The railway from Kharbin passes through Manchuria in a north-westerly direction till it comes to the town of that name, where the customs examination takes place before entering Russian territory. In a magazine article recently written by a French lady, she complains of having been examined at four different places on the line, and in a very thorough manner, the sleeves of coats being ripped open, and the bedding of the sleeping car being pulled to pieces, but we saw nothing of this sort, and I think there must have been some suspicion on the part of the police. Registered luggage is a much more serious affair, and endless were the stories we heard from fellow-passengers of the losses they had sustained—one passenger had waited a whole week for his at Moscow. For those who like ourselves take all their luggage in the railway carriage, the examination was a mere farce, consisting of the verbal inquiry, “Have you any spirits, tobacco, or playing cards?” to which is sometimes added a cursory examination of the bedding to see if any dutiable article has been concealed there.
It is a great convenience that passengers can take so much luggage in the carriage without inconvenience. In the Russian State Express there is not nearly so much accommodation as in the International Sleeping Cars, where there is a large recess over the door, extending above the corridor, in which there was ample room for two suit cases and two bags of bedding. Besides this there were racks for smaller objects in the other part of the carriage. The space is so considerable in the first-class carriages that the upper berth is at right angles to the lower, which is consequently very much pleasanter than when it is immediately below the other berth, leaving no space to sit upright. There is a nice dressing-room between every two coupés, where hot and cold water is laid on, and this is really an inestimable boon on a long journey. The hot water supply is somewhat variable, so we generally supplemented it by buying extra. In some of the trains no charge is made for it; in others it costs 2½d. If for no other reason than the dressing-room, I should advise all first-class passengers to go by the International rather than by the Russian State Express. One is also less worried by the official trio coming to inspect tickets. It seems odd that on all Russian trains it requires three men to fulfil so simple a duty, but no doubt it is an example of the suspiciousness which seems to permeate all officialdom in this country. There is a comfortable chair and table, so that passengers can sit facing one another. This is no small convenience on so long a journey, especially when you prefer having some meals in your own carriage.
It is not only pleasanter but wiser not to have more than one solid meal a day on the journey, and we could not help being amused at the general collapse of a large number of passengers on the third day, evidently the result of imprudence in this matter. In the restaurant book of food (I can call it by no other name) there was a page of “fasting dishes” which was, I fear, neglected. We found that a judiciously stocked luncheon basket, added to the facilities for securing scalded milk, bread, excellent butter, and eggs, made it unnecessary to spend much time in the restaurant car. This was not so important in the International Sleeping Car as in the Russian State Express, for although the dining-car was atrociously hot and crowded, the meals were served promptly, but in the latter we were an hour and a half having a lunch of five courses, so we determined after that experience to order our meal in advance and à la carte. By so doing we saved a great deal of time, but we were obliged to have it at an unseasonable hour. That did not matter much, as we altered our hours in accordance with the “Daylight Saving Bill,” and so profited in various ways. In order to have comfortable time for washing, without having other people hammering on the door, it was most convenient to rise at 5 o’clock, and it was equally convenient to go to bed as soon as it was dark, because all Russian trains economise in light. Even a first-class carriage has only a single candle for all illumination, and that is placed in a lantern above the door, so that it only serves to reveal the darkness.
Leaving Manchuria we passed into the Trans-Baikal province, at the western side of which lies Lake Baikal, and to our no small surprise and disappointment, winter still reigned supreme. Beautiful forests of birch and pine trees broke the monotony of the plains, and drifts of snow still lingered in the hollows, where sun or wind had failed to chase it. It was, of course, very different from when we crossed it in February, with the thermometer at thirty degrees below zero, but we still found winter clothing necessary, and were bitterly disappointed to see none of the lovely flowers which transform the dreary plains into flower gardens. We had been told that the delphiniums were a dream of beauty, but we saw none, and I imagine the end of May or beginning of June would be a much better time to travel across Siberia, in spite of the fact that the trains are then crowded, and it is necessary to secure seats months beforehand, or trust to getting one that accidentally falls vacant nearer the time.
Lake Baikal was still completely frost-bound, and looked beautiful glittering in the morning sunlight, with snow-capped mountains enclosing it on every side. The only disappointment about Lake Baikal is that the mountains are too distant to look really grand and awe-inspiring. The steamer which plies on the lake during the summer from Baikal station was still lying close alongside it. Turning westward almost immediately after leaving it, the railway line follows the course of the river Angara for about one and a half hours, till it reaches Irkutsk, the present seat of government.
