THE VOLGA.
From Kazan to the Caspian Sea, the Volga flows between Islam and
Christendom. One small town, Samara, has been planted on the eastern
bank--a landing-place for Orenburg and the Kirghiz Steppe. All other
towns--Simbirsk, Volsk, Saratof, Tsaritzin--rise on the western bank,
and look across the river towards the Ural Ridge. Samara is a Kirghiz,
rather than a Russian town, and but for the military posts, and the
traffic brought along the military roads, the place would be wholly in
Moslem hands. Samara has a name in the East as a place for
invalids--the cure being wrought by means of fermented mare's milk,
the diet and medicine of rovers on the Tartar Steppe.
A Christian settlement of the Volga line from Kazan to the Caspian Sea
must be a work of time. Three hundred and seventeen years have passed
since Ivan the Terrible stormed Kazan; three hundred and twelve years
since his armies captured Astrakhan and opened a passage through
Russia to the Caspian Sea; yet the Volga is a frontier river to this
very hour; and it is not too much to say that the noblest watercourse
in Europe is less familiar to English merchants in Victoria's time
than it was in Elizabeth's time.
The first boats which sailed the Volga, from her upper waters to her
mouth, were laden with English goods. So soon as Challoner found a way
up the Dvina, a body of merchants formed themselves into a society for
discovering unknown lands, and this body of London merchants was the
means of opening up Eastern Russia to the world.
The man who first struck the Volga was Anthony Jenkinson, agent of
these discoverers, who brought out a cargo of cottons and kerseys,
ready dyed and dressed, of lead and tin for roofing churches; and a
vast assortment of pewter pots; all of which his masters in London
expected him to exchange for the gums and silks, the gold and pearls,
of mythical Cathay. Coming from the Frozen Sea, he noticed with a
trader's eye that the land through which he passed was rich in hides,
in fish, in salt, in train-oil, in furs, in pitch, and timber; while
it was poor in many other things besides cotton shirts and pewter
pots. Sailing up the Dvina to Vologda, he noted that town as a place
for future trade; crossed the water-shed of Central Russia to Jaroslav
and Moscow; dropped down the river Oka; and fell into the Volga at
Nijni, the only town in which trade was being done, until he reached
the Caspian Sea. The Volga banks were overrun by Tartar hordes, who
took their spoil from every farm, and only spared the towns from fear.
In ten weeks his rafts reached Astrakhan, where he saw, to his great
surprise and joy, the riches of Persia and Bokhara lying about in the
bazars in heaps; the alum, galls, and spices; the gems and filigrees,
the shawls and bands, which he knew would fetch more in the London
markets than their weight in gold. By hugging the northern shores of
the Caspian Sea, he made the port of Mangishlak, in the Khanate of
Khiva, early in autumn; and hiring from the natives a thousand camels,
he loaded these patient beasts with his pots and pans, his sheetings
and shirtings, and marched by the caravan road over the Tamdi Kuduk to
Khiva, and thence across the range of Shiekh Djeli, and along the
skirts of the great desert of Kizil Kum to Bokhara, near the gates of
which he encamped on the day before Christmas-eve. There, to his
grief, he learned that the caravan road farther east was stopped, in
consequence of a war between tribes in the hill country of Turkestan;
and after resting in the city of Bokhara for some weeks, he gave up
his project, and, turning his face to the westward, returned to Moscow
and London by the roads which he had found.
Three years later he was again in Moscow, chaffering with raftsmen for
a voyage to the Caspian Sea. Queen Bess was now on the throne, and
Jenkinson bore a letter from his sovereign to the Tsar, suggesting the
benefits of trade and intercourse between his people and the society;
and asking for his kingly help in opening up his towns and ports.
Ivan the Terrible was quick to perceive how much his power might be
increased by the arts and arms which these strangers could bring him
in their ships. Like Peter the Great in his genius for war, Ivan was
only too well aware that, in comparison with the Swedes and Poles, his
people were savages; and that his troops, though brave as wolves and
hardy as bears, were still no match for such armies as the Baltic
powers could send into the field. The glory of his early triumphs in
the East and South had been dimmed by defeats inflicted upon him by
his civilized enemies, the Poles; and the conquests of Kazan, Siberia,
and Astrakhan, were all but forgotten in the reverses of his later
years. He wanted ships, he wanted guns; the best of which, he had
heard, could be bought for money in Elizabeth's ports, and brought to
the Dvina in English ships. He was too great a savage to read the
queen's letter in the way she wished; he cared no whit for maps, and
could not bend his mind to the sale of hemp and pewter pots; but he
saw in the queen's letter, which was addressed to him as Tsar, a
recognition of the rank he had assumed, and the offer of a connection
which he hoped to turn into a political alliance of the two powers.
While Ivan was weaving his net of policy, the English rafts were
dropping down the Volga, towards Astrakhan, through hordes of Tartar
horse. From Astrakhan they coasted the Caspian towards the south,
landed at the port of Shabran, and, passing over the Georgian Alps,
rode on camels through Shemaka and Ardabil, to Kasbin, then a
residence of the Persian Shah. To him the queen had also sent a letter
of friendship, and Jenkinson proposed to draw the great lines of
Persian traffic by the Caspian and the Volga, to Archangel; connecting
London and Kasbin by a near, a cheap, and an easy road; passing
through the countries of a single prince, a natural ally of the Shah
and of the Queen, instead of through the territories and waters of the
Turk--the Venetian, the Almaigne, and the Dutch. The scheme was bold
and new; of vast importance to the Russ, who had then no second outlet
to the sea. But the Shah had just made peace with his enemy the
Sultan, which compelled him to restore the ancient course of trade
between the East and West.
