De Windt's Hardships

DE WINDT'S HARDSHIPS

Explorer's Story of Overland Trip From Paris to America

HORRORS OF SIBERIA DESCRIBED

Threatened by Starvation, In Danger From Alaskan Indians Who Attempted Their Lives, and Suffering From Intense Cold, the Explorer and His Party Traversed Thousands of Miles In Sledges.

Harry de Windt, leader of the first expedition to make the overland trip from Paris to the United States by way of Russia, Siberia and Alaska, recently arrived in Seattle on his way to New York. He sent to the New York World the following dispatch, giving the first details of his thrilling and dangerous journey. He says:

I have experienced nothing but difficulties from the time I and my companions left the Siberian railway early In January. We traveled from Irkutsk to Yakutsk in horse sleighs, a distance of 2,000 miles, mostly over the frozen river Lena. The road was unsafe, owing to the robbers who infested the region. They murdered the driver of the mail sleigh and stole the mail only a week before we passed.

Yakutsk I found to be a wooden city of mean appearance, with a population of 7,000 people, made up of officials, merchants, exiles and Yakutes. Yakutsk province, of which it is the chief city, has an area six times the size of France. We reached Yakutsk after traveling three weeks from Irkutsk and on the way had a narrow escape on the Lena from the breaking of the Ice over which we were traveling.

We had to remain some time in Yakutsk owing to the difficulty of procuring reindeer, which were very scarce. The governor urged me to abandon the trip, but I resolved to push on to Verkoyansk, 800 miles distant. I found posthouses from eighty to 150 miles apart on the road, which was merely a narrow track marked for much of the way by blazed trees.

