At last we reached Karungi, the frontier between Sweden and Russia, and scores of sleighs were in waiting at the station to convey the passengers the short distance to the Russian Karungi. The fine-looking Russian Consul, clad in a splendid fur coat and cap to match, was most obliging, and cheered us greatly with the news—alas, quite inaccurate, as we found out later—that the Allied fleets had silenced all the forts in the Dardanelles! My brother went off to pass our heavy luggage through the Swedish Customs, and I had some difficulty in collecting our small possessions on to one sleigh, because half a dozen men and boys, clad in nondescript garments of fur and leather, hurled themselves upon hold-alls and dressing-cases and bore them off in all directions, utterly regardless of my remonstrances. The only thing I could do was to follow the most responsible-looking of my self-constituted porters, and when he deposited his burden on a sleigh I induced him to accompany me in a hunt among the lines of shaggy little ponies, finding the tea-basket in one place, a hat-box or a bundle of sticks and umbrellas mixed up with another passenger’s luggage, and so on. The Consul told me to come and drink coffee in the buffet, exclaiming reassuringly, “You can leave everything safely, for in this part of the world the people do not know how to steal.”
At last we drove off in the keen air across a level waste of snow, traversing a frozen river which forms the actual boundary, and in half an hour, with many a bump and jolt, we reached a gate through which, after we had shown our passports, we were admitted into Finland.
We had now a wait of some six hours, which we spent in walking on the crisp snow or sitting in the little station buffet, where I observed that coffee had given way to tea, the Russian national beverage, drunk in glasses with a slice of lemon and much sugar. From now onwards the pièce de résistance of our chief meals was sturgeon. I liked it fairly well when stewed or fried, but it was usually tough when served cold. Some of these enormous fish are said to weigh two or three tons.
When the train made a tardy appearance it could not accommodate all the passengers, and many were perforce left behind to follow the next day. The first halt was at Tornea, to which point travellers used to drive until the extension of the line to Karungi after the outbreak of the War, and, though we were in the Arctic Circle and it was early in March, the air seemed quite mild as we rushed across Finland, our wood-fed engine belching forth immense whorls of smoke. At Vyborg we entered Russia, and at midnight of the second day reached Petrograd.
In the Astoria Hotel it was remarkable to see every one drinking kvass, a somewhat mawkish beverage made from bread or from cranberries, in lieu of wine or spirits. In Finland alcoholic refreshments were obtainable in the restaurant car, but now we found ourselves in a country which the will of an autocrat had made so strictly teetotal that we were unable even to purchase methylated spirit for our tea-basket!
Some of our Russian acquaintances spoke with enthusiasm of the beneficial effect of the Tsar’s edict, one competent observer pointing out that the Russian women were just beginning to take to drink, which would have meant the ruin of many thousands of homes. On the other side, there were murmurs among the well-to-do, who were deprived of their favourite beverages unless they could obtain a doctor’s certificate of ill-health, which did not, however, seem difficult to arrange. I was asked more than once whether King George was about to follow the lead given by the Tsar, Russians not being very clear as to the limitations of a constitutional monarchy.
Soldiers were to be seen everywhere, sometimes drilling near the great red Winter Palace, sometimes as reservists, with numbers chalked upon their backs, or again as small parties of wounded in charge of kind-faced hospital nurses. I heard pathetic accounts of the extreme poverty of the men who were being nursed back to health in the English Hospital directed by Lady Georgina Buchanan, who had had the kindly thought of fitting them out when they were dismissed to their peasant homes; the totally disabled being trained in basket-making. Both at Petrograd and at Moscow, our next halting-place, those actively engaged in nursing spoke highly of the courage and gratitude of their patients. In the latter city an English girl of only nineteen and a Russian lady of the same age, neither of whom had had any training in nursing, were in charge of a hospital containing forty-five wounded soldiers. They did all the bandaging themselves, assisted at every operation, and supervised the peasant women who performed the more menial share of the work. My devoted compatriot told me that the men called her “Little Sister,” and were marvellously brave when operated upon, saying that her presence gave them courage. Owing to the absence of the great majority of the trained nurses at the front, these capable amateurs were of the utmost service. We heard that the Russian medical faculty disapproved of inoculation for typhoid, giving the somewhat inadequate reason that “there were so many worse diseases,” and consequently the soldiers suffered terribly from this scourge.
My brother and I did the sights of Petrograd, with its many gold-covered domes, cupolas and spires, but I will refrain from describing the gorgeous interior of St. Isaak, the pictures of the Hermitage, or even the deeply interesting house in which Peter the Great lived while building his “window opening to the West.”
Moscow, with its hundreds of gilt-domed or purple or blue or green cupolas, that bizarre orgy of colour and fantastic design called the Church of Ivan the Terrible, and the ancient Kremlin built to resist Tartar inroads, gave me, as indeed it does to most travellers, the impression of a semi-Oriental city.
We were in the very heart of Russia, and no one could fail to be struck by the intense devotion—I refrain from calling it superstition—of the people. In the dim magnificence of the small but lofty Coronation Chapel, which has its walls literally encrusted with jewelled icons, crowds were kissing the hands and feet of the sacred pictures all day long, in defiance of every hygienic principle. Long-haired priests in embroidered copes were chanting services, and as the body of a saint, dead centuries ago, had just been exhumed, it was confidently expected that many miracles of healing would be wrought by the remains. Gilded and jewelled banners to be carried in procession stood in the ornate chapels, which had gorgeous doors through which no woman might pass. On the great day of his coronation the Tsar passed through these portals, anointed and crowned himself, then issued forth, the Father of his people, to perform the same ceremony on the Tsaritsa.