IV

Seeing that there was nothing more to be done at Chitá in the way of

reforms, I gladly accepted the offer to visit the Amúr that same summer

of 1863.

The immense domain on the left (northern) bank of the Amúr, and

along the Pacific Coast as far south as the Bay of Peter the Great

(Vladivostók), had been annexed to Russia by Count Muravióff, almost

against the will of the St. Petersburg authorities and certainly

without much help from them. When he conceived the bold plan of taking

possession of the great river whose southern position and fertile lands

had for the last two hundred years always attracted the Siberians; and

when, on the eve of the opening of Japan to Europe, he decided to take

for Russia a strong position on the Pacific coast and to join hands

with the United States, he had almost everybody against him at St.

Petersburg: the Ministry of War, which had no men to dispose of, the

Ministry of Finance, which had no money for annexations, and especially

the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, always guided by its pre-occupation

of avoiding ‘diplomatic complications.’ Muravióff had thus to act on

his own responsibility, and to rely upon the scanty means which thinly

populated Eastern Siberia could afford for this grand enterprise.

Moreover, everything had to be done in a hurry, in order to oppose the

‘accomplished fact’ to the protests of the West European diplomatists,

which would certainly be raised.

A nominal occupation would have been of no avail, and the idea was

to have on the whole length of the great river and of its southern

tributary, the Usurí--full 2,500 miles--a chain of self-supporting

settlements, and thus to establish a regular communication between

Siberia and the Pacific Coast. Men were wanted for these settlements,

and as the scanty population of East Siberia could not supply them,

Muravióff did not recoil before any kind of means of getting men.

Released convicts who, after having served their time, had become serfs

to the Imperial mines, were freed and organized as Transbaikálian

Cossacks, part of whom were settled along the Amúr and the Usurí,

forming two new Cossack communities. Then Muravióff obtained the

release of a thousand hard-labour convicts (mostly robbers and

murderers), who had to be settled as free men on the lower Amúr.

He came himself to see them off, and, as they were going to leave,

addressed them on the beach: ‘Go, my children, be free there, cultivate

the land, make it Russian soil, start a new life,’ and so on. The

Russian peasant women nearly always follow, of their own free will,

their husbands if the latter happen to be sent to hard labour to

Siberia, and many of the would-be colonists had their families with

them. But those who had none ventured to remark to Muravióff: ‘What

is agriculture without a wife? We ought to be married.’ Whereupon

Muravióff ordered to release all the hard-labour convict women of the

place--about a hundred--and offered them the choice of the man each of

them would like to marry and to follow. However, there was little time

to lose; the high water in the river was rapidly going down, the rafts

had to start, and Muravióff, asking the people to stand in pairs on the

beach, blessed them, saying: ‘I marry you, children. Be kind to each

other; you men, don’t ill-treat your wives--and be happy!’

I saw these settlers some six years after that scene. Their villages

were poor, the land they had been settled on having had to be cleared

from under virgin forests; but, all taken, their settlements were

not a failure, and ‘the Muravióff marriages’ were not less happy

than marriages are on the average. That excellent, intelligent man,

Innocentus, bishop of the Amúr, recognized, later on, these marriages,

as well as the children which were born, as quite legal, and had them

inscribed on the Church registers.

Muravióff was less successful, though, with another batch of men that

he added to the population of East Siberia. In his penury of men he had

accepted a couple of thousand soldiers from the punishment battalions.

They were incorporated as ‘adopted sons’ in the families of the

Cossacks, or were settled in joint households in the villages. But ten

or twenty years of barrack life under the horrid discipline of Nicholas

I.’s time surely was not a preparation for an agricultural life. The

‘sons’ deserted their adopted fathers and constituted the floating

population of the towns, living from hand to mouth on occasional jobs,

spending chiefly in drink what they earned, and then again living as

birds in the sky in the expectation of another job turning up.

The motley crowd of Transbaikálian Cossacks, of ex-convicts, and

‘sons,’ who were settled in a hurry and often in a haphazard way along

the banks of the Amúr, certainly did not attain prosperity, especially

in the lower parts of the river and on the Usurí, where every square

yard had often to be won upon a virgin sub-tropical forest, and deluges

of rain brought by the monsoons in July, inundations on a gigantic

scale, millions of migrating birds, and the like continually destroyed

the crops, finally bringing whole populations to sheer despair and

apathy.