Irkutsk was a trading town founded in 1652, but was almost completely destroyed by fire in 1879. It is striking in appearance as one approaches it by the long railway bridge across the river, and is finely situated, with an imposing railway station. As we crossed the bridge we saw the fine bridge of boats used in summer still lying alongside the bank in its winter quarters, for large masses of loose ice floated past, blocking the river. But although Irkutsk has a certain comeliness of appearance, and is the centre of intellectual activity in Siberia, it is not altogether a desirable place to live in, for not only is the climate trying, but report says that it is imprudent for any one to go about unarmed. The great prisons in the neighbourhood of Irkutsk have for generations been the place where the worst criminals of the Empire, as well as political exiles have been sent, and when their term of service has expired they are let loose on the community, the only regulation being that they shall remain there. The result is that the present population contains not only the present released convicts, but also a considerable number of the descendents of former convicts of the worst type.
Irkutsk is in the centre of the gold district, which attracts also a somewhat undesirable class of people. It is not, I think, generally known what a large quantity of gold is found in Siberia, but about five millions worth is annually sent into Russia. This by no means represents all that is found, although the Government requires that it should all pass through Irkutsk, and thence be forwarded to Russia. Smuggling is reported to be extensively carried on, and a considerable Chinese population are credited with the bulk of it. The working of the gold diggings is said by experts to be amazingly primitive. Large fortunes are both made and squandered in Irkutsk. Not only gold but tea is a great source of wealth, although the trade in the latter is by no means so great as it used to be in the old caravan days. At the present time by far the largest quantity of it is sent round by sea; but there are still many Russians who believe that the flavour of the tea is spoilt by sea air, so that the demand for caravan tea continues. It is said that wealth in Irkutsk is estimated by a man’s furs and by a woman’s furs and jewels. Curiously enough Sunday labour is entirely prohibited in this town, and fine and imprisonment may follow the breaking of the law with regard to buying and selling. Trade is greatly hampered throughout the Russian Empire by the corruption of officials, of whom there are an incalculable number; and it is the Jews who form the most successful part of the trading community. There is always a long halt at Irkutsk station, varying from one and a half to two and a half hours, for passengers have to change trains on account of the difference of the line in gauge, and when travelling by the Russian State Express it is necessary to have tickets visé-ed and fresh places allotted. On the International you are saved this because the places are numbered and passengers are required to keep the same number in both trains, so there is no confusion in having the luggage transferred from one to the other. Having to get fresh ones was decidedly tiresome, as there seemed to be no method in the madness of the officials, their knowledge of other languages than their own was almost nil, and their slowness phenomenal. One of our English fellow-passengers seemed to have a great deal to say, and knew no Russian, so he had secured the services of a Chinese waiter from the restaurant car who acted as interpreter with complete success. I do not think I am wrong in saying that the issuing of fresh tickets took more than three-quarters of an hour, and confusion reigned in the train for more than double the time.
During the first two days of our return journey we had suffered from continual snow-storms and a leaden sky, but after leaving Irkutsk the weather improved, and the sun shone most of the time. The land is sparsely inhabited; at the close of the last century the density of population was given in the official census as two to the square mile in the province of Irkutsk. If Siberia be taken as an example of the effects of land nationalisation, few people, I think, will be attracted by it; out of an area of 3,240,000,000 square miles no less than 3,104,000,000 belong to the State. There is only one province, the Amur region, in which land can be purchased. It is the Russian village communities who hold the land when it has been allotted for industrial enterprises. All along the line we were interested in seeing the colonists travelling to their various destinations; they were taken in slow trains densely packed, and when they came to the stations where they had to change they and their belongings were dumped down for an apparently indefinite number of hours on the station, and there they remained, eating and sleeping in the midst of their baggage till it was time to start afresh. There are sheds for them to be housed in when the weather prevents their being out of doors. They seemed to have practically no furniture with them, and some of them were remarkably well dressed in comparison with what one would have expected. They are all obliged to have passports just like foreigners.
Up to the year 1901 there was an average of nearly 20,000 exiles sent yearly to Siberia; many of these exiles settled down and helped to civilise the land. They founded twelve Natural History and Ethnological Museums, besides starting scientific societies. Now the Government has altered the system, and great efforts are being made to send another class of colonists, the political exiles being driven to more uninhabitable regions. It seems a pity that the Russian Empire, which extends over an area of no less than one-sixth of the territorial globe, should leave this fertile land of Siberia, much of it the finest grazing ground in the world, and other parts excellent wheat-growing land, so sparsely inhabited, while it stretches envious hands into Manchuria, the land which China imperatively requires as the natural outlet for her surplus population.
