THE GREATEST HORSE-EXPRESS SERVICE IN THE WORLD--EQUIPMENT FOR
THE ROAD--A SIBERIAN "SEND-OFF"--POST TRAVEL ON THE ICE--BROKEN
SLEEP--DRIVING INTO AN AIR-HOLE--REPAIRING DAMAGES--FIRST SIGHT OF
IRKUTSK
We remained in Yakutsk only four days--just long enough to make the
necessary preparations for a continuous sleigh-ride of five thousand
one hundred and fourteen miles to the nearest railway in European
Russia. The Imperial Russian Post, by which we purposed to travel from
Yakutsk to Nizhni Novgorod, was, at that time, the longest and best
organised horse-express service in the world. It employed 3000 or 4000
drivers, with twice as many _telegas, tarantases_ and sleighs, and
kept in readiness for instant use more than 10,000 horses, distributed
among 350 post-stations, along a route that covered a distance as
great as that between New York City and the Sandwich Islands. If one
had the requisite physical endurance, and could travel night and
day without stop, it was possible, with a courier's "podorozhnaya"
(po-do-rozh'-na-yah), or road-ticket, to go from Yakutsk to Nizhni
Novgorod, a distance of 5114 miles, in twenty-five days, or only
eleven days more than the time occupied by a railway train in covering
about the same distance. Before the establishment of telegraphic
communication between China and Russia, imperial couriers, carrying
important despatches from Peking, often made the distance between
Irkutsk and St. Petersburg--3618 miles--in sixteen days, with two
hundred and twelve changes of horses and drivers. In order to
accomplish this feat they had to eat, drink, and sleep in their
sleighs and make an average speed-rate of ten miles an hour for nearly
four hundred consecutive hours. We did not expect, of course, to
travel with such rapidity as this; but we intended to ride night and
day, and hoped to reach St. Petersburg before the end of the year.
With the aid and advice of Baron Maidel, a Russian scientist who had
just come over the route that we purposed to follow, Price and I
bought a large open _pavoska_ or Siberian travelling sleigh, which
looked like a huge, burlap-covered baby-carriage on runners; had it
brought into the courtyard of our house, and proceeded to fit it up
for six weeks' occupancy as a bedchamber and sitting-room. First of
all, we repacked our luggage in soft, flat, leather pouches, and
stowed it away in the bottom of the deep and capacious vehicle as a
foundation for our bed. We then covered these flat pouches with a
two-foot layer of fragrant hay, to lessen the shock of jolting on a
rough road; spread over the hay a big wolfskin sleeping-sack, about
seven feet in length and wide enough to hold our two bodies; covered
that with two pairs of blankets; and finally lined the whole back part
of the sleigh with large, soft, swan's-down pillows. At the foot of
the sleeping-sack, under the driver's seat, we stowed away a bag of
dried rye-bread, another bag filled with cakes of frozen soup, two or
three pounds of tea, a conical loaf of white sugar, half a dozen dried
and smoked salmon, and a padded box containing teapot, tea-cannister,
sugar-jar, spoons, knives and forks, and two glass tumblers. Schwartz;
and Malchanski bought another _pavoska_ and fitted it up in similar
fashion, and on the 19th of November we obtained from the Bureau
of Posts two _podorozhnayas_, or, as Price called them, "ukases,"
directing every post-station master between Yakutsk and Irkutsk to
furnish us, "by order of his Imperial Majesty Alexander Nikolaivitch,
Autocrat of All the Russias," etc., etc., six horses and two drivers
to carry us on our way.
In every part of the world except Siberia it is customary to start on
a long journey in the morning. In Siberia, however, the proper time is
late in the evening, when all your friends can conveniently assemble
to "provozhat," or, in colloquial English, give you a send-off.
Judging from our experience in Yakutsk, the Siberian custom has the
support of sound reason, inasmuch as the amount of drinking involved
in the riotous ceremony of "provozhanie" unfits a man for any place
except bed, and any occupation more strenuous than slumber. A man
could never see his friend off in the morning and then go back to his
business. He would see double, if not quadruple, and would hardly be
able to speak his native language without a foreign accent. When
the horses came from the post-station for us, at ten o'clock on the
evening of November 20th, we had had one dinner and two or three
incidental lunches; had "sampled" every kind of beverage that our host
had in the house, from vodka and cherry cordial to "John Collins" and
champagne; had sung all the songs we knew, from "John Brown's Body"
in English to "Nastóichka travnáya" in Russian; and Schwartz and
Malchanski were ready, apparently, to make a night of it, send the
horses back to the station, and have another _provozhanie_ the next
day. Price and I, however, insisted that the Czar's ukase to the
station-masters was good only for that evening; that if we didn't
take the horses immediately we should have to pay demurrage; that the
curfew bell had rung; that the town gates would close at ten thirty
sharp; and that if we didn't get under way at once, we should probably
be arrested for riotous disturbance of the peace!
