FROM PEKIN TO CALAIS BY LAND.
CHAPTER I.
GRAVESEND TO PEKIN.
“From China to France overland! Why, surely it’s impossible. I thought one could only get to China by sea!”
Such was the remark made by a young lady whom I had the honour of taking down to dinner a few days previous to embarking upon the voyage of which I am about to narrate my experiences. Although I trust there are not many educated persons who, like my fair friend, are unaware that Pekin and Paris are actually undivided by sea, I imagine there are but few who, if put down at Calais, and told to find their way overland to Pekin, would know how to set about it, fewer still who have any practical knowledge of that vast but comparatively unknown country separating the Chinese Empire from Russia proper, Siberia.
It had been a long-projected voyage. Lancaster, (a fellow-traveller in many lands,) and I had talked it over for at least two years before: in the early spring of 1887, we finally decided to put our project into execution, and start for the great unknown.
Unlike most voyages which in these days of travel are an accomplished fact as soon as decided upon, this one was fraught with innumerable delays and annoyances. Our difficulties commenced at the very outset, for nowhere in London, or indeed anywhere else, could I glean the smallest information respecting the journey; the only book I succeeded in finding on the subject being one written by John Bell, the English traveller, in 1788, but, as may be imagined, the information contained therein was somewhat obsolete.
Nothing more modern, however, could I procure. Jules Verne’s amusing and clever book, “Michel Strogoff,” deals largely with Irkoutsk, Lake Baikal, and other regions we were about to traverse, but I hardly felt justified in taking that versatile author as a travelling-guide. That we landed at Tientsin——China——and saw the sea again at Calais——France——was all we definitely knew; of the time it took to do, or how the journey was to be accomplished, we were quite in the dark.
About a week before our departure, however, I had the good fortune to meet a gentleman connected with the Russian Embassy in London, and to him I confided our difficulties. M. de ———— was indeed a friend in need, for in less than twenty-four hours our difficulties had vanished like snow in the sunshine. Not only was the route from Pekin to Moscow clearly laid down for us, but we were provided, in addition, with a letter of introduction from M. de Staal, the Russian Ambassador in London, to the Russian Minister at Pekin. Had it not been for this, I doubt whether we should ever have got further than the celestial city.
The route (we now found) was as follows: From Shanghai to Pekin by steamer and house-boat, from Pekin to Kalgan (or the Great Wall of China) by mule litter, and thence across the Great Gobi Desert to Kiakhta, the Russo-Chinese frontier, by camel caravan. From Kiakhta to Tomsk, viâ Lake Baikal, Irkoutsk, and Krasnoiarsk by tarantass or Russian post carriage, and thence by steam communication on the Obi and Irtish rivers to Tobolsk and Tiumen. From the latter place our journey was easy enough. Four days’ sail and seven of steam would bring us to Moscow, practically the end of our voyage. As to the time the journey would take, no one, even at the Russian Embassy, seemed to know. So much in this journey depends (as we afterwards found) upon the weather, the facility of obtaining camels at the Great Wall, and last, but not least, the state of the roads in Siberia. We were starting at a good time, however, and with luck might expect to reach Moscow in the early autumn. If detained in Siberia by floods or other casualties, we might not arrive in Europe till the new year. This was all we could ascertain, and with this somewhat scanty information were forced to be content.