Five Thousand Miles in a Sledge: a mid-winter journey across Siberia ... With ... illustrations, etc

Preface

A residence for even so brief a period as four years in a distant land suffices to imbue one with a wholesome contempt for the globe-trotter who imagines that a stay of a few weeks in a strange country, or a hasty journey across it, is enough to enable him to write an exhaustive account of that country and to pose ever afterwards as an authority upon its constitution and mode of government, and upon the social and intellectual condition of its people. A sledge journey across Asiatic Russia, undertaken by one whose knowledge of the language is barely extensive enough to enable him to make his wants known, does not qualify him to pass an opinion upon the administration of the Siberian provinces or upon the commercial and industrial future of a tract of country covering an area considerably greater than the whole of Europe.

This book pretends, therefore, to be nothing more than a truthful record of a journey in which no English author has preceded the present writer. Other English travellers have, it is true, traversed the same ground, or almost the same ground, in summer, and have written their

PREFACE.

experiences ; but Siberia under frost and snow differs so vastly from Siberia in the aspects in which Dr. Lansdell, for instance, has described it, that an apology for the present account is less needed than it might otherwise be. As a record of a journey under conditions utterly strange to most English readers it is hoped that it will not be found without interest, though the illness and subsequent death of the com rade, from whose keen observation, as well as from his facile pencil, the author had anticipated great and valuable assist ance, have undoubtedly robbed it of much of its interest. But although the author has tried to avoid touching upon questions in regard to which a superficial observation might have led him into error, there is one subject on which it is impossible for him to be altogether sdent. ' "What is the truth about the convict system ? ' 'Is the fate of the exiles as terrible as has been represented ? ' These are the questions with which one who has recently been in Siberia is assailed on every hand.

And since such knowledge as the author has been enabled to glean on these subjects has been entirely gained at second hand, it is perhaps better that the question should be dealt with here than in the body of the work. In 1879 the Rev. Dr. Henry Lansdell travelled through Siberia, armed with a letter from the Minister of the Interior which opened all the prison doors to him. On his return to England he published an account of his travels

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IX in which he completely whitewashed the Russian authorities and expressed the conviction that, 'on the whole, if a Russian exile behaves himself decently well, he may in Siberia be more comfortable than in many, and as comfortable as in most, of the prisons of the world.' In 1885 Mr. George Kennan, accompanied by Mr. George A. Frost, started on an expedition to Siberia for the express purpose of ' making a careful study of the exile system.' The judgment he had at that time formed was, he tells us, that the system had been ' greatly misrepresented by prejudiced writers.' So he informed Mr. Vlangalli, the then Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs. Since then Mr. Kennan has published to the world some of the results of his investigations. And ' if,' he says, ' the opinions which I now hold differ from those which I expressed to Mr. Vlangalli in 1885, it is not because I was then insincere, but because my views have since been changed by an overwhelming mass of evidence.' Which opinion is correct — that of Dr. Lansdell, or that of Mr. George Kennan?

The present author can claim perfect impartiality on the question. So far as the dispu tants, if they may be called so, are concerned, his personal sympathies would be with Dr. Lansdell, through whose kindness in providing him w7ith a general introduction he made many valued friends during his journey; and the unvaried kindness and courtesy which he received from Russian officials and people would have been enough to dismiss from his X

PREFACE.

mind any prejudice, had it existed, against Russia or the Russian Government. But such information as he and his companion were able to gather was totally opposed to the opinions of Dr. LansdeU and in accord with the conclusions to which the later traveller has come. The very difference in the methods of the two men and their fitness for the task of investigation is sufficient of itself to raise a strong pre sumption as to the side on which truth lies. The one fact that Dr. Lansdell was ignorant of the language and was compelled, in regard to everything which he did not actually see with his own eyes, to rely almost entirely upon such information as the Government officials chose to supply him with, renders his account prima facie of infinitely less value than that of Mr. Kennan, whose familiarity with Russian enabled him to gather his information from innumerable sources.

