Every winter throughout my time on Sakhalin, I found myself preoccupied by the church and meteorological station in Rykovsk settlement, but in summertime, the prison administration interrupted my serenity with various assignments, and even moreso by summoning me to Aleksandrovsk Post. There was needed a survey of populated areas to be completed or an ocean bay to be measured, a government steamer to be renovated and taken around Sakhalin, there was needed the depths of the Tatar Strait to be plumbed or scholarly magnetic and astronomical observations to be assisted, the seeds of some Sakhalin fir tree to be gathered for Petersburg— for these and other similar occasions they turned to me. Upon fulfilling such assignments, I merely received an approving “thanks”: these jobs were imposed on me as “katorga.” Nonetheless, I thoroughly took to them because they familiarized me with the island and varied my existence in a foreign land.

One of my first assignments was to complete a survey of the Tym Valley to an extent of fifty versts, i.e., that region which at that time accounted for all the land worked by Rykovsk, Derbinsk, Voskresensk, Palevo, and other settlements. I was asked to hurry and complete the job before August so plans for building a prison could be prepared, but I had no instruments except for a pendant-compass. I requested from Aleksandrovsk a plane table, staffs, a chain, and other things pertinent to surveying, not knowing if they even had those, and, not shoving the matter under the rug, went walking into the fields and meadows. Wielding just my one small compass, I measured the boundaries of the cultivated land with footsteps and wrote them down on a schema. After half the work was completed in such way, my instruments arrived. But in such terrible shape! Were this not so, I’d have completed the survey on time.

During these walks among the settlements, I saw much of interest. Among other things, with my own eyes I became familiar with the tilling of the Tym Valley and the issues debated by Sakhalin researchers. The early sowings of barley, rye, millet, and potatoes in Rykovsk settlement had yielded surprising harvests.