Considerable supplies of salt, flour, cured meat, and so on had thus

to be shipped every year to support both the regular troops and the

settlements on the lower Amúr, and for that purpose some hundred and

fifty barges used to be built and loaded at Chitá, and floated with

the early spring floods down the Ingodá, the Shílka, and the Amúr. The

whole flotilla was divided into detachments of from twenty to thirty

barges, which were placed under the orders of a number of Cossack

and civil-service officers. Most of them did not know much about

navigation, but they could be trusted, at least, not to steal the

provisions and then report them as lost. I was nominated assistant to

the chief of all that flotilla--let me name him, Major Maróvsky.

My first experiences in my new capacity of navigator were all but

successful. It so happened that I had to proceed with a few barges

as rapidly as possible to a certain point on the Amúr, and there to

hand over my vessels. For that purpose I had to hire men exactly from

among those ‘sons’ whom I have already mentioned. None of them had

ever had any experience in river navigation, nor had I. On the morning

of our start my crew had to be collected from the public-houses of

the place, most of them being so drunk at that early hour that they

had to be bathed in the river to bring them back to their senses.

When we were afloat, I had to teach them everything that had to be

done. Still, things went pretty well during the day; the barges,

carried along by a swift current, floated down the river, and my crew,

inexperienced though they were, had no interest in throwing their

vessels upon the shore--that would have required special exertion. But

when dusk came, and our huge heavily laden fifty-ton barges had to

be brought to the shore and fastened to it for the night, one of the

barges, which was far ahead of the one upon which I was, was stopped

only when it was fast upon a rock, at the foot of a tremendously high

inaccessible cliff. There it stood immovable, while the level of the

river, temporarily swollen by rains, was rapidly going down. My ten

men evidently could not move it. So I rowed down to the next village

to ask assistance from the Cossacks, and at the same time despatched a

messenger to a friend--a Cossack officer who stayed some twenty miles

away and who had experience in such things.

The morning came; a hundred Cossacks--men and women--had come to my

aid, but there was no means whatever to connect the barge with the

shore, in order to unload it--so deep was the water under the cliff.

And, as soon as we attempted to push it off the rock, its bottom

was broken in and water freely entered it, sweeping away the flour

and the salt of the cargo. To my great horror, I perceived lots of

small fish entering through the hole and freely swimming about in the

barge--and I stood there helpless, not knowing what to do next. There

is a very simple and effective remedy for such emergencies. A sack of

flour is thrust into the hole, and it soon takes its shape, while the

outer crust of paste which is formed in the sack prevents water from

penetrating through the flour; but none of us knew anything about it.

Happily enough, a few minutes later a barge was signalled coming down

the river towards us. The appearance of the swan who carried Lohengrin

was not greeted with more enthusiasm by the despairing Elsa than that

clumsy vessel was greeted by me. The haze which covered the beautiful

Shílka at that early hour in the morning added even more to the poetry

of the vision. It was my friend the Cossack officer, who had realized

by my description that no human force could drag my barge off the

rock--that it was lost--and taking an empty barge which by chance was

at hand, came with it to place upon it the cargo of my doomed craft.

Now the hole was filled up, the water was pumped out, and the cargo was

transferred to the new barge, which was fastened alongside mine; and

next morning I could continue my journey. This little experience was

of great profit to me, and I soon reached my destination on the Amúr

without further adventures worth mentioning. Every night we found out

some stretch of steep but relatively low shore where to stop with the

barges for the night, and our fires were soon lighted on the bank of

the swift and clear river, amidst most beautiful mountain scenery. In

daytime, one could hardly imagine a more pleasant journey than on board

a barge which leisurely floats down, without any of the noises of a

steamer--one or two strokes being occasionally given with its immense

stern rudder to keep it in the main current. For the lover of nature,

the lower part of the Shílka and the upper part of the Amúr, where one

sees a most beautiful, wide, and swift river flowing amidst mountains

rising in steep wooded cliffs a couple of thousand feet above the

water, offers one of the most delightful scenes in the world. But on

that very account communication along the shore, on horseback, along a

narrow trail, is extremely difficult. I learned this that same autumn

at my own expense. In East Siberia the seven last stations along the

Shílka (about 120 miles) were known as the Seven Mortal Sins. This

stretch of the Trans-Siberian railway--if it is ever built--will cost

unimaginable sums of money: much more than the stretch of the Canadian

Pacific line in the Rocky Mountains, in the Canyon of the Fraser River,

has cost.

