Chapter X: Irkoutsk to Tomsk (3)

Krasnoiarsk, which stands on a plain fringed by the precipitous cliffs of red earth, from which the town takes its name, is neither picturesque nor interesting. Wooden hovels here, stone palaces there, wooden pavements, oil lamps, open drains by the roadway, deep mud in rainy weather, blinding dust in dry; dirty, greasy men, frowsy, ill-dressed women, Cossack soldiers, and occasional gangs of prisoners; such is the visible population. For one thing only is Krasnoiarsk famous: its fire brigade. There are at least thirty watch-towers in the town, and the stations are models of smartness and cleanliness. Though so frequent at Irkoutsk, Tomsk, and the other smaller towns, a bad fire here is rare.

We paid a visit while at Krasnoiarsk to the Whiteley of Siberia——one, Gadolovitch, in whose establishments at Irkoutsk, Tomsk, Atchisk, Krasnoiarsk, and Tobolsk, almost anything may be purchased, from a Waterbury watch to a ship’s anchor, and, curiously enough, at reasonable prices. I bought a box of revolver cartridges at Krasnoiarsk cheaper than I should have paid for them in London or Paris.

The morning of the 9th of September saw us once more _en route_. The road, after leaving the town, skirts for some distance the banks of the Yenisei river, that huge volume of water which, rising on the borders of China, traverses half Asia to discharge itself into the Gulf of Yenisei in the Arctic Ocean, its entire length being computed to be something over three thousand miles. It is, of course, unnavigable throughout the winter, though that intrepid explorer, Captain Wiggins, has satisfactorily demonstrated that, during the summer months, water communication between England and Central Siberia is by no means impossible.

Our axle now gave us a good deal of anxiety, for before we were many miles out the tarantass was leaning over at a most uncomfortable angle. The road, too, was worse than it had been since leaving Lake Baikal, and every roll the carriage made gave us the greatest anxiety, for there was no blacksmith procurable nearer than Atchinsk, nearly two hundred versts off. It put us out of our suspense at Kosoulskaya by snapping in two altogether, although we were going at a most gingerly pace, precipitating the yemstchik into the road, where, had it not been for the hood of the tarantass, Lancaster and I should have followed him.

Here was a pretty predicament. Luckily the horses were quiet, and stood still while we scrambled out to ascertain the extent of the damage. Luckier still, we were only four versts from the post-house——the last before Atchinsk. Lopping off a couple of stout fir boughs, our yemstchik prized the carriage up straight, and, mounting one of the horses, galloped off to Chernoyéchinsk in quest of another axle and pair of wheels, by the aid of which we might, at any rate, reach Atchinsk.

Luckily the day was fine, and though the mosquitoes were troublesome, we had plenty of cigarettes and half a dozen bottles of claret, which we had purchased at Krasnoiarsk, to while away the weary hours. Being a lonely part of the road, we loaded the revolvers, and kept them ready in case of need. Nothing passed us, however, the whole, long, weary day, from eight in the morning, when the accident occurred, till 5 p.m., but a couple of hay-carts and a gang of three hundred prisoners, most of them in chains, followed by six télégas with political prisoners, four women and two men, the latter on foot. Two of the women were young and pretty, and laughed heartily, as they passed, at our woe-begone condition, and, indeed, we must have looked somewhat ridiculous, seated in the middle of the road in our tarantass, with the hind-wheels and axle gone, propped up on a couple of fir-trees, solemnly discussing a bottle of claret! A casual observer might have taken the political exiles for a pleasure-party, to judge from the shouts of merry laughter that rang through the forest long before they came in sight. The smart, tweed gowns and Tam-o’-Shanter hats (this seems to be the uniform of Nihilist ladies) looked strangely out of keeping with the rough wooden télégas and dirty straw on which they were seated. And yet the youngest and prettiest girl of them all was, we afterwards heard, on her way to Irkoutsk for life. She could not have been more than eighteen, and was as neatly turned out, with _gants de Suéde_ and neat grey dress, as if she had come from a walk in the Bois de Boulogne or Hyde Park, instead of a long twenty-days’ march from Tomsk. The men, too, were well dressed and respectable looking, though their high spirits were evidently assumed for the occasion, while those of the women were perfectly natural.

The yemstchik returned about four o’clock, accompanied by two villagers carrying an iron axle. It was a clumsy affair enough, having been taken off one of the Post télégas; but as it was only a temporary affair, this did not much signify. We arrived at Taoutinsk, the next station to Atchinsk, at ten o’clock that night without further mishap. At times, though, the tarantass wobbled about terribly, and we constantly expected to find ourselves in the old position——feet upwards. The yemstchik who drove us the last stage could not possibly have been more than twelve years old. The stage was only sixteen versts, luckily, and I luckily kept an eye on the proceedings of our youthful jehu; for about half way, being about to descend a long and very steep hill, he got down from his box, and gravely proceeded to put the skid _behind_ the front wheel instead of before the hind one!

