41237	----	IN SEARCH OF A SIBERIAN KLONDIKE AS NARRATED BY WASHINGTON B. VANDERLIP THE CHIEF ACTOR and HEREIN SET FORTH BY HOMER B. HULBERT ILLUSTRATED WITH MANY PHOTOGRAPHS [Illustration: Publisher's Mark] NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1903 Copyright, 1903, by THE CENTURY CO. _Published, October, 1903_ THE DE VINNE PRESS TO "THE LITTLE MOTHER" CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. OUTFIT AND SUPPLIES Rumor of gold in northeastern Asia--Plan to prospect through Kamchatka and north to Bering Strait--Steamer _Cosmopolite_--Russian law in the matter of liquor traffic--I make up my party and buy supplies--Korean habits of dress--Linguistic difficulties 3 II. SAGHALIEN AND THE CONVICT STATION AT KORSAKOVSK Departure of the expedition--Arrival at Korsakovsk--Condition of convict station--Freedom allowed prisoners, most of whom are murderers--Wreck of the steamer and loss of outfit--Gold lace and life-preservers--Return to Korsakovsk--Russian table manners--The Russian's naïve attitude toward bathing--Some results of the intermarriage of criminals--How Yankee shrewdness saved some confiscated photographs--Pleasant sensations on being shaved by a murderer--Predominance of American goods 20 III. PETROPAULOVSK AND SOUTHERN KAMCHATKA Volcanoes of Kamchatka and the superstitious natives--The first prospecting trip--Copper found, but no gold--Mosquitos cause an evacuation of the land--The typical Chinese peddler 43 IV. SALMON-FISHING IN THE FAR NORTH Tide that rises twenty-five feet--Wholesale suicide of salmon-- Fish-eyes as a delicacy for sea-gulls--How the natives store fish for the sledge-dogs--The three varieties of salmon--An Arcadian land for the birds 51 V. THE TOWN OF GHIJIGA The sacred icon and the sewing-machine both in evidence--The native "process of getting married"--Mrs. Braggin's piano--American pack-saddles and Russian obstinacy--Theodosia Chrisoffsky and his sixty descendants 64 VI. OFF FOR THE TUNDRA--A NATIVE FAMILY Hard traveling--The native women--A mongrel race--Chrisoffsky's home and family and their ideas of domestic economy--Boiled fish-eyes a native delicacy--Prospecting along the Ghijiga 79 VII. TUNGUSE AND KORAK HOSPITALITY My Korak host--"Bear!"--I shoot my first arctic fox--My Tunguse guide--Twenty-two persons sleep in a twelve-foot tent--Tunguse family prayers--The advent of Howka--Chrisoffsky once more 92 VIII. DOG-SLEDGING AND THE FUR TRADE Description of the sledge and its seven pairs of dogs--The harness--The useful _polka_--The start-off a gymnastic performance for the driver--Methods of steering and avoiding obstructions while going at full speed--Dog-trading _en route_--Dog-fights are plentiful--Prices of sable and other skins in the native market--The four grades of sables--How they live and what they live on--A Russian writer on sable hunting--Days when a native would barter eighteen sable skins for an ax 116 IX. OFF FOR THE NORTH--A RUNAWAY My winter wardrobe of deerskin--Shoes that keep the feet warm when it is sixty degrees below zero--_Plemania_, a curious native food in tabloid form--Other provisions--Outline of proposed exploration about the sources of the Ghijiga River--Four hours of sun a day--When dog meets deer--A race for life and a ludicrous dénouement--More queer native dishes--Curious habits of the sledge-dog 139 X. THROUGH THE DRIFTS Sledging over snow four feet deep--Making a camp in the snow--Finding traces of gold--A grand slide down a snow-covered hill--My polka breaks with disastrous results--Prospecting over the Stanovoi range 155 XI. BURIED IN A BLIZZARD A trip to the northern side of the Stanovoi range of mountains--Nijni Kolymsk, the most-feared convict station--Sledging by light of the aurora--Lost in a blizzard on the vast tundra--Five days in a snow dug-out--I earn a reputation as a wizard--Back at Chrisoffsky's 167 XII. CHRISTMAS--THE "DEER KORAKS" I celebrate Christmas day with the over-kind assistance of two hundred natives--Koraks as sharp-shooters--Comic features of a Russian dance--Off for Kaminaw--Another runaway--Slaughtering deer--A curious provision of nature--Eight families in one yourta--Korak method of washing dishes--A herd of ten thousand deer 177 XIII. HABITS AND CUSTOMS OF THE KORAKS The hour-glass houses--Their curious construction--The natives prove to be both hospitable and filthy--Dialects of Dog Koraks and Deer Koraks--Some unpleasant habits--How they reckon time--Making liquor out of mushrooms--Curious marriage customs--Clothes of the natives--Queer notions of a deity--Jealousy of the wandering Koraks--Thieving a virtue and childbirth a social function 205 XIV. OFF FOR BERING SEA--THE TCHUKTCHES The Tchuktches are the Apaches of Siberia--Their hospitality to Americans and their hostility to Russians--Wherein my experiences differ from those of Mr. Harry DeWindt--Result of licking a piece of stone with the thermometer at 45° below zero--Konikly--Power of moral suasion in dealing with a rebellious Korak--The cure of a dying woman and the disgust of her husband--Poll-tax and the Tchuktches 224 XV. A PERILOUS SUMMER TRIP The tundra in summer--Crossing the swift Paran River--Literally billions of mosquitos--Unique measures of protection against these pests--Mad race down the Uchingay River on a raft--Lighting a fire with a pistol--Narrow escape from drowning--Fronyo proves to be a man of mettle--Pak is caught stealing from slim supply of provisions and receives chastisement--Subsisting on wild onions and half-ripe berries--Help at last 255 XVI. A TEN-THOUSAND-MILE RACE Persistent rumors of gold in the Tchuktche peninsula--Count Unarliarsky--I am called to Vladivostok to fit out an expedition--Our vessel arrives off Indian Point--Charging through the ice-floes--A meeting with Eskimos--Our prospecting proves fruitless--We meet the rival expedition in Plover Bay--Their chagrin--The end 292 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Washington B. Vanderlip _Frontispiece_ Map showing the territory covered by Mr. Vanderlip in his search for a Siberian Klondike 5 Korean Miners 15 Market-place, Korsakovsk, Saghalien Island 25 Russian Murderers in Angle of Prison-House, Korsakovsk, Saghalien Island 37 Main Street of Petropaulovsk, Kamchatka 45 A River of Dead Salmon--August 53 The Salmon Catch 57 Ghijiga 65 Russian Church, Ghijiga 71 House in Ghijiga occupied by Mr. Vanderlip and his Party 75 House of Theodosia Chrisoffsky, Christowic 81 Start from Ghijiga, Summer-time. Theodosia Chrisoffsky and Family--Fourteen Children 87 Village of Christowic, Okhotsk Sea 93 Mr. Vanderlip on "Bill" 99 The Pride of the Family 105 Mr. Vanderlip crossing Turumcha River 111 Sledge-dogs, showing Harness and Method of Hitching 119 Mr. Vanderlip's Dog-sled loaded 125 Ghijiga River in Winter 129 Deer crossing River 141 Reindeer 145 Theodosia Chrisoffsky, Guide 151 Mr. Vanderlip and Reindeer Team. 157 Native Winter Camp 163 Mr. Vanderlip on March with Deer Outfit 173 Reindeer 183 Herd of Reindeer 189 Reindeer, Herders in background 195 Reindeer--Summer 201 Upper View of Underground Hut--Home of the Dog Korak 207 Chinese Pump 213 One of the Tchuktches--an unconquered Race 227 Summit of Kamchatka--First Sight of Bering Sea 233 Kassegan, half-caste Russian trader, and Korak wife, living at Boeta, Baron Koff Bay, Kamchatka 239 In Crater of Extinct Volcano, digging for Sulphur. Baron Koff Bay, Kamchatka 245 Killing Deer for Dog-food 251 Expedition on march--"Konikly" in foreground 257 Across the Tundra 261 Tundra Camp 267 "Kim" in Summer Camp on Tundra 273 Reindeer Feeding 279 Three Little Half-caste Russians and Native Nurse, Ghijiga, Okhotsk Sea 287 Russian Miners 293 Picked up on the Ice off St. Lawrence Island 299 Natives at Indian Point, Siberia 303 Eskimo Village, East Cape--Northeastern Point of Asia 307 Plover Bay, Siberia, in July 313 PREFACE The following pages are the result of one of those delightful partnerships in which the party of the first part had all the adventures, pleasant and otherwise, while the party of the second part had only to listen to their recital and put them down on paper. The next best thing to seeing these things for one's self is to hear of them from the lips of such a delightful raconteur as Mr. Vanderlip. Whatever defects may be found in these pages must be laid at the door of the scribe; but whatever is entertaining and instructive is due to the keen observation, the retentive memory, and the descriptive powers of the main actor in the scenes herein depicted. H. B. H. SEOUL, KOREA, December, 1902. IN SEARCH OF A SIBERIAN KLONDIKE IN SEARCH OF A SIBERIAN KLONDIKE CHAPTER I OUTFIT AND SUPPLIES Rumor of gold in northeastern Asia--Plan to prospect through Kamchatka and north to Bering Strait--Steamer _Cosmopolite_--Russian law in the matter of liquor traffic--I make up my party and buy supplies--Korean habits of dress--Linguistic difficulties. When the rich deposits of gold were found on the Yukon River, and later in the beach sands of Cape Nome, the question naturally arose as to how far these deposits extended. Sensational reports in the papers, and the stories of valuable nuggets being picked up along the adjacent coast of Asia, fired the imagination of the Russians, who hoped, and perhaps not without reason, to repeat the marvelous successes which had been met with on the American side. The existence of valuable gold deposits in other parts of Siberia lent color to the belief that the gold-bearing belt extended across from America to Siberia, and that consequently the Asiatic shores of Bering Sea ought to be well worth prospecting. No people were ever more alive to the value of mineral deposits than the Russians, and none of them have been keener in the search for gold. As evidence of this we have but to point to the vast, inhospitable wilderness of northern Siberia, where gold has been exploited in widely separated districts and under conditions far more trying than those which have surrounded any similar undertaking, with the exception of the Klondike. I had left Chittabalbie, the headquarters of the Oriental Consolidated Mining Company,--an American firm that is successfully exploiting the gold deposits of northern Korea,--and being enamoured of a wandering life, I found myself one morning entering the magnificent harbor of Vladivostok, the eastern terminus of the Siberian Railway and the principal Russian distributing center on the Pacific coast. I believed that as the northeastern extremity of Asia was as yet virgin ground to the prospector, there would be no better opportunity for the practice of my profession than could be found in the town of Vladivostok. The surmise proved correct, and I was almost immediately engaged by a Russian firm to make an extended prospecting tour in Kamchatka, through the territory north of the Okhotsk Sea and along the shores of Bering Sea. This arrangement was made with the full cognizance and approval of the Russian authorities. I carried a United States passport. The Russians gave me another at Vladivostok, and through the Governor-general at that place I secured an open letter to all Russian magistrates in eastern Siberia, instructing them to give me whatever help I might need in the procuring of food, sledge-dogs, reindeer, guides, or anything else that I might require. Not only were no obstacles put in my way, but I was treated with the utmost courtesy by these officials, who seemed to realize the possible value of the undertaking. [Illustration: Map showing the territory covered by Mr. Vanderlip in his search for a Siberian Klondike.] My instructions were to go first to the town of Petropaulovsk, on the southern point of the peninsula of Kamchatka, and explore the surrounding country for copper. The natives had brought in samples of copper ore, and it was also to be found in the beach sands near Petropaulovsk, as well as in a neighboring island, called Copper Island, where the Russians had opened up a mine some seventy years before, but without success. I was next to go north to Baron Koff Bay, on the eastern coast of the peninsula, near its neck, and examine some sulphur deposits which were supposed to exist in that vicinity and which the government was very desirous of working. From that point I was to cross the neck of the peninsula by reindeer sledge to the head of the eastern branch of the Okhotsk Sea, my objective point being Cape Memaitch, where I was to prospect for gold. It had been reported that on two successive years an American schooner had touched at this point and carried away full cargoes of gold ore to San Francisco. I was then to pass around the head of the Okhotsk Sea to the important trading town of Ghijiga. This was the headquarters, some thirty years ago, of the Russo-American Telegraph Company, with which Mr. George Kennan was connected and where he spent one winter. Making this my headquarters, I was to work out in various directions in search of the yellow metal, and finally I was to use my own judgment as to whether I should strike northeast to Bering Strait, following the Stenova range of mountains, or southward to Ola, where a steamship could stop and take me off the following summer. As we shall see, the main points of this plan were carried out, though not in the order here given. As to the means for reaching Kamchatka I had no choice. There is no royal mail steamship route to these boreal regions. A "tramp" steamship is annually chartered by the great firm of Kunst and Albers in Vladivostok, and rechartered by them to the Russian government, to take the Governor-general on his annual visit to Saghalien and the trading posts in Kamchatka, and even as far northward as Anadyr, situated inland from Bering Sea on the Anadyr River. At each of these trading posts is a Russian magistrate, or _nitcheilnik_, and a guard of about twenty Cossacks. The annual steamer carries the supplies for these officials and for the traders, as well as the goods which are used in trade. On her return, the steamer brings back the furs of the Russian Chartered Company, who hold all the furring rights of northeastern Siberia. In the summer of 1898 the steamer _Cosmopolite_ was scheduled to make the annual voyage. She was a German tramp steamer of one thousand tons. Besides the captain there was but one other foreign officer. The crew was Chinese. In addition to the annual mails she carried a full cargo of tea, flour, sugar, tobacco, and the thousand and one articles that make the stock in trade of the agents of the Chartered Company. She was allowed to carry no wines or liquors, with the exception of sixty bottles of vodka for each trader, and that for his private use only. He is strictly forbidden to sell a drop to the natives. For a first offense he is heavily fined, and for a second he serves a term of penal servitude on the island of Saghalien. This law is in brilliant contrast to the methods of other governments in respect to liquors. Africa and the Pacific Islands bear witness to the fact that, from the standpoint both of humanity and mere commercial caution, the Russian government is immeasurably ahead of other powers in this respect. The sale of intoxicants demoralizes the natives and "kills the goose that lays the golden egg." Of course there is an occasional evasion of the law. The natives of Siberia are passionately fond of spirits of any kind, and, having tasted a single glass, will sell anything they have--even their wives and daughters--for another. When they are in liquor a single wineglass of vodka will induce them to part with furs which in the London market would bring ten pounds. Besides this annual steamship, two Russian men-of-war cruise north along the coast, looking for American whalers who bring alcoholic liquors to exchange for skins. I decided to take with me two Koreans from Vladivostok. They were gold-miners from southern Siberia. Being expert horse-packers and woodsmen and speaking a little Russian, they were sure to be of great use to me. They were named Kim and Pak respectively; both are among the commonest family names in Korea, the Kim family having originated at least as early as 57 B.C. Kim was thirty years old and was possessed of a splendid physique. He could take up four hundred pounds of goods and carry them a quarter of a mile without resting. Koreans are taught from childhood to carry heavy weights on their backs. They use a chair-like frame, called a _jigi_, which distributes the weight evenly over the shoulders and hips and enables them to carry the maximum load with the minimum of fatigue. Kim was always good-natured even under the most discouraging circumstances, and he was fairly honest. Pak was thirty-eight, tall and thin, but enormously strong. He enjoyed the possession of only one eye, for which reason I promptly dubbed him "Dick Deadeye." He was a cautious individual, and always "packed" his money in his clothes, sewed up between the various thicknesses of cloth; and whenever he had a bill to pay and could not avoid payment, he would retire to a secluded place, rip himself open, and return with the money in his hand and a mysterious look on his face, as if he had picked the money off the bushes. Having secured the services of this precious pair, I promptly marched them off to the store of one Enoch Emory to exchange their loose Korean clothes for something more suited to the work in hand. This Enoch Emory, by the way, is a character unique in Siberian history. When sixteen years old he came out from New England as cabin-boy on a sailing vessel which had been sent by an American company to establish trading stations on the Amur. He left the vessel and went into one of the company's stores. He now "owns" the company and is one of the wealthiest merchants in Siberia. The company operates immense stores in Nikolaievsk, Blagovestchensk, and Khabarovka, with a large receiving store at Vladivostok. Emory always favors American goods and sells immense numbers of agricultural implements and of other things in the manufacture of which America excels. This is the only great American firm in Siberia. Emory makes his home in Moscow and comes out once a year to inspect his stores. He is a typical Yankee of the David Harum stamp. When my two protégés came to change Korean dress for American it was difficult to decide just where the dress left off and the man began. The Korean bathing habits are like those of the medieval anchorite, and an undergarment, once donned, is lost to memory. Besides the two Koreans, I engaged the services of a Russian secretary named Nicolai Andrev. He was an old man and not by any means satisfactory, but he was the only one I could get who knew the Russian mining laws and who could make out the necessary papers, in case I should have occasion to stake out claims. As it turned out, he hampered the movements of the party at every turn; he could not stand the hard knocks of the journey, and I was obliged to drop him later at the town of Ghijiga. His lack of teeth rendered his pronunciation of Russian so peculiar that he was no help to me in acquiring the language, which is not easy to learn even under the best of circumstances. I was also accompanied by a young Russian naturalist named Alexander Michaelovitch Yankoffsky. As this name was quite too complicated for everyday use, I had my choice of paring it down to "Alek," "Mike," or "Yank," and while my loyalty to Uncle Sam would naturally prompt me to use the last of these I forbore and Alek he became. He did not take kindly to it at first, for it is _de rigueur_ to address a Russian by both his first and second names, the latter being his father's name with _vitch_ attached. This was out of the question, however, and he succumbed to the inevitable. So our complete party consisted of five men, representing three languages. None of my men knew any English, and I knew neither Russian nor Korean, beyond a few words and phrases. But before two months had elapsed, I had, by the aid of a pocket dictionary, my little stock of Korean words, and a liberal use of pencil and paper, evolved a triglot jargon of English, Korean, and Russian that would have tried the patience of the most charitable philologist. The steamer was to sail in eight days, and this necessitated quick work in making up my outfit. For guns I picked a twelve-bore German fowling-piece with a rifle-barrel beneath, in order to be equipped for either small or large game without being under the necessity of carrying two guns at once; a Winchester repeating rifle, 45-90; an .88 Mannlicher repeating rifle; and two 45-caliber Colt revolvers. As money is little used among the natives of the far North, it was necessary to lay in a stock of goods to use in trade. For this purpose I secured one thousand pounds of Moharka tobacco. It is put up in four-ounce packages and costs fifteen rouble cents a pound. I procured also two thousand pounds of sugar both for personal use and for trade. This comes in solid loaves of forty pounds each. Next in order came two thousand pounds of brick-tea. Each brick contains three pounds, and in Hankau, where it is put up, it costs twelve and a half cents a brick. It is made of the coarsest of the tea leaves, twigs, dust, dirt, and sweepings, and is the kind universally used by the Russian peasantry. I also secured one hundred pounds of beads, assorted colors, and a goodly stock of needles, together with ten pounds of colored sewing-silks which the natives use to embroider the tops of their boots and the edges of their fur coats. Then came a lot of pipe-bowls at a cent apiece, assorted "jewelry," silver and brass rings, silk handkerchiefs, powder and shot, and 44-caliber cartridges. The last mentioned would be useful in dealing with the natives near the coast, who commonly use Winchester rifles. Those further inland use the old-fashioned musket exclusively. [Illustration: Korean Miners.] For my own use I laid in a goodly supply of Armour's canned beef, canned fruits, dried fruits, lime-juice, bacon, three thousand pounds of beans, canned tomatoes, tinned butter, coffee, German beef-tea put up in capsules an inch long by half an inch thick (which proved extremely fine), and canned French soups and conserves. Besides these things, and more important than all, I took two tons of black bread--the ordinary hard rye bread of Russia, that requires the use of a prospecting hammer or the butt of a revolver to break it up. This was necessary for barter as well as for personal use. Judging from my experiences in Australia, Burma, Siam, and Korea, as well as from my reading of Nansen, I thought it best not to encumber myself with any liquors excepting four bottles of brandy, which were carried in the medicine-chest and used for medicinal purposes only. My medical outfit consisted of four main articles, quinine, morphine, iodoform, and cathartic pills. With these four one can cope with almost anything that is likely to happen. The chest contained also bandages, absorbent cotton, mustard leaves, a hot-water bottle, two small surgeon's knives, and a pair of surgical scissors. After a prolonged search for really good pack-saddles, I concluded that such things were unknown in Siberia; so, calling in a Chinese carpenter, I gave him a model of an Arizona pack-saddle, with instructions to turn out a dozen at the shortest possible notice. I proposed to teach my Koreans how to throw the "diamond hitch," but I found later, to my humiliation, that what the Korean does not know about packing is not worth knowing. Either Kim or Pak could do it quicker and better than I. Two thousand years of this sort of thing have left little for the Korean to learn. Mining-tools were of course a necessity. Even in Vladivostok I could not secure what I wanted. I therefore took what I could get. I purchased drills, hammers, a crow-bar, a German pump which was guaranteed to pump sand (but which I found later would pump nothing thicker than pure water), a quantity of blasting powder called "rack-a-rock," picks, shovels, wire, nails, and other sundries. The Russian shovel is an instrument of torture, being merely a flat sheet of iron with a shank for the insertion of a handle, which latter is supposed to be made and fitted on the spot. As there is no bend at the neck of the shovel, the lack of leverage makes it a most unwieldy and exasperating utensil. As for the Russian pick, it has but one point, and in its construction is clumsy beyond belief. Even the Korean picks are better. I also carried a simple blow-pipe outfit, an aneroid, a compass, gold-screens, and gold-pans, with other necessary appliances for prospecting. These preparations were made very hurriedly, as the _Cosmopolite_ was the only steamer going north during the season. Tourists sometimes ask if it would not be possible to secure passage on this annual steamer and take the trip along the coast to Bering Sea and back. There is nothing to prevent it. The trip of three months, stopping at ten or twelve points along the coast, could be made for about three hundred roubles, a rouble representing fifty cents in gold. But the trip would be of little value or interest, because, in the first place, the natives bring down their furs to the trading stations during the winter, when the ice makes traveling possible, so that one would have very little opportunity of seeing anything of native life, or of securing any of the valuable furs that come out of this region each year. It would be impossible for the tourist to pick up any good ones in summer. Outside of natives and furs, it is difficult to see what interest there could be in such a trip, unless the tourist is studying the habits of mosquitos and midges, in which case he would strike a veritable paradise. CHAPTER II SAGHALIEN AND THE CONVICT STATION AT KORSAKOVSK Departure of the expedition--Arrival at Korsakovsk--Condition of convict station--Freedom allowed prisoners, most of whom are murderers--Wreck of the steamer and loss of outfit--Gold lace and life-preservers--Return to Korsakovsk--Russian table manners--The Russian's naïve attitude toward bathing--Some results of the intermarriage of criminals--How Yankee shrewdness saved some confiscated photographs--Pleasant sensations on being shaved by a murderer--Predominance of American goods. At six o'clock in the afternoon of July 22, 1898, the Governor-general with his wife and suite, resplendent in gold lace and buttons, came aboard in the rain. The anchor was heaved up and we pointed southward toward the open sea, which is reached by way of a passage from half a mile to three miles wide and twelve miles long. The shore on either side bristles with armaments which, together with the narrowness of the passage, make Vladivostok entirely impregnable from the sea. There is a story, however, which the Russians never like to hear. One morning, after a night of dense fog, as the sun cleared away the mist, four big British men-of-war were found anchored within two hundred yards of the city, and could have blown it skyward without a shot from the batteries, being safe from the line of fire. Since then big guns have been mounted to cover the inner harbor. Reaching open water, we turned to the northeast and set our course toward the southern point of the island of Saghalien, for the Governor-general was to inspect the convict station of Korsakovsk. Three days of uneventful steaming at ten knots an hour brought the shores of Saghalien above the horizon. We saw a long, curved beach backed by low-lying hills covered with fields and woodland. As the place could boast no harbor, we dropped anchor in the open roadstead a mile from shore. Our whistle had long since waked to life an asthmatic little steam-launch, which soon came alongside. We forthwith invaded her stuffy little cabin and she waddled shoreward. As we approached the rough stone quay, we had our first glimpse of Russian convict life. A gang of prisoners were at work mending the seawall. Some of them wore heavy iron balls at their ankles, which they had to lift and carry as they walked, else they dragged ponderously along the ground. These balls would weigh about a hundred pounds apiece. The convicts seemed to be well fed, but were excessively dirty and unkempt. They appeared to be men of the very lowest grade of mental development. It must be remembered that no political convicts are confined on the island of Saghalien. They are kept in the far interior of Siberia, where the chances of escape are much less, and where there is no possibility of contact with others than their own jailers. The convicts on Saghalien are almost all desperate criminals. As there is no such thing as capital punishment in Siberia, Saghalien is the terrestrial Valhalla of these doomed men, a sort of ante-mortem purgatory. We stepped out upon the quay and walked up into the town. The street was about fifty feet wide, with a neat plank walk on either side. The houses were all log structures, but not the kind we are accustomed to associate with that name. The Russian makes the best log house in the world. The logs are squared and carefully fitted together. The windows are mostly double, and the houses, all of one story, are warm enough to be habitable. The streets are lined with small shops and stores. The entire population outside of the officials consists of convicts, most of whom enjoy almost complete freedom within the limits of the town. It gives one a queer feeling to walk through the streets of a town and know that all the storekeepers, carpenters, blacksmiths, clerks, butchers, and bakers are or have been desperate criminals. This town of Korsakovsk contains about two thousand people, of whom nine tenths are convicts. I asked if I might inspect the prison, expecting a prompt refusal, and was surprised when informed that I could go wherever I pleased. Approaching the main entrance to the prison, I found the two heavy gates off their hinges and the convicts coming and going at their own pleasure. A sleepy Cossack was on guard, and he did not even challenge me. The prison buildings were arranged around a large quadrangle. The prisoners were talking, lying about at their ease, with a few at work on little wood carvings. I was astonished to see no prison bars anywhere, but after I had looked about at my leisure, one of the officers took me in charge and led me into another part of the grounds, where we found a sentry on guard, armed only with a revolver. This guard took us in hand and conducted us to a small building which appeared to be heavily barred. Inside were rows of clean, dry, whitewashed cells, half a dozen of which were occupied by convicts who had recently committed murder on the island, and were about to be sent north to the dreaded coal-mines, where they would be chained to wheelbarrows. These would be their constant companions for seven years, night and day, summer and winter. In the workshops the convicts seemed to be trying to do as little as possible. They were making tools, hinges, horse-shoes, farming-implements, and other simple ironwork. In another portion of the shops they were making wagons and carts. Very many of the convicts are farmers, and they seemed to be cultivating the surrounding fields with success. In the main offices I found a dozen clerks smoking and drinking tea. They were all convicts, most of them having dark crimes to their discredit. Leaving the prison, we walked down the street and soon came to a little stand, where bread and milk were being sold by a nice-looking Russian girl. I asked on what charge she had been brought to Saghalien. The officer interpreted my question. The girl laughed and said that she had murdered her husband. She was twenty-three years old. We had arrived at ten in the morning, and, as we left at four in the afternoon, my inspection of the town was necessarily brief, but enough had been seen to give impetus to even a very ordinary imagination. When we had all embarked again and the bell in the engine-room gave the signal for starting, we were enveloped in a thick mist; but as we had open sea before us and nothing, apparently, to fear, we drove ahead at full speed through the dense fog, pointing southeast in order to round the southern point of the island and make our way up the eastern coast. We might have been more cautious had not the Governor-general been in haste. As it turned out, we would have done better to proceed more slowly; for shortly after eight o'clock, as I was sitting at dinner with the captain and the first officer, we heard the second mate on the bridge call loudly: "Hard aport! Ice ahead!" The captain rushed to the bridge, and I made my way to the prow of the boat. Peering through the fog in the failing light, I descried a low, white line that looked like ice, behind which a great dark mass rose high in the air. We had not begun to slow down yet, and almost instantly we struck with terrific force, which threw me to my knees. I scrambled to my feet and peered over the rail. I saw that the white line was not ice, but surf, and the dark object behind it was a cliff which towered hundreds of feet in the air. [Illustration: Market-place, Korsakovsk, Saghalien Island.] The utmost confusion prevailed among the Chinese crew and the Korean stevedores. It looked as if there would be serious trouble. I made my way as rapidly as possible to my state-room and buckled on my revolvers, tore my valise open and stuffed a package of money into my pocket, and hurried on deck to help put down any rush that the Asiatics might make for the boats. The first officer was sounding the forward well, and water was already coming into the engine-room. The steamer, evidently, was making water very fast. As there were so few foreign officers, and as the Russians were of no use, the captain ordered me to get out the boats. Amid such confusion this was no easy task, but by means of the most sanguinary threats and the show of my revolver, I got enough men together to swing a boat over the side. Fortunately, there was no sea running at the time, and affairs began to assume a more hopeful aspect when it was found that we lay on a shelving beach and could not sink. We hurriedly supplied the boats with casks of water and bags of biscuits; but as there was no immediate danger of sinking, the captain asked me to take one of the boats and explore the shore for a suitable landing-place. With a strong headlight in the prow, we pushed off in the fog; and within an hour we were back with the news that half a mile up the shore there was a good landing-place. The Governor-general and his wife and staff were, of course, the first to be sent ashore. The lady seemed to take it very coolly, even more so than some of the staff. The latter, as soon as the alarm sounded, had hastened to their state-rooms and put on their swellest regimentals. Their gold lace, glittering swords, and patent-leather boots seemed curiously out of place on board the wreck. It reminded me of the ancient Persian custom of going into battle in full regalia. These Russians left everything but their fine clothes. In due time they were landed, and then we came back and took off the crew. It was growing light and the sea was rising. The steamer began to pound on the reef, and it was evident that she would not hold together long. The captain said he was going to stay on her till she broke up. As I was an enthusiastic knight of the camera, I thought this would be a good opportunity to secure a picture of a ship going to pieces, so I determined to stay with the captain as long as possible. We remained on board all that day and the next two, taking watch, by turns, six hours at a time. We determined to rig a block and tackle over the after hatch, and although this was under water, we managed to get hold of the big Russian mail-bags and haul them out. Among other things, they held fifteen thousand roubles in notes. During the second day of our detention we sighted the British gunboat _Archer_ passing us to the southeast on her way to Kamchatka. We tried desperately to attract her attention with bombs, but did not succeed. Meanwhile, the chief officer had taken the long-boat and part of the crew and sailed back to Korsakovsk with a fair wind, to secure help. Three days later, he returned with the steam-launch and two lighters, one of which was filled with convicts who had been brought to help in getting the steamer off the rocks, if possible. If not, they were to save what cargo they could. They were put into the forward hold and a few cases were gotten out, but all my provisions and outfit were lost except my tent, which had been sent ashore for the Governor-general's wife. This, together with my valise, camera, guns, and ammunition, was all that I had to show for the careful preparation I had made. My Russian friends had not enjoyed their stay on shore under the trying conditions. We threw overboard for their use all the ducks and geese, which, after disporting themselves a few minutes in honor of their new-found liberty, made their way to the shore, where they were speedily despatched with axes by the gentlemen in patent-leather boots and gold lace. We also consigned a pig to the vasty deep and it nobly struggled ashore only to meet the common fate of succulent pork. Through the glass I could see the Governor-general in his swell regimentals with a row of medals across his breast lugging an armful of driftwood along the shore to the fire. And so we made our way back to Korsakovsk, a very discouraged and bedraggled company. The Governor-general took me to the house of the chief magistrate, where I was given a comfortable room, and could once more sit down to a good table. That night I ate my first genuine Russian dinner. Each person as he enters a dining-room, faces the icon which hangs in the corner, and bows and crosses himself. The table was loaded with tinned preserves, pâté de foie gras, caviar, salted salmon, herrings pickled, and raw fish, sardines, cheese, sliced raw onions, cold sausages, raw cabbage, and huge piles of black and white bread. There was also the usual large carafe of pure white vodka, a powerful distilled liquor made from rye. Before eating, every glass is filled and the host's health is drunk to the accompaniment of "Butches sd rovia," which means, "Your good health." In