'Nine years.'
'How old are you?'
'Thirty-six,' and this simple statement told his inquisitors much of what they needed to know about the great river: it made young men old.
Dropping his voice to a more congenial level, the prince asked: 'Then you know the area well?' and the priest replied: 'I walked hundreds of miles.'
'Now look, you didn't walk up and down the Yukon. It's a river.'
'And most of the year it's frozen.'
'Most of the year?' the new chief administrator asked, and Father Fyodor nodded:
'September to maybe July.'
'How far up the river did you go?'
'Five hundred miles. To Nulato. That's as far as Russian troops have penetrated.'
He hesitated, then added the unpleasant news: 'It's only the beginning of our territory, you know. Nulato's only a short way up the Yukon, really.'
Voronov whistled in amazement, then asked: 'How would I get to Nulato?' and both he and the prince were astonished by what happened next, for the priest after asking meekly 'May I?' snuffled through the maps until he found one covering much of the eastern Pacific: 'Your best approach, sail from New Archangel down to San Francisco ...'
This was so preposterous that both listeners protested: 'But we want to head north to the Yukon, up this way,' and on the map they indicated that Sitka Sound lay well to the southeast of the Yukon, whereupon Father Fyodor said: 'Of course, but there are no ships going that way. So down you go to San Francisco, about twenty-eight days, then across the ocean to Petropavlovsk.'
'We don't want to go to Siberia,' the prince shouted. 'To the Yukon.'
'But that's the only way to reach the Yukon. About one month in transit.'
Voronov, who was jotting the elapsed time on a slip of paper, noted that he had now been at sea about two months and was still an ocean and a continent away from his target.
The priest droned on: 'From Petropavlovsk you will cross over to this little storm-swept harbor of St. Michael, maybe ten days.'
'But that's nowhere near the Yukon,' Voronov protested, and the priest, wincing, said: 'I know. I once got laid up there for two months.'
'Why?'
'Big ships can't enter the Yukon. You must wait at St. Michael for a skin boat to take you across the bay and into the Yukon.' Tracing this dangerous route on the map, he added: 'Boats capsize trying to make this crossing.'
Rather dry in the mouth, Voronov asked: 'But now at the end of three months we're in the river?'
'You are. And with any kind of luck and two months of hard rowing and poling, you may get to Nulato before the Yukon freezes.'
'What month are we in?' Voronov asked, and the priest said: 'Everything must be scheduled according to the Yukon. It's ice-free only briefly. So if you leave New Archangel in late March, you should get to St. Michael in late June, just right for the thaw.
That would put you in Nulato safely before the freeze.'
'You mean I'm to stay in Nulato all winter? Till the ice goes out again?'
'Yes.' When Voronov totted up the time it would take him to get from New Archangel to Nulato and then back, he and Prince Maksutov realized that he would have to be gone at least a year and a half, and just to go from one Alaskan base to another.
Both men were appalled.
But then Father Fyodor dangled a slight ray of hope: 'I once followed a much different route,' and Voronov cried: 'I'd like to hear it!' and back to his maps went the priest.
'Same first part. San Francisco, Petropavlovsk, St. Michael. But now, instead of heading south in a riverboat to the Yukon, you head north to this little place Unalakleet.'
On the map this was a dead end, leading to no river, no thoroughfare, and a good sixty miles from the Yukon, which at that point would be heading almost due north, but Father Fyodor relieved their apprehensions by assuring them: 'There is a trail across the mountains, some parts very high, and it intersects the Yukon about here.'
'How would I negotiate the trail?' Voronov asked, and the priest said: 'You'd walk.'
'And when I reached the Yukon?'
'You'd be in a party, of course. Have to be, or the Indians might kill you.'
'Are they like the Tlingits?' Voronov asked.
'Worse,' and with a long finger he pointed to various Russian installations where Eskimos or Athapascans had either murdered everyone or burned the place: 'Most often they did both. Here at St. Michael, many dead. At Nulato, where you want to go, three burnings, same number of murders. Toward the mouth of the Yukon, this little place, two burnings, six murders.'
