neighbors, and has succeeded in annexing a vast territory while keeping
on the friendliest of terms with his new subjects. He has respected
their prejudices, left their religions untouched, dealt with them in
their own ways, and is rapidly planting the Muscovite type of
civilization where Asiatic barbarism had for untold ages prevailed.
No man can predict the final result of these movements. Asia has been in
all ages the field of great invasions and of the sudden building up of
immense empires. But the movements of the Muscovite conquerors have none
of the torrent rush of those great invasions of the past. The Russian
advances with extreme caution, takes no risks, and makes sure of his
game before he shows his hand. He prepares the ground in front before
taking a step forward, and all that he leaves in his rear falls into the
strong folds of the imperial net. Gold and diplomacy are his weapons
equally with the sword, and in the progress of his arms we seem to see
Europe marching into Asia with a solid and unyielding front.
_THE RAILROAD IN TURKESTAN._
On the 24th of January, 1881, Edward O'Donovan, a daring traveller who
had journeyed far through the wastes and wilds of Turkestan, found
himself on a mountain summit not far removed from the northern boundary
of Persia, from which his startled eyes beheld a spectacle of fearful
import. Below him the desert stretched in a broad level far away to the
distant horizon. Near the foot of the range rose a great fortress,
within which at that moment a frightful struggle was taking place.
Bringing his field-glass to bear upon the scene, the traveller saw a
host of terror-stricken fugitives streaming across the plain, and hot
upon their steps a throng of merciless pursuers, who slaughtered them in
multitudes as they fled. Even from where he stood the white face of the
desert seemed changing to a crimson hue.
What the astounded traveller beheld was the death-struggle of the desert
Turkomans, the hand of retribution smiting those savage brigands who for
centuries had carried death and misery wherever they rode. These were
the Tekke Turkomans, the tribes who haunted the Persian frontier, and
whose annual raids swept hundreds of captives from that peaceful land to
spend the remainder of their days in the most woful form of slavery. For
a month previous General Skobeleff, the most daring and merciless of
the Russian leaders, had besieged them in their great fort of Geop Tepe,
an earthwork nearly three miles in circuit, and containing within its
ample walls a desert nation, more than forty thousand in all, men,
women, and children.
On that day, fatal to the Turkoman power, Skobeleff had taken the fort
by storm, dealing death wherever he moved, until not a man was left
alive within its walls except some hundreds of fettered Persian slaves.
Through its gateways a trembling multitude had fled, and upon these
miserable fugitives the Russian had let loose his soldiers, horse, foot,
and artillery, with the savage order to hunt them to the death and give
no quarter.
Only too well was the brutal order obeyed. Not men alone, but women and
children as well, fell victims to the sword, and only when night put an
end to the pursuit did that terrible massacre cease. By that time eight
thousand persons, of both sexes and all ages, lay stretched in death
upon the plain. Within the fort thousands more had fallen, the women and
children here being spared. Skobeleff's report said that twenty thousand
in all had been slain.
Such was the frightful scene which lay before O'Donovan's eyes when he
reached the mountain top, on his way to the Russian camp, a spectacle of
horrible carnage which only a man of the most savage instincts could
have ordered. "Bloody Eyes" the Turkomans named Skobeleff, and the title
fairly indicated his ruthless lust for blood. It was his theory of war
to strike hard when he struck at all, and to make each battle a lesson
that would not soon be forgotten. The Turkoman nomads have been taught
their lesson well. They have given no trouble since that day of
slaughter and revenge.
Such was one of the weapons with which the Russians conquered the
desert,--the sword. It was succeeded by another,--the iron rail. It is
now some twenty years since the idea of a railroad from the Caspian Sea
eastward was first advanced. In 1880 a narrow-gauge road was begun to
aid Skobeleff, but that daring and impetuous chief had made his march
and finished his work before the rails had crept far on their way. Soon
it was determined to change the narrow-gauge for a broad-gauge road, and
General Annenkoff, a skilful engineer, was placed in charge in 1885,
with orders to push it forward with all speed.