Midway between Yakutsk and Verkoyansk we crossed the Verkoyansk range over the steepest mountain pass in the world, nearly a perpendicular wall of ice 300 feet high near the sunimit of a mountain 4,000 feet high. We crossed with great difflculty in a howling gale and with the temperature 40 degrees below zero. All in our party were badly frozen. We found the posthouses fllthy beyond description, and the only food we could obtain was putrid flsh. We were obliged to live on the stores we had bought for use when we should reach the arctic coast. After twelve days' travel we reached Verkoyansk, a mere hamlet of twenty miserable huts, situated in the middle of a howling wilderness. We found fifteen exiles there, living in a pitiable condition, but better off than others whom I shall describe later on. We left Verkoyansk on sledges pulled by reindeer for Srednikolymsk, 1,200 miles a way. The road lay through an undulating wooded country. Tho posthouses were 200 miles apart and "were very filthy and occupied by natives and cattle. The places werè literally swarming with vermin. It was a terribly desolate country. E very fifty miles we found uninhabited lodges, most of them roofless and filled with snow. The cold was intense, varying from 60 to 78 degrees below zero. Occasionally we had to flounder through snowdrifts twenty feet deep. Many of our reindeer died of exhaustion. During the latter part of January we erossed over numberless frozen lakes, and it was bad, slippery traveling. Finally we reached Srednikolymsk, the most remote Russian settlement in Siberia. We had been twenty-one days getting there from Verkoyansk. Srednikolymsk is the most desolate and God forsaken spot on earth. It consists of twenty or thirty dilapidat$d huts on the banks of the Kolyma river, 300 miles from its mouth on the Aretic ocean. A famine was raging In the place when we got there. There were very few dogs and but little food, and we were still 1,800 miles from Bering strait. We managed to get five dog sleds and to procure some black bread and frozen fish. We had nothlng else to eat, for our original stock of provisions was very nearly ftnished. Here we heard for the first time that we would have to traverse a quite uninhabited part of the coast for 500 miles before we could reach Tehuktchi, a village of natives whr had migrated eastward. But I resolved to push on. I found thirteen exiles in tuis place in a terrible condition - ill ciad, half starved and with sentences of from eight to thirty years BtlU to serve. The poor tures were overjoyed to see us, for we were the flrst visitors in the settlement Ín more than twenty years. The government allowance of $8 a monlh to each person for maintenance is utterly inadequate. All lived in a conditiou entalling unspeakable physical misery. Their food was putrid fish, their huts fllthy. ' I found among these oxiles cultivated men and women, all suffering terribly In body and mind. ïhey had no books. The post brought mail but once a year. Often they were not allowed to receive or write letters, and of all wbo were there only two were accused of actual crimes. They were Kimova, who attempted to kill the czar at his coronation, and Zimmerman, who eaused the dynamite explosión at the Lodz factories in Prussia. The rest were peaceable citizens, whose crimes, if such they may be called, were of a strictly political nature. They described thcir existeuce there ns a living death. Four commited suicide and three became hopelessly insano in the two years preceding my visit. Just before our arrival a young exile named Kaleshnikoff, who had been brutally flogged by order of the pólice Jnaster, shot himself the same day in his sliame and humiliation. But another exile, a friend of the one who committed suicide, shot and killed the pólice master, and this man now awaits trial in the Yakutsk prison. The winter here has eight months of darkness. In the summer there are continuous rains and stifling heat. The mosquitoes swarm in the summer, and there is much sickness. There is no hospital. Sukharno. 300 miles from Srednikolymsk, was our last link with humanity. Sukharno "consists of three filthy hovels, inhabited by half breeds, but wretched as was the place I often longed for it later when on the cruel and desolate coast. We left Sukharno in a bllnding snowstorm and a heavy gale. We had flve sleds and sixtythree dogs. The cold was intense throughout the journey of 500 miles from Sukharno to Erktrik, the flrst Tchuktcan settlement on Tchaun bay. It was a hard trip, and it took us seventeen days to make it, the last week of which we lived on half rations, had an insufflciency of driftwood with which to cook, only a tent for shelter and slept in 40 to 50 degrees below zero. Once we lost our way and wandered in a blizzard for three days on the shores of the Arctic ocean. We were badly frozen and reached Erktrik in an exhausted condition from our exposure. The nativos were unfriendly and would give us but little food. We left the villuge and struggled on with diffleulty for another sixteen days, flnally reaching Cape Norton. Here we were better received, but our troubles were increased by the appearance among us of "kor," a painful skin disease. We found that smallpox was raging on the coast and that some villages had been decimated. Beyond Cape Norton we traveled more rapidly. " At one village the na:ives were hostile and threatened our party with knives. As we neared the Bering strait we found the natives netter and more friendly, owing doubtess to their frequent intercourse with American whalers during the summer months. We arrlved at East cape, Bering strait, May 20, five months and one day since we left Paris, Dec. 19, 1901. We remalned at East cape four weeks, and found the natives hospitable and !riendly when sober, but exceedlngly dangerous during their drunken orgies, which were of frequent occurrence. We were compelled upon one occasion o hide in a hut for two days while men, mad with drink, ran yelling about J he settlement with loaded rifles searching for us to Uil! us. Two natives were niurdered during this carouse, and a white trader living on Diomede island was murdered two days later. The American ship Thetis took ns off June 18 and landed us on the ice of Bering strait, five miles off Cape Prince of Wales. As the sliip was unnble to approach tlie shoie, Esleimos put off in skin boats and reached the Thetis with dlfflculty. We took four hours to reacli the shore over moving ice floes, with mnch open water betwoen. We had perilous work to drag the boat over the rough ice, and in the open water a hoavy sea was running. We reached land drenched to the skin and half dead with cold at 5 o"clock on the inorning of June 19, exactly six months out froin Paris. We remained ten days at Cape Prince of Wales. It is a desolate place, and but few ships touch there. The Thetis was compelled to leave us to go in search of missing Cape Nonie steamers in the Arctic ocean. The American missionary, Mr. Lopp, was most kind and gave us every assistance in his power. Finally a sinall steamer, the Sadie, trading in those waters, took us to Nome.