_FROM TOMSK SOUTHWARDS._
Application for horses.--Effect of Petersburg letter.--A false
start.--A horse killed.--Attempted cooking.--Siberian
weather.--Meteorology.--Scenery.--Trees, plants, and flowers.--An
elementary school.--Education in Western Siberia.
Though our journey to Barnaul took place quite early in our posting
career, it was by no means devoid of incident. On Thursday, June 12th,
we sent for a “troika” of horses at noon, and were coolly told by the
postal authorities that we could have them towards midnight. Now the
chief of their department at Petersburg had favoured me with a special
letter, addressed to the post-masters on our route, enjoining them to
help me, and requesting that I might be delayed as little as possible.
We had been favoured likewise with a crown podorojna. This latter had
been presented, but to no purpose; and it seemed a clear case for
bringing our heavy artillery into action. We presented, therefore, the
postal letter, and the effect was magical. Before the official had half
read it, he sprang to his feet, eyed me respectfully, bustled off to
his chief, and, speedily returning, promised the horses in an hour.
They appeared punctually, and we started “troika” fashion--that is,
three horses driven abreast. Unfortunately, however, the _starosta_,
or man in charge of the postal yard, could not read our podorojna,
and he took it for granted that we wished to go towards Krasnoiarsk,
and told the yemstchik to drive us thither. Nor was it till we had run
some dozen miles or more that it was discovered we were not on the road
to Barnaul. We had, of course, to retrace our steps to Tomsk, and then
we heard that it was not the first time this starosta had sent off
travellers in the wrong direction. The mistake in our case had caused
the extra expenditure of eighteen pennyworth of horse-flesh, and I
thought it right to visit the loss of this sum on the starosta for the
benefit of future travellers as well as our own. I therefore declined
to pay for the privilege of having been taken out of our way, and left
the starosta to settle with the post-master.
Making a fresh start, we found ourselves by nightfall near the river
Tom. The ordinary road was under water, and the banks of the stream
were so flooded that we were obliged to take a cross-country road
leading some 25 miles out of the way; and as it went over hill and
dale, and almost “hedges and ditches,” we were advised to stay till
morning. But we pushed on, crossed the river at daybreak, and at the
third station, in the direction of the Barabinsky steppe, turned
southwards, and travelled well till Saturday evening, when, on stopping
awhile to rest the horses, one of them dropped and died upon the
spot. We were pulling the creature off the road--one having hold of a
leg, another of her tail, and so on--when the remaining horses, as if
indignant at such conduct, rushed over the bank, and tore away with the
tarantass into the forest. Some of us pursued, and fortunately caught
and brought them back without further harm. The loss of a horse is
more serious in Eastern than in Western Siberia, where people have
herds of horses worthy of patriarchs. One lady told me that her husband
possessed from 4,000 to 5,000 horses, and about as many cows. Pasturage
is abundant, and horse-flesh is cheap. Our horse was reckoned a good
one, and valued at £4 10_s._ The post-master could claim nothing from
us for its loss, and thanked us warmly for 10_s._ towards repairing his
damage. As we went along we saw large herds of mares with their foals,
turned loose for the summer in company with a single horse to guard
them. Should danger approach, in the form of a wild beast for instance,
the stallion drives all the mares within a circle with their heels
outwards, and the foals in the centre, whilst he stamps the ground with
rage and dares the wolf to come within reach of their hoofs.
When we reached the last river we had to cross, which at ordinary
times was probably not half a mile wide, we found it so flooded that
the ferry-boat had a journey of more than five miles. This took a long
while, and, when returning, we thought to save time by eating a meal on
the water. In my luncheon-basket is a “Rob Roy” cuisine, with a view
to the using of which, before leaving England, I took an evening’s
cooking lesson. I was now anxious to demonstrate to the Russians that
it was possible to make a cup of tea without the aid of a _samovar_.
We therefore commenced operations, there being on board not only our
own three horses, but half-a-dozen others with their drivers and
tarantasses. The great advantage of this cuisine is that, whereas a
puff of wind may extinguish an ordinary spirit-lamp, the “Rob Roy,” by
setting fire to the steam of the spirit, burns so furiously that a
hurricane will not blow it out. It makes, however, a considerable roar;
and when matters reached this stage, not only were all the natives
surprised, but the horses began so to kick and to plunge that we feared
an upset. One of the drivers said his horse was 30 years old, and had
never heard such a noise in his life! So, for the general safety of all
on board, I packed up my kitchen and had to forego the tea.
