THE RUSSIAN TEACHER: A NATIVE SCHOOL IN TASHKENT
The Central Asian Railway had for its original object the pacification of the Tekintsi, and was a strategic line from the Transcaspian post of Krasnovodsk to the oasis of Kizil Arvat. It was built over the desert, and was at first regarded as of a temporary military character. It cannot now be regarded as a well-built railway, is very loose, and trains are forced to go very slowly, and it is constantly in danger of sand obstruction through storms. In the progress of the military operations against the Tekintsi, Geok-Tepe was stormed in January, 1881, and the first train went through to Kizil Arvat in December of the same year. Kizil Arvat remained the terminus until the fray with the Afghans, on March 30th, 1885, when the prolongation was undertaken seriously. In June, 1885, the Tsar decided to continue the railway towards the frontier of Afghanistan, and by December 11th, 1885, the Russian military railway gangs had taken the rails 136 miles on to Askhabad, at the northern limit of Persia. Merv was annexed, the rails went on to Merv. By December, 1886, the railway had gone on to Chardzhui, on the Oxus. The red river was bridged, and the railway went on to Bokhara and Samarkand. A state service of steamers was started on the Oxus between Chardzhui and Khiva. In 1888 the completion of the line to Samarkand was celebrated, and the railway was consecrated with ecclesiastical pomp. The Russians have always given the impression that they did not intend to develop their railways, and yet they have gone on developing them all the same. They have gone south from Merv to the River Kush, on the Afghanistan frontier, and east from Khodgent to Andigan and Kokand. They have brought a main line from Petrograd, by way of Orenburg, over the deserts of Sirdaria, to the cities of Turkestan and Tashkent, and have thus a railway all the way from the Baltic to within a few hundred miles of India. In February, 1916, trains were first run on the first reach of the new railway that is to join Russia and Western China. It is now possible to go to Chimkent by train, and possibly next year to Aulie Ata. If English were in charge of this territory there would probably be more railways by now. In any case, the chief value of the railways has been the means they afforded of bloodless pacification of tribes. But their future is not so much a military future as one of trade and Imperial development.
Russia has made her Imperial conquests by force of arms, and safeguarded them by railways and colonisation. It should be remembered that before and after and all the time runs the natural stream of colonisation. The ultimate bond of unity is that which comes from the national family ties of colonisation. Nothing stands in Russia’s way, and she is always quietly colonising the empty East.
An interesting yearly chart might be issued by the Russian Government showing the waves of colonisation: the new spots in forests and deserts that have been given names, the new farms, the thickening of the population in the nearer-in districts, the efflorescence of Russian enterprise at the farthest-out points whither they have gone. Several hundred Russian families are settled in Northern Persia, several hundred also in Mongolia and China. The movement goes on, and it is not primarily due to the density of population in European Russia. All Russia, excepting the few industrial regions, is under rather than over-populated. There is plenty of room. Why, then, should Russia increase? or why not? Russia has access to the empty heart of Asia. The old world is hollow at the core, and Russia has access to that great, wide hollowness, stands at the door of it and stares into the great emptiness. Then her people are wanderers; they have the wandering spirit. A cross wind blows over them, and they are gipsies—the roving heart rules the mind. They love the road and the quest. They are seekers. Even the most materialistic of them, the least religious in their outward expression, nourish dreams of success and ideas of golden climes to be found “beyond the horizon.” We should call many of them ne’er-do-wells, though as a matter of fact they are all intent to do well somewhere. They take up farms and give up farms with too little scruple, and then go farther, disgusting the official eye in one district, but knowing they will delight other official eyes farther on when they turn up with carts and cattle and belongings at some verdant, empty wilderness still farther away from the centre of Russia.
VIII
ON THE ROAD
THERE was some difficulty in getting on from Tashkent. I had two British notes, but no bank would change them. The clerks held the paper upside down, took it to their colleagues, who were supping tea whilst they worked at their ledgers, took it to the manager to show him a curiosity, and finally returned it to me “with much regret.” “Don’t think we are savages,” said one bank clerk, “because we do not accept your money. The fact is, we’ve never seen it before and cannot even read what is written on it.” Another clerk, a sympathiser, advised me that there was an Englishman in Tashkent, a merchant who did much business and had an account in the bank, bade me go to him, for he would know what the notes were worth, and would no doubt accommodate a fellow-countryman. I obtained the address and sought out my compatriot. His name was something like Kellerman—not very promising. Behold one of the funniest Englishmen I ever met—as clear a German Jew as I’d ever seen in my life, scarcely speaking English, and making all the comic mistakes which Germans make with our tongue, a fat, ill-shaven, collarless old man of a greasy complexion, a middleman buying wool and horsehair and oilcakes and seed from the native Sarts and Jews and Tartars and Kirghiz. He professed to be very pleased to meet a fellow-countryman, and to be yearning for his “native land”—“a nice house in Kentish Town, all fog and wet in the streets, a nice fire, pull the blinds down, and read the ‘Daily Telegraaf.’” Every night in Tashkent he repaired to the public gardens, took a seat beside the skating rink, and watched the violent whirl of Armenian youths and their lady friends on roller-skates. Each night between ten and twelve Kellerman might be found in his place, chuckling to himself at the sight of accidents. “Causts nawthing,” said he, “and it’s such a pleasure to see other people break their necks or their legs.”
Needless to say, he would not touch my notes; at first thought they might be false, and then offered me three pounds ten each for them. He said he wouldn’t change them, but would be willing to make a deal and treat it as a matter of business. So I had to post my money to Moscow.
The next obstruction was from the police, who doubted whether I had permission to wander about in Central Asia, and it was only after I had myself looked through the books at the police-station that I found my name, almost unrecognisably spelt, in the list of those who had permission. At last I got both my money in Russian change and my visé, and was free to go. So I started my long journey from the limits of the railway to the frontier of China.
I took train to Kabul Sai, a little station north of Tashkent, and thence set out across the grass-covered downs to Chimkent, the first point of importance on my journey. I was a little anxious lest I should be stopped by the station gendarme, for it was not to be thought that every local police authority would have my name legibly inscribed, and I did not want to be delayed waiting while Kabul Sai and a hundred other places wrote to Tashkent for information. However, I escaped attention, and, having made a good country dinner (big dinner, I should rather say) at the station buffet, I lounged about till the train went out of the station, and then, considering compass and map, I cut across country and found the road—without questions.
So I got on to my feet in Sirdaria, the land of the little horde of the Kirghiz. The plain was dusty and vast, with a great sky overhead. There were long-legged beetles that scampered through the dust of the road, tortoises and their families eating grass and dandelions, and very much taken aback when picked up and examined. Father Tortoise is big and green; his children are wee, like young crabs. There was no cultivation anywhere in sight; the first grass had already seeded and withered, but thousands of blue irises were in blossom, and the tall sheaves of their leaves contrasted strangely with the dying grass below. The sun was hot, but a fresh, travelling wind fairly lifted me as I walked. A chorus of larks overhead made the prelude to my journey.