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Title: The great Siberian railway
what I saw on my journey
Author: Francis E. Clark
Release date: June 8, 2026 [eBook #78829]
Language: English
Original publication: London: S. W. Partridge and co., 1904
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78829
Credits: Peter Becker, Terry Jeffress, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREAT SIBERIAN RAILWAY ***
[Illustration: FRANCIS E. CLARK]
THE GREAT SIBERIAN RAILWAY
WHAT I SAW ON MY JOURNEY
BY DR. F. E. CLARK
WITH SIXTY-FIVE ILLUSTRATIONS
FROM PHOTOGRAPHS AND A MAP
=London=
S. W. PARTRIDGE AND CO.
8 & 9, PATERNOSTER ROW
1904
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. FROM NEW YORK TO VLADIVOSTOCK 1
II. THE METROPOLIS OF THE NORTHEAST 13
III. RIDING ON THE RAIL IN SIBERIA 25
IV. FROM VLADIVOSTOCK TO KHABAROFFSK 39
V. THE _BARON KORFF_ 50
VI. THE LORDLY AMOUR 61
VII. BETWEEN TWO GREAT NATIONS 74
VIII. A SIBERIAN CAPITAL 86
IX. AGROUND IN THE AMOUR 101
X. ON THE SHILKA 114
XI. THE TRANS-BAIKAL 129
XII. THE HOLY SEA 144
XIII. A SIBERIAN CITY OF CHURCHES 156
XIV. A SIBERIAN _TRAIN DE LUXE_ 166
XV. OUT OF ASIA INTO EUROPE 180
SOME FACTS AND FIGURES 194
ENGLISH-RUSSIAN GLOSSARY 201
ILLUSTRATIONS
FRANCIS E. CLARK _Frontispiece_
CATHEDRAL AT VLADIVOSTOCK _Facing p._ 4
DRY-DOCK AT VLADIVOSTOCK ” 6
HARBOR OF VLADIVOSTOCK ” 10
GROUP OF KOREAN WORKMEN, VLADIVOSTOCK ” 12
GENERAL TCHITCHAGOFF ” 18
GENERAL VIEW OF VLADIVOSTOCK ” 22
STATION OF KORFOVSKIA, EASTERN SIBERIA, SHOWING AMERICAN
LOCOMOTIVE ” 26
“WHO’LL BUY MY FLOWERS?” ” 30
VILLAGE OF VIAZEMSKOI, EASTERN SIBERIA ” 32
THROUGH THE FOREST IN EASTERN SIBERIA ” 34
CITY OF KHABAROFFSK, ON THE AMOUR RIVER ” 38
FATHER ALEXANDER AND STATION-MASTER AT NIKOLSKOIE ” 42
A PATHETIC SIBERIAN VILLAGE GRAVEYARD ” 46
THE OLD WAY BY THE “SHIP OF THE DESERT” ” 48
THE _BARON KORFF_ ” 50
EMBARKING ON AN AMOUR RIVER STEAMER ” 54
ON THE SHORE OF THE AMOUR ” 58
A PRISON BARGE ” 62
A SIBERIAN RIVER TOWN IN WINTER ” 66
A THUNDER-STORM BY NIGHT ON THE AMOUR ” 70
ON THE BANKS OF THE AMOUR ” 74
SOME OF OUR FELLOW-TRAVELLERS. SIBERIAN EMIGRANTS ON THE
AMOUR ” 78
SOME OTHER FELLOW-PASSENGERS. RUSSIAN OFFICERS AND THEIR
FAMILIES ” 80
A TRIUMPHAL ARCH IN HONOR OF THE CZAREWITCH’S JOURNEY
THROUGH SIBERIA ” 82
A MODEST TRIUMPHAL ARCH AT A LITTLE SIBERIAN VILLAGE ” 84
“EACH WOMAN HUGGING TWO OR THREE BOTTLES OF MILK” ” 86
THE LEADING HOTEL, BLAGAVESTCHENSK ” 90
THE CEMETERY AT BLAGAVESTCHENSK ” 92
ONE OF BLAGAVESTCHENSK’S BEAUTIFUL CHURCHES ” 94
A GREAT DEPARTMENT STORE IN BLAGAVESTCHENSK, WITH
MARKET-PLACE IN FRONT ” 96
AN UPPER AMOUR RIVER STEAMER ” 98
ON THE UPPER AMOUR ” 100
TUMBLING ASHORE FROM THE _ADMIRAL CHICACHOFF_ ” 102
CHILDREN OF EMIGRANTS PICKING WILD FLOWERS ON THE BANKS
OF THE AMOUR ” 106
AN EMIGRANT HOUSE ON THE UPPER AMOUR ” 108
THE MEN BEHIND THE BARS ON THE PRISON BARGE ” 110
THE HILL-SIDES WERE CARPETED WITH FLOWERS ” 114
A TYPICAL WATER-TOWER ON THE TRANS-SIBERIAN RAILWAY ” 116
THE LIGNITE CLIFFS ON THE AMOUR ” 118
THE EVER-PRESENT SAMOVAR ” 122
SOME FIFTH-CLASS PEOPLE ” 124
A RAFT ON THE SHILKA ” 126
SIBERIAN RECRUITS BOUND FOR CHINA ” 130
FOR THIRTY-SIX MORTAL HOURS WE WAITED ” 132
A TRANS-BAIKAL TRAIN. PRISONERS CARRYING WATER ” 134
BOUND FOR FAR SIBERIA ” 138
FIFTEEN MINUTES AT EVERY STATION ” 140
PRISON CAR IN SIBERIA. FAMILIES OF PRISONERS AT THE WINDOWS ” 142
THE ELEPHANT’S NOSE, LAKE BAIKAL ” 146
THE ICE-BREAKER ON LAKE BAIKAL ” 150
THE SHORES OF LAKE BAIKAL ” 154
BURIATS FROM LAKE BAIKAL, WITH SEAL FROM THE LAKE ” 158
AN IRKUTSK DROSKY ” 160
GENERAL VIEW OF IRKUTSK ” 162
ONE OF THE BEAUTIFUL CHURCHES OF IRKUTSK ” 166
A PART OF OUR _TRAIN DE LUXE_ ” 170
A VIEW ON THE ANGARA, NEAR IRKUTSK ” 174
A TRAINMAN WHO HAS TAKEN THE VEIL ” 176
SIBERIAN RAILWAY NEAR THE ASIATIC BORDER ” 178
ZLATOOST, A BORDER TOWN BETWEEN EUROPE AND ASIA ” 182
IN THE URAL MOUNTAINS ” 186
THE KREMLIN IN WINTER ” 190
A SHRINE AT A RAILWAY STATION ” 194
RUSSIAN TYPES ” 196
MAP SHOWING THE AUTHOR’S ROUTE FROM VLADIVOSTOCK ACROSS
SIBERIA TO ST. PETERSBURG ” 200
BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION
This volume describes the last six weeks of a long journey undertaken
in the interests of the Young People’s Society of Christian Endeavor.
Mrs. Clark and myself having been invited to attend various conventions
of the society in Japan and China, we started for the far East,
accompanied by our little son Harold, a boy of twelve years, in the
early days of January, 1900.
The conventions were, beyond our expectations, large in numbers,
enthusiastic in interest, and important in their results; but they
cannot be described in this volume.
Knowing that a new all-steam route around the world was to be opened by
the completion of the Trans-Siberian Railway to the head of navigation
on the Shilka River, and having important engagements at the World’s
Christian Endeavor Convention, which was to meet in London in July, we
determined not to follow the beaten tracks around the world which we
had before taken, but to attempt this new route, which binds Asia and
Europe, the Pacific with the Atlantic.
The last meetings of the series we had gone to the far East to attend
were held in north China, in Tientsin, Peking, Tungchow, and Poatingfu,
only a few days before the terrible uprising which bids fair to make
such momentous changes in the map of the world.
The meetings being over and our object in visiting China being
accomplished, we left Taku, as it proved, by the last steamer that
sailed for Corea before the bombardment of the forts of Taku and the
siege of Tientsin.
For nearly two weeks we coasted around the peninsula of Corea, stopping
at Chemulpo, Mokpo, Fusan, and Wonsan, or Gensan, as the last-named
port is indifferently called.
At Fusan, at the southern extremity of Corea, we spent four days
waiting for a steamer to take us up the coast, and here, in soil
already prepared, the first Christian Endeavor Society of Corea was
planted in a church of the Australian Presbyterian Mission.
At length we reached Vladivostock, and our long journey across the
Siberian plains by rail and river began.
At Taku our party had been pleasantly enlarged by the addition of
Miss Anna Northend Benjamin, of New York, a well-known lecturer and
newspaper correspondent, on her way home from the Philippines.
At Wonsan, in Corea, Mr. J. M. Jordan, British Consul-General to Corea,
and Mr. Burn Murdock, a mining expert, became our fellow-passengers.
At Khabaroffsk Mr. J. C. Smith, a leading merchant of Nagasaki, who
was accompanied by Mrs. Smith, took the same steamer; also Baron
Hartogensis, of Germany, and Herr Ritter, Swiss Consul-General to
Japan, all of whom, with one or two other foreigners (non-Russians),
afterwards formed themselves into the “Never Again Society,” to whom
this book is dedicated.
Interest is perhaps added to this journey from the fact that we were
the first Americans, and in all probability the first foreigners, to go
around the world by the new route. The trans-Siberian all-steam route
had been opened but a few days when we took passage at Vladivostock,
as I have explained in an early chapter, and none of the few who had
preceded us across Siberia by this route had completed the circuit of
the globe.
If this fact is borne in mind, it will explain some of the difficulties
inevitably incidental to a new and untried route.
I wish gratefully to acknowledge the courtesy of their Excellencies the
Russian Ministers Plenipotentiary to Japan and China, and to General
Tchitchagoff, the Governor of Vladivostock and the Primorskaia, for
their kind assistance in a journey which, were it not for their aid,
would have been far more difficult and tedious.
It is also fair to add that already, in the minds of some at least
of the “Never Again Society,” the discomforts and delays of the
journey have faded into the unremembered Past, which so kindly and so
quickly touches our little woes with the finger of oblivion, while its
novelties and pleasures stand out in ever-bolder and happier relief.
If the above-mentioned society were canvassed to-day, it would not be
at all surprising if its members should unanimously resolve themselves
into a
“_Some Time Again Society_.”
BOSTON, _February 2, 1901_.
A NEW WAY AROUND AN OLD WORLD
I
FROM NEW YORK TO VLADIVOSTOCK
The completion of a new way around this old world is a matter of no
little interest and moment. Such a new way has just been opened, and
it was my fortune to be one of the first five passengers who took this
journey.
On the 28th of December, 1899, the last rail was laid on the
trans-Baikal section of the Siberian Railway, which for the present
will stop at Stretinsk, and there connect with the steamers on the
Shilka, a branch of the Amour River, for Khabaroffsk, where again
railway communication is resumed for a further journey of five
hundred miles to Vladivostock, on the Sea of Japan. Thus across all of
Russia’s vast domain in Europe and Asia it is possible to go by steam,
a distance of considerably more than six thousand miles, as the route
is now traversed by river and by rail. My own route was in the other
direction, from east to west--from Vladivostock to St. Petersburg.
Though, as I have said, the last rail of the trans-Baikal section of
the road was laid on December 28, 1899, the Amour and its tributaries
were then frozen, and no steam communication could be had until spring
unloosed the icy fetters. The rivers did not open this year until the
middle of May, and on the 31st day of May I reached Vladivostock, and
on the 1st day of June took passage at Khabaroffsk, on the Amour River
steamer _Baron Korff_, for the long journey across the Russias.
I mention this fact because the newness of the route will account for
some of the crude and primitive accommodations that will be alluded to
further on in this story.
To be sure, many other travellers had crossed Siberia from Vladivostock
to St. Petersburg, but the journey could not, before May of 1900, be
done by uninterrupted steam travel, and thus one more way of going
around the world by the aid of the all-compelling steam-engine has been
added to the two that already existed.
For many years it has been possible to steam around the Cape of Good
Hope and stormy Cape Horn from New York back to New York again. For a
generation it has been possible to take the shorter cut by rail across
the American continent and by steamer through the Suez Canal. Now a
third steam route has been opened which reduces the ocean journey to a
minimum, and, for the first time in history, makes the portion of the
journey by land considerably longer than the portion by sea.
This is surely good news for bad sailors.
Roughly speaking, this way around the world involves about thirteen
thousand miles of railroad or river travel, and nine thousand miles of
sea travel. Approximately, these distances may be divided as follows:
MILES.
By rail from New York to San Francisco 3000
By ocean from San Francisco to Yokohama 5000
By rail from Yokohama to Nagasaki 800
By ocean from Nagasaki to Vladivostock 1000
By rail (and river) from Vladivostock to Liverpool 9000
By ocean from Liverpool to New York 3000
I need dwell but briefly on our journey from New York to Vladivostock,
for, so far as Nagasaki at least, it is getting to be as commonplace
as a trip across the Atlantic steam ferry. As a matter of fact, it
occupied us more than four months, owing to various detours in Japan
and China for the sake of attending Christian Endeavor conventions
which had called me to the far East. This part of the journey, however,
might have been easily accomplished in twenty-five days--five days
across the American continent, eighteen days from San Francisco to
Yokohama, and two days from Yokohama to Nagasaki.
[Illustration: CATHEDRAL AT VLADIVOSTOCK]
Here the novel part of the journey begins. We at once get out of the
beaten path of the globe-trotter. He halts on the southern edge of
Japan, or, perhaps, more often keeps on eastward across the choppy
Yellow Sea to Shanghai, and thence, if he is really a _globe_-trotter,
on to Hong Kong, the Straits, Colombo, and Suez.
In the future, however, the stream of world-encirclers is likely to
divide at Nagasaki, one part of the stream flowing east and south over
the old channel, the other flowing east and north over the new route
which, less than three weeks ago as I write these words, was opened up
around “this goodly frame the earth.”
By this latter route, which I am about to describe, the traveller
sails from one glorious harbor to another--from Nagasaki to Fusan,
Corea; to Wonsan, Corea; to Vladivostock, Russia. In all of them “the
navies of the world might ride,” according to the old platitude, and
on this coast, without much doubt, will be the naval battle-field of
the future, when the Titans get ready to measure their sea-power one
against another in the struggle for Corea or China.
We took passage on a little Japanese steamer, the _Ise Maru_, which
runs between Kobe and Vladivostock, and which belongs to the Nippon
Yushen Kaisha, the largest steamship company in the world, with
steamers plying to America and Europe and Shanghai and Hong Kong,
besides to the innumerable ports up and down the coast of Japan.
Many of the steamers are large and fine, but the _Ise Maru_ is not one
of these. She is, however, clean and fairly comfortable, and we will
not complain, as the journey is a short one of less than a thousand
miles.
[Illustration: DRY-DOCK AT VLADIVOSTOCK]
A prejudice against Japanese captains and chief officers exists among
many foreigners, who will not sail, if they can help it, except on
ships manned by European officers. I must say that I do not share
this prejudice. I have sailed with more than one Japanese captain and
crew, and I have invariably found them polite and exceedingly attentive
to the comfort of their passengers, and, so far as I could judge,
excellent seamen, leaning always to the side of caution in navigating
the treacherous rock-bound coasts. As a matter of fact, the steamers
that have been lost in these eastern seas have usually been officered
by Europeans, and not by Japanese.
Half of the steamers of the Nippon Yushen Kaisha are officered by
Japanese, and half by Europeans, and the latter have been by far the
most unfortunate.
So, casting prejudice and fear to the winds, and trusting in Providence
for a safe voyage, we set sail, and, twenty-four hours out of Nagasaki,
approached the bold shores of Corea, no longer the hermit nation, but
open now at a dozen doors to the commerce of the world.
Fusan, at the southwestern corner of the peninsula, is one of these
open doors, a door, in fact, which has long been open, for the Japanese
for three hundred years have here kept at least a foot in the doorway
for their own ingress and egress.
Fusan is in every sense a Japanese port. The Japanese have been here so
long that they have even trained the great pine-trees along the streets
and on the temple hill to grow in picturesque Japanese fashion, and
their shops, their banners, their Shinto shrines, their good roads,
all proclaim their long occupation. The only Americans in Fusan are
found in a small colony of faithful missionaries, whose homes, on a
picturesque hill between the Japanese and Corean cities of Fusan, are
conspicuous for miles around. The next day after her arrival the _Ise
Maru_ weighed anchor again and, shaping her course due north, made
for the port of Wonsan, on the Corean coast, midway between Fusan and
Vladivostock, and about three hundred miles from either port.
Wonsan, like Fusan, possesses a magnificent harbor, entirely landlocked
and surrounded by imposing hills. No wonder that Russia, as well as
Japan, has cast covetous eyes upon this splendid port, but to all
appearances Japan has the inside track, for here, as in Fusan, she has
securely seated herself, has built her houses and shops and wharves and
temples, and owns more of the shipping that visits the harbor than all
other nations combined.
A few hours only were given to Wonsan, and again the whistle of the
_Ise_ shrieked, the anchor was hoisted to the bows, and the little ship
ploughed her way once more up the bold Corean coast, to make the last
loop in her frequently interrupted voyage. One of these days Corea, I
believe, will be a favorite haunt of pleasure-seekers and tourists. The
coastline is magnificently indented with bays and gulfs, the interior
is one series of grand mountains and lovely valleys, the west coast
is lined with charming islands that form almost a continuous break
to the winds and waves, while the east coast, though without many
islands, furnishes equally fine scenery and unrivalled delights for
the mountaineer on the shore and the yachtsman on the sea. The people
are poor, primitive, and, it must be confessed, dirty, but are kind,
courteous, and even courtly, and, in their white linen clothes and
queer horse-hair hats, are most picturesque and interesting--far more
so than their neighbors in China, _me judice_.
[Illustration: HARBOR OF VLADIVOSTOCK]
But we are bound for Siberia, and must not in this chapter linger in
Corea. Early on the morning of May 29th, five days out from Nagasaki,
the passengers of the _Ise Maru_ awoke to find themselves in still
another magnificent landlocked harbor. One glance at the shore where
stands Vladivostock, the “Magic City,” showed them that they had left
Mongolia and Mongolians behind them, and, though still in Asia, and on
the extreme eastern verge of Asia, were in an Asia owned and dominated
by Europeans. Large blocks of brick and stone crown the hills on
which the town is situated. A great white house flying the admiral’s
flag occupies the most commanding site. A beautiful Greek church,
with trim minarets, stands near by. The Russian tricolor is flying
everywhere. We had left behind, as completely as though we had sailed
to another planet, the mud huts of Corea, the slight one-story wooden
houses of Japan, and the stone hovels and filthy streets of China, and
suddenly found ourselves in a city of substantial brick and stone, wide
paved streets, electric lights and telegraph wires, and railway trains
snorting and puffing down to the very wharves. We could almost imagine
that either Tacoma or Seattle had bodily taken passage across the
Pacific and had planted itself on the eastern shore of Asia instead of
the western shore of America. Only the droskies and tarantasses flying
through the streets, with one horse under the huge Russian collar while
another ran free to keep up with his trotting-mate, recalled us to the
fact that we were about to step ashore in monarchical Russia instead of
republican America.
A score of sampans, each manned by a long-cued Chinaman, were clamoring
to take us ashore, and we were scarcely less anxious to accept their
invitation, that we might plant our feet on _terra firma_, and realize
that our long ocean voyage was over and our longer land journey over an
unbeaten track was about to begin.
[Illustration: GROUP OF KOREAN WORKMEN, VLADIVOSTOCK]
II
THE METROPOLIS OF THE NORTHEAST
Vladivostock, on nearer approach, unlike many towns, carries out its
more distant promise. It is not a trim and finished town, but it is
one of strong outlines, and evidently built for a great future. Its
chief buildings are substantial. The town looks as though it had come
to stay. To be sure, the new outlet which Russia has obtained through
eastern China to the sea at Port Arthur will rob Vladivostock of its
unique importance as Russia’s only open door on the Pacific, but her
glory as the great natural port of Siberia, with a limitless country
of vast resources behind her, can never be taken away. The huge
ice-breaker which crunches up the harbor ice in winter with its sharp
iron beak is a complete success, and it is no longer an ice-bound port
for even three months of the year. The winter, though long, is not
unusually severe, and the mercury, I am told, seldom or never sinks so
low as it does in Boston or New York.
No sooner had we stepped on shore than we were treated to our first
disillusionment concerning Russia and the Russians. We had heard much
about the terrors of the Russian custom-house. We expected to have our
baggage overhauled from turret to foundation-stone, and the feminine
member of our party had pictured to herself a swarthy Cossack with
sword and cutlass making hay of her feminine belongings, while he
searched for dutiable goods. But our Chinese sampan-man landed us at
the pier, and no customs officer appeared upon the scene. We waited,
but he did not come. We inquired in two or three different languages
for the custom-house, but no one knew what we meant. We wandered
up and down the pier looking for some building that resembled the
familiar office where duties are collected, but could find none. At
length, having fully satisfied our consciences, we boldly loaded our
_impedimenta_ into a drosky, and told the driver to take it to the
Hôtel du Pacifique. This he successfully accomplished, and no officer
of the law appeared to disturb our peace of mind, or to look into the
innocent recesses of our trunks.
So far as I know we were subjected to no surveillance of any sort. We
came and went as we pleased. We minded our own business, and every one
else minded his. There seemed to be no such inspection of newly arrived
strangers as one is often conscious of in Germany. And yet, here we
were in autocratic Russia, and, more than that, in Siberia, the land of
the exile and the prisoner--the land around whose name has clustered
every synonym for oppression and cruelty.
I am inclined to think that what I have been told by an acute
observer is very true, and that Russia is much more autocratic and
inquisitorial on paper than in reality. Her laws are severe and may
be enforced if needs must, but their iron hand is seldom felt by
the well-disposed. There is much theoretical restriction, and much
practical liberty.
