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Steamer Corwin,
Near the mouth of Metchigme Bay,
On the west side of Bering Strait,
June 27, 1881.
AFTER leaving St. Michael, on
the evening of the twenty-first, we crossed Bering Sea to Plover Bay to fill
our coal-bunkers from a pile belonging to His Majesty, the Czar of Russia.
On the twenty-third we were
sailing along the north side of St. Lawrence Island against a heavy wind.
There was a rough sea and a clear sky, save on the island. I had a tolerably
clear view of the most prominent portion of the island near the middle. It
is here composed of lava, reddish in color and dotted with craters and
cones, most of which seem recent, though a slight amount of glaciation of a
local kind is visible. About three in the afternoon we came to anchor off
the northwest end of the island opposite the village. A few natives came
aboard at eight o'clock.
The next day we got under way
at four in the morning, going east along the south side of St. Lawrence
Island. The norther again was blowing as hard as ever. We discovered an
Eskimo village, but the natives were mostly dead. Coming to anchor there at
six in the evening, we went ashore and met a few Ekimos who, though less
demonstrative, seemed quite as glad to see us as those on the northwest end
of the island. The village, as we examined it through our glasses, seemed so
still and desolate, we began to fear that, like some of the villages on the
north side of the island, not a soul was left alive in it, until here and
there a native was discovered on the brow of the hill where the summer
houses are.
After we had landed from the
life-boat, two men and a boy came running down to meet us and took us up to
the two inhabited houses. They all gathered about us from scattered points
of observation, and when we asked where all the people were to whom the
other houses belonged, they smiled and said, "All mucky." "All gone."
"Dead?" "Yes, dead!" We then inquired where the dead people were. They
pointed back of the houses and led us to eight corpses lying on the rocky
ground. They smiled at the ghastly spectacle of the grinning skulls and
bleached bones appearing through the brown, shrunken skin.
Being detained on the
twenty-fifth by the norther which was still blowing, we went ashore after
breakfast, and had a long walk through graves, back to noble views of the
island, telling the grandeur of its glaciation by the northern ice-sheets.
Weighed anchor and steered for Plover Bay shortly after nine in the evening,
and arrived there early on the morning of the twenty-sixth. While the ship
was being coaled, I climbed the east wall of the fiord three or four miles
above the mouth, where it is about twenty-two hundred feet above the level
of the sea, and, as the day was clear, I obtained capital views of the
mountains on both sides and around the head of the fiord among the numerous
ice-fountains which, during the glacial winter, poured their tribute through
this magnificent channel into Bering Sea.
When the glacier that formed
what is now called Plover Bay, was in its prime, it was about thirty miles
long and from five to six miles in width at the widest portion of the trunk,
and about two thousand feet deep. It then had at least five main
tributaries, which, as the trunk melted towards the close of the ice period,
became independent glaciers, and these again were melted into perhaps
seventy- five or more small residual glaciers from less than a mile to
several miles in length, all of which, as far as I could see, have at length
vanished, though some wasting remnants may still linger in the highest and
best-protected fountains above the head of the fiord. I had a fine glissade
down the valley of a tributary glacier whose terminal moraines show the same
gradual death as those of the Sierra. The mountains hereabouts, in the forms
of the peaks, ridges, lake-basins, bits of meadow, and in sculpture and
aspects in general, are like those of the high Sierra of California where
the rock is least resisting.
Snow still lingers in drift
patches and streaks and avalanche heaps down to the sea-level, while there
is but little depth of solid snow on the highest peaks and ridges, so that,
there being no warm, sunny base of gentle slopes and foothills, no varying
belts of climate, this region as a whole seems to consist of only the
storm-beaten tops of mountains shorn off from their warm, well-planted
bases. Still there are spots here and there, where the snow is melted, that
are already cheered with about ten species of plants in full bloom:
anemones, buttercups, primulas, several species of draba, purple heathworts,
phlox and potentilla, making charming alpine gardens, but too small and
thinly planted to show at a distance of more than a few yards, while trees
are wholly wanting.
On our way north to-day we
stopped a few minutes opposite a small native settlement, six or eight miles
to the northeast of the mouth of Metchigme Bay, in search of Onmiscot, the
rich reindeer owner, whom we had met further up the coast two weeks ago, and
who had then promised to have a lot of deerskins ready for us if we would
call at his village.
Some of the natives, coming
off to the steamer to trade, informed us that Omniscot lived some distance
up the bay that we had just passed, and one of them, who speaks a little
English, inquired why we had not brought back Omniscot's son. He told us
that he was his cousin and that his mother was crying about him last night,
fearing that he would never come back.
We informed him that his
cousin was crazy and had tried to kill himself, but that he was now at
Plover Bay with one of his friends and would probably be home soon. This
young Omniscot., whom we had taken aboard at St. Lawrence Bay, thinking that
he might be useful as an interpreter, is a son of the reindeer man and
belongs to the Chukchi tribe. We soon came to see that we had a troublesome
passenger, for the expression of his eyes, and the nervous dread he
manifested of all the natives wherever we chanced to stop, indicated some
form of insanity. He would come to the door of the cabin to warn the Captain
against the people of every village that we were approaching as likely to
kill us, and then he would hide himself below deck or climb for greater
safety into the rigging.