The present author's direct experience on the subject is confined to the meetmg of a few convoys of exiles on the road, and to the casual inspection of the outside walls of several prisons and Stapes. But he was able to gather the opinions of foreign residents in Siberia as to the accuracy of Dr. Lansdell's account. There were but two, it is true, who appeared wdling to open then minds quite freely on the point, most of the others being more or less closely con nected with the Russian administrative system. But these two were both men to whose extensive knowledge of Asiatic

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XI Russia Dr. Lansdell was indebted for many of the facts related in ' Through Siberia ; ' and they are both emphatic ally of the opinion that the learned doctor had been imposed upon. ' Don't you think,' asked Mr. Uren of one of them, ' that things were " set up " for Dr. Lansdell in the prisons — that they "saw him coming "?' ' Undoubtedly,' was the reply. ' Still,' remarked the present writer, the stories which used to be related in England of the sufferings of political prisoners in Siberia, were doubtless to some extent exagge rated ? ' ' Hardly at all ; it would hardly be possible to exaggerate them,' was the rejoinder. In his more recent work on 'Russian Central Asia,' Dr. Lansdell has replied at great length to those w7ho argued that he had been deceived by the Russian prison authorities, who had been warned beforehand of his visits.

He admits, however, that tw7o of his friends living in Siberia and Russia shared in this belief. One of these he mentions by name ; the other may possibly have been one of the two Siberian residents referred to above. But the opinion strongly impressed upon the mind of the present writer — an opinion which was completely shared by his companion of the voyage — is that although Dr. Lansdell has dispelled some erroneous ideas and disproved some false stories in regard to Russia's treatment of her prisoners, political and social, he has been misled into presenting a picture of Siberian prison management which is far too

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XII roseate-hued, and which does infinitely more credit to the Russian Government than is deserved. Having first heard when in the heart of Siberia of the great and noble work in which Mr. George Kennan had then been so recently engaged, the author cannot omit the opportunity of bearing testimony to the high opinion entertained there as to the unsparing pains which Mr. Kennan had taken to arrive at the truth, and as to the value his work was likely to have in placing before American and English readers a reliable account of the sufferings of Siberian prisoners. Since the completion of the journey here narrated a work has been projected which, when completed, will render summer travelling in Siberia far easier than in the past. The connection of Tomsk and Stretensk by rad on either side with the Baikal Sea, and the budding of a further railway from Lake Khanka to Vladivostok, will, if competed, enable the traveller to cross the two entire continents of Europe and Asia by steam.

Undoubtedly it will, for both commercial and strategic purposes, be a great and important work. But of its prospective commercial value some immensely exagge rated estimates have been formed. It has even been spoken of as a formidable rival to the Canadian Pacific Railway. But when it is remembered that for half the year the navigation of the rivers is stopped by ice, and that when open the Amur is so shallow that the light-draught steamers which ply on its surface are not unfrequently compelled to

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XIII stop for want of water ; and when one recollects the frequent embarkations and disembarkations which will still be neces sary, it must be conceded that it will take more than these connecting links of railway to render this a very serviceable route for passengers and cargo to and from the Far East. For the tourist on pleasure bent, the winter journey by sledge will still, with all its hardships and inconveniences, have something to recommend it over the mosquitoes, the heat, the dirt, and the discomfort of Siberian steamboat travelling as it has been described by summer voyagers. The author has endeavoured to maintain a reasonable amount of uniformity in the transliteration of Russian names ; but the anomalies of English spelling render it difficult to indicate the proper pronunciation without having recourse to an elaborate system of phonetics which would be out of place in a book of this kind.

If, however, the reader will pronounce the letter ' u ' like ' oo ' in boot, and ' i ' Uke ' ee ' in feet, or ' i ' in ' fit,' and will give to the other letters their common English sound, ' ch ' being pro nounced as in ' chat,' ' zh ' like ' s ' in ' vision,' and ' kh ' like the Scottish guttural in ' loch,' he will not go so very far wrong. L. F. G. Hahpstead : October, 1889. PAGE CONTENTS

Chapter I Introductory

The conception of the idea — A host of advisers — Encouragements and warnings — Our forerunners in Siberian travel — Mr. Michie — Professor Milne — The Western Union Extension Telegraph Company — Mr. Kennan — The Rev. Dr. Lansdell — M. Russell-Killough — M. Meignan — Mr. Thomas Duff — Farewell to Shanghai — Nagasaki — Fusan — Gensan 1

Chapter II Coeea

The opening of the Hermit Kingdom — Political crises — Chemulpo — A ride to the capital— Ma-po — Seoul— Pak-tung — The massacre of 1882 — Interview with a Corean prince — A night ride from Seoul — Port Hamilton — Gensan — Arrival at Vladivostok ... 10

