_Approximate
equivalent
_Versts._ in miles._
From St. Petersburg to--
Omsk 2,937 1,958
Semipalatinsk 3,666 2,444
Tashkent 3,727 2,484
Vladivostock 8,268 5,512
From Moscow to--
Omsk 2,681 1,794
Semipalatinsk 3,410 2,340
Tashkent 3,123 2,082
Vladivostock 8,012 5,340
From Odessa to--
Omsk 3,784 2,522
Semipalatinsk 4,518 3,008
Tashkent 4,536 3,024
Vladivostock 9,115 6,076
TABLE OF RAILWAY FARES FOR EMIGRANTS
_No. of _Equivalent _Cost of ticket _Equivalent
versts._ in miles._ in roubles._[E] in shillings._
_rbls._ _copks._ _s._ _d._
750 500 1 80 2 8
1,500 1,000 2 80 4 2
2,250 1,500 3 65 5 5
3,000 2,000 4 45 6 7
3,750 2,500 5 55 8 3
4,500 3,000 6 65 9 11
5,250 3,500 7 65 11 5
6,000 4,000 8 75 13 0
7,500 5,000 10 95 16 4
9,000 6,000 13 05 19 7
BAGGAGE TARIFF FOR EMIGRANTS
To carry 3 poods (i.e. 1 cwt.)--
1,000 versts 30 copecks (i.e. about 6d.).
5,000 ” 1 rouble 50 copecks (2s. 3d.).
9,000 ” 2 roubles 70 ” (4s.).
To carry 30 poods (i.e. 1/2 ton)--
1,000 versts 3 roubles (4s. 6d.).
5,000 ” 15 ” (22s. 6d.).
9,000 ” 27 ” (40s. 6d.).
And other amounts and distances proportionately.
CHARGES ON THE RIVERS
_Fare in
roubles._ _Baggage
_rbls._ _copks._ per pood._
From Omsk to--
Pavlodar 3 20 20 copecks
Semipalatinsk 4 80 25 ”
From Krasnoyarsk to--
Batenei 2 50 16 ”
Minusinsk 2 80 18 ”
At the larger stations and piers colonists’ shelters have been built;
free medical aid is given, and hot food is served out cheap (for
instance, a plate of lenten or of ordinary soup, four copecks--one
penny).
To children up to ten years of age and to sick persons, hot food is
given free. To small children (up to three years), white bread and milk
is given free.
People who become ill of infectious diseases are removed to the
Government hospitals and treated free.
At the great emigration stations beware of swindlers and charlatans, of
whom there are not a few. It goes without saying that even the poorest
emigrants have a little money, and they stand to lose even that if they
are not careful. Beware of loiterers, card games with unknown persons,
pick-pockets, robbers. Hide your money in a place where it cannot be
stolen. Do not accept drinks of vodka or beer from unknown people. It
is a common trick to scatter thorn-apple seed in vodka; the colonist
loses consciousness, and is robbed. Many people have suffered in this
way through lack of caution.
If on the road you purchase cattle or horses, obtain a certificate of
purchase, or else the persons from whom you have bought may come back
and declare that you have stolen what you bought.
SEVEN RIVERS PROVINCE (_Semiretchenskaya Oblast_)
One of the most remote Central Asian possessions of Russia, remarkable
for its natural wealth and the beauty of Nature.
The route thither is either by rail to Tashkent or by rail to Omsk, and
up the River Irtish to Semipalatinsk, and then 500 to 1,000 versts or
more by road.
It is bounded on the south and east by China, on the north by the
province of Semipalatinsk, on the west by the provinces of Sirdaria and
Ferghan.
The principal inhabitants are wandering Kirghiz, of whom there are
about one million. The Russians number about 200,000, and there are
about 200,000 of other races. Half the Russian population is Cossack.
The province is divided into the jurisdictions of Verney, Pishpek,
Przhevalsk, Jarkent, Kopal and Lepsinsk.
The northern districts of Lepsinsk and Kopal are specially suitable
for agricultural settlement, and there is much land there not needing
irrigation, as there is comparatively much water.
In the districts of Verney, Jarkent and Pishpek irrigation is
generally necessary. Free plots of land are mostly in the district of
Jarkent and on the frontier of China. When the railway has been brought
across to Verney, trade will certainly develop, so the sale of products
will be facilitated and the conditions of farming very profitable.