The hotels of Vladivostock are not to be indiscriminately commended.
When Baedeker writes his inevitable guide-book about Siberia he will
not mark them with his familiar *, unless they greatly improve upon
their present condition. It should be said, however, that the best one
was recently destroyed by fire, and the chief one that still remains is
probably suffering from lack of competition. The table was very good,
and the chief fault was that the rooms and halls were dark and dirty,
and clean linen was a scarce and precious article. One sheet for each
bed seemed to be the full allowance, and one small towel for three
people was apparently thought to be an ample supply. When one of our
party righteously complained that her towel had evidently done duty
before, the Japanese chambermaid, who did the English for the hotel,
replied that it was _impossible_ to get another; it was not to be had.
There was not a clean towel in the hotel. After much importunity,
however, she was induced to loan a long, clean scarf from her own
bureau to serve as a towel.
However, this was a minor matter. We reminded ourselves that we were
in Siberia, and on the eastern edge of Siberia at that. Who could
expect all the amenities of civilization? We were no sooner established
in our hotel for the day than I sallied out to seek the governor of
Vladivostock and of this whole eastern province, to whom I fortunately
had a letter from the Russian minister of Japan.
Well was it that I found the governor armed with these credentials, as
the sequel will show in another chapter. Governor Tchitchagoff received
me with the utmost courtesy. The letter from the minister to Japan
acted like an open sesame to his kindly attentions, and he at once
despatched a secretary to secure berths on the train which left the
next day for Khabaroffsk, and sent another to telegraph to Khabaroffsk
to hold a state-room on the Amour River steamer for Blagovestchensk, as
he knew the berths were in great demand. At the same time he gave me
a letter to the chief of police in Khabaroffsk. While waiting for the
preparation of this letter by his secretary he showed me a map of the
vast province of Primorskaia, of which he is governor, a province which
extends for two thousand miles up the shores of the Pacific, clear away
to the North Pole, embracing Kamchatka and the famous Saghalien Island
north of Japan, to which are banished the worst of Russian convicts.
[Illustration: GENERAL TCHITCHAGOFF
Governor of Vladivostock and Primorskaia]
Governor Tchitchagoff is a man of commanding presence, but most
urbane and gentlemanly, a trait which he shares with most Russians
of the better class, so far as my observation goes. There is a
certain courtly simplicity about them, free from all arrogance
and brusqueness, which is the very essence of high breeding. The
governor speaks fluently French and German, and English with a little
hesitation. This, again, is a type of the educated Russian of the
better class, who is usually a famous linguist.
Moreover, the governor is a Cossack, a name which, in my ignorance, I
had hitherto associated largely with frontier troopers of the Buffalo
Bill order. I confess my stupid misconception with contrition of
spirit. Thus again came a happy disillusion concerning Russia and the
Russians. This interview with the governor set my mind at rest in
regard to any danger of losing the steamer on the first stage of our
long river journey, for I knew that the word of General Tchitchagoff
was as the law of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not. He is the
virtual czar of all this Eastern land. It was exceedingly necessary
that we should incur no long delays, as a most important engagement
awaited me in London within forty-four days. I had already cabled
“London screaming,” which meant, according to the cable code, that I
would be in London on the Fourth of July (a most appropriate cable word
for the date in question), and there were very few days to spare over
the shortest time on record. Mail steamers on the Amour River start on
their various stages only once in five days, and it would not do to
miss connections at the outset.
But now, with easy minds, we set out to “do” the town. It does not
take long to exhaust its glories, for it is a new town, in the raw,
half-baked stage of its existence, with most of its glories in the
future. But these are evident enough to make up for any present
deficiencies. Vladivostock is credited, in the latest published
statistics, with about 29,000 inhabitants, but it is now said to have
40,000, chiefly Russians, Chinese, and Coreans, with a sprinkling
of Japanese, Germans, French, Italians, English, and a very few
Americans. It is a remarkably cosmopolitan little city to be found on
the banks of an almost arctic sea, and it exhibits all the life and
picturesqueness of a little cosmopolis. Russian droskies go flying
about the streets in every direction, as though their occupants were
pressed for the last second of time, and would be eternally too
late unless they arrived somewhere within less than five minutes.
Most harum-scarum, reckless drivers apparently are the drosky men.
Their horses are given a loose rein, and they go flying down-hill
at breakneck speed, over the rough roads, and galloping up the next
incline with never a check on their mad career. The appearance of
reckless haste is further increased by the fact that always one horse
and often two horses are hitched to the vehicle outside the shafts, by
loose ropes or leather thongs. These horses often pull away from the
wheel-horse within the shafts so far as the harness will let them, and
they dance and prance and gallop while he trots at full speed, and the
drosky goes rattlety-bang over the stones and into the holes and over
the “thank-ye-marms” in a way that the Russians seem to like, but which
tires the patience and, let us hope, improves the liver of the foreign
passengers.
Besides the drosky, the streets are full of another peculiarly Russian
vehicle, the isvodschik, which resembles a small boat set on long
poles, somewhat after the fashion of the body of a buckboard. This is
used to carry luggage, and, in many parts of the country, passengers
as well, who pile into it until it looks like a peasant’s cart in
Naples or a Chinese wheelbarrow in Shanghai. The Chinese wheelbarrow
is not wanting in Vladivostock either, and its familiar squeak is
heard on every hand. Vladivostock, indeed, must be the paradise of the
Celestial, for here he gets a wage of a rouble and a half a day, which
is something like ten times the pay he would receive in his native
land. Moreover, there seems to be unlimited work for him in grading
and paving the streets, carrying brick and mortar, rowing the sampans,
building the railways, and doing the other drudgery of a new colony.
The Corean, in his dirty white garments and padded pillow-cushion
shoes, is not far behind him in numbers, and competes for the manual
work of this new country with his Chinese cousin on the same terms.
[Illustration: GENERAL VIEW OF VLADIVOSTOCK]
Vladivostock consists of one chief street, running up-hill and
down-dale, with various branches climbing the hills on every side.
The chief sights are easily done, as I have said, for they consist
of a few fine stores and public buildings, a beautiful Greek church
with its graceful domes, and a triumphal arch in honor of the visit of
the czarewitch, a few years ago, when the first spadeful of earth, in
breaking the eastern end of the new Siberian railway, was turned by the
royal visitor.
But Vladivostock’s chief glories do not lie in her public or private
buildings, or in the great fortresses which command the city and
harbor, but in the magnificent scenery that greets the eye on every
hand. Few cities in all the world are more beautiful for situation. The
Amour Bay, on one side, and the Bay of Ussuri, on the other, clasp the
city in their kind embrace, and constantly lave its feet with gentle
ripples. Noble hills stretch off landwards, and from the main hill-tops
within the city limits one gets glimpses of sea and shore and mountain
and valley of surpassing loveliness. In view of the long journey to
which we were looking forward, the railway station, prosaic as it is,
was the most interesting building in all Vladivostock. Over its doorway
is printed, in old Russian characters, a legend which may well stir the
blood as we think of all that it means. It reads as follows:
VLADIVOSTOCK TO PETERSBURG
9877 VERSTS.
We were to begin to measure off these versts on the morrow.
III
RIDING ON THE RAIL IN SIBERIA
Our first introduction to a Siberian railway train was made under
unusually pleasant circumstances. Hurrying to the station in ample
season to secure what accommodations we could, and expecting to have a
severe struggle with our tickets and our baggage in a strange language
of which we knew scarcely a single word, what was our surprise to have
a decorated official, in a handsome white uniform bound with gold
lace, accost us by name and assure us that, at the governor’s orders,
a first-class compartment had been reserved for us, and all we had to
do was to buy our tickets and take our seats. As the train was very
much crowded, and our lack of knowledge of the language made us almost
as helpless as infants in looking out for our comfort and advantage,
this was a favor which we most thoroughly appreciated. Before the train
started we were favored with a call in our little state-room from the
enterprising and energetic United States Consul, Richard T. Greener,
and also from Mrs. Frederick Pray, a little American lady, who, a few
years ago, transferred her home half around the world, from Berwick,
Maine, to Vladivostock, Russia. Her husband is connected with a large
American firm doing business in Vladivostock, that is introducing many
products of American soil and a thousand Yankee conveniences to the
Siberian public. Mrs. Pray had kindly prepared for us a list of common
Russian phrases, with the English pronunciation, which proved to be
exceedingly useful in calling for tea and bread-and-butter, and a
carriage, and a room at a hotel, or any one of the necessities of life
to the wanderer in Siberia, where French is scarce, and German scarcer,
and English almost nil.
[Illustration: STATION OF KORFOVSKIA, EASTERN SIBERIA, SHOWING AMERICAN
LOCOMOTIVE]
The Russian language is formidable enough even when one has time and
opportunity to make a study of it; to the passing traveller it is
absolutely appalling. It has thirty-six letters instead of twenty-six,
and several of them seem absolutely superfluous, for they cannot be and
never are pronounced. The Greek scholar at first hails the alphabet
with delight, and tackles it with enthusiasm, for he recognizes several
old friends. There is delta and lambda and phi and chi and theta and
several other letters that he struggled with in his school-days. But,
alas! his enthusiasm is soon quenched, for he finds that there are so
many other letters that are neither Greek nor Roman that he is more
confused than helped by the presence of his old friends in such strange
company.
Moreover, several of the letters are exactly like Roman characters, but
have a very different sound, which is very confusing. For instance,
B is not B at all, but is V, as in vein, while the Russian B is an
entirely different character. H is not our familiar aspirate, which
Cockneys so sorely abuse, but is our N. P is equivalent to double
R in hu_rr_y, while the Russian P is made like the Greek pi. C is
always S, and there is no hard C in Russian. Y looks very familiar,
certainly, but is really oo, as in m_oo_n, and a letter that looks like
R wrong side before, Я, is the vowel ya, as in _ya_rd. Then there are
certain italicized letters which still further bewilder the puzzled
student, for u = i and n = p and m = t when written in italics, but not
otherwise. Thus it will be seen that Russian, “as she is spoke” or as
she is wrote, is not by any means a holiday affair, and the usefulness
of Mrs. Pray’s extemporized phrase-book can be fully appreciated.
But the time has come for the start, of which we have been made fully
aware by numerous bells and gongs and whistles. There is no excuse for
any one to get left at a Siberian railway station. Five minutes before
the train starts a large station bell is rung. Four minutes more the
passengers stroll up and down the platform or visit the buffet. Then
the bell is rung once more, the conductor blows his whistle, the engine
shrieks a warning blast, and at last we are off, with St. Petersburg
9877 versts (more than 6250 miles) away.
The scenery for a few miles out of Vladivostock is superb. The railway
skirts one of the great bays between which the city lies, high up
above the water, while off in the distance, beyond the blue ripples,
lie the blue mountains, only partially obscured by the morning haze.
Chinese junks, loaded with firewood for the locomotives, are dancing
on the waves, or unloading their cargo by throwing the pieces into the
sea for the waves to wash ashore, since the shallow water prevents the
junks from coming close to the bank. Occasionally the railway diverges
from the shore and runs through a copse of birch or beech, fresh and
bright in their new spring livery, and then returns once more to give
us a glimpse of the bright blue sea. The day was charming. Our most
delicious spring weather in America is no more delightful than this
first day of June in frozen Siberia. Had James Russell Lowell lived in
Siberia, he would have written with equal rapture his oft-quoted lines:
“What is so rare as a day in June?
Then, if ever, come perfect days.”
On one of these “perfect days” it was our good fortune to journey from
Vladivostock. The spring seemed just about as far advanced as it would
be in northern New England on the same date. The meadows were lush and
rank in their growth, and the cattle waded knee-deep in their delicious
fodder, and were, of course, as sleek and fat as cattle could be. The
trees were nearly in full leaf, though some of the later varieties had
not as yet donned their full suit of green. Great dandelions, almost as
large as peonies, starred the fields with yellow, and bluebells and
tiger-lilies made the roadway gay.
[Illustration: “WHO’LL BUY MY FLOWERS?”
Lilies-of-the-valley at the railway station]
At the stations little girls with bare feet offered great bunches of
lilies of the valley for sale, and I noticed that they were not unlike
the rest of the world in taking advantage of the unsophisticated
traveller, for, while I paid fifteen kopeks for a bunch, a Russian by
my side, who knew how to dicker and bargain in the vernacular, paid but
three kopeks for his lilies. But every traveller in a strange land must
pay dear for his experience as well as for his lilies. Let me say, once
for all, that one hundred kopeks make a rouble, and that a rouble, at
the present rate of exchange, is worth a little more than fifty cents.
Russian money is on the gold basis, and is in gold, silver, paper, and
copper. National bills up to the value of five hundred roubles are good
in any part of the empire, and are in denominations of three, five,
ten, twenty-five, fifty, one hundred, and five hundred roubles. Gold is
in common use in pieces of five, seven and one-half, ten, and fifteen
roubles, and silver in roubles, half-roubles, and twenty-five, twenty,
fifteen, ten, and five kopek pieces, while copper coins are of one,
two, three, and five kopeks in value. In my opinion, there are too many
coins of different values, and one and five kopek pieces in copper, and
ten, twenty-five, and fifty kopek pieces in silver, and five and ten
rouble pieces in gold would answer quite as well the purposes of trade
as the larger variety now in use. As it is, the fifteen, twenty, and
twenty-five kopeks are so nearly of the same size as to be confusing,
especially as different issues of the same value are not always of
exactly the same size. The older silver coins seem to be of debased
metal, with a large admixture of copper, but the newer coins that bear
the image and superscription of the present czar are of much better
metal.
[Illustration: VILLAGE OF VIAZEMSKOI, EASTERN SIBERIA]
After the edge of the novelty of our first ride on a Siberian railway
wore off we had time to examine the railway equipment and the
carriages in which we were riding. The train was drawn by a sturdy
Baldwin locomotive, fitted with a big bulbous smoke-stack for burning
wood, and consisted of about a dozen cars of the first, second, and
third classes, in which the third-class largely predominated. The
third-class were painted green, the second-class yellow, and the
first-class a dark shade of blue. Sometimes a single car was divided
into two classes, first and second, one-half being painted blue and
the other yellow, with very little difference between the two classes
except the color of the paint and the price of the tickets. The
second-class cars were, perhaps, upholstered a shade less luxuriously
than the first, and were somewhat more crowded, though there was little
to choose in this respect. The first-class fare was seventeen roubles
(about eight dollars and a half), and the second-class about one-half
that sum. We were told in advance that the trains were built on the
“American plan,” but it is really a combination of the American and
English, somewhat in vogue on the continent of Europe. All the first
and second class cars are divided into compartments, but down their
side runs a narrow corridor wide enough for only one person to squeeze
through at a time. The compartments open on this corridor, and through
it the conductor passes to collect his fares; passengers walk back
and forth, babies escaped from their nurses toddle down, and it is
the general thoroughfare for a heavy-laden train. Being exceedingly
narrow, it is always “congested,” and a fat man finds it his “misery,”
indeed. In order to get through at all he must turn sideways and go
crab fashion. There seems to be a great social democracy in this
aristocratic country, and passengers from the different classes visit
back and forth with the utmost freedom, and occupy compartments of a
higher class than their own for half a day at a time.
[Illustration: THROUGH THE FOREST IN EASTERN SIBERIA]
As a rule, the Russians are exceedingly polite and considerate of
other people, and, for the most part, the rude and selfish people
whom we have met on this journey have belonged to other nationalities.
The third-class cars frequently have an aisle down the middle, with
seats on either side. As all the coaches are meant for night travel,
all provide what is called “lying-down room”--_i.e._, room is provided
for each passenger to stretch out at full length either in the upper
or lower berth. The first and second class cars are luxuriously
upholstered, and, by a curious contrivance, the upper bed turns over
and becomes, not “a chest of drawers,” but the back of the seat by
day. The only real lack of a Siberian railway is suitable lavatory
accommodations. The little toilet-room is often a wretched, filthy
closet, with a single wash-basin and a very limited supply of water,
and it answers for all, men and women alike. This fault is shared by
all Siberian hotels and steamboats that I have seen. The one cramped
and dirty spot is the wash-room (for many hotels have a common
lavatory, and no water is brought to the rooms), and the one scarce
article is fresh, cold water. Beer, wine, vodka, tea, especially tea,
flows freely, but to order a glass of water to drink, or a basin of
water, much more a tub of water for a bath, creates a commotion, and
the water desired is often unattainable, except after strenuous effort.
A Siberian writer remarks, naïvely, that “Englishmen have the bad
habit of washing themselves all over every day. _As a consequence of
this habit_, their bodies emit an unpleasant odor.” It must be said
in all fairness, however, that hotels, cars, and steamers in Siberia
are, outside of the wash-rooms, clean and wholesome for the most part.
To one who has just come from China or Corea, and who has tasted the
rare discomforts of travel in those countries, they seem to be beyond
criticism.
Besides the cars already mentioned, a baggage-car and a dining-car
completed our train equipment. The latter, at least three times a day,
is a place of much interest, and deserves a few words of description.
Pullman would scarcely own the diner as an offspring of his invention.
A long table down the middle, at which perhaps twenty people can sit at
one time, and a bar at the end, at which all kinds of light and strong
drinks are served, and toothsome delicacies dear to the Russian heart,
like caviare, sardines, and other little fishes “biled in ile,” are
eaten. At the long table _table d’hôte_ meals are served, consisting
of three or four courses, and one can also order what he chooses,
at a fixed price. The meals are usually one rouble each, and though
not luxurious, from the American dining-car point of view, they are
quite sufficient for the average traveller, and worth the price asked
for them. To be sure, one must get used to the greasy Siberian soup
and to the chunks of tough stewed meat, which may be beef, mutton,
or pork, one is never certain which. But travellers who choose to go
across Siberia should not be squeamish, and to think of eating in
a dining-car, however primitive, while whirling across the plains a
little south of Kamchatka, is enough to kill the spirit of criticism in
the most confirmed growler who ever went around the world.
It only remains to be said that the road-bed of the Eastern Siberian
railway is well made, but seems to lack permanent stone ballast, the
bridges are substantial iron structures, the piers and culverts are
thoroughly built of cut stone, the embankments are smooth and well
sodded, but the rails are light, and, it would seem, must be replaced
by heavier ones before any high rate of speed can be attained.
[Illustration: CITY OF KHABAROFFSK, ON THE AMOUR RIVER]
IV
FROM VLADIVOSTOCK TO KHABAROFFSK
The distance from Vladivostock to Khabaroffsk is a little less than
five hundred miles, and it requires fully twenty-nine hours to cover
it, so it will be seen that the trains are not run on the “Empire
express” plan. However, before we had been many days in Siberia such
a rate of progress had come to seem speed itself. The stations on the
eastern end of the Siberian railway are not many, for the villages are
few and far between, but we make up for the fewness of the stops by
spending a long time at each station. Still we can occupy the waiting
time very pleasantly by getting many, though fleeting, glimpses of
Siberian life. The stations themselves are usually wooden buildings,
neat and attractive and prettily painted. A picturesque water-tower
is always a feature of the grounds, and usually an underground
store-house, sodded over, that looks like an Oklahoma cyclone cellar.
In this, doubtless, provisions are kept from freezing during the long
Siberian winter. All the principal stations have buffets, where thirsty
Russians refresh themselves with vodka, kvass, and other national
drinks.
The villages usually consist of a few log-houses, with an occasional
more pretentious frame house, but they are neat and attractive, and
compare very favorably with the villages on our own Western frontier.
The most interesting object at all these stations was the line of
country men, women, and children who had brought the products of
their farms to sell to the hungry travellers. Every station had its
hucksters, not noisy or obtrusive, but waiting patiently in an orderly
line for customers. Bottles of milk for ten kopeks, hard-boiled eggs
for ten kopeks a dozen, huge loaves of black, sour bread in which the
Siberian rejoices, chunks of fried meat and fried fish, huge pickled
cucumbers, bottles of home-brewed kvass, a kind of innocent pop beer,
were among the comestibles offered for sale. The hucksters were all
hearty, healthy specimens of humanity, not refined or elegant in
feature or dress--this could scarcely be expected in this new land--but
wholesome, honest-faced settlers, capable, evidently, of laying deep
and strong the foundations of an empire. I am told that many of them
are dissenters from the Greek Church, and that they live godly and
simple lives, and are much respected by their neighbors, and in this
part of the country at least are unmolested by the government, unless
they try to proselyte among adherents of the national faith. Most
of them, too, are vegetarians. Every village has its church, often
embowered in a little park of green, and the towers of blue and green,
colors which the Siberians greatly affect for their churches, and
bright copper domes, shining in the brilliant sun, always gave a touch
of pleasing color to the scene, and showed that the people were not
wholly given to buying and selling and getting gain in these little raw
railway settlements.
The costumes of the people who flocked to the railway stations were
most picturesque and interesting. Red was decidedly the favorite color
with the women, and red of every shade and hue. Dull red and bright
red, Turkey red and blood red, crimson, magenta, scarlet, and crushed
strawberry. Often several, if not all, of these colors were combined in
the same costume in a way which, I suppose, would have set the teeth of
our fashion-plate ladies on edge, but which, after all, was undeniably
picturesque.
[Illustration: FATHER ALEXANDER AND STATION-MASTER AT NIKOLSKOIE]
The men were usually clad in a loose blouse, belted around the waist,
and loose trousers tucked invariably into huge top-boots that reached
nearly to the knee. Many times these boots looked to be by far the
most expensive feature of the costume. As a Mexican peasant will often
wear a sombrero, it is said, worth as much as his coat and trousers
and boots, mule and saddle--in fact, the whole outfit combined--so the
Siberian peasant clothes the other end of his anatomy with equal care,
and even if he must go in rags, will bankrupt himself on his boots.
