Land and see the world. Once, as a boy on a Russian training-ship, he
had landed at Newcastle, and had seen something of England--had even
slept in a sailors’ rest. He would like to _see_ England, to come and
live there, and understand the country and the nation, to see America,
also Australia. He liked being up in the mountains, working by himself
in the fresh mountain air, talking to chance-met Kirghiz, shooting wild
goats and partridges. But by the end of the summer he would be terribly
bored. He would come down from the mountains, rush into Verney,
complete his maps, and then bolt for Petersburg. He thirsted for human
society all the summer through.
He was always dressed in white, and wore a fez on his shaved head. He
sat with me hours in a bamboo _palatka_ in the one garden restaurant of
Pishpek, and we talked over koumis, over roast chicken, over tea, over
wine. At night, too, when he lay on a broken-down bedstead and I on a
dusty divan, he prattled of his wife and children that he was sick
to leave behind, and of the boy in himself which made him always seek
loneliness and adventures, however much his heart bade him remain at
home.
“I wouldn’t change my lot, but still it is wrong to marry at twenty,
as I did. There are so many partings and it is a great pain. A young
man has things to do in the world, and he is bound to put his wife and
family in the background; his ties are his pains. Most happy marriages
are made of men of middle years, when they have made a little fortune
and can take things more easily. When a stout, old man marries a young
girl, moreover, there is generally a happy, healthy family.”
“But surely you don’t mean to say that old men are better fathers than
young men?” I urged.
“Yes; they have fewer stakes in the world. They are not called on to
go and chart the valleys and peaks of the Thian Shan Mountains. They
know they will not be called on to fight for their country. They know
they’ve got enough money to educate their children and keep up a good
home. They are not so fretful, not so irritable as young men, but
good natured, easy going, and a pretty girl can make one do what she
desires.”
I surmised he must have quarrelled with his wife a little just before
leaving, and be sick at heart to get back home and make it up.
* * * * *
Pishpek, though four hundred miles from a railway station, is a
promising town. The climate seemed to be a hot and dry one, though, of
course, it is easy to be misled by the chances of the weather. There
are long, white streets, with ranks of poplars on each side, a big
market-place, a high road of shops and colonial stores, many places
where _Kvass_ and aerated waters are sold, garden restaurants. There is
not the atmosphere of mystery that Aulie Ata has. It is more colonial
and less Eastern, though, of course, there are the inevitable Oriental
hawkers and the native bazaar. Pishpek has a camel ambulance, a roughly
shaped wood-sleigh with enormously long shafts, to which a Bactrian
camel is yoked. Pishpek also has its lepers, and, as in all these
Eastern towns, there is a great deal of skin disease, though chiefly
among the natives.
The colonists seemed fairly well-to-do, though there was little
evidence of culture, few books, no pianos; the cinema, it is true, but
that is rather a sign of poverty. But the Russians seemed thriving and
everyone seemed to have plenty of horses and cattle. In this country,
where wishes are horses, even the hawker of bootlaces in the bazaar has
his nag tied to a poplar tree near by.
The Kirghiz going from the parched plains up into the mountains let
me understand the changing of the season. The road out from Pishpek
led into desolate country, and I was troubled by the heat and the
difficulty of obtaining food and drink. I carried four pounds of bread
with me out of Pishpek, but that very quickly vanished, some eaten by
myself, some by ants. Ants got into my bread at night and riddled it
so that I could not break off a fragment without an ant appearing in
it. I carried two water-bottles with me, and filled them with milk
or water when I could. Neither milk nor water seemed to be very good
to drink. The best thing out here is the aerated water, apricot or
pineapple; it is very thirst-quenching and a good corrective to the
stomach. When my European bread gave out I had to eat _lepeshka_, which
I cannot recommend. It seems a possible diet when one is hungry, and if
you have wine to wash it down you feel you are making a beautiful meal.
One afternoon, however, I had a _très mauvais quart d’heure_ after
_lepeshka_. A lump of it stuck in my gullet and would not go down and
could not come up. I thought I was choked.
