into the hands of the Dungani, a Mongolian tribe, of Mohammedan faith,
who had been for long in persistent insurrection against the Chinese
rule. It was razed to the ground and no living creature spared. Of
the thirty thousand souls who are said to have inhabited the town,
over a third had found refuge in flight; the rest, confident in the
success with which repeated assaults had been repulsed, remained to
their destruction. When the Dungani succeeded in storming the town,
they showed the same inhuman cruelty which the Chinese had shown to
them. What the sword did not claim was destroyed by fire. When our
escort, Captain Friedrichs, visited the place some fourteen days after
the town had been stormed, the clouds of smoke had cleared from the
charred ruins. Wolves and dogs, with bellies swollen from eating human
flesh, slunk away sated, or refused to be disturbed in their horrible
festival, and continued to gnaw at the bones of their old foes or
masters. Eagles, kites, ravens, and crows shared the spoil. In places
where the insurgents had made space for themselves, the corpses were
thrown together in heaps, dozens and hundreds together; in other parts
of the town, in the streets, courts, and houses, corpses lay singly, in
couples, in tens,--husband and wife, great-grandparents, grandmothers,
mothers, and children, whole families and neighbours who had sought
refuge with them. Their foreheads were gashed with sword-cuts, their
features decayed and burned, their limbs gnawed and torn by the teeth
of dogs and wolves, their bodies headless and handless. Whatever horror
the maddest imagination ever pictured was here realized.
At the present day there are at most a thousand inhabitants in
Tchukutchak, and the newly-erected battlemented fort is actually under
the protection of the small Russian picket of Bakti. That the Dungani
have not yet laid down their arms nor been subdued, was sufficiently
proved by the recent march of a Chinese army into the valley of the
Emil, where insurrection is again threatened.
Under the escort of Major Tichanoff and his thirty Cossacks we
traversed this valley without seeing a single Dungani, indeed without
meeting a human being for days. The Emil, arising from the Zaur, flows
between the Tarabagatai and Semistan--two mountain ranges which meet
at an acute angle--and receives numberless small tributaries on either
side. The genius which the Chinese have for irrigation had utilized all
the streams, and made a fruitful garden of the whole valley till the
Dungani broke into and devastated the fertile land, and surrendered
it once more to the steppe-land from which it had been won. In the
neighbourhood of the town we passed through several small villages, and
we came across a Kalmuck aul, but apart from these we saw only the ruin
of former possession, comfort, and industry. Over the fields Nature
herself had drawn a veil with gentle hand, but the ruined villages,
not yet destroyed by storm and tempest, cried aloud to heaven. When
we visited these villages, the tragedy of bygone days was appallingly
clear. Between the crumbling walls, whose roofs had been burnt and
whose gables had wholly or partially fallen in, on the mouldering
rubbish over which poisonous fungi ran riot, amid remnants of Chinese
porcelain, and half-charred and thus preserved plenishings, we came
everywhere on human remains, crumbling skulls, bones broken by the
teeth of carnivores, and certain parts of the skeletons of domesticated
animals, especially of the dog. The skulls still bore traces of the
heavy blows which shattered them. The inhabitants had fallen before the
rage of their murderous foes, and the dogs had shared the fate of their
masters whom they may have been trying to protect; the other domestic
animals had been driven away, plundered like the rest of the useful
property, and the apparently useless residue had been broken up and
burnt. Only two semi-domesticated animals remain, the swallow and the
sparrow; the rest are replaced by ruin-loving birds.
We passed cheerlessly through the desolate valley. Not one of the
Dungani was to be seen, for behind our thirty Cossacks was the great
power of Russia. The first human beings we came across were Russian
Kirghiz, who, though in Chinese territory, were pasturing their flocks
and tilling their fields as usual, and had even erected a monument to
one of their dead.