At all these stations the military were strongly in evidence, as is
not unnatural, since this is a military road and the large places are
all military headquarters. Everywhere, in the cars and out, officers
and soldiers were to be seen. At least every other man you met seemed
to be in uniform. But they, too, were invariably polite and showed
nothing of the haughty arrogance and devil-may-care air often exhibited
by the soldiery of Germany and other army-ridden countries. In fact,
I was struck on this railway ride, and on all my other journeys in
Siberia, by a certain quiet, dignified, self-contained air that the
people displayed. The hucksters are not insistent on your buying
their wares. The cabmen are not vociferous. The few beggars are not
obtrusive. It is as though the vast, lonely stretches of their homeland
had somehow impressed themselves upon the character of the people. The
broad reach of upland and prairie, the noble hills, the wide stretch
of blue heavens above them, the long, serious winter, the strenuous
conditions of their life in this virgin land, have developed a national
character, which seems never to have acquired the noise and bustle and
artificial “hustle” of city-dwellers. On the whole, it is a pleasing,
restful, and, I should think, likable type of character to which these
surface indications point. I felt that I was back in the early days of
New England, among the Pilgrim fathers and mothers of a new empire, as
I looked into these earnest, frank, and serious faces, and as I looked
I had large hope for the empire they are founding.
The parish priest is also a picturesque and interesting factor of
village life. He often came to the station to take part in the one
excitement of the day, the arrival of the daily passenger train. He was
usually clad in flowing robes of black, with a close-fitting purple
cap, while a huge gold or silver crucifix dangled from his neck. His
hair is always long and curly. Whether the Greek priests were chosen
for their curly hair or indulged in the use of curling-irons when
preparing their morning toilet was a question which interested the
ladies in our party. They seemed to mingle with their people on terms
of benevolent equality, and their kindly and gracious presence shed a
benediction even upon the railway platform. They were not averse to
having their pictures taken, and the camera enthusiasts “snapped” the
holy fathers with the greatest freedom.
The kodak is not unknown in Siberia, but it is evidently much more of a
novelty than in the west, and always attracted crowds of staid peasants
who wanted to look into the “finder” and see the resultant picture.
Some were quite disappointed that the completed picture could not
immediately be taken out of the camera and shown to them. One gorgeous
railway official, much be-braided and be-spangled with gilt, insisted
on having his black-bearded face transferred to the sensitive film.
He posed with his most radiant expression, without any exhortation to
“look pleasant.” He followed our party about, and apparently expressed
every good wish for our successful journey, though our knowledge of
Russian was not equal to his voluble good wishes, and, finally, just
as the train pulled out of his station, he handed us a paper on which
he had written a request that we telegraph him of our safe arrival at
Blagavestchensk, a city on the Amour River, a thousand miles further
west. A kindly fellow-feeling that, to be provoked while the train
stopped “ten minutes for refreshments.”
[Illustration: A PATHETIC SIBERIAN VILLAGE GRAVEYARD]
Fifty miles after leaving Vladivostock the railway climbs to a
considerable plateau, and the trees disappear, while open prairie
land takes the place of the forests that crown and gird the hill-sides.
For a couple of hundred miles, at a rough guess, the open prairie land
continues. The soil mostly seemed to be a rich black loam, and one
would think it was capable of supporting millions of people where it
now supports hundreds.
On the second morning of our journey, twenty hours after leaving
Vladivostock, we woke up in a heavily wooded, hilly region, and I had
to rub my eyes to make sure that I was not dreaming and had really
awaked in Siberia and not in northern Maine. Here was the Moosehead
Lake region duplicated, apparently, in every stump and white birch-tree
and corduroy road. Here were the same tree-clad hills and rocky
ravines, with glimpses of other and higher hills peering above the
tree-tops. Here were the same clear running brooks, babbling over their
rocky beds, the same patches of charred timber burned to clear the
land, the same flora down to the dandelions, blue-bells, butter-cups,
and cowslips. To be sure, there was not such a predominance of
spruce-trees as in northern Maine, but their places were taken by the
larch and cedar and other evergreens, and white and yellow birch,
beech, and poplar, which predominated, made me feel very much at home.
For hours these familiar forests lined the railway, and then the
train emerged into the fertile plains that border the Amour. Here the
snow fences, piled up in their summer quarters, reminded one of the
prairies of our own Northwest, and showed that in the Siberian winter
the railway has the same great enemy to fight. The telegraph poles,
often braced by two supports until they look like so many tripods, also
testify to the strength of Siberian winds. At length, at noon of the
second day, twenty-nine hours after leaving Vladivostock, the spires
and chimneys of Khabaroffsk appear across the prairie, and we realize
that the first stage, and a very pleasant one, of our trans-Siberian
journey was nearly finished.
[Illustration: THE OLD WAY BY THE “SHIP OF THE DESERT”]
Scarcely had the train pulled into the station of Khabaroffsk, and
before I could get to the door of the car, when a police official in
gorgeous raiment crowded in and inquired anxiously for “Pastor Clark
from America.” When I confessed to being, in all probability, the
individual that he sought, the official seemed much relieved, and at
once took charge of me and mine, bag and baggage, and summoned a small
squad of soldiers, or sub-police, to assist him. Evidently the kindly
telegram of Governor Tchitchagoff was doing its beneficent work, and,
like expectant American politicians, we were “in the hands of our
friends.”
V
THE _BARON KORFF_
Our friend in need proved a friend indeed, for it would have been no
easy thing, knowing scarcely a word of the language, to disentangle our
baggage, secure a cart to carry it, and droskies to carry ourselves,
and make our way through the city of Khabaroffsk to the steamboat
landing two miles away in season to catch the mail steamer, which,
with steam up and whistle shrieking, was waiting to start on her long
journey up the mighty Amour. But our official accomplished it all for
us with celerity and despatch. He picked out our baggage, hired our
droskies, took another himself, and drove to the steamer, saw our
baggage safely bestowed in a state-room which had been secured for us
at the governor’s orders, and did not leave us until we were fairly
established in our comfortable and commodious quarters on the _Baron
Korff_. We appreciated this courtesy the more fully when we learned
that the steamer was exceedingly crowded, that it went only once in
five days, and that some people had already been waiting fifteen days
for the coveted passage. Our rapid flight through Khabaroffsk was made
in a cloud of dust which would have done honor to Peking itself, the
dustiest city in the world. Through the dust, however, we were able
to catch glimpses of a frontier American-like town, with some good
business blocks of brick and a fine cathedral church. We afterwards
learned that Khabaroffsk contains about fifteen thousand inhabitants,
and its importance is derived from the fact that it is the highest seat
of government for all this vast section of the Amour River. Sitting
on a high bluff at the juncture of the Amour and the Ussuri, a great
stream which here joins its forces with its greater rival, the town
occupies a commanding position and is regally situated to dominate the
traffic of both rivers. In any other land the Ussuri itself would be a
notable river, but in this country of great rivers, though it is nearly
a mile wide at its juncture with the Amour, it is only a branch of
eastern Siberia’s greater waterway.
[Illustration: THE _BARON KORFF_]
Since the _Baron Korff_ was to be our home for the next week, and, in
a literal as well as figurative sense, we were to be “all in the same
boat” with the rest of her passengers, we were naturally anxious to
know something of them and of her, if it is proper to speak of a baron
as belonging to the feminine sex. A hasty inspection showed us that the
_Baron Korff_ was a stately side-wheeler, such as might have done duty
on the Mississippi before the railroads robbed her of her commercial
glory. The first-class accommodations were well forward, and consisted
of roomy and comfortably furnished staterooms for about twenty people
on the upper deck, each room having berths for two people, a long
dining-saloon, into which the state-rooms opened, and a pleasant
saloon in front, handsomely furnished and provided with a good German
piano. This saloon made a delightful sitting-room for the passengers,
for its abundant glass furnished a splendid view of the river and the
banks on either side, between which the _Baron_ made her devious way.
Behind the first-class cabins was a large open space, sheltered from
the wind, and suitable for a promenade. Here was a restaurant and bar,
frequently patronized by some of our thirsty fellow-passengers, while
behind it were the second-class cabins, which looked to me nearly as
comfortable as those at the other end of the ship. Down below were
huddled together a miscellaneous crowd of peasants--men, women, and
children--with their scant piles of bedding and all their worldly
possessions; sturdy men in top-boots and figured gowns belted at the
waist, often with a sleeveless vest worn outside; women in gay calicoes
and hobnailed shoes; children clad in little more than nature’s
original raiment--all were here. On the hard iron floor they spread out
their quilts, piled their household goods about them, and prepared to
make the best of their six days in the bowels of the _Baron Korff_.
Their accommodations were not luxurious, certainly, but when we
remember that they paid but three roubles and six kopeks for the entire
918 versts, more than six hundred miles, to Blagavestchensk, or only
about one dollar and a half, we cannot think that the accommodations
were disproportionate to the price.
The chief rival of our friends in the steerage was the great pile of
wood, for which the _Baron Korff_ had an insatiate maw, and which, when
first put on board, occupied fully one-half the space of the steerage,
but which, every hour, sensibly diminished until we came to a station,
where a new supply was taken on board.
[Illustration: EMBARKING ON AN AMOUR RIVER STEAMER]
The second-class fare was four times the third-class, or thirteen
roubles and ninety-seven kopeks, and the first-class more than seven
times the third, or twenty-two roubles and ninety-six kopeks. I am
constrained to admit, however, that the first-class accommodations are
fully seven times as good as the third, though I do not think they are
twice as good as the second.
For the meals on the Amour steamers one pays separately, at the rate of
two roubles a day, not an extravagant sum, indeed; but they were not
extravagant meals, and they cost all they were worth.
In the morning, about eight, tea was served, with the inevitable
samovar occupying the place of honor in the centre. Slices of lemon and
sugar were provided, according to the Russian style, but no milk. Soft
bread and zweiback, without butter, completed the first meal of the day.
The second, and principal, meal was served promptly at noon, and
consisted of a thick, greasy soup, a course of meat with no potatoes,
and very scanty vegetables of any kind, and a pudding. On rare
occasions ice-cream took the place of the pudding. Tea was served
again at four o’clock, and supper, which consisted of one meat course
without vegetables, and more tea, completed the menus for the day. If
one wished to supplement these meals with orders from the restaurant of
caviare or smoked fish or boiled eggs, of course he was at liberty to
do so.
The first meal served on the _Baron Korff_ on our voyage was supper.
Fifteen foreigners and five Russians sat down to the table together.
None of the foreigners, at least, knew what to expect from the culinary
department. The meat was served, and was sparingly partaken of, on
the supposition that, after the fashion of other steamers, four or
five other courses would follow. Then came a long wait. The plates
were removed, and still we waited. The minutes lengthened into a full
quarter of an hour, and at length the one overworked waiter appeared,
bearing, not the expected fish or vegetables or salad or dessert, but
_the brass samovar_, and we knew a tumbler of tea was all that was to
be expected. The craning of necks as the long-delayed waiter entered
the room, and the expressions of disappointment when his sole burden
was discovered, were amusing. But though some went hungry to bed the
first night, Experience, the mother of wisdom, taught a needed lesson
for all travellers on the Amour River--to lay in a sufficient store
from the first platter, and not trust to the “hereafter.” After that no
one omitted the first course.
I dwell somewhat at length on these details, because, so far as my
experience of Siberian river-steamers goes--and this experience became
somewhat large and varied before we reached Stretinsk, twenty days
later--they are characteristic of all river travel in Siberia.
The steward, to whom I have already alluded, was a sadly overworked
individual. He was waiter, cook, bell-boy, chambermaid, boots, and
man-of-all-work for all the twenty first-class passengers, and, as can
be imagined, no grass was allowed to grow under his feet. To be sure,
his duties as chambermaid were merely nominal, for every one took care
of his own room, furnished his own bedding, and made his own bed, and
all had to wash in a common lavatory and furnish their own towel, soap,
and, of course, all toilet articles. This common washroom arrangement
was the most unpleasant feature of the _Baron Korff_, and we had
occasionally to remind ourselves that we were in the extreme boundaries
of Siberia. Who, then, had a right to look for all the luxuries of the
latest civilization?
[Illustration: ON THE SHORE OF THE AMOUR]
At length we were embarked on the long river journey to which we had so
long been looking forward, and about which we had heard such various
and contradictory reports. For months we had made it a point to inquire
of every one likely to know concerning the trans-Siberian route. No
two people agreed concerning it, or came within sight of agreement.
“It can’t be done,” “You can do it easily,” “It will take two months,”
“You can go through in twenty-two days,” “You will get stuck on the
sand-bars for weeks,” “You will have no difficulty whatsoever,” “The
steamers run only occasionally, and do not begin until the 11th of
June,” “They run every day, and the river is open early in May,” “You
will need heavy clothes, and all your winter furs,” “You will find
delightful summer weather,” “You will have to ride in cattle-cars when
you get to the end of your boat journey,” “You will have the most
luxurious railway accommodations in the world.”
Such were the varied and miscellaneous bits of misinformation which
we had been able to pick up in America, Japan, China, and even in
Vladivostock itself. But now the journey on the great waterway of
Siberia had begun. The paddle-wheels of the _Baron Korff_ had begun
to revolve, we were to be among the first few score of people who
had crossed the Russias by steam, and we should soon know which of
these conflicting stories were correct, or whether they were all alike
untrustworthy.
VI
THE LORDLY AMOUR
Fair as was the scene that first bright June day on the Amour, we could
not altogether forget that we were in Siberia, for, as the lines of the
_Baron Korff_ were cast off, another steamer of like pattern anchored
just beyond moved out of our way, and we saw that she was towing a
convict barge, and the faces of the poor fellows bound for dismal exile
could be seen, pressing close up to the bars of their floating cage.
These prisoners were bound for Saghalien Island, a thousand miles away,
at the mouth of the Amour.
No sooner had the _Baron Korff_ gotten clear of the pier than we found
that she, too, towed a convict barge, and henceforth, for days and
days, for hundreds of miles, one of these grewsome ships followed
in our wake, tugged by the same steam-power that carried us along.
But what a difference! We were journeying in comparative luxury, with
pleasant company, and all the freedom that a roomy steamer can furnish,
to friends in Europe, and then to our home in the home land.
They, shut up in a white, floating cage, in narrow quarters, were
facing exile and misery, and perhaps death, far from their homes and
kindred. Every revolution of the paddle-wheels was carrying us nearer
home, and them farther away. What a mockery the bright sunshine and
green, tree-clad banks, and boundless, free prairies, stretching
beyond, must have seemed to these cabined, cribbed, confined, hemmed-in
voyagers!
[Illustration: A PRISON BARGE]
It must be confessed that these particular convict barges from a
distance did not look either filthy or overcrowded, and closer
inspection afterwards convinced me that if prisoners must be exiled,
they could scarcely have expected more comfortable conveyance. Still
the thought of those fellow-travellers, so near and yet so far from
the view-point of freedom, hope, and good cheer, cast a shadow on the
journey whenever we looked at their white prison trailing on behind.
The Amour at Khabaroffsk, though we were more than five hundred miles
from its mouth, was fully a mile and a half wide, and flowed in a
strong, full current, which fact we realized for many a day thereafter,
as we made our slow and toilsome way against it. The Amour is one
of the few greatest rivers of the world. In length it is equalled
by no river in Europe, and surpassed only by the Yang-tse-Kiang and
Yenisei, in Asia, by the Nile and Congo, in Africa, and by the Amazon
and Mackenzie, in America, though, if we reckon the Mississippi and
Missouri as one river, it is longer than any of them except the Nile.
The basin drained by the Amour contains over 500,000 square miles. It
is a singular fact that so many of the great rivers of the world are
of nearly the same length. The Amour, Yenisei, Mekong, Obi, Hoangho,
and Lena, in Asia, are all within two or three hundred miles of the
same length, and all surpass 2500 miles.
The Congo, according to the geographers, is only about a hundred miles
longer than the Amour, while the Niger is two hundred miles shorter.
The Amazon is three hundred miles longer than the Amour, the Mackenzie
a hundred miles longer, while the St. Lawrence falls short of it by six
hundred miles.
But, in a general way, it may be said that a dozen of the great rivers
of the world are practically of the same length. Of them all, few are
more majestic and imperious in their flow, or drain a fairer country
than the Amour.
Its water is somewhat muddy at Vladivostock, but nothing like the
consistency of the Mississippi at St. Louis. It cannot not be said to
be “both food and drink.” As we ascend its swift current it constantly
grows clearer, until, a thousand miles farther up, it is about the
color of white wine, and is sweet and wholesome to the taste.
The Amour is unique in the fact that it flows through a fertile country
which is almost uninhabited, and yet is capable of supporting millions.
No great cities line its banks, and not many towns that rank larger
than hamlets. Even these are few and far between, and one journeys
for half a day at a time without seeing even one little hut among the
bushes. Its shores are still in their virgin greenery. For hundreds
of miles at a time one sees not a cultivated field, though doubtless
some such tilled land lies back from the river and out of sight. Great
wood-piles for the use of the frequent river-steamers are the most
common objects that show the hand of man, but even these are often in
desperately lonely spots, so that one can scarcely believe that they
were ever visited by human beings. And yet all this immense river basin
of half a million square miles is apparently fertile and habitable,
and, when we saw it, was glowing in rich and brilliant verdure. Surely
the world is not yet over-peopled while such a lordly domain is waiting
for the plough and the reaper.
To be sure, we saw the Amour Valley in early June, when everything in
nature is at its freshest and best, and our judgment might have been
modified had we seen it in December. Still, every country, like every
man, should be judged at its best and not at its worst.
Promptly at four o’clock the _Baron Korff_ started on her long journey,
and went zigzagging across the lordly river in order to stem the swift
current as best she might. On the left-hand side was Chinese Manchuria,
on the right Russian Siberia. But the Bear has her huge paw on all this
country, and only by sufferance has she for many years allowed the Sick
Man of Asia to nominally rule the left bank of the river.
[Illustration: A SIBERIAN RIVER TOWN IN WINTER]
It is a suggestive journey that we are taking on the broad ribbon of
water that divides two of the greatest nations of the world--the one
hoary and decrepit, with the weakness of her centuries heavy upon her,
the other lusty and stout in comparative youth, like a strong young man
lately come to the consciousness of virile powers.
Two hundred years ago and more China and Russia tried conclusions on
these same plains of the Amour, and then China came off best. Russian
garrisons were captured and carried off to Peking, and a treaty was
concluded ceding all this land back to China. But during these two
centuries China has daily been growing weaker and more corrupt in her
senility. Russia has become mightier with each succeeding year.
In 1868, by the treaty of Aigun, so called because of the Chinese town
on the banks of the Amour, where the treaty was signed, China ceded
all the country north of the river to the Great Bear, who afterwards
obtained concession after concession, until she was paramount in all
Asia north of and including Peking. Then came the last uprising of
China, which began the very month this journey was made, and which
again threatened Russia’s domination, at least for a time. Thus the
shuttlecock of dominion over northern Asia has been thrown back and
forth between the battledore of Russia and China, and the end is not
yet.
It will be seen that if this country through which we are making our
zig-zag route is lonely, it is not devoid of historic interest. It has
been and is a battle-ground for armies and diplomats, and is likely to
play a still larger part on the world’s checker-board in the future.
All through the first afternoon and through the long twilight which,
in these northern latitudes, leaves but a few hours to the night, the
_Baron Korff_ ploughed her way along the mighty river which seemed to
be vexed by no other paddles. But so great is its extent that, although
there are hundreds of steamboats on the river, to meet one is still an
event.
During the first part of the voyage the Manchurian shore presents the
most striking scenery. Many bold and picturesque hills come down to the
water’s edge, clothed from top to toe in living green, the graceful
boles of the white birch, the most abundant tree, gleaming like pillars
of silver against the dark background. On the Siberian shore the banks
are less bold, but seem to present an endless stretch of rich bottom
lands, where the cattle of the world might graze.
One important and interesting feature on all Amour River boats is the
constant heaving of the lead, to tell of the treacherous shoals which,
all up and down the length of the river, lie in wait for every passing
steamer. Constantly, day and night, week in and week out, stands a man
near the bow with a stick about ten feet long, loaded at the lower end.
To the upper end of this pole a cord is attached, which is tied to the
leadsman’s wrist, and this pole he constantly casts, once a minute on
the average, to ascertain the depth of the water. The pole is divided
into foot lengths, each painted a different color, so that he can tell
at a glance how much water there is when the leaded end strikes bottom.
When the water is deeper than his pole, he gives no warning cry, but
when it comes down to nine, eight, seven, six feet, he calls out the
depth with every cast, to the man at the wheel, and throughout half the
day and half the night we hear his monotonous sing-song: “shest” (six),
“shest polovina” (six and one-half), “pyat” (five), “pyat polovina”
(five and one-half). When the leadsman calls out “pyat,” O helmsman,
look out, for there is only five feet of water below your water-line,
and when he calls out “chiteery polovina,” ring “half-speed” down to
the engine-room, for there is only four feet and a half of water, and
the _Baron Korff_, flat bottomed as she is, draws four feet.
[Illustration: A THUNDER-STORM BY NIGHT ON THE AMOUR]
These frequent shoals add a spice of excitement to the voyage, for one
never knows when he may hear the bottom grating on the gravel, and find
the steamer laid up for an hour or a day or a week on a sand-bar.
The Amour River, like certain men, spreads itself out too thin, and
gains breadth at the expense of depth.
The cry of the leadsman reminds one of Mark Twain’s days on the
Mississippi, only they “mark dva,” and “tree,” and “chiteery,” and
“pyat,” instead of “mark twain,” and “mark three,” and four, and five.
When will the genius of the Amour come to the front? And when he comes
will he call himself “Dva” or “Pyat”?
