Chapter XXIX
FROM KIAKHTA TO CHITA.
Farewell ceremonies.--Writing home of changed plans.--Caravans.--An iron foundry.--Buriat yemstchiks.--Methods of driving.--Salutations.--Insignificant post-stations.--Visit to a missionary to the Buriats.--Russian missions in Japan.--A remarkable meeting.--The Yablonoi mountains.--Chita.--Visit to the Governor and prison.
We had determined, after dining at Maimatchin, to continue our journey eastwards. Mr. Koecher, however, would not let us go without giving us a supplementary dinner; for the Chinese spread is looked upon as a matter of curiosity rather than of genuine gastronomy, and we did not expect to get another respectable meal for many hundreds of miles. After this supplementary dinner, therefore, we prepared to start. The hospitality and kindness of the Siberians to departing friends is unbounded; and, among other customs, they have one method of doing honour to a guest at a feast which is considered a mark of great respect. It is called the podkeedovate, and is done by seizing the unfortunate victim and laying him flat on the extended and clasped hands of two rows of guests, who toss him up and catch him. When Mr. Collins, their first American visitor, was at Kiakhta, they tossed him up in this manner to the ceiling, which he touched, palpably. In our own case, happily, we were spared this honour, and were dismissed with the repeated shakings of the hand of which the Russians are so fond; provided, however, it be not over the threshold. Twice I found myself transgressing in this respect--once to an American, who had become half Russianized, and once to a Russian lady. Both of them smiled, and asked me to come right in before shaking hands. What superstition they have upon the subject I know not. Another Russian custom with departing friends is to drive alongside for a few miles, perhaps to the first post-station, and then take a last farewell. This our host did when we left Kiakhta on the evening of Wednesday, the 16th July, and we were then fairly started for a drive of 600 miles. We passed along the road by which we came as far as Verchne Udinsk, or, as I have called it, “the Amur and China junction.” Here we took the opportunity to post letters to England, to say that to return from hence would be to leave my work half done, and that we were going on to the Amur, from which Mr. Interpreter was to turn back, whilst I was to continue to the Pacific, and so reach home by completing the circle of the globe; and as I thought to finish the journey in person sooner than a letter would cross Asia and Europe, and I did not know what holes and corners I might get into, or how be detained, my friends were exhorted not to be alarmed if they heard nothing of me for many days. And the exhortation was needed, for I subsequently got into two places from which I could not stir, nor well communicate my whereabouts, so that, notwithstanding my warning, serious and anxious doubts were entertained for my safety.
Whilst travelling eastwards we had frequently met caravans of carts carrying tea. These caravans sometimes reach to upwards of 100 horses; and, as they go at walking pace, and when they come to a river are taken over by ferry, it is not matter for surprise that merchandise should be three months in coming from Irkutsk to Moscow. In winter the rivers, of course, present no difficulty, and hence this season is on some accounts preferred for transport. The number of drivers required for a large convoy is not numerous, and they lighten their work by hanging a bundle of hay on the hinder part of every cart, so that a horse, if hungry, takes good care to keep up with his leader. As we proceeded, from Verchne Udinsk we met trains of two-wheeled carts with manufactured iron.[1] There was one driver to every four or five carts, and this driver had a dormitory on one of his loads, consisting of a rude frame, two-and-a-half by six feet, with a covering of birch-bark, and under this, clad in a sheepskin coat, a man contrives to sleep for many an hour of the night and day. They usually travel about 16 hours (though not at a stretch) out of the 24, and in the summer graze their horses at the side of the road.
We had now left the great highway between China and Europe, and of this we were sternly reminded by the amount of shaking to which we were forced to submit. Also we were introduced to a new set of yemstchiks; for most of our drivers now were Buriats, who tie up their horse’s mane like a horn between his ears, and who, like the Russians, have a wonderful knack of sending their horses along without harassing them, the driving being done by the voice and by threatening with the hand. Whip-cracking is unheard in Siberia, and the long, slender, snapping whips of Western Europe are unknown. The Siberian uses a short stock with a lash of hemp, leather, or other flexible substance, but having no snapper at its end. The Russian drivers talk a great deal to their horses, and the speech they use depends much upon the character and performance of the animals. Do they travel well? Then the driver calls them his “brothers,” his “doves,” his “beauties,” his “jewels.” On the contrary, an obstinate or lazy horse is called a variety of names the reverse of endearing. He may be called a sabaka, or dog, and his maternity disrespectfully ascribed to the race canine. Sometimes the driver rattles off his words as if the creatures understood all the praise he is giving them, after which, on proper occasion, he storms at and scolds them as the veriest hags and jades he ever drove. But I do not remember that this fashion of talking to the horses was so observable among the Buriats, though they drove exceedingly well.
These people have a curious method of salutation, as have several of the peoples with whom we were brought in contact. The Chinese, for instance, fold the hands together, and raise them up and down several times. The Mongols hold up their thumb to salute, and to clench a bargain one places his hand on the sleeve of the other. The Buriats do much the same, whilst the Russians shake hands for everything, and if they are friends they also kiss.
As we drove along we saw abundance of black and white jackdaws; small birds, like a cross between a canary and a linnet; and, on the distant hills, flocks of sheep. Further south, I have been told, herds of camels are reared, for the sake of their wool, which in these parts grows to a considerable length. The post-stations we passed were far apart and poor, and the villages few. In these last live many Buriats, some Russians, and a few Jews. In one village we saw some very good-looking Jewish women, whom I saluted with a word or two of Hebrew. This, and the showing of our podorojna that we were English, attracted attention to us as strangers. Not long before, some Chinese ambassadors had passed the same way; and one yemstchik, hearing that we were foreigners, thought we too must be ambassadors, and inquired whether he should go and put on his best suit, from which, however, we excused him.
On the evening of the second day after leaving Verchne Udinsk, we reached Koordinska, where lives a Russian priest who is a missionary to the Buriats, and upon whom I wished to call, though, as it was getting towards midnight, I feared we might find the good man in bed. But it was “now or never,” and I therefore persisted in going to the house, notwithstanding the Buriat yemstchik’s remonstrances, which I afterwards thought, may have proceeded from the fear that he should be bewitched, or in some way influenced by the missionary, for I could not get him to stop his horses within many yards of the house. The missionary did not appear at first particularly amiable on being visited at such an unusual hour; but, when he found that we had good books to give him, he began to change his demeanour, and readily imparted to us information respecting the progress of the mission, telling us that during the previous year 300 Buriats had been baptized east of the Baikal, and more than 1,000 on the west. He showed us, however, that he had already a sufficiency of the Buriat Scriptures--of the same edition, in fact, as those we were distributing--and he did not care to accept more, which rather led me to surmise, what was afterwards confirmed, that the amount of knowledge required by the Russian priests of their converts before baptism is very slender. I do not know either how far they press upon the Buriats the study of the Scriptures, or whether the Buriats are averse to the book. The old man at Selenginsk, Ivlampi Melnikoff, told us that many copies of the Scriptures were left in the hands of his father when the English missionaries took their departure, and that the Buriats would not receive them. They were therefore handed over to a Russian priest; but he was speaking of things as they were forty years ago.
When our missionary friend found that we were really interested in his work, he pressed us, notwithstanding the lateness of the hour, to drink tea; but this we declined, as we could not keep the post-horses standing. He was very eager to tell us, before we went, that the Russians were carrying on a successful mission to the Japanese (the liturgy being sung in Russian style in the vernacular), under the directorship of the Archimandrite Nicolai; and the missionary, dwelling in the Buriat wilderness, was considerably perturbed because someone in Japan had been writing a book, attempting to show that Confucius was greater than Jesus Christ; and as I said that I expected to pass through Japan, he begged that I would get a copy of the life of Confucius, and consult with the Archimandrite how the heretical book might be extinguished. This was the first I heard of the Archimandrite, but, on reaching Nikolaefsk, I found him exceedingly well spoken of by a Lieutenant Yakimoff, who gave me a letter to him to deliver on my arrival in Japan.[2] Accordingly I hoped to see the said Archimandrite Nicolai, but, before I reached Yokohama, he had returned home to be consecrated bishop. I therefore thought no more of the matter till last autumn, when my hopes were singularly and unexpectedly fulfilled, whilst staying at Kieff on my way to the Caucasus. My companion and I were trying to find someone in the Pechersky monastery who could speak English or French. At last appeared with the monks a tall man in a cassock, dressed like the others, save that his cassock was brown. He said he could speak English, and, after having taken us round to see the sights, he inquired of me where I was labouring in England, or, as he put it, “where I was in service.” I told him, and then asked where he was “in service.” “Oh,” said he, “very far off.” “Well,” I said, “where?” “In Japan,” he replied. “Then,” said I, “you must be the Father Nicolai, to whom I had a letter last year from Siberia, and who has lately been consecrated bishop.” And so it turned out, and thus we had casually fallen in each other’s way, thousands of miles from the place of our expected meeting. I dined with him, and we then parted, he to continue his return journey to Japan, whilst I pushed forward to Mount Ararat.
All this, however, was in the unknown future when we were talking to the Russian missionary at Koordinska, who regretted that our visit was so short, and whom we left to continue our journey all night to Chita. In doing so we traversed hilly roads, and on the following day had some extended views as we approached the Yablonoi, or Apple-tree Mountains. This range runs in a north-easterly direction, right through the Za-Baikal province; and when, after gradually rising from Verchne Udinsk, which is 1,500 feet, we reached the summit of the range, 4,000 feet above the sea, we were then about 20 miles from Chita. Before us a well-defined range of mountains bounded the horizon to the east, while to the north and south the valley stretched away for miles. We had a fine morning for the descent, and bounding along over a rolling prairie, where herds of cattle were grazing, had a beautiful view as we approached the town. Moreover, we were at last on the eastern side of the great Altai chain, and consequently the rivers before us differed from all that we had yet seen in Siberia. All the others had been flowing northwards to be emptied into the Arctic Ocean, whereas in the river Chita, from the left, joining the Ingoda from the right, the current was flowing eastward, through a delightful valley, to find its way, 2,000 miles off, into the Pacific. We had before us now, in fact, one of the valleys of the head waters of the Amur, of which valley Baron Rosen says that it is remarkable for its flora, and is called the “garden of Siberia.”
Chita stands on the left bank of the Ingoda on a height, bounded on two sides by lofty mountains. To the north lies Lake Onon, on whose shores Genghis Khan, as he marched westwards, held his court of justice, and in whose waters he drowned the condemned. Below this point the Ingoda is navigable for boats and rafts. During the early years of the Amur occupation, much material was floated down from Chita. The town was founded in 1851, when it had a population of 2,600; now it has 3,000. Many of the houses are large and well fitted, and all are of wood. We found shops, at which, however, we had to pay 1_s._ a pound for loaf-sugar, and white bread cost just three times what we had paid for it at Tobolsk.
The Governor’s house was the best in the place, and there we presented our letters. His Excellency, M. Pedashenko, gave us a kind reception. I had met on the road, at a post-station, the father of Madame Pedashenko, and he had given me an introduction to his daughter; but Madame was unwell. The Governor, however, spared no pains to do for us all he could. On learning that I wished to visit the penal colony and gold-mines of Kara, he telegraphed that arrangements might be made for my being conveyed thither; and after this we proceeded to inspect the prison in the town. Outside the building was a black cart, which might be placed in a similar category with our old-fashioned English stocks. Formerly prisoners were taken in this cart to the market-place, and there exposed as outlaws and felons--their accusation being carried on the breast, and a notification attached that they had “lost all their rights.” This punishment was said to be abolished now, but I heard of its having been used at Blagovestchensk as lately as the previous year.
The prison at Chita contained 169 prisoners, and cannot, I suppose, be that in which the 30 Decembrists were confined in 1826; for Baron Rosen speaks of Chita in his day as a little village of 300 people. At the time of our visit, they were expecting a new place of confinement to be built--not a day before it was wanted; for the Chita prison was apparently the oldest, and I thought it the poorest and dirtiest, we had seen. The prisoners, too, were shabbily clad, and dirty. One of them was reading a religious book lent him, I think he said, by the priest; but there was no prison library. Indeed, it was very rare to find one, though at Ekaterineburg we were told that a prisoner who wished to read might have a prayer-book. Several of the Chita prisoners were from Russia, and condemned to hard labour. There was a carpenters’ shop, in which some were forced to work, and others did so for their own pleasure. Speaking generally, those in the building appeared to be enjoying an easy time; for the doors of the wards were open to allow their going in and out of the yard as they chose, and many were lying about sleeping in the sun. We were told that they found it difficult to sleep at night by reason of vermin, and so were sleeping instead by day. This illustrates a remark of Goryantchikoff in “Buried Alive,” to the effect that his prison was never free from fleas even in winter, and that in summer they increased. In the prison kitchen we saw them cutting up rhubarb leaves to put in the soup (fresh cabbage not being ready at the time of our visit), which reminds me of another remark of Goryantchikoff, who writes as if it were a normal thing with him to have black-beetles swimming in his soup. His remark about fleas I can readily believe; but by “black-beetles” I presume he refers to little brown insects, about half an inch long, called “Tarakans,” which swarm in the houses of the Siberian peasants. Happily, however, they are non-belligerent, and I was told by an Englishman that the people are not averse to them. Why they should daily walk into the copper to be boiled in Mr. Goryantchikoff’s soup, I know not; but one thing about prison soup I do know, that, in the irregular, uncomfortable (I was going to say half-starved) condition in which I have sometimes travelled in certain parts of Russia, I have more than once tasted prison soup, of which, but for appearance sake, I would fain have eaten, not a mere spoonful to give my opinion thereon, but a plateful to satisfy my appetite. I should not have chosen that, however, seasoned with rhubarb leaves.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] It is not unlikely that the iron here alluded to had come from Petrovsky Zavod, which is about 100 miles south-east of Verchne Udinsk. These ironworks were established during the reign of Peter the Great, and at one time were worked by convicts; but, so far as they are in activity now, free labour, I believe, is employed. This Zavod was formerly of importance to the locality. The engines for the first steamers that Russia placed on the Amur were made here. Guns, also, have been cast and bored by Russian workmen. There is plenty of coal, too, in the neighbourhood, but it is not much used, as wood is plentiful. I heard very little of the operations carried on at present, but it seems that in the whole Trans-Baikal province there were produced, in 1877, of cast iron 482 tons and of wrought iron 280 tons. Thirty years ago, Petrovski wrought 18 tons of bar iron annually.
[2] On my voyage I gathered from a Russian captain that there were in Japan 7 priests, 95 catechists, and 2,000 members, all of whom, not excepting even the priests, were converts to the orthodox Russian Church. In 1876, £1,174 were spent on this mission, which is the only Pagan mission, as far as I know, that the Russians have in foreign parts; and they think their Japanese work a great success, for in the Oriental Church Magazine for March 1880, the Russian editor says: “In 1879 the (Russian) Church in Japan numbered a total of 6,000 members, an increase of 2,000 having taken place during one year”; and he adds, “Though the other Christian Churches control over 320 missionaries, and have in their possession enormous pecuniary means, still our (Russian) missionaries have succeeded in gaining full and exclusive control over the northern part of the island of Nipouna, and compete most successfully with their Roman Catholic and Protestant brethren in the central part of the island.” “This brilliant success is mainly attributable to the chief of our Japanese mission, Father Nicolai.”
Chapter XXX
THE BURIATS.
Country of the Buriats.--Their physiognomy and costume.--Habitations.--Mongol yourts.--Hospitality.--Fuel.--Possessions in cattle.--Character of Buriats.--Their religions.--Buddhist Buriats.--The soul of Buddha.--The lamas.--Their celibacy, classification, employments, disabilities.--Buddhist doctrines.--A prayer cylinder.--Christian Buriats.--English missions.--Reports of English travellers.--Results of Russian missions.--Distribution of Buriat Scriptures.
Soon after leaving Verchne Udinsk, we entered upon the vast steppe which occupies a large portion of the Trans-Baikal. Here we found ourselves in the heart of the Buriats’ country. We first met with these people a few miles on the western side of Irkutsk, and their physiognomy at once told us they belonged to a different race from any we had seen. They have very large skulls, square faces, low and flat foreheads; the cheek-bones are high and wide apart, the nose flat, eyes elongated, the skin swarthy and yellowish, and the hair jet black. With the men the hair is allowed to grow upon the crown of the head, and is plaited into a queue that hangs down their backs. What remains is cut close, but not shaved, as with the Tatars. The head-dress of the women is exceedingly rich, and consists of silver, coral, polished beads of Ural malachite, and mother-of-pearl. They wear their hair in two thick braids, which fall from the temples below the shoulders, and the unmarried girls interweave their braids with strings of coral. Several women had many silver ornaments hanging on their breasts, and in some cases a straight rod at the back of the head stuck out horizontally for several inches on either side, and to this the hair was tied. I was desirous to purchase one of these head-dresses for a curiosity, but they were not to be had at shops. The stones and metal are purchased, and made up by household skill. I was, however, somewhat taken aback on finding that their value frequently amounted to twenty or thirty pounds sterling. At a post-station we asked a Buriat what he would take for his hat. To our surprise, he asked the modest price of fifteen roubles merely for the silver knob at the top. The Buriats are said to wear no linen, but a wealthy bride’s dowry sometimes consists of 40 cases of the richest furs.
As for their habitations, the Buriats are such inveterate dwellers in tents that though they are supposed now to be civilized where they come in contact with the Russians, yet they make a tent of the house by piercing a hole in the middle of the roof, and have the fire in the centre of the floor. When visiting Madame Tokmakoff, she had a Buriat man-servant, for whom a Russian house was provided, but in which he could not be happy until he had thus readjusted his dwelling. We entered a Buriat house at Cheelantoui, although only the woman was at home. There was within a rude wooden bench, on which we were invited to sit, and on it was lying a pair of coral ornaments for the head. These the woman, on our noticing them, immediately put on, and she then invited us to drink tea. To have declined would have been considered highly unpolite. Even among the Russians, a general pleasantly told me that he took a refusal to eat food in his house like a slap in the face. Moreover, we were anxious to stand well in the good graces of our Buriat hostess, for we wished to be admitted to the Buddhist temple, and she was the only person in the place through whom we could communicate in Russian with the lamas. But to see the tea served, and have to drink it, was no small trial. Over the fire hung a large open iron pot, full of a bubbling liquid covered with scum. In this was a ladle, which our fair hostess filled and refilled, and emptied back into the pot. Then, scraping the scum away, she took a ladleful of the decoction, poured it into cups, and gave us to drink. We were told it was tea flavoured with salt. I only hope it was nothing worse, but it will hardly be thought matter for surprise if, after tasting it, I had an accident, upset the beverage, and declined a second cup. We had a good look, however, at the furniture of the dwelling, the most interesting item of which was a family altar, something like a small sideboard with drawers. On it were round bronze cups of liquor, and other offerings. There were also about the room some objects of ornamented metal, betokening clever workmanship.
This represents the Buriat in his civilized condition. One gets a better idea of his native habits and antecedents by going away from the haunts of the Russians, or even into the “land of grass,” as their Mongolian brothers call their desert. There they live in tents, which, like those of other Siberian aborigines, are constructed with poles meeting at the top, but covered with felt instead of deerskins. The hospitality of all Mongol tribes is unvarying. Every stranger is welcome, and has the best his host can give; and the more he consumes, the better will all be pleased. The staple dish of the Mongol yourt is boiled mutton, but it is unaccompanied with capers, or any other kind of sauce or seasoning. A sheep “goes to pot” immediately on being killed, and when the meat is cooked, it is lifted out of the hot water and handed, all dripping and steaming, to the guests. Each man takes a large lump on his lap, or any convenient support, and then cuts off little pieces, which he tosses into his mouth. The best piece is reserved for the guest of honour, and, as a mark of special attention, is frequently put into his mouth by the greasy fingers of his host. After the meat is devoured, the broth is drunk, and this concludes the meal. Knives and cups are the only aids to eating, and as each man carries his own “outfit,” the dinner-cloth and service does not take long to arrange. The entire work consists in seating the party around a pot of cooked meat. The Buriats are famous at drinking brick tea, infusing with it rye meal, mutton fat, and salt obtained from the lakes of the steppe. I suspect it was this we had to taste at Cheelantoui. So important an article of food is this tea to the Buriats, that they sometimes lay by stores of it as money. In dry situations, this substance will remain a long time undeteriorated; and consequently on the steppe an accumulation of it is often thought a better investment than herds and flocks.
In the northern parts, the Buriats procure wood for fuel; but in the southern parts, and with the Mongols in the desert, this article is scarce, and they use instead sun-dried camels’ dung, which they call argols, from a Tatar word which signifies the droppings of animals when dried and prepared for fuel.[1]
The Buriat implements for striking fire used to be preferred to European, and commanded a high price among the Russians. They are made of plates of the best tempered steel, from four to six inches long, stitched to a bag for holding the tinder, the bag being of red leather, and tastefully ornamented with silver and steel spangles. The English and Swedish matches have now driven them out of the Russian market.
The ordinary occupation of the Buriats is that of tending cattle, the number of their herds reminding one of the flocks of the Hebrew patriarchs. Mr. Stallybrass told me that, when he was living at Selenginsk, he knew rich Buriats to possess as many as 6,000 or 7,000 sheep, 2,000 head of horned cattle, and 200 horses; and Captain Cochrane mentions the case of the mother of a Buriat chief who possessed 40,000 sheep, 10,000 horses, and 3,000 horned cattle, besides a large property in furs. In a sparsely-populated country, therefore, a man’s children are very useful in looking after his cattle; and since it is necessary to be constantly removing to fresh pastures, it will be understood that this state of things presented to the missionaries a double educational difficulty, namely, unwillingness on the part of the parents to lose their children’s services, and their constant change of residence. The same difficulty besets those still who would carry on missionary and educational work among other wandering tribes of Siberia. The Buriats, in 1876, numbered 260,000--the largest of the native populations of Eastern Siberia. As yemstchiks we thought them livelier than the Russians, and there was a manly independence in their bearing, which easily accounted for the difficulty the Russians had at first in subjugating them. Moreover, they would seem not to be deficient in intellectual power, for the English missionaries taught some of them Latin, and had prepared an elementary work on geometry and trigonometry in the Buriat language. Baron Rosen also mentions that they play chess, having learnt it from the Chinese, and he says that the best player among his comrades, who were Russian officers, having on one occasion challenged a Buriat to a game, was beaten. The speech of the Buriats is a dialect of Mongol, rough and unsophisticated, with Manchu, Chinese, and Turkish corruptions. It is distinguished by its abundance of guttural and nasal sounds. Instead of true Mongolian letters they employ the Manchu alphabet, which is written in vertical columns from the top to the bottom of the page, the lines running from left to right. The only versions of the Scriptures in the Mongolian language are those of the Calmuck and Buriat dialects.
