IN THE LAND OF LOST LEADERS
Across the Urals--Into Siberia--The Treimen waiting-prison--First
exiles--The journey to Tobolsk--Secret night meeting of
politicals--Hardships of exile--Splendid personnel of
prisoners--Forced into daily contact with foul
disease--Starvation--Life among the Ostiaks--Lack of medical
aid--Siberia, a monumental crime--The journey back.
Ufa held little to interest me, so that after only a brief pause I
continued my journey east to Cheliabinsk, the western terminal of the
Trans-Siberian Railway. It had not originally been my intention to
traverse Siberia. European Russia I did want to cover thoroughly, but
when I found myself here on the edge of Asia, within a night’s ride of
the “land of lost leaders,” I felt justified in making an excursion far
enough over the border to bring me to the nearest places of exile, where
I could meet and talk with men and women whom Russia had expelled.
Instead of pursuing the line of the Trans-Siberian road, however, I
decided to follow the old route used by exiles in the days when no
railroad penetrated even to the borders of Siberia. To reach this port
it was necessary for me to go north from Cheliabinsk, along the ridge of
the Ural Mountains, and down into Yekaterinburg, a famous mining-center,
and the starting-point of a short railroad line running to Tyumen, the
most northerly point reached by railroad in Siberia.
From Cheliabinsk to Yekaterinburg was one long day’s journey. Autumn was
already descending upon the land and the trees were tossing their dried
and brown leaves over the steep slopes of the hills into the valleys
below, where a lingering green still carpeted the earth.
From Yekaterinburg to Tyumen is a night’s journey. When the first light
of dawn creeps into the car window and one realizes that day will
presently reveal the melancholy wastes of the dreariest country on
earth, a little of the meaning of that sinister name--Siberia--possesses
one, and the desolate miles of waste and marsh country seem to hold a
weird fascination.
The same train that brought me to Tyumen carried a party of exiles in
the prison-car ahead--a car ironclad, with small square windows to
receive the light--windows crossed by iron bars. At the station I
watched the gendarmes forming their charges into line, preparatory to
the first stage of their long walk. Most of these prisoners were
strikingly ill-clad for a Siberian expedition. Several had no hats,
while only one or two had overcoats. A representative of the
revolutionary Red Cross Society--himself an exile--was on hand to make
note of these things. Of him I inquired the reason why these prisoners
were so inadequately clothed. He laughed at my ingenuousness, and told
me that recently a party of fifty had come in, most of whom were clad in
their underclothes, with an old army coat over for decency’s sake.
Sometimes men are arrested in the dead of night, torn from their beds
without time to dress, but often it happens that a man will sit for
months in a local prison, and then, suddenly one night, he will be
hurried from his cell to join the party about to start for Siberia.
There is no time to dress nor to collect his possessions. The worst
feature of this treatment is that the government usually makes no
ultimate effort to make good this loss. Therefore the exiles have been
obliged to organize a relief committee among themselves, with
underground[19] connections with the outside world, to make provisions
for the neglected and ill-clad new-comers whom the government so
mercilessly deserts upon their arrival in this region of long winter and
incredible cold.
The exile whom we found taking notes of the needs of arriving prisoners
was immeasurably delighted when we spoke to him. His home was one of the
university cities of south Russia, where he had been the editor of a
local newspaper. Because of something he had written the wrath of the
governor of the province was brought down upon him, and he had been
exiled to Siberia for five years. At the beginning he was sent to a
settlement several hundred miles to the north, but through influential
friends in St. Petersburg he had been given permission to return to
Tyumen, which is a distinctly more habitable place than a remote
settlement of half-civilized Ostiaks. He invited us to visit him in his
lodgings, and promised to introduce us to several other political exiles
who were living in so-called “free” exile in Tyumen, and to supply us
with letters of introduction to various people that would be helpful to
us in Tobolsk.
