Through Siberia

My plans altered.—A serious alternative.—Khabarofka.—Fur trade.—Post-office and bank.—A Siberian garden.—Started for Nikolaefsk.—The Lower Amur.—Its affluents.—Fish.—A Russian advocate.—Goldi Christians.—Sophiisk.—A procureur.—Lake Kizi.—Mariinsk.—Snow mountains.—Mikhailofsky.—Hot-springs of Mukhal.—Beautiful scenery.—Tyr monuments.—The “white village.”—Mouth of the Amur.

Approaching Khabarofka on the evening of August 8th, I thought that my journeys on the Amur were ended. I had refused advice that I should go on to Nikolaefsk, my great object being to reach Vladivostock as quickly as possible, there embark for Japan, and thence proceed to America. As to how this could be accomplished no definite information was forthcoming. Something was said at Blagovestchensk about a steamer called the Dragon, and her periodical trips between China, Japan, Vladivostock, Sakhalin, and Nikolaefsk. Merchant ships also were reported to leave the Siberian ports from time to time, as also men-of-war, returning southwards after spending the summer months out of the heat of the tropics. My friends, therefore, at the telegraph station promised to inquire what ships were to leave Vladivostock, and I was to learn the reply on arriving at Khabarofka. A new factor, however, was added to my calculations by Baron Stackelberg, my fellow-passenger, who understood that his friend, Professor Milne, was staying at Vladivostock. The Baron had telegraphed thither to his agent to inquire of the professor if he were “plein de voyage,” and if so, whether he would proceed by sea to meet him at Nikolaefsk for a pleasure tour, and then accompany him to Kamchatka. The Baron expected to find a telegram at Khabarofka, and then, said he, “If Mr. Milne come by the Dragon to Nikolaefsk, it will be better for you to go there with me, and take the boat on its return to Sakhalin, Vladivostock, and Japan, or you may otherwise have to wait at Vladivostock until the Dragon returns.”

Such were our thoughts as we approached Khabarofka, where, on arriving, I found, to my dismay, that the Ussuri boat had grown tired of waiting for us, and had gone, and that another would not start for three days.⁠[1] No message awaited me at Khabarofka, and from the Baron’s telegram it seemed that Mr. Milne was not at Vladivostock, but that the Dragon had just left, or was about to leave, for Nikolaefsk, to which port, however, there was no steamer proceeding from Khabarofka for several days. I was, therefore, in a dilemma. If I went south, I might have to wait a month for the Dragon; and if I stayed for the river steamer to Nikolaefsk, I might lose the Dragon, and thus go 1,250 miles out of my way. I fell asleep that night not knowing what to do, hoping that with morning light the way might be clearer. On waking, I learned that the Baron had been to the agents and taken them to task because the steamer going north to Nikolaefsk had also not waited the arrival of our boat as announced. So successfully had he stormed, according to his own account, that the agent had ordered the Zeya, instead of going back, to go forward to Nikolaefsk.

At no previous point in my journey had I felt it so hard to decide what to do for the best. On leaving England, my tour had been planned to last three months, a period I had already exceeded, while more than half the globe remained to be traversed. I had, moreover, left in the hands of others editorial duties that called for my return, and now there seemed the possibility of prolonged delay. I looked up most earnestly for wisdom, and determined to be guided by the Baron’s advice. Gloomy rumours had reached me of the sad condition of the Sakhalin prisoners, and I asked the Baron whether he thought it at all likely that if I went to the island, and afterwards sent a report to the authorities, it might tend to better the prisoners’ condition. He first asked me gravely, though somewhat to my amusement, whether what I was doing was likely to bring the governments of our respective countries into collision, and then, on being assured that I was acting simply as a private individual, he told me that at Vladivostock I should get no information or statistics respecting Sakhalin, since the books were kept at Nikolaefsk, to which place, therefore, he recommended me to go. Accordingly, fortified with the hope of being useful, I decided to do this; but it was not without many misgivings, though out of that decision sprang results for which afterwards I was deeply grateful. I did not find the Dragon, and had ultimately to retrace my steps to Khabarofka; but my going to Nikolaefsk led to the better distribution of more than 12,000 tracts and several Scriptures, and afforded me glimpses of heathen life for which I shall ever be thankful.

