Chapter XLVI
THE GILYAKS.
The Gilyaks perfect heathens.--Their habitat, number, and form.--Diseases, generation, and character.--Habitations.--Living on fish.--Winter and summer clothing.--Methods of fishing.--Dirty habits.--Domestic animals.--Boats.--Marriage customs.--Price of a wife.--Foreign relations.--Fair at Pul.--Manchu merchants.--Conversation with Gilyaks.--Gilyak and Goldi languages.--Education.--Superstitions.--Idols and charms.--Method of bear catching and killing.--Alleged worship of the bear.--Shaman rites.--Gilyak treatment of the dead.--Romanist mission to the Gilyaks.--Martyrdom of the missionary.
The Gilyaks were the most thorough heathens I saw in Siberia.[1] I visited two of their villages--Mukhul and Tyr--saw some of them at Nikolaefsk almost daily, and met a former starosta of the “white” village. I conversed also with an American and an Englishman who had known them for many years; with a French trader among them; with a telegraph engineer whose business took him through the Gilyak country and into their houses; and, further, with three Russian priests, who as missionaries labour among them and the Goldi. From all of these I gathered more or less information, which has since been supplemented by reading; yet it must be owned that, as to all save what meets the eye, we are still very little informed in regard to this people; whilst of their religion (if they have any) next to nothing is known. Few Russians learn the Gilyak language, and few Gilyaks learn Russ.
The Gilyak country extends from Tambofsk (or Girin), about 350 miles south of Nikolaefsk, to the sea-shore near the mouth of the Amur, as well as over the northern half of the island of Sakhalin. The subdivisions of the people on the island are, on the west coast the Smerenkur, and on the east the Tro. To state accurately their numbers is not easy. When I asked a former starosta of the white village what was its population, he replied, “We have 60 men and more women, but the children are not counted.” Mr. Collins passed on the Amur 39 Gilyak villages, the population of which he estimated at 1,680.
In stature these aborigines are diminutive, usually below rather than above five feet; their eyes are elongated; the color of the skin tawny, like that of the Chinese; the hair black, and not luxuriant.[2] The Gilyaks tie up the hair in a thick tail, but do not, like the Manchu and Goldi, shave or cut it; hence they were called by the Chinese “long hairs.”
They do not cause malformations of body by pressure, mutilation, or incision. Their diseases, in common with the Goldi, are rheumatism, ophthalmia (produced by hunting in the snow), and syphilis, the last having been originally introduced by Manchu merchants. In hereditary cases it is no doubt aggravated by their filthy manner of living. The Gilyaks resort for cure to the hot springs at Mukhul; but the Goldi, having no such springs, frequently die of the disease. Insanity is rare among them. Their women have few children; six is thought a very large family. They strap their babies in wooden cradles very much like a butcher’s tray, and suspend them from the roof, as I saw at Mukhul, where the poor little creature was unable to move hand or foot. I gathered from a Russian missionary that the Goldi are thought to be slightly on the increase; but the Gilyaks, from the time the Russians first knew them, have been dying out.[3]
The winter habitations of the Gilyaks and Goldi are erected in clusters of from two or three to perhaps a dozen. In the 39 villages mentioned by Collins he counted 140 houses. The first Gilyak dwelling I entered was at Mukhul. It was about 40 feet square, built of small posts or stakes, and plastered with mud. The roof was supported by heavier posts at the corners, with cross-pieces on which the rafters rested, and upright timbers supported the covering of larch bark, kept in its place and from warping in the sun by stones and heavy poles. Among the cross-beams and joists were nets, skins, dog-sledges, light canoes, hunting implements, fish-baskets of birch or willow twigs, dried fish, herbs, and, in fact, the wealth and working tools of the half-dozen families to whom the house was evidently a comfortable home during a long and severe winter. Around three sides of the interior was a raised divan for a seat and dining and sleeping place, with a flue running underneath, and a fireplace at either end. At the vacant side of the interior were cooking utensils, pots, kettles, knives, and wooden pans; and there were hung to dry various skins and fish, entrails, etc. The house had only this one room, and in the centre was a raised platform, under which in winter are tied the dogs, and sometimes the family bear. The windows were of fish-skin, or thin paper, over a lattice. Besides this kind of dwelling-house for winter, I entered at Tyr a thatched log building, supported and raised on posts several feet above the ground, and out of the reach of floods, dogs, and vermin. The verandah was approached by climbing a notched log. The floor consisted of poles, between which daylight was visible; and in the centre was a box full of earth for the fireplace. The building was used probably in winter for a storehouse; but I found it inhabited as a summer residence. The most prominent objects, both indoors and out, were large racks and poles, on which fish were hung to dry; and the combined odour of fish and fish-oil made it little short of an act of heroism to stay long in a Gilyak’s house.
These people do not cultivate the land, but subsist almost entirely on fish. Occasionally they eat the animals taken in the chase, and their dogs, when they die; while pork and other flesh, with a little millet, are reserved for festivals.[4]
The favourite winter dress of both Gilyaks and Goldi is made of dogs’ skins, or of fox or wolf, as being the next warmest. In summer they wear fish-skin, hence the Chinese called them “Yupitatze,” or “fish-skin strangers,” though the well-to-do among the Goldi get from the merchants cotton goods, and sometimes even silk. The fish-skin is prepared from two kinds of salmon. They strip it off with great dexterity, and, by beating with a mallet, remove the scales, and so render it supple. Clothes thus made are waterproof. I saw a travelling bag, and even the sail of a boat, made of this material. I had hoped, when leaving Kara, to have found at Ignashina the dress of a Tunguse shaman, but I was disappointed. I succeeded, however, in purchasing at Tyr a fish-skin coat. It is handsomely embroidered, and colored on the back.[5] The Gilyak hats are made of fur for the winter with lappets; and the Goldi, by sewing together squirrels’ tails, make a round fur like a “boa,” about five inches in diameter, which, being joined at the ends, serves either for the neck or to encircle the head like a coronet. Their summer hat, of depressed conical shape, is made of birch-tree bark, ornamented on the top by strips of colored wood sewn in patterns. It has inside a wooden ridge, and is kept in place by a string under the chin.
The occupations of the Gilyaks and Goldi are fishing and hunting. They use gill-nets and seines in some localities, and scoop-nets in others. I more than once saw a fence of poles built at right angles to the shore, extending 20 or 30 yards into the Amur. This fence is fish-proof, except in a few places where holes are purposely left for the salmon, which the natives lie in wait to catch with spears or hand-nets. When the fish are running well, a canoe can soon be filled.[6] Ropes and nets they make from hemp and from the common stinging-nettle, the stalks of which are treated like flax. This latter material is preferred, and makes cordage equal to that of civilized manufacture, though sometimes not quite so smooth. I obtained a specimen of very fine sewing-thread of native manufacture, and exceedingly strong; but colored threads for embroidery are purchased from the Russians or the Manchu.
The habits of the Gilyaks are dirty beyond description. They are said never to wash. A telegraphic engineer told me that he one day gave a Gilyak a piece of soap, which he put in his mouth, and, after chewing it to a lather, pronounced “very good.” Both Gilyaks and Goldi have a liking, reverence, or fear for animals. They formerly domesticated ermines for catching rats, the high price of cats confining their possession to the wealthy. On the Lower Amur they find, besides those mentioned elsewhere, the elk, roebuck, reindeer, and fox; the racoon-dog, wild boar, and lynx; the polecat, hedgehog, ermine, sable, and striped squirrel.[7] They are fond also of seeing swallows build in their houses, and to induce them to do so they fasten small boards under the roof, by which these birds have access to the house. The Goldi keep the horned owl (for catching rats), the jay, the hawk, and the kite--the last for no particular use, unless it be for the sake of their feathers for arrows.[8] The eagle is sometimes seen fastened near their houses, and so are the dogs, which, in winter, are their principal means of locomotion. I saw a large number of them at Mukhul. A team may consist of any odd number from 7 to 17, a good leader being worth 50_s._ and an ordinary dog from 8_s._ to 10_s._ The sledge is made of thin boards five or six feet long, and 18 inches wide, convex below, but straight on the upper edge. A team of nine dogs draws a man and 200 pounds of luggage an entire day, each dog receiving a piece of fish a foot long, and about two inches square, the same in size as suffices for his master. The mode of summer communication is by boats made of pitch-fir or cedar. Besides these the Goldi make canoes of birch-bark. The native sits in the centre, and propels himself with a double-bladed paddle. The canoes are flat-bottomed, and very easily upset. When a native sitting in one of them spears a fish, he moves only his arm, and keeps his body motionless. The larger boats are usually rowed by women, the lords of creation sitting in the stern to steer and smoke their long-stemmed, amber-tipped, Chinese pipes. There is one marked difference, however, between the rowing of the Gilyaks and Goldi, for whereas the latter, taking two oars, pull them together, the former pull them alternately--a seemingly clumsy way, but in practice efficient.
Women occupy a low position among the Gilyaks and Goldi, who are polygamists. Mr. Ravenstein quotes a statement of Rinso, a Japanese traveller, that among the Smerenkur Gilyaks polyandry prevails. Betrothal dates from childhood. The father chooses the bride for his infant son, a rich Gold paying from £5 to £20 for a girl five years old. At Mukhul the price of a wife was given me as from £10 to £50, often paid in silk stuffs and other materials, whilst a telegraph engineer named as the selling price for a Gilyak bride, from eight to ten dogs, a sledge, and two cases of brandy, though, if she have “a good nose,” she fetches rather more. The bride elect is brought into the house of her future father-in-law, and when the girl is 12 or 13, and the boy 18, they are married.[9] Should a Gold who has many wives desire to be baptized the Russian missionaries compel him to elect one, and be canonically married to the object of his choice; the rest being sold, or, by a happy arrangement, returned to their respective fathers at half price. Notwithstanding such matrimonial drawbacks, I heard that among these interesting people there are no unmarried ladies.
The amusements of the Gilyaks are of the nature of gymnastics, such as throwing heavy irons and fencing. They begin early to shoot with bow and arrow, and are good archers. Their foreign relationships are of a very limited character.[10]
There was formerly at Pul an annual fair, which lasted for 10 days, and was like that of Nijni Novgorod in miniature.[11] The navigation of the Amur by the Russians has caused this fair to be discontinued, but the Manchu merchants still descend the river, though not in such numbers as formerly, when one voyage sufficed to realize enough for the wants of a year. I was informed that they fleece the natives sadly, giving the Gilyaks, for instance, a pint of millet or half a pint of brandy for a sable-skin; and when the natives are made drunk, then, of course, skins are bartered for very much less. The Russian barges, fitted like floating stores, and towed on the river, must have interfered greatly with the Manchu traders, whose sway, it is to be hoped, is nearly at an end. The Gilyaks now come to the Russian towns, especially to Nikolaefsk, and not only sell their fish, but begin to purchase Russian articles; whereas, for a long time, they gave the preference to goods of Chinese make.
I met a family of Gilyaks in a shop at Nikolaefsk, with whom I endeavoured to exchange ideas, through one who spoke a little Russian, and I thought they seemed a people the lowest in intellect of any I had met. The company consisted of a father, mother, two daughters, and a deaf and dumb boy. The man did not know his daughters’ age, nor even his own, saying that they kept no account. When asked whether he would sell me his daughter to wife, he replied at first that they did not sell their girls to Russians, not approving the alliance. When pressed further, however, he said that she was already sold (she was about 10 years old, and was smoking a pipe), and he added, “I sold her dearly!” It was difficult, however, in Russ to convey to their minds any but the simplest ideas. Neither Gilyaks nor Goldi have any written signs. The missionary living at Khabarofka has translated into Goldi parts of the Scriptures and the Greek liturgy, using, if I mistake not, Russian characters. The Goldi language, he told me, was much like the Manchu, and that, speaking the former, he could make himself understood in the latter. Both, Mr. Howorth says, are Tunguse languages. M. de la Brunière writes that Goldi stands to Manchu much as Provençal does to French or Italian.[12]
The Russians have made some attempts to educate the Gilyaks. When Mr. Knox visited Mikhailofsky, he found a merchant farmer who was acting as superintendent of a school opened at the cost of the Government for the education of Gilyak boys. The copy-books exhibited fair specimens of penmanship, and on the desks were Æsop’s fables translated into Russ. Close at hand was a forge, where the boys learned to work, and a carpenter’s shop, with tools and turning lathe. The school at that time was in operation ten months a year, and the teacher belonged to one of the inferior ranks of the Russian clergy. I called on the priest at Mikhailofsky and inquired about the Gilyaks, but heard nothing of the existence of the school, and I am under the impression that it is discontinued. The Russians have two mission schools, however, on the Lower Amur, attended by 30 children--one at Troitzka for the Goldi, and another for the Gilyaks at Bolan, near Malmuish. I heard of one Gilyak boy who had made sufficient progress to qualify him to become a psalmist, or dïechok, in the Russian Church.
Like other heathen tribes, the Gilyaks have many superstitions. They do not allow fire to be carried in or out of a house, not even in a pipe, fearing such an act may bring ill luck in hunting or fishing. The same superstition is found in many parts of Russia. They appear, too, to be fatalists; for an Englishman at Nikolaefsk told me that if one falls into the water, the others will not help him out, on the plea that they would thus be opposing a higher power, who wills that he should perish. A Russian officer and his family were drowned some time since near the town, within easy reach of the boats of the Gilyaks, who could have saved them, but they did not attempt to do so.[13]
The Gilyaks believe in wooden idols or charms as antidotes to disease. I had practical illustration of this at Tyr, where I wished to buy some of the little amulets belonging to the head of a household; but he was at first unwilling to sell them, saying that he had found the wearing of them very efficacious in sickness. The offer of a silver piece, however, changed his mind;[14] and he afterwards sold me not only his own, but those of his baby, one of them like a doll in a sitting posture; and after I had left the house, he sent after me a fish rudely cut in wood, and meant for a sturgeon, with a little god seated on his back. This had been used, apparently, not long before, on a fishing expedition, for there was gelatine and fresh blood in the mouth of the fish and the god. Sometimes poles shaped like idols are placed before the houses. Another kind is carried as companion to the native on his journeys, whilst some are placed upon the summits of the mountains.
Other idols are in the form of the tiger, bear, etc., which animals are closely connected with their superstition, if not their religion. The tiger is said to be feared much more among the Gilyaks than the Goldi, and its appearance portends evil. If the remains are found of a man killed by a tiger, they are buried on the spot without ceremony. On the other hand, if a cow is found killed by a bear, it is eaten with great glee and rejoicing. It is said that neither Gilyaks nor Goldi attempt to kill the tiger. Neither do they hunt the wolf, to which they attribute an evil influence. With the bear, however, things are very different. There is in each Gilyak village a bear cage. I saw them at both Mukhul and Tyr. They speak of the captive as Mafa, that is, “Chief Elder,” and to distinguish him from the tiger, who is Mafa sakhle, that is, “Black Chief.” In hunting the bear they exhibit great intrepidity. In order not to excite his posthumous revenge, they do not surprise him, but have a fair stand-up fight. When it is not desired to secure the animal alive, the natives use a spear, such as I saw at Krasnoiarsk, the head of which is covered with spikes. It lies upon the ground, having cord attached to the centre, and held by a man, the spear-point being towards the bear. As Bruin advances to the man, the spear-head is raised from the ground, and the beast throws himself upon it, but finds the chevaux-de-frize a disagreeable object to embrace. He is then set upon by the huntsmen and killed. It is much more interesting sport to catch a bear alive. A party of ten men or more enter the forest provided with straps, muzzle, and a collar with chain attached. Having discovered the whereabouts of the bear, he is surrounded, and one of them, jumping upon his back in the twinkling of an eye, seizes hold of his ears. Another quickly fastens a running knot round the neck of the beast, and almost suffocates him. He is then muzzled, the collar passed round his neck, and he is led in triumph to the village to be put in the cage, and fattened on fish.[15] Bruin is not imprisoned, however, to be treated like the sacred bulls of Egypt. On festivals he is brought out, his paws tied, an iron chain put in his mouth, and he is bound between two fixed poles, an involuntary witness of the natives frolicking around him. On very grand occasions he takes a more direct share in the festival by being killed with superstitious ceremonies.[16] The people then go home, their chiefs staying to cut up the bear, the flesh of which is distributed to every house, and eaten with great zest, as food calculated to inspire and bring courage and luck. The head and paws, however, are treated with great reverence.[17] These ursine ceremonies have, no doubt, given rise to the statement that the Gilyaks worship the bear. Mr. Collins goes so far as to say that they consider the bear an incarnated evil spirit; and the missionary at Mikhailofsky, in answer to my question, was not sure, but he thought it quite likely that they worshipped the animal. It is only proper to say, however, that when I met at Nikolaefsk the former elder of the White village, and asked him whether it was true that they worshipped the bear, he denied it, and said that they killed it as we should do any other animal for a feast; and that each village was bound in turn to provide a bear, on which occasion other villages assembled and joined in the banquet. I then inquired what was the religion of the Gilyaks. He said they had none, but upon being asked to whom they prayed, he looked up to the skies. He acknowledged that they practised Shamanism, but added that that was a mystery.
Thus far I have frequently used the word Shamanism, but have deferred explaining it till I treated of the Gilyaks, some of whose Shamanistic practices were described to me by an eye-witness--the telegraph engineer, to whom I have before alluded. The Gilyaks and the Siberian natives generally believe in the existence of good and bad spirits; but as the former perform only good, it is not thought necessary to pay them any attention.[18]
The shamans, or priests, who may be male or female, are regarded as powerful mediators between the people and the evil spirits. The shaman, in fact, combines the double functions of doctor and priest. When a man falls sick, he is supposed to be attacked by an evil spirit, and the shaman is called to practise exorcism. There is a distinct spirit for every disease, who must be propitiated in a particular manner. The performance was thus described to me. The shaman puts on a huge bearskin cloak, which jingles with bells, pieces of iron, brass, or anything which will help, when shaken, to make a noise; the whole sometimes weighing as much as 100 lbs. He begins by singing in a monotonous murmur, and drinks brandy. Both patient and doctor are usually decorated with strips of wood or shavings, hanging round the waist and head. By the side of the patient are placed idols and brandy. The shaman sits on one side and the audience on the other. He approaches, drinks more brandy, begins to sing and jingle his bells, and gives brandy to the spectators. On the table are placed idols, fish, a squirrel’s skin, millet and brandy, and a dog is tied under the table. The eatables are offered to the idols, and then distributed to be consumed by all present. Meanwhile the shaman contorts his body, and dances like one possessed, and howls to such an extent that Chinese merchants, who have come out of curiosity, have been known to flee in very terror. He also beats a tambourine, and sometimes falls prostrate, as if holding communion with the spirits; and this kind of thing sometimes goes on for three days and nights, as long, probably, as provisions and spirits hold out, after which the patient is left to believe that he will get well; and the shaman receives his fee, which may be a reindeer, a dog, fish, brandy, or whatever the patient can afford. The shamans possess great power over their deluded subjects, though they are said to be somewhat held in check by the belief that, should they abuse their authority over evil spirits, to the detriment of a fellow human being, they will hereafter be long and severely punished. Their punishment is supposed to await them in a nether hell, dark and damp, filled with gnawing reptiles. A good shaman, however, who has performed wonderful cures receives, after death, a magnificent tomb to his memory.
The treatment of the dead among the Gilyaks would seem to vary. Réclus and Collins say that some tribes burn the dead on funereal pyres, and build a low frame over the ashes, and that others hang the coffins on trees, or place them on a scaffolding near the houses. The French trader at Nikolaefsk told me that in winter they wrap up the dead and put them in the forked branches of trees, out of the reach of animals, till the ground is thawed, and then, he supposed, the corpse was buried. The soul of the Gilyak is supposed to pass at death into his favourite dog, which is accordingly fed with choice food; and when the spirit has been prayed by the shamans out of the dog, the animal is sacrificed upon his master’s grave. The soul is then represented as passing underground, lighted and guided there by its own sun and moon, and continuing to lead there, in its spiritual abode, the same manner of life and pursuits as in the flesh.
The Russians have missionaries among the Gilyaks, but the Greek Church cannot claim the honour of bringing Christianity first among them. This belongs to a Roman missionary, M. de la Brunière, who perished in his endeavour.[19] On April 5th, 1846, he addressed a letter to the directors of the Seminary for Foreign Missions, telling them of his plans, and how strongly a Chinese friend tried to dissuade him, “representing to me the troops of tigers and bears which filled these deserts; and, whilst relating these things, he sometimes uttered such vehement cries that my two guides grew pale with horror. Being already a little accustomed to the figures of Chinese eloquence, I thanked him for his solicitude, assuring him that the flesh of Europeans had such a particular flavour that the tigers of Manchuria would not attempt to fasten their teeth in it.”[20]
Then follows a touching portion, in which he writes:-- “About the 13th or 15th of May, I will buy, if it please God, a small bark, in which I may descend the Amur to the sea to visit the ‘long hairs.’ I shall go alone, because no one dare conduct me. I am well aware how difficult it will be to avoid the barges of the mandarins who descend the river from San-sin; but if it is the will of God that I arrive where I design going, His arm can smooth every obstacle, and guide me there in safety; and if it please Him that I return, He knows well how to bring me back.”
He went, and at the White village was murdered.[21] I passed the spot a few hours before reaching Nikolaefsk, and the bay was pointed out where the missionary was put to death. My fellow-passengers said that De la Brunière reached the place with a baptized Mongol, whom he sent back on the day of his arrival, after which he proceeded to show the Gilyaks his watch, crucifix, spoons, etc.; and that two days after his arrival, they killed him on a small island where he had taken up his abode. One of my fellow-passengers was the Russian Lieutenant Yakimoff, who in 1857, with the Governor of the province, visited the village, and found the Gilyaks who had committed the murder. They had still in their possession the watch, crucifix, and spoons, which the Russians bought. During my stay at Nikolaefsk I met, as I have said, a former starosta of the White village, who told me that he had heard from his father the story of the missionary. Thus perished the first man who attempted to carry Christianity to the Gilyaks. What the Russians are doing among them I shall refer to when speaking hereafter of their missions to the neighbouring Goldi.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Their name is variously spelt Gee-laks, Giliaks, Ghiliaks, and Gilyaks. Living near and resembling in many points the Goldi, the two tribes, for ethnographical purposes, are sometimes classed together as branches of the Tunguse family. But M. Réclus is right when, speaking of the “Giliaks” or “Kilé,” he calls them “frères de ceux qui vivent dans l’île de Sakhalin et parents de ces mystérieux Aïnos qui sont l’objet de tant de discussion entre les ethnologistes”; and Mr. Howorth says that the Ghiliaks, called “Fish-skin Tata” by the Chinese, are no doubt sophisticated Aïnos, while the Goldi are Tunguses.
