TOMSK TO OMSK.
While waiting for our servant to come up with the tarantass, we had sundry matters to look to in Tomsk before committing ourselves once more to the road, of which we continued to hear shocking accounts. Our portmanteaus were so smashed by the concussions the hard rough roads had exposed us to, as to be unfit for further service, and it was necessary to replace them with Russian chemadáns. This is an excellent contrivance for rough travelling; being constructed of soft leather, hard knocks have no effect, and it is capable of being so tightly lashed up as to be practically waterproof. It has also this advantage over an ordinary trunk or portmanteau, that whether it is full or not, there is no empty space left in it to block up the carriage where there is no room to spare.
A few accessories, in the way of fur gloves and such like, completed our wardrobe so far. To replace a broken thermometer we were led into an optician's establishment, managed by some clever Germans. Here we were surprised to find as good an assortment of instruments as is usually to be met with in any similar establishment in this country. Telescopes, microscopes, transit-instruments, theodolites, and all kinds of surveying instruments, of excellent workmanship, were there for sale. Everything, except the very simplest articles, was of foreign make, many of them German, but mostly French.
We had been strongly advised at the outset of our Siberian travels to provide ourselves with feather pillows, after the manner of the Russians, to use as buffers between our prominent bones and the hard substance of the carriage. Judging that our bedding would suffice, we, with the vanity of ignorance, rejected these good counsels in defiance of the well-known travelling maxim which inculcates the wisdom of taking your cue from the people of the country. Our carcases had been so unmercifully knocked about on the road to Tomsk, that we dared not go farther without pillows. It was not so easy to find them, however; for although Tomsk is said to be celebrated for them we could not hit on the right place to buy them. They are sold at about fourteen roubles per pood (36 lbs.). Our landlady was appealed to, but she avowed that there was not, and never could have been, any such thing in Tomsk, least of all had she any to dispose of. We were actually beginning to despair of pillows when a young Russianised German introduced himself to us, and, as usual in such rencontres, the conversation turned on civilisation. We happened to allude to the pillow difficulty, as proving the primitive state of society in Tomsk. On this our friend at once undertook to provide us. He went first to the old lady, and then to the younger members, none of whom he had seen before, and spent full half an hour ingratiating himself with them. The pillow question was in due time gently hinted at, and before very long one, and then another, and another, was produced, until we had pillows to our hearts' content. Delighted with his success, we begged our friend to tell us how he had achieved it. "First," he said, in very good English, "you must beat about the bush with these —— Russians; you must flatter them and humbug them. Then you must talk about everything but the thing. If you want to buy a horse, you must pretend you want to sell a cow, and so work gradually round to the point in view." He went on to tell us how he had coaxed and cajoled the good people into parting with their pillows, and how he backed up his requests by a touching appeal to their sense of hospitality. "You have two distinguished foreigners in your house, they are very good people, and you ought to treat them with the kindness due to strangers from distant countries. When Russians go to their country they are well treated. But if you refuse this small favour to these people, they will go home and tell their countrymen what beasts the Russians are," &c.
We were in a dilemma about the mode of travelling from Tomsk. Our tarantass was very much the worse for the wear, and on bad roads it might break down at any time. It would hardly be safe to leave the town with it. It would be equally imprudent to purchase a sledge, for there was very little snow; none fell during our stay, and there was reported to be none to the westward. We might of course use the post-carriages, but that mode of travelling has many inconveniences. It is uncomfortable in the extreme to sit in, and it necessitates changing at every station. The nuisance of turning out luggage, and turning out one's-self, every few hours, multiplies tenfold all the horrors of the road. Had we listened to the advice proffered to us on all hands in Tomsk we should have remained there till snow fell, which might be in one week or in six. We were entertained with terrible accounts of the road through the Baraba steppe, and the post had been six days coming from Kolivan, a town only 120 miles from Tomsk. The delay was attributed entirely to the roads, but making due allowance for Russian vagueness, we thought it just as likely to have been due to the difficulty of crossing some of the large rivers. In this uncertainty a diversion occurred in the advent of Schwartz, on the third day, minus the tarantass. He had been talked into the impossibility of getting it over the ice, and was induced to sell it for the small sum of ten roubles silver. The Russians designate their paper money by the high-sounding term "silver" roubles, lucus à non lucendo. This crowning act of folly, coupled with the fact of his having left behind (or sold) sundry articles which were in the tarantass, determined us to give Mr. Schwartz "the sack," and nothing but reflection on the probable consequences of his being left with no money, and a blighted character, to the "cold charity of the world," caused us to relent.