The boat was not to start till noon, and this gave me leisure to see something of our stopping-place. Khabarofka stands on a promontory, at the junction of the Amur with the Ussuri, and overlooks both streams from the top of the bluff, in which, in this direction, the Khoekhtsi hills, running at right angles from the coast, terminate. The position is well chosen for a military post, and the town is not without importance commercially. There are several stores, and the merchants trade with the aborigines of the north in furs to the value of £30,000 a year. Whilst calling on a merchant with whom I had travelled, there entered a Chinaman with what looked like a number of dried rabbit-skins hung on his arm. They proved to be sable-skins, almost as they come from the animals’ backs, turned inside out. In this condition the natives barter them to the Chinese, who, in turn, sell them to the merchants, some of whom are agents for large firms in Petersburg and Moscow. On this occasion the Chinaman asked seven silver roubles, or a guinea, for each skin, which showed that they were not of high quality.⁠[2]

Besides the stores in Khabarofka there is an establishment where they employ 50 men and build steamers, etc., to the value of £10,000 yearly. One of the principal agents of the Steamboat Company lives in the place, drawing a salary of £500 a year, which is thought there a handsome income; but he told me he could not remain, since there was no school near for the education of his children. On entering the post-office, there were to be seen in a large chest, bags, not to say sacks, full of silver roubles, the guardianship of which seemed fully to justify the presence of an armed Cossack, one of whose cloth is always found keeping watch in the post-office and over the mail-bags in transit. The post-office, in fact, is a quasi bank, for on arriving at Nikolaefsk I found that my host kept his banking account 6,000 miles distant, at Petersburg. He paid in his money at the local post-office, and then telegraphed to the capital, upon which his bankers gave him credit for the deposit. There are State banks in Siberia, at Tomsk, Krasnoiarsk, and Irkutsk; but, from the narrow escape I had at Tomsk of being delayed in getting my cash, I was thankful for having exchanged my money in Petersburg for a number of hundred-rouble notes, which I carried in a pocket-girdle.⁠[3]

At Khabarofka I visited the garden of one of the merchants, said to be the best in the place. It was 10 years old, full of apple and pear trees, but they were wild ones, transplanted eight years before. None of the apples were so large as a good English crab, and the “Bergamot” pears were as small. The latter tasted something like the quince, and were useless except to preserve for eating with roast meat. Among other trees were the walnut, the acacia, the bird-cherry, a thorn with a berry larger than is commonly seen in England, called résan; the boyarka or service tree, with bunches of berries like grapes (called calina), and the beech. Among the shrubs, plants, and flowers were maize, wild white lilac, raspberries, currants, and strawberries, dahlias, verbenas, wild pæonies, stocks, carnations, and pinks; and among climbers the wild pea, and the Siberian vinegar plant. These, with other flowers, of which I did not know the names, made a fair show for Khabarofka, where the cold winds begin in the middle of September, and snow covers the ground from November to March. In the neighbourhood were abundance of trees common to a temperate region, such as the oak, maple, alder, larch, pine, poplar, willow, and lime. Some prettily overhung the river’s bank, which was enlivened with boats drawn up by Manchu and Chinese, some of whom were selling excellent French beans, whilst others were engaged in making and mending shoes.

Having thus made the most of my time at Khabarofka, I once more boarded the Zeya, on Saturday noon, for a voyage of 626 miles to Nikolaefsk, in the course of which we were to pass, though not necessarily to stop at, 52 stations. Some were native villages, the names of which had been adopted by the Russians; others were Russian settlements with Sclavonic names; whilst other stations bore double titles, both Russian and native.

The basin of the Lower Amur is bounded on the west by the Bureya mountains, between which and the river lies a flat and partially swampy country; whilst on the east its limit is the coast range already referred to as the Sikhota Alin. The course of the river is north-east. Its principal tributaries flowing in on the left or western bank are the Kur, Girin, and Amgun; on the right bank, the Dondon and the Khungar. The largest of these on the left bank is the Amgun; the largest on the right is the Dondon, which is 500 yards wide at its mouth. At Khabarofka, the Amur has a width of 900 yards; and as we steamed away, the right bank stood out in contrast to the left, which was flat; but after proceeding 20 miles, the character of the scenery changed. Both banks became flat, islands were numerous, and the stream widened to five miles. This kind of scenery continued for the rest of the day, and our evening progress was highly enjoyable, varied now and then by the appearance of the summer yourts of the natives, or the lonely post-stations, deserted in summer, where horses are kept in winter, when the river is frozen and transformed into a road. At the confluence of the Dondon, the river has soundings up to 37 feet, and the channel measures three miles in breadth. This is the widest part of the river without intervening islands, though 17 miles lower, where the left bank is marshy and dotted with lakes, the entire width extends to 12 miles.⁠[4]

