The next province through which the railway passes is that of Tobolsk, but it only skirts its southern border, which adjoins the steppes inhabited by Cossacks and nomadic tribes, whose caravans may be seen in the busy markets of Petropavlosk, which was founded in 1752 as a protection against the Kirghiz Cossacks. About one-third of its population is Mohammedan, and the Greek Orthodox Church has a mission in the province for them: the present staff of the mission consists of thirteen priests, twelve assistants, two deacons, and one Psalm reader. Last year they baptized eight Mohammedans. They have a very small educational work. The Greek Orthodox Church has various missions scattered through Siberia, and the Russian Government does not allow any foreign ones, which seems the greater pity when it is considered how inadequate in every respect are those of the Greek Church—they only number nine. Everywhere in the cities we saw the beautiful green domes and spires of the churches, but very little is done for the religious welfare of the people in the country districts, and for the most part they are in a state of profound ignorance; religion is summed up in (α) the worship paid to the ikon, (a little coloured print of our Lord, or of the Virgin, or of a saint), which is to be found, not only in all private houses, but in every waiting-room or restaurant on the railway, and in (β) certain religious ceremonies at special times of the year, and on special occasions.
After leaving Tobolsk, the next important station passed on the line is Chéliabinsk, in the province of Orenburg, the first town over the border into Europe. The frontier between Asiatic and European Russia is crossed about 104 miles to the east of it, and is marked by an obelisk on the left hand side of the line at its highest point, which may be seen soon after leaving Kurgan. Chéliabinsk is a cosmopolitan centre; it is the real starting-point of the Trans-Siberian line, and is the junction where the line divides, the one going north to St. Petersburg, and the other west to Moscow. The Russian State Express runs once a week from each of these cities to Vladivostock, and also in the opposite direction.
We were much pleased with the way our carriages and corridors were cleaned out daily while we were stopping at stations. A little army of women swarmed into the train directly it stopped, provided with buckets of hot water, and they washed out the whole place quite efficaciously and with great rapidity. It is really much better to have oilcloth on the floors rather than carpet, for the sake of cleanliness. The dusting of the carriages was done every morning by the attendant after he had made the beds, and he kept them quite nice and tidy. The one thing that provoked me through all our travelling in Russia, however, was the fact that the attendants had keys which opened all the bolts, so that they could come in whenever they choose, and the art of knocking before entering was unknown to most of them. They generally seemed to select the most inappropriate moment for coming in, when one was either dressing or undressing; but fortunately all travelling tends to blunt one’s susceptibilities on such points.
The ninth day after leaving Kharbin we reached Kinel, the next station before reaching Samara, the real junction for the Turkestan line. There was only a small margin of time allowed for changing train there, so we decided it was better to have to wait unduly long at Kinel, rather than run the risk of missing our train and waiting twenty-four hours for the next one. We got out at a most dreary hour, which seems to be rather frequently the case on Russian railways, considering how few are the trains; it was between one and two o’clock in the morning, and our baggage was deposited in the ladies’ waiting-room, where we found the only sofa filled with babies. A considerable number of passengers had their luggage in the adjoining restaurant, where they slept or smoked. The atmosphere was decidedly trying, so I spent most of the time pacing up and down the platform, watching the dawn grow, for even at that early hour there was a broad belt of orange light lying along the horizon. At fitful intervals one and another of the passengers would come out for a breath of fresh air, or order drinks from the somnolent attendants. It appeared to be the natural thing for people to be spending the night at the station, though no train disturbed the peace of the place for several hours. Not one of the officials seemed able to speak or understand any language but Russian, so I addressed a young German tourist to ask for information. He told me that there were no sleeping berths on the summer trains for Tashkent, the “wagon lits” service being suspended on the first of May, but that we should find the ordinary carriages thoroughly comfortable, the second class quite as good as the first (in which we proved him to be correct), for all the trains are arranged with a view to night travelling. He also told us that instead of the journey taking five days (as we had been informed when we made inquiries at Peking), it would only take three. Later on we discovered there was a wagon lits carriage at the rear of the train (without a single passenger in it), but no restaurant car. Encouraged, I suppose, by the pleasure which he saw depicted on my face at such pleasant news, he went on to give us particulars of our route, by which he said he had just come from Turkestan. He advised us to go by the Black Sea instead of through the Caucasus, saying that the journey from Tashkent to Vienna by that route took not more than five days; the minimum time in reality is seven. He had a Russian time-table, quite a thick volume, which he advised us to purchase; we succeeded in buying one later in the day when the bookstall opened, and although the names were quite a puzzle in Russian characters, it provided us with constant occupation, both in deciphering them, and in fitting together the bits of the route, scattered on at least a dozen different pages. In the station at Kinel they had rather a good sort of map in a large frame on the wall opposite the ticket-office, arranged as under. As there are so few trains it is easier than it would be on our lines, but such a map would be much more intelligible for cheap-trippers than our time-tables. These maps we saw in various places later on.
