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!■

ALL THE RUSSIAS

T.M. THE TSAR AND TSARITSA AT HOME

ALL THE RUSSIAS

TRAVELS AND STUDIES IN CONTEMPORARY

EUROPEAN RUSSIA, FINLAND, SIBERIA

THE CAUCASUS, & CENTRAL ASIA

HENRY NORMAN, M.P.

author of

"the peoples and politics of the far east"
"the real japan," etc.

WITH ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-SEVEN ILLUSTRATIONS

CHIEFLY FROM THE AUTHOR'S PHOTOGRAPHS

AND FOUR MAPS

SECOND EDITION

LONDON

WILLIAM HEINEMANN

1^02

First F.dition, May igo2
Second Edition, July igo2

This Edition enjoys copyright in all
Countries signatory to the Berne
Treaty, and is not to be imported into
the United States of America

TO
MY SON NIGEL

. . olim hoc pro patre loquetur

6^2093

PREFACE

This volume is the outcome of fifteen years interest in
Russian affairs, culminating in four journeys — one of
nearly 20,000 miles — in European and Asiatic Russia.
In the course of these, besides a residence of some time in
St. Petersburg, and visits to the principal cities, I travelled
in Finland, in Siberia as far as Lake Baikal (/ had
previously beefi to Vladivostok), in the Caucasus, and in
Central Asia as far as the frontier of Kashgar. During
all these journeys I was afforded opportunities of seeing
and investigating every matter that interested me, and of
making the acquaintance of the chief Russian adminis-
trators in every part. Indeed, official courtesy ivent so
far as to convey me, by a special train and a special
steamer, to places I could not otherwise have seen, and to
provide for my safety on another occasion by an escort of
Cossacks. ^LJtJ=—

^ In case the reader may wonder hoiv, without a mastery
of the Russian language, I held the conversations and
made the inquiries here described, I may say that diirin^
my chief journeys I took with me as interpreter a young

vili PREFACE

Russian gentlemait, a student of law at the University of
Moscow, whose hiowledge and intelligent synnpathy were
of the greatest service to me. Without such help, or the
ability to speak Russian fluently, a journey for any serious
purpose in Russia outside the two capitals would be a
waste of time.

It has not been my object to write a comprehensive
account of Russian institutions and Russian life. This
exists in admirable form in the two volumes of Sir Donald
Mackenzie Wallace, which remain, when allowance is
made for the changes since their publication, the most
instructive and trtLstworthy general work upon Russia.
My own modest aim has been to present a picture of the
aspects of contemporary Russia of most interest to foreign
readers, with especial reference to the recent ronark-
able industrial and commercial development of Russia,
and the possibility of closer commercial and political
relations between Russia and Great Britain. This last
I regard as the most important question {after
Anglo-American relations) in British foreign politics
to-day.

As in former books, I have tried to present in their
natural relationship the picturesque surface and the solid
substratum- of fact, in the hope of making my pages at the
same time entertaining and informing. I trust, therefore,
that the reader will not resent the occasional close
proximity of the light and the weighty.

It has been my strenuoiis endeavour to be fair and
frank in my judgments, and so far as one may, to divest

PREFACE Ix

myself of inborn and acquired prejudices. I have never
accepted any courtesy that might in the slightest degree
fetter my freedom of speech. Feelings about each other,
however, run so high in both Russians and Englishmen
that it is probably impossible for a writer of either country
to hold the balance of his judgment perfectly level, but I
anticipate with satisfaction that in England I shall be
regarded as too pro-Russian, and in Russia as too anti-
Russian.

With two insignificant exceptions — the Governor of
Samarkand and the Chief of Police at Askhabad — /
received at all times the greatest kindness and courtesy,
indeed, the most friendly help, from Russian officials
everywhere. The list of all to ivhom I owe thanks,
including many British representatives, would be too long,
and I must therefore content myself with a cordial
acknowledgment in general terms. I cannot omit, how-
ever, to beg His Excellency Monsieur de Witte, Minister
of Finance, to accept my most sincere and respectful
thanks for permitting me to have frequent recourse to his
distinguished assistance, and for honouring my journeys
with a sympathy which opened to me every official door in
Russia.

To escape one minor criticism I may say that my
rendering of Russian proper names exhibits certain
inconsistencies^ but that, while retaining accepted spellings
of familiar names, I have endeavoured to follow a simple
and accurate system of transliteration.

The majority of my illustrations are reproduced from

X PREFACE

uiy own photographs. The rest I procured in the places
where they were taken. The striking photographs of Their
Majesties the Tsar and Tsaritsa were taken by Messrs.
Gan & Co., of Tsarskoe Selo. The maps have been
specially drawn for this volume.

H. N.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

/ TAKE the opportunity of an early demand for a second
edition to make certain necessary corrections, and a few
alterations suggested by my many kind and competent
critics.

H. N.

London, July 26

CONTENTS

THE CAPITALS

CHATTER

I. St. Petersburg and the Way There

II. The Two Moscows, and a Few Recollections

COUNT TOLSTOY AT HOME AND ABROAD
III. Leo, the Son of Nicholas

FINLAND

IV. Finland : the Land of Wood and Water .
V. The Finns and their Neighbours

SIBERIA

VI. The Significance of Siberia
VII. The Great Siberian Railway
VIII. Siberia from the Train
IX. Siberian Civilisation
X. The Prison of Irkutsk .

THE GREAT WATER-WAY
XI. "Little Mother Volga"

THE CAUCASUS
XII. The Frosty Caucasus

XIII. The Georgian Road

XIV. TiFLis OF the Cross-Roads .
XV. The Oil- Wells of Baku

l-ACE
I

64
79

96
102
127
142
157

164

172
181
202
219

xii CONTENTS

CENTRAL ASIA

PAGE

XVI. The Trans-Caspian Railway : Across Central Asia by

Train 228

XVII. Russian Expansion in Central Asia 254

XVIII. Russian Administration in Central Asia: Trans-Caspia

AND Tashkent 272

XIX. New Bokhara and Its Prospects 287

XX. Old Bokhara and its Horrors 297

XXI. Samarkand and Beyond ....... 319

ECONOMICS

XXII. M. DE Witte and His Policy 349

XXIII. Russian Finance, Commerce, and Industry . . . 363

FOREIGN POLITICS

XXIV. Russia and the Nations 387

XXV. Russia and England 413

CONCLUSION

XXVI. Retrospect and Prospect 449

Appendix 459

Index 461

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

T.M. the Tsar and Tsantsa at Home .... Frotitispiece

The Russian Policeman ..........

The Fortress ami Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul, St. Petersburg

The Dashing Troika and the Homely Sleigh ..... facing

Cathedral of St. Isaac, St. Petersburg
The Nevski Prospect, St. Petersburg ....
The Ministry of War, St. Petersburg ....
Gate and Chapel of the Old City, Moscow

A Gate of the Old City, Moscow

Women in the Sunday Market, Moscow ....

The Cathedral of St. Basil the Beatified, Moscow — Sixteenth Centu

The Kremlin, Moscow, from the Kamenny Bridge .

The Kremlin, Moscow

H.M the Tsar at the Manoeuvres

The Kremlin Square and Memorial of Alexander III., Moscou

Russian Peasants

T.M. the Tsar and Tsaritsa — Easter in Moscow

Broken Down on the Steppe — Tapping the Telegraph for Help

The Home of the Romanoffs, Moscow ....

The Gateway of Yasnaya Polyana .....

Count Tolstoy at Home .......

Yasnaya Polyana, Count Tolstoy's Home (Front) .
Yasnaya Polyana, Count Tolstoy's Home (Back)

A Country House in Finland

The City and Harbour of Helsingfors ....

The Diet House, Helsingfors

The Burghers' Chamber

Finland's Love for Alexander II. .....

The Finnish Landscape — Mountain, Lake, Forest, Field

The Rapids of Imatra

A Road in Finland

facing

facing 8

facing 20

27
29
31
33

facing 36

37
40
42
43
45
51
53
56
57
66
68,69

71
72

73
75
76

facing

XIV

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

A Finnish Mourning Stamp

Finnish Agriculture — Burning the Woods for a Seed-bed

Arhippaina Miihkali, the Finnish Blind Bard

The Rune-singers .

Finnish Types

Crossing a Bridge in Finlajid

A Finnish Wedding : The Bride's Prayer on leaving Home

„ ,, Veiling the Doivered Bride .

A Siberian Locomotive ......

A Party of Russian Engineers in the Primeval Forest

The Top of the Urals — The Water-parting betiveen Europe an

The Railway in the Urals ....

The Steamship " Baikal'' steaming through the Ice
Bow of the " Baikal " breaking the Ice .
The Last Station in Europe ....

The Boundary between Europe and Asia

The Town of Zlataoust from the Railway

Gold-diggers waiting for the Train .

What you see for Days from the Siberian Express

The Water-tower and Storehouse at every Station

The Regular Siberian Station .

Siberian Peasants watching the Train

Building a Hut in the Taiga .

The Tower of the Fire-watch, Irkutsk

The City of Irkutsk

The Technical School, Irkutsk

The Museum, Irkutsk

The Cathedral, Irkutsk .

Poor Siberian Peasant .

Prosperous Siberian Peasant .

Inside the Prison, Irkutsk — A Group oj Convicts to

The Volga

A Timber-barge on the Volga . . .
Caucasian Types — Tatars ....

,, ,, A Tekkin Family

„ „ The Real Circassian .

Batum

Vladikavkaz, at the Foot of the Caucasus
The Georgian Road — The Approach

A Woolly Wave .

Russian Fort in the Pass

The Castle of Princess Tamara in the

Dariel
Round the Mountain Side
The Top of the Pass— Old Road

d Asia

be '■^ Distributed

183

facing 184
186
189

Gorge of

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Mlet

The Georgian Road -Crossing the Summit
,, ,, ,, How the Road comes down to

,, ,, ,, The Old Royal Castle of Mtskhet

Shoeing an Ox in the Caucasus
The Boiirka .......

Tiflis

Tiflis and the Ruins of the Citadel ,

A Bit of Old Tiflis

A Caucasian Type — Rostom the Guide .
Tiflis — Wine -skins and the Wine-shop .
A Wandering Beggar, Tiflis ....
The Shampooer of Tiflis ....

A Chat at the Wine-shop, Tiflis

A " Fountain " at Baku

The Railway Station, Baku ....

The Landing-Stage at Krasnovodsk

The Railway Station at Krasnovodsk

The Trans-Caspian Train ....

Geok Tepe, the Old Ramparts and the New Railway

A Glass of Tea while the Train Stops

A Mystery in Trans-Caspia — Turkomans examining the

Bread-sellers at a Station ....

In the New Tashkent

Tashkent : A Cossack Patrol ....

,, The Boys' College ....

,, A Familiar Sight ....

,, The Arba .....

,, Father and Son ....

Bokhara : City and Citadel ....

,, The Portal of the Amir's Palace .

The^'Batcha" ....

„ The Unveiled Ladies

,, A Street Grimacer

,, The Tow'cr of Executions

,, The Approach to the Prison .

„ The Prison Gate and the Gaoler

„ The Door of the Great Prison

„ The Horror of Horrors .

Samarkand : The Rigistan ....

„ A Sart

„ The Madrassa Shir Dar

„ The Madrassa of Uliigh Beg

„ Interior of Shir Dar .

„ Portal of the Tomb of Tamerlane

,^ The Tomb of Tamerlane , ,

Trai

197
199

facii

ing 200
201
202
203
205
207
208
210
211
213
facing 214
221
225
229
230
232

235
241

244
250

274
276
278
280
282
284
298
300
302
303
307
308

3ir
312

314
316
321
323
324
325
327
329
330

XVI

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Samarkand : The Tomb of Tamerlane— The Upper Chamber . . . 331

„ „ „ „ The Crypt where He Lies . . 332

„ Mausoleum of Bibi Khanum 334

„ Tomb of Bibi Khanum 335

„ Mausoleum and Mosque of Shah Zindah .... 336

„ Interior of Shah Zindah 337

„ The Hour of Prayer 33^

The Avenue of Andijan 339

The Native Policeman of Andijan 34°

Packing Cotton in A ndijan 342

The Entrance to Osh 344

A Kirghiz Family Shopping in Osh 345

A Mother and Daughter of Osh and their Home 346

''Osh, and No Mistake.'"— The End of My Journey .... 347

His Excellency M.de Witte, Minister of Finance 353

MAPS

The Trans-Siberian Railway {Eastern Section]
Railways of the Caucasus ....
The Trans-Caspian Railway . . . .
Railway Expansion in Asia .

107

• 215

. 251

facing 260

THE CAPITALS

CHAPTER I
ST. PETERSBURG AND THE WAY THERE

USSIA!"

What a flock of thoughts take wing as the word
strikes the ear ! Does any word in any language, except the
dear name of one's own land, mean as much to-day ?

What is Russia ? The unfettered, irre-
sponsible, limitless, absolute rule of one man
over a hundred millions of his fellows — is
that it ? The ikon in the corner of every
room where the language is spoken, the
blue-domed basilica in every street of great
cities, the long-haired priests chanting in
deep bass, the pedestrian ceaselessly crossing
himself, the Holy Synod, whose God-given
task it is to coerce or to cajole a heathen
world to orthodoxy — is that Russia ? Or is
it the society of the capital, speaking all
languages, familiar with all literatures, prac-
tising every art, lapped in every luxury, es-
teeming manners more highly than morals ?
Or is it the vast and nearly roadless country,
where settlements are to distances like fly-
specks to window-panes ; where the con-
veniences, the comforts, and often the decencies of civilisa-
tion may be sought in vain outside the towns and away

THE KUSSIAN TOI-ICEMAN

2 ALL THE RUSSIAS

from the lines of railway ; where entire villages are the prey
of disease ; where seven people out of every ten can neither
read nor write ?

Siberia is Russia — five million square miles, in which whole
countries are a quivering carpet of wild-flowers in spring,a rolling
grain-field in autumn, an ice-bound waste in winter, stored full
of every mineral, crossed by the longest railway in the world, and
largely inhabited by a population of convicts and exiles.

Central Asia is Russia — a million and a half square miles of
barren desert and irrigated oasis, the most famous cit'.es of Asia
and the greatest river, a few years ago the hot-bed of Mussulman
fanaticism, probably the cradle of the human race, and possibly
the scene of its most fateful conflict.

The Eastern Question is — how will Russia try again to get
Constantinople ? The Far Eastern Question is — will Russia suc-
ceed in dominating China ? A question of questions for the
British Empire is — will Russia attempt to invade India ?

The Triple Alliance is a league against Russia. The Dual
Alliance is Russia's reply. Russia called the nations to the Con-
ference of Peace.

It would be easier to say what is not Russia. In world-
affairs, wherever you turn you see Russia ; whenever you listen
you hear her. She moves in every path ; she is mining in every
claim. The "creeping murmur" of the world is her footfall —
the " poring dark " is her veil. To the challenge of the nations,
as they peer from their borders, comes ever the same reply — -

" Who goes there ? "

" Russia ! "

It is a long way to St. Petersburg on the map. Across a
corner of France, right across Belgium, across Germany, and a
final northward stretch up to the Gulf of Finland — what an end-
less railway journey it must be ! As a matter of fact, the capital
of Ri.ssia is a whole day nearer London by rail than Seville, and

ST. PETERSBURG AND THE WAY THERE 3

exactly the same distance as Naples. You leave Charing Cross
at eleven ; an engine, dining-car and sleeping-car of the Inter-
national Sleeping Car Company are waiting on a siding at Calais ;
as soon as the conductor has secured all the passengers on his
list the little train starts with a rush, and hardly checks its almost
alarming speed until it lands you on the platform at Brussels,
ahead of the train from Ostend which brings the direct passengers
from Dover — the better route — by its proper few minutes. Only
once are you delayed by one of the ridiculous performances so
dear to the heart of the Continental official. At Blandain, where
the train enters Belgium, all the registered luggage is bundled
out upon the platform, hastily fumbling porters thread string
through the buckles and handles of each bag and portmanteau,
and a solemn functionary, approaching Hke a questioner of the
Inquisition, affixes lead seals to the knots, by means of a pair
of iron forceps a yard long. You leave Brussels at four minutes
past six, the German frontier is crossed at Herbesthal at half-
past nine, and you are in bed as the train runs through Cologne
at eighteen minutes past eleven. While you are taking your
morning coffee the miles of new houses, wide streets, and long
avenues of Berlin flash by— the newest-looking capital in the
world, and all day long the plains of agricultural Germany
unroll, where innumerable stacks of straw prove how grain
grows under an agrarian tariff.

Military concentration is writ large over the railway here-
abouts. At every station as you approach the frontier the lines
expand into a dozen, each alongside a platform, obviously that
trains may be filled and emptied quickly, collected or distributed
without block and delay, if ever it should be necessary to hurl
the military might of Germany northward. So far as transport
is concerned, the fateful word " Mobilise" would evidently find
everything as ready on this frontier as on the other. One mailed
fist stretches over the Rhine, but another is clenched by the
Baltic. Eydlkuhnen, the last frontier station, is of course filled

4 ALL THE RUSSIAS

with uniforms, and as the train moves on we catch, through the
dusk, glimpses of fortifications low and broad and new, as we
have seen several times already, commanding the line and its
approaches. I find myself wondering, as we glide away, at which
platform the group of German officers stood a few years ago
to look for their traveller from over the frontier, standing at

THE FORTRESS AND CATHEDRAL OF ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL, ST. PETERSBURG

the sleeping-car door with a packet in his hand — a packet which
betrayed one of the best-kept secrets of the world; which caused
quick recalls and surprising promotions in that class of men
who serve their countries by combining the roles of gentlemon
and spy ; which gave the hangman a hasty job in the recesses
of a famous fortress, and threw upon the charity of His Majesty
the Tsar — never sought in such circumstances in vain — a widow
and a child.

You make your entry into Russia like a thief in the night.
It is after eight o'clock, and dark, when you all pour in anxious
flood from the train into the Customs Hall at Vierzhbolovo, or
in German, Wirballen. Commanding figures in grey and gold,
whom you take at the first glance to be at least Major-Gene-

ST. PETERSBURG AND THE WAY THERE $

rals, but who are really officers of police and Customs, stand
by the doors ; a soldier collects passports as the passengers enter
until he has a great sheaf of all sizes and colours ; and a little
army of porters in blouses and magenta belts and top-boots car-
ries off the luggage, and quickly sorts it by the baggage num-
bers it bears. The officials gather round a table in the middle
of the hall, where the passports are registered and stamped
with a notice that you cannot leave Russia again without a
police permit, or without a Russian passport if your stay has
lasted six months. I expected that our luggage would be ran-
sacked through and through. On the contrary, I have never
been more courteously treated, nor more expeditiously dis-
patched. But the striking contrast with all other Continental
Custom Houses was the silence, the discipline, the routine, the
order — there was neither rudeness nor chatter.

The gauge of the Russian railway is wider than the German,
with the obvious intention of preventing German rolling-stock
from being available in Russia in case of invasion, so you change
cars here — the only time between Calais and St. Petersburg
— and in the night, with the wood-sparks belching from the big
engine and tearing past the carriage windows, you pursue your
unseen way through the mysterious country w^hose name has
sounded differently in your ear from the name of every other
country on the map since first you heard it. You only know it
is Russia, because it differs so much from every description you
have read of it. The mahogany-panelled carriage is lighted by a
score of candles, among which more silent, dignified servants
move, pouring vodka and bringing tea in glasses — and this is the
only Russian thing, so far, in which popular rumour has met its
liabilities.

Express speed in Russia, as exemplified by the Nord Express,
is about twenty miles an hour, so the wide car runs easily and
quietly. The red sparks fly ever from the wood-fed engine, the
night passes and the dawn grows pink and grey over Russia.

6 ALL THE RUSSIAS

And what do you see ? Why, heather ! Miles upon miles of the
lavender-pink ling, faithfully making carpet as ever for the silver
birches and the Scotch firs, whose feet, seemingly, are not at
ease beneath any other rug — Scotch firs, spruces, the Austrian
Christmas-tree, silver birch, low-growing alder, and that shrubby
tree I know only as " Scotch mahogany." It grows here by loch
sides, as in Scotland, where it makes your fingers pink when you
cut a switch of it to string five meagre, peaty trout upon. There
is hardly a sign of hfe. Little grey wood-shingled cottages, the
house not to be known from the stable ; little scrappy patches
of oats, very short in the straw and veiy poor in the ear ; the
occasional huddled figure of a peasant moving slowly in the wake
of some saddened beast. Here, in these Baltic provinces, is not
the wealth of Russia — neither the industrial nor the agricultural
sphere of activity I have come to see. Here is landscape,
simple, vast, unalterable landscape — not country malleable to the
touch of ambitious or covetous humanity. A crop, when there
is one, rises bleakly, half-heartedly, from the sparse soil. Earth
is grim, and has no heart to laugh with produce. To him who
deplaces the heather and lops its guardian fir-tree little good
comes, as we know, and small increase. In these vast moorland
and water-sodden spaces — for there is water, yes, and bulrushes
and dabchicks, too — there is no joy of life. The moorland, with
its melancholy, wistful smile, is suited rather to death and her
sables. See — as we speak, in the middle of the moor, upon some
poor trodden pathway, apparently a funeral train ! Some dis-
heartened peasant, who has laid by his futile mattock, quitted
the crazy plough, dropped the blunted sickle. Black figures,
in close procession, in the grey, cold hour of morning, hooded
and shrouded in humble weeds. How it fills out the picture ;
how it accords with the minor scale ; how entirely it is approved
by the imagination ! It is the right thing, the only thing one
knows, to suit with this Russian moorland, where life is not
encouraged, where death is all at home. It is — well, possibly it

"Sl

A '-^

Mf^

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bE_^

}

IHK DASMlNd IkOlKA

THE HOMELY SLEIGH

ST. PETERSBURG AND THE WAY THERE 7

miglit be many more things, but we must stay our reflections, for
a sapient member of the party has pointed out that it is not a
funeral procession at all, but a row of peat-stacks — native to ihe
moorland, too.

And what else do we see ? Every mile or two enormous
heaps of pine- wood and silver birch, cut in blocks a foot long, and
laid with marvellous precision — acres and acres of this cheapest
and costliest of fuels — cheapest because its price is but the
blow of an axe, costliest because it leaves sterility, famine, and
flood behind it. Each station is ramparted around with these
wood-stacks, each river we cross is choked with huge barges
carrying it away. And whenever the train stops we see, moving
silently behind the crowd of uniforms, the peasants of Bulgaria
and Servia and Austrian Poland — the same poverty, the same
sackcloth and sheepskins, the same rope shoes, the same loaf of
black bread. They prove the existence of a tie one did not sus-
pect between the Balkan countries which Russia loves and which
do not always love her. We see Vilna, where one June Napo-
leon entered in triumph, and whence one December he fled from
his own army, leaving 20,000 sick and five millions of francs be-
hind ; and where the last Polish revolution died when its leaders
were executed. We see Pskov, where Europe first touched
hands with what has since become Russia, where the Duke of
Moscow destroyed a republic, where Ivan the Terrible fled from
an idiot saint, where Gustavus Adolphus with his army knocked
at the walls in vain, where Peter the Great kept his cannons and
his powder. And we see Gatchina, one of the summer residences
of the Imperial Family, and where the best trout come from.
Then, almost without transition of suburbs, the train draws up
in a plain, lead-coloured station, and we are in the city which
the great Tsar Peter built in the waters of the Neva and named
after himself.

It is a remarkable railway journey — from Charing Cross to
St. Petersburg in fifty hours, with only one change of carriage

8 ALL THE RUSSIAS

where the gauge changes, with bed and board of the best, with
never a single stop of more than five minutes, and such punc-
tuahty that, due at St. Petersburg at 2.45, the station clock is
striking three as we drive with our luggage out of the yard.
This journey is one of many such owed by travellers to the
enterprise which makes this imposing cross upon the map — from
Calais to Constantinople, and from Gibraltar to Irkutsk.

A troika dashes down the Nevski Prospect, the horse in the
shafts trotting desperately, the others galloping on either side,
their heads bent outward. Over the housetops rise the five
bulbous domes, like inverted balloons, that crown the church now
standing where Alexander II. fell. At the corner of the great
bazaar is a little votive chapel to the saint who caused people
to subscribe so liberally to rebuild the bazaar when it was burned,
and as they pass, the v.-ell-to-do cross themselves and the poor
doff their caps. All these are incongruities. They look as
odd as a leather bottel would amid silver and cut-glass. They
are bits of real Russia — St. Petersburg is a foreign city, and a
hybrid one to boot. Any quarter of it would be at home in
Paris or Potsdam or Pesth. Peter the Great built it in the Neva
swamps as "a window toward Europe," in Algarotti's memor-
able phrase ; and that is precisely what it remains. For a long
time every educated Russian wished to make his country like
Western Europe ; he resented above all things being called un-
civilised, and civilisation meant to him French architecture and
English manners. St. Petersburg is the embodiment of this wish.
Provincial Russians still hugely admire their capital, but if it were
to be rebuilt now it would resemble Moscow, and not Milan. The
fashion of imitating the West has passed ; to-day to be patriotic
is to be Russian, and so far from following the mode of the
outside world, to wait confidently till the outside world shall
learn that the Russian mode is better and shall lay aside its
heathenism, its parliamentarianism, its socialism, the licence it

THE CATHEDRAL OF ST. ISAAC, ST. PETERSBURG

ST. PETERSBURG 9

calls liberty, and all its other wickednesses, and walk in the only
path of religious truth and social security. So to the Russian,
St. Petersburg is no longer Russia, while to the visitor it is cos-
mopolitan and therefore, as a whole, uninteresting.

I say, as a whole, for the city of Peter the Great and all his
successors cannot fail to contain many things to arrest the at-
tention. Its churches, for example, are the most splendid of
any modern churches in the world — indeed their costliness is in
curious contrast with their modernity. In other countries cathe-
drals are magnificent through the faith and the munificence of
men of old time; here our contemporaries have set their creed
in gold and gems. St. Isaac's Cathedral, from whose magnificent
dome the best view of the city is obtained, whose gloom hides
untold wealth upon its altars, whose colossal steps are each formed
of a single stone, whose four sides of great granite monoliths are
unsurpassed, and whose pillars of malachite and lapis lazuli are
unapproached elsewhere, was consecrated the year in which I
was born. A semicircular colonnade leads from the Nevski to-
the cathedral of our wonder-working Lady of Kazan, where
the name of the Almighty blazes in diamonds, where half a ton
of silver marks an outburst of Cossack piety, where pearls and
sapphires seem to have no value, so lavishly are they strewed, and
it dates from 181 1. Wealth in Russia seems to pour itself to-
ward the habitation and the decoration of religion. Any reason
suffices for a new church. Of course, where Alexander II. fell
a superb church is rising, and its dazzling group of blue and
green and white and gold cupolas is visible from every part of
the city. In its centre are the very paving-stones upon which
he fell, and the soil stained with his blood. Such a solemn,
memorial is natural and inevitable, but a fire at the market,
and a generous popular subscription to rebuild it, is excuse
for a highly decorated little chapel on the Nevski itself, before
which innumerable passers stop and pray, diverting the traffic
like a boulder in a stream.

lo ALL THE RUSSIAS

One church only, meagrely endowed in comparison with the
rest, is profoundly rich in association. A spire like a needle rises
almost from the Neva, and at its base are the heavy casemates
where the water laps drearily forever at inscrutable dungeons
behind — church and the dungeons alike dedicated to St, Peter
and St. Paul. The citadel is upon an island, where Peter's gene-
rals first camped, and which he found good and made the focus
of the city to be. Upon it is his cottage, a log-house of four
rooms, now carefully protected by another structure built over
and around it. Here is his dining-room, his reception-room, his
dark little bedroom, the very chair in which he sat, the very
objects he made. You see nothing of the prison of which you
have heard so much, except its walls upon the river and its dark
water-gate, for as you drive to the cathedral through the land-
gate the modern mint is before you, the church to your right,
and a long row of single-storey barracks to your left. And it is
useless to ask questions. Very few people know what passes
within, and these few never open their lips. But the horror has
departed from this place, for nowadays prisoners of State are
carried to the fortress of Schliisselburg, also an island in the
Neva, forty miles away. Concerning this prison absolute secrecy
prevails. I made the acquaintance of an intimate relation of the
Governor, and he assured me that never in the closest family
talk had he ever heard a syllable concerning it. So far as silence
goes, it is indeed a living grave, the stony replica of the closed
lips of autocracy. But all the world may drive through the low
red-brick gate of the citadel to the Cathedral of St. Peter and
St. Paul, and gaze through its narrow gloom upon all the mould-
ering flags of conquered enemies and all the rusting keys of sur-
rendered towns. These are but poor things, however, to what
lies below them — the long rows of square white marble tombs,
where, each under the same gilt cross and with nothing but a
name to mark the difference, repose forever all the Tsars, save
one, of all the Russias, since Tsars and Russia were.

ST. PETERSBURG 13

Of this long line, two only impress their personality in St.
Petersburg to-day. One, the first, the great Peter, who did
everything, designed everything, foresaw everything. The other,
the emancipator, whose blood stained the street twenty years
ago, impressive because of the contents of one little room. At
the Hermitage, once Catharine's pavilion, but since 1850 the
magnificent home of the world-famous collection of pictures, you
may see Peter in his habit as he lived. A life-size wax portrait
model, sitting in his own chair, dressed in the very clothes he
wore, grasping the sword given to him by that deposed ruler of
Poland once called " the strong," shows you his great height
and his vigilant black eyes. In a glass case is the yellow charger
he rode on that July clay at Pultava when he founded Russia
upon the ruins of Sweden, and beside it, almost as big — for the
moth-eaten handiwork of this early taxidermist must have shrunk
pitifully since it bore that royal load — runs his favourite yellow
hound. All around are hundreds of his instruments and lathes
and tools, and the things those strong busy hands made with
them. And an attendant, observing with pleased anticipation
your great interest, selects from a group of walking-sticks his
heavy iron staff, and catches it as it falls from your unready grasp,
and then, placing a tall stick upright beside you, shows you the
notch at Peter's height a foot above your head.

Since Peter the Great foresaw so many things, it is possible
enough that when he crushed the aboriginal frogs of the Neva
marshes beneath his heel he foresaw the Island Parks too. The
Neva, with its broad, slow, silver flood, stealing to the sea by
manyways,holds netted certain flat islands, called Kamennoi and
Yelagin, in its watery strands, and these have been laid out and
planted with an art which worked hand in hand with nature.
The result is a series of parks, among which summer villas, called
daiclias, nestle and sandy roads wind fancifully, but all with an
artlessness of which other European parks have lost the secret.
But with what a prodigality it has been done, these smooth roads,

14 ALL THE RUSSIAS

these solid embankments to protect the edges of the lagoons,
these miles of silver birches and firs and other graceful trees I
Indeed, this is a reflection that rises often to one's lips in Russia,
meaning not only what money — and money has always weltered
forth — but what time, what labour, what tenacious clinging to
an ideal seen afar off ! Flying along these soft roads come the
Russian horses, beautiful black stallions, flecked with white foam^
driven with outstretched arms by a coachman of Gargantuan
size in his wadded gown of blue cloth. He calls out as he goes^
he leans over his beasts, his narrow waistbelt of Eastern silk em-
phasises his enormous girth, the reins, half of leather and half
of blue or orange webbing, flap their buckled sides upon the
horses' flanks — he scorns a whip. The master or mistress of all
this sits firmly back in the diminutive dark blue or green drosky
— a light phaeton with tiny front wheels — and the big Orloff
plunges forward, his wooden arched collar framing his proud
head, his flowing tail streaming out behind — it is the most fami-
liar sight in St. Petersburg, and an exhilarating one. Suddenly,
" B-r-r-r !" says the driver, the horse pulls up, and you are at the
Point, with one of the loveliest water-views in the world before
you. From the end of the farthest island you gaze toward Kron-
stadt down the Neva, so shallow in her vast width that only a
few yachts flutter across her breast, for the steamers may not
venture out of a dredged channel between close-set buoys. After
the green shade of the woods and the little eye-like pools looking
out of their seclusion, the open of blue sky seems enormous, the
water is a silver floor, and something in this peep into the infinite
— it may be the tumble of opalescent clouds piled upon the hori-
zon — reminds you of the other great water-view of Europe, down
the Sea of Marmora. To my eye, the island parks of Petersburg
— they are within half an hour of the centre of the city — are
the most beautiful town drive in Europe.

But though the Neva brings beauty, it brings misery, too.
Along its quays in the populous parts of the city are thousands

ST. PETERSBURG 15

of cellar-dwellings, where the poor live. When a certain wind
blows back from the sea the river rises and floods these tene-
ments, and the wretched inhabitants have to forsake them till
the water subsides, when they return with their bits of furniture
to their reeking homes. A paternal government, however,
thoughtfully causes a gun to be fired from the citadel when the
river is rising, and its boom across the waters warns the cellar-
dwellers to escape. St. Petersburg, it is perhaps needless to add,
is an unhealthy place, damp and depressing, and in summer, when
water is low and sewage is high, the canals with which it is inter-
sected smell horribly. Only in winter, when damp and other evil
things are frozen solid, is it bracing and clean, and even then,
you must remember, every window in every house is hermetically
sealed, except for one air-hole.

The little room I have spoken of as conveying the impression
of the second personality is in the Winter Palace. Here there
is much to see. Beautiful rooms, halls huge and white, enamelled
in pink or white marble, so delicate as to be lovely, although
an imitation, and giving a sense of light and freshness not com-
mon in palaces. Three thousand people can dance in the Winter
Palace at one time ; over two thousand people, after a ball, can
sup. Never, in Europe, can there be a scene of more brilliance
than this — every woman in extravagant loveliness, every man
in uniform, most of them blazing with stars and medals, of which
there are nowhere so many as here. But after endless march-
ings through the countless chambers, great and small, from the
Throne Room to the private apartments of visiting royalties,
which seem in almost all the palaces of Continental Europe to
have been designed by the same architect and furnished by the
same upholsterer, the official with you knocks at a door and
retires. The door is slowly opened by an old man with many
medals — a grave, melancholy old man. He is the keeper of tiie
private apartments of Alexander II., which have been sacredly
preserved exactly as he left them. On Sunday morning, March 13,

1 6 ALL THE RUSSIAS

1881, the Tsar was writing in his room, smoking a cigarette^
It was his custom to inspect some regiment on Sunday morn-
ings, and on this day he was due at the parade of the marines
in the Michael Riding School. Five times had the Nihilists tried
to kill him, and at least twice they had nearly succeeded. They
almost blew up the Imperial train, and they actually blew up the
guard-room and dining-room of the Winter Palace and failed
of their chief purpose only because the Imperial dinner had been
arranged for half an hour later than usual, in order that a royal
visitor, Prince Alexander of Hesse, might be present. The air
was once more full of terrorist threats, and the Tsar's son and
heir, and his most trusted adviser, begged him not to go to the
inspection. But Alexander, brave and obstinate and fatalistic^
was not to be deterred. He laid his half-smoked cigarette upon
an ash-tray, picked up a loosely folded clean handkerchief from
the table, slipped his little silver-plated, ivory-handled revolver
into his pocket, buckled on his sword and left the room. An
hour later he was carried back, fast bleeding to death, one leg
shattered to the thigh, the other to the knee, and placed upon
the narrow iron bed in the recess, and there he breathed his last.
As the room was, so it remains. The half-smoked cigarette
lies upon the ash-tray in a glass tube. The little revolver lies
before the mirror. Upon each of the tables and several of the
chairs is a loosely folded clean handkerchief, for it was the Tsar's
wish to have one of these always within reach of his hand. Here
are his toilet articles — a plain small set of bottles and brushes,
from a rusty morocco folding case, evidently bought in England
before we invented the modern luxurious dressing-bag. It is all
modest beyond belief, and the brushes are half worn. This was
a monarch who did not care to spend any of his incalculable
wealth upon personal luxuries. The walls of the room are cov-
ered by bookcases, all quite full of books obviously read. Among
them, just behind his chair, I noticed the two volumes of Dru-
mont's La France Jtiive, showing signs of much handling. Op-

ST. PETERSBURG 17

posite the foot of the camp-bed hangs a portrait, rather crudely
painted, of a httle daughter who died, and below the portrait,
neatly folded, lie the last frocks she wore, which her father kept
always by him. It is all extraordinarily affecting. Had he lived,
I could never by any chance have thus known his private life
and looked at his intimate belongings. I should have seen Alex-
ander II. in uniform, a tall figure, a composed, not intellectual
face — seen him in those very clothes that are now in a glass case
in a church — but he would have been covered with his great
dignities, cased by the enormous loneliness of his position as an
Emperor. I should never have known that the maroon-coloured
frock, dating from the time when children were most hideously
clad of all, belonging to his little dead daughter, had to be spread
upon a table in the rear of his study for him to come and look
at, and a blue frock, too, which she was wearing when that pic-
ture hanging above it was painted. I should not have seen
the short iron bed, humbly draped in some Turkish stuff, neither
rich nor costly, on which behind a bit of archway he could rest
himself. He would have been merely the great remote Tsar, the
Liberator of the Serfs, the suppressor of Poland, the war-maker
against Turkey, the object of the Nihilists' bloodthirsty pursuit.
But because he died a royal martyr, I may see him for the man
he was, learn his little personal ways, look at what he carried
in his pockets, know how simple a life he chose to live inside
his outer shell of impenetrable pomp, and be permitted to dis-
cern how he worshipped the memory of his little dead child.

By more vivid means still, however, is the memorv of Alex-
ander II. nourished in St. Petersburg. In three places is his
actual shed blood to be seen. As I stood by his bed, my own
guide, taking advantage of the old official's back being turned,
lifted the coverlet and pointed silently to the broad rusty stain
upon the faded linen. The act was an offence, and I reproved
him sharply. Again, in a glass case by the altar of the Cathedral
of the Transfiguration is the uniform Alexander wore upon the

1 8 ALL THE RUSSIAS

day of his death, and the scabbard of his sword bears a wide
splash of rusty red. Finally, the very paving-stones and soil
upon which his torn body lay and bled have been preserved and
will remain for ever in the gorgeous Memorial Church of the
Resurrection, built over them. His descendants have indeed
determined that here, too, the populace, as Antony would have
it do in Rome, shall mark the blood of Caesar.

Far more than churches and palaces and fortresses, the little
daily habits of a people, the commonplaces of their life, tell of
their character and predict their future. Here, then, are a few
commonplaces of the Russian capital — trifles too often beneath
the notice of stately chroniclers.

What strikes the visitor first in St. Petersburg ? The gentle
manners of the police. The very name of the Russian police
suggests terror to the Western ear — men haled from their beds,
midnight trials, dungeons, all the familiar setting of the melo-
drama. The Russian street police, at any rate, are the antithesis
of this. One of them, looking like a soldier because of his mili-
tary uniform, sabre, and, at night, revolver, stands at every cross-
ing and at every hundred yards in the busy thoroughfares. He
directs the traffic like his London brother in blue ; like him, he
is angry when a vehicle takes the wrong side. When a cart comes
along with the driver in a half-drunken sleep from too much
vodka, the policeman pulls him off and sets him to walking by
his team. He directs lost wayfarers, he helps in any accident,
he reads Russian addresses for me and tells me where to find
them, and all with perfect good temper and unruffled calm. So
far as one can judge from externals he is a model policeman.
And, as a matter of fact, it is not this govodovol who does the
mysterious and despotic work of which the Western world hears
so much. He cannot arrest you without a warrant ; he cannot
conceal from you of what you are accused ; he cannot expel you
from the city at his pleasure. That is the work of another branch
of the police, whose story is too long to be told here.

ST. PETERSBURG 19

Tlie next thing that catches the eye of the stranger is the
universal custom, except in the case of the most expensive shops,
of decorating the outside with pictures of everything sold within.
The tailor's shop has elaborate pictures of coats and trousers,
the ironmonger depicts saws and pincers and hammers and
locks, the fruiterer every kind of fruit, the provision merchant
bread and sausages and cheese. Why ? Partly, of course,
like all advertisements, to catch the eye, but chiefly because
the majority of potential customers cannot read, and would
not know what the shopkeeper offered if he did not tell them
pictorially. This is a trifle, but it is a significant one.

The costliness of Russian life is also a curious revelation. Rus-
sia contains probably a larger proportion of very poor people
than any country except China, yet St. Petersburg is the most ex-
pensive city I have ever visited. To begin with, every house and
hotel contains a swarm of servants, and each one expects a tip.
The man who takes your hat and coat at a private house thinks
fivepence little enough ; if you give half-a-crown to the attendant
who performs the same modest service for you at a great official's
he shows no signs of excessive gratitude. The tips of a wealthy
Russian to a waiter at a good restaurant are enormous. At the
Hotel d'Europe, where I made the mistake of stopping on my
first visit, a room on the third floor costs thirteen shillings a day,
and a closed carriage to take you to dinner ten minutes' drive
away cannot be had for less than twenty-six shillings. Similarly
you find sixpence charged on the bill for a few sheets of hotel
note-paper of the cheapest kind, and a bath costs three-and-
sixpence. A fortune awaits the man who will "run" an hotel
in St. Petersburg on modern lines, where, if you pay high, at
least you will get comfort and attention, without miserable
extortions. Meanwhile, the home-like old Hotel de France is
where you find ioiit Pelcrshourg.

One expects to find Russia overrun with soldiers, her capital
like Berlin tor its masses of troops, but more so. Yet if you

20 ALL THE RUSSIAS

chance to see the guard marching up the Embankment to the
Bank of Enghuid, and a troop of horse-guards riding up St.
James's Street, you have possibly seen more soldiers any day in
London than in St. Petersburg. There are innumerable officers
about, but the private soldier is almost an uncommon figure.
And at first you take for officers scores of men who are nothing
of the kind. For nine-tenths of the middle classes wear a uni-
form. Uniform, in fact, is the Russian's passion; it stamps him
as a member of the governing class. To be a plain civilian is
to be nothing. To begin with, there, is, of course, the almost
infinite variety of military and naval uniforms; then all the police
and gendarmes; then all the oi^cials connected in any way with
the Court; then every individual, from the station-master to
the window-cleaner, who has to do with the railways; then all
the dvoniiks, or porters who do police duty day and night out-
side every house; then the postmen, the tramway men and the
street-cleaners. Any of these may be taken for a soldier by the
ignorant visitor. But there is another huge class, or series of
classes, which wears uniform in Russia. The nobility has its
uniform, but is the only class which, possessing one, does not
usually wear it. Every student of the University wears a military
uniform, and every boy at school, down to the youngsters as
high as your walking-stick. Every graduate of a technical school
— mining engineers, civil engineers, architects, &c. — has the
right, which he generally exercises, to wear a uniform for the rest
of his life. Every member of all the public offices has a uniform.
Since such an astonishing proportion of the well-to-do popula-
tion is thus attired more or less like a soldier, it is easy to under-
stand how it comes to be so undignified to be in civil dress. Of
course, nobody living — except perhaps a tailor or two — knows
all these uniforms and what they mean. A dozen times I have
asked an educated Russian companion what a certain uniform
denoted, and he confessed he had not the least notion. But to
the wearers they mean a little authority, a little more touching

ST. PETERSBURG 21

of the cap, the excuse for a more commanding accent. And to
the foreigner they mean two things : first, an officialdom which
both indicates and explains so great a lack of private initiative ;
and second, a ceaseless source of embarrassment, from the
danger of exhibiting your railway ticket to a major-general, or
making your most deferential bow to the guard.

St. Petersburg is the only city I have seen apparently without
such a thing as a place where alcoholic drinks alone are sold.
In a restaurant you can order a glass of beer or of vodka, but the
** bar " or the public-house or the American " saloon " is non-
existent. The only exception I saw was an "automatic buffet"
where you get any drink on the penny-in-the-slot principle. It
was enormously popular, but it also sold excellent food automati-
cally, and called itself "Quisisana." (I puzzled over this name a
long time until it occurred to me to divide it into three Italian
words.) In a shop, however, where cigarettes and liquors are sold
I have several times seen poor children come with an empty
bottle, place a few coppers on the counter and take vodka home.
The consumption of alcohol in Russia is comparatively small per
head, but there is a good deal of drunkenness — much more in
public than in other countries. The Russian is by nature a genial
and company-loving man, and on religious holidays and public
fetes these virtues are his undoing. The well-to-do Russian has
a peculiar passion in connection with his meals — namely, to hear
the music of a huge " orchestrion " or mechanical organ, with
drums, cymbals, and every imaginable instrument. No self-re-
specting restaurant is without one of these monstrous and costl]
erections, wound by hand or moved by electricity, and they play
with the briefest intermissions the whole day. With one excep-
tion, all that I heard needed tuning, and dinner — even when it
is so excellent as Russian food in good restaurants always is —
under such conditions is apt to be indigestible.

Two more quaint little details. Nobody in Russia wears
woollen underclothing — always linen or cotton. Moreover, the

22 ALL THE RUSSIAS

foreigner who brings the underclothing he wears at home in
ivinter, because Russia is a very cold country, is sorry somebody
did not condescend to tell him this fact before. The explanation
is simple : indoors it is always hot, and out of doors the Russian
never ventures, even in a mild autumn, without an overcoat.
To wear thick woollen underclothing you must keep your houses
cool. The other detail is that in this country where everything
is strictly prescribed by law, you make your bargain with a cab
for every journey according to distance, weather, the quality of
the vehicle, and the necessity of the driver. At the hotel door
or in front of the cab-rank you call out the place to which you
wish to be driven, and the drivers shout back what they will
take. If you are a foreigner, they begin by demanding ten times
what they will take ; if you are a Russian, twice the proper sum.
Several minutesof oriental bargainingareanecessary preliminary
to a five minutes' drive. In St. Petersburg the police invented a
table of fares and had it affixed, as in England, to every cab, but
the drivers repudiated it, and after several months it has become
a dead letter. The isvostchik alone has vanquished autocracy.

But no matter how many new things, big and little, have
impressed themselves upon you in the political capital of Russia,
one, as you look back, outweighs all the rest. It is the one which
caused even Voltaire to say, "Peter was born, and Russia was
formed." Not in name only, but in real fact, is Petersburg the
City of Peter. In his dark cathedral, amid surrendered keys and
captured flags, he sleeps for ever, but his monument is all around
him, and everything bears eloquent testimony to his marvellous
prevision. Every site seems to have been chosen by him — every
need of the Russia of to-day to have been anticipated by him.
Still, in all your wonder at his foresight and his energy, you can-
not live long in St. Petersburg without coming to the conclusion
that he made one mistake — in building the city at all. His win-
dow toward Europe should have been in another part of the
great Russian wail.

CHAPTER II

THE TWO MOSCOWS, AND A FEW REFLECTIONS

ST. PETERSBURG might be anywhere, and without turn-
ing one's self into a guide-book (precisely what I wish
to avoid) there is hardly anything in it to describe. My impres-
sions of it have only
covered a few pages ;
but it would be easy
to write a volume
about Moscow. Here
is Russia indeed —
every side of her faith-
fully represented. The
magnificent white rail-
way station, with
''God save the Tsar"
in permanent gas-let-
ters over the portal, is
where the Great Si-
berian train starts
for Vladivostok and
Port Arthur. These
strange, dark-robed

men, sitting by themselves at the bourse, turbaned or fur-hatted,
are Russian subjects from Central Asia. Russia is a great manu-
facturing country now; Moscow is one of the manufacturing
cities of the world. Napoleon looms large in Russian history :
from those low hills a few miles away he looked down upon the
splendid prey he was about to seize; through this gate he entered

■-'' ■ -'fgfr^d^m-il

GATE AND CHAPiiL OF IHE OLD CITY, MOSCOW

•24 ALL THE RUSSIAS

the citadel; in that church his horses wore stabled. A Romanoff
Tsar rules Russia; this is the house where the first Romanoff to
become a Tsar lived, as a simple seigneur ; and here are the tombs
of all the Ruriks and Romanoffs who ruled when St. Petersburg
was a swamp. Russia is a theocracy ; Moscow is the holy city,
consecrated and consecrating. Under whatever aspect Russia
of to-day presents herself to you, in Moscow you may find it
embodied, for Russia sprang from Moscow and the Dukes of
Muscovy laid her foundation-stones.

Since the Coronation of 1896 everybody has read of the won-
derful churches of Moscow, of its brilliant colouring, of its his-
toric interest, of the piety of its people. Yet I cannot refrain from
dwelling for a moment on this, for Moscow produces a unique
and an ineffaceable impression. There is no city in the world like
it. The Imperial City in the centre of Peking, seen from the
walls where Marco Polo's instruments stood until the Germans
purloined them, has something of its blue and green and gold.
Its fantastic architecture recalls the eaves and the watch-towers
of Korea. Its narrow Eastern streets remind one of Sarajevo.
Its holy images, literally innumerable, and the pious passer, ela-
borately bowing and crossing himself again and again, suggest
Lourdes at pilgrimage time. Its streets paved with cobble-stones
as big as your fist, over which the droschkies rattle and bang till
your ears are deaf and your throat is sore, bring back to memory
Belgrad, the worst-paved town in the world, where you may quite
well fracture your skull in a drive down the main street in a closed
carriage. But as a whole Moscow is like nothing but Moscow —
a city apart, exempt from comparison, beyond description.

The second capital of Russia has a population of a million,
it is the commercial centre, and the greatest Russian manufactur-
ing town, and it has four hundred and fifty churches; but to the
visitor Moscow is the Kremlin, and the Kremlin is Moscow. The
remaining forty-nine fiftieths of the city do not count. The
learned have not yet agreed what " Kremlin " means — probably

THE TWO MOSCOWS

fortress, or Acropolis, or central official quarter, for many other
towns have one. Actually it is an isosceles triangle, one side rest-
ing upon the river Moskva, and all three marked by enormous
pyramidal walls of pale pink brick, broken at intervals by square
watch-towers, and pierced by five gates. One of these leads from
the river — a prison or secret gate — and everybody who passes

A GAll. (jF the old city, Mi i.^CuW

under another, the Gate of the Redeemer, so called from the
miracle-working portrait over it, must remove his hat. The best
view is from the Kamenny Bridge, and is shown in my photo-
graph. Without colour, however, the Kremlin loses half its
charm.

A Russian wit has said that Moscow is remarkable for two
things — a cannon which has never been fired, and a bell which
has never been tolled. And these are perhaps the two most
striking single objects. On the way through the Kremlin, you
pass in the arsenal yard an enormous quantity of bronze cannon,

26 ALL THE RUSSIAS

neatly disposed in groups. Towering above them is the "Tsar
Cannon," a huge and highly decorated piece of bright green
bronze, weighing forty tons, with a bore of eighteen inches, cast
in 1586. It is merely decorative, for a hatful of powder would
blow it to bits. A hundred yards farther on is a colossal bell on
the ground, weighing 200 tons. While it was being raised to the
tower in 1737 it was broken, and the eleven-ton piece knocked
out of it lies by its side. These cannon remind me of a significant
little incident. As everybody knows. Napoleon brought 800 can-
non into Russia with him, and took nine out again. Of the re-
mainder, 365 are here, together with many more from Austria
and Prussia and Italy and other enemies. In a glass frame is a
brass tablet telling this proud story. We stopped to read it —
a party of four, including a guide — when instantly a sentry ran
up with fixed bayonet and sharply ordered us tomoveon. Gather-
ings in the street are not permitted in Russia. He was, of course,
an Ignorant man, too zealously executing orders he did not
understand, but the incident tells its story. There is also
something peculiarly absurd in visitors being forbidden to read
a tablet set up in a public place to tell of Russian victories.

Moscow is, of course, redolent of Napoleon's gigantic failure.
Three hours' drive from the city are the Sparrow Hills, from
which he obtained his first viewof the splendid pillage that awaited
his impatient legions. If Moscow eighty-seven years ago looked
from those hills as it looks to-day, his heart, sated as it was with
conquest, must have beat high. Through the Troitski Gate of
the Kremlin he entered next day. In this tiny Byzantine arch-
roofed room of the old palace he slept. One day later he climbed
this narrow winding stair to this little balcony to watch Moscow
burning. By this Red Staircase he led his glittering Marshals
into the Palace. In this Church of the Saviour the forage of his
cavalry was stored above the relics of the first Christian martyr
in Russia. And from here to the frontier stretches the long
narrow cemetery of his troops.

THE TWO MOSCOWS

The whole KremHn is wonderfully picturesque. Its broad
castellated brick walls are pierced by deep arched gateways and
crowned by quaint towers whose red sides and green-tiled roofs
emerge from masses of foliage. High above all is the tower of
Ivan Veliki (an Englishman, by name John Villiers), from which

WOMEN IN THE SUNDAY MAUKb-T, MObCOVV

the whole city is spread out before you like the illuminated page
of some old missal. Here is a glimpse of the garden of a mon-
astery wdiich once boasted 16,000 servants, pretty red balconies
running round a square of embowered walks. A few steps away is
the never-to-be-forgotten Cathedral of the Assumption, in shape
as its original was built six centuries ago, dazzling with gold,
frescoed from floor to cupola, claiming upon its highest altar a
piece of the Saviour's robe, the spot where a man crowns himself
Tsar of All the Russias, and, in the eyes and in the profoundest
convictions of a hundred millions of his subjects, rises thereby

2 8 ALL THE RUSSIAS

to something of the Divinity he invokes. It is an area of infinite
interest, and he must be dull indeed who is not brought to a
standstill more than once by the pressure of his own reflections.
My object here, however, is not to re-describe well-known sights
and places, but to seek, in both familiar and unfamiliar scenes,
the underlying facts and motives and meanings which go to
make the Russia of to-day, and from which the Russia of to-
morrow may be inferred. Therefore I leave the Kremlin and old
Moscow to the guide-books and many previous travellers.

To most people, even well-travelled and well-read people,
Moscow is only the quaint old capital of a picturesque and mys-
terious faith — the Holy City of Russia, where Tsars are made.
It is this, but it is also something very different, which the West-
ern World has not yet begun to appreciate. It is a great manu-
facturing city, the focus of a national industrial development
already beginning to influence the markets of the w^orld and des-
tined some day to affect the fate of nations. W^e have glanced
at Old Moscow, but New Moscow means cotton-spinning mills
which have paid seventy or eighty per cent. It is an extraordinary
— a startling juxtaposition, but the one thing is not less real than
the other. In manufacture, as well as in history and religious
tradition, Moscow is the heart of Russia. The old quarter, inside
the walls, known as the "Chinese Town" — the only Chinese in
it are a few tea merchants — is packed close with business offices
and banks. The streets hum with the steps of hurrying buyers
and sellers. At noon the Exchange is crowded with brokers and
merchants, a remarkable proportion of them speaking German,
with a sprinkling of Chinese, Persians, andstrange faces and head-
gear from Turkestan. When you drive out to stand with Napo-
leon's ghost on the hills outside, a walled monastery, brilliant in
colour, quaint in architecture, thrilling in story, lies midway be-
tween you and the city. By its side is a great factory, with huge
disfiguring chimneys. All around Moscow, at distances varying
from two to six hours by train, are great spinning and weaving

THE TWO MOSCOWS

and cotton-printing mills. Spinning in Russia has advanced with
astonishing strides. In 1886 there were ah'cady over two million

THE CATHEDRAL OF ST. BASIL THE BEATIFIED, MOSCOW— SLXTEENTH CENTURY

Napolfon ordered his soldiers to " destroy that Mosque"
but they used it as a cavalry stable instead

spindles in the Moscow district, and as many more in other
places.* From 1880 to 1889 the output of the cotton manu-

* An official statement for 1S93, the latest I can find, says : " At the present
time the number of spindles in Russia may be estimated at 6,000,000, and the
number of looms at 200,000, taking 300 days per annum of ten working hours."

30 ALL THE RUSSIAS

facturing industry rose from 240 to 487 millions of roubles. Since
then the production has steadily risen, though not of course at
this astonishing rate. The demand for cotton goods is practically
unlimited, for the entire population of Russia wears it, while new
markets in Central Asia and the Far East are opening rapidly.
These Eastern markets are due to the sagacious character of
Russian foreign policy, but the supply has of course grown up
within the industrial paradise of an absolutely prohibitive tariff.

Not long ago in Moscow there were English foremen in most
mills. Now almost allot these are gone. Theywere the objects of
great jealousy, and their nationality had this disadvantage, that
when trouble arose with the workmen, the immediateobject of the
hostility of the latter was their direct chief, and the situation be-
came much more complicated if he happened to be a foreigner.
Such troubles are by no means rare, and in one of them an Eng-
lishman was killed a few years ago. Indeed, among the subjects
of official consideration in Russia to-day the familiar one of the
relations of capital and labour is assuming an ever more perplex-
ing, not to say disquieting, aspect. From the mill-owners' point
of view the most difficult problem, however, is that of fuel.
Hitherto wood has been chiefly used, but its price is growing
prohibitive. Already it costs £2 or more for four tons, and it
does not go half as far as good coal. English coal is costly,
coal from the Donetz district in the south has to bear 800 miles
of railway transport, and naphtha residues, which are so largely
employed for all kinds of steam-raising, are rising steadily in
price. Official comfort is given by the statement that coal will
probably be found under the Moscow district itself, but mean-
while the cost of fuel, and therefore of power, stands in the
way of many a new industrial enterprise.

One other matter in connection with cotton in Russia desen^es
mention. Most of the raw material comes from America, and
a considerable quantity from Egypt. But in Turkestan, Russia
has come into possession of a cotton-growing country of great

THE TWO MOSCOWS

possibilities. Last year, a Moscow merchant told me, 350,000
American bales came from there, and this, it must be remembered,
is favoured by escapin<4 the heavy duty which foreign cotton has
to pay. An official publication before me contains this state-
ment : "In the near future probably the greater part of the Rus-
sian cotton industry will be supplied with native raw material."

THE KREMLIN, MOSCOW, FROM IHE KAMIN.W l;Kll(Gh

But as all the cotton of Turkestan is dependent upon irrigation,
and capital is scarce there,the Moscow spinners do not yet share
this optimistic hope. Meanwhile, here is a little story, which
may interest Lancashire. A prominent and wealthy Moscow
producer of cotton goods is exhibiting, with ostensible indigna-
tion, but really with much natural pride, a piece bearing an exact
imitation of his own trade-mark. His name is slightly altered,
but the rest, including his many medals from exhibitions, with his
name correctly spelled upon them, is there. This piece was manu-

32 ALL THE RUSSIAS

factured in England and sent to him by his agent in Persia.
So, at least, everybody says. I did not succeed in seeing it.

There is nothing so interesting in Russia at this moment as
the industrial development which has already gone so far, and
is without doubt going so much farther. It is a momentous de-
velopment. Russia, with great aggregations of capital in middle-
class hands, alongside an impoverished nobility ; Russia, with her
fields, like our own, depleted of labour, which has gone to the
factories and the towns ; Russia, w'ith the character of her masses,
upon whom alone rests the mighty and complicated fabric of her
Church and State, essentially changed ; Russia, with her colossal
mineral wealth in full exploitation ; Russia, ever more nearly self-
sufficing and more independent of the Western World; Russia,
pushing her railways, building her factories and opening her
mines right out into the heart of China and the centre of Central
Asia, while she is deliberately ringing India round with her net
of railways — this is the Russia of the future brought to mind
by a few days spent among the merchant princes of Moscow.

The Russian has an affection for things which are new, there-
fore when he enters the great Square of the Kremlin his enthu-
siasm vents itself upon the gorgeous green and gold memorial
of Alexander III. The foreigner, on the other hand, though he
is charmed with the towers on the wall embowered in trees, de-
lighted with the quaint monastery and the nunnery where the
Tsaritsas are buried, dazzled by the treasury, and duly impressed
by the Great Palace, is not halted by emotion until he finds him-
self in the painted gloom and amid the buried patriarchs of the
little Cathedral of the Assumption, "fraught with recollections,
teemingwithworshippers, bursting with tombs and pictures from
pavement to cupola," as Dean Stanley said. But his emotion
is not for these. Then it is because the Tsar is crowned amid
these " infinite riches in a little room " ? Not at all. It is because
the Tsar crowns himself there. He is so incomparably greater

THE TWO MOSCOWS 35

than all other men that nobody but himself can hallow and ordain
him King. So exalted and remote and sacred is he that not even
the chief servant of God is high enough to place the crown upon
his brow. Therefore, in the holiest spot of the Holy City, amid
all the pomp of the living and all the solemnity of the dead, sur-
rounded by the royalty of the world, while bells clash and cannon
roar and multitudes throng without, the hereditary heir of the
Romanoffs — though but a trace of real Romanoff blood is left —
•crowns and consecrates himself Emperor and Autocrat of all the
Russias, and — for the whole list is well worth recalling — of Mos-
cow, of Kiev, of Vladimir, of Novgorod ; Tsar of Kazan, of
Astrakhan, of Poland, of Siberia, of Kherson-Taurida, of Grusi ;
Gosudar of Pskov; Grand Duke of Smolensk, of Lithuania, of
Volynia, of Podolia and of Finland ; Prince of Esthonia, of
Libonia, of Kurland; of Semigalia, of the Samoyeds, of Bielos-
tok, of Korelia, of Foer, of Ingor, of Perm, of Viatka, of Bulgaria,
and of other countries ; Master and Grand Duke of the Lower
Countries in Novgorod, of Tchernigov, of Riazan, of Polotsk,
of Rostov, of Yaroslav, of Vieloselsk, of Udork, of Obodsk,
of Kondisk, of Vitelsk, of Mstilav, and of all the countries of the
North; Master Absolute of Iversk, of Kastalnisk, of Kabardinsk,
and of the territory of Armenia ; Sovereign of the Mountain
Princes of Tcherkask ; Master of Turkestan, Heir Presumptive
of Norway, and Duke of Schleswig-Holstein, of Stormarne, of
Dithmarschen, and of Oldenburg. And it is sober truth, as I
have said, that to the majority of the people who live in these
places the man who thus crowns himself in the House of God
becomes thereby something more than human — a semi-divine
person. One is reminded of the vigil of Festus;

— those bright forms
We clothe with purple, crown, and call to thrones,
Are human, but not his ; those are but men
Whom other men press round and kneel before —
Those palaces are dwelt in by mankind ;

36 ALL THE RUSSIAS

Higher provision is for him you seek
Amid our pomp and glories : see it here !
Behold earth's paragon ! Now, raise thee, clay!

There is nothing like it in the world ; probably no such claim
has ever been put forth elsewhere as is regularly made in this
church when Tsar succeeds Tsar — certainly no such claim has
ever been so widely and so sincerely allowed. And to understand
Russia it is absolutely necessary to appreciate this fact. Unless
you realise that in Russia the Tsar is everything, literally every-
thing ; that not only is his will law but that it is also heaven-
inspired right ; that his land and his subjects are his to dispose
of wholly as he will — I am speaking, of course, of the masses of
the people— you will not grasp the fundamental condition of Rus-
sia to-day. A well-known storytells that in a Russian battle not
so long ago, the artiller}'', urgently needed in front to save the
day, was stopped by a deep ditch. The soldiers thereupon flung
themselves in until the ditch was full, and the artillery galloped
over their bodies. The incident, whether fact or fiction, illus-
trates the relation of the common people of Russia to their Sove-
reign. As you go higher in the scale the fact remains, but on a
different basis. Official rank — tcliin — is the standard of position
— a greater or less tchin determines a man's honour and influence,
and of course all conceivable tchin culminates in the Tsar. If
you have not yourself a high tchin, you must be "protected" by
somebody who has. Officials of high rank will hardly deign to
notice you at one minute, and the next they are wholly at your
service, if they have learned that you are well " protected." And
in the highest society of all, whatever views it may privately hold
and express, the Tsar, as the source of promotion and the foun-
tain of honours and emoluments, dwells alone upon the heights.

In material things it is the same. I was once discussing with
a Russian administrator the military capabilities of the Trans-
Siberian Railway, and I remarked that there would not be rolling-
stock enough to convey masses of troops in a short time. "Every

THE TWO MOSCOWS

engine and carriage in Russia would be put there if necessary,"
was the reply. " But," I objected, "that would disorganise the
whole commerce of the country, and bring tens of thousands to
ruin." " You don't understand/' answered this official ; " if the

THE KREMLIN SQUARE AND MEMORIAL Of ALEXANDER III., MOSCOW

Tsar gave the word to take every railway carriage in Russia and
run it across the Siberian Railway and throw it into the China
Sea at the other end, who, I should like to know, would prevent
it?"* The influence of the throne is increasing rather than
diminishing, for I heard many complaints from educated Rus-

* "To a Russian no obstacle is unsurmountable when his Tsar commands."
M. de Witte.in his Report to H. M. the Emperor on the Budget of the Empire
for 1900.

38 ALL THE RUSSIAS

sians that certain Ministers of State were taking their proposals
direct to the Tsar, whose signature made them irrevocably law,
instead of submitting them first, as is customary, to the Council
of Ministers. The Tsar himself determined to build the Trans-
Siberian Railway ; it will cost a hundred millions sterling. Tradi-
tion alone is more powerful than autocracy ; if it were not, the
world would have even greater reason to admire the aspirations
of Nicholas II. A Tsar cannot command a policy which no
Minister will undertake to carry out ; he is unable to control and
helpless to set aside a mass of statistics or unfavourable informa-
tion which they lay before him. Sometimes, as in the case of
Alexander III., he is deliberately overwhelmed with details in
order that he may not espouse principles. Thus a Tsar might
possibly not be able to preserve peace against all the facts and
w^irnings and arguments brought to bear upon him. But he
could declare war, by a word, at any time. And it is to the ever-
lasting honour of Alexander III. that he set his face so stead-
fastly against war, waged either by himself or by others, and of
Nicholas II., that his first great act should be to call a Confer-
ence of Peace, although some of his Ministers, both by private
w^ord and official deed, made it almost a mockery.

From ruler to ruled is a natural transition, and especially so
in Russia, where there is no middle class in which the two quali-
ties coalesce. Indeed this is the most striking aspect of Rus-
sian society : at the top, the Imperial family, surrounded by the
nobility ; at the bottom, the " common people." Russian life
abounds in incidents which illustrateapersonal sympathy between
high and low existing in no other society. I read, for instance,
that one day a miserably ragged man begged an alms at a rail-
way station from a prosperous-looking passenger. At that mo-
ment a General — and it must be remembered that in Russia a
General is a very great personage — with his pretty young wife
came upon the platform. " I will give you five roubles," said the
man heartlessly, " if you will kiss the General's wife." The beg-

THE TWO MOSCOWS 39

gar went straight to the lady, fell upon his knees, and told her
of his plight. She listened, and then, getting her husband's per-
mission, held out her cheek for him to kiss. The Novoye Vremya,
which told the story, added truly that such magnanimity could
only occur in Russia. One day I remarked to a Russian friend
with whom I was dining what an excellent servant he had.
"Yes," he said, "and there is also something remarkable about
him that you don't see. That man has been kissed by a Tsar."
"When — why ?" I asked in astonishment. "Some years ago,"
replied my friend, "he was on sentry duty in the garden of an
Imperial palace, and in the early Easter morning the Emperor
came out alone. ' Christos Voskress'.' — 'Christ is risen!' said
the sentry, as custom prescribes, and it is also prescribed that
you shall salute with a kiss the first person who tells you the
good news. Such customs in Russia are binding upon Emperor
and peasant alike." It was a charming story, and well illustrates
the comparative nearness of top and bottom in Russian life.

The development of industrialism with its rapidly made for-
tunes is changing this condition so far as the large towns are con-
cerned, but it still remains true of the country as a whole. What
impressions of the Russian people does one gather from several
months' travel through the whole empire — a journey of twenty
thousand miles ? The first thing that attracts your attention in
the two capitals themselves, is the curious detail I have already
mentioned, namely, that the shops which offer wares to the peo-
ple do so, not in words, as with us, but with pictures. I noticed
the same thing later in going over barracks. In one large frame,
for instance, is a series of " penny dreadful " pictures, showing
all the duties of a sentry — what the good sentry does if a fire
breaks out, if a burglar is seen entering a house, if a citizen is
attacked, if a sportsman comes shooting birds near a powder-
magazine, and so on. Very few of the soldiers can read,* and this

* The official report for 1896 showed that out of every 100 recruits an average
of 28.4 could write, and 71.6 could not write.

ALL THE RUSSL^S

is the only way to impart information.
In a class-room at another barracks
was a schoolmaster teaching the letters
of the alphabet on a blackboard to a
large number of men. "This is the
class for me to join," I remarked, to
the great glee of these good-tempered
grown-up children.

The Russian people, then, is illite-
rate, in the strict sense of the word.
And millions upon millions of people
who read no books and no newspapers,
write and receive no letters, must in-
evitably be the helpless victims of

RUSSIAN PEASANT

superstition and preju-
dice. This is, of course,
the fact. Russia is the
home of more religious
manias and crazy
notions than could be
enumerated. Not a
month passes without
some almost incredible
instance of religion-
fanaticism. Theendol
the world is a constantly
recurring belief. The
horrible skoptsi, whose
practices one cannoi
more nearly describe

RUSSIAN PEASANT

THE TWO MOSCOWS 41

than by saying that they carry out literally the exhortation," If thine
eye offend thee, pluck it out," are represented all over Russia,
and in spite of the severest measures the police cannot stop their
abominable propaganda. It is natural to the Russian peasant
to take the scripture literally. In May of this year a man named
Ivan Plotnikof of Bielovodsk, in the government of Kharkov,
begged a book to teach him to "live in truth." He was given
a Gospel, read Mark v. 29, and was admitted to the hospital,
having chopped his hand off with an axe, after failing to gouge
out his eye. The Dukhobortsi, too, the superior peasants who
left Russia, largely with Tolstoy's help, rather than perform
military service, found the laws of Canada as contrary to their
peculiar tenets as those of Russia. The Government allotment of
land, a correspondent wrote, was opposed to their conviction
that all land should belong to the community. They refuse to
accept the marriage law, claiming that the only proper marriage
is that brought about by mutual moral affection, and they cannot
consent to recognise the right of authorities to regulate such
matters. The divorce law also conflicts with their idea of free
love. If parties find their union not contracted through the pure
feeling of love, they have the right, it is urged, to divorce them-
selves. And the registration of births and deaths is objected to,
because God knows all about them. The Russian authorities are
entitled to more sympathy than they receive, considering what
strange millions they have to deal with. A friend told me of a
travelling impostor he had seen, who went from village to village
offering, for a small fee, to show some hairs from the head of the
Virgin Mary. One person at a time was admitted, a small parcel
was produced and many wrappings taken off in succession, until
in the last paper of all the visitor was invited to gaze upon the
miraculous hairs. The paper was quite empty and the peasant
would aver that he saw nothing. Then the impostor would
sorrowfully explain that the hairs were invisible to sinful eyes,
and that only the pious could see them. In order to escape the

42 ALL THE RUSSIAS

reproach, his customers would loudly and proudly assert that they
saw them clearly, and so he did a brisk trade. The Russian Gov-
ernment is anxious to change its old Gregorian Calendar to that of
the rest of the world (the Russian date is now thirteen days be-
hind our own), but it cannot doso, because the peasants would be
furious if the favourite saints were robbed of their proper birth-
days. Sunday, by the way, is a person to the Russian lower classes.
Poverty and illiteracy naturally go hand in hand. In no
other great country of the world is poverty — monotonous, re-
signed poverty — to so great an extent the national characteristic
of the people. The only parallels I know are in some of the
Balkan States. At almost any point in rural Russia you might
think yourself in the interior of Servia or Bulgaria, except that
even in these countries the poor peasant seems not quite so poor,
and his bearing is more independent. Long train journeys in
Russia are depressing experiences. Once past the limits of the
towns, every village is the same — a wide street or two — not really
streets, of course, but deep dust or mud, or snow, according to
the season, and from a score to a couple of hundred grey, one-
storey wooden houses, usually dilapidated, and a church. Russia
is still first and foremost an agricultural country; she produces
(including Poland) two thousand million bushels of grain, and
grain products form more than half her total exports to Europe;
therefore at the right season there are great stretches of waving
helds, and later the huge mounds of straw, whence the grain has
been threshed. But it is in her most fertile districts that the
worst famines occur, for famine — a little one every year, a big one
every seven years — has now become a regular occurrence. And
the country, as one flies across it, leaves the general impression
of indigence. In sharp and painful contrast with Western Eu-
rope, there are virtually no fat stack-yards, no cosy farm-house,
no chateau of the local land-owner, no squire's hall — merely
assemblages of men and women just on the hither side of the
starvation line. And, from all one learns, disease is rife. Whole
villages, I was told by men who knew them well, are poisoned

THE TWO MOSCOWS

with syphilis, and the authorities, gravely alarmed at this terrible
state of things, have appointed of late several commissions of in-
quiry to devise remedial measures. Drunkenness, too, is a
national vice, the peasant having his regular bout whenever he
has saved up a small sum, but the new government monopoly
of the sale of vodka, which is gradually coming into force over
the whole country, will, I believe, exert a beneficial influence
in this matter, and much of the denunciation levelled at it is,
in my opinion, unjust.
The vast void spaces
of rural Russia, by the
way, may be imagined
from the fact that
every train carries a
ladder and tools and
electrical appliances
for cutting the tele-
graph wire and calling
for assistance in case
of accident or break-
down. This happened
to me on one occa-
sion. The lines are, of
course, nearly all single
ones, so there is no
opportunity to stop a train going in the opposite direction.
Last winter successive trains were blocked by snow near Odessa,
until several thousand passengers were sno wed-up, almost with-
out food, for three days, suffering terribly, and only released and
provisioned at last by the efforts of two regiments and a hastily
organised service of sledges. Between the towns in Russia,
even on the main lines of railway, you are in a country almost
untouched by the conveniences of modern civilisation.

Personally, the Russian common people are attractive. They
are simple, good-natured, kindly, very ready to be pleased or to

BROKEN DOWN ON THE STEPPE — TAPPING THE
TELEGRAPH FOR HELP

44 ALL THE RUSSIAS

laugh. Nobody can fail to like them. Their poverty does not
prevent them from being happy in their melancholy Slav fashion.
They live in dirt and are inexpressibly verminous, yet they
luxuriate regularly in the village vapour baths. Black rye bread,
cabbage, buckwheat, mushrooms, eggs are the chief items of the
iiiujik's fare. He is a fluent liar, generally from amiable motives.
He is religious in every fibre of his being, but his religion iswholly
of the letter ; he is convinced that his priest has the evil eye ; he
gets wildly drunk at Easter for joy to think that Christ is risen,
and at other times for no reason at all. The soldier, typical of
his class, is a great child, and is treated as such. Nothing is left
to his intelligence or his initiative. Of virtues he has many — he
is brave, obedient, faithful ; of wits he is not supposed or even
desired to show any sign. The very words he is to say are put
into his mouth. If an offtcer asks him a question that he cannot
answer, he may not say, '' I do not know " ; he must reply, " I
am not able to know." When his Colonel greets him collectively,
he has one answer ; when the Tsar greets him he has another —
a whole sentence carefully learned by heart and shouted in unison
by the whole regiment in a long series of explosive syllables.
His pay is about is. lod. — 44 cents — every three months. From
the point of view of the military martinet, he is ideal Kanoncn-
futter — chair a canon. To his number there is no limit.

To this general characterisation of the Russian populace I
must add one important qualification. The extraordinary — the
almost incredible — growth of industrialism in Rus3ia is bringing
about a great and vital change in the masses of the people. The
peasant who works with hundreds or thousands of his fellows
in a mill or factory soon becomes a different being from the
peasant toiling on his bit of village land and migrating hither
and thither, in seasons of agricultural work, for employment.
This, to my Ihinking, is by far the most significant and impor-
tant aspect of Russia of to-day, and I shall have more to say
about it hereafter. I only desire here to make clear the two great

THE TWO MOSCOWS

characteristics of the Russian social fabric, without an apprecia-
tion of which no Russian question or prospect can be intelHgently
judged— autocracy, the semi-divine, unquestioned, unbounded
authority, at the top; its counterpart, illiterate, superstitious,
brute-like dependence and automatonism, at the bottom.

I cannot help but turn back for a moment to Old Moscow,
before leaving the two capitals of Russia, with their associations
and suggestions. In
a crowded street of
banks and merchants'
offices, in the " Chinese
City " — all foreigners in
Russia used to be called
•*' Chinese," just as to-
day they are called
*' Germans " — stands a
httle mediaeval house,
skilfully and sympa-
thetically restored — the
home of Michael, the
first Tsar of Romanoff
race. And within the
Kremlin stands the
Cathedral of the Arch-
angel Michael, the

mausoleum of all the Ruriks and Romanoffs till Peter built
his city on the Neva and laid him down for ever in its island
fortress-church, to be followed by all the Tsars unto this day.
In the one place you see the little, low, many-coloured rooms
(much like the old royal apartments in the Kremlin palace),
the narrow bed, the modest clothes-chest, the great wooden
kvass bowl, the green leather boots with their pointed spur-
heels, of Michael Romanoff; the night-dress and the needles and

TilE HUML

46 ALL THE RUSSIAS

the flat-irons of his wife ; the cradle and the playthings of his
children. In the other place he lies beneath a wine-red velvet pall,
and six-and-forty of his race, similarly habited for eternity, are
his silent companions. When one thinks of what these Roman-
offs were, what they are, what they desire to be, and what are
the colossal and ever-growing forces they control, at the
motion of a single will, to turn their all-embracing and fanatic
desire into fact, I know of few more impressive spots on
modern earth.

COUNT TOLSTOY AT
HOME AND ABROAD

CHAPTER III
LEO, THE SON OF NICHOLAS

THE name of Moscow will always bring back to my mind,
before anything else, my visit to Tolstoy. Indeed, he is
as much a part of Russia, as significant of Russian character, as
prophetic of Russian development, as the Kremlin itself. At
the bottom of every Russian is a stratum of enthusiastic ideal-
ism, of disbelief in the thing that is and belief in the thing that
may be. Scratch a Muscovite and you find a transcendentalist.
Drop into conversation with your neighbour in the railway
carriage and in ten minutes you will be disputing hotly over
some purely abstract proposition, connected, nine times out of
ten, with the possibility of a perfect social state. With us the
classes of those who do things and those who dream them are
sharply dissevered ; the typical Russian is doer and dreamer in
one, and Tolstoy is the dreamer incarnate in every Russian heart.
The guide-book describes Tula as the Russian Birmingham
and Sheffield combined. Peter the Great filled it with his gun-
smiths, and to-day, faithful to this tradition, it is the principal
small-arms manufactory of the Empire. Moreover, since coal
and iron have been discovered in the neighbourhood, it has taken
on a new development, and is now a thriving and growing city.
It was not small-arms, however, nor iron-works, that took me
thither, but something the precise antithesis of these symptoms
of modernity. For ten miles out of Tula lives Count Tolstoy,
and I could not be within six hours by train of his home with-
out making a pilgrimage to meet the man who is perhaps less
of this Russian world than any other individual within its con-

48 ALL THE RUSSIAS

fines, yet whose voice is regarded by the world outside as the
most remarkable thing which Russia contains to-day. To my
telegram requesting permission came the cordial but untrans-
latable words, Milosti prosiw, and, leaving Moscow at night, at
eight o'clock next morning I vainly endeavoured, in very broken
Russian, to make an hotel-keeper and a droshky-driver under-
stand who was meant by " Graf Tolstoy." To them the great
man is simply Leo, son of Nicholas, and remembering this
patriarchal habit and " Lef Nikolaievitch," I was soon rattling
over the cobble-stones of the long wide street on the way to
Yasnaya Polyana, Count Tolstoy's world-famous estate.

After the misery of agricultural Russia between the frontier
and the capital it was a relief to pass through a landscape show-
ing good tillage, good roads and bridges, good flocks and herds,
good crops, and afforestation. For part of the way we drove
through dense forests of silver birch of perhaps twenty years'
growth, soon to follow their predecessors into stove and furnace,
but meanwhile of fairy-like beauty, with their spotted shining
silver trunks and delicate golden foliage. Midway, at the foot
of a valley, beside a railway and a river, rose an example of what
is really to-day " New Russia" — a huge iron-works, with its un-
ceasing din and its belching chimneys, its rows of little houses
and its village of mud-roofed triangular dwellings. This belongs
to a Belgian joint-stock company, and night and day, Sundays
included, it has a thousand men at work — men who formerly
tilled the sandy soil with careless hand and primitive implement.
An ant-like stream of men pours across the road to the long
barracks and the half-underground hovels where they live. They
are not attractive men, either, and we are glad to be in the green
country once more, with the quiet figures of browsing beasts,
the rumble of springless carts jerking along, a peasant asleep,
his boots dangling, on each one, the horses with bits beneath
their chins, thoughtfully picking their way and giving elbow-
room to passing vehicles. After about nine miles the driver turns

LEO, THE SON OF NICHOLAS 49

aside from the excellent main road, and for another mile the
droshky rocks, like a ship hove-to in a sea-way, across grass
fields, where cart-wheels have left foot-deep ruts in the recent
rainy weather. There are signs of careful planting about us,
and at last something which at home would be called a village
green, and two little white-washed towers forming the end of an
avenue of old birches. The birches are hoary as is their master's
head, and great in stature even as himself, and their way winds
upward, past an exquisite willow-grove by a lake, till it brings
you in sight of a white low-spreading chateau, with iron roof
painted green, like almost all roofs in Russia, close set round
with trees.

Tolstoy works in his room till one o'clock, and nothing is
ever allowed by his devoted family to disturb him. We are there-
fore led by a man-servant to a spacious upper room, where a
long table, with a portly samovar at one end, and a row of chairs
down each side, shows that wide and ever-ready hospitality is
the rule of the household. There his youngest daughter charm-
ingly entertains us for awhile, until his eldest daughter and
daughter-in-law come to take us for a long walk round the
farm and through the birch-woods.

It is not like the farms of England, still less like the West ;.
it resembles more the neglected homesteads of New England.
There are long, low wooden barns, a long stable and codch-
house, and a fragrant apple-house, where tons of apples are being
weighed and packed for the train. Outside the barn lie two
wooden ploughs, primitive enough to have come from the depths,
of Asia. In the stable Miss Tolstoy unfastens the loose-box door
of her own hack, and going outside calls to her. The mare trots,
out and follows her mistress about like a dog. Then I am shown
what is called the "Clydesdale " stallion, and asked to explain his
breed. In such an atmosphere even the innocent falsehood of
politeness is impossible, and I am therefore compelled to say that
the animal is just half the size he should be for the name he-

50 ALL THE RUSSIAS

bears. There is also a 13-hand wild white horse from the steppe,
which is with difficulty persuaded by the incessant purring of
the groom from showing us then and there how really wild he is.
Count Tolstoy, notwithstanding his great age, finds perhaps his
keenest pleasure in traversing the country at full gallop on this
narrow steed. Then round the fields and through the woods and
orchards we walk and talk. It is rather a dreary picture our
hostess paints of this famous estate. The land brings in no
revenue — no landowner in Russia, we are told, draws anything
in the shape of rent from his estates. The peasants give service
at sowing and harvest in return for their land, or a proportion
of their crops where they do not give labour. But the crops are
small, and are all consumed on the place. Moreover, it is grow-
ing ever more difficult to get labour at all. I ask why the land
cannot be tilled with modern implements, fertilised with artificial
manures, and the crops reaped with self-binders, and thus sold
at a profit. I am told that it could not be done ; but I cannot
learn why. It would be contrary to Count Tolstoy's theories,
strictly speaking, I know, but then so is apple-selling. For one
thing, the iron-works have disorganised the district. The peas-
ants tramp to the mill every day and work incredibly long hours
for incredibly small pay ; which, however, saved for a fortnight,
enables them to indulge in bi-monthly orgies of vodka. And
drink, as everywhere, breeds crime. It is no longer safe to be
out after dark, and once Miss Tolstoy and a friend were pursued
in their own woods by ruffians. This is the seamy side of Russia's
industrial development. Estate by estate is passing out of the
hands of those who inherited it from a long line of ancestors,
into the possession of the rich merchants and manufacturers of
the city, who are careless as to produce and seek only the social
prestige that land alone gives in old countries. Miss Tolstoy is
pessimistic this morning, for she goes on to say that even of these,
the third generation is always ruined and has to begin again.
" No Russian," she avers, " ever * founds a family,' as you say.

LEO, THE SON OF NICHOLAS

A man makes a fortune, his son lavishes it, his grandson disperses
it." In his youth, Tolstoy was a mad sportsman, from dawn to
nightfall in the saddle, or with gun and hound. Then this estate
was watched and cherished for the chase's sake; now he thinks
of it but as an appanage of the people which he monopolises.

lilt GAIKWAV OF YA6NAVA i'ULVANA

But here he comes, walking sturdily down the narrow woodway,
his dog leaping joyously about him.

Count Tolstoy's face is as familiar as that of any crowned
ruler of to-day. Everybody knows of his simple habits, his
peasant's blouse, his avoidance of meat, wine and tobacco — in a
word, of his practical embodiment of a curiously primitive form
of Christian faith. But his appearance makes an impression no
whit less keen because it is exactly what you have long known.
He is seventy-two, and his broad strong face is deeply seamed,

52 ALL THE RUSSIAS

his eyes see visions from far beneath heavy bushy brows, his
beard is snow white. He wears a round soft felt cap, and a
black blouse with a strap at the waist, and his shoes are in a
strange state of dilapidation for the feet of a man who, by birth
a nobleman, has become from conviction a shoemaker.

The photograph reproduced here, which he afterward per-
mitted me to take, shows him precisely as he appeared that day
— the prophet's brow, the patriarch's beard, the peasant's blouse.
But the lens cannot portray the infinite sweetness of his expres-
sion, nor the pen convey the exceeding gentleness of his words.
For him the law and the prophets, the-ten commandments and
the categorical imperative, are all comprised in the one word —
Love. Who has it, has everything — religion, ethics, law, politics;
who has it not, has nothing. "Write me as one who loved his
fellow-men," would be also Tolstoy's request to the recording
angel, if he were not far too modest to wish to be written down
at all. And his devotion to the race marks his attitude to the
individual. He greets you with genuine pleasure, he asks your
opinion almost with deference, he considers your answer with
respect. Your personality is evidently a thing he regards as
sacred. You struggle in vain to reverse the relationship, but
without much success, for his soul dwells apart and you can-
not get on the same plane with him — there is so little common
ground between you. To questions about matters of current
interest, he often replies as a mathematician might reply to a
question about the rotation of crops, and to my own common-
place questions, prompted by everyday life and mundane affairs,
there come from the burning bush of his pure soul answers as
incomprehensible as the commandments must have seemed to-
Moses. "Are you in sympathy," I asked, "with M. de Witte's
policy of fostering by all means the industrial development of
Russia, as against her agricultural development ? " "I do not
see," was the Delphic reply, " that it makes an engine work any
better or worse if you paint it red or blue or green." It took me,.

LEO, THE SON OF NICHOLAS S3

beni_^hted recipient of an inspired message, several days to get
down to the bed-rock meaning of this ethical conundrum. When

COUNT TOLSTOY AT HOME

I did, I saw that, Hke all Tolstoy's utterances, it led straight back
to the single primal principle which for him sums up Christ's

54 ALL THE RUSSIAS

teaching, and offers the one and only cure for the ills of mankind.
But I ran him to earth, so to speak, over the Dreyfus case, at
that moment being reheard at Rennes. His attitude in this
matter was that of a believer in the " secret dossier," a
defender of the General Staff, accepting the guilt of Dreyfus as
an easier alternative than the conspiracy of his fellow-officers
agamst him. " The people are hypnotised," he said ; " they
know nothing and they all shout the same thing. After all, why
should I concern myself with Dreyfus — are there no innocent
men in the prison of Tula ? " *

In truth. Count Tolstoy lives in a world of his own — a world,
however, into which many thousands of Russians, following either
him or Sutayef, have also entered. He sees current affairs from
afar off. ** Tell me," he said, as we sat over coffee after lunch,

* The latest illustration of Count Tolstoy's intellectual remoteness from con-
temporary affairs is furnished by his reply to some questions addressed to him by
the Revue Blanche of Paris. He says :

" My reply to your first question, as to what the Russian people thinks of the
Franco-Russian Alliance, is this. The Russian people, the true Russian people,
has not the smallest idea of its existence; but, if it were known toit,I am certain that,
all peoples being equally indifferent to it, its common sense as well as its sentiment
of humanity would show it that this exclusive alliance with one people in preference
to any other can have no other object than to involve it in enmities and perhaps
in wars : and on this account it would be in the highest degree displeasing to it.

" To the question whether the Russian people shares the enthusiasm of the
French people I think I may reply that the Russian people not only does not share
its enthusiasm — if such enthusiasm really exists,\vhich I very much doubt — but that,
if it knew all that is said and done in France with regard to this alliance, it would
actually conceive a feeling of distrust and antipathy for a people which without
any reason suddenly sets itself to profess a spontaneous and exceptional love for it.

"As to the third question — what is the effect of this alliance on ci\ilisation in
general ? I think I am entitled to suppose that, having no other possible motive than
war or menace of war against other peoples, its influence cannot but be mischievous.
As for the effect of the alliance on the two nations which form it, it is clear that
it has produced up to the present and can produce in the future nothing but the
greatest mischief to the two peoples."

Of course the Russian people, the masses, know nothing whatever about the
Dual Alliance, therefore the question was essentially a foolish one. But in des-
cribing it as a " menace of war against other peoples ' ' Count Tolstoy diametrically
mis-states both its motive and its effect. (See Chapter XXIV.) Such mundane matters
cannot be criticised to any good purpose from the standpoint of spiritual intuition.