Atchinsk is, if not the largest, decidedly the most taking town we saw in Siberia. It has a population of about ten thousand, and is built on the summits of five or six low hills. The grassy hollows between these are used as common land, where cattle, pigs, and geese roam about at will. The cheerful aspect of the place, when compared with other Siberian towns, is partly due to the fact that the soil is of a much lighter colour, and nearly all the wooden buildings are painted white or grey, picked out with bright colours. The immediate neighbourhood of Atchinsk, too, is free of forest. The town stands in the middle of a large grass plain watered by the Chulim river——a plain composed of large enclosed grass meadows, where, as we drove by that bright sunshiny morning, cattle and sheep were browsing, knee deep in rich, luxuriant pasture, and wild flowers. Atchinsk is the one bright spot of that weary journey——an oasis of flowers and sunshine in the dark, dreary desert of gloom and monotony lying between Tomsk and Irkoutsk. The post-house was clean and roomy, the waiting-room boasting a carpet, plenty of chairs, and a sofa, while the snowy, whitewashed walls hung with bright engravings, and the windows filled with flowers, gave a cheerful look to the place that up till now I had thought impossible to find in a Siberian dwelling. We were glad of a rest of twenty-four hours here (the time necessary for the completion of our repairs), and after an excellent breakfast of caviare, fried eggs, and beefsteak, sallied out refreshed in body and mind to find a blacksmith.

The town was _en fête_ for some reason or other. Bells were ringing, the houses decorated with flags and evergreens, and people all turned out in their Sunday best. It was not reassuring, on reaching the principal square, to find that all the shops were shut, save the public houses, where crowds of natives were refreshing themselves with vodka and other spirituous liquors, preparatory to the mid-day meal. Some were drinking at the bar, others seated at the little tables by the doorway, others rolling about in the bright sunshine outside, but all, men and women, were even at this early hour——11.30 a.m.——more or less drunk.

The blacksmiths’ quarter was, I found, at the other end of the town, and we had to walk nearly a mile before reaching the forge. Like many oriental towns, each trade in Atchinsk has its own street, and we found a regular colony of smithies, but all, alas! closed, and their owners either inside their houses sleeping off the effects of the previous day’s debauch (the _fête_ lasted two days), or laying in a fresh stock of vodka and brandy in the town. We knocked at and entered at least a dozen houses before we found a man sober enough to undertake our job. Nor would he till we had promised to pay him a ridiculously large sum in proportion to the work, and to keep him well provided with liquor till it was finished. We regarded the wheel with some uneasiness for two or three days after, but our friend, drunk as he was, had made a good job of it, and we arrived at Tomsk without further mishap.

Leaving Atchinsk on the morning of the 11th of September, we passed the same day between Bogotolsk and Bolshoi-Kosoul, the two high brick pillars that mark the boundary of Eastern and Western Siberia. We had now entered the Government of Tomsk.

The tedium of the journey now palled on one terribly. No one can thoroughly understand the meaning of the word “monotony,” who has not visited Siberia, and travelled for hour after hour, day after day, week after week, along its dark, pine-girt roads. Along the whole of the post-road from Irkoutsk, distances are marked by wooden posts, painted black and white, placed at every verst, while at every post-station a large board indicates the distance from the chief towns. My heart sank whenever I looked at these and saw the word Petersburg, with the appalling number of oughts under it. The few versts from station to station were bad enough, but when it came to the six thousand odd separating us from Petersburg, one almost gave up all hope of ever seeing Europe again. However bright the sunshine or blue the sky, a sense of depression and loneliness hung over one, impossible to shake off. I have never, even in the depths of a Bornean forest, felt so utterly lonely and cut off from the rest of the civilized world as when crossing Siberia. It is rightly named by Russians, the land of exile and sorrow; and the dreariest days I have ever experienced were those spent in traversing the wild tract of forest and steppe between Irkoutsk and Tomsk. One chafed and fretted at first at the daily difficulties, the hours of delay passed in waiting for relays that never arrived——hours that seemed endless by day, but became maddening by night. After a time, however, one saw the folly of attempting to fight against fate, and fell into a state of reckless apathy, a condition of mind I should recommend any traveller adopting who intends crossing Siberia, I will not say with comfort, but without being positively driven out of his mind. Towards the end of our journey, nothing put us out. I verily believe if the tarantass had stood on its head, or rather hood, we should have taken it quite as a matter of course, and remained quietly seated till it righted itself! Everything after the first week became mechanical. Drinking tea at the stations, going to sleep at a moment’s notice, if there were no horses, harnessing them at once if there were, and returning to the depths of our gloomy vehicle, there to lie hour after hour, day after day, with nothing to look at but the black road and eternal pine-forests, nothing to think of save fair civilized Europe, so far away, but to which one felt with a kind of gloomy satisfaction, every jingle of the collar-bells was bringing us nearer. Even the scenery does not atone for all these drawbacks. The Siberian forests are not grand, but the trees have a dwarfish look produced by the immense plains. Not a bird, not a sound, is heard in these vast solitudes, and when the horses stop and the bells are silent, the stillness becomes almost oppressive.