Hitherto our Siberian tour had been highly enjoyable. South of Tomsk
the weather was charming, and the new spring vegetation lovely. A
question that has been repeatedly put to me since my return to England
is, “Did you not find it very cold in Siberia?” It may be well,
therefore, that this question should here be answered. Snow fell on
the night we entered the country, and the ground next morning, May
29th, was white; but the snow disappeared after an hour or two, and
we saw no more for some days. By the 5th of June we reached on the
Obi a latitude 100 miles north of Petersburg, where the buds had not
yet opened, nor had the winter floods subsided. I heard subsequently
that the opening of spring had come that year unusually early in
Petersburg, and exceptionally late in Siberia, where the ice usually
breaks up at Tobolsk at the end of April. On the 6th of June we had
snow, and the trees on the banks had little verdure till we reached
Tomsk on the 9th, after which fine weather set in, and was followed by
almost uninterrupted sunshine till the beginning of autumn. The summer
climate, therefore, of those parts of Siberia through which I passed
I consider simply delightful--neither oppressively hot by day nor
unpleasantly cold by night.
Before leaving England, my neighbour, Mr. Glaisher the meteorologist,
had urged me to take a few instruments for the purpose of making
observations, and had kindly lent me for the journey a valuable
unmounted thermometer. I took, besides, an aneroid barometer, a
compass, an anemometer, maximum and minimum thermometers, and two
others. With these instruments I felt very much like a boy leaving
home on a summer morning with excellent fishing tackle, and bent on
taking nothing less than trout. When returning, I felt that I had
brought back minnows. On my first night out, at Cologne, my apparatus
was duly exposed from the hotel window, and on reaching Petersburg I
climbed daily to the top of the hotel to measure the velocity of the
wind. At the copper-mine at Nijni Tagilsk I was resolved on being very
learned, and took my instruments to test the temperature of springs and
the velocity of air currents. But, alas! I broke my thermometer, and,
having reached the bottom of the mine, had forgotten, when undressing,
to take my watch. On the Obi I was able to take a few observations, but
it was impossible to continue this during posting journeys; and further
on I broke my minimum thermometer, after which I abandoned hope of
attaining meteorological distinction.[1]
The journey to Barnaul revealed to us beauties of scenery and
vegetation for which we were hardly prepared after the flat and
leafless districts through which we had been passing. The landscape
now became undulating, and the traveller who passes further south to
Biisk, and beyond, approaches the regions of the Altai chain, which are
spoken of as well worth seeing.[2] The grass between Tomsk and Barnaul
was remarkable, and the further south we went the more luxuriant it
became. Much of the flora was familiar, but we were now introduced to
a good many trees, shrubs, plants, and flowers, found more or less in
the country west of Irkutsk, that were new to us. The most prominent of
the trees was the white-barked birch, justly called the “lady of the
forest.” We saw also the cedar-nut tree, the pitch pine, the larch,
the flowering acacia, spruce fir, and alder, the white-pine, willow,
lime, Siberian poplar, laburnum, and white-flowering cheriomkha--the
last a beautiful object when in blossom, and yielding for fruit a small
bird cherry. Among the shrubs appeared the white hawthorn, and an
abundance of wild red currants, which, like bird cherries, are eaten
by the people--the latter being made into bread and cakes, and, in
common with other fruits, put into brandy to make _naliphka_. These
fruits are very sour as compared with the English kinds. Strawberry
and raspberry plants abounded, though we did not get our first plate
of wild strawberries till 11th July. In autumn, numerous berries
are plentiful, such as cranberries (called _klukva_), bilberries,
cowberries, bearberries, stoneberries, the mountain ash berry, and
the Arctic bramble. All these are found, too, in European Russia,
north of Petersburg, the last having a blossom like a single rose, a
strawberry leaf, and a fruit resembling the English blackberry. In
summer, strawberries and raspberries are the best fruits within reach
of the Siberian traveller until he reaches the southern region of the
Amur. Among the spring flowers we missed (or perhaps overlooked) the
pale primrose; but violets are found, also sweet-williams, daisies,
foxgloves, rich camomile flowers, the wild rose, crocus, lily of
the valley, and many others. The fields were actually blue with
forget-me-nots. We noticed also on this journey what was to me a new
plant, bearing an orange flower something like a buttercup, but very
much larger, and of which there were many. Also east of Tomsk we saw
a large red lily, made much of in English gardens, but which here was
growing wild; also, in great abundance, a red flower very much like the
peony.
