Through Siberia

General remarks on Siberia.—Limits.—Area.—Temperature.—Divisions.—Roads.—Ethnography.—Language.—Posting to Tobolsk.—Floods.—Spring roads.—Villages of Tatars.—Their history.—Characteristics.—Costumes.—Occupation.—Worship.—Language.

Between Ekaterineburg and Tiumen, as already intimated, the traveller passes into Siberia,—concerning which country it may be well here to make some general observations, with a view to the better understanding of future chapters. The western boundary of this immense region runs from the Arctic Ocean along the chain of the Northern Urals to a point in about the same latitude as Lake Onega; then, leaving the mountains a little to the left, it comes down in a tolerably straight line to a point midway between the Sea of Aral and Lake Balkash; thence it turns eastward to and along the northern shore of the lake, and, going further east, joins the Altai Mountains. All Russia lying to the west and south of this line is either in Europe or in Asia; all lying to the east of it is Siberia, the length and breadth of which are the same as of Russia in Asia; whilst its area, as given in recent Russian statistics, is 4,750,000 square miles, or more than three thousand millions of acres (3,185,510,900), of which nearly one-fifth is arable. The river Yenesei (roughly speaking) divides the country into east and west, the surface of the western portion being almost entirely flat, whilst the eastern portion, especially towards the Pacific, is mountainous. Siberia extends over nearly 40 degrees of latitude, and in climate ranges from arctic to semi-tropical. In passing through the country from west to east, from the end of May to the beginning of October, between the 50th and 57th parallels, we found the temperature much the same as during the same period in England. When steaming on the Obi, at the beginning of June, on the 62nd parallel, my minimum thermometer fell during the night as low as 35° Fahrenheit, but rose by 9 o’clock to 75°. English winter clothing, therefore, by day was not too warm. Again, at Vladivostock, lying on the 43rd parallel, the heat towards the end of September was not too great for clothing suited to an English summer. All through the journey, however, when sleeping in the tarantass, it was sufficiently cold in the early morning, whatever might be the heat of the day, to make an ulster coat acceptable.

The political divisions of the country are two vice-royalties, called respectively Western and Eastern Siberia. Each of these is divided into “governments” and “oblasts.”⁠[1]

The means of communication in Siberia are more ample than a foreigner might suppose. There are, indeed, no railways; but when the line, now in course of construction, from Ekaterineburg to Tiumen is finished, the English traveller will be able to go by steam from Charing Cross to Tomsk, a distance of 5,000 miles, and further east than Ceylon. As it is now, when Tiumen is reached, river communication becomes possible with each of the four capitals of Western Siberia. Again, the Amur presents a water passage inland from the Pacific, by which Nikolaefsk, Blagovestchensk, and almost Chita, may be reached; and now that Captain Wiggins has led the way through the Kara Gates, and Professor Nordenskiöld has followed on to Behring’s Strait, Russia may congratulate herself on having for the commerce of Siberia three additional outlets—the Obi, the Yenesei, and the Lena—to both Europe and Japan.

Again, there is the communication by roads, which is the more important on account of the many months the rivers are frozen over. There are two post roads by which Siberia is entered from the west; one through Orenburg, which is little used, and the other through Ekaterineburg to Tiumen. There is also a third road, not much used, which crosses the Urals further north, and connects Veliki Ustiug, on the Northern Dwina, with Irbit. The high road to China leaves Tiumen in an easterly direction to Omsk, where the routes from Orenburg, Semipolatinsk, and Central Asia converge. The main road goes east to Tomsk, where it is joined by roads on the north from Narim, and on the south from Barnaul; it then continues eastward to Krasnoiarsk, where it is joined by roads, on the north from Yeneseisk, and on the south from Minusinsk. After this it takes a south-easterly direction to Irkutsk, whence there go two ways—one to the north-east, to Yakutsk, and so on to Kamchatka; the other, and principal one, to the south-east and round the base of Lake Baikal to Verchne Udinsk. Here it divides into two, that to the right leading to Kiakhta and China; that to the left running east, through Chita to Stretinsk. Thence the traveller proceeds on the Shilka and Amur—by boat in summer, and on the ice in winter—past Blagovestchensk to Khabarofka, whence, to the left, he continues on the Amur to Nikolaefsk, or he turns to the right up the Ussuri and the Sungacha to Vladivostock. Along all these roads there is postal and, except towards Yakutsk, telegraphic communication also.

An ethnographical map of Siberia, coloured according to the area which is occupied by its various nationalities, reveals the fact that only a very small portion of the country is inhabited by Russians.⁠[2] In fact, a narrow strip of country suffices to show their habitat, if drawn on either side of the great land and water highways, and somewhat widened in the mining districts of the Yeneseisk and Tomsk governments; and as the aborigines do not generally follow agriculture, it will be inferred that those parts of the land which are under cultivation lie within this narrow strip. The same observation will also indicate that, whilst the language of the towns and the highways is Russian, a knowledge of other tongues is needed for extensive intercourse with the natives.