The second and third days on the _Baron Korff_ were much like the
first--bright, beautiful, rare days in early June. The breath of
the flowers came sweet and fresh from either shore, as the steamer
swept from one side of the river to the other. No grand scenery
marked these early days of the voyage, but much that was exceedingly
beautiful, with a quiet loveliness all its own. The whole country has
a peculiarly finished and cultivated appearance for such a wild and
almost uninhabited land. Though there are few settlements and fewer
farms visible from the steamer, there is little of the tangled wildwood
of our American forests. Much of the country is open and treeless, and,
where trees abound, they grow in stately ranks, with little undergrowth
and no impenetrable thickets.
At night the helmsman steers by lights set along the shore at
advantageous points and at a distance of a few hundred yards from
each other. These lights are like kerosene street lamps, set on posts
fifteen or twenty feet high. Some of the lamps are white and others
red, and, though their light is feeble, they afford points to steer by,
and boats are able to steam day and night, except when stuck upon a
sand-bar.
A familiar sight towards evening is the lonely lamplighter in his
little Rob Roy canoe, the paddles flashing alternately on either side
in the evening sun. Often he is the only inhabitant along the shore for
miles and miles, and he must make his solitary rounds alone day after
day to fill and light his lamps, and is often obliged to scale almost
inaccessible precipices to get at them, for, wherever it is possible,
the lamps are placed upon a bluff or headland.
The voyager on the Amour has reason, indeed, to bless the lonely
lamplighter, and to say to himself, as the steamer ploughs along
through the darkness, guided by the minute points of light in the
distance: “How far the little candle throws its beams!”
VII
BETWEEN TWO GREAT NATIONS
For three days longer we continued to steam on the _Baron Korff_
between China and Russia. On the third day out from Khabaroffsk the
scenery grows more charming with every mile. The Amour here passes
through a cleft in a spur of the Khingan Mountains, which close in on
her on both the Manchurian and Siberian sides. The hills here are not
very high, perhaps not more than five hundred feet, but their sides are
often precipitous and present a sheer wall of rock to the view, through
which it forces its way with many a swirl and eddy and with tremendous
force of current, against which our good ship could make but slow
headway.
[Illustration: ON THE BANKS OF THE AMOUR]
We here remarked again the peculiar open, park-like effect of the
forests, especially on the Manchurian side. I could scarcely believe
that these trees in these far Eastern wilds had not been planted
by man, and that they did not indicate some great baronial estate,
whose castle, to be sure, was hidden behind the hills. Some beautiful
hill slopes were covered with stately white birches, without a sign
of underbrush, but with green grass forming a soft carpet beneath.
In other places trees with black boles took the place of the white
birch, but they were at such a distance that I could not determine
the species, though they looked like oaks. For miles and miles these
natural parks continued, and even where the park-like effect was not
so pronounced and beautiful, the lovely open character of the forest
continued, for nearly the whole of our fifteen hundred miles on the
Amour. The cause of this beautiful effect I do not know. Perhaps in
the severe Siberian winters only the fittest survive. The small wood,
vines, and parasites of all kinds are killed off by the cold, and
only the hardier and stronger trees remain. Whatever the cause, the
resultant parks make the banks of the Amour singularly attractive
during the brief summer.
The approach to a village was a matter of much interest, both to those
on ship and those on shore. When within a quarter of a mile the captain
would blow a tremendous blast on the whistle to summon every man,
woman, and child to the banks. They would all respond with promptness
and despatch, and come streaming down the bluff to the shore, each
woman hugging two or three bottles of milk or carrying a pail of butter
or a basket of eggs or a bowl of sour cream or a great loaf of black
bread, with a hole in the middle like a huge doughnut. Sometimes a
woman would appear holding a large goose in her arms as tenderly as
though it were a baby, the body of the goose being concealed in the
blouse that covered her ample bosom, while its long neck craned out,
exhibiting as much interest in the passing show as any one on the
shore.
The passengers on the ship would all congregate on the upper deck,
many of them with empty bottles in their hands, to exchange, with ten
kopeks added, for the full bottles on the shore. There are, of course,
no docks or piers at these villages along the Amour, and to make fast
to the shore in this swift and shallow water is a work of time and
patience. First the anchor is thrown out about a hundred yards from
the shore, and cable enough is paid out to allow the boat to drift
within twenty feet of the bank. Then a bowline is carried ashore in the
ship’s boat and made fast to a tree or a post. A stern line is treated
in the same way, and by this time the steamer is near enough for the
long gangplanks to be pulled ashore. A wooden horse is put underneath
to steady them, and then the eager passengers stream ashore, and there
is, for a time, a lively barter in milk and eggs and curd cheese and
black bread, until the market is exhausted or the passengers’ wants
satisfied.
The villages on the Amour all have a striking family resemblance, and
usually consist of one or two streets of log-houses, often chinked with
moss, one or two stores of general merchandise, and, if the village
is of any size, a handsome Greek church, and a triumphal arch to
indicate that the czarewitch, in his famous journey to the far East,
stopped there. Sometimes the arch is anything but majestic in its
proportions, a mere pitiful little affair of unpainted wood, ten feet
high, but it indicates the loyalty of the Siberians and their love for
their “Little Father” just as well as though it was a magnificent and
imposing work of art. The larger towns, like Vladivostock, Khabaroffsk,
and Blagavestchensk, all have lofty and imposing arches, blazing with
colors or shining with burnished copper, as becomes the larger and
wealthier municipalities.
[Illustration: SOME OF OUR FELLOW-TRAVELLERS. SIBERIAN EMIGRANTS ON THE
AMOUR]
Just at nightfall on the third day out we passed a Chinese village
on the Manchurian shore, called into being by some rich gold-mines in
the vicinity. It is only placer-mining that has yet been attempted,
and the quartz awaits the enterprise and the machinery of the Western
nations.
On the fourth day we passed the Chinese town of Aigun, a city of forty
thousand inhabitants, and noted, as I have before said, as the place
where the treaty was signed in 1868 which gave all eastern Siberia to
Russia.
These places, even from the steamer’s deck, mellowed and sweetened
as they were by distance, looked dirty and wretched and squalid, and
showed none of the thrift, neatness, and prosperity of the towns on the
Russian side. These were the only Chinese towns that border the Amour
for a thousand miles from Khabaroffsk. Besides them we scarcely saw
a hut or a wood-pile in Manchuria. Here are vast stretches of virgin
soil, rich and productive, millions of acres of noble forest, great
park-like estates, laid out by nature, without a single inhabitant. Yet
there are uncounted millions of Celestials huddled together in hundreds
of cities and thousands of reeking villages in China, who need this
sweet air and the wide freedom of these Manchurian fields, which for
centuries have belonged to the “Middle Kingdom.” That the Chinaman has
not occupied his own domain is the more remarkable, for he is in a way
an enterprising individual and often leaves home to seek “fresh fields
and pastures new.” He finds his home in America and Australia, in the
Sandwich Islands and Manila, in the Straits Settlement and Colombo, in
Japan and Corea--even across the Amour into Russian territory he has
wandered in large numbers, while much of his own country is still a
wilderness. I suppose the fact is that the Chinaman knows a good thing
in the way of a stable and just government when he sees it, as well
as the rest of mankind, and that he does not propose to develop a
country where he will be robbed and pillaged under the form of law, and
the fruits of his toil taken away from him as soon as they are ripe.
[Illustration: SOME OTHER FELLOW-PASSENGERS. RUSSIAN OFFICERS AND THEIR
FAMILIES]
Almost every day our steamer had to take on a fresh supply of wood,
for she had a vast appetite for birch and pine. Fortunately there was
enough to satisfy the most voracious of furnaces. When wooding-up time
came at night, it was a most picturesque sight. Two great flares would
be built of large logs on either side of the gangplank, a cord of the
best wood being piled on at one time to light up the scene. Then the
roustabouts from the steamer would tumble ashore, each with a long,
stout pole and a strap to go over his shoulders. Two roustabouts,
working in partnership, would then lay down their poles and pile the
heavy sticks upon them till they had as much as they could carry.
Then, hitching the straps over their shoulders, they would hoist their
load hip high and rush it on board. The banks down which they had to
carry the wood were often steep and slippery, and the gangplank was
long and unsteady, and there was many a slip and a spill between the
wood-pile and the steamer’s hold. But these minor accidents made the
scene all the more interesting from the passengers’ point of view. How
the roustabouts looked at the matter I cannot tell. At any rate, they
good-naturedly made the best of it, without any profanity that English
ears could understand, picked up themselves and their wood, and started
on again.
The fourth and fifth days on the Amour were cold and rainy, but we
comforted ourselves for the discomfort of the weather by remembering
that the rain would raise the river, which was exceptionally low, and
perhaps enable the _Baron Korff_ to reach Blagavestchensk.
[Illustration: A TRIUMPHAL ARCH IN HONOR OF THE CZAREWITCH’S JOURNEY
THROUGH SIBERIA]
On the afternoon of the fourth day we reached a little village, which
consisted mostly of wood-pile, and here the wait continued hour after
hour. No one knew the cause of the delay, and the Russian of none
of the foreign passengers was equal to the strain of finding out.
At last it was rumored that the _Baron Korff_ could go no farther,
and that we must wait for a boat of lighter draught to take us up to
Blagavestchensk. After several hours, two other steamers came sweeping
down the river, and brought up with a graceful curve and flourish, like
a stage-coach in the olden times, at our anchorage. They were little
boats, cramped and dirty as compared with the _Baron Korff_, and many
were the groans of the passengers that the change must be made. But low
water is no respecter of persons, and we were told that at four o’clock
in the morning we must make the transfer. At midnight, however, the
captain changed his mind and concluded to scrape through if he could,
so, getting up steam, at two o’clock he started. The critical shallows
were reached. The _Baron_ scraped and grated on the sandy bottom. A
half inch less of water and she would have been stranded, perhaps for
a day. But the captain whistled down the speaking-tube for full speed
ahead, the engineer opened the throttle-valve, the engine responded,
and, with a mighty shove and jerk, our great leviathan pushed herself
over the shallows and into the deeper water beyond. It was a “close
call,” but on the Amour, as elsewhere, an inch is as good as an ell.
About eight o’clock in the evening, precisely five days after
leaving Khabaroffsk, the beautiful spires of the great churches of
Blagavestchensk appeared in sight above the tree-tops, and, sweeping
around a bend in the river and heading due north, we were soon
alongside the bustling wharf of the metropolis of eastern Siberia. In
these five days from Khabaroffsk we had journeyed nine hundred and
eighteen versts, or about six hundred miles, having made an average of
less than five miles an hour, which is about the average rate of speed
on the Amour River when there are no extraordinary delays. Here ended
the first stage of our river journey, for now we must wait two days
and then change to a smaller steamer that can more easily scrape over
the shallows that are before us on the upper reaches of the river.
[Illustration: A MODEST TRIUMPHAL ARCH AT A LITTLE SIBERIAN VILLAGE]
VIII
A SIBERIAN CAPITAL
Blagavestchensk, a mouthful of a name for any one but a Russian, is a
surprising city to be found in the heart of the wild woods of eastern
Siberia.
Almost immediately after our departure it was besieged by the Chinese
and became well known the world around as one of the storm-centres of
the Yellow Tempest. But I must confess that my knowledge of geography
was so defective that I had scarcely heard the name of this city three
weeks before I saw it.
[Illustration: “EACH WOMAN HUGGING TWO OR THREE BOTTLES OF MILK”]
Had I been particularly conceited on this point, my geographical pride
would have received a severe blow, for here is the natural metropolis
of a vast section, as large as all New England, with New York,
Pennsylvania, and New Jersey thrown in. Here is a city of nearly 40,000
inhabitants, with wide streets, as fine blocks for its leading banks
and stores as Portland, Maine, or Portland, Oregon, could show, or any
of the smaller cities of the Union; very comfortable hotels, and at
least five really fine churches.
The glories of Blagavestchensk, moreover, are not in the past by any
means, but largely in the future, as is evidenced by the amount of
new building going on. Piles of brick, masons and hod-carriers, and
carpenters and stone-cutters, are seen everywhere, busy at their
trades, and it is evident that Blagavestchensk is preparing for the
time when the Siberian Railway will be completed from Stretinsk to
Khabaroffsk, and still further add to her importance as the chief
city on the Amour--indeed, the chief city between Lake Baikal and the
Pacific.
We did not have time, however, to make these observations on the
evening of our arrival, for before the _Baron Korff_ was made
fast it was half-past nine o’clock, and nearly dark. Having heard
of the Central Hotel, and knowing not whether it was good, bad, or
indifferent, we directed the drosky man to drive thither, which he did,
and soon set us down in front of a large brick building of imposing
dimensions. But here our troubles began. No office could be discovered.
No one seemed to be in charge. The register which hung in the front
hall--a large blackboard with the numbers of the rooms written in
chalk--indicated that every room, with one exception, was full. At
last a peasant, in Russian blouse and top-boots, appeared who seemed
to belong to the establishment; but, alas! he spoke a word of naught
but Russian. To polyglot inquiries: “Do you speak English?” “Sprechen
Sie Deutsch?” “Parlez-vous français?” he responded with a “nyet,” and a
helpless shake of the head. At length his instinct, or our bad Russian,
enabled him to understand that we wished lodgings for the night, and
he showed us to a large room with a single narrow bed, a sofa, and some
chairs.
But there were four in this particular party that sought the shelter
of the Central Hotel--two ladies, a small boy, and a man. It was
evident that all could not be accommodated in these limited quarters.
What could be done about it? All the other hotels were crowded. It
was ten o’clock at night, and we were on the sidewalk outside of this
thoroughly Russian hotel, with our baggage unloaded from the tarantass.
At this opportune moment our good genius came to our rescue in the
shape of a young Russian lieutenant who spoke French, and who insisted
on my sharing his room with him, so that the ladies and the small boy
might have the only vacant room. Moreover, he acted as translator,
asked for another bed, arranged prices, and in every possible way
became our guide, interpreter, and friend. I shared his room for two
days, and when I tried to pay for my part of it he absolutely refused,
saying, with the utmost delicacy, but with firm insistence: “I could
not think of it. You are my guest.”
Would such graceful and delicate hospitality be found in New York,
or Chicago, or London? I very much doubt it, or whether the average
American, or even the exceptional American, would have taken a
foreigner into his room, and, for a couple of days, concerned himself
for the welfare of a party of absolute strangers.
Our good angel in military clothes had recently graduated at the
Russian West Point, and had been stationed at Nikolskoie, on the
Siberian frontier. He was on his way to visit his mother at St.
Petersburg, and thence to the Paris Exposition. As I expected to travel
farther with him, I neglected to learn his name. But he was detained at
the last moment, and I shall not be able to send him my acknowledgment
of his kindness by post, and I can scarcely hope that he will read
them in this account of our travels. What I think will please him
most, however, could he but see it in print, I will record here, that
such kindness and delicate consideration I believe to be characteristic
of the great people of whom he is such a worthy representative.
[Illustration: THE LEADING HOTEL, BLAGAVESTCHENSK]
While we are still at the hotel, it may give some idea of Siberian
hostelries of the better class if I say that the rooms at the Central
were large and comfortably furnished, but there were some peculiarities
which strike a traveller as odd. A bed with a mattress upon it is
provided, but no blankets, sheets, or pillows. A common wash-room, not
over tidy, served all the guests, and such a thing as a bath-tub or
a bath-room seemed unknown. Every guest is expected to bring his own
bedding, towels, and soap. Not knowing this, we naturally asked for
sheets and blankets and pillows and towels, which, after some delay,
were brought, though only one sheet, blanket, and pillow apparently
could be raised.
What was my surprise to have a lengthy bill brought when I came to
leave, for I was conscious of having had but few “extras.” When I
inquired for a translation of the items, the waiter pointed to the
different articles ordered the night before, and then to the cabalistic
words upon the bill, and I learned that the charge was: Blanket, 25
kopeks; sheet, 20 kopeks; pillow, 30 kopeks; towel, 15 kopeks. No
wonder the bill was a long, if not a large, one. The room itself
was only two roubles and a half, or one dollar and a quarter, for a
large double room, and the _table d’hôte_ meals, which consisted of
soup, meat, dessert, and tea, cost 80 kopeks (40 cents). Breakfast
was served in our rooms, and normally consisted of tea made on the
spot in a porcelain teapot, with water boiling hot from the samovar,
very nice and refreshing, with lemon as a substitute for milk, and
bread-and-butter. We did not attempt the coffee, which is not the
national drink, and does not compare with the tea. On tea and
bread-and-butter the Russian would be sure to break his fast, though
eggs might be had by the Outlander, if he should insist upon it.
[Illustration: THE CEMETERY AT BLAGAVESTCHENSK]
It so happened that the day after our arrival at Blagavestchensk was
the emperor’s birthday, and all the city was in holiday mood. But it
seemed to take its pleasure seriously, if not sadly, as the English
are said to do. A few flags were flying, the churches were open, and
the stores were closed, and a general air of solemnity pervaded the
town. The great German store of Kunst & Albers was religiously closed
in front and the curtains drawn, but I was told that it had a back
door, like the saloons in Maine. As my conscience did not compel me to
observe the emperor’s birthday sacredly, I sought the side entrance,
where I made some necessary purchases.
I may mention for the benefit of future travellers that many of the
necessaries of life cost about the same in eastern Siberia as in
New York--linen collars two dollars a dozen, cuffs twice that sum,
shirts, underclothing, and other dry goods in like proportion. Two
of the stores in Blagavestchensk, Kunst & Albers and a Russian store
nearly opposite, are really palatial in proportions and equipment. The
department store has blossomed out in full proportions in Siberia, and
it is far more surprising to find such a store as I have mentioned in
Blagavestchensk than to find Wanamaker’s, in Philadelphia, or Jordan &
Marsh, in Boston.
Here you find books and bric-à-brac, pipes and pickles, flowers and
flat-irons, oil and oysters, waistcoats and watches, indigo and
icons. Here were attentive clerks and cash-boys (Chinese cash-boys,
by-the-way), cashier girls in their little elevated desks, receiving
the money, and all the conveniences and appliances of the great modern
establishments.
[Illustration: ONE OF BLAGAVESTCHENSK’S BEAUTIFUL CHURCHES]
But the chief interest in Blagavestchensk centred in the churches on
the day of our visit, especially in the blue and green military church.
Here a high mass was held in honor of the emperor. The church was
crowded with soldiers and peasants, and all were most devout and
earnest. Old peasants would come in, and, though there was scarcely
standing room, would spread down their bandannas, and, kneeling on
them, would touch their grizzled forelocks to the floor, and then
rise and join heartily in the service. This was conducted chiefly
by a priest in beautiful robes of cloth of gold, whose magnificent
bass voice chanted the service as I never heard it rendered before.
A sweet-voiced choir of boys answered the priest, and the whole
congregation joined reverentially, but in stentorian tones, in part
of the service. Behind the altar and facing the officiating priest,
whose back was to the audience, stood a figure clad, apparently, in
pure gold, and with a golden mitre upon its head. Whether man or image
I could not at first make out. But it stood so immovable, and was
apparently so solidly built of gold, that I concluded it was an image,
a huge icon, which did duty in the soldiers’ church. I thought that I
detected the image solemnly winking, but the moment after I concluded
that I was the victim of an optical illusion. Nothing so stately,
solemn, and immovable could wink. It was almost sacrilegious to think
of such a thing. But when I had fully made up my mind to the icon
theory, the golden image stepped from behind the altar, and, coming to
the front, an attendant took off his heavy mitre, and in a deep, rich
voice, he intoned the part of the service that fell to his share.
Bowing to the cross, his golden garments wrinkled and bent like the
scales of a fish, or like the chain-armor of an ancient knight whose
corselet was of pure gold. Never have I seen in any church or temple,
in Christendom or pagandom, such gorgeous vestments or a more stately
service. I only hope that it was as intelligently devout as it was
gorgeous and impressive.
[Illustration: A GREAT DEPARTMENT STORE IN BLAGAVESTCHENSK, WITH
MARKET-PLACE IN FRONT]
Some of the Greek priests, whose writings I have read, like Father
John, of Kronstadt, are as deeply imbued with the Spirit of God as
Thomas à Kempis or John Tauler of old, or as Andrew Murray and F. B.
Meyer of the present day. A fine, sweet, mystical vein runs through
their writings, which shows that they have seen the Invisible and heard
the Inaudible, and their writings are as refreshing as a draught of
clear spring water in this thirsty commercial age.
So may it have been with the holy fathers of Blagavestchensk! I could
not judge, for all their service was to me in an unknown tongue. I will
give them the full benefit of the doubt.
The streets of Blagavestchensk on this holiday were full of soldiers,
who marched in orderly file from their barracks to the church and
back again. They were fine, stalwart, manly fellows, marching in
perfect alignment, and with an easy swing which did one’s eyes good to
see, after beholding for a few weeks the slouchy straggle of Chinese
soldiers. They were an orderly, well-behaved lot, too, and I saw no
rioting or drunkenness. The log-cabin which served as a soldiers’
guard-house seemed to have few occupants. The soldiers did not know
how soon their holiday manners would be changed into grim and deadly
warfare with the yellow men on the opposite bank of the Amour.
Blagavestchensk, though it has a few large and imposing buildings, is
largely a log-built city. Nine-tenths of the houses are of hewn logs,
but most of them are prettily painted and are not without appropriate
ornamentation. I never had believed that a log-house city could be so
picturesque and substantial in appearance.
Upon the churches the people have lavished their chief wealth. At least
three of them are costly and beautiful buildings that would do honor
to any European capital, and a fourth that is building will, when
completed, surpass them all. It is really a building of remarkable
stateliness and beauty.
[Illustration: AN UPPER AMOUR RIVER STEAMER
Buriats’ hut in foreground]
In the cathedral I saw for the first time the Black Christ and the
Black Virgin, which are often seen in Greek churches. The pictures in
all the churches impressed me as a much higher grade of art than one
sees in the ordinary church on the continent of Europe.