The religion of the Buriats is of three kinds: Shamanism, Buddhism, and Christianity. Shamanism, more or less like that of the other tribes of Siberia, would appear to have been their old religion; and it still lingers most, I presume, in the northern parts of their country, which are farthest from Buddhist influence. Buddhism, however, holds sway over by far the greater portion of the people, and was originally imported from Thibet.[2]
The lamas, or priests, are treated with great reverence, and every Buddhist Buriat desires that one of his family should follow the priestly calling. Hence it comes to pass that the lamas compose a sixth--some say a fifth--of the population. When in full dress they are clothed in scarlet, and shave their heads all over, and their large ears standing off from the skull give them a curious appearance. They are supposed to observe the strictest celibacy; hence Mr. Michie observes that it is a tender point with a lama to be asked how his wife and family are; but Mr. Erman points out that their celibacy has the most prejudicial consequences. The use of spirits is forbidden to them, lest excess “should disorder the brain of the student of the divine oracles, and corrupt the heart by the bad passions it might engender.” The use of tobacco also is denied them, and that for one of the best of reasons against smoking, because “it is conducive to indolence, and tends to waste leisure hours which ought to be devoted to pursuits affording instruction as well as amusement.”[3]
Besides their religious employments the lamas engage in various branches of ordinary industry, especially in the manufacture of their own wearing apparel and their ecclesiastical furniture. A lama labours under one inconvenience, in that he is not allowed to kill anything, through fear that what he slaughters may contain the soul of a relative, or possibly that of the divine Buddha. Even when he is annoyed, says Mr. Knox, by fleas or similar creeping things, with which their bodies are often thickly populated, he must bear his infliction until patience is thoroughly exhausted. He may then call in an unsanctified friend, and place himself and his garments under thorough examination. So again, in connection with this difficulty about killing, Captain Shepherd relates an instance in which the lamas did their best to keep the law and yet evade it at the same time. The captain, in crossing the desert, had bought a sheep, and was somewhat in difficulty as to how the animal should be slaughtered. There were four in the party. The late owner was a lama, and could not take life; so was the guide; the captain was unwilling to turn butcher, and his Chinese servant did not know how. The captain would have shot the animal, but the owner protested. One of the lamas, therefore, took the sheep aside, threw it down, tied its legs, explained to the Chinaman the trick, and lent his own knife for the deed to be done, after which he turned and walked quickly to a distance. When the sheep was once killed, the lamas soon cut it up, had it cooked, and, of course, helped to eat it.
The Buddhist books teach the people that they will attain the highest wisdom if they honour the lama; that the sun itself rises only that honour may be rendered to the lamas; and that persons obtain pardon for the most enormous sins by showing them respect. Any offence against a lama annihilates the merit acquired by a thousand generations. Whosoever shows any contempt for these personages is said to be punished by accident, sickness, and all kinds of misfortunes, and so forth. One of their Siberian monasteries, or lamaseries, with a temple, is at Turgutu, midway between Verchne Udinsk and Chita; and I think I heard of schools there. I have said that we visited a lamasery at Cheelantoui. It was a small one, consisting of about half-a-dozen houses, one of which was the temple, where, if I mistake not, they worship daily at sunset, but into which, unfortunately, we could not enter, as the chief was absent. There were younger lamas present, some of them mere boys; but they either could not or would not understand us, and seemed afraid to grant favours. We saw, however, the praying machine. It consisted of an upright cylinder, from two to three feet high, and perhaps two feet in diameter. It was fixed on a pivot, and could be turned by a rope, to be pulled by the devotee, who secured by each revolution some thousands of invocations to Buddha. Sometimes these machines are turned by mechanical power, like a wind or water mill. This, of course, is easier, and as the quantity of prayer is more important than the quality, the latter method saves much trouble, and is popular.[4]
The Buriats, who are Buddhists, have temples, ritual, an order of priests, and a considerable literature. With a religion so developed, it will not be difficult to account for its overcoming the older Shamanistic creed, nor will it be hard to understand what was told us by the Ispravnik of Selenginsk,--that of the two religions among the Buriats, with whom the Russian missionaries come in contact, they find the conversion of the Shaman Buriats tolerably easy, but the Buddhists are greatly opposed to Christianity.
We now come to that part of the Buriat people who are Christian. Perhaps it was an inquiry into the false religion of Buddha, under which so many millions of the human race are deluded, or perchance only a timid belief in the power of their own creed, that led our early travellers in Siberia, with one exception, to look coldly and unbelievingly on the efforts of the English mission to the Buriats; in connection with which the thought arises for how little the heathen world would have to thank the Christianity of England, if there were not some who take a more believing view than the travellers who go abroad, looking in a superficial way at what is being done, or sometimes not looking at all, and then coming home to pronounce missions a failure or an imposture. Captain Cochrane, for instance, speaking of the missionaries at Selenginsk, goes so far as to say, “For my own part, so small are my hopes of their success, that I do not expect any one Buriat will be really and truly converted.”[5]
I have shown, however, that the English missionaries laid a solid foundation, taught several scholars, and translated the Scriptures, which translation the Russian missionaries have in their hands to-day; and whatever may have been the success or failures of the English, it certainly cannot be said of the Russian missionaries that they have no converts, for, such as they are, they count them by thousands.
The Ispravnik at Selenginsk told me there were about 40 men engaged in nine districts in the Russian mission to the Buriats, though I am not aware whether some of them are not also parish priests. We called upon a priest at Verchne Udinsk to ask about the matter, and sold him some New Testaments and Gospels. He informed us that there were 15 mission stations among them, and that on the eastern side of Lake Baikal there were baptized annually about 300 Buriats, and on the western side more than 1,000. This was confirmed by the missionary upon whom we called further on, and it agrees tolerably with the general almanack of 1878, in which it is stated that in the Irkutsk diocese there were baptized, in the previous year, 1,505 of both sexes, including four Buriat lamas; though the number of converts given for the Trans-Baikal diocese for that year amounted to only 52, there being one lama to every 20 persons.
We had brought with us a number of copies of the Buriat Scriptures. Some of these we left at Irkutsk, some with the Ispravniks of Selenginsk and Troitzkosavsk, and some for the lamasery of Cheelantoui. Others we left at Chita with a view to spreading them over the district, as well as placing them in the prisons. I asked the Ispravnik at Selenginsk what he thought the lamas would do with the books. He said he thought they would first read them and then destroy them; but Mr. Stallybrass, on my return, was of opinion that they were likely to be deterred from destroying them by a feeling that they were holy books. In any case we gave the copies we had brought, and thus endeavoured to do what little we could for this interesting people, who, I doubt not, will gradually be absorbed into the Russian Church.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The collecting, pounding, moulding, and drying of dung is, further south, an important branch of commerce. Argols are of four classes. In the first rank are the argols of goats and sheep, which make so fierce a fire that a bar of iron placed therein is soon brought to a white heat. The argols of camels constitute the second class; they burn easily, and throw out a fine flame, but the heat they give is less intense than that given by the preceding. The third class comprises the argols of the bovine species; these, when thoroughly dry, burn readily, and produce no smoke. Lastly come the argols of horses and other animals, which, not having undergone the process of rumination, present nothing but a mass of straw more or less triturated. They are soon consumed, but are useful for lighting a fire. This fuel is called kiseek in Russia, and in the southern governments was the only kind available for the poorer inhabitants, wood being very scarce and dear. The discovery of coal, and the establishment of manufactories, has wrought a complete change in the means of heating in Ekaterinoslaf. Kiseek was made from the dung of cattle and sheep, laboriously trodden under foot by women, and then sun-dried.
[2] At Lhassa, the capital of Thibet, dwells the Dalai Lama, who is the head of the Buddhist religion; and though his followers acknowledge him to be mortal, they believe his soul to be an immediate emanation from the essence of their supreme deity, Buddha. In places where this worship prevails are found religious communities gathered round the temples dedicated to the rites of their faith, and monasteries, or, as they are called, lamaseries, containing the various orders of priests. It was one of these we visited at Cheelantoui. When the great lama dies, it is held that his spirit immediately enters the body of another human being, who thus becomes successor to all the rights and privileges held by his predecessor, and some little difficulty often occurs in discovering who may be the favoured individual; but as the priests are the chief actors in the scene, their search is generally successful. Commonly the spirit is recognized as having animated some new-born infant, who is at once taken to the religious establishment and educated by the lamas in the mysteries of their faith.
[3] The lamas are divided into four classes. Those of the first are occupied with the study of doctrine, and with the tenets and mysteries of their faith; those of the second with the regulation of certain religious rites and ceremonies; those of the third busy themselves in the study and direction of their worship; the fourth class study and practise medicine, in which it would appear that some of them attain eminence, for when we arrived at Kiakhta we found Mr. Tokmakoff, on account of his health, was gone to Urga, the Mongolian capital, to be near a native doctor.
[4] Inside the cylinder is placed the oft-used prayer of the Buddhist, “Om mani padme houm,” of which a Russian near the monastery said the meaning was Gospodi pomilui,--i.e., “Lord, have mercy upon us!” Its real meaning, however, does not appear to be very clear. Klaproth understood it to mean, “O the gem in the lotus. Amen!” and Huc paraphrases it into, “O that I may obtain perfection, and be absorbed in Buddha. Amen.” The lamas assert that the doctrine contained in the marvellous words is immense, and that the whole life of man is insufficient to measure its depth and extent. At Lhassa the formula is heard from every mouth--is everywhere visible in the streets, in the interior of the houses, and on every flag and streamer floating over the buildings, printed in Tatar and Thibetan characters. Certain rich and zealous Buddhists even entertain, at their own expense, companies of lamas for the propagation of the mani; and these strange missionaries, chisel and hammer in hand, traverse field, mountain, and desert to engrave the sacred formula on the stones and rocks they encounter in their path. There was a stone with inscriptions, in the temple yard at Cheelantoui; and I found other stones, bearing the mani, on the supposed site of a temple at Tyr, on the Lower Amur.
[5] He does, indeed, afterwards allow that what is impossible with man is possible with God; but goes on to insinuate that the missionaries knew of the uselessness of their work, but that they had “too comfortable a berth to be given up,” and then he thinks, forsooth, that justice is not done to the people of England in so squandering money, etc., etc. Mr. Atkinson contented himself with a passing compliment to the character of the missionaries, and said that they were unable to make converts among the Buriats; whilst Mr. Hill, who visited Selenginsk, records that, “notwithstanding all their labours, not a single Buriat had been converted by them”; and then he quotes the testimony of a lady living on the spot, who said, “The missions only failed because the undertaking was beyond the power of man to accomplish unaided by more than his own genius. The missionaries had all the zeal and perseverance of the Apostles, but they wanted their power of working miracles, or the aid of some such startling circumstances as the history of religious revolutions has often presented to us, and without which all efforts at all times to convert the Buriats will be equally fruitless.”
Chapter XXXI
SIBERIAN POLITICAL PRISONERS.
The Za-Baikal a natural prison.--“Decembrists” of 1825.--Misapprehensions respecting political prisoners.--The story of Elizabeth.--Vindictive foreign writers.--Palpable misstatements.--Misleading information.--Dostoyeffsky’s “Buried Alive.”--Rosen’s “Russian Conspirators.”--Present condition of political prisoners.--Testimony of Poles.--Treatment of an attempted regicide.--The number of “politicals” exaggerated.--Calculations concerning them.--Their mode of transport.--Paucity of statistics accounted for.
The Trans-Baikal province, east of the “Holy Sea,” was, until within the past 30 years, a cul-de-sac, to which the gravest of political offenders were commonly deported. It lay outside the two great routes of Siberian travel. The traveller to the Pacific, by way of the Lena, left the province on his right; the merchant going to Kiakhta passed it on his left. There was, indeed, a road running through the province, but it might be said to lead to nowhere. It was, moreover, a country from which a prisoner found it difficult to escape. If he went to the north he came to enormous forests, in which, though he might find berries in summer, he could not live in winter. Southwards he was hemmed in by the Mongolian desert. The road eastwards brought him to a river, down which, if he could float 2,000 miles and escape the jealous Chinese, he might reach the Pacific; or, again, if he turned to the west, and rounded or crossed the Baikal lake, he was likely to be caught in the neighbourhood of Irkutsk; and lastly, in whatever direction he went, there was a price on his head that could be claimed by any Buriat who chose to make him his prisoner, and bring him to the authorities either dead or alive.
There was also another reason, which, in the eyes of the Government, made the Za-Baikal a suitable place in which to confine the worst offenders; for the province is rich in silver and gold, and gems are found in its mountains. It provided a place, therefore, where they could segregate disturbing elements of society, exact enforced labour from their convicts, and to some extent mitigate the cost of keeping them by the value of the minerals obtained. Consequently “the silver-mines of Nertchinsk” has long been an expression, at the mention of which the ears of Russians tingle; and so it was with the prisons of Chita and Petrovski,--connected in their minds with political exiles, and especially with certain of them called “Decembrists,” who in December 1825 tried to raise revolt among the soldiers of Nicolas, and deprive him of his throne.
The mines of Nertchinsk and Kara will be treated of in subsequent chapters. I purpose to speak in this, not of political exiles with their families and descendants generally, but of the condition of political prisoners, past and present, and of certain buildings in which some of them have been confined. That there exists a great deal of exaggeration and misapprehension in England, on the Continent, and in America respecting the number, misery, and degradation of Russian political prisoners I am persuaded; nor is this hard to account for if regard be had to the character of the books which profess to give information upon the subject.
Let us begin, for instance, with the touching story of “Elizabeth; or, the Exiles of Siberia,” by Madame de Cottin, to whose work many English persons are indebted for nearly all they know of Siberia. The book so far resembles the truth that, in 1799, a young girl of 18, the only daughter of a Russian exiled officer, Proscovie Lopouloff, formed the project of asking forgiveness for her parents, for which purpose she left Ischim, near Tobolsk, with a few roubles in her pocket, walked in 18 months 2,000 miles to the capital, was presented, and obtained her petition, the real account of which is told by Xavier de Maistre in “La Jeune Sibérienne.” But Madame de Cottin imported a love-match into the story, and produced one of the most popular books of her day, depicting, however, a narrative for which she had to rely largely upon her imagination for many details. She paints a picture of Siberian exile life very different from anything I ever heard, saw, or read of in the country itself. Her mistakes, however, were the mistakes such as any foreign author might easily commit in laying the scene of a story in a country then almost unknown.
Less excuse can be made for later writers (some of them escaped or released convicts), who, trading upon the credulity and ignorance of the public, have retailed and garnished accounts of horrible severities, which they neither profess to have witnessed, nor attempt to support by adequate testimony. In one of these books, by Alexander Hertzen, published in 1855, the author naïvely says in the preface that, having written in London a work, entitled “Prison and Exile,” which met with success, he decided to write another volume. He accordingly did so, and had the audacity to call it “My Exile in Siberia”; whereas, on reading the book, we find that he was not exiled to Siberia at all, but simply banished for awhile to Perm, which is in Russia in Europe! Again we have, in De Lagny’s “Knout and the Russians,” published in 1854, a tirade against Russia all through, in which words bad enough can hardly be found to vilify its army, navy, nobility, and clergy; whilst in the following year was published “Recollections of Russia by a German Nobleman,” in which he states that, for prisoners, water was drawn up green from the filthiest canal in Petersburg; and, as if that were too little, he adds that, after being knouted, the prisoners had to drink their own blood!
The books quoted thus far are mostly foreign productions, which have been translated into English; but within the past three years has been published in London a book called “The Russians of To-day,” by the author of “The Member for Paris,” and dedicated to the Duke of Sutherland, which gives the following account of a Russian prison (page 86):--
“A Russian gaol is not built on any wasteful plan of keeping prisoners warm and comfortable. A black, mouldy house, situate in one of the slums of the town, it is guarded by a dozen corp-headed soldiers, and has a painted escutcheon with the Imperial double-headed eagle over the gate. There is a whipping-post in the front yard. Thieves, murderers, boys, lunatics, women, are all huddled together in a room of foul stenches, warmed by a stove, and the only food served out to them is a pound of black bread in the morning, and a mess of rancid soup at mid-day. The sexes are separated at night.”
Now as there will appear to be a great difference between this account and what has been stated in my chapters on Siberian prisons, I think it only right to say that I have visited Russian houses of detention from the White Sea in the north to the Black Sea and the Persian frontier in the south, and from Warsaw in the west to the Pacific in the east, but have never yet seen a Russian prison such as fairly answers to the description given above. My experience would place prisons in the suburbs rather than the “slums” of towns; and as for their atmosphere, I may safely say that the air I breathed in the worst Russian prison was incomparably better than that I had temporarily to endure in some of the peasants’ houses, or which may be inhaled in many of the post-houses. The “one pound of black bread” should be multiplied by two and a half or three, and in some cases four; and as for “the whipping-post,” I have seen such a thing in English and in American prisons, but not in Russia. The “kobyla,” or “mare,” used in flogging with the “plète” in Siberia, will be described further on; and I do not deny that in Russia there may be some instrument to which those to be birched are fastened, but I have never seen one, though I have usually made a point of asking concerning the mode of corporal punishment.
Again, the same author says (page 217):--
“The convicts are forwarded to Siberia in convoys, which start at the commencement of spring, just after the snows have melted and left the ground dry. They perform the whole journey on foot, escorted by mounted Cossacks, who are armed with pistols, lances, and long whips; and behind them jolt a long string of springless tumbrils, to carry those who fall lame or ill on the way. The start is always made in the night, and care is taken that the convoys shall only pass through the towns on their road after dark. Each man is dressed in a grey kaftan, having a brass numbered plate fastened to the breast, knee boots, and a sheepskin bonnet. He carries a rug strapped to his back, a mess-tin, and a wooden spoon at his girdle. The women have black cloaks with hoods, and march in gangs by themselves, with an escort of soldiers like the men, and two or three female warders, who travel in carts.
“In leaving large cities like Petersburg, all the prisoners are chained with their hands behind their backs; but their fetters are removed outside the city, except in the case of men who have been marked as dangerous. These have to wear leg-chains of 4 lbs. weight all the way; and some of the more desperate ones are yoked by threes to a beam of wood, which rests on their shoulders, and is fastened to their necks by iron collars.”
The author then goes on to say that “Nihilist conspirators, patriotic Poles, and young student girls, are all mixed up, and tramp together with the criminals.”
The words I have italicised (of which there are 23 in 26 lines) involve, in many cases, palpable misstatements. In others they are blunders, or are, at all events, open to serious question. As in the case of Madame de Cottin (only with less innocence), a very free rein has been here given to the imagination. The avoiding of towns by day, the brass plate on the breast (instead of a piece of yellow cloth on the back), the accompanying female warders, and the chaining of men’s hands behind their backs, are blunders utterly inexcusable; and as for the mounted Cossacks with whips, and the “beams of wood” on some of the exiles’ necks--if the Cossacks were mounted, they would naturally have whips as part of their accoutrements, as they do even when riding behind the carriage of the Emperor, but the “beam of wood” is a pure invention. I never saw, heard, or read of such an instrument. Upon these last two points, however, to correct my own opinion if wrong, I spoke to an Englishman living in a town through which pass all the Siberian exiles. He has lived there many years, and has seen exiles from Perm to Kiakhta, and under all conditions. He tells me, however, that he never saw this wooden collar, and never saw soldiers with whips to conduct exiles; and he added, further, that he had never witnessed them using exiles improperly or unfairly. Thus it will be seen that some of the information offered to the public respecting Russian exiles is open to more than suspicion of grave misrepresentation.
But there is yet a third class of books which, in detailing past horrors, leads public opinion astray, not so much by saying what is absolutely untrue, as by omitting to point out that since the horrors they relate were enacted, the law has been altered, and that they are now a thing of the past. Englishmen would think themselves very unfairly dealt with if a foreigner, having seen an old pair of stocks in an English village, appealed to this as proof that persons are still exposed therein; or if he hunted up stories of Tyburn, with accounts of gibbeted felons hung, drawn, and quartered, or pilloried criminals with slit noses and cropped ears, and then represented this as the existing state of things, or left his readers so to infer. This would be very similar to the treatment Russia receives at the hands of prejudiced and careless writers now-a-days, as will be seen more fully hereafter when we speak of the mines.
To keep, however, for the present, to books about prisons, and to mention one more which has appeared in English dress during the present year--namely, Dostoyeffsky’s “Buried Alive; or, Ten Years’ Penal Servitude in Siberia,” to which I naturally turned with interest as it was written by a Russian. I was struck at the outset with the significant fact that the reader is not properly informed as to places and dates. The introduction sets forth that a certain Alexander Petrovitch Goryantchikoff died, after whose death there was found among his papers a bundle of manuscripts, which the editor, Feodor Dostoyeffsky, thought would interest the public. But scarcely a word is dropped to inform the reader when the events referred to took place, and he is left to form the very natural conclusion that he is reading of things as they now exist. My suspicions being aroused, I put on my best critical spectacles to discover, if possible, where the events happened, and when. The writer mentions having been in Tobolsk, and says that his prison was near the banks of the Irtish. Now there was, and perhaps is, a prison on the banks of the Irtish at Tara, the same from which Rufin Pietrowski made his escape; and at first I was disposed to think this was the place of Goryantchikoff’s captivity, but two subsequent allusions gave me additional light: one, that in the prison was a Jew who went out in the town to a synagogue; and another, that on some prisoners running away the Governor-General was told of it. Now, assuming that the Governor-General was living in the town, then the only prison situate on the banks of the Irtish, in a town with a synagogue and the residence of a Governor-General, would be Omsk, and here accordingly I adjudged my man as to his place. Then as for the date. The writer speaks of prisoners’ chains made of “four iron rods, the size of the finger, connected by three rings and worn under the trousers.” I saw none like these. All we saw had small links, and hence I assumed that the chains described must have been of an old-fashioned pattern of former days, and I have since learnt that chains such as the man describes were seen on a prisoner going to the Caucasus in 1842. Next he speaks a good deal of flogging, and mentions the running of a prisoner down “the green lane,” that is, between two rows of soldiers, each of whom gave the culprit a stroke with a stick. But this method of punishment has long been abolished in Russia; and, finally, the writer, when speaking of his conversation with a fellow-prisoner, happens to use this sentence: “I explained to him Napoleon’s position, adding that he might, perhaps, some day become Emperor of the French.” Taking, therefore, these three data, that Napoleon became Emperor in 1851, that the flogging of the description mentioned was abolished not later than 1860, and the old pattern of the chains, I came to the conclusion that the story must represent events at least 30 years old; and I have since heard that it was about as long ago the book appeared in Russia. Now, of course, the translation might not have sold so well had readers been informed that it treats of a state of things more than a quarter of a century old; yet, no doubt, so candid a statement would have prevented many from forming false opinions respecting the present state of Siberian prisons.[1]
But Goryantchikoff’s, it should be remembered, is a picture of a convict prison for criminals, and not for political prisoners, who are treated as a class by themselves,--so much so that they are sent to Siberia, not usually walking, under the charge of Cossacks, but driving furiously under guard of gendarmes; and if they need to lodge at an ordinary prison, they are kept in special rooms, and so jealously watched that frequently I was not allowed to approach the inspection hole so much as to look at them. It may be that when they reach their destination they have, in some cases, to work outdoors in company with criminals. I think I met one case of this at Kara, but even he, in the prison, was kept apart.