A melancholy native stands with a tray of _lepeshki_ in the road, and
you buy three for five copecks--three rolls for five farthings. No
matter how hard they are, they can be soaked and softened in tea. But I
often wondered what gave the cement-like quality to them. On the road I
have often felt that my diet was unsuitable, but never have I had such
indigestion as on a diet of mare’s milk and _lepeshka_. It is claimed
that mare’s milk is the best thing in the world for the stomach. Koumis
cleanses and fortifies and freshens everything; it is the mother of the
inside. But it does not dissolve _lepeshka_. I was told that it was
difficult to tell the difference between champagne and mare’s milk.
“But, to start with, one is white,” said I.
“Oh, it’s not the colour; it’s the quality.”
[Illustration: A SETTLED KIRGHIZ: ONE OF THE CHARACTERS OF PISHPEK]
“It is best when it is thick.”
“It’s not a matter of being thick or thin, but in the tingling taste
and the exuberance and happiness you feel after it.”
“Well, I’ve nothing to say against koumis.”
I kept a diary of on what and how I spent my money on the road, and the
entries run like this:
_Monday._ _Copecks._
Boiling water 5
Koumis 10
--
15
_Tuesday._
Boiling water 3
Lepeshka 5
Milk 5
--
13
_Wednesday._
Koumis 10
Pilgrim 5
Beggar 2
Milk 10
Kvass 3
--
30
_Thursday._
Lepeshka 5
Sheep’s milk 5
Koumis 10
--
20
And so on; a poor budget. The greatest disappointments of this journey
were the absence of fuel and the great difficulty of making a fire.
It took something like two hours to collect enough straw and withered
grass and splinters of wood to make a fire. And the dried camel-dung
blocks would not burn. As I tramped I made it a golden rule to pick up
and put in my knapsack every bit of combustible material that my eye
lighted upon on the road, but even so it often happened that I had to
buy hot water at some dusty, broken-down caravanserai or in a Russian
inn or from some Tartar draper.
Night in an inn or post-house or under the resplendent Asian stars! Hot
day toiling over empty moors and across half-empty deserts, staying in
shady Russian villages, going up the yards of the farmhouses with my
pot in hand asking for milk, drinking about a pint of milk, and filling
my two bottles so that I might have something better than water with
which to quench my thirst when I was out on the road again; talking to
the farmers; riding behind the reckless Kirghiz and his three horses;
and then night again and its problems and charms!
Seventeen versts beyond Pishpek is Constantinovka, and seventy-one
versts, Kurdai. Russian settlement is rather sparse until Kazanskaya
Bogoroditsa and Linbovinskaya are reached, and these are in the urban
district of Verney, the capital of the colony. There is an enormous
amount of room for human beings here and, when the railway comes along
and puts stations every twenty miles or so from European Russia, all
the way, to Kuldja in China.
After the Cossack village of Linbovinskaya, with its shops and bazaar,
comes the approach to Verney, and the high road is worn into many
tracks and is broad and deep in dust. Along these come many equipages
and picnic carts with pleasure parties of Russians, and for the first
time since leaving Tashkent there was a suggestion of the life of
a large provincial town. But, after all, Verney was only a larger
Pishpek.
IX
THE PIONEERS
All the way to Verney the carts are travelling eastward, but on the
road to Kopal two processions meet one another; the colonists coming
from Tashkent meet the colonists coming from Omsk and Semipalatinsk. It
struck me that those coming from the North were a poorer, harder, more
jaded people than those who had accompanied me from the West. Perhaps
that was because the journey from Siberia was more trying and there
was less to eat on the way, or because the people who came by way of
the northern road were from provinces of Russia where the standard of
living and the average of health were lower.
The pioneers were a rugged sort of folk. They walked with their oxen
and horses, they wandered all over the sandy wastes looking for roots
and straws, and fifty people would spend hours getting enough fuel to
make a fire to boil their pots. They got covered in white dust; their
boots were through; their feet blistered; their carts broke down or
cattle died; but still the band went on patiently, cheerily. They went
very slowly, and I overtook many bands as I walked. I would fall in
with the caravan at evening, and listen with an involuntary thrill to
the great choruses these people sang as they went. They chaffed one
another, gossiped, shouted to the cattle, sang with as much easy-going
cheerfulness as if they were in their native province and driving the
cattle in from their own pasture lands, and not threading the road
across the silent deserts of Central Asia. I would see another party
afar off at ten in the morning, a grey-brown mass on the horizon, and
catch it up by twelve noon. And there would be a strange sight: not a
single peasant walking or in sight. Only the creaking, slowly moving,
patient carts and the clumsy, straining oxen or little ponies, going on
by themselves without the flick of a whip or the whisper of a master’s
voice. And, coming close up to the wagons, I would hear snoring. The
whole caravan would be sleeping and snoring in the shelter of the
tarpaulin tilts, and yet going ever slowly on, slowly on, through the
blaze of the Asian noon-day, over the desert, toward the happy valleys
of the East.