* * * * *

After I had delivered my barges, I made about a thousand miles down the

Amúr in one of the post boats which are used on the river. The boat is

covered with a light shed in its back part, and has on its stem a box

filled with earth upon which a fire is kept to cook the food. My crew

consisted of three men. We had to make haste, and therefore used to row

in turns all day long, while at night the boat was left to float with

the current, and I kept the watch for three or four hours to maintain

the boat in the midst of the river and to prevent it from being dragged

into some side branch. These watches--the full moon shining above,

and the dark hills reflected in the river--were beautiful beyond

description. My rowers were taken from the same ‘sons;’ they were

three tramps who had the reputation of being incorrigible thieves and

robbers--and I carried with me a heavy sack full of bank-notes, silver,

and copper. In Western Europe such a journey on a lonely river would

have been considered risky--not so in East Siberia; I made it without

even having so much as an old pistol, and I found my three tramps

excellent company. Only as we approached Blagovéschensk they became

restless. ‘Khánshina’ (the Chinese brandy) ‘is cheap there,’ they

reasoned with deep sighs. ‘We are sure to get into trouble! It’s cheap,

and it knocks you over in no time from want of being used to it!’ ...

I offered to leave the money which was due to them with a friend, who

would see them off with the first steamer. ‘That would not help us,’

they replied mournfully; ‘somebody will offer a glass ... it’s cheap,

... and a glass knocks you over!’ they persisted in saying. They were

really perplexed, and when, a few months later, I returned through

the town I learned that one of ‘my sons’--as people called them in

town--had really got into trouble. When he had sold the last pair of

boots to get the poisonous drink, he had made some theft and was locked

up. My friend finally obtained his release and shipped him back.

Only those who have seen the Amúr, or know the Mississippi or the

Yang-tse-kiang, can imagine what an immense river the Amúr becomes

after it has joined the Sungarí and can realize what tremendous waves

roll up its bed if the weather is stormy. When the rainy season, due to

the monsoons, comes in July, the Sungarí, the Usurí, and the Amúr are

swollen by unimaginable quantities of water; thousands of low islands,

usually covered with willow thickets, are inundated or torn away, and

the width of the river attains in places two, three, and even five

miles; water rushes into hundreds of branches and lakes which spread

in the lowlands along the main channel; and when a fresh wind blows

from an eastern quarter, against the current, tremendous waves, higher

than those which one sees in the estuary of the St. Lawrence, roll up

the main channel as well as up its branches. Still worse is it when a

typhoon blows from the Chinese Sea and spreads over the Amúr region.

We experienced such a typhoon. I was then on board a large decked boat,

with Major Maróvsky, whom I had joined at Blagovéschensk. He had well

provided his boat with sails, which permitted us to sail close to the

wind, and when the storm began we managed, nevertheless, to bring our

boat on the sheltered side of the river and to find refuge in some

small tributary. There we stayed for two days while the storm raged

with such fury that when I ventured for a few hundred yards into

the surrounding forest, I had to retreat on account of the number of

immense trees which the wind was blowing down round me. We began to

feel very uneasy for our barges. It was evident that if they had been

afloat this morning, they never would have been able to reach the

sheltered side of the river, but must have been driven by the storm to

the bank exposed to the full rage of the wind, and there they must have

been destroyed. A disaster was almost certain.

We sailed out as soon as the main fury of the storm had abated. We knew

that we must soon overtake two detachments of barges; but we sailed one

day, two days, and there was no trace of them. My friend Maróvsky lost

both sleep and appetite, and looked as if he had just had a serious

illness. He sat whole days on the deck, motionless, murmuring: ‘All is

lost, all is lost!’ The villages are few and rare in this part of the

Amúr, and nobody could give us any information. A new storm came on,

and when we reached at last a village, we learned that no barges had

passed by it, and that quantities of wreck had been seen floating down

the river during the previous day. It was evident that at least forty

barges, which carried a cargo of about 2,000 tons, must have perished.

It meant a certain famine next spring on the lower Amúr if no supplies

were brought in time. We were late in the season, navigation would soon

be closed, and there was no telegraph yet along the river.

We held a council and decided that Maróvsky should sail as quickly

as possible to the mouth of the Amúr. Some purchases of grain might

perhaps be made in Japan before the close of the navigation. Meanwhile

I was to go with all possible speed up the river, to determine the

losses, and do my best to cover the two thousand miles of the Amúr and

the Shílka--in boats, on horseback, or on board steamer if I met one.

The sooner I could warn the Chitá authorities, and despatch any amount

of provisions available, the better it would be. Perhaps part of them

would reach this same autumn the upper Amúr, whence it would be easier

to ship them in the early spring to the lowlands. Even if a few weeks

or only days could be won, it might make an immense difference in case

of a famine.

