economic significance. The line holds a strategic position as truly as
does the Panama Canal. Though in Siberia proper there is the enormous
area of nearly five million square miles, so much of this is in Arctic
tundra, impassable swamp, forest, or barren steppe, that the really
habitable and arable land narrows down to a tenth of this, which lies
in general between the parallels of 55° and 58° 30’ north, and is
contained within a belt some thirty-five hundred miles long and two
hundred to two hundred and fifty miles broad.
When it is noted that the tillable area of one hundred and ninety-two
thousand square miles in Tobolsk and Tomsk, mostly along the Obi
System, the stretch of twenty thousand miles in the steppe, and that of
one hundred thousand in the Yeneseik and Irkutsk governments of eastern
Siberia, are all in immediate proximity to the railroad, whose course
is generally along the 55th parallel, the economic value of Russia’s
great enterprise takes a different perspective.
Its vantage is still more emphasized when the element of the north and
south watercourses is considered. One after another the great Siberian
rivers are crossed,--in the Tobolsk Gobernia, the Tobol, the Ishim,
the Irtish; in the Tomsk Gobernia, the Obi and the Tom; in Yeneseik,
the Yenesei; in Irkutsk, the Angara. Each of these reaches far up into
the agricultural zone that lies north of the railroad, bringing the
harvests to its cars by the cheap unfettered water-avenues. Thus, to
the part of Siberia that is capable of extensive development, the
railroad is even now in a position to give great aid.
It is from such natural factors as these, not from financiers’ figures,
that one must weigh the potentiality of this great line. Its direct
value is enormous, its indirect commercial services greater yet.
It may best be compared to a mighty river system such as that of
the Mississippi. The latter’s traffic has never directly returned a
dollar of the millions that have gone to maintaining its levees and
training-walls and channels. Yet indirectly the return and the value,
as an asset to the American people, are so great as to be incalculable.
From its controlling position in relation to the cultivatable land and
the interior watercourses of Central Siberia, as well as in relation
to the far eastern artery, the Russian railway is an empire-builder as
important as has been the Nile.
The results already achieved are noteworthy. The city of Omsk, where
the railroad and the Irtish River lines meet, has risen from a
population of thirty-seven thousand in 1897 to seventy thousand in
1908. Further east, Stretensk has sprung from a town of two thousand
people ten years ago to over twelve thousand to-day. Irkutsk has
climbed from sixty to over eighty thousand since the railroad opened.
[Illustration: ISLAND OF KALTIGEI VILLAGE OF LISTVIANITCHNOE LAKE
BAIKAL]
The rural population has increased even as that of the cities. At the
beginning of the seventeenth century, all Siberia contained but two
hundred and thirty thousand souls; at the end of the eighteenth,
one million five hundred thousand; at the end of the nineteenth, five
million. Now, with the railroad-induced immigration, it approaches the
seven million mark. The Steppe Government alone has risen in fifty
years from five hundred thousand to one million five hundred thousand,
and the Tomsk from seven hundred thousand to two million five hundred
thousand.
More in importance than its present utility is the fact that the
railway holds the key to Siberia’s future. The arable territory of
the belt is equal to that of Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Ohio,
Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas
combined. This land is generally well-watered, in a climate suitable
to grain-raising, and it is, as has been shown, in its whole extent,
adjacent to river and rail transportation.
While such farming districts of the United States have some fifty
inhabitants to the square mile, the most densely populated gobernia,
Tomsk, has but six, and the Yeneseik but six tenths of one.
An immense further area will yield to clearing and to irrigation, as
has been demonstrated in the great results secured from five hundred
versts of canals in the Barbara Steppe. Coal and iron are available in
many places, and timber in the greatest abundance grows in the northern
district.
From a summary of these elements one may glean an idea of the Colossus
sleeping beneath these snows. At a normal rate of increase, fifty
million souls should populate Siberia at the close of the twentieth
century. The agency of their coming and existing will be primarily
the line of rails across the continent. Despite the eight hundred
million roubles expended, with only far-off hopes of profit, the faulty
road-bed, the light rails, the steep grades, and crawling trains, the
glory of Russia is still “The Great Siberian Railway.”