When, later in the day, we climbed to his attic-room I was struck by the
atmosphere of refinement that was somehow conveyed in the simple
furnishings of the
[Illustration: In the waiting-prison at Tyumen]
[Illustration: Ostiaks
Among these semi-barbarous people cultivated men and women are forced to
spend long years in exile]
room, and the few books neatly arranged on a crudely fashioned table.
“Free” exile is allowed to only certain privileged exiles, and mostly to
those against whom there are only trivial charges or undefined
“suspicions.” When we arrived our friend was composing a letter
presently to be forwarded to St. Petersburg, detailing the pressing
needs of the revolutionary Red Cross committee. In reply to questions I
asked he told us how the revolutionary Red Cross Society has its
committee in every village, settlement, and hamlet where exiles are
sent. In Russia and abroad its agents are always actively collecting
money for food for the starving and clothing for the needy. He cited
many instances of heroic sacrifices of men and women of smallest
resources sharing their little with their comrades in distress in
Siberia. Exiles who have well-to-do families and friends receive
contributions, but these are almost invariably shared with those who
have no such resources. Were it not for this work of the revolutionary
Red Cross Society, the suffering in Siberia would be infinitely greater
than it is, and the number of deaths from starvation would be appalling.
While waiting for one or two others to join us he gave me a little
sketch of Siberian exile history and life:
“Siberia began to be used by Russia as a place of exile about three
hundred years ago, but at that time very cruel and terrible punishments
were meted out to civil as well as political offenders. The bodies of
men were frequently mutilated, their limbs amputated, and hideous
tortures applied that left lasting scars. In order to dispose of these
maimed and now worthless creatures they were dumped into this remote
region of northeastern Asia, which was at that time a recently acquired
possession. A hundred years later, that is, just before the beginning of
the eighteenth century, bodily mutilation was officially abolished, and
simple banishment was introduced on a large scale. Exile soon came to be
the usual punishment for a long list of crimes, covering practically the
whole criminal list. Men were exiled on every conceivable pretext, or
merely to get rid of them. About this time the mineral resources of the
country began to be known, and the government conceived the idea of
utilizing the labor of exiles for developing these resources. This
policy continues in force to-day. From time to time the exile system has
sunk into such a condition of disorganization and barbarity that the
escape of death was sought by scores and hundreds. Pestilential prisons,
incredibly crowded, were allowed to become fairly putrid with filth,
while the men and women confined in them grew foul with disease or lost
their senses through suffering.
“Six years ago the Czar, by imperial ukase, ended the banishment of
political prisoners to Siberia, but you see how it is, this edict, like
most of the imperial decrees that go out from our Emperor and his
government, was meaningless. A flood of politicals pours through Tyumen
all of the time now, and most people have forgotten that that edict was
ever issued.
“Cruelties like those of former times are not employed now. That is to
say, prisoners are not mutilated, although they are sometimes beaten and
roughly handled, and while the prisons are still foul and bad they are
not as they were even a generation ago. What the government does now is
to desert its political prisoners to inevitable starvation, and to force
many of them into intimate daily contact with loathsome diseases in the
settlements of diseased savages in the interior.”
I was soon to learn the full truth of these statements from other lips,
but I listened to this man’s story with keenest interest. It appears
that there are two classes of political prisoners, the so-called
privileged, and unprivileged, exiles. The privileged grade includes the
graduates of all technical schools and universities, all noblemen, and
the sons and daughters of noblemen. The unprivileged are all others:
peasants, merchants, workmen, clerks, and the rest of the rank and file.
The government allows each privileged exile three dollars a month, out
of which he must rent a room, or sleeping-place of some description, pay
for his food, clothing, and all other necessities. If the wife of a
privileged exile accompanies her husband into exile, she also is granted
six rubles, or three dollars, and one dollar and a half for each child.