[2] As Réclus observes, they have not the open and clear physiognomy of the majority of the Tunguses, and their little eyes sparkle with a dull brilliance; they have squat noses, thick lips, prominent cheekbones, and, he adds, “thick beards”; which last I can hardly confirm, but would rather say, with Mr. Ravenstein, that the beard is stronger with them than with the Tunguses, which is not saying much.
[3] Dwelling further from the Manchu than the Amur Tunguses, they are wilder; and Réclus observes that they have a greater idea of liberty, acknowledge no master, and are governed only by custom, which regulates their festivals, and determines their hunting and fishing affairs, their marriages and burials. They are certainly courageous in the way they catch and kill the bear, though oddly enough they never willingly get into water, and do not swim.
[4] They are beginning now to use tea, salt, sugar, and bread; but all of these seem to have been unknown to them before the advent of the Russians. I heard it mentioned, as a good trait in their character, that if a Gilyak receives a piece of bread, after eating a portion he takes home the remainder as a treat for his family. During my stay at Mikhailofsky the natives came to barter wild fruit for bread. They are said to have no stated hours for meals, and knives and forks are of course unknown to them. Noticing one day some Manchu and Goldi at a meal, I observed they had boiled millet in basins, which they raised to the lips, and then whipped the millet into their mouths with chop-sticks.
[5] The men and women dress very much alike. A number of small metal pendants about the size of a sixpence round the bottom of the blouse distinguishes the gentler sex. I purchased, too, at Mukhul some pieces of embroidery on fish-skin, the workmanship of which is thought good in England; whilst at Tyr was given me a kind of fish-skin open work or lace. The blouse of the men is fastened in front, and confined round the waist by a belt, to which is suspended a number of articles of daily use. They consist of a large knife, a Chinese pipe, an iron instrument for cleaning it, steel for striking a light, a bone for smoothing fish-skins and loosening knots, a bag of fish-skin for tinder, and a tobacco pouch, a specimen of which last, somewhat tastefully made of sturgeon’s skin, was given me at Nikolaefsk by the chief civil authority.
[6] In places I saw square pens of wicker-work fixed, to enclose the fish after they pass the holes in the fence. For catching sturgeon they use a circular net, of 5-feet diameter, and shaped like a shallow bag. One part of the mouth is fitted with corks, and the opposite with weights of lead or iron. Two canoes in mid-stream hold this net vertically between them across the current. The sturgeon descending the river enter the trap, and the fishermen divide the “net proceeds.”
[7] “Cats,” says Mr. Knox, “have a half-religious character, and are treated with great respect. Since the advent of the Russians, the supply is very good. Before they came, the Manchu merchants used to bring only male cats, and those mutilated. The price was sometimes a hundred roubles for a single mouser, and by curtailing the supply, the Manchu kept up the market.”
[8] The birds known to them belong generally to the species found in the same latitudes of Europe and America, but there are some birds of passage that are natives of Southern Asia, Japan, the Philippine Islands, and even South Africa and Australia. Seven-tenths of the birds of the Amur are found in Europe, two-tenths in Siberia, and one-tenth in regions further south. Some birds belong more properly to America, such as the Canadian woodcock and the water-ouzel, and there are several birds common to the east and west coasts of the Pacific. The number of stationary birds is not great. Maack enumerates 39 species that dwell here the entire year. The birds of passage generally arrive in April or May, and leave in September or October. It is a curious fact that they come later to Nikolaefsk than to the town of Yakutsk, nine degrees further north. This is due to difference of climate.
[9] Weddings, however, are expensive, for all the relatives expect to be invited, and they sometimes drink several gallons of Chinese khanshin. The drinking of this, I am told, causes not only intoxication, but among these people violence akin to madness. It is sold by weight, and costs tenpence per Russian pound, but its importation is strictly forbidden by Russian law.
[10] Before the Russian occupation the Manchu came down the river to collect tribute and dispose of their merchandise. These Mandarins are charged with abuse of power, and with having made extortionate demands upon the natives, who hailed the Russians as their liberators. On the other hand, the Mandarin was supposed to make a small present of tobacco or silk to every one paying him tribute; and among the Gilyaks this present appeared to be reckoned of greater value than the tribute demanded. The Gilyaks, however, living so far off from the Manchu, do not seem to have been much oppressed by them, nor indeed to have been very frequently visited. Sakhalin was visited still less often, but I heard among the Goldi that they decidedly preferred the Russian to the Manchu rule.
[11] Manchu and Chinese merchants met Japanese from Sakhalin, Tunguses from the Okhotsk coast, and from the head waters of the Zeya and Amgun. Besides these were the Orochi, or Orochons, from the mountains east of the Lower Amur, and Manguns; to say nothing of smaller tribes, speaking nearly a dozen languages, and conducting business in a patois of all the dialects. The goods imported were coarsely printed calicoes, Chinese silk materials, rice and millet, also bracelets, earrings, tobacco and brandy, cloth, powder, lead, and knives. These were exchanged for furs, isinglass, and the dried backbones of the sturgeon--the last being highly prized in Chinese cookery.
[12] I found that the priest was compiling a Goldi lexicon and grammar, and that, for his linguistic labours, he has received a medal from the Imperial Geographical Society. I am indebted to him for some of the words in the following short vocabulary, which will give an idea of the Manyarg, Manchu, Orochon, and Goldi tongues (which are Tunguse) compared with the Gilyak and Aïno dialects, which seem to belong to another family.
English. Manyarg. Manchu. Orochon. Goldi. Gilyak. Aïno.
One omun emu omu omu niun chine Two zur juo dhjou dhjour morsh tu Three ilan ilan ulla ellan chiorch che Four digin duin dii duyin murch yne Five sunja tungha tongha torch ashne Dog inda inda kan sheta Sable nossa seppha Fox solaki solli
[13] These aborigines do not bear a favourable character. Schrenk says that the Gilyaks of the mainland are avaricious and covetous in their commercial transactions, but that among those of Sakhalin this propensity seeks satisfaction in theft and robbery. I shall presently relate a case in which they murdered a missionary apparently for the sake of getting the little merchandise he possessed.
[14] Sometimes they wear amulets fashioned like the part afflicted. A lame or injured person carries a small leg of wood, an arm, a hand, reminding one of the wax and silver arms, legs, hands, and hearts seen in churches on Roman images, and on the pictures of Russian saints. The missionary at Tyr gave me, in exchange for tracts, a charm to which is attached a stone, and also two rough wooden fish gods--one with a tail, the other without. The Gilyaks use these images or idols also in their Shaman worship.
[15] When secured as a cub, he is frequently kept for three or four years. The natives are often seriously wounded in these encounters, but to this they do not object, since such wounds are thought to be marks of prowess, and to be killed by a bear is deemed a very happy death. Most of the writers on the Gilyaks mention this extraordinary procedure; and I heard it confirmed at Mikhailofsky by the missionary.
[16] The day falls in January of each year, and an Englishman at Nikolaefsk, who had been an eye-witness of the spectacle, described it to me thus: “The bear is led from his cage, dragged along and beaten with sticks, and presented at every house in the village; thus he gets exasperated to a high degree. He is then led to the river to a hole in the ice, where they try to make him drink water, and from a platter to eat food, though only a spoonful, both of which in his excited state he refuses, and which is precisely what they desire. He is then dragged back with shouts to the place of sacrifice, where, having been fastened to a post and allowed to repose awhile, he is shot through the heart with an arrow.”
[17] Among the Gilyaks the head is kept by the patriarch of the village, and prayers are said to be offered to it for the space of a week. I was told at Nikolaefsk that the Gilyaks often bring bears’ skins to sell; but by no chance do they bring, or can they be induced to bring, a hide with the head or paws attached. The ears, jaw-bones, skull, and paws are sometimes hung upon trees to ward off evil spirits. Occasionally the skull is split, and suspended in their houses; and Mr. Knox observed in a Goldi house that part of one wall was covered with bear skulls and bones, horse-hair, wooden idols, and pieces of colored cloth.
[18] Mr. Collins does indeed say that the true God is adored without the shamans in autumn, and then by the whole community in mass, but I am unable to confirm this from anything I have read or heard. It would seem rather that all their efforts are directed to induce the evil spirits not to act; for these evil spirits are supposed to have power over hunting, fishing, household affairs, and the health and well-being of animals and men. Accordingly I inferred that Shamanism, so far as it can be called a religion, is one of fear, and not of love; that it is something for times of sorrow, such as death, sickness, and calamity, and not for occasions of joy or thanksgiving, as a birth or a wedding.
[19] Mr. Ravenstein states that the efforts of the Roman Catholic missionaries in Manchuria may be said to date from 1838; and in May 1845 M. de la Brunière left Kai Cheu with the intention of seeking the conversion of the “long-haired” people--that is, the Gilyaks of the Amur. This was before the Russian occupation of the river, and at a time when thus to wander, without permission, was contrary to Chinese law and full of danger, to say nothing of the difficulties of locomotion.
[20] M. de la Brunière then describes his fatigues, his only food being millet boiled in water. “You must cut and drag trees, light fires (necessary against the cold and tigers), prepare your victuals in wind and rain, and all this in the midst of a swarm of mosquitoes and gad-flies, who do not suspend their attacks till about 10 or 12 in the evening. Water and wood were abundant at first, ... but 30 leagues from the Ussuri, the springs became so scarce that we were compelled to do like the birds of heaven, and eat the millet raw.”
[21] Four years after, M. Venault was sent to the Lower Amur partly, if possible, to clear up the fate of De la Brunière. On arriving at what is now called the White village, he found no difficulty in ascertaining how matters had gone. M. de la Brunière, it seemed, was preparing his meal in a small bay, when ten men, attracted by the prospect of booty from the strange priest, went towards him, armed with bows and pikes. Having hit him with several arrows, seven of them struck him with their pikes, and the last stroke fractured his skull and proved mortal. This act consummated, the assassins divided the spoil.
Chapter XLVII
NIKOLAEFSK.
My arrival.--Visit to prisons and hospitals.--Health statistics.--Siberian hospitals in general.--A Sunday service arranged.--Visits to inhabitants.--Russian customs, superstitions, and amusements.--Dancing.--Nikolaefsk town, arsenal, and commerce.--Mr. Emery.--Russian bribery.--Cost of provisions and labour.
Nikolaefsk, founded in 1853, rapidly grew into importance, but gradually waned after the removal of the “port”; and as our steamer approached on a cloudy evening, I seemed to have arrived at a very dismal and out-of-the-way part of the world. My spirits, however, had risen appreciably during the day. The perplexity in which I left Khabarofka, and my uncertainty as to how to reach San Francisco, have been alluded to; but on boarding the Onon I met Mr. Enoch Emery, an American merchant of Nikolaefsk. After almost disusing my native tongue for three weeks, I was able to speak again in English, and I now learnt that for £90 a first-class ticket might be taken from Yokohama in Japan to Euston Square in London, including food whilst traversing the two oceans, an allowance of 250 lbs. of luggage, and railway tickets for America and England. It was not so clear, however, how Japan was to be reached. The Dragon was not expected at Nikolaefsk, I heard, nor was there any regular means of getting away other than by retracing my steps to the Ussuri and Vladivostock. A Russian gunboat had been lying at the mouth of the Amur, the previous day, with provisions for Dui in Sakhalin, by which it was suggested that I might get a passage to the island, and perhaps be trans-shipped to Japan or China on some chance vessel calling for coal. But when we reached Nikolaefsk this gunboat had started a few hours before; and thus I landed--with regard to my future movements--as full of uncertainty as ever.
I had fallen, nevertheless, into good hands; for, in talking to Mr. Emery, it transpired that we had common friends in Petersburg, one of whom had spoken to me of the Amur, and would gladly have given me introductions, had I not persisted in saying that I did not intend to go so far. Mr. Emery invited me to be his guest--an invitation doubly welcome in a place where was no better hotel than a beershop, and because with him I should have the advantage of conversing in English.
Baron Stackelberg was lodged near me, and in the morning we went to the chief civil authority, M. Andreyeff, to whom I was introduced as a person desirous of information about the prisons of Sakhalin, and of a passage, if possible, to the island. To my surprise M. Andreyeff also was acquainted with some of my friends in Petersburg, and he at once promised the information; but it was uncertain, he said, when a ship would leave again with provisions.
The police-master was sent for to take me to see the prisons of the town. The police-station was the first building we entered; it contained a few rooms for temporary accommodation. In one of them were flogging instruments I had heard of at Kara and elsewhere, and had vainly inquired for more than once. I have no reason to suppose, however, they were hidden from me in other places, a lawyer having told me that the troichatka, or plète, was used only at Kara, Nikolaefsk, and Dui. What they were like shall be told hereafter. I will only say for the present they were the most terrible things of the kind I had ever seen. There was a guard-room in the station where Cossacks were sitting on the floor, eating with wooden spoons from a common saucepan, and other rooms occupied by clerks and officials. I was then taken to the town prison, containing 68 prisoners in half-a-dozen rooms. Some of the men had just come from the bath, the advantages of which were patent. But I do not recollect seeing accommodation in any of the Siberian prisons for washing the hands and face except at Tomsk, where was a sort of caldron mounted on a tripod, and from which, through four tiny pipes, water was forced, in Russian fashion, to trickle on the hands. I fancy, however, that not only with prisoners, but among the lower classes generally, minor ablutions between the weekly or fortnightly steaming of the bath are regarded more or less as supererogatory.
In the western suburb of the town was the étape, a prison in which 150 persons could be lodged on their way to Sakhalin. Detached, but not far distant, was the kitchen, in which were convicts of good behaviour, allowed the run of the town by day, though compelled to sleep in the building at night. They could thus earn money if they chose.[1] Both prisons in the town were reported to the Emperor as “old, and built of bad material, wanting proper sanitary arrangements, and inconvenient for their purpose.”
A similar description would have been not far wrong of the Nikolaefsk hospitals, of which there were three--two military and one civil. In the civil hospital, partly supported by voluntary contributions, they were sadly cramped for room--so much so that, in one chamber, alongside of other patients was a boy suffering from small-pox. The chief doctor had, on his own account, opened an extra room for the blind and the infirm.[2] In the hospital of the 6th East Siberian battalion were 24 beds only, whereas by law there should have been 48. Happily only five beds were occupied at the time of my visit, and the list of diseases treated in the hospital during the preceding 18 months appeared to show that the medical staff were doing their work successfully. The chief physician was a German, as are many of the doctors in Russia, and he took great pains to acquaint me with all I wished to know.[3] I found some large hospitals for the navy at Vladivostock, with 108 patients at the time of my visit; but the hospital that pleased me most in the province, not to say in all Siberia, was that at Khabarofka, built on the newest principles, and leaving nothing to be desired.[4]
They have in the Sea-coast province no madhouses, properly so called; but lunatics are treated in a ward of the Nikolaefsk hospital. Of eight cases during 1878, four recovered, two remained, and two died. Besides these hospitals I have named, there is in the province one each at Petropavlovsk, Ghijiga, and Okhotsk. Looking at the Siberian hospitals with an unprofessional eye, I may say that they struck me as fairly good. I have twice met Englishmen in Russian hospitals,--one at Archangel, and the other in the Urals,--and they both said they had every attention. The hospitals of the country are supported by the Government, by the army, navy, and civil departments respectively. None are supported entirely by voluntary contributions. Government servants, being poor, pay nothing. Civilians pay, and one of the good features of the Russian hospitals is that persons of the middle classes may enter, and by a small extra payment receive medical attendance and superior accommodation.[5] The Siberian towns seemed fairly well supplied with medical men; but it was rather appalling on the Ussuri to hear from a telegraph official that he had no medical man within 200 miles to the south, and 300 to the north.[6]
My coming to Nikolaefsk did not long remain unknown, for it was suggested that on the Sunday I should conduct a service, there being no resident Protestant minister, though they had a Roman chapel in the town. The pro-Governor, Mr. Andreyeff, readily gave his sanction, offered his house for a place of meeting, and sent round by the police a notice requesting all to sign who purposed to attend. More than 30 signed, and before Sunday several called on me. I was invited to a dinner on my first Friday in Nikolaefsk. It happened to be the birthday of Mr. Schenk, the worthy manager of the principal store. The shop was closed, and his friends called in the morning to felicitate him, and to drink and eat nick-nacks from a sideboard. In the evening a capital dinner was served with asparagus and preserved fruits, which it was hard to realize we were eating in one of the most dreary parts of Siberia, where they have seven months’ winter, and where the navigation does not open till the end of May. Several at table spoke English, and near me sat a merchant who had lived in the Sandwich Islands and in Kamchatka. Mr. Emery the same week had a party to lunch; and Mr. Andreyeff gave a dinner in his garden to some of my fellow-passengers, myself, and the military commandant. The dinner began with “schnapps,” and among the dishes was a salmon pie, with rice on the top, the dinner ending with cream and wild raspberries, of which last there were bushels growing outside the town.
I made the acquaintance also of some of the naval officers, such as the captain of the Ermak, to whom I gave books for his men, and Lieutenant Wechman, the captain of the port. The latter was a Protestant, who invited me on the second Sunday to hold the service in his house, which I did, and sent books for the barracks of the men under his command. These social occasions gave me opportunities to see something of Russians at home, their customs, superstitions, and amusements. Tea was usually offered whenever a call was made; and as lemons were not to be had so far away in summer, a spoonful of jam was often put in the glass instead. They have a custom in Russia of addressing friends, or those to whom they wish to be polite, by their Christian name plus their patronymic, or Christian name of their father, which in the case of Mr. Emery sounded odd to me to hear a lady ask, “Enoch, son of Simeon, may I give you a glass of tea?”[7]
Among the superstitions of the Russians may be mentioned the not liking to begin a journey on a Monday. The Governor-General of Western Siberia told me he usually chose that day expressly, in order to avoid the crowd of fellow-passengers. Nor do they like to take edge-tools from another person’s hand, nor to pass the salt, or, if it be done, the person who receives must smile blandly to break the spell. Again, when a man is starting upon some special business, he thinks it very unlucky if the first person he meets in the street should be a priest; and if the eyes of one dying are not closed by a friend, it is imagined that there will soon be another death in the family.
The Russians struck me as a people exceedingly ill-provided with manly amusements. They have nothing to correspond to our cricket, boating, or football. Their young men seem incapable of rising to any greater exertion of mind or body than that demanded for billiards, cards, drinking, and smoking. I saw some soldiers, however, playing with a large, heavy steel pin, like a tenpenny nail with a heavy head.[8] An outdoor game played by girls is called “skaka” (to jump), something like the English game of see-saw, only that the two parties do not sit but stand on the plank, which is only some four feet long, and is jumped upon with sufficient force that when one person reaches the ground the other springs into the air, and so on alternately. Swings, too, are in great demand at fairs and such gatherings. I was treated to one on the Sukhona, suspended from a cross-beam not less, I should judge, than 40 feet high.
Dancing is one of the most popular of indoor amusements, and I had a good opportunity of witnessing the peasants’ performance of it at Mikhailofsky; for on the evening of our enforced stay a soirée was extemporized. The dancers were the young men and girls of the village, dressed in their heavy boots and cotton gowns, but washed and brushed up for the occasion. The manner in which the girls sat in a row at the commencement, and the men hung together in an outer room, struck me very much like a piece of human nature which is seen all the world over. The music consisted of a fiddle, accordion, and tiny bells; and in the first dance, two youths having nodded condescendingly to partners, the four stood up and figured before us, one feature of the dance being that the men from time to time stamped heavily with their feet.[9] At an early stage of the proceedings cigarettes were handed round, and men, girls, and old women all began to smoke--a sure sign that they were not Starovers, or Old Believers, for they turn out their sons if they smoke, and call them “pogani,” or “nasty,”--the practice having been introduced into some parts of Siberia, I was told, within the last quarter of a century.[10] After dance No. 3, which was by four girls only, two plates were handed round--one of sweets, the other of cedar nuts. The latter, from the monotonous gaps they so often fill at parties, are called by a word which means “Siberian conversation.” Other refreshments followed in the shape of black bread and cucumbers, the whole affair looking very formal and solemn; but I am not sure whether this was normal, or whether the peasants were overawed by the strange company. I heard that at Nikolaefsk, in winter, they have frequent balls at the club, but in the summer the evenings are given to the promenade.
At this time of day I usually took my constitutional, and searched about into every hole and corner of the town. Its population stands in the Almanack at 5,350, which probably was right some years ago, but it was estimated to me as having decreased to 3,500. The houses extend a mile and a half along the left bank of the river on a wooded plateau about fifty feet high. The landing-place is available only for small craft. Larger vessels lie in the middle of the river, and there is a wooden pier from which stairs lead to the plateau. The visitor is then opposite the church, built of wood, having one large cupola and four small ones. Behind the church stands what was the “Admiralty,” but is now the police-station, having a flagstaff with semaphore for signalling vessels in the harbour. To the west of the church is the officers’ club, and a few minutes’ walk to the east is situated the admiral’s house, the palace of the town, having around it a few flowers struggling for existence. In 1866 Mr. Knox found at Nikolaefsk machine-shops, foundries, and dockyard, into which last I wandered one evening, and thought of the time when nations are to learn war no more; for whereas there had been 800 men employed in the place a dozen years before, I found it covered with weeds, the workshops closed, and rusty iron lying about in all directions. Here and there were heaps of bombshells and cannon-balls, with a few grape-shot. Except the sentinel at the entrance, I met not a soul in the place, from which the glory had plainly departed. So it was, in fact, with the town generally. The boarded pavements are fast rotting, and allow the unwary foot-passenger to step through into the drains. There is sufficient grass in the streets for cows to graze, and pigs are occasionally seen there looking about for food. The Governor’s house is falling into decay, and its grand rooms are looking and smelling dusty, musty, and old. Again, the buildings erected for the higher Government officials are inhabited by smaller and feebler folk, and some of the shops are closed.
Nikolaefsk, nevertheless, from its position at the mouth of a river which is navigable so far into Asia, will probably continue its present commercial standing.[11]
There was a medical officer at Nikolaefsk, whose duty it was to examine the articles sold for food, and who during my stay lodged a complaint against a merchant for selling damaged flour, although he sold it as such, and at a reduced price. I heard Russia and Siberia spoken of as a country where capital can be placed out to great advantage. One merchant said he could easily get 6 per cent. for his money in Russia, on security which he deemed satisfactory. I have quoted in an earlier chapter the 30 or 40 per cent. given for capital at the gold-mines, and one man I met told me that in Western Siberia he made as much as 100 per cent. on a considerable portion of his capital.