III
IN IRKUTSK
The train pulls slowly up to the white station-house at Irkutsk. A
swarm of porters, _nasilchiks_, white-aproned, with peaked hats, and
big, numbered arm-tags, invade the carriage. They seize each piece
of luggage and run with it somewhere into the crowd outside. You,
encumbered with your heavy coat, laboriously follow. Irkutsk station,
more than any previous one, is crowded with passengers and Cossack
guards. Train officials are shouting instructions, and every few paces
a sentry is standing his silent watch. This is the transfer entrepôt
for all through traffic, as well as the depôt for the largest and most
important city of Siberia.
Threading the press on the platform, you struggle with the outgoing
human current, and in time reach the big waiting-room of the first
class. It likewise is crowded with a mass of people, and its floor
is cumbered with heaping mounds of baggage. One of these hillocks is
constructed from your impedimenta, which are being guarded now by a
porter, apparently the residuary legatee of the half-dozen original
competitors within the car. The man takes the long document that
witnesses your claim to two trunks, and departs. Upon you in turn
devolves sentry duty for the interminable time during which those
trunks are being culled out from the baggage-car.
It is an exasperating wait, but the fundamental rule for Russian
traveling is, “never separate from the baggage.” The parcel-room here
at Irkutsk held for six months a suit-case left by a friend to be sent
to this traveler. The officials would not give it up to its owner or
to any person save the forwarder, though he, oblivious to sequels, had
gone on to San Francisco.
Like the rest, now, you camp, with the baggage in front of you, on the
waiting-room floor. It is a very country fair, this station. At the
far end is a big stand crowded with dishes, on which are cold meats,
potato salad, heaps of fruit and cakes, sections of fish from which one
may cut his own slices, boxes of chocolates, and cigarettes. All are
piled up in heaping profusion. One can get a glass of vodka and eat
of the _zakuska_ dishes free, or while waiting he may buy a meal of
surprisingly ample quantity and good quality at the long tables that
run down the centre of the room. Most of the Russians order a glass of
tea, and with it in hand sit down till such indefinite future time as
the luggage situation shall unroll itself.
We move our baggage and join the tea caravan. Across the table is a
slight, brown-faced man, with an enormous black astrakan cape falling
to his ankles, and wearing a jauntily perched astrakan cap on his head.
“One of the Cossack settlers,” a friend from the train remarks. Beyond
are half a dozen tired-looking women, with dark-gray shawls over their
heads. Near them are men with close-fitting _shubas_, or snugly-belted
sheepskin coats, fur inside, and rough-tanned black leather outside.
Beside the lunch-stand are a couple of young men with huge bearskin
caps, short coats, and high leather boots tucked into fleece-lined
overshoes.
A general at one of the little side tables is talking volubly to a
plump dame with furs, which are attracting envy from many sides. The
lady merely nods between puffs of her cigarette, and sips her tea.
A large fat merchant waddles past, wrapped in a paletot made of the
glistening silvery skin of the Baikal seal. The room is stifling,
full of smoke, and crowded with people. Yet no one seems to feel the
discomfort, even to the extent of taking off the heavy outer coats,
which, with the thermometer at twenty degrees below zero, they have
worn on the sleigh-ride in, from across the river.
Your friends of the train, save those whose possessions were comprised
in their multitudinous valises, are all here, fur-coated likewise and
sipping tea, waiting, without a thought of impatience, for the baggage
to be brought out.
At last appears your _nasilchik_. “They are got,” he cries, and
balances about himself, one by one, your half-dozen pieces of luggage.
Through the noisy, gesticulating, thronging passengers and heaped
belongings, he shoulders and squirms a way to the door and into the
anteroom.
A couple of soldiers are good-naturedly hustling out, from the
third-class waiting-room opposite, a little leather-jacketed and very
dirty mujik.
“I did not owe seven kopecks. I cross myself. I am not a Jew,” he
loudly proclaims.
“_Nietchevo_,” says the soldier. “Out with him just the same!” The
peasants and crowd loafing alongside grin appreciatingly, as the mujik
is escorted, collar-held, through the great doors.
The porter and yourself follow. A plunging line of sleighs, backed up
against the outer platform of the station, extends far up and down
the road. Their _isvoschiks_, leaning back, are shouting for fares.
In sight are your two trunks. “How much to the Métropole?” you call.
The legal fare across the river to the hotel is a rouble, but the
Governor-General of eastern Siberia couldn’t tell how much it would be
if you didn’t bargain beforehand. “_Piat rubla!_” “_tree rubla!_” come
hurtling from all sides.