Probably the best, and, as far as I know, the only book in English which gives the description by an eye-witness of life in a political prison is “Russian Conspirators in Siberia,” by Baron R(osen). He relates his taking part in the attempt to incite the soldiers to revolt on the accession of Nicolas in 1825, and how he was condemned with 120 comrades, large numbers of whom were counts, barons, princes, and some of the very flower of the Russian nobility. About 30 were at once transported to Chita. There they remained until a new prison was built expressly to contain them all at Petrovski, near Verchne Udinsk, at which place are the ironworks already alluded to. In these two places of confinement the Baron spent six years. I do not remember that he ever speaks of one of his comrades being thrashed. The Russian law, even in those days, held exempt from corporal punishments every noble, not only during his trial, but after his condemnation. The wearing of chains was included among corporal punishments, and it was forbidden to put them on nobles going into exile; but the law appears to have been set aside in the case of some of the Decembrists. The Baron describes their labour as that of digging and grinding corn in hand-mills. One of their first occupations was to dig the foundations for their new prison. “Every day,” the Baron writes, “except Sundays and holy days, the non-commissioned officer on guard entered early in the morning with the call of ‘Gentlemen, to work!’ In general we set out with songs on our lips and energy in our hearts; no constraint was used towards us.” He gives likewise a vivid picture of their amusements and their studies. Playing-cards they might have had through the warders, but they wisely passed their word to each other not to allow card-playing, in order to prevent any cause of unpleasantness or dissension. Chess was their sole amusement between the time of work and sleep, and they formed among themselves a company of singers, which cheered many a sad hour. Some of them endeavoured, by study, further to improve their minds. One learnt not only Latin and Greek, but also eight modern languages; and it says much for the high education of the prisoners that this proficient found an instructor in each of the languages among his comrades, one of whom was still living, not many years ago, at Petrovsky Zavod, and lent my informant several books from what was the Decembrist library. They had, too, a room in which they practised the piano, the flute, the flageolet, the violin, and guitar. The most touching part of the book, however, recounts the arrival of some of the prisoners’ wives. Every effort short of absolute denial had been employed to prevent these noble ladies from expatriating themselves. Their heroic determination wrung tears from the eyes of the officials who had in vain dissuaded them. These ladies were compelled to resign their titles, and were warned that they would not be permitted to return. Several of them, notwithstanding, gave up all to be allowed to join their husbands, and in so doing covered their names with undying lustre in the annals of Russian history. They were allowed to live with or near their husbands, and several had children, two of whom--a lady and a gentleman--I have met in Europe. The Baron’s book nowhere stoops to invective or misrepresentation; on the contrary, he acknowledges “there was reason enough for our having been treated thus”; but at the same time he tells a sad story, which is all the more touching because told so calmly, of what he and his comrades suffered. He was at length allowed to return to his home in Esthonia, in 1839, after 14 years’ imprisonment and exile. About 500 non-commissioned officers and soldiers, I am told, were sent to Omsk and different places, where they were by far less well treated than their superior officers under whom they had rebelled.[2]
I have thus spoken of the political or State prison at Petrovski, which, as far as I know, is the only building there has ever been in Siberia that could with propriety be called a State prison for political offenders. It was burnt down many years ago, and has not been rebuilt. Of the prison at Chita, and the accommodation for political prisoners at Kara, mention will be made hereafter. Meanwhile it should be borne in mind we have been speaking of events which happened about half a century ago.
We now pass from the condition of political prisoners as they were to treat of political prisoners as they are. I shall speak of those with whom I was brought in contact and with whom I conversed, and will put the worst case first. It is that of a Pole, who was concerned in the insurrection of 1863, at which time he was a student for the Roman priesthood, and, under cover of his clerical garb, had busied himself in procuring arms and provisions for the Polish rebels. On the suppression of the insurrection he fled from the country, but was foolish enough to return, six years afterwards, by permission, he said, of the Emperor; and within three days was taken, and, without trial, sent to a prison at Oriel for a year. After this he was sent to Irkutsk, and there learned that he was condemned for eight years to the mines, at which he arrived in 1871, having been a year on the route from Tiumen. He had 20 Polish companion exiles, some of whom were in irons, though his clerical character saved him from this degradation. The Polish party travelled by themselves as far as Tobolsk, beyond which they were sometimes compelled to walk and lodge with criminal prisoners, who robbed my informant of 300 roubles, which his mother had sewn at the back of his coat collar. He complained that some of the prison officers were great despots; in illustration of which he stated how, whilst they were at Nijni Udinsk, some of the prisoners having escaped at night, the governor of the jail procured rods from the neighbouring woods and birched the rest of them, I suppose on the ground of aiding and abetting the escape of the others. The 21 Poles, however, were not in the ward from which the escape was made, and this they urged, but apparently to no purpose, for the governor seemed to have been enraged beyond bounds, and in some cases to have used, not only rods, but the plète and clubs. My informant declared that of the 300 Russians and 21 Poles thus treated, 17 subsequently died, though he could not give me any satisfactory evidence as to how, after leaving the place, he got this information; but the affair must have been serious (though abnormal), for, on arriving at Irkutsk they presented a petition to the governor, an inquiry was instituted (especially as regards the Poles), and the violent prison official was telegraphed for, and himself incarcerated, though how punished my informant did not know. He also complained that one of his companions was badly treated on the road, being lame, and yet made to hurry along.
When, however, the Polish cleric arrived at the mines, he did not appear to have once worked in them, as the chief made him his cook, exchanged his prison allowance for five roubles a month, and fed and lodged him thus for six years, after which the remaining two years were remitted on the score of good conduct. He was afterwards located in a small village in the Za-Baikal, but had obtained permission to live elsewhere, and when I met him he was respectably dressed, and apparently earning a good livelihood. Thus my informant’s gravamina, as regarded himself, were not so heavy as it might have been feared. He said, indeed, that four or five letters reached him at the mines, informing him that money was enclosed, which he never received.
He had more to say of the way in which some of his fellow-prisoners were treated, to which I shall allude when speaking hereafter of the mines.[3]
I did, it is true, meet another Pole who complained, though I do not know whether he was a political or a criminal offender, but I have already referred to him and the information he gave me respecting the prison at Irkutsk. There was a third Pole, also a student, banished after the insurrection of 1863, whom we met in the streets of Atchinsk, who looked very gloomy, and spoke in a very dispirited and dissatisfied manner; but he was free, having his wife and children with him, and he named no one particular cause of complaint. Still, I have mentioned these cases fully, though they seem somewhat opposed to the opinion I have stated, that there exists a great deal of misapprehension respecting the number, misery, and degradation of Russian political prisoners.
The severest case of punishment of a political prisoner I met with was that of, I think, a Nihilist, at Kara, who had daily to go to work in the gold-mines; but, on returning, he had a room to himself, some of his own furniture, fittings, and books, one of which was on political economy. His wife lived in the neighbourhood, and could see him lawfully, and bring him food at frequent intervals; and it was not difficult for her to see him unlawfully, for just in front of his window passed the public road, where she could stand and talk to him with ease.
I met in Siberia one political prisoner whose case was more surprising, perhaps, than any I have mentioned. It was that of a man who had been concerned in one of the attempts upon the life of the late Emperor. He was sentenced to the mines, and no doubt popular imagination pictured him chained, and tormented to within an inch of his life; whereas I found him confined indeed, but only to the neighbourhood, and dressed, if I remember rightly, in a tweed suit, looking highly presentable, and engaged in a way that I purposely avoid naming, but which did not necessitate the soiling of his fingers. Again, I had two opportunities of speaking to upper-class prisoners in French, which the authorities accompanying me did not understand; therefore these men had no reason to fear speaking out plainly. One was a political prisoner; concerning the other I am not sure; but I asked them both whether they had any cause of complaint in the prison regimen. The first said the only thing he thought unjust was that he was not allowed to smoke, which one of my exile informants deems incredible, since at Nertchinsk, when, for insubordination, they were deprived of meat, milk, and tea, for weeks, they were still allowed to smoke, as a supposed preventive against scurvy. The man, moreover, in the neighbouring cell--a fat man--a defaulting post-master, a drunkard and a gambler, who would have made an admirable Falstaff, was smoking, and I should not wonder if by this time the grievance is mended. The second man, a doctor, said that he had been taken about from place to place, and did not know his destination, though he thought it would be Irkutsk, but that he had nothing to complain of.
Supposing, then, that these instances throw any light upon the misery and alleged degradation of political prisoners, I have yet to offer some remarks upon their supposed numbers--that is, the average number banished annually at the time of my visit--for I do not profess here to deal with those sent into exile after the Polish insurrection of 1863, with their families and descendants, nor of Nihilists deported since the assassination of the late Emperor. Mr. Whyte, in his “Land Journey from Asia to Europe,” says: “It is calculated that in Eastern Siberia alone there are at least from 30,000 to 40,000 Polish political exiles, but they are kept in different portions for fear of disturbances, a great many having to work in the mines.” Now let us suppose for the moment that these figures are something like the truth, then let us add to this calculation for Eastern Siberia, whither are banished the gravest offenders, at least twice as many for Western Siberia, whither are sent those losing particular rights only; and this will give, say, 120,000 Polish political exiles in the whole country. Let us further suppose that they represent the surviving total of 30 years’ deportations, not including, of course, their families and descendants. Then this gives a yearly influx to Siberia of 4,000 Polish political exiles! Now from statistics given me in Warsaw last autumn, taken from the report sent to the Emperor, it appeared that the total number of Polish criminal prisoners sent to Siberia in the year I passed through (1879) was 898; and last year, up to September, the number, as I had it straight from the prison books, was 270. Supposing, then, the politicals to number one-tenth of the criminals (which I judge far too great a proportion), it would give less than one-fortieth of the numbers quoted by Mr. Whyte respecting Polish political exiles.
I base my opinion, however, mainly upon other calculations, such as these: the prisoners must sometimes be lodged, permanently or temporarily, as they go to their destinations. But it has been already stated that there is now no building in Siberia answering to a State prison, and further that political prisoners, when confined, are kept not only apart from criminals, but as far as possible from one another. I fail to see, then, where all these multitudes are to be properly lodged, as at Tiumen, for instance, whilst they wait for the arrival of the steamer, or at other prisons where they may have to stop, but in none of which we found more than a very few separate chambers--always less, I think, than 20. Again, another difficulty is presented by the possibilities of separate conveyance for so large a number. It is not very long since that 78 political exiles passed through Tiumen, a town where, in summer, from 500 to 700 criminals pass through weekly; but these 78 politicals excited such a commotion that there was a general “turn out” to look at them; and the manager of the steamboat was at his wits’ end to know how properly to convey them; for political prisoners are not now sent, I am informed, in the common prisoners’ barges. To give each man a cabin was impossible; to put two in a cabin was unlawful; and so they compromised the matter by putting husbands and wives together. But, if a batch of 78 made all this commotion, what would the annual passing through of 4,000 politicals do?
Again, Kara, I was told, was a special place for political offenders, and I saw and heard of more there than in any other prison. They had, at the time of my visit, 2,458 prisoners of all sorts, all of whose crimes were given me duly tabulated, with the exception of 73, which came under the heading “various.” Now, supposing all these 73 were political offenders (and I have not the least reason for thinking they were, but) even then the proportion of politicals would be only one-thirtieth of the criminals.
Once more: a recent correspondent of the Gaulois for 30th September, 1881, describing the last occasion on which he saw the exiled Tchernichewsky at Kadaya, near Nertchinsk, just after the news had been received of the assassination of President Lincoln, says, “At this time the number of (Russian?) political prisoners was not great; they might easily be counted.... I believe there were not 20 of them; if mistaken, I may certainly affirm there were not 50.” This scrap of information has come to hand very opportunely, for I have reason to believe that it may be relied on, and Nertchinsk was the only other district for political prisoners concerning which, until a few days ago, I did not feel satisfactorily informed.
Lastly, the summer of 1879 was supposed to be a very heavy one for the transport of Nihilists and revolutionary offenders. It was just after one of the attempts on the late Emperor’s life, and Petersburg was put under a military governor. The Daily Telegraph, on the 2nd June, informed its readers, as I have said before, that “a large number of convicts were about to be despatched to Saghalien from Odessa, the service which provides for the ordinary transportation of criminals to Siberia being already overtaxed.” We were therefore traversing Siberia at a time and under circumstances particularly favourable for knowing the real condition of things; and as we went along the only route by which these exiles could possibly travel to Eastern Siberia, it might have been expected that we should see or hear something of them. The numbers, however, with whom we were brought in contact on the outward journey could easily have been counted on our fingers; and if it should seem that, having started early in the season, we had travelled in advance of them, then my interpreter, who returned from the Amur, had the opportunity of meeting them, or hearing of them, as he went back. As a matter of fact, however, he met, between the Amur and the Urals, three special convoys only. The first contained one prisoner, who said he was going to Kara; the next consisted of seven vehicles, each of which contained a soldier on the box, and a gendarme at the side of the prisoner; and the third convoy consisted of 21 vehicles, each filled in like manner. Thus, excepting the 78, or the possible 73 just mentioned, the total number we met or definitely heard of all across Asia, both in going and returning, did not amount, I should think, to 50.
I write, then, under correction, and shall be glad to be set right if I am wrong; but I must now leave it to my readers to judge whether or not the considerations brought forward are such as to justify my opinion respecting the number, degradation, and misery of political prisoners. I have few statistics on the point, from the fact that political offenders are treated as belonging to a special department, and are unconnected with the ordinary sources from which I obtained my figures. This I did not know until I had left European Russia, and hence my inability to give other than general reasons. My impression, therefore, is that the greater number of the political exiles either go to prison only for a short time, or not at all, and are then placed in villages and towns. They are then expected to get their living. (I have recently heard that, at the time of the burning of Krasnoiarsk, there were 40 living free in the town.)
This they do in a variety of ways. Some are teachers of languages, some are tradesmen, and some are photographers. We met, for instance, two exile photographers at Tobolsk. As strangers we had, of course, no means of identifying exiles from other people, though we were sometimes brought into contact with them, from the fact that many of the Poles speak French. Moreover, as the question of prison and exiles was, so to say, my speciality, I was always glad, when opportunity presented itself, to converse with them directly rather than get my information translated. A stranger, however, who believes every exile who calls himself a “political,” may easily be misled. To be a “political” prisoner in Siberia is to be more or less of a gentleman, and many try thus to pass themselves off. Mr. Ashton Dilke, M.P., who travelled some years ago in Southern Siberia, and spoke Russian, has told me that, on asking gangs of convicts if they had any politicals or “gentlemen” prisoners among them, they usually said “No”; and that, in the case of one man who imposed upon him and tried to palm himself off as a “political,” the Governor showed Mr. Dilke the man’s papers, which described him as a criminal, a thief, etc.
In Irkutsk I met an exile who told me he was a captain, and had been banished for a duel, which no doubt he thought a respectable crime; but, upon my repeating it to others who knew the man, they said he was a forger. Looking, however, at the political prisoners I saw in the separate rooms of the various prisons, at those with whom I came into personal contact, those pointed out to me, and those of whom mention was made as living in the towns through which we passed, I think that, if I had been commissioned to give a sovereign to each, 50 coins would have sufficed for the purpose. It is not pretended, of course, that a lover of statistics can or ought to attempt to build anything definite upon this statement; but, until proof is brought to the contrary, it may perhaps tend to modify what I deem the exaggerated and extravagant notions as to the number of Siberian political prisoners, and to show at least that they are not as “plentiful as blackberries.”[4]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Let me not fail to add, however, that the whole tone of Dostoyeffsky’s book is far above that of the vindictive class of writers, some of whom have been alluded to. It gives an inner view of prison life, such as no inspector, or philanthropist, or person visiting prisons as I did, could furnish. Some of this writer’s statements, indeed, would hardly tally with my own experience, as, for instance, that they had the bath seldom, whereas I found it the rule once a fortnight, and at Tiumen and Tomsk once a week; above all, the statement that prisoners were thrashed if found sleeping on their backs, or the left side instead of the right; also what he says of thrashing generally, to which I shall allude hereafter. But I have to thank Alexander Goryantchikoff for his lifelike pictures, many of which illustrate scraps of information I received concerning the Siberian prison world--such, for instance, as the various occupations carried on in secret among the convicts, one being a pawnbroker, another a vodka seller, others smugglers of spirits into the prison, the card-playing at night, the exchanging of their names and punishments, and the horrible language and fighting and quarrelling of the prisoners. In these things I make no doubt that “Buried Alive” gives a fairly accurate picture of things as they were, and in some cases still are, perhaps, among such prisoners as those with whom the lot of Goryantchikoff (himself a murderer) was cast. Further light also is thrown upon the interior of prison life in Siberia by the papers of M. Andreoli in La Revue Moderne for 1868, in which he speaks of the tricks and vices of both prisoners and officials, and of the evil effects of the gang system. A great deal of this is inevitable where a number of the most desperate felons are herded together.
[2] I have been favoured with a few particulars from an unpublished manuscript, written by a Decembrist prisoner for the use of his wife and children. He describes his cell at the fortress in Petersburg as small, dirty, and dark; and speaks of a poor and scanty diet, adding, “C’était l’Empereur, qui, sur le rapport du comité d’enquête prescrivait, le régime diétique ainsi que la dure aggravation d’une détention penible.” He had to leave Petersburg, and many of his comrades with him, in the middle of the night, in chains (though a noble), and was not allowed to bid his mother good-bye, though she was in the next room to him at the post-station. They left in a telega, travelling viâ Jaroslav, Kostroma, Viatka, Ekaterineburg, Omsk, etc., and reached Irkutsk in 24 days. At Chita they were kindly treated by the governor of the prison and attendants, and later on, when allowed to colonize at Irkutsk and Tobolsk, suffered no hardships, excepting petty restrictions and vexations.
[3] Perhaps I ought to add that this information was given me in French, which the Pole had not conversed in for a long time, and did not speak readily. It was given, too, with a good deal of bitter feeling, whilst I made notes of what was told me. As he looked on at my writing, and knew pretty well who I was, and what I was travelling for, I felt he might be exaggerating, and I therefore asked him pointedly whether all he had told me was true. He replied in the affirmative, and I therefore hand on the account to my readers, though, as will be seen later on, it was a much severer testimony than I received from political prisoners in general.
[4] Since this chapter has been in type my impressions have been strikingly confirmed by an official, high in the prison administration, who in reply to my written inquiries as to the number of political prisoners sent to Siberia during the last few years, replies that the deportation of political offenders came under the prison administration only in 1880, but that for the present year, 1881, the total number of political offenders of all kinds, sent to Siberia, is 72; which number, moreover, includes nearly 40 condemned to the mines during the years 1875-6-9-80, but who have been detained meanwhile in the central prisons of the Kharkof district. The year, therefore (up to November), of the Emperor’s assassination has sent about 30 persons into exile.
Chapter XXXII
FROM CHITA TO NERTCHINSK.
The Trans-Baikal province.--Books deposited with Governor.--Specimen letter of consignment.--Prisons and hospitals.--Governor’s distribution of books.--Satisfactory results.--Journey from Chita.--Buriat Obos.--Russian emigrants.--Salutations.--Approach to Nertchinsk.--Its mineral treasures.
The Trans-Baikal province is bounded on the south and east by Chinese territory, on the west by Lake Baikal, and on the north by the province of Yakutsk. It measures 830 miles from east to west, and 460 miles from north to south; its entire area covering about 240,000 square miles. It is thus not quite so large as Austria.[1]
Before leaving the capital, Chita, we deposited with the Governor enough books for his prisons and hospitals; and since this region was so important, from my point of view, in regard to its penal establishments, and our efforts, moreover, here met with such good success, I shall give the substance of a letter which I wrote to the Governor (in French), and which is a fair specimen of similar letters written to the other Governors throughout Siberia:--
“TO HIS EXCELLENCY THE GOVERNOR OF ----.
“SIR,--
“I have the honour to beg your acceptance of -- boxes of books containing -- large New Testaments, -- small New Testaments, -- Gospels, -- Psalms, -- New Testaments in French, German, Polish, Tatar, and Buriat, -- copies of the Rooski Rabotchi, -- wall-pictures, and -- tracts. Will your Excellency do me the favour to accept them for the prisons, hospitals, poor-houses, and schools of the government of ----? I shall be thankful if the copies of the Rooski Rabotchi (Russian Workman) and the tracts may be given to the children in schools to be taken to their homes, and thus distributed as much as possible among the people. As for the books, I wish that they should remain in the rooms (not in the libraries) of the prisons, hospitals, etc. If the chief of each room may be made responsible for the books as for the other property of the prisons, etc., I shall be glad; but in any case I wish that the books may be had without asking for them from the library. I hope with your assistance in the government of ---- to place a New Testament or a copy of the Gospels in every room of every prison and hospital throughout Siberia; and I shall be very thankful if I may hear from you, at my English address, how the distribution has been made, because I shall probably send an account of my tour to the authorities at St. Petersburg.
“I have the honour to be, etc., etc., etc.”