I began my two thousand miles’ journey in a rowing boat, changing

rowers each twenty miles or so, at each village. It was very slow

progress, but there might be no steamer coming up the river for a

fortnight, and in the meantime I could reach the spots where the barges

were wrecked, and see if any of the provisions had been saved. Then,

at the mouth of the Usurí (Khabaróvsk) I might find a steamer. The

boats which I took in the villages were miserable, and the weather

very stormy. We kept evidently along the shore, but we had to cross

some branches of the Amúr of great width, and the waves, driven by

the high wind, threatened continually to swamp our little craft. One

day we had to cross a branch of the Amúr nearly half a mile wide.

Chopped waves rose like mountains as they rolled up that branch. My

rowers, two peasants, were seized with terror; their faces were white

as paper; their blue lips trembled, they murmured prayers. Only a boy

of fifteen, who held the rudder, calmly kept a watchful eye upon the

waves. He glided between them as they seemed to sink around us for a

moment; but when he saw them rising to a menacing height in front of

us he gave a slight turn to the boat and steadied it across the waves.

The boat shipped water from each wave, and I threw it out with an old

ladle, noting at times that it accumulated more rapidly than I could

get rid of it. There was a moment when the boat shipped two such big

waves that, on a sign given to me by one of the trembling rowers, I

unfastened the heavy sackful of copper and silver that I carried across

my shoulder.... For several days in succession we had such crossings. I

never forced the men to cross, but they themselves, knowing why I had

to hurry, would decide at a given moment that an attempt must be made.

‘There are not seven deaths in one’s life, and one cannot be avoided,’

they would say, and, signing themselves with the cross, would seize the

oars and pull over.

I soon reached the places where the main destruction of our barges took

place. Forty-four barges had been destroyed by the storm. Unloading

had been impossible, and very little of the cargo had been saved. Two

thousand tons of flour had perished in the waves. With this message I

continued my journey.

A few days later a steamer slowly creeping up the river overtook me,

and when I boarded her the passengers told me that the captain had

drunk so much that he was seized with delirium and jumped overboard.

He was saved, though, and was now lying ill in his cabin. They asked

me to take the command of the steamer, and I had to accept it; but

soon I realized, to my great astonishment, that everything went on by

itself in such an excellent routine way that, though I paraded all day

on the bridge, I had almost nothing to do. Apart from a few minutes

of real responsibility when the steamer had to be brought to the

landing-places, where we took wood for fuel, and saying a few words now

and then for encouraging the stokers to start as soon as dawn permitted

us faintly to distinguish the outlines of the shores, everything went

on by itself, requiring but little interference of mine. A pilot who

would have been able to interpret the map would have managed as well.

Travelling by steamer and a great deal on horseback I reached at last

Transbaikália. The idea of a famine that might break out next spring

on the lower Amúr oppressed me all the time. I found that the small

steamer on board of which I was did not progress up the swift Shílka

rapidly enough, and in order to gain some twenty hours, or even less, I

abandoned it and rode with a Cossack a couple of hundred miles up the

Argúñ, along one of the wildest mountain tracks in Siberia, stopping to

light our camp fire only after midnight would have overtaken us in the

woods. Even the ten or twenty hours that I might gain by this exertion

had not to be despised, because every day brought us nearer to the

close of navigation: at nights, ice was already forming on the river.

At last I met the Governor of Transbaikdália, and my friend, Colonel

Pedashénko, on the Shílka, at the convict settlement of Kará, and the

latter took in hand the care of shipping immediately all available

provisions. As to me, I left immediately to report all about the matter

at Irkútsk.

People at Irkútsk wondered that I had managed to make this long journey

so rapidly, but I was quite worn out. However, youth quickly recovers

its strength, and I recovered mine by sleeping for some time such a

number of hours every day that I should be ashamed to say how many.

‘Have you taken some rest?’ the Governor-General asked me a week or so

after my arrival. ‘Could you start to-morrow for St. Petersburg, as a

courier, to report there yourself upon the loss of the barges?’

It meant to cover in twenty days--not one day more--another distance

of 3,200 miles between Irkútsk and Níjni-Nóvgorod, where I could take

the railway to St. Petersburg; to gallop day and night in post-carts

which had to be changed at every station, because no carriage would

stand such a journey full speed over the ruts of the roads frozen at

the end of the autumn. But to see my brother Alexander was too great

an attraction for me not to accept the offer, and I started the next

night. When I reached the lowlands of West Siberia and the Urals the

journey really became a torture. There were days when the wheels of the

carts would be broken over the frozen ruts at every successive station.

The rivers were freezing, and I had to cross the Ob in a boat amidst

the floating ice, which menaced at every moment to crush our small

craft. When I reached the Tom river, on which the ice had only stopped

floating during the preceding night, the peasants refused for some time

to take me over, asking me to give them ‘a receipt.’

‘What sort of receipt do you want?’