But at the present time eighty-five per cent. of the political exiles in
western Siberia, are of the unprivileged class, and these the government
allows one ruble and a half, or seventy-five cents, a month! It seems
almost unthinkable that a government which aspires to greatness would
turn adrift living men and expect them to live for years on an allowance
of seventy-five cents a month. Sometimes exiles arrive unknown to the
Red Cross Society, and then there happens to them what would happen to
nearly all unprivileged exiles if the government’s dole were not
supplemented--they starve.
At this point a bright-faced, buoyant man of about thirty-five entered
the room, and shook hands with us with great warmth. He soon told his
story. He came from the town of Yaroslaff, on the Upper Volga. By trade
he was a carpenter. Last spring the workmen of Yaroslaff decided to keep
May Day (the European Labor Day) by what they called a “peaceful
celebration”; they would not only refrain from work, they would remain
indoors all day. On the eve of May Day the governor caused to be issued
a proclamation warning all the inhabitants of the province that any one
who celebrated Labor Day in any way whatsoever would be punished. The
Yaroslaff work-men decided to take the chance. They remained in their
respective homes all day, merely absenting themselves from work. The
next morning every man who had thus “celebrated” was placed under
arrest. The man whom I met here in Tyumen had been sentenced to three
years of exile in Siberia for this offense.
The man had brought with him his wife and five children--as “voluntary”
exiles. During the first three days after their arrival in Tyumen they
had no money, and somehow had failed to connect with the Red Cross
committee, in consequence of which they literally starved. The man told
me that he had not one piece of bread for his children, the youngest of
whom cried constantly through hunger.
For many years the government made a slightly better allowance to exiles
for food than now. When Mr. George Kennan was in Tyumen, for example,
the cost of food for each prisoner in the forwarding prison was 3½
cents a day, and for privileged prisoners 5 cents a day.[20]
The impossibility of living on seventy-five cents a month, the current
allowance, is patent on the face of it. Living is very high in Siberia.
All foods are costly. For example, the government allowance of bread for
soldiers is thirty pounds a month. Now thirty pounds of bread cost
ninety cents! Sugar--criminally high all over Russia--is twelve cents a
pound in Siberia. Ordinary meat is practically unobtainable at any price
in the remoter places. All vegetables, save potatoes, are unknown. The
character of the soil, in the northern provinces, is such that no
vegetables will grow. Potatoes, being scarce, are thirty cents a pail.
I do not wish to sustain the popular impression that Siberia lies
entirely within the region of Arctic cold and barrenness, for it reaches
as far south as the latitude of central and southern Italy, Greece, and
Constantinople, but political exiles at the time of my visit to Siberia
were being sent rather to the northern and desolate parts of Tobolsk
province, to Yakutsk, and the Transbaikal region.
Space forbids that I recount the vivid hours spent in Tyumen, of
interesting conversations I enjoyed with cultivated men and women who
had been sent off to this distant Asiatic province to end their efforts
to do something worth while for their long-suffering fellow countrymen.
After three days I started for Tobolsk, the capital of this western
province, where I anticipated planning a tour of a few hundred miles to
outlying settlements used for penal colonization.
The great Siberian _Trakt_, or imperial highway, begins at Tyumen and
runs across the eternal desolateness of interior Siberia to the Amur
River, a distance of more than three thousand miles. Along this ancient
road, beaten hard by sore and bleeding feet, moistened by myriad tears,
_more than one million exiles trudged between the reigns of Nicholas I
and Nicholas II_. When exiles arrive in Tyumen they are thrown into the
waiting-prison until a sufficient number have arrived to make up a party
for the interior. They are then corralled like so many cattle, formed
into loose marching order, surrounded by Cossacks or regular troops,
and marched over the weary way. They tramp thirty versts a day for two
days, and rest the third day. Rough Russian carts, called _telegas_,
usually drawn by one horse, accompany each party to carry the luggage
and provisions, and sometimes sick or exhausted marchers. At this rate
of going, through summer heat and winter cold, many months are consumed
in reaching the destinations to which the exiles have been assigned.
