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Updated: May 31, 2025
The telegraph was an object of great wonder to all the natives. In Ghijiga a few hundred yards of wire were put up in the spring of 1866. Crowds gathered to see the curiosity, and many messages were exchanged to prove that the machine really spoke. At Anadyrsk Captain Kennan arranged a small battery and held in his pocket the key that controlled the circuit. Then the marvel began.
We made deep sea soundings and obtained specimens of the bottom from depths of two or three hundred fathoms. Near the entrance of Ghijiga Bay we brought up coral from eighty fathoms of water, and refuted the theory that coral grows only in the tropics and at a depth of less than two hundred feet. The specimens were both white and red, resembling the moss-like sprigs often seen in museums.
They row the pilot boat when needed, travel on courier or other service, guard the warehouses, and when not wanted by government labor and get drunk for themselves. The governor was a native of Poland, and it struck me as a curious fact that the ispravniks of Kamchatka, Ghijiga, and Ohotsk were Poles. Cows and dogs are the only stock maintained at Ohotsk.
Major Abasa and the Ispravnik of Ghijiga escorted us from the landing to their quarters, where we soon warmed ourselves with hot tea, and I took opportunity and a couple of bearskins and went to sleep. Late in the day we had a dinner of soup, pork and peas, reindeer meat, and berry pudding. The deer's flesh was sweet and tender, with a flavor like that of the American elk.
The American eagle can scream louder since its cage has been enlarged, and if any man attempts to haul down that noble bird, scoop him from the spot. Colonel Bulkley determined to sail on the 6th of August for Anadyr Bay, and ordered the Variag to proceed to the Amoor by way of Ghijiga.
The tide rises twenty-two feet in Ghijiga Bay, and to reach the lighthouse and settlement near the river, even with small boats, it is necessary to go with the tide. We learned that Major Abasa, of the Telegraph service, was at the light-house awaiting our arrival, and that we must start before midnight to reach the landing at the proper time.
Again endeavoring to rescue their companions, and in their weak condition finding it impossible, they sought the nearest camp. In the following summer the remains of men and dogs were found where the melting snow left them. They had huddled close together, and probably perished from suffocation. We remained four days at Ghijiga and then sailed for Ohotsk.
While wintering in Japanese waters she was assigned to assist the telegraph enterprise, and reported as soon as possible at Petropavlovsk; but the only service demanded was to proceed to the mouth of the Amoor by way of Ghijiga and Ohotsk.
The native tribes included in the district of Ghijiga are the Koriaks and Chukchees; the Koriaks readily pay tribute and acknowledge the Russian authority, but the Chukchees are not yet fairly subdued. They were long in open war with the Russians, and though peace is now established, many of them are not tributary.
Bilzukavitch, the Ispravnik of Ghijiga, was a native of Poland, and governed seventy-two thousand square miles of territory, with a population of sixteen hundred taxed males. His military force comprised thirty Cossacks with five muskets, of which three were unserviceable.
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