Tent Life in Siberia | Page 5

wrote a letter to Colonel
Bulkley, advising him strongly not to land a party on the Asiatic coast
of the North Pacific, but to send it instead to one of the Russian ports of
the Okhotsk Sea, where it could establish a base of supplies, obtain
information with regard to the interior, and procure horses or
dog-sledges for overland explorations in any desired direction.
The wisdom and good sense of this advice were apparent to all; but
unfortunately the engineer-in-chief had no vessel that he could send
with a party into the Okhotsk Sea, and if men were landed at all that
summer on the Asiatic coast, they must be landed near Bering Strait.
Late in June, however, Colonel Bulkley learned that a small Russian
trading-vessel named the Olga was about to sail from San Francisco for
Kamchatka (kam-chat'-kah) and the south-western coast of the Okhotsk
Sea, and he succeeded in prevailing upon the owners to take four men
as passengers to the Russian settlement of Nikolaievsk (nik-o-lai'-evsk),
at the mouth of the Amur River. This, although not so desirable a point
for beginning operations as some others on the northern coast of the
Sea, was still much better than any which could be selected on the
Asiatic coast of the North Pacific; and a party was soon organised to
sail in the Olga for Kamchatka and the mouth of the Amur. This party
consisted of Major S. Abaza, a Russian gentleman who had been
appointed superintendent of the work, and leader of the forces in
Siberia; James A. Mahood, a civil engineer of reputation in California;
R. J. Bush, who had just returned from three years' active service in the
Carolinas, and myself,--not a very formidable force in point of numbers,
nor a very remarkable one in point of experience, but strong in hope,
self-reliance, and enthusiasm.
On the 28th of June, we were notified that the brig Olga had nearly all
her cargo aboard, and would have "immediate despatch."

This marine metaphor, as we afterward learned, meant only that she
would sail some time in the course of the summer; but we, in our
trustful inexperience, supposed that the brig must be all ready to cast
off her moorings, and the announcement threw us into all the
excitement and confusion of hasty preparation for a start. Dress-coats,
linen shirts, and fine boots were recklessly thrown or given away;
blankets, heavy shoes, and overshirts of flannel were purchased in large
quantities; rifles, revolvers, and bowie-knives of formidable
dimensions gave our room the appearance of a disorganised arsenal;
pots of arsenic, jars of alcohol, butterfly-nets, snake-bags, pill-boxes,
and a dozen other implements and appliances of science about which
we knew nothing, were given to us by our enthusiastic naturalists and
packed away in big boxes; Wrangell's (vrang'el's) Travels, Gray's
Botany, and a few scientific works were added to our small library; and
before night we were able to report ourselves ready--armed and
equipped for any adventure, from the capture of a new species of bug,
to the conquest of Kamchatka!
As it was against all precedent to go to sea without looking at the ship,
Bush and I appointed ourselves an examining committee for the party,
and walked down to the wharf where she lay. The captain, a bluff
Americanised German, met us at the gangway and guided us through
the little brig from stem to stern. Our limited marine experience would
not have qualified us to pass an ex cathedra judgment upon the
seaworthiness of a mud-scow; but Bush, with characteristic impudence
and versatility of talent, discoursed learnedly to the skipper upon the
beauty of his vessel's "lines" (whatever those were), her spread of
canvas and build generally,--discussed the comparative merits of single
and double topsails, and new patent yard-slings, and reef-tackle, and
altogether displayed such an amount of nautical learning that it
completely crushed me and staggered even the captain.
I strongly suspected that Bush had acquired most of his knowledge of
sea terms from a cursory perusal of Bowditch's Navigator, which I had
seen lying on the office table, and I privately resolved to procure a
compact edition of Marryat's sea tales as soon as I should go ashore,
and overwhelm him next time with such accumulated stores of nautical

erudition that he would hide his diminished head. I had a dim
recollection of reading something in Cooper's novels about a ship's
deadheads and cat's eyes, or cat-heads and deadeyes, I could not
remember which, and, determined not to be ignored as an
inexperienced landlubber, I gazed in a vague way into the rigging, and
made a few very general observations upon the nature of deadeyes and
spanker-booms. The captain, however, promptly annihilated me by
demanding categorically whether I had ever seen the spanker-boom
jammed with the foretopsailyard, with