Читать книгу The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism (Vol. 1-4). The History of Sea Voyages, Discovery, Piracy and Maritime Warfare онлайн

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PETROPAULOVSKI AND THE AVATCHA MOUNTAIN.

And now, before leaving the Asiatic coast, let us, as many English naval vessels have done, pay a flying visit to a still more northern harbour, that of Plover Bay, which forms the very apex of the China Station. Sailing, or steaming, through Bering Sea, it is satisfactory to know that so shallow is it that a vessel can anchor in almost any part of it, though hundreds of miles from land.98 Plover Bay does not derive its name from the whaling which is often pursued in its waters, although an ingenious Dutchman, of the service in which the writer was engaged at the periods of his visits, persisted in calling it “Blubber” Bay; its name is due to the visit of H.M.S. Plover in 1848–9, when engaged in the search for Sir John Franklin. The bay is a most secure haven, sheltered at the ocean end by a long spit, and walled in on three sides by rugged mountains and bare cliffs, the former composed of an infinite number of fragments of rock, split up by the action of frost. Besides many coloured lichens and mosses, there is hardly a sign of vegetation, except at one patch of country near a small inner harbour, where domesticated reindeer graze. On the spit before mentioned is a village of Tchuktchi natives; their tents are composed of hide, walrus, seal, or reindeer, with here and there a piece of old sail-cloth, obtained from the whalers, the whole patchwork covering a framework formed of the large bones of whales and walrus. The remains of underground houses are seen, but the people who used them have passed away. The present race makes no use of such houses. Their canoes are of skin, covering sometimes a wooden and sometimes a bone frame. On either side of one of these craft, which is identical with the Greenland “oomiak,” or women’s boat, it is usual to have a sealskin blown out tight, and the ends fastened to the gunwale; these serve as floats to steady the canoe. They often carry sail, and proceed safely far out to sea, even crossing Bering Straits to the American side. The natives are a hardy race; the writer has seen one of them carry the awkward burden of a carpenter’s chest, weighing two hundred pounds, without apparent exertion. One of their principal men was of considerable service to the expedition and to a party of telegraph constructors, who were left there in a wooden house made in San Francisco, and erected in a few days in this barren spot. This native, by name Naukum, was taken down into the engine-room of the telegraph steamer—G. S. Wright. He looked round carefully and thoughtfully, and then, shaking his head, said, solemnly, “Too muchee wheel; makee man too muchee think!” His curiosity on board was unappeasable. “What’s that fellow?” was his query with regard to anything, from the donkey-engine to the hencoops. Colonel Bulkley gave him a suit of mock uniform, gorgeous with buttons. One of the men remarked to him, “Why, Naukum, you’ll be a king soon!” But this magnificent prospect did not seem, judging from the way he received it, to be much to his taste. This man had been sometimes entrusted with as much as five barrels of villainous whisky for trading purposes, and he had always accounted satisfactorily to the trader for its use. The whisky sold to the natives is of the most horrible kind, scarcely superior to “coal oil” or paraffine. They appeared to understand the telegraph scheme in a general way. One explaining it, said, “S’pose lope fixy, well; one Melican man Plower Bay, make talky all same San Flancisco Melican.” Perhaps quite as lucid an explanation as you could get from an agricultural labourer or a street arab at home.