Two stations after Atchinsk, the weather changed, and the second day out the rain was pouring down in sheets, with the usual result, that of wetting us through and through after the first hour. The post-houses about here were the filthiest we had as yet come across, and saving stale eggs and sour milk, there was absolutely nothing to eat. Yet with all these _contretemps_, we could not grumble, for rain as it might, we were now safe as regards the steamer, which would soon, we thought with relief, be bearing us out of this cursed country for good and all!

There were no delays to speak of till reaching Haldiéva. But arriving here at four o’clock on the afternoon of the 14th September, we found all the horses engaged. We were now but some thirty versts from Tomsk, so could afford to wait, and change our soaking garments for dry ones. For two days and a night we had been wet through, and were chilled to the bone.

A roaring fire and three or four glasses of vodka soon put things in a rosier light, and we retired to rest with an assurance from the post-master that at 4 a.m. at latest the horses would be forthcoming, and visions of civilization and a luxurious _déjeûner à la fourchette_ at Tomsk next day, mingled with our dreams, till at about 3 a.m. the sound of wheels and trampling of hoofs brought us back to reality. Looking out into the yard, I descried a confused mass of télégas and tarantasses. By-and-by a torch flashed on the gold-laced cap of a courier standing up in a tarantass and superintending the proceedings. It was the mail! “No horses till five to-morrow afternoon, monsieur,” said the old post-master, as he and the courier, a smart stalwart young fellow, armed with a long cavalry sabre and brace of revolvers, sat down to a glass of tea and cigarette while the relays were put in. A quarter of an hour more, and they were away again, leaving us to grumble and curse our ill-luck, as the sound of their collar-bells died away on the clear, frosty air. We did not get away from Haldiéva till past 5 p.m. the following day. The clear amber light of the setting sun was flooding the dark green forest of fir-trees when we reached Semiloujnaya, the last station before Tomsk. The journey from Haldiéva had been a hard one, for the country was flooded, and the water in parts well over the axles. The last stage was a long one, twenty-nine versts, but we refused to accede to the post-master’s pressing invitation to stay the night, and proceed next morning. We had good cause to regret our obstinacy ere morning. By six o’clock the relay was in, and a few minutes after we rattled out of the village, as with a loud clashing of bells the wiry little horses tore away on our last stage in Siberia, flinging the mud and stones high in air behind them, as if in derision at the desolate and depressing country we were now (thank Heaven!) fast leaving behind us.

The sky was still grey and lowering, and the wind keen. We had now left the forest altogether, and were traversing the vast plains that encircle the capital of Western Siberia for some thirty miles on every side. There is practically no road here, the yemstchiks taking their own line, and steering for the city in their own fashion; evidently, however, our wretched driver had but a poor eye for locality, for after floundering helplessly about for three or four hours, he calmly pulled up in the middle of a huge lake of water, the overflow from a stream hard by, and confessed that he had lost his way. I looked at my watch; the hands pointed to a quarter before midnight; we had already been six hours on the way, and the horses were dead beat.

I resisted the temptation to pull the idiot off his perch and give him a sound ducking. He richly deserved it, but it would have done but little good in hastening our arrival. So we set about making casts, to use a hunting expression, and after four hours of the coldest and most disagreeable work that has ever fallen to my lot, a thin bright streak appeared on the horizon. We led the horses all this time, be it mentioned, and were as often as not up to our waists in the pools of icy cold water that covered the marshy plain. But the longest lane must have a turning, and by three o’clock we were rolling wearily through the silent and deserted streets of Tomsk.

“Nothing but distance now separates us from England,” I thought as we entered the portals of the comfortable Hôtel d’Europe, “and what is distance when steam is at hand to overcome it!” We turned into a real bed two hours later (with sheets and pillow-cases), and felt, after an excellent supper, contented, not to say triumphant. Trouble, privation, filthy post-houses, “katorgi,” were now things of the past, but as I sank into the deep and dreamless sleep that a man can only know who has passed twenty-two days out in the open, half starved, and wet through the greater part of the time, the thought uppermost in my mind was: “Not for a king’s ransom would I do this journey again.”