Old Barnaul left us a few hours after Schwartz's arrival. His destination lay nearly due south from Tomsk, a few stations beyond which town the road to Barnaul branches off from the Moscow road. The old gentleman refused to leave us entirely by ourselves, and had cheerfully sacrificed two whole days of his time, simply to keep us company until our own man came up. There was much genuine kindness in this, as in all his intercourse with us, and we parted with the pleasantest recollections on both sides (I hope).
Having made all necessary arrangements for resuming our journey, and armed ourselves with a pass from the Director-General of Posts for Western Siberia, we started on the 5th November in a post kibitka, with the intention of buying a sledge when we found an opportunity, and snow enough to use it. It was late in the afternoon before we got away from Tomsk, and dark before we emerged from the thick wood into which we plunged on leaving the town. The post-station had been at a village eighteen versts from Tomsk, but on arriving there we learned that it had been removed that very day to a place more convenient for crossing the river Tom, or on the other side of the Tom, for it was hard to deduce any positive conclusion from the various and partially contradictory statements we heard. At all events, be the new station where it might, our yemschiks refused to drive us any further than the old station in the village. To be cast adrift with our baggage in a village where no accredited officer of the government was located, would have consigned us to unknown troubles. We refused, therefore, to let the yemschiks go, but insisted on their proceeding to the next station, wherever it might be. The assistance of the starust, or village elder, was invoked, and he, with a few peasants, piloted us at our request to the river Tom, that we might examine for ourselves the state of the crossing. The ice was good, and apparently strong enough to bear the carriages, but the yemschiks lapsed into a state of mulish obstinacy, and refused to stir. The starust and his satellites, all speaking at once, held forth vigorously on general topics for the edification of the company, and went to bed. As for us, we had simply to keep possession of the carriages, and leave the rest to time. The yemschiks would get hungry, the horses would certainly have to be fed, and we might hope that when they got tired of waiting they would go on. With this idea we committed ourselves to rest in the kibitka. It was sadly deficient in comfort, as compared with our old tarantass. The kibitka is open in front, and rather over-ventilated everywhere. Cold kept sleep from our eyes for a time, while our ears were regaled with spasmodic bursts of indignation from the yemschiks, who now threatened to take us back to Tomsk, bag and baggage. To these attacks we offered nothing but passive resistance, and even the yemschiks wearied of a discussion so entirely one-sided. We were lulled to sleep in time by the chanting of some wild native airs by a Russian family in a neighbouring house. Their songs, many of them very sweet, are mostly, if not all, of the plaintive order. A drunken "brute of a husband," whom his poor wife was trying to decoy homewards, was the only incident that broke in upon the dead stillness of the night scene in the village of Kaltarskaya. There stood our wearied horses in the street that livelong night, bearing their sufferings from cold and hunger with resignation. How the yemschiks bestowed themselves during the night I know not. One at least must have kept awake to watch the horses. As morning approached the cold proved too much for my somnolence, and I was fain to turn out and grope my way into the house that had until the previous day been the post-station. On getting the door of a room open, the warm, fulsome exhalations of closely pent-up human beings that greeted the nostrils were enough to have produced a revolution in a sensitive stomach. The hard breathing of some, and the more sonorous articulations of others, enabled me to ascertain the positions of the heads of most of the sleepers, but still with every care I came into collision with sundry legs and trunks in my voyage across the floor in quest of a clear space where I might stretch myself. At length I discovered an unoccupied bench or table, and yielded to the luxury of sleep till daylight. When I again opened my eyes, my night companions had begun to stir about. Some were engaged in their toilet, which consists in stretching legs and arms, yawning a little, shaking up their clothes, and tightening the scarf which forms their girdle. By stooping low on entering the room I had escaped a broken head from a false ceiling which was used as a sleeping bunk. This is a common arrangement in post-houses, where the family of the post-master and all the yemschiks and hangers-on of the establishment are often jumbled up together, some climbing up to the top of the brick stove to sleep, and others lying on the boarded floor or ceiling which overhangs part of the room like a hay-loft. The Russian houses generally are built on traditional principles, the first thing aimed at being the exclusion of air, and consequently cold. They always feel warm, the temperature during the day being kept up to a pretty uniform scale by the large stoves. At night the fires go out, but the house retains its heat until about daylight in the morning, when it begins to feel a little chilly. There is scarcely one perfectly level floor in the country, and many of the houses, especially the old ones, are tipped up at one end so that the line of the roof makes a very wide angle with the level ground. Some indeed tumble over altogether, where the owners are too poor or too indifferent to take them down before they progress so far towards demolition. This phenomenon is not caused by the sinking of one end from the timbers rotting in the ground, but by the action of frost in the earth, which, unless the uprights are sunk deep enough, expands with cold so much as to heave up the foundations of the houses.