It is for you to walk down the line calling in the vernacular, “fifty,
seventy kopecks!” One of the drivers will eventually shout a fare which
you feel able to allow, and the porter, who has been watching the
bargaining process with keen interest, gives him the two trunks. The
_isvoschik_ retires then behind the stormy hiring-line, and you renew
the process for a second vehicle. The sleighs are just big enough for
one person to occupy comfortably. Two can squeeze in if they be thin
enough or economically minded. But a second sleigh is needed now for
the hand-baggage, and a third for one’s self. At length the arrangement
is completed. The porter bows low at the donation of fifty kopecks,
“for vodka”; then, “Go ahead! all ready!” you call, and with a flourish
the procession of sleighs dashes out of the station purlieus.
The road to the town mounts first a low hill parallel to the river.
As the horses climb toward its crest the panorama of the city and
stream, hidden previously by the railroad structures, unrolls. Like a
great band of white, the frozen Angara sweeps to the left and right.
Beyond it stand out boldly the clustered domes of the cathedral, their
surmounting crucifixes glittering in the sunlight. At your feet are the
sections of the pontoon bridge, which in summer spans the river but in
autumn is disconnected, the parts being moored to the shore, lest the
drifting ice from partly frozen Baikal cut and destroy their woodwork.
A dark streak crosses the frozen river, with dots moving, as small
apparently as running ants. The deceptive snow has made the distance
seem much less than it is in reality. The streak is a road, and the
seeming insects are the sleighs that pass and repass on the frozen
river-trail. Between scattered wooden houses our cavalcade rides down
to the bank, and at length onto the smooth white sheet. It is like
skating. The big horses on our sleigh are imported from Russia, and
trot splendidly, overtaking one after another of the citizens with
their little shaggy Siberian ponies. The heaped snow is on either side.
The cold air is bracing, almost welcome, until it begins to eat its way
in.
It is a fair drive, this, across the river--a full verst to the
northern bank. We mount the incline that leads up the slope, and come
to the first log houses of the poorer quarter of Irkutsk town. Gaunt
dogs bark feebly, and slink away on either side. The street is almost
deserted; the houses give no sign of life.
Suddenly we come into a square crowded with people, gay with life and
motion, and motley in colors. It fairly buzzes with talk and cries and
chaffering. Low-built booths face every side of the open _piazza_. We
catch a glimpse of one stocked with hardware. Opposite it stands a
little shrine within which are dimly visible pictured saints and the
Madonna, before which are scores of burning tapers. Our _isvoschik_
takes off his hat as he drives past, and reverently makes the sign of
the cross. He crosses himself also as he passes the white church of
St. Nicholas with its green roofs and gilded crosses, and he removes
his cap to the long-haired and dark-robed pope that he meets, for the
Siberian pays much reverence to his Church.
[Illustration: THE ANGARA RIVER THE CATHEDRAL IRKUTSK]
The residences improve from the log cabins of the outskirts, and grow
into the two-storied whitewashed structures of the main thoroughfares.
The streets also have an interesting procession of people. The big
troika of some high official glides past, with coal-black horses and
a coachman padded out into a liveried Santa Claus, after the style of
St. Petersburg. Officers of the garrison sweep by in their light-gray
overcoats. Shoals of sleighs and sledges are going to and fro. At
almost every corner, armed with a sabre and revolver, stands a police
officer.
As one drives along he reads the Russian letters on the placards and
the names on the stores. Many here are Hebrew, for the Siberians of the
cities are more tolerant than their European cousins. Irkutsk has a
very large and prosperous Jewish merchant community, and sent her Dr.
Mendelberg to the Duma. Irkutsk has had its representation cut down,
they say, _post hoc_,--perhaps _propter hoc_.
The driver, who has kept his horses at a moderate trot from the
station through the town, suddenly cries out to them, and swings and
snaps his lash till they break into a gallop. “We always come in
handsomely,” says the city native who is with you, as the sleigh pulls
up triumphantly at the door of the Hôtel Métropole.
A swarm of attendants greet you at the portal, a tall uniformed
concierge, half a dozen aproned porters, a waiter or two, a page,
and behind them the Hebraic Hazan, our host. Each porter seizes a
parcel and the concierge leaves his post by the front door to lead the
procession up the broad red-carpeted stairway. With a rattle of keys he
swings open the door to a salon big enough to give a ball in, and whose
ceiling is six good feet above one’s head. The average New York flat
would rattle around in it. The concierge advances to its centre and
bows. Then he goes on through to another room, almost its duplicate in
size, with a forlorn-looking washstand and a screen across one corner.
