Chapter IX
TOBOLSK.
Early history of Siberia.--Yermak.--Conquest of the Tatars.--Tobolsk the first capital.--The exiled bell.--Our visit to the Governor.--Hard-labour prisons.--Interior arrangements.--“Travaux forcés.”--Testimony of prisoners.--Books presented.
Tobolsk, for a long period, was the capital of the whole of Siberia. This will be a suitable place, therefore, in which to treat briefly the history of the Russian subjugation of the country at large. It can hardly be said that Siberia was familiar to the Russians before the middle of the sixteenth century; for, although at an earlier period an expedition had penetrated as far as the Lower Obi, yet its effects were not permanent. Later, Ivan Vassilievitch II. sent a number of troops over the Urals, laid some of the Tatar tribes under tribute, and in 1558 assumed the title of “Lord of Siberia.” Kutchum Khan, however, a lineal descendant of Genghis Khan, punished these tribes for their defection, and regained their fealty, and so ended again for a while the result of the Russian expedition. A third invasion, however, was made in a way quite unexpected. Ivan Vassilievitch II. had extended his conquests to the Caspian Sea, and opened commercial relations with Persia; but the merchants and caravans were frequently pillaged by hordes of banditti, called Don Cossacks, whom the Tsar attacked, killing some and taking prisoner or scattering others. Among the dispersed were 6,000 freebooters, under the command of a chief named Yermak Timofeeff, who made their way to the banks of the Kama, to a settlement at Orel, belonging to one of the Stroganoffs, where they were entertained during a dreary winter, and where Yermak heard of an inviting field of adventure, lying on the other side of the Urals. Thither he determined to try his fortunes, and after an unsuccessful attempt in the summer of 1578, started again with 5,000 men in June of the next year. It was eighteen months before he reached the small town of Tchingi, on the banks of the Tura; by which time his followers had dwindled down, by skirmishes, privation, and fatigue, to 1,500 men. But they were all braves. Before them was Kutchum Khan, prince of the country, already in position, and, with numerous troops, resolved to defend himself to the last. When at length the two armies stood face to face, that of Yermak was further reduced to 500 men, nine-tenths of those who left Orel having perished. A desperate fight ensued, the Tatars were routed, and Yermak pushed on to Sibir, the residence of the Tatar princes. It was a small fortress on the banks of the Irtish, the ruins of which are still standing, and of which I have seen a photograph, if I mistake not, among Mr. Seebohm’s collection.
Yermak was now suddenly transformed to a prince, but he had the good sense to see the precariousness of his grandeur, and it became plain that he must seek for assistance. He sent, therefore, fifty of his Cossacks to the Tsar of Muscovy, their chief being adroitly ordered to represent to the Court the progress which the Russian troops, under the command of Yermak, had made in Siberia, where an extensive empire had been conquered in the name of the Tsar. The Tsar took very kindly to this, pardoned Yermak, and sent him money and assistance. Reinforced by 500 Russians, Yermak multiplied his expeditions, extended his conquests, and was enabled to subdue various insurrections fomented by the conquered Kutchum Khan. In one of these expeditions he laid siege to the small fortress of Kullara, which still belonged to his foe, and by whom it was so bravely defended that Yermak had to retreat. Kutchum Khan stealthily followed the Russians, and, finding them negligently posted on a small island in the Irtish, he forded the river, attacked them by night, and came upon them so suddenly as with comparative ease to cut them to pieces. Yermak perished, but not, it is said, by the sword of the enemy. Having cut his way to the water’s edge, he tried to jump into a boat, but, stepping short, he fell into the water, and the weight of his armour carried him to the bottom. Thus perished Yermak Timofeeff, and when the news reached Sibir, the remainder of his followers retired from the fortress, and left the country.
The Court of Moscow, however, sent a body of 300 men, who before long made a fresh incursion, and reached Tchingi almost without opposition. There they built the fort of Tiumen, and re-established the Russian sovereignty. Being soon afterwards reinforced, they extended their operations, and built the fortresses of Tobolsk, Sungur, and Tara, and soon gained for the Tsar all the territory west of the Obi. The stream of conquest then flowed eastward apace. Tomsk was founded in 1604, and became the Russian head-quarters, whence the Cossacks organized new expeditions. Yeneseisk was founded in 1619, and, eight years afterwards, Krasnoiarsk. Passing the Yenesei, they advanced to the shores of Lake Baikal, and in 1620 attacked and partly conquered the populous nation of the Buriats. Then, turning northwards to the basin of the Lena, they founded Yakutsk in 1632, and made subject, though not without considerable difficulty, the powerful nation of the Yakutes; after which they crossed the Aldan mountains, and in 1639 reached the Sea of Okhotsk. Thus in the span of a single lifetime--70 years--was added to the Russian crown a territory as large as the whole of Europe, whose ancient capital, as I have said, was Tobolsk.
The citadel and upper town stand on a hill, with a precipitous front, at the foot of which lies the lower town. The two are now connected by a winding carriage-road, but formerly the only entrance to the citadel was by a very steep incline through the fortress gates. From the top of the hill an extensive view is obtained of the Irtish, flowing close by the town to its junction with the Tobol. The town below is built with regularity, and contains many churches and monasteries. The houses are chiefly of wood, and the streets are paved with the same material. But the glory of Tobolsk has long been waning, and, when this is the case with a Siberian town, wooden roadways degenerate into a delusion and a snare. They rot and remain unrepaired, and one is in danger at night of tumbling into holes. The population of the town consists mainly of Russians, Tatars, and Germans, and in it are manufactured leather, tallow, soap, tiles, boats, and firearms.
In the upper part of the town are some handsome churches, and a cathedral, near which is the famous bell from Uglitch, that was exiled by Boris Gudonoff because it gave signal to the insurrectionists. On their being quelled, the unfortunate bell was deposed, had two of its ears broken off, was publicly flogged, and sent to Siberia and forbidden for ever to ring again. But the ban has since been removed, and it now is hung, not in a belfry, but alone, and assists in calling the people to church.
Not far from the fortress are the pleasure-gardens, and also the three hard-labour prisons, which we wished particularly to see. My letter was therefore presented to M. Lisagorsky, the Governor, who immediately sent for the police-master; and we proceeded at once to visit our first hard-labour prisons in Siberia. For many years Tobolsk was a principal place of punishment, and even now prisoners condemned to the east frequently spend here the first portion of their time. On the road we had heard it spoken of as a place of considerable severity, in which were kept those condemned to “travaux forcés.” On entering, therefore, I braced my nerves for such horrors as might present themselves. The authorities seemed determined that the prisoners should not harm us (or them?); for, as we moved from ward to ward and section to section, there followed us four soldiers with fixed bayonets. The buildings were large and of brick, with double windows to keep out the cold; and I noticed that, in addition to a pillow and covering, mattresses stuffed with old clothes were also provided for the prisoners. These, I presume, were furnished by the local committee. They had a few books, and as one man only in ten could read, it was usual during the evenings for these to read aloud to their less instructed fellows. I saw a copy of the “Lives of the Saints” in one room, but no Bibles. The guard-room for the military was furnished much the same as the prisoners’ rooms. There were likewise other wards of various sizes: one for murderers, having five occupants (most of whom, we were told, had committed their crimes in fits of drunkenness); another for eight men without passports; and other rooms for thieves. One was occupied by a man who had run away, and another by a man who, for selling things belonging to an altar, had been found guilty of sacrilege.
In the first prison were nine single cells, in one of which was a Polish doctor, a political offender, who had surrounded himself with such small comforts as Polish books, eau-de-Cologne, and cigarettes, which last he (by way of privilege) was allowed to smoke. One or two cells were set apart for punishment.
After marching through room after room, corridor after corridor, now across yards with prisoners lolling about, and now through sleeping apartments, where some were not even up, though breakfast-time had long gone by, I began to wonder where the work was going on, and asked to be shown the labours of those condemned to “travaux forcés”; upon which we were taken first into a room for wheelwrights, and next into a blacksmith’s shop. Then we were introduced to a company of tailors, and another of shoemakers, and last of all we saw a room fitted for joiners or cabinet-makers’ work. The amount of labour going on appeared to be exceedingly small, and the number of men employed (or apparently that could be employed) to be only a sprinkling of the 732 inmates in prisons Nos. 1 and 3, and 264 in prison No. 2. I believe some reason was given why more were not at work, though whether it was a holiday or bathing-day, or what, I forget; but I came to the conclusion that they had not appliances enough to find occupation for 1,000 prisoners, and that one need not have come to Siberia to see the severity of a hard-labour prison, since the same might just as easily have been witnessed in Europe. Had I entered with any of the curiosity that takes people to the chamber of horrors at Madame Tussaud’s, such curiosity would certainly have remained ungratified. The prisons of Tobolsk reminded me most of those I had seen in Vienna and Cracow, in which, however, in some respects, a comparison would result in favour of Siberia; for at Cracow the convicts had not only to work at the bench by day, but, if my memory does not fail me, to sleep on it at night. At Tobolsk a set portion of labour is imposed daily; but when this is done, the prisoner is at liberty to work for himself. Various specimens of their handicraft were shown to us.
Prison No. 2 contained criminals who were sentenced to terms ranging from one year to the whole of life, and who, when liberated, were to be sent east to live like colonists. I do not know to whom the credit of superiority is due, whether to the governor of the province, the governor of the prison, or the local committee; but I was struck with the fact when I subsequently asked two prisoners who had been deported across Siberia, as to which prison west of Irkutsk they thought, from their point of view, the best, they both mentioned that of Tobolsk. We left with the governor of this province nearly 500 Scripture portions, such as copies of the Gospels, Psalms, and the New Testament in Russian, Polish, German, French, and Tatar, together with 400 copies of the illustrated Russian Workman, and 1,000 tracts, his Excellency kindly undertaking to distribute the papers and tracts in the schools, and in the best way he could through the province generally, and to place the books for permanent use, not in the libraries, but within reach of each person in every room of every prison, hospital, poor-house, or similar institution under his administration. Having made these arrangements, committed them to paper in the form of a letter, and delivered it to the governor on the Monday evening, we awaited the arrival of the steamer to take us to Tomsk.
Chapter X
FROM TOBOLSK TO TOMSK.
The steamer Beljetchenko.--Fellow-passengers.--Card-playing.--Cost of provisions.--Inspection of convicts’ barge.--An exile fellow-passenger.--Obi navigation.--The Ostjaks.--Their fisheries.--Feats of archery.--Marriage customs.
The Siberians are rich in time. Days to them are of little consequence; hours of no moment. With them “Time is not money.” “What difference,” said a coachman at Ekaterineburg to a friend of mine for whom he had lost his train, “what difference one way or other could an hour make, or for that matter two hours either?” Moreover, the arrival and departure of steamers are not announced by a.m. and p.m., but the date simply is given; and of course you are expected to be in readiness to start at any moment of the twenty-four hours. We deemed it unsafe, therefore, to sleep at the hotel on Monday night, the 2nd of June, lest we should be left behind; so, getting our tarantass and luggage on the pier, I crept inside the vehicle, and there spent the early part of the night, till, at dawn, the steamer arrived. For a Siberian steamer, the Beljetchenko, belonging to Messrs. Kourbatoff and Ignatoff, was good, and her dimensions, compared with others upon which I subsequently travelled, were large. She was a paddle-boat, with fore-cabins and saloons for first-class passengers, and after-cabins for those of the second class, whilst the deck was allotted to a considerable number of third-class passengers and discharged soldiers who were “homeward bound.” All told, the passengers, I should imagine, could not have counted less than from 100 to 150. Among those of the first class were some pleasant people, such as officers of the army, navy, and gendarmerie, and a few school girls going home for summer holidays from Petersburg, a distance of 3,000 miles. There were specimens also of the ubiquitous Russian merchant, travelling on business. Our first impressions of these travellers were unfavourable. Some of the gentlemen were taking leave, if I mistake not, at Tobolsk, of friends, and this event is usually accompanied in Siberia with the drinking of a great deal of wine; so that, when one of the naval officers came to take his place in the sleeping saloon, he was in a condition “unbecoming an officer and a gentleman.” We were spared further inconvenience of this kind by the captain, who had received injunctions from one of the proprietors, Mr. Ignatoff, to look after “Mr. Missionary,” as the captain insisted upon calling me, and on which I did not undeceive him. For the payment of three second-class fares he gave us for sleeping the second-class ladies’ cabin--intended for five persons--in which we were comfortable enough at night, whilst we sat where we pleased by day. The captain was also instructed to charge £2 instead of £4 for the carriage of our tarantass, and also to deal leniently with our heavy excess of baggage and books. As our voyage lasted several days, it was not a matter for surprise that time hung heavily upon the hands of some of the passengers, but I was hardly prepared for the amount of card-playing with which much of it was killed. In no country that I have visited have I seen a tenth part of the card-playing that I witnessed in Siberia. The Russian Government exercises a monopoly in the manufacture of playing-cards, the profits being applied to the support of the Foundling Hospital at Moscow, and 110 tons of cards are annually carried on the Petersburg-Moscow railway. I am told that the amount of card-playing in European Russia also is very considerable; that there are clubs in Petersburg where the gambling is frightful. As for our fellow-passengers, there was a clique who played by day and quarrelled by night, and sometimes did not leave off their games till seven in the morning. By the time the journey was five days old, £20 had been lost by a young officer, who told me that in the small towns of the interior, in which soldiers are quartered, where there is little congenial society and nothing to do, card-playing is the daily constant resource of the officers. The habit, moreover, is not confined to men, but is indulged in, though apparently in a less degree, by women also. On board the steamer the game was not accompanied by excessive drinking, and, happily, several of the passengers--especially the ladies--spoke French, and a few could read English, so that in their society we passed an agreeable time.
The fares for travelling and the charges for provisions were low. The three second-class tickets for the whole journey of 8 days cost only £4, and for a dinner of 4 or 5 courses--soup, fish, meat, game, and pastry,--only 2_s._ were charged. I remembered this tariff with a sigh in California, where the price was double for a meal not half so good, with wretched attendance into the bargain. It must be confessed, however, that provisions on the river’s bank were extremely cheap--so cheap that one almost hesitates to put it on paper. At Surgut I was offered a pair of ducks for 2½_d._; 10 brace of riabchiks, a sort of grouse about the size of a partridge, cost 1_s._; a couple of fish called yass, weighing, I supposed, 1½ lb. each, were offered for 1½_d._; and 10 large fish, as a lot, for ¼_d._ each. At Juchova I was offered for 5_d._ a couple of pike, weighing probably 20 lbs., and a live duck for 1¼_d._; whilst at the villages in the district we passed, which are not easily accessible, a young calf, I was told, could be bought for 6_d._
As we ploughed along, there was tugged at our stern a barge laden with convicts, to which Dr. Johnson’s definition of a ship as “a prison afloat” would with accuracy apply. The barge was a large floating hull, called the Irtish, 245 feet long, and 30 feet beam, 11 feet high from the keel to the deck, with a 4-feet water-line. It was made expressly for the transport of convicts, of whom it was intended to carry 800, with 22 officers. Below it was fitted with platforms for sleeping, like those described in the jails, whilst at either end of the craft were deck-houses eight feet high, containing a small hospital, an apothecary’s shop, and apartments for the officers and soldiers in charge. The space between the deck-houses was roofed over, and the sides closed by bars and wires, painfully suggestive of a menagerie, or reminding one of the cage-cells in the old jail at Edinburgh. The vessel had neither masts nor engines, and bore a pretty close resemblance to a child’s Noah’s ark. At one of our stoppages I was trying to make a sketch of this unique craft, when the officer came and invited me to inspect it. We therefore went on board, with hands and pockets full of reading matter for distribution; and if the bars were suggestive of a menagerie, so, I must add, was the mode in which the occupants received our literary food. Not that they were rude, but so delighted were they with the pictures, and so eager to get the papers that contained them, that we found it hard work to hold our own. We had afterwards an opportunity of testing the value in money of this apparent eagerness for reading material. In former years I had always given both Scriptures and tracts. This year it was urged, and I think rightly, that it is better, when possible, to sell them. To offer them, however, for money to convicts seemed almost a mockery. Nevertheless we tried it, and requested the officer to let us know how many prisoners would like to give 2½_d._ for a copy of the New Testament, or the Book of Psalms. To my surprise he came at a subsequent stopping-place, bringing the money for 44 copies, and said that one man was in such haste to get his book that he had been to him three times to ask for it. As we proceeded on our course, and, looking back, saw the broad keel of the barge ploughing its way after us, one could not help feeling for its strange freight, and the many heavy hearts that were being tugged along further and further from the dear place called “home.” But such thoughts received little enlargement at the halting-places, when the barge was drawn up to the bank; for the hilarity thereon of men, women, and children was much more noisy than that of the free people on the steamer. One might have thought that the convicts were having a good time of it; and it had been observed to us at Tiumen, as a noteworthy remark, that although, of the 800 prisoners on board, probably 250 would be murderers, nevertheless 20 soldiers would suffice to control them. They had a considerable amount of freedom on the barge, though they could not go, of course, indiscriminately to whatever part of the vessel they pleased.
At one of the halting-places we dropped a Polish exile, a doctor. He was the same man we had seen with his little comforts in the prison at Tobolsk. He was not on the barge, but travelled, as such prisoners usually do, on the steamer, as a second-class passenger, in a cabin near ours, with a gendarme who kept him, and who, we had opportunities of observing, never allowed him to go for a moment out of his sight. We had ingratiated ourselves into the gendarme’s favour by giving him books, as we had given also to the soldiers, passengers, and all on board, and we wished to chat with the prisoner; but his guard was faithful to his duty, and would not suffer him to be spoken to. When it was time for the prisoner to go on shore, he walked erect out of his cabin, dressed in private clothes, wearing shaded spectacles, and smoking a cigar. But he was landed at a miserable place on the 62nd parallel, where, at the beginning of June, the leaves were not out, and it had not ceased occasionally to snow; at a village where an educated man could, I presume, find little agreeable society or congenial occupation. His hair was already grey, and as he sat upon his little stock of clothes, with the gendarme standing near, and watching our ship as it glided away, we felt we had left him in a sorry place in which to spend his declining years. We heard that he had a second time incurred punishment, by trying to escape from Nertchinsk. But it was a melancholy illustration of the meaning of Siberian exile.
The distance from Tobolsk to Tomsk by water is 1,600 miles, which we accomplished in 8 days. We overtook more than one freight steamer, but saw few other vessels, and no timber rafts. The banks were low and flat, and houses of rare occurrence. On the second day from Tobolsk we stopped at Samarova, where the Irtish runs into the Obi; and on the third day we stopped at Surgut, a place of 1,200 inhabitants. Three days later we touched at Narim, which has a population of 2,000.
We did not land sufficiently near to any of these towns to allow of a visit, and the steamer picked up and set down few passengers. Herds of half-wild horses were seen from time to time on the prairies. They were not shod, were unfamiliar with the taste of oats, and had in the summer to find their own living. In the winter they are used for the transport of dried and frozen fish. The natives have an ingenious way of catching fish through holes in the ice, especially in the case of the sturgeon, which in winter congregate in muddy hollows in the bed of the river, lying motionless in clusters for the sake of warmth. The Ostjak cuts a hole above them, sets a spring rod, and then forms a number of balls of clay, which he makes red hot and throws into the river below his bait. The heat rouses the sturgeon, which rise, swim up stream, and are caught. There are large fisheries in the gulfs of the Obi and the Taz, where the Russians pay rent for the sandbanks to the Samoyedes, and, having caught the fish in summer, they put them in ponds till the approach of winter. They are then taken out and frozen, and in this condition sent as fresh fish a journey of 2,000 miles to Petersburg.[1] A large quantity of dried fish is also forwarded from the Obi to the great fair of Nijni Novgorod. Furs and hides likewise are sent there from the northern part of the province, together with rye, barley, oats, and buckwheat from the south.
Nothing, however, that we saw on the banks was more interesting perhaps than the aborigines, especially the Ostjaks, some of whom appeared paddling in their tiny canoes, and stealthily gliding among the bushes as the steamer approached. The Ostjaks inhabit a tract of country on either side of the Irtish and Obi, extending as far north as Obdorsk, on the south to Tobolsk, and nearly as far east as Narim. There is also a territory over which they roam on the left bank of the Yenesei below Turukhansk, though Mr. Howorth thinks that these are miscalled Ostjaks, being really Samoyedes. Their numbers are estimated at 24,000. They have no towns or villages, though they sometimes settle among the Russians. We saw on the banks the frames of some of their yourts, or tents, though the people were just then driven by the floods to higher ground. In the neighbourhood of the Obi they possess no reindeer; their wealth consists of boats, fishing-tackle, clothes, and utensils; and a nomad Ostjak who possesses goods to the value of £10 is deemed a rich man. In this district they have ceased to wear their native costume; and are become more or less Russianized; but the Ostjaks of the Yenesei still dress in the costume of their forefathers. These people are short of stature, with dark hair and eyes, and flat faces; in complexion and general appearance those we saw were not much unlike some of the Siberians. They live principally by fishing and the chase, and are very skilful in the use of the bow. In shooting squirrels, for instance, they use a blunt arrow, and take care to hit the animal on the head, so as not to damage the fur.[2]
I had heard of these aboriginals, before leaving England, from Miss Alba Hellman in Finland, who thus writes of some of their marriage customs in expressive English: “The Ostjaks are carrying on the most shameless commerce with their daughters. A girl is a valuable thing while she is yet in her parents’ home. She then gets all possible care and protection. But is it therefore that she may be a good daughter, wife, or mother? By no means for that cause: an Ostjak father has the same object in his daughter’s feeding as he has in feeding his animals. Well fed, she will not long stay at home without the father getting good payment for her. The price of an ordinary wife was at the river Irtish (on the Obi the price is higher), first, from £20 to £30 in money; next, a horse, a cow, and an ox; then from 7 to 10 pieces of clothing; and lastly, a pood of meal, a few hops, and a measure of brandy for the wedding feast. And when a man cannot afford to pay all these things, he often steals the girl. So says Professor Castrén.”
