CHAPTER XVI

KAMCHATKAN NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENTS--CHARACTER OF PEOPLE--SALMON-FISHING--
SABLE-TRAPPING--KAMCHADAL LANGUAGE--NATIVE MUSIC--DOG-DRIVING--WINTER
DRESS

After our unsuccessful attempt to pass the Samanka Mountains, there
was nothing for us to do but wait patiently at Lesnoi until the rivers
should freeze over, and snow fall to a depth which would enable us
to continue our journey to Gizhiga on dog-sledges. It was a long,
wearisome delay, and I felt for the first time, in its full force, the
sensation of exile from home, country, and civilisation. The Major
continued very ill, and would show the anxiety which he had felt about
the success of our expedition by talking deliriously for hours of
crossing the mountains, starting for Gizhiga in the whale-boat, and
giving incoherent orders to Viushin, Dodd, and myself, about horses,
dog-sledges, canoes, and provisions. The idea of getting to Gizhiga,
before the beginning of winter, filled his mind, to the exclusion of
everything else. His sickness made the time previous to Dodd's return
seem very long and lonesome, as I had absolutely nothing to do except
to sit in a little log room, with opaque fish-bladder windows, and
pore over Shakespeare and my Bible, until I almost learned them by
heart. In pleasant weather I would sling my rifle across my back and
spend whole days in roaming over the mountains in pursuit of reindeer
and foxes; but I rarely met with much success. One deer and a few
arctic ptarmigan were my only trophies. At night I would sit on the
transverse section of a log in our little kitchen, light a rude
Kamchadal lamp, made with a fragment of moss and a tin cup full of
seal oil, and listen for hours to the songs and guitar-playing of the
Kamchadals, and to the wild stories of perilous mountain adventure
which they delighted to relate. I learned during these Kamchatkan
Nights' Entertainments many interesting particulars of Kamchadal life,
customs, and peculiarities of which I had before known nothing;
and, as I shall have no occasion hereafter to speak of this curious
little-known people, I may as well give here what account I can of
their language, music, amusements, superstitions, and mode of life.

The people themselves I have already described as a quiet,
inoffensive, hospitable tribe of semi-barbarians, remarkable only
for honesty, general amiability, and comical reverence for legally
constituted authority. Such an idea as rebellion or res