R [A , 'A umv ,~--TV O CAt r '. * SAN DIEGO STRANGE SIBERIA ALONG THE TRANS-SIBERIAN RAILWAY A JOURNEY FROM THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA TO THE SKY- SCRAPERS OF MANHATTAN BY MARCUS LORENZO TAFT NEW YORK: EATON & MAINS CINCINNATI : JENNINGS & GRAHAM Copyright, 1911 by EATON & MAINS TO MARY AND MARION, MY FELLOW -TRAVELERS. WITHOUT WHOM THESE JOURNEYINGS WOULD HAVE LOST THEIR CHARM. TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE FOREWORD 9 Sketches of Travel Time and Route Our Mascot Courtesy Occident and Orient Coincidences Yankee Notion. I. To Go OR NOT TO Go 19 II. THE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE 25 III. THE START 30 IV. THE GREAT WALL 34 The Great Wall of China Legend. V. MUKDEN 38 Imperial Railways of North China Port Arthur The Asiatic Armaged- don Policy of Russians and Japanese Hunghutze Hobgoblin. VI. HARBIN 51 Geography from a Chinese Standpoint Migration Hotel Money Matters Pristan Chinatown. VII. ACROSS MANCHURIA 62 Russia's Real Navy The Trans-Sibe- rian Railway Express Trains Rus- sian Paternalism. VIII. KING- AN AND GENGHIS KHAN 72 Alpine Regions Genghis Khan Mongol Imprints Chinovnik. IX. SIBERIA 83 Prairie and Forest Fires White Birch Trans-Baikal Scenery Customs Examinat ions Chita Albazin . X. IRKUTSK 100 Safety Hotel Metropole Lutheran Church Bolsche Kaya Museum Russian Holidays National Sesames Shopping Street Strolls Church Music Churches Schools Ex- cursion to Monastery Marriage Hin- drances Friendships of Russians and Americans Unique Honor to the Bible. 5 6 STRANGE SIBERIA CHAPTER PAGE XI. THE JEWS IN RUSSIA 140 National Contrasts Sowing Dragon's Teeth Reaping. XII. JERMAK, IMMIGRATION AND EXILES 145 Jermak Vereshchagin Immigration Exiles Opportunity of the Painter Religious Liberty Raskolinks Russian and American Pioneers Com- pared. XIII. TOMSK 174 Yenesei River Taiga Tomsk Women with Careers The Black Hundred University of Tomsk Market Place Prison City Park Dentists Yellow Literature j-Legend and History Repulsive Printing Cathedral Service. XIV. ACROSS THE STEPPES . 211 Onward from Tomsk Bridges and Rivers Omsk Petropaulovsk Kourgan Butter Business Russian Eggs. XV. OVER THE URALS 222 Chelyabinsk Scenery Minerals Demidoff, the Miner Souvenirs. XVI. THE VOLGA 228 Samara Division of Night and Day Scythians River Travel Kazan Tolstoy On Shore and Stream. XVII. THROUGH RUSSIA 241 Ride to Moscow Moscow Redeemer's Gate French Revolution What's in a Name? Saint Isaac's Cathedral. XVIII. HOMEWARD BOUND 249 The Voyage Quarantine Russian Detectives A Russian Memento Home Again Robinson Crusoe. INDEX. . 256 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS A Siberian Village Colored Frontispiece FAdNO PAOB " Small Heart, Fiery Cart," Chinese for " Look Out for the Locomotive" 30 Pastor Te (Virtue) 36 Chinese Soldiers Saluting on Railway Station in Manchuria; Trilingual Railway Sign in Manchuria 39 Russian Cemetery at Port Arthur 42 Tunnel with Inscription, "To the Atlantic Ocean " 87 Ice-breaker "Baikal" on Lake Baikal 95 Hotel Metropole, Irkutsk; Log-sliding in Park, Tomsk 104 Lutheran Church, Irkutsk 108 Statue of Alexander III at Irkutsk Ill Museum at Irkutsk 112 Cossack General, Lama Head Priest, and Sibe- rians at Irkutsk 126 "Everywhere is Life," Painting by Yaroshenko. 154 Bacteriological Institute, Tomsk 190 Old Cathedral, Tomsk 192 The Market, Tomsk 194 Tomb of Theodore Kusmitsch, Tomsk 202 Timber Raft on the Volga 238 Nijni-Novgorod, with World's Fair Grounds on opposite side of Oka River 241 Saint Isaac's at St. Petersburg 247 Russian Chapel at Wiesbaden 253 FOREWORD On vous a dit, que la Russie est un pays ferm6; n'en croyez pas un mot. Tout ce que j'ai desire voir, je 1'ai vu, et on m'en a meme montr6 plus que je n'en demandais. Victor Tissot. Sketches of Travel IF Henry van Dyke's analysis of The Spirit of America as stated in his lectures before the cultured audiences at the Sorbonne, Paris, is correct, then travel in a foreign country, or observing foreigners in other lands, does not necessarily give an outsider a true insight into the real genius of a peo- ple. A person must have lived long enough in a foreign land, and so mingled with its inhabitants as to know their hopes and fears, their life and ideals, before he is able to form a just estimate of the genius of a nation. Now, our trio were simply passing travelers. These are nothing more than im- perfect sketches of travel roughly drawn, to keep fresh some salient sights on our unique trip. It certainly was unique in one respect at least, for not until Marion and her mother stopped over at Irkutsk had any other repre- sentative of the fair sex, other than Russian, ever visited that thriving Siberian city. This 9 12 STRANGE SIBERIA such as we in vain searched for, and of which we would gladly have availed ourselves be- fore undertaking this overland journey. Our Mascot Throughout our journeyings in the Tsar's dominions, we were entirely free from any dread of being shadowed by a Russian spy. During our sojourn at Tomsk, the capital of Siberia, we were not even asked to show our passport. Who can say but that our ex- emption from all such espionage, of which travelers in Kussia so generally complain, was due to the fact that a playful child was unconsciously acting as mascot for our Taft party ? Courtesy Travelers sometimes complain of incivility on the part of Russian officials. Such was not our experience. Now and here I desire to record our high appreciation of their un- failing courtesy. This was especially notice- able from officials along the railway lines and in public buildings. In the descriptions of Irkutsk and Tomsk, later on, more de- tailed accounts will be found. At Saint Petersburg there were two ob- jects, which we particularly desired to ex- amine, the Codex Sinaiticus, and the Vase of Nikopol. One Brooklynite had lately written to a New York periodical, how his FOREWORD 13 party had been hurried through the Imperial Library, without seeing this celebrated manu- script, discovered by Tischendorf in the Con- vent of Saint Catherine on Mount Sinai. He, however, determined to see it. So he relates how he stubbornly refused to leave the build- ing, after all the rest of his party had gone out, until he succeeded in gaining his point. Without let or hindrance it was shown to us, passing travelers. Provided with a card from our old friend, United States Consul Eagsdale, formerly of Tientsin, China, we were escorted by a polite custodian to the stand, where this sacred treasure was care- fully wrapped in a faded yellowish cloth. This he removed, allowing us leisurely to gaze at this famous parchment and to ex- amine the handwriting of Professor Tischen- dorf attesting the genuineness of this ancient New Testament, so marvelously preserved to our day. In the Hermitage at Saint Petersburg, the same marked courtesy was shown to us, perfect strangers. The world-renowned silver Vase of Nikopol with its unique chas- ing was not seated, as queen, on her usual pedestal, where she holds undisputed sway over the other rare beauties, crowding her throne-room so full. A suave Russian guard, so soon as he was aware of our desire, guided us to an official in civilian attire, busy in his office nearby. This gentleman explained 14 STRANGE SIBERIA to us that the vase had been removed to be cleansed and would not be again on exhi- bition for several days, but he offered to show us photographs of it. Fortunately, just as we were leaving, the artisan who was renovating it came along. This offi- cial explained to him our desire. At once they both started to escort us to see the vase. On the way the head official asked us whether we would like to look at some other rarities, and led us to a case with glass doors, screened by inside curtains. Unlocking the doors, he showed us a won- derful collection of antique figures of clay, some in their natural white, and others gilded or colored with various delicate tints. Then we walked through back passageways to another building and entered a small workshop. Before us stood the large silver vase, just lifted from its chemical bath, which workmen were busily engaged in bur- nishing. The size and graceful contour of this celebrated vase charmed us, as we gazed upon these lifelike, agile, and daring cowboys of days gone by. These Russian officials seemed delighted to have us carefully scan the lifelike scenes of primitive Scythians, chiseled upon this choice trophy dating back to the days of Alexander the Great. Could a custodian of the National Museum at Washington, or the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, have been more courteous? FOREWORD 15 Occident and Orient A new cycle marks the East, both far and near. Tremendous changes have already taken place. The commingled strains of Eastern and Western life in Constantinople and Tokyo are weaving a far more beautiful fabric than Joseph's coat of many colors. Shanghai and Cairo in their weird, ever- changing color effects, and their incessant, startling contrasts, present par excellence the most fascinating "living pictures" in the world. Unter den Linden, Champs Elyse'es, Rotten Row, and Riverside Drive, with all their gorgeous display, are tame in com- parison. To-day along the thronged Bubbling Well Road, Shanghai, swarthy coolies may be seen trudging wheelbarrows, built some- what on the lines of an Irish jaunting-car, upon which laughing almond-eyed maidens sit back to back with their tiny feet dan- gling in the air. Suddenly, the toot of a horn is heard, when the coolie veering his load to one side, barely escapes collision with a speeding motor car and its European oc- cupants. When in January, 1907, our steamer stopped at Alexandria, Egypt, a clipping from a Cairo newspaper read to this effect: "Major-General Wingate and party are re- covering from their injuries, received in an 18 STRANGE SIBERIA why do you not stop at the Urals?" Chiefly for three reasons: First, some succinct knowledge of China and Manchuria, on the one hand, and of Russia and Europe on the other, is essential as a proper setting to any Siberian sketches. Secondly, the through Trans-Siberian Expresses do not come to a sudden stop at the Ural Mountains, but ply regularly between Moscow or Saint Peters- burg in Russia, and Vladivostok in Asia, as their terminals. Thirdly, stopping short at the marble "Monument of Tears" on the frontier between Asia and Europe might prove to be as embarrassingly abrupt as that of the sprucely dressed sprig of a tour- ist visiting Quebec. He was climbing up one of the narrow, steep streets, leading from the lower town to the citadel above. A sudden misstep sent him coasting down the slippery stones, knocking over a housewife with her basket returning from market. Both swiftly tobogganed together until they landed at the base of the mountain. The woman, whose eyes flashed indignation at the author of her ignominious plight, looked up at him, as if expecting an apology. As soon as he could extricate himself from the scattered market produce and from the en- tangled skirts of his chance acquaintance, he stood erect and politely touching his hat, remarked, "Excuse me, madam this is as far as I go." CHAPTER I To Go OR NOT TO Go Distance not alone separates Russia from us, but her customs, institutions, language, keep up high barriers between her and the rest of Europe. Po- litical and religious prejudices raise others. LeRoy Beaulieu, Russia and the Russians, p. 2. Advice "You had better not stop over at Harbin. It is very unsafe there. Even the servants in the hotels are all ex-convicts and crimi- nals. They will rob you of your money and passport." Such was the startling, gratui- tous advice of the obliging clerk in the Russo-Chinese Bank at Tientsin, China, as we were tucking away in our pockets a Letter of Credit, a roll of Russian rouble bank notes, and some silver kopeks. "I would not advise stopping off any- where short of Moscow or Petersburg. There is so little of interest in any Siberian town," was the unsolicited written prescription of a Scotch physician, who had traveled from Manchuria with his family over the newly opened Trans-Siberian Railway to Scotland and back. 'There is no use to stop over in Siberia. You only see mudhuts, as in any miserable 19 16 STRANGE SIBERIA accident, when their motor car ran into a camel on the road to the Pyramids." Some- times the camel gets the brunt of the shock and sometimes the autoists. Not quite two millenniums ago, Alaric and the Huns, and later Genghis Khan and his Mongol hordes, swept as with a besom of destruction everything out of their way. In our time the Japanese bantam has made the Russian bear take his predatory paws from off Port Arthur and southern Man- churia. Shall our eyes see the Chinese giant regain his ancestral domains in Manchuria? Events in the Far East just now seem to be pointing that way. Coincidences A month after our landing at New York found us living in "our own hired house" at Lakehurst, New Jersey, a quiet retreat amid the forests and lakes of the famous pine-belt, far away from the glare and stir of modern electrified city life. To our sur- prise, we found here a genial retired octo- genarian, William A. Torrey, who had lived in Saint Petersburg when Marshall Jewell was American minister there. By his busi- ness tact he had succeeded in supplying American torpedoes for the Russian navy and Baldwin locomotives for the Air Line between Saint Petersburg and Moscow. In his parlor was an artistic specimen of brass- FOREWORD 17 work, presented to him by the Tsar as a token of personal friendship. The group represented the Tsar and his driver seated in a sleigh drawn bj two prancing steeds in regular Russian style. Another coincidence refers to some un- couth footgear, purchased on our overland trip, merely a pair of heavy Russian ga- loches. They were probably a product of one of the enormous factories of the Russo- American Rubber Trust at Saint Petersburg. One morning, a Russian Jew, a peddler, chanced to come along. Recognizing these Russian rubbers, he asked, "Where did you get these?" When he was told he replied, looking as wise as Solomon, "I thought you did not buy them in this country." Yankee Notion The caustic comment, attributed years ago to a quaint old American minister at Saint Petersburg, is just as pertinent to- day : "What Russia needs most is more soap and spelling-books, fewer princes and more country schoolmasters; fewer diamonds on the barebacked court ladies in Petersburg and more broken stones on the country roads." Abrupt Stop One may ask, "Since your title is 'Strange Siberia along the Trans-Siberian Railway,' 18 STRANGE SIBERIA why do you not stop at the Urals ?" Chiefly for three reasons: First, some succinct knowledge of China and Manchuria, on the one hand, and of Russia and Europe on the other, is essential as a proper setting to any Siberian sketches. Secondly, the through Trans-Siberian Expresses do not coine to a sudden stop at the Ural Mountains, but ply regularly between Moscow or Saint Peters- burg in Russia, and Vladivostok in Asia, as their terminals. Thirdly, stopping short at the marble "Monument of Tears" on the frontier between Asia and Europe might prove to be as embarrassingly abrupt as that of the sprucely dressed sprig of a tour- ist visiting Quebec. He was climbing up one of the narrow, steep streets, leading from the lower town to the citadel above. A sudden misstep sent him coasting down the slippery stones, knocking over a housewife with her basket returning from market. Both swiftly tobogganed together until they landed at the base of the mountain. The woman, whose eyes flashed indignation at the author of her ignominious plight, looked up at him, as if expecting an apology. As soon as he could extricate himself from the scattered market produce and from the en- tangled skirts of his chance acquaintance, he stood erect and politely touching his hat, remarked, "Excuse me, madam this is as far as I go." Distance not alone separates Russia from us, but her customs, institutions, language, keep up high barriers between her and the rest of Europe. Po- litical and religious prejudices raise others. LeRoy Beaulieu, Russia and the Russians, p. 2. Advice "You had better not stop over at Harbin. It is very unsafe there. Even the servants in the hotels are all ex-convicts and crimi- nals. They will rob you of your money and passport." Such was the startling, gratui- tous advice of the obliging clerk in the Russo-Chinese Bank at Tientsin, China, as we were tucking away in our pockets a Letter of Credit, a roll of Russian rouble bank notes, and some silver kopeks. "I would not advise stopping off any- where short of Moscow or Petersburg. There is so little of interest in any Siberian town," was the unsolicited written prescription of a Scotch physician, who had traveled from Manchuria with his family over the newly opened Trans-Siberian Railway to Scotland and back. 'There is no use to stop over in Siberia. You only see mudhuts, as in any miserable 19 20 STRANGE SIBERIA Chinese village," volunteered an American lady, who had come through from Moscow to Peking in an express train. To stop over anywhere in Siberia seemed generally to be considered as downright folly. Rapidly rushing across was the popular fad. One pushing Yankee had actually made the trip from New York to Peking in twenty-eight days, and boasted that he could have made the journey in two days less time had he not delayed one day in London and another in Moscow. A distinguished author, who had traveled from Vladivostok to Moscow, in reply to our query whether he had visited Tomsk on his Siberian trip, said, "I merely saw the city while the train stopped there." A most remarkable case of hyperopia! No other mortal was ever endowed with such powerful eyesight as to pierce the dense, primeval forests from Taiga, the junction, to Tomsk, the capital of Siberia. The fact is that Tomsk lies at the northern terminus of a branch line, sixty miles distant from the main transcontinental railway. After the traveler has arrived at Tomsk he alights at a handsome, snowy-white depot, situated amid an extensive white birch park. All through Siberia the railway stations have not been built near the cities, but many miles away. Some think that this was done for political reasons, while others assert that, like the enterprises of Tammany, the object TO GO OR NOT TO GO 21 was graft. Such, evidently, was the case of Tomsk, as we later learned from an in- telligent resident of this important center, which now unfortunately and inconveniently lies far away from the main trunk line. Early Desire and Late Decision However, we were not so easily dissuaded from our purpose. Such advice, no matter how well intended, so much resembled the cheap article generally current in the mar- ket, the product of ignorance and prejudice, that we simply took it at its face value. For years we had decided that if we should ever travel through Kussian territory, we would not dash through on an "Express Rapide," even if it were fast and luxuriously equipped. Kussia, land of mystery, autocracy, and promise, had long had an irresistible fasci- nation for us. So we steadily kept on with our preparations, determined to stop over at important points in order to study at close range the life of the people. This purpose was strengthened by the fact that Baedeker, in his guidebook on Russia, mentioned Lutheran churches in all large Siberian and Russian cities and towns. So we concluded that, if necessary, we could fall back on the knowledge of German, with which a two years' course of study in Leip- zig, Bonn, and Heidelberg had equipped us. 22 STRANGE SIBERIA Near the confines of Russia at Koenigs- burg, one summer, we had watched the Polish Jews, clad in flowing robes and wear- ing long, shaggy beards of precisely the same cut as their kinsmen on the other side of the Russian border. The appetite to visit this immense, mysterious land was further whetted by the realistic accounts which our parents gave of their personal expe- riences during a tour in European Russia. Again, in 1886, our family spent a summer at Kalgan, where we enjoyed delightful so- cial intercourse with the family of a Russian merchant, engaged in the overland tea trade. It was by this inland route, traversing the desert of Gobi, that the missionaries of the American Board, stationed at Kalgan, es- caped the fury of the Boxers. 1 This sum- mer, 1910, a railway, built entirely by Chinese, whose engineers had studied in the United States, has been opened from Peking to Kalgan. When extended, it will be an Air Line from Peking to Irkutsk, eliminat- ing hundreds of miles and several days from the present roundabout route via Mukden and Harbin, Manchuria. Through the cour- tesy of Engineer Yen a graduate of Lehigh University, Pennsylvania we had, in the fall of 1908, the rare privilege of riding in an observation-car up through the famous Nan- kow Pass. On the opposite side we could J A Flight for Life, by J. H. Roberts. TO GO OR NOT TO GO 23 see, trudging along the old caravan road, strings of Bactrian camels, droves of black, razor-backed swine, fat-tailed sheep, black- haired goats, and occasionally swarthy Mon- gols in gaudy attire and dirty sheepskins, in- termingled with Peking carts, sedan chairs, and mule-litters, as in centuries past. Besides, we had spent a summer month, in 1883, at Vladivostok, beautiful for situa- tion. There Lieutenant Nevinsky, a Rus- sian naval officer in whose home we were staying, treated us most cordially, showing us sights on shore and taking us in a small collapsible boat on the magnificent bay to witness some Whitehead-torpedo practice. Never can we forget his hospitality in tak- ing us in. His furnished house was pro- vided with only one double bed and one couch, which he generously placed at the dis- posal of our party. When we protested, "But w r here will you sleep?" he replied in Teutonic English:' "That's all right. I shall "become a bed." Later, we learned that he had extemporized a long steamer-chair for sleeping purposes. To-day, Vladivostok, "Queen of the East," as the name signifies, is the eastern termi- nus of the great Trans-Siberian Railway. The corresponding western garrison city in the Caucasus is called Vladikaukas, or "Queen of the Caucasus." At one end of the long main avenue of Vladivostok stands the 24 STRANGE SIBERIA imposing statue of Admiral Nevelskoi, on which, are the bombastic but historically untrue words of Tsar Nicholas I, "Where the Eussian flag has been hoisted it must never be lowered." At the other end, where the railway runs across the boulevard to- ward Europe, is a post on which is engraved in gigantic letters the plain notice, Vladivostok to St. Petersburg, 9922 Versts. These different glimpses on the eastern, western, and southern frontiers of the Tsar's realm only served to intensify our longing and confirm our decision to cross over the borderland and leisurely travel through the heart of this extensive country. So no halt was made in our preparations. Not only did we devour various volumes on its history, travel, and folklore, but we delved into its cumbrous language for ordi- nary, useful phrases, that afterward proved invaluable. CHAPTER II THE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE "Nothing is worse than a barrier to the com- munication of thought," was the lament of Li Kamon no Kami, the Premier of the Shogunate, who, after Commodore Perry's arrival at Japan, had to make a treaty with "Western Barbarians," of whose language and intentions he knew noth- ing. Later this same premier, because of his pro- gressive stand, fell by the hand of a conservative. Russian Literature ,,3KCl4E/ibC!OPT>". "EXCELSIOB" IN BUSSIAN "THE Russian language," says Yon Schier- brand, "is of a wonderful richness and flexi- bility, permitting the writer to adapt his thought precisely to his words. It easily expresses every shade of meaning, even the faintest, as well as every mood. In that re- spect it is without doubt the most perfect instrument for literary work. . . . Russian literary works, on their part, lose much of their literary flavor by rendering into any other tongue more than would translations from the Italian, English, German, or French. . . . The greatest, perhaps, of all psychological novels ever written in any literature is Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punish- 25 26 STRANGE SIBERIA ment, when read in the original. Looking at other departments of literature, what could be more finished in its way than Aksakoffs Family Chronicles? By perfectly simple, apparently naive means, in limpid and quite natural language, we here gaze down to the very bottom of the Russian soul and are enabled to fathom its complexities. What warmth in the description of men and nature! Or, taking TerpigorefFs greatest story, Decadence it is a veritable treasure- trove for the student of Russian social con- ditions, so minute and photographically correct." 1 However, most foreigners, like a certain Englishman, regard the Russian language, with its elaborate alphabet of thirty-six let- ters, "as a combination of good English letters and a large assortment of inverted, reversed, and nondescript characters." The Spoken Language The excellencies of the written language may all be true, but for the tourist the spoken language is far more important and usually quite difficult. As Marco Polo shrewdly observes, "They (the Russians) have a language of their own," which, un- like English, German, or French, is not cur- rent outside their country. Once, when 1 Russia, Her Strength and Weakness, by Wolf von Schierbrand, pp. 235, 236. THE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE 27 crossing the Pacific on the steamship Ocean- ic, there was a big, gruff-looking Russian, quite conspicuous on deck by his loud talk- ing in rough, rasping tones. One day a little American morsel of humanity peered up at the tall figure as she asked, anxiously, "Doesn't it hurt your froat to talk dat way?" More than one traveler through Russia has had to resort to the sign-language, usu- ally more or less effective. Even that does not always work, as a versatile American frankly admits when he endeavored to pur- chase eggs in a Siberian market, "The sign- language for once failed to convey my mean- ing. When I was at my wits' end I cackled and the farmers at once brought me out as many eggs as I wanted." 1 Aware of these practical difficulties, we took the precaution to take lessons in Rus- sian from a native, committed to memory useful words and phrases, and practiced on every Russian-speaking person whom we chanced to meet. This proved our salvation, for in the large hotels at Irkutsk, Russian, and Russian only, was spoken. It was also indispensable at many other times and places, as in dealing with street venders, shopkeepers, and drosky-drivers. Cultured Russians, who can converse flu- ently in German, English, or French, reside in all large cities, but the traveler does not 1 A Flight for Life, by J. H. Roberts, p. 294. 28 STRANGE SIBERIA usually meet them. At Irkutsk we were entertained by a Russian physician, who had studied medicine in London. In order to improve his English he was at that time arranging to form a class or "circle," as he called it, for the practice of English con- versation. At his request we made out a public notice for an English "Conversazione" to be held once a week. At Tomsk an erudite professor in the governmental University was detailed to conduct us through the well-stocked rooms of the Museum. Our guide was unable to speak anything except his native tongue. His eager, kindly desire to explain various rare specimens wasi seriously hampered. The Latin and Russian labels proved of greater assistance. After we had finished our inspection and he had escorted us down the main staircase into the capacious hall, with a polite bow and a gracious smile he uttered the word "Esperanto." We cer- tainly needed some such talisman. Who is enough of a linguistic prophet to foretell whether the key to international intercourse will be Esperanto, or, as others with good reason think, English? At any rate, we were firmly convinced that our visit to the Tomsk Museum was surely as satisfactory to us as was that of Peter the Great to the Kunst Museum of Dresden. Waliszewski narrates how that monarch arrived late one THE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE 29 evening at Dresden, after a day of such fatiguing travel that all his retinue were reduced to a state of utter exhaustion. How- ever, the moment after the Tsar had finished dining he insisted on going to the already celebrated Art Gallery, where he arrived at one o'clock in the morning and spent the rest of the night trying to satisfy his curiosity by torchlight. 1 1 Peter the Great, by Waliszewskl, p. 130. CHAPTER III THE START The problem of Asia is a world-problem, which has come upon the world in an age when, through the rapidity of communication, it is wide-awake and sensitive, as never before. Captain A. T. Mahan, in The Problem of Asia. Changli, China THE fast mail from Peking to Shanhai- kuan arrived at Changli a little late on the afternoon of May 13, 1909. Our trio bade farewell to the friends, Chinese and foreign, who had gathered at the station. The boys of the day school, drawn up in line on the platform and dressed in their new uniforms, saluted "good-by" in true military style. Fortunately, we were not in the plight of the father and mother, described in the Flie- gende Blatter. These parents were sketched as anxiously examining their huge con- fused pile of trunks, bags, bird cage, go- cart, bandboxes, and other paraphernalia, to be sure that nothing had been overlooked. The train was nearing the station when the mother, realizing that something important was missing, frantically screamed, "Where is the baby?" The boisterous crowd of fruit-sellers were 30 "SMALL HKART. FIKRY CART" Chinese for "Look Out for the Locomotive" THE START 31 as usual hawking the delicious fruit for which Changli is noted. Mr. Mayers, of the United States Department of Agriculture, had visited this region and had returned to America, carrying as part of his spoils the thin paper-shell English walnuts grown here. The large, luscious red persimmons, whether fresh and juicy or dried like figs, are favorites, as are also various species of choice grapes, from the light green seedless variety to the large, plump purple kind, which the Chinese know how to keep fresh all through the winter, and offer for sale even as late as May. Last winter's revival had invaded the ranks of these fruit-sellers and claimed a Mr. Wu as a Christian convert. Shortly after, he came to our native pastor, Rev. Liu Fang, and frankly confessed that, as a Christian, he could no longer pad the bottom of his fruit baskets with leaves, as was the custom. For ways that are dark, And for tricks that are vain, The heathen Chinee is peculiar, but the Christian Chinese, as the Boxer up- rising revealed to an incredulous world, is quite a different article. Friendliness In the northeast section of China, near the Great Wall, the mandarins have been STRANGE SIBERIA extremely friendly. The recent skillful cure by an American physician of five Chinese commercial travelers, who had been brutally mutilated by cut-throats, increased their friendly attitude. Near by were stationed two camps of cavalry, commanded by Gen- eral Ting, who manifested marked courtesy toward us. It happened that we had met him a couple of times on a railway train and had greeted him civilly, as we would any chance acquaintance. Accidentally we learned from a military official of lower rank that he was calling himself our friend. Shortly after hearing this we visited him at his headquarters in a temple by his camps. He treated us to Chinese tea and English biscuits and expressed a desire to prepare a banquet in our honor. This we politely de- clined. Thereupon he offered to send around his own carts, sedan chairs, and horses to take us to the station. We protested that this was unnecessary, but, to our surprise, when we walked out into the street to climb into our own hired cart, we found General Ting's official equipages already there await- ing us. So Mrs. Taft accepted his highly decorated mulecart, with official servants and outrider, wearing the regulation tas- seled hat, while her husband mounted one of his elaborately caparisoned horses, pre- ceded by a fat outrider on a strutting steed. In this high Chinese fashion we proceeded THE START 33 to the station a spectacle to men and angels. Such ostentatious kindliness was a most decided and agreeable change from the ex- periences of foreigners some thirty years earlier. Mobs cursing, pelting, and maltreat- ing ''outside kingdom men" were then no uncommon events in China. At Chinkiang, in walking from our home to the chapel up the main, narrow business street, the shop- keepers on either side would hiss out like so many serpents, "Sah Yang-kueitze! Sah Yang-kucitze!" ("Kill the foreign devil! Kill the foreign devil !") Once an American friend of ours was pursued by a butcher with a cleaver in his hand. Maltreatment of this sort would seem strange and unusual to- day, so radically has changeless China changed. CHAPTER IV THE GREAT WALL He [Samuel Johnson] expressed a particular enthusiasm with respect to visiting the Wall of China. I catched It for the moment and said I really believed I should go and see the Wall of China, had I not had children, of whom it was my duty to take charge. "Sir!" said he, "by doing so you would do what would be of importance in rais- ing your children to eminence. There would be a luster reflected upon them from your spirit and curiosity. They would be at all times regarded, as the children of a man who had gone to view the Wall of China. I am serious, sir!" Bosicell's Life of Johnson. The Great Wall of China THE Great Wall of China comparable in its massiveness and forced labor expended on it to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon or the Pyramids of Egypt after rambling for some thousand miles up and down the frontier ranges of China, makes its final plunge into the sea at Shanhaikuan (The Barrier of Mountain and Sea). The break in this barrier of solid masonry, through which the railway runs, occurred, according to a popular legend, in this way : Legend Among the horde of laborers impressed by the despot Chin Shih Wang into the 34 THE GREAT WALL 35 task of building the Great Wall was a young man from a southern province. At the ap- proach of cool autumn days the fair Meng Chiang Nil, his betrothed, left her peaceful southern home to bring him a warm wadded coat, the product of her summer's labor, to shield him from the northern blasts. After toiling many a dusty mile, she reached the Great Wall only to learn that he with many others had fallen under the pressure of the work and for a burial had been built into the Wall itself. Despairing and disconso- late, she prayed unto the gods. In a dream she was told to walk along the top of the Wall to the west. While obeying the injunc- tion, she could not keep from biting her finger-tips in her agony. Suddenly a large section of the Wall fell flat, and where the blood touched her lover's bones, it was in- stantly absorbed. In frantic joy at the re- sponse, she wrapped them tenderly in the wadded coat. But word had gone to the em- peror that a great breach had been made in his Wall by a woman. Exceedingly incensed, the tyrant ordered her to come before him. On seeing her, he was so smitten by her sur- passing loveliness and her pathetic tale that, without delay, he made overtures for her to become his queen. She consented only on three conditions: First, he must dispose of the other wives in his harem; secondly, he must allow her former lover a grand funeral; 36 STRANGE SIBERIA and, thirdly, she herself must superintend the funeral ceremonies. So infatuated was he that he readily agreed to all the terms proposed. A hand- somely wrought girdle of imperial gold was presented her, while she made ready for the funeral. With heart weighed down by sad- ness, she bore her heavy load to the top of a beetling cliff projecting into the sea and, to the astonishment of all, leaped with her burden into the waters. To-day on that spot stands an island, to which the Chinese point in proof of the legend, and a few leagues inland, on a lonely eminence, is a temple protecting a mute, girlish figure with eyes turned toward the sacred place, where rest all the mortal remains of herself and her lover. Pastor Virtue We appreciated the great privilege of spending our last night in China at Shan- haikuan in the neat, happy home of Pastor Te (Virtue). Upon his head the Boxers had placed a reward of a hundred silver taels, but the Almighty graciously and mar- velously spared the useful life of his servant. Once he foiled his pursuers by sleeping in an empty coffin, and another time by hiding, like Elijah, in a cave on the mountainside, where food was stealthily furnished him by a faithful Christian. We were most hos- PASTOR TE THE GREAT WALL 37 pitably entertained, and enjoyed looking at his collection of curious clocks, ticking va- rious times in happy discord. Geil, the inde- fatigable ''Yankee on the Yangtse," started the previous winter on his circuitous trail along the Great Wall from this same hospi- table hospice. CHAPTER V MUKDEN Mukden ranks not only with the signal military defeats of history, but with the disasters. Not only was Kirin, two hundred miles in the rear, stricken with panic, but an exodus from Harbin to Siberia, and from Vladivostok took place. The Grand Army might be likened in its dejection to the vanquished armies of Napoleon, because utter defeat was something that, to both of them, had been an impossibility. The Tragedy of Russia, Frederick McCormick. Imperial Railways of North China AFTER an early breakfast at Shanhaikuan, we left on the eight o'clock train of the Im- perial Railways of North China, reaching Mukden on time at 6 :35 p. M. This railway had one through train a week from Peking to Mukden. According to statistics, it cleared 4,000,000 yen, net, in 1908. A part of this profit has been expended on building the Peking-Kalgan Air Line, to which refer- ence has already been made. The gauge of this Chinese Railway, like the standard American and European, is four feet eight and one half inches, and that of the Trans-Siberian is five feet, while the Japanese gauge is three feet six inches. 1 1 Wm. Barclay Parsons, An American Engineer In China, pp. 280, 281. 