Having again spent the night aboard the steamer, we went one more time to the hamlet of Tyk, to ask the Giliaks to provision us with their fish and live swans. They caught some young broods of geese and swans and brought them to us in large wooden crates; they stuck them on tall poles so their dogs couldn't get at them. In these same crates they construct caches for fish and any provisions in general.

One Giliak approached us with a request, and in a language difficult to understand, began lodging some complaint. His face told of extreme suffering and had taken on the pinched look of a person crying, though I saw no tears.

Finally, with other Giliaks’ assistance, it was explained that his little mother (wife) had been taken away from him to another village, and he was now asking the leadership to order she be returned to him. The officials vowed they would.

This was not the first case wherein Giliaks appealed to Sakhalin's administration with such a request. Such weighty matters as the kidnapping of wives were traditionally resolved among families, but the decrees of the few Giliak families currently scattered across hundreds of versts often carry no force. Little-by-little, Giliaks have lost their patriarchal self-government, and respect for family elders has been replaced by fear before the Russian noyoni, i.e., the authorities.

We left Tyk at high tide and headed south. This time, our weather was favorable. The warm, sunny day, calm sea, and coastal proximity turned this voyage into a pleasant sea-stroll. In order to defer conclusion of the assignment laid before us, we now decided to alter course, to go to the settlements we’d missed: Trambaüs, Tangi, and Mgachi. Of them, the most beautiful location was Tangi. In a ravine between tall, green mountains, along the shore of a river, two settlements lay beside each other: the closest to the sea was Giliak, behind it was the Russian. This proximity has sparked ongoing quarrels between them. The Giliaks complain that the Russians come to their village and push them out of their yurts onto a small corner of land, rudely abuse them, ruin their nets, pilfer, etc.