Early in the morning our yemschiks had made up their minds to take us over the river and to the next station. They had first to obtain the services of some peasants from the village, to pilot them over the ice. This local knowledge was necessary to enable them to avoid holes that had been only recently frozen, and other dangerous places. The Tom was here a fine broad expanse of ice, white with snow, very rough and lumpy. The crossing was satisfactorily effected, and we made the best of our way during the day through a flat, barren, and most uninteresting country, but still well wooded. A little snow fell, but only to tantalise us, for the ground never got covered more than half an inch.
Soon after daylight on the 7th, we arrived at a station on the right bank of the river Ob, which was the most formidable-looking obstacle to progress we had yet encountered. But as we had only ourselves and our baggage to get over, no serious difficulties were made, though we were threatened with trouble from a gang of drunken ice-men. The Ob, Obe, Obi or Oby, for all these spellings are used, is a noble river, and at the point where we crossed it is nearly half-a-mile wide. The current is rapid, and ice had only formed along the edges of the water. The difficulty in crossing arose from the huge masses of floating ice that were carried rapidly down by the current. To avoid being shut in by these small icebergs required all the dexterity of the adepts who manned the ferry-boat. Not only skill, but real hard work was necessary. Poles and boat-hooks were vigorously plied. The short paddle-oars were of comparatively little use; but by hooking on to the floating ice and hauling round them, then shoving off into clear water for a short space, and hooking on to the next lump of ice, we managed to thread our way through. The current had carried us down stream, but it was not nearly so strong on the left side of the channel, and there was a good breadth of clear water there which enabled the men to recover their lost ground. On reaching the landing-place, a rope was passed ashore, that is, to the solid ice, and the boat hauled up bodily far enough on the ice to enable horses to fetch the luggage. The sides and bottom of the boat being thickly coated with ice, enabled the men to slide her about with great facility.
From Tomsk our course had turned southerly, following the course of the river Tom, and striking the Ob obliquely. From the Ob we turned west again, and entered the great Baraba steppe.
Two stages from the Ob we reached the town of Kolivan, which is perhaps the most dreary, cold-looking town in Siberia, situated in a perfectly bare country, and exposed to every wind that blows. It possessed a peculiar interest for us, however, as being the then most easterly telegraph station in Siberia. The Tomsk station had been completed, but the manager had not arrived to inaugurate the opening when we left. Kolivan, being a second-rate station, only Russian messages could be sent; but having got a gentleman in Tomsk to write one out in that language, I was enabled to send a telegram from Kolivan to St. Petersburg, a distance of 2700 miles. Many repetitions were necessary in the transmission of this message, but it was delivered with perfect accuracy in thirty-six hours.
The Siberian telegraph, being now completed as far as Irkutsk, will no doubt be extended in time to the Amoor country. It is also probable that a branch will be formed from Irkutsk to Kiachta, and the Russians in Siberia confidently believe that their government will establish a line across Mongolia to Peking.
The Baraba steppe is, for the most part, one vast marsh, extending from the left bank of the river Ob westward to Tumen. It borders on the Kirghis steppe on the south, and is apparently a continuation of it. Its natural features are barren, being at the best a succession of wild prairies. The grass is long and coarse, but there is so much water on the ground that, in the summer season, the grass can hardly be available for pasture. The steppe is bare of wood, with the exception of strips here and there of dwarf birch-trees, which struggle for existence. In some of its more elevated parts, trees grow to a good size, but these spots are like oases in the desert. The inhabitants of the steppe are few, and lack the comforts enjoyed by the natives of other parts of Siberia. Villages are thinly scattered, and poor and mean-looking. The principal subsistence of the people consists in their cattle, and at every village a large tract of common land is fenced in for pasture.