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The fish of the Obi are generally pike, perch, bleak, and a kind of red mullet, and are of less importance than the migratory fish from the sea. These are chiefly the sturgeon, the nelma, and muksum, several kinds of salmon, and the herring. In the first weeks of June, when the ice breaks up, they commence their ascent of the river, avoiding the rapid parts, the quick swimmers soon getting ahead of the rest: 30 miles below Obdorsk they form shoals, and have all passed in a week, by which time, 150 miles higher, the quickest salmon arrive. The nelma comes two days later, but the sturgeon not till five days afterwards. Erman reckons this annual migration of fish to be at the lowest computation 26,000,000.
[2] Their bows are 6 feet long, with a diameter of an inch and a quarter in the middle, and are made of a slip of birch joined by fish-glue to a piece of hard pine-wood. The arrows are 4 feet long, the head consisting of either a ball for shooting small fur animals, or an iron spear-like head for killing larger game. The bows are exceedingly powerful, and the archers wear on the left forearm a strong bent plate of horn to deaden the blow of the string. We heard of feats of archery accomplished by them which far outdo the traditional deed of William Tell. Our captain told a lady on board that on one occasion he saw an Ostjak mark an arrow in the middle with a piece of charcoal and discharge it in the air, whilst a second man, before it reached the ground, shot at the descending shaft and struck it on the mark.
Chapter XI
TOMSK.
The province of Tomsk.--The city of Tomsk.--Visit to the Governor.--The prison.--Institution for prisoners’ children.--A Lutheran minister.--Finnish colonies in Siberia.--Their pastoral care.--Dissuaded from visiting Minusinsk.--Distribution of Finnish books.--Détour to Barnaul.
The province of Tomsk is, in some respects, the most favoured in Siberia. It is not so huge and unwieldy as some of the others, and does not, like its two neighbours of Tobolsk and Yeneseisk, extend to the Frozen Sea; but, beginning on the 62nd parallel for its northernmost boundary, it continues southward as far as the borders of Mongolia, from which it is separated by the Altai mountains. The climate is good, and the land is valuable for agricultural purposes, while the mountainous districts are exceedingly rich in minerals.[1]
The city of Tomsk is situated on the river Tom, whence it derives its name, and has a population of 30,000. Its streets are wide but steep, and in the centre of the town is a good specimen of that prominent feature in so many Russian towns--a Gostinnoi Dvor (bazaar or market). It is an aggregation of shops and open spaces, to which the stranger is constantly sent for anything he may require. If a countrywoman has butter or milk to sell, she takes up her position there; so do hucksters with small wares. Larger establishments are to be found elsewhere, but the Gostinnoi Dvor of a Russian town contains a concentration of goods that supplies all wants. Many of the houses at Tomsk are of brick; it boasts of several hotels, two banks, and two photographers. In a distant part of the town is an imposing building, the law courts, etc., also a large church or cathedral, which is still unfinished.
We called upon M. Sooproonenko, the Governor, who was very obliging, and sent us at once to see the two prisons, in one of which criminals are kept, whilst in the other they only stay whilst passing through to their destinations. The condition of prison affairs in Tomsk showed that there was an active local committee. The jail in which criminals are permanently confined is a heavy brick building, with low, vaulted corridors, in which prisoners may be kept for terms varying from one month to four years. The authorities complained that in winter it is damp. This was one of the few prisons where there was a school, which such prisoners as chose might attend; but out of 640, when we were there, only 30 did so. Among those confined was an old man who had been condemned to hard labour further east, but on his way his penalty had been mitigated, and he allowed to stay at Tomsk. There was some little show of work going on in the shoemakers’, carpenters’, and blacksmiths’ shops; but the great mass of the prisoners was herded in rooms where they had nothing to do. When invited by the Governor to point out any defects I had noticed, I mentioned, first, that I thought all should work. He replied that they have no laws to compel them (I presume he spoke of a certain class of prisoners), and that the severest punishment they are allowed to inflict is three days’ solitude with bread and water. We saw so many prisons in Siberia in which the majority of the prisoners had nothing to do, that the sight became wearisome; and when the authorities told us that they could not find them work, I was vain enough inwardly to say, “It strikes me that I could.” But on reaching San Francisco, I altered my mind when inspecting a prison managed on modern principles, where they can manufacture in a day more than a thousand doors, to say nothing of hundreds of other articles of wood, leather, iron, and I know not what; and yet, even there, they had men condemned to hard labour twirling their thumbs for want of a job. The difficulty of employing a large number of Siberian convicts is vastly enhanced by the difficulty and the expense of the carriage of raw materials, and the comparatively small demand for manufactured articles.
Our distribution of books was highly appreciated at Tomsk, and one prisoner gave me in return a paper-knife he had made, for which he would accept no money. In the underground storehouse we saw quass in huge vats worthy of an abbot’s cellar, and large receptacles for sour cabbage, of which the Russians make soup. The cabbage is salted in September and pressed, and in ten days is ready for use. The store contained also a large number of tongues, which cost on the spot from 2_d._ to 6_d._ each. In one of the wards, the men who formed the church choir asked permission to sing us a hymn, which they did very creditably.
The most pleasing part of our visit, however, was that made to an adjoining building within the prison grounds--an institution for the children of prisoners and of the poor, which had been built by the local committee. The matron apologized that they were not in holiday trim, but the place was as neat and clean as could be. We called in the afternoon. The girls had an English sewing-machine, and were busy at work, whilst some were embroidering elaborate initials in the corners of handkerchiefs, to the orders of ladies in the town. Some of the boys were learning shoemaking, whilst others were taught to be of use in waiting on the doctors in the prisoners’ hospital. Such progress do some of them make that one boy had recently left the school to go to help a doctor at the gold-mines, for which he was to receive his board and lodging, and £30 a year. There are certain funds in connection with the institution, by means of which the girls, on leaving to go out to service, receive various gifts up to about £50; and with this, one of the committee told us, they not unfrequently take away an education which makes them better informed than their Siberian mistresses.
Before we had been many hours in Tomsk we discovered an English lady, with whom and her husband we dined, and who told us that a certain Finnish pastor--Roshier, who had been named to me in my Finnish correspondence--was staying in the town. We therefore sought him out to ask advice concerning the whereabouts and the mode of approach to some of the Finnish colonies which I was anxious to visit.
The reader will perhaps wonder how there come to be Finnish colonies in Siberia at all. Often when a Finnish prisoner is condemned to a certain term of imprisonment in his own country, he petitions the Grand Duke, who is the Emperor of Russia, to send him instead to Siberia as a colonist, and the request is usually granted. I recollect meeting a young man at Wiborg, in the castle prison, in 1874, who told me that, rather than serve for three years as a convict in the town of his birth, he had asked to be allowed to go to Siberia. The Finns do not usually speak Russian. Consequently, on arriving in Siberia, they are quasi-foreigners, and, accordingly, are not scattered hither and thither, but put together in villages with Lithuanian, Esthonian, Lettish, and other convicts from the Baltic provinces. Of this nature are the colonies I wished to visit near Omsk, called Ruschkova and Jelanka, each with 400 inhabitants, and near to which are four villages, bearing the home-names of Riga, Reval, Narva, and Helsingfors. Another colony of a similar kind is Werchne Sujetuk, about 50 miles south of Minusinsk.[2] Pastor Roshier had been settled there for 15 years, and was returning home. The Finnish Government were looking out for one to fill his place, to whom they offered a stipend of £150 per annum; but when I heard from Mr. Roshier that he had not conversed with an educated fellow-countryman for 10 years, that he could speak no Russian, and that his dwelling had been in the midst of convicts only, I was not surprised to hear that the Finnish Government had a difficulty in finding a successor.
For my own part, it had been my intention certainly to turn aside to Werchne Sujetuk, thinking to go across country to Minusinsk, return by raft on the Yenesei, or by road, to Krasnoiarsk, and there await the arrival of the remainder of our luggage--plans which a better knowledge of the country afterwards taught me were visionary indeed. When we did subsequently arrive at Krasnoiarsk, we found persons who, on account of the floods, had been waiting a fortnight to go to Minusinsk.[3] The remainder, however, of our baggage was not yet come from Tiumen, and could not arrive for a week; so we agreed meanwhile to make a détour to Barnaul. There we should find a prison, and another in the same direction, at Biisk, to which we could send; priests and people would be benefited by the way; and we hoped to see the Emperor’s usine for the smelting of gold and silver. This looked more inviting, even though it involved a journey of 700 miles, than loitering at Tomsk for a week. We were now to begin tarantass travelling in earnest, which I think had better be once for all described, partly for the benefit of the uninitiated, who may possibly become Siberian travellers, and partly that the reader may not be wearied hereafter by a too frequent recurrence to the same topic.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] It is the most populous province of Siberia after that of Tobolsk, and contains 838,000 inhabitants. Another reference to Hoppe’s Almanack shows the vast preponderance of its rural population over that of other provinces, and shows also a large population of the upper classes, many of whom, doubtless, are descendants of noble exiles. In 1875 the number of hereditary nobles in the province was 2,400; ecclesiastical persons, 4,000; town population, 4,400; and rural population, 725,000; whilst the military forces numbered 30,000; foreigners, 48; and the mixed races (chiefly Tatars, Teleuti, and Altai Kalmuks) numbered 130,000, the population being spread over an area of half a million square miles--a territory bigger than any two countries in Europe except Russia. The government is divided into six uyezds. It has seven prisons and four large hospitals. The principal towns are Barnaul, Kainsk, Biisk, Kuznetsk, Mariinsk, Narim, and Tomsk, which last is the capital and residence of the Governor.
[2] Since 1850, it appeared, 541 persons have been sent there, of whom 142 are dead; 20 for fresh crimes were transported further east, and 80 have disappeared--probably run away to live by pilfering and plunder. Some of the last-named possibly have been killed by the Russians and buried; for when the peasants catch men of this kind doing them mischief, so far off are the courts, and so difficult is the bringing of witnesses, that they take the law into their own hands, and put the malefactors to death. In all, there should be now 547 persons living at Werchne Sujetuk, including 358 Finns. But about 300 live away at the gold-mines, and so it comes to pass that not more than 10 or 12 families reside there regularly.
[3] Apart from and in addition to these difficulties, however, there were other considerations that dissuaded me from going--such as the small number of Finns I should find, my ignorance of their language, their not being in particular need of books, and the offer of the pastor to enclose mine in a parcel he was sending to the catechist he had left in charge. All this caused me to listen to what proved good advice, and instead of going, I determined to send about a third of my books by the pastor. When further east, I elected to go home through America, consequently another third of my books was sent to the Lutheran pastor at Omsk. Some were left also for the Lutheran pastor at Irkutsk; and I gave the remainder to various prisons and persons for the Finns in the east.
Chapter XII
SIBERIAN POSTING.
Travelling by post-horses.--The courier, crown, and ordinary podorojna.--The tarantass.--Packing.--Harness.--Horses.-- Roads.--Pains and penalties.--Crossing rivers.--Cost.--Speed.-- Post-houses.--Meat and drink.
When you purpose to travel “post” in Russia, your first business is to get a podorojna, or permit, of which there are three kinds. The first is a “courier’s” podorojna, which is used by passengers travelling in hot haste upon important--generally Government--business. Each post-master reserves three horses in case a courier should arrive, in which event only a certain number of minutes is allowed for changing the horses, and away goes the courier at breathless speed. Not long before my visit an exile, condemned to the east, had reached the city of Tomsk, a distance of nearly 3,000 miles from the capital, when, for some reason, his presence was required by the authorities in Petersburg. They telegraphed, therefore, that he was to be brought back couriersky; whereupon he was placed between two gendarmes, and then over the stones they rattled the bones of that unfortunate man, till in 11 days they brought him to his destination. This sort of podorojna is reserved for special messengers and persons of importance; but, after hearing the foregoing story, I came to the conclusion that it is not every one who would appreciate the privilege of travelling couriersky.
Number 2 is a “crown” podorojna, recognised by post-boys who cannot read by its having two seals. This is not paid for, and is usually given to officers and persons on Government service, and sometimes to favoured private individuals. The bearer crosses bridges and ferries free, and need not pay for greasing his wheels; but its great advantage is that, when there is a lack of horses, the owner of a crown podorojna has a preferential claim. Podorojna number 3 is that used by ordinary travellers, for which at the outset you have to pay, by way of tax, a trifling amount per verst, according to the distance you intend to travel.
And now, having secured your podorojna, your next concern is for a vehicle. If you simply take that to which your podorojna entitles you, it will be a roofless, seatless, springless, semi-cylindrical tumbril, mounted on poles which connect two wooden axletrees, and out of this at every station you will have to shift yourself and your baggage. This is called travelling pericladnoi. From such a fate, gentle reader, may you be delivered! No, better buy a conveyance of your own. The vehicle I have alluded to is called by the general name of tarantass. The one you will purchase, though in many respects similar, and by some called also a tarantass, will be dignified by the post-boys with the appellation of an “equipage.” Like the other, it will be mounted on poles for springs, but the axles and body of the carriage will be of iron, and it will have a seat for the driver, and a hood, with a curtain and apron, under which you may sit by day and wherein you can sleep by night. The equipage may cost you from £20 to £30, and, if given to mercantile transactions, you may consider on the way how much you will gain or lose (for that is possible) by the sale of your vehicle at the end of the journey. A third way is to get a vehicle from one who--having come to Tomsk, for instance, to proceed to Russia--wishes his carriage taken back to Irkutsk. It was our good fortune to borrow the two we used, one being kindly lent by Mr. Oswald Cattley.
The packing of the vehicle requires nothing short of a Siberian education. Avoid boxes as you would the plague! The edges and corners will cruelly bruise your back and legs. Choose rather flat portmanteaus and soft bags, and spread them on a layer of hay at the bottom of the tarantass. Then put over them a thin mattress, and next a hearth-rug. When we entered Tiumen, women besieged us with these hearth-rugs, as I thought them. Not knowing what they were for, I could not conceive what they meant by such conduct. Had my companion been a lady, I should have deemed that they thought us on a bridal trip, and about to set up housekeeping. But I was innocent of all such devices, and chased the women away. When it was discovered what the carpets were for, I regretted not having bought one. Next, put at the back of the carriage two or more pillows of the softest down, for which please send on your order in advance, because these must be bought as opportunity offers. If a housewife has finished the manufacture of a down pillow she wishes to sell, she will bring it into Ekaterineburg to market; but, if you want such a thing on a given day, you may search the town and not get one.
You may now get in, cover your legs with a rug, and watch them harness the horses. Siberian post-horses are sorry objects to look at, but splendid creatures to go. A curry-comb probably never touches their coats; but, under the combined influence of coaxing, scolding, screaming, and whip, they attain a pace which in England would be adjudged as nothing short of “furious driving.” They are smaller than English horses, but much hardier, and are driven two, three, four, or even five or more, abreast. The Russian harness is a complicated affair, the most noticeable feature being the douga, or arched bow, over the horse’s neck. To the foreigner this looks a needless incumbrance, but the Russian declares that it holds the whole concern together. The rods are fastened to the ends of the bow, and the horse’s collar in turn to the shafts, so that the collar remains a fixture, against which the horse is obliged to push. The shafts are supported by a saddle and pad on the back, and do not touch the horse’s body. The centre horse only is in rods; those on either side, how many soever they be, are called a “pair,” and are merely attached by ropes. If you have been wise, you have bought at the Gostinnoi Dvor about 20 yards of inch-rope to go all round the back of the vehicle, and to which are attached the two outer horses. The post-men are supposed to supply such a rope, but theirs are often thin and rotten. It is well, too, to take several fathoms of half-inch rope. One of the wheels may become rickety, and threaten to fall to pieces, in which case the rope will be needed to interlace the spokes. A third supply should be laid in of still smaller cord, in case of spraining a pole or the rods. Do not forget to purchase besides a hatchet. All these we took, and more than all were wanted.
When the driver, or yemstchik, has taken his seat, the horses will not stay a minute. Indeed, in some districts, the horses’ heads are held while the driver mounts, and, when freed, they start with a bound. And now begin your pains and penalties!
When, at Nijni Tagilsk, we descended by ladders 600 feet into a copper-mine, and came up in the same manner, we were warned that on the following day we should be terribly stiff; but I aver that the consequences were as nothing compared with those of the first day’s travelling by tarantass. The roughness of the roads and the lack of springs combine to cause a shaking up, the very remembrance of which is painful. Let the reader imagine himself about to descend a hill at the foot of which is a stream, crossed by a corduroy bridge of poles. The ordinary tarantass has no brake, the two outer horses are in loose harness, and the one in rods has no breeching. The whole weight of the machine, therefore, is thrown on his collar, and the first half of the hill is descended as slowly as may be. But the speed soon increases, first because the rod-horse cannot help it, and next because an impetus is desired to carry you up the opposite hill. All three horses, therefore, begin to pull, and, long before the bridge is reached, you are going at a flying pace, and everybody has to “hold on.” The bridge is approached, and now comes the excruciating moment. Most likely--almost to a certainty--the rain has washed away the earth a good six inches below the first timber of the bridge, against which bump! go your fore-wheels, and thump! go your hind ones; whilst fare and driver are alike shot up high into the air. I have a lively recollection of these ascents, some of which were so high that, when travelling from Archangel to Lake Onega, we had the hood removed, lest our skulls should strike the top. Happily, all roads are not so perilously rough, and, briefly to summarize my experience of them, I should say that those of Tobolsk and Tomsk are muddy, causing the yemstchiks, when possible, to avoid them--to go into lanes and by-ways, over hillocks and fallen timber, and down into holes and ditches, all of which give variety to the route. The Yeneseisk roads deserve nothing but praise; they are well kept, and would be reckoned good in England. The Irkutsk ways deteriorate, and those beyond Baikal are worse than all; for the Buriat yemstchiks drive you furiously over hillocks, rocks, and stones.
Nor are roads the only things to be traversed; there are numerous streams and rivers--some with bridges, but more without. Through some of these your horses simply walk; on others there is a well-kept ferry, upon which you and your carriage are drawn or rowed. On one occasion our vehicle was put on the ferry, and the horses made to swim the stream. It sometimes happens, however, especially in early spring, that the ice or floods have carried away or damaged the ferry, and a flat-bottomed boat is temporarily substituted. In this manner we crossed the Tom. The tarantass was lifted by degrees into the boat, one wheel at a time. The boat was only just wide enough to take the vehicle, and we were advised to let down the hood, lest the wind should blow us over. This was about the only time I felt nervous, and I confess being thankful when we safely reached the opposite shore.
The cost of these pleasures of travel is not so great in Siberia as might be supposed. In the western division, where pasture is abundant, the hire of each horse is only about a halfpenny per mile. In Eastern Siberia the fare is exactly double. Horses are changed about every ten or fifteen miles, and each new driver looks for a gratuity, euphemistically called “money for tea.” On the amount of the “tip” depends your speed. Ten kopecks are often given, but we found fifteen put the boys in better humour, and we made from 100 to 130 miles a day. Two hundred versts in a day and night, for summer travelling, is considered good, and we sometimes did it; but given a Russian merchant, bound for a fair, where his early arrival will give him command of the market, and then a “tip” of, say, a rouble a stage will in winter get him over 300 versts, or 200 miles a day. It is common to hear Siberians boast of quick journeys made thus, but they are usually attained only at cruel cost to the horses. The reader may judge what speed can be made from a story told us at Tiumen of a Governor-General of Eastern Siberia, whom the late Emperor, some 12 winters ago, required on an emergency at Petersburg, a distance from Irkutsk of 3,700 miles. The General was put in a bear’s skin, wrapped up like a bundle, placed in a sledge, and in 11 days was brought to the capital. Several horses dropped dead on the way, an ear was cut from each as a voucher, and the journey continued. When governors of provinces travel, they are supplied with the best horses in the villages, and sometimes have them changed at the half stage, so as to spare the animals whilst securing extra speed.