Chapter III Vladivostok

The first sight of Siberia — Russian officers and German merchants — A Siberian hotel — Landing baggage — A five weeks' delay — Danes, Germans, English, and Americans — Sunshine and frost — Public buildings — Mexican dollars and Russian roubles —Expenses of the journey — Sledges — Outfit— Life in Vladivostok — Drunkenness and gambling — A suicide's funeral — A German brewery — Tigers— A big bag — A German Singing Club — Vodka —Russian robbers and Manza pirates SU CONTENTS PAGE 53 67 s(l

Chapter IV Deer-stalking In Eastern Siberia

A voyage in the Anna — The beginning of winter — Close quarters — Perog— Strelok Bay — An abandoned Finnish settlement — A life of adventure — A steady nerve — A smoky chimney — The samovar — Deer-stalking in the snow — Human deer — The moccasins of the savage — A rechristening — Wary deer — An improvised tea-kettle — Blood-stained tiger tracks in the snow — A dead shot — Our bag — A feast of deer's liver — Siberian venison — Return to Vladivostok .

Chapter V Vladivostok

— THE START Ocean sledging — Wanted, snow and ice — A snowfall and a transformation — A jovial Ispravnik — ' Sei chas ' — ' British arrogance ' — A friend in need— Passports and podorozhnayas— Cattle-lifting — An officer and a perfect gentleman — Exasperating delays — The last trip of the Baikal — Dismal forebodings — Parasites and kidnappers — A Russian dish — A purga — More delays— Off at last

Chapter VI Vladivostok To Khabarovka

Good-bye to Vladivostok — The effects of the purga — First experiences of road-sledging — Sledge bells — The first post-station — Tea-drinking in Russia — Wellington bellows — Sledging by night — An unwelcome equine visitor— Tigrova — Rasdolnoi— Fall of the thermometer — Nikolsk — Kamen Ruiboloff — An unexpected meeting and a welcome rest — The Khanka Lake — Marvellous effects of frost and storm— Slow progress — Frost-bitten yemshiks — Libellous loyalty — Russian emigrants — He had never heard of London — The Sungacha — The borders of China — The mails — An affectionate starosta — The Ussuri — The perfection of sledging — Siberian post-stations and peasants' homes — Kazakevitch — Arrival at Khabarovka.

Chapter VII Khabarovka To Blagovestchensk

The capital of the Primorsk — A miserable hotel — A Christmas dinner — Shtchee and cutlets— Beware of officials — Driving tandem — The CONTENTS XVII PAOK Amur River — A dreary steppe — A midnight collision — Thirty-six hours through falling snow — Radde — A pleasant meeting — The family sledge — Racing on the road — A long cold drive by night— A frosty supper and an altercation — No snow— A station-master takes a fancy to our sledge— An encounter and a victory — We proceed with five horses — The battle renewed — Another victory and a rough ride — A drive in a tarantas and a frozen nose— Entry into Blagovestchensk 104

Chapter VIII Blagovestchensk

The City of Glad Tidings — A decent hotel — How Siberians wash — Among friends — The pleasures of hospitality — A curious sledge — Foreign testimony as to life in Siberia — A comfortable home — — Foreign merchants and German officials — A new postal administration — A frozen market— Effects of the cold — A royal gift— A new podorozhnaya — Pairs and troikas — Molokans — Off up the Amur 123

Chapter IX Blagovestchensk To Albazin

The beauties of the Amur — The Siberian moon — Collisions — Buriat Cossacks — Missionary work among the Buriats — Slow travelling — ' Pochta boodit ' — Effects of the cold — Sleepy yemshiks — A natty post-station — Pairs and troikas — Burning cold — Camels and oxen — The cowardly wolf — Private horses — Russian bargains — The Buriats again — Drunken yemshiks — The duga — Cossacks on the spree — A lonely post-station — Deer and deerskins — A meeting with old friends — The Siberian carpenter — A dangerous drive — Albazin 136

