the coal if it had been sold, since it was all burned together with the buildings.
Before 1870 the military authorities founded the posts of Chibisansky, Ochekhpoksky, Manuysky, Malkovsky and many others. All of these have been abandoned and forgotten.
In September and the beginning of October, excluding those days when a northeaster blew, the weather was marvelously warm. Riding along with me, Mr. Bely complained that he was very lone- some for the Ukraine and there was nothing he wanted so much as to see a cherry tree heavy with fruit. While spending the night at guardhouses, he always rose very early. When I awoke at dawn, I saw him standing at the window reciting in a low voice: "A white light rises over the ciry, a young woman sleeps a deep sleep. . . ." Mr. Yartsev also constantly recited poetry from mem- ory. Sometimes when I was bored during our journeys I asked him to recite something and with great feeling he would recite a long ^^m. Sometimes he would recite two poems.
For example, 70 percent of the inhabitants of the Korsakov Post are between cwenty and forty-five years old. It was the former custom, though not the law, to assign newly arrived short-term convicts, who were considered to be lesser criminals and not in- corrigible, to the South, where it is warmer. However, the neces- sary caution was not always exercised in allocating long- and short-term convicts according to prison lists. Thus the former island commandant, General Gintse, reading the list while on board a ship, himself decided to send the short-term convicts to the South. Among these fortunate ones there were later found twenty vagrants and those who were called "Not Remembering" —i.e., the very worst type of incorrigible and hopeless criminals. At the present time this custom has obviously been abandoned, since now long-term and even life-term convicts are also sent South, while I met short-term convicts in the terrifying Voyevodsk prison and in the mines.
The agronomist Mikhail Semenovich Mitsŭl was one of those who took part in the expedition of 1 870 sent from Petersburg under the command of Vlasov. He was a man of rare ethical standards, industrious, an optimist and idealist, enthusiastic and possessing the ability to communicate his enthusiasm to others. He was then about thirty-five years old. He carried out his duties with exceptional exactitude. In investigating the Sakhalin soil, flora and fauna, he went on foot over all the land included in present day Alexandrovsk and Tymovsk, the western coast, and the entire southern part of the island. There were no roads on the island then. Occasionally he came upon miserable paths which vanished in the taiga and swamps, and every journey, whether on horseback or on foot, was like a martyrdom. The idea of a penal agricultural colony astonished and fascinated Mitsul. He devoted himself to it wholeheartedly, fell in love with Sakhalin, and just as a mother sees no wrong in a beloved child, he paid no atten- tion to the frozen soil and mists of the island which became his second homeland. He thought of it as a flourishing oasis. Neither the meteorological data, practically nonexistent at the time, nor the bitter experiences of men who had come in previous years, which he obviously disbelieved, changed his opinion. Had he not seen the wild grapes, the bamboos, the giant grasses and the Japanese? Later in life he became a manager, and then a civilian adviser, always enthusiastic and indefatigably industrious. He died on Sakhalin from a severe nervous disorder at the age of 41. I saw his grave. He left a book: An Outline on Sakhalin Island in Respect to Its Agriculture (187 3). This is a lengthy poem in praise of Sakhalin productivity.
0 A convict handed me a slip of paper resembling a petition, which bore the following title: "Confidential. Something about
Our Wretched Hole. To the Great-Hearted and Benevolent Litera- teur Mr. Chekhov, Who Has Graced This Unworthy Island of Sakhalin with His" Presence. Post of Korsakov." In the petition I found a poem entitled "Wolfsbane":
Near the river proudly grows, In a suampy place, in a hollow, That blue leaf, so beautiful, In medicine called Aconite.
This is the root of the tiolfsbane, Planted by the hand of the Creator. Often it tempts people And sends them to the grave, Bestowing them on Abraham's bosom.
Those who selcct the sites of new settlements find that larches indicate the presence of poor, swampy soil. The subsoil clay does not drain water, but forms a peat bog. Marsh rosemary, cran- berries and moss appear, the larch itself deteriorates, grows crook- edly and is covered with Iceland moss. The larches here are ugly, with thin trunks, and they soon wither away without reaching maturity.
Cork trees and grapevines grow here, but they have degen- erated and resemble their forebears as little as Sakhalin bamboo cane resembles Ceylon bamboo.
In one of his orders General Kononovich testifies that "partly because of its isolation and the difficulties of communication, and partly because of private considerations and designs which in the full sight of my predecessors had the effect of ruining all these affairs and corroding everything touched by their rotten breath, the Korsakov district was continuously ignored and unfairly treated, and not one of its most pressing needs was examined, satisfied or resolvcd" (Order No. 318, 1889).
One verst from Bolshoye Takoe, a mill was built on the river by a German convict called Laks, by orders of General Konono- vich. He also built a mill on the Tym near Derbinsk. At the Takoe mill they charge one pound of flour and one kopeck for milling a pood of grain. The settlers are satisfied, because formerly they paid fifteen kopecks for a pood or milled the grain them- selves on a homemade elm hand mill. A canal had to be dug and a dam built for the mill.
I am not naming here the small tributaries where the Susui and Naybuchi watershed settlements lie, because they all have hard-to-pronounce Ainu or Japanese names such as Ekureki or Fufkasamanay.
12 Michman V. Vitgeft, "Two Words About Sakhalin Island,'" Kronstadt News (1872), Nos. 7, 17 and 34.
XIV Tarayka - Free Settlers - Their Failures - The Ainus, Boundaries of Their Dispersion, Enumeration, Appearance, Food, Cloth- ing, Habitations, Temperament - The Japanese - Kusun-Kotan - The Japanese Consulate
the siska settlement is situated at a place called the Tarayka, located on one of the southernmost tribu- taries of the Poronaya, which falls inta Terpeniye Bay. All of the Tarayka belongs to the Southern district, although this affiliation is farfetched because it is some 400 versts from Korsakov and the climate is forbidding, worse than in Due. The projected district mentioned in Chapter X will be called the Taraykinsky district. It will include all the settlements along the Poronaya, including Siska. In the meamime, only Southerners are being setded here. Gov- ernment data show only 7 inhabitants, 6 males and 1 female. I did not visit Siska but quote an excerpt from someone's diary: "The setdemem and the locality are deso- late. First, there is no clear water or The inhabitants
use well water that turns red from tundra seepage during rainy periods. The sandy shore on which the senlement stands is surrounded by tundra. . . . The site is distressing and depressing."1