eating, you must reach for what you want. It is very seldom that anything is passed during this first stage of the meal. You would never suggest to your neighbor on the right to pass you the cheese; but you would rise in your place and, with a firm grasp on your knife, reach over his plate and impale the tempting morsel. If this is not possible, you leave your place and go around the table and secure your loot. There is only one thing that they will readily pass, and that is the vodka. The general aspect of things is that of a well-patronized free-lunch counter when the train is to start in five minutes. It must be confessed that Russian table manners are not fashioned on ordinary European models. They closely resemble the Korean method of eating at a public feast, when all the food is put on the table at once. It is a mistake to suppose this terminates a Russian dinner. It has only begun. By this time the uninitiated is full to repletion unless he has been forewarned, but to the Russian this is but the ante-prandial overture. Everything is now cleared off the table except the vodka, which is never out of sight, and the dinner proper begins with soup. I must say that this soup is the heaviest and richest it has ever been my fortune to taste. Alone, it would form a full meal for any one less robust than the ordinary Russian. Each guest adds to his soup two or three heaping spoonfuls of sour whipped cream. Their method of eating soup appeals as much to the ear as to the eye. Perhaps they go on the principle that soup must be eaten as audibly as possible, for this means that it is so good you cannot wait for it to cool. My Russian naturalist, Alek, was a fair sample of an educated Russian, and he turned to me and said: "I see that you eat with a fork." "Yes," said I; "and I see that you do not." "No; but I had a sister who studied at an English convent in Japan for a year or so. When she came back she ate with a fork, but we soon laughed her out of it." The end of the Russian knife is broader than the portion next the handle, and it is used both as a knife and as a spoon. They complain that the American knives do not "hold" enough. After the soup came fowls, roast meats, vegetables, and two or three more dishes made of whipped cream. These last one grows to like. Their favorite form of dessert is this same sour cream, sprinkled generously with sugar and ground cinnamon. When all is seemingly over the table is again cleared, and the samovar is placed steaming upon the table. Every one takes four or five glasses of hot tea, flavored with sliced lemon. Some of the Russian tea is very fine. It is well known that they drink the costliest as well as the cheapest grades. It is more than likely that not a pound of the very best tea grown in China ever gets farther west than Russia. Meanwhile every one is smoking cigarettes, men and women alike; not only after dinner but between the courses. My use of the fork was not the only thing that distinguished me while in the country of the White Czar. Wherever I went, the Russians were highly amused at my use of the tooth-brush, which they consider a peculiarly feminine utensil. I was everywhere embarrassed by the total absence of the wash-bowl. Such things seem to be unknown. A sort of can or ewer of water, with a valve in the bottom, lets out a little stream of water on the hands; or, oftener still, a mouthful of water is taken from a glass and spurted over the hands--a much more sanitary method than the American, since the Russian does not wash in any vessel which has been used by others. The Russian objects to any bath excepting the elaborate Russian bath, and as this can be obtained only in the centers of population, the result is not edifying. Even on the steamer, where hot and cold baths could be had for the asking, the bath-room was not patronized. The Russians say of the English and Americans that they bathe so much that they emit an offensive odor, which turns the tables on us somewhat surprisingly and casts some doubt upon the truth of the proverb that virtue is its own reward. As black, the most somber of all colors, is in truth a lack of all color, so perhaps the lack of any distinctive odor in the well-tubbed Englishman strikes the Russian as unpleasant. One of the waiters in attendance was a young and handsome man of twenty-five, convicted of murder. He was dressed in the picturesque costume of the Cossack, and, strangely, wore a dagger at his side. The woman who brought in the samovar had killed an entire family: her husband, father-in-law, mother-in-law, and her own child. She had been married to the waiter a year since arriving at Saghalien. The intermarriage of criminals raises a delicate penological question, considering what the fruit of such unions is likely to be. After dinner, I suggested to one of the Governor's aides that we take a stroll, but the local magistrate vetoed this, saying that on no account must we go out on the street after six o'clock in the evening. Our lives would be in immediate danger, as murders among the convicts averaged one a day on Saghalien. Hundreds have broken away and escaped into the interior of the island, living on game, roots, and berries. Some roam the streets at night, looking for plunder, especially when a steamship is in harbor. The following day we passed a building which seemed to be full of women. They were convicts recently landed. On stated days, those male convicts whose conduct has been uniformly good are taken to this building where the women are lined up and the men are allowed to choose wives for themselves. The women are quite willing to be chosen, but if they refuse they are not compelled to marry. Marriage means that they get away from the confinement of the workshops and gain a snug little home among the neighboring hills, with nothing to suggest penal conditions except an occasional inspection. If they consent to marry, they go immediately to the little cathedral and are married by the priest. A plot of land is allotted to the couple, to clear and cultivate. Possibly a horse, a cow, and a few chickens are given them, as well as the inevitable samovar. Our saying, "What is home without a mother?" might well be rendered in Russian, "What is home without a samovar?" All the money that they can make by raising produce is their own, and will be turned over to them upon the expiration of their sentences. But most of the convicts on Saghalien have sentences which terminate only at death. The women in the prisons are kept busy making clothes for such convicts as have not been let out on good behavior. The following day I was invited to attend, at the Greek Church, a service of thanksgiving for the escape of the passengers and crew of our wrecked steamer. The service proved a very impressive one. The singing, by a choir of convicts, was especially fine. In these Russian churches seats are not provided, and the audience stands or kneels during the entire service. That afternoon I had the temerity to take my camera under my arm and stroll through the prison grounds. To my great surprise, I was permitted to take what photographs I pleased. Even the guards lined up and were "snapped," much to their delight. I also secured a picture of a convict being knouted for some slight misdemeanor. This is very common, and is done by tying the offender to a bench, face down, and inflicting the necessary number of blows on his back. [Illustration: Russian Murderers in Angle of Prison-House, Korsakovsk. Saghalien Island.] As the light began to fail I remembered the magistrate's injunction about being indoors before dark, and so made my way home to dinner, during which I sat at the same table with the magistrate. He was a man of considerable ability, and made good use of the English language. During the meal he leaned over toward me and said, smiling: "I understand you have been taking some pictures." "Yes," I answered penitently. "Well, of course that is against the law, and I am afraid I shall have to ask you to turn those plates over to me." I expostulated mildly, but found that his mind was firmly made up on the matter. To tell the truth, my mind was also made up on the matter. "But," said I, "the plates are still in the camera, undeveloped." "Oh, well, bring your camera along and I will develop them for you,"--this with a little smile of amusement. "Shall I go now," said I, pushing my chair back from the table, although dinner was not half over. "Don't think of it. To-morrow morning will do just as well." And to-morrow morning surely did, for that night the camera went to bed with me, and when the magistrate smilingly drew out the plates next morning and cracked them, one by one, on the corner of the table, he was not aware that he was spoiling fresh plates. I tried to look as sad as the occasion seemed to demand. I asked him if any of the convicts ever escaped from the island. He gave a short laugh and said: "Some of them got away once. I will tell you about it. A Japanese fishing-schooner put in here under stress of weather and anchored off the town. That night eight of the convicts swam off to her, murdered the crew, and sailed away without the slightest knowledge of navigation. After drifting about aimlessly for several days, they were picked up by an American whaler and carried to San Francisco. As soon as the facts became known, the Russian authorities demanded their extradition, but the American papers took the matter up and made a great outcry about sending back these innocent political convicts to the horrors of Siberia, while the ladies of San Francisco heaped confections and flowers upon them. The United States authorities declined to give them up, though it should have been well known that no political suspects are ever sent to Saghalien, only tried and condemned criminals. But mark the sequel. Within two years all but one of those eight men were hung for murder, and the remaining one was in prison for life. We appreciate the kindness of the United States in relieving us of the support of these criminals, and she can have all the Russian convicts on the island of Saghalien if she wants them, and welcome." Saghalien is Russia's gallows, and the incident given above shows how philanthropic zeal, if ill-informed and misdirected, may easily work harm. Having occasion to interview the barber, I entered a neat shop in company with a Russian official. It was not till the razor was playing about my chin that I learned that the barber was a common murderer. There was no backing out, for I knew not what savage instincts I might arouse in him by proposing to leave his place half shaved. I generally manage to get a nice little nap when under the soothing influence of the barber's hand, but this time I confess that I remained rather wider awake than usual. The gentle reader can, perhaps, imagine my feelings as the keen steel rasped across the vicinity of my jugular vein. Strange to say, the only image that remains in my mind's eye is a staring advertisement which hung against the wall, and which expatiated with Yankee modesty upon the merits of a certain American barber-supply house and the unique opportunity it offered of securing the best goods at the cheapest price. I was informed later that this barber combined with his tonsorial occupation that of procurer, which shows how wide a range of pursuits Russia allows her convicts. A superficial examination of the various shops which lined the main street of the town showed that American canned goods, sheetings, prints, flour and other food-stuffs are most in demand. The hardware was mostly of cheap German manufacture. I saw no English goods displayed. CHAPTER III PETROPAULOVSK AND SOUTHERN KAMCHATKA Volcanoes of Kamchatka and the superstitious natives--The first prospecting trip--Copper found, but no gold--Mosquitos cause an evacuation of the land--The typical Chinese peddler. Upon our return to Korsakovsk from the wreck, the Governor-general had immediately telegraphed the news of the disaster to Vladivostok, and had asked that a relief steamer be despatched at once. In six days we saw her smoke on the horizon, and soon the _Swatow_, flying the German flag, cast anchor off the town. She was accompanied by a Russian gunboat, which carried the Governor-general and his suite back to Vladivostok, as he had been recalled on urgent business. I found that the _Swatow_ would not be able to go up into Bering Sea, but could only visit the trading stations on the Okhotsk Sea, at the head of which lies the important town of Ghijiga. Although my outfit had been so terribly depleted in the wreck, I was determined to push on and live on the country if necessary. The steamer had brought me a small supply of brick-tea, sugar, and hard bread. This slender store I supplemented as best I could from the shops in Korsakovsk, and boarded the _Swatow_ en route for the north. On leaving Saghalien for the second time, we gave the southern point of the island a wide berth, and after ten days of uneventful steaming we sighted the shores of the peninsula of Kamchatka, which showed a chain of lofty snow-covered mountains, now and again hidden by dense banks of fog. We entered the magnificent harbor of Petropaulovsk by way of a narrow passage, and found ourselves in a landlocked bay, twenty-five miles long and ten miles wide. Its shores were well wooded, and we could see several fine streams as they made their way swiftly down the mountainsides to the waters of the bay. At the northern extremity of the harbor rose the active volcano of Avatcha, sixteen thousand feet high from the water's edge. About its summit lay heavy masses of snow, and above it hovered a thick blanket of smoke. Kamchatka lies in the line of volcanic activity which stretches from Tierra del Fuego in South America northward through South and North America, the Aleutian Islands, Kamchatka, the Kurile Islands, Japan, and so southward; and, therefore, it is not surprising that there should be many semi-active volcanoes on the peninsula as well as many hot springs. The natives consider both of these the habitations of evil spirits, and will not go near them if it can be helped. Once a party of Russians forced the natives to show them the way to one of the hot springs, and when the superstitious people saw the foreigners looking over the edge of the spring, tasting of the water and cooking eggs in it, they were filled with wonder, and thought the Russians had power over the demons. In port we found the British gunboat _Archer_ and a small Russian gunboat. [Illustration: Main Street of Petropaulovsk, Kamchatka.] The town of Petropaulovsk consists of about three hundred Russians and half-caste Kamchadales, presided over by a Russian magistrate, assisted by a secretary, a physician, and twenty Cossacks. With the exception of an imposing cathedral, the houses were all built of logs and one story in height, but they were neat and substantial, and were provided throughout with double windows, which are required by the severity of the winter. At that season of the year the country was covered with a luxurious growth of vegetation. Of trees, so called, there are only the larch and birch, but the whole country is covered with a dense growth of underbrush, ten feet high, which it is impossible to penetrate. Consequently, very little traveling is done in summer, except on the rivers in small boats. Most of this undergrowth dies down at the approach of winter, and the snow which then covers everything makes traveling comparatively easy in any direction. As our steamer was to make a little side excursion of ten days to different trading ports in the vicinity and then return to Petropaulovsk, I determined to remain behind and explore the region in search of copper deposits, which had been reported to exist in the vicinity. I secured a stanch little skiff built in San Francisco, and after stowing away my tent in the bow I started out to prospect along the beach. For the most part, I walked while the Koreans rowed the boat a little offshore, keeping always within hailing-distance. I carefully examined the mineral formations along the shore. About five miles from the town, I came across numerous pieces of copper "float" (detached fragments from the parent ledge). Striking up the hill above the point where this "float" lay, I found the outcroppings of a thin seam of bornite, which is a valuable copper ore if found in quantities. But the thinness of the seam was not promising; so I simply set up a claim post, which would hold it for three years, with a view to further exploration. When night closed in, which in that northerly region in summer does not occur till nearly ten o'clock, we pitched our camp beside a brawling mountain stream, prepared our supper, and felt sure of passing a comfortable right. But within ten minutes we were undeceived. The mosquitos came down by the millions, and we surrendered at discretion, capitulated with the honors of war, went out with colors flying and side-arms on, so to speak, and spent the night in the boat, anchored some fifty yards from the shore. It is not necessary to follow the fortunes of this little side excursion, as it did not result in finding any evidences of valuable deposits of copper. So at the appointed time we found ourselves back at Petropaulovsk, ready to resume our journey toward the north. We found the _Swatow_ in port and scheduled to sail the next morning. The anchor came up at dawn, and before night we lay again at anchor at the mouth of the Tigil River, on the western coast of the peninsula. We found most of the population of the little village of Tigil awaiting our arrival. This village, composed of a mixed Russian and half-caste population, lies about forty miles up the river; but the villagers had all come down to the coast to meet the steamer, to fish, and to get away from the mosquitos, which are far worse inland than on the coast. They were all living in little temporary summer huts. The first person I met as I stepped ashore addressed me in good western American. He was Mr. Fletcher, a Russian subject, born in Kamchatka of mixed American and Russian parentage. He had been educated in San Francisco. He invited me to his little cottage and set before me a tempting meal of fresh milk and blueberries, supplemented by raw, salted and smoked fish, vodka, and the contents of the steaming samovar. After doing honor to these good things, we strolled down to the beach to watch the Chinese sailors from the steamer lay out the little stock of goods that they are allowed to bring with them to barter with the natives. The thrifty Celestial spreads a piece of canvas on the ground, and on it arranges in the most tempting manner his stock of hand-mirrors, needles, buttons, soap tablets, perfumery, and other articles de luxe. A bevy of native girls crowd about him, giggling and chaffing, while men elbow their way in to buy presents for their sweethearts, paying for them in deerskins, fur gloves, and smoked deer tongue. Meanwhile the steamer has been busily discharging the quota of flour, tea, vodka, and other things which are required by the officials and traders of the station, and in return loading the bales of skins and furs consigned to the Russian Chartered Company. CHAPTER IV SALMON-FISHING IN THE FAR NORTH Tide that rises twenty-five feet--Wholesale suicide of salmon--Fish-eyes as a delicacy for sea-gulls--How the natives store fish for the sledge-dogs--The three varieties of salmon--An Arcadian land for the birds. Leaving the mouth of the Tigil River, we steamed northward into the upper arm of the Okhotsk Sea. The shore line showed rolling hill and mountain country without much timber. Three days of steady steaming brought us to the extreme limits of the Okhotsk Sea, at the mouth of the Ghijiga River. Owing to the shallowness of the water, we were obliged to anchor eighteen miles off shore. We had on board a small steam-launch, for use in towing the lighters to the shore, each lighter carrying about twenty-five tons. The launch and lighters were soon put over the side and their cargoes loaded into them. At ten o'clock at night we set off toward the shore. It was necessary to start at that hour in order to get over the bar at flood-tide. We entered the mouth of the river at three in the morning. The sun was already up. The width of the estuary was considerable, but it was enormously increased by the tide, which rises twenty-five feet and floods the fields and plains on either side. The air was literally full of sea-gulls, flying very high. Some of them were going inland, and some out to sea. The odor of decaying fish was almost overpowering, and was plainly perceptible five miles out. This was caused by the enormous number of dead salmon that lay on the bar, having been swept down the river. About the tenth of June the salmon come in from the sea and work their way up the river until the lack of water bars their further progress. Salmon do not run up these rivers until they have attained their sixth year of growth. From the moment they enter the fresh water of the river, they get no food whatever. For this reason they must be caught near the river's mouth to be in good condition. The female, having gone far up the river, finds a suitable place, and deposits her eggs; after which the male fish hunts them out and fertilizes them. As soon as this has been accomplished there begins a mad rush for death. However many millions of salmon may run up the river, not one ever reaches the sea again alive. They race straight up the river, as if bent on finding its source. When the river narrows down to two hundred feet in width, and is about a foot deep, the fish are so crowded together that the water fairly boils with them. And still they struggle up and ever up. One can walk into the water and kill any number of them with a club. After the fish have gone up the river in this fashion for fifty or sixty miles, they are so poor that they are worthless as food, for they have been working all this time on an empty stomach. As they fight their way up, they seem to grow wilder and wilder. Whole schools of them, each numbering anywhere from a hundred to a thousand, will make a mad rush for the shore and strand themselves. This is what the gulls have been waiting for. They swoop down in immense flocks and feast upon the eyes of the floundering fish. They will not deign to touch any other part. Bears also come down the river bank and gorge themselves. I have seen as many as seven in a single day, huge black and brown fellows, feasting on the fish. They eat only certain parts of the head, and will not touch the body. They wade into the water and strike the fish with their paws and then draw them out upon the bank. Wolves, foxes, and sledge-dogs also feast upon the fish, and for the only time during the year get all they want. [Illustration: A River of Dead Salmon--August.] As the fish get further and further away from the sea, their flesh grows loose and flabby, the skin sometimes turning black and sometimes a bright red. They dash themselves against stones, and rub against the sharp rocks, seemingly with the desire to rub the flesh off their bones. The eggs of the salmon remain in the river during the winter, and it is not until the following spring that the young fish are swept down to the sea by the spring floods. Along the banks of the river live the half-breed Russians and the natives in their miserable shanties and skin huts. They fish with long nets made of American twine. Fastening one end of the net to a stake on one side of the river, they carry the other end to the opposite side. In an hour or more, the farther end is brought back with a wide sweep down stream, which, of course, is the direction from which the fish are coming. The two ends are brought together, and a team of a dozen sledge-dogs hauls the net to the bank. The children kill the fish with clubs. Then they are carried to the women, who squat upon the sand, and, with three deft sweeps of a sharp knife, disembowel them, and cut off the thick pieces of flesh on each side of the backbone. These pieces are dried in the sun and form the chief article of food among this people. It is called by them _yukulle_. The backbone, the head, and the tail, which remain after the meat is cut off, are then dried, and they form the staple food for the sledge-dogs. After they have cut up enough fish for one year's consumption, they make yet another large catch and throw the whole lot into a pit and cover them with earth. If there should be no run of fish the following year, these pits could be opened up and the contents fed to the dogs, thus saving their valuable lives. The natives, who live mainly on fish, will not cure more than enough for a single season's use. [Illustration: A River of Dead Salmon--August.] They may lay up future store for their dogs, but not for their children. When an old fish-pit is opened up the stench is terrible, but this does not trouble the dogs, for they will eat anything into which they can bite. If the natives were willing to work fifteen days longer, they could easily lay up enough food to tide over any ordinary famine, but they will not do this unless forced to it. Consequently, the Russian Government compels one or two from each family to work on certain government nets, every fish caught being put in the "fish-bank" and a record kept of the exact number due each individual who helps work the nets. During several successive good years, enough fish are laid up to supply the people at least in part during times of scarcity. If these should not suffice, the government would buy up reindeer from natives in the interior at fifty kopeks a head, and feed them to the destitute people. Fifty kopeks make twenty-five cents in United States currency, which seems a small price to pay for a reindeer, but in the country of which we are writing that is a good average price. A failure of the fish crop occurs about once in seven years. For some reason not yet ascertained, the fish will entirely desert a river for a season. Not infrequently it is found that of two rivers whose mouths are not more than a few miles apart, the salmon will frequent one and not the other. The Russian Government forbids the export of salmon caught in the rivers or within two miles of their mouths. While the people do not destroy a thousandth part of one per cent. of the fish that run up the river, we must bear in mind that not a single fish gets back to the sea after depositing its eggs. As the fish are killed as near as possible to the river's mouth, an enormous number of eggs are destroyed. There is, therefore, a possibility of seriously diminishing the supply if a wholesale slaughter takes place when the fish come in from the sea. If they were taken after the eggs are deposited it would be another matter; but this is never the case. These salmon are of three different varieties, called, respectively, the silver salmon, the "hump-backed" salmon, and the "garboosh." The weight of a full-grown salmon is from eighteen to twenty-five pounds. There is in the rivers another fish called the salmon-trout. It has a dark-green back, with vivid pink spots, and it is a most delicious article of food. The little lakes in the tundra also contain a fish somewhat resembling the pickerel, which the natives catch in traps. These are set in the little creeks leading from the tundra lakes. They are cylindrical baskets, five feet long and three feet wide, and are set in an opening in a dam built, for the purpose, of reeds and stakes. Often as many as a dozen fish are taken from the traps at a single catch. At the time when the salmon are running, hundreds of sea-dogs (hair-seal) are attracted to the mouth of the river by the smell of dead fish. As we went in from our steamer, they kept lifting their heads from the water all about us, and afforded some good shooting. The natives take them in huge nets made of walrus thongs with a mesh of six inches or more. A good haul may net as many as thirty of these big fellows, which weigh up to four hundred pounds apiece. Their fur is of a mottled or speckled color. They are in high repute among the natives, who use their hides for boots. The women are able to sew them so as to be perfectly water-tight. The blubber is a delicacy which is eaten cold. It is also made into oil, and in a shallow dish, with a piece of moss for a wick, it forms the ordinary lamp of the native. The sea-gulls, on their way north to breed, arrive in May, and the air is simply filled with them. They make their nests on rocky declivities or beside the rivers, or even on the open tundra. The nesting and hatching of their young comes at such a time that it just matches the running of the salmon, which is very convenient. The young mature very quickly. When newly hatched they are gray. When they come back the following season only their wings are gray, the body being white. The egg harvest is a very important one to the natives, who preserve the eggs by burying them in the ground on the north side of a hill where there is perpetual frost. Besides the gulls, there are countless ducks, geese, and snipe. These last often fly in such dense flocks that the boys stand and throw clubs among them, and bring down half a dozen at a throw. These youngsters are also very skilful with the sling, and bag many ducks and geese with this primitive weapon. I have seen a boy bring down a single goose with one of these slings, though the general rule is to throw into a flock on the chance of hitting one. Birds of all kinds here find the richest feeding-grounds in the world. The sea birds, in countless numbers, feed upon the salmon, while the insectivorous birds have only to open their mouths to have them filled. At this season the ground is quite covered with berries, which have been preserved all winter under the snow. Among these are cranberries, blueberries, and huckleberries. When the birds arrive in the spring they are generally poor, but ten days suffice, on this rich fare, to make them fat. An hour's stroll is enough to use up all the gun-shells one can conveniently carry, and to bag more game than one can bring home. The hunter has only to sit down in a "goose lane" or behind a blind of some sort, and shoot birds right and left. The few merchants who reside in these trading posts kill large quantities of birds in the season, and keep them in cold storage, which can be found almost anywhere a few feet below the surface of the ground. The natives, as a rule, are too poor to own shot-guns, and so do not profit largely by this generous supply of feathered game. CHAPTER V THE TOWN OF GHIJIGA The sacred icon and the sewing-machine both in evidence--The native "process of getting married"--Mrs. Braggin's piano--American pack-saddles and Russian obstinacy--Theodosia Chrisoffsky and his sixty descendants. When we reached the shore, or as near the shore as the shallowness of the water would permit, a crowd of natives and half-castes waded out and offered their backs to convey us to dry ground. There we found two Russian officers in uniform and twelve Cossacks, besides a hundred or more of the villagers. The magistrate and his assistant, with the aid of twenty Cossacks, govern a section of territory as large as Texas and New Mexico combined. The magistrate led us to his house, a log structure, one story high, with five large rooms. No carpets adorned the floor, which was spotlessly clean. On the wall hung the pictures of the Czar and Czarina, while in the corner, of course, hung the sacred icon. One noticeable feature was a Singer sewing-machine. The magistrate's wife lives here with him and looks after their modest family of thirteen children. [Illustration: Ghijiga.] It was now four o'clock in the morning, but the family were astir. The samovar was brought in, and over hot tea and buns we speedily became acquainted. The magistrate is an important man in Ghijiga, and I found him to be a highly educated gentleman, speaking French and German fluently, but not English. He examined my papers, and, with the aid of the supercargo, who interpreted for me, I told him the purpose of my visit. He made me entirely welcome, and told me that he had received orders from the Governor-general in Vladivostok to aid me in every way possible. And he assured me he would gladly do so. My first object was to reach the town of Ghijiga, which lay twenty-five miles up the river. Here I intended to make my headquarters while I explored the country inland and about the head of the Okhotsk Sea. The magistrate immediately gave orders that a boat be gotten ready to take me up the river, and five Cossacks were detailed to haul at the tow-line. After a hearty breakfast of salmon, reindeer meat, and other good things, we embarked and started up-stream. The boat was probably the worst-shaped craft ever constructed. It was made by hollowing out an eighteen-foot log, after which side boards were attached. As it drew fully twelve inches of water and was very cranky, one could scarcely recommend it for river travel. I afterward built three boats which would carry double the weight of cargo, and which drew only four inches. We rowed up-stream a few miles in a northwesterly direction until we reached the limit of tide-water, and the stream suddenly grew shallow. The banks were covered with a dense growth of bushes, which at some places attained a height of twenty feet, but there was no large timber near at hand. With my field-glasses I saw some fairly heavy timber on the mountainsides inland. The general aspect of the country was exceedingly rough. The banks of the river showed outcroppings of slate, striking east and west, with a pitch to the south of forty-five degrees. To the southwest, about ten miles away, I saw a long, low range of hills, perhaps a thousand feet high. The highest point in this range is called Babuska, which is the Russian for "grandmother." As we approached the shallows the water became so swift that we could no longer row, whereupon four of the Cossacks jumped out of the boat into the icy water. Putting over their shoulders a kind of harness made of walrus hide, to which was attached a rope of the same material one hundred feet long, they began towing. The fifth Cossack held the steering-oar. The shore was too heavily wooded to admit of using it as a tow-path, and so the poor fellows had to wade in the water. Frequently, the boat would ground on the shallows, and then they would patiently come back and haul us over the obstruction. At noon we landed, built a roaring fire, and imbibed unknown quantities of tea along with our lunch. Taking to the water again, we kept steadily, if slowly, on until seven o'clock, when, suddenly turning a sharp bend, we saw on the hillside, on the left bank, the green spires of a Russian church around which were grouped about fifty houses. I noticed that not a single house had a window on the north side. The severe winds from the north drive all the snow away from that side of the houses and pile it up against the windows on the south side, so that they are often buried twelve or fifteen feet deep. Some of the people are too lazy to dig this away and so have to remain in comparative darkness; but as the days are only a couple of hours long in mid-winter, it does not make so much difference. As we neared the landing all the village, except such portion as had met the steamer at the mouth of the river, came down _en masse_ to greet us--dogs, children, and all. They gave us a hearty _drosty_, or "How do you do?" and treated us most hospitably. We pitched our tent on a grassy slope near the water and made preparations for supper. As I was bending over, busy with my work, I was startled by a hearty slap on the shoulder and the true Yankee intonation, "Well, friend, what are you doing in this neck of the woods?" I turned quickly and saw before me a stout, good-natured, smiling American. I learned that he was a Mr. Powers, manager of the Russian Trading Company, which had a station at this point. He had arrived a few days before in the company's steamer, the _Kotic_, and had brought with him a Russian-American as clerk. The latter was in process of being married to the daughter of a Mrs. Braggin, the capable agent of the Russian Fur Company at that point. I say he was in process of being married; for, although the ceremony had begun the day before, it would be several days yet before it would be completed. They literally dragged me up to the house, although I pointed in dismay at my disreputable suit of khaki. I was too late for the church service, but was just in time for the more substantial part of the festivities. After the service in the church the villagers gather at the bride's house and spend the balance of the day in feasting, amid the most uproarious mirth. The second day finishes this act of the play, but on the third and fourth days the bride and groom make the round of the village, feasting everywhere. It was on the second day that we arrived, and before the day was over the groom had gorged himself about to the limit; and before the next two days had gone he confided to me the fact that if he had known how much he would be forced to eat, he would have hesitated before crossing the threshold of matrimony. [Illustration: Russian Church, Ghijiga.] Mrs. Braggin's drawing-room boasted an antiquated upright piano, that had long passed its prime, but was in fairly good tune for such a corner of the world. In the course of the evening, as the fun was growing fast and furious, and there seemed to be no one to play the instrument, I sat down and struck up the "Washington Post" march; but before I had played many bars, I was dismayed to find that the merriment had suddenly ceased and the whole company were standing in perfect silence, as if rooted to the spot. When I finished nothing would suffice but that I should exhaust my slender repertory, and then repeat it all again and again. Evidently, many of those rough but kindly people had never heard anything like it in their lives, and, as the Russian is musical to his heart's core, I felt pleased to have added my mite to the evening's entertainment. After the four days of feasting, we descended to the plane of the ordinary. By