LEO, THE SON OF NICHOLAS SS

" of the progress of Socialism in England." And his face clouded
over when I told him that Socialism, at least under its own name,
plays a far smaller part in English life than it did within my own
recollection twenty years ago. "Then tell me," he continued,
" what is being done in England about the ' single tax.' " And
he was obviously deeply disappointed when I replied that no-
thing was being done about it at all. One trifling remark in our
conversation interested him most. Looking at some carpenters
at work, I happened to say that 1 try to do with my own hands
all the carpentry on my farm. He at once came over to me to
ask about it. And in the liking of one man for simple country
life and manual labour he evidently thought he discovered a
symptom of hope for the future of a nation. For thither runs
his own ideal.

So far as the secular authorities are concerned, Tolstoy seems
to bear a charmed life. The story about the Tsar meeting him
at a railway station and holding a long conversation with him,
was a pure invention. Indeed, when an important official from
St. Petersburg came to Tula in the course of certain investiga-
tions, and desired to ask Tolstoy's advice, the latter refused to
receive him. But except the suppression of some of his writings,
the authorities leave Lef Nikolaievitch alone, though his views
must seem to them the quintessence of subversive propagandism.
"Three things I hate," he said to me : "autocracy, orthodoxy,
and militarism," and these are the three pillars of the Russian
State, I asked him point-blank, " How is it that the Govern-
ment has never arrested or banished you ? "' " I cannot tell,"
he answered, and then, after a moment's pause he added, slowly,
in a tone of much solemnity : " I wish they would. It would be
a great joy to me." The general opinion among advanced Rus-
sians is that the police are restrained in this instance by the world-
wide scandal that any harsh treatment of Tolstoy would cause.
But I am inclined to think that Tolstoy's influence, which is pro-
bably greater out of Russia than in it, being almost confined to the

ALL THE RUSSIAS

spiritual sphere, is not found running athwart the administration
in practical life. How should it ? Here, for example, is one of
his proposals. " My hind here," he said to me, when I pressed
him for some immediate practical reform, " is worth to me, let
us say, six roubles an acre a year. I would have the Govern-
ment impose upon this land a tax of nine roubles. I could not
pay it. Very well, let them take it away from me and give it in
cultivation to peasant families in small quantities sufficient to

YASXAYA POLYAXA, COUNT TOLSTOYS HOME (FKONT)

support them. They could well pay the higher rate for it." Such
views as this do not endanger the Russian social fabric.

For some unexplained reason, however, and by some extra-
ordinary error of ecclesiastical tactics, the religious authorities
suddenly excommunicated him in March of this year. I was told
by Russians that the reason was the issue of flysheets at a kopeck
apiece, containing his bitterest denunciations of the Orthodox
Church, and the enormous circulation these were having among
the people. In accordance with what he had said to me
about secular prosecution, he remarked to a recent visitor, " The
day of my excommunication was the happiest of my life."
But this did not prevent him from striking back at once, in a

LEO, THE SON OF NICHOLAS

long letter addressed to the Woly Synod. The latter's decree,
he declared, is illegal or intentionally ambiguous ; it is arbitrary,
unjustifiable, and mendacious. Moreover, it contains a calumny
and constitutes an incitement to wicked sentiments and acts.
" I have not repudiated the Church," he added, " because I had
revolted against the Lord. I repudiated it, on the contrary,
because I wanted to serve God with all the force of my soul."
He admits that ho denies the whole creed of Christianity

VASNAYA POLYANA, COUNT TOLSTOY'S HOME (BACK)

considered as theology — the incarnation of Jesus Christ, the
Trinity, the Immaculate Conception, &c,, but he does not deny
" God the spirit, a unique God of love, the principle of all things."
He believes not in the Christian Heaven and Hell, but in the
immortality of the soul and man's moral responsibility, and he
writes long and eloquently of the God of love, whose will is that
we should all live according to the law of love as the condition
of bringing real brotherhood into a world torn by strife. " It
may be," he says in conclusion, " that my beliefs offend, afflict,
or scandalise some persons ; it may be that they disturb or dis-
please ; but it is not in my power to change these beliefs any more
than it is possible for me to change my body. I must live and

58 ALL THE RUSSIAS

shall be obliged to die — and before long — yet all this interests
only myself. I cannot believe otherwise than I do believe at the
moment when I am preparing to return to this God from whom
I came. I do not say that my faith has been the only incontest-
ably true faith for all times, but I do not see any other simpler or
clearer, none which responds better to the requirements of my
mind and heart. If suddenly there should be revealed another
faith, better capable of satisfying me, I would adopt it at once,
for truth is the only thing that is of importance to God. As for
returning to the doctrines from which I emancipated myself at
the price of so much suffering, I cannot do so. The bird that
has taken its flight can never return to the shell out of which
it came." *

Before this, however, Countess Tolstoy had addressed to the
Procurator of the Holy Synod a pathetic and passionate protest
against the excommunication of her husband, which deserves
quotation at length, if only to refute the statement so commonly
made — in Russia, also — that she is without sympathy with his
views. " I have read in the newspapers," she wrote, " the de-
cree of the Holy Synod excommunicating my husband, Leo
Nicholaievitch Tolstoy. This excommunication, countersigned
by the Bishop of the Church, cannot leave me indifferent.

" My indignation and grief are immense. Not that my hus-
band's spiritual death is entailed by that document. This is God's
affair, not man's. From the religious standpoint the life of the
soul remains an impenetrable mystery for each of us, and that
life, thank Heaven, is dependent on no earthly power. But when
1 see this excommunication pronounced by the Church to which
I belong and shall never cease to belong, which Christ has estab-
lished in order that in God's name it should consecrate all the
most solemn acts of man's life — birth, marriage, death — whose
mission is to proclaim the law of charity, the law of pardon, the
love of our enemies and of those who hate us, and whose prayers

* The Times, May i, igoi.

LEO, THE SON OF NICHOLAS 59

are due to all, I am at a loss what to think. That excommunica-
tion will excite not the adhesion but the indignation of men, and
will earn for Leo Tolstoy increased love and sympathy. We are
already receiving the expression of these sentiments, and from
all parts of the world it will long continue to reach us.

" Deep, too, is the pain caused me by another senseless mea-
sure recently adopted — the secret order bywhich the Holy Synod
forbids priests in the event of Leo Nicholaievitch's death to bury
him in church. Against whom is this blow directed ? The dead,
the insensible remains of the man, or his kindred, the believers
surrounding him ? If it is a threat, to whom is it addressed, against
whom is it aimed ? Is it really believed that I shall not find a
priest to celebrate my husband's funeral service and pray for him
in church — a good priest who in the presence of the true God of
love disregards the commands of men, or a bad priest whom an
offer of money would place at my disposal ? But even this is not
necessary. For me the Church is an abstraction, and I do not
acknowledge other ministers than those who comprehend what
it really is. Were it necessary to believe that the Church is
merely the congregation of men who out of malice do not hesi-
tate to violate Christ's highest command, the law of love, we
should long ago have left it, all of us who are faithful to it and ob-
serve its laws. And the renegades are not those who go astray in
search of truth, but those who, placed by their very pride at the
head of the Church and unfaithful to the law of love, humility,
and mercy, act as spiritual hangmen. God will be lenient to
those who even outside the Church have lived a life of humility,
renunciation of the good things of this world, love, and devo-
tion. His pardon is surer for them than for those whose mitres
and decorations sparkle with precious stones, but who strike and
expel from the Church those over whom they are set as pastors.
Hypocrisy will try in vain to distort my words, for good faith will
not err in judging people's real intentions."*
* The Times, March 19, 1901.

6o ALL THE RUSSIAS

Three weeks later, Mgr. Antonius, Metropolitan of St. Peters-
burg, replied to this letter, having waited, as he explained, until
the first outburst of her grief had subsided. He repelled the
accusation of cruelty made by the countess by explaining that
the count had rather been cruel to himself in voluntarily renounc-
ing the only "source of eternal life," adding that it was against
such renunciation on his part that his wife's protest should have
been directed, and not against the action of the Holy Synod,
whose decree merely recognised an accomplished fact. That de-
cree, moreover, did not violate the Christian law of mercy and
forgiveness, but, on the contrary, was an act of love toward
the count, inviting him to repentance and reunion with the
Church. As to the assertion of the countess that she could in
any case obtain a Christian burial for her husband by love or
money, his Eminence declared that any such act would be a
criminal profanation, and he did not see whythe countess should
be so eager to force upon her husband a form of burial which he,
apparently, would not wish to have. It was not astonishing that
marks of sympathy continued to reach the count from all parts
of the world. " There is a glory of man and a glory of God. For
all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass,
but the word of the Lord endureth for ever." As long as the
count lives there is hope, and the Holy Synod had only expressed
the exact truth in stating that he had withdrawn himself from
the Church and is no longer a member of it unless and until he
repent. Although the clergy wear diamond-studded mitres and
stars, they would be just as much pastors of the Church if they
were again dressed in rags and persecuted.*

Four months afterward Count Tolstoy fell gravely ill, and
his life was despaired of. According to all accounts from Russia
this prospect deeply alarmed both the ecclesiastical and the sec-
ular authorities, for their action had provoked popular feeling
to a degree they had wholly failed to foresee. A most embar-

* The Tunes, April 8, 1901.

LEO, THE SON OF NICHOLAS 6i

rassing dilemma faced them. If they refused Count Tolstoy
Christian burial, they risked an explosion of anger against the
Church. If they granted it, they stultified their own decree.
Happily the occasion for a decision was postponed, but the Synod
has already gone so far as to explain that the decree of excom-
munication was only temporary, not eternal. It seems highly
probable that some way of avoiding so very delicate a situation
will be found before it again threatens.

So far as a foreigner may express an opinion, the Church in
Russia needs no defence of this kind. It has become part of
the very nature of the masses of the people — as I have said be-
fore, even the State and the Church together cannot venture to
change the Gregorian Calendar because the people will not have
their saints' days altered. The excommunication of Tolstoy, too,
could have no possible effect upon the educated classes, whose
religious views are definite and well known. Finally, since
so many of Tolstoy's writings are not permitted to be circu-
lated in Russia, the effect of his views there is hardly so far-
reaching as to call for such conspicuous and heavy-handed
treatment.

The truth is, I believe, that Tolstoy's influence is first, that
of his noble personal character ; and second, that of the artist.
It is in this latter light that educated Russians esteem him. I
have often heard people speak with profound respect of his work
as a creative artist, and in the next breath laugh at his theories
of reform. What are these, in a word ? I tried to summarise
them, immediately after my conversation with him, as follows :
No more nations and frontiers and patriotism, but the world ; no
more rulers and laws and compulsion, but the individual con-
science ; no more multitudinous cities and manufactures and
money, but simply the tiller of the soil, eating of the fruit of his
toil, exchanging with his neighbours the work of his hands, and
finding in the changing round of natural processes alike the nour-
ishment of his body and the delight of his eyes ; while, like some

62 ALL THE RUSSIAS

directing angel poised above, the law of love, revealed in Christ,
lights each man's path, and so illumines the world.

It is, of course, a species of nihilism, for realisation of it
would mean the annihilation of science, of invention, of art, of
literature, but it is the nihilism of the visionary, and should
have no terrors for the autocrat, the priest, or the major-
general.

I have dwelt thus long upon my visit to Yasnaya Polyana,
partly because Tolstoy is one of the most striking of living figures,
and anything at first hand about him, especially now that we
can hardly hope he will be included in this category much longer,
is probably of interest ; and partly because, in his vague and
facile idealism, he is the typical Russian. There are, of course,
compact groups of Russian reformers working directly for prac-
tical ends which they keep steadily in view. Among these the
bimetallists are not the least numerous or energetic. But the
vast majority of reformers, so far as I could judge from my own
experience, are dreamers. Almost every serious student, for in-
stance, is a socialist, but a pure theorist, seeking the line of de-
velopment along which human nature can perfect itself. No
doubt of this perfectibility ever occurs to him. Half of them
label themselves Marxists, and the other half— some local name I
have forgotten. When any new solution of the social problem
is advocated anywhere, it immediately finds disciples in Russia.
Thus during the last American Presidential Election, a Populist
group of students sprang up, and still exists. As Sir Donald
Wallace has pointed out, Russians, having received their political
education from books, naturally attribute to theoretical considera-
tions an importance which seems exaggerated to those who have
been educated by political experience. " When any important
or trivial question arises, they at once launch into the sea of
philosophical principles." So far as the students are concerned,
the result of this national habit is that they, the best educated

LEO, THE SON OF NICHOLAS 63

and most intelligent class of the community, exert little influence
in the direction of change. When the next liberalising move
ment comes — and such a movement is being unconsciously
prepared from above — not they, but an entirely different class,
will have constrained it.

FINLAND

CHAPTER IV

FINLAND: THE LAND OF WOOD AND WATER

FINLAND is a little country, and there is not much to tell
about it. But it is the focus of some brave ideas, and
its short story has no soiled page. A desolate and water-
logged land, in a hard northern climate, three-quarters of its
surface destitute of population, possessing no natural wealth
except its forests and no natural advantages except its water-
falls, where the ripening crops race against the descend-
ing frost for their harvest-goal and are often outstripped, and
where the peasant for half the year lives like an Arctic explorer
— how should it have any story ? Yet the very hardness of the
struggle has made the Finn one of the sturdiest specimens of
humanity — only the sturdy could survive ; industry was the con-
dition of his existence ; his loneliness has bred self-reliance, and
his long solitudes have awakened faith. He has developed in
this dark wintry corner of Europe a civilisation curiously his
own — quaintly original on the one side and Transatlantically
progressive on the other. He has a natural bent for science,
especially in its practical application ; art has been born to him
— not much in quantity, but vigorous and independent in qua-
lity ; while literature has by nature deep roots in the hearts of
men whose chilly, infertile home-land is the richest of all the
world in folk-song and lyric proverb, in legend and magic
spell, in epic saga and chanted rune.

Yes, it is a little country, but it is big in character, big in
the material and moral progress it has made under severe con-
ditions, and it raises a big political question. No review of

FINLAND 65

Russia to-day could be complete that did not take Finland into
account, though even in its short story there is much that
cannot, with discretion, be discussed just now.

The first aspect under which the visitor to Russia hears of
Finland is that of the playground of St. Petersburg. The fron-
tier is but a couple of hours' distance by rail, yet this little journey
takes you into a more attractive rurality than can be found in
other directions. A Russian grand seigneur, with a vast estate and
troops of servants, can have all the pleasures of country life and
few of its inconveniences, even though his estate be mortgaged
to the hilt and ready cash be a rare commodity. But for the
ordinary man, and j^articularly for the foreign resident, it is diffi-
cult to find a small country house in pleasant and healthful sur-
roundings. Russia is very flat and iminteresting, from a topo-
graphical point of view, and Russian villages do not offer by
any meaias4hat wholesome life and idyllic environment in which
the townsman finds temporary amusement and repose. On the
contrary, they are too often dirty and drunken, and they are
nearly always poor. In Finland, on the other hand, pine-clad hill
and dashing stream form the commonest natural features; the
peasants are fairly well-to-do, they are healthy, intelligent, and
strikingly honest; sobriety rules, because the sale of intoxicants
is absolutely prohibited; there is capital fishing to be had; while,
perhaps most influential reason of all, owing to the lowness of
the Finnish tariff, both necessaries and luxuries are far cheaper
than in Russia. So every one who can afford it — and almost every
foreign resident of the Capital — buys or rents a little country
house in Finland, where his family lives during the summer —
almost intolerable in the flat, canal-intersected city of Peter —
and whither he betakes himself either daily or at each week-end.

The north-eastern part of St. Petersburg is called the Viborg
quarter, and the Finland station is just on the other side of the
Neva. The frontier is at Terijoki, thirty-three miles away, but
there are no frontier formalities, as a perfunctory glance is given

ALL THE RUSSIAS

at your baggage in the station before the train starts. There
is no fear of much smuggling from a high-tariff country to a low-
tariff one. Smuggling between the two countries, as I shall
point out later, plays an important political part, but it is all the
other way. Almost the only thing you may not take freely in
your baggage into Finland is spirituous liquor. Even from the
train you soon rem:uk a difference between the two countries.

A COUNTRY HOUSE IN FINLAND

Russia is a land of plains, broken by occasional great rivers. Fin-
and is a land of "rocks and rills," covered with masses of granite,
an astonishing proportion of its surface water, and the train runs
for hours past two unbroken lines of pine-woods. And man's
handiwork shows as much difference as nature's. The wooden
houses of the peasants, as well as of the better classes, are neat
and pretty, mostly painted red ; they are always in good repair,
the fences in order, the gates sound and closed. The whole
country, in fact, looks well cared for — the home of hard-working
people, prospering thriftily. And one curious and characteristic
detail strikes the traveller before he alights. In Russia official

FINLAND 67

notices of every kind appear in Russian only. The Russian
officially ignores the existence of foreign languages even where
foreigners mostly congregate. If you do not know Russian there
is but one thing to do— learn it. P^inland, on the other hand, is
cosmopolitan, for, to begin with, it is bilingual. Finnish, that
strange, soft cousin of the Oriental Magyar tongue, is the
language of the people ; Swedish is spoken in all the towns
and by everybody above the status of peasant. And the
notices to passengers in the railway carriages are m six
languages : Finnish, Swedish, Russian, English, French, and
German.

Neatness, and modest self-respecting prosperity, are even
more noticeable in the towns than in the country districts. Vi-
borg, the first important place you reach in the journey from
Russia to the capital, is hardly a real Finnish town, for it is the
commercial Hnk between Finland and Russia, and a large pro-
portion of its merchants are Russians and Germans, and Rus-
sian is spoken currently in commercial circles. The main line
of railway runs through it ; the branch to the north is only a few
kilometres away ; its splendid harbour is — except in winter— the
chief maritime inlet and outlet of the country ; and the great
Saima Canal leads from the head of its bay deep into the multi-
tudinous waterways of the interior. Needless to say, there is
a strong Russian garrison here, and over the strange old slab-
sided Gothic castle, built by the Swedish Governor Knutson in
1293, flies the little Russian "war-flag." The approach, too, is
guarded by several modern forts upon islands in the bay, for
Russia is open to attack from this side and takes her precautions
accordingly. Viborg, thus, apart from its Castle and round-
house, is commercial, modern, Russo-German Finland ; it is
not genuine Finland, either of our time, like Helsingfors, or of
all time, like the villages and up-country towns.

Eight hours in the train, through almost unbroken pine-
woods, with hardly a town of any importance the whole way,

ALL THE RUSSIAS

THE CITY AMU HARBOUK

bring you to Helsingfors, and here you are really in Finland of
to-day. The Finn has an enthusiastic admiration for the capital
of his country, which could be pathetic if it had not so good a
basis of justification. Indeed, I doubt if any of the capitals of
the world which count their age by centuries and their inhabi-
tants by millions, evoke such a patriotic appreciation as this little
place of 85,000 people which only began to exist in its present
form within the lifetime of some now living. In certain respects
I have never seen any city like it. It appears to have no slums,
no rookeries, no tumble-down dwellings of the poor, no criminal

FINLAND

OF HELSINGFORS

quarter, no dirt. I did not specially search for these things, but
I wandered about a good deal during a week's stay, and I did not
see them. And I could not find them from the top of Observa-
tory Hill with a field-glass. Down the centre of the city runs
the wide Esplanade, all gardens and trees, with fine houses upon
one side, and a truly metropolitan range of shops and hotels upon
the other. In the middle, stands the bronze statue of the poet
Runeberg, by his son, and graven on its pedestal is the national
song he wrote. Every May the students of the University gather
about his feet and sing his words — or at least they used to do so ;

70 ALL THE RUSSIAS

perhaps this is forbidden now. The spirit and metrical vigour
of Runeberg's poetry are admirably shown, by the way, in the
following spirited translation of "The March of the Biorne-
borgers," in the exact metre of the peculiar original, line for
hne — a poem now forbidden to be sung in Fmland : —

Sons of a race whose blood was shed,
On Narva's field ; on Poland's sand ; at Leipzig ; Lutzeus darlv hills under
Not yet is Finland's manhood dead ;
With foemen's blood a field may still be tinted red.
All Rest, all Peace, Away ! begone !
The tempest loosens; lightnings flash ; and o'er the field the cannon thunder

Rank upon ranic, march on ! march on 1
The spirit of each father brave looks on as brave a son.
No nobler aim

Could light us to the field ;
Our swords are flame ;
Nor new our blood to yield ;
Forward each man, brave and bold 1
Lo ! the glorious path of Freedom, centuries old !

Gleam high ! thou banner Victory-sealed !
In the grey bygone days, long since, all battle-worn.
Be still our splendid colours, though tattered, onward borne !
Of Finland's ancient Standard there's yet a shred untorn.

Never shall our father's ground
Be reft by force from out the arms of soldiers who have never bled ;

Never shall the word go round
That Finns to their free Northern home were traitors found.

The brave can only do and die
Not backward turn at danger's threat ; nor shrink ; nor quail ; nor bow the head
Be ours the warrior's fortune high
To fall — we only plead for one last Victor)^ !
Take sword in hand !
Rush gladly on the foe !

Die for our land,
So Honour's life shall grow !
Untiring plunge from fray to fray,
The present time is ours — 'tis now the harvest-day ;
Thinned ranks as splendid witness show

FINLAND

To Valour's daring doeds, our land that save and ward ;
On with the grand old banner, that never battle scared,
Around the staff still gathers its faithful Finnish guard.='=

Above the Esplanade is the hill whereon stands the observa-
tory and the fine well-known group of "The Shipwrecked " by
tiie sculptor Stigell. From this height the splendid bay and har-
bour spread out before you. On the town side these end in rows
of neat warehouses and railway lines. A little way out is the pic-
turesque Yacht Club, on an islet, and farther on is the group of
island fortresses around Sveaborg — the "Gibraltar of the Baltic,"
with its 6000 Russian
troops and 900 guns.
This was the scene
of the treacherous sur-
render of the Swed-
ish Admiral Cronstcdt
to the Russians in
1808, and of the un-
successful attacks of
the Allies during the
Crimean War.

Helsingfors has
many imposing buildings for so small a city, the best placed
being the Lutheran church of St. Nicholas in the Senate Square,
raised upon its little granite hill and reached by fifty wide steps.
It may be seen behind the monument of Alexander II. in my
illustration on page 73. This monument — also by the younger
Runeberg, and erected by the Finnish people in 1894— is a
proof of how easy it has been for Russia to enjoy the devotion
of the Finns, for on the anniversary of the Emperor's assassi-
nation or fete-day it is surrounded by wreaths and memorial
emblems of their grateful affection. The University, another fine
building accommodating 2000 students, is named after Alex-
* The Times, January 8, 1901.

THE DIET HOUSE, HELslNGl

ALL THE RUSSIAS

ander I., and his bust occupies the place of honour in the Aula.
But to the visitor, especially just now, the most interesting build-
ings are the Senate House, with its magnificent salle, where the
Emperor, if he came, would open the Diet; RichlarJiiiset, ihe
great panelled hall, its walls covered with the escutcheons of all
the knightly members of the Diet, where the knights hold their
session ; and Stdnderhiiset, the Estates' House, with its three halls
where the representaHves of the clergy, the bourgeoisie, and pea-
sants sit during the rare meetings of the Diet. There is nothing
remarkable in the architecture of these : theyare simple, modern,
and dignified, but to the stranger from a land of representative

institutions they are
fraught with the in-
terest and pathos of
some noble and his-
toric landmarksinking
slowly into the sea.

The first impres-
sion of "Helsinki,"
however, is one's last ;
surprise and admira-
tion at the enterprise
and vigour by which
so poor and small a people have made of their capital so civilised
and so progressive a modern city. Forty years ago Helsingfors
had only 20,000 inhabitants, to-day it has more than four times
that number, and as I have already remarked, I know of no capital
city in the world which surpasses it in order, cleanliness, conveni-
ence and all the externals of modern civilisation. The streets are
perfectly kept, and little electric-cars, models of their kind,
furnish rapid and comfortable transport to all parts; education in
all branches of knowledge, for both sexes, offers every theoretical
and material opportunity; the Post-office, to take one example
of government, is the best arranged — not the biggest, of course

THE BURGHERS CHAMBER

FINLAND

— I have ever seen, our post-offices in the great provincial towns
of England, where the wholeof Helsingforswoiild be butaparish,
being but barns in comparison ; and on the table in my sitting-
room at the Hotel Kamp was a telephone by which I could con-
verse with all parts of Finland. All these things are the signs
of good citizenship, the more to be admired as it has grown upon

FINLAND'S LOVE FOR ALEXANDER II

The anniversary of his assassination

norich soil of unlimited natural resources andvasteasilyacquired
wealth, but has been cultivated, like the Spartan virtues of ori-
ginal New England, in the crevices of the rocks.

What the Finns have accomplished, however, cannot be
adequately appreciated without a comparison of certain extra-

74 ALL THE RUSSIAS

ordinary statistics of land and people. The area of Finland is
373,000 square kilometres, of which as many as 41,000 are inland
water. No fewer than 250 rivers flow into the Baltic. And only
twenty-eight per cent, of the superficial area of the country pos-
sesses a population of more than ten souls to the square kilometre.
That is, seventy-two per cent. — say three-quarters, of Finland —
isvirtually uninhabited, while the remaining quarter has a density
of only 23.5 inhabitants. At the same date as these statistics the
neighbouring countries of Denmark had 60 inhabitants to the
square kilometre, Russian Poland, 63, and the Government of
Moscow, 67, while France had 72, Germany, 80, Holland, 140,
and Belgium, 205. The extraordinary poverty and sterility of
the land could not be more eloquently told. Yet this poor land
and scattered folk — with everything but wood and waterfalls de-
nied to them by nature, and handicapped by one of the worst
climates of lands where people live at all — exported in 1898 no
less than 180,000,000 francs' worth of natural and manufactured
produce — nearly £t, worth per head of the total population !
There need be fewbounds to one's admiration and respect for the
Finnish race.

The aspect of Finland is slvown by the foregoing figures as
plainly as by any illustrations of Finnish landscapes. It is a land
of pine forest, of rock, of river and lake. Nature has but these
three colours on her palette there, and the only difference be-
tween one landscape and another depends upon which of the
three predominates at any particular place. The typical land-
scape — the composite Finnish portrait, so to speak — is seen when
all these elements are present in equal prominence, and the
human factor is superadded in the shape of a little patch of culti-
vated land around a cluster of wooden buildings. This combma-
tion is precisely shown in one of my illustrations, scattered spruce
and fir trees where you stand, clinging, as these trees alone can,
to the thin earth between the out-crops of granite hillside; below,
in the shelter, the cleared land, marked off by snake-fences which

FINLAND

recall a landscape in Virginia ; a stream or two, emptying into
a lake which is connected with another and thus again with
another until a great chain is formed; beyond and around, hills

THE FINNISH LANDSCAPE — MOUNTAIN, LAKE, FOREST, FIELD

clad thick with spruce and fir. That is Finland, where man in-
habits it at all. Sometimes the forest predominates, as in the
north and west, again the whole country appears to be lake and
bog, and the only terra firma is the long narrow road between

76 ALL THE RUSSIAS

two sheets of water ; elsewhere your eyes and ears perceive
nothing but dashing, roaring stream.

I have spoken of the " waterfalls " as one of the two natural
resources of Finland, but this is not strictly accurate. There is not
a real waterfall in Finland — only rapids. Imatra itself, the show
place of the Grand Duchy, the Mecca of the tourist and the envy
of the engineer, is a thousand yards of rocky, roaring rapids. The
magnificentphysicalatlasof the country, recently published, shows
some 700 rapids, a large proportion of which are suitable for hy-
draulic development for industrial purposes, or the production of
electrical energy. A large number of rapids have been thus devel-
oped, and it is certain that such enterprise will extend greatly
during the next few years. For not only is this the cheapest pos-
sible power, but it is peculiarly suited to the one industry, for
which Finland possesses natural supplies,which will soon — by the
exhaustion of similar supplies elsewhere — be unrivalled. I mean
the manufacture of wood-pulp, and cellulose (chemical wood-
pulp) for making paper, cardboard, &c. Finland's forests are as
yet hardly touched, and she has a vast area of them. An official
estimate assigns forty-six per cent, of the entire area to forests —
a superficies of thirty-seven and a half million acres, or 58,500
square miles. In 1899 it was calculated that these forests con-
tained 22,396,289 large trees, and 30,712,501 smaller trees,
still good enough for sawing. Much of this is unavailable for
commercial purposes until the price of wood and pulp rises con-
siderably, for at present prices, it is too far to the North, or too
remote from river transport to pay for cutting and bringing down.
But these prices are steadily rising, and must continue to rise,
while to-day Finland has forests for sale, intersected by streams
for floating down the logs, and powerful rapids from which tens
of thousands of horse-power can easily be developed to grind
them into pulp.

Already this industry has taken on large proportions. In
1865 there were two pulp-mills ; in 1872, six more ; to-day there

- W^''\ :.. - L !

FINLAND

are over thirty. In 1898, twenty-five pulp-mills, employing 1959
men, produced 50,894 tons, of the value of a quarter of a million
sterling — nearly a million and a quarter of (dollars. Besides this,
eight cellulose mills produced 13,296 tons, value ;^i 20,242, and
fourteen paper mills,employing 2828 men, produced 32,022 tons,
value ;^55 2,750. In fact, to so preponderating an extent is this

A ROAD IN FINLAND

the chief Finnish industry that of the 180 millions of francswhich,
as I have said, was the total value of Finnish exports in that year,
no less than 110,000,000 francs were represented by wood, pulp,
and paper. In view of the ever-increasing circulation of news-
papers,which depend wholly upon pulp for their supply of paper,
and the facts that America is almost denuded of her pulp-wood
forests, that Canada is using up her supplies at a great rate, that

78 ALL THE RUSSIAS

Russian wood is poor in quality and remote in situation, and
that no other country has any forests of this nature at all, the
question, where is pulp to come from ten years hence ? is
becoming a pressing one to all who have to supply the insatiable
maw of the newspaper press. To-day in Finland, if you know
where to go and how to set to work, you can buy at a fair price
a powerful waterfall, and the freehold of enough forest land
around it to cut and grow and cut again enough timber to keep
the waterfall at work grinding night and day for ever. Finland,
therefore, in my opinion, offers an excellent opportunity for
the investment of foreign capital in this direction. Certain
fiscal changes, too, which there is good ground to believe that
Russia will shortly impose,* will place this industry in Finland
upon an even more advantageous footing.

• See Chapter V., page 91, footnote.

CHAPTER V

THE FINNS AND THEIR NEIGHBOURS

FOUR races have struggled unconsciously tor predomi-
nance in Finland, and the native population of to-day
keeps something of the impress of each of them : the dark,
slender, poetic, dreamy, singing Karelian, who
first came to colonise it over the eastern border ;
the fair, broad-shouldered, hard-working, Tory
Tavast ; his cousin the real Finn ; the impulsive,
blue-eyed Swede from westward ; and the child-
like roaming Lapp from the north. But, as I said
at the start, the real ancestor of the Finn is his mourning
climate. He is hardy in body and hard in tem- ^^^^^^

perament ; given to silence ; laborious and conscientious ; with
many virtues and few graces. The fact that he makes a splendid
sailor, tells much of his character, as it causes him to be found
before the mast the world over — there is a special mission to
Finnish sailors in San Francisco. He steers the tar-boats down
his own perilous rapids, with the daring and coolness of the
Indian in his canoe ; he lives as frugally— and for the same
reason — as the Highlander of Scotland ; you cannot help but
trust him, but it is often more than you can do to get him to talk.
His agriculture is yet of the most primitive character: his favourite
method of cultivation is to cut down the trees in winter, leave
them to dry for a season, and then burn them, with the under-
woods, to clear the land, and fertilise it at the same time.

Within his hard shell, however, there is a tender kernel of
romance and playfulness and song. His immortal epic of the

8o ALL THE RUSSIAS

past, the Kalevala, still echoes in his heart, and his old men clasp
hands and sing its runes, or others which come unbidden to
their lips, in thrilling strophe and antistrophe. On Whitsun-
eve, his young men light bonfires and make merry round them,
and Christmas brings out his candles and fir-trees and fat fare.
But he comes out of his shell most of all in midsummer for
a Sfreifgesang, or Eisteddfod, when from far and near come
singing-clubs and choirs, to be judged by a jury of their elders,
in the court of a green glade, before an audience of the whole
countryside. Then he plays quaint childlike games.

To one wise law he doubtless largely owes his freedom from
a vice which cold and poverty and loneliness and opportunity
have developed to a terrible degree among his great neighbours
to the east ; the sale of alcohol, in any shape or form, is abso-
lutely prohibited in Finland outside the towns. A Finnish
countryman can only obtain intoxicating liquor by going to a
town and bringing it back with him, and towns are few and
distant, and he is not a mobile unit. And when he wishes to
celebrate some domestic festival, and like King Olaf's guests, to
*' feast late and long," he has to get a special police permit for
enough spirits to entertain his neighbours and drink '' Skaal to
the Northland, skaal" like his forebears, the vikings and the
*' hoary skalds." Except for this law the savings bank of Suomi
would tell a different and a sorrier tale.

The law-makers of Finland have also been strikingly wise in
all that relates to education. It is a land of schools. Except
upon the eastern frontier, where the people are still backward,
everybody can read and write. The total population in 1890 was
2,380,140, and so far as I can calculate, no fewer than 540,412
souls were attending school. That is, out of every hundred of
the entire population, something like twenty-three were actually
at school. This seems an extraordinary record, taking all things
into consideration. There are 2608 university students, includ-
ing women ; 4723 are at the lycees ; private schools educate

FINXISH AGRICULTURE— P.URNIXG THE WOODS FOR A SEED-BED

THE FINNS AND THEIR NEIGHBOURS 83

7785; primary schools contain 413,867; "urban popular
schools" give instruction to 25,931 ; and "rural popular schools"
to 72,991 ; normal schools are preparing 1881 teachers, the sexes
being of about equal number; and private schools receiving a
subvention from the State have 7785 children. With such a
foundation, one is no longer surprised to read the long list of
learned societies which flourish here — literary, philological,
juridical, medical and scientific. One of these, the Society of
Finnish Literature, is laying the world under obligations by the
wealth of folk-song it has discovei'ed and preserved. So long ago
as 1889 it had a collection of 22,000 epic, lyric, and magic songs,
13,000 legends, 40,000 proverbs, 10,000 enigmas, 2000 runes,
and 20,000 incantation formulas.

I find in my note-books a number of other figures about Fin-
land, some of them eloquent concerning the national character
and achievement. We hardly realise what a little people it is
until we see the fact in numerals. Twice the whole population
would still be half a million short of filling London. Including
the capital, there are but three towns larger than Viborg, whicli
has only 24,569 inhabitants. In the whole country there are only
thirty-seven " towns." There are but 461 Roman Catholics in
Finland, and only 45,000 members of the Russian Orthodox
Church, and these almost all on the eastern frontier adjoining
Russia. Of 2,380,140 inhabitants at the census of 1890, no fewer
than 2,334,547 were Lutherans.

The public debt is 112,000,000 francs, and every penny of this
has been incurred for construction of railroads, of which there are
1094 miles belonging to the State, and 112 miles of private
companies. There are 174 savings banks — six to a town, and it
must be remembered that many of these " towns " are what we
should call villages — these banks have 124,245 depositors, who
possess among them close upon 70,000,000 francs of savings —
that is, the savings banks alone have on deposit popular savings
equal to nearly two-thirds of the entire public debt.

ALL THE RUSSIAS

The people who can show facts like these in the hard con-
ditions of their homeland must indeed be welcome citizens in
aland where nature is lavish and men are still lacking, and it is
astounding that any regime lucky enough to have them should
lake steps which drive them away. Some years ago there were
80,000 Fins in the United States, and to-day numbers of them

are emigrating to Canada,
where it is now easier for
them to get good land.

This reflection naturally
leads to the consideration of
the one matter which the
Finn regards as of vital im-
portance to him — the ques-
tion which keeps the little
northern land in the world's
eye. I refer to the rela-
tions between the Grand
Duchy and the Russian Em-
pire.

At present, as everybody
knows, these are almost the
worst possible. Twice with-
in the last few months I have seen a capital where every
woman was in black. One was London, where the people
were mourning their dead Queen ; the other was Helsingfors,
where people mourned their lost liberty. Every woman in
Helsingfors bore the black symbols of personal woe. But per-
sonal protest went much farther than this. When General Bobri-
kof, the Russian Governor-General, who was sent to carry out
the new regime, took his walks abroad, every Finn who saw him
coming, crossed to the other side of the street. When he patron-
ised a concert for some charitable purpose, the Finns bought all
the tickets, but not a single one of them attended. The hotels

ARHIPPAIXI MIIHKALI, THE FINNISH BLIND
BARD

THE FINNS AND THEIR NEIGHBOURS 85

refused apartments to one of the Finnish senators wlio supported
the Russian proposals. By the indiscretion of a porter he se-
cured rooms at one of the principal hotels and refused to leave.
Therefore the hotel was boycotted and it is temporarily ruined.
The Russian authorities, intending to make the Russian lan-
guage compulsory in all Government departments, invited sev-
eral young Finnish functionaries to St. Petersburg to learn Rus-
sian under very advantageous conditions and with every prospect
of official promotion. When the language ordinance was pub-
lished and these Finns saw why they were desired to learn Rus-
sian, they immediately resigned. The Russians took charge of
the postal system of P'inland and abolished the Finnish stamps.
Thereupon the Finns issued a ''mourning stamp," all black ex-
cept the red arms of Finland and the name of the country in Fin-
nish and Swedish, and stuck it beside the Russian stamps on
their letters. The Russians retorted by strictly forbidding its
sale and destroying all letters which bore it. Now it is one of the
curiosities of philately. On the last anniversary of the publica-
tion of the Tsar's manifesto to the Finnish Senate concerning
the modification of the administration of Finland, in one of the
streets a black sheet was displayed on which were inscribed the
names of those Senators who voted in favour of the proclama-
tion of the Imperial manifesto, and in the evening the windows
of the houses inhabited by Finns were hung with black curtains,
and the lights in the rooms extinguished, A deputation of ladies
placed a mourning band on the monument of Alexander IL, while
groups of young men made a round of the town and compelled
Russian shopkeepers to put out their lights. They also forced
their way into Finnish houses in order to extinguish the lamps.
One of the bands demonstrated before a Russian bookseller's
shop and made rough music outside the residences of some Sen-
ators, to whom threatening letters bearing the signatures of mem-
bers of the Street Patriotic Association were sent.* So the

* The Times, February 23. tgoi.

ALL THE RUSSIAS

wretched struggle goes on, and the young Finn turns his eyes and
often his steps toward the Western World.

Nothing could be easier than to write a few pages of dithyram-
bic denunciation, declaring one side to be wholly right and the
other wholly wrong, and I well know that I shall be reproached

THE RUNE-SINGERS

in no measured terms for not doing so. Moreover, sweeping
generality is much more convincing than discrimination. Yet I
find myself unable to take this course. The rights and wrongs
of the dispute are not, so far as I can judge, thus strictly appor-
tioned. Like most rights and wrongs, when disputes rage, they
are shared. I am certain, too, that only harm is done by long
and bitter discussion of the relations of Russia and Finland at
this moment. Therefore I shall write briefly, but frankly, on
this painful topic.

There is no doubt whatever that, under the Finnish Consti-

THE FINNS AND THEIR NEIGHBOURS 87

tution, the contention of the Finns is right and that of the Rus-
sians wrong. In the F'undamental Laws, the Order on the Diet,
paragraph 71, says : "A fundamental law can be instituted, modi-
fied, explained, or abolished, only on the representation of the
Emperor and Grand Duke, and with the consent of all the Or-
ders." That is clear, and it is final, so far as any law or treaty
can be. Therefore, when Russia insists upon modifying, abolish-
ing, or introducing fundamental conditions of Finnish national
life without the consent of the Finnish Diet, she is acting illegally
and unconstitutionally. When Finland was taken from Sweden
and annexed to Russia in 1809, the Tsar Alexander I. conferred
upon it — and conferred willingly, and from conviction of the
expediency of the act — a distinct autonomy, and that autonomy
has been confirmed by the Coronation declaration of each suc-
ceeding Tsar. Finland has done nothing to show that the con-
cession was unwise, or to justify its w^ithdrawal. She has been
loyal, she has raised her due contingent of soldiers — a very small
one, it must be allowed — and she has paid her financial contribu-
tion. Her Constitution is now practically abrogated by the de-
cision of the Russian Government that the Tsar has power to
decide what laws must be subject to discussion by the Diet,
and what may be put in force without such discussion and Fin-
nish constitutional acceptance. In their appeal to the Tsar the
members of the Diet point out "that a law, whether fundamental
or general, to be valid in the country can be enacted only with
the approval and consent of the Estates " ; that " neither the
institutions of Russia and its autocratic system have been intro-
duced into Finland, nor have they had any force there" ; that
the Council of State "cannot act as a legislative organ for Fin-
land," and that the Imperial manifesto and the statutes based
upon it are " inconsistent with the right of making their own
laws w^hich, according to the Constitution of Finland, belongs
to her people." There can be no question of the historical ac-
curacy of these contentions.

88 ALL THE RUSSIAS

The chief Russian actions of which the Finns complain are
the appointment of a Russian instead of a Finnish Secretary of
State, the taking-over of the Finnish post-office, the announce-
ment that after a certain future date Russian will be the lan-
guage employed in all official departments, the severe censor-
ship and suppression of newspapers, and the institution of a
new law of military service. Of these it is the last named which
has brought something like despair into the Grand Duchy.

FINNISH TYPES

It was stated on good authority that this proposal, when
laid before the Russian Council of Ministers some three
months ago by General Kuropatkin, Minister of War, and Gen-
eral Bobrikof, Governor-General of Finland, was discussed for
four hours and then rejected by a large majority, the Grand
Duke Vladimir Alexandrovitch, and M. de Witte, Minister of
Finance, both voting with the majority. If this were so, the
Tsar, w^hose decision of course overrides that of the Council, has
been guided by his military advisers, for the new law, in a some-
what modified form, has now been signed and officially promul-
gated, and is to come into force in 1903. It is accompanied by
an Imperial manifesto pointing out that the inhabitants of the
Grand Duchy must share, in common with all other parts of the

THE FINNS AND THEIR NEIGHBOURS 89

Empire, the military burdens necessary to secure the unity of
the Russian army and the national defence. Not to go into
needless detail, the effect of the new law, two years hence, will
be to abolish the post of Finnish Commander-in-Chief, to abolish
the Finnish army as a distinct military organisation, and to draft
the Finnish recruits into Russian regiments, which will for a time
have a specially Finnish character, be paid for by the Finnish
exchequer, and be liable to service anywhere. The number of
recruits will be fixed by the Minister of War, and the length of
service will be eighteen years — three with the colours and fifteen
in the reserve.* Some of the above provisions are obviously only
temporary, and the Imperial intention undoubtedly is to make
Finland contribute to the national army precisely like every other
part of Russia.

Now, it is easy to understand that military service in Russia
will be intensely distasteful to the Finnish peasant. But it is
doubtless equally distasteful to every other peasant of the Tsar's
dominions. No peasant, in any country, enjoys forced military
service. The Finn will suffer rather more because he will be
surrounded at first with a strange language, and because his
attachment to his home is greater. The blow hits him harder,
also, because he has hitherto enjoyed an exemption unknown
to Russian or German or Frenchman : his loss is the withdrawal
of a privilege, rather than the infliction of an injustice. Why
should the Finn, alone of all subjects of the Tsar, escape the
personal burden of military service ? I confess that I can see
no reason, except that under his Constitution he is thus excep-
tionally favoured.

To be quite frank, the charge of violation of the Finnish Con-

* The Novoye Vremya, in commenting on the New Military Service Law for
the Grand Duchy, sagaciously points out that as the existing period of service with
the colours for Russian conscripts is five years, and as the object of the new law
is to secure unity of service in the Russian army, this particular enactment
probably points to a reduction from five to three years in the period of active
service throughout the whole Russian army. — Morning Post, August 2, 1901.

ALL THE RUSSIAS

stiUition is met by one simple consideration. As a matter of
plain fact, there is in human affairs of this kind no such thing
as finality. Or rather, the only final thing is force majeure —
imperative national self-interest. Before that all promises are
air, and all treaties are black marks on white paper. I put this
brutally (foreseeing the consequences), but there is no use in
mincing words. Every student of history, politics, or diplomacy

CRO'SING A BRIDGE IN FINLAND

knows it to be the simple truth, and every country, not Russia
alone, affords examples in proof. Germany broke her promises to
Denmark. France broke her promises about Madagascar. To
come nearer home, England has repeatedly pledged herself to
evacuate Egypt, and the United States was solemnly pledged to
grant complete independence to Cuba. None of these pledges
seems likely to be kept. Therefore, if it is, in the judgment of
Russia, an imperative condition of her national prosperity or
security that her relations with Finland should be fundamentally
altered, she will only be following the ordinary line of historical
and modern precedents by breaking her promises and tearing

THE FINNS AND THEIR NEIGHBOURS 91

up her pledges. I do not defend the prineiple — I state the fact.
" Pity 'tis, 'tis true."

And who is to be the judge of Russian national prosperity
and security ? Obviously, Russia herself— not the well-meaning
foreigners who from the safe comfort of their libraries hurl their
books of reference at her head. It is not they who will stop the
smuggling across her frontier from Finland, to the injury of her
heavily taxed manufacturers and merchants, nor they who, in her
hour of need, will increase her army or defend her western fron-
tier. Russia, like Italy, fara da sc, and like every other sovereign
Power that has ever grown up and endured, will and must take
all the steps that seem to be necessary to that end.

Having said so much, I bow before the storm ; but one or
two considerations should be borne in mind by those who will
passionately differ with me. I shall not be accused of having
failed to ^wq due credit to the Finnish national character for the
wonderful progress she has achieved, but let it be remembered
that Finland has thriven under the protection of the Russian
sword. She has borne virtually no burden of national defence.
If she had been independent, and obliged to be ready to mobilise
an army or a fleet at any time for her own protection, her budget
would have presented a different aspect. Moreover, the high
tariff country has protected the low^ tariff country. The Finn
has thriven under a very low scale of customs duties, while his
Russian neighbour and competitor has had to meet the demands
of a high one.* Living is cheap in Finland : that is one of the

* The Russian Government decided long ago to assimilate the Finnish tarift
to that of Russia. Germany, which exports to Finland about ^'2, coo, ceo worth of
goods annually, naturally viewed the proposed change with alarm, but although
this question of the Finnish tariff was not mentioned in the commercial treaty
between the two Governments, the following arrangement was concluded by an
exchange of notes. Russia undertook to permit Finland to maintain its tariff un-
altered until December 31, i8g8, after which date the dift'erence between the
Finnish and Russian tariffs might be reduced by 50 per cent., after December 31,
1901, by 75 per cent., and the two tariffs may be made identical after Decem-
ber 31, 1903. Up to the present time, however, no change has been made.

ALL THE RUSSIAS

reasons why so many Russians spend half the summer and half
their incomes there. Cigars cost a quarter of what they cost in
Russia : every daily summer resident takes back a pocketful every
morning. All Finnish produce enters the great Russian market
under a differential duty — that is, practically, with a bounty.
Russian ananufacturers cannot compete in Finland with the pro-

A FINNISH WEDDING : THE BKIUE S PRAYEK ON LEAVING HU.ME

duce of England or Germany. Finally, as things are now, Russia
really believes herself vulnerable to a foreign foe coming via
Finland. In her view, national security means military and other
unification. I have no competence to say whether this view is
right or wrong. I only say that Russia holds it, and that settles
the question.

There has been bad procedure on both sides, and, as in the
case of the hen and the egg, it is hard to say which came first.
Russian administrators in Finland have committed blunder after
blunder of tact, have given offence where none need have been

THE FINNS AND THEIR NEIGHBOURS 93

given,haveneedIesslywounded the national sentimentsof a proud
and stubborn people. The Finns have shown themselves so in-
transigent, so careless of Russian feelings and needs, so hostile,
in fact, as to put weapons in the hands of those who declare them
to be really enemies of Russia. I repeat, therefore, that no true

A FINNISH WEDDING: VEILING THE DOWEKED BRIDE

friend to Finland will seek, under these circumstances, to
embitter her relations with Russia.

If this remark be justified, it applies especially to those
among us who are always, assuredly with the best motives,
ready to sign memorials and hold meetings and found
societies to protest against the management by other nations
of their own affairs, or to summon our own Government
to redress wrongs for which it is not responsible. The
meetings held and the letters written to the late Tsar con-
cerning the treatment of Jews in Russia are a prominent
example. In this case it might have been thought that

94 ALL THE RUSSIAS

the spectacle of the great Hebrew financial houses floating
gigantic Russian loans would have been sufficient to deter
Christians from stepping i n where the co-religionists of the
oppressed, indispensably powerful in their own sphere, would
not. tread. To have plunged into war to avert or avenge
the sufferings of Armenia, with all Europe ranged against
such a course, would have been an act fraught with extreme
national peril, from which we were happily preserved, though
there were many who urged it upon us. And the con-
tinual and often ignorant* denunciations of Russia for her
action in Finland is, in my opinion, equally futile and
unwise. The desu-ability of minding one's own business is
as great in international relations as in private life, even
though good people often lose sight of it. And let us not
foreet that Russians dislike and resent abuse and denun-
ciation precisely as much as we do ourselves, and are
just as apt as we are to stiffen their backs in consequence
of it.

In conclusion, there is one more consideration which those
who raise the loudest cries of illegality would do well to ponder.
Russia, as one of her leading statesmen remarked to me, might,
with perfect ease and safety and in all the odour of perfect legal-
ity, absorb the whole of Finland next month, and wipe it off the
map as a separate entity. This would be the simple process.
First, she announces that she withdraws from all protection over
Finland and grants to the former Grand Duchy absolute and
complete national independence. Then, as the presence of an in-
dependent and possibly hostile State upon her exposed frontier
would be obviously incompatible with her national security, she
marches an army corps into Finland and annexes the country —
lock, stock, and barrel. White to play— mate in two moves.
There would be a huge outcry, but anybody who knows any-

* I read in a recent issue of a leading London daily paper the statement that
Russia had suppressed the use of the Finnish language throughout Finland !

THE FINNS AND THEIR NEIGHBOURS 95

thin£^ of contemporary Europe knows that not a finger would
be raised to stop lier. And I do not see an American fleet steam-
inij; up the Bahic. Thus Russia could get all she wants, and
infinitely more than she is asking, without transgressing for an
instant or by a hair's breadth that sacred formal legality in
which laws and lawyers often perpetrate injustice everywhere.

SIBERIA

CHAPTER VI

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF SIBERIA

ANY account of Siberia should begin with the words, "Once
upon a time," for it must sound hke a fairy-tale. The
little beginnings, when the first Tsars of Moscow authorised the
first expedition across the Urals ; the private family that financed
it ; the Volga boatman, become pirate, his life forfeited for his
crimes, w^ho led it ; the vast distances, the awful climate, the
strange peoples, the unsurpassed heroism of these pioneers; later
on, the magnificent diplomacy, the fine strategy, the perfect in-
sight which outwitted Tatar, Tungus, Manchu, and Jesuit alike;
the military tenacity which stuck to what diplomacy won, even
when England and France allied tried to take it away ; after
the conquest, the development ; first furs, then gold, then wheat,
then coal, and now at last the greatest railway in the world and
possibly the eventual mastery of the Far East behind the snort
of the locomotive — there is not in history, so far as I know, a
chapter which, being fact, breathes such an air of fairy-land.

So, once upon a time, there dwelt upon the banks of the
Volga a man named Vassili, the son of Timothy, the son of Atha-
nasiusAlenin the carter, earning his hard bread by towing boats
up the great river. He was nicknamed " the millstone," because
he ground the corn for his comrades — Yermak. A man of iron
physique and primitive passions, the lonely boats were at his
mercy, so he became a pirate and murdered their owners and
plundered their cargoes. At last the terrible tales reached the

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF SIBERIA 97

ear of Ivan the Terrible, who decreed his death and sent a force
to hang him and his band of Don Cossacks. Up the highway
of the Volga they fled, till on the banks of the Kama, not far from
the foothills of the Ural Mountains, they came to the abode of
a rich family of settlers and traders named Stroganof, who at
that very moment were casting envious eyes across the range
to the land of Yugra, whence the Ostiaks brought such precious
sables. In Yermak the Stroganofs saw the man they needed.
They furnished him w^ith money and arms, he gathered a motley
crew of adventurers round him, and on New Year's Day, 1581,
he started. That was the beginning ; the railway to Port Arthur
is not the end.

Yermak was a fox in cunning and a lion in fighting. His
perils were endless and his sufferings terrible. One by one his
old Cossack comrades of the Volga were slain by his side, and
at last he was literally caught napping by his chief enemy, the
blind Tatar chief, Kuchum, in a camp on the banks of the Irtysh
River, and after cutting his way to the water was drowned while
trying, like the old boatman he was, to swim to safety. But be-
fore this he had carried the two-headed eagle of Byzantium,
which Ivan the Terrible had just adopted for the blazon of Mos-
covy, almost as far as the site of Tobolsk ; he had bartered the key
of a new empire for the Tsar's pardon ; he was a prince and wore
a mantle sent him by the Imperial hands; he had set Russia's
goal immutably in the East. Moreover, although Kuchum killed
huTi in the end, he had seized the old man's capital two years
before, and made it a centre of Asiatic trade for Russia. This
capital was called Sibir, and it has given its name to five million
square miles of Russia in Asia. Henceforth, therefore, let us
pronounce the first syllable of Siberia short.

After Yermak's death the absorption of Siberia proceeded as
steadily as water trickling down hill. The loadstone was ever the
sable, and as fast as one district was stripped of its furs, rumours
of the wealth of the next drew the pioneers on. Sometimes furs

98 ALL THE RUSSIAS

were scarce, at other times the Cossacks Hned their coats with
sable. The Httle band^^ of explorers built thembclves ziinovie,
winter quarters of wood, and gradually the soldiery followed and
erected their ostrogs, wooden blockhouse forts, near by. Terrible
suffering was, of course, common ; starvation and frost-bite took
their yearly toll ; more than once it is recorded that men ate men
in their extremity ; one expedition had to abandon twenty-four
soldiers with frozen feet upon an ice-bound river, w^iich engulfed
their corpses in the spring. But ever the movement spread —
now by individual enterprise, now by Government aid, now in
spite of Government opposition. Heroism against nature and
natives alike became endemic. Russia pushed steadily on.
Tobolsk, near Kuchum's deserted capital, w^as founded in 1587;
the next great river, the Yenissei, was reached, and Yenisseisk
founded in 1620 ; the Lena discovered and Yakutsk built in 1632.
Irkutsk, on the Angara, close to its outlet into Lake Baikal, dates
from 1651, and before this, to the north, Dejnef had sailed
through Bering's Strait in 1648, Cossacks had made their appear-
ance on the Sea of Okhotsk in 1636, Poyarkof had found the
Amur in 1644, and in 1650 Khabarof had captured the town of
Albazin, to the north of the Amur, and founded at the junction
of the Ussuri and the Amur the town now called Khabarofsk,
he being the first Russian to come into contact — which meant
conflict— with the Chinese. Thus in seventy years after Yermak
had started to cross the Urals for the unknown, fur-bearing land
of " Yugra," Russia had extended right across Asia, northward
as far as the inaccessible Arctic regions, southward to the borders
of China, and eastward to the bank of the mighty river which falls
into the Pacific. In the north the expansion continued, f'or in
1697 Atlasof conquered Kamchatka ; but a sudden check came
to the eastward and southern advance by the pusillanimous treaty
of Nertchinsk in 1689— the one occasion on which Russia has
been a victim to that venerable bogey, tlie military power of the
Chinese. This was, by the way, the first convention between

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF SIBERIA 99

Chinese and any Western nation, and by it Russia lost the Amur
and her access to any useful part of the Pacific seaboard.

For nearly one hundred and fifty years the tide was stayed in
the Far East, while Russia's energies were sapped and her vigour
rudely tried by events at home. The race of Rurik had become
extinct ; the false Demetrius had desolated the country ; the
faniilv of Romanoff had finally established itself on the throne of
Moscow at the moment of Russia's direst need; Moscow itself had
been burned and occupied by the Polish enemy ; the land had been
a prey to insurrections. The Romanoffs saved Russia, but it was
long before they had any strength to spare for her far frontiers,
and even the colossal energy of Peter the Great, though he was
sensitive enough to the pull of the Eastern loadstone, was almost
monopolised by the task of lifting Russia into line with her West-
ern neighbours. Nine Russian rulers came and went — four of
them were women, one was a child, and the reigns of all but two
were very short — before Russia resumed her eastward march.
But when Alexander I. had finished his successive wars with
France, Austria, Sweden, and Turkey, when Nicholas I. was not
yet plunged into the war in the Crimea, the moment arrived, and
with it the man. The sudden elevation in 1847 of the young Gen-
eral Muravief, Governor of Tula, to the post of Governor-General
of Eastern Siberia — an act of administrative genius on the part
of Nicholas I. — closed the period of Siberian eclipse which had
begun a hundred and forty-eight years before with the Treaty of
Nertchinsk, and opened the brilliant chapter which leaves Russia
to-day with a naval base, an army, and a railway at the gates
of Peking. As Yermak was the hero of the first chapter, so
Muravief is the hero of the second — he left Siberia in 1861 —
and his statue at Khabarof sk looks down with proudly folded arms
upon as splendid a piece of creative statesmanship as modern his-
tory records. He saw the end from the beginning, and in spite of
the frequent doubts and hesitancies of his sovereigns, the machi-
nations of his many and bitter enemies, and the vast natural

lOo ALL THE RUSSIAS

difficulties of his task, he realised it to the full, for after his retire-
ment his work proceeded almost mechanically to its conclusion.
He founded Petropavlofsk, on the Pacific coast, in 1849, fortified
it, and enabled it to beat off triumphantly the English and French
fleets in 1854 — the only Russian success of the Crimean War. He
established Nikolaiefsk, at the mouth of the Amur, in 1850, and
in 1858 concluded with China the Convention of Aigun, which
gave Russia eastward all the territory from the Ussuri River to
the sea, and carried her southern boundary where for the present
it remains — at the Korean frontier. In i860 he selected her
great naval base of Vladivostok, its name meaning "the dominion
of the East." The rest was automatic. On March 17, 1891, an
Imperial rescript ordered the construction of the Great Siberian
Railway; on March 27, 1898, Russia obtained — nominally as
" lease and usufruct," but really for ever and a day — the railway
terminus and impregnable naval fortress of Port Arthur, com-
manding by land and sea the only practicable approach to the
capital of the Chinese Empire. The fairy-tale is told.

I have not taken this rapid glance at Siberian history because
the history of Siberia possesses intrinsically greater interest or
importance than the history of any other part of the Russian
Empire. It is to illustrate and emphasise a vital principle of
Russian life as essential to a correct comprehension of her past
and an intelligent anticipation of her future, as the principle of
autocracy or the character of her people. This is, that as
Russia was Oriental in her origin, so she moves to the Orient by
innate and congenital compulsion. Only while Peter the Great
indulged his dream of rivalling the West, and while Russia was
distracted and exhausted by internal disorder and external ene-
mies, was this natural process stayed. It has been, it is, and it
always will be, her normal development : in the eyes of her
strongest men it is her divine mission. A seaman would describe

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF SIBERIA loi

her course as " east half south." In her blood is the irresistible
mysterious Drang nach Osten; like Man himself she —

Perhaps acts second to some sphere unknown,
Touches some wheel, or verges to some goal.

It has been pointed out that the sea alone stopped the Cos-
sacks in the seventeenth century, and when they got to work
again in the nineteenth, the Russians crossed the Paciiic, and
pushed on to within a few miles of San Francisco, long before
the first "prairie schooner" sailed over the plains. The map of
Asia is a Russian step-ladder : the Urals, Western Siberia, Eastern
Siberia, Baikalia, Kamchatka, the Amur, Manchuria ; the Steppe ;
Khiva, Turkestan, the Merv Oasis, Bokhara, Samarkand; these
are the rungs she has climbed. Persia, Kashgar, Afghanistan,
India itself — unless a mightier force than herself bar the way,
her feet will be here loo in the fulness of time. The "half
south " in her course is shown by the gradual descent of her
naval base in the Far East : Petropavlofsk, Nikolaiefsk, Vladi-
vostok, Port Arthur. If you would understand Russia, and
interpret and forecast aright the march of great events,, never
forget that, for her, eastward the course of empire takes its
way; that as the sap rises, as the sparks fly upward, as the
tides follow the moon, so Russia goes to the sunrise and the
warm water.

CHAPTER VII
THE GREAT SIBERIAN RAILWAY

AT present there is no direct connection between St. Peters-
burg and the Siberian Railway, but a direct line is under
construction. Moscow is the western terminus, and a train leaves
for Irkutsk every afternoon. This is the ordinary slow train,
consisting chiefly of third-class carriages, with one second-class
and half a first-class, and a mail van. It makes a direct connec-
tion with Irkutsk, but passengers have to change more than once.
Through travellers, and almost all who go far into Siberia, ex-
cept the poor and the colonists — who have fourth-class trains to
themselves — take the train de luxe w^hich leaves Moscow every
Saturday at a quarter to nine P.M. This service is performed by
four trains, known as Nos. i, 2, and 3, which are purely Russian,
and the train of the International Sleeping Car Company.

The Siberian Express is still a novelty in Russia, and people
come to the station to inspect its luxurious appointments and
witness its departure. The Siberian station is the finest in Mos-
cow, with an imposing white fagade — " God Save the Tsar " in
permanent gas illumination over the entrance — spacious halls,
an admirable restaurant, and a series of parallel platforms, which
make one think sadly of certain great London termini. At the
farthest of these stand five unusually large and heavy corridor
carriages and a powerful engine. As always in Russia, a crowd
of uniformed officials is on hand ; a brilliant light pours through
the little windows high up in the flat sides of the carriages ; the
locomotive is only purring softly, but somewhere in the train an
engine is at work at high speed, for there is a cloud of escaping

THE GREAT SIBERIAN RAILWAY 103

steam, a stream of wood sparks, and a shrill buzz ; and a chatter-
inj^, laughing, crying crowd is at each entrance taking long leave
of those going far away. Three strokes of the bell, big men
with swords kiss each other fervently, a whistle, a snort of the
engine, an answering whistle, and the train is off into the night
on its unbroken journey of 3371 miles, to the far confines of that
land whose name was recently only a synonym of horror.

The Russians are very proud of their Siberian train. They
told me at every chance that I could never have seen such a train

A SIBERIAN LOCOMOTIVE

— that there is nothing so luxurious and so complete in the world.
This is a mistake of tact — it rather causes one to look for short-
comings, and little failings look larger in the light of these boasts,
Moreover, the Siberian Express needs no puff ; from almost every
point of view it is a marvellous achievement, though the train
itself is not so wonderful as Russians think. It differs enough,
however, from all other trains de luxe to be worth a detailed des-
cription. The first engine I noticed was built in France, all the
rest were Russian, and some of these, with four large driving-
wheels coupled together, were extremely powerful. These were
freight engines; in fact, after the line enters Siberia all its engines
are freight engines ; the train is a very heavy one,the speed is low
and passenger engines will not come until the line is complete
and a great effort is made to shorten the entire journey. Be-

I04 ALL THE RUSSIAS

hind the locomotive comes a composite car, the forward part
being the locked luggage compartment, and the after-section
being the kitchen. Between the two is the electric-light plant,
for the entire train, even to the red tail-lamps, is lighted by
electricity. This plant is an illustration of the enterprise Rus-
sian engineers are showing in every direction. Steam is supplied
by an ordinary upright boiler, but the dynamo is run by a tiny
Laval steam turbine — the same Norwegian firm that makes the
familiar milk separators — revolving at an enormous speed. This
turbine makes the shrill note that is audible whenever the train
stops after dark. The electric plant was not out of order for a
moment during my double journey, and the trains were lighted
magnificently.

The second carriage contains the sleeping quarters of the
cooks and waiters, the pantry and the restaurant. This is a car
which formerly served as a royal saloon, and it is in no way suited
for a dining-car. It contains two leather sofas, a piano, three
tables seating four persons, and certain absurd tables about
eighteen inches square. In the front part of this car there is
also a full-sized bath, with shower, and an exercising machine,
something like the crank in our prisons, which you make more
or less laborious by adjusting a weight. The third and fifth cars
are second class, and the fourth first class.

Except in two points, there is virtually no difference between
the two classes, although, of course, as elsewhere, or, rather, much
more than elsewhere, you are less likely to find objectionable
companions in the one than in the other. There is a through
corridor at the side, and six compartments for four persons and
one for two persons in the second class, and three larger com-
partments and one small one in the first class. One of the ad-
vantages which the first has over the second is that in the former
the centre of the car is an open salon, with sofa, easy chairs, writ-
ing-table, clock, and a large map of the Russian Empire. This,
when it does not happen to be monopolised by a party playing

THE GREAT SIBERIAN RAILWAY 105

cards, is certainly dclii^htful, and I have seen nothing Hke it else-
where, except in the private car of an American railway magnate.
Both first and second class have one improvement over similar
trains elsewhere, which cannot be too highly commended. All

A PARTY OF RUSSIAN ENGINEEKS IN IHE I'KIMliVAL FOREST

the upholstery is of soft leather, and all the walls are covered
with a species of waterproof cloth, which is washed at the end of
each journey. The difference between this and the cloth and
plush upholstery of other trains, which soil you at every touch,
and fling clouds of pestilent dust into the air, is indescribable.

io6 ALL THE RUSSIAS

The Siberian Express, however, shows more improvement
than this. In the roof of each compartment are two electric
Hghts, one of which is extinguished when you pull the curtain
over it at night. There is also a table lamp hanging on the wall,
which can be placed anywhere, and an excellent movable table.
With these two you can read and write in perfect comfort. Above
your head are two levers : one admits fresh air, through wire
gauze to keep out dust; the other turns hot water into the heat-
ing apparatus. There is a pneumatic bell to the restaurant and
an electric bell for the servant. The beds are wide and very com-
fortable, and the whole of your luggage goes in the racks over-
head. In the corridors are more ingenious filter-ventilators, and
outside the windows are plate-glass flanges, so that you can look
ahead without the danger of a spark entering your eye. Over-
head, in the little central salon and in the dining-car, is an elabo-
rate ventilator to be filled with ice from outside in summer, so
as to admit cooled air. The corridor also contains a frame to
hold a large printed card showing the name of the next station,
the time of arrival, and the length of the stop. Finally, there is
the other advantage which the first-class passengerenjoys. There
are no brakes on his carriage 1 There is no hand brake, as on
every other part of the train, and the Westinghouse passes under-
neath him in its pipe. He is thus undisturbed by the grinding and
jolting which even the best-regulated brake produces, and can
lead and sleep peacefully through stoppages and down grades
and hostile signals. This is surely the height of railway con-
sideration. Such luxury, however, it is perhaps needless to add,
speaks volumes concerning the speed of the Siberian Express.

This train is the result of study by Russian engineers of the
railways of Europe and America. It may therefore be regarded
as the fixed type of the Siberian carriage, and I have described
it in detail, because before we are many years older the Siberian
Railway will be one of the great passenger routes of the world.

After much praise 1 may venture upon a little criticism.

H 5

-S -o

THE GREAT SIBERIAN RAILWAY 109

Russia has in this train gone somewhat ahead of herself, so to
speak. It is not enough to build a fine train — you must educate
in knowledge, and more especially in responsibility, the people
who are to work it. The dining-car, for example, will not bear a
moment's comparison with that of the Orient Express or the Ri-
viera Express. We waited interminable times for our meals. One
passenger sat at table fifty minutes, having had nothing but a
plate of soup and being unable in all that time to obtain a bottle
of beer. Then he left the car in disgust, and in a loud voice de-
manded the complaint book. Result : he was snowed under with
apologiesand waited upon like a prince. If the dining-car were
properly arranged, it would hold all the passengers. As it is,
one has to intrigue and struggle for a table. Again, not once
after we left was one of the station and time cards put in the
frame. All the pneumatic bells, too, were out of order, and no
waiter could be summoned. When I ordered a bath I was told
that the pipes were inexplicably stopped up. There are other
matters I might mention, and it is only fair to add that some of
the shortcomings are the fault of the passengers themselves, who
are not yet educated to the use of the facilities so lavishly pro-
vided for them. A needless inconvenience is that all the lavatory
arrangements of the train are shared by the two sexes, with con-
sequent delays and embarrassments. The greatest disturbance,
however, to the foreign visitor's comfort is that all Western meal-
times must be abandoned before a Russian's daily food-scheme.
No Russian has an exact sense of time, the lack of it being prob-
ably attributable to the Orientalism in his blood. Nobody, indeed,
could have one on this train, for the clock keeps the hour of St.
Petersburg for a thousand miles or more of due eastward travel-
ling, in order that its time-table may have some semblance of
utility and conformity ; then as the days pass the train itself grows
ashamed of such a childish pretension, and after Chelyabinsk it
leaps lightly to local time and hurls a couple of useless hours cut
of the window, so to speak — hours that make no record, either

no ALL THE RUSSIAS

of weal or woe, against any of us — two sinless hours, two joyless,
tearless little hours flung forth upon the brown Siberian steppes.
As for a Russian's meal-times, he simply has none. If I had my
tea early there would be the invariable nameless official in his
dark-blue uniform piped with green or blue or magenta cloth,
with crossed pick-axes or hammers or bill-hooks on his collar and
cap, finishing a hdchis made into the shape of a cutlet — futile
masquerade ! — or thoughtfully spitting out the bones of a fried
carp upon his plate while he selected a fresh mouthful with his
knife. When we dined or supped they would be drinking tea, and
once when we went into the restaurant-car for a sandwich about
midnight a party of rugged-looking men^not officials, for once^
but of occupations which their strange faces did not allow us
to presume — were sitting round an empty cafeticre drinking
champagne from tumblers, a saucer in front of them piled high
with the cardboard mouth-pieces and ashes of many dozen oigar-
ettes. This habit of eating when you are hungry and eating what-
ever you may happen to fancy, instead of eating when the cook
wills, and then only what custom severely restricts you to, is dis-
organising in its efifects upon the refectory of the train. There
is no time to sweep up and set tables ; no time when the servants
can feel free to rest, sleep, or eat ; no time when the wearied
kitchen fire can " go down " as it does at home. The result is
great discomfort for Western passengers, and the authorities
should certainly insist upon all meals bein/g served at fixed
hours, and at those hours only.

The story of the inception of the Great Siberian Railway has
been told many times (in my own " Peoples and Politics of the
Far East," for instance), and all that need be recalled here is
that the first suggestion of it came from an Englishman, and that
enterprising Americans were the first to lay before the Russian
Government a definite offer to build it on certain terms. Natu-
rally enough, Russia decided that it must be her own task, but

s^ '.^

THE GREAT SIBERIAN RAILWAY 113

it was a long time before she could face the tremendous expendi-
ture involved, and not until her statesmen's keen foresight per-
ceived the vast change coming over the Far East was the gigantic
enterprise reduced to a definite project. The present Tsar, when
as I'sesarievich he was travelling in the Far East, wheeled the
first barrow and laid the first stone of the railway at Vladivostok
on May 19, 1891, and his enthusiastic support has assured the
success achieved. The speed with which construction has fol-
lowed is, considering the great natural difficulties, without par-
allel in railway-building. The whole line was divided into seven
sections, and work carried on upon them so far as possible simul-
taneously. The Siberian plain presented no engineering diffi-
culties, since for a thousand miles the surface does not show a
higher rise than four hundred feet; but as all wood, water, food,
and labour had to be supplied from the base, the difficulties of or-
ganisation were very great. But the first portion, from Chelya-
binsk to Omsk, 492 miles, was opened for traffic in December
1895 ; the second, from Omsk to Ob, 388 miles, in 1896 ; the
third, from Ob to Krasnoyarsk, 476 miles, later in the same year;
the fourth, from Krasnoyarsk to Irkutsk, 672 miles, in August
1898. Thus the rail-head reached a point 33711 miles east of
Moscow, and as the train had also reached Khabarofsk, on the
Amur, from Vladivostok, the eastern terminus, a distance of 475
miles, in the same month and year, a total of 2503 miles of rail-
way had been laid and opened for traffic in seven years. The
Siberian Railway will cross altogether thirty miles of bridges, and
of these the line to Irkutsk required a large number, including
such important ones as those over the Irtysh at Omsk, 700 yards,
over the Ob at Krivoshekovo, 840 yards ; over the Yenissei at
Krasnoyarsk, 930 yards, and over the Uda at Nijni Udinsk, 350
yards. Moreover, before reaching Irkutsk there is some very
stiff grading work in a mountainous country. By this perform-
ance Russia holds the world's record for railway-building. She
may well be proud of it.

114

ALL THE RUSSIAS

The train leaving Moscow at 8.15 on Saturday evenings
reaches Irkutsk— at least it did when I travelled by it, but the
journey is being expedited so often that the time-table is seldom
accurate for more than a month or two— at 7.15 in the morn-
ing of the Monday week— the ninth day. The average speed of
the Siberian Express, which, it must be remembered, is much

THE RAILWAY IN THE URALS

greater than that of the ordinary train from Moscow daily for
Irkutsk, is, therefore — allowing for the difference of time between
West and East — almost exactly seventeen miles an hour, includ-
ing stoppages. A few minutes' study of a condensed time-table
will give the reader more information than much description.
Here, then, is the journey at a glance :

THE GREAT SIBERIAN RAILWAY

115

VERSTS

* STATION.

HOUR OF

Moscow Kursk Line.

ARRIVAL.

Moscow

. • •

. 8.15 P. M.)

Seipukhof .

. 10.54 P.M.j

i8ii

Tula .

. 1.33 A.M.'

Suz?-a?io

]\ase!nskaya Line.

2 39i^

Uzlovaya .

. 4.03 A.M.

382*

Riask

. 8.32 A.M.

753

Penza

. 7-47 P-M..

Great Siberian Railw.w.
Samara -Zlataoust Section.

Saturday

Sunday

1II8

Samara

. 7. 09 a.m.

8.59 A.M.
. 10.25 P-"^!-

1155*

Kind .....

1609

Uia

1792!

Vyasovaya ....

4.48 A.M. ■

1908*

Zlataoust

West Siberian Section.

8.49 A.M.

2059

Chelyabinsk ....

2.05 P.M.

2299*

Kurgan .....

10.55 P-^'-.

2548*

Petropavlovsk ....

8.00 A.M.^

2805

Omsk .....
Central Siberian Section.

4.57 P.M./

3382*

Krivoshekovo ,

4.18 P.M.^

3390

4.50 P.M.j

3605

Taiga (for Tomsk, 82 versts)

1.58 A.M."

3743

Mariinsk .....

7.34 A.M.

3932

Achinsk .....

2.50 P.M.

4099

Krasnoyarsk ....

. 10.30 P.M.^

4326

Kansk

9.09 A.M.

4633

Nijni Udiiisk

1.38 A.M."!

4742

Tulun

8.26 A.M.J

5108

Iikutsk

7.15 A.M.

Monday

Tuesday
Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Saturday

Sunday

Monday

To turn versts into miles, multiply by .65

ii6 ALL THE RUSSIAS

The condensation of this table is shown by the fact that on
three days only two stations each are given, and on two days
only one station. Between Samara and Irkutsk nineteen stations
are mentioned above; in reality there are two hundred and six.
Therefore, stoppages play a large part in reducing the speed
average, and if the rate of progress were at all uniform, seventeen
miles an hour would be a very respectable figure. But for the
first thousand versts, as far as Samara, the line is an important
one in European Russia, and the speed of the train averages
twenty-two miles an hour. Then, when the Urals are passed,
a speed of nineteen miles is kept up for a long distance over the
straight stretches of the Siberian plain. From Omsk to Taiga,
nearly another thousand versts, it sinks to fifteen or sixteen,
and after Taiga it drops to twelve miles an hour or less. In fact,
for the last 1500 miles of the long journey there was hardly a
moment when I would not have backed myself to pass the train
on a bicycle if there had been a decent road beside the track. And
the present speed average will not be greatly increased until the
whole line is relaid with heavier rails and solidly ballasted.

But, though it is possible to find fault with the speed, the
cost of the journey is beyond even a miser's criticism. There is
nothing in the world like it. A few years ago, when it was dis-
covered that the people were not making sufficient use of the
railways, the heroic decision was made to put railway travelling
literally within the reach of every one. The zone system of
charges was adopted, the tariff made cheaper the longer the jour-
ney, and the rates put at an astoundingly low figure for the whole
empire. Irkutsk, as I have said, is 3371 miles from Moscow,
and the journey thither occupiesclose upon nine days. The price
of a first-class ticket is sixty-three roubles, and there are supple-
mentary charges of 12.60 roubles for " express speed," 7.50 for
the sleeping-berth, and three roubles for three changes of bed-
linen £;« ro/z/t;. Total : 86.10 roubles; ;^'9 2s.; $44.30. And this
is for a train practically as luxurious as any in the world, and

THE GREAT SIBERIAN RAILWAY 117

incomparably superior to the ordinary European or American
train. The second-class fare for the same journey is only £(^,
or less than $30, and the third-class passenger, travelling by the
ordinary daily train, and spending thirty hours more on the way,
can actually travel these 3371 miles for the ridiculous sum of
about £2 14s., or, say, S13.50. It is officially stated that the
through ticket from Moscow to Port Arthur or Vladivostok will
cost 115 roubles, about ;^I2, or $59, and a ticket from London
or Paris to Shanghai 320 roubles, about ^^33 175., or S165. The
enlightenment which prescribes such fares should be reckoned
to the credit of the Russian authorities, when we are noting
down things to their debit.

In laying the Siberian line one great mistake was made —
far too light rails were ordered. The rail-makers pointed this
out when they made their contracts, but an unwise economy
prevailed, with the result that already the traffic is heavier than
the rails can carry, and minoraccidents are consequently frequent.
The present weight is a little over sixteen pounds to the foot, and,
as the ballast is only earth or sand, and the rails are merely spiked
to the sleepers, after a day's rain the trains, as somebody has
remarked, run off the track like squirrels. This excuse, however,
must be made for the authorities : when they planned the line they
had no idea that traffic would develop as fast as it has done. In
1900 no less than 758,000 tons of paying freight were carried, and
yet the railway was wholly unable to move all that was offered,
and I saw small mountains of grain still awaiting transportation
as late as in November.* It is now the intention to relay the

''" "The gross income of the railway was reckoned in igooat 24.58 roubles
[/2 IDS.— §12.68] per 1000 car-axle versts(in 1899 it was 28.63 roubles [^3 — S14 57] ),
as compared with 36.23 roubles [^3 i6s. — S18.65] on all the other Government
railway lines. This low gross revenue is attributed to the great quantities of troops,
Government and railway stores that the line had to transport, at very low rates as
regards the two first. The present gross revenue of the line is estimated at 5000
roubles per verst, or about /230 per mile." — Mr. Consul-General J. Michell's
Report for 1900, Annual Series, No. 270S, page 18. The above equivalents within
square brackets are my own, British Consuls not having leisure for such calcula-

ii8 ALL THE RUSSIAS

rails over the whole hne, and, as a beginning, the track from Ob
to Irkutsk will be relaid as soon as possible, a sum of 15,000,000
roubles having been set aside for this purpose. The old rails
will be used for fresh sidings, of which a large number, and over
a hundred new stations, will be constructed. As a further striking
example of the extraordinary development along this new rail-
way, I may mention here that last year 1,075,000 passengers
Vv'ere carried, as against 417,000 in 1896. The stations them-
selves are admirable. Except the quite unimportant ones, where
no settlement yet exists, and the engine stops only to take water,
they are prettily designed, the chief ones of brick, the rest of
wood, like Swiss chalets, and they are commodious in size. In
no country that I know can such excellent food be had en route,
and at every station there is a medicine-chest, and an official
corres]i(3nding to a dresser in one of our hospitals, called a
Felscher, capable of treating simple ailments and rendering first
aid to the injured. For his services and medicine no charge is per-
mitted to be made. My photograph on page 135 shows the water-
tower and storehouse to be seen at every station, the latter being
banked up to the roof with earth to keep out the cold. How se-
vere this is may be judged from the fact that for a considerable
distance on the Central Siberian section the earth never thaws,
even in mid-summer, for more than two or three feet below the
surface — a condition which makes it very difficult to find a solid
foundation for buildings and bridge-piles. The line is watched
by an army of men, no fewer than 4000, for instance, being em-
ployed between the Urals and Tomsk. One of these is stationed
in his little wooden hut at every ver.^t ; he stands at attention, flag
in hand, as the train approaches, and it is his duty to step into
the middle of the track as soon as the train has passed, and

tions. The Russian figures are doubtless accurate, but the concluding statement
contains an extraordinary blunder. Five thousand roubles per verst equals about
£797 los. , not ;^230, per mile. Inasmuch as 5000 roubles is roughly /'500, and a
verst is about two-thirds of a mile, it is not unreasonable to think that evcQ
Foreign Office proof-reader might have detected so palpable an error.

THE GREAT SIBERIAN RAILWAY 119

hold up his staff as a signal that all is right. This figure may
be observed in my photographs. Almost every one of these
men — every one in Central Siberia — is an ex-convict or a
(Icfoiie ; yet although, as I shall have occasion to point out
later, crime is rife in Siberia, and constitutes the chief drawback
to the development of the country, I did not hear of a single
offence committed by one of these men.

Beyond Irkutsk the railway was not yet open, but the line
was in working order and the Governor-General, General Gore-
mykin, was kind enough to give me a special train over it to
Lake Baikal, and to place a Government steam-launch at my
disposal on the lake. This inland sea has an area of over 12,000
square miles ; its water is brilliantly clear, its depth is enormous
and in many places unplumbed, and the solid mountains run
sheer down to its edges. The terminus is a station called
Baranchiki, just where' the Angara empties itself into the lake,
and a long wooden jetty leads to the slip where the great ice-
breaking, train-carrying steamer lies. The railway has now
been begun round the southern end of the lake, though the
cost of one hundred and fifty-live miles of line through such a
country will be very great, but this Circum-Baikal section, the
Kriigohaikalskaya, is considered essential for heavy traffic, to
provide an alternative route if the steamers break down or
cannot pass the ice, and not improbably to connect ultimately
with a line direct to Peking.

The firm of Sir William Armstrong, Whitworth & Co..
has built upon Lake Baikal one of the most remarkable
steamships in the world, to ferry the Siberian trains across
the lake, and in winter to break the ice at the same time.
The Baikal was brought out in pieces from Newcastle-on-
Tyne, and put together by English engineers, who have been
living in this remote and lonely spot for over two years. I
found three of these hard at work, the chief, Mr. Douie, and
his assistants, Mr. Renton and Mr. Handy, and spent some very

I20 ALL THE RUSSIAS

interesting hours with them. They ought to be well paid for
the fine work they were doing, for a more dreary exile can hardly
be imagined. They lived at a little village called Listvenitchnaya,
a nest of crime and robbery, crowded during the summer with
innumerable caravans bringing tea from China. Every civilised
person carries a revolver there, and two if he is of a cautious
temperament. Nobody thinks of going out after dark, and every
week somebody is robbed or killed. The whole population is ex-
convict or worse. The boss of the labourers on the Baikal was in
Siberia for outraging a child ; the man who conducted me to
where Mr. Douie and Mr. Renton were at work was a murderer
fromthe Caucasus; a short time before my visit another murderer
employed on the ship had tried to repeat his crime, and had
been consigned to chains again ; the very day I was there the
police were looking for a man supposed to have obtained work
in the yard, who was wanted for killing eight people, I was
told, at one time. There are a few Cossacks at Listvenitchnaya,
but they are wholly incapable, even if they have the desire, of
coping with the turbulent place. It may be the best policy for
the Russian Government not to hang its murderers, or keep its
criminals in confinement, but to turn them loose in such places.
There can be no excuse, however, for its failure to provide an
adequate police force to control them, or for the preposterous
tolerance which allows every man of these criminals to go about
armed to the teeth. A few months before my visit they held
up the mail-cart from Lake Baikal to Irkutsk, shot four of its five
guards, and stole its gold. Some day they will hold up a train,
and rob the passengers. Then authority will doubtless assert
itself. I do not see anything to prevent such an act. In a place
like this the English engineers have absolutely nothing to do
or think about, except their work, and the long evenings of a
Siberian winter, spent within fast-barred doors, must be
inexpressibly dreary.

The Baikal is a magnificent vessel of 4000 tons, with twin

THE GREAT SIBERIAN RAILWAY 121

engines amidships of 1250 horse-power each, and a similar
engine forward, to drive the screw in the bow; for the principle
of the new type of ice-breaker is to draw out the water from
under the ice ahead by the suction of a bow-screw, when the
ice collapses by its own weight and a passage is forced through
the broken mass by the impact of the vessel. As will be seen

THIS STEAMSHIP BAIKAL STEAMING THROUGH THE ICE

from my illustrations, the first that have been published, the
Baikal has extensive upper works, and these contain luxurious
saloons and cabins. Upon her deck she carries three trains
— a passenger-train in the middle, and a freight-train on each
side. Her speed is thirteen knots, and on her trial trips she has
shown herself capable of breaking through solid ice thirty-eight
inches thick, withfive inches of hard snow on the top — such snow
is much more difficult to pierce than ice — and has forced her
way through two thicknesses of ice frozen together, aggrega-
ting from fifty-six to sixty-five inches. In summer her bow pro-
peller should be removed, and large propellers substituted for her

122

ALL THE RUSSIAS

smaller winter ones ; but so far the railway authorities have taken
no steps to build a dock upon the lake, without which neither
of these important changes can be effected, nor the steamer
herself repaired if any mishap should damage her hull. Lake
Baikal is frozen from the middle of December to the end of April,
and there is also talk of laying a railway across upon the ice, as
is done each year from St. Petersburg to Kronstadt ; but pro-
bably all depends upon the success of the ice-breaking steamer.

If this accomplishes
its purpose another
similar vessel will be
built, for obviously
the entire Trans-Con-
tinental service
would otherwise be
staked upon one ship
never getting out of
order the whole sea-
son. The Yermak,
however — the ice-
breaker also built by
Sir William Arm-
strong, Whitvvorth
& Co. for service in
the Baltic — has been
such a splendid suc-
cess, forcing her way through mixed ice twenty-five feet thick,
that there is every reason to presume the Baikal will do her
work equally well.

Upon the opposite side of Lake Baikal the starting station
is Misovaya, thirty-nine miles from Baranchiki, and there the
railway enters upon a great plateau and reaches its highest point
in the Yablonoi Mountains at 3412 feet. This has been the
most trying section of the line to build, and the last rail was

BOW OF THE BAIKAL BREAKING THE ICE

THE GREAT SIBERIAN RAILWAY 123

laid only on December 28, 1889. As originally announced, the
intention was to continue the railway right through to Khabar-
ofsk, whence trains have been running for some time to Vladivos-
tok. But there is good reason to think that the Russian Gov-
ernment never really expected to have to do this, and was well
aware that before the rest of the line could be finished an arrange-
ment with China would permit her to carry the railway through
Manchuria, thus not only giving her virtual control of this most
valuable province but also greatly shortening the entire length.
The route will, therefore, now be from Misovaya to Stretensk,
605 miles ; by steamer, larger or smaller according as the water
is higher or lower, down the Shilka and Amur Rivers, 1428 miles,
to Khabarofsk ; and thence to Vladivostok, 252 miles. Total
distance from Moscow by this route, 4307 miles by railway, and
1467 miles by steamer.

The Boxer rising has so disorganised and delayed everything
connected with the Trans-Baikal section of the line that no
through times can be accurately given. But previous to these
disturbances it was officially stated that in summer the journey
from Moscow to Vladivostok would, until the completion of the
Manchurian lines, occupy about twenty days. Just before the
Chinese commenced hostilities a friend of mine made the com-
plete journey as quickly as possible — the railway not being yet
organised for through traffic. With much courteous help from
the authorities, and doing one long stretch in Eastern Siberia
in a horse-box, his itinerary was as follows :

Vladivostok May 17, 1 8

Khabarofsk May 19, 20

Blagovyeshchensk .... May 27-29

Pokovkhra June 4-6

Stretensk June 9-1 1

Baikal June 15

Irkutsk June 16

Moscow (late) June 23

124 ALL THE RUSSIAS

That is, the journey took thirty-eight days. But it will be noticed
that no fewer than twenty days were spent on the Amur and
Shilka Rivers, this dreary delay being due to the fact that shallow
water reduced the rate of speed at times to next to nothing, and
at other times stopped the steamer altogether. This was excep-
tional, even at this time of year, and allowing for the fact that
the journey was against the current. Moreover, as 1 have ex-
plained above, this river journey is only a temporary expedient,
to connect the two ends of the railway while the Manchurian
railway is under construction, and it will be observed that the
journey from Irkutsk to Moscow has been considerably shortened
even since I made it a few months previously.*

The ultimate route will be from Misovaya, on Lake Baikal,
to Khaidalovo, a short distance on this side of Stretensk, thence

* The line from Khaidalova to the Chinese frontier, connecting the Siberian
Railway with the Manchurian Railway, has been opened for traffic. Moreover,
since this chapter was written, the last rail of the Northen Manchurian section was
laid on November 3, 1901, completing the all-rail connection between Moscow and
the Far Eastern termini, and by eliminating the river journey between Stretensk
and Khabarofsk greatly shortening the through journey, in which there will now
be only one change of cars (at Lake Baikal) between Moscow and Port Arthur (to
which the branch from Kharbin is already open) or Vladivostok. This event has
been announced by M. de Witte in the following address to the Tsar :

"On May 19, i89i,your Majesty, at Vladivosiok, turned with yourown hand the
first sod of the Great Siberian Railway. To-day, on the anniversary of your ac-
cession to the throne, the East Asiatic Railway line is completed. I venture to
express to your Majesty from the bottom of my heart my loyal congratulation on
this historic event. With the laying of the rails for a distance of 2400 versts,
from the Transbaikal territory to Vladivostok and Port Arthur, our enterprise in
Manchuria is practically, though not entirely, concluded. Notwithstanding ex-
ceptionally difficult conditions and the destruction of a large portion of the line
last year, temporary traffic can, from to-day, be carried on along the whole
system. I hope that within two years hence all the remaining work to be done will
be completed and that the railway will be opened for permanent regular traffic."