At the railway stations all sorts of queer people are to be seen, the men mostly wearing bright-coloured shirts, and tall red leather, or felt boots; but the nomadic tribes of Buriats, who cultivate parts of the country with great industry and success, are not often to be seen near the railway. The Buriats on the eastern side of Lake Baikal are Buddhists, but those on the west still cling to their original religion—Shamanism. This mainly consists in the worship of gods, called “Ongons,” supposed to protect both house and property. The former are hung up in a box inside the house; the latter, along with the skins of squirrels and other small animals are in a box fastened to the top of a pole, with a little roof over it in the fields. Every man has his own Ongon as soon as he marries, and when he dies it is taken down from the pole and hung up in the woods, where it eventually rots to pieces.
In a most interesting volume the American linguist and ethnologist, Jeremiah Curtin, describes these strange tribes. He tells how he witnessed the Horse Sacrifice, one of the most ancient of Mongol ceremonials, and which is still perpetuated among Buriat clans. He saw it performed in 1900 on a hill called Uhér, about seven miles from Usturdi, which is some forty miles from Irkutsk. There are fifteen large altars on the hill, on which the sacrifices are offered to the Burkans (namely the gods) of the hill. These gods include “The Lofty Clear Heaven,” “The Revered Pure Earth,” “Bull Prince Father,” “Blessed Mother Mist,” “The Creating Great One” (the hedgehog, who is considered by the Buriats to be the wisest of all deities), “Grandfather Bald Head,” “Creator of Cattle,” “Crooked Back,” &c. The different families of the first and second divisions of the clan Ashekhabat have each their own place near one or other of the altars. The leaders of the ceremony invoke all the different deities by name and in turn, while the people pray either aloud or in silence for what they want. Then the horses are killed, and after that they are rapidly skinned and dismembered, the bones being burnt in roaring fires on the fifteen altars. The flesh is boiled in iron kettles, and when it is cooked all the people stand in groups by the altars, receding and advancing towards them at intervals, and reciting the following invocation to the deities, together with any special petitions of their own.
“We pray that we may receive from you a blessing. From among fat cattle we have chosen out meat for you. We have made strong tarasun (a liquor distilled from milk) for you. Let our ulus (villages) be one verst longer. Create cattle in our enclosures; under our blankets create a son; send down rain from high heaven to us; cause much grass to grow; create so much grain that sickle cannot rase it, and so much grass that scythe cannot cut it. Let no wolves out unless wolves that are toothless; and no stones unless stones without sharp corners or edges. Hover above our foreheads. Hover behind our heads. Look on us without anger. Help those of us who forget what we know. Rouse those of us who are sleeping (in spirit). In a harsh year (a year of trouble) be compassion. In a difficult year (a year of want) be kindness (in sense of help). Black spirits lead farther away from us; bright spirits lead hither, nearer; grey spirits lead farther away from us. Burkans lead hither to us. Green grass give in the mouths (of cattle). Let me walk over the first snow. If I am timid be my courage. If I am ashamed, be a proper face to me. Above be as a coverlid, below be as a felt bed to me.”—(“A Journey in Southern Siberia,” page 47.) After this prayer the worshippers all sat down in groups to eat the horse-flesh and drink tarasun, while many vultures hovered round to share the flesh. After this strange sacrifice is ended the Buriats indulge in wrestling.
At Usturdi there is a Russian Orthodox Mission Church, and the Bible Society has undertaken to publish the Gospel of St. Matthew in the Buriat language. It seems strange that such uncivilised beings as those who would take part in the ceremonial described above, should be sufficiently literate to have a use for the Gospel; but it is estimated that all the Buriats in the north, and nearly all those in the south, will be able to read it. The population is about 290,000. The translation has been made by the Irkutsk Translation Committee, and is to be printed in Russ characters, as most of the Buriats are able to understand them. Mr. Curtin mentions a young Buriat whom he met as having studied six years at the Irkutsk gymnasium, and possessing a knowledge of history and science, besides being a considerable reader, so that evidently they are not uninfluenced by education.