The Governor of the Trans-Baikal province, M. Pedachenko, spoke of his four large hospitals and 10 smaller, or occasional hospitals. He told us also that he had in his government four permanent prisons, besides those at the mines, namely, at Nertchinsk, Troitzkosavsk, Verchne Udinsk, and Chita, the last three of which we saw. The number of prisoners was given us as about 150 each at Chita and Nertchinsk.[2] M. Pedachenko was good enough to promise that a small shelf should be put up in each room (under the ikon I suggested), on which the books might rest when not in use; and this promise he carried out.[3]
I have dwelt particularly on what we were able to distribute in the Za-Baikal for two reasons; first, because the letter of the Governor, together with our own observations, give an insight into the number of prisons existing in this province, which of all others was that reserved for the worst of exiles; and, secondly, because of the satisfaction it afforded me, when looking back upon the work as a whole, to feel that the Scriptures and other reading material had been deposited in these out-of-the-way places, especially those of Kara, Nertchinsk, and Algatche. Had nothing more been effected than this, and what I subsequently learned was done at Tiumen, these two results would have well repaid me for the journey.
Late on the afternoon of Monday, July 21st, the day of our arrival, we left Chita and proceeded towards Nertchinsk, a distance of 180 miles, where we intended to make our next stoppage. The road ran within sight of the river, and as the route was hilly we had pretty views. Some of the hills I measured as 400 feet above the level of the river, and my barometer, at the highest point, stood at 2,350 feet above the sea. The hills were rounded and well wooded, whilst the lower land resembled English downs. We saw some of the flora of which Baron Rosen speaks so admiringly, and among them a flower we had not noticed before, like blue larkspur. On both sides of the Yablonoi range are grown wheat, rye, oats, hemp, flax, potatoes, cabbage, turnips, lettuce, radishes, onions, spinach, and horseradish. In the valleys was abundance of grass, but few cattle to graze it. We saw also buckwheat and barley growing, but neither the fields under cultivation, nor the Russian inhabitants, were numerous, nor did we come in contact, after passing Chita, with many Buriats, though we inspected one of their sacred spots on a hill not far from that town. It consisted of a few rough stones piled together, with some dried branches of trees, on which were hung small flags and strips of calico, having inscribed on them verses in the Thibetan or Mongolian language. We had passed several of these south of the Baikal, and the Russian drivers had usually told us that they were Buriats’ graves. Sometimes there were sweetmeats lying about, and copper money, which the Russian yemstchiks did not scruple to collect and pocket. Sometimes, too, we found horse-shoes strewn around, and almost invariably a quantity of tufts of horse-hair tied to the bushes, the appearance of the whole reminding one of the so-called holy wells to which the Romanists of Ireland make pilgrimage. The yemstchiks said that the flags painted with demons were to frighten devils away, and that the coins and sweets were given as offerings to their God; but that if a Buriat had nothing to give, he cut off a piece of his horse’s tail and tied it to the bush.
I noticed that these spots were usually on elevated ground, like the “high places” denounced by the Hebrew prophets, and after reading the travels of Huc, Erman, and Hill, I make no doubt that they were not Buriats’ graves at all, but the obos which are erected throughout Tartary, and at which the people worship the spirits of the mountains, a superstition of the Shamanist Buriats, which extends, at least partially, to other aboriginal tribes in Siberia.[4]
As we passed along the road, we sometimes overtook companies of emigrants from Russia, or from other parts of Siberia, who were wandering further east. We heard, at Barnaul, that peasants are encouraged thus to migrate. Also, we sometimes drove by labourers in the fields, which gave an opportunity to the passing yemstchik to salute them in Russian fashion: “Bogh pomotch,” “May God be your help,” to which the reply is, “Spasibo,” “Thank you,” or “Save you!” a very similar custom to that I have observed in the west of Ireland, where the car-driver accosts his brother Pat, digging potatoes, with a “Bal o’ ye airth,” “God bless the work,” or, more probably, it will be, “God and Mary bless the work,” to which Pat replies, “And you too.” They both remind one of the salutation of the Hebrew, Boaz, “The Lord be with you!” to which his reapers replied, “The Lord bless thee!”
I confess to having been sometimes tired of travelling so many days without being able to read; I managed to get through only two or three small works, for, notwithstanding my air-cushions and a paper-knife placed below the line I was looking at, the shaking of the tarantass rendered study almost impossible. After leaving Chita on Monday, we travelled all day and all night on Tuesday, and on Wednesday found ourselves approaching Nertchinsk, a town surrounded by a hilly district noted for its minerals. The mining region extends over a large area, and for a long period of years provided employment to vast numbers of convicts, as also for many Polish exiles after the insurrection of 1863. The mines were worked under the supervision and direction of an able chief, with a numerous staff of officers; and many distinguished mineralogists here commenced their career. Up to the year 1847, silver and lead formed the principal products.[5] Tin and zinc also, and the aqua marina are found in the neighbourhood of Nertchinsk, and 130 miles to the south is the mountain of Odon Tchelon, celebrated for its gems, including the topaz and emerald, which latter Mr. Erman speaks of as green, yellow, and blue. To these minerals must be added gold, which is found in large quantities in the bed of the Nertcha and its tributaries, besides iron, antimony, and arsenic. In Petersburg, I heard the gold-mines of Nertchinsk spoken of as “large and well worked”; but other reports went to show that the Government mines brought in little to the Crown; and we heard that most of them about Nertchinsk have been sold, so that mining affairs at the time of our visit were in a transition state.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The surface is mountainous; one range, the Yablonoi, running from north to south, is the watershed of numerous rivers. The streams from the western slopes drain into Lake Baikal; the largest one towards the north, the Vitim, finds its way to the Lena, whilst the remainder run into the Argun, which flows at the south of the province and into the Ingoda and Onon, which form the Shilka. The population of the government is 430,000, of which the town inhabitants number only 4 per cent. In 1867 the population was 380,000, of whom there were 400 hereditary nobles, 1,000 personally noble, 1,700 ecclesiastical persons, 11,000 townspeople, 109,000 rural inhabitants, 4,000 military, 9 foreigners, and 164,000 natives. The present population is quoted as 10,000 less than that given by the Almanack for 1875, which diminution probably arises from emigration to the region of the Amur, and from the Government sending fewer exiles here than formerly. There were throughout the government, in the year 1875, about 3,000 marriages, 16,000 births, and 12,000 deaths. The province is divided into seven uyezds; and among its principal towns, besides the capital, are Verchne Udinsk, Selenginsk, and Troitzkosavsk, on or near the Selenga, Barguzin, near the Baikal, and Nertchinsk, to all of which we went with the exception of Barguzin. Barguzin is the chief town of the district, but is not otherwise remarkable.
[2] We had deposited with the Ispravniks of Verchne Udinsk and Troitzkosavsk Russian New Testaments, Tatar Gospels, and Buriat Scriptures for the prisons and for the Troitzkosavsk poor-house, which last, as far as I remember, was the only one of this kind we heard of during our tour, unless it were at Perm, and, perhaps, Barnaul. In addition to these the Governor at Chita accepted 25 wall-pictures of the Prodigal Son, 12 Tatar Gospels, 14 large Russian New Testaments, 50 small ones, 60 Russian Gospels, 20 Psalms, 3 New Testaments in Polish, French, and German, 38 Buriat portions, 75 copies of the Russian Workman, and 200 tracts.
[3] At a further stage of my journey I had the opportunity of sending additional books to M. Pedachenko, and on the following February 4th I received in England the following letter:--
TCHITA, le 12 Decembre, 1879.
MONSIEUR,--Je me fais un plaisir de vous faire savoir, que j’ai reçu votre lettre du 9 Juillet de même que les livres et les brochures religieuses, qui ont été tous distribués.
A Kara: Dans les prisons, les hôpitaux, et l’établissement de charité, d’ Alexandre:--
13 Papiers pour les murailles, 43 Petits Evangiles, 7 Grands Evangiles, 8 Psaumes, 3 Nouveaux Testaments Polonais, Français, Allemands, 29 Brochures Rouski Rabotchi, 60 Différentes brochures, 22 Anciens Testaments Mongols.
A Algatche: Dans les prisons et les hôpitaux:--
3 Papiers pours les murailles, 2 Psaumes, 2 Grands Evangiles, 9 Rouski Rabotchi, 13 Petits Evangiles, 15 Brochures religieuses.
A Nertchinsk: Dans l’hôpital et la prison:--
2 Papiers pours les murailles, 2 Psaumes, 1 Grand Evangile, 9 Rouski Rabotchi, 13 Petits Evangiles, 9 Brochures religieuses, 4 Anciens Testaments Mongols.
A Tchita: Dans la prison:--
2 Papiers pour les murailles, 13 Psaumes, 1 Grand Evangile, 10 Rouski Rabotchi, 14 Petits Evangiles, 10 Brochures religieuses, 4 Anciens Testaments Mongols.
Pour les Forçats de Nertchinsk:--
3 Papiers pour les murailles, 2 Grands Evangiles, 15 Rouski Rabotchi, 13 Petits Evangiles, 9 Brochures religieuses, 2 Psaumes, 4 Anciens Testaments Mongols.
A l’hôpital de Strétinsk:--
2 Papiers pour les murailles, 1 Ancien Testament Tatare, 3 Brochures religieuses.
D’après votre désir, Monsieur, les livres distribués dans les prisons et les hôpitaux sont placés sur des tablettes, afin qu’on puisse s’en servir en tout temps. Les serviteurs sont chargés de les tenir en ordre.
Recevez, Monsieur, mes plus sincères remerciements pour votre précieuse offrande,
J’ai l’honneur d’être, Votre très humble serviteur, (Signed) JEAN PEDACHENKO.
[4] The natives believe that their shamans have more power than other people with the spirits infesting the mountains. Accordingly, sacrifices are offered to these spirits, and are carried off secretly by the shamans. Horse-hair seems to hold a conspicuous place in connection with their superstitions. Mr. Erman speaks of the practice of the Yakutes in tying knots of it on trees; and Mr. Hill states that the Yakutes informed him that the rites of their ancient worship consisted for the most part in sacrifices to invisible spirits, and that portions of the horses’ tails were attached to trees to notify to the spirits who might chance to pass by that such rites had been performed, and that thereabouts they would find the offered sacrifice. From the oldest times the Buriats have been accustomed about midsummer, when the cattle are in good condition, to celebrate festivals for the good spirits, the rites being followed by wrestling matches, and other popular amusements; and the crafty Buddhist lamas have recognised and sanctioned these ancient usages, in order that the Buriats may regard the new religion only as an extension or completion of the old.
[5] Of the former 4 tons, and of the latter 570 tons, were produced annually. The discovery of lead was of great importance, as it had been previously necessary to bring it all the way from England to Barnaul for the smelting of the ores of the Altai, in which region little or no lead is found. The lead of Nertchinsk, however, did not find its way so far as the Russian arsenals, because, by reason of carriage, it would have cost six times the price of English lead delivered either in Petersburg or Moscow.
Chapter XXXIII
THE SILVER AND (SO-CALLED) QUICKSILVER MINES OF NERTCHINSK.
The supposed quicksilver-mines.--Inadequate evidence of their existence.--Unsupported statements of writers.--Not known to Anglo-Siberians.--Silver-mines perhaps intended.--Deleterious fumes a myth.--Questionable allegations regarding silver-mines.--Misstatements exposed.--Testimonies of Collins and other eye-witnesses.--Accounts of ex-prisoners and Lutheran pastor.--Nertchinsk Zavod and work in the mines.--Condition of affairs in 1866.--Present state of things.--The Nemesis of exaggeration.
When crossing the Pacific I heard it remarked by an American clergyman that Mrs. Beecher Stowe, in her exaggerated account, as he thought it, of American slavery, showed great shrewdness in assigning to her story a locality that was very remote and unknown to most of her readers. A similar observation might be made in regard to not a few of the writers on Siberian exiles and their labours in the mines. How the idea first came into my mind I know not, but when in 1874 an Englishman, born in Russia, told me in Petersburg that the worst of Russian criminals were put down in quicksilver-mines in Siberia, where they were speedily killed by unhealthy fumes, it seemed to me like an item of news I had heard before. Since my return from Siberia the question has been frequently put to me, Did you go to the quicksilver-mines, where the exiles are so cruelly treated? Baron Rosen also wrote, “Eight persons of the above-mentioned eleven criminal categories were dispatched at once to the quicksilver-mines of Nertchinsk; ... they worked for long years underground in the mines, like the other forced labourers.” Again, the Newcastle Daily Chronicle for 21st November, 1878, quoting, apparently, Captain Wiggins, says: “Desperate criminals only are sent to labour in the quicksilver-mines, and for these there is a specially severe discipline provided, and ‘horrors,’ without doubt, exist.” And I have somewhere read, if I mistake not, that in the vicinity of Nertchinsk was a quicksilver-mine, which for a time was worked, but that the loss of life entailed upon the convict labourers was so great as to cause it to be given up.
Now it is somewhat remarkable that I have been unable to learn that there is a quicksilver-mine in Siberia at all, or to get satisfactory proof that one ever existed. This may perhaps surprise my readers, but I proceed to explain myself thus:--The “English Cyclopædia,” under the article “Mercury,” mentions various places where this mineral is found, but says nothing of Siberia. Yet surely, if mines exist there, affording employment for numerous labourers, we ought to hear something of their output. Again, in “Ure’s Dictionary of Arts, Manufactures, and Mines,” a standard book on mining (p. 120), we find a good deal concerning the mines of Siberia, of those in the Urals, the Altai, and Daouria (which last comprise those about Nertchinsk), but nothing is said of quicksilver-mines in any one of these regions.[1] Again, Mr. Atkinson, who spent several years in Asiatic Russia, went to the district of Nertchinsk, and had friends among the mining engineers, says: “Tin and zinc ores are found, but neither have as yet been much worked, and I am not aware of the existence of quicksilver, though it is said to be found in these regions.” Mr. Eden, in his valuable little compilation on Siberia, speaking of its mineralogy, says, “Quicksilver also is reported to exist in some of the north-eastern provinces”; but he gives no authority for the report, says nothing of its being worked, nor mentions the existence of it at Nertchinsk. I may further add that recently I have seen the Englishman whom I met at Kiakhta, and who since has twice passed through Nertchinsk. He asked particularly of an officer connected with the mines for one of quicksilver, and was told that, though there was said to be quicksilver in the neighbourhood, it was not worked.
To these testimonies I must add my own, that neither in the town of Nertchinsk, through which we passed, nor in the neighbourhood, nor indeed throughout Siberia, did we anywhere hear of a quicksilver-mine. The only testimony I have ever received in the opposite direction is that of a released political exile, who has told me that he once heard from some of his fellow-prisoners at Petrovsky Zavod, many miles distant, that there was a small quicksilver-mine at Nertchinsk, but so poor an affair that it was not worked. Subsequently my informant was deported to four places in succession round about Nertchinsk, but he neither saw nor heard anything more of the said quicksilver-mine. Accordingly, on meeting, since my return, with an English acquaintance who has spent a large part of his life in Siberia, and who knows it well, I said to him, “You have heard, have you not, that there are quicksilver-mines in Siberia?” to which he replied in the affirmative, but he did not know where they existed; and when I asked him whether, if I took upon myself to say that there was no such thing as a quicksilver-mine in Siberia, he could contradict me, he thought awhile, and then was obliged to confess he could not. The Englishman from Kiakhta said the same; and my most recent informant, a released political exile, who spent some years in the mines about Nertchinsk, assures me to the same effect. In the face, therefore, of the prevalent notion to the contrary, and notwithstanding what little evidence I have been able to collect in their favour, I must express my grave doubts as to whether mercury has ever been worked, in any sense worthy of the term, by Russian convicts; and I shall further venture on the assertion that there does not exist a quicksilver-mine in Siberia at all.
But perhaps silver-mines were intended instead of “quicksilver,” in which case it should be observed that, if the quicksilver-mines have no existence, then the slow process of killing convicts by their fumes is a delusion. That working in quicksilver-mines is destructive to health is perfectly well known; but working in silver-mines is quite another matter. When at Barnaul, we heard nothing of any difficulty arising under this head in the working of the Altai silver-mines. When in the Rocky Mountains, I heard from a Russian lady, who had been down the silver-mine near Virginia city, that the heat was very great, but she said nothing as to the air being otherwise objectionable. Mr. Collins, also, describing his descent of one of the Nertchinsk mines, the silver-mine of Zarentunskie, says: “We now passed along another drift, and found nothing unpleasant in this underground passage.” Moreover, the two released exiles, to whose information I have already alluded, have told me that they never perceived any objectionable fumes,--that, in fact, there were none.
But, apart from the supposed deadly fumes, there has been a great deal said and written respecting the Siberian mines in general, and those of Nertchinsk in particular, which my experience and reading lead me to question, not to say to contradict. The number of Englishmen who have visited the great mine of Nertchinsk is represented, I believe, solely by Captain Cochrane,[2] and great changes have taken place since his day. In 1848, the Emperor Nicolas decided, with a view to carrying out his plans in the regions of the Amur, that the whole of the people in the Trans-Baikal should become Cossacks. Hitherto a large body of the population had been employed in mining operations, and Mr. Atkinson speaks of this sudden change as having closed the silver-mines of Nertchinsk; but I suppose he means relatively, for the mines have been worked for many years since by convicts, and, if we are to believe all that is written on the subject, they are full of horrors to the present day. But I shall venture to examine a few of these writings which say so, and compare them with the statements of travellers and eye-witnesses. I shall offer, too, my own experience, and then leave the reader to judge respecting the truth of the whole.
The author of “The Russians of To-day” says (p. 216): “The miners are supposed to be the worst offenders, and their punishment is tantamount to death by slow torture; for it is certain to kill them in ten years, and ruins their health long before that time. If the convict have money or influential friends, he had better use the time between his sentence and transportation in buying a warrant which consigns him to the lighter kinds of labour above ground, otherwise he will inevitably be sent under earth, and never again see the sky until he is hauled up to die in an infirmary.” This was published in 1878, and I have italicised the doubtful or erroneous words.
Again, the Contemporary Review for September 1879, in an article on “Conspiracies in Russia,” says (p. 143): “Of the treatment of political exiles in Siberia, as it has been carried on for a long time past, I have before me a thrilling description from the pen of Mr. Robert Lemke, a German writer, who has visited the various penal establishments of Russia with an official legitimation. He had been to Tobolsk, after which he had to make a long, dreary journey in a wretched car, until a high mountain rose before him. In its torn and craggy flank the mountain showed a colossal opening similar to the mouth of a burnt-out crater. Fetid vapours, which almost took away his breath, ascended from it.”
Mr. Lemke then walks down with a guide, and--
“Entering a room of considerable extent, but which was scarcely a man’s height, and which was dimly lit by an oil lamp, the visitor asked, ‘Where are we?’ ‘In the sleeping-room of the condemned! Formerly it was a gallery of the mine; now it serves as a shelter.’ The visitor shuddered. This subterranean sepulchre, lit by neither sun nor moon, was called a sleeping-room. Alcove-like cells were hewn into the rock; here, on a couch of damp, half-rotten straw, covered with a sackcloth, the unfortunate sufferers were to repose from the day’s work. Over each cell a cramp iron was fixed, wherewith to lock up the prisoners like ferocious dogs. No door, no window anywhere.
“Conducted through another passage, where a few lanterns were placed, and whose end was also barred by an iron gate, Mr. Lemke came to a large vault, partly lit. This was the mine. A deafening noise of pickaxes and hammers. Then he saw some hundreds of wretched figures, with shaggy beards, sickly faces, reddened eyelids, clad in tatters,--some of them barefoot, others in sandals, fettered with heavy foot-chains. No song, no whistling; now and then they shyly looked at the visitor and his companion.”
Mr. Lemke leaves the mine and speaks to one of the officers about the convicts’ rest. “Rest!” said the officer, “convicts must always labour. There is no rest for them; they are condemned to perpetual forced labour, and he who once enters the mine never leaves it!” And so on.[3]
These remarkable extracts may be appropriately followed by reference to an article in the Echo for May 5th, 1881. It numbered 100 lines, and on reading it I had the curiosity to mark every line that appeared to me to contain a misstatement or a blunder. No less than 20 were marked; that is to say, one line in every five. The article is headed. “On the Road to Siberia.” The author begins by starting his pedestrian exiles on the march at the Sparrow Hills at Moscow, and in crossing Russia he gives them all sorts of difficulties by road to overcome; whereas I have shown, in an earlier chapter, that for years past the prisoners are taken by steam across Russia, and that the exile reaches the first prison in Siberia without walking at all. Then the author places his pedestrian exiles under the charge of mounted, long-speared guards, feeds them with bread and oil (which latter I never yet heard of in a Russian prison), and, what is more amusing, feeds the Cossack horses with the meal (whatever that may be) eaten by their masters. Then having got his exiles over the Ural, he says:--
“Beyond the Ural, however, with its simple industries and markets, the region becomes more barbarous; it is less relieved by the softening aspects of social life; the exile population, clad in sheepskins, thickens at every step; the cold grows so intense” [this, by-the-bye, in the “open season,” i.e. the summer], “that occasionally the Cossacks on guard are frozen, lance in hand; and the silver-mines are now not far distant,--immense caverns, illuminated by torches of pine, peopled by men with leaden-hued faces, caused by exhalations from the copper ore, in which the silver is found imbedded; inhabited too by women and children, who share in the unhealthful labour, and contribute their quota to the terrible totals of mortality, living, dying, and being buried often far below the light of day.”
Now, when I read this, my first thought was to take Mr. Punch’s advice, and “write to the Times,” but I repressed my feelings till I could gather these extracts, italicise the questionable words, and then calmly place before the reader such remarks upon the matter as I have to offer. Let me, then, observe, in the first place, that neither of these three authors professes to write from personal experience. Had the writer in the Echo been to Siberia in the “open season,” he would not have frozen his mounted guard, lance in hand, but would have made him trudge on foot at the side of his convoy, sweating beneath the load of rifle and bayonet; and neither of the three writers, had they been to Siberia, would have been so vague with regard to its geography. The author of the “Russians of To-day” (p. 216) informs his readers that “Siberia is a territory covering about six times the area of England and Scotland!” Had he written sixty times he would have been not far from the mark; but--perhaps six was a printer’s error!
