STEAMER “YERMAK,”
June 20, 1890.
Greeting, dear ones at home!
At last I can take off my heavy muddy boots, my shabby breeches, and my
blue shirt which is shiny with dust and sweat; I can wash and dress like a
human being. I am not sitting in a chaise but in a first-class cabin of the
steamer _Yermak_. This change took place ten days ago, and this is how it
happened. I wrote to you from Listvenitchnaya that I was late for the
Baikal steamer, that I had to cross Lake Baikal on Friday instead of
Tuesday, and that owing to this I should only be able to catch the Amur
steamer on the 30th. But fate is capricious, and often plays us tricks we
do not expect. On Thursday morning I went out for a walk on the shores of
Lake Baikal; behold--the funnel of one of the little steamers is smoking. I
inquire where the steamer is going. They tell me, “Across the sea” to
Klyuevo; some merchant had hired it to take his waggons of goods across the
Lake. We, too, wanted to cross “the sea” and to go to Boyarskaya station. I
inquire how many versts from Klyuevo to Boyarskaya. They tell me
twenty-seven. I run back to my companions and beg them to take the risk of
going to Klyuevo. I say the “risk” because, going to Klyuevo where there is
nothing but a harbour and a watchman’s hut, we ran the risk of not finding
horses, having to stay on at Klyuevo, and being late for Friday’s steamer,
which for us would be worse than Igor’s death, as we should have to wait
till Tuesday. My companions consented. We gathered together our belongings,
with cheerful legs stepped on to the steamer and straight to the
refreshment bar: soup, for the love of God! Half my kingdom for a plate of
soup! The refreshment bar was very nasty and cramped; but the cook, Grigory
Ivanitch, who had been a house-serf at Voronezh, turned out to be at the
tip-top of his profession. He fed us magnificently. The weather was still
and sunny. The water of Lake Baikal is the colour of turquoise, more
transparent than the Black Sea. They say that in deep places you can see
the bottom over a verst below; and I myself have seen to such a depth, with
rocks and mountains plunged in the turquoise-blue, that it sent a shiver
all over me. Our journey over Lake Baikal was wonderful. I shall never
forget it as long as I live. But I will tell you what was not nice. We
travelled third class, and the whole deck was occupied by the
waggon-horses, which were wild as mad things. These horses gave a special
character to our crossing: it seemed as though we were in a brigand’s
steamer. At Klyuevo the watchman undertook to convey our luggage to the
station; he drove the cart while we walked along the very picturesque
shore. Levitan was an ass not to come with me. The way was through woods:
on the right, woods running uphill; on the left, woods running down to the
Lake. Such ravines, such crags! The colouring of Lake Baikal is soft and
warm. It was, by the way, very warm. After walking eight versts we reached
the station of Myskan, where a Kyahtan official, who was also on his
travels, regaled us with excellent tea, and where we got the horses for
Boyarskaya; and so we set off on Thursday instead of Friday; what is more,
we got twenty-four hours in advance of the post, which usually takes all
the horses at the station. We began driving as fast as we could, cherishing
a faint hope of reaching Sryetensk by the 20th. I will tell you when we
meet about my journey along the bank of the Selenga and across
Transbaikalia. Now I will only say that Selenga is one continuous
loneliness, and in Transbaikalia I found everything I wanted: the Caucasus,
and the valley of the Psyol, and the Zvenigorod district, and the Don. By
day you gallop through the Caucasus, at night along the steppe of the Don;
in the morning, rousing yourself from slumber, behold the province of
Poltava--and so for the whole thousand versts. Verhneudinsk is a nice
little town. Tchita is a wretched place, in the style of Sumy. I need
hardly say that we had no time to think of sleep or dinner. One gallops on
thinking of nothing but the chance that at the next station we might not
get horses, and might be kept five or six hours. We did two hundred versts
in twenty-four hours--one can’t do more than that in the summer. We were
stupefied. The heat was fearful by day, while at night it was so cold that
I had to put on my leather coat over my cloth one. One night I even wore my
sheepskin. Well, we drove on and on, and reached Sryetensk this morning
just an hour before the steamer left, giving the drivers from the last two
stations a rouble each for themselves.
And so my horse-journey is over. It has lasted two months (I set out on the
21st of April). If we exclude the time spent on the railway and the
steamer, the three days spent in Ekaterinburg, the week in Tomsk, the day
in Krasnoyarsk, the week in Irkutsk, the two days on the shores of Lake
Baikal, and the days wasted in waiting for boats to cross the floods, you
can judge of the rate at which I have driven. My journey has been most
successful, I wish nothing better for anyone. I have not once been ill, and
of the mass of things I had with me I have lost nothing but a penknife, the
strap off my trunk, and a little jar of carbolic ointment. My money is
safe. It is not often that anyone succeeds in travelling a thousand versts
so well.
I have grown so used to driving that now I don’t feel like myself, and
cannot believe that I am not in a chaise and that I don’t hear the rattling
and the jingling of the bells. It seems strange that when I go to bed I can
stretch out my legs full length, and that my face is not covered with dust.
But what is stranger still is that the bottle of brandy Kuvshinnikov gave
me has not been broken, and that the brandy is still in it, every drop of
it. I have vowed not to uncork it except on the shore of the Pacific.
I am sailing down the Shilka, which runs into the Amur at the Pokrovskaya
Stanitsa. The river is not broader than the Psyol, it is even narrower. The
shores are stony: there are crags and forests. It is absolutely wild.... We
tack about to avoid foundering on a sandbank, or running our helm into the
banks: steamers and barges often do so in the rapids. It’s stifling. We
have just stopped at Ust-Kara, where we have landed five or six convicts.
There are mines here and a convict prison.
Yesterday we were at Nertchinsk. The little town is nothing to boast of,
but one could live there.
And how are you, messieurs and mesdames? I know positively nothing about
you. You might subscribe twopence each and send me a full telegram.
The steamer will stay the night at Gorbitsa. The nights here are foggy,
sailing is dangerous, I shall send off this letter at Gorbitsa.
... I am going first class because my companions are in the second. I have
got away from them. We have driven together (three in one chaise), we have
slept together and are sick of each other, especially I of them.
* * * * *
My handwriting is very bad, shaky. That is because the steamer rocks. It’s
difficult to write.
I broke off here. I went to my lieutenants and had tea. They have both had
a long sleep and were in a very cordial mood. One of them, Lieutenant N.
(the surname jars upon my ear), is in the infantry; he is a tall, well-fed,
loud-voiced Courlander, a great braggart and Hlestakov, who sings songs
from every opera, but has no more ear than a smoked herring, an unlucky
fellow who has squandered all the money for his travelling expenses, knows
all Mickiewicz by heart, is ill-bred, far too unreserved, and babbles till
it makes you sick. Like me, he is fond of talking about his uncles and
aunts. The other lieutenant, M., a geographer, is a quiet, modest,
thoroughly well-educated fellow. If it were not for N., I could travel with
the other for a million versts without being bored. But with N., who
intrudes into every conversation, the other bores me too.... I believe we
are reaching Gorbitsa.
To-morrow I will make up the form of a telegram which you must send me to
Sahalin. I will try to put all I want to know in thirty words, and you must
try and keep strictly to the pattern.
The gad-flies bite.