Outside a Kirghiz Uerta.
The descendants of Jonadab knew what they were about, and what was good for them, when they determined to keep to their pastoral life, and hold on to all their tent-dwelling traditions; and as for wine, no one need ever feel the need of such a stimulant in the invigorating air of those great plains.
Amongst the Kirghiz one feels an extraordinarily biblical atmosphere, and is back again in the days of Abraham and the patriarchs, and the “women in the tent,” of whom Jael sang after the great victory. The men are attired much as Isaac and Ishmael, and Jacob and Esau were, and the women very probably keep the traditions of thousands of years in wearing their pretty nun-like head-dresses of white, which leave their pleasant faces free and uncovered.
These Kirghiz hardly ever use money. They grow “rich in many flocks and herds,” and if they sold would immediately buy again. Some of them, however, are very well off, and I was told that one, who lived simply with his wife in a uerta on the steppes, had sent his only son to complete his education in Paris, and get a medical degree at its University. For this he would have to sell off some of the increase of his flock, and send the proceeds to his son.
Let me now explain how I came to be amongst these tent-dwelling folk at all. During my first visit to Petrograd I was asked one evening by a member of the Russia Company if I could appoint a chaplain to go out to Siberia once a year or so, and visit the scattered little groups of our own countrymen who are there, but, at that time, had never seen a clergyman nor had a service since coming into the country.
“There are unbaptized,” he said, “and unconfirmed, and even those who need to be married with the service of their Church, who through no fault of their own, but through circumstances, have had to go without it. There are people who have been in Siberia all their lives, and some who have been there forty and fifty years, and never once had any ministration of their Church. Can nothing be done?”
This, of course, was a strong and direct appeal, and, after considering for a short time, it seemed impossible to appoint a chaplain for work of which one knew nothing, and so I proposed to go myself, which I found later was what it was hoped and expected that I should do. Accordingly in 1912 and again in 1913 I carried out this intention, and found that it practically took the form of a Mining Camp Mission; for, though I visited one or two other British communities, yet the most interesting part of both years’ experiences was in going to the mines situated, except in one case, in the very heart of the steppes. Each, though employing thousands of Kirghiz and Russians, is managed by a British staff of between twenty and thirty, and is the property of a British company with its board of directors meeting in its offices in London.
I will describe two of these journeys, for without knowing something of the steppes and of those who live there, and indeed taking in something of their spirit, it is impossible to feel that one really knows Russia.
Four days and nights from Moscow brings one to Petropavlosk (Peter and Paul’s town), and it is from there, in a southerly direction at first, and then heading towards the east, that the great Spassky Copper Mine is reached, for which a drive of a thousand miles, there and back, is necessary. I had not realized till just before I set out that I should have to drive on day and night without stopping for anything but food and to change horses, as there were no Russian rest-houses on that route, and the Kirghiz tents were impossible owing to the great number of living beings, other than human, which inhabited them. It was no light thing to undertake, as it meant leaving on Tuesday and getting in late on Saturday evening, and this only if all went well. Some people can sleep under such conditions during the night. I don’t know how they possibly can, for there are no roads in any true sense of the word, and none of the vehicles which cross them have springs.