From Pekin to Calais by Land

by Harry De Windt

The climate is, on the whole, good. Irkoutsk is not nearly so cold in winter as many other Siberian towns. In summer the temperature is pleasant and equable, the unhealthiest time of year being the autumn, when dense fogs are productive of much rheumatism and lung disease, but as a rule the public health is excellent, for the city is beautifully drained. It would be strange were it otherwise, with the broad, resistless flood of the Angara for ever foaming by. Epidemics are rare, with the exception of small pox, a disease frequently brought to Irkoutsk and other towns of Eastern Siberia by tea-caravans from China. Cholera is unknown.

My ideas of Siberia were, before I left England, extremely vague. It is a country in which, before I undertook this voyage, I had taken but little or no interest. There are but few works written bearing upon the region we passed through. The only ones I had ever read on the subject were “Michel Strogoff” and “Called Back”! The reader will judge for himself how faithfully these authors have portrayed Irkoutsk, the scene of the “Courier of the Czar’s” triumph, and the meeting between “Dr. Ceneri,” and “Gilbert Vaughan!”

It was a bright sunny morning, when, about 8 a.m. on the 12th of August, we dashed into the city, and, after a longish drive through its broad and deserted streets, drew up with a flourish at the door of the “Moskovskaya Podovorié,” the principal hotel. Let not the reader imagine a dilapidated wooden hut, such as I myself had conjured up visions of, but a handsome, four-storied stone building, with gorgeously furnished apartments, a lift, electric bells, and “Table-d’hôte à 6 heures”! As we ascend the broad, well-carpeted stairs, with a polite and white-waistcoated manager leading the way, while a gold-lace-capped porter follows with our luggage, it is hard to realize that we are still on the borders of China, and over four thousand miles from a railway.

Irkoutsk presents, at first sight, an untidy, unfinished appearance. Like most Siberian towns, its buildings are a strange mixture of squalor and grandeur. The majority are of brick, for since the great fire of 1879 a law has been passed forbidding the construction of any more wooden dwellings. The consequence is that the greater part of the city presents a patchwork appearance, the lofty mansion of a millionaire gold-miner, with its conservatories and gardens, often standing next door to the dilapidated wooden hovel of some peasant with half its roof off, which has been partially saved from the flames. One’s first feeling on walking through the streets is one of intense depression, for a more melancholy-looking city does not exist. The streets, though wide and regular, give one the idea of being continually up for repair. One looks instinctively for the “No Thoroughfare” board. Although so much care is lavished on the architecture and decoration of buildings, the streets are apparently left to look after themselves. Unpaved and uneven, one comes across holes that would play sad havoc with a springed carriage, which article, however, does not exist here, at least among the public vehicles. The pavements, which are of rough pine with light wooden guard-rails, are barely three feet wide.

The “Grande Rue” is the principal street; a thoroughfare nearly a mile long, which would not disgrace a European city, so far as buildings are concerned. It is the only street whence the old wooden dwellings have entirely disappeared, to give place to fine, well-built houses and Government offices. The principal shops are situated here, but, though one may buy almost anything in this far-away corner of the globe, from an English steam plough to a Parisian bonnet, there is no outward or visible sign in any of the windows of the goods sold within. Merely a roughly painted board over the doorway indicating the name and business of the proprietor, and a notice to the effect that from twelve o’clock mid-day till three p.m. he is not at home. To the nakedness of the shop-windows, perhaps, among other reasons, may be attributed the dismal appearance the place presents. Perhaps, too, the black roads, total absence of trees or gardens, or indeed of colour of any kind, has much to do with the sense of depression that fastens on one after ever so short a residence in any Siberian town. I cannot say exactly why, but one’s only thought, after a couple of days was invariably, “When shall I get away?” and this though the sun was shining brightly at the time, and the day in any ordinary country would have been one to raise and enliven the spirits. Here the sunshine only served to reveal more plainly the dirty, unwashed appearance which everything, including the natives, presented.

You can seldom tell a Siberian (so-called) gentleman apart from the lower orders, though the income of the wealthier gold-miners would enable them to live in luxury in London or Paris. It should, one would think, also provide them with an occasional collar and a clean shirt once a week, but it doesn’t. Wealth in Siberia apparently makes no difference to the garb of an individual. All, high or low, wear the same suit of rusty black; all have the same dirty, unkempt look. A pair of high boots, with square toes and very high heels, and small, narrow-peaked caps, complete the costume. All look as if they slept in their clothes, which, by the way, they probably do, for sheets are unknown in Siberia (except at the Moskovskaya Podovorié), and in many houses, beds also. I heard, when at Tomsk, of a gold-miner, worth some thousands sterling a year, who always slept on two chairs, but at the same time imported his horses and carriage, grapes and hothouse pines from St. Petersburg, and had had a grand piano sent out to him from Paris. The women in Irkoutsk dressed well as a rule, and some, but not many, were good-looking. A Siberian lady seldom wears a hat in summer, but a black or white silk handkerchief twisted round the head. Nor is this head-dress with a pretty face beneath it, by any means unbecoming.

We were not sorry to turn in to bed and enjoy a good ten hours’ rest after the fatiguing journey from Kiakhta, and slept none the less soundly for the knowledge that when we woke what the Americans call a good square feed would be awaiting us, a luxury we had not enjoyed since leaving Pekin. The hasty snatches of food we got at Kiakhta were too frequently interrupted by pugilistic encounters and toasts in “Vodka” to be dignified by the name of meals!

A slight disappointment awaited us, though, on waking, at the scanty washing appliances this gorgeous hostelry provided. Baths there were of course none. We did not expect it, but we had at any rate looked forward to a wash-hand basin. But, the only appliance furnished was a small tin vessel holding about a pint of water, and nailed up against the bedroom wall. On turning a small tap, a thin trickling stream of water ran out, so that by holding your hands under it for half a minute or so, you could just manage to wet them all over, and with this, we had to manage. One had at any rate the advantage of privacy, and could wash (so to speak) in one’s own bedroom. It was better than at Tomsk, where the hotel only boasted one of these tin abominations, and it was fixed up in the passage, pro bono publico.

We strolled out in the evening to the public gardens, gardens in name only, for the stunted shrubs are not worthy of the name of trees, and there were no flowers and very little grass. The lovely night, had brought out all the élite of Irkoutsk, to listen to the band of a Cossack regiment, which performed in a brilliantly lighted kiosk in the centre of the square. But our light tweed suits and high brown boots attracted so much attention and created such consternation among the rook-like garments of the inhabitants, that we nearly beat a hasty retreat. The temptation of good music and a cigar in the moonlight, however, was too much for us, and we remained undeterred by the searching and not altogether complimentary glances of those around us, who seemed to look upon the appearance of any stranger in their midst as an unwarrantable intrusion and insult. I am bound to say that for downright rudeness and vulgarity, the Siberian male, pur et simple, is unequalled. It seems the more strange that their countrymen west of the Ourals are undoubtedly, next the French, the most courteous and polite nation in the world.

There are three distinct classes of society in Irkoutsk: the Government officials, millionaire gold-miners, and tradespeople. It is probably the only city in the world where the latter are in reality the most aristocratic portion of the community, for the simple reason that they are most of them political exiles who, in Russia or Poland, were of good birth and position till they lost name and individuality in a prison number. The Government officials and military stationed in Irkoutsk form a clique of their own, from which they rigidly exclude the gold-mining millionaire, a class of men the like of which I have never met, thank Heaven, out of Siberia.