Again, the Contemporary writer says that Mr. Lemke “had been to Tobolsk, after which he had to make a long dreary journey until a high mountain was before him;” which sentence, though not expressly saying so, leaves one to infer that the mountain was at least in the vicinity, whereas the country about Tobolsk is flat, and there is no mountain answering to the writer’s description, where convicts are employed, within 2,000 miles. So, again, the writer for the Echo, almost immediately after getting his exiles over the Urals, informs us that “the silver-mines are now not far distant,” which is hardly an exact way of speaking of 3,000 miles.
But I shall now proceed to give such personal information as I am able about Nertchinsk, prefacing what I have to say with words from Mr. Collins’s chapters describing his visit to the mines of the district. This, I think, should go far to satisfy an ordinary reader as to the quality of the miners’ food, clothing, and sleeping accommodation. “This [gold] mine was a convict establishment, like all the mines east of Lake Baikal. The men were well clad, and in visiting the hospital, prison, and quarters, I found the arrangements for their health and sleeping clean and comfortable. Cooks were preparing dinner for the prisoners. I tasted of the soup, bread, and kacha, or grits, made from buckwheat and milk, and found them good and well prepared. There were a number on the sick list, mostly those who had recently arrived, but they were in a warm, clean room, with clean beds and clothing, and with a separate kitchen, where proper diet was prepared for them.”
This was published in 1860. Before leaving Asia I had an opportunity of asking an American, who had visited the Nertchinsk mines, as to what he saw, but he told of no such barbarities as those quoted above. Again, I asked an Englishman living in Siberia about women working in the silver-mines, but he had never heard of such a thing, nor have I; and my second exile informant denies it; so that I trust the women and the children with “leaden-hued faces,” inhabiting the mines and “sharing in the unhealthful labour,” exist only in the imagination of the writer for the Echo. Had the article said that there were women and children at the mines, it would have been less difficult to believe, because I found them at the gold-mines--the women employed in scrubbing, washing, or hard female labour, and their children taken care of, clothed and fed in a school; but this will be alluded to hereafter. Again, I met a naval officer, who had seen the coal-mines at Dui, in Sakhalin, and who spoke of the prison abuses there in no measured terms. He had visited the mines at Nertchinsk five years before we met, and had descended into one of them; but though he said the men looked sickly, and sometimes had to “go on all fours” to get the mineral (which, I suppose, all miners occasionally have to do), yet he had no barbarities of which to speak, and did not confirm any of the notions with which I entered the country, as to the prisoners being kept underground by night and by day. He said they worked twelve hours a day, six on and six off. I questioned, too, the chief of the gold-mines at Kara concerning the silver-mines at Nertchinsk, which are not far off. He denied that the prisoners were kept underground, and thought they worked in three sections of eight hours each.
I have three testimonies besides, not from prison officials, travellers, or amateur philanthropists, but from men, two of whom themselves worked in the mines of Nertchinsk; whilst the third, a Lutheran pastor, told me of what he had heard direct from prisoners at the mines, where it was his business periodically to visit. He said that old convicts at Nertchinsk and Kara had told him of Rozguildieff, a director, 20 years before, who gave them only 4 lbs. of bread a day, and who used to go about with four Cossacks behind him, armed with the knout, to thrash those who did not do the prescribed quantity of work. He afterwards became blind. I have heard from another quarter that this man used sometimes to condemn his prisoners, not to so many stripes, but so many “lbs.” of the birch--to 10 or 15 lbs., for instance--which meant that the man should be flogged until a certain weight of rods had been used up. But a military officer was sent to inspect the mines, and Rozguildieff was removed; since which time the pastor said that all seemed going on well, and that he had heard no complaints of abuse. I have also heard of this Rozguildieff and his cruelty from a third person, who was at Petrovsky Zavod in 1866, with about 500 prisoners, many of them Polish insurgents. Another testimony respecting the mines is from a Pole whom I met, engaged as a clerk at one of the post-houses. He had been sent to Nertchinsk as a political prisoner, condemned to hard labour, but he said he was not compelled to work. Perhaps he had the good fortune to be taken as a servant, or employed as a clerk; this he did not explain, but he said that the officers were not cruel, and that of the prison treatment he had no complaint to make. He had, he said, 3 lbs. of bread, and ½ lb. of meat a day. He might write a letter every three months; and so well satisfied did he seem with his present lot, that he said if the Emperor were to allow his return to Poland he would certainly go; but if he were offered permission to return only to Russia, he would prefer to stay where he was. One reason for this, it has been suggested, might be that police supervision is more irksome in Russia than in Siberia.
The last testimony I would offer is perhaps the most satisfactory of all, because it came to me direct in English from one who, implicated in the Polish insurrection of 1863, was sent as a political exile to Nertchinsk, with several like offenders from the Russian and Polish aristocracy, he himself being a man who had received a university education. The accounts he gave me relate to the condition of things in 1866 and 1867. The principal centre of the mining district, he said, was called Nertchinsky Zavod, or Bolshoi Zavod, “the great works,” at which, however, the mines were abandoned before 1865, and the prison was afterwards used for a hospital. Round about were various mines, works, hospitals, and prisons, such as Kadaya, Akatuya, Klitchka, Alexandreffsky, Algatche (the last a smelting place), and some others. At Stretinsk and Sivakoff, on the Shilka, were ship-yards, where prisoners were employed. There would seem to be labour going on still at Nertchinsk and at Algatche, since, from the Governor’s letter to me, it appears that some of my books have been sent to these two places, and to the hospital at Stretinsk; but the greater part of the mines just mentioned have now passed out of Government into private hands. I am speaking, however, of things as they were in the time of my informant, who laboured at Kadaya, Akatuya, Alexandreffsky, and Nertchinsky Zavod. Kadaya was only two or three versts from the Chinese frontier,[4] Alexandreffsky was about six versts from the frontier, and 35 from head-quarters. At most of the places there were prisons built: at Alexandreffsky, of stone; at Kadaya, of wood; and at Akatuya, partly of wood and partly of stone. At Nertchinsky Zavod the prison was very old, and was empty. The commandant, General Chitoff, living there, he preferred to house the convicts at a convenient distance. At Alexandreffsky there were not less than 700 prisoners in three buildings. Of these, 30 or 40 were Russian political offenders; the remainder were Polish insurgents of 1863. At Akatuya there were 110 prisoners, 60 of whom were Polish priests, together with 22 other prisoners sent to join them for extra punishment.
Akatuya, by reason of its isolation and loneliness, was regarded as the worst place of all, there being no village around it. There was reported to have been a Tatar in this prison, before 1866, chained to the wall, but this was an exceptional case, and such things, it was said, were not done to the political prisoners, some of whom had friends who could bring influence to bear in their favour. My informant, being counted “noble,” was exempted from wearing chains during the journey, but on his arrival he had irons, he said, of 7 lbs. (Russian) on the feet, and the same weight on the hands. If so, these handcuffs must have been heavier than any I have seen in Russia or Siberia. There were sometimes cases in which criminal prisoners burst into fits of ferocity, and were guilty of such insubordination as to call for special punishment. At Sivakoff, for instance, he had known men suspended for a time by the armpits, but none were chained to barrows or tools, as has been sometimes done. In the case of my informant himself, who insulted the Governor-General Korsakoff, and also joined others in a league to refuse to work on Sundays (the cruel and unjust regulation to this effect was enforced on these exiles in 1866), he, with many more, and for a considerable time, was put first on half rations, then deprived of meat, then of milk, and then was not permitted to lounge in the yard, but had to go straight from work to his ward. The priests had joined in this resistance to Sunday labour, and there were also Protestants and a Jew among the league. Some of the priests, however, were the first to give in, and all at length followed, so that they had afterwards only four holidays in the course of the year, though this was exclusive of bath-day, which recurred once a fortnight, and was a holiday as at Kara.
I asked as to the formation of the mines, and found that some of them had shafts and galleries; one shaft in particular, by reason of its construction, being dangerous to descend. In some cases it seems that the granite was dug from the side of a hill, and the work of the prisoners consisted largely of boring holes for blasting, which were charged with powder by Cossacks or labourers, and, in the absence of the prisoners, were fired. From an engineering point of view, the mines, as far as I could understand, were worked badly enough; and this agreed with what I had heard elsewhere. The mineral was brought to the surface in baskets, but they had no steam or horse-power. There were veins of silver, but often the galleries did not follow them, and the mines seemed to subserve the purpose of providing hard labour for malefactors, rather than that of bringing gain to the Emperor. Whilst my informant was talking to me, he had in his hand some pins, and, holding up one of them, he said, “I did not see a piece of silver as big as that all the time I was at Akatuya.”
I inquired carefully respecting the hours of labour, and heard that in 1866 it was 13 hours a day, which agrees with the hours I found at Kara in the gold-mines. At noon they came out of the mines to dinner--unless, that is, a man had arranged his hours otherwise; for it seemed that so long as they did not worry the Cossacks or prevent their lounging about and smoking, the prisoners might do their allotted number of hours when they pleased. There was, moreover, no definite amount of mineral required of every man daily, and hence he might work hard or not, pretty much as he liked.
This, then, appears to have been the condition of things at Nertchinsk 15 years ago;[5] and from what I heard in Siberia, matters since seem to have improved rather than otherwise, though it must not be supposed that the lot of the convicts is an easy one. I am far from attempting to make it appear so. No doubt the corporal punishment inflicted in many cases is very severe. I shall have more to say of this hereafter. The period of an exile’s life spent at the mines, before being set free to colonize, cannot but be hard. Whatever laxity of discipline may prevail, as compared with the prisons of other countries, the herding together of the worst of characters, the deprivation of social, intellectual, and religious privileges, to speak of nothing else, must to many make life in the mines, from the nature of things, a burden. But this is very different from killing exiles by inches in quicksilver fumes, or keeping men, women, and children underground by night and by day, with insufficient clothing, food, and sleep. Such gross misstatements must in time be refuted, and the revulsion caused by their exposure often makes people too easily believe less severity than really exists. The treatment of prisoners necessarily depends greatly upon those who are set over them, and the study of human nature about us renders it quite needless to go to Siberia to discover that among prison officials there are both bad and good. That there have been instances of cruelty in the mines I do not doubt, but I believe far less have occurred than some writers would have us believe; and I trust that what has here been written may tend to throw some light upon a matter of which many are desirous to know the truth.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Speaking, however (p. 56), of “Mercury or Quicksilver,” the author says: “Argental Mercury, or native silver amalgam, has been found at ... Kolyvan, in Siberia.” But Kolyvan is thousands of miles from Nertchinsk, and on the Obi, where there are no quicksilver-mines. Further (on page 66 of “Ure’s Dictionary”), the imports of quicksilver are given as coming from Spain, the United States, Chili, Australia, Hanse towns, Hanover, Austria, Italy, Mexico, and other parts, but nothing is said of any from Siberia.
[2] Perhaps this is not to be wondered at, if the inaccessibility of the place be considered. It is 5,250 miles east of Petersburg, 700 miles nearly due north of Peking, about 480 north of the Chinese wall, and 1,000 miles west of the Pacific. Captain Cochrane went there half a century ago, at which time there were 1,600 convicts in the mines, and he speaks sternly of their treatment, their miserable huts, and of their haggard, worn-down, wretched, half-starved appearance. But he stayed at the place only a day, and his book does not say that he entered the mines at all.
[3] On my reading this description to one who knows from painful experience what the mines were like, he laughed outright at its absurdity.
[4] This is the place to which the Russian poet Mikhaïloff was banished for writing his proclamation or manifesto, Molodom pokoleniou, “To the rising generation,” as was also his literary friend Tchernichewsky, who is called the intellectual chief and founder of Nihilism. Mikhaïloff died and was buried at Kadaya; Tchernichewsky, who it seems is feeble and delicate in constitution, was not compelled to work, nor did he carry chains; and after spending a certain time at Kadaya, he was removed to Viluisk, in the province of Yakutsk.
[5] I have quite unexpectedly had the opportunity of submitting this chapter, in manuscript, to a second released exile, who was at the Nertchinsk mines at the time alluded to, and who, after expressing his great surprise at the accuracy of my account, confirmed it almost to the letter, adding, however, that he thought I underrated the number of political exiles; but he referred to the numbers deported in 1863 and during the present year, rather than to the average number for the intervening years.
Chapter XXXIV
FROM NERTCHINSK TO STRETINSK.
Nertchinsk.--Its climate and history.--Scene of a Russo-Chinese treaty.--Appearance of the town.--Visits to authorities.--Dinner with a rich merchant.--Siberian table customs.--Poverty of travelling fare.--Fine arts in Siberia.--Painting and photography.--Journey from Nertchinsk.
Before passing from Nertchinsk, a few words should be said respecting its history, and as at Nertchinsky Zavod, 2,230 feet above the sea, there is a meteorological observatory--its climate, also. Mr. Atkinson writes: “The climate is not so horrible as many have supposed, nor is the earth a perpetual mass of ice at a few feet below the surface, as I have seen it stated. The summers are not so long as in Europe, but they are very hot, and the country produces a magnificent flora. Both agriculture and horticulture are carried on successfully, and vegetables of almost every kind can be grown here. Tobacco is extensively cultivated, for which the people find a sale among the Buriats and Tunguses.”
Again, Baron Rosen, speaking of Chita, which is on the same parallel and within 200 miles of Nertchinsk, says: “The high situation of Chita considerably increases the cold in winter, but it is healthy, with a fresh bracing climate. The sky is almost always clear, excepting in August, when the thunder is incessant for days together, and then follows a shower, beginning with enormously large single drops, which in a few hours floods all the roads; for the water falls rapidly down the slopes, digging deep trenches as it runs. The great electricity of the air is remarkable: the slightest movement of cloth or wool produces sparks or crackling. The rapidity of the vegetation is most extraordinary; for both corn and vegetables ripen within the five weeks in which the frosts cease, i.e., from the middle of June to the end of July. One of my comrades first introduced the growing of cucumbers in the open air, and melons in hot-beds.” And the Baron afterwards adds: “When I was chosen senior of the prison, I salted down in brandy casks 60,000 cucumbers out of our garden.” Whether the Baron is accurate in speaking of five weeks only during which there is no frost, seems doubtful. I observe in the meteorological report from Nertchinsky Zavod, that in 1877 the lowest temperature was, in June, 36°·8; in July, 47°·8; and in August, 41°. If, therefore, frost occurred in these months, it must have been ground-frost caused by radiation; which would not affect the crops. The lowest temperature of the year, which occurred in January, was 45°·5 below zero; the highest temperature, 95°·3, occurring in August.
It should be observed that the Trans-Baikal province has a climate almost peculiar to itself. From the north, the Polar Sea, immense tracts of swamp, lakes, and rivers supply the atmosphere with moisture, a great deal of which is precipitated, in passing southwards, over a region more than 1,000 miles in breadth; and as the clouds approach the Altai, in process of elevating themselves to pass the mountains, they part with their last drops, which fall along the northern, southern, and eastern sides of the range. But this happens, of course, only when the prevailing winds are from the north. Upon the south there are few lakes or rivers; while the land in general is dry, and remote from the sea. The winter clouds from the Indian Ocean in the south, and the Caspian on the west, discharging themselves upon the mountains of Thibet and Bucharia, rarely pass the desert of Gobi. Accordingly, the winds blowing so regularly from this direction bring no water; and thus, rain clouds coming for the most part from the Pacific only, it comes to pass that the fall of rain and snow about Chita and Nertchinsk is exceedingly small, and the winter passenger, for lack of snow upon which to drive, has frequently in this region to mount his sledge on wheels.[1] As summer travellers, however, we had no difficulties of this kind, and the absence of rain we regarded as a blessing. The weather was delightful, and I was looking forward, after passing a few more stations, to bid farewell to tarantass and horses, and by steamer to descend the Amur.
The town of Nertchinsk is one of the oldest in Eastern Siberia, having been founded in 1658. After about 10 years it began to rise into a place of importance, and 20 years later was the birthplace of a famous treaty between the Russians and the Chinese.[2]
The question in dispute was the boundary of the two empires; the Russians first proposing, and the Chinese refusing, that the Amur should be the boundary; after which the Chinese proposed, and the Russians refused, that Albazin, Nertchinsk, and Selenginsk should be surrendered. After several conferences neither party showed a disposition to yield, and both prepared for battle; but this was averted, and a treaty was at length drawn up fixing the boundary between the empires, but by no means in accordance with Russian wishes, for they were completely shut out from the Amur.
After this, Nertchinsk remained for a long time the most easterly of the large towns in the Trans-Baikal region. The discovery of metals in the surrounding mountains increased its importance, and the continued arrival there of exiles, and the stories connected with them, caused the place to be only too well known--at least by name--throughout the empire.
The town is charmingly situated, 1,845 feet above the sea. The surrounding country is picturesque, and the soil rich. Hill, valley, river, mountain, all combine to make it an interesting spot, apart from its legendary and historic associations. Mr. Knox entered the town from the east, and speaks of the view as especially pleasing, because it was the first Russian town where he saw evidences of age and wealth. The domes of its churches glistened in the sunlight that had broken through the fog and warmed the tints of the whole picture! It struck me, however, very differently. The natural beauties of the place, of course, one could not but admire, but I had left behind the handsome cities of European Russia, and had passed through many cleanly and newly-built towns in Siberia, in comparison with which Nertchinsk struck me as being black with age and decay. There was a woebegone look about the place, and the streets seemed deplorably neglected. Many of the houses were falling to pieces, and gave the town a most untidy appearance.
We reached Nertchinsk on Wednesday morning, July 23rd, and made it our first business to seek the Ispravnik, from whom I wished to get general information respecting prisons and mines, and permission, perhaps, to visit some of them within reasonable distance, though I hardly hoped to see the great mines, as I knew they were more than 100 miles away from the town, and if I attempted to reach them I should either miss the penal colony of Kara, or lose the steamer which was shortly to leave Stretinsk. We had thought it just possible, moreover, that the Ispravnik might provide some one who could speak English, French, or German, to accompany me to Stretinsk, and thus leave my interpreter free to return.
Nertchinsk formerly stood at the junction of the Nertcha, which flows from the north, and the Shilka. The repeated damage to the houses from floods caused its removal, though even on its present site the lower part of the town has been more than once under water. It was to this lower part we drove in search of the authorities, but the Ispravnik was away “in the country,” and his representative was asleep.
We went next to present a letter of introduction to Mr. Bootyn, of whom we had heard at the Alexandreffsky Central Prison, and subsequently at Irkutsk. On approaching his house, it proved to be not only the most remarkable in the town, but, I might add, the grandest we had seen in Siberia. The houses of Nertchinsk have already been alluded to as old, black, and rotten; but Mr. Bootyn is a merchant, miner, and millionaire, who has been to England and round the world, and he was building himself a house, in the construction of which were manifest sundry foreign ideas. It was a huge erection, part of which was executed in Byzantine and castellated styles; and the establishment comprised dwelling-houses, gardens, conservatories, and shops--all in one. The Mr. Bootyn to whom our letter was addressed was from home, but we were received by his brother, and invited to dine in the verandah conservatory.
This gave us an insight into the social habits of another class of Russians, and I was now beginning to know pretty well what to expect when invited by a Siberian to dinner. Their hospitality is unbounded, though, of course, its manifestation differs according to the means of the host. Our first dinner in Siberia was at a merchant’s house, where brother-merchants in travelling put up, and hence it was called a hotel. We were asked if we would have our dinner in our own room, or en famille. I was rash enough to choose the latter, and we found ourselves seated at the table with mine host and a queer lot of male guests (there were no females), who appeared to be clerks or fellow-lodgers. We were first requested to help ourselves from a tureen, in the centre of the table, to stchee, or soup, on the top of which the fat floated like oil; and for the next course we had bones of veal, followed by game and sour berries. Our fellow-guests ate ravenously, tearing the bones to pieces with their teeth. Nothing was placed on the table to drink, but towards the close of the meal a glass of milk, as is common in Western Siberia, was given to each. The foregoing represents, I should think, the dinner of the well-to-do Siberian tradesman. There is nothing like display, and things are sometimes served in a rough fashion. If any one wishes to be brushed clean of over-fastidiousness in the arrangements of the table, I can conscientiously recommend a tour across Siberia. In one house where I was entertained--and entertained most kindly--the fish was brought in in the frying-pan, and thus placed in the middle of the table, which, if it did not minister to the delights of the eye, gave us food admirably hot. On one occasion we dined with a teacher of languages in a classical school, and he gave us stchee, roast meat with sour wild cherries, then preserved maroshka berries and pudding. We dined in a similar fashion with a medical doctor, but fared more sumptuously in the house of a gold-seeker, where salt-spoons reminded us of England.
At Nertchinsk we had fallen on pleasant places. The number of plants and flowers (I had almost said shrubs) on the table went far to hide the guests from one another, but there was abundance of excellent food. Had we been bibbers of wine, there was no lack of the choicest vintages; but, upon our declining alcohol, we were offered some excellent cherry syrup, which, in so remote a region, was a great luxury. Further east, I was invited to dinner by the acting governor of a town, where the first course was provided, they said, for my special benefit. It was a salmon pie. Fish pie is a grand dish with peasants, and their betters too, throughout Russia. If well prepared it is excellent. The crust is not made with butter, but with yeast, as it is commonly eaten in Lent, when butter is forbidden. I dined most sumptuously, however, in Siberia, at Vladivostock, with the officers of a Russian man-of-war, at the house of the Governor. Here everything was served with the elegance and refinement of an English mansion; and the customs observed were much the same, except that the hostess (in the absence of her husband, the Governor) gave a toast standing, and left her seat to come round and do the honours by touching glasses with several of her guests. Thus I saw something of the table customs of nearly all classes. Grace was sung before meals in the house of a devoutly orthodox general in Petersburg, and now and then I saw a peasant, before or after a meal, turn to the ikon and cross himself; but grace before meat did not appear to obtain as a custom in Siberia. I partook, too, of all sorts of Siberian food, from sumptuous dinners down to what was often very humble fare indeed. I think the best dinner we got at a post-station consisted of chicken soup, then the newly-killed chicken that made it, and pancakes. This, perhaps, was due in part to our not usually caring to wait until a meal could be cooked, and we could not always eat what the post-people had prepared for themselves, even when it was ready. Our provision basket, however, supplied us with a few relishes to bread and butter, and thus we made shift from town to town. I never travelled with anything like such bodily fatigue as during the drive across Siberia; and never, that I can remember, ate so little animal food during a corresponding period of time; but I have no hesitation in saying that my health was better after the journey than before it.
