windings of the swift-flowing Angara, and then, leaving the river,
strikes off across the interminable wooded prairies that line so much
of the track to Moscow. The weather was exceedingly hot during the
first four or five days of the journey, the thermometers in the cars
frequently registering over ninety degrees Fahrenheit. If one takes
the Siberian route to avoid the heat of the Red Sea in summer, he will
not gain much, though, to be sure, the cool nights make the Siberian
journey more tolerable. Moreover, the heat, much of the time, was of
the damp, “muggy” variety so trying to bear.
[Illustration: A VIEW ON THE ANGARA, NEAR IRKUTSK]
A plague of flies, which would have made even Pharaoh quail, added
much to the minor discomforts of the trip, though they did not afflict
the passengers within the cars as sorely as when they ventured out
upon the platform. Here they were, indeed, intolerable, and set every
pair of hands revolving about a tormented head like a windmill in a
gale. The most obnoxious insect was a little black gnat, much like
the midge of the Adirondacks, which in clouds filled the air, and
filled as well eyes, and nose, and ears of any venturesome traveller
that left the comparative refuge of his car. The natives have learned
to protect themselves against these pests by wearing veils of black
mosquito netting day and night. For fully fifteen hundred miles almost
every man, woman, and child we met was thus protected, and it gave a
peculiarly solemn and lugubrious aspect to the little villages and
stations to see every one peering at you through a mask of black
netting. In this funereal attire every Siberian looked as though
he had lost every friend in the world, or was about to attend his
own obsequies. Trainmen working on the track, flagmen signalling
the engineer, women with bottles of milk and loaves of bread,
station-masters in bright official uniforms, little tow-headed children
with bare feet, all had gone into mourning because of the midges.
At every station were country hucksters at a little stand, ready to
sell the few products of the farms to the hungry travellers. They did
not do much business, naturally, with the passengers of the _train de
luxe_, who had their own dining-car, but with the regular trains or
the frequent special emigrant or military trains they had a rushing
trade. As we approached the European frontier, prices of these country
comestibles fell, and boiled eggs were to be bought for half a cent
each, and a very considerable loaf of bread for two cents and a half,
while milk, fried fish, chunks of roast meat, and kvass, or Russian
pop-beer, were proportionately cheap.
[Illustration: A TRAINMAN WHO HAS TAKEN THE VEIL]
At almost every siding we passed a long train laden with emigrants or
soldiers on their way to China, for the Siberian reserves had been
called out. The latter were stalwart, rough, honest-looking fellows,
who evidently had left their little farms at a moment’s notice to
serve their country. They seemed to possess no uniforms or equipments,
though, to be sure, these may have been stored in the close box-cars
that accompanied each train. They wore their peasants’ red blouses
and loose breeches. Many of them were barefooted, and some of them
were hatless and ragged, but, before they meet the Chinese, these raw
recruits will doubtless be licked into shape by the drill-masters,
uniformed and armed, and made into very presentable soldiers. They
certainly have the requisite brawn, if not the brain. I was surprised
to see that there seemed to be few young men among them, scarcely any
under thirty, while most looked to be over forty.
The emigrants were weighted with more _impedimenta_ than the soldiers,
but even their household belongings were pitifully scant. Every day
we passed half a dozen long trainloads of men, women, and children
on their way to the new Eldorado on the banks of the Amour. Most of
them were too poor to afford even the hard comfort of a third or
fourth class car, and they were pigged in together in ordinary box
freight-cars, which were marked on the outside to carry “twelve horses
or twenty-four men.” Still they did not seem discontented, much less
hopeless, but at every little station jumped from their stifling boxes
and raced for the hot-water tank, which a paternal government always
kept steaming, free of charge. Here they filled their tin pails and
made their inevitable “chi” (tea), on which, supplemented by liberal
portions of black bread, they chiefly subsist.
Sometimes we indulged in the luxury of giving the little emigrating
urchins, bound for a far-off land, a few kopeks, when the gratitude of
the parents was touching to see. Rushing from the car, they would
sometimes seize our hands and kiss them in the courtly old Russian
style, as though we had bestowed a king’s ransom on their offspring,
and then as the trains parted, going east and west, would tumble back
into their fifth-class boxes, while we would return to our compartments
feeling as we reached them that he would be a thankless man indeed who,
with such contrasts in view, should ever grumble again at the minor
discomforts of a _train de luxe_.