‘Well, you write on a paper: “I, undersigned, hereby testify that I was

drowned by the will of God and by no fault of the peasants,” and you

give us that paper.’

‘With pleasure, on the other shore.’

At last they took me over. A boy--a brave, bright boy whom I had

selected in the crowd--opened the procession, testing the strength of

the ice with a pole; I followed him, carrying my despatch-box on my

shoulders, and we two were attached to long reins which five peasants

held, following us at a distance--one of them carrying a bundle of

straw, to be thrown on the ice if it should not seem strong enough.

At last I reached Moscow, where my brother met me at the station, and

we proceeded at once to St. Petersburg.

Youth is a grand thing. After such a journey, which lasted twenty-four

days and nights, when I came, early in the morning, to St. Petersburg,

I went the same day to deliver my despatches, and did not fail also

to call upon an aunt--or, rather, upon a cousin--who resided at St.

Petersburg. She was radiant. ‘We have a dancing party to-night. Will

you come?’ she said. Of course I would! And not only come, but dance

until an early hour of the morning.

* * * * *

When I came to St. Petersburg and saw the authorities, I understood

why I had been sent to make the report. Nobody would believe the

possibility of such a destruction of the barges. ‘Have you been on the

spot? Did you see the destruction with your own eyes? Are you perfectly

sure that “they” have not simply stolen the provisions and shown you

the wreck of some barges?’ Such were the questions I had to answer.

The high functionaries who stood at the head of Siberian affairs at

St. Petersburg were simply charming in their innocent ignorance of

Siberia. ‘_Mais, mon cher_,’ one of them said to me--he always spoke

French---‘how _is_ it possible that forty barges should be destroyed

on the Nevá without anyone rushing to help save them?’ ‘The Nevá,’ I

exclaimed; ‘put three, four Nevás side by side, and you will have the

lower Amúr!’

‘Is it really as big as that?’ And two minutes later he was chatting,

in excellent French, about all sorts of things. ‘When did you last

see Schwartz, the painter? Is not his “John the Terrible” a wonderful

picture? Do you know for what reason Kúkel was going to be arrested? Do

you know that Chernyshévsky is arrested? He is now in the fortress.’

‘What for? What has he done?’ I asked.

‘Nothing particular; nothing! But, _mon cher_, you know, State

considerations! Such a clever man, awfully clever! And such an

influence he has upon the youth. You understand that a Government

cannot tolerate that: that’s impossible! _intolérable, mon cher, dans

un État bien ordonné!_’

Count Ignátieff made no such questions; he knew the Amúr very well,

and he knew St. Petersburg too. Amidst all sorts of jokes, and witty

remarks about Siberia which he made with an astounding vivacity, he

dropped to me: ‘It is a very lucky thing that you were there on the

spot, and saw the wrecks. And “they” were clever to send you with the

report! Well done! At first, nobody wanted to believe about the barges.

Some new swindling, it was thought. But now people say that you were

well known as a page, and you have only been a few months in Siberia;

so you would not shelter the people there if it were swindling. They

trust in you.’

The Minister of War, Dmítri Milútin, was the only man in the high

administration of St. Petersburg who took the matter seriously. He

asked me many questions: all to the point. He mastered the subject at

once, and all our conversation was in short sentences, without hurry,

but without any waste of words. ‘The coast settlements to be supplied

from the sea, you mean? The remainder only from Chitá? Quite right. But

if a storm happens next year, will there be the same destruction once

more?’ ‘No, if there are two small tugs to convoy the barges.’ ‘Will it

do?’ ‘Yes, with one tug the loss would not have been half so heavy.’

‘Very probably. Write to me, please; state all you have said, quite

plainly; no formalities.’

V

I did not stay long at St. Petersburg, and returned to Irkútsk the same

winter. My brother was going to join me there in a few months; he was

accepted as an officer of the Irkútsk Cossacks.

Travelling across Siberia in the winter is supposed to be a terrible

experience; but, all things considered, it is on the whole more

comfortable than at any other season of the year. The snow-covered

roads are excellent, and, although the cold is fearful, one can stand

it well enough. Lying full length in the sledge--as everyone does in

Siberia--wrapped in fur blankets, fur inside and fur outside, one

does not suffer much from the cold, even when the temperature is

forty or sixty Fahrenheit degrees below zero. Travelling in courier

fashion--that is, rapidly changing horses at each station and stopping

only once a day for one hour to take a meal--I reached Irkútsk nineteen

days after I had left St. Petersburg. Two hundred miles a day is the

normal speed in such cases, and I remember having covered the last 660

miles before Irkútsk in seventy hours. The frost was not severe then,

the roads were in an excellent condition, the drivers were kept in good

spirits by a free allowance of silver coins, and the team of three

small and light horses seemed to enjoy running swiftly across hill

and vale, and across rivers frozen as hard as steel, amidst forests

glistening in their silver attire in the rays of the sun.