During the short summer season when the waterways are open, convict
barges carry some of the parties as far as possible along the rivers of
the Tobol, the Irtysh, and the Obi. In order to get a taste of Siberian
water travel I decided to go by boat to Tobolsk, and from there on, and
indeed back to Tyumen, by the usual post-roads. The little steamer that
carried us from the chief city to the capital of the province was filled
with soldiers and Tartar merchants returning from Nijni-Novgorod. Each
spring the Tartars travel from their northern homes with winter
pelts--ermines, sables, silver foxes--up the Siberian rivers to Tyumen,
then by rail over the Ural Mountains to Perm and down the Kama to the
Volga, then up to Nijni-Novgorod.
The amount of commerce on the river surprised me greatly. We met many
boats heavily freighted, plying between Omsk, Tobolsk, and Tyumen, and
there was every appearance of a large volume of trade passing over these
waterways. The quays and landing-places were very crude. In fact there
were no regular docks at all. At intervals a single post had been driven
into the mud, usually within a reasonable distance of some settlement or
village, which seemed rarely to be close to the stream, and around this
post the steamer’s hawser would be made secure, while a long gang-plank
would be
[Illustration: The great Siberian _Trakt_
Along this highway more than one million political exiles tramped toward
remote Siberian settlements between the reigns of Nicholas I and
Nicholas II--a period of 75 years]
extended to the muddy bank over perhaps ten or even twenty feet of
water.
The steamer engines burned wood. Every few hours we would make fast to
the bank near to a pile of cordwood which the native Tartars constantly
replenish, and practically the entire crew and sometimes some of the
passengers would act as stevedores bringing it aboard.
The settlements we passed were mostly of Tartars. The women would offer
for sale milk, fish, and raw turnips--the latter sweet and tasty, though
hard, and very cheap. Two and three for a cent. Toward nightfall we
would pass fishermen in crude boats that were often merely
dugouts--logs, hollowed and roughly shaped. On the whole the
civilization of these shores was as crude as any frontier country could
be, and the dirty, dilapidated hamlets we could see in the distance from
the steamer-decks, suggested only decay and stagnation. Even the somber
wooden Moslem houses of worship with their gilded, or painted,
crescents, looked faded and forgotten, rarely reflecting any of the
garishness which characterizes the temples of Mohammed. Relics of a dead
civilization are all that remain to these people who once boasted a
powerful empire, with glory as well as power.
Tobolsk proved a business-like town of something over 20,000
inhabitants. It commands an excellent location on the river Irtysh,
facing the junction of the Tobol. On a high bluff to the west of the
town proper is a striking monument to Jermak, the conqueror of Siberia.
Behind this monument is a small but tremendously interesting museum. It
contains large collections of old instruments of torture: branding
tools, used to stamp the foreheads and cheeks of prisoners, instruments
for pulling out the center bone of the nose, painful shackles, and
other horrible devices for human torture. Besides these things are
splendid collections epitomizing the ethnology of western Siberia
through costumes and excellent models of the industries of the natives.
The ornithology, geology, and mineralogy of the country are also
indicated through complete collections.
There is one good hotel in Tobolsk, but when we arrived it was entirely
filled with officers and we were obliged to put up at a small and
dilapidated inn kept by a Pole. The man’s father had been sent to
Siberia with the Polish revolutionists of the early ’50’s. This man was
born in Siberia and had never been out of the country. He had married
there and had children born to him, so that he had virtually become a
Siberian.
One of the letters of introduction given to me in Tyumen was to a young
woman whom I had been particularly told to seek out first. For reasons I
did not question I was to find her through a mutual friend of hers and
the writer of my letter of introduction. The morning after our arrival
in Tobolsk my interpreter and I called at the house of the friend, who
accepted the password we had been instructed in as evidence of our
trustworthiness. She bade us enter and wait in an inner room while she
sent out for the girl whom we wanted to see.