My host, Mr. Emery, had come to the Amur as a boy, and began at the bottom of the ladder; but at the age of 20 he was able to count his gains by thousands. He was but 27 when we met, but was looking forward in a year or two to retire.[12]
One of the drawbacks to honest trading in Russia is the bribery which officials expect when purchasing Government supplies. An instance of bribery practised on the rivers was described to me thus: A shipping agent, for example, carries 5,000 poods of freight, for which the sender pays him at a certain rate for Government duty. At the custom-house the agent makes out his bill as having only one-tenth the real freight, and gives ten roubles each to the officers, who make out a false bill to correspond with his own. It is then signed by the head official, who receives no bribe on the spot, but occasionally drives to the agent’s office, says that he is short of money, and asks for the loan of 300 roubles or more. The agent “lends” them, not dreaming, however, to see them again. At the end of the year the agent finds himself several thousands of roubles in pocket, the higher official drives his carriage on a surprisingly small stipend, and the lower officials, having been put into their office by the higher, do not even ask for their salary, and yet manage to live in houses of their own procuring.[13]
Again, gambling and drunkenness are two principal snares besetting foreign traders in Siberia, whose time in winter hangs heavily, and where, in seaport towns, officers and large consumers expect to be frequently fêted and invited to drink. Immorality is the third snare, which leads many astray who are removed from the restraints of home, and who otherwise hold their heads above gambling and insobriety.
The trade customs of Nikolaefsk were, in some respects, superior to those in the interior,--due, no doubt, to the influence of the Germans and Americans. In the bazaars of Petersburg one has to bargain for everything. A shopman asked me, for instance, 10_s._ for a box, for which he afterwards “touted” to me, and took 7_s._ At Nikolaefsk business is done at fixed prices, and I was glad to find that, though compelled to close their stores for many hours on the greater Russian festivals, the foreign merchants, for the most part, did not open at all on Sunday.
The weather during my stay on the Lower Amur was chilly and disagreeable, and the season for garden produce was about a fortnight late. On August 19th we ate new potatoes. They cost 2½_d._ per lb., but eight days later they cost but 1_d._ per lb. Cucumbers were ready on the 10th of August, and on the 27th they were selling for 3_s._ per hundred. Eggs cost 5_s._ per hundred, fresh butter 2_s._ 3_d._ per pound, and beef from 7_d._ to 8½_d._ On August 27th we had our first spring cabbage made into little pies and eaten with soup. The price of these cabbages, to a “friend,” was 5_d._ each, but they were expected shortly to fall to 16_s._ or 20_s._ per hundred. I do not remember tasting mutton, but was informed that a good sheep weighs about half a cwt., and costs alive, at Nikolaefsk, from 22_s._ to 30_s._
In Western Siberia, about Tomsk, a sheep can be bought for 2_s._ I am told that Russians in general abhor mutton, and my informant’s housekeeper wonders the English can eat it, for she would as willingly eat cat, dog, or rat as such “garbage.” Game and fish were surprisingly plentiful. I bought in the streets at Nikolaefsk a capercailzie (called glukhar, or deaf bird) for 10_d._, which was thought by no means cheap; and a blackcock was offered for a similar price. The cost of salmon, however, was most surprising. Up to the 20th August, salmon trout, weighing from 10 to 12 lbs., cost as much as 5_d._ each, but they were then said to be dear. On the 15th August a large salmon, the first fish of the season, and weighing perhaps 15 lbs., was offered to me for 7½_d._, but this was considered quite “a fancy price.” From the 1st September to the 17th, during which period the large fish are caught, weighing from 15 lbs. to 25 lbs., they may be bought for 10_s._ per hundred, or 1_d._ each![14]
I was fortunate in finding at Nikolaefsk some English books, and among them the travels of Collins, Knox, and Ravenstein, on the Amur. The reading of these occupied much of my time, and I sometimes wandered down to the river-side--especially in the morning--to the pier, to watch the Gilyaks sell their fish.[15] Moored alongside the pier were some lighters of English build, which were failures for the particular purpose for which they had been constructed, though they made admirable landing-places. There were also several barges converted into floating shops, one of which was the property of a Frenchman, who had been a tutor in England. He dealt largely with the Gilyaks, and offered me a live eagle, obtained from them, for 6_s._; a fish-skin coat for 8_s._, and a tiger’s skin for £3 10_s._ For bear-skins he asked from 10_s._ upwards, whereas in Krasnoiarsk they sell from 10_s._ down to 3_s._ each.
Thus passed by my enforced stay at Nikolaefsk, and, after trying in vain to get a passage to Japan, I determined to retrace my steps by the post-boat, which I started to do on Saturday, 30th of August. Before proceeding southwards, however, I must give some account, in the next two chapters, of what I have been able to learn concerning Kamchatka and the island of Sakhalin.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] So rare is it for them to see a visitor to the prison in these parts, that some of the men supposed I was sent by some foreign Government to inquire into their condition; and I heard that they subsequently came to seek me with a written paper, but I was not in the house when they called. My position having been explained to them, they declined to leave the paper, and so I heard no more of the matter.
[2] They received from Government only £15 per annum for a clerk, paper, and ink, and so were unable, they said, to get books for the patients. I was glad therefore to send, and they were thankful to accept, 50 copies of the New Testament--two for every room, and the remainder to be given to departing convalescents who could read.
[3] In 1878 there entered the hospital 347 cases, suffering from 39 diseases, of which the principal were: bronchitis, 46; syphilis, 42; fevers, 39; pleuritis, 26; internal cold, 18; rheumatism, 14; and so on in diminishing numbers. During the six months immediately preceding my visit they had received but 83 patients, whilst for the entire year and a half 13 patients only had died. Besides these they had treated a large number of slight ailments of out-patients, and given advice to promiscuous applicants to the number of nearly 3,000.
[4] It was fitted for 100 male and five female patients, with superior rooms for officers, and a separate apartment for syphilitic diseases, in which last was a mad Russian soldier, who in early life had been a travelling acrobat, and who inveighed to me in French against the doctor, who, he said, kept him there in confinement. Hereditary syphilis was reported to the Emperor to be the most dangerous disease in the province, for an inquiry into which a commission of four persons, with the whole medical staff, had been appointed. In a hospital in Ekaterineburg I found half the patients, at Vladivostock one-third, and in Krasnoiarsk one-fifth, suffering from syphilis, and in Kamchatka they have a barrack for the treatment of this disease only.
[5] Thus at Perm, whilst a poor patient was received into the hospital at the rate of ten days for 5_s._, better accommodation could be secured for 1_s._ 4_d._ a day. At Vladivostock civilians paid 1_s._ 9_d._ a day, the price being fixed on a three years’ average.
[6] This probably is worse towards Kamchatka; for in 1878 there were four medical posts vacant--that of chemist at Nikolaefsk, and doctor at Sofiisk, Ghijiga, and Okhotsk respectively--not a matter for much wonder, seeing that the salary at the best was but £40 a year!
[7] This is a Semitic custom which has been retained by the Russians. Even the Emperor and all members of the Imperial family are so addressed--one reason given for the preference of the Christian to the family name being, that to be a Christian is a greater honour than to be an earthly noble.
[8] They raised it above the shoulders, holding the head of the nail in the palm, and threw it down, making the point pass through a ring, about an inch and a half in diameter, lying on the ground. The person throwing it sometimes buried it to the head in the soil, whence another had to unearth it, or it was driven through a piece of wood, from which it was another’s business to extricate it. The feat appeared very easy, but in the few attempts I made I did not succeed in sticking the pin in the ground.
[9] Perhaps it was akin to the Mazourka, which had its birthplace in Poland, for I remember witnessing a similar performance in the salt-mines of Cracow. The second dance was a national one, by a single pair, and something like a Scottish hornpipe, the man occasionally sinking down almost to the ground. Then the pair waved handkerchiefs to each other. I was told that this dance is made to represent the various stages of courtship, and that a good dancer does not go through the same figure twice. Another dance was by four couples, in which the ship’s machinist figured prominently in his heavy boots. One man also crawled on all fours, and twice passed through the extended legs of another, and so they continued till the cotton shirts of the men showed they were getting wet, and the company were growing tired.
[10] The Starovers object to smoking upon the literal meaning of the text, “That which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man.” According to Dr. Pinkerton, an ukase was issued in 1634 condemning those who took snuff, or sold or even possessed tobacco, to be knouted, to have their nostrils torn open, or ears cut off, and to be sent into exile.
[11] There came to it, in 1878, 12 merchant vessels, bringing manufactured goods to the value of £52,781; alcohol, £4,705; and wines, beer, and porter, £1,604. I was told by one of the merchants that Hamburg is the cheapest market for goods for a new country, there being more imitations made there than elsewhere, which perhaps accounts for the complaint made to the Russian Government that the imported manufactures are of the lowest quality. The same merchant told me, however, that when he imported good articles, the Russians merely admired them; but that when he imported cheap ones, they bought them.
[12] He had, indeed, already retired in a fashion; for the winter season at Nikolaefsk had become to him so insupportably dull, that for the last few years he had posted off in autumn to Petersburg and other European markets, and then, chartering a schooner of 350 tons with merchandise, he had either accompanied it round the remainder of the globe, or crossed the Atlantic to America to see his parents, and then sailed over the Pacific by the following spring. In this way he had several times made the circuit of the world, going west or east, as business or inclination decided. He allowed 18 days in winter for a sledge journey of 3,300 miles, from Moscow to Irkutsk.
[13] These and similar practices are not confined to merchants, but go down even to the isvostchiks, who come to Petersburg from the country and hire themselves to their masters by the month, having to bring in 5_s._ a day. At the end of their term the master is said to do his best to swindle the cabmen, whilst they, taking their food and scanty wages, do their best to make a picking from their fares. Sometimes, however, the biter is bitten; for driving in the capital one day my isvostchik pointed to a large building, and said that he had just brought there a well-dressed woman, who had asked him to drive at the side of the pavement, because the road was better there, she said; and then, when opposite the door, she had sprung off the low vehicle, and run in without paying.
[14] About 500 tons of them are salted yearly at Nikolaefsk, for winter use, the Government having, annually, two contracts for 16 tons, and others besides. For the most part, however, the fish of the province is consumed where it is caught, and it is only quite recently that exportation in small quantities has commenced.
[15] The plentiful season commenced on August 25th, and salmon were sold for five roubles per hundred. These were commonly used for salting, but I found that they sold pieces of dried salmon and other fish a foot long, at the rate of 1_s._ per hundred, as winter food for dogs. Among the less valued fish of the Amur are the dolphin, trout, and others, known by the name of sazan, karass, and a white fish called suig--the last being esteemed in Petersburg a delicacy.
Chapter XLVIII
KAMCHATKA.
The Upper Primorsk.--History of north-eastern maritime discovery.--Travellers in the Upper Primorsk.--The Sea of Okhotsk and fisheries.--Bush’s journey.--Okhotsk and its natives.--Kamchatka.--Its volcanoes, earthquakes, springs.--Garden produce and animals.--Kamchatdales.--Their number and character.--The Koriaks.--Their warlike spirit.--Houses of settled and wandering Koriaks.--Food.--Herds of deer.--Marriage customs.--Putting sick and aged to death.--The Chukchees.--Their habitat.--Diminution of fur animals.--Vegetation.--Intoxicating plants.--Nordenskiöld on the Chukchee coast.--Onkelon antiquities.
North-eastern Siberia, or the Upper Primorsk, is to be the subject of this chapter, for which I have chosen the title of Kamchatka as best recalling the locality. Unlike the Amur, of which we have been treating, this portion of the Sea-coast province cannot be spoken of as new; for its discovery dates back more than a century. Of late years, all eyes have been turned in this direction by the maritime achievements of Professor Nordenskiöld, who, having completed his wonderful travel by water, was being fêted at Yokohama, whilst I was lying weather-bound off the coast.[1]
During my stay at Nikolaefsk, I was further north than the capital of Kamchatka, and Petropavlovsk was distant only a few days’ sail. Intervening, however, was the Sea of Okhotsk, the mention of which so often recurs in connection with the north-eastern parts of Siberia.[2] Formerly it was much frequented by whales. The captain of the Tunguse told me at Nikolaefsk that, as a young man, he used to go to the Okhotsk Sea in a whaler; but so many of these animals had been killed, he said, that during one season they caught only three of them, which he thought poor. At Vladivostock, however, I met with Mr. Lindholm, who has a steamer and a sailing-ship engaged in the whale trade, and from him I gathered that at the present high price of whalebone, it answers well if, during a season, a boat takes two large whales.[3] The whales feed on the molluscs of the Okhotsk Sea, some of which Erman mentions as being eaten by the Chinese.[4] Whether the molluscs are less abundant than of yore, or whether so many whales have been killed that few remain, the diminution of the trade was impressed on my mind by meeting in the Primorsk several Finlanders who had left their fatherland in the expectation of speedily making their fortunes by whaling in the Okhotsk Sea; but their project proved a bubble.[5]
The only man, I believe, other than an aboriginal, who has travelled round the Okhotsk Sea, starting from Nikolaefsk, by land, is Mr. Bush, the author of “Reindeer, Dogs, and Snow-shoes,” all three of which he certainly had ample opportunity of becoming acquainted with. Nothing, perhaps, in his journey would appear more remarkable to those unacquainted with the records of Arctic travel than his sleeping, night after night, in the open air of a Siberian winter, between a couple of ordinary blankets, lined with deerskin, between which, on awaking, he sometimes found himself buried, as were his dogs, beneath recently-fallen snow. Proceeding round the coast, the first village we approach after leaving the Amur is Udskoi, with 150 inhabitants. It is situated on the river Ud, and was one of the earliest Cossack stations. Further north is Port Ayan, to which, in 1844, the American Company transferred their station for trading in fish and furs.
On the Okhota, further north, is the town of Okhotsk, which has given its name to the adjoining sea. Its population was never large, though it had a certain amount of activity before 1807, when the burdens of many thousands of horses passed through to the Russian settlements on the Pacific. It is a sorry-looking place of 200 inhabitants, though many a traveller has been glad to reach it after a severe journey from Yakutsk. The only animals kept at Okhotsk, says Mr. Knox, are cows and dogs. In summer the dogs are shrewd enough to go into the water and catch their own salmon, wading into the stream and standing, like storks, till the fish appear. The natives living on this western coast are the Lamuti, a seafaring Tunguse tribe, said to be uncorrupted from their primitive simplicity, either by the tricks of the Russian merchants or those of the aboriginal Yakutes. From Okhotsk to Nikolaefsk is a voyage of 400 miles, but there is no road by land: hence the remarkable nature of Bush’s journey.
The traveller who, from Okhotsk, wishes to visit Kamchatka may reach Petropavlovsk by sea through the Kuriles, or continue round the coast by road. The latter course takes him through Yamsk to Ghijiga, at the north of the bay, a distance of 1,100 miles. He then descends along the western coast of Kamchatka to Tigil, 760 miles further, at which point he strikes inland to a valley lying below active volcanoes, and so reaches Petropavlovsk, on the shore of the North Pacific, a land journey from Okhotsk of 2,540 miles, accomplished by deer, horses, and dogs.
Kamchatka is so called after the name of its principal river. The peninsula is 800 miles long, and from 30 to 120 miles wide; its total area being about 80,000 square miles, or five times the size of Switzerland. The southern extremity, called Cape Lopatka, is a low, narrow tongue of land, which, as it proceeds northwards, widens and rises into rocky and barren hills, with small valleys timbered with willow and stunted birch. Two degrees north the range divides, one portion running nearly due north and the other taking a north-easterly direction. In the fork formed by these two chains lies the valley of the river Kamchatka. The western chain rarely rises above 3,000 feet, but the eastern chain has many high volcanoes, among them Kluchevsky, which is somewhat higher than Mont Blanc, and not far from the sea.[6]
Earthquakes are more frequent, perhaps, in Kamchatka than in any other country. The number of shocks felt at Petropavlovsk averages eight annually.[7]
The climate of Kamchatka is much milder than in the eastern parts of the mainland. The frost sets in about the middle of October, but up to December the temperature rarely falls 10° below the freezing point of Fahrenheit, though in severe winters the thermometer sometimes sinks to 25° below zero. Snow-storms with wind, called poorgas, are prevalent in February and March. They sometimes take up whole masses of snow, and form drifts several feet deep in a few minutes, burying, it may be, travellers, dogs, and sledges, who remain thus till the storm is over. Dogs begin to howl at the approach of a poorga, and try to burrow in the snow if the wind is cold or violent.
About 50 miles west of Petropavlovsk is a remarkable warm spring, into which when you enter, says Mr. Collins, the sensation is as if the skin would be removed, whilst the stones and mud on the bottom fairly burn the feet, added to which the steam and gas, ascending from this natural caldron, fairly take away the breath. In a short time, however, bathers become red like lobsters, and find the temperature enjoyable. The water is very buoyant. It is used by the natives for all sorts of diseases.
The valley watered by the Kamchatka is composed of fine mould, and has abundant natural productions--fir, birch, larch, poplar, willow, cedar, and juniper, and that of larger size than in the same latitude elsewhere in Asia. Raspberries, strawberries, whortleberries, currants, and cranberries abound; and flowers are seen in spring in almost tropical luxuriance. There is much grass in the lower lands, and Mr. Hill records an extraordinary phenomenon in a place he visited respecting the growth and preservation of potatoes.[8] There grows, likewise, a plant in the country called by the natives krapeva, from which they make a coarse but very durable cloth. It resembles our stinging-nettle, but is of larger growth and stronger fibre.
Among the animals of Kamchatka there is none with which the traveller becomes more familiar than the dog, which is found wild on the hills. The color is usually buff or silver-grey, and in nature and disposition he resembles the mastiff and the wolf, sleeping, like the latter, more by day than by night. He is intelligent as regards his work, but not affectionate, as may be said of the steppe dogs, and has to be ruled by the rod. It is not usually safe to leave these dogs loose, for they kill fowls, deer, smaller dogs, and sometimes even children.[9] As on the Amur, they are usually fed on fish, particularly the salmon, besides which there are caught in Kamchatka, or off its coasts, the cod, herring, smelt, as also whales, walruses, and seals. The country abounds with geese, ducks, and a variety of wild fowl.
The southern part of the peninsula is inhabited by the Kamchatdales, which is the name the Russians give them; but they are called Konchalo by their neighbours the Koriaks. They have large round faces, prominent cheek-bones, small sunken eyes, flattened noses, black hair, and tawny complexions. Their language, very guttural, is largely inflexional, or composed of invariable root forms modified by prefixes. The poverty of the language may be inferred from their having but one word for the sun and moon (khiht), but still more from the circumstance that it has scarcely any names for fish or birds, which are merely distinguished by the moon in which they are most plentiful. The language is spoken in the south among the Kuriles, and in the extreme north about Penjinsk. Otherwise it is fast dying out, as is also the race. In certain parts the people are almost Russified. When Captain Cochrane travelled in Siberia, he surprised his friends by taking home a Kamchatdale wife, but this did not surprise me after meeting at Nikolaefsk, at dinner, a Kamchatdale lady who had married a Russian officer. I saw, too, at Khabarofka, and on the steamer, another Kamchatdale, of less presentable appearance--a cleric, wearing his hair in a queue, perhaps for convenience in travel. He was taken, as a boy of 10 years old, to Irkutsk to be educated; afterwards sent to be minister in a church in Russian America, and subsequently became priest of Okhotsk. He is now near Blagovestchensk, and when I saw him was sick. He looked a poor miserable creature, and was pointed out to me by Baron Stackelberg, of whom he had openly asked an alms, as “ce pauvre diable.” He appeared much pleased with some books I gave him, but was altogether about the poorest specimen of a priest I saw in Russia.
The number of the Kamchatdales, strictly so called, is estimated at 3,000. Their capital is Petropavlovsk, the only town on the eastern coast of the peninsula.[10] The little town points with pride to its two monuments, erected, one to Behring and the other to La Perouse, and its old fortifications, now covered with grass and flowers, serve to recall the defeat of the English and French allies, who attacked this village during the Crimean War.
The Kamchatdales are a people of much amiability and honesty. Their houses are always open to the stranger, whom they never weary of waiting upon, and from whom they soon forget an injury.[11] They have given up, to a large extent, their Shamanism, though they still take care, when hunting an animal, not to pronounce its name, lest they should be visited by ill luck. The Kamchatdales have not the heroic character of their neighbours the Koriaks. Their plaintive songs do not celebrate battles, but love, sledge travels, fishing, and hunting. In their dances they mimic admirably the movements of animals, bounding like the deer, running like the fox, and even entering the water to swim like the seal.
The northern half of the peninsula, and the mainland up to the 65th parallel, are inhabited by the Koriaks, their district extending laterally from the 130th meridian to Behring’s Sea, and north of this region to the Frozen Ocean live the Chukchees.[12]
The Anadir is the one river of this region worth mentioning; but flowing as it does on the polar circle, and near the limit where trees cease to grow, it traverses only solitudes without towns. The Russian garrison was obliged to abandon the small fort of Anadirsk, constructed on its banks for a fur depôt, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and the Chukchees set it on fire. It is now replaced by four little villages, with a united population of about 200, consisting of aborigines and Cossacks living a half-savage life, though speaking Russ. The Anadir, like the rest of the rivers in the Chukchee and Kamchatdale countries, is so full of fish at the breeding season that the water seems alive with them. When the shoals of salmon mount the river, the water rises like a bank, and the fish are so pressed together that they can be taken by hand. The water ceases to be drinkable, and its smell and taste become intolerable, by reason of the millions of its inhabitants in a state of decomposition.