I suppose that, but for the instinctive movements of the Russian people
and the seeking spirit, it would be difficult for the Government to
settle these remote tracts of the Russian Empire. People would not go
simply because of the grants they obtain. It is the wandering spirit
that is the foundation of the Empire. In Central Asia the officials
complain that the people who come are not like those who remain behind
in Russia; they are the most restless of all Russians. They have
wandered thus far, but they have no wish to settle down even now. They
take up land, build villages, till the soil, but sure enough after
a few years they are itching to move on farther. The majority of
colonists are people who have come not direct from Russia, but from
some less remote farm or homestead in Turkestan, Seven Rivers Land, or
Siberia. And these people do not recognise the arbitrary limits of the
Russian Empire, but stray over in considerable numbers into Persia,
Mongolia, and Chinese Tartary. It is true that the Government exercises
considerable control upon the movements of the pioneers. It indicates
each year what tracts of territory are open to colonisation, what
developments have been made in the irrigation system, and shows spots
where villages may be built. The colonial village is not a haphazard
growth such as is the ordinary European village. It does not simply
grow; it is planned by the Government engineers and indicated in a
schedule before ever a single inhabitant has set eyes on it.
[Illustration: THE IRRIGATED DESERT--AN EMBLEM OF RUSSIAN COLONISATION
IN CENTRAL ASIA]
When the harvest has been taken in in Russia many peasants go on
pilgrimage to shrines and many go out in quest of new land. The
_khodoki_, or walkers, set out. A village or a family sends out a
messenger to seek new land; this messenger is called a _khodok_. The
_khodoki_ are specially encouraged by the Government. The police will
not allow a whole village to take to the road and go off all together
in quest of land; they insist on the _khodok_ going first and booking
something in advance. Very great reductions are made in railway fares
and great facilities are given to the _khodoki_, who go forth and look
at all the valleys and irrigated levels at the disposal of the
colonists during the year in question. They travel in twos and threes,
one _khodok_ being required for each three families.
When the _khodoki_ come back, after three weeks, or it may be three
months, or three years, there is necessarily tremendous excitement in
the village. They cannot then disclaim the _khodok’s_ authority to have
taken land in their name, or in any case they very seldom do disclaim
it. It often happens, of course, that the _khodoki_ return saying
that they have found nothing better than their own land and their own
village, and that, consequently, they do not recommend a move. Many
of the _khodoki_ I met on the road were well-to-do peasants who had a
stake in the old country and would not readily advise their constituent
villagers to sell out and come to Central Asia. Still, more than half
of the messengers sent out come back with a positive message. They have
found and taken land.
Whether the _khodok_ has done well or ill, the families set out. It
happens occasionally that the messengers choose death-traps and places
of eternal desolation, and they are terribly blamed. But it ought to
be remembered that Government engineers and agricultural specialists
have indicated the sites as possible before ever the _khodoki_ set
eyes on them; or a Russian general, visiting a district, has said:
“Plant fifteen villages on the eastern slopes of this range of hills,”
or “twenty villages along this valley,” and it has been done simply
because he wanted Russian villages for strategical considerations.
The manner of settling the Empire is so interesting to us that I append
a summary of the information given to all Russians desirous to emigrate
to the Russian colonies. This is for the year 1914:
The provinces open to colonisation this year are those of Uralsk,
Turgaisk, Akmolinsk, Semipalatinsk, Seven Rivers, Tobolsk, Tomsk,
Yenisei, Irkutsk, Transbaikal, Amur, and Primorsk. Also Yakutsk,
Sakhalin, and Kamchatka.
_The following people are allowed to settle beyond the Ural._--All
peasants and _meshtchane_, those engaged exclusively in agriculture,
and also artisans, workmen, factory hands, merchants and shopkeepers.