[Illustration: SIBERIAN RAILWAY NEAR THE ASIATIC BORDER]
XV
OUT OF ASIA INTO EUROPE
The long journey in the _train de luxe_ from Irkutsk to St. Petersburg,
especially the Siberian part of the journey, does not afford a great
variety of scenery or incident. But, if somewhat monotonous, it is a
pleasing and gentle monotony. There is not a mile of desert land in all
the five thousand versts between Lake Baikal and the Atlantic, or, for
that matter, between the Pacific and the Atlantic, by the way we have
travelled.
There are no long stretches of sagebrush plain, such as Wyoming, Utah,
and Nevada afford; no “bad lands,” such as are found in the Dakotas;
no interminable stretches of wearisome, treeless prairies, such as
the Canadian Pacific traverses in Manitoba and Assiniboia. There are
occasional wide reaches of prairie or meadow land, but trees are always
in sight, and for the most part the road passes through a heavily
wooded country. Birches abound everywhere, with their graceful white
boles, and there are many forests of pine and poplar. The trees in the
vicinity of the railway are not large, the “monarchs of the forest,” if
there ever were any, having been cut off at the advent of the railway.
The piles of cut wood by the railroad track impress the traveller
with the boundlessness of the forests. Millions of cords of clean cut
birch and pine, with scarcely a knot or a blemish, stand in neat piles
waiting the insatiable engine.
Everywhere the land seems fertile, and, though but an infinitesimal
part of it is cultivated, it would all reward the husbandman. Great
flocks of sleek cattle roam over these natural pastures, but there is
room for a hundred flocks where one roams to-day. And all this vast
domain has been waiting for settlers at Europe’s back door during all
the centuries. Only now is the door fairly open, and the new settlers
are pouring through. America, meanwhile, has been discovered, opened,
and occupied; Australia has been discovered and great cities built upon
its seaboard; the tropics and the poles have been explored; and all
the time a great fertile domain, vaster than all Europe, and separated
from Europe’s swarming, overcrowded millions by no barrier of sea, and
but a low mountain range, has been waiting, almost tenantless, for a
people. But now Siberia has been discovered--discovered by the settler
and the home-maker, as well as by the politician and the autocrat who
desires a Botany Bay for his convicts--and a new and virgin empire that
can afford asylum for the surplus population of two continents has been
added to the world’s productive domains. Undoubtedly this enormous and
almost untrodden empire gives Russia a great advantage among the
nations of the world. Here is a vast new continent contiguous and near
to ancient Russia, a domain which cannot be seriously threatened by
any enemy, a domain which in the decrepit state of China requires no
fleets or armies to protect. At length Russia has awakened to a sense
of its value, and is pouring into it by the ten thousand every month
the peaceful settlers who will make her possession secure.
[Illustration: ZLATOOST, A BORDER TOWN BETWEEN EUROPE AND ASIA]
Between Irkutsk and Moscow the railway passes through a few large towns
of considerable importance. Chief of these are Crasnoiarsk, about
seven hundred miles from Irkutsk; Taiga, some three hundred miles
still nearer Europe; Omsk, about five hundred miles further west; and
Tschelabinsk, which lies near the edge of Europe, two thousand miles
from our starting point at Irkutsk.
These places will be but names to most of my readers, and they will
not be much the wiser if I tell them such facts as that Omsk has forty
thousand inhabitants and Tschelabinsk has fifteen thousand. All these
towns, and many smaller ones that I might mention, are places of no
little importance in the districts of which they are the centres, but
they do not as yet cut much of a figure on the world’s maps. They
all have the characteristics of frontier towns, are built largely of
logs, but boast from one to twenty beautiful churches, which always
strike the eye and give them a character and a beauty which they would
sadly lack without the shining domes and brilliant crosses pointing
heavenward.
Omsk is the most important place on the line of the railway between
Irkutsk and Moscow, and is the residence of the governor-general of the
province of the Steppes, and of a Greek Church archbishop.