More than half an hour passed before the girl arrived. When she came in
I was greatly surprised by her appearance. She did not look more than
twenty, and she was gowned as any woman might be of a morning in any
fashionable resort in the season. Her manner and bearing suggested
Mayfair drawing-rooms. My first thought was that she must be the
daughter of an aristocratic family, who had been exiled, but I
remembered that the remark had been passed that she was not a prisoner.
She was graciously glad to see us and told us we were most fortunate in
having come to Tobolsk just at that time, because there were many
political exiles in town from all over the province, even from Berezov,
a thousand versts to the north. It appeared that every autumn, just
before the rivers closed in for the winter, delegates of one or two
“free” exiles from each settlement were appointed to go to Tobolsk to
purchase the winter’s supply of matches, candles, pins, and other little
things; for once the winter sets in it is often many months before a
courier can get through, even with mail. The girl told us to come to a
certain house in a neighboring street that evening and she would have
there to meet us a number of the delegates from different parts of the
province.
The house she designated was one belonging to a physician who had been
exiled from an eastern Russian city for twelve years, by order of the
local governor. He had never been able to learn what charge there was
against him, and as he was a Constitutional Democrat, and opposed to
revolutionary activity, he found his exile particularly exasperating.
However, he had brought his wife and children with him and he was
striving to make the best of his situation. He welcomed us with the
utmost cordiality, when, at the appointed hour, we repaired to his
house. It was seldom that exiles have such direct communication with the
outside world as we afforded.
One of the greatest hardships of exile life to educated men and women is
the life of enforced idleness that they must lead. Hard labor, indeed,
for politicals, is usually interpreted enforced idleness. For an
educated and disciplined mind emptiness and absolute lack of occupation
is the most cruel strain. The result is that politicals often beg local
authorities to permit them to go to work in the mines, merely that they
may have occupation. This physician told me that previous to my coming
some poor people had come to him to give them relief from pain they were
suffering from a certain curable cause. The doctor gave them some simple
remedy and sent them away. A day or two after he received a reprimand
from a police authority--he was there as an exile, not as a professional
man, and he was not expected to use his professional knowledge! The man
protested that he had done very little, yet it had relieved the poor
peasants, and inasmuch as the government made no provision for healing
the sick he could not understand why he should not do what he could.
“But the government does provide physicians,” was the officer’s reply.
The physician then asked me to wait until others of the exiles came in,
when the Berezov man reported that the single Berezov doctor, for
example, has a territory almost as large as the whole of France! Others
told me that in the central and southern sections of Tobolsk province
physicians have districts which are defined as “a radius of five hundred
versts of a given point.” In winter the only means of communication is
by sledge. Fancy a New York physician who had one patient in Atlantic
City, another in Lenox, and a third in Utica, and no other way of
getting from point to point than by horse; or a Boston practitioner with
a call to make in Pawtucket, and a patient to be operated upon in
Bangor!
A delegate from a village called Felinsky gave me a photograph of the
funeral of a political exile who died through the sheerest, most wanton,
neglect. He had a bad tooth which developed an abscess. There was no one
about who knew how to lance it, or that it should be lanced, and blood
poisoning set in, causing his death.
[Illustration: Siberia: the start into the Interior
Politicals are corralled like so many cattle and marched to their
respective destinations, which may be one thousand, fifteen hundred, or
two thousand miles from Tyumen, the starting-point]
One by one the exiles began to gather. To me it was a remarkable group.