The Koriaks seem to be related to the Chukchees, and speak a dialect approaching theirs. They are divided into settled and wandering Koriaks, the former occupying themselves in fishing, the latter as reindeer keepers and hunters. Their southern limit in Kamchatka is the village of Tigil, whither they go once a year to exchange their commodities. Travellers do not speak well of the settled Koriaks. Deprived of their herds of reindeer, they have no resource but fishing and traffic with foreign sailors and Russian dealers. The first are said to have taught them drinking and debauchery, and the second lying and stealing. They are eaten up with misery and vice, and are the most degraded of the Siberian tribes. Only the women tattoo their faces, thinking thereby to arrest the ravages of time. Their winter yourts may be classed among the most extraordinary of human habitations. They are built somewhat like a huge wooden hour-glass, 20 feet high, in the shape of the letter X, and are entered by climbing a pole on the outside, and then sliding down another through the “waist” of the hour-glass, which waist serves for door, window, and chimney. Holes are cut in the logs for climbing, but they are too small for the heavily-clad fur boots of a novice, who has, therefore, amid sparks and smoke, to hug the pole, slide down, and as best he can avoid the fire at the bottom. The interior presents a strange appearance, lighted only from above. The beams, rafters, and logs are smoked to a glossy blackness. A wooden platform, raised about a foot from the earth, extends out from the walls on three sides, to a width of six feet, leaving an open spot 8 or 10 feet in diameter in the centre for the fire, and a huge copper kettle of melting snow, in which is usually simmering fish, reindeer meat, dried salmon, or seals’ blubber with rancid oil; these make up the Koriaks’ bill of fare. When any one enters the yourt, the inmates are apprised of the fact by a total eclipse of the chimney hole. Among the wandering Koriaks an entrance to the tent is effected by creeping on the ground through a hole into a large open circle, which forms the interior. A fire burns upon the ground in the centre, and round the inner circumference of the yourt are constructed apartments called pologs, which are separated one from another by skin curtains, and combine the advantages of privacy with warmth and fugginess! These pologs are about four feet high and eight feet square. They are warmed and lighted by a burning fragment of moss floating in a wooden bowl of seal oil, which vitiates the air and creates an intolerable stench.
Mr. Kennan gives a humorous description of his first supper among the wandering Koriaks, and their substitute for bread, called manyalla, of which the original elements are clotted blood, tallow, and half-digested moss taken from the stomach of the reindeer, where it is supposed to have undergone some change fitting it for second-hand consumption. These curious ingredients are boiled with a few handfuls of dried grass, and the dark mass is then moulded into small loaves and frozen for future use. As a mark of special attention, the host bites off a choice morsel from a large cube of venison in his greasy hand, and then, taking it from his mouth, offers it to his guest.
The wandering Koriaks necessarily move their habitation frequently; for a herd of 4,000 or 5,000 deer (Mr. Bush mentions one Koriak as possessing 15,000 of them) paw up the snow, and in a very few days eat all the moss within a mile of the encampment. This independent kind of life has given to the Koriaks the impatience of restraint, independence of civilization, and perfect self-reliance, which distinguish them from the Kamchatdales and other settled inhabitants of Siberia. They are most hospitable, and the best of husbands and fathers. Mr. Kennan, during his sojourn of 2½ years among them, never saw a Koriak strike any of his belongings. They treat their animals with kindness, and will on no account sell a deer alive. A slain deer may be had for a pound of tobacco. Among the Koriaks the animal costs 10_s._, at Okhotsk from 20_s._ to 30_s._, and on the Amur £5.
Like the Kamchatdales, the Chukchees are obliged to earn their wives by working a year or more in the service of the prospective father-in-law, and even then the lover may be refused. In any case, at the wedding ceremony he has to pursue the object of his devotion through the pologs of a tent, the bridesmaids doing all they can to facilitate the passage of the bride, and, by keeping down the curtains and whipping him with switches, to hinder the progress of the bridegroom. The lover usually overtakes the maiden, however, in the last polog but one, and there they remain together for seven days and seven nights.
The treatment of the sick and aged in these regions is remarkable, for they put them to death to avoid protracted suffering. I heard the same alleged of the Gilyaks, but it was afterwards contradicted. The Koriaks look upon this as the natural end of their existence; and when they think the time come, they choose in what manner the last office of affection shall be rendered. Some ask to be stoned, and some to be killed by the hatchet or knife. All the young Koriaks learn the art of giving the fatal coup de grace as painlessly as possible.
Sometimes the younger request the old to wait a bit; but in any case immediately after death the corpse is burnt, to allow the spirit to escape into the air. Formerly, infanticide was common among them, and of twins one was always sacrificed. None of the Siberian tribes have shown such bravery in resisting the Russians as have the Koriaks and Chukchees, and some of these still retain their independence.
The Chukchee coast extends from Chaunskaia Bay, round Behring’s peninsula, to the Anadir river. The fauna of this part of Siberia is richer than in the west. Probably some of the American animals have crossed the ice of Behring’s Straits, and are mingled with those of Asia. The Alpine hare, the bear, the marmot, the weasel, the otter, are common, and wild deer roam in herds of thousands. Snakes, frogs, and toads are not found in North-Eastern Siberia nor in Kamchatka. In the latter country, however, are lizards, which are regarded as of evil omen, and when found are cut up in pieces, that they may tell no one who killed them. The country teems with lemmings, which from time to time migrate in myriads, crossing in a straight line rivers, lakes, even arms of the sea, though decimated on the way by shoals of hungry fish. Travellers are sometimes stayed for hours, waiting the marching-past of these huge armies.[13]
Many fur-bearing animals in Kamchatka and the Chukchee country have greatly diminished in number since the advent of the Russian hunters, as is the case in the neighbouring seas, where some of the species have altogether disappeared.[14]
The aspect on the two sides of Behring’s Straits is very different. America is wooded, whilst the Chukchee country has no vegetation but lichens and mosses, and from a distance looks completely bare. Among the flora, however, of North-Eastern Siberia is a peculiar mushroom spotted like a leopard, and surmounted with a small hood--the fly agaric, which here has the top scarlet, flecked with white points. In other parts of Russia it is poisonous. Among the Koriaks it is intoxicating, and a mushroom of this kind sells for three or four reindeer. So powerful is the fungus that the native who eats it remains drunk for several days, and by a process too disgusting to be described, half-a-dozen individuals may be successively intoxicated by the effects of a single mushroom, each in a less degree than his predecessor. The natives dig for roots and tubers, which serve for food or making intoxicating drinks. They eat also the green bark of the birch mixed with caviar.
In certain valleys, especially in those of Kamchatka, the grass exceeds the height of a man, and the Russian settlers make hay three times a year. The culture of cereals is of little profit; oats thrive best. Hemp has been grown, but not in sufficient quantities to replace the nettle as a textile thread. In fact, gardening has succeeded better than agriculture, and now the natives cultivate in hundreds of gardens cabbages, potatoes, beetroot, turnips, carrots, and other vegetables introduced by the Russians in the last century. All these, however, added to their other kinds of food, barely give sustenance enough to the Kamchatdales and their dogs, without which it would be almost impossible for them to leave their huts at certain times of the year. During the four months of summer they must lay up dry fish to provide for eight months of winter, and the normal amount of winter food for a pack of half-a-dozen Kamchatdale dogs is 100,000 herrings. Besides this the owner’s family must be nourished, and hence, if a bad season comes, and the fishing or hunting fails, death is certain; for to the greater part of the natives who have no deer, winter and want are synonymous terms.
It was on the Chukchee coast that the vessel of Professor Nordenskiöld--the Vega--was frozen in. The ship had continued her eastward course to the 28th September, and had arrived to within a few miles of the open water of Behring’s Straits. New ice had, however, begun to form, and the ship had passed into a narrow and shallow channel, where the crew made fast for the night, hoping to disentangle themselves in the morning without difficulty, especially as whalers had sometimes remained in these parts till the middle of October. They were disappointed, however. For at least a month the wind blew from the north, and by the 25th of November the new ice was two feet thick, so that there was no hope of getting free till the following summer. The Vega’s winter harbour was at the northernmost part of Behring’s Straits, a mile from land, and only about two miles from the point where the straits open into the Pacific, for the passage of which a single hour’s steam at full speed would have sufficed. This was disappointing to the professor’s party, but they built a magnetic observatory, made what discoveries they could in the interest of science, and formed acquaintance with the Chukchees. They describe the natives’ tents as kept at so great a heat that the children were usually naked. The women wore only a girdle, and the children sometimes ran from one tent to another without shoes or clothing in a temperature below freezing point.
Some of the party made excavations in the neighbourhood of dwelling-places of a race that was driven by the Chukchees hundreds of years ago to islands in the Polar Sea. The people were called Onkelon. Their houses were in groups, and built, or at least partly so, of whale-bones and driftwood, covered with earth, and connected by long passages with the open air and with one another. The kitchen middens contained bones of whale, walrus, seal, reindeer, etc., together with stone and bone implements, fastened by leather thongs to wooden handles.
The language of the Chukchees and Koriaks has not been reduced to writing, nor do these people attempt to express ideas by signs or pictures. The Russians, however, have attempted something towards Christianizing them, and the first missionary arrived so far back as 1704, though baptism did not become general among them till 1800. Some of the Chukchees, notwithstanding their savage and independent spirit (which has become somewhat softened in the few who have received baptism), are just and honest; and though implacable to an enemy, are staunch and true to a friend. They are only nominal subjects of Russia, and it will apparently take long before the Russian Government can hope to Christianize and civilize them.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Among early sources of information concerning voyages to the north-eastern seas, we have the “History of Kamchatka and the Kurile Islands,” translated from the Russian by Dr. Grieve in 1764. In 1802 Martin Sauer wrote an account of a geographical and astronomical expedition to the north parts of Russia, the mouth of the Kolima, to East Cape, and islands in the Eastern Ocean, performed by Commodore Joseph Billings from 1785 to 1794; and within 20 years afterwards Captain Burney published a chronological history of north-eastern voyages of discovery, and of the early eastern navigation of the Russians; but these brought us no further than 1819. The admirable “Géographie Universelle” of M. Réclus (by far the best geographical work on Siberia I have met with) gives a map showing the routes not only of the principal travellers by land, but also furnishes an excellent account of Siberian maritime discoveries down to the present day.
To confine ourselves more particularly to Kamchatka, we have the travels in 1787-8 of M. de Lesseps, Consul of France, and interpreter to the Count de la Perouse, who landed in the peninsula, and thence made his way by land round the northern coast of the Okhotsk Sea, and crossed Asia and Europe to Paris. A quarter of a century later, Peter Dobell followed the same route, and was deserted by his Tunguse guides in the vicinity of Okhotsk, which town, however, he at length reached, and crossed Siberia to Europe. Accounts of remarkable travels in this part of the country have been written by two Americans--Messrs. Bush and Kennan--who went, in 1865, to make preliminary surveys for a proposed route for telegraph wires intended to traverse Behring’s Straits from America, continue across the peninsula, and round the Sea of Okhotsk to Nikolaefsk, and thence to the Chinese frontier. The enterprise was ultimately abandoned, but not till the country had been surveyed from the straits to the mouth of the Amur, in doing which these authors passed through portions of country untravelled by foreigners before.
For a short account of the early exploration of Siberia by sea and land, see Appendix E.
[2] It is a great gulf shut in from the North Pacific Ocean by the promontory of Kamchatka, and a chain of islands reaching down to Japan It measures from 1,200 to 1,400 miles from north to south, and from 700 to 800 miles from east to west, the greatest depth being 700 yards.
[3] It was curious to hear that whales are now more shy than formerly, and that the whalers dare not row their boats, but must sail them to the monsters, who are then sometimes frightened away even by the baling out of water. I learned, too, that in the Sea-coast province they have great difficulty in procuring a sufficiency of suitable sailors for the trade; for although ordinary seamen will do for a part of the crew, there ought to be about eight of the officers and men who are experts.
[4] I saw a considerable number of dried trepangs, or sea-snails, at Vladivostock, worth in China 30 dollars the pickle of 133 lbs., say 1_s._ a lb. The Chinese employ them in the preparation of a nutritious soup in common with sharks’ fins, edible birds’ nests, and an esculent seaweed, or cabbage, of which last 3,000 tons are taken yearly from the bays of the Sea-coast province.
[5] They sailed round Cape Horn to Siberia, but met with foul weather, which delayed them for a whole season, and initiated their failure. Not having the means to return to Finland, they were getting their living as best they could. The commander of the Onon, Captain Stjerncreutz, was one of them. I discovered that he was a cousin of Miss Heijkel, my fellow-passenger in Finland in 1876, who, to help me in procuring a horse, introduced me to the family I have mentioned at Wasa. This was the third Finlander I chanced to meet in Siberia with whom I could claim a sort of acquaintance.
[6] Many ranges of terraces and secondary summits surround the mountain as with an enormous pedestal, so that its base has a circumference of not less than 200 miles. The fissured summit constantly smokes, and twice or thrice a year throws out cinders. Ashes and dust have sometimes been carried to a distance of 180 miles, and covered the ground many inches deep, preventing the Kamchatdales from sledging. An eruption in 1737 ejected much lava, and this, dissolving the glaciers, poured into the neighbouring valleys a deluge of waters. In 1854 another stream of fire descended from Mount Kluchevsky. From the crater of the Avasha, immediately behind Petropavlovsk, have been thrown at the same time stones, lava, and water. The following are some of the active volcanoes: Korakovsky, 11,200 feet; Chevelutch, 10,529; Jupanof, 8,478; Avatcha, 8,344; and the Great Tolbach, 7,618; whilst, of the extinct volcanoes, Uchkin is the highest, with an elevation of 10,977 feet.
[7] Mr. Hill describes one lasting no less than eight minutes. During the whole of this time rumbling and loud noises were heard beneath the ground, and the earth trembled violently. Some of those who experienced it said they thought at one moment that the earth was sinking beneath them, and the sea about to rush in upon the land, and the next that they were rising upon the crust of the crater of a volcano in terrible eruption beneath the ground.
[8] Admiral Ricord, a former governor of Kamchatka, imported potatoes for seed, and they were planted, but not taken up the following autumn. The next year, being found abundant and good, they were allowed to remain, where, dying and propagating continually, they yielded more than were locally required. Mr. Hill accounts for the phenomenon by the fact that neither damp nor frost could reach the potatoes; for though in winter the snow covers the surface of the frozen ground, yet so great in this vicinity is the internal volcanic heat that the earth is quite dry, and never frozen below a few inches from the surface.
[9] They love sledging, and upon a journey of four or five days will work from 14 to 16 hours out of the 24 without tasting food, the idea of their masters being that, when travelling, the less food the dogs receive, short of starvation, the better. The travelling sledge weighs about 25 lbs. (a freight sledge is heavier), and a good team will travel from 40 to 60 miles a day. When running, they must be paired with dogs known to each other from puppies; and, should they happen to cross the scent of a deer, so fond are they of its flesh that they sometimes become utterly unmanageable, upset the sledge (or nartee, as it is called), and leave the driver, it may be, to perish in the snow.
[10] It is situated on the right shore of the splendid Bay of Avatcha, which may claim with Rio Janeiro and San Francisco to be one of the finest harbours in the world. It is perfectly protected from the winds, and, transplanted to a more favourable position, it might be one of the greatest of markets; but since the fishery of the whale in the surrounding seas has lost its importance, Petropavlovsk has sunk from a place of 1,000 inhabitants to one of 500. Mr. Dobell, who lived in the peninsula five years, says that he found there many dykes and mounds, from the existence of which he argues that the country was once thickly populated.
[11] Their hospitality is carried even to excess. They visit one another, for instance, during a month or six weeks, until the generous host, finding his stock exhausted, gives the hint by serving up a dish called “tolkootha,” a hodge-podge, composed of meat, fish, and vegetables; upon which the guests depart the following day.
[12] The Russian calendar gives the following numbers to these peoples: Kamchatdales, 4,360; Koriaks, 5,250; and Chukchees, 12,000. Mr. Kennan, however, doubts this, and thinks that they do not exceed 5,000 altogether.
[13] The industrious little creatures store up their grain and roots underground, covering them, it is said, before their migration, with poisonous plants, to hinder other animals from eating them. The Kamchatdales, in times of necessity, help themselves to these stores, but do not fail to replace what they take by caviar, or remains of fish, that they may not alarm such benevolent purveyors.
[14] Whalers have now to go much further north for their prey; the sea-otter, with its precious skin, and the sea-lion are rarely seen on the strand and rocks of Behring’s isle, and the sea-cow is completely exterminated. The sea-bear, as Réclus calls it, but which I suspect is that we know as the seal, was threatened also with extermination, until the Americans purchased the monopoly of taking them on Russian territory.
Chapter XLIX
THE ISLAND OF SAKHALIN.
Geographical description.--Meteorology.--Flora and fauna.--Population.--Cultivation.--Mineral products.--Coal-mine at Dui and penal settlement.--Prison statistics.--Flogging.--Desperate criminals.--Complaints of prison food.--Prison labour.--Difficulties of escape.--Prison executive and alleged abuses.--General opinion on Siberian prisons.--Comparison of Siberian and English convicts.
Sakhalin (or Saghalien), an island nearly as large as Portugal, was not generally known to be an island until a century ago.[1] A gloomy interest now attaches to it, because of late years the Russians have been deporting thither a large proportion of their criminal convicts, so that it promises to be the Siberian prison of the future.
As Sakhalin extends over eight degrees of latitude, the climate varies considerably; but at the best, in Aniva Bay, it cannot be called other than severe, for while the latitude is the same as that of Lombardy, the average temperature is that of Archangel. Besides this low temperature, the climate is one of great humidity. At Kusunai, in the south of the island, 250 days in the year are foggy or rainy, and the east coast is worse.
The vegetation of the island resembles that of the neighbouring Manchu mainland, with the addition of some of the species common to the Japanese archipelago, and among them a sort of bamboo, which, attaining to the height of a man, covers whole mountains. Certain American species also mingle with the Asiatic flora, so that out of 700 kinds of phanerogamous plants, not more than 20 belong specially to Sakhalin. The plants on the lowest grounds resemble those of the opposite continent. The mountain slopes to the height of 500 yards are clothed with conifers, and higher are birches and willows, above which are the thick dark branches of creeping shrubs. The animals found on the island resemble those of the continent, and the tiger at times crosses the ice on the Mamia Strait to the northern portions; though no specimen has been seen in the south, nor did the Aïnos at the advent of the Russians know that animal even by name.
The population of the island is reckoned at 15,000. To the north are about 2,000 Gilyaks. In the centre are the Oroks, or Orochi--Tunguses of the same stock as the Manguns and Orochons of the Lower Amur; and in the south are the Aïnos. These last are thought to have been the aboriginal population, not only of Sakhalin and of the Kuriles, but of the Japanese islands also. They have been driven to their present locality by the Gilyaks and Oroks from the north, and by the Japanese from the south, and the slavery to which the Japanese fishermen have reduced them has contributed alike to their diminution and their moral degradation.[2]
Judging from a photograph I chanced to procure of an Aïno, they have large and wide cheeks, a narrow forehead, and eyes not so elongated as with the Chinese races, and their appearance is more European. The Aïno’s ample beard and moustache are worthy of a Russian. The Japanese, representing, with the Russians, the “upper classes” in Sakhalin, have established fishing-stations along the southern coast of the island, managed by a population who live there for the season without their families. On the south-eastern shore live 700 Chinese, engaged in gathering trepangs and sea-cabbage. Réclus mentions a trade in this last from the Bay of Paseat, in the south of the province, of £400 in 1864, £13,500 in 1865, £40,000 in 1866. The natives subsist on fish, and eat no bread. I was told at Khabarofka that the Aïnos contrive to make an intoxicating drink called sakhe--probably that described by Miss Bird as obtained from the root of a tree--which, to attain their highest notion of happiness, they drink to beastly intoxication. As for the Russians in Sakhalin, nearly all are in the military or prison service, and are supplied with provisions by the Government, the resources of the island being utterly inadequate. I heard that a large proportion of the convicts are employed in farming on a considerable scale, but the cultivation of cereals and vegetables, and the raising of cattle, have not yet, I think, made much progress. Whether they can ever thrive in more than a certain number of sheltered valleys is doubtful.
The Russian military posts are all by the sea. Dui is the principal, situated about the middle of the western coast. On the shores of Aniva Bay are the Korsakoff barracks, with a garrison of 500 soldiers. Muravieff, near this, is a military post, and its port is perhaps the best, or rather the least bad, in the island; for along a coast of 1,200 miles Sakhalin has not a single harbour where vessels can anchor in real safety.
The island was held for a time jointly by Russia and Japan, and the latter was not altogether disposed to give up her portion; but the importation of convicts soon brought the Japanese to terms, and the Russians are now sole masters. I am not aware that it has any metals, though I heard of a surface iron-mine on the opposite coast near to Nikolaefsk, belonging to Mr. Boutyn of Nertchinsk, which it was said might be worked for scores of years without exhaustion, the mine being similar in character to that which I saw in the Urals. The one mineral production of Sakhalin is coal, of which 70,000 tons were raised in 1878. I heard the coal spoken of as good, but small. Recently it has been described as “dusty nut-coal, suitable for smithy work, but not for steaming.” Coal at Sakhalin costs more than in Japan or Australia. The mines are let out by the Government to a company, which from the first has seen small prosperity.[3]
The mention of the mines, and of those who work them, leads me to speak of the prisons, about which I have official statistics. I obtained information from several military and naval officers; also from a soldier, a prison officer, and a civilian, all of whom had been to Sakhalin, and most of whom spoke as eye-witnesses. At Dui, it would seem, there are four large prisons. I heard of them, from one who had lived in the island, as insufficiently heated in winter, and over-crowded. Another report, sent secretly by a prisoner to my exile informant, corroborated the alleged want of space. They said, however, that additional buildings were in course of erection.[4]
The number of prisoners in the island in 1879 was about 2,600; half were reported to be in prison, the remainder comparatively free. The Sakhalin convicts are for the most part murderers, vagabonds, and runaways, there being no “politicals” among them.[5]
Dui is one of the three places where the authorities may use, in addition to the birch, the troichatka or plète, which I have described (vol. i., p. 92). I have no trustworthy information as to the frequency with which flogging is inflicted. At Tiumen the prison director said that, of 80,000 exiles who had passed through his hands in four years, he had flogged only one. This, perhaps, is an extreme in one direction. An exile, purporting to give information he had received from a prisoner at Dui, and also translating into French what was supposed to be addressed to me by a Russian soldier from Sakhalin, said that Tuesday and Saturday were flogging days at Dui, and that they flogged from 40 to 50 a week. This, I afterwards learned, was very much exaggerated; and I had strong suspicions at the time that my interpreter was making up a story for my note-book, which he saw me writing. It is, in fact, difficult to know what is the truth, as so much exaggeration has been used concerning the flogging of Russian prisoners.[6]
I saw at Nikolaefsk the wooden kobyla, or “mare,” on which the culprit is laid; it is preferable, I should think, to the birching “horse” in the Middlesex prison, Coldbath Fields, though, of course, there can be no comparison between the birch and the plète. The latter is a truly fearful instrument, but it is right to remember that the Russians use it for the more part on such as we should hang outright. Corporal punishment cannot be inflicted in Russia on a free man for a first offence. Only the worst offenders are sent so far east as the localities where the plète exists; and according to the law (Article 808) this punishment is reserved for those who, condemned to hard labour, have committed further crime in Siberia, where it would seem there are not wanting some desperate characters.