I was now nominated attaché to the Governor-General of East Siberia for

Cossack affairs, and had to reside at Irkútsk; but there was nothing

particular to do. To let everything go on, according to the established

routine, with no more reference to changes, such was the watchword that

came now from St. Petersburg. I therefore gladly accepted the proposal

to undertake geographical exploration in Manchuria.

If one casts a glance on a map of Asia one sees that the Russian

frontier, which runs in Siberia, broadly speaking, along the fiftieth

degree of latitude, suddenly bends in Transbaikália to the north. It

follows for three hundred miles the Argúñ river; then, on reaching

the Amúr, it turns south-eastwards--the town of Blagovéschensk, which

was the capital of the Amúr land, being situated again in about the

same latitude of fifty degrees. Between the south-eastern corner of

Transbaikália (New Tsurukháitu) and Blagovéschensk on the Amúr, the

distance west to east is only five hundred miles; but along the Argúñ

and the Amúr it is over a thousand miles, and moreover communication

along the Argúñ, which is not navigable, is extremely difficult. In its

lower parts there is nothing but a most wild mountain track.

Transbaikália is very rich in cattle, and the Cossacks who occupy

its south-eastern corner, and are wealthy cattle-breeders, wanted to

establish a direct communication with the middle Amúr, which would be

a good market for their cattle. They used to trade with the Mongols,

and they had heard from them that it would not be difficult to reach

the Amúr, travelling eastwards across the Great Khingán. Going straight

towards the east, they were told, one would fall in with an old Chinese

route which crosses the Khingán and leads to the Manchurian town of

Merghén (on the Nónni river, a tributary to the Sungarí), whence an

excellent road leads to the middle Amúr.

I was offered the leadership of a trading caravan which the Cossacks

intended to organize in order to find that route, and I accepted it

with enthusiasm. No European had ever visited that region, and a

Russian topographer who went that way a few years before was killed.

Only two Jesuits, in the time of the emperor Kan-si, had penetrated

from the south as far as Merghén, and had determined its latitude. All

the immense region to the north of it, five hundred miles wide and

five hundred miles deep, was totally, absolutely unknown. I consulted

all the available sources about this region. Nobody, not even the

Chinese geographers, knew anything about it. Besides, the very fact

of connecting the middle Amúr with Transbaikália had its importance;

Tsurukháitu is now going to be the head of the Trans-Manchuria railway.

We were thus the pioneers of that great enterprise.

There was, however, one difficulty. The treaty with China granted

to the Russians free trade with the ‘Empire of China and Mongolia.’

Manchuria was not mentioned in it, and could as well be excluded as

included in the treaty. The Chinese frontier authorities interpreted

it one way, and the Russians the other way. Moreover, only trade being

mentioned, an officer would not be allowed to enter Manchuria. I had

thus to go as a trader, and accordingly I bought at Irkútsk various

goods, and went disguised as a merchant. The Governor-General delivered

me a passport, ‘To the Irkútsk second guild merchant Petr Alexéiev

and his companions,’ and he warned me that if the Chinese authorities

arrested me and took me to Pekin, and thence across the Góbi to

the Russian frontier--in a cage on a camel’s back was their way of

conveying prisoners across Mongolia--I must not betray him by naming

myself. I accepted, of course, all the conditions, the temptation to

visit a country which no European had ever seen being too great for an

explorer.

It would not have been easy to conceal my identity while I was in

Transbaikália. The Cossacks are an extremely inquisitive sort of

people--real Mongols--and as soon as a stranger comes to one of their

villages, while treating him with the greatest hospitality, the master

of the house submits the new-comer to a formal interrogatory.

‘A tedious journey, I suppose,’ he begins; ‘a long way from Chitá, is

it not? And then, perhaps, longer still for one who comes from some

place beyond Chitá? Maybe from Irkútsk? Trading there, I believe? Many

tradesmen come this way. You are going also to Nerchínsk, I should

say?--Yes, people are often married at your age; and you, too, must

have left a family, I suppose? Many children? Not all boys, I should

say?’ And so on for quite half an hour.

The local commander of the Cossacks, Captain Buxhövden, knew his

people, and consequently we had taken our precautions. At Chitá and at

Irkútsk we often had had amateur theatricals, playing in preference

dramas of Ostróvsky, in which the scene of action is nearly always

amongst the merchant classes. I played several times in different

dramas, and found such great pleasure in acting that I even wrote on

one occasion to my brother an enthusiastic letter confessing to him my

passionate desire to abandon my military career and to go on the stage.

