The historian and ethnographer of the Kolyma region, E. Ustiev, in his book At the Origins of the Golden River, published in 1977, talks about how gold was discovered in the Kolyma basin.
During the First World War, a certain Tatar Safi Shafigullin, nicknamed Boriska, escaped from being drafted into the army and moved to the distant Kolyma lands. This illiterate wretch discovered the first grains of precious metal here.
At first Boriska was looking for gold alone. Then he picked up an artel of the same hicks as himself, but after a few years he moved away from his comrades and again began to hunt alone. He came across only insignificant "golden traces" here and there. The poor man did not know the laws of the formation of gold deposits and therefore he washed in the wrong place, and in the wrong way.
But then one day Boriska was fabulously lucky - he did find the richest gold placer. Our prospector began to fill the bag with golden sand and … suddenly gave up his breath.
In the winter of 1917/18, Boriska's body was accidentally discovered next to a shallow pit he had drilled into the ground. Apparently, none of the people have approached this body to this day. A sack full of gold lay on the ground next to the dead prospector. The gun, cartridges, foodstuffs were also lying here.
There were no signs of violence on the body of the deceased. Boriska, of course, died a natural death, and he died just suddenly. He was squatting dead near the pit.
The people who discovered the dead body were in awe of the local Kolyma "demons" who, according to their assumption, threatened the man who found the richest gold placer. For hundreds of kilometers around - not a single living soul. There are absolutely no traces next to Boriska's body indicating that someone has visited this place.
And - here's a miracle: the whole pit, punched by a prospector in the ground, was tightly, densely braided with thick, harsh threads. The threads were pulled in the pit like strings, filling it from top to bottom like a spider's web. Clinging to the branches of the bushes, gray threads stretched up from the pit. They reached for Boriska's body, tightly braided him too.
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E. Ustiyev writes in his book: “Like everything devoid of visible meaning, this delicate openwork thread weaving seemed ominous and full of some secret meaning”.
What killed Boriska? What unknown forces pulled the entire pit like a cobweb with harsh threads? By the way, where did these forces get the threads of factory production in the Kolyma wilderness? And why, one wonders, did they braid not only the pit, but also Boriska's body with threads?
Perhaps, having tied him up in such a strange way and then killed him, they wanted to prevent this prospector from spreading the news that he had finally discovered powerful deposits of precious metal in the Kolyma basin?..
We will never know the truth about the reasons and, most importantly, the mysterious circumstances of Boriska's death … However, the history of the development of gold deposits in the local area began precisely with a shallow pit drilled by Boriska right above one of the richest gold placers in the Kolyma basin.