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7 TRANSPORT PROBLEMS "It can be said that, for our sins, on the Okhotsk Road we suffered the ten tortures, similar to the Egyptian [tortures]. Rabid horses; quagmires, where the land turned into water for us; nocturnal darkness , often catching us en route among the thick woods; branches threatening to blind us; hunger; cold; mosquitoes; gadflies-these are truly biting flies; dangerous fords across rivers; and sores [anthrax] on the horses-the tenth punishment!" Protoiyerey Prokopy Gromov, "Put ot Irkutska," p. 217. From Irkutsk to Yakutsk A plethora of difficulties plagued overland-overseas provlSlonment . Downstream transport on the Lena River was faced with fewer obstacles than transport on the Yakutsk-Okhotsk Track and on the sea lanes from Okhotsk. In some places between the river's headwaters and Yakutsk navigation was hampered by swift shoals; in June and July it was sometimes almost halted by low water.1 The Governor of Yakutsk reported to Moscow in 1675 that low water and insufficient workers delayed the "Yakutsk delivery": "25 men were sent to Ilimsk Ostrog for grain, and these men bring grain supplies to Yakutsk with great need; and they navigate from Ilimsk Uyezd from the mouth of the Kuta River to Yakutsk with grain supplies on kochas, doshchaniks, barkas, and rafts at two and three men per vessel on account of the shortage of men, and, because of the scarcity of men, they founder on shoals and they sail to Yakutsk in five weeks and more; and 60 state servitors are needed for sending for grain supplies."2 Lorenz Lang, a high official of Ilimsk Uyezd, reported in 1740 that shipping down the Lena to Yakutsk from the upper Lena landings encountered "great difficulty" every year because of shallow water. For example, five of the thirty-two loaded rafts sent downriver to Yakutsk in 1740 with freight for the Second Kamchatka Expedition were stopped by shallow water.3 The problem was described by two peasant pilots in 113 114 OVERLAND-OVERSEA PROVISIONMENT mid-June of 1758: "because at present the Lena River is shallow. . . it is by any means impossible and hopeless to send not only loaded but even empty rafts, for in many places in the Lena River there are great shoals across the entire river, so that already there is no more than three-quarters of an arshin [twenty-one inches] of water, and in some places half an arshin [fourteen inches]. And a loaded raft needs more than an arshin [twenty-eight inches] of water...."4 In 1830 an observer reported that barkas, the chief grain vessels, were "sometimes" and "not infrequently" wrecked.5 At Yakutsk the resultant "lack of the first item of provisionment was very long [until the middle of the eighteenth century] a sore point and one of the most difficult matters of the local administration."6 From Yakutsk to Okhotsk The difficulties of the Irkutsk-Yakutsk stretch, however, were minor compared with those of the Yakutsk-Okhotsk section of the supply line, especially the land version. No other Siberian route sapped the Russian Treasury of so much money as did the Yakutsk-Okhotsk Track. Generally proceeding at the rate of four to five m.p.h. for ten to twelve hours a day, the Yakut pack horses should have reached Okhotsk (600-750 miles) in ten days at the least or in nineteen days at the most; instead, they often took twelve to fifteen days just to travel the 144 to 220 miles from Yudoma Cross to Okhotsk, while it usually took them six weeks and sometimes even two to three months to cover the entire route from Yakutsk to Okhotsk7 (Map 7). This discrepancy stemmed from many natural and human difficulties, difficulties that loomed large in the harrowing experiences of the First and Second Kamchatka Expeditions . Almost half of the second expedition's ten years were spent transporting supplies, mostly provisions, from Yakutsk to Okhotsk. In the summer of 1770 a party of exiles took 95 days to go from Yakutsk to Okhotsk with eighty horses, of which sixty-three died en route.8 This was not an uncommon occurrence on the Okhotsk Track. Around 1750 an anonymous observer declared that "this route is so difficult, that there is hardly one like it in all of the Russian state."9 Peter Dobell asserted that the tracks between Yakutsk and Okhotsk were "the worst and most dangerous roads I ever travelled";lO and the Decembrist Zavalishin, who journeyed from Okhotsk to Yakutsk in...

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