Tomsk is a larger and more important place still, but is not directly
on the Trans-Siberian route, being connected by a branch line at Taiga.
The road crosses many large rivers during these two thousand miles
before it reaches the European frontier, and the cost of the great iron
bridges which span them must have been enormous. They seem to be built
in the most substantial manner, with piers and buttresses of massive
cut stone. These rivers belong to the great systems of the Yenisei and
the Obi, which in their upper reaches branch off into many streams,
each of which, in any other continent, would be a notable and famous
stream. But Siberia is so rich in great rivers that even the names
of these mighty tributaries are not of great interest to the reading
public. When Siberia shall come to her own and take her place among the
great populous nations of the earth, these rivers will add enormously
to her wealth and commerce.
On the evening of the fifth day from Irkutsk we went to bed in Asia,
and woke up on the morning of the sixth day in Europe, and in the
beautifully situated town of Zlatoost. We found ourselves also in the
heart of the Urals, and the contrast with the flat plains of Siberia
was most refreshing.
Lovely spruce-clad mountains towered above us on every side; a rushing
river, which the track follows for many miles, seemed to beckon us on
with its smiling ripples that glinted and glowed in the morning sun.
Great, open, park-like valleys and uplands lay between the mountains,
dotted with trees and covered with the greenest of grass, studded with
beautiful flowers of every hue. Altogether, for many miles, the scene
was one of rare loveliness, and was worth travelling a thousand weary
versts to see.
The Russians call this region of the Urals the “Switzerland of Russia,”
and though it lacks the grandeur of the snow-clad Alps, it has a beauty
of its own which is exceedingly charming.
All day long our road wound through these charming scenes, up hill and
down dale, usually keeping a rushing, sparkling river in view, until,
towards the close of the long day, the great town of Oofa, with
its beautiful churches and fine railway station, came in view. We had
passed the barrier of the Urals, and the day of loveliest scenery in
all the long journey had come to an end.
[Illustration: IN THE URAL MOUNTAINS]
Our deliberate train mended its pace very considerably after getting
into Europe, and, on the last three days of the journey, did almost
as many versts as during the first five. The engineer actually seemed
able to get by some small and insignificant stations without stopping,
and where we did stop it was often for less than a full half-hour. We
averaged fully twenty miles an hour after crossing the Urals, which
seemed like lightning speed after our slow and toilsome way in Siberia.
On the seventh day of our journey from Irkutsk, the Urals had faded
into the distance, and the flat plains of European Russia were
substituted for the flat plains of Asiatic Russia. The country on both
sides of the mountains looks much the same, except that the European
plains are better cultivated and less wooded. They have evidently
known the plowshare for many a hundred years, and in early July were
smiling with luxuriant crops of wheat, and barley, and rye. Greater
Russia plainly is in no danger this year of a wide-spread famine.
In some places hay-making had begun, and the great unfenced fields
containing hundreds of acres were alive with haymakers in gay attire.
The Russian farmers live together in villages, instead of in isolated
farmhouses, as do our husbandmen, and the business of cutting and
making a great communal hayfield was evidently an important matter
that brought together all the men, women, and children of the village.
Often forty hay-wagons, each with a span of horses and five times as
many people, were assembled at the edge of a field. The mowers, in long
rows, would then start for the other side of the great field, nearly a
mile away, cutting a wide swath as they went, while fifty Russian Maud
Mullers, in red and blue bodices, raked the meadows sweet with hay,
which yesterday had been cut. They seemed merry and light-hearted about
their task, and we could hear snatches of song and bursts of laughter,
and many a bright bandanna was waved at the flying train.
The small villages did not strike me, as I saw them from the train, as
being superior to the Siberian towns. They are built largely of logs,
or of mud and wattle, and have low-browed thatch roofs, often much out
of repair. But every village, however small and shabby, has a beautiful
church, which contrasts strangely with the one-story thatch-roof huts
that gather around it, as if a brood of very diminutive chickens were
clustering around a big brooding mother hen.
The large towns which we passed, as we drew near to Moscow, were
distinctly better built than in Siberia. Large blocks of brick and
stone, wide streets, and a general air of thrift and prosperity seemed
to pervade them. Samara is a city nobly situated on the banks of the
Volga, and has really a regal appearance on her crown of hills, with
her great cathedral and noble churches dominating all.