The Tsar replied as follows :

" I thank you sincerely for your joyful communication. I congratulate you on
the completion within so short a time and amid incredible difficulties of one of
the greatest railway undertakings of the world."

I may add that M. Lessar, the new Russian Minister to China, performed the
through journey in twenty days, but for political reasons every effort was made to
convey him to his post as quickly as possible.

THE GREAT SIBERIAN RAILWAY 125

across Manchuria to Nikholsk, sixty miles above Vladivostok,
with a branch Hne from Kharbin, the centre of Manchuria, to
Mukden, whence three other branches lead respectively te.
Niuchwang, Port Arthur, and Peking. The last of these is
nominally built by the Russo-Chinese Banking Company, but
this is a mere form of words — the whole line is as Russian
as Moscow. The Manchurian Railway will be 950 miles long,
and the southern branch 646 miles, and when all this is com-
pleted the total length of the Great Siberian Railway will be
5486 miles.

The following will then be the shortest route between the
United States and the Far East via Siberia : New York, Havre,
Paris (London passengers will go via Dover and Ostend to
Cologne), Cologne, Berlin, Alexandrovo, Warsaw, Moscow, Tula,
Samara, Chelyabinsk, Irkutsk, Stretensk, Mukden, Port Arthur,
and the total length of this journey (excluding the Atlantic)
about 7300 miles, of which 297 miles will be in France, 99 miles
in Belgium, 660 miles in Germany, 2,310 miles in European
Russia, and about 4000 in Asiatic Russia. These are the
official figures.

One other possibility must be mentioned — it is always
unsafe to say that any Russian plan is final — namely, that the
whole direction of the Trans-Baikalian line will once more be
altered, as I have suggested above, and that a line will be run
due south-east from Irkutsk to Peking along the old caravan
road through Kiakhta, and across the desert.

This would again enormously shorten the through journey;
there are no insuperable physical difficulties ; if Chma is coerced
into consenting while England still has her hands full in South
Africa, and Japan remains passive, there will be no political ob-
stacle; and the political and strategical results will be infinitely
more important than the commercial ones, for it will give Russia
definite control over the whole of Northern China. But this,
unless a wnser diplomacy arises meanwhile, might mean war with

126 ALL THE RUSSIAS

England and Japan, sooner or later, whether America strikes a
blow for her trade or not.

Finally, the Siberian Railway is officially estimated to
cost, when completed, 780,000,000 roubles (;^82,5oo,ooo —
8401,362,000), of which 500,000,000 roubles (;^53,ooo,ooo —
$257,283,000), were spent by the end of 1899, and 130,000,000
roubles (;^i 3,745,000 — 866,893,000) were allocated to the work
of 1900. From what I saw, I concluded that the official esti-
mate will be largely exceeded. Before this gigantic enterprise
is finished it is not likely to cost much less than Xioo,ooo,ooo
(8500,000,000).

Since the Great Wall of China the world has seen no one
material undertaking of equal magnitude. That Russia, single-
handed, should have conceived it and carried it out, makes
imagination falter before her future influence upon the course
of events. Its strategical results are already easy to foresee. It
will consolidate Russian influence in the Far East in a manner
yet undreamed of. But this will be by slow steps. The
expectation that the line would serve at a moment of danger,
or in pursuit of a suddenly executed coup, to throw masses of
soldiers from Europe into China, is yet far from realisation.
The line and its organisation would break dow^n utterly under
such pressure. But bit by bit it will grow in capacity, and the
Powers which have enormous interests at stake in the Far East,
if they continue to sleep as England has done of late, will wake
to find a new, solid, impenetrable, self-sufficing Russia domi-
nating China as she has dominated, sooner or later, every other
Oriental land against whose frontier she has laid her own.

CHAPTER VIII
SIBERIA FROM THE TRAIN

TO Siberia ! The mere name still causes a shudder. An
ice-bound land, inconceivably remote, a few miserable,
lonely towns, the endless tramp of the chain-gang, the horrors
of the prison and the mine, the bark of the wolf-pack in the forest,
banishment, despair — that is Siberia as most people have been
taught — often maliciously — to imagine it. A land where spring
blazes with flowers, as nowhere else, thousands of square miles of
golden grain, an unimaginable wealth of minerals, forests beyond
computation, a network of great waterways without parallel,
all to be seen from a drawing-room on wheels, with servants and
tea and cigarettes ever at your elbow, and an official invitation
to complain if the temperature rises or falls more than a few
degrees — that is a much truer picture. Between the rose-colour
and the horror there is a mid-stratum of plain fact of much interest
and importance to the world, and I will try to describe a journey
through Siberia as it actually is.

I left the train blazing out of Moscow station, amid cheers
and tears. Every one is tired with leave-taking, and most pas-
sengers are facing a long absence from home. So, in response
to an early summons, a big Tatar, in blue linen blouse, with a
twisted scar upon his forehead which suggests contact with some
fierce crooked Eastern blade, comes in and makes up the broad
bed in a manner very neat and prompt ; the book of statistics
of Russian commercial activities slips from the foreign traveller's
hand, a last effort disconnects the electric lamp and pulls the
blue silk curtains over the twin roof-lamps, and so, wrapped m

128

ALL THE RUSSIAS

a cloudy maze of anticipations and rocked softly by the murmur
of the wheels of the Siberian Express, he falls on sleep.

Morning shows a country mostly fiat as a billiard-table,
patched with fields of corn-stubble, with stretches of emerald-
coloured wi nter rye and intervals of bi rch forest, scattered over with
grey-roofed villages — little, Oat, shed-like houses all huddled to-

THE LAST STATION IN EUROPE

gether and reminding one of the kind of grey scab that clusters
and spreads on the back of a diseased leaf. There is nothing of
the industry and economy of French cultivation, nor of the rich
farmyards and sleek herds of England, but the soil is tilled every-
where, and the harvest is gathered and sold. Enormous stacks of
straw testify to the abundant harvest of this season. All the
houses are of wood, grey with age, often dilapidated, the wide
roads straggle through them, mere mud-tracks in rainy weather,
and there is almost always a white church with a green roof. But
never a superior house, never the residence of some one well-
to-do. These villages have no squire and no Lady Bountiful.
Without exception they exhibit one dull level of poverty, one

SIBERIA FROM THE TRAIN 129

unbroken record of toil which just keeps a roof and a fire and
finds a meagre sustenance. The price of wheat is very low, for
want of transport, and the middle man — a Russian, not a Jew —
pockets most of the profits. As we get farther east we pass
more prosperous colonies of Bashkirs, one of the many strange
native races scattered over Eastern Russia. Here is agriculture

THE BOUNDARY BETWEEN EUROPE AND ASIA

m its most primitive aspect. Half a dozen shaggy little horses,
tied head and tail, trot briskly in a circle, knee-deep in wheat,
and in the middle stands the peasant with a whip, urging them
on like the ring-master in a circus. There is no need to muzzle
the beast that treadeth out the corn ; he is kept moving so fast
that he never has a chance to lower his head. Near by is a similar
ring, where a man is winnowing by the simple method of tossing
great shovelfuls of the grain into the air, and the chaff sails away
in clouds. Much of this grain goes to the windmills which cluster
round the little towns. One of these, Morchansk, has hundreds
within the space of a few acres, all turning busily in the light
wind. The peasants hereabouts have a curious superstition which

I30 ALL THE RUSSIAS

prevents them from selling their wheat except as flour. They
believe that if they sell the grain they lose the vitality of the
seed for their next sowing. Superstition, indeed, is encountered
in Russia at every step. In this very town of Morchansk, for
instance, only a few years ago, a wealthy merchant was found
to have a secret iron-barred cellar deep under his house, w-here
the shocking mutilations of the Skopfsi sect, of which I spoke
in an earlier chapter, were perpetrated. They were all sent to
Siberia, where they are very likely making new converts.

We are making nearly thirty miles an hour, express speed
in Russia, for the line here is well laid and well ballasted. We
are still in Europe and on a main line. At the tail of the train,
common to both first and second class passengers, is an observa-
tion car with four arm-chairs and a few folding-stools in-it, where,
while the day passes and we find ourselves more and more fas-
cinated as the landscape eliminates useless details from itself and
settles down to a few^ very elementary and persistent traits, we
spend much time. The vast agricultural plain is at last broken
by the expanse of the Volga, a mile wide at low water and four
miles when the river is in flood, which we cross at Batraki by
the magnificent Alexandrofski Bridge, with its thirteen enormous
spans. It is close upon a mile long, but even with this length
the river has to be squeezed together by a three-mile dam before
it can be crossed. Then the town of Samara, the junction of the
great railway and the great river, then over another bridge across
the Ufa River, and the climb over the Ural Mountains begins.

Russians had raved to us about these mountains, but the
truth is that Russians are not good judges of mountains — as, in-
deed, how should they be, w^hen in the whole of European Rus-
sia there is no land as high as the Washington Monument ?
Those in whom the Urals excite immoderate enthusiasm can
never have seen the Tyrol and do not know^ the Grampians. Let
it be said at once that the Urals cannot hold a pine-knot to either.

W^here the firs clothe them closely, the hills seem to be w-ear-

SIBERIA FROM THE TRAIN

131

ing a mantle of rough green frieze, but presently larches, yellow-
ing fast in this perfect October weather, burn like flambeaux
among the green, and beside the shallow river, wimpling over
its stony bed, and through the fords of stepping-stones built
curiously m a fork shape, the purple thicket of bare alder-twigs

THE TOWN OF ZLATAOUST FROM THE RAILWAY

makes planes of soft, quiet colour. Your tir or pine en iiuisse
is an inartistic tree; the repetition of his even points be-
comes tiresome, and he gives the outline of the mountains
a line regular as the teeth of a comb, which should be the
despair of the painter. Therefore painters wisely let these fir
countries alone.

In a few places, at the water-parting, which occurs near the
townofZlataoust, the pine gives way and the grey stone triumphs
where a few points, the highest of any in this southern end of the

132 ALL THE RUSSIAS

chain, rise bare against the sky. A httle stir among the engineers,
who courteously desire that 1 shall lose nothing, causes me to
glue myself to the window and stare into the forest in my de-
sire not to miss the frontier-post, the actual definite spot, beyond
the station of Urjumka, where Europe ends and Asia begins, the
only place, except one other in these same mountains and one
in the Caucasus, where Europe and Asia are joined by railway.
It has been marked, as we presently see, by a little uninspired
monument, some ten feet high, in yellow freestone. It is a simple
base with a stone-built, pointed column on the top — the sort of
thing you may find behind some trees in the park of a noble-
man, raised to mark the resting-place of his favourite fox-terrier.
I do not detect any inscription upon its front, as the train passes
at such a speed that to photograph it I have to set my shutter
at the hundredth part of a second, with the result you see. Indif-
ferent, the passengers barely interrupt their endless tea and talk
and cigarettes, but we are silent, thoughtful, oppressed, fraught
with vague realisations of the significance of this bit of earth ;
idly we compose, with feelings that should thrill a Russian, but
are, save for our sense of the sentiment, alien to us, the legend
that might be cut upon this fateful pillar. Russia, who has not
looked back, here first pushed her plough beyond the last limit
of Europe. Here she girded herself for that long and bloody
march across the Asian plain ; what a journey, how long since be-
gun, how strenuously pursued, how rich in human incident, how
bitter with human suffering ! Here passed her trains of chained
convicts — convicts whose tears made Europe weep ; here, even
here, defiled the long line of exiles, reft from their homes to make
warm a spot in Asia for the coming thousands. Here passed
the Poles, a hundred years ago, when Russia first took up that
burden on her western border — the burden that has meant riches
and industrial expansion to her ever since — many thousand of
them went this way. Here she held her Cossacks, always m
harness of war, hurrying the laggard and the fugitive. Here,

SIBERIA FROM THE TRAIN 133

to-day, when so much has been done and said and suffered, so
much spent and lost and gained, here passes this emblem of her
success, carrying an earnest, even to the confines of China, of
what she has done and what in the future she means to do — the
Great Siberian Express. No, on second thought there is no
room on that monument, nor yet space on the broadest hillside

GOLD DIGGERS WAITING FOR THE TRAIN

of her forgotten boundary, to write the story that surges to the
surface of one's imagination.

The Urals produce, as everybody knows, most kinds of pre-
cious stones and vast quantities of iron. The centre of the min-
eral industry is at Zlataoust, twenty-four hours beyond Samara.
A lovely glimpse of the town itself is caught after leaving the
station. Built in a valley, it surrounds part of a large artificial
lake which was produced by damming up the little river to supply
water-powder to its foundries. This was not a success, and Zlata-
oust must for ever look out upon an expensive failure, which
nevertheless constitutes its chief attraction as a town. Almost
before the train stopped, our passengers were clustering round
three kiosks on the platform, where a thousand little objects in
black iron, all of unspeakable ugliness, were for sale as souvenirs.

134

ALL THE RUSSIAS

An enthusiastic engineer showed me the walking-stick he had
bought of "vraiacier," but,unfortunately, when he bent it double
on the platform to show the trueness of its metal, the resili-
ence of its spring, it remained in a disheartened curve, no better
than a wilted dahlia-stalk. There is sure to be a bayonet factory
at Zlataoust. At Chelyabinsk, however, four hours later, on the

WHAT YOU SliE FOR DAYS FROM THE SIBERIAN EXl'RESS

eastern verge of the Urals, the platform output was charming :
pink, red, and green jasper, shining rock crystal, lumps of mal-
achite that had been suddenly cooled off while boiling (when
the world was made), of the vivid verdigris-green that is like
nothing else. The palaces and galleries of St. Petersburg and
Moscow are full of vases and tables and basins of these jaspers
and lapis la/Aili, and nothing could be more beautiful if only the
makers would follow classic shapes instead of choosing as their
models the stucco horrors of the suburban garden, or of inlaying
tables with diamond-work in contrasting colours which ape the
patchwork bed-quilt of the cook's aunt. But the little ash-trays
in cloudy rose jasper, polished only on one side, are the best pre-

SIBERIA FROM THE TRAIN 135

sents to bring hack to friends who have been very good, as a me-
mento of that town where convicts and exiles used to be gathered
in enormous sheds and sorted over before being drafted to places
where their labour was required or where their vices — when they
had any — would remain unheard of. To-day every spring sees
huge crowds of peasant emigrants to Siberia, undergoing ex-

THE WATER-TOWER AND STOREHOUSE AT EVERY STATION

amination and selection at Chelyabinsk before being distributed
according to a regular scheme of colonisation.

From Chelyabinsk onward the train crosses the great Siberian
plain, and this may be said to continue as far as Tomsk, more
than seven hundred miles away. From Wednesday noon till Fri-
day morning, except for the rivers you could hardly tell one piece
of the monotonous landscape from another. But the more you
see of it, the more it appeals to you. I nfinitely simple in its long,
sunburnt expanses to right, to left, and behind the train, dotted
sparsely with meagre beasts which may be dromedaries, may be
oxen, may be horses ; broken by tracts of bog where silver birches,
very old and very small, struggle for their life ; flecked here and

136 ALL THE RUSSIAS

there at wide intervals by a wooden hut or the rounded tent of
a Khirghiz ; cut through by winding sandy ways where carts
move like flies in October, faint and slow — yet there is something
singularly winning about this landscape, even though the pathos
of miles of purple heather and grey and black moorland is wholly
missing.

For an idea of the monotony of this part of the journey I must
refer the reader to my photographs. Words will not describe
it. Several times for more than an hour the track is perfectly
straight — without even the suggestion of a curve. A cannon-
ball fired from between the rails would fall between them a dozen
miles away, if the aim were true and the trajectory faultless.
There is positively one stretch where the line is as straight as a
plumb-line fornearly eighty miles,and it should be easy to imagine
the hypnotic effect of sitting in the middle of the observation-
car and watching the twin lines of steel unroll themselves from
under your feet, and roll away again out of sight over the edge
of the world, till day passes, and sunset, flooding the plain with
gold and scarlet and purple, receives them into its blazing abyss.
What a horizon, what a sense of space and detachment ! The
mind breathes, the dust of great cities is a cloud nothing like so
large as a man's hand, and everything is far away, except to-
day and yesterday, which in the desert and the steppe are the
same, one with another.

In these early days of October the great blossoming of the
plain is over for the year. East of the Urals there is no oak, nor
ash, nor elm, nor hazel, nor apple, to people the landscape, and
no autumn-flowering plant blooms beside the way, only an in-
finite variety of reeds, and where the line natural hay was taken
in June, a crop of tall weeds, stark and brown, their heads still
holding up the empty seed-vessels, architectural in their exact
branchings. Sometimes in the black, shallow cutting beside the
track, whence the ballast had been digged, I saw certain bulb-
rooted plants with round whorls of leaves that should have shel-

SIBERIA FROM THE TRAIN

137

tered either a lily or an orchid spike this summer, and once or
twice a big bulrush — at least, that rush which suffered an aesthetic
renaissance in England under this name, and is not a bulrush at
all — stood up very high. Already a cocoon-like fluff was taking
the place of the close brown velvet covering, and he was soon
to seed freely — the familiar sacrifice of the individual in the in-
terest of the species. He will not be there, that brown velvet
bulrush, when I return from Irkutsk in a month, but then — the

-|t#>-;#^ «:"*

THE REGULAR SIBERIAN STATION

widespread rushy hopes of next summer ! Not only bulrushes,
but every kind of high-water grass and reed, the whole gamut
from grass to bamboo, wave and whisper and whistle in wide
beds. At last you have under your eye the real country for the
Marsh-King's Daughter. Hans Andersen, who knew marshes
as no one before him or since, who has left in every teachable
mind that reads him some enduring sense of their poetry, would
have loved this part of Siberia. What romance could he not
have written of these bowed birches, "the white ladies of the

138 ALL THE RUSSIAS

forest," with stems of silver, here positively frost-white, and fine
purple twigs weeping evenly to the northward. He would have
peopled these thickets of black alder with a weird water-life. And
suddenly, after days of it, in a second it is swept away ; alder,
birch,willow,and reed-bed alike disappear, and, as though planted
by the hand of man in a straight line across this worldscape, the
Siberian cedar, to be readily mistaken for an ill-nourished fir-tree
with a yellowish tinge about the needles, springing from a rich
madder-coloured bed of heath and heather, usurps the scene. It
is after twelve o'clock by local time ; enter the Siberian cedar at
some mysterious nature-cue, exeunt birches and the rest that
have followed us so faithfully from the western verges of Russia.
We are now to have nothing but Siberian cedar all day.

For a thousand versts this Siberian plain hardly changes its
character. The silver birches are always by our side, and some-
times the woods take on a more solid shape. Round the settle-
ments herds of black and white cows graze, and for a few miles
we pass through stubble fields, and great heaps of grain, in sacks,
covered with tarpaulins, are piled up at the stations awaiting
transport. But these oases of industry hardly count in the long
monotonous steppe. Once a picturesque group of Tatars, come
back from gold-washing, attracts attention, and again we see the
devastated track of a forest fire. Occasionally we take a meal at
a station, for the buffets are everywhere excellent and put to
shame the wretched railway counters in the heart of populous
England. The stations themselves are all beautifully built of
wood, neat and clean, surrounded with pretty palisades, each
having its water-tower and fire-engine house, and offering to the
third-class traveller free boiling water for his teapot and cold
boiled water to drink. ' We pass a train of convicts going to
Irkutsk, all the windows barred with iron, and a sentry with fixed
bayonet at the entrance of each carriage. By showing my official
letter to the colonel in command I get permission to pass through
the train. The prisoners consist of convicts, in chains, and simple

SIBERIA FROM THE TRAIN

139

exiles, the wives and children of the latter accompanying them.
Their accommodation is warm and comfortable, and except some
of the convicts, who are obviously savages, they seem in good
spirits. Several times, too, we meet trains of returning colonists,
who have either been to Siberia for the harvest, or are returning
disappointed and dissatisfied. This latter category includes a
regular percentage of all who emigrate voluntarily.

The vast agricultural plain is, of course, the predominating
impression left by this journey ; indeed, there is no other such

Sii;i:kian ri.As.w i.s vvatciiim, •1111. ii^ai.m

plain in the world. Statistics of the size of Siberia may be found
in every book of reference, but it is impossible not to reproduce
some of them when describing a journey through the land. It
is, then, over 5,000,000 square miles in area, half as large again
as the whole of Europe ; it covers 32 degrees of latitude, and
no fewer than 130 degrees of longitude ; it possesses a magni-
ficent series of rivers running with fan-like branches north
and south, with a total navigable length of 27,920 miles ; some

140

ALL THE RUSSIAS

■of these rivers have been proved to be easily navigable with care
from the Arctic Sea, and so astonishingly complete is this natural
network of waterways that, with the aid of one canal, steamers
of a considerable size have been built in England and taken under
their own steam to Lake Baikal, nearly 3500 miles east of Mos-
cow. The zone of colonisation lies to the south of 64 degrees
north latitude, for above this is the zone of polar tiindra — a wilder-
ness of marsh and moss, with stunted bushes for its only vegeta-

BUILDIXG A HUT IX THE TAIGA

tion, frozen during the greater part of the year, and incapable
of supporting any life except that of the scattered tribes of Arctic
natives who roam about and manage not to perish in it. But
south of this there is in Western Siberia alone a cultivable area
of six thousand geographical square miles.

The landscape changes a third time between Moscow and
Irkutsk. This is at Taiga, whence a branch line of fifty-four
miles leads to Tomsk. The word Taiga means primeval forest.
A couple of years ago this place was but a name and a stopping-
place for the trains ; to-day it is a smart little town and growing
fast. Beyond it the line plunges into the virgin woods. The

SIBERIA FROM THE TRAIN 141

first passenger train left it, eastward bound, on New Year's Day,
ICS99, and the bridge at Krasnoyarsk was only finished in March
of the same year, permitting trains to proceed without a break
to Irkutsk, the present terminus. Our train has no longer an
engine with air-compressor for the Westinghouse brake, there-
fore our speed, never great, dwindles to a crawl, and for nearly
a thousand miles, from Friday till Monday, we dawdle along,
almost always through an unbroken forest of silver birch, pine,
larch and cedar, with occasional clearings and innumerable little
stations. From the train only Fmall timber is in sight, but back
in the forest there is an inexhaustible supply of serviceable trees,
and a special department has been recently created for the eco-
nomic deforestation of these Siberian provinces, the outlet being
a great timber port to be formed at the mouth of the Ob. At
each station we make a long halt. They are charming places,
admirably built, and prettily decorated, and round each of them
a circle of civilisation is spreading. At last, at noon on Monday,
nine days and 3371 miles from Moscow, after passing a zone of
rolling country with Highland scenery, we come in sight of a
large town encircled by a great river, its churches and public
buildings visible from far away. This is Irkutsk, the end, for the
present, of the Great Siberian Railway, the boundary of Eastern
Siberia, the junction of Europe, so to speak, for trade by land
with Peking, and not much more than a hundred miles from the
frontier of China.

CHAPTER IX

SIBERIAN CIVILISATION

THE chief towns of Siberia are naturally still those
that had grown up and flourished before the railway
was constructed — Omsk, Krasnoyarsk, Tomsk, and Irkutsk.
Others will, of course, soon be created, and in several

cases they will supersede
the old ones. After a
thousand versts of the Si-
berian plain, the first im-
portant station, Omsk, is
a genuine surprise. At
dusk you pass over the
great river with a well-lit
passenger steamer plying
upon it — pass over it by a
handsome girder bridge.
Then a promising net-
work of sidings begins, and, after the manner of Siberian
trains, you steal very slowly into the electric-lit station of
Omsk. A neat and pretty brick building greets you, the silent,
impassive figures of peasants in sheepskins grouped about
its doors. You pass into the usual hall which is waiting-room
and restaurant combined ; well-set tables with tall palms —
imitation palms of course — standing in them, and tall crystal
candelabra veiled in red muslin. At one side is the tea-counter,
its brass samovar purring softly ; at another a display of hot dishes
to tempt the hungry, with 3.cJiefoi smiling face and much-starched
linen waving his knife above the baked meats. The proffered

THE TOWER OF THE FIRE-WATCH, IRKUTSK.

SIBERIAN CIVILISATION

meal was so attractive that we took it here instead of in the res-
laurant-car, and nothing could have been better. The town of
Omsk is only Tomsk on a smaller scale, and Tomsk has a mystery
of its own. It was originally selected for the administrative and
educational centre of Siberia, and its public buildings were erected
on this scale. Its university is splendidly housed; it has an am-
bitious theatre ; one of the three Government gold laboratories
is there ; the prison was the principal distributing station of Si-
beria ; it is lighted by electricity ; it is the focus of a great agri-
cultural district ; it has over 50,000 inhabitants ; there was every
reason to suppose that its happy development would be parallel
with that of the railway itself. To-day it is going down-hill, for
the simple reason that the railway is fifty-four miles away — a
journey of five hours — and that even then the station is a long
drive through the woods from the town. I heard many explana-
tions of this extraordinary arrangement : that the land around
the town was too swampy, that too costly bridges would have
had to be built,.that the engineers who laid out the line left the
town aside because its inhabitants would not agree to certain con-
ditions advantageous to the proposers. Which is true I do not
know, but it is certain that Taiga, the station for Tomsk on the
main line, was only a couple of tents in the wilderness three years
ago, and that to-day it is a considerable settlement, growing
rapidly into a town, destined beyond question to thrive at the
expense of the city so proudly planned to be the heart of
Siberia. Tomsk reminds one of a rapidly grown Western Ameri-
can town, except that it has several far finer permanent build-
ings. The streets are its least civilised characteristic, for, except
in winter, they are either ankle-deep in dust or knee-deep in
mud, and winter comes so suddenly that the tov.aispeople some-
times wade through mud to the theatre and find the roads frozen
solid when they come out, while by next morning there are
thirty degrees of frost.

Omsk, to my thinking, v.dll necessarily become the chief Si-

146 ALL THE RUSSIAS

berian town, because of its magnificent waterways, its surround-
ing agriculture, its gold-mining, and, above all, its proximity
to the colossal deposits of coal that have been discovered to the
south of it, the copper-mines not far off, and the probability that
some day a railway will run south-east from it to connect Siberia
with Central Asia.

For the present, however, Irkutsk is a more important place,
and indeed, at first sight, as it nestles within the embrace of the
broad Angara, it is charming, and one is astonished at the pro-
portion of imposing buildings rising from the flat brow'n mass of
wooden houses. A second surprise is that the suburb where the
station is situated is called Glascow. But when you drive away
through mud a couple of feet deep, in which the droschky rolls
about so alarmingly that people invariably ride with their arms
about each others' waists, you fear that first appearances were de-
ceptive. The streets, in fact, are awful, and the local paper of
the morning after my arrival told how two little boys returning
from school fell in the middle of the street and were only just
rescued from drowning by some passing carters. Your first im-
pression, however, returns and remains when you have seen more
of this remote Siberian capital. It is an astonishing place.

Here are a few plain facts to begin with. Irkutsk has 51,464
inhabitants. It spends ten per cent, of its municipal income on
primary education. It has five hospitals and thirty doctors.
There is an astronomical and meteorological observatory, of
which the magnetic observations possess peculiar importance.
Its theatre, a handsome building of brick and stone, cost over
;^30,ooo. There is a museum, an offshoot of the Russian Geo-
graphical Society, w^ith an extremely interesting ethnological
collection, as well as almost complete collections of the birds
and animals of the district. From its telegraph-office mes-
sages can be sent to any part of the world in any language, but
I must add that a telegram sent to me from London on Monday
was only delivered at midday on Friday. There is a perfectly

SIBERIAN CIVILISATION

147

organised telephone service, and the outlying manufactories, one
of them as much as sixty miles away, are all connected with the
city by telephone. A fire-extinguishing service is excellently
equipped with an English steam fire-engine among other appa-
ratus, and I saw some smart drill. Finally, besides an imposing
cathedral, Irkutsk boasts no fewer than twenty Orthodox
churches, one Roman Catholic and one Lutheran chapel, two
synagogues, and two monasteries, for in Siberia a greater re-
ligious tolerance exists than in Russia, That is not a bad list
for a town which, until a few months ago, could only be reached

THE TECHMCAL SCHOOI , IRKUTSK

by an exhausting journey of several weeks, driving at full speed
day and night.

There is an air of well-being about the place, however, which
says more than any catalogue of facts. I have seldom been more
surprised than when, on the evening of my arrival, I started out
to make a few purchases. I wanted some sardines and sugar
and similar supplies, and I found myself in a shop which for size,
arrangement, and variety of stock would compare with those of
the West End of London, except, perhaps, such exceptional pur-
veyors of luxuries as Morell's and Fortnum & Mason's. Next
I wanted some photographic materials, and the first thing that
caught my eye was a complete assortment of Zeiss lenses, of the
latest pattern — the most expensive lenses in the market. Two

148 ALL THE RUSSIAS

stationers' shops and a chemist's were certainly equal to the
average of such places in any of the capitals of the world, and in
another I saw such a stock of guns, rifles, revolvers, cutlery, and
electric fittings as I have never seen in one place before. I should
be at a loss where to look in London for such a selection of tele-
phones, for instance, of every make and size, as were displayed in
this Siberian shop. Such things would not be brought all these
thousandsof miles unless there were peoplewho understoodthem
and could afford to buy them, and it is this inference which causes
the surprise. Similarly, the outsides of the houses, with their
thick wooden walls and stoutly barred gates, do not suggest
wealth and culture ; but when you have passed some of these
outer barriers you find yourself in homes which, for luxury and
taste, are in no way behind rich men's houses elsewhere in the
world, and where you are entertained with a hospitality as lavish
and as elegant as that of Mayfair. These belong to men who
have made great fortunes in Siberia and who are happy to re-
main there. They are generous men, too, and there are prob-
ably few towns of its size in the world with so many monu-
ments of private beneficence in the shape of schools, hospitals,
orphanages and the like.

Irkutsk, however, is not saved by its churches from an amount
of crime, actual and potential, that would be considered excessive
in a new mining-camp. The night before I arrived a church was
ransacked of its plate ; the night of my arrival the principal jewel-
ler's shop was robbed ; a few days later a flourishing manufactory
of false passports — a peculiarly heinous crime in Russia — was
raided by the police; the day I visited the prison a man clubbed
nearly to death, who never recovered consciousness, was picked
up in the street ; a short time previously the mail, carrying gold-
dust, had been ambushed and three of its armed guards shot ; and
no respectable citizen would dream of passing alone through its
suburbs after dark. Indeed, people often fire a revolver-shot out
of the window before going to bed, to remind whom it may con-
cern that a strong man armed keepeth his goods. I do not know

SIBERIAN CIVILISATION

149

how many police there are in this city of 50,000 people, but
during the week of my stay I saw only two or three, and
once, when I had to drive across the town at nine o'clock
at night, I did not see a single living thing out of doors.

The principal shops and the best houses are all in one street,
and as the side streets get farther from this they become poorer
and rougher. There is something suggestive of China in long
stretches of wooden walls and heavy gates. There are, of course,
hundreds of Chinese about, and rows of Chinese shops, where

^-■^-•«8es«--.,.»,,-Trr

THE MUSEUM, IKKL IsK.

the furniture, the clothing, the tea, and the various culinary and
medicinal abominations dear to the Celestial mind are for sale.
Stolid Mongols, too, hung with silver, have come through with
their caravans from China, and every now and then you see a
tired passenger stretched out in a tarantass amid his heteroge-
neous luggage, who has probably been driving day and night for
a week or two, for Irkutsk is the focus of five great post roads.
The hotel is a trial to mind and body, but a new one, the Metro-
pole, is just completed and will apparently offer more civilised
accommodation. Living is, of course, very dear, as everything,
except meat and flour and beer — an enterprising German is coin-

I50 ALL THE RUSSIAS

ing money by brewing excellent lager — has to be brought so far
by rail. One of my most interesting visits was to the Government
Gold Laboratory, where the director was kind enough to have
a special operation of weighing and smelting the dust carried
out for my benefit. Gold is disposed of in Siberia in a wholly
different manner from elsewhere. Every grain of it has to be
sold to the Government, and heavy penalties attach even to the
private possession of raw gold. But as "illicit diamond-buying "
exists at Kimberley, so illicit gold-buying flourishes at Irkutsk,
and the Chinese merchants are the offenders. They hang a few
furs outside a shop, or put a few chests of tea in the window, but
this is merely a blind, for they make big profits by buying gold-
dust, in quantities from a pinch to a pocketful, and smuggling
it across the frontier into China, where there has long been a
great market for it at Blagovyeshchensk. The mines pay a small
rent to the Government, and a varying percentage upon their
output. Ordinary mines pay three per cent., more productive
ones ten per cent., while those situated upon the Emperor's
private property pay as much as fifteen per cent. In leather
bags containing about a poud each (36 lb.), the dust is sent by
mail, the post undertaking the insurance of each bag for about
14,000 roubles. At the laboratory it is weighed, mixed with
borax, and melted in crucibles (Morgan's, one of the few
things of British make I saw in Siberia), the ingots assayed
and weighed, and an ** assignat " for the value at Government
rates, less the tax, a charge for laboratory fees, the cost of
transmission to St. Petersburg, and a certain small margin,
given to the owner. This "assignat" can be cashed immedi-
ately, or can be used as a bank-note. When a large quantity
has accumulated, it is sent in a special waggon, under an armed
guard, to St. Petersburg, and when the Irkutsk weights and
assays have been verified, the margin is paid to the owner. The
strong-room contained tier upon tier of bright ingots, weighing
from a few pounds to more than I could lift. This treasure, it

SIBERIAN CIVILISATION

15^

seemed to me, was very insufficiently guarded, and when I
remarked upon this to the Director, he told me that for a good
many years a force of Cossacks kept watch every night, but
since they once stole the whole contents of the strong-room a
couple of civilian guards have been employed.

The laboratory at Irkutsk was built in 1870, and since that
time it has received a total amount of 1,173,456 lb. avoirdupois
of gold, or, I suppose, considerably over ^^60,000,000. There are

THE CATUKDRAL, IRKUTSK

three such laboratories in Russia, the others being at Tomsk for
Central Siberia, and Ekaterinburg for the Ural district. In 1896
Russia produced io| per cent, of the gold of the world. Up to
the present year, from 1754, when she began to find gold, she
cannot have taken much less than ^250,000,000 from her own,
soil. The production of gold, however, is decreasing in Russia
and in Siberia thericherminesaregivingsmallerreturns. Against
this must be set the discovery of valuable gold-fields farther
north ; the willingness of the Tsar to lease to private companies
some of his own very valuable mines that have hithertobeenverv

152

ALL THE RUSSIAS

inadequately worked ; and the fact that the science of gold ex-
traction has made such progress of late that the mines supposed
to be worked out by the first-comers many years ago, can now
be made to yield a handsome profit again. The chief difficulty

in Siberian gold-mining is
labour. There is no skilled,
personnel to be had, and
the conditions of life at
points remote from civili-
sation are so disagreeable
that labourers often leave
as soon as they have
amassed a small sum. I
may add here my belief
that Russia has secured in
Mongolia a tract of ex-
tremely rich auriferous ter-
ritory, but this is jealously
held by a group of Peters-
burg capitalists, under of-
ficial protection, and the
foreign investor is not
likely to secure an inch of
it. But for the disturb-
ances in China, I believe
that these gold - fields
would have been sensa-
tionally heard of before
now.

Irkutsk, of course, is
typical only of the civilisation of Siberia in the towns. The
little settlements tell a different tale. Many of them are doing
well enough as regards agriculture, but the extreme loneli-
ness of the life, and the length of the winter, are producing

POOR SIBERIAN PEASANT

SIBERIAN CIVILISATION 153

a peculiar Siberian type of people— silent, morose, inexpres-
sibly sad. Among the lowest classes, too, these conditions,
with the presence of so large a proportion of criminals, inevit-
ably breed their own series of crimes. The future of Siberia,
however, obviously depends upon the success or failure of
the Trans-Siberian Railway, and this is a question asked with
great earnestness in Russia and of almost equal interest else-
where. Will it pay ? Will this gigantic enterprise be a suc-
cess — financial, commercial, strategic ? Russians themselves are
by no means unanimous in reply. There are those who declare
that it will not only give Russia the ultimate mastery of Asia, but
that it will also pay a handsome dividend. On the other hand, I
have heard it called a white elephant, a huge humbug and a finan-
cial millstone. I may admit that I approached the railway with
many prejudices against it. Some years ago I studied its begin-
ning^ in Vladivostok ; I have since been over the whole of the
line that is open, and as far as Lake Baikal on the uncompleted
section ; and I had many conversations with engineers and
officials closely connected with all parts of it. I have therefore
some grounds for an opinion, and I have certainly come to the
conclusion that the enterprise is of vast promise to Russia, and
of equal significance to Europe, and to Great Britain most of all.
As regards the financial prospects of this gigantic railway
any opinion as yet must, of course, be of the nature of a guess.
It is fairly obvious that through passenger traffic will not pay at
the very low rates now charged, while if the rates are raised to
a paying standard they would be prohibitive to most passengers.
Neither can through goods traffic be profitable, as few classes of
merchandise, except tea, and perhaps silk, could support the cost
of upwards of 5000 miles of railway transport, in competition
with an alternative, if much longer, sea route. It is the enlight-
ened policy of the railway authorities, moreover, to charge as
little for goods proportionately as for passengers. For example,
bar steel is carried from the Gulf of Finland to Krasnoyarsk, in

154 ALL THE RUSSIAS

Siberia, say, 3300 miles, at the charge of about £t^ per ton. This
figure was given to me by an English merchant in Krasnoyarsk.
Machinery between the same points costs ;^^io per ton. Such
rates make for the development of the country, but not for the
dividends of the railway.*

When we look at local traffic, however, a very different pic-
ture presents itself. Already the demand for transport far ex-
ceeds the supply. Acres of sacks of wheat lie piled up, waiting
for the railway to take them away. Agriculture here is still in
its infancy, yet in 1898, the latest statistical year, Siberia pro-
duced 1,000,000 tons of wheat, 730,000 tons of oats, 2,500,000
tons of grain of all kinds, and 325,000 tons of potatoes. Already
last 3^ear 2500 American agricultural implements were sold in
Siberia — more to the cultivated acre than in Russia ; McCor-
mick's posters are in every village, and Deering machines have
a strong foothold ; in Tomsk there is a central depot where four-
teen agricultural implement makers are represented. British
firms, unfortunately, are conspicuous by their absence. I travelled
for a time with the able and experienced representative of an
American firm of agricultural machine manufacturers, who was
delighted, and with good reason, at his prospects in Siberia.
If the microbic fertilisation of land becomes a success, its influ-

* An attempt is announced to establish a connection between the Russian and
United States Railways, via Bering Strait. A company called the Trans-Alaskan
Railway Co. is stated to have been incorporated at Seattle, Washington State,
with a capital of $50,000,000, its avowed object being the construction of a line
through Alaska to some point near Cape Prince of Wales. Mr. Harry de Windt,
the well-known traveller, who nearly lost his life on a similar previous journey, is
said to be planning, with the assistance of the Russian and American Govern-
ments, to start from Irkutsk, in December 1901, for Yakutsk, 1800 miles by
sleigh ; thence to Nijni Kolymsk, the most remote Russian settlement, where the
population is chiefly composed of political exiles, another 1600 miles by reindeer
teams ; and thence to the shore of Bering Strait, which is only about 36 miles
wide at its narrowest point, and which he will cross either on the ice or in an
American revenue cutter, returning to civilisation by the Yukon or Mackenzie
River. Such a railway enterprise appears wholly chimerical, and it is incredible
that the Russian Government should seriously contemplate it while so many more
promising parts of Russia are in great need of railway facilities.

SIBERIAN CIVILISATION

155

ence upon Siberian agriculture, where chemical manures are out
of the question, will be incalculable. There is a new world of
agricultural and mineral wealth waiting beyond the Baikal. A
new railway, to connect the Trans-
Siberian with the Trans-Caspian,
will be built before many years
elapse, bringing new supplies, creat-
ing new demands, and providing a
new safeguard against famine. The
gold output of Siberia, of which 1
have already given the striking
figures, will be largely increased
when the present mining laws are
modified, and the mines thrown
open to the improved methods and
ampler capital of the West — a state
of things which Russia is ready to
welcome. At a place called Ebikas-
tuz, near Pavlodar, to the south of
Omsk, and only sixty-six miles from
the great Irtysh River — to which a
line of railway was finished two
years ago, and three Baldwin loco-
motives sent — are coal deposits
which an English engineer declared
to me to be the largest in the world,
a seam running for miles of the
almost incredible thickness of three
hundred feet. Vast quantities of coke

will be produced here, shipped down the Irtysh to Tiumen,
and thence transported to the Urals for the ironworks —
a supply the importance of which will be appreciated by those
who know anything about the iron industry. Near this are very
rich copper mines, and it is certain that minerals will be dis-

PROSPEROUS SIBERIAN PEASANT

156 ALL THE RUSSIAS

covered in other parts. The transportation of convicts to
Siberia will shortly cease, and last year 223,981 emigrants
of both sexes crossed the Urals, making a total of close upon
1,000,000 since 1893.

I have perhaps now said enough to justify in some degree
my own belief that the development of Siberia is destined to
be a handsome reward for the efforts and expenditure so
lavishly devoted to it.

CHAPTER X
THE PRISON OF IRKUTSK

FROM gold, which H. E. General Goremykin, Governor-
General of the Irkutsk Government — whom I must
not forget to thank for all the facilities he afforded me — calls
" the enemy of Siberia," it is a natural step to crime, and of
course I spent some time at the famous prison of Irkutsk.
It is a great, square, whitewashed brick building, surround-
ing a courtyard, with a number of smaller wooden buildings
adjacent, the whole enclosed, except on the front, by an
enormous wooden palisade of logs, twenty feet high, sharpened
at the end. I went into every part of the prison that I could
see, including the hospital, the workshops, the laundry, and
the kitchens, and visited every one of the large rooms and
almost every cell. In all these I saw but two things to find
fault with — the practice of herding together criminals of all
ages, tried and untried, and the long time, in some cases
amounting to two years, which many of the prisoners spend
there before their cases are finally judged. This latter evil
is caused partly by the great difficulty of collecting evidence
from many parts of Siberia, but chiefly because the central
authorities do not supply magistrates enough to cope with the
numbers of those arrested. An additional difficulty is the
variety of languages spoken by the criminals themselves :
three times during my visit was the governor, who accom-
panied me most of the time, obliged to send to another part
of the prison for a prisoner to interpret a request made to
him as we passed.

158 ALL THE RUSSIAS

The prison is supposed to hold only 700 criminals, but it
contained 1024 men on the day of my visit, 12 women, and 10
children accompanying their mothers. Of these no fewer than
621 were awaiting trial, 138 were condemned for definite
periods not exceeding three years, which they will serve in
this prison, and 286 were "in transit," mostly either to the
great convict prison of Alexandrofsk, forty-six miles from
Irkutsk, or to the island of Sakhalin. The convicts
condemned to long periods or to Sakhalin had half the head
shaved, as shown in the group photographed on page 160, and
a number of the worst characters were in chains. The
majority of the prisoners were there for theft, and robbery
with violence ; a number for unnatural offences, and several,
in solitary confinement, for using forged passports, or two,
for instance, who had exchanged identities and passports —
a serious offence in Russian eyes. Two other men I saw
separately confined were unidentified prisoners, who had no
passports, and refused to say who they were, or where they
came from, the natural inference being that they had some-
thing serious to hide. The cells were large, clean, and fairly
light, and all the prisoners were dressed in loose coats and
trousers of grey felt, with apparently such underclothing as
they happened to possess. Those not separately confined
were in long rooms, lighted by a row of small windows
high in the walls, entered by one heavy door, and having
down the middle a sort of enormous plank-bed, sloping
from the middle down to each side. Upon this they slept in
two rows at night, and sat during the day, for the space
between the end of the boards and the wall was only just
big enough to hold them all when standing up to receive an
official visit. Four such wards did I enter, seeing perhaps six
hundred prisoners of all ages, from youths to very old men,
of all the nationalities which Russia contains, and charged
with all the crimes in the code. Every one of these prisoners

THE PRISON OF IRKUTSK 159

was awaiting trial, and 1 was told that many of them would
be there as long as two years. Certain considerations,
however, may modify our disapproval somewhat. In the
first place, these men arc assuredly better clothed and housed
and fed than they would otherwise be — indeed, at the
approach of winter, a large number deliberately get them-
selves arrested. In the second place, the proportion of
criminals in the whole population of Siberia is so very large,
and the police are so few in number, and so lax, that the
chances are much stronger against an innocent man being
arrested than in more civilised regions. Thirdly, it was
impossible to pass about among these men, looking care-
fully into their faces, and not to feel that it was better for
Siberia that most of them should be where they were.
When the door of one of the large rooms was thrown open
and I was invited to step in among two hundred of them, I
confess at first I hesitated. There were only four of us — the
governor, the head-warder, the doorkeeper of the room, and
myself, with nobody else even within hail, while in one case
there were but two doors between them and the street, and
an old man keeping watch. In an English prison those
men would have been outside in a couple of minutes.
Never has it been my lot, though 1 have visited prisons,
civilised and uncivilised, in many parts of the world, to see
human nature at such a low ebb, and the faces of these men,
from wild beast to vacant idiot, haunted me for days.
Guilty or innocent of any particular crime, they could
hardly be other, with few exceptions, than a curse to society.
From this point of view Russian criminology has a task
unknown in countries where civilisation has reached a higher
average development.

The convicts, curiously enough — that is, men condemned
to considerable terms of hard labour before being set free as
exiles, forbidden to leave the district to which they are

i6o

ALL THE RUSSIAS

assigned — were on the whole of a rather better type, although
they were disfigured by having half of the head shaved.
Each man had a rough parcel of his personal belongings,
and they were all strangely cheerful, considering their
destination. Nothing, however, strikes an English visitor,
who has seen the rigid military discipline of our own prisons,

A group of convicts to he " distributed"

so much as the good feeling, not to say familiarity, which
prevails between the officials and the prisoners. The
Inspector-General of the Prison, M. Sipiagin, who accom-
panied me, seemed to regard his charges rather as children
than as criminals, and they behaved to him with the confi-
dence, never wanting in respect, of school-boys toward a
master. He never failed to remove his military cap, and
say " Zdrasti !" (Good health !) when he entered a ward, and
a simultaneous cry returned his greeting. As we walked up

THE PRISON OF IRKUTSK i6i

and down, man after man stepped up to the inspector, asked
him questions about themselves or their sentences without
the least trace of fear or embarrassment, and even took him
literally by the button-hole and turned him aside from us
when they wished to make some private remark to him.
One man going to Sakhalin produced a paper showing that
he had a small sum of money to his credit in a prison in
Moscow, and the particulars were noted down and orders
given that this was to be sent after him. Another wished
the doctor to examine him again before he started for
Sakhalin ; the Inspector spoke a word to his orderly, and
later in the day I saw this man sitting at the hospital door
awaiting his turn. Those who think that everything in the
Russian prison system is savagery may say that all this
was rehearsed for my benefit, but I am not a child in such
matters, and I say that it was impossible to accompany
M. Sipiagin on this tour of inspection and not to be struck
by the entire absence of terrorism in any form. The Russian
convict system has its terrible side, of which I am now more
than ever aware, but there are few signs of it in a prison
like that of Irkutsk. To find this nowadays one must look
farther north and east.

There was no political prisoner there at the time ; at least,
I was assured that this was the case, and later I saw the
official report for the day, in which no such prisoner figured.
I saw a number of " politicals " elsewhere at various times,
but they were all earning a good living as clerks and book-
keepers. Of course I did not get as far as the terrible little
town of Kolymsk, a thousand versts north of Irkutsk, where
the worst political offenders are exiled to a living death.
But from all I saw I was not surprised to learn that at the
beginning of each winter an influx of minor offenders takes
place into prison, where they get warm quarters, plenty of
wholesome food, and no work. And as I have said, I saw

1 62 ALL THE RUSSIAS

clearly that the Russian authorities have to deal with a
stratum of population far below any that exists with us — a
brutish, hopeless, irreclaimable mass of human animals.

A few figures will show to what an extent the human
refuse of European Russia has been emptied into Siberia. In
1898 — the latest statistics available — 7906 men and 314
women were exiled to Siberia. These were voluntarily
followed into exile by 1683 men and 3275 women. The
first-named exiles were divided into classes as follows : 1281
men and 68 women condemned to hard labour ; 128 men
and 3 women sentenced to banishment; 52 men and 158
women simply deported ; and 3848 men and 3 women,
peasants whom their village communes had refused to receive
back after condemnation and punishment for various offences.
The convict headquarters is the island of Sakhalin, in the
China Sea, which very few foreigners have ever visited. It is
crowded now and can take no more, and its condition is said
by Russians themselves to be very bad. Indeed its prisons,
which will not hold half the convicts, are admitted in the
official report itself to be " dans un etat de vetuste trcs
avancee."

It is evident to anybody who studies the state of Siberia
that this wonderful country can never enjoy its due develop-
ment until the whole system of convict transportation is done
away with. Not a week passes without a murder in every
Siberian town. Two emigrants had been killed in the
Siberian train shortly before my visit. The head of one
force of free labourers upon railway works was in Siberia
for an outrage upon a child ; the boss of another was a
murderer. The porter at my hotel in Irkutsk was a murderer
from the Caucasus. Theoretically, when bad characters are
deported they are forbidden to leave the district to which
they are assigned ; practically, they leave as soon as it suits
them, and their first object is to kill some peasant for his

THE PRISON OF IRKUTSK 163

clothes and passport. Indeed, if they did not move away
they would starve, for in many cases the autiiorities simply
turn them out and leave them to their fate.* The political
exiles have made Siberia what it is, for they have been among
the most educated and energetic classes in Russia ; but the
criminal exiles are a fatal bar to further progress. Siberia
will therefore eagerly welcome the good news that the commis-
sion appointed by the Tsar to consider the whole question of
criminal transportation has just reported against the Siberian
system, and recommended the construction of great convict
prisons in Russia. The cost of these to the State will be
enormously greater than that of criminal Siberia, and assuredly
the lot of the convict will henceforth be harder, but the
decision was inevitable if one of the richest parts of the Tsar's
dominions is to attain its proper prosperity.

* " De fait, la situation du forcat etait, sous maints rapports, mieux assuree que
celle des condamnes a la deportation simple ou a la relegation. Tandis que le
premier, en etant astreint au travail, avait souvent son propre menage, certains
deportes, abandonnes a la merci du sort, dans un pays presque inhabite, avaient
de la peine a trouver de I'occupation pour assurer leur existence. On conc^oit par
consequent I'importance de la recente loi qui a supprime la deportation, et avec
elle ce genre special de proletariat vagabond. La prison contemporaine n'est cer-
tainement pas I'ideal du regime penitentiaire ; mais son effet sera toujours in-
finiment moins nuisible que celui du vagabondage pour ainsidire force qui vient de
supprimer la loi susmentionnee." — Report of the Central Prison Administration,
reproduced in the Gazette de St. Pctershouro, March i8, igoi.

THE GREAT
WATER-WAY

CHAPTER XI

"LITTLE MOTHER VOLGA"

RUSSIA has two great Asiatic railways, each destined to
play a vast part in her commercial and political future.
One of them runs, speaking roughly, from St. Petersburg to
China, the other from the Black Sea (by the Caucasus and the
Caspian) to India. The commercial objects of the two are
different, but a political aim they have in common : together
with other lines shortly to be built they form part of the net
which Russia is throwing over Asia. Having seen the Great
Siberian Railway, as described in previous chapters, my next
object was the Trans-Caspian Railway, and the heart of Asia to
which it goes. But Russia is a country of magnificent dis-
tances, and practically the whole of it separated me, in the
north of Europe, from Asia Minor, in the south, with a great
mountain chain, crossed by no railway, intervening. To make
the whole journey by rail would have been long, dreary and
roundabout, whereas if I could get down the Volga, it would be
not only a comfortable but a very interesting one. But snow
had begun to fall in Siberia, and the freezing of the Volga
was close at hand. Fortune, however, was kind, for on the
platform at Samara I learned that the last boat of the season
was to leave the same night. The traveller from Western
Europe reaches the Caucasus most pleasantly by steamer
from Constantinople to Batum, or if he is already in Russia,
by steamer from Odessa. It is only when you are coming
from Siberia that your best route is down the Volga to
Tsaritsin, and thence by rail to Vladikavkaz.

"LITTLE MOTHER VOLGA" 165

Samara had both plague and famine for its neighbours of
late, but there were no signs of either. It is a typical Russian
provincial town, defying description. Its houses range from
wooden hovels to well-built, handsome structures, public
offices and business premises. Its principal sight is, of course,
a statue of a Tsar. Its best streets are paved and the others
are a welter of mud. Its chief industry and the source of its
prosperity — though this has suffered from the succession of
bad harvests in the Volga provinces, and has still, 1 fear, to
suffer more — could be learned from a glance round the store
of Messrs. Koenitzer & Co., where every kind of agricultural
tool and machine was displayed. Incidentally I have to
thank this most courteous German firm for very timely
assistance, and a word about this may be of use to future
travellers in provincial Russia.

My letters had been addressed to the Samara branch of
the Volga-Kama Bank, and I had a personal letter of intro-
duction to them from a Moscow banker, besides my official
letter of recommendation from the Minister of Finance him-
self. Under these circumstances, when I approached the
manager of the bank with London and Westminster circular
notes, I imagined that cash would be forthcoming. It was a
vain hope. The manager of the principal bank of this im-
portant town of 100,000 people, situated at the focus of traffic
where the greatest railway in Russia crosses the greatest river,
looked at my tinancial documents with amiable curiosity, as
if they had been a Papal Bull or a portrait of the Emperor
of China. As for advancing money upon such things, the
very idea raised obvious and painful suspicions in his mind.
After long discussion I inquired if he could suggest any means
whereby the solvency of the London and Westminster Bank
could be made manifest in Samara. He thought that if he
telegraphed to Moscow, and Moscow telegraphed to St. Peters-
burg, and St. Petersburg telegraphed to London, the deed

1 66 ALL THE RUSSIAS

might ultimately be done. How long would this take ?
Perhaps a week. I left, with the intention of seeking the
nearest pawnshop, when the firm of Koenitzer & Co. arose
like a star in my financial night, and, having the usual know-
ledge of the methods of credit and exchange common to
civilised countries, was kind enough to give me in two minutes
all the money I wanted. Let this be the record of my thanks,
and a warning to other travellers in provincial Russian towns

THE VOLGA

where the constellation of Koenitzer may not be in the
ascendant, to carry their cash in a belt, as one does in Korea,
for instance.

At the foot of a steep hill, at the end of a broad street,
the great grey Volga flows past Samara. A paddle-steamer,
looking like a row of two-storey houses, lay at a wharf piled
high with goods — sacks of corn and flour, thousands of
wooden cases, cart-wheels, the kind of dug-out canoes in
which linen is washed in Russia, in fact, a miscellaneous
mountain of merchandise, all asking urgently to be taken south
before the frost blocked the long waterway. And a shout-

"LITTLE MOTHER VOLGA"

167

ing, pushing, perspiring mass of peasant humanity, with its
belongings, personal and professional, in innumerable great
bundles. We were off before the hour struck, and an excel-
lent meal and a large and verminous cabin awaited me upon
the bosom of what geographers know as the biggest river in

A TIMBER-BARGE ON THE VOLGA

Europe, and what Russians affectionately call " little Mother
Volga."

This gigantic waterway, 2300 miles long, over eleven
miles wide in the spring at Nijni Novgorod, draining a country
three times the size of France, with a delta of seventy-two
miles, is a disappointment as regards scenery. The Rhine,
the Hudson, the Yang-tsze, and the Thames all surpass it in
their different aspects. Its left bank is an unbroken fertile
plain, edged with willows and dwarf oaks, and when the
sandbanks, bordered with a green strip, come down to the
river, one could think one's self on the Nile. The right
bank is an uninterrupted cliff, worn steep by the river in
geologic time. Every now and then, when its angle is acuter.

1 68 ALL THE RUSSIAS

a little village clings to it, the mud-coloured houses rising one
above another on the mud-coloured slope. The important
town of Saratof extends for a mile or more, and very quaint
is the view of it from the steamer. Its centre is a mass of
red-brick buildings, and on each flank is a long suburb of
wooden houses, tailing out at last to a fringe of poverty.
High white churches with green roofs are dotted over the
city, and all the wide main streets fall precipitously to the
water's edge at a right angle, looking at a distance more like
streams than roads.

The river is covered with busy life. Tugs are slowly haul-
ing whole fleets of barges upstream, some loaded high above
the water, some flat-decked and black — these are filled with
petroleum from Baku. Most picturesque are the immense
barges of timber drifting down from the north ; these are as
big and as high as a house, and on the top of them are the
solidly built cabins in which their crews live during the long
quiet voyage. Every few hours we meet another steamer
like ourselves, its one scarlet boat slung at a slant, nose
upwards, at the stern.

Near Saratof we made fast to a huge oil barge, and 1 think
this was the most interesting incident of the Volga. No fuel
but oil is used upon the river or near it, and the consumption
is increasing so fast that, although the supply is increasing
also, the price is steadily rising. It is not, of course, petroleum
or kerosene as we know it, but the heavy residue left after these
light oils are refined. The residue, for its fuel value, is worth
more than the illuminating oils, and indeed I was told that the
whole industry exists practically to produce this residue. As
soon as we were made fast, a long wooden sluice was run
aboard, one end of which was under the canvas pipe leading
from a huge tank on the deck of the barge, and the other end
over the opening of our own oil cisterns amidships. The
word was given, and instantly a thick, darl^ green, almost

"LITTLE MOTHER VOLGA" 169

inodorous stream rushed down the sluice. In less than an
hour we had taken on board some forty tons, enough for four
days and nights of consecutive steaming.

When we cast off again I went down to the stokehole to
see what became of the oil. There were four large cylindrical
boilers, each with apparently an ordinary firebox but without
any grate-bars. In each furnace door was an opening a few
inches wide, and two pipes, about an inch and a half in diameter,
descended from the roof and coalescing in a joint with two taps,
like that which unites the oxygen and hydrogen cylinders of
a magic lantern, projected a little way into the firebox. The
principle is precisely that of the familiar ozoniser or scent-spray,
the oil coming into contact with a jet of steam and being driven
into the furnace in the shape of a blast of petroleum vapour,
which burns fiercely with a deafening roar. The heat is intense,
the inside of the furnace being red-hot all round, but it is
astonishing to see a perfectly empty firebox, with all the boiler-
tubes in full sight, and not a cinder nor a trace of smoke. The
stokehole is as clean as any other part of the vessel, and the
two stokers stand quietly, each before a pair of boilers, holding
a little wooden mallet in his hand. This is to tap the steam
and oil cocks, as they are too hot to touch. A few taps, and
one of the boiler fires is extinguished. A few more taps and
a torch thrust for a second through the opening and it is
alight again. Half a dozen taps and one furnace is burning
with a blaze and a heat and a roar positively alarming. The
contrast between this simplicity and cleanliness and the bang-
ing, the dirt, the sweat and the cinder-shifting of an ordinary
stokehole is extraordinary. When I went on deck there was
not even a suggestion of smoke from the one broad low
funnel, and the captain told me that he could get up steam
from cold water in a little over half an hour.

The combination of perfect river transport, connected by
canals with §t, Petersburg and Moscow, and the abundance of

I70 ALL THE RUSSIAS

such a convenient and cheap fuel, is obviously destined to pro-
mote manufactures of all kinds in the Volga towns. At Saratof
it was easy to see that a number of the factories were new,
while at Tsaritsin a French company is setting up ironworks
on a great scale. It is safe to prophesy that many other similar
enterprises will take shape hereabouts in years to come.*

At Tsaritsin I left the steamer after three days on board,
and next day took train for Vladikavkaz, another three days
travel. It is a long and monotonous railway journey across
a plain with no elevation on it bigger than your hat, green in
spring and coming gradually under cultivation — though you
never cease to wonder how the little scattered villages can
hold inhabitants enough to till it — and brown as a nut after
the summer heats. After a time you cease even to look out
of the carriage- window, and doze or read through the long
hours, while the train itself seems to go to sleep, so slowly
does it move.

Distances look insignificant upon the small scale map of
Russia, but, in fact, they are very great, and nearly a week
had elapsed since I left the railway in the north, on my
return from Siberia, before I came in sight of the great
range. But at last I looked up and saw suddenly a startling
prospect — nothing less than an army of dazzling snow-white
mountains, marching, as it were, in close order over the
mud-coloured plain. A few hours later we were in Vladi-
kavkaz, whose name means the Mastery of the Caucasus,

"" This year the navigation of the Volga has been attended with very great diffi-
cuhy, arising partly from the failure of the light-buoys, resulting in many barges
running aground and blocking the channel, and more from an extraordinary low-
ness of water. It is said that no less than 15,0x30,000 pouds of petroleum and
petroleum residue are stranded in barges between Astrakhan and Saratof, while
40,000,000 pouds are lying at Astrakhan, and will probably have to be stored there
during the winter. The lack of this enormous quantity of material for light and
fuel will evidently cause the most serious embarrassment. The dredging of a deep
navigable channel in the Volga is a matter which demands the immediate efforts
of the Government on a much larger scale than that at present pursued. Probably
the authorities would welcome foreign cooperation in this great undertaking.

"LITTLE MOTHER VOLGA" 171

just as Vladivostok means the Mastery of the East, though,
like Gordon's "ever-victorious army," such appellations con-
vey an aspiration rather than a description. Here the plain
and the monotony and the West come to an end, and the
mountains and the wonderland and the East begin.

Like all such Russian towns, it has a cosmopolitan centre
of a more or less pretentious kind — the hotel, and an insti-
tution or two, any of which buildings might be found
enclosing the smug bourgeoisie of the Erench provinces, or
per.suading F^crdinand of Bulgaria that he was still in his
Austrian home. After this kernel, the streets gain in dirt, in
colour, in that frank indecency of procedure which marks
Oriental life, and the first houses you pass as you enter the
town, and the last as you leave it, are square, crumbling
wooden caves with all the messy food-products or the garish
cottons hanging in them that characterise the customs of
Eastern peoples.

It is a cold and bright October day, and the great blue
mountains that appear at every southern street-end of
Vladikavkaz are powdered with snow. I have not seen
mountains trust themselves so near a plain before. They
seem a company of noble travellers, these huge peaks, always
at the same point of arrival, walking into the town and
toward the plain. The snow upon them is not more than
the generous sugaring upon a birthday-cake, and their deep
fissures keep an indigo gloom. They disdain foot hills and
approaches and slopes and shoulders, and only a green grass
ridge seeded thickly with sheep, and a wooded hill or two,
russet and orange at this autumn moment, lie between them
and the steppe. My road leads over them, 8000 feet high,
by the most famous mountain-highway of the world,

THE CAUCASUS

CHAPTER XH

THE FROSTY CAUCASUS

FROM the Oxus to the Arctic Circle, and from Kars to
Kamchatka, the Tsar rules many strange peoples and
countries, but the Caucasus is strangest of all. Indeed, any one
who averred that the Caucasus is the most interesting land of
the world would be able to back his opinion with good reasons.
The range is a wall across the narrow isthmus which joins
Europe and Asia, and the Gorge of Dariel is the door in this wall
through which have come almost all the migrating peoples
between East and West since men began to move at all. From
many of these migrations stragglers remained, some in one
valley, some in another, and their new homes lent themselves so
well to defence against all after-comers that the original settlers
were able to increase and multiply and keep their race intact.
Hence the Caucasus contains to-day the direct and not greatly
changed descendants of peoples otherwise lost in the mists of
remote antiquity. It is, in the words of Mr. Douglas Freshfield,
the first explorer and climber of the mountains, " an ethnolo-
gical museum where the invaders of Europe, as they travelled
westward to be manufactured into nations, left behind samples
of themselves in their raw condition." TheGermans, destroyers
of sacred and profane legend, do not accept this theory, and
Professor Virchow declares that it is disproved by the fact
that the Caucasus could not have been a highway when the ice-
fields came down lower than they do now, and that the languages
of the Caucasus are not related to languages elsewhere, as would
have been the case if the speakers of them were remnants of

THE FROSTY CAUCASUS

173

greater nations that had passed on. But the theory of human
samples is so attractive, and the races of the Caucasus are so
original and peculiar, that for my part I share on this occasion
the willingness of the American humorist to "know some
things that are not so." At least the sceptical Germans may
leave us the classic belief that Kasbek was the scene of the
martyrdom of Prometheus, and the Christian legend that
Abraham's tent and
Christ's cradle are still
to be found hidden on
its slopes. The Cau-
casus, in fact, was des-
tined by nature to be
the home of myth, for
in ancient times it was
the barrier beyond
which no man could
go, and therefore the
gate of the land which
man populated with
the offspring of his
dreams — the land " of
Gog and Magog, of
gold-guardingGriffins,
one-eyed Arimaspians,
and Amazons — of all
the fabulous creatures which pass slowly out of the atlases of
the learned into the picture-books of the nursery."

History is so romantic,however, in the Caucasus, that myth
can be dispensed with. It tells us how Alexander the Great
conquered Georgia; how the legions of Pompey, and, long after-
ward, those of Justinian, fought at the mouth of the Dariel Pass,
but that neither soldier nor merchant ever passed up from the
south, while the Scythian barbarians to the north were equally

CAU( ASIAN rvri.

174 ALL THE RUSSIAS

unable to push their way down. The history of the people who
held the Pass begins in the third century B.C., with King Phar-
navaz, and goes on, in ah unbroken and often bloody story,
down 1300 years till the swords of the Crusaders had so
weakened the infidel hordes that King David II. (1089), whose
descent from the Psalmist is commemorated by the harp and
the sling in the arms of Georgia, drove out the Turks and laid
the foundations of order and civilisation upon which, a hun-
dred years later, Queen Tamara of immortal memory built up
the Augustan age of her country. If half that is told of this
lady be true, she was one of the most remarkable women that
ever filled a throne or broke a heart. So beautiful that Shahs
and Sultans competed for her hand ; so gifted with poesy that
she celebrated her glorious victories in ever-memorable verse ;
so humble that she earned her own living every day ; so pious
that she set aside for the Virgin a portion of all her spoils of
war ; so brave that she defied a Persian threat, backed by
800,000 warriors, she spread the fame and the fear of Georgia
through all the accessible world. But the flowers had not
bloomed often on her grave ere that invincible scourge of Asia,
Genghiz Khan, came to Georgia, and her son went down before
his victory-glutted Mongols, while her daughter's beauty, like
her own before, brought rejected suitors seeking revenge at
the head of their armies. Georgia became the cockpit where
the rival Mohammedan sects of Persia and Turkey fought out
their everlasting quarrel ; it was divided by its own rulers, and
for many a generation its story is of pillage and poison and
murder and the putting out of eyes. Then came Irakli the
Great, the contemporary of Frederick the Great, who said of
him, '' Mot en Europe, et en Asie t invincible Hercule, roi de
Georgie."* Finally, when Georgia was helpless at the feet of
Persia, came Russia, nominally mistress of Georgia in 1801.
She had to defeat both Persia and Turkey before her conquest

* War drop.

THE KROSTY CAUCASUS

175

was consolidated, and to suppress many a rising of hei new sub-
jects. Tlie latest of these was the revolution led by the prophet-
patriot Shamyl, who raised the entire Caucasus against her
and held her whole might at bay for sixteen years, destroying

, y-rn - -, -rrrTTvuKX-eBTi

CAUCASIAN TYl'ES— A TEKKIN FAMILY

several Russian armies, until he was hopelessly surrounded in
the highland fastness of Gunib in 1859 and surrendered. In
the public gallery at Tiflis there is a huge painting repre-
senting Shamyl with head thrown back and scarlet beard,
brought before the Russian commander, seated under a tree
amid his staff. As I looked at it a Georgian peasant, who,
of course, could not read the inscription below, timidly

176 ALL THE RUSSIAS

approached me and asked, " If you please, is that Shamyl ? "
"It is," I repUed, and his deep, long-drawn " Ah " showed
how poignant the memory of this lost leader is yet. And
when I left the gallery half an hour later he was still gazing
upon the man with whose fall all the hopes of his people,
with their history of 2000 years, fell finally too.
/Z^But the interest of the Caucasus is by no means confined to
its romantic history, nor even to its ethnological variety also —
its once gallant Georgians, who so long championed the Cross
against the Crescent, its wild Lesghian highlanders of Daghes-
tan, its savage Suanetians, but lately tamed, its Ossets, the arm-
makers, " gentlemen of the mountains," its Abkhasians, who
migrated to Turkey en masse rather than remain under Russian
rule, its vain and handsome Circassians, its lazy Mingrelians of
the fever-haunted coast, and all the other races whose namessug-
gest a philologist's nightmare — Imerian,Rachan,Gurian, Lech-
gum, Laz, Pshav, Khevsur, Ubych, Shapsuch, Dshiget, Ingush,
Galgai, Kist, Tush, Karabulak, Kazi-Kumyksh ! Its mountain
scenery is unparalleled for grandeur except by the Himalayas,
and offers many a virgin peak to the adventurous Alpinist. The
sportsman may find ibex and stag and boar and wild bull, and
game-birds to satiety, for, in contrast with other places, game
is becoming more abundant because of the high price of licences
— so abundant, indeed, that, according to the T'lfiis Li'sfok, bears
and wolves rob the shepherd before his eyes, and wild boarscome
to the fields in droves. It is a botanist's paradise : between the
arid plain and the snows is a belt where men on horseback can
play at hide-and-seek amid the flowers, " survivals of the giant
flora of past ages." It contains the other great oil-fields of the
world, and its mineral wealth, already great, only awaits de-
velopment to astonish an age little apt to enthusiasm over the
treasures it drags from their hiding-places in the earth. Finally,
to the student of politics its very atmosphere reeks with interest,
since someday the vast armies of Russia will pour through it

THE FROSTY CAUCASUS

177

again to another death-grip with the Turk — the great fortress
of Kars is fortified only on the south side — and who knows what
scenes it may witness if Britain and Russia draw the sword, and
the masses of Moscovy march singing across it, to the Cas-
pian, to find their graves
on the banks of the Indus?
' Yet this httle land, in
spite of its surpassing in-
terest from every point of
view, remains compara-
tively unknown. It can
be reached almost in
luxury, and on its main
routes the most delicate
dame need suffer no undue
discomfort. In the whole
of Russia there is not an
hotel so clean and pleasant
as the Hotel de Londres
at Tiflis. I cannot think
why the enterprising and
well-to-do tourist, who has
exhausted Europe, does not
turn his steps thither. Per-
haps these pages may in-
duce him to do so. And
as Mr. Freshfield, who
justly claims that he and his
companions " took the first
step toward converting the prison of Prometheus into a new
playground for his descendants," says that he cannot enforce
his recommendation better than by echoing the exhortation
of Mr. Clinton Dent, so, assuredly, neither can I. "If you
worship the mountains for their own sake ; if you like to

CAUCASIAN TYI'ES — THE REAL CIRCASSIAN

178 ALL THE RUSSIAS

stand face to face with nature, where she mingles the fan-
tastic and the subHme with the sylvan and the idyllic — snows,
crags and mists, flowers and forests — in perfect harmony ;
where she enhances the effect of her pictures by the most start-
ling contrasts, and enlivens their foregrounds with some of the
most varied and picturesque specimens of the human race — go
to the Caucasus. If you wish to change, not only your earth
and sky but your century, to find yourself one week among the
pastoral folk who once peopled Northern Asia, the next among
barbarians who have been left stranded while the rest of the
world has flow^ed on ; if it attracts you to share the bivouac of
Tauli shepherds, to sit at supper with a feudal chieftain while his
retainers chant the old ballads of their race by the light of birch-
bark torches — go to the Caucasus." I would only add, go to
the Caucasus also if you would visit a city where seventy lan-
guages are spoken, and where you can step aside from the opera-
house and the electric tramway and in five minutes be drink-
ing wine from an ox-skin and talking politics and revolution
and war with mysterious men of the real old hopeful, all-know-
ing, all-plotting East, the while you bargain for a turquoise from
Tehran, or a Turkoman carpet, or a pinch of that perfume of
strange potency which is one of the very few things that the
East does not willingly give for Western gold.

But the traveller in the Caucasus would be unwise to let his
attention be monopolised by its romance and picturesqueness,
to the exclusion of its practical and commercial interests. These,
however, are hardly inferior to its more dazzling side, and they
are growing, and destined to grow, in amazing fashion. Nature
has endowed the country with a climate in which anything will
flourish, and the soil holds mineral wealth in vast variety and
infinite quantity. At present Russian official methods seriously
handicap production, but M. de Witte's influence is gradually

THE FROSTY CAUCASUS

179

removing obstructions and hastening procedure. If he hves,
and no war comes to strain Russian resources, the next ten years
will see all the world astonished at the commercial development
of the Caucasus. The progress of the oil industry of Baku every-
body knows, and I give the astonishing figures in a subsequent
chapter. The export of manganese ore, an essential of the steel
industry, the Caucasus furnishing exactly half of the world's

^P^l'j:^^^J^^

,'*W-.

supply, was 426,179 tons in 1900, from the two ports of Poti
and Batum. As regards other productions, the British Consul
at Batum, Mr. Patrick Stevens, who speaks from intimate know-
ledge, says that if the uncertainty that hangs over Russian
official methods were removed " there can be no shadow of
doubt that the boundless resources of this country, so richly
endowed by nature, might be developed very advantageously
both for the capitalist and the population," for " its'mineral
wealth is practically unlimited, copper, zinc, iron, tin, and

i8o ALL THE RUSSIAS

many other metals being found throughout the region, in
most cases in exceedingly extensive deposits." Round the
shores of the Black Sea are several Imperial Estates, known
as " appanages," where excellent wine is produced in large
quantities, and this is an industry which might be greatly
extended by experienced and skilful wine-growers with capital.
The wine of Kakhetia is already drunk all over Russia. Around
Batum are flourishing tea-plantations, and the two crops
already gathered are said to have been very satisfactory.
Hitherto Chinese tea has alone been grown, but on an estate
of the Imperial family Indian tea has been successfully
planted, and further plantations of this are now to be made
near Sukhum and in Mingrelia. A British company has just
been formed to develop new oil-fields. And one more
eloquent fact in conclusion : the railway across the Caucasus,
from Batum on the Black Sea to Baku on the Caspian, six
hundred and twenty-one miles in thirty hours, showed a net
profit of revenue over expenditure last year of nearly
;^i,ooo,ooo — $5,000,000 ; and yet the rolling-stock is so
inadequate to the traffic offered that a large amount of
freight is now going by rail round the mountain range, via
Petrofsk and Vladikavkaz, to the port of Novorossisk, instead
of to Batum. At present agriculture alone is languishing in
the Caucasus, but this industry has its ups and downs every-
where, and when it is less prosperous there is the more labour
available for commercial enterprise.

CHAPTER XIII
THE GEORGIAN ROAD

THE traffic over the great Georgian Military Road, which
connects Europe and Asia across the Caucasus, is in the
hands of contractors who work under strict official rules and
tariff.* You visit the office at Vladikavkaz, inspect a series of
photographs of all the available types of vehicle, make your
choice, pay the charge, and receive a ticket which you show en
route. I selected a carriage in shape something between a small
victoria and a small barouche. It had a long and heavy pole for
its size and was built for two horses, but for the Pass we have
an extra horse hung on at each side by rope traces. All four
are grey, with the pretty Russian harness of thin straps dotted
with brass buttons. It does not look strong enough to hold a
refractory horse for a minute, and even the four single reins the
driver holds in his hands, though thick and double, are so
twisted and hardened by weather that they might be expected
to snap, like all unnourished leather, in a moment of
emergency.

Snugly packed in, well folded in furs and rugs, and our
lighter belongings tucked about us and tied on wherever there
is space for them, we rock away through the rugged streets of
Vladikavkaz, and soon we have passed its most eastern limit and
are in the country. All mountain ranges have the same begin-
nings in the plains — a gentle ascent, rolling foot-hills, a zig-

* The charge is four kopecks (a penny— 2 cents) per horse per verst, and the
distance is 201 versts (132 miles). The total cost for a two-seated private carriage
works out at about ;^6— say S30— for the trip. Prince Hilkoff, Minister of
Railways, has just made the journey in a motor-car, and it is proposed to use
these for carrying the mails across the Pass.

1 82 ALL THE RUSSIAS

zag road, white peaks on the horizon drawing ever nearer, a
dashing, splashing river-keeping company, a rocky descent
beside the narrow road, and then of a sudden a chill in the
air which may be intoxicating to the mountaineer, but causes
the plainsman to draw his wraps tighter about him. Our
horses travel splendidly, and we do not yet seem to be
mounting sensibly ; now and then a cream-coloured sheep-
dog, in shape a small St. Bernard, with black muzzle and
cropped black ears, flings himself at the outer horses with a
deep and savage bark, but these, as we are to learn presently,
have brought their troops and troops of sheep out of the high
mountains for the winter, and some of them are still too tired
to get up out of the roadway.

For Fortune gave us a wonderful experience in thus cross-
ing the Caucasus. By chance we had hit upon the very day
chosen by the shepherds to bring down their flocks from the
summer mountain pastures to their winter quarters in the
plains — it may have been a Saint's Day, sacred by tradition
to this change, or perhaps the first snows of winter gave the
signal. From Vladikavkaz to the top of the pass, however,
we met these flocks in such numbers as I had never dreamed
of. Shall I be believed when I say that during that day we
met a hundred thousand sheep and goats ? I fancy it was
much more, and during our first day we thought of little
else.

The whole long simple business of sheep-rearing, more
archaic to-day in its pursuit than the breeding and keeping of
any other animal, is deeply interesting from many a point of
view. I am delighted to add another sheep silhouette, so to
speak, to memories I have gathered of " the meek-nosed, the
passionless faces " of sheep in other parts of the world. The
Caucasian sheep — like every other inhabitant, brute or human,
of these mountains — abounds in character. Unlike other
Eastern sheep, it is mainly a white beast, with fawn-coloured

THE GEORGIAN ROAD

183

ears and fawn-coloured feet, and a light dash of freckles upon
its white nose ; but beyond this pretty colouring only the
buttocks are remarkable, and these because they carry what
look like superfluous cushions of wool, similar in shape, if I
am permitted the illustration, to the "bustles" of twenty
years ago, but which prove to be lumps of fat between which

VLAI)1KA\ KA/, AT THE FOOT OF THE CAUCASUS

depend their short and modest tails. The rams, of which
there are numbers, have horns that curve in double curls, and
though they are relatively small like the sheep they are beau-
tiful and walk with pride among the flock, stamping their feet
and barking from time to time.

Deplorably mingled with the sheep are goats — goats of all
sorts and styles, black, brown, white, and mottled ; goats with
great horns sweeping upward and over their backs, or wide-
spread to each side, or even malignly twisted one over another.
Nothing will ever mak& S ^oat look a good animal. Even a kid,

1 84 ALL THE RUSSIAS

in his moment of prettiest play, is impish as a lamb cannot be.
Nobody knows why this is. From the first a goat has been
used as an emblem of sin — though nobody who knows goats
can understand why they should be tolerated upon the left
hand, where, after all, you can smell them just as much as if
they were upon the right. And a goat is not morally sensitive ;
it will not realise any indignity in being allowed only upon
the left hand, while a sheep is too stupid to appreciate any
compliment in being placed upon the right. However, this
is no moment for theological discussion. I was about to say
that in the classics, in the Scriptures and by the old masters,
a goat has always symbolised evil, depravity, and general
vileness. The moment you see goats, you understand this.
Their cross-set agate eyes of salacious regard ; their flat,
ironical noses always a-snuffle, their thin, wicked mouths at
the end of long lascivious faces — the thing is stamped upon
them : goats are irremediably and immemorially bad, and it is
only the deep invulnerable stupidity of sheep which has pre-
vented them from knowing it and being corrupted by it, and
has preserved to the world immaculate, snow-pure, the per-
sistent, inalienable innocence of lambs.

It was beautiful to watch these flocks, quitting the fast-
nesses that have harboured them all summer, and now, ere the
sparse vegetation of the high pastures is bedded with its first
coverlet of snow, hurrying down to the open plain and the
shelter of the reaped maize-fields. Jammed tight together,
pouring along like a flood, running like a frothy river for a
quarter of an hour at a time between the horses' legs and the
wheels of the carriage, the whole road was blocked with them.
Their backs were a woolly sea, the patter of their innumerable
feet was like the tide upon a stony beach. One grew giddy
as they surged by. What a reckoning there will be, when they
reach the pastures by the river below, to see how many more
the herds number when they come back in the autumn than

THE GEORGIAN ROAD 185

when they went up in the spring ! The bronzed shepherds in
huge brown felt cloak, black fur hat the size of any tea-cosy on
their swart heads, bashlik draped at hazard in lines of inex-
tinguishable grace upon their powerful shoulders, and ten-foot
staff in hand, walk at their head, amidst them, and at the end
behind the least and the weakest of the lambs. When they see
our carriage, the sheep halt — halt as sheep always do, neatly,
feet together very even, almost in the " first position " of the-
dancing-class. Then the shepherd cries, in harsh and sharp
falsetto — is it the cry of the hawk to call their woolly wits
together, to assemble such odds of cunning as may have been
given them for the eluding of their enemy the falcon or the
eagle ? — and the flock hurries forward at this cry, their little
feet poaching the dirtied snow and making that delicate sound
which belongs solely to the passing of many sheep and has
something timid and feminine and diffident about it. Some-
times one startled, foolish face pokes between the legs of our
horses, and at once a blind, unreasoning dozen of foot-
followers dare the passage, so that the horse starts and screams
in fright and is shouted at by the driver.

When the stream is flowing evenly past the two carriages
the shepherds whistle encouragingly and the cream-coloured
dogs, with their sinister faces turned our way, pass with mis-
trustful feet. They are too wearied to make any adverse
demonstration ; for days they have been harrying the flock
upon the mountains, collecting stragglers, constraining obsti-
nate climbers, circumventing the astutely divagating goat, now
dog-tired and sullen they are wending with the rest to the
plain, their puppies — soft, furry love-pledges of a wild summer
— looking over the edges of the saddle-pockets of the flock-
donkey or the shepherd's horse. How innocent and frank
and pretty are the puppy-faces ; how charmingly they extri-
cate first one then another soft, supple paw, and hang it out
till the shepherd sees them and hurriedly crams it in again and

i86

ALL THE RUSSIAS

binds the edges of the pocket tighter round the puppy neck.
I was so enchanted by these creatures, even by the open
enmity of their large savage parents, that I priced a ravishingly
beautiful puppoose (that would be a nice word) and learned
that its price was above roubles, and not even for five would its
master part with it. Perhaps had I shown him a gold-piece of

THE GEORGIAN KOAl.) — A WGGLLV WAVE

five I should at this moment be cluttered, as the Yorkshire
people say, with a cream-coloured Caucasian puppy of Circas-
sian beauty and a latent savagery to terrify a whole English
county.

I dwell overlong upon these by-sights of the road, l)ut in-
deed most of our first day went in passing that sea of sheep and
goats, and the dogs and the humble flock-donkey, bridleless
and bitless and burdened with all the huge hairy felt mantles of
the shepherds, pattering meekly among the crowd, were always

THE GEORGIAN ROAD 187

with us. After a spell of a dozen versts or so, we drew up at
a post-station. These, like the excellent military road, are
maintained by the Government, and entertainment can be had
at them of a modest character. In the barrack-like building,
very grey and cold, we passed instinctively toward a door on
which was the word " Buffet," written phonetically in Russian
letters to rhyme with " muffet." A little bar, with " snacks "
of sausage, herring, and Caucasian cheese in front, and bottles
of vodka at the back, rewarded us.

The shadow of the mountains fell upon this posting-house,
and in the sharp cold a camel and a scatter of bristly pigs
made an odd group. Soon our fresh horses were harnessed,
and this time, as we followed the course of a little river in a
large and gravelly bed, we felt ourselves at last among the
mountains. The vegetation of the valley was interesting,
and I indulged an old habit of collecting berries of shrubs
and trees that were new — a thing that looked like a willow
and had many orange-berries clustered tightly to its stem and
long spines — also a spray of barberry, thinner and pinker
than ours at home, to grow in my own far-away garden.
Turkey oaks, falling now to yellow, crowded and hung from
the cliff upon our right, and the usual sorts of rock-ferns
nestled in the damp seams of the stone.

The engineering of the road was masterly, and, like all
mountain-roads that have presented great difticulties, it every
now and then made light by serious risk by running close to
huge overhanging lumps of mountain which, if not to-day on
my head, then to-morrow on yours, will descend convincingly.
Everywhere the greatest care is taken of this most important
military highway — Russia's avenue mto that country she
coveted and fought for so long. It is easy to understand her
passionate desire to possess this great range, this fine race or
tangle of fine races, this fertile country on the southern slopes.
If I were Russia, and as fiat as Russia, with only the Urals to

1 88 ALL THE RUSSIAS

point to as Russian mountains, I should have wanted the
Caucasus just as badly, and I would have sacrificed the men of
whole provinces of plain life to possess them, as Russia did.

Eight miles from Vladikavkaz is the posting-station of Balta;
eleven miles farther is Lars ; and five miles farther is the world-
famous Gorge of Dariel, the " Caucasian Gates " of Pliny, the
dark and awful defile between Europe and Asia. Gradually, as
we drive on, the hills rise and close in on us till at length they
fall almost sheer to the edge of the rushing Terek and the
narrow road, leaving only just room for these at the bottom of
a rocky cleft, 5000 feet deep. The air strikes chill as a vault ; not
a ray of sunshine enters ; the driver stoops low and lashes his
horses ; instinctively we lapse into silence. The geologist calls
this gorge a "fault," for it is not a pass over the mountain-chain,
but a rent clear across it. To the imaginative traveller, how-
ever, it is a fit scene for the most wonderful highway in history.
Seventy years ago it was a perilous road, for avalanches, or the
sudden outbursts of pent-up glacial streams, swept it from end
to end, but the Russians have spent twenty million dollars upon
it and made it safe. In 1877 nearly all their troops and stores
for carrying the war into Turkey and Asia came by this road,
and it will be used again for the same purpose, although to a
much less degree, for there is now direct railway connection
from Moscow to Baku, at one end of the Trans-Caucasian Rail-
way, and therefore to Kars itself, -oid Tiflis ; and equally to Kars
from Datum, at the other end, to which fortified port steamers
would bring troops and supplies from Odessa and Novorossisk
in the Black Sea. The gorges of the Yang-tsze may be as
impressive — I have not seen them — but there is nothing in
Europe which produces so profound an effect of dread upon
the mind as this lonely, silent, gloomy, cold abysm of Dariel.
You do not wonder that any people holding it could bar the
way to the i-est of the world — the only cause for surprise is
that before the present road was constructed anybody ever

THE GEORGIAN ROAD

189

got through it at all. It even said, "Thus far and no farther,"
to Rome herself, and marked the limit of her dominion.

The gorge ends suddenly, as we dash at a right angle over
a narrow bridge, and find a most picturesque sight before us.
The valley has now a flat floor between its two rugged walls of
rock, and man has turned such a narrow mountain-gap to his
own uses, as was inevitable when Europe is at one end and Asia

THE GEORGIAN ROAD — RUSSIAN FORT IN THE PASS

at the other, for suddenly, where the road widens to a few flat
acres, a Russian fortress springs into view — a square building,
with corner towers, battlements and loopholes, precisely the
fortress of the fairy-tale and the box of bricks. The guide-
book, even the trusty Murray, points out that the fort of Dariel
is commanded by the surrounding mountains, but adds that "an
enemy could not draw any cannon up their sides." This is quite
true — unless they took their cannon up in balloons. A Cossack

I90 ALL THE RUSSIAS

sentry lounges before the gate and scrutinises me suspiciously
as I stop the carriage and get out my camera, but there is no
other sign of life. The choice of such a spot, however, to dispute
the passage of the Pass was anticipated long, long ago, for
on the summit of a peak high above the modern fortress stand
the ruins of a greater ancient castle, the rocky and im-
pregnable home of the Princess Tamara — not her of history,
but her of immortal legend, in which truth and fancy can
never again be plucked apart. It is said that hither came all
her lovers, an ever-flowing stream, since she was of resistless
beauty, and that when her fancy tired of them they were
hurled into the torrent below. In this castle passes the action
of Lermontof's play " The Demon," but he has none of this
gruesome story, though Tamara's beauty is there :

Witness, thou star of midnight, witness, sun,
Rising and setting, king upon his throne,
Nor Shah of golden Persia, e'er did kiss,
A face so bright, so beautiful as this ;
No houri in the noontide heat did lave
A form so perfect in the fountain's wave,
And lover's hand, since Eden's days, I trow.
Ne'er smoothed the wrinkles from so fair a brow.*

But as one gazes up at these ruins in the spot of all the
world apt to breed the romance and passion and war of days
when life was thick-set with such, one earnestly longs to pierce
the trivial veil of legend and poetry, and know what really
happened there — just the daily life of the men and women
who looked along Dariel from that high-built eyrie. These
battlemented and loopholed towers repulse or yield to attacks
which change with the changing years, but the stronghold of
the heart knew then, as it knows to-day, but one plan of sap
and mine, and it is rarely safe from treachery within. Princess
Tamara, did your lonely castle in this gorge, so cold and dark

* Storr's Translation.

THE GEORGIAN ROAD 191

at midday, keep you safe from the insidious foe ? I would
give much to know your story.