At the stations in Baraba the post-master is seldom found at home, the domestic part of the establishment being generally left in charge of women, and the posting-department in that of the senior yemschik. The women in the steppe, we were informed, are mostly Kirghis, called by the Russians by the generic name of Tartars. The Kirghis women are physically superior to Russian women of the same class,—cleaner, better dressed, and handsomer. They have, in many instances, blue eyes and fair complexions, in marked contrast to the Kalmuks and Mongols. In manners they are more cheerful than the Russians.
Game abounds in the steppe. Blackcock were in some parts met with in great numbers. Pure white pheasants and ryabchik are plentiful, and, I have been told, though I did not see any, that the ptarmigan and capercailzie are also to be found.
The most conspicuous objects in the steppe are the windmills, a number of which are to be found round every village. These are the only marks that exist in the country, and they indicate the positions of the villages long before any other evidence of habitation is visible. They are primitive in construction. In order to face the wind the whole fabric is moved round on its axis by means of a clumsy, but powerful lever.
The road through Baraba looks like a strip of ploughed land in a desert, and was frozen so roughly that if solely depended on, traffic would soon have been brought to a stand. As it was, the heavy cart caravans were stopped for a time, and very few travellers were met with on this part of the journey. We rarely travelled on the road at all, only crossing it occasionally in quest of tracks through the open country. The frozen marsh greatly facilitated our progress. There was enough grass overspreading the ice to enable the horses to keep a footing, and by taking advantage of every sheet of ice we came to, we managed, by circuitous paths, to keep clear of the main road.
The weather was mild in the steppe. The sun was strong enough in the middle of the day to melt the thin covering of snow that lay on the ground; and even the nights were not so cold as we had experienced to the eastward. Snow fell occasionally, but not enough to make a sledge-road.
Slow as our progress was, it was quicker than we could have anticipated, and it was some satisfaction to keep ahead of the post which left Tomsk at the same time with us. Our yemschiks in the steppe were an unusually drunken set, but though often in jeopardy, we escaped without accident, saving one upset.
Passing Kainsk on the 9th, we reached the town of Omsk at midnight on the 11th, putting up at the Hôtel Moscow, an establishment of the same empty, comfortless character as other Siberian hotels.
Omsk is built round a hill at the junction of the Om river with the Irtish. It has a population of about 12,000; and is at present the residence of the Governor-General of Western Siberia. This functionary had recently made a tour to the Kirghis frontier, where some disputes had occurred between the Russian soldiers at the outposts and the Kirghis tribes. These émeutes are of constant occurrence. The Cossacks at the Russian stations make raids on their own account on the Kirghis people, and subject them to very rough treatment. An outbreak among the Kirghis occurs, which requires a military force to subdue. An expedition for this purpose is sent every year to the Kirghis steppe—the Russian outposts are pushed further and further south—more disturbances occur, and so the frontier is, year by year, extended, on the pretext of keeping the peace. That has been the system pursued by the Russian Government in all its aggressions in Asia. Siberia is dotted all over with old forts, which have become obsolete as the country has become quiet and settled under Russian sway. One of the strongest of these works is on the hill that stands in the middle of the town of Omsk. It is almost intact, and still kept up after a fashion. On the Kirghis frontier forts continue to be planted as footholds on the soil, and centres from which outlying territories may be subjugated.
A great deal of injustice, oppression, and cruelty have unquestionably attended the aggressions of Russia among the various Asiatic races, but in the long run the results have been rather beneficial than prejudicial to the tribes. The Kirghis who live as Russian subjects in the province of Omsk, are probably more comfortable than their semi-nomad brethren who feed their cattle on the southern steppes. The Mongol tribes who dwell under the auspices of Russia under the name of Bouriats, are more cultivated, and lead a more civilised life than the Mongols proper. They enjoy some degree of comfort, and have undoubtedly improved by their contact with the Russians. The wild hunting tribes, again, who inhabit the forests of Northern Manchuria, recently annexed to Russia, are said to have longed greatly to be transferred from allegiance to the autocrat of China to that of the Tsar. On the whole, the ambitious projects of Russia have been the means of spreading the benefits of civilisation and Christianity (in a much diluted form, it must be confessed) to many savage tribes. Highroads have been opened through deserts, and commerce has followed in the wake of conquest. The tribes who have become Russian enjoy, under the shelter of a strong government, immunity from war with neighbouring tribes, to which they were in former times constantly exposed, and have at least the opportunity of giving more attention to the arts of peace. Of course many bad, as well as good, results have flowed from the contact of Russians with these barbarous people. Those who were too low in the scale of humanity to bear the shock