We put on our _kukhlankas_ and fur hoods at last; shook hands once
more all around; and finally got out into the street;--Malchanski
dragging Schwartz off to his sleigh singing the chorus of a Russian
drinking song that ended in "Ras-to-chee'-tel-no! Vos-khe-tee'-tel-no!
Oo-dee-vee'-tel-no!" We then drank a farewell stirrup cup, which our
bareheaded host brought out to us after we had taken our seats, and
were just about to start, when Baron Maidel shouted to me, with an
air of serious concern, "Have you got a club--for the drivers and
station-masters?"
"No," I replied, "I don't need a club; I can talk to them in the most
persuasive Russian you ever heard."
"Akh! Neilza!" ("Impossible") he exclaimed. "It is impossible to go
so! You must have a club! Wait a minute!" and he rushed back into
the house to get me a bludgeon from his private armory. My driver,
meanwhile, who evidently disapproved, on personal grounds, of this
suggestion, laid his whip across his horses' backs with a cry of "Noo,
rebatta!" ("Now then, boys") and we dashed away from the house, just
as the Baron reappeared on the steps brandishing a formidable cudgel
and shouting: "Pastoy! Neilza!" ("Stop, it's impossible.") "You can't
go without a club!" When we turned a neighbouring corner and lost
sight of the house, our host was waving a bottle in one hand and a
lighted candle in the other; Baron Maidel was still gesticulating on
the steps, shouting: "Neilza! Hold on! Club! For your drivers! It's
impossible to go so!" and the little group of "provozhatters" on the
sidewalk were laughing, cheering, and shouting "Good-bye! Good luck!
With God!"
We dashed away at a gallop through the snow-drifted streets, past
earth-banked _yurts_ whose windows of ice were irradiated with a warm
glow by the open fires within; past columns of luminous smoke rising
from the wide chimneys of Yakut houses; past a red stuccoed church
upon whose green, balloon-shaped domes golden stars glittered in the
frosty moonlight; past a lonely graveyard on the outskirts of the
city; and finally down a gentle decline to the snow-covered river,
which had a width of nearly four miles and which stretched away to the
westward like a frozen lake surrounded by dark wooded hills. Up this
great river--the Lena--we were to travel on the ice for a distance of
nearly a thousand miles, following a sinuous, never-ending line of
small evergreen trees, which had been cut in the neighbouring forests
and set up at short intervals in the snow, to guide the drivers in
storms and to mark out a line of safety around air-holes and between
areas of thin ice or stretches of open water. I fell asleep, shortly
after leaving Yakutsk, but was awakened, two or three hours later,
at the first post-station, by the voice of our driver shouting: "Ai!
Boys! Out with the horses--lively!" Two of us then had to alight from
our sleighs, go into the post-station, show our _podorozhnayas_ to the
station-master, and superintend the harnessing of two fresh teams.
Getting back into my fur bag, I lay awake for the next three hours,
listening to the jangle of a big bell on the wooden arch over the
thill-horse's back, and watching, through frosty eyelashes, the dark
outlines of the high wooded shores as they seemed to drift swiftly
past us to the eastward.
The severest hardship of post travel in eastern Siberia in winter is
not the cold, but the breaking up of all one's habits of sleep. In the
first stages of our journey, when the nights were clear and the river
ice was smooth and safe, we made the distances between stations in
from two to three hours; and at the end of every such period we were
awakened, and had to get out of our warm fur bags into a temperature
that was almost always below zero and sometimes forty or fifty degrees
below. When we got back into our vehicles and resumed our journey,
we were usually cold, and just as we would get warm enough to go to
sleep, we would reach another station and again have to turn out.