I played mostly young merchants, and had so well got hold of their

ways of talking and gesticulating, and tea drinking from the saucer--I

knew these ways since my Nikólskoye experiences--that now I had a good

opportunity to act it all out in reality for useful purposes.

‘Take your seat, Petr Alexéievich,’ Captain Buxhövden would say to me,

when the boiling tea-urn, throwing out clouds of steam, was placed on

the table.

‘Thank you; we may stay here’, I would reply, sitting on the edge

of a chair at a distance, and beginning to drink my tea in true

Moscow-merchant fashion. Buxhövden meanwhile nearly exploded with

laughter as I blew upon my saucer with staring eyes, and bit off in a

special way microscopic particles from a small lump of sugar which was

to serve for half a dozen cups.

We knew that the Cossacks would soon make out the truth about me,

but the important thing was to win a few days only, and to cross the

frontier while my identity was not yet discovered. I must have played

my part pretty well, as the Cossacks treated me as a small merchant.

In one village an old woman beckoned me in the passage and asked me:

‘Are there more people coming behind you on the road, my dear?’ ‘None,

grandmother, that we heard of.’ ‘They said a prince, Rapótsky, was

going to come. Is he coming?’

‘Oh, I see. You are right, grandmother. His Highness intended to go,

too, from Irkútsk. But how can he? Such a journey! Not suitable for

them. So they remained where they were.’

‘Of course, how can he?’

In short, we crossed the frontier unmolested. We were eleven Cossacks,

one Tungus, and myself, all on horseback. We had with us about forty

horses for sale and two carts, one of which, two-wheeled, belonged to

me, and contained the cloth, the velveteen, the gold braid, and so on,

which I had taken in my capacity of merchant. I attended to it and to

my horses entirely myself, while we chose one of the Cossacks to be the

‘elder’ of our caravan. He had to manage all the diplomatic talk with

the Chinese authorities. All Cossacks spoke Mongolian, and the Tungus

understood Manchurian. The Cossacks of the caravan knew, of course, who

I was--one of them knew me at Irkútsk--but they never betrayed that

knowledge, understanding that the success of the expedition depended

upon it. I wore a long blue cotton dress, like the others, and the

Chinese paid no attention to me, so that I could make, unnoticed by

them, the compass survey of the route. The first day only, when all

sorts of Chinese soldiers hung about us in the hope of getting a glass

of whisky, I had often to cast only a furtive glance at my compass and

to inscribe the bearings and the distances in my pocket, without taking

my paper out. We had with us no arms whatever. Only our Tungus, who was

going to marry, had taken his matchlock gun and used it to hunt for

fallow deer, bringing us meat for supper, and making a provision of

furs with which to pay for his future wife.

When there was no more whisky to be obtained from us the Chinese

soldiers left us alone. So we went straight eastwards, finding our way

as best we could across hill and dale, and after a four or five days’

march we really fell in with the Chinese track which had to take us

across the Khingán to Merghén.

To our astonishment we discovered that the crossing of the great ridge,

which looked so black and terrible on the maps, was most easy. We

overtook on the road an old Chinese functionary, miserably wretched,

who travelled in the same direction in a two-wheeled cart. For the last

two days the road was going up hill, and the country bore testimony

to its high altitude. The ground became marshy, and the road was

muddy; the grass was very poor, and the trees grew thin, undeveloped,

often crippled and covered with lichens. Mountains devoid of forests

rose right and left, and we thought already of the difficulties we

should experience in crossing the ridge, when we saw the old Chinese

functionary alighting from his cart before an _obó_--that is, before a

heap made of stones and branches of trees to which bundles of horsehair

and small rags had been attached. He drew several hairs out of the mane

of his horse, and attached them to the branches.

‘What is that?’ we asked.

‘The _obó_--the waters before us flow now to the Amúr.’

‘Is that all of the Khingán?’

‘Yes! No mountains more to cross as far as the Amúr: only hills!’

Quite a commotion spread in our caravan. ‘The rivers flow to the Amúr,

the Amúr!’ shouted the Cossacks to each other. All their lives they had

heard the old Cossacks talking about the great river where the vine

grows wild, where the prairies extend for hundreds of miles and could

give wealth to millions of men; then, after the Amúr was annexed to

Russia, they heard of the long journey to it, the difficulties of the

first settlers, and the prosperity of their relatives settled on the

upper Amúr; and now we had found the short way to it! We had before us

a steep slope upon which the road went downwards in zig-zags leading

to a small river, which pierced its way through a chopped sea of

mountains, and led to the Amúr. No more obstacles lay between us and

the great river. A traveller will imagine my delight at this unexpected

geographical discovery. As to the Cossacks, they hastened to dismount

and to attach in their turn bundles of hair taken from their horses to

the branches thrown on the _obó_. The Siberians altogether have a sort

of awe for the gods of the heathen. They don’t think much of them, but

these gods, they say, are wicked creatures, bent on mischief, and it is

never good to be on bad terms with them. It is far better to bribe them

with small tokens of respect.