It was a new and bold project which the Russians had in view. Never
before had a railroad been built across so bleak a plain, a treeless and
waterless expanse, stretching for hundreds of miles in a dead level,
over which the winds drove at will the shifting sands, constantly
threatening to bury any work which man ventured to lay upon the desert's
broad breast. West of Bokhara and south of Khiva stretched the great
desert of Kara-Kum, touching the Caspian Sea on the west, the Amu-Daria
River on the east, the home of the wandering Turkomans, the born foes of
the settled races, but from whom all thought of disputing the Russian
rule had for the time been driven by Skobeleff's death-dealing blade.
The total length of the road thus ordered to be built--extending from
the shores of the Caspian Sea, the outpost of European Russia, to the
far-away city of Samarcand, the ancient capital of Timur the Tartar, and
the very stronghold of Asiatic barbarism--was little short of a thousand
miles, of which several hundred were bleak and barren desert. Two
immense steppes, waterless, and scorching hot in summer, lay on the
route, while it traversed the oases of Kizil-Arvat, Merv, Charjui, and
Bokhara. In the northern section of the last lay the famous city of
Samarcand, the eastern terminus of the road. The western terminus was at
Usun-ada, on the Caspian, and opposite the petroleum region of Baku,
perhaps the richest oil-yielding district in the world.
General Annenkoff had special difficulties to overcome in the building
of this road, of a kind never met with by railroad engineers before.
Chief among these were the lack of water and the instability of the
roadway, the wind at times manifesting an awkward disposition to blow
out the foundation from under the ties, at other times to bury the whole
road under acres of flying sand.
These difficulties were got rid of in various ways. Fresh water, made by
boiling the salt water of the Caspian and condensing the steam, was
carried in vats or tuns over the road to the working parties. At a later
date water was conveyed in pipes from the mountains to fill cisterns at
the stations, whence it was carried in canals or underground conduits
along the line, every well and spring on the route being utilized.
To overcome the shifting of the sand, near the Caspian it was
thoroughly soaked with salt water, and at other places was covered with
a layer of clay. But there are long distances where no such means could
be employed, at least two hundred miles of utter wilderness, where the
surface resembles a billowy sea, the sand being raised in loose hillocks
and swept from the troughs between, flying in such clouds before every
wind that an incessant battle with nature is necessary to keep the road
from burial. To prevent this, tamarisk, wild oats, and desert shrubs are
planted along the line, and in particular that strange plant of the
wilderness, the _saxaoul_, whose branches are scraggly and scant, but
whose sturdy roots sink deep into the sand, seeking moisture in the
depths. Fascines of the branches of this plant were laid along the track
and covered with sand, and in places palisades were built, of which only
the tops are now visible.
Yet despite all these efforts the sands creep insidiously on, and in
certain localities workmen have to be kept employed, shovelling it back
as it comes, and fighting without cessation against the forces of the
desert and the winds. In the building of the road, and in this battling
with the sands, Turkomans have been largely employed, having given up
brigandage for honest labor, in which they have proved the most
efficient of the various workmen engaged upon the road.
Aside from the peculiar difficulties above outlined, the Transcaspian
Railway was remarkably favored by nature. For nearly the whole distance
the country is as flat as a billiard-table, and the road so straight
that at times it runs for twenty or thirty miles without the shadow of a
curve. In the entire distance there is not a tunnel, and only some small
cuttings have been made through hills of sand. Of bridges, other than
mere culverts, there are but three in the whole length of the road, the
only large one being that over the Amu-Daria. This is a hastily built,
rickety affair of timber, put up only as a make-shift, and at the mercy
of the stream if a serious rise should take place.
The whole road, indeed, was hastily made, with a single track, the rails
simply spiked down, and the work done at the rate of from a mile to a
mile and a half a day. Before the Bokharans fairly realized what was
afoot, the iron horse was careering over their level plains, and the
shrill scream of the locomotive whistle was startling the saints in
their graves.