The day was done when we came up to the post-house
called after Mount Kasbek, and round us, in a close group, rose
the splendid peaks of which he is the chief. Kasbek is to my
eye more beautiful than Elbruz with its divided peaks; it is
steeper, with terribly sheer slopes, gorges, and glaciers around
it, itself ending in a savage spike of rocks against the sky,
while Elbruz, really much higher and more difficult to climb
(Elbruz is 18,470 feet and Kasbek 16,546*), has larger and
milder-looking summits. This is a mistake in a mountain ;
the proper mountain is the blue and white kind, of which you
can see at least ten thousand feet " out of the ground," so to
speak, with a peak offering room for no more than the two
feet of one climber at a time, and he so perilously placed
that he must hold a cloud by the tail if he would stay there.
This is the character of Kasbek — from below.

The post-house is again a bleak white building, with a large
square yard behind it, round three sides of which are stables
to accommodate the numerous horses required for relays. In
the middle of this yard another huge old camel is standing, his
head balanced upon his absurd neck and his mouth supercilious
as are all camels in the desert, seen against this snowy back-

" Kasbek and Elbruz were first climbed in 1868 by Messrs. Douglas Freshfield,
Corny ns Tucker, and Adolphus W. Moore. When near the summit they sent
back their guide, and his statements were at first received with absolute in-
credulity. But when the three Englishmen reappeared from the opposite valley,
having gone up one side of the mountain and down the other, even the unwilling
natives had to admit that the impossible had been accomplished. Elbruz was
again climbed in 1875 by Mr. F. Crauford Grove, and in 18S4 by M. de Dechy,
a Hungarian Alpinist. But the curious jealousy of foreigners makes local writers
still loath to admit the fact, though repeated descriptions have made the ascents
familiar to all the world. In his "Guide au Caucase," published in 1891,
M. J. Mourier has this amusing sentence about Kasbek : " Trois anglais: Fresch-
wild, Mour et Tecker, membres du club alpestre de Londres, pretendent- etre
parvenus jusqu'a sa cime le 18/30 Juin 1868."

192 ALL THE RUSSIAS

ground there is something irresistibly incongruous about his
appearance. He prowls about, ungroomed, loose, ignored,
padding silently where he is not wanted, thrusting his horrid
nose into what does not concern him. At first I thought
this beast was merely resting between loads, but when he re-
appeared regularly at the end of each stage, I saw he served

THE CASTLE OF PRINCESS TAMAKA IX THE GORGE OF DARIEL, GEORGIAN ROAD

some curious purpose. It is this : droves of camels come from
time to time over the Pass, and unless the horses were accus-
tomed to the sight and smell of these misshapen creatures
they would take fright, perhaps where the way was narrow and
the cliffs steep, and a catastrophe would result. Therefore at
each station lives a camel, whose only business in life is to
scare each passing horse into the contempt which familiarity
breeds. Perhaps he understands this, and that is why he stalks

THE GEORGIAN ROAD 193

unheard up to a panting, sweating animal quenching its thirst,
and suddenly thrusts his long hairy face at it, just as naughty
children say " Boo ! " to each other when they meet in the
dark. It is one of those simple explanations which yet strike
one as ludicrous, and at each post-house I am smitten anew
by this strange exigency, and this fresh proof of Russia's
boundless ethnological complications.

We are to stay over-night at Kasbek, and we make our-
selves comfortable in the barrack-like chambers that are
placed at our disposal. When we descend to the bufTet for
dinner, our enthusiasm hurls us in the direction of the
national plat of shashlik — the delicious Caucasian mutton,
cooked a la broche over a wood fire. We wait in happy impa-
tience for its arrival, stemming our hunger with a zakushka of
raw herring, with brown bread, and draughts of quaint Cauca-
sian wine, which we profess determinedly, if with some effort,
to find delicious.

By-and-by a profound and searching steam of rawish but
not quite raw onion invades the buffet ; this is onion at its very
worst moment ; raw onion is tolerable, cooked onion is palat-
able, onion that has merely suffered a heat-change is devastat-
ing in its effectuponthe soul of the feeder. W^ebecome nervous,
and when a Circassianpersoncomesinbearing that onion which
is apparently allied to the hoped-for j-Zmj-Z/ZzX', we wince palpably.

Some roughly chopped loin of mutton, smoked without and
crude within, smothered in the aforesaid onion, manifests itself,
and timidly we address ourselves to it. Fork and knife recoil
simultaneously from each knobby piece, and one mouthful
(which never gets any farther) contents each inquiring palate.
The meat, hacked without any relation to its fibre, its grain,
or its bones, is absolutely fresh, is also quite uncooked, and
only hours of stewing could have made it fit to eat.

" Would you try the plat national again ? — it might be
better here," says some one, a day or two later. " Not again,"

194

ALL THE RUSSIAS

is the reply ; " let us wait till we get to England ; my cook
does it beautifully : N'avets de mouton a la hroche. No more
Circassian shashlik baa-ing at me, if you please."

I made plans at Kasbek for an early ride up the mountains
opposite, to see the little ancient church, 1400 feet above us,
of Tsminda-Sameba, not that of itself this presents much in-
terest, but the view of the mountain, and especially of its great

THE GEORGIAN ROAD — ROUND THE MOUNTAIN SIDE

black side where Prometheus was chained (though the legend is
inaccurate after all, for yEschylus distinctly speaks of Pro-
metheus' rock as above the sea and far from the Caucasus), was
said to be beautiful, and I wished to enjoy a ride in true Cau-
casian spirit. A quarter to seven was the hour fixed, and I
retired early, to be ready. When I arose at six, it was upon a
world of snow that I looked out. Everything was white, and
that broad-fiaked, Christmas-card kind of snow we used to have
in England, was falling. The stables and the yard were white ;

THE GEORGIAN ROAD

195

the poor camel even had httle drifts between his humps, and
absurd tufts of it all over him ; you could not see fifty yards
away, and all the mountains had retired within the veil. This
put off my ride, and even alarmed us somewhat about the
Pass and its condition. There was no mistake — the snow
had come to stay ; it was winter snow. What I saw fall as
I looked out of the window would be there till next April.

We started at once, the hood of the carriage up, and little
visible beyond the back
of the driver in his thick
pleated woollen gown,
but all round in the grey
air the broad flakes were
in suspension, appar-
ently falling with that
slow deliberation, that
incredible downy light-
ness, and that incalcul-
able vagary of direction
that characterise real
snow. Suddenly, out of
the grey mystery in front
of us, a troop of Cossack
soldiers came riding, a
couple of hundred of
them, returning from

their service on'the Armenian frontier to their little villages in
the plain. These men are supplied with rifles and ammunition
by Government ; their wiry little horses, their armoury of
sabres, knives, and pistols, are their own. Shrouded in the
black, shaggy, felt cloak that descends to the horse's tail, and
nearly covers their big felt boots in the short stirrups,
cowled each in his pointed basklik, a hood with two
ends wound round the neck and falling down the back.

rm-; gi:(.)Kgi.\x koah, 'ihk ■i'oi'_;^of''the pass-
old ROAD

196 ALL THE RUSSIAS

they seemed like some ghostly procession of warlike friars
passing in slow defile. Each cone-shaped silhouette upon
his high saddle, with wild face — and what faces they were !
— looking straight in front of him was the incarnation of all
that is picturesque, romantic, in a word, Caucasian.

Presently the veil was lifted ; the flakes grew slimmer and
finer, the sun flashed out, the hood of the carriage was thrown
back, and there beside us, mantled in a flawless ermine, was
Kasbek and his court of peaks, bright and glittering against a
heaven of Italian blue. In his winter majesty, every seam and
fissure of yesterday, filled and smoothed with one night-fall of
snow, he was scarce to be looked on by his subjects. And now,
with many a zigzag, the road mounted in good earnest ; we en-
countered the immobile oxen yoked to the snow-ploughs, we
came upon the artificial tunnels, made to accommodate ava-
lanches. These places where the road suddenly runs under a
stoutly timbered roof built against the mountain side, bringhome
to one the chances of winter, and the eventualities that may —
and often do — overtake the faithful post-waggon with its Euro-
pean mails for Tiflis. As we approach them, I can imagine the
tons of snow and loosened boulders plunging down the steeps
toward the river, here growing slender as a thread, and the
awful thunder of them exploding over these man-made de-
fences. Like all such work, and much of the construction
work I have seen in Russia, these avalanche roofs are splen-
didly built ; there is no trail of the contractor over them ;
whether the Government does its own work or contractors
are different here, I know not, but assuredly the highway
by which Russia's Empire is moving sedulously forward is
made to endure, and to carry the great weight of her
power.

At the top of the Pass is a small cross upon the hill-side,
standing out in black relief upon a snowy shoulder. Many gene-
rations ago it was set to mark the summit — 7977 feet, and by

THE GEORGIAN ROAD

'97

the road is one of later date. This, then, is the second time
during my present journey that I have crossed a mountain-
range from Europe into Asia. No Alpine pass, except the
Stelvio, which is 9040 feet high, is so high as this. Seldom
can it be given to any one to see great mountains in more exqui-
site aspect than I saw these at the top of that pass. Peak

CROSSING THE SUMMIT OF THE GE(;RGIAN ROAD

after peak biting the sky in sharp outline ; snow but a few hours
old, sun and heavens dazzlingly clear and deeply blue ; the air
keen and intoxicating ; once more the never-failing though
so often tasted intoxication of the East in front — it was one of
the days of a lifetime.

Then came the wild rush from the water-parting to the val-
ley. Two fresh horses and a hilarious driver, whom I encour-
aged by the promise of a rouble if he drove well, carried us at
breakneck speed down a road zigzagging likethelacingof a foot-

198 ALL THE RUSSIAS

ball. On the north the range is barren and deserted, on the
south it is green, with quaint villages nestling in fertile valleys
and little haystacks by the thousand telling of a fragrant sum-
mer past. At full gallop down the slopes, with asickening swing
round each corner, both inside wheels off the ground, we came,
the driver, shouting in glee and swishing his savage little whip,
looking back with a smile for approval as we just escaped going
wholesale and headlong over the cliff at each turn. Having
promised him one rouble to go fast I would gladly have given
him several to go slow, but his own enjoyment was far too
keen to heed our breathless protests.

The vegetation on this southern side began with a sudden-
ness almost unbelievable ; first that obstinate and crouching little
tir-tree, ascetic as a fakir, and nourished upon escarpments
of pure rock and dark dreams not given to trees in whose
branches birds nest and sing ; then pines and oak-scrub ; among
these presently little sun-soaked hay-fields whose harvest, in
pointed cocks, stood out oddly upon the snow. Then villages
or colonies or farmlets of dwellings, half underground, and with
the square, open cave-like front which marks all Eastern dwell-
ings ; flat-roofed, of course, and chokedandhuddled roundwith
straw-stacks and mounds of winterfodder. I was much tempted
to stop and explore one of these little places where the foot-sole
of its occupants never knows what it is to stand upon the fiat
ground, save when indoors on the trodden earth of the humble
living-room.

With a swoop almost hawklike in its sheerness and its sud-
denness, we drop into the considerable settlement of Ananur,
beside a river which is carrying the grey glacier water to the
south. Here we are to harbour for the night, and only two
general chambers, one for men and one for women, are at
the disposal of travellers, for it is one of the smaller stations.
The food is in that particular transition stage between
archaism half-disdained and civilisation half-comprehended,

THE GEORGIAN ROAD

199

which is the most trying of any ; but again the wine of the
country and its bread give sustenance to travellers who have
never been in slavery to tables dhote.

In the morning a Caucasian gentleman with white hair and
a self-possession princes might envy, came and poured water upon
our hands and face from a jug, while we juggled with sponge and
soap in a vain effort after even precarious cleanliness. In this

^^ ...

HOW THE GEOKUIAN KOAIJ CO1ME.S UOVVN AT iH.ElT

matter we agreed that they do things handsomely in Ananur.
None of us had ever been washed by a Circassian prince in full
uniform before. (I think I am right in describing him as a prince;
you are a prince in the Caucasus if you possess four sheep, so
Russians say, jokingly, and I cannot believe that our friend had
a fleece less.) We wandered up to the strange little castle ; it
dates from the fifteenth century, and the shells of its square and
tapering towers frame and crumble round a church of later date.

200 ALL THE RUS§IAS

Nothingaboiitthischurchjsavesomehalf-obliteratedfrescosand
the arabesques lettered beside its door, interested us, but in the
river, a special breed of bull-trout mocks the prowess of the pass-
ing fisherman, and there were smooth places beside the tails of
water and sudden-coming " races " in the hollows of banks
where I should have delighted to see the dry-flies of a certain
Liberal statesman friend alluringly floating.

That day we made the second ascent of a smaller pass,
this time always among cultivated slopes where the wheat
was already sprouting, the big, blue-grey buffaloes ploughing,
and the little flat-roofed houses, all scraped out of the hill-
sides, comfortably fronting the southern sun. Visiting some
of them, we found the cave-dwellers to be a handsome race
indeed ; the men tall, strong, and martial, bearded and bronzed
and covered with weapons ; the women gay in bright colours
of blue and red and crimson, holding up babies whose small
heads were covered with henna-tinted hair. Cocks, hens, cats,
dogs, and a few little fluffy buffalo-calves all clustered in the
shelter of these house-fronts, and on the roof huge oval baskets
of maize-cobs shone golden, very often with the owner seated
smoking beside his store of winter provender.

At Dushet we spent some time trying to get into the castle
of Prince Tschliaief, which stood upon the hill, white, castel-
lated, looking proudly across the valley at the little town with
its grim, plain red boxes of new Russian barracks. In point
of appearance, the Prince's palace, which was also employed
as a Police Station, was easily first in its expression of martial
capability. Dushet is charmingly situated, and as it is within
easy reach of the cosmopolitan pleasures of Tiflis, it is the
place I should recommend for a prolonged spring or autumn
stay on the Georgian Road,

Ancient history pervades the Caucasus, and the last town
on the road is a strange link between past and present. This
is Mtskhet, the ancient capital of Georgia. The race to which

H
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<
O

Q
J.
O

THE GEORGIAN ROAD

20I

it belongs — or rather belonged — believes it to be the oldest
town in the world, founded by Noah's great-great-great grand-
son, while even sober historians recognise it at the beginning
of the fourth century. Here lived and reigned all the Tsars
of Georgia ; hither came the Vandals of Tamerlane and rased
the cathedral, but Tsar Alexander I. of Georgia rebuilt it, and
under its aisles lie Georgia's rulers and wise men. The cathedral

.sll()l,l.\G A.N

)X l.\ llil. LALLAsr

itself was built originally in 328 A.D., over the spot where
Christ's seamless robe, brought from Golgotha either by a Jew
or by the Centurion Longinus — the legends differ — and given
by him to his sister Sidonia, was found. She wrapped it
around her, fell dead, and as it could not be detached from
her body, she was buried in it, and until it was carried off to
the Cathedral of the Assumption at Moscow, a holy oil exuded
from the very stones above the precious relic. Such was
old Mtskhet. To-day it is a railway station on the line from
Batum to Baku, the point where the military road meets the
military railway — a plain village, but ennobled by the ruins
of palaces and churches telling of the wonders of the days
when Tsars lived here, before the proud name went north.

CHAPTER XIV
TIFLIS OF THE CROSS-ROADS

HE German philologist, Pro- ^^
fessor Brugsch, has calcu-
lated that seventy languages are
spoken in Tiflis. That simple state-
ment, pondered long enough, might
almost suffice to describe the city.
It is the modern Babel, the meeting
place of Europe and Asia, the cross-
roads of the great routes north and
south, and east and west, the focus
of a scoreof keenly trading peoples,
tlie conglomerate deposit of two
thousand years of busy history.
Over this complication Russia rules
easily and well. It is an excellent
example of how she carries civilisa-
tion to Eastern peoples.

Externally, half of Tiflis is a
little Paris, or a prettier Bucharest. A mass of tin roofs,
painted in pale green and Indian red, makes a pleasant
colour impression as you approach the city from the moun-
tains, but to see it in its real and remarkable picturesque-
ness, as shown in my illustration, it must be viewed from
the remains of the old fortress, or the Botanical Garden
beside it, at the other end of the town. It lies at the
bottom of a brown, treeless valley, between steep hills,
on either side of the river Kura. This may not sound very
attractive, but there is an abruptness about the contours

THE nOURKA

TIFLIS OF THE CROSS-ROADS

203

and a serpentine twist about the river that make it one of the
most strikingly placed towns I know. In summer, as might
be guessed from its position and from the additional fact that
it has a phenomenally small rainfall, Tiflis is stifling and in-
tolerably hot, but in winter the same conditions render it a
delightful residence, perfectly sheltered from the cold winds
that sweep from the mountains and the plain to the south-

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east, and by its dry atmosphere admirably suited to people
with weak lungs.

It is a place of great importance to modern Russia. It forms,
to begin with, the end of the military road across the Caucasus,
which, though the railway now goes round the eastern coast
to Baku, is still the quickest way to Europe, and all the mails
come over it by fast coach. It is midway between Baku and
Batum ; that is, between the Caspian and the Black Sea, be-
tween Europe and Asia when you go east and west, as well as
when you go north and south. The railway is now open to Kars,

204 ALL THE RUSSIAS

that frontier fortress which, not long ago the Russian objective,
will some day be her base for an advance into Armenia and far
beyond. Tiflis, in fact, is thinking of the future, as you are
reminded when you go to the topographical department of the
General Staff to buy the magnificent maps they sell, and see a
dozen officers working busily over their drawing-boards.

And Russia has developed her Caucasian capital in a manner
worthy of its importance. In the modern town the streets
are wide and paved and lighted by electricity, the shops are
large and handsome, there is a public garden with winding walks
and fine trees, excellent tramways run in all directions, and the
public carriages, leather-upholstered and rubber-tyred, are far
superior to those of St. Petersburg or Moscow — in fact, the
best I have seen anywhere. The official buildings are numerous
and imposing — Russia always takes care of this. The cathedral
is a magnificent edifice, the Governor-General's palace dignified
without and splendid within, there is a new and elaborate opera-
house, and of course a number of military buildings. The mu-
seum is extremely interesting for its collections of all the animals
and birds of the Caucasus, all the geological products, and a
fascinating series of figures and domestic implements illustrating
the ethnology of all the local races. While I was there an agri-
cultural exhibition was held, and the quality and variety of pro-
ducts shown were astonishing. Some of the vegetables were
so remarkable that I wrote and asked for seeds, which were
sent promptly by official post and are now germinating under
the surprised eyes of a Hampshire gardener. In matters like
this, let me remark once for all, the Russian authorities are
courtesy itself to foreigners who approach them courteously and
are genuinely interested in what they are doing. Finally, the
Hotel de Londres is the first really civilised and comfortable
hotel I have found in Russia — and this is in Asia ! I dwell upon
these matters because the striking fact about Tiflis is that
Russian rule has made a handsome, clean, safe, civilised, and

TIFLIS OF THE CROSS-ROADS

205

merry little town out of a jumble of dirty, jarring Eastern races,
outside her European frontier, and far from anywhere.

But one does not go to Asia to see Europe, and Rostom, the
guide, in Circassian costume, with long poniard and war-medal,
haunts the hall of the hotel. To test the German philologist, I
ask him how many languages he speaks. He does not remember,

TIFLIS AND THE RUINS OF THE CITADEL

but proceeds to count them upon his fingers. Russian, Mingre-
lian — his native tongue — Georgian, Armenian, Persian, Lesghian,
Gruznian — I can't remember them, and I don't know how to
spell them, but it is an extraordinary list. And he needs them
all in an hour's stroll through the bazaar. Ten minutes in a
tramway from the hotel door transports you into a piece of
Baghdad or Tehran, and one of the very few Eastern bazaars I
have seen which has not its eye fixed, so to speak, upon the
Western purchaser. A few things in the silversmiths' shops are

2o6 ALL THE RUSSLVS

for the foreigner, hut otherwise, if you go there, you go as the
native goes, you see what the native sees, you haggle as the
native haggles, and you get what the native gets. This is re-
freshing when one remembers the bazaar in Cairo, for instance,
where the tourist buys with solemn precautions and secret glee
things specially made for him in Birmingham or Germany,which
an Oriental passes with a contemptuous shrug.

If one half of Tiflis is like Europe, the other half is purely
Oriental. Narrow, steep, ill-paved streets ; mysterious houses
hiding the life within behind closed doors and shuttered win-
dows ; the merchant sitting among his wares — the silversmiths
in one street, the arms-makers in another, the shoemakers, the
carpet-dealers, the fruit-sellers, the perfume-venders, each trade
in its own quarter. And what things to buy, if one has money
and time — the two equally essential components of an Eastern
bargain ! Through this low doorway and behind this common-
place shop is a dark warehouse piled high with carpets in moun-
tainous profusion. Here is every fraud ready for the unwary or
unknowing purchaser, but here, also, if your eye is sharp and
your tongue smooth and your experience trustworthy and your
time and patience without limits, is a brocade from the palace of
one of the old Khans of Nukha, vassals of Persia in time gone
by; this is a silken carpet from Isfahan, in the golden days of
Shah Abbas, two hundred years old, priceless ; that rug was
woven by Tekke girls in the tent of nomad Turkomans, a pattern
never copied but preserved in memory from the times of Tamer-
lane; this drugget issued long ago from the loom of Kurdish
women of Erivan; the roll of rainbow-coloured silk came
slowly to light, like a dragon-fly above a reeking pond, in a mud
hovel of the torture-town of Bokhara, fieriest hot-bed of Mussul-
man fanaticism. The merchant will show you, too, turquoises
— handfuls of them, all small or of the worthless greenish hue.
Many times you ask him if he has not bigger turquoises and he
shakes his head. At the back of his iron strong-box, wrapped

TIFLIS OF THE CROSS-ROADS

207

in a dozen crumpled papers, he has a great one, of that mar-
vellous and indescribable blue which nature has produced only
in this stone. Will much persuasion wheedle it into sight for a
moment, or much money secure its possession for ever ? Maybe,
but I have my doubts, and they are based upon the unchanging
truth that at last,
between East and
W^est, pride of race
is stronger than
greed of gold. To
console you, how-
evei-, for the imat-
tainable azure, you
may find and carry
off a blue scimetar
li-om Daghestan, a
\vi"()ught-iron sta'.f
surmounted by an
oxhead with which
some old Persian
otftcer has led his
men to battle, a
Georgian pistol in-
laid with silver
iiiello work, and a
choice bit of gold-
encrusted ivory
from Kazi-Kumyk.
But Tiflis, this
"precipitate of history," these cross-roads between Europe and
Asia, excites your wonder and enchains your recollection chiefly
for its human conglomerate. Most of the speakers of its many
tongues have their distinctive costume, and indeed their own
well-marked faces. There is no mistaking the Tatars with their

A BIT OV OLD TIFLIS

2o8

ALL THE RUSSIAS

hats in the shape of a truncated cone, the aquiline-featured
Lesghians, the swarthy Persians with their long-pointed hats of
astrakhan fur, the Armenians with their flat caps, the Turko-
mans in huge shaggy hats of
sheepskin, the Wi^irtembergers
of the German colony in the old
Swabian costume, and most
marked of all, the Georgians in
the icJicrkess, with the kJuizir, the
row of cartridge-cases, across
??| the breast. The native gentle-
* man, an officer of high rank and
long service in war, who strides
into the hotel dining-room in his
uniform of chestnut and Indian
red, jingling with small - arms
and hung with medals even as a
Zulu is strung with cow'ries, is
certainly one of the most striking
figures I have ever seen. In fact,
I do not remember to have been
in the society of so many dis-
tinguished-looking people in my
life before; a grotip of princes
of the blood, ambassadors and
commanders -in -chief would
have everything to learn from
A CAUCASIAN TYPE— RosTOM THE GUIDE thcm lu thc mattcr of dcport-

ment. No matter who they may
be — the Smiths and Joneses, possibly, of Georgia and Dag-
hestan — their manners and their clothes hit off the choicest
expressions of dignity and distinction. That full-skirted woollen
coat, flying round the fine riding-boots, and hiding trousers of
carmine silk; that tight-fitting body-part, open at the breast to

TIFLIS OF THE CROSS-ROADS 209

show a shirt of richest cream-colour, hooked smartly over the
ribs and narrowly girdled at the waist by a belt of chased metal,
worn very tight, from which hang silver-worked poniard, sabre,
pistol-holster and other strange httings, combine to form a
costume of infinite spirit, to which the row of cartridges, sewn
on a cunning slant on each side of the breast, are a splendid
finish, even though the cartridges are but dummy bits of wood,
with gold or silver heads. Added to all this, the port of the
head in its black sheepskin hat, and the whole martial bearing,
make every man a field-marshal and the hero of a hundred
fights — to look at.

Are the women of Georgia as beautiful as we have always
been told ? When they become matrons, which is at an early age,
they are too stout and broad in the beam for beauty, but in their
youth, I should judge from glimpses at windows and passing
faces, there may well be extraordinary loveliness among them —
the loveliness of perfectly chiselled features true to the racial
type, large calm dark eyes, firm, full mouth, alabaster skin, in-
digo-black hair — the precise antithesis of the piquancy of irregu-
lar features and nervous temperament which generally passes for,
beauty among ourselves. These are women, you feel, whose lips
would whisper passionate love or, if times allowed, sing high
the song that sends their men to battle — whose fingers w^ould
grasp the dagger or fall lightly across the strings of the lute,
with equal aptness. Dagger and war-song, however, are out
of date in the Caucasus to-day.

One of the quaintest sights of the whole bazaar is its wine.
The district of Kakhetia, not far from here, produces red and
white wine, and a wine neither red nor white, but of the colour
of tawny port and the taste of brown sherry. This is for the
well-to-do ; the people's wine, costing incredibly little, is thin and
acid, but quite pure. Of course I have seen in many Eastern
countries wine-skins and water-skins, but a w-hole ox filled with
wine took me by surprise. There he lay at the ditkJuni door, on

2IO

ALL THE RUSSIAS

his back, his feet and head cut off and the holes tied up, bloated,
enormous. You call for a glass and the lace is loosed from his
foreleg and out pours the wine. The wine-shop itself is below the
street, and below it is a deeper cellar where a match shows row
upon row of these truncated wine-filled beeves, a bovine cata-
comb. In the ditkJiaii nearer the Persian bazaar I spent some rare
hours, eating black bread, smoking tobacco from Isfahan, drink-

ing the slender vintage from the foreleg of the biinlxiiki, and
listening to thrilling tales of Shamyl from one who had fought
against him for ten years.

Another experience of Tifiis is the bath. It is a luxurious,
modern, tile-fronted building in the heart of the Armenian ba-
zaar, belonging to a prince whose name escapes me. Abundant
springs of water strongly impregnated with sulphuretted hydro-
gen supply it, and in its vaulted chambers, far below the street,
there is no sound but the splash of the fountain and the rolling
echo of one's own voice. The iiiassciii; however, distinguishes

A WANDERING BEGGAR, TIFLIS

TIFLIS OF THE CROSS-ROADS 213

the bath of Titlis. He is a Persian, speaking but a word or two
of Russian. His head is shaved, round his waist a rag is twisted,
and his feet are dyed orange. First he rubs you like the sham-
pooer of Jermyn Street,then suddenly, as you He face downwards
on the marble slab, he is upon your back, his heels dug into your
spine, his hands grasping your shoulders to increase the pres-
sure, and slowly, with skilful appreciation of the lie of every
muscle, his feet grind up and down your back — they encircle

THE SHAMPOOER OF TIFLIS

your neck — ^they are on your head 1 Then he vaults lightly off,
and in a moment, from a linen bag filled with soap, he has
squeezed clouds of perfumed bubbles, and you are hidden in
them from head to feet, as completely as if you had fallen into a
snow-drift. So far, all is tolerable, if rather startling, but when,
wrapped in linen and beturbaned, you call for a cigarette and
he brings one, lights it between his own lips and would put it
between yours, the prejudices of the West arise, and you re-
pulse the well-meant attention of that orange-footed Oriental.
The bath costs you six shillings, but cleanliness is always a
luxury in the East.

It will occur to many readers, no doubt, to ask what is the

2 14 ALL THE RUSSIAS

political condition of these strangely mingled and once vigorous
nationalities, and howthey are affected towards their great rulers.
In spite of the enthusiasm they evoke, the small nationalities
almost disappear politically in the face of the colossal interests of
the Great Powers which control them directly or indirectly, and
the Caucasus is no exception to this rule. Before the Russo-
Turkish War the Georgians stood high in Russian favour ; they
held important public offices, and the social relations between
them and Russian officials were cordial. During the war doubts
arose as to their loyalty, and the Armenians took advantage of
this to push their own interests. Their well-known trading and
financial gifts were of much use to the Russians and very profit-
able to themselves. Bnt the Armenians have shared the fate of
the Georgians, for the Armenian troubles in Turkey bred a cer-
tain amount of real political agitation, and evoked fears of a great
deal more, with the not unnatural result that the Russian au-
thorities now cry a plague on both their houses, and exclude
Georgians and Armenians alike from office and influence. This
action, again, is naturally being followed by a recrudescence of
national feeling, especially among the Georgians. The national
costume, once almost abandoned, is now the fashion ; the national
literature is being fostered; and Georgian women talk less gossip
and more politics. But all this has no serious significance. Mr.
Oliver Wardrop, in his ''Kingdom of Georgia" (1888), wrote :
" Should Russia ever become involved in a great war, Georgia
would undoubtedly declare her independence and endeavour to
seize the Dariel Road; the Armenians and Lesghians would also
revolt each in their own way." My own opinion is that any
enemy of Russia that counted upon this would be disappointed ;
the time is past for a Georgian political nationality, unless, in-
deed, Russia should be already so hopelessly defeated as to break
up of her own weight. I doubt much whether, in spite of their
good looks and their martial clothes, the Georgians possess
capacity for any struggle or for the organisation which it would

"^ots-aaeiwr;

A CHAT AT THE WINE-SHOP. TIFLIS

TIFLIS OF THE CROSS-ROADS 217

necessitate if successful. Sporadic risings there might be if
Russia were defeated once or twice, but they would be crushed
without the slightest difficulty, and the only chance of success
they might have would be when Russia was too exhausted even
to attempt to put them down. Moreover, I saw no reason why
the Georgians should wish to revolt, for they are not oppressed
in any way, they have practically all the chances that Russians
themselves enjoy, they are treated very gently as regards mili-
tary service, and it is perfectly certain that if for any cause Russia
should cease to protect them, some other Power would have to
do so, for they are now incapable of taking care of themselves
or standing sword in hand, as they once did, between Europe and
the pressing hordes of Asia. In a word, the little nationalities
of the Caucasus present no political problem.

In a previous chapter I showed how the inevitable trend of
Russia is to the sunrise and the warm weather. The Caucasus
affords a further striking example of this. As may be seen by a
glance at my map (which shows railways projected and under
construction, not to be found, 1 believe, elsewhere), Russia is
stretching out her arm rapidly to the south, toward Persia and
its warm and commercial gulf which leads straight to India and
the East, in the shape of roads and railways. Already a railway
runs from Tifiis to Kars, and several other schemes are on foot
for further facilities of transport in the same direction. A railway
is already begun, and will be finished in three or four years, from
Karakles, below Alexandropol, down the valley of the Arpa-chai
to the valley of the Aras (Araxes), then by the side of the Aras
to Erivan, and on to Nakhitchevan and Julfa on the Russo-Per-
sian frontier. Another railway is under survey and considera-
tion from Baku to y\stara and Tabriz, with an alternative scheme
from Yevlach, on the present line, through Jebrail to Tabriz, An
important military road, about which not much is heard, runs
from Batum to Artvin, thence to Ardanautch, thence to Ardahan
thence to Kars, It is nuetalled from Batum to Artvin, and is

21 8 ALL THE RUSSIAS

being widened from Artvin to Ardanautch. It has been metalled
and in use for some time from Ardahan to Kars. Plans and
performances like these, at a time when money is scarce in Russia,
mean only one thing. And I believe, though much secrecy is
observed upon the matter, that the railway which Russia hopes
to lay through Persia to the sea, the route of which has already
been roughly surveyed, is intended to start on the frontier at
Julfa, and run, via Ahar, to Tabriz, Tehran, Isfahan, and Yezd,
and past Bunder Abbas to the Indian Ocean. But this railway
raises an international question of extreme delicacy, to which I
return later.*

Such is the Caucasus, in its various aspects — a rapid glance
at a great subject. I hope I have gone a little way, at any rate,
toward justifying my remark at the outset that it is perhaps on
the whole the most interesting land of the world. It has been,
as I said, unaccountably neglected, but I feel sure in advance
of the thanks of any, whether travellers in search of new scenes
or capitalists on the look-out for new enterprises, who take my
advice and visit it for themselves.

'- See Chapters XVII. and XXIV.

The Times has just learned, "from a trustworthy source," that the Russians
have decided to proceed at once with the construction of a railway which will connect
their Trans-Caspian line with the Persian province of Khorassan. This line will start
from Askhabad and be carried to Meshed, and the construction is expected to be
pushed forward rapidly. The line will enter Persian territory at Kettechinar, runup
the Deregez Valley, and keep along the river side until it strikes the existing main road
to Meshed between Durbadan and Imamkulich. A large party have been at work
pegging out the line, and attached to this party have been M. Stroieff, Dragoman of
the Meshed Russian Consulate, and the Ikram-ul-Mulk, late Karguzar of Kuchan.
Difficulties were met with in passing through villages, but it is said that these have
been arranged, and the Ikram-ul-Mulk has been given 12,000 roubles as a present.
It is understood in Askhabad that the money for the railway has been sanctioned and
is ready, and that the Russian Bank will open a branch almost immediately in Meshed
to assist the financing of the works. A gentleman from St. Petersburg was named
manager of the bank in Meshed, another official was to come from Teheran, and AH
Askar Khan, the interpreter of the State Bank, Askhabad, was also under orders to
proceed to Meshed. " There is,"' the Times adds, " a feeling of great uneasiness
amongst the official classes in Meshed, as it is impossible to predict what the advent
of this railway means." It means that Russia is hurrying upon her " historic
mission ' ' in view of Germany 's haste upon the enterprise described in Chapter XVII.

CHAPTER XV

THE OIL-WELLS OF BAKU

FATE has thrown a good many strange sights in my way,
but I think the oil-wells of Baku are as strange as any.
Directly after reaching the hotel I was called to the telephone,
and invited by Mr. Tweedy, at Balakhani, six miles away, to
spend the night there and see the wells next day. So I found
myself, after dark, driving from the little station of Balakhani
to the headquarters of the Russian Petroleum and Liquid Fuel
Company. The mud was a foot deep, there was no road in par-
ticular, but the droschky-driver took the direction which prom-
ised the best chance of escaping an upset, and we rocked about
till I was quite resigned to find myself floundering. The sur-
roundings were positively weird. Every few yards a pyramidal
structure, huge and ill defined in the dark, towered up; within
each was machinery hard at work, and mysterious hangings and
splashings issued ; in boiler-houses the lurid glow and fierce roar
of petroleum furnaces made night alarming ; and the whole air
was thick with the reek of oil. I longed for morning to bring
some sort of unity into this peculiar Hades.

With daylight came not only unifying knowledge, but also
fascination. To a man with imagination the business of petro-
leum-getting must combine in itself the things which delight the
gold prospector, the sportsman, the surgeon, the mechanician
and the gambler. Like the prospector, the oil-seeker may look
long in vain, and then suddenly run full tilt against riches.
Like the sportsman, he may have the quarry just within his reach,
and then in a second lose it. Like the surgeon, he uses instru-

220 ALL THE RUSSIAS

ments to perform strange and delicate tasks in the dark, guided
only by a fine sense of touch and a knowledge of the body in
which he is working. Like the mechanician, he must always be
inventing new and more ingenious tools. Like the gambler, he
ranges headlong over rising and falling values. After the pen,
I think the oil-borer would be my choice of implement where-
with to solve the great problem.

To leave generalities and come to plain facts, this is in brief
the story of an oil-well. The mysterious processes of nature,
whether animal or vegetable —probably the former — which pro-
duce petroleum in the bowels of the earth, have taken place in
an unusual degree under the eastern shore of the Caucasian
peninsula, wherethe town of Baku has risen — and where, I may
incidentally add, this town has increased by twenty-five per cent.
in fifteen months, where house rents have doubled in the same
time, and where you may see a string of camels crossing a tram-
way line under an electric light. This petroleum-bearing land
used to be leased by the Russian Government at a nominal rental ;
now it is put up to auction. A certain number of pouds (a poud
is thirtv-six lb.) of oil is supposed to be available for a certain
area, and the bidding is by kopecks (say farthings) per poud of
that number. Having acquired the land, the concessionaire pro-
ceeds to sink his wells. First he erects the pyramidal w^ooden
structure, about seventy feet high, called the " derrick," with a
large grooved wheel, like that over a colliery shaft, at its apex.
He puts in an engine and a winding drum, and then the digging
begins. It is of the first importance to have as wide a shaft as
possible, because the wider the shaft the greater the dimension
of the "baler," or elongated bucket, in which the oil is ultimately
brought to the surface, and therefore the greater the yield of
oil per diem and the larger the profit. So nowadays the first
tubes of wrought-iron of which the well consists may be as wide
as twenty-eight or thirty inches. A kind of huge spade, weigh-
intJ perhaps half a ton, is suspended from a beam, which balances

THE OIL-WELLS OF BAKU

221

like the beam of a beam-engine. This spade is fixed to its shaft
by a sort of bayonet catch, and when the beam hfts the whole
apparatus a man standing over the well gives it a half turn, and
the spade falls two feet, striking the ground a heavy blow, the
beam allows the shaft to fall upon it, pick it up and raise it again,
the man gives another half turn, the spade falls again, and so on
for hours with ex-
traordinary rapid-
ity, the spade fall-
ing perhaps thirty
times a minute.
This is known as
the " free fall " sys-
tem, from the
German Freifall.
After a while the
earth is extracted
by means of a co-
lossal shell-auger,
and the iron tube
is lowered into
place.

The spades are
of all shapes and
sizes, and so far
all is plain sailing.
But by-and-by
accidents happen.

Spades break, tubes collapse under the enormous pressure
necessary to force them into place, steel ropes and chains give
way and precipitate the whole apparatus into the well, or the
apparatus gets twisted or broken and jams fast perhaps a
thousand feet below the surface. Or perhaps even a wrench
or a heavy bolt falls into the well — quite enough to prevent

A "fountain" at BAKU

222 ALL THE RUSSIAS

the " free fall " from working. Then the fun begins — not that
the well-owner regards it as fun at all. But the business of
picking up these things seems to me an intoxicating task.
Remember that your accident has happened perhaps 1500 feet
underground, in a tube perhaps a foot in diameter, perhaps
only six inches, for, as the well goes deeper, its diameter de-
creases. You do not know what the accident is — you only
know that something, perhaps everything, has gone to smash
down there. Or you may know that you have a ton of broken,
twisted iron jammed tight in the narrow iron tube, with a
quarter of a mile of wire rope or chain piled up pell-mell on the
top of it. Your business is to get it all out — and the oil-borer
does get it all out. In his workshop are laid side by side scores
of surgical instruments — tweezers, pincers, forceps, probes,
snares, ecraseiirs, expanding things which grasp a tube by the
inside, revolving knives which cut a three-inch iron bar or a
12-inch tube, eccentric hooks which put straight anything lying
on its side, so that the pincers can seize it, and in fact a replica
of every ghastly implement of modern surgery that I know,
except a speculum. There is this little difference, however, that
each of these instruments weighs a quarter of a ton or more, that
a whole day is not too much in which to lower it, let it do its work,
or fail to do it, and hoist it up again, and that the oil-surgeon has
nothing whatever to guide him except the light of pure imagi-
native genius and the waggle in his hand of a wire rope which
has half a ton dangling from it a quarter of a mile below. The
reader should not now be surprised when I add that in a moment
something drops into the well, and that it sometimes takes the
most skilful engineer six months to pick it up. I looked with pro-
found respect upon the man who accomplishes such things. He
happened to be a Caucasian prince, but that had nothing to do
with my admiration. Never in my life have I seen anything
which demanded such infinite patience. Waiting for the Foreign
Office to publish a Blue-book is child's play in comparison.

THE OIL-WELLS OF BAKU 223

But at length the engineer has his splendid reward. The oil
stratum is reached, he rolls affectionately in his hand the slimy
sand that the digger brings up — he is sure there is oil ! So to
the wire rope a hollow cylinder, twenty to thirty feet long and an
inch or two less in diameter than the lowest tubes, with a plunge-
valve at the bottom, is attached, and cautiously lowered. It
comes back by-and-by, the valve is pushed open as it is gently
lowered upon a board, and out pours a quarter of a ton of sand,
slime, water — and the precious oil. At last it is only oil, and
then the well is pumped night and day till it runs dry.

It takes on an average fifteen months to dig a well, and may
cost five or six thousand pounds. The tubes alone for a well 2000
feet deep cost ;^'30oo. But perhaps it will give you five hundred
tons of oil a day. The average life of a well may be said to be
three years, but of course it is often vastly more. There is, it
must be added, the horrid chance — rare hereabouts — that after all
your boring you may find nothing. Three miles from here a Rus-
sian well-owner sank a well 1995 feet and failed to get a trace of
oil. But, on the other hand — and this is where the gambler's
excitement comes in — you may have the delirious joy of getting
a " fountain," and then hats are thrown up and dividends mount
skyward. A " fountain " is an artesian well of oil which bursts up-
ward with incredible force and gives you as much oil in a minute
for nothing asyou could pump in twenty-four hours of labour and
expense. Perhaps it blows the huge baler through the derrick
roof and into somebody else's boiler-house, knocks the derrick it-
self into splinters, hurls up great stones like cannon-balls, buries
the machinery in sand and slime and oil, and floods the reservoirs
and roads — nitchevo, the more the better, it is coining gold for
its lucky owners. The Russian Petroleum Companvhad a "foun-
tain " once which gave forty million pouds of oil in two months.
The world went very well then. Curiously enough, a fountain
made its welcome appearance on the same property the very day
I went to say good-bye to Mr. Tweedy, its managing director

224 ALL THE RUSSIAS

in London, whom by good luck I found at Baku, and he had of
course rushed off to see it. This is a good opportunity for me
to say how much I am indebted to Mr. Tweedy for the oppor-
tunities of studying and understanding the business of oil-
getting. His knowledge of the subject is minute and profound,
he has rendered great services to the successful investment of
British capital in Baku, and after what I have written it is per-
haps hardly necessary to add that his enthusiasm 's contagious.

Such is, in hasty outline, the business of oil-getting on its
mechanical side. Imagine a couple of thousand of these black
derricks crowded together, with a network of little canals,
reservoirs dug in the ground, and pipes innumerable just laid
about, one above another, exactly as they happened to lie most
conveniently — the pipes which carry off the oil to the reservoirs
at a little distance, the whole place ceaselessly reeking, smoking,
steaming, and humming, and you know what Balakhani looks
like, and why it seemed so strange to me when I drove through
it at night.

Since so much British capital is invested in this district cer-
tain statistics concerning the production of oil may be read with
interest, especially since they point to some important conclu-
sions regarding the future prospects of the industry. The num-
ber of firms and companies engaged in 1899 ^'^^ 160, owning
1357 active wells. Of these firms 62 sprang up during the pre-
vious two years, and 26 of them were still at the boring stage.
All attempts to "strike oil," in spite of extensive and deep boring,
outside the five proved areas of the Apsheron Peninsula, namely,
Bibi-Eibatandthegreat oil-field formed by Balakhani, Sabuntchi,
Romani and Binagadi, have proved wholly unsuccessful. The
total output for 1899* (to which the Binagadi area contributed
very little) was 2,167,801,130 gallons. This was over 162,000,000
gallons more than in 1898, but though this great increase looks

* The figures here given are taken from the report of the official Russian super-
visor of the petroleum industry at Baku, as published in the official ViestnikFinanzoJ.

THE OIL-WELLS OF BAKU

225

very satisfactory :it first sijfht, furtlier examination gives it a less
encouraging aspect. In the iirst place, the relative increase com-
pared with previous years shows a marked decline ; and second,
theseincreascs arc nothing like so great as the increases in energy
and expenditure in boring operations. In 1899 the enormous
sum of ;£r2, 600,000 was spent on boring alone, and 572,761 feet
of wells were bored, against 402,605 feet in 1898— an increase

il 1; \ll \\A\

of over 42 per cent. Thus for a 42 per cent, increase of effort,
only an 8 per cent, increase of output was obtained. This is not
quite so bad as it looks, for a number of wells, especially on the
Bibi-Eibat area, were only commenced in the second half of the
year, and could not have become productive. But it points to
the serious fact that the whole oil-field is becoming less pro-
ductive. This conclusion is clearly borne out by other figures.
The number of inactive wells, for instance, has increased by
nearly 50 per cent., whereas the number of active wells has
increased by only 24 per cent. Of the five areas, moreover, only
Sabuntchi and Balakhani showed an absolute increase of out-
put. Most significant of all, however, are the facts that the

22 6 ALL THE RUSSIAS

" fountains " — i.e. wells where the oil is forced to the surface
by confined gas, showing that the seam has no other sufficient
outlet— have decreased by one-half ; and that the average pro-
ductiveness of wells has regularly diminished, while their
average depth has as regularly increased. This is strikingly
shown by the oflicial figures when arranged thus :

Average Production Average Deptbi

per Well in Gallons. per Well in Feet.

1895 . . . 2,578,996 . • • 853

1896 . . . 2,171,922 ... 895

1897 . . . 1,926,292 . . . 897

1898 . . . 1,811,672 ... 917

1899 . . . i,597>495 ■ • • 937

These figures are again confirmed by the fact that whereas in
1895 only 2 per cent, of the wells were " deep" ones — i.e. over
1400 feet in depth — and gave only 5.4 per cent, of the total out-
put, in 1899 over 10 per cent, of the wells were "deep," and
gave over 29 per cent, of the total output.

The conclusion is thus unavoidable that the upper levels of
oil-strata are becoming exhausted, and that in the future the
supply of petroleum from the Baku district will depend more
and more upon deep borings, until these in their turn become
exhausted, or the extreme depth possible for boring and pump-
ing is reached. In other words, the approaching exhaustion of
this great oil-field is unquestionably foreshadowed, though no
man can foretell when this point will be reached. I happen to
know, by the way, that Russian engineers have discovered
another oil-field, which they believe to be of the highest value,
in an entirely dilTerent district, at a considerable distance from
Baku. For certain good reasons no particulars concerning
this have yet been made public. It is also practically a cer-
tainty that valuable oil-fields will be found in other parts of the
Caucasus itself.

I should say, however, though of course I speak entirely as
a non-expert, that the above statistics and considerations deserve

THE OIL-WELLS OF BAKU 227

the careful attention of investors in oil-hearin^f properties at
Baku.

From Baku my way now lies across the Caspian Sea, and
to tlie wild, world-famous towns of the heart of Asia, once so
far away that a man could make a reputation by riding to one
of them, now so intimately connected WMth the commerce of
the world that the price of cotton is telegraphed to them every
morning from Liverpool.

CENTRAL ASIA

CHAPTER XVI

THE TRANS-CASPIAN RAILWAY : ACROSS CENTRAL
ASIA BY TRAIN

NOT many years ago — since a middle-aged man left
college, in fact — a journey to the heart of Central Asia
involved several curious preliminaries. P'irst of all, making a will,
because the chances of your coming back again were slender.
Second, a perfect colloquial knowledge of at least one Eastern
language. Third, an Oriental cast of countenance, and much skill
in disguising it. Fourth, a most unusual love of adventure and
stock of personal courage. For you were going to places as
suspicious as Mecca, as hostile to the stranger as Thibet, as
fanatical as nowhere else, and amongst other things you were
running the risk of a fate unequalled in sheer horror in the
whole wide world, namely, being eaten alive by vermin trained
for the purpose. The qualifications mentioned above were pos-
sessed by Arminius Vambery, which accounts for his successful
journey and safe return, and the fate alluded to was suffered
by our countrymen Stoddart and Conolly in the 'forties.

Nowadays the undertaking is simpler and less perilous. To
begin with, you apply to the Russian authorities for special per-
mission to travel in the Trans-Caspian military district. Usually
they accord it ; if they do not, you don't go. Supposing they do,
you betake yourself to Baku, by the route you have read about
here, or some other ; you drive down in the evening to the wharf
of the Caucasus and Mercury Steamship Company — stopping on
the way, if you have the proper traveller's foresight, to buy a
thousand cigarettes, a bottle of something for strictly medical

THE TRANS-CASPIAN RAILWAY 229

use, and a dozen tins of sardines ; you take a ticket for Krasno-
vodsk, and a perspiiinj^ Persian carries your luggage on board
a sturdy little paddle-boat, built thirty years ago on the Tyne.
If you are lucky, you travel with the same captain that I did, who
knows about as much French as you know Russian, but whose
geniality is wholly independent of any philological basis ; you

Tin-; i,.\M>iN(;-siA(;i-: at kkasn(i\

have a jovial little supper with him ; you turn into a comfortable
cabin ; and some time after you are asleep the ship paddles out
into the blue Caspian, her nose turned toward the rising sun.
Not much danger so far, and disguise superfluous.

Eighteen hours is the allotted time for the sea-crossing, and
in fine weather it is enough. Coming back we took forty, for
there was a wind and sea that at times made us think it would
have been safer, after all, to be in old-fashioned Central Asia, to
say nothing of the man we lost overboard. Going East, however,
the Caspian was like a pond, and on the crowded decks, with their
conspicuous division of quarters for "Men," "Women," and

230

ALL THE RUSSIAS

" Persians," happiness reigned, and everybody ate sunflower-
seeds and brewed tea. The oily reek of Baku was far behind
the Caspian was as still as a lake, and at last the little paddle-boat
turned sharply round a sand-spit and brought into view a hun-
dred flat white houses, scattered at the foot of converging bare
brown hills, like a few crystals of sugar at the bottom of a
brown cup, and we were at Krasnovodsk — " Red Water," though
why so called I cannot tell, for there is no fresh water there at

r\llii.\ A'l KRAsN(j\OI)SK

all, except what they produce every day in the big distillery,
and the sea is a deep Italian blue.

Here, according to some authorities, in bygone ages the
mighty Oxus emptied itself into the sea, so that from Peter the
Great's time till now there has always been a project of bringing
it back to its old bed. The town is new, for the original starting-
point of the Trans-Caspian Railway was at Uzun-Ada, farther to
the south, in a bay which proved unsuitable for shipping. Mud-
brown mountains hem it closely round ; not a green leaf or a
drop of fresh water is in sight, the place is as burnt and dry as
the inside of a baker's oven. And in November a hot and daz-
zling sun is still beating down into it ! The long, handsome white

THE TRANS-CASPIAN RAILWAY 231

stone building, of consistent Oriental architecture, is the railway
station, for Russia lays solidly and artistically the foundation-
stones of her empire, no matter how remote they may be, and
there stands the train, all white, ready for its incredible journey.
The next most conspicuous building is the distillery, which sup-
plies both the town and the line, and the next is a sort of military
depot, half barracks and half prison— a halting-place between
Europe and Asia for soldiers and convicts alike.

No foreigner, as I have said, lands at Krasnovodsk without
special permission ; Russia watches all strangers on her frontiers
— and England's — hereabouts. Mine was obtained from St.
Petersburg through the British Foreign Office before I started.
Thewooden pier was crowded withciviliansand porters — Persian
hamals — and, where the steamer was to touch, a group of uni-
formed police stood, with a military band behind them. When
we were within a few yards the music struck up, and as soon as
the gang-plank was in position the chief of police came aboard,
and nobody else. The captain awaited him. Were there any
foreigners on board ? One — myself. My name ? An official list
was produced from a portfolio and consulted. Pozhahiista ! — " If
you please" — and I was politely invited ashore. In St. Peters-
burg it is the official pleasure to smile when you speak of special
permission being necessary for the Trans-Caspian Railway. They
take it seriously enough at Krasnovodsk. I may add that after
this original formality — with the single exception of the Chief of
Police, an army Colonel at Askhabad, who curtly summoned me
to his office and kept me waiting for an hour and a half, and then
charged me before all his subordinates with being in Central Asia
without permission, the fact being that not only had I special per-
mission but also the highest official letters of personal introduc-
tion to all the principal authorities — I received the greatest
possible courtesy and assistance from the Russian officials every-
where, a courtesy going so far on one occasion as a mounted
torchlight escort of Cossacks. It is, however, but natural that

232 ALL THE RUSSIAS

the Russians should be ready to show what they have done in
Central Asia. They have every reason to be proud of it.

On the Trans-Caspian Railway there are two kinds of train —
the train and the post-train. And the difference between them is
that the latter has a restaurant-car and the former has not. The
post-train has an extra passenger-carriage, and the train has sev-
eral freight-cars, but the speed is the same and the discomfort is
the same. For what the Russian railway service gives you in extra
comfo'-t on the magnificent Siberian Express, it takes out of you
in exira fatigue and dirt on the Trans-Caspian. The train that

awaited me was the
post-train and con-
sisted of hve corridor
carriages, the last be-
ing a restaurant-car
all of them painted
white. The lender of
the engine was an oil-
tank, and behind ir,
on a fiat truck, was
an enormous wooden
tub, to hold water,

THE TRANS-CASPIAN TRAIN ' '

for in Central Asia
there is little fuel, and water is the most precious commodity
that exists. But a glance at the train raised a most painful
suspicion, which a visit to the ticket-office confirmed — there is
not a first-class carriage on the Trans-Caspian Railway ! It was
not snobbery which evoked one's consternation at this disco verv.
A thousand miles of a slow, hot, dusty journey lay before me, and
even in European Russia the prospect of a thousand miles in a
second-class carriage would be farfrom pleasant, while in Central
Asia, with ample experience in other lands of what a native crowd
is, it was appalling. Let me say at once that it more than ful-
filled all my expectations. The ordinary second-class, too, has

THE TRANS-CASPIAN RAILWAY 233

narrow, flat wooden seats, with thin, hard cushions spread on
them. After a couple of nights ©n one of these you are stiff for a
week. There is a carriage which has stuffed seats, but it is half
second and half third, and the toilette arrangements are all in the
third-class half. Moreover, in the stuffed cashions are passengers
without number who pay no fare. 1 still wriggle as I think of
those carriages, for on one never-to-be-forgotten stage I became
perforce what a recent Act of Parliament calls a " verminous per-
son." Now, to go unwashed is bad, but to share your washing
with third-class Russian Asiatic passengers is not only worse— it
is impossible. P^u-thermore, while the railway authorities have
separate third-cla^-s carriages for Europeans and natives, the
second class is open to both. Their idea probably was that the
higher fare would deter the native passenger, but this is far from
beingthe case,so prosperous has the sedentary Sart becomeunder
Russian rule. Therefore your carriage is invaded by a host of
natives with their innumerable bundles, their water-pots and their
tea-pots, then- curiosity and their expectoration. They do not
understand the unwritten law which reserves to you the seat you
have once occupied ; they dump themselves and their belongings
anywhere, and they are very difficult to detach ; they are entirely
amiable; they follow your every movement for hr^urs with an
unblinking curiosity ; and they smell strong. I hope I have noth-
ing but goodwill for my Eastern fellow-man,and I assuredly often
find him more interesting than peoplewith white skins, but I have
the greatest objection to passing days and nights crowded close
with him in an overheated railway carriage. And if I expatiate
somewhat upon this minor topic it is because the Trans-Caspian
railway journey is such a remarkable experience and affords such
rare and vast interests, that everybody who can afford the time
and money should take it, and the [Russian authorities should do
all in their power to make the actual travelling as tolerable as
possible. As things are at present, I should not advise any lady
to come who is not prepared for some of the most personally

234 ALL THE RUSSIAS

objectionable sides of "roughing it." Prince Hilkoff, however,
Minister of Railways, is so prompt to make any improvement or
to inaugurate any new enterprise that if this plaint should meet
his eye it may well be that no future traveller will have occasion
to make it. There is also one other little matter which calls for
attention. Formerly the train at Krasnovodsk waited for the
steamer from Baku. Now the local railway authority causes it
to start precisely at three, even if the steamer is coming into
harbour. So it has happened that the train has started with-
out a single passenger, while the wretched people arriving by
steamer have had to pass twenty-three hours in some railway
carriages, there being nothing of the nature of an hotel at
Krasnovodsk. Such an absurdity should be corrected, but the
fact that there is a railway here at all is so marvellous that
every other consideration is insignificant beside it.

There is a strange medley on the platform before we start.
Crowds of ragged porters, jostling and jabbering in Persian and
broken Russian, and carrying huge bundles of native luggage
tied in carpets ; a few civilians — merchants and commercial tra-
vellers ; Armenian " drummers," sharp and swarthy, for Persian
firms; a score of officers in various uniforms; several soldiers
sweating in heavy grey overcoats — they badly need a bath — and
old, patched breeches of red morocco leather ; three officers in
the handsome green and gold of iht pogranichnaya strazlia, the
frontier guards, soldiers and customs-officers in one ; specimens
of most of the natives of Central Asia ; and myself, the only
foreigner. There are no fewer than eleven parallel lines of rail,
for either military purposes or freight accommodation, as maybe
needed. At three o'clock we start, and between the bare brown
hills and the still blue sea the train runs slowly along for hours.
It carries, as I said, its oil-fuel, and its water in a huge wooden
tank on a truck behind the engine, for the country is a desert,
andthestationsaremerely the little white houses of the employees,
appearing as specks in the wilderness. The low indented coast-

THE TRANS-CASPIAN RAILWAY

^2>S

line, within a few yards of our ri<^lit, reminds me of the Mediter-
ranean coast, between Marseilles and Nice, but here there are in
every bay thousands of white-breasted ducks. For twenty-five
miles the line runs across an absolutely barren plain ; sunset linds
us traversing a salty waste, dotted with scanty bushes, and when I
look out of the window in the middle of the night, a bright moon
shines on the same desolate scene. But at eight o'clock next

GEOK TEPE, THE Ol.li kAMi-AKIs AM) IIIK ,\h:\V RAILWAY

morning comes a sudden thrill. Over a little station are written
the magic words " Geok Tepe," and I rush out to see if any-
thing remains to tell of the terrible battle and more terrible
slaughter of 1881. Sure enough, on the opposite side of the
line, only fifty yards away, is the whole story, and luckily the
train is accidentally delayed long enough to enable me to make
a hasty visit to the historic spot.

It is a rectangular fortress, a thousand yards square, formed
by a high and thick earthen wall and rampart. The sides are rid-
dled with bullet-holes — not a square yard is untouched, while
scores of gaps in the top show where shells have burst. Several
complete breaches gape wide, and one whole corner is gone —
that is where the mine exploded, giving both the signal and
the occasion for the final attack. Here raged for three whole

236 ALL THE RUSSIAS

weeks an almost uninterrupted battle, fought by both sides with
a ferocious courage never surpassed in history; here Skobelef,
and Kuropatkin under him, won their greatest laurels; here
Russia became mistress of Trans-Caspia ; here died a gallant and
an interesting race. TheTekke Turkomans first drove back the
Russian General Lomakin ; then they completely routed Lazaref
at this very spot, and swept in triumph over the whole country.
For two years Skobelef made his preparations, and on Jan-
uary I, 1881, he delivered his first attack upon this Turkoman
stronghold with 8000 troops and more than fifty guns. Inside
was the flower of the Turkoman race, with 7000 women and
children. Their felt tents were set on fire by petroleum bombs,
artillery rained shell and shrapnel on them, gradually the trenches
drew nearer ; but they fought with a desperation which kept the
Russians at bay for three weeks, and on more than one occasion
they routed the invaders in a hand-to-hand struggle and slashed
them to death in their own trenches, leaving Russian heads and
limbs scattered about. But the inevitable end came, and the
slauf^hter of every male left in the fortress, and, after it, that ter-
rible Cossack pursuit of flying men and women for ten miles.
Opinions differ as to this part of the struggle. What is certain
is, that never since that time has a Turkoman hand been raised
against Russia, nor ever will be. If you would strike only once,
and thus be more merciful in the end, you must strike hard, was
Skobelef's motto in dealing with (Orientals, as it has been that
of all who have understood the Eastern character. Trans-Caspia
has been aspeaceful as paradise since then. But Turkoman brides
cost few cattle for many years, as all the bridegrooms lay beneath
Geok Tepe, and the knell of the Turkoman, so hospitable to
strangers, so terrible in his raids, so devoted to his proud
steed, so independent and gay in his moving home, was
sounded. He died as he had lived, and the stone crosses in
the gaps in his fortress wall tell how many Russians, as fearless
as himself, went with him where brave dead soldiers go.

THE TRANS-CASPIAN RAILWAY 237

With a natural desire to perpetuate the memory of their own
victories, the Russians have built between therailway station and
the nuns a pretty little museum of white stone. In front of it
stands a Turkoman cannon, captured by them from the Persians
in one of their innumerable raids. This has its glorious story, too,
for though it was mounted on the ramparts of Geok Tepe the
Turkomans did not know how to use it, and, having captured
some Russian artillerymen, they ordered them to fire it on their
own comrades, or be slaughtered on the spot. The Russians loy-
ally chose death. In the museum are portraits of Skobelef and
the other commanders, and a collection of Turkoman guns and
swords — poor tools against artillery and petroleum bombs, throw-
ing the bravery of these nomad horsemen into still higher relief.
I ran up the rough earthen steps leading to the shattered ram-
parts and looked through them at the busy station, the white
train, and the groups of officers strolling up and down the
platform. It was the advance of Russia at a glance.

For some time now we have had the mountains to our right,
and the country has become more populated, though theherbage
is still thin, and long strings of camels wind across the plain. The
Turkoman mud houses are hardly visible, but the villages of
Khirghiz kihitkas, round felt tents, make picturesque groups.
There is neither cuttmg nor embankment, the line being simply
laid upon the surface of the plain. When General Annenkof was
building it, with almost superhuman energy and a confident en-
thusiasm which events have more than justified, everything re-
quired — rails, sleepers, men, food, water, protection — had to be
moved forward by a train always following the railhead. Even
to-day a large proportion of the stopping-places are j ust stations,
and nothing else — a house, a storehouse embedded in the
ground as a protection against both heat and cold, a well, built
round with sloping stones and planted around with trees — the

238 ALL THE RUSSIAS

only trees in the landscape, a few shaggy black cattle, and
often, too, a little unfenced cemetery in the open desert, with
half a dozen wooden crosses to mark its site. The station-master
and his family who live in these houses have no nearer neigh-
bours than their fellow-officials at the stations on either side
of them, and no connection with the world except by the one
passenger train daily in each direction, whose arrival is the
chief daily event at every place. At Askhabad, the administra-
tive centre of Trans-Caspia, where we arrived an hour and a
half after leaving Geok Tepe, a military band played us in, a
crowd was waiting on the platform, and an officer of gendarmes,
recognising me as a foreigner, became anxious and made many
pointed inquiries. East and West mingled here in curious
fashion — elegant ladies escorted by smart officers, alongside
big Turkomans in mulberry-coloured dressing-gowns and enor-
mous hats of shaggy black sheepskin, their bare feet thrust
into thick leather shoes.

From Askhabad a carriage road of one hundred and seventy
miles runs across the Persian frontier to Meshed, a town of the
greatest interest to the two rival nations of Asia. It has a flourish-
ing trade with Russia, Afghanistan, and thence with India and
Bokhara. After Mecca and Kerbela (near Baghdad) it is the
holiest goal of Moslem pilgrims, of whom 100,000 are said to
visit the tomb of the hnani Reza every year. The Persian schis-
matic Mohammedans have their headquarters there in a mosque
whose doors are studded with rubies, and whose library contains
over a thousand Korans. But far more important than either
commerce or creed. Meshed "the Holy" is only one hundred
and ninety-five miles from Herat as the crow flies, and a road
two hundred and thirty miles long connects the prosperous Per-
sian town and the Afghan fortress supposed to be the key to the
invasion of India. Therefore Russia and England keep very
active rival intelligence departments there and struggle diplo-
matically for influence. The proximity of Meshed has perhaps

THE TRANS-CASPIAN RAILWAY 239

something to do with the fact that Askhabad is the mihtary
centre of this part of Russian Central Asia, with a garrison of
10,000 men and stores of every kind on a war footing. A few
years ago the tea and indigo of India used to supply Central
Asia from this centre, but when Russia became paramount
here her first care was to destroy British trade by excessive
duties and even direct prohibition, and in this task she has
been only too successful.

After Askhabad the desert once more, till at last cultivated,
irrigated land appears, and at each little station is a great heap
of bales of cotton, for the harvest has just been gathered, await-
ing transport. It has come for the most part on camels, and
while their owners chat these are tethered in a quaint manner,
tied nose and tail in a vicious circle, so that each is fast between
two others. Midway in the burnt plain is a magnificent old fort-
ress, its good preservation telling how few years have passed
since these same plains held the wild life of immemorial time.
A belt of fertile land extends for fifteen miles from these moun-
tains to the south, deliciously green in spring, but now only
covered with dwarfed scrub — tamarisk, I think. In summer
the heat is terrible, rising to 155 at midday, and even now, in
mid-November, one is glad to get out of the sun.

At nine o'clock at night and 556 miles from our starting-
point, another sensation. Most readers will remember how
the word " Merv " once rang through England, thanks to
O'Donovan and Marvin and Vambery, as the possible cause
of war with Russia, whose absorption of Central Asia brought
her here in 1884 — just a year before Parliament, at Glad-
stone's behest, voted ^£'1 1,000,000 of war-money at a sitting in
view of Russia's next step south ; how the fears of some people
that Russia meant to seize it, and beyond it, all Central Asia,
gave rise to the sarcastic adjective " mervousness " ; how Russia
assured us that she did not mean to take it ; how she took it
soon afterwards ; and how she built from it a line with no other

240 ALL THE RUSSIAS

possible object but, should need arise, to hurry troops toward
India. Well, the train slackens speed on the second evening,
draws up to a long platform full of brilliant uniforms whose
wearers are escorting elegant ladies, u^hile a band strikes up a
gay tune, and your window stops exactly opposite the word
" Merv" over the central doorway. You cannot quite believe
it. But it is a fact, for the whole oasis of Merv, one of the most
fertile spots in the world, is as Russian as Riga, and when
you say " Merv " in Central Asia you mean a long, low, neat
stone railway station, lit by a score of bright lamps in a row,
where the train changes engines, while in a busy telegraph-office
a dozen operators sit before their clicking instruments ; and if
you are a Russian officer or official you mean also a brand-new
town where a pestilent malarial fever is sure to catch you
sooner or later, and very likely to kill you.

But Merv has long ceased to be a Russian boundary, for in
the dark you can see a branch line of railway stealing south-
ward across the plain. This is the famous Murghab Branch, the
strategical line of one hundred and ninety miles along the river
to the place the Russians call Kushkinski Post, close to the
frontier of Afghanistan, a short distance from Kushk itself and
only eighty miles from Herat.* The Russians keep this line
absolutely secret, no permission to travel by it having ever been
granted to a foreigner. My own permission for Central Asia
read, "With the exception of the Murghab Branch."

This line is purely strategic and military. Neither trade nor
agriculture is served by it ; nor would anybody ever buy a ticket
by it, if it were open to all the world, as it may be before long.
Moreover, it runs through such a fever-haunted district that Rus-
sian carpenters, who can earn two roubles a day on it, throw up
the job and go back to earn fifty kopecks at home. The line is

* This line has since been prolonged a few miles to Chahel Dokhteran, on the
very frontier, and a branch is building through Penjdeh to Maruchak, where the
Murghab River crosses the frontier.

THE TRANS-CASPIAN RAILWAY

241

simply a deliberate military measure aj^ainst Great Britain. It
serves at present only the purpose of facilitating the invasion of
India, or rather of enabling Russia to squeeze England by pre-
tending to prepare the lirst steps of an invasion of India, when-
ever such a pretence may facilitate her diplomacy in Europe.
In simple truth, it places Herat at her mercy. The Merv-Kushk
line, I may add, is now completed, and two regular trains a week
run over it, at the rate of something less than ten miles an

A GLASS OF TEA WHILE TlIK TKALN STOPS

hour, reaching the Afghan frontier terminus in eighteen hours.
The country on both sides of it is a desert, with tufts of hardy
scrub. Wild pig abound, and pheasants, of which this country
is the original home. The fever I have spoken of attacks a
man suddenly, the spleen swells, he turns as yellow as in jaun-
dice, becomes unconscious on the second day, and then recovers
or dies. Those working on the railway say that recovery de-
pends upon whether there is a train immediately after the attack
to take you to the hospital at Merv. If you have just missed
the bi-weekly train, you die. But the epidemic will doubtless

242 ALL THE RUSSIAS

diminish in frequency and in virulence as there is less necessity
to dig up the ground. In the East — even at Hongkong, for
instance — stirring of the soil almost always produces illness.
Armenians, the pioneers of trade in this part of the world, are
trying to open up trade at Kushk Post, but hitherto w^ith little
success. From the Russian post the Afghan frontier is visible,
and the Russian sentries can be discerned with the naked eye.
There is one line of them on the top ridge of the hills, and
another upon the slope beyond. Beyond these are the Afghan
posts,

Kushkinski Post itself consists of about a score of houses,
with something like fifty white inhabitants, apart from soldiers.
There are no white women in the settlement, and nothing like
an hotel. The officers have established a little military club, where
they take their meals. During the great heat of summer, ice,
or rather snow, is brought regularly by train. At first the only
fortification, 1 was told, consisted of a series of detached ram-
parts, within which the artillery was quartered. The infantry
and Cossack barracks, and the ofKcers' quarters — little grey one-
storey houses — are in the town. A temporary line of rails, how'-
ever, had been laid down from the main line to convey material
for building a second fort, on the right of the terminus, and two
hundred labourers had been brought — which meant that the
garrison was to be increased. There is also a considerable rail-
way workshop, and a depot, where presumably rails, &c.,are kept
in readiness for a hast}- prolongation of the line — precisely as is
the case at our own terminus on the Indian frontier. I read, by
the way, in a recent work, that the relations of the Russians
and the Afghans are very friendly. The contrary is the case.
Russians described the Afghans to me as " very dangerous,"
and told me that it had happened more than once that Russian
officers out shooting had accidentally crossed the boundary and
been pursued by armed Afghans. The Afghan posts let nobody
pass, and no trade, and there is no custom-house of any kind.

THE TRANS-CASPIAN RAILWAY 243

Allo<^ether, this particular I'Jussian outpost of Empire must be
about as disaj^reeable a place of exile as can be imagined — which
is precisely what officers who have been stationed there say about
it. Of course, I did not myself see any of the things I have
mentioned, but they were matters of common conversation
with my acquaintances in the train.

Most interestingof all, however, as one standshere on the edge
of the platform and looks down the few hundred yards of this
mysterious Merv-Kushk line visible in the dark, is to reflect that
if the future brings war between England and Russia its roaring
tide will flow over these very rails for the invasion of India, and
that if it brings peace this will be a station on the through line
between Calais and Kandahar. Some day surely, though it
may be long, long hence, and only when tens of thousands of
Russian and British soldier-ghosts are wandering through the
shades of Walhalla, the traveller from London will hear on
this very platform the cry, " Change here for Calcutta ! "

For some time after Merv the train passes through this world-
famed oasis, then for more than fifty miles it traverses the heart-
breaking desert of sand. Central Asia, in fact, as one views it from
the train, is a desert broken by oases. Where a river descends
from the mountains on the south, and is caught and measured
and allotted and distributed till it sometimes disappears alto-
gether in the sands, there is fertility — luxurious vegetations and
enormous crops, such fertility, indeed, as hardly exists else-
where. The moment the irrigated area is passed, the burnt
desert begins again, where nothing grows but stunted tamarisk
and the prickly camel's thorn — indeed, for hour after hour one
often sees not even these poor struggles after plant life. Here", on
either side, as far as the eye reaches, is a yellow plain of ribbed
sand. The earth has surely nothing more dreary to show, and it
is dangerous, too, for the wind blows it up and over the track,

244

ALL THE RUSSIAS

and at the best, companies of men must sweep it away, while
at the worst it chokes the locomotive and brings the train to a
standstill. Sometimes the whole service of the railway is sus-
pended by such a wind. The only help is found in the saxaul,
a stunted, gnarled bush whose twisted roots bind the sand
together as osiers bind mud. This being so, I was astonished

A MYSTERY IN TRANS-CASPIA— TURKOMANS EXAMININC THE TRAIN

to see that the fuel in the stoves of the train was heaps of
tangled saxaul roots and branches.

By-and-by vegetation begins again — timidly at first, but soon
luxuriously, for we are on the edge of the most wonderful river
in the world, not excepting the Nile. At the station which now
bears the name of the river, Amu Darya, but used to be called
Charjui, one hundred and fifty miles beyond Merv, we halt for
twenty-five minutes, and then creep forw-ard at a snail's pace.
At first by close-packed mud-houses, deep in tropical vegetation,
then out upon a wooden bridge over long mud flats, then, barely
moving at all, over the Amu Darya — the mighty and immortal

I'HE TRANS-CASPIAN RAILWAY 245

Oxus itself. The bridife is :i narrow, low way, upon trestles and
piles, but it is one of Ihc engineering wonders of the world, for
it is a mile and three-quarters long, the river runs fast over its
deep mud, and every balk of timber — there are 3300 piles in
the river-bed alone — had to be brought from Russia down the
Volga and then transported these seven hundred miles by rail.
It is as dry as tinder, for rain is almost unknown here. Every
quarter of a mile there is a fire station, with a great cistern of
water and buckets, over which stands a sentry with fixed bayonet.
Fire is the nightmare of the guardians of the bridge, but though
I am not of a nervous temperament I must confess I was much
more afraid of water — the dashing, swirling, coffee-coloured
water below, between us and which was such a narrow, slender
support of twelve years old wood, every single timber creaking
against its neighbour in a sickening fashion. Without exaggera-
tion, I should not have been surprised if the whole thing had
collapsed in an instant, and I was glad to see the solid ground
imderneath once more. The authorities seem to share this
fear, for our speed was the slowest at which the engine could
move at all. And, in spite of the great cost and the emptiness
of the Russian official pocket just now, they are working with
utmost speed upon a new bridge a quarter of a mile to the
north. A number of huge iron cylindrical piers are in place,
a dozen engines are puffing, huge heaps of dressed stones and
limbers lie about, and an army of men is at work,

I saw this scene for the first time at sunrise, and I count that
among the most impressive moments of my life. These waters
rise mysteriously in the "Roof of the World " ; for 1500 miles
they roll through the land which has been the scene of the most
marvellous human episodes ; they were looked upon by the first
of mankind, for the cradle of our race was there, and they have
qualified the schemes of many of the greatest ; the legions of
Alexander and Genghiz Khan and Tamerlane drank at them ; we
hear of them at the beginning of Genesis, and they may well yet

246 ALL THE RUSSIAS

be one of the pathways of the last great war of human history.
The railway jars sadly upon one's thoughts of such a scene. One
feels vulgar to pass through the heart of Asia, the mother of
peoples, to the accompaniment of the restaurant-car and the con-
ductor's whistle. The Turkoman, silent in his dignity, wrapped in
reserve as in his flowing garments, looking upon the invading
stranger and his iron modernitieswith inscrutable eyes — it is with
him, and like him, that one would wish to journey here, and learn
and wonder. Most welcome, therefore, comes the recollection
of Matthew Arnold's noble lines upon these immemorial waters:

But the majestic river floated on,

Out of the mist and hum of that low land,

Into tlie frosty starlight, and there moved,

Rejoicing, through the hush'd Chorasmian waste.

Under the solitary moon ; — he flow'd

Right for the polar star, past Orgunje,='-

Brimming, and bright, and large ; then sands begin

To hem his watery march, and dam his streams,

And split his currents ; that for many a league

The shorn and parcell'd Oxus strains along

Through beds of sand and matted rushy isles —

Oxus, forgetting the bright speed he had

In his high mountain-cradle in Pamere,

A foil'd circuitous wanderer — till at last

The long'd-for dash of waves is heard, and wide

His luminous home of waters opens, bright

And tranquil, from whose floor the new-bathed stars

Emerge, and shine upon the Aral Sea.f

By breakfast time we are running amid houses and fields and
trees, with dignified Bokharans on horseback everywhere in sight.
And now the great names of Asia follow fast. Seventy miles
beyond the Oxus, and seven hundred and eighty altogether, bring
us to Bokhara. A neat, stone-built station like Merv, but larger,
a long row of droschkies outside, and a little town of new white
houses — that is all the passing traveller sees. The old Bokhara,

"■ Khiva. f " Sohrab and Rustum."

THE TRANS-CASPIAN RAILWAY 247

"the noble," the seat of the learning of Asia nearly a thousand
years ago, and always tiie home of its most savage bigotry, the
city with a connected history of more than twelve hundred years,
is eight miles away in the fertile land, while the station itself is in
the desert. When they brought the railway the Russians were
still afraid of the fanatical Bokharans; now they wish they had
run their line past the very gates of the city. On the platform a
native barber is rapidly shaving heads with a huge hatchet-shaped
razor. A woman completely hidden in a dark blue garment sits
with her face to the wall, while her husband arranges cushions
and washes grapes, and then they proceed to a breakfast of fruit
and flapjacks. The Turkoman head-dress of shaggy sheepskin
has wholly disappeared, and in place of it there are big burly
Bokharans in enormous white tuibans and khalats of flowered
and striped cotton over their tunics, their feet in elegant green-
heeled morocco boots, and these tucked into a couple of pairs
of slippers, one over the other. They crowd into the train the
moment it stops, mostly into the second class (remember there
is no first class), and make themselves very much at home.
All their belongings come in with them, packed — including, in
every case, a long-necked copper water-bottle — in a pair of car-
pet saddle-bags slung oveir their shoulder. The native passen-
gers leave the train, and, squatting down a few yards beyond
the track, perform their ceremonial ablutions and pray toward
Mecca. Then they go over to the melon-sellers and return with
an enormous water-melon to make a pickaninnygape with envy,
and this they proceed to eat in the carriage. These people have
never been crushed like the Turkomans ; their independence
is still nominally preserved to them, for their own Amir can
have their throats cut in the bazaar at his pleasure, and their
looks and actions are therefore those of free men. They behave,
in fact, as if the train belonged to them, and the unfortunate
foreigner is crushed in his corner — if he has been lucky enough
to keep a corner — by mere weight of humanity.

248 ALL THE RUSSIAS

The flocks of sheep and goats are the most striking feature
of the landscape as we proceed, and among the latter are huge
billy-goats, as big as a pony and twice as thick, with horns a yard
long tossing over them. Then come the first really cultivated
fields we have seen, surrounded by low mud walls, some under
water and all cleverly irrigated, with winter rice or corn just
coming up. After a while the water-supply stops — not a blade
can be grown in this country without irrigation, therefore the
water-supply is subject to the most rigorous supervision and
scrupulous distribution, what Matthew Arnold calls " the shorn
and parcell'd Oxus," in a line as remarkable for its exact accu-
racy as for its perfect music — the desert regains its sway, and for
hours w^e pass over an absolutely flat plain, unbroken at an
horizon, without a living thing upon it but tufts of coarse grass
a few inches high. Then gradually signs of the neighbourhood
of a river reappear, willows and alders and big trees like maples,
irrigation channels, planted fields, winter crops just green above
the surface. Ruined strongholds, similar to those one sees in
the Balkans, where a whole village had to be ready to run for
safety against Turkish marauders, tell their own tale of the rich
life hereabouts and the state of society in years long past. Some
of these little castles are now inhabited by villagers, and some
are in almost perfect preservation, walls, gates, towers, crene-
lated battlements and all. At half-past seven, nine hours after
leaving Bokhara, and 934 miles from the Caspian, the train stops,
and opposite my window is the magic name " Samarkand," redo-
lent of the East and its roses, the city which Tamerlane made
the Asiatic Athens, alike for the renown of its learning and the
magnificence of its monuments. A glimpse of a wooden town
in a park of verdure, a twenty minutes' halt, a capital meal in
the restaurant, and we are off again. Of course, I lingered in
these famous cities on my return — now^ I go straight through.
Five hours later we are at the junction of Chernayevo, where
the line divides, one branch going northward to Tashkent, the

THE TRANS-CASPIAN RAILWAY

249

other continuing eastward to Andijan, in the heart of the cot-
ton country. At hist, sixty-six hours and 1153 miles from
Krasnovodsk, the train stops for good, in the lieart of Asia, at
the large, handsome station of Tashkent, the administrative
centre of Turkestan and the residence of the Governor-General
of the whole Trans-Caspian region.

The following condensed time-lable will show the reader
this journey— the most remarkable train-journey in the world
— at a iilance :

\iiLi-:s.

STATKiN.

IIOl

i; ui- .\uKivAi

Krasnovodsk .

(departure)

3.00 P.M.

208

Kizil-Arvat

2.36 A.M.

343

Askhabad

9-45 A.M.

556

Merv ....

g.io P.M.

574

Hairani-Ali

10.25 P-^'-

706

Amu- Darya (Charjui)

5.07 A.M.

780

Bokhara ....

10.04 A.M.

886

Katti- Kurgan .

4.40 P.M.

934

Samarkand

7.30 P.M.

1005

Jisak . . . .

11.40 P.M.

1059

Chernayevo

2.55 A.M.

1 1 53

Tashkent.

8.40 A.M.

1059

Chernayevo

(departure)

4.00 A.M.

iioS

Khodjcnt.

6.45 A.M.

1177

Kokand ....

10.55 A.M.

1226

Marge! an

2.ig P.M.

1261

Andijan ....

5.15 P.M.

The principal stations are thus sixteen, but the total num-
ber of stations is ninety-six — seventy-seven to the junction of
Chernayevo, five to Tashkent on the northern branch, and four-
teen to Andijan on the eastern branch. The total length of the
railway, including both branches, is 2053 versts — 1355 miles —
and the average speed, from Krasnovodsk, the starting-point on
the Caspian, to Tashkent, the northern terminus, including all
stoppages, is seventeen and one-half miles an hour. But ex-

250

ALL THE RUSSIAS

eluding the eight scheduled stops, amounting to two hours and
.twenty-five minutes, and allowing three minutes at each of the
other stations, the actual average speed while running works out
at over twenty miles an hour — a highly creditable performance
and much superior to that of the Trans-Siberian Railway.

Merely as a railway the Trans-Caspian is in no way extraor-
dinary. Except for the absence of labour, timber, and water,
which necessitated a rolling camp following upon the heels of

BKEAD-SELLERS AT A STATION

the working party, and the passage of the sand desert, it pre-
sented no difficulties, and the only engineering exploit is the
bridge over the Oxus. But, as I said at the beginning, the as-
tounding fact is that it is here at all. It was begun on June 30,
1885 ; Merv was reached in July 1886 ; the Amu-Darya in
June 1887 ; the bridge, 4600 yards long, was opened for traffic
in January 1888; Samarkand reached in May 1888 ; and Tash-
kent soon afterward. Thus twenty years ago it was not thought
of as it exists to-day ; the notion of it was even strenuously repu-
diated by Russian statesmen when England grew nervous about

THE TRANS-CASPIAN RAILWAY 253

their intentions. Twenty-five years ago Samarkand and Tash-
kent were only to be reached by adventurous travellers carry-
ing their lives in their hands ; Bokhara was as dangerous and as
inaccessible as the capital of Thibet is to-day; Andijan was un-
heard of ; England would not have tolerated for a moment the
idea of the absorption of all Central Asia by Russia. Now
Russia has it all — for ever, beyond the possibility of internal
revolt or external attack; you **book" to Kokand as easily as to
Kent or Kentucky ; you are as safe there as in Calcutta or
Colorado ; the raihvay has brought Russian troops once more
close to the frontier of China, and actually to the frontier of
Afghanistan ; most wonderful of all, this line, planned and
carried out as a purely military work, is already paying its way
handsomely, and has been transferred from military to civil
administrators. And it has brought peace and commerce and
civilisation, as Russia understands the word, to a vast region
where so few years ago utter barbarism reigned. The military
advantages it confers are too great and too conspicuous to call
for mention. It is a daring enterprise, magnificently executed.
Physical difficulties and diplomatic obstacles have been alike
overcome or disregarded. Moreover, it is but the beginning of
what is to be in this part of the world. No thoughtful foreigner
can make the journey without conceiving a profound admira-
tion of Russia's courage and a profound respect for her powers.
Russians have every right to be proud of their Trans-Caspian
conquest and its symbol, the railway ; for the rest of the world
it is half a dozen object-lessons in one.

CHAPTER XVII

RUSSIAN EXPANSION IN CENTRAL ASIA

THE railway which Russia has pushed forward through the
region of tropic heat has worked a revohition not less than
that which she has thrust across the region of Arctic cold. Indeed
the Trans-Caspian Railway has accomplished more than the
Trans-Siberian, for whereas the remotest districts of Siberia have
been accessible for generations to anybody who had time and
endurance enough to undertake a journey of many weeks in
tarantass or sleigh, Central Asia a few years ago was hermetically
sealed except to the courageousfew who, knowingthe languages,
were prepared to penetrate it in disguise, at the risk of torture
and death, beyond the reach of any possible succour or rescue in
case of mishap. Moreover, in Siberia, there was always river
transport in summer, slow, but cheap and safe ; in Central Asia
the camel was the only carrier. Therefore the Trans-Caspian
Railway was destined by nature to have a revolutionary effect,
and this has been even more than was foreseen. Not to burden
these pages with figures, I may say that in 1885, two years
before the railway reached Samarkand, the total imports and
exports of the province of Turkestan amounted to 40,475 tons,
while in 1896, after the railway had been in operation eight
years, they had risen to 159,229 tons, and the increase is pro-
ceeding rapidly and steadily. In 1897, ^^^ district of Andijan
alone exported 19,000 tons of cotton, and along the eastern
portion of the line I saw acres and acres of bales awaiting ship-
ment, while everywhere I heard complaints of the insufficiency
of rolling stock to meet the demands of growers. Yet the line
itself is laid as in Russia, except for the first hundred miles,

RUSSIAN EXPANSION IN CENTRAL ASIA 255

where the rails are tlie old light ones originally laid to Uzun-
Ada ; the roadway is solidly ballasted ; and the speed, as I
have shown, is good. The income from freight and passengers
is not yet enough, of course, to pay interest on the whole
capital expenditure, but it more than pays all working ex-
penses, and for the rest Russia has the enormous strategical
advantages it gives her, and the certainty that the pecuniary re-
turns will be greater every year. The gross receipts for 1899
were £^C)0 — say $3000 — per mile, and the total movement of
freight 376,000 tons.

Russia is not satisfied, however, with the brilliant results she
has achieved — British trade, once so flourishing, driven from Cen-
tral Asia ; a great domestic trade created ; Trans-Caspia, Bokhara,
Turkestan closely connected with European Russia ; a railway
station placed upon the Afghan frontier; and the rich province
of Khorassan as good as annexed. As usual, it is a supposed
strategic necessity that is urging her on. At present, in the eyes
of her strategists, the Trans-Caspian is an isolated railway. It
depends upon the military district of the Caucasus alone. If a
Russian army is'ever required in Central Asia — a possibility which
every Russian strategist feels compelled to contemplate — it will
be a great one, it will demand vast quantities of supplies behind it,
and both men and uiatcrid will be w^anted quickly. Taking Mos-
cow or Warsaw as the military centre of Russia, this movement
would have to take place, as things are now, by the rail route
of Rostof, Vladikavkaz, Petrofsk, Baku, thence across the Cas-
pian, and another seven or eight hundred miles to where the
troops were wanted — a long and costly journey, and without
sufficient steamer accommodation on the Caspian Sea. By rail
to Samara or Saratof, and thence down the Volga and across the
Caspian to Baku, would be even longer in point of time. Why
does Russia think her troops must be more quickly moved than
either of these two routes would allow ? She know^s that she has
no invasion from India to fear, and that, whether her forces were

256 ALL THE RUSSIAS

gathered quickly or slowly, they would find the same mili-
tary concentration awaiting them on the Indian frontier or in
Afghanistan.

The explanation is simple, and has recently been put forward
in an almost semi-official manner in Russia.* It is an absolutely
determined part of her policy to have an outlet on the Persian
Gulf — to carry her south-western frontier to the warm water.f
With her present railway system, however, she does not feel
strong enough to meet the opposition that this step — practically
the annexation of Persia — might provoke. The definite project

* See "The Shortest Railway Route from Central Europe to Central Asia"
(St. Petersburg, 1899) and R. E. C. Long, "Russian Railway Policy in Asia,"
Fortnightly Revieiv, December 1899.

t It may be remarked that Russian writers have been for some time urging upon
the Russian Government the necessity of pushing a railway to the Indian Ocean with -
out delay. For instance, Professor Hermann Brunnhofer, of St. Petersburg, in a
volume of essays called " Russia's Hand over Asia," published three years ago,
advocated the seizure of the little Persian seaport of Bender Jesseh, near Ormuz, as
an offset to the expected British occupation of Bender Abbas. He wrote :

' ' Bender Jesseh is, so to speak, the Russian Vladivostok on the Indian Ocean. If
Western Siberia and Central Asia are not to be excluded from the great trade of the
world in future, they must endeavour to come into direct communication with the
Indian Ocean. Gigantic as the advantages are which the Siberian Railway will confer
on the Russian Empire, it will in the future not be able to meet the still more gigantic
demands which will be made upon it by international traffic, the produce of Russo-
Siberianand Chinese soil, the industries, and the civil and military administrations.
A second Pacific railway through Siberia, analogous to the three Pacific railways
running through North America, is absolutely impossible. If Russia, therefore,
wishes to, and will, safeguard the future, the centre of her Empire — viz. Western
Siberia and Central Asia — she must, in the first instance, keep open the access to the
Indian Ocean. The railway to Bender Jesseh will probably start from Askhabad,
south-east, via Kotchan, to Meshed and Herat ; then curve westward to Birjand,
cross the terrible Lut Desert, and reach Kerman. From here it will run to Bender
Jesseh, after overcoming considerable difficulties. The harbour of this commercial
town is good, and only open to south-east winds. The anchorage is five metres deep
at oneand one-half kilometres distance from the shore, and eight metres deep at three
kilometres distance. Bender Jesseh is connected by a regular weekly steamship
service with Kurachi and Bombay on the east, and with Bushire and Busraonthe
west."