When we were in Blagavestchensk we had little thought that this
obscure capital was so soon to figure in the world’s telegrams, or
that it could be besieged and bombarded by the Chinese. But history
in the far East was making itself rapidly about that time, and we
had scarcely left Blagavestchensk a week behind, when the apparently
peaceful Celestials, inspired from Peking, attacked and for a long time
bombarded this inoffensive city.
As I write, the outcome of the immediate conflict is still in the
balance, but it can scarcely be doubted that in the long run the Giant
of the North will win his way through Siberia and Manchuria into the
heart of China, and that the siege of Blagavestchensk will really
hasten the awakening of China from her sleep of the ages.
On the evening of the second day, we were glad to take passage once
more for the upper reaches of the Amour, the most difficult, uncertain,
and tedious part of our journey.
“_If you have tears, prepare to shed them now_” might have been our
motto as we went aboard the crowded little steamer and realized that
Stretinsk, the terminus of our river journey, was 1197¼ versts away,
and that, much of the way, less than four feet of water separated our
keel from the sandy bottom of the Amour. But how we scraped over the
sand-banks from Blagavestchensk to Stretinsk must be reserved for
“another story.”
[Illustration: ON THE UPPER AMOUR]
IX
AGROUND IN THE AMOUR
Two Mississippi River captains were once conversing as to the merits of
their respective steamers as light-draught boats. One claimed that his
steamer could run in a good heavy dew. The other, not to be outdone,
claimed that that was nothing, for his boat could run on the sweat
of an ice-pitcher. It is this latter kind of boat that is needed on
the upper reaches of the Amour River, as we began to think before we
were many miles from Blagavestchensk. We had scarcely gone five miles
before we heard that peculiar crunching, scraping, gritty sound which
we came to know so well. The paddle-wheels revolved fruitlessly for
a few minutes, but it was no use, and we knew that we were hard and
fast aground in less than three feet of water. For hours the boatmen
worked with might and main, and at last we could feel that there was
water under our keel and that we were making slow progress against the
current once more. But we had scarcely been moving another hour when
c-r-u-n-c-h, s-c-r-a-p-e, s-t-o-p, and there we were stuck on another
sand-bank. The captain seemed to tear his hair in despair, and well he
might, for Stretinsk was 1187 versts away, and we had scarcely come
ten versts in ten hours from Blagavestchensk. If it requires ten hours
to do ten versts, how long will it take to reach Stretinsk, was an
appalling problem in mental arithmetic.
However, we made somewhat better progress after getting off the second
time, and the hope that springs eternal in the human breast kept us
from despair of reaching in time the important engagement at our
journey’s end.
[Illustration: TUMBLING ASHORE FROM THE _ADMIRAL CHICACHOFF_]
The _Ivan Vishnegradskie_ was a much smaller steamer than the _Baron
Korff_, and consequently much more crowded. Especially were the
third-class passengers much in evidence, for there were no steerage
accommodations, and they were obliged to lie about anywhere as best
they could, in the passages, on the companion-way, huddled on the
boiler deck, lying out on the wood-pile or anchor chains; every
available foot of deck room had its two human feet to occupy it.
It is said that the birth-rate of Siberia is higher than any other
country in the world, amounting to fifty-six in the thousand. I could
well believe it as I saw the uncounted, tow-headed babies tucked into
every nook and cranny of the _Ivan Vishnegradskie_. Head to heel and
heel to head, they lay, with their fathers and mothers and older
brothers and sisters lying about them four square, building, as it
were, a sort of living rampart around the family compound. It was
pathetic to see a mother lay her three little children out in a row,
with the croupy baby in the middle, while she herself sat in the
draughty doorway all night long to shield them from the wind.
“She bared her bosom to the storm,
And smiled to think her babe was warm.”
For two days we sailed on this crowded little craft. The river turns
almost due north after leaving Blagavestchensk. A very tortuous stream
is the Amour from here on, turning and twisting and doubling on itself
like a huge serpent writhing in agony. Following its twistings we made
very little progress, even when we could steam all day long, which the
treacherous shoals did not often allow us to do. The shores on either
side were often picturesque and beautiful, and sometimes grand and
striking, with bare cliffs of rock rising sheer from the water’s edge
to a height of four or five hundred feet.
The park-like effect of the clean, open woods continued, and made it
difficult to believe that the country had not been thickly inhabited
for a thousand years, except that the utter absence of habitations
dispelled the illusion.
On the second day out from Blagavestchensk we were obliged to change
steamers and take up our abode in the _Admiral Chicachoff_, the
regular steamer of this line, which had not been able to get so far
down the river as the above-named city. The _Admiral_ was a somewhat
larger boat than the _Ivan_, and had much better accommodations for
the steerage passengers, who no longer had to sleep in doorways and
draughty passages, but had the after upper deck roofed over for their
accommodation. The steamers of the line on which we were embarked
carried the government mail, and were supposed to be more sure of
reaching their destination than the other river-steamers, of which
there are many lines on the Amour.
Frequently we passed other steamers going down with the current at a
famous rate of speed compared with our slow and toilsome ascent of the
river. More often we passed great rafts of timber, with little bark
huts built upon them, in which families lived and moved and had their
being for weeks and perhaps months at a time, as they let the force
of the current carry them down the stream, and tied up to the bank
at night to avoid the passing steamers. Sometimes the rafts would be
loaded with horses that seemed to enjoy their floating quarters, and
who lived off the country, for it was only necessary to tie the raft to
the shore and drive its living freight into the rich pasturage, which
in many places could be obtained free, gratis, for nothing.
[Illustration: CHILDREN OF EMIGRANTS PICKING WILD FLOWERS ON THE BANKS
OF THE AMOUR]
The monotony of the voyage was varied by a stop once or twice every
twenty-four hours to take on wood, or at some little log village on
the river’s margin. On the occasion of these stops the passengers
would tumble ashore almost before the gangplank made connections, and
would spend the time as the fancy seized them, in the woods or on the
pebbly margin of the river. The youngsters would scale the bluffs,
which usually abounded near the wood-piles, or would come back from
the meadows laden with great armfuls of beautiful wild flowers. Lilies
of the valley seemed to abound everywhere, violets, blue and white
forget-me-nots, lady slippers, and another beautiful orchid somewhat
similar, which I have never seen elsewhere. In other places, blue
honeysuckles were found, and yellow lilies, and Solomon’s seal, and the
yellowest of buttercups. Indeed, the flora of the country seemed to be
exceedingly extensive, embracing most of the spring flowers with which
I am familiar in New England, except the arbutus, and many flowers that
I had never seen before. The trees were mostly white and yellow birch,
poplar, white oak, soft maple, larch, and pine. The wood-piles, cut
for the use of the river steamers, were interminable, and consisted of
beautiful, straight, knotless sticks of birch and pine that it seemed a
pity to sacrifice in the rapacious maw of our never-satisfied boilers,
to go up in smoke and sparks.
While the smaller fry were racing on the shore or gathering wild
flowers, their more sedate elders among the steerage passengers would
kindle a little fire of driftwood on the shore and cook a savory
pot of stew to vary the crude monotony of their daily fare. Or the
forethoughtful mothers would improve the opportunity to scrub their
offspring or wash their clothes, pounding the latter upon the stones.
Sometimes we would get a delicious bath in the clear, cold water which,
less than a month ago, was bound with icy fetters, for the weather,
much of the time, was extremely warm. The summers of Siberia are short
and fiercely hot. Vegetation has to be forced to maturity by Dame
Nature in six weeks, instead of taking six months, as she would do in
more leisurely climes.
Many patches of snow and ice still lingered upon the banks, and it
could have been comparatively but few days since all the country
was snow-bound. Yet every tree seemed to be in full leaf, and ferns
and grasses in many places were knee-high and were growing with the
lustiness and vigor of a tropical summer.
[Illustration: AN EMIGRANT HOUSE ON THE UPPER AMOUR]
Our new steamer was no more exempt from the prosaic perils of the
sand-bar than the one we had just left, for, before we had finished the
first day we had run hard aground in a place where the current was very
swift, and where it was very difficult to get off. For seventeen hours
our officers and crew worked with a will, but to no effect. First huge
poles, like iron-shod battering-rams, as big as telegraph poles, which
could barely be lifted by six men, were hitched to the windlass by a
wire rope, and, with this, every effort was made to pry us off. But
all utterly failed. Then two telegraph poles were rigged, and finally
three, but all in vain. In the useless effort, three or four of these
huge pries were broken off short, and yet the little steamer did not
budge. Then, to lighten ship, the convict barge, which all these days
had been following in our wake, was towed alongside, and all the
passengers were requested to go on board of her.
This gave us an opportunity to visit our fellow-passengers behind the
bars, if I may so call those who were propelled by the same steam and
were hitched to us by a single cable. It must be confessed that they
were not bad-looking fellows as men average, and the impartial visitor,
had he been asked to pick out the convicts by their looks, would, very
likely, have chosen the hardened criminals from among the free men on
top of the barge, instead of from among those whom the law had put
into the cage below. Possibly even some of the first-class passengers
who had paid thirty roubles for their voyage would have been chosen,
instead of those who had fare and board paid by the government. My
idea of the severity with which Russia treats her Siberian exiles
was also modified when I saw the clean and comparatively comfortable
quarters of the prisoners, which compared most favorably with the
steerage accommodations on our own steamer. There were not many
prisoners in the cage, and they were going from the crowded prisons of
Vladivostock or Khabaroffsk to other prisons in the interior. One poor
fellow was landed at a little river town, and in his heavy felt boots
and overcoat, though it was a broiling day, was marched between two
soldiers to a new prison, or, perhaps, handed over to some man who had
bought his labor for a time.
[Illustration: THE MEN BEHIND THE BARS ON THE PRISON BARGE]
But we had gone aboard the convict barge to lighten our ship, and not
to inspect the prisoners. It was all of no avail, however, and some new
method must be tried. So an anchor was carried out into mid-stream,
two hundred yards away, perhaps; the steam windlass was again brought
into play and, little by little, inch by inch, we were coaxed off the
sand-bar, the flat bottom creaking and groaning as the steamer scraped
along, as though unwilling to leave her comfortable bed. Seventeen
hours had been wasted, and not a third of our voyage had been
accomplished.
After this experience our captain was very cautious, and when he came
to shallow places would anchor, and often spent several hours in a
small boat in ascertaining the channel and marking it with sticks
driven into the sand. Then the _Admiral_ would start up slowly and
warily. Two men, one on either side of the bow, with sounding-poles,
would constantly take the water and report to the first officer of
the deck above, who shouted it back to the man at the wheel. “Vosem”
(eight), “sem” (seven), “shest” (six), he would call, and no one would
feel anxious, for the _Admiral_ only draws two feet and a half; but
when it came to “pyat polovina” (five and one-half), to “pyat” (five),
or to “chiteery” (four), we began to be interested.
When, in stentorian tones, the leadsman would call “trees polovina”
(three and one-half), and his mate on the other side would call
“trees,” and the first officer would shout to the wheel, “trees,” we
would positively hold our breath, and sit more lightly in our chairs
to ease the ship, until again the leadsman would reassuringly cry
“chiteery,” “pyat,” “shest,” “sem,” and we would feel that we were
safely over one more bar.
X
ON THE SHILKA
Our progress up the Amour was slow but not sure. Time after time the
experience described in the last chapter would be repeated. We would
touch bottom, scrape on the sand, the engines would make desperate
efforts to pull us off into deep water, but would finally give up in
despair, slow down, stop altogether, and for one hour, or ten, or
twenty, we must possess our souls in patience, until, with infinite
pains, our craft was floated once more.
[Illustration: THE HILL-SIDES WERE CARPETED WITH FLOWERS]
We were told before starting that the journey from Blagavestchensk
to Stretinsk would not take more than seven days, or seven days and
one-half; but seven times twenty-four hours passed and Stretinsk was
still four hundred miles away, and not half the distance had been
traversed. The alarming tale was circulated that the water was falling
at the rate of two inches a day. The usual story about this being an
extraordinary season was current--“not for thirteen years had the water
been so low,” etc. I am inclined to think that every year on the Amour
is “extraordinary,” and that, especially in the month of June, those
who essay this journey must count on spending as much time on the
sand-banks as in deep water.
Still, for those who are in no haste to reach their journey’s end,
who can put up with very indifferent food, and who can good-naturedly
accept the inevitable, there are many and delightful compensations in
this new way around an old world. The scenery throughout the whole
journey is pleasing, and, much of the way, it is extremely beautiful.
A hundred miles beyond Blagavestchensk we passed some remarkable high
bluffs, seamed with coal or lignite in narrow, diagonal veins. In many
places this coal had caught fire, and for years had been burning with
an unquenchable flame. The scene, as we passed, was one of striking
beauty. The sun was just setting behind the western hills, lighting up
the evening clouds with golden and crimson glory. The broad river swept
in a grand and graceful curve around a pine-clad mountain that towered
a thousand feet above its placid waters, while, as the light of the
dying day waned, glowing jewels appeared in the mountainside, where the
burning coal was afire, or little bursts of flame, as from a hundred
gas-jets, lit up the gaunt and seamy cliff.
[Illustration: A TYPICAL WATER-TOWER ON THE TRANS-SIBERIAN RAILWAY]
Two days later, and a hundred miles farther on, the same scene was
repeated with a still lovelier variation. Again it was just at the hour
of setting sun, the most delicious of all the day, for the boiling heat
of the day was over, and the cool breezes of evening had begun to blow.
On the Chinese shore of the great river high cliffs like the Palisades
of the Hudson stretched westward for miles, with tops as even and
flat as Table Mountain at Cape Town. Here and there, throughout their
whole length, these cliffs, too, were seamed and veined with fire.
Oftentimes green shrubs overhung the seams of coal, or pine-trees grew
below them, their upper branches athwart the narrow line of fire, so
that again the Scripture miracle seemed to be repeated, and the burning
bush was not consumed. Imagine the Palisades on a wilder and grander
scale, illuminated by their own internal fires, and you have an idea of
this night scene on the Amour.
Seven days out from Blagavestchensk, the day we should have completed
our river journey, we again stuck fast on a sand-bar for nearly twenty
hours. This delay was all the more uncomfortable on account of the
extreme heat, unalleviated by the breeze caused by the boat’s motion,
and the discomfort was aggravated by innumerable huge green-headed
flies, larger than the biggest horse-fly I ever saw in America. These
flies showed all the idiosyncrasy of the average house-fly in returning
time after time, with the utmost persistence, to the same unguarded
spot on ear, or nostril, or back of neck, and, being about ten times as
large, their attentions were fully ten times as unpleasant as those of
the house-fly.
At length we rubbed our way, inch by inch, over the shallows and into
deeper water, and an hour later found ourselves at Albazin, a small
and decayed village four hundred miles from Blagavestchensk. Albazin
has no glories in the present, but it is famous as the place where,
two hundred years ago, a Russian garrison was defeated by the Chinese,
and four hundred prisoners carried off to Peking. As a result of this
victory a treaty of peace was concluded, and the north bank of the
Amour again became Chinese territory. The Great Bear of the North is
sometimes defeated and retreats to her den, but it is only to nurse her
wounds and to come out again, stronger than ever, to win, either by
arms or diplomacy, perhaps two hundred years later, a new victory which
will wipe out old scores.
[Illustration: THE LIGNITE CLIFFS ON THE AMOUR]
Two hundred years have elapsed since the Russian garrison was carried
off to Peking, but Albazin is again in Russian territory, which
stretches fifteen hundred miles beyond to the very shores of the
Pacific, while Manchuria itself and China, almost to the very gates of
Peking, seem likely soon to become Russian provinces.
“That, too, is our country,” said a Russian judge, one of our
travelling companions, as he pointed with a sweep of the hand to the
Manchurian shore. “That, too, is our country.” And his was no empty
boast, even if a little premature.
It is an interesting fact that the descendants of the Russian garrison
carried from Albazin to Peking still live in the Chinese capital. They
married Chinese wives, but organized a distinct community of their own,
in which the Greek Church has flourished ever since.
Ten miles from Albazin we stopped at the larger and more flourishing
town of Renova, that owes its prosperity to some large placer
gold-mines, which, like all Russian gold-mines, are a government
monopoly. All gold discovered and dug must be sold to the government
at a price fixed by it below the market price. Of course, much is
smuggled out of the country, and such a law is death to genuine private
enterprise; but the laws are strict, and no foreigner is allowed to
filch the gold from the czar’s private purse, _i.e._, the bowels of the
earth.
The next day we reached the final limit of travel on the _Admiral
Chicachoff_. She could go no farther, and we were transferred to a
great barge, not unlike the prisoners’ cage which we had been towing
all this distance. This barge, which for another week was to be our
abiding-place, drew only one foot and a half of water, and was towed
by a tug which also drew but eighteen inches. On this craft we were to
enter the Shilka and stem the current for three hundred miles farther
to Stretinsk.
Each change we had made was a descent. We had gone from luxury on the
_Baron Korff_ through different grades of discomfort, until we had come
to the superlative degree of discomfort on the barge _Diana_.
The men among the first-class passengers were all herded together in
one cabin, and the women in another, and the decks and passageways
were so littered with third-class passengers and their belongings,
that it was with great difficulty that we could pick our way over
stout, extended legs, and tender baby toes, and peasant women suckling
still smaller babies, who filled every nook and crevice. Clad in great
sheepskin garments,
“With the skinny side out and the woolly side in,”
and with huge top-boots, worn often by the women as well as the men,
the Moujiks defied the cold night air and the intensely hot mid-day
sun, always sprawled out, day and night, at full length, except when
they went ashore at landing-places to cook their scanty meals over a
brushwood fire.
Of course, exercise under these circumstances was out of the question
on shipboard, and, as can be imagined, we all made the most of our
stops at the wood-piles for a little run on shore.
Travel on Siberian rivers, like poverty and politics, makes strange
bedfellows, and in the men’s cabin were a polyglot company, consisting
of a German baron, a Swiss consul, a Dane, two French “bounders,” two
Russians, two Scotchmen, a North of Ireland man, and two Americans. All
made the best of the situation except the Frenchmen, who sputtered and
growled at everything, and made themselves generally disagreeable. Like
Mrs. Gummidge, they seemed to say of all the discomforts: “I feels it
more than others.” Especially did the food, which indeed was atrocious,
come in for their objurgations. At last the climax was reached when
one of these irascible Gauls found that sugar had been put in his
cabbage. His gastronomic canons were all outraged, and, throwing the
cabbage, dish and all, out of the window into the river, he flung a
full bottle of beer at the waiter, narrowly missing a lady’s head, and
only then felt that his outraged culinary taste had been fully avenged.
[Illustration: THE EVER-PRESENT SAMOVAR]
But for the most the company on the _Diana_ was a happy family, and
though a “Never Again Society” was proposed (never again to cross
Siberia by this route), we often consoled ourselves with the reflection
that things “might be worse.”
On the second day after boarding the barge the Amour, so far as we
were concerned, came to an end, or, rather, we came to its abrupt
beginning, for, at a junction point of entrancing scenery, the Argun
and the Shilka, two great rivers, come together to form the Amour,
after having pursued their separate and devious ways for hundreds
of miles. The Argun flows sharply from south to north, the Shilka
pursues a northeasterly course. To be sure, the Shilka is really the
Amour, and ought to bear the same name to its source, but for boundary
purposes the Russians choose to call it another river, and to bound
their possessions by the left branch of the Amour, called the Argun.
We turned into the Shilka and were soon steaming against its swiftly
flowing current.
Now, at length, after coasting along the Manchurian shore for over a
thousand miles, we leave China and plunge into the heart of Siberian
Russia. On either side the mountains close in on the Shilka, dipping
their feet in its rapid, crystal stream, and narrowing it down to
less than a quarter of a mile in width. Wild and picturesque is the
scenery for almost the whole distance to Stretinsk. The fertile arable
land and vast open parks of the Amour give way to rough and rugged
hill-sides, clad with a growth of small trees, but affording scant
encouragement for the agriculturist. The villages are fewer and farther
between, and the scanty houses are of a distinctly poorer type. In
fact, the whole country is given up to placer gold-mining and to
cutting wood for the frequent steamers, and almost no cultivation is
attempted.
[Illustration: SOME FIFTH-CLASS PEOPLE]
It even became difficult, and at last impossible, to secure milk and
eggs on shore, and some of the scanty fare provided by the steamer’s
steward might have been called “rotten” by the college boy without
indulging in slang.
But the natural scenery grew more charming as the evidence of man’s
handiwork disappeared. The hill-sides were carpeted with flowers;
lilies of the valley, azaleas, and a half-dozen kinds of rare and
beautiful orchids abounded everywhere, and the air was fragrant with
the new-made leaves of birch and pine. Cuckoos struck all hours of the
day from the deeper forest, and a sylvan beauty that I have rarely
seen surpassed constantly greeted our eyes.
Frequently during these days on the Shilka we passed great rafts,
floating down stream with the current, loaded with emigrant families,
men, women, and children, horses, cattle, and dogs, and all the little
store of household goods that the poor Moujiks possessed. Sometimes
a small bateau would contain a family of seven or eight people and
all their belongings. Occasionally great barges towed by a tug-boat
would pass us, and these were invariably crowded with such a mass of
humanity that one wondered how all could stand by day, much less lie
down by night. These crowded rafts and barges headed eastward were most
suggestive of Russia’s policy. Hers is a peaceful conquest of the far
East. First she must fill up the waste places of Siberia, and then she
can stretch out her hand over all Manchuria and northern China, and
even in spite of temporary Mongolian uprisings she can hold her own,
with no fear of a repetition of the disaster of Albazin, and another
exclusion for centuries from Manchuria.
[Illustration: A RAFT ON THE SHILKA]
With one barge company alone the government has made a contract to
transport thirty thousand peasants within three months to the lower
waters of the Amour. Thousands of others will find their way by other
methods of conveyance. Liberal land laws and government aid while they
are getting established will result in a few years in tens of thousands
of log-house homes that in time will make this wilderness to blossom
like the rose.