Chapter X Albazin To Stretensk

Chernigovski — Albazin and its sieges — An elevated starosta— Embarrassing hospitality — The sentinel deserts his post — Off to Stretensk — An unfortunate family — Gently down hill — The Buriats again — An irascible Polish exile — Farewell to the Cossacks — Up the Shilka a CONTENTS XVIII PAGE River— The Seven Cardinal Sins— Restlessrepose— Returninghorses — Good-bye to the vashok — A Chinese merchant — Stretensk — A rude hotel — English again — A transmitting station — Tapping the wires— Borsh and pilmenies— On the road again .... 162

Chapter XI Stretensk To Verkhne Udinsk

The shallow Shilka — An infantile yemshik — In a snowdrift — A novel ' equipage ' — Nerchinsk — A millionaire's palace — Chita — A snowless tract — Siberian fires — Tarantas travelling — A convict train — An attack on the post — Double murder and robbery — The Yablonoi Mountains — Our sledge again — The shrine on the mountains — A smash — The land' of the Buriats — The tarantas once more — A long cold ride — Through the woods — The Uda River — Verkhne Udinsk 178

Chapter XII Across The Baikal To Irkutsk

Verkhne Udinsk — The Kiakhta road — Maimaichin and Urga — An infant starosta — A day of rest — House sparrows — The starosta in trouble— The Selenga— Freight caravans— Pitfalls— Nearing the Baikal — Kahansk — A little Siberian traveller — Mishikhinsk— Over the Baikal— Icy caves — Ominous fissures— The wreck of a post-station — Mock suns — Listvinichnaya — A wilderness of freight sledges— The customs station— A two hours' block — An unappetising supper — Rough travelling— A glorious sunrise — English literature in Siberia — Irkutsk 192

Chapter XIII Irkutsk To Tomsk

The Paris of Siberia — The great fire — Ivan Pachaboff — A civilised hotel — A Siberian vapour-bath — A corduroy road — The caravan horse — A lost breakfast— Tulunovsk — Nizhni Udinsk — Siberian roads — Damages and repairs — Sledge races — Krasnoyarsk — A kindly Englishman — Western Siberia — A train of convicts — Sleeping men's souls — An unexpected visitor — The worst road on record —Tomsk CONTENTS XIX PAGE 230 240

Chapter XIV Tomsk To Tiumen

The boundary of steam communication — Companions and a change of route — Omsk — Siberian music— Off again — A meagre dinner — A purga — Private horses and private post-stations — In the family bedrooms — Homespun — Cheap bread — Beggars — Tiukalinsk — Nearing the railway — Quick travelling — Tiumen .

Chapter XV Tiumen To Moscow

English faces — An Englishman among the Samoyedes — A railway journey — The road to Irbit — Irbit Fair — The city of a month — Business and pleasure — Natural food preservation — A heavy bill — A sledging steeplechase — Back to Tiumen — A Siberian squire — Maslinitza —Farewell to Tiumen — The Tiumen -Perm Railway — Luxurious travelling versus speed — Ekaterinburg and its gems — Asia, the Urals, Europe — Perm — Sledging in Europe — A posting monopoly — Snow ploughs — A road surveyor — Tatar caravans — The miseries of Lent — Kazan — Up the Volga — Vasil Sursk — Nizhni Novgorod — A deserted city — Moscow — A retrospect — The death of Mr. Uren LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Russian Officer 33 Russian Officer — Vladivostok 35 ChInaman in Winter Clothes 36 Corean Coolie at Vladivostok 37 Winter Uniform 39 Self and Gowing in our Travelling Paint . . . . 45 Cabin of the Anna.

Home of Six People for a Week. Strelok Bay 54 Siberian Stove 76 Our Sledge, with Troika 79 In Travelling Furs 81 Yemshik — by an Inside Passenger 81 Our Horses make a Call on the Next Passenger . . 87 The Road on the Khanka Lake 92 Siberian Post-station — Khanka Lake 93 Leaving Khabarovka — an indifferent Road . . . . 107 A Stoppage. Our Yemshik tries to knock down a Tree . 108 SlBERLAN POST-KOAD ON LOWER AMUR 110 Station-master and Chum at Kliochi explain in Russian that we must leave our sledge with him, unless we pay him 30 roubles to drive us by some road that he knows nothing about 111. . . . . . . 117 Station-master in the Act of solemnly declaring that with less than five horses he can't go anywhere . . 118 On the Road to Gulchina — no Snow ..... 119 View op Gowing's Nose after it was touched by the Frost 120 The Last Mile into Blagovestchensk 121 Frozen Fish and Mllk at Blagovestchensk . . . . 131 A Manza Ox Sledge for Freight 150 Gently down a Hill 166 The Best Station-master we saw 190 Boys Skating on Sidewalk, Irkutsk 207 The Freight Caravan Horse who gtves it up . . . 215 An overturned Kerosine Sledge — Lost from a Caravan . 216 What a Siberian calls a Ploka Doroga .... 228 Boy Tobogganing I..„„l„„ i! .,::■ .1 W,„.!„. • ' '.■".:--: ; FIVE THOUSAND MILES IN A SLEDGE