People of other classes must, before emigrating, apply to the governor
of the province in which they live.
_The Government invites no one to emigrate, and is anxious only to show
all possible help to those who have decided to take that step, and to
make the emigration laws and the grants and privileges accorded to
colonists clear to everyone._
EMIGRATION OF AGRICULTURISTS
_All agriculturists thinking of crossing into Asia should first think
well: Is there not some way of improving the home land and remaining on
it?_
Having become owners of your land at home (by the completion of
purchase after the liberation from serfdom), it is possible to let
part of it out to others, or by careful culture greatly increase the
harvest, or you can mortgage it to the Peasants’ Bank and buy other
land, either in your own or in a neighbouring province.
It is another matter when the land you possess is so little that there
is none to let out or mortgage, or when it is difficult to buy suitable
land at all near, when the land offered by Government or private owners
becomes year by year less and the prices year by year higher.
Then it is worth while considering the question of emigration to
Asiatic Russia, where there is still much space. The Government assigns
land to the extent of 25-50 dessiatinas a farm or 8-15 dessiatinas for
each male soul. Or it is possible to settle in a village or Cossack
station by special arrangement, and lease land cheaply from settled
colonists. To enable people to travel to such places the Government
helps with cheap tariffs and money grants.
During the past seven years more than three million souls have firmly
established themselves in this way, and in many places it may be said
that the colonists have become rich and live in a more flourishing way
than they did on the old lands at home. But it must be remembered that
such results are not attained at once. It is not a little heavy labour,
grief and poverty that have to be undergone during the first years in
the new place. Not every family has the strength to bear such trial.
It is reckoned that of every hundred families going across the Ural
fifteen return to the old country after having failed to take root
in the new. It is hard for families where the general health is weak,
where there are not good working hands, or where there is no money
whatever to start with. Such families would do better not to stir;
better to work a bit more on the home lands till they get some means to
take up new land and try and develop it.
THE EMIGRATION OF FACTORY HANDS AND ARTISANS
The towns and villages are greatly in need of people knowing trades.
Especially great is the need in the provinces of Amur, Primorsk, and
Transbaikal, where railways, fortresses, and barracks are being built,
and where mining, fishing and lumbering are in full swing. More than
a hundred thousand men are employed annually on the Government works
alone, and private firms want more. Unskilled labourers, brickmakers,
joiners, diggers, bricklayers, sawyers, locksmiths, glaziers, miners,
and anyone who has any special knowledge or knack, willing hands and a
heart to work.
Wages are higher than in European Russia, and all manner of help is
given in transport. There is a great reduction of fares on the Siberian
Railway, and every _artel_ of workmen contracted for the Government,
and also for many private businesses in connection with lumbering and
fisheries, is transported to its field of work FREE OF CHARGE and taken
back at specially cheap rates.
Many of those who go out with _artels_ like the country and the
conditions so much that they prefer to stay and take up plots of land
and settle.
WHERE AND HOW IS IT POSSIBLE TO SETTLE?
In the provinces open for colonisation there are a great number
of specially chosen plots of Government land at the disposal of
individuals or of numbers electing to farm and work together. The
names of peasants electing to see these or choose one of them are
gratuitously enrolled by the emigration officials. In the more settled
and inhabited places of Siberia, Turkestan and Seven Rivers Land, where
land has now obtained a considerable value, there are also special
plots marked out by the Government, and these may be bought. Also in
many peasant settlements and Cossack stations there are wide stretches
of land granted by the Government to the Cossacks or sold in time past
to freed serfs, and on these it is possible to settle when arrangements
can be made privately with the peasants or the Cossacks, as the case
may be. Finally, it is also possible to lease land or to buy it from
private individuals.
TO WHOM DOES THE GOVERNMENT GIVE HELP?
Although emigration is permitted to all who wish, yet, in order to
enjoy the advantages of Governmental help and grants in aid, it is
necessary that families should first send out messengers, and should
await their return before setting out themselves. This is only enforced
by the Government in order to save the people from the ruin which often
follows unconsidered and frivolous emigration. It should be remembered
that all who have not obtained land in advance through their messengers
(_khodoki_) will find that they have to take their turn last in the
selection of plots of land.