Before we left Mr. Bootyn’s, we were shown some of the best rooms in the house, elegantly furnished. In one of them was a fair collection of European paintings, some of which I recognized as Swiss scenes. I do not remember seeing any other paintings in Siberia worth naming, nor do I remember being shown any statuary. Both would, of course, be carried safely with difficulty over such immense distances and such uneven roads.
The Siberians are, however, by no means behind in photography. When preparing for my tour, I had serious thoughts of taking with me a camera and dry plates, thinking thereby to secure some novel pictures, to the surprise, perhaps, of the people. It proved well that I attempted nothing of the kind, for much trouble was thereby saved to me, and instead of my astonishing the natives, I found that the natives astonished me. I visited parts of Siberia of which no English author has written, but discovered that photography had everywhere preceded me; and though there were many villages in which we could not procure white bread, there were few towns in which the same could be said of photographs.[3]
In Siberia, some of the photographers are Polish exiles; some are Germans; one I met was a Frenchman, and another a Finn. Their landscapes are not particularly good, and their productions are dear. Landscapes of the size of views which may be purchased in Rome for sixpence cost in Siberia at least six shillings; and when, at Krasnoiarsk, our party went to be photographed, we paid for cabinet groups at the rate of sixteen shillings the half-dozen copies. It should be remembered, however, that the demand is limited.
After taking leave of Mr. Bootyn, we prepared for a journey of 150 miles, which was to bring us to Stretinsk. The upper town of Nertchinsk is built at the end of a long sweeping prairie, exposed to all the winds that blow up through the valley, or down from the cold summits of the Yablonoi Mountains. We came towards night to a solitary house in the midst of the steppe, the poorest station we had seen. The outer roof was off, and the building divided into two compartments--one for travellers and the other for horses--the one being not much better than the other; whilst on the opposite side of the road was the only building in sight--a roofless shed. The only food to be obtained was black bread, salt, and water, and in this place it looked at first as if we should be compelled to stay; for they had not six--that is, two “pairs” of--horses; they had four; and I suggested that the difficulty should be overcome by putting two horses to each vehicle. But this they said was illegal, because their four horses would make only one “pair,” and these they were willing to attach to our tarantass, if we would pile on the rest of our boxes before and behind. By what mathematical process they explained this reasoning about pairs I have never yet fathomed, but we were only too thankful to get on at any price, and early next morning we drove into Stretinsk.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The following table gives for 1875 the number of days of rain and snow, the mean temperature of winter, spring, summer, autumn, and the whole year, and the difference between the mean temperatures of summer and winter, for London and four Siberian towns:--
| WINTER. | SPRING. | SUMMER. | AUTUMN. | YEAR. |Diff. |Days Temp.|Days Temp.|Days Temp.|Days Temp.|Days Temp.|betw. Nikolaefsk| 28 1·27 | 36 25·70| 28 59·05| 39 32·23|131 29·56|57·78 Barnaul | 22 6·60 | 26 42·93| 30 61·83| 30 29·10|108 35·11|55·23 Irkutsk | 10 -1·27 | 17 2·14| 25 61·54| 11 30·65| 63 23·27|62·81 Nertchinsk| 5 -1·40 | 17 2·81| 26 60·70| 12 24·90| 60 21·75|62·10 London | 47 40·0 | 34 53·70| 42 60·40| 44 43·50|167 49·40|20·40
The precipitation (rain and snow) in inches stands as follows at Barnaul, Nertchinsk, and London:--
| Inches. | Inches. | Inches. | Inches. | Inches. Barnaul | 0·92 | 1·77 | 6·39 | 2·93 | 12·01 Nertchinsk | 0·75 | 0·60 | 8·77 | 7·42 | 17·54 London | 4·76 | 5·13 | 9·94 | 8·21 | 28·04
[2] Mr. Ravenstein gives an interesting account of this. The two nations were represented by the envoy extraordinary Fedor Alexevitch Golovin, and the celestial ambassadors So-fan-lan-ya and Kiw-Kijew, with two Jesuit fathers as interpreters. The Russian envoy was accompanied by a regiment of Regular Militia (Strelzi) 1,500 strong, and two regiments raised in Siberia; but the Chinese ambassadors were accompanied by a force of 9,000 or 10,000 persons, consisting of soldiers, mandarins, servants, and camp followers. They had from 3,000 to 4,000 camels, and at least 15,000 horses; and as they came to the river’s bank opposite Nertchinsk, before the arrival of the Russian envoy, the Governor of the town not unnaturally felt uneasy at the presence of so large a company.
At length, however, Golovin arrived, and a large tent was pitched, midway between the fortress and the river, one-half appropriated to the Russians, the other to the Chinese. The Russian portion was covered with a handsome Turkey carpet. Golovin and the Governor of Nertchinsk occupied arm-chairs, placed behind a table, which was spread with a Persian silk embroidered in gold. The Chinese portion was devoid of all ornament. The chiefs of the embassy, seven in number, sat upon pillows placed upon a low bench. The remainder of the mandarins and Russian officers were ranged along both sides of the tent. The Chinese had crossed the river with 40 mandarins and 760 soldiers, 500 of whom remained on the bank of the river, and 260 advanced half-way to the tent. In a similar manner, 500 Russians were placed close to the fort, and 40 officers and 260 soldiers followed the envoy.
[3] It is interesting to know that in certain departments of photography, Russia stands well to the front. In theoretical, scientific, and landscape photography, I am informed England takes place in the foremost rank; but in portrait photography, Russia is before us. Among first-class photographic artists in Petersburg, the names might be mentioned of Levitzky, Bergamasco, and Dinier; and in Moscow that of Eichenwald; but the most remarkable photographer in all Russia, probably, is one Karelin, at Nijni Novgorod. A small view of Kasan, which I purchased in the city of that name, and which is printed by the phototype process, seemed to indicate that this branch of the art had extended more widely, and made further progress eastward, than might have been expected at the time of my visit. There are to be had in Petersburg and Moscow some magnificent photographic panoramas of the two capitals; and in descending the Urals, on the Asiatic side, I procured what can rarely be had elsewhere--a photograph of a surface iron-mine; whilst further east was added one of a gold-mine. A photographic view of Ekaterineburg, given me there, shows how thin and light is the air in Russia, for purposes of photography, as compared with ours in England.
Chapter XXXV
FROM STRETINSK TO UST-KARA.
Arrival at Stretinsk.--Recorded distances from Petersburg.--Taking in a passenger.--Travelling allowance to officers.--Parting with interpreter.--Farewell to tarantass.--Starting to Kara.--The world before me.--Previous writers on the Amur.--Gliding down the Shilka.--Talking by signs.--My Cossack attendant.--Taking an oar.--How Russians sleep.--Arrival at Ust-Kara.
On reaching Stretinsk, we were on the same meridian as Nanking. We had been reminded of our increasing distance from Petersburg by the verst-posts which kept us company all the way. At every station, too, there is a post setting forth how many versts distant are Petersburg, Moscow, and the government towns on either side. The verst-posts recur at every two-thirds of an English mile. At the top they are shaped square, being so turned that the approaching traveller sees at a glance how many versts it is to the station which he has left, or to which he is journeying. When we entered Siberia at Tiumen, the distance was 2,543 versts from Petersburg; at Tomsk it increased to 4,052; at Krasnoiarsk to 4,606; and at Irkutsk to 5,611; whilst on arrival at Stretinsk it was almost 7,000 versts, or 4,600 miles.
It has already been stated that, after leaving Nertchinsk, the number of our horses was reduced. On reaching the last station but one, we had to take in a passenger. We overtook an officer, his wife and family, whose acquaintance we had made in the Obi steamer, and whom we subsequently met several times on our journey eastward. His wife spoke French, and their three or four children were exceedingly well-behaved. We could not help pitying this party of six, all of whom were stowed away in a single tarantass, not much, if any, bigger than ours, which was not excessively large for two. One of the children, if I mistake not, was a baby, and if to the discomforts I have described as accompanying us two be added the crowding of all these children and an untold quantity of baggage into a single vehicle, then one may picture some of the difficulties with which Russian officers and their families travel in Siberia.
This party having arrived before us had secured one “pair” of horses, and the question arose as to whether the remaining pair should be given to us or to a telegraph officer, who had also arrived before us, but who was proceeding in our direction. He proposed that we should have the horses and take him carriage free, which, rather than wait, we were glad to do, and he thereby was able to pocket his travelling allowance.[1]
On arriving at Stretinsk we found it a good-sized town, with hospital, sundry factories, barracks, and other buildings, befitting the chief port of the Upper Amur. We were reminded, however, of its distance from civilized centres almost before our horses stopped, for a youth rushed up to inquire whether our tarantass was for sale. They make no axletrees of iron in these parts, and hence, when a traveller arrives who has a tarantass thus furnished, he has a good chance, after having had the use of it all across the country, to sell it at Stretinsk for as much or more than it cost in Europe. White bread was at famine prices here, costing 6_d._ a lb.--five times as much as we paid at Tobolsk--because the American flour deposited at Nikolaefsk ascends the river a distance of nearly 2,000 miles, and the Russian flour, from Irkutsk, travels 900 miles by land. So between the two, delicate persons “brought up on white bread,” as the Russians say, fare badly.
We called first at the telegraph office, and presented a letter of introduction to Mr. Koch, who was ready at once to help, and from whom I learned that my coming had been announced to the Commandant, Colonel Merkasin, a worthy officer, of whom I heard a good account from a released political exile, who said that prisoners received much kindness at his hands, and that, if the colonel used their labour, he paid them fairly for their work. We were favoured with his ready attention, and, on going to his house, found that the Governor of Chita, according to his promise, had requested him to make arrangements whereby I might visit the mines of Kara. They were 80 miles distant, and could be approached in summer by land only by a bridle-path. The other method was to row down the Shilka in an open boat.
But I was first to part with my interpreter, who was to return from this place, a day or two afterwards, in our poor old tarantass.[2] Before parting, there were sundry arrangements to make, and various things to send back with him, instead of my taking them round the remainder of the globe; but some of these I never saw again, for at one of the stations Mr. Interpreter’s portmanteau was stolen, with my property in it. The only place at Stretinsk in which we could put up was a small building, dignified with the name of an hotel, consisting of a central chamber with a billiard table, and a room on either side--one set apart for women and the other for men. The sleeping accommodation in the latter was a wooden seat running round the room--a very common arrangement still in many parts of Russia. They provided us food, however, and the place sufficed for unpacking and arranging our effects, of which I intended to take the light baggage with me, and leave my trunk, “hold-all,” and boxes of books to follow by the steamer.
I was anxious to get forward as quickly as possible, for it was already Thursday morning, the 24th of July, and on Sunday evening the steamer was due to pick me up at Ust-Kara, and take me to the Amur. The colonel spared no pains to make things go smoothly. He had provided a boat used by the police, which I was to keep all the way, and not change at every station. He had also provided a Cossack who was to be my guard, servant, and attendant, and whom I asked the colonel positively to order not to leave me till he had delivered me safe into the hands of Colonel Kononovitch, the Commandant at Kara. The colonel smiled at my request, and undertook to see that my luggage was properly put on board the steamer, as also did Mr. Koch; and then, bidding farewell to the officer and to Mr. Interpreter, I embarked at three o’clock to float down the waters of the Shilka.
And now the world was before me, and that in a sense in which it had never been before. I was not only a stranger in a strange land, but penetrating a region where no English author had preceded me;[3] but I was far from disliking my new position. The weather was delightful, save that I rather feared sunstroke, and would fain have had a cabbage-leaf to put in my hat. The colonel had recommended some other antidote, but it was rendered unnecessary by the rising of clouds, from which there fell a few drops of rain. The Cossack had provided two oarsmen, so that I had nothing to do but to lean back in the boat, and enjoy the delightful way in which we glided down the stream. It was so pleasant, too, to miss the dust of the road and the jolting of the tarantass!
I could ask no questions, from the simple fact that none of my crew spoke anything but Russ, of which I had hardly learned a dozen words. I purposely did not spend time in mastering even the elements of the language, thinking that I should have an interpreter with me all the way, and not supposing that I should have any further use for my smatter after leaving the country. Moreover, the Russian alphabet of 36 letters is different from others used in Europe, and is certainly not inviting. I had very commonly found, among the upper classes of Russians, that I could get on by some means in French, German, or English. The post-masters, who happened to be Jews, spoke German; and when this triglot mode of communication failed, I took to signs and dumb show--not always, however, with entire success.
At Tomsk, for instance, while Mr. Interpreter was “blowing up” the officials for allowing us to be sent on the wrong road, I was peacefully engaged in ordering the samovar and preparing for tea at the post-house. I wanted some eggs, for which, even if I had learned it, I had quite forgotten the Russian word, “yaitsi.” The Russian who wanted an egg in England cleverly clucked like a hen, and was instantly understood; but this did not occur to me. I therefore walked into the back room, and, to the woman’s astonishment, peeped into the cupboards and drawers, and examined the shelves; but to no purpose. I then bethought me of my artistic acquirements, and, taking out a pencil, drew on the wall an oval the size of an egg, and bade the woman look at that; but she was too dense to catch my meaning. At this juncture her husband entered, and I appealed to his masculine intelligence by pointing to the oval on the wall; but he could not “see” it. A happy thought then struck me, and I remembered that I had in my provision-basket an egg-cup. I took him accordingly into the guest-room, and showed it in triumph. But the man mistook it for a brandy-glass, and said to his wife, “Oh! it is vodka he wants.” I had therefore to return to the charge, and took him into the yard, thinking to see a hen walking about; but they were gone to roost. So I pointed to a pigeon instead, but he perceived no connection between that and a hen’s egg; nor, on second thoughts, did I. At last I saw in a corner some broken egg-shells, and, picking them up, showed them, and effected my object. Further east, I lost a pocket-book containing some of my most important documents, and was compelled to go through a very serious conversation all in dumb show; but this I must not anticipate.
On the Shilka I experienced no inconvenience through not knowing Russ; for, on arriving at the first station, the Cossack went off for fresh oarsmen, and I aired my dozen words in ordering the samovar, which important word, together with tarelka, a plate; chai, tea; voda, water; stakan, a glass; sakhar, sugar; khleb, bread; and maslo, butter, I had thoroughly mastered. It was no part of my duty, I suppose, to feed my Cossack; for I observed he had brought with him black bread, but of course I offered him tea and other fare, to which he took very kindly, even to preserved meat, though he fought shy of anchovy paste, which probably he had never seen before.
Tea over, we left our first station, 17 miles from Stretinsk, for station number two, 14 miles distant. But on this stage one of our oarsmen was old and feeble, and I had insisted (by signs and motions) that an extra hand should be hired, and that the Cossack should be allowed to rest, which he did by curling himself up in the prow of the boat and going to sleep. In this state of things darkness came on, and eight o’clock, nine o’clock, and ten o’clock passed, and still we made only slow progress. At last, in spite of the remonstrances of the men, I took an oar myself, pulled away lustily till I had a warm jacket, and at eleven o’clock we arrived at the post-house of Uktich.
On entering the room a practical illustration was afforded us of the Oriental custom, “Take up thy bed and walk.” The people of the house, not expecting travellers, had occupied the guest-chamber,--one on the bedstead, another on the floor, and so on; but, upon my entering, they snatched up the rugs or cloths upon which they were lying, and decamped with alacrity. In crossing Siberia we rarely saw a genuine bed in the houses of the peasantry, and the people do not usually, I believe, undress before going to sleep.[4]
Soon after five the next morning, I roused the Cossack, who had taken up his quarters on the floor of the guest-room, and by six we started for Botti and Shilkinsk, the third and fourth stations from Stretinsk; and, after sundry stoppages, at seven in the evening we finished our day’s pull of 44 miles, and reached Ust-Kara, where Colonel Kononovitch was awaiting my arrival.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The Russian Government, when sending officers overland from Petersburg to the Amur province, say, for instance, to Nikolaefsk, grants them money according to their rank, and the number of horses they are supposed to drive. Thus, a lieutenant is allowed 2 horses, a captain of the third rank 3, captain of the second rank 4, captain of first rank 5, rear-admiral 6, vice-admiral 7, full admiral 8; and the sum for horses in each case is doubled; in addition to which, for outfit, single officers receive on the outgoing journey half a year’s pay, and married officers a year’s; but when they are returning, three-fourths of a year’s pay is allowed to married and single alike. The distance from Petersburg to Nikolaefsk is 9,848 versts, and the cost of a horse for this distance, at the time of my visit, was 277 roubles--say £28. An officer, therefore, going to this privileged part, or returning on furlough, might multiply £28 by the number of horses to which his rank entitled him, double the product, and add 6, 9, or 12 months’ pay, and so realize a heavy purse. Out of this he might save considerably by hiring less horses than his dignity was supposed to require, by sharing expenses with another traveller, or, lastly, in the case of one already in the Amur province, and entitled to leave on furlough, by giving up his holiday and pocketing the travelling expenses, which last, I found, was not unfrequently done at Nikolaefsk, by officers who had got into debt, and looked forward to furlough money as the means of getting them out of their difficulties.
[2] He left it at Tiumen, where it still may be, for aught I know to the contrary; in danger, perhaps, of being immortalized, like another old “equipage,” of which the following story is told. The Russians apply the term “equipage” to any vehicle, whether on wheels or runners, and whether drawn by horses, dogs, deer, or camels. The same word “equipage” is used in Russian, as in French, to denote a ship’s crew. Accordingly, a few years after the disappearance of Sir John Franklin, the English Admiralty requested the Russian Government to make inquiries for the lost navigator along the coasts and islands of the Arctic Ocean. An order to that effect was sent to the Siberian authorities, and they in turn commanded all subordinates to inquire and report; whereupon a petty officer, somewhere in Western Siberia, was puzzled at the order to inquire concerning the English Captain, John Franklin, and his equipage. In due time, however, he reported, “I have made the proper inquiries. I can learn nothing about Captain Franklin, but in one of my villages there is an old sleigh that no one claims, which may be his equipage.”
[3] The names of several have been mentioned who crossed Siberia turning northwards to the Sea of Okhotsk, or southwards to China; some, too, as Captain Cochrane and Mr. Atkinson, reached Nertchinsk and the surrounding neighbourhood; but none went on to the Amur. Mr. Atkinson wrote a book of “Travels in the Region of the Upper and Lower Amur,” but he did not see the goodly land; he only described it, getting his information, probably, from the Russian officers who took part in the annexation of the country; and some of his illustrations, if I mistake not, from the Russian book of Maack, which has proved a storehouse also for subsequent writers.
Two American authors, however, had passed this way--Mr. Collins, who, in 1858, from Chita, floated down the Shilka, continuing the whole length of the Amur to Nikolaefsk; and Mr. Knox, who, bent on journalistic enterprise, made his way up the Amur from Nikolaefsk to Stretinsk. Unfortunately, I had neither of their works with me, nor had I the more scholarly volume of Mr. Ravenstein, whose production, though not that of an eye-witness, is far the best English work on the Amur, being largely compiled from the information given by those Russians who were the first scientific explorers of the country.
[4] Their favourite place for spending the night is on the top of the stove, which is sometimes raised at one end by brickwork to form a rest for the head. Before mounting this, they may perhaps take off their boots and an upper garment; but an Anglo-Russian lady has told me that, when living at Kertch, though she made it a condition, before a woman entered her service, that she should undress before going to bed, yet servants frequently transgressed; and that, as far as the men were concerned, they never took off their clothes but for the bath or to change them.
Chapter XXXVI
THE PENAL COLONY OF KARA.
Evil reputation of Kara.--Testimony from Siberians and exiles.--My own experience.--The Commandant.--Our evening drive.--Hospitable reception.--Statistics respecting prisoners, their crimes, sentences, and settlement as “exiles.”--The Amurski prison.--Cossack barracks.--The upper prison.--Convicts’ food.--Prisoners’ private laws.--Middle Kara prison.--Mohammedan forçats.--Sunday labour.--Convict clothing.--Guard-house.--A genuine political prisoner.--The church.--Lack of preaching.--House of the Commandant.
In the penal colony of Kara I found more than 2,000 convicts, and a few political prisoners, together with some of their wives and families, a military staff, and some peasants. The penal institutions of this place are not so old as those of Nertchinsk; but, like them, they inherit a bad reputation. Mr. Atkinson appears to have been the first author to bring the place under the notice of English readers, doing so in no favourable terms, though he does not profess to speak as an eye-witness. Before I left England I was told that, if I did not intend to go east of the Baikal, I should see nothing but what might be witnessed in the prisons of London, and that I should get no idea of the real horrors of Siberian exile. This was said by a man who had worked in the mines of Nertchinsk, and he urged me by all means to see Kara.
Again, when we reached Siberia, and were travelling on the Obi, my interpreter conversed with an officer in the prison service, whom he told that I had come to Siberia for the purpose of seeing its prisons. The officer expressed his doubts (as numbers of my English friends had done before) as to whether I should succeed in getting at the real state of the convicts in the mines and prisons; and he further mentioned three places where they had to work specially hard, namely, Alexandreffsky and Nertchinsk (about which I have spoken), and the third was Kara.
We met further east a gentleman who told me that his brother-in-law, a colonel, had given him sad accounts of the dreadful state of some of the prisons in Eastern Siberia. I was introduced to the said colonel, but a lengthy inquiry was productive of little more, on his part, than general statements, and I obtained only five lines for my note-book, the gist of them being that, when I asked for the very worst places--those in which I should find most horrors--one of the four places mentioned was Kara.
It is curious to notice that, of the four persons who spoke against Kara, not one of them (so far as I know) ever went there; and, with regard to Nertchinsk also, it is observable that the language of ear-witnesses respecting its mines is far stronger than the language of eye-witnesses, or even of those who suffered as prisoners. But I need dwell no longer upon what others have said, and may proceed to write of what I saw at Kara, where I was, if I mistake not, the first English visitor.
It was towards evening when our boat reached Ust-Kara. Pacing the river’s bank was Colonel Kononovitch, the Commandant of the colony. I had been delayed on the way, and he had been for some hours awaiting me, but a few words of explanation sufficed to make matters clear. My tongue, after an enforced silence of nearly 30 hours, was now released. We talked in French, and I soon discovered that I was addressing an officer of more than average intelligence. He took me into the police-master’s house for some light refreshment, and to leave my heavy baggage, and then suggested that we should start on a drive of eight miles, so as to reach our destination before dark.