Chapter I Introductory

The conception of the idea — A host of advisers — Encouragements arid warnings — Our forerunners in Siberian travel — Mr. Michie — Professor Milne — The Western Union Extension Telegraph Company — Mr. Kennan— The Rev. Dr. Lansdell— M. Russell-Killough— M. Meignan — Mr. Thomas Duff — Farewell to Shanghai — Nagasaki — Fusan — Gensan. It was midday, and we were seated round the tiffin-table when the idea was first mooted. The swinging punkah overhead tempered with a gentle breeze the fierce moist heat of a Shanghai August day, and the white glare outside only reached us mellowed and subdued by filtra tion through the reed blinds surrounding the verandah. 'Jack,' the tall, burly, beaming-faced Chinese head-boy, was busily employed in the dispensation of cooling liquors, and we were one and all arrayed in the loose white garments which form the summer costumes of exiles in the Far East.

But in spite of all that the arts of civili- L INTRODUCTORY 2 sation could do to mitigate the rigour of a sub-tropical sun, the idea of gliding through endless tracts of ice and snow, with the thermometer at unheard-of depths below zero, proved singularly pleasing and attractive at that moment. The fortunate man of business or merchant's clerk whose lot is cast in Shanghai, the gay metropolis of the Far East, sometimes assumes a tone of pity for his less favoured comrades who are struggling along in the keen race for existence in the Old Country. I have heard many an old China resident declare that Shanghai is the best place in the world to live in, and that nothing less than the award of a double first prize in the Manila Lottery, or some other semi-miraculous chance which should make him the possessor of a handsome fortune, would induce him to take up his residence permanently in England.

My future camarade de voyage, Mr. Uren, of the Eastern Extension Telegraph Company, though by no means an old resident, was strongly imbued with this unpatriotic notion. ' England,' he was wont to declare, ' is a capital country to live out of and boast about ; ' but even he had sufficient love for his native land to look forward with eager antici pation to a coming twelvemonth's furlough, which would enable him to pay a temporary visit to Old England. For my part, I had determined, after a four years' residence in Shanghai, to break through the fascinations of Far Eastern life before they obtained too strong a hold on me ; and on this sultry August day in 1885 we were discussing the respective merits of the various routes from China to PREPARATIONS 3 England. My future comrade declared that he had for some time entertained the idea of making his way home through Siberia in the middle of winter, but unfortunately he had never been able to find anyone mad enough to accompany him, and he had consequently abandoned the notion.

I at once stepped into the breach, and within five minutes the journey was, in our minds, an accomplished fact. Our friends round the tiffin-table smiled knowingly, and insinuated that as the year declined and the days grew cooler, so also would our ardour. Certainly, in the midst of the wintry east winds which compensate the residents of Shanghai for the tropical heat of summer, the projected journey did not bear quite so pleasant an aspect ; but, nevertheless, our purpose endured. Various obstacles necessitated our postponing its execution till the winter of 1886 ; but in the meantime we consulted all the authorities we could find on the subject, placed ourselves in communi cation with foreigners resident in Vladivostok, which we settled upon as the base of our journey, and generally perfected our plans.

From the foreigners in Vladivostok to whom we obtained introductions we received the most kindly promises of assistance ; and although from many friends in China we were overwhelmed with dire warnings of the perilous nature of our projected enterprise, we were consoled by the reflection that the darkness of the pictures was generally in direct proportion to the ignorance of our informants in regard to everything connected with Siberian travel. B INTRODUCTORY From the accounts of earlier travellers across Siberia we could obtain but little information to assist us in maturing our plans. During the last twenty or thirty years some half a dozen or more English residents in the Far East have made their way home through Northern Asia, and some two or three of these have placed their experiences upon record ; but in nearly every case they have made their way through Peking, across the Mongolian desert, by Urga, Kiakhta, and Verkhne Udinsk to the Baikal Sea, and have thus been unable to give at first hand any description whatever of travel in Eastern Siberia.

