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They acknowledge also their subjection to the authority of the Tsar, and pay a regular annual tribute in furs. Nearly all the Siberian squirrelskins which reach the European market are bought by Russian traders from Wandering Tunguses around the Okhotsk Sea.
In the second place, the villages of Okhotsk, Yamsk, and Gizhiga, taken together, did not have more than five hundred inhabitants, and it was doubtful whether the whole five hundred could make up a purse of as many rubles, even to ensure their eternal salvation.
The shores of the mainland and islands were first traced by La Pérouse, who determined the insular character of Sakhalin, and ascertained the existence of a strait connecting the Japanese Sea with that of Okhotsk. This completed the general survey of the whole Siberian seaboard.
I also sent a small party of natives under Mr. Wheeler to Yamsk, with five or six sledge-loads of axes and provisions for Lieutenant Arnold, and despatches to be forwarded to Major Abaza. For the present, nothing more could be done on the coast of the Okhotsk Sea, and I prepared to start once more for the north.
We entered the Okhotsk Sea by the Nadeshda Channel, so-named after Admiral Krusenstern's ship, which was the first civilized vessel that passed through its turbulent waters.
In ten minutes we were seated on bearskins before a warm fire in a cozy Russian house, drinking cup after cup of fragrant tea, and talking over our night's adventures. The village of Penzhina is a little collection of log houses, flat-topped yurts, and four-legged balagáns, situated on the north bank of the river which bears its name, about half-way between the Okhotsk Sea and Anadyrsk.
The season for dog-sledge travel was now over; and as the country afforded no other means of interior transportation, we could not expect to do any more work, or have any further communication with our outlying parties at Anadyrsk and Okhotsk until the arrival of our vessels.
Their southern limit is the settlement of Tigil, on the west coast, where they come annually to trade, and they are rarely found north of the village of Penzhina, two hundred miles from the head of the Okhotsk Sea.
On the contrary, the whole coast of the Okhotsk Sea, for nearly six hundred miles west of Gizhiga, was one wilderness of rugged, broken, almost impassable mountains, intersected by deep valleys and ravines, and heavily timbered with dense pine and larch forests.
We made our way as rapidly as possible along the coast of the Okhotsk Sea, partly on the beach under the cliffs, and partly over low wooded hills and valleys, extending down to the coast from the central mountain range.
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