THE GREAT MIGRATION

difficult as it may sound to the ear. Our travellers were just in the place, from which it was possible tp, proceed direct to
this asiatic peninsula. Vessels belonging to the russian fur company company every year collect the furs along the north west coast
of america, and among the fox and aleutian islands sitka being their port of rendezvous. Thence proceeding to the
harbour of saint peter and saint paul (petropaulouski), on the coast of kamschatka, they complete their cargoes with the
skin crop that during the winter has been collected throughout the peninsula. Thence to china a portion of these furs
are taken especially skins of the sable, which the chinese mandarins use extensively for trimming their costly robes: and
for which, teas, silk, lacquer ware, and other articles of chinese manufacture are given in exchange. The japanese also, and
other wealthy oriental nations, buy up quantities of costly furs: but by far the greater portion of this produce is
consumed by the russians themselves in whose cold climate some sort of a fur coat is almost a necessity. Even most of
the furs collected by the hudson’s bay company find their way into russia: for the consumption of these goods in great
britain is extremely limited, compared with that of many other articles de luxe. In the fur ship our travellers proceeded
from sitka to the port of petropaulouski, which is situated on avatcha bay, near the southern end of the peninsula. As
avatcha bay is nearly land locked, it forms one of the most sheltered harbours on that side of the pacific; but
unfortunately during winter the bay freezes over, and then ships can neither get into nor out of it. The vessel which
carried our adventurers arrived at petropaulouski late in the spring: but, as the winter had been unusually prolonged, the
bay was still blocked up with ice, and the ship could not get up to the little town. This did not hinder them from landing.
Dog sledges were brought out upon the ice by the the inhabitants: and upon these our travellers were carried to the town.
or ostrog as it is called such being the name given to the villages of kamschatka. In petropaulouski, many curoius objects
and customs came under the observation of our travellers. They saw no less than kinds of houses first, the isbas, built of
logs and not unlike the log cabins of america. These are the best sort of dwellings: and belong to the russian merchants
and officials, who reside there as well as to the cossack soldiers, who are kept by the russian government in kamschatka.
The native kamschatdales have kinds of houses of indigenous architecture one for summer, the balagan, and another to
which they retire during the winter, called the jourt. The balagan is constructed of poles and thatch upon a ralsed
platform to which the kamschatdale climbs up by means of a notched trunk of a tree. There is only one story of the
house itself which is merely the sloping thatched roof with a hole in the top to give passage to the smoke and resembles
a rough tent or hayrick set upon an elevated srand. The space under the platform is left open: and serves as a store house
for the dried fish, that forms the staple food of all sorts of people in kamschatka. Here, too, the sledges and sledge
harness are kept: and the dogs, of which every family owns a large pack, use this lower story as a sleeping place. The
winter house or jourt, is constructed very differently. It is a great hole sunk in the ground to the depth of or feet, lined
round the sides with pieces of timber, and roofed over above the surface of the ground so as to look like the rounded
dome of a large bake oven. A hole at the apex is intended for the chimney, but it is also the door: since there is no other
mode of entrance into the jourt, and the interior is reached by descending a notched tree trunk similar to that used in
climbing up to the balagan. The curious fur dresses of the kamschatdales: their thin yellowish white dogs, resembling the
pomeranian breed: their dog sledges, which they use for travelling in winter: the customs and habits of these singular
people: all formed an interesting study to our travellers, and enriched their journal with notes and observations. We find
it recorded there, how these people spend their time and obtain their subsistence. Very little agriculture is practised by
them the climate being unfavourable to the growth of the cereals. In some parts barley and rye are cultivated: but only
to a very limited extent. Cattle are scarce a few only being kept by the russian and cossack settlers: and horses are equally
rare, such as there are belonging to the officials of the government and used for government puposes. The common or
native people subsist almost entirely on a fish diet their lakes and rivers furnishing them with abundance of fish: and the
whole of the summer is spent in catching and drying these for their winter provision. Several wild vegetable productions
are added roots and berries, and even the bark of trees all of which are eaten along with the dried fish. Wild animals also
furnish part of their subsistence: and it is by the skins of these especially the sable that the people pay their annual tax, or
tributs, to the russian government. From animals, too, their clothing is chiefly manufactured: and many other articles
used in their domestic economy. The peninsula is rich in the fur bearing quadrupeds, and some of these furnish the very
best quality of furs that are known to commerce. The sable of kamschatka is of a superior kind as also the many varieties
determined they to go. Having procured mules and a guide, they proceeded onwards; and after the journey of days in which.
