Along the shore are all manner of craft. The British fleet had come on a visit, and grey and grim the ships lay there on the grey sea, like a Turner picture, with, for a dash of colour, the Union Jacks. The Russian fleet was there too, welcoming their guests, and I took a boat manned by a native of the country, Mongolian evidently, with, of course, an unknown tongue, but whether he was Gold or Gilyak I know not. He was a good boatman, for a nasty little sea got up and James Buchanan told me several times he did not like the new turn our voyaging had taken, and then, poor little dog, he was violently sick. I know the torments of sea-sickness are not lightly to be borne, so after sailing round the fleets I went ashore and studied the shipping from the firm land.
I was glad then that Mr Sly at Kharbin had insisted that I should see the Russian port. The whole picture was framed in green, soft tender green, edged with grey mist, and all the old forgotten ships of wood, the ships that perhaps were sailed by my grandfather in the old East India Company, seemed to have found a resting-place here. They were drawn up against the shore or they were going down the bay with all their sails set, and the sunlight breaking through the clouds touched the white sails and made them mountains of snow. There was shipbuilding going on too, naturally—for are there not great stores of timber in the forests behind?—and there were ships unloading all manner of things. Ships brought vegetables and fruit; ships brought meat; there were fishing-boats, hundreds of them close against each other along the shore, and on all the small ships, at the mast-heads, were little fluttering white butterflies of flags. What they were there for I do not know, or what they denoted. Oh, the general who commands the Czech Slovaks has a splendid base. I wish him all success. And here were the sealing-ships, the ships that presently would go up to the rookeries to bring away the pelts.
One of my brothers was once navigating lieutenant on the British ship that guarded the rookeries “north of 53°,” and I remembered, as Buchanan and I walked along the shore, the tales he had told me of life in these parts. His particular ship had acquired two sheep, rather an acquisition for men who had lived long off the Chinese coast, and had a surfeit of chickens; so while they were eating one, thinking to save the other a long sea voyage they landed him on an island, giving him in charge of the man, an Aleut Indian, my brother called him, who ruled the little place. Coming back they were reduced to salt and tinned food, but they cheered themselves with thoughts of the mutton chops that should regale them when they met again their sheep. Alas for those sailor-men! They found the Indian, but the sheep was not forthcoming.
His whilom guardian was most polite. He gave them to understand he was deeply grieved, but unfortunately he had been obliged to slay the sheep as he was killing the fowls!
The ward-room mess realised all too late that mutton was appreciated in other places than on board his Majesty's ships.
I thought all the races of the earth met in Kharbin, but I don't know that this port does not run it very close. There were Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Koreans in horsehair hats and white garments; there were the aboriginal natives of the country and there were numberless Germans. And then, in July, 1914, these people, I think, had no thought of the World's War.
And here I came across a new way of carrying, for all the porters had chairs strapped upon their backs and the load, whatever it was, was placed upon the chair. Of all ways I have seen, that way strikes me as being the best, for the weight is most evenly distributed. Most of the porters, I believe, were Koreans, though they did not wear white; nor did they wear a hat of any description; their long black, hair was twisted up like a woman's, but they were vigorous and stalwart. We left weakness behind us in China. Here the people looked as if they were meat-fed, and though they might be dirty—they generally were—they all looked as if they had enough.
Always the principal streets were thronged with people. At night the town all lighted up is like a crescent of sparkling diamonds flung against the hill-sides, and when I went to the railway station to take train for Kharbarosvk, thirty hours away, at the junction of the Ussuri and the Amur, that large and spacious building was a seething mass of people of apparently all classes and all nationalities, and they were giving voice to their feelings at the top of their lungs. Everybody, I should think, had a grievance and was makin the most of it. I had not my capable Mr Poland to arrange for me, so I went first class—the exact fare I have forgotten, but it was ridiculously low—and Buchanan and I had a compartment all to ourselves. Indeed I believe we were the only first-class passengers. I had my basket and my kettles and I had laid in store of provisions, and we went away back west for a couple of hours, and then north into the spacious green country where there was room and more than room for everybody.