On the twenty-fifth, when we
were lying at anchor off St. Lawrence Island, he offered his rifle, which he
greatly prized, to one of the officers, saying that inasmuch as he would
soon die he would not need it. He also sent word to the Captain that he
would soon be "mucky," but came to the cabin door shortly afterward, with
nothing unusual apparent in his face or behavior, and began a discussion
concerning the region back of St. Michael as a location for a flock of
reindeer. He thought they would do well there, he said, and that his father
would give him some young ones to make a beginning, which he could take over
in some schooner, and that they would get plenty of good moss to eat on the
tundra, and multiply fast until they became a big herd like his father's, so
big that nobody could count them.
In three or four hours after
this he threw himself overboard, but was picked up and brought on deck. Some
of the sailors stripped off his wet furs, and then the discovery was made
that before throwing himself into the sea the poor fellow had stabbed
himself in the left lung. The surgeon dressed his wound and gave as his
opinion that it would prove fatal: He was doing well, however, when we left
him, and is likely to recover. The Plover Bay natives, in commenting on the
affair, remarked that the St. Lawrence people were a bad, quarrelsome set,
and always kept themselves in some sort of trouble.
Having procured a guide from
among the natives that came aboard here, we attempted to reach Omniscot's
village, but found the bay full of ice, and were compelled to go on without
our winter supply of deerskins, hoping, however, to be able to get them on
the east coast.
There is quite a large
Chukchi settlement near the mouth of the bay, on the north side. Seven large
canoe-loads of the population came aboard, making quite a stir on our little
ship. They are the worst-looking lot of Siberian natives that I have yet
seen, though there are some fine, tall, manly fellows amongst them. Mr.
Nelson, a naturalist, and zealous collector for the Smithsonian Institution,
who joined us at St. Michael, photographed a group of the most villainous of
the men, and two of the women whose arms were elaborately tattooed up to the
shoulders. Their faces were a curious study while they were trying to keep
still under circumstances so extraordinary.
The glaciation of the coast
here is recorded in very telling characters, the movement of the ice having
been in a nearly south-southwest direction. There is also a considerable
deposit of irregularly stratified sand and gravel along this part of the
coast. For fifteen or twenty miles it rises in crumbling bluffs fifty feet
high, and makes a fiat, gently sloping margin, from one hundred yards to
several miles in width, in front of the mountains. The bay, moreover, is
nearly closed by a bar, probably of the same material. The weather is
delightful, clear sunshine, only a few fleecy wisps of cloud in the west,
and the water still as a mill-pond.
June 28. Anchored an hour or
two this forenoon at the west Diomede, and landed a party to make
observations on the currents and temperature of the water that sets through
Bering Strait. Then proceeded on our way direct to Tapkan to seek our search
party. The fine weather that we have enjoyed since the day before our
arrival at St. Michael ended in the old, dark, gloomy clouds and drizzling
fog on reaching the Diomedes, though the coast above East Cape has until now
been in sight most of the time UI) to a height of about a thousand feet.
The glaciation, after the
melting of the icesheet, has been light, sculpturing the mountains into
shallow, short valleys and round ridges, mostly broad-backed. The valleys,
for the most part, are not cut down to the sea. The shore seems to have been
cut off by the glacier sheet that occupied the sea, after it was too shallow
to flow over the angle of land formed by East Cape. This overflow is well-
marked, fifteen to twenty-five miles northwest of the Cape, in the trends of
the ridges and valleys as far back as I could see, that is, about
twenty-five miles from the shore. The north wind is, and has been, blowing
for twenty-four hours, and we fear that we will soon meet with the drifting
ice from the main polar pack.
Steamer Corwin,
Off the Chukchi village of Tapkan,
Near Cape Serdzekamen, Siberia,
June 29, 1881.
We arrived here about eight
this morning to meet the search party that we landed about a month ago, near
Koliuchin Island. They had been waiting for us nearly two weeks. We were
unable to land on account of the stormy weather, but after waiting about two
hours we saw them making their way out to the edge of the drift ice, which
extended about three miles from shore, and after a good deal of difficulty
they reached the steamer in safety. The air was gray with falling snow, and
the north wind was blowing hard, dashing heavy swells, with wild, tumultuous
uproar, against jagged, tumbling ice blocks that formed the edge of the
pack. The life-boat was lowered and pulled to the edge of the pack and a
line was thrown from it to the most advanced of the party, who was balancing
himself among the heaving bergs. This line was made fast to a light skin
boat that the party had pushed out over the ice from the shore, and, getting
into it, they soon managed to get themselves fairly launched and free from
the tossing, wave-dashed ice which momentarily threatened to engulf them.
Mr. Herring, the officer in
charge, reported that they had proceeded along the coast as far as Cape
Wankarem and had been so fortunate as to accomplish the main objects of
their mission, namely, to determine the value of the stories prevalent among
the natives to the southward of here concerning the lost whalers Vigilant
and Mount Wollaston; to ascertain whether any of the crews of the missing
vessels had landed on the Siberian coast to the southeastward of Cape Yakán;
and in case any party should land there in the future, to bespeak in their
behalf the aid and good-will of the natives.