Voronov cleared his throat and asked: 'From St. Michael to Nulato by your overland route, how many days?' The priest tried to recall his own experiences, for he had made the journey in both directions, then guessed: 'I left St. Michael once on July first, an excellent time except for mosquitoes, and reached Nulato on August fourth.'
Voronov groaned, but then the priest added: 'Now, if you were willing to trust a dogsled, you wouldn't have to remain in Nulato for nine months. You could hire a sled, Indians have them and love to travel, and come right down the middle of the frozen Yukon and across the pass to Unalakleet and over to St. Michael.'
At this point Prince Maksutov, increasingly horrified by the difficulties involved in exploring his domain, cut a Gordian knot: 'Arkady, suppose I diverted one of our ships direct to Petropavlovsk, bypassing San Francisco? Commandeer a smaller ship there for the run across to this Unalakleet? Over the mountains on the dogsled, a short, swift visit of inspection at Nulato, and right back down the frozen Yukon, with the ship waiting for you off the mouths of the Yukon? What would that take?'
Jotting down new figures, and giving himself the benefit of the briefest delay at each junction point, Voronov announced with some pleasure:
'Supposing not one day's delay, about one hundred and fifty days. With normal disappointments, two hundred days.'
But Father Fyodor blasted such plans: 'Of course, when you reached the sea it would be frozen too, just like the river.'
'Till when?' Voronov asked, and the priest replied: 'Same schedule. Solid ice till about July ... maybe the middle of June,' and the two administrators groaned.
But Prince Maksutov, more determined than ever to have a report on his dominions, told Voronov: 'We'll handle it however the ice allows. Pack your bags.' Arkady saluted, turned to leave, but stopped abruptly to offer a sensible suggestion: 'Father Fyodor, you know the area. Would you come along to show me the way?' and the priest replied enthusiastically: 'I would love to see my people again. I lived among them nine years, you know,' and he smiled at the prince as if the Yukon he knew were some Isle of Capri, a vacationland basking in the sun.
So the trip was scheduled, and Prince Maksutov, fulfilling every promise he had made, diverted a rather smart ship to Petropavlovsk. On it he sent a letter to the commandant there, requesting that Voronov be forwarded speedily across the Bering Sea to St.
Michael, but when the time came for departure, Maksutov and Voronov were presented with a problem no one had anticipated: Praskovia Voronova announced that she would be accompanying her husband to Nulato. This occasioned much turmoil, for although Arkady was delighted with the prospect of having his intelligent and energetic wife along, Prince Maksutov put his foot down: 'The Yukon is no place for a lady!'
And there matters stood, until the impasse was resolved by strong advice from an unexpected quarter. Father Fyodor, hearing of the argument, announced in what was for him a bold voice: 'A woman on the Yukon? Splendid! The men would be delighted and so would I.'
'Why, in God's name?' Maksutov shouted, and the priest replied: 'Precisely! It's in His name I make the suggestion. Our Athapascan women should be allowed to see how a Christian woman lives.' Then, blushing, he added: 'How she looks,' and it was agreed that Praskovia would join the expedition.
NEW ARCHANGEL-PETROPAVLOVSK-ST. MICHAEL-Unalakleet, it was a journey to two continents, half a dozen cultures. The travelers passed great
glaciers, a score of volcanoes, whales and walruses, terns and puffins, until they reached a bleak and barren shore where Father Fyodor spent three hectic days trying to find a team of natives to serve as porters while they crossed the high country leading to the Yukon. As the Voronovs traversed this barren but exciting land marked by low mountains, they learned how overwhelmingly vast inland Alaska was and how ferocious its mosquitoes, for at times they settled upon the travelers like a flock of sea gulls descending upon a dying fish.
'What do you do about these dreadful things?' Praskovia asked in despair, and the priest said: 'Nothing. In six weeks they go away. If this were September, you wouldn't be bothered at all.'