‘Look, here is a strange tree: it must be an oak,’ they exclaimed,

as we went down the steep slope. The oak does not grow, indeed, in

Siberia. None is found until the eastern slope of the high plateau

has been reached. ‘Look, nut trees!’ they exclaimed next. ‘And what

tree is that?’ they said, seeing a lime tree, or some other tree

which does not grow in Russia either, but which I knew as part of the

Manchurian flora. The northerners, who for centuries had dreamed of

warmer lands, and now saw them, were in delight. Lying on the ground

covered with rich grass, they caressed it with their eyes--they would

have kissed it. Now they burned with the desire to reach the Amúr as

soon as possible. When, a fortnight later, we stopped at our last camp

fire within twenty miles from the river, they grew impatient like

children. They began to saddle their horses shortly after midnight,

and hurried me to start long before daybreak; and when at last we

caught from an eminence a sight of the mighty stream, the eyes of these

unimpressionable Siberians, generally devoid of poetical feeling,

gleamed with poetical ardour as they looked upon the blue waters of the

majestic Amúr. It was evident that, sooner or later--with or without

the support, or even against the wish, of the Russian Government--both

banks of this river, a desert now but rich in possibilities, as well

as the immense unpopulated stretches of North Manchuria, would be

invaded by Russian settlers, just as the shores of the Mississippi were

colonized by the Canadian _voyageurs_.

In the meantime the old half-blind Chinese functionary with whom we had

crossed the Khingán, having donned his blue coat and official hat with

a glass button on its top, declared to us next morning that he would

not let us go further. Our ‘elder’ had received him and his clerk in

our tent, and the old man, repeating what the clerk whispered to him,

raised all sorts of objections to our further progress. He wanted us to

camp on the spot while he would send our pass to Pekin to get orders,

which we absolutely refused to do. Then he sought to quarrel with our

passport.

‘What sort of a passport is that?’ he said, looking with disdain into

our pass, which was written in a few lines on a plain sheet of foolscap

paper, in Russian and Mongolian, and had a simple sealing-wax seal.

‘You may have written it yourselves and sealed it with a copper,’ he

remarked, ‘Look at my pass: this is worth something,’ and he unrolled

before us a sheet of paper, two feet long, covered with Chinese

characters.

I sat quietly aside during this conference, packing something in my

box, when a sheet of the ‘Moscow Gazette’ fell under my hand. The

Gazette, being the property of the Moscow University, had an eagle

printed on its title-heading. ‘Show him this,’ I said to our elder.

He unfolded the large sheet of print and pointed out the eagle. ‘That

pass was to show to you,’ our elder said, ‘but this is what we have for

ourselves.’

‘Why, is it all written about you?’ the old man asked with terror.

‘All about us,’ our elder replied, without even a twinkle in his eyes.

The old man--a true functionary--looked quite dumbfounded at seeing

such a profusion of writing. He examined every one of us, nodding with

his head. But the clerk was still whispering something to his chief,

who finally declared that he would not let us continue the journey.

‘Enough of talking,’ I said to the elder; ‘give the order to saddle

the horses.’ The Cossacks were of the same opinion, and in no time our

caravan started, bidding good-bye to the old functionary and promising

him to report that short of resorting to violence--which he was not

able to do--he had done all in his power to prevent us from entering

Manchuria, and that it was our fault if we went nevertheless.

A few days later we were at Merghén, where we traded a little, and soon

reached the Chinese town of Aigún, on the right bank of the Amúr, and

the Russian town of Blagovéschensk, on the left bank. We had discovered

the direct route and many interesting things besides: the border-ridge

character of the Great Khinghán, the ease with which it can be crossed,

the tertiary volcanoes of the Uyún Kholdontsí region, which had so long

been a puzzle in geographical literature, and so on. I cannot say that

I was a sharp tradesman, for at Merghén I persisted (in broken Chinese)

in asking thirty-five roubles for a watch when the Chinese buyer had

already offered me forty-five; but the Cossacks traded all right. They

sold very well all their horses, and when my horses, my goods, and the

rest were sold by the Cossacks it appeared that the expedition had cost

the government the modest sum of twenty-two roubles--a little over two

pounds.