Leaving Atchinsk on the morning of the 11th of September, we passed the same day between Bogotolsk and Bolshoi-Kosoul, the two high brick pillars that mark the boundary of Eastern and Western Siberia. We had now entered the Government of Tomsk.
The tedium of the journey now palled on one terribly. No one can thoroughly understand the meaning of the word “monotony,” who has not visited Siberia, and travelled for hour after hour, day after day, week after week, along its dark, pine-girt roads. Along the whole of the post-road from Irkoutsk, distances are marked by wooden posts, painted black and white, placed at every verst, while at every post-station a large board indicates the distance from the chief towns. My heart sank whenever I looked at these and saw the word Petersburg, with the appalling number of oughts under it. The few versts from station to station were bad enough, but when it came to the six thousand odd separating us from Petersburg, one almost gave up all hope of ever seeing Europe again. However bright the sunshine or blue the sky, a sense of depression and loneliness hung over one, impossible to shake off. I have never, even in the depths of a Bornean forest, felt so utterly lonely and cut off from the rest of the civilized world as when crossing Siberia. It is rightly named by Russians, the land of exile and sorrow; and the dreariest days I have ever experienced were those spent in traversing the wild tract of forest and steppe between Irkoutsk and Tomsk. One chafed and fretted at first at the daily difficulties, the hours of delay passed in waiting for relays that never arrived——hours that seemed endless by day, but became maddening by night. After a time, however, one saw the folly of attempting to fight against fate, and fell into a state of reckless apathy, a condition of mind I should recommend any traveller adopting who intends crossing Siberia, I will not say with comfort, but without being positively driven out of his mind. Towards the end of our journey, nothing put us out. I verily believe if the tarantass had stood on its head, or rather hood, we should have taken it quite as a matter of course, and remained quietly seated till it righted itself! Everything after the first week became mechanical. Drinking tea at the stations, going to sleep at a moment’s notice, if there were no horses, harnessing them at once if there were, and returning to the depths of our gloomy vehicle, there to lie hour after hour, day after day, with nothing to look at but the black road and eternal pine-forests, nothing to think of save fair civilized Europe, so far away, but to which one felt with a kind of gloomy satisfaction, every jingle of the collar-bells was bringing us nearer. Even the scenery does not atone for all these drawbacks. The Siberian forests are not grand, but the trees have a dwarfish look produced by the immense plains. Not a bird, not a sound, is heard in these vast solitudes, and when the horses stop and the bells are silent, the stillness becomes almost oppressive.
Two stations after Atchinsk, the weather changed, and the second day out the rain was pouring down in sheets, with the usual result, that of wetting us through and through after the first hour. The post-houses about here were the filthiest we had as yet come across, and saving stale eggs and sour milk, there was absolutely nothing to eat. Yet with all these contretemps, we could not grumble, for rain as it might, we were now safe as regards the steamer, which would soon, we thought with relief, be bearing us out of this cursed country for good and all!
There were no delays to speak of till reaching Haldiéva. But arriving here at four o’clock on the afternoon of the 14th September, we found all the horses engaged. We were now but some thirty versts from Tomsk, so could afford to wait, and change our soaking garments for dry ones. For two days and a night we had been wet through, and were chilled to the bone.
A roaring fire and three or four glasses of vodka soon put things in a rosier light, and we retired to rest with an assurance from the post-master that at 4 a.m. at latest the horses would be forthcoming, and visions of civilization and a luxurious déjeûner à la fourchette at Tomsk next day, mingled with our dreams, till at about 3 a.m. the sound of wheels and trampling of hoofs brought us back to reality. Looking out into the yard, I descried a confused mass of télégas and tarantasses. By-and-by a torch flashed on the gold-laced cap of a courier standing up in a tarantass and superintending the proceedings. It was the mail! “No horses till five to-morrow afternoon, monsieur,” said the old post-master, as he and the courier, a smart stalwart young fellow, armed with a long cavalry sabre and brace of revolvers, sat down to a glass of tea and cigarette while the relays were put in. A quarter of an hour more, and they were away again, leaving us to grumble and curse our ill-luck, as the sound of their collar-bells died away on the clear, frosty air. We did not get away from Haldiéva till past 5 p.m. the following day. The clear amber light of the setting sun was flooding the dark green forest of fir-trees when we reached Semiloujnaya, the last station before Tomsk. The journey from Haldiéva had been a hard one, for the country was flooded, and the water in parts well over the axles. The last stage was a long one, twenty-nine versts, but we refused to accede to the post-master’s pressing invitation to stay the night, and proceed next morning. We had good cause to regret our obstinacy ere morning. By six o’clock the relay was in, and a few minutes after we rattled out of the village, as with a loud clashing of bells the wiry little horses tore away on our last stage in Siberia, flinging the mud and stones high in air behind them, as if in derision at the desolate and depressing country we were now (thank Heaven!) fast leaving behind us.
The sky was still grey and lowering, and the wind keen. We had now left the forest altogether, and were traversing the vast plains that encircle the capital of Western Siberia for some thirty miles on every side. There is practically no road here, the yemstchiks taking their own line, and steering for the city in their own fashion; evidently, however, our wretched driver had but a poor eye for locality, for after floundering helplessly about for three or four hours, he calmly pulled up in the middle of a huge lake of water, the overflow from a stream hard by, and confessed that he had lost his way. I looked at my watch; the hands pointed to a quarter before midnight; we had already been six hours on the way, and the horses were dead beat.
I resisted the temptation to pull the idiot off his perch and give him a sound ducking. He richly deserved it, but it would have done but little good in hastening our arrival. So we set about making casts, to use a hunting expression, and after four hours of the coldest and most disagreeable work that has ever fallen to my lot, a thin bright streak appeared on the horizon. We led the horses all this time, be it mentioned, and were as often as not up to our waists in the pools of icy cold water that covered the marshy plain. But the longest lane must have a turning, and by three o’clock we were rolling wearily through the silent and deserted streets of Tomsk.
“Nothing but distance now separates us from England,” I thought as we entered the portals of the comfortable Hôtel d’Europe, “and what is distance when steam is at hand to overcome it!” We turned into a real bed two hours later (with sheets and pillow-cases), and felt, after an excellent supper, contented, not to say triumphant. Trouble, privation, filthy post-houses, “katorgi,” were now things of the past, but as I sank into the deep and dreamless sleep that a man can only know who has passed twenty-two days out in the open, half starved, and wet through the greater part of the time, the thought uppermost in my mind was: “Not for a king’s ransom would I do this journey again.”
List of Post Stations (with Distances, Telegraph Stations, and Rivers), between Irkoutsk and Tomsk, Siberia.