“But the bedroom, where do we sleep?” you ask.
“_Sdiece, gaspadine_,” he says, “right here”; and he conducts you to
the screen.
Raised about eighteen inches above the floor is a little wooden
platform-like structure, about the size of a cigar-shop showcase. A
dingy mattress is rolled up at one end of it. As you ruefully feel
its straw texture and survey the planks which it is to cover, the
hotel-keeper pushes in to tell you that sheets will be put on at once
if the _gaspadine_ has not his own. “_Chass! Chass!_ If only the rooms
suit the _gaspadine_, everything will be arranged.”
The porters silently deposit their loads and depart with their twenty
kopecks each. The manager goes out, doubtless to gather his sheets.
Only the concierge stays expectant after he has received his tribute.
You throw your heavy overcoat over one of the armchairs and begin to
open some of the bags. The concierge still stays and looks on. You
begin to segregate laundry, and locate brushes and tooth-powder. The
concierge still stays and looks on. You get out some slippers which are
an improvement upon the heavy snow-boots. The concierge still lingers.
“The room is accepted,” you say finally.
“Yes, yes,” he answers. “_Haracho_, but for the police, I want, please,
your passport.”
To show your passport, true enough, is no more of an incident than to
take out your handkerchief. But to be obliged before you have been ten
minutes in a place to produce a paper for the police telling of your
age and infirmities, the color of your eyes, the number of your arms
and legs and children, seems tiresome.
“Must all give in their passports?” you inquire.
“All, all,” he answers. “I am punished if one person stays here
overnight without showing it.”
He takes the document, visibly impressed with its flying eagle and the
big red seal, and bows his way out.
Now one can stroll around one’s suite and take in some of the details.
There are electric lights with clusters of globes in the big pendant
electrolier of the parlor, and drop-lamps for the massive writing-desk
in the corner! The armchair by the high-silled window is a good place
to read in. Too bad one cannot look out on the shuttling sleighs of the
street below, but the cold has thickly frosted the double windows. Here
is a big sofa, plush-covered, and half a dozen armchairs surround the
polished table, whose top is scarred with a multitude of rings--from
the hot tea-glasses, one deduces.
Mentioning tea, why not have some? There ought to be a bell somewhere.
Unfortunately there is not a bell. In looking for it one finds that
Siberian housekeeping does not include any dusting of the heavy
red hangings which flank the doors and windows. An imperious cry
resounds in the corridor. “_Chelaviek!_” It is followed by a patter
of footsteps. So this then is the custom of the country. You open the
door, and in the tone described in books upon elocution as “hortatory,”
cry out into the dim distances of the corridor, “_Samovar, chai!_”
Somewhere down the line a voice answers, “_Chass, chass!_” and you
retire to wait and hope.
Curiously battered the furniture looks when you inspect it closely.
Here and there a flake is chipped away from the varnish, and cuts or
dents show in the paint. Have sabre fights, perhaps, taken place here,
or raids on assembling revolutionists? Certainly in the generations of
occupants, life has been, in some fashion, tumultuous.
There is a fumbling at the door-knob, and, without any preliminary
knocking, a waiter comes in with a nickel samovar, an empty teapot, and
a glass. He puts them down on the battered table and walks out. The big
kettle hums away pleasantly as the red charcoal in its hollow interior
glows from the upward draft. The preparations seem all made, save for
the tea. Perhaps the _chelaviek_ has gone to get it. You let your eye
rove around to the little ikon far up in the corner, and the sleighing
and wolf-shooting etchings on the walls. But after a time this becomes
tiresome. Has the secret gendarmerie descended on the waiter among his
teapots and trays? Has he forgotten the matter entirely, or what? The
corridor-call seems to be the only recourse. Once again you go out.
“_Chelaviek!_” and from some region he comes trotting up.
“Where is that tea?”
“Oh, _chai_,” he says, illumined. “Has the _gaspadine_ not his own?”
“Most decidedly the _gaspadine_ has not his own,” you retort. “The
_gaspadine_ does not carry pillow-shams or bales with him. He is not a
draper’s establishment or a grocer’s store.”