Having made these general remarks concerning Siberia, we proceed on our journey from Tiumen to Tobolsk, en route for Tomsk, which is best reached in summer by river, steaming for 1,800 miles, the post road from Tiumen to Tomsk passing through Omsk, or by a somewhat nearer way, leaving Omsk to the south, and then crossing the Barabinsky steppe.

We arrived at Tiumen on Thursday, the 29th May, bringing with us two loads of luggage, and leaving the rest to follow by “goods’” transport. There was steam communication between Tiumen and Tobolsk twice a week, the passage occupying a day and a half; but the steamer that went on to Tomsk was to leave on the following Monday, by which time the remaining luggage could not arrive. It became, therefore, a question whether we should wait for it or go before, in the hope that, whilst we were making détours, our books might overtake us. My Finnish friend, Miss Alba Hellman, had sent me some pamphlets for distribution amongst a colony of Finns and others from the Baltic provinces, numbering about 1,800, and located at Ruschkova, not far from the city of Omsk. We at first thought, therefore, to make this détour, and then, instead of returning to Tiumen, to go “across country” to Tobolsk, and thus see the prisons, and wait for the next steamer but one, in which we hoped all our luggage might be forwarded; but this plan our friends at Tiumen condemned. The question then remained, How could we see Tobolsk? The steamer in passing would stay but for an hour or two, and another boat would not follow for a week. The only alternative was to drive. But terrible accounts were given of the roads, which had not yet dried after the breaking up of the frost. Not to see Tobolsk, however, was out of the question, and we therefore determined to make the attempt by road, hoping to reach the city on Saturday, see the prisons on Monday, and take steamer the following day.

Accordingly, on Friday night, late, we left Tiumen in two tarantasses, with three horses to each. At the first station the post-master gave us warning that the roads were very bad, and that only one or two travellers had passed that way since the waters had subsided. On coming to the first river, it was found to be unapproachable at the usual place of embarkation. A ferry-boat had, therefore, to be brought to us, some six miles out of the way, and so we were kept waiting five hours. Whilst thus delayed, report said that the post-master kept hardly half the men required by his contract for working the ferry, and, further, that the men were sometimes extortionate. When, therefore we had rowed six miles down the stream to the landing-place, and the post-master could give no satisfactory reason why we had been thus kept, we thought it right, for the benefit of future travellers, to enter in his “book for complaints,” bearing the Government seal, our regrets that his neglect had detained us five hours.

About eleven o’clock the same night another episode occurred, which illustrates the pleasures of spring travelling in Siberia. The post-master gave us, what we never had before or after,—two outriders to convey us over a bad place on the road. Towards midnight we slept, when, being awakened by repeated shouting, I peeped out and saw that we were plunging among willows and mire. The outriders were holding up the tarantass to keep it from toppling over. Then came more shouting, with desperate jerking and pulling of the horses, which were up to their knees in bog, till solid ground was gained, and all stopped for breath. The next thing was to get the luggage tarantass through. We heard in the distance a crash, and lo! one of the shafts was broken. A horseman went back to the village for a new one, but in vain, and the old one was repaired. Whilst waiting we had time to look around. It was not yet morning, but the rays of the sun, which in northern countries are seen above the horizon all the night through at this time of the year, shed sufficient light on our darkness to give a weird appearance to all that was visible.

Silence was broken only by the incessant croaking of frogs, and by the men, who were relating to each other how they had got through. One had slipped into water up to his waist. The temperature was anything but warm; but, poor fellows! they seemed to regard things as in their normal condition, and uttered repeated thanks when they were dismissed with a gratuity of a few extra kopecks. Further on we had to wade through water above the axletrees, and during the last stage to cross five streams, the last of which was the Irtish. Tobolsk at length was reached, but not until Sunday night, and after a journey of forty-eight hours instead of twenty, as we expected.

