Letters of Anton Chekhov (Tchekhov) - Penn State University

Anton ChekhovTO A. S. SUVORIN.THE STEAMER “BAIKAL,” September 11, 1890.Greetings! I am sailing on the Gulf of Tartary from the north ofSahalin to the south. I am writing; and don’t know when this letterwill reach you. I am well, though I see on all sides glaring at me thegreen eyes of cholera which has laid a trap for me. In Vladivostok,in Japan, in Shanghai, Tchifu, Suez, and even in the moon, I fancy—everywhere there is cholera, everywhere quarantine and terror.... Theyexpect the cholera in Sahalin and keep all vessels in quarantine. Inshort, it is a bad lookout. Europeans are dying at Vladivostok, amongothers the wife of a general has died.I have spent just two months in the north of Sahalin. I was receivedby the local administration very amicably, though Galkinhad not written a single word about me. Neither Galkin nor theBaroness V., nor any of the other genii I was so foolish as to appealto for help, turned out of the slightest use to me; I had to act on myown initiative.The Sahalin general, Kononovitch, is a cultivated and gentlemanlyman. We soon got on together, and everything went off well. I ambringing some papers with me from which you will see that I wasput on the most agreeable footing from the first. I have seen everything,so that the question is not now what I have seen, but how Ihave seen it.I don’t know what will come of it, but I have done a good deal. Ihave got enough material for three dissertations. I got up everymorning at five o’clock and went to bed late; and all day long wason the strain from the thought that there was still so much I hadn’tdone; and now that I have done with the convict system, I have thefeeling that I have seen everything but have not noticed the elephants.By the way, I had the patience to make a census of the wholeSahalin population. I made the round of all the settlements, wentinto every hut and talked to everyone; I made use of the card systemin making the census, and I have already registered about ten thousandconvicts and settlers. In other words, there is not in Sahalinone convict or settler who has not talked with me. I was particularly201