Siberia To-Day

by Frederick Ferdinand Moore

I saw a bottle snatched from a man, who was attempting to get more than his money’s worth. Everybody laughed, including the bottle-snatcher, and just to show that he was honest, and willing to pay for his little joke, the man threw a few extra postage-stamp kopecks to the woman, and went on his way, his shoulders heaving with mirth over his fun.

Those long hours of waiting at Botchkereva will always stick in my memory as a period in my life when I was reduced to peasantry in Siberia. It was cold and drear enough to make the sugarless tea from the steaming samovar taste like nectar; I acquired a taste for greasy cabbage soup which revealed formless chunks of meat concealed in its foliage.

I shared with a giant Tartar my packet of Moscow biscuits, and marvelled at the amount of nourishment he could still pick from his teeth after he had finished his meal.

Lest I should build up the idea that travel de luxe is all that I know, I wish to establish the fact that I know the forecastles of fishing boats, have lived below in cattle ships, and know intimately the foremast life of tramp steamers. I have lived among savages under most primitive conditions, and know something of the hardships of campaign. I spent eighty days ’tween-decks in a transport from New York to the Philippines by way of Suez in the days when a soldier was a hard-bitted being and knew nothing of Y. M. C. A. or Salvation Army aid. Three times I have made the circuit of the globe, bent on seeing and admiring and fighting, and have always felt more or less at home wherever my campaign hat happened to hang.

But in the Maritime Provinces of Siberia I got the impression of being on a new planet. This place seemed to me farther from civilization than any place I had ever been, despite the fact that a railroad passed the door of the station. The peasant of Siberia can create and endure the vilest conditions of life I have ever witnessed.

It is said that there are queer tribes to the north, on the Siberian littoral, who are more hidden from the world than the natives of Central Africa or the Eskimos of the Arctic—the blacks of Africa and the denizens of the regions near the poles have seen explorers and traders, but civilization has never penetrated portions of the mainland in behind Kamchatka. This territory would no doubt prove to be a rich field to the ethnologist.

I knew that the green minarets of a church not far from the station marked the position of the town, and I induced my orderly to take a walk. We scouted for a bath-house, and found one. It was a primitive structure of logs, floored with rotten adze-hewn planks which were full of splinters, mouldy and dangerously slippery. A girl of about twelve, clad in dirty rags, conducted us into the place. It looked as if it had been deserted for years.

A rude fireplace, built of rocks, held the stubs of charred logs. Above, was a sort of stone oven also made of rocks, but not mortared, so that there were interstices through which a hand could be thrust. It was into this oven-like place that water was thrown, once the rocks were glowing from the fire, and thus the steam was generated for the typical bath.

Merely out of curiosity to see what would happen, I gave the girl a ruble and asked her to prepare the fire and bring water. Kissing the dirty slip of paper money, she went out. In half an hour she had provided one bucket of water and one stick of wood. In time she had a sickly fire going. I judged that in about six hours she would have the rocks of the oven warm enough to turn water into steam.

We went wandering about the town, which consisted of probably a couple of hundred crude buildings, not counting the inevitable yellow buildings near the station, provided for railroad employees. The place seemed almost deserted, except for shivering Chinese at their open-air counters in little kiosks at some of the street-corners. They were huddled in these little huts, and were not at all eager to sell their cigarettes and other goods—they most reluctantly took their hands out of their ample sleeves, which they used as muffs. I believe they were engaged chiefly in selling vodka.