Then the southern parts of the province are very mountainous. Fruitful
valleys are separated by great ranges, but with time a road system will
be developed and this difficulty overcome.
A railway will soon be built from Tashkent to Verney.
There are as yet no steamers. The largest river, the Ili, crosses the
centre of the province. Besides the Ili there are many mountain streams
and also large lakes; among the latter may be named Balkhash, Alakul,
Issik-Kul.
The climate is very varied, there being levels of eternal snow and of
burning sand. The chief occupations of the colonists are cattle farming
and all branches of agriculture. A well-watered farm gives, as a rule,
a rich and abundant harvest.
Wheat is sown (from 7 to 10 poods the dessiatina), rye oats (8 to 14
poods), millet, peas, potatoes, maize, sunflowers, mustard, flax, hemp,
poppy, buckwheat, etc. And the harvest gives wheat up to 150 poods the
dessiatina, oats give from 70 to 120 poods the dessiatina, and barley
90 poods. In the districts of Pishpek, Jarkent and Verney rice is
sown, and gives 100 roubles the dessiatina clear profit. Orchards are
cultivated almost everywhere with success.
PRICES
Wheat 30 to 80 copecks the pood.
Rye 30 to 60 ” ”
Oats 30 to 60 ” ”
Barley 30 to 70 ” ”
A horse costs 45 roubles
A cow costs 25 to 30 roubles
A camel costs 50 roubles
A sheep costs 3 to 5 roubles
Labour costs from 70 copecks to 1 rouble
50 copecks the day.
GOVERNMENT GRANTS
(_a_) In the measure of 100 roubles the family is given in the
districts of Pishpek and Verney, except for certain special districts
where colonisation proceeds without loans. A hundred roubles are also
given to settlers in the district of Kopal, excepting the survey of
Altin-Emel and certain plots in the valley of the River Chu and also in
the neighbourhood of the Lake Issik-Kul.
(_b_) In the measure of 200 roubles the family in the northern parts of
the district of Jarkent and in the survey of Altin-Emel in the district
of Kopal.
In the southern and eastern frontier region half the loan is reckoned
as not returnable to the Government.
In the artificially watered tracts in the districts of Verney and
Pishpek no grants are made.
Beyond personal loans special grants are made for purposes of supplying
general needs, for the building of schools, churches, village barns,
mills, brick factories and irrigation works. For the poorer districts
the Government takes upon itself the burden of building schools and
churches, and hundreds of thousands of roubles are spent annually for
this purpose. The Government also sinks wells for the colonists.
Personal loans are repayable by instalments after five years. The
first five years there is no need to repay anything, but during the
succeeding ten years after that the whole should be cleared off.
General loans are repayable within ten years.
TAXES
Settlers are free of all Governmental charges and taxes for the first
five years. During the second five years half has to be paid, and after
ten years settlers take their stand with the established colonists.
MILITARY SERVICE
Settlers over 18 years at the time of settlement are allowed to
postpone their starting service for three years.
In Turkestan six years’ grace is given to all over 15 years of age.
TIMBER
When there is no timber, the Government provides free wood for building
purposes--from the nearest Crown forest.
TURKESTAN
Though, generally speaking, Turkestan is shut for the purposes of
immigration, nevertheless a great number of people go there every year,
there being a great demand for labour of all kinds. Cotton growers give
even as much as two roubles fifty copecks per day. Good wages are paid
on the irrigation works. Artisans are needed in the towns and villages.
Turkestan is rich, and can support any working man who goes there. It
is good to go there and make some money before taking up land, and also
to get some experience of the climate and conditions. As regards the
taking up of land when allowed, grants in the measure of 165 roubles
are given in the provinces of Sirdaria, Samarkand and Ferghan, and
in the measure of 250 roubles to settlers in the frontier regions of
Zaalaisk and Pamir, half of which is not returnable.
[Illustration: THE SHADY VILLAGE STREET--ONE LONG LINE OF WILLOWS AND
POPLARS]
It is impossible to give the whole of this “combined circular” in
extenso, but I think I have included or summarised all that is vital.
