Then we proceeded to buy provisions, and here I lost my way. She engaged a stray Chinaman, at least I think he was a Chinaman, with a dash of the gorilla in him, to carry the goods, and I thought she was provisioning her family against a siege or that perhaps there was only one market a month in Kharbin. Anyhow I did not feel called upon to interfere. It didn't seem any concern of mine and she had a large little family. We bought bread in large quantities, ten cucumbers, two pounds of butter, two pounds of cream—for these we bought earthenware jars—two dozen bananas, ten eggs and two pounds of tea. And then I discovered these were the provisions for my journey to Vladivostok, twenty-seven hours away! I never quite knew why I bought provisions at all, for the train stopped at stations where there were restaurants even though there was no restaurant car attached to it. Mr Sly warned me to travel first class and I had had no thought of doing aught else, for travelling is very cheap and very good in Russia, but Mr Poland thought differently.
“I arrange,” said he, “I arrange, and you see if you are not comfortable.”
I am bound to say I was, very comfortable, for Buchanan and I had a very nice second-class carriage all to ourselves. At every station a conductor appeared to know if I wanted boiling water, and we had any amount of good things to eat, for the ten eggs had been hard boiled by Mrs “Poland,” and the bread and butter and cream and cucumbers and bananas were as good as ever I have tasted. I also had two pounds of loaf sugar, German beet, I think, and some lemons.
And so we went east through the wooded hills of Manchuria. They were covered with lush grass restfully green, and there were flowers, purple and white and yellow and red, lifting their starry faces to the cloudy sky, and a soft damp air blew in through the open window. Such a change it was after China, with its hard blue skies, brilliant sunshine and dry, invigorating air. But the Manchus were industrious as the Chinese themselves, and where there were fields the crops were tended as carefully as those in China proper, only in between were the pasture-lands and the flowers that were a delight to me, who had not seen a flower save those in pots since I came to China.
I spread out my rugs and cushions and, taking off my clothes and getting into a kimono—also bought in the Kharbin market; a man's kimono as the women's are too narrow—I slept peacefully, and in the morning I found we had climbed to the top of the ridge, the watershed, the pleasant rain was falling softly, all around was the riotous green, and peasants, Russian and Chinese, came selling sweet red raspberries in little baskets of green twigs.
And the flowers, the flowers of Siberia! After all I had heard about them, they were still something more beautiful than I could have hoped for; and then the rain passed, the life-giving rain, the rain that smoothed away all harshness and gave such a charm and a softness to the scenery. And it was vast. China was so crowded I never had a sense of vastness there; but this was like Australia, great stretches of land under the sky, green, rich lush green, and away in the distance was a dim line of blue hills. Then would come a little corrugated-iron-roofed town sprawled out over the mighty plain, a pathway to it across the surrounding green, and then the sun came out and the clouds threw great shadows and there was room to see the outline of their shapes on the green grass.
There were Chinese still on the stations, but they were becoming more and more Russianised. They still wore queues, but they had belted Russian blouses and top-boots, and they mixed on friendly terms with flaxen-haired, blue-eyed Russians similarly attired. And the evening shadows gathered again and in the new world we steamed into Vladivostok.
The Russians I came across did not appreciate fresh air. The porter of a hotel captured me and Buchanan, and when we arrived on a hot July night I was shown into a bedroom with double windows hermetically sealed and the cracks stopped up with cotton wool!
I protested vehemently and the hotel porter looked at me in astonishment. Tear down those carefully stopped-up cracks! Perish the thought. However, I persuaded him down that cotton wool must come, and he pulled it down regretfully. I called at the British consulate next day and asked them to recommend me to the best hotel, but they told me I was already there and could not better myself, so I gave myself up to exploring the town in the Far East where now the Czech Slovaks have established themselves.
It is a beautifully situated town set in the hills alongside a narrow arm of the sea, rather a grey sea with a grey sky overhead, and the hills around were covered with the luxuriant green of midsummer, midsummer in a land where it is winter almost to June. The principal buildings in Vladivostok are rather fine, but they are all along the shore, and once you go back you come into the hills where the wood-paved streets very often are mere flights of steps. It is because of that sheltered arm of the sea that here is a town at all.