Four years later, William Johnson, also an agent of the society, was
sent from Archangel to Kasbin, with orders to make a good map of the
River Volga and the Caspian Sea, and to build an English factory at
Astrakhan for the Persian and Chinese trade. The Dvina was also
studied and laid down, and the countries dividing her upper waters
from the Volga were explored. A track had been worn by the natives
from Vologda, one of the antique towns of Moscovy, famous for bells
and candles, to Jaroslav, on the Volga; and along this track it was
possible to transport the bales and boxes of English goods. This line
was now laid down for the Persian and Oriental trade to follow, and
factories were built in convenient spots along the route; the
headquarters being fixed at Archangel and Astrakhan.
The Tsar sent home by Jenkinson not only a public letter to the queen,
in which he asked her to send him cannon and ships, with men who could
sail them; but a secret and verbal message, in which he proposed to
make such a treaty of peace and alliance with her as that they should
have the same friends and the same foes; and that if either of the two
rulers should have need to quit his states, he might retire with
safety and honor into those of the other. To the first he received no
answer, and when Jenkinson returned to Russia on his trade affairs,
the Tsar, who thought he had not delivered his message word for word,
received him coldly, and ill-used the merchants in his empire; on
which Thomas Randolph, a wily and able minister, was sent from London
to pacify the tyrant, and protect our countrymen from his rage. But
Randolph was treated worse than all; for on his arrival at Moscow, he
was not only refused an audience, but placed in such custody that
every one saw he was a prisoner. The letters sent to him by the queen
were kept back, and those which he wrote to her were opened and
returned. After eight months were passed in these insults, he was
called to Vologda, received by the Tsar, and commanded to quit the
Russian soil. So much insolence was used, that he was told by one of
the boyars if he were not quick in going they would pitch his baggage
out-of-doors.
Yet Randolph, patient and experienced, kept his temper, and when he
left the Tsar he had a commercial charter in his trunk, and a special
agent of Ivan in his train. This agent, Andrew Gregorivitch, bore a
letter to the queen (in Russ), in which he prayed her to sign a treaty
of war and peace against all the world; and to grant him an asylum in
her realm in case he should be driven from his own. Andrew found that
the queen could make no treaty of the kind, though she was ready to
promise his master an asylum in her states, where he might practise
his own religion, and live at his own expense. He then gave ear to an
impostor named Eli Bomel, a native of Wesel, whom he found in an
English jail. This wretch, who professed to work by magic and the
stars, proposed to go with Andrew to Russia and serve the Tsar. The
agent asked for a pardon, and took him out to Moscow, where he soon
became master in the tyrant's house. For Bomel made the Tsar believe
that the queen, whom he described as a young and lovely virgin, was in
love with him, and could be brought by sorcery to accept an offer of
his hand and throne. The Tsar, who was past his prime, and feeble in
health and power, never tired of doing honor to the man who promised
him an alliance which would raise him above the proudest emperors and
kings.
Horsey, following Randolph to Russia, saw the end of this wizard. When
the Tsar found out that Bomel was deceiving him with lies, and that
the queen would not write to him except on questions of trade, he sent
for his favorite, laid him on the rack, drew his legs out of their
sockets, flayed him with wire whips, roasted him before a fire, drew
him on a sledge through the snow, and pitched him into a dungeon,
where he was left to die.
Traders poured into Russia, through the line now opened from the Dvina
to the Volga, stores of dyed cotton, copper pots and pans, sheets of
lead rolled up for use, and articles in tin and iron of sundry sorts.
Thomas Bannister and Geoffrey Ducket reached Jaroslav early in July,
and, loading a fleet of rafts, dropped down the Volga to Astrakhan,
where they staid six weeks in daily peril of their lives. The Turks,
now friends with the Persians, were trying to recover that city, with
the low countries of the Volga, from the Christian Russ; and the
traders could not put to sea until the Moslem forces were drawn off.
They put into Shabran, where they left their ship and crossed the
mountains on camels to Shemaka, where they staid for the winter. Not
before April could they venture to take the road. They pushed on to
Ardabil, where they began to trade, while Bannister went on to Kasbin
and procured a charter of commerce from the Shah. Only one objection
was raised at Kasbin; Bannister wished to send horses through the
Shah's dominions into India; but an article which he had inserted in
his paper to this effect was left out by the Persian scribes. The
successful trader sickened near Shemaka and died; leaving the command
of his adventure to Ducket, who gathered up the goods for which they
had exchanged their cloth and hardware, crossed the mountains to
Shabran, and put to sea. Storm met them in the teeth; they rolled and
tumbled through the waves; and after buffeting the winds for twenty
days, they anchored in shallow water, where they were suddenly
attacked by a horde of Moslem rievers, and after a gallant fight were
overcome by superior strength. The Tartars pulled them from their
ship, of which they made a prize, and, putting them into their own
cutter, let them drift to sea. The cargo lost was worth no less than
forty thousand pounds--a quarter of a million in our present coin.
At Astrakhan, which they reached in safety, they made some efforts to
recover from the brigands part of what they had lost, and by the
general's help some trifles were recovered from the wreck; but this
salvage was lost once more in ascending the Volga, on which their boat
was crushed by a ridge of ice. Every thing on board went down, and the
grim old tyrant, Ivan the Terrible, sore about his failing suit for
Elizabeth's hand, would render them no help.
Ten years elapsed before the traders sent another caravan across the
Georgian Alps, but the road from Archangel to Astrakhan was never
closed again; and for many years to come the English public heard far
more about the Eastern Steppe than they hear in the present day.
This Eastern Steppe is overrun to-day, as it was overrun in the time
of Ducket, by a tameless rabble of Asiatic tribes.