At Viatskoy, 50 miles from Khabarofka, I stayed on my return journey, and was offered a sturgeon a yard long, which a man had caught, and was keeping in the river tied by a string beneath the gills. Of the fish caught on the Lower Amur, the Russians think very highly of the sterlet, and the sturgeon is costly. For this small specimen at Viatskoy was asked 2s. 6d., but in Moscow they said it would fetch £1. They sometimes catch sturgeon weighing from 200 to 300 lbs., and the dried bones and cleansed gelatinous entrails of this fish form a prominent article of commerce between the natives and the Manchu. The bones cost in Manchuria, for culinary purposes, nearly 4s. per lb., and the gelatine in Moscow 7s. per lb.

In latitude 50° N., the Amur receives on the left bank, from Lake Bolan, an affluent 900 yards wide and 30 feet deep. Hills now rise on both banks, and at Perm (or Milku) the depth of the river increases to between 50 and 60 feet. At Tambofsk, 280 miles from Khabarofka, the banks become mountainous on either side, the river contracts to an average width of a mile and a third, and soundings often reach to 90 feet; and thus the river continues, for a distance of 60 miles, to Zherebtsofsk. From Zherebtsofsk to Sophiisk, the scenery changes again, the river enlarges, runs between numerous islands and several sandbanks, and at Sophiisk its depth is nearly 50 feet.

Our company on board was small in number, which was to be expected, seeing that the boat was a “special.” In the first-class there were only three persons besides the Baron and myself, namely, M. Kruskopf, the telegraph inspector, an advocate, and with him a young man dressed like a Russian shopkeeper. The last two I had observed among the second-class passengers from Kara. We were now brought into closer contact. The advocate spoke French, and I gathered from him that the young man was his client, whose father had recently died, leaving him £20,000. They were come from Central Russia to realize the money, for which the advocate, since he would be occupied at least all the summer, was to have the modest fee of £3,000.⁠[5]

On the morning after leaving Khabarofka, M. Kruskopf left the boat to visit the station at Troitzkoy, but he did not forget me; for, unasked, he telegraphed to Nikolaefsk to his friends, told them I was coming, and requested them to look after my welfare. The day was Sunday, and I enjoyed a quiet morning in my cabin; and in the afternoon we had steamed 170 miles—to Malmejskoy. Here we saw on the bank some Goldi, who called to my mind pictures I had seen of North American Indians. Some of them had a cross suspended from the neck, which in their case had a meaning; for those who wore it thus were baptized, and so distinguished from the pagan Goldi. I gave a few tracts among these people, and in return received, in one of the villages, a curious salutation. Offering an illuminated text to a little girl, her mother directed her to express her thanks by crossing her hands with the palms uppermost, and then go down on all-fours at my feet with her head to the ground.

At Tambofsk, or Girin, 280 miles further, was a village where, on the return journey in the beginning of September, I bought melons and ripe black currants, the latter good, but with less taste than those grown in England. Other berries, tart but juicy, were offered for sale. Here, too, were lying on the bank some drunken gold-miners, whom the captain refused to take on board in that condition, leaving them till he should call again three weeks later, by which time possibly they might be sober and wiser. I met gold capitalists both at Nikolaefsk and at Vladivostock; but from the report sent to the Emperor concerning the Primorsk, it appeared that in 1878 only 600 lbs. of gold were washed throughout the province, the small quantity being set down to the lack of workmen. At Tambofsk we passed out of the district inhabited by the Goldi, and entered that of a distinct though somewhat similar tribe, called the Gilyaks, of both of whom I shall speak hereafter.

