scales of a fish, or like the chain-armor of an ancient knight whose
corselet was of pure gold. Never have I seen in any church or temple,
in Christendom or pagandom, such gorgeous vestments or a more stately
service. I only hope that it was as intelligently devout as it was
gorgeous and impressive.
[Illustration: A GREAT DEPARTMENT STORE IN BLAGAVESTCHENSK, WITH
MARKET-PLACE IN FRONT]
Some of the Greek priests, whose writings I have read, like Father
John, of Kronstadt, are as deeply imbued with the Spirit of God as
Thomas à Kempis or John Tauler of old, or as Andrew Murray and F. B.
Meyer of the present day. A fine, sweet, mystical vein runs through
their writings, which shows that they have seen the Invisible and heard
the Inaudible, and their writings are as refreshing as a draught of
clear spring water in this thirsty commercial age.
So may it have been with the holy fathers of Blagavestchensk! I could
not judge, for all their service was to me in an unknown tongue. I will
give them the full benefit of the doubt.
The streets of Blagavestchensk on this holiday were full of soldiers,
who marched in orderly file from their barracks to the church and
back again. They were fine, stalwart, manly fellows, marching in
perfect alignment, and with an easy swing which did one’s eyes good to
see, after beholding for a few weeks the slouchy straggle of Chinese
soldiers. They were an orderly, well-behaved lot, too, and I saw no
rioting or drunkenness. The log-cabin which served as a soldiers’
guard-house seemed to have few occupants. The soldiers did not know
how soon their holiday manners would be changed into grim and deadly
warfare with the yellow men on the opposite bank of the Amour.
Blagavestchensk, though it has a few large and imposing buildings, is
largely a log-built city. Nine-tenths of the houses are of hewn logs,
but most of them are prettily painted and are not without appropriate
ornamentation. I never had believed that a log-house city could be so
picturesque and substantial in appearance.
Upon the churches the people have lavished their chief wealth. At least
three of them are costly and beautiful buildings that would do honor
to any European capital, and a fourth that is building will, when
completed, surpass them all. It is really a building of remarkable
stateliness and beauty.
[Illustration: AN UPPER AMOUR RIVER STEAMER
Buriats’ hut in foreground]
In the cathedral I saw for the first time the Black Christ and the
Black Virgin, which are often seen in Greek churches. The pictures in
all the churches impressed me as a much higher grade of art than one
sees in the ordinary church on the continent of Europe.
When we were in Blagavestchensk we had little thought that this
obscure capital was so soon to figure in the world’s telegrams, or
that it could be besieged and bombarded by the Chinese. But history
in the far East was making itself rapidly about that time, and we
had scarcely left Blagavestchensk a week behind, when the apparently
peaceful Celestials, inspired from Peking, attacked and for a long time
bombarded this inoffensive city.
As I write, the outcome of the immediate conflict is still in the
balance, but it can scarcely be doubted that in the long run the Giant
of the North will win his way through Siberia and Manchuria into the
heart of China, and that the siege of Blagavestchensk will really
hasten the awakening of China from her sleep of the ages.
On the evening of the second day, we were glad to take passage once
more for the upper reaches of the Amour, the most difficult, uncertain,
and tedious part of our journey.
“_If you have tears, prepare to shed them now_” might have been our
motto as we went aboard the crowded little steamer and realized that
Stretinsk, the terminus of our river journey, was 1197¼ versts away,
and that, much of the way, less than four feet of water separated our
keel from the sandy bottom of the Amour. But how we scraped over the
sand-banks from Blagavestchensk to Stretinsk must be reserved for
“another story.”