From the valley of the Emil we crossed the Tarabagatai by one of the
lowest passes of the range, and thence descended to the almost flat
plateau of Tchilikti, which lies over five thousand feet above the sea,
surrounded by the Tarabagatai, Zaur, Manrak, Terserik, Mustau, and
Urkashar. Crossing the plateau, passing some enormously large _Kurgans_
or sepulchral mounds of the natives, we followed the serpentine valleys
of the infinitely irregular Manrak mountains in order to reach the
plain of Zaizan and the delightful town of the same name which had been
erected as an outpost some four years previously. Here, close to the
Chinese-Russian boundary, we found European comfort and civilization
for the first time since leaving Lepsa. In the society which we enjoyed
we seemed to be back again in St. Petersburg or Berlin. There was
talking, playing, singing, and dancing both within the family circle
and in the public gardens. The melody of nightingales accompanied the
dance and song; one forgot where one was.
I used the time of our sojourn here to hunt “ullars”, mountain-fowl
resembling partridges, but as large as black-cock, and in so doing not
only became acquainted with the wild grandeur of the Manrak mountains,
but saw the life of the poorer Kirghiz herdsmen in a light new to me,
and returned much satisfied with my excursion.
On the afternoon of the 31st May we again set off in our wagon, making
for the Black Irtish in order to meet General Poltoratski at an
appointed rendezvous in the Altai mountains. We drove rapidly through
the rich steppe-land, over coal-black soil, and afterwards over the
drier high-steppes till we came to the river, whose rolling waves bore
us next day to the lake of Zaizan. Hitherto all the Siberian rivers and
streams had seemed rather tedious; but on the Black Irtish it was far
otherwise. We got lovely views of the two great mountains--Zaur and
Altai--and the adjacent ranges, while the fresh green banks, cheerful
with singing birds, gladdened our eyes and ears. A rapid cast of the
net brought us an abundant catch of delicious fishes, and proved that
the river was as rich as it was beautiful. On the 2nd June we crossed
the shallow and muddy lake, exceedingly rich in fishes, but attractive
only in the peeps of distant scenery which were to be got from its
surface, and on the next day we traversed the dreariest part of the
steppe which we had yet seen. Here, however, we made the acquaintance
of three most noteworthy steppe animals--the wild horse or kulan, the
saiga antelope, and Pallas’ sand-grouse. Our Kirghiz secured a kulan
foal and shot one of the birds. In the evening we rested among the
spurs of Altai, and next day we met our former hosts at the appointed
place, and continued our journey under their guidance.
It was a delightful journey, though wind, snow, and rain were all too
frequent, and robbed the pleasant yurt (which we carried with us)
of much of its comfort, though torrents barred our path, and though
we had to find our way along precipitous slopes such as at home a
chamois-hunter, but certainly no horseman would attempt. A Russian
Governor does not travel like an ordinary mortal, least of all when
he journeys through uninhabited territory. He is accompanied by the
district-officers and their subordinates, by the elders and clerks
of the community, by the _elite_ of the district which he visits,
by a troop of Cossacks and their officers including the captain, by
his own servants and those of his escort, &c. And when, as in this
case, the expedition is to a comparatively unknown country, when it
is necessary to consult with Kirghiz communities, the cavalcade is
enormously increased. For not only have yurts and tents to be carried,
as is usual on steppe journeys, but flocks of sheep have to go on in
front of the little army to feed the hundreds on their way through the
barren wilderness. Since leaving the Zaizan lake we had been once more
in China, and a journey of several days had to be faced before we could
hope to come across human settlements, which are confined to the deeper
valleys among the mountains.
At first we were accompanied by more than two hundred men, mostly
Kirghiz, who had been summoned to receive an imperial order relating
to the suspension of their pasture-rights in the crown-lands of the
Altai, and to come to an agreement as to consequent changes in their
wanderings. But even after the deliberations were ended, our retinue
still numbered over a hundred horses and sixty men. In the early
morning the yurts were raised from over our heads and sent on in
front with the baggage; then we followed in companies, riding slowly
until the ladies, the General’s amiable wife and daughter, overtook
us. We breakfasted at some suitable spot, waited till the last of the
pack-horses had gone ahead, and then went on, usually reaching our
halting-place along with the daily dwindling flock of sheep which
always started first. Thus, every evening, we had an opportunity
of watching the pleasant picture of camp-life take form before us.