The next place of note to which we came, 412 miles from Khabarofka, was Sofiisk, from which there is a road 33 miles long by the shore of Kizi Lake to the coast at De Castries Bay. Light draught steamboats can go within 12 miles or less of De Castries; and as the navigation of the mouth of the Amur is difficult, it was at one time proposed to make a canal, or a railway, to connect the lake with the sea. Surveys were made by Mr. Romanoff, but the plan is not likely to be carried out. The steamer passed Sofiisk on my first journey, but in returning we stayed for a couple of hours; and as there was a prison in the place, I presented my letters, and requested to be allowed to see it. Also I gave to the Commandant of the 5th East Siberian battalion, Colonel Ussofovitch, who was stationed there, a box of books and tracts, with a letter in French, asking that they might be distributed among his soldiers. The colonel did not know French, and a young officer, who called himself the “procureur” of the battalion, was called in to interpret. What this gentleman’s precise office was, I could not exactly make out, but it seemed to be something between that of a judge and a military head police-master. He took me to see the building, where, to my surprise, were 150 prisoners, many of whom, however, were on their way to Sakhalin. The wooden planking of the footways in the town was miserably out of order, and I hinted to the procureur that since they had insufficient work for the prisoners, it would be well to employ them in repairing the pavements. This idea seemed never to have struck him, and he replied at once that he would consider the matter. The procureur spoke French fluently, though with a Russian accent, and he knew something also of the dead languages, Hebrew among them. He said that he had studied this language in prospect of becoming a priest; but that, when he could not see his way to £200 a year in the church, he had entered the army, which, he said, “paid” better. In this case, it seemed to me, the Russian Church, by reason of its miserable emoluments, had lost to her clergy a youth of greater intellectual culture than the majority of her priests. The population of Sofiisk was given me as 700 military and 300 civilians, amongst whom I found a ready sale for the Scriptures. At the telegraph office complaints reached me, as at Khabarofka, that they had no means of educating their children, there being no local school.

The Amur at Sofiisk is nearly two miles wide; seven miles lower it expands to upwards of four miles. Thirteen miles beyond, the banks are low, flat, and marshy; but the land is good, and is cultivated by Russian settlers. Here, too, is the town of Mariinsk, the oldest Russian settlement, next to Nikolaefsk, on the Lower Amur, and situated on the right bank of the river, at the entrance to the Kizi Lake.⁠[6]

Mariinsk was founded by the Russian-American company in the same year with Nikolaefsk, and was a trading post until the military occupation of the river. Difficulties of navigation diminished its military importance, and the post was transferred to Sofiisk, founded in 1858. On an island opposite Mariinsk is the trace of a fort, built by Stepanof, the Cossack adventurer, who descended the Amur in 1654. During the winter he remained here he collected nearly 5,000 sable-skins as tribute. On our return journey we took in at this place, as passengers, a priest, his wife, and son; the lady being the daughter of the late Metropolitan Innokente of Moscow, the wonderful priest who, travelling 8,000 miles, crossed Siberia with his translations of a portion of the New Testament into the language of the Kuriles, and then took them back in print. This lady seems to have inherited something of her father’s enterprise, for I have heard recently from a friend that he met her travelling in Western Siberia.

Mr. Collins mentions that from Mariinsk is seen, to the south-west, a very high mountain, with much snow upon it; and Mr. Ravenstein observes that a few miles below Tambofsk, or Girin, may be seen the craggy summits of mountain ranges, at greater or less distance from the river, covered, in places, as late as June with snow. It was after June when I passed down the stream, but I saw mountains to the left with what looked like snow-drifts, or corries filled with snow. My fellow-passengers, however, and especially the Baron, stoutly maintained that I was mistaken, and that what we saw was either chalk or an effect of light. The formation of the rocks on some of the mountain crests was very remarkable, and they were arrayed in such straight lines, here and there, that they looked like the building of Titans rather than Nature’s handiwork.

Passing Mariinsk we reached Mikhailofsky, a distance of 526 miles from Khabarofka, on Monday afternoon,—that is to say, in about 48 hours, which was more rapid travelling than the captain had accomplished on the Shilka and Upper Amur. A merchant afterwards whispered to me, however, that it was reckless navigation. The captain had not made the passage before; so, placing a man in the bows with the measuring-rod, and rising above all questions as to where the channel lay, he just shot ahead, suspecting no ill where no ill seemed. Fortunately we ran on neither rocks nor shoals, but I was exhorted to be thankful that we had not come to grief. Had we been allowed to proceed at this rate we should have reached Nikolaefsk in another 24 hours, but a telegram awaited the captain at Mikhailofsky to say that another boat of the company was coming up from Nikolaefsk, for which he was to wait, then exchange cargoes and passengers, and return. This involved a delay of 30 hours, which gave me an opportunity of visiting a settlers’ village, the priest of which informed me that he had in his parish 400 persons, of whom only 15 could read. The forest in the neighbourhood has been cleared, and rye, barley, and oats are successfully cultivated. So, too, are vegetables on the river’s bank, for the market at Nikolaefsk. Cucumbers were just coming in, and the people were eating them like apples. When the Baron and I made a morning call at one of the houses, they simply brought forth cucumbers and salt wherewith to regale us. I saw, too, in this village a curious specimen of Russian economy. Not able to purchase whole panes of window-glass, the peasants had used fragments of any form they could get, and fixed them with pieces of birch bark, cut to the shape. Mikhailofsky, however, was not a flourishing village, and it must be added that the colonies of the Lower Amur are generally the least prosperous in the country.