The railway crosses the Volga, a few miles after leaving Samara, by a
splendid iron bridge, nearly a mile long. Even here, so far from its
source, this greatest river of Europe is a majestic, swift-flowing
stream, bearing upon its ample bosom great rafts from the pine forests
near its source, and many great steamers, which carry passengers to the
famous fair at Nijni-Novgorod, and other towns along its banks. Most,
if not all of these steamers, use petroleum for fuel, brought from the
great wells of Batoum, and huge tanks for the storage of oil begin to
form conspicuous features of the landscape near every large town.
[Illustration: THE KREMLIN IN WINTER]
Indeed, our own locomotive, instead of gorging itself with birchwood,
as its predecessors which drew the _train de luxe_ had done, took long
deep draughts of crude kerosene oil, which, it must be said, did not
improve its breath. Some of the engines I noticed at this end of the
line were Baldwin locomotives, a make which I had not seen since we had
left Khabaroffsk, on the further side of far Siberia.
On the eighth and last day of our journey on the “Siberian Special,” as
our train was called in railroad nomenclature, we passed through the
large and commanding town of Toula, a great railroad centre, and also
famous for the splendor of its churches. The stations we passed on this
day were finer than any we had yet seen, and were often embowered in
trees until they looked like châteaus in lovely green parks. Peasant
women stood on every platform with heaps of little wild strawberries,
which they sold at a ridiculously cheap price, about two cents a quart.
Others had the first red cherries of the season, and others yellow
apples that had been kept in water for nearly a year, and that tasted
as if baked. Other vendors of delicious, sparkling koumyss, milk,
Russian kvass, and other more harmful beverages, also appeared upon
the scene at many stations.
The devout character of the Russians was shown by the fact that every
third-class waiting-room had its shrine, with beautifully framed
pictures of Christ and the Madonna and some of the Eastern saints.
Before these icons often burned ceremonial candles, and smaller
candles were to be had by devotees for two or three kopeks apiece.
Rapt travellers, with uplifted eyes, were often to be seen crossing
themselves before these icons.
We still passed frequent trains of Siberian settlers, and others
of brawny soldiers, “bearded like the pard,” and packed into their
fifth and sixth-class cars like the proverbial sardines in their
boxes. Occasionally a train of prisoners looked out through their
iron gratings at us, seeming to cast a murky shadow on the pleasant
landscape, as we thought of the dreary years of exile before them.
We saw no political prisoners, however, and even the criminals are
allowed to take their wives and children with them. These latter often
clung to the iron bars with their faces close against them, like so
many infant Charlotte Cordays. It must be said that these prisoners,
like others whom we had seen, fared a good deal better in their railway
accommodations than the emigrants or the soldiers.
More and more cultivated and attractive the beautiful country appeared
as we approached Moscow, giving evidence in every smooth and fertile
field of five hundred years of tillage, until at last, promptly on
schedule time, 197 hours after leaving Irkutsk, the Siberian Special
rolled into the beautiful station of sacred Moscow, and our long
journey across all the Russias was practically finished. It is a matter
of thirteen hours further to St. Petersburg, and two days more by the
fastest train to London. Thence six or seven days more by one of the
Atlantic liners to New York, and our journey by this new way around an
old world was completed.
SOME FACTS AND FIGURES
As a multitude of friends and other correspondents have asked me to
give full particulars concerning the time and cost of this journey, I
will add a few lines to answer these natural inquiries.
I was told by the most sanguine, before starting, that the journey from
Vladivostock to Moscow could be made in twenty-two days. I do not think
that it ever was, or can be, made in that length of time, until the
Trans-Baikal Railway is greatly improved, and the Amour and Shilka have
a channel dredged through their shallows; and that will be many a long
day yet.