[Illustration: ON THE UPPER AMOUR]
IX
AGROUND IN THE AMOUR
Two Mississippi River captains were once conversing as to the merits of
their respective steamers as light-draught boats. One claimed that his
steamer could run in a good heavy dew. The other, not to be outdone,
claimed that that was nothing, for his boat could run on the sweat
of an ice-pitcher. It is this latter kind of boat that is needed on
the upper reaches of the Amour River, as we began to think before we
were many miles from Blagavestchensk. We had scarcely gone five miles
before we heard that peculiar crunching, scraping, gritty sound which
we came to know so well. The paddle-wheels revolved fruitlessly for
a few minutes, but it was no use, and we knew that we were hard and
fast aground in less than three feet of water. For hours the boatmen
worked with might and main, and at last we could feel that there was
water under our keel and that we were making slow progress against the
current once more. But we had scarcely been moving another hour when
c-r-u-n-c-h, s-c-r-a-p-e, s-t-o-p, and there we were stuck on another
sand-bank. The captain seemed to tear his hair in despair, and well he
might, for Stretinsk was 1187 versts away, and we had scarcely come
ten versts in ten hours from Blagavestchensk. If it requires ten hours
to do ten versts, how long will it take to reach Stretinsk, was an
appalling problem in mental arithmetic.
However, we made somewhat better progress after getting off the second
time, and the hope that springs eternal in the human breast kept us
from despair of reaching in time the important engagement at our
journey’s end.
[Illustration: TUMBLING ASHORE FROM THE _ADMIRAL CHICACHOFF_]
The _Ivan Vishnegradskie_ was a much smaller steamer than the _Baron
Korff_, and consequently much more crowded. Especially were the
third-class passengers much in evidence, for there were no steerage
accommodations, and they were obliged to lie about anywhere as best
they could, in the passages, on the companion-way, huddled on the
boiler deck, lying out on the wood-pile or anchor chains; every
available foot of deck room had its two human feet to occupy it.
It is said that the birth-rate of Siberia is higher than any other
country in the world, amounting to fifty-six in the thousand. I could
well believe it as I saw the uncounted, tow-headed babies tucked into
every nook and cranny of the _Ivan Vishnegradskie_. Head to heel and
heel to head, they lay, with their fathers and mothers and older
brothers and sisters lying about them four square, building, as it
were, a sort of living rampart around the family compound. It was
pathetic to see a mother lay her three little children out in a row,
with the croupy baby in the middle, while she herself sat in the
draughty doorway all night long to shield them from the wind.
“She bared her bosom to the storm,
And smiled to think her babe was warm.”
For two days we sailed on this crowded little craft. The river turns
almost due north after leaving Blagavestchensk. A very tortuous stream
is the Amour from here on, turning and twisting and doubling on itself
like a huge serpent writhing in agony. Following its twistings we made
very little progress, even when we could steam all day long, which the
treacherous shoals did not often allow us to do. The shores on either
side were often picturesque and beautiful, and sometimes grand and
striking, with bare cliffs of rock rising sheer from the water’s edge
to a height of four or five hundred feet.
The park-like effect of the clean, open woods continued, and made it
difficult to believe that the country had not been thickly inhabited
for a thousand years, except that the utter absence of habitations
dispelled the illusion.
On the second day out from Blagavestchensk we were obliged to change
steamers and take up our abode in the _Admiral Chicachoff_, the
regular steamer of this line, which had not been able to get so far
down the river as the above-named city. The _Admiral_ was a somewhat
larger boat than the _Ivan_, and had much better accommodations for
the steerage passengers, who no longer had to sleep in doorways and
draughty passages, but had the after upper deck roofed over for their
accommodation. The steamers of the line on which we were embarked
carried the government mail, and were supposed to be more sure of
reaching their destination than the other river-steamers, of which
there are many lines on the Amour.
Frequently we passed other steamers going down with the current at a
famous rate of speed compared with our slow and toilsome ascent of the
river. More often we passed great rafts of timber, with little bark
huts built upon them, in which families lived and moved and had their
being for weeks and perhaps months at a time, as they let the force
of the current carry them down the stream, and tied up to the bank
at night to avoid the passing steamers. Sometimes the rafts would be
loaded with horses that seemed to enjoy their floating quarters, and
who lived off the country, for it was only necessary to tie the raft to
the shore and drive its living freight into the rich pasturage, which
in many places could be obtained free, gratis, for nothing.
