Dinosaurs in the Attic by Douglas Preston Read Free Book Online Page B

unexplored. Many of the photographs taken by Jochelson, Borgoras, and Laufer show landscapes and peoples being seen for the first time by Western man.

    The first to arrive in Russia, Laufer landed at Vladivostok in June 1898. From there he traveled by steamer to Sakhalin Island (a large, remote island in the Sea of Okhotsk, northwest of Japan), where he remained for the bitter Siberian winter studying the Gilyak, Tungus, and Ainu tribes. A letter he wrote to Boas on March 4, 1899, reveals a glimpse of the details of his fieldwork:

I did not succeed in obtaining any anthropometric measurements. The people were afraid they would die at once after submitting to this process. . . . I succeeded in measuring a single individual, a man of imposing stature. who, after the measurements had been taken, fell prostrate on the floor, the picture of despair, groaning, "Now I am going to die tomorrow!" . . .

I took phonographic records of songs, which created the greatest sensation among the Russians as well as among the natives. A young Gilyak woman who sang into the instrument said, "It took me so long to learn this song. and this thing has learned it at once, without making any mistakes. There is surely a man or a spirit in this box which imitates me!" and at the same time she was crying and laughing with excitement.

    Jochelson arrived in Siberia a year later than Laufer, to research the tribes that made their home above the Arctic Circle. Both Jochelson and his wife, Dina Brodsky Jochelson, were imposing figures, well suited to the kind of expedition they undertook. They were intrepid explorers, hazarding everything to acquire new knowledge. In 1901, during their second year in Siberia, they attempted the almost unthinkable—a two-month trek across the breadth of Siberia, from Gizhiga Bay on the southern side to Nishe-Kolymsk on the northern side, near the East Siberian Sea. In order to take advantage of the shortest route to these remote tribes, they planned to take packhorses across the extremely remote Stanovoi Mountains, over unexplored territory to a small town on the Korkodon River. There they would build a raft and float north to the Arctic Ocean. In a letter to Boas, Jochelson wrote about the harrowing journey:

This journey was the most difficult one that it was ever my fortune to undertake. Bogs, mountain torrents, rocky passes and thick forests combined to hinder our progress.... A heavy rain which fell during the first few days of our journey soaked the loads of the pack-horses and caused the provisions to rot. Therefore we had to cut down on our rations from the very beginning. After crossing the passes of the Stanovoi Mountains, we reached the upper course of the Korkodon River. By this time our horses were exhausted, and it was necessary to take a long rest. Meanwhile the cold was increasing day by day, and haste was necessary if we were to reach the Verkhne-Kolymsk before the closing [freezing] of the river.

It took us one day to build a strong raft, and then we began our descent of the river, made dangerous by numerous rapids and short bends, by the rocky banks and by jams of driftwood. Our guides had intimated that we could make the descent in two days, but instead we spent nine days on the raft.

    Jochelson did a great deal of research and collecting with the Koryak, a group of small tribes living along the shores of the Sea of Okhotsk. While among the Maritime Koryak, Jochelson and his wife lived most of the time in the tribe's underground dwellings, which could be entered only through a tree-trunk ladder descending through the smokehole. He complained to Boas:

It is almost impossible to describe the squalor of these dwellings. The smoke, which fills the hut, makes the eyes smart ... walls, ladder, and household utensils are covered with a greasy soot, so that contact with them leaves shining black spots on hands and clothing. The dim light which falls through the smoke-hole is hardly sufficient for writing and