It indicates the scaffolding of empire building. The people at home
feel cramped or restless. They send out their KHODOKI, the pioneer
messengers. The messengers select a portion of new land and return to
Russia. The families of the emigrants follow. But first they must sell
off or abandon all manner of cumbersome property; and good-bye has to
be said to friends, to the old village, to church and churchyard, and
the dead. Most difficult of all for many Russians is the leaving
the dead behind. There is the whole agony of separation, the being cut
off from Russia and going forth as a new child into Siberia or Central
Asia. Then the long, monotonous train journey, and the road journey
at the end of it; the caravan on the Central Asian road, and it is in
the caravan that the colonists begin to taste of new life, and many
feel they would like to go on wandering so all their lives. But they
reach the place the messenger has found for them, and then commences
the great work of making a habitation of man where no habitation has
ever been before. Prayers and thanksgiving, and then work. There is no
possible living without work, and the rather easy-going ways of the old
land have to be given up and a new life begun of arduous labour and
unflagging energy. To their aid comes hope and the passion for making
all things new. No Russian would work so much were it not interesting;
it is real life, the wine of experience.
First of all, trees are planted. How pathetic to see the long rows
of three-foot-high poplar shoots and willow twigs! A month on this
sun-beaten road leaves no doubt in the emigrant’s mind as to what is
the first necessity--shade, shade. Trees are planted all along the
main Government dyke. The colonist chooses the place for his house;
he digs a trench all round it and lets in water from the dyke, and he
plants trees along the trench. Then he buys stout poplar trunks and
willow trunks, and makes the framework of his cottage. He interlaces
little willow twigs, and makes the sort of wilted green, slightly
shady, slightly sunny house that children might put up in a wood in
England. But that is only the beginning. To the willow house he slaps
on mud puddings. This is the filthiest work. He makes a great quantity
of mud, and treads it up and down with his bare feet till he gets the
consistency he requires, and then, with his hand, fetches out sloppy
lumps of it and builds his walls. In a few days the mud hardens, and
he has a shady and substantial dwelling, and one that in an earthquake
will swing but will not collapse. His roof he makes of prairie grass,
great reeds ten feet to fifteen feet in length and thick and strong, or
of willow twigs again and turf. In his second year he has a little hay
harvest on his roof. He ploughs his little bit of desert. He exchanges
some of his oxen for cows. He strives with all his power--as does a
transplanted flower--to take root. He looks forlorn. You look at his
poor estate and say: “It is a poor experiment. The sun is too strong
for him; he will just wither off, and the desert will be as before.”
But you come another day and you see a change, and exclaim: “He has
taken root, after all; there is a shoot of young life there, tender and
green.” Along the road I noticed villages of all ages; of this year, of
last year, of four years gone, of twenty years, forty years.
There are now several thousand Russian villages in Central Asia--year
by year scores of new names creep into the map in faint _italics_. It
is astonishing to English eyes, because we are accustomed to think
that maps of Asia do not change. We like to preserve the old Asiatic
names of places, and our map-makers seem to have prejudice in favour
of Teuton nomenclature similar to the prejudice for spelling the
names of Russian places with German pronunciation equivalents. Asia
becomes predominantly Russian, and not by virtue of troops stationed at
outlandish posts, but by virtue of this process of settling.
The process of colonisation is, however, slower than the process of
colonising the British Empire. The population is said to increase at
a greater rate, but the organic development is slower. The facilities
for getting to Siberia and Central Asia are greater, but the prospect
held out is not so alluring, not so fascinating. There is more work to
be done by the immigrant here than in Canada or Australia or Africa.
There are no large fortunes to be made in a few years, no speculative
chances, no great whirling wheel of life set going. On the other hand,
Russian colonisation is sounder colonisation, more solid and lasting.
It has a better quality and it promises more for the future, unless we
British are going to wake up to the facts of our situation.
