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Updated: May 8, 2025
Nearly all the officers of the Varag, some thirty in number, spoke English; the ship itself was luxuriously fitted up; a fine military band welcomed us with "Hail, Columbia!" when we came on board, and played selections from Martha, Traviata, and Der Freischütz while we dined, and all things contributed to make our visit to the Varag a bright spot in our Siberian experience.
Colonel Bulkley, the engineer-in-chief, had touched at Petropavlovsk on his way north, and had written us from there, by the Varag and the Clara Bell, full particulars as to his movements and dispositions.
The peculiar state of affairs, however, at the time the Varag and the Clara Bell reached Gizhiga, made it almost impossible for him to leave. Two vessels the Onward and the Palmetto were yet to arrive with large and valuable cargoes, whose distribution along the coast of the Okhotsk Sea he wished to superintend in person.
The Varag he proposed to send with stores and despatches to Mahood, who had been living alone at Okhotsk almost five months without news, money, or provisions, and who it was presumed must be nearly discouraged.
The brief excitement produced by the arrival of the Varag and the Clara Bell was succeeded by another long, dreary month of waiting, during which we lived as before in lonely discomfort at the mouth of the Gizhiga River.
Captain Sutton replied that all of the Company's vessels had been late in leaving San Francisco, and that he had also been detained some time in Petropavlovsk by circumstances explained in his letters. "What steamer is that lying at anchor beyond the Clara Bell?" inquired the Major. "That is the Russian corvette Varag, from Japan." "But what is she doing up here?"
The corvette Varag had been detailed by the Russian Navy Department to assist in laying the cable across Bering Strait; but as the cable, which was ordered in England, had not arrived, there was nothing in particular for the Varag to do, and Colonel Bulkley had sent her with the Russian Commissioner to Gizhiga.
As soon as possible after the departure of the Varag, the Clara Bell was brought into the mouth of the river, her cargo of brackets and insulators discharged, Lieutenant Arnold and party sent on board, and with the next high tide, August 26th, she sailed for Yamsk and San Francisco, leaving no one at Gizhiga but the original Kamchatkan party, Dodd, the Major, and myself.
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