THE SENDING OF MESSENGERS (KHODOKI)
Any peasant or town family occupying itself with agriculture can now
send out a _khodok_, and it is now allowed to send one _khodok_ to
represent several families, but not more than five. What is more, any
working man, artisan or tradesman can obtain a _khodok’s_ certificate
without difficulty, and can make the journey to the places of
colonisation and become acquainted with the local conditions.
The faithful _khodok_ should make a thorough study of conditions of
life in the new places, consider carefully all the plots of land
offered, and, choosing the most suitable, inscribe his name for it
according to the regulations. The _khodok_ must not set off without
his certificate, for only by showing the certificate can he travel at
reduced rates or be recognised by the officials in Turkestan or Siberia.
In Seven Rivers Land and the other provinces of Turkestan no
permission is given to people of other than the Russian race or the
Orthodox religion. In the case of Old Believers and other sects whose
teaching forbids military service, no permission can be granted to
settle--therefore, no Molokans, Baptists or Seventh Day Adventists are
allowed to settle anywhere in Turkestan.
The certificates, both for _khodoki_ and emigrating families, are
given gratuitously. The _khodok_ certificate for 1913 is printed on
yellow paper, the colonists’ on rose-coloured paper, and the tariff
certificate on green.[D]
The most convenient time for looking over the plots of land is from
April till June, but the best are taken up very quickly at the
beginning of spring; many people of foresight get to the various points
in the winter in order to form an idea of the winter life of the
district and to be on the spot when the new plots are laid open in the
early spring.
In order to make it easier for the messengers and to decrease the
expense, _khodoki_ are advised to go in groups and not alone. A party
together always fares better than separate people can, and more trouble
is necessarily taken for them.
_Khodoki_ often take very little money with them, and, through poverty,
are obliged to return without having found the land they want. It is
not possible to find suitable land at once; it is necessary to go to
various places and look at many farms. For that, time and money are
both necessary.
It is not thought wise to answer advertisements or apply at offices
where the promise of arranging everything is made. It is impossible to
take up land except through application to the emigration officials,
and they do their work without making any charge. Everyone who promises
to obtain an option on a plot of Government land after the payment
of a fee is practising deceit, and complaint should be lodged at
the Emigration Department in St. Petersburg. (Postal address: St.
Petersburg Emigration Department, Morskaya 42. Telegraphic address: St.
Petersburg, Emigrant.)
_Khodoki_ should remember that many of the free plots of land indicated
in the booklet may have been allotted to other people before their
arrival. So it is, generally speaking, wise to take a wide view of the
possible places of settlement. _Khodoki_ should obtain the full list of
plots offered by the Government. This list can be obtained at Seezran
station, at Orenburg, Iletsk, Ak-bulak, Jurun, Arees, Tashkent.
The following reductions are made in railway and steamer fares for
messengers and colonists and their families, and also in the charges
for baggage:
1. People holding certificates as colonists or messengers of colonists
are taken on all railways at a reduced fare--at a fourth of the cost
of a third-class ticket--and they are accommodated in the grey wagons
of the fourth class, or, in the absence of these, in goods trains.
Children up to ten years of age are carried free.
2. Baggage is taken on the same train as that by which the colonists
travel, and is charged at the rate of one hundredth part of a farthing
per pood per verst, the first pood per ticket going free. Horses and
horned cattle are taken at half a farthing per head per verst, and
small domestic animals at a quarter of a farthing per head per verst.
Fowls and small animals in cages or baskets are charged by weight as
if they were ordinary baggage.
3. Baggage is divided into three categories.
_First category._--Domestic goods and furniture in packing cases; more
than eight poods per person of either sex cannot be taken at this rate.
_Second category._--Animals, carts, agricultural machinery, guns,
provisions, can only be taken to the number and extent shown on the
back of the tariff certificate.
_Third category._--Grain, flour, seed, trees and vines can only be
taken up to ten poods per person.
Beyond these limits baggage must be taken at the general commercial
tariff.
In the case of loss the railway undertakes to pay the owner forty
roubles a pood for baggage in the first category (though not more
than 120 roubles for each ticket), six roubles a pood for the second
category, and a rouble and a half a pood for the third category.