the aid of Mr. Powers I secured a vacant log hut, where I bestowed my various goods and appointed old Andrew as steward, making arrangements for him to board at Mrs. Braggin's. Some of the native women were easily induced to fit me out with a suit of buckskin which I should require in traveling about the country. In this whole district there were but twelve horses. They were Irkutsk ponies, shaggy fellows, about fourteen hands high. They were very hardy animals, and could shift for themselves both summer and winter. In the winter they paw down through the snow until they reach the dead grass. After nearly exhausting my powers of persuasion, and paying a round sum, I secured six of these horses. I hired a competent Russian guide and prepared to take my first trip across the tundra, to examine a locality where the Russians had reported that gold had been discovered a few years before. With my horses came little Russian pack-saddles or rather combinations of pack- and riding-saddles. They have the faculty of turning with their loads about once an hour all day long. This I had discovered at Petropaulovsk, but when I expressed my determination to use my American pack-saddles, I found myself confronted by the opposition of Russians and natives alike. They viewed my saddles with amusement and contempt. The double cinches and the breast and back cinches puzzled them completely, and they refused to have anything to do with them. As fast as my Koreans would get the packs on, the Russians would take them off when our backs were turned. I soon discovered that the Russians were determined to use their own saddles, and no argument would move them. I unbuckled a Russian saddle and threw it to the ground, substituting one of my own for it. I turned to a second horse to do likewise, when, looking over my shoulder, I saw a Russian quietly unfastening the first. Stepping up to him, I gave him a slap with the open hand on the jaw. Instantly, the whole matter assumed a new aspect. I was not to be trifled with. They saw it. Their objections were at once withdrawn, and never after that did I have occasion to strike a man. [Illustration: House in Ghijiga occupied by Mr. Vanderlip and his Party.] My guide was an old man of sixty-five, but a noted sledge-driver and hunter. His name was Theodosia Chrisoffsky, a half-caste. He was a dried-up and wizened old man, but I found him as active as a youth of twenty. He was always the first up in the morning, and the last to bed at night. He owned the best dogs in northeastern Siberia, and could get more work out of a dog-team than any other man. His reputation reached from the Okhotsk Sea to the Arctic Ocean, and he was considered among the dog-men to be about the wealthiest of his class. He owned a hundred dogs, valued at from three to one hundred roubles each. Perhaps ten of them were worth the maximum price, and the rest averaged about ten roubles apiece. He also owned five horses. Not the least part of his wealth were twelve strapping sons and daughters, all of whom, with their wives and husbands, lived under the paternal roof--or, rather, under a clump of paternal roofs. There were some sixty souls in all, and they formed a little village by themselves about twenty miles up the river from Ghijiga. I had to load the horses very light on account of the marshy condition of the tundra. Each pack was a hundred pounds only. On this trip I took only one of my Koreans. CHAPTER VI OFF FOR THE TUNDRA--A NATIVE FAMILY Hard traveling--The native women--A mongrel race--Chrisoffsky's home and family and their ideas of domestic economy--Boiled fish-eyes a native delicacy--Prospecting along the Ghijiga. We set out at nine o'clock on the sixth of September. Fortunately for us, the sharp frosts had already killed off all the mosquitos. The path through the tundra was very difficult. We stepped from tuft to tuft of moss, between which were deep mud and slush. When we could keep in the river-bed, where it was dry, we had tolerably good going; so we kept as near the river as possible. Often I would have to mount the back of my faithful Kim to cross some tributary of the main stream. We were continually wet to the knee or higher, and were tired, muddy, and bedraggled beyond belief. Toward night, we saw the welcome smoke from the village of the Chrisoffskys. A crowd of small urchins came running out to greet their grandfather, and soon we were in the midst of the village. The old gentleman, my guide, took my hand and led me into his house, where, after I had kissed every one (drawing the line at the men), one of the daughters sat down on the floor, unlaced my boots, took off my wet socks, and replaced them by soft, fur-lined deerskin boots. She then looked my boots over very carefully, and finding a little seam ripped, she got out a deer-sinew and sewed it up. All my men were similarly attended to. The boots were then hung up to dry. In the morning, they would have to be oiled. This attention to the foot-gear is an essential part of the etiquette of this people. Any stitch that is to be taken must be attended to before the boot is dry and stiff. Even here the samovar reigned supreme. The women were strong, buxom creatures, and they wore loose calico gowns of gaudy colors. The hair, which is never luxuriant in the women of the North, was put up in two slender braids crossed at the back and brought around to the front of the head and tied up. Their complexions were very dark, almost like that of a North American Indian. Most of them had very fine teeth. These people are of a mongrel race, having a mixture of Korak, Tunguse, and Russian blood. Chrisoffsky himself was one fourth Russian. They speak a dialect that is as mixed as their blood; for it is a conglomerate of Korak, Tunguse and Russian. They are very prolific, six and eight children being considered a small family. The death-rate among them is very high, and, as might be expected, pulmonary diseases are responsible for a very large proportion of the deaths. [Illustration: House of Theodosia Chrisoffsky, Christowic.] This house into which I had come as guest consisted of a kitchen, a small living-room, and a tiny bedroom. The old gentleman's wife was fifty-five years old, and was still nursing her fifteenth child, which, at night, was swung from the ceiling, while the father and mother occupied a narrow bed. Three of the smaller children slept on the floor beneath the bed. The room was eight feet long and six feet wide. The fireplace in the living-room was a huge stone oven, which projected through the partition into the bedroom. Every evening its capacious maw was filled with logs, and this insured heat in the heavy stone body of the stove for at least twenty-four hours. In the mouth of this oven the kettles were hung. This house was far above the average; for, in truth, there were only twelve others as good in the whole immense district. For dinner, the first course was a startling one. It consisted of a huge bowl of boiled fish-eyes. This is considered a great delicacy by the natives of the far North. When the dish was set before me, and I saw a hundred eyes glaring at me from all directions and at all angles, cross, squint, and wall, it simply took my appetite away. I had to turn them down, so that the pupil was not visible, before I could attack them. The old gentleman and I ate alone, the rest of the family not being allowed to sit down with us. This was eminently satisfactory to me, as we ate from the same dish; in fact, I could have dispensed with my host too. The second dish consisted of fish-heads. I found on these a sort of gelatin or cartilage that was very good eating. Then came a kind of cake, fried in seal-oil, of which the less said the better. For dessert, we had a dish of yagada, which is much like our raspberry, except that it is yellow and rather acid. The rest of the family, together with my men, squatted on the floor of the kitchen, and ate from tables a foot high by three feet square. In the center of each table was set a large bowl of a kind of fish-chowder. Each person wielded a spoon made from the horn of the mountain sheep, and held in the left hand a piece of black bread. After dinner they all had tea. No sugar is put in the tea, but a small lump is given to each person, and he nibbles it as he sips his tea. It is the height of impoliteness to ask for a second piece of sugar. Many of these people drink as many as sixty cups of tea in a single day. They seldom, if ever, drink water. We sat and talked a couple of hours over the samovar, and then the blankets were spread for the night. The large room was reserved for me. Three huge bearskins were first placed on the floor, and then my blankets were spread over them. It made a luxurious bed, and quite free from vermin; for a bedbug will never approach a bearskin. In the kitchen, I fear, they were packed like sardines. They slept on deerskins or bearskins, anything that came handy being used for a covering. Curiously enough, these people all prefer to sleep on a steep incline, and to secure this position they use heavy pillows or bolsters. Before retiring, each person came into my room and bowed and crossed himself before the icon in the corner. I had to shake hands with them all, and kiss the children, which operation I generally performed on the forehead, as handkerchiefs are unknown luxuries in that country. The next morning, while partaking of a sort of French breakfast of bread, tea, and sugar, I noticed that my party were the only ones that made use of a comb and brush. When I stepped outside the door to clean my teeth, I was surrounded by twenty or more, who had come to witness this strange operation. They were brimming over with laughter. The tooth-brush was passed around from hand to hand, and I had to keep a sharp lookout, lest some of them tried it themselves. Finally, I lined them all up to take their photograph. I placed my camera on the ground, and turned to direct them how to stand. I had no need to ask them to look pleasant, for they were all on a broad grin. I was at a loss to account for their mirth till I turned and saw that the village dogs were treating my camera in a characteristically canine fashion. Then it was I who needed to be told to look pleasant. At last we were on the road again. For the first five miles our way led up the bed of the river, sometimes in the water, and sometimes on the bank in grass as high as the horses' shoulders. When, at last, we came out on to the tundra, to the north, a hundred and fifty miles away, I could see the tops of the mountains among which the Ghijiga River has its source. They are about ten thousand feet high. To the northeast, about sixty miles away, I could see the foothills of a range of mountains in which rises the Avecko River, which enters the Okhotsk Sea within a mile of the mouth of the Ghijiga. Reaching the summit of the water-shed between the two rivers, I discovered that between me and these foothills the land was low and abounded in tundra lakes. To avoid these, I bore to the left and kept on the summit of the water-shed. By noon we had covered only eight miles. We halted for dinner, unpacked the horses, and turned them out to feed upon the rich grass while we made our dinner of fish, bread, and other viands which we had brought ready prepared from the house. At eight that night we camped on a "tundra island," a slight rise in the general flatness on which grew a few tamarack trees. As the nights were now very cold, we built a roaring fire. My koklanka, or great fur coat, with its hood, now proved its utility. After supper, which consisted of several brace of fat ptarmigan, brought down that afternoon with my shotgun, each man took his deerskin and spread it on a pile of elastic tamarack boughs. With our feet shod in dry fur boots, with our koklankas about us and great pillows under our heads, we slept as soundly and as comfortably as one could desire. [Illustration: Start from Ghijiga, Summer-time. Theodosia Chrisoffsky and Family--Fourteen Children.] In the morning we found ourselves covered with white frost. The start was very difficult, for an all-day tramp in the bog the day before had made our joints stiff. For the first half hour, walking was so painful that I found myself frequently counting the steps between objects along the way. But after a time the stiffness wore off, and I began to find the pace of the horses too slow. When at last we came to higher ground and better going, I examined the streams for gold. The pan showed several "small colors," for we were in a granite country, but as yet there were no signs of any gold-bearing float rock. On the thirteenth day we arrived at our destination which was a certain creek indicated by a Russian engineer named Bugdanovitch. I liked the looks of the country very much. The creeks were filled with quartz float. So I determined to stop here two or three weeks and explore the adjacent hills and creeks for gold. At this point my guide's contract expired and I reluctantly let him go, as well as five of the six horses. I was thus left in the wilderness with Kim and Alek. I pitched camp in a favorable place and went to work in good spirits. I thoroughly prospected the hills and ravines and made repeated trials of the creek beds, but though I found more or less show of gold, I was at last obliged to confess that there was nothing worth working. This being the case, it behooved me to be on my way back to headquarters at Ghijiga. I thought there could be no difficulty about it, as the water all flowed in one direction. I did not want to go back by the way we had come. I suspected that there was a shorter way, and that the guide had purposely brought me a longer distance in order to secure more pay. So I decided to make a "bee line" for Ghijiga. Already we had had a slight flurry of snow, which had made me a trifle uneasy. We had only thirty days' provisions with us, and it would not do to be snowed in. As we had only one horse, we could not, of course, take back with us all our camp equipage, so I left Alek at the camp and started out for Ghijiga with Kim and our one horse, intending to send back dog-sledges for the things. A more timid man than Alek would have hesitated before consenting to be left behind in this fashion, but he bore up bravely and in good cheer sent us off. CHAPTER VII TUNGUSE AND KORAK HOSPITALITY. My Korak host--"Bear!"--I shoot my first arctic fox--My Tunguse guide--Twenty-two persons sleep in a twelve-foot tent--Tunguse family prayers--The advent of Howka--Chrisoffsky once more. I struck what I thought to be a straight course toward our destination. The going was much better than it had been a few weeks before, because of the hard frost which held everything solid till ten o'clock in the morning. Then the sun would melt the ice and make it very hard to travel; for the broken ice would cut our boots, which meant wet feet for the rest of the day. On the second day we struck a small water-course and saw many signs of reindeer. Soon we found a tiny trail, and, following it down the valley, I turned around a bend in the creek, and saw before me six large deerskin tents, while on the surrounding hillsides were hundreds of reindeer. As we neared the village a dozen curs came rushing out; some of them were hobbled so as to prevent their chasing the deer. They attacked us savagely, as is the custom of these ugly little mongrels. We had to make a counter attack with stones to keep them off. The noise aroused the natives, who hurried out and received us with the hospitable "drosty." [Illustration: Village of Christowic, Okhotsk Sea.] These people were pure Koraks,[1] a little under the medium size, in which they resemble the Japanese. I was led into the largest of the tents, and a wooden bowl containing boiled reindeer meat was placed before me. To the delight of my host, I went to my pack and produced some tea. I also displayed some sugar and black bread, which firmly established me in their good graces. I was greatly surprised to see my host bring out a box, from which he produced half a dozen china cups, heavily ornamented with gilt, and bearing such legends as "God Bless Our Home," "To Father," and "Merry Christmas." He must have secured them from an American whaling vessel on one of his annual trips to the coast. So, in the midst of this wilderness, I drank my tea from a fine mustache cup, originally designed to make the recipient "Remember Me." These cups were the heirloom of the family, and were brought out only on state occasions. [1] Sometimes spelled Koriaks or Koryakes. Korak is given the preference as being more accurately the phonetic spelling. When tea was finished I produced some tobacco and filled my pipe and that of my host, much to his gratification. The sequel was embarrassing; for when our pipes were smoked out he insisted on filling them again with his own tobacco. This was rough on me, but I set my teeth on the pipe-stem and bravely went through with it to the end. I can say nothing worse of it than that it was as bad as a cheap American cigarette. My host was a genial old fellow, and later on he became my bosom friend. He was the wealthiest man in his district, and owned upward of ten thousand reindeer. Of course I had great difficulty in talking to him, but by a liberal use of signs, I made him understand where I had come from, and that I would like to have him kill some reindeer and carry them back to the camp where I had left Alek, and, if possible, bring him to this village. I made a rough sketch of the position of the camp, and he understood perfectly, as shown by the fact that he carried out my instructions to the letter on the next day. I asked him the way to Ghijiga and pointed in the direction that I had supposed it lay. This was approximately correct, but he promised to give me a guide to take me to town. That evening there was another surprise in store for me. They served for supper the boiled flesh of unborn reindeer. It is accounted a specially choice viand among the Koraks. This seemed worse than smoking the old man's tobacco, but I laid aside all squeamishness and found that, after all, it was a palatable dish. My bed that night was a pile of skins, a foot deep, in a corner of the tent. The next morning we set out with our guide, a mere boy dressed in a close-fitting suit of brown buckskin. He carried in his hand an ugly looking bear spear with a blade a foot long and sharpened on both edges. It was artistically inlaid with copper scroll-work and was a fine example of genuine Korak art. The shaft was a good eight feet long. All day we pushed ahead without adventure or misadventure until about seven o'clock in the evening, when, as we were passing down a gentle incline through thick bushes, with the Korak guide in the lead and I behind, my notice was attracted by a mound of fresh earth a few steps from the path. I went to investigate, and was greeted by a terrific roar. I brought my gun to position and cocked both barrels, but could see nothing beyond a tremendous shaking of the bushes. Looking around, I saw the little guide with his eyes blazing and his spear in readiness for an attack. He exclaimed "Medvait!" which in Russian means "bear." As my gun was loaded only with bird shot, I decided that discretion was the better part of valor, and slowly backed out of the dense undergrowth. When I reached the open, whatever remnant of hunting instinct a hard day's tramp had left in me asserted itself. Hastily reloading my gun with shells loaded with buckshot, I circled around the bushes to get a shot at the fellow. I saw where the bushes were being beaten down by his hasty retreat, but could not catch sight of the brute. I sent a charge of buckshot after him as an inducement to come out and show himself, but the argument worked just the other way, and he made off at his best speed. The strangest thing about the whole affair was that we had passed within ten feet of the animal without the horse showing any signs of uneasiness. Nothing will so frighten a horse as the smell of a bear. But I learned afterward that this particular horse was afraid of nothing. I had named him "Bill," and we had many a hard day together. Night was now upon us, and so we made our camp in some dry grass beside a brook. The guide slept on a single deerskin, with no covering but the clothes he wore. In the morning I ascended a little knoll, and with my glasses could see a mountain near the town of Ghijiga, so the guide left me, and went back. That afternoon I killed my first arctic fox. The little fellow, about as large as a coyote, came running toward us. We stopped short, and the inquisitive animal approached to within a hundred feet and paused to inspect us. I killed him with a ball through the chest. [Illustration: Mr. Vanderlip on "Bill."] That night as Kim and I sat beside a roaring fire of birch logs a little animal leaped suddenly into the firelight opposite. It was a young arctic fox, the prettiest sight I have ever seen. He would jump to one side and then the other, and crouch, and strike attitudes like a kitten at play. Then he would lift his nose in the air and sniff this way and that, raising one of his paws meanwhile. The thought of killing the little thing would never have entered my head if Kim, the matter-of-fact, had not whispered, "Strelite," which means "shoot." Instinctively my hand crept toward my gun, but the little fox saw the movement and was gone like a flash. I was heartily glad of it, too. In this district are to be found almost all the different varieties of foxes--the red, fiery, blue, chestnut, black, and white. But it should be remembered that, with the exception of the white and red, these are not exactly different species. For instance, a black fox may be found in a litter of the common red fox in any country. He is simply a freak of nature, just as one might find a black kitten among a litter of gray ones. The foxes are caught by poison or traps. There are two kinds of traps, one of which seizes the animal by a leg or around the neck, and the other is made with a bow and arrow so set that as the fox goes along the path the slightest touch of the foot will discharge the arrow. Formerly these animals were so common that when the dogs were fed the foxes would come and try to steal part of the food, and had to be driven away with clubs. At that time the natives valued their pelts hardly more than dogskins, but as the foreign demand increased the foxes became worth catching. We had four days of hard work traveling across the tundra, which was frozen hard in the morning, but was soft in the afternoon. Many times a day we were up to the waist in the mud and water, working to get Bill out of the mire. On the fourth day, just as night fell, we struck the trail between Ghijiga and old Chrisoffsky's little hamlet. I did not know just how far we were from the village, and as we were tired out we camped for the night. In the morning, what was our chagrin to find that we were within a quarter of a mile of Ghijiga. Bill doubtless knew, and if he could have talked he would have saved us one night in the open. The days now grew rapidly colder, with flurries of snow that heralded the coming of winter. As it was now possible to use dog-sleds, I engaged some of the natives to go to the Korak village and bring down my camping outfit, which I thought must long since have arrived at that place. At this season the dogs could travel only at night, when the ground was hard, but even so they covered between thirty and forty miles a day without difficulty. Meanwhile I loaded up Bill with all he could carry, and, in company with Kim, started out to find the head waters of the Turumcha River, where gold was reported to have been discovered. This trail led west from Ghijiga, but it was first necessary to go up the valley of the Ghijiga a short distance before crossing over into the other valley. I had, therefore, to pass Chrisoffsky's place again. We arrived there the first evening and received a hearty welcome. I tried to get the old gentleman to go with me and to furnish horses and dogs, but he could do neither. His dogs were engaged by the trading company on the coast, and his horses were in too poor a condition to undertake the journey which I contemplated. So I was reduced to the melancholy necessity of walking, Bill carrying our camp outfit. As I was about to start, a native Tunguse arrived at Chrisoffsky's. He was the first of that tribe that I had seen. Chrisoffsky told me that this young man was going the same road as I, and that his yourta, or hut, was near the stream along which I intended to prospect. He willingly agreed to act as my guide at a wage of one brick of tea a day. He answered to the euphonious name of Fronyo. He was five feet high and weighed only one hundred and ten pounds, but was prodigiously strong and wiry. He was dressed in old tanned buckskin, with a gaudy apron trimmed with beads in geometric patterns and with a fringe. According to the custom of his tribe, he wore a long, ugly knife strapped to his thigh, the point reaching to the knee, while the handle lay at the hip. These knives are fashioned by the Koraks, who sell them to the Tunguses. On his feet were moccasins with seal-hide soles. I found that he could speak a little broken Russian, and as I had acquired a few Russian expressions we got along famously. So we set out, Fronyo leading off with his long bear spear but no fire-arms. It was a straight three days' trip across the tundra, and without special incident. At night we arrived in good season at a skin yourta on the banks of a tributary of the Ghijiga. On our approach a dozen dogs rushed out with the full intention of tearing us to pieces, but changed their minds when they found that we were equally determined to defend ourselves. The dogs were followed by the denizens of the place, ten or twelve in number, including Fronyo's father, mother, brothers, and sisters. Their greeting consisted in grasping right hands, throwing out the lips as far as possible and touching the two cheeks and lips of the friend. I pretended ignorance of the ceremony. In truth, they were so unconscionably dirty that it was impossible to tell the color of their skin, and besides, I could not distinguish the men from the women. But I learned later that the dress of the two sexes does differ slightly, for the women have a little fringe about the bottom of the skirt, which is split up the back precisely like our frock-coats. [Illustration: The Pride of the Family.] The flap of the tent was drawn aside and we crept in, only to find ourselves buried in a dense cloud of smoke, which came from an open fire burning in the middle of the tent, and which escaped through a hole at the top, as in the wigwam of the North American Indian. On sitting down, I discovered that near the ground the air was comparatively clear. Because of this smoke, the natives suffer severely from sore eyes. Among the Tunguses the guest is always supposed to provide the tea, so I had Kim bring out a brick, and it was brewed and served with bread and sugar. For supper I had a splendid salmon-trout spitted before the fire, and it seemed the most delicious morsel I had ever tasted. Then we lighted our pipes and took our ease. I noticed that the women carried pipes. The little brass pipe-bowls are bought from the Russian traders and are fitted with reed stems about eight inches long. Some of the pipe-stems were made of two pieces of wood grooved down the center and then bound together with deer thong. They mix Manchu tobacco with the dried inner bark of the fir tree. When it came time to retire, several logs were added to the fire in the center of the tent, the deerskins were spread, and each lay down in the clothes he or she had worn all day. The tent was twelve feet in diameter, and in that space twenty-two persons slept; three of them were infants who were swung from the top and just below the smoke fine. Indeed we lay like matches in a box, and certain grave misgivings I had relative to living mementoes of the occasion were later verified. But before retiring I witnessed a scene that would have put to shame not a few of the homes in America. These Tunguses are, many of them, adherents of the Greek Church. There was an icon in the tent, and before and after eating they crossed themselves before it. Now as we were about to retire the family shook hands and kissed one another. They came and shook my hand and said, "Pleasant sleep." Then the old man turned his face upward, closed his eyes and said, "O God, do not forget our home to-night." Considering the surroundings, it was the most impressive thing I had ever witnessed. On our departure the next day we made the old people happy with the gift of several bricks of tea. Snow had fallen during the night to the depth of six inches. Winter was on us in full force. As we left we were followed from the yourta by a beautiful black dog the size of a fox. I was to become well acquainted with him later. We camped that night on the banks of the Turumcha where I was to commence my work. The stream was only sixty feet wide, but it was swift and turgid and filled with floating ice. The next morning we were obliged to ford it; so, tying a lariat about Bill's neck and leaving the end of it in Kim's hands, I mounted and forced the horse into the water. At the deepest point it came well up to his shoulders and he found it hard to keep his feet, but we got safely over. Kim pulled the horse back by the lariat and the guide came across. That long-suffering brute had to make four round trips before we and our effects were all across the river. When Kim started across, the dog began to howl piteously, but finally sprang into the water after us. When in mid-stream he encountered a floating cake of ice. He climbed upon it and was whirled down-stream and out of sight. He got across, however, and caught up with us two hours later. We followed up the bed of the stream, stopping often to examine it for signs of gold. We sunk shafts here and there and panned the gravel in the icy water of the stream, always getting a few "colors" but nothing of particular interest. Each night we camped in some sheltered nook, often in heavy timber, and our first move always was to change our wet boots. One night I spread out my deerskin bed, put on my heavy fur coat and cap, lay down as usual with the canvas tarpaulin over all, and was soon asleep. About four o'clock in the morning I felt something warm moving at my side. I put out my hand and found that it was the black dog which had followed us. We called him Howka. When I stirred he offered to leave, but I patted him and coaxed him to remain, which he was quite willing to do. Afterward I bought him, and for a year he was my constant companion. Once, during a long period of semi-starvation, he saved my life by hunting sea-gulls' nests, from which I took the eggs. After working my way up to the headwaters of the stream without finding gold in paying quantities, I determined to cross over the divide into another section, but my guide, Fronyo, begged me to go one day's trip farther up the little brook to a place which he described as "white walls with little sparkling points like the stars." I said to myself, "Probably quartz with sulphurets" (bisulphide of iron). So on we went and came at last to the shiny wall. It proved to be a large vein of low grade gold ore crossing the brook at right angles. Panning below I found nothing of particular value; so breaking off fragments of the rocks we piled them up beside the stream, making a little monument to mark the spot, should I wish to revisit it. I appeared to be now in a mineral country. We went on up the brook, panning continually, but nowhere on the bed-rock found gold in paying quantities. [Illustration: Mr. Vanderlip crossing Turumcha River.] We had now reached the top of the divide, and so crossed over into a district called Toloffka, with a stream of the same name, where we spent several days. The cold was intense. The thermometer registered ten degrees below zero. The streams were all ice-bound, except where they were very swift. The snow was about a foot deep, and Bill was faring badly. His only food was the tops of the grass that stuck up through the snow or that could be found on wind-swept places. He was so weak that he could only pack sixty pounds, and that with difficulty. All our food was gone except rice and tea. Our tobacco had long ago given out, and, as a substitute, we used brick tea mixed with pine bark. It made a smoke--and that was all. The rough work had destroyed my boots. I had used one pair to mend the soles of the other. My guide made a needle of a fish bone, and with thread from the fiber of a vine sewed the soles on for me. It was evidently time for us to be turning our faces homeward. We went straight for the yourta where Fronyo's family lived, and of course made it in far less time than it had taken us to come. I found that the whole trip had covered just one month. Bill came very near giving out on the home trip, but by a heroic effort pulled through and was rewarded at the journey's end by getting all the provender he could stow away. As Bill had to carry the pack and as my feet were not in the best condition, Fronyo proposed that I ride to Ghijiga on a reindeer. A fine big bull of about five hundred pounds was brought out and I looked him over. I had some misgivings, but at last decided to accept the offer. The saddle was made with reindeer bones for a foundation. These were securely bound together, padded with moss, and covered with rawhide. The antlers of the deer had a spread of five feet, and there were so many prongs that I never tried to count them. Much to my surprise, I found that the motion of my steed was a smooth and gliding one, even more comfortable than the gait of a single-footer. It had taken us three days to walk up from Chrisoffsky's to the yourta. It took just eight hours to make the same trip in the other direction. Chrisoffsky's house was on the left bank of the stream, while we were on the right. It would have been death to the deer to have taken him within scent of the dogs. So I dismounted two miles from the house, tethered the deer, and made my way in on foot. The stream was not solidly frozen, so I fired off my gun and brought out the whole settlement. A boat was found, and presently I was seated again at old Chrisoffsky's fireside. CHAPTER VIII DOG-SLEDGING AND THE FUR TRADE Description of the sledge and its seven pairs of dogs--The harness--The useful _polka_--The start-off a gymnastic performance for the driver--Methods of steering and avoiding obstructions while going at full speed--Dog-trading _en route_--Dog-fights are plentiful--Prices of sable and other skins in the native market--The four grades of sables--How they live and what they live on--A Russian writer on sable hunting--Days when a native would barter eighteen sable skins for an ax. I could not delay here. The sledge-road to Ghijiga was in fine condition, and, hiring a team of dogs, I started out the next morning on my first sledge-ride. Our team consisted of fourteen big, wolflike sledge-dogs with shaggy coats and erect pointed ears. Some were white, some black, some gray, some red, and some a bluish color. The two leaders were a magnificent pair--one red, the other blue. They were all fierce-looking fellows, but I had no difficulty in stroking them, as they like to be petted. The harness consisted of a breast collar and a belly-band. Leading back from the collar, and held in place on the sides by the belly-band, are two thongs, which are attached to a ring directly behind the dog. From this ring a single thong, three feet in length, attaches the dog to the central tug which draws the sledge. Each thong is fastened to a ring on the tug by means of a wooden pin three inches long. The dogs are always fastened to the tug in pairs. The central tug leads forward from the sledge to a point between the leading pair of dogs. Between the several pairs is a clear space of about eighteen inches. The sledge itself, which is called a _narta_, is a remarkable vehicle. It is made of light basswood without nails or screws. The parts are bound together with walrus thongs. It is admirably adapted to survive the hard knocks which it is sure to receive. It has just the necessary amount of "give" without losing anything in strength. The runners are from ten to fourteen feet long and two feet apart. They are from three to four inches wide and unshod. The bed of the sledge is raised ten inches above the runners by means of posts at frequent intervals. On each side is a railing six inches high, with a thong mesh to prevent the load from falling off. At about one third the distance from the front to the back of the sledge is placed a perpendicular bow of stout wood, which rises some four feet and a half from the ground. The driver sits behind this, and whenever an obstruction is met with, he steps off quickly at the side and pulls the sledge one way or the other by means of this bow, which he grasps in the right hand. The driver holds a stout steel-shod stick five feet in length with a cord attached to the end. He can use this _polka_ as a brake by putting it between the runners and digging it into the ground, or he can anchor the sledge with it by driving it perpendicularly into the snow immediately in front of the sledge and then tying the cord to the bow which has been described. When this is done the sledge cannot possibly move forward. Several bearskins were laid in the bed of the sledge for me, and a back-rest was made by lashing together three cross-pieces. I was told to keep as far down as possible, as it would lessen the probability of capsizing. Before starting, one more important piece of work had to be performed. Chrisoffsky, using the polka as a lever, tipped the sledge up at an angle of forty-five degrees, exposing the bottom of one runner, and proceeded to scrape it with a knife he always carried in a sheath at his thigh. Then from under his fur coat he drew out a little bottle of water which was fastened about his neck with a cord, and wetting a piece of deer fur as one would wet a sponge, he drew it rapidly along the