Late on Tuesday evening the promised steamship Onon arrived, and I left the Zeya, in which I had spent the previous 16 days, and travelled 1,900 miles. Next morning we arrived at a Gilyak village, called Mukhal, near to some hot springs which are said to be beneficial in cases of rheumatism, syphilis, diarrhœa, and goitre. The Polish exile, in whose charge they are, is allowed their monopoly, and the Government gives him a grant of £50 a year. About mid-day we passed another Gilyak village called Tyr. The Amur here contracts to 900 yards, and from a bold cliff, 100 feet high on the right bank, a fine view is obtained up stream. The river’s banks spread to a width of five miles, and well-wooded islands lie between. To the south are dark forests and mountain ridges, and at the back of the cliff is a tableland several miles broad. On the opposite bank enters the river Amgun, which rises in the Bureya mountains, and, after a course of not less than 700 miles, flows into the Amur through a delta covered with forest.

The cliff at Tyr is interesting to the archæologist by reason of its Tatar monuments with inscriptions, the history of which appears somewhat doubtful.⁠[7]

I went ashore to examine these monuments, of which Mr. Ravenstein mentions four—one with a granite base, and the upper portion of grey, fine-grained marble, and another of porphyry resting on an octagonal pedestal. Unfortunately, I could stay only a very short time, as the steamer did not wait. I found two monuments near the edge of the cliff, with characters cut thereon. A third is about 400 yards to the east, on a more elevated point, and on a bare rock foundation. The principal one, which I examined most, resembles a thick upright tombstone, about five feet high. The Archimandrite Avvakum says everything proves that the spot where the monument is standing was once the site of a temple devoted to the worship of Buddha, and in Chinese language was called “Youn-nen-se”—that is, the “Temple of Eternal Repose.” The two inscriptions on either side—one in Chinese and the other in Mongolian—were written, he thinks, by some illiterate Mongol lama, not thoroughly acquainted with Chinese grammar. On the left-hand side are the Sanscrit words, “Om-mani-badme-houm” in Thibetan letters; and beneath, in Chinese, “Dai Yuan shouch hi-li-gun-bu”—that is, “The great Yuan spreads the hands of force everywhere.” In a second line on the same side the words, “Om-mani-badme-houm” are written in Chinese and Nigurian. The inscriptions on the right side contain the same in Chinese, Thibetan, and Nigurian. “And then,” says the Archimandrite, “there is nothing more”; about which statement, however, with all deference, I venture to express my doubts; for although I do not read Chinese, and could only examine the monuments for a very few moments, yet I came to the conclusion that whether the interpretation first given be correct or not, it is inadequate, and far from exhaustive. I saw clearly on the stone some large Chinese characters, perhaps two inches high, and some of the Chinese passengers were able partially to decipher them; but the general appearance of the stone reminded me of a palimpsest manuscript which had been, in the first place, covered with small characters, about half an inch square or less, over which the larger characters had been written. Beside the monumental stone, which was mounted on a pedestal, there were lying near five flat stones, cut across the centres from side to side with transverse grooves, about an inch wide and deep. Mr. Collins says they are supposed to have been altars of sacrifice, once elevated and within the temple, and that the grooves served to conduct the blood of the victim into the proper vessel. Whether this be so or not I cannot say, but they looked to me much more like the capitals or bases of pillars, with the grooves for keeping them in place.⁠[8] It is much to be wished that the spot should be visited, and the monuments examined by a competent scholar.

Towards evening we passed another Gilyak habitation called the “white village,” and afterwards found the banks of the Amur becoming abrupt, the islands low and to a great extent exposed to inundation. We had long been passing out of the region of foliferous trees, and in approaching Nikolaefsk they were almost entirely supplanted by conifers, fir-trees prevailing, birches and some few other leafy trees occurring only in favoured localities. The Amur at Nikolaefsk reaches in some places to a depth of 15 feet, is a mile and three-quarters wide, with a current of from four to five knots. The river enters the sea at a distance of 26 miles from the town, the Liman, or gulf, measuring more than nine miles at its widest.⁠[9]

Thus, on Tuesday evening, the 13th of August, I arrived at Nikolaefsk, having completed the passage of the Lower Amur. I have said almost nothing, however, of its curious heathen inhabitants, whose acquaintance I am so glad to have made, and to whose description I shall now proceed.