Certain of my comrades devoted themselves entirely to studying the Giliak language and recording their legends and fables.

From the start, the Giliaks who enthusiastically came to our apartment for the best refreshments and gifts shared their entire lexicon of words with us, then began relating their fantastic stories, or “fables,” in the form of oral poetry passed down from generation to generation.

The Lithuanian P— — i was especially assiduous in writing down Giliak fables. I tried to record them, but failed: my hearing had still not sufficiently recovered. I had to ask after each word several times and, as such, exhausted myself and the Giliak by constantly interrupting the thread of his story.

The whole of their fables was first written down in the Giliak language, and then a literal translation was made. Everything was then read to a different Giliak to verify it. In such way, a universal Giliak literature was compiled.

Among my comrades, L. Ia. Shternberg later conducted heartfelt ethnographic work on the Giliak lifestyle and language. On Sakhalin, a tragic incident forced him to live in the coastal settlement of Viakhtu, near which a small group of Giliaks resides to this day. Mr. Shternberg soon became interested in his neighbors, studied their language and customs, and got so used to Giliak society that he not only did not disdain to spend the night in their yurts but shared their table.

The more familiar I became with Giliak life, the more pertinent it became to suggest a comparison to the natives of the northwest American coast. Certain similar conditions of existence between the one and the other shore of the Great Ocean probably explain this. There are the same forests and mountains, the same hunting of fur-bearing beasts, the same Salmo fish eaten simultaneously by the Giliaks and the natives of Vancouver. Still further bases exist for a comparison between them: they both belong to one and the same yellow race. When I happened to read the legends missionaries gathered on Vancouver Island and compared them to the fables Giliaks dictated to us, I was struck by the many practices, feelings, and views of nature they had in common.