runner, with the result that a thin film of ice was formed along its whole length. The other runner was treated likewise. This is a very important part of the preparation for a sledge-ride. [Illustration: Sledge-dogs, showing Harness and Method of Hitching.] While this was going on the dogs were continually yelping with excitement and leaping in their collars, eager to be off. Old Chrisoffsky quieted them with the cry "Chy, chy, chy." The old gentleman himself was to be my driver, and I mounted and was carefully tucked in by kindly, even if dirty, hands, while Chrisoffsky restrained the dogs. I said good-by, and settled back to witness a marvelous feat of human dexterity on the part of the driver, and of almost human intelligence on the part of the dogs. It was a crisp, cold morning. The road was well broken, but the difficulty was in getting out of the village with its narrow, winding paths to the open tundra where the road was straight and easy. As Chrisoffsky untied the cord from the bow, the alert dogs gave a wild yell, and strained at their collars as though they had gone mad. He drew out the polka, placed one foot on the runner, gave the bow a jerk to dislodge the sledge from its position in the snow, and shouted, "Hyuk, hyuk, hyuk!" to the impatient dogs. They sprang forward together, giving the sledge a jerk that nearly threw me overboard, and dashed forward at a terrific speed, Chrisoffsky still standing on the runner and waving the polka in his hand. We were off like a shot amid the laughter and good-bys of Chrisoffsky's numerous progeny. The trick was to get the dogs around those sharp curves at such a speed without upsetting the sledge. The driver by shouting, "Put, put, put!" could make them swerve about forty-five degrees to the right, and they would continue to turn till he stopped; then they would go straight ahead. If he wanted them to turn to the left he would give a strong guttural, scraping noise that sounded like an intensified German "ch," repeated as long as he wished them to continue turning. If we met an obstruction he would leap off, even when going at full speed, and by means of the bow pull or push the sledge free from the impending smash, and then leap on again as nimbly as a cat, despite his sixty-odd years. As we swept out of the village, followed by the shouts of "Doswi dania" (good-by), we plunged down into a gully and up the other side on to the open tundra, the dogs on the dead run. For a time our speed must have been nearly that of a greyhound at full stretch. Old Chrisoffsky looked back at me and laughed, and asked me how I liked it. I have ridden a good many kinds of vehicles, but for beauty of motion give me a narta with fourteen big, wild dogs, and a smooth road. The narta goes like a snake, it is so sinuous and adapts itself so perfectly to the irregularities of the road. After a while the dogs got the "wire edge" worked off their enthusiasm and settled down to a good steady trot that took us along at the rate of seven miles an hour. They worked together as smoothly as a machine. When they became thirsty, they would lap up the snow beside the path. If one of the dogs stops drawing and begins to shirk, the driver stands up and throws the polka at him, hitting him on the head or back, and then, by a dexterous motion, pushes the narta to one side and recovers the polka as the sledge passes it. The dog so warned will probably go miles with his head over his shoulder watching to see if he is going to be struck again; and all the other dogs, too, keep a weather-eye open. The best dogs are always in the lead, and the poorest ones back near the driver, where he can manage them most easily. If a dog refuses to draw, the sledge is stopped and the driver, to an accompaniment of very choice language, beats the sluggard with the lash of the polka till he deems the punishment sufficient. That dog will need no more reminders for a day at least. Almost always after starting out one or two dogs have to be handled in this manner before they will settle down to the day's work. Not infrequently dog-teams, meeting in the road, will stop and the drivers will proceed to "swap horses," or rather dogs, in the true David Harum style. But the two leaders are never exchanged in this way. They are the driver's favorites, and are too valuable to risk in such a trade. Even if their master is starving he will not part with his leaders. About five miles out, we met a team of dogs going up-country. We stopped simultaneously to exchange news, and inside of ten seconds one of our dogs made a jump at one of the other team. This was the signal, and in an instant all the twenty-eight dogs were at it tooth and nail in one grand scrimmage. After beating them unmercifully, the drivers were able to separate the two teams, and we found that three of our dogs were limping. I then learned that in a fight the Siberian dog does not make for his antagonist's throat, but for his feet, for he seems to know that injury to that member is the most serious that can happen to a sledge-dog. It was amusing to see with what deftness they would draw their feet back from the snap of the enemy. The neck is generally covered with a thick growth of hair which is impervious to teeth, while from the ankle to the foot the hair is cut away by the driver to prevent the snow from balling upon it. Our troubles proved not to be serious, and at the end of the third hour we approached Ghijiga. As soon as the dogs scented the town they gave a simultaneous yelp and broke into a swift run, as is always their custom in approaching any settlement. At the same time all the dogs of the village, apparently, came rushing out to meet us, and ran alongside yelping and snapping in a friendly way at our dogs. Old Chrisoffsky drew up with a flourish before my cabin, where I received a hearty welcome from the townsfolk. This day's trip from Chrisoffsky's house by dog-sledge cost me the enormous sum of one rouble, or fifty cents in United States gold. [Illustration: Mr. Vanderlip's Dog-sled loaded.] It was now late in October, and it was necessary for me to stop in Ghijiga while my winter outfit of clothes was being prepared. The snow was already deep and the river frozen solid, excepting at the rapids. But cold as it was, my work was but just beginning, for it is only in winter that long distance travel is possible. In summer you may struggle across six or eight miles of spongy tundra a day, but in winter you can easily cover from sixty to ninety miles, depending upon the quality of your teams and the number of your relays. By this time the natives were beginning to bring in their furs and other valuables to exchange with the merchants of the trading company. It may be of interest to give the prevailing prices. The native, ordinarily, does not take money for his skins, but various kinds of necessaries. Reducing it all, however, to a monetary basis, we find that he receives for sable skin ten to thirteen roubles; red-fox skin, two to three roubles; white-fox skin, one and a half roubles; black-fox skin, fifty to one hundred and fifty roubles; blue-squirrel skin, thirty-five cents; unborn-deer skin, twelve cents; turbogan (kind of coon), fifteen cents; yearling-deer skin, seventy-five cents; sea-dog skin, one rouble; black-bear skin, seven roubles; brown-bear skin, five roubles; white-bear skin, twenty-five roubles; walrus rope, two cents a yard; walrus ivory, from five cents to one and a half roubles a tusk; mammoth tusk, five to six roubles; fur coats, one and a half to five roubles; boots, twenty-five cents to seventy-five cents a pair. For an ermine skin he is wont to receive two needles or a piece of sugar as large as a thimble. In exchange for these commodities the traders give tea, sugar, powder, lead, cartridges, tobacco, bar iron one inch wide by a quarter of an inch thick, needles, beads, and various other trinkets. When the goods are marketed it is found that the company makes anywhere from one hundred to one thousand per cent. profit. Tea, the article most called for, allows only one hundred per cent. profit. On sugar some three hundred per cent. is made, and on the trinkets and other miscellaneous goods anywhere from five hundred to one thousand per cent. is made. [Illustration: Ghijiga River in Winter.] Several significant facts are to be deduced from this list: first, the low price that is paid for sables compared with the prices they bring in the European market; second, the comparatively high price the skin of the black fox brings, although it is only a fraction of what it costs at home (a single skin has brought as high as four thousand dollars in Paris); third, the extremely low cost of ermine; and fourth, the fact that there is no active trade in mammoth tusks, although they are plentiful. They are often ten feet in length, and it might be supposed that they would contain ivory enough to make them worth much more than they bring; but the fact is that it is fossil ivory, and the outside of each tusk is so far broken and decayed that only the very center of the tusk contains marketable ivory. The common rule is to give the natives one year's credit; the tea, sugar, tobacco, and other articles which they receive this year being paid for by the skins which they bring next year. The plan works well, for the natives are scrupulous in the payment of their debts. And furthermore, the traders, being on the spot, have a wide personal acquaintance among the natives and know just whom they can depend upon. Of course the most valuable portion of the produce of this north country is sable skins. There are four kinds, or rather grades, of sables. The finest come from the Lena River district; the second grade from the territory of which we are writing and within a radius of five hundred miles about the head of the Okhotsk Sea; the third grade from the Amur River district, and the fourth from Manchuria. Generally, the farther north one goes the better the sables. Before Siberia was conquered by Russia, sables were extremely common, but gradually they were pushed back by the coming of settlers, for they will not remain in the vicinity of human dwellings. They live in holes, as do the martens or ermines, but those who have studied their habits say that they frequently build nests of sticks and grass in the branches of trees, and use them alternately with their holes. They usually sleep about half the day, and roam about in search of food the other half. In the early spring they live on hares, though they will also eat weasles or ermine. When the berries are in season they subsist solely on cranberries, blueberries, and especially the berries of the shad-bush. The natives say that eating these last causes them to itch and rub themselves against the trees, which for the time being spoils their fur; so that while the shad-bush is in berry no sables are caught. About the end of March the sable brings forth its young, from three to five in the litter, and suckles them from four to six weeks. The method of trapping sables has been well described by a quaint writer near the beginning of the nineteenth century, and, as there have been very few changes during the interval, he is worth quoting: The sable hunters, whether Russian or native, begin to set out for hunting about the beginning of September. Some Russians go themselves, and others hire people to hunt for them, giving them proper clothes and instruments for hunting, and provisions for the time of their being out. When they return from the chase they give their masters all the game, and restore them likewise all that they received, except the provisions. A company that agrees to hunt together assembles from six to forty men, though formerly there were sometimes even fifty. They provide a small boat for every three or four men, which they cover over; and take with them such persons as understand the language of the people among whom they go to hunt, and likewise the places properest for hunting. These persons they maintain at the public charge, and give them, besides, an equal share of the game. In these boats every hunter lays thirty poods of rye-flour, one pood[2] of wheat-flour, one pood of salt, and a quarter of a pood of groats. Every two men must have a net, a dog, and several poods of provisions for the dog, a bed and covering, a vessel for preparing their bread, and a vessel to hold leaven. They carry with them very few firearms. [2] Russian weight equivalent to thirty-six pounds avoirdupois. The boats are then drawn up-stream as far as they can go, where the hunters build for themselves. Here they all assemble and live until the river is frozen over. In the mean time they choose for their chief leader one who has been oftenest upon these expeditions; and to his orders they profess an entire obedience. He divides the company into several small parties, and names a leader to each, except his own, which he himself directs; he also appoints the places where each party is to hunt. As soon as the season begins, this division into small parties is unalterable, even though the whole company consists of only eight or nine, for they never all go toward the same place. When their leaders have given them their orders, every small company digs pits upon the road by which they must go. In these pits they lay up for every two men three bags of flour against their return, when they shall have consumed all their other provisions; and whatever they have left in the huts they are obliged to hide also in pits, lest the wild inhabitants should steal it. As soon as the rivers are frozen over and the season is proper for the sable hunting, the chief of the leaders calls all the huntsmen into the hut, and, having prayed to God, gives orders to every chief of each small company, and despatches them the same road which was before assigned them. Then the leader sets out one day before the rest to provide lodging-places for them. When the chief leader despatches the under-leaders he gives them several orders; one of which is that each should build his first lodging in honor of some church, which he names, and the other lodgings to some such saint whose image he has with him, and that the first sable they catch should be laid aside in the quarter of the church, and at their return be presented to it. These sables they call "God's Sables," or the church's. The first sable that is caught in the quarter of each saint is given to the person who brought the image of that saint with him. On their march they support themselves with a wooden crutch about four feet long; upon the end of which they put a cow's horn, to keep it from being split by the ice, and a little above they bind it around with thongs to keep it from sinking too deep in the snow. The upper part is broad like a spade, and serves to shovel away the snow or to take it up and put it into their kettles, for they must use snow, as they have frequently no water. The principal chief having sent out the small parties, starts with his own. When they come to the places of lodging they build little huts of logs, and bank them up with snow round about. They hew several trees upon the road, that they may the more easily find their way in the winter. Near every quarter they prepare their trap-pits, each of which is surrounded with sharp stakes, about six or seven feet high, and about four feet distant, and is covered over with boards to prevent the snow from falling in. The entrance through the stakes is narrow, and over it a board is hung so nicely that by the least touch of the sables it turns and throws them into the trap; and they must absolutely go this way to reach a piece of fish or flesh with which the trap is baited. The hunters stay in a station till they have a sufficient number of traps set, every hunter being obliged to make twenty in a day. When they have passed ten of these quarters the leader sends back half of his company to bring up the provisions that were left behind, and with the remainder he advances to build more huts and set more traps. These carriers must stop at all the lodging-places to see that the traps are in order, and take out any sables they may find in them, and skin them, which none must pretend to do but the chief man of the company. If the sables are frozen they thaw them out by putting them under the bedclothes with them. When the skins are taken off, all present sit down and are silent, being careful that nothing is hanging on the stakes. The body of the sable is laid upon dried sticks, and these are afterward lighted, the body of the animal smoked, and then buried in the snow or the earth. Often when they apprehend that the Tunguses may meet them and take away their booty, they put the skins into hollow pieces of wood and seal up the ends with snow, which being wetted soon freezes. These they hide in the snow near their huts, and gather them up when they return in a body. When the carriers are come with provisions, then the other half are sent for more; and thus they are employed in hunting, the leader always going before to build traps. When they find few sables in their traps they hunt with nets, which they can only do when they find the fresh tracks of sables in the snow. These they follow till it brings them to the hole where the sable has entered; or if they lose it near other holes, they put smoking pieces of rotten wood to them, which generally forces the sable to leave the hole. The hunter at the same time has spread his net, into which the animal usually falls; and for precaution his dog is generally near at hand. Thus the hunter sits and waits sometimes two or three days. They know when the sable falls into the net by the sound of two small bells which are fastened to it. They never put smoky pieces of wood into those holes which have only one opening, for the sable would sooner be smothered than come towards the smoke, in which case it is lost. When the chief leader and all the hunters are gathered together, then the leaders of the small parties report to the chief how many sables or other beasts their party has killed, and if any of the parties have done anything contrary to his orders and the common laws. These crimes they punish in different ways. Some of the culprits they tie to a stake; others they oblige to ask pardon from every one in the company; a thief they beat severely, and allow him no part of the booty; nay, they even take his own baggage from him and divide it among themselves. They remain in their headquarters until the rivers are free of ice; and after the hunting they spend their time preparing the skins. Then they set out in the boats they came in, and when they get home they give the sables to the several churches to which they promised them; and then, having paid their fur-tax, they sell the rest, dividing equally the money or goods which they receive for them. Before Kamchatka was conquered by the Russians the sables were so plentiful that a hunter could easily take seventy or eighty in a season, but they were esteemed more for their flesh than for their fur. At first the natives paid their tribute in sables, and would give eight skins for a knife and eighteen for an ax. CHAPTER IX OFF FOR THE NORTH--A RUNAWAY My winter wardrobe of deerskin--Shoes that keep the feet warm when it is sixty degrees below zero--_Plemania_, a curious native food in tabloid form--Other provisions--Outline of proposed exploration about the sources of the Ghijiga River--Four hours of sun a day--When dog meets deer--A race for life and a ludicrous dénouement--More queer native dishes--Curious habits of the sledge-dog. I now set about preparing my winter wardrobe. With the aid of my good friend Mrs. Braggin, several native women were set at work to make a complete suit of native clothes, for I knew that only in these would I be able to endure the rigors of their arctic winter. The trousers were made of yearling-deer skin tanned soft on the inside, and the short hair left on the outside. A short jacket of the same material completed the inner suit. The socks were made of the same skin with the fur left on the inside. They reached well to the knee. Over these came a pair of boots made from skin taken from reindeer's legs, with soles of seal-hide. A cushion of grass is used in the boot. The skin taken from the reindeer's leg is better adapted to the manufacture of boots than any other part of the skin, because the hair is shorter and denser in growth. I also had boots with soles made of the fur which grows between the toes of the reindeer, and which is of such a texture that it prevents slipping on the ice. On each foot of the reindeer there is a tuft of this hair about as large as a silver dollar, and it takes twelve of them to make the sole of a single boot. These boots are used only in extremely cold weather. Even with the thermometer sixty degrees below zero they prevent cold feet. For an overcoat I had a great koklanka made. It was shaped like a huge night-gown, reaching to the knee. It was made of two thicknesses of yearling-deer skin, and was provided with an ample hood. It is too heavy to wear when walking, but is used in the dog- or deer-sledge and when sleeping. It is usually belted in with a gay-colored woolen scarf. For head-gear I wore a "Nansen" woolen hat capable of being drawn down over the face. Without it my nose would have been severely punished. My heavy mittens were made of fur from the deer's leg, with the hair outside. Even in the worst of weather they were a complete protection from cold. Of snow-shoes I took three pairs, two being designed for use in soft snow. They measured five feet and ten inches long by eight inches wide, being pointed and curved up in front and gathered to a point at the back. They were shod with reindeer fur, with the hair pointing back, thus preventing slipping. One pair for use on hard snow were three feet long and eight inches wide. [Illustration: Deer crossing River.] An indispensable part of my equipment was a sleeping-bag made of the thick winter fur of the reindeer, with the fur inside. It was provided with a hood that, when pulled down, completely shut out the cold. One would suppose that the sleeper must smother in such a case; but, although at first it seemed rather close, I suffered no inconvenience. Enough air found its way in around the edge of the hood for respiration. For provisions I first laid in several hundred pounds of _plemania_, as the Russians call it. It consists of little balls of reindeer meat chopped fine, and surrounded with a casing of dough. Each ball was about the size of an English walnut. These froze immediately and remained so till thrown into a pot of boiling water. Ten minutes then sufficed to make a most tempting dish. To this I added several hundred pounds of hard rye bread, which had been cut in slices and dried on the top of the oven to the consistency of stone. Tea, sugar, and tobacco were added as luxuries, though the first is well-nigh a necessity, and all of them are potent levers in opening the hearts of the native Korak or Tunguse. I took a small quantity of dried fruits, which, of course, proved most useful in a land where food is almost all of an animal nature. It was my intention to explore first the mountains in which the Ghijiga River has its source, together with the tributary streams; and after that to cross over the mountains and explore the head waters of the rivers flowing north into the Arctic Ocean. I anticipated that this would take at least two months. Old Chrisoffsky furnished six dog-sledges; he himself and two of his sons acted as drivers. The other three drivers were hired from Ghijiga. My party consisted, then, of the following members: my faithful Kim, who stuck to me through thick and thin, though, at first, he little dreamed how far I would take him from the pleasant hills and valleys of his beloved Chosun; my Tunguse guide, Fronyo, who had proved such a valuable help in my trip into his district; the six drivers, myself, and the eighty-four dogs. I had left behind all my Russian help, as they would have been of no value on such an expedition as this. The reader may imagine that our stock of food was small for such a party, but we were going into a reindeer country where we were sure of securing all the meat we wanted. So all the available space on the sledges was loaded with dog-food--namely, salmon heads and backs. It was now November, and there were only four hours of sunlight--from ten to two. But the northerner does not depend on the sun. The glistening snow and the stars overhead give sufficient light for ordinary travel. [Illustration: Reindeer.] We were off with a dash and a happy howl of mingled dogs and village children, at one in the afternoon, and that night we spent at Chrisoffsky's village. The next morning we were off again in the gray light at seven o'clock, up the bed of the Ghijiga River. The third day out we neared the yourta of a wealthy Tunguse magistrate. At four o'clock in the afternoon the dogs suddenly broke into a swift run, and we knew they had scented something that interested them. We soon perceived that we had struck a deer trail and that we were nearing an encampment. We turned a bend in the road and there, a hundred yards ahead of us, saw the cause of the dogs' excitement. A team of reindeer were running for their lives. Their Tunguse driver was lashing them with the whip and urging them on with all his might, for he knew as well as we that if our dogs overtook them before the camp was reached, we seven men would be utterly powerless to prevent the dogs from tearing the deer to pieces. Chrisoffsky put on the brake with all his might, but it had not the least effect. Our fourteen dogs had become wolves in the turn of a hand and no brake could stop them. There were many stumps and other obstructions along our path, and my driver had great difficulty in preventing a smash-up. For a short time the deer held their own, and, in fact, gained on us, but before the yourta came in sight we were gaining rapidly. While we were still at some distance the people of the village, warned by the cries of the dogs, comprehended what was the matter, and, arming themselves with sticks and spears, came running toward us. As they came on they spread out in a fan-like formation across the trail. When the terrified deer reached them they opened and let the team through, and instantly closed again to dispute the passage of our dogs. Chrisoffsky was in no wise minded to let these natives club his dogs and perhaps injure the valuable animals, so he resorted to the last expedient. Giving a shout of warning to me he suddenly, by a deft motion, turned our sledge completely over, landing me in a snow-drift on my head. In this position the sledge was all brake and the dogs were forced to stop, leaping in their harness and yelling like fiends incarnate. I sat up in the snow-bank and laughed. The other drivers had followed our example, and the struggling tangle of sledges, harness, dogs and men formed a scene that to the novice at least was highly ludicrous. The drivers and the village people were belaboring the dogs, and the entire herd of reindeer belonging to the village were escaping in all directions up the hills. When order was at last restored, which was not accomplished till every deer was out of sight, we made our way to the yourta, which was large and comfortable, and, as usual, the women set about making tea. The reader may well ask how the natives can use both dogs and reindeer if the very sight of a deer has such a maddening effect on the dogs. The explanation is simple. The two never go together. There is the dog country and the deer country, and the two do not impinge upon each other. Even among the same tribe there may be a clear division. For instance, there are the "Deer Koraks" and the "Dog Koraks." In some of the villages of the former there may occasionally be seen a few low-bred curs which are not used for sledging and have been trained not to worry deer. Confusion is often unavoidably caused by traveling with dogs through a deer country, but the natives do not take it in ill part, knowing that if they themselves have to travel with deer through a dog country they will cause quite as much inconvenience. While we were drinking tea and eating hard bread I noted that the settlement contained some thirty men, with their wives and children. The women hastened to prepare a dinner of unborn-deer's flesh and deer tongues. Frozen marrow bones, uncooked, were broken and the marrow, in the shape of sticks or candles, was passed around as a great delicacy. These dishes, together with frozen cranberries, formed our repast, and a very good one we voted it. When we were done I went outside and found, to my surprise, that the dogs had not yet been fed. I remonstrated with Chrisoffsky, but he answered that they had not yet finished their evening toilet. Then I saw that the dogs were busy licking themselves and biting the pieces of frozen snow out from between their toes. My driver explained that if they were fed before performing this very necessary task, they would immediately lie down to sleep and wake up in the morning with sore feet and rheumatism, and then they would be useless for several days. It takes the dogs a good hour before they have groomed themselves fit for dinner. They seem to know that they can get nothing to eat before this work is done, but the minute they have finished they sit up and begin to howl for their meal. Each dog receives two or three salmon backs and heads. This is a fairly good amount considering that the salmon were originally eighteen- or twenty-pound fish. The dogs were all left in harness and still attached to the main tug. This is pulled taut and anchored at the front with the polka, which prevents the dogs from fighting, for no more than two can reach each other at a time. As they feed, the drivers watch them to see that they do not steal each other's food. After they finish their dinner they scratch a shallow place in the snow, curl up with their backs to the wind and go to sleep. They are never unfastened from the sledge from one end of the journey to the other. They literally live in the harness. While the dogs were eating, the mongrel curs belonging to the encampment (an entirely different breed from the sledge-dog) stood around and yelped saucily at the big intruders, but the sledge-dogs gave them no notice whatever. [Illustration: Theodosia Chrisoffsky, Guide.] The dogs sleep quietly all night unless one of them happens to raise his nose and emit a long-drawn howl. At this signal they all join in the howl for about three minutes, stopping at the same instant. If some puppy happens to give an additional yelp, all the others turn a disgusted look at him as if, indeed, he ought to display better manners. This howling concert generally comes off two or three times a night. We do not know what causes it, but probably it is some subconscious recollection of their ancestral wolfhood. The same thing happens whenever the team stops on the road. They all sit and howl for several minutes. On the road the dogs are fed simply with the dried fish heads and backs; but at home a more elaborate meal is prepared for them. Water is put into a sort of trough, and then rotten fish, which has been kept in pits, is added, with a few of the dried fish, and the whole is cooked by throwing in red-hot stones. This is fed to the dogs only at night. In the summer-time the dogs have to forage for themselves, which they do by digging out tundra-rats. By the time summer is over the dogs are so fat that they have to be tied up and systematically starved till brought into condition for the sledge again. This period is one long concert of howls, but the natives do not seem to mind it. The food of the dogs is entirely carnivorous, for they would rather live by gnawing their own harness than to eat bread, even if the latter could be supplied. The instinct by which these animals foresee the coming of a blizzard is truly wonderful. The unfailing sign of a coming storm is the pawing of the snow. For what reason they paw the snow will probably never be known. This, too, may be some residual taint of their original savage state. CHAPTER X THROUGH THE DRIFTS Sledging over snow four feet deep--Making a camp in the snow--Finding traces of gold--A grand slide down a snow-covered hill--My polka breaks with disastrous results--Prospecting over the Stanovoi range. The next morning we had before us ten miles of forest in which the snow lay four feet deep, and the trail was unbroken. This meant serious work for our teams. At the advice of Chrisoffsky I hired two reindeer narties to go ahead and break the trail, but they had to keep a mile in advance, out of sight of our dogs. The snow had been falling all night, and when we came out in the morning, we saw only a lot of little snow hummocks, like baby graves in the snow. Chrisoffsky cried, "Hyuk, hyuk!" and there occurred a most surprising resurrection. Every dog jumped clear of the ground from his warm bed and clamored to be off. I looked to see them fed, but nothing were they to have till their day's work was done. When fed during the day they are lazy and useless, but with the anticipation of salmon heads before them they push on heroically. It would be difficult to express adequately my admiration for these animals. They are patient, faithful, and always ready for work. A mile, then, in the lead went the reindeer narties to break the trail; and ahead of them were two Tunguse villagers on snow-shoes to mark the way for the deer. A mile in the rear came the dogs, and heavy work it was, as is shown by the fact that when lunch-time came we had made only five miles. When we came up with the Tunguses they had already built a fire, and water was boiling. The deer were tethered in the bushes about two hundred yards away, out of sight of the dogs. The latter smelled them, however, and were making desperate efforts to break out of their harness and give chase, but their efforts seemed futile, so we paid no more attention to them. As we were busy drinking tea I happened to look around, and was dismayed to see that the worst dog in the pack had broken loose and was already near the deer, who were plunging and making desperate efforts to escape. When the dog was almost at the throat of the nearest deer it broke its fastenings and made off through the snow, followed by the rest of the herd. We hurried after them on our snow-shoes at our best speed. The deer could easily outstrip the dog in the deep snow, but we wanted to stop the chase before they were completely frightened away. But we were too late. By the time that we had secured the dog the deer were a mile away, making straight for home, and we knew that nothing could stop them till they found themselves in their own village. [Illustration: Mr. Vanderlip and Reindeer Team.] Thus it came about that we had to break our own trail for the balance of the way through the woods. This proved to be extremely difficult. Every man had to put his shoulder to the wheel, or rather to the sledge, and frequently it was necessary to use several teams of dogs on a single sledge, and then return for the other sledge. When night came we found that we had covered nine miles, after an exceedingly hard day's work. We were still a mile from the river, where we were sure to find a good road on the ice. We had now to prepare for the night. With our snow-shoes for shovels we cleared a space twelve feet square right down to the ground, and built a roaring fire in the center of the cleared spot. The loaded sledges were placed on the banks about the sides, while the dogs lay, as usual, in the snow. Our sleeping-bags were placed about the fire on piles of fir boughs, and after a good supper of reindeer soup, bread, and tea, we lay down and went to sleep. A light snow covered us with a mantle of down, which ensured our warmth. When I awoke in the morning and opened my hood, I found two inches of snow over me. That day we floundered through the remaining mile of deep snow to the river. I was pushing one of the sledges, when we came to the steep bank that leads down to the river. The sled began to glide down the declivity, settling deeper and deeper. Chrisoffsky called to me to get on quickly, as there was open water beneath, but he was too late. I was already in the icy water up to my knees. We had unfortunately struck a snow-bridge over open water. The sled was fast in the snow, and the dogs were struggling madly. By vigorous pulling and pushing we managed to get the sledge out on to the ice. The other drivers, who were behind, saw our predicament and went up-stream, prodding with their polkas until they found solid ice beneath. Chrisoffsky immediately began taking the lashings off the pack on the sled to get me dry fur socks and boots. Almost before I could undo the lashings, those I wore were frozen stiff. The last one was cut away with a knife. I applied a vigorous rubbing with snow to my feet and they were soon glowing with warmth. Then pulling on the warm, soft fur socks and fresh boots, I found that I had suffered no harm; but Chrisoffsky warned me that whenever I had wet feet I must change immediately or serious consequences would result. At the time, the thermometer stood between ten and fifteen degrees below zero. On examining the wind-swept bars of the creek there seemed to be good promise of gold, so making camp near timber I prepared for a three or four days' stay. The ground was frozen to bed-rock, and it was necessary to thaw it out all the way down. The following day I unloaded the sledges and sent them into the woods under the direction of Chrisoffsky to haul in fuel for the fires. I selected a likely spot and proceeded to thaw out a shaft. As this was very slow work, I determined to try it in several places at the same time. After the fires had burned three hours the picks and shovels would be called into play, and we could take out about twelve or fifteen inches of gravel. The surface gravel showed some small "colors" in the pan, and I determined to set watches and keep the fires going night and day. A windlass was rigged over one of the shafts, and we went down twenty-five feet, till we came to boulders which showed that