Having said this much about the vehicles, horses, and roads, the reader may wonder how it fares with the traveller in the matters of lodging and board, which brings me to the subject of post-houses. These, like the post-horses, are the property of the Government, and are of very varied quality, from the best--which have all the appearance and the comfort of a roomy, well-established English farm-house or country inn--to the worst, which are little better than hovels. Certain features, however, are common to them all. On one side of the door, as you enter, will be found the room in which the post-folks and their children live, and on the other will be one or more rooms reserved for travelling guests. The guests’ room will never contain less than the following articles: a table, a chair, a candlestick, a bed, or rather a bench--padded, if in a good house, but of bare boards in the humbler ones--an ikon or sacred picture, a looking-glass, and sundry framed notices. One of these notices is a tariff of meat and drink--not that you are to suppose for a moment that any amount of money would purchase the luxuries named thereon, but the Government makes every post-master take out a victualler’s licence, and named thereupon are the prices which he would charge for the delicacies IF HE HAD THEM! No--bed and board are the rub of Siberian travel. You may safely rely upon getting at any station a supply of boiling water, and probably some black bread; but beyond this all is uncertainty. In Western Siberia milk and eggs are plentiful and cheap--the latter a farthing each; and everywhere, if you arrive at dinner-time, there is a chance of getting some meat, which you may or may not be able to eat. The fact is, you must take your own provisions, and for this winter is better than summer, because then you have simply to freeze your meat and chop off a piece with your hatchet when required. It is easy, moreover, to start with a stock of frozen meat pies, one of which, thrown in hot water, is eatable in a few minutes; and so with lumps of frozen cream. Tea and sugar are carried, of course, by every traveller in Russia; and to these were added a small quantity of tinned meat, fresh butter, anchovy paste, and marmalade--the last two as qualifiers in case we were reduced to black bread. These things, with a stock of white bread taken from the larger towns, formed a base, for which we were thankful. If anything better fell in the way, it was so much to the good; if white bread and butter failed, then we hoped for improved circumstances. These remarks apply, of course, to the hundreds of miles of country between the towns. In the towns we fared comparatively well. Such are some of the features of tarantass travel for which we prepared ourselves at Tomsk. What occurred will be related in its proper place.
Chapter XIII
FROM TOMSK SOUTHWARDS.
Application for horses.--Effect of Petersburg letter.--A false start.--A horse killed.--Attempted cooking.--Siberian weather.--Meteorology.--Scenery.--Trees, plants, and flowers.--An elementary school.--Education in Western Siberia.
Though our journey to Barnaul took place quite early in our posting career, it was by no means devoid of incident. On Thursday, June 12th, we sent for a “troika” of horses at noon, and were coolly told by the postal authorities that we could have them towards midnight. Now the chief of their department at Petersburg had favoured me with a special letter, addressed to the post-masters on our route, enjoining them to help me, and requesting that I might be delayed as little as possible. We had been favoured likewise with a crown podorojna. This latter had been presented, but to no purpose; and it seemed a clear case for bringing our heavy artillery into action. We presented, therefore, the postal letter, and the effect was magical. Before the official had half read it, he sprang to his feet, eyed me respectfully, bustled off to his chief, and, speedily returning, promised the horses in an hour. They appeared punctually, and we started “troika” fashion--that is, three horses driven abreast. Unfortunately, however, the starosta, or man in charge of the postal yard, could not read our podorojna, and he took it for granted that we wished to go towards Krasnoiarsk, and told the yemstchik to drive us thither. Nor was it till we had run some dozen miles or more that it was discovered we were not on the road to Barnaul. We had, of course, to retrace our steps to Tomsk, and then we heard that it was not the first time this starosta had sent off travellers in the wrong direction. The mistake in our case had caused the extra expenditure of eighteen pennyworth of horse-flesh, and I thought it right to visit the loss of this sum on the starosta for the benefit of future travellers as well as our own. I therefore declined to pay for the privilege of having been taken out of our way, and left the starosta to settle with the post-master.
Making a fresh start, we found ourselves by nightfall near the river Tom. The ordinary road was under water, and the banks of the stream were so flooded that we were obliged to take a cross-country road leading some 25 miles out of the way; and as it went over hill and dale, and almost “hedges and ditches,” we were advised to stay till morning. But we pushed on, crossed the river at daybreak, and at the third station, in the direction of the Barabinsky steppe, turned southwards, and travelled well till Saturday evening, when, on stopping awhile to rest the horses, one of them dropped and died upon the spot. We were pulling the creature off the road--one having hold of a leg, another of her tail, and so on--when the remaining horses, as if indignant at such conduct, rushed over the bank, and tore away with the tarantass into the forest. Some of us pursued, and fortunately caught and brought them back without further harm. The loss of a horse is more serious in Eastern than in Western Siberia, where people have herds of horses worthy of patriarchs. One lady told me that her husband possessed from 4,000 to 5,000 horses, and about as many cows. Pasturage is abundant, and horse-flesh is cheap. Our horse was reckoned a good one, and valued at £4 10_s._ The post-master could claim nothing from us for its loss, and thanked us warmly for 10_s._ towards repairing his damage. As we went along we saw large herds of mares with their foals, turned loose for the summer in company with a single horse to guard them. Should danger approach, in the form of a wild beast for instance, the stallion drives all the mares within a circle with their heels outwards, and the foals in the centre, whilst he stamps the ground with rage and dares the wolf to come within reach of their hoofs.
When we reached the last river we had to cross, which at ordinary times was probably not half a mile wide, we found it so flooded that the ferry-boat had a journey of more than five miles. This took a long while, and, when returning, we thought to save time by eating a meal on the water. In my luncheon-basket is a “Rob Roy” cuisine, with a view to the using of which, before leaving England, I took an evening’s cooking lesson. I was now anxious to demonstrate to the Russians that it was possible to make a cup of tea without the aid of a samovar. We therefore commenced operations, there being on board not only our own three horses, but half-a-dozen others with their drivers and tarantasses. The great advantage of this cuisine is that, whereas a puff of wind may extinguish an ordinary spirit-lamp, the “Rob Roy,” by setting fire to the steam of the spirit, burns so furiously that a hurricane will not blow it out. It makes, however, a considerable roar; and when matters reached this stage, not only were all the natives surprised, but the horses began so to kick and to plunge that we feared an upset. One of the drivers said his horse was 30 years old, and had never heard such a noise in his life! So, for the general safety of all on board, I packed up my kitchen and had to forego the tea.
Hitherto our Siberian tour had been highly enjoyable. South of Tomsk the weather was charming, and the new spring vegetation lovely. A question that has been repeatedly put to me since my return to England is, “Did you not find it very cold in Siberia?” It may be well, therefore, that this question should here be answered. Snow fell on the night we entered the country, and the ground next morning, May 29th, was white; but the snow disappeared after an hour or two, and we saw no more for some days. By the 5th of June we reached on the Obi a latitude 100 miles north of Petersburg, where the buds had not yet opened, nor had the winter floods subsided. I heard subsequently that the opening of spring had come that year unusually early in Petersburg, and exceptionally late in Siberia, where the ice usually breaks up at Tobolsk at the end of April. On the 6th of June we had snow, and the trees on the banks had little verdure till we reached Tomsk on the 9th, after which fine weather set in, and was followed by almost uninterrupted sunshine till the beginning of autumn. The summer climate, therefore, of those parts of Siberia through which I passed I consider simply delightful--neither oppressively hot by day nor unpleasantly cold by night.
Before leaving England, my neighbour, Mr. Glaisher the meteorologist, had urged me to take a few instruments for the purpose of making observations, and had kindly lent me for the journey a valuable unmounted thermometer. I took, besides, an aneroid barometer, a compass, an anemometer, maximum and minimum thermometers, and two others. With these instruments I felt very much like a boy leaving home on a summer morning with excellent fishing tackle, and bent on taking nothing less than trout. When returning, I felt that I had brought back minnows. On my first night out, at Cologne, my apparatus was duly exposed from the hotel window, and on reaching Petersburg I climbed daily to the top of the hotel to measure the velocity of the wind. At the copper-mine at Nijni Tagilsk I was resolved on being very learned, and took my instruments to test the temperature of springs and the velocity of air currents. But, alas! I broke my thermometer, and, having reached the bottom of the mine, had forgotten, when undressing, to take my watch. On the Obi I was able to take a few observations, but it was impossible to continue this during posting journeys; and further on I broke my minimum thermometer, after which I abandoned hope of attaining meteorological distinction.[1]
The journey to Barnaul revealed to us beauties of scenery and vegetation for which we were hardly prepared after the flat and leafless districts through which we had been passing. The landscape now became undulating, and the traveller who passes further south to Biisk, and beyond, approaches the regions of the Altai chain, which are spoken of as well worth seeing.[2] The grass between Tomsk and Barnaul was remarkable, and the further south we went the more luxuriant it became. Much of the flora was familiar, but we were now introduced to a good many trees, shrubs, plants, and flowers, found more or less in the country west of Irkutsk, that were new to us. The most prominent of the trees was the white-barked birch, justly called the “lady of the forest.” We saw also the cedar-nut tree, the pitch pine, the larch, the flowering acacia, spruce fir, and alder, the white-pine, willow, lime, Siberian poplar, laburnum, and white-flowering cheriomkha--the last a beautiful object when in blossom, and yielding for fruit a small bird cherry. Among the shrubs appeared the white hawthorn, and an abundance of wild red currants, which, like bird cherries, are eaten by the people--the latter being made into bread and cakes, and, in common with other fruits, put into brandy to make naliphka. These fruits are very sour as compared with the English kinds. Strawberry and raspberry plants abounded, though we did not get our first plate of wild strawberries till 11th July. In autumn, numerous berries are plentiful, such as cranberries (called klukva), bilberries, cowberries, bearberries, stoneberries, the mountain ash berry, and the Arctic bramble. All these are found, too, in European Russia, north of Petersburg, the last having a blossom like a single rose, a strawberry leaf, and a fruit resembling the English blackberry. In summer, strawberries and raspberries are the best fruits within reach of the Siberian traveller until he reaches the southern region of the Amur. Among the spring flowers we missed (or perhaps overlooked) the pale primrose; but violets are found, also sweet-williams, daisies, foxgloves, rich camomile flowers, the wild rose, crocus, lily of the valley, and many others. The fields were actually blue with forget-me-nots. We noticed also on this journey what was to me a new plant, bearing an orange flower something like a buttercup, but very much larger, and of which there were many. Also east of Tomsk we saw a large red lily, made much of in English gardens, but which here was growing wild; also, in great abundance, a red flower very much like the peony.
On the road to Barnaul, at a place called Medvedsky, is an elementary school, to which, in returning, we paid a visit, and so were brought into contact with village education.[3] There were in attendance 32 boys and girls, of ages varying from 6 to 16, most of whom came from distant places (some 30 miles off), and lodged in the village. Only 8 were from the immediate neighbourhood. Adults sometimes attend the school, in which the education is free, the school being supported by the commune or mir. The scholars attend daily from 8 o’clock till 2, after which hour some of them learn bookbinding. Sundays and saints’ days are holidays, but the children are required to be every Sunday at church. There was a priest in the room giving instruction. I asked the children some Scripture questions, but was poorly answered. Many of the children, however, jumped at the opportunity of purchasing a New Testament for 1¼_d._, and we left a supply for them. The master wished the boys to be examined in arithmetic, whereupon, among other questions, I asked them, “What two numbers multiplied together make 7?” They knitted their brows as if making a great effort--and even the master’s countenance seemed to betray that he thought the question too difficult. All laughed heartily, however, when, on giving it up, I told them that the factors were 7 and 1. The master lived in an adjoining part of the house; and in this far-off place I observed on the wall of the schoolmaster’s room, as I had seen on that of one of the prison officials at Tiumen, an English engraving of the portrait of Professor Darwin. The schoolmaster said I was the first Englishman he had seen, gladly purchased some of our books, and thanked us for our visit.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] My scientific attempts brought me in contact with some pleasant people; notably Captain Rykatcheff, of the Observatory in Petersburg, and with others at Moscow, Ekaterineburg, Tomsk, etc.; at all of which places they have observatories, that near Petersburg being, I was told, in some respects better than ours at Greenwich. The Russians take considerable pains in collecting data from 103 stations throughout the Empire, of which 14 are in Siberia, namely: at Omsk, Akmolinsk, Semipolatinsk, Tomsk, Barnaul, Kuznetsk, Yeneseisk, Turukhansk, Irkutsk, Kiakhta, Nertchinsk mines, Blagovestchensk, Nikolaefsk, and Vladivostock. The Russians have an observatory also in China, at Peking; and I think I heard of some new ones established on the Obi. They register thrice daily--at seven, one, and nine--the readings of the barometer, the dry and wet bulb thermometers giving the temperature and humidity of the atmosphere, the direction of the wind, and the amount of clouds, rain, snow, etc.; and these statistics are collected and published at Petersburg with a fulness which exceeds, I am told, anything that we do in poor England. I was presented with the Report for 1877 (the last then published)--a great volume of 600 pages. It will be from this source that I shall from time to time air before the reader my meteorological learning. Tomsk was the first of the Siberian stations at which we arrived, where the maximum temperature of the year rose, at one o’clock on the 6th August, to 106°.9, and the minimum temperature, 83°.2 below zero, occurred on Christmas Day. At Barnaul, some 200 miles south, it was a little hotter and a little colder, the maximum being 107°.8, and the minimum 84°.8 below zero. On the Sunday we spent there, June 15th, the temperature was the hottest we had experienced up to that time in Siberia; and we heard it is so cold in winter that small birds sometimes drop dead in the streets.
[2] The entire Altai system extends in a serpentine line, and under various names, from the Irtish to Behring Strait. The breadth of the chain varies from 400 to 1,000 miles. Its entire length is about 4,500 miles, but it is only to the portion west of Lake Baikal that the term Altai is applied. This part consists of a succession of terraces with swelling outline, descending in steps from the high tableland, and terminating in promontories on the Siberian plains. On these terraces (some of them at great height) are numerous lakes. The ordinary tablelands are given as not more than 6,000 feet high, and as seldom covered with perpetual snow, though it is otherwise with the Korgan tableland, which reaches 9,900 feet; and the two pillars of Katunya, which are said to attain to nearly 13,000 feet above the sea level. At the western extremity of the chain are metalliferous veins, in which several important workings have been established since 1872.
[3] In the uyezd or district of Tiumen, which is one out of 9 in the province of Tobolsk, there are 24 schools; at Tobolsk we heard of 12 schools more. In the villages about Barnaul there are few schools, but there are some in the district of the mines and the works. In Tomsk are a few upper-class schools, as also at Tobolsk; and we met at Tomsk a school inspector. Further, from the Golos of 25th June, 1879 (old style), it appeared that the Russian Government had lately opened a classical school, or gymnase, at Omsk; a real, or commercial school, at Tomsk; and pro-gymnases, or preparatory classical schools for girls, at Tomsk and Barnaul. It was further stated that in 1878 there were in Western Siberia 22 upper-class schools, with an attendance of 3,200 scholars; and that other such schools were asked for at Semipolatinsk, Petropavlovsk, Kainsk, and Barnaul. In Western Siberia, in 1878, 546 schools of a lower class existed, numbering 15,000 scholars, of whom, however, the remarkable preponderance of 13,000 boys over 2,000 girls is startling. The Russians have had schools for some time for Kirghese boys, and they have two also for Kirghese girls; whilst, as observed before, they opened in 1879 a school at Obdorsk for the Ostjaks and Samoyedes.
Chapter XIV
BARNAUL.
Situation of town.--Cemetery.--Burial of the dead.--The Emperor’s usine.--Visit to Mr. Clark.--Visits to hospital and prison.--A recently-enacted tragedy.--Crime of the district.--Smelting of silver and gold.--Price of land and provisions.--Return to Tomsk.
We reached Barnaul very early on Sunday morning, having traversed, after leaving the flooded river Obi, a miniature Sahara, or desert of sand. Barnaul, like Tobolsk and Tomsk, lies at the foot of a hill. It has 13,000 inhabitants. On the top of the hill is a cemetery, which was the first we had met with; but it did not convey a favourable impression of Siberian burying-places. Indeed, I have not been greatly struck by Russian cemeteries, whether in Europe or in Asia, though on the graves of their emperors the Russians place monuments of considerable taste, which deserve to be placed in the same category with memorials of the departed such as those of Frederick William III. and his Queen at Charlottenburg, or the tomb of Napoleon in the Hotel des Invalides. But it is otherwise, as I have said, with average Russian tombs.[1]
From the cemetery at Barnaul are seen its half-dozen churches and a large building known as the Emperor’s usine, or gold and silver smelting works. Most of the business of the town is connected with mining; and many surveyors and engineers live in the adjacent mountains in summer, and in Barnaul in winter. The discovery of the precious metals in the Altai regions was made by one of the Demidoffs, who is said to have been sent there by Peter the Great. His monument in brass stands in the public square at Barnaul. We had an introduction to the manager of the usine, Mr. Clark, who is the son of an Englishman, and who reads but does not speak his father’s language. We found in his spacious house a good collection of English books, together with copies of the Nineteenth Century, the Graphic, All the Year Round, and the weekly edition of the Times. On the Sunday afternoon our host took us to visit the poor-house and the hospital. In this latter were 14 rooms, which had the advantage of being very lofty and airy, though they struck me as not particularly tidy.
In the 9 rooms of the prison were 120 criminals, one of whom, a day or two previously, had within the prison walls enacted a tragedy, the circumstances of which would furnish material for a sensational novel. The rooms of the prison are ranged on either side of a wide corridor, and in one of them was a number of women, one of whom had murdered her husband and was condemned to Eastern Siberia, to which she was on her way, though for some reason detained at Barnaul. In one of the male wards was a young man, formerly under-manager of a shop in the town, who had been suspected of stealing, and was imprisoned for three months. He had served out this time within a week; but during his stay in the prison he made the acquaintance of, and became more or less attached to, the murderess, holding conversation with her from the corridor during the time allowed for exercise. Another male prisoner was by these two taken into council, and the three determined to attempt an escape, by means of wooden keys which the men were to make. The plot, however, was discovered, and the woman, finding that she must proceed to her destination and leave her lover, tried to kill herself. But she was prevented. She therefore adopted another plan of ridding herself of life. In the door of the women’s chamber was an inspection-hole, unusually large. This she cut a little larger, thrust her head through into the corridor where the man was walking, and begged him, if he loved her, to take her life; upon which he took a knife, cut her throat, and so effectually killed her. We saw the stains of the blood still on the door, for the deed had been done only a day or two before our visit. Close at hand was the prisoner, placed in a separate and rather dark cell, and chained hand and foot--the only man I saw so chained in Siberia. As he walked out of his cell, I walked in, and found on the floor a quantity of cigarettes and a book of songs. Upon my pointing to the cigarettes, the officer said that the prisoners managed to smuggle them in; and then came out the old story, that this prisoner had managed also to smuggle in drink, under the influence of which he had committed this horrid murder. On asking what punishment he would be likely to receive, we were told that he would probably be condemned to hard labour for about 16 years; and we were further informed that in the small district of Barnaul, consisting of less than half the population of Liverpool, there are usually about 10 murders a year. As we went from room to room, the police-master introduced me to the prisoners as an Englishman travelling through Siberia who had brought them books, which usually elicited an expression of thanks. We left them a New Testament and papers for each room, doing the like also for the hospital and poor-house, and sending a supply for the prison at Biisk.
On Monday we went with Mr. Clark to see the Emperor’s usine, to which is brought mineral from Smirnagorsk, 200 miles distant, as well as from other parts of the Altai mountains, where are mines, the ore from which contains for the more part copper and silver. They find there but very little lead. Nor is the quantity of iron worked at all large--chiefly, I believe, for lack of capital and energy. In 1879 only 507 tons of iron were cast, and 238 tons wrought in the government of Tomsk. Many thousand poods of copper are obtained annually in the district, but not smelted at Barnaul. These mines are called the private mines of the Emperor, and the revenues belong to the Crown. In them are employed from 1,500 to 2,000 men (not, in this case, convicts), and the ore from the Altai regions is brought to be smelted to four different works for silver, and one for copper.
The smelting of silver is carried on at Barnaul all the year round. They burn charcoal, which costs 10_s._ a ton. The ore as brought from the mine is called mineral, and 4,000 tons of mineral yield 2 tons of silver--that is, 2,000 parts of ore yield one part of pure metal.[2]
We went from the usine to the museum, which could not fail to be interesting to a mining engineer or a geologist. There was a large and well-assorted collection of minerals; models of the principal Altai silver-mines, showing the shafts, adits, and galleries, with their machinery; models of gold-washing machines, of quartz mills, and of furnaces and works in various parts of Siberia. Among the natural curiosities of the museum were the stock of a tree, with branches that represented pretty accurately a man in a sitting posture; and a piece of wood, which, when split, had been found to contain a cross inside. In the ethnological department were some good costumes of the Kirghese and of a Tunguse shaman, or priest and priestess. They had also in another room an eagle’s nest, and several specimens of the Altai eagle; but in the zoological department the most remarkable specimen was the stuffed skin of a tiger killed in the southern part of the district, where this animal is usually unknown.