Four hours wore slowly away, and at last the ticket-office opened, and I presented a paper with “Tashkent—2 klacce,” and held up two fingers. Traveling is very cheap here; from Tashkent to Kinel, a distance of 1314 miles, the tickets are approximately first class, £4, 5s. 0d., second class, £2, 10s. 3d., third class, £1, 9s. 0d., fourth class, 14s., but then the train goes like a snail, and stops perpetually. The third and fourth class carriages always seemed to be packed with humanity, and the passengers lie all day, as well as all night long, on shelves one above the other. The fuel used both on this line and on the Trans-Siberian is entirely wood, so they have to be continually taking in a fresh stock, and each carriage has a little room for its own special heating apparatus. The funnels of the engines have large bulbs at the top to prevent the escape of sparks.
CHAPTER XVI
Into Turkestan
The first day we travelled through a vast cultivated plain, and the landscape was dotted over with a sprinkling of houses and many trees. The children brought forget-me-nots and anemones to sell at the wayside stations; but on this line the towns and hamlets are fewer than on the one we had just left. Though the land seemed so uninhabited the train always seemed full, and the passengers made themselves thoroughly at home. The second-class travellers, who were going any distance, put on fresh clothes, the ladies dressed in négligé costumes like tea-gowns. One amazingly stout lady put on a muslin gown over a pink slip, and looked just like an animated pin-cushion. These people seem to wear all their jewels too, when travelling. Often it was difficult to imagine where the few people visible at the stations had sprung from, especially to the south of Orenburg. This is one of the only two important places between Kinel and Tashkent, and is the principal town of the province of the same name. There are four mission stations in the Orenburg diocese, and twenty-seven Mohammedans were baptized last year. To the south of Orenburg the land becomes more and more desolate-looking, and the vegetation is so sparse that one can hardly believe it is possible for anything to subsist upon it. Perhaps that is the reason why the Kirghiz nomadic tribes, who inhabit this territory, known as the Kirghiz Steppes, cultivate a peculiar kind of sheep called “stéatopyge” by the French traveller Capus. This sheep has a singularly fat tail, sometimes so long and heavy that it has to go on a little wheeled cart, and it is this tail which suffices to nourish the sheep in time of scarcity of herbage, in the same way that the camel is said to live on his hump; at the end of the winter the tail has dwindled to quite ordinary proportions. Unfortunately we did not see any of these interesting animals (though I once met one at Delhi), but during the following days we saw hardly any living things but camels, much used also by the Kirghiz. The earth seemed utterly barren, and exuded nothing but salt; hour by hour elapsed, only varied by the interest of stopping at some wayside station, standing alone in the desert, where samovars full of boiling water were eagerly sought by the passengers with their various pots and kettles; the ordinary charge for a potful is three farthings, and one wonders how the poor creatures who supply it are able to make any living out of so poor a harvest. Their only other wares are eggs (generally hard boiled), bottles of milk, and baskets of oranges and lemons. The latter are always in request for Russian tea, and fetch a better price than most things. The peasants look most amiable, good-natured creatures, and are eminently picturesque in their embroidered blouses of blue, green, scarlet, or white, fastened in at the waist with a leathern belt. For the last half century the Russians have been gradually colonising the steppes. Some people labour under the impression that the agricultural classes are not only happier but also more successful when they are ignorant, but this has certainly not proved the case in the Russian Empire. The colonists have considerable advantages offered to them by the Government in the way of cheap grain and agricultural implements, but their ignorance of the rotation of crops and the necessity of feeding the land cause them to exhaust it in a few years’ time. The contrast between the Russian peasant and his German neighbour when you cross the frontier is extraordinary, and it is deplorable to consider the latent wealth of Siberia in conjunction with the present condition of its peasant population.