Lovely verdant valleys full of spring’s fragrance invited us; from the
lofty precipitous mountains, still snow-capped, we got glimpses of
the distant highlands and of the steppe-land, which we had traversed,
stretching to the Zaur and the Tarabagatai; and at last we caught sight
of Markakul--the pearl among the mountain lakes of the Altai--and
entered the highlands proper. For three long days we journeyed along
the lake, hindered by bad roads and bad weather, and delayed by a
Chinese embassy sent to the Governor; then we rode through dense
forests and over scarce surmountable passes, and down by breakneck
paths towards the Russian frontier, and into the fertile valley of
the Buchtarma. There in the newly-established Cossack settlement the
Altaiskaya-Stanitza, we were again able to enjoy Russian hospitality
and to rest in comfort.
The officers of the Stanitza were kind enough to present us with
samples of the produce of the district, and we continued our journey
on the 12th of June. The sun shone cheerfully down from a cloudless
sky on the splendid landscape, now for the first time unveiled.
Immense park-like valleys, surrounded by steeply towering, snow-capped
mountains, suffused with bewitching colours, beautiful trees on the
meadows, blossoming bushes on the slopes, and an infinite wealth of
flowers, beautiful beyond description, and as it were exultant in the
sunlight long denied to them, newly unfolded wild roses, the call of
the cuckoo and songs from a hundred throats, the auls of the Kirghiz
in the broader valleys, and the Russian villages surrounded by green
shrubs, grazing herds, fruitful fields, rushing brooks, and jagged
rocks, mild air and the balmy fragrance breathing of spring--such were
some of the elements which intoxicated the senses and made our journey
a continual delight. Soon we crossed the boundaries of the crown-lands
of the Altai, a property not much smaller than France! At the end of a
day’s journey we reached the little town of Serianoffsk with its silver
mines. After we had been hospitably entertained and had inspected
all the works, we turned again to the Irtish, and were borne by the
rapid stream through deep and picturesque gorges past Buchtarminsk to
Ustkamenogorsk, whence we journeyed in wagons once more through these
crown-lands which give promise of a rich future. Steppe-like plains
adjoin the pleasant tracts which lie along the spurs of the mountains;
extensive forests alternate with cultivated land. Large prosperous
villages; valuable, fertile fields of coal-black soil; well-built men
with a look of conscious prosperity, beautiful women in picturesque
costume, both child-like in their inquisitiveness and in their
good-nature; excellent, serviceable, untiring horses, and powerful,
shapely oxen lying at ease in large herds; an endless succession of
caravans bearing ore and coal along well-made roads, marmots on the
slopes of the mountains, souslik on the plains, imperial eagles on the
guide-posts by the highway, charming little gulls on the water-basins
and about the townships--such cheerful pictures enlivened our route. We
hastened through the country as if in flight, paying a passing visit
to the mining town appropriately called Schlangenberg (Snake-town),
and allowing ourselves but a short rest in the country-town of Barnaul.
Thence we journeyed to the little hill-town of Zalair, and thence to
the great government-town of Tomsk.
[Illustration: Fig. 59.--Imperial Eagle, Marmot, and Souslik.]
Before we came to Barnaul we had reached the Obi; at Barnaul we crossed
it, and at Tomsk we embarked on board a boat. Through its tributary the
Tom we entered this giant river, whose basin is larger than that of
all the west European rivers taken together, and sailed for about 1700
miles, towards the north. For four days and nights the river--flooded
to its highest water-mark--bore us at a rate almost twice as quick
as a steamboat hastening up-stream; we required eleven full days and
nights to cover the distance between the mouth of the Irtish and that
of the Shtchutshya, although we only rested a few hours in Samarowo
and Bereosoff, and did not include in our reckoning the two days which
we spent in Obdorsk, the last Russian village on the river. The river
is gigantic and most impressive, dreary and monotonous though it be
called. In one valley, whose breadth varied from six to sixteen miles,
it split up into numerous branches surrounding countless islands, and
often broadening out into extensive lake-like shallows; near its mouth
the depth of water in the main stream--miles in breadth--was on an
average about 90 feet. Primeval forests, hardly broken by clearings,
into whose heart not even the natives have penetrated, clothed the true
banks of the river; willow-woods in all stages of growth covered the
islands, which are continually carved at by the floods, eaten away, and
built up afresh. The further down we went the poorer became the land,
the thinner and more scanty the woods, the more miserable the villages,
though as the river nears its mouth the water liberally supplies the
food which the land itself denies. Not far below Tomsk, beyond Tobolsk,
the soil ceases to reward cultivation, further down the grazing of
cattle gradually ceases; but the river teems with shoals of valuable
fishes, and the primeval forests along its shores yield rich spoil to
the huntsman. Fisher-folk and huntsmen replace the peasants, and the
reindeer herdsmen the cattle tenders. Russian settlements become more
and more rare, the homes of the Ostiaks become more frequent, until
at length the only visible signs of man’s presence are the movable,
conical, birch-bark huts or “tshums” of the Ostiaks, and occasional
exceedingly miserable log-huts, the temporary shelters of Russian
fishermen.