This railway, he added, would have its greatest value in rendering Russia
"entirely independent of the Dardanelles and the Suez Canal." And in this
connection it is a curious fact that Suez Canal shares fell when the concession for
the Baghdad railway was announced.

RUSSIAN EXPANSION IN CENTRAL ASIA 257

of such a railway would (unless a preliminary agreement had
been reached), precipitate hostile action by England ; it would in
all probability cause a Mohammedan rising ; like the Trans-Cas-
pian, the railway would be isolated from Europe, and moreover it
would be open to military attack from Egypt and India. Most
important consideration of all, Germany stands possessed dc jure
of the right of which Russia is hurrying to become possessed
(Ic fiicfo, namely, to build a railway connecting the present Euro-
pean system with the Persian Gulf. Russia's fear is intense,
therefore, that Germany, or England and Germany in co-opera-
tion, will create direct transit between Europe and India, and will
do this before she herself is in a position either to prevent it or
to offer an alternative. For the Russian view is that the trade
of the world is insufficient to support two railway connections
between Europe and India, and that therefore whenever one such
connection is made, any other becomes impossible. And this
connection Russia has always been determined to have for her-
self. The answer to the above question, therefore, is this : Russia
is extremely anxious to extend her railway system in Central
Asia, (i) to bring her military centres into direct connection with
the Afghan and Persian frontiers, in view of possible hostilities
with England ; (2) to secure for herself the future railway trade-
route between Europe and India, by offering a shorter and
cheaper line before the alternative route rm Baghdad is con-
structed ; (3) by thus rendering the construction of this latter
railway an unprofitable undertaking, to remove the one fatal
obstacle to an ultimate port for herself upon the Persian Gulf ;
(4) to develop further her own Central Asian territories. From
a Russian point of view the reasons are certainly convincing.

The German project is so important, in itself, as affecting the
future of Russia in Central Asia, and as possibly compromising
gravely the relations between the two Empires, that all students
of foreign affairs are watching its development with great atten-
tion, and I may pause a moment here to give a brief account of it.

258 ALL THE RUSSIAS

From the time of the Armenian massacres, when Germany
so conspicuously declined to join in any coercive measures, the
relations of the Kaiser and the Sultan have grown steadily more
intimate, as exhibited during the war with Greece, and in the
former's triumphal visits to Constantinople and Jerusalem. The
climax — assuredly foreseen and planned^ — came in the signature,
in December 1899, of the concession to a German company of
the right to build a railway across Asia Minor to Baghdad, with
an obvious ultimate terminus in the great harbour of Koweit, at
the head of the Persian Gulf. The Russian Ambassador had
moved heaven and earth to prevent this concession being given
to Germany, and a British syndicate had even offered to con-
struct the line without any State guarantee at all. But so powerful
was the combination of Baron Marschall von Bieberstein, the
German Ambassador in Constantinople, and Dr. von Siemens,
the director of the Deutsche Bank, that they not only obtained
the concession but also in it an undertaking from the Turkish
Government to pay to the Company a kilometrical guarantee or
subsidy of j^iooo per mile per annum — that is, a yearly payment
in all of _^'240,ooo — .S^I, 200,000 ! This is the most striking diplo-
matic success of modern times, and the rebuff to Russia is,
of course, proportionate to the triumph of Germany. I say
nothing of the rebuff to England ; the conduct of our foreign
affairs of late has accustomed us to rebuffs. But it is worthy
of remark that the final struggle for this great concession was
taking place in Constantinople at the precise time when the
Kaiser was in England and when the first startHng disaster of
the Boer War had just occurred.

The proposed railway is an extension of the line rapidly built
and well worked by Germany, from Haidar-Pasha, on the Bos-
phorus (where a German company has just been formed, with the
Sultan's approval, to develop a harbour), via Ismid, Eskishehr,
and Afiun kara-hissar, to Konia. The new line will proceed
§oi;thward to Kerman^ at the foot of the Taurus Mountains^ then

RUSSIAN EXPANSION IN CENTRAL ASIA 259

skirt this range north-eastward to EregH, cross it by the famous
pass to Adana (whence there is already a short EngHsh Hne to
the Mediterranean), and proceed to Tell-ha-besh (with a branch
to Aleppo), bridging the Euphrates at Europus, and via Mosul
(near Nineveh), Tekrit, and Beled (with a branch to Khannikin,
on the Persian frontier, whence a line might profitably be run via
Kermanshahan, Aamadan, and Kum, to Tehran) to Baghdad.
Thence the line will continue via Kerbela, Nedjef, and Busra, to
Kozima, at the head of the magnificent harbour of Koweit, where
there is to be a German naval coaling-station — four days' steam
from Bombay ! To bring this railway into connection wuth
European lines the Bosphorus is to be spanned by a bridge
gratefully named after the present Sultan, and a recent well-in-
formed anonymous writer calculates that Kozima will be reached
in three and a half days from Constantinople, and ten days from
Berlin. The length of the new railway will be 1750 miles, and
according to the concession it is to be finished by 1907. But
although the concession was signed two years ago, the first
shovelful of earth has yet to be lifted^and for the very good
reason that Turkey is utterly unable to pay the guarantee she
has promised unless she is permitted by the Powers to increase
her import duties from eight to eleven per cent., which, backed
of course by Germany, she is now desirous of doing. But
England has the preponderant share of Turkish trade, and
therefore for her to consent to burden her trade in order that
Germany may build a railway to rob her of an important trade-
route is, as has been said, like asking her to contribute to the
cost of the razor for cutting her own throat.

The harbour of Koweit has just enjoyed a period of con-
siderable diplomatic and naval prominence, unquestionably in
connection with the development of the German scheme. In
January 1900 it was visited by a German mission, accompanied
by the German Consul-General in Constantinople, and several
engineers, including the chief engineer of the Baghdad Rail-

26o ALL THE RUSSIAS

way. This mission requested the Sheikh of Kovveit, Mubarek
el Sabbah, /// tJie name of the Sitltan of Turkey, to cede to Ger-
many the village of Kadne, on the northern shore of the Ko-
weit inlet. The Sheikh declined to do so. Next, a Turkish
force of 3000 men was collected at Busra, where Izzet Bey,
said to be one of the Sultan's chief advisers upon Arabian affairs,
had been spending several months, and in August last the
Turkish corvette Sehah arrived at Koweit with some of this
force on board, to occupy the place — a previous attempt to ■
smash Mubarek through his enemy Ibn el Rashid, Emir of
Nejd, having failed. But when the Scliab reached Koweit she
found a British gunboat already there, the commander of
which prohibited her from landing troops, and a British naval
force was promptly concentrated in the Gulf. In view of the
relations of Turkey and Germany one need not be unduly
suspicious to suppose that if the Sultan had succeeded in
occupying Koweit, its cession to Germany would have been
the next step. Those who have a taste for such things will
greatly enjoy the following comment of the Kolnischc Zeitung
upon the incident :

" In the political sphere the Koweit question threatens to
assume a certain importance. It is naturally not in the interest
of Turkey, nor in that of those who will build and work the
railway, that the terminus, the excellent harbour of Koweit, on
the shores of which Kozima lies, should be alienated from the
immediate sovereignty of Turkey. The ' Salnameh,' the Tur-
kish statistical annual, regularly registers Koweit as ' Kaasa '
and its Sheikh as a Kaimakam. This clearly shows that
Koweit is accounted Turkish territory, although the exercise
of sovereign rights had been ceded to the Sheikh for the time
being. The question of the form in which the State should
exercise its sovereignty may best be left to itself. The fact
that Koweit belongs to Turkey cannot be impugned, and
English atlases have till now exhibited no dubiety on this point.

SCALE Op-

K^T*. MONGOLIA

%, oTashkurafan Tfj^r ^* ^

<\SIA.

RAILWAY EXPANSION IN CENTRAL ASIA.

RUSSIAN EXPANSION IN CENTRAL ASIA 261

It must be regarded as highly improbable that England means
to alter this situation by violent means, and it is equally im-
probable that the Sultan of his own accord will divest himself
of rights which are of great importance for Turkey and for
the working of the contemplated great railway. In an epoch
which has given birth to Pan-Islamism, a movement with
many promising aspects, the renunciation of the sovereignty
of the Sultan over Mahomedan territory in Asia would be a
step which would be entirely inconsistent."

A blind man could read between the lines of this inspired
utterance. The spectacle of Christian Germany invoking Pan-
Islamism on behalf of her own political and commercial ambi-
tions is both .instructive and entertaining.*

What is this railway to accomplish ? " The German calcula-
tion is, of course," says the anonymous writer I have already
quoted, " not only that new trade will be developed, but that the
course of present trade will be altered. It is expected that British
vessels will cease to be the chief medium between Central Europe
and the East. Passenger traffic with India is to be almost ab-
sorbed by the Baghdad Railway,reached from Londonand Paris
i'ia Munich and Vienna." But far more than this, Asia Minor
is to serve for the overflow population of the Fatherland ; its
grain is to render Germany independent of the United States
and Russia ; Mesopotamia, irrigated anew, is to overflow with
agricultural wealth ; tobacco, silk, oil, petroleum, are to be
produced lavishly ; and a German fleet, at a naval base four
days from Bombay, with a railway to Germany behind it, is to
alter the balance of power in Asia. All discussion of these
developments is stifled in Germany at present, but a glance at

* A second incident of a similar kind has since (December 1901) happened at
Koweit. A Turkish official from Busra visited Koweit and hoisted the Turkish flag
there, whereupon the commander of a British gunboat hauled it down and hoisted
Mubarek's own flag. The Porte has repudiated its official's action and assured
England that it has no desire to disturb the status quo. The French and Russian
press is angry, but the Russian Government has privately disavowed any aggres-
sive intention in that part of the world,

262 ALL THE RUSSIAS

the map, combined with an elementary knowledge of ancient
economic history, is sufficient to show them plainly.

This, then, is the very serious rivalry which Russia has now
to face in her cherished policy. It is not surprising that she is
genuinely alarmed. Two years ago (November 1899) the Riisski
Tnid, a well-informed weekly, since suppressed, prophetically re-
marked : " We have repeatedly urged that before great interests
have been developed in Persia the whole of this country must
somehow or other be drawn into the sphere of Russian influence.
What we can now attain without any sacrifices on our side, later
on, when the auspicious moment will have passed, would require
immense efforts in a struggle with Germany, which has for a long
time past been aiming at the Persian Gulf." A month later, when
the Turkish concession to Germany was known, the Novoye
Vremya expatiated with alarm upon the " terrible blow " which
Germany would be able to deal to Russian trade, and upon the
prospect of Russia having to fight in Persia " not only against
the British, but against a whole coalition of Western Commer-
cial adventurers," while the Sviet saw Russia face to face not
with the Triple but with a Quadruple and even a Quintuple
Alliance, formed by the adhesion of Great Britain and Turkey
to Germany, Austria, and Italy. Now the Novoye Vrcniya
announces frankly that " before the German Baghdad Railway
has become an accomplished fact, Russia's railway projects in
Persia will have been advanced to an important stage," and
in its alarm even holds out a surprising olive-branch to
England :

" We cannot conceal from ourselves the fact that the Near
Orient is of immense importance to us. It is absolutely indis-
pensable to the final accomplishment of an historical task im-
posed by Providence upon Russia. As England is perfectly well
aware of this, she has swayed hither and thither, pro and cow,
in her dealings with Germany with regard to the latter's
Baghdad Railway scheme. . , , Had England conferred one-

RUSSIAN EXPANSION IN CENTRAL ASIA 263

half the favours upon this country which she has heaped upon
her wily and ungrateful German neighbour, there would to-day
exist a cordial and durable Anglo-Russian entente, if not,
indeed, a complete and lasting Alliance.*

I have already described briefly what Russia is doing in the
matter of railway expansion towards the Persian frontier, and
what her further intentions are believed to be.f

In 1898 Count Vladimir Kapnist, cousin of the then Russian
Ambassador in Vienna, applied on behalf of an international syn-
dicate for a concession to construct a railway from Tripoli to
Koweit, uniting the Mediterranean with the Persian Gulf, with
the double object of developing the marvellously rich country
traversed by the Euphrates and the Tigris, and of reducing the
journey from Brindisi to Bombay from thirteen days to eight.l
In spite of very influential support, however, the scheme fell
through. The claim that such a railway would have added enor-
mously to the wealth of the world appears to be well founded,

* Under the circumstances this overture maybe read with a smile in England,
but for my own part I believe the assertion in the last paragraph (omitting the
adjectives applied to Germany) to be unquestionably true.

t See Chapter XIV., and also Chapter XXIV.

J The following was the exact route laid down by the engineers to the syndicate.
From Tripoli the line would followthe sea-coast as far as the Nahr-el-Kebir, and then
up the course of that river over the lowest and easiest pass which could be found
through the chain of mountains running parallel to the Syrian coast. The line would
reach a summit level of about 2000 feet above the sea between Tripoli and Horns, on
a plateau of hard black basalt. Thence it would proceed to Homs, which is about
1500 feet above the sea, and on through Palmyra, past numerous villages, to Rahaba,
on the Euphrates, following, in the main, the present caravan route. The railway
would go down the valley of the Euphrates as far as El Kaim, then over the plains to
Hit, where it would cross the river and proceed to Iskanderieh, the junction for Bagh-
dad and for Khannikin (on the Persian frontier), and to Kerbela and Nedjef, the
famousshrines and burial-places of the Persian Mahomedans, on the south ; thence,
in as nearly a straight line as possible, across the great alluvial plain between the two
rivers to Kurna, where it would again cross the Euphrates and be continued to Busra,
and thence across country to Koweit, on the Persian Gulf. — Tli e Times, Decem-
ber 17, i8g8. Another application for a similar railway concession, this timefrom
Alexandretta to Aleppo and thence to Hit and onward, issa.\d{Daily Mail , April 27,
1899) to have been unsuccessfully made by Mr. Ernest Rechnitzer, a Hungarian
^^nker resident ip London, backed by English, German, and Belgian capital,

264 ALL THE RUSSIAS

but as it would not have strengthened Germany or Russia to
the exclusion of other nations it was doubtless wrecked by the
opposition, or failed to succeed for lack of the official support,
of one or both of these Powers. Russia has never turned aside
from her "historical task," however. Her agents have worked
with complete success in the Persian capital ; a good road has
been built by a group of Moscow merchants, heavily backed by
Imperial subsidies, from Resht, on the Caspian, to Tehran ; the
Shah's "Cossacks" are commanded by Russian officers and have
recently been increased in number to 2000 ; and parties of her
surveyors have examined the railway routes to the Gulf. That
her present aim is the incorporation of Persia in the Russian
Empire admits of no doubt whatever; indeed it was recently
openly avowed by the Chief Officer, a personage of princely
rank, of the Grand Duke Alexander Michaelovitch, of the
battleship Rostishrc', at a banquet in Odessa, who declared it
to be just as certain that Persia would become Russian as that
Manchuria had already done so.*

All accounts, official and private, agree that Russia has been
extremely active in Persia of late, and she has twice despatched
to the Gulf ports a steamship named the Koniilov, carrying Rus-
sian goods with which to open trade relations, and an investi-
gating commission of twenty merchants, and is also stated to
have sent a lighter draught vessel, the Azov, to enable her
admiralty hydrographers to take soundings of important points.
Her newspapers declare that her forward policy in Persia is
due to the British preparations for a railway from Quetta to
Siestan, and ultimately to Busra — "another base from w^hich
she may attack us in Central Asia" 1— but, as a matter of plain
fact, no direct evidence of Russian aims in this direction need
be adduced. Her determination to construct such a railway
as is here described follows naturally and logically from her
political, geographical, and commercial conditions, and would

* See The Standard, July 22, 1901.

RUSSIAN EXPANSION IN CENTRAL ASIA 265

similarly follow in the case of any other nation so situated.
It would be of such enormous value to her, from every point
of view, that her statesmen would be poor in patriotism indeed
if they did not make every conceivable effort to secure it.*
Other nations, however, may be equally interested to prevent
it, but this aspect of the situation is apart from the matter in
hand, and I shall return to it later, in connection with the
political relations of Russia with her neighbours, great and
small, t

This somewhat lengthy digression has been intended to show
what reasons Russia has, or thinks she has, for linking her Euro-
pean railway system without delay to her Trans-Caspian Railway.
I return now to Central Asia, with the reflection, to begin with,
that the position of this link must chiefly depend upon its im-
mediate object. For one of two practical considerations would
be decisive : the route would be selected either for its strategical
value and to form ultimately the connection with India, or else
primarily for the development of new territory. If the former,
then the shortest and most direct route would undoubtedly have
been from Saratof, on the Volga, to the little town of Alexandrof-
gai, one hundred and forty miles to the south-east (the two are
already connected by a narrow-gauge railway), bending round the
north of the Caspian and the south of the Aral Sea, and running
straight by Khiva to the station of Amu-Darya (Charjui) on the
main line of the Trans-Caspian Railway. Thisrailway would have
the disadvantage of passingthrough comparatively poor territory,
but it would be almost a straight line from Moscow to Amu-
Darya, and, via Mew and Kushk Post, would place the head-
quarters of the Russian army within literally a few days of its

* ' ' That Russia seriously contemplates such an adventure I do not for a moment
believe." Sir Lepel Griffin, quoted by Mr. P. H. Oakley Williams, in the Pall
Mall Gazette, February 19, 1900.

t See Chapter XXIV.

2 66 ALL THE RUSSIAS

military objective, whether this were Afghanistan, Persia, or
Chinese Turkestan. The distance from Alexandrof-gai to Amu-
Darya station would be 1128 miles, and the cost of laying this
line, which would meet with no engineering difficulty of any im-
portance, is estimated at';^9,5oo,ooo— $46,300,000— including an
iron bridge over the Volga at Saratof, and the widening of the
line from Saratof to Alexandrof-gai. When it was completed, the
distance from Moscow to Merv, which latter we may take as a
central point of concentration, would be 1980 miles, and at an
average speed of twenty miles an hour, Merv would be just four
days distant from Moscow, and in less than another day the
Afghan frontier would be reached at Kushk Post. If strate-
gical and rapid-transit interests were adjudged paramount,
this seems obviously the line which should have been con-
structed.

Russian statesmen have been led by considerations of direct
and strategical transit rather than by commercial and agricultural
potentialities, but they have not chosen this route. For reasons
difficult to understand they have decided upon a railway from
Orenburg to Tashkent. The Riisski Invalid, which has just
published an account of it, admits that it will traverse a large
tract of sparsely populated and barren land. After leaving Oren-
burg it will pass through Ilentsk and Aktiubinsk and strike the
Syr Darya at Kazalinsk. It will then follow the course of the
river to Tashkent, passing on the way the fort of Karmakchi,
the town of Petrofsk, and the village of Julek. It will be a
single line and have a length of about 1150 miles. The build-
ing of the railway is already in full swing ; on the northern part,
from Orenburg to Kazalinsk, the earthworks and the building
of bridges are almost finished, and the laying of the rails will
be commenced next spring ; in the southern part the work is
not so far advanced, but preparations are being made and ma-
terials collected. It is expected that the railway will be opened
on January i (14th), 1905, and it will then be possible to run

RUSSIAN EXPANSION IN CENTRAL ASIA 267

trains from St. Petersburg and Moscow to Tashkent and the
whole Trans-Caspian line. The estimated cost of the railway
is 115 million roubles — _^' 12, 150,000, $58,175,000. When com-
pleted, the journey will be : Moscow to Samara, 738 miles ;
Samara to Orenburg, 260 miles (railway traffic has long existed
to this point) ; Orenburg to Tashkent, 1150 miles; and Tash-
kent to Merv, by the existing line, 597 miles. Total : 2745
miles, as against the 1980 miles 7' id Alexandrof-gai.

When 1 was in Tashkent I was told by the Director of the
Topographical Bureau that this decision had been reached, and
that the line would shortly be commenced, but after studying
the alternative routes I thought that he must be mistaken, and
I am still unable to find a reason for the choice that has been made.
In each case over a thousand miles of new rails must be laid,
no engineering difficulties occur, and the country traversed is
almost worthless for agricultural or commercial development.
The one important difference is that by the Orenburg-Tashkent
route the military centre of Russia in Europe is some seven
hundred miles farther from the military focus of Russia in
Central Asia.

The chief export of Central Asia to Russia is, and will be in
a still greater degree, cotton. At present this goes to the mills
of Moscow by the Trans-Caspian Railway, the Caspian Sea, and
the Volga in summer, and the Russian railway system instead of
the Volga in winter, the former rate being 1.08 rouble and the
latter 1.30 rouble per poud. From the centre of the cotton dis-
tricts of Fergana to Moscow is reckoned at 3212 versts, and
the freight of cotton at one-thirtieth of a kopeck per poud per
verst, which works out at 1.07 rouble per poud* — practically the
same cost as by the existing railway and the Volga in summer.
Thus only in winter will the line to Orenburg be of service

* The English or American reader who desires to translate these figures into
the currency and quantities of his own country can do so by the equivalents given
in the Appendix.

268 ALL THE RUSSIAS

to the greatest export of the country, and then only, allowing
fully for all the disadvantages of the present route, by reducing
the total cost of cotton in Moscow by 3 per cent.* — a trifle, while
on the imports of manufactured goods from Russia, costing much
more and paying a higher freight than cotton, the percentage of
advantage will be considerably less. A branch will doubtless be
run from the flourishing little town of Orsk, 152 miles to the
south-east of Orenburg, in the centre of a cattle-breeding district,
to Chelyabinsk, on the Siberian side of the Urals, the commence-
ment, properly speaking, of the Trans-Siberian Railway. This
will bring grain and iron to Trans-Caspia, and thus to some
extent afford a commercial justification of the choice of route, but
even here I cannot see that the advantage over the present line
of transportation will be anything like great enough to lead us
to believe that the interests of commerce dictated the choice of
the new line.

If commercial and agricultural development were really the
paramount consideration, then beyond any question a line con-
necting Turkestan with Western Siberia would confer the
greatest benefit. This would run from Tashkent, 7Ui1 the
town and Russian fort of Aulie-ata, one hundred and fifty-five
miles to the north-east; Vernoye, the capital of the province of
Semiryechensk, with a population of nearly 25,000 ; Kopal, one
hundred and seventy miles farther on ; Sergiopol ; Semipala-
tinsk, capital of the province of that name, on the Irtysh River,
with a population of nearly 20,000 ; and thence to Omsk, the
town probably destined to become the most important on the
Trans-Siberian Railway. This railway would run, as shown, past
large and growing towns, through districts with an industrious
and prosperous population of nomads, through a fertile corn-
growing country, where the best wheat to-day sells for eight

* For this calculation I am indebted to an essay by Mr. D. Zhoravko-Pokorski, a
Russian merchant resident in Central Asia, and to the author himself for interesting
information and some statistics gi\en elsewhere.

RUSSIAN EXPANSION IN CENTRAL ASIA 269

kopecks the poud (twopence, or four cents, for thirty-six
pounds) through a rich cattle-raising steppe, and past known
deposits of both coal and gold. Moreover, it would enormously
increase the production of cotton in Turkestan, by bringing
cheap wheat into that country from Siberia and thus allowing
all the land now necessarily given to corn-growing to be
devoted to the far more profitable cultivation of cotton.

The reader who has followed this somewhat technical rail-
way discussion w'ill have gathered that Russia has two inter-
twined aims and motives, that she is driving two politico-econo-
mic horses abreast, so to speak. She greatly desires to connect
her European railway system with the railways of British India,
across Central Asia and Afghanistan. And she desires this for
two reasons : first, that she may enjoy the great advantages of
the future ownership of the great international railway route to
the East ; and second, that by depriving any prospective railway
to the Persian Gulf of much of its misjii d'etre she may pre-
vent it being built, and thus block the creation of what w'ould
undoubtedly be an almost insuperable obstacle to her protec-
torate over Persia, and her own railway to the Persian Gulf.
This policy may be thought to resemble Paul Morphy's
announcement of mate in twenty-three moves, but Russian
diplomacy is accustomed to look far ahead and to calculate
with wide combinations, and when I say above that such is
Russia's desire, I mean that I know^ that the men who chiefly
direct her policy have these particular aims in view and very
much at heart.

Most readers will by now have formulated an objection some-
what in this shape : it is all very well for Russia to talk about join-
ing her Central Asian railways to the Indian railways, and thus
securing a great rapid-transit route from Europe to the richest
East, but what about Afghanistan and the Indian Government —

270 ALL THE RUSSIAS

will they, under any circumstances, permit such a junction to be
made, and thus prepare an easy road for Russian troops to enter
India ? * The question is, of course, of the first importance, and
in the present state of feeling on both sides, it can only be an-
swered with some discretion. In the iirst place, such a junction
is absolutely certain to come some day, but the time may be far
off. Second, if Russia were successful in a war against England,
it would assuredly be one of her conditions of peace. Third, a
railway would give little advantage to Russia that it would not
give to England, for if it would enable Russia to hurry troops
toward India, it would equally enable England to hurry Indian
troops toward Central Asia, and the final advantage would
thus be, as it always is in war, to the quickest to act. Fourth,
it would do much to remove international misunderstanding, for
it would bring intelligent and commercial Russians into India,
and a similar class of English and Anglo-Indians into Russia.
Finally, will not the moment soon come, when two civilised
nations will refuse to allow an uncivilised regime, friendly at
heart to neither and only friendly in action to one of them so
long as self-interest dictates such a course,! to stand in the way
of one of those great advances of intercommunication, which
are the chief signs and promoters of civilisation ? In view of
these considerations, it can hardly be thought unreasonable for
Russia to plan her Central Asian communications with a view
to their ultimate extension to Central India.

If the two nations agreed to join hands across Afghanistan
with their respective railway systems as at present existing, the
route would be from Merv to Kushkinski Post, thence to New
Chaman,thepresentterminusof the Indian frontierrailway, sixty
miles north-west of Quetta ; thence to Sukkur and Ruk junction ;
and from there either to the Punjab or to Karachi, one of the four

* Forthedetailsofthe Russian branch railway to the Afghan frontier, see the pre-
ceding Chapter,and for the political question of Russia and India,see Chapter XXIV.
t This was written before the death of the late Amir of Afghanistan.

RUSSIAN EXPANSION IN CENTRAL ASIA 271

^reat seaports of India. If Kushkinski Post and New Chaman
were connected by railway to-day, a distance of only four
hundred and thirtv-ei^ht miles, without any new line whatever
being constructed by either Russia or India, the distance from
London to Karachi by rail (including the short sea passages of
the Channel and the Caspian) is calculated by Mr. Paul Lessar
as 4716 miles, and the time of the journey as one hundred and
seventy-four and one-half hours. The route would be London,
Calais, Berlin, Alexandrovo, Warsaw, Rostof, Petrofsk, Baku,
Krasnovodsk, Merv, Kushk, Chaman, Karachi. If Kushkinski
Post and New Chaman were connected by rail after the
Orenburg-Tashkent link is finished, there would be, of course
an all-rail route from Calais to Karachi, but it would take
considerably more time.

I have written at what may seem undue length about the
future of Russian railway construction in Central Asia because
it is really the most important and significant question in that
part of the world. It is vitally connected with peace and war
alike — with commercial development and international rivalry.
The reader who takes the trouble to grasp the routes I have
mentioned and the arguments for and against each of them,
will understand also where the line of next tension lies, and
when the first step in advance is made — and it may not long be
delayed — he will be in a position to interpret its intention, to
perceive its diplomatic significance, and possibly to forecast
its military consequences.

CHAPTER XVIIl

RUSSIAN ADMINISTRATION IN CENTRAL ASIA:
TRANS-CASPIA AND TASHKENT

AS I sat writing my notes in a little whitewashed room in
the very heart of Asia, having come by train through
Merv, with its branch straight to the Afghan frontier ; past the
ruined fortress of Geok Tepe, which fought Skobelef for three
bloody weeks ; past Bokhara, the last home of Central Asian Mus-
sulman fanaticism ; by Samarkand, where Genghiz Khan ruled
and Tamerlane is buried ; to Tashkent, which routed a Russian
army thirty-five years ago — as I sat and thought, on the one
hand, of this wild, remote, unaltered East, and on the other, that
I was as safe as if in my own garden and that I had just come
from a brilliant evening party at the Governor-General's, it
seemed to me that I must be dreaming. I almost despair of
making it all seem real to anybody else, for the position was one
"at which," in Dr. Johnson's words, "experience revolts, cre-
dulity hesitates, and even fancy stares." However, the attempt
must be made, and I begin with the district in which you set
foot on landing upon the eastern shore of the Caspian, officially
known as the Trans-Caspian Territory.

The administrative district of Trans-Caspia extends from the
Caspian to the frontier of Bokhara, and is under the authority
of a " Chef du Territoire Transcaspien," with headquarters at
Askhabad. At the time of my visit this was Lt.-Colonel Bogo-
liubof, one of the most enlightened administrators it has been
my good fortune to meet. He is not only a soldier and a states-
man, but a student : the practical problems of his great province,

ADMINISTRATION IN CENTRA!. ASIA 273

its commerce, its ethnology, its arts, have all been made bv him
the subjects of profound investigation, and he talks of them
with rare knowledge and enthusiasm. When I had the pleasure
of visiting him he was busily engaged upon a great ethnological
map of Trans-Caspia, the first that had ever been attempted,
and I believe he will some day publish an epoch-making study
of Turkoman art, particularly as exhibited in the products of
Turkoman needlewomen.

Trans-Caspia has an area of about 215,000 square miles and
only about 360,000 inhabitants. Its scanty population cannot
increase, because each Turkoman head of a family requires, to
live with anything like comfort, ten camels, four to five horses,
fifty sheep, and two cows, and to feed these, ten square versts
are needed. Camels cannot be replaced by horses, for only
camels and asses can eat the prickly "camel's thorn " which is
the sole fodder available during much of the year. The attempt
to improve the condition of Trans-Caspia is therefore a
struggle between civilisation and this nomad life, and it is
unlikely that civilisation will win.

Civilisation has had, at any rate, one bad effect — it has killed
the carpet. The carpet woven by Turkoman women in their
moving tents, without any pattern to copy, the design being
handed down in instinct and memory, was, both for design and
workmanship, the finest thing of the kind in the world. Old
specimens are now almost unprocurable and fetch huge prices,
but the examples which may still be had are eagerly bought up.
In fact, carpets furnish one of the chief topics of conversation
among Russian officers and functionaries quartered in Trans-
Caspia. Everybody collects them, and the discussions about
price and quality, and the comparisons of " finds " are endless.
Carpets are peculiarlyconvenient to these nomadsof civilisation,
astheywere to the uncivilised nomads who originally made them,
for as both soldiers and civilians may not be long in one place
they seldom possess much furniture, since it could not be trans-

274

ALL THE RUSSIAS

ported except at an expense which would ruin them, whereas
a few empty beer-boxes with carpets and cushions thrown over
them, and a few carpets hung on the walls, give you a fine
Eastern salon at once. Moreover, carpets can be easily taken
home, and then if you wish you can probably sell them for

IN Tin: NI.W TASIIKI,XI

much more than you gave for them. There is unfortunately
one drawback — all modern carpets fade.

The old carpet, however, is now perhaps the one relic left
of a great bygone civilisation, for assuredly the Turkomans in
their dirt and squalor could not have invented the beautiful
designs that their women made till recently. The patterns and
the surroundings are in too great a contrast. The different great
tribes of Turkomans — the Sariks, Saliks, and nearer the Caspian
the Yumuds — are indistinguishable in their dress, their utensils,
their habits, &c. ; their carpets alone can serve to distinguish
them. These are their passports — their visiting cards. Perhaps
these very patterns were given them by Nebuchadnezzar ! But
aniline dyes and loom competition are killing these fast, and

ADMINISTRATION IN CENTRAL ASIA 275

soon nothing except their old carpets will be left to tell of a
mysterious civilisation of the far past. This whole region, as far
as China, is the field of rectangular ornaments, and the details
of these patterns recur in the most extraordinary fashion. A
detail can be traced, for instance, through China, Afghanistan,
Persia, and Galicia. I n Trans-Caspia are two well-marked races,
about whom we know almost everything — in the north the
Kirghiz, in the south the Russians. In the farthest south there
are two or three tribes of Arabs and Jews, come nobody knows
how or when. But the Turkomans are the great mystery, and
it will only be from their carpets that the problem of their origin
and movements will be solved at last. The magic carpet of
Eastern fable, which transports its possessor in an instant to
the other end of the earth, has its counterpart in the carpet
which will carry the student round the Asian world in the track
of its racial design.

Not only cannot the population of Trans-Caspia increase,but,
so far as can be foreseen, its productivity is likely to decline.
Cotton is its chief, indeed practically its only important export.
It formerly possessed the finest race of horses in the world, and
the Turkoman, who lived by raiding, esteemed his steed far
above all his other belongings, including his wife. But Russian
rule has imposed peace upon him, and therefore the need ot his
horse, and his incentive to breed and cherish him, have gone.
So, in spite of I mperial Commissions and the importation of Arab
stallions, the fleet and tireless Turkoman horse, with his flashing
eye and scarlet nostril, is extinct for ever. And the production
of cotton cannot increase without an increase of water for irriga-
tion, and instead of more there is growing steadily less. For the
Kopet Dagh Mountains, which rise above Askhabad, and are the
great source of vi^ater supply, are gradually w^earing away. Ages
ago there was eternal snow upon them ; now they are nowhere
more than 9000 feet high. The explanation is that they are of
clayey substance. In summer the great heat calcines this clay to

276

ALL THE RUSSIAS

powder, then the rains come and wash it away. Hence the
fecundating power of the rivers, but hence also their ultimate
disappearance. A geographical authority has said of this whole
region that "both glaciers and rivers continue to lose volume ;
the lakes are shrinking and the extremes of temperature become
more marked, while the sands of the desert are steadily encroach-

A COSSACK PATROL IN TASHKENT

ing on the cultivated zones." A well was recently sunk three
miles from the mountains to a depth of seven hundred metres
without striking water. The truth is that this water question,
vital to the prosperity and indeed to the existence of Trans-
Caspia, is in the last analysis a political issue — a peculiarly
interesting example of the forces underlying diplomacy and
national ambitions. For the water-basin of this part of Trans-
Caspia is in Persia, and the Amir of Afghanistan controls, in
the River Murghab, the water supply of the great Merv oasis
and other districts. Therefore if these possessions of Russia
are ever to regain their ancient wealth, when Merv, for instance,
was really " Queen of the World," Russia must rule in Persia

ADMINISIRATION IN CENTRAL ASIA 277

and Afghanistan. Northern Persia — the province of Khorassan
— is probably at her mercy, to seize whenever an opportunity
or an excuse presents itself, but Afghanistan is quite another
matter, for the British fleet blocks the way thither. Thus the
cotton crop of Central Asia, and purchases for Russia on the
markets of Richmond and New Orleans — for it is Russia's desire
to grow all her own cotton and buy none abroad — depend at
last upon the number of ironclads that fly the cross of St.
George in the Channel and the Mediterranean. It is, I repeat,
a peculiarly interesting example of the correlation of sea-power
and political history, but it should not surprise the readers of
Captain IVIahan.

The cities of Central Asia to-day are of two widely differing
kinds — theold and the new, the world-famous towns of antiquity,
whose proud and fanatical inhabitants have only been constrained
for a few years to tolerate white men among them, and the
brand-new settlements which Russia has built up for her admini-
strators, her soldiers, and her merchants. Each kind is the more
interesting according to whether you look at it with the eye of
the traveller and the ethnologist, or from the point of view of
the student of contemporary expansion and politics. Krasno-
vodsk I have sufficiently described ; Kizil Arvat is merely the site
of the railway workshops, where a large number of Russian
artisans are employed, whose pale wives and children give pain-
ful evidence of the unhealthiness of the place and climate ; Merv
is wholly a new city, the old " Queen of the World " being noth-
ing but a few splendid ruins some distance away, an important
military centre where the prevalence of a particularly virulent
fever has often suggested the desirability of abandoning the
town altogether, and where, a few miles to the east, the Tsar has
an ''appanage" which irrigation and skilful management are
making into a most fertile and profitable estate ; Askhabad, the

278 ALL THE RUSSIAS

military headquarters of Turkestan, on account of the proximity
of the Persian frontier and the road to Meshed, is ahiiost entirely
a new town, where the central railway administration has a
range of handsome stone-built offices. None of these calls for
any special mention.

In ordinary times the entire garrison of Central Asia is prob-

THF. BOYS COLLEGE, TASHKENT

ably about 30,000 men, with .headquarters at Askhabad, and the
chief garrisons at Merv, Tashkent, Samarkand, and Andijan. At
the present moment this figure is doubtless largely exceeded.
The civil administration, which, as everywhere in Russia, is elabo-
rate and highly manned, brings a population of its own, under
a Governor-General of Turkestan at Tashkent, a Governor of the
Trans-Caspian Territory at Askhabad, and Governors at Samar-
kand and at Margelan, the administrative centre of Fergana. All
the public offices are fine commodious buildings, the ofBcials and
their families live in much comfort, indeed, often in luxury, and
the foreign shops in the chief towns are large and well stocked.
There are admirable schools for Russian children, and many
native schools for teaching Russian and elementary subjects.

ADMINISTRATION IN CENTRAL ASIA 279

Two prisons I inspected, and that of Tashkent was, so far as I
could see, excellent. The other, a mere <^uard-room in the
citadel of Andijan, was not creditable, for the twenty or thirty
prisoners were crowded toi^ether in one apartment without dis-
tinction of class or crime, the sanitary conditions were offensive,
and there was no proper supervision. But Andijan is the latest
and remotest Russian town, and doubtless a proper prison will
be built before long. It was at the village of Mintiuba, close
to Andijan, by the way, that an abortive little revolt broke
out in 1898, suppressed with the usual thoroughness of the
Russians in such matters, the village being wiped out, a
colony of Russian emigrants planted on its site, eight leaders
hanged together, and a large number deported to Siberia — via
Moscow 1

One curious little fact about Trans-Caspia, by the way,
deserves mention. The Persians, of whom there is of course a
large working and trading population, insist upon being paid
with the Persian kraii, a small silver coin now w^orth 40 kopecks.
The Russian authorities have recently prohibited its impor-
tation, but with the only effect, so far, of causing its price to
appreciate.

The capital of Russian Central Asia — though no such nominal
position exists — is undoubtedly Tashkent, "the city of stone," at
the northern terminus of the railway in Turkestan, and presently
to be connected with Europe 7'id Orenburg. Here the two
kinds of city and the two races are best seen side by side. Tash-
kent was for many generations, and perhaps still remains, the
most important strategical focus of Central Asia. An interesting
and significant incident is connected with its capture. The gallant
Chernaieff, advancing victorious from the north, attacked it in
1 864, but was beaten back with heavy loss. Alexander II., averse
to further slaughter in a cause whose importance he had not
realised, and perhaps fearing complications with England, for
bade him to make a second attempt. The outcome is a striking

28o

ALL THE RUSSIAS

example of how Russian officials on remote frontiers drag Rus-
sian policy at their heels. Chernaieff appears to have known
what was in the Tsar's despatches, so he attacked first, took the
city by storm, and then opened his papers. The reply he sent,
as given by Ney (quoted by Ross and Skrine), was this : " Your
Majesty's order forbidding me to take Tashkent has reached me
only in the city itself, which I have taken and place at your
Majesty's feet." His career was ruined by this act, but Tashkent
was promptly used as a base from which to subjugate Samar-
kand and Bokhara.
It is after Chernaieff
that the junction of
Chernayevo is named.
Tashkent is pro-
bably to-day the
largest town in Asia-
tic Russia, for in 1885
it was nearly as pop-
ulous at Tiflis, hav-
ing 120,000 inhabit-
ants, and covering
an area of twelve square miles. The first thing that strikes
you as you drive from the station is the width of the streets,
and the second the mud. The former are often fifty yards
wide, and the latter is a foot deep. Through this wades and
splashes an extraordinary procession of men and beasts —
Tajiks, the chief race, of Persian descent, in turbans and multi-
coloured khalats, or loose-sleeved robes gathered at the waist
with a sash, their material depending upon the wealth of the
owner; Kirghiz in skins with the fur inside and tight-fitting
caps ; women in sad-toned garments and draped from crown
to sole in thick, absolutely opaque horsehair veils; Russian
soldiers, always in the same thick grey felt overcoats — in fact,
all the Eastern humanity seen by Matthew Arnold in the past :

A FAMILIAR SIGHT IN TASHKENT

ADMINISTRATION IN CENTRAL ASIA 281

The Tartars of Ferghana, from the banks

Of the Jaxartcs, men with scanty beards

And close-set skull-caps ; and those wilder hordes

Who roam o'er Kipchak and the northern waste ;

Kalmucks and unkempt Kuzzaks, tribes who stray

Nearest the Pole, and wandering Kirghizzes,

Who came on shaggy ponies from Pamere.

They ride on horses, on donkeys — often two adults on one
little beast — on shaggy camels or in the arba shown in my
photograph, with enormously high wheels to enable it to ford
rivers without wetting its load, the driver seated on the horse
in the shafts. The Russian town, which has 5000 or 6000
inhabitants, consists of well-built, low houses of brick and
stucco, with roofs of sheet iron painted green, and the streets,
as everywhere else in these Russian settlements, are planted on
each side with shade trees, chiefly silver poplars. In the
Russian shops most of the necessaries and some of the luxuries
of life may be bought, though they do not compare with the
shops of far Siberian towns. There is no such thing as an hotel,
its place being taken, loiigo iiitcivallo, by what are called
Noinera—" numbers," that is, furnished rooms, to which, if
you have nowhere else to eat, you can have a greasy meal
brought. These are dirty, cold, and uncomfortable. But
there is a magnificent military club, with a theatre and ball-
room, where you can find all the papers, including a local
bi-weekly, the Vicdomosti, play cards or billiards, and fare very
well indeed, being waited upon by soldier orderlies. The
Governor-General— when I was there, the late General
Dukhovskoi — who rules over the whole of Turkestan, lives in
a charming old-fashioned, wide-spreading residency, filled with
precious Eastern objects. On nights of official reception the
staircase is lined with picturesque native troops who supply a
fitting local colour, and several bands of oriental performers
with weird instruments provide local sound. I can no longer

282

ALL THE RUSSIAS

thank General Dukhovskoi for all his kindness, but the hospi-
tality so brilliantly dispensed by Madame Dukhovskoi will not
be forgotten by anybody who ever enjoyed it. The large staff
of ofticials at Tashkent works in spacious quarters in buildings
which, as they were erected thirty years ago, show the fore-
sight that provided accommodation for all the development to
follow. The garrison at the time of my visit consisted of four
battalions of sharpshooters (siirlki), two of the line, one of

it^M'

THE "AREA", IN TASHKENT

engineers, a regiment of Cossacks, and some artillery. There
is an observatory, equipped with instruments brought on
camel-back across the desert. But the sight remaining most
vividly in my memory is the Rcahchiile of Tashkent. This was
not only wonderful because it was in the heart of Asia, but
also because it would be an admirable school even in London
or New York. The enthusiastic headmaster. Prince Dolgoruki,
conducted me over it, and a better equipped or more capably
managed educational institution could hardly be found. A
complete course of instruction is given, and the class-rooms,
museums, laboratories, gymnasiums, &c., were on the latest

ADMINISTRATION IN CENTRAL ASIA 283

German model. There are two hundred and ninety-six scholars,
all sons of Russian ofiicials and residents exxept two, the son
of the late Amir of Kokand and the son of a rich native
merchant. Among the professors was Mr. Howard, a Russian
subject, admirably teaching the English classes, and I was in-
vited to satisfy myself of the ability of his scholars. The school
costs 40,000 roubles a year, of which the boys contribute forty
roubles each and the State the rest. They take only their
dejeuner at school, and for this they pay seven roubles each
per half-year. I saw this meal, and how it is provided for the
money I cannot tell. Afterward I visited the Technical School,
and here, remembering the admirable Austrian native schools
of Bosnia, I was disappointed to find but very few native boys.
It appears, however, that they invariably fall behind, and most
of them leave after the second year. But any native boy who
wishes to learn can attend one of the gratuitous schools in the
native quarter where Russian is taught and elementary instruc-
tion given by some of the most devoted educationalists I have
seen, who live in discomfort and on a pittance, devoted to their
work and worshipped by their scholars. Altogether, in fact,
Russia is doing more to educate her people, both Russian and
native, in Central Asia than she is doing in Europe.

The native quarter of Tashkent contains nothing of interest,
unless it be the old citadel which Chernaieff stormed and after-
ward put in repair for his own defence. It is simply a wide en-
ceinte surrounded by high earthen walls, commanding the city
by a number of guns. Within its area are the magazines and
barracks, but as a military work it is long out of date. No
foreigner has ever visited it, so I remarked to the Governor-
General that I should like to do so. He was surprised, but
upon reflection, seeing no reason why he should refuse, con-
sented, and issued a written order that I should be admitted.
The officer in command was the most surprised individual in
Central Asia when I arrived with my order. He conducted me

2 84 ALL THE RUSSIAS

into the guard-room within the walls, and then inquired cour-
teously what it was that I wished to see ; for, said he, "There
is nothing whatever remarkable in the citadel."

" I beg your pardon," I replied, " but I believe there is a
most extraordinary thing here at this moment."

" What may that be ? " he asked in much surprise.

" An Englishman," I said ; and he laughed and admitted

FATHER AND SON IN TASHKENT

that it was indeed so. This citadel, however, reminds me of an
incident which explains how Chernaieff came to conquer these
peoples as he did. After the storming, and even before the
dead natives had all been buried, and almost before the firing
had ceased, finding himself war-stained and uncomfortable
from not having changed his clothes for days, he w^ent, alone
and unattended, on the very afternoon of his victory, in spite
of the protests of his staff, to the vapour-baths in the native
city. Such extraordinary coolness and indifference made a
greater impression than all his Cossacks and cannon. This is,
indeed, how natives are taught who is their master, as our own
earlier Indian annals abundantly show^

ADMINISTRATION IN CENTRAL ASIA 285

Statistics of Central Asian trade are not easy to procure, for
Russia is very jealous of foreign curiosity there. The annual
report, for example, of the Trans-Caspian Railway is printed in
two parts, one the military and confidential portion ; the other
the commercial. The director of the railway at Askhabad bluntly
refused to give me the latter, though the highest local authority
ordered him to do so, without a direct order from the Minister
of War, and this of course I did not apply for, as it would have
invested my natural and innocent curiosity with a suspicious
importance. But certainly Russian trade here has grown by
leaps and bounds, except with Afghanistan, where it has ceased
altogether, for political reasons, and by the action of the Amir.
Askhabad station was opened in December 1885, and by
October 1886 no less than 360,000 pouds of merchandise had
passed through en rouic for Persia. Taking the average of the
three years previous to the opening of the railway, 1883-5, ^"^
the average of four years, 1893-6, the imports of the country
nearly trebled, while the exports nearly quadrupled. During
the year 1899 {'^^^ latest statistical year), the Trans-Caspian
Railway carried 24,999 passengers and 376,000 tons of freight,
and its gross receipts were ;{'725,376, or ^590 per mile. And
this, be it remembered, upon a railway originally built as a
strategical line and until a short time ago under the direct
control of the Minister of War. The exception to the develop-
ment of trade is Afghanistan — a fact evidently unknown to
writers who have pointed morals by the relations of Russians
and Afghans in Central Asia.

In 1895 Afghan exports to Russian territory were of the
value of 209,000 roubles ; and in 1896 of 83,000 roubles; while
Russia exported to Afghanistan in 1895, 21,000 roubles, and in
1896 the trade ceased completely. The trade of Persia, it
should be added, is with Russia proper ; Trans-Caspia is
merely the point of transit and produces nothing which
Persia buys.

286 ALL THE RUSSIAS

It will be evident, I think, before I have done with Central
Asia, and I may as well set down the reflection now, that Russia
has carried out a great task here, and on the whole, most worthily.
Not only must the greatness of her conquest evoke our admira-
tion, but the qualities of civilisation she has afterwards imposed,
the peace, the commerce, the comparative happiness and well-
being of the people, should also win our sincere respect.

CHAPTER XIX

NEW BOKHARA AND ITS PROSPECTS

RUSSIA has been very careful not to annex the Khanate of
Bokhara. She had enough on her hands in Central Asia
without undertaking direct responsibility for the government of
three million fanatical Mussulmans, who have never learned the
lesson that Skobelef administered to the Turkomans. So she
made it into a Protected State, thereby securing all the advan-
tages of control and commerce, without assuming the obligation
of good government. She has nothing to fear from Bokhara ;
the Amir is a nonentity, mentally and physically exhausted,
though not yet forty ; her own territory is on both sides of it; her
main railway runs within ten miles of the capital and could bring
a small army in a day ; by her control of the Zarafshan she has
Bokhara at her mercy, for she could cut off the water-supply
and ruin every crop at once ; and no trade except Russian is
permitted. So the Bokharans are left in their original dirt and
cruelty and corruption, nominally under the rule of their own
sovereign. He, however, does not greatly appreciate his posi-
tion, for he spends all his time at a hunting lodge near Termene,
the fifth station up the line beyond the capital, 44 miles away,
his passion being for falconry — a sport the local importance of
which may be judged from the fact that the principal Minister of
State is called KJinz Begi, ''Chief of the Falconers." He receives
reports, however, every day, brought by relays of horsemen who
cover the distance in three hours — the railway taking four ! In
his capital his prestige is gone, and he dislikes the vicinity of his
Russian masters, but on the rare occasions — sometimes not once

288 ALL THE RUSSIAS

in a year — when he visits Bokhara he sharply reminds his people
of his existence by taking a dozen condemned wretches from the
prison and having their throats cut in the open bazaar. I said
that Russia had left Bokhara in its original cruelty, but this is
not quite accurate. She has abolished the open sale of slaves
and the native method of execution by trussing hapless criminals
like fowls and flinging them from the top of the great tower.
But otherwise she has left Bokhara as it was, and, above all, she
has left untouched the prison of execrable memory. Here it
was that the two English officers, Stoddart and Connolly, sent
on a diplomatic mission from the Indian Government about sixty
years ago, were flung into the pit where sheep-ticks, most loath-
some of insects, gnawed the flesh from the bones of living men.

When the Russians reached Bokhara with their railway they
were rather afraid of the natives, and as a measure of precaution
they created New Bokhara, eight miles from Old Bokhara, and
placed the station there. Now they realise that their caution
was excessive, and wish they had originally gone straight to the
town, and thus avoided the necessity of building a branch railway
to connect it with the main line. New Bokhara consists of a
few European houses, the Residency and offices, and a clean and
comfortable little hostelry, called the Hotel d'Europe, kept by
a worthy German and his wife. The Amir maintains a suite of
rooms in a native house in the old city for the use of the
Resident, who thereby avoids disturbing the populace by too
much show of foreign dominion. M. Ignatieff was so kind as
to allow me to use these rooms, as there is, of course, no place
in the native city where a foreigner can even take a meal.

The Resident has a personal escort of about a score of
Cossacks, and there is a detachment of railway sappers, w'ho do
technical work and furnish guards for the bank, post- office, &c.
The Amir, on the other hand — and the contrast is instructive —
is allowed to keep a so-called army of 30,000 men in the whole
country, 10,000 of whom are in the city of Bokhara. In spite

NEW BOKHARA AND ITS PROSPECTS 289

of their scarlet trousers they can hardly he called soldiers, and
tiieir best weapons are a few thousand old rifles given them
loy Russia, with old-fashioned triangular bayonets. Concerning
these rifles, and bearing their origin in mind, my meaning will
doubtless be obvious when I say that I should be quite willing to
let a Bisley marksman shoot at meat a hundred yards with one
of them. And while speaking of the Bokharan army I must
repeat a pleasant story I read somewhere. The Amir's forces
were once exhibiting themselves at a field-day before a Russian
general. Suddenly, to his intense surprise, all the men in the
front line threw themselves upon their backs and waved their
legs in the air. But he was more astonished still when, in reply
to his inquiry as to the military purport of this remarkable man-
cieuvre, he was assured that it was exactly copied from the Russian
drill ! The explanation turned out to be that once, when Russian
troops were attacking, they had been obliged to ford a stream
waist-deep, and on gaining the bank they had all lain down and
lifted up their legs to let the water run out of their long boots.
The Bokharans, attributing the victory which immediately
followed to this impressive stratagem, had promptly incor-
porated it in their own tactics !

Political writers about Central Asia often speculate upon the
possibility of a Mussulman rising against Russia there, and as
Bokhara is undoubtedly the most fanatical country, this seems the
place to say a few words on the subject. If there should ever be
a real Pan-Islamic movement — if the Mussulman world should
ever be inspired with a common religious fervour against the
Cross, then, of course, the Crescent would be raised in Central
Asia also, and the Russians would have all they could do for a
short time. And such an outburst is not quite as improbable as
most people think. It will hardly come from the appeals and
intrigues of the ruler of the Ottoman Turks in Constantinople,
who enjoys among millions of his co-religionists no loftier title
than " Sultan of Roum," although the fact is remarkable that

290 ALL THE RUSSlAS

certciin communities who hitherto acknowledged no allegiance to
him, as in Tripoli, for instance, now accept the obligation of mili-
tary service for the defence of Islam, but many little signs — such
as the collection of ;^2ooo by the Anjituian-i-Islaiu in Bombay
for the projected Damascus-Mecca railway — show that it is not
altogether out of the question. After the revolt in Fergana in
1898 the Russian authorities were very anxious for a time about
the state of Bokhara, and the telegraph line to Tashkent was
monopolised with military conversations. Curiously enough, at
that very moment a Russian railway watchman was killed by a
native. The latter was tried by a Court consisting of the Acting
Resident and two native Begs, and was condemned to death.
And then the Russians played one of those little master-strokes
of policy which, insignificant in themselves, contribute so
largely to their success with Oriental races. Instead of making
a mystery and conferring great importance upon the incident
by executing the murderer in the Russian tov.'n, with all the
elaborate ceremonial of a European death-penalty, they simply
handed him over to the Bokharan authorities, who cut his throat
in the bazaar in the good old way. This completely reassured
the native authorities, who had believed that the Russian would
treat the murder as a political offence, and make it an excuse
for annexing the country.

The war between Turkey and Greece, again, produced a con-
siderable impression in Bokhara, and the news was eagerly dis-
cussed in the bazaars. The Resident discovered some Turks from
Egypt, fomenting religious feeling, and the Political Agent at
Tashkent told me that he had found and arrested several fanatical
mollahs from Constantinople. On one PYiday evening I was
enabled by a Russian friend, who is an acute and sympathetic
student of native life, to enjoy the rare advantage of being present
at the regular prayers of a widespread dervish sect in one of the
chief towns, and nobody could witness the profound attention
of the crowd at first, gradually growing into fanatical fervour.

NEW BOKHARA AND ITS PROSPECTS 291

and finally reaching a height of religious madness when anything
would have been possible, the whole crowd swaying rapidly and
abruptly back and forth to the deafening rhythmic staccato
shout of Ya lioii ! Ya hak ! — and not realise that the tinder and the
spark are never very far apart in Central Asia. For these men,
barking like mad wolves under the temporary sway of religious
hypnotism, were not performing for Christian money, like the
dervish mummers of Cairo, but were just pious Mussulmans
come to prayers and in many cases plainly drawn into the
vortex in spite of themselves. But a Russian fort was not two
miles away, and at a warning gun four thousand men would
have sprung to arms. Pan-Islamism, even if it should break
forth, would accomplish nothing in Russian Asia — unless
Russia herself should be lighting for her life elsewhere.

A local revolt in Bokhara, however, is another matter, and
upon this I have a decided opinion, namely, that it is more than
probable. But it will be a revolt in favour of Russia, not against
her. Government in Bokhara under Russian protection is, as I
have said, almost as bad as under unmitigated native oppression,
and in the matter of tax-gathering — always more considered by
a native than life and liberty — it is quite as bad. Now the Bok-
haran looks across the border into Samarkand, and sees that his
fellows under Russian rule, men with neither more land nor more
fertile land than himself, are contented and comparatively rich,
and know precisely what their obligations are and how much
money the tax-collector will require of them ; while they them-
selves know neither, and must live at the mercy and the whim of
every cruel and rapacious official. Therefore the prospect is that
sooner or later, when they have outgrown their dislike of the infi-
del, the Bokharans will demand to be taken under Russian gov-
ernment. One informant assured me that this would have been
done before now except for the fact that when the Amir visited
the Tsar at his coronation the latter promised him that no change
should be made in the status of Bokhara while he reigned, and that

292 ALL THE RUSSIAS

consequently if the Amir dies before the Tsar another Amir will
be allowed to rule. But even in this case a stricter supervision
would probably be exercised, especially as regards taxing the
people. Indeed, there are other signs that a change in this
direction is coming, for a handsome new palace is being built
halfway between New and Old Bokhara, the intention — it was
M. Lessar's idea — being that the Amir shall have some fitting
place in which to receive the Russian authorities, who will doubt-
less take advantage of more frequent interviews to exert a more
extended influence. But meanwhile, Russia has clearly had
every advantage in leaving things as they are, and up to the
present her tendency has been rather to shift burdens on to the
Amir's shoulders than to relieve him of any — as in the cession
to Bokhara of Roshan and Shignan from the British sphere.
This is not at all to the taste of the military caste in Tashkent and
Merv, who would like nothing so much as an order to march on
Bokhara, in view of the ease of the campaign, and the shower
of crosses, medals, and promotions that would follow.

The Trans-Caspian Railway has, of course, wrought a revolu-
tion since it reached the valley of theZarafshan. In pre-railway
days Bokhara's connection with Russia was by the old caravan
route vici Kazalinsk and Orenburg, when the cost of transport
was three roubles a poud and the journey depended on so many
accidental circumstances — a scarcity of camels, for instance —
that its duration could never be foreseen, and goods sometimes
remained at Kazalinsk for months, spoiling, while all the risks
were the sender's, since nobody would grant insurances against
them. Up to 1887 Russia sent to Bokhara iron, crockery, sugar,
cheap safes, oils and colours, to the extent of about 8000 tons a
year, and Bokhara exported to Russia and to Turkestan some
16,000 tons of cotton, wool, sheep-skins, goat-skins, and karakul
— the lamb-skin we know as *' astrachan." At this time, how-
ever, Bokhara enjoyed a trade of over 3000 tons a year with
India, via Afghanistan, importing indigo, green tea, and English

NEW BOKHARA AND ITS PROSPECTS 293

manufactures, but the new railway enabled Moscow manufac-
turers to flood the market with cheap manufactured articles,
drivint^ out the better but dearer English goods, a process which
the Russian Government completed when necessary by prohibi-
tive tariffs. Bokhara was the depot for tea and indi(^o for the
whole country, and it now gets, via Meshed, Askhabad, Dushak,
and Kaakhka, the remnant of what used to reach it from Kabul.
For sugar Russia has established depots at Bokhara and remits
the excise and pays a bounty upon all that is sold there. Bok-
haran imports have risen from 8000 tons in 1887 to over 42,000
tons in 1896, but exports have not risen in proportion, havmg
never exceeded 21,000 tons. This discrepancy is attributed by
the local authority I have previously quoted to four causes : the
limited sphere which is really tapped by the railway, and the
indifference of merchants to districts distant from the railway,
without waggon-roads or regular communication by the Amu-
Darya ; the rapid growth of new needs among natives served
by the railway ; the difficulty in the cultivation of American
cotton owing to the uncertainty of water supply; and the truly
Oriental carelessness of the Bokharan Government regarding
its products — for example, twenty-five years ago the silkworm
industry flourished and is now in decay. When these condi-
tions, however, are removed, Bokhara will once more be in a
position to export in proportion to its imports, for, thanks to
the railway, which carries wheat at the very low rate of i/iooth
of a kopeck per poud per verst, grain can be bought as cheaply
as it can be grown, and the land thus left free for more valuable
crops. Moreover, as in 1893-4, the railway will render famine
from bad harvests impossible. The principal new objects
which the railway has taught the natives to use are kerosene,
building materials, passementerie, and stearine candles. The
consumption of these articles increases regularly, but with the
exception of candles, which go as far as Afghanistan, they do
not yet reach nearly the whole of the Khanate.

294 ALL THE RUSSIAS

Before the railway came, capital could hardly turn over once
a year, because of the difficulty of communications with Europe,
and therefore Russian commerce was confined to a few wealthy
Bokharan merchants. But now that goods can be delivered in
Moscow in from 35 to 40 days, direct relations are possible even
to small capitalists, and the natives take every advantage of this,
with the result that competition is very keen and the people en-
joy the lowest possible prices. The establishment of elementary
processes of manufacture, on the other hand, such as cleaning,
packing, tanning, has quadrupled wages, and cultivated land has
risen enormously in value. My Bokharan authority claims, and
rightly, I think, that the two facts (i) that a total annual trade of
;^3,ooo,ooo is done by a population of 3,000,000 souls, one half of
whom take no part whatever either in producing or purchasing ;
and (2) that the imports are 3,000,000 roubles more in value than
the exports, show that the trade of Bokhara must necessarily
increase largely, as soon as the conditions which prevent the
greater part of the mountainous regions of the Khanate from
taking any share in the commerce wath European Russia are
changed. It is confidently held, too, that the mountainous dis-
tricts of Bokhara are the natural half-way house of trade between
Moscow and Afghanistan. At present there are no direct rela-
tions, although Bokharan merchants bring every year a certain
amount of produce, chiefly karakul, from Afghanistan and send
it to the fair of Nijni Novgorod, paying for it in iron, cotton,
sugar and candles, but the natural trade route to Kabul, well
known to the Afghans, runs through Bokhara, and therefore
in the future Russian manufactures should be exchanged for
Afghan raw materials via Bokhara. Then Bokhara will stand to
Afghanistan in a relation similar to that of Trans-Caspia to Per-
sia, but more favourably, for whereas Trans-Caspia trades with
only one province, Khorassan, Bokhara will exchange with the
whole rich and densely populated northern part of Afghanistan,
beginning with Kabul, which has an area equal to the whole of

NEW BOKHARA AND ITS PROSPECTS 295

Bokhara, and which, when the roads are somewhat improved,
will be able to seek an outlet for its products in Bokhara, rather
than send them over the difficult mountains to the south, to find
a market in the direction of Kandahar. So, at least, they believe
in Bokhara ; but, apart from other considerations, it is obvious
that the development of a trade route over the Murghab branch
line to Kushk and Herat, if England and Russia should agree
upon it, would upset most of their calculations.

There is one other industry that should be mentioned, for
although it has only just been started, its success— and the few
who have invested in it have a iirm faith in its future — would
have an enormous influence upon the development of Bok-
hara. I refer to gold-mining. It would seem inherently prob-
able that in such a mountainous country as a large part of
Bokhara minerals would be found, and gold in paying quantities
may well be along them. Two Russian commercial residents
have begun the work of seriously developing one district known
to be gold-bearing. Their mine is 530 miles from Bokhara city,
and at present can only be reached on horseback. They hold a
concession of seven properties, each two versts square, and one
of these they are working. They have reached the gold-bearing
stratum at a depth of fifteen metres, and they were getting one
zoloinik of gold from every hundred poudsof dirt washed — say
2 dwt. to the ton. They pay the Amir a royalty of five per cent,
of the gold produced, and an annual rent of about two shillings
an acre. Against the small returns of gold may be set the fact
that labour is plentiful and wages are from sixpence to eight-
pence a day, and that there is abundance of water. The owners
of this concession are very anxious to get foreign capital to help
them to prove and develop their six remaining properties.

My lady readers may like to know something of the origin
of the fur which becomes them so well, known to them as "astra-
chan" (Astrakhan used to be its port of entry into Russia) or
"Persian lamb," and to those who produce it as karakul. It is

296 ALL THE RUSSIAS

the skin of the very young lamb — not of the unborn lamb, as is
commonly believed — and the best comes from Afghanistan. Its
high cost is due to the heavy export duty the Amir of Afghanistan
places upon it, which his subjects regularly try to evade by smug-
gling. In Bokhara the Afghan skins are mixed in parcels of ten
with inferior local skins, and thence they go to Novgorod, to
Moscow and especially to the great annual fur fair of the world
at Leipzig. Only the best are kept for sale in Central Asia,
and for these the Russian dealers give about 32 roubles — £2, ys.,
$16.50 — for ten skins, though the best single skin will fetch as
much as fifteen shillings — $3.60. I bought excellent grey skins
in Tiflis at the rate of 28 roubles for ten. Another curious Bok-
haran export, of which also those who use it do not guess the
source, is sheep's guts, prepared for violin strings imder the
supervision of Russian workmen.

I remarked above that the natives had imported for them-
selves smce the railway came, and that prices of European goods
rule very low in Bokhara. This is partly due to a very peculiar
system of trading which prevails there. There is now only one
firm of Russian importers in the city, and the native merchants,
the Sarts, have been accustomed to conduct their business as
follows. They go to Moscow themselves, give their orders, get
long credit, return to Bokhara, sell their goods for less than they
paid for them, and invest the cash thus raised in cotton or silk
or skins. In a good year their profits cover their loss and leave
a handsome balance. In a bad year they fail and pay fifteen or
twenty kopecks on the rouble. The Moscow merchants know
that when a man has paid for four or five years in succession he
is sure to go under, but their profits have been so good that if
they were paid for four years they could w^ell afford to lose the
fifth. Now, however, the Trans-Siberian Railway has given
them so much more to do that they care less about Central
Asian trade and are refusinj^ the old loner credit.

CHAPTER XX

OLD BOKHARA AND ITS HORRORS

'' T T has eleven gates, and a circumference of fifteen English
X miles; threehundredandsixtymosqLies,t\venty-twocara-
vanserays, many baths and bazaars, and the old palace called Ark,
built by Arslan Khan one thousand years ago, and has about
one hundred splendid colleges." So wrote of old Bokhara that
singular divine, the Rev. Dr. Wolff, sixty years ago, one of the
very few Europeans to visit it before the conquering Russian
army, a witness to whom 1 shall presently recur. Like all the
East, alas, Bokhara is no longer what it was, but it is a mightily
impressive city all the same. And the more so because it is among
the rare places where the Oriental does not cringe to the white
face. One notices a distinct difference in the attitude of the
natives towards foreigners here, from that of the Turkomans of
Trans-Caspia and the Sarts of Samarkand. The Turkomans were
crushed by Skobelef at Geok Tepe once for all ; they will never
lift a hand again. The Sarts are urban and mercantile people,
and are wholly resigned to the present n'gimc. The Bokharans,
on the other hand, are still nominally a free race. They see few
strangers, and they dislike them intensely. As you go about the
crowded narrow streets of Bokhara you meet with studied in-
difference or black looks, except from the Jews, and it is easy
to see that indiscreet action would provoke instant reprisals
against yourself. This is one reason why the Russian authori-
ties do not encourage visitors to Bokhara, and indeed some
passports issued for Central Asia include it with the Murghab
branch of the railway as a forbidden place.

298 ALL THE RUSSIAS

When I was there the new branch Hne from the Russian
settlement to the native city was not built, so I drove eight miles
along a flat, dull, dusty road, passing to the left the new palace
the Russians are building for the Amir — a handsome heterogene-
ous sort of structure, half Oriental, half European — and to the
left an old palace completely hidden behind high mud walls.

CITY AND CITADEL, BOKHARA

Midway we stopped at a roadside hovel with a big water-trough
in front, and while the horses drank, the owner brought out a
great gourd water-pipe, with a red charcoal on top, and passed
it to my driver, who drew one deep inhalation and passed it to
another driver, who handed it to a third, and so on till it had
been used by the half-dozen teamsters watering their beasts there.
No man even wiped the mouthpiece as it passed from mouth to
mouth. I mention this incident because it goes some way
tow^ard justifying the statement of a Russian physician quoted
to me, that eighty percent, of the inhabitants of Bokhara suffer
from the worst of contagious diseases.

The approach to the centre of the city is through a great
gateway in the wall, and then by long, narrow streets, between
high walls. In the true fashion of the East, where domesticity

OLD BOKHARA AND ITS HORRORS 299

is of all thini^s most secret, the houses all look inwards, pre-
senting blank backs, broken only by a huge door, to the
passers-by. After a mile or more of these you reach the great
covered bazaar, with charming corners where mulberry-trees
drop their fat berries into shaded ponds, and gossiping men sit
sipping coffee or green tea and smoking the inevitable kalian.
Already the convenient Russian samovar is in general use, and
indeed is made here. Each trade has its own street. Workmen
in leather, in iron, brass, tin, are hard at it, stitching, grinding,
riveting, hammering, with all the strange labour-saving dodges
of the machineless East. Much of the bazaar is vmder a heavy
vaulted roof, and here the more valuable articles are exposed —
books, stuffs, the embroidered skull-caps worn by all, the gay
silk khalats, the universal outer garment like a dressing-gown,
rolls of rainbow-like watered silk from native looms, carpets,
cottons and crockery from Moscow, exquisite kngaiis, ewers of
chased and hammered brass — irresistible to the foreign visitor,
the most characteristic and interesting objects here. The money-
changers are as usual conspicuous — Hindus, with the orange
flame-shaped caste marks on their foreheads, great heaps of
little brass coins and big lumps of silver before them, and a
stock of the beautiful Bokharan gold coins in leather bags
tucked into their breasts. The Jews are in evidence everywhere,
recognisable by their drab khalats, square hats trimmed with fur,
and the cord round their waists. Anti-Semitism has always
reigned in Bokhara, and every Jew is compelled to wear a cord
round his waist. The original intention was that this should be
a genuine piece of rope, but the Jew of to-day obeys the letter
and escapes the spirit of the proscription by wearing a thin silk
cord, or, if he is poor, just a little bit of string.

Twelve or fourteen years ago this bazaar was filled with

English goods, but the Russians deliberately set about killing
that trade, and the long credits of the Moscow merchants

helped. Now nothing is English but the fine muslin used for

300

ALL THE RUSSIAS

the voluminous turbans (in Persia for shrouding the dead),
which Moscow cannot make. The native velvet of brilliant
colours running one into the other, greatly admired by the
Bokharan, though thin and poor in quality, is from 14 to lyi
inches wide, and costs from three to four shillings the arshm
(28 inches). The watered rainbow silk of the same width costs

THI', I'liRTAI

Will; - I'M, ATE, BOKHARA

about 2s. the arsliiii. After long haggling I bouglit a beautiful
brass kurgan, fifteen inches high, for six roubles.

Sunday is bazaar-day in Bokhara, and the crowd is extraor-
dinary. The road from stall to stall is packed with men and
beasts and carts, each man shouting to all the others to get out
of his way, and belabouring the nearest beast. P'or those on
foot it is one congested jostle. The mounted are of many
kinds : big men on little asses — often with veiled women sitting
behind them ; boys astride asses' cruppers with sacks before

OLD BOKHARA y\ND ITS HORRORS 301

them; proud cavaliers, iiiagniiicent in niiilti-coloiired silk and
velvet, on splendid horses of Arab-like breed from Turkestan ;
camels with silent feet and horrid face high above all and pushing
ruthlessly through ;every now and then one of the Amir's otttcers,
followed by his suite, preceded by grooms on foot smartly clearing
a way with sticks ; then suddenly the baklui, thrust close by the
crowd, staring curiously at you with wise old eyes in a child's
face — the scene entrances till you weary of it, which is soon.
The charm of the East is in its mysteries, its thoughts unuttered,
its opinions veiled, its eloquent silence, the strange things it
knows and does not tell : this noise and pushing are of the West
you know. Besides, there is too much horror here — the hot
smallpox marks, the unmistakable pallor of the leper, the dirty
bandage where the Bokharan worm has been pulled from the
flesh, the feature rotted away from unnamable evil, the mutila-
tion from gangrenous wound or judicial torture. You shoulder
your way to a side-street, in a few minutes the bazaar is only a
distant surf-like murmur, and you venture a deep breath again.
The hiitcha of whom I have spoken is one of the peculiarities
of Samarkand. He is the singing and dancing boy, correspond-
ing to the geislui of Japan. It is needless to inquire very closely
into his career, which depends upon his looks and gifts, and not
infrequently brings him wealth by the time his beard comes and
he " retires," but it is an interesting and instructive fact about
Bokharan life that a number of high officials to-day were for-
merly batcJias, and I was told that d.uring my visit there were
hardly any left in the city, as the Amir had sent for them all !
While I had lunch a carpet was spread in the courtyard and a
band of batdias was brought to dance and sing. The natives took
the greatest possible interest in the performance, crowding in,
and appearing on every house-top around, but it seemed to me a
dull show. The singing, which, perhaps fortiuiately, I did not
understand, showed a certain amount of training, but the so-
called dancing seemed aimless, and some of the band were of the

302

ALL THE RUSSIAS

most repulsive ugliness. Doubtless for a performance before an
infidel, in broad daylight, these epicene artists did not give the
rein to their passion, as otherwise it would be impossible to ex-
plain the mad admiration and devotion they excite among their

native patrons. But they would
not come for less than twenty
roubles, all the same, and they
were very dear at the money.
As Mr. Skrine truly remarks,
the European never feels more
acutely the gulf between East
and West than when he wit-
nesses the enthusiasm excited by
the mimic passions of such a
scene. My illustration is a pho-
tograph I took at the time of
an extremely popular hatcha. I
have always been greatly inter-
ested in native dances, and often
found them repay careful study,
but Bokhara contributed little to
my notes on this subject — not to
be compared for a moment to the charming dancing of Japan,
or that most wonderful and eloquent dance I witnessed and
photographed in Seoul, the capital of Korea.*

Every respectable woman in Bokhara goes, of course, veiled,
and her veil is of horsehair, thick and long enough totally to
obliterate her personality. Nothing but the little pointed toe of
a scarlet or green boot, or a mud-plastered shapeless extremity,
betrays the presence behind the veil of a woman whose looks
still justify coquetry, or of a poor old labouring hag. The
unveiled ladies have a street to themselves, where they sit on

" BATCHA " OF BOKHARA

* See " The Real Japan," Chapter IX., and " The Peoples and Politics of the
Far East," p. 354 sqq.

OLD BOKHARA AND ITS HORRORS 303

their balconies in velvet robes and wei<4hed down with cheap
metal ornaments. As they olTer the only opportunity of see-
ing what the women of this country look like, I took advan-
tage once of having a Cossack with me to get him to gather
a little group of them together to be photographed — with

THE UNVEILED LADIES OF .BOKHARA

the result you see. They thought it great fun, and were
made very happy with a rouble or two and some handfuls of
cigarettes.

Bokhara is the focus of Mohammedanism in Central Asia,
since its teaching here is free of all Christian interference. There-
fore the inailrassas, or theological colleges, are still the homes of
devotion and fanaticism, and enjoy all their original prestige.
Therefore, also, a Christian cannot enter them. But their original
architectural beauty has vanished, for the tw^o chief ones, which

304 ALL THE RUSSIAS

face each other in the middle of the town, were once covered
with exquisite bhie tiles and are now meanly repaired with great
patches of mortar. At one mosque in Bokhara two thousand
worshippers can pray at once. Another has a fayade entirely
formed of delicately carved wood, now of that beautiful greyness
which untouched wood takes on with age. In front of it there
is a quiet spot where willows and birches droop over a trickling
fountain, and here an old man in a bright yellow khalai, seated
upon a low square stool, was reading aloud ancient Asian history
to scattered groups of deeply attentive listeners. From time to
time one of them would rise, walk by the reader and drop a coin
for him and silently disappear, while others would as silently join
the circle. I stood a long time watching this scene, held by its
charm, the monotonous voice of the reader, and the remoteness
of it all from one's own w^orld. The genuine untouched East,
exactly the same to-day as it was a thousand years ago, is rare
now.

1 had not been in the city an hour, on my first visit, before
there was a commotion in the crowd and a huge old gentleman
in a brilliant striped A'//^//^?/, mounted on a hne horse and followed
by several attendants, came pushing his way through the crowd,
careless of whom he trod upon or knocked aside. It was evident
from the demeanour of the people that he inspired respect if not
fear, so when he reined up sharply by me and began to address
me volubly, I was prepared for some sort of a scene. It turned out
that he was the chief of police, and that he had been despatched
by the Khiiz Bt^gi^ the ruler of the city in the Amir's absence, to
find the foreigner reported to be in the bazaar, and request him
to present himself at once at the palace. I have had so many of
these dreary receptions, and my time was being so much more
interestingly occupied, that I made every excuse I could think of.
I was not fittingly dressed to wait upon his mightiness, my time
was very short, I begged the policeman to present my respects
and excuses, and so on. But it was of no use, and the worthy

OLD BOKHARA AND ITS HORRORS 305

man became so insistent that I saw it would be discreet to comply
without further delay.

The nondescript " palace " to which we made our way may be
better jud^^ed from my illustration than described. It is the old
"Ark," built in 1742, and the clock between its towers was
the ransom an Italian prisoner gave for his life. The slope
leading to it was lined with soldiery, wearing black astrachan
hats, black tunics, scarlet trousers and high boots, and groups
of officials eyed us curiously and without any obvious ap-
proval. The actual entrance behind the towers is up a narrow
sloping passage, evidently made to admit a horse, with queer dark
cell-like rooms off it at intervals — the sleeping quarters of the
soldiers, and perliaps places of detention also. At last we were
ushered into an ante-chamber, beyond which was a kind of
banqueting-room,and in the former we were immediately joined
by that redoubtable personage, the Chief of the P'alconers him-
self. He was a short, enormously fat man, with a patriarchal
white beard, a colossal white turban, and a splendid kliahit of
flowered white silk. A native interpreter, speaking Russian, ac-
companied him, so our conversation was done at two removes,
through my own interpreter. He greeted me with a string of
profuse and variegated compliments, and begged me to partake
of refreshments. As soon as we entered the adjoining chamber
I saw that I should be lucky if I escaped in a couple of hours, for
a most elaborate and picturesque ilasfarklian, or spvecLcl of sweet-
meats of every kind, was on the table, too obviously the prelude to
a corresponding feast. And so it proved, the troop of servants
swept away course after course, the well-known sluisJilik, the
sluufct, boiled mutton with rice, the kdvanlik, ragout of mutton
and onions, the kebab, grilled knobs of mutton, and the profusion
of fruit and sugary cakes; while finding that I did not drink the
sweet champagne very fast out of one glass they tried the hos-
pitable but ineffective expedient of filling several glasses with it
and placing them temptingly within reach of my hand.

3o6 ALL THE RUSSIAS

The conversation was of a similar sugary character. I asked
after his Highness Sayid Abdul Aliad, and if he was soon coming
to Bokhara. I was informed that he was very busy but that he
would soon come to conduct affairs of state. The Klinz Bcgi
hoped "my Queen" was in good health, and that the war in
which she was engaged was progressing well. I was thankful
to say the Queen was well, and I hoped the war would soon have
a victorious issue. War, remarked my host, was a terrible thing.
I agreed, and asked how trade in Bokhara was. Thanks to the
wisdom and kindness of the Russians in bringing the railway,
it was excellent (O hypocrite !). I begged that my respectful
greetings might be conveyed to the Amir, with an expression of
my profound regret that I had not been able to present my com-
pliments in person. A special courier should instantly be des-
patched to his Highness, I was assured, to carry my message.
This, I afterwards heard, was actually done, not of course for
anything of the sort, but doubtless to tell him that a foreigner
had arrived, that he had been summoned to the palace and enter-
tained with food and fair words, and ascertained to be a harmless
Englishman, who had duly paid homage to the great Amir. At
every compliment, or whenever our eyes met, the KIiuz Begi
rose, passed his hand slowly down his beard (the conventional
salaam, refusal to perform which cost poor Stoddart his life),
and bowed profoundly, I of course doing the same. The scene
would have been a great success on the stage, I think — at least I
had to adjure my Russian companion not to laugh. As a matter
of fact, it was rather a shocking farce, for he regarded me as an
accursed Christian dog, thrusting my nose into places where I
had no business, and was doubtless reflecting that but for those
other accursed Russians he would promptly have dropped me
among the sheep ticks, preparatory to letting my blood run
down the gutters of the bazaar ; while I certainly regarded
him as an old monster, given up to the beastliest vices, and
crafty and cruel and rapacious beyond words. We parted

OLD BOKHARA AND ITS HORRORS 307

with an outburst of compliments and affectionate assurances
which deceived neither of us. This is one aspect of Eastern
travel. If there were much of it, and nothing else, few
people would go to the East except for trade or sword in
hand.

As we were conducted down the passage I noticed hanging

THK STREET GRIMACER OF BOKHARA

near the entrance a great club and an enormous whip. The
former is said to have come from Mecca, and the latter to be the
whip of the immortal Rustum himself. Outside, a crowd had
gathered, and an official made a way for me with his stick. In the
middle a tall native was holding forth at a great rate about a
young fellow in a blue tunic, who illustrated the different phases
of the patter with an appalling grimace, greeted by the spectators
with shouts of delighted laughter. Never have I seen such a
countenance on a human being. The fellow's mouth seemed
made of india-rubber, and inserting a finger of each hand into the
corners he pulled and stretched it and apparently wound it round
his ears and opened it till you could have inserted a good-sized
melon. It was a quaint scene, as my photograph shows, proving

3o8

ALL THE RUSSIAS

that the natural man finds pleasure in unnatural things, alike in
Central Asia and on Epsom Downs.

High above everything else in Bokhara towers the Minar
Kalan, the great tower of punishment. It is built of flat red

bricks, and its graceful
proportions have not suf-
fered at all from the effects
of time. At the top, as
will be seen, it widens into
a kind of campanile, set
with oblong windows,and
at its foot there is a de-
pression which looks as
if it had been scraped
out of the ground. From
one of these windows
condemned criminals,
trussed like fowls, were
pushed out, and this de-
pression is where genera-
tions of them fell. One of
the last Europeans to wit-
ness the horrid sight be-
fore the Russians stopped
it for ever was M. Moser,
the well-known French
traveller in Central Asia,
who spent some time in
Bokhara, but almost as
a prisoner in his house,
for he could not go about the city without an escort. Speak-
ing of dull days .thus spent he writes : " Comme distraction,
je voyais, les jours de bazar, des paquets, jetes du haut du
Manarkalan, tournoyer dans I'air."

THE TOWER OF EXECUTIONS, BOKHARA

OLD BOKHARA AND ITS HORRORS 309

The prison of Bokhara possesses an irresistible fascination
for anybody who knows the history of Central Asia, and I fear
I looked forward to visiting this more than any other place
there. It was the scene of three of the most horrible and
lonely martyrdoms that Englishmen have ever been called
upon to suffer in the cause of Empire. The story is forgotten
now, but cannot be separated from the place.

In 1840 Colonel Stoddart, of the Indian army, was sent by
the British Government on a mission to Bokhara, to make cer-
tain political arrangements with the Amir Nasrullah. He was
discourteously received, and appears to have acted with indis-
cretion. When he was requested to make the usual salaam
before the Amir, he drew his sword — a gross affront, and when
a message was brought to him from the Amir he is said to have
replied with the Oriental insult, " Eat dung ! " At any rate
he was on the worst terms with the Amir, and was eventually
thrown into prison. Later, Captain Arthur Conolly, also of the
Indian army, a man of singular beauty of character and con-
spicuous piety, was despatched by the Indian Government to
Khokand and Khiva, with orders to proceed afterwards to
Bokhara, to place himself under the orders of Stoddart and
assist the latter in any way necessary. He duly reached
Bokhara, and shared Stoddart's treatment. Then darkness fell
upon the fate of the two envoys. The last authentic news of
them, up to September 1843, was contained in two letters from
Conolly to his brother John, himself a hostage in Kabul, and
told of their situation in the summer of 1842 :

" For four months they had no change of raiment ; their
dungeon was in a most filthy and unwholesome state, and teemed
with vermin to a degree that rendered life a burden. Stoddart
was reduced to a skeleton, and his bodv was covered with putrid
sores. They had, with great difficulty, prevailed upon one of
their keepers to represent their wretched condition to the King,
and were then awaiting his reply, having committed themselves

3IO ALL THE RUSSIAS

to God, in the full assurance that, unless soon released, death
must shortly terminate their sufferings."

The British and Indian Governments — to their shame be it
said, unless there were circumstances one does not know —
took no steps to discover what had become of their envoys,
and, indeed, placed obstacles in the way of several officers
who volunteered to risk the journey to Bokhara, by forbid-
dincf them to wear their uniforms and refusing them official
credentials.

At this point a quaint hero stepped forward, in the person
of Joseph Wolff, D.D., LL.D. This worthy man had already
lived through experiences strange enough, one would have
thought, to satisfy the most adventurous. Born a Jew, he had
become a Roman Catholic,turned Protestant, publicly protested
against the Pope in Rome, and been escorted out of the city
by twenty-five gendarmes. He joined the Church of England,
studied at Cambridge, and then, with two objects, the conver-
sion of his fellow-Jews and the discovery of the Ten Lost Tribes
of the Dispersion, he had preached a defiant and polemical
gospel all over the East, challenging the learned everywhere to
dispute with him in many tongues. Amongst other remote and
dangerous lands his missionary zeal had carried him, in 1830,
even to Bokhara, where he " underwent much rigid questioning
from the Goosh Bekee " — a fact eloquent enough in itself of the
stuff he was made of. Then he settled down as curate of High
Hoyland, in Yorkshire ; but unable to pass rich on X60 a year, he
had taken his wife and son to live in Bruges. With a courage
not to be over-praised he decided to make the perilous attempt
to rescue the two officers, the younger of whom he knew
personally and greatly esteemed, or at least to place their fate
beyond doubt, and in July 1843 he inserted a letter in the
Morning Herald, addressed to all the officers of the British army,
calling for companions or funds to help him in the enterprise.
" I merely want," he wrote, " the expenses of my journey, and

OLD BOKHARA AND ITS HORRORS 311

not one sin<^le f:irthin}4 as a compensation, even in case of
complete success." Tlie money was found, chiefly by a Captain
Grover, one of the officers to whom, as narrated above, the
Government had refused official countenance; instructions were
given to all British representatives on his route to afford him
help ; he left London on October 14, 1843 ; reached Bokhara

■rill". APPKiiACll 10 rilK TKISON, BOKHARA

after many adventures and in spite of the gravest warnings of
his certain fate ; was detained there a prisoner for a longtime;
refused to embrace Islam, and finally abandoned all hope of
escaping the executioner ; was only allowed to go at last in
consequence of letters demanding his release being sent to the
Amir by the Shah of Persia ; was in such a condition when he
reached English friends again in Persia that he wrote : " For
five days poor Colonel Williams was engaged in putting the

312

ALL THE RUSSIAS

vermin off my body " ; and arrived back in London on April 12,
1845.*

His journey established the fact that the two men he sought
to rescue had been murdered three months before he started,
and also that a third British officer, Lieutenant Wyburd, had
been killed by the Amir. " For the quietude of soul of the
friends of those murdered officers, Colonel Stoddart and Cap-
tain Conolly," wrote
Dr. Wolff, "I have
to observe that they
were both of them
cruelly slaughtered
at Bokhara, after suf-
fering agonies from
confinement in prison
of the most fearful
character — masses of
their flesh having
been gnawed off
their bones by ver-
min — in 1843." The
fate of the unhappy
envoys had indeed
been almost the
cruellest conceivable.
They had been kept
long in prison, sub-
ject to every privation, their hopes being constantly raised
by sham negotiations with the Amir, and several times they
had been led to execution and taken back to prison. On
one of these occasions they had been offered their lives if they
would embrace Islam. The younger man boldly professed

* By a curious slip his own narrative gives the date of his start wrongly as
October 1844, instead of 1843.

GATE AND THK GAULEK, KUKHAKA

OLD BOKHARA AND ITS HORRORS 313

his faith in the eye of death, but in a moment of weak-
ness, for which he needs no forgiveness, the elder aposta-
tised. That they were confined in a dungeon-pit infested
with sheep-ticks — the reader who has ever seen a sheep-tick may
supply the adjectives — seems certain, though it may be a fable
that these insects were fed with meat in readiness for the human
prey supplied to them from time to time. At last they were
taken out and their heads cut off in public, but not before
Stoddart had denounced Islam and declared that he died, as he
had lived, in the faith of his fathers. Of Conolly's end Dr.
Wolff finely wrote : "His firm conduct at his dying hour re-
minds us forcibly of the bearing of those brave soldiers who
died in the persecutions of Decius and Diocletian. I hope to
see my Conolly among them at the hour of Christ's coming in
glory."

As the British Government had done nothing to save its
emissaries, so it did nothing to punish their murderer. But the
Reverend Joseph Wolff was not without justification when he
said : " I have given such proofs to my Jewish friends of my
sincerity of belief, as I may say without boasting no other
Jewish convert has yet done. Independent of this, my
nation saw that the Jew was prepared to risk his life to save
the Gentile." Lcclia shaloui*

All this was vividly in my memory when I set out for the
old prison of Bokhara. The palace, or, as it should rather be
termed, the citadel or fort, stands upon a low hill, said to be
artificial, and is surrounded by a high mud-wall. Skirting

* Dr.Wolff subsequently became vicar of Isle Brewers, in Somerset, and remained
there till his death. The Rev. Mr. Cole, the present vicar, courteously informs me
that he is buried in the churchyard under a marble cross with this most modest
inscription: " Joseph Wolff, Vicar of Isle Brewers. Born Nov. gth, 1795. Died
May and, 1862. The Lord Jesus Christ was his only hope of Salvation." It is
equally remarkable and regrettable that his monument bears no allusion to his life
of missionary zeal, or to the act of Christian heroism which was its climax.