The next province through which the railway passes is the Yenisei, which stretches right away up to the Arctic Ocean, and which at once conjures up in one’s mind visions of Merriman’s novels: it is one of the largest provinces in the empire, consisting of 987,186 square miles, but has only an average of one person to the square mile. The city of Krasnojarsk is the largest and most interesting on the railway; there are about 30,000 foreigners living in this district, most of them Tartars; it is the principal seat of Government, and lies just half-way between Moscow and Vladivostock on this wonderful railway. The whole length of the railway is 5449 miles, and with the exception of the 193 miles round Lake Baikal, it was completed in an extraordinarily short space of time, between eight and nine years, at a cost of, roughly speaking, £85,000,000. It is fairly correct to say that it was built at the rate of about a mile a day. At the distance of one verst (namely, two-thirds of a mile) apart, there are guard houses all along the line, each under the care of an ex-convict, who comes out of his house to wave a green flag when the train passes, or more frequently it is a barefooted wife or daughter who does it for him. There is a fine view of Krasnoyarsk from the train as you approach it, for the line makes a wide circular sweep before crossing the River Yenisei, on which it is situated. Of all the noble rivers which flow through Siberia, the Yenisei is the greatest; it rises in the mountains of the distant Chinese province of Kobdo in Mongolia, over 3000 miles from the Arctic Sea, and makes its impetuous way through the mountains of Sagansk, then through the strange, tundra region, with its countless islands and trackless wastes—the great nesting place of myriads of migratory birds, who come there led by some marvellous instinct at the exact time of year when the snow melts, uncovering the berries which form the requisite food for the nestlings. The Yenisei is only navigable for a little over six months of the year, and the ceremony of cutting the ice, which closes its mouth on the Arctic Sea, takes place always on June 10th.
The next province on the route is that of Tomsk, but the principal town, which has the same name, lies to the north of the Trans-Siberian Railway, and is only connected with it by a branch line from Taiga, the nearest point to it on the main line, which is eighty-two versts or, roughly speaking, 54 miles distant. The reason why Tomsk is not on the main line is that the city refused to bribe the surveyors and engineers who planned the route. This accounts for the fact that so many places, which might quite easily have been on the line, are more or less distant from the railway, according to their willingness to pay. It takes four hours by rail from Taiga to Tomsk. It must be most injurious to trade to have such difficulties as these, and such unnecessary ones. Tomsk boasts the only university in Siberia, but this is still incomplete, and has only about 500 students. Education has been discouraged in this as in every part of the Russian Empire, and although the money required for a university at Irkutsk was offered, the Government refused to grant permission for it to be established. The number of schools in 1901 was only 3909 for the whole of Siberia, and the scholars attending them 115,407, while the population was estimated at 5,727,090; these figures need no comment, and my authority for them is Prince Krapotkin.
The only important town in the province on the railway line is Omsk, where we learnt (by telegram) the death of the King. The news came like a thunderclap, and cast a gloom over every English person on the train. What made it doubly trying was the impossibility for weeks to come of getting any further news. The town of Omsk is on the River Irtish. The number of rivers in the country adds greatly to the charm of the journey, and they have been the chief highways of the empire in the past; the bridges over them are remarkably fine. We began to rejoice in the sight of wild flowers once more, and children brought bunches of marigolds and anemones to the stations for sale, but generally they were tied up into tight little bunches without any leaves, and were quite wilted. The main occupation of some of the passengers seemed to be that of putting on fresh clothes, and showing them off at the stations where we had an opportunity at least half-a-dozen times every day of getting a brief constitutional. We learnt that passengers were allowed to visit the luggage van, as on board ship, and get out fresh supplies of dresses, but it did seem rather unnecessary, considering the amount of luggage taken in the carriages.
The next province through which the railway passes is that of Tobolsk, but it only skirts its southern border, which adjoins the steppes inhabited by Cossacks and nomadic tribes, whose caravans may be seen in the busy markets of Petropavlosk, which was founded in 1752 as a protection against the Kirghiz Cossacks. About one-third of its population is Mohammedan, and the Greek Orthodox Church has a mission in the province for them: the present staff of the mission consists of thirteen priests, twelve assistants, two deacons, and one Psalm reader. Last year they baptized eight Mohammedans. They have a very small educational work. The Greek Orthodox Church has various missions scattered through Siberia, and the Russian Government does not allow any foreign ones, which seems the greater pity when it is considered how inadequate in every respect are those of the Greek Church—they only number nine. Everywhere in the cities we saw the beautiful green domes and spires of the churches, but very little is done for the religious welfare of the people in the country districts, and for the most part they are in a state of profound ignorance; religion is summed up in (α) the worship paid to the ikon, (a little coloured print of our Lord, or of the Virgin, or of a saint), which is to be found, not only in all private houses, but in every waiting-room or restaurant on the railway, and in (β) certain religious ceremonies at special times of the year, and on special occasions.