Over such a road no great speed can be attained. Thirty miles an hour is
the maximum, and from ten to twenty miles the average speed, while the
stops at stations are exasperatingly long to travellers from the
impatient West. To the Asiatics they are of no concern, time being with
them not worth a moment's thought.
In the operation of this road petroleum waste is used as fuel, the
refining works at Baku yielding an inexhaustible supply. The carriages
are of mixed classes, some being two stories in height, each story of
different class. There are very few first-class carriages on the road.
As for the stations, some of them are miles from the road, that of
Bokhara being ten miles away. This method was adopted to avoid exciting
the prejudices of the Asiatics, who at first were not in favor of the
road, regarding it as a device of Shaitan, the spirit of evil. Yet the
"fire-cart," as they call it, is proving very convenient, and they have
no objection to let this fiery Satan haul their grain and cotton to
market and carry themselves across the waterless plains. The camel is
being thrown out of business by this shrill-voiced prince of evil. The
road is being extended over the oases, and will in the end bring all
Turkestan under its control.
It almost takes away one's breath to think of railway stations and
time-tables in connection with the old-time abiding-place of the
terrible Tartar, and of the iron horse careering across the empire of
barbarism, rushing into the metropolis of superstition, and waking with
the scream of the steam whistle the silent centuries of the Orient.
Nothing of greater promise than this planting of the railroad in Central
Asia has been performed of recent years. The son of the desert is to be
civilized despite himself, and to be taught the arts and ideas of the
West by the irresistible logic of steel and steam.
But this enterprise is a minor one compared with that which Russia has
recently completed, that of a railway extending across the whole width
of Siberia, being, with its branches, more than five thousand miles
long--much the longest railway in the world. Work on this was begun in
1890, and it is now completed to Vladivostok, the chief Russian port on
the Pacific, a traveller being able to ride from St. Petersburg to the
shores of the Pacific Ocean without change of cars. A branch of this
road runs southward through Manchuria to Port Arthur, but as a result of
the war with Japan this has been transferred to China, Manchuria being
wrested from the controlling grasp of Russia. It is a single-track road,
but it is proposed to double-track it throughout its entire length, thus
greatly increasing its availability as a channel of transport alike in
war and peace.
All this is of the deepest significance. The railroad in Asia has come
to stay; and with its coming the barbarism of the past is nearing its
end. The sleeping giant of Orientalism is stirring uneasily in its bed,
its drowsy senses stirred by the shrill alarum of the locomotive
whistle. New ideas and new habits must follow in the track of the iron
horse. The West is forcing itself into the East, with all its restless
activity. In the time to come this whole broad continent is destined to
be covered with railroads as with a vast spider-web; new industries will
be established, machinery introduced, and the great region of the
steppes, famous in the past only as the starting-point of conquering
migrations, must in the end become an active centre of industry, the
home of peace and prosperity, a new-found abiding-place of civilization
and human progress.
_AN ESCAPE FROM THE MINES OF SIBERIA._
The name Siberia calls up to our minds the vision of a stupendous
prison, a vast open penitentiary larger than the whole United States, a
continental place of captivity which for three centuries past has been
the seat of more wretchedness and misery than any other land inhabited
by the human race. To that far, frozen land a stream of the best and
worst of the people of Russia has steadily flowed, including prisoners
of state, religious dissenters, rebels, Polish patriots, convicts,
vagabonds, and all others who in any way gave offence to the authorities
or stood in the way of persons in power.
Not freedom of action alone, but even freedom of thought, is a crime in
Russia. It is a land of innumerable spies, of secret arrest and rapid
condemnation, in which the captive may find himself on the road to
Siberia without knowing with what crime he is charged, while his
friends, even his wife and family, may remain in ignorance of his fate.
