After a night's travelling we were still among the outlying spurs of the Ural range, well wooded with pine and birch, the former in greater variety than on the eastern side of the chain. On the road to Perm we passed through many cleared spaces, with villages and farms at short intervals.
On the 21st we reached Perm, a very flourishing manufacturing and commercial town on the left bank of the river Kama. Perm is the first (or last) town in Europe, and a little earlier in the season it would have been our last stage of road travelling. But we were too late and too early all the way through. The river Kama was not frozen, but so much floating ice was coming down, that the steamers which run between Perm and Nijni-novgorod had been taken off and sent down the Volga to Astrachan for the winter. Only a few small craft were left for repairs to their machinery. We met some more English workers in iron in Perm, and they seemed to have a good winter's work before them. A few weeks earlier, we should have embarked on one of the passenger steamers at Perm, steamed down the Kama as far as Kazan, where it joins the Volga, then up the latter from Kazan to Nijni-novgorod. This voyage would have been accomplished in five days, the whole of which time would have been available for sleep, but no luck fell in our way. Not only must we continue our journey by land, but it was very doubtful whether we could even cross the Kama at all, owing to the velocity of the current and the weight of ice that was borne downwards. The ferry is not at Perm, but at a point fifty versts lower down.
The navigation of the Russian and Siberian rivers is making astonishing progress. There are now no less than 370 tugs on the Kama and Volga, and new steamers are being added every year. One company runs steamers from Nijni to Perm, and two from Nijni down the Volga to Astrachan. The Volga Steam Navigation Company is managed by an Englishman at Nijni-novgorod, and in his hands has proved a very remunerative undertaking. Under Russian direction it had been quite the reverse. Nearly all the steamers are of foreign construction. Many come from the German ports, and many from England. They are usually sent to Russia in pieces, but several have steamed across the North Sea, and have made their own way into the very heart of the country by means of the canals in communication with the rivers.
The facilities enjoyed by Russia and Siberia for inland navigation are so vast, as to afford almost unlimited scope for capital and enterprise in introducing steam. It is, of course, a serious disadvantage that vessels have to be built in foreign countries, but there is no good reason why this should continue. If the authorities had encouraged the working of their own iron and coal mines with half the zeal they have misapplied to the gold-diggings, the country would have been further advanced in real wealth than it is. The Russian statesmen must sooner or later learn that mere gold no more constitutes wealth than tallow or any other article that has a mercantile value. The capital and labour consumed in procuring a given quantity of the precious metals would have probably produced a higher marketable equivalent, if coal and iron had been the object. At any rate, iron would have proved a surer basis for the propagation of wealth than gold. When steamers, for example, are built in Siberia, the manufacturing profits will, in the first instance, be disseminated in the country, and the gold that would, as now, be sent abroad for their purchase, may lie in the bowels of the earth, and no one be a loser by it. A good deal has already been done on the Siberian rivers, and the heavy traffic between Irkutsk and the west is conveyed for the most part in barges, which on the Om and Irtish are towed by steamers. The mere navigation of rivers in the Russian dominions is not new, but in former times the barges were incapable of ascending the rapid streams. They were constructed merely for the one trip down stream, and on reaching their destination and discharging their cargoes, they were broken up for fire-wood. The water communication between Eastern Siberia and Western Russia is necessarily very circuitous from the circumstance that the great rivers in Siberia run from south to north, and fall into the Frozen Ocean. For example, the distance by water from Omsk to Tumen is 3000 versts, and by land only 632. The Amoor and its tributaries form an exception, flowing eastward and falling into the Sea of Ochotsk. To begin at the extreme east; the grand water-route now used for goods is from the Pacific up the Amoor as far as the Shilka. Thence to the Baikal land carriage is at present used, but the Shilka itself is capable of navigation much higher up. The London and China Telegraph, August 15, 1864, reports that a steamer has lately ascended this river and its tributary the Ingoda as far as Chita, the government town of Trans-Baikal. From the Baikal the communication is by water down the Angara to Irkutsk, and 1400 miles beyond that town, to the junction of the Angara with the Yenisei, in the north of the province of Irkutsk. The water-route on the Angara below the town of Irkutsk is only used for traffic to the north. Goods in transit for Europe go by land from Irkutsk to Tomsk.