There was a civil engineer who had formerly been the district manager of
one of the Baltic provinces railroads--now exiled to the far north. Then
there was a mining engineer from Great Russia, the physician from Perm
in the Urals, a Jewish student from Odessa, a peasant from Saratoff--who
still bore the fresh bruises and mutilations of the police who tortured
him--a Harkoff editor, a St. Petersburg school-teacher, and an
“intellectual peasant” from Moscow province. This man, a follower of
Robert Owen, could not get over his surprise at being greeted by a
correspondent in Siberia. “When we fought on the barricades in Moscow,”
he said, “correspondents came to see us. When we had our Peasants’ Union
congress in Moscow, correspondents were there. And now in Siberia a
correspondent visits us!” He shook his head in deep wonderment. Later,
he showed me a Russian-English book which he had procured somehow,
somewhere, and from which he hoped to learn English during the years of
his exile. Around a steaming samovar we sat until far into the
night--that little group and I--they relating to me the stories of their
lives, the conditions of their exiles, and I telling them of what the
world is doing, the world of which they once were a part, but which now
seems remote as another planet, this world which they have lost. Some of
them spoke English, nearly all of them knew French or German. They were
strong men, all. Men of great hopes, of nobler thought and life than
banishment and suffering can destroy.
The first matter I inquired about particularly was the prevalence of
disease in the villages to which exiles are assigned. I was already
satisfied in regard to the inevitableness of starvation. A report from
a certain village five hundred versts from Tobolsk had recently reached
Russia, asserting that the number of houses in the village which were
infected with a certain loathsome disease was so great that the exiles
could not escape close daily contact with it. This was an Ostiak
village, and the disease had evidently been rooted there many years, for
the report stated that the noses and lips of many of the inhabitants
were entirely eaten away. I had already seen some dreadful cases, so I
was not unprepared to learn that this report, which was signed by fifty
political exiles, was not exaggerated. One of the group round our
friendly samovar was an exile from the village of Felinsky. He told me
that a careful investigation had just been made, and of the fifty houses
composing Felinsky village, forty-eight were infected with this disease.
And yet twelve politicals were assigned to this village. A government
physician stated that in his district--Ovat Point--there were eighty-two
villages, and over sixty per cent. of all the houses in all of the
villages were similarly infected.
There is another very common disease found in these northern villages.
It is a stomach ailment which poisons the blood. It results from eating
bad fish. The query naturally presents itself: why do people eat fish
that have gone bad? The explanation is plausible: the northern summers
are short and the winters excessively long. The winters are also
exceedingly severe, and during weeks at a time the people may not stir
out of doors. It is necessary, therefore, for them to lay by what stores
they can during the summer against the winter, when they may not shoot
or trap. So the fish caught during the warm season are preserved
according to a simple and crude method. They are partially sun-dried,
then roughly salted. The sun-baking decays them slightly and the salt
preserves them in practically that condition. Ordinarily, dried fish are
preserved with a specially prepared salt, often containing a dash of
sulphur, which prevents this slight decay. But these crudely prepared
and partly decayed fish are said to be not untasty once one is
accustomed to the diet, only the ultimate effects are disastrous.
However, it is the best the people can do, and so they depend largely on
these fish during the winter.
Scurvy is very common throughout the region, of course. The scurvy, in
advanced forms, is one of the most nauseating of human diseases to look
upon, but throughout Siberia, as throughout the famine region, there is
no escaping it.
The political exiles in the town of Berezov had prepared a telegram to
the Duma setting forth their plight. This telegram was to have been
carried from Berezov to the nearest telegraph line--one thousand versts
away--by the very messenger who brought the news of the dissolution. A
copy of the telegram was preserved, however, and given to me. The text
proved incontrovertibly that exile to a Siberian village at the
government allowance is equivalent to banishment to starvation. To live
upon the government grant would mean subsisting each day on one twelfth
of a pound of meat (local meat, deer, or bear, etc.), one half pound of
bread, one half of one piece of sugar, and eight potatoes. There would
then be left eleven cents a month for lodging, and six cents a month for
all exigencies, and such luxuries as candles, matches, and clothing. As
a matter of fact it is difficult to find a room in any kind of a house
for less than one dollar a month, unless one sleeps with native Ostiaks,
and the great crime of Siberia is that political exiles are obliged to
do this, even when the Ostiaks are foul with disease.
When I had asked as many questions as I cared to, the conversation
shifted to world interests, and we might have been a group in any London
or New York club. How the sane men who make up a government can persuade
themselves that it is the policy of wisdom to banish educated,
intelligent men like those whom I met in Tobolsk is past finding out. It
would seem that in Russia’s time of great need that these were the very
ones who were most needed in active effort of reconstruction.