“_Nietchevo_,” says the waiter, amiably; and runs off, to return with
a saucer of tea-leaves, and another containing half a dozen lumps of
sugar.
“Your pardon, generally the _gaspadines_ have their own”; and he leaves
you to the brew and your meditations.
Well, it is pleasant, after a long train-ride, to stretch out in a big,
if battered, armchair, and sip glasses of anything hot. The little
teapot, full of a very strong decoction, is perched on the top of the
samovar over its chimney. For a fresh glass you pour out a half-inch
of the strong essence, throw in the sugar, and from the samovar’s
spigot fill the glass with hot water. It is thus just the strength
you personally prefer, and always hot. The samovar, by a judicious
regulation of the draft, can be kept for hours exactly at the boil. It
is a fine institution, but cannot be transplanted to a country where
hot charcoal embers are not constantly available.
Comfortably ensconced and sipping one’s tea, one can leisurely, Russian
fashion, think of the most amusing method of passing the time. It is
getting on toward evening; for the day fades early here. To-morrow is
soon enough to look at things and distribute letters of introduction.
The beverage has also blighted the appetite. Perhaps a light supper
and an early couch would be wise. The latter in the far room looks
singularly unpromising, but, “_Nietchevo!_” It is rather early for
dinner or supper, but what of that? As an elusive New York politician
used to say to each of the office-seekers who came to ask his influence
for nominations, “If you want it, there is no reason why you should not
have it.” We will try another summons of the waiter.
Up he comes with the bill of fare printed in Russian and alleged French.
Perhaps some eggs would be good. You decide upon them to begin with,
and you will have them poached.
“_Gaspadine_,” he says, “the eggs to-day cannot be poached. Will you
not have an omelette instead?”
On second thoughts we will not have eggs at all this time; we will have
a sterlet, a small steak, and a compote. He goes off to the nether
regions again. A long time passes, but at length he returns with the
sterlet, its chisel-shaped nose piercing its tail in true Siberian
style. White creamy butter and Franzoski kleb, white bread, round out
the course. The steak is excellent and the canned fruit is satisfying,
eaten beside the singing samovar in the great room of the main hotel of
Irkutsk. Half a dozen letters pass the next hours until it is time to
sleep. They are written on the big desk beneath the drop-light, with a
glass of tea at one’s elbow in warm cosy comfort.
The place is rather warm, and without any apparent source of heat, for
there are no registers or gratings of obvious instrumentality. A search
of elimination, like the game in which one is warm, warmer, very hot,
leads at length to a rounded corner of porcelain built into the wall,
of which only a curved segment shows in an angle of the room. Further
inspection reveals that it is a big cylindrical stove fed by somebody
in the hallway, and so arranged as to warm two adjoining rooms.
In mitigation of the fire-tender’s zeal, we decide to open a window.
Perhaps with an hydraulic jack this might be possible; but to manual
labor it is not. A single pane of the inner window, however, swings
back, and then we can open a similar pane in the outer window, leaving
a hole as big as the port of a ship. It is sufficient in this weather.
Some further corridor-shouting, produces, in due time, sheets and
blankets, and presently we lie down on the straw mattress in the little
wooden-bottomed box called a bed. “_Spacoine notche_,” the attendant
calls, and without trace of irony.
It is one thing to go to bed, another to sleep. Tales are told of
powder-circled couches which the invaders, surmounting these ramparts
by climbing walls, dropped upon from above. There is a legend that
there are some people whom they do not bite. “_Nietchevo!_” Is it not
Irkutsk, the Paris of Siberia? Why then complain of parasites?
Furthermore, a brass band has started up somewhere in the immediate
neighborhood the tune of _Viens poupoule!_ to which there echoes a
popular accompaniment of tapped glasses and stamping feet. Perhaps
one had better get up and see things after all,--“Needs must when the
Devil drives.” We dress again. An exploring expedition reveals the
big dining-room on the floor below full to the doors with uniformed
officers, long-haired students, and assorted civilians. All are
drinking and smoking. On a stage at one end of the room thirty
short-skirted damsels are singing and dancing in chorus, to the great
approval of the audience. As the curtain rolls down on an act, the
_ci-devant_ dancers descend to their friends on the floor. Corks pop,
and sweet champagne flows. The call goes up for “_Papirose!_” and more
cigarettes and more bottles come thick and fast.