When we passed through Ekaterineburg, for instance, a horrible incident had occurred only four days previously. A man had entered brandy-shops, ordered drink, and then presented a revolver to the salesmen if they dared to require payment, and had treated isvostchiks in a similar manner. He was summoned before the court, but through some technicality got off, and subsequently told one of his prosecutors that he would kill the lot of them; whereupon a number of isvostchiks set upon him, and wounded him with 30 stabs. Some four or five were awaiting trial at the time of my visit. Again, a murder took place during my stay at Nikolaefsk, at a small drinking-shop in the town, kept by a man and his wife. Two soldiers were in the habit of going there, and at night one said, “Let us go and kill those two and get what brandy we want.” Accordingly, very early in the morning, they went, knocked at the door, and, on the man opening it, one of the soldiers stabbed him. The other, after some difficulty, killed the wife, and all but cut off her head. A serving woman narrowly escaped stabbing, but rushed out of the window and told the police. The soldiers were called out, and the two men identified, whereupon they both confessed their crime, and were taken to the guard-house to await legal proceedings, which would consign them, not to death, but to hard labour, it was supposed, in Sakhalin, for 15 or 20 years.
I think the worst thing I heard of Dui was about the prisoners’ food. From two or three independent sources I was told that they did not get enough. For some weeks one year they were reduced to a pound and a half of bread a day, in consequence of an insufficient quantity of flour having been sent to the island,--or, rather, by reason of the ice breaking up that season so late that a fresh supply could not be forwarded. Again, a naval officer told me that he had seen the convicts, when bringing coal to his vessel, pick up and eat the scraps which the seamen had thrown away. I should not think much of this, however, for when I was on board a Russian man-of-war I saw fragments of seamen’s biscuit tossed overboard such as any hungry man might well be thankful for, and which, being of superior flour, a convict would naturally relish in preference to his ordinary rye bread.
The soldier who came from Sakhalin told me that the prison fare consisted, on four days a week, of 3 lbs. (Russian) of bread and ¼ lb. of meat, and on three days, of 3 lbs. of bread and 1 lb. of fish, which is the quantity of bread allowed to the soldiers there, and exceeds the weight of bread given to English prisoners. It should be added that one of my informants said the prisoners gambled. Cards, with brandy at an exorbitant price, they manage to smuggle into the prison, and then play for their food. Goryantchikoff draws a vivid picture of this practice carried on at night. When all are supposed to be asleep, a piece of carpet is spread, a candle lighted, and a sentinel posted. The card-playing then begins, and often does not cease till morning; and the prisoners, having no money, stake their food and clothes. It is not matter for surprise, therefore, if some of the prisoners find themselves with insufficient or very bad clothing, the frequent cause of which should be borne in mind in connection with the reckless statements sometimes published respecting the clothing of Russian prisoners.
Making due allowance for exaggeration, however, I am disposed to think that there is real cause for complaint regarding the food at Dui, as to quality, if not quantity.[7] There are certain local circumstances which would render it likely that the prisoners’ food in the Sea-coast province, and especially Sakhalin, would not be so satisfactory as in Western Siberia. The cost of provisions is very much higher in the east, and the Government does not appear to allow proportionately increased payment.[8]
Testimony went in the opposite direction as regards the prisoners’ labour, and all seemed of opinion that they were not overworked. The agricultural convicts, from the great length and severity of the winter, are idle the greater part of the year. The Polish exile said, indeed, that the work was harder than at Kara, and that if the allotted amount of work were unfinished, the miners were flogged; but when the yearly output amounts to only 70,000 tons, it speaks for itself that the getting of this quantity and loading the ships therewith is a mere trifle for 1,000 or 1,500 men; and as in the other penal colonies of Siberia, convicts suffer more, I judge, from inactivity than from overwork. The miners spend 11 hours a day in the mine, from eight to noon and one till eight; and then return to their barracks or houses, not working, a German told me, so hard as English miners. One officer, who had been much in Dui, said that the daily task of a prisoner was not more than he himself could do in a couple of hours of really hard work, and that the men are idle and spin out the work.
Another, in answer to my question, replied that there was no difference perceptible in the general health of the convict miners and farmers; and the traveller I have quoted from the North China Herald goes so far as to say, “The conclusion we arrived at was, that contentment prevailed throughout, even the convicts giving no evidence of discontent.”
To escape from the prisons of Dui has been comparatively easy, but it is almost impossible to get far away, owing to the scarcity of provisions and the nature of the country; and the difficulty will no doubt be increased when the cable is laid[9] from De Castries Bay to Dui. From this spot the runaway must first walk 200 miles along the coast, and this through a country where he can get no provisions. He dare not show himself to the natives, since there is a price on his head, and they receive 6_s._ for taking him to the police, dead or alive; and even if he should succeed in crossing the six miles of ice to the continent, he is often compelled to give himself up to get food. Thus, out of 100 who were reported to have run away the winter before my journey, 32 were caught by the Gilyaks, and one case of cannibalism was said to have taken place among the starving fugitives. A terrible instance of the difficulty of procuring food in the Amur region occurred in 1856, when a battalion of soldiers was dispatched in September from Nikolaefsk up the river to Shilkinsk Zavod. They were overtaken by winter, and were compelled to draw lots as to who should be eaten. The survivors walked on the ice and arrived in safety. Mr. Emery told me he had more than once seen hungry runaways give themselves up to the authorities. Runaways when caught are flogged; but this does not prevent others from making the attempt to escape. During my stay at Nikolaefsk a rumour spread that a third of the prisoners landed by the Nijni Novgorod had escaped, having in their possession 30 revolvers; and as the small Cossack station on the island opposite the mouth of the Amur had only 15 men, it was feared they would be in a plight. Within a day or two the reported numbers sank to one-half, and I have since learned that 40 was the number--some newly arrived and others older convicts, and that 27 were caught.
With regard to the prison executive, there is a resident priest in Sakhalin; and since my visit a schoolmistress has been sent for the convicts’ children, who are kept in prison. I sent a supply of Scriptures and tracts for the prisoners and soldiers at Dui and Aniva Bay. In the Nijni Novgorod, too, there came out a priest and an assistant bringing with them a number of ecclesiastical books. The assistant and books had been sent, I believe, by the Consistorium, from which the priest at Vladivostock, at the time of my visit, was expecting £40 worth of ecclesiastical literature. To every 100 prisoners in Dui there are one superior and two under officers, all of whom are miserably paid. The usual charges of peculation and using for their own advantage the prisoners’ work are brought against them; but with what amount of truth I cannot say. The most shameful abuse I heard of concerning Sakhalin was that formerly the female prisoners were allowed clandestinely to go on board the ships whilst coaling, and were expected, on their return, to share with the warders their licentious gains. This came from a prison official, but I cannot answer for its truth; though when I asked a Russian doctor if it was at all likely to be true, he thought it not improbable, and said that he had no doubt female prisoners could, by payment to under officers, get release for an occasional promenade. To what depths of rascality some of the prison authorities may descend, I know not; but one officer, of whom I thought highly, told me that he had been sometimes appointed to inspect Siberian prisons, and in one of them, which he named, he found the director had committed such frauds that, could he have hanged him, he would have done so. As it was, he reported him to his chief, and the man was removed. On the sea coast they say the heaven is high and the Tsar is far off; and a bribe goes a long way in diverting the hand of justice. For instance, one merchant declared that released convicts had sometimes stolen his goods, but that he could not get them punished because the offenders bribed the police. At Nikolaefsk they testified that one convict, a murderer, who ought to have been fast in prison, was allowed, for handsome payment, the run of the streets; though, like John Bunyan in Bedford Gaol, he was obliged to be in prison when inspectors came. This may be sufficiently shocking to English readers, but not less so, perhaps, the following from nearer home. When visiting one of the largest and best-managed prisons of England, and pointing to the warders in broadcloth, I said to the gentleman conducting me, “Do you think these men can be reached by a bribe?” To which he replied, “I have not the smallest doubt of it; they bring in tobacco and eatables to the cells, and we are powerless to prevent it. A prisoner, for instance, informs his warder as to the whereabouts of his friends, and perhaps asks him to call. On doing so the warder can inquire, ‘What would you like me to do for your friend who is under my charge? and what will you give me for doing it?’” A simple-minded woman, in her innocence, came one day to the chaplain of a prison I know, complaining that it “cost her so much to get little comforts to her incarcerated husband”; and then came out the story of the warder’s exactions, which at last had exhausted her means and patience!
The reader will have observed that, in speaking of Sakhalin, I have only given the testimony of others, as I did not go to the island. I entered one prison only after leaving Nikolaefsk--that of Vladivostock, and I may here, therefore, sum up my personal experience of Siberian prisons.
I have met with a deep and almost universal conviction that the prisons of Siberia, compared with those of other countries, are intolerably bad. This I cannot endorse. A proper comparison would be between the Russian sent to Siberia and the English convict as formerly transported to Botany Bay; but, comparing the convicts of the two nations as they now are, and taking the three primary needs of life--clothing, food, and shelter--the Russian convict proves to be fed more abundantly, if not better, than the English convict; and the clothing of the two, having regard to the dress of their respective countries, is very similar. The floors of Siberian cells are not of polished oak, as in Paris, nor are the walls of stone slabs, as in York. Siberian prisons have not fittings of burnished brass, with everything neat and trim, as at Petersburg; but then, neither have the houses of the Siberian people. The average peasant, taken from his izba to prison, need experience no greater shock than does the average English criminal when confined in jail. A convict’s labour in Siberia is certainly lighter than in England; he has more privileges; friends may see him oftener, and bring him food;[10] and he passes his time, not in the seclusion of a cell, nor under imposed silence, but among his fellows, with whom he may lounge, talk, and smoke.
I am now looking at things from a prisoner’s point of view, and referring more especially to his animal requirements. When we look at his intellectual, moral, and religious nature, then it must be allowed my former comparison, as between Russian and English prisons, no longer holds good. The English convict, if unlettered, is compelled to attend school; the Siberian is left in ignorance. In the case of the English prisoner, some attempt, at all events, is made at his moral reformation. When he enters the prison, and on subsequent occasions, it is the chaplain’s duty to see him privately; and having learned, if possible, his moral condition, to point out the cause of his fall, and to show him the way to rise; and these efforts are attended with more success than is known to the general public. Once more, the English prisoner has opportunity of daily religious worship--in some establishments twice a day, religious instruction twice a week or oftener, and this sometimes ends in the happy result that going to prison proves the turning-point of a life.
But I can hardly conceive this happening to a Siberian prisoner. Chaplains, in our sense of the word, are unknown; and even if the criminal be softened at the thought of leaving home or friends, or otherwise, he is turned loose among a herd of sinners more wicked perhaps than himself, with the imminent probability that he will speedily become as abandoned as they. If condemned to hard labour, he is robbed of the Sunday and attendance at church; there is none to point him to higher and better things, and hence he too often becomes a wreck both for this world and the next. Once more, there are in England voluntary agencies meeting the prisoner on his release with an endeavour to minister to his temporal and spiritual good, so that, if he desire to lead a reformed life, he is helped to do so; and there are hundreds of former inhabitants of our prisons who to-day are respectable members of society. But in regard to the spiritual good of the Siberian prisoner, the Russian system is sadly deficient. The exile, it is true, is settled in a village, in possession of land where, if he chooses to work, he may satisfy his wants, and, as regards material things, begin life anew; but he is known as a convict, and too often does not care to retrieve his character. A doctor, holding a high position in Siberia, told me that he thought the convicts, when released, did not as a rule become reformed. They find difficulty, he said, in persuading peasants to give them their daughters in marriage; and if they marry released female convicts, these have almost always been women of bad character, who bear no children. Hence the men, having no home, often work during the week only to supply immediate wants, and to save enough for a drink on Sunday. Such was his testimony, from which it would appear that Siberia furnishes another illustration of the truth that reformation, to be worthy of the name, except on a religious basis, is impossible.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] This is to some extent indicated by its name, “Sahalin ula hota,” that is, “Rocks at the mouth of the Black River,” in keeping with which idea, on Cook’s map of 1784. Sakhalin is but a small islet near the Gulf of the Amur. Other maps, published later, represent Sakhalin as a peninsula. It was left to the Russian Admiral Nevilskoy, 30 years ago, to lay down with accuracy the shores of the island and the Strait of Mamia Rinso, by which it is separated from the continent. Sakhalin is about 600 miles long, with an estimated area of 32,000 square miles, and traversed length-wise by a mountain chain with craggy summits. The coast is for the most part rocky and steep, but opposite the mouth of the Amur it consists of sandy downs. Similar downs are found, too, on the eastern side of the island. None of the mountains reach the line of perpetual snow, but several lift their bare grey summits above the limit of vegetation. The island has two large indentations--one on the eastern coast, called the Bay of Patience, and another at the south, called Aniva Bay; also two rivers, each about the length of the Thames, and some smaller streams flowing through arable valleys. It has likewise three lakes, the largest of which is 50 miles long.
[2] I am not aware that any efforts have been made for the educational or spiritual improvement of the Aïnos of Sakhalin. Veniaminoff reduced to writing the language of the neighbouring Kuriles, published a grammar, and translated the Gospel of St. Matthew, which was printed at Moscow in 1840. When at Hakodate I was informed that the missionaries contemplated work among the Aïnos in Yesso, the northern island of Japan, and I found this, on my return, to be desired by the late Henry Wright, Honorary Secretary of the Church Missionary Society, but I am not aware that any efforts have yet been put forth for the Aïnos of Sakhalin.
[3] It has the right to employ 400 convicts, for which they pay to the Government, says Mr. Réclus, from 9_d._ to 1_s._ 6_d._ per man per day; but I heard that it was at a certain rate per pood of coal obtained. The company are supposed to supply the Government ships with 5,000 tons yearly, if required, at 18_s._ a ton; but in 1878 less than 700 tons were so disposed of.
[4] A traveller writing in the North China Herald of August 5th last, describing what he saw of the convicts in Sakhalin, says: “They lived in barracks which from the outside appeared to be large, airy, and commodious. One evening we went to one of them, in which about 1,000 convicts were ranged in the courtyard. We passed round the building and saw that, for ventilation and comfort, arrangements of the most complete kind had been made.” But I think he speaks of Korsakovsk, south of Dui, where there were in 1881, as I learn from official sources, 450 male and female convicts with their families.
[5] The following list gives, for the five years preceding my visit, the number of persons condemned to hard labour and sent from European Russia by road to the Sea-coast government and Sakhalin, and who, on their arrival, were distributed to Nikolaefsk, Dui coal-mines, Dui farm, and in small numbers to Aniva Bay. It shows the number remaining over annually from the previous year, the number of additions, of departures by death, finished terms, or removal elsewhere, and the number remaining:--
| From | | | | last year.| Arrivals.| Departures. | Remaining. 1874 | 962 | 759 | 1,011 | 710 1875 | 710 | 1,919 | 1,503 | 1,126 1876 | 1,126 | 2,412 | 2,039 | 1,499 1877 | 1,499 | 1,494 | 1,429 | 1,564 1878 | 1,564 | 1,116 | 988 | 1,692
Taking a rough average, I find a proportion of 18 women convicts to 100 men. Further details respecting these convicts for 1878 will give some idea as to their crimes. There were sent to Nikolaefsk 476 men and 62 women. Of the men, 98 were removed to Dui, and 378 remained on the continent--300 on the Upper Amur, and 70 in the Primorsk province.
These 378 men were convicted of the following crimes:--
Murder 155 Vagrancy and assuming false names 55 Running away 52 Highway robbery 39 Theft 17 Robbery with violence 9 Arson 4 Insubordination to authorities 13 Counterfeiting money 3 Seduction 3 Incest 3 Removing railway irons 1 Crimes not mentioned 24
The crimes of the 62 women were as follows:--
Murdering husbands 28 Murdering illegitimate children 6 Murdering other persons 17 Arson 7 Theft 1 Highway Robbery 1 Counterfeiting money 1 Vagrancy 1
[6] Goryantchikoff, in “Buried Alive,” says a good deal about flogging, but some of his writing refers to the condition of things 50 years ago, and some of it is, to say the least, questionable; as, for instance, he had heard a story of an executioner giving 50 strokes or so more than was decreed, because the culprit was stubborn and did not ask pity. When I witnessed a birching at Nikolaefsk, a Cossack stood by, counting aloud every stroke; and when the plète is administered, a medical officer and others are obliged to be present. It is very unlikely, therefore, that a lictor would dare to give 50 extra strokes, even if he wished to do so. But, further, Goryantchikoff says, “400 or 500 strokes of a birch rod are almost sure to kill a man, and 1,000 strokes will kill the strongest man; but the same number of strokes with a cane will hardly injure a man of moderate constitution.” And yet I have quoted the case of a soldier at Nikolaefsk birched with 1,100 strokes, who, a fortnight afterwards, saucily declared that he would receive them again for a bottle of brandy!
[7] A civil officer, whom I know, was told of complaints about the food, to which he replied, “What can I do? They now get the supply of fish by contract, and allow so small a sum that I know it cannot be good. I can only bring the matter before my superiors, and, if they do nothing, I am powerless. I cannot pay it out of my own pocket!” Again, a naval officer told me that, in taking across provisions to the island, the smell of the fish on board was almost insupportable. The fish, he said, were bad, and the salt meat bad, though the bread was good.
[8] Thus I met with a gentleman who was elected director of the local committee for the prison at Nikolaefsk, to whom, for many years, the Government allowed only 13 kopecks per day to provide food for each prisoner. The committee petitioned for 25 kopecks a day, and it received 17, at which rate he believed it now stands. At that time 17 kopecks represented about 6_d._ a day, now they represent only 4½_d._ But three pounds of rye bread at Nikolaefsk cost 15 kopecks, and thus there was less than 1_d._ left for other kinds of food. The result, in the case of my informant, was that he often put his hand in his own pocket to the extent of £20 or £30 a year; but it is not likely that many can be found thus to act, especially in such a place as Sakhalin, where there is no colony, and the free inhabitants are very few. There is no philanthropic committee there at all, so that the management of the exiles is left solely to the administrative authorities. My informant said that the corn sent to Dui was good, but that the meat and fish were always bad, and that, in fact, the convicts scarcely ever got meat at all.
[9] Alluded to in the North China Herald of August 5th, 1881.
[10] The best conduct of an English convict would not entitle him to a visit from friends oftener than once in three months, and they may not bring him anything.
Chapter L
THE USSURI AND SUNGACHA.
From Nikolaefsk to Khabarofka.--Proposal to move the port.--Military forces in the province.--Departure for Kamen Ruiboloff.--The Ussuri.--Visit to a parish priest.--The native Goldi.--Missions of the Russian Church.--Pay of missionaries.--Head waters of Ussuri.--The Sungacha.--Cossacks.--Visit to a Cossack stanitza.--Chinese houses.--Lake Khanka.--Arrival at Kamen Ruiboloff.
On Saturday night, August 30th, I left Nikolaefsk for Khabarofka, pleased with the prospect of travelling 700 miles where no English or American author had gone before. By Sunday morning we reached Tyr, and Mariinsk and Sophiisk were passed on Monday.[1]
As we approached Khabarofka, on Thursday evening, summer appeared to have returned. The small steamer bound for the Ussuri did not start for 24 hours after our arrival, and so I had another day in Khabarofka, which just then was in a state of excitement. General Tichmeneff was there, with a commission sent to the Sea-coast government, to consider whether or not it was desirable to move the port from Vladivostock. In early years Ayan, and next Petropavlovsk, was the Russian port in the Pacific; then it was removed to Nijni Kamchatka, afterwards to Nikolaefsk, and from thence, in 1865, to Vladivostock. From a strategic point of view the situation of Vladivostock was considered unsatisfactory, and when it looked possible, in 1878, that England and Russia might go to war, the apprehensions of the authorities were aroused, and some of the foreign merchants of the port, preferring not to run the chance of a siege, decamped to Japan. The question then was whether the Government should spend some £300,000 or £400,000 in the defence of Vladivostock, to make it a military as well as a naval stronghold, or move to another harbour that could be more easily fortified. This was the talk of the province during my stay, and steam, telegraph, and postal services seemed busy in doing the behests of the commission. I caught sight of the general as he and his staff embarked on the Onon for Nikolaefsk; and I have since heard that he has been appointed military governor of the province, to live at Khabarofka, whilst Vladivostock continues as the head-quarters of the fleet, and Admiral Erdmann has been recalled to Russia, and is now Governor of the Port of Reval.
I made it my business to call upon Major Evfanoff, the commandant, as I wished to place Scriptures in the barracks, and to give other reading material for distribution among soldiers and Cossacks. At Nikolaefsk I had entrusted upwards of 1,200 books and tracts to Colonel Ossipoff, which he distributed during my stay; also at Sophiisk I left a parcel of 500 with Colonel Ussufovitch.[2] The major expressed his willingness to carry out my wishes at Khabarofka, though he did not see how the books could be allowed to lie safely in the barrack-rooms for every one’s use. I was therefore obliged to ask him to carry out my intentions in the way that was most feasible, and he subsequently told me that the soldiers were highly pleased, and thankful for the distribution.
Besides the books left for the barracks and hospital, I did a stroke of business with the merchant Plusnin, selling him a bundle of 250 tracts, hoping thereby to get them distributed; and had not my stock failed, I would gladly have sold to him, or sent to Blagovestchensk, some copies of the Scriptures for the Molokans, who, I heard, are the largest purchasers, as I suppose they are the greatest readers, of the Scriptures on the Amur. Thus, having done what I could for Khabarofka, I prepared to leave it on Friday night, September 5th.
The steamboat agents and officials were exceedingly kind to me, apparently out of regard to what I was doing. A man said at Nikolaefsk that the chief director had been staying with him, and had he known that I was coming on such an errand, he should certainly have asked for me a free passage. As it was, the clerk would not hear of taking anything for the carriage of “the holy books,” and a first-class cabin was given for my sole use at a second-class fare, and this was repeated on the Ussuri.[3] The great General Tichmeneff had been the last occupant of my cabin, and it was draped with Brussels carpet, apparently new, the stately proportions of the room being 6 feet long by 4 broad and 7 high, which I feared his Excellency, who was bigger than I in more senses than one, must have found exceedingly small.