we were near bed-rock. Six inches more brought us to the end. I eagerly panned out some of the gravel and found several tiny nuggets, but was forced to admit that there was not enough gold to pay for working. The other shafts showed the same results; so we were compelled to move on after four days of exhausting and fruitless work. We repeated this operation at several other points on the river, and carefully examined the outcroppings all along the stream. Coming to the head of the river, we crossed over the summit of the ridge. The aneroid showed that we were seven thousand six hundred feet above the sea level. When we reached the top, we found that a long, smooth stretch of snow swept down into the valley beyond. For a quarter of a mile the smooth, hard surface was unbroken by bush or stone. I asked Chrisoffsky how it would do to slide down, but he shook his head and replied that it would be dangerous for dogs and sledges alike. I had, however, conceived the foolish notion that it would relieve the monotony of life a little to slide down that incline, and I over-persuaded my driver to make the attempt. Moreover, it would save several miles of travel over a safer but more circuitous route. The dogs were unhitched. Chrisoffsky's two sons took one of the sledges, and, by sticking their heels into the snow, slid about half way down somewhat slowly, then they both climbed on to the sledge, stuck their polkas into the snow for brakes, and "let her go." They went the remaining distance like an arrow, and shot out into the plain below triumphantly. They stopped and waved their hands as much as to say, "See how easy it is." Chrisoffsky then sent down one team of dogs, still fastened to the tug. This was a mistake, for the leaders went cautiously and the others crowded on them. In an instant they were one howling, wrangling ball of dog-fur rolling down the hill. The natives were all shouting and cursing their liveliest, but I could only hold my sides with laughter. I utterly refused to see the serious side of the adventure. The remaining dogs were sent down two and two. Chrisoffsky and I, with one sled, were the last to go. Sitting on opposite sides of the sledge with our polkas carefully adjusted, we slipped over the brink and shot down the hill. By some perverse chance my polka broke in my hands, the sledge slewed around, and we both went head over heels. I landed on my head some yards from the careening sledge and continued my journey down the hill in a variety of attitudes, all of which were exciting, but none very comfortable. Had I not been so heavily bundled up I could not have escaped serious injury. Old Chrisoffsky and the sledge were a good second in the race, first one and then the other being on top. They held together bravely. When we all rounded up at the bottom and took an inventory of damages, we found that there were no bones broken and that no harm had been done, except to my Winchester rifle, the barrel of which was sprung. [Illustration: Native Winter Camp.] And as the days passed, I continued to busy myself examining the outcroppings or digging in the creek beds for signs of gold, until about the middle of December, by which time I had gone over that section of the Stanovoi range pretty thoroughly as far as their southern slopes were concerned. And then I essayed to pass over the lofty range to discover what was on the other side. CHAPTER XI BURIED IN A BLIZZARD A trip to the northern side of the Stanovoi range of mountains--Nijni Kolymsk, the most-feared convict station--Sledging by light of the aurora--Lost in a blizzard on the vast tundra--Five days in a snow dugout--I earn a reputation as a wizard--Back at Chrisoffsky's. In order to reach the northern side of the Stanovoi range of mountains it was necessary to make use of one of the few passes that are to be found. At an elevation of nine thousand feet, we succeeded in accomplishing the passage, and found ourselves on the head waters of the Kolyma River. The name as given in that locality was more like Killamoo than Kolyma. Due north, far across the wastes of snow, was the town of Nijni Kolymsk, the spot most dreaded by Siberian convicts. This station is used only for the most dangerous political prisoners. About their only occupation is to gather hay and pick berries in summer. Provisions are carried to them in the summer by a man-of-war. None but Russians in authority are ever allowed near the place. The natives could give me very little definite information about it. They had strict orders from the magistrate in Ghijiga not to approach this convict station. We swung to the northeast and east, which course would bring us back to Ghijiga. Wherever it was possible we examined the float rock and sunk shafts to determine whether any of the precious metal was hidden away in the mountains or beneath the waters of the streams. As we came back over the mountains our course lay over the head waters of the Paran River, which runs southeasterly and enters the Okhotsk Sea. We passed over the divide between this and the Ghijiga, and tried to steer a straight course for Chrisoffsky's house. Here we came to a stretch of tundra two hundred miles wide. The snow was hard and the going very good. We struck the trail of a number of "dog" Koraks who were, evidently, bringing in their furs. The tundra was as level as a floor, and the driving was so easy that it was possible to sit and doze while the dogs sped over the white expanse. As it was now December the nights were made bright by the light of the aurora, while at noon the sun just shone, a red disk, above the southern horizon. This is the month noted in that region for its severe storms. The days were mostly overcast. The second morning after we had started out across the tundra a light flurry of snow blew up. Chrisoffsky shook his head and said it was going to storm. We were just half way across the bare tundra, the worst place possible in which to try to weather one of these storms, because of the utter lack of fire-wood. Chrisoffsky called back to me that he was looking for a _porgo_, which, in his dialect, means a blizzard. About noon the storm struck us with full force. I was continually standing up in the sledge to catch a sight, if possible, of some trailing pine where we could make an excavation and find fire-wood; but it was all in vain. At last the dogs lost sight of the trail and could follow it only by the sense of smell. When the snow came down so heavily that we could hardly see our leading dogs, we halted to let the others catch up with us. With our snow-shoes we dug down six feet to the ground, making an excavation that was, roughly, eight feet square. Placing the three sledges around the edge of the hole, we banked them in with snow. Then we took a tarpaulin from one of the sledges and with walrus-hide rope improvised a sort of roof over our dug-out. The dogs, after washing themselves, dug holes in the snow and settled down comfortably to sleep. They were almost immediately covered with snow. At this time the thermometer stood thirty-five below zero. We could not tell whether it was actually snowing or whether the snow was only being driven by the wind, but at any rate, the air was filled with it and the prospect was anything but exhilarating. We lined the bottom of the hole with furs, got out our sleeping-bags, and prepared for a long siege. As we were without fuel, we had to eat cold food. Frozen reindeer meat taken raw is not an appetizing dish, but this, together with hard bread and pounded soup-ball, formed our diet for the next few days. As we had but few fish left, the dogs were put on short allowance. In this snowy prison we were held for four mortal days, and were obliged to climb out every three or four hours and relieve the tarpaulin of the weight of snow. Our furs were damp, caused by our breath, which congealed and thawed again from the warmth of the body; to say the very least of it, we were extremely uncomfortable. At last it got so bad that I gave orders to burn one of the sledges, and that day we feasted on hot tea. Our deer meat was all gone, so we stopped feeding the dogs, and appropriated the remaining fish to our own use. The result was that the dogs began gnawing their harness, and had to be chained up with dog-chains which we carried for the purpose. The time spent in our snow retreat was not entirely lost. To while away the tedious hours I gave my arctic friends some lessons in astronomy, using snowballs as object-lessons. It was not an ideal observatory, but there was at least snow enough to have represented all the heavenly bodies, down to fixed stars of the fourteenth magnitude. It all began by their asking how God made the aurora. On the side of our excavation I made a rough bas-relief of the great masonic temple in Chicago. They looked at it very politely, but I could see that they took me for the past master of lying. I told them all about elections, telephones, phonographs, and railroads, and gathered from their expression that they thought I had gone mad from the cold and exposure. They looked at one another and muttered, "Duroc, duroc," which is Russian for crazy. I also amused myself at their expense by the use of a compass and a little pocket magnet; the latter I palmed and with it made the magnetic needle play all sorts of antics. They asked what made the needle move about continually, and I replied that it would point to any place that I might designate, by simply requesting it to do so. Chrisoffsky, the skeptical, thought he had caught me, for he immediately asked me to make it point toward Ghijiga. Now I happened to know about where Ghijiga lay, for just before the storm came on I had caught a glimpse of a mountain near that town. So I put the compass in my lap, palmed the magnet, and began muttering and waving my hand over the compass. At the same time I repeated, in sepulchral tones, the magic formula: Ere eirie ickery Ann, Fillisy follisy Nicholas John, Queevy quavy English navy, Stickelum stackelum Johniko buck! The hand with the magnet was now in the proper position, and the needle pointed steadily toward Ghijiga. Old Chrisoffsky sat with amazement and fear pictured all over his face. He glanced over his shoulder as if looking for some place to run, and exclaimed in a deep and piteous tone, "Dia Bog!" which means, "O Lord." After a long silence he asked me if the compass would answer his questions as well. I said I did not know, but that he might try it and see. Concentrating his whole attention upon the compass, he bent over it and tried to imitate my motions, and asked the instrument to tell him the direction in which his house lay. Of course the needle, which, meanwhile, I had been causing to swing about in all directions, now came to a standstill due north, directly away from his house. He looked puzzled and said it must be because he did not understand the wizard formula, and I promised to teach it to him at some future time. I also performed some other simple tricks, which actually frightened him so that for a time he went out and sat in the snow all alone. I found later that my reputation as a wizard spread through that whole district, and time and time again I had to go over these old tricks before admiring audiences. [Illustration: Mr. Vanderlip on March with Deer Outfit.] During the night of the fifth day the storm passed and the stars came out once more. Our bedraggled party crawled forth from our prison, and harnessed up the weak, but willing, dogs, who seemed to know that we were not far from home; for they tugged at their collars gladly, and we were soon gliding over the snow. Ten miles from Chrisoffsky's house we came down upon the wind-swept ice of the Chorny Raichka, a tributary of the Ghijiga. From this point the going was ideal. We had timber on both sides, but we did not stop to build a fire. The dogs were very weak, yet they displayed wonderful mettle, knowing they were near home. They went so fast that the sledges were continually slewing about on the smooth ice in imminent danger of capsizing; but they were steadied by a clever use of the polka. While still a mile from Chrisoffsky's, we saw women and children running out to meet us. Because of the storm and the fact that we were two weeks overdue, we knew that there would be anxious mothers and wives in the little village. We came in with a flourish, a score of children hanging on the sides of the sledges. We encountered a terrific storm of kisses, which I evaded as best I could. Willing hands unhitched the faithful dogs, and then we all went into the house. The village was warned of our approach while still far away, because each dog carried a little sleigh-bell on his back. The people had heard the tinkling of the bells sometime before we had come in sight. To say that we fed off the fat of the land is literally true. Seal fat, deer fat, marrow fat, blubber galore with cranberries, and tea by the gallon. For once I gladly exchanged snow for vermin. Perhaps the greatest comfort was the opportunity to wash my face and hands, which I had not been able to do for seven days. CHAPTER XII CHRISTMAS--THE "DEER KORAKS" I celebrate Christmas day with the over-kind assistance of two hundred natives--Koraks as sharp-shooters--Comic features of a Russian dance--Off for Kaminaw--Another runaway--Slaughtering deer--A curious provision of nature--Eight families in one yourta--Korak method of washing dishes--A herd of ten thousand deer. When I reached town the Russians desired to know what I had accomplished, and I was obliged to tell them that I had discovered no considerable deposits of gold on the head waters of the Ghijiga. Some time before this I had caused it to become known that I would pay liberally in tea or other commodities for bags of rock picked up in the beds of streams and delivered in Ghijiga. I now found upward of a ton of such specimens awaiting my inspection. This was my information bureau. I had found the natives trustworthy, and I knew they would not pick up specimens near by and claim they had been brought from a distance. Some that I thus examined had been brought seven hundred miles. By a careful examination and classification of these specimens I was able to determine the various geological formations of the district, and the next three weeks were spent in this important work. I wanted to be off again promptly, but as Christmas was at hand, it was impossible to secure dog-teams; so I was obliged to rest. As I sat in my cabin on Christmas eve, thinking over old times, and feeling, perhaps, a trifle blue, I determined to usher in the great day with some éclat. So I loaded up every firearm that I had, and when midnight came I stepped outside and "let loose" with revolvers, rifles, and shotguns. The first effect was to wake up four hundred dogs, who responded with howls and barks, which they kept up till morning. At seven o'clock, my Russian friends came flocking over to find out what I was celebrating. I told them that it was our Christmas day. Their Christmas comes twelve days later than ours. When they found out the cause of my exhilaration they slipped away, but within three hours the women and children began to appear, each loaded with a steaming dish. There were meats, fowls, berries, pasties, fish, blubber, stuffed ptarmigan, deer tongues, and other things--enough to feed a hundred men. When the table was so full that it could hold no more, they put the dishes on the floor. I knew well that they had brought much more than I could handle, and I was somewhat embarrassed by their excessive generosity. But my fears were ill-founded, for soon the whole village began to arrive. The priests and magistrates came first, and then the rest in descending scale, and by the time they were done, all the good things that they had brought had been consumed, as well as all that I could obtain from Mrs. Braggin. Two hundred were fed, and by night I was entirely cleaned out--cupboard, shelf, and cellar. What the small children could not eat they put in their pockets. The Russian storekeepers sent me a bag of coppers, telling me that it was the custom to give each child a coin on such occasions. When I went to bed at night, I determined that I would never again disturb the peace of Christmas night with firearms. On New Year's eve, fearing that the ceremony might be repeated, I stole away on my snow-shoes and spent the day hunting ptarmigan. I had good luck, and bagged all I could carry. These beautiful little birds are about the size of a pigeon, but of heavier build. In summer their color is brown, but in winter it is pure white, and they sit motionless in the snow, so that it is almost impossible to discover them. The native boys kill them with bows and arrows. Almost all the natives of the far north are good shots, being trained to it from boyhood. In order to catch ermine and _belk_ (arctic squirrel) they must be marksmen of the first order; for these animals are small, and must be shot in the head, or the skin is worthless. For this purpose, twenty-two caliber rifles of German manufacture are used. They are muzzle-loaders, and can be purchased in Vladivostok for four roubles. The natives rig them up with a forked rest, and an ermine at seventy-five yards stands no chance of escape. About twenty years ago the Russian Government sent a company of expert Cossack rifle-men into this north country to teach the natives how to shoot. These instructors never got further than Ghijiga, though it had been the plan to distribute them throughout the district. Targets were set up, and the Cossacks did some fancy shooting. The natives looked on stolidly, and when asked to shoot, declined to do so, but called up some of their boys, who easily worsted the Cossacks at their own game. The natives were always curious about my Colts forty-five caliber six-shooters, as this weapon is not known in that section. In my younger days, I had seen something of Arizona and Texas life, and thought I was a pretty fair shot. One day a native with whom I was stopping asked me to let him have a shot with my revolver. I tore a small piece of paper from my note-book and pinned it on a tree about twenty yards distant. I shot first, and came within an inch or so of the paper--a fairly good shot; but the old Korak took the weapon, and, bringing it slowly into position, let drive, and hit the paper. I could detect no look of exultation on his face, nor on that of any spectator. They took it as a matter of course that their tribesman should out-shoot me with my own weapon, the very first time he ever had one like it in his hand. I have never tried to shoot against a Korak since then. My only consolation was that it might have been an accident, for he refused to shoot again, although I pressed him to do so. For hunting large game, they use a forty-four caliber Winchester, or a forty-five caliber German muzzle-loader. The feasting at the Russian Christmas-tide lasts fully three days. In the morning the entire population attends church, after which, apparently, a contest ensues as to who shall get drunk first; and the priest generally wins. They hitch up their dog-teams, and go from house to house, feasting and drinking. Etiquette demands that a man use his team, even if calling at a house ten rods away. The women troop about in gay dresses of calico, with bright silk handkerchiefs over their heads, and the men in their best furs, embroidered with silk. One of the most distinctive features of a Christmas celebration is that each person takes a full bath with soap, before the great day is ushered in. At the same time, the hair is combed and done up afresh. The transformation is so great that it is often hard even for bosom friends to recognize one another. All day long bands of boys go about singing carols. They enter one's home, and bow before the icon, and sing their songs, after which it is the proper thing to give each of them a coin or something to eat. In the evening, young men repeat the same performance, except that they bring large illuminated wheels, which they whirl before the icon as they sing the Christmas hymns. They receive about half a rouble apiece for this service. The next day I started in to return their calls. It is an insult not to taste every dish on the table of your host, and the result was that I soon reached my utmost capacity. In the evening, I dined with Mrs. Braggin, and afterward the room was cleared, and the whole village came in for a dance. For music, we had a piano, an accordion, and a violin; the last was played by an old Russian, who knew sixteen bars of a single tune, and repeated it over and over, _ad nauseam_. In this primitive fashion, we made merry till the morning. The dance was a curious kind of quadrille, in which the men did almost all the dancing. The ladies stood at the corners, and the men in the center. The men danced very energetically, with many steps that resemble the "bucking" and "winging" of the negro in the United States. At the same time, they shouted at the top of their voices. As for the women, they merely moved forward and back, with little mincing steps, and then turned around in their places. All this time the samovar was going full blast, and every one was streaming with perspiration. [Illustration: Reindeer.] About midnight, the fun grew fast and furious, and every one started in to kiss and hug his neighbor; for by this time, more than half were intoxicated. The worst feature of such a Russian festive occasion is, that every one grows fearfully affectionate as he begins to feel the effect of the liquor. When the Christmas festivities were over, I made preparations to carry out a more extensive plan of exploration. It was my purpose to examine the valleys of the rivers running from the Stanovoi range of mountains into Bering Sea; the beaches along the shore of that sea, and then to turn south to Baron Koff Bay, on the eastern coast of Kamchatka, where sulphur deposits were said to have been found; then across the neck of the Kamchatka Peninsula to Cape Memaitch, and around the head of the Okhotsk Sea to Ghijiga, my starting-point. This trip was in the form of a rough circle, and the total distance, including excursions, proved to be upward of twenty-five hundred miles. This distance I had to cover between January 15 and May 15, when the road would no longer be passable for sledges. My first work was to select and buy the best sledge-dogs to be found in the town. By this time, I had become fairly adept at driving a dog-team. Old Chrisoffsky did not care to undertake such a long trip, and so I selected as my head driver a half-caste named Metrofon Snevaydoff. Two villagers also contracted to go as far as the village of Kaminaw, which lies three hundred miles to the northeast of Ghijiga. They would not go further, because the country beyond this was unknown to them. But the magistrate gave me a letter to two Cossacks stationed at Kaminaw, requesting them to furnish native dog-teams to take me on east from that point. I took but little dog-food, as the territory through which I was going abounds in reindeer, and we could get all the meat we needed. Provisions were beginning to run low in Ghijiga, and all I could buy was tea, sugar, tobacco, and a little dried fruit. It was the middle of January when we started out, all in good health and spirits. The thermometer stood at forty-six below zero. The dogs were fat, and their feet were in good condition. We whirled out of the village at breakneck speed, followed by friendly cries of "Dai Bog chust leewee budet!" ("God give you good luck!") I had all I could do to manage my team. The road was worn perfectly smooth, and the sledge would slew about from side to side in constant danger of striking some obstruction and going over. I had to pull off my koklanka and work in my sweater, and yet even in that biting air the exercise kept me quite warm. In two hours the dogs settled down to a steady six-mile gait, and, leaving old Chrisoffsky's house on the left, I laid a direct course over the tundra for the mountains now visible far to the northeast. By five o'clock, we saw signs of deer, which showed us that we were nearing the encampment that was to be our lodging-place for the night. Mounting a rise of land, we beheld, scattered over the face of the landscape, thousands of reindeer which belonged to the denizens of half a dozen skin yourtas, sheltered from the wind in the valley below. Snevaydoff's team, which was in the lead, caught the scent of the deer, and dashed down the hill, and I after him, though I jammed my polka down and braked with all my might. It had no effect on my speed, and I saw that I was simply being run away with. On the left, near a yourta, a bunch of deer were standing, and, in spite of all my efforts, my dogs left the road and bolted straight for them. The deer bounded away in mad flight. Snevaydoff had already turned his sledge over and brought his team to a halt, but I was enjoying a new sensation. I pulled out my polka and "let her slide," literally. I was minded to save the Koraks the trouble of slaughtering a few of their deer by doing it myself. Just as "Old Red" got a good mouthful of hair, our flight suddenly came to an end with the sledge turning upside down. The natives hurried up and caught the dogs, and, bringing them down to the yourtas, fastened them securely. I have coursed antelope in Texas, and in Arizona have picked wild turkeys from the ground while on horseback, but for good exhilarating sport give me fourteen wild sledge-dogs, the open tundra, and a bunch of deer ahead. I found, to my surprise and pleasure, that the old Korak in charge of the village was the one who had helped me the summer before when I was trying to find my way back to Ghijiga. I was now better able to talk with him than I had been at that time, especially as I had Snevaydoff for interpreter. After tea, I went outside to see how things were getting on. Four men were out among the herd, lassoing those intended for slaughter. They did it much after the fashion of cow-boys at home. Having secured an animal, two men held it while a third drew out a long, keen knife and plunged it into the animal's heart. The poor beast would give one or two wild leaps, and then fall dead. The Koraks do not bleed their animals when they butcher them. This scene was enacted three times, each deer being intended as food for a single team of dogs. It took place in plain sight of the dogs, who leaped in their collars, and yelled applause at every stroke of the knife. [Illustration: Herd of Reindeer.] The men's work ended with killing the deer, and the women and children followed, the former with sharp knives, and the latter with bowls. It was their part of the work to skin and cut up the dead deer. With a deft stroke, they ripped up the belly and drew out the entrails, being very careful to leave all the coagulated blood in the abdominal cavity. When the viscera had all been removed, the carcass was tipped up, and the blood was caught in the bowls, and carried to the dogs. The tongue and the leg-bones were removed and laid aside for home use, and all the rest of the carcass went to the dogs. As the women were skinning the deer, I noticed that every few moments they would lean down and tear off, with their teeth, little round protuberances which grew on the under side of the skin. These were an inch long by a quarter of an inch thick, and were bedded in the skin, and surrounded with fat. They proved to be bots, formed by a fly that is the special torment of the deer in summer. On one skin I counted more than four hundred of them. A little child came up and offered me a handful. I found that they are considered a delicacy by the natives. The flies deposit minute eggs in the skin in mid-summer, and the larva lies under the skin, imbedded in fat. The following spring the deer is tormented with itching, and rubs against anything it can find, and so liberates the larva, which comes forth in the shape of a fly, an inch in length, only to repeat the same operation. It is a marvelous provision of nature that teaches the fly to seek the only place where its larvæ can be kept warm and safe during the terrible cold of winter. When the last deer had been skinned, the men brought axes and chopped the carcasses into equal portions, each dog receiving a good ten pounds. When I went back to the yourta I left them snarling and growling over their meal, like so many wolves. The yourtas of these natives are covered with deerhides. The hair is cut down to a quarter of an inch in length, and is put on the outside. The construction of the frame-work of the yourta is very ingenious, and is the result of centuries of experimenting. They require no guy-ropes to keep them erect, but the frame-work of poles is so constructed and so braced on the inside that they resist the most violent wind. After the poles are lashed in place by the women the deerhides are fastened over them separately, not sewed together; for this would make it difficult to move readily. At the top there is, of course, the usual exit for the smoke. The yourta that I entered was about thirty-five feet in diameter and fourteen feet high, and divided, by means of skin curtains, into eight little booths or apartments, each of which could be entirely closed, to secure privacy. These little booths are arranged around the side of the yourta, and each one is occupied by an entire family. The booths are eight feet long, five feet high, and six feet wide, and are heated only by lamps. The great fire in the center of the yourta is not primarily for heat, but for cooking purposes, all the families using it in common. The various kettles are hung over the fire by means of wooden hooks. The food is either boiled or eaten raw. They do not seem to know the use of the frying-pan. The main door of the yourta is formed by two flaps of deer skin, an inner and an outer one, which gives the effect of a storm-door. The dogs generally huddle between the two, and occasionally one of them sneaks into the yourta itself, only to be promptly kicked out. Our dinner consisted of boiled deer ribs, sticks of frozen marrow, and half-digested moss, taken from the stomach of the deer. This last was cooked in seal oil, and looked much like spinach. I found some difficulty in bringing myself to eat it, but I craved vegetable food so keenly that at last I was able to overcome my repulsion, and found it not so bad after all. The reindeer, therefore, furnishes the Korak with meat, clothing, shelter, and vegetable food. The dinner was served on wooden plates, and conveyed to the mouth with fingers, except that for the "spinach" they had spoons carved from the horn of the mountain-sheep. The host persisted in offering me the daintiest lumps of fat in his fingers; and I accepted them. In that far northern latitude, we all craved fat or any kind of oil. The women did not eat with us. The host and I sat in one of the little booths, while the women remained outside by the fire. The children, however, could not resist the temptation to "peek," and they lay on the ground, looking up from below the edge of the skin partitions, like a row of detached heads, with the eyes blinking solemnly at me. [Illustration: Reindeer, Herders in background.] After we had eaten, I made them all happy by sending Snevaydoff out to the sledge for some tea, and some broken bits of sugar. The host brought out the family treasures, the gaudy cups which I have heretofore mentioned. The women licked the saucers, and wiped them with moss, after which tea was served. Strange is the effect of environment; a year previous, no inducement could have made me use those cups after seeing them cleansed in that fashion. Was I, after all, a savage, and civilization but a thin veneer? I found myself at times looking at life from the standpoint of these people. I was thinking, dreaming, and talking in my sleep in my polyglot language. At times I would talk to myself in English, just to enjoy the sound of it. I had with me no books, except a Bible, which was in my valise, but the print was too fine to read, except with a good light. Action was my only salvation. Had I been compelled to stay in one place I should have feared for my reason. After two or three cups, every one perspired freely, and off came one garment after another, until the men were entirely naked, and the women were naked to the waist. When we had imbibed ten or a dozen cups, the kettle was replenished with hot water, and handed out to those in the main part of the yourta. I gave each one a lump of sugar to make him happy, and then, leaning back among the skins, lighted my pipe, and had a long talk with my host, during the course of which I elicited much curious information. At bedtime, two of the smaller children were put in tiny cradles, swung from the top of the yourta. The compartment in which I slept held eight people that night. The lamp was left burning all night, for the sake of its warmth. As far as I could discover, there was an utter lack of ventilation. When I crawled out of that noisome hole the next morning, I found that the dogs were very uneasy; they scratched the snow continually with their hind feet. This was a sure sign that one of the dreaded storms--a porgo--was coming. As I had experienced one of them, I had no wish to be caught out in another, so I determined to wait where I was till it blew over. By ten o'clock it was raging, and for three mortal days there was no stirring from that village. Just before the storm came on I secured some photographs of the reindeer. They were very tame indeed, and would come up to me and smell of my garments, and would even lick them, hoping to get some salt. I had to carry a short stick to keep them from pressing too close upon me. I walked in among the herd, which numbered about ten thousand, and watched them eat. They would paw away the snow until they reached the moss, which lay about ten inches below the surface, and then, kneeling down, would dig it out with their teeth. The moss is about ten inches thick, and is a loose, spongy mass of vegetation. It will not bear the weight of a man, the foot sinking through it. It forms a most excellent food for deer, but horses will not eat it. The Tunguse deer, which is larger than the Korak, eats only moss, but the Korak deer will eat either moss or grass. These nomads have regular roads to and from the coast, and generation after generation they follow the same old beaten tracks. In December, they are farthest from the sea. Once in two, three, or four weeks, according to the supply of moss and the size of the herd, they break camp and move off on the trail. Late in December they turn, and gradually work their way back, so that by the time that June and the mosquitos have arrived they are near the sea. The deer eagerly lick the salt from the rocks, and even drink the sea water. They stay on the coast until late in August, when the frosts kill off the mosquitos, and then they move off inland for another winter. In summer, the deer grow very poor and weak, for they find little moss near the coast. All along the shores of Bering Sea thousands of deer can be counted every summer. A few years ago, when the United States Government wished to secure some reindeer herds for Alaska, they sent all the way to Lapland, and imported the deer at enormous expense, took them across the American continent by rail, and shipped them by steamer to Alaska. By the time they arrived, those that had not died must have cost an enormous sum. If the government had sent a steamer a single day's run across Bering Sea, it could have purchased fifty thousand reindeer right on the coast at a cost of one rouble, or fifty cents, apiece. Coin cannot be used in purchasing these animals, for the natives do not understand nor use our coinage, but they can be obtained by barter at the rate of one rouble's worth of tobacco a head. Some rich natives might accept a few silver coins to hammer up into buttons for their children's clothes, but not as a medium of exchange. The rutting season is in July, and fights between the male deer are not uncommon. But most of the male deer are gelded, only enough being left for breeding purposes. The natives watch their herds carefully, both night and day, but without the use of dogs. The principal enemy of the deer is the great gray Siberian wolf, which stands as high as a Saint Bernard dog. One of these wily fellows will dash into a herd, "cut out" three or four deer, and run them off into the wilderness. When a deer grows tired the wolf runs alongside, and, seizing it by the nose, brings it to the ground and despatches it. [Illustration: Reindeer--Summer.] The Koraks eat the hoofs after burning them on the fire and thus setting free the gelatin. The weapons used by the Koraks, and the Tunguses as well, are the modern rifles, or in default of these the regular old-fashioned muzzle-loader. They do a little trapping, but only for sport. The little boys take out the knuckle-bones from wolves' feet and set them up like ninepins, and pitch stones at them. Even the grown men sometimes indulge in this sport. It is not their custom to use the reindeer under the saddle. They do not even carry a pack, as among the Tunguses. Even in summer the Korak prefers to carry his goods on a sledge, as many as eight deer sometimes being required to draw the load. There is one physical feature which helps to determine the geographical division between the "dog" people and the "deer" people; and this is the depth of the snowfall. For instance, on the peninsula of Kamchatka there are many places where the snow is so deep that the deer could not dig down to the moss in winter. All through the northwestern portion of the peninsula, however, where the land is occupied mostly by Koraks, the snow is not so deep, and the keeping of deer is possible. CHAPTER XIII HABITS AND CUSTOMS OF THE KORAKS The hour-glass houses--Their curious construction--The natives prove to be both hospitable and filthy--Dialects of Dog Koraks and Deer Koraks--Some unpleasant habits--How they reckon time--Making liquor out of mushrooms--Curious marriage customs--Clothes of the natives--Queer notions of a deity--Jealousy of the wandering