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some money—then in 1937, without my father. And the last time the windows and there wasn't a glass-cutter in the entire village. I was in 1947 as part of a group of youngsters. tried scoring it with the edge of that half of a stone sphere, and it "The 'Valley of Death’ extends along a right-hand tributary of turned out to cut with amazing ease. After that, my find was often the Viliuy River. In point of fact it is a whole chain of valleys used like a diamond by all our relatives and friends. In 1937 I along its flood lands. All three times I was there with a guide, a gave the stone to my grandfather, but that autumn he was arrested Yakut. We didn't go there because life was good, but because and taken to Magadan where he lived on without trial until 1968 there, in the back of beyond, you could pan for gold without the —_ and then died. Now no-one knows where my stone got to..." threat that at the end of the season you'd be robbed or get a bullet In his letter, Koretsky stresses that in 1933 his Yakut guide told in the back of your head. him that: "...five or ten years before, he had discovered several "As for mysterious objects, there are probably a lot of them spherical cauldrons (they were absolutely round) that protruded there, as in three seasons I saw seven of those 'cauldrons'. They high (higher than a man) out of the ground. They looked brand all struck me as totally perplexing: for one thing, there was their new. Later the hunter had seen them again, now broken and size—between six and nine metres in diameter. scattered." Koretsky also noted that when he visited one "Secondly, they were made of some strange metal. Everyone "cauldron" a second time, in the intervening few years it had sunk has written that they were made of copper, but I'm sure it isn't appreciably into the ground. copper. The thing is that even a sharpened cold chisel will not A. Gutenev and Yu. Mikhailovsky, two researchers who lived mark the ‘cauldrons' (we tried more than once). The metal doesn't in the town of Mirny in Yakutia, reported that in 1971 an old break off and can't be hammered. On copper, a hammer would _ hunter belonging to the Evenk people had said that in the area definitely have left noticeable dents. But this 'copper' is covered between two rivers known as Niugun Bootur ("fiery champion") over with a layer of some unknown material resembling emery. and Atadarak ("place with a three-sided harpoon"), there is poking Yet it's not an oxidation layer and not scale—it can't be chipped __ out of the ground the very thing that gave the place its name—a or scratched, either. "very big" three-faceted iron harpoon—while in the area between "We didn't come across shafts going down into the ground with _ two rivers known as Kheliugur ("iron people"), there is an iron chambers. But I did note that the vegetation around the 'caul- burrow in which lie "thin, black, one-eyed people in clothes of drons' is anomalous—totally different from what's growing iron". He said that he could take people there, that it was not far around. It's more opulent: large-leaved burdock; very long with- away, but no-one believed him. In the meantime, he died. es; strange grass, one and a half or two times the height of a man. One more of these objects was, to all appearances, covered after In one of the 'cauldrons', the whole group of us (six people) spent the building of a dam on the Viliuy, slightly below the Erbiie. the night. We didn't sense anything bad, and we calmly left with- | According to the account of one of the builders of the Viliuy out any sort of unpleasant occurrences. Nobody fell seriously ill hydro-electric project, when they constructed a diversion cana afterwards. Except that three months later, one of my friends lost —_and drained the main channel they discovered in it a convex metal all his hair. And on the left side of my head (the side I slept on), "spot". Deadlines were pressing and after a cursory inspection o! three small sore spots the size of match-heads appeared. I've tried _the find the project managers gave orders for work to continue. to get rid of them all my life, but they're still with me today. "None of our efforts to break off even a small piece from the strange ‘cauldrons' was successful. The only thing I did manage to bring away was a stone. Not an ordinary one, though: half of a perfect sphere, six centimetres in diameter. It was black in colour and bore no visible signs of having been worked, yet was very smooth as if polished. I picked it up from the ground inside one of those cauldrons. "I took my souvenir of Yakutia with me to the vil- lage of Samarka, Chuguyevka district, Primorsky region (the Soviet Far East), where my parents were living in 1933. I was laid up with nothing to do until my grandmother decided to build a house. We needed to put glass in the windows and there wasn't a glass-cutter in the entire village. I tried scoring it with the edge of that half of a stone sphere, and it turned out to cut with amazing ease. After that, my find was often used like a diamond by all our relatives and friends. In 1937 I gave the stone to my grandfather, but that autumn he was arreste: and taken to Magadan where he lived on without trial until 1968 and then died. Now no-one knows where my stone got to..." In his letter, Koretsky stresses that in 1933 his Yakut guide tol him that: "...five or ten years before, he had discovered several spherical cauldrons (they were absolutely round) that protruded high (higher than a man) out of the ground. They looked bran new. Later the hunter had seen them again, now broken and scattered." Koretsky also noted that when he visited one "cauldron" a second time, in the intervening few years it had sunk appreciably into the ground. A. Gutenev and Yu. Mikhailovsky, two researchers who live in the town of Mirny in Yakutia, reported that in 1971 an old hunter belonging to the Evenk people had said that in the area between two rivers known as Niugun Bootur ("fiery champion") and Atadarak ("place with a three-sided harpoon"), there is poking out of the ground the very thing that gave the place its name—a "very big" three-faceted iron harpoon—while in the area between two rivers known as Kheliugur ("iron people"), there is an iron burrow in which lie "thin, black, one-eyed people in clothes of iron". He said that he could take people there, that it was not far away, but no-one believed him. In the meantime, he died. One more of these objects was, to all appearances, covered after the building of a dam on the Viliuy, slightly below the Erbiie. According to the account of one of the builders of the Viliuy hydro-electric project, when they constructed a diversion canal and drained the main channel they discovered in it a convex metal "spot". Deadlines were pressing and after a cursory inspection of the find the project managers gave orders for work to continue. NEXUS + 51 DECEMBER 2003 — JANUARY 2004 www.nexusmagazine.com