By posting from Tiumen to Tobolsk, we purchased experience of early summer roads; and, in so doing, saw things which I should be sorry to have missed. Among these were several villages peopled exclusively by Siberian Tatars. These people differ in one important respect from most of the other nations living with the Russians in Siberia, in that they have a history and can look back to great princes who have made a name for themselves in the annals of the world. They are remnants of those who, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, in the days of Genghis Khan and his descendants, overran Northern Asia, and wrested the land from its aboriginal inhabitants. They pushed their conquests to the Volga, and Serai, on that river, became the capital where their great Khans (known as the Khans of the Golden Horde) lived and reigned, and whence they long proved formidable antagonists to the Russians. At length came their disruption. Kasan was founded in the fifteenth century, and was the capital of a small khanate. A second khanate was that of Astrakhan, a third that of Krim, a fourth that of Tiumen—all fragments of the main horde which had collapsed in the fifteenth century. Towards the close of the sixteenth century, the Russians took from the Tatars Kasan and all else west of the Urals, and those on the east of the mountains, in the region of the Irtish, were afterwards subjugated by Yermak and his followers. Tatar villages may still be found between Kasan and Tobolsk, beyond which these people inhabit a district stretching south to the Kirghese hordes, and south-east as far as the Altai Mountains, and so joining the territory west of Irkutsk peopled by the Buriats.⁠[3] The Tatars live among and are subject to their Russian conquerors; but the two races do not blend—one race being Christian, the other Mohammedan. The traveller is reminded of this by noticing that the Tatars, when on a journey, carry with them their wooden basins, for they will not drink from a vessel used by Russians; and so, in some parts, Russians will not drink from Tatar cups, though this exclusiveness wears away where Russians are many and Tatars are few. The Tatars have a good physique: dark eyes, swarthy skin, black hair, and high cheek-bones. Their strength of body is such as to make them excellent workmen, as may be seen by the enormous burdens they carry in loading vessels at Nijni Novgorod and Kasan. They are much liked in the capitals as coachmen, for they understand horses well. I heard good accounts of them likewise as servants in the hotel at Petersburg. They are not drunken, and are therefore valuable as waiters. Their women are supposed to wear veils, and do so in the cities. In the villages they content themselves with shawls, which are drawn nearly over the face when a stranger approaches. Men and boys, whether in the house or abroad, wear a small skull-cap, sometimes richly embroidered; and on high days some are seen with white turbans. These and their long cassock-like coats give the men a decidedly oriental appearance. Both men and women wear top-boots, and generally goloshes over them, so that, on entering the house or the mosque, they have only to slip off the goloshes to secure clean shoes.⁠[4]

In the Tatar villages the green domes and pinnacles of the Russian church, surmounted with the cross, were of course wanting; and in their places were found Mohammedan mosques, with minarets surmounted with the crescent. These latter reminded one of the shingled steeples of English village churches. Our first sight of Tatar worship was on the Volga, on board the steamer at sunset. Three Tatars approached the paddle-box, on a clean part of which they spread a small carpet. Leaving their goloshes on the deck, they knelt on the carpet, bowed their heads to the ground, and, rubbing their hands as if washing, chanted their prayers. They then appeared to pray silently in deepest reverence with closed eyes, and as if in total oblivion that a crowd was looking on. We were told that the pious pray thus at least three times a day, wherever they may be. At Kasan we had an opportunity of seeing their congregational worship in a Tatar mosque. Permission was given us to enter, if at the bottom of the stairs we would take off our goloshes, or, having none, our boots. The Mohammedan reason for this practice seemed to be that they did not wish to bring into the place anything soiled or unclean.

The building inside had a square room, with the barest of bare white walls, without attempt at ornament of any sort or kind. The only piece of furniture even was a high wooden rostrum approached by stairs, from which exhortations are delivered on Fridays. There were no chairs or benches, or any resemblance to an altar or table. Those who assembled early sat on the ground with their legs beneath them, apparently for private prayer, reading, and meditation; but upon some one beginning to murmur in a low strain, all jumped up, ran to the front, and arranged themselves in ranks. They commenced their prayers by placing the thumb into or on the lower part of the ears, with the palms of the hands outwards. Then they stood, bowed, knelt, and then lowered the head to the ground. This is done a certain number of times, according to the hour of the day, twice at early morning, and increasing till five or more at the last of the five daily services. At the conclusion of prayer they passed their hands over their faces. All these external acts of devotion were done by each rank with the utmost precision, and the histrionic effect, as some would call it, was excellent; only that to one in the rear of four or five ranks of men, of each of whom nothing could be seen but the soles of their feet and the seats of their trousers, the spectacle was somewhat grotesque. In the less demonstrative parts of the service, however, there was not an eye that wandered, with the single exception of a man who bestowed a glance on us strangers; nor a man who did not behave in a manner becoming the occupation in which he was engaged. Some few who came in late did not join those whose service had begun, but commenced a separate one for themselves.

The floor was covered with clean matting, on which lay here and there a common rosary made of date-stones, ninety-nine in number, and divided by beads into three sections.

The Tatars objected to give us a translation in Russian of the prayers they said thereon. We heard elsewhere that they have ninety-nine names of God; and a Tatar prisoner—apparently a gentleman—told me that they had a separate prayer for each bead. The uneducated, however, do not know these many names of the Deity. On the following day we had the opportunity of asking a monk concerning the Russian rosary, which differs from both the Mohammedan and the Roman.⁠[5]

The Tatars can read the Scriptures in Turkish, and are apparently not indisposed to do so, provided it does not attract attention. A colporteur at Moscow told me that he sold fifty-seven copies to Tatars in the villages between Kasan and Perm, though they became angry in the larger towns if he attempted openly to sell them in the Tatar quarter. I took with me a few Turkish gospels, and among the prisoners at Barnaul found three Tatars, one of whom could read. As we repassed the door of their room, all three were seen sitting with their legs beneath them, the two illiterate ones listening to their scholarly friend with eager attention. We met several of this race in prison and elsewhere, as we proceeded onwards, but I do not remember passing through whole villages of Tatars after we left the district of Tobolsk. Hence we were the more glad not to have missed these.