Koraks--Thieving a virtue and childbirth a social function. When the storm was over, we harnessed the dogs and continued our journey. Seven days of ideal sledging brought us to Kaminaw, a Korak village at the extreme northern point of the northeastern arm of the Okhotsk Sea, where I was to discharge my Russian dog-teams, and secure others from the natives. My first view of the village was from the summit of a hill half a mile away. I saw what resembled fifty huge hour-glasses set on the plain, which, on a nearer approach, turned out to be ten or twelve feet high. As we drew near, the village came swarming out with a pack of mongrel curs at their heels; and over the edge of each hour-glass house appeared the heads of the women and children, all eager to get a glimpse of such a novel sight as a foreign face. Over each house was suspended a frozen dog. These were impaled under the chin on the sharp end of a pole, and lifted high in the air. I learned later that this was a form of sacrifice to the Fish God, and was intended to insure a good run of fish the next season. As I tumbled out of my sledge, I was surrounded by the filthiest lot of natives I had yet seen. Their furs were old and mangy, and the hair was worn off in spots. The people were kind and pleasant, and seemed bent on shaking hands with me. I was pressed on all sides with invitations to enter one and another of the curious houses. As I stood there, debating what I should do, the chief of the village elbowed his way through the crowd, took me by the hand, and led me to the largest of the huts. In order to enter we had to go up a ladder to the height of ten feet or more. This ladder was a log of driftwood, split down the center, and provided with little holes in which to put the toes in ascending. These natives have very small feet, and I found the holes in the ladder too small to insert my toes, but I managed to scramble to the top. I was now standing on the edge of an inverted octagonal cone, made of logs lashed together, the inside or crater of the affair, which was eighteen feet across, sloping down at an angle of about fifteen degrees to the center. At that point there was a hole leading down to the interior of the house. The hole also sufficed for a chimney, and to enter the house one had to go down a ladder through the smoke. Santa Claus is said to come from the north, and it is evidently among this people that he originated, for here everybody enters his house by way of the chimney. [Illustration: Upper View of Underground Hut--Home of the Dog Korak.] This flaring line of logs protects the opening of the house from being covered up with drifting snow. This is the main reason for building in this fashion. Moreover, the high scaffolding thus provided is an excellent storehouse, upon which all sorts of things can be placed without fear of molestation from wild animals. I saw here a miscellaneous collection of implements, dog-harness, oars, fishing-tackle, and firewood. I followed the chief down the ladder through the smoke. The hole was two feet wide and three feet long. I found myself in a semi-subterranean apartment, thirty feet in diameter and fifteen feet high. As we stood on the floor, our heads were about level with the general surface of the ground. The frame was strongly built of timbers, evidently driftwood; but everything was black with age and smoke. I found it so warm that I had to remove my furs. The room was very dimly illuminated with what little light filtered through the hole in the roof; and even this was partially obscured by the smoke that was always passing up and out. As soon as my eyes became accustomed to the perpetual twilight of the place, I perceived that around the apartment ran a raised wooden platform, one foot high and six broad, on which lay piles of deerskins. The women were busy clearing off a place for me, shaking out the skins and choosing the best ones for my accommodation. With native courtesy, which had no stiffness about it, the old gentleman led me to my place, sat down beside me, and began to talk. I pointed to my ears to show that I did not understand him. There seemed to be little difference between the dress of the men and the women, excepting that the wide "bloomers" of the women were made of alternate strips of black and white deerskin. Their clothes were indescribably old and shabby and dirty, and their faces were anything but clean; but for all that, there were some very comely people among them. The women wore their hair in two braids, wound about the head, and fastened at the top in front. In these rooms one would naturally expect the worst in the matter of ventilation, and I was surprised to find that it was exceptionally good. They are enabled to arrange an air-shaft so that it enters the room, near the floor, on one side. The draft, made by the heat of the fire rising through the smoke-hole, causes pure air to be drawn through this ventilating shaft. In fact, there seemed to be no reason why these dwellings should not be made perfectly comfortable and sanitary. The women appeared to be very busy, and even the children were industriously making thread from the sinews that lie near the backbone of the deer. In this house I found an explosive harpoon that the natives had taken from the body of a whale. It had been fired from the deck of some whaling-vessel, and had been deeply embedded in the flesh of the animal. It bore no name. The Koraks have two dialects, one of which is spoken by the Dog Koraks, and the other spoken by the Deer Koraks, but the slight variations are not marked enough to constitute a serious barrier to communication between them. All these tribes, without doubt, belong to the great Turanian family, and are allied to the Mongols, Ostiaks, Samoyeds, and other tribes of northern Asia. The evidence for this is both physiological and philological. The writer before quoted says truly of these people that "their manner of living is slovenly to the last degree; they never wash their hands or face, nor cut their nails; everything about them smells of fish; they never comb their heads, but both men and women plait their hair in two braids; when any hair starts out they sew it in with threads to make it lie close; and, as a result, they have such a quantity of lice that they can scrape them off by handfuls." Time seems not to have weaned them from these disgusting habits. These people reckon ten months to the year, not by reference to the changes of the moon, but by the order of special occurrences which take place each year, with sufficient regularity for the purpose. The months in their order are: Purifier of Sins, Breaker of Hatchets, Beginning of Heat, Time of the Long Day, Preparing Month, Red-Fish Month, White-Fish Month, Kaiko Fish Month, Great White-Fish Month, and Leaf-Falling Month. Others name them as follows: River-Freezing Month, Hunting Month, Purifier of Sins, Breaker of Hatchets, Long Day Month, Sea Beavers' Puppying Month, Sea Calves' Puppying Month, Tame Deer Foaling Month, Wild Deer Foaling Month, Beginning of Fishing. A peculiar custom sometimes to be noted among these people is that of drinking a kind of liquor made from a large species of mushroom. The effect is, in some respects, similar to that produced by the use of hashish. At first the imbiber shakes as with the ague; and presently he begins to rave as if in delirium. Some jump and dance and sing, while others cry out as if in agony. A small hole looks to them like a bottomless pit, and a pool of water as broad as the sea. These effects are produced only when the beverage is used to excess; a small quantity has much the same effect as a moderate amount of alcoholic liquor. Curiously enough, after recovering from one of these debauches, they claim that all the antics performed were by command of the mushroom. The use of it is not unattended with danger, for unless a man is well looked after he is likely to destroy himself. The Koraks sometimes take this drug in order to work themselves up to the point of murdering an enemy. Three or four of the mushrooms is a moderate dose, but when one wants to get the full effect one takes ten or twelve. [Illustration: Chinese Pump.] When a native resolves to marry he looks out for a bride, not in his own village, but in a neighboring one. When he finds a girl who pleases him, he tells her parents that he is desirous of serving them, and, during this period of probation, he works most industriously in order to make a good impression. At last he asks permission to steal the girl. If his suit is looked upon with disfavor, he is paid for the service he has rendered and sent away, but if he is acceptable to the girl and to her parents and relatives, the permission is given. He then seeks an opportunity of finding the girl alone, which is no easy matter, for she is supposed to be guarded by the women of the village. Besides, the girl is covered with two or three coats, and is wrapped about with fish-nets and straps, so that motion is almost impossible. If the young man succeeds in finding her alone, or in company with only one or two women, he seizes her and begins tearing off her garments, for this constitutes the ceremony of marriage. But this is not an easy thing to do; for, though the girl herself makes little resistance, such other women as are about fall upon the would-be groom without mercy, and beat and scratch him and use every means to prevent him from accomplishing his purpose. If, however, he is successful in tearing off her garments, he immediately walks away from her, whereupon she gently calls him back, and the ceremony is complete. It seldom happens that the young man succeeds the first time, and instances are known where a man has tried for several years to secure his bride, without success. When successful, the groom carries off his bride to his own village without any ceremony; but after some time they return to the bride's home, and a marriage-feast is celebrated, somewhat after the following manner: the bridal party, including the bridegroom's friends, approach to within a hundred paces of the village from which the bride has been taken. They sing and go through certain mystic rites with a fish's head wrapped in tow and carried by an old woman. A coat of sheepskin is put on the bride, and several images are hung about her till she can hardly bear up under the load. A boy of the village comes out and leads the bride in by the hand. When she comes to the hut of her parents, a strap is tied around her, and by this she is let down into the underground house. The fish-head is laid on the floor at the foot of the ladder, and the bride and all who follow step on it, after which it is thrown into the fire. The bride is stripped of all her superfluous ornaments, and the company take their places about the room. The bridegroom builds a fire and prepares the food, which had been brought for the purpose, and entertains the people of the village. The next day, the host entertains the visiting company, after which every one goes home, except the bride and groom, who remain to serve her father for a time. The dress of the men differs but slightly from that of the women. Both wear the same kind of upper garment, with the skirts either cut off an equal length all around, or with the back part longer than the front. The women have an under garment which they usually wear at home. It consists of a combination of trousers and waistcoat, the trousers being tied about the leg below the knee, and the waistcoat being tied with a cord. As might be supposed, the covering for feet and ankles is a most important matter in this far northern country. In the summer-time, when the ground is generally one wide marsh, they wear the skins of seals, with the hair turned out, but often make their leggings of the skin of reindeer legs. The very finest foot-wear is made with the sole of white sealskin, and the upper of fine dyed leather from the hind quarters of a white dogskin. The part that incases the calf of the leg is made of dressed leather or dyed sealskin. The tops are always richly embroidered with silk thread. If a young man is adorned with these shoes, immediately it is concluded that he is in search of a wife. Since the complete conquest of these parts by the Russians war has been practically unknown, but during the process of conquest the natives made a stubborn resistance. They never fought in the open, but always by stratagem. A company of Cossacks, arriving at a village, would be hospitably received, the tribute would be paid, and large presents made in addition; but when all suspicion had been lulled to rest the Cossacks were likely to wake in the night to find themselves in the midst of flames. If any one succeeded in breaking through the flames, a worse fate awaited him; for then he was slowly tortured to death by burning, or cut to pieces and disemboweled while yet alive. If the natives were in strong force, upon hearing of the approach of the Cossacks they would retire to some high place, which they would strongly fortify and hold as best they could against the invaders. If unable to hold their position, they would first cut the throats of the women and children, and then throw themselves over a precipice, or rush upon the enemy to be ruthlessly cut down. These people have indistinct notions about a deity, but they render him no homage. On the contrary, they treat his name with the utmost irreverence, and relate stories about him that rival the scandals of Olympus. They blame him for making so many steep hills, so many rapid rivers, and for sending so many storms. Sometimes they raise a pillar in the plain and bind it around with rags, and whenever they pass, throw at it pieces of fish or other food. But it is noted that they give nothing that they can use themselves--only the tails of fish or other refuse. Besides these pillars, there are other places that they reckon sacred, such as smoking mountains, hot springs, and certain forests, all of which they imagine to be inhabited by devils, whom they fear much more than the gods. A Russian who lived for a long time among these people says of them: All their beliefs concerning both gods and devils are certainly very simple and ridiculous; however, it shows that they endeavor to account for the existence of everything as far as they are able; and some of them try to penetrate into the thoughts even of the birds and fishes. But when once a belief is established they never trouble themselves with inquiring whether the thing be possible or not. Hence their religion depends entirely upon ancient tradition, which they believe without questioning. They have no notion of a supreme being that influences their happiness or misery, but hold that every man's good or bad fortune depends upon himself. The world, they believe, is eternal, the soul immortal, and that it shall again be joined to the body and live eternally, subject to the same fatigues and troubles as in this present life, with this difference only: that they shall have a greater abundance of all the necessaries of life. Even the smallest animals, they believe, will rise again and dwell under the earth. They think the earth is flat, and that under it there is a firmament like ours; and under that firmament another earth like ours; in which when we have summer they have winter, and when we have winter they have summer. With regard to future rewards and punishments they believe that in the other world the rich will be poor and the poor will be rich. Their notions of vice and virtue are as extraordinary as those they entertain of God. They believe everything lawful that procures them the satisfaction of their wishes and passions, and think that only is sinful from which they apprehend danger or ruin; so that they reckon neither murder, suicide, or adultery, oppression, nor the like any wickedness: on the contrary, they look upon it as a mortal sin to save any one that is drowning, because, according to their notions, whoever saves such an one will soon be drowned himself. They reckon it likewise a sin to bathe in or to drink hot water, or to go up to the burning mountains. They worship several animals from which they apprehend danger. They offer fire at the holes of sables and foxes; when fishing they entreat the whales or sea-horses not to overturn their boats; and in hunting they beseech the bears and wolves not to hurt them. The wandering Koraks are extremely jealous, and sometimes kill their wives upon the merest suspicion. Adultery is punished by the death of both parties. This extreme jealousy on the part of husbands accounts for the fact that the women take no care of their persons, and are always dirty and repulsive. They say that their husbands believe that any attempt at personal adornment would be a sign that they were wavering in their affections, for their husbands can love them without any such adornment. With the Koraks who live in the "hour-glass" houses the case is reversed, for they are extremely careless of the virtue of their wives and daughters; so much so, that frequently they lend either the one or the other to their guests or special friends. A refusal of this civility they consider the greatest affront. Among all these tribes, except the Kamchadales, theft is considered reputable so long as one does not steal from people of his own tribe. When discovered, theft is punished severely, but only because the thief was not clever enough to escape detection. A Tchuktche girl may not marry until she has proved her dexterity in this line. Murder is not looked upon as particularly heinous, unless one kills a fellow-tribesman. In that case the relatives of the dead avenge the crime. Consanguineous marriages are extremely common. A man often takes a cousin, an aunt, or even a mother-in-law as his wife. In fact, any relative except his mother or daughter may become his wife. As soon as a child is born they set aside for it a number of reindeer, but the child cannot claim them till he has reached maturity. In naming a child, they often go through a certain formality. Having set up two sticks, they tie a string across the top, and from the middle hang a stone. Then they repeat the names of the child's relatives, and, during the course of this recital, should the stone appear to shake or move, the name spoken at that moment is given to the child. Without doubt the most curious custom among these people is that childbirth is a public function, and the whole village may assemble to witness the event. The dead are commonly burned. The corpse is dressed in his finest clothes, and drawn to the place of cremation by his favorite deer. A great pile of wood is fired, and into the flames are thrown the dead man's arms and some of his household utensils. After this the deer are killed, and they, together with the man's body, are thrown upon the fire. A year later they bring to the place of cremation two young deer and a large number of deer horns, and, burying the latter, they make a pretense of sending a herd of deer to the dead man for his use in the nether world. CHAPTER XIV OFF FOR BERING SEA--THE TCHUKTCHES The Tchuktches are the Apaches of Siberia--Their hospitality to Americans and their hostility to Russians--Wherein my experiences differ from those of Mr. Harry DeWindt--Result of licking a piece of stone with the thermometer at 45° below zero--Konikly--Power of moral suasion in dealing with a rebellious Korak--The cure of a dying woman and the disgust of her husband--Poll-tax and the Tchuktches. Immediately upon our arrival at the village of Kaminaw I began looking about for dog-teams to take me on the long trip around by the shore of Bering Sea. I found it very difficult to get good dogs there, but after four days of patient search I secured two strong young natives, each with a team of twelve dogs. I contracted with them to accompany me all the way from that point, a distance of over fifteen hundred miles, for fifty pounds of tobacco and twenty pounds of sugar, all of which I paid in advance. Thus equipped I left Kaminaw, and pushed toward the northeast, following the line of mountains, and examining the rivers and creeks, the cañons and the gulches for the precious metal. We generally found Korak villages in which to lodge, but we suffered greatly with the excessive cold. Not infrequently we had to go without any fire at all, and at such times we found raw meat preferable to empty stomachs. The next few weeks we worked our way toward the coast, one day succeeding another in the monotonous iteration of camping and breaking camp, and digging down into bed-rock in a fruitless search for paying gold. As we approached the coast for the first time, we fell in with members of the Tchuktche tribe. This name is generally spelled Tchou-tchour, but I found the name invariably pronounced T'chuk-tche, the apostrophe signifying that the initial T is pronounced separately. These people are generally supposed to be a rather ugly lot, and the Russians have never been able to subdue them as they have the other Siberian tribes. They are the Apaches of Siberia, and when attacked they retire to their mountain fastnesses, where it is next to impossible to reach them. They are purely nomadic, and subsist solely upon their immense herds of reindeer. They are much taller and broader in the shoulder than is characteristic of any of the other tribes that I have seen. Many of them stand five feet and eleven inches. The women, too, are tall and well-formed. I had been warned by the Russian authorities at Ghijiga to be on my guard when I fell in with these fierce people, but I found the warning entirely unnecessary. They had a clear knowledge of the difference between a Russian and an American. Their preference for the American lies in the fact that the Russians have tried to make them pay tribute, and have carried on a desultory war with them for fifty years, while the American whalers bring them articles of trade of which they stand in need. They took the greatest interest in me, and did everything in their power to make me comfortable. In their sledges they would take me on long drives up the water-courses to look for gold, and in countless other ways showed their good will. They were the only people in Siberia with whom we could not bargain for meat or transport. They simply would not listen to my offers of pay, and it was only with difficulty that I could get them to take presents of tobacco or tea. They smilingly told me that I had better keep all those things till I went south into Kamchatka, "where all the people are thieves." I felt so safe among the Tchuktches that never once did I take my guns from the pack and bring them into the tent with me. One instance will illustrate the manner in which these good people treated me. At one point I had to take a three-days' trip over the mountains. It required twenty-five reindeer and five drivers. The village chief insisted on carrying my baggage, leaving my dog-teams to come on behind, unloaded. For this service I succeeded in making him take twenty cartridges. [Illustration: One of the Tchuktches--an unconquered Race.] Mr. Harry DeWindt crossed over from the American side, and reported later that he had been captured by the natives, and, after undergoing great hardships, was rescued by a man-of-war. In view of my experiences among this people it is very difficult to understand the treatment that Mr. DeWindt received. I traveled all along the coast to the same places visited by him, and was always treated as an honored guest by the natives. On the whole, they are the finest race of savages that it has ever been my lot to meet. The trip had been barren of results, as far as gold was concerned. Not long after leaving Kaminaw I struck a sandstone formation, and lost all traces of the yellow metal. And now I was approaching the coast, though I had not as yet caught sight of it. On the eighth of March we reached the foot of a range, and one of the Koraks, pointing to a distant summit, said that from that point we would be able to see the ocean. With renewed courage we pushed on. Each of the dogs wore on his feet soft deerskin moccasins, and the teams were being very carefully handled, for they were sadly worn by the long journey. They now needed constant urging. We no longer rode on the sledges, but walked beside them, pulling on the bow to relieve the dogs. When the hills were too steep, we had to double up the teams and make two trips, which lengthened the journey materially. During this period I was compelled to keep my beard trimmed close to my face, because I found, by hard experience, that my mustache would freeze down to my beard in such fashion that I had a mass of ice depending from my face, which had frequently to be cut away with a knife. In ordinary cold weather a beard is a protection from the cold, but under those circumstances I found that it added greatly to my discomfort. Natives will pay more for short-haired dogs, for, in the case of the long-haired dog, the moist breath, as it flows back from his nostrils, soon covers him with a mass of icicles. With the short-haired dog this is impossible. One day, shortly before we reached the coast, we camped at noon, and, about half a mile away, I saw a peculiar outcrop of white rock. Thinking that it might be worth prospecting, I put on my snow-shoes and walked over to it, while the men were getting dinner ready. The thermometer stood at forty-five below zero. I found that there was only a soda-like incrustation on the rock. And then, without thinking of the after effects, I took up a piece, about two pounds in weight, and put it to my mouth to taste it. Of course my tongue stuck to it, and an excruciating pain shot through that organ. I had taken a generous lick, and the whole surface of my tongue was fastened firmly to the stone. I managed to get back to the camp, still holding the stone to my face. For a moment, the men gazed at me in wonder; then one of them hurried to bring a kettle of warm water, which he attempted to dash in my face, but it did not reach the right spot. For what he next did I shall be grateful always. He took a large mouthful of the warm water, and then, with careful aim, squirted it between the stone and my face, and we soon had the encumbrance removed. With it came away a piece of the skin of my tongue, as large as a silver quarter. This escapade was wholly inexcusable, as I had already had sad experience in handling naked guns with bare, moist hands, and all my weapons were wrapped in buckskin, with only the sights exposed. Our teams were now so exhausted that several of the dogs dropped out entirely, to crawl along after us as best they might. Looking back, from time to time, I could see them trying desperately to keep up, for they seemed to know that their only chance of life was to reach the camp before night, to get some of the dog-food, which was running very low. They were quite useless in the collar, for they not only did not draw, but held back the other dogs who were able to pull. I had started with fourteen good, strong animals, but now was reduced to eight; and even these looked like skeletons. However, these eight were game to the backbone, and would pull till they fell dead in the harness. "Old Red," still my right-hand dog, would occasionally look over his shoulder with pitiful eyes when I called, "Hyuk, hyuk!" and then he would put down his head and strain at his collar, while his breath came in coughing gasps. The ravens followed us for the last five days, seeming to know that if the dogs gave out they would have a feast. As for us men, we were in no danger, for we could easily have walked to the coast. At last, one memorable day, we dragged ourselves to that last summit, and there, before us, were the waters of the sea, stretching out far to the east, with the pack-ice extending fifteen miles out from the shore. Below us, ten miles away, we could see the black dots that stood for the "hour-glass" huts, where we knew there was warmth, food, and rest for ourselves and our dogs. Since that day I have been able to sympathize keenly with Xenophon and his ten thousand, when they caught sight of the waters of the Euxine, and raised that glad shout of "Thalassa, thalassa!" [Illustration: Summit of Kamchatka--First Sight of Bering Sea.] Though the dogs were very weak and worn, we went in with a rush, as usual. But the moment we stopped, the poor fellows dropped in their tracks and went to sleep, without a thought of food. Their utter exhaustion was due to the fact that for the last ten days we had been crossing a stretch of uninhabited country, and it had been impossible to secure for them the necessary amount of food. We were much relieved to find ourselves once more in "civilization," and we were in no hurry to move on. The people received us so hospitably, and with such genuine kindness, that we spent a week with them, resting and getting the dogs into condition again. Every day we were regaled with frozen fish, dried fish, dainty bits of walrus blubber, and frozen blueberries. Some of the people of this tribe have curly hair, a thing that I had not seen before in Siberia. They speak with one of those peculiar "clicks" that are so baffling to the Western tongue, and which I had always supposed were confined to the languages of Africa. The village was composed of a mixed race in whose veins was mingled Tchuktche, Korak, and Kamchatkan blood, in about equal proportions. On our second day there I was glad to see the dogs that had dropped behind dragging themselves in. They were tied up in their old places, and fed generously on seal blubber and hot fish-soup, which might be called a kind of fish and oil chowder. They were all suffering badly from the need of fatty foods, and it was interesting to see the avidity with which they would bolt huge pieces of clear blubber. At the end of our week of rest, they were all fat again, their feet were healed up, and they were eager for the road once more. Some of the dogs that had shown less endurance than the others were traded off and better ones secured. The best medium of exchange seemed to be the little skeins of sewing-silk which I had been careful to bring. Skeins that were bought in Vladivostok for two and a half cents apiece readily brought a dollar here. I would have sold it cheaper, but they pushed the price of the dogs up from five dollars to twenty, and I was obliged to follow suit. The silk was in all the colors of the rainbow; it was a study to see the faces of these natives as they devoured the gaudy stuff with their eyes, especially the women. They use the silk to embroider the bottoms of their fur cloaks, some of which are true works of art. Traders have been known to pay as high as two hundred dollars for a single coat. The amount of needlework on them is simply enormous. Sometimes they cut out little pieces of skin a quarter of an inch square, of all colors and shades, and make a genuine mosaic of them, and around the bottom of each garment is a wide fringe of silk. The natives laughed at the prices that I asked, and good-naturedly expostulated with me, saying that they could get the same thing in Ghijiga much cheaper; to which I laughingly answered that they were at liberty to go and get it. Whenever I left a house, I presented the women each with a few needles, which in that country is a very substantial tip. This village was not composed of pure Tchuktches, and these mongrel people are looked down upon by the clean Tchuktche stock, who frequently raid them and carry off their best-looking women. It was now my purpose to turn south along the coast, and examine the beach sands and the rivers running into Bering Sea, as far down as the neck of the Kamchatkan peninsula, or Baron Koff Bay. As I was still in a sandstone country, there seemed little likelihood of finding gold in the beach sands, and unless the geologic formation changed as I went south, I should push right on without stopping, except to rest. Bidding good-by to the friends who had treated us so kindly, we set out one morning, on our way southward, keeping to the smooth snow just above the beach line. Once, and only once, I tried to shorten the journey by crossing an arm of the sea on the ice. Here I had my first taste of what it must be like to attempt to reach the Pole across the frozen sea. Not once could I go fifty feet in a straight line. It was an unspeakable jumble of hummocks and crevasses. We covered eight arduous miles that day, and the dogs were so exhausted that we had to stop two days to recuperate. Time and again, that miserable day, I got into the water up to my waist, which necessitated an immediate change of clothes. About once an hour the dogs would fall into the water and have to be hauled out, after which a tedious detour would be made to find a more likely route across the wilderness of ice. The sixth day out we reached Baron Koff Bay. It is a long, narrow inlet lying southeast and northwest; and at its head I found the little Korak village where it was decided that I should secure a guide to take me to the sulphur deposits, which were supposed to exist in an extinct volcano in the vicinity. These people were of the same mixed blood as those of the village I had so lately left, but they did not live in the hour-glass houses. They simply had the underground room, with a hole leading down into it. The one I entered was fifteen feet wide by ten in height. [Illustration: Kassegan, half-caste Russian trader, and Korak wife, living at Boeta, Baron Koff Bay, Kamchatka.] In this village seal-catching is the principal pursuit. The seal is such an important animal to these people that they go through a peculiar ceremony every year in its honor--a ceremony that is characteristically childish and built upon superstitions. Near this point is an immense deposit of coal which had been discovered by a Russian man-of-war some twenty years before. The coal is of poor quality, but could be used for steaming if necessary. The coal-measures come right down to the water's edge. In the cliff beside the water I found three veins of coal, with an aggregate thickness of eighty feet. This was a "dog" village, as distinguished from a "deer" village, and it was amusing to see half a dozen dogs lying about each of the entrance-holes of their underground houses, with their heads hanging over the edge, so that they could better appreciate the smell of food that rose with the smoke of the fire below. Of course I was always on the lookout for good dogs, and while I was in this village I came upon the finest specimen of a Siberian sledge-dog that it was ever my fortune to see. He was tawny or light-brown in color, with a splendid head, back, and shoulders. Clean-limbed, muscular, and straight-eared, his tail curved up over his back in the most approved style. He whipped our best dog in less than a minute. His name was Konikly, meaning "One of Two," and his stuffed skin can be seen to-day in the American Museum of Natural History. I presented him to the Jessup Expedition, in charge of which was Mr. Buxton, whom I afterward met in Vladivostok on his way to the north. I tried to obtain this dog, but found, to my chagrin, that he had been marked for sacrifice, and could not be bought. After bidding in vain up to fifty dollars in tea, sugar, and silk, I came to the sad conclusion that the animal was not on the market. But Snevaydoff, my right-hand man, said to me in Russian, "There is a better way. We must simply take him and leave behind sufficient compensation." This, of course, I hesitated to do until I found that the natives would gladly sell him, but did not dare to do so, for fear of angering the deity to whom he had been vowed in sacrifice. If, however, we took the dog by force they would not be to blame, and could demand the price as compensation. So I left the matter with Snevaydoff to arrange as diplomatically as he could. We waited a day or so for a Korak named Myela, who was to guide us to the sulphur deposits, and when he arrived we made ready to start the next morning. Everything was loaded the night before, and some time in the night my Korak drivers hitched up the dogs, taking Konikly with them, and drove out of the village. When morning came, the owner of the dogs seemed much surprised to find that his dog was missing, and he very naturally surmised that my men had taken him. He demanded that I should pay for the stolen animal. Of course I protested, but in the end paid the full price, and then every one was happy and satisfied. After these ethical gymnastics, we drove out of the village, and made our way southward to the mouth of a river near which point the sulphur deposits were supposed to be; but I found, to my disgust, that the place was twenty miles inland, up an unnavigable river, and through a very rough country. I saw at a glance that it could never be a good mining venture, but I determined to go and examine the deposit, in order to be able to give a thorough report of the case. That night we arrived at Myela's home, which was an isolated house or hole in the ground. For the last twelve miles we had been gradually ascending the valley, and the next morning we saw, eight miles away, the extinct crater in which the sulphur lay. We unloaded the sledges, and, taking only our picks and shovels, found ourselves, two hours later, on the summit of the volcano. The crater was partly filled with snow, but on one side, where it had been wind-swept, it was not deep. We carefully descended the steep side of the crater until Myela stopped us, and said, "Dig here." After going down through six feet of snow to the ground I found it strewn with detached boulders, covered with a thin film of sulphur, evidently a late solfataric deposit from the crater which had been lately active, and the indications did not promise large quantities; but even if the deposit proved to be rich, I could see very well that mining it would never pay. The distance from the coast, the roughness of the country, and the complete absence of timber made it out of the question. A careful examination of the place was, therefore, unnecessary. I was then ready to start for Cape Memaitch, on the western coast of the peninsula, but I perceived that if I went all