On the road to Barnaul, at a place called Medvedsky, is an elementary
school, to which, in returning, we paid a visit, and so were brought
into contact with village education.[3] There were in attendance 32
boys and girls, of ages varying from 6 to 16, most of whom came from
distant places (some 30 miles off), and lodged in the village. Only
8 were from the immediate neighbourhood. Adults sometimes attend the
school, in which the education is free, the school being supported by
the commune or _mir_. The scholars attend daily from 8 o’clock till 2,
after which hour some of them learn bookbinding. Sundays and saints’
days are holidays, but the children are required to be every Sunday
at church. There was a priest in the room giving instruction. I asked
the children some Scripture questions, but was poorly answered. Many
of the children, however, jumped at the opportunity of purchasing a
New Testament for 1¼_d._, and we left a supply for them. The master
wished the boys to be examined in arithmetic, whereupon, among other
questions, I asked them, “What two numbers multiplied together make
7?” They knitted their brows as if making a great effort--and even the
master’s countenance seemed to betray that he thought the question too
difficult. All laughed heartily, however, when, on giving it up, I told
them that the factors were 7 and 1. The master lived in an adjoining
part of the house; and in this far-off place I observed on the wall of
the schoolmaster’s room, as I had seen on that of one of the prison
officials at Tiumen, an English engraving of the portrait of Professor
Darwin. The schoolmaster said I was the first Englishman he had seen,
gladly purchased some of our books, and thanked us for our visit.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] My scientific attempts brought me in contact with some pleasant
people; notably Captain Rykatcheff, of the Observatory in Petersburg,
and with others at Moscow, Ekaterineburg, Tomsk, etc.; at all of which
places they have observatories, that near Petersburg being, I was told,
in some respects better than ours at Greenwich. The Russians take
considerable pains in collecting data from 103 stations throughout
the Empire, of which 14 are in Siberia, namely: at Omsk, Akmolinsk,
Semipolatinsk, Tomsk, Barnaul, Kuznetsk, Yeneseisk, Turukhansk,
Irkutsk, Kiakhta, Nertchinsk mines, Blagovestchensk, Nikolaefsk, and
Vladivostock. The Russians have an observatory also in China, at
Peking; and I think I heard of some new ones established on the Obi.
They register thrice daily--at seven, one, and nine--the readings of
the barometer, the dry and wet bulb thermometers giving the temperature
and humidity of the atmosphere, the direction of the wind, and the
amount of clouds, rain, snow, etc.; and these statistics are collected
and published at Petersburg with a fulness which exceeds, I am told,
anything that we do in poor England. I was presented with the Report
for 1877 (the last then published)--a great volume of 600 pages. It
will be from this source that I shall from time to time air before the
reader my meteorological learning. Tomsk was the first of the Siberian
stations at which we arrived, where the maximum temperature of the year
rose, at one o’clock on the 6th August, to 106°.9, and the minimum
temperature, 83°.2 below zero, occurred on Christmas Day. At Barnaul,
some 200 miles south, it was a little hotter and a little colder, the
maximum being 107°.8, and the minimum 84°.8 below zero. On the Sunday
we spent there, June 15th, the temperature was the hottest we had
experienced up to that time in Siberia; and we heard it is so cold in
winter that small birds sometimes drop dead in the streets.
[2] The entire Altai system extends in a serpentine line, and under
various names, from the Irtish to Behring Strait. The breadth of the
chain varies from 400 to 1,000 miles. Its entire length is about 4,500
miles, but it is only to the portion west of Lake Baikal that the term
Altai is applied. This part consists of a succession of terraces with
swelling outline, descending in steps from the high tableland, and
terminating in promontories on the Siberian plains. On these terraces
(some of them at great height) are numerous lakes. The ordinary
tablelands are given as not more than 6,000 feet high, and as seldom
covered with perpetual snow, though it is otherwise with the Korgan
tableland, which reaches 9,900 feet; and the two pillars of Katunya,
which are said to attain to nearly 13,000 feet above the sea level. At
the western extremity of the chain are metalliferous veins, in which
several important workings have been established since 1872.
[3] In the uyezd or district of Tiumen, which is one out of 9 in the
province of Tobolsk, there are 24 schools; at Tobolsk we heard of 12
schools more. In the villages about Barnaul there are few schools, but
there are some in the district of the mines and the works. In Tomsk
are a few upper-class schools, as also at Tobolsk; and we met at Tomsk
a school inspector. Further, from the _Golos_ of 25th June, 1879 (old
style), it appeared that the Russian Government had lately opened
a classical school, or _gymnase_, at Omsk; a _real_, or commercial
school, at Tomsk; and _pro-gymnases_, or preparatory classical
schools for girls, at Tomsk and Barnaul. It was further stated that
in 1878 there were in Western Siberia 22 upper-class schools, with an
attendance of 3,200 scholars; and that other such schools were asked
for at Semipolatinsk, Petropavlovsk, Kainsk, and Barnaul. In Western
Siberia, in 1878, 546 schools of a lower class existed, numbering
15,000 scholars, of whom, however, the remarkable preponderance of
13,000 boys over 2,000 girls is startling. The Russians have had
schools for some time for Kirghese boys, and they have two also for
Kirghese girls; whilst, as observed before, they opened in 1879 a
school at Obdorsk for the Ostjaks and Samoyedes.