The Ussuri, after the Sungari, is the most considerable of the rivers which join the Amur from the south. It flows from the south-west to the north-east in the valley that separates the two parallel ridges of the Shan-alin and the Sikhota-Alin mountains. At Khabarofka it measures nearly two miles wide, having at its mouth three islands and two sandbanks, with an ordinary depth of 10 feet, though after the summer rains it rises to 19 feet. Ascending 25 miles, the width diminishes to a mile and a half, the depth never exceeding 20 feet. The Ussuri was chosen in 1860 for a frontier, so that we now had Russian territory on the left, and Chinese territory on the right. The Chinese bank is for the most part flat, but the horizon is bounded by low mountain peaks. The Russian bank is mountainous and richly wooded, being formed of the western slopes of the coast range, which give birth to a number of streams, the Chirka, Bikin, Por, and others, which flow in on the eastern bank of the Ussuri. The largest of the streams flowing in on the western bank are the Nor, Muren, and Sungacha. At the confluence of the Chirka the river is a mile and a quarter wide. For 30 miles further the mountains retire, and the bottom land thus left is richly, though not thickly, wooded with aspens, willows, oaks, and elms. Opposite the mouth of the Por, which flows in on the Russian bank, were a few Chinese houses called Sunchui. We had passed a similar group on the first day’s travel, and subsequently came to three others, one of which, opposite Graphskaya, was called Vikul Uima. The right bank was almost uninhabited. Within 70 miles from Khabarofka we passed, on the Russian bank, six stations, and among them Kazakevich (where was a military post, at which I gave some books to Colonel Glen); Dyachenkova, a village of seven houses; and Trëkh-svyateeteley, or the “station of three saints.” Another euphonious name was given further on to a collection of houses called Vidnaya, or “the beautiful,” where the Ussuri divides into three channels.
On Sunday morning we arrived at Kozloffskaya, or the Goat station, having a telegraph office and a church. Service was over, and I called on the priest, John Voskresenskie (which means resurrection), a man who, if not--
“To all the country dear, Was passing rich on sixty pounds a year!”
His parish extended along the river’s bank, 30 miles to the north and 50 to the south, and he ministered to 10 villages. To the most distant he goes eight times a year, to the others once a month.[4]
Most of the houses at Kozloffskaya had gardens, in some of which maize was growing. There was also a private chapel, erected by one of the tradesmen. At the next station, Vasilyeva, the Bekin flows in on the Russian bank, and the mountains here reach their highest.
On Sunday evening we passed a deserted village of 10 log houses, called Pashkova, from which the inhabitants had migrated in a body further south. On the Chinese bank the hills, well wooded to the top, approached the river. In the course of Sunday night we were delayed nine hours by fog, and during the next day stopped for a chat with a steam launch, used, if I mistake not, for the telegraph service. This was the only craft, excepting the canoes of the natives, that we met. Seven stations more were passed, and on Monday evening we arrived at Krasnoiarskaia, having completed half our voyage.
The principal natives of the Ussuri are the Goldi. In addition to what I read and saw of these people, I acquired a great deal of information from Alexander Protodiakonoff, the priest of Khabarofka, who has been a missionary hereabouts for 23 years. At Malmuish a missionary, who had 3,000 Goldi in his district, came on board the Onon, from whom I gathered that he had been a priest only a year, during which time he had baptized 50 persons. This man called one of the Goldi passengers to explain to me the use of my Gilyak idols.
The Goldi are of the Tunguse family, and belong to the Mongolian race. Their number was estimated by Collins at 2,560, but a missionary gave it me as about 6,000. Their habitat extends along the Amur to the country of the Gilyaks on the north, and on the south to the Upper Ussuri, whilst laterally it extends from the mouth of the Sungari to the sea coast. The mortality among them, as among the Gilyaks, is great, but they are, nevertheless, thought to be on the increase. Their physiognomy is distinctly Mongolian. They imitate some of the customs of the neighbouring Manchu, amongst others that of shaving off the hair, with the exception of a tail, which they wear on the top of the head. They do not, as a rule, cultivate the ground, even for garden produce; and such vegetable food as they use, millet or rice, they get in exchange for furs. We did, however, pass two or three Goldi huts where millet was under cultivation, and where the natives looked unusually dirty. Their houses and clothing I have already spoken of as resembling those of the Gilyaks.
Their communications with the outside world are extremely limited. The only foreigners they know are Russians and Chinese. When, therefore, the natives asked who I was, it was exceedingly difficult to make them understand, as they had never seen an Englishman before.[5] The Goldi, long used to dealing with the Manchu, still use their money, weights, and measures, also their musical instruments. I was told they do not sing. Each village has its chief or elder, as formerly, under Manchu rule, but they are gradually becoming Russianized. Twenty years ago they used to have drunken fights, village with village, but this practice is now abandoned, and their treatment of the dead is growing more decent; not that they used, like their Mongolian congeners, the interior of their dogs for burying-places, the corpse being cut up and eaten, but they had in each village a house for the dead, which, in summer, stank so horribly as fairly to drive the people away. In these buildings the clothes and arms were placed with the corpse, and children and friends entered from time to time to mourn. A missionary told me he had seen one of these houses within the past 10 years, but that now the Goldi bury their dead, as do the Russians.
I spent part of my last evening at Khabarofka at the house of Peter Alexander, protodiakonoff, or arch deacon, of that town and two neighbouring villages, with a population of 260. He told me that the missionary district he superintended, in addition to his parish, extended from Orlofsk to Ekaterin-Nicolsk on the Amur, and from Busse on the Ussuri to Khabarofka, a river line of about 700 miles. At the time of my visit the priest and his brother were engaged on a translation of the Gospels, and as he did not appear to know how to get it printed, I recommended him to apply to the British and Foreign Bible Society, whose obliging and energetic agent in Petersburg, Mr. Nicolson, had desired me to be on the look-out for new Siberian translations. The Russian liturgy had been already translated into Goldi. The priest gave me a photograph of a group of Goldi Christians, wearing ear and nose rings, and embroidered garments of fish-skin. I set great store by the picture, for it is a rarity. The natives have not yet become vain of their faces, and do not like to be photographed. This group had been taken for the priest who baptized them. In the background is the village starosta, and in front the patriarch of the group, whilst a large number of the other figures are women. I know not whether many of them were the patriarch’s wives, of whom, before baptism, he intended to have a sale. If so, he must have been rich, for one of the Goldi, of whom I inquired the price of wives, said that if paid in money they cost from £50 to £70; and if in goods, then from four to seven pieces of “stuff,” but he did not say whether it was to be silk, linen, or blue nankeen.
Peter Alexander, the archdeacon, in 23 years up to October 1878, had baptized 2,000 natives; 403 were Orochons (he computed them at 3,000 in his district), and 1,501 were Goldi.[6]
I had heard it stated that the Russian missionaries pay the heathen to be baptized. One of the missionaries told me that he believed there were priests who gave rewards to their converts, though he had not done so, and he thought it possible that a few natives presented themselves more than once to different priests for baptism, hoping to gain thereby. Another allegation, that of a nobleman, was that the converts were “bribed.” But this kind of statement is so frequently made by those who look coldly on mission work that I did not regard it as proven. My informant said that he had seen at Irkutsk that they gave to the Buriats shirts, crosses, and a few roubles; and that often the same Buriats came again for baptism the following year. Also an Ispravnik, interested in the Buriat missions, told me they sometimes gave converts five roubles or so when poor and privately persecuted. Accordingly, I inquired concerning this of the archdeacon, and he explained by telling me that the last 400 he had baptized had received nothing, but that previously each candidate had been supplied, at the expense of the Missionary Society at Blagovestchensk, with a new shirt, a cross to hang on the neck, and an ikon. The reason for this would be evident to any one who knows Siberia. There would be no towns near, where the Gilyaks, for instance, could buy crosses or ikons, and without the possession of these I suppose it is doubtful whether a Russian could be persuaded that he was a Christian at all. Again, the new shirt might represent the chrisom, or baptismal robe; and even if not, the people’s ordinary garments (of fish-skin and dog-skin) are so filthy that it would be only becoming that for once in their lives, at their baptism, they should look decently clean. The Protodiakonoff told me that on his journeys he used to take two or three hundred shirts and crosses, stay in a village for two or three days, and then sometimes baptize as many as 40 at once, especially when he could bring over a rich man, for then the poorer ones followed.
I came, therefore, to the conclusion that the charge of bribery on the part of the missionaries was not well founded; but, on the other hand, it was equally plain, upon their own showing, that the Russian missionaries differ widely from the English as to what constitutes proper qualification for baptism.[7] I asked the priest at Khabarofka concerning the pay of missionaries, to which he replied that he to whom I had spoken from Malmuish received £25 per annum, and he himself received £30 as a missionary, and 241 roubles 62 kopecks, or about £24, from another source--say £55 in all. Others had represented to me that he received £250 a year; so perhaps this was exclusive of his offerings, which I heard might vary from 6_d._ to £1 for baptisms, and from 6_s._ to £5 for a wedding. Also it is usual to call in the priest after a death to say a “panychid,” or office, the name of which suggests a prayer all night long, but which lasts an hour, and for which it is usual to give from 6_d._ up to £1. Offertories, too, are collected each Sunday for the priest, orphans, church, etc., according to the object, for which each of several plates is carried. I gathered that the support given by the natives to their pastors and the church consists of the purchase of candles to the extent of a few pence and an occasional sable-skin. The house and library of the Protodiakonoff did not look as if its owner had an income of £250 a year; but his home was neat and clean, though simply furnished, and his wife and daughters were becomingly dressed. I was glad to hear an excellent report of this missionary, who was said to be a good man and learned. It was his custom actually to preach or read a sermon every Sunday, and he had a crowded church in consequence. I suppose he did not profess that his sermons were all original; for when, on board the Onon, he caught sight of a tract I had given to the steward’s boy, he immediately seized it, and wrote thereon “for a sermon.”
I thought this missionary the most hard-working priest I met in Siberia, and I was very glad to have obtained from him what I consider such trustworthy information concerning the Goldi. The last representatives of this race I saw at the little village of Krasnoiarskaia, 260 miles from Khabarofka, where a man and woman were standing on the banks. The man had a Manchu matchlock with no butt, but having a handle something like that of a pistol. It had a flint and hammer, pulled by a very clumsy trigger. Of the woman I bought her ear- or nose-ring.
On the fourth day, Tuesday, we arrived early in the morning at Busse, where was another telegraph station. Up to this point we had passed on the river 10 tributaries on the right bank, and 17 on the left. About an hour before noon, we changed our course from the Ussuri to the Sungacha; but, before leaving the Ussuri, I would observe that its head waters are formed by the confluence of the Daibecha and the Ulache, together with several smaller streams. One of them, the Sandugu, rises only about 50 miles from the coast at Olga Bay, and on the banks of the Daibecha gold has been found. I learn, too, from the North China Herald, that a few miles from Vladivostock (in what direction is not stated) coal-mines on a large scale are being opened up by Mr. S. Morris, whom I met, if I mistake not, and that they promise to yield well. The Ussuri is navigable several miles higher than Busse, and could a railway be constructed (to which the country offers, I am told, no special obstacle) from Vladivostock to the most southern navigable point of the Ussuri, a means of communication would be made for the carriage of merchandise and passengers, which would be of the utmost importance to the Ussuri valley, the only military and commercial route leading from the Amur to the southern parts of Russian Manchuria.[8]
On the morning of Tuesday, the 9th of September, we entered the Sungacha. It enters at right angles on the western bank of the Ussuri. The Sungacha, flowing out of Lake Khanka, is the largest of the Ussuri tributaries, and the most tortuous river on which I have been. A straight line from its source to its mouth measures but 60 miles, whereas along its channel it measures nearly 180 miles, and I do not think we traversed a single half mile without a bend. Great skill, therefore, was required in steering both steamer and barge. So sharp were some of the curves that, when the former had turned the bend, the two crafts appeared to be proceeding in opposite directions. The steamer at such times slackened speed, but even then, on the first day, the barge twice ran into the muddy bank, and temporarily stuck fast. The Sungacha is from 20 to 60 feet deep, from 100 to 110 feet wide, with a current of two knots. In some parts it is barely 100 feet wide, and in two places only from 8 to 12 feet deep.
Black and turbid as was the water of the Ussuri, it was limpid compared with that of the Sungacha, which was unusable for cooking. A supply of Ussuri water was therefore taken on board, and this implies a good deal, since the Siberians are not too nice in this respect, and are accustomed to the use of river and surface water only. I saw turtles in the Sungacha, and learned that this river, as well as Lake Khanka and the Ussuri, abounds with all kinds of fish, especially carp, sterlet, and salmon.[9]
There joined us at Busse a telegraph officer named Adamson, who spoke German, and with whom I was able to employ my smattering of that tongue to good effect. Hitherto I had not exchanged many ideas with my four fellow first-class passengers, one of whom was a veterinary surgeon, and two others Russian and Polish officers. The horse-doctor and the Pole seemed to have no mental resources whatever; and regarding them as types of Siberian “society,” it was not difficult to understand the dismal complaint of a physician I met, that he had no congenial companions, there being nothing cared for in the town above the level of wine or cards. These two passengers played incessantly, and, excepting at meals and during sleep, I doubt if cards were out of their hands for a couple of hours during the passage. One night the Pole, even after he had gone to bed, got up to play another game. The captain was very obliging, and gave me a chart he had made of the Ussuri, which is valuable, there being only two original writers, as far as I know, on any considerable portion of this river--namely, Venyukoff and Prejevalsky.[10]
On the day we entered the Sungacha, we came to one station only--Markova, which was the last collection of houses that could be dignified with the name of a village. All the stations beyond were Cossack pickets, and consisted of one or perhaps two houses, at which horses are kept for the postal service in winter. There were six of these pickets beyond Markova, making a total of 36 stations between Khabarofka and Kamen Ruiboloff. Among them are four villages only with a church--namely, Kazakevich, Ilyinska, Kozloffski, and Venyukova, with a resident priest to each of the first three. Among the stations were likewise 21 Cossack stanitzas or settlements, containing from one to a hundred houses each. Also, between Kamen Ruiboloff and Vladivostock are ten stanitzas and three churches. Markova was a Cossack stanitza, and as we stayed there for an hour or two, I enlisted the services of Mr. Adamson, and peeped at Cossack life.
Cossacks of old were warlike people, who lived a free-and-easy life on the border, frequently ravaging their neighbours’ herds, whom the Russians reduced to subjection, but left them many privileges. When the Amur came into the hands of the Tsar, it became necessary that the Russian frontier should be guarded, and, if possible, settled. General Muravieff therefore took many of the children of convicts, called them Cossacks, and placed them, together with voluntary emigrants from the Trans-Baikal province, in stations, about 10 miles apart, along the Amur and the Ussuri. Land was allotted to them, and they were supplied with cows, horses, farming-stock, and provisions for a year, after which time they were expected to take care of themselves.[11] The mounted Cossacks are employed to keep the boundaries, and many of the foot Cossacks act as police. When not engaged in service they are free to farm, rear cattle, hunt, or, in fact, turn their hands to what they please, though they are liable to be called up in time of war, almost to the depopulation of a whole neighbourhood.[12] This accounted for the deserted village of Pashkova, and I learned that the service is not unpopular; for when the Government wanted 800 men wherewith to found a colony on the shores of Lake Khanka, there was no lack of volunteers--a circumstance sufficiently explained by the fact that in such cases they get new farming stock and provisions.[13]
On the Ussuri the Cossacks are expected to keep off the Chinese smugglers, and even traders, who are not allowed to settle on the Russian bank except under proper restrictions. Cossack habitations, therefore, represent the utmost bounds of Russian life.
Markova consisted of rather more than a dozen houses, of which only seven were inhabited. I entered some of them, and was struck with their cleanly and orderly arrangement, as compared with the houses of the Russian peasantry. In the first the floor was strewn with hay, the walls were whitewashed, and on one of them was displayed a quantity of table ware, consisting of seven forks, four spoons, and a ladle. On a plate-shelf stood a teapot, slop-basin, two dishes, and four plates, a mug, cup, and two glasses. Near the door hung two bundles of squirrel-skins, and a sheepskin coat, whilst in the corner was a well-known feature in every Cossack’s house,--a handmill for grinding corn, worked by the Cossack’s wife. A larger mill in the village was turned by horse-power, but with the slender result of grinding only 3 cwt. of meal a day. I saw, too, rope made of lime-tree bark, good for use in the water, and large fish-hooks on which the fish of the Sungacha hook themselves whilst playing with the float. In another house was a Cossack’s hunting gun, with a two-legged rest and a flint lock, which is said still to be preferred to more modern kinds. In a third house I bought some hazel-nuts. I had been unable to procure any fruit since leaving Khabarofka, nor could I succeed at Krasnoiarskaya in getting cucumbers.
After leaving Markova the banks of the Sungacha continued flat, and were all but uninhabited. Our ceaseless windings on the river continued till Wednesday evening, when we arrived at Lon Mayo, on the edge of Lake Khanka, where, on the Chinese bank, were two small houses. They were inhabited, apparently, by men only, and those very dirty. Within the house I entered there was an inner compartment, where, among other objects, I observed a heavy stone for grinding corn, a well-made wicker shovel, and a huge brandy bottle, or cask, made of a sort of coarse papier-maché. The building was thatched, and at a distance of two or three yards stood the chimney, constructed of the hollowed trunk of a tree, and plastered with mud at the bottom. In the yard was a cart, with clumsy Chinese wheels, and troughs for cattle, hollowed, like canoes, from the trunks of trees. Bricks, made of mud and rushes, were drying in the sun, and men were busy pulling hemp into threads. In the garden was a small heathen temple, the size of a sentry-box, into which they did not object to my looking. Two poles stood in front, and inside, a table, with a picture over it, a pan and vase, with joss-sticks and some fish-hooks. Not far distant I noticed a field of “buddha” or millet growing, and attempted to approach it by crossing a boggy plot, but was compelled by mosquitoes to beat a speedy retreat. The Ussuri and Sungacha are famous for these insects, as was suggested by the mosquito blinds of the steamer; but a slight breeze and the comparative lateness of the season delivered us.
The Khanka Lake might be called a “Mediterranean,” for such is the meaning of the Chinese word “Khan-Kaï,” which the Russians have changed into Khanka, spelt also Khinka, Hinka, and Kenka.[14] Its superficial extent is more than 1,200 square miles, but, notwithstanding its size and high-sounding name, it is little more than a huge inundation, for its depth is in no part more than seven feet. In early summer one can sometimes walk into the lake, half a mile from the bank, without finding more than 10 inches of water. Hence I had been warned that the steamer might possibly not be able to cross, in which case it would be necessary to proceed 40 miles through Chinese territory, round the north of the lake, by a road on which there is but one post-station, and so to re-enter Russian territory at a point on the north-west shore; for the frontier does not skirt the lake, but crosses it from Lon Mayo, at an angle of 45 degrees. My host at Nikolaefsk on one occasion was obliged to accomplish this journey on the back of a cow. This, however, I was spared, for the thunderstorms of June and July, with the south-east winds, had brought their usual supply of rain, and caused the lake to enlarge, so that it assumed the proportions of an inland sea. At ordinary times the Khanka is divided into two parts, the “great lake” and the “little lake,” which latter is also called “the Dobuka.” From the captain’s chart I calculated it to be 20 miles long by three wide. The two lakes are separated by a sandy strand, of regular proportions, bending towards the north in such a manner as to continue with exactness the curves of the banks from the east and west. This strand, developing its arc with geometrical precision, is only like many others found on the shores of the ocean; but few similar cases occur on the banks of a lake of such comparatively small extent. Such strands, for the most part, are formed when the locality is sheltered from the winds, which do not come regularly from the same quarter.[15]
I suppose that the water is sometimes rough, for the good-natured captain kindly inquired whether I should be afraid if the boat rocked about. I had not at that time traversed two oceans, but was able to assure him, nevertheless, that I hoped for the best. The windows were as solemnly closed and battened as if we were about to cross the Atlantic; and towards night we steamed into the lake, to find it as calm as a mill-pond. After steering south-east for about 50 miles we arrived, at dawn, at Kamen Ruiboloff, or the Fisherman’s Stone, thus finishing a voyage from Khabarofka of 466 miles, or 510 if we had gone to the stations on the shores of the lake.
We had made a quicker passage than was expected; perhaps partly to be accounted for by an “attraction” which no doubt influenced the captain. He spoke a little French, and communicated to me that on the day after our arrival he was to be married to the niece of the merchant Plusnin, of Khabarofka. They have certain domestic and semi-religious preliminaries to a Russian wedding, as I have stated, which I was anxious to see, for we have nothing corresponding to them in England; but unfortunately I missed the opportunity at Kamen Ruiboloff, for although I rose soon after daylight, the captain had fled, and I hastened to proceed, remembering well that the foremost traveller at the post-house gets the untired horses.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] At all of these places I distributed tracts or sold my books, some of the latter at a shilling each; but the people purchased them so readily that I had not a sufficient supply. In this work I had a willing helper in Captain Stjerncreutz, who in his university days had learned a little English from a lady at Helsingfors. At our stopping-places he usually became the medium through whom I gave a bundle of books to the local priest, to be distributed to the Russians. Some of these priests worked also as missionaries to the Gilyaks. I met one at Tyr, and another, Peter Logimof, at Mikhailofsk. The last told me he had baptized 200 aborigines in seven years.
[2] I learned that in the Primorsk were 6 battalions of infantry, namely, at Nikolaefsk, Sophiisk, Khabarofka, Sakhalin, Kamen-Ruiboloff, and Vladivostock; and 8 batteries of horse-artillery, namely, at Nikolaefsk, Khabarofka, Sakhalin, Nicolsk, and Paseat. From the “Russian Officers’ Handbook,” published at Petersburg by the Ministry of War, it appeared that the number of soldiers in East Siberia, in 1878, was 17,610, with 130 guns; namely, 10,640 infantry, 1,300 artillery, 270 sappers and miners, and 5,400 irregular cavalry. More particularly they read as follows:--
Infantry.--Blagovestchensk, 400; Irkutsk, 900; Chita, 300; Stretinsk, 240; Yakutsk, 700; Kara, 470; Kiakhta, 470; Nertchinsk, 470; Sakhalin, 1,100; Olga Bay, 180; Paseat, 340; Vladivostock, 1,000; Kamen Ruiboloff, 1,000; Sophiisk, 1,000; Khabarofka, 800; Nikolaefsk, 800; De Castries Bay, 400; Barracouta Bay, 70.
Heavy artillery.--Chita, 250; Khabarofka, 250; Nikolaefsk, 800.
Field artillery.--16 batteries, of which 8 were in the Primorsk, of 8 guns, having 12 horses to each gun, and 2 mountain batteries.
Sappers and miners.--30 torpedo men and 240 engineers.
Irregular cavalry.--9 Cossack regiments of 600 each.
In war time the Cossacks of the Amur and Ussuri send 6 mounted regiments, of 560 each; 9 foot regiments, of 920 each; and 2 batteries of horse artillery. Of these, 500 are in constant service.
