Possiet Bay is a large military station of fine barracks and storehouses. It scarcely seemed to possess a civil population, but there are Korean settlements at no great distance, from which much of the beef supply of Wladivostok is derived. We met a number of strong, thriving-looking Koreans driving 60 fine fat cattle down to the steamer.
The post wagon, in which we were cramped up among and under the mail-bags, took us at a two hours’ gallop along frozen inlets of the sea and across frozen rivers, over grassy, hilly country, scarcely enlivened by Korean farms in the valleys, to Nowo Kiewsk, which we reached after nightfall, and were hospitably received by the representative of Messrs. Kuntz and Albers, whose large brick and stone establishment is the prominent object in the settlement.
Nowo Kiewsk is a great military post, to which 1,000 civilians, chiefly Koreans and Chinese, have been attracted by the prospect of gain. Koreans indeed form the bulk of this population, and do all the hauling of goods and fuel with their ox-teams. The centre of the town is a great dusty slope intersected by dusty and glaring roads, which resound at intervals from early morning till sunset with the steady tramp of brown-ulstered battalions. Between Possiet Bay and Nowo Kiewsk there were 10,000 infantry and artillery, and at the latter post 8 pieces of field artillery and 24 two-wheeled ammunition wagons. Barracks for 10,000 more men were in course of rapid construction. Long wooden sheds shelter the artillery ponies, and villages of low mud-houses of two rooms each, with windows consisting of a single small pane of glass, the families of soldiers. There are great drill and parade grounds and an imposing Greek church of the usual pattern.
With its great open spaces and wide streets, Nowo Kiewsk looks laid out for futurity, straggling along a treeless and bushless hill slope for 2 miles. In addition to Kuntz and Albers, with their polyglot staff of clerks, among whom a young Korean in European dress was conspicuous for his gentlemanliness and alacrity, there is another German house, and there are forty small shops, chiefly kept by Chinese, at all of which schnaps and vodka are sold.
I was detained there for three days while arrangements for my southern journey were being made, and during that time the Chief of Police, who spoke French, took me to several Korean villages. So far as I saw and heard, the whole agricultural population of the neighborhood is Korean, and is in a very prosperous condition. There, and down to the Korean frontier, most of these settlers are doing well, and some of them are growing rich as contractors for the supply of meat and grain to the Russian forces. At this they have beaten their Chinese neighbors, and they actually go into Chinese Manchuria, buy up lean cattle, and fatten them for beef. To those who have only seen the Koreans in Korea, such a statement will be hardly credible. Yet it does not stand alone, for I have it on the best authority that the Korean settlers near Khabaroffka have competed so successfully with the Chinese in market gardening that the supplying that city with vegetables is now entirely in their hands!
The Russian tarantass is one of the most uncouth of civilized vehicles—all that can be said of it is that it suits the roads, which in that region are execrable. On two sets of stout wheels and axles, attached to each other by long solid timbers, a long shallow box is secured, with one, two, or even three boards, cushioned or not, “roped” across it for seats. It may be drawn by either two or three horses abreast, one in the shafts and one or two outside, each with the most slender attachment to the vehicle, and his head held down and inwards by a tight strap. This outer animal is trained to a showy gallop, which never slackens even though the shaft horse may keep up a decorous trot. The tarantass has no springs, and, going at a gallop, bumps and bounces over all obstacles, holes, hillocks, ruts and streams being alike to it.
The tarantass of the Chief of Police made nothing of the obstacles on the road to Yantchihe, where we were to hear of a Korean interpreter. The level country, narrowing into a valley bordered by fine mountains, is of deep, rich black soil, and grows almost all cereals and roots. All the crops were gathered in and the land was neatly ploughed. Korean hamlets with houses of a very superior class to those in Korea were sprinkled over the country. At one of the largest villages, where 140 families were settled on 750 acres of rich land, we called at several of the peasant farmers’ houses, and were made very welcome, even the women coming out to welcome the official with an air of decided pleasure. The farmers had changed the timid, suspicious, or cringing manner which is characteristic of them to a great extent at home, for an air of frankness and manly independence which was most pleasing.
The Chief of Police was a welcome visitor. The Koreans had nothing to fear, unless his quick scent discerned an insanitary odor or his eye an unwarrantable garbage heap! The farmyards were clean and well swept, and the domestic animals were lodged in neat sheds. The houses, of strictly Korean architecture, were large, with five or six rooms, carefully thatched, and very neat within, abounding in such comforts and plenishings as would only be dreamed of by mandarins at home. It is insisted on, however, that, instead of the flues which heat the floors vomiting forth their smoke through many blackened apertures in the walls, they shall unite in sending it heavenwards through a hollow tree trunk placed at a short distance from the house. This, and cleanly surroundings in the interests of sanitation, are the only restrictions on their Korean habits. The clothing and dwellings are the same as in Korea, and the “topknot” flourishes.
A little farther on there is the large village of Yantchihe, with a neat schoolhouse, in which Russian and Korean pupils sit side by side at their lessons, a Greek church, singularly rich in internal decorations, and a priest’s house adjoining. This is a very prosperous village. In the neat police station a Korean sergeant wrote down my requirements and sent off a smart Korean policeman in search of an interpreter. Four hundred Koreans in this neighborhood have conformed to the Greek Church and have received baptism. On asking the priest, who was more picturesque than cultivated, and whose large young family seemed oppressively large for the house, what sort of Christians they made, he replied suggestively that they had “a great deal to learn,” and that there would be “more hope for the next generation.”
I am not clear in my own mind as to the cause of the success which has attended “missionary effort” at Yantchihe and elsewhere. The statements I received on the subject differed widely, and in most cases were made hesitatingly, as if my informants were not sure of their ground. My impression is that while Russia is tolerant of devil-worship, or any other worship which is not subversive of the externals of morality, “conformity” is required to obtain for the Korean alien those blessings which belong to naturalization as a Russian subject.