X
FELLOW-TRAVELLERS
It is not necessary to say much about Verney, the capital of Seven
Rivers Land. It is so subject to earthquakes that it is difficult to
see in it a permanent capital. No houses of two storeys can with safety
be built, so it is more suited to remain a military centre and fortress
than to be a great city. In order to look imposing, shops and stores
have fixed up sham upper storeys; that is, they have window-fronts
up above, but no rooms behind the fronts. Singer and the cinema are
here, though an enormous number of Singer shops have been compulsorily
closed all over the Russian Empire during the war. Verney has its
bazaar, its inns and doubtful houses, its baths, dance halls, clubs,
restaurants. Although it is so far from a railway station and such an
enormous distance from the wicked West, it has its frivolity and sin
and small crime. It has no electric cars. It has no Bond Street or
West End. One may say, however, that it has its Covent Garden. Verney
is a great market for fruit and vegetables. Its native name means the
city of apples, and for apples it is famous. All travellers from China
are given Verney apples when they pass through. Carts heaped high with
giant red radishes are driven through the town, and the strawberry
hawkers make many cries. Many horses are adorned with fancy garments,
and I noticed donkeys with trousers on. Women ride about astride, and
are evidently used to horseback, tripping along leaning forward over
the horse as it springs to a gallop, sedately coming up the high street
at a walk, erect like little fat soldiers. Then, Kirghiz women astride
of bulls are to be seen, and I saw one carrying twin babies and yet on
bull-back, dexterously holding the cord from the ring in the animal’s
nose, and guiding it whither it should go. Verney has its newspaper.
It has some hope of culture, and in the High School two dozen students
matriculate each year and go off to the Universities of Kief, Moscow,
and so on. Verney folk are grumblers at home, but when they get to
Russia they develop great local patriotism and sigh for a bit of Verney
bread, even of the stale bread of Verney. At the Universities the
students of Seven Rivers Land keep together, and know themselves as a
body having certain views and opinions of their own. Then, after their
course, they come back to their home land and bring tidings of Russia.
I talked with some students, and found them not unlike our own colonial
students in their outlook and their attitude to the Empire. They help,
but, of course, a far away place like this needs a lot of helping in
the matter of culture. They bring back books and musical instruments.
When I went out at night, strolling through the moon-illuminated city,
I listened to the tinkling of pianos, and it was interesting to
reflect that each instrument, besides coming thousands of miles by
train, had also come five hundred miles in a wagon along these Central
Asian roads.
There is a suggestion of America in the life out here. When you ask
the way you are directed by blocks, not by turnings, and you may be
sure the town is a planned one, with the streets running at right
angles to one another. Only Nature, with her earthquakes, has tumbled
it, given you chasms to jump over, and made it dangerous to walk in
the outskirts of the town at night. There is much advertisement of
wares and of persons, and a keenness to prosper and get rich. “Getting
rich flatters your self-esteem,” I read, and again, “Buy Indian tea
and get rich.” It is quite clear to me that buying Indian tea really
makes poorer, for it is altogether inferior to Russian tea; but, then,
these people have not our experience, they do not know the history of
tea-drinking in England; how once we also had good tea, but that, in
the national passion for cheapness and “getting rich,” we have come
to drink popularly that vile thick stuff we now call tea. Verney has
its rich bourgeois--rich for Verney--men with ten or twenty thousand
pounds capital. Among such is, or was (for perhaps he has been interned
or expelled), a German sausage-maker, who started his career in the
market-place with five pounds of sausages on a plate, and is now a
respected merchant with shops and branch shops and a fame for sausages
throughout Central Asia.
[Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL OF ST. SOPHIA AT VERNEY--AFTER THE
EARTHQUAKE OF 1887]
The local newspaper had made some sort of record of the cinema films
that were shown in the five towns of Seven Rivers and analysed them in
this way:
Scientific 2 per cent.
Historical 3 ”
Industrial 3 ”
Nature 4 ”
Farce 20 ”
Lurid drama 60 ”
Polite drama 8 ”
Which seemed to give a fair account of its civilising force. I visited
three or four cinemas at various remote places, and was astonished
at the French and Italian horrors, German and Scandinavian bourgeois
funniosities, ghastly white-slave tragedies, and many visualised penny
dreadfuls. When you see the crowds of Russians at these performances
you realise that the penny dreadful is by no means played out, that
many people did not in the old times read the penny dreadful just
because they did not know what lay between the covers of those badly
printed books, what enthralling rubbish. The business has changed hands
commercially, but the thing sold is the same. It is sold in a more
acceptable form--that is all.
Astonishing to see the yellow men of Asia staring at the cinema: the
turbaned Sart; the new Chinaman, with cropped pigtail; the baby-like
Kirghiz. Whatever do they make of American business romances and
the Wild West and Red Rube and Max? They seem engrossed, smile
irrelevantly, stare, go out, but always come again. The cinema is a
queer window on to Europe and the West.
The road from Verney to Iliisk, on the River Ili, seemed more deserted
than the road to Verney had been. Many parties of pioneers evidently
turn south at Verney, and not so many turn north-east towards Iliisk.
