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V.—ON THE ICE

Despite the fire made on the iron plate in the middle of the tent, our adventurers found the cold at this point of their journey most poignant. It was about Christmas; but the exact time of year had little to do with the matter. The wind was northerly, and keen: and they often at night had to rise and promote circulation by a good run on the snow. But early on the third day all was ready for a start. The sun was seen that morning on the edge of the horizon for a short while, and promised soon to give them days. Before them were a line of icebergs, seemingly an impenetrable wall; but it was necessary to brave them. The dogs, refreshed by two days of rest, started vigorously, and a plain hill of ice being selected, they succeeded in reaching its summit. Then before them lay a vast and seemingly interminable plain. Along this the sledges ran with great speed; and that day they advanced nearly thirty miles from the land, and camped on the sea in a valley of ice.

It was a singular spot. Vast sugar-loaf hills of ice, as old perhaps as the world, threw their lofty cones to the skies, on all sides, while they rested doubtless on the bottom of the ocean. Every fantastic form was there; there seemed in the distance cities and palaces as white as chalk; pillars and reversed cones, pyramids and mounds of every shape, valleys and lakes; and under the influence of the optical delusions of the locality, green fields and meadows, and tossing seas. Here the whole party rested soundly, and pushed on hard the next day in search of land.

Several tracks of foxes and bears were now seen, but no animals were discovered. The route, however, was changed. Every now and then newly-formed fields of ice were met, which a little while back had been floating. Lumps stuck up in every direction, and made the path difficult. Then they reached a vast polinas, where the humid state of the surface told that it was thin, and of recent formation. A stick thrust into it went through. But the adventurers took the only course left them. The dogs were placed abreast, and then, at a signal, were launched upon the dangerous surface. They flew rather than ran. It was necessary, for as they went, the ice cracked in every direction, but always under the weight of the nartas, which were off before they could be caught by the bubbling waters. As soon as the solid ice was again reached, the party halted, deep gratitude to Heaven in their hearts, and camped for the night.

But the weather had changed. What is called here the warm wind had blown all day, and at night a hurricane came on. As the adventurers sat smoking after supper, the ice beneath their feet trembled, shook, and then fearful reports bursting on their ears, told them that the sea was cracking in every direction. They had camped on an elevated iceberg of vast dimensions, and were for the moment safe. But around them they heard the rush of waters. The vast Frozen Sea was in one of its moments of fury. In the deeper seas to the north it never freezes firmly—in fact there is always an open sea, with floating bergs. When a hurricane blows, these clear spaces become terribly agitated. Their tossing waves and mountains of ice act on the solid plains, and break them up at times. This was evidently the case now. About midnight our travelers, whose anguish of mind was terrible, felt the great iceberg afloat. Its oscillations were fearful. Sakalar alone preserved his coolness. The men of Nijnei Kolimsk raved and tore their hair, crying that they had been brought willfully to destruction; Kolina kneeled, crossed herself, and prayed; while Ivan deeply reproached himself as the cause of so many human beings encountering such awful peril. The rockings of their icy raft were terrible. It was impelled hither and thither by even huger masses. Now it remained on its first level, then its surface presented an angle of nearly forty-five degrees, and it seemed about to turn bottom up. All recommended themselves to God, and awaited their fate. Suddenly they were rocked more violently than ever, and were all thrown down by the shock. Then all was still.

The hurricane lulled, the wind shifted. snow began to fall, and the prodigious plain of loose ice again lay quiescent. The bitter frost soon cemented its parts once more, and the danger was over. The men of Nijnei Kolimsk now insisted on an instant return; but Sakalar was firm, and, though their halt had given them little rest, started as the sun was seen above the horizon. The road was fearfully bad. All was rough, disjointed, and almost impassable. But the sledges had good whalebone keels, and were made with great care to resist such difficulties. The dogs were kept moving all day, but when night came they had made but little progress. But they rested in peace. Nature was calm, and morning found them still asleep. But Sakalar was indefatigable, and as soon as he had boiled a potful of snow, made tea, and awoke his people.