After they had been on the trail some days, one of the Indians who spoke Russian said: 'Tomorrow, maybe, the Yukon,' and the Voronovs rose early for their first glimpse of this great river whose name so fascinated geographers and others who speculated on the nature of the earth. 'It's a magical word,' Arkady told the priest as they breakfasted on smoked salmon, but Father Fyodor corrected him: 'It's a brutal word.
It's a river that never allows you to travel it easily.'
But Voronov could not be discouraged by the reports of another man, so after breakfast he and Praskovia rushed ahead, and at the conclusion of a hard climb, reached a point from which they could look down into the broad valley that opened up below them.
Since the mists which obscured it from time to time had cleared, Arkady and Praskovia could see clearly this great and powerful river, twice as wide as they had expected, much lighter in color because of the monstrous load of sand and silt it brought down from distant mountains.
'It's so big!' Arkady cried to Father Fyodor as the priest puffed up to the vantage point, but when the latter saw his old friend, his nemesis, he said matter-of-factly:
'In spate I've seen it reach from that hill to this one. And in late spring when the ice breaks up, chunks as big as a house come sailing right down the middle, and heaven help whatever they strike.'
The Voronovs remained on the hill till the rest of their party had passed, speculating on what the river must look like a thousand miles farther up, where the Canadians, those mysterious people the Russians never saw, had their footholds. They were enchanted by the Yukon, awed by its turbulent power and mesmerized by its incessant flow, this messenger from frozen lands, this symbol of Alaska.
'Come along,' Father Fyodor said. 'You'll see enough of it before we leave,' and this frank assessment was proved accurate when the party descended to the level of the river and started up its right bank, for their way was constantly impeded by many small rivulets that wandered down from the north to join the great stream; to cross these required wading, and since one seemed to appear each half-hour, the Voronovs had wet feet most of that first day, but at dusk they approached the small but important settlement of Kaltag, where dogs began barking as children screamed: 'Father Fyodor! He conies back!'
In the explosive moments that followed, the Voronovs gained a completely different impression of what life in central Alaska could be, for they were surrounded by a new kind of native, the taller, sturdier Athapascans whose ancestors had reached Alaska long before either the Eskimo or the Aleut and who served as progenitors to the Tlingits. Like the latter, they were a warlike lot, but when they saw that their onetime priest, Father Fyodor, was back, they swarmed about him with cries and presents and manifold expressions of their love. For two exciting days the travelers remained in the village, with the Voronovs getting an idea of what it was like to be a missionary on the frontier.
During this time Arkady had an opportunity to witness the wisdom of Father Fyodor's strange statement when Prince Maksutov objected to Praskovia's joining the expedition:
'Our Athapascan women should be allowed to see how a Christian woman lives,' for the Kaltag women trailed along with Praskovia wherever she went, marveling at her appearance and joining with her when she laughed. Those who spoke Russian asked innumerable questions, wanting to know specifically: 'Is your bright hair real?' and 'Why is it so different from ours?' and from the direct manner in which she answered even their most personal questions, they knew that she respected them and was meeting them as equals, and this friendliness encouraged them to ask more questions.
Arkady, watching her performance, said to himself: She likes this village and this river! And he loved her even more than before because of her willingness to see and accept Alaska as it was. When he mentioned this to her after one of her sessions with the women, she cried: 'I do love this strange land. I think I now understand Alaska.'
On the morning of the third day, when they were about to depart, Praskovia, with her practiced woman's eye, noticed that one Athapascan, no longer a girl but not yet a woman, was taking a special interest in the priest, bringing him the best bits of food and protecting him from the importunities of the children. Praskovia began studying the young woman, noticing her handsome carriage, the subtle coloring of her skin, the attractive way she wore her hair in braids, and she thought: That one was meant to be the mother of children, the custodian of a house.
So when the time came to leave the village, she went to Father Fyodor and said: 'That girl, the smiling one, she'd make a fine wife,' and the priest blushed, looked to where Praskovia pointed, and said, as if he had never seen the woman before: 'Yes.
Yes, it's about time she was finding herself a husband,' and he nodded to Praskovia as if thanking her for her sensible suggestion.