The price of land and provisions at Barnaul was such as might make many a man sigh to live there. The price for the hire of cleared black soil was 3½_d._ an English acre. We saw them scratching the surface of it (for their instrument was so shallow that it was a mockery to call it ploughing), and yet such farming yields there an abundant crop. They take just a little of their stable manure for cucumber beds, but burn the rest to get rid of it, never thinking of putting it on the land; but when they have used a field for a few years, and it is becoming exhausted, they take fresh ground. The cost of provisions in this fertile district is on a level with the prices quoted on the Obi. Black rye flour costs half-a-farthing per English pound; undressed wheat flour, such as we use for brown bread, costs 2_s._ per cwt.; whilst white wheaten flour costs up to 16_s._ for a sack of 180 pounds. The price of meat is similar. In the summer, when it will not keep and is dear, beef costs 1¼_d._ per lb.; but in winter, when it can be kept in a frozen condition, it sells for less than ½_d._ per English pound. Veal is more expensive, and costs 1½_d._; whilst aristocratic persons, who live on grouse, have to pay as much as from 2_d._ to 2½_d._ per brace. In this part of Siberia it is rare to find a peasant without a stock of horses and cows, and a man with a family to help him can make an excellent living. When I wrote, in April 1880, some letters to the Times on Siberian prisons, one gentleman said he thought there would be a rush thither, because I made things look so comfortable. In case, therefore, the quotation of these prices should tempt any of my readers to emigrate, I think it right to point out that in this district carriage is dear and labour is scarce, a workman earning 1_s._ 3_d._ a day, or, if provided with food, 6_s._ a month.
We should have liked well to have stayed longer in this part of the country, and to have made our way among the hordes south and west, in the provinces of Akmolinsk and Semipolatinsk, which contain a population of 10,000 and 9,000 respectively.[3] Our time, however, did not permit of our so doing; and therefore, after a very pleasant stay at Barnaul, and a final lunch with Mr. Clark, we bade our host adieu, and on Wednesday, June 18th, we re-entered Tomsk, where we found our luggage arrived, and for the carriage of which, by steamer, Mr. Ignatoff--to his liberality be it said--would make no charge. When I added this concession to the reduced rate we had paid on the Obi for our tarantass, our berths, and excess luggage--to say nothing of the personal attention shown on board to “Mr. Missionary,”--and all this without my having breathed a word as to charges, I thought it very handsome, and I gladly record this good deed spontaneously emanating from beneath the double-breasted coat of a Russian merchant.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] In the Russian Church there are five offices for the burial of the dead, namely, two for the laity, and one each for monks, priests, and children. The priest is sent for immediately after death, and performs a service. The rich usually have relays of priests to continue praying so long as the corpse remains in the house. Burials always take place in the morning. The corpse is taken into the church with the face uncovered, looking eastward, and before removal is kissed by the priest and relatives. At the grave the priest casts earth upon it. Further (though this is not ecclesiastically prescribed), the Russians have services for the dead at the grave, or at the church, on the third, the ninth, and the fortieth day, also on the anniversaries of the departed one’s death and birthday, the last two being continued for some persons for many years. They do not, however, believe in purgatory.
[2] The processes of smelting are three. The mineral is first powdered, and a handful taken to the assaying house. Here we saw a man making small crucibles of clay, at the rate of 1,000 a day. In two cups, one having bone in its composition, is put an ascertained quantity of the mineral: both are placed in the furnace, and the result shows what proportion of pure metal the mineral will yield. The powdered mineral is then taken to furnace No. 1, which is like an iron furnace, and from 20 to 30 feet high. Into this the mineral is put with charcoal, and, after remaining there about 12 hours, there comes out of the furnace a black compound of lead and silver called ruststein. The ruststein is then placed in furnace No. 2 with lead, and, after remaining there for a short time (three tons, for instance, for an hour), the silver is extracted by the lead, and the compound which comes out is called werchblei. This is put into furnace No. 3, where 16 tons would remain three days, with the result that the lead oxydizes into glot, and is run off, whilst the silver remains and sinks to the bottom of the furnace. It is then taken out in round cakes from 12 to 15 inches in diameter, and sent to Petersburg. The cakes we saw had a dull hue, very much resembling lumps of newly molten lead, and were valued at £3 6_s._ 8_d._ per pound.
A simpler process is the smelting of gold, carried on in a room about 20 feet square, having a tall furnace in the centre, in which are fires not much larger than those in a laundry copper. The gold is brought to the usine in dust and small nuggets, tied up in leather bags, and begins to arrive from the mines at the end of June. The smelting goes on to the end of October. Some of the leathern bags were shown to us, duly sealed, and with particulars written thereon. One, about the size of a hen’s egg, was worth £36; and another, the size of a blackbird’s egg, was marked £5. When opened, the gold, just as it comes from the washings, with borax as a flux, is put into an earthenware pot, and then placed in the fire, after which it fuses, and is poured out into an iron mould in the shape of a flat bar. A bar we saw weighed 15 pounds.
In the season they sometimes have in the strong-room 250 poods--say from four to five tons--of gold, which the previous summer had been worth £2,000 a pood, making a total value of £500,000 for gold alone. At the end of the season the silver and gold are sent to the capital, under charge of a military escort.
[3] Dr. Finsch, who travelled with an exploring party up the Irtish in 1876, has put on record much information of a scientific character about this part of Siberia. Mr. Atkinson, an English artist, with his wife, also spent seven years in Central Asia and the Kirghese steppes. He gives fuller information than I have met elsewhere of the Kirghese, who number nearly 1,500,000 souls. They live either in tents or in caverns resembling rabbit burrows, both of which are filthy beyond measure. The appearance of the Kirghese, judging by those I saw in the prisons, is anything but prepossessing--the nose sinks into the face, and the cheeks are large and bloated. They eat chiefly mutton and horse-flesh, and drink tea and mare’s milk. The last, when fermented, is called koumis, and is kept in the tent in a large leathern sack, said to be never washed out. The Kirghese are splendid horsemen; and their usual occupation is tending sheep, goats, horses, and camels, of which they possess immense herds. Indeed, I was told that, in the aoul or encampment of a rich Kirghese chief, one can see in the present day the principal objects that were witnessed 4,000 years ago, when the patriarch Abraham was a dweller in tents, and pastured cattle.
Chapter XV
THE SIBERIAN CHURCH.
The Russian Church.--Geographical area.--History, doctrines, schisms.--Ecclesiastical divisions of Siberia.--Church committees.--Russian Church services.--Picture-worship.-- Vestments.--Liturgy.--Ordination.--Baptism.--Marriage.--Minor services.
It will be expected, of course, in a journey from the Urals to the Pacific, that something should be said of the Siberian Church, to treat of which is to treat of the Russian Church in Siberia. Wherever the Russians carry their arms, there, like the Romans, they carry their creed; and consequently all along the great Siberian highways, where the Russians dwell, they have their ecclesiastical system as in Europe. I shall therefore speak generally of things concerning the Greek Church, whether in Russia or Siberia, and illustrate them by what I have seen.
Our knowledge of the Russian Church comes to us chiefly from two sources: from the pens of ecclesiastical authors, and from the writings of modern travellers. From the latter, it is not too much to say that the Russians and their religion often receive a scant measure of justice, not to add misrepresentation; for when the British tourist looks upon the gorgeous and elaborate ritual of an Eastern Church, sees the picture-worship of the people, their kissing of relics, and invocation of saints, he is reminded of like things in the Churches of Italy and Spain, and he not unfrequently condemns both East and West as superstitious and corrupt alike. Such a charge, however, is far too sweeping, and betrays a lack of knowledge of many points which, if more generally known, would certainly bring English Churchmen nearer, at least in sympathy, with members of the Church in Russia. On the other hand, the writings of ecclesiastical authors are usually so technical as to fail in bringing before us what the traveller sees as the everyday religious life of a people. It is desirable to avoid these two extremes, and to distinguish between the recognized standards of a Church’s teaching, and the correspondence therewith, or otherwise, of the daily lives of its members.[1]
I do not propose to enter here upon the history,[2] doctrines,[3] or schisms[4] of the Russian Church, but proceed to observe that, for ecclesiastical purposes, Siberia is divided into six dioceses, presided over by 7 bishops. It contains 1,515 churches and 1,509 clergy; 14 monasteries containing 147 monks, and 4 nunneries containing 62 nuns. Russian dioceses are subdivided into rural deaneries, each consisting of a circle of from ten to thirty parishes, some of which, in Siberia, must be very extensive, though not necessarily populous. A priest near Tobolsk, however, told me that he had 5,000 parishioners; another at Kansk, near Irkutsk, had 2,000, widely scattered; whilst on the Siberian coast of the Pacific, Nikolaefsk and Vladivostock, towns of 3,000 and 5,000 inhabitants respectively, form only one parish each. Every selo or town of a certain grade has a church; and in some of the derevni, or villages, churches and small chapels, or oratories, are built, in which latter, services, other than the liturgy or holy communion, may be performed. The churches and vestments are furnished and kept in repair by parochial committees, of not less than five persons, elected annually, who, on retiring from office, are called “church elders.” They visit every house in the parish, and determine what proportion of the expenses should be paid by each householder. There would seem to be no difficulty in raising the necessary funds; and I must add that I was agreeably surprised in Siberia to see how well and how clean the churches were kept, even in the remotest and most out-of-the-way places.[5]
We had several opportunities, in passing through Siberia, of attending the Church services. Picture-worship is an almost universal attendant of Russian devotion--more so, if possible, than in Roman countries; and the Russian Church has found it necessary to issue many warnings against the perils of idolatry.[6]
Another prominent feature of “orthodox” worship is the plentiful use of lighted candles bought at the church entrance. In one church in Petersburg, and that not the largest, I was told that money is taken yearly for candles up to 10,000 roubles--say £1,000.
The vestments of the priests and bishops are gorgeous in the extreme. A metropolitan’s “sakkos” is shown at Moscow, which is said to weigh 50 pounds, by reason of the pearls and gems with which it is embellished. At the Troitza monastery are fifteen dresses for the Archimandrite, one of which, for the mere making, cost the Empress Elizabeth £600, the robe itself being valued at £11,000. This monastery is said to possess amongst its treasures two bushels of pearls, and, from what I have twice seen there, I am inclined to add an estimated pint of diamonds, to say nothing of emeralds, rubies, and sapphires innumerable!
The Church services are of a monastic character, long and tedious, read in Sclavonic, “which is to the modern Russian,” it is said, “about what the language of Chaucer is to us”; so that, what with its ancient form and the rapidity with which the ecclesiastical language is read, it is practically unintelligible to many of the people. From time to time in the services commemorations are made of the Virgin and saints; and prayers are offered to them, blessings are asked of God through their intercessions, and the response, Gospodi Pomilui, “Lord, have mercy!” is uttered thirty, forty, fifty times or more, almost at a breath.
No instrumental music is allowed in the Russian Church; but the singing in large cathedrals, such as St. Isaac’s at Petersburg (where they have 30 choristers dressed in blue and gold tunics), is exceedingly grand. I do not remember to have heard elsewhere such extraordinary harmony. The basses descended to depths almost abyssmal, and the trebles soared to and were sustained at a height perfectly marvellous, whilst other voices were so profusely blended that I can compare the effect of the whole to nothing better than to an exquisite colored window. The hymn called “The Cherubim,” with music by Bortnyanski, I heard sung at Petersburg and Kasan; and at the latter place was not surprised to see tears falling from the eyes of a peasant woman near me, for my own were uncommonly moist. I made bold to approach and look over the music of one of the choristers, thereby alarming the Monk director, who, mistaking my interest, said afterwards he thought I had perchance come from the Imperial choir to take away some of his best voices.
The ritual and services of the Russian Church are contained in twenty volumes folio. The greatest part of the service varies every day in the year except in the Liturgy, where the greater part is fixed.[7]
As we passed through Kasan we happened to see the ordination of a priest and a deacon, which was interesting. Holy orders are regarded by the Russian Church as a sacrament or mystery, but are not indelible. If, for instance, a widower priest wishes to marry again, he can do so by resigning his priest’s orders and taking some inferior place among the minor orders, or by giving up his ecclesiastical profession altogether. They have five orders, namely, bishop, priest, deacon, sub-deacon, and reader; and the episcopal dignitaries consist of metropolitans, archbishops, and bishops, some of which latter are suffragans.[8]
The services connected with baptism in the Russian Church were formerly very numerous, though now they are frequently more or less combined;[9] one principal difference in practice between the Greek and English Churches being that the former always baptizes by immersion. The child is usually named after one of the saints in the Russian calendar, the yearly recurrence of whose festival constitutes the person’s “name’s-day.” This is observed in Russia more than the “birth-day,” which practice has the advantage that if the Christian name of a friend is familiar, one always knows when to congratulate him.
Marriage is counted one of the sacraments or mysteries of the Greek Church, but virginity is taught to be better than wedlock. Priests are commanded, under pain of degradation, not to join in wedlock persons of unsuitable ages, nor those ignorant of the essential articles of the faith, and in no case without due notice given. The Russian Church fixes the age of majority for the bridegroom at twenty-one, or, by permission of parents, as early as eighteen, and sixteen for the bride; it frowns on second and third marriages, and forbids fourth marriages altogether.[10]
There are yet other services, such as the so-called sacrament of penance, which closely resembles, but differs in two important respects from, that of the Church of Rome.[11]
And, again, the Russian sacrament of unction differs in more than one respect from the Roman.[12]
For the benediction of water there are two offices: the lesser, which is used whenever consecrated water is required, and the greater, which is performed at the Epiphany, in memory of the baptism of Christ, and is carried out with great ceremony. Another office in the Russian Church is that of “Orthodox Sunday,” which is in form somewhat similar to the English “Commination Service,” and in which anathemas are pronounced against those who impugn various articles of the Russian faith. Yet another service is “the Office of the Holy Unction,” that is, for preparing the chrism,[13] and there are other occasional and curious services, such as for the consecration of a church; for an icon or picture; washing the feet on Thursday in Holy Week; prayers on laying the first stone of a house; for seed time; longer offices to be used in drought, earthquake, plague, incursion of barbarians, for children when they commence their education, and many more; but I think that on this head I have said enough.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] In connection with this subject, we constantly meet with the terms “Eastern Church,” “Greek Church,” and “Russian Church.” Let us distinguish between them. If on a map of Europe a line be drawn from the White Sea southwards to Petersburg, thence along the western border of Russia to Cracow, then along the eastern and southern frontier of Austria to the Adriatic, this line will roughly divide Christendom between the Churches of the East and of the West. Eastern Christendom is sometimes divided into three main groups of Churches, the first group being the Chaldean, the Armenian, the Syrian, the Egyptian, and the Georgian Churches. The second is the Greek Church, whose members, speaking the Greek language, are found as far south as the desert of Mount Sinai, through all the coasts and islands in the Levant and the Archipelago, and whose centre is Constantinople. This is the only living representative of the once powerful Church of Constantine, called the “Orthodox Imperial Church.” The third group of Eastern Churches consists partly of the Sclavonic peoples, found in the provinces of the Lower Danube, Bulgaria, Servia, Wallachia, and Moldavia; and partly, and much more largely, of the Sclavonic people of Russia. The Russian Church, therefore, is an offshoot of the Greek Church of Constantinople, once the centre of Eastern Christianity, which Greek Church, by reason of its former Imperial grandeur, sometimes gives its name to the other Oriental communions.
[2] See Appendix A.
[3] See Appendix B.
[4] See Appendix C.
[5] Besides this parish church committee, there was formerly, and may be now in some instances, in large towns, a “directory,” consisting of about four members. In each diocese there is a “consistory,” of from five to seven members, presided over by the bishop, the whole being under the synod. Appeals, therefore, lie from the directories (where they exist) to the consistory, from the consistory to the bishop, and from the bishop to the synod. The synod, which has equal civil rank with the senate, and the ecclesiastical rank of a patriarch, consists of bishops and priests, whose nomination, appointment, and length of membership depend on the will of the Sovereign. There sits also with them a lay procurator, who is the crown representative, and who has a veto which can be reversed only by appeal to the Emperor.
[6] The “orthodox” Church draws a nice distinction between the unlawfulness of using in church an image proper, and the lawfulness of using the same image if carved on a flat surface; but the ordinary observer, who beholds people in an Eastern Church bowing down before graven images and likenesses of things that are in heaven and in earth, must find it exceedingly difficult to determine where reverence ends and idolatry begins.
[7] This Liturgy (which in the Greek Church always means the office for the Holy Communion, and is the ordinary morning service) is divided into three parts, namely, “the offering,” during which the bread and wine are offered by the people, and prepared by the priest; “the liturgy of the catechumens,” during which the Epistle and Gospel are read; and “the liturgy of the faithful,” during which the elements are administered. The priest and deacon receive the bread and wine separately, as with us; the laity receive bread and wine mixed together from a spoon, and standing; whilst to infants wine only is administered, for fear of ejection. The priest receives daily, the devout quarterly or oftener, and every one by law yearly.
[8] Each of the five orders has a separate ordination. At the ordination of a reader, he is clothed with a vestment called a sticharion; and the bishop among other things says to him, “Son, ... it is your duty daily to study the Holy Scriptures, and to endeavour to make such proficiency therein that those who hear you may receive edification.” A sub-deacon, on ordination, wears an orarion, like an English stole, girded crosswise over his shoulders. The bishop puts a towel also on the left shoulder of the newly ordained, and delivers him a basin and ewer, in which the bishop washes his hands. A deacon, when ordained, kisses the four corners of the holy table, the bishop’s hands and shoulder, and the part of his garment called the epigonation. He kneels on his right knee, lays his hands crosswise on the holy table, and puts his forehead between his hands. The bishop’s omophorion, or pall, is placed on his head, the stole on his left shoulder, and he is presented with sleeves or cuffs, and a fan with which to fan the sacramental elements. When ordained priest, the stole is exchanged for a similar vestment, called an epitrachelion, and there are also added a phelonion and a girdle.
The consecration, however, of a bishop is much more elaborate. He is called upon to confess the Nicene Creed. He anathematizes sundry heretics in particular, and all of them in general; confesses the Virgin Mary to be properly and truly the mother of God; and prays that she may be his helper, his preserver, and protectress all the days of his life. He promises to preserve his flock from the errors of the Latin Church; declares that he has not paid money for the dignity about to be conferred upon him; promises not to go into other dioceses without permission, nor to ordain more than one priest and one deacon at the same service; further, that he will yearly, or at least biennially, visit and inspect his flock; and among other things take care that the homage due to God be not transferred to holy images. He puts on his sakkos and other episcopal garments; and there is delivered to him the panagion, or jewel, for the neck; mantyas, or ordinary cloak; the cowl, mitre, rosary, and pastoral staff; after which he walks to his house attended by two of the superior clergy.
[9] 1, On the day of delivery the priest goes to the house, and prays for mother and child; 2, on the eighth day the child should be taken to church to receive its name; and 3, on the fortieth day it should be taken by the mother to be received into the Church, according to the service for the reception of catechumens. In the course of this service the priest breathes in the catechumen’s face, pronounces three exorcisms, calls upon the catechumen or his sponsor to blow and spit upon Satan, which he essays to do, not metaphorically, but visibly; after which follows, 4, the administration of baptism, when the candidate is first anointed with oil, then completely immersed three times, then clothed by the priest with a white garment, and a cross is suspended on the neck. Immediately after the baptism follows, 5, confirmation, or anointing of the baptized with chrism on the forehead, eyes, nostrils, mouth, ears, breast, hands, and feet, with the words repeated each time, “The seal of the gift of the Holy Ghost.” Prayers are offered, an Epistle and Gospel read, and the benediction pronounced. Eight days after, the candidate is brought again to the church for, 6, the ablution of the chrism. The priest looses the candidate’s clothes and girdle, and with a sponge washes the parts that have been anointed; after which follows the last part of the service, namely, 7, the tonsure, in which the priest cuts the hair of the newly baptized in the form of a cross, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
[10] The marriage service consists of two distinct offices, which are performed at the same time. The first is called the “Betrothal,” when rings are given and exchanged; the second is the “Coronation,” in which the bride and bridegroom are crowned, and are thrice given wine to drink from a common cup, and thrice led round a lectern on which lie the Gospels. Weddings in Russia are usually celebrated in the evening, and among the friends are persons corresponding to a godfather and godmother, before whom, previous to coming to church, the happy pair kneel in the house, and ask a blessing. The godfather holds in his hand an ikon, usually of Christ, with which he makes the sign of the cross over the head of the bridegroom, and then gives it him to be his peculiar treasure. In old-fashioned places the godmother gives the bride a loaf of bread, symbolical of worldly prosperity, making the sign of the cross. The godmother also presents the bride with an ikon, usually of the Virgin Mary; and these two ikons are carried to the church, figure in the wedding ceremony, and are afterwards taken to the new home, to be sacredly preserved for life, and afterwards bequeathed to their children.