Our way lay over a stony road, through a wild valley, which, in the shades of evening, had a weird and out-of-the-world appearance. The ridges of the hills were irregular, and partially covered with conifers, while lower were deciduous shrubs and trees, though not of considerable dimensions. Among the rank and tall herbage were some late flowers, and an orange tiger-lily, about two feet high, that was strange to me. After we had driven a few miles, we came to a détour in the route, where the colonel proposed that we should clamber up a bank, and walk down to the road on the other side. From this elevation the landscape appeared wilder than ever, and the place looked like a natural prison, from which escape was impossible. There was not a habitation to be seen, and the consciousness that we were in the neighbourhood of so many “unfortunates,” as they are called, gave me similar feelings to those with which I looked down on the forest-bound prison at Alexandreffsky.
As we drove along, and darkness crept on, there passed us labouring men returning from work, who saluted us. “Who,” said I, “are they?” “They are convicts,” said the colonel. “Convicts!” said I; “how, then, are they loose?” “Oh,” said he, “a large proportion of the condemned--perhaps half--live out of the prisons in their houses en famille.[1] But they ought not to be out after dark.” I then began to inquire respecting the crimes of the prisoners, and was informed that there were in the place about 800 murderers, 400 robbers, and 700 vagrants or “brodiagi”; and having been told what proportion of these were loose, I was not surprised to hear the colonel say that he usually avoided, if possible, being out at night. I approved his caution. Being very tired, moreover, and seeing that it was now dark, and that neither of us was armed, I was heartily glad to reach Middle Kara, the end of our drive.
Where I was to be quartered I did not know. There was no hotel in the place, or even a post-house, and I doubt if they could have offered me lodgings, as at Troitskosavsk, in the police-station. The commandant, however, had arranged everything for me, and I found that I was to occupy his own study. There he had prepared a neat, clean little bed; and as I looked around at the European comforts on the table, in the shape of writing materials and ornaments, it seemed like an arrival in the library of an English gentleman rather than the private bureau of the director of a penal colony.
I wanted to get a thorough rest against the morrow, for we had a stiff programme before us. Moreover, the last bed I had occupied was nearly 600 miles away; and, with the exception of two nights, I had not taken off my clothes to sleep for exactly a month. But the colonel insisted first on giving me food, of which my prominent recollection is that it was tastefully served, and consisted of delicacies that had been out of reach for many a day, with tinned fruits, including pears that had made their way from America up the Amur. When at last I undressed, and stretched my limbs between a pair of sheets, I felt on excellent terms with my surroundings in general, and the colonel in particular. He was a fine-looking man, with intellectual tastes and an intelligent forehead, and neither smoked, drank, nor played cards,--a trio of virtues by no means always found in a Siberian official. The room was clean and sweet; quietness reigned around; and, uninterrupted by the rumbling of the tarantass or the noise of a post-house, I was left to sleep in peace.
I had been asked overnight whether next morning I should like a bath. Of course I jumped at the offer, having been able to get such a luxury but twice in Siberia. Accordingly, on waking, the colonel brought me a Turkish dressing-gown and bade me follow him. I thought, perhaps, he would lead the way to a bath-room, instead of which he opened the front door and marched me down the middle of his garden to a summer bathing-shed. Here I splashed about, then returned to my toilet and to breakfast.
Of course I asked all sorts of questions about the convicts, or, as they are called, “forçats,” or katorjniki--prisoners condemned to forced labour. Their number at Kara for four preceding years had been as follows:--
1875 1876 1877 1878 1879[2] 2,600 2,722 2,635 2,543 2,458.
Their classification according to crime is important, as throwing some light on the number of political prisoners, for whom, I was told, Kara is a special place of deportation, and I have heard that it has become more so since my visit. The only class where they could be included was under the heading “various,” of whom there were 73; and this would suffice to include the politicals, respecting whose number I asked, and was told that it was 13 Russians and 28 Poles. I did not hear of any of the sects of dissenters in prison at Kara.[3]
As regards the sentences of the convicts, they were all, I believe, condemned to hard labour, either of the fabric or the mines--one year of work in the mines counting for a year and a half in the fabric. There were a few, chiefly “vagabonds,” sentenced to Kara for life; but for such grave offenders even as parricides, fratricides, etc., 20 years was the extreme limit of their terms. The convicts are able to shorten their time, to some extent, by good conduct, and are set free to live as colonists, or, as they are then technically called, “exiles,” or “poselenetsi.”[4]
Not all of the forçats at Kara, as already observed, were in prison, nor were those in close confinement placed all in one building, but in six, distributed over a distance about 15 miles long. Thus we left one behind at Ust-Kara, another about midway between the river and Middle Kara. At Middle Kara were one or two prison buildings, and in the opposite direction from the river were two more, the High Prison and the Amurski Prison, which last was eight miles distant from the commandant’s house. To this last the colonel proposed to drive first, and then work back, taking the others in order; and this, after breakfast, we proceeded to do.
It was a beautiful morning when we started, and the bright sun and the clear air gave a very different aspect to the valley from that of the preceding night. The dark hues of the conifers stood out well in contrast with foliage of lighter green, a stream was visible here and there, and immense forests bounded the horizon. We drove a pair of splendid horses that would have attracted attention in Rotten Row; and as we dashed along the road I perceived at its side wild currants and strawberries, raspberries, and wild peas, the apple, and the vine. The colonel pointed out a gold-mine as we proceeded, but I do not remember seeing any one there at work.
When we reached the Amurski prison, it proved to be a log building, of good pitch, and of a single storey. Most of the prisoners were out at work, but a few were engaged in whitewashing the rooms, which the colonel said was done at least four times a year. The wards were large sleeping-rooms, occupied for the greater part of the year only by night. There were no bedsteads, but a wide shelf, like that of a guard-room, ran round three of the walls; and on this they placed their large bags, for the making of which sacking was supplied to them, to serve the double purpose of clothes-bag and bed.
Near the prison were the summer barracks of a company of 150 Cossacks, a fourth of whom were replaced yearly. The barracks consisted of large canvas booths, with rows of beds arranged in the fashion of the summer hospitals. A school is provided in winter for the Cossacks, of whom rather more than a half read.
We next drove back to the Verchne (or upper) prison, a building much older than the one we had left, having in the rooms an upper sleeping shelf resembling a loft, on which the prisoners sleeping would have the full benefit of the breathed air of their comrades below. The commandant saw this, and pointed out that it was an old and doomed building, and that in the new erections they were avoiding a repetition of the evil. In this prison were two solitary punishment cells, one of them being occupied on the morning of our visit for the first time in the colonel’s experience.
Some prisoners, it seemed, might receive money, and some not. There was in this prison a Jew to whom 150 roubles a year were sent by friends. His family were living outside. They might bring him food, and were allowed to pay him at least a weekly visit.
We went into the kitchen, and I looked attentively at the scale of diet hung on the wall as in prisons in England.[5] The weight of the highest allowance in Siberia, as observed before, is far in excess (nearly double) of the highest English convicts’ allowance, though for non-working prisoners in Siberia an abatement must be made for fast-days. The annual cost of provisions for each prisoner at Kara is 65 roubles 72¾ kopecks, or say £6 10_s._ The soup appeared somewhat roughly served in small wooden tubs or bowls, but I presume that the place is too distant to allow of crockeryware being easily procured. Every prisoner provided his own spoon. Knives, as in most prisons, were forbidden.
We saw, lounging about this building, two or three men who seemed to have very little to do. They were called “starostas,” that is, seniors or elders. Each ward of men in prison, and each gang of exiles on the march, chooses a starosta, who is their ruler and representative, the middle-man between them and the authorities. He receives the charities given them on the road, and pays and bribes the petty officers for little favours. He is, in fact, banker, purveyor, and general factotum to the body by whom he is elected. The authorities recognise this arrangement, exempt the starostas from labour, and through them deal with the prisoners rather than give their small orders direct. On behalf of the prisoners it is the starosta’s duty to befriend them, and see that they have the proper amount of food, and whatever else may be their due; whilst, on behalf of the authorities, should anything go wrong with the prisoners, the starosta is held responsible.[6] The office, however, at Kara, notwithstanding its privileges and exemptions, is by no means coveted; and the men, rather than be unoccupied, though it be to rule, prefer to work and to serve.
In the prison at Middle Kara was a considerable number of Tatars. Why they were unoccupied I know not, unless it happened to be a bath-day, which is a holiday, and recurs twice a month; or, again, it may have been one of the Mohammedan festivals, some of the greater of which they are allowed to observe, though not the Friday in every week. Nor are the Jewish prisoners allowed to rest on their Sabbath, nor Christians on the Sunday. It might possibly be argued, in justification of this, that Sunday is not usually observed at any of the Siberian gold-mines; but, however that may be, I thought this robbing the hard-labour prisoners of their day of rest the most cruel and unjust thing in their lot. A greater than a Russian Tsar gave to man the Sabbath, and to take it away from him is, to my mind, nothing less than a sin and a shame.[7]
Near the prison at Middle Kara was a storehouse, to which we mounted by a flight of outside steps. It contained a quantity of material for prisoners’ clothing--coarse linen for shirts and summer trousers, felt for coats, and leather for shoes and gloves; also a number of made-up garments. A pair of summer shoes or slippers was valued at 3_s._, and a coat of felt at 12_s._ A pair of gloves, such as the prisoners use in the mines, was given me as a keepsake. I have added them to my prison curiosities, collected in various parts of the world, comprising fetters, whip, handcuffs, specimens of prison labour, and a variety of other lugubrious objects.
There was likewise a guard-house at Middle Kara. In it I observed, as I had done at Tobolsk, that the furniture and arrangements for the soldiers were not at all better than for the prisoners. From information respecting soldiers’ food received later, I make no doubt the rations of the Cossack guards are less ample than those provided for the labouring convicts; and I am persuaded that under some circumstances, dear liberty excepted, the Cossacks are more to be pitied than their prisoners. Thus, when a gang of exiles comes at night to an étape, they can lie down and rest, whereas the Cossacks have to mount guard.
In this building, opening out of the central room guarded by soldiers, were a few (perhaps half-a-dozen) separate cells, through the doors of which no one could pass without being seen by the Cossacks. These cells were evidently inner prisons, in which were kept those whose escape was especially to be prevented. I entered two of them. The first was not quite so wide, but about the length and rather higher than the cell of an English prison, measuring perhaps five feet wide by eight long and ten high, and occupied by a Tatar gentleman, with his rosary of a hundred beads in hand, with nothing to do.
On entering the second cell, occupied by a political prisoner, just then at work in the mines, I had at last lighted upon the dwelling-place of one of a class about whom such harrowing stories have been told--a genuine political prisoner of high calibre, and a Jew to wit, undergoing the full sentence of punishment in the mines of Siberia. This meant, in his case, that he had to labour in summer very much like a navvy, from six in the morning till seven in the evening, with certain hours for rest and meals; but in the winter he frequently had nothing to do. His wife was living near, and might see him twice a week. But his cell was that which struck me most. Compared to the criminal wards in the other prisons, this was a little parlour. It was clean, and in a manner garnished--not, indeed, in the fashion of a cell at San Francisco, where I found a “boss” painter condemned for life, and who had decorated his cell from floor to ceiling, as if intending to remain there for the rest of his days (this would have been out of keeping with Russian ideas); but the Kara prisoner had certain articles of furniture and eating requisites, the placing and arrangement of which indicated familiarity with the habits of decent society, and showed the prisoner to be above the common herd. One of his books I found was a treatise on political economy, which may be noted in connection with the remark of Goryantchikoff in his “Buried Alive,” who asserts that in his prison no book was allowed but the New Testament. The room certainly was not large, but there was abundance of light, the outlook from the long window being not on a prison wall surrounded by chevaux-de-frise, but commanding a view of the Kara valley such as a Londoner might envy; whilst just outside was the public road, along which could be seen everything that passed. I speak only truth when I say that, if I had the misfortune to be condemned to prison for life, and had my choice between Millbank in London or this political’s cell at Kara, I would certainly choose the latter.
Between the guard-house and the residence of the colonel was a collection of buildings and store-houses, called “Middle” Kara. Among these was the church, the priest of which was the only chaplain I could hear of for the prisoners. He practised photography in addition to his ecclesiastical calling, and although he probably needed every rouble he gained thereby--and I certainly ought not to revile him, since by his means the colonel was able to present me with some views of the colony--yet it would have rejoiced me to hear that he was doing something worthy of his position for the spiritual good of the convicts. The pastoral superintendence, frequent services, and preaching to prisoners, as carried on in English prisons, is unheard of at Kara, and I gathered that the convicts attended church only twice a year.[8]
I may here mention that the religious scruples of Siberian exiles are to some extent respected. Thus, for the Jewish prisoners to be obliged to eat food prepared by Gentiles would be an abomination. In the prison at Tiumen we were informed that 42 Jews, who had been confined there during the previous winter, had been placed together in a ward, with a separate cooking-place, in which they prepared their food canonically. So, too, a similar arrangement had been observed with 71 Mohammedans; and I have just remarked that there were many of this religion together, in the prison at Middle Kara, who were allowed, within certain limitations, the exercise of their religious observances. I have already said that we met a Protestant pastor who made periodical visits to the prisons and mines; and on the Amur I travelled with a Roman Catholic priest, from Nikolaefsk, who was returning from a lengthened tour along the river, which doubtless included visits to his co-religionists in confinement.
After seeing Middle Kara our morning’s inspection was over. We had driven 15 miles, and as there were prisons in the opposite direction, extending over the same length of country, it will be seen that for the colonel to pay a visit to all his Kara prisons involved a drive, in all, of 30 miles, which I understood he accomplished at least once a week; and he had also, I believe, another penal institution to inspect, called Alexandreffsky Zavod, at a still greater distance. His salary was £330 per annum, and an unpretentious house, his perquisites, perhaps, making up his income to £400. In his yard was a good bath-house and offices, and an enclosure with a couple of wild deer, caught and kept for his children.
At dinner I was introduced to Madame Kononovitch, who was considerably younger than her husband. They had married at Irkutsk, which to a Siberian is Paris. It was not greatly to be wondered at, therefore, if she found Kara somewhat dull. The society of the place was very limited. There were the families of the officers and the wives of a few gentle or noble prisoners, but these latter of course could be received into the colonel’s house only with a certain amount of reserve. The servants were, I suppose, all of them exiles, but the dinner was well served. I remember nothing of the food, save that the colonel had made a successful effort to get me a plate of wild strawberries. The season (July 26th) was now late, and they were the last I ate in Siberia. Madame spoke French well, and, as their children were growing up, she and her husband were interested in their education, and made many inquiries concerning our methods of teaching in England. The colonel then requested me to send him some English books; and soon after dinner we started for the hospital, the orphanage, and one of the mines.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] This is permitted after the expiration of two, four, six, or eight years (or nearly one-third of the punishment), to those who by good behaviour attain to a certain class. They still live on the spot and must work, and after a second period of this half-liberty, they are sent to a better place as exiles. Whilst in the former class they may be re-imprisoned for bad conduct, but not, I find, after they are set free to colonize (except for fresh crimes), as I have stated in my chapter on the exiles, vol. i., p. 35.
[2] The colonel had not quite all the statistics to hand for 1879. Their number, therefore, at the time of my visit, was given me as 2,144, classified, according to their crimes, as follows:--
Men. Women. Total. Murderers 668 125 793 Robbers with violence 404 5 409 Incendiaries 29 9 38 For rape 22 22 Forgers 45 1 46 Offenders against discipline, and defaulters in public service 86 86 Vagabonds 665 12 677 Various 71 2 73 ----- ----- ----- 1,990 154 2,144
[3] The only place where I met any of these in confinement was in the prison hospital at Tomsk, in which were three Subbotniki,--one of them a priest, and the others descendants of priests,--who were suffering from scorbutic disease, and who were in prison, I think I understood, for trying to propagate their creed; though, as this would seem to be contrary to what I understood were now the laws respecting dissenters, it may be that I did not understand the whole case. Subbotniki are so called because they believe that we ought to keep Subbota, or Saturday, as the day of rest. They are said also to consider circumcision a binding ordinance, because it was to Abraham, the father of the faithful, that the Lord gave it, and Moses wrote, “in your generations for ever.” In some other respects, perhaps, such as purifications, they may further Judaize.
[4] The number of forçats who, after finishing their terms, were, by special order of the Government, distributed, as exiled colonists among the inhabitants of the provinces of Eastern Siberia, for the seven years preceding my visit, was as follows:--
1872 1873 1874 1875 1876 1877 1878 176 193 134 167 290 472 672
--the last year thus showing a release of a third of the whole number I found under detention.
[5] It appeared that, when a man was working in the mines, he received daily 4 lbs. (Russian) of bread, 1 lb. of meat, ¼ lb. of buckwheat, and a small piece of brick-tea (kirpichny chai; kirpich meaning a brick), amounting to a quarter of a brick per month. In winter they are given cabbage and potatoes. When a man was not working, he received 3 lbs. of bread, ½ lb. of meat, and 1/12 lb. of buckwheat. No kvas was provided at Kara except in the hospital. These allowances are given to the prisoners at Kara in kind, and not, as at Irkutsk, their value in money, which would not be so suitable, as I saw no shops at Kara, nor did I hear of any local committee to-eke out the prisoners’ money.
[6] Thus the prisoners make laws for themselves and invest their seniors with a good deal of power. In this matter there is “honour among thieves.” I was told, for instance, that east of Tomsk the sentinels ask an oath of the prisoners that they will not attempt to escape, and then give them certain liberties. My informant said that he had sometimes met gangs of prisoners alone, their sentinels having stayed behind to drink at a public-house. When a general promise has been thus given, should one dare to run away, he is pursued by the others, and when caught is thrashed, or loaded, according to M. Andreoli, with a sack of earth tied on his back. I have even heard of a gang of exiles sentencing one of their number to death for the breach of some law of their own making, the sentence being carried out of course unknown to the authorities--such cases, I presume, being very rare.
[7] The only days at Kara on which men are supposed not to work are three days at Christmas, New Year’s Day, three days before Lent, three days at Easter, and certain imperial birthdays, making in all 15 days in the year, and the first and fifteenth day of each month for the bath. There are other days when, as a matter of fact, for various reasons, they do not work; but I am speaking of the rule.
[8] This may be noticed in connection with a statement of the author of “The Russians of To-day” (p. 231), who says: “Once a week a pope--himself an exile--goes down into the mines to bear the consolations of religion, under the form of a sermon enjoining patience.” I suspect that the poor fellows would be only too thankful to have the opportunity once a week of listening to a sermon upon patience or any other subject! Moreover, the number of sermons given by our author to his prisoners is exceedingly liberal (52 in the course of the year), seeing that in an ordinary church in Petersburg or Moscow the number does not usually exceed half-a-dozen. I have seen it stated that properly there should be 12, but, in Siberia, on my asking the grandson of a metropolitan how often his father preached, he told me “five or six times a year,” and after many inquiries I never heard of but one priest in the empire, though, of course, there may be others, who preached, or rather read, a sermon every week.
Chapter XXXVII
THE CONVICT MINES OF KARA.
Gold-mines not underground.--Hours of labour.--Visit to a mine.--Punishments.--Branding abolished.--Miners marching off.--Statistics respecting runaways.--Women criminals at mines.--A new building for expected politicals.--Superannuated forçats.--The hospitals.--“Birching” and its effects.--Kara in 1859.--Improvements effected by Colonel Kononovitch.--A children’s home.--Return to the gold-mine.--Comparison of Siberian and English convicts.--Distribution of books.
As I had visited the mine of the Archangel Gabriel near Krasnoiarsk, I was in some measure prepared what to expect in the gold-mines of Kara. It was not easy, however, to get rid of a preconceived notion attaching to Siberian mines, that the convicts must be working underground, for I had entered the country with ideas such as those expressed by the author of “The Russians of To-day.”[1]
But now that I have been to the convict gold-mines, I have, happily, no such horrors to relate. All the gold-mining is done aboveground. The season begins on the 15th February, and ends on the 15th November, and they work 13 hours a day, excepting certain hours for refreshment and rest. I suppose, however, both the length of the season and of their daily labour must be to some extent modified by the rigour of the frost and the duration of the light. During the three winter months the ground is frozen, and they are mostly unemployed.
The visiting of the mine at Kara was far from pleasant. It was like walking into a large gravel-pit, from 20 to 30 feet deep. In this pit 198 men were at work, some removing the roots, stones, and surface-earth, and others carting off the gold-bearing sand to the washing machine. The miners were surrounded with a cordon of armed sentries, as at Portland prison. A large number of the convicts had irons on their legs; this, however, was something special to a particular prison, and was inflicted for two months as a punishment for aiding and abetting the escape of four comrades.[2]
A certain measure of earth was allotted to the men as each day’s labour. A released Pole, who had been at Kara, though he did not work in the mines, told me it was a 7-feet cube to three men. This he allowed to be less than the quantity worked by free labourers. He said these latter had the help of horses and were better fed, but there were 70 horses in the mine I visited at Kara, and the reader may judge, from what has been said, whether or not the miners’ food was sufficient. So far, therefore, the Siberian convicts at Kara did not appear to be worked harder than--I should think not so hard as--our own at Portland.
I asked what was done to them if they did not fulfil their tasks, and was told that they were punished first by privation, and, if that did not suffice, by corporal chastisement with rods. Kara, I heard subsequently, is one of three places in Siberia where the troichatka or “plète” is in use. The colonel described it as a whip with three ends, of which, for serious offences, any number up to 20 stripes might be given; but, he said, he rarely used it, cases of insubordination being usually met by seclusion, irons, less food, or delay of removal to a higher class, which last might mean, in some cases, the virtual prolongation of a sentence for a couple of years.
The branding of prisoners is no longer practised. There were two or three veterans at Kara, one of whom, at my request, was brought to me, and whose cheeks and forehead were marked with the letters K A T, an abbreviation of Katorjnik, a convict. This man had been marked in 1863, and the letters presented a tattooed appearance, though the operation of tattooing must be the more severe, since it is slowly done by hand, whereas, in the case of the prisoners, the brand was done by a kind of cupping instrument, or stamp, furnished with small points, which, on being tapped, pierced the skin. A liquid was then rubbed on, and so the convict was tattooed for life. I just missed seeing one of these instruments at Nikolaefsk, where it had been recently sold as a curiosity.