38 CHINESE SOLDIERS, SALUTING ox RAILROAD STATION, IN MANCHURIA TRILINGUAL RAILWAY SIGN IN MANCHURIA MUKDEN 39 At every station the railway police and soldiers were lined up to salute a high mili- tary mandarin named Chang, who was traveling in a private car attached to our train. The names of the stations were dis- played on signposts in three languages Russian on one side, English on the other, while Chinese occupied the middle position on the post itself, as if wedging the two others aside. Is this a mere play of chance or a happy omen? Russia and Manchuria In ancient times Scythia occupied the place which Russia now takes in our geog- raphies. Herodotus tells how, in those early days, the Scythians, by retreating farther into their wild fastnesses, brought disaster upon Darius and his advancing hosts. Centuries later, the Russians, under Rostopchin, adopted the same policy against Napoleon and his invading army. By burning Moscow, destroying provisions, and deserting the city, they thwarted his genius, humiliated his pride, and hastened his down- fall. Now, as we look at the recent steady retreat of the Russian army in Manchuria, is it possible that the Russians are again practicing these same tactics, by which in the long run they will profit in like manner? Or will the Chinese persistent, peaceful, and prolific regain their ancestral do- 40 STRANGE SIBERIA mains ? Many maintain that ultimately Rus- sian, Japanese, and all other invaders will be banished from Manchuria, and that it is only a matter of time before awakened China will assert herself and come again to her own. 1 Port Arthur The previous October, a memorable trip to Port Arthur the present southern terminus of the South Manchuria Railway controlled by Japanese had given us an insight into Japanese rule on the mainland of Asia. This railway proceeds via Dalny and Muk- den northward to Kuan Ch'dng-tze, its junc- tion with the Russian branch line south of Harbin. At the time of our visit Port Arthur, once crowded with Russians, had only a single Muscovite living in the city. He was appar- ently left stranded there, for his residence, as printed on his carte de visite, was in the Pristan quarter of Harbin. The sight of a lone Chinaman strolling along a street in classic Rome so stirred the poetic genius of Goethe, that he wrote that gem of a poem en- titled, "Der Chinese in Rom." Who knows but that before many days the long-awaited 1 The Coming Struggle In Eastern Asia, by B. L. Put- nam-Weale, p. 6. Greater Russia, by William Oliver Greener, p. 209. Russia, Her Strength and Weakness, by Wolf von Schierbrand, pp. 31, 32. The Tragedy of Russia in Pacific Asia, by Frederick McCormick, vol. 1, p. 9. MUKDEN 41 American poet, in his "Wanderlust," may chance to see this lone Kussian at this Japa- nese garrison city, "Whence all but him had fled," and be inspired to indite at least a few lines of his forthcoming immortal epic, to "A Russian in Port Arthur" ? The Japanese railway hotels were well managed and provided good accommoda- tion and excellent food. Whether at Port Arthur, Dalny, or Kuan Ch'e'ng-tze, all these hotels have the same name, Yamoto, like the popular Astor House, for there is an aris- tocratic Astor House in the Chinese cities of Shanghai, Hankow, and Tientsin, as well as downtown New York. The toilsome climb up and over the fiercely contested 203 Meter Hill well repaid our exertion. Delightful also was the carriage ride over the winding macadamized road up the central mountain, from which we ob- tained a comprehensive survey of this ex- tensive battlefield and the land-locked har- bor below. On its summit the Japanese were erecting a magnificent monument to com- memorate their victory. In architectural beauty it far excels the Bunker Hill Monu- ment at Boston, and rivals the famed Wal- halla at Ratisbon. Up the river valley was the Russian ceme- tery, marking a greater victory than that of 203 Meter Hill. It tells a magnanimity un- dreamed of even bv Christian nations. The 42 STRANGE SIBERIA Japanese had collected the decaying bodies of their fallen foes, given them an honorable burial, and then erected a handsome granite monument amid a forest of tombstones and iron double crosses of the Russian-Greek Church. On the day of dedication, by in- vitation of the Japanese authorities, the Greek patriarch of Peking, with his acolytes and the surviving Russian military officials from Vladivostok, Harbin, and other acces- sible posts, assembled with Admiral Togo and other high Japanese victors, to conse- crate this "God's Acre." Side by side, friend and foe mounted the pedestal and placed wreaths to the memory of the conquered slain. This deed cost the Japanese some 50,000 yen, but it gained for them the amazed admiration of the world. The Museum, which contained various war tro- phies and miniature raised models of forts before and after the famous siege, enables the lay visitor to understand how even elec- trified barbed wires and intrenched bastions were as a child's sand-pile before modern improved weapons. Through the courtesy of a Japanese naval officer, we were granted a permit to ride in a Japanese sampan around the inner harbor and out through the narrow, fortified straits into the open ocean beyond, where we watched clivers, en- cased in their strange uniform, bringing up relics from the sunken Russian battleships. MUKDEN 43 On our way back five Japanese torpedo-boat destroyers, with flags flying and whistles shrieking, shot past us on their arrowy flight toward the horizon. The Asiatic Armageddon At Mukden the second story of Dr. Chris- tie's well-known hospital affords an exten- sive view of the battlefield. This beloved physician, who was an eyewitness of the conflict, pointed out to us that particular part which was alternately eight different times in the possession of Russians and Japanese. Mukden well deserves a visit. The massive walls of the city, resembling those of Peking, inclose the Imperial Palace, with its choice treasures and noted library. Let Miss Wright, one of the few who have recently inspected its interior, describe it for us: "Last year the empress-dowager herself had planned to visit this ancient capital of her forefathers. A great clearing and re- building and a flood of vermilion lacquer followed this vaguely expressed wish and then the empress died. "But the old palaces which she was to have occupied have been rescued from ruin, and their lovely grace and brightness give delight to the few who chance to visit them. This glowing group of red and gold and royal yellow lies in the heart of Mukden. 44 STRANGE SIBERIA They are not palaces as we know them, but low, single-storied buildings, with beautiful straight beams and curling eaves, suggesting and probably copied from the ancient Tartar tents. "Behind these fragile lacquered walls is hidden an untold wealth of treasure, the sacking of which was so feared by the Chi- nese that they brought their war with Japan to a halt. There was a great unbolting and unlocking of the red doors, and a tearing away of absurd paper seals, before we could gain admittance, two soldiers, with bayonets fixed, standing meanwhile by our sides. "Treasure after treasure, endlessly wrapped and packed with little papers of camphor, was placed for a moment for inspection on a sort of yellow lacquer counter. Golden helmets, ruby-set and sapphire-starred, royal coats of yellow satin, embroidered solidly in seed pearls, daggers with diamond hilts, priceless kakemonos, painted by China's greatest artists, and others painted with a needle cunning as a brush all these things, and many others, were shown us in this tem- ple storehouse, piled to the eaves with cabi- nets and boxes. "We walked at last out of that cold, dim treasure-house into the court, full of melt- ing snow and blinding sunlight, and across it into the audience chamber, where that audacious, ivory-colored, paint-enameled MUKDEN 45 Manchu princess had meant to hold her court. It was dark as we stepped in from the dazzling light, but full of the gleam of gold eaves gold, walls gold, and in the center of the room a raised and canopied dais. On this, before a monstrous screen, stood the throne a giant's chair of gleam- ing old-gold lacquer, a deep shining seat, smooth as a mirror, wide enough and deep enough to seat three men a royal, five- clawed dragon rampant on arms and back. "The whole chamber was carpeted with a thick and brilliant rug of royal yellow, and this yellow, newly laid, and newly woven tapestry, was covered inch-deep with the dust and dirt of months feathers, broken birds' nests, bits of earth; and as we looked in amazement we heard a stir and move- ment above our heads, where amid the golden eaves the fowls of the air were nest- ing unmolested. "We followed our guide into the gloom and deathlike chill of still another wonder- house, and paused on the threshold in amaze- ment. The place was lined with cabinets and shelves, and there, row on row, piled and stacked, was an array of imperial porcelains, each bit a fortune in itself; bowls and basins and vases of matchless 'blue and white,' ginger-jars with lovely plum pattern, clear white with rich blue medallions, curious old vases of Persian blue form and pattern Per- 46 STRANGE SIBERIA sian plain blue and 'powder blue.' There they stood, great toppling columns of them rice-bowls, tea-bowls, ordinary vessels of everyday use, cast, as it were, in gold, and piled as unconcernedly as crockery bought by the ton. ''One end of the room was packed in yel- low rice-bowls, soup-basins, tiny sam-shui cups, frail as eggshell, piled by the dozens, or hundreds, rather; the pure undecorated royal yellow, half mustard, half canary, with the imperial dragon swimming beneath the glaze. "There were big vases of a glistening bronze, of swelling and perfect proportions, with iridescent gleams of flame and peacock green, dim and drowning. There were others of sea-green, of a pure and delicate wash : others again pale blue, the very ghost of a summer's sky, with outlines simple and demure. One's fingers itched for the feel of them, the sliding surface and the satisfying shape. There were gourdlike vases running through every tone of purple and thick brown, and ending in petunia and amethyst and rose. There were scores of deep cream pieces, and biscuit boldly crackled. There were vases black as night and glossy; famillc vertc, in pairs, with handles and quaint deco- rations, each color distinct and pure. "We found four shelves of precious 'peach- blow' slender little vases, identical in form, MUKDEN 47 some placid and perfect peach, some a trifle pale, others ruddy, but all of the surface of satin and without a flaw. There were thirty in the group, a common sisterhood, doubtless of one firing, and probably akin to the 'peach-blow' in the 'Walters' collection, iden- tical as it is in shape and color. On another shelf were as many little 'peach-blow' boxes, varying as a flame varies in tone and inten- sity. "Above was another room, crowded as that below. More 'blue and white,' some wondrous sang de bcenf, pulsing, throbbing tones, red and thick as blood-clots. On the same shelf stood a pair of vases of greenish- blue, with a glaze brilliant as enamel, and crushed into it a warm fawn-color, like a turquoise matrix, mixed and melted. Hun- dreds of bowls again of dazzling white, thin and exquisite, each piece with the clear chime of a bell rice-bowls, winecups, tea- bowls, fish-bowls, 'apple-green' this time, the royal dragon sprawling round the brim half smothered in the paste, and so it went. "Finally, we dragged ourselves away, out again into the dazzle of the snow and the bold blue sky, and faced once more those amazing dwellings of vermilion lacquer. ''What was the sum of it all? It made one pause and consider. A race that can think in such fearless, fundamental colors, without fuss or futile decoration. And one 48 STRANGE SIBERIA sees this legend repeated again and again on every side, in the hard enduring things of stone, the blunt monoliths, the time-serving tortoise, every symbol of the land pointing alike to fundamental, enduring things patience, labor, discrimination. This cha- otic, inchoate, centuries-old China what is the meaning of it all ? It is a thing to make one think, to think mightily, and to think again." 1 A few miles outside the city lie the Im- perial Tombs, spared by both Russian and Japanese foes from ' desecration at the pa- thetic plea of China. The railway between Mukden and Antung, on the border of Korea, has long been a bone of contention between .China and Japan. The Japanese by diplomatic pressure have forced China to grant them the right to change the present narrow gauge to a broad, and also to allow Japan to station her soldiers and build barracks at frequent in- tervals along the line. To-day Japan has two lines of railway in Manchuria, one from Port Arthur and the other from the border of Korea, both converging at Mukden and proceeding northward, as one trunk line, to Kuan-Ch'ng-tze, south of Harbin. At Mukden it was a delight to us, Ameri- cans, to board an American-built Pullman, 1 The Color of Mukden, by Elizabeth Washburn Wright, In The Atlantic Monthly, February, 1910, pp. 242244. MUKDEN 49 which had painted on the outside in English, ' ; Sleeping Car," and to ride far out upon these prairies, so recently the seat of war, with the same facilities of modern, luxurious travel as at home. Policy of Russians and Japanese The large, solid stone and brick railway stations and barracks along the Japanese and Russian railway lines throughout Man- churia indicates that both these aggressive nations have come into Manchuria to stay. The proposed conference of M. Kokovsto, the Russian Minister of Finance, with Prince Ito, of Japan, on October 26, 1009, at Harbin, resulting in the latter's assassina- tion, as he alighted from the train there, in- dicates to any intelligent observer the overt, concerted attempt on the part of these two empires to act unitedly in grasping and hold- ing this valuable Manchurian territory, ut- terly regardless of helpless China and in defiance of the "open door," promised and guaranteed in the Portsmouth Treaty. Hunghutze-Hobgoblin The Japanese and Russian guards have been appreciably increased on account of the bugbear, "Hunghutze" (literally, "Red Beards"). By reiterated sensational dis- patches from Manchuria many readily be- lieve what Count Vay de Vaya wrote to the 50 STRANGE SIBERIA Revue des Deux Mondes: "Of all these ma- rauders, the Hunghutzes are the most ter- rible. They form a body of men, more or less organized, like the Italian brigands of old times, and this band resembles the Sicilian Mafia in the extent of its influence." Fred- erick McCormick, from personal observation, flatly denies these rumors so assiduously disseminated. He says: "The Russians from the first made much of the Hunghutze, no doubt largely because it was the fruitful ma- terial of which were fabricated political arguments for the continual occupation of Manchuria, and because they furnished the excuse for military exploits to gain decora- tions and military distinction. In eighteen months of continuous riding alone in the theater of war, in the rear and on the flanks of the Russian, army, through the lines, as well as around the lines in the so-called Hunghutze country, on the borders of Mon- golia, I never saw a Hunghutze, nor did I ever meet with any Chinese who had them- selves seen any or knew where any were, except such Chinese as were in the service of the Russian or Japanese army." 1 From these statements one may judge for himself as to the reality of the Hunghutze scare. 1 The Tragedy of Russia in Pacific Asia, by Fred- erick McCormick, vol. ii, pp. 346 and 348. CHAPTER VI HARBIN "In order to suppress the insolence of certain scoundrels [that is, Russians] who cross the frontier to hunt, plunder, and kill, and who give rise to much trouble and disturbance; to determine clearly and distinctly the boundaries between the empires of China and Russia; and, lastly, to re- establish peace and good understanding for the future, the following articles are by mutual con- sent agreed upon." Chinese preamble to the first treaty with Russia, at Nerchinsk, August 27, 1689, when in the pres- ence of 1,500 Chinese soldiers, and some 10,000 Chinese servants, retainers, and camp-followers, Russia relinquished territory which she had already occupied. Alexis Krause, Russia in Asia, f>p. 40, 41- On to Harbin OUR refreshing night's rest in the luxuri- ous Pullman reminder of the homeland was rudely broken by our arrival at Kuan- Ch'eng-tze at 5 A. M. Here we had to leave the Japanese train and travel one hundred and seventy miles further on a branch line under Russian management. Forced absti- nence on a bitter cold morning, and dirty, discarded railway equipment, did not pro- duce the most pleasant experience on our overland journey. Still, we could obtain hot 51 52 STRANGE SIBERIA water suitable for drinking, and, as we looked out of our car windows over these broad, fertile prairies, the real reason why Russians and Japanese coveted this vast, rich territory was quite apparent. Neither of these world-powers has any intention of letting go its hold, unless par force ma- jeure, as at the close of the Spanish-Ameri- can War the Spanish Treaty plenipoten- tiaries, with reluctant hauteur, avowed was their compelling motive when they had to sign the Treaty of Paris, by which Cuba, Porto Rico, and the Philippines slipped out of their hands. On Saturday, at 3 p. M V this slow, jerky train of antiquated, unswept, and undusted Russian cars arrived at Harbin. We re- mained there a couple of days, seeing the strange sights. Geography from a Chinese Viewpoint So, at last, here we were at the noted and notorious city of Harbin. About a year previous we had met a Chinaman who in- sisted that Harbin was in America. This happened when we were taking our noonday rest in a small village en route to a pic- turesque hamlet perched in the mountains of Mongolia, a day's ride by mulecart north of the Great Wall. Seeing a Chinaman strolling in the inn court, we accosted him. After the customary inquiries as to one's HARBIN 53 honorable country, worthy surname, and re- spectable age had been asked and answered, to make conversation, we ventured to ask him whether he had ever been in America. With beaming face and an air of compla- cency he replied, "Yes!" We inquired in what part. Imagine our surprise when he answered, "Hah-er-been," which is Chinese for Harbin. We tried to explain that Har- bin was not in America, but, although many foreigners lived there, was in Manchuria. A look of injured innocence came over his face, as, pointing to my Panama, he pertly retorted, "But the foreigners there wear the same kind of hat that you have on," and he went away sorrowful, for he had great prepossessions. Migration Hundreds and thousands of Chinese pass every year from China into Manchuria in the early spring and many return before Chinese New Year. Some days they seemed a never-ending stream. Their migrations north and south are as regular as the flocks of wild geese and ducks overhead. The Im- perial Railways of North China make an especially low rate for a through train from a station near Tientsin to Mukden, while the steamship companies carry thousands more, at reduced rates, from the northern ports of Shantung province. 54 STRANGE SIBERIA In rapidity of growth Harbin resembles many an American city in the West. In 1897 two Russians rode into the place and camped on the open prairie. Now the popu- lation numbers some 80,000. Through this gateway, during the Eussian-Japanese war, passed* more than 1,000,000 of the Tsar's soldiery and 250,000 horses. Harbin is a triple city, formed of the new Russian city, extending east of the mammoth railway sta- tion, Pristan or the old riverine town, along the banks of the Sungari, and Chinatown at the north. Hotel A couple of droskies soon conveyed us and our baggage to the Grand Hotel, diag- onally opposite the station. Here we were shown a good-sized, comfortably furnished front room. A placard on the wall stated in parallel columns in Russian, English, German, and French languages the tariff of the room, and also a list of extras with fixed prices attached, as, for instance: The use of a towel was 15 kopeks (7 cents United States gold) ; the use of a pillow-case was 20 kopeks (10 cents United States gold) ; the use of a sheet was 20 kopeks (10 cents United States gold) ; a candle was 20 kopeks (10 cents United States gold) ; a piece of soap was 40 kopeks (20 cents United States gold) ; the use of a bathtub was 1 HARBIN 55 ruble (50 cents United States gold). As we were not provided with a linen chest, we hired toilet necessities, so that the entire charge for our room was 5.50 rubles ($2.75 (United States gold) a day. Food was extra. In the dining room the bill of fare was printed in Russian and French. This official price list does not always protect the trav- eler. At one hotel, the porter rushed ahead and raised the rate. Tiffin, or luncheon, costing one ruble, consisted of excellent soup, boiled meat with rice, quail on toast, with cranberry sauce, and Italian cream, followed by a dainty cup of superior cafe noir. A supper which we took a la carte consisted of juicy beefsteak, thoroughly cooked French fried potatoes, hot string beans covered with cream sauce, and glasses (not cups) of delicious, piping hot tea. We sipped it clear and also a la Russe, with lemon and cube sugar. After supper we were invited by the hotel manager to see a moving-picture show to be given in the dining saloon at nine o'clock. This we de- clined with thanks on account of being fa- tigued from our journey. Such nocturnal entertainments, accompanied with dancing and carousing, are in vogue in hotels in Siberia. Our rooms here and later at Tomsk were, fortunately, in another part of the hotel, so that we were not disturbed by such midnight revelry. 56 STRANGE SIBERIA Money Matters At the American Consulate we learned that Consul Greene had recently started home on furlough, but the obliging inter- preter, Mr. Morton, gave us useful informa- tion and personally conducted us to various places of interest. One was to the large de- partment store of Churin & Co., where we invested in tins of American Saint Charles Cream and oranges. Another was across the Sungari Kiver, in the popular Kitais- kaya, or "Chinese Street," to a dealer in photographic materials, where we purchased rolls of twelve films for our Bull's-Eye Kodak at 1.90 ruble each, about 95 cents United States gold, which was about what we would pay at Tientsin. Ascending the broad, main street, running opposite the railway station, the visitor passes many of the finest buildings of the city, and on the summit comes upon the handsome, new Greek church, unusually light and airy in its architecture. In this neighborhood are many elegant mansions and large, attractive shops, fronted by broad sidewalks and rows of shade trees. A little nearer the station stands the substantial Russo-China Bank, where we found courte- ous and prompt attention. It is a significant coincidence that at the time this Rnsso-China Bank was established to finance the Russian HARBIN 57 railway through Manchuria, called "The Chinese Eastern Railway," Baron Hirsch- man is supposed to have been instrumental in inducing Wall Street to invest $50,000,- 000 in Russian bonds. 1 In this bank Eng- lish and German, as well as Russian, were spoken. High up on a narrow gallery, built above the huge safe, was a Russian soldier, armed cap-a-pie. From his ammunition belt protruded revolvers, and he carried a loaded rifle as, with heavy tread, he paced to and fro. The rugged sturdiness in the make-up of this minion of the Tsar impressed the beholder as an interesting contrast to a similar scene away off in Italy. There, dur- ing the annual Requiem to the memory of Victor Emmanuel in Rome, a half dozen handsomely accoutered Italian soldiers, dressed in gay uniforms and with plumed helmets, are detailed to keep guard and stride with muffled step back and forth high up on the circular, interior gallery of the Pantheon. Our observations, however, confirm us in the belief that, if the occasion should arise, those Italian patriots, fired with the spirit of Garibaldi, would give as good an account of themselves as any Russian hireling. Years ago at Vladivostok an incident, illus- trative of the insensate obedience of the Russian soldiery, occurred. The occasion 1 Greater Russia, by William Oliver Greener, p. 246. 58 STRANGE SIBERIA was the military parade on the national festival of the Tsar's Name Day. The troops were drawn up with military precision. To- ward the close of the drill, champagne, foam- ing in glass goblets, was served to groups of officers gathered in front of the troops. While this was being quaffed off in patriotic hilarity, not even a drop of vodka moistened the parched throats of the rank and file. To them the command was given to hurrah for the "Tsar of all the Russias." "Hark from the tombs a doleful sound !" Such a hoarse, heartless shout rent the air that to this day its sepulchral reverberations keep ring- ing in our ears. Appalling, indeed, is the present status of the Russian army, if the revelations of Kuropatkin, suppressed by the Russian government, be true: "Belief in God, devotion to the Tsar, love of the Fatherland are the features which up to now . . . made the mass of the soldiers fear- less and obedient, but those principles have latterly been much shaken among the people, and the result was, of course, felt in the army." 1 Frisian In Pristan stands the large Greek church, Saint Sophia, conspicuous and imposing. A Russian priest, the Rev. Bagdanoff, to 1 The Russian Army and the Japanese War, by Kuro- patkin, vol. i, p. 296. HARBIN 59 whom Mr. Turley, agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society at Mukden, had given us his card of introduction, kindly showed us the objects of interest in the sacred edifice. Most worthy of inspection were three handsome oil paintings, in whose backs were inserted brass plates, inscribed as spe- cial gifts blessed by the high ecclesiastics of the cities of Constantinople, Kiev, and Old Novgorod. These cities possess older and more celebrated Saint Sophia cathedrals, though that at Constantinople is still in the hands of the infidels. One very large paint- ing vividly represented the historic incident of the wholesale baptisms in the Dnieper near Kiev, when Christianity was introduced into Russia in 988. Great was the excite- ment when the idols were overthrown amid the tears and fright of the people. Perum, the favorite idol, whose head was of silver and beard of gold, was thrown into the river from the "Devil's Leap," a spot still shown to visitors. Rambaud relates how, "by Vladimir's order, all the Kievans men and women, masters and slaves, old people and little children plunged naked into the consecrated waters of the old pagan stream, while the Greek priests, standing on the bank, read the baptismal service." 1 Later, riding toward the banks of the Sungari, we made our way through streets 1 History of Russia, by Rambaud, vol. I, p. 80. 60 STRANGE SIBERIA on each side of which were numerous flour mills and yards inclosing immense piles of merchandise, such as timber, coal, and sacks of flour. Along the wharves were stern- wheel steamers, like those plying on the Ohio and Orinoco Rivers in America, crammed full of passengers and freight, about ready to start for ports on the Sungari and Amur Rivers. Putnam-Weale states that "from the flour mills at Harbin, Tsitsihar, and Kirin Provinces, so far as flour is concerned, sufficient was locally available to feed every Russian soldier, east of Lake Baikal, on the day peace was signed." On the broad, frequented avenues our attention was attracted to a prevailing fash- ion : when a man and woman were out rid- ing together in a drosky, the man evinced his eagerness to prevent his lady from falling out by firmly encircling her waist with his protecting arm. Many women were briskly promenading the streets in high-heeled white slippers, regardless of the late spring or whether the rest of their attire harmonized with this ballroom costume or not. Chinatown The Chinese city of Harbin lies more than a couple of miles distant from the Russian settlement. We took a short cut across a long meadow to it and hunted for a Protes- tant church. First, we were directed to a HARBIN 61 small Roman Catholic chapel, then to a Chinese government lecture hall, and finally to the "Gospel Hall," where we learned that preaching had been started about a year pre- vious by a British missionary, whose Chi- nese name was Pi, and that the present mem- bership was about thirty. This Chinese part of Harbin, with its yamens, temples, shops, and street life, looked like an ordinary Chi- nese town bodily transplanted into the midst of these modern European surroundings. The drosky-driver whom we employed on our way back happened to be a Chinaman, and seemed happy to have as passengers those who had come from the Middle King- dom and could converse in his native tongue. CHAPTER VII ACROSS MANCHURIA Railroad iron is a magician's rod in its power to evoke the slumbering energies of land and water. R. W. Emerson. Russia's Real Navy RUSSIA'S Premier "I)e Witte long ago realized that in a land-locked empire, such as Russia, the railway locomotive must take the place of the ship as pioneer of national development. What Great Britain and Ger- many had gained by steamship lines Rus- sia must attain by railways. . . . He demon- strated that a continent can be made an accessible highway, as any ocean, and he showed that Russia's real navy rests not on the sea but on many parallel lines of steel rails, laid down with scientific accuracy and strategic intent." 1 The Trans-Siberian Railway The present Tsar, Nicholas II, when he was Tsarevitch, laid the first stone of this greatest transcontinental railway on the globe at Vladivostok, on May 12, 1891. Its original cost was more than $390,000,000 (United States gold), and its annual aver- 1 To-morrow in the East, by Robert Story, p. 233. 62 ACROSS MANCHURIA 63 age maintenance amounts to nearly $25,000,- 000. The railway is divided into sections of one verst (about two thirds of a mile), marked by a neat guardhouse, where the guard, whose duty it is to see that the track is in good order, lives with his family. At heavy curves, additional guards are sta- tioned. Between Tomsk and the Urals there are nearly four thousand of these. There grew to be a certain fascination in watch- ing for these little homes and the man, or sometimes the woman, standing, flag in hand, near the doorstep or alongside the track. During the Russo-Japanese war, Prince Khilkoff, Minister of Ways and Communica- tions, had personal oversight of the railway management, with his headquarters at Irkutsk. His apprenticeship in the railway business in America proved of inestimable value at that critical period. Under his direction, innumerable sidings and new sta- tions were speedily provided, enabling the railway to transport troops and material so regularly and rapidly as to astonish the world. So efficiently did he manage his diffi- cult task that after the war he was highly honored by his government. Villari tells how on one occasion, while inspecting a section of the main line, where he had ordered a new station to be built, he inquired why his train did not stop there. 64 STRANGE SIBERIA "O! your Excellency," the officials replied, "we passed it in the night." Not satisfied with the reply, since it did not tally with his schedule, he gave orders for his inspection train to return to the spot. No station was visible. The feelings of those officials can be better imagined than described. Suffice it to say that not many days elapsed before that station materialized. As late as 1880 Russia had no railways in Asia, although Great Britain had nearly 10,000 miles of iron road in India. Express Trains To-day trains run daily between the Pacific and the Urals. Each week three ex- press trains go each way between Vladivo- stok and the old and. new Russian capitals, while a fourth runs between Irkutsk and Moscow. These three expresses include one of the International Wagons Lits and two of the Imperial Siberian Express. So far as our observation went, the Wagons Lits trains had the advantage of a conductor who could speak some English, German, and French, besides Russian; the fares were higher, the cars were usually more crowded, and their condition in regard to cleanliness would have given a New England housewife a conniption fit. Doubtless, as soon as the attention of the company is called to this untidy state of affairs, it will be promptly ACROSS MANCHURIA 65 remedied. We well remember in the early days of the Canadian Pacific Steamship Company, how hash, disguised as "Pepper Pot," "Bubble and Squeak," and other mys- tic, euphonious names, were frequent dishes on the menu. But after complaints reached the London office, a director was dispatched personally to investigate, with the result that to-day probably no better table is to be found anywhere. On the other hand, the Imperial State Express had the advantage of the same speed, lower rates, a conductor who could speak German, French, and Russian, while the cars were both cleaner and less crowded. Passengers, first and second-class, in both expresses, had the right to the same dining car. Generally, the same car was provided with coupe's, partly first and partly second- class. A corridor or passageway extended along one side of the car. Overhead in this corridor were racks for baggage, while near the windows were adjustable seats and tables. We tried a second-class compartment on the Imperial State Express and found it so comfortable and satisfactory that we had no desire to change to the first. The fare, second-class from Harbin to Samara on the Volga, was 77.85 rubles, the ticket being valid for forty days. On our way from Har- bin to Irkutsk, and also from Taiga to Sa- 66 STRANGE SIBERIA mara, although we had only two tickets, we were allowed a whole section to ourselves. This afforded us more room and greater pri- vacy than usual on American Pullmans, since we could securely fasten the door on the inside. This coupe" had two upper and two lower berths, besides a double row of racks on each side for baggage. We occupied the two lower berths and so had an abundance of room. The ornamental top of a folding stepl adder before our window formed a table, upon which a green-shaded electric reading lamp was placed at night. Another bulb overhead illumined the room. Electric buttons near the door brought the car porter or the waiter from the dining car, as we might desire. The first-class coupe" differs from ours in being furnished with only two berths, and in having a strip of rarpet on the floor, while ours had matting. The dining car was fancifully decorated with real and artificial flowers, and provided at the farther end with a piano. Beyond this, at the corner of the car near the roof, was an icon, or small sacred painting. Like all icons, the drapery of the clothing and the halo around the heads of the Madonna and Child were stamped upon a bright, me- tallic, gilt and silver casing, concealing all the rest of the picture, except the flesh tints of the face and hands. Every orthodox Rus- ACROSS MANCHURIA 67 sian, on entering, would first reverently face this object of devotion and cross himself be- fore sitting down at table and ordering his meal. The cuisine was excellent, although at times a Russian flavor predominated. Still we could procure a good tiffin of four courses for 1.25 ruble, or of three courses for only 1 ruble. A sample tiffin of four courses consisted of (1) Soup Noodle or Chicken, (2) Fish, (3) Roast Veal, with Po- tatoes and String Beans, (4) Dessert, con- sisting of Ice Cream and after-dinner Coffee, served in hexagonal glass tumblers. Surely no epicure ought to grumble when a plump, toothsome partridge, cooked to a turn, could be bought for 75 kopeks, or about 40 cents, gold. Some British travelers, ad- dicted to afternoon tea, advised us to order hot water sent to our compartment and there brew our own tea. But we preferred a change of scene and would take our tea in Russian style in the dining car. One glass of hot tea and Russians and Chinese of all peoples know how to brew it and a couple of pieces of zwieback cost 10 cents, Ameri- can currency not a very extravagant charge for this afternoon refreshment. The measured movements of these Rus- sian express trains remind one of the camel, which for ages used to traverse these inter- minable wildernesses. Never do they deign to start like a thoroughbred on the instant 68 STRANGE SIBERIA the signal is given. Rather, grunting like a patient camel, they only begin to move after three distinct actions, similar to the jerky opening of the blades of a jackknife, reminding one of how first the camel rises on its knees, then straightens its hind legs, and finally its front ones. Usually, the train stops twenty minutes at stations. This affords plenty of time to stroll up and down the platform and see the unusual sights, especially of humanity men and women, boys and girls, Buriats, Mongols, Vitim gold-diggers, Altai miners, Russian immigrants, and Siberian settlers, not to mention our fellow travelers from the four corners of the world. Russian Paternalism At all important stations, a Russian sign, "Keep-a-tok," meaning "boiling water," was visible, indicating that boiling-hot water could be obtained there gratis by simply turning the brass faucet. This was provided by the government chiefly for immigrants, as were also booths at one end of the long platforms, where provisions, such as bread, eggs, vegetables, and fruit, were for sale at low rates. Never tiresome and always pic- turesque was the sight of the rows of quaintly attired peasants, offering for sale huge loaves of black bread and bottles of fresh milk. The cheap prices were fixed by ACROSS MANCHURIA 69 governmental tariff, not yet affected by any Milk Trust. Travelers, first and second-class, could purchase a finer grade of provisions at higher prices in the railway restaurants. For a few kopeks they could also procure hot water, steaming and hissing from the brightly polished brass samovar, unfailingly adorning the counter. Along some lines the Russian government exhibits a paternal solicitude over its chil- dren. Patent medicines, for instance, which have wrought such havoc in America, are not allowed to be sold to the Russian people without the authorization of a physician. One summer at Vladivostok our bedroom was overrun with rats, and chancing to see the American remedy "Rough on Rats" for sale in a store, we asked the clerk for a pack- age. To our surprise we were informed that we could not buy any until we had first pro- cured a physician's certificate. How much happier would the Russian people be to-day if this same paternal so- licitude had been exercised in regard to vodka! Vodka is a government monopoly. Steadily this seething mass of ignorant, downtrodden humanity is being over- whelmed by the alcohol habit, fostered by the government. Von Schierbrand says, "One per cent of the net returns from the sale of all alcoholic 70 STRANGE SIBERIA liquors is being devoted by the Finance Min- ister to promote the temperance move- ment!" 1 Such incongruity equals that of a certain Sunday school scholar at a Brooklyn Christmas entertainment, when we were boys. This temporary scholar, hailing from Jack- son Hollow, was an undersized youth of sallow, shriveled features. Attracted to a group of us boys, who were eagerly compar- ing notes about our Christmas presents, he exultingly interjected the remark, ''My father gave me a box of cigars for my Christ- mas." Instantly he checked himself, as the thought shot across his mind that tobacco- smoking was usually tabooed in a Sunday school, and hastily finished his sentence with, "if I would not smoke." And this saying of his has been current among us to the present day. Von Schierbrand further states that, "as far as statistics go, every budget, since the introduction of the gov- ernment monopoly, shows a rapidly increas- ing sale of spirits, and for the last year the excess of such sales over the figures of ten years ago is fully thirty per cent." In 1009 Russia received from her revenue in intoxi- cating liquors $275,000,000 enough to pay the cost of her army and navy. 2 McCormick, who accompanied the Russian 1 Russia, Her Strength and Weakness, by Wolf von Schierbrand, pp. 235, 236. 2 Northwestern Christian Advocate, September 14, 1910, p. 1162. ACROSS MANCHURIA 71 Grand Ariny during the disastrous Man- churian campaign, observes: "The Russian physician's first inquiry in case of accident was, 'Was he drunk?' On one occasion a man was describing to a surgeon in charge of an imperial hospital the actions of an artillery officer in the last stages of exhaus- tion from fighting during the battle of Muk- den, and from the work of saving his battery in the flight from Tieh-Ling. But the tragedy of the incident was entirely lost on the surgeon. As the narrator concluded he simply asked, 'Was he drunk?'" 