One curious fact connected with this system of Russian transportation is that the wives and children of the exiles are often authorized to follow the condemned man, which they very frequently do, although in some cases the law considers the marriage bond annulled by the mere act of condemnation, the unfortunate exiles being considered civilly dead. The families of these poor people often endure such terrible privations that local committees have been founded, under the patronage of the authorities, to assist them. In 1894, in the five Governments of Tobolsk, Tomsk, Yenissei, Irkutsk, and Yakutsk, 15,000 exiles and their families arrived.
In a single and not particularly favourable year, the population of Siberia was increased by about 85,000 persons, of whom about 66,495 were free immigrants. The natural increase was almost equally great, rising, according to the statistics, to 78,000, exclusive of the Littoral Province, which, if taken into account, ought to raise the population by 80,000. On a population which we may estimate at 5,300,000 at this period, there must have been about 250,000 births, that is 47·5 per 1,000, and 172,000 deaths, or 32·4 per 1,000. The birth-rate, therefore, is exceedingly high, and the death-rate, when the conditions of the country are considered, certainly not abnormal. In 1898 the immigration, owing to the opening of the railway, was greatly increased, to the extent even of 200,000 souls. It is not therefore a lack of population which is ever likely to affect the future of Siberia. The natural resources of the country can be justly compared with Canada, which it exceeds in size, and also, to a slight extent, in population; but the difference between the two countries, in point of economic development, is very great. What is wanted in Siberia is less the creation of a great number of complex industries, for which the country is not yet ripe, than the introduction, as already stated elsewhere, of up-to-date methods of exploiting the natural resources of the country, which can only be borrowed from foreign countries, and it will only be by opening wide its doors and by receiving strangers without jealousy or unwarranted suspicion that Russia will ever be able to obtain from her gigantic enterprise in Trans-Siberia a return worthy of the great wealth of a country which must eventually be placed on the same footing as any other in point of civilization and progress.
CHAPTER VIII
MEANS OF COMMUNICATION IN SIBERIA
Absolute insufficiency of the present means of transport—Coaches and sleighs—The tarantass: price, length and conditions of travelling by this means of locomotion—Navigation—Scheme for penetrating into Siberia by the Arctic Ocean and its recent success—Absolute necessity of more railways.
In order to form a fair idea of the revolution which the Trans-Siberian Railway is likely to bring about in the economical and political conditions of Northern Asia, it will be as well to glance at the actual conditions of the present means of travel and transport in the country. The most rapid means of locomotion at the disposal of travellers only yesterday, as it were, was in summer the stage-coach, and in winter the sleigh. Twenty years ago, to go to Vladivostok (6,000 miles distant) the traveller took the coach at Kazan, on the Volga, the journey occupying not less than two months in the more favourable season, when a coat of snow, as solid as marble and as smooth as velvet, replaces the usual mud and slush on the Siberian roads. Later on, with the progress of navigation and the construction of a railway across the Urals, the starting-point for this journey was removed further on to the most eastern point touched by the steamboats, in the basin of the Obi at Tomsk. In summer this route shortened the journey viâ Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk, and Chita about 1,875 miles, at the end of which one reached the Amur, where navigation recommenced. Since 1896 the Trans-Siberian has passed Tomsk, and now the starting-point of the road journey has gone gradually farther afield, and is now daily receding more to the east.
In the summer of 1897 the railway had already reached the little town of Kansk, about 160 miles beyond the Yenissei, and it was here, or at the Kluchi station, some 65 miles further on, that one hired a coach. It is, however, wiser to buy one’s tarantass, in order to avoid the trouble of unloading luggage at each stage, and, again, the coaches hired out by the postmasters are much less comfortable.
The station-master at Kluchi, to whom I had been recommended, like many other subordinate officials in Siberia, was an exile, who in better days had been a captain in the artillery, and, moreover, the cashier of his regiment. One fine day, in a fit of over-generosity, he unluckily lent a sum of money, abstracted from the cash-box, to a comrade who had lost very considerably at the gaming-tables. Fate avenged the regiment in the shape of an inspector, who inopportunely arrived upon the scene, examined into affairs, and forthwith ended the military career of the unlucky officer. After fourteen years’ exile in Siberia this indiscriminately good-natured individual has become chief inspector of a little railway-station, and adds to his small income by letting out tarantasses to travellers. He sold me for £18 the best of his vehicles, which, I was assured, had recently been used by a distinguished official, but, nevertheless, I had to get rid of it, when I took the steamer on the Amur two months later, for about £7.