[Illustration: CHILDREN OF EMIGRANTS PICKING WILD FLOWERS ON THE BANKS
OF THE AMOUR]
The monotony of the voyage was varied by a stop once or twice every
twenty-four hours to take on wood, or at some little log village on
the river’s margin. On the occasion of these stops the passengers
would tumble ashore almost before the gangplank made connections, and
would spend the time as the fancy seized them, in the woods or on the
pebbly margin of the river. The youngsters would scale the bluffs,
which usually abounded near the wood-piles, or would come back from
the meadows laden with great armfuls of beautiful wild flowers. Lilies
of the valley seemed to abound everywhere, violets, blue and white
forget-me-nots, lady slippers, and another beautiful orchid somewhat
similar, which I have never seen elsewhere. In other places, blue
honeysuckles were found, and yellow lilies, and Solomon’s seal, and the
yellowest of buttercups. Indeed, the flora of the country seemed to be
exceedingly extensive, embracing most of the spring flowers with which
I am familiar in New England, except the arbutus, and many flowers that
I had never seen before. The trees were mostly white and yellow birch,
poplar, white oak, soft maple, larch, and pine. The wood-piles, cut
for the use of the river steamers, were interminable, and consisted of
beautiful, straight, knotless sticks of birch and pine that it seemed a
pity to sacrifice in the rapacious maw of our never-satisfied boilers,
to go up in smoke and sparks.
While the smaller fry were racing on the shore or gathering wild
flowers, their more sedate elders among the steerage passengers would
kindle a little fire of driftwood on the shore and cook a savory
pot of stew to vary the crude monotony of their daily fare. Or the
forethoughtful mothers would improve the opportunity to scrub their
offspring or wash their clothes, pounding the latter upon the stones.
Sometimes we would get a delicious bath in the clear, cold water which,
less than a month ago, was bound with icy fetters, for the weather,
much of the time, was extremely warm. The summers of Siberia are short
and fiercely hot. Vegetation has to be forced to maturity by Dame
Nature in six weeks, instead of taking six months, as she would do in
more leisurely climes.
Many patches of snow and ice still lingered upon the banks, and it
could have been comparatively but few days since all the country
was snow-bound. Yet every tree seemed to be in full leaf, and ferns
and grasses in many places were knee-high and were growing with the
lustiness and vigor of a tropical summer.
[Illustration: AN EMIGRANT HOUSE ON THE UPPER AMOUR]
Our new steamer was no more exempt from the prosaic perils of the
sand-bar than the one we had just left, for, before we had finished the
first day we had run hard aground in a place where the current was very
swift, and where it was very difficult to get off. For seventeen hours
our officers and crew worked with a will, but to no effect. First huge
poles, like iron-shod battering-rams, as big as telegraph poles, which
could barely be lifted by six men, were hitched to the windlass by a
wire rope, and, with this, every effort was made to pry us off. But
all utterly failed. Then two telegraph poles were rigged, and finally
three, but all in vain. In the useless effort, three or four of these
huge pries were broken off short, and yet the little steamer did not
budge. Then, to lighten ship, the convict barge, which all these days
had been following in our wake, was towed alongside, and all the
passengers were requested to go on board of her.
This gave us an opportunity to visit our fellow-passengers behind the
bars, if I may so call those who were propelled by the same steam and
were hitched to us by a single cable. It must be confessed that they
were not bad-looking fellows as men average, and the impartial visitor,
had he been asked to pick out the convicts by their looks, would, very
likely, have chosen the hardened criminals from among the free men on
top of the barge, instead of from among those whom the law had put
into the cage below. Possibly even some of the first-class passengers
who had paid thirty roubles for their voyage would have been chosen,
instead of those who had fare and board paid by the government. My
idea of the severity with which Russia treats her Siberian exiles
was also modified when I saw the clean and comparatively comfortable
quarters of the prisoners, which compared most favorably with the
steerage accommodations on our own steamer. There were not many
prisoners in the cage, and they were going from the crowded prisons of
Vladivostock or Khabaroffsk to other prisons in the interior. One poor
fellow was landed at a little river town, and in his heavy felt boots
and overcoat, though it was a broiling day, was marched between two
soldiers to a new prison, or, perhaps, handed over to some man who had
bought his labor for a time.