It was far into the night when we separated, and then it was with mutual
reluctance that we said good-night. To me, the evening had been one of
intensest interest and most genuine inspiration. And they, too, had
appreciated the breath from west of the Urals.
My companion and I walked home with our friend, the girl who had brought
together this little gathering for us. She talked vivaciously of the
“work” in Siberia, and I wondered more than ever about her. When she
stopped at her own front door, it proved to be before one of the few big
houses in the town. This again increased my curiosity concerning her.
“Oh, she is probably a school-teacher,” suggested my interpreter.
“But school-teachers in Siberia are not apt to wear Paris-made gowns and
live in one of the grandest houses in town,” I answered.
The next day I asked our physician about her, and he replied:
“She is the daughter of one of the governor’s staff. She was educated
abroad. Most of her family live abroad. She chooses to accompany her
father here because of the opportunities she has for service in the
[Illustration: Sozonoff--a typical Siberian exile of the intellectual
class]
[Illustration: Head of a convoy of prisoners on the great Siberian
_Trakt_]
movement. Her father is in the interior now, so she has unusual
liberties.” I really might have guessed that her situation was something
of this nature.
During the next few days I saw so many exiles in and about Tobolsk that
I gave up the idea of visiting outlying settlements. Since I had neither
the credentials, nor the time, for visiting the prisons, I only hoped
and desired to talk with a fair number of exiles and hear their story of
the conditions of political exile under the “constitution.” This I was
able to accomplish right here.
One house of special interest in Tobolsk that all the politicals pointed
out was a kind of community-house built by the Decembrists of 1825 who
were sent to Tobolsk. During my stay here I met at least two men who had
been exiled in 1878--they had both met Mr. Kennan when he was in Siberia
in 1885, and asked me to carry their greetings to him, and to tell him
that they were still there! One man, Kosturin, has made his lot more
bearable by editing a newspaper, or rather, his wife edits and conducts
the paper--officially.
The season was now advanced, snow-flurries were daily in the air, and
there was a winter crisp in the trees that heralded the near approach of
the icy storms that close Siberia through long months.
At four o’clock one morning we left Tobolsk in a post-chaise and drove
continuously for thirty hours along the great _Trakt_ to Tyumen--a
distance of three hundred versts, stopping only at post-stations to
change horses. In Tyumen we lingered long enough to say good-by to the
men and women we had met coming in, and then traveled by train to
Yekaterinburg.
This trip into Siberia was very short, superficial even, yet it proved
worth while. I got a brief glimpse of the country, I visited the two
most important towns of western Siberia, and I met many splendid men
and women who are doomed to long exile, yet who were of good cheer. To
merely have met them face to face, to have grasped their hands, and
talked with them through the still hours of night--this, alone, was
worth the long journey.
If I had needed any further evidence of the inhuman and utterly blind
policy of the Russian government, I found it here in the treatment
imposed upon men and women that any nation in the world should be proud
of--verily the flower of the land.
At Yekaterinburg six weeks’ mail had accumulated, so that I spent
several days here before crossing the Urals to Perm, where I rested
again for nearly a week, before continuing my journey westward to
Vyatka, which I found in many ways the most interesting province I had
seen in Russia. The peasants there are very progressive, and through
generations of practice have become marvelously skilful in wood-working.
Some of the boxes I saw, with secret compartments, were examples of rare
ingenuity and skill. There is a museum there of the peasant handicrafts
which is most interesting. And withal the Vyatkans have a business sense
which has enabled them to build up a profitable trade in these things
with Siberia and Russia at large, through the Nijni-Novgorod fair and
sales-shops in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
From Vyatka I traveled by a new railroad to Vologda and St. Petersburg,
arriving in the capital early in October, when the nights were
lengthening and the icy air was calling out the winter furs.