Jules Verne, in ‘Michael Strogoff,’ has introduced and popularized the tarantass. It is a vehicle without springs, with a body about six feet long, like a trough supported on three broad planks of wood, and mounted upon two very low axles nine to ten feet apart. An immense hood protects the back part of the carriage from the rain, and by buttoning the leathern apron fixed to the front, one can keep one’s self almost hermetically screened from the weather. The tarantass, if it is not particularly comfortable, has the advantage of being very strong. It possesses nothing in the shape of a seat, and one is obliged to lie full-length on a litter of hay or upon the luggage, unless, indeed, from time to time, in order to change position, one cares to sit on the edge of the vehicle or else alongside the coachman. The horses are supplied by the postmasters at the rate of three kopecks, or three farthings, per verst for each horse, and, moreover, one has to pay a fixed tax of about fivepence per horse at each relay. The team consists usually of three horses, and the relays are found at a distance of about sixteen miles apart. The expenses, therefore, for this short distance amount to about five shillings, inclusive of a tip to the coachman, so that there is not much to complain of in that respect. The same tariff applies in winter, but in the intermediary seasons, from March 5 to May 15, and from September 15 to December 1, when the thaw sets in and the roads are very heavy, a fourth horse is needed, and the expense is increased about one quarter. I used frequently to ask Siberians how many miles could be performed in this sort of vehicle. Of course, almost everybody gave me a different answer. One high official in Tomsk informed me that it could undertake as many as 400 versts in twenty-four hours. ‘Do not imagine you can go more than from sixty-five to eighty,’ said the station-master, and as it was he who had sold me my tarantass, I came to the conclusion that his rather dismal prognostic was the true one. As a matter of fact, everything depends upon the condition of the roads, and also as to whether the traveller has supplied himself with a podorojne, an official document usually granted to Imperial couriers and to high officials, and which enables its possessor to avoid being detained at the various stations on the road. Fortunately, as I had one of these documents, I was able to make between 90 and 120 miles in twenty-four hours.
I cannot describe the scenery by the way as particularly interesting. The road cuts through the forests of pines and larches, and is, as a rule, fairly well kept, and about as broad as the best of our national routes in France. From time to time the wall of verdure opens out to give way to a clearing, along which one perceives rows of wooden houses, indicating the existence of some village or other, the name of which is printed on a post, that also supplies information as to the number of inhabitants of each sex. One soon gets tired of the beauty of the trees, and, to be truthful, also of the rather monotonous convoys of telegas loaded with merchandise, waggons with gold, escorted by soldiers, and of the interminable caravans of emigrants. As one passes the Baikal the road becomes less and less frequented, and more and more monotonous and dreary, especially in the dismal steppe, with its stunted growth, through which flows the Vitim, an affluent of the Lena. The road now meanders through marshy prairies, and is merely indicated by the line of gray telegraph-posts stretching off towards the horizon.
In order to break the intolerable monotony of these very long journeys, it is usual to invite one or two other travellers to share expenses, and these are not difficult to find, for the Russians are naturally sociable and quite free from stiffness or conventionality. I was rather surprised on one occasion to find the wife of an official in Trans-Baikalia who, to join her husband, had performed the journey from Vladikavkaz, 4,000 miles by rail and 1,000 miles by road, in the company of an officer with whom she was only slightly acquainted. The Russians were not more astonished at this than Americans would have been. The general insecurity of the country is probably responsible for the ease with which people make acquaintances. Those who like to deal in horrors are by no means behindhand in relating appalling stories of travellers who have been waylaid by escaped convicts and murdered in the heart of the forest. ‘Have you your revolvers?’ asked the postmaster, on the evening of my first journey in my tarantass, and just as we were about to start. ‘Three travellers were assassinated on this relay only fifteen days ago,’ continued he, and then he gave us a horribly detailed account of the circumstances. I had no revolver with me, and never had any reason to need one, and I rather doubted the authenticity of these gruesome stories. The real danger which travellers in Siberia have to encounter is that of having the rope which attaches their luggage to the back of the tarantass artfully cut and their portmanteaus carried off. Accidents are rare, as the tarantass is generally very strongly built. It is somewhat alarming, however, when at the head of a steep incline, to watch the coachman exciting his horses into a gallop by the wildest gesticulations, but one soon learns that the danger in this case is merely apparent.