They were now about to enter a labyrinth of toroses or icebergs. There was no plain ground within sight; but no impediment could be attended to. Bears made these their habitual resorts, while the wolf skulked every night round the camp, waiting their scanty leavings. Every eye was stretched in search of game. But the road itself required intense care, to prevent the sledges overturning. Toward the afternoon they entered a narrow valley of ice full of drifted snow, into which the dogs sank, and could scarcely move. At this instant two enormous white bears presented themselves. The dogs sprang forward; but the ground was too heavy for them. The hunters, however, were ready. The bears marched boldly on as if savage from long fasting. No time was to be lost. Sakalar and Ivan singled out each his animal. Their heavy ounce balls struck both. The opponent of Sakalar turned and fled, but that of Ivan advanced furiously toward him. Ivan stood his ground, axe in hand, and struck the animal a terrible blow on the muzzle. But as he did so, he stumbled, and the bear was upon him. Kolina shrieked; Sakalar was away after his prize; but the Kolimsk men rushed in. Two fired: the third struck the animal with a spear. The bear abandoned Ivan, and faced his new antagonists. The contest was now unequal, and before half an hour was over, the stock of provisions was again augmented, as well as the means of warmth. They had very little wood, and what they had was used sparingly. Once or twice a tree, fixed in the ice, gave them additional fuel; but they were obliged chiefly to count on oil. A small fire was made at night to cook by; but it was allowed to go out, the tent was carefully closed, and the caloric of six people, with a huge lamp with three wicks, served for the rest of the night.

About the sixth day they struck land. It was a small island, in a bay of which they found plenty of drift wood. Sakalar was delighted. He was on the right track. A joyous halt took place, a splendid fire was made, and the whole party indulged themselves in a glass of rum—a liquor very rarely touched, from its known tendency to increase rather than diminish cold. A hole was next broken in the ice, and an attempt made to catch some seals. Only one, however, rewarded their efforts; but this, with a supply of wood, filled the empty space made in the sledges by the daily consumption of the dogs. But the island was soon found to be infested with bears: no fewer than five, with eleven foxes, were killed, and then huge fires had to be kept up at night to drive their survivors away.

Their provender thus notably increased, the party started in high spirits; but though they were advancing toward the pole, they were also advancing toward the Deep Sea, and the ice presented innumerable dangers. Deep fissures, lakes, chasms, mountains, all lay in their way; and no game presented itself to their anxious search. Day after day they pushed on—here making long circuits, there driven back, and losing sometimes in one day all they had made in the previous twelve hours. Some fissures were crossed on bridges of ice, which took hours to make, while every hour the cold seemed more intense. The sun was now visible for hours, and, as usual in these parts, the cold was more severe since his arrival.

At last, after more than twenty days of terrible fatigue, there was seen looming in the distance what was no doubt the promised land. The sledges were hurried forward—for they were drawing toward the end of their provisions—and the whole party was at length collected on the summit of a lofty mountain of ice. Before them were the hills of New Siberia; to their right a prodigious open sea: and at their feet, as far as the eye could reach, a narrow channel of rapid water, through which huge lumps of ice rushed so furiously, as to have no time to cement into a solid mass.

The adventurers stood aghast. But Sakalar led the way to the very brink of the channel, and moved quietly along its course until he found what he was in search of. This a sheet or floe of ice, large enough to bear the whole party, and yet almost detached from the general field. The sledges were put upon it, and then, by breaking with their axes the narrow tongue which held it, it swayed away into the tempestuous sea. It almost turned round as it started. The sledges and dogs were placed in the middle, while the five men stood at the very edge to guide it as far as possible with their hunting spears.

In a few minutes it was impelled along by the rapid current, but received every now and then a check when it came in contact with heavier and deeper masses. The Kolimsk men stood transfixed with terror as they saw themselves borne out toward that vast deep sea which eternally tosses and rages round the Arctic Pole: but Sakalar, in a peremptory tone, bade them use their spears. They pushed away heartily; and their strange raft, though not always keeping its equilibrium, was edged away both across and down the stream. At last it began to move more slowly, and Sakalar found himself under the shelter of a huge iceberg, and then impelled up stream by a backwater current. In a few minutes the much wished-for shore was reached.