[11] Both Churches require contrition, and also confession. Confession in both Churches begins at the age of seven years, and is a secret, periodical, compulsory acknowledgment of mortal sins to a priest; but it is made less complete in Russia than in Rome--has less of an inquisitorial character; and hence Dean Stanley says, “The scandals, the influence, the terrors of the confessional are alike unknown in the East.” The other important difference between the two Churches is, that subsequent exercises of piety, commonly called “penance,” when enjoined upon the penitent in the Russian Church, are not performed as satisfaction offered to God. This, it will be seen, closes the gate against a great deal of Roman teaching concerning the meritorious value of good works.
[12] In the East the oil is not previously consecrated by the bishop, but at the time, by seven priests; and, further, whereas extreme unction is not administered by the Romans until the sick person is beyond hope of recovery, the Russians call for the elders of the Church, pray over him, even though the sickness be but slight, and anoint him with oil, in the hope that he may be healed both spiritually and bodily. The service is performed by seven priests (or at the least three), who place a table in the church or house, on which is set a dish with wheat, a vessel for the oil, and seven twigs with cotton tied around, one for each of the priests, who first anoint the sick and subsequently spread the Gospels, with their hands laid thereon, over his head.
[13] This ointment, made of 23 ingredients, can be consecrated only by a bishop, and in Passion Week. It boils three days, with a depth of five fingers of wine below the oil, and priests and deacons by turns read the Gospel day and night, without ceasing, from Monday till Thursday.
Chapter XVI
THE SIBERIAN CHURCH (continued).
Parochial clergy.--Their emoluments.--Duties.--Official registers.--Discipline.--Morality.--Status.--Our clerical visits.--Monastic clergy.--The Metropolitan Macarius.--Fasting.--General view of Russian Church.--Compared with Roman.--Teaching respecting Holy Scripture and salvation by faith.--Needs of Russian Church.
The Russian clergy are of two orders--the parochial and the monastic; or, as they are sometimes called, the white and the black--the secular and the regular clergy. Such was the plethora of them in the time of Peter the Great that they had to restrict the number of ordinations and of those who should serve.[1] Now, however, there is no superabundance.[2] Speaking generally, every parish church is under the control of prikhod or corporation, consisting of the priest, deacon, and two dïechoks, or bell-ringer and reader, and also a widow-woman to prepare the sacramental bread.
The parish priest may rise to be a protopope or head priest of an Episcopal Church, or one who holds a position in which there are other priests under him; but so long as his wife is living he can go no higher. Should he become a widower, and take the monk’s habit, he is then eligible to be made a bishop.[3]
The pay of the town clergy in Russia is better than of those in the country, where it is very little. The salaries of the Siberian clergy, to judge from the district of the Amur, vary from £125 to £180 a year.[4] Hence those who have families are miserably poor. It is not uncommon to hear them spoken of as exacting, avaricious, and grasping (such charges are easily made, all the world over); but due allowance is not always made for the dire needs of poverty; and they sometimes are obliged almost, if not quite, to beg their bread.[5]
It must not be supposed, however, that, because the pay of the priests is so small, their duties are light. Of their three daily services, the first often begins between four and five in the morning (fancy that with a thermometer below zero!), vespers at sunset, and the liturgy before mid-day. To these must be added occasional services in district churches or chapels, as well as in houses; at every birth, every death in the parish; when a building is begun, after it has been repaired, and when it is supposed to be haunted; together with the blessing of school-houses and children before they begin work after the holidays; to say nothing of processions through the streets with miraculous pictures in times of harvest, pestilence, and danger. In Siberia we saw one of these processions, with a picture, lanterns, and flags, leaving a village church at four o’clock in the morning.
But this is not all. There are the church registers to be kept--all the more important because in Russia no one can stir hand or foot without a character paper, which sets forth, with the minutest details, the particulars of his birth, baptism, marriage, etc. These papers have to be signed and countersigned by the priest and deacon, and then to be sent to the bishop’s registry, which, in Siberia, may be 1,000 miles away--and all this with an expenditure of stamps, and red tape, and filling up of blank forms that is simply appalling.[6] Again, every priest has to keep a clerical journal of his official acts as to what he and his fellows do daily. This is for the bishop’s assistant; and, should the journal be suddenly found not written up to date, the priest is liable to be punished. “How would you be punished?” said I to a protopope. “With a good talking to, perhaps, for the first offence, and for the second a fine, or, it may be, have the delinquency inscribed on my character paper”; in other words, to carry a blot on his escutcheon perhaps for life!
Verily, ecclesiastical discipline, whether in great things or small, is not a dead letter in Russia. Perhaps it is not altogether uncalled for. By it priests are forbidden to find their amusements at the theatre, or in cards, buffoonery, or dancing; and mention is made of another evil greater than these, in which we shall recognize an old foe, too well known in England. It is drink![7]
It is not matter for surprise, then, that the status of the Russian clergy is low, as it was in England when Christianity had existed no longer here than it now has in Russia--say in the fourteenth century, when Chaucer wrote his “Canterbury Tales.” We have no room for boasting; nor are these remarks made with any idea of drawing unfavourable comparisons, but only to give a true picture of a large class of the Russian ecclesiastics. I called upon some few of the priests in Siberia, who, like the peasants, seemed decidedly superior to, and better off than, those in Russia. On arriving at a post-station, I not unfrequently sent for or called upon the priest, gave him tracts to circulate in his parish, and offered to sell him, at a reduced rate, portions of Scripture for distribution, which offer was almost always accepted.
Let me now pass to the monastic clergy, who alone fill all the higher offices in the Russian Church. Among the monastic clergy are many scholars. The present Metropolitan (Macarius) of Moscow, formerly a professor at the Academy, may be selected as a bright example. He has written extensively, and, from the very outset of his literary career, is said to have resolved to devote all the money derived from his works to the progress of knowledge. He has founded scholarships and-prizes at Kieff, Petersburg, and Vilna, and as long ago as 1867 he possessed a capital of £12,000, the interest of which is distributed yearly in premiums for the best compositions in the Russian language. It was this amiable dignitary, as related in my first chapter, whom I had the honour of visiting when passing through Petersburg. Other things might be said to the praise of many of the Russian clergy--notably their simple manner of living. In none of their houses that I entered in Siberia was there the least approach to luxury, and the library of one of the best priests I met was all too scanty for the literary work he had in hand. I remember, too, that I entered the sleeping-room of the archimandrite (who is also the Metropolitan of Moscow) at the “Skit,” near the Troitza monastery, and found a chamber that would be thought not too well furnished for a guest in an average English rectory. Further, in Russia, both orders of clergy fast at least 226 days in the year; and the monastic clergy, which includes all the bishops, never eat flesh at all. I met with a practical illustration of the strictness with which the clergy abstain from forbidden food. At a post station where we stopped, and where the priest had come to us, we invited him to drink tea, and I cut for him a slice of white bread and buttered it. This he declined, as it was a fast-day, and butter was forbidden. I then offered him a slice of bread; but another difficulty arose, for, having to lay in a large stock of white bread at the previous town, we had requested the baker to put in a little butter to keep it moist. The good man’s conscience therefore, he felt, would be denied even by this, and so I was obliged to call for black bread wherewith to entertain our fasting guest.[8]
Something must be said of the Russian monasteries for women and men. They are of three sorts: Lavra, of which there are only three, namely, at Kieff, Petersburg, and Troitza, near Moscow; next are those called “Cœnobia”; and, lastly, others called “Stauropegia.” Their general characteristics are Egyptian rather than Roman.[9]
One of the monks of the Yuryef Monastery, near Novgorod, gave me the following outline of their daily life: They rise at half-past two (one o’clock on festivals), go to church till six, and from six till nine they sleep. Then they go to church again for an hour and a half, and afterwards breakfast. This over, they are free to sleep or do as they please till five in the afternoon, when evening service brings them together for an hour and a half, after which they sup and go to bed. They have but two meals a day, never eat flesh, and, when observing the fasts, eat vegetables only.
To sum up, then, all that need here be said of the Russian Church--very different thoughts arise according as one looks at the every-day religion of the people, or their formularies and theology. The former may cause pain and grief, the latter excite sympathy and hope; and it will be my object in the remainder of this chapter to expand these thoughts in a fair and honest way, without sparing blame or withholding praise.
Most persons, who have had the opportunity of observing, allow that the Russians are a religious people. One sees this not only in the large numbers both of men and women who attend the churches, but also in the tens of thousands who yearly go on pilgrimage to sacred places. The monks of Troitza sometimes have in summer, on a feast day, a thousand guests. Some, of course, are idle wanderers, going from place to place to get food; but many walk hundreds--nay, thousands--of miles to redeem a vow or offer a prayer for something specially desired. Much of this, no doubt, is eminently unspiritual and superstitious. Much of their worship is perilously like, if not altogether, idolatry; yet it should be remembered that the average Russian knows no better; and what can be expected of the peasant, if the highest authorities of the land, on arriving at a city, make it their first object to pay their devotions, if not, as at Ephesus, before “the image which fell down from Jupiter,” yet before a picture to which is attributed miraculous powers? We can at least admire, however, the intention in these things; and if the Russian peasant can only be kept sober, he displays a number of virtues, some of which are not found so abundantly in other and more advanced countries. They are a kind, a generous, and a hospitable people, by no means unmindful of philanthropic effort, and at least, we may add, intensely ecclesiastical.
Again, there is much to admire in the formularies of their Church, although Dean Stanley brings against it, and justly, three weighty charges--extravagant ritual, excessive dogmatism, and a fatal division between religion and morality. When, however, the Russian Church is compared with the Roman, and spoken of as like it, certain considerations should be borne in mind which make the comparison result in favour of the former. Russia did not receive the religion of Jesus Christ in its purity. The merest tyro in Church history knows that when the stream of Christianity had flowed down to the tenth century, it was no longer pure as at its source. But follow the stream as it branches east and west, and observe which of the two remains the purer.[10] And if this be said to be negative, and much of it belonging to the past, then other considerations may be adduced which seem to bring the Greek Church nearer to the English than many suppose, and notably so in two vital points, namely, the attitude of the Russian Church to the Holy Scriptures,[11] and her doctrine respecting salvation through Christ alone.[12] She does not forbid or hide the Scriptures from the people, even if she neglects them, nor has she stereotyped her errors by the claim to infallibility. There is room, therefore, to hope for a change for the better, which in my humble opinion should be attempted from within, by a wider circulation and more general study of the Scriptures; next, by a vastly increased amount of good and Scriptural preaching; and, once more, by a powerful attack on the prevailing sin of intemperance. Would the priests only endeavour to instil into their people, respecting drink, half the abstemiousness and self-denial that they teach them to observe concerning forbidden food, they would render Russia such a service as I have no words to express.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] In an Episcopal Church, for instance, there were not to be more than one protopope, two treasurers, five priests, four deacons, two readers, and two sacristans, besides thirty-three choristers. In parishes of large extent there were to be two priests, two deacons, two choristers, and two sacristans, reckoning one priest for every hundred houses.
[2] On the Amur I heard of merchants and, in exceptional cases, even yemstchiks, being ordained; also of students, for lack of a sufficiency of priests, being ordered deacons at the age of 20 (instead of 22), and sometimes made priests seven days after.
[3] There are, or were, several curious customs and regulations among the Russian clergy with respect to matrimony. A man cannot join the ranks of the white clergy unless he be “the husband of one wife.” Formerly he was obliged, or expected, to marry a priest’s daughter; and as a priest’s daughter sometimes received her father’s living for her dowry, a young priest not infrequently found himself, in this way, settled for life; though, if the father-in-law were old and merely retired, then the son-in-law was expected to keep him. In these arrangements the bishop played a part, for knowing, on one hand, the young men coming forward for ordination, and being kept informed, on the other, regarding the marriageable daughters of his clergy, he could frequently make suggestions for the benefit of all parties concerned. There prevailed, too, in former times in Russia, a pernicious custom, that every clergyman’s son was obliged to follow the profession of his father. This is no longer compulsory: and the sons of the clergy, finding themselves free, choose other callings to such an extent that there is now a lack of candidates for the priesthood. Candidates, however, are still drawn for the most part from the homes of the clergy, and from the lower class of merchants. Quite recently, I am informed, a few of the Russian nobility have taken Holy Orders.
[4] Dr. Neale, in his learned work on the Eastern Church, says, “The Russian clergy never possessed tithes. Their income arises from Easter offerings, fees, and glebe, the minimum of the glebe being 181½ acres, to be divided between four clergy.” I have heard that the usual remuneration for a country priest in Russia is from £22 to £25 a year, and his share of the glebe. To these must be added, I suppose, his fees. The town priests receive no regular stipend from Government, but in Petersburg and Moscow the income from some of the parishes amounts to £600, or more, to be apportioned amongst several clergy. At a cathedral I attended, I was informed that the protopope, from all sources, received about £500 a year and a house; two priests from £220 to £250 each; the deacon about £180; and the psalmist or dïechok from £90 to £150; the whole available sum for all the parish clergy in this cathedral being from £1,500 to £1,800 a year. At another cathedral, in the provinces, I was told that the bishop received £110 from the Government, and £75 from the monastery, with monks as servants free. A correspondent further informs me that metropolitans and archbishops receive “large sums for the maintenance of their house, church, singers, serving monks, and other comforts, of which they can take or leave as much as they like”; the “large sums” quoted, with these not insignificant expenses, being from £625 to £1,250 a year; and this for men who rank ecclesiastically with English primates!
[5] The Russian priests labour under great social disadvantages. They are less instructed than what are called the “educated classes” of their countrymen, and so do not mingle with them on a social equality; and in many of the towns of the interior, intellectual affairs are on so low a level that the priest’s most intelligent companion is the schoolmaster, lately arrived perhaps from the capital with a smattering of neology. In one parish of which I know, the old priest said that the new schoolmaster had been telling him, among other like things, that it was not God who made the world, etc., etc., till the priest hardly knew what was right or otherwise. He could not think what a lay person could possibly find to preach about from a verse out of the Bible. This same priest, when recommended pastorally to visit his flock, said, “I never appear among my people except to ask for corn, milk, and eggs, and thus they hate the sight of me.” He had not even a Bible, and said he never possessed one.
[6] One of these blank forms, given me by a protopope, relates to each of the clergy in a particular church. Here are the headings of some of the columns:--
1. Name; place of birth; from what rank in society; where educated, and in what subjects; when promoted to last appointment, by whom, and to what office; whether holding any additional appointment; when and how rewarded for service; whether having a family, and, if so, of what number.
2. What he knows; of what capacity in reading and explaining the catechism, Scriptures, etc.; whether he be a singer; and how many times in the year he has composed his own sermons.
3. His children; their place of education; character; what they are learning; and their behaviour at home.
4. His family relations.
5. Whether he has ever been accused before the court, and how punished; or whether the trial is still pending.
[7] The excellent Russian book on the duty of parish priests, speaking of drunkenness fifty years ago, says, “Yet though drunkenness is a sin so grievous and deadly, there are very many in our time who scarcely pass a day without indulging their sottish passion for drink. Wherefore ... the councils forbid ... all clerks ... so much as to enter a tavern, under pain of deprivation and excommunication.” This is a painful and humiliating subject, though the more respectable amongst the Russians regard the matter in various lights. Some, of course, condemn such priests unmercifully. One man told me he had not communicated for several years; “for,” said he, “how can I in the morning receive the sacrament from the hands of my country priest when I know that before night he will probably be inebriated?” To which some, in effect, reply that he should look at the light and not only at the lantern; as a religious general said to me, “If my priest supplies me properly with the ordinances of the Church, I am not concerned with his private life--that lies between God and his own soul.” Others, again, make allowance for their great temptations. On five festivals in the year, at least, such as Christmas, New Year, Easter, etc., the priest is supposed to go the round of his parish and say a prayer in every house; and on these festive occasions refreshment stands on the sideboard, and vodka, or spirits, is offered as drink--the evil results of which, among clergy and laity, on one of the festivals, I myself could not but observe.
[8] There are four great fasts in the year, during which are eaten only bread, vegetables, and fish: 1. Lent; 2. St. Peter’s fast, from Whit-Monday to the 29th June; 3. Fast of the Virgin Mary, from August 1st to 15th; and 4. St. Philip’s fast, from November 15th to December 26th. Wednesday and Friday also are fast-days.
[9] The Lavra of Egypt are supposed to have been collections of tents in the deserts, where each provided for himself, but joined the rest in common devotions. Cœnobia were institutions where all lived associated. The discipline is the same in all three, but the Stauropegia are under the direct jurisdiction, not of the bishops, but of the Synod. Dr. Neale gives the numbers of Russian monasteries for men at 435, and for women, 113. My almanack mentions a gross total of 472. Greek monks need not be ecclesiastics, and are all of the order of St. Basil. The head of a large monastery is called an archimandrite (or abbot); of a smaller monastery, a hegumen (or prior), whilst the lady superior of a monastery for women is called a hegumena. There are monk priests, and also monk deacons, and in the churches attached to the nunneries a large part of the service is performed by the nuns. Among the Russian monks, according to Dr. King, are three degrees: novices, who should serve three years; the proficients, who wear the lesser habit; and the perfect, who wear the greater or angelic habit, which last are said to be uncommon in Russia. Men are not admitted to be monks till 30 years of age, and nuns do not receive the tonsure till 60, or at least 50. Younger women may enter as probationers; but they take no vow, and are at liberty to leave and be married. Probationers, whether men or women, wear a black velvet hat without a brim, and the men a black cassock. Proficients have a black veil attached to the hat (with metropolitans this is white), and monastics of the third degree always wear the veil or hood down, and never suffer their faces to be seen. In the time of Peter the Great the monasteries had become homes for the idle, and he issued many salutary rules concerning them. Monastics were to confess and receive the communion four times a year, though they were not compelled to confess to their own superior. They were to avoid idleness; were not allowed (with the exception of the superior, the aged, and infirm) to keep servants; were not to receive or pay visits without permission; and in all monasteries the monks were to be strictly kept to the study of the Bible, the most learned were to explain it, and such only were to be promoted to offices and dignities.
[10] When clerical celibacy, for instance, was imposed in the West, it was not followed in the East, nor was the cup denied to the Russian laity when it was withheld from the Roman. The Russian Church never fabricated a purgatory, and then sold indulgences to get people out of it. The Eastern Church has never added uncatholic articles to the Nicene Creed, as in that of Pope Pius the Fourth, and issued the whole as binding upon all who would be saved. Again, the errors of the East have at least the stamp of antiquity. They have not added to the Christian faith novel articles, such as the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin, or still less claimed a supremacy and infallibility which in the early Christian councils would need only to have been mentioned to have been scouted; but in a very real sense it maybe said that Russia has kept the faith as she received it.
[11] It may surprise some, as I confess it at first surprised me, to learn the place the Russian Church gives to the Bible in her “Treatise on the Duty of Parish Priests,”--a book by two Russian bishops, which has been adopted by the whole Sclavonian Church, and which all candidates for orders are required to have read, and to show their acquaintance with before being ordained. The book begins by saying that “to teach the people is the priest’s very first duty,” and then (VII.) that the priest is to teach the faith and the law; that (IX.) “all the articles of faith are contained in the Word of God--that is, in the books of the Old and New Testament”; and that (XI.) “none other books are to be held by us as Divine Scriptures, or called the Word of God, than the two volumes of the Old and New Testaments.” Again (XIII.), that “the writings of the Holy Fathers are of great use.... But neither the writings of the Holy Fathers, nor the traditions of the Church, are to be confounded or equalled with the Word of God and His commandments; for the Word of God is one thing, but the writings of the Holy Fathers and traditions ecclesiastical are another.” And further (XXXII.), “So great being this work of teaching, etc. ... we cannot fail to see how needful it is for the priest to abound both in word and in wisdom, in order to the well-fulfilling of this his vast duty; and the only way hereto is that he be skilled and nourished up from a child in Holy Scripture.”
[12] The “Treatise on the Duty of Parish Priests” reads (XXIX.): “Since the sole beginner and perfecter of our holy faith and of everlasting salvation is our Lord Jesus Christ (Heb. xii. 2), and there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved, but only His (Acts iv. 12), ... it is plain that in each of the above kinds of teaching, the priest ought to instil the knowledge of Christ Jesus, inculcate His doctrine, dwell on His exceeding compassion, and possess the soul with this truth, that Christ alone is made unto us of God wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption (1 Cor. i. 30).... In every case, I say, according to circumstances, he can implant, and is in duty bound to implant, the knowledge of Christ Jesus; and so all instruction, and every particular instruction, should be grounded on Christ; for all that can be either written or said in reference to the faith, and to everlasting happiness, if it be not grounded on faith in Christ, is unfruitful, and can never save.”
Chapter XVII
FROM TOMSK TO KRASNOIARSK.
Book-distribution in Western Siberia.--Departure from Tomsk.--Postbells.--How to sit in posting.--Sleeping.--Boundary of Western Siberia.--Wild and domesticated animals.--Birds.--Scenery.--Roadside villages.--Peasants’ houses.--Hammering up “the Prodigal Son.”--Siberian towns.--Houses of upper classes.--Misadventures.--A hospitable merchant.--Frontier of Eastern Siberia.
