Chapter XV: Out of Asia Into Europe 180 (3)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.