Siberia To-Day

by Frederick Ferdinand Moore

While we were thus distributing our property along the railroad, the interpreter told me that the car was going on the train to Blagoveschensk. He also said that he had learned of this sudden shift of the car by overhearing the Japanese commandant’s interpreter at the station order the Russian station-master to so switch the car, because the Japanese captain in it desired to go to Blagoveschensk. If that order had not been overheard, our kits, so vitally necessary to us, would have been whisked away, locked in the compartment. And our conductor had assured us, by all the saints in the Russian calendar, that the car was bound for Ushumun!

While we jettisoned our property from the car-window, the Japanese captain and his orderly looked on in mild surprise, probably sure that we were wholly mad. In a sense we were. I refrain from including our comprehensive and utterly complete remarks on all things pertaining to the Russians, from the time of the first Michael Romanoff up to the present and into the future.

Having rolled up a fine supply of particularly sharp cinders into my bedding-roll, and placed it on the station platform, a Chinese took a liking to it, and I discovered him making off with it. I doubt if he understood English, but he did get the drift of my remarks, for he dropped the roll.

Once more my interpreter resumed the debate with the Russian operator, and the latter decided to send my message. We had a wait of ten hours for the next train, and I expected to hear from Major Miller in time to know whether to proceed aboard that train for Ushumun.

The station waiting-room, crowded with poor people either waiting for trains, or simply killing time and talking politics, was a most filthy place. According to our standards, they were in dire poverty, but men, women and children were most contented and good-natured, and carried on their primitive housekeeping on the floor, and the mothers performed most intimate services for their children in full view of the assemblage with a carelessness for the senses of their neighbors which appalled me.

Yet no one seemed to mind. Barbaric-looking Mongols, in fur boots and garments smelling of fish and raw fur, came and sprawled at the long table, and demanded tea and cabbage soup, which they disposed of like wild animals come to the kill; great hulking Russian peasants, their heads and faces half-hidden in jungles of long, matted hair, sat crouched on primitive stools, and ate the kernels of sunflower seeds by the hour, throwing a handful of the seeds into their mouths, chewing meditatively, and then ejecting the seeds in a wide semi-circle before them on the floor.

From the window I could see the rude troikas of the farmers drive up, with three horses abreast. They sat in their seats, while their women disembarked from the rude carts, crawling out of the loose straw upon which they had ridden, to unload bottles of milk, cabbage, and potatoes.

While their lords stomped about the station, drinking vodka in secret places, from which they emerged wiping their mouths with the backs of their hands, the women set up the farm products on boxes near the station, and the market was open.

The mothers in the station crowds sought the milk eagerly. Such milk, and in such bottles! The latter had evidently never seen water, but were grimy with old and sticky milk down their sides. The wads of paper and rudely whittled stoppers used as corks were loose, and milk oozed up through them, to become a feeding place for millions of flies.

In some cases the milk appeared to be sold by the drink, a few kopecks giving a man or woman the privilege of drinking from the bottle, while the seller of the milk carefully watched the throat of the buyer and counted the swallows. And I observed that the last swallow taken, consisted of all the cheeks of the buyer would hold.