1 Whole- sale debauching a people for revenue may be a phase of paternalism in the Russian sense, but we far prefer the American right to cast our votes for local option. i The Tragedy of Russia, by Frederick McCormick, vol. ii, p. 281. CHAPTER VIII KlNG-AN AND GENGHIS KHAX 'O TWV 5pwv ?ps dploros. "The love of mountains is best." In those fine words some Swiss professor anticipated the doctrine of Ruskin and the creed of Leslie Stephen, and of all men who had found mountains the best companions in the vicissitudes of life. In the annals of art it would be easy to find additional proof of the attention paid by men to mountains, three or four hundred years ago. The late Josiah Gilbert, in a charming but too little known volume, Landscape in Art, has shown how many great painters depict in their back- grounds their native hills. Titian is the most conspicuous example. D. W. Freshfield. President of the Geographical Society of the British Asso- ciation. Alpine Regions TOWARD evening of the first day out from Harbin, the air becomes perceptibly cooler. Before long we leave the broad Manchurian prairies, so like the immense wheatfields of Minnesota and the Dakotas. An extra en- gine helps to pull the train up the steep grades of the King-an Mountains, reported to be the coldest spot of like latitude on the globe. According to one account, the mercury sometimes falls to seventy-one de- grees below zero, Fahrenheit. 1 1 Greater Russia, by William Oliver Greener, p. S6. 72 KING-AN AND GENGHIS KHAN 73 The flora here and also on the elevated plateaus of Mongolia above Kalgan is Al- pine. Vast areas on the plateaus above Kalgan can be seen to-day white with the edelweiss. Specimens of this Alpine favorite were once sent to Oberlin College, Ohio, for careful examination, and were pronounced to be the real edelweiss, now so rare and prized in the high latitudes of Switzerland, where, on the border line, snow and ice con- tend in a life-and-death struggle with the flora of the temperate zone. Genghis Khan Before reaching those higher altitudes the twin engines keep puffing and tugging in their winding way around the grotesque foot- hills and up the steep grades of the moun- tainsides. Tschingis Chan is the name of the station we are passing. We are startled, for we learn that this is the equivalent of the Russian name for Genghis Khan. Can it be really true that we are near the birth- place of this renowned conqueror? Luridly flash before our vision the strange, stirring scenes enacted here, when vast hordes of uncouth nomads roamed at will over these spacious Siberian steppes. At the appointed time arose Genghis Khan. His military genius united these multitu- dinous warring tribes into one compact mass. These loyal, reckless barbarians were eager 74 STRANGE SIBERIA to follow their doughty chieftain across the Urals and to combat savage Scythians or any other forces rash enough to oppose their onward, overwhelming onslaughts. Genghis 5 Khan, later succeeded by Tamer- lane and the Golden Horde, first fought his way westward, until all lands from the Danube to the Pacific and from the Arctic to the Himalayas owned his sway. His con- quests were purely Oriental, and thus fall into the lowest of the three categories men- tioned by Fiske, namely, conquest without incorporation, a grade lower than the ancient Roman or modern Russian, but eons distant from the highest class, the federa- tion, prevailing in most modern world- powers. 1 This triumphing over apparently impas- sable barriers, asi Genghis Khan did, when he led his barbaric hordes across these track- less, interminable Siberian wastes, evinces a military genius of no mean order. Our admiration at the indomitable will and con- summate skill of this 1 Mongolian chieftain rises higher and higher. Like Alexander the Great, he aimed at world-wide dominion, proclaiming that "as there was but one God in heaven, so there should be but one ruler on earth." Some six centuries ago these hardy pio- neers suffered untold hardships as they 1 The Destiny of Man, by John Fiske, pp. 87 and 89. KING-AN AND GENGHIS KHAN 75 . . . fought to win the prize And sailed through bloody seas. To-day, in glaring contrast, we, leisurely lounging in our comfortable, well-heated coupes, and surrounded by obliging servants on the alert to attend to our every want and whim, are indeed being carried along "on flowery beds of ease." In our day strangely enough a reflex movement in the tide of men is noticeable. Those enormous masses of Asiatics, under the sway of Genghis Khan and Timur, swept like a floodtide toward the setting sun. Now the ever-increasing tide of Russian immigra- tion along the iron road and the extensive waterways flows eastward on its ebb at the rate of nearly 1,000,000 a year. Mongol Imprint Russia had suffered more from Mongolian invasion than any other European power. Napoleon's drastic epigram, "Grattez le Russe et vous trouverez le Tartare," contains as much truth as wit. One of Russia's own aristocracy, Prince Dolgorouki, reveals Russia in these words: "Russia is an im- mense edifice, having a European exterior, adorned with a European fagade, but in the interior it is furnished and managed Asiati- cally. The very large majority of Russian officials, disguised in uniforms more or less European, proceed in the exercise of their 76 STRANGE SIBERIA official tasks as genuine Tartars." Gibbon, the historian, sums! up the Mongolian im- print in this way: "Both Moscow and Kiev the modern and ancient capitals were re- duced to ashes (by the Mongols) ; a tempo- rary ruin, less fatal than the deep and per- haps indelible mark, which a servitude of two hundred years has imprinted on their character." Chinovnik AA = CHIN (pronounced like "ch" in China or the Eng- lish word "chin," the lower part of the face) means "Imperial Grant." "Chin," or "Tschin," adopted by Russia from the Mongol invaders, was branded deep by Peter the Great on the Russian body politic. This barbaric Chin, with its chino- vniks (or tschinovniks) , will ever remain an ugly scar until the bright day dawns whose healing rays will diffuse among Rus- sia's millions the long-coveted blessings of enlightened freedom. This Chin, consisting of a Mongolian system of rank not of birth, education, or wealth is an arbitrary grade KING-AN AND GENGHIS KHAN 77 of distinction, conferred at the pleasure of the Tsar. Look at this instance : In 1889 all the justices of peace were, one fine morn- ing, removed by a special ukase of Alexander III, and succeeded by "rural district cap- tains," men of no legal education whatever. In China all the evil effects of this system are more than counterbalanced by the demo- cratic competitive civil service examination. These examinations in China, open even to the lowest peasant, furnish an opportunity for all Chinese ambitious of office, and serve as a safety valve to the seething body politic. In Kussia, on the other hand, this despotic caste system is graded into fourteen classes. Only chinovniks, or holders of these distinc- tions, are eligible for office. The military chinovniks form not only the ruling class, but practically the only class. The energy and intelligence of Russia are centered in her army, which, with a few exceptions, claims every male within the age limit, that is, from the twenty-first to the forty-third year, the first eighteen years being spent in the standing army and the last four in the militia. This system of Chin is the colossal incubus which is crushing out liberty and education. Henry Ward Beecher, in show- ing that religious freedom is based upon education, instanced the schoolhouses as well as the churches of New England, affirm- ing, "Our New England fathers, although 78 STRANGE SIBERIA failing here and there in some points in the administration of religious liberty, were pre- eminent for the time in which they lived, and, at the bottom, they were really the workmen that brought in the doctrine of religious freedom, because they undertook to make intelligent men." In the Russian em- pire statistics show that only three per cent of the population can read. Russia provides for less than two million out of her popula- tion of one hundred and thirty millions, so that education is unknown, except among the upper classes. One of the most malign and monstrous bureaus of this Chin is that of the Holy Or- thodox Church, presided over by a layman, who is subject only to the authority of the Tsar, as was originally constituted by Peter the Great. This lay Pope, styled the Over- Procurator of the Most Holy Governing Synod, has veto power over the other mem- bers of this Synod, who are personally se- lected by the Tsar from among the higher clergy of the Orthodox Church. Some of the mechanical methods of this powerful bureau have been disclosed by Baron Uxhull. He tells us that "a Moham- medan, or a heathen, or a Jew, if he wished to become a Christian, could join only the Greek Orthodox Church. . . . For a thousand converts, the Greek Orthodox missionary re- ceived a decoration, a cross on his breast, KING-AN AND GENGHIS KHAN 79 and a certain sum of money. When they went into a village they did not preach Christ. They said: 'See, we have come to invite you to join the religion of the em- peror; the emperor is the most mighty man in the whole world, and as he is of the Greek Orthodox religion, of course the Greek Or- thodox religion is the best, and the police will be indulgent to you, and the judge will favor you, if you join the Greek Orthodox Church, and next Sunday I will receive all of those who wish to become members of the Greek Orthodox Church, and every one of you will receive a little cross to wear around the neck, as the Greek Orthodox do, and a white shirt.' And then the missionary re- ceived the heathen, and every one received the little cross around his neck and the white shirt for baptism." Moreover, accord- ing to the bureaucratic regulations, every priest must marry, for had not Paul in- structed Timothy, "Let the deacons be the husbands of one wife"? This wife is not a helpmeet of his own choice, but a virgin never a widow selected for him by his bishop. If that one wife dies the rigid rules require that the husband can no longer offi- ciate as a priest, but must take monastic vows or enter into secular work, so that naturally her husband has incentives to treat her well. Hence the popular proverb, 'Happy as a priest's wife." 80 STRANGE SIBERIA For fifteen years Count Dmitry Tolstoy, a cousin of the novelist, was the Over-Pro- curator, although he was an avowed atheist. Religion had, indeed, been dragged down to the depths, when the chief authority in the church was vested in a man who boldly de- clared himself an unbeliever. The change was, however, much for the worse, when Pobiedonostzeff succeeded him. Neither George Washington nor Abraham Lincoln could have indorsed his political theories, as published in his Reflections of a Russian Statesman, where he affirms, "Among the falsest of political principles is the prin- ciple of the sovereignty of the people, the principle that all power issues from the peo- ple, and is based upon the national will." 1 "This nonmitered Hildebrand and non- purpled Nero is inextricably involved in the history of the religious life of Russia for a period of about twenty-five years. The fero- cious slaughterings of the saints of God under the pagan Roman emperors, under our English Queen Mary, and even the Walden- sian and Huguenot massacres, dwindle be- side the 'havoc of the church,' wrought by this man Pobiedonostzeff. "It has been said that no tyrant is so remorselessly tyrannical as the religious fanatic. The Over-Procurator was pre- 1 Reflections of a Russian Statesman, by K. P. Pob- iedonostzeff-Grant Richards, London. 1808. In chapter "The Greatest Falsehood of Our Time," p. 32. KING-AN AND GENGHIS KHAN 81 eminently a 'religious' man. He might be seen almost any day, when in residence at the Winter Palace, wandering around the imperial private gardens, with a prayer book in his hands, mumbling his devotions. During the greater part of the year he re- tires to the Sergieff Monastery and mortifies his flesh as vigorously as any anchorite, re- maining for days upon his knees, fasting and beating his forehead against the stone floor. "It might be said of him, as the monk Nicholas said to Ivan the Terrible, when he was contemplating the massacre of the peo- ple of Pskoff. Ivan visited Nicholas in his cell. The monk offered him a piece of raw meat. 'I am a good Christian,' said Ivan, 'and eat no meat during Lent.' Thou doest worse,' answered Nicholas, 'for thou feastest upon the flesh and blood of Christians.' "Like Saul of Tarsus, Pobiedonostzeff had a zeal for God that was not to him at all in- consistent with 'breathing out threatenings and slaughter' against his servants. He sincerely imagined that be was 'doing God's service.' 'You believe in a Christ of weak- ness and sentiment ; but I believe in a Christ of authority and power,' said he in a letter to Count Leo Tolstoy." 1 The religious toleration of the Mongols was far superior to these modern inquisi- 1 Under Three Tsars, by Robert S. Latlmer, pp. 133, 136, 138, 139. 82 STRANGE SIBERIA torial methods, recalling the vindictive spirit of pious Philip II. Sir Donald Mac- kenzie Wallace highly extols the religious toleration of these Asiatics, adducing the following facts in proof: "The Grand Khan Kuyuk caused a Christian chapel to be erected near his domicile, and one of his successors, Kublai, was in the habit of pub- licly taking part in the Easter festivals. In 1261 the Khan of the Golden Horde al- lowed the Russians to found a bishopric in his capital, and several members of his family adopted Christianity. One of them founded a monastery and became a saint of the Russian Church. The Orthodox clergy were exempted from the poll tax. . . . Many generations later, when the property of the church was threatened by the autocratic power, refractory ecclesiastics contrasted the policy of the Orthodox sovereign with that of the 'Godless Tartars,' much to the advantage of the latter." 1 1 Russia, by Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace, 1905 edition, p. 200. CHAPTER IX SIBERIA In Siberia's wastes The ice-wind's breath Woundeth, like the toothed steel. Lost Siberia doth reveal Only blight and death. Blight and death alone, No summer shines. Night is interblent with day. In Siberia's wastes alway The blood blackens, the heart pines. In Siberia's wastes No tears are shed, For they freeze within the brain. Naught is felt but dullest pain, Pain acute, but dead. In Siberia's wastes Are sands and rocks. Nothing blooms of green or soft, But the snow-peaks rise aloft And the gaunt ice-blocks. James G. Mangon. Prairie and Forest Fires THE plains at evening were often lighted up by prairie fires, flaring up in the rank, dry prairie grass, and throwing a fitful, lurid glare amid the dense darkness of the 83 84 STRANGE SIBERIA night. Further along, in higher regions, bright flames were devouring the timber, evergreens, and white birch. White Birch Who would believe, if his own eyes did not witness the sight, that white birch formed so large a proportion of the vast forests of Siberia? The enthusiastic French geographer, Reclus, states that "toward the southeast, on the Chinese frontiers, the birch is encroaching on the indigenous species, and the natives regard this as a sure prog- nostic of the approaching rule of the Tsar." Whether this French scientist's notion is a case of chromatic aberration or not, the fu- ture will doubtless determine. At all events there seemed to be an unfailing supply of this choice wood. There seems ever to be a law of compensation in nature, as when the shores recede on one continent they at the same time upheave on the opposite. So the lotus, whose magnified petals crown the colossal columns of the mammoth temple of Karnak a temple three times as large as Saint Peter's at Rome the lotus, which, as food fit for the gods, was so relished by Ulysses and his crew, is now extinct in the land of the Pharaohs. But to-day it blooms in all its pristine luxuriance in the castle moats of Tokyo and elsewhere in Japan. We never were fortunate enough to join any SIBERIA 85 happy band of Lotus-Eaters in Egypt, but more than once in China have we tasted the lotus bean, served hot in an aromatic broth at feasts. Its inexpressibly delicious flavor still lingers, as a delightful dream, since it far excels birds' nest soup, sharks' fins 1 , sea- slugs, and other rare, costly dainties, so highly prized by Celestial epicures. The edelweiss, in quest of which the ar- dent lover risks limb and life in venturesome feat along inaccessible Alpine peaks, and which the chamois hunter, scaling slippery heights in hot pursuit of his agile prey, pauses a moment to pluck and thrust into his belt, to sell later to the languid tourists loitering around fashionable hotels below, is nowadays, as we have before observed, quite rare in Switzerland. However, these snowy white, irradiant stars bespangle many a broad steppe in Mongolia. Blossoming alone, Where earth's grief Is sorest. Similarly the beautiful white birch, famil- iarly associated with the American Indian and his canoe, is gradually disappearing from the American continent, but in Siberia the travelers on the transcontinental trains day by day pass dense forests of this grace- ful tree. What the bamboo is to the China- man the white birch is to the Russian. With its bark he tans his valuable Russian leather, while its oil gives it its pungent scent. Its 86 STRANGE SIBERIA leaves and sap, as well as its oil, possess certain medicinal qualities, prized as potent remedies in various chronic ailments, while its tough, coarse-grained wood serves as ex- cellent material for furniture and household utensils, as well as for fuel for his fire to cheer him with its blaze and warmth during the prolonged cold of winter. So limitless seems the supply around him that he does not hesitate to thatch his cabin with it. The wood of birch and other trees also serves as fuel for locomotives. Transbaikal Scenery Now and then we would look out of our car windows upon lovely scenery, just such cozy glades as would be picked out in our country for picnic parties. Sometimes our train would wind its way among mountains clothed with dark forests, the branches of whose trees were often trimmed with fanci- ful, snowy white drapery, as if artistically arranged there by the wand of some sylvan elf. Several places reminded us of wild forest districts in the Adirondacks in early spring. Rude, zigzag rail fences of the early Virginia type brought back pleasant mem- ories of the homeland, and particularly of that typical American, Abraham Lincoln, with his rail-splitting propensities. Here, as the train whirled past, we caught glimpses of just such bits of landscape as instinc- T I .\.NKI, WITH l.NSCKII'TION. "To TIIK ATLANTIC OCEAN" SIBERIA 87 lively recalled Elizabethtown on the Lake Champlain side of the Adirondacks and restful nooks as make a summer at North Conway, New Hampshire, so delightful. Generally, we were favored with fair weather. Only occasionally storms oc- curred, or a short-lived gale would go soughing through the forest, when the Wind, the grand old harper, smote His thunder-harp of pines. On the morning of the second day out from Harbin we passed through a little tunnel with big inscriptions. "To the Great Ocean" was inscribed on the frieze of its eastern entrance, while on the western side was "To the Atlantic Ocean." Customs Examination At three o'clock on the afternoon of the third day out our train pulled up at the station, Manchuria, near the border of Man- churia and Siberia. Here our passports and baggage were examined. All the trunks were carried from the baggage van into a commodious room at the station, where they were opened and subjected to a rigid and rough examination. Trays were lifted out without much ceremony, while the customs examiners, delving down to the bottom, caused considerable confusion and com- plaint. Forewarned of the nuisance of traveling "via Siberia" with trunks, we had 88 STRANGE SIBERIA all of our traveling effects packed in hand- bags, suitcases, and shawl-bundles nine in all. After finishing our overland trip at Saint Petersburg we discarded the handbags and repacked most of our possessions in a large Russian trunk. The hand-baggage was examined on the train. A Russian merchant from Vladivo- stok, who was traveling with his wife, and on whom we had been practicing broken Russian, tried to inveigle us to act as his accomplices in smuggling a box of cigars. After politely but firmly refusing, he later informed us that he had found somebody else to do that deed for him. For some rea- son or other our refusal to help him defraud the Russian government did not seem to make any perceptible difference in his at- titude toward us, for the next morning he was as affable and talkative as ever. When the customs examiners came to our coupe* one of them felt with his long cane under our seats, and with his hands searched be- neath the mattress of our sleeping berths. Suspicious of cigar-smuggling, one inspec- tor, noticing an outside pocket of my coat bulging a little, pointed to it, felt of it on the outside, and then requested me to show what was inside. So soon as a red-covered "Baedeker" was produced, he seemed per- fectly satisfied, promptly chalked the rest of our baggage, and speedily walked off, while SIBERIA 89 the faces of the bystanders were suffused with smiles. A few days later, before reach- ing Lake Baikal, at a station called Tan- choi, our baggage was again examined. This examination, occurring at half past two in the early morning, was most inconvenient, interfering with the slumbers of the pas- sengers, so that many preferred to remain dressed until this ordeal was over. So far as our party was concerned the examination was merely nominal. My wife and babe had retired several hours earlier and were sleep- ing. As the inspector peered into our coupe" I simply said, in Russian, "Americans, New York," which he at once comprehended and accepted at its full face value in lieu of any examination whatever. Chita Some careful observers, as William Oliver Greener, in his Greater Russia, are of the opinion that "east of the Baikal is Russia's greater and better half, because the land has been influenced from the West by the way of the cosmopolitan Far East." Cer- tain it is that great enterprise has been shown in this district. In the early morning, before arriving by the waters of Lake Baikal, our train pulled up at Chita, the flourishing capital of the Transbaikal District. Several German of- ficers, conveying troops from their fatherland 90 STRANGE SIBERIA for guard duty in north China, had traveled through this region the previous spring. Their letters, narrating the journey, had been published in a German newspaper at Tientsin. In these letters they gave glow- ing descriptions of Chita, whose romantic location and scenery reminded them of their beloved Heidelberg on the Neckar. Heidelberg, du schone Stadt, Wenn es ausgeregnet hat. Dr. J. Purvis Smith, of Peking, who had twice passed this way, regarded Chita as an ideal spot for a summer resort. Historically also Chita presents many interesting fea- tures. "Damskaya," or "Ladies Street," is the name of the main thoroughfare. It is so named in honor of those faithful wives of the nobility who followed into exile their patriotic husbands, called "dekabrists," be- cause on "December" 24, 1825, they were implicated in an uprising at Saint Peters- burg and banished to this remote Cossack post. The heroic devotion of Lady Trube- tskoy, Princess Maria Wolkhonsky, and the other Russian wives, who followed their ex- iled husbands on that long and painful jour- ney, has been immortalized by Nekrasov in his poem entitled "Russian Women." Chita boasts of its fine schools for boys and girls, a training school for midwives, a museum well worth visiting, a branch of the Russo- SIBERIA 91 China Bank, and various large government buildings. We had planned to stop over here, but as the only "Official Guide of the Siberian Rail- way," published a few years previously, stated, "Hotels are Tokyo and Bianchinsky, with rooms at two rubles per day. The rooms are bad," etc., we hesitated until we could ascertain whether we could secure more tempting accommodations. In reply to our inquiries, the Minister of Ways and Communications at Saint Petersburg recom- mended one hotel, the Russo-China Bank at Harbin another, and the old reliable firm of Kunst & Albers, at Vladivostok, still an- other. Afterward an American fellow traveler, who stopped off there and later met us at Irkutsk, told us that he had stopped at a still different hostelry and had found the service and cuisine excellent. Albazin The clear waters of the stream along the east bank on which the city of Chita is built have a trend northeastward and empty into the Amur River, not far from Albazin, a frontier post of the Russians, established in 1651, but destroyed by the Chinese in 1689. The Russian soldiers, captured dur- ing these border skirmishes^ were sent as prisoners to Peking. At the time Peter the Great dispatched a friendly mission to Pe- 92 STRANGE SIBERIA king they found a Russian colony in the northeast quarter of the city, composed of those Russian prisoners. These were even- tually formed into a Russian company a body of foreign soldiers somewhat analogous to the papal Swiss Bodyguard at Rome, Italy. In China's capital this Russian com- pany was attached to the Imperial Body- guard of the illustrious Chinese emperor, Kang-Hsi, that wise, liberal, and enterpris- ing Manchu monarch, whose Chinese dic- tionary is the rich thesaurus for all subse- quent Chinese lexicographers. Less than three hundred miles further down the Amur, directly opposite the mouth of its tributary, Kumara, on a prominent projecting cliff, has been erected a huge iron cross, visible miles and miles away. This Christian emblem is inscribed with the Christian sentiment forming the opening sentence in the address of Baron Korft, "Power lies not in force but in love." Sad irony of fate! Less than one hundred miles further downstream lies the city of Blago- veshchenk, the scene of the ruthless slaughter of Chinese by Russians in 1900. On its way from Chita toward Lake Baikal our train halted at Yerchne-Udinsk (or Upper Udinsk), entrancingly located at the junction of the Uda and Selenga Rivers. Here are the headquarters of the Trans- baikal Mountain District and a branch of SIBERIA 93 the Russo-China Bank. This is the strategic point where the Peking-Kalgan Air Line will probably unite with the Trans-Siberian Railway. Trains are now regularly running (in eight hours' time) between Peking and Kalgan, and the line is being projected via the sacred city of Urga and the trading post, Kiachta, to this city. A glance at the map will show what a great saving in dis- tance will be made by using this "Path of the Cossack" the old caravan route across the desert of Gobi so long traversed by camels laden with tea from China to Rus- sia. 1 Fifteen miles further downstream the railway crosses the Selenga on a bridge 1,816 feet long. From Verchne-Udinsk the traveler may proceed by steamer, or by post in a tarantass southward some one hundred miles to Selenginsk, a place hallowed with sacred memories. Here lived and labored from 1818 to 1841 two noble but almost un- known English missionaries, William Stally- brass and Edward Swan. These pioneers of the cross did heroic, faithful work among the Mongols, and translated the entire Bible into the Mongolian tongue. A faint idea of the inherent difficulty of this language may be had by bearing in mind that our simple English word "for" w r ith causal meaning is written in Mongol with eleven syllables "Tere-yagano-tola-hemebesu." Displaying 1 The Russian Road to China, by Lindon Bates, Jr. 94 STRANGE SIBERIA the same praiseworthy assiduity and faith- fulness as actuated Robert Morrison in China, these two Christian pioneers cleared the way for Gilmour and all later mission- aries among the Mongols. All through the night the Imperial State Express kept forging its way over and across, up and down the snarled, twisted slopes of the Transbaikal range. When our train came to a standstill at Missovaia scarcely had the faintest rays of the rising sun begun to throw a glow, as a delicately tinted gossamer veil, over the snow-crowned mountain summits. Those towering peaks stood with closed ranks, like gaunt, grim giants, guarding, as their willing captive, the fair form of this lovely, though oft fickle, lake, now calmly reposing at their feet. Missovaia lies directly on the shores of Lake Baikal, whose surface is fifteen hundred feet above the sea level. Here was opened before our eyes a magnificent panorama of superb loveliness. The placid surface of the great lake reflected in the bright morning light the snow-capped mountains and the floating clouds in the blue sky above. After the Great Lakes of North America and Victoria Nyanza in Africa, Lake Baikal is the largest body of fresh water on the globe. An idea of its immense size may be gained by comparison. It is as long as Eng- land, and in places it is more than a mile ICE BREAKER. "BAIKAL." ox LVKI: BATKAI. SIBERIA 95 deep. Its clear, greenish waters are well stocked with fish, but it has the unique dis- tinction of being the only body of fresh water in which seals live and sport. Before the railway around the lake was opened, in 1905, the traffic was carried over the lake in sledges on the ice, or by large ice-breaking steamers, to and from the harbor of Baikal on the opposite shore. The two ''ice-breakers," named respectively Baikal and Angara, are most powerful steamers, built in England by the well-known firm of Armstrong. The ice-breaker Baikal is large enough to carry twenty-five ordinary Eu- ropean freight cars, while its titanic en- gines, developing 3,750 horse-power, crush into atoms or thrust on either side any ice presumptuous enough to oppose its progress. The sinuous southern border of Lake Baikal, in the character of its massive, moun- tains, whose rugged cliffs and precipitous spurs boldly advance into the deep, allowing only here and there scanty, narrow, sandy beaches, resembles the Italian Kiviera from Pisa to Genoa and beyond. The roadbed is well ballasted on solid foundations. All reports of quicksands, causing the railway embankment to fall down in times of heavy rains, were found to be mere myths, if not baseless cavils of an enemy. Extensive and expensive rock-cutting was in evidence. Between Missovaia and Baikal the last 96 STRANGE SIBERIA station of the railway bordering the lake our train skirted along the indented, pic- turesque coast, plunging in and out of some eighty tunnels. Any tourist who takes the railway line along the curving, rocky coast of the Ligurian Sea may have the same kind of experience in passing through a similar succession of tunnels. So numerous are the tunnels along that Italian coast that even now memory conjures up vivid pictures of two American children amusing themselves and at the same time practicing Chinese and French by counting alternately in these dif- ferent tongues the rapidly passing tunnels as they came along in quick succession. Siberian Waterways On the crisp morning of May 20, while we were stopping at Baikal, the ice, broken into large and small cakes, was still floating on the surface of the lake. At this station the railway left the lake and ran along the left bank of the Angara Kiver to Irkutsk, but this river continues one thousand miles further on its tortuous course, until it pours its waters into the broad Yenesei. The waters of the Angara, as it issues from Lake Baikal, are as swift and clear as those of the Rhone, where they rush forth out of Lake Leman at Geneva, Switzerland. It may not be generally known that the finest and most extensive system of inland SIBERIA 97 navigation in the world is to be found in Siberia. Vessels can go from Lake Baikal via the Angara to the Yenesei and thence up one of its tributaries, the Kass, and pass through a canal to the Ket River, a tributary of the Obi, and thence by the Obi, Irtysh, and Tobol Rivers to the very base of the Ural Mountains. This inland water route is only one part of the 15,000 miles of inland navigation which Siberia possesses. These mighty rivers, freighted with steamers and other craft, transport men and goods north- ward to the Arctic Ocean and southward to the mines, grazing grounds, and fastnesses of the Altai Mountains. Strange as it may seem, official statistics show that far more immigrants are conveyed in Siberia by steamers than by train. Put- nam- Weale states: "Great crowds come by steamer up the rivers Obi and Irtysh, and in a lesser degree the Yenesei. From 1897 to 1904 the beginning of the war it is cal- culated that 200,000 were annually entering the country in this way, while the number of those conveyed by railway sometimes ex- ceeded 100,000." Anyone aware of these facts need not be surprised that the keen- sighted, though defeated warrior, General Kuropatkin, in his painstaking treatise on the Russo-Japanese war, points out with the eye of a Moltke as one of five essentials for success in any future war in the Far East, 98 STRANGE SIBERIA "to prepare the waterways of Siberia for the movement of heavy freight from west to east." A delightful ride of forty-one miles in the wide, fertile Angara valley, dotted with vil- lages and farmsteads, brought us to Glas- gow, as the railway suburb opposite Irkutsk is called. We alighted and entered the large railway station, modeled after the usual Eu- ropean type, with commodious restaurants of the first, second, and third-class, and numer- ous offices and rooms for railway business, besides newspaper stands, where periodicals and picture postals were displayed for sale. All around us were officials railway and military porters, passengers, immigrants, and onlookers. Locomotives were whistling, bells ringing, and trains being shunted. Near by were yards, fencing in lumber and other kinds of freight. On the other side of the Angara, in the near distance, loomed up the domes, towers, and pinnacles of the city of Irkutsk, luring us thither. The porter of Hotel Metropole, already notified by tele- gram, greeted us and engaged two droskies. After piling our nine "articles de voyage" in one vehicle and assisting us into the other, he sped ahead on his bicycle. Our droskies followed at a slower pace, and in crossing over the Angara on the pontoon bridge stopped a few moments to pay the customary toll of a few kopeks. SIBERIA 99 The icy cold, emerald waters of the An- gara rather chill and repel the beholder, as do those of the Saguenay near Quebec, for rivers, like men, seem to possess a person- ality of their own. The Rhine and the Hud- son attract by their winsomeness. We love to linger along their banks and find rest in their peace and beauty. The Saguenay and the Angara, on the other hand, although mighty and majestic, with deep and power- ful current, rather repel. We may admire, but we do not love. CHAPTER X IRKUTSK The police are few, escaped convicts and ticket- of-leave men many. In Irkutsk, and all towns east of it, the stranger should not walk after dark. If a carriage cannot be got, as is often the case, the only way is to tramp noisily along the planked walk. Be careful in making crossings, and do not stop, or the immense mongrel mastiffs, turned loose into the streets, as guards, will attack. To walk in the middle of the road is to court attack from the garroters, with which Siberia abounds. Brad- shaw's Through Routes to the Chief Cities of the World, latest edition, 1907, under "Irkutsk." Safety CORROBORATING this quotation from Brad- shaw the vade-mecum of every loyal British traveler but giving more minute particu- lars, writes William Oliver Greener as fol- lows: "Siberian towns, even capitals like Tomsk, Irkutsk, and Kharbarovsk, are squalid, mean, and unkempt. The streets are badly illuminated, and after dark are roamed by great yard-dogs mastiffs and other fierce brutes which are trained to take little or no attention of the few pe- destrians who tramp noisily along the side- walks, but approach and commence to attack if one hesitates but so long as necessary to 100 IRKUTSK 101 determine whether to turn to right or left. The dogs of Constantinople are lapdogs in comparison to these savage mongrels turned loose in all Siberian towns and villages after dark. Crime is prevalent in all Siberian towns; murders, assaults, outrages, and burglary are the common forms. Garroting is the usual device of the footpad. With a short stick or a noose of twine, he approaches his victim stealthily from the rear, slips the cord over his head, and strangles the man, woman, or child, who is unable to utter a cry. Then he strips the body of everything likely to lead to its identification and decamps. If there is an accomplice he blocks the stranger's advance or engages his attention at the right moment." 1 At Vladivostok, years ago, we gladly gave the right of way to such massive canine brutes, which were like Vice, ... a monster of so frightful mien, As, to be hated, needs but to be seen. Grains of truth are doubtless to be found in these heaps of exaggeration. Still the patent fact remains that during the last decade Siberia, as well as all the Far East, has been far from stagnant. Candor, however, compels one to ask, "Are Irkutsk, Tomsk, and other Siberian cities the only unsafe spots on the surface of the globe?" Have Berlin, London, and San 1 Greater Russia, 1904, pp. 116, 117. 102 STRANGE SIBERIA Francisco no toughs, thugs, or hoodlums? Paris, we know, was recently terrorized by the vitriol-throwing Apaches on her boule- vards. Andrew H. Green, "the father of Greater New York," was shot dead near his own residence on Manhattan Island, and in this year of grace, 1910, a banker, Van Norden, was the victim of one of the most daring highway robberies in the annals of crime, and that by two female outlaws. Surely, aristocratic Dame Knickerbocker need not hold up her skirts in Pharisaic aloofness. "There has been no time in many years past in which crimes of violence have been more rife than they have been in recent years in the oldest and most thickly populated parts of this community. Take, for in- stance, the community in and about the city of New York. Murders, maimings, assaults with deadly weapons, dynamite bomb ex- plosions, burglaries, highway robberies, cases of arson particularly in crowded tenement houses the shootings of wives by drunken husbands, and of girls by degenerates whom they have refused to marry; in short, every kind of violent crime has occurred in and about the city to an unprecedented extent." 1 Vigilance and alertness are valuable as- sets everywhere, whether in New York or 1 Judge Holt, of the United States District Court of New York. In The Independent, New York, August 11, 1910. IRKUTSK 103 Xijni-Xovgorod, Tomsk, or Timbuctoo. Each place has its peculiar dangers. If prom- enading at night in Naples or Irkutsk may allure the stiletto or garroter's rope, simple caution would compel the tourist to restrict his promenading to the daytime. The summer days in Siberia and Russia are so lengthened that we could read books or papers by daylight even later than nine o'clock in the evening, and we had to be very careful to darken the windows or rig up an umbrella to keep the merry sunshine from awakening little Marion even as early as three in the morning. With this supera- bundance of daylight any rational traveler ought to be satisfied and not grumble be- cause discretion literally emphasizes the scriptural advice, "Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you." One night, during our stay at Irkutsk, a physician received an urgent call from a patient between one and two o'clock in the morning. While he was hastily walking to- ward the patient's home a footpad attacked him with a revolver. Instantly the physician fired his own revolver, and was fortunate enough, with aim sufficiently true, to kill his assailant. By the simple policy of doing our sight-seeing in the daytime, and by keep- ing away from notoriously dangerous locali- ties, we were not anywhere molested during our entire stav in Siberia and Russia. 