As we approached Stretinsk signs of civilization became more numerous.
Cultivated fields appeared. Winter wheat already seemed to be ripening,
forced to maturity by a few weeks of the almost continuous sunlight
of this northern clime. The interesting village of Oost Kara, about
seventy miles from Stretinsk, lies on the right bank of the Shilka,
and is supported by extensive gold-mines, which are worked by
convicts--criminals, not political prisoners, I am told.
At length, on the 21st day of June, thirteen days after leaving
Blagavestchensk, and twenty-one days after embarking on the Amour at
Khabaroffsk, we were glad enough to bid good-bye to the _Diana_, its
crowded decks, and its wretched fare, and still more glad to feel that
our long river voyage, which had stretched itself out from the twelve
days which we had expected to twenty-one, was at length at an end, and
that the rest of the journey would be behind the iron horse on land,
instead of his aquatic cousin, the puffing steamboat.
XI
THE TRANS-BAIKAL
We had supposed, as has already been remarked, that if we had tears
to shed, we should need to indulge them on the last part of our river
journey. But we soon found that we should have saved them all for the
journey on the Trans-Baikal Railway between Stretinsk and Irkutsk, as
the sequel will show.
Stretinsk is a raw, shabby, straggling frontier town, whose only excuse
for being so uninteresting is that it is very new and never thought of
being a place of any importance until it suddenly found itself, on the
28th of December, 1899, the terminus of the Trans-Baikal Railway, and
an important forwarding point for freight and passengers between the
Atlantic and Pacific. The large railway shops and engine-houses are
situated across the river from the town, which is connected with them
by a ferry, ingeniously worked by the swift current of the Shilka, like
the picturesque ferry at Bonn, on the Rhine. The hotels of Stretinsk
are wretched inns, and there are absolutely no attractions within the
town to persuade the traveller to remain. But, in justice even to the
squalid raggedness of Stretinsk, it must be admitted that fine hills
encircle it and a noble river washes its feet, for the Shilka, in spite
of shoals and shallows, is still a mighty stream, and runs even here
with a large, impetuous flow.
We were glad enough to find that we must remain in Stretinsk only
thirty-six hours, and that the train which was to carry us to Lake
Baikal was to start the following night. We were still more rejoiced to
find that the good governor of Vladivostock, General Tchitchagoff, had
not forgotten us, but had wired for a special car for our use. The
car was very small, and held but five people, and, as can be imagined,
it was not built on the latest Pullman plan, but, as compared with the
cars assigned to our three hundred fellow-passengers, it was a _car de
luxe_, indeed.
[Illustration: SIBERIAN RECRUITS BOUND FOR CHINA]
This road is not yet officially opened for traffic, and we were taken
on sufferance, as it were. At least, most of those who take it have to
suffer severely. Nor can they complain overmuch, for the government
does not invite them to go or advertise any attractions. The best cars
that are yet run, with the exception of the little _car de luxe_, of
which I have just spoken, are marked “fourth class,” and are no better
than they pretend to be. They have wooden seats of the hardest possible
variety, and three wooden shelves, one above another, afford cramped
opportunity for a man not more than five feet long to stretch himself
out. Each of these cars, with three tiers of shelves, is supposed to
afford accommodations for forty-three people. But these are the best,
as I have said. Others, which might be termed fifth class, if the
nomenclature of railway trains descended so far, are simply box-cars,
with no seats, and marked on the outside, “to carry twelve horses
or forty-three men.” Into these cars there crowded, helter-skelter,
pell-mell, higgledy-piggledy, Russians and Siberians, Moujiks and
Chinamen, Tartars, Buriats and Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, and
Americans.
If there were fifth-class cars, there were plenty of sixth and seventh
class people--some in rags, and many in tags, but few in velvet gowns.
Old Moujiks, with half a dozen half-naked children, filthy with a grime
that has accumulated since their birth, and alive with unmentionable
parasites, crowded every car, or, rather, human pigpen, as each car
soon becomes. Odors indescribably offensive made the air thick and
almost murky. The stench, the dirt, the vermin grew worse the longer
the car was inhabited, and one simply resigned himself to the
inevitable and lived through each wearisome hour as best he could.
[Illustration: FOR THIRTY-SIX MORTAL HOURS WE WAITED]
Our non-Russian fellow-passengers, when they found the true state of
affairs, made a desperate resistance to their fate, and after repeated
remonstrances, objurgations, and even threats, which nearly came to
blows, induced the station-master to put on another little car, which
they could have for themselves.
We fondly hoped that the governor’s kindness had spared us the heaviest
affliction of the journey; but alas! even the best-hearted governor
cannot insure all the bridges on the line, and we had not been
travelling a half-dozen hours when we learned that a bridge had burned
down twenty miles ahead, owing to the carelessness of a fireman who
drew the fire on the wooden sleepers, and there we were stranded as
fast as though on a sand-bar on the Shilka.
For thirty-six mortal hours we waited at that wretched railway town,
which consisted principally of a round-house and a water-tower, then
were pulled to the burned bridge, twenty miles away, and, with much
difficulty and long delay, were transferred to the train on the other
side. Here our good fortune deserted us. Our comparatively fine car
could not, of course, cross the bridge, the governor could do nothing
more for us, and in the general scramble we found ourselves in one of
those dreadful fourth-class cars I have already described, with the
Moujiks, the filth, and the vermin destined to be our companions for
four weary days and nights.
[Illustration: A TRANS-BAIKAL TRAIN. PRISONERS CARRYING WATER]
After passing the burned bridge our train met with no serious delay,
though our rate of progress was exceedingly moderate. The whole
distance to Irkutsk is about seven hundred miles, and we managed to
consume three days and a half of actual travel in covering it. It would
seem impossible to the uninitiated in Siberian travel that a railway
train that could go at all could go so slowly. Two hundred miles a
day, or about eight miles an hour, is scarcely more than post-horses
would make. This is accounted for by reason of the interminable,
unreasonable length of the stops at the stations. Our train would
draw up at a wood-pile and a log-house. The peasants would scramble
out of the train, build their fires, cook their soup, boil their
tea, and still the train would wait. There was usually no baggage to
be taken on or put off, no passengers to join us, no passing train
to wait for. Water would soon be taken, and still we would wait, a
half-hour, three-quarters, a full hour. At last, for no particular
reason, apparently, the station-master would ring a big dinner-bell.
Five minutes later he would ring another. Then, soon after, the guard
would blow his whistle, the engineer would respond with the engine
whistle, the guard would blow again, the engineer would answer him once
more, and, after this exchange of compliments, the train would move
leisurely along, only to repeat the process two hours later at the
next station.
The stops ranged from half an hour to two hours in length, and the
speed attained about fifteen miles an hour while running. Fortunately
the stations are few and far between, averaging nearly thirty miles
apart.
The only towns of any importance on this line are Chita and
Verkneydinsk, the former about two hundred and the latter about five
hundred and fifty miles from Stretinsk. Verkneydinsk is a centre of the
old caravan tea trade, and retains its life in spite of the new railway.
The Trans-Baikal province, which this railway traverses from end
to end, is the smallest of the six provinces into which Siberia is
divided, and has about six hundred thousand inhabitants, of whom
two hundred thousand belong to the aboriginal tribes. Much of it
seems exceedingly fertile, and vast savannas, stretching away from
the railway track as far as the eye can reach on either side, are
frequently seen during the early part of the journey. Thousands of
cattle and horses roam on these great flat prairies, which, often, are
as level as a house floor for miles. In other parts of this journey the
scenery is beautiful and picturesque, but never grand, the mountain
range which is crossed being not a lofty one. For many miles the
railway follows the winding of the Shilka River, usually high above its
banks. Then it crosses the plains, and afterwards, some four hundred
miles from the starting point, plunges among the pine-clad hills which
hem it in on both sides with their resinous heights.
In other parts of the hill beautiful birches stand like white sentries
in a green livery. The flowers that carpet the fields everywhere
are lovely; marigolds and marguerites, roses and blue honeysuckles,
buttercups galore, bold tiger-lilies, modest lilies of the valley, and
white and yellow poppies make the trackside gay.
After traversing about half the distance, the streams, which had been
flowing east into the Pacific, give way to others that flow west to
Lake Baikal. The roof of the world, or, at least, of this part of the
world, has been reached, and now we will follow the raindrops towards
the distant Atlantic.
The Selenga, which we reach on the last day of this journey, is a
great and strong flowing river, as large as the St. Lawrence above the
Ottawa. It is crossed by a splendid iron bridge, resting on magnificent
piers of cut stone, a bridge which would be an honor to any railway in
the world.
It is the custom of the few travellers who have crossed this line, or
any part of it, to poke fun at the Trans-Baikal Railway. And, indeed,
it is not hard to do so. With its crawling trains, its inordinately
long stops, its primitive rolling-stock, it does not inspire much
respect. It reminds one of the railway in the United States called a
“tri-weekly road,” which was explained by its president to mean that
a train went up one week, and tried to come down the next.
[Illustration: BOUND FOR FAR SIBERIA
A passing glimpse of an emigrant train]
All the ancient and hoary railway jokes, like the one about the boy
who started on a half-fare ticket and was so old before he reached the
end of his journey that he had to pay full fare for the last part, are
cracked and appreciated by the passengers on this line. Yet it must be
remembered that the last spike in this road was driven less than six
months before I passed over it; that it was not even then accepted by
the government, or formally open for traffic; that it is largely built
for military exigencies, and that no one is asked to travel over it,
but rather discouraged by Russian officials; then the jokes lose their
best points.
Still it must be confessed that the road seems to tithe the mint,
anise, and cumin, and omit the weightier matters of railway
construction. For instance, the water-towers are beautiful, stately
structures, and the stations are very creditable even for an old
railway, but the rails are light and constantly breaking and giving way
and delaying traffic for days at a time. “Two streaks of rust across
Siberia,” is the exaggeration of a friend, which has an element of
truth in it.
Many parts of the embankment have been carefully sodded, the sods
being pegged down with great care, but the road is very imperfectly
ballasted, and is rough almost beyond belief. The culverts and small
bridges are buttressed with cut stone, carefully dressed; the cars, as
I have said, are exceedingly poor and filthy.
Still the road is evidently built for the future, and all these defects
will, in time, be remedied, and the Trans-Baikal section will take its
place as an important link in the greatest railway of the world.
[Illustration: FIFTEEN MINUTES AT EVERY STATION]
During these long and weary days we were obliged to get what diversion
we could from our fellow-passengers. We watched the mother who
combed her offspring’s head with a carving-knife, with which she made
vigorous onslaught on the numerous inhabitants that had taken shelter
there, while we shuddered as we thought of the coming night in close
proximity. We were interested in the other mother who did her daily
washing in a pint cup and hung it out to dry on the upper bunk. We were
fascinated by the soldiers who performed their morning ablutions by
taking a large mouthful of water from a teapot, then, squirting it on
their hands, vigorously washed their faces.
We never get away from the prisoners in Siberia, and two cars,
immediately in front of ours, were filled with these poor wretches.
Before these cars, at every station, marched four soldiers with set
bayonets. The heads of the prisoners, shaved on one side only, would
have betrayed them even had they escaped for a little.
At the stations women and girls with milk and eggs were eagerly
patronized by us all, for we were desperately thirsty, and water that
we dared to drink was scarce. At some stations we saw the aborigines of
the country, the Buriats, of whom two hundred thousand remain in the
province. They are a Mongol race, and their black hair and slant eyes
contrast with the blue eyes and tow heads of the Siberians, bleached as
they were still further by the sun.
Some of the Buriats are won to Christianity, but most of them are rank
heathen still. They are a nomadic race, and do not take kindly even to
the limited civilization of Siberia.
[Illustration: PRISON CAR IN SIBERIA. FAMILIES OF PRISONERS AT THE
WINDOWS]
I must record that, in the midst of the filth and discomfort and
unutterable odors of this hard journey, we met with many courtesies and
kindnesses from the most unpromising of our fellow-travellers. Some of
the peasants were ladies and gentlemen at heart, who would incommode
themselves to promote our comfort, and were never too preoccupied to
lend a helping hand, or to supplement our exceedingly limited Russian.
We discovered a “fourth-class guardian angel,” who took us under his
special protection, and was never weary of offering little kindnesses.
He even wished to share with us his black bread and some curds, which
we found it difficult to refuse without hurting his feelings.
None of the occupants of our car were intemperate or noisy, and,
in genuine politeness of heart, these Russian serfs of a few years
back could have given many points to the two selfish, unmannerly,
foul-mouthed Frenchmen of the party, who represent the nation
erroneously supposed to have a superfluous supply of politeness and
good manners.
XII
THE HOLY SEA
On the fifth day after leaving Stretinsk we were aroused at two o’clock
in the morning, just as the faint dawn began to streak the east, by a
guard going through the train and crying out: “Misovaia, all change.”
Eagerly we rubbed our sleepy eyes open, for now we had reached Lake
Baikal, and we fondly hoped that the most trying part of our journey
was over. But again we were doomed to disappointment, for we waited
and waited and waited, and still there was no sign of departure to the
other side of the lake. The sun rose, ascended high in the heavens,
reached the zenith, and began to decline, and still we sat about
miserably upon our baggage, not daring to go far lest at any moment the
“ice-breaker” from the other side of the lake might come to transfer
us across.
The station-master was eagerly importuned, but knew nothing. No
official had the slightest information. Our Russian fellow-travellers
only shrugged their shoulders when asked when we should start. At
length patience ceased to be a virtue, and a telegram was prepared
for the governor of Irkutsk, asking why a trainload of inoffensive
passengers of all nationalities were kept in anxious suspense for so
many hours at a miserable little station which had been eaten bare of
provisions long ago.
Just as this telegram was about to go came word that the “ice-breaker”
on the other side was waiting for the minister of justice, and that
when he got ready to start the boat would come. This proved to be the
case, and at last, fourteen hours after we had reached Misovaia, the
great steamer which should carry us across was seen approaching. Then
it took hours more to unload and reload her, and finally, in the
middle of the night, twenty-two hours after we should have started, we
got under way for the other side of the lake.
I dwell for a moment on this irritating experience, for it represents
one phase of Russian life which is very foreign to life in free,
constitutional countries. For twenty-two hours three hundred people
were made to wait upon the convenience of one official. Hungry
passengers were allowed to half starve; sick and crying babies, who
had with difficulty survived a week of hard journeying amid unnamable
privations; weary mothers, trying to comfort the babies; business
and professional men with important engagements to keep, and whose
connections with other roads were seriously imperilled by this delay,
all must wait and suffer while this one official finished his morning
nap, or ate an elaborate dinner, or otherwise made himself ready to
start for the other side of Lake Baikal.
[Illustration: THE ELEPHANT’S NOSE, LAKE BAIKAL]
Had this happened in any free country, such a howl would have arisen
as would have insured the decapitation of this minister of justice
(minister of justice indeed! minister of injustice rather) at the first
possible election.
How the _New York Tribune_ or the _London Times_ would have blazed with
indignant protests had such an affair taken place in America or Great
Britain! But in Siberia such an event is quite a matter of course. We
were still more surprised by the utter indifference and nonchalance of
our Russian fellow-passengers. There was nothing to be said and nothing
to be done. “Whatever is, is right,” especially if it is done by one
high in authority, seemed to be their motto.
The contrast between the foreign passengers and the Russians during
this exasperating delay was marked and amusing. The former champed
at the bit, and fretted and fumed and (it is feared) swore in their
different tongues. They would gather together in little groups and
discuss the situation. They haunted the telegraph office. They
interviewed every promising official. They tried to get another
steamer. They exhausted every possibility of progress.
The Russians placidly sipped their tumblers of tea, gathered about the
steaming samovar, quietly curled up on their luggage, and went to sleep
as though they had not an irritating care in the world. Why should they
fret? The official had all power. They had no appeal. No protest was
open to them. No _Times_ would thunder in St. Petersburg. No _Tribune_
would voice their complaints in Moscow. “Let it go; life is too short
to wear it out with such worries,” seemed to be their mental attitude.
The irritations of those hours of waiting, however, could not destroy
the beauty of the placid lake, the Holy Sea (Bai-Kal), on whose shores
we were waiting.
Baikal is one of the great lakes of the world. It covers thirteen
thousand five hundred square miles of surface. Only Lakes Superior,
Michigan, and Huron, of our own great lakes, surpass it in size. It is
half as large again as Lake Erie, and twice as large as Lake Ontario,
and being long and narrow, and surrounded by high, precipitous hills,
is more picturesque than any of them. Its waters are crystal clear,
and, at a depth of forty feet, every pebble upon the bottom can be
seen. Drop a stone into its clear waters from the steamer’s deck, and
you can see it fluttering and zigzagging its way down as a feather
falls through the air. The water is as cold, too, as it is clear, as a
delicious bath that I took testified. Even on the last days of June the
water cannot be far above the freezing point.
The peasants who live on the shores of the lake regard it with almost
superstitious reverence and love. There is in their estimation no lake
in all the world like the Baikal. Its rock-bound shores, its wooded
steeps, green with larch, and fir, and pine, and birch; its limestone
and marbles glistening in the sun; its shores strewn with bright
pebbles, washed smooth and round by countless centuries of the lapping
waves, all combine to make the Baikal worthy of the love and reverence
with which the true Siberian regards it.
We found it in a peaceful mood, but it is not always so by any means.
“No man has ever said his prayers until he has ventured on Lake
Baikal,” is a common saying of the peasants on the shore. Lying,
as it does, in a comparatively narrow valley, between the mountain
ranges, the terrible gales which have their homes between the mountain
peaks are often let loose with but scant warning. Then woe betide the
little fisherman’s craft that is caught far from shore, and even the
passengers on the stout steamer may well tremble.
To unite the two shores with a strong, substantial ferry-boat which can
run throughout the winter months, the railway has had constructed in
England and brought out piecemeal the huge “ice-breaker,” so called.
Several of the parts of this great craft were lost, strayed, or stolen
on the way, and infinite difficulty was experienced in putting it
together again when it reached the lake. Even now some tell me that it
is no great success as an ice-breaker.
[Illustration: THE ICE-BREAKER ON LAKE BAIKAL]
On a fine day, with a smooth sea, nothing could be more delightful than
a little journey on the great ships. Into the hold of the steamer runs
the whole train without unloading; or, rather, that is to be the way
when the railway is in running order. Three parallel tracks throughout
the entire length of the boat afford ample room for the longest trains.
Above are elegant accommodations for first-class passengers, while the
steerage people dispose of themselves in the hold as best they can.
Four great stacks belch out smoke and cinders, and the engines are of
the most powerful pattern. A half acre of deck room over all gives the
passenger unrivalled opportunities of viewing the magnificent lake,
whose southern end he is about to traverse.
A fine breakwater of wooden piles, nearly half a mile long, provides
a safe little harbor on the eastern side of the lake, while another,
not quite so large, affords a refuge from the winds on the other side.
Between these harbors the ice-breaker plies back and forth, making the
distance of about fifty miles in four hours.
As we approach the western shore, the scenery grows more lovely than
on the eastern side. The crystal lake, fifty feet deep at the shore,
dashes in places against precipitous cliffs; the banks are clad in
freshest grass, dotted with poppies and lilies and blue honeysuckles,
while a little village nestles in a cove beneath a frowning cliff.
Rarely have I seen in all my travels a scene more lovely than is
presented as the ice-breaker makes her way cautiously into the little
artificial harbor of Listvinitschnoie, at the southwestern end of the
Holy Sea.
In the early morning we could see, as we thought, the seals disporting
themselves in the icy waters, for it is a singular fact that in Lake
Baikal alone, of all the fresh-water lakes in the world, are seals
found. It is thought by some that in prehistoric times they made their
way up the River Yenisei, that flows from the lake into the Arctic
Ocean, two thousand miles away. At any rate, they have made themselves
very much at home in the Baikal, and have increased and multiplied and
replenished the lake.
The determination of the Russian government to have through steam
communication between the oceans is shown by the fact that while such
sums have been spent for an ice-breaker and for harbors to make the
link across the Baikal possible, the railway is also being pushed
around the southern end of the lake, only a short distance away.
Both of these routes will be needed, I understand, to facilitate the
mobilization of her armies--the supreme object which Russia has in
mind in the construction of this great iron road.
At the village of Listvinitschnoie, on the western side of the lake,
we had another exasperating delay of eight hours, while passengers and
baggage were being transferred to the other train, a transfer which
would have been made in America in half an hour. For half a day we sat
about on our baggage in the broiling sun, surrounded by filthy Moujiks,
while the leisurely engines puffed back and forth, and the still more
leisurely porters loaded the train. At length all was ready, and we
steamed in a leisurely fashion to Irkutsk, the great city of Central
Siberia.
Here we arrived after being six days, within a few hours, on the road
since leaving Stretinsk. In those six days we had travelled less
than eight hundred miles, and less than six miles an hour, including
the stops. We had endured many discomforts, some of them entirely
unnecessary had a little system and forethought been used. Even in the
present incomplete state of the equipment of the road the journey
ought to be made in two days, and decent cars might be provided for
decent people.
[Illustration: THE SHORES OF LAKE BAIKAL]
I must say that this experience somewhat weakened my faith in the
boasted energy and enterprise of Russian railway construction. How a
road that is so slow and halting in peace can be great in war, I do not
see. How a line that cannot carry a few hundred passengers and their
luggage without interminable delays can be used to mobilize a hundred
thousand soldiers at short notice is difficult to comprehend. It is
fortunate for Russia that she has a slow, stupid opponent on the other
side of the world to contend with, an opponent that not only has no
slow railroads, but no railroads at all, of her own.
As it is, the Trans-Baikal railway, poor as it is, will undoubtedly
prove a very important instrument in forcing beneficent Russian fetters
upon poor, decrepit, worn-out China.
