Mr. Smith is a persona grata in Wladivostok, and very much so with the Governor, who consequently received me with much friendliness, and asked me to let him know my plans. I explained what I wanted to do, subject to his approval, and presented my credentials, which were of the best. He said that he quite approved of my project, and would do anything he could to help me, and wrote on the spot a letter to the Frontier Commissioner, but he added that the disorganized and undisciplined state of the Chinese army near the frontier might render some modification of my plan necessary, as I afterwards found. The Governor and his wife speak excellent English, and the social intercourse which I had with them afterwards was most agreeable and instructive.
During the afternoon Mr. Smith returned, and saying that he and his wife could not endure my staying in that hotel, took me away to his home high up on a steep hillside, with a glorious view of the city and harbor, and of which it is difficult to say whether the sunshine were brighter within or without. Under such propitious circumstances my two visits became full of sunny memories, and I may be pardoned if I see Wladivostok a little couleur de rose; for the extraordinary kindness which dogs and shadows the traveller in the Far East were met with there in perfection, and where I was received by strangers I left highly valued friends.
After a snowstorm splendid weather set in. The snow prevented dust blasts, the ordinary drawback of an Eastern Siberian winter, the skies were brilliant and unclouded, the sunsets carnivals of color, the air exhilarating, the mercury at night averaging 20°, there was light without heat, the main road was full of sleighs going at a gallop, their bells making low music, all that is unsightly was hidden, and this weather continued for five weeks!
“The Possession of the East” is nothing if not military and naval. Forts, earthworks, at which it is prudent not to look too long or intently, great military hospitals, huge red brick barracks in every direction, offices of military administration, squads of soldiers in brown ulsters and peaked pashaliks, carrying pickaxes or spades on their shoulders,[31] sappers with their tools, in small parties, officers, mostly with portfolios or despatch boxes under their arms, dashing about in sleighs, and the prohibition of photography, all indicate its fortress character. Certainly two out of every three people in the streets are in uniform, and the Cossack police, who abound, are practically soldiers.
Naval it is also. There are ships of war in and out of commission, a brand-new admiralty, a navy yard, a floating dock, a magnificent dry dock, only just completed, and a naval clubhouse, which is one of the finest buildings in Wladivostok. No matter that Nature closes the harbor from Christmas to the end of March! Science has won the victory, and the port has been kept open for the last two winters by means of a powerful ice-breaker and the services of the troops in towing the blocks of ice out to sea. Large steamers of the “Volunteer Fleet” leave Odessa and Wladivostok monthly or fortnightly. As the eastern terminus of the Trans-Siberian Railway, Wladivostok aspires to be what she surely will be—at once the Gibraltar and Odessa of the Far East, one of the most important of commercial emporiums, as the “distributing point” for the commerce of that vast area of prolific country which lies south of the Amur. Possibly a branch line to Port Shestakoff in Ham-gyöng Do may enable the Government to dispense with the services of the ice-breaker!
The progress of the city is remarkable. The site, then a forest, was only surveyed in 1860. In 1863 many of the trees were felled and some shanties were erected. Later than that a tiger was shot on the site of the new Government House, and a man leaving two horses to be shod outside the smithy had them both devoured by tigers. Gradually the big oaks and pines were cleared away, and wooden houses were slowly added, until 1872, when the removal of the naval establishment of 60 men from Nicolaeffk on the Amur to the new settlement gave it a decided start. In 1878 it had a population of 1,400. In 1897 its estimated civil population was 25,000, including 3,000 Koreans, who have their own settlement a mile from the city, and are its draymen and porters, and 2,000 Chinese. The latter keep most of the shops, and have obtained a monopoly of the business in meat, fish, game, fruit, vegetables, and other perishable commodities, their guild being strong enough to squeeze the Russians out of the trade in these articles, which are sold in four large wooden buildings by the harbor known as the “Bazar.” There are some good Japanese shops, but the Japanese are usually domestic servants at high wages, and after a few years return to enjoy their savings in their own country. A naturalized German is the only British subject, and my host and his family are the only Americans.
The capital has two subsidized and two independent lines of steamers, 700 families of Russian assisted emigrants enter Primorsk annually, each head of a household being required to be the possessor of 600 roubles (£60), and from 8,000 to 10,000 Chinese from the Shan-tung province arrive every spring to fulfil labor contracts, returning to China in December, carrying out of the country from 25 to 50 dollars each, convict labor from the penal settlement of Saghalien having been abandoned as impracticable.
The Chinese shops, which are a feature of Wladivostok, undersell both Russians and Germans, and have an increasing trade. Kuntz and Albers, a Hamburg firm of importers, bankers, shipping agents, and Whiteleyism in general, with sixty clerks, mostly German, with a few Russians, Danes, and Koreans, conduct an enormous wholesale and retail business in a “palatial” pile of brick and stone buildings, and has sixteen branch houses in Eastern Siberia, and the German firm of Langalutje runs them very closely.
The railway station and offices are solid and handsome; an admirably built railroad, open to the Ussuri Bridge, 186 miles, and progressing towards the Amur with great rapidity, points to a new commercial future; streets of shops and dwelling-houses, in which brick and stone are fast replacing wood, are extending to the north, east, and west, and along the Gulf of Peter the Great, for fully three miles; and new and handsome official and private edifices of much pretension were being rapidly completed. One broad road, with houses sometimes on one, sometimes on both sides, running along the hillside for 2 miles at a considerable height, is the “Main Street” or “High Street” of Wladivostok. Along it are built most of the public buildings, and the great shops and mercantile offices. It is crossed by painfully steep roads climbing up the hill and descending with equal steepness to the sea. There are two or three parallel roads of small importance.
The builder was at work in all quarters, and the clink of the mason’s trowel and the ring of the carpenter’s hammer were only silent for a few hours during the night. Several of Government buildings were barely finished, and were occupied before they were painted and stuccoed. Building up and pulling down were going on simultaneously. Roads were being graded, culverts and retaining walls built, and wooden houses showed signs of disappearing from the principal thoroughfare. There was a “boom” in real property. The value of land has risen fabulously. “Lots” which were bought in 1864 for 600 and 3,000 roubles are now worth 12,000 and 20,000, and in the centre of the town land is not to be bought at any price.