Every year a convoy of some twenty thousand wretched prisoners is sent
off to that dismal land, including the ignorant and the educated, the
debased and the refined, men and women, young and old, the horror of
exile being added to indescribably by this mingling of delicate and
refined men and women with the rudest and most brutal of the convict
class, all under the charge of mounted Cossacks, well armed, and bearing
long whips as their most effective arguments of control.
It may be said here that the misery of this long journey on foot has
been somewhat mitigated since the introduction of railroads and
steamboats, and will very likely be done away with when the
Trans-siberian Railway is finished; but for centuries the horrors of the
convict train have piteously appealed to the charity of the world, while
the sufferings and brutalities which the exiles have had to endure stand
almost without parallel in the story of convict life.
The exiles are divided into two classes, those who lose all and those
who lose part of their rights. Of a convict of the former class neither
the word nor the bond has any value: his wife is released from all duty
to him, he cannot possess any property or hold any office. In prison he
wears convict clothes, has his head half shaved, and may be cruelly
flogged at the will of the officials, or murdered almost with impunity.
Those deprived of partial rights are usually sent to Western Siberia;
those deprived of total rights are sent to Eastern Siberia, where their
life, as workers in the mines, is so miserable and monotonous that death
is far more of a relief than something to be feared.
[Illustration: GROUP OF SIBERIANS.]
Many of the exiles escape,--some from the districts where they live
free, with privilege of getting a living in any manner available, others
from the prisons or mines. The mere feat of running away is in many
cases not difficult, but to get out of the country is a very different
matter. The officers do not make any serious efforts to prevent escapes,
and can be easily bribed to allow them, since they are enabled then to
turn in the name of the prisoner as still on hand and charge the
government for his support. In the gold-mines the convicts work in
gangs, and here one will lie in a ditch and be covered with rubbish by
his comrades. When his absence is discovered he is not to be found, and
at nightfall he slips from the trench and makes for the forest.
To spend the summer in the woods is the joy of many convicts. They have
no hope of getting out of the country, which is of such vast extent that
winter is sure to descend upon them before they can approach the border,
but the freedom of life in the woods has for them an undefinable charm.
Then as the frigid season approaches they permit themselves to be
caught, and go back to their labor or confinement with hearts lightened
by the enjoyment of their vagrant summer wanderings. There is in some
cases another advantage to be gained. A twenty years' convict who has
escaped and lets himself be caught again may give a false name, and
avoid all incriminating answers through a convenient failure of memory.
If not detected, he may in this way get off with a five years' sentence
as a vagrant. But if detected his last lot is worse than his first,
since the time he has already served goes for nothing.
There is another peril to which escaping prisoners are exposed. The
native tribes are apt to look upon them as game and shoot them down at
sight. It is said that they receive three roubles for each convict they
bring to the police, dead or alive. "If you shoot a squirrel," they say,
"you get only his skin; but if you shoot a _varnak_ [convict] you get
his skin and his clothing too."
Atkinson, the Siberian traveller, tells a remarkable story of an escape
of prisoners, which may be given in illustration of the above remarks.
One night in September, 1850, the people of Barnaoul, a town in Western
Siberia, were roused from their slumbers by the clatter of a party of
mounted Cossacks galloping up the quiet street. The story they brought
was an alarming one. Siberia had been invaded by three thousand Tartars
of the desert, who were marching towards the town. Nearly all the gold
from the Siberian gold-mines lay in Barnaoul, waiting to be smelted into
bars and sent to St. Petersburg. There was much silver also, with
abundance of other valuable government stores. All this would form a
rich booty for an army of nomad plunderers, could they obtain it, and
the news filled the town with excitement and alarm.
As the night passed and the day came on, other Cossacks arrived with
still more alarming news. The three thousand had grown to seven
thousand, many of them armed with rifles, who were burning the Kalmuck
villages as they advanced, and murdering every man, woman, and child who
fell into their hands. Some thought that the wild hordes of Asia were
breaking loose again, as in the time of Genghis Khan, and the terror of
many of the people grew intense.
