Tent Life in Siberia | Page 4

$10,000,000. The stock was rapidly taken, principally by the stockholders of the original Western Union Company, and an assessment of five per cent. was immediately made to provide funds for the prosecution of the work. Such was the faith at this time in the ultimate success of the enterprise that in less than two months its stock sold for seventy-five dollars per share, with only one assessment of five dollars paid in.
In August, 1864, Colonel Charles S. Bulkley, formerly Superintendent of Military Telegraphs in the Department of the Gulf, was appointed engineer-in-chief of the proposed line, and in December he sailed from New York for San Francisco, to organise and fit out exploring parties, and to begin active operations.
Led by a desire of identifying myself with so novel and important an enterprise, as well as by a natural love of travel and adventure which I had never before been able to gratify, I offered my services as an explorer soon after the projection of the line. My application was favourably considered, and on the 13th of December I sailed from New York with the engineer-in-chief, for the proposed headquarters of the Company at San Francisco. Colonel Bulkley, immediately after his arrival, opened an office in Montgomery Street, and began organising exploring parties to make a preliminary survey of the route of the line. No sooner did it become noised about the city that men were wanted to explore the unknown regions of British Columbia, Russian America, and Siberia, than the Company's office was thronged with eager applicants for positions, in any and every capacity.
Adventurous Micawbers, who had long been waiting for something of this kind to turn up; broken-down miners, who hoped to retrieve their fortunes in new gold-fields yet to be discovered in the north; and returned soldiers thirsting for fresh excitement,--all hastened to offer their services as pioneers in the great work. Trained and skilled engineers were in active demand; but the supply of only ordinary men, who made up in enthusiasm what they lacked in experience, was unlimited.
Month after month passed slowly away in the selection, organisation, and equipment of parties, until at last, in June, 1865, the Company's vessels were reported ready for sea.
The plan of operations, so far as it had then been decided upon, was to land one party in British Columbia, near the mouth of the Frazer River; one in Russian-America, at Norton Sound; and one on the Asiatic side of Bering Strait, at the mouth of the Anadyr (ah-nah'-dyr) River. These parties, under the direction respectively of Messrs. Pope, Kennicott, and Macrae, were directed to push back into the interior, following as far as practicable the courses of the rivers near which they were landed; to obtain all possible information with regard to the climate, soil, timber, and inhabitants of the regions traversed; and to locate, in a general way, a route for the proposed line.
The two American parties would have comparatively advantageous bases of operations at Victoria and Fort St. Michael; but the Siberian party, if left on the Asiatic coast at all, must be landed near Bering Strait, on the edge of a barren, desolate region, nearly a thousand miles from any known settlement. Thrown thus upon its own resources, in an unknown country, and among nomadic tribes of hostile natives, without any means of interior transportation except canoes, the safety and success of this party were by no means assured. It was even asserted by many friends of the enterprise, that to leave men in such a situation, and under such circumstances, was to abandon them to almost certain death; and the Russian consul at San Francisco 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