I have said that, on returning to Tomsk, we found the remainder of our books arrived. The reader may like to know how we had prospered in relation to their distribution through Western Siberia. Our singular mission greatly puzzled the Russians. I have since heard how it reached the ears of the worthy Archbishop of Tobolsk that a strange Englishman had been through the district, leaving thousands of books to be given away. Like a watchful shepherd, his first anxiety was to see that they contained no heresy. Having examined the books, however, and perused a set of the tracts, he found them exceedingly good, and would by no means put anything in the way of their distribution; but, said his Eminence, “Those English are a queer lot, and there must surely be some ulterior motive behind it.” To the same effect were many of the officials’ cogitations as they oozed out and reached me from time to time. We met with no opposition, however, or even questioning of what we were doing. The fact that the revolutionists have sometimes distributed seditious leaflets inside pamphlets approved by the censor makes the police on the alert in European Russia; but I have usually found even there, so long as all was clear and above-board, that the authorities were willing to forward my endeavours; and I so far availed myself of this willingness in Siberia as to distribute more through the authorities than formerly, and less in proportion with our own hands. Still, we gave an immense number personally, and many also we sold, on the principle that a man values most what he pays for. At each of the towns and villages on the Obi we made up parcels and sent them with a note to the parish priest, asking him to distribute the books gratuitously. As the periodical--The Russian Workman--could be had post-free for a rouble a year, many said they should get it. One man intimated that he should write for 50 copies forthwith, and another that he should get the same number of subscribers in his neighbourhood, on the Lower Obi, where he had built a little church, and had had his son instructed to read to the people. Our greatest success, however, in Western Siberia, and one that would have repaid us for all our trouble, has since proved to be the plans laid at Tiumen, through which town, as observed before, some 18,000 exiles pass yearly. From data given me in the prison, we had calculated that there would be about 2,000 pass during the summer who could read, and for these I left 1,980 Russian Scripture portions, 36 Polish, German, French, Tatar, and Mongolian Scriptures, 546 copies of the Rooski Rabotchi, and 2,520 tracts. The exiles going east are sent away in the barge weekly, and, before the party starts, a religious service is held by a priest at Tiumen. I have since heard that after this service, throughout the summer, our books were distributed; so that I trust they are now to be found not only among the convicts in prisons, but also with those who have been sent to live free, but in comparative solitude, in the furthest corners of the country.
Some have shaken their heads and said that the men would sell the books, and make cigarettes of the tracts. This, however, I doubt; but, even if it be so, it may simply mean, in the case of the Scriptures, that a book has passed from the hands of one who did not care for it to those of one who does. But the Russians have great respect, amounting almost to superstition, for what they call “holy books”; and such books are a great deal too scarce to allow of their being generally uncared for. Moreover, in Siberia, books of this character and tracts are new. In European Russia, many, on receiving the books, said they had no idea there were such publications in existence; and we had cases in Asia of soldiers giving their last kopeck to get a copy of the Gospels, the Psalms, or the New Testament.
Before leaving Tomsk we gave the Governor books for the public institutions of his government, and left with him boxes to be forwarded to the residence of the Governor-General Kaznakoff, at Omsk. I had been made acquainted with this latter officer, both officially and privately, in Petersburg, and had been invited to call upon him on my return through Omsk, to be introduced to his family. The general had told me also to telegraph to him in case I got into prison, or in the event of any other small casualty, and I looked forward with pleasure to my visit; but with my subsequent change of plans, I wrote asking that the books I had sent might be distributed in the provinces of Akmolinsk and Semipolatinsk, and thus finished arrangements for the supply of the public institutions in all the four provinces of Western Siberia: our total distribution thus far being 4,000 Scriptures and 9,000 pamphlets and tracts.
We now prepared to drive into Eastern Siberia, and on Thursday evening, June 19th, galloped out of Tomsk in two troikas, containing ourselves and baggage--the latter reduced, but still a heavy load. Outside the town the tongues of our horses’ bells were unloosed, and we jingled merrily along. The said bells are placed beneath the douga, over the centre horse, and are intended to give notice to the public generally, and all whom it may concern, that post-horses are coming, and, accordingly, that it is their bounden duty to get out of the way. If they fail to do this, which is sometimes the case, especially at night, when the drivers of slow-going vehicles are nodding on their seats, then “the rule of the road” is that the post-boy may give them a cut with his whip--a visitation inflicted sometimes upon men, and sometimes, with caravans, upon the leading horse, which, in his driver’s absence or sleep, is supposed to know the side of the road he ought to take.
We were now becoming accustomed to our jolting mode of travel, and I had already discovered a secret in connection therewith worth handing down to posterity. It concerns the position of the body and legs in the tarantass. If you place your heels against the front of the vehicle, or against a bag or box, your feet become excessively tired; and if you lie at full length, flat, you may soon imagine yourself in a ship’s berth, rolling from side to side. Now, my golden secret is this: First secure to yourself (in a hole if possible) a soft, springy base upon which to sit, and then place on that a ribbed circular air-cushion. Secondly, put your down-pillow behind at an angle of 60 degrees, and, if you like, an air-pillow, without ribs, in the nape of your neck. But the next arrangement is the most important. Draw up your legs till the knees come on a level with your chin; then put beneath the knee-pits a soft parcel or bag, sufficiently high to leave the feet dangling above the ground; and the result will be that you will travel with comparative comfort by night and by day continuously for 1,000 miles. Being thus fixed before and behind, and kept laterally straight by the side of the vehicle and your companion, the only direction in which you can be shot is upwards and heavenwards, to come down, alas! on the old spot; and this must be accepted as your minimum amount of local disturbance. The reader may think it utterly impossible to sleep under such circumstances--and at first it is so. But Nature will assert her claims. A Siberian priest told us that, when he travelled from Europe, he could not at first sleep at all in the tarantass; but that, when at last he did so, he lost no less than three hats whilst wrapped in slumber. As for myself, I soon learnt to doze; and in my journal of June 21st I find the entry, “Managed to sleep quite soundly in the tarantass till 8 o’clock this morning.” It was not always, however, one could sleep the whole night through; and I recollect on one occasion awaking from a beautiful dream of pleasant society in an English drawing-room to find myself, to my disgust, outside a Siberian post-house. On another occasion I had been sleeping soundly, and, on looking out early in the morning, found that the driver had followed my example; and the horses, not feeling the lash, had followed suit, and so we had come to a standstill, and all were slumbering together. I gave the man, however (to confess it for once), a dig in the back; his whip fell on the horses, and they galloped in style to the end of the stage.
On the third day after leaving Tomsk, we approached the boundary that divides Western from Eastern Siberia; but up to this point we had not met with a large number of wild animals. No wolves came alongside the tarantass as they did last year in the Caucasus, nor did we so much as catch sight of a bear, as on my journey from Archangel.[1] As to domesticated animals, large herds of cows were seen, and milk was abundant. Strange to say, however, the people make little or no cheese; and the peasants do not usually butter their bread. Their fresh butter, when they make it, is without salt, and is generally used for cooking. The pigs of the country are a long-legged breed, and are frequently seen running about the village streets. They furnish the long bristles from their mane which are used for making brooms.
We saw no lack of birds of prey in Western Siberia, for hawks of various kinds are seen sailing gracefully over every town. We met with the largest number of sportsmen’s birds between Tiumen and Tobolsk, chiefly water-birds, with wild ducks and geese in abundance. I tasted at Ekaterineburg the gluchar, or cock of the wood, the same as our capercailzie. It was a well-tasted bird, from whose breast ten persons were helped, and it may be bought in the winter at Ekaterineburg for 8_d._ In the Altai regions is found a magnificent eagle called the bearcoot, of which specimens are shown in the Barnaul Museum. It is strong enough to kill a deer with ease; and it not unfrequently happens that, when wolves have killed and begun to eat their prey, a pair of bearcoots will attack and kill or drive them away, and eat their intended meal. The Kirghese tame these birds for the purpose of hunting.
As we pursued our way towards Eastern Siberia, there was a slight improvement in the landscape. For a long distance, after leaving Tomsk, the country was flat; but in the direction of Krasnoiarsk was seen a range of hills to the south, dotted with pine-trees, the country looking English-like and fertile, well wooded, and here and there under cultivation. Hitherto the herbage had been singularly luxuriant; but, from the station next before Atchinsk, pasture became less plentiful, and thus, in a measure, explained why henceforth our hire of horses was to cost us double. The number of towns and villages along the road for the first 400 miles of the way--that is, from Tomsk to Krasnoiarsk--was more numerous than might be expected, though, the further east we went, the further apart they were. The post-houses were rarely more than from ten to fifteen miles distant from one another, and we frequently drove through two or three intervening villages. To describe one village is to describe them all--the chief difference being that whilst each consists of a single street, with detached houses on either side of the way, some villages are larger than others. One we passed through was said to be nearly three miles long. The said street is usually wide, but never by any chance paved, though now and then a few boards are laid down for a footway. Nor is the street usually beautified with anything worthy the name of a garden. Now and then a few trees are planted in front of a house, but with such a high, clumsy palisade to keep off the cattle, that the attempted cultivation of beauty becomes rather a disfigurement than otherwise. The priest’s house is often one of the best in the place. So, again, the post-house usually stands out prominently; and if there happen to be any Government official in the village, an extra coat of paint, or some little ornamentation about the exterior, may point out the house inhabited by superiors; but ordinarily the houses of the peasants or farmers are very much alike. The foundation may perchance be of stone, but all else is of wood. For the walls, trees are cut and barked, slightly flattened by being cut away on two opposite sides, and then laid one above the other, the ends being dovetailed together at the corners. The interstices between the logs are calked with moss, and the roof is generally of overlapping boards. So long as the foundation holds good, the houses look tolerably neat; but when this begins to give, or the logs to rot, they become strained and warped in so many directions as to present a very dilapidated appearance. When the houses are intended for the accommodation of human beings only, they generally have no second storey; but in the case of farm-houses, where cattle are sheltered, we frequently found them having an upper storey approached by an outside staircase. There were usually also out-houses adjoining, and under the same roof; so that one had but to leave the dwelling-room upstairs, cross a passage, and open a door, to find oneself looking down upon beasts and cattle, and other denizens of a farm-yard, which share the same roof, though not, like the Irish pig, the same apartments as their owners. The interior of the house is as simple as the outside. In the centre is a brick stove. The walls are whitewashed or papered, and adorned with pictures according to the means and taste of the owners. Portraits of the Imperial family figure largely, so do battle scenes, pictures of the saints, and family photographs. As already observed, I took with me a large number of illustrated prints of “The Prodigal Son,” round which was written the parable in Russ. Having provided myself with a hammer and tacks, I was wont to go into the guest-room at the post-houses, and there nail up the picture, to the great admiration usually of the post-master. I have heard from a gentleman, who has recently crossed Siberia, that these pictures still adorn the walls of the post-houses, and that the books given with them are carefully preserved. My action, however, was not always understood at first, especially by those who could not read. One woman, who saw only an early stage of my operations, ran off to her husband as frightened as if I had been nailing up an Imperial ukase. They usually proceeded at once to read the parable; some said they should have it framed; and one post-master, a Jew, said in German, as he finished reading, that it was “a right good story.”
What has been said of Siberian houses thus far refers more especially to the houses of the peasantry and their villages. The traveller, however, from Tomsk passes certain small towns which have cross streets, wooden footways, perchance a small hospital, and the residence of an ispravnik, or a few well-to-do merchants. On entering the dwelling of one of these classes, one finds large rooms, papered walls, and painted floors, with perhaps a square of carpet near the sofa and table. Things look plain but comfortable within; and the out-houses, such as kitchen and bath-house, are at a convenient distance in the yard. The liability of the kitchen to catch fire partly accounts for its being detached; and these out-houses serve as a residence for the servants.
Houses occupied by persons highest in position, such as governors of provinces, and high military officers, are also of wood, and often without a second storey; but the rooms are more spacious and en suite, enlivened with flowers and creepers, and the tables enriched by articles of virtu from Europe. It is interesting to an Englishman to see how many things from London find their way to these remote regions. Thus, when sitting at a desk, one finds oneself among Cumberland leads and Perry’s coloured pencils, and a dozen other trifles, reminders of home.
Our journey from Tomsk to Krasnoiarsk was not entirely devoid of incident, our misadventures being connected for the most part with a limping wheel. Our first misadventure happened in returning from Barnaul, when, in the middle of the night, in the midst of a field, one of our shafts broke. But this might have happened anywhere; and fortunately there happened to be a man resting by the roadside to feed his horses, who lent us his pole to go to the next station. Early in the morning, however, it was discovered that our Siberian Jehu had been driving so furiously that, like Phaëton, his classical ancestor, he had set the wheels on fire. Matters were made worse for want of a smith at hand; and when we found a smith, he had no coal. We applied, therefore, a liberal allowance of grease, and limped on to Tomsk, where the whole concern was supposed to be put in order and cleaned, with the addition of new shafts and mended wheels, at a cost of nearly £2. We had not travelled four-and-twenty hours before the wheel was again on fire, and we paid several shillings for the repair of the axletree; a little further on, 24_s._ more; and then, on the evening of the third day, we arrived at a village where lived a smith. Now this man was well known in the district as an extortioner. He came to us clad in a pea-green dressing-gown, and smoked a cigarette as he leisurely walked round the tarantass, just as a man surveys a horse. He informed us that he would put us right for £5, which we flatly refused to give. “But you will certainly break down if you proceed,” urged the extortioner. “Then,” said I, “if we do, we will not come to you for assistance.” Said some of the people, “You had better go on to the next station at Bogotol, where there lives a merchant named So-and-so; and if you ask him he will recommend you to an honest wheelwright.” With our spokes roped together, therefore, and wetted, we waddled on, and arrived at Bogotol between three and four in the morning.
“Is the merchant So-and-so at home?” was the first question we asked at the post-house. “Yes,” said they; “but he is asleep, and will get up for nobody.” “Indeed,” said I to my interpreter, “will you go to him and say as politely as you can that an Englishman travelling to Irkutsk has met with an accident, and will be greatly obliged if he can recommend him an honest wheelwright?” And off went Mr. Interpreter, with a glum countenance, evidently not liking his job. He knocked at the merchant’s door, expecting to get roundly abused for his intrusion. But the merchant, on ascertaining what was the matter, asked the stranger in, and shouted to his servants, Peter, Timothy, and John, to bestir themselves. One he sent for the wheelwright, another to heat the samovar, and a third to prepare some food; and then, said he, “I cannot think of letting you go till the wheelwright comes, and all is going well”; after which he plied his visitor with talk, telling him what a famous place was Siberia; that any one might come in his neighbourhood, and, without payment, till as much land or cut as much grass as he liked, no man forbidding him; though labour, he added, was scarce, and imported goods dear. Thus, after tea and talk, and the arrival of the workman, the merchant returned to his slumbers. But I thought this one of the finest examples of hospitality and kindness to strangers I had ever met with, and I wondered much whether a broken-down Russian traveller, knocking up an Englishman at four in the morning, and asking to be recommended to an honest wheelwright, would have received a kindlier reception. The honest wheelwright mended us up for a few shillings, and, after calling to thank the merchant, we started, and about noon reached Krasnorechinska. Here we called upon the priest, who had 3,000 parishioners, of whom he said 200 could read, for whom we gave him some pamphlets, and sold him four New Testaments. He possessed a large Russian Bible, which cost upwards of six shillings, and was, he said, the cheapest to be had.
By night we reached Atchinsk, the first station in Eastern Siberia, and although the roads were perceptibly better immediately we crossed the border, our poor wheel was out of trim again, and threatened to detain us far into the morrow. And now came sundry physicians to administer advice, chiefly, however, in their own favour. One wished to sell us a new wheel for £1, another to make an exchange of our two front wheels for £2, and so on; in answer to which I declared that I would go straight to the Ispravnik and show my grand letter from Petersburg. “But,” urged Mr. Interpreter, “the Ispravnik has nothing to do with mending wheels!” “True,” I replied; but--“Let us go!” And so we did, and were kindly received. “If your axletrees are of iron,” said the Ispravnik, “I doubt whether there are any persons in the place capable of mending them; but, even if there are, they will most likely be drunk, as to-day is a fête; and you must therefore wait till to-morrow.” I pleaded, however that he should do his best, and things turned out better than he prophesied. A wheelwright was found, who for half-a-crown enabled us to proceed, and early next morning we reached Krasnoiarsk.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Mr. Atkinson gives the following list of mammalia as inhabiting Siberia:--The reindeer, stag, roebuck, elk; the argali, or wild sheep, and wild boar; the jackal, wolf, tiger, and bear; the Corsac and Arctic foxes; the lynx, glutton, and polecat; the beaver, otter, badger, hedgehog, ermine, Arctic hare; sable; flying, striped, and common squirrels; the Siberian and common marmots; the water and common rats; the mouse, bat, and mole.
Chapter XVIII
THE YENESEI.
Sources of the river.--Discoveries of Wiggins and Nordenskiöld.--The Yenesei at Krasnoiarsk.--Current, width, depth.--Breaking up of ice.--The Yeneseisk province.--Geography.--Meteorology.--Forests.--Timber.--Fish of Yenesei.--Birds.--Russian population.--Navigation.--Corn and cattle.--Towns.--A Scoptsi village.--Salubrity of climate.--The aborigines.--Ethnology.--Tunguses.--Fur-bearing animals.--Methods of hunting.--Minerals.
The most remarkable of the natural features of the Yeneseisk province is its wonderful river, the Yenesei,[1] much of our knowledge of which, below Krasnoiarsk, we owe to the discoveries of Wiggins and Seebohm, Nordenskiöld and Théel, all of whose information has come to us within the past seven years.[2]
As I stood on the banks of the Yenesei at Krasnoiarsk, it appeared to me the most majestic stream I had ever beheld; and, when looking at the rush of its waters, I was thankful that we had attempted nothing so rash as to descend by a raft on its bosom; for, however pleasant a method of travelling from Minusinsk this might be in summer, it would be nothing short of madness to attempt it during the spring floods. Some idea of the swiftness of the current may be gathered from the report of M. Théel, who says that, including stoppages and without rowing, they were carried in their boat from Krasnoiarsk to Yeneseisk, a distance of 300 miles, in 2½ days; that is to say, they floated down the stream at just about the same speed as we attained with three horses at our best travelling, namely, 130 miles in a day and night. Allowing for stoppages, they floated at the rate of seven miles an hour. Dr. Peacock, who lives at Krasnoiarsk, informed me that the river in quiet places has a current of five miles an hour; in swifter places of 10 miles, and in some very rapid parts of 17 miles an hour; but this last may perchance refer to the two rapids, through one of which M. Théel’s party had to shoot at Padporoschensk, about 170 miles below Krasnoiarsk, and the other, of which Mr. Seebohm speaks as remaining unfrozen all the winter through.[3]
I imagine that the grandest thing to be witnessed on the Lower Yenesei is the breaking-up of the ice, which Mr. Seebohm has described as he saw it in 1877. Proceeding down the river on the ice with Captain Wiggins, they reached the ship Thames in her winter quarters near the confluence of the Kureika with the Yenesei, and were quietly waiting for the opening of the navigation, when on the 1st of June commenced what Mr. Seebohm calls the “battle of the Yenesei.” The pressure underneath caused a large field of ice to break away, which, by collision with an angular point of the bank, resulted in the piling up of a little range of ice mountains 50 or 60 feet high, and picturesque in the extreme. Huge blocks of ice, six feet thick and 20 feet long, were seen standing perpendicularly, whilst others were crushed up in fragments like broken pottery. Some were white, and some clear as glass, and blue as an Italian sky. Then the river began to rise, and in the course of the night the whole crust of the Yenesei, as far as could be seen, broke up with a tremendous crash, and a dense mass of ice-floes and pack-ice rushed irresistibly up the Kureika, driving the poor ship like a toy before it, and leaving it in the evening, amidst huge hummocks of ice, almost high and dry. The velocity of these masses of pack-ice on the Yenesei was reckoned on some days to be not less than 20 miles an hour. This sort of thing continued for a fortnight, and during two days it was calculated that 50,000 acres of ice passed the ship up the constantly changing Kureika, which alternately rose and fell. Many square miles of ice were marched up for some hours, and then marched back again. Sometimes the pack-ice and floes were jammed so tightly together that it looked as if one might scramble across the river without much difficulty. At other times there was a good deal of open water, and the icebergs “calved” as they went along, with much commotion and splashing, that could be heard a mile off. Underlayers of icebergs grounded, and after the velocity of the enormous mass had caused it to pass on, the “calves,” or pieces left behind, rose to the surface like whales coming up to breathe. Some of them must have done so from a good depth, for they rose out of the water with a considerable splash, and rocked about for some time before settling down to their floating level. At last took place the final march past of the beaten winter forces in this great 14 days’ “battle,” and for seven days more came slowly down the stragglers of the great Arctic army--worn and weather-beaten little icebergs, dirty ice-floes looking like mudbanks, and broken pack-ice in the last stage of destruction--after which the river was found to have risen to a height of 70 feet.