From the west, the Siberian water-route begins at Tumen, proceeding down the Irtish from Tobolsk, then up the Ob and the Tom as far as Tomsk. Then, if for the northern part of Eastern Siberia, land carriage from Tomsk to Krasnoyarsk; from the latter town down the Yenisei to the towns of Yeniseisk and Turukhansk, beyond which the country is inhabited only by wandering Tunguses and Ostiaks. There are other important water-routes in Siberia, such as that from Tumen by the Ob and Irtish to Semipalatinsk on the Kirghis steppe; and from Irkutsk down the Lena to Yakutsk, but the lines of greatest traffic are those running east and west. The ice interposes a serious difficulty in the navigation of these rivers, especially in the more northern parts, where the summer is very short, and frost sets in early. Goods are frequently caught in the ice, and in some parts of the rivers, they may be frozen up for six, or even eight months together. This risk would, of course, be greatly diminished were steam in more general use. The duration of a voyage could then be calculated with tolerable certainty, and a convenient port reached after the premonitory indications of freezing-up had shown themselves. Steam would also afford the means of expediting goods so much quicker, that the heavy part of the year's traffic might be conveyed by the rivers during the open season.
A project for improving the water communication in Siberia was set on foot by an enterprising Russian in 1859. The scheme was revived in 1862, and the projector was supported by a Hamburg banker, and assisted by a Russian colonel of engineers. Their intention was to form a complete water route from Tumen to Kiachta, first by the rivers Ob, Tom, Tchulim and Ket. From the last-named, a canal thirty to thirty-five miles in length would have to be cut into the river Yenisei. From the Yenisei, the Angara would be used to its source in the Baikal lake. From the lake the route would be up the Selenga to a point about eighteen miles from Kiachta. Thus, by one cutting, of, at the most, thirty-five miles, clear and uninterrupted water conveyance would be established from near the Ural mountains to the frontier of China. But the difficulties in the way of this enterprise are very serious. The river Angara is, in its present state, not navigable except down stream. In a distance of 800 miles below Irkutsk, there are no less than seventy-eight rapids and dangerous passes, some of which it would be impossible even for a steamer to ascend. Native craft shoot the rapids when the water is high, and effect a passage down the river, but of course never return. To render that part of the river fit for navigation, rocks would have to be blasted and cleared away. Above Irkutsk also, there are one or two places on the Angara that would have to be cleared before the steamers could ply with safety on the river. But supposing all that accomplished, to carry out the water communication with efficiency, steamers of various classes suited to the depth of water, and the nature of the different rivers, would be necessary, thereby adding greatly to the expense. On the whole, the cost of clearing out the channel of the Angara, and other minor items of expense, would be so enormous that it is highly improbable the scheme will ever be carried out; certainly not for some generations to come. All that can now be done is to improve the water communication at present in use in so far as steam traffic is practicable. Before the Angara is cleared of rocks, railways will probably traverse Siberia. Not that I consider the construction of railways in that region nearer than a remote possibility. For, although Siberia would be no exception to the general rule that railways make traffic for themselves, yet the cost must bear some proportion to the return. The length of railway necessary to connect the traffic of the various distant parts would be enormous, and as these matters are managed in Russia, would probably cost three times the amount that would be required in any other country. There is no capital in Russia available for such a purpose, and foreign capital will find many more attractive investments than Siberian railways.
From Perm we were driven by "Tatárs," who are capital coachmen. We first met these Western Tatárs at Ekaterineburg, where they live in peace and good will with the Russians. They have no apparent affinity with the Mongol races, but yet they betray, in their manner of life, their descent from nomad tribes. Many of them are engaged in trade, but they prefer hawking to settling in a shop; and even when they have opened shops they like to sally forth with a "pack" on their shoulders and roam about the great towns with their merchandise.
The general and sweeping misapplication of the name of Tartar, or Tatar, to the various wandering tribes of Asia, has led some persons to doubt whether there ever was any one tribe properly entitled to the appellation. The name has been too widespread—say from China to Russia—not to have had a foundation in fact, and there is not much doubt that an insignificant tribe of the Mongol family was known to its neighbours, and called its people by the name of Tatars. But the dominant tribes, even of the Mongols, have always repudiated the appellative; and although the Russian-speaking "Tatars" of the west acknowledge the name as applied to them, it is much in the same sense as an English-speaking Chinese calls himself a Chinaman (Cheenaman) to accommodate himself to western phraseology, although the term has no equivalent in his own language.
It is indeed curious to trace old names of countries and races to merely accidental circumstances. The name of China in use among the Mongols and Russians, is still Kitai, which is the Kathay of Marco Polo, and the name of the northern part of China during the reign of the Mongol dynasty. The name originated with a northern tribe, also called the Liau, who pushed the frontiers of their empire into North China, and held sway there from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries, and who, defeated by the Niu-ché, retired into the desert, and at a later period founded the formidable empire of Khara Khitan, or the Black Khitan, near the source of the river Obi.
But the name of Tartar has been liberally bestowed on all those Asiatic tribes who led a roving life, and of whose history little or nothing was known. The Chinese, for reasons somewhat similar, term all "outer" nations "barbarians," just as the Jews grouped all who were beyond their own pale under the comprehensive title of "gentiles;" and the ancients gave the name of Scythians to all the barbarians of Asia, of whom they could not give any more definite account.