314

ALL THE RUSSIAS

this, one comes at its eastern side to the foot of a mound,
upon which there is a walled enclosure reached by a winding
road and entered through a massive gateway of brick, now
dilapidated. This is the Zindan, or state prison, and it faces
the wall of the citadel. The gaoler came out to meet me and
I shivered at the thought of those at his mercy. He was an

THE DOOR OF THE GREAT PRISON, BOKHARA

old man, very fat, with a long white beard, dressed all in white,
and his cruel, leering face was an epitome of the vices. Expec-
tation of a present made him obsequious, but from his wicked
grin it was easy to guess that he would have been better pleased
to receive me under quite different circumstances. For twenty-
seven years, he said, he had been in charge of the prison. The
square doorway admits to a kind of vaulted guard-room, in
which soldiers and a few ugly natives were sitting and lounging.
On the walls were plastered pieces of paper on which texts from
the Koran were roughly engrossed, and below them hung a
fine collection of chains and handcuffs. Beyond the guard-room
was a small yard, and two sides of it were formed by the fronts
of the two separate prisons — one of brick, and comparatively

OLD BOKHARA AND ITS HORRORS 315

new, the other of mud, low and old, below the level of the yard,
its thick doors of worm-eaten wood fastened at the top by an
antediluvian padlock. The door of the new prison was opened
and I entered alone. It was a good-sized chamber, lighted by
little barred windows near the roof, its floor covered with men.
A row of them sat round the wall, for the simple reason that
they were chained there, while others had spread their miserable
quilts so as to fill every inch of space, and sat and lay in all sorts
of attitudes to get relief for their limbs without touching their
neighbours. The moment they realised that a foreigner had
come, they broke out into all sorts of petitions, a dozen talking
at once. Doubtless they took me for a Russian of^cial, who
could have interfered on their behalf. One poor wretch ran
across and fell on his knees, seizing me by the leg and reiter-
ating in all the Russian he knew that he was a Samarkand man,
and therefore a Russian subject — " Ya Scnuarkand chclovick !
Ya Samarkand cheloviek 1 " It was a shocking sight, and I con-
fess I approached the door of the old prison with misgiving.
A soldier undid the padlock and stood aside for me to enter.
I took one step and then stopped.

The room was almost dark, two deep steps led down into it,
it was crowded with men like beasts in a pen, a stifling reek
issued, and heavy chains rattled as those wearing them turned
to see who was entering. For a moment I hesitated, then a
thin broken voice said half reproachfully, in Russian : "Please
come in— please ! " and I stepped down into the inferno. The
spectacle was such as one does not easily forget. The room
was smaller than the other, and without any opening to the
outer air except the door, and it was even more crowded. As
my eyes grew accustomed to the gloom I saw that most of the
inmates were chained, and others were evidently only free for
the day, for behind them were the rings in the wall to which
they were chained at night. Chains on the hands, chains on
the feet, even chains round the necks, and some of them with

3i6

ALL THE RUSSIAS

a big iron collar and chained by it to the wall. Poor, pale,
haggard wretches — utterly ignorant of what might happen to
them, never knowing when the door opened that it was not the
executioner come to take them to the bazaar. Among them
were men evidently well-to-do, for they were dressed in clothes
that had once been good, and their mats had once been the
clean beds of prosperousfmen. They were almost beyond hope ;

THE HUKKOK OF HuRKOKS, IJOKHARA

few spoke to me except to beg for bread and water ; several
took no notice of me whatever, but the moment the door had
opened and let in a little light they had pulled copies of the
Koran out of their dress and were reading if fast as long as the
light lasted. One man seemed to take a sardonic satisfaction
in my evident horror, for he made a way for me across the
floor and invited me by gestures to enter a second chamber,
through a low doorway in the wall. I remembered that the
vermin-pit was said to have been within a second chamber in
the old prison, so I overcame my repugnance and entered.
The inner room was like the outer, but its human inmates were
in even a worse state, and it is needless to dwell more on filth

OLD BOKHARA AND ITS HORRORS 317

and horror. The earthen floor sank in the middle — the pit
that was here has been filled up.

This, then, was probably the scene of the long agony of
Stoddart and the gentle Conolly. Within these very walls the
two Englishmen, thinking on the spotlessness and the honour
of home, on their comrades and friends, on the women who
loved them and were breaking their hearts for them — or were
finding consolation, if time had tried troth too high — on the
Government that had sent them and had apparently washed
its hands of them, starved with hunger, sickened with dirt,
gnawed alive by burrowing vermin, had prayed first for life and
then at last for death. But even this poignant memory could
not displace the present horror. There is this truth in the
Roman playwright's immortal remark, that the degradation of
one human being, whether inflicted or self -procured, degrades
humanity. I was haunted for weeks by the face of a man I
once saw in prison who had just been flogged, and to me, who
hate to see a lark in a cage or a monkey tied to an organ, the
sight of all these men, with hopes and fears and affections like
my own in kind, positively chained in rows, robbed of every
vestige of human rights, was awful. All I could do was to buy
bread for them all, and stand by till I saw they really had it,
and distribute some handfuls of small coin, in the hope that it
would afford a grain of alleviation of their lot. How long had
most of them been there ? I asked the old gaoler. Some just
come in — some for years. Had they all been tried ? Some
had — some had not. What were they chiefly condemned to ?
Some to stay in prison — some to death. Would some of
them be freed ? The old man smiled. I knew what he meant
— it depended upon whether they, or their relatives, could find
money to bribe others and him. When would the condemned
ones be executed ? God alone knew.

If the round earth has a spot upon which hope can find
no foothold, that spot would seem to be the prison of Old

3i8 ALL THE RUSSIAS

Bokhara. Yet as I looked back I saw that a gipsy woman had
followed me in, and that — the soldier at the gaol-door being
too interested to shut it — a group of eager prisoners had
gathered round the step, and she was telling their fortunes for
the coppers I had given them.

CHAPTER XXI
SAMARKAND AND BEYOND

AFTER Athens, Rome, and Constantinople, I should rank
Samarkand as the most interesting city in the world. A
volume might be filled with descriptions of all its sights, hut
fortunately my photographs, which I venture to think are
of unusual interest, tell the greater part of what one would
wish to say. It lies 2000 feet above the sea, and is a desert
of narrow streets and silent, mud-coloured houses, surrounded
by an earthly paradise of fertile fields, rich vineyards, and
blossoming gardens, recalling at once a certain clever imita-
tion of Omar Khayyam —

What thoiish the Book 3-011 cannot understand?
Druik while the Cup stands ready to your hand ;

Drink, and declare the summer roses blow
As red in London as in Samarkand.

In its midst is the inevitable bazaar, crowded from morning till
night by dense crowds of haggling purchasers and gossipers,
through which a ceaseless stream of men and women on horses,
donkeys, and camels push their way with the greatest difficulty.
As in Bokhara, one section is devoted to cloth, another to silk,
another to leather, another to arms, another to metal-work, and
the most interesting of all to manuscripts. Here I was brought
all ports of strange volumes to buy, and although this market
had been ransacked of late for rare treatises I could not help
feeling that only my ignorance of their contents prevented me
securing some manuscript of value. But probably my ignorance

320 ALL THE RUSSIAS

also preserved me from less pleasant discoveries, for much of the
reading matter that delights the East would produce a very
different impression upon a Western mind.

It is the marvellous ruins of Samarkand, however, that give
the city its extraordinary interest. Alexander the Great paused
here ; long afterward China made it into a great capital ; then
Mohammedanism, destined to conquer from China to Turkey,
converted it into the best loved and most admired spot of the
world. Genghiz Khan destroyed it with fire and sword in
1 2 19, and more than a century later Timur, the lame Tartar
— Timur Lciig, whence our "Tamerlane" — anticipated the
beauty and the fame of Athens here, and adorned it with
the "grandest monimients of Islam," whose ruins to-day, six
centuries later, are worth the long journey to the heart of
Asia to see. They surround the Rigistan, or market-place,
and consist of several iiuulrassas, or colleges, Timur's tomb,
his wife's mausoleum, and one wonderful mosque. The
niadrassa, called Shir Dar, or "the Lion-Bearing," from the
Lion and the Sun of Persia enamelled upon it, stands on
the eastern side of the great square, and that known as Tila
Kari, or the Golden, from the gold plating with which it was
once covered, on the north. To their splendour, as shown
in my illustrations, must be added the effect of colour, for
their fafades are built of coloured tiles, among which the
unequalled blue of Persia predominates. These fagades are
flanked with minarets of extreme grace but curiously out of
the perpendicular, while within, the courtyard is surrounded
with two storeys of class-rooms and students' apartments.
Foreigners are not welcomed here, but I managed to make
friends with the professors of one of these colleges, and
after a theological discussion of the prohibition in the Koran
of making pictures of the faithful, to take this photograph of
a group of them.

A young student of the niadrassa, with the Oriental's eye for

SAMARKAND AND BEYOND

323

bakshish, volunteered to take me up to the roof, and the view of
the city, combined with the recollection of its marvellous past,
held me long entranced. Below was the crowded, noisy, many-

A SAKT OF SAMARKAND

coloured market-place, enclosed by the great buildings, still
magnificent in their partial ruin — the noblest public square in
the world, in Lord Curzon's opinion. Beyond them the glorious
domes of the mausoleums of Timur, the man who built them
all, and his wife, stood high above everything else. Time and

3^4

ALL THE RUSSIAS

earthquakes have wrought destruction, the portals are broken,
some of the minarets are without tops, square yards of tiles have
fallen off, rubbish-heaps have been formed of the ch'biis, but still
the magnificence of these great structures persists, and I know

THK MADRASSA SHIR DAR, SAMARKAND

no more impressive and picturesque sight than this great market,
crowded with stalls and shouting buyers and sellers, while high
above and all around the human ant-heap stand these vast archi-
tectural splendours of an age long past, the note of heavenly blue
dominating all. The city, flat and sombre, was ringed around

SAMARKAND AND BEYOND

327

with gardens and vineyards. Around these was the bare, sandy
desert, rolHng up into the Mai range. Behind me was the peace-

INTKKIOK OF SHIR PAR, SAMARKAND

ful courtyard, surrounded by its tiers of cells for the students,
with trees, and fountains, and slowly stepping, white-turbaned

328 ALL THE RUSSIAS

iiiolhilis. Once this was the metropolis of the world of Islam,
the home of art and poetry, the site of everything most splendid
that Mohammedanism produced, the place of every Mussulman's
desire, the symbol of beauty and perfection. Hafiz of Shiraz be-
lieved himself to be touching the high- water mark of hyperbole
when he wrote —

If that Turkish girl of Shiraz would give me her heart,

I would give for one mole of her cheek Samarkand and Bokhara.

But the Uzbegs were the Goths and Vandals of this Asian Rome
— the Turks of this later Athens. F'inally even Bokhara took it
and held it till the Russians came conquering from Tashkent.
Happily Timur built his monuments so solidly that neither
men nor time have destroyed them, and to-day they are
assuredly still among the most glorious works of human
hands.

Timur himself reposes beneath an exquisite fluted dome,
flanked originally by two minarets, of which one has fallen
and the other is cracked and leans dangerously. In front is
an entrance portal with a Gothic arch, in blue enamel,
leading to a garden shaded by alders and mulberries and
weeping acacias. An aged mollaJi lives in a stone cell within
the mausoleum, surrounded by paper texts copied from
the decorations and tombs, which he sells to the faithful.
Beneath the lofty dome, on the ground level, within a kind
of palisade of pierced alabaster or gypsum, are half a dozen
coftin-shaped slabs, marking the places where the bodies lie
in the crypt below. One of these is an enormous block of
dark-green jade, almost black, said to be the largest in the
world, bearing the name of the Amir Timur himself, and
the date of his death in Mohammedan chronology — A.D. 1405.
Another block is commemorative of his grandson, Ulugh
Beg, the famous astronomer. In a recess, below a pierced
stone window, hangs a flag, surmounted by a horse-tail — the

SAMARKAND AND BEYOND

329

symbol of fightin<^ MoliainniecUmism. When you have gazed
upon these the old iiiollnh h<4hts a guttering candle and leads you
down a narrow liight of marble steps to the crypt, where the

'amOfiiMti^iAifis^iJ^jS

POKTAI, OK THK TOMR OF TAMERI.ANK, SAMARKAND

mighty conqueror lies beneath a single stone — one of the world's
greatest dead, whose armies ranged victorious over more than
even Russia rules to-day.

Not less impressive than his own tomb, and probably more
beautiful before it fell into hopeless decay, is the mausoleum of

330

ALL THE RUSSIAS

Bibi Khaniim, his wife, the daughter of the Emperor of China.
One traveller speaks of it as "Ic plus bcdii luonumcnt qui ait
jdiiiais etc clevc n la mcinoirc d'ltiic fciiuuc adorcc,'^ and if one

THE TOMB OF TAMERLANE, SAMARKAND

did not remember the Taj Mahal at Agra one might accept the
enthusiastic verdict. Its colossal and sweeping portal is now but
a ruined arch, and its magnificent and towering dome, once
gorgeous in red and green and gold, is rent across and must

SAMARKAND AND BEYOND

33'^

soon fall. But time and ne<4lect have failed to make any
impression upon one thing — the enormous marble lectern
in the courtyard, which used, it is said, to hold a Koran of
corresponding proportions read by Bibi Khanum herself from
an upper window.

Most impressive of all, however, to my way of thinking, is the

THIC TOMB OF TAMKKLANE— THE Ul'l'KR CHAMBER

mosque of the Shah Zindah, or " Living Saint," a martyred saint
of Islam, who is to arise again in the hour of the triumph of his
failh. You enter it through a blue and white-tiled gateway, and
pass by a marble stair between a double row of tombs of Timur's
relatives and generals. To the left, when I visited it, the very
sacred mosque was crowded with kneeling worshippers, all bow-
ing together like a wave as the leading niollali chanted the credo
of Islam. If I caught thedeeprollingalliterativesyllables aright,
they were the sacred words which Mohammed saw in letters of

332 ALL THE RUSSIAS

fire on the tiara of Gabriel, since that day the profession of the
most fanatical—" God, and nothing but God, and Mohammed
the Prophet of God." Then through a long narrow corridor to
the entrance of the inner mosque, on the threshold of which a
mollah was devoutly praying, with its huge inscription, " God is
Great," and a green text from Mecca, a carved wooden pulpit,

KiMl; (II TAMEKLANK— THE CRYPT WHERE HE LIES

and an enormous Koran, five feet square. Then across padded
carpets to the inner sanctuary, where, behind a pierced stone
screen, old green flags hang, and a faint candle shows the deep
stone-built hole where the Saint awaits the joyful news of the
final triumph of Islam. Beside the screen is a heavy little wooden
door, leading to the vault below, and fastened with a most
quaint padlock. " That has never been unlocked since the Saint
entered the earth, twelve hundred and fifty-nine years ago,"
said the mollah who was conducting me — with a fine disregard,
it must be confessed, of historical accuracy, for that would
place the date about six hundred years before the birth of
Timur himself, who built the mosque. This spot, however,
does not need the aid of pious fiction, and through these narrow

SAMARKAND AND BEYOND 333

ways and gates and prayer-chambers one walked in silence,
for everywhere worshippers were prostrating themselves in
deep devotion, and in the innermost room one peered down
into the deep and black tomb where the Saint lies until that
day, feeling that one was in truth in a place sanctified by the
solemn homage of ages of devout men.

One word must be added here in criticism of the Russian
authorities. They are apparently oblivious of the sacred re-
sponsibility imposed upon them by the possession of these unique
monuments of a glorious past. Some rough repairs of common
plaster have been made in the walls and dome of the tomb of
Timur — and, indeed, it would be a crime to allow so memorable
a spot to fall into decay — but, on the whole, the Russians have
done almost nothing to keep these splendid structures intact.
They do strictly forbid the selling of the blue tiles, but thirty
years after they came here an earthquake wrought destruction,
and the piles of brick, and mortar, and smashed tiles lie just
as they fell. One of the most beautiful domes of Samarkand,
that of the Mosque of Bibi Khanum herself, the great Amir's
consort, has a huge open rift across it, and may collapse at any
moment. The cost of preservation would not be great, and it
is surprising that some archaeological society in Russia does
not undertake the task which the Government thus strangely
neglects.*

As Samarkand and all the surrounding country is Russian
territory, and as the commerce of the place is important and
rapidly growing, the Russian town — which, as in the case of

* Since I wrote theabove the following lamentable confirmation of this neglect has
been telegraphed from St. Petersburg to the Daily Chronicle : — " The tomb of the
great Asiatic conqueror Tamerlane was plundered last month in Samarkand. The
robbers not only broke the valuable memorial tablet that was on the tomb under the
cupola of the great mosque, where the conqueror is buried, but they also took away
many other valuables belonging to the mosque, which seems to be practically un-
guarded, notwithstanding it contains some of themost valuable inscriptions in Asia."

334

ALL THE RUSSIAS

Bokhara, is at some distance from the native one — is aheady of
considerable extent and importance. The Governor's residence
is large and spacious— indeed, somewhat extravagantly so — set
in the middle of a square- walled garden of several acres. The
official departments are numerous and well housed, and there is
an admirable school, on an astonishingly large scale, for the

MAUSOLEUM OF BIBI KHANUM

children of the civilservantsand Russian residents. Theshopsare
not like those in Siberia, but all ordinary supplies may be pur-
chased. The town reminded me of some American cities in the
West, being laid out like a chessboard, with wide streets planted
with trees. It is evident that the Russians foresaw from the
beginning the possibilities of the place, and that they allowed
roomforthedevelopmentthatissuretocome. The mountainous
districts around are believed to contain valuable minerals in
enormous quantities, and it is said that a great coal-bed has been

SAMARKAND AND BEYOND

335

discovered. The natives are industrious, and weave Moscow
yarn into stuffs which have a large local sale ; many thousands
of acres are planted with vines, producing wine and raisins;
and the industry of distilling eau-de-vie de viii has sprung up
and is growing fast.

It is curious, as I have already remarked, that in such

TOMB OF BIBI KHANUM

thriving foreign settlements there is nothing like an hotel. The
nearest approach is what are called Nojiiem, houses let out in
furnished rooms, in which you can get a cup of coffee in the
morning and nothing else that you can eat. On the other hand,
the military casino, or club, is a fine building, with dining-rooms,
billiard-room, library, and a truly magnificent ball-room, and pri-
vate theatre. Unless the traveller hasthet'^/n'Vtothis, he is very
badly off in Samarkand. At Tashkent I was formally introduced^
by a courteous acquaintance, but here I knew nobody, as the
Governor did not trouble to acknowledge the letter of intro-
duction I left at his residence from his immediate superior, the
Governor-General of Turkestan. This, by the way, and the

33^

ALL THE RUSSIAS

action of theChief of Police of Askhabad,of which I havealready
spoken, were the only two occasions during my whole journey
in the Tsar's dominions when I was not treated with the utmost
courtesy and consideration, and when every effort was not
made to enable me to see everything and learn everything that
I desired. I gladly take this opportunity to return my cordial

MAUSOLEUM AND MOSQUE OF SHAH ZINDAH

thanks, and to say that nowhere in the world could a visiting
foreigner have pursued his way under happier conditions. But
this reference to the club at Samarkand reminds me of a
story.

As I have said, I knew nobody, and the club was the only
place in the foreign settlement where a decent meal could be had.
So, with my interpreter, a young Russian gentleman who ac-
companied me everywhere, I made bold to call at the club, ask
for the name of any officer who happened to be present, and
when a lieutenant who was playing billiards came out, to ex-

SAMARKAND AND BEYOND

337

plain to him who I was and what was my p'ii^ht, and to beg
that I might be permitted to use the chib during my short stay.
Like every Russian, lie was the soul of courtesy when courte-

INTEKK^K ()|- SIIAII ZINUAH, SAMARKAND

ously approached, and he at once sought another officer on the
premises to be my supporter, and our two names were entered as
guests on the spot. This is one example of many such acts of
friendly politeness. Now for the story — which shows another

338

AIX THE RUSSIAS

side of foreign life in Russia. It was during the Boer War, when
things were not going well for us in South Africa, and anti-
British feeling ran veryhigh in Russiaand the newspapers served
up a daily hash of denunciations and lies manufactured in Brus-
sels. Things reached such a pass at last that British Consuls, in
full uniform, on official occasions, were deliberately insulted in

THE HOUR (i|- I'KA'tIK, SAMARKAND

public by Russian officials of high rank. With the timidity that
has characterised it during the past five years, the British Foreign
Office, instead of officially takingup these insults and thus bring-
ing them to an instant stop, ordered all our Consuls to absent
themselves on public occasions. This order was the result of an
exceedingly gross insult offered to our Consul in Moscow by a
Russian General at an official party given by the Governor-Gen-
eral there — an insult which compelled him to rise, seek his wife
at another table, proceed to the table w'here the Grand Duke
and the Grand Duchess were sitting at supper, make his bows,
and withdraw, the most marked action that a foreigner could
possibly take in the presence of Russian royalt3\ This, however,

SAMARKAND AND BEYOND

339

is not the story, which contains one of the most finished diplo-
matic repHes I have ever heard of. A British Consul-General,
with a mihtary title from having served in a famous Highland
regiment, was dining in full uniform at an official party on a
State occasion about this time. He was seated at a table with a
distinguished company, including a prince and princess. While

THE AVENUE OF ANDIJAN

they were talking, a well-known Russian General, covered with
decorations, walked across from another table, his glass in his
hand, and holding it before the face of the British Consul-Gen-
eral, exclaimed, "/^ ^^^'-^ ^' I'-i saute des braves Boers !" It was a
moment that would have tested the most experienced diplomacy.
But the Scotsman was equal to it. The insult was deliberate and
gross; moreover, it was official, and the Consul would have been
wholly within his rights if he had treated it as such, left the room,
reported it to his Ambassador, and demanded an apology. This,

340

ALL THE RUSSIAS

however, in the ciicumstances, and considering the relations of
the two countries, would have been a blunder, and the Foreign
Office, while it would have been compelled to take up his case,

THE NATIVE POLICEMAN OF ANDIJAN

would have regarded him as a tactless mischief-maker. Still,
some reply had to be made on the spot, and a dignified one.
The Consul-General rose instantly, with perfect self-control
ignored the intended affront, and touching his glass to the
General's, responded, " Aiix braves dc toutes Ics nations, inon

SAMARKAND AND BEYOND 341

Gc'iuTol!" It would be difficult to beat that reply, and the
Russians themselves were loud in their praises of such con-
summate tact. The man who made it was severely wounded
by a Boer shell not long afterward.

Beyond Samarkand, along the eastern branch of the Trans-
Caspian to its terminus at Andijan, lies the cotton country of
Turkestan. The towns themselves— Khodjent, Kokand, Marge-
Ian (the administrative capital of P'ergana), and Andijan— are on
a smaller scale like those I have described, Kokand with a past,
Margelan with a present of greater importance. Nothing in
them calls for additional remark, except cotton. Where there
is no water, or no system of irrigation, desolation reigi.s. I
remember well how the train stopped, late one afternoon, at a
station in the middle of the desert. Not a house or a leaf was
in sight. A few dogs were prowling about, an old man on a
camel was just starting across the trackless sand, and a long-
bearded Sart was delighting the Russian station-master's little
son by setting him upon his ass. A hundred yards from the
station were seven graves in the sand, each with a rough wooden
cross above it, and by the sight of the station-master himself,
thin, pale, bent, with crooked knees, I judged there would soon
be eight. Given water, and the scene changes to fat fields,
cosy dwellings, blooming gardens, prosperous natives, and
mountains of bales of cotton awaiting transport.

The cotton-land is the property of those natives who were in
occupation of it when the Russians came, and every effort is
v^risely made to keep it in their hands. Before they can sell,
they must procure the written permission of three Kazis, or
native judges, and then the Russian Chief of the District can
either give or withhold his consent to the transaction, and in
any casehe only gives permission when none of the native neigh-
bours wish to purchase. The land-tax is based upon a quin-

342

ALL THE RUSSIAS

quennial classification according to crop, and its maximum is
6 roubles per dcssiatiiia (2.7 acres*) for cotton-land, and 7^
roubles for rice-land. That which pays yh roubles is sold at
about 500 roubles the licssiafiiia— shout _^"2o an acre. Land
bought twelve years ago <iov 17 roubles is to-day worth 300,

TACKING t:OTT()N IN ANLilJAN

which explains the prosperity of some of the older cotton com-
panies. In Fergana the crop averages 60 pouds — rather less than
a ton — of raw cotton to the ih'ssintiiKt, or about 800 lb. to the
acre ; at Merv, 50 pouds, and at Tashkent, 30 pouds. Ten years
ago a Sart labourer was paid 17 kopecks a day ; now he receives
from sixty to seventy. The buyers make an advance upon the
crop in February or March, and the harvest is in September and
October ; but this system has the obvious disadvantage that the

* Murray's " Handbook to Russia" (5th ed. p. [65] ) gives one dcssiatina as
equal to 28.6 acres !

SAMARKAND AND BEYOND 34J

natives, being sure of their monc-y, take less pains with the
crop. Several Americans have visited Fergana late'y, with a
view to the investment of capital. One, who had left three
weeks before my visit, had offered to irrigate over 450,000
acres of the terrible so-called " Famine Steppe," from the water
of the Syr-Darya, on condition that he should be allowed to let
the land along the canal to natives for a hundred years, at a rent
to be agreed upon between the Government and himself, the
irrigation works to be the property of the Government at the
expiration of that period. Two others were proposing to erect
presses to produce cotton-seed oil and cotton-cake. Cotton has
been rather unlucky lately in this district. First of all, when the
price of grain once rose, the natives all hastened to put their
land under grain, instead of cotton, with the natural result that
they lost heavily. Then the revolt caused much land to go out
of cultivation for a time. This year locusts have done great
damage. But the future of Turkestan as a cotton-growing
country is assured, and the time will come when Russia will
realise her ideal of lindmg in her own territory, beyond the
Caspian, all the cotton needed by her mills in Europe and
tho.^e which will be built in the Caucasus. Spinning-mills at
Baku, 1 may add, will be highly profitable enterprises, for on
the one hand ihey will save the cost of transport of the raw-
material to Central Russia and of the linished article back
again, and on the other the markets of Asia will be at their
door.

I wished to see what Russian Central Asia looked like beyond
the railway, so, after a couple of days spent at Andijan, its ter-
minus, I drove fifty versts to Osh, the last Russian town before
the Chinese frontier is reached, ar.d the starting-place for the
great passes leading into Kashgar. The first village on the road
is curiously called Khartum, and I had not gone far before I was
struck with the busy and prosperous life here on the very out-

344 ALL THE RUSSIAS

skirts of Russia's territory. Every few yards on the load I met
or passed mounted men, often two on a horse, or an arba —
the high-wheeled carts of my illustration, for fording rivers with-
out wetting their loads — piled with sacks of grain or cotton-
seed or hay, or filled full of veiled women and pretty children,

THE ENTKANXE TO OSH

the driver sitting astride the horse in the shafts. One charming
figure went by — a young man, lightly dressed to run, on his fist
a yellow hawk, not hooded, but tied by a string to its leg, ready
to be cast off. And a Kirghiz family party, out shopping, pleased
me greatly. The man was on one horse, with a little son perched
behind him, his arms round his father's waist and his legs wide-
stretched almost to splitting point. The woman was astride of
another horse, with a baby before her, and she looked gay in her

SAMARKAND AND BEYOND

345

scarlet cotton gown and white hood, and masses of jingUng
metal orn.unents. On her Hat face, of the colour of terra-cotta,
could be read the struggle between modesty and intense
curiosity as I approached. Finally the latter conquered, and

A KIRGHIZ FAMILY SHOPPING IN OSH

we had a good look at each other till her husband perceived
her fall, and angrily drove her away.

The road ran between wide cotton-fields, their tiny canals,
planted on either side with pollard willows. Just before the town,
at awayside tea-house, there was a little mosque with its minaret,
whence the faithful were called to prayers, in the fork of a high
tree, and, as I drove into the first street, I saw two haystacks
apparently coming toward me and tilling the road from side to
side. These turned out to be enormously laden donkeys, with
nothing but their noses and hoofs visible. Then two miles of
deeply rutted roads, between thick earthen houses, their flat

346

ALL THE RUSSIAS

roofs bearing great heaps of maize-straw, millet-sheaves, and
green hay, brought me to the centre of the town, where a crowd
of natives, their horses tethered in a long row against the wall,
were gathered in front of the Uyesdiioye Pravlenye, the office of
the Russian administrator, and the post-office. Osh is remark-

A .MoUil.K AND DAUGHTER OF OSH AND THEIR HOME

able for a number of high-walled enclosures, with huge wooden
gates. At first I thought they were old forts of some kind, but
they turned out to be for droves of horses and cattle. And the
number of chaihainias, open tea-houses, all well patronised, and
singularly picturesque at night when white-turbaned groups
gather round the blazing lire, show that the people of Osh are
what the Germans csLWgfiniitlilicli. Nevertheless they often cast
black looks at the foreigner, and a man ran at me with a horse-
whip while I was taking one of these photographs. But the
little girls cheerily cried, Salaaui aleikinn !

A magnificent, mile-long avenue of silver beeches leads to

SAMARKAND AND BEYOND

347

the Governor's residence, on a hillside overlooking the town and

a brown range of mountains. The guardian of this outpost is

Colonel Zaitzef, the frequent host of Dr. Sven Hedin during

the pauses of his splendid explorations in this part of the world,

and I found him feeling much

kindly anxiety about a piano he

had undertaken to see safely on its

way to Mr. Macartney, the British

Resident at Kashgar, which had

gone astray somewhere between

here and the Caspian. On my

homeward journey I was fortunate

enough to discover it and get it

sent forward — a fact which would

doubtless be made know^n at once

in Kashgar, as a telegraph-line

runs from here via Vernoye.

I do not think that Osh will
long remain a Russian outpost.
Kashgaria is weakly held by
China ; the rule of the local Chi-
nese otttcials is barbarous,- and
taxes are collected by torture when
other methods fail ; great discontent, therefore, reigns ; and
Russia has within her borders, and under her hand, Mohamme-
dan refugees who could be slipped like hounds to raise rebellion.
The British Resident I's compelled, by the deliberate withhold-
ing of support from home — going so far as to forbid him to wear
a uniform — to play a minor role, while his Russian colleague is
almost master in the place. Nor do I see that an arrangement
which gave Kashgaria and Kulja— for the latter would inevit-
ably follow the former — to Russia, need raise any objections in
England. It is her natural line of expansion ; it is out of any
possible sphere of ours ; and it would substitute civilisation for

OSH AND NO MISTAKI-:" — THE END
OF MY JOURNEY

348 ALL THE RUSSIAS

extortion and cruelty. For my last word about Central Asia
must be — and it was the dominant thought in my mind as 1
deciphered the faded word " Osh " on the official boundary-
post and realised that I had reached the end of my long journey
—that Russia has destroyed nothing there — except the Turko-
man horse and the Turkoman carpet — that was of any value,
and that she has brought peace, prosperity, and probably quite
as much liberty as is good for those who enjoy it.

ECONOMICS

CHAPTER XXII

M. DE WITTE AND HIS POLICY

FROM the unique and impressive spectacle of absolute
autocracy ; from the docile, childlike masses of the people;
from the vastness of Siberia, slowly awaking to consciousness
and productivity under the stimulus of a railway which links
Moscow to the China Sea ; from the beauty and Babel of the
Caucasus ; from the conquest and annexation of the proud
peoples and historic cities of Central Asia — I turn to a wholly
different aspect of the Russia of to-day. No romantic story
introduces it ; no clash of arms or diplomatic intrigue echoes
through it ; the camera affords it but one single illustration —
the portrait of a man. To my thinking, however, it exhibits
the most wonderful Russia of all.

" The Russian State is by far the greatest economic unit on
the face of the globe."* To ninety-nine readers out of a
hundred this statement will doubtless be startling. It certainly
was to me when I first met with it, yet the facts to justify it are
not far to seek. The Russian State draws an annual net profit
of 45,000,000 roubles from its forests, mines, and agricultural
property. It receives annually 80,000,000 roubles (minus con-
siderable arrears) from its communities of ex-serfs for the use
of land it ceded to or purchased for them. It is building the
longest and most costly railway in the world, and it owns and

* For this phrase, and for many of the statistical facts which follow, I am in-
debted to the Russian Journal of Financial Statistics, an admirable periodical pre-
sentation of figures and explanations dealing with every side of Russian economic
and financial activity. Although a semi-official publication, the statistics given
in the Journal are absolutely trustworthy.

350 ALL THE RUSSIAS

works over 24,000 miles of railways, the net revenue on which
is equal to one-seventh of the net revenue of all the railways of
the United States.

In i8g8 it received ;^' 180,000,000 into its coffers, nearly one-
half of which sum was not produced by taxation. Its budget
is greater than that of France by more than ^^40,000,000.

In 1890, when one of the banks of London was unable to
meet its obligations, the Russian Government had with it on
current account a balance of so many millions of pounds that
when the Bank of England came to the rescue a request was
immediately made to Russia not to dispose of her balance before
a certain date, since to do so would be to precipitate a financial
crisis of the utmost gravity. F'inally, besides being a capitalist
and a banker of this magnitude, the Russian State is also a
metallurgist and a spirit merchant. In a word, the proud claim
is made for it that it is the greatest land-owner, the greatest
capitalist, the greatest constructor of railways, and carries on the
largest business in the world. This is the aspect of contemporary
Russia to which I now turn. I need hardly add that it can be
but a brief consideration of a great and complex subject.

To some people statistics offer the liveliest interest; to most
they are dull and soporific. Therefore I do not wish to fill my
space with tabulated figures, and fortunately an easy way of
escape presents itself. Economic, industrial, and commercial
Russia of to-day is, in a large degree, the work of one living
statesman, and in his convictions and his activity its direction is
incarnate. This man is Monsieur de Witte, Minister of Finance,
and his career is in many chapters of the story of how modern
Russia, in this aspect, came to be what she is. Few people who
know him well would dispute the opinion that he is perhaps the
ablest and most far-seeing statesman in Europe to-day, and it is
doubtful if any other exercises so great an influence as he upon
the course of events. Outside Russia, however, and the higher

M. DE WITTE AND HIS POLICY 351

circlesofdiplomacy and finance, he is comparatively little known,
and not much that is accurate has ever been written about him.
P>om every point of view, therefore, his story is worth telling,
but I must preface it by the remark that in no w^ay whatever,
directly or indirectly, is any word here due to his inspiration, or
has even any suggestion upon the subject ever been made by him
to me. I have had the honour of conversing with M. dc Witte
onagoodmanyoccasions, butall that follows here is my personal
view, and the sole responsibility for it is my own. When this
sketch of his career appeared in its original form I sent him a
copy of it. At our next meeting he thanked me formally, but
neither then, nor at any subsequent time, did he make one
word of comment upon it.

Serge Julievich Witte was born in i84(), in the Caucasus,
where his father, of German descent, was Director of State Do-
mains. His mother, iice Fadayef, was the daughter of the Gov-
ernor of Saratof under the Emperor Nicholas, and of a Princess
Dolgoruki, one of the oldest and best-known Russian noble
families. His first studies were pursued at the G\'iniiasiinii of
Tiflis, which must have been a very strange place forty years ago,
wnth its extraordinary mixtures of Georgians, Armenians, Cir-
cassians, Persians, and the like, all much more strongly marked
w^ith their national characteristics than they are in the same city
to-day. To such an environment in early youth M. de Witte's
wide outlook in after-life may probably be traced. From Tiflis
he passed to the University of Odessa, where it is said he pre-
sented Georgian as the " foreign language " necessary to his
graduation in 1870, thus compelling the faculty to import a pro-
fessor of Georgian to examine him. Like many another, he found
in journalism the ladder to public life, M. Katkof, the well-known
editor of the Moscow Vicdoiiwsti, being first his pattern and
afterward his chief, whom he supported enthusiastically in more

352

ALL THE RUSSIAS

than one of his hard-fought campaigns for a new ideal of
Russian patriotism. He was also a collaborator of the once
famous Aksakof.

M. de Witte's first post was a modest one in the service of the
Odessa Railway, which at that time belonged to the State. He
rose steadily from one grade to another, and hispersonal qualities
were so highly esteemed that the municipality of Odessa elected
him to the post of honorary magistrate, a kind of judicial arbi-
trator to whose decision both parties in a dispute can agree to
refer the issue between them. At this time, too, the Odessa
Railway, together with other adjoining lines, was conceded by
the State to private enterprise, and the whole, amounting to 2000
miles of road, formed into the important South-West Railway
Company, of which M. de Witte, who had attracted favourable
official notice by a work upon the principles of a universal
railway tariff, ultimately adopted throughout Russia, became
general manager after ten years of service. During the Russo-
Turkish War he also greatly distinguished himself by adminis-
trative skill and energy in forwarding troops and supplies to
the front.

In 1887 M. Bunge, Minister of Finance, resigned this office,
and was succeeded by M. Vishnegradski, a man of great natural
gifts and greater acquired knowledge. He had been for several
years president of the South-West Railway and other important
companies, and being, therefore, intimately acquainted with
M.de Witte's career and capabilities, one of his first acts was to
offer the latter a post in the Ministry of Finance. M. de Witte
declined this, not unnaturally preferring his own independent
position, but a dramatic incident which occurred soon afterward
led him inevitably to St. Petersburg. As manager of the South-
West Railway it was his duty to supervise the arrangements of
the Imperial train. In spite of his energetic warnings these were
so made as to result in the terrible catastrophe at Borki, when
theTsar,the Tsaritsa, and their children narrowly escaped death.

M. DE WITTE AND HIS POLICY

353

M. de Witte's action in this connection recommended him so
strongly to the Tsar that soon afterward M. Vishnegradski's
repeated invitation was backed! by an Imperial command, and

HIS EXCELLENCY M. DE WITTE, MINISTER OF PTNANCE

he accepted the post of Director of Railways, specially created for
him. In March 1892 he was appointed by the Emperor Minister
of Ways of Communication ; during M. Vishnegradski's long
illness he undertook the duties of the Finance Department ; and
when the latter was compelled in August to retire from public

354 ALL THE RUSSIAS

life, M. de Witte was appointed, provisionally at first, and after-
ward formally, Minister of Finance. This was in January 1893,
and consequently by his own unaided ability he had reached the
highest administrative post in the Russian Empire at the age of
forty-four. In tlie very same year he fought the great tariff
war with Germany, and showed the world once for all that
he could handle colossal issues of national finance with the
utmost hardihood, and that, having once entered upon a
struggle, he would stop at nothing to bring it to a successful
conclusion. Since that time his high-tariff neighbours have
taken care to give him no ground for reprisals.

The key to M. de Witte's economic views may be found in the
fact that at an early period of his career he published a work
entitled " The Political Economy of P'riedrich List." The latter
(1789-1846, "the politico-economic Messiah of two worlds ")
was an apostle of what may be called " educational protection,"
and this has been throughout his life, as it still remains, the
fundamental principle of M. de Witte's economic statesmanship.
Such a principle assuredly needs no explanation or comment for
American readers at any rate, to whom it must be familiar alike
in theory and in practice. M. de Witte's statesmanship has been
directed, up to the present time, to four ends, of which this
educational protection is the first and chief. A brief experiment
he made, but dropped as soon as wider knowledge showed it to be
unsound, may be just mentioned for the sake of contrast. He
began with a belief in ** rag-baby " currency — the issue of
assignats, irredeemable paper money, for the payment of the
cost of public works. Of this nothing more need be said than
that the greatest achievement of his public life has been won in
precisely the reverse direction. The second subject to which he
turned his attention was the fluctuation in exchange of the gold
price of the rouble. These fluctuations seem almost incredible
to-day, in view of the stability now so firmly established. In

M. DE WITTE AND HIS POLICY 2SS

Kcbruary 1888 the loublc was quoted in London at 19 pence;
in September 1890 it sprang suddenly to 31 pence; by Decem-
ber 1891 it had fallen to 21 pence. Between 1877 and 1896
the highest and lowest rates in London and New York, respec-
tively, were 2.s-. ()d. and 15. yd., and 67 cents and 385 cents.
The most unscrupulous gambling took place upon the Berlin
bourse. In 1891 the hundred-rouble note had actually been
quoted at rates varying from 245.10 marks to 191.50 marks.
Financial reform, or indeed any important financial operation,
was almost impossible to a country whose currency was thus the
sport of the money-gamblers, so M.de Witte resolved to strike,
and — perhaps remembering what the tariff war with Germany
had cost him — at Berlin. So he struck, with his accustomed
boldness, straight from the shoulder. It was decided that from
January i, 1894, to December 31, 1895, the gold price of the
hundred-rouble note should not fall below 216 marks, and
Berlin was informed that as many paper roubles as she cared
to sell would be bought at that rate. Berlin sold gaily for
eight months, and M. de Witte bought ; then, when the final
time for delivery came, her speculators had to go upon their
knees to the Russian Minister of Finance and beg him of his
mercy not utterly to ruin them all. He consented to let them
off easily, and there has been no gambling in the rouble since.
The Russian statistical historian remembers that not long ago
an empty space used to be pointed out in the Berlin Stock
Exchange, and questioners were told, " That is where specu-
lators in the rouble stood." Campi iibi Troja fiiit.

The rouble being thus placed upon a stable basis of exchange,
the next step was obviously to the gold standard, and this su-
preme reform constitutes the third of M. de Witte's aims, The
policy which had stopped the gambling at Berlin was contmued
till November 1897, by which time experience had shown con-
clusively that the resources of the Russian treasury were suffi-
cient to enable it to announce definitively that payments would

2s6 ALL THE RUSSIAS

henceforth be made in gold specie, and by an Imperial ukaz of
November 14, 1897, every rouble note was made to bear upon
its face an undertaking to that effect. The most remarkable
fact about this resumption of specie payments is the enor-
mous contraction of paper money by which it was accompanied.
On January i, 1892, the amount of paper roubles issued
was 1,121,000,000; to-day it is 630,000,000. That is, over
;^5 2,000,000 of paper money was withdrawn from circulation,
the public being literally compelled to take gold. And what
makes this enormous contraction the more remarkable, if
not indeed unique, is that as in Russia the State alone issues
paper money, these notes were not withdrawn in one form
to be reissued in another.

M. de Witte's fourth great undertaking — the first in point
of time — is under way to-day, but it will not be concluded for
several years. This is the Government monopoly of the sale of
alcohol. Hitherto his official achievements had been in the line
of economic science, connected only indirectly with social prob-
lems. His latest legislation, however, strikes deep to the very
roots of popular welfare. Drunkenness is a great curse in Russia,
as everywhere. The consumption of alcohol per head is not so
great there as in the United Kingdom, but it does more harm, for
there is in Russia an entire class, the peasants — the very class
upon whom in the last analysis the prosperity and security of the
country rest — which is impoverished and degraded by drink to
an extent not found in any class of any other country. The very
virtues of the Russian peasant — his good humour, his sociability,
his kindness of heart — make him an easy victim, and to these
must be added the terrible loneliness of his life, the long black
evenings of winter, the total absence of any other form of enter-
tainment, his ignorance and illiteracy, and finally the poisonous
filth which has been all that he could buy in the shape of alcohol.
To the late Emperor Alexander III. belongs the credit of seeing

M. DE WITTE AND HIS POLICY 357

that this evil, destroying his people wholesale, must absolut ly he
stopped so far as legislation can stop it, but hitherto no Russian
statesman has been found courageous enough to carry the gigantic
task to its logical conclusion. Already in i<SS5 a law had been
passed prohibiting the sale of spirits apart from the sale of food,
except in corked bottles, and forbidding the establishments per-
mitted to sell spirits by the bottle to consist of more than one
room, or to have on the premises any spirits in open vessels. This
law killed the drinking-house, pure and simple, but the peasant
could still drink all he desired by going to a trakiir, or restaurant,
where a few bits of fish and bread were also for sale. It did
nothing to prevent the sale of physiologically noxious spirit,
and most important, it left the publican free to buy the peasant's
labour or produce for spirit — the most ruinous course of all. The
Emperor Alexander III. perceived that what had been done so far
was after all but a half-measure, and that nothing short of a State
control of the retail sale of drink would save the peasant from
ruin. But M. Bunge, the first Minister of Finance to whom the
opportunity was given, dared not seize it ; M. Vishnegradski,
the second, determined to do so, but always put off the first
step till the morrow ; M. de Witte, fresh from his financial suc-
cess, and looking for new legislative worlds to conquer, took
upon himself the burden of this reform, and by the law of 1894
a gradual Government monopoly of the sale of spirit was estab-
lished.

The principles upon which he has acted are brifly as follows :
A man drinks for three reasons : First, because he has a natural
desire to do so ; second, because he is excited to do so ; or third,
because he is given credit to enable him to do so. From the first
of these reasons drinking is seen to be inevitable ; complete pro-
hibition is impossible, and the evasion of it only leads to more
destructive drinking than that for which a cure is sought. But
the second and third causes given above can be removed : it
shall be no man's interest to excite another to drink, and no man

358 ALL THE RUSSIAS

shall be supplied with drink on credit. Incidentally, no man shall
drink stuff which poisons him ph^^sically and destroys him
morally. Therefore it follows that nobody except the State shall
make either a direct or indirect profit from the sale of spirit.
On January i, 1901, the law of 1894 was extended to all Russia
except Siberia and the Caucasus, and tlierefore in a short time
the whole manufacture and sale of spirit in the Russian Empire
wall be a strict Government monopoly ; the spirit will be of
pure quality ; it will not be sold by the glass except honn fide
with food; and it will be sold for cash only. 1 have heard not
a little complaint and indeed denunciation of this legislation,
but in my opinion it is a magnificent reform, under the peculiar
conditions of Russian life, and redounds to the honour alike
of the monarch who perceived its necessity, and of the states-
man who is carrying it into effect.

In one respect this reform offers far less difficulty in Russia
than, for instance, in England. In the latter country a man gets
drunk, at his pleasure, upon brandy, or whisky, or gin, or rum,
or beer ; in the former the only intoxicant known to the people
is vodka. There remains, of course, nothing to prevent the
peasant from buying his bottle of corn-brandy and drinking
it at home, but there, at any rate, as has been well said, " the
blandishments of the publican would probably be replaced by
conjugal remonstrances."

Finally, in this connection, what has been the financial result
of monopoly so far as it has gone ? Monopoly was certainly not
introduced into Russia for any profit it might bring — the other
reasons for it were so overwhelming as to render that one un-
necessary — but it has been a source of additional revenue to the
State, all the same, for the net profit for 190 1 is calculated at
over four millions sterling. The uniform price of spirit is now
65. — S1.45 — a gallon.

I have said already that the system of "educational protec-
tion" — in plain language, the development of home industries

M. DE WITTE AND HIS POLICY 359

by means of high duties upon imported manufactured articles
and upon raw material which the country itself is alsoable to pro-
duce — has been the central idea of M. de Witte's national policy.
With the resulting industrial andcommercial Russia of to-dayhe
is moreclosely identified than any other man. In a recent report
to the Emperor he pointstothiswith pardonable pride. Classify-
ingthe national industrial productionundernineheads — textiles,
food, animal products, wood, paper, chemicals, pottery, manu-
factured metal, and various — from 1878 to 1887 Russia produced
26,000,000 roubles' worth; from 1888-92 the output was
41,000,000 roubles ; and from 1893-97 it had risen to no less
than 161,000,000 roubles. That is, the progress of the figures
of industrial business — the industrial turn-over — during the
latest quinquennial period was four times that of the preceding
period, and six times that which ended ten years ago. The
figures relating to the extraction and production of minerals are
as striking as those of manufacture. Of coal, petroleum, pig-
iron, iron, and steel, Russia produced in 1877 '^ total of 1,700,000
tons ; in 1898 she produced close upon 24,000,000 tons. To
take the latest figures of all — of coal, cast and wrought iron,
steel, and cotton goods, Russia produced in 1892, 9,000,000
tons, and in 1900 nearly 21,000,000 tons.* Such figures are
alone a sufficient justification of M. de Witte's policy, but as,
under the Emperor, he controls the economic and industrial
future of Russia, and as foreign capitalists will certainly turn
their attention more and more to that country, it is worth
while to quote from his own lips a lucid summary and defence
of his actions. He gave this in an official speech a few years
ago, but I have never seen it in English.

"History shows," he said, "that exclusively agricultural
countries, even when they are politically independent and inter-
nationally powerful, are economically restricted to the role of
tributary colonies to industrial countries, which are, so to speak,
* The exact and detailed figures will be found in the next chapter.

36o ALL THE RUSSIAS

their metropolis. In exclusively agricultural countries neither
intensive agriculture nor an accumulation of capital is possible.
A large spirit of enterprise is never found there. Technical
knowledge is rare there, and, as our own experience shows, even
the food of the people depends upon circumstances now of one
kind, now of another, against which agriculture cannot contend.
. . . The best protection that can be afforded to agriculture
consists in assuring for it a market at home for its products, and
remunerative wages for labour which finds no occupation on
the land. . . . The ultimate aim of the protectionist system is
therefore to enfranchise our national production from its
dependence alike upon foreign labour and foreign markets, and
to raise our country to an economic unity of an independent
importance. Like all other methods of action, protection
should only be regarded as a temporary measure, in force until
the time comes when its object is reached.

" It is not, however, surprising that many persons think this
temporary measure should be permanent. Those who benefit
by protection are not disposed to let themselves be deprived of
all the advantages which it brings them. That is why we see a
certain dissatisfaction at the influx of foreign capital for industrial
purposes, capital which creates competition, which in its turn
lowers prices and reduces profits. We sometimes hear individual
interests, shielding themselves behind a sham patriotism, speak-
ing of ' squandering the natural resources of our country,' or of
the ' enslavement of our people to foreigners.' It is not the first
time that such complaints are heard. They arose in the days of
Peter the Great, when he wished to ' open the window toward
Europe.' The Great Reformer himself had to overcome this
* patriotic ' wish to preserve routine, ignorance, the spirit of
isolation — in a word, all the fetters which confine the vital
forces of the country. . . .

"The protectionist system has the effect of creating a school
for our young industry. Important results have already been

M. DE WITTE AND HIS POLICY 361

obtained in this respect. Doubtless this school costs us dear.
The Russian consumer pays a high price for manufactured
articles : that is the chief reproach that can be made against
protection. But it is precisely for this reason that the present
phase must be traversed as quickly as possible, and this again is
why we must attract a large amount of foreign capital into Russia.

" Unhappily, the amount of available Russian capital is in-
sufficient ; agriculture supplies almost none at all, and hoarded
capital can hardly be attracted toward industrial enterprise.
Abroad, capital is plentiful, and it is cheap ; we must seek it
there. Beyond all question it is better to see foreign capital
flowing into Russia, than to witness the importation of foreign
products. For it is by means of this foreign capital that Russian
production itself will be developed, obtaining for its own profit,
at the lowest calculation, ninety per cent, of the value of the
manufactured article."

This speech is not only M. de Witte's reply to the so-called
" pro-Russian " party, v^hich detests foreigners and all their
ways and works, and to those who charge him with destroying
a natural agricultural community in order to create an artificial
industrial one, but it is a concise summary of Russian economic
policy. It deserves, therefore, the most careful attention in
other countries.

Alongside his invitation to foreign capital, as a counterpoise
to the protectionist irgiiiw — that is, to replace by it that healthy
and necessary competition which a high tarifT of itself tends to
suppress— M. de Witte has done much to supply capital in
Russia with its helpmate, labour. To give one example only,
since the emancipation of the serfs every peasant has had the
theoretical right to a passport (without which he cannot move
outside his native village). In practice, however, he was almost
as tightly chained to the soil as before ; for passports are issued
by the village community, the iiiii; and the /«/rgave them only
to men whose payments of taxes were not in arrears. But as

362 ALL THE RUSSIAS

the mil' is always in arrears of payment, for which all its
members are jointly and severally responsible, it could refuse a
passport to anybody. Moreover, if a number of men were
working in a factory away from home, and that factory for any
reason were closed, the police of the place immediately shipped
all the workmen back to their own communes, M. de Witte
has gained for every Russian of the labouring classes the right
to a passport for at least one year. This reform, simple in
itself, is obviously of the greatest importance in the development
of industrial enterprise, although at times of political trouble
the police authorities probably ignore this yearly passport.
Moreover, he has drawn up a code of regulations correspond-
ing to our Factory Acts, workmen's compensation, &c., and is
about to present them to the Council of Ministers. These are
of the nature of reforms to assure labour in Russia of con-
sideration and protection analogous to that which it enjoys in
other countries. Finally, he is at present turning his attention
to the introduction of the metric system into Russia, and to the
development of a Russian mercantile marine.

Such, in brief, are the career and the views of the most
influential statesman of Russia — a man, moreover, if the Tsar's
confidence continues to be extended to him in the same full
measure as hitherto, whose influence upon Russian affairs,
national and international, may be even greater in the future
than in the past. One obvious danger accompanies his insatiable
activity. In order to get thingsdone in accordance with his policy
he has transferred one department after another to the Ministry
of Finance, until the work of this offtce is assuming dimensions
beyond the personal supervision of any one man. Moreover,
however great the will, there is a limit to human endurance,
and that limit, in M, de Witte's case, must be nearly reached. If
his health broke down, and caused him to relinquish his work
half finished, there is no tellingwhat the consequences might be.

CHAPTER XXIIl
RUSSIAN FINANCE, COMMERCE, AND INDUSTRY

THE finances, national and international, of the Russian
Empire form a very complex subject, about which
serious misapprehensions exist, even among foreigners who
study such matters, while gross mistakes receive popular cre-
dence. A volume, not a chapter, would be necessary for a
complete exposition, even if I myself possessed the technical
qualifications for so difficult a task. Russian finance, industry,
and natural resources have, however, become of late the subject
of frequent and familiar public comment, commonly inexact,
and therefore, even within the restricted limits of my space and
my own competence, I hope to be able to throw some light
upon them.

The Russian national debt, which is less than those of
France and England only, is now ^'680,000,000 ($3,31 1,000,000).
Upon this she pays an annual interest of about _^27,20o,ooo
(i? 1 32,500,000). Now, in view of these vast figures and the
long series of Russian loans that have been floated (chiefly
in France) during the last few years, popular opinion, and
indeed to a large extent educated opinion also, have come
to regard Russia as a country which is not paying its way,
which is expanding and undertaking new enterprises far
beyond its financial resources, and which can only keep
going by constantly borrowing from its neighbours. And this
opinion is often popularly illustrated by pictures of Russian

364 ALL THE RUSSIAS

statesmen and linanciers running about the world trying to
raise loans.

In one sense it is perfectly true that Russia needs money;
but in the sense in which the above opinions are commonly
stated and believed, they are wholly inaccurate. The Russian
public debt is very large, but it is being paid oft" at the present
time at the rate of -^2,500,000 a year. During the past ten
years no less than ^^30,000,000 has been paid off. This striking
act is usually overlooked. Moreover, as security for its debt,
the Russian State (I am not speaking of the country of
Russia : the difference is vital) has natural resources and pro-
ductive public w^orks surpassing in value those of any other
State in the world. Besides its enormous mineral wealth, which
has hardly been scratched as yet, it draws, for instance, an
annual net revenue of more than five millions sterling from
its forests; and while the United States has almost exhausted its
timber, and Europe is looking around anxiously to see where
its wood and wood-pulp are to come from in a few years, the
Russian State has 200,000,000 acres of real forest as yet un-
touched. (Official figures give a far larger area than this, but
I am speaking of genuine forest, not mere forest-land.) Russia's
peasants pay (minus large arrears) the State an annual rent of
;^8,46o,ooo. It owns and works over 24,000 miles of railway,
of which the average net earnings from 1897-99 w^ere £14,800,000.
Its budget shows a considerable surplus every year — with these
surpluses the Trans-Siberian Railway has been largely built.
These considerations will place the financial position of Russia
in a new light for most people ; but what follow^s will astonish
still more all who have not looked carefully into the matter. I
turn now to Russian loans.

During the past fifteen years Russia has borrowed enor-
mously — that is what strikes the popular imagination. But
during these fifteen years Russia has converted and redeemed
in cash previous loans amouuting to over £440,000,000. In

FINANCE, COMMERCE, AND INDUSTRY 365

t;ict, frotn icStSy to 1901 tJic Russian Ireasiny has not received
from nciv loans a single penny of capital more than the old capital it
repaid its creditors*

How baseless, therefore, is the widespread notion that
Russia, lii<e a spendtlirift, borrows to fill the gap between her
income and her expenditure, is thus seen. But why, it will
perhaps be asked, does Russia borrow at all under these
circumstances ? For two reasons : First, to pay off more costly
debts — ^loans previously contracted at a higher rate of interest
— and thus to unify her debt, both for her own economy and
for the convenience of her creditors ; f second, to construct
public works necessary alike for the development of her national
resources, and in order that many of the great industries which
this development has already called into existence, and which
largely depend upon Government orders for their support, may
not languish and disappear, and thus perhaps fail her when
she needs them most. This is what happens : Potential traffic
justifies a new railway between two points ; either the State
finds the money in the first place, or it authorises a company
to do so, and as the company cannot dispose of its bonds the
State takes them over at second hand; the railway is constructed
and gets to- work ; the State borrows abroad as much as it has
lent to the railway ; instead of the bonds on, say, blue paper
of the railway, there are the bonds on, say, white paper of the
Russian public debt. These are precisely the circumstances
under which much of Russia's national indebtedness has been
incurred. In conclusion, the truth is that the Russian Govern-
ment is glad to borrow money, at a lower rate than before,
to pay off debts bearing the higher interest, or to carry out
productive works, for the reasons I have given above ; but it
is under no present necessity whatever — and has not been for

* See " Fonds d'Etat russes et autres Valeurs mobilieres" (published by the
Bulletin Russe de Statistique), 2nd ed. pp. 114-117.

t Between 18S7 and 1900 the Russian loans converted and redeemed in cash
amounted to a grand total of ^441,000,000.

366 ALL THE RUSSIAS

twenty years — to borrow at rates which do not fulfil the above
conditions.*

As an offset to her national debt, Russia — I am speaking
still of the State — has the unique good fortune to possess an
annual income from actual property and investment which
alone almost pays the annual charge upon the debt. The
interest upon her debt is 670 millions of francs. The net
earnings of her State railways, the revenue from her forests and
agricultural domains, and profits of the Bank of Russia, with
certain indemnities, &c., form together an annual income of
650 million francs.f And her railways and domains are rapidly
increasing in value. No other State has such a i-eal security,
as distinct from national credit, to offer its creditors.

In 1898-99 the fiscal receipts from all sources exceeded
the Government expenditure (including ^^9,5 16,000 for extraor-
dinary naval shipbuilding and £'4,315,000 for expenses in
mitigation of bad harvests) by ^^34,458,000. This surplus more
than met the demands for the construction of the Siberian
and other State Railways and purchase of rolling stock,
^22,922,000, and advances of capital to railway companies
for new construction, ;£^9,ooo,ooo.

The Russian State, which at the outbreak of the Crimean
War had but a thousand kilometres of railway, to day owns
and operates 38,250 kilometres, of which 8345 kilometres are

* In May 1901, a Russian four per cent, loan for 424,000,000 francs was floated
in Paris, according to the Imperial ukaz, ' ' in order to replace in the I mperial Treasury
the sums spent in 1900 in advances to railroad companies, and to provide for similar
advances to be made during the current year." This loan was subscribed several
times over, the allotment being fifteen per cent, for paid-up bonds and two and a half
for others. It is now stated that another loan for a thousand million francs
(/'40, 000, 000) will shortly be placed upon the same market. Prophecy, however,
about Russian loans is always dangerous. In fact, even official assurances do not
cover very long periods. ' ' I authorise j'ou," M. de Witte is reported to have said to
a correspondent (Daily Telegraph, March 5, 1901), " to state over again, as emphati-
cally as you know how, that I haveno intention whatever of borrowing." Ten weeks
later (May 12) the Imperial ukaz authorising the loan was published,
t Bulletin Russe dc Statistiqiie Financiire, 1901, p. 23.

FINANCE, COMMERCE, AND INDUSTRY 367

double-track. This is more than any other State in the world.
Last year, in spite of linancial crises and commercial depression,
railvv'ay passengers increased in number more than a million,
and the amount of freight carried was 86,000,000 tons, against
79,000,000 in 1899. The net annual revenue from the State
railways alone pays half the interest upon the national debt.*

Such are, necessarily in a very condensed form, the statistical
facts concerning Russian national finance which are apparently
quite unknown to the host of facile critics of contemporary
Russia, and especially to those who believe that Russia spends
right and left, upon all sorts of objects, the large sums she has
borrowed in France.f

I must allude for a moment to the only way in which these
remarkable and impressive figures are directly attacked, namely,
by the charge that they are not honest — that the Russian
budget, in a word, is " cooked." The allegation is neither fair
nor intelligent. It is not fair, because none of those who make
it ever give the grounds of their charge or any alternative or
comparative figures in disproof of the official ones. And it is
not intelligent, because the Russian budget, though it cannot
but be complicated when dealing with such vast sums, does yield
to the careful student every fact he desires to extract from it.
Some official Russian statistics undoubtedly exaggerate — as

* The gross revenue of all the Russian State railways (excluding the Siberian,
but including the Trans-Caspian) was in 1897 ^2035 P^^ mile.

f Even serious students of Russian economics fall, notwithstanding their care and
good will, into this gross error. For example, Mr. Alexander Hume Ford, " an un-
biased American engineering traveller," contributing an in teresting series of articles
• to the Engineering Magazine upon " Russia's marvellous industrial expansion and
mechanical needs," writes: " It must not be lost sight of for a moment that Russia is
spending every cent she can possibly borrow in developing her magnificent resources.
New and mighty canals are to be cut, rivers and harbours deepened, arid lands irri-
gated, forests cleared and waste lands reclaimed ; cities, villages, and workshops are
being built, colonies are planted in new localities, where modern systems of drainage
and agriculture are being introduced." (April igoi, p. 39.) Nearly the whole of
this attribution of Russian loans is entirely fanciful. I have explained above where
the money really goes.

368 ALL THE RUSSIAS

for example, in reckoning mere forest-land as genuine timber-
forest, but this exaggeration is always evident to the impartial
student, and it does not appear in financial statistics, which are
kept and presented with the utmost minuteness and detail.
Compared with the French budget, the Russian annual balance-
sheet is child's play. The difference is that the Russian Ministry
of Finance desires for its own sake that its figures shall be
understood, whereas the French budget is an elaborate con-
cealment, beneath colossal complications and endless cross-
reference, of unwelcome facts.* The memory of weary days
devoted to the volumes of the French budget leads me to say
that in it only those who hide can find. On the other hand, any
statistical financial figure about Russia can be found without
undue difficulty in the publications of the Ministry of Finance,
or those issued semi-ofticially, with its cognizance and permis-
sion. To suppose that the whole of these is one vast and
marvellously calculated network of deceit is childish.

From la haute finance to the poor miijik is a longer step in
appearance than in reality. I turn to the Russian peasant here
because any one who wishes, for whatever reason, to disparage
the figures I have cited above can best do so by emphasising
the condition of the masses of the Russian people. In spite of
all her brilliant progress in manufacture, ai-d her great indus-
trial development, Russia is still chiefly an agricultural country.
The vast majority of her people draw their living from the soil,
and must long continue to do so, and the economic ideal of
Russian statesmen should be to mcrea.se pari passu the material
wants of the peasantry and their means of supplying them.
Russia may — and I think will, as the other nation of colossal
natural resources developed behind a high-tariff wall has done —
become an exporting nation, but her best market will always

* M. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, the eminent French writer upon economics : " Our
unhappy Budgets are retouched and altered to such an extent that it is impossible
to recognise them or find one's way about in them." And see " The Peoples and
Politics of the Far East," pp. 124-127.

FINvVNCE, COMMERCK, AND INDUSTRY 369

be foiincl under the roofs of her own people. It is but too true
that the condition of the Russian peasantry is at present far
from satisfactory. While the people have rapidly increased in
number the amount of land communally owned and tilled by
them has remained constant since the Liberation of the Serfs,
with the result that the outcome per family has grown steadily
less and therefore the standard of physical well-being has slowly
declined. Moreover, the famous "black earth" districts, the
most fertile agricultural portions of the Empire, have been
visited, like the poorer lands, by repeated famine. A succession
of bad harvests has been even more disastrous in Russia than
elsewhere. It is not without reason, therefore, that the careful
observer puts forward the suffering iiiiijik in reply to the
splendid figures of the Minister of Finance.

The reply is effective as far as it goes, but it is not conclusive.
Other countries have suffered from a succession of bad harvests,
and there is no reason to believe that Russia will not enjoy the
fat years of the cycle again.* I have taken some personal in-
terest in agriculture, and I believe that we are on the eve of
great advances in the chemical and even in the bacteriological
fertilisation of land. If this be so, Russia will proht more than
any other country, and if I were Minister of Finance I would
generously subsidise laboratories of experimental agricultural
chemistry. The Government is fully alive to the condition of
the peasantry, for it is expending many millions of roubles upon
relief, and employing thousands of poverty-stricken peasants
upon the public work most urgently needed in Russia — road-
making. The last budget statement contains the news that the
payment of no less than ^'12,000,000 of arrears of redemption
of land by the peasant proprietors has been virtually regarded
as a bad debt. Over a million sterling has been wiped off, and

* Indeed, the commercial tide seems turning already. The Russian customs
receipts for the first half of igoi, just published, show an increase of no less than
twenty-five per cent, over those for the first half of lyoo — 109,000,000 roubles
as^ainst 87,300 000.

370 ALL THE RUSSIAS

the payment of ten millions been " distributed by insialments."
The State monopoly of alcohol, and the improved condition of
its sale, will tend to remove one of the contributing causes of
the peasant's poverty. Siberian agriculture, too, is being opened
up for and by the peasants. Moreover, agriculture was not un-
fortunate everywhere in Russia last year. Mr. Consul-General
Michell's Report says that "the harvest of 1900 in sixty pro-
vinces of Russia taken as a whole is considered fairly favour-
able," it being 10.3 per cent, in excess of the average of the
previous five years. The total product of grain grown in 1900
is computed, according to the same authority, at 1,119,019,950
cwts., lentils and beans 4,949,775 cwts., potatoes 513,891,289
cwts., and 19,339 tons of butter were exported from Siberia
alone. These iigures should mitigate pessimism somewhat.

Finally, M. de Witte's economic regime has for one of its
main aims to provide a large proportion of the people with
means of livelihood other than agriculture, and the produc-
tion in a year of nearly 5,000,000 tons of steel and iron, and
60,000,000 barrels of oil, and the raising of nearly 16,000,000
tons of coal, to say nothing of the large output of all the
mills and factories of Moscow and Poland, means not a
little employment for peasants who a few years ago were all
agricultural labourers.*

Not only in agriculture, however, has Russia recently suffered
severely. Her commerce and industry are still in a state of

* In order to show that " the results obtained fully justify the policy pursued by
the Government," M. de Witte has just published statistics of the increase of produc-
tion in four great classes during eight years. They may be tabulated as follows :

Output in tons, Output in tons,

1892. 1900.

Coal ..... 6,800,000 15,800,000

Cast-iron .... 1,050,000 2,850,000

Wrought-iron and steel . 984,000 2,000,000

Cotton goods . . . 140,000 232,000

Totals . . . 8,974,000 20,882,000

FINANCE, COMMERCE, AND INDUSTRY 371

great depression. British readers, at any rate, have not lacked
full information upon this topic, for Mr. Cooke, British Com-
mercial Agent in Russia, has industriously gathered and
forcibly presented every fact and deduction that places Russian
mineral and metallurgical enterprises in the most discouraging
light.* I do not mean for a moment, of course, that he has
sought to show the situation as blacker than it is, but only that,
in my opinion, his Report would have been of greater service
to the interests he represents in Russia if the lights and shadows
had been more naturally balanced. Here is one example of
what I mean. Mr. Cooke says: "The Russian iron industry
has no market beyond the frontier. Some 100 tons of southern
pig-iron, it is lately announced, have just been despatched
from the Kertch works to Leghorn. . . . This new opening for
Russian iron produce has been loudly acclaimed as offering
another solution of present difficulties." But Mr. Vice-Consul
Wardrop had already reported from Kertch, a fortnight earher,
that " Perhaps the most noteworthy item in the exports is the
pig-iron shipped to Marseilles and Rotterdam" — 2815 tons.
And at the same time Mr. Vice-Consul Walton had reported
from Mariupol as follows : " Some 50,000 tons of hematite have
lately been sold to the north of Russia, and trial shipments have
been made to Germany, France, and Belgium ; thus not only is
South Russia no longer a customer for pig-iron from abroad,
but she is entering the market as a supplier of this commodity."
I do not suggest, of course, that these small exports of iron from
Russia necessarily presage an important new development of
Russian industry, but I do say that the incident has its signifi-
cance, and that this has been better appreciated by the old-
fashioned Consuls in this case than by the modern Commercial
Agent. And I think that the facts, if Mr. Cooke had known
them, deserved some more balanced comment, for an iron-

* " Mineral and Metallurgical Industries of Russia." Diplomatic and Consular
Reports, Miscellaneous Series, No. 555. Foreign Office, June 1901.

372 ALL THE RUSSIAS

exporting country like England, than " The Russian iron
industry has no market across the frontier."

Mr. Cooke says that " Russia became the playground for
universal Bourse speculation." The word " universal " is too
strong, and indeed elsewhere he places the cap where it fits.
The present aspect of the industrial condition of Russia, so far
as foreign investment is concerned, is, speaking roughly, the
work of unscrupulous Belgian company-promoters, or perhaps,
more correctly speaking, of unscrupulous company-promoters
working in Belgium because of the opportunities afiforded them
by Belgian law. These gentlemen have taken advantage of
the enthusiasm in Belgium and France for things Russian to
float company after company, to build ironworks after iron-
works, where it was perfectly evident that only bankruptcy
could result. Some ironworks had no ore accessible, some
no coal, some no limestone. The nominal capital was in every
case enormous, the working capital absurdly insufficient. The
promoters placed their shares, pocketed the huge "rake-off,"
and are now turning their malevolent attention to the Far
East, while the unhappy investors in their Russian companies
will lose almost every penny. I made careful inquiries on the
spot, and I do not hesitate to say that a number of these Belgian
and French enterprises were nothing better than swindles from
the start. Some of them, as M. de Witte himself has just
pointed out, with nominal capitals of millions of roubles, began
operations without working capital, and even in debt. " Nine-
tenths of the foreign industrial enterprises initiated in Southern
Russia during the last decade have in the first place been
promoted exclusively for the personal aggrandisement of the
promoters." — Odessa correspondent of the Standard, August 3,
1901. For these failures Russia is unjustly condemned. She
is no more to blame for them than England is to blame for the
shocking record of liquidated companies on the London Stock
Exchange. As Mr. Cooke himself says, " Firmer or older-

FINANCE, COMMERCE, AND INDUSTRY 373

established enterprises even in the metallurgical industry,
keeping their own steady course, apart from the wild ruii of
speculation, have stood their ground."

It is true, of course, that Russia has suffered ahnancial and
economic crisis of the most serious kind. But is she alone in
this misfortune ? Is not the German iron industry in a similar
position ? Are there not 50,000 unemployed in Berlin ? Are
not German workmen being transported by the Government
back to the land ? Have not German banks collapsed right and
left ? In France, too, is there not a deficit of 110,000,000 francs
in this year's budget ? Have not the French taxes for the first
ten months of the present year fallen short of the estimate by
90,000,000 francs ? Are not French wine-growers threatening
to plough up their vineyards ? And is the United Kingdom
wholly without anxiety regarding its own economic outlook?
If Russian national securities have fallen, what about Consols ?
Apart from the injurious effects of the South African War, these
epochs of bad trade are cyclic, and depression is far less likely
to persist in Russia than in countries which possess neither the
vast real wealth of her State nor the boundless natural resources
of her country. For, notwithstanding Russian development and
production, the striking figures of which I have already given,
her natural wealth is as yet hardly touched. Mr, Cooke says,
in the Report already quoted :

" Not that there is not incalculable wealth, more especially
mineral, in the vast dominions of the Russian Empire. The
natural resources of the country, as is well known, are indeed
enormous. The future, with such assets to realise, cannot but
be of the most promising."

American authorities are even more enthusiastic. Mr. V^ice-
Consul-General Hanauer says : "The vast Empire offers the
best and most profitable field for our promoters of railway,
electric, and other enterprises, for the construction of water-
works and drainage systems, building streets and canals, works

374 ALL THE RUSSIAS

in iron, making dry-docks and harbours, and opening mines.
... I would recommend my countrymen to ' go East,' and
employ their talent, time, money, and energy in Russia, which
will return them ample compensation." * And Mr. Alexander
Hume Ford, an engineering expert, after a journey of investi-
gation in Russia for an important American technical review,
concluded as follows : " In fact, Russia seems to stand to-day
where America stood half a century ago, on the threshold of
an industrial prosperity and development which must soon awe
the world by its rapid and stupendous growth. It is here that
the Goulds, Rockefellers, Huntingtons, Carnegies, and Flaglers
of the future will spring up and become all-powerful." f I
myself have certainly become a convinced believer in the future
industrial development of Russia, and in this development
foreign capital, which will be welcomed and will receive per-
fectly fair treatment, judiciously placed, after careful examina-
tion and without inflation of values — placed, that is, for invest-
ment and not for speculation, should — on one condition — play
a large and a very profitable part.

The directions in which foreign capital has been employed
in Russia, or may be, are very numerous indeed. The cotton-
spinning mills of Moscow and St. Petersburg are the first
example that comes to mind, and their profits in the past have
been enormous — reaching sometimes fifty per cent, and even
more. The iron industry of to-day is largely a result of
foreign enterprise, and is certain of enormous development
in the future. A commission of four experts, including Pro-
fessor Mendeleyef, the celebrated chemist, appointed by the
Tsar in 1899, reported that there are 2,400,000,000 tons of
iron-ore in the Urals alone — ten million tons of pig-iron a
year for a hundred years.

* Report from Frankfort, June 20, 1899.
t Engineering^ Magazine, h'^v'il 1901, p. 41,

FINANCE, COMMERCE, AND INDUSTRY 375

The petroleum industry at Baku is almost entirely the work
and the capital of foreigners, led by the great names of Roths-
child and Nobel. Last year the Russian output of petroleum
was greater than that of the United States, it is increasing, and
important new fields are certain of discovery. Such a produc-
tion in so short a time would have been impossible unless
foreign capital and wise and generous Russian regulations had
worked hand in hand.

During the ten years 1 891-1900 Russia produced eleven
and a half million ounces of fine gold. During the last four
years the production has fallen off somewhat, but it is beyond
question that there are valuable deposits still untouched in
Siberia, and that under a more enlightened official /-6'^////t' than
that at present in force foreign enterprise would be able to ex-
ploit them. The world has yet to learn, too, of the gold-fields
of enormous wealth of which Russia has — by means also unap-
preciated yet — become possessed.

Russia has vast deposits of coal, but for some reason or
other neither Russians nor foreigners are working them to any
great extent. In vain has M. de Witte urged Russian capitalists
and coal-owners to greater efforts in this direction. He has
just sent the following sarcastic telegram to the Mining Con-
gress sitting at Kharkov : " The owners of ironworks and coal-
mines are continually complaining of the difficulty of selling
their products, and of the consequent restriction of the output.
However, the imports of these products during the current year
up to October i amounted to 106,000 tons for cast-iron and
cast-steel, to 54,000 tons for machines made of these materials,
and to 2,970,000 tons for coal. In view of the very high customs
duties imposed for the protection of home industries, I ask the
Congress how it is to be explained that people can speak of a
difficult situation in the face of such considerable imports of
products which might be supplied by Russian industry." And
a contract for 60,000 tons of coal for unmediate delivery, at

376 ALL THE RUSSIAS

$12.24 a ton, is announced from New York as I write. In the
great Donetz coal basin there is, I am sure, an important open-
ing for foreign enterprise, especially as all Russian properties
can be purchased cheaply for cash just now.

The manganese industry of the Caucasus offers, so far as I
am able to judge, a remarkable opportunity for judicious invest-
ment of a certain kind, and, indeed, the mineral development of
the whole Caucasus district will probably astonish the world
some day. As for the Urals, their extraordinary richness in
minerals is a matter of common knowledge, but few people
realise what openings they present for foreign capital. Central
Asia is as yet an unknown land to engineers and capitalists, but
the opportunities there for a combination of the two — and I
speak from careful examination on the spot — are great, and
cannot fail to be seized before long.

The forests of Russia, with the price of timber steadily rising
and the demand for wood-pulp always increasing, also offer a
further opportunity, and joinery mills, since Russian workmen
are exceptionally clever carpenters, should be successful. The
manufacture of hardware, linoleum, and many small objects now
imported from Germany, should pay handsomely. Already an
important Sheffield firm is preparing to manufacture files and
tools in Russia.* And there are many openings for imported
British goods, if intelligently brought before the consumers.f

* I quote the follow ing interesting testimony from the Odessa correspondent of the
Standai'd : " 'Lodz, known now as the Russian or Polish Manchester, is a prominent
example of successful foreign industrial enterprise. Fifteen years ago it was a place
of some ten or twelve thousand inhabitants; its population, wholly industrial, now
numbers close upon four hundred thousand. In order to escape the prohibitively
high Russian duties, and still push their trades in the Russian markets, a host of
German, Austrian, Belgian, and French manufacturers have, so to say, brought their
mills and factories over the Russian frontier, and, with scarcely an exception, they
are all flourishing. As, generally speaking, all British manufactures have an ex-
ceptionally high reputation in this country, there is no reason why British manu-
facturers should not start operations in Russia with even greater success than that
which has so abundantly crowned the enterprise of the Lodz cosmopolitans."

I I cannot do better than to copy here the printed letter which Colonel Murray,

FINANCE, COMMERCE, AND INDUSTRY 377

This summary by no means exhausts the directions in which
M. de Witte's policy of educational protection invites foreign
capital to come and establish a healthy competition with men
and means in Russia. So far only a few capitalists have dis-
covered Russia and her economic regime; they are chiefly
Englishmen and Belgians, with comparatively few French and
German companies.

Not that joint-stock enterprise does not already exist on a
large scale, for of Russian companies no fewer than 580 declared
a dividend during the first nine months of 1901, their total
nominal capital being ;^' 105,000,000, and their average dividend
no less than lo.i per cent. But it may be regarded as certain
that, unless some international catastrophe should interrupt
peaceful relations, men and associations with large sums of
money to invest will turn their attention and their talents more
and more toward Russia.

After so many general considerations it may interest the
reader to see a foreign company in Russia actually at work. I
will therefore try to picture for him the best 1 saw.

In the south of Russia there is a large flourishing town,
owned entirely by Englishmen, the seat of a great and pros-
perous industry, created by Englishmen, the most striking
example of how foreign enterprises, wisely conducted under

the energetic British Consul-General at Warsaw, has prepared to send to his many
unintelHgent Britisli correspondents :

" I beg to acknowledge the receipt of the price-Hst which you have been good
enough to send me, but of which I regret that I am unable to make any use, as it
is in English, as are also the details and prices given in it.

" To bring goods to the notice of buyers in this country price-lists must be in
the Russian, Polish, or German languages, and all dimensions and prices must be
in Russian weights, measures, and money, and moreover, the prices given should
be those at which the goods can be obtained from your agents in Russia, or if you
have no regular agents, full details should be given as to probable cost of freight,
duty, Ac, to give the buyer some idea of what the goods will cost him if he im-
ports them himself."

37« ALL THE RUSSIAS

Russian laws, may thrive in Russia. Few people know of this,
nor did I until I began to investigate the conditions attaching
to foreign investments in Russia and to look for a typical case
to describe. Yet such is the town of Usofka, the site of the
New Russia Company, Ltd. You will not, by the way, find its
shares in the list of quotations ; they are all privately held, and
nobody who has any would be likely to sell.

The founder of Usofka was the late John Hughes, the son
of a blacksmith of Merthyr. He w-as at one time manager of
the Mill wall Ironw^orks, on the Thames; he built the Plymouth
Breakwater Fort ; and he made his first acquaintance with
Russia by building the Constantine Fort at Kronstadt in 1864.
His friendship with Todleben, the defender of Sevastopol and
the saviour of the situation before Plevna, had something to
do with his interest in Russia. Under Imperial protection he
was sent to the south to search for coal. He found it, and the
New Russia Company is the outcome. Now the management
of the great concern is in the hands of his sons, and to them
1 have to express my warm thanks for hospitality and most
interesting opportunities of inspection.

The railway station of Usovo and the town of Usofka are
both named after John Hughes. They lie in the extreme south
of Russia, just north of the Sea of Azov and about a third of
the way from Rostov to Odessa. Much thumbing of the time-
table is necessary to get there. As I came up the Black Sea
from Batum, I left the steamer at Novorossisk (where there is
the largest grain elevator in the world) and went by train to
Rostov. Thence to Khartsisk, and thence again to Yasino-
vataya — fairly unknown country, as you see. There at dusk a
phaeton and dashing pair awaited me, and an eighteen-verst
drive, quickly covered, across the steppe, brought me to my
destination. As I entered the house a valse of Chopin was
being played on the piano. " You will find us in the billiard-
room, when you have dressed," said my host. It seemed like

FINANCE, COMMERCE, AND INDUSTRY 379

a dream, so much civilisation, all of a sudden, after months
spent in provincial Russia, in Siberia, and in Central Asia.

The New Russia Company's estate, owned, not leased,
extends to some 60,000 acres. Half of this is coal-bearing land,
and one-half of this half shows enough coal to last the company
for two hundred years. In fact, the company sells coal, and no
ironworks would do this unless there was plenty to spare. Some
distance away there are 2700 acres of limestone property. The
supply of iron comes from the hematite mines of Kriveirog,
where the ore averages from fifty-eight to sixty-five per cent,
of metallic iron. These mines, of which the New Russia
Company's share is 2500 acres, are about three hundred miles
away. There is enough ore in sight to last the company for
from fifteen to twenty years. After that a fresh supply must be
found. Its source is hardly a secret.

The manufacturing side of Usofka is like a huge ironworks
anywhere else — a forest of chimneys, belching forth smoke and
steam ; a row of blast-furnaces, clouding the day and illumin-
ating the night; great stretches of coke ovens; mountains of
slag ; acres of workshops ; miles of railway with banging trucks
and shrieking engines — the whole familiar industrial inferno.
Beside it are two of the colliery pit-heads, and adjoining it on
the other side is the town. This has no resemblance to a Russian
provincial town ; it is regularly laid out, its houses are solidly
built and neatly kept, indeed many of them are luxurious ; there
is a whole street of capital shops, a co-operative store, a public
garden, a branch of the Imperial Bank, a Cossack barrack. The
streets are numbered on the American plan, and are called
"Lines" — there are fifty " Lines," if I remember aright. The
whole place, as a glance shows, is prosperous and well governed.
It has no fewer than 30,000 inhabitants, and no other raison
delre than the New Russia Company, Ltd. Close the iron-
works, and next w^eek this town, as big as Colchester or Topeka,
would be deserted.

38o ALL THE RUSSIAS

The pay-sheet of Usofka contains 12,000 men, and ;^5o,ooo
a month is paid in wages. This gives some idea of the scale of
the company's operations, and of the benefit to Russia which
this foreign enterprise confers. But the figures of output are
perhaps even more informative. There are six large blast-
furnaces, five working, and one kept in reserve. These are
worked with what I believe is called a " ten-pound pillar." In
1899 the output of pig-iron was 335,000 tons. For the produc-
tion of steel there are ten open-hearth furnaces (into which the
metal is carried hot — an improvement, unless I am mistaken,
upon English methods) and two Bessemer converters. During
the year preceding my visit 50,000 tons of steel billets were
produced. The rolling-mills, in which I noticed that an electric
trolley carried the red-hot ingots from one rolling-table to
another — a very useful little tirne-saver introduced locally-
turned out last year 150,000 tons of rails. Besides this, 10,000
tons of "merchant iron" and 8000 tons of "Spiegeleisen" were
produced and sold. From the company's coal mines, six in all,
650,000 tons were lifted, of which about 30,000 tons were sold.
The company made and used 350,000 tons of coke, and bought
more besides, and it raised from its own mines at Krivei-rog
500,000 tons of iron ore. One other interesting item is that
the company has a large farm adjoining the town, for the
production of vegetables and forage, and that it ploughs every
year some 8000 acres of land.

To complete the appreciation of this great industrial enter-
prise, and its significance for Russia, two other facts should be
borne in mind : first, that in 1870 there were only a few huts
on the steppe where now this busy town thrives ; and second,
that the whole of the output during these thirty years has been
used in Russia, and not a yard or a pound sent to any other
country.

The workmen at a Russian place like this present many
contrasts with labour elsewhere. Originally they were all from

FINANCE, COMMERCE, AND INDUSTRY 381

the land, attracted tor a time by the higher wages, or actually
driven from home by poverty. They worked in the mill for a
few months and then took their savings back to the village
home. Many of them are still of this class, but now these stay
as a rule for three or four years, and there has in addition grown
up a regular working class, dissociated for ever from the soil.
The growth of this proletariat is one of the most striking
developments in modern Russia, and in time will undoubtedly
transform many old conditions. Their wages are both low and
high — low in actual money, high because the labour is ineffi-
cient. The lowest rate is 80 kopecks, about 15. 8</. or forty
cents, a day, and this rises, with the skill and responsibility of
the recipient, until rollers and fitters and furnace-men draw
from three and a half to four roubles, say "js. 6d. to 8s. Gd. —
$1.75 to %2 — a day. Moreover, any factory in Russia is handi-
capped by the great number of saints' days and Imperial fete-
days, when work ceases by official order. In fact the working-
days only average about twenty-one a month. The character of
the labourers may be judged from the fact that they occasion-
ally take a nap upon the railway line ! 1 myself saw a man
stretched on his face fast asleep on the iron plates which form
the roof of a blast furnace, with his head a few inches from a
shaft up which at any moment poisonous gases might burst.

Foreign enterprises in Russia usually either fail or pay what
would be regarded in England, at any rate, as very large
dividends ; and if they fail it is generally from their own fault.
But they have to face a good many conditions which an English
or American employer would consider intolerable at home. For
instance, the precautions they have to take against accidents are
infinite, and if a man is killed the police procedure which follows
is a perfect inquisition. For example, the foreign head of the
department in which the victim worked cannot leave the
country until a verdict is reached and penalties inflicted, and
the various trials and inquiries may last a year or more. Again,

382 ALL THE RUSSIAS

in Russia the State imposes upon private enterprise obligations
which elsewhere it discharges itself. At Usofka, since I am
taking this as a typical business, the company has to support
schools in which are eight hundred scholars ; a hospital, in
which there are one hundred beds and six doctors ; a force of
police consisting of three head constables, four sub-constables,
and seventy-six men ; and even to make a contribution to the
guard of one hundred and fifty mounted Cossacks quartered in
the town.

Besides these obligations, the company has two Russian
taxes to pay. First, the zcmstvo taxes — call them rates. These
amount to £10,000. Second, a new cumulative tax on general
profits, and, as the New Russia Company had paid a dividend
of fifty per cent., this tax was ten per cent. Third, as this is an
English company, there is the income-tax at home.

But even yet I have not touched upon the severest handicap
of all. This can only be explained rather technically. Iron-
masters will understand it, and others must believe that it is
far harder than exists elsewhere in the world. I allude to the
tests which the material supplied to Government, of course
a customer much larger than all the rest put together and
doubled, has to pass before it is accepted.

Take rails, for instance, very much the most important item.
First, a 35-foot rail must not vary in length more than three
millimetres from the standard. Second, a 5-foot rail, previously
frozen, placed upon supports 3 feet apart, receives two blows
from a half-ton " monkey," falling from a height of from 8i to
9J feet according to the weight of the rail, and must not break
or show any defect. Third, after a deflection test of from 14 to
17 tons pressure the rail must not show a permanent " set " of
more than .75 millimetre. Fourth, a tensile strain of 65 kilos,
to the square millimetre (about 40 tons to the square mch)
must not produce an elongation of more than six per cent.
And fifth, the figure produced by this strain, added to the

FINANCE, COMMERCE, AND INDUSTRY 383

elongation and multiplied by two, must reach eighty-two. I
am assured that a British or American raihnaker would refuse
a contract requiring these tests, which at Usofka are scrupu-
lously applied by a committee of Russian engineers.

Still I have not done with the hard side. After all these
conditions, obligations, taxes, and tests, it might be thought
that the company could put its own price upon its output. But
it is not the company which fixes the price — the Minister of
Finance fixes it for it. When I was at Usofka the Government
was giving its orders for steel rails at the price of one rouble
ten kopecks a poud, which I work out as the equivalent of
£-} 45. per ton. A year previously the price was 1.35 roubles.
The Government gives its order and you take it or leave it.

Poor foreign enterprise in Russia ! Well, not exactly. Mr.
Hughes went off to look for a fresh cue when I hinted a
curiosity concerning the dividends of the New Russia Com-
pany, but I had a suspicion that if anybody could buy its
shares at many times their par value he would think himself
lucky. I afterward looked up these dividends for the last ten
years and found them to be as follows : Nineteen per cent., six-
teen per cent., twenty-eight per cent., thirty per cent., twenty-
four per cent., one hundred and twenty-five per cent., fifteen
per cent., twenty per cent., twenty-five per cent., twenty percent.
And at one point in this pleasing record the share capital was
doubled ! Indeed a list of the concerns working in Russia, with
foreign capital, which have paid between fifteen and fifty per
cent, dividend would make the foreign investor's mouth water.