To proceed, however, from the river to the basin through which it flows. The Yenesei gives its name to Yeneseisk, that central Siberian province which is bounded on the west by the governments of Tobolsk and Tomsk, and on the east by those of Yakutsk and Irkutsk. It is the only province that stretches across the country from the Altai range to the Arctic Ocean, a distance from north to south of nearly 2,000 miles; or, to put it in another way, it extends from the latitude of London to that of the most northerly point of Asia, within 14 degrees of the North Pole.[4]
The province is divided into six uyezds, with six principal towns, viz., Krasnoiarsk, Minusinsk, Yeneseisk, Kansk, Atchinsk, and Turukhansk. The differences of temperature between its various parts are, of course, very great. The southern portions about Minusinsk we heard spoken of as the Italy of Siberia; and at Krasnoiarsk, towards the end of June, we found the temperature like that of an English summer. Further north, at Yeneseisk, the greatest heat of the year 1877 (registered in June) was 92·5, whilst the greatest cold sunk to 59·2 below zero. This cold was exceeded in December of the same year at Turukhansk, where the thermometer sank to 63·0 below zero.
The province is covered with magnificent forests up to the Arctic Circle, but the trees rapidly diminish in size further north, and disappear soon after lat. 69°. These forests are principally of pine. In the neighbourhood of Krasnoiarsk the pine and the larch attain to colossal dimensions. The pine frequently rises to 200 feet in height, but is never more than six feet in diameter at the base. The larch, which has the furthest northern range, sometimes attains to the same height, but its diameter is but four feet on the surface of the ground.[5]
The forests abound with animal life, as do the rivers with fish. Fish forms the principal food of the natives, and in summer almost every one is a fisherman, using nets and lines, or spearing by torchlight. In the Yenesei are found pike, ruff, perch, and tench, all which are little esteemed, and serve as food for the dogs. The more valued are the sturgeon, salmon, and various species of the genus Coregonus. The common sturgeon is caught along the whole Yenesei, and sometimes weighs more than 200 lbs. The sterlet usually weighs only three or four lbs., but occasionally reaches 18. The salmon is most numerous in the upper course of the river at Minusinsk, where it is caught in great numbers.
The birds of the Yeneseisk province have received much attention from Mr. Seebohm. He brought home, in 1877, about 500 eggs, and more than 1,000 skins, but he thinks that he would have had a still larger bag had he made Yeneseisk his head-quarters instead of the Kureika. He speaks of a perfect Babel of birds when the ice was breaking up at the beginning of June. Gulls, geese, and swans were flying about in all directions, also flocks of redpoles and shore-larks, bramblings and wagtails; and in the course of the summer were seen the sea-eagle, the rough-legged buzzard, the sparrow-hawk, and various kinds of owls. In addition to our species of cuckoo, the Himalayan cuckoo made its way to these regions, though it had a different note to that of our English bird--a guttural and hollow-sounding hoo, which could be heard at a great distance. Ravens and carrion-crows were plentiful, and jackdaws, magpies, and starlings were seen at Yeneseisk, though the jackdaw and starling did not go much further north, which remark applies also to the bullfinch. The nut-cracker was found as far north as the Kureika, where it showed a desire to be sociable, and often perched on the rigging of the Thames. Besides these, Mr. Seebohm, among many other birds, mentions the thrush, the black, hazel, and willow grouse, the capercailzie, bittern, crane, lapwing, and golden plover. Towards the end of summer is to be seen, he says, a curious sight on the tundras--flocks of geese in full moult and unable to fly.
The Russian population of the province is settled for the more part in towns and villages by the side of the river, and along the great high road crossing it. The natives wander over the remainder. Russian villages are seen from 10 to 15 miles apart on the rivers’ banks, at which travellers proceeding north may find oarsmen in summer and horses in winter,--horses, that is, as far as Turukhansk, beyond which first dogs and then reindeer are employed.
Most of the corn that is raised in the province grows about Minusinsk, where it may be bought at a fabulously low price, and whence it is brought down the river in barges and flat-bottomed boats.[6] Rye is not cultivated further north than Antsiferova, 40 miles below Yeneseisk, and oats not beyond Zotina, on the 60th parallel. Potatoes are cultivated up to Turukhansk, but they are small. Agriculture, in fact, practically ceases a little beyond Yeneseisk. The Russians alone give any attention to it, as the natives are too busy fishing during their short summers to till the land. Cattle are raised to some small extent in the valley of the Yenesei, though the people do not appear to understand how to make the most of them. Cows are found as far as Dudinsk; but though in some of the villages they may have 40 or 50, it is almost impossible to get a glass of milk, the calves being allowed to take it all. An Anglo-Russian lady informs me that, were these cows treated like English ones, even for a few days, they would lose their milk; therefore a Russian cow is only partially milked, the rest being left for her calf. A scientific gentleman told my friend that it is the peculiarity of all cows only lately redeemed from a wild state to lose their milk when deprived of their calves. The making of butter is only half known on the Yenesei, and of cheese not at all. Sheep are found as far as Vorogova, and goats up to Yeneseisk.
Of the towns and villages on the Yenesei, Yeneseisk is the oldest, having been founded in 1618; and the most curious is that of Silovanoff, near Turukhansk. It is inhabited by exiled Scoptsi, a fanatical sect whose principal doctrine is based on Matt. xix. 12, who mutilate themselves, and endeavour to persuade others to follow their example. When these people are caught so acting, they are banished.[7]
It has already been intimated that the aborigines wander over the uninhabited parts of the province. In the south, about Minusinsk, are Tatars, most of whom have embraced the Christianity of the Russian Church. In the north, to the west of the river, are the Samoyedes and Ostjaks. West of the river, at the extreme north, are the Yuraks, and below them the Tunguses, which latter wander over a far larger area than any other tribe in Siberia.[8] Those in the Yeneseisk province give themselves to the care of reindeer and to the chase. M. Théel speaks of them as the most intelligent of the natives on the Yenesei, and says that their rich women, probably wives of chiefs, often wear furs of beaver, sable, and black fox to the value of many hundreds of pounds sterling. He mentions also, as some proof of their intellectual taste, that there was presented to him a hexagonal spindle of ivory, upon which the days, the weeks, and the months were indicated by different signs. He speaks also of a game they had resembling chess, of which all the pieces were of ivory.
Among the principal animals, objects of their chase, are the sable, the common fox, the white fox, the elk, the reindeer, the wolf, the bear, the ermine, and the squirrel. At the beginning of October, and sometimes also of January, they start on snow-shoes. Alone, or in company, the hunter goes into the virgin forest, some hundreds of versts from any habitation, and is followed by a little sledge drawn by dogs. If he finds the track of a sable, he follows, and, on lighting upon the animal, he has not much difficulty in killing it. But the sable often takes refuge in a hole, and then there is nothing to be done but to await his pleasure in coming out; and as this may be by night as well as by day, his retreat is covered with fine threads attached to bells, which give the alarm. The hunter may thus have to wait two or three days; but, if he happen to kill the much-coveted animal, his trouble is well rewarded; for a good sable skin fetches from 50_s._ to £10. In skinning, the coat ought not to be stretched; but, on the contrary, contracted as much as possible, in order to render the hairs more bushy, which enhances the value. Hence the skins one meets with in commerce are all short and wide.
The common fox is taken with snares and traps. The black fox is very rare in these parts, and its skin is valued up to £100. The white fox is taken on the tundra by means of traps placed on the top of little hills. This animal generally retires south towards the middle of September; and as it is known that the fox, rather than jump over an obstacle, however low, goes round it, the hunters, profiting by this knowledge, set up barriers of branches, leaving openings where they plant their snares, and catch their prey. The hunting of the elk is carried on by men on snow-shoes; and such numbers of this animal are killed that in some years one may buy at Yeneseisk as many as 10,000 skins. Reindeer are taken in numbers equally large, sometimes in traps, and sometimes by driving whole herds into an enclosure, from which they cannot get out.[9]
One of their modes of capturing the bear in the Yeneseisk province is by fixing a wooden platform to the trunk of a tree, and at such a height from the ground that the bear is forced to stand on his hind-legs at full length to reach the middle. On this platform are numerous barbed iron spikes, and at the higher part a joint of meat. The bear arrives, stands up, and puts forward one paw to seize the bait; but, bringing it down on the spikes, finds it fixed. The furious animal puts down the second to release the first, which also is caught, and he thus becomes an easy prey to the huntsman.
Thus the natives spend their days--fishing in summer and hunting in winter. They have no towns, no villages, no houses, but live in tents of skins or of bark, according to the season; and they have little idea of civilized life, or the mineral wealth with which their country abounds. Iron ore is found in the valley of the Yenesei, and from the province, in 1877, 2,700 tons were cast; also from the mine of graphite, on the Kureika, Captain Wiggins ballasted one of his vessels. The greatest mineral product of the province, however, is gold, of which I shall speak in the following chapter.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Its most distant sources rise under another name in Mongolia, on the eastern side of the Khangai mountains, whence the Selenga and the Orkhon, flowing together into Lake Baikal, emerge as the Angara, which flows into the Yenesei proper near the town of Yeneseisk. The stream that is called the Yenesei, however, rises in the Tannu range of the Altai mountains, whence it bursts through the Sayansk chain in cataracts and rapids, and enters Siberia south of Minusinsk; and then, flowing on beyond Krasnoiarsk, it is joined by the Angara, the Lower and Upper Tunguska, and the Kureika, all flowing in on the right bank. The Russians give its length as 3,472 miles, thus making the Yenesei the fourth longest river in the world, being exceeded only by the Nile, the Amazon, and the Mississippi.
[2] See Appendix D.
[3] The gigantic proportions of the Yenesei will be further realized from its width, which at Krasnoiarsk, 1,700 miles from the sea, is more than 1,000 yards, and at Yeneseisk it measures rather more than a mile. From thence it widens gradually, so that at the Kureika it enlarges to about three miles; and between Tolstonosovsk and Goltchikha it expands like a lake with a breadth of more than 40 miles. The delta and lagoon formed by its waters are about 400 miles in length. The depth of the river varies, of course, according to the season, but opposite Dudinsk M. Théel’s sounding-line indicated a depth of 12 fathoms. The river has a fall of 4,000 feet, and the banks generally are steep and lofty, from 60 to 100 feet above the water. Thus it would seem that comparatively little land is covered by the summer floods, which is just the reverse in the case of the Obi. M. Théel observes, however, that it frequently happens, when one bank is high, the other is low, from which it follows that the vegetation on either side assumes a somewhat different character; for where the bank is low, and consequently exposed to inundations, one sees abundance of willows, whilst the higher bank is very often covered with fir, pine, and larch.
[4] The province has an area of nearly a million square miles--that is to say, is somewhat larger than the aggregate surface covered by Austria, France, Russia, Spain, and all the British possessions in Europe. The southern part only is mountainous, all above the 60th parallel being flat and swampy. It has some half-dozen large and thousands of smaller lakes in the tundras of the north, and the province is well watered by the Yenesei and its larger affluents,--namely, the Angara, the Podkamennaia (or stony) Tunguska, the Nijnaia (or lower) Tunguska, and the Kureika. In 1873 the population was thus classified: hereditary nobles, 800; personally noble, 1,600; ecclesiastical persons of all sorts, 4,000; townspeople, 20,000; rural population, 232,000; military, 15,000; foreigners, 42; and others, probably aborigines, 122,000. The total population in 1880 was 372,000, or about three-fourths of the population of Liverpool.
[5] The larch is called in Russ listvenitsa (from list, a leaf, and venets, a crown), in allusion to the arrangement of its acicular leaves. Its wood looks well for the walls and ceilings of the peasants’ rooms. The larch is highly valued also for its power of resisting the effects of moisture, besides which, when used as fuel, it is found to produce a high degree of heat (in which respect the birch comes next), though it does not produce a brilliant light. For the tile-kilns it is preferable to all other wood, but it is not used for charcoal, nor does it serve well for burning in the house, on account of the pungent and stupefying qualities of its smoke; nor in the furnaces used for the manufacture of rolled iron plates, for it soils the metal.
The elegant spruce fir, with its branches almost down to the root and trailing on the ground, is more abundant, and extends nearly as far north. The Siberians look upon this tree as very important for commercial purposes. The wood is white, light, and very elastic. It is the favourite tree for masts, and is considered the best substitute for ash for oars, and it makes the best “knees” for shipbuilding. Snow-shoes also are generally made of this wood. The quality is good down into the roots. It is, however, subject to very hard knots, which are said to blunt the edge of any axe not made of Siberian steel. The Siberian spruce is less abundant, and differs from the common spruce in having a smooth bark of an ash-grey colour. The leaves are also of a much darker and bluer green. The wood is soft and liable to crack and decay, and is consequently of little commercial value; but, being easy to split, it is largely used for roofing and for fuel. The cost of firewood in Siberia per sajen, or seven-feet cube, is 3_s._, as compared with 12_s._ in Petersburg, and from 20_s._ to 30_s._ at Moscow. At Krasnoiarsk a log of building timber, 80 feet long, costs from 20_d._ to 3_s._, whilst bricks cost from 16_s._ to 20_s._ per 1,000. The Scotch fir, with the upper trunk and branches almost of a cinnamon yellow, is in many places very abundant.
The Siberian is proudest, however, of his cedar--a tree very similar in appearance to the Scotch fir, but more regular in its growth--clothed with branches nearer to the ground, and with an almost uniform grey trunk. For furniture and indoor wood it is considered to be the best timber in the country, and is said never to rot or shrink, warp or crack. It is soft and easy to work, but has a fine grain, and is almost free from knots. The Ostjaks use it for building their large boats. They take a trunk two or three feet in diameter, split it, and of each half make a wide, thin board. Having no proper saws, they are obliged to cut the wood away with an axe, and thus the greater part of the tree is wasted. The Russian peasant is still more prodigal with his timber, for when I was going through the forest east of the Yenesei, a felled cedar-tree was pointed out, and the remark made that it was quite usual that a man who wanted nuts should cut down a fine tree for the sole purpose of replenishing his bag with the nut-filled cones.
The birch is common up to the 70th parallel, and still further north, on the tundra, in suitable localities, the creeping birch and two or three sorts of willow may be met with. The alder is abundant, and the juniper. The poplar is found as far north as Turukhansk. The Ostjaks hollow their canoes from the trunks of this tree.
[6] In 1876 the number of steamers on the Yenesei was four, all of which had paddle-wheels, and were used for tugging barges. The steamers took no cargo on board, and some of the barges were arranged like floating shops. These last leave Yeneseisk at the end of May, and return from the lower part of the river at the end of September, during which period the two largest steamers, with engines of 60 or 70-horse power, make two voyages, the smaller only one. Some of the barges are of 250 tons burthen. Besides these steamers, there were two sailing-boats of 50 tons burthen each, and a number of others from 6 to 20 tons. It should also be added that there are large pentagonal boats or barges, constructed with huge timbers in the corn-growing districts on the upper part of the river, whence they are towed down each by 15 or 20 men, and then, arrived at their destination, are broken up for building or firewood. Such was the fleet of the Yenesei at the time of the visit of M. Théel.
[7] Mr. Seebohm tells me that, as regards material comforts, this village is far in advance of the ordinary Russian villages. He found the land well cultivated and railed off, the cattle kept out by gates, and there was a hospital for the sick. The houses were ventilated, the joining work was good, and there were books. All intoxicants were forbidden, and likewise tobacco and tea and coffee. Morally, in fact, it was a model village and without crime. The inhabitants, however, of whom there were more men than women, had a remarkable appearance. They were all sallow; the men were beardless, with squeaky voices; and no inhabitant was less than forty years of age. A “baby’s music” had never been heard among them. They keep all the festivals of the Russian Church, but have no priest. They say that every man is a priest, and that he can perform priestly acts only for himself. They provided Mr. Seebohm, as a guest, with both tea and butter, but the Scoptsi themselves eat no animal food but fish, use no butter and drink no milk. At least this was so originally; but here breaks forth a fact that should be respectfully dedicated to all who suppose it within the bounds of possibility to bring every one, or to keep every one, to the same way of thinking. These people number less than a score, have no one in the village not of their own persuasion, and yet they have split into two sects, the difference being that one drinks milk and the other does not. Originally some 700 or 800 were sent from the government of Perm; but many on the Yenesei were dying, and they petitioned to be removed elsewhere, and are now to be found with other Scoptsi in large numbers in the province of Yakutsk. As to the relative salubrity of these and other Siberian provinces, the only clue that I have is that whereas in 1879 the death-rate in the government of Perm, whence these people came, was 5·07 per cent., it was 4·13 in the province of Tobolsk, 3·89 in that of Irkutsk, and 3·51 in the province of Yeneseisk.
[8] Dr. Latham observes that, if we take the principal populations that are common to the Russian and Chinese Empires, we find them to be the Turkish, Mongolian, and Tungusian races; the Turk on the west, the Mongol in the middle, and the Tunguse on the east. The Tunguse race begins, he says, north of Peking, and stretches through Manchuria across the district of the Amur, and north-east and west to the sea of Okhotsk and to the Yenesei. Of the Tunguse family the Manchu is the most civilized, whilst in Siberia we have them in their extreme character of rude nomads, unlettered, and still pagan, or but imperfectly Christianized. The Tungusian approaches the Mongolian, the Ostjak, or the Eskimo, according as his residence lies north or south; within the limit of the growth of trees or beyond it, on the champaign, the steppe, or the tundra. On the tundra the horse ceases to be his domestic animal, and the reindeer or the dog replaces it. Hence we hear of three divisions of the Tunguse family called by different names, according as they possess horses, reindeer, or dogs.
[9] The horns of these animals are very fine. I was presented with a pair in Archangel, measuring nearly four feet from the skull to the extremities, which are a yard apart. The brow antlers are 13 inches long, and the bes-antlers, or those next above, 16 and 18 inches respectively, whilst the total measurement of antlers and branches is upwards of 14 feet.
Chapter XIX
A VISIT TO A GOLD-MINE.
Gold in Siberia.--Where found.--Gold-hunting.--A prospecting party.--Thawing the ground.--Subterranean passages.--Hardships.--Mining calculations.--Building of barracks.--Preparations for our visit.--Costumes.--Road through the “forest primeval.”--Luxuriant vegetation.--Crossing mountains.--Arrival at mine.--Labour of miners.--Gold-washing machine.--Government inspection.--Wages.--Hours of labour.--Miners’ food.--Pay-day.--Drink and its follies.--Miners’ fortunes.--Mines of Eastern Siberia.--Return to Krasnoiarsk.
Not many Englishmen, probably, would think of going to Siberia to seek for El-dorado, the fabled land of gems and gold. Many tons of precious metals, however, are found there yearly; and there are firms, consisting of only two or three partners, that net an annual income of more than half-a-million sterling. The Russian empire furnishes an eighth part of the gold found yearly throughout the world, and three-fourths of this quantity come from Siberia. It was at the beginning of the century that gold-washing was commenced in the Urals, and a period of great prosperity followed from 1825 to about 1850. Since that time, the number of mines has increased, but the profits are less, because, whilst the value of gold has diminished, the price of labour has risen. The sources and affluents of the great Siberian rivers are rich in gold. The districts on the west of Lake Baikal that are most worked are those of Yeneseisk, Irkutsk, Kansk, Nijni-Udinsk, and the sources of the Lena, which last are the richest.[1]
Accordingly, when we arrived at Krasnoiarsk, the large town of the Yeneseisk gold-mining district, and made acquaintance with some of the gold-seekers’ families, it appeared a good opportunity to visit one of the mines, since they were called “near.” It was rather alarming, however, to discover what were the Siberians’ notions of the word near, for in that huge country 100 miles or more go for nothing--in fact, are a mere trifle, and not too long to be travelled for the sake of a ball or a festive gathering. The gold-seekers’ daughters even sometimes go out to their fathers’ mines within this distance, and, when they do so, stride their horses in top-boots and knickerbockers to save their dresses being torn in the primeval forest, or, as it is called, the taiga. When, therefore, I found that a pair of high boots would be necessary, and that it would involve a long journey on horseback, I rather hesitated. We had, however, been introduced to the Director of the Krasnoiarsk Hospital, Dr. Peacock; and when it appeared that not only he, but Mrs. Peacock also, would join the party, my courage rose, and I determined to go.
But, before we start, let me try to give the reader some idea as to the localities in which the gold is found, and how it is discovered. In the mountainous districts of the forest countless brooks unite into rivulets, which, in accordance with the character of the landscape, have a strong fall, becoming very rapid in the spring, and still more so in the summer, after the melting of the snow. The waters uproot trees, undermine rocks, and sweep along earth, gold, and other metals with resistless fury, till the lowlands are reached, where the stream, having no longer the same force, allows the heavy gold to sink to the bottom, to be covered, perhaps, next season with more gold, or, perhaps, by earth and rubbish. It will be easy to understand, then, how a layer of sand containing gold may be thus formed, and subsequently covered over with beds of earth and stone.