At the Chukchi village at
Cape Onman they were told that at the village of Oncarima, near Cape
Wankarem, they would find three men who could tell them all about the broken
ship, for they had seen the wreck and been aboard of her, and had brought
off many things that they had found on the deck and in the cabin. This news
caused them to hurry on, and when they arrived at the village, and had
bestowed the customary presents of tobacco and coffee, Mr. Herring stated
the object of his visit.
Three natives then came
forward and stated through the interpreter that last year, when they were
out hunting seals on the ice, about five miles from the land, near the
little island which they call Konkarpo, at the time of year when the new ice
begins to grew in the sea, and when the sun does not rise, they saw a big
ship without masts in the ice-pack, which they reached without difficulty
and climbed on deck. The masts, they said, had been chopped down, and there
was a pair of horns on the end of the jib-boom, indicating the position of
them on a sketch of a ship. The hold, they said, was full of water so that
they could not go down into it to see anything, but they broke a way into
the cabin and found four dead men, who had been dead a long time. Three of
them were lying in bunks, and one on the floor. They also got into the
galley and found a number of artides which they brought away; also, some
from the cabin and other parts of the ship.
While they were busy looking
for things which they fancied, and considered worth carrying away, one of
the three called out to his companions that the wind was blowing offshore,
and that they must make haste for the land as the ice was beginning to move,
which caused them to hurry from the wreck with what articles they could
conveniently carry without being delayed. Next day they vent as far out
towards the spot where they had left the vessel as the state of the ice
would allow, hoping to procure something else. But they found that she had
drifted out of sight, and as the wind had been blowing from the southwest,
they supposed that she had drifted in a northeasterly direction. They had
looked for this ship many times after her first disappearance, but never saw
her again.
After they had finished their
story, Mr. Herring requested them to show him all the things that they had
brought from the wreck, telling them that he would give them tobacco for
some of them that he might want to show to his friends. Thereupon they
brought forward the following articles, which were carefully examined by our
party in hopes of being able to identify the vessel: -
A pair of marine glasses
A pair of silver-mounted spectacles in a tin case (the lenses showing that
they had belonged to an aged person)
A jack-knife
A carving-knife
A butcher's chopping-knife
Two table-knives, the handle of one of them marked V
A meat saw
A soup ladle
A stew pan
A tin collander
A hand lamp
A square tin lantern painted green
A draw-knife
An adze
Two carpenter's saws
A chisel
A file
A brace and bit
A tack hammer
A pump-handle
A shovel
A bullet-mould
A truss
A bottle of some sort of medicine
A sailor's ditty bag, with thread
A razor
A linen jumper
Two small coins
Two coils of Manila rope
Three whale spades
One harpoon
The harpoon and whale spades
are marked "B.K.," and will no doubt serve to identify the owners. Not a
single private name was found on any of the articles; nor did the natives
produce any books or papers of any sort, though they said that they saw
books in the cabin. A number of the articles enumerated above were purchased
by Mr. Herring and are now on board the Corwin, namely, the marine glasses,
spectacles, harpoon, and table- knives.
The fate, then, of one of the
two missing ships is discovered beyond a doubt., though a portion of the
crew may possibly be alive. If the statement as to the deer horns on the
jib-boom is to be relied on, it is the Vigilant, as she is said to be the
only vessel in the fleet that had deer horns on her jib-boom.
A party of Chukchi traders,
also, were met here, being on their way to East Cape with reindeer skins.
They stated that no vessel had been seen anywhere along the coast to the
northwest of Wankarem as far as Cape Yakán except one, a three-masted
steamer, the Vega, two years ago; that if any ships had been seen they
certainly should have heard about it. The place where the Vega wintered, [Pittle
Keg.] fifteen or twenty miles to the northwest of Cape Scrdzekamen, is well
known to nearly all the natives living within a hundred miles of it.
The Jeannette was last seen
by the natives off Cape Serdzekamen two years ago, probably just before she
went north into the ice. A party of walrus hunters went aboard of her. They
described her as a three-masted steamer, with plenty of coal and dogs on
deck. When Wrangell Land was pointed out on a chart to the natives at Cape
Wankarem, they shook their heads and said that they knew nothing of land in
that direction. But one old man told them that long ago he had heard
something about a party of men who had come from some far unknown land to
the north, over the ice.
According to Lieutenant
Reynolds, nine Chukchi settlements were passed on the coast between Tapkan
and Oncarima, namely, Naskan, Undrillan, Illwinoop, Youngilla, [lintlin.]
Illoiuk, Koliuchin, Unatapkan, Onman and Enelpan. The largest of these is
Koliuchin, with twenty- seven houses and about three hundred people.
The natives, everywhere along
the route traveled, treated the party with great kindness, giving them food
for their dog-teams and answering the questions put to them with good-
natured patience. At Koliuchin one of the chief men of the village invited
them to dinner and greatly surprised them by giving them good tea served in
handsome China cups, which he said he had bought from the Russians. |