After leaving Tobolsk, the next important station passed on the line is Chéliabinsk, in the province of Orenburg, the first town over the border into Europe. The frontier between Asiatic and European Russia is crossed about 104 miles to the east of it, and is marked by an obelisk on the left hand side of the line at its highest point, which may be seen soon after leaving Kurgan. Chéliabinsk is a cosmopolitan centre; it is the real starting-point of the Trans-Siberian line, and is the junction where the line divides, the one going north to St. Petersburg, and the other west to Moscow. The Russian State Express runs once a week from each of these cities to Vladivostock, and also in the opposite direction.
We were much pleased with the way our carriages and corridors were cleaned out daily while we were stopping at stations. A little army of women swarmed into the train directly it stopped, provided with buckets of hot water, and they washed out the whole place quite efficaciously and with great rapidity. It is really much better to have oilcloth on the floors rather than carpet, for the sake of cleanliness. The dusting of the carriages was done every morning by the attendant after he had made the beds, and he kept them quite nice and tidy. The one thing that provoked me through all our travelling in Russia, however, was the fact that the attendants had keys which opened all the bolts, so that they could come in whenever they choose, and the art of knocking before entering was unknown to most of them. They generally seemed to select the most inappropriate moment for coming in, when one was either dressing or undressing; but fortunately all travelling tends to blunt one’s susceptibilities on such points.
The ninth day after leaving Kharbin we reached Kinel, the next station before reaching Samara, the real junction for the Turkestan line. There was only a small margin of time allowed for changing train there, so we decided it was better to have to wait unduly long at Kinel, rather than run the risk of missing our train and waiting twenty-four hours for the next one. We got out at a most dreary hour, which seems to be rather frequently the case on Russian railways, considering how few are the trains; it was between one and two o’clock in the morning, and our baggage was deposited in the ladies’ waiting-room, where we found the only sofa filled with babies. A considerable number of passengers had their luggage in the adjoining restaurant, where they slept or smoked. The atmosphere was decidedly trying, so I spent most of the time pacing up and down the platform, watching the dawn grow, for even at that early hour there was a broad belt of orange light lying along the horizon. At fitful intervals one and another of the passengers would come out for a breath of fresh air, or order drinks from the somnolent attendants. It appeared to be the natural thing for people to be spending the night at the station, though no train disturbed the peace of the place for several hours. Not one of the officials seemed able to speak or understand any language but Russian, so I addressed a young German tourist to ask for information. He told me that there were no sleeping berths on the summer trains for Tashkent, the “wagon lits” service being suspended on the first of May, but that we should find the ordinary carriages thoroughly comfortable, the second class quite as good as the first (in which we proved him to be correct), for all the trains are arranged with a view to night travelling. He also told us that instead of the journey taking five days (as we had been informed when we made inquiries at Peking), it would only take three. Later on we discovered there was a wagon lits carriage at the rear of the train (without a single passenger in it), but no restaurant car. Encouraged, I suppose, by the pleasure which he saw depicted on my face at such pleasant news, he went on to give us particulars of our route, by which he said he had just come from Turkestan. He advised us to go by the Black Sea instead of through the Caucasus, saying that the journey from Tashkent to Vienna by that route took not more than five days; the minimum time in reality is seven. He had a Russian time-table, quite a thick volume, which he advised us to purchase; we succeeded in buying one later in the day when the bookstall opened, and although the names were quite a puzzle in Russian characters, it provided us with constant occupation, both in deciphering them, and in fitting together the bits of the route, scattered on at least a dozen different pages. In the station at Kinel they had rather a good sort of map in a large frame on the wall opposite the ticket-office, arranged as under. As there are so few trains it is easier than it would be on our lines, but such a map would be much more intelligible for cheap-trippers than our time-tables. These maps we saw in various places later on.
Four hours wore slowly away, and at last the ticket-office opened, and I presented a paper with “Tashkent—2 klacce,” and held up two fingers. Traveling is very cheap here; from Tashkent to Kinel, a distance of 1314 miles, the tickets are approximately first class, £4, 5s. 0d., second class, £2, 10s. 3d., third class, £1, 9s. 0d., fourth class, 14s., but then the train goes like a snail, and stops perpetually. The third and fourth class carriages always seemed to be packed with humanity, and the passengers lie all day, as well as all night long, on shelves one above the other. The fuel used both on this line and on the Trans-Siberian is entirely wood, so they have to be continually taking in a fresh stock, and each carriage has a little room for its own special heating apparatus. The funnels of the engines have large bulbs at the top to prevent the escape of sparks.