We accepted this offer, and accompanied our friend, when the mystery was solved. He was a Polish exile, who, having done his time at Kara, had been permitted to return to Tiumen, for the remainder of his life. Here he managed to scrape up a living by doing odd jobs as porter, droshki-driver, and what not. He had seen better days, he told us, and knew Paris and London well, having once been employed as waiter in an Italian restaurant in the latter city, and had he kept away from Petersburg and politics, would now be living an honest and comfortable life. How many poor wretches in Siberia could, I wonder, say the same thing!
A PRISON BARGE ON THE OBI RIVER.
Most of the convict barges are of the same size, while all are on the same principle. The one we visited, The Irtish, was about two hundred and fifty feet in length, by forty in width, the upper deck being supported by two large deck-houses, one of which formed a hospital and dispensary, the other quarters for the officers of the convoy, and exiles belonging to the noble or privileged class. No objection was shown by the sentry to our going on board. Indeed we were not even asked for our passports.
I was certainly agreeably surprised. The cells were sweet and clean, though, I must add, they had not been occupied for more than a month, the vessel having been towed back empty from Tomsk in preparation for her next cargo in the spring. “You should visit one of these ships on her arrival at Tomsk,” said our guide, with a sinister smile. “I do not think then you would be quite so impressed with the cleanliness and comfort. The voyage is seldom made without at least five per cent. dying of typhus, and who can wonder? Human beings were never intended to be herded together like swine.”
The large iron cage on deck amidships, in which the convicts are allowed to take exercise, certainly did give one rather the idea of a menagerie, and more fitted for the reception of monkeys than human beings; and considering that its dimensions were only seventy-five feet long by forty wide, and that these prison ships carry eight hundred a trip, certainly seemed rather wanting in its arrangements for fresh air. Companion-ladders led down from this into the sleeping-quarters, of which there were three, ranging in length from forty to seventy feet, with a uniform width of forty feet, and a height of about seven. One of these cabins is given up for the accommodation of women and children, the others occupied by the men. Through the centre of each runs longitudinally two tiers of double sleeping-platforms, upon which the prisoners lie athwart-ships in four closely packed rows, with their heads together over the line of the keel. These sleeping-platforms are made of wooden boards. There are not even wooden pillows, but prisoners are not debarred from making use of their great-coats for that purpose, or any linen bags or cloths they may have about them. Indeed, all the prisoners we met seemed to carry exactly what they liked, from a tin saucepan to a gingham umbrella.
We got rid of our guide with some difficulty, for he was anxious that we should visit the prison under his auspices. This we thought wise to decline, not relishing the idea of being “detained on suspicion,” as we probably should have been, by the Tiumen authorities, if seen lurking round the prison gates in the society of a “discharged Katorgi.” A couple of roubles, however, consoled him, and we left him standing in the middle of the muddy road, making deep obeisances and calling down numberless blessings on the heads of the “Ingliski gospodin.” Passing the same spot two hours later, we found him flat on his back by the roadside, dead drunk, with two empty vodka bottles beside him!
Tiumen must be a cheap place to live in, judging from the price of provisions and grain. Beef and mutton are as cheap again as in most parts of England, while wheat, which is always cheap, became in 1887 a veritable drug in the market, and was selling at Semipalatinsk, in Southern Siberia, for eight kopeks a pood. One speculator from that city went to the expense of exporting a quantity to Vernoe, four hundred miles off, on the borders of China, but then only managed to get twenty-five kopeks a pood, the harvests having been equally good. He had only got rid of about half, when the earthquake occurred, which the reader may recollect destroyed the whole city, and more than half the population in September, 1887.
Many people are under the impression that the Oural Mountains are of great altitude, and the scenery very grand. Though the length of the chain is something over one thousand seven hundred miles, its highest peak does not attain to more than six thousand feet, and at the point where the line crosses them, barely two thousand feet above sea-level. No part of the Ourals is permanently covered with snow. Hard by the town of Ekaterinburg, by the side of the Great Post-Road to Siberia, is a large stone pillar, on one side of which is carved the word “Europe,” upon the other “Asia,” and this marks the boundary between the two quarters of the globe. There is probably no spot in the whole breadth and length of Siberia more full of painful associations than this, for no less than eighteen hundred thousand exiles have passed it since 1878, more than half a million men, women, and children since the beginning of the present century. The base of the pillar is covered with inscriptions, letters rudely carved by those who have here looked their last on their native land. It is the custom to make a halt and allow the exiles to bid good-bye, many of them for ever, to Europe. Travellers no longer pass the spot, now that the railway has obviated the long, lonely drive from Perm to Tiumen. The frontier on the line is marked by three stations, at intervals of ten miles or so, “Asia, Oural, and Europe.” At ten o’clock on the morning of the 29th of September, we passed by rail from one quarter of the globe into another, and reached at mid-day the town of Ekaterinburg.
We here bade adieu, with much regret, to the Sourikoffs, who were proceeding direct to Perm, and took up our quarters at the comfortable Amerikanske Gostinza, or American Hotel, so called, perhaps, because but two Americans have ever set foot in the place. It was evident that we had left Asia. The broad, stone-paved streets and boulevards, the handsome hotels, private houses enclosed in large well-kept gardens, and last, but not least, the well-dressed men and women in the streets, were signs that we had done with sombre, sad Siberia for good and all. Ekaterinburg was the first really civilized place we had seen since leaving Shanghai, it seemed ages ago, and here for the first time since leaving Pekin we enjoyed the unwonted luxuries of a real bath, and a clean bed with sheets and pillow-cases.