the way back to Baron Koff Bay to make a new start, considerable time would be lost. One of my Koraks was tired of the trip, and insisted on going back home by the shortest route, rather than by way of Cape Memaitch. He absolutely refused to cross the range of mountains, as the spring sun was now beating down on the snow, and he feared that, at any time, we would be engulfed in an avalanche. I had already learned that this route would not be really dangerous till three weeks later, and that if we pushed right through we should be quite safe. So on the morning of starting I sent off the other Korak with one of the sledges, and then turned to the unwilling one and asked whether he would go with me over the mountains. He still said no. I drew my revolver, and told him that his only chance of seeing home again was to hitch those dogs up instantly and obey me to the letter. He stood for a moment looking into that compelling muzzle, and then turned, sullenly, and began harnessing up. I had no more trouble with him after that. [Illustration: In Crater of Extinct Volcano, digging for Sulphur. Baron Koff Bay, Kamchatka.] Two reindeer sledges were engaged to show us the way across the mountains, and to break the track wherever necessary. They started a mile in advance, so as to keep out of sight of the dogs. It was easy work to follow, for it was simply an all-day chase for the dogs; each one had his nose to the ground, and was fondly imagining that he would soon enjoy the unparalleled delight of jumping at a reindeer's throat. Myela led us before night to a Korak village of three yourtas. As we approached it I saw a crowd huddled about something on the ground. It proved to be a middle-aged woman, lying on a deerskin, and she seemed to be dying. I asked why they did not take her inside, and was told that she had asked to be brought out. I studied her symptoms, and decided that she was suffering from the grippe, and that her case demanded heroic treatment. She had not slept for three nights, so I gave her twenty grains of quinine, two cathartic pills, and one-tenth grain of morphine. She woke up the next morning with her eyes brighter, and feeling better in every way. I gave her ten more grains of quinine, and that afternoon she sat up, and dipped her hand into the dish of meat and "spinach," and ate her full share. I thought her cure was something of a triumph, for when I saw her she seemed to be _in articulo mortis_. As I was about to leave, the husband of this woman, a man of many reindeer, asked me if I had not forgotten something, and intimated that I had not paid for the meat that my dogs had eaten. I asked him if he did not think that my curing of his wife was compensation enough; nevertheless, I paid him his full price and departed. My Korak men told me later that the old fellow was angry because I had saved the woman, as he had already picked out a young and pretty girl to be her successor. Alas! I had unwittingly come between man and wife, and had wrecked (at least his) domestic bliss. On the whole, I am not sure but that it would have been kinder to have let her die. Our way led up a succession of cañons, and then over high mesas until we reached the summit of the range. As we were passing up through these cañons, we frequently ran under the edges of enormous overhanging drifts, and I looked up anxiously, but nothing fell except a little light snow and a few small pebbles. After passing the summit I determined to take no chances at all, and so restricted traveling to the night-time, when, of course, everything was frozen stiff. It was now well into April, and the sun was climbing up into the heavens at noon. The surface of the snow grew a little too soft to make day travel quite comfortable. On this side of the mountains I found considerable float coal, especially in the beds of the creeks. The whole country was a sandstone formation, which, of course, meant no gold. At last, far in the distance, we saw the blue waters of the Okhotsk Sea flashing under the rays of the western sun, and we came down rapidly to the shore. I saw below us a few of the hour-glass huts, and at the mouth of a shallow stream a long promontory running far out into the sea. This was Cape Memaitch,--whither I was bound because the Russians had heard reports of a United States schooner touching at this point and taking away full cargoes of ore to San Francisco. The first question I asked was whether or not it was true that such a vessel had actually stopped there, and was answered in the affirmative. A villager offered to guide me to the spot from which the ore had been taken. I was naturally elated, for there was now a prospect of finding something that would benefit my employers. The next morning we started out along the shore. The guide led me to the face of a sandstone bluff, and said, "Here is the place from which they took the ore." To say that I was dumfounded would be to put it mildly. When I had recovered sufficiently to fairly get my breath, I asked why this stuff had been loaded on the vessel, and the guide calmly replied that it had been done to keep the ship from turning over. It appeared that the vessel was a Russian, and not an American, after all. This place had been a favorite rendezvous for traders, and the schooner had come to exchange the products of civilization for the skins offered by the natives. Of course, when the vessel was unloaded it was necessary to secure ballast, and for this purpose the sandstone had been brought into requisition. I shrugged my shoulders, and tried to take it philosophically. Our next move was to start on the return trip around the head of the Okhotsk Sea to Kaminaw. We had a beautiful road over the smooth tundra. Konikly was now leading with "Old Red," and every time we stopped, the two would fight, for the latter was very loath to share my affection with Konikly, whom he considered a parvenu. [Illustration: Killing Deer for Dog Food.] As we were speeding along the beaten track the Koraks would break out in a wild strain of music; then Snevaydoff would sing one of the Russian peasant-songs, and occasionally, not to be outdone, I would give them a few bars of some such touching lyric as "A Hot Time," or "After the Ball." Thus we whiled away the long hours on the road. Every few hours we changed places, letting each team lead in turn, for only the driver of the head team had any work to do. The others could even lie down and go to sleep if they wished, for the dogs drew as steadily and as patiently as mules. It seemed second nature to them. I used to sit and wonder how they could be trained to undergo such severe labor. I found out that, when only four months old, they are put into the hands of the small boys to train. They make up little teams of pups, with the mother dog, perhaps, as leader, and bring in water from the neighboring stream or drag in the firewood. By the time they are a year old they are ready to be turned over to a grown-up, who hitches up one or two of the young dogs with some steady old fellows, and it is not long before the training is complete. This method not only trains the dogs, but it teaches the boys how to handle them, so that by the time they are young men they are expert drivers. After several days of fine going we arrived at Kaminaw, where I found the Ghijiga magistrate, who had come on his annual collecting tour. Each of the Koraks pays an annual poll-tax of four and a half dollars' worth of skins. These are taken to Ghijiga, and there auctioned off to the highest bidder. All these northern natives pay this tax, except the Tchuktches, who refuse to pay a cent. I found the magistrate in one of the huts, reclining on several bearskins, and kindly and affable as ever. Over him was arranged a sort of canopy to protect him from particles of dust or dirt that might fall from between the rafters of the building. He was dressed in his full regimentals of green and gold, with a sword at his side. He gave me a fine cup of coffee, and made me take a pound of the fragrant berry to cheer me on my way in to Ghijiga. I jealously guarded it, and made the grounds do duty three or four times over till every particle of the caffein had been extracted. CHAPTER XV A PERILOUS SUMMER TRIP The tundra in summer--Crossing the swift Paran River--Literally billions of mosquitos--Unique measures of protection against these pests--Mad race down the Uchingay River on a raft--Lighting a fire with a pistol--Narrow escape from drowning--Fronyo proves to be a man of mettle--Pak is caught stealing from slim supply of provisions and receives chastisement--Subsisting on wild onions and half-ripe berries--Help at last. After a rest of two days we started out on the home stretch toward Ghijiga, which lay three hundred miles to the southwest. As the snow was now very soft the wooden runners of our sledges were useless. The wet snow stuck to them, and made progress almost impossible. We therefore purchased sets of whalebone runners, cut from the ribs of the whale, and pared down to a quarter of an inch in thickness. These strips are pinned to the sledge runners, one piece overlapping another, and the joints worked down smooth. These are as good on wet snow as the iced wooden runners are on dry snow. We made the three hundred miles in four days, which was doing fairly well, considering the fact that we came back with only half the number of dogs that we started out with. It is true, however, that we had made one or two valuable acquisitions in the dog line, especially Konikly, with whom I became more and more pleased. We fed the dogs on the best the land could provide, and kept them on the road from twelve to fourteen hours a day. Our provisions were, of course, almost gone, and we were coming back practically as "empties." In making long trips the natives frequently have to cache a part of their provisions along the way for use on the return trip. They make a little scaffold on the stumps of trees or between two or three living trees. Even though not set up very much above the snow line, the snow is so deep that by the time summer has melted it away the goods are high and dry. No one except the owner would ever think of touching these provisions. Upon my return I found that the snows were fast melting, and green tints were beginning to appear on the hillsides. I thought, however, that there would be enough snow to allow me to take a little run down the peninsula that lies between the two northern arms of the Okhotsk Sea in search of a deposit of cinnabar of which I had heard rumors; but after two days of hard work, urging the dogs over bare tundra, I gave it up and came back in disgust. By June 1 the snow was quite gone, except upon the highest hills and in the secluded nooks where deep drifts had lain. The river was still very high, and filled with floating ice. The sun was now visible twenty hours out of the twenty-four. [Illustration: Expedition on march--"Konikly" in foreground.] I was soon ready for a summer trip. The services of my old friend Chrisoffsky and half a dozen of his horses were secured, and, taking along my two Koreans, who had wintered at Ghijiga while I was making my trip to the shores of Bering Sea, I started out, sitting in the saddle which had been left in the village thirty years before by Mr. George Kennan. He was then a leading spirit in the American Russian Telegraph Company, whose object was to build a line across Bering Strait and connect the two continents. Of this saddle there was nothing left but the tree and a little leather on the cantle, bearing a San Francisco stamp. Mrs. Braggin said that Mr. Kennan had given it to her when he left; I rigged it up with stirrups and used it all summer. Plodding northward, we reached Chrisoffsky's place about bedtime, soaked with mud and water. The tundra was like a great marsh, through which we had to flounder. We tried to keep to the beds of the little creeks in which the water had worn away the moss and turf. Where this was not possible, we had to wade through almost bottomless mud. Even though lightly loaded, the horses kept sinking to the girth, and it was only by sheer hard work that we were able to average fifteen miles a day. Some days we made only five. Our objective point was the Uchingay, which means "Red," River. It is a comparatively small stream, flowing into the Paran, near its head. The natives had told me that at the head waters of this stream there were two red mountains where the rocks were filled with shiny yellow points. This place lay about three hundred miles north of Ghijiga. As we neared the foot-hills the trail became better. The tundra was one mass of brilliant flowers, like the wrecks of rainbows. There were plants of almost infinite variety, and the ground was like a great expanse of variegated carpeting. But the flowers! They were indescribably beautiful. Turning the shoulder of a hill, we would come upon a broad expanse of solid pink or scarlet, acres in extent, and this would give way to a blue, a yellow, or a lavender, either in solid color or in various blends. We enjoyed these beauties of nature, but, at the same time, did not fail to notice the fine beds of wild onions, which we pulled and ate with great gusto. We craved vegetables in summer as keenly as we had craved fat in winter. Hardly an hour passed that we did not have a shot at a duck or a goose, and our journey was consequently a continual feast. Konikly and Howka accompanied us. They lived like princes on the tundra rats, which swarmed about us. The dogs caught them cleverly, and after one good shake, bolted them whole. These rodents were the size of a small house rat. [Illustration: Across the Tundra.] On June 22 we crossed the high pass leading into the valley of the Paran River. My aneroid showed an elevation of six thousand feet. That afternoon we were greeted with a storm of sleet and snow, which drove us to the shelter of a high precipice, where we stayed close till the following day. The descent once fairly begun, we soon came into a more genial atmosphere. Below us in the valley we could see the heavily wooded banks of the Paran where Chrisoffsky and his two sons were to leave me with my two Koreans and Fronyo, the Tunguse guide. That night we camped on the bank of the river. We were now in the primeval wilderness and had to subsist off the land. There were fish to catch and there was game to shoot, so there was little danger of our coming to grief. We had with us some fish-nets. These were made of horsehair obtained by barter from Central Siberia. These nets are large enough to hold a good-sized salmon. By placing them at the mouths of little creeks, and then scaring the fish down into them, it was not difficult to secure plenty to eat. The Paran, even on its upper reaches, was a formidable stream two hundred yards wide, at this season swollen by melting snows. It was imperative that we cross this river, for the Uchingay flowed into it from the other side. Old Chrisoffsky had averred that I would never get across alive, but I had assured him that I could if there was timber near by. I had already guaranteed to pay for any horses that I might lose during the trip. When we came down to the bank of the river and saw the swift, sullen tide, the old man laughed and said, "I told you so." I knew that he would be an impediment to me, and that he would do all he could to prevent my taking the horses across, so I answered that as it was impossible to cross I would go into camp and wait for the water to go down. The old gentleman hit the trail for home the next day, carrying the tale that for once the American was beaten, and must await the pleasure of the Paran River. He would have been surprised had he seen us that very night safely on the other side with our baggage and horses intact. I confess the crossing was no easy feat, but it had to be done. As the river narrowed to a gorge with dangerous rapids less than a half mile below where we stood, I went three miles up the stream, where I found a lot of dead trees, averaging some ten inches in thickness. These we felled and cut into twelve-foot lengths, and bound them together with walrus rope, and thus were provided with a good raft. The Tunguse with his ax fashioned four rough sweeps, and we rigged up rowlocks by mortising uprights into the side logs of the raft. We first tried, unsuccessfully, to cross by swimming the horses behind the raft; the animals kept trying to climb upon the raft. So we put back to shore. Then, making long whips, we drove the horses into the water at a point where the current set across toward the other bank. By vigorous whipping we showed the horses that they were not to be allowed to come back to the shore. They were swept off their feet, and after one or two attempts to return they seemed to understand the situation, and set out for the farther shore, which they reached after being swept about a third of a mile down-stream. Then we shoved off and arrived without mishap on the other bank at almost the very spot where the horses had landed, and we found them quietly eating. It was now late in June, and the mosquitos had arrived in full force, though the flies as yet held off. The former pests were so thick that the air seemed literally filled with them as with flakes of snow in a heavy storm. The air was resonant with the deep humming sound from their wings. We all had to wear heavy gauntlet gloves tied tightly about the arm, and mosquito-hats made after a plan of my own. The summer before, I had made use of a broad felt hat with mosquito-net sewed around the rim, and with a draw-string at the bottom to fasten it at the throat; but this had proved perfectly useless because the least breath of wind would blow it against my face, and instantly a hundred mosquitos were at their deadly work. Besides this the net was continually getting torn in the underbrush; consequently, I was driven by desperation to invent some better way. I had with me a small roll of fine wire screen for screening gold ore. It was "thirty-mesh" (thirty strands to the inch). The night after we crossed the river I got out this roll of screen and cut out pieces six inches wide and twelve inches long and sewed them around the front rims of our hats. I cut up a couple of flour-sacks and sewed the strong cloth all around below the wire screen and behind the hat, gathering it with a string at the bottom. Finally I punched a small hole through the wire for my pipe-stem, and with this piece of armor on my head I could laugh at the mosquitos, and even succeeded in drinking tea through the screen. When we ate we were obliged to make a big smudge and sit in the smoke, and we slept in our hats and gloves. The special value of the wire screen became evident a few days later when the flies began to appear. There was one species of fly so small that it could easily penetrate the ordinary mosquito-netting, but could not possibly negotiate this wire screen. The bite of this fly feels like the prick of a red-hot needle, and two days later each bite becomes a running sore. The flies are far more to be dreaded than the mosquitos. [Illustration: Tundra Camp.] The poor horses were simply black with mosquitos, though we helped them as much as we could by tying branches of leaves to the saddles and bridles. During the night we provided a good heavy smudge for the animals to stand in. The horses knew well its value, and would crowd together into the smoke to escape the cruel stings of their enemies. At about four o'clock each morning the cool temperature quieted the mosquitos, and the horses could get two hours of feeding. At noon, when we lunched, the horses would crowd in upon us in the smoke, and even though beaten off, would persistently return. Frequently the camp was pervaded by the smell of burning hoofs and tails. The dogs suffered less, for their hair protected them, and at night they would sleep with their faces buried between their paws so that the mosquitos could not get at their vulnerable spot. Having crossed the river, we followed along its eastern bank till we came to the Uchingay River, and a few days later reached the head waters of this stream. We saw in the distance the two red mountains. In the stream I began to find float-rock containing iron pyrites, and I prospected carefully on all sides, but, with the exception of a few colors now and then, there was nothing of interest. When we came near the source of the stream I sunk shafts to bed-rock. After a thorough examination of the region I was forced to admit that the trip had been a failure, and prepared to retrace my steps. After two days on the return trail, we found the water of the stream fairly deep, and I determined to make a raft and float down with my Tunguse guide, examining the outcroppings on either side of the stream, while the two Koreans took the horses down along the bank. I estimated that I could go four times as fast as the horses, and that if I stopped frequently to examine the formations I would arrive at the crossing of the Paran at about the same time as the Koreans. So we all went to work and made a raft of light dry sticks, twelve feet long by about eight inches in diameter. There were twelve sticks in all, and the raft was about seven feet wide. Fronyo selected three good pieces of timber and made sweeps, the extra one being for emergencies. We also had two good stout poles. All our baggage was loaded on the raft, fastened down securely, and covered with a tarpaulin. I then divided the food evenly, giving the Koreans their full share, and telling them to go to the point where we had crossed the Paran, and that if we did not show up within a certain time to make their way across the river and return to Ghijiga without us. I gave Kim the rifle and cartridges, and half the food, which amounted to a little rice, half a pound of tea, and some hard bread. I also gave him the fish-net. Fronyo and I kept the shot-gun. We bade the Koreans good-by, and shoved off into the stream, which was running like a mill-race. We were kept busy steering the raft clear of the rocks with which the river was strewn. As yet we used only the poles. I may as well confess right here that this trip on the raft was a fearfully hazardous undertaking, for we never knew what sort of water we had below us; so clumsy was our craft there was no chance of escape to either bank should danger loom suddenly ahead. But the hard work we had experienced in making our way through the tangled woods made us reverse the dictum of Hamlet, and, rather than bear again the ills we had been through, we flew to others that we knew not of. The rush and swirl of the angry waters, the narrow escape from the ragged crest of a reef that came almost, but not quite, to the surface, and was invisible thirty feet away, the rush past steep cliffs and flowery banks, all formed such a delightful contrast to the weary plodding through the forest that we were willing to welcome almost any dangers for the sake of the exhilaration of this mad dash down the stream. The river was only about twenty yards wide at the point where we embarked upon it, but it broadened rapidly as it was fed by tributary streams from either side. Now and again the current was divided by an island, and then came together far below. All went smoothly the first day, and at four o'clock we tied up to the bank and prepared to camp. But so great was our difficulty in finding any dry wood that it was bedtime before we had finished our preparations for the night. The next morning we made an early start. It was thought that we must be near the junction of the Uchingay and the Paran. Though a drizzly, sleety day, it did not dampen our ardor--nor that of the mosquitos. I had to put on a set of oilskins which greatly hampered my movements on the raft. The river had now broadened to a hundred and fifty feet, and was indeed a mighty torrent. We tied up to the bank frequently to examine the outcroppings. We had congratulated ourselves upon the ease and rapidity of our run down-stream, when suddenly we sighted white water below and knew there was serious trouble ahead. Our raft was so light that usually it would pass over any obstacles in the bed of the stream or at most scrape lightly upon them, turn around once or twice, and then float off into smooth water below. Of course, if the rocks came above the surface it was an easier matter to go around them. We managed to pass through these rapids successfully, but immediately below them we saw that the stream divided into two parts, the channel to the left appearing to be the better one. We guided our raft accordingly, and soon found ourselves rushing down a gorge at railroad speed. The cañon began to "box up" in an ugly manner, and our pace became so great that we lost control of our little craft. Sweeping around a bend, we saw that a great tree had been undermined by the water, and had fallen out over the stream so that two thirds of the narrow channel was completely blocked. We strove with might and main to pull the raft to one side in order to evade disaster, but she might as well have been an ocean steamer for all the effect of our futile endeavors. We swept under and among the branches of the tree, and though we hugged the raft as closely as possible, we were both brushed clean off. I seized a branch and tried to draw myself up, but the current snatched me away, and I was swept down-stream. I fought to regain the surface, but could not do it. My head was fairly bursting, when I felt the current pushing me up, and suddenly I was shot out of the water and rolled up on a wooden incline. As soon as I could collect my wits I found, to my amazement, that I was on the raft again. It had landed against a rock in a shelving position, with the lower side under the water, and the water itself had provided, in an almost miraculous manner, the means which alone could save my life. Almost the first thing I saw was a hand above the water, grasping the edge of the raft, and another feeling eagerly for a place to get hold. Poor Fronyo was under water and evidently far gone. I thrust my arm in up to the shoulder, and got hold of his hair, and I had little difficulty in dragging him out and up on the raft. He was almost unconscious. I took him by the collar and the seat of the pants, and, by pounding his stomach on the pack, soon relieved him of the water he had swallowed. Twenty minutes later I was rejoiced to see him quite himself again, although very weak. [Illustration: "Kim" in Summer Camp on Tundra.] When he had sufficiently recovered, we began to think of continuing our eventful journey. The raft was firmly lodged upon the rock, and the force of the current threatened to break it up at any moment. I waded into the water on the submerged end of the raft to ease the pressure on the rock, and then, with levers, we gradually swung her about until she drifted free of the ledge and went whirling down-stream. By good luck we encountered no more obstacles, and soon shot out into open country; and, in a drenching rain, we pulled up to the bank and hastened to make preparations for getting dry. Almost everything we had was soaking wet, but I remembered that among our impedimenta there was a tin box containing some matches. I rummaged around and found it, but the matches were too damp to use. We then hunted everywhere for a piece of flint, but could find none. As a last resource, I opened my medicine chest and took out a piece of absorbent cotton. Then we secured some dry chips from the interior of a log of dead wood. Opening three or four of my revolver cartridges, I poured out the powder on the absorbent cotton and then fired a blank shell into it. This manoeuver proved successful, and we soon had a roaring fire. We stood in the smoke and let our clothes dry while we fought the mosquitos. Now and then we would make a dash out of our covert to bring wood for the fire. In a couple of hours we were dry, and, lighting our pipes, we had a good smoke. We were able to laugh, then, at the ludicrous aspect of what had been a mighty close shave. Fronyo had done better than I, for he had not once loosed his hold on the raft; and yet had I not been swept off and then thrown up on the raft again, there would have been no one to tell the story. This Tunguse, Fronyo, was game to the backbone. When it came time to start out once more on our crazy craft, he crossed himself devoutly, and followed me without a murmur. He said that if God willed that he should die on that raft he would die, that was all. If he did not follow me wherever I went he felt that he would lose caste with his people and be shamed forever. That day I shot two sea-gulls which had come far inland to nest. They were not very savory eating, being tough and insipid. These birds usually come up into the interior in May, and, until the advent of the salmon, they have little to eat except berries. Each day they make a trip down to the coast and back. All our sugar was melted, and our tea had received a preliminary steeping; but we dried it out and made it do. The fact is, we were rather badly off for food. I had only a few paper shells left, and half of these were damp. The next morning after our adventure in the gorge we cut loose from the bank, and, in an hour's time, floated out of the Uchingay into the Paran, which was a hundred and twenty yards wide, and carried an immense volume of water. The river was in flood, and was filled with small islands, which made it difficult to choose a route; but all went well, and at four o'clock we pulled up to the bank at the spot where we had first crossed, and where we had agreed to meet the Koreans. We settled down in camp, expecting to see them on the following day. That afternoon I had the pleasure of killing a goose with a brood of little ones. After the mother goose had been killed the little ones took to a small pond, but were hunted down and killed in cold blood. It was no time to think of mere sportsmanship, as the law of self-preservation absorbed our thoughts. Soon we heard the "honking" of the old male goose. Fronyo took the dead goose and cleverly set it up with a stick thrust through its neck, and the other end stuck in the mud at the bottom of the shallow pond. The old gentleman goose saw his spouse sitting quietly on the water, and was just settling down near her when, not receiving any answer to his call, he grew suspicious and started to rise again. I could ill afford to waste a single cartridge, but I took the risk and fired. The old fellow came to the ground with a resounding thump. We now had over twenty pounds of good meat. Of the little goslings we made a soup, adding a good quantity of wild onions; and it would have been a dish fit for a king had we possessed a little salt. But our supply had been melted. [Illustration: Reindeer Feeding.] The next day we heard a rifle-shot in the woods. This was the signal agreed upon, and soon Konikly and Howka came running into camp half famished, and eagerly bolted the bones that we had thrown aside. We could not waste a cartridge on an answering shot, so Fronyo went out to meet the Koreans, and soon brought them into camp, and there followed an interesting interchange of experiences since we had parted company on the Uchingay. I found that they had not hoarded their provisions at all, but, with true Korean improvidence, had eaten up everything. For the morrow they had no thought. I took a careful inventory of stock, and found that we had two geese, a little wet rice, some tea, and hard bread. The outlook was certainly not pleasing, for it would take at least six days to get within the radius of civilization. To recross the river we used the same heavy raft that we had crossed on before, dragging it a mile up-stream before venturing to embark. The horses knew that they were on the homeward trail, and breasted the swift tide willingly. Before starting out to cross the mountains on the way to Ghijiga, it was imperative that we should supplement our slender stock of food, for there would be several days during which we could hope to get very little along the way. With our small fish-net I tried a little arm of the river, and succeeded in catching two fine _harritongas_, each weighing nearly three pounds. They were black on top, with a yellow belly, and supplied us with a delicious white meat. The dorsal fin extends from the neck to the tail. It is a favorite dish in Russia, where it is called the _harra_. Try as I might, I could catch no more. I decided that it would be necessary to send Fronyo on ahead with the best horse and most of the food, with instructions to hurry to Ghijiga and secure from the magistrate the necessary food, and then hasten back to our relief. I wanted certain special articles of food, and as I could not write Russian, and as Fronyo could not be expected to know the different kinds of foreign food, I was driven to use the primitive ideographic method. My note to the magistrate, therefore, consisted of a series of pictures, representing roughly the things that I wanted and the amount. First came a picture of a Tunguse leading a pack-horse, and then the "counterfeit presentment" of a tin of beef, with the number twelve appended. Then came loaves of bread, with tins of butter following, and a noble array of other edibles. To my fancy it was the most interesting procession I had ever witnessed. Fronyo said that we need have no fear, for if worse came to worst, we could live on the wild onions and the inside bark of the fir-trees, which grew here and there among the mountains, while on the tundra there were plenty of tundra rats--appetizing thought! Of course, if we had been in any real danger of starvation, we could have immolated the horses and dogs on the altar of Epicurus, but we did not propose to do this, except as a last resort. The wild onion is considered the best cure for the scurvy, and is eaten eagerly as soon as it begins to appear in the spring. It is said, though I had no opportunity to see a case, that if scurvy is imminent and some of the wild garlic is eaten, the body breaks out in an eruption which passes away in a few days. The onion seems to expel the germs through the skin by means of this eruption. The natives strip the birchbark from the trees while it is still green, and cut it into long threads like vermicelli. On entering a village it is quite a common sight to see the women cutting up this bark for food. They ferment the juice of this birchbark and make a mild alcoholic drink. They also eat the berries of the shad-bush and the bark of the sallow, a kind of willow. These people have acquired a remarkable knowledge of the virtues of various plants. Some of these tribes are accustomed to dip the points of their arrows into a decoction of a species of ranunculus, and wounds so inoculated are incurable unless the poison is immediately drawn out. Even whales, if wounded with these arrows, come near the shore and expire in dreadful agony. Fronyo started out at a good pace while we stayed behind to try and secure more game before hitting the trail across the mountains. We secured two more fish, and at four o'clock in the afternoon were on the road, which we kept till ten o'clock. The next morning, after half a breakfast, we pushed on up the valley through the foothills of the range that we had to cross, none of us any too cheerful, but all determined. That day I discovered some crumbs of bread in Pak's beard, and investigation showed that he had been making a square meal of a large portion of our remaining small stock of bread. It may be pardoned me, under the circumstances, that I drew off and hit him a good shoulder blow in the left eye, which felled him to the ground. This proved to be an unfortunate form of punishment, for he was the Korean who possessed only one good eye, and that was good no longer. My anger, righteous though it may have been, turned instantly to solicitude. I blamed myself without measure for my hasty action, went into camp and founded a hospital on the spot. For the next twenty-four hours all my energies and resources were centered on that unhappy eye. I can truly say that I have never hit anything since without first making sure that the object of my punishment had a spare eye. Later on my conscience forced me to give him a silver watch and a new suit of clothes. I rather think the other Korean envied him that blow when he saw the final result. To my vast relief the eye healed, and we went on. The third day saw us over the mountains and crawling across the tundra. We had thrown away all our bedding and blankets, and each was astride a horse. On the fourth day we were reduced to wild onions and half-ripe berries, which induced a violent diarrhea. We came at last to where sea-gulls were nesting, but they were so shy that we could not get near them. Konikly had gone on with Fronyo, but we still had Howka with us, and he was getting fat on the tundra rats. It was to him, now, that we looked for food. He would make a rush at a sea-gull, and, as the bird flew from its nest on the tundra, he would begin to devour the eggs; but we would rush up and drive him off and secure the loot. The eggs were far gone, and would have been ready to hatch in another week. We boiled them, and the Koreans ate the embryonic sea-gulls while I ate the albuminous substance that still remained. About this time we began to think of sacrificing one of the horses to the common good, but no one of us was strong enough to walk, and the horses were therefore spared. The dog we could not kill, for he was our chief provider. [Illustration: Three Little Half-caste Russians and Native Nurse, Ghijiga, Okhotsk Sea.] We plodded on until we were about two days' journey from Chrisoffsky's house, when one morning I descried, far across the tundra, a line of some fifteen pack-horses and men. We spurred on gladly to meet the welcome relief. I found that half a dozen of the officers and men of the steamer which my employers had sent for me had come to hunt me up. Never have I seen such a glorious sight as those well-dressed men and those loaded horses. The captain dismounted, and I tried to address him in Russian, but he said, "You forget that I speak English." Now, it may seem scarcely credible, and yet it is