104 STRANGE SIBERIA Hotel Metropole The hotel porter, preceding our two dros- kies, as we rode over the Angara toward our hotel, did not dash ahead to clear the way, like a sandaled "betto" through the narrow streets of Kyoto, nor like a gayly sashed "sais" in the crowded alleys of Cairo. No such precaution was necessary, for the streets that hour seemed to be deserted, with the exception of a few pedestrians here and there. It needs a holiday to make those streets alive with men, women, and children. On our arrival at Hotel Metropole we were ushered through a hallway, past a public telephone, and upstairs to choice rooms on the first floor. The regulation "icons," or sacred metallic pictures high up in a corner of each room, welcomed us as visitors. The icon in the parlor represented the Madonna and Babe, and the other the adult Christ. The apartments, commanding a good view of the street and beyond, looked commodious and cheery as the bright sunshine was flood- ing them with its light and warmth. We were delighted to find awaiting us a home mail with late copies' of the Outlook and the Evening Post of New York, and other periodicals. One letter from Connecticut had been only twenty-four days on its way, which made us realize that we were gradu- ally nearing the homeland. HOTEL METROPOLE, IRKUTSK LOG-SI,IDIXG IN* PARK. TOMSK IRKUTSK 105 Our bedroom was furnished with two beds, a wardrobe, a chest of drawers, and an in- genious automatic washstand. The last mentioned article we found to be a common piece of furniture in Russian hotels every- where. This washstand had a marble slab and bowl on the top, and above at the back a marble-faced reservoir filled with pure water and provided with a faucet, while hidden underneath was a pail for waste water. Both rooms were equipped with electric lights. Our adjoining parlor had its floor covered with oilcloth, over which was spread a large rug. The room was elabo- rately furnished with handsomely uphol- stered red-plush furniture, a sofa and chairs, large and small, a tall pier-glass between the two front windows, lace curtains, a bric-a- brac stand, and two tables. One was a good- sized writing table, on which lay a large sheet of blue blotting paper, with inkstand and pens, and also a fancy movable electric reading lamp, while the other was our pri- vate dining table, covered with a white table- cloth. Mention must also be made of the typical Russian stove, which stood in a corner near the door. This was made of brick, faced with white glazed tiles, and reached nearly to the ceiling. The stove door was in the hallway, where the fire is made and the heat regulated. Two aspects of Siberian hotel manage- 106 STRANGE SIBERIA ment surprised us. One was the elegant and often luxurious furniture and furnishings, and the other the lack of ordinary necessi- ties in the bedroom. No soap and no sheets, except as extras. In this hotel only one sheet was provided for each bed. How to manage this single sheet was a puzzle al- most as difficult to us as were the two sheets to Booker T. Washington, which he found upon his bed on his first evening after his "sweeping" entrance examination at Hamp- ton Institute. The first night, he tells us, he slept under both sheets, the second on top of both, until, noticing how the other students did, he discovered the golden mean, which has been his habit ever since. If we might hazard a Yankee's right, we would guess that the Russian traveler would pre- pare himself for his night's rest with this single sheet in the same way that the popular ballad of "The Wake of Flannigan" says that the Irish mourners did for their late friend's last long rest "They wrapped him up in a clean, white sheet." We, however, were fastidious and extravagant enough to de- mand two sheets for each bed and slept soundly, as in the good old-fashioned way at home. We found by experience that in Si- beria it is expensive to keep clean. Twenty cents United States gold is the regulation charge for one small cake of soap. For- tunately, we "had taken time by the fetlock," IRKUTSK 107 as the Irishman said, since we have provided ourselves with a sufficient supply of a well- known soap. Here, as throughout Siberia, a placard fastened on the wall of our room indicated in Kussian and French the fixed prices ac- cording to law for the rooms and for eata- bles. Here we paid daily two rubles for our bedroom and three rubles for our parlor. No extra charge was made for serving meals in the rooms. The exterior of this hotel had a curious primitive appearance, for it was built of logs, notched at the points of juncture and projecting at their ends from each corner of the building. A kind of moss, served as oakum, pressed tightly between the layers of logs to keep out the intense cold of the long winter months. Irkutsk also boasts of two other hotels on the main street erected within a few years. These are not built of logs on the outside and furnished modernly on the in- side, like Hotel Metropole, but they are of modern construction throughout and would be sightly structures in any city. A chance acquaintance an American commercial traveler who had stopped off at Chita, met us a few days later at .Irkutsk and wanted us to visit him at the Grand Hotel, where he was staying. He could not speak Rus- sian, and so desired us to help him ask the 108 STRANGE SIBERIA hotel management to find an interpreter for him. There was no person at the hotel who could speak German, French, or English. Finally, from another section of the city, a seedy-looking specimen of humanity was se- cured who knew a little German and proved of some assistance. Lutheran Church Beautifully located near the heart of the city, where two broad avenues meet, stands the attractive Lutheran church, with its graceful spire pointing heavenward. It is surrounded by a wood-embowered court in- closed by a wall of brick and iron grating. Away out here, in far-away Siberia, it looks just like many a similar one in Saxony or the lower Rhine country. One did not need much imagination to believe that it had been bodily transported here, as they say was the case of ''The Sacred Staircase" from Pilate's Court at Jerusalem to Rome, Italy. "Dem Name Werde Gelobet," in large letters, in- scribed on the arch over the front cruciform window, ought to make any true Deutscher reverently doff his hat and stand still and let grateful thoughts of his distant father- land float soulfully over his memory. This church we could easily view from our win- dows, as it was only a few steps away. It had the distinction of possessing the only church organ in all Siberia. This is not //HV LUTHERAN CHURCH AT IRKUTSK IRKUTSK 109 such a unique distinction as at first sight might appear, for we have to remember that in all the multitude of Orthodox Greek cathedrals and churches no organ or other wind or stringed instruments accompany the human voice. Only with vocal music, melodiously rich beyond description, does the devout adoration of the worshipers soar heavenward. On Sunday the music, which formed a large part of the service in this Lutheran church, was very fine. At the com- munion service four persons were admitted and the Lord's Supper administered. After we had scrubbed off some of the dust and dirt of travel, and had refreshed our- selves with a simple luncheon, we walked over to the parsonage of the Lutheran church. A neat servant girl opened the door and ushered us into the parlor, where soon appeared the pastor, who gave us a most cordial welcome. He informed us that the previous year four British gentlemen from China had stopped over a few days at Irkutsk. We ascertained afterward that he had written the section of Baedeker's Russia referring to Irkutsk, for he showed us his copy of Baedeker, on whose fly-leaf were the words, "With the compliments of the Editor." Al- though a very busy man and frequently in- terrupted by callers, he showed us every possible attention and courtesy, so that 110 STRANGE SIBERIA through his assistance we were enabled to obtain a fair idea of the sights and insights of this rapidly growing inland city. He estimates from official sources that the pres- ent population is in the neighborhood of 100,000. This Lutheran clergyman is a native of the Baltic provinces, had studied at the Uni- versity of Dorpat, and had lived eight years in Irkutsk, where every Sunday he holds services in three languages German, Let- tish, and Esthonian. Besides these tongues and the Russian, he had often to talk with people in several other languages and dia- lects. Every summer his work takes him several months away from his home on his tours to his mission stations among the rude tribes along the Amur. At the time of our stay at Irkutsk his wife and two daughters were on their way to visit their former western home. The City Irkutsk is the residence of a governor- general and also of an archbishop. Among its institutions, besides churches, schools, and museums, it has civil and military hos- pitals and several orphanages, one of which is especially provided for the children of exiles. Less than fifty miles to the north- west is one of the largest prisons in Siberia. It is named Alexandrovskaya, and sometimes STATUE OF AI.EXAXPKI: Til AT IRKUTSK IRKUTSK 111 confines within its walls 200,000 convicts, waiting to be drafted for work in the mines. Irkutsk has also several learned and philan- thropic societies, including a branch of the Imperial Society of Saint Petersburg, whose chief object is to prevent abuses in prison discipline. By nature Irkutsk is most favorably situ- ated, where the Irkut empties into the en- circling Angara, not far from the great in- land Lake Baikal. It possesses railway com- munication east and west by the Trans- Siberian line, and, being the emporium for the rich Vitim gold mines and the Amur trade and travel on the north and northeast, as well as levying tribute on the increasing commerce from the Pacific via Vladivostok, and from Korea and China via Manchuria, Irkutsk has a great and prosperous future opening before it. Bolsche Kaya Most of the principal buildings, as the Museum, Opera House, modern hotels, and large stores, are on the "Bolsche Kaya," or "Great Street." At the head of this thor- oughfare stands a colossal bronze statue of Tsar Alexander III, raised aloft upon a red Scotch granite pedestal. This statue is near the edge of a favorite park along the banks of the Angara. Here on Sundays and other holidays the populace love to ramble and 112 STRANGE SIBERIA rest under the trees on the benches. In front of this statue a Russian soldier paces back and forth on guard. We were informed that every winter a large wooden casing is built around the statue and kept heated, so as to prevent the surface of the granite from peeling or splitting off by the action of the severe cold. Museum The Museum happened to be closed for repairs on our arrival at Irkutsk, but through the kind mediation of this Luther- an clergyman, who proved a friend indeed, an hour was appointed when, under the guid- ance of the director, we could look over its valuable collections. Fortunately for us, most of the exhibits were labeled in both Latin and Russian. This urbane director, wearing shaggy locks and a patriarchal beard, and attired in a long, heavy robe, with his trousers tucked inside his top-boots, looked like a veritable "Old Man of the Woods." His geniality was evidenced by his incessant, eager efforts to explain his be- loved curios, but the lifeless Latin helped us more, and most of all the lucid explana- tions later given by our German-speaking friend. On the second story were extensive collec- tions of utensils and implements pertaining to the primitive ages of man, systematically IRKUTSK 113 arranged and labeled, and illustrated by life- sized figures of Buriats, Tulugus, Aleutians, ct al. Some of these wore bead-bedecked leather garments, like our American Indians. What especially interested us, however, were specimens of rhinoceroses, elephants, and other ancient mammoths, found in these frozen regions, especially in the Lena valley, not many miles north. The curious appear- ances of long, straggling hairs on the hides of these huge antediluvian monsters at- tracted our attention. We were told that the flesh on these mammoths was so solidly fro- zen and well preserved that when thawed dogs devoured it with a relish. Where these mammoths were found is "a region of alluvial soil, but spread out in those vast quivering morasses, which form the urmans of Siberia. Even to wild ani- mals these urmans are forbidden ground. The nimble-stepping, broad-hoofed reindeer can sometimes cross them safely in the sum- mer time, but most other large animals at- tempting to do so would be quickly engulfed. This may be a partial explanation of the remains of mammoth and rhinoceros, which are so abundant and so widely diffused through those northern marshlands of Si- beria. When an ice-pack breaks down a river-bank, or floods tear up a frozen marsh, or the summer thaw penetrates a little more deeply than usual into the ground, some of 114 STRANGE SIBERIA these antediluvian monsters are sure to be exposed. In many cases they are so fresh and well preserved, with their dark, shaggy hair and under-wool of reddish brown, their tufted ears and long, curved tusks, that all the aborigines, and even some of the Russian settlers, persist in the belief that they are specimens of animals which still live, bur- rowing under ground, like moles, and which die the instant they are admitted to light. There is a great market for these tusks at Yakutsk on the Lena, from which they find their way not only to the workshops of Eu- rope, but even to the ivory carvers of Can- ton." 1 Most mysterious and awful is the alchemy in nature's laboratory. Just to think of it! Eons earlier, wild elephants, rhinoceroses, and kindred mammoths roamed freely over these Siberian plains, as they now do in equatorial Uganda, hunted by Roosevelt and other modern Nimrods. Russian Holidays Russia is great, especially in holidays. Holidays in the Russian soil or climate at- tain an abnormally rank and luxuriant growth, as 1 of the Mesozoic Age. Perchance the phylogeny of Russian holidays may be deduced from the same paleozoic period, as 1 Four Thousand Miles Across Siberia, by Charles Wenyon, M.D., pp. 234, 235, 236. IRKUTSK 115 the paleontological monster mammals col- lected from the paludal plains of polar Si- beria and preserved in her museums. If this hypothesis be correct, then, like the marsu- pial kangaroo, whose former companions are extinct, leaving them behind as living sur- vivals, they certainly deserve exact and ex- haustive investigation. Would it not be wise for the government to establish in the University of Tomsk a new chair for such an interesting study? Transient travelers, such as we were, dare to hope that, like the celebrated ''Last Rose of Summer," those Russian holidays are numbered. At all events they turned out to be a great nui- sance, especially when a traveler needs to call upon his banker or to make needful pur- chases. How long would an American public refrain from grumbling if all stores in New York were closed not only on Sun- days but also often on three other days of the week? This was the case during our stay in Irkutsk. Wednesday celebrated the Tsar's birthday, Thursday was Ascension Day, and Saturday commemorated the Re- moval of the Bones of Saint Nicholas. "Who cares a fig for 'Old Nick' or his dry bones?" some one may ask. Doubtless a mighty chorus of children, with vivid visions of Christmas joy, would vigorously protest against any intended slight to their patron saint, but their exasperated elders would 116 STRANGE SIBERIA gladly eliminate this holiday and most em- phatically extenuate any apparent profana- tion of Saint Nicholas. America, it has been argued for years, has needed more holidays, but not Russia. There a rigid excision is demanded. "Business be- fore pleasure" is certainly not a Russian maxim so long as nearly one half of the three hundred and sixty-five days on the Russian calendar are officially devoted to idleness, often culminating in beastly drunk- enness. A Russian holiday is a pathetic sight. The joyous spontaneity of most other races is missing. National Sesames The popular sayings of a country often indicate a national characteristic. "Step lively, please!" of the New York subway at once shows American push. "Man-man- tsou!" "Walk slowly!" of the Chinese in- dicates the leisurely dignity of the Wise Men of the East. "Mariana," or "To-morrow," of the Spaniard betrays the decided prefer- ence of the hidalgo for his beloved siesta before exerting himself. So Russia has its significant, characteristic phrase. "Nich- evo!" or "No matter!" ever recurring on Slavic lips, reveals the inert, gloomy, credu- lous temperament of Russia's grim-visaged millions. How can a people ever be really happy when a system of espionage, like a IRKUTSK 117 threatening thundercloud, ever hangs over them, while Ignorance, with her twin sister, Superstition, darkens their sky? Nowhere in the vast Muscovite empire does one see the hearty good nature of the Chinese or Anglo-Saxon, nor the spontaneous vivacity of the Japanese or French. Melancholy is as plainly marked on the Russian physiog- nomy as are the white streaks to Siva or Vishnu daubed on the forehead of the fana- tic Hindu. Spasmodic hilarity, stimulated by governmental vodka, reacts and depresses the moujik, as does fire water the aboriginal Aino of Japan and the Indian of America. Search as we may the musty archives of the past, still nowhere in history can be found such a record of high moral purpose, so persistently and consistently pursued, as China furnishes to-day. China is hero- ically stamping out the opium curse, re- gardless of the annual deficit of millions to her revenue. Nowhere in Siberia does one see anything approaching the jolly disposi- tion so characteristic of the American Negro, whose good-nature bubbles up and flows over, even in the midst of hard toil. On the Mis- sissippi, when the large steamer hugs the bank for fresh supplies of firewood, the African deckhand rushes ashore, seizes his load, quickly returns and piles it up high on the steamer's deck. All the while drops of sweat drip from his brow. Still he keeps on 118 STRANGE SIBERIA singing and keeping time to some popular plantation melody. In the evening this same exuberant happiness vents itself in an ex- temporized concert. "Mister, let me tell you, When the music starts, Hum, hum, I can't keep still. There's a feeling in my feet Like Saint Vitus dance, Although it am against my will. I am trying mighty hard For to concentrate. Hum, hum, what shall I do? The music sets me going Like a jumping-jack. I've got to dance Until the band gets through." This national trait of sluggish, apathetic sadness, so universal and tragic, weighs heavily upon the dense, dull mass of hu- manity throughout the Russian dominions. Even the gentle-spirited Whittier feels forced to write : Fell spider of the North, Stretching thy great feelers forth, Within whose web, the freedom dies Of nations eaten up, as flies. Finland But what shall we say of the acute pangs of woe now gripping the hearts of the wide- awake, liberty-loving nation of Finland? Their constitutional rights more highly prized than life itself have been ruthlessly IRKUTSK 119 trampled under foot. Is it possible that to- day lives any loyal Finn who could find even a particle of pure joy in any one of these superfluous Kussian holidays? Fast days, when they might call upon the God of na- tions for vengeance, they would gladly wel- come. Finland's lament rends the heavens : If I forget thee, O Helsingfors, Let my right hand forget her cunning! If I do not remember thee, Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth! If I prefer not Helsingfors above my chief joy! Shopping Toward the further end of the popular "Great Street" we came to a crowded depart- ment store, employing some two hundred salesmen and women. Here we purchased a few useful and ornamental articles, such as fancy fans and a genuine Russian leather pocketbook. This latter souvenir, whether stuffed full of bank notes and coin or not, is a thing of beauty and highly prized by its owner even to this day. Marshall Jewell, when American Minister to Russia, found out in 1873 the secret process of making this celebrated Russian leather. The skin used is that of goats or sheep. The leather is usually black or red. The latter shade is produced by alum and a decoction of Brazil and sandalwood ; the former by a solution of iron and sandalwood. Russian leather is 120 STRANGE SIBERIA very tough, pliant, and waterproof, and has a peculiar faculty for resisting moisture and ravages of insects. The strong, pene- trating odor is due to the oil of birch used in its preparation. Shops KOJAKH (pronounced "Kodaky") was a frequent sign before many stores, showing that this East- man product from Eochester, New York, was busy having its films imprinted with many strange Siberian sights. The clarity of the atmosphere, resembling that of Denver, Colo- rado, is especially adapted to photography, as was evidenced by the numerous photo studios, exhibiting excellent specimens of the art. Fruit stores, generally managed by Ar- menians, were located in cellars, where the perishable produce from distant, milder climes would not be so readily damaged by the weather. This fruit, for the most part, comes by rail from Astrakhan, Caucasia, Crimea, and other districts of south Kussia. We found the apples, oranges, and figs ex- cellent, but not cheap. Fine-flavored, crisp apples cost five cents or more (United States IRKUTSK 121 gold) apiece. We were commenting upon the fine quality of this fruit in the hearing of our clerical friend, when he asked us whether we had noticed the fruit trees in his yard near the church. He stated that those trees blossomed every summer, but the sum- mer season is so short that the frost nipped the apples when they were no larger than peas. At Irkutsk we did not succeed in finding any "Saint Charles Cream," but bought two tins of "Henri Nestle's Viking Unsweetened Milk," made at Copenhagen, Denmark. The price of this purchase here, as in many an- other store in Siberia and Russia, was indi- cated by the familiar click and figures of a "Cash Register," made at Dayton, Ohio. Street Strolls One bright morning we sauntered south- ward down a broad avenue, opening on the Great Street, and came in front of a large w r ooden arch, erected in the middle of the thoroughfare. Overhead we read this in- scription, ''This way to the Great Ocean," with the dates 1858* and 1891. Evidently it had served its day by pointing out the way to adventurous pioneers, before the iron road binding the Pacific with the Atlantic was started in 1891. Climbing up a steep ascent, a short distance beyond this memorial arch, we came to a cemetery with its mortuary 122 STRANGE SIBERIA chapel. Looking around, we saw a funeral procession just beginning to enter the in- closure. Women carrying the cover of a coffin, piled with flowers, preceded a party of men, carrying the bier, which also was covered with flowers. All soon climbed up the broad steps into the chapel, where candles were lit and the last rites performed by the officiating priest. Another morning we strolled up a fre- quented street in a northerly direction, which brought us to the massive Cathedral and the extensive square around it. Its northern side is flanked by a beautiful park, furnish- ing an outlook on where the river Irkut, from which the city takes its name, empties into the Angara. On our way we passed a number of school buildings and academies, various government buildings, a brick Ro- man Catholic church, and numerous Greek churches. We entered a number of these on Sundays, holidays, and at other times. Church Music Generally, in Greek churches the choir is composed entirely of male voices, but we entered one Greek church here where there were female voices of wonderful sweetness and compass, but in all Greek church choirs vocal music is an integral unifying element, permeating the entire public worship. This Greek church music bv trained human voices IRKUTSK 123 possesses a distinctive quality of deep, fas- cinating richness, irresistibly thrilling. In its way it stands in a class apart by itself. These singers dauntlessly take up the gaunt- let of "Voice and Verse" thrown down by the poet : Blest pair of Sirens, pledges of heaven's joys; Sphere-born harmonious sisters, Voice and Verse! Wed your divine sounds and mixed power employ, Dead things with inbreathed sense able to pierce And to our high-raised phantasy present That undisturbed song of pure concent Aye sung before the sapphire-colored throne To Him, that sits thereon, With saintly shout and solemn jubilee. 1 The quality of this music is unapproachable. The very select and exceedingly popular Bach motets, which draw the crowds to the Saint Thomas Church at Leipzig, the highly lauded sacred music during Holy Week in the vast cathedral at Toledo, Spain, or in the Sistine Chapel, Rome, fail to surpass it. Its motif varies radically from that prev- alent in the short, choppy songs and hymns of so many of our Protestant services, which are often mere Short swallow-flights of song, that dip Their wings in tears and fly away. On the contrary, these uplifting, full notes of the Russian church service are broad 1 Milton, Ode, "At a Solemn Muslck." 124 STRANGE SIBERIA mighty sweeps, as of eagles in their skyward, cloud-piercing flights, once enjoyed, ever afterward cherished. In one Greek church referred to at Irkutsk the service was in progress, where the sing- ing of a remarkably sweet-voiced choir, as of devout nuns, was deliciously rich. In im- agination we could almost fancy that these pure souls were being wafted to celestial heights. There they seemed to join the angelic choirs, singing "the song of Moses and of the Lamb." \Ye could almost catch their high, fluid notes of loving adoration to the Lamb of God, ravishingly reverberat- ing through the corridors of heaven. As, entranced, we listened to these rhapsodies of song, it seemed as though their voices blended in ecstatic antiphony, as in days past did their sisters, who on the banks of the Ked Sea, under the direction of Miriam, praised Jehovah, all harmonizing in the deep diapason of the multitudinous male voices in emphasizing with great joy the power of God. Their wondrously rapturous strains rose in perfect unison, higher and fuller, until all heaven resounded with the overwhelmingly sonorous and ineffably sublime Hallelujah Chorus, "as it were the voice of a great mul- titude and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunders, saying, Hallelujah! For the Lord God, Omnipotent, relgneth!" IRKUTSK 125 Churches In another church we came upon a few poorly clad scrub-women hard at work, sweeping and dusting. They would first cross themselves, kneel down and kiss the sacred pictures, and afterward cleanse them, illustrating George Herbert's lines: A servant with this clause Makes drudgery divine; Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws Makes that and th* action fine. Inside this church, not far from the en- trance, was a large case in which were displayed various sacred objects for sale. We bought a package of gilded card icons of the Madonna, as souvenirs. The extensive Cathedral Square is the rendezvous for cheap-jack shows, wild-beast exhibitions, merry-go-rounds, candy-sellers, and knickknack hawkers of every description. One part of this square is reserved for the Cossack cavalry. Here can be witnessed daring equestrian exercises of these troopers, sights especially exciting to the small boy, and always drawing large crowds. The hurdle practice of these Cossack horsemen might well challenge the equine feats of Roosevelt's Rough Riders. Schools The commodious school buildings show how highly Irkutsk prizes education. Addi- 126 STRANGE SIBERIA tional proof is adduced from the fact that this city sets aside ten per cent of its annual income for educational purposes. On one walk we passed a bevy of school- girls, chaperoned by their teacher, marching along the sidewalk. They were all dressed in a uniform and wore white aprons and black felt hats. Many peasant women, whom we saw on the street, wore aprons of black or in colors, and all had their hair neatly wrapped in scarfs, usually white. Excursion to Monastery One day the air was so stifling hot that the least exertion proved a weariness to the flesh, and, since we were warmly dressed, brought out the perspiration. At the same time, as if to add insult to injury, a regular North-China dust-storm overtook us, pursu- ing us with relentless fury, as if riotously exulting in its successful effort to find us so far away from our Chinese home and wan- tonly scattering its fine dirt and dust in our faces. Another time we were strolling with other holiday-makers along the Great Street to- ward the Riverine Park, where stands the lofty statue of Tsar Alexander III. With- out warning a rain-squall scattered the crowd, who scuffled away for shelter, while we hailed an isvoslichik, and rode in his drosky to our hotel. But on the morning on IRKUTSK 127 which we started on our excursion to the Monastery of Saint Innocent the day was perfect. Light clouds were lazily scudding over the deep azure sky, and the air was crisp and bracing. Many a time, as we were wandering around Cathedral Square and along the river bank, we had cast longing eyes on the distant white domes and towers of this monastery silhouetted on the horizon, and especially alluring when gilded by the golden glow of the setting sun. So we planned to make an excursion thither. In all Irkutsk there was only one German- speaking drosky-driver, and we engaged him the evening before to be at our hotel at nine o'clock the following morning. He was true to his word, and proved eager to explain ob- jects and incidents on the way. A short ride through the city brought us to the steep bank by the ferry. Our driver safely de- scended the declivity and boarded the ferry- boat, stationing us amid a motley collection of vehicles, both elegant and shabby. Be- sides carriages and droskies there were "telegas," or basketlike buckboards, while one peasant's wagon had a drygoods box with a board, on which sat Mr. and Mrs. Moujik. The charge for ferriage was sixteen kopeks. The motive power was the swift current of the Angara, for a strong chain, supported by buoys and small boats and anchored in the middle of the river several 128 STRANGE SIBERIA rods upstream, allowed the ferryboat to sway at the option of the pilot from one bank to the other. A short distance above the ferry the muddy Irkut was painting a broad brownish fringe along the further side of the crystal Angara, as does the turbid Arno the lucid waters of the arrowy Rhone below Rousseau's Isle. Scattered blocks of ice from Lake Baikal were now and then to be seen floating down the stream. In some respects the drive across country reminded us of the flat Hackensack meadows in New Jersey. There were numerous cross-streams, canals, and watercourses, over which wooden bridges were thrown. Immediately after reaching higher ground we entered a small village, stretched out on one long street, like some Canadian settlements near Montmo- renci Falls, Quebec. Every other house seemed to be a tiny grocery shop. Near the northern end stood the monastery, guarded by its high walls and a belfry, where hung the bells, tier on tier, the larger below. This monastery was erected in memory of Saint Innocent, a Greek priest eminent for his successful missionary labors in Siberia. After his wife's death he was accorded the high honor of being appointed by Philaret, the Metropolitan of Moscow, as the archi- mandrite of the wealthy, influential Troitsa Monastery near Moscow. Troitsa Monastery had been famous as a monastic stronghold, IRKUTSK 129 impregnable against the attacks of Tartars, Poles, and French. Like Castle San Angelo and Orvieto in Italy, it had served as a safe place of refuge for the rulers of the land in times of uprising or invasion. The usual procedure for a priest who be- came a widower was either to leave the clergy or become a monk. Innocent, enthu- siastically engaged in his good work away off in the wilds of Siberia, refused to become a monk, and so declined the tempting offer to be archimandrite of that rich monastery. As a priest he continued faithfully to min- ister to the unchurched Siberian settlers, who deeply loved him while he lived and highly cherished his memory when he died. Innocent declared that because a priest's wife had died, to cease to be a priest or to become a monk "was more a custom than a canon." This laconic epigram startled, as by a thunderclap, the mechanical scruples of the monks, but among the more enlight- ened class awakened an approving response. Leaving a native in charge of our drosky and wraps, our driver acted as guide, and showed us around the premises. Services were going on in the church, which we as- cended by a high flight of cast-iron steps. We trod upon many cast-iron slabs, inscribed with epitaphs laid in the pavement of the church floor. We watched the service soon drawing to a close, witnessed a priest giving 130 STRANGE SIBERIA communion wafers to a few children, and admired the seraphic singing of a boy choir, assisting the priests. At the close of the service a crowd of dev- otees quickly gathered before a handsomely embroidered golden canopy near the center of the church. Here on an elevated dais was a richly decorated casket with its lid off, said to contain the bones of Saint Innocent. Behind this casket sat a priest, clothed in elaborate yellow robes and busy tearing cotton-batting into shreds. The devotees first climbed on their knees up the front steps, kissing each step on the way up. Ar- riving on the upper platform, they stood erect, then one by one reverently bent over and devoutly kissed the bones of the saint and deposited coins, when the priest handed each a small bit of the cotton. Our driver advised us to follow suit, but we preferred simply to hand the priest in charge a small "douceur," which seemed to satisfy him, for he presented us with bits of the blessed cot- ton the same as the rest. Scattered through the gardens of the monastery were various other buildings, large and small, more or less connected with the life of this local though famous saint. The hovel in which he is said to have lived and a sort of antiquated chariot, in which he rode forth on his errands of mercy, were shown us. IRKUTSK 131 A Pious Fraud After our return to the city we were re- lating to our Lutheran friend our experi- ences at this monastery, when he regaled us with an account of a recent pious fraud, which had greatly stirred up society in this out-of-the-way Siberian city. It seems that during the Russo-Japanese War a corporal named Xassili Sytchewa, of the 285th In- fantry, deserted from his regiment on the Manchurian battlefield and fled to Irkutsk. Pretending to be so seriously wounded that he could not walk, he was ordered to the military hospital at Irkutsk. He had his legs and head wrapped around with band- ages. Disguised in this style, he had his photograph taken with a Sister of Charity at his side, administering medicine. On several nights he was detected walking stealthily about in the dimly lighted room. It happened about this time, 1905, a great religious festival occurred, commemorating the centennial of the burial of Saint Inno- cent. Availing himself of this event, this renegade managed to have himself conveyed to their monastery, where he kissed the bones of Saint Innocent. Instantly his strength returned, so he threw away his crutches. The nurses and doctors who were cognizant of his knavery in the hospital made loud and frequent protests against his misrepresenta- 132 STRANGE SIBERIA tions, but apparently to no avail. Furnished with funds, this runaway succeeded in hav- ing himself sent to Saint Petersburg, where he was granted a private audience with the Tsar. He presented to his Majesty the affi- davit of the monks of the Monastery of Saint Innocent, affirming his miraculous cure through the efficacy of the bones of their favorite saint. After the imperial sanction, these monks had printed thousands of leaf- lets, narrating the incident, which were scat- tered broadcast. One of these was shown us. The nurses at the hospital many of whom belonged to the upper classes of Irkutsk, who had loyally volunteered their services during the war were amazed at the credulity of so many of their cultured asso- ciates, who could swallow whole such an im- position with as much avidity as the igno- rant, gullible rabble. Marriage Hindrances One day, as in company with our Lutheran friend we were strolling along a business street, we stepped into a large, well-stocked furniture shop and, finding the proprietor in, he entered into a lively conversation with him. This Russian was a sturdy, well- favored man of the Protestant persuasion. Presently he left us, going out of the rear door of his shop, but soon returned, bring- ing with him a handsome woman of the IRKUTSK 133 Murillo Madonna type modest and comely. It was a case where the course of true love did not run smooth. This furniture dealer, a Protestant, had fallen in love with this beautiful Jewess, whom we had just seen. An old law of the city requires that such a marriage must be performed publicly in a Protestant church, at which time usually an unruly rabble fill the church to make sport. However, a merciful proviso exists whereby this publicity may be avoided. Such a wed- ding may be private, provided the Jewess can procure a physician's certificate to the effect that such a public spectacle would make her nervous. This legal hitch to their courtship had just been removed. Their joyous faces showed clearer than any words that the coveted physician's certificate had been promised, so that their future bliss was now assured. Friendship of Russians and Americans Russia is an autocratic beaurocracy. America, we boast, is "the land of the free." Somehow or other Russians 1 seem to exhibit a very cordial friendship toward Americans. Senator Beveridge traces this spontaneous friendship to the complimentary resolution passed by Congress and conveyed by special envoy to Emperor Alexander II on account of his liberating the Russian serfs. Then he expatiates as follows: "America and Russia 134 STRANGE SIBERIA have always been friendly. The American people are a young people, and the Russian regards himself as quite as young a man as the American. The American has 'go-ahead' in his make-up. The American 'gets things done.' That is what the Russian admires, and he likes to think that he is doing the same thing. So there is natural friendship on the part of Russians for Americans." 1 The American, on his part, highly esteems the Russian for the timely sympathy and moral support of Alexander II, in the sum- mer of 1863, when he sent his fleet, under Admiral LissofFski, into the harbor of New York, while we were engaged in a life-and- death struggle for our existence as a nation. When darkness hid the starry skies In war's long winter night, One ray still cheered our straining eyes, The far-off Northern Light. Every American feels deeply indebted to Russia for her diplomatic foresight in dis- posing of Russian America before our mani- fest destiny should have driven her off American soil, as was the fate of Spain. Moreover, Americans, endued with intui- tive Yankee business shrewdness, appreciate more highly every passing year Russia's un- bounded liberality in pouring into Uncle Sam's lap such an untold wealth of precious gold, copper, coal, and seals, to say nothing 1 The Russian Advance, by Albert J. Beveridge, p 252. IRKUTSK 135 of her inestimable good will, manifested by the transfer of Alaska to the United States. Of course Senator Beveridge, as an intelli- gent, loyal American, deeply realized all this, but doubtless, on account of his official position, felt constrained from making any public statement on this point. Then, again, it is patent to all that to the oppressed, outraged millions, smarting under the knout of Russian beaurocracy, America stands as a symbol for freedom. Naturally, he regards all Americans whom he chances to meet as representatives of such freedom, and cordially treats them as though they were intimate, sympathetic friends. A Rus- sian business man, who had shown us several acts of kindness in Moscow, requested us on parting to give him our address in America. On inquiring the reason, he replied that he might want to call on us in America within a few years, when he should come over there to live. Besides, there are perhaps other impal- pable but, nevertheless, powerful influences, which irresistibly attract each to other. We are inclined to believe the fact that both the Russian and American are consciously proud of belonging to a big country, each having to work out its own "manifest destiny," and the further fact that we are both Pacific neighbors, all of which tends to increase this sincere, unbounded friendliness. 