The journey up the Yukon to Nulato required three days, and they were days the Voronovs would never forget, for as they progressed northward the river broadened out until it reached a mile and a half from bank to bank, a massive stretch of water pressing always toward the distant ocean, which now lay nearly five hundred miles away, counting all the twists and turns. On the bosom of the river, which seemed to move past the boat with rugged determination, the Voronovs felt themselves to be entering the heartland of a great continent, a feeling totally different from any they had previously experienced in their gentler part of Alaska where islands and stretches of open sea predominated.
'Look at those empty fields!' Praskovia cried, pointing to the land that reached down to the river's edge and seemed to stretch off to infinity.
'A field,' her husband said reflectively, 'makes you think of orderliness, as if someone had fenced in an area and tended it. The land up here goes on forever.' It did, and across much of it no human being had ever moved, and as they contemplated its awesome immensity the Voronovs began to comprehend the terrain they governed.
For long stretches there would be no trees, no hills, no animals moving, not even any snow, just the boundless emptiness, so lonely and forbidding that Praskovia whispered:
'I'll wager there aren't even any mosquitoes out there,' and Arkady asked: 'You want us to let you off? Test your theory?' and she cried: 'No! No!'
Yet in a perverse way it was the brutal nothingness of this trip up the Yukon that enchanted the Voronovs. 'This isn't a garden along the Neva,' Arkady said, anticipating the sentiments of those thousands of men from all corners of the world who would soon be crowding into the empty spaces of Alaska. They would deplore the loneliness, the difficulties of travel and the dreadful experience of fifty-five degrees below zero, but they would also revel in the fact that they had been able to withstand and conquer this gigantic, forbidding land, and fifty years later, as their lives drew to conclusion, they would cherish above all their other accomplishments the fact that 'I traveled the Yukon.'
Toward the close of their third day on the river the Voronovs saw around a bend a sight which caused them to cheer: the tight little fort of Nulato, its two wooden towers defying the world, a Russian flag flying from a central pole. As they drew close and men ashore began firing salutes from rusty guns and an ancient cannon, Arkady felt a surge of emotion: 'This is the last outpost of empire. My God, I'm glad we came.'
The garrison, some twenty Russian traders and soldiers, were as delighted to see their old friend
Father Fyodor as the people at Kaltag had been and ran to the shore to embrace him, but when they did so, they stared in amazement to find that a woman, and a pretty one at that, had come so far up the Yukon, and when Praskovia tried to debark, four men reached for her, lifted her high in the air, and with shouts and imitated bugle calls carried her into the fort, while her husband trailed behind, informing the garrison commander of his official position in the government and his interest in their fort.
It was a rough, frontier stronghold perched well back from the right bank of the Yukon, but so located as to command far reaches of the river in all directions. Built in the classic form of four lengths of long buildings joined to enclose a rather spacious central square, it was dominated by the two stalwart towers and protected by a double-strength palisade which surrounded the entire structure. Having been overrun three times in the past, with considerable loss of Russian lives, it was not going to be an easy target in the future, for during daylight hours one soldier manned each tower; two at night.
After samovars bubbled with hot tea, and toasts were drunk, and garrison members reported on their experiences with the surrounding Athapascans, a fierce lot according to them, the commanding officer, an energetic clean-shaven young lieutenant named Greko, signaled one of his men, who blushed, stepped forward, bowed to the Voronovs, and said: 'Gracious visitors, this humble fort at the edge of the world is honored by your presence. As a token of our respect, Lieutenant Greko and his men have prepared a special treat.' At this point he broke into uncontrollable laughter, which left the visitors bewildered, but now Greko took over.
'It was that rascal's idea, not mine,' he said, pointing to the young fellow, whom he now punched in the arm: 'Go ahead, Pekarsky, tell them what you and those others did,' and Pekarsky, after holding his hand over his mouth to stop his laughter, straightened up, bit his lower lip, and announced in a butler's manner:
'Come this way, monsieur et madame,' but the French, proving too much to handle under the circumstances, threw him into such convulsions that Lieutenant Greko had to intervene.