Sleeping in short snatches, between shivers, to the accompaniment of
a jangling dinner-bell and a driver's shouts, and getting out into
an arctic temperature every two or three hours, night and day, for a
whole week, reduces one to a very fagged and jaded condition. At the
end of the first four days, it seemed to me that I should certainly
have to stop somewhere for an unbroken night's rest; but man is an
animal that gets accustomed to things, and in the course of a week I
became so used to the wild cries of the driver and the jangle of the
thill-horse's bell that they no longer disturbed me, and I gradually
acquired the habit of sleeping, in brief cat-naps, at all hours of the
day and night. As we ascended the river, the moon rose later and
later and the nights were often so dark that our drivers had great
difficulty in following the line of evergreen trees that marked the
road. Finally, about five hundred miles from Yakutsk, a particularly
reckless or self-confident driver got off the road, went ahead at a
venture instead of stopping to look for the evergreen trees, and just
after midnight drove us into an air-hole, about a quarter of a mile
from shore, where the water was thirty feet deep. Price and I were
fast asleep, and were awakened by the crashing of ice, the snorting of
the terrified horses, and the rush of water into the sleigh. I cannot
remember how we got out of our fur bags and gained the solid ice. I
was so bewildered by sleep and so completely taken by surprise that I
must have acted upon blind impulse, without any clear consciousness of
what I was doing. From subsequent examination of the air-hole and the
sleigh, I concluded that we must have jumped from the widely extended
outriggers, which were intended to guard against an accidental
capsize, which had a span of ten or twelve feet, and which rested
on the broken ice around the margin of the hole in such a way as to
prevent the sleigh from becoming completely submerged. But be that as
it may, we all got out on the solid ice in some way, and the first
thing I remember is standing on the edge of the hole, staring at the
swimming, snorting horses, the outlines of whose heads and necks
I could just make out, and wondering whether this were not a
particularly vivid and terrifying nightmare. For an instant, I could
not be absolutely sure that I was awake. In a moment, the other
sleigh, which was only a short distance behind, loomed up through the
darkness and its driver shouted to our man, "What's the matter?"
"Oootonoole!" ("We got drowned") was the reply. "Get out your ropes,
quick, while I run to the shore for some driftwood. The horses
will freeze and sink in a few minutes. Akh! My God! My God! What a
punishment!" and, tearing off his outer fur coat, he started at a run
for the shore. I did not know what he expected to do with driftwood,
but he seemed to have a clear vital idea of some sort, so Price and
I rushed away after him. "We must get a tree, or a small log," he
explained breathlessly as we overtook him, "so I can crawl out on it
and cut the horses loose. But God knows," he added, "whether they'll
hold out till we get back. The water is killing cold." After a few
minutes on the snowy beach, we found a long, slender tree-trunk that
our driver said would do, and began to drag it across the ice. Our
breath, by this time, was coming in short, panting gasps, and when
Schwartz, Malchanski, and the other driver, who ran to our assistance,
took hold of the heavy log, we were on the verge of physical collapse.
When we got back to the air-hole, the horses were still swimming
feebly, but they were fast becoming chilled and exhausted, and it
seemed doubtful whether we should save them. We pushed the log out
over the broken edge of the ice, and five of us held it while our
driver, with a knife between his teeth and a rope about his shoulders,
crawled out on it, cut loose one of the outside horses and fastened
the line around its neck. He then crept back, and we all hauled on the
line until we dragged the poor beast out by the head. It was very much
exhausted and badly scraped by the sharp edge of the ice, but it had
strength enough to scramble to its feet. We then cut loose and hauled
out in the same way the outside horse on the other side. This one was
nearly dead and made no attempt to get up until it had been cruelly
flogged, but it struggled to its feet at last. Cutting loose the
thill-horse was more difficult, as its body was completely submerged
and it was hard to get at the rawhide fastening that held the collar,
the wooden arch, and the thills together, but our plucky driver
succeeded at last, and we dragged the half-frozen animal out. Rescue
came for him, however, too late. He could not rise to his feet and
died, a few moments afterward, from exhaustion and cold. Fastening
ropes to the half-submerged sleigh and harnessing to it the horses of
the other team, we finally pulled that up on the ice. Leaving it there
for the present, we made traverses back and forth across the river
until we found the line of evergreen trees, and then started for the
nearest post-station--Price and I riding with Malchanski and Schwartz
while our driver followed with the two rescued horses. When we reached
the post-station, which was about seven miles away, it was between
three and four o'clock in the morning; and, after rousing the
station-master and sending a driver with a team of fresh horses after
the abandoned sleigh, we drank two or three tumblerfuls of hot tea,
brought in blankets and pillows from the sleigh of Schwartz and
Malchanski, and went to bed on the floor. As a result of this
misadventure, our homeward progress was stopped, and we had to stay at
the village of Krestófskaya two days, while we repaired damages. Our
sleigh, when it came in that morning, was a mass of ice; our fur bag,
blankets, pillows, and spare clothing were water-soaked and frozen
solid; and the contents of our leather pouches were almost ruined.
