Werkstein got a man with a pony and a cart, and we loaded our baggage. Then, trailing along after it, walking in order not to freeze our feet, we skirted the railroad, and came to a railroad bridge over a gully, which was to lead us to Chita proper.
But just as our wagon approached the bridge, a Russian ran out of a hut, and let down bars, blowing a horn loudly meanwhile. Our pony had to stop, and we had to wait.
We spent the time walking to and fro in an effort to keep warm. Werkstein said there was a train coming, and the bridge guard could not let us cross after he had been warned. And the time between when the guard closed the bridge, and the freight train crossed and we were allowed to pass, was forty-five minutes. At both ends of the bridge long lines of traffic had been held up, and men and horses obviously suffered greatly from cold. But Nitchyvo! The people are too good-natured to protest. What does it matter? Nothing, except that I have observed in lands where people are noted for their good nature, those people bow their necks under the yoke of a foreign conqueror.
There is a system of philosophy used as a thesis for happy books in the United States, somewhat akin to New Thought, which can see no evil in any thing or any person. The heroes and heroines of such books being depicted as living in happy American homes, insist that everybody should be happy and can be happy, merely by seeking happiness. But while these youngsters are being happy, father is making money, and somebody does a deal of work that the machinery of government, and the machinery of modern life, may be kept going. And such books sell by the millions to American people. Happiness should not be the result of wearing mental blinders. For the curse of Russia was not the Czar, but the peasants Nitchyvo—“no matter.”
XIV
THE CITY OF CONVICTS
My first impressions of Chita were good. It had an excellent though dirty station, and the buildings were substantial, most of those in the business district being of stone or brick. There were two big Russian churches, a synagogue, and a Mohammedan mosque, two local newspapers being published intermittently, banks which did not at that time boast of their assets, trade-schools, high schools, and a school conducted by the clergy but which was temporarily closed, its building having been commandeered by Ataman Semenoff, the chief of the Trans-Baikal Cossacks, for an officers’ school. The population was between fifty and sixty thousand. There were two fairly good hotels, the better one held by Semenoff as quarters for his officers and their families.
The streets were wide and laid in straight lines. And oddly enough, in a country which we assume to be buried in snow during the winter, to walk the streets meant to sink ankle-deep in dust. All the snow I saw in Chita was a mantle of fine particles on ground which was not disturbed by traffic. It was too cold to snow.
We found the officer I was to relieve in the Hotel Dayooria. The room was dark, because the single window was an inch thick with frost. But there was an electric drop-light. On the window-sill were tea, sugar, bread and a mess-kit. The scant furniture was dangerous to use, for the Bolshevists had gone through the hotel and wrecked it.
I was offered a room for myself and interpreter which was bare of furniture, the walls stripped clean of paper, the window repaired poorly, at the rate of twenty-five rubles per occupant, or at the then rate of exchange, about five dollars a day for both.
The halls were filthy dirty, and the odors nauseating. The toilet on the main floor had plumbing, but not water, and it had been in use for several months. There was no light in it, and its ventilation was attended to by the door which opened into the dirty hall. The place made its presence known throughout the building, and neither proprietor nor Russian guests felt that there was anything out of the ordinary in their surroundings.