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

the north as long as the size of his ship allowed, and, reaching a depth of 9 fathoms, he stopped. The gradual, uniform rising of the sea floor and the fact that the current in the strait was almost imperceptible led him to the conviction that he was not in a strait, but in a bay, and that, therefore, Sakhalin was connected to the mainland by an isthmus. At De-Kastri, he had a consultation with the Gilyaks once again. When he drew an island separated from the mainland for them on paper, one of them took his pencil and, drawing a line across the strait, explained that the Gilyaks sometimes have to drag their boats across this isthmus and that grass even grows on it—that is how La Pérouse understood it. This convinced him even more firmly that Sakhalin was a peninsula symbol: *.

Nine years later, the Englishman W. Broughton was in the Tatar Strait. His vessel was small, drawing no deeper than 9 feet, so he managed to pass somewhat further than La Pérouse. Stopping at a depth of two fathoms, he sent his assistant north to take soundings; on his way, he encountered depths among the shoals, but they gradually decreased and led him now to the Sakhalin shore, now to the low sandy shores of the other side, and the resulting picture was as if both shores merged; it seemed that the bay ended here and there was no passage. Thus, Broughton, too, had to conclude the same thing as La Pérouse.

Our famous Krusenstern, who explored the shores of the island in 1805, fell into the same error. He sailed toward Sakhalin with a preconceived notion, as he was using La Pérouse’s map.

*) It is appropriate here to cite one observation by Nevelskoy: natives usually draw a line between shores to show that one can sail from shore to shore in a boat, i.e., that a strait exists between the shores.