Lepsinsk is what the Russians call a medvezhy ugolok (a bear’s corner), a place where in winter the wolves roam the main street as if they did not distinguish it from their peculiar haunts. It is by post-road 945 miles from Tashkent on the one hand, and 1,040 miles from Omsk on the other—roughly, 1,000 miles from a railway station. It is high up on the mountains on the Mongolian frontier, and lives a life of its own, almost completely unaware of what is happening in Russia and in Europe—a window on to Mongolia, as a local wit has called it.
In the course of the next five years a railway is to be run from Semipalatinsk to Verney, and as Lepsinsk is the largest town on the way, it should in justice pass through it. But Lepsinsk is high. When the news of the projected railway came, the burgesses made a petition to the authorities asking to be informed where exactly the railway would be, and they would remove Lepsinsk thither. Everyone who had any business would transfer his stock. They were informed, and in a year, or a year and a half, Lepsinsk promised to remove itself fifty miles westward. Building operations were in full swing on the new site, land having been allowed by the Government free; and the engineer whose wife we had met was in charge. If the war does not preclude the continuation of the railway construction, Old Lepsinsk will be abandoned.
I spent four days in the town in the company of the young hydrotechnics. We were given rooms free at the Zemsky guest-house, and I stayed three nights there before resuming my journey toward the Irtish. The students quickly found and made friends with people in the town. We found a family that came from the same country-side as one of the young men, and spent the whole evening in a big farmhouse, drinking tea, trying musical instruments, and singing Russian choruses. Next day we went to the colonists’ information office, made friends with the young man in charge, and went and played pyramid with him in the town assembly rooms; several other folk came in, young and old, and joined in the game of billiards till we were a dozen or more. After billiards we all sat down to a crude lunch of boiled and undisguised beef, without vegetables, but with jugs of creamy milk to drink. The conversation went on cards, billiards, the coming Sunday-night dance. Couldn’t an orchestra be made up to supplant the usual gramophone to which the people danced on Sunday evenings? Had the cinematograph films come, and that had been so long expected? What would happen if one showed a cinema film backward—wouldn’t the story be often more funny?
SHEEP-SHEARING OUTSIDE THE TENT HOME
Sunday morning we spent in the domain of the colonists’ information bureau, and interviewed peasants for the manager whilst he was still in bed. What a litter there was everywhere—tea glasses, cigarette boxes, picture post cards, electric lamps, old letters, forms issued by the Government, maps—the same in the bedroom as in the office. There was a typewriter, and I amused myself trying to write English sentences with the Russian type, there being a fair number of letters in the Russian language resembling our own. The people who came for information had various pleas. One was ill, another had quarrelled with her husband. An old man pushed in front of him a rather downcast young woman, and commenced his appeal to us in these words: “I recommend this woman to your mercy. The land which is hers is being stolen away from her.” She had fallen out with her husband, and had fled to her father’s house. But meanwhile the husband was trying to sell the land or raise money on it—at least, so the father said. But we pointed out to him that that was nonsense; the land was not yet the unqualified property of the husband, and he could not sell it; he could only give it back to the Government, and so on and so on. On Sunday evening we all went to the assembly rooms, and saw Lepsinsk in its Sunday best, talked vociferously in crowds, listened to a gramophone, watched peasant girls and young men dance melancholy waltzes—there was no Russian dancing, but the people were glad to think themselves “European.” I made acquaintance with the ispravnik, or whoever he was who ruled Lepsinsk, and with the local rich men—a remote, obtuse, provincial set, whose only interest was cards. They were very keen on playing me at preference, a complex Russian card game which I have generally thought it worth while not to learn, and I was amused to hear that they would teach me, and what I lost would pay for my lesson. I talked a little about England. They got their daily papers three weeks after issue, as a rule, but they read them as new when they came. Their chief idea of our British activities was that the suffragettes were assassinating, murdering, bombing, expropriating, and they chuckled over the fact that our men were not able to manage the women.
Lepsinsk is an out-of-the-way place, and, as far as the road is concerned, a blind alley among the mountains. I was much exercised to know which way I should go next, and I did not want to retrace my steps to Altin-Emel. The map and my route was another topic of conversation among the worthies of Lepsinsk. Everyone gave me a different account of the roads and the ferries. Eventually I decided to cut across country and take the risk of marshes or rushing water lying in my path—a rash decision, as I might after a day or so be forced to walk back to the town and try some other way; but it turned out to be a perfectly happy decision. On this track I saw more of the Cossacks and of the Kirghiz, two races in striking contrast, and I spent Midsummer Night—always a festival night—under very beautiful and unusual circumstances.
Lepsinsk is a Cossack settlement. All the young men are horsemen, have to serve their term in war, and are liable to military service without any exemption or exception. All Cossack families and Cossack villages are brought up on these terms. The children are taught to get on to horseback and ride as we teach our children to walk. They learn the songs which the regiment sings as it comes up the main street on horseback, bearing the black pikes in their hands. The women, whose children and husbands go to the war, are patient as the mother of Taress Bulba. War is the normal condition of life, and the mere manœuvres are taken so seriously that the opposing parties frequently forget that it is only a friendly test, and do one another serious injury. “The Cossacks get so enraged, and they can’t stop themselves when they are called upon to charge the sham enemy,” said a Lepsinsk boy to me.
On the Monday morning I said good-bye to the students, and, shouldering my knapsack, set off in a north-westerly direction to find Sergiopol, forded the Lepsa river, and climbed out of the green valley where Lepsinsk lies as in a cup. The mountain-sides were rankly verdant, and the purple labiate was thick as in spring-time. It may be remarked that strawberries were not expected to ripen in Lepsinsk for three weeks, whereas six weeks ago in Tashkent they had been a penny a pound.