————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

_List of Post Stations (with Distances, Telegraph Stations, and Rivers),
between Irkoutsk and Tomsk, Siberia._

(G.) Good Post-house, (B.) Bad Post-house, (F.) Uninhabitable.

VERSTS

_Irkoutsk._ (Telegraph Station. Ferry over River Angara.)
Good hotel.

Bokofskaya (G.) 13 Soukovskaya. (G.) 21 Tilminskaya. (B.) 27 Maltinskaya. (G.) 21 Polovilnaya. (G.) 29 Cheremoffskaya. (G.) 18 Koutoulik. (B.) 28 Zalarinsk. (B.) 30 Tiretskaya. _River Oka dangerous. Cross by day._ (B.) 22 Ziminskaia. (G.) 25 Kinultinskaya. Telegraph Station. (G.) 30 Listvinskaya. (G.) 20 Kouitoungskaya. (B.) 18 Tilinskaya. (F.) 23 Cheragilskaya. (B.) 18 Touloung. (B.) 26 Kourjinskaya. (B.) 25 Shabartinskaya. (G.) 21 Houdalanskaya. (G.) 21 Kirgitoulskaya. (F.) 26 _Nijni Udinsk._ Telegraph Station. (G.) 21 Oukovskaya. (F.) 28 Kamoushetzkaya. (G.) 17½ Zamzovskaya. (G.) 24 Alzaminskaya. (G.) 25 Rasgonnaia. (B.) 19½ Bayeronovskaya. (G.) 25 Biriousinsk. (G.) 21 Polovina. (G.) 23 Kloutchínskaya. (B.) 19 Tinskaya. (G.) 28 Nijni-Gatchefskaya. (G.) 25 Ilianskaya. (B.) 26 _Kansk._ Telegraph Station and River. (G.) 27 Bolshoirinskaya. (B.) 25 Klontchefskaya. (B.) 22 Borodinskaya. (B.) 16 Ribinskaya. (G.) 16 Ouyarskaya. (B.) 20 Balaiskaya. (B.) 24 Tertege. (G.) 17 Kokinskaya. (G.) 14 Botoiskaya. (B.) 25 _Krasnoiarsk._ Telegraph Station. Ferry over Yenisei River, and 29 Fair Inn. Zaldievka. (B.) 21 Sokofskaya. (G.) 18 Malokemchougsk. (B.) 18 Ivrulskaya. (B.) 21½ Bolshitiemshimsk. (Ferry). (G.) 16 Kasoulskaya. (G.) 16 Chernoyéchinsk. (G.) 22 Taoutinsk. (B.) 16 _Atchinsk._ Telegraph Station and Ferry. (G.) 16 Bieloyarski. (G.) 13 Krasnoiejinska. (G.) 17 Bogotolsk. (G.) 30 Bolshoi-Kosoul. (B.) 16 Itatskaya. (B.) 18 Pomejoutotchnaya. (F.) 17 Tiajniskaya. (G.) 16 Souslofkaya. (G.) 28 _Marinsk._ Telegraph Station and Ferry. (G.) 24 Podielnichnaya (G.) 23 Birikoulskaya. (B.) 28 Potchitansk. (F.) 27 Kolinskaya. (G.) 23 Ichimskaya. (F.) 22 Trountaiva. (F.) 22 Haldiéva. (B.) 22 Semiloujnaya. (B.) 14 _Tomsk._ Telegraph Station. Good Inn. 29

Price of posting: Horses three kopeks, a verst each from _Irkoutsk_ to _Bogotolsk_. From Bogotolsk to Tomsk, 1½ kopeks a verst.

—————

Footnote 12:

Extract from the _Volga Messenger_, of October 16th, 1887:——

“The entire tract of country between Tomsk and Irkoutsk is infested
with runaway convicts, so that travelling in this region, especially
on dark autumn nights, is extremely dangerous. Lately a whole family
was murdered at the distance of a few versts from Irkoutsk, and we
hear of such cases frequently enough. So bad is the state of the roads
in this respect, that the Government is about to put a stop to it by
abolishing exile to Siberia, and a proposal to this effect is now
under the consideration of the Imperial Council.”

Footnote 13:

A kind of spruce beer.

Footnote 14:

Such a one is the young and beautiful Countess Ignatieff, wife of the
Governor of Irkoutsk, who, it would seem, is as much at home in the
frozen forests of Eastern Siberia as in the salons of Paris or
Petersburg. One of her latest exploits was to accompany the general to
Yakoutsk——a voyage of three months from Irkoutsk——the greater part of
which had to be accomplished in small birch-bark canoes.

Footnote 15:

Are there any horses?

————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————