of a superior order of life, have been demoralised by it. The Tunguses and Ostiaks, who live in the northern parts of the provinces of the Irkutsk and Yeniseisk, are of a very low order of savages. The Tunguses are thievish, treacherous and cowardly, and live solely by fishing and hunting. The Ostiaks live almost entirely on and about the water, eat little else but fish when they can get it. They wander as far north as the Frozen Ocean. When deprived of their usual food in winter, they are reduced to eating carrion and garbage of all kinds. In their habits they are filthily dirty. Small-pox and drunkenness together make frightful havoc in their numbers. These tribes have been greatly injured by their contact with Russians. Naturally addicted to drunkenness, they have been supplied with ardent spirits to their heart's content by the invaders. The use of money being unknown to them, they only receive brandy in exchange for their services and products. They supply the gold-diggings with game, which brings them in return large quantities of spirits. They also act as guides to exploring parties, and such services are invariably requited with brandy. To obtain this liquor seems indeed to be the main object of their lives, and they have recourse to the most extraordinary expedients to gain their purpose. They are low idolaters, but they know how to turn to account the solicitude of the Russian Church for proselytising. They will allow themselves to be baptised in consideration of a bottle of brandy, but on the next favourable opportunity, they will pass over to another part of the country, and again offer themselves as candidates for baptism, if a similar inducement be held out. Brandy is fast ruining these people, and in a few generations they are likely to become extinct—a catastrophe which will have been greatly accelerated by the Russian settlers.
The reverse of this is the case with the nomad tribes who are spread over the steppes of the southern districts of Siberia. Their nomad habits have been so far circumscribed that they remain for many years together in the same places, moving only to suit the seasons and the pastures for their horses. They have a fixed place where they live in spring, but move off for the summer months, then again to winter quarters. At each of these encampments they leave their tents of felt or skins standing, thus evincing great confidence in the security of life and property. These tribes use tents of the same construction as those of the Mongols; but, unlike them, they care little for the rearing of horned cattle or sheep, their wealth consisting in horses, of which they keep large herds. They do not practise agriculture, but live a great deal by the chase, and a few of them carry on a kind of wandering trade. They obtain bread and other necessaries of life in barter for the skins of wild animals, but never part with their horses until hard pressed by necessity. If they have no skins, they will rather want bread than sell their horses. These tribes respect themselves, and command the respect of others by the strict sobriety of their habits, their general honesty, and cleanliness. They are mostly Mahometans. In many respects these people stand higher than the Russians, and are not likely to be demoralised by them.
Another Mahometan tribe may be mentioned in this category—the Yakuts, who occupy some of the northern part of the province of Irkutsk. They are no longer nomads, although they still live in tents. The Yakuts are very industrious people, rear large herds of horses and cattle, occupy themselves with trade, are skilled in ironwork, and have more recently taken to agriculture. They bear the character of sobriety, and are much more cleanly in their habits than any neighbouring tribes. The Yakuts have a tradition that they were once settled in the province of Kazan, whence they were expelled during the great irruption of Tartars into Russia, and wandered to their present habitat before they settled.
The wildest and most unmanageable of all the Siberian aborigines are the Khargasses, who live about the Altai mountains on the Chinese frontiers, in the south of the provinces of Yeniseisk and Irkutsk. The Khargasses are quite nomad, carrying tent and all with them when they move. They are said to be fierce and treacherous, perfectly uncivilised, and idolaters. It is a common practice with them when the time for the collection of their essak, or poll-tax, comes, to strike their tents, and cross the mountains to Chinese territory. There they remain until some similar claim is made on them on behalf of the Emperor of China, when they again pack up and return to Siberia. The Khargasses are great hunters, and live on the produce of their guns. They own no cattle, their riches consisting of reindeer and guns, like the Tunguses.
We saw two small tug steamers and six huge barges frozen-in at the junction of the Om with the Irtish. These barges go as far as Tumen with their cargoes, but of this more hereafter.
As there was still too little snow on the roads to warrant us in buying a sledge, we were obliged to continue undergoing the torture of a small kibitka, changing at every station. Sleep had now become out of the question, and if we could get a nap once in forty-eight hours we had to be satisfied. Eating was almost equally irregular, for the steppe afforded but few opportunities of enjoying a good meal. And yet this rough mode of life rather improved my health than otherwise. The constant exposure to the clear bracing Siberian air was certainly most beneficial, and I am convinced of this, that with all its ice and snow, there is no finer—that is, more salubrious—climate in the world than Siberia.