The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, August 17, 1902, Page 13

THE SUNDAY CALL. W PO [;4 ARNIN Jler POST - P HOUSE ON PUSIIAN ), STEPPES g/ bt f__5 ARRY DE WINDT, explorer, [~ || newspaper writer and Paris & London society man, has com- pleted the journey from Paris to New York, undertaken in the interest of a trans-Siberian, trans-Alaskan rail- way. With theexception of the few miles across Bering Straits, the entire trip was made by land, and while there no attempt at record-breaking, the time consumed was remarkably ort for the time of year and the way. In eight months Mr. de Windt has veled a distance of half the earth’s The greater part of e was made by sledge, with of horse, reindeer and dog and not a little of the journey f necessity made on foot. e Windt left Paris notice, in mid-winter, and at on nto the barren snow- of th® frozem Arctic. anions he had George Englishman, and Vi- hamp-Bellegards, al- - circumference. ta at a selected led the travel- chain of Russian exile last of which had one from the out- y years. the route lay miles through an T d portion of Siberia, and this Mr. de Windt considers the most teres: art of the trip. Between the northmost Russian and Bering Straits the ex- the the plorer located two settlements of Tchuktchi peopie sot shovn upcn the ments which had never e been ed by white men. de Windt stopped in San Fran- several days en route to New and while here gave this ac- f his trip from Nijni-Kolymsk y unknown. No n ¥ before. It was Arctic midwinter, but the trip be deferred. In summer it impossible, absolutely. After begins the sl is waist deep. n, it had to be, and we left e farthest north of the ts, early in March d was Sredni-Kolymsk, the he filthiest and most hide- ¢ the famine-; ,dis- nies of political exiles. ped to get food, but they msk we hoped to find fresh r. They gave us dogs in- arved brutes they r to the huskies of londike and requiring sledge. It was these or noth- s no choice in that godiess were the of a bre twe consisting of a few food prepared for little black bread—the of the starving people could spa ! no guide e world No one in all had ever ven- lymsk in this direc- years ago, a German ex- Kolymsk for the interior. He never reachcd never heard of. Had edge of the globe he ppeared more com- e back. be a companions and I chose the coast though it was almost Impossible to frozen sea left the snow- st i-Kolymsk there are no more povarnias, or post-houses, main- tained by the Russion Government at dis- ) miles along the route lead- the penal coionie These are at miserable hovels, uninhabited with no pretense of being weather- roof. Often they are entirely hidden by 2d do not even serve as landmarks, h less afford a half shelter to the A traveler, 2nd the supply of wood and wa- ter, which is their real purpose. Day after day, over the desolate waste, in the dull gray of the endless Arctic night, we beat our way, fighting at every step a fierce gale that almost hurled us from our feet. On and on, from eight o'clock in the morning till eight at night, walking when we could not ride for the cold, riding whea we were too weak to walk farther, mak- ing on an average twenty miles a day. Once a day we ate our slim ration of , black bread and brick tea—once a for we could not afford to eat more. for the dogs, they had frozen fish when there were any to be had, and when there we no fish nothing. Each day was ltke the day before. No change of scene—nothing as far as eye could see Dut Snow—umOrokKen, bar- ren, blinding. No change from dawn to dark, and from k to dawn. Only the black, inhuman 3 ve when the aurora flared from in all its gaudy but we would a the northern horizon plendor—a royal sight, gladly have exchanged it for an hour of daylight 0 change in the weather, except that the wind seemed stronger and sharper, the cold more keen, as we grew weaker from lack of food and long exposure. A week passed, two weeks, and still no sign of human life. But for the howl of the wind and the wolves the white desert was also vold of sound. Two days more and the last mouthtul of food wgs gone. We did not know whether we were days or weeks or months from men and food, yet we bent our backs against the gale, lashed the dogs on, following the line of the coast as nearly as we could for the snow that thickened the air and made the ground a great, white blenk. One, two, three days without food. There was but one thing to do. Hunger and cold kill a man’'s prejudices and be- numb his fastidiousness. At the end of the third day we killed one of our dogs, not knowing that the next day was to bring us to a Tchuktchi village. It was just nineteen days after leav- ing Nijni-Kolymsk that we stumbled upon the eingle hut that constitutes the village of Erktrik, the first habitation within 500 miles of what had seemed the jumping- off place of Russia. This village is locat- ed on the neck of Chaun Bay. The inhabitants of Erktrik number about twenty, while nine corpses are laid cut in the snow awalting burial. - Our dogs made quick work of the