In conclusion, since I have described foreign enterprise in
Russia as typified in this great English business, 1 must add one
word of reservation. The New Russia Company was founded
when foreign capital was admitted under easier conditions than
exist nowadays, for to-day the Government would not sell such
properties outright, as it did in 1870. Moreover, John Hughes,
who founded it, had the foresight of a commercial Prometheus.

384 ALL THE RUSSIAS

But I do not hesitate to say that for the foreign capitahst, if
he knows where and how to go to work, there are opportu-
nities to-day as promising as those which Mr. Hughes foresaw
and utiHsed thirty years ago.

As so much ignorance prevails about Russia, and the general
opinion of the world takes an unfavourable and unjust view of
her economic position and her commercial possibilities, I have
naturally been led to give prominence to facts favourable to her
and attractive to others. But I would not be thought to suggest
that fortunes are to be pi died up in Russia more than elsewhere,
or that it is sufficient merely to bring capital into the country
to reap an immediate and rich pecuniary harvest. Far from it.
In Russia, as elsewhere, plenty of people are waiting to sell you
the worthless thing at the top price. Moreover, the conditions
of Russian industrial and commercial life are peculiar, and no
enterprise can succeed which does not take them closely into
account Every country presents its own particular dit^culties,
and Russia at least as many as any other. There is hereaway
to do things, and a way not to do them. The openings for
foreign capital are naturally known to comparatively few.
Moreover, if the present policy of the State were to change its
direction or lose its vigour, all the future relations of Russia
and foreigners would be different. Foreign faith in Russian
economic freedom is as yet a tender plant, and it might easily
be blighted. So far, however, Russia's record is a good one.
Nobody has ever lost a farthing by trusting the Russian State.
The official conditions of the investment of foreign capital are
more liberal than those of the United States, and the official
attitude is one of sympathy and intelligence.* And so long as

* The following paragraph occurs in a letter recently addressed officially to The
Times by M. Tatistcheff, the representative of the Ministry of Finance in London :
" The Imperial Go\ernment, far from putting obstacles in the way of foreign, and

FINANCE, COMMERCE, AND INDUSTRY 385

his Majesty Nicholas II. rules over All the Russias, and M. de
Witte is his Minister of Finance, or the successors to Tsar and
Minister are equally far-seeini^ and wise-minded, there need be
no fear that these conditions and this attitude will be altered.
Indeed, among the many reasons Russia has for substantial
gratitude towards her present Tsar, the fact that he should so
clearly perceive M. de Witte's patriotic genius and firmly uphold
him against hismany enemies, constitutes by no means the least.
In conclusion, however, I must pen one word of frank and
serious warning. 1 have previously expressed the belief that
foreign capital will play a large and a profitable part in Russian
industrial development — on one condition. That condition is
if greater official expedition and more business-like methods
— the methods of the western world, in fact — are employed
in dealing with the foreign investor. At present the weari-
some delay often experienced in conducting negotiations v;ith
the Russian authorities is a most serious obstacle. Foreign
capital is ardently desired ; the greatest intelligence is shown
in examining any proposal ; if the latter is found good, official
promises of help are freely and sincerely given ; and then the
foreigner believes that he is about to accomplish something.
Great is his disappointment. Delay after delay, for no conceiv-
able cause, supervenes ; months pass, and he is not one step
nearer his goal ; a definite conclusion of any kind seems the one
thing he cannot obtain. Not seldom he abandons his enterprise
in despair, and goes away with his money and his indignation.
All this, so far as it is not temperamental in the Russian, is due
chiefly to two causes : first, the very few ofticials who have
authority really to conclude anything and lay it before the Tsar
are overwhelmed with work, always long in arrear ; and second,

especially British, investments in Russian commercial and industrial enterprises,
is, on the contrary, in every way disposed to encourage and favour and to authorise
to operate in Russia those companies which are based on sound commercial prin-
ciples and solid capital being able by their financial organisation to guarantee the
successfully carrjing out of their undertakings."

2 A

386 ALL THE RUSSIAS

even when one of these is anxious to expedite matters, every
individual of a small army of subordinate functionaries is able
to interpose objection after objection, and to heap technicality
upon technicality in the way. If these obstacles are removed,
there is plenty of foreign capital awaiting investment in Russia,
if not, it will go elsewhere.

FOREIGN POLITICS

CHAPTER XXIV

RUSSIA AND THE NATIONS

THE reader of this volume has now considered the six
great divisions of interest in contemporary Russia — the
life of her two capitals, her vast Siberian territory and its great
railway, the people and problems of the multifarious Caucasus,
her new and successful empire of Central Asia with its present
and prospective railway system, her dependency of Finland, and
the career and policy of the man who, under the Tsar, chiefly
directs her contemporary development. There remains, in con-
clusion, the vital question : whither is this colossal conglomera-
tion tending ? In other words, what is to be the future of
Russia ? Interesting as are her separate aspects, their chief
importance and significance for other people lie in their joint
and several contributions to the solution of the problem of her
future destiny among the nations of the earth. He would be a
bold — not to say an untrustworthy — writer who would try to
give a precise answer to the above question ; but an examina-
tion of the international conditions surrounding Russia, suffi-
cient perhaps to enable the reader who has followed me thus
far to make for himself a forecast in general terms, may be
attempted without over-confidence.

The future of Russia, far more than that of any other
country, depends upon her relations with other nations. Three
Powers of the world enjoy a certain geographical isolation which
endows them with a corresponding measure of political inde-
pendence. These are, first, the United States ; second, Japan ;
and third, Great Britain. Except where it touches an entirely

388 ALL THE RUSSIAS

friendly Power, the United States may be said to have no
frontiers at all. The map of Europe might be repainted with-
out affecting it. There is no great nation, except England,
whose fall or aggrandisement would make it a whit the more
or less secure. In a much smaller degree this is true of Great
Britain, whose only frontiers are in Canada and along her
Indian boundaries. Japan, too, is a Power which, except in
so far as she considers Korea to be ultimately her own, has no
borders that her battleships cannot protect. The converse is
truer of Russia than of any other nation ; with the exception
of the United States, France, and Italy there is no Great Power
whose frontier does not run with her own. A glance at a small
scale map impresses this vital fact. Beginning at the North,
the Russian land-frontier skirts successively Sweden,* Germany,
Austria, Roumania (and through Roumania, the other Balkan
countries of Bulgaria and Servia), Turkey, Persia, Afghanistan,
India, China, and (in Korea) Japan. Moreover, Russia has
created an intimate relationship with the one Great Power
whose frontiers do not touch her own — France ; and by mar-
riage and by protection she has interwoven her affairs with the
two remaining countries of the Balkan chessboard — Greece and

* As I shall not have occasion to mention Sweden again in this connection I may
say here that a curious disquiet, probably without any real basis, exists at present in
Scandinavia regarding Russia. A number of Russian spies or surveyors are said to
have been discovered lately in Scandinavia, disguised as pedlars, knife-grinders, &c. ,
or accompanying genuine specimens of these. This seems incredible, but I have been
assured by Swedes that it is undoubtedly true. It is certain, at any rate, that the
Swedish Government is giving remarkable attention to its own military position,
having under consideration, amongst other matters, a bill, to take effect imme-
diately, to augment the period of compulsory military service from ninety days to
twelve months. So noticeable is this military movement that the Russian Press
has remarked that " if the dual Scandinavian kingdom were hastily preparing for
war it could scarcely manifest a more feverish energy than it is now applying to the
increase of its offensive and defensive power. ' ' The correspondent who quotes this
adds that " money is being lavishly spent on the improvement and strengthening
of old, and on the construction of new, fortresses. A new first-class fortress and
a camp capable of accommodating sixty thousand troops will shortly be completed
at Boden, the most strategic point in the north of Sweden."

RUSSIA AND THE NATIONS 389

Montenegro, and throu^^Ii the latter, which is virtually a Rus-
sian dependency, she is in close touch with the House of Savoy.
Tims, no political or status-threatening question can arise in
any nation of the world — always excepting the United States
— which does not immediately and vitally affect her own inte-
rests. Therefore I say that the future of Russia, far more than
that of any other country, depends upon her relations with
other nations. What is for the rest of mankind a merely
humanitarian motto, lutmani iiiliil a inc aliciiinii piilo, is per-
force for Russia the first axiom of foreign policy.

The strange bridal of Russia and France — the alliance of
autocracy and democracy — has been familiar to all the world
since the bands of the French warships at Kronstadt played
the Marseillaise, the hymn of the revolution, before Alexander
III., whose father had fallen at the hands of revolutionists.
This momentous event was the direct result of the change of
German policy, marked by the downfall of Bismarck and the
refusal of Count Caprivi to renew the secret treaty with Russia
by which Bismarck had unscrupulously sought to "hedge"
against his allies of the 'Iriple Alliance. Germany, moreover,
turned to Turkey— thereby adding to a negative anti-Russian
policy a positive and indeed, in Russian eyes, an aggressive
one — and Russia turned to France.

Only since the Tsar's last visit to France has there been pub-
lished what appears to be a correct account of the contents of
the document constituting the Dual Alliance.* After the first
development of the F'ranco-Russian entente, when a French
fleet under Admiral Gervais visited Kronstadt, M. Ribot being
Minister of Foreign Affairs, a Military Convention was signed,
in 1891. This stipulated that if either nation were attacked
by Germany, the other should come to its aid with a certain

* Wiener Allgemeine Zeitung, September 21, and La Liberie, an interview with
M. Jules Hansen, September 26, igoi.

390 ALL THE RUSSIAS

specilied force. The word " alliance " did not occur, nor
was it used in any of the official speeches. This Convention
appears to have been extended in 1894, but it was not until
President Felix Faure's visit to Russia, in 1896, that the final
step so much desired by France was taken, a formal treaty of
alliance being signed in 1897 and announced to the world by
the Tsar's famous words, nations amies d alliccs, in his speech
on board the Potlinan.

This treaty gains greatly in scope and significance by the
omission of all direct reference to Germany. It declares that if
either nation is attacked, the other will come to its assistance
with the whole of ils own military and naval forces, and that
peace shall only be concluded in concert and by agreement
between the two. No other casus belli is mentioned, no
term is fixed to the duration of the treaty, and the whole
instrument consists of only a few clauses.

If this account be correct, and there seems no reason to
doubt that it is substantially so, a more pacific document could
hardly be devised. So pacific, indeed, is it, that as the leading
Hungarian paper remarked, it only serves to guarantee to
Germany the undisturbed possession of Elsass and Lothringen.
Its pacific character, moreover, was pointedly emphasised by
the Tsar in his last speech at Compiegne, when he described the
French army, whose magnificent evolutions he had just wit-
nessed, as " a powerful support of the principles of equity upon
which repose general order, peace, and the well-being of na-
tions " — a phrase in which some commentators have seen, prob-
ably with justice, an allusion to the international Court of Arbi-
tration at the Hague. And I may add that from all I learned
in Russia I believe the Tsar would be more likely to draw the
sword to compel some international dispute to be settled by
arbitration instead of by war, than for any other object.

The Treaty of Alliance, it is added, had an important financial
corollary. In return for the guarantee afforded to France

RUSSIA AND THE NATIONS 391

against German aggression, and to free Russia from her finan-
cial dependence upon Berlin, it was agreed that Russia should
be allowed to contract loans upon the Paris market to the total
amount of 1,500,000,000 francs, in three or four series.

The Dual Alliance has naturally had for result to confer
upon France a confidence and a calm she had not previously
felt — or rather to relieve her frpm a fear which need have had
no terrors for her, while Russia has enjoyed a military prestige
beyond that to which her own arms entitle her, for it has been
believed that, though she might exert a restraining influence
upon France, the latter would be ready enough to make any
Russian quarrel her own. But practically the Dual Alliance has
had chieffy a financial result — the investment of many hundreds
of millions of francs in Russian immovable securities — for it is
largely in repaying State advances to Russian railways that the
French loans have been employed. The Russian alliance has
not saved France from attack, for nobody has dreamed of
attacking her ; and on the one occasion when she might have
drawn the sword — about Fashoda — the influence of St. Peters-
burg was, with profound wisdom, used in the interests of peace.

It is commonly said that France is growing somewhat tired
of this one-sided bargain, and that she is alive to the fact that
while Russia is adding enormously to her sphere in the Far
East, she herself stands where she did before the fc/cs of Kron-
stadt and Toulon. I think that in a certain degree this is un-
doubtedly the case. The jest that when the cJiarlotte rttsse was
placed upon the mess-table, the French officers rose and
cheered, would have no point to-day. Moreover, the genera-
tion which fought in 1870 is dying out, and the new genera-
tion has forgotten Deroulede's war-poems, and only looks upon
him as the rather ridiculous conspirator of an impossible
** plebiscitary republic." The Kaiser, too, ceases not his friendly
overtures — witness the distinguished reception of French officers
at the German manoeuvres, the abandonment of the annual

392 ALL THE RUSSIAS

military ban(|uct at Metz in celebration of the surrender at
Sedan, and the motor-car race from Paris to Berlin — an event
inconceivable ten years ago. The Emperor William II. has set
his heart upon certain aims which are before him nov^' at every
waking instant. To the realisation of these Russia will inevi-
tably be opposed. Therefore it is of the most urgent importance
to him to allay PYench reseniment and if possible secure P^rench
neutrality, and to this end he will spare no effort and stop at
no step short of the actual relinquishment of territory. Such
an attitude on the part of Germany is obviously calculated to
undermine the foundations of the alliance of France with
Russia. I do not think it unreasonable to suppose that some
day the Kaiser will succeed in his earnest desire to visit Paris,
and from that moment the Dual Alliance will possess only an
antiquarian interest, so far as it regards Germany. So far as
England is concerned, its French support will be further
weakened by the improvement in the relations between the two
nations, which seems happily in prospect. Finally, the rapidly
approaching financial embarrassment of France herself * may
make it difficult for Russia to raise on the Paris market the re-
mainder of the vast sum mentioned in connection with the
signature of the Treaty of Alliance, and is certainly likely to
cause her investors to be more sensible to the great deprecia-
tion of the Russian securities they already hold. The follow-
ing statement recently appeared simultaneously in a number
of French newspapers, thus having the character of a commu-
nique inspired from some quarter :

* The French budget for 1902 is arranged to show a nominal surplus of 7,770,519
francs. In reality, there is a deficit of no less than loi ,660,897 francs. During the
ten months ending October 3 1 , 1 901 , the revenue from taxation was less by 1 40,000,000
francs than for the corresponding ten months of 1900, and less than the budget
estimate by 91,000,000 francs. A new loan of 265,000,000 francs has been issued. It
must be added , however , that this loan , though issued at par, was covered twenty-four
times over. Lord Rosebery has just reminded us that the debt of the city of Paris
is ;^8o,ooo,ooo, and that this year there is a deficit in the municipal budget of
;^8oo,ooo. The French national debt was already over ;^ 1,202, 000, 000.

RUSSIA AND THE NATIONS 393

" The enormous fall which has occurred in all i\ussian stocks
is calculated to disquiet French capitahsts heavily involved in
them. It is of the highest importance for them to be accurately
informed on the possible consequences of this fall, which in
the case of some slocks is only temporary and may even be
profited by, but which, in the case of a large number, is but
the signal for inevitable discomfiture." For this reason
Russian enthusiasm for the alliance may also wane,* though
the Tsar himself will doubtless continue to attach the greatest
importance to it for the immense support it gives him in his
efforts for international peace.

On the whole, therefore, though the Dual Alliance will
linger long in name, most competent observers believe that its
political potency will be a diminishing quantity, unless, through
the improvement of relations between Russia and Great Britain,
the latter become a kind of sleeping partner in it, or unless those
relations grow more unfriendly, and Great Britain allies herself
to some other Power. Its moral effect, however, will last as

* A significant proof of the very limited scope of the Dual Alliance has been
furnished by the attitude of the Russian Press (which would not have been tolerated
by the authorities if it had run counter to their own views) upon the French seizure of
Mitylene to compel the Sultan to satisfy a number of French pecuniary and political
claims. " It has naturally been assumed abroad," wrote the St. Petersburg cor-
respondent of the Times, " that France has not acted as she has done without the
approval of Russia, even if she has not been guided by the advice of her powerful ally.
The attitude of the Russian Press renders this view untenable. . . . The action
of France in taking direct and energetic measures to punish the Sultan for his in.solent
evasions is regarded without sympathy, and even with disapproval and alarm."
Moreover , the charge that Russia, the ally of France, and Russia alone, supported the
Sultan against the legitimate and unaggressive demands of France, has just been made
with great weight and directness by a high French authority. Professor Victor
Berard, of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes, a well-known writer upon foreign politics,
in the Revue de Paris for December 15, 1901, analyses the European situation to find
out by whose support the Sultan was encouraged to resist France to the last moment,
and this is his answer: " One Power alone appeared to hesitate, and for two
months of the ten weeks of the Turk's obstinacy withheld its opinion. It was not
till early in November that we learned from an official note that M. Zinovieff
(Russian Ambassador in Constantinople) had in person urgently advised the
Palace and the Porte to yield to the French injunctions."

394 ALL THE RUSSIAS

long as the present Tsar fills the throne of Russia and continues
to resist the reactionary and bellicose among his own surround-
ings. In any case, it has hitherto been an alliance of peace,
and on that ground the future will call it blessed.

The relations of Russia and Germany make a very different
story. They are concerned with the future, and with a coming
situation possibly more delicate and more pregnant than any-
thing since the fall of the first Napoleon — a situation, moreover,
that may burst upon us any day between night and morning.
To understand this, it is necessary to look back a little. The
keynote of Bismarck's foreign policy was — keep on good terms
with Russia. To that he subordinated, and, if needful, was ready
to sacrifice, every other German interest abroad. For that, he
went so far as to play a crooked game with Germany's chief
partner in the Triple Alliance. For that, he contemptuously
declared that the Balkans were "not worth the bones of
a Prussian grenadier," because Russia desired to extend her
influence there. For that, he even condoned that barefaced
outrage, the Russian plot to kidnap Prince Alexander of
Bulgaria, a German Prince. For that, he inspired his reptile
press to stir up ill-wdll with England, and himself even launched
a most offensive insult against the British royal house, because
he knew that Russia would be instantly alarmed by a rappvoche-
mciit between Germany and England, but would remain on
good terms with a Germany which occasionally growled across
the North Sea. At the same time, he took good care to keep
Russia convinced that if Germany wished it, she could at any
time have an alliance with England, and therefore he managed
that the relations of Germany with England should remain at
the stage of a vague irritation, and not take on such an aspect
of irremediable rupture as would naturally tempt Russia to
seek in England an ally against Germany — the astonishing and

RUSSIA AND THE NATIONS 395

almost shocking obsequiousness of British policy toward
Germany making his task an easy one. So strongly were both
States permeated with this Bismarckian policy of a Russo-
German understanding that a dying Tsar and a dying Kaiser
alike urged it upon their successors. Indeed, it appeared
rooted in German policy, and when the Russian Foreign
Minister once remarked to Bismarck that he had every con-
fidence in him, but was he sure that his own position was
secure, the Iron Chancellor replied indignantly that his Imperial
master had perfect confidence in him, and that he would
assuredly only lay down his office with his life.

Such were the relations of Russia and Germany up to a
short time after William II. ascended the throne. How simply
and suddenly he "dropped the old pilot" in 1890 is well
known. The dismissed and astounded Bismarck never forgave
his Emperor, and the closing years of his life were deeply
stained by an unparalleled series of malevolent interviews, in-
spired articles, and deliberate breaches of confidence, all in-
tended to prove that Germany's policy had become anti-Russian,
and that nothing but disaster awaited the Fatherland in conse-
quence. But William II. went on his way unmoved, and bit
by bit his policy and his ambitions have been revealed to
students of European affairs. They are original, daring, and
gigantic. Moreover, he has, up to the present, succeeded at
every step. But the crucial time has not yet come. When it
does come, he will possibly be found to have been aiming at
nothing less than a transformation of the map of Europe, and
an extension of the German Imperial sphere, in comparison
with which the annexation of Elsass and Lothringen was, from
the standpoint of national economics, but like adding a potato-
patch to a dukedom.

I do not mean that after he had dismissed Bismarck the
Kaiser adopted a frankly anti-Russian policy. That would have
been as contrary to his own diplomatic methods as it would

396 ALL THE RUSSIAS

have been distasteful to his people and dangerous to the security
of his Empire. On the contrary, he endeavoured to combine all
the advantages of a good understanding with Russia, with the
advantage also to be found in complete freedom of political
action. "The incessant movement of his imagination," as an
anonymous writer has recently said, "presents him in turn with
equally persuasive pictures of incompatible designs." But
Alexander III. was no lover of Germany and the Germans, as
Alexander II. had been; moreover, he was a convinced Pan-
slavist, and Panslavism and hatred of Germany are at the end
of the same road. Therefore the Kaiser set himself, with such
a Tsar in Russia, an impossible task. No doubt it was in large
part to secure closer relations with Russia that he took the
very strong step of throwing aside all his previous sympathy
with Japan, and joining Russia and France in forcing her to give
up a large part of the fruits of her victorious war with China.
This step involved many fateful consequences, several of which
are still to come. It involved the seizure of Kiao-chao and Port
Arthur, and the cession of Wei-hai-wei ; the virtual annexation
of Manchuria by Russia ; the change of route of the Great Si-
berian Railway ; and, indeed, it may fairly be said to have been
the cause, even if indirectly, of the Boxer rising and all that
came in its train. Moreover, it has left Russia and Japan face
to face under conditions in which war is only too possible an
outcome.

Naturally Russia was much gratified by the Emperor
William's course, but her gratitude, probably to his lively dis-
appointment, took no material form. He thereupon proceeded
to help himself to advantages in the Far East which he had
failed to secure by the good-will of his temporary ally. With
the murder of some German missionaries as a pretext, he boldly
seized upon Kiao-chao and announced that Shan-tung was a
German sphere of interest. The Foreign Offices of Europe
were led to believe that Russia was a consenting party to this

RUSSIA AND THE NATIONS 397

course, and consequently they failed to unite in the protest
whicli would assuredly have been made if they had known that
Germany was taking isolated action. This incident strained
Russo-German relations very severely, as (to depart for a
mou:ient from chronological order) did the precisely similar
stratagem by which the command of the international forces in
China was secured for Count von Waldersee. On this occasion,
too, Europe was given to understand that Russia's consent
had been obtained — indeed, that the suggestion of the Ger-
man Field-Marshal had originated with her. The German
version was specifically repudiated later in a Russian ot^cial
document, and the circumstances are believed to have been the
subject of a private and personal explanation by the Kaiser to
the Tsar.

From all these events — to say nothing of the two visits
of the Emperor William to England and his enthusiastic re-
ception there — it will be clear that the relations between Russia
and Germany must now be widely dift'erent from what they
were in Bismarckian days. And to complete the picture so
far, must be added the conviction in St. Petersburg that
Germany is about to impose an increased duty upon the
import of Russian cereals. If this be done, Russia has already
bluntly declared that she will retaliate — a tariff war.

In the foregoing, however, we have hardly yet touched upon
the real and fundamental causes which are moulding the rela-
tions of Russia and Germany to-day. These are not isolated
incidents or personal encounters, but new springs of national
policy, new drifts of racial development. The fact — as Russia
sees it — is that Germany has deliberately placed herself athwart
Russian policy in each one of the three paths along which
Russian statesmen desire that their country should enjoy an
unimpeded progress. These three paths lie in the Far East, the
Near East, and toward the Persian Gulf. Here, then, we at
last touch the danger-zone of contemporary European politics,

398 ALL THE RUSSIAS

and the most important factor in the future of the Russian
Empire.

I have already spoken of German action, vh a vis Russia,
in the Far East. It may be summed up as a claim to share
a position which Russia has regarded as predestined to be hers
alone. Germany has come into North China ; she has
established a naval base there and appropriated a province ; she
secured — by sharp practice, as Russia thinks — the conspicuous
leadership of the European nations; she has concluded with
England an open Convention which, in spite of assurances
to the contrary, means that under certain circumstances, she is
pledged to join in opposition to Russian designs ; she now
maintains a considerable naval force in Far Eastern waters;
she has, in a word, given Russia clearly to understand that any
further extension of Russian power in China must either
"square" Germany or overcome her opposition, and this is
a new, a serious, and a wholly unexpected obstacle in the path
of Russian policy.

German activity in the Near East is a much darker cloud
still upon the Russian horizon. Events there have moved for
a long time precisely as Russia has desired, and her desires there
are deeply rooted in the aspirations and confident hopes of her
people. Turkey has slowly but steadily decayed. The Russian
Ambassador at Constantinople has been the power behind
the throne. Step by step Bulgaria, which, under the ferocious
patriotism of Stambolof, barred the Russian advance in the
Balkans, has been brought back under Muscovite influence.
Stambolof's strong and busy hands, chopped off in front of his
own house, are preserved by his wife in a jar of spirits ; his
murderers, well known to everybody, have never been punished;
little Prince Boris was baptized into the Greek Church ; Russia
has lent Bulgaria money, and has once more sent her officers
to the Bulgarian army ; Prince Ferdinand has been permitted
to entertain a Russian Grand Duke in a Bulgarian port, and

RUSSIA AND THE NATIONS 399

the next steps will be his reception by the Tsar in St. Peters-
burg, his remarriage with a Russian or pro-l^ussian princess,
and the elevation of Bulgaria into a kingdom.

All this has come about precisely as Russia desired. So,
too, with Servia, hitherto jealously dominated by Austria. The
King and Queen of Servia are about to visit the Tsar and
Tsaritsa, and the Tsar was prepared to be godfather to the
expected but mythical heir. Panslavism is rejoicing, too, in the
coming joint session of the Bulgarian and Servian parliaments,
with its probable resolution of affection for Russia. Prince
Nicholas of Montenegro remains the devoted friend of the
Tsar, as he was of his father, and his influence is naturally
much greater now that his daughter is Queen of Italy. Only
Roumania preserves her diplomatic independence of Russia,
and, indeed, has just concluded a military convention with
Austria. With this single exception, the obstacles to a Russian
advance to Constantinople had gradually been removed,
when suddenly it dawned upon an astonished Europe and an
indignant Russia that the Kaiser's "mailed fist " had obtruded
itself into the way. During the Armenian massacres Germany,
with calculated and placid indifference, declined to speak or
act. The Turkish army was supplied from German factories
with cannon and ammunition ; when she took the field against
Greece a German general drew up the plan of campaign ; and
the Turkish council of war at Elassona followed German advice
day by day. (I was a prisoner in that camp for several hours
shortly before the outbreak of war, so I am not speaking with-
out some personal knowledge.) The Kaiser's brother-in-law,
the Crown Prince of Greece, commanded the Greek army
against the irresistible combination of Turkish troops and
German tactics, while the Kaiser's sister wept bitterly over her
brother's ruthless indifference toward her adopted country. For
a while Germany contributed one second-rate warship to the
blockade of Crete, and linallv withdrew even that. The Kaiser

400 ALL THE RUSSIAS

has made a triumphal procuress in Constantinople and in Asia
Minor. P'inally, the way being thus carefully made ready, Ger-
many, with confident audacity and entire success, took the step
for which all the rest had been but preparation, and openly
thrust her line of policy not only across the ambitions of Russia
but into the very kernel and heart of Russia's most cherished
plan. I allude, of course, to the concession by the Sultan to a
German company of the right to build a railway from the Bos-
phorus to the Persian Gulf, 27V/ Baghdad, the momentous scheme
I have already described in detail when writing of Russian rail-
way expansion in Central Asia.* Russian official resentment
of what is regarded as a deliberate invasion of her own sphere,
a project which can succeed only at the expense of her own
most cherished ambition, is great, while the Russian Press emits
a most unusual note of pessimism. " The German invasion of
Asiatic Turkey," says the A'c»2'0V6' Vrcmva, "goes steadily for-
ward, always and undeviatingly forward, whilst Russia, unfor-
tunately, looks onasasilent and helpless spectator at the gradual
destruction of her interests and the dissipation of her hopes
in Asia Minor." And the Svict is permitted to launch its tiny
thunderbolt straight at the head of the Kaiser himself. " Day
after day," it declares, " the Emperor William is dealing Russia
blows severely felt." " The Persian Gulf," adds the Novosti,
" is to be the question of the near future to the exclusion of all
other world problems." So acrimonious is Russian criticism of
everything German just now that the Xovoye Vremya, by far
the most important paper in the Empire, recently declared it
to be " credibly alleged " that the German agents at Haidar
Pasha of the Baghdad railway " tired the properties in order to
clear a site for the company's railway station, depots, engine-
sheds, &c., and with the further economic purpose of acquiring
the land at a very low price " !

* See Chapter XVII., and for Russian expansion toward Persia the conckiding
part of Chapter XIV.

RUSSIA AND THE NATIONS 401

To understand this indignation, it should be remembered
that it springs not only from this serious direct issue, but also
from the even more menacing underlying indirect issue. The
former is the determination of Russia to secure at any cost the
control of Persia and a naval and maritime outlet upon the
Persian Gulf. Persia is perfectly helpless before her, she is
virtually mistress in Tehran, her plans for railway extension from
the Caucasus (as shown upon my map) are being rapidly pushed
forward, and she has surveyed the route for her own railway
through Persia to the Gulf. This extension she regards as a
matter of life and death — so much so that her leading news-
paper recently declared that if England would consent to this,
every other issue between the two countries could be settled
amicably and at once. But the indirect and greater issue is the
German Emperor's patronage and even protection of the Sultan
of Turkey, of which this Baghdad railway concession is only
one result. Russian diplomacy, usually so perspicuous, failed
to foresee this. Turkey, since the Armenian massacres, was
believed to have no powerful friend in Europe, and her gradual
disintegration was counted as one of the factors of Russian
foreign policy. In fact, the Russian ambassador at Constan-
tinople often appeared to act more like the Resident in a
Protected State than the representative of one Sovereign at the
Court of another. The injury to Russian plans by the German
blow was therefore the more galling because of the surprise
with which this was struck.*

* This aspect of the relations between Russia, Germany, and Turkey, is
becoming the subject of frequent comment in the capitals of Europe. For
instance, while writing the above I read these two telegrams in the Times : —
" There has been throughout Europe for some years past an uneasy feeling that, for
political objects of her own, Germany has been in the habit of encouraging the
Sultan to offer resistance to the just representations of the Powers to a degree
which confronted them with the alternatives of being fooled or of seeming to
endanger the peace of Europe by deserved measures of coercion." — Berlin corres-
pondent, November 5.

"Russia looks upon the Sultan as naturally and of right dependent upon her.
It is to her that he must look for support if he needs it. It is from her that he must

2 B

402 ALL THE RUSSIAS

It will thus be seen that the relations of Russia with Ger-
many are highly critical. If the Emperor William persists in
the scheme he has so grandly conceived and, up to the present,
pushed forward with extraordinary skill — and he is not the man
to be frightened from his ardently desired goal — a rupture of
the traditional relations between Berlin and St. Petersburg may
not be far off.* I need not point out what an opportunity this
situation affords to England, if she finds a statesman with
insight and courage to take advantage of it. The more so, as
she holds in her hands for the moment the key to the building
of this Baghdad railway, which cannot receive its guarantee from
the Sultan unless he is permitted to raise the Turkish tariff.f

dread punishment for any wrong which he may have committed. The attempts
of the German Emperor to take the Sultan under his own immediate protection in
exchange for commercial and financial concessions have throughout been regarded
here with unconcealed indignation." — St. PetersUtrg correspondent, November 9.

* A significant feature in the foreign relations of Russia are the two purely
strategical railway she is building toward the frontier of Galicia. One, intended
to facilitate the concentration of troops from Southern Russia on the extreme
south of Galicia, is obviously directed to the Balkans and Austria. The more
remarkable one, however, farther nortU, is a military measure against either
Austria or Germany -indeed, one account declares that it is being constructed at
the instance of the French General Staff as a condition of the last Russian loan in
France ! It starts from Bologoye (to which a line comes from Kostroma), midway
on the line from St. Petersburg to Moscow and runs via Ostashkof, Toropetz,
Luki, Polotsk, and Volkovisk, to Siedlce (Syedlets), close to the Russian frontier
which is thrust between Prussia and Austria. The expropriation of the land for this
line was ordered by an Imperial iikaz dated September 14, 1901, it is to be finished
by next February, engineers and navvies are said to have been recalled from the sur-
veys of the proposed Moscow-Kistin railway to work upon it, and eight thousand
labourers from the depressed agricultural districts placed upon it at the expense of
the Ministry of War. This railway, as I have said, is purely strategical, and this
aspect of it is enormously emphasised by the fact that it terminates midway between
and close to the two great fortresses of Brest-Litovsk and Novogeorgievsk (formerly
Modlin, twenty miles from Warsaw), the most strongly fortified portion of the Rus-
sian Empire, the site of the ' ' Polish Quadrilateral. " It is an inevitable conclusion
that if Russia has suddenly decided that her immensely strong position hereabouts
is not strong enough, she must be contemplating the possibility of immediate and
dangerous tension with one or other of her two neighbours across this frontier.

t I cannot help thinking there is some reason to fear that Lord Salisbury has
recently concluded another secret convention of some kind with Germany. If so,
nobody knows what is in it, and Englishmen can only hope that this concession to

RUSSIA AND THE NATIONS 403

With Austria, no less than with Germany, have Russia's
relations recently undergone a rapid and a vital change. For a
number of years past peace has been guaranteed in the Balkans
— the powder-magazine of Europe — by the common decision
of St. Petersburg and Vienna that they would not allow it to
be broken. Indeed it was preposterous that these semi-civilised
little Sates, sizzling with ill-digested ambition, ignorant, reck-
less, ceaselessly intriguing, should be able at any moment to
precipitate a situation in which two mighty empires might find
themselves irresistibly dragged into a colossal and ruinous war.
Therefore Russia and Austria, having decided that this should
not be, proceeded to communicate their decision to Servia and
Bulgaria in terms that left no room for misunderstanding, and
Europe breathed freely. It was tacitly understood that Austria
would not interfere in Bulgaria, while Russia recognised that
Servia must be more or less under Austrian influence.

It will be remembered that the freedom of Bulgaria was
the result of the Russo-Turkish War, and that Servia was saved
from Bulgaria during the war between the two by the appear-
ance of Graf von Khevenhililler, Austrian Consul-General at
Belgrad, at the Bulgarian outposts beyond Pirot, announcing
to Prince Alexander that if he advanced farther he would find
not Servian but Austrian bayonets in his front. Thus each of
the two Great Powers had a kind of prescriptive right to exer-
cise influence over one of the two little Balkan States.

Roumania did not come under this arrangement, for though
she fought with Russia against Turkey, and, indeed, according
to Moltke, saved the Russian army from the loss of the results
of one whole campaign, she was alienated by her treatment by
Russia at the close of the war, and she has been virtually a
member of the Triple Alliance for a good many years. Roumania

Germany — with another to be mentioned in connection with Austria — is not part
of the price they will have to pay for the Kaiser's conspicuous and unwavering
neutrality during the war in South Africa. The "honest broker" does not usually
work for nothing.

404 ALL THE RUSSIAS

is the most civilised and the most powerful of the Balkan coun-
tries, and so far from Russia having gained influence there, the
only result of the growth of Russian influence in the Balkans
is that Roumania has just concluded a new military convention
— or, more probably, confirmed an old one — with Austria. So
significant is this last act, that the Reichsccchr, the semi-official
journal of the Austro- Hungarian army, has published the
following remarkable comments :

"It is only in case a Balkan situation were created which
would be directed against Austria and Roumania, as also Greece,
which is affiliated to the latter country, that what is now de-
scribed as the Austro-Roumanian Military Convention, which,
perhaps, exists on paper, would acquire a practical significance.
At the present juncture it is certainly a suspicious circumstance
that Bulgaria, Servia, and Montenegro should make such ex-
travagant efforts to manifest their devotion to Russia. It is, for
the moment, impossible to say how far this policy of flattery
will prove successful ; but it is conceivable that under Pan-
slavist influence it may one day lead to a regrettable disturbance
of Austro-Russian relations."

But gradually, as Russia has resumed her old paramountcy
in Bulgaria, which Stambolof destroyed, this Austro-Russian
understanding has worn thin, and Russia has begun to trench
upon Austria's sphere in Servia. The Tsar's wedding-present
to Queen Draga will be remembered, and I have mentioned his
intention to be god-father to the heir who never appeared. The
late King Milan had a personal feud with Prince Nicholas of
Montenegro, the fine old mountain-fighter who belongs, body
and soul, to Russia, but King Alexander has just withdrawn his
military attache from Vienna to send him to Cettigne, the little
Montenegrin capital. In fact, the Russian Press now uses lan-
guage on this subject which a few years ago would have caused
the imip.ediate suppression of the newspaper printing it. A
leading St. Petersburg journal of Panslavist views, for instance

RUSSIA AND THE NATIONS 405

speaks of the meeting of the Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailo-
vich and Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria as "the canonisation of
Russia's eternal and fraternal friendship with her loyal kindred
of the Balkan States " (note the plural), and adds that Russia
has now addressed herself to the task of eliminating most
thoroughly "the baneful Hapsburg incubus," not only from the
independent Balkan States, but even from the peoples which still
"languish under tlie oppressive sway" of Austro-Hungary.
Frankness could go no farther, unless it be in this precise sum-
mary of the Balkan situation published in the Sviet : " The
present grouping of the Powers — that is to say, the union of
Russia, Servia, Bulgaria, Montenegro, and France in one idea
— affords ample protection against the union of Austria- Hun-
gary, Germany, Roumania, and Greece. Russia must keep
watch on the whole of Slavdom, and cannot allow it to be either
wholly or partly Germanised or Magyarised."

Rumours of wars form such a large part of the atmosphere
of the Balkan Peninsula that it is never wise to attach much
importance to them there, but beyond question there is at the
present moment a stronger feeling of alarm among serious
observers than has existed for many years, and this is caused
not so much by an obvious weakening of the Austro-Russian
agreement as by the actual events which have ensued. Russia
has increased her troops along the Pruth — river of fateful
memory — and in other places and ways, including a curious dis-
play of her naval power along the Black Sea coast and on the
lower Danube, has shown an activity which it is difHcult to re-
concile with a desire to maintain the status quo. And the Aus-
trian Press draws pointed attention to the frecjuent meetings of
General Lahovari, the Roumanian Commander-in-chief, and
Baron von Beck, chief of the Austro-Hungarian General Staff.
Probably neither on one side nor the other is there anything more
than the development of ordinary military preparations, but even
these, amid so many explosive elements as the Balkans contain-

4o6 ALL THE RUSSIAS

are causing a new and distinct uneasiness and putting a certain
strain upon the relations of Russia and Austria.

There is, however, one other impending question, rarely men-
tioned yet in current comment, which may affect — and at any
moment — the relations of these two nations. I allude to the
situation which will arise upon the death of the aged Austrian
Emperor and the consequent action that Germany may take.
We enter here upon the region of political speculation, though
not without several definite and striking utterances to guide us.
The Austrian Empire is of course a congeries of States of widely
differing origins and language, for the most part on bad terms
with one another, only held together by the purely political and
accidental bond of the Hapsburg Crown and, to an even greater
degree, by the personality of the Emperor Franz Josef. Even
Hungary, which is politically a separate kingdom, having its
own king crowned in Buda, and only sharing its foreign affairs,
customs, and army with Austria, cannot agree with the latter
over the periodical Atisgleich. As for the other races of the
Dual Empire — Germans, Czechs (Bohemian Slavs), Poles, Ru-
thenians, Serbs, Croats and the rest, all hope of peace among
them is now virtually abandoned. Every kind of concession and
coercion has been applied in turn, but the abominable scenes
of disorder in the Parliament at Vienna are a reflection of what
exists throughout the land. Austria is in a state of general
ill-veiled rebellion. The next and only remaining step will be
the suppression by the Crown of representative institutions,
followed by absolute government.

Now the great racial struggle is in Bohemia, between two
million Germans and four million Czechs. Other warring
interests are comparatively unimportant. The Czechs are of
course backed by their fellow Slavs in the Empire, and the
Germans by Vienna, with its almost exclusively Hebrew and
extremely influential capitalist ring. Between Czechs and

RUSSIA AND THE NATIONS 407

Germans nothing less tli.in a deadly hatred prevails, and both
are disloyal to Austria,

Each of the rivals, it must next be observed, is included in
a great politico-racial movement outside its own country. Rus-
sian Panslavism of course includes the Czechs, though they do
not altogether reciprocate the feeling, as Panslavism carries with
it the doctrines of the Russian Greek Church, and the Czechs
are by no means all orthodox. But they are infinitely nearer to
this than to German Lutheranism. What, now, is the corre-
sponding movement which includes the Germans ? A precisely
similar, though not nearly so well-known aspiration, called Pan-
Germanism, already wide-spread and deeply-rooted both in
Germany and Austria. It has its great leaders, its organisation,
its newspapers, its famous atlas, its flag ; and unless many signs
fail, it possesses the sympathy and enjoys the support of no less
a power than the Kaiser himself. Its racial object is simple :
Germany to include all German-speaking countries. Its poli-
tical objects are equally simple and strikingly concrete. Sir
Rowland Blennerhassett describes them as follows : " This party
now openly desires the break-up of the Austrian Empire, the
annexation of all the German portions of Austria by Germany,
and the extension of the German Empire to the Adriatic." And
another well-informed writer upon this topic, Mr. W. B. Duf-
field, says : " The successful prosecution of German ambition
means that Trieste is to be a German port, and the Adriatic a
German lake," and with this " the imposition of a universal
monarchy in German lands." And the latter truly remarks that
it is impossible to read these words which the Kaiser spoke at
Bonn on April 24 in any but a Pan-German sense : ** Why did
the old Empire come to naught ? Because the old Empire
M'as not founded on a strong national basis. The universal idea
of the old Roman Kingdom did not allow the German nation
developments in a German national sense. The essential of the
nation is a demarcation outwardly corresponding to the personality

4o8 ALL THE RUSSIAS

of a people and its racial peculiarity." One must be stupider
even than Heine said the Germans of his day were, to misunder-
stand such a plain hint as this, and, indeed, the heir to the
throne of Austria-Hungary, the Archduke Ferdinand, under-
stood it well enough, for he retorted in a speech which startled
Europe, calling upon the Roman Catholic forces of the Empire
to rally to its defence. For this racial and political struggle
involves a religious conflict also. The Pan-German propa-
ganda is evangelical, and one of its wings is the Los von Rom —
" Cut loose from Rome ! " — movement, directed against the
Catholicism of the House of Hapsburg and its adherents, and
the great majority of the Czechs. Dr. Engel, one of the Czech
leaders, characterised this movement by the remark that as
Germany has no use for Austrian Catholics she is trying to con-
vert Austria to Protestantism, and Dr. Lueger, the famous Anti-
Semite burgomaster of Vienna, declares that by proselytism
it is intended to facilitate the absorption of Austria by the
German Empire.

This politico-religious propaganda is carried on in Germany
with a frankness almost amounting to effrontery, for in the
Grand Duchy of Saxe-Weimar a house-to-house collection for
the Los von Rom movement has been permitted, and at the
recent General Assembly of the Evangelical Alliance held at
Breslau a resolution was passed beginning as follows : " The
fourteenth General Assembly of the Evangelical Alliance ex-
presses its grateful satisfaction at the blessed progress of the
evangelical movement in Austria " ! It is not surprising that
the heir to the throne of Austria, the strongest remaining royal
support of the Papacy, should sound a call to arms in face of
such an attack, from beyond the frontier, on both the dynasty
and the official faith of his country.

If the ambition of Germany has really assumed these gigan-
tic proportions, the situation in which it must seek realisation
may arise at the death of a monarch now aged seventy-one. It

RUSSIA AND THE NATIONS 409

is therefore impossible to exaggerate the seriousness of the pros-
pect, or indeed the extreme delicacy and danger of the inter-
national complication that would be thus produced. Russia
is not prepared, either from a purely military or from a financial
point of view, to fight Germany ; but such considerations have
never kept her back yet, and it may reasonably be doubted
whether she would not plunge the whole Balkan Peninsula into
war, and perhaps even the whole of Europe, rather than see her
mightiest military neighbour so vastly aggrandised in territory,
in population, in wealth, and in sea-power. At any rate, we
see here Panslavism claiming the Austrian Czechs, and Pan-
Germanism claiming the Austrian Germans, and this definite
rivalry already constitutes one of the most momentous and
puzzling factors in the relations of Russia with the nations.

Two other countries may be more briefly mentioned in
connection with Russia. There has been for long in the United
States a belief that Russia is a genuine, sympathetic friend,
moved by admiration for the American people and their
institutions. This has grown up chiefly, I suppose, from the
apocryphal narratives of the readiness of Russia to intervene on
the side of right during the war of the Rebellion. Therefore
the American people have frequently made public profession of
their friendship for Russia, which Russia, needless to say, has
cordially accepted, for who would refuse such a gift ? The
whole belief is a political soap-bubble. It is nothing but a
bright film in the ether. Russia likes to appear a friend of the
United States, because the eftect of that is to postpone any co-
operation of England and America in world aft'airs — a con-
tingency which Russia is not the only Power to fear. But
beyond this, she seldom thinks of the United States, except to
admire and envy its vast prosperity ; among the official and
reactionary class, to regard its institutions with profound

41 o ALL THE RUSSIAS

disapproval ; to anticipate the time when enough cotton will be
growu in Turkestan to make it safe for her to put a prohibitive
tax upon every American bale ; or to wish that the American
billionaires would invest a few spare millions in Government
guaranteed 4 per cent, bonds of Russian railways — and, let
me add, if 1 were a billionaire I should meet the Russian wish
I' this respect, for there is no better investment at such an
interest in Europe. Beyond these things, America does nor exist
for Russia, except when a troublesome Secretary of State puts
a series of direct questions about Manchuria or the Open Door,
and insists upon answers in writing. In fact, Russia, with no
ill-will at all, thinks about America precisely what a great
religious autocracy imtsi think about a huge secular democracy
four thousand miles away. The rest is mere flag-wagging, and
for my own part, when I see an American newspaper lauding
Russian love for the United States, I cannot help asking myself,
knowing what I know, why that particular newspaper goes out
of its way to disseminate that particular view.

About Japan, on the contrary, Russia thinks night and day.
When, with the help of France and Germany, she had uncere-
moniously kicked Japan out of Port Arthur and off the main-
land of China, Russia probably thought that she had done with
the little island-Empire for a long time. But Japan thought
otherwise, and proceeded to lay out a programme of naval and
military expansion due to mature a short time before the Trans-
Siberian Railway was to be completed. Many things have
conspired to hinder the progress of the great raihvay, but Japan's
military and naval schemes have gone steadily onward, in spite
of all financial difficulties. To-day she has a magnificent navy,
including some of the most powerful battleships afloat, stronger
than any fleet Russia could safely send to the Far East, while
her army is at least equal in numbers, and superior in equip-
ment and scientific training, to the land forces Russia could
muster on the Eastern side of her vast dominions. And be-

RUSSIA AND THE NATIONS 411

tvveen the two nations there hes Korea — a terriiorial deadlock^
a poHtical antinomy. Russia cannot allow Japan to have it, for
that would give her Eastern border a land frontier to a military
Power. Japan cannot allow Russia to have it, for that would
leave her island-home almost within gunshot of the troops and
the naval bases of the Colossus of the North, and deprive her
of an outlet for her overflowing population. At present Japan
is gaining, for her influence and her people and her trade are
increasing in Korea every day.

Russia has not failed to propose a division of interests to
Japan. The latter was assured that war with Russia meant ruin,
whereas an understanding meant a long era of tranquillity.
Japan, it was proposed, should have a free hand in Korea, and
in return should undertake not to impede Russia in Manchuria.
But Russia must have a naval base on the south coast of Korea^
as a half-way house between Vladivostok and Port Arthur.
With striking unanimity the Japanese Press has declined these
semi-official overtures. In the first place, they say, Korea does
not belong to Russia to give away ; on the contrary, other
Powers are interested in the Far East, and Japan and Russia
have a treaty guarding each of them against the aggression of
the other in that country. And a Russian naval base in Japanese
waters is precisely what Japan most strenuously objects to.
Finally, Japan does not wish Manchuria to be closed to trade»
and does not herself desire to annex Korea, being quite satisfied
with its present status and her own position there.* And as
if to clinch this last argument, comes the news that Korea has
ceded to Japan, for a special settlement, 650 acres, formerly
surveyed and pegged out by a Russian warship, at Cha-pok-
pho, near Ma-sam-pho, to be policed by Japan.

It is a very delicate situation, and Russia would give a good
deal for a diplomatic escape from this naval and military anxiety.

* See an interesting letter from the well-known Tokyo correspondent of the
Times, November 8, 1901.

412 ALL THE RUSSIAS

Her view of it is shown by the fact that the best part of her
navy is in the Far East. Japan, too, would be thankful to be
relieved from the financial burden thus imposed upon her. But
the question of the closing of Manchuria to non-Russian trade,
with all its consequences, blocks the way, more even than that
of the status of Korea. Russia is unlikely to forego this, and
Japan will not forego her freedom to join any international
action that may ultimately be taken — indeed she will not do
anything which would prevent her from taking single-handed
action, if her fate should so cast the die.

Such, then, in necessarily brief outline and with one excep-
tion, are the relations of Russia, as a great whole, with the
different nations surrounding her, upon whose attitudes and
actions her future must in a large part depend. It will have been
seen that the problems awaiting her — perhaps close at hand —
are neither few nor simple, but that they will demand all her
judgment, all her diplomacy, all her prestige, and possibly all
her resources, to solve them to her advantage, while some of
them are so bound up with her national security and well-being
that a mistake in handling them might throw her back for
generations. The exception is, of course, the future course of
events between Russia and the British Empire, and this, with
certain broad conclusions about Russia which must affect it, is
naturally the subject of a separate chapter.

CHAPTER XXV

RUSSIA AND ENGLAND

THERE remains the last and greatest of Russia's foreign
relationships. England — what of this long-existent and
traditional rivalry ? Is not mutual enmity rooted in the hearts
of both peoples ? Do not their statesmen take this nightmare
of predestined war to bed with them every night, and wake
every morning to hnd it wide-eyed upon their pillows ? Has
not a library of books been written in both languages to show
to demonstration that Briton and Muscovite must inevitably
come to the death-grip ? In fact, are not England and Russia,
by the eternal nature of things —

Like rival thunders from opposed pole?,
Rushing toward the shock that splits tlie world ?

I have long held and advocated a contrary opinion, and
now^ that I have seen much more of Russia that opinion has
been confirmed almost to the point of certainty. I am pro-
foundly convinced that a good and lasting understanding be-
tween the two nations is not only desirable above all things,
but also well within the range of possibility. When Lord Rose-
bery's government was defeated seven years ago this entente
was virtually in sight. " Nous sommes a la veille du partage,"
said a great Russian statesman-soldier in office to an English
official friend of mine with whom he was discussing the situa-
tion. Moreover, notwithstanding that the latest books on the
subject are violently anti-Russian, the number of people sharing
this opinion has largely increased, and if our statesmen had

414 ALL THE RUSSIAS

been stronger (and younger) men, we should ere this have
been on the road to an understanding, for Lord SaHsbury has
confessed that the anti-Russian, pro-Turkish poHcy of Lord
Beaconsfield was " putting our money on the wrong horse ; "
and Mr. Balfour has pointedly remarked that "Asia is big
enough for both." Their words flew up, but their thoughts
remained below, and ofticially we are as suspicious of Russia as
ever, and Russia is equally disgusted with our unformed, incal-
culable, spasmodic policy. Therefore she goes calmly ahead,
doing what she pleases, taking what she wants, knowing that
in all probability when England alone desires or opposes any-
thing, a few acid despatches and a little calling of names in
Parliament will be the worst she has to fear. In diplomacy
Russia plays a strong game, and plays it sometimes without
scruples ; but she both respects and likes an opponent who
plays his own game strongly too, and she does not demand in
others a higher standard of scrupulousness than she follows her-
self. Before I had set foot in European Russia my conviction
rested upon examination of the various divergent and conver-
gent interests of the two countries ; to-day it rests also upon
positive knowledge that the ablest and most powerful states-
men of Russia would welcome a definite and far-reaching recon-
ciliation and adjustment, if they could be convinced of British
sincerity and consistency. Anybody, moreover, who knows
what the Novoye Vremya is will see what a change has come
over Russian opinion when that journal publishes a series of
lengthy articles from the pen of M. Siromyatnikof, a much-
respected publicist, advocating an Anglo-Russian agreement
and warning his fellow-countrymen against the " costly assist-
ance of the ' honest brokers ' in Berlin." At any rate the
greatest personal forces in Russia are on the side of such a
policy, upon the condition I have mentioned above. I assert
this as a fact within my own knowledge.

Thereare only threepartsof the world where serious obstacles

RUSSIA AND ENGLAND 415

are held to exist — China, India, and Persia, and each of these
calls for distinct consideration. In China, Russia has virtually
got what she wants, namely, the control of Manchuria and a
free rail-route to a fortified harbour upon the open sea. The
Manchurian Convention is not yet signed, but it certainly will
be in some form or other, though Russia has lost her friend at
court by the death of Li Hung-chang, who was a paid Russian
agent and who, in the negotiations for the settlement, was
acting all the time in the interest of Russia. He served her
well — as he had often done before, and as Gordon long ago
foretold that he would.* The manufacturing nations of the
world will have made a grave mistake if they permit Russia to
close Manchuria to non-Russian trade, as they will discover in
time. So little do they care for their own commercial interests,
and indeed their own prestige, that even now Russia still main-
tains her military seizure of the international custom-house
(for it is that, though nominally Chinese) at the only Man-
churian sea-port. Common representations by Great Britain,
the United States, and Japan could at one time without diffi-
culty have saved for the world the trade of Manchuria, but
the opportunity appears to have slipped by, though Japan is
still unreconciled to the fact, whatever shape the settlement
between Russia and China may take, and though negotia-
tions are still proceeding on the subject. Of the conduct of
British policy in the Chinese question during the past five
years I can hardly trust myself to speak : I believe that the
historian of the next generation will regard it as the grossest
neglect of the national interests within his knowledge. But to
all appearances the evil is done : Russia virtually has Manchuria,
and also Mongolia, with its enormously valuable gold-mines,
now being privately exploited by a semi-official Russian group.
Russia being thus palpably replete in China, there should be
no great difficulty in persuading her to admit the fact. The
* See " The People and Politics of the Far East," p. 246.

41 6 ALL THE RUSSIAS

losers in the game may perhaps find some consolation in the
reflection that Russia— as some of her statesmen keenly realise
—has undertaken a responsibility the end of which is not yet.
The "yellow peril" exists in truth for her, with thousands of
miles of frontier coterminous with China, and to be colonised
by scattered settlements of Russian peasants hardly superior in
civilisation to the Chinese, with whom they may well develop
relationships far more intimate than will be pleasing to their
rulers. And China has profited in military matters from her
late experience ; she has by no means lost prestige in her own
eyes— rather the reverse ; she is arming with speed and with
knowledge ; and Russia, with its sources of human and material
supply on the other side of the world, is her neighbour. If
one were looking for a motto for Russia's triumphal relations
to two Chinese provinces, I am not sure that it would not be,
Hahcs tota quod mente petisti, infelix.

I turn to India, where most people believe that the real
strain and danger between the British and Russian Empires
lie. The intention of Russia to invade India has been for gen-
erations an accepted commonplace, due probably most of all to
the idea expressed in Sir Henry Rawlinson's remark that "any
one who traces the movements of Russia toward India on the
map of Asia cannot fail to be struck with the resemblance which
these movements bear to the operations of an army opening
parallels against a beleaguered fortress." This is very true, but
it must be remembered, first, that some of these movements
date back a considerable time, when the situation of Russia in
world-politics was very different from what it is to-day; second,
that in many of these movements commercial development
was beyond question the chief, if not the sole aim— an aim
which, be it added, results have abundantly justified ; and
third, that others of these movements have been forced upon

RUSSIA AND ENGLAND 417

Russia, by the necessity of keeping order beyond her borders
—a natural and inevitable process to which much of the ex-
pansion of the British Empire has also been due.

This question of Russia's intentions with regard to India
has been present to my mind in every conversation I have ever
held with a Russian whose opinion was worth hearing. I have
endeavoured to study every fact bearing upon it, and after long
consideration I have come to the conclusion that the colossal
and perilous undertaking of an armed invasion of India, with
a view to conquest, is not part of the plan of any really respon-
sible Russian^ either statesman or soldier. Of course a great
many Russians, nearly all their newspapers, and a large ma-
jority of Russian ol^cers, believe not only that Russia intends
to do this, but that she will. In Russia, however, public opinion
and newspapers count for very little, and ninety-nine per
cent, of officers not at all, so far as national policy is concerned.
It would be roughly true to say that every Russian officer up
to the rank of colonel believes firmly that the invasion of India
is possible, probable, and desirable, while every one above the
rank of colonel has learned that as a military operation it is
practically impossible, and that as a political move it would
be the climax of folly. In Central Asia almost every Russian
knows to a month or two when he will get his marching orders
for Kabul— the time is generally close at hand ; in St. Peters-
burg the very few men who really influence the course of
Russian affairs will not waste their scanty leisure in discussing
the question with you — they sincerely regard you as quite an
outsider, diplomatically speaking, if you desire to raise it. I have
talked with some of these really responsible men, and I sin-
cerely believe the most influential of all would not have India
at a gift. Above them all, too, is the Tsar, compared with
whose decision little else matters, and his Majesty is a man of
peace, not only from the deep conviction that Russia, like other
countries, needs the sunshine of peace for her own growth, but

2 c

41 8 ALL THE RUSSIAS

also from the highest moral and humanitarian motives. Upon
this point there are not two opinions among those in a position
to know. Moreover, if Russia had desired to make a move
toward India why has she remained inactive during two years
of perfect opportunity? We have had no army in England;
our army in Africa could not spare a man ; our army in India,
though more seasoned and better trained owing to its pro-
longed absence from home, has not been at its normal peace
strength ; the entire Continent has been raging and imagining
vain things against us ; we were without an ally in the world;
the death of the Amir of Afghanistan made everything in that
country uncertain for a moment ; never was there — never can
there again be — such a chance for an unscrupulous enemy to
strike at us by land. And in spite of all the warring naval
schools we cannot defend the North-west Frontier by sea. Yet
Russia has not shown the slightest desire to take advantage of
our embarrassment or our defeats, and it is certain that her
commercial crisis would not have kept her back if she thought
her national policy demanded action. I venture to say that
the Emperor of Russia and his principal advisers have by their
attitude since October 1899, given England a striking and
unequivocal proof of the absence of any hostile intention, if
not of the presence of positive friendliness. I should be happy
if I could point to any similar evidence of British consideration
for Russia.

The truth is, in my opinion, that Russia regards her position
on the Indian frontier as a lever to bring pressure to bear,
whenever necessary, upon England in other matters. If the re-
lations between the two countries grow strained beyond a cer-
tain point, you hear of troops from the Caucasus crossing the
Caspian; if the situation gets worse, you learn the precise
number of troops of all arms gathered at Kushkinski Post on the
Afghan frontier ; if a serious rupture occur, or were about to
occur, I should expect the Russians to seize Herat, which they

RUSSIA AND ENGLAND 419

could do without much difliculty.* Then there would be peace,
or war all round. I have no doubt Russia is ready enough to
use the powerful leverage conferred by her position on the
Afghan frontier, and she would be foolish, in her own interest,
not to do so.f But the notion of invading India to annex and
administer it does not seriously exist in Russia.

It would, from any point of view, including the merely
technical one of men and transports, be far beyond Russia's
means, considering the vast tasks she has undertaken and the
vast aims she cherishes in other parts of the world. Finally,
this must be considered. India no longer looms in Russia's
eyes as the El Dorado of the world ; she sees plainly the prob-
lems of finance and population that are assuming such grave
dimensions there ; she observes the almost mechanical recru-
descence of famine ; she realises what the strain of adminis-
tering India is likely to be for England in years to come ; she
has not the least desire to add that burden to the many she
already has to bear.

Therefore I hold that India offers no insurmountable or
even serious obstacle to a solid and friendly understanding be-
tween England and Russia, covering all points where their
national interests appear now to be at variance.

* On the other hand, a friend possessing unusual sources of military information
assures me that the Afghans could delay the Russian seizure of Herat for a consider-
able time — for as long, he believes, as it would take an Indian force to reach there,
if the Afghans desired us to assist them in that part. The late Amir, he adds, had
a force in and near Herat of 22,000 men, with modern armament, especially in guns.

f When I returned from Central Asia during the South African War I was assured
in official military circles in London that large bodies of Russian troops had been
conveyed across the Caspian Saa or forwarded by railway to the frontier. In
reply I informed them that I myself had been travelling up and down the line
between the Caspian and Merv during those very weeks, talking freely with all
sorts of people, and had not seen or heard of a single man being moved - except
one shipload of recruits always sent at that time of year, very raw and very sea-
sick. The canard does not nest in newspaper offices alone.

Readers of Colonel C. E. Yate's "Khurasan and Sistan" will remember that a.
high Russian officer (since stated by Major Yate to ha\e been a Minister of State)
said to him of the Merv-Kushk Railway, "We are building it to Drotect our
interests in China and the Bosphorus."

420 ALL THE RUSSIAS

There remains Persia, and here the question is one of much
difficulty and perplexity, involving several issues of the greatest
importance and range. Moreover, unlike those of China and
India, it is one with which English readers are not yet familiar.
It must therefore be considered in some detail.

Russia desires to become mistress of Persia, and to possess
an outlet upon the Persian Gulf, and she is determined to use
all her strength to carry out her desire. That is the postulate.
She has nowhere, so far as I know, set forth in detail either the
ground or the justification of this desire. I have already de-
scribed some of her reasons at length — in fact, I believe 1 have
stated her case, as regards one aspect of it, more fully than she
has ever stated it herself. Her writers usually confine them-
selves to asseverating the fact, adducing no better arguments
than "historic aim," "national necessity," or "inevitable ex-
pansion." When they descend to detail they are often on very
unsafe ground. The latest of them merely remarks that " Rus-
sia .. . must be the predominant Power when her political
security and vital interests are involved."* It is needless to
point out that England could make out a better case upon
these two grounds for her predominance in the Persian Gulf.
The St. Petersburg Bourse Gazette, understood to express the
views of M. de Witte himself, contained a typical Russian state-
ment of clami two months ago, as follows :

The final decision rests neither with England nor Germany nor with
Turkey, which reckons upon the support of the latter Power, but with Russia,
whose merchant navy is now in regular communication with the ports of the
Persian Gulf. It was not in order to secure for the British Fleet this impor-
tant strategic point on the shore of the Persian Gulf that Russia has latterly
devoted immense capital to the economic revival of Persia and that Russian
diplomacy has done so much to emancipate Western Persia from British servi-
tude. Inasmuch as Russia's diplomacy roused her neighbour Persia to a new
existence and strengthened the moral and economic link between that
country and Russia, it put an end once for all to the idle talk about dividing

* " A Russian Diplomatist," National Review, January 1902, p. 687.

RUSSIA AND ENGLAND 421

Persia into a northern sphere of influence belonging to Russia and a
southern sphere of influence belonging to England. There can be no
division of spheres of influence. Persia, together with the waters that bathe
its shores, must remain the object of Russian matei-ial and moral protection.

This magniloquent allusion to the fiasco of the Kornilof and to
"British servitude" is, it must be confessed, rather poor stulT,
but it is the best we get. Therefore, as Russia does not state
her case, we must state it for her.

Russia's desire for Persia, besides the possession of the future
railway route to the East which I have previously described,
is part of her general and vague, but perfectly established,
movement toward the warm water. She feels sufiocated, and is
struggling for air — which in her case means sea outlets. She
has secured one in the Far East free from ice ; she has created
another in her own North ; she will beyond question force open
the Dardanelles for her Black Sea fleet ; and to complete the
circle — to open a window in every wall — she must have an
egress into the seas of the Middle East — the Mediterranean of
the future struggle. And, be it remembered, the strength of
her desire is not less, but more, because it is of the nature of
an instinctive impulse rather than a calculated plan. A man
gasping for breath will smash things that he would not venture
to touch deliberately. The desire seems to me natural and
legitimate ; 1 feel convinced that every reader will admit that
he would share it if he were a Russian. This much at least is
certain : it will ride rough-shod over conventions and protocols
and treaties. One thing, and one alone, will keep Russia per-
manently from the Persian Gulf : some force stronger than her
own.

In pursuance of her aim she has already accomplished much.
From Resht, on the Caspian, practically a Russian port, she
has made a good road to Tehran, and is reaping a rich com-
mercial reward ; she is pushing her railway fast from the Cau-
casus ; the only troops of the Shah worth considering are his

422 ALL THE RUSSIAS

so-called " Cossacks," commanded by Russian officers ; she is
said to have a force at Turbat, to the distress of the natives ;
she secured a monopoly of railway-building in Persia for ten
years ; she has established a commercial agency and a Vice-
Consul at Bushire ; and she has recently coerced Persia into
a new arrangement of ad valorem duties favourable to her own
commerce. So far as North Persia is concerned, the Times
admits that Russia "has established her commercial and indus-
trial supremacy, not only by virtue of her geographical posi-
tion, but also by bounties, financial encouragements, and a
heavy expenditure of workmen's lives and hard cash." All
these together, however, are of less significance than the step
by which she laid hands upon Persian finance and the custom-
houses — a step which shows that, although she has been quies-
cent over many things, she struck from the shoulder when a
vital issue was raised by the action of another Power.

In 1892 the (British) Imperial Bank of Persia lent the
Persian Government -^500,000, upon the security of the customs
receipts of Southern Persia and the Persian Gulf. In 1898 the
Persian Government desired to borrow more from the same
source. The same security was sufficient, the loan was for
*' productive consumption," the British Government approved
and was a party to the negotiations, and ;^i, 250,000 was under-
vi-ritten in London. At the last moment Russia learned of the
affair, and at once forbade the Persian Government, saus
phrases, to conclude the loan, and offered a much larger sum on
the security of all the customs. Persia was desperately alarmed,
Lord Salisbury (exactly as later in the similar matter of a
Chinese loan) did nothing to support the British capitalists whom
he had encouraged, and the whole business was abandoned.*

* " From that time forward the influeuce of Russia in Persia has been in the
ascendant, while that of Great Britain has perceptibly waned. Hinc illce lacrinice.
Hence the troubles and obstacles encountered by Indian merchants on the new
Quetta-Nushki route, and hence many other untoward consequences of a policy of
drift and abstention, Itisnow clear that westoodatthepartingof the ways when we

RUSSIA AND ENGLAND 423

For a time Persia, afraid to offend either Russia or England,
refrained from borrowing at all, and then Russian pressure
carried the day. On January 30, 1900, the (Russian) Banque
des Prets de Perse took up a Persian five per cent, gold loan
for 22,500,000 roubles (;^2,375,ooo), upon the security of all
the custom-houses except those in the province of Fars and
on the Persian Gulf, redeemable in seventy-five years, with
the added condition that all previous loans should be paid
off at once, and no more incurred until this loan is discharged,
without the permission of the Russian bank. Accordingly, on
February 23, less than a month later, 5,000,000 roubles were
remitted to London to pay off the British Loan of 1892. It
was an audacious stroke, brilliantly successful. The remarks
of the directors of the British bank and the underwriters are
not recorded, but the Rossia recently alluded to the operation
as "removing from the neck of Persia the strangling rope
twisted about it by England."

The general result is that Persia is now financially a vassal
of Russia. The particular results are that Persian duties are
collected (except in Fars and upon the Persian Gulf), by
Russians, or rather by Belgians acting for them (precisely as in
the case of the Chinese railways), a fact which, according to Mr.
Foley, the representative of the Indian Tea Association, "has
given Indian traders the idea that the Russian Government is
all-powerful here, that Persia is practically Russian, and British
influence is nil" ; and that, pleading the danger of the intro-
duction of plague, Russia has established quarantine stations
at Seistan and on the Herat border, and (again quoting Mr.

allowed Persia to do the bidding of Russia, and to decline to complete the almost
compleledarrangements she had made with a group of British capitalists for a British
loan to meet her financial necessities. But we made our choice, and we must now
take the consequences." — The Times, August 31, 1901.

The student cannot fail to be struck by the remarkable coincidence that in 161 7,
four years after his election, Michael Romanoff, the first Tsar, borrowed 7000 roubles
from the Shah Abbas the Great of Persia, and that in 1900 Russia paid off the debt of
Persia, preparatory to absorbing her.

424 ALL THE RUSSIAS

Foley) is able to " paralyse any trade by the Quetta-Xushki
route by keeping caravans and travellers unnecessarily long at
any station before granting pratique." The Russian agents also,
amongst other restrictions, forbid Indian merchants, carrying
goods and money, to enter with arms, although the road in
Persia is unsafe and every Persian is armed, and the Indian
traders have offered to give any guarantee that no arms should
be sold, and even to register every weapon and produce it again
when they leave Persia. Thus a new and promising Indian
trade outlet— which might be greatly developed by a railway
from Quetta or Larkhana to Seistan — is in imminent danger of
being blocked.

So much for the nature of Russia's claim upon Persia, and
what she has already accomplished there. What now are Eng-
land's position and title in the same sphere ? In Northern Persia
we have neither right nor result to point to, beyond certain
financial and other relations which give us no kind of special
interest, and our indirect concern with the trade of Afghanistan,
our sphere of influence. In Southern Persia and the Gulf, on
the other hand, our interest is both great and intimate. The
present situation in the Gulf is the direct result of our work.
British soldiers and sailors, and British treasure, acting continu-
ously over a long period of years, have imposed peace and
brought prosperity to what was — and speedily w^ould be again,
were authority removed— a hotbed of tribal warfare, slavery,
piracy, and disorder of every kind. From this point of view^ the
trade of the Persian Gulf is our asset — we have created it.
Russia has nothing comparable of this kind to show. Moreover,
although by her prohibitive tactics Russia has a large prepon-
derance of the trade of Northern Persia, that of the Persian
Gulf may be said to be almost wholly with the United Kingdom
and India. Out of 188,608 tons of foreign shipping at the port
of Busra in 1900, 172,938 were British.* Further, although the

* The"Statesman'sYear Book" for igoi, pp. 610,611, gives thetotal import and
export trade of the United Kingdom and India with Persia as ^'3, 619, 006, and that

RUSSIA AND ENGLAND 425

Banqiie desPrcls de Perse is (like the Kusso-Chinese Bank) only
another name for the Russian Government, and is establishing
new branches and agencies, the Imperial Bank of Persia, a
British institution, is " virtually the State bank of the country,
the essential part of whose business is largely connected with
the Government finances, such as the collection and transfer
of Government revenues, the issue of paper money and the
nickel coinage, the import of silver for the mint, &c." *

There exists, however, a ground for the status quo in Persia
of far greater importance from the standpoint of international
relations than any commercial achievements or prospects —
nothing less, in fact, than an engagement between the Govern-
ments of Great Britain and Russia regarding the integrity and
independence of Persia. This is the continuation of arrange-
ments made and conHrmed in 1834, 1838, 1839, and 1873, and
our knowledge of it is conveyed in a despatch from Lord
Salisbury to Sir Robert Morier, British Ambassador at St.
Petersburg, dated March 12, 1888, in which he states that M. de
Staal, Russian Ambassador in London, called at the Foreign
Office that afternoon and read him a despatch "written in very
friendly terms." Lord Salisbury continues ;

In the first place, as regards our desire for an assurance that the engage-
ment between the two Governments to respect and promote the integrity and
independence of Persia is considered by the Russian Government as remain-
ing in full force, M. de Giers states that, although, in their opinion, there are
no present grounds for apprehending any danger to Persia, and although

of Russia as /i ,200,000. These figures can hardly be correct, and indeed it is pro-
bably impossible to get the correct figures from any source, as the Custom House does
not furnish them, and in its returns " the countries only from which merchandise
actually starts for Persia are given. — (Mr. Consul-General Wood.)" On the other
hand, a Renter telegram from Tehran gives the total foreign trade of Persia for the
year ending March 21, 1901, as ^8,000,000, and states that of this, fifty-six per cent,
was trade with Russia, and twenty-four per cent, trade with Great Britain. But
these are the figures of the Russo-Belgian customs staff, and by no means to be
accepted without scrutiny.

* Mr. Consul-General C. G. Wood, "Report for the Year 1900 on the Trade of
Azerbaijan," p. 19.

426 ALL THE RUSSIAS

they have received no communication on the subject from Tehran, yet the
Russian Government have no objection to placing again on record that
their views on this point are in no way altered. The Persian Government,
his Excellency adds, have on more than one occasion had tangible proof of
this, and he alludes to a military demonstration made at the request of the
Shah in 1880 on the Caucasian frontier, when a portion of the Province of
Azerbaidjan was suffering from the incursions of bands of Kurds.

I have expressed to M. de Staal, and I request your Excellency to offer
M.de Giers, my best thanks for this frank and courteous communication of
the views of the Russian Government. It has been highly satisfactory to
her Majesty's Government to learn that those views are so much in
accordance with their own, and they owe their acknowledgments to M. de
Giers for enabling Sir H. D. Wolff to inaugurate his mission by an
assurance to the Shah that the engagements between Great Britain and
Russia to respect and promote the integrity and independence of the
Persian Kingdom have again been renewed and confirmed."

This important despatch shows, on the highest possible
authority, that an engagement of long standing between the
British and Russian Governments to respect the" integrity and
independence " of Persia was declared by both to be binding
upon them fourteen years ago. This engagement still holds
good, for in reply to an inquiry by myself, in a speech in the
House of Commons on January 22, 1902, Lord Cranborne,
Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, made this impor-
tant statement :

The hon. member for Wolverhampton referred to an exchange of notes
which took place in 1888 in regard to Persia, and he quite accurately
quoted what passed on that occasion. It was that mutual assurances had
been given that the policy of England and Russia was the maintenance of
the integrity of Persia ; and I have special reason to believe that on both
sides that assurance is maintained.

* " Treaties containing Guarantees or Engagements by Great Britain in Rela-
tion to the Territory or Government of other Countries." Miscellaneous Series,
No. 2 (1898), p. 130.

RUSSIA AND ENGLAND 427

The whole question of the future of Persia, liowever, is one
of imdoubted urgency. There is in existence an arrangement
between Russia and the Sultan regarding future railways in
Asiatic Turkey ; there is some ground for the belief that Russia
has secretly acquired from Persia a lease of one of the ports on
the Gulf ; Germany has the concession of a railway from Con-
stantinople to Baghdad, and her agents have already once
applied in the name of the Sultan for a harbour on the Gulf ;*
British gunboats have forcibly prevented the cession of a coal-
ing station to France on the Gulf, and the landing of Turkish
troops at another port there ; the Indian Government is being
strongly urged to construct a railway to the Persian frontier ;
the Russian and Continental Press sees an imminent contest
between Great Britain and Russia over the whole issue ; and the
subject of the fate of Persia in the future relations of the two
nations has been raised in an acute form by several English
writers. In its frankest form this urgent question is, should
England consent to the annexation of Persia by Russia in order
to effect an Anglo-Russian settlement of all matters of possible
conflict between the two nations, and to replace the present re-
lations of suspicion and veiled hostility, with the possibility of
a ruinous conflict, by an amicable and inclusive understanding ?

The question is of the greatest importance and delicacy.
Those who answer it in the affirmative begin by laying stress
upon the relief every British statesman, and, indeed, every
thoughtful citizen, would feel if all chance of a war with Russia
were removed — the possibility of which dogs our foreign policy
at every step. Upon this we are all agreed. They then pro-
ceed to offer us a choice between fighting a Continental coah
tion, to be created by Germany, and coming to an arrangement
with Russia. And some press this point with the peculiar con-
fidence which attaches to anonymity. "Unless by conscription,
a fleet at the three-Power standard, and service estimates rising

* See page 258.

42 8 ALL THE RUSSIAS

at no distant date to eighty or ninety millions a year, there can
be no adequate insurance against the appearance of Germany
and her fleet at the head of a hostile Europe but a settlement
with Russia by the unreserved relinquishment of Persia to her
influence. There is no diplomatic alternative worth considera-
tion." * This course has also been strongly urged by a group
of anonymous writers in the National Review, but their plan
is not so bold, for it consists in offering Russia a commercial
outlet on the Persian Gulf, "in return for an undertaking on the
part of Russia to respect the political status quo along the shores
of the Gulf." This is a case of Mr. Balfour and Port Arthur over
again, and would be followed, in my opinion, by a similar result ;
namely, that we should give away everything and provoke ill-
will to boot. Sir Rowland Blennerhassett, who writes upon
foreign affairs with much knowledge and sobriety of judgment,
has also strongly advocated a complete abandonment of our in-
terests in Persia, as the only way to avoid a " desperate war,"
and further " deplorable results" from surrenders to Germany
of the kind we have recently experienced in the Far East.

It cannot be denied that there is much force in the conten-
tion that England could hardly fight Russia in Persia without
military sacrifices to which the nation would be most loath to
submit on such an issue. This is a question for military experts,
of course, but the difficulty of the situation that would arise if
Russia simultaneously seized Herat and advanced an army to
Tehran (where it would meet with no local opposition whatever),
may surely be appreciated by any thoughtful Englishman.
Moreover, we should almost certainly not be offered the decision
of any such clear-cut problem as this. Russia would assuredly
follow her usual tactics of advancing step by step, no one step
being sufficiently hostile in appearance to furnish a direct
challenge to a war in which the fate of the British Empire
would be at stake, but all of them forming at last the fait

* " Calchas," in the Fortnightly Review, December 1901, p. 947.

RUSSIA AND ENGLAND 429

accompli envisaged from the first. The recent history of Central
Asia affords a precise precedent.

On the other hand, there is weighty authority against the
abandonment of our position on the Persian Gulf. Captain
Mahan, for example, has made the following observations upon
this question :

Progress through Persia would not only approach the Gulf, but if
successful would turn — would outflank — the mountains of Afghanistan,
avoiding the difficulties presented by the severe features of that country,
and by the character of its inhabitants. Russia would thus obtain a
better position both in itself and in its communication with the north, for
beginning and sustaining operations in India itself..

Unless Great Britain and Germany are prepared to have the Suez
route to India and the Far East closed to them in time of war, they cannot
afford to see the borders of the Levant and the Persian Gulf become the
territorial base for the navy of a possible enemy, especially if it appear
that the policy of the latter in the Pacific runs seriously counter to their
own.''=

And Lord Curzon committed himself some time ago to
a most uncompromising attitude. After describing the results
of British surrender of the control of the Persian Gulf, he says:
^* I do not think there can be two opinions among Englishmen
that there is no justification, either in policy or in reason, for
exposing India to such a danger, or for allowing South Persia
to fall into Russian hands." t And in another place he has
declared that he would regard the cession to Russia of a Persian
Gulf port as "a wanton rupture of the status quo, and as an in-
ternational provocation to war, and I should impeach the British
Minister who was guilty of acquiescing in such a surrender as a
traitor to his country." X

And Major Francis Edward Younghusband has put the
objection in a concrete form :

* " The Problem of Asia," pp. 56, 77.

t " Russia in Central Asia," second edition, p. 37S.

X " Persia" (1892), vol. 11, p. 465.

430 ALL THE RUSSIAS

Some will say there is room enough in Asia for both England and Russia,
and why not let Russia goto the Persian Gulf if she wants to? There is room,
of course, but Russia already has much the larger share of it. While we have
less than 2,000,000 she has 6,500,000 square miles. Besides this she is just
absorbing Manchuria with another 360,000 square miles, and we admit that
she must have Mongolia with 1,300,000 square miles and Chinese Turkestan
with 580,000 square miles. In addition to all this, which amounts in the aggre-
gate to 2,250,000 square miles, we recognise that she must control Northern
Persia. Is not this enough room without conceding Southern Persia as well ? *

These are all opinions entitled to respectful consideration ;
but, upon examination, it will appear that the authorities pro-
fessing them contradict themselves or one another. Captain
Mahan, for instance, says in one place that Russia established
in the Persian Gulf would be a " perpetual menace in war," and
that England " cannot afford to see the Persian Gulf become the
territorial base for the navy of a possible enemy " ; yet in another
he declares that the maintenance there, by Russia, of " a navy
sufficient to be a serious consideration to the fleets of Great
Britain, and to those who would be her natural allies upon the
sea in case of complications in the Farther East, would involve
an exhausting effort, and a naval abandonment of the Black
Sea, or of the China Sea, or of both." t It may fairly be argued
that we do not run much risk in affording to a possible enemy
an opportunity of which he cannot make use without exhausting
himself. Lord Curzon, again, says that "The absorption of
N. E. Persia and Khorasan will provide an alternative route of
advance, either upon Herat or, through Seistan, upon Beluchis-
tan and India itself." t Yet, according to Major Younghusband,
in the letter previously cited, " we recognise that Russia must
control Northern Persia," and therefore what Lord Curzon
fears for Herat has already happened ! And surely the in-
vasion of India through Seistan is a contingency remote enough
to be disregarded. It appears to me, therefore, that the

* Letter to The Times, December 5, 1901.

t " The Problem of Asia," p. 119.

J " Russia in Central Asia," second edition, p. 377.

RUSSIA AND ENGLAND 431

opinions even of these authorities do not bring the solution
much nearer.

Moreover, there can be no great and far-reaching arrange-
ment between two Powers in which some risks are not incurred.
The question must be whether the advantages greatly outweigh
the dangers. A Russian naval base and fleet in the Persian Gulf
would necessitate a strengthening of our sea power in Indian
waters, for the safeguarding alike of India and our routes to the
Far East and to Australasia, and the building of certain strate-
gical Indian railways, e.g. from Ahmedabad to Karachi. But
friendly relations with Russia (including, as they necessarily
would, a similar settlement with France), placed upon a perma-
nent and defined footing, would be cheaply purchased at the
price of an additional squadron in those waters, and a railway or
two. And would it not be rather an advantage than otherwise
to us, who must for our very existence retain the command of
the sea, that Russia should come down to the sea and thereby
offer a fresh vulnerable place and a new trade-route to our
natural means of attack, if ever friendship failed ? The more the
elephant comes to the water, the better the chance of the whale.
And, to recur to the kernel of the question, can we, a sea Power,
prevent Russia, with her vast army, carrying out these land
operations in far-off Asia whenever she may choose to do so ?

This question can no longer be regarded as one between
England and Russia alone. Upon its decision hang two other
international issues of great gravity. If we come to terms with
Russia, our relations with F ranee, already happily upon a better
footing, must also necessarily improve. To us this would be
easy and natural, but France would follow Russia's lead \n such
a matter, where she would hesitate, from old suspicion and recent
sharp divergence of interest, to take action by herself. French-
men, usually so alert to perceive national movements of sym-
pathy or the reverse, would then probably at last learn that there
is no country except the United States for which so much good-

432 ALL THE RUSSIAS

will is felt in England, or against whom national passion could
only with so much difficulty be aroused, as France. And to
nine Englishmen out of ten the fact that a Russian understand-
ing would necessarily involve a settlement with France also,
would be an additional and strong argument in its favour.

The other international issue is unhappily of a different cha-
racter. The feeling of the British people toward Germany has
undergone a serious change of late, and although it would be
impolitic to exaggerate this, it would be even more unwise to
ignore it. Several causes have brought about the change.
The masses of the people, acting upon simple impressions and
instinctive impulses, have been deeply affronted by the indecent
caricatures of King and Queen which have enjoyed absolute
immunity in a land where Vcse-niajeste is officially regarded as a
peculiarly heinous offence, and by the veritable campaign of
invective and " foul and iillhy lies," as Sir Edward Grey has
rightly called them, directed against our officers and men in
South Africa.* At first this was confined to that considerable
portion of the German press known to be corrupt, and it was
fed by the ample means of which the Boer representatives in
Brussels at first disposed. But later it spread to more respect-
able German journals, until virtually the whole press reeked
with it — the Socialist Vorwdrts being the chief honourable ex-
ception in this as in so many other matters — the insertion of
indecent advertisements, for example. It is easy to analyse the
origins of this seemingly volcanic upheaval. Bismarck system-
atically corrupted the press, and poisoned the atmosphere of
Germany with suspicion and hatred of England. There are his
chickens coming home to roost. The extraordinary growth of
national sentiment after the war of 1870, legitimate and natural

* Lord Roberts, Commander-in-Chief, has even thought it necessary to give his
"most positive assurance " to a German lady correspondent that the statements
that Boer women and girls have been violated by British officers and soldiers, and
that all Boer females over twelve years of age in a certain refugee camp were "des-
patched to Pretoria for immoral purposes ' ' were "absolutely without foundation "1

RUSSIA AND ENGLAND 433

enough, lias now run to excess in that talal pride which was the
fav(3urite theme ot the (jieek dramatist. The unp.iralleled de-
velopment of Geiinan commerce and the sudden accretion of
wealth has been accompanied by a distinct lowering of the old
German standards of mental sobriety and severe morality, with
the result that serious Germans have not hesitated to write in
alarm of certain recent events and tendencies both at home and
in the colonies. This analysis, however, though it may explain
the origin of the anti-British campaign, cannot mitigate its in-
tense effect upon the minds of innumerable Englishmen, who
have seen their country befouled by a dirty torrent which even
the example and speech of the Emperor himself were powerless
to stem.

The anger in the minds of the British people at large is
matched, unfortunately, by the alarm with which thoughtful
observers have noticed certain revelations of modern German
policy. The repeated declarations of the Emperor concerning
the part to be played in the immediate future by the German
navy, his dictum that " Our future lies upon the water," the
official definition that the navy must be able to " keep the North
Sea clear," its rapid growth, ofBcially insisted upon in the face
of every pecuniary and Parliamentary obstacle, and a recent
revelation that it is being pushed forward even faster than the
German public w'as aware — have naturally raised acutely the
question. What role, against whom, is the German navy in-
tended to play ? And the geographical situation of Germany,
her rapidly increasing population, and her over-production,
demanding new and protected markets, together with the
fact that only two countries, England and Holland, possess
over-sea territories corresponding to the German demand,
supply the answer. Holland is surely destined to come under
German influence, and if the German tieet to be is not in-
tended — alone or by judicious alliance — to neutralise England's
command of the sea, with its natural commercial conseepiences

434 ALL THE RUSSIAS

which Germany feels restricting her ambition and needs at so
many points, and to secure for her a position on the water
analogous to that she enjoys on land, then a foreigner can hardly
see what reason it has for coming into existence at all. At any
rate, whether this be the aim or not, the growth of the German
navy is calculated to make it a possibility.

The alarm of students of foreign affairs rests also on more
precise grounds than the above. The German Foreign Minister
has informed the world that Germany sounded other Powers of
Europe concerning a possible coalition against England in con-
nection with South African affairs, and that, having discovered
that she would be " isolated " in acting against us, to be " patri-
otic " could do nothing. A recent writer has expressed " doubt
whether history records a more impudent avowal of an un-
friendly act," and if for the word " impudent," which has no
applicability, the word " frank " were substituted, the remark
is not exaggerated. Again, the unconcealed and almost con-
temptuous hostility to England shown by Count von Walder-
see in China, against which both Lord Salisbury and Lord Lans-
downe protested in sharp terms,* and which we should presum-
ably have met in a peremptory manner if almost every available
British soldier had not been in South Africa, could not but pro-
duce a lamentable impression in this country. Finally, the
manner in which the German Government has treated Lord
Salisbury's Anglo-German Convention regarding China (now

* For instance, Lord Salisbury to the British Ambassador in Berlin, October 30,
1900 : "The arrangements referred to with regard to railway traffic assume to deal
with private British commercial interests without consultation with the persons
affected or communication with her Majesty's Government. You should request the
German Government to obtain from Count Waldersee an explanation of these
arrangements." And Lord Lansdowne to the same, November 27: "In the
opinion of her Majesty's Government, such an arrangement, closely affecting the
interestsof the British bondholders, should not have been made without consultation
with their representatives or previous communication with her Majesty's Govern-
ment. I should wish your Excellency to point this out to the German Government."

A summary of German anti-British action in China was given in a striking
letter to The Times, signed " Far East," on August 26, 1901.

RUSSIA AND ENGLAND 435

known in (Germany as the " Yan^-lszc Agreement"!) has
changed many doubts of its policy into conviction. This mad
agreement formally gave Germany henceforth an equal right
in our own Chinese spliere of influence, and only imposed upon
her in return obligations of so flimsy a character that she has
already tossed them aside.

The simple truth, as it has long been known to the few and
is now at last beginning to be appreciated by the many, is that
Germany has come to regard us with hostility, tempered by in-
difference, if not by contempt, and that she will do almost any-
thing, or leave almost anything undone, to keep on good terms
with Russia. She is running counter to Russia, as I have
previously shown, on one great matter of foreign policy, but with
this exception the German attitude toward Russia is only
equalled in submission by the attitude of the British Government
for the past seven years toward Germany. There is nothing in
this for Englishmen to blame or to resent : every independent
nation has the right to make its policy subserve its own ends ;
but there is very much in it from which they should take warn-
ing, if not alarm, and the German people cannot be surprised
that Englishmen who read the venerable Professor Mommsen's
" regret . . . that a deep and incurable split" is " now yawning
between the two nations," should themselves reluctantly recog-
nise that the former good relations with their neighbours across
the North Sea have, for the present at any rate, given place on
both sides to a very different feeling.

To return now, after this excursus, to the relations of Eng-
land and Russia, it is evident that if there is any ground whatever
to fear the active hostility of Germany in the near future, with
possibly other attempts to form coalitions against us, the fact
must exercise a very grave influence upon our minds in c6n-
sidering our future relations with other Powers. If we do Ger-
many an injustice in being thus influenced, if our suspicions and
alarms are unfounded — and there is still enough good-will left

436 ALL THE RUSSIAS

in this country for Germany, admi ration for the great quahties
of the Teutonic people, and sympathetic respect for their great
ruler to create the earnest hope that it may be so — the fault is
her own. We have been long enough in learning to distrust
her, and it is only as a measure of self-defence that we now
regard her attitude as an additional reason for endeavouring to
adjust our national interests to those of Russia and France.