[Illustration: THE MEN BEHIND THE BARS ON THE PRISON BARGE]
But we had gone aboard the convict barge to lighten our ship, and not
to inspect the prisoners. It was all of no avail, however, and some new
method must be tried. So an anchor was carried out into mid-stream,
two hundred yards away, perhaps; the steam windlass was again brought
into play and, little by little, inch by inch, we were coaxed off the
sand-bar, the flat bottom creaking and groaning as the steamer scraped
along, as though unwilling to leave her comfortable bed. Seventeen
hours had been wasted, and not a third of our voyage had been
accomplished.
After this experience our captain was very cautious, and when he came
to shallow places would anchor, and often spent several hours in a
small boat in ascertaining the channel and marking it with sticks
driven into the sand. Then the _Admiral_ would start up slowly and
warily. Two men, one on either side of the bow, with sounding-poles,
would constantly take the water and report to the first officer of
the deck above, who shouted it back to the man at the wheel. “Vosem”
(eight), “sem” (seven), “shest” (six), he would call, and no one would
feel anxious, for the _Admiral_ only draws two feet and a half; but
when it came to “pyat polovina” (five and one-half), to “pyat” (five),
or to “chiteery” (four), we began to be interested.
When, in stentorian tones, the leadsman would call “trees polovina”
(three and one-half), and his mate on the other side would call
“trees,” and the first officer would shout to the wheel, “trees,” we
would positively hold our breath, and sit more lightly in our chairs
to ease the ship, until again the leadsman would reassuringly cry
“chiteery,” “pyat,” “shest,” “sem,” and we would feel that we were
safely over one more bar.
X
ON THE SHILKA
Our progress up the Amour was slow but not sure. Time after time the
experience described in the last chapter would be repeated. We would
touch bottom, scrape on the sand, the engines would make desperate
efforts to pull us off into deep water, but would finally give up in
despair, slow down, stop altogether, and for one hour, or ten, or
twenty, we must possess our souls in patience, until, with infinite
pains, our craft was floated once more.
[Illustration: THE HILL-SIDES WERE CARPETED WITH FLOWERS]
We were told before starting that the journey from Blagavestchensk
to Stretinsk would not take more than seven days, or seven days and
one-half; but seven times twenty-four hours passed and Stretinsk was
still four hundred miles away, and not half the distance had been
traversed. The alarming tale was circulated that the water was falling
at the rate of two inches a day. The usual story about this being an
extraordinary season was current--“not for thirteen years had the water
been so low,” etc. I am inclined to think that every year on the Amour
is “extraordinary,” and that, especially in the month of June, those
who essay this journey must count on spending as much time on the
sand-banks as in deep water.
Still, for those who are in no haste to reach their journey’s end,
who can put up with very indifferent food, and who can good-naturedly
accept the inevitable, there are many and delightful compensations in
this new way around an old world. The scenery throughout the whole
journey is pleasing, and, much of the way, it is extremely beautiful.
A hundred miles beyond Blagavestchensk we passed some remarkable high
bluffs, seamed with coal or lignite in narrow, diagonal veins. In many
places this coal had caught fire, and for years had been burning with
an unquenchable flame. The scene, as we passed, was one of striking
beauty. The sun was just setting behind the western hills, lighting up
the evening clouds with golden and crimson glory. The broad river swept
in a grand and graceful curve around a pine-clad mountain that towered
a thousand feet above its placid waters, while, as the light of the
dying day waned, glowing jewels appeared in the mountainside, where the
burning coal was afire, or little bursts of flame, as from a hundred
gas-jets, lit up the gaunt and seamy cliff.
[Illustration: A TYPICAL WATER-TOWER ON THE TRANS-SIBERIAN RAILWAY]
Two days later, and a hundred miles farther on, the same scene was
repeated with a still lovelier variation. Again it was just at the hour
of setting sun, the most delicious of all the day, for the boiling heat
of the day was over, and the cool breezes of evening had begun to blow.
On the Chinese shore of the great river high cliffs like the Palisades
of the Hudson stretched westward for miles, with tops as even and
flat as Table Mountain at Cape Town. Here and there, throughout their
whole length, these cliffs, too, were seamed and veined with fire.