dead, and after some parley we were given a scant supply of walrus meat from the hidden store of ,the living. Walrus soaked in seal ofl is the chief food of these people, but it is only possible to a white man when it is the one thing between him and starvation. They shared their supply with us through fear rather than friendliness. No one in the village had ever seen a. white man and they did not know what to make of us. Besides, we had more wea- pons than they, their arsenal consisting of a single rifle of a very old French make, which must have come at some re- mote time from a whaler. Plainly they were afraid of us, but it took us a long time to make them give us anything, [ e PTGHUK TCHI gE’LLEJ A EAST CAFPE though we knew they had plenty hidden somewhere. The Tchuktchis are the most degraded, the lowest type of humanity I have ever come across. What race they belong to and where they came from I don't know, they don’t know, nobody knows. My bellef is that they came from North America, as they have some cus- toms similar to those of Eskimos. One of these customs.is when a man is sick for two or three days and does not seem to get better he goes to a friend and asks him to put a bullet through his head. A refusal means enmity for life. Another point of similarity between the Tchuktchi and the Eskimo ig their ex- treme filth. ' Neither knows the first prin- ciple of cleanliness. In Erktrik the en- tire population lives in one small tent, eating and sleeping there in disgusting s THR X_,fi@\\})\ /fifigfi?{/\\\ Z squalor, These people have no religion but that of shooting a friend when he asks It, and sometimes when he doesn't. A man can marry any woman—his mother, sister or daughter, if he choose, and as many as he can afford. The price is pald in skins and furs, which, at this distance from Bering Straits, is all the Tchuktchis have. Farther along, where the whalers now and then, there are a few cheap trinkets and more firearms. These and whisky and dogs add to the Interest of bargalning. Whisky is every- where the most coveted article of ex- change. As a result of the frequent intermar- riage of these people the race degener- ates physically and deformities are com- mon, while all manner of loathsome dis- ease finds them easy victims. The women are slaves to the men. As usual among primitive people, it is the women who do all the work. The men bunt walrus when the ice melts suffi- clently, but aside from that they do noth- ing. The women must pack the meat, take care of the hides and make all the boots and parkas, caps, gloves and any- thing else that any one needs. They are skillful enough with the needle, too, and ouGH UN. display some taste In arrangement of col- ors. The boots worn in the.picture were made by a Tchuktchi woman, the upper part being of reindeer skin and the low- er of walrus hide. They are absolutely waterproof. The parka was made for me by the natives at Nijni-Kolymsk, and was worn over five suits of heavy woolen underwear. Our welcome at Erktrik was not warm enough to make us care to remain long, nor to cause regret at leaving. We could communicate with our reluctant hosts only by signs and could get nothing from them in the way of directions for con- tinuing our journey. They khew nothing of any part of the country but their own, and cared less. Again we turned our backs upon what might prove the last human faces we should see, and set out in the direction of the Straits. The snow desért seemed endless as be- fore. The winds still blew flercely, as if trying to beat us back and stifle us with the icy particles swept from the ground. The aurora flared continuously in the northern sky, now and then softened to a dull glow by the thick haze. Strangely enough, the gales were mostly from the southward, yet the temperature ranged between zeventy and eighty de- [AFRRY BY srees below zere. Many times we lost our way and wan- dered miles inland, for the coast-line was hard to follow. Some of our dogs went mad with the cold and had to be shot. As the teams were reduced in number and weakened by continued hunger they could do less work on the rough ice, and we must walk more. ‘When we stopped at night, our clothing, &amp with perspiration, froze to our bod- les. There was nothing with which to build fires, and a canvas tent, while it sieves the wind and keeps out the snow, s poor protection against Arctic cold. Only once did we find use for gur guns— VILLAGE or’ ERKTRIK when a polar bear crossed our path. The meat was a grateful change from putrid walrus flesh, which had grown sickening, but must be eaten when there was abso- lutely nothing else. It had seemed long from Nijni-Kolymsk to Erktrik, but that 500 miles was short as compared with the 350 miles from Erk- trik to the next village, Owarkin. Owarkin had perhaps fifty inhabitants, and there were several huts, though one was all we could see at first for the drifls of snow. JFrom the top of this hut there was flying a small black flag, which we discovered later meant smallpox. Al- though we did not know the