Both on the Turkestan and on the Trans-Siberian Railway we met agents of the British and Foreign Bible Society selling Gospels, Bibles, and Testaments in various languages, of which they had a good assortment in attractive bindings and extremely cheap. These agents are allowed free passes on all the lines in Russia. Ten of these passes are granted annually, and the colporteurs are able to carry on what may well be called a mission work among the immigrants and others. The number of immigrants into Siberia in 1908 reached the astonishing figure of 760,000 persons. A Russian red cross nurse told me that she had travelled in charge of a train full of such immigrants, and the description of the horrors of the journey are only to be equalled by Zola’s tale of the pilgrims to Lourdes. To these immigrants many free copies of the Gospels are given, and the value of such a gift in that land must be very great. Books must be scarce in the greater part of the country, though, thanks to the generosity of a Russian there is a village libraries’ organisation in the province of Tomsk, by means of which fifty villages have been supplied with libraries. The generosity of the state railways department is not confined to the gifts of free passes for the colporteurs, but also the free carriage of all their books from the moment they enter Russian territory, and the remitting of all duty upon them. All the employés, too, of the Bible Society are exempt from the Trade and Industrial Tax.
The excellent example of the railway companies has been followed by many of the shipping companies on the Black Sea, the White Sea, and the Dnieper, Don, and Volga rivers. The companies, where there is a foreign element present, are much less willing to grant these facilities. Even the tramway companies in many towns give free tickets to colporteurs.
The second day we reached the little town of Aral at the head of the Aral Sea, after passing through the most desolate country: it could not have been more accurately described than in the words of Browning:
“I think I never saw
Such starved ignoble nature; nothing throve:
For flowers—as well expect a cedar grove!
But cockle, spurge, according to their law
Might propagate their kind, with none to awe,
You’d think: a burr had been a treasure-trove.
No! penury, inertness, and grimace,