[Illustration: A SHRINE AT A RAILWAY STATION]
As a matter of fact, the journey took us thirty-eight days, and,
allowing for probable detentions by rail and river, it cannot often be
made in less time. If it had not been for the kind personal interest
of the governor of Vladivostock, we should have been much longer
on the way than we were. I can well imagine that the trip might take
three or four months instead of as many weeks. The exact time of the
different divisions of our journey was as follows:
Days
Vladivostock to Khabaroffsk (rail) 1¼
Khabaroffsk to Blagavestchensk (boat) 5½
Waited for steamer at Blagavestchensk 2
Blagavestchensk to Stretinsk (boat) 12½
Waited for train at Stretinsk 1½
Stretinsk to Irkutsk (rail) 6
Waited for train at Irkutsk 1
Irkutsk to Moscow (rail) 8½
----
Total 38¼
If we had found high water in the Amour, we might have saved three days
on the river journey, and if the bridge on the Trans-Baikal road had
not burned down so inopportunely, we might have saved two days more,
but it is difficult to see how more than five or six days could have
been saved by the most favoring combination of circumstances.
I also heard many absurd rumors of the cheapness of the journey across
Siberia. One Russian official of note told me that the whole cost from
Vladivostock to Moscow, first-class, meals included, would be one
hundred and twenty roubles. I will give the fares as they actually were
paid, leaving out the odd kopeks:
Roubles
Vladivostock to Khabaroffsk 17
Khabaroffsk to Blagavestchensk 23
Blagavestchensk to Stretinsk 29
Stretinsk to Irkutsk 18
Irkutsk to Moscow 98
-------
Total for fares (first-class) 183
To this must be added at least three roubles a day for living expenses
along the road, even by those economically inclined who drink no
strong liquors, which will add to the expense of a thirty-eight days’
journey one hundred and fourteen roubles, making the journey cost
two hundred and ninety-six roubles, or, in round numbers, about one
hundred and fifty dollars in gold--not expensive, to be sure, for a
six-thousand-mile trip, but not so cheap as is usually thought.
[Illustration: RUSSIAN TYPES]
Those who are willing to travel in second-class cars and steamer
accommodations can save nearly one hundred roubles, or about fifty
dollars, on the whole journey. The second-class cars are entirely
comfortable, and very little poorer than the first-class, but the
second cabin on the steamers is not to be recommended.
I have very often been asked whether I would advise others to take
the journey. That all depends upon their circumstances and travel
proclivities.
For good sailors who do not mind a long ocean voyage, the trip
through the Suez Canal is certainly easier and more restful. For bad
sailors and those who fear the sea for any reason--and their name is
legion--the Trans-Siberian route offers many compensations. Moreover,
if one can command his own time, and is in no great haste to reach his
journey’s end at a fixed date, the Siberian journey will prove far more
attractive than to those who are pressed with engagements and must
make schedule time, for it is impossible to calculate exactly, or even
within a fortnight, the time that may be taken. A pressing engagement
in London, which I almost missed owing to the unexpected delays,
detracted not a little from the comfort of the journey so far as I was
concerned.
Nevertheless, in spite of the discomforts and delays, I am exceedingly
glad to have taken the journey. It was an experience never to be
forgotten, and furnished memory-pictures that will never fade. I should
advise any one with plenty of time on his hands, who enjoys rail and
river travel, and who is not afraid of the inevitable hardships of a
new frontier country, to go and do likewise.
The journey I have described was made at a most fortunate time,
immediately before the Chinese outbreak, which may change the face of
the world, especially of the far Siberian world. A week later, or a
fortnight later at the most, the journey would have been impossible
for many months. But doubtless before my readers wish to take this new
way round the old world the “Yellow Peril” will be overpassed, and the
Trans-Siberian route will be once more open to the travelling public.
In these annals I have purposely omitted any extended reference to the
commercial and political importance of the Trans-Siberian Railway, for
the reading public has been flooded with speculations and facts, more
or less accurate, on this subject. There seems, then, to be little need
for their further exploitation. Moreover, history, during the next
decade, will determine these matters much more accurately than the
wisest prophet can forecast them to-day.
When the Eastern Chinese Railway, connecting with the Trans-Siberian
road, is opened--if the Mongolians, who are showing such unexpected
ferocity, ever allow it to be opened--it will be possible, perhaps,
to go from Paris to Peking in two weeks, or, in time, even in eleven
days, as Mr. A. R. Colquhoun, in his excellent book, _Overland to
China_, points out.