The reader will probably have concluded by now that I also
am an advocate of the policy of securing Russian good-will by
the relinquishment of Persia to her influence. That is not quite
the case. I am most earnestly in favour of a rapprochcmcni with
Russia, and after long consideration 1 do not share the view
that a Russian port on the Persian Gulf would necessarily
involve a serious danger to the British Empire. Certainly it is
illogical to admit one rival Power— to Koweit— and atthe same
time see disaster in the approach of another. But there are
other aspects of the proposal in which I see grave objections.
To begin with, this is not a matter which we should approach
like a bull at a gate. It is not the kind of masterpiece that can
be fondu d'uii trait. I think I know enough of Russia to say
that to approach her with a complete cut-and-dried offer, spring-
ing^ from no succession of events or arising from no diplomatic
dead-lock, would be to invite certain rebuff. She would fear
us bearing gifts. She would conclude that our new-found
friendship had its root in weakness, not in conviction. She
would observe that not until we had fought an unsuccessful war
for more than two years, spent two hundred millions of money,
seen Consols dow-n to 92, lost twenty thousand men, and
wondered how we were going to replace our present army when
it is disbanded, did it occur to us to remember that we loved
Russia so much that we would gladly make a heavy sacrifice for
her ffood-will. This is what she— and others— v.'ould retort.

RUSSIA AND ENGLAND 437

and it may as well Ix- set down bhintl\-. We arc fai- loo apt tc;
tlirow dust in our own eyes in dcalin^,^ with other nations. To
say to her, " Please take Persia and be friends," for that is what
the ofier amounts to wlien stripped of its diplomatic foliage,
would cause her to draw two instant conclusions: first, that we
were in a far weaker and more dangerous position than she had
thought; and second, that we had made up our minds that we
could not possibly preserve our interests in Persia against her
influence. And neither of these conclusions would be likely to
move her to a generous or a grateful response.

Nor could Russia be wholly blamed for such an attitude.
We sufi'er here from the multitudinous errors of our past policy
toward her — now hot, now cold ; now abjectly yielding, now
suddenly voting millions for war in a few minutes ; now de-
ploying our fleet against her when exhausted at the moment
of victory, now casually admitting that we had " put our money
on the wrong horse" ; now inviting her to a port in the China
Sea, now reproaching her for fortifying it ; now graciously re-
marking that there is " room enough in Asia " for us both, now
thinking we had cleverly got Germany to help us to stop her
there. And as a result of long experience of our diplomacy
Russia will take a great deal of convincing that we should stick
to any line of policy, or that we should otTer more than a forensic
opposition to anything she might do.

Devoutly to be wished as is a cordial settlement with Russia
of our respective worid-interests, and, though there is every
opportunity for it and no insuperable obstacle to prevent, it is
unlikely to be reached except in one way. To deal with Russia
on equal terms we must begin by regaining her respect. I do
not mean her respect for our moral qualities or our disinterested
aims ; she will probably persist in thinking us very much like
other people in those matters ; but her respect for our sagacity,
our tenacity, and our strength. And we shall only accomplish
this by holding our own wherever we come into contact with

438 ALL THE RUSSIAS

her — by never letting our words run ahead of our intentions, by
never forgetting that deeds are more eloquent than despatches,
by never taking hold of anything she desires that we can well
do without, and by never letting go when we have once taken
hold.

In saying this I am prepared for the retort that amicable
relations are impossible with a nation whose agents on every
outpost or contested field act without much scruple on their own
initiative, while the central authority is usually ready to profit
by their indiscretions, even while ostensibly repudiating them.
It would be easy to give a score examples of this — in fact, it is
a kind of unwritten understanding in Russian diplomacy that a
distant agent may do pretty much what he will at his own risk.
If it succeeds, he is handsomely rewarded ; if it fails he is ruth-
lessly dismissed. It is true, too, that the Russian diplomatist
does not act up to the level of Bismarck's profession, Offiziell
winl nicJit gelogen : the late Count Muravief will always be re-
membered in diplomacy for one startling performance of this
nature.* But my reply is, first, that our own vacillation and
malleability have encouraged Russia to take liberties with us ;
she does not play these tricks upon Germany or Japan. And
second, we had better learn that the obligation to speak the
truth to your own disadvantage is not considered abroad to hold
good in diplomatic intercourse. There is no question here of
" lying " ; the " lie " only arises when there is a recognised obli-
gation, as among honourable people in ordinary life, to speak
the truth. It is not a " lie " deliberately to give your opponent
by your play a false idea of your hand in agame of cards; Russian
diplomatists— and most others— regard their work also as a
game— with subtler rules, for higher stakes. When they score
against us by taking advantage of what they consider one of the
legitimate openings, and arousing in us a childlike belief in the

* See "Correspondence respecting the Affairs of China " (China No. i, 1898},
passim.

RUSSIA AND ENGLAND 439

thing which is not, their satisfaction and their astonishment are
equal. Of course the diplomatic falsehood must he used rarely
and with discretion, and the diplomatist, not a fool, who is
known never to use it under any circumstances enjoys a peculiar
prestige and authority. The late P'oreign Minister of a certain
Great Power was known in diplomatic circles as " the biggest
liar in Europe " ; his successor, on the other hand, owes much
of his remarkable success to the fact that he always speaks the
truth. I was once talking to a great foreign statesman upon a
matter at issue between another country and my own, and in
answer to a remark he made I pointed out that the Foreign
Minister of that other country had just publicly declared the
contrary to be the case. "And you believe him ?" was the simple
reply. The British Ambassador to a Great Power once said to

me, "I shall believe that is capable of deceiving me when

I find that he has done so, and not before." This is the Public-
School spirit in diplomacy — the finest spirit in the world in its
place, but if I had been Foreign Secretary I should have retired
that Ambassador forthwith. It would have been better for us,
I may add, if he had been retired. I once asked a Foreign
Minister for information upon a certain point. "Why do you
ask me?" he said; "why don't you ask your Ambassador?" I
looked at him for a moment, and then he smiled, and we talked
of something else. His smile meant that he knew, and knew
that I knew, that the Ambassador in question would believe
anything he was told, and was therefore the last person to apply
to for information — a habit which was the despair of his subor-
dinates, who grew haggard coding despatches which they knew
conveyed erroneous impressions. But these reminiscences are
carrying me from the matter in hand, which is that we shall re-
gain the respect of Russia in diplomacy by treating her with
honourable frankness, and at the same time making it perfectly
clear to her that we are not to be deceived by any fair words and
that any arrangement with her must be set down definitely in

440 ALL THE RUSSIAS

the bond. When Russian statesmen reaHse that a new spirit —
the spirit of efficiency — has come into the conduct of British
affairs — that we are genuinely friendly at heart, whether we are
on the top of the wave or in the trough, but that when we are hit
we are absolutely certain to hit back, even if some day we have
to prohibit their goods in our markets to prevent the further
prohibition of our goods in theirs, they will be as ready for an
entente as we are, and then some "casual meeting at an inn"
will do the rest.

Now, to have done with this matter of Persia, upon which
so nuich hangs, when the entente comes, what form is it to take ?
In fairness this question should only be put to a statesman who
has " seen the correspondence," not to a humble unofficial
student ; but I have my own notion of an answer, and it is based
upon the belief that the diplomatic struggles and even the wars
of the future will not be for territory, but against commercial
discrimination. I see no good reason in British interests why
Russia should not develop Persia as a market for her surplus
manufactures, why she should not bring her goods and passen-
gers to the sea through Persia, why she should not have a naval
base in the Persian Gulf. But I see excellent reasons why she
should not come clown to the Persian Gulf and immediately
extinguish British and Indian trade there, as she has virtually
done in Central Asia, by the imposition of absolutely prohibitive
duties. If she would bind herself, by formal treaty, to admit
all foreign goods to Persia and transport them upon Persian
railways on precisely the same terms as Russian goods, she
might, in my opinion, have Persia to-morrow, with all the vast
advantage its possession would confer upon her.*

* The following passage in the article entitled " Russia and England," by "A
Russian Diplomatist," is also worth quoting both as an example of the use of
asseveration, instead of solid argument, in the Russian demand for Persia, and
also because in the last sentence the writer apparently foresees, and more suo,
hastens to concede at this preliminary stage, the suggestion I make here :

'The geographical position of Russia and of Persia have bound the essential
interests of those two countries together for more than a century, and it appears to us

RUSSIA AND ENGLAND 441

Such d treaty, liowcvcr, would have to be formally recog-
nised by other nations besides ourselves, so that any infraction
of it would involve something more than a bi-lateral struggle.
And first of all I should look to the United States to be a party
to such a compact. This is, I know, not the common view of
what the American Cjovernment may be expected to do, but I
believe the future will see American policy modihed in this
matter, as it has been so strikingly modified of late in others.
Captain Mahan has been quoted on the other side in this Persian
question, and I may draw from his remarkable insight two
striking passages in support of my own contention :

Americans must accept and familiarise their minds to the fact that, with
their irrevocable entry into the world's polity, first, by the assertion of the
Monroe doctrine, and since by their insular acquisitions — above all, the
Philippines — and by the interests at stake in China, they cannot divest
themselves of concern, practical as well as speculative, in such a question as
the balance of power in the Levant, or at the entrance of the Persian Gulf.

As contrasted with the political unity of Russia and her geographical
continuity, the influences that can possibly be opposed to her are diverse
and scattered. They find, however, a certain unifying motive in a common
interest, of unfettered commerce and of transit in the regions in question.
It is upon the realisation of this interest, and upon the accurate appreciation of
their pou-er to protect it — and not upon artificial cond)inations — that correct
policy or successful concert in the future nmst rest.'''

Nothing could be truer or more lucidly s'ated than the
sentence I have italicised. Indeed, it seems to need only to be

impossible that Russia should yield any of her acquired advantages to any other
Power. We therefore cannot see any serious possibility of England's preventing
Russia from approaching toward the Persian Gulf. It is possible that this goal will
not be reached to-morrow, but it certainly will be in the near future. In any event a
partition of influence in Persia between Russia and England appears to be outside
the range of practical politics. However, no impediments would be imposed upon
the development of British commerce as protected by international rights and
demanded by the needs of the Persian people."

The obvious comment upon the last sentence is that if no impediments were
placed upon British trade in a Russian Persia, it would be the one exception to a
hitherto invariable rule.

* " The Problem of Asia," pp. 57 and 68.

442 ALL THE RUSSIAS

understood to be accepted. For the United States, hardly less
than for England, open markets for manufactures are an essen-
tial condition of future welfare, and it is irrational in this age,
when steam and electricity have annihilated distance, that this
interest should be insisted upon in one part of the world and set
aside as contrary to tradition and policy in another. If the
Open Door in China justifies an American Secretary of State in
sending a strongdespatch to all the European Governments and
to Japan, why does not the Open Door in Persia ? In logic,
therefore, as well as in the pursuit of legitimate and imperative
national interest, I fail to see why the United States should de-
cline to be a party to a multi-lateral agreement giving great
geographical and transit advantages in Persia to the Power
which most desires and needs them, in return for an equality of
trade for all the world there. Similar considerations should
bring about the adhesion of France, Italy, and Japan. I omit
Germany, because she is apparently already engaged in an
attempt to extend her own high tariff to that part of the world,
but France has not received from Russia such treatment in the
matter of tariff as to cause her to welcome the extension of
Russian duties to another great part of the world, and the fact
that she has concluded a military alliance for mutual defence
with Russia is no reason why she should not do all in her
power to extend the market for her own people's manufactures
and products.

This suggestion opens up a wide field for discussion, and it
would be foreign to my general subject to review the argu-
ments for and against it. I hope to return to it elsewhere,
so here I will only point out that if once adopted anywhere
this policy of international commercial equality in regard
to the future disposal of undeveloped countries would
acquire an almost irresistible moral momentum, and would
go far toward removing from mankind the shadow of several
imminent wars.

RUSSIA AND ENGLAND 443

P'inally, let us consider iov a nionient what is tlie liiitish
alternative policy toward Persia, and on this point a recent
debate in Parliament enables us to speak with confidence. In
two debates in the House of Commons Lord Cranborne has
spoken for the British Government upon the Persian ques-
tion. I take these passages from his speeches :

Our position in the Persian Gulf, both commercially and politically, was
one of a very special character, and his Majesty's Government had always
considered that the ascendency of Great Britain in the Persian Gulf was
the foundation of British policy. This was not merely a question of theory ;
it was a statement of fact. Our trade interests there far exceeded those of
any other country. Our recognised maritime supremacy secured our political
ascendency. The policy of the Government with regard to Koweit was to
maintain the status quo, and this they had put forward with some insistence.

You may roughly lay down that our object in Asia is to maintain the status
quo. I do not mean to say that that is a statement to which there may not be
some exceptions, but, taking it generally, the policy of England throughout
Asia is to maintain the status quo. That is an advantageous policy. It was not
always our policy, because at other times a different policy was more suit-
able; but at the present moment, with the very great extension which our
Empire has had of late years, undoubtedly the policy of maintaining the
status quo is the right one for this country. This is a policy which may be
mistaken for what was called by one of the honourable members who have
spoken, a policy of drift. It does not follow that it is a policy of drift. It
is a difficult policy to maintain, because as other countries advance a purely
defensive policy must always present much greater obstacles than any other.
What is true of the East generally is true of Persia. We have very large
interests there. Far be it from me to minimise them in the least. They are
interests of the highest political order, vast commercial interests which it is
our wish and our dut\'to maintain. We see no reason why that should lead
us into anything but friendly relations with Russia ; but although we seek
friendly relations, I must remind the House that those friendly relations are
not to be sought at the cost of any treaty rights we possess. Whether to
Russia or to any other country, it does not become us to go cap in hand for an
understanding. Our policy is the integrity of Persia. That unselfishness is
not due to any elaborate moral motive, because it is onr interest that Persia
should remain in its present territorial condition. But, when I state that, I
ought to add that there are limits to that policy. That policy cannot be
pursued independently of the action of other Powers. We are anxious for the

444 ALL THE RUSSIAS

integrity of Persia, but we are anxious far more for the balance ot power ;
and it would be impossible for us, whatever the cause, to abandon what we
look upon as our rightful position in Persia. Especially is that true in regard
to the Persian Gulf, as I had the honour to state to the House a few days ago.
It is true not only of the Persian Gulf, but of the Southern Provinces of
Persia, and those provinces which border on our Indian Empire. Our rights
there, and our position of ascendency, we cannot abandon. In the Gulf itself,
as I ventured to state on the previous occasion, our ascendency is not merely
a question of theory, but a question of fact. Our position of ascendency is
assured by the existence of our maritime supremacy.

More information is often secured in the House of Com-
mons by carefully worded questions to Ministers than from
their speeches, and the above exposition of poHcy is usefully
supplemented by two answers which Lord Cranborne made
about the same time. Here is one ;

The occupation of a port in the Persian Gulf by any Power would be
inconsistent with the maintenance of the status quo which, as I have already
informed the House, is the policy of his Majesty's Government.

And in reply to an inquiry whether any exchange of views
had taken place between his Majesty's Government and the
German Government as to the selection of a terminus on the
Persian Gulf, Lord Cranborne said :

His Majesty's Government have intimated to that of Germany that they
are in no way opposed to the scheme, in which it is probable that British
capitalists will wish to take a considerable share. There has already been
some discussion of the point referred to in the second part of the question
between the two Governments ; and no decision with regard to it will be
come to without a further exchange of views."

The situation is therefore this : England's pohcy is the
status quo \n Persia and the Persian Gulf; but this means the
political and not the commercial status quo; and the latter is

* These quotations are taken from The Tunes Parliamentary reports of Jan. 17,
23, 24, and 25. 1902

RUSSIA AND ENGLAND 445

conipatililc with a (icrmaii railway to the GiiH' and a (jCinian
terminus tliere, which is actually under discussion at this
moment between England and Germany.

Such a policy is self-condemned. To suppose that Ger-
many will rest content with a merely commercial outlet, and
that she will not subsequently lind insuperable reasons for
fortifying it and making it a basis for her ships of war is, in
my opinion, childish. The result will be the fiasco and the
friction of Port Arthur over again. The British Government,
in fact, is simply maintaining its old policy of paper protests
against Russia, while yielding once more to German pressm-e.
And I may perhaps quote my own comment upon Lord Cran-
borne's statement in the debate already mentioned :

I hold that there should be a definite statement of the policy of his
Majesty'sGovernment in Persia — not merely the policy of saying " Hands oft'"
to Germany and " Hands off" to Russia, and still doing nothing, while both
countries steadily advanced until British interests found themselves between
them like a nut in a nut-cracker. In conclusion, I am strongly of opinion
that, if the British policy is simply to keep out Russia, more particularly by
means of any understanding, secret or otherwise, which would let Germany
into the Persian Gulf, then we are preparing for ourselves in the future not
only grievous commercial injury but possibly also imperial disaster.*

Our policy, in a word, is simply that deprecated so neatly
by Sir Edward Grey (Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs in
the last Liberal Government) in this debate — " a policy which
combines in a most extraordinary way the disadvantages both
of yielding and of resistance, without getting the advantages
of either course." Lord Cranborne says that we must not go
"cap in hand" to Russia. Precisely; but my own contention

* This speech was, of course, made before Lord Oanborne had admitted that
England had practically conKcnted to a German outlet upon the Persian Gulf. I
may add that the fear I expressed on page 402, footnote, regarding the existence
of a secret treaty between Cheat Britain and Germany, appears to have been
officially admitted.

446 ALL THE RUSSIAS

is that we shall only arrive at good relations with her by going
boldly cap on head — in Mr. Meredith's delightful phrase,

With hiiidward feather and with forward toe.

In considering this rnost grave question of the relations of
Russia and England, we must never hide from ourselves the fact
that it is no easy matter for two nations so dissimilar in condi-
tions, opinions, institutions, and ideals, to arrive at harmony of
purpose. Russia is an autocracy : so long as a strong and con-
sistent autocrat rules, absolute continuity of aim is probable. In
Great Britain, though persistence of view is to be expected, re-
presentative institutions, reflecting a gust of national passion or
modification of national conviction, may quickly register a
change of policy. The accession of a new autocrat, on the
other hand, may substitute a feeble will and a fickle attitude
for strength and consistency. At any rate, a foreign nation
may naturally hesitate before staking some of its most
vital interests upon the will, or perhaps only the life, of one
man. I have cited the opinions of leading Russian states-
men, but for my own part I can see no sure foundation for
Anglo-Russian good-will except a sincere conviction upon each
side that such would be for its own good and the advantage
of mankind. I shall be ridiculed by some for attributing any
weight to the latter consideration in the case of Russia, but closer
observers will probably support me in the view that the Rus-
sians, not less than ourselves, are a nation of sentimentalists, and
even more sensitive than ourselves to broad philosophical
appeals. Between us and them there is not, in my opinion, any
innate, permanent instinct of hostility. The present popular
hostility had its roots in the Crimean War (a painful memory to
every Englishman who has studied its diplomatic origin) and
has developed of late from causes easy to analyse if space per-
mitted. Russia has one deep-rooted and ever-present national
antipathv, probably destined to exhibit itself some day in flam-

RUSSIA AND ENGLAND 447

iiig colours to the world, hut it is not toward En.i^lund. She
has sharp suspicions, and indeed anxieties, ret^archnt^ the aims
of another nation, but this is not ourselves. If a conflict with
us were as likely as her newspapers profess to believe, her news-
papers would never be permitted to chronicle their belief in
excited language day by day. They fling their sparks into what
IS non-explosive ; if it were gunpowder, their pyrotechnics
would speedily be damped down. Indeed, the hand of authority
has turned the hose on this fiery press once or twice when
there has been real danger of a conflagration.

At the present moment the conditions are perhaps not favour-
able for a reconciliation and settlement. We should gravely
err, however, in my opinion, in regarding ourselves as more
"isolated" than others, whether our isolation be "splendid"
or the reverse. The prestige of our Government — of a group
of individuals — has suffered — not the prestige of the British
people.* I would go so far as to say that respect, not to say
fear, enters more often into the feeling of foreign statesmen
towards us to-day than at any previous period of our modern
history. The spectre of isolation makes more wakeful couches
than ours. If the roofs could be lifted off the Foreign Oftices
of Europe and a glance cast into their recesses, I fancy that the
uneasiness prevailing in unsuspected places would go far toward
reassuring Britons concerning their own position in the world.
Therefore, w^e may await with comparative equanimity the de-
velopment of a rapprochcuient based upon geography and upon
history, upon sentiment and upon interest. I believe it will
come in time — if not to-day, then to-morrow. When it comes
it will show how little exaggeration there was in the words of

* " With these obvious gains — development of Imperial purpose, strengthening
of Imperial ties, broadening and confirming the bases of sea-power, increase of mili-
tary efficiency , demonstrated capacity to send and to sustain 200,000 men on active
service, for two years, Cooo miles from home — I do not believe the international
prestige of Great Britain has sunk in foreign Cabinets, however it maybe reckoned
in the streets and cafes of foreign cities." — Captain A. T. Mahan, in the National
Revieii', December 1901, p. 511.

448 ALL THE RUSSIAS

the Tsar Nicholas I. to Sir Hamilton Seymour before the terrible
blunder of the Crimea, " Let England and Russia arrive at an
understanding : the rest is nothing." And with its inevitable
consequences it will do more than any other conceivable event
in Europe to bring about a realisation of the ideal of the Tsar
Nicholas II,, and to connect an imperishable glory with his
name a new secular era from which to reckon human progress
— A.O.P. , Ab oyhc pacitkato, "From the Pacification of the
World."

Postscript. — On the day that the foregoing chapter is passed for press, the
British Government has issued a most momentous Agreement between Great Britain
and Japan, signed in London on January 30, 1902, relating to the maintenance of
ihe status quo in China and Corea. After declaring that the two Powers are "entirely
uninfluenced by any aggressive tendencies in either countrj'," and defining their
common interests to be " the independence and territorial integrity of the Empire of
China and the Empireof Corea, and in securing equal opportunities in those countries
for the commerce and industry of all nations," the Agreement proceeds as follows :

Article II. — If either Great Britain or Japan, in defence of their respective
interests as above described, should become involved in war with another Power,
the other High Contracting Party will maintain a strict neutrality, and use its
efforts to prevent other Powers from joining in hostilities against its ally.

Article III. — If in the above event any other Power or Powers should join in
hostilities against that ally, the other High Contracting Party will come to his
assistance and will conduct the war in common, and make peace in mutual agree-
ment with it.

Article IV. — The High Contracting Parties agree that neither of them will,
without consulting the other, enter into separate arrangements with another Power
to the prejudice of the interests above described.

CONCLUSION

CHAPTER XXVI
RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT

AFTER four journeys made under the most favour-
able conditions for seeing and hearing, after thiity
thousand miles of travel in Russia — heat and cold, river and
mountain, wheat-field and cotton-field, desert and steppe,
empty country and crowded capital — what is the upshot of it
all, what are the dominant superficial impressions left upon
one's mind ?

Vastness of area, of course, to begin with. The extent of
the Russian Empire is almost terrifying. The British Empire
is enormous, too, but though one may have seen most of it, a
similar impression of totality is never produced, for it is
scattered over the world and divided by great seas. Russia is
a whole — you could walk from Archangel to Kushk, and from
Helsingfors to Vladivostok. The great Russian mystery is how
all this is governed from the city on the Neva. The world has
never known such centralisation.

Again, and smiilar to this first impression, the apparently
inexhaustible variety of races. In Central Asia you come upon
a company of recruits ; they are Poles and Finns. A Persian
carries your baggage at Baku. Your servant in Siberia is a
Circassian. Your guide at Tiflis is a Mingrelian. The Russian
officer who took Merv is a Mussulman native — Genera
Alikhanoff : you see — Ali Khan -off ? Great Russians and
Little Russians, Cossacks of the Don, and Cossacks of the

2 E

450 ALL THE RUSSIAS

Urals, Germans and Jews and Greeks — never did so multi-
farious a crowd bear a single name.

It is obvious, one might conclude, that with so vast and
varied a territory, and so huge and ethnologically variegated
a population, the natural penalty of centralisation — qui trop
ciiibrasse iiial etreiut — must be in process of development. The
Russian Empire, from its very size and promiscuity, must be
showing signs of going to pieces ? There are thoughtful
Russians who see danger in this direction, and declare it would
become acute if Russia took Constantinople. I can only say
that few such signs are outwardly visible. The sacred personality
of the Tsar and the heavy hands of the authorities in St. Peters-
burg are just as evident and just as inevitable on the cir-
cumference as at the centre. Russia revolves as smoothly
as the well-welded fly-wheel. So long as no flaw develops,
nothing could be more impressive or more powerful than the
fly-wheel.

After the vastness of country, the mixture of peoples, and
the centralisation, comes the impression of strength. Russia is
indescribably strong. Her strength makes you nervous. It is
like being in the next field, with a golf-jacket on, to an angry
young bull. The bull does not realise that the gate is there
to stop him — therefore it will not stop him. Russia walks
rough-shod over and through obstacles that an older, a more
civilised, a more self-conscious country would manoeuvre around
for half a century. She wants Siberia — she takes it. She wants
Central Asia — she takes it. She wants Port Arthur — she takes
it. She wants Manchuria — she is taking it. She wants Persia
— we shall see. A constitutional Finland is in her way — con-
stitutional Finland must become a Russian province. Russia
has suffered of late from an acute financial and commercial
crisis, intensified by the heavy cost of the rising in China and
the relief of famine. In view of this, one would expect to see
all expensive national enterprises postponed, or at least cur-

RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT 451

tailed. Not at all. Everything proceeds as regularly as though
a million roubles came floating down the Neva every morning.
The Great Siberian Railway is being pushed along at all speed.
The army is being increased. The navy is being strengthened
rapidly. Railways are building to the German frontier, to the
Austrian frontier, in the Southern Caucasus, in Central Asia.
During the ten years ending in 1899 18,000 miles of railway
were constructed. In 1899 alone the increase was 2640 miles.
And everywhere that Russia reaches she erects handsome and
permanent buildings — railway stations, cathedrals, administra-
tive offices, barracks. Few provincial towns in Europe or
America have theatres and museums as fine as those of far-off
Irkutsk and Tiflis.

The strength of Russia, again, strikes you in the inex-
haustible masses of her common people. They are physically
vigorous, they can live on a Chinaman's daily expenditure,
they are wholly illiterate, wholly superstitious, absolutely obe-
dient, even to death, to what they are told is the will of the
Tsar, and they are increasing in numbers at an astounding
pace.* Recruits may be seen with a band of straw twisted
round the arm to show them which is their right hand. If a
couple of hundred thousand of them are needed to increase the
army, they weep and go. If they must be sacrificed in shoals
to win a battle, well, they are never missed except each group
in its own village, and not much there. There are two countries
in the world where flesh and blood are cheap — China and
Russia. This is the strength of the one ; it will be the strength
of the other if ever she is organised. 1 was once discussing
the relations of England and Russia with a travelled Russian

* In the forty-six years from 1851-1897 the population of the Russian Empire
increased 92 per cent. In the last-named year, according to Prince Krapotkin, it
was 123,211,113, of which 94 millions were in European Russia proper, and 35
millions in the non-Russian provinces of the Empire, divided as follows : Finland,
2| millions; Poland, 9^ millions; Caucasia, 94' millions; the Kirghiz Steppes,
3^ millions ; Trans-Caspia and Turkestan. 4^ millions ; Siberia, 5:^ millions.

452 ALL THE RUSSIAS

officer as we walked through a barrack square. " Do you
know why we should always beat you in the end ? " asked my
companion. As he spoke we came to the sentry, who was
standing rigid at the salute. Touching the man upon the
breast, he continued : " Because we can lose a hundred thou-
sand of these without feeling it in any way." The brutal but
true remark suggests the reflection that a peculiar strength
belongs to Russia from the fact that the more civilised her neigh-
bours become, while she stands still — that is, the greater the
value they set upon human life in general and the higher the
respect attaching to the individual man — the stronger in propor-
tion does (Russia become, for the more dearly in comparison
are her rivals ever paying for their counters in the game of war.
Up to a certain point, in other words, the civilisation of Russia's
enemies is a millstone about their necks. It must not be sup-
posed, however, that this brute force — this cheapness of flesh
and blood — is the only strong side of military Russia. The
enthusiasm and confidence of all her officers, and the intelli-
gence and training of a large number of them, are also striking
factors. A competent English military critic wrote of the last
army manoeuvres : " Certainly no class of men could be more
whole-hearted in their work than the staff officers with whom
I have come in contact. With a great enthusiasm for the
routine of their profession, they appear to combine a wide
interest, not only in military history, but in even the minutest
details of contemporary war."

Among the impressions left by study of contemporary
Russia, however, perhaps the most interesting is that of an
approaching social change. Hitherto, speaking generally, there
was no artisan class — no great social stratum below the nobility
except the illiterate, stupid, kindly, superstitious peasantry.
The growth of industry is producing such a class — a proletariat.
Association in large numbers, the discussion of affairs, the
influence of the fluent speaker, the circulation of the news-

RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT 453

paper, the use of machinery, residence in towns— all these com-
bine to confer a certain education. With this rough education
come new aspirations and the consciousness of ability to realise
them. When a dozen men insist upon something hitherto
denied them, a policeman may move them on ; a hundred men
may be dispersed by a troop of gendarmes ; five hundred men
may be surrounded by a regiment of Cossacks. But when
two or three thousand men demand a change, for instance, in
hours of labour, and not in one town only but in half a dozen
towns simultaneously, their demand must be considered on its
merits. This means a new class and a new era in Russia —
a vital modification of a society hitherto resting upon the two
pillars of autocracy and theocracy. The " labour question "
has been born in Russia.

In this there is, so far, little of a revolutionary tendency.
The share of the workmen in the students' disturbances has
been exaggerated, and the students themselves are without
qualifications to lead any great movement. Their views are
but the dreams of disordered intellectual digestion — the workers
themselves will soon leave them behind. The transition from
agriculture to industrialism has been so sharp a change that
some labour difficulties were inevitable at the outset. The
Russian peasant does not easily accommodate himself to new
conditions, nor, on the other hand, does the Russian employer.
Both have to modify their habits to suit their new environ-
ment. But this industrial development was both right and
inevitable in a country possessing the boundless natural
resources of Russia. Perhaps it has been unduly hurried, but
that is the Russian way — to be very slow in adopting a new
principle, and then to embody it in act and fact with a
rapidity that takes away the breath of an observer from
less confident countries. The Russian authorities have the
great advantage of beginning with the accumulated expe-
rience of other nations. Already their attitude tow^ard labour

454

ALL THE RUSSIAS

is, in niciny respects, far more modern and emancipated than
one would have expected it to be, and, unless I misread
all the signs, the future relations of employers and em-
ployed in Russia will be moulded by the democratic — for
want of a better word — conditions which prevail in other
aspects of Russian life ; as exhibited, for instance, in the fact
that the most powerful Minister the Empire has ever had
began as a modest employe in a distant provincial railway
station. I should not be surprised if I lived to see industrial
co-partnership, for example, adopted as a primary condition of
production and distribution in Russia before any other nation
has advanced so far on the road to the solution of the old
antagonism of money and men. I know that such a view will
sound Utopian to many, especially to the " old resident " in
Russia, but it should be borne in mind that Russia starts in
this matter from the point we have reached with so much diffi-
culty and at such cost, and that to her a new theory, practical
or ethical, of social relationships is not the suspected and
disquieting thing it is to us.

If I have said comparatively little in this book about the
difficulties and dangers which may beset Russia in the future,
to warp her line of progress and mar her prosperity, it is be-
cause most writers seem to me to have dwelt overmuch on
such topics and to have done less than justice to her achieve-
ments and her prospects. But I would not have it thought
that I am blind to such considerations. I am no believer in
any revolutionary upheaval, though, of course, the possibility of
social disorder cannot be overlooked, but, in spite of her indus-
trial progress and natural resources, it may be that the financial
and commercial task she has undertaken will prove too great
for her strength without foreign financial assistance, that her
own action may prevent this being given, and that therefore
3 long period of stagnation is before her. I do not think so.

RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT 455

Indeed, I am convinced to the contrary, but I recognise the
possibiHty. She may, of course, fall upon war with an equal
Power, and this would be to her the greatest of all calamities
in the present stage of her development. But I am certain
that it is her ruler's fixed resolve to " seek peace and pursue
it." Certain minor and distinct dii'liculties imdoubtedly await
her. For example, her nobility as a class is virtually insolvent,
its great estates gone through mismanagement, its fortunes
prodigally squandered. Vast areas of land are mortgaged to
the Agrarian Banks, and many millions of acres have been
sold under foreclosure. In 1899 these banks had advanced
1,351,518,884 roubles upon landed estates, in number 89,084,
and in total area over 117,000,000 acres. During the previous
five years the number of mortgaged estates increased by 22,675,
and the amount of the mortgages by over 300,000,000 roubles.
In most of these cases the original owners have no longer a
rouble of interest in their properties. Societies of peasants are
in many cases the purchasers, and the State, which has often
helped the proprietors before, is considering a scheme to assign
large grants of agricultural land in Siberia to the now landless
class. But the Siberian peasants will naturally not view this
process with favour, and the men who have failed to make
land pay in Russia would hardly succeed better in Siberia,
Here, then, is a grave problem, the solution of which is not
apparent. Another is presented by the inability of the Cos-
sacks, the pioneers and guardians of every Russian advance,
to adjust their peculiar feudal institutions to the circumstances
of modern life, and the consequent decline in their numbers
and prosperity, and the difficulty in which many of them
find themselves even to provide the horse and equipment
(the State furnishing only their rifle and ammunition) which,
with their personal service, is the return they make for their
land. Above all, there is, of course, the danger that further
bad harvests may render whole districts finally desolate.

456 ALL THE RUSSIAS

Still another danger is the corruption and peculation
which prevail in many public departments among underpaid
officials.

My own conviction, however, is that these and other diffi-
culties and dangers are small in comparison with Russian
strength and resources. No one who remembers the past can
doubt of her future. A glance at the map of the world is
almost a sufficient basis for optimistic forecasts concerning her.
The character and aims of the Tsar himself warrant the
happiest auguries.

Russia is going ahead — that is my conclusion.* It is foolish
and unscientific to judge her solely by the foot-rule of our
older and different civilisation. She should be measured by
a standard deduced from her own past, her own period of
existence, and her own racial character. Then it will be seen
that she stands, so far as virtue and vice go in a national
development, very much where the rest of the nations do —
that only the Judge who is able to cast up very long debit and
credit accounts, in a very great ledger, can strike a true
balance. For the rest, she excels most European nations in her
vivacity of intellectual outlook, in her iiisonciant courage to
affront great difficulties, in her freedom from traditional and
theoretical top-hamper, and in her absolute confidence in her
own glorious destiny. Beyond this, no nation in the world,
save perhaps America, can vie with her in lavish wealth of
natural resources, and when we add that she has never lacked
the guidance of statesmen of profound sagacity and almost reck-
less courage, and that her present all-powerful Emperor is a
man inspired, beyond all question, by lofty ideals, it should be

* Lord Rosebery, whose insight into foreign affairs is unequalled by that of any
statesman of our time, has recently written of Russian policy as follows : " There is
one signal quality which I specially admire in the policy of Russia. It is practically
unaffected by the life of man or the lapse of time— it moves on, as it were, by its own
impetus; it is silent, concentrated, perpetual, and unbroken; it is, therefore,
uccessful." — " Questions of Empire," p. 27.

RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT 457

clear that tlie twentieth century must count Russia as one of
its greatest factors in the movement and development of
human society. I trust that this series of studies of Russia of
to-day may have helped a little to bring home these con-
clusions, in the interests of peace and good-will and commerce,
to readers on both sides of the Atlantic.

APPENDIX

I rouble = loo kopecks.

1 rouble = 2^-. 1.3765^. or ^0.1057; ^J- = 9-4575 roubles.

I rouble = §0.5145 ; §1. = i .9433 roubles.

I verst = 0.6628 mile; i mile =1.5085 verst.

1 poud = 36.1 128 lb. or 0.016 1 ton.

I ton = 62.0278 pouds.

T kopeck per i)oud = 1.3 1 175. per ton.

I rouble per poud = 0.7027^/. per lb., or X6-55S5 per ton.

X rouble per poud = §0.1.425 per lb., or §31.9175 per long ton.

I kopeck per verst = ^0.001595 per mile.

I rouble per verst = ^o. 1595 per mile.

I poud moved one verst = 0.0 106S ton moved one mile.

INDEX

Abkhasians, 17G

Accidents in works and manufactures,

precautions against, 381, 382
Adana, British railway from, to Medi-
terranean, 259
Afghanistan —

Bokharan trade with, future possi-

bihties of, 294
Distance of Moscow from frontier of.

via Alexandrof-gai, 266, 267
Herat fortified by, 419, note
Position of, 270
Russian relations with, 242 ; decline

of Russian trade with, 285
Trans - Caspian water - supply con-
trolled by, 276
Agriculture (see also Grain) —
Bashkirs of, 129
Black earth districts, 369
Cereals, production of, 42 ; decrease

in yield of 1901, 386, tiote
Depression in, 369, 3S6, note; ex-
penses in mitigation of bad harvests,
366
Important position of, 368
Aigun, Convention of, 100
Aksakof, 352
Alcohol —

Poisoncus quality of vodka, 35G-35S
Price of, 358

State monopoly of, 356-358 ; hopeful
prospects from, 370
Alexander II., Tsar —
Apartments of, 15-17
Chernaieft's disregard of, 280
Church in commemoration of, 8, iS
Germany, attitude toward, 396
Alexander III., Tsar —

Alcohol monopoly advocated by, 357
Germany, attitude toward, 396

Alexander, King, of Servia, 404
Alexander, Prince, of Bulgaria, 394
Alexander Michaelovitch, Grand Duke,

cited, 264
Alexandretta-Hit railway scheme, 263.

note X
Ambassadors, credulity of, 439
America —

Fergana, enterprise at, 343
Foreign capital, conditions for in-
vestment of, compared with those
in Russia, 384
Isolated position of, 388
Persia, interest in, 441
Russian attitude toward, 409, 410
Trans-Alaskan railway project, 154,
note
Amu-Darya, Alexandrof-gai route from

Moscow to, 265-267
Amu-Darya (Oxus) River —
Arnold's lines on, 246
Bridge over, 244, 245
Amur River —

Discovery of, by Russians, 98
Navigation on, 123, 124
Ananur, 198
Andijan —
Cotton district of, 34 1 ; export from ,254
Garrison at, 278
Prison at, 279
Railway to, 249
Annenkof, General, 237
"Appanages," Imperial, 180, 277
Apsheron Peninsula, oil areas in, 224
Arabs in Trans-Caspia, 275
Arba, 281

Archaeological treasures, Russian neg-
lect of, ^^2 and note
Area of Russian Empire, vastness of,
419

462

Armenia, massacres in, German attitude

toward, 399
Armenians —

Characteristics of, 214

Trading by, at Kushk Post, 242
Army —

Characteristics of, 44

Length of service in, 89 and note

Mobilisation of, for diplomatic pur-
poses, 241, 418

Pay in, 44
Arnold, Matthew, quoted, 246, 281
Asia, see Central Asia, Siberia, &c.
Askhabad —

Administrative headquarters at, 272,
278

Discourtesy at, 231

Garrison of, 239, 277, 278

Military headquarters of Turkestan
at, 277, 278

Mixture of East and West in, 238

Railway from, projected, 218, note

Trade statistics refused at, 285
Assignats, policy of, formerly approved

by M. de Witte, 354
Astrachan (wool), 292, 295, 296
Austria —

German attitude toward, 407-409

Internal condition of, 406

Roumanian convention with, 399,
404

Russian relations with, 403

Servian relations with, 399, 403

Baghdad railway scheme, 256, iiote-\,

257-259. 400. 402. 427
Baikal, Lake, 119; distance of, from

Moscow, 140
Baikal (stesimer), 119-122
Baku-
Petroleum industry at, 219-226, 374,

375
Spinning-mills at, advantages of, 343

Balakhani, oil-wells at, 219-224

Balkans, political situation in the, 403-

405
Baltic Provinces, 5, 6
Baranchiki, 122
Barracks, pictorial display of duties in,

Bashkirs, 129

Batchas, 301, 302

Bath at Tiflis, 213

Batraki, 130

Batum —

Military road between Kars and, 217
Railway from, profits of, 180

Beggar and general's wife, anecdote of,

38, 39
Belgian company-promoters, effect of,
on Russian industrial condition, 37
Bender Jesseh, 256, note f
Bimetallists, 62
Bismarck —

British antipathy of, 433
Russian policy of, 389, 394, 395
Blandain, 3
Blennerhassett, Sir Rowland, quoted,

407 ; cited, 428
Bobeikof, General, 88
Boer War —

China, influence on British position

in, 435
Foreignpolicy generally,influenceon,

258, 437

German comments on, 432 ; proposed
anti-British coalition, statement re-
garding, 434

India's risk during, 418

Mahan, Captain, view of, regarding,
447, note

Russian general's reference to, 339
Bogolinbof, Lieutenant-Colonel, 272
Bokhara —

Amir of, 287, 288, 291

" Ark " of, 305

Army of, 288, 289

Aspect of, 246

Barbarities of, 28S

Bazaar of, 299-301 ; throat-cutting
in, 247, 288, 290

Brass work of, 299, 300

Costume of, 247

Disease in, 298

Foreigners disliked in, 297

Freedom of natives of, 247, 297

Gold mines near, 295

Grain imports to, 293

Hotel d' Europe in, 288

Jews in, 299

INDEX

463

Bokhara —

Khuz Begi of, 304-307

Manufactures established at, 294

Minar Kalan (tower) of, 308

Mohammedanism in, 303

Prison of, 309, 313-31S

Revolt in, against Amir, not im-
probable, 291

Russian relations with, 287, 288,
290-292

Silk and velvet of, 299, 300

Trade with, 287, 292-296

Women in, 302, 303
Borki catastrophe, 352
Brass work of Bokhara, 299, 300'
Brest-Litovsk fortress, 402, note *
Brunnhofer, Professor Hermann,

quoted, 256, note f
Budget, see under Finance
Bulgaria, Russian influence in, 398,

403
Bunge, M., 352, 357
Bushire, Russian influence in, 422
Busra, British shipping at, 425

Calendar, Russian, 42, Gi
Camels, 191, 192, 239, 273
Canada, Finnish emigration to, 84
Capital and labour problem, 30
Carpets, 273-275
Caspian, crossing of, 229
Caucasus {see also Georgia)

Alcohol, sale of, not a State mon-
opoly in, 358

Climate of, 179

Mineral wealth of, 178-180, 376

Oil-wells in, 219-226

Political condition of, 213, 217

Races of, 176

Railway development in, 217, 218,
and note, 401

Routes to, 164

Wine of, 180, 193, 209, 210
Cellulose industry in Finland, 77
Central Asia —

British trade in, decline of, 239, 255,
293, 299, 440, 441

Foreign capital, field for, 376

Foreigners, dislike of, 297, 320, 347

Garrison of, in ordinary times, 278

Central Asia^

Mussulman rising in, possibility of,

289
Railway routes in — direct strategi-
cal, 265, 266 ; proposed, 266, 267 ;
best commercial, 268 ; Russian
and Indian connection, 270, 271
Trade statistics in, Russian secrecy
regarding, 285
Centralisation of Russian Govern-
ment, 449, 450
Cereals {see also Grain), production of,
42 ; decrease in yield of (1901),
386, note
Chahel Dokhteran, railway to, 240, note
Charjui (Amu- Darya), Alexandrof-gai

route from Moscov; to, 265-267
Chelyabinsk, 134, 135, 268
Chernaevo, 248, 280
Chernaieff, General, 279, 2&0, 283, 284
China —

British policy in, 415, 435
Development of, 416
German claims in, 396, 398, 434
Japanese war with, European inter-
vention after, 396, 410
Russian anxieties regarding frontier
with, 416
Chinese —

First contact of Russians with, 98
Irkutsk in, 149, 150
Kashgaria, rule in, 347
Church, Orthodox^
Position of, 61

Tolstoy excommunicated by, 56
Churches in Russia, number and

wealth of, 9
Coal —

Donetz basin, prospects in, 376

Imports of, 375

New Russia Company's possessions

in. 379. 3S0
Production of, statistics of, 359 ; pro-
duction in 1892 and 1900, 370,
note
Siberia, in, 155
Cole, Rev. Mr., 313, note
Commerce, see Trade
ConoUy, Captain Arthur —
Letter from, ijuoted, 309

464

INDEX

Conolly, Captain Arthur —
Mission of, 309
Murder of, 2S8, 312, 313, 317
Convicts —

Irkutsk, at, 159-161

Licence of, in Siberia, 120

Sakhalin, at, 162

Siberian railway, employment on,

iig
Train of, 138, 139
Cooke, Mr., British Commercial Agent

in Russia, quoted, 371-373
Copper in Siberia, 156
Cossacks, decline in numbers and

prosperity, 455
Costliness of living — in Russia, 19; in

Irkutsk, 149'
Cotton —

Freight charges on, 267
Goods, statistics of production of,
359; production in 1892 and 1900,
370, note
Profit of, in Turkestan, as compared

with v/heat, 269
Route of exports of, from Central

Asia, 267
Spinning and weaving of, 28-31 :

profits of, 374
Trans-Caspian export of, 275 ; export
from Andijan, 254; from Bokhara,
292
Turkestan, growth of, 30, 31, 341-

343
Underclothing of, 21
Country life in Russia, 65
Courtesy of Russian officials, 231, 236
Cranborne, Viscount, quoted, 426, 443-

445. 446
Crete, German share in blockade of,

399
Crimean War —

Friends, Society of, responsibility

regarding, 93
Hostile feeling consequent upon, 447
Petropavlofsk, Russian success at,

100
Salisbury, Lord, view of, regarding,
414
Curzon, Lord, quoted, 429, 430
Custom House officials, 5

Customs —

Persian, Russian control of, 422, 423
Russian, high, 375; increase in,

during 1901, 369, note
Czechs, 406-409

Dariel, Gorge of, 172, 173, 188-190
Debt, national, see under Finance
Deportation, 162 and note
Dervish sect, religious rites of, 290, 291
Diplomacy —

Russian, character of, 414, 438

Truth-telling and credulity in, 439
Donetz coal basin, 376
Douie, Mr., 119

Dreyfus case, the, Tolstoy's view of, 54
Drinks, bars for, non-existent in St.

Petersburg, 21
Driving —

Charges for, 19, 22

Georgia, in, 181, 197, 198 ; cost of,
181, note

Method of, 14
Drunkenness —

Measures against, 357, 358

Prevalence of, 21, 43, 44, 50, 356,

357
Dual Alliance —

French view of, 391

Nature of, 389, 390, 442

Result of, 390, 391

Scope of, 390, 393, note

Tolstoy's view of, 54, note
Duffield, Mr. W. B., quoted, 407
Dukhobortsi, tenets of, 41
Dukhovski, General, 281, 282
Dushet, 200

Easter greeting, custom of, 39
Eastward movement of Russia, 100,

lOI

Economic policy of Russia, summary

of, by M. de Witte, 359-361
Education —

Cost of, in Russia, 3S6, note
Deficiency in, 2, 19, 39 and note, 40,

356
Finland in, 80, 83
Tashkent in, 282, 283
Ekibas-tuz, coal at, 155

INDEX

465

I'^lbrutz, Mount, 191 and note

England, see Great Britain

Exhibition of British Arts and Indus-
tries to be held in St. Petersburg,
376, note

Exiles to Siberia, number of, in iSy8,
161

Export of iron, 371

Eydtkuhnen, 3

Famines in Russia, 42, 369

Fashoda incident, Russian influence

regarding. 391
Faure, President Felix, visit of, to

Russia, 390
Ferdinand, Archduke, 408
Ferdinand, Prince, of Bulgaria, 398
Fergana —

Administrative centre of, 278, 341
American enterprise in, 343
Revolt at, 290, 343
Fever in Central Asia, 240 242, 277
Finance
Budget-
Character of, 367, 368
French compared with, 368
Report on Budget of 1902, by M.

de Witte, 386, note
Surplus in, 364, 366
Customs duties, high, 375 ; increase

in, during 1901, 369, note
Debt, national —
Amount of, 363
Decrease in, during last ten years,

364, 386, note
Interest on, 366
Security for, 364, 366
Foreign capital —

Baku petroleum industry due to,

374. 375
Conditions afforded to investment

of. 384, 385, and note
Openings for, 374, 376
Russian attitude toward, 360, 361
Loans —

France, floated in, 391

Official assurances regarding, 366,

note
Reasons for, 365, 366, note
Redemption of, 364, 365 and notes

Finance —
Ministry of —
de Witte, M., appointed to, 354
Scope of work of, 362
Misconceptions regarding, 363, 367

384
Revenue —

Alcohol, from sale of, 358
Forests, mines, and agricultural

property, from, 349, 364
Peasants' land, from, 349, 364;

arrears of rent written off, 369
Railways, from, 350, 364, 367 and

note *
Taxes, 382

Trustworthiness of Russian State,

384
Finland —

Alcohol, sale of, prohibited, 65, 80
Annexation of, by Russia, possibility

of, 94, 95
Area of, 74

Cheapness of living in, 91
Civilisation of, 64
Climate of, 64, 74, 79
Constitution of, terms of, 86, 87
Exports of, 74, 77
Helsingfors, 68, 69, 71-73
Landscape in, 74, 75
Languages of, 67
Military regulations for, 88, 89 and

note
Poetry of, 70
Population of, 74

Races in, 79

Rapids of, 76

Religions of, 83

Russia, relations with, 84-93

Saima Canal, 67

Savings in, 83

Schools in, 80, 83

Sveaborg, 71

Tariff of, 91 and note

Towns in, 83

Viborg, 67

Women, position of, 80

Wood-pulp industry of, 76-78
Finns —

Characteristics of, 64, 79

Customs of, 80

2 F

466

INDEX

Finns — -

Devotion of, to Alexander II , 71

Emigration of, to United States and
C nada, 84

Maritime ability of, 79

Types of, 79, 88
Foley, Mr. (Indian Tea Association

representative), quoted, 423, 424
Food —

Peasants, of, 44

Restaurants, in, 21
Force majeure sanction, go
Ford, Mr. Alexander Hume, quoted

367, note t, 374
Foreign capital —

Baku petroleum industry due to, 374,

375
Conditions afforded to investment of

384, 385 and note
Openings for, 374, 376
Russian attitude toward, 360, 361
Foresight of Russian methods, 22, 231,

237. 282, 334
Forests —

Foreign capital, opening for, 376
Revenue from, 349, 364
France —

British relations with, 432

Budget of — arrangement of, 368 and

note ; deficit in, 373, 392, note
German attitude toward, 391, 392
Mitylene, seizure of, 393, note
Persian Gulf, acquisition of coaling
station on, prevented by Great
Britain, 427
Russia —

Loans to, 366, note, 391
Relations with, 54, note, 389-391
Tariff of, 442
Frontier-post between Europe and

Asia, 132
Frontiers of Russia, 3S8, 416
Furnished rooms [nomera) — at Tashkent,
281 ; at Samarkand, 335

Galtcia, Russian railways toward,

402, note ~
Gatchina, 7

Genghiz Khan, 174, 320
Geok Tape, 235-237

Georgia [see also Caucasus) —

MiUtary road in, 181, 182, 187, 188,

196-198
Political condition of, 214-217
Russian acquisition of, 174
Women of, 209
Germany —

Austria, attitude toward, 407-409
Baghdad railway scheme of, 256,

note t, 257-259, 400, 402, 427
British attitude toward, 394, 397, 398,
432. 435, 445; German attitude
toward Great Britain, 432, 435 ;
British understanding with, 402,
note t, 446, note
China, claims in, 396, 398, 434
Financial condition of, 373 ; financial

relations with Russia, 354, 355
France, attitude toward, 391 392
Frontier of, 3

Los von Rom movement in, 408
Naval development of, 433
Pan-Germanism, 407-409
Persia, aims in, 445, 446; railway
scheme in, 256, note f, 257-259, 261,
262
Russia —

Attitude of, 400, 401 and note, 414
Attitude toward, 435
Exports to, 376

Relations with, 394-398, 400-403
Turkey^

Assistance to, in Greek War, 399
Policy regarding, 389
Goats, 183, 184, 248
Gold mines —

Bokhara, near, 295
Illicit buying of gold at Irkutsk, 150
Mongolian, 415

Output of, in Russia in ten years, 375
Siberian, 150-152, 155, 375
Gold standard, reforms of M. de Witte,

regarding, 355, 356
Goremykin, General, Governor-General

of Irkutsk Government, 119, 157
Grain -

Central Asian imports of. 269, 293
Elevator for, at Novorossisk, 378
Low price of wheat in Eastern Russia,
129

INDEX

467

Grain —

Production of, 42 ; decrease in yield
of (1901), 386, note

Siberian production of, 154 ; product
during 1900, 370
Great Britain-
Afghanistan secured from Russia by,
277

Alcoholic consumption in, compared
with that of Russia, 356

Baghdad railway scheme subject to
consent of, 402 ; understanding re-
garding, 402, note, 446, note

Central Asian trade of, decline in,
239. 255, 293, 299, 440, 441

China, policy regarding, 415, 435

Consuls of, attitude of Russians to-
ward, 338, 339

Exhibition of British Arts and In-
dustries to be held in St. Peters-
burg, 376, note

Foreign policy of —

Boer War's influence on, 258,

435. 437
Russian view of, 414, 437
France, relations with, 432
German attitude toward, 432, 435 ;
British attitude toward Germany,
394. 397, 398. 432, 435, 445
Merchants' price lists from, 377, note^'
Persia, see that title
Quetta-Siestan railway project of,

264, 424
Russia —

Attitude of, 385, note, 414, 41S
Entente with — possibility of, 413;
form of, 440 ; importance of, 448
Overtures from, 262, 263, 385, note
Suspicion against, 414
Greece, Turkish war with, 399
Grey, Sir Edward, quoted, 446
Griffin, Sir Lepel, quoted, 265, note
Grover, Captain, 311
Growth of industry in Russia, 452

Hanauer,Mr.,Vice-Consul-General,

QUOTED, 373

Handy, Mr., 119
Heather in Russia, 6
Helsingfors, 68, 69, 71-73, 84

Herat, 419, and note
Hilkoff, Prince, 234
Horse, extinction of Turcoman breed

of, 275
Hughes, John, 378, 384

Ignatieff, M , 288
Illiteracy in Russia, 2, 19, 39, 40, 356
India-
Diplomatic value of, to Russia, 241,

418
Hours' distance of, from London, if

railway connection between Kush-

kinski Post and New Chaman, 271
Responsibilities in administration of,

419
Russian invasion of —

Expectations as to, 416

Opportunity for, 418

Russian view of, 417
Industrial development of Russia —
Drawbacks of, 50
Effect of, 44
Importance of, 32
Outlook of, 374
Statistics of, 359, 370, note
Tolstoy's view of, 52
Irakli the Great, 174
Irkutsk^

Costliness of living in, 149
Crime in, 148
Founding of, 98
Gold laboratory in, 150, 151
Goremykin, General, Governor-
General of, 119, 157
Importance of, 146-148
Journey to, from Moscow, time of,

114; time-table of, 115; cost of,

116
Mountainous district of, 113, 141
Population of, 146
Prison of, 157-161
Iron —

Belgian company swindles regarding,

372
Exports of, 371
Imports of, 371,375
New Russia Company's works, 379-

384
Outlook of the industry, 374

468

INDEX

Iron —

Price of goods fixed by Government,

383
Production of, statistics regarding,

359; production in 1892 and 1900,

370, note
Tests imposed on manufacturers of,

by Government, 382, 383
Ural Mountains rich in, 133 ; Ural

works, 156
Isolation not peculiar to Great Britain,

447

Japan —

Chinese War, European intervention

after, 396, 410
Isolated position of, 388
Korea, position in, 411
Manchuria exclusion of trade, attitude

toward, 415
Naval and military strength of, 410
Russian overtures to, 411
Jasper, 134
Jews —

Bokhara, in, 299
Trans-Caspia, in, 275
Wolff, Rev. Dr. Joseph, quoted,
297, 313; career of , 310-313
Joint-stock companies, Russian. 377
Joiunal of Financial Statistics cited, 349,

note
Journey to St. Petersburg, 2-8 ; to
Irkutsk, 102-116; to Tashkent,
228-249

Kabul, area of, 294

Kakhetia, wine of, 180, 209, 210

Kamchatka, conquest of, 98

Kamenoi, 13

Kapnist, Count Vladimir, 263

Karachi, distance of, from London, if
railway connection between Kush-
kinski Post and New Chaman, 271

Karakul, 292, 295, 296

Kars —

Military road between Batum and,

217
Railway to, 203

Kasbek, Mount, 173, 191 and note, 196

Kashgaria —

Kashgar, telegraph to, via Vernoye, 347

Chinese rule in, 347

Russian line of expansion through,

348
Katkof, M., 351
Kazalinsk, 292
Khabarofsk —
Founding of, 98

Railway from, to Vladivostok, 123
Khaidalovo, 124
Kharbin, railway from, to Port Arthur,

124, note, 125
Khartum (near Andijan), 344
Khorassan —

Russian relations with, 255, 277
Trans-Caspian trade with, 294
Kiakhta, possible route of Siberian rail-
way through, 125
Kiao-chao, seizure of, 396
Kirghiz —

Costume of, 280
District of, 275
Travellers, 344, 345
Villages of, 237
Kizil Arvat, 277

Koenitzer & Co., Messrs., 165, 166
Kokand, 341
Kolymsk, 161
Kopek, value of, 268
Kopet Dagh Mountains, 275
Korea, situation in, 411
Kornilov, activity of, in Persian Gulf,

264, 421
Koweit —

Demonstration at, 260
Flag incident at, 261, note
German aims regarding, 259
Tripoli railway to, scheme of, 263
and note J
Kran (Persian coin), 279
Krapotkin, Prince, quoted, 452, note
Krasnovodsk, 230, 231, 234; route from
(journey and distances), to Tash-
kent, 249
Kremlin, the, 24, 25, 27, 32
Krivei-rog, 379, 380
Kuropatkin, General, 88, 236
Kushk, distance of, from Moscow via
Alexandrof-gai, 266, 267

INDEX

469

Kiishkinski Post —
Diplomatic demonbtrations at, 418
Garrison life at, 242, 243
Railwa)' to, 240 ; railway to, from
Indian frontier, suggested, 270, 271

Labour —

Capital and, problem of, 30
Question, birth of, 453
Supply of, reforms of M. de Witte
regarding, 361, 362
Lahovari, General, 405
Land —

Imperial ("appanages"), 180, 277
Peasants, revenue from, 349, 364 ;

arrears of rent written off, 369
Tax on, in Turkestan, 342
Landscape-
Finnish, 74, 75
Russian, 6, 7, 167
Siberian, 135-138, 140, 141
Trans-Caspian, 234, 235, 243
Ural mountain district, 131
Leroy-Beaulieu, M. Paul, quoted, 368,

note
Lesghians, 176, 207
Lessar, M., speed of journey to Vladi-

vostock by, 124, note
Levey, Mr. George Collins, Secretary
for Exhibition of British Arts and
Industries to be held in St. Peters-
burg, 377, note
Li Hung-chang, 415
Listvenitchnaya, crime in, 120
Loans, see under Finance
Lodz, 376, note

Long, R. E. C, cited 256, note *
Lueger, Dr., cited, 408

Machines, imports of, 375
Mahan, Captain, quoted —

American foreign policy, on, 441

Great Britain, foreign opinions re-
garding, on, 447, note

Persian Gulf, on, 429, 430
Malachite, 134
Manchuria^ —

Area of, 430

Japanese influence in, 411, 412

Railway through, 123-125

Manchuria — ■

Russian annexation of, 39G, 415
Manganese industry, 179, 37G
Manufactures, Moscow the centre of,

28
" March of the Pjiorneborgers, The,"

70
Margelan, 278, 341
Maruchak, railway to, building, 240,

note
Meal times, Russian indefiniteness re-
garding, no
Mendeleyef, Professor, cited, 374
Mercantile marine, contemplated de-
velopment of, 362
Merv—

Acquisition of, by Russia, 239
Bokhara, attitude toward, 292
Fever prevalent at, 240, 241, 277
Garrison at, 278

Moscow, distance from, via Alexan-
drof-gai, 266 ; via Orenburg-Tash-
kent, 267
Railway from, to Kushk (Murghab
branch), 240 and note, 241, 243,
295 ; Russian statement regarding,
419, note
Water-supply of, controlled by Af-
ghanistan, 276
Meshed—

Importance of, 238
Railway to, projected, 218, no^e
Metric system, contemplated introduc-
tion of, 362
Michael, Tsar, house of, 45
Michell, Mr. J., Consul-General, quoted,

117, note, 370
Military service, see Army.
Minerals —

Extraction and production of, sta-
tistics of, 359
Wealth in, 32, 364, 374-376
Mines (see also Gold Mines), State profit

from, 349
Mintiuba, revolt at, 279
Misovaya, 122

Mitylene, French seizure of, 393, note
Mohammedanism in Bokhara. 289, 303
Mongolia-
Area of, 430

470

INDEX

Mongolia —

Russian control of, 415
Montenegro, Russian relations with,

389, 399> 404
Morchansk, 129, 130
Mortgaged estates in Russia, 455
Moscow —

Amu-Darya, direct route to, vi<1
Alexandrof-gai, 265-267

Bokharan trade with, 296, 299

Cannon and bell of, 25, 26

Chinese city in, 28, 45

Churches of, 24

Commercial activity, 28, 296

Fergana, distance from, 267

Kremlin, the, 24, 25, 27, 32

Merv, distance irom.vid Alexandrof-
gai, 266 ; vid Orenburg-Tashkent
route, 267

Population of, 24

Siberian Railway terminus in, 23, 102
Moser, M., quoted, 308
Mtskhet, 200, 201
Mujik, see Peasants
Muravief, Count, 438
Muravief, General, 99, 100
Murghab Railway —

Diplomatic value of, 241

Future possibilities for, 243

Route of, 240 and note

Russian statement as to, 419, note

Secrecy regarding, 240

Trade route by, possible develop-
ment of, 295
Murghab River, 240, note, 276
Murray, Colonel, Consul-General at

Warsaw, quoted, 377, note *
Mussulmans in Bokhara, 289, 303

Navy —

German, development of, 433

Russian, expenditure on, 366
Nerchinsk, treaty of, 98
Neva River —

Dungeons on, 10

Floods of 14, 15

Shallowness of, 14
New Russia Company, Ltd., 378-384
Nicholas II., Tsar —

de Witte, M., confidence in, 362, 385

Nicholas II., Tsar —

Peace desired by, 390, 417, 44S
Siberian Railway, interest in, 113
124, note
Nicholas, Prince, of Montenegro, 399,

404
Nikholsk, 125

Nikolaiefsk, founding of, 100
Nomera (furnished apartments) — at
Tashkent, 281 ; at Samarkand, 335
Novogeorgievsk fortress, 402, note "
Novorossisk, 378
" Numbers," 281, 335

Odessa —

de Witte, M., connection with, 351,

352

Trains snowed up rear, 43
Oil, see Petroleum
Oil-worked steamers, 1C8, 169
Omsk, 142, 145, 146
Onions and mutton, 193
Open-Door policy in Persia, 440, 442
Orenburg-Tashkent railway project

266, 267
Orsk, 268
Osh—

Approach to, 343, 345

Aspect of, 346

Foreigners disliked in, 347

Governor of, 347
Oxus (Amu-Darya) River-
Arnold's lines on, 246

Bridge over, 244, 245

Pan-Germanism, 407-409
Pan-Islamism, 289-291
Pan-Slavism, 396, 409
Paper manufacture in Finland, 77
Paper money, withdrawal of large

proportion of, 356
Passports —

Forging of, 148, 158

Peasants, for, 361, 362
Peace Conference, 38
Peasants —

Characteristics of, see Russians

Condition of, 42, 128, 369

Passports for, 361, 362

Relief works for, 369

INDEX

471

Peasants —

Rent paid to the State by, 349, 36.4 ;
arrears of, written off, 369
I'enjdeh, railway to Maruchak

through, 240, note
Persia —

American interest in, 441
Commercial freedom in, essential,

440, 442
Customs, Russian control of, 422,

423
Division of north and south for po-
litical control, Russian \ie\v of,

421, 441, note
German railway scheme in, 257-259,

400, 402, 427 ; terminus for, 445
Great Britain —

Commercial disabilities of, 424 ;
trade with, in igoi, 425, note

Gunboats of, action by, 427

Interests of, 424, 443, 444
Imperial bank of, 422, 425
Loans to, 422, 423, note
Military possibilities in, 428
Russia —

Aim of, for outlet on Persian Gulf,
256, 257, 264, 400, 401, 420;
suggested offer of commercial
outlet for, 428, 431

Influence of, 264, 422, 423

Trade with, 285, 422
Silver coins of, in Trans-Caspia, 279
Status quo in, maintenance of, 426,

427, 443, 444, 445
Tariff of, for Russian goods, 422
Trade with, 294, 425, note
Trans-Caspian water basin in, 276
Persian lamb (wool), 292, 295, 296
Peter the Great —
Cottage of, 10
Effigy of, 13
Influence of, 22
Siberian affairs in time of, 99
Petroleum industry —
Baku, at, 179, 374, 375
Caucasus district, prospect in, 178,

179
Fountains, 223, 225
Output of oil compared with that of

United States, 375

Petroleum industry —

Statistics of, 224-22G, 359, 370

Working of wells, 220-223
Petropavlofsk, 100
Pictorial representation, 19, 39
Pig-iron, statistics of production of,

359
Police, Russian, 18 ; scarcity of, in

Siberia, 120, 149
Political prisoners, 161
Population of Russian Empire, 451,

note
Port Arthur —

Acquisition of, 100, 396

Railway to, from Kharbin, 124, note,
125

Route to, from United States via
Siberia, 125
Poud, equivalent of, 268, 269, 342
Poverty in Russia, 42, 128, 369
Prisoners, political, 161
Prisons —

Andijan, at, 279

Bokhara, at, 309, 313-318

Irkutsk, at, i 57-161

Tashkent, at, 279
Protection, educational, M. de Witte

an advocate of, 354, 359-361, 377
" Protection " by person of rank, 36
Pskov, 7
Pulp industry in Finland, 76-78

QUETTA-SlESTAN RAILWAY rROJECT,
264, 424

Races, variety of, in Russian

Empire, 449
Rails, tests imposed on manufacturers

of, by Government, 382
Railways —

Advances to, loans to meet, 365, 366
and note

Alexandretta-Hit scheme, 263, note X

Alexandrof-gai route to Merv sug-
gested, 2C5-267

Baghdad scheme of Germany, 256,
note-\, 257—259, 400, 402, 427; pro-
posed route of, 258, 259

Caucasian lines, 217, 218 and note,
401

472

INDEX

Railways —

Central Asia, direct route for Rus-
sian line in, 265, 266 ; proposed
route, 266, 267 ; best commercial
route, 268 ; Russian and Indian
connection, 270, 271
Construction of new lines, 451
de Witte, M., appointed Director of,

353

Fares on, 116, 117

Freight traffic, increase in, 367

Galician frontier, toward, 402, note *

Gauge of, 5

Indian and Russian connection sug-
gested, 270, 271

Investment in, 410

Isolated route of, in Russia, 43

Murghab branch, see Murghab Rail-
way

Odessa, M. de Witte's former con-
nection with, 352

Orenburg-Tashkent project, 266, 267

Passenger traffic, increase in, 367

Persia, Russian monopoly in, 35

Quetta-Siestan project, 264, 424

Siberian, see under Siberia

State-
Extent of, 350, 364, 366
Revenue from, 364, 367 and note *

Tashkent-Omsk route, 268

Trans-Alaskan project, 154, note

Trans-Caspian, see that title

Travelling by (see also under Siberia),
5,8

Tripoli-Koweit scheme, 263 and
note *
Rank in Russia, 36
Rawlinson, Sir Henry, quoted, 416
Rechnitzer, Mr. Ernest, railway scheme

of, 263, note X
Recruits, illiteracy of, in Russian army,

451
Reeds, 136, 137
Reformers, 62
Relief works, 369

Religious fanaticism in Russia, 40, 41
Renton, Mr., 119

Resht, road from, to Tehran, 264, 422
Restaurants, 21
Revenue, see under Finance

Road-making as relief works, 369
Romanoff —

Establishment of, as rulers, 99

Tombs of, 24, 45
Rosebery, Lord, quoted, 456, note
Roshan, cession of, to Bokhara, 292
Rouble — equivalent value of, 118, note ;
M. de Witte's reforms regarding,

354-356
Roumania —

Austria, convention with, 399, 404

Russia, relations with, 403
Runeberg, statue of, 6g
Russia, difficulties and dangers of, 454
Russian Empire, strength of, 450

vastness of, 449
Russian staff officers, efficiency of, 452
Russians, characteristics of —

Drunkenness, 21, 43, 44, 50, 356, 357

Geniality, 21, 41, 356

Idealism, 47, 62

Superstition and religious fanaticism,
40, 44, 130

Time, inexact sense of, 109

Untruthfulness, 44

Saima Canal, 67
St. Petersburg — •

Bars and saloons non-existent in, 21
Character of, 8, 9
Churches of, 9, 10
Costliness of living in, 19
Exhibition of British Arts and In-
dustries in, 376, note
Floods in, 15
Hotels in, 19
Island Parks of, 13, 14
Police of, 18
Shops in, 19
Unhealthiness of, 15
Sakhalin, 162
Salisbury, the Marquess of —

China, despatch regarding German
action in, 434 ; Anglo-German
Convention regarding China con-
cluded by, 435
Pro-Turkish policy, opinion of, 414
Russian assurance as to Persia,
despatch regarding, 425
Samara, 130, 164, 165

INDEX

473

Samarkand —
Aspect of, 248
Batchas of, 301
Bazaar of, 3 1 y

Discourtesy of (jovernor of, 335
Foreigners disliked in, 320
Garrison at, 278
Industries of, 335
Manuscripts of, 320
Military club at, 335-338
Mosque of the Shah Zindah at, 331-

333 I

Noviera at, 335
Prosperity of, 291

Rigistan of, 320-323 I

Russian quarter of, 333 335
Saratof, 167-169 ; suggested railway
vid Alexandrof-gai to Amu- Darya
from, 265-267
Sarts, 297 ; wages of, 343
Scenery, see Landscape
Schliissenburg, 10
Sea outlets, Russian desire for, iot,

256, 421
Seistan, project of railway to, from

Quetta, 264, 424
Servia —

Austrian relations with, 399, 403
Russia, relations with, 399; Russian
attitude toward, 403, 404
Shamyl, 175

Shan-tung, German claim to, 396
Sheep, 182-186

Shignan, cession of, to Bokhara, 292
Shilka River, navigation on, 123, 124
Shops, pictorial advertisements of, 19,

39
Siberia (foy rivers, towns, &'C., see their
titles)—

Agricultural production of, 154; de-
velopment of agriculture, 370

Alcohol, sale of, not a State monopoly
in, 358

Area of, 139

Climate of, iiS

Copper mines in, 156

Crime in, 120, 148, 162

Deforestation in, 141

Emigrants to, 135, 139, 156

Exiles to, 139; number of, in 1898, 161

Siberia —

Export of butter from, in 1900, 370
First expedition to, 97
Gold mining in, 150-152, 155, 375
Journey to, and through, 127-141
Muravief's work in. 99, 100
Nature of country, 2
Peasants of, 455
Police in, scarcity of, 120, 149
Siberia, Railway of —
Beginning of, 100, no
Bridges of, 113
Caravan road through Kiakhta a

possible route for, 125
Construction of, 113
Cost of, 126 ; funds for, 364, 366

Engines on, 103

Fares on, iiC, 117

Freight charges on, 153, 154

Length of, 125

Light rails on, 117

Manchurian section of, 123-125

Opinions regarding, 153

Rate of speed on, 103, 106, 116, 141

Stations on, 118; buffets, iiS, 138,

142, 143
Traffic on, 117 and note, 118
Trains on — daily, 102 ; weekly train

de luxe, 102-110, 127, 130
Trp ns - Caspian Railway compared
with — in comfort, 232; in speed,
250 ; in importance, 254
Watchers on, 118, 119
"Waterways of, 140
Silk of Bokhara, 300
Singing boys of Bokhara and Samar-
kand, 301, 302
Sipiagin, M., Inspector-General of

Irkutsk prison, 160, 161
Siromyatnikof, M., cited, 414
Skobelef, General, 236
Skoptsi sect, 40, 130
Smuggling, 66

Social change in modern Russia, 452
Social fabric, characteristics of, 38, 39
Soldiers —

Characteristics of, 44
Length cf service of, 89 and note
Mobilisation of, for diplomatic pur-
poses, 241, 418

474

INDEX

Soldiers —

Pay of, 44
Staal, M. de, cited, 425

Stamp, mourning, issued in Finland, 79,

85
Statistics of increase of population in
Russia, 451, note
Of railway construction in Russia,

451
Steel-
Imports of, 375

Production of, statistics of, 359 ;
production in 1892 and 1900, 370,
7iofe
Stevens, Mr. Patrick, British Consul

at Batum, quoted, 180
Stoddart, Colonel —

Indiscretions of, 306, 309
Murder of, 288, 312, 313, 317
Stretensk, railway route from Miso-

vaya to, 123
Students, Russian —
Disturbances of, 453
Theoretical views of, 62
Uniforms worn by, 20
Sugar, depots for, at Bokhara, 293
Superstition, 40, 44, 130
Sveaborg, 71
Sweden —

Language of, spoken in Finland. 67
Russia, attitude toward, 388, uole

Taiga, 140, 145
Tajiks, 2S0

Tamara, Queen, 174, 190
Tamerlane, tomb of, 320, 328, 329, 333
and note ; mausoleum of his wife,

329-331. 333
Tashkent —

Bokhara, attitude toward, 292

Citadel of, 283, 284

Furnished rooms in, 281

Garrison at, 278, 2S2

Governor-General of Turkestan resi-
dent at, 278

Military club in, 281

Native quarter of, 283, 284

Observatory at, 282

Orenburg-Tashkent railway project,
266, 267

Tashkent —

Population of, 280, 281

Prison at, 279

Realschvle at, 282, 283

Route (journey and distances) to.
from Krasnovodsk, 249

Russian quarter of, 281

Seizure of, 279, 280

Shops of, 281
Tatars, 207

Tatistcheff, M., quoted, 385, note
Taxes, 382

Tea plantations at Batum, 180
Tehran, road to, from Resht, 264, 422
Tiflis—

Bath of, 213

Bazaar of, 205

Buildings of, 204

Characteristics of, 202

Costumes of, 207-209

de Witte, M., educated at, 351

Hotel de Londres, 177, 204

Importance of, 203

Languages of, 178, 202, 205

Old quarter of, 206
Timber (ses aha Wood) —

Barges of, on the Volga, 168

Price of, increasing, 376

Siberian port for, 141
Timur, see Tamerlane
Tobolsk, 98

Tolstoy, Leo, Count —

Appearance of, 51, 52

Emigration of Dukhobortsi assisted
by, 41

Excommunication of, 56-61

Home of, 49, 50

Influence of, 61

Opinions of, 52-58, 61

Title of, 48

Visit to, 49-62
Tolstoy, Countess, protest of, to Holy

Synod, 58 ; reply to, 60
Tomsk, 145
Treaties —

Aigun, 100

Anglo-German Convention regarding
China, 435 ; regarding Persian
Gulf, 446, note

Berlin, 440, note

INDEX

475

Treaties —

Nerchinsk, 98
Trade-
Afghanistan, with, decline in, 285;
future possibiHties of, 294

Bokhara, with, 287, 292-296

British, in Central Asia, decline of
239, 255, 293, 299, 440, 441 ; British
merchants' price lists, 377, note *

Persia, with, 285, 294, 425, Jiote

Price of iron goods fixed by Gov-
ernment, 383

Statistics of, Russian secrecy re-
garding, 285

Tests imposed by Government, 3S2,
383
Trans-Caspia —

Cotton export of, 275 ; export from
Andijan, 254 ; from Bokhara, 292

Extent of, 272

Grain imports to, 293

Population of, 273, 275

Scenery of, 234, 235, 243

Water basin of, 276
Trans-Caspian Railway —

Boat connection with, 234

Construction of, time employed in,
250

Fever in district of, 240, 277

Financial success of, 253, 255, 285

First-class non-existent on, 232

Map of, 252

Murghab branch of, see Murghab
Railway

Rate of speed on, 249, 250

Revenue of, iSo

Sand drifts on, 243, 244

Siberian Railway compared with-
in comfort, 232 ; in speed, 230 ; in
importance, 254

Starting-point of, 230

Trade facilities effected by, 292, 294,
296
Trains and post trains on, 232, 233
Trees in Russia, 6
Tripoli —

Military service obligation accepted

by, 290
Railway between Koweit and, pro-
jected 263 and note X

Truth-telling in diplomacy, 438, 439
Tsar, peasant worship of, 451
Tsaritsin, 169
Tsars —

Coronation of, 27, 32-36

Influence of, increasing, 37, 38, 451

Sentiment for, 35, 36, 37, note

Titles of, 35

Tombs of, 10
Tula, 47

Turbat, Russian force at, 34
Turkestan —

Cotton product of, 30, 31, 269, 341-

343

Imports and exports of, 254

Land-tax in, 342

Military headquarters of, 278
Turkey —

Decay of, 398

French claim against, 393, note

German relations with, 258-261, 389,
399-401

Mollahs from, in Trans-Caspia, 290

Russian understanding with, as to
railways in Asiatic Turkey, 427

Sultan of, Moslem attitude toward,
289
Turkomans —

Art of, 273

Carpets of, 273-275

Costume of, 246, 247

Horses of, 275

Russian conquest of, 236, 237, 297
Tweedy, Mr., oil wells of, 219-224

Underclothing, 21, 22

Uniforms, 20

United States, see America

University students-
Theoretical views of, 62
Uniforms worn by, 20

Ural Mountains —
Iron works in, 156
Products of, 133, 374, 376
Scenery of, 130

Urjumka, 132

Usofka, 378 383

Uzum-Ada, 230

Vambkry Arminius, 228

476

INDEX

Velvet of Bokhara, 300
Vermin —

Murder by, 228, 288, 312, 313, 317

Prevalence of, 44, 233
Versts, equivalent of, 118, note
Viborg, 67

Vierzhbolovo (Wirballen), 4
Villages in Russia, poverty of, 42, 43,

128
Vilna, 7

Vishnegradski, M., 353, 354, 357
Vladikavkaz, 170, 171, 181
Vladimir Alexandrovitch, Grand Duke,

88
Vladivostok —

Distance to, from Moscow, 123

Founding of, 100
Volga River —

Bridge over, 130

Journey down, 164-170

Navigation of, 170, note

Scenery of, 167

Traffic on, 168
von Beck, Baron, 405
von Waldersee, Count, leadership of
allied forces secured for, 397, 398, 434

Wages of New Russia Company's
employees, 38 i

Walton, Mr., Vice-Consul, quoted, 371

Wardrop, Mr. , Vice-Consul, quoted, 371

Wei-hai-wei, 396

Western modes, modern attitude of
Russia toward, 8, 9

Wheat {see also Grain) —

Low price of, in Eastern Russia, 129
Siberian production of, 154

William II., Emperor of Germany —
England, visit to, 397
France, attitude toward, 391, 392
Navy, declarations regarding, J33
Pan-Germanism of, 407
Russia, attitude toward, 395-397
Turkish policy of, 389, 400, 402

Williams, Colonel, 311

Windt, Mr. Harry de, railway scheme
of 154, note

Wine, Caucasian, 180, 193, 209, 210
Wirballen (Vierzhbolovo), 4
Witte, M. de. Serge Julievitch, Minister
of Finance —
Address of, to the Tsar, regarding

Manchurian railway, 124, note
Budget of 1902, Report on, 386, note
Career of, 350-354, 454
Coal industry development advocated

by, 375

Finland, military proposals for, dis-
approved by, 88

Imperial confidence in, 362, 385

Loans, statement regarding, 366, note

Policy of, 354-356, 370
Wolff, Rev. Dr. Joseph, career of,
310-313 and notes; quoted, 297,

313

Women —

Bokhara, in, 302, 303

Finland, in, position of, 80

Georgia, in, 209
Wood {see also Timber) —

Cost of, 30

Fuel of, on railways, 5, 7
Wood-pulp —

Demand for, 376

Finland, industry in, 76-78
Workmen, 381

Yakutsk, 98
Yasinovataya, 378

Yate, Colonel C. E., cited, 419, note
Yelagin, 13
Yenisseisk, 98
Yermak, exploits of, 96, 97
"Yermak" (steamer), 122
Younghusband, Major F. E. quoted,
430

Zaitzef, Colonel, 347

Zemstvo taxes, 382

Zhoravko-Pokorski, Mr. D.. cited, 268,

note
Zinoviefl, M., attitude of, toward French

claim on Turkey, 393, note
Zlataoust, 131, 133

Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson &r Co,
London &= Edinburgh

MR. HEINEMANN desires to call attention
to the following remarkable Opinions of
the London and Provincial Press upon the
first edition of this important and timely-
Volume :

The Times : —

"The object Mr. Norman had in view was not to write a comprehensive
account of Russian institutions and Russian life, but merely to present a
picture of the aspects of contemporary Russia most likely to interest foreign
readers, with special reference to the recent industrial and commercial
development of the country and the possibility of closer commercial and
political relations with Great Britain. Within these limits, and considering
the difticulties with which he had to contend, we may say he has executed
his task extremely well. Unlike the ordinary globetrotter he is a careful,
accurate, and thoughtful observer, and in complicated questions he constantly
shows a laudable desire to be just and scrupulously impartial. ... In the
first part of the volume, devoted largely to what the French call ' impressions
de voyage,' the author shows himself a delightful travelling companion."

The Daily Telegraph : —

" Mr. Henry Norman's new book ought to be read and pondered by all who
take an intelligent interest in the world politics of the present day. It appears
at a most timely moment, and fills a gap which has long been felt by those
who desire enlightenment upon the aims and the policy of Russia. What is
Russia doing? What is her mission ? What is her present condition, what
her cardinal policy ? These are questions of the hour, and Mr. Norman
answers them from personal knowledge and long study, in a most temperate
and sympathetic volume, which must have great weight in moulding public
opinion in this country. He gives us a record of his travels written through-
out with great charm of style and bright descriptive touches, which light up
his pages and carry the reader along with him, delighted to be in such
entertaining company. . . . Simply as a record of travel this book is entitled
to the warmest praise. ... In a most illuminating chapter I\Ir. Norman
deals with the international politics of Russia. ... A most notable contribu-
tion to the literature of travel and politics."

The Morning Post: —

" It should be read by all who take interest in world affairs. The descriptive
portions, especially those dealing with the Caucasus and Central Asian
towns, are vivid, often humorous, always interesting. The illustrations are
beautiful."

The Standard:—

" Finely illustrated and extremely we written."

The Daily Mail :—

" Mr. Henry Norman's new book is extraordinarily picturesque and incisive,
and will greatly add to his growing reputation, in and out of the House of
Commons, as a very able and alert publicist."

The Daily News : —

"Mr. Henry Norman's book of travel may be commended to all who seek
vividly to realise the life of the strangely diverse races who make up the
great Russian Empire. He has travelled far and lingered long in gleaning
his knowledge. Readers will remember with ease and pleasure more from a
single page of the descriptive parts of the book than they can carry away
from a whole chapter of the wearisome detail which often fills the traveller's
quarto."

The Westminster Gazette : —

"We have seldom met a book which acted so wholesomely upon pre-
conceived ideas and prejudices as Mr. Henry Norman's ' All the Russias.'
. The great merit of Mr. Norman's book is that it seizes these paradoxes,
presents them with insight and understanding, and so leaves us with a
coherent idea of Russia and the Russian character. ... A narrative of
unfailing animation and complete coherence. . . . Admirably wrought diaries
of travel, \ ivid in colour, delicate in observation, and impressionist in effect,
as such things should be. ... A book to read and to possess."

The Pall Mall Gazette :—

" No writer is better qualified than Mr. Henry Norman to describe the
wondrous Empire of the Tsar. He has covered 20,coo miles of railway and
river travel in European and Asiatic Russia ; he has penetrated to Lake
Baikal and to the confines of Kashgar, and everywhere the officials of
government vied with each other in facilitating the object of his wanderings.
The result is a picture of 'All the Russias,' which is masterly in its
comprehensive lines and the delicacy with which the lights and shadows are
filled in. . . . No work approaching Mr. Norman's in completeness has
appeared since Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace's, which saw the light more
than a quarter of a century back."

The Globe :—

" Few of the roving Englishmen of to-day wield a defter pen than Mr. Henry
Norman, M.P. , and none, we may add, can use the camera with better effect.
His latest book ... is perhaps the most interesting in the long roll of works
which stand to his credit in the library catalogue."

The Contemporary Review : —

"It should appeal to a wide circle of readers, for it is certainly one of the
most entertaining, and, at the same time, informing books of travel published
within recent years."

The Spectator: —

"Mr. Henry Xorman, who has already done much to give the English reader
a better appreciation of Asiatic problems, has now increased the debt which
we owe him by producing a very suggestive book on Russia. . . . We need
not tell our readers that Mr. Norman wields a practised and fluent pen, and
has the art of displaying his observations in the light of thought. This is
manifested in the present volume as fully as in his previous works, and no one
who wishes to understand the life and true inwardness of Russia — that strange
country which unites Europe and Asia psychologically as well as geographi-
cally—can dispense with a careful study of Mr. Norman's book, which is so
entertaining that even the idlest reader, who seeks amusement at the
circulating library, need not fear to attack it. . . . We hold that a really
strong and broad-minded statesman, who could shake himself clear of
prejudice and rise above the mists of the lower diplomacy, could bring about
' that good and lasting understanding between the two nations,' which
Mr. Norman regards as 'not only desirable above all things, but also well
within the range of possibility.' Perhaps the highest praise which we can
give to this book is to say that it should be of real assistance in educating
people in general up to the level of such an enterprise."

The Guardian : —

" A noteworthy volume. . . . We know of no recent book in English, except
Mr. Bookwalter's 'Siberia and Central Asia' (and that is an American
study), which gives so true and living a picture of Russia as it is to-day in its
economic and political aspects. ... It is unnecessary to say that the results
of his inquiries are presented by Mr. Norman with the clearness and force
which belong to a good publicist. It may be added that the present volume
. is excellently illustrated. As a key to unlock the secrets of Russia the author
has chosen sympathy rather than malignity and the interest of fear. In his
care of investigation, breadth of view, and depth of insight, he has worked as
a statesman putting pen to paper should always work."

The Athenaeum : —

" A pleasant and even a valuable series of pictures. . . . No false impression
wall be produced on the reader's mind, and as he will undoubtedly be enter-
tained he has no reason to complain."

The Academy : —

"A book not only brimful of knowledge and information, but written with
unflagging brightness and pictorial quality. To what most writers would lea\e
a dry desert of statistics he gives a skilful interest by his manner of presenta-
tion. ... A notably distinguished book among the many books on Russia,
and by much the brightest of them to the general reader, with no appetite
for the plum-duff of knowledge, but a readiness for what is attractive and
novel. ... Of the charm of the book no quotation will convey an idea. It
depends on the accumulation and succession of vivid and novel details, in
page after page, as in the long and interesting description of Samarkand, for
example. Nor can we here do justice to its importance ; for the statistics
Mr. Norman sets forth and the views he propounds would require an article.
... It is none the less well, and a valuable antidote to the ordinary pessimist
view, that we should be shown Russia as she appears to those who believe
in her with knowledge, and that she should be shown to us with such
conspicuous literary ability."

The Outlook :—

" In this rapid survey of the topics suggested by Mr. Norman we have
indicated the highly engrossing nature of his book, and we add a recommen-
dation to all who are interested in the European pressure on the East to read
and digest its statements and conclusions."

The Graphic:—

" Books of travel have many objects, sometimes our amusement, sometimes
our instruction, but they rarely combine both qualities in such a remarkable
degree as does Mr. Henry Norman's most interesting 'All the Russias.'
Interesting as it may be to the layman and the politician, it should be doubly
so to the man of commerce."

The Scotsman : —

"Full of suggestive and often ne-.v light upon questions it is of the utmost
importance that the British public should understand : while the author does
not hope in vain that, by 'presenting in their natural relationship, picturesque
surface, and solid substratum of fact,' he has succeeded in making his pages
at once entertaining and informing."

The Yorkshire Post :—

"The whole work is so interesting, and in its subject so important, that it will
repay the attention of everyone who watches with intelligence the progress of
the w'orld and the play of political forces."

The Freeman's Journal, Dublin : —

" For any one who desires to know about ' All the Russias ' this is the
very book. It is marvellous how much useful, accurate, and interesting
information, geographical, topographical, social, military, and historical,
Mr. Norman has managed to cram into a single volume. Nor is the result a
mere dry narrative or a bald catalogue. The author has a vivid and lucid
style, and by the magic of his style he has produced from his vast accumula-
tion of materials not merely a book to be read, but a most readable book.
. . . It is a volume for careful and studious reading. Profit and pleasure are
to be derived in equal measure from its perusal."

The Dundee Advertiser :^

" The work of a man with a singular genius for travel and the possessor of a
most agreeably animated style."

The "Western Daily Mercury : —

" Mr. Henry Norman is probably the Englishman best qualified fo give us a
book on this subject. . . . This fascinating book is extremely successful."

LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN

21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.

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