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

Europe attached so little importance to this that, when subsequently the Russians and Japanese decided the question of who owned Sakhalin, only the Russians spoke and wrote about the right of first exploration *).

A new, as thorough as possible, exploration of the coasts of Tartary and Sakhalin has long been on the agenda. Current maps are unsatisfactory, which is evident if only from the fact that ships, both naval and commercial, run aground on shoals and rocks much more often than is written in the newspapers. Thanks, mainly, to poor maps, the commanders of ships here are very cautious, suspicious, and nervous. The commander of the Baikal does not trust the official map and looks at his own, which he draws and corrects himself during the voyage.

22 1/2In order not to run aground, Mr. L. did not risk sailing at night, and after sunset, we dropped anchor off Cape Jaore. On the cape itself, on a hill, stands a lonely hut where a naval officer, Mr. B., lives; he sets marks in the fairway and supervises them, and behind the hut is an impassable, dense taiga. The commander sent Mr. B. some fresh meat; I took advantage of this opportunity and sailed to the shore in a rowboat. Instead of a pier, there was a pile of large, slippery stones that I had to jump across, and a row of steps made of logs buried almost vertically into the ground leads up the hill to the hut, so that one must hold on tight with one's hands while climbing. But what a horror! While I was climbing the hill and approaching the hut, I was surrounded by clouds of mosquitoes—literally clouds, it was dark from them, my face and hands were burning, and there was no way to defend myself. I think that if one were to stay here overnight under the open sky, without surrounding oneself with fires, one could perish or, at the very least, go insane.

*) The Japanese surveyor Mamiya Rinzō, while traveling by boat along the western coast in 1808, visited the Tatar coast at the very mouth of the Amur and sailed more than once from the island to the mainland and back. He was the first to prove that Sakhalin is an island. Our naturalist F. Schmidt speaks with great praise of his map, finding it "especially remarkable, as it is obviously based on independent surveys."

A circular purple institutional library stamp is located at the bottom left, partially illegible. To the right of the stamp, in the bottom margin, the archival number "N 150" is written in ink.
N 150