136 STRANGE SIBERIA A British journalist noticed this peculiar trait in the make-up of the Russians, as he traveled in company with some Americans from Peking to Saint Petersburg, a pecu- liarity which he tried to explain by Ameri- cans having donated famine-relief funds. This Britisher acknowledges that he was treated civilly, but he naively records how the Russians "display a special amount of cordiality and friendship to America and Americans." 1 Such was our experience nearly three decades ago, when we lodged at Vladivostok in the home of a Russian naval officer. This Russian officer seemed especially glad to find one from the land of freedom to whom he could open his heart and freely pour out his tales of grievance in regard to the unseemly conduct and graft among the Russian no- bility. So at this German-speaking Russian's home at Irkutsk we were invited to after- noon coffee, where we had the privilege of meeting other German-speaking Russians, where incidents were related and photo- graphs shown exhibiting interesting inci- dents of actual Siberian life. On the last evening of our stay at Irkutsk we accepted an invitation to dine at the resi- dence of a physician. His home was built in a pine forest on a hillside in the Glasgow sub- 1 From Peking to Petersburg, by Arnot Reid, pp. 210, 211. IRKUTSK 137 urb, across the Angara. The dwelling was a capacious bungalow, compactly built of logs, with their sawn ends projecting at the cor- ners, as in our quaint, old-fashioned Hotel Metropole. The interior, however, revealed an air of comfort, if not luxury. A grand piano, a gramophone, large canary cages full of the yellow songsters, bric-a-brac, etc., showed the taste of the mistress of the house, who was temporarily absent on a visit in Russia proper. Her photograph, which the doctor so proudly showed us, displayed the features of a handsome lady, who would grace and charm any family circle or social gathering. His private library was well stocked with books, chiefly in Russian, Ger- man, and English, for he had studied medi- cine in London. In company with the doctor's brother, we bade good-by a little after 9 p. M V but it was not yet very dark, and we strolled through the pine grove out to the main street and across the railway and pontoon bridges to Irkutsk, where we hired a drosky and re- turned to our hotel, without the excitement of any garroting experience to relate. Books and the Bible Several times, in order to buy postal cards, photographs, or books, we had stepped in- side Makoushin's immense bookstore on the Great Street. Its seven large plate-glass 138 STRANGE SIBERIA windows made as grand a display as Scrib- ner's or Brentano's on Fifth Avenue, New York. The British and Foreign Bible So- ciety have their stock stored in one part of this mammoth establishment. Their affable agent, W. Davidson, chanced to arrive in Irkutsk while we were there. We are greatly indebted to him for much valuable informa- tion as well as for letters of introduction to some of his friends at Tomsk and elsewhere, which he volunteered to give us. He highly recommended the quality of the Eussian baths in Irkutsk, saying that there was a superior quality in the waters of the Angara River which made these cheap ablutions par- ticularly worth taking. He also enthusiasti- cally urged us to take the all-water route from Tomsk to Tiumen at the base of the Urals, thence by rail to Perm on their west- ern slope, and there board a steamer down the Kama to the Volga and proceed direct to Nijni-Novgorod. However, we were already provided with tickets to Samara on the Volga, so we decided to postpone such an extended excursion by water until a later date. Unique Honor to the Bible Russia surpasses all countries in the high honor which it renders to the Bible. It is not so well known as it should be, that throughout the length and breadth of the IRKUTSK 139 vast Russian empire, the Russian govern- ment makes no charge whatever for the transportation by steamer or rail of the Holy Scriptures. Honor to whom honor is due ! Neither Christian America or Europe, nor non-Christian China or Japan, has as yet risen to such a high degree of honoring the Bible "without money and without price." Surely has God said concerning his Word, "It shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it." Only the future will reveal how much bless- ing this praiseworthy reverence for the Word of God will bring to Russia's millions trudg- ing wearily along the path of life. May his Word indeed prove to them all "a lamp unto their feet and a light unto their path !" CHAPTER XI THE JEWS IN RUSSIA They lived In narrow streets and lanes obscure, Ghettos and Judengass, in mirk and mire, Trained In the school of patience to endure The life of anguish and the death of fire. Longfellow. National Contrasts SOME will doubtless be surprised to know that Russian laws compel all Jews, with a few specified exceptions, to live within a restricted area, called "The Pale of Settle- ment." This limited territory is about the size of France and consists of fifteen prov- inces out of the more than one hundred of the Russian empire. This land was allotted to Russia as her share of the spoil after the political crime of the partition of Poland. As far as the east is from the west is the contrast in the treatment by Russia of the Jewish inhabitants in this "Pale of Settle- ment" to that by America of the inhabitants of the Philippines. As spoils of war, the Philippines fell into the lap of fair Colum- bia, and that part of Poland with its Jewish race was snatched by the paws of huge Russia. The Russian Hebrews live lives of terror and torture. The Filipinos enjoy a 140 THE JEWS IN RUSSIA 141 widely spread system of popular education and are being trained to exercise their rights and abilities in representative government. Sowing Dragon's Teeth The chief restrictions imposed upon the Jews in Russia are enumerated in the fol- lowing list : 1. Compulsory residence within the "Pale of Settlement," prohibiting residence in vil- lages or inside of fifty versts (thirty-three miles) of the frontier. 2. Restricted education. 3. Prohibition to sell spirits (a govern- ment monopoly). 4. Closure against government employ- ment, railway and postal service, higher mili- tary rank, and from the navy. 5. Special taxes, applicable only to Jews. There are these exceptions to the above : 1. Merchants, who are members of guilds and pay an annual tax of about $500 (United States gold). 2. University graduates and students of higher grades. 3. Nicolai soldiers, who have served twenty- five years. 4. Druggists, dentists, surgeons, and mid- wives. 5. Skilled artisans, supported by their own handicraft. As if these arbitrary laws were not suffi- 142 STRANGE SIBERIA ciently harassing and cruel, the obnoxious May laws were superimposed. These were proposed by General Ignatieff, and adopted after receiving the sanction of the Tsar. Paragraph III serves as a sample. It reads: "Jews are forbidden to transact business on Sundays and on the principal Christian holidays. The existing regulations concern- ing the closing of places of business belong- ing to Christians on such days shall apply to Jews also." The proportion of Jews permitted to study in an institution of learning was curtailed in many places to five per cent, and in Saint Petersburg and Moscow to three per cent. Reaping This broadcast sowing of dragon's teeth is already beginning to bear its harvest: 1. Poverty, by being forced into the con- gested Ghettos of the cities. 2. Ignorance, with its criminal retinue, by being debarred from education. 3. Political helplessness, by being excluded from public office and the army and navy, thus engendering anarchy. 4. Last but not least, the pogroms, or fana- tical massacres, abetted by the government. The acts of these frenzied mobs of Russian Christians resemble those attributed to the early Pilgrims in their dealings with the American Indians: THE JEWS IN RUSSIA 143 They first fell on the knees And then on the aborigines. "They (that is, Orthodox Russian Chris- tians) went to work with the holy pictures in their hands, crossing themselves and kneeling in prayer, and then murdered and robbed mothers with infants in their arms," witnesses Leon Rosenberg, of Odessa. 1 Samuel Wilkinson, in his exhaustive study of this subject, ascribes as the motive of this inhuman persecution of the Jews, "Russia's treatment of her Jewish subjects was simply a matter of domestic policy. If she placed no restrictions upon them, she knew that in the struggle for existence the lethargic na- tive-born would go to the wall and the Jew come out on top." 2 The intense gravity of this Jewish problem among the one hundred and twenty odd races and tribes within the Russian empire is ap- parent when a government is driven to crowd this single detested race of 5,000,000 Hebrews inside the arbitrary artificial bar- riers of the "Pale of Settlement." Lord Curzon sagely remarks, "The Russian system may be government, but cannot be called improvement or civilization." No wonder, then, that these Hebrew children, number- ing one half of the Israelites in the world, 1 la the Land of the North, by Samuel Wilkinson. p. 47. 2 Ibid, p. 24. 144 STRANGE SIBERIA and downtrodden now as in the days of Pharaoh, should constitute nine tenths of the immigrants from Russia to England and America ! Such are the galling strictures which bind the Russian Jews, as mercilessly as the Philistines did their mighty champion, Sam- son. But history tells how this hero, blinded and goaded to fury by his enemies, finally had his revenge. No eagle's eye can pierce the future and see what fate awaits the haughty ruling house of Romanoff. Some day before the sun sets perhaps sooner than any of us imagine persecuted Samson, driven to desperation, may again rise in his pristine strength and annihilate his enemies. CHAPTER XII JERMAK, IMMIGRATION AND EXILES What most interested us in Russia was that it was an empire of discontent. High or low, official or unofficial, it made no difference; every one talked of the unsatisfactory condition of the country even General Todleben, the hero of Sevas- topol and Plevna, who was then the governor- general of Odessa. It was a result of the Russo- Turklsh War a foretaste of what was to follow the war with Japan. George Washburn, Fifty fears in Constantinople, p. 11(9. Jemark JERMAK, Yermak, or Irmak, as his name is variously spelled, presented Siberia to Rus- sia, as did Cortez and Pizarro, his antipodal conquistador? s, Mexico and Peru to Spain. Those Cossack and Spaniard outlaws em- ployed almost simultaneously the same tac- tics against the indigenes. The impetuous charges and fierce ardor of these simple-minded natives, fighting for wife, children, and native land, were no match to these infamous freebooters, armed with strange fire-spitting weapons. Despite their reckless courage, the field of battle was again and again strewn with heaps of their slain braves. For years Jermak gained great notoriety 145 146 STRANGE SIBERIA by harassing merchants on "the royal road of the Volga," often robbing and murdering his victims, until one day imperial troops outwitted and captured him. Ivan the Ter- rible, learning of the prowess of this Cossack chieftain, pardoned him and then authorized him to lead a motley crowd of some 850 Rus- sians, Cossacks, Tartars, Germans, Poles, and escaped prisoners across the Urals into Siberia. Jermak marched boldly into the interior of Siberia and captured Siber or Isker, the capital of the Siberian dominions. He consoled the Tsar in his last years by presenting him with the vast domain of Si- beria. Ivan sent bishops and priests to the survivors of the subdued peoples, and re- warded Jermak with a costly cuirass of ex- quisite workmanship. This handsome gift proved his doom. At an unguarded moment his enemies attacked his forces. He tried to escape by swimming across 1 the Irtysh, but the weight of his imperial chain-armor pulled him under the waters never to rise again. Jermak was made a hero by the Russian people and a saint by the Orthodox Church. An elegant silver statuette of this Cossack hero, inclosed in a glass case, is one of the many costly curios on exhibition in the sump- tuous apartments of the Kremlin Palace at Moscow, and two paintings represent him on the walls of the University at Tomsk. In one, Jermak is seen fiercely combating na- JERMAK 147 tive tribes on the banks of a river, while they are paralyzed with terror by the novel murderous firearms. The other represents him standing with proud mien, arrayed in the handsome, fatal cuirass, bestowed upon him by the Tsar. From Jermak's day to this the same merci- less tactics have been systematically pur- sued. By this relentless policy, thousands of helpless Chinese were remorselessly butchered in Manchuria in 1900. General Skobeleff adopted the same methods in his conquests in Central Asia. He tried to justify his atrocious massacre of eight thou- sand defenseless Tekkes at Geok Tepe, in 1881, on the principle that with Asiatics the duration of peace is in direct proportion to the number of the enemy slain. He un- abashedly declares his policy in these words: "My system is this to strike hard and to keep on hitting until resistance is completely overcome, then to form ranks, cease slaugh- ter, and be kind and humane to the prostrate enemy." 1 Vereshchagin Vereshchagin painted his battle scenes from a radically different motive from that which actuated the French artists, whose martial productions embellish the Palace of Versailles. They were swept off their feet by 1 Russia In Asia, by Alexis Krause, p. 128. 148 STRANGE SIBERIA the brilliant victories of Napoleon. French patriotic enthusiasm inspired them to throw a glamour of glory over the gory fields of slaughter. The tourist is amazed at these mammoth canvases of war, as he wanders for nearly a fifth of a mile through the mag- nificent "Galerie des Batailles" at Ver- sailles. Vereshchagin, on the other hand, was a passionate pleader for peace. His war paint- ings, in their realistic hellish carnage, so appal the beholder that he leaves the place with his soul ever afterward armed with undying hate against the dread Moloch, War. "The fate of Vereshchagin was especially pitiful, because he had spent his whole life trying to teach the human race peace, and had come in his old age to this boiling crater (Port Arthur) so that he might catch, per- haps, a final horror, with which to convince mankind." 1 There, on the fatal 13th of April, 1904, in the sixty-third year of his age, Vereshchagin, Admiral Makaroff, and sixteen hundred men on the Russian flagship, Petro- paulovski, in the twinkling of an eye, found a watery grave. Vereshchagin's series of twenty paintings, descriptive of Napoleon's Russian campaign, now adorning the walls of the elegant Mu- seum of Alexander III, at Saint Petersburg, when exhibited in Berlin in 1897 attracted The Tragedy of Russia, by McCormick, vol. I, p. 113. JERMAK 149 great crowds. His brush portrayed the barbarous sacrilege of Napoleon turning churches dedicated to the worship of God into stables for his cavalry and kitchens for his troops, and also the hideous diabolism of war, in a most realistic manner. Emperor William viewed these masterpieces carefully, and then, singling out two which especially impressed him, he stood still studying them, attracted by their freshness and originality. One was "The Retreat from Petrovski Park," in which Napoleon, accompanied by his body- guard, was riding amid smoldering heaps and smoking ruins. The other sketched the em- peror of the French, wrapped in furs, strid- ing at the head of his generals, over a battle- field strewn with corpses veiled in snow, through which protruded mutilated arms, legs, heads, and feet. The German monarch turned to the Russian painter and, with deep emotion, said, "Yos tableaux sont la> meiUeure assurance contre la guerre!" 1 Vereshchagin, it will be remembered, was the artist who painted the battle of San Juan, Cuba, and exhibited it to President Roosevelt, who had been a participant in that conflict. Roosevelt criticized the paint- ing because the foliage in the foreground was not true to life. So Vereshchagin made a special trip to San Juan in the summer, the season in which the battle was fought. 1 Russische Kulturbilder, by Eugen Zabel, p. 91. 150 STRANGE SIBERIA After this he retouched his painting by add- ing the brilliant crimson of the poinciana. "A Pyramid of Skulls" may be a most elo- quent advocate for peace. What could have been conceived more expressive of utter horror, extreme lonesomeness, and appalling ghastliness than this painting of Veresh- chagin? There, alone on the dead level of the desert, where once mortal hate raged in all its fury, stands piled up a huge pyramid of human skulls. Overhead evil-omened birds of prey wearily alight or fitfully flutter around, as if in quest of more cadavers to peck at and devour. Immigration Ever since the days of Jermak, emigrants and exiles have been crossing the Urals in a constantly increasing ratio. Few realize the immense migration now going on into Siberia. Statistics state that from January 1 to October 31, 1908, 728,802 persons crossed from Russia into Siberia, showing an in- crease of thirty-one per cent over the same period of 1907, so that now the annual num- ber must be about a million or more. Every day we would meet trainloads of these wanderers, and would watch parties of them huddled about the Russian plat- forms in a most pitiable plight. The freight box cars, in which they were often trans- ported, had painted on the outside "8 Horses JERMAK 151 or 40 men." Surely eight or a dozen horses would have fared much better than those for- lorn immigrants of varying ages and sexes, packed together like slaves in a dhow. Shelves were extemporized on the inner sides of these cattle cars, on which men, women with babes, boys and girls herded during the long dreary months of interrupted travel. For some special reason unknown to us these poor unfortunates were left stranded at the station, while other trains, having right of way, passed by. Exiles The political exiles and convicts looked far more comfortable. These traveled, to be sure, under guard, but in fairly decent cars, and seemed to be properly fed and cared for. These prison vans on wheels, when seen for the first time on our way from Irkutsk to Tomsk, sent a chill, as a draught from a cold storage room, through our very bones. Every succeeding car of these miser alles intensified our horror at this atrocious system of exile. One day we counted twelve of these crowded convict cars. Some faces looked brutal and vicious, while others wore the sad, resigned look of refined intelligence. Probably such were political or religious offenders, who were either betrayed by some indiscreet re- mark, or who, having tasted of the waters of life, would obey God rather than man. 152 STRANGE SIBERIA The sight of such victims of political tyranny could not but awaken sympathy in the hearts of Americans and all other lovers of freedom. Russia has many souls who abominate this dastardly policy of banishment, which should have been abolished with the Inquisition in the Middle Ages. The laws of Russia are such that no Russian patriot in the press or at public meeting can long protest with im- punity against this monstrous repression of human rights. Count Tolstoy was the single exception to this rule. Opportunity of the Painter No restrictions, strange to say, are placed upon the painter. His brush can and does depict the horror and pity of it. No Rus- sian can look upon "The Remorse of Ivan the Terrible," by Ryepin, without having the frailty and wickedness of his imperial rulers staring him in the face. No one can look at the painting "Everywhere Is Life," by Yaroshenko, without bitter animosity in- stinctively rankling in his breast. Both paintings are preserved in the famous Tretyakov Gallery, said to be the choicest private collection of paintings in the world. They were collected by the brothers Trety- akov, and in 1892 presented by them to the city of Moscow. "The Remorse of Ivan the Terrible" is the larger of the two and con- stantly attracts crowds. This talented Rus- JERMAK 153 sian artist has represented this Muscovite Nero with terror-stricken visage, frantically embracing the pallid corpse of his son, whom in a passion he has just slain. Most graphi- cally, nay, even sensationally, does this re- markable painting tell the plain story, that the Tsar of all the Kussias the Father of the Orthodox Church is not only human but exceedingly sinful guilty of murder and needing the forgiveness of God as much as his humblest subject. Most excruciat- ingly revolting and loathsome is this dia- bolic specter of imperial murder. Unex- pectedly coming before it, we found our- selves for the first few moments riveted to the spot as fixedly as Chipanoff, the mes- senger of Prince Kourbski from the Polish camp, whose foot this same Ivan pinned with his sharp staff to a step of the Red Staircase. With pigments more glaring than any with which Titian ever ventured to embellish his frescoes, Ryepin has placed upon canvas this spectacular exposure of heinous guilt in high places. The tragic remorse of the deed will not down. Anyone who has once viewed it finds its gruesome, blood-curdling shadow, like the ghost in Mac- beth, insistently pursuing him many a long day and night. Such an artist, whose inner- most soul is burning with fiery indignation, dares display an eloquence as patriotic, though mute, as did Patrick Henry. With 154 STRANGE SIBERIA one masterstroke he has brushed away the flimsy fabric of the divine right of kings and affirmed "Vox populi, vox dei" Such in- sight into inhuman crime on the throne haunts like a horrid nightmare the simple- minded moujik. Such imperial villainy steels the sinews of the infuriated revolu- tionist to still darker deeds of vindictive violence. The other painting, "Everywhere Is Life," "by Yaroshenko, portrays a less ghastly but extremely sad event alas, too common, from which Hope, writhing fled, and Mercy sighed farewell. A convict car is stopping at a station plat- form. Inside the iron bars of a car window is an interesting family trio. The center of the group is a little boy of three or four summers, who is eagerly watching some pigeons outside. One pigeon is perched on the car roof. Some are flying about, while others are busy picking up crumbs of black bread with which the child is feeding them. The father at one side, whose hand holds the broken loaf, is pictured with a kindly, in- telligent countenance. The free, happy life of these pigeons, gayly hopping on the platform or gracefully cir- cling in the air, by their striking contrast throw a charming soft glow of pathos over this touching domestic episode at the car EVERYWHERE Is LIFE JERMAK 155 window. This is emphatically so, if seen through Russian eyes. The ancient Egyp- tians, 1 like most modern nations, never re- garded the pigeon as a sacred bird, but prized it as a dainty dish. Not so the Russian. He considers the pigeon as symbolic of the Holy Ghost, which should be held sacred and never used as an article of food. Moreover, every Russian uses, as a term of endearment, the very common expression, "My little pigeon !" 2 The father in the picture was probably a well-meaning artisan in a small village, who had in an unguarded moment dropped some chance remark about liberty. This had been overheard and reported to the authorities, with the result that he was peremptorily sen- tenced to banishment to Siberia or Saghalien. The mother has a sweet, resigned expression. Like so many other Russian wives similarly situated, she had volunteered to accompany her husband to his far-off exile, taking along their only son. An elderly, grizzly whis- kered moujik, but with benignant look withal, and a youthful, sleek-looking citizen of the hounded Hebrew race, both of whom are deeply absorbed in watching the playful antics of the innocent boy, complete the group in the foreground. In the back- ground, out of the opposite window, is an- 1 The Ancient Egyptians, by Wilkinson, vol. 111. * Siberia, As It la, by DeWindt, p. 66. 156 STRANGE SIBERIA other exile, wistfully gazing out upon God's free open and beyond "everywhere is life." By such paintings Kussian patriots, even though their mouths are muzzled and their ankles enchained, can teach the love of free- dom. These paintings indicate the intense passion for liberty smoldering in the breasts of Russia's millions. Violent eruptions, as of a pent-up Vesuvius, have already taken place. The extreme propaganda of the Nihil- ist have been summarily suppressed. "Their conspiracies and murders," as Dr. Buckley pertinently states, "have made it necessary that the government of Russia should be nothing but a gigantic police force, of which the emperor is the chief.*' 1 So soon as the real facts of the repeated defeats by the Japanese percolated among the masses of the Russian people, riot and revenge reigned rampant, recalling the days of "the Reign of Terror" in France. Russia has also produced musicians of re- markable genius. Rubinstein, one of her musical prodigies, who astounded Moscow at the age of ten, made the following discrimi- nating remark toward the close of his fa- mous career: "In Russia I exist; in Germany I think ; in France I enjoy [myself] ; in Italy and Spain I wander; in America I act; and everywhere I love." 2 J The Midnight Sun, The Tsar, and The Nihilist, by James M. Buckley, p. 370. 3 Kulturbilder, by Zabel, p. 190. JERMAK 157 Exasperated at the political despotism of Russia, and admiring the rare artistic genius of her sons, Hugo Ganz felt compelled to utter the following noble sentiment, which echoes in the heart of every lover of liberty the world over: "A people which produces such artists in every field as the Russian, has not only the right to the strongest self- consciousness and to the general sympathy of people of culture, but, above all, it has the right to be respected by its rulers and not to be handled like a horde of slaves." 1 Religious Liberty Had the policy of religious liberty, as once frankly stated by Peter the Great, been con- sistently carried out, the inhabitants of the Russian empire would be to-day far more happy and prosperous. "Passing through the desert of the Volga, he [Peter the Great] found there a colony of industrious rasko- links [dissenters], ordered them to be left in peace, and begged them to pray for him. 'God,' he said, 'has given the Tsar power over nations, but Christ alone has power over the consciences of men.' " 2 His loyalty to the Orthodox Church, however, made him regard the dissenters as heretics, whom he often caused to be punished, sometimes most cruellv. 1 The Land of Riddles, by Hugo Ganz, p. 282. 2 History of Russia, by Uambaud, vol. ii, p. 94. 158 STRANGE SIBERIA The Edict of Alexander I, dated December 6, 1816, breathed the same humane senti- ment, but proved abortive in stopping perse- cution.' A truly Christian spirit pervaded this imperial utterance. "To lead back the lost sheep to the fold cannot be done by force, this being contrary to the doctrine of the Saviour, who came to seek and save the lost. True faith is a work of grace and can only be effected in the soul by instruction, gentleness, and, most of all, by good ex- ample. . . . The church must neither use nor permit violence against the erring ones, even if it should not approve of their separation. It is utterly opposed to the spirit of its Divine Head." 1 On Easter Day, 1905, a new Imperial Edict of Keligious Toleration was ostenta- tiously granted, but its effects appear to be as nugatory as Alexander I's, nearly a cen- tury earlier. An enraged people, exasper- ated by the disastrous defeats in the Russo- Japanese war, forced Nicholas II reluctantly to grant it. Carl Joubert styles it "a Stock Exchange Ukase," asserting that it was issued solely to placate the enmity of other nations, and thus facilitate another foreign loan. 2 In it Nicholas II makes no allusion whatever to loosening the cruel bonds shack- ling millions of his Jewish children. The Under Three Tsars, by Robert S. Latimer, p. 46. "The Fall of Tsardom, by Carl Joubert, p. 248. JERMAK 159 inveterate hatred of the Orthodox Church and chinoviks also continues to vent itself on anyone daring enough to free himself from such spiritual tyranny. Despite these dark clouds, an unprejudiced observer can dimly discern glimmerings of hope, presag- ing a brighter dawn in the near future. It has been estimated that about a third of the so-called Orthodox Christians are secretly or openly attached to these dis- senters, who "are an index of the devotion and desire for light in the character of the true Russian." 1 Among these raskolinks, or sects, the fol- lowing are the chief: (1) Popovsty, or with priests; (2) Bezpopovsty, or without priests ; (3) Khlysts, or flagellants, like some Roman Catholic devotees; (4) Stundists, or Ger- man Mennonites, so called from their "Stunde," or hour of devotion; (5) Molo- kans, or milk eaters; (6) Doukhorborsts, or Spirit- Warriors, resembling Quakers. Evangelical Nobility Persecution has spared neither the high nor low ranks of Russian society. The case of Colonel Pashkoff, of the Imperial Guards, is in point. Belonging to a distinguished family and possessed of great wealth, he made a visit to England, and, while there, imbibed some of the Methodist spirit. On J Land of the North, by Samuel Wilkinson, p. 19. 160 STRANGE SIBERIA his return he devoted his whole life and- vast fortune to spreading the truth he had espoused. The impassioned evangelical preaching of Lord Radstock, in French, to the upper classes at Saint Petersburg dur- ing the successive winters from 1874 to 1877 was also productive of much ripe fruit. Besides Colonel Pashkoff, two other notable Russian aristocrats, Count Bobrinski and Count Korff, joined the ranks of the dis- sentersi All three began to conduct meet- ings for prayer and expounding the gospel. The mansion of Colonel Pashkoff on Gagarin Quay was crowded with eager hearers of the Word. The arch enemy of religious liberty, Pobiedonostzeff, affirmed that "more than fifteen hundred persons were present, representing every grade of society." "Peasants and members of princely fami- lies, students from the university, and mili- tary officers, resplendent in their uniforms, and even monks and priests were among the crowds that thronged the doors to secure ad- mission. Madame Pashkoff usually presided at the American organ, and her daughters helped to lead in the singing. The hymns were Russian versions of familiar English hymns, adapted to the tastes of the Russian people. All three of the above-mentioned noblemen gave expositions of the Scriptures and addresses, each having his distinctive gifts as a public speaker. Colonel Pashkoff JERMAK 161 was mighty in the Scriptures, and arrested the attention of his hearers by his earnest and forcible utterances; Count Korff ap- pealed mainly to the intelligence of his hearers; while Count Bobrinski, who earned the name of 'the Spurgeon of Kussia,' spoke with great vivacity and freedom. "In summer these noblemen repaired to th&r estates in the country, where they opened their castles to the astonished peas- ants for the preaching of the gospel of Christ. The good news would have been 'as cold waters to a thirsty soul,' even if brought to them in an earthen pitcher by a hunted Stundist, but to have the water of life prof- fered to these sheepskin-clad moujiks in silver tankards was every way most sensa- tional." 1 Pobiedonostzeff, though a layman, was at this time the head of "the Most Holy Gov- erning Synod of the Orthodox Church." An implacable bigot, like Philip II of Spain, or his prototype, Saul of Tarsus, "breathing out threatenings and slaughter," he deter- mined to extinguish this rapidly growing heresy. Soon an order was issued for the banishment of the chief offenders, who were given ten days to pack up and quit their native land. Colonel Pashkoff, with the other leaders, was banished, his institutions destroyed, and a large part of his estates con- 1 Under Three Tsars, by Robert S. Latlmer, pp. 74, 75. 162 STRANGE SIBERIA fiscated, while he, himself, died in 1902, an exile in Paris. 1 Milk Eaters The Molokans, or "Milk Eaters," receive this nickname because the members of this sect would eat curds and cheese on fast days the same as on other days, and also because they abstain from vodka the popular alco- holic drink of the Russian peasant and con- tent themselves with drinking milk. They cheerfully accept the term, saying: "Yes! We are indeed milk eaters. We desire 'the sincere milk of the Word, that we may grow thereby.' We must have it unadulterated uncontaminated by the fingers of the Popes and undiluted by any mixture of man's de- vices; and we will have as much as we can get of it, for we love our Bibles." 2 The Molokans are very friendly toward other evangelical Christians. Dr. G. A. Simons, of the Methodist Episcopal Mission at Saint Petersburg, was recently in southern Russia, where by invitation he attended their meet- ings and acceded to their request to be photo- graphed in the midst of their group of dele- gates. The mighty pen of Count Tolstoy was wielded in behalf of the Molokans and Douk- horborsts, but apparently not one iota did the government abate its bitter antagonism. i Russia, Her Strength and Weakness, by Wolf von Schlerbrand, pp. 210, 211. "Under Three Tsars, by Robert S. Latimer, pp. 38, 39. JERMAK 163 Spirit- Warriors Hemmed in on either side and relentlessly pursued by the oppressor, the situation of the Doukhorborsts did, indeed, seem to be as desperate as the Israelites, pursued by Pharaoh's hosts. Their plaintive cries, how- ever, reached the ears of the Almighty, who from an unexpected quarter raised up for them deliverers. Wealthy and influential philanthropists in England and America provided a way of escape across their Red Sea of difficulty to the broad fertile prairies of Canada. At first their advent on Ameri- can soil caused great forebodings among the Canadian authorities, until in 1902 a former popular leader, Peter Veregin, or "Father Vereguine," was released from prison in Russia and arrived in Canada. By kindli- ness and ability he gained their confidence, and soon brought order out of chaos, peace out of discord. His shrewd leadership sys- tematized their life. A miniature Parlia- ment was organized, composed of two men and one woman out of each of their forty- eight villages, which had authority over all their affairs. Veregin's personality as presi- dent of this body asserted itself in directing decisions according to his superior wisdom. Every spring and fall, agents of the Douk- horbor Trading Company visit Winnipeg to buy stores at wholesale rates for cash and 164 STRANGE SIBERIA thus save fully twenty-five per cent. Some- times these agents spend $100,000 to $150,- 000 on one trip. They implicitly follow the instructions of Father Vereguine's commit- tee, and on their return render a strict ac- count. One specimen list is as follows : 100 Teams of Draft Horses. 25 Wagons. 62 Plows. 38 Mowers. 52 Self-Binders. 30,000 Ibs. Binding Twine. 350 Sets Harness. Machinery for one Oatmeal Mill. Machinery for four Flour Mills. 1 Telephone System. 12 Wheat and Flax Elevators. In 1909 the Dominion Interior Depart- ment published an Annual Report concern- ing this sect of Russian Quakers, who in 1898, to the number of some 10,000, found an asylum within their borders. This official document, far from regarding the Douk- horborsts as a thorn in the flesh, asserts that none of their neighbors, not even the increas- ing American contingent, surpass them in industry, frugality, and general desirability as settlers. 1 Raskolinks The rabid bigotry of the Holy Orthodox Church was not content with hunting Rus- 'The Evening Post, New York, May 23, 1909. JERMAK 165 sian raskolinks not rascals or rascallions, as some might infer from the etymology of the word, but merely dissenters within her own borders, but vented her spite against any foreign ones, who might have only a simple "Reverend" or the more dignified "Bishop" prefixed to their names. At the time the Trans-Siberian Railway was opened to travel Russian officialdom in their narrow prejudice absolutely refused to allow any such raskolinks to travel on their transcon- tinental trains. 1 However, God is no re- specter of persons, whether a Pharaoh or a Tsar. The rude shock of the Russo-Japanese war was needed to arouse Russia to a more liberal policy. In 1894-5, during the Chi- nese-Japanese war, Russia refused to grant passports to American missionaries living at Kalgan, where a spur of the Great Wall divides China from Mongolia. The Ameri- can government at Washington took up the matter with the Russian government at Saint Petersburg and thrashed it out, until finally passports were promised in case ex- treme danger in China should compel the American missionaries to escape via Siberia. The Boxer uprising in 1900 furnished the occasion, when a party of various nationali- ties succeeded in making "A Flight for Life" to Irkutsk and thence over the Trans-Si- 1 China and Her People, by Charles Denby, vol. 1, p. 225. 166 STRANGE SIBERIA berian Kail way to Europe and home. 1 While this restriction was still in force Bishop Cranston, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, now residing at Washington, D. C., happened to be on a visit at Vladivostok. He desired to take a short ride on the eastern section of the Russian railway, but was pre- vented because he was an American clergy- man. To-day all is changed. Now citizens of any nation, provided with passports no matter of what religious creed may freely travel from one end of the Russian empire to the other. The world moves and Russia too, though reluctantly with laggard gait, as of a tired, peevish child, who is being dragged along by his mother. Political Liberty Much confusion prevails concerning the political liberty of the freed serf in Russia. "From the moment when, with so loud a flourish of trumpets, Alexander II decreed the emancipation of the serfs, nothing has been done to train, educate, or raise this miserable people from their degradation. While hundreds of millions had been spent in the indulgence in the craze for militarism and conquest, inherent in the one class (chi- noviks), which is consulted in the country, the moujiks have been retrograded rather than assisted in emerging from the con- 'A Flight for Life, by James H. Roberts. JERMAK 167 ditions of mere animal existence. A tithe of the money expended in the exploitation of Manchuria, the sending of secret missions to Afghanistan, and the fleecing of territory from Persia and the Khanates of Central Asia, would have sufficed for the enlighten- ment of the Russians, the emancipation of the country from its primitive civilization, and the introduction of education through- out the territories of the Tsar." 1 The liberty granted to the American Negro by the Emancipation Proclamation of Abraham Lincoln was as wide as the poles from that granted by the Imperial Ukase of Alexander II. As in feudal times, the serf remained attached to the soil, osten- sibly that he might be available for military service. Government bonds were presented to his former baronial landlords, but not a single kopek nor one square foot of land was given to the poor ex-serf. Any "Rus- sian serf who leaves the village-commune without permission to-day is arrested, fined, imprisoned, and sent back to his native place. ... In many cases the position of the peasant is hopeless. At present the peasant cannot, without consent of his commune, work for wages. From the wages of peas- ants, permitted, to work in mines, factories, and industrial works, a part may be de- 1 Russia In Asia, by Alexis Krause, pp. 286, 287. 