By distributing our things among half a dozen houses we succeeded in
getting them thawed out and dried in time to make another start at the
end of the second day; but after that time I did not allow myself to
fall asleep at night. We had escaped once, but we might not be so
fortunate again, and I decided to watch the line of evergreen bushes
myself. When we lost the road in the darkness afterward, as we
frequently did, I made the driver stop and searched the river myself
on foot until I found it. The danger that I feared was not so much
getting drowned as getting wet. In temperatures that were almost
continuously below zero, and often twenty or thirty degrees below, a
man in water-soaked clothing would freeze to death in a very short
time, and there were so many air-holes and areas of thin ice that
watchfulness was a matter of vital necessity.
Day after day and night after night we rode swiftly westward, up a
river that was always more than a mile in width and often two or
three; past straggling villages of unpainted log houses clinging
to the steep sides of the mountainous shores; through splendid
precipitous gorges, like those above the Iron Gate of the Danube;
along stretches of flat pasture land where shaggy, white Yakut
ponies were pawing up the snow to get at the withered grass; through
good-sized towns like Kirinsk and Vitimsk, where we began to see
signs of occidental civilisation; and finally, past a stern-wheel,
Ohio-River steamboat, of primitive type, tied up and frozen in near
the head of navigation at Verkholénsk. "Just look at that steamer!"
cried Price, with an unwonted glow of enthusiasm in his boyish face.
"Doesn't that look like home?" At Verkholénsk we abandoned the Lena,
which we had followed up almost to its source, and, leaving the ice
for the first time in two weeks, we started across country in a line
nearly parallel with the western coast of Lake Baikal. We had been
forty-one days on the road from Okhotsk; had covered a distance of
about 2300 miles, and were within a day's ride of Irkutsk.
One bright sunshiny morning in early December, from the crest of
a high hill on the Verkholénsk road, we got our first view of the
east-Siberian capital--a long compact mass of wooden houses with
painted window-shutters; white-walled buildings with roofs of metallic
green; and picturesque Russo-Byzantine churches whose snowy towers
were crowned with inverted balloons of gold or covered with domes of
ultramarine blue spangled with golden stars. Long lines of loaded
sledges from the Mongolian frontier could be seen entering the city
from the south; the streets were full of people; flags were flying
here and there over the roofs of government buildings; and from the
barracks down the river came faintly the music of a regimental band.
Our driver stopped his horses, took off his hat, and turning to us,
with the air of one who owns what he points out, said, proudly,
"Irkutsk!" If he expected us to be impressed--as he evidently did--he
was not disappointed; because Irkutsk, at that time and from that
point of view, was a very striking and beautiful city. We, moreover,
had just come from the desolate moss tundras and wild, lonely forests
of arctic Asia and were in a state of mind to be impressed by anything
that had architectural beauty, or indicated culture, luxury, and
wealth. We had seen nothing that even remotely suggested a city in two
years and a half; and we felt almost as if we were Gothic barbarians
gazing at Rome. It did not even strike us as particularly funny when
our Buriat driver informed us seriously that Irkutsk was so great a
place that its houses had to be numbered in order to enable their
owners to find them! To us, fresh from Gizhiga, Penzhina, and Okhotsk,
a city with numbered houses was really too remarkable and impressive
a thing to be treated with levity, and we therefore received the
information with proper awe and in silence. We could share the native
feeling, even if numbered houses had once been known to us.
Twenty minutes later, we dashed into the city at a gallop, as if we
were imperial couriers with war news; rushed at break-neck speed past
markets, bazaars, telegraph poles, street lamps, big shops with gilded
sign-boards, polished droshkies drawn by high-stepping Orloff horses,
officers in uniform, grey-coated policemen with sabres, and pretty
women hooded in white Caucasian _bashliks_; and finally drew up with a
flourish in front of a comfortable-looking stuccoed hotel--the first
one we had seen in more than twenty-nine months.