[Illustration: Fig. 60.--An Ostiak Settlement on the Banks of the Obi.]
We had determined to explore a tundra or moss-steppe, and had therefore
fixed upon the Samoyede peninsula between the Ob and the Kara Sea, all
the more because a solution of certain important commercial problems
was to be looked for in this portion of the broad treeless zone which
encircles the pole--a region, moreover, on which Europeans had scarcely
as yet set foot. In Obdorsk and further down-stream we hired for this
journey several Russians, Syryanians, Ostiaks, and Samoyedes, and set
out on the 15th of July.
From the northern heights of the Ural range, which is here represented
by lofty mountains, three rivers arise near one another, the Ussa, a
tributary of the Petchora, the Bodarata, which enters the Kara Sea,
and the Shtchutshya, which flows into the Obi. It was the basin of the
last, Shtchutshya, which we determined to visit. But no one could tell
us what the country was like, how we should fare, whether we might hope
to find reindeer or be forced to go afoot.
To the mouth of the Shtchutshya river we journeyed in the usual
fashion, paying off our oarsmen at each Ostiak settlement and hiring
others; when we reached the river our own followers began their work.
For eight days we worked slowly up the stream, following its countless
serpentine windings further into the monotonous, indeed dismally
tedious tundra, now approaching the Ural range, and again diverging
from it. For eight long days we saw no human beings, but only traces
of their presence,--their necessary property packed on sledges for the
winter, and their burial-places. Treacherous swamps on both sides of
the river prevented us from making inland excursions, and millions of
bloodthirsty mosquitoes tormented us without ceasing. On the seventh
day we saw a dog--quite an event for us and our crew; on the eighth day
we came upon an inhabited tshum, and in it the only man who could tell
us about the country before us. We took him with us as a guide, and
with him, three days later, we set out on an expedition which proved as
dangerous as it was fatiguing.
We were told that reindeer were to be found nine full days’ journey
from us, on the pasturage of Saddabei in the Ural range; at this season
there was not one to be got near the Shtchutshya. There was nothing
for it but to set off on foot, and to face, as best we might, the
difficulties and hardships of a journey through a pathless, barren,
mosquito-plagued district, altogether hostile to man, and worst of
all--unknown!
After careful and prolonged consultation with the natives our
preparations were made, the burdens which each one was to bear were
carefully weighed, for the spectre of starvation loomed before us. Full
well we knew that only the nomad herdsman--but no huntsman--was able
to keep body and soul together on the tundra; well we knew by previous
experience all the trials of the pathless way, all the torments which
the army of mosquitoes promised, the inconstancy of the weather, and
the general inhospitability of the tundra, and we made our preparations
with due consideration of all these. But we could not prepare for
what we did not know and could not foretell, and for what, in fact,
eventually befell us. Not that we wished to turn back, though, had we
foreseen what was to happen, we might well have done so.
Dressed in short fur, heavily laden with knapsack, weapons, and
ammunition, we set off on the 29th of July, leaving our boat in the
charge of two of our company. Painfully we tramped, gasping under
our burdens, stopping every hour and half hour, and at length every
thousand paces, but finding no rest on account of the mosquitoes,
which tortured us day and night without ceasing. We ascended countless
hills, and traversed as many valleys, we waded through as many marshes
and morasses; we passed by hundreds of nameless lakes, and crossed a
multitude of swamps and streams.