168 STRANGE SIBERIA ducted and paid to the government on ac- count of their commune's indebtedness under the land-redemption scheme. . . . The con- ditions are such as preclude the creation of wealth by the people and deprive them of hope and legitimate aspirations He is born to a heritage of debt and saddled with an incubus from which he can free himself in no other way than by emigrating." 1 If these millions of Slavic men "with the hoe" wageless and hopeless through so long a night of horrid darkness now descry a faint ray of hope on their far eastern horizon, need we wonder to find them with wives and little ones all they can call their own start for that far-away land, even if it be the dreaded, ill-famed Siberia of the exiles? Tolstoy, ever sympathizing with the peasants in their misery, in his last work, Three Days in a Village, suppressed by the government after a few copies had found their way to America, depicts a Russian peasant, lured by the call of the wild, sell- ing his patrimony and emigrating with his family to Siberia. Disillusioned there, he returns to his ancestral village, only to find himself homeless, landless, hopeless. In order to overcome the stupid inertia of ages, special inducements had to be offered. Since 1892 emigrants, on certain conditions, 1 Greater Russia, by William Oliver Greener, edition 1904, pp. 45-47. JERMAK 169 receive per head a grant of fifteen dessiatins (about forty acres) of land, every man, woman, and child counting. In addition, they are tax free for the first three years, and one half tax free for the following three years, thus making them liable to the full levy at the beginning of the seventh year. Besides, all young men are permitted to post- pone their military service for three years (that is, until the farm is in order) and, moreover, to the poorest classes, small loans and grants of seeds and timber are made. 1 ''Liberty, Equality, Fraternity!" were the loud cries rending the air during the French Revolution, when the frenzied Jacobin mobs, intoxicated with the first draughts of liberty, paraded the streets of Paris. To the slug- gish, century-oppressed minds and bodies of these emancipated serfs, such sentiments sound as far distant as the planet Mars. Not many decades, however, will elapse be- fore Siberia, with its greater though limited freedom, will demand its long-denied rights those inalienable rights of man which made the Paris mob run riot, and which Thomas Jefferson embodied in the Constitu- tion of the United States in the modified form of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." A marked contrast is already noticeable in the people of Siberia from the 1 The Coming Struggle in. Eastern Asia, by Putnam- Weale, pp. 264, 265. 170 STRANGE SIBERIA Russians on the other side of the Urals. Men who undergo exile for their political and religious opinions have usually deep convictions, so that their new and freer en- vironment enables them to breathe the air of greater independence. Some predict that "in time these facts will tell, and things will occur which may change the trend of affairs in a moment, which will surprise no one more than the authorities at Saint Petersburg." 1 Russian and American Pioneers Compared Any attempted parallel between the pio- neers of American civilization westward and Russian eastward is both gratuitous and futile. The character of the American pio- neers, with their accompanying civilization, is diametrically opposite. The winning of the Mississippi valley, the gaining of Cali- fornia, and the saving of Oregon to the Union were accomplished by men of a radi- cally different type. Siberia can boast of no Daniel Boone, Colonel Fremont, nor Marcus Whitman. Outlaws, exiles, convicts, and moujiks have laid the foundations of an entirely opposite social fabric. Religious liberty and the schoolhouse have produced very dissimilar farmers, merchants, and artisans from those under the persuasion of the icon and the knout. * Russia in Asia, by Alexis Krause, p. 320. JERMAK 171 Siberia has not always proved to be the rosy-hued Utopia of their dreams. Its long, dark, cheerless winters and short summers do not always compensate for the milder climes and charming shores of the Euxine. One wide-awake, widely traveled investigator believes that "the extreme loneliness of the life and the length of the winter are pro- ducing a peculiar Siberian type of people silent, morose, and inexpressibly sad." 1 The moujik, starting from the fertile valleys of the Dnieper, Don, and Volga, sometimes keeps moving on his eastward tramp until he stands on the shores of the Pacific or the Gulf of Pechili, for he has not yet reached the land of promise. He is still restive, dissatisfied, so that we find him wist- fully watching and waiting on those distant shores, eager to sail away to a land about which strange rumors of real liberty have reached his ears. Surely no one need be surprised at reading the cablegram, pub- lished in a New York daily, dated October 22, 1909: "The immigration agent who ac- companied Commander Atkinson to Man- churia to secure Russians to take the place of Japanese laborers on sugar plantations in Hawaii says over 100,000 Russian peasants in Manchuria want to come to Hawaii. Hundreds of families pleaded for a chance 1 All the Russias, by Henry Norman, pp. 152, 153. 172 STRANGE SIBERIA when Atkinson selected thirty families to come over. Those people cannot make a liv- ing in Siberia. Some Russians who accom- panied Atkinson were veterans of the late war between Russia and Japan." 1 Just two months earlier Colonel Rudolph Jasenski, of the Fourth Battery Siberian Artillery, who had seen service at Port Arthur, arrived at Ellis Island, New York, having crossed the Atlantic in the steerage of the Cunarder Mauretania. A reporter of the New York Times gives this account of the arrival of this Russian officer in Amer- ica: "Before leaving Russia," the Colonel said, "I resigned my commission and told the government officials that I should not return. I am alone in this city and have no friends, but I hope to get some kind of em- ployment, and am willing to become a citizen, as I prefer the United States to any other foreign country to settle in. ... I will not return to Russia, no matter what hap- pens. I speak French and, of course, my native language, but I cannot speak English, although I can read and write it an accom- plishment I acquired in the Military College at Saint Petersburg." 2 The novel sensations which an ordinary Russian immigrant experiences on his first arrival in New York have been vividly The New York Sun, October 23, 1909. *The New York Times, August 23, 1909. JERMAK 173 sketched by one of his most observant and ardent admirers: ''My Russian friend, amazed, as he was, by the turmoil of the streets and the height of the buildings, is still more awed by the sight of such abun- dant and wholesome food, to which he may help himself without stint. There are large sweet potatoes, which taste better than cakes and are permeated by the delicate flavor of nuts; they are a greater contrast to the small, gnarly scant portion of potatoes which it has been his lot to eat, than any forty-story sky-scraper can be to the tumble- down shanty in which his father kept store. Meat a huge piece of meat on his plate and in memory of his palate only the soft end of a soup-bone, as a special delicacy. What a contrast! 'Last but not least,' the pie, that apple pie, of which he had a whole one to himself and knew not how to attack it; until, finally, following good precedent, he took it into his trembling hands and let his joyous face disappear in its juicy depths. After the dinner he was catechized. All the inhabitants of the far-away town were in- quired after, and the record of the living and dead told to the hungry hearers. What a marvelous group this is! And typical of thousands." 1 1 On the Trail of the Immigrant, by Edward A. Steiner, pp. 158, 159. CHAPTER XIII TOMSK We reached Tomsk at two o'clock in the morn- ing, but did not stop. Beyond Tomsk there is a river to cross the Tom, of course, unfordable and unbridged. There is a ferryboat with paddles, worked by horses, walking round in a circle on the deck a sort of bateau a cheval. But the ferry- man is a Siberian. Antonio Scarfoglio, Round the World in a Motor-Car, p. 298. Railway to Tomsk A TWO days' ride by rail brought us from Irkutsk via Taiga to Tomsk, the capital of Siberia. During this part of the trip the cars were uncomfortably crowded. "Platz- karten," or reserved berths, were not hon- ored. Through the courtesy of our friend, the Russian physician, who went early to the railway station and secured for us reserved berths, we were provided with proper tick- ets, but they proved to be of no use. I was ordered by the conductor to leave our re- served quarters, where I was with my wife and babe, and was assigned to a coupe* for men only. A Russian lady and her daughter, and an English maid to a British dowager, were my wife's companions, while a Russian Jew, a Japanese, and a Hongkong Britisher 174 TOMSK 175 occupied the three other berths of my coups' a typical illustration of the cosmopolitan nature of the travel on this popular overland highway. During the night this Japanese had a constant skirmish over the matter of ventilation with the American occupying the opposite berth. That Far Easterner wanted the coupe" hermetically sealed, while the Westerner desired a change of air. Before the first night was over the Japanese re- treated from the renewed attacks of the American, who kept opening the coupe' door a little, as often as the Japanese had closed it, until finally, out of courtesy or despair, he gave up the contest, and indulged in that sound sleep that usually comes before aris- ing. The following night a Yankee stratagem outwitted the enemy, affording both a cessa- tion of hostilities and ample ventilation all night long. The upper sash was opened a few inches, but was concealed by pulling down the inside shade, so that this ruse proved to be a perfect triumph of the Occi- dent over the Orient. The congested condition of travel was due to the "Compagnie Internationale des Wagons Lits" neglecting to attach one of their cars to this Saint Petersburg express at Harbin, as had been promised by their agent to a party of Americans, so that they were all crowded into the cars of our Russian State Express. Their telegrams to Vladivo- 176 STRANGE SIBERIA stok and expostulations to the railway offi- cials were all of no avail. Two of the party had paid extra fare for reserving a four- berth compartment for their exclusive use. Notwithstanding this, two other passengers, Russians, were assigned to it, and since these Americans could not make the officials under- stand, all their protestations and explana- tions proved futile. At Krasnoyarsk an old, dingy "Wagons Lits" car was attached to our train, relieving somewhat the conges- tion, though its American occupants com- plained of its superfluous dirt and dust. On four different through expresses we met Japanese of the cultured and official class, generally traveling by twos. Were they imitating Caleb and Joshua, spying the enemy's land? Wherever we met the China- man and accosted him in his native tongue he always showed a beaming countenance, radiant with joy, whether acting as a trained linguistic waiter on the dining car or as dealer in tea in hisi own shop at Tomsk, Irkutsk, or other cities, or as itinerant vender on the streets, or as travelers in small com- panies on the trains as far west as Samara on the Volga. After leaving Irkutsk the old Siberian post-road could occasionally be seen, some- time on one side of the track and sometimes on the other, recalling the seventies in America, when the "prairie schooner" trail TOMSK 177 was easily recognizable by the side of American transcontinental railroad tracks, from Omaha to California. Both days the train passed through varie- gated scenery. Now dense forests of pine, fir, cedar, larch, and birch, the latter just beginning to leaf out in their fresh feathery green. Again, passing along clearings, we would see some miserable-looking villages of log cabins, and we would wonder how these poor peasants ever managed to eke out a living during such a short summer season. In some fields peasants were busy starting their spring plowing. In shady nooks, in valleys, and by the banks of streams patches of ice and snow were still to be seen, while amid the rank, grassy growth of the steppes wild flowers were blooming in rich profusion, beautifying the landscape with their bright colors. It was a real delight to recognize the familiar dandelions, buttercups, and cowslips of the homeland, besides large patches of the daring blue borage with its pinkish buds. The flora seemed to be fully a month behind that of our home in north China. Fifteen miles north of the 1,560-feet long bridge over the Oka are cliffs, sculptured with prehistoric figures different from any in western Europe. 1 After our train had 1 Greater Russia, by William Oliver Greener, p. T4. 178 STRANGE SIBERIA crossed over the Birjussa, with its golden sands, we left the jurisdiction of Irkutsk and entered the province of Yeniseisk. Yenisei River Toward sunset on the afternoon of May 26 our train crossed over some islands in the mighty Yenisei Kiver and halted at the colos- sal electric-lighted depot of Krasnoyarsk. In the early twilight the city, with its numer- ous buildings -and high-pointed towers, pre- sented a very attractive appearance. Kras- noyarsk has a population of some fifty thou- sand, and is capital of the province of Yeniseisk, which is more than half as large as all European Eussia. It is beautifully situated on the left bank of the broad Yenisei, which here is divided by islands into several streams. The Yenisei Kiver is the largest in Asia, and opposite the city of Krasnoyarsk is about half a mile wide. It rises in the tablelands of Mongolia, five thou- sand feet above sea level, and flows some three thousand miles before emptying into the Arctic Ocean. Several interesting excur- sions can be made from Krasnoyarsk as a center. By steamboat or post-road the traveler can go northward two hundred miles to the city Yeniseisk and enjoy the strange sights of the town or inspect its museum. If he has four or five days at his disposal, it would well repay him to make a trip to the TOMSK 179 Tyrolese-looking town of Minusinsk; and if he travels by steamer, the steep cliffs along the banks will call forth his admiration. Its city museum, containing over sixty thousand objects, well merits studying, as well as do the inhabitants themselves, along with the shepherds and farmers, the miners and hun- ters in their grotesque costumes strolling through the streets. A shorter outing may be taken to the interesting village of Bas- aicha, noted for its rock formations, com- posed of gigantic stone columns. There they stand, as the fossilized ruins of a prehistoric organ, like the Giants' Causeway in Ireland. A British physician, who crossed the Yenisei seven years before the days of rail- way travel, describes the salient features of the traffic at that time. "Old topers would have been filled with a hankering desire at the sight of a caravan, which had just crossed the river a caravan of vodka, great hogsheads on wheels, conveying to the settle- ments of eastern Siberia the strong rye- spirit of which Russians are so fond, and which so ill repays their fondness. Mem- bers of temperance societies would have been delighted to see there, waiting to cross over, a caravan of nearly a hundred cart- loads of tea on its way from China to Europe. Those who were too whimsical to look with any favor upon tea might yet find satisfac- tion in thinking of that simpler beverage, of 180 STRANGE SIBERIA which they had such an inexhaustible supply in the clear, cold waters of the river." 1 The costly, substantial bridge on which the railway crosses the Yenisei has changed all this. Dynamite would have blown this fine structure into atoms and travel would once more have reverted to the slow, old- fashioned way, had not the reckless revolu- tionist been dissuaded from his design, when von Plevne was blown to pieces instead. 2 Taiga The sun was bright and the air clear and bracing on the morning of May 27 when, at 10:45 A. M., we left the Saint Petersburg express at the junction Taiga, for Tomsk, sixty miles northward off the main line, through this primitive forest, as the word "Taiga" signifies. Somehow or other, this small clearing in the midst of this "forest primeval" of Siberia did not kindle in our breasts any such romantic sentiments as in- spired Longfellow, when he indited his im- mortal poem, "Evangeline." After a delay of only fifteen minutes we were on a branch line bound thither. The almost interminable stretches of forest, "sad and prophetic," whose solemnity was now and then relieved by recent clearings, pall on one's spirit. The 1 Pour Thousand Miles Across Siberia, by Charles Wenyon, M.D., p. 212. a Russia from Within, by Alexander Ular, p. 12. TOMSK 181 superstitious natives believe there is a spirit which haunts these deep forest shades, and try to propitiate it with offerings. Kant was a renowned philosopher, but no traveler, for his biographer states that he never wan- dered farther from his home at Konigsberg than Pillau, thirty miles distant. Kant once said, "Two things there are that always fill me with awe: the starry heavens above and the moral consciousness within," but Kant had never seen the Taiga. The melancholy monotony of the three hours' ride was broken by occasional glances at the Siberian settlers, gathered at the sta- tions in the clearings, conspicuous for their numerous stumps and few log cabins. They had country produce, such as eggs, bread, and bottles of milk, and also vodka for sale. Among all these Siberian maidens one could not pick out one as charming as the devoted heroine of Grand Pre, Arcadie. These buxom damsels evidently did not in- herit those chivalric traits exhibited by the early French settlers in Nova Scotia, whose ancestors loved to listen to romantic legends, recounted by roving troubadors. They, like their ancestors along the Dnieper and Don, had daily to drudge in their izbas or out in the fields. Poetry, romance, and love seldom if ever brightened their dull days of toil. When the maiden became a mother, and her babe was wailing or restless, it was quieted 182 STRANGE SIBERIA by a decoction of crude opium, obtained from the exuding juice of the poppy, which is to be found in every Russian shanty. 1 Tomsk A neat, white depot in a beautiful grove of white birch awaits the traveler on his arrival at the station of Tomsk. This thriv- ing capital of Siberia boasts of its fine uni- versity, two hundred and ten factories, and four banks. We did not loiter long at the station, but, hiring two droskies, rode at once to the city, some two miles distant. Herds of cattle were browsing on the tender, rich grass under the birches in the park. The street, running northward toward the city, as we neared the suburbs, passed by large, handsome red brick buildings, sur- rounded with spacious premises on a natural rise of ground ; these were technical schools, connected with the railway. The thorough- fare, emerging from the forest park, becomes a broad boulevard with sidewalks and two roadways, separated in the middle by elon- gated grassy plots, planted with poplars and provided with paths and benches for pedes- trians. This highway had been paved in 1904, and the main or "Post Office Street," where are the university and chief hotels, last year, while work in paving its western 1 Russia, Her Strength and Weakness, by Wolf von Schierbrand, p. 204. TOMSK 183 extension was still in progress. Many of the sidewalks were paved with boards, recalling streets in Chicago before the great fire. The Russian drosky-driver is a regular Jehu. He loves to make his horse dash ahead on a breakneck gallop. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals might do a thriving business in Siberia and Russia. Their reckless driving so wrought upon the sensitive feelings of "The Lady of the Deco- ration," that she exclaims : "If their cruelty to horses is any criterion of their cruelty to their fellow men, I can't help feeling they deserve their punishment [defeat by the Jap'anesej. The Chinese and Korean, even in their brutality, are not as bad as the ordi- nary Russian." 1 Certain it is that if one does not want to run the risk of having himself or his baggage upset he must first learn this indispensable phrase, "Po-ycs-shal medlenno!" ("Drive slowly!") As it was, our forward drosky, carrying our valises, had scarcely started be- fore, when to our dismay, we beheld our light wicker suitcase go bouncing up into the air and fall down on the roadway strange to say, without bursting and scattering its con- tents on the ground. The great number and superior quality of horses, harnessed to private equipages as 1 The Lady of the Decoration, pp. 87, 88. 184 STRANGE SIBERIA well as to droskies for hire, had attracted our attention, so that we were not surprised to learn that horse-breeding was quite a profitable industry in the outlying farms. We were, however, surprised to see so many droskies having rubber tires. Carriage hire is cheap at Tomsk. Forty kopeks is the charge for the first hour, and thirty kopeks for each following hour, while twenty kopeks (or ten cents, United States gold) is the usual fare for a short ride. Arriving at the Hotel Rossiya (or "Rus- sia"), we found that rooms had been reserved for us, as had been requested by telegram. The obsequious, incessantly bowing hotel clerk, dressed in a swallow-tail suit, but whose linguistic attainments were limited to the Russian language, received us most ur- banely and escorted us to the rooms. They appeared too grandiose for our democratic taste, so we were shown other apartments, and finally selected a large room over-looking a residential street, one flight up and pro- vided with two windows. One of these was a French sash-window, or glass door, opening out upon a small balcony over the street. One third of this room was screened off by a wooden partition and curtains, and con- tained two beds, while there was fine furni- ture, as of a parlor, in the remaining living room. We partook of the regulation dinner of four courses, served in our room. During TOMSK 185 the daytime the southern, sunny exposure made the room pleasantly warm, but toward night the air became so cool that we found it conducive to our comfort to have the large brick of en heated. Our steady progress homeward was again made evident, soon after our arrival, by our home mail, brought by a servant to our room. It included the Outlook of Kew York, dated May 8, and a letter from the same city of May 10. It seemed almost a dream, that here in the capital of Siberia we should be reading home news written about a fortnight earlier. One of our first walks was toward the heart of the city, passing by large retail stores with plate-glass windows to the mam- moth book and printing establishment of Makoushin, to whose great branch store at Irkutsk reference has already been made. We made a call upon the family, to whom we had a letter of introduction, and were cor- dially invited to an evening dinner, which we declined, but accepted an invitation to an afternoon tea. Upon a long table the ubiquitous samovar proudly towered over the lavish tempting array of delicious homemade buns, rusks, cakes, thinly cut bread, choice Siberian but- ter and cheese, sliced ham, fresh apples, oranges, etc., too numerous to mention. Rus- sian hospitality is proverbial, and here, as 186 STRANGE SIBERIA elsewhere, we heartily enjoyed not only the dainty food but also the good cheer of our hosts. Their spacious apartments revealed a cultured taste and an air of comfort. The floor was of hard wood, over which beautiful rugs were spread, while a piano, books, pic- tures, and bric-a-brac added an element of hominess. Mr. and Mrs. Makoushin with their fifteen-year-old son were present. The father was a prosperous Siberian merchant of hardy, patriarchal build and affable man- ner. He could speak only Russian, while his wife could converse in German, as well as in her native tongue. The son could speak English quite well and French also. He was expecting to go in two weeks to Paris in order to pass an entrance examination for the Lyce'e. This young man later acted as cicerone to us on several of our outings. Women with Careers The daughter, we were told, was just com- pleting her law course in Paris. Like Dr. Louise Robinovitch and many other Russian young ladies, she was preparing for a career of usefulness. It will be remembered that Dr. Louise Robinovitch, a native of Odessa, Russia, recently astonished the medical world by her novel discovery of electrical anaesthesia, successfully tried in a hospital at Hartford, Connecticut. Her treatment consisted in passing an electric current of TOMSK 187 low tension and frequent interruption through the brain of the patient, thereby producing sleep, and so dispensing with drugs as anaesthetics. 1 Women in Russia have to be reckoned with, whether on or off the throne, foreign or na- tive, Catherine II, or Sophie Perovskaya, 2 Catherine Breshkovsky, or Dr. Louise Robin- ovitch, or the thousands of earnest, unnamed, self-renunciating women of learning, who go from town to village, teaching the poor igno- rant peasant the first principles of liberty and human rights. A keen German observer recently said : "The young women in Russia are more frequently than anywhere else possessed with a life-ideal. I would often hear them say, 'I will not live a useless life, merely going from one corner of the room to the other.' Then also girls of respectable houses, and, indeed, married women, espouse a career, in order, as far as in them lies, to help in the support of the family. In no country of Europe is there to be found among the young people such a striving to make themselves useful, and to exert them- selves for the welfare of mankind, so as to have those around them free and happy. This ideal of helpfulness has been dominant 1 Harper's Weekly, March 5, 1910. 1 The most famous woman revolutionist, belonging to the highest nobility, and the first woman to die on the scaffold in Russia for a political offense. 188 STRANGE SIBERIA for some forty years. Young ladies who at home keep in their stables ponies half Eng- lish thoroughbred have these later years gone away into the dangerous famine dis- tricts and distributed bread to the famish- ing." 1 Such is the fervent, loving, loyal spirit of young womanhood in Russia to-day. The Black Hundred One afternoon, as we were out riding near the public square, young Makoushin pointed out the governor's residence a low, quaint bungalow which had been plundered by the "Black Hundred" in 1905, during those dark days of blood and loot. His uncle held the office of governor at that time, "but," he in- formed us, "they did not kill him." He also showed us the extensive gutted brick build- ings of the Trans-Siberian Railway and the adjoining theater, which the same mob of rioters had set on fire, after looting the vaults of the railway company. Those were exciting times, as the days of the auto-da- fe in Madrid, Spain. The brutal official butcheries at Kishinev were perpetrated by this same secret society, the "Black Hun- dred." "Men were burned alive by the hun- dred in Tomsk ; women were cruelly tortured in Odessa, . . . and there were more men, women, and children killed in that one city 1 Russland in XX Jahrhundert, by M. L. Schlesinger, Berlin, 1908. TOMSK 189 in the course of a single month than in all France during the great Revolution." 1 This "Black Hundred" was an association of rascals, which a patriotic Russian curtly informed us was "like Tammany, New York, you know." This secret organization was used by the governmental party to counter- act the efforts of the Revolutionists, and is also called "The Union of the True Russian People." 2 University of Tomsk The University of Tomsk the only uni- versity in all Siberia is finely located on the main street, near the center of the city. It has a well-kept campus in front of its main buildings. The grassy border of the wide sidewalk outside the campus was planted in an economical and, to us, novel way. There were two rows of poplar trees. The inner row had been allowed free growth until the trees had attained a height of about thirty feet. Then the upper section of ten feet had been lopped off and planted, as is done with willow-saplings, on the outer edge of the grass-plot, forming the second row of shade trees. Both of these rows seemed to be flourishing. The largest and, in some respects, the most 1 Dr. Dillon, in the Contemporary Review, December, 1905, p. 88S. 2 The Reaction in Russia, by George Kennan, In the Century, June and July, 1910. 190 STRANGE SIBERIA imposing and substantial buildings in Tomsk are the University buildings. Its new large technical school in architecture may well rival any in Western lands. Its medical department is especially flourishing. Under the existing regime at Saint Petersburg we would naturally expect that a theological de- partment, including comparative religions, and a legal faculty, explaining and emphasiz- ing legal rights of man, whether based on the Mosaic law or the Napoleonic code, would be kept in abeyance, and such is the fact. No such restriction, however, rests upon the medical department, .so we look with unbounded admiration on the new, im- posing, solidly built and artistically con- structed Clinic, occupying a whole block, and also wonder at the fine, well-equipped Bac- teriological Institute, away out here in the very heart of the wilds of Siberia. This University was opened just two dec- ades ago, in 1889. It has some two thou- sand students and a library of one hundred thousand volumes, and its privately endowed Scholarship Fund amounts to $2,500,000, United States gold. 1 Its museum possesses large collections of rare curios, but they are housed in cramped, crowded rooms, utterly inadequate for such fine specimens, some of which belong to the 1 Siberia : A Record of Travel, Climbing, and Explo- ration, by S. Turner, p. 99. TOMSK 191 Bronze Age, recently unearthed from mounds discovered near the sources of the Yenisei. It is particularly rich in objects illustrative of native tribes throughout Siberia. Our guide showed us some specimens of American Indian workmanship, which had been pre- sented by the Smithsonian Institution, Wash- ington, D. C., and compared these with va- rious articles made by Tungus and Aleutians, such as birch-bark canoes, fancy translucent fishskin garments, and also bead work on leather made by the natives living along the Amur Kiver, long before Columbus dis- covered America. Windows and Wedding Why everywhere in Siberia a glass tumbler holding a fluid was placed on the inner win- dow sill between the double-sash windows, which are needed to ward off the severe cold of winter, we could not understand, until the explanation was given that the fluid in the tumblers was ammonia in solution, placed there to prevent the formation of vapor on the panes of glass which otherwise would obscure the view. Looking out of those double-sashed win- dows of the Makoushin mansion one after- noon, we saw carriages draw up before the old Greek Cathedral, where a crowd quickly gathered. Madame Makoushin told us that it was a Russian wedding, and advised us to 192 STRANGE SIBERIA go over and witness the ceremony. So her son gallantly offered to escort us. We hastened across the street and entered the Cathedral. Going inside the reserved corded space, he led us to a favorable standing place, for he was well known to the officiating priest. From this vantage ground we eagerly watched the wedding ceremony, so novel to us. The priest, clothed in gorgeous yellow robes, had a most peculiar head of brown hair, which stood out stiffly all around his head, instinctively reminding one of the comic pictures of a mischievous boy so frightened that each hair stood on end. However, there was nothing comical in the ceremony, but, as in most Greek Church serv- ices, all was solemn and symbolic. As usual, the music throughout the ceremony was especially rich and thrilling, and particu- larly fine were the deep, mellow notes of the priest, wearing the fantastic Circassian head of hair. "Without effort, the voice of the priest was the sound of virile, unexhausted, elemental vocality itself, suppressed, puri- fied, beautified by devotion and lofty spir- itual feeling." 1 The expectant couple, in holiday attire, did not stand before the altar but in the center of the room. The priest led them by the hand to their proper positions and then gave 1 The Russian Advance, by Albert J. Beveridge, p. 349. TOMSK 193 each a lighted candle, symbolizing caution in looking before they leaped into wedded life. After considerable singing and reading, the priest lifted the heavy Bible from the lectern and presented it in turn to bridegroom and bride to kiss, indicating that this book should be reverenced as their guide through life. Then he dipped two gold rings into holy water and, after pronouncing his bless- ing, handed one to each of the bridal pair. The man placed his upon the middle finger of the woman, who did the same on the middle finger of her future husband, symbolic that each belonged to the other. After this two lofty golden crowns were produced. One was placed upon the bridegroom's head and the other upon the bride's, symbolizing that the man was to be king and the woman queen in their new home. Then, as if to restrain them from becoming unduly elated by these assured regal rights, he threw a long wide scarf around their clasped hands and rather unceremoniously led them both on a quick pace three times around the lectern, on which lay the Bible and a crucifix, thereby declar- ing that the truth and love of God should be the center of all their actions. The sacra- ment of the Lord's Supper was then par- taken and the crucifix kissed, thus emphasiz- ing the sacrificial nature of God's love, which their lives should exemplify. Finally, to manifest that marriage is honorable, so that 194 STRANGE SIBERIA no one entering wisely into its holy precincts need ever be ashamed, they kissed each other in public and the ecclesiastical ceremony was over. At this moment loving relatives and friends began cordially to greet the happy pair, and the glad bells in the Ca- thedral tower above chimed their hearty approval. Market Place The widely extended market place, with its ever-changing, strangely clad crowds, shifting amid the busy shops and stalls, where meat, game, vegetables, fruit, and other produce, and also farming and house- hold utensils, articles of clothing, as well as clumsily made toys, were sold, was always an unfailing source of attraction to us, whether we were leisurely sauntering or slowly riding along. One morning, noticing some bunches of fine-looking radishes, we in- quired the price and were told thirty kopeks per bunch. Thinking the price too high, we ordered the coachman to drive on, where- upon the peasant woman rushed out of her stall and ran after our drosky and threw a fine, bright-red specimen of a radish into little Marion's lap, as if to show that she was not really so avaricious as she might seem to be. Suffice it to say, that on our next visit there we purchased some of her tempting wares. TOMSK 195 Carriage Ride One afternoon we rode in a drosky up the steep winding incline at the eastern extrem- ity of the city and enjoyed the extensive views from the edge of the vast eastern steppe, which stretches far away toward Lake Baikal. The city of Tomsk lies so low near the foot of this steppe that formerly, only a few miles away, this low-lying city could not be seen. Not many years previous a party of nearly one hundred soldiers and returning emigrants, losing the post-road by a heavy fall of snow, perished, and some of the frozen corpses of the party were after- ward picked up within three miles of the city limits. Such a catastrophe would be almost impossible now, since these cliffs along the edge of the steppe are being covered with churches and residences, visible for long dis- tances. From these surrounding bluffs, to- ward sunset, when the twilight glow illu- mined the numerous green domes, cupolas, towers, and roofs of the city, spread out on the plain below, the outlook bore a striking resemblance to a somewhat similar scene from the heights of Walnut Hills, overlook- ing Cincinnati. Near the market by the stream Uschaika, dividing the city into two parts, we could look down from the bridge spanning the creek and see the many motor boats which ply across the Tom River to a riverine re- 196 STRANGE SIBERIA sort and to the summer houses on its oppo- site side. Street Sights The long evenings, when the sunshine lasted toward nine o'clock, were highly rel- ished by the natives. At Saint Petersburg we met a Kussian who had lived some time in New York. He stated that he disliked the American summers, where one swelters under the fierce heat, and the twilights are so short, whereas in his Kussian home he could enjoy the long, delightful summer evenings. Be- fore retiring we would take a glance out of our front windows and notice citizens still enjoying the long-drawn-out twilight most reasonably so, when one thinks of their hiber- nating for half a year or longer in their stuffy winter quarters. Some evenings, even after eleven o'clock, we would step out on our little balcony to "view the landscape o'er." Even at that late hour a rosy glow would be visible on the western horizon, so that the streets were not yet real dark, while the contours of the Greek churches and the upper parts of city buildings would cast clear-cut silhouettes against the bright sky. The stately public buildings and attractive stores, having large plate-glass show-win- dows, in Siberian cities, like Irkutsk and Tomsk, were as great a revelation to us as were those of Portland, Oregon, in 1877, be- TOMSK 197 fore that enterprising city on the Pacific slope was linked to the great transconti- nental lines of railroad. Benches along the main streets in front of stores and in residential streets before citi- zens' homes are quite an institution in Irkutsk and Tomsk. One day as we were coming from the post office, on the main street at Tomsk, we were accosted by a Rus- sian traveler, whom we had met several times in the dining car between Harbin and Irkutsk, and on whom we had practiced Russian. He seemed delighted to meet us again, and proposed our sitting down on one of these public benches nearby, so that we might converse at our leisure. This we did, as we gazed upon the droskies and basket- like telegas dashing past in the street, and the crowds, some briskly and others leisurely promenading on the sidewalks. We found out that he was planning to proceed toward Russia on the same train with us. He told us that he was a Mohammedan from Vladivo- stok, where he had been engaged in shipping meat by cold storage from Australia to that port, and now he was on his way to Caucasia. Receiving Prison In our desire to