It is waste territory, overgrown with coarse grass and thistles. There
are occasional mountain rivulets, bridged on the roadway with straw
and mud bridges much higher than the level of the road, so that every
bridge is a sort of hump. Behind me and behind Verney immense steep
mountains lifted themselves up into the clouds. The road that I walked
was a slowly descending tableland.
I passed through the little village of Karasbi, and then through the
more substantial settlements of Jarasai and Nikolaevski. These are
prolonged and attenuated villages. The oldest houses are the biggest
and the deepest in trees, they have plenty of out-houses and farm
buildings; but the newest are bare and wretched, with poplar shoots in
front of them but three feet high. There are some deserted hovels--even
a fine house was perhaps a hovel to begin with, a temporary mud hut
put up to give shelter whilst the first work was done on the fields.
I saw many houses half built, showing their framework of yet green
willow and poplar twigs. I saw whole families and villages at work on
new settlements, and also families living in tents. On the foundations
of the new dwellings or attached to the rude framework were little
crosses, only to be taken down when there would be a place in the
house for the ikons brought from their old homes in Russia. Some
colonists, on being asked when they had arrived, replied, “Last week,”
others said, “During these days”; the dust on their wagons was new.
Everyone had a sort of Swiss Family Robinson air, as of exploring an
island, making natural discoveries, and bringing things from a wreck.
Some groups, however, were already busy sowing their new fields, and I
understood that that was the first thing to do; that was the work, and
the building the new cottages was the play. They had nothing to fear
from sleeping in the open every night of summer and early autumn--a
lesson to these Russians, who in their home cottages or in railway
carriages are afraid of fresh air as if it brought pestilence.
I spent two wonderful nights under the stars on the road to Iliisk, the
first in a sort of natural cradle in a copse, the second in a hollow
which I made for my body in the bare sand of the desert. I passed out
of the new land on to the waste of the Ili valley; the road was visible
twenty or thirty miles ahead, and on it in front of me are telegraph
poles unlimited, at first with spaces between, but in the distance
thick, like black matches stuck close together in the sand. I walked a
long way in the evenings, and I remember, as the sun set, an enormous
and foolish bustard that was under the impression I was chasing it.
It would fly the space of five telegraph poles, I’d walk the space of
three; then it would fly three, I’d catch up; and it would fly on ahead
along the track as if it dared not desert the poles. Finally, however,
just at the last rays of sunset, it flew crossways over the desert and
disappeared.
I was rather nervous at this time about the _karakurt_, the black
spider that sheep eat with pleasure, but whose bite is mortal to men;
and each night when I made my fresh-air couch I took pains to keep out
of the way of flies, beetles, spiders, and snakes. I never was troubled
by the _karakurt_, but I had a lively time with beetles and running
flies, to say nothing of snakes, whose sudden darts and writhings gave
me momentary horrors many times. The valley of the Ili is a wild place,
with tigers and panthers; a splendid district for study and sport, I
should say. However, no beasts came and snuffed my face in the night.
Each night on the road I learned to expect the moon later and later. It
always seems unpunctual, always late, but not worried, and having that
irreproachable beauty that excuses all faults. She came up late over
the Ili desert in a wonderful orange light, and then, emerging into
perfect brilliance, paled the myriad stars, set them back in the sky,
Divesting herself of her golden shift and so
Emerging white and exquisite.
I lay looking eastward on the sand, and on my right, in the vague night
shadow, lay the tremendous pyramids of the Ala Tau mountains, the great
cliff triangles south of Verney, first vision of the mighty Thian Shan.
The clouds had lifted off them during the night, and in the morning
I saw them in their true perspective, vague, smoke-like, shadow-based
and grey-white, sun-bathed, many-pointed rocky and precipitous summits
stretching a hundred miles and more from east to west.
It was ten miles in to breakfast at Iliisk. The water in the little
lakes being salt, and my water-bottles empty, I could not make tea. The
lakes and ponds remind you that you are between Issik-Kul and Balkhash.
It is, however, desert country till you come to the thickets of the
river, and there the cuckoo is calling, there are bees in the air, and
it is glorious, fresh, abundant summer. The bases of the mountains are
all deep blue as the sky, but utterly soft and delicious to the gaze,
and the colour faints into the whiteness of the hundred-mile-long line
of snow.