XIII
A SIBERIAN CITY OF CHURCHES
As the feeble and halting train that brought us from Lake Baikal,
following the meanderings of the swift Angara River, drew near to
Irkutsk, the capital of Central Siberia, we received the impression
of a small city dominated by a score of great churches. And this
impression was not dissipated when we crossed the Angara on the bridge
of boats that links the city with the railway on the other side and
found ourselves within the city precincts.
You cannot look up without seeing a beautiful dome or spire. In the
waters of the Angara the great cathedral is reflected, flanked by two
other churches which in any other city of its size would be considered
marvels. The principal street of the city seems to lead up to and
terminate in another lofty and imposing church, while every section
of the town has its own ecclesiastical buildings of lesser magnitude.
Brooklyn must look out for its laurels as the City of Churches when it
comes in competition with Irkutsk.
The interior of the churches is quite equal to their exterior, and they
blaze with sacred pictures and icons, framed and matted in gold, so
that the chief impression one gets is of walls of solid gold, chased
and fretted and highly ornamented, with the face of Christ or the
Virgin or some Oriental saint peering out between the shining plates.
The Russians are evidently an extremely devout and religious
people. This is evidenced by their churches, which are always, both
metaphorically and literally, higher than the chimneys of their
factories. In the small towns along the line of the railway the church
is always the one conspicuous object. The village may be, it probably
is, built entirely of logs, without a single frame or brick house
within its border. But the church, with its glittering dome and blue
and green towers, always lifts its Greek cross skyward, and reminds
the poor Moujiks that there is another world above the flat plains of
Siberia.
The unabashed devoutness of the peasants tells the same story as
their churches. Our fellow-travellers in the fourth-class cars from
Stretinsk never omitted their morning devotions, their ablutions being
an entirely secondary matter. The poorest boatman would always cross
himself and bless his crust of black bread before he ate it. The
soldiers with whom we journeyed for hundreds of versts, undismayed
by the presence of their comrades, would every morning face the
rising sun, and though they could secure no possible privacy, would,
with genuine devoutness, pray for ten minutes at a time, standing
bare-headed and reverential in the crowded railway car in which
they were travelling. Such genuine devotion speaks well for the church
which fosters it, and for the country that is peopled and defended by
faithful devotees, for no nation without a religion which took strong
hold of the hearts of the common people ever greatly influenced the
destinies of the world.
[Illustration: BURIATS FROM LAKE BAIKAL, WITH SEAL FROM THE LAKE]
Distance lends considerable enchantment to Irkutsk, and nearer approach
does not bear out the remoter promise of its beautiful churches. The
streets are poorly paved and extremely dusty, and the wooden sidewalks
are frequently man-traps for the unwary passenger. Still it is no mean
city to be found in the heart of Siberia, three thousand five hundred
miles from the nearest European capital.
Irkutsk has had time enough to grow, for it was founded thirty years
after the _Mayflower_ sailed into Plymouth harbor, and is about ready
to celebrate its quarter millennial. Founded originally as a military
post to withstand the attacks of wandering Tartars, its naturally
advantageous situation has made it the metropolis of Siberia. It is now
the seat of government of the province of Eastern Siberia, and contains
something over fifty thousand inhabitants. It contains twenty-five
Greek churches, substantial Catholic and Lutheran churches, and two
synagogues. There are no less than forty schools, among which are
seminaries for girls, military and technical schools of various kinds,
so that the young idea of Irkutsk has no excuse for not learning how to
shoot.
The city has lost something of its ancient importance since the region
of the Amour has been erected into a separate province, independent of
Irkutsk, and since the rise of Vladivostock as a point of departure
on the Pacific for Odessa and America. Nevertheless, it will always
be an important centre, owing to its situation near the head-waters
of the Angara, which starts from Lake Baikal, forty miles away, and
continues its majestic and ever-widening way for three thousand
miles until, as the Yenisei, the fourth greatest river in the world, it
empties into the Arctic Ocean. It is a centre for the shipment of gold,
and in a single year no less than twenty-one thousand pounds weight
avoirdupois of the precious metal passed through Irkutsk on its way to
St. Petersburg.
[Illustration: AN IRKUTSK DROSKY]
It may make the geography of Siberia a little more plain if I here
explain that Siberia, for governmental purposes, is divided into six
provinces: First, starting from the Ural Mountains, Western Siberia,
that borders on Europe, and in a rough way embraces the basin of the
Obi. Next, Eastern Siberia, which stretches a thousand miles farther
east and embraces the basin of the Yenisei and its tributaries. In this
province Irkutsk is situated. Then comes the Trans-Baikal, the province
that lies east of the beautiful lake of that name, and through which we
made our slow and toilsome way as described in the last chapter. Then,
east of that, the great province of the Amour, embracing the basin of
the Amour and Ussuri. Last of all, bordering on the Pacific Ocean, and
including the convict island of Saghalien, is the province called in
Russian Primorskaia. The province of the Steppes lies south of Western
Siberia, but with that our new way around the old world has nothing
to do, for the railway barely grazes its edge, and does not fairly
enter its territory. During the twenty-nine days of rail and river
travel which I have already described, we had traversed in succession
Primorskaia, Amourskaia, and Zabaikalskaia and had reached the eastern
edge of Eastern Siberia.
During these twenty-nine days we had travelled nearly twenty-seven
hundred miles, and, between us and Moscow, there still lay more than
thirty-three hundred miles to be traversed. But the peculiar hardships
of the journey were nearly over, for a _train de luxe_ starts from
Irkutsk for Moscow every Friday afternoon, and we were just in season
to get our tickets, and secure our berths, and replenish our seedy
wardrobes, and take passage on the most famous train in all the world,
which, without a single change of cars, runs a distance considerably
greater than from Boston to San Francisco.
[Illustration: GENERAL VIEW OF IRKUTSK]
We were happy enough to board this train, as can be imagined, after
the bare boards and filth of the uncertain train which had carried us
from Stretinsk, and were in a fit frame of mind to enjoy its luxuries
and to overlook its defects. Nor were we sorry to leave Irkutsk, for
though it is a remarkable place to be found so far from the confines of
civilization, yet it has few attractions to long beguile the traveller;
and the stifling dust of the streets, which never seem to be watered,
obscure the attractions it does possess.
Shortly before our arrival news had come of the serious disturbances
in China, and troops were being enrolled and equipped and hurried to
the eastern coast in feverish haste. The whole square in front of
the Hôtel de Russie was filled with peasants in their red blouses and
top-boots, each with his tea-kettle and little bag of poor belongings.
These peasants were to be shipped off that day as food for Chinese
powder, if so be the Celestials have any powder left by the time these
Moujiks reach Blagavestchensk or, later, Port Arthur. The whole city
was full of rumors of war, and, though we could not read the Russian
papers, or know the extent of the trouble, the air seemed vibrant with
battle.
We were told that the train we had taken over the Trans-Baikal road
would be the last passenger train that would be allowed to go through
for six weeks. How we blessed our fortunate stars that we were not
stranded in Stretinsk for six times seven days! We were told also that
between Omsk and Irkutsk were twelve trains loaded with soldiers, bound
for Manchuria, and that no private telegram to Vladivostock could
be delivered within a week, so hot were the wires with government
despatches.
Some of these reports were true and some were exaggerated, but
evidently China’s last days had come, we thought, as we boarded the
_train de luxe_, and Russia intends to be in at the death.
XIV
A SIBERIAN _TRAIN DE LUXE_
The Paris Exposition has made famous the Siberian _train de luxe_,
with its moving panorama, its terminal stations at St. Petersburg
and Peking, and its dinners at seven francs per head. The newspaper
correspondent, too, who has seen it only in his mind’s eye, as he sat
at his own cosey fireside rehashing second-hand descriptions of its
magnificence, has done his share to advertise it, until the wondering
world has an idea that it is a veritable Waldorf-Astoria on wheels,
before which all Empire State expresses on the American continent must
hide their diminished heads. We read of library-cars and bath-cars,
gymnasium-cars where one can make a century run on a stationary
bicycle, elegant dinners, barber-shops where passengers receive a
free shave every morning, pianos, and other luxuries too numerous to
mention.
[Illustration: ONE OF THE BEAUTIFUL CHURCHES OF IRKUTSK]
As a matter of fact, the Siberian _train de luxe_, at least as it
started from Irkutsk on the 29th day of June, in the year of our
Lord 1900, was a rather shabby vestibuled train of three sleepers, a
diner, and a baggage-car. It was luxurious, indeed, compared with the
fourth-class emigrant train on which we had been journeying, but it
is still many degrees behind the best American trains. It should be
remarked, however, that the best cars had been sent to Paris for the
Exposition, and it is doubtless true that the train we took is somewhat
below the average of the Siberian _trains de luxe_. It is well worth
describing, however, as an important link in the great chain that
connects the Atlantic and the Pacific in this new way around the world.
First, and very naturally, comes the engine of Russian make, with
a great flaring smoke-stack for burning wood. Next to it is the
baggage-car with one end fitted with a bath-tub, where dusty travellers
can enjoy a refreshing bath on payment of a rouble and a half
(seventy-five cents), a very high price to be sure compared with the
rate charged for transportation; but then the scarcest and dearest
thing throughout Siberia we found to be cold water, either for drinking
or bathing purposes.
Following the baggage-car was the dining-car, which was also divided
into two sections, half being occupied with small tables that seat
two and four each, and the other half fitted with easy-chairs for
the smokers and provided with ample windows for observation. In the
smoking-room was a small library of, perhaps, fifty books in the
Russian, French, and German languages, but nothing in English, except
two or three discarded fifth-rate novels in paper covers, evidently
contributed by previous travellers.
In the dining-car, two _table d’hôte_ meals were provided: a lunch
of two courses at one o’clock, which cost one rouble, and a dinner at
six of four courses, for a rouble and a quarter. At other times of day
passengers could order what they pleased _à la carte_ from a limited
bill of fare.
Behind the dining-car came a second-class sleeping-car, then a
first-class sleeper, and, last of all, another second-class sleeper.
These cars are all divided into compartments, or little staterooms,
holding two or four people each, with a window, a table, and a wide and
very comfortable berth for each person. The cars are all handsomely
carpeted and upholstered in blue plush, covered, for the sake of
protection, with red-striped denim. In each stateroom were convenient
racks and hooks for the disposal of clothes and baggage, and in every
way one could make himself as comfortable and have almost as much room
as in an ocean steamer’s cabin.
For two friends travelling together, or for a small family of three,
as in my own case, this arrangement is far superior to America’s more
promiscuous and public Pullman sleeping-car. For individuals travelling
alone, the Pullman plan has some decided advantages, if one does not
care to be cooped up in narrow quarters for eight or nine days with
any chance stranger who may be assigned to the same stateroom. The
Pullman cars, too, economize space, for while from forty to forty-eight
people can sleep in a Pullman car when crowded, only eighteen can find
“lying-down room,” in a Siberian sleeper.
One curiosity of this particular _train de luxe_ was that the first and
second class cars were precisely alike in every particular. In amount
of room, fittings, upholstery, and comforts of every description, there
was not the slightest difference between the three sleeping-cars that
composed our train, while the difference of price was nearly forty
roubles in favor of the second-class. One would think that, these
being the facts, the second-class cars would be overcrowded and the
first-class would be empty. Such was not the case on this train at
least, for I found every cabin in the first-class taken, and was able
to get a large four-berth stateroom in one of the second-class cars for
little more than I would pay for two berths in the first-class car.
[Illustration: A PART OF OUR _TRAIN DE LUXE_]
At the most, the fares in Siberia are remarkably cheap. For the whole
stateroom I paid less than one hundred and twenty dollars from Irkutsk
to Moscow, a distance of three thousand three hundred and fifty miles;
this included four fares and the supplementary price of the _train de
luxe_. For the same accommodations in a Pullman car across the American
continent (a shorter distance) I should have paid at least five hundred
dollars. The full first-class fare in the _train de luxe_ is about
fifty dollars, while the second-class fares are less than thirty
dollars. By the ordinary trains a considerable saving is effected over
these very cheap rates.
Each car has its porter, who can usually speak German or French in
addition to Russian, but the specimens that we saw were very lazy and
inefficient fellows compared with the deft and obliging “George” who
attends to one’s wants in a Pullman car. Our porters on the _train de
luxe_ never thought of sweeping or dusting the staterooms, and seemed
to think it an imposition to be asked to thoroughly make up the berths
for day travel, preferring to leave the beds made up by day that they
might have less trouble at night. All day long the lazy porters would
loll about on their seats in the middle of the car, doing as little
as possible, and apparently begrudging that little. Twice a week the
bed linen is changed. Ample washrooms, with a single roller towel, for
all guests who do not furnish their own, complete the equipment of the
Siberian sleeper.
My excuse for this somewhat minute description of these accommodations
is that it will be welcomed by future travellers who have to spend at
least eight and one-half days in their little room on wheels.
It must not be thought that for all its name and fame the “Siberian
Special” is a lightning express. In speed it would be outstripped,
during all the early part of the journey, by any “huckleberry train” in
America. Fourteen miles an hour, including stops, was all it pretended
to make during the first five days from Irkutsk. The road-bed is new,
the rails are light, and as a consequence the train plods along at a
pace which an able-bodied cowboy on his bronco would outstrip. In fact
I saw, one evening, a race between our famous train and a Siberian
“cow-puncher,” in which, for two miles or more, the horseman more than
held his own. Then he pulled up with a careless wave of his hat, as
though he did not consider it worth while to race any longer with so
slow a rival.
The stops at the stations, too, seem most unnecessarily protracted for
such a train, which might be supposed to have the right of way. Never
less than ten minutes, and more often fifteen or twenty, our patient
locomotive would stand panting at every little platform in the wilds
before the station-master would ring his welcome bell, to tell it that
it might shriek its farewell and proceed on its way.
For a number of miles after leaving Irkutsk, the railway follows the
windings of the swift-flowing Angara, and then, leaving the river,
strikes off across the interminable wooded prairies that line so much
of the track to Moscow. The weather was exceedingly hot during the
first four or five days of the journey, the thermometers in the cars
frequently registering over ninety degrees Fahrenheit. If one takes
the Siberian route to avoid the heat of the Red Sea in summer, he will
not gain much, though, to be sure, the cool nights make the Siberian
journey more tolerable. Moreover, the heat, much of the time, was of
the damp, “muggy” variety so trying to bear.
[Illustration: A VIEW ON THE ANGARA, NEAR IRKUTSK]
A plague of flies, which would have made even Pharaoh quail, added
much to the minor discomforts of the trip, though they did not afflict
the passengers within the cars as sorely as when they ventured out
upon the platform. Here they were, indeed, intolerable, and set every
pair of hands revolving about a tormented head like a windmill in a
gale. The most obnoxious insect was a little black gnat, much like
the midge of the Adirondacks, which in clouds filled the air, and
filled as well eyes, and nose, and ears of any venturesome traveller
that left the comparative refuge of his car. The natives have learned
to protect themselves against these pests by wearing veils of black
mosquito netting day and night. For fully fifteen hundred miles almost
every man, woman, and child we met was thus protected, and it gave a
peculiarly solemn and lugubrious aspect to the little villages and
stations to see every one peering at you through a mask of black
netting. In this funereal attire every Siberian looked as though
he had lost every friend in the world, or was about to attend his
own obsequies. Trainmen working on the track, flagmen signalling
the engineer, women with bottles of milk and loaves of bread,
station-masters in bright official uniforms, little tow-headed children
with bare feet, all had gone into mourning because of the midges.
At every station were country hucksters at a little stand, ready to
sell the few products of the farms to the hungry travellers. They did
not do much business, naturally, with the passengers of the _train de
luxe_, who had their own dining-car, but with the regular trains or
the frequent special emigrant or military trains they had a rushing
trade. As we approached the European frontier, prices of these country
comestibles fell, and boiled eggs were to be bought for half a cent
each, and a very considerable loaf of bread for two cents and a half,
while milk, fried fish, chunks of roast meat, and kvass, or Russian
pop-beer, were proportionately cheap.
[Illustration: A TRAINMAN WHO HAS TAKEN THE VEIL]
At almost every siding we passed a long train laden with emigrants or
soldiers on their way to China, for the Siberian reserves had been
called out. The latter were stalwart, rough, honest-looking fellows,
who evidently had left their little farms at a moment’s notice to
serve their country. They seemed to possess no uniforms or equipments,
though, to be sure, these may have been stored in the close box-cars
that accompanied each train. They wore their peasants’ red blouses
and loose breeches. Many of them were barefooted, and some of them
were hatless and ragged, but, before they meet the Chinese, these raw
recruits will doubtless be licked into shape by the drill-masters,
uniformed and armed, and made into very presentable soldiers. They
certainly have the requisite brawn, if not the brain. I was surprised
to see that there seemed to be few young men among them, scarcely any
under thirty, while most looked to be over forty.
The emigrants were weighted with more _impedimenta_ than the soldiers,
but even their household belongings were pitifully scant. Every day
we passed half a dozen long trainloads of men, women, and children
on their way to the new Eldorado on the banks of the Amour. Most of
them were too poor to afford even the hard comfort of a third or
fourth class car, and they were pigged in together in ordinary box
freight-cars, which were marked on the outside to carry “twelve horses
or twenty-four men.” Still they did not seem discontented, much less
hopeless, but at every little station jumped from their stifling boxes
and raced for the hot-water tank, which a paternal government always
kept steaming, free of charge. Here they filled their tin pails and
made their inevitable “chi” (tea), on which, supplemented by liberal
portions of black bread, they chiefly subsist.
Sometimes we indulged in the luxury of giving the little emigrating
urchins, bound for a far-off land, a few kopeks, when the gratitude of
the parents was touching to see. Rushing from the car, they would
sometimes seize our hands and kiss them in the courtly old Russian
style, as though we had bestowed a king’s ransom on their offspring,
and then as the trains parted, going east and west, would tumble back
into their fifth-class boxes, while we would return to our compartments
feeling as we reached them that he would be a thankless man indeed who,
with such contrasts in view, should ever grumble again at the minor
discomforts of a _train de luxe_.
[Illustration: SIBERIAN RAILWAY NEAR THE ASIATIC BORDER]
XV
OUT OF ASIA INTO EUROPE
The long journey in the _train de luxe_ from Irkutsk to St. Petersburg,
especially the Siberian part of the journey, does not afford a great
variety of scenery or incident. But, if somewhat monotonous, it is a
pleasing and gentle monotony. There is not a mile of desert land in all
the five thousand versts between Lake Baikal and the Atlantic, or, for
that matter, between the Pacific and the Atlantic, by the way we have
travelled.
There are no long stretches of sagebrush plain, such as Wyoming, Utah,
and Nevada afford; no “bad lands,” such as are found in the Dakotas;
no interminable stretches of wearisome, treeless prairies, such as
the Canadian Pacific traverses in Manitoba and Assiniboia. There are
occasional wide reaches of prairie or meadow land, but trees are always
in sight, and for the most part the road passes through a heavily
wooded country. Birches abound everywhere, with their graceful white
boles, and there are many forests of pine and poplar. The trees in the
vicinity of the railway are not large, the “monarchs of the forest,” if
there ever were any, having been cut off at the advent of the railway.
The piles of cut wood by the railroad track impress the traveller
with the boundlessness of the forests. Millions of cords of clean cut
birch and pine, with scarcely a knot or a blemish, stand in neat piles
waiting the insatiable engine.
Everywhere the land seems fertile, and, though but an infinitesimal
part of it is cultivated, it would all reward the husbandman. Great
flocks of sleek cattle roam over these natural pastures, but there is
room for a hundred flocks where one roams to-day. And all this vast
domain has been waiting for settlers at Europe’s back door during all
the centuries. Only now is the door fairly open, and the new settlers
are pouring through. America, meanwhile, has been discovered, opened,
and occupied; Australia has been discovered and great cities built upon
its seaboard; the tropics and the poles have been explored; and all
the time a great fertile domain, vaster than all Europe, and separated
from Europe’s swarming, overcrowded millions by no barrier of sea, and
but a low mountain range, has been waiting, almost tenantless, for a
people. But now Siberia has been discovered--discovered by the settler
and the home-maker, as well as by the politician and the autocrat who
desires a Botany Bay for his convicts--and a new and virgin empire that
can afford asylum for the surplus population of two continents has been
added to the world’s productive domains. Undoubtedly this enormous and
almost untrodden empire gives Russia a great advantage among the
nations of the world. Here is a vast new continent contiguous and near
to ancient Russia, a domain which cannot be seriously threatened by
any enemy, a domain which in the decrepit state of China requires no
fleets or armies to protect. At length Russia has awakened to a sense
of its value, and is pouring into it by the ten thousand every month
the peaceful settlers who will make her possession secure.
[Illustration: ZLATOOST, A BORDER TOWN BETWEEN EUROPE AND ASIA]
Between Irkutsk and Moscow the railway passes through a few large towns
of considerable importance. Chief of these are Crasnoiarsk, about
seven hundred miles from Irkutsk; Taiga, some three hundred miles
still nearer Europe; Omsk, about five hundred miles further west; and
Tschelabinsk, which lies near the edge of Europe, two thousand miles
from our starting point at Irkutsk.
These places will be but names to most of my readers, and they will
not be much the wiser if I tell them such facts as that Omsk has forty
thousand inhabitants and Tschelabinsk has fifteen thousand. All these
towns, and many smaller ones that I might mention, are places of no
little importance in the districts of which they are the centres, but
they do not as yet cut much of a figure on the world’s maps. They
all have the characteristics of frontier towns, are built largely of
logs, but boast from one to twenty beautiful churches, which always
strike the eye and give them a character and a beauty which they would
sadly lack without the shining domes and brilliant crosses pointing
heavenward.
Omsk is the most important place on the line of the railway between
Irkutsk and Moscow, and is the residence of the governor-general of the
province of the Steppes, and of a Greek Church archbishop.