As it happened, the tundra could not well have been more inhospitable.
The wind beat the drizzling rain into our faces; drenched to the skin
we lay down on the soaking soil, without roof to cover us, or fire
to warm us, and unceasingly tormented by mosquitoes. But the sun
dried us again, gave us new courage and strength, and on we went. A
piece of good news did us more good than sun or sleep. Our followers
discovered two tshums, and with our field-glasses we distinctly saw the
reindeer around them. Heartily delighted, we already pictured ourselves
stretched comfortably in the sledge, the only possible vehicle in such
a district, and we seemed to see the quickly-stepping antlered team. We
reached the tshum and the reindeer; a dismal sight met our eyes. For
among the herds splenic fever was raging--the most dreadful, and for
man also the most dangerous of plagues, the most inexorable messenger
of death, unsparing and merciless. Against its ruin-bringing attacks
man is powerless; it reduces peoples to poverty, and claims its victims
as surely from among men as among beasts.[81]
I counted seventy-six dead reindeer in the immediate neighbourhood
of the tshum. Wherever the eye turned it lighted on carcasses or on
beasts, both young and old, lying at their last gasp. Others came, with
death at their heart, to the sledges already loaded for departure, as
if they hoped to find help and safety in the neighbourhood of man.
They would not be driven away, but remained stock-still for a couple
of minutes with staring eyes and crossed fore-legs, then swayed from
side to side, groaned and fell; a white foam issued from mouth and
nose, a few convulsions, and another was dead. Milk-giving mothers and
their calves separated themselves from the herd; the mothers succumbed
with similar symptoms; the calves looked on curiously, as if amazed
at their mother’s strange behaviour, or grazed unconcernedly beside
the death-bed. When they came near, and found instead of their devoted
mother a corpse, they snuffed at this, recoiled in terror, and hastened
away, straying hither and thither and crying. They sought to approach
one or other of the adults, but were repulsed by all, and continued
lowing and searching until they found what they did not seek--death,
from an arrow sped by the hand of their owner, who sought to save at
least their skin. Death was equally unsparing of old and young; before
the destroying angel the strongest and stateliest stags fell as surely
as the yearlings of both sexes.
Schungei, the owner of the herd, his relatives and servants, hurried
to and fro among the dead and dying beasts, seeking with mad eagerness
to save whatever was possible. Although not unaware of the dreadful
danger to which they exposed themselves if the minutest drop of blood
or a particle of the infected foam should enter their system, knowing
well that hundreds of their race had died in agony from the incurable
plague, they worked with all their strength skinning the poisoned
corpses. A blow from a hatchet ended the sufferings of the dying deer,
an arrow killed the calves, and in a few minutes the skin--which for
weeks is quite capable of spreading the infection--was off and lying
beside the others. With blood-stained hands the men dipped morsels
cut from the bodies of the calves into the blood collected in the
chest-cavity, and swallowed them raw. The men seemed like executioners,
the women like horrible harpies, and both like blood-smeared hyænas
wallowing in carrion. Careless of the sword of death which hung over
their heads, rather by a gossamer thread than by a hair, they grubbed
and wallowed, helped even by their children, from half-grown boys down
to a little girl hardly more than a suckling.
The tshums were shifted to an adjacent hill. The unfortunate herd,
which had started from the Ural two thousand strong, and had now
dwindled to a couple of hundred, whose path was marked by a line of
carcasses, was collected afresh around the tshum; but next morning
there were again forty corpses around the resting-place.
We knew the danger of infection from animals with splenic fever or
anthrax, but we had not adequately appreciated its extent. Thus we
bought some fresh, apparently quite healthy reindeer, harnessed them to
three sledges, loaded these with our baggage, and striding beside them
went on our way lightened. The plague forbade us from getting reindeer
flesh to eat, as we had hoped, and we began to look around more
carefully and anxiously for some small game, a willow grouse, a great
snipe, a golden plover, or a duck. Sparing our slender supplies to the
utmost, we crouched around the miserable fire, whenever the least of
Diana’s nymphs had been propitious, and collectively roasted our paltry
spoil as best we might. Of satisfying our hunger there was no longer
any possibility.