On the frontier service were 2 regiments, each of 400 mounted Cossacks; and 15 companies, of 133 each, of foot.
For the service of the Étape prisons of Eastern Siberia were employed, from the Yakutsk regiment, 400, and the Kamchatka regiment, 200. It is from these last two, I suppose, are supplied the Cossack posts I heard of from Behring’s Strait round the Sea of Okhotsk, serving as police, and distributed thus: Anadir, 13; Petropavlovsk, 59; Tigil, 17; Ghijiga, 42; Yamsk, 7; Okhotsk, 32; Ayan, 12; Udskoi, 10.
The following is the constitution of an infantry regiment, which is divided into 3 or sometimes 4 battalions, of 1,000 men each, in war time or on the frontier. Superior officers: 1 commander, 1 adjutant, 1 treasurer, and 1 commissariat. To each battalion 1 commandant, 1 adjutant, 1 treasurer. Each battalion has 4 companies, No. 1 being called “skirmishers,” and consisting of a fixed number of 240 men, 1 captain, 2 lieutenants, 2 sub-lieutenants and non-commissioned officers, 1 field assistant, and 1 under officer to every 5 men. Companies 2, 3, and 4 have not a fixed number of men, and there is an under officer to every 10 men only.
In the book quoted above appeared the military officers’ pay; but they get several additional allowances, everything being provided for them except food. The pay of officers is:--
Generals from £152 to £254 per annum. Colonels ” 58 ” 103 ” ” Captains ” 54 ” 66 ” ” Staff Captains ” 50 ” 68 ” ” Lieutenants ” 40 ” 60 ” ” Sub-Lieutenants ” 37 ” 54 ” ” Cornets ” 34 ” 51 ” ”
[3] The Onon, from Nikolaefsk, was smaller than the Zeya, in which I travelled from Kara, but cleaner and better managed. She was about 20 years old, had Belgian engines of 30 horse-power, and carried 5 machinists and 8 sailors. My fare and steward’s bill to Khabarofka cost 3 guineas. The Sungacha, about to ascend the Ussuri to Lake Khanka, was a still smaller boat, 90 feet long, and drawing 3 feet of water. Her engines were of 40 horse-power, and 15 years old. Towing a barge with third-class passengers and cattle, she could make 5 or 6 miles an hour against the stream, and 8 with it; but without the barge she could go 10 miles against the stream, and 16 with it. I hoped accordingly to accomplish the 500 miles to Kamen Ruiboloff in 5 days, for which I paid as fare 35_s._
[4] Help came to me once more from the telegraph station--this time in the person of the wife of the manager, and through her I gave the priest some tracts, but he declined to purchase New Testaments, even at a reduced price; at which I was not surprised when he subsequently told me that he occasionally preached to the people for five minutes on Sunday, but that they complained of the sermons as “too long.” What he would not buy, however, the third-class passengers on the barge speedily did, and I then gave some copies to the captain for the use of the passengers of the Sungacha, as I had done to Captain Stjerncreutz for the Onon.
[5] Perhaps it was as well that I had no malformation or physical peculiarity about me, for Prejevalsky relates his meeting a Mongolian who had seen but one Englishman in his life, who lived at Kiakhta, and who had, unfortunately, lost one of his legs, whereupon the man of the desert had come to the conclusion that all the English had wooden legs!
[6] Since the previous October he had baptized an additional 50 Goldi, and he thought that what Gilyaks there were in his district were all baptized. Formerly, he said, natives when willing were baptized, though they understood nothing of what was being done, but in his own case he required them to know certain prayers. After baptism they were expected to attend church when there was one near, and to come to communion once a year. I learned that some of the native Christians, as might be expected, relapse into heathenism, especially in time of sickness, when, having perhaps no doctor near, they send for the shaman. It did not appear, however, that the profession of Christianity exposed them to persecution.
[7] Their work seemed very nearly a repetition of the wholesale baptism at Kieff by command of Vladimir, or of the baptisms by Roman missionaries of whole villages at a time. The first missionary whom I questioned thought it enough if, before baptism, the candidates could say the short prayers of the Russian Church; the second appeared content with less than this. Further south, however, I met a parish priest who was not a missionary proper, but who in ten years had baptized ten persons; and in his case he said he had usually kept his candidates under instruction for a year or more.
[8] The entire length of the Ussuri, between 43½° and 48½° N. Lat., is 497 miles. The upper part of the river has a rapid current, and it is swift below the confluence of the Sungacha to the Muren; but for its remaining 300 miles it has a current of two miles an hour only, which is slow compared with the three miles of the Amur, and the four miles of the Shilka. The stream, frequently divided by islands, presents no peculiar difficulties to navigation. Its scenery has a quiet English park-like beauty that never wearies, though it cannot boast the grandeur of the Amur, which combines the beauties of the Rhine and the Danube, and is, taken all in all, the finest river I have travelled.
[9] It is said that during the floods, when the Ussuri becomes a series of lakes connected by shallows, the traveller can with his hands, in spawning time, lift off salmon by the dozen from the banks, and in certain confined places may even hear the rippling of the water caused by their fins. The turtles in the Sungacha are eaten by the natives, but not by the Russians. They lay their eggs on the margins of the stream, and one of our crew amused himself by shooting the animals as they basked in the sun.
[10] I learned that the three steamers by which I had travelled on the Amur and Ussuri belonged to the same Company, the managing director of which receives £1,200 a year. The captain of the Sungacha received £21 per month, the second captain £10, the steersman £4, the other sailors £3, and the machinists from £4 to £5 per month each; but during a large part of the year, when the river is frozen, they have little or nothing to do.
[11] It not infrequently happened, however, that they came at the end of the year begging for further assistance, which was given, and the result has been in many cases to make them idle. Captain De Vries told me that he had seen grass and weeds growing six inches high in their corn, which, owing to bad cultivation, stood only six inches higher. Cossacks enjoy to a certain degree the privilege of self-government. They elect, for instance, their own officers, who, after a service of 35 years, receive rank as if in the regular army. On the other hand, they have to supply a certain number of fighting men, of whom 10 per cent. must be engaged in active service continually each for two years, and all are drilled for one month in every year.
[12] When settled in a locality they cannot leave it at will, though, if they can raise themselves to the position of merchants, they acquire greater liberty. Sometimes a whole village is moved to a new colony, and the inhabitants find themselves in a strange district, but with their old comrades and neighbours.
[13] A Cossack’s pay ranges from 10_s._ 6_d._ to 13_s._ a year, which is less than that of infantry soldiers, whose monthly pay I learned at Vladivostock was for recruits, 1_s._ 6_d._; soldiers, 4_s._; under officers, 10_s._ 9_d._; and field assistants, 30_s._; whilst cooks, tailors, bootmakers, and barbers each receive about 1_d._ a month from every soldier in the company. Every soldier also subscribes 6_d._ a year for religious purposes. Whether Cossacks, when called up, have the same food as soldiers of the line I know not, but the latter in time of peace have as follows:--Per day 3 lbs (Russian) of rye bread, ¾ lb. meat, vegetables 1½ lb. in summer and 1 lb. in winter; also, per month, 37 lbs. oatmeal, 4 lbs. peas, 2 lbs. butter, ⅓ lb. sugar, ⅙ lb. each of brick tea and salt, and ½ pint of vinegar. These, too, are the rations of Russian sailors on shore. The clothing for soldiers I learned was as follows:--Yearly, 2 caps, 2 pairs of cloth trousers, and 2 of linen, 2 linen shirts for gymnastics, and 3 for ordinary use, 3 pairs linen drawers, 2 pairs high boots, 1 pair shoes, and 2 pairs of cloth gloves. Every other year, a thick cloth coat, long overcoat, hood, and skull-cap. A belt is expected to last 3 and a set of buttons 5 years. What proportion of this clothing is supplied to Cossacks I do not know. It may very well be that they receive less, seeing that they give to the Government less time and less labour than the ordinary soldiers.
[14] It measures, according to Réclus, 62 miles long, 46 in the widest and 31 in the narrowest part; but the Russian captain gave me its measurement as 67 miles long by 21 miles at the narrowest and 26 at the widest parts.
[15] The Khanka is completely exposed to the winds on the south, which blow during a great part of the year, rushing in through an open gap in the Sikhota-Alin chain. Thus there is found on the surface of its water a regular swell, which is carried from the south to the north, and which delineates with nicety the circular outline of the shore. This is the theory of M. Réclus, and he usually writes very carefully and correctly; but I ought perhaps to add that in the chart given me by the captain this regularity of outline of the north shore is not so observable as in the map of M. Réclus.
For five months of the year ice covers the lake to the thickness of a yard. The north-east and north-west shores are level and wooded. The south-west shore is also wooded, but not so the shores in the south and south-east. Swampy tracts exist at the mouths of the eight rivulets which enter the lake; the Toor-balenkhe flowing in from the north-west, and the largest, the Lifu, from the south. About ten villages and post-stations are dispersed along the shores, and roads lead away to the Manchu towns Ninguta, Hun-chun, and Furden.
Chapter LI
LAKE KHANKA TO THE COAST.
Difficulties in prospect.--Appearance of the country.--Vegetation.--Garden produce.--Medicinal plants.--Ginseng.--Country almost uninhabited.--A serious loss.--Remarkable landscape.--Distribution of animals in Siberia.--Little-Russian settlers.--Peasant affairs and taxes.--Travelling by night.--Arrival at Rasdolnoi.--Clerical functions in request.--War in the post-house.--Summary of tract distribution.--Russia as a field for Christian effort.--The Suifun.--Cheap travelling.--Baptizing children.--Arrival at Vladivostock.
From Kamen Ruiboloff I had before me a drive of nearly 100 miles to Rasdolnoi, on the river Suifun, and this comparatively short journey I feared might present greater difficulties than any I had encountered since leaving my interpreter. In towns, or on the steamer, some one could be found with whom to exchange ideas in one of the three principal languages of Europe; but now I was to go alone through a district where even Russians are comparatively strangers, and where, if my half-dozen words of Sclavonic failed, I expected to be quite at a loss in communicating with the Manchu. Besides this I had heard uncomfortable accounts of the Manzas, Coreans, and other congeners of the Chinese, many of whose culprits had been expatriated to these regions as to a Botany Bay, and were giving the authorities trouble, not from political causes, but by forming themselves into banditti and plundering Russians and Chinese alike. At Khabarofka Major Evfanoff informed me that quite recently a number of these robbers had committed depredations on the Russians, and that Cossacks were gone in search of them. I also heard further on that they had entered an officer’s house, murdered his wife, hung her up by the heels, and carried away her child. Again, tigers were said to infest the district.[1]
I was so delighted, however, with the thought of reaching the coast, and with the hope of getting from thence to Japan, that I hastened to depart notwithstanding. A letter of introduction had been given me from Nikolaefsk to Colonel Vinikoff, stationed at Kamen Ruiboloff, and the prospect held out that he would perhaps show me the wonderful manœuvres of his cavalry Cossacks; but, hearing that he was away, I contented myself with sending to him by the captain of the steamer a letter, and a box of books for his men, and by 8 o’clock I was ready to start. The weather was charming, like that of a sunny English September--a morning without clouds.
The district through which I was to travel, south of Lake Khanka, is about 100 miles from north to south, and the Chinese frontier is a few miles west of the post-road. Extensive plains constitute a prominent feature of the country, which is sufficiently hilly, however, to render the landscape pleasing. The soil, loamy and black, is covered with rich vegetation. These Manchurian plains are like enormous limitless meadows and heaths, from which the herbage has never been cut, and where pasture is ready for cattle by thousands. The country was fairly but not thickly wooded until I crossed the hills, south of which flows the Suifun. Water in some places was scarce, and I had to wait at one station at least an hour whilst a man fetched a supply. The climate resembles that of the Ussuri. On the 5th and 6th of September, at Khabarofka, I found it decidedly hot. The mean annual temperature is 48°, which allows of the cultivation of the cereals of Northern Europe, and of some of the hardier fruit-trees. Wild grapes I saw in abundance, but none cultivated. On the coast the Governor had recently planted some fruit-trees, and Madame one day, during my visit, brought to table her fruit harvest, which consisted of less than a dozen apples. Vegetables, however, thrive well. My host told me that near Vladivostock, on his island, he had raised potatoes twice from the same ground, between the middle of April and October.[2] He had grown cart-loads of tomatoes, but, being unable to sell them to his satisfaction, salted them for his cows. Carrots and parsnips grow wild, and in the market at Vladivostock I observed, in addition to what have been mentioned, pumpkins, celery, turnips, beetroot, the egg plant, and Chinese onions and radishes. The missionary Huc mentions three treasures of Manchuria. One is the sable, another a grass called oula, the peculiar property of which is that, when put into the boots, it communicates to the feet a soothing warmth even in the depth of winter.[3] The third treasure is “Ginseng.” The Chinese call it Orhota, that is, “the first of all plants.” They consider it the most costly produce of the earth, diamonds excepted, and ascribe to it the most wonderful healing properties. It is said to be a specific in all kinds of bodily ailments, to cure consumption when half the lungs are gone, and to restore to dotards the fire of youth. Huc says the Chinese physicians think it too heating for the European temperament, already in their opinion too hot.[4]
Other medicinal plants of the district are the yellow rhododendron and marsh wild-rosemary, of which the natives use an infusion against stomach-ache; also the root of the tokose herb is used for diarrhœa, produced by feeding on fish. The burnt heads of burdock are laid on ulcers as in Peking, wounds are covered with agaric, the root of “Solomon’s seal” is applied for pains in the throat, and that of the hand-shaped bulb of an orchid for ulcers. The Goldi, however, as I have said, often attempt another method of cure, by making a wooden model of the part afflicted, which they carry about; but authorities do not record the comparative values of the two modes of treatment. It is said that the enlightened portion of the native community despise vegetable medicine, and more frequently resort to the services of the shaman and his brandy-drinking performances, which no doubt are popular with all parties concerned.
On leaving Kamen Ruiboloff the country was almost uninhabited. On the first stage I met one vehicle and three men, but passed not a single house. On the second stage two men only were seen.[5] On arriving at the fourth station--Dubininskaya--I discovered that I had lost a large pocket-book, or paper wallet, in which were my most valuable documents, including the letter from the Minister of the Interior, my podorojna, and other official papers. This alarmed me, for without the podorojna I could not claim post-horses to go either backwards or forwards; and the situation was the more serious because none of the post-people could speak anything but Russian. I made them understand by signs that I had lost my letter-case, and that I must go back with the yemstchik to see if I had left it at the previous station. Giving my heavy luggage in charge to the post-mistress at Dubininskaya, I mounted the returning vehicle. It was now nine o’clock, and quite dark, and I journeyed in anything but a pleasant mood. I remembered, too, with appreciation, the luxury I had had further west, in Mr. Cattley’s tarantass, for here I had nothing but a wretched post-tumbril, without springs, seat, or hood. One of the horses went lame, which retarded progress, and I lay on my bear-skin, with only a shawl to cover me, for six hours of the night, gazing up into the heavens. The moon arose in her beauty, and the number of stars visible might have delighted the eye of an astronomer, but I could think of nothing but my loss. At three o’clock in the morning we reached the station, where they knew nothing of the pocket-book, and where the guest-room was occupied by a Chinese packman and his assistant, with whom I did not at first relish passing the remainder of the night. One, however, got off the bedstead and offered it me, and the other wished to give me tea, which, to say the least, was civil. So I spread my bearskin on the wooden couch, and the candle was extinguished. In less than two minutes I had kicked out the tester-board of the rickety bedstead, and it came down with a clatter, causing my room-fellows to start. “Ladna! ladna!” said I, thinking this was the Russian for “all right”; and then we recomposed ourselves. On awaking, and after further search, I ascertained that my difficulties were increased, for I now discovered, to my dismay, that beside the important papers alluded to in the wallet, there were also two volumes of manuscript notes, taken in coming across Siberia. I was now in an agony; and if crying would have availed I could well have done it, so distressed was I at the thought of losing information that had cost so much. It occurred to me that I might have left the wallet at the station still further back, and, seeing a Cossack saddle in the post-house, I pointed at it, intimating that the yemstchik should mount, and ride courier to inquire for the lost treasure. But he did not welcome the task, though he intimated I might have the saddle if I chose to go myself. Thinking to quicken the post-master into further exertion I offered a reward of five roubles if the book could be found. Meanwhile the two Chinamen evinced great kindness and sympathy with me in my loss, and the more so when they discovered I was an Englishman. At breakfast they offered me rice and onions, and I returned the compliment by inviting them to partake of bread and jam. They were travelling to Kamen Ruiboloff, and offered me a place for two stages in their vehicle. I resolved at first to go back, but afterwards determined to send a note by the Chinamen to Colonel Vinikoff, asking him to make inquiries for the wallet, and then continue my way, and to look very narrowly on the road for what I had lost. The yemstchik was not a good specimen of his profession, being fonder, if I mistake not, of drink than of work, and my slender knowledge of Russian led me to suspect that he was congratulating himself on the extra money he was exacting from me, which, in my suppliant condition, I was ready enough to pay if only the books could be found. At last we started, and I was scanning the road with the eyes of a lynx when about a mile from the station we met a post-vehicle, in which was a lady traveller whom I had seen the previous evening at Dubininskaya. We pulled up, and she placed her hands at distances apart, showing the length and breadth of something that had been found, and spoke to the yemstchik, from which I was able to make out that my troubles were over. I clapped my hands, and pushed forward with a light heart to the station, and there was my wallet, well hauled over, but with nothing missing. The yemstchik had told a peasant of my loss, and of the promised reward, and he had found the article lying in the road. I then remembered that, in the cool of the evening, I had put on my ulster, standing up in the conveyance, without stopping the horses, and so had jerked the wallet out of my pocket. Never did I pay ten shillings with greater pleasure than to the finder, after which I set forward, truly grateful, and prepared with reanimated spirits to enjoy the prospect before me.
Leaving Dubininskaya, the post-road lay over a range of low hills, the top commanding a view such as I had never before seen. The distant horizon was bounded by pointed hills, and between were enormous plains of tall, brown, luxuriant pasture, waving like fields of corn--a land of plenty, at all events, if not flowing with milk and honey. No cities were visible, nor a human being, nor a habitation. There were just one or two spots where the grass had been cut and piled in heaps, but the abundance that remained seemed to mock such puny efforts. The hills were wooded with oak, and the plains with aspens, elms, lime trees, ashes, black and white birches, maples, and walnuts.[6] In young forests of this district are vines, roses, and a great many lilies. In the grass land there is much wormwood and pulse, the marsh ranunculus, and field-pink-clover. This last I saw in such abundance as to remind one of an English clover-field. There were also wild sun-flowers, and, growing at the roadside, wild millet, and what looked like bastard wheat or darnel.
Nor is this richness confined to the vegetable kingdom. To the 20,000 sable-skins sold annually at Khabarofka, Southern Manchuria contributes its quota; but I heard more of its abundance of deer, the flesh of which sells in Vladivostock in winter from 1½_d._ to 2_d._ per lb.[7] Wild turkeys are found in the district. Ducks and water-fowl we caused to fly up without number on the Ussuri, and pheasants, like those in England, rose before me as I drove to the south. At the station I was now approaching, woodcocks cost from 10_d._ to 1_s._ each, riabchiks or black grouse 5_d._ each, and pheasants 6_d._ each. So plentiful were pheasants in 1875, that they could be bought for 7½_d._ a brace, and at Paseat for 2½_d._ each.[8] This was in strong contrast to what the telegraph inspector told me of the prices of butchers’ meat at Vladivostock. He had been asked nearly £3 for the half of a calf, and beef, he said, cost 5_d._ per lb.
I now and then saw large herds of cows grazing, and learned that in 1878 there were imported to the Ussuri districts 80 horses, 600 sheep and pigs, and 1,000 head of cattle.
On arriving at the next station, Nicolsk, there was a good-sized village, with a church, barracks of the 3rd Ussuri battalion, and, what was better to me, a telegraph station. It was now Friday afternoon, and I was anxious, if possible, to reach Vladivostock on the following day, so as to be ready for Sunday. I had heard that they had been building there a Lutheran church, and it was suggested to me at Nikolaefsk that I might open it, as there was no resident pastor. I knew also that steamers served on the Suifun only for the mail service, and that when travellers required a passage, a telegram had to be sent to the Governor. I had heard that he was absent; but as his wife spoke English I telegraphed from Nicolsk, and said that if I could reach Vladivostock in time I should be happy to conduct a Sunday service. In the telegraph office I met Captain Alexander Jdanoff, to whom I gave some reading material for his soldiers, and then went to the post-house.
I noticed in several of the houses at Nicolsk that the chimneys were built of lattice work like English hurdles, plastered with mud. These erections told a tale to those who could read it, the builders being emigrants from Little Russia. So long as serfdom continued, the Russian peasantry were rooted to the soil, and often in great poverty;[9] but when the serfs were liberated they came in some cases to the Government in numbers, and said, “We are poor; please send us to colonize in Siberia, or make us Cossacks.” And the Government, desiring to populate the Ussuri, had sent them hither, freed from taxes, and with the usual privileges granted to colonists.[10]
The telegraphist at Nicolsk strongly advised me to push on to the Suifun without delay, so as that night to reach the steamer, which was to leave Rasdolnoi early on the morrow. I therefore started after tea for a drive of 14 miles, the first stage being to Baranofskaya, or the “sheep” station. On arriving I thought more of wolves than of sheep, and of tigers than either. The post-house was in the middle of a wood, and near it were burning large fires to keep away the mosquitoes and, as I supposed, beasts of prey. It was now night, and I certainly should have preferred proceeding by day; but I remembered the advice just received, and told the men to put to the horses. A sailor youth, travelling to Vladivostock, apparently on foot, and speaking a few words of English, made himself officious on my behalf, and then wanted to be allowed to mount my vehicle. It was too dark for me to see what he was like, but I consented, thinking that if we did have any encounter with wild animals or robbers, it might be an assistance to have some one who understood if only a word or two of my mother tongue. I sincerely hoped that we should not meet a supperless tiger, though I think I should have been really uneasy had I known what I learned on the morrow--that several of these animals had been killed during the summer at the very village to which I was going.[11]
It was nearly midnight when we reached Rasdolnoi. On the way my fellow-traveller showed that he had been drinking, and his stock of English words proved to be very small and by no means choice. I went to the telegraph office and ascertained that the steamer, lying a few miles off in the river, would leave at seven next morning; accordingly, I took up my quarters at the post-house, and at midnight was writing up my diary when, the news having spread that a clergyman had come, a Finnish shopkeeper, named Rosenstrom, presented himself and asked if I would baptize his little girl. The request came at an awkward moment, for I had ordered the horses for five. At half-past three, however, I sallied forth, arrayed in my cassock, with the Finn to conduct me, lantern in hand. His house was not far, though approached by a rough road; and, passing through the shop, I found a room nicely arranged and brilliantly lighted, with some half-dozen persons present--the telegraph officer and his wife or sister (who had communicated my arrival), and a Finnish friend, besides the father and mother of the child. After the service and breakfast, dawn appeared, and by five I was ready to depart. Much to my chagrin, however, the smoke from the funnel, among the distant trees, showed the vessel to be moving, and I was left behind. I telegraphed to Vladivostock to this effect, and received a reply that the steamer would return and bring me on Monday morning.