Oftentimes green shrubs overhung the seams of coal, or pine-trees grew
below them, their upper branches athwart the narrow line of fire, so
that again the Scripture miracle seemed to be repeated, and the burning
bush was not consumed. Imagine the Palisades on a wilder and grander
scale, illuminated by their own internal fires, and you have an idea of
this night scene on the Amour.
Seven days out from Blagavestchensk, the day we should have completed
our river journey, we again stuck fast on a sand-bar for nearly twenty
hours. This delay was all the more uncomfortable on account of the
extreme heat, unalleviated by the breeze caused by the boat’s motion,
and the discomfort was aggravated by innumerable huge green-headed
flies, larger than the biggest horse-fly I ever saw in America. These
flies showed all the idiosyncrasy of the average house-fly in returning
time after time, with the utmost persistence, to the same unguarded
spot on ear, or nostril, or back of neck, and, being about ten times as
large, their attentions were fully ten times as unpleasant as those of
the house-fly.
At length we rubbed our way, inch by inch, over the shallows and into
deeper water, and an hour later found ourselves at Albazin, a small
and decayed village four hundred miles from Blagavestchensk. Albazin
has no glories in the present, but it is famous as the place where,
two hundred years ago, a Russian garrison was defeated by the Chinese,
and four hundred prisoners carried off to Peking. As a result of this
victory a treaty of peace was concluded, and the north bank of the
Amour again became Chinese territory. The Great Bear of the North is
sometimes defeated and retreats to her den, but it is only to nurse her
wounds and to come out again, stronger than ever, to win, either by
arms or diplomacy, perhaps two hundred years later, a new victory which
will wipe out old scores.
[Illustration: THE LIGNITE CLIFFS ON THE AMOUR]
Two hundred years have elapsed since the Russian garrison was carried
off to Peking, but Albazin is again in Russian territory, which
stretches fifteen hundred miles beyond to the very shores of the
Pacific, while Manchuria itself and China, almost to the very gates of
Peking, seem likely soon to become Russian provinces.
“That, too, is our country,” said a Russian judge, one of our
travelling companions, as he pointed with a sweep of the hand to the
Manchurian shore. “That, too, is our country.” And his was no empty
boast, even if a little premature.
It is an interesting fact that the descendants of the Russian garrison
carried from Albazin to Peking still live in the Chinese capital. They
married Chinese wives, but organized a distinct community of their own,
in which the Greek Church has flourished ever since.
Ten miles from Albazin we stopped at the larger and more flourishing
town of Renova, that owes its prosperity to some large placer
gold-mines, which, like all Russian gold-mines, are a government
monopoly. All gold discovered and dug must be sold to the government
at a price fixed by it below the market price. Of course, much is
smuggled out of the country, and such a law is death to genuine private
enterprise; but the laws are strict, and no foreigner is allowed to
filch the gold from the czar’s private purse, _i.e._, the bowels of the
earth.
The next day we reached the final limit of travel on the _Admiral
Chicachoff_. She could go no farther, and we were transferred to a
great barge, not unlike the prisoners’ cage which we had been towing
all this distance. This barge, which for another week was to be our
abiding-place, drew only one foot and a half of water, and was towed
by a tug which also drew but eighteen inches. On this craft we were to
enter the Shilka and stem the current for three hundred miles farther
to Stretinsk.
Each change we had made was a descent. We had gone from luxury on the
_Baron Korff_ through different grades of discomfort, until we had come
to the superlative degree of discomfort on the barge _Diana_.
The men among the first-class passengers were all herded together in
one cabin, and the women in another, and the decks and passageways
were so littered with third-class passengers and their belongings,
that it was with great difficulty that we could pick our way over
stout, extended legs, and tender baby toes, and peasant women suckling
still smaller babies, who filled every nook and crevice. Clad in great
sheepskin garments,
“With the skinny side out and the woolly side in,”
and with huge top-boots, worn often by the women as well as the men,
the Moujiks defied the cold night air and the intensely hot mid-day
sun, always sprawled out, day and night, at full length, except when
they went ashore at landing-places to cook their scanty meals over a
brushwood fire.
Of course, exercise under these circumstances was out of the question
on shipboard, and, as can be imagined, we all made the most of our
stops at the wood-piles for a little run on shore.