see as much as possible of the life of a place, we would often wander into side streets. Once in Tomsk, as we were so walking, we heard rough-sounding 198 STRANGE SIBERIA voices, and, looking up, saw many windows of a broad, high building, crowded with con- victs, clothed in earthen-colored garments, and many with iron chains on their wrists. Unintentionally we had stumbled upon one of the large receiving prisons, for which Tomsk has an unsavory reputation. In- stantly the horrors of Siberian prison life, as described by George Kennan, were con- jured up from our memories. An uncanny feeling startled and oppressed us. Hastily we quickened our steps to escape from the sight and sounds of this horrid spot. Ever afterward in our strolls we were careful to keep away from that detested place, although only one block away was located a prosper- ous young ladies' seminary. One day we rode by a grove in a fashionable quarter, where were buildings connected with a popu- lar Cafe" Chantant, but young Mr. Makou- shin's comment upon it was, "Not good." City Park A large city park, ornamentally laid out with winding walks, planted with trees and shrubbery, and provided with refreshment booths, where cakes, kumiss, ices, and other delicacies were in brisk demand, was a fa- vorite resort for the multitude, as well as for our trio, since it was only one block away from our hotel. We would frequently saunter around the paths or sit down on one TOMSK 199 of the many benches and watch the peasants in their odd costumes and the school chil- dren at their sprightly games. Crowds gather in this park evenings as well as dur- ing the day. Late one afternoon workmen were busy decorating a portion of these pleasure grounds with gala flags and fancy lanterns for a '"Firemen's Show." Special playgrounds were set apart for the children. One space was full of nimble, rollicking urchins, exercising on swings, horizontal and parallel bars, rings fastened to hanging ropes, vertical ladders, and sim- ilar apparatus. In another space there was a miniature slide-hill, on which a smooth, round log about a foot thick and fifty feet long was so fixed on a slant that one's own weight would send him sliding down. Off at arm's length at one side was a smooth rail- ing, which could be touched to steady the timid or save the luckless from a fall. This Si- berian sport, we thought, was an improvement on our old-fashioned American fun of sliding down a cellar door, so exciting in our child- hood days. We never wearied watching the constantly changing, brightly colored stream of happy, ruddy-faced boys and girls, who, like Tennyson's "Brook," seemed to "go on forever." One little tot, apparently four years old, would take his turn in sliding down the log, trudging uphill and then to- bogganing down again, with as much zest as 200 STRANGE SIBERIA his playmates twice or thrice his age. Oiie little maiden, not yet in her teens, carefully held in her lap her baby sister, while with the other hand she steadied herself by holding on to the side-rail. Handicapped as she was, she never seemed to have enough of the play, and her gleeful face said that she was hav- ing, in the anglicized phrase of a Chinese youth, "a lot of funs." Dentists Another American enterprise, besides sew- ing machines, kodaks, typewriters, cash registers, gramophones, and other Yankee no- tions, had apparently found its way into Siberia's capital, and that was dentistry. Judging from the numerous signs of dentists and dental schools displayed on the main and side streets, Tomsk ought to encourage a profitable export trade along the dental line. Such a bountiful supply of dentists ought to more than suffice to repair the jaws not only of all its own citizens and all the strangers within its gates, but also all the tribes of Aleuts, Buriats, Tungus, and Kirghis roam- ing over Siberian soil. Yellow Literature It did seem a pity but perhaps it cannot be helped at present to see "yellow litera- ture" for sale. It was vauntingly displayed at newspaper kiosks, where were small paper- TOMSK 201 covered pamphlets, illustrated with pictures of masked assassins, robberies, and murders, before which stood groups of youthful ad- mirers. Several years ago heathen Chinese officials in Peking prohibited the sale of ob- jectionable pictures on their streets on the ground that they corrupted the morals of the people. The baleful influence of this cheap litera- ture has been noticed in a recent number of the Outlook, New York, October 1, 1910: "Without attempting to fix or apportion the responsibility for the general disregard of property and personal rights in Russia, we may point out the existence of a cause of crime to which attention has never been directly called either by the government or by its enemies, and that is the unrestricted circulation of criminal literature. In con- nection with the recent exhibition of books and periodicals in Saint Petersburg, the De- partment of Press Affairs compiled, for the information of visitors, a statistical classifi- cation of all the books published in the Rus- sian empire in the year 1909. From this classification it appears that, in point of cir- culation, the literature of crime takes fourth place (after schoolbooks, almanacs, and tracts), with 585 separate titles and 8,981,- 520 copies. The books which make up this immense class are all intended for circula- tion among the peasants, are sold at an 202 STRANGE SIBERIA average price of three cents each, and are collectively known to the Kussian book-trade as 'Pinkerton Stories.' They may be de- scribed as flimsy 'penny dreadfuls/ whose paper covers are embellished with cheap colored pictures of crime or the instruments of crime, and whose contents may be inferred from their titles, some of which are : A Nest of Criminals, The Man with Three Fingers, The Bloody Altar, The Revenge of the Es- caped Convict, The Corpse of the Gold- Seeker, The Bloody Pavilion, The Two- Footed Wolf, A Mysterious Crime, The Bloody Talisman, The Church Robber, Mod- ern Inquisitors, Kidnapers of Girls, The Incendiary, A Sect of Murderers, Secret Bul- lets, Lynch Law, and The Manufacture of Counterfeit Money." Legend and History One of the sights of Tomsk is the tomb of Theodore Kusmitsch, who died in 1861. This tomb is erected in the cemetery of the Alex- ander Monastery on the heights above the center of the city. A popular legend, based on the resemblance of this ascetic to the Tsar, Alexander I, and fostered by the priests, is that Alexander I did not die in southern Russia, but escaped in disguise to Tomsk, where he lived as a hermit, under the name of Theodore Kusmitsch. This rumor is believed by many devotees, who flock to TOMB OF THEODORE KUSMITSCH, TOMSK TOMSK 203 worship at his tomb. It was this legend that worked such an overpowering weird spell over Count Leo Tolstoy that the octo- genarian novelist stealthily stole away from his comfortable home, in the pathetic at- tempt to imitate Kusmitsch. All the world knows how he, finally succumbing at a lonely railway station, abruptly met his tragic fate. The nunnery in which Tsar Peter II com- pelled his bride, Princess Katherine Dol- goroukaya, to take the veil, and where she was immured two years, until released by Empress Elizabeth, has been razed to the ground and now the fine Greek Church of the Incarnation occupies the old site. Other Faiths Tomsk exhibits a surprising liberal spirit toward other faiths. Besides two Greek Cathedrals and innumerable Greek churches, there are sacred edifices dedicated to the Mohammedan, Hebrew, Roman Catholic, and Protestant faiths. In one quarter of the city stands a lone Mohammedan mosque, with its tall, slender minaret, where the muezzin stands and calls the faithful to prostrations and prayers. How did this lonely mosque ever spring up on this wild Siberian soil? Could it be possible that some descendants of the Mame- lukes, who had been sold into Egyptian slavery by Genghis Khan, after long listen- 204 STRANGE SIBERIA ing to the legendary tales of their forbears, became suddenly possessed with a resolve to seek out those boundless ancestral steppes, and so left the alluring city of Cairo, with its one thousand mosques, bringing with them the seed of this solitary, graceful minaret, which so astonished our eyes to-day? Here also we find a Jewish synagogue. How did this colony of Jews ever come to settle here? Were they of that company of Israelites who in the dim centuries of the past halted here, preferring to remain on this side of Jordan than to wander farther toward the promised "land of Sinim," the ruins of whose old synagogue have lately been discovered inside the walled city of Kai- Feng-fu, on the banks of the Yellow River? Then, again, we distinguished the charac- teristic cross on the lofty steeple of the Ro- man Catholic church. Do these Romanists claim descent from the followers of Saint Thomas, who is said to have visited India, just over the border of southern Siberia, or, perchance, of Xavier, who later labored there? Authentic history states that Catherine II induced many German Protestants to settle on the fertile land in southeastern Rus- sia, and bestowed upon them special privi- leges, including freedom of worship. Ekater- inburg, Ekaterinodar, Ekaterinoslaw, Eka- terinowka, and many other places, in which TOMSK 205 her name is interwoven, indicate how highly this liberal-minded empress was esteemed by these thrifty Teutons. Kecently many of these German-speaking subjects have mi- grated into "Greater Russia." Repulsive Painting The Lutheran church at Tomsk, a neat, homelike structure, is admirably located op- posite the City Park. However, as soon as one enters the sacred edifice, he is startled and shocked by a large painting directly in front. The conspicuous painting represents the Christ in a kneeling, agonizing posture in the garden of Gethsemane, limned in a most revoltingly realistic manner. God is love, and his "love divine, all love excelling," reveals itself not only in Gethsemane and on Calvary, but also at Bethlehem, Bethany, and everywhere as he "went about doing good." So do we find him portrayed in the great masterpieces. In the celebrated fresco of "The Last Judgment," painted on the inner wall of the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo depicted Christ in the prime of his vigorous manhood, acting as divine Arbitrator in deciding the destinies of mankind. Raphael and Murillo loved to paint over and over again the miracle of the incarnation. Thorwaldsen sculptured his monumental Christ with extended arms of blessing and invitation, so that as with 206 STRANGE SIBERIA wondrous rapture we gaze at his colossal Christ, in the Lutheran cathedral of "Our Lady," at Copenhagen, we can almost hear his gracious words saying, "Come unto me." Some such incidents in the loving, trium- phant life of Christ are far more uplifting and inspiring for the house of God. Vast, stately cathedrals, like those at Cologne, Toledo, and Chartres may impress the wor- shiper with divine awe, as is right and meet in God's holy temple. But this divine awe, if truly contemplated, is so overwhelming in its very infinitude, that we need a reminder of the very essence of Deity, love. So we joyfully welcome the genial warmth of the sun's rays, which stream through the ex- quisitely beautiful stained-glass windows of these cathedrals, radiantly illumining the familiar biblical stories of faith, hope, and love, and lavishly throwing a mass of won- drous rainbow tints on the cold pavement below. Now, this painting in the Tomsk Lutheran church represents our Saviour excruciatingly jaded, indescribably sad and appallingly ghastly. Either it ought to be removed at once, or its counterpart, illustrating some incident in his joyful, merciful, or trium- phant life, should also hang there to counter- act this repellent spectacle. Otherwise, if we belonged to that communion, nothing but deep religious conviction could ever induce TOMSK 207 us to attend the services there Sunday after Sunday. Rather would we be inclined to join the earnest throngs who flock to the many Greek churches, so attractive with their superb music, gorgeous rites, and handsome icons, revealing the benign Madonna and the infant Christ in all his innocent loveliness. Cathedral Service It chanced to be Whitsunday during our stay at Tomsk, and we managed to wedge our way into the new Cathedral amid surg- ing crowds of zealous worshipers, where rich and poor met together. Compared with the Pharisaic exclusiveness in some of our American Protestant churches, this free commingling of rich and poor in their com- mon worship of God was most refreshing. True theocracy it was, when in this Cathe- dral the splendid uniforms of the army of- ficers and the broadcloth suits of the wealthy citizens, along with the costly furs and vel- vets of the ladies, brushed by the side of the tattered felt and ragged sheepskin of the peasants. In the presence of God the millionaire and the beggar stand equal. In- deed, are we not all, in the sight of our heavenly Father, equally his children throughout life, as well as in the hour and article of death? Especially appropriate is it to remember and emphasize this whole- some truth in the house of God. 208 STRANGE SIBERIA The aged and infirm would find this Greek worship, though varied by almost incessant prostrations and crossings, very wearisome. The prescribed posture, apart from those above mentioned, is standing, and the serv- ice is by no means brief. This standing at- titude in worship contrasts strikingly with that of the ordinary pampered American con- gregation, who complacently, if not resign- edly, are seated in their reserved uphol- stered pews. Participating in Russian church services means the practice along devotional lines of "La Vie Intense," as "The Strenuous Life," by Roosevelt, has been rendered in French, and putting forth extra effort as in the good old days, when the prophets urged the peo- ple, saying, "Come ye and let us go up" to the Lord's house, established on the top of the mountains. Downhill-going is easy, but uphill work means exertion. Worshipers in the Russian church to-day do not find their devotional exercises any lazy lolling about on soft pews. Rather may it be regarded as one phase of muscular Christianity. In honor of this Whitsuntide festival, the interior of this vast Cathedral was beauti- fully decorated with an abundance of leafy branches from white birch and poplar trees and with bouquets of wild flowers. At one counter near the central pillars a brisk trade was kept up in candles, large and small, TOMSK 209 which the devotees, after purchasing, carried to other priests near particular shrines, where they were lighted and with others made the dim religious light brighter. On one long table near the candle-stall small rolls of bread were being purchased. One in- cident showed that Siberian notions of etiquette differed from ours, for a gorgeously robed priest deliberately took out a comb and with it adjusted his hair in the presence of all the congregation, before he placed a heavy golden crown on his head and pro- ceeded with the prescribed ceremony; but this public performance was of a piece with another long-haired priest, whom we saw riding in a drosky with his wife at his side and her bandbox in his lap. The exceeding richness and profusion of costly icons in this new Cathedral was very noticeable some quite quaint in design. One had a realistic representation of the Son of God in the bosom of the Father, while an- other exhibited the Holy Ghost by a fantastic combination of a beatific woman's face with the wings of a dove at each side but minus a body. Monday, another holiday "The Descent of the Holy Ghost." We were disappointed and disgusted to find on going out that all the large stores and public buildings were closed, on this our last day in Tomsk, since we had planned to make a few more pur- 210 STRANGE SIBERIA chases. Under the circumstances we tried to make the best of it and so strolled along the streets and parks sight-seeing amid the throng of festive, happy-go-lucky holiday- goers. To some Siberians, who had evidently imbibed too freely of their favorite vodka, we gave a wide berth. Why did so many of the populace make such a public spectacle of this historic spiritual event by reversing the scriptural injunction : "Be not drunken with wine, wherein is riot, but be filled with the Spirit"? And this sorry travesty of God's most gracious gift on the very day set apart to commemorate "The Descent of the Holy Ghost"! CHAPTER XIV ACROSS THE STEPPES Some of the Asiatic steppes are grassy plains. Others are covered with succulent, evergreen, articulated sodaplants. Many glisten from a dis- tance with flakes of exuded salt, which cover the clayey soil, not unlike in appearance to freshly fallen snow. Humboldt. Onward from Tomsk Ox Tuesday, June 1, long after daybreak, but really quite early for the correct time by the clock was only half-past four we arose, packed our goods, and at half-past six o'clock started for the railway station. The morning air was fresh and bracing. After bounding over the uneven cobblestone pave- ment of the city we enjoyed all the more the early ride back again over the smooth park roads leading through the white birch forests. We might have continued our journey by water down the Tom and Obi and up the Tobol Rivers to Tobolsk, as had been sug- gested. Or, if we had been so inclined, we could have made an excursion by steamboat to Barnaul, one hundred miles south, among the foothills of the Altai range, where its population of 30,000 inhabitants, its thriv- 211 212 STRANGE SIBERIA ing mining industries, and its choice mu- nicipal museum would have interested us. This mining industry was established there in 1738 by Demidoff, whose enterprise was recognized and rewarded with the rank of nobility by Peter the Great, and by this town with his statue in a public square. Pro- ceeding fifty miles further south from Bar- naul by steamboat up the Obi toward the Altai mountains, we would have arrived at the busy, picturesque town of Biisk, with its 18,000 inhabitants. At this remote town, if we should chance to discover that our "fluid assets" had run short, we could have them replenished at the Russo-China Bank there. We decided, however, to abide by our original plan. The poet, whose enraptured soul gave vent to the strains, "Backward, turn backward, O time!" might have felt some consolation to find that each day one hour had heeded his passionate appeal, but for full and com- plete satisfaction he would have to voyage over the Pacific from America to Asia. After crossing the 180 meridian, the steam- ship captain arbitrarily drops out of the calendar one entire day. The voyager re- tires, for instance, on Monday evening and awakens the next morning to find it Wednes- day. Nowhere else on the surface of this globe of ours can be found a more effectual way of killing time. ACROSS THE STEPPES 213 Immigrants The railway stations were of the same monotonous type. Occasionally we would watch the thirsty immigrants, holding ket- tles, pitchers, bottles, and cups in their hands, standing in line to take their turn to get their government keep-o-tok. Most piti- able was the forlorn appearance of many of them, stranded at the various stations and huddled together on the platforms. Among them were many mothers with baby and bundle strapped on their backs. Some were barefooted, although furs were worn by some of our fellow passengers. Many men and women wore coarse sandals braided out of rushes, which looked as cheap and crude as the straw-shoes with which the Japanese used to shoe their horses before and long after the days of Commodore Perry. The pungent odor which exuded from some of these immigrant cars was easily distin- guished from that "of Araby the blest," and presented a strong contrast to the pure ozone of these sunshiny days, for It is the month of June, The month of leaves and roses, When pleasant sights salute the eyes And pleasant scents the noses. Passing Sights Every telegraph pole had two numbers painted on it. One indicated the individual 214 STRANGE SIBERIA number of the pole and the other the year in which it had been erected. Movable fences for the purpose of warding off snow-drifts reminded us of similar appliances over the Rockies and Sierra Nevadas on American transcontinental railroads. After leaving Taiga the forest gradually became less dense, and before long we emerged upon the open steppes with their broad, seemingly limitless fields of wild grass and flowers. Windmills on many farm- steads added a quaint Dutch feature to the landscape. A few hours' ride west from Taiga brought us to the flourishing town of Novo-Xiko- layevesk, on the right bank of the Obi, with its 25,000 inhabitants. Lord Ronaldshay, Major Swayne, and other British sportsmen have selected this place as their favorite starting point in their pursuit of mountain sheep, ibex, wapiti, and other large game on the northern slopes of the Altai. Bridges and Rivers Our train crossed the Obi River on a rail- way bridge 2,640 feet long. These railway bridges over the Yenisei, Obi, Irtysh, and other Siberian rivers are all fine, solid struc- tures veritable triumphs of engineering skill. In our schooldays we studied the out- landish names of these Siberian rivers. Lit- tle did we then dream that the dav would ACROSS THE STEPPES 215 ever dawn when we would be comfortably gliding over them on such magnificent bridges. A trip to the moon would have seemed just as probable. At the time Jules Verne published his famous romance, Around the World in Eighty Days, the story was generally considered as preposterous as a tale of Baron Munchausen. Truth is stranger than fiction. To-day, that once popular book has been relegated to the back shelves of the libraries, side by side with tomes on ancient history. Omsk Early on the morning of June 2 our train stopped at the station of Omsk, w r hich, like other Siberian depots, is situated miles away from the city, but a branch line of railway or a drosky affords the means of communi- cation. Omsk is a city of considerable importance, having 53,000 inhabitants and twenty-nine educational establishments, and is the center of a growing agricultural district. The grain and hay are gathered chiefly by machines, bearing the names of Deering and McCor- mick of Chicago. These American harvest- ing machines are great favorites with Si- berian farmers, on account of their lightness and adaptability compared with the heavy, clumsy articles of British or Russian manu- facture. Recently an American lady has do- 216 STRANGE SIBERIA nated funds with which to erect a Baptist church in the city. Along the sloping banks of the Irtysh, where the waters of the Om flow into it, and not far from the steamboat landing, extends the city park. Near by, on the banks of the Om, is the Children's Playground, with its summer theater, a miniature of its proto- type in the Parisian Champs Elyse'es. As in most large Siberian cities, so here is a fine museum, with choice specimens of the pre- historic period, collected from the surround- ing steppes, curious articles of indigenous domestic industries, and a rare collection of ornithology. Omsk is historically noted as the place of banishment for the celebrated writer, Dosto- yevsky, whose popular work, Buried Alive, which has been translated into many lan- guages, reveals some aspects of the execrable exile system. According to Koznovsky, a fellow prisoner, Dostoyevsky was twice flogged by the prison authorities. Once he was punished for having complained, on be- half of the other prisoners, because a lump of filth was found in their soup. The second time his offense was that, in defiance of an officer's command, he saved a fellow prisoner from drowning. On both occasions he was brutally beaten. After the second flogging, which his companions regarded as fatal, he was removed to the hospital. Fortunately ACROSS THE STEPPES 217 recovering, he was ever afterward dubbed by his fellow-convicts with the nickname "Deceased." 1 By traveling down the Irtysh River, the traveler may proceed to Tobolsk and further eastward to Tomsk. Or, if possessed with an adventuresome spirit and desirous of seeing some of Russia's acquired possessions in Central Asia, he could journey by steamer south 685 miles up the Irtysh to the Oriental city of Semipalatinsk and thence by post- road to the great city of Tashkent in Tur- kestan, with its 156,000 inhabitants, which Russia annexed in 1865, and thence by rail via Samarkand with its mausoleum of Tam- erlane, thence to Bochara, Merv, and the Caspian, then across this inland sea to Baku, with its petroleum industry, and so on to Europe. 2 On his way he could visit Rus- sia's new Asiatic stronghold, Vladikaukas, "Queen of Caucasia." Petropaulovsk A six hours' ride from Omsk brought us to the city of Petropaulovsk, named in honor of two great apostles, one who labored chiefly among the Jews and the other among the Gentiles. A third of its 21,500 inhabitants are Mohammedans. In the city, two miles 1 Russia and the Russians, by E. Noble, p. 220. * Travel and Sport In Turkestan, by Captain J. N. Price Wood. 218 STRANGE SIBERIA distant from the railway, is a noted barter- market, whose slopes open on an interior court, where brisk trading is carried on, chiefly in cattle and hides. Up to 182G this place was notorious as the mart where Cos- sacks publicly sold their captives. Kourgan The next important stop is at Kourgan, or Kurgan, another six hours' run. Kour- gan, situated on the river Tobol, derives its name from the Tartar "gur," "kyr," or "kur," signifying a grave, or hill, and "khan," a house literally a grave-house. 1 Many of these tumuli, or hillocks, dotting the plains have been found to contain rare collections of archaeological treasures, which now en- rich the museums of Saint Petersburg and other cities. Butter Business Kourgan is one of the main centers in the manufacture of Siberian butter. Many do not yet realize that the quantity of butter exported from Siberia is double that of wheat. An Englishman, engaged in this busi- ness, traveled with us from Omsk to his home in Kourgan, where, on alighting, he was af- fectionately greeted by his wife and son. He gave us interesting particulars about this profitable industry. Just before the 1 The Russian Empire, by Haxthausen. ACROSS THE STEPPES 219 train pulled into the depot at Kourgan he pointed out one of the large butter establish- ments, in which he was interested. Large letters in Russian, German, and English ad- vertised "The Union Cold Storage Co., Lon- don." He stated that fourteen English, Ger- man, and Danish firms were at Kourgan, about twenty-one at Omsk, and others at Barnaul and other places on the surround- ing steppes. This business of butter-making in Siberia has been greatly assisted by the government. In order to secure efficiency and economy in its manufacture and excellence in the pro- duct, a professor of agriculture is appointed by the central authorities to study the latest improvements all over the w T orld in the science and art of butter-making. The re- sults of their investigations are published in pamphlet form and distributed to trained men, graduates of universities, who teach at the Siberian Dairy Schools, established at Kourgan, Omsk, Barnaul, and elsewhere. An agronom, or professor of dairy farming, has the oversight of each dairy, who gives personal attention and instruction to the peasants, so that a moujik of average intel- ligence, after three months' training, is qualified to manage a dairy. These dairies belong to cooperative associations or artels, so popular in Russia, who hire these quali- fied dairymen to manufacture butter for 220 STRANGE SIBERIA them on modern scientific methods. In 1903 the government granted substantial subsidies to assist these artels. There are more than two hundred and fifty artels, and their num- ber is constantly increasing. Government experts, usually from the Baltic provinces, and also skilled Danish butter-makers, who must be provided with government diplomas, supplement the work of the native butter- makers, by systematic visitations, practical demonstrations, and correction of errors. Each of these inspectors has oversight of ten creameries. The governmental instructors also teach the peasant how scientifically to feed cattle on fodder during the winter, some- what on the plan of American silos, so that butter is produced all the year round. This immense butter-making industry had its origin in the dairy of an English wife of a Russian, who lived in the Tiumen district, and whose dairy to-day is still regarded as a model. In 1896 hers was the only dairy in all Siberia. This butter business has assumed so great proportions that to handle the traffic the railway has ten hundred and eighty refrig- erator cars of fifteen tons each, for which the railway arranges a weekly service of seven trains, each train, if necessary, com- posed of thirty-five cars. These trains of refrigerator cars are easily distinguished by being painted white. They convey the butter ACROSS THE STEPPES 221 to Saint Petersburg, Kiga, and other Baltic ports, where steamships regularly carry the golden product to England. Sometimes as many as one thousand tons of Siberian butter have been delivered in London within a single week. Russian Eggs This Englishman, now employed in the butter business, told us that previously he had been employed in the poultry business in the country southeast of Moscow, where he shipped eggs by the wholesale to London. It may be news to some to know that Great Britain annually buys nearly 1,000,000 or 5,000,000 worth of Kussian'eggs. After the usual three signals, our train pulled out of the station of Kourgan and steadily glided over the level steppes west ward toward the Urals, passing isbas, wind mills, and telegraph poles in quick succes sion. CHAPTER XV OVER THE URALS There is a chain of mountains, celebrated for a long time, but better known in our day by its numerous mines and smelters, and by the scien- tific explorers, who have traversed It in all direc- tions. These are the Ural Mountains, which the people living there revere and call "the Girdle of the Earth," and which Strahlenberg rightly fixes as the boundary between Europe and Asia. P. 8. Pallas, Observations sur les Formation des Montagnes, 1777, p. 10. Chelyabinsk At Chelyabinsk, an important junction at the foot of the eastern slope of the Urals, the Trans-Siberian Railway divides into two branches, one going north one hundred and fifty-four miles to Ekaterinburg, where it crosses the Urals and proceeds westward via Perm, direct to Saint Petersburg. The other line continues due west, via Slatoust, Sa- mara, and Tula, near Count Tolstoy's estates, to Moscow. At present two trains run weekly to Russia's old capital, and one to the new one on the Neva. At this junction not far from the railway depot stand the immense modern barracks for the accommodation of immigrants en route for Siberia. The city of Chelyabinsk, 222 OVER THE URALS situated nearly three miles distant from the railway on the banks of the Mias, contains some 27,000 inhabitants. The approach by the railway westward to the Urals, like that to the Rocky Mountains on the Union Pacific, is so gradual that the tourist is surprised when he learns that the train has already arrived at the summit of the pass. At this high point a triangular pyramid of white marble has been erected on the dividing line between the two continents. One of its three sides is inscribed "Asia," and another "Europe." This is the celebrated "Monu- ment of Tears," noted for being embraced by thousands of weeping exiles, as they pay sad farewell to Europe before plunging into un- known Siberia with its terrors, intensified by incessant horrible rumors. Their hearts are as heavy with inconsolable grief as were the ancient Israelites who in their eastern captivity, sat down and wept, hanging their harps on the willows in a strange land. Scenery The scenery, where the railway crosses the Urals, possesses no elements of grandeur or sublimity at all comparable to Switzerland or the Canadian Rockies. The tourist is, perhaps, reminded of pleasant, picturesque views along the Pennsylvania or Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad over the Alleghenies rather than that of the Denver and Rio 224 STRANGE SIBERIA Grande or Canadian Pacific over the Rockies. As our train wound its way around the many mountain curves the speed was slackened, for there was danger of cave-ins and landslides from recent heavy downpours. In some places the ground looked very miry and treacherous. The newly shoveled-up dirt showed that the roadbed had just been re- paired from washouts. So in those risky sections our train crept along at a snail's pace, passing gangs of laborers with spades in their hands. Minerals This Ural region is noted for apparently inexhaustible mineral wealth. Here pre- cious gold is mined. Ninety-five per cent of the world's supply of platinum is produced here. Its greatest riches, however, consist in limitless deposits of iron ore, providing four fifths of the pig iron used in Russia, not to mention the profusion of precious stones, including porphyry and jasper of great beauty and immense slabs of malachite, which, as gigantic pillars, vases and table- slabs enrich the palaces, museums, and art galleries of Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Out of this Ural treasure-house are taken twenty-five per cent of the gold obtained in Russia, besides silver, mercury, copper, nickel, zinc, cobalt, and coal. Rich stores of sapphire, emerald, beryl, chrysoberyl, tour- OVER THE URALS 225 maline, aquamarine, topaz, amethyst, rock- crystal, garnet, jade, marble, diamond, as- bestos, and pyrites are found imbedded in the solid sides of this same rugged range of mountains. 1 Demidoff, the Miner Peter the Great and his imperial succes- sors perceived the necessary part which these valuable minerals play in providing not only for "the sinews of war" but also for public expenditures in time of peace. So they have wisely striven to encourage these mining enterprises. History records how the first iron smelter was established in 1623, and that a very industrious miner named Demi- doff had a small iron mine on the confines of Siberia. Peter the Great on visiting the spot was so pleased with the industry and reputation of this miner, and so eager to encourage mining, that he made Demidoff and his heirs in perpetuity, a present of an extensive district, surrounding his small patrimonial mine. This enormous grant of ground turned out to be a source of inex- haustible wealth. It was found to cover some of the richest veins and finest quality of iron ore in Kussia. The output soon en- riched its industrious proprietor. His son continued to work the mine and to explore 1 Oriental and Western Siberia, by A. B. Granville and Atkinson, p. 81. 226 STRANGE SIBERIA more ground, and invested the capital thus acquired in purchasing additional estates. Among these was one in which soon after a gold mine was discovered that has yielded on an average 100,679 pounds in pure gold annually. When Peter the Great learned how valuable a subject he had rewarded in old Demidoff he wished to see him classed in the rank of nobles. After some hesitation the old man agreed to accept his sovereign's further bounty. When he was asked, what his coat-of-arms would be, he replied, "A miner's hammer, for I want my posterity never to forget the source of their wealth and prosperity." At present the Demidoff estates comprise 3,095,700 acres. 1 Souvenirs At the various stations in the Ural Moun- tains, booths for the sale of trinkets, which are manufactured out of precious stones or of iron, attracted the attention and the money of passengers. Paper knives of figured ironwork, paper weights, and other fancy iron souvenirs are for sale at Slatoust, where is located an important government armory. This city is one of the most picturesque spots along the line of the railway through the Urals. Here the rushing Ai makes a grand curve, as it impetuously forces its triumphal 1 Oriental and Western Siberia, by A. B. Granville and Atkinson, p. 81. OVER THE URALS 227 way onward through enfilading mountains. "Sta-to-ust" is Russian for "Chrysostom," or "the golden mouth," to whose honor Mosoloff, a Moscow merchant, the founder of the town, erected a church in 1754. * At these stations among the mountains we bought a few souvenirs, such as a handsome alexandrite bracelet, a chain of brilliant aventurine beads, and a. pretty whitish moon- stone brooch in the shape of a butterfly. The settings of these souvenir-gems were of very inferior workmanship, so that after com- paratively little use, all of this Ural jewelry fell to pieces. Especially handsome were the alexandrite stones. Freshly picked bunches of beautiful wild flowers were also offered for sale by peasant boys and girls, at the way stations. We longed to have the train stop long enough just outside these towns, that we might jump out on the wild prairie and gather a few handfuls of forget-me-nots, lilies of the valley, purple lilacs, and other beauties, which "were so near, and yet so far," for, in a most tantalizing manner, our train stolidly and steadily whirled by toward the setting sun, utterly oblivious of these floral beauties and confirming the poet's true insight, that Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air. 1 Greater Russia, by William Oliver Greener, p. 74. CHAPTER XVI THE VOLGA The whole history of Russia is the history of Its three great rivers, and is divided into three periods: that of the Dnieper with Kiev; that of the Volga with Moscow; that of the Neva with Novgorod, in the eighth century, and Saint Peters- burg in the eighteenth. The Dnieper made Russia Byzantine, the Volga Asiatic. It was for the Neva to make it European. Rambaud, History of Rus- sia, vol. i, pp. 27, 28. Samara Our train halted at the busy city of Sa- mara, a little this side of the great Alexan- der Bridge over the Volga. This fine speci- men of a railway bridge has fourteen sections of 360 feet span each, and is built so high that at low water it is 135 feet above the river. In its structure nearly 7,000 tons of iron were used, and it was constructed en- tirely by Russian engineers. Division of Night and Day Since it was broad daylight at 4 :30 A. M. when we alighted from the train, we jumped into a drosky and, as usual, placed our pos- sessions in another, and without delay started for a popular kumiss sanitarium, charmingly situated on high bluffs, overlook- 228 THE VOLGA 229 ing the Volga, nearly two miles distant. Our guidebook stated, "The best time to visit the watering place is spring and early sum- mer," so we concluded, as it was June 4, we had arrived just in the nick of time. We had pictured to ourselves the novel experiences we would have at a Kussian spa, which we might compare with other fashionable water- ing places, as Wiesbaden, Leamington, or Saratoga, and where we could mingle with the crowds of visitors and observe^how they quaffed this quaint drink, kumiss, manu- factured here out of mare's milk. The guide- book said that the custom is to begin by drinking daily one or two bottles and gradu- ally increase the quantity until five bottles are drunk daily. But The best laid schemes o' mice and men Gang aft a-gley. The heavy rains, which caused the wash- outs in the Urals, had evidently dispersed their moisture over and into this famous "black earth" district. Jersey mud and Xishnibotany clay are nothing compared to the sticky, oozy black mire through which our horses tugged and wallowed. Providen- tially without any very serious mishap, we arrived at the sanitarium, only to find that it had not been yet opened for the season! Weary from travel and hungry as bears from our early ride in the cool morning air, there 230 STRANGE SIBERIA was nothing to do but to retrace our steps and find a hotel at Samara. Still while the horses had a few minutes to catch their breath, we strolled along winding paths, amid shrubs and vines dripping from the heavy rains, through the artistically laid-out grounds, coming occasionally upon pretty rest-houses, from which could be obtained ex- tensive vistas of the broad sweep of the Volga valley and the mighty river flowing at our feet. Then our jaded beasts tugged away through the mire back to the city. When we came to settle with our drosky drivers at Samara, we paid them, as we sup- posed, according to the regular printed tariff. To our surprise, they indignantly refused to accept this fare, and showed us the tariff- card on which was distinctly printed, that night rates prevailed for twelve o'clock mid- night, until 7 A. M., during which time the charges were double those of the daytime daytime being counted from 7 A. M. until midnight. It did indeed seem passing strange that, riding, as we did, in broad day- light, the time should be reckoned as night- time. But such was the case, not only in Samara but also in Saint Petersburg. There the daytime officially begins at 7 A. M. and lasts until 12:30 A. M. If in the realm of nature the darkness of midnight is officially and arbitrarily reckoned as daylight, is it any wonder that in Russian politics, dark- THE VOLGA 231 ness and light, right and wrong, are so hope- lessly confused? Scythians This city of Samara, with its 92,000 in- habitants, is situated in the celebrated "black land," which feeds 25,000,000 people and is the center of an immense grain trade. It was in this fertile district that Herodotus placed the Scythians, and, strange to say, refers to their drinking mare's milk even in his day, centuries before the Christian era. Homer's Cimmerian darkness in the Odyssey refers to the long, dark, wintry nights of this hyperborean region, where The dusky nation of Cimmeria dwells, The sun ne'er views th' unfathomable seats When radiant, he advances or retreats. 