I had abundance of time, therefore, to inspect the little station of Rasdolnoi.[12] Had I not felt impatient at losing the boat, I might have enjoyed the view from the post-house, for it was exceedingly pleasing. The country was well wooded, and the curves of the Suifun added much to the beauty of the picture. It was in this post-house, and only here, that I had a desperate battle with thousands of cockroaches or tarakans. By day they hid themselves, but at night they came out on to the table, the couch, and everywhere, great grandfathers and grandmothers with their offspring to the third and fourth generation. To wage general warfare against them was hopeless; therefore I set my wits to work to keep the table free. I recalled a visit paid to Messrs. Huntley and Palmer’s Biscuit Manufactory at Reading, where, on the floor, were thousands of little insects running about. Let no lover of Huntley and Palmer’s biscuits, however, be dismayed, for none of these creepers are allowed to mount the tables, the legs being made to stand each in a little pan of water; and as the emmets will not take to swimming, they have to be content with the crumbs on the floor. This plan I adopted with modifications. My friends had strongly urged me to take from Petersburg a box of Persian powder, supposed to be an abomination to B flats and F sharps. I had not used it once, but now I surrounded each leg of the table with an embankment of the said powder, and great was my delight to see the enemy advance, evidently thinking to scale the ramparts and mount as usual, but, instead, suddenly stop, hold a council of war, wave feelers, and then beat a retreat!
I was enjoying my tea on Saturday afternoon from a clean table when two officers, a wife, and child arrived from Vladivostock. Then was cleared up the mystery of the boat having left so early; a telegram had been sent that it should depart at five to meet these travellers, one of whom was merely accompanying his friends for a few miles in Russian fashion, and was to return next day. They spoke French and a little English, and, having started in a hurry, they asked if I could sell them some quinine, which I thought I might venture to do, seeing that I had not once opened my store. Arnica had been needed for the sprain of the interpreter’s foot, but as for myself I am not sure that I had taken so much as a pill since leaving London, so that the counsel of my medical adviser had proved to be sound; for when I proposed to take a lot of medicines, he strongly urged me not to carry too much, “lest,” he said, “you should be tempted to excess.”
Though Rasdolnoi was so small a place, yet, when it became known that I had good books in possession, several came from I know not where to buy them. I now had time to reckon up my “takings,” and found that sales amounted in all to about £18--not a large sum truly, but a good deal to make up in kopecks, of which 100 equal only 2_s._ My receipts covered, I suppose, about a fourth of the cost of the transport of books and tracts, and as these had been given me, with grants toward their carriage, by the Bible and Tract Societies of London and Petersburg, I subsequently divided among them the proceeds. From Nikolaefsk I sent to the Governor of the Primorsk 1,000 New Testaments, 10,000 tracts, and 200 copies of the “Life of Christ,” requesting that they might be distributed from Vladivostock to Kamchatka, to the prisons, hospitals, soldiers, Cossacks, schools, and the seamen of the Siberian fleet; and it has gratified me to hear, during the present year, that this was thoroughly and carefully done. Thus I distributed in all by proxy--that is through the authorities--about 44,000 publications, and personally about 12,000, the exact total being 55,812 of all kinds.[13]
On my return to England I wrote to the Director of the Central Administration of Prisons, saying what I had done, and enclosing a list of the persons to whom and for whom the books had been given. I also stated my “strong conviction that a wider and better knowledge of the Holy Scriptures would do much both to lessen crime and also to reform the criminal. Hence I wished that a copy of the New Testament might always remain within reach of every prisoner and hospital patient in Siberia, and I cherished the hope that some who might perhaps take up the book to while away time might read to profit and subsequent reformation.” To this end I asked the administration to do anything they could to forward the successful completion of my work; and this letter I enclosed to the Minister of the Interior, when writing to thank his Excellency for the great kindness and attention his letter had secured for me.[14]
My “work” was now almost done, and I looked forward with hope, for I regard the Russian people as presenting a promising field for the diffusion of a more spiritual religion than they now possess. Many, it is true, do not cease to speak of Russian bribery and untruthfulness, gambling and dishonesty. But, however that may be, there seemed to me to be a general willingness in Russia to learn better things. The sceptics we met were few and far between. In Western Siberia a Polish veterinary surgeon--a Romanist--argued as if he would like to upset Christianity, but he ended by giving money for a New Testament, and acknowledged that he envied the experience of his antagonist. In Eastern Siberia I met a Protestant gentleman who said that most educated people in Siberia were materialists; but I had afterwards reason to suspect he was measuring by his own bushel, for so material was his creed that, though holding a high position in the Government, with a large salary, he was not above suspicion of asking a bribe. I ought, however, to add that a Russian critic, by no means unfriendly, lamented to me that, owing to the want of teaching power in the priests, men of the educated classes in Russia are, as a rule, perfectly indifferent to religion, and therefore tolerant to all and every creed, though jealous of the orthodox Church as a national institution.
A good type of a religious gentleman--a devotee perhaps some would say--was an officer I met, who goes to mass every morning at five; or, again, a lady of high rank, who, whilst continuing strictly “orthodox,” learns to look at the errors of her Church in their least objectionable form, and to separate the good from the bad. Another educated man, an advocate, was typical, I should judge, of many in his rank of life. All are required to attend church on certain occasions, and beyond this he acknowledged that he did so very little; but it was because he got no teaching there. He went, he said, on the festivals, from six to twelve times a year, and oftener whilst his children were young; but he was ready to go every Sunday if something could be learned thereby. As for the uneducated Russians, the distances they will go, amounting to literally thousands of miles, for religious purposes, manifests at least something intensely earnest about religious affairs. Never--certainly, in any other country--have I met with such eagerness to get Scriptures and good books. This extends to both clergy and laity. When, on one occasion, my friend who edited the Russian Workman thought of giving it up, some of the priests sent their subscriptions again, and implored that it might be continued; and some of those interested in the religious societies at work in the empire have told me that, in spite of the obstacles put in their way, they have far more opportunities of usefulness than they can use. I agree, therefore, with those who look upon Russia as a promising field for Christian effort.
On Sunday afternoon the officer returned to Rasdolnoi, and I began immediately to question him. There was no ship sailing to Japan, he said, for a fortnight; and then, by way of preface to information respecting Vladivostock, he asked my standing, and whether I was rich or poor. Having classed myself with those who have neither poverty nor riches, he said that, as for himself, he was a man of means, and that he took the journeys to the Caucasus and Egypt (of which he had told me) because he had money in pocket, and so on--tall talk which sank down wonderfully when I searched him out at Vladivostock.[15] He appeared well posted, however, in his professional studies, and willing to give me information; so, as we were to start very early in the morning, we boarded the steamer towards sunset. The Suifun is 120 yards wide. It varies in summer from 30 inches to 7 feet in depth, and in winter rises 20 feet. Our vessel was named Suifun, after the stream, and drew 2 feet of water, and could steam 8 or 10 miles an hour. Vladivostock was only 50 miles distant, but the boat was not suited for the sea, and therefore, on reaching the mouth of the river at Richnoi, 30 miles distant, we were to be transhipped to a sea-going steamer, the Amur, and so landed at Vladivostock. The Suifun was not a passenger vessel in the ordinary sense of the word, but belonged to the Government. It was used for bringing the mails from Khabarofka, and if there happened to be passengers accompanying them, they travelled the 50 miles free. They were, moreover, so obliging, that, if travellers arrived and telegraphed to the post as I had done, the two ships were put in motion; and as if that were not enough, an allowance was made to the officers to feed hungry passengers free of expense, so that, on the whole, this was the cheapest 50 miles I travelled.
I did not know of these arrangements at first, and heard that there were no provisions to be had on board, and no sleeping accommodation. My fellow-passenger slept in the open air, on deck, and I thought I should be compelled to do the same; but the captain gave me an excellent cabin, with plenty of room, which the officer, however, would not share. I had not been long on board when my clerical services were asked for a second time. We were to pass a saw-mill where lived a Protestant family, and the captain, knowing that the children were unbaptized, thought my coming very opportune, and asked whether, if he stopped the steamer, I would go ashore and officiate. As we approached Richnoi we came in sight of the mill, built, as I afterwards ascertained, by Captain de Vries, and subsequently sold to the Government. There are three such mills near Vladivostock, employing 39 workmen, chiefly Chinese, who earn £4,500 a year. The manager was a Swede, named Lovelius, his wife, if I mistake not, being one of the whaling community who had come from Finland. The father spoke a little English, calling me “parson”; and after I had christened his three children he placed a fee in my hand. When I demurred to take it, he said he wished to stand indebted to no man, and added that I had saved him a “lot of trouble,” for otherwise he must have brought all the children into Vladivostock, when there chanced to arrive a minister or chaplain.[16]
The saw-mill was prettily situated, and the manager received good remuneration, but he was not much in love with his position; for one thing, the mosquitoes troubled him, as on the previous evening they did me.[17] Fear of the Manza robbers, however, troubled the manager more, and he pointed to a house across the river where they had lately murdered an old man of seventy.
On reaching the mouth of the Suifun we met the Amur, and the two vessels exchanged passengers, whereupon I discovered, to my surprise, that some of our new officers were those I had travelled with on the Shilka. I had breakfasted that morning, not very comfortably, in the open air, and was, therefore, ready for dinner in the officers’ cabin, after which it was I learned that I had eaten at the expense of the Emperor; and then, steaming down the Amur Gulf, and rounding the promontory into the Golden Horn, we dropped anchor before Vladivostock.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The merchant Plusnin had on one occasion been attacked in his sledge by one of these animals; and Mr. Emery told me that, when a tiger had been seen on the road, he had sometimes found it very difficult to make the post-boys set out on a journey.
[2] When he left America he brought eight of a choice sort in his portmanteau, and in three years had as many as he needed, and so fine that they weighed 1 lb. each. The Chinese have since planted them, but cultivate them so badly that their size has greatly diminished. On the same land the captain sowed maize, and from one grain grew a stalk with three heads and 900 grains. This he thought exceptional, but considered 500 grains for one an average return. He sowed in drills, and cleaned the land with a cultivator drawn by an ox. This plan in the Western States of America, he said, yielded six bushels an acre more than ordinarily.
[3] This reminds me of what Mr. Emery said at Nikolaefsk, that if I put hay into the soles of the Yakute boots I purchased, I should never suffer from cold feet.
[4] Ginseng is found chiefly in the valleys of the Upper Ussuri, where it is cultivated in beds, planted in rows. The earth must be a rich black mould, and loose; and when the plant has attained the height of 4 or 5 inches, it is supported by a stick. The beds are carefully weeded and watered, and protected from the sun by tents or sheds of wood. Wild ginseng is said to be the best. From May to September, hundreds go out to seek the plant; and when I asked for the Goldi natives at some of the stations on the Ussuri, I learnt that many of them were gone to seek for ginseng. The prices named by the French missionaries for this root were almost fabulous, a single root being valued in Manchuria at from £250 to £300. The plantations belong to Chinese merchants living at a distance, and Venyukoff found the guards strictly forbidden to sell it. He was able, however, by stealth to procure 12 roots for £4, and his native interpreter subsequently procured 20 for 30_s._ I was told on the river that ginseng sells for £30 per Russian lb., but that in a bad year the Chinese count it as valuable as gold, and give up to £40 per lb. If, therefore, these prices be paid to those who find it, no doubt it is very expensive when sold in China, where no chemist’s shop is without it. The root is straight, spindle-shaped, knotty, and up to half an inch in diameter, and 8 inches in length. The leaves are cut off, and the root is boiled in water, apparently to remove some injurious quality; and when it has undergone fitting preparation its colour is a transparent white, with sometimes a slight red or orange tinge; its appearance then is that of a stalactite. It is carefully dried, wrapped in unsized paper, and sent to market. On the Ussuri it is used, boiled, for cold, fever, headache or stomach-ache.
[5] The first three stations--Mo, Vstrechni, and Utosni--were single post-houses, with no other habitation in sight. The accommodation was of the poorest; the couch at Vstrechni consisting of three boards, and the table-cloth of linen tick. I gave the children some nuts, but not one said “thank you,” and none could read.
[6] Mr. Ravenstein speaks of the walnut of the Ussuri as seldom bearing fruit, and he suggests that the whole growing power may be absorbed by the trunk and leaves; but I saw walnuts on the trees at Khabarofka, and, when speaking of them to Baron Stackelberg, heard nothing of their failure in fruit.
[7] The Chinese employ men in the interior to slaughter these animals, simply for the sake of their antlers. These soft horns are exported yearly to China in large quantities. Captain de Vries told me that on one occasion he carried on his little schooner a load of them to the value of £2,000, one extra good pair being worth £60. Erman states that the jelly made of these horns is much esteemed by Chinese gourmands, whilst Ravenstein quotes their medicinal use by the Chinese as a remedy in female diseases. A Russian doctor, to whom I spoke upon the subject, however, knew only of their general sedative properties, the jelly being used, he thought, as a comforting medicine in weakness.
[8] How long this abundance of game will last is an interesting problem, for it is a well-known fact, says M. Réclus, that the distribution of animals over Siberia has been markedly affected by the advent of Russian hunters. The region of the reindeer, for instance, ought to impinge upon that of the camel; and the reindeer used to be found on the mountains of Southern Siberia, but it now runs wild only in the low forests and tundras of the north. The argali, or wild sheep, is no longer found in the plains and mountains of Siberia, as it was in the last century, but has fled southwards into Mongolia. The antelopes and wild horses, driven from the steppes of the Gobi by cold and lack of pasture, descend in troops in autumn towards the plains of Siberia, followed by tigers and wolves, and hunted by men; and the slaughter lasts till the spring allows their return to the solitudes of Mongolia. Neither animals nor birds need a map to show them the frontier of the two countries. It has been remarked that the same birds which permit a stranger to approach them without fear in Mongolia, flee in terror at the least noise on Siberian soil. Especially is this the case with water-fowl, for the Mongols never allow birds to be shot upon the sacred element, believing that, if the blood of a bird mixes with the water, the flocks that drink it will speedily die.
[9] A lady in Petersburg told me that the peasantry near her country house live for a large part of the year almost without bread, weave in winter by the dim flame of a piece of lighted wood, and often go to bed supperless. With a sufficiency of rye bread all the year round they think themselves rich.
[10] I heard on the Kama in European Russia, from a Belgian, that whereas he, as a foreigner, was free from taxation, having to pay only 1_s._ 3_d._ a year for his passport, some of the peasants have to pay as much as 28_s._ Servants of the Crown, including priests, pay no taxes, though their children begin to do so at the age of 21. In Western Siberia no man (except convicts deprived of all their rights) is free from direct taxation, the manner of collecting the tax being similar to that followed in Russia. A census is taken every 20 years or oftener, and a number of villages are classed together into a mir (a world), from which a certain tax has to be raised. The mir settle among themselves in a kind of local parliament the proportion each family shall pay, and then, whether the members of a family increase or diminish, this fixed proportion goes on till the next census is taken. This causes great inequalities. Thus a father with a large family will be made liable for a large sum, which, so long as he has children at home to work, he can pay; but should his sons be drawn for soldiers, or be cut off by death, he is in a different position; though, on the other hand, a man with a family of small children at the time of taking the census is lightly taxed, whereas, when his children grow up and work, he could well afford to pay more. In European Russia the census is taken every seven or nine years, and the tax to be paid by each family is revised oftener.
Each village receives land according to the number of its inhabitants, but so that each “soul,” or able-bodied male or head of a family, gets about 15 acres, a space which, properly cultivated, should suffice for his support; but if not, land in the Primorsk government costs only 2_s._ an acre; in fact, at Nikolaefsk, the government gave land under certain restrictions for building, and up to 1875 charged no property-tax, nor even for licences during the first ten years of Russian occupation. When this land has been allotted to a man in Russia with its accompanying tax, he cannot get quit of the bargain so far as the tax is concerned. Should he find the land unprofitable he may give up its cultivation, but he must continue to pay the tax, and hence it often happens that a man leaves his commune and goes to a neighbouring town for employment, but still pays taxes for the land in some remote village he has left.
[11] In the early days of the Russian occupation tigers used to come into the town of Vladivostock, and my host had a horse eaten by them. His young boy once came home saying that he had seen “such a pretty calf,” but that he could not hold in his pony, such haste did it make to get away. Sixty-five tigers were said to have been killed in the district the year before my arrival, and Captain de Vries told me that on the road by which I travelled he was proceeding, early one morning, with a farmer and his dog, when the royal beast appeared on the road a few yards before them, at which they shouted, and the animal retired into the forest. They went forward, the dog preceding them, whereupon the tiger sprang out and seized the dog and bore it away. The farmer began to mourn his loss, but the captain said, “Why, you donkey! if the tiger had not taken the dog for his breakfast he might have taken you!” I heard these things, however, after my journey; and the only tangible reminders of tigers I saw were some of their skins, offered at Khabarofka and Vladivostock from £2, for that of a cub, to £5 for those of full size. Prejevalsky speaks of the tiger of the district as being equal to the royal tiger of Bengal, but, judging from the skins I saw, it is not so handsomely marked.
[12] It being the furthest navigable point on the Suifun from Vladivostock, the Russians in the early days of their occupation had posted soldiers here and built barracks. They subsequently removed the military to Nicolsk, and with them had migrated all the inhabitants except Mr. Rosenstrom and the people at the telegraph-office and post-house. There were plenty of log-houses still standing, to one of which my attention was directed, and I was told that my informant had purchased it for 10_s._--the cheapest house I had ever seen. Mr. Rosenstrom and his friend, I discovered, were of the party of Finns who had come to these parts to catch whales, so that he knew Captain Stjerncreutz with whom I had travelled. I was puzzled to know how a living could be made from a tiny shop near which there were but two inhabited houses visible, but I found that a small trade was done with travellers passing to and from Vladivostock, by hawking, and with workmen building a shed at the river side.
[13] The governors of Tobolsk, Tomsk, Akmolinsk, and Semipolatinsk, of Yeneseisk, Irkutsk, and Yakutsk, were requested to apportion the Scriptures to prisons, hospitals, poor-houses, and similar institutions, and to disperse the tracts in schools, as widely as possible. The governors of the Za-Baikal, Amur, and Sea-coast provinces, in addition to this, were asked also to distribute extra supplies to the army, navy, and Cossacks.
[14] I would take this opportunity of expressing my thanks to the Religious Tract Society of London and its colleagues in Russia for the gracious way in which the Committee has always accepted my offers of service, and for the kind manner in which I have been trusted to act in concert with their local agents as seemed best on the occasion. Not a little of my success (if it may be so called), especially in Russia, has been traceable to this; and my holiday distribution of more than 100,000 of their publications, I hope, I shall always remember with gratitude and pleasure. An extensive work is done in Russia by the Religious Tract Society. About 1,000,000 tracts were sold from 1875 to 1878 which is an indirect testimony that we hold more truth in common with the Russian Church than many are aware of. In Russia, as is well known, every book, every pamphlet, every leaflet, before it can be published and circulated, must receive the approval of the censor; and if the doctrine of what is printed, whether political or religious, be objectionable, its publication is forbidden. Further, it is pretty well known what kind of doctrine, and what kind only, the Committee of the Religious Tract Society approves. Hence, if these two things be put together, and it be remembered that tens of thousands of tracts are circulated in the empire which the Committee approves, and to which the Synod does not object, then surely it is pretty clear that the Russians and ourselves have in religious matters a great deal of common ground.
[15] My travels in Russia have led me to the conclusion that in the interior of that country it is not always wise to be too modest about divulging one’s income. An English officer in plain clothes, passing lonely through Kiakhta, was asked by a merchant, who had shown him some attention, what was his income; whereupon the officer told him that of a captain of Royal Engineers in full pay on foreign service, which greatly astonished the Siberiak. He said he would mention it to the chief man of the town, who, he felt sure, would call upon him. And so he did, and the captain received a marked increase of attention. Again, before starting last year for the Caucasus, I was told of the potency there of wearing arms and insignia of office, and of the difference it makes at the post-stations in getting horses, whether the traveller wears a plain hat, or one adorned with gold, or bearing the tchinovnik cockade. Accordingly, I so far profited by this information as to put on certain splendid array which I possess as I approached the stations, and (I will not say therefore) I obtained my horses.
This is further illustrated by the treatment received by an able correspondent of the Times, who has recently been in the Caucasus. On arriving at a station, he was informed that he could not have horses because they were detained for an English general, whose arrival was expected every minute. Somewhat chafed, the correspondent took to his legs, being anxious to secure a certain view before nightfall; and it was not till he reached the next station, tired and enraged, that his vexation was turned into mirth by discovering that the horses had all the while been intended for himself. The préfet had politely telegraphed to the post-masters to have horses ready for “a distinguished” Englishman; and as the one idea of distinction in the mind of a Russian peasant is the rank of a general, the post-master was expecting an officer in uniform, and the correspondent in plain clothes not coming up to this, he refused him the horses.
[16] I did not grasp the full meaning of this till some days after, and then I learned that every child in Russia must have a certificate of baptism, wanting which sundry civil difficulties may arise. It was well, therefore, that I chanced to give certificates on these two occasions, of which I sent notice, 6,000 miles off, to Moscow, to be copied into the register of “the nearest parish church.” The Russian certificate of baptism gives the sponsors’ names, and is signed over a 15_d._ stamp by the officiating priest and deacon. The certificate is then sent to the bishop’s registry for another stamp of like value, in addition to which, to expedite the matter, it is customary to add a rouble or two for the bishop’s clerk.
[17] I had been recommended sundry remedies against these insects, and small vermin generally,--such as the burning of incense, a mosquito mixture of pyretum roseum, and another, the essential oil of cloves. I was prevailed upon to take some of the last-named, and offered the bottle to the officer travelling with me to try the first experiment. It made his hands and face tingle, but not in vain; and I followed suit, to find that the little nuisances approached one’s skin, evidently with malicious intent, and then changed their minds and sailed away.