The professional tayoshnik, or gold-hunter, has to discover these auriferous layers; but this he cannot do alone.[2] There must be a prospecting party made up, which may consist, say, of an overseer, a leader, 8 workmen, 10 horses, 18 saddle-bags, provisions, and tools, the whole of which may be estimated to cost £500, which amount has to be risked, for the party may go out into the taiga and find nothing, or what may prove worse than nothing.[3]
The tayoshnik knows, however, that the Siberian gold deposits are almost always to be met with on the banks of streams, or in their beds. Again, gold is often hidden in crevices of the earth that have evidently once served as channels for running water. Moreover, he knows that those rivers that wash up gold are always such as have their sources in ravines, the rocks of which are very much weather-beaten. Gold is rarely found at precipitous spots, and is most abundant where the water ages ago had a calmer current, and consequently no longer possessed the necessary strength to carry the heavy metal along.[4]
The hunter must, however, dig some depth beneath the surface, the thickness of the beds of earth covering the gold varying from 2 to 20 feet, though it increases sometimes to 150 feet. At some spots three or four gold deposits, or plasts, as they are called, lie one over the other, separated by thick strata of earth and rocks, in which case the lowest of the plasts is generally the richest.[5]
With knowledge of this kind, therefore, the gold-hunter proceeds till he arrives at a valley along which he judges some ancient river ages ago may have rolled down its golden sands. He then seeks in the bed of the rivulet for pyrites, iron, slate-clay, or quartz with a thick coat of crystals; and at length he forms a judgment as to whether or not he is likely by digging to find a gold deposit. If his verdict be favourable, then all hands are set to work to cut down trees and build a rude log hut, in which the party may have to live for months. The next business is to dig a number of holes or trenches at a distance from each other, to get down to the auriferous layers--that is, if there are any; for if there be none, their labour of course is lost, and they have to try elsewhere. But if there be auriferous layers, it is no easy matter to get to them, for gold-hunting is usually followed in the winter, often with the thermometer many degrees below zero, and when the ground is so hard as not to be pierced even by a pickaxe; they have, therefore, to make huge bonfires, whereby the earth is softened, so as to allow trenches of considerable depth to be dug. This manœuvre has to be repeated until the longed-for gold is found, or unyielding stone presents an impenetrable obstacle.[6]
These trenches or holes are made under the superintendence of the overseer. Samples of the earth are constantly tried, and so guidance is obtained as to the direction in which other work should be begun, and some idea formed as to the depth and breadth of the beds of gold. Often, however, the metal lies so far beneath the surface that it would scarcely be possible to dig out all the trenches begun. In such cases the wider ones are sunk into wells or shafts, and subterranean passages are made.[7]
Thus the work of testing a locality may take some little time; meanwhile the workmen and overseer live in their wretched hut, which often is not well roofed, and heated only by a portable stove. The wind whistles through the cracks of the moss-calked walls, an insupportable heat reigns in the vicinity of the stove, while, on the opposite walls, icicles gleam like brilliants, and melting snow falls from above. The air is rendered poisonous by the exhalations of the inmates and the vapour ascending from damp clothing hung near the fire to dry. In fact, as the workmen say, the atmosphere is thick enough “to hang up an axe in.” However, in the wilderness, even such a shelter is a longed-for refuge when a fierce snowstorm is raging and the thermometer has sunk to far below zero.
But the climate is not the only hardship the gold-hunter has to encounter. His provisions consist of black rusks, dried meat, tea, and a little brandy; and often he does not possess as much as could be wished even of this meagre fare, for he is obliged to carry with it all requisite tools and weapons on his beasts of burden, and communication with civilized centres or depôts is usually difficult, and in spring sometimes impossible. My interpreter told me he had an uncle, who was a tayoshnik, who made an income of about £1,000 a year, but had sometimes, for want of better food, to eat bear’s flesh.
But supposing the overseer to have discovered a promising spot, and to have tested the earth from several holes, he can then strike an average as to the amount of gold that may be got from every hundred poods--that is, every 32 cwt., or say every ton and a half--of sand. If the amount be five zolotniks,--say, ¾ oz., this is thought rich; if less than ⅛ oz. it is very poor; sometimes, however, ½ lb. of gold even is found to 100 poods of sand. The overseer has next to calculate whether it will pay to work the mine.[8]
If, when all things are calculated, the land promises to pay, he sticks up two posts, one on each end of the area he has chosen, despatches a courier to his employer, and the place is registered at once by the commissary of police or other competent authority from the local Direction of Mines. The area is then thoroughly surveyed by a Government surveyor, who makes a map of the spot, and, when all is secured to the finder, the proprietor can at once borrow money on the security of his mine, paying at the rate of from 20 to 30 per cent., according as money is scarce or plentiful. Many capitalists, content with this interest, employ all their money in this way.[9]
The next thing is to build the necessary houses and barracks for the future manager of the mine and his workmen, the number of which may vary from 10 to 2,000. Provisions and fuel provided, then the digging begins about the middle of February, and the washing about the 1st of May, the operations being over on the 10th of September, or, if the weather be unusually fine, on the 1st of November. When a mine has been registered, it must be worked to some extent, or it is forfeited to the Crown. The owner, however, may sell it if he pleases, but it must not remain idle.
It was to a mine that had been opened the same year that we were to start from Krasnoiarsk. It was called the Archangel Gabriel mine, and was situated on the river Slisneva, at a spot nearly 30 miles from the Yenesei. Our worthy doctor arrayed himself for the occasion in the costume of a Tyrolese hunter, with a double gun over his shoulders, a revolver and bowie-knife in his belt, and a huntsman’s horn; for he hoped, he said, that we might chance to meet with a bear--a hope that I cannot say was shared by all the party. I know at least of one who hoped we should not meet with a bear. However, it was by no means unlikely, and I accordingly armed Mr. Interpreter with our revolver. Madame Peacock wore a black velvet hat, a magenta chemisette, a brown tweed tunic, black knickerbockers, and top boots; and thus, with a few provisions, we started in the afternoon to cross the Yenesei to the village of Basaïka. The water was more than 20 feet higher than it had risen for 30 years, the ferry had been washed away, and the force of the stream carried down our boat a good mile ere we reached the opposite bank; and then, after wading through a great deal of mud and water, in doing which we learned to appreciate high boots, we reached the village, and took refreshment before mounting our steeds. We then advanced in single file from the village through the cultivated bottom-land, and afterwards through much grass, that was very like penetrating a forest of herbs, to which our horses took kindly, for they had scarcely to stoop their heads to nibble their fodder. Although the summer was young, there were to be seen the acacia in blossom, currants, and raspberries; and among flowers, the bitter vetch, the spiræa, anemones, Flora’s bell, high pæonies, aconite, or wolf’s bane, and large dragon-mouths; also abundance of ferns, among them one strongly resembling the Osmunda regalis, and the magnificent Struthiopteris germanica, which attains to gigantic growth in Siberia; and even the trunks of the trees and the granite rocks were covered with a rich variety of lichens and verdant mosses.
Thus far, therefore, everything was going well. The evening was delightful, and all were in excellent spirits. Soon, however, our guide turned into the forest, and we had before us the first of two mountains over whose backs we were to climb, thinking to reach our destination by nightfall. At this point we began to get some idea of what is meant by “the forest primeval,” for sometimes the way was all but impassable by reason of masses of shattered-down dry wood; now our horses stepped over fallen trees, and now waded knee-deep up the beds of rivulets; in some places we met with snow-white skeletons of dead trees with branching arms; in others the way, indicated by notches on the trees, had been cut with an axe.
As we mounted higher and higher, we had before us a fine, bold, rocky mountain, lit up with the sinking sun. My companions called to me to look back, and we had a splendid view of the noble Yenesei at sunset, of its verdant bottom-lands on either side, its impetuous stream, and magnificent forests.
We then prepared for our first descent. But it became dusk, and the overshadowing trees made our difficulty the greater. My horse, however, seemed to know so well what he was about, that I was minded to keep my seat and hope for the best. But when all my companions, including Madame and the guide, had dismounted, and advised me to do the same if I valued my neck, I followed suit till the valley was reached. We then remounted for a short distance, by which time it was quite dark, and for a short space some of the party were lost to the others. All came right, however, towards midnight, when we saw afar off the glimmering of a candle. This we hailed with a lusty blast of the doctor’s horn, thinking to awake the inhabitants. Our coming had not been expected, but letters from the owners of the mine secured us attention, and such hospitality as the place afforded. “Let us have the samovar,” said the doctor; “and bring a good large one, please, for we shall empty it.”
And he was true to his word; for although they brought a twenty-glass samovar, it went out empty. Russians, however, be it remembered, think nothing of drinking from eight to a dozen glasses of tea, and we were in need of refreshment!
Then came the question of sleep. They had but one room to offer us. Madame, therefore, lay on what might be called by courtesy a sofa. The bedstead was politely given to me, and the doctor and interpreter lay on the floor. Thus we managed to rest till about five in the morning, when we were called. Our toilets had to be speedily arranged, and our faces washed with a handful or two of water outside the door, for there was no sort of washing apparatus to be seen. After some tea and rusks, we started to witness the working of the gold-mine.
I had seen the Swedish iron-mines of Dannemora, and had gone down a copper-mine in the Urals; but the gold-mine was something new. There was no underground work going on, and no digging of holes and sending up the earth to be washed; but the whole surface had been laid bare. Hence the work resembled that of English navvies making a cutting. There were a number of small carts drawn by Siberian horses, and men with pickaxes and shovels filling them. When full, the carts were drawn up an incline to a platform, and emptied into one end of a large iron cylinder, resembling a coffee-roaster, with holes all round it. This was made to rotate by water-power, and the large stones and pebbles were, by the formation and turning of the cylinder, tumbled out at the end. Here they were duly watched, so that no nuggets should be overlooked. At the same time several streams of water were poured into the cylinder, and the earth and small pebbles, passing through the holes, fell into a long wooden apron, inclined at an angle of 35°, with moveable boxes or “pockets.”
In order that we might see how the gold was washed, the manager caused some of these pockets to be emptied on to an inclined plane of clean wood, raised at either side, and over which ran equably and slowly a stream of clear water. One of the pockets (called dundofka) was then emptied on the higher part of the plane, and the water soon washed away the mud, the man who performed the washing having a wooden scraper, like that of a scavenger, with which he pushed back the descending grains of gold. This was repeated till six poods, or say 200 lbs., of washed earth had been placed on the board. After the mud and sand had been allowed to roll away, a brush was used instead of the scraper, and there remained behind perhaps a small teaspoonful of gold-dust, or as much as was roughly valued at from 40_s._ to 50_s._ The gold was then placed in a miniature frying-pan, and held over a small fire to dry, after which it was put into what resembled a “poor-box.” This was done in the presence of a Government official, of whom there is always one at every mine, and who is usually a Cossack officer.[10]
The gold thus gained is eventually poured into bags of coarse linen, which, after having been stamped with the brand of the mine, are sewn in leather sacks[11] and taken to Irkutsk or Barnaul, where it is assayed; and afterwards there is deducted the tax of from 5 to 10 per cent., according to the quantity. Gold assignats are given in exchange, payable in six months, or they may be cashed at the Government bank at a discount of 7 per cent. per annum. Thus all the gold found in the country is claimed by the Government, and it is unlawful for any person to have gold-dust in his possession unknown to the authorities.
After we had seen the manner of washing the gold we walked into the barracks, the hospital, stables, and the houses for the 200 or 300 workmen. I have spoken of the hardships that are endured by a prospecting party. Yet, despite all their privations and dangers, there is never a lack of persons who volunteer their services to wealthy projectors, for they receive large wages. The overseer who discovers the mine generally stipulates that he shall receive from 1 to 5 per cent. on the yield; and the percentage given to some of the others on a lucky find is very liberal. The ordinary labourers, too, such as we saw, are well paid. Among them, of course, is a great variety of races and people. There meet at the mines the nobleman and the Siberian peasant; the former officer of the army and the pardoned convict; the Pole, the German, the Tatar, and numberless others, who work in common, now freezing in the icy blasts of winter, and now scorching in the heat of the summer sun. They work intensely hard (sometimes from 3 a.m. to 7 p.m.), and observe no Sundays or saints’ days, excepting that of the patron saint of the mine. But in most cases they have wholesome food, warm quarters, and attention in sickness.
Some of them, however, run away. It happens occasionally that a man may have secreted gold, with which he gets off as early as possible; and some, not reckoning aright the difficulties of travelling so far alone, have been found starved, the useless gold clutched in the grasp of lifeless fingers. We found some attention paid to what might be called the fanaticism of the Mohammedan workmen; the Tatars being placed alone, and convenience being afforded them to cook their food in their own way. A separate barrack, too, was assigned to married men with their wives. Over an outdoor fire hung a large caldron, big enough to boil a donkey--the largest I had ever seen. This, I presumed, was for cooking the meat; and in the bake-house we saw abundance of rye bread, of which some of the men eat 7 lbs. in a day. Their beverages are tea and quass. It is forbidden by law to sell spirituous liquors at the mines. Only the managers have the right to keep them in their possession, though this sensible regulation is often evaded by contrabandists.
When the 10th of September arrives, and the workmen receive their pay, they break forth into the wildest excesses. Before leaving the mine, each labourer gets a ticket, setting forth what he is to receive, which may vary from £20 to £50. This ticket he has to present some miles away at his employer’s office, and there, awaiting him outside, are merchants and dealers, who manage soon to empty his pockets. He too frequently begins by drinking; and then the man who has toiled harder than a slave for months is often at a loss to know upon what objects and follies to lavish his money.
Captain Wiggins says that he never witnessed among the Siberian miners, such scenes of depravity and disorder as may be witnessed among the Australian and Californian miners, or even, at times, in the low streets of English seaport towns. Another Englishman, however, has told me a different story, to the effect that one miner, for instance, will take a common woman and clothe her in satin and velvet, and then, a week after, when money is gone, will tear the clothes from her back to raise capital for drink. Another, of a vain turn of mind, buys bottles of champagne, and sticks them up in a row to throw stones at; a third will buy a piece of printed cotton, or other material, lay it down in the dirty road, and, to indulge his aristocratic tread, will walk on it; whilst a fourth, despising to be drawn by horses, will yoke to his telega his fellow-fools who have spent their money, and so be drawn by human beings. The end of this, of course, is that their money is speedily gone; and now comes the opportunity of the masters for the following year, since they know that they shall want the men again, and labour is scarce. Employers, therefore, advance them money, and the poor sots start off to walk, perhaps, 500 miles to their homes or friends, where, having arrived, they must needs return in a few months to begin the labours of another season.
The managers of mines, some of whom make £1,000 a year, congregate in the winter in the towns, where much drinking and card-playing goes on. If capitalists are fortunate, they can make and keep large fortunes. Two gold-seekers in Krasnoiarsk are reputed to have found, in about 10 years, 1,000 poods of gold, of the value, say, of £2,000,000 sterling. We dined at the house of one of these men.[12]
But to return to the Archangel Gabriel mine. After we had looked at the buildings, and seen what else there was of interest, we returned to a breakfast of beefsteaks, left some books for the workmen, and then, mounting our steeds, returned towards Krasnoiarsk; and, seeing that four persons similarly attired might not meet again for awhile, I proposed that, on reaching the town, we should be photographed in a group. This was done; and so ended one of the pleasantest détours of our journey.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] East of Lake Baikal are many mines on various rivers, such as the Nertcha, the Ingoda, and the Onon. Another famous river is the Olekma; whilst the Amur produces so much of the precious metal that the yield of some of its valleys is fabulous. I heard, near Albazin, concerning the Upper Amur Gold-mining Company, that for the past ten years they had washed 150 poods of gold annually, which, reckoned at £2,000 a pood--its price during the year of my visit--gives a product of £3,000,000. Also on the Vitim, during the summer of 1878, from 300 to 400 poods, I was told, had been extracted, which represent from £600,000 to £800,000 sterling.
[2] Any one, indeed, may go into the uninhabited taiga to seek for gold (as the hunter may penetrate the same dismal region in search of game), provided, that is, he have a certificate from the mining officers, which he may get by giving proofs of good citizenship from the local authorities among whom he resides. He is then at liberty, when he has found gold, to hire the land from the Government for the purposes of mining.
[3] A party of this kind will go where, perhaps, the foot of man has never trodden. Fortunate is the tayoshnik if he have by his side a faithful native who can direct; otherwise he throws himself into a labyrinth of small valleys and hills, intersected in all directions by rushing mountain streams. He has no path to guide him save the course of the rivers, often no compass save the sun, and in this manner he travels--mounted, perhaps, on a small Siberian pony, or, in the far north, on the back of a reindeer. In situations where it is impossible for him to make use of small sledges drawn by reindeer on the frozen rivers, he has to run on snow-shoes, everywhere encountering hardship and dangers, with certain death in store for him should he lose his way.
[4] Large rivers hardly ever carry gold with them, and when in exceptional cases they do, the treasure cannot be recovered, since to turn the water from its channel would be too great an expense. The shape of the gold grains gives some idea of its previous history and travels. Are the particles flat and thin? Then they have been dragged over sand and rocks. Are they round like grains? Then they have been in some whirlpool, participants in a mad circling dance. Or, once more, are they fine dust particles, with here and there a larger piece, or with various minerals attached--particularly quartz, their original home? Then in this last shape the gold has probably had a comfortable and quiet journey.
[5] The plasts vary from 3 inches to 15 feet, and their composition varies considerably. Blue clay, coarse sand, quartz, clay-slate, limestone, granite, and syenite occur frequently, as well as iron in the most various combinations; and, more rarely, ferruginous red clay. This last is very tough, and in the rainy season causes the workmen no little difficulty. In return, however, it contains a good deal of gold. In the district of the Olekma the gold deposit rests on a bed of firm rock.
[6] In many localities it is in the cold season only that the trenches can be dug with advantage. In summer they would be quickly flooded. Even in the winter the water must be fought against, and there are some places where the earth is dug out from under frozen rivers.
[7] These are the beginning of the so-called gold-mines. The subterranean work, which is carried on principally during the winter months, does not differ much from the ordinary work of the miner. Poisonous vapours do not usually occur, but, when cutting through clay-slate, the presence of sulphate of cobalt has sometimes an injurious effect. The passages are nine feet wide and high, and two labourers generally work from two to three tons of sand per day. The sand thus accumulated during the winter is thrown up into heaps and washed in the summer.
[8] He must reckon the quantity of earth and rubbish to be removed before he gets to the gold sand, also the number of labourers necessary to be brought to the place, and food to keep them; and, further, he must consider what will be the summer level of the stream on which his claim lies, because without the proper supply of water the machinery cannot be set in motion, and to put up an artificial water conduit would be too expensive.
[9] An area consists of a piece of land about 3½ miles long, the breadth being determined by the distance between the two mountains in which the gold-seam lies. This is generally from 500 to 1,000 feet. No one can occupy more than three consecutive miles; but a wife, a friend, or partner, having a certificate, may take the adjoining three miles, and then the three miles below may be taken, and so on to any extent.
[10] It is his duty to supervise the washing of the gold, which is placed in a coffer, locked by the proprietor, and sealed by the Government agent, the quantity of gold washed at each operation being entered in a register. If they find a quarter of an ounce of gold to a ton and a half of sand, then 200 men can wash from four to five pounds of gold a day. I heard, however, of a mine to the south of Yeneseisk, where they usually found from 15 to 20 lbs., and sometimes even up to 36 lbs. a day. Gold thus found is not always pure, but is frequently mixed with magnetic iron, which is drawn off by a magnet. Nor is the metal all of the same colour. In some places it is found very dark, and often still covered by a crust of oxide of iron; in other places it is of a very light colour, and contains silver.
[11] Each bag contains about 50 lbs. of gold. Two of these, further protected by a covering of thick felt, constitute the load for one horse. To the two bags are fastened a long cord and a piece of dry wood, so that, in the event of the horses’ burdens being washed away while crossing a swollen river, the floating wood would indicate the whereabouts of the sunken treasure. In the middle of June, or at the end of the season, the departure of loads of gold from the mine is accompanied with pistol-firing and the booming of cannon, and cheers and blessings bid the caravan bon voyage.
[12] There are, or were, some rich gold-mine proprietors at Kiakhta. One firm there, consisting of three partners, washed in one year enough gold to give a net profit of £600,000; they expected the year after to make £1,000,000; and the Government surveyor calculated that at that rate the mine would last 50 years. Thus many fortunes are realized in Siberia; but hardly a month passes without chronicling some one’s ruin, which may often be attributed to the fast life and gaming propensities of the miners. Hence, although between the years 1833 and 1870 about 30,000 poods of gold were sent out of Eastern Siberia alone, to the value of £50,000,000, the finding of which gave employment in some years to upwards of 30,000 workmen, yet it will be seen from the foregoing that this great wealth has not proved an unmixed blessing, for the discovery of a gold-mine never brings to it a population permanently thriving and industrious.