It seems that when the Japanese invaded Saghalien, the great island which lies opposite the mouth of the Amur, they liberated at least thirty thousand convicts, and they burnt the records so that no one could prove anything against them, and the majority of these convicts were unluckily not all suffering political prisoners, but criminals, many of them of the deepest dye. These first made Saghalien an unwholesome place to live in, but gradually they migrated to the mainland, and Nikolayeusk and other towns of Eastern Siberia are by no means safe places in consequence. Madame Schulmann told me that many a time men were killed in the open streets and that going back to her lodgings on the dark winter evenings she was very much afraid and always tried to do it in daylight.
Nikolayeusk is officially supposed to have thirteen thousand inhabitants, but really in the winter-time, says Mr Pauloff, they shrink to ten thousand, while in the summer they rise to over forty thousand, everybody coming for the fishing, the great salmon fisheries.
“Here is noting,” said he, “noting—only fish.”
And this remark he made at intervals. He could not reiterate it too often, as if he were warning me against expecting too much from this remote corner of the world. But indeed the fish interested me. The summer fishing was on while I was there, but that, it seems, is as nothing to the autumn fishing, when the fish rush into the wide river in solid blocks. The whole place then is given over to the fishing and the other trades that fishing calls into being to support it. All the summer the steamers coming down the river are crowded, and they bring great cargoes of timber; the wharves when I was there were covered with barrels and packing-cases containing, according to Mr Pauloff, “only air.” These were for the fish. And now, when the humble mackerel costs me at least ninepence or a shilling, I remember with longing the days when I used to see a man like a Chinaman, but not a Chinaman, a bamboo across his shoulder, and from each end a great fresh salmon slung, a salmon that was nearly as long as the bearer, and I could have bought the two for ten kopecks!
He that will not when he may!
But great as the trade was down the river, most eatables—groceries, flour and such-like things—came from Shanghai, and the ships that brought them took back wood to be made into furniture, and there was, when I was there, quite a flourishing trade in frozen meat with Australia, Nikolayeusk requiring about two hundred and forty thousand pounds in the year. In winter, of course, all the provisions are frozen; the milk is poured into basins, a stick is stuck in it and it freezes round it, so that a milk-seller instead of having a large can has an array of sticks on top of which is the milk frozen hard as a stone. Milk, meat, eggs, all provisions are frozen from October to May.
I do not know what Nikolayeusk is doing now war and revolution have reached it. At least they have brought it into touch with the outer world.
And having got so far I looked longingly out over the harbour and wondered whether I might not go to Saghalien.
Mr Pauloff laughed at my desires. If there was nothing to see in Nikolayeusk, there was less than nothing in Saghalien. It was dead. It never had been much and the Japanese invasion had killed it. Not that he harboured any animosity against the Japanese. Russians and Japanese, he declared, were on very friendly terms, and though they invaded Saghalien they did not disgrace their occupation by any atrocities. The Russian, everybody declared in Nikolayeusk, bridges the gulf between the white man and the yellow. Russian and Chinese peasants will work side by side in friendliest fashion; they will occupy the same boardinghouses; the Russian woman does not object to the Chinese as a husband, and the Russian takes a Chinese wife. Of course these are the peasant classes. The Russian authorities made very definite arrangements for keeping out Chinese from Siberia, as I saw presently when I went back up the river.
But the more I thought of it the more determined I was not to go back till I had gone as far east as I possibly could go. The Russian Volunteer fleet I found called at Alexandrovsk regularly during the months the sea was open, making Nikolayeusk its most northern port of call. I could go by the steamer going down and be picked up by the one coming north. It would give me a couple of days in the island, and Mr Pauloff was of opinion that a couple of days would be far too long.