It was late in the afternoon when we reached the mine at Kara; and by the time we had looked round, and gone among the miners, the hour arrived for leaving off work; the drum sounded, and the convicts formed in line, some of them shouldering tools, and what looked like stretchers for carrying loads of earth between two bearers. Their heavy tools were put in carts to be drawn by horses, and all marched under guard to their prison, five miles off. This walk, therefore, to and fro must in this instance be added to their day’s labour; but I noticed that, when the convicts walked out of the mine, the free labourers continued working, and did so for some hours afterwards.
Before the miners started, their numbers were called, for prisoners sometimes attempt to remain in the mine all night for the purpose, it may be, of washing earth secretly to secure a little gold, or, more frequently, with a view to escape. If it be spring-time, a runaway may succeed, during the summer, in getting a long way off, and, as winter comes on, give himself up, be imprisoned as a vagrant or vagabond, and, the following spring, be fortunate enough, perchance, to make his escape again, and so get towards Europe. Sometimes they manage to obtain forged passports, and travel as free men. At other times the escaped gather in bands, and roam about the country. It is, in fact, by no means uncommon to meet escaped prisoners on the roads, but they are not spoken of as malicious. They are not like banditti. They will sometimes steal a chest of tea from the hindmost vehicle of a caravan, or, indeed, run off with horse, cart, and all; but they do not usually attack travellers. The runaways beg food of the peasantry, who, of course, by law, ought not to aid them; so they compromise matters by placing food on their window-sills at night, ostensibly with the charitable purpose of helping passers-by in distress. They thus avoid conflict with the authorities, and do not anger the convicts, who might otherwise do them mischief, especially by setting the house on fire.
The half-liberty given to convicts after a period of good behaviour presents a loophole for escape, of which many hundreds avail themselves.[3] These escaped convicts are known as “Brodiagi,” or “roaming gentry.” They wander about, guided through the forests by marks left by the natives and preceding runaways. There are some places, it is said, where they can live without fear. M. Réclus goes so far as to say that sometimes the authorities, in times of difficulty, or when ordinary labourers fail, call in the help of “vagabonds,” with the tacit understanding that they will not ask for their passports, whereupon hundreds emerge from the surrounding forests and present themselves for employment. I am not able to confirm this from my own experience as regards the authorities, but I met with a private firm who had in their employ several men without their “papers.”
When marched out of the Kara mine, those in the higher category are free to go to their families. I saw, too, near the Cossack barracks, a dwelling in course of erection for those who were living half-free, but in which they were to sleep at night. Those in the lower category are taken to their respective prisons, and may sleep, if they choose, in summer from nine o’clock till five, and in winter from seven till seven.
I looked in at a prison, near the colonel’s house, just before the men were going to rest. I do not remember that there were any lights, and the place was gloomy enough; but I suspect that it must be more so during the long nights of winter. At Tiumen I observed but one small candlestick in a room for 65 prisoners,--light enough to make the darkness visible. In this respect my testimony is of limited value, as my visits were paid by day, but I can readily believe Goryantchikoff’s dismal description of the foul air and gloom of a Siberian prison by night. Whether the majority of prisoners, however, would wish for a constant and plentiful supply of oxygen I am not sure. They certainly do not provide for it in their own houses, any more than do some of the poorer classes in England.
I have said nothing yet of the female prisoners at the mines of Kara. Russian women look upon prison life from very different points of view. I met a lady in Petersburg who visited the female wards in the prisons, and she told me that on one occasion a woman, on being brought back to her cell for the fourth or fifth time, found the arrangement of its furniture altered, whereupon she asked that her bed might be put “in the place where she always slept”; whilst another, a worthy old soul, on entering her cell, turned to the ikon and thanked God that her old age was so well provided for! This, of course, is very different from the picture of Siberian female prison life represented in “The Russians of To-day” (p. 230):--
“Women are employed in the mines as sifters, and get no better treatment than the men. Polish ladies by the dozen have been sent down to rot and die, while the St. Petersburg journals were declaring that they were living as free colonists; and, more recently, ladies connected with Nihilist conspiracies have been consigned to the mines in pursuance of a sentence of hard labour.” I neither heard nor saw anything of women labouring in the mines, and one of my released exile informants, from Nertchinsk, says that it is not true that women work in the mines in getting the mineral. At Kara there were 154 female prisoners to more than 2,000 men; and since the latter have a clean shirt every week, it would seem likely that the women may be employed in laundries and work-rooms, only that I am under the impression the prisoners wash their own linen. Five out of every six of the women convicts at Kara, dismal to relate, were murderesses, and walking between 58 of them in their prison at Ust-Kara was not pleasant. Some had babies, and most of the mothers had murdered their husbands. Husband-murder seemed to me painfully frequent in Russia, for which, in the fifteenth century, they had a barbarous punishment: the murderess was buried alive up to the neck, and left to the hungry dogs!
Near this women’s department was a new cellular building of wood, recently erected. I notice this particularly because of its bearing upon the number of political exiles that are supposed to be imprisoned in Siberia. The spring of 1879, it will be remembered, was a time of great excitement in Russia. An attempt was made upon the life of the Tsar, the great cities of the empire were placed under military command, and the journals talked of troops of prisoners being sent off to Siberia. And this was true, only they were not troops of political prisoners. A telegram, however, was sent from Petersburg to the telegraph office at Kara, enjoining the commandant to prepare places for a certain number of prisoners about to be dispatched. But the number prepared for was not very great after all, for, as far as I remember, it did not exceed 20 or 30 at most; so that if the convoys of 29 prisoners, whom my interpreter met in returning, were all destined for Kara, as he heard they were, then this small prison would be filled, and it might, in a sense, be called “a State prison.” When, therefore, in a previous chapter, I ventured to say there was, with one exception, no prison in Siberia that could be called a political or State prison, this was the exception in my mind.[4]
Of course I entered this little prison and looked at the cells. They were ranged on either side of a roomy oblong space, in which were two stoves. The chief fault I had to find with the cells was that they were very small, and lighted, I think, only from the lobby within, the area of each cell being certainly smaller than that of the cells in Coldbath Fields, though I am not sure that they were smaller than those at Portland, nor do I remember how they compared with ours for height. If, therefore, the prisoners were to work by day, as do ours at Portland, perhaps the cells at Kara were not too small. For my own part, I would rather inhabit one of them in solitude by night than be turned in among the motley crew of the larger prisons.
There were convicts at Ust-Kara, however, in a plight more pitiable than those confined in the political cells, or who had to work in the mines. I allude to the occupants of two or three wards in an old weather-beaten, smoke-dried, low-pitched building, in which were confined a number of old men, perhaps from 30 to 50 in number, who were not ill in such sense as to be patients in the hospital, but who were condemned to prison for life, or who, though too old to work, had not served their time.
I do not remember any sight in Siberia that so touched me as this. To see scores of able-bodied men pent up in wards with nothing to do was bad, to hear the clanking of their chains was worse, though many of them were burly fellows who could carry them well. More touching still were the convoys of exiles with faithful and innocent women following their husbands; but to see these old men thus waiting for death was a most melancholy picture. The doctor inspects the convicts once a month, and determines upon those who are past work, who, in the absence of any specific disease, are then brought into these wards for the remainder of their lives. To release them, the colonel pointed out, would be no charity, because, being too old to work, and being out of the near range of poor-houses or similar institutions, they would simply starve. And thus they were left in confinement for a Higher Power to set them free. They lounged in the prison and in the yard, and some sat near a fire, though it was a sunny day in July. One old man was pointed out who had attained to fourscore years, and another had reached the age of ninety, and so on. The difficult breathing of one, however, the wheezing lungs of a second, and the hacking cough of a third, proclaimed in prophetic tones that their time was short; and one wished them a softer pillow for a dying head than a convict’s shelf in a prison ward. Their building was one of the oldest in the place, and was doomed to be pulled down within a month.
There were two hospitals at Kara; one near the house of the commandant, at Middle Kara, containing, at the time of my visit, 43 patients; and the other at Ust-Kara, with 93 patients.[5] By the time the exiles have reached Kara they have trudged nearly 1,000 miles, and have been lodged, after leaving Moscow, in about 200 étapes and prisons. Many, of course, die on the route, but I have no official statistics upon this point. A released exile told me that, as far as he remembered, it was in his day about 16 per cent. With the survivors the fatigue of the march, together with deficiencies or irregularities of nourishment, and the bad atmosphere in some of the prisons, often induces scorbutus or scurvy. The colonel said that with bathing twice a day, and with good food, they are soon cured; and, though many arrive sick in April, they are commonly well before autumn. In winter they have fewer patients generally, and commonly no cases of scorbutus at all.
We visited the hospital at Middle Kara on the Saturday afternoon. It was a fine building, with large, lofty, and airy rooms, which were clean, and decked with boughs of birch and coniferous trees, placed in the corners, not merely for ornament, but with the idea that the odour given off by them is salubrious. I saw the same thing on a large scale in the prison hospital at Tomsk; and upon my asking in one of the prisons at Ust-Kara why a large branch of cypress was placed there, they said it was for the sake of the smell.
In the Siberian hospitals, at the head of every bed, was hung a board, with the occupant’s name written in Russian, and the name of the disease, written in Roman letters, in Latin; and as this was the only part of the writing I could read, I used generally to run my eye over the diseases in the wards. A remark made thereon caused the doctors sometimes to ask if I had studied medicine, which unfortunately I had not. Hence I was nonplussed at the word “costegcetis,” written over a man’s bed, and of which I asked an explanation; whereupon I was told that the man, who had been a ringleader in aiding the recent escape of the runaways, had been birched with 100 stripes of the rod, and that he was consequently in hospital for recovery. Whether the effects of a birching are very serious I do not clearly make out, but I met at least two cases in which the recipients of the rod made fun of it. One was that of a servant in a house where I stayed. She was a convict, and therefore liable, in case of misconduct, to be sent by her mistress to the police to be birched, as in bygone days had been more than once done with her; but she did not fear the switches, saying they would not kill her: “they did indeed make one a little sore, but that was of no consequence!”
I saw only one suffering in this way at Kara; and the colonel told me, as already stated, that though he rarely used the whip, yet that he did not choose to be trifled with. It was manifest that he could not maintain discipline among 2,000 convicts if he did, yet I met with no prison official in Siberia who seemed so judiciously to line with velvet the glove of steel as did Colonel Kononovitch. The whole place bore about it marks of the superintendence of a man who conscientiously acted from a high sense of duty.
I have already mentioned what an unenviable reputation Kara had in former days. An old sea captain, with whom I stayed, told me he paid a visit to Kara in 1859, when there were 2,000 men branded, and chained to their barrows by night and by day. The overseer of the gold-mines, a German, told him that he had shot four men who had killed others when at work; and I have heard, since my return, that some of the predecessors of Colonel Kononovitch were so cruel that the mention of their names made convicts tremble. It is not, then, greatly to be wondered at that this evil reputation has descended to later days.
But Colonel Kononovitch had effected great improvements. It has already been pointed out that many of the Siberian prisons were old and dilapidated, but that reforms were expected yearly to take place; and, there being no money forthcoming, things were allowed to go on as best they could. It was under this condition of affairs that the colonel was appointed to Kara, with its crazy buildings, some of which had been pulled down only a few days before my arrival. I saw one or two that were yet standing. Of course he applied for funds to meet the expenses of new buildings so urgently needed, but received only the stock answer with a polite bow that there were insufficient funds, and that they could not expend money on prisons whilst waiting for reforms; whereupon the average Siberian official might have allowed things to drift, but not so the colonel! The reforms he knew had been talked of for 15 years, and he commenced a number of “economies,” by which, if money were not forthcoming from one quarter, it might be obtained from another.[6]
In this way he might quietly have pocketed £1,200 a year, and if in Russian fashion he had handed round hush money, all might probably have been smooth enough. But so did not the colonel, and he pointed out some of the improvements he had been able to effect by these economies.[7]
The subordinate officials at Kara are very scantily paid, the chief of each prison receiving £70 a year, and his inferior officer £24. When at Tomsk, we heard of prison officials still lower, under each of whom were placed 30 prisoners, but who received only £6 a year and their food and accommodation, which were similar to those of the prisoners. It is not, therefore, greatly to be wondered at if these petty officers are not above misappropriating some of the prisoners’ food, or taking bribes. Colonel Kononovitch encouraged these men to engage in trade, or to keep horses, in which case he employed them in carrying or other ways, so long as they did not rob the prisoners.
But other substantial good was effected; for during the previous two years and a half the colonel, chiefly, I understood, by his economies, had erected no less than 18 buildings, for which the governor of the province complimented him highly.[8]
The colonel, moreover, did not spend his savings wholly on prisoners, or restrict his efforts to what might be strictly called his duty. He exceeded that, and allowed his justice to enlarge into benevolence. After seeing the hospital he took me to a children’s home which he had built for boys whose fathers were in prison.[9]
The building was simple, but prettily situated within an enclosure, where was the best kitchen-garden I had seen in Siberia. In a green-house and a hot-house were growing melons, and I know not what. These the colonel said he sold for the good of the concern, and the money obtained for vegetables helped to pay the expenses of the school. The schoolmaster was an exile, and had been, I suspect, of good position from what I heard about him after I had left the place. The children were assembled for me to see, and I was tempted to act the schoolmaster and put to them some questions, but it was under difficulties of a polyglot character; and by the time my ideas had filtered twice through Russian, French, and English, the children’s answers were not very clear. Everything looked clean and orderly, and, what was better, there were about the place tokens of care and sympathy. Behind the house was a natural shrubbery, enclosed from the forest. In this a pavilion was erected, in which, from time to time, the commandant brought his wife and family to drink tea with the children, when the boys who had sisters in the colony might meet them, and where the humanizing influence of kindness was allowed to flow forth.
By the time we had seen the school the day was far spent, and I was desirous to return to the mine to witness the final washing of the sand. During the day there had been worked (I presume by convicts and freemen together) 30 sajens, or, as they put it, 30,000 poods of sand. The produce of the first half of the day had been taken out of the machine; and after the convicts had left the mine, a few workmen remained washing the sand, in which at length the gold was found together with black dust of iron.[10]
The number of men who had stayed for the last of the washing was less than a dozen, and there was a certain gravity manifested by the little group as they took their places round the wooden apron on which was pushed up and down the few handfuls of mineral that remained of 240 tons that had passed through the cylinder. Darkness came on, so that they had to light torches of pine. There stood the colonel, looking on with dignity. The Cossack, too, was there, with loaded rifle, to protect the gold. The wooden scraper pushed away at the sand, and then the brush, and there was left only the gold and iron, less than half a pint. This was put in the miniature frying-pan, dried over an extempore fire, and then placed in a tin can. It was given into my hand that I might feel its weight, which I judged to be about a pound, and, if so, worth £40. The can was then given to the Cossack, who mounted his horse, and, accompanied by an escort, took it off to the treasury.
And thus ended the day. That the men who worked in the mines had no easy task was plain, but it was equally plain that their labour, as compared with that of an English navvy or convict, was nothing extraordinary. The tread-wheel is unknown to them. Foreigners speak with horror of Siberian punishments, to which, as a set-off, I may mention that a Russian lady asked me, with a shudder, whether it could possibly be true that in England we placed prisoners on a wheel, on which, if they did not continue to step, it broke their legs! Comparing Siberian convicts with English,[11] the Siberian has the advantage in more food (which perhaps the climate may require), more intercourse with his fellows, and far more permissions to receive visits from his family. The Kara convict, when in the higher category, receives besides 15 per cent. of what he earns for the Government; and even in the lower category he is credited with the money, though its payment is deferred till he mounts higher. Political prisoners also may write to their friends; and though by strict right, I believe, criminals in Siberia cannot do so, yet this rule is not carried out, or is as often honoured in the breach as in the observance.
The following day was Sunday, and happened to be the colonel’s name’s-day. This kept him at home for the morning to receive visitors. A telegram came to felicitate him from Madame’s father, from Ekaterineburg, a distance of 3,000 miles, taking 30 hours in transit. As the visitors did not speak French, I was not introduced, and had a comparatively quiet time to arrange and digest the information I had received. Later, I unfolded to the colonel my plan of distributing the Scriptures throughout Siberia. With this work he sympathized heartily, and promised to do what I wished. He subsequently received a lion’s share of the books, etc., I left with the governor of the province. I gave him some for the children’s home, and afterwards sent him a considerable number for his soldiers. All these reached Kara safely, and I have since had the great satisfaction of hearing that they were properly distributed throughout the colony. According to my latest news, the colonel is said to have left Kara; and if this be so, I can only hope that he has been replaced by as good a man.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] He says (p. 229): “They never see the light of day, but work and sleep all the year round in the depths of the earth, extracting silver or quicksilver under the eyes of taskmasters, who have orders not to spare them. Iron gates guarded by sentries close the lodes, or streets, at the bottom of the shafts, and the miners are railed off from one another in gangs of twenty. They sleep within recesses hewn out of the rock--very kennels--into which they must creep on all fours.”
[2] According to the law of 1857 (Article 569), it appears that irons are worn during the time a prisoner is in the lowest category (or during probation time), after which they are continued as follows: for one condemned for life, 8 years: from 15 to 20 years, 4 years: from 12 to 15 years, 2 years: from 6 to 8 years, 18 months; and from 4 to 6 years, 12 months.
[3] The number of “forçats” who, living free, ran away from Kara and escaped the control of the authorities for 15 years preceding my visit, is as follows: 1864, 327; 1865, 448; 1866, 369; 1867, 402; 1868, 354; 1869, 266; 1870, 483; 1871, 326; 1872, 368; 1873, 585; 1874, 321; 1875, 242; 1876, 175; 1877, 256; 1878, 194.
Thus it will be seen that in 1869 there ran away a smaller number than in any preceding year, namely, 266, whereas in the following year, 1870, there ran away 483. This great difference was accounted for by the fact that up to 1869 the prisoners were under the “administration of the mines,” and when they were passed over to the new administration of the Minister of the Interior, this at first gave much dissatisfaction. Again, in 1873, the number of escapes rose to the highest, namely, 585, during which year it appeared the quantity of provisions was lessened; whilst, on the other hand, in 1875, the number of escapes being so low, less than in any preceding year, namely, 175, was accounted for by there having been in that year a building committee, which gave wages to certain of the convicts for their work. Up to 1st July of the year of my visit, 155 had escaped.
[4] After leaving Kara I heard that the number of political prisoners to be transported there was considerably augmented; but I have it on good authority that even then the number expected did not exceed 60. The most recent information I have received, since the Emperor’s assassination, goes on to say that as Nertchinsk was made the special place of deportation for the Poles after 1863, so Kara has been made the special place for Nihilists; but I have no official information to that effect.
[5] This gave a sick-list of 136 to a population of upwards of 2,000 exiles and 1,000 Cossacks; besides, I suppose, the surrounding peasants. The number of convicts who died in the Kara hospitals from 1872 was as follows:--
1872 1873 1874 1875 1876 1877 1878 108 287 152 55 118 117 90,
and the number for 1879, up to the 1st July, was 65.
At Tiumen the number on the sick-list was 19 out of 1,113 prisoners on the day of our visit. The number of sick prisoners, out of 20,711 passing through Tiumen in 1878, was 1,562, of whom 1,246 were cured, 280 died, and 44 remained in hospital.
[6] Thus the Government allowed him 4_s._ 6_d._ per sajen for 8,000 sajens of wood for fuel, which, instead of buying, he procured by sending his unemployed miners into the forest to cut, giving them, to their great satisfaction, a small payment, and effecting a saving of 1_s._ per sajen. A year’s economy, therefore, in wood brought him £400. He found, too, by being his own timber-merchant, he could procure a log from 20 ft. to 30 ft. long for 7½_d._, for which dealers would have made him pay 2_s._ Then, again, the Government allowed him 7½_d._ per pood for 7,000 poods of hay, instead of buying which he sent his prisoners into the neighbouring valleys to cut three times the normal quantity. Part of this was for feeding the horses he had already, and the rest for feeding others he added in order that he might be his own carrier, and so save the contract for carriage.
[7] He paid each of the convicts, as perquisites, 4_d._ per sajen for the wood they cut, increased their allowance, and if, at the end of a job, all had gone well, he gave them each 1½_d._ a day extra. This helped the poor fellows to get sundry little extras, especially tobacco, which was encouraged; for the colonel, though he did not smoke himself, yet had imbibed the notion that it was good for the health of the prisoners.
[8] I understood at the time that these buildings had been erected entirely out of savings; but I have since been told that, from 1877 to 1879 there was granted, for the erection of prisons in Nertchinsk, the sum of £17,500, a part of which was destined for Kara.
[9] The house had cost £200; and he informed me that for another £100 he could put up a house for girls, of whom there were 20 about the place, whose fathers were prisoners. About £4 10_s._ per year was allowed by Government for each child, and to educate, clothe, and care for them as the colonel was doing costs about £5 a year extra for each; and this money he raised, I understood, among his friends.
[10] The Government determines how much gold is to be washed in the season. In 1878 it was 25 poods, or 900 lbs. They told me that the average they were finding for the season of 1879 was ¾ of a zolotnik of gold to every 100 poods of sand, and that none of the mines about Kara yield more than one zolotnik to the 100 poods; also that the strata of gold sand are never more than seven feet, but usually less in thickness. I have already stated in an earlier chapter, only in different figures, that whilst 5 zolotniks to the 100 poods is considered good, 1 zolotnik to the same quantity is poor. Hence it is apparent that no private company would work the mines of Kara, and the Government do so only to provide penal employment at a reduced cost to the State. There are at Kara certain mines spoken of as belonging to the Emperor’s private purse. When the convicts work in these, the Minister of the Interior is paid for their labour according to the amount of work they do. This I understood to be an economical arrangement in favour of the Emperor.
[11] Unfortunately my Siberian statistics are not sufficiently complete to allow a comparison between the numbers of English and Russian convicts. “O. K.” points out that since 1860, out of a population of 84,000,000, Russia has had on an average 20,000 criminals a year; whilst England and Wales, out of little more than a quarter of that population, has annually 12,000 criminal convictions. I am afraid that it is not satisfactory to compare these figures, because the 20,000 Russian criminals does not include, I presume, those left in prisons west of the Urals, but only those sent to Siberia; and, again, 12,000 does not nearly cover the total number of criminals in England and Wales. In the borough and county jails of England and Wales there was, in 1878, a daily average of 19,818 prisoners, besides 10,208 in convict prisons. I think, however, I am right in estimating that there is not a daily average of 10,000 convicts in the prisons of Siberia.