The route was rude and rugged as they approached the land; but all saw before them the end of their labors for the winter, and every one proceeded vigorously. The dogs seemed to smell the land, or at all events some tracks of game, for they hurried on with spirit. About an hour before the usual time of camping they were under a vast precipice, turning which, they found themselves in a deep and sheltered valley, with a river at the bottom, frozen between its lofty banks, and covered by deep snow.

"The ivory mine!" said Sakalar in a low tone to Ivan, who thanked him by an expressive look.

THE RUSSIAN SERF

"In the Russian peasant lies the embryo of the Russian chivalric spirit, the origin of our nation's grandeur."

"Cunning fellows they are, the vagabonds," remarked Vassily Ivanovitsch.

"Yes, cunning, and thereby clever; quick in imitation, quick in appropriating what is new or useful—ready prepared for civilization. Try to teach a laborer in foreign countries anything out of the way of his daily occupation, and he will still cling to his plow: with us, only give the word, and the peasant becomes musician, painter, mechanic, steward, anything you like."

"Well, that's true," remarked Vassily Ivanovitsch.

"And besides," continued Ivan Vassilievitsch, "in what country can you find such a strongly-marked and instinctive notion of his duties, such readiness to assist his fellow-creatures, such cheerfulness, such benignity, so much gentleness and strength combined."

"A splendid fellow the Russian peasant—a splendid fellow indeed;" interrupted Vassily Ivanovitsch.

"And, nevertheless, we disdain him, we look at him with contempt; nay, more, instead of making any effort to cultivate his mind, we try to spoil it by every possible means."

"How so?"

"By the loathsome establishment we have—our household serfs. Our house serf is the first step toward the tchinovnik. He goes without a beard and wears a coat of a western cut; he is an idler, a debauchee, a drunkard, a thief, and yet he assumes airs of consequence before the peasant, whom he disdains, and from whose labor he draws his own subsistence and his poll-tax. After some time more or less, according to circumstances, the household serf becomes a clerk; he gets his liberty and a place as writer in some district court; as a writer in the government's service he disdains, in addition to the peasant, his late comrades in the household; he learns to cavil in business, and begins to take email bribes in poultry, eggs, corn, &c.; he studies roguery systematically, and goes one step lower; he becomes a secretary and a genuine tchinovnik. Then his sphere is enlarged; he gets a new existence: he disdains the peasant, the house serf, the clerk, and the writer, because, he says, they are all uncivilized people. His wants are now greater, and you cannot bribe him except with bank notes. Does he not take wine now at his meals? Does he not patronize a little pharo? Is he not obliged to present his lady with a costly cap or a silk gown? He fills up his place, and without the least remorse—like a tradesman behind his counter—he sells his influence as if it were merchandise. It happens now and then that he is caught. 'Served him right,' say his comrades then; 'take bribes, but take them prudently, so as not to be caught.'"

"But they are not all as you describe them," remarked Vassily Ivanovitsch.

"Certainly not. Exceptions, however, do not alter the rule."

"And yet the officers in the government service with us are for the most part elected by the nobility and gentry."

"That is just where the great evil lies," continued Ivan Vassilievitsch. "What in other countries is an object of public competition, is with us left to ourselves. What right have we to complain against our government, who has left it in our discretion to elect officers to regulate our internal affairs? Is it not our own fault that, instead of paying due attention to a subject of so much importance, we make game of it? We have in every province many a civilized man, who backed by the laws, could give a salutary direction to public affairs; but they all fly the elections like a plague, leaving them in the hands of intriguing schemers. The most wealthy land-owners lounge on the Nevsky-perspective, or travel abroad, and but seldom visit their estates. For them elections are—a caricature: they amuse themselves over the bald head of the sheriff or the thick belly of the president of the court of assizes, and they forget that to them is intrusted not only their own actual welfare and that of their peasantry, but their entire future destiny. Yes, thus it is! Had we not taken such a mischievous course, were we not so unpardonably thoughtless, how grand would have been the vocation of the Russian noble, to lead the whole nation forward on the path of genuine civilization! I repeat again, it is our own fault. Instead of being useful to their country, what has become of the Russian nobility?"

"They have ruined themselves," emphatically interrupted Vassily Ivanovitsch.—The Tarantas: or Impressions of Young Russia.

In Ireland this functionary's operations are not confined to the dead, but extend very disagreeably to the living.

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