Tomsk is a larger and more important place still, but is not directly
on the Trans-Siberian route, being connected by a branch line at Taiga.
The road crosses many large rivers during these two thousand miles
before it reaches the European frontier, and the cost of the great iron
bridges which span them must have been enormous. They seem to be built
in the most substantial manner, with piers and buttresses of massive
cut stone. These rivers belong to the great systems of the Yenisei and
the Obi, which in their upper reaches branch off into many streams,
each of which, in any other continent, would be a notable and famous
stream. But Siberia is so rich in great rivers that even the names
of these mighty tributaries are not of great interest to the reading
public. When Siberia shall come to her own and take her place among the
great populous nations of the earth, these rivers will add enormously
to her wealth and commerce.
On the evening of the fifth day from Irkutsk we went to bed in Asia,
and woke up on the morning of the sixth day in Europe, and in the
beautifully situated town of Zlatoost. We found ourselves also in the
heart of the Urals, and the contrast with the flat plains of Siberia
was most refreshing.
Lovely spruce-clad mountains towered above us on every side; a rushing
river, which the track follows for many miles, seemed to beckon us on
with its smiling ripples that glinted and glowed in the morning sun.
Great, open, park-like valleys and uplands lay between the mountains,
dotted with trees and covered with the greenest of grass, studded with
beautiful flowers of every hue. Altogether, for many miles, the scene
was one of rare loveliness, and was worth travelling a thousand weary
versts to see.
The Russians call this region of the Urals the “Switzerland of Russia,”
and though it lacks the grandeur of the snow-clad Alps, it has a beauty
of its own which is exceedingly charming.
All day long our road wound through these charming scenes, up hill and
down dale, usually keeping a rushing, sparkling river in view, until,
towards the close of the long day, the great town of Oofa, with
its beautiful churches and fine railway station, came in view. We had
passed the barrier of the Urals, and the day of loveliest scenery in
all the long journey had come to an end.
[Illustration: IN THE URAL MOUNTAINS]
Our deliberate train mended its pace very considerably after getting
into Europe, and, on the last three days of the journey, did almost
as many versts as during the first five. The engineer actually seemed
able to get by some small and insignificant stations without stopping,
and where we did stop it was often for less than a full half-hour. We
averaged fully twenty miles an hour after crossing the Urals, which
seemed like lightning speed after our slow and toilsome way in Siberia.
On the seventh day of our journey from Irkutsk, the Urals had faded
into the distance, and the flat plains of European Russia were
substituted for the flat plains of Asiatic Russia. The country on both
sides of the mountains looks much the same, except that the European
plains are better cultivated and less wooded. They have evidently
known the plowshare for many a hundred years, and in early July were
smiling with luxuriant crops of wheat, and barley, and rye. Greater
Russia plainly is in no danger this year of a wide-spread famine.
In some places hay-making had begun, and the great unfenced fields
containing hundreds of acres were alive with haymakers in gay attire.
The Russian farmers live together in villages, instead of in isolated
farmhouses, as do our husbandmen, and the business of cutting and
making a great communal hayfield was evidently an important matter
that brought together all the men, women, and children of the village.
Often forty hay-wagons, each with a span of horses and five times as
many people, were assembled at the edge of a field. The mowers, in long
rows, would then start for the other side of the great field, nearly a
mile away, cutting a wide swath as they went, while fifty Russian Maud
Mullers, in red and blue bodices, raked the meadows sweet with hay,
which yesterday had been cut. They seemed merry and light-hearted about
their task, and we could hear snatches of song and bursts of laughter,
and many a bright bandanna was waved at the flying train.
The small villages did not strike me, as I saw them from the train, as
being superior to the Siberian towns. They are built largely of logs,
or of mud and wattle, and have low-browed thatch roofs, often much out
of repair. But every village, however small and shabby, has a beautiful
church, which contrasts strangely with the one-story thatch-roof huts
that gather around it, as if a brood of very diminutive chickens were
clustering around a big brooding mother hen.
The large towns which we passed, as we drew near to Moscow, were
distinctly better built than in Siberia. Large blocks of brick and
stone, wide streets, and a general air of thrift and prosperity seemed
to pervade them. Samara is a city nobly situated on the banks of the
Volga, and has really a regal appearance on her crown of hills, with
her great cathedral and noble churches dominating all.
The railway crosses the Volga, a few miles after leaving Samara, by a
splendid iron bridge, nearly a mile long. Even here, so far from its
source, this greatest river of Europe is a majestic, swift-flowing
stream, bearing upon its ample bosom great rafts from the pine forests
near its source, and many great steamers, which carry passengers to the
famous fair at Nijni-Novgorod, and other towns along its banks. Most,
if not all of these steamers, use petroleum for fuel, brought from the
great wells of Batoum, and huge tanks for the storage of oil begin to
form conspicuous features of the landscape near every large town.
[Illustration: THE KREMLIN IN WINTER]
Indeed, our own locomotive, instead of gorging itself with birchwood,
as its predecessors which drew the _train de luxe_ had done, took long
deep draughts of crude kerosene oil, which, it must be said, did not
improve its breath. Some of the engines I noticed at this end of the
line were Baldwin locomotives, a make which I had not seen since we had
left Khabaroffsk, on the further side of far Siberia.
On the eighth and last day of our journey on the “Siberian Special,” as
our train was called in railroad nomenclature, we passed through the
large and commanding town of Toula, a great railroad centre, and also
famous for the splendor of its churches. The stations we passed on this
day were finer than any we had yet seen, and were often embowered in
trees until they looked like châteaus in lovely green parks. Peasant
women stood on every platform with heaps of little wild strawberries,
which they sold at a ridiculously cheap price, about two cents a quart.
Others had the first red cherries of the season, and others yellow
apples that had been kept in water for nearly a year, and that tasted
as if baked. Other vendors of delicious, sparkling koumyss, milk,
Russian kvass, and other more harmful beverages, also appeared upon
the scene at many stations.
The devout character of the Russians was shown by the fact that every
third-class waiting-room had its shrine, with beautifully framed
pictures of Christ and the Madonna and some of the Eastern saints.
Before these icons often burned ceremonial candles, and smaller
candles were to be had by devotees for two or three kopeks apiece.
Rapt travellers, with uplifted eyes, were often to be seen crossing
themselves before these icons.
We still passed frequent trains of Siberian settlers, and others
of brawny soldiers, “bearded like the pard,” and packed into their
fifth and sixth-class cars like the proverbial sardines in their
boxes. Occasionally a train of prisoners looked out through their
iron gratings at us, seeming to cast a murky shadow on the pleasant
landscape, as we thought of the dreary years of exile before them.
We saw no political prisoners, however, and even the criminals are
allowed to take their wives and children with them. These latter often
clung to the iron bars with their faces close against them, like so
many infant Charlotte Cordays. It must be said that these prisoners,
like others whom we had seen, fared a good deal better in their railway
accommodations than the emigrants or the soldiers.
More and more cultivated and attractive the beautiful country appeared
as we approached Moscow, giving evidence in every smooth and fertile
field of five hundred years of tillage, until at last, promptly on
schedule time, 197 hours after leaving Irkutsk, the Siberian Special
rolled into the beautiful station of sacred Moscow, and our long
journey across all the Russias was practically finished. It is a matter
of thirteen hours further to St. Petersburg, and two days more by the
fastest train to London. Thence six or seven days more by one of the
Atlantic liners to New York, and our journey by this new way around an
old world was completed.
SOME FACTS AND FIGURES
As a multitude of friends and other correspondents have asked me to
give full particulars concerning the time and cost of this journey, I
will add a few lines to answer these natural inquiries.
I was told by the most sanguine, before starting, that the journey from
Vladivostock to Moscow could be made in twenty-two days. I do not think
that it ever was, or can be, made in that length of time, until the
Trans-Baikal Railway is greatly improved, and the Amour and Shilka have
a channel dredged through their shallows; and that will be many a long
day yet.
[Illustration: A SHRINE AT A RAILWAY STATION]
As a matter of fact, the journey took us thirty-eight days, and,
allowing for probable detentions by rail and river, it cannot often be
made in less time. If it had not been for the kind personal interest
of the governor of Vladivostock, we should have been much longer
on the way than we were. I can well imagine that the trip might take
three or four months instead of as many weeks. The exact time of the
different divisions of our journey was as follows:
Days
Vladivostock to Khabaroffsk (rail) 1¼
Khabaroffsk to Blagavestchensk (boat) 5½
Waited for steamer at Blagavestchensk 2
Blagavestchensk to Stretinsk (boat) 12½
Waited for train at Stretinsk 1½
Stretinsk to Irkutsk (rail) 6
Waited for train at Irkutsk 1
Irkutsk to Moscow (rail) 8½
----
Total 38¼
If we had found high water in the Amour, we might have saved three days
on the river journey, and if the bridge on the Trans-Baikal road had
not burned down so inopportunely, we might have saved two days more,
but it is difficult to see how more than five or six days could have
been saved by the most favoring combination of circumstances.
I also heard many absurd rumors of the cheapness of the journey across
Siberia. One Russian official of note told me that the whole cost from
Vladivostock to Moscow, first-class, meals included, would be one
hundred and twenty roubles. I will give the fares as they actually were
paid, leaving out the odd kopeks:
Roubles
Vladivostock to Khabaroffsk 17
Khabaroffsk to Blagavestchensk 23
Blagavestchensk to Stretinsk 29
Stretinsk to Irkutsk 18
Irkutsk to Moscow 98
-------
Total for fares (first-class) 183
To this must be added at least three roubles a day for living expenses
along the road, even by those economically inclined who drink no
strong liquors, which will add to the expense of a thirty-eight days’
journey one hundred and fourteen roubles, making the journey cost
two hundred and ninety-six roubles, or, in round numbers, about one
hundred and fifty dollars in gold--not expensive, to be sure, for a
six-thousand-mile trip, but not so cheap as is usually thought.
[Illustration: RUSSIAN TYPES]
Those who are willing to travel in second-class cars and steamer
accommodations can save nearly one hundred roubles, or about fifty
dollars, on the whole journey. The second-class cars are entirely
comfortable, and very little poorer than the first-class, but the
second cabin on the steamers is not to be recommended.
I have very often been asked whether I would advise others to take
the journey. That all depends upon their circumstances and travel
proclivities.
For good sailors who do not mind a long ocean voyage, the trip
through the Suez Canal is certainly easier and more restful. For bad
sailors and those who fear the sea for any reason--and their name is
legion--the Trans-Siberian route offers many compensations. Moreover,
if one can command his own time, and is in no great haste to reach his
journey’s end at a fixed date, the Siberian journey will prove far more
attractive than to those who are pressed with engagements and must
make schedule time, for it is impossible to calculate exactly, or even
within a fortnight, the time that may be taken. A pressing engagement
in London, which I almost missed owing to the unexpected delays,
detracted not a little from the comfort of the journey so far as I was
concerned.
Nevertheless, in spite of the discomforts and delays, I am exceedingly
glad to have taken the journey. It was an experience never to be
forgotten, and furnished memory-pictures that will never fade. I should
advise any one with plenty of time on his hands, who enjoys rail and
river travel, and who is not afraid of the inevitable hardships of a
new frontier country, to go and do likewise.
The journey I have described was made at a most fortunate time,
immediately before the Chinese outbreak, which may change the face of
the world, especially of the far Siberian world. A week later, or a
fortnight later at the most, the journey would have been impossible
for many months. But doubtless before my readers wish to take this new
way round the old world the “Yellow Peril” will be overpassed, and the
Trans-Siberian route will be once more open to the travelling public.
In these annals I have purposely omitted any extended reference to the
commercial and political importance of the Trans-Siberian Railway, for
the reading public has been flooded with speculations and facts, more
or less accurate, on this subject. There seems, then, to be little need
for their further exploitation. Moreover, history, during the next
decade, will determine these matters much more accurately than the
wisest prophet can forecast them to-day.
When the Eastern Chinese Railway, connecting with the Trans-Siberian
road, is opened--if the Mongolians, who are showing such unexpected
ferocity, ever allow it to be opened--it will be possible, perhaps,
to go from Paris to Peking in two weeks, or, in time, even in eleven
days, as Mr. A. R. Colquhoun, in his excellent book, _Overland to
China_, points out.
Even then, there will be many who will desire to take the journey I
have described through the lordly domain of Siberia, by rail and river
from the Pacific to the Atlantic, which for vastness of extent along
the same east and west parallels, for variety of primeval scenery, and
for wideness of view over “this goodly frame, the earth,” will never be
surpassed.
[Illustration: MAP SHOWING THE AUTHOR’S ROUTE FROM VLADIOSTOCK ACROSS
SIBERIA TO ST. PETERSBURG]
Synopsis of the Russian Alphabet
======================================================
Form. | Proper sound. | Name.
=======+=================+=============+==============
А а | a _in_ f+a+ther | ah
Б б | b _in_ +b+utter | bey
В в | v _in_ +v+ein | vey
Г г | g _in_ +g+one | ghey
Д д | d _in_ +d+one | dey
Е е | ye _in_ +y+et | yey
Ж ж | z _in_ a+z+ure | zhey
З з | z _in_ +z+one | zey
И и | i _in_ s+i+ck | ee
І і | i _in_ +i+ota | ee
Й й | i _in_ o+i+l | ee s’krátkoy
К к | k _in_ k+i+n | kah
Л л | ll _in_ do+ll+ar | ell
М м | m _in_ +m+an | emm
Н н | n _in_ +n+ote | enn
О о | o _in_ n+o+t | oh
П п | p _in_ +p+it | pey
Р р | rr _in_ hu+rr+y | airr
С с | s _in_ +s+afe | ess
Т т | t _in_ +t+urn | tey
У у | oo _in_ m+oo+n | oo
Ф ф | f _in_ f+i+ne | eff
Х х | =ch= _in_ =Da+ch+= | khah
Ц ц | ts _in_ wi+ts+ | tsey
Ч ч | ch _in_ +ch+arm | chey
Ш ш | sh _in_ +sh+ut | shah
Щ щ | shtch _in_ sma+sht-ch+ina | shtchah
Ъ ъ | _mute_ | _hard sign_
Ы ы | _approximately_ y _in_ pit+y+ | yairrwee
Ь ь | _half mute_ | _soft sign_
Ѣ ѣ | ye _in_ y+e+t | yaht
Э э | e _in_ m+e+t | a
Ю ю | u _in_ +u+niform | you
Я я | ya _in_ +y+ard | yah
Ѳ ѳ | f _in_ +f+ine | feetah
Ѵ ѵ | i _in_ s+i+ck | eezhitsa
SOME NECESSARY RUSSIAN WORDS
The following list of words, of course, does not pretend to be an
English-Russian vocabulary, but simply the smallest possible number of
words which a traveller would need in crossing Siberia. It would be
well, of course, to know many more. But it would be possible for the
traveller to make this journey with the limited means of communication
with his fellow-travellers, restaurant-keepers, hotel-proprietors,
train-men and steam-boat officials that are here put at his disposal.
As it is impossible, of course, in a volume of this character to give
anything like a complete vocabulary, I have thought that a very small
fraction of a loaf was better than no bread, and that this was not one
of the cases when a little knowledge (of Russian) was a dangerous thing.
Cardinal Numbers
одинъ, one.
два, two.
три, three.
четыре, four.
пять, five.
шесть, six.
семь, seven.
восемь, eight.
девять, nine.
десять, ten.
English-Russian Vocabulary
Able (to be), быть въ состояніи.
accident, несчастніе.
act (to), дѣйствовать.
address (direction), адресъ, надпись.
adieu, прощай, прощайте.
air, воздухъ.
all, весь, вся, все.
America, Америка.
animal, животный.
apartment, комната, квартира.
apple, яблоко.
April, апрѣль.
as, какъ, такъ, такъ какъ.
ask (to), спрашивать.
August, августъ.
Bag, кошелекъ.
baggage, багажъ.
barber, цирюльникъ.
bath, ванна.
bed (bedstead), постель, кровать.
bedroom, спальня.
beefsteak, бифштексъ.
bill (account), счетъ.
boat, лодка.
book, книга.
bookseller, книгопродавецъ.
boot, сапогъ, ботинка.
box (coffer), сундукъ.
bread, хлѣбъ.
breakfast, завтракъ.
business, дѣло.
butter, масло (коровье).
button, пуговиця.
buy (to), покупать, купить.
Cab, дрожки.
cabman, извощикъ.
can (I), я могу.
carriage, карета, телѣга.
carry (to), носить, нести.
chair, стулъ.
chamber, комната.
China, Китай.
church, церковь.
city, городъ.
class, классъ, разрядъ.
clean (to), чистить.
clock (what o’--is it?), который часъ?
clothing, одежда, платье.
coachman, кучеръ.
coffee, кофей.
coffee-house, кофейня.
copeck, копейка, (копѣйка).
cost (to), стоить.
cure (to), лѣчить.
Day, день.
December, Декабрь.
dentist, зубной врачъ.
dinner, обѣдъ.
dirty, грязний.
dish, блюдо, кушаніе.
do (to), дѣлать.
doctor, врачъ, лѣкарь, докторъ.
dress, пгатье.
Eat (to), ѣсть, кушать.
egg, яйцо.
engage (to), уговаривать.
enough, долвольно.
Europe, Европа.
express-train, курьерскій поѣздъ.
Face, лицо.
fact, дѣло.
family, семейство.
farmer, фермеръ.
February, февраль.
first (at), сперва.
fish, рыба.
flour, мука.
flower, цвѣтъ, цвѣтокъ.
foreign, иностранный.
fork, вилка.
fowl, курица.
French, французскій.
Friday, пятница,
friend, пріятель, другъ.
fur, шуба, мѣхъ.
Girl, дѣвочка.
give(to), давать, дать.
glass (drinking), стаканъ.
glove, перчатка.
gold, золото.
good, добрый.
Half, половина, полу ...
handkerchiefs, (носовой) платокъ.
hat, шлапа, шапка.
have (to), имѣть.
here, здѣсь.
hill, холмъ.
horse, конь, лошадь.
hot, жаркій, горячій.
hotel, гостинница.
hour, часъ.
house, домъ, жилище.
how much, сколько.
hungry (to be--), быть голоднымъ.
Ice, ледъ.
ill (sick), больной.
important, важный.
impossible, невозможный.
inhabitant, житель, обитатель.
ink, чернила.
inn, гостинница.
instantly, немедленно.
January, январь.
journal, журналъ.
July, Іюль.
June, Іюнь.
Key, ключъ.
knife, ножъ, ножикъ.
Lady, госпожа.
lamp, лампа, лампада.
landlord, хозяинъ.
language, языкъ.
lantern, фонарь.
large, большой, широкій.
letter, письмо.
light, свѣтъ, сіяніе.
linen, бѣлье.
little (a), мало.
lock, замокъ.
lodging, квартира.
lunch, закуска.
Mail, почта.
man, человѣкъ; men, люди.
many, многіе.
map, карта.
March, Мартъ.
matter (no), бсе равно.
May, Май.
meat, мясо.
mend (to), исправлять.
mile, миля.
milk, молоко.
minute, минута.
Monday, понедѣльникъ.
money, деньги, монета.
morning, утро.
morrow (to), завтра.
Moscow, Москва.
mother, мать.
Name, имя.
needle, иголка.
never, никогда.
news, новость, извѣстіе.
newspaper, вѣдомость, газета.
night, ночь.
no, нѣетъ.
noon, полдень.
north, сѣверъ.
November, ноябрь.
October, октябрь.
overcoat, пальто.
Petersburg (Saint), (Санктъ) Петербургъ.
pillow, подушка.
plate, тарелка.
please (if you--), пожалуйста.
post-office, почтамтъ, почта.
potato, картофель.
promise (to), обѣщать.
pronounce (to), произносить.
province (Russ.), губернія.
purse, кошелекъ.
put (to), класть.
Quarter, четверть.
quickly, скоро.
Railroad, railway, желѣзная дорога.
railway-station, вокзалъ.
rain, дождь.
read (to), читать.
refreshment, освѣженіе.
registered (letter), заказное.
repair (to), поправлять.
rest (repose), отдыхъ.
river, рѣка.
road, дорога, путь.
room, комната.
Russia, Россія.
Russian, Россіянинъ, русскій.
Salt, соль.
Saturday, суббота.
say (to), сказать, говорить.
sea, море.
September, сентябрь.
sheet (bedlinen), простыня.
Siberia, Сибирь.
silver, серебро.
soap, мыло.
soup, супъ, похлебка.
speak (to), говорить.
spoon, ложка.
stay (to), оставаться.
steamboat, steamer, пароходъ.
stocking, чулокъ, носокъ.
stove, печь, печка.
street, улица.
sufficient, достаточный.
sugar, сахаръ.
Sunday, воскресенье.
supper, ужинъ.
sweep (to), мести.
Table, столъ.
table-cloth, скатерть.
talk (to), разговаривать.
tea, чай.
thank (to), благодарить.
there is, вотъ.
thirsty, жаждущій.
Thursday, четвергъ.
ticket, билетъ.
towel, полотенце.
trunk (coffer), сундукъ.
Tuesday, вторникъ.
Vegetables, овощи.
Wagon, вагонъ, телѣга.
wait (to), ждать, пожидать.
waiter, служитель, человѣкъ.
waiting-room, (станціонная) зала.
waken (to), разбудить.
walk (to), гулять, ходить.
want (to), нуждаться, желать.
wash (to), мыть, обмывать.
washerwoman, прачка.
washstand, рукомойникъ.
water, вода.
way, путь, дорога.
Wednesday, среда.
what, что; какой; то что.
when, когда.
wish (to), желать.
woman, жена, женщина.
wood (fuel), дрова.
word, слово.
work (to), работать.
write (to), писать.
Yes, да.
THE END
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Transcriber’s Notes
- Italics represented with surrounding _underscores_.
- Bold text represented with surrounding plus signs+.
- Blackletter represented with surrounding =equal signs=.
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