1 Among the many precious trophies in the Hermitage at Saint Petersburg are two rare vases, the Silver Vase of Nikopol and the Golden Vase of Kertch, dating from the fourth century before Christ, or about the time Herodotus wrote his history. The un- known artists depict upon these vases Scythian horsemen of the same racial fea- tures as their descendants lassoing and tam- ing horses precisely as is done on those same plains to-day. 1 Odyssey, Bk. XI. 232 STRANGE SIBERIA The City Samara on the Volga, though situated farther east than Bagdad, Mecca, and Zanzi- bar, is in close touch by rail and water with European civilization, as its various indus- tries, fine stores, and public buildings testify. We spent the day in this busy commercial city in sight-seeing and making purchases. In the early evening we rode to the wharf so as to be in time to catch the steamboat for Nijni-Novgorod, scheduled to arrive at 7:30 p. M. Like steamers on the Mississippi and other rivers, punctuality was not always ob- served. However, three hours behind time, the steamer with its load of passengers was moored alongside the wharf. Many of them were from "Little Russia," whose Mongolian features are so pronounced that it is not necessary to scratch a native, as the map of Russia is printed on his face. We boarded this steamer, which on its way to Samara had stopped at Saratoff, the site of ancient Sarai, where the Tartars once had their headquarters, referred to in Chaucer's lines, At Sara in the land of Tartare There dwelled a king, who werryed Russie. Shortly after we had ensconced ourselves in our comfortable, clean staterooms she started up stream with her cargo of freight and pas- sengers. THE VOLGA 233 River Travel Every river possesses a peculiar charm of its own. The Volga was no exception. The broad decks and capacious cabins of a river steamer, especially after a long ride in the cramped quarters of a railway car, offer a cordial welcome to the tired, dust-begrimed traveler. The fresh air, the broad views on every side, the sense of freedom in promenad- ing the deck or loitering on shore at landing places all combine to render river travel a most refreshing change. The commodious Yangtse steamers plying between Shanghai and Hankow at times run close to the green-tilled fields, where Chinese urchins are riding astride of water-buffaloes and industrious coolies are tilling the soil or carrying produce in baskets suspended from bamboo poles. Now the steamer glides near ancient walled cities guarded by lofty gate towers, and anon, it is steaming by the side of Golden, Silver and Little Orphan Islands, where art, with her temples, shrines, and pa- godas, vies with nature with her trees, crags, and shrubbery. This kaleidoscopic pano- rama of Oriental landscape and life presents an ever-varied entertainment to the traveler on his voyage up China's mightiest stream. A day's trip down the picturesque minia- ture river, the Tonegawa, in Japan, affords a most idyllic refreshing route to Tokyo after 234 STRANGE SIBERIA the fatiguing jinricksha, basha, or railway ride to Nikko. The charm of a Nile voyage is as delight- ful when enjoyed to-day as it was to the ancient lotos eaters, and forever lingers in one's memory as a dream. The intoxicating atmosphere, the clarity of the desert air, the lazy dahebiahs, the Bedouin life on river and shore, the mammoth temple-ruins on the river-banks all unite in producing an over- whelming and indelible impression. No won- der the hustling Yankee loves to bask there. World-renowned is the Rhine with its en- chantment of castle and legend. The Hud- son, with its unsightly ice houses above West Point and its famous Palisades near New York, is the favorite of Americans. The grand Columbia is the pride of the North- west, where big salmon leap high out of the water and splash back again as the steam- ship glides near the base of titanic cliffs over half a mile high, whose frowning brows are crowned with castellated Ehrenbreitsteins. The majestic Saint Lawrence laves the lovely tree-clad shores of the Thousand Islands. Further oceanward in its mad course the surging stream plunges through the Sault and other rapids, tumultuously tossing the great steamer, so that she quivers from stem to stern, as though struck by a sudden gale in mid-Atlantic. The mighty Mississippi, the "Father of Waters," as the superstitious In- THE VOLGA 235 dians termed him, is often compared to the revered "Mother Volga" of the Russians. So life on the Volga has its own peculiar charm. The steamers are both large and comfortable, like those on the Mississippi, and are even called American. The staterooms are good-sized and clean with the ubiquitous icon, though of diminutive size, perched, not like Poe's raven on the door-lintel, but high up in its conventional corner opposite the entrance. The sheets, pillowcases, and bed- ding are charged extra. The service is ex- cellent. The cuisine is more Slavonic than French, yet the traveler by judicious selec- tion from the elaborate menu, will find the food quite satisfactory. Kazan Early on the morrow our steamer stopped at the old Tartar city, Kazan, long the stronghold of the Golden Horde Mohamme- dans in their rule over Muscovy, and from which they made their inroads into Europe. Its name, Kazan, is derived from the Tartar word meaning "golden kettle," commemorat- ing the incident of a slave of the first Khan, who accidentally dropped a golden kettle in the tributary, Kazanka, which debouches here into the Volga. The city was founded by Batu Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan. In its stubborn resistance to the attacks of Ivan the Terrible, its streets flowed with the 236 STRANGE SIBERIA commingled blood of Moslem and Giaour. The expulsion of the Mohammedans from Kazan bears the same historic importance to the Russian as the expulsion of the Moors from Granada does to the Spaniard. The siege of Kazan was long drawn out; Ger- man engineers were employed to spring mines under the city walls, and a miracu- lous cross was brought from the Cathedral of Moscow to bring victory to their arms. Soon a breach in the walls was made, the Russian forces entered and slaughtered their infidel foes. So horrible were the gruesome piles of the massacred that even Ivan the Terrible, like Scipio before Carthage, was moved to tears, exclaiming, "They are not Christians, but yet they are men." Perhaps the career of this Muscovite ruler would be judged with greater leniency if we bore in mind that he lived at the time of the In- quisition. A polite Norwegian commercial traveler called our attention to some men climbing up the staircase to the upper deck of our steamer. They were Mohammedans. To- ward sunset they mounted aloft, where each spread out a rug upon which they kneeled and prostrated themselves, knocking their foreheads on the deck in their prayers to Allah, as they endeavored to face toward Mecca, notwithstanding the ever-swerving course of our steamer. THE VOLGA 237 Tolstoy In its celebrated university, Tolstoy, the novelist, was once enrolled as a student. The horoscope foretelling the fickleness of his nature was even then indicated by his student life. He matriculated in mathe- matics, then studied successively law, medi- cine, and Oriental languages, and finally left the university without obtaining a degree. His future career has been well summarized as "a man who preaches celibacy, and is the father of thirteen children ; who denounces war, and fought at Sebastopol ; who preaches purity of life and confesses that he has com- mitted practically every crime known to man ; who is an aristocrat of aristocrats, and yet makes his own fire and dresses like a peasant ; who writes romances that the world calls masterpieces, and denounces these novels as folly; who finds the inspiration of his life in the gospel of Christ, yet mutilates the Bible according to his own subjective fancies, denies the divinity of Jesus, does not believe in immortality, and scorns the or- ganized church and its ordinances. Count Tolstoy is a living paradox." 1 On Shore and Stream At various landing places peasants stood in double rows, between whom passengers 1 The Zion's Herald, by Professor J. R. Taylor, August la, 1908. 238 STRANGE SIBERIA came and went. There they displayed their wares for sale, such as rye bread, red rad- ishes, kettles of hot boiled chicken, and pigs' heads, eggs, milk, and other produce along with flowers, chiefly lilies of the valley. High up on the hills away from the river we passed numbers of windmills, sometimes as many as five or six clustered together. Strange objects were occasionally passed floating downstream. Immense rafts or timber boats, built of thousands of large logs, tier on tier, into the shape of a bulky vessel like Noah's ark, were drifting down toward the Caspian. Sometimes two of these were fastened together below and connected above by bridges, capped with houses like conning towers for the lumbermen. Then again we passed by numerous other river craft, includ- ing peculiar oil boats with decks awash, carrying the crude oil of the Caucasus. On the morning of June 7 the heights of the world-renowned annual fair town ap- peared in the distance. Like the Alcazars, or fortified palaces of Seville, Toledo, and other Spanish cities, the Kremlins or lofty citadel-palaces of Kazan, Nijnf-Novgorod, Moscow, and other Russian cities are always prominent and interesting places to view and visit. Modern trolley cars and antique edifices unite the old with the new in this busy city. The widely extended mud-flat, covered by the many buildings of these Fair THE VOLGA 239 Grounds, was inaccessible save by boat, for the bridge across the Oka was being repaired. A month later all would be bustle and confu- sion at the great Fair of Nijni-Novgorod. Limit of Fame The Volga loomed up before the ecstatic vision of the tea-guzzling scholar, Samuel Johnson, as the far-off limit of fame. Boswell records how one evening at the Essex Head Club in London, Johnson startled the com- pany by exclaiming : "O ! Gentlemen ! I must tell you a great thing. The empress of Russia [Catherine II] has ordered The Ram- bler to be translated into the Russian lan- guage, so I should be read on the banks of the Volga. Horace boasts that his fame would extend to the Rhone. Now the Volga is farther from me than the Rhone from Horace." 1 Facts are stubborn things, and truth is sometimes unpalatable. But, as we scanned both banks of this broad stream, we could detect no signs whatever of any na- tives or foreigners, singly or in groups, en- gaged in perusing the pages of The Rambler, or any other book. Perchance the river- banks were still too damp and chilly, since every now and then patches of winter snow were still visible, hidden from the sun in shady nooks and ravines by the river sides. Whether during the long-drawn-out sultry 1 Boswell'a Life of Johnson, 1847 edition, p. 755. 240 STRANGE SIBERIA days of July and August lovers of literature idly recline upon the grassy banks of the Volga, as is the vogue on summer afternoons by the Cherwell and Isis at Oxford, our ex- perience on the Volga furnishes no proof. CHAPTER XVII THROUGH RUSSIA The people, the Russian people, God grant their night is past, And the gloom of their weary waiting Lost in the dawn at last! From the Baltic to the Okhotsk Sea The stars have heard their wail, And the steppe-winds borne their prayers to heaven That Right may yet prevail. The people, the patient people, They are the strength, the power Their hearts are true to the Russian Land Though darkest clouds may lower. It was Yermak, the valiant Cossack, Who broad Siberia won; Through Minin, peasant of Nijni, Were the tyrant Poles undone; And Archangels' Lomonosoff, Child of the common throng, A fisher lad, was first to shape The sounding Russ in song. The people, the trusting people, God grant their night Is past, And the gloom of their weary waiting Lost in the dawn at last. Edna Dean Proctor. Ride to Moscow Xuxi-XovGOROD rivals Naples and New York in the rapacity and extortion practiced on strangers passing within or without their 241 242 STRANGE SIBERIA gates. A midnight buffet-sleeper train of antiquated "Wagons Lits" cars whirled us across the level country to the fascinating old capital, Moscow. Moscow What especially interested us in this strikingly composite Muscovite capital was the Kitai Gorod, or "Chinese City," sur- rounded by its city wall. This so-called Chi- nese Wall is as much of a caricature of the walls of Peking, Nankin, or other Chinese cities, as the vile decoctions called American ice-cream soda in European cities are of the genuine article sold in New York, Chicago, or other American cities. The Redeemer's Gate The Kremlin is the heart of Moscow, as Moscow is the heart of Russia. How highly the Kremlin is honored is well expressed in Viazemski's lines: The Kremlin is our Sanctuary and our Fortress; The source of our strength and the treasury of our faith. The most popular gateway into its historic precincts is through the Redeemer's Gate. This remarkable gateway was built by skilled workmen from other lands. English archi- tects crowned it with the beautiful Gothic towers, but the massive gateway itself is the product of Italian workmanship, as similarly THROUGH RUSSIA 243 in India Italian artists wrought at Delhi, Agra, and elsewhere those wonderful crea- tions of palace, tomb, and mosque. During the past few years a Florentine mosaic expert has been employed by Lord Curzon to restore the beauty of the famous palace at Delhi. The Redeemer's Gate was built by a Milan- ese artisan, just one year before Columbus discovered America. Over the entrance to the Gate is the mir- aculous icon of the Redeemer, to which reverence is paid by all, Tsar, peasant, citi- zen, and stranger alike. "Hats off!" is the rule on passing through the Redeemer's Gate, as in entering Grant's Tomb in New York. Occasionally a person, forgetful or disre- spectful, fails to doff his hat. Instantly a guard approaches to remind him of the cus- tomary etiquette. Every man will show his real breeding whether at home or abroad. In 1879 a party of American and British tour- ists visiting Constantinople were disgusted at the boorish insolence of a Russian officer. It was Friday, when the Sultan was in the habit of riding from his palace to worship in a mosque nearby. As his Majesty passed in his imperial carriage, every one, native and foreign, politely saluted him, except this tall handsome Russian. Alone he stood bolt upright in his hired barouche, insultingly displaying Russian bearishness against the sovereign of Turkey a piece of brazen im- STRANGE SIBERIA pertinence equaling that of Count Robert of Paris in that same Byzantian capital. It will be remembered that the Emperor Alex- ins, in order to insure respectful obeisance from the bold but often rude Crusaders, had the door into the imperial reception room of his palace made so low that each guest on entering was compelled to bow down before the emperor, seated on his throne directly opposite. Count Robert of Paris, discovering this, simply turned around and backed in, to the dismay of all present. French Revolution If, as some predict, the French Revolution is to be reenacted in Russia, the Gallery of the Rumyanzev Museum will play a subtle but powerful part. On its walls hangs a large oil painting, depicting a terribly shocking tragedy from the French Revolu- tion. A countess of genteel, cultured mien and dressed in fashionable costume had been horribly maltreated and murdered. Her dis- figured corpse, with her costly robes sadly torn and stained with blood, had been left like a dead dog on the highway. The mob of infuriated peasants, armed with impro- vised weapons, who had perpetrated this deed of villainy, were retiring to a village in the distance, while high up on a frowning cliff in the forest stood the sacked castle, a victim to the devouring flames. THROUGH RUSSIA 245 What's in a Name ? Some years ago a number of benevolent Russians, imitating the Christian activities in the congested quarters of English and American cities, started similar work in the slums of Moscow, designating their work by the English word, "Settlement." To the Russian civil authorities this foreign term was obnoxious, so they stopped this enter- prise for one year. Last year exactly the same altruistic activities were renewed with- out any interference on the part of the gov- ernment, since it had been rechristened and was now called "Children's Work and Play." Sparrow Hill A drive outside the city to the heights of Sparrow Hill brought us to the historic spot where Napoleon first beheld Moscow, and afforded us a magnificent outlook over the ancient capital, unrolled as a map at our feet. When Mohammed from the heights of Lebanon first gazed upon Damascus, gleam- ing in all its loveliness like an emerald in the desert, he was so entranced with its beauty that he gave orders that the city be spared from sack and slaughter. One of the most touching episodes in the life of our Saviour occurred when he was making his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. He was rounding the southern shoulder of Olivet for the last time, when suddenly the glorious 246 STRANGE SIBERIA temple, the city walls and gates, with the mass of other buildings, burst in all their splendor upon his vision. Utterly overcome by his feelings, and yearning for its highest welfare, "he wept over it." No such senti- ment troubled Napoleon. On Sparrow Hill he ordered his artillery to be planted and the city to be bombarded. This being the case, is it any wonder that the grand, costly Church of the Redeemer has been erected and a service of thanksgiving is held every year to commemorate the defeat of the Corsican ? But to find the most simple yet expressive memorial to Napoleon's disastrous Russian campaign, one must travel seven hundred miles westward to Vilna, Poland, where, not far from the city where the French army barely escaped annihilation, is a monument which reads on one side, "Napoleon Buona- parte passed this way in 1812, with 400,000 men," and on the other, "Napoleon Buona- parte passed this way in 1812, with 9,000 men." Saint Petersburg As the fine structures, parks, and roads of the "model settlements" of Shanghai and Tientsin afford the Chinese a peep into Western civilization, so Saint Petersburg, Russia's European capital, was built by order of Peter the Great to "open a window into Europe." However, as Emperor Nicho- THROUGH RUSSIA 247 las has candidly stated, "Saint Petersburg is Russian, but it is not Russia." Saint Isaac's Cathedral Saint Isaac's Cathedral, for instance, is modeled with severe simplicity along Euro- pean lines. It was erected to the honor of Saint Isaac of Dalmatia, on whose festival, May 30, 1G72, Peter the Great was born. Its foundations, like those of Saint Mark's at Venice, are built upon thousands of piles, at the cost of nearly one million rubles, and constantly need repairing. The first edifice was made of wood, which afterward was re- placed with stone. Then Catharine II, who erected on a mammoth rock in the adjoining park the bronze statue of Peter the Great riding a horse in a fantastic attitude, began to rebuild it in marble, which Paul I slovenly finished in brick. A Russian wit who epit- omized the successive building operations in these words, "This church is the symbol of three reigns, granite, pride, and destruc- tion," had to pay the penalty for his temerity by banishment to Siberia. The present grand and elegant Cathedral was begun in 1819 and completed in 1858. The lavish expen- diture of choice marble, fine granite, and figured bronze in its construction, and the enormous value of its brilliant ikonostas, and the sacred gold and silver vessels of its church service, are appalling, staggering to 248 STRANGE SIBERIA the imagination. The titanic blocks are built into the form of a Greek cross, but the colonnnades of its portico are an imitation of the Pantheon at Rome. Its majestic solemnity throws upon the visitor a pall of gloom and awe, similar to that experienced on entering the Escorial. That gloomy monarch, Philip II, with the wealth of Mex- ico and Peru at his feet, sat day by day on a neighboring hillside superintending the crea- tion of that one compact, colossal mass of stone, called the Escorial, combining cathe- dral, monastery, palace, and mausoleum. The pyramids of Egypt and the Escorial of Spain seem to belong to the same old aristo- cratic family. Both stand solemnly and silently alone in their majestic massiveness on the sands of the desert. The somber, though rich mass of Saint Isaac's betrays the same racial characteristics of depressing immensity, as though a distant nouveau riche relative in "the Land of the North." The more you see of Russia, the more deeply you fall in love with. Uncle Sam. The Lady of the Decoration. Departure WITH a sense of relief akin to that felt in leaving India in 1907, we stepped aboard the scrupulously clean Finnish steamer, Von Doebeln, moored alongside the cholera- stricken city of Saint Petersburg. Over two years previous we boarded a Messageries Maritimes steamer at Bombay, while the plague was raging in northern and central India, after we had almost trodden upon a dead rat in an alley at Delhi, and had nearly touched another on a stone wall at Bombay. White streaks of chloride-of-lime were still marking the street gutters and other parts of Russia's capital, when the spotless Von Doebeln, at 6 p. M. on June 19, loosened from her moorings and, dropping down the Neva, steamed into the Gulf of Finland, on its way to Helsingfors and Stockholm. The next morning found us making a stop of several hours at Helsingfors, the capital of Finland, where we enjoyed a short ramble ashore. Then the steamer plowed its way 249 250 STRANGE SIBERIA westward, arriving at Stockholm at one o'clock in the afternoon of the following day. The Voyage On this passage the steamer's course was amid a multitude of islands and islets, mak- ing the voyage indescribably delightful, with their ever-varying sylvan scenery, rivaling that of Lake George, New York. Only for about an hour does the steamer cross the open sea, and that at midnight, so our party were unaware whether in the open ocean there were heavy seas or not. Meals on these Finnish steamers are served in a most unique, democratic fashion. A superabundant variety of food, such as cold salmon, ham, sardines, caviare, radishes, salads, butter, bread, and a few hot dishes, as fried fish, stewed kidneys, and fried eggs, with plates and cutlery are piled up on a long table in the center of the dining saloon. Each guest is expected to take from this table a plate, knife, and fork and, after choosing whatever he wishes, he goes to his assigned place at one of the many small tables arranged around the sides of the room and there sits down. After he has succeeded in disposing of this preliminary repast, a regular course meal is served. For instance, if dinner, the waiters bring in soup, fish, roast, salad, and dessert. As one may sur- mise, this ample preliminary meal of ap- HOMEWARD BOUND 251 petizing food often suffices. It was pleasing to notice that although each traveler was at liberty to go to the long table and help him- self, there was no evidence of pushing and grabbing so different from many a hungry crowd on American and British lines of travel. Here everyone was considerate of his neighbor, and everything was done de- cently and in order. The after-dinner coffee, which was daintily served on the after-deck, was pronounced the finest ever tasted, being unexcelled by the thick, sweet concoction of Constantinople and Cairo, or the amber, clear beverage of Paris and Madrid. Quarantine On account of the cholera at Saint Peters- burg the Swedish health authorities detained all the passengers until each had been pro- vided with a ticket and a sheet of paper as large as foolscap, printed in three languages, informing him that for four consecutive days he must appear before the local health au- thorities personally, or be subjected to a heavy fine. Even when visiting Upsala, be- fore the expiration of the time-limit, we had to waste nearly half a day in calling upon a medical officer. One lawless American young lady disregarded this daily visit and had to pay a considerable fine, to her surprise and disgust. Like pill-taking, quarantine though necessary, is generally unpalatable. 252 STRANGE SIBERIA Russian Detectives Friday, the last day of our stay in that charming capital of Sweden, the city was being gaily decorated in honor of the ex- pected visit of Tsar Nicholas II on the mor- row, and Russian detectives were very solici- tous lest any outrage should be perpetrated on the sacred person of the Autocrat of all the Russias. We chanced to be in the office of the "Northern Travel Bureau," engaging our passage across the Atlantic, when the ticket agent asked us whether we had noticed the man who had just hurriedly slammed the front door on his way to the street. He informed us that he was a Rus- sian detective on the track of two Russians, who had purchased tickets in this office a few minutes earlier. This detective had asked the agent what kind of tickets they had bought, and seemed satisfied to find noth- ing suspicious in the transaction. The inci- dent serves to indicate the excessive surveil- lance of Russian detectives. Stay in Sweden In spite of the quarantine fetters, shack- ling our movements day by day, our sojourn in Stockholm was delightful, including an excursion to Upsala and repeated visits to the open-air museum at Skansen, with its many attractions. Skansen has the reputa- tion of being the pioneer open-air museum of RUSSIAN CHAPEL AT WIKSBADKX HOMEWARD BOUND 253 the world. Here could be studied the historic progress of the Swedes from their earliest past up to modern times. Relics of bygone days, herds of reindeer and other animals, and gaudy costumes of peasants from dis- tant districts attracted crowds. The long summer twilight thronged the streets and parks with citizens and guests from other lands. Dinner was served very early, at half- past five in the afternoon, so that all might take advantage of the delicious coolness of the broad daylight evenings and return be- fore dark for a light nine-o'clock supper. A Russian Memento A beautiful Russian chapel is situated a little below the summit of the Neroberg in the environs of Wiesbaden. It was erected as a mausoleum for the Duchess Elizabeth Michailowna, a Russian princess, and is built in the form of a Greek cross, and its interior is lavishly decorated with marble and gilt. Its roof is surmounted by five golden domes, ornamented by double Greek crosses. It is a perfect gem in itself, but when seen glisten- ing in the bright sunshine through the long funnel-opening cut in the dense, green foliage of the forest, its resplendent beauty is only surpassed by the Wartburg Castle at Eise- nach, when viewed through the arboreal tele- scope from Hohe Sonne, some three miles awav. 254 STRANGE SIBERIA Home Again After bidding farewell to Russia, our route took us by way of Finland, Sweden, Den- mark, Germany, Belgium, France, and Eng- land, where we tarried at various alluring places a day, or a week or so, as the fancy took us. Then we left England in the swift steamship Lusitania for New York. It was really provoking, notwithstanding the lux- uriousness of the steamer's equipment, to find the length of our voyage trimmed off so short at both ends. A little more than four days after we had lost sight of land in Eu- rope we came in sight of the American side of the Atlantic. Robinson Crusoe Robinson Crusoe's thrilling narrative has captivated many a youth, who in his later life may have forgotten that this hero's last exciting journey was from China through Siberia and Russia to his old home in Eng- land. He narrates how he left Russia by boat at Archangel, as we did at Saint Peters- burg. A certain devout elderly acquaintance of ours, whose pastor's preaching had been adversely criticized, taking his part replied, "But I always like his closing remarks." So after reading to the finish Robinson Crusoe's long life of adventure and travel, we heartily indorse his closing remarks: "And here [in HOMEWARD BOUND 255 England], resolving to harass myself no more, I am preparing for a longer journey than all these, haying lived seventy-five years, a life of infinite variety, and learned sufficiently to know the value of retirement, and the blessing of ending our days in peace." INDEX Adirondacks, 87 Afghanistan, 167 Aksakoff, 26 Alaric, 16 Albazin, 91 Alexander I. 158, 202 Alexander, II, 166, 167 Alexander III, 111, 126, 148 Alexander the Great, 14 Alexandra vo, 11 Alexandrovskaya, 110 Alexius, Emperor, 244 Amur River, 91, 92, 111 Angara River, 96, 98, 99, 111, 127, 128 Astor House, 41 Atkinson, 225, 226 Atkinson, Commander, 171 B Baedeker 10, 21, 88, 109 Bagdanon, Rev., 58 Baikal, Lake. 60, 94, 111, 128 Baku, 217 Bank, Russo-Chinese, 19, 56, 90, 91, 93, 212 Barnaul, 211, 212, 219 Basaicha, 179 Bates, Lindon, Jr., 93 Beaulieu, LeRoy, 19 Beecher, Henry Ward, 77 Beveridge, Hon. A. J., 134, 192 Bezpopovsty, 159 Bible, honor to, 137-139 Biisk, 212 Black Hundred, the, 188 Blagoveshchenk, 92 Bobrinski Count, 160, 161 Bolsche Kaya, 111 Boswell, 34 Boxers, 22 Bradshaw's Guidebook, 100 Brass Sleigh, 17 Breshkovsky, Catherine, 187 'Bubble and Squeak," 65 Bubbling Well Road, 15 Buckley, J. M., 156 Butter, Siberian, 218-221 C Cairo, 15, 104, 204 Camel, 16, 67 Canadian Pacific Steamship Company, 65 Caravan Route, 23, 93 Cathedral Service, 207 Catherine II, 187, 204, 247 Caucasus, 23 Cemetery, Russian, 41 Champs Elysees, 15 Changli, China, 30, 31 Chaucer. 232 Chelyabinsk, 222 China, 18^ 77, 111 Chinese Eastern Railway, 57 Chinkiang, China, 33 Chinovnik, 76-82 Chin Shih Wang, Emperor, 34 Chita, 89-91 Church, Orthodox, 78, 79, 153, 161, 164 Cimmeria, 231 Clay Figures, 14 Codex Sinai ticus, 12 Constantinople, 15, 59 Convent of Saint Catherine, 13 Cortez, 145 Courtesy of Officials, 12 Cowboys, 14 Cranston, Bishop Earl, 166 Crusoe, Robinson, 255 Customs Examination, 87-89 Damskaya, 90 Danube, 74 Darius, 39 Dekabrists, 90 Demiuoff, 212, 225, 226 Denby, Hon. Charles, 165 Dentists, Siberian, 200 256 INDEX 257 Detectives, Russian, 252 De Windt, 155 De Witte, 62 Dillon, Dr., 189 Dining Car, 66 Dnieper, River, 59, 171 Dogs, Siberian, 100 Dolgorouki, Prince, 75 Dostoyevky, 25, 216 Doukhorborsts, 159, 163, 164 Dresden, 28 Edelweiss, 73, 85 Education, 125, 126 Eggs, Russian, 221 Ekaterinburg, 204, 222 Emerson, R. W., 62 Escorial, Spain, 248 Esperanto, 28 Evening Post, the, of New York, 104, 164 Exiles, 151, 152 Express Trains, 64 Finland, 118 Finnish Steamers, 1 1 , 250 Fiske, John, 74 French Revolution, 244 Freshfield, D. W., 72 Friendship of Russians and Americans, 133-137 G Galoches, Russian, 17 Ganz, Hugo, 157 Garibaldi, 57 Garroters, 100 Geil. William Edgar, 37 Genghis Khan, 16, 73-75. 203, 235 Genius of a People, 9 Gibbon, 76 Gilmour, James, 94 Gobi, Desert of, 22, 93 Goethe, 40 Golden Horde, the, 74, 82 Granville, A. B., 225, 226 Great Wall of China, the, 34, 165 Green, Andrew H,. 102 Greener, W. O. (Wirt Gerrare), 40, 57, 72, 100, 168, 177 Harbin, 19, 22, 40, 49, 51-61, 87 Harper's Weekly, 187 "Hats Off," 243 Hawaii, 171 Helsingfors, 119, 249 Hermitage, Saint Petersburg, 13, 231 Herodotus, 231 Hildebrand, 80 Himalayas, 74 Hirschman, Baron, 57 Holidays, Russian, 114-116 Homer, 231 Hotel Metropole, 104-108 Hotel Rates, 54, 107 Humboldt, 211 Hunghutze, 49 Huns, 16 Icon, 66, 104, 207, 235, 243 Ignatieff, General, 142 Immigration, 150, 151, 213 India, Railways in, 64 Irish Jaunting Car, 15 Irkutsk, 9, 12, 22, 100-139 Irtysh. 97, 146, 214, 216, 217 Ito, Prince, 49 Ivan the Terrible. 81, 152, 235, 236 Japanese, 16 Jasenskai, Colonel Rudolph, 172 Jermak. 145-147 Jewell, Marshall, 16, 119 Jews in Russia, 17, 132, 133, 140-144 Johnson, Samuel, 34, 239 Joubert, Carl, 158 Journey, length of, 20 K Kalgan, China, 22, 73, 93, 165 Kang-Hsi, Emperor, 92 Kant, 181 Karnak, 84 Kass River, 97 Kazan, 235 "Keep-a-tok," 68, 213 Kennan, George, 189, 198 Kertch, 231 Ket River, 97 258 STRANGE SIBERIA Kharborovak, 100 Khilkoff, Prince, 63 Khlyats, 159 Kiachta, 93 Kiev, 59, 76 King-an-Mountains, 72 Kodaks, 56, 120 Koenigsberg, 22, 181 Kokovsto, M., 49 Korea, 48, 111 Korff, Count, 160, 161 Kourbski, Prince, 153 Kourgan, 218, 219 Krasnoyarsk, 176, 178 Krause, Alexis. 51, 147, 167, 170 Kuan-Cheng' tze, 48, 51 Kumiss Sanitarium, 227 Kunst and Albera, 91 ' Kuropatkin, 58, 97 Kusmitsch, Theodore, 202 Kyoto, Japan, 104 Lady of the Decoration, the, 183, 249 Lakehurst, New_Jersey, 16 Language, Russian, 25-29 Latimer, R. S., 158, 161, 162 Leather, Russian, 86, 119 Legend of Mcng Chiang Nil, 35, 36 Lehigh University, 22 Lena River, 114 < Li Kamon no Kimi, 25 Library, Imperial, 13 Lincoln, Abraham, 80, 86, 167 Literature, Russian, 25, 26 Literature, Yellow, 200 Lhi Fang, Rev., 21 Longfellow, 140, 180 Lotus Eaters, 85 Lusitania, Steamship, 254 Lutheran Church, 21, 108-110, 205, 206 M Mahan, Captain A. T., 30 Makaroff, Admiral, 148 Makoushin, 137, 185, 191 Manchuria, 16, 17, 19, 22, 39, 87, 147, 171 Mangon. James G., 83 Marketplace, Tomsk, 104 Marriage Hindrances, 132, 133 Mary, Queen, 80 Mascot, 12 Matsushima Bay, 11 Mayers, Mr., 31 McCormick, 38, 40, 71, 148 Meng Chiang Nu, 35 Mennqnites, 159 Michailowna, Princess, 253 Migration, 53 Milton, 123 Minerals, 224 Minusinsk, 179 Missovaia, 94 Mohammedan, 197, 203, 236 Molokans, 159, 162 Monastery, Saint Innocent, 126-130 Mongol, 16, 76, 81, 93 Monument of Tears, 18, 223 Morrison, Robert, 94 Moscow, 16, 18, 19, 76, 135, 142, 241, 242, 245 Motor Car. 16 Mukden. 22, 38, 48 Museum, Dresden, 28; Ir- kutsk, 112-114; Metropoli- tan, 14; National, 14; Saint Petersburg, Alexander III., 148; Rumyanzef, 244; Tomsk, 28 Music, Church, 122-124, 192 N Nankow Pass, 22 Napoleon, 75, 148, 149, 245. 246 Negro, American, 117 Nekrasov, 90 Nevelskoi, Admiral, 24 New England, 77 New York, 12, 14, 102, 104 New York Sun, the, 172 New York Times, the, 172 Nicholas I, 24 Nicholas II, 62. 158 Nijni-Novgorod, 103, 138, 238. 239, 241 Nikopol, Vase of, 12, 13, 231 Noble, E., 217 Nord-Express, 11 Norman, Henry, 171 Northwestern Christian Advo- cate, 70 Novgorod, Old, 59 Obi River, 97, 214 Omsk, 213. 217, 218, 219 Outlook, the, 104, 185. 201 INDEX 259 Painters, Russian, 152 Palace, Imperial, Mukden, 43 Pale of Settlement, 140 Pallas, P. S., 222 Pantheon, Rome, 57, 248 Park, City, Tomsk, 198 Parsons, William Barclay, 38 Partition of Poland, 140 Pashkoff, Colonel, 159, 160, 161 Passports, 12 Patent Medicine, 69 Peking, China, 20, 22 "Pepper-pot," 65 Perovskaya, Sophie, 187 Perry, Commodore, 25, 213 Peter the Great, 28, 78, 91, 157, 212, 247 Petropaulovsk, 217 Philip II, 82, 161. 248 Philippines, 140 Pigeons in Russia, 154 Pobiedonostzeff, 80, 81, 160, 161 Pogroms, 142 Polo, Marco, 26 Popovsty, 159 Porcelain, Chinese, 44 Port Arthur, 16, 40-43, 148, 172 Postroad, Siberian, 176 Prison, Siberian, 110, 197 Pristan, Harbin, 40, 58-60 Proctor, Edna D., 241 Pskoff. 81 Putnam-Weale, B. L., 40, 60, 169 Pyramids, 16, 34 Q Quarantine, 251 Quebec, 18 R Radstock, Lord, 160 Ragsdale, Consul, 13 Rambaud. 59, 157, 228 Raskolniks, 164-166 Reclus, 84 Reid, Arnot, 136 Riverside Drive, 15 River Travel, 233 Robert of Paris, Count, 244 Roberts, J. H., 22, 27, 166 Ronaldshay, Lord, 214 Roosevelt, Colonel Theodore, 114, 125, 149, 208 Rosenberg, Leon, 143 Rotten Row, 15 Ryepin, 152 S Saint Isaac's Cathedral, 247, 248 Saint Lawrence River, 11 Saint Petersburg, 11, 12, 13. 16, 17, 18, 24, 90, 142, 148, 165, 172, 246, 247 Saint Sophia Cathedrals, 59 Samara, 65, 228, 231, 232 Samarkand, 217 Sarai. 232 Saratoff, 232 Scarfoglio, Antonio, 174 Schlesmger, M. L., 188 Scotland, 19 Scythians, 14, 39, 231. 232 Selenga River, 92 Selenginsk, 93 Settlement Work, 245 Shanghai, 15 Signposts on Railways, 39 Simons, Dr. G. A., 162 Sinai, Mount, 13 Skansen Open- Air Museum, 252 Skobeleff, General, 147 Sla-to-ust, 227 Smith, Dr. J. Purvis, 90 Sparrow Hill, 245 Stallybrass, William, 93 Steiner, Edward A.. 173 Stockholm, 11, 249. 250, 252 Story, Robert, 62 Stundists, 159 Sungari River, 59 Swan, Edward, 93 Swayne, Major, 214 Sytchewa. Nassili, 131 Taiga, 20, 180-182 Tamerlane, 74 Tammany, New York, 20, 189 Tartars, 76, 82 Tashkent, 217 Taylor, J. R., 237 T6 (Virtue) Pastor, 36 Tekkes, 147 Terpigoreff, 26 260 STRANGE SIBERIA Thousand Islands, 11 Timbuctoo, 103 Time for Travel, 10 Timur, 75 Ting, General, 32 Tischendorf, 13 Tissot, Victor, 9 Todleben, General, 145 Togo, Admiral, 42 Tokyo, 15, 84 Tolstoy, Count Dmitry, 80 Tolstoy, Count Leo, 81, 162, 168. 203, 222, 237 Tomsk. 12, 20, 21. 28, 100, 103, 174-210 Torrey, William A., 16 Trans-Siberian Railway, 10, 17, 18, 23, 165, 188, 222 Treaty of Paris, 52 Tretyakov Ga lery, 152 Troitsa Monastery, 128 Trossachs, 10 Trubetskoy, Lady, 90 Turley, Mr., 59 Turner, S., 190 203 Metre Hill. 41 U Uda River, 92 Uganda. 141 Ular, Alexander, 180 United States Department of Agriculture, 31 University of Tomsk, 189-191 Unter den Linden, 15 Urals, 18, 19, 222-227 Urga, 93 Villari, 63 Vitim Gold Mines, 111 Vladikaukas, 23, 217 Vladimir, 69 Vladivostok, 18, 20, 23, 24, 57. 91, 111. 197 Vodka, 69, 179, 210 Volga, 171, 239, 240 Von Plevne, 180 Von Schierbrand, 26, 40, 69, 70, 162, 186 W Waliszewski, 28 Wallace, Sir Donald Macken- zie, 82 Wall Street, New York, 57 Warsaw, 11 Washburn, George, 145 Washington, Booker T., 106 Washington, George, 80 Waterways, Siberian, 96, 97 Wedding, 133, 191-194 Wenyon, Dr. Charles, 114, 180 White Birch, 84 Whittier, 118 Wiesbaden, 229, 253 Wilkinson, Samuel, 143 Wilkinson, Sir Gardner, 155 Wingate, Major-General, 15 Winnipeg, 163 Wolkhonsky, Princess, 90 Women with Careers, 186 Wood, J. N. Price, 217 Wright, Elizabeth W., 43-48 Van Dyke, Henry, 9 Van Norden, 102 Vay de Vaya, Count, 49 Verchne-Udinsk, 92 Veregin, Peter, 163 Vereguine, Father, 163, 164 Vereshchagin, 147-150 Victor, Emmanuel, 57 Yakutsk, 114 Yankee Notion, 17 Yaroshenko, 152, 154 Yenesei River, 97, 178-180, 214 Zabel, Eugen, 149, 156 32401 University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 9002^ - Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed. 000 677357^