meaning of the black flag, I had only to put my head in the doorway of the hut to detect the smell of the disease, with which I had be- come familiar in Russian prisons. It was epldemic in the villages, which for filth and vermin was the equal of Erktrik—the very limit. Smallpox offers.no inducement to stop in a Tchuktchi village, and as soon as we could arrange for a little more food we started for Cape North. That part of the trip was little different from what we had now endured for weeks, but after leaving Cape North the weather grew milder and villages became more fre- quent. It was not more than eighty or » & hundred miles from ane to another, and ‘we had food in plenty, such as it was. To get it we had often to give a dog in trade, for there dogs are scarce and very valu- able. To these people a white man was not such a curiosity, for the villages are oc- casionally visited by whalers. They had no love for us, however, and it was safer to make our visits as short as possible. We found little difference between the Tchuktchis of the different villages, ex- cept that those who had come in con- tact with white men were less honest than the others. The people of Erktrik and Owarkin pald no attention to the things we left lying around in our camp, but the nearer the Straits we got the less eafe was our outfit. They steal anything they can lay hands on. What they want most is whisky, and of that we had none, as we carried only tea to drink; but when they can’t get whisky they take what- ever they can get. While the habits of the Tchuktchis are quite the same all along the coast, the language is different in every settlement. The few words we picked up in one vil- lage served no purpose in the next, for they were not understood. Toward the end of May we reached East Cape and here we had to wait five weeks for a ship, as the ice in the Straits was already broken and we could not cross on foot or with sledges. We found the people of Fast Cape in the midst of a great celebration. It was not the occasion of a whale killing, which is always the signal for a drunken orgle, but kootch was king, and during his reign no white man’s life is safe. Kootch Is a flery liquor made of mo- lasses and flour fermented and forced through a gun barrel. It is little less than poison and not only intoxicates but crazes men. For two days we lay hidden In the hut of an old man who offered us protec- tion—for a consideration. All through the day and night the savage din continued and not until the third day did the ex- citement subside enough to make it safe for us to leave our hiding place. This was our reception at the Tchuktehi metropelis after two months of travel through the most God-forsaken country on the glob: —_— ee———— Held for Ransom. M. Stravalopoulos, a young man who was captured recently by brigands, has returned to Athens. He states that as he was about to go on board his yacht at Eghion, he was accosjed by a fashionably dressed young man, who kept him in con- versation while four other men crept up behind him and seized and gagged him. They then carried him off to the moun- tains, to which they were accompanied by the fashionable young man, who turned out to be a notorious brigand chief named Panopculos. M. Stravalopoulos was taken to a large cavern or grotto, very comfort- ably furnished, where the brigands com- pelled him to write to his father, a rich banker, for a ransem of £4000 in gold. His captors gave him plenty of food and wines, and even insisted on his saying his prayers twice a day. They also made him read various improving books, of which there was a large supply in the grotto. On the arrival of the money, it was conveyed to a monastery in the mountaine, where one of the monks counted it and handed it over to the rob- bers. A great feast was held the same evening In the grotto, and the brigands becoming Intoxicated, the prisoner made his escape and reached the raflway after a journey of five hours on foot. He re- turned to the grotto as soon as a force of police could be got together, but the brigands had all decamped.—London Globe. —_—————————— Animals That Drink No Water. There are some lucky animals who are never troubled with thirst and who can exist quite comfortably without drinking a drop of water, asserts the London Tat- ler. There is a parrakeet at the Zoologi- ¢zl Gardens in London that has lived for oter half a century without drinking any- thing. Many naturalists have a theory that hares never drink, or at all events that water is not a necessity to their ex- istence; the dew on the grass is supposed to be sufficient liquid for their wants. There is a certain breed of gazelle that never drinks, and the lamas of Patagonia live for years without taking water. In France there is a particular class of cat- tle near Losere that rarely touches water. This is all t! more remarkajle because these cattle give milk of a rich quality, from which excellent cheese {8 made. In this country, of course, milking cows would dle in a very short time without 2 plerfiful supply of water.