from the difficulty of the roads, they had travelled less than miles they found themselves among the foot hills of the
andes the giant Cotopaxi with his snowy cone towering stupendous above their heads. Here they were in the proper
range of the bears a part of the country famous for the great numbers of these animals and it only remained for them to
fix their headquarters in some village, and make arrangements for prosecuting the chase. The little town of napo, called
after the river, and situated as it is in the midst of a forest wilderness, offered all the advantages they required; and,
choosing it as their temporary residence, they were soon engaged in searching for the black bear of the cordilleras.
eating a negro’s head. According to their usual practice, they had hired one of the native hunters of the district to act as
a guide, and assist them in finding the haunts of bruin. In napo they were fortunate in meeting with the very man in the
person of a mestizo, or half blood indian, who followed hunting for his sole calling. He was what is termed a tigrero, or
tiger hunter which title he derived from the fact that jaguar was the principal object of his pursuit. Among all
spanish americans mexicans included the beautiful spotted jaguar is erroneously termed tigre (tiger), as the puma or
couguar is called leon (lion). A hunter of jaguar is therefore denominated a tiger hunter, or tigrero. There are no
puma or lion hunters by profession as there is nothing about this brute to make it worth while but hunting the jaguar is,
in many parts of spanish America, a specific calling; and men make their living solely by following this occupation. One
inducement is to obtain the skin, which, in common with those of the great spotted cats of the old world, is an article of
commerce, and from its superior beauty commands a good price. But the tigrero could scarce make out to live upon the
sale of the skins alone; for although a London furrier will charge from to guineas for a jaguar’s robe, the poor hunter in
his remote wilderness market can obtain little more than a tenth part of this price notwithstamding that he has to risk his
life, before he can strip the fair mantle from the shoulders of its original wearer. It is evident, therefore, that jaguar
hunting would not pay, if there was only the pelt to depend upon; but the tigrero looks to another source of profit the
bounty. In the hotter regions of spanish America, the brazils as well there are many settlements to which the jaguar is not
only a pest, but a terror. Cattle in hundreds are destroyed by these great predatory animals; even full grown horses are
killed and dragged away by them but is this all are the people themselves left unmolested no. On the contrary, great
numbers of human beings every year fall victims to the rapacity of the jaguars. Settlements attempted on the edge of the
great montana in the very country where our young hunters had now arrived have, after a time, been abandoned from
this cause alone. It is a well known fact that where a settlement has been formed, the jaguars soon become more
plentiful in that neighbourhood; the increased facility of obtaining food by preying on the cattle of the settlers, or upon
the owners themselves accounting for this augmentation in their numbers. It is precisely the same with the royal tiger of
india, as is instanced in the history of the modern settlement of singapore. To prevent the increase of the jaguars then, a
bounty is offered for their destruction. This bounty is sometimes the gift of the government of the country, and
sometimes of the municipal authorities of the district. Not unfrequently private individuals, who own large herds of
cattle, give a bounty out of their private purses for every jaguar killed within the limits of their estate. Indeed, it is not
an uncommon thing for the wealthy proprietor of a cattle estate (hacienda de ganados) to maintain one or more tigreros
in his service just as gamekeepers are kept by european grandees whose sole business consists in hunting and destroying
the jaguar. These men are something pure Indians, but, as a general thing, they are of the mixed, or mestizo race. It need
hardly be said that they are hunters of the greatest courage. They require to be so; since an encounter with a full grown
jaguar is but little less dangerous than with his striped congener of the indian jungles. In these conflicts, the tigreros
often receive severe wounds from the teeth and claws of their terrible adversary; and, not unfrequently, the hunter
himself becomes the victim. You may wonder that men are found to follow such a perilous calling, and with such slight
inducement for even the bounty is only a trifle of a dollar or differing in amount in different districts, and according to
the liberality of the bestower. But it is in this matter as with all others of a like kind where the very danger itself seems
to be the lure. The tigrero usually depends upon fire arms for destroying his noble game; but where his shot fails, and it
is necessary to come to close quarters, he will even attack the jaguar with his machete a species of half knife half sword,
to be found in every spanish american cottage from california to chili. Very often the jaguar is hunted without the gun.

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