Works of A.P. Chekhov, Vol. 10: Sakhalin Island

decided toward evening to set off for the Baikal. But here is a new trouble: a considerable swell has developed and the Gilyak boatmen refuse to take me for any amount of money. Again I walk along the shore and do not know what to do with myself. Meanwhile, the sun is already setting and the waves on the Amur are darkening. On this side and the other, Gilyak dogs are howling frantically. And why did I come here? I ask myself, and my journey appears to me extremely frivolous. And the thought that the penal colony is already near, that in a few days I will disembark on Sakhalin soil without a single letter of recommendation, that they might ask me to leave and return—this thought worries me unpleasantly. But finally, two Gilyaks agree to take me for a ruble, and in a boat hammered together from three boards, I safely reach the Baikal.

This is a sea-type steamer of medium size, a merchant vessel, which seemed quite tolerable to me after the Baikal and Amur steamers. It makes trips between Nikolayevsk, Vladivostok, and Japanese ports, carrying mail, soldiers, prisoners, passengers, and cargo, mainly state-owned; according to a contract concluded with the treasury, which pays it a solid subsidy, it is obliged to call at Sakhalin several times during the summer: at the Alexandrovsky Post and at the southern Korsakovsky Post. The tariff is very high, such as probably does not exist anywhere else in the world. Colonization, which above all requires freedom and ease of movement, and high tariffs—this is quite incomprehensible. The salon and cabins on the Baikal are cramped but clean and furnished in a completely European manner; there is a piano. The servants here are Chinese with long queues; they are called in English: "boy." The cook is also Chinese, but his cuisine is Russian, although all the dishes are bitter from spicy keri curry and smell of some kind of perfume, like corylopsis a plant essence/perfume.