Moreover, they had nearly all very naturally chosen the summer for their journey, and the conditions of whiter and summer travelling in Siberia are so vastly different that this rendered the accounts of our predecessors almost entirely valueless to us. One of the first English residents in China to whom the idea of making his way homeward by the northern route seems to have occurred was Mr. Alexander Michie, still, I believe, a resident in the Far East, who published a description of his journey in 1864; and fifteen years later Professor Milne, now celebrated for his important seismo logical researches in Japan, undertook a similar exploit, an account of which he subsequently read before the Asiatic Society of Japan. In 1882, while on my way to China, Professor Milne and I happened to be fellow-voyagers on board the French mail steamer Oxus, and from him I first learnt something of the kind of adventure which voyagers in Siberia have to expect.

At that time I had as little idea SIBERIAN TRAVELLERS 5 of travelling across Northern Asia as of making a journey to the moon ; but three years later, when the adventure was suggested to me, the professor's descriptions recurred to my memory, though how far they influenced me in my decision to attempt the journey I have been unable to determine. Since Captain John Dundas Cochrane's account of his adventurous pedestrian tour in Siberia in the early part of this century, a number of works on Northern Asiatic travel have appeared from the pens of French, American, and English writers. In 1865 an expedition started from America for the purpose of surveying the north of Siberia and erecting an overland telegraph line from Behring's Straits to Europe, to be connected by a short cable across the straits with a similar land line stretching from Alaska to New England.

The enterprise was abandoned two years later owing to the success of the rival scheme for laying an ocean cable across the Atlantic ; but several of the hardy spirits who volunteered for this hazardous expedition have since published in America thrilling accounts of their ad ventures, by far the best being from the pen of Mr. George Kennan. Not one of them, however, has described at any length the features of an ordinary midwinter journey over the great highway of Asiatic Russia. Of the comparatively few English and French travellers who have crossed the western boundary of Asia, those who have penetrated to Eastern Siberia could easily be counted on the fingers of a single hand. Foremost among them is the Rev. Dr. Henry Lansdell, who in 1879 crossed Siberia INTRODUCTORY from the Urals to the Pacific as the pioneer of missionary work among the Russian exiles.

The outcome of this journey, Dr. Lansdell's ' Through Siberia,' is undoubtedly the fullest and most accurate description of the country which has yet appeared. But his also was a summer trip, and the only two detailed descriptions of post-sledging along the great Northern Asiatic route which have been published are from the pens of French travellers. The first of these, M. Henry Russell-Killough, left Peters burg in November 1858, intending to pass out of Asiatic Russia at Kiakhta and make his way through China. He reached Peking in safety ; but, much to his disgust, was prevented from proceeding farther, and made to retrace his steps over the Mongolian desert. By the time he regained the Siberian highway the winter was nearly at an end, and he continued his journey by water, steaming the whole way along the Shilka and Amur to Nikolaevsk, whence he proceeded to Japan.

His travels have never been trans lated into English. The other winter voyager is M. Victor Meignan, who left Paris on October 25, 1873, and arrived in Irkutsk in the middle of the following February. The fatigues of the journey having affected his health he re mained some weeks in Irkutsk, had a dangerous passage in his sledge over the Baikal, owing to a thaw having set in, and crossed Mongolia to Peking and Tientsin in the spring. An English translation of M. Meignan's account of his journey appeared some four years ago, and only reached Shanghai after our trip had been decided upon. It contained the first authoritative opinion which we had A WARNING 7 then been able to obtain as to the advantages and dis advantages of such a journey as that we proposed to make. In concluding the account of his travels M. Meignan says: ' My readers, perhaps, will wonder what could have induced me to have undertaken so wearisome a journey : I had imagined the bright side of it only then, but now I have seen the other I can advise them not to follow my example ; for though there are many novel, grand, and striking scenes of nature, accompanied with much exciting adventure, still they are not to be enjoyed in so rigorous a climate as that of Siberia in winter without incurring much hardship, and even a certain exposure to a considerable share of danger.' This was not very encouraging.