By noon the enemy had increased to ten thousand, and the people
everywhere were flying before their advance. Hasty steps were taken for
defence and for the safety of the gold and silver, while orders were
despatched in all directions to gather a force to meet them on their
way. But as the days passed on the alarm began to subside. The number of
the invaders declined almost as rapidly as it had grown. They were not
advancing upon the town. No army was needed to oppose them, and Cossacks
were sent to stop the march of the troops. In the course of two days
more the truth was sifted from the mass of wild rumors and reports. The
ten thousand invaders dwindled to forty Circassian prisoners who had
escaped from the gold-mines on the Birioussa.
These fugitives had not a thought of invading the Russian dominions.
They were prisoners of war who, with heartless cruelty, had been
condemned to the mines of Siberia for the crime of a patriotic effort to
save their country, and their sole purpose was to return to their
far-distant homes.
By the aid of small quantities of gold, which they had managed to hide
from their guards, they succeeded in purchasing a sufficient supply of
rifles and ammunition from the neighboring tribesmen, which they hid in
a mountain cavern about seven miles away. There was no fear of the
Tartars betraying them, as they had received for the arms ten times
their value, and would have been severely punished if found with gold in
their possession.
On a Saturday afternoon near the end of July, 1850, after completing the
day's labors, the Circassians left the mine in small parties, going in
different directions. This excited no suspicion, as they were free to
hunt or otherwise amuse themselves after their work. They gradually came
together in a mountain ravine about six miles south of the mines. Not
far from this locality a stud of spare horses were kept at pasture, and
hither some of the fugitives made their way, reaching the spot just as
the animals were being driven into the enclosure for the night. The
three horse-keepers suddenly found themselves covered with rifles and
forced to yield themselves prisoners, while their captors began to
select the best horses from the herd.
The Circassians deemed it necessary to take the herdsmen with them to
prevent them from giving the alarm. Two of these also were skilful
hunters and well acquainted with the surrounding mountain regions, and
were likely to prove useful as guides. In all fifty-five horses were
chosen, out of the three or four hundred in the herd. The remainder were
turned out of the enclosure and driven into the forest, as if they had
broken loose and their keepers were absent in search of them. This done,
the captors sought their friends in the glen, by whom they were received
with cheers, and before midnight, the moon having risen, the fugitives
began their long and dangerous journey.
Sunrise found them on a high summit, which commanded a view of the
gold-mine they had left, marked by the curling smoke which rose from
fires kept constantly alive to drive away the mosquitoes, the pests of
the region. Taking a last look at their place of exile, they moved on
into a grassy valley, where they breakfasted and fed their horses. On
they went, keeping a sharp watch upon their guides, day by day, until
the evening of the fourth day found them past the crest of the range and
descending into a narrow valley, where they decided to spend the night.
Thus far all had gone well. They were now beyond the Russian frontier
and in Chinese territory, and as their guides knew the country no
farther, they were set free and their rifles restored to them. Venison
had been obtained plentifully on the march, and fugitives and captives
alike passed the evening in feasting and enjoyment. With daybreak the
Siberians left to return to the mine and the Circassians resumed their
route.
From this time onward difficulties confronted them. They were in a
region of mountains, precipices, ravines, and torrents. One dangerous
river they swam, but, instead of keeping on due south, the difficulties
of the way induced them to change their course to the west, alarmed,
probably, by the vast snowy peaks of the Tangnou Mountains in the
distance, though if they had passed these all danger from Siberia would
have been at an end. As it was, after more than three weeks of
wandering, the nature of the country forced them towards the northwest,
until they came upon the eastern shore of the Altin-Kool Lake.
Here was their final chance. Had they followed the lake southerly they
might still have reached a place of safety. But ill fortune brought them
upon it at a point where it seemed easiest to round it on the north,
and they passed on, hoping soon to reach its western shores. But the
Bea, the impassable torrent that flows from the lake, forced them again
many miles northward in search of a ford, and into a locality from which
their chance of escape was greatly reduced.