true, that for a few moments I was almost totally unable to converse with him in my native tongue. I had not used a word of it in conversation for fourteen months, and my low physical condition acting on my nerves, confused my mind, and I spoke a jumble of English, Russian, and Korak. It was a week before I could talk good, straight English again. We camped right where we had been met, and the packs were opened up immediately. I sat on a sack filled with potatoes, and watched them bring out coffee, then some bacon, then some fresh eggs! Then the captain came with a bottle of champagne and handed me a glass. This I held in one hand, and with the other I reached down and extracted a potato, and fell to munching it raw, sipping the champagne between bites, while I watched them build a fire and prepare the food. It was a feast that I shall never forget. After it a box of good cigars was circulated, which added the final touch to my felicity. When the inner man had been satisfied, I began to think of how the outer man might be improved upon. My clothes were in rags, my weight had fallen from one hundred and sixty pounds to one hundred and fifteen, my beard was long and unkempt, my boots were in shreds. The good friends had thoughtfully brought along my steamer trunk, which now lay in one of the tents. I ordered several kettles of water heated, and stripping behind the tent, I threw the noisome rags, with all their denizens, as far into the bush as I could, and then went in and had a glorious tubbing. I got into a suit of soft flannels, Scotch tweed knickerbockers and a Norfolk jacket, and after shaving and grooming myself for an hour, the loathsome larva that had crawled into camp emerged from that tent a bejeweled butterfly. That delicious moment was worth almost as much as it cost. Then we made our way back to Ghijiga, where I distributed presents among my friends, native and foreign, and boarded the steamer for Vladivostok. I reached that place twelve days later, and gave account of my travels and explorations. The search for a Siberian Klondike had been, so far, a failure. This is not the place for a technical account of my observations in northern Siberia, but this much I may say: though there may be gold within the radius that I covered, I satisfied myself that there were no extensive auriferous deposits on the streams flowing into the Okhotsk Sea near its head, nor in the beach sands along the shore of Bering Sea, south of the Anadyr River. But, of course, the whole question was not yet settled, for there remained the whole stretch of the northeast peninsula, above the point I had reached, and it turned out that my work was not yet finished. CHAPTER XVI A TEN-THOUSAND-MILE RACE Persistent rumors of gold in the Tchuktche peninsula--Count Unarliarsky--I am called to Vladivostok to fit out an expedition--Our vessel arrives off Indian Point--Charging through the ice-floes--A meeting with Eskimos--Our prospecting proves fruitless--We meet the rival expedition in Plover Bay--Their chagrin--The end. The winter following my explorations in Northeast Siberia I spent in the United States, during which time the papers contained frequent reports of rich finds on the Siberian coast, opposite Cape Nome. The company that had employed me still believed that there was gold to be found in this region, and were determined to test the matter thoroughly. The papers stated that the Russian Government had granted to Count Unarliarsky the mining rights to the whole Tchuktche peninsula, which is the extreme northeastern portion of Siberia, between the Anadyr River and the Arctic Ocean. From St. Petersburg we learned that the Count must present the papers of his franchise to the Governor at Anadyr before he could legitimately take possession. Any claims staked out before that time would be valid, according to Russian law. In order to present his papers before the Governor, the Count would have to wait till navigation opened up late in May, for the town of Anadyr lies far up the river of that name, and is ice-locked till well into the summer. [Illustration: Russian Miners.] I received a cablegram to hurry out to Vladivostok, and make ready to start at an hour's notice. It was the intention of our company to charter a steamer for four months, and, with thirty Russian miners, steam with all speed toward the north, make a hasty examination of the beaches in question, and even though there might be American miners there (who would be without Government permission), we were to stake out claims and then hurry to Anadyr and file our papers before the Governor should have so much as heard of the existence of the Count. In all this we were well within the law, and, as our company had already spent a large sum of money in the work, it was but right to use every legal means to establish a claim to at least a portion of the field. Through our agent at St. Petersburg we were kept informed of the movements of our rivals. Our agent in San Francisco was instructed to inform me, by cable, as to what steamer the Count chartered, her speed and equipment. Meanwhile I was busy looking up a vessel, and after great difficulty, secured the Russian steamer _Progress_, Captain Gunderson. I provisioned her for six months, filled her up with coal enough for five months' steaming, and by June 3 everything was ready. The previous day I had received a cablegram from San Francisco, stating that the rival expedition, under the management of Count Bogdanovitch and George D. Roberts, an American mining engineer, would sail from that port on June 6. Their speed was ten knots, and they would stop at Nome and one or two other United States ports. They were in no hurry, and were entirely in ignorance of our existence. Their boat was the _Samoa_, a Puget Sound lumber vessel. We could make eleven knots an hour, and had a slightly shorter route to follow than they. Furthermore, _we knew_, and they did not. We learned that at Plover Bay, on the Russian side, they were to meet a Russian gun-boat named the _Yakut_, which would help to drive away any American miners who might surreptitiously have opened up claims on the Siberian side. Of these rumor said that there were some three thousand. At five o'clock in the afternoon of June 3 we turned our prow seaward, but, after going a hundred yards, a bolt gave way in the engine, and we had to lay up for repairs. I chafed at the enforced delay, but the next morning we were off. Before we had cleared the entrance of the long, winding bay, we ran into a heavy fog-bank, and, after feeling our way along for a while, we were obliged to drop anchor again. When the fog lifted we found that we had passed within a hundred yards of a rocky promontory, and had escaped only by good luck. It was not till the next day that we reached the open sea, and six days later we were riding at anchor in the harbor of Petropaulovsk. At that point I put off four men to open up a copper vein that I had located the first time I had passed that way. After having filled our water-tanks again, we pushed toward the north. In Bering Sea we found it still cold and foggy, but we kept the vessel up to her eleven knots, even at the risk of suddenly encountering ice. By keeping a sharp lookout and frequently taking the temperature of the water, we lessened the danger as much as possible. Some of the Russian miners on board were set to work making a large United States flag, with which to decoy natives on board, for they can scarcely be induced to go on board a Russian ship, because of the rough treatment they frequently receive. On June 14 the temperature of the water suddenly dropped from forty to thirty-four degrees, which showed plainly that we were nearing ice. We slowed down, and half an hour later sighted an iceberg through the mist. As our vessel was of steel and without compartments, a very slight blow would put us _hors de combat_, so we took every precaution. There were but two life-boats for a crew of seventy men in all, many of whom would be likely to make trouble in case of accident. The ship's officers and I always had our revolvers handy for any emergency. On the 16th we arrived off Cape Chaplain, or Indian Point, as the Americans usually call it. Between us and the shore there lay a band of ice at least thirty-five miles broad. We tried to discover an opening in it, but without success. We therefore headed for St. Lawrence Island, which lies near Bering Strait and belongs to Uncle Sam. As soon as we had cast anchor the natives came off to see us. The men were small but stocky, and looked much like North American Indians. Their women are rather good-looking, but are accustomed to tattoo as soon as they reach the age of womanhood. We found that about two thirds of the tribe were suffering either from the measles or the grippe. The mountains that loomed up in the background were used as burial-places. The dead were laid there, exposed, and the dogs and wild animals soon disposed of them. The higher the rank of the dead man the higher he was placed on the mountain. Dr. Lorego of the Presbyterian Mission came off to see us, and courteously invited us ashore. It was an invitation that I gladly accepted. Through him I learned from the natives they were unaware that any American miners had landed on the Siberian side. [Illustration: Picked up on the Ice off St. Lawrence Island.] As we were about to weigh anchor and go in search of an opening in the ice by which we could reach the Asiatic shore, a steamer loomed up through the fog. She dropped anchor near us, and I found, to my delight, that she was the ex-United States cutter Corwin, which, at that time, belonged to the _Corwin_ Trading Company. On board were several American miners from Nome, who were bound for Indian Point, where they firmly believed gold was to be found. The captain of the _Corwin_ kindly offered to guide us through the ice, and, if necessary, to lend us an ice pilot. I therefore contracted with him, for five hundred dollars, to cut a channel through the ice to Indian Point. We learned that there is always a narrow strip of water between the ice and the shore up and down the coast at that season. As the wind was rising I hurried back to my vessel and asked our captain to make ready to follow the _Corwin_, but within an hour a gale was raging, and the _Corwin_ signaled us to follow her under the shelter of the island. It was a beautiful sight to see Captain West of the _Corwin_ handle his vessel as easily as though it were a rowboat on a lake. He had spent twenty years in the Arctic seas, and knew his business thoroughly. Before our anchor was fairly up he was steaming away before the gale a mile in advance. We followed him around the point of the island to a sheltered nook, and there dropped anchor to await the cessation of the storm. The next morning the day broke fine and clear. Captain West affirmed that to see a perfect summer day one must go to the far north. The _Corwin_ took the lead, and a five-mile run brought us to the edge of the ice-pack. There the _Corwin_ slowed down, and we ran as close alongside as was safe. Captain West shouted through the megaphone, "Good-morning. I find the ice pretty heavy, but it is loose, and with care you will be able to follow us." He then sent to us Captain Coffin, an old-time whaling captain, whom he happened to have with him on the _Corwin_, to act as ice pilot for our boat. Captain Coffin has a record of over forty years in the north seas. As I was anxious to have the experience of smashing through the ice on an icebreaker, I went aboard the _Corwin_. The _Progress_ followed about six lengths behind. The _Corwin_ has twelve feet of solid green-heart timber in her bows, four feet of the same on the sides, and two feet aft. She is barkentine rigged, a hundred and twenty feet long, with a speed of nine knots. She is twenty-four years old, all but one of which have been spent in Arctic waters. [Illustration: Natives at Indian Point, Siberia.] When all is ready Captain West mounts to the crow's-nest to con the ship, and Captain Forrest, another old whaler, is on the bridge. The wheel is in the hands of two intelligent Boston sailors. Captain West sings out, "One bell--starboard--steady!" and we are off. It looks as if it were going to be a ticklish business for the _Progress_, with only half an inch of steel to withstand the pressure of the loose bergs, but I say to myself that with Captain Coffin in the crow's-nest, and the _Corwin_ in the lead, it is ten to one that she comes through without even knocking the paint off. As we gather speed I hurry to the stern to see how the _Progress_ is coming on. She winds her way beautifully between the bergs, in and out through the passage which we are making. Some of the ice the _Corwin_ can push to one side or the other, but when this is not possible she backs up in order to get good headway, and charges the obstruction, and strikes it fairly between the eyes. She comes to a dead stop, and quivers from stem to stern with the tremendous impact. A rending, grinding noise is heard, and the berg which challenged us is a berg no longer; and its fragments are brushed aside as we push our way through. Captain West laughingly calls from above, "Get out of the way, if you don't want to get hit." So on we go, backing and turning, and plunging and wriggling through the ice. As we were thus engaged I espied a seal, about three hundred yards off our starboard bow, and, seizing a Winchester, I let drive. The captain called down, "Killed; good shot." I should have done well to rest on my laurels, for though I had above forty more shots that day I did not kill anything. By six o'clock we were through the ice and in open water again, with Indian Point, or Cape Chaplain, dead ahead. Almost immediately we were boarded by the natives, who called out: "Hello, hello, how d'ye do?" We answered in kind. Then, after a string of lurid oaths in bad English, they said: "Plenty man cough--make die--you got medicine?" But to our question as to how many people there were in their village they replied: "Don't know." "Why, can't you count?" "No; Siberia side all d--n fools." At which we were forced to smile. "Say, you got chaw tobacco?" I could not remain deaf to this appeal, so I cut up a cigar and watched it go into their mouths. Then, after I had taken their photograph in a group, we all went ashore, where I found a few native skin huts and one or two houses built with timber which they had obtained in trade from whalers. These were modeled after the houses that the whalers or missionaries had erected. [Illustration: Eskimo Village, East Cape--Northeastern Point of Asia.] Indian Point is a long, low spit of land, and is a freak of nature, being nothing more nor less than a moraine in the sea. The great icebergs ground here and melt, dropping the stone and gravel which they have brought from some distant bay where they were born. Kovarri, the old chief of the tribe, came aboard, and we interviewed him. He said there were no American miners on the Siberian side. We did not believe him implicitly, but found later that he had told the truth. We succeeded in hiring a noted native pilot to show us along the coast. He was named "Shoo Fly," and came of very mixed parentage. These natives were all large, strong, and hearty, and were good sailors, having had experience on many United States whalers, which recruit their crews among these men before going up into the Arctic Sea. These fellows are splendid oarsmen, and as good as Americans at chasing whales. They speak a little English, especially the bad words, and chew as much tobacco as they can lay their hands on, while as for drink, they are crazy for it. The natives just to the south of them are very different, for they have not come in contact with the whalers to so great an extent. I shipped a boat's crew of these men, and steamed north to St. Lawrence Bay. In the steam-launch we explored every portion of the shore of this bay, but could find no trace of gold, although this was the very spot that Count Unarliarsky was depending upon to make the fortune of his company. Then we steamed north into Bering Strait. Here lie the two islands, "Big Diomed" and "Little Diomed," one Russian and the other American. After prospecting in vain we returned to the mainland, and rounded East Cape, and found ourselves, for the first time, on the waters of the Arctic Ocean. We landed at a little village built on the steep slope of a high hill. It had just lost one half its population through measles and the grippe. Corpses were lying about, half eaten by the dogs. A little child had a leather thong tied through the eye-holes of a skull, and was dragging it about for a cart. The child's father said he did not know whose skull it was. After the dogs had gotten through with it how was he to tell! These people live in regular Eskimo huts, built of stone, in the shape of a half-sphere, and with a long tunnel for an entrance, through which they crawl on hands and knees. Nothing could be more desolate than the prospect at this point. Behind the village was a bleak hill. The beach was only fifty feet wide, and before it lay the grim Arctic Sea. There was only one thing of beauty, and that was the skin boats of the natives, which were drawn up on the beach. They were shaped like an American whale-boat, and were capable of carrying forty men. In these they follow the ice-pack, and capture seals and walruses, and occasionally a whale. A few of the natives have secured bomb-guns from the whalers. Whenever a whaling-vessel completes its cargo and is ready to turn toward home, it disposes of all its whale-boats to the natives, taking, in return, whalebone, ivory, and skins. A good boat will bring one thousand dollars' worth of such goods. The condition of these natives is pitiable in the extreme. Disease and filth are doing their work, and it is a wonder that any of them have survived as long as they have. The whalers sell them spirits at a small price, and, being utterly without self-control, they speedily become slaves to drink. The American Government makes no effort to stop this sort of thing, and the Russian Government can do but little to stop it with a single little gunboat. We went as far north as the Arctic Circle, but, finding no gold in the beach sands nor in the float-rock in the rivers, we turned south again, and, after picking up some men whom we had left to finish prospecting St. Lawrence Bay, we continued south, examining the coast as we went. We looked into Plover Bay, with the expectation of finding the _Samoa_ there; and not seeing her we steamed out, and, with the aid of the launch and the native boat crews, examined the southern part of the Tchuktche peninsula. There were splendid deposits of steaming-coal, but the general geologic formation made it plain that there was no gold to be found. Once more we steamed into Plover Bay, but the _Samoa_ had not yet arrived, and we determined to wait for her. Two days were spent in the pleasant occupation of hunting eider-duck and making a short trip into the interior. On the third day we heard, through the fog, the sound of a siren whistle. Of course we answered, and an hour later the _Samoa_ came nosing through the fog and picking her way through the light drift-ice. As soon as her anchor was down I went aboard. As I went up the gangway I saw half a dozen Russians and as many Americans standing in a group on the deck. I walked up to them, but before I had time to introduce myself Count Bogdanovitch said: "Captain, I am glad to see you. You Have some coal for us, I believe?" "No; I have not any for you," I said, smiling. [Illustration: Plover Bay, Siberia, in July.] "Oh, you are a steam-whaler," and his face fell. "No, not a whaler," I said. "Well, then, what are you here for?" he asked, curiously. "I am on the same errand as you." As soon as he comprehended he was terribly angry, and apparently wished me at the bottom of the sea. He turned on his heel and walked away, without doing me the courtesy of asking me into the cabin, although it was raining. But one of the Americans stepped forward, and I was taken to their quarters, where explanations followed. I told them the situation, how that we had carefully prospected all along the coast, but had found no gold. I felt I was doing them a favor to let them know that there was no use in spending time and money in a search for gold along the Siberian coast of Bering Sea. Whether or not they believed me I cannot tell, but the next morning we weighed anchor, and left them there waiting for the arrival of the _Yakut_. The search for a Siberian Klondike was over. * * * * * Transcriber's note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). Small capital text has been replaced with all capitals. Variations in spelling, punctuation and hyphenation have been retained except in obvious cases of typographical error. 
49637	----	[Illustration: _GENERAL MAP_ of the RUSSIAN EMPIRE.] ACCOUNT OF THE RUSSIAN DISCOVERIES BETWEEN ASIA AND AMERICA. TO WHICH ARE ADDED, THE CONQUEST OF SIBERIA, AND THE HISTORY OF THE TRANSACTIONS AND COMMERCE BETWEEN RUSSIA AND CHINA. By WILLIAM COXE, A. M. Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, and Chaplain to his Grace the Duke of MARLBOROUGH. LONDON, PRINTED BY J. NICHOLS, FOR T. CADELL, IN THE STRAND. MDCCLXXX. TO JACOB BRYANT, ESQ. AS A PUBLIC TESTIMONY OF THE HIGHEST RESPECT FOR HIS DISTINGUISHED LITERARY ABILITIES, THE TRUEST ESTEEM FOR HIS PRIVATE VIRTUES, AND THE MOST GRATEFUL SENSE OF MANY PERSONAL FAVOURS, THE FOLLOWING PAGES ARE INSCRIBED, BY HIS FAITHFUL AND AFFECTIONATE HUMBLE SERVANT, WILLIAM COXE. Cambridge, March 27, 1780. PREFACE. The late Russian Discoveries between Asia and America have, for some time, engaged the attention of the curious; more especially since Dr. Robertson's admirable History of America has been in the hands of the public. In that valuable performance the elegant and ingenious author has communicated to the world, with an accuracy and judgement which so eminently distinguish all his writings, the most exact information at that time to be obtained, concerning those important discoveries. During my stay at Petersburg, my inquiries were particularly directed to this interesting subject, in order to learn if any new light had been thrown on an article of knowledge of such consequence to the history of mankind. For this purpose I endeavoured to collect the respective journals of the several voyages subsequent to the expedition of Beering and Tschirikoff in 1741, with which the celebrated Muller concludes his account of the first Russian navigations. During the course of my researches I was informed, that a treatise in the German language, published at Hamburg and Leipsic in 1776, contained a full and exact narrative of the Russian voyages, from 1745 to 1770[1]. [Footnote 1: The title of the book is, Neue Nachrichten von denen Neuendeckten Insuln in der See zwischen Asia und Amerika aus mitgetheilten Urkunden und Auszuegen versasset von J. L. S.] As the author has not prefixed his name, I should have paid little attention to an anonymous publication, if I had not been assured, from very good authority, that the work in question was compiled from the original journals. Not resting however upon this intelligence, I took the liberty of applying to Mr. Muller himself, who, by order of the Empress, had arranged the same journals, from which the anonymous author is said to have drawn his materials. Previous to my application, Mr. Muller had compared the treatise with the original papers; and he favoured me with the following strong testimony to its exactness and authenticity: "Vous ferès bien de traduire pour l'usage de vos compatriotes le petit livre sur les isles situées entre le Kamtchatka et l'Amerique. II n'y a point de doute, que l'auteur n'ait eté pourvu de bons memoires, et qu'il ne s'en foit fervi fidelement. J'ai confronté le livre avec les originaux." Supported therefore by this very respectable authority, I considered this treatise as a performance of the highest credit, and well worthy of being more generally known and perused. I have accordingly, in the first part of the present publication, submitted a translation of it to the reader's candour; and added occasional notes to such passages as seemed to require an explanation. The original is divided into sections without any references. But as it seemed to be more convenient to divide it into chapters; and to accompany each chapter with a summary of the contents, and marginal references; I have moulded it into that form, without making however any alteration in the order of the journals. The additional intelligence which I procured at Petersburg, is thrown into an appendix: It consists of some new information, and of three journals[2], never before given to the public. Amongst these I must particularly mention that of Krenitzin and Levasheff, together with the chart of their voyage, which was communicated to Dr. Robertson, by order of the Empress of Russia; and which that justly admired historian has, in the politest and most obliging manner, permitted me to make use of in this collection. This voyage, which redounds greatly to the honour of the sovereign who planned it, confirms in general the authenticity of the treatise above-mentioned; and ascertains the reality of the discoveries made by the private merchants. [Footnote 2: The journals of Krenitzin and Levasheff, the short account of Synd's voyage, and the narrative of Shalauroff's expedition, N^o I. IX. XI.] As a farther illustration of this subject, I collected the best charts which could be procured at Petersburg, and of which a list will be given in the following advertisement. From all these circumstances, I may venture, perhaps, to hope that the curious and inquisitive reader will not only find in the following pages the most authentic and circumstantial account of the progress and extent of the Russian discoveries, which has hitherto appeared in any language; but be enabled hereafter to compare them with those more lately made by that great and much to be regretted navigator, Captain Cooke, when his journal shall be communicated to the public. As all the furs which are brought from the New Discovered Islands are sold to the Chinese, I was naturally led to make enquiries concerning the commerce between Russia and China; and finding this branch of traffic much more important than is commonly imagined, I thought that a general sketch of its present state, together with a succinct view of the transactions between the two nations, would not be unacceptable. The conquest of Siberia, as it first opened a communication with China, and paved the way to all the interesting discoveries related in the present attempt, will not appear unconnected, I trust, with its principal design. The materials of this second part, as also of the preliminary observations concerning Kamtchatka, and the commerce to the new-discovered islands, are drawn from books of established and undoubted reputation. Mr. Muller and Mr. Pallas, from whose interesting works these historical and commercial subjects are chiefly compiled, are too well known in the literary world to require any other vouchers for their judgement, exactness, and fidelity, than the bare mentioning of their names. I have only farther to apprize the reader, that, besides the intelligence extracted from these publications, he will find some additional circumstances relative to the Russian commerce with China, which I collected during my continuance in Russia. * * * * * I cannot close this address to the reader without embracing with peculiar satisfaction the just occasion, which the ensuing treatises upon the Russian discoveries and commerce afford me, of joining with every friend of science in the warmest admiration of that enlarged and liberal spirit, which so strikingly marks the character of the present Empress of Russia. Since her accession to the throne, the investigation and discovery of useful knowledge has been the constant object of her generous encouragement. The authentic records of the Russian History have, by her express orders, been properly arranged; and permission is readily granted of inspecting them. The most distant parts of her vast dominions have, at her expence, been explored and described by persons of great abilities and extensive learning; by which means new and important lights have been thrown upon the geography and natural history of those remote regions. In a word, this truly great princess has contributed more, in the compass of only a few years, towards civilizing and informing the minds of her subjects, than had been effected by all the sovereigns her predecessors since the glorious æra of Peter the Great. CATALOGUE OF BOOKS QUOTED IN THIS WORK In order to prevent the frequent mention of the full title of the books referred to in the course of this performance, the following catalogue is subjoined, with the abbreviations. Müller's Samlung Russischer Geschichte, IX volumes, 8vo. printed at St. Petersburg in 1732, and the following years; it is referred to in the following manner: S. R. G. with the volume and page annexed. From this excellent collection I have made use of the following treatises: vol. II. p. 293, &c. Geschichte der Gegenden an dem Flusse Amur. There is a French translation of this treatise, called Histoire du Fleuve Amur, 12mo, Amsterdam, 1766. vol. III. p. 1, &c. Nachrichten von See Reisen, &c. There is an English and a French translation of this work; the former is called "Voyages from Asia to America for completing the Discoveries of the North West Coast of America," &c. 4to, London, 1764. The title of the latter is Voyages et Decouvertes faites par les Russes, &c. 12mo, Amsterdam, 1766. p. 413. Nachrichten Von der Hanlung in Sibirien. Vol. VI. p. 109, Sibirische Geshichte. Vol. VIII. p. 504, Nachricht Von der Russischen Handlung nach China. Pallas Reise durch verschiedene Provinzen des Russischen Reichs, in Three Parts, 4to, St. Petersburg, 1771, 1773, and 1776, thus cited, Pallas Reise. Georgi Bemerkungen einer Reise im Russischen Reich in Jahre, 1772, III volumes, 4to, St. Petersburg, 1775, cited Georgi Reise. Fischer Sibirische Geschichte, 2 volumes, 8vo, St. Petersburg, cited Fis. Sib. Ges. Gmelin Reise durch Sibirien, Tome IV. 8vo. Gottingen, 1752, cited Gmelin Reise. There is a French translation of this work, called Voyage en Siberie, &c. par M. Gmelin. Paris, 1767. Neueste Nachrichten von Kamtchatka aufgesetst im Junius des 1773^{ten} Yahren von dem dasigen Befehls-haber Herrn Kapitain Smalew. Aus dem abhandlungen der freyen Russischen Gesellschaft Moskau. In the journal of St. Petersburg, April, 1776.--cited Journal of St. Pet. Explanation of some Russian words made use of in the following work. _Baidar_, a small boat. _Guba_, a bay. _Kamen_, a rock. _Kotche_, a vessel. _Krepost_, a regular fortress. _Noss_, a cape. _Ostrog_, a fortress surrounded with palisadoes. _Ostroff_, an island. _Ostrova_, islands. _Quass_, a sort of fermented liquor. _Reka_, a river. The Russians, in their proper names of persons, make use of patronymics; these patronymics are formed in some cases by adding _Vitch_ to the christian name of the father; in others _Off_ or _Eff_: the former termination is applied only to persons of condition; the latter to those of an inferior rank. As, for instance, Among persons of condition _Ivan Ivanovitch_, }Ivan the son of inferior rank, _Ivan Ivanoff_ } of Ivan. _Michael Alexievitch_, } Michael the _Michael Alexeeff_, }son of Alexèy. Sometimes a surname is added, _Ivan Ivanovitch Romanoff_. Table of Russian Weights, Measures of Length, and Value of Money. WEIGHT. A pood weighs 40 Russian pounds = 36 English. MEASURES OF LENGTH. 16 vershocks = an arsheen. An arsheen = 28 inches. Three arsheens, or seven feet = a fathom[3], or sazshen. [Footnote 3: The fathom for measuring the depth of water is the same as the English fathom = 6 feet.] 500 sazshens = a verst. A degree of longitude comprises 104-1/2 versts = 69-1/2 English miles. A mile is therefore 1,515 parts of a verst; two miles may then be estimated equal to three versts, omitting a small fraction. VALUE OF RUSSIAN MONEY. A rouble = 100 copecs. Its value varies according to the exchange from 3s. 8d. to 4s. 2d. Upon an average, however, the value of a rouble is reckoned at four shillings. ERRATA. P. 23, _Reference_, _for_ Appendix I. N^o I. _read_ N^o II. 24, _for_ Appendix I. N^o II. _read_ N^o III. 30, _for_ Rogii _read_ Kogii. 46, _for_ Riksa _read_ Kiska. 96, _for_ Korovin _read_ Korelin. 186, Note--_for_ Tobob _read_ Tobol. 154, Note--Line 2, _after_ handpauken _omitted_ von verschiedenen Klang. 119, _for_ Saktunk _read_ Saktunak. 134, Line 6, _for_ were _read_ was. 188, l. 16. _for_ pretection _read_ protection. 190, l. 5. _for_ nor _read_ not. 195, _for_ Sungur _read_ Sirgut. 225, l. 13. _read_ other has an. 226, _for_ harlbadeers _read_ halberdiers. 234, Note--line 3, _dele_ See hereafter, p. 242. 246, _for_ Marym _read_ Narym. 256, Note--_for_ called by Linnæus Lutra Marina _read_ Lutra Marina, called by Linnæus Mustela Lutris, &c. 257, Line 5, _for_ made of the bone, &c. _read_ made of bone, or the stalk, &c. 278, Note 2--line 2, _for_ Corbus _read_ Corvus. 324, Note--line 4, _dele_ was. 313, Note--line 3, _dele_ that. Ibid. Note--line 10, "I should not" &c. _is a separate note, and relates to the extract in the text beginning_ "In 1648," &c. Omitted in the ERRATA. P. 242. l. 9. _r._ 18, 215. l. 11. _r._ 1, 383, 621. 35. ADVERTISEMENT. As no astronomical observations have been taken in the voyages related in this collection, the longitude and latitude ascribed to the new-discovered islands in the journals and upon the charts cannot be absolutely depended upon. Indeed the reader will perceive, that the position[4] of the Fox Islands upon the general map of Russia is materially different from that assigned to them upon the chart of Krenitzin and Levasheff. Without endeavouring to clear up any difficulties which may arise from this uncertainty, I thought it would be most satisfactory to have the best charts engraved: the reader will then be able to compare them with each other, and with the several journals. Which representation of the new-discovered islands deserves the preferance, will probably be ascertained upon the return of captain Clerke from his present expedition. [Footnote 4: See p. 286.] List of the CHARTS, and Directions for placing them. CHART I. A reduced copy of the general map of Russia, published by the Academy of Sciences at St. Petersburg, 1776. to face the title-page. II. Chart of the voyage made by Krenitzin and Levasheff to the Fox Islands, communicated by Dr. Robertson, to face p. 251. III. Chart of Synd's Voyage towards Tschukotskoi-Noss, p. 300. IV. Chart of Shalauroff's Voyage to Shelatskoi-Noss, with a small chart of the Bear-Islands, p. 323. View of Maimatschin, p. 211. Communicated by a gentleman who has been upon the spot. CONTENTS. Dedication, p. iii. Preface, p. v. Catalogue of books quoted in this work, p. xi. Explanation of some Russian words made use of, p. xiii. Table of Russian Weights, Measures of Length, and Value of Money, p. xiv. Advertisement, p. xv. List of Charts, and Directions for placing them, p. xvi. PART I. Containing Preliminary Observations concerning KAMTCHATKA, and Account of the NEW DISCOVERIES made by the _Russians_, p. 3--16. Chap. I. Discovery and Conquest of _Kamtchatka_--Present state of that Peninsula--Population--Tribute--Productions, &c. p. 3. Chap. II. General idea of the commerce carried on to the New Discovered Islands--Equipment of the vessels--Risks of the trade, profits, &c. p. 8. Chap. III. Furs and skins procured from _Kamtchatka_ and the New Discovered Islands, p. 12. Account of the RUSSIAN DISCOVERIES, p. 19. Chap. I. Commencement and progress of the _Russian_ Discoveries in the sea of _Kamtchatka_--General division of the New Discovered Islands, ibid. Chap. II. Voyages in 1745--First discovery of the _Aleütian Isles_, by _Michael Nevodsikoff_, p. 29. Chap. III. Successive voyages, from 1747 to 1753, to _Beering's_ and _Copper Island_, and to the _Aleütian Isles_--Some account of the inhabitants, p. 37. Chap. IV. Voyages from 1753 to 1756. Some of the further _Aleütian_ or _Fox Islands_ touched at by _Serebranikoff's_ vessel--Some account of the natives, p. 48. Chap. V. Voyages from 1756 to 1758, p. 54. Chap. VI. Voyages in 1758, 1759, and 1760, to the _Fox Islands_, in the _St. Vladimir_, fitted out by _Trapesnikoff_--and in the _Gabriel_, by _Bethshevin_--The latter, under the command of _Pushkareff_, sails to _Alaksu_, or _Alachshak_, one of the remotest Eastern Islands hitherto visited--Some account of its inhabitants, and productions, which latter are different from those of the more Western islands, p. 61. Chap. VII. Voyage of _Andrean Tolstyk_, in the _St. Andrean_ and _Natalia_--Discovery of some New Islands, called _Andreanoffsky Ostrova_--Description of six of those islands, p. 71. Chap. VIII. Voyage of the _Zacharias_ and _Elizabeth_, fitted out by _Kulkoff_, and commanded by _Dausinin_--They sail to _Umnak_ and _Unalashka_, and winter upon the latter island--The vessel destroyed, and all the crew, except four, murdered by the islanders--The adventures of those four _Russians_, and their wonderful escape, p. 80. Chap. IX. Voyage of the vessel called the _Trinity_, under the command of _Korovin_--Sails to the _Fox Islands_--Winters at _Unalashka_--Puts to sea the spring following--The vessel is stranded in a bay of the island _Umnak_, and the crew attacked by the natives--Many of them killed--others carried off by sickness---They are reduced to great streights--Relieved by _Glottoff_, twelve of the whole company only remaining--Description of _Umnak_ and _Unalashka_, p. 89. Chap. X. Voyage of _Stephen Glottoff_--He reaches the _Fox Islands_--Sails beyond _Unalashika_ to _Kadyak_--Winters upon that island--Repeated attempts of the natives to destroy the crew--They are repulsed, reconciled, and prevailed upon to trade with the _Russians_--Account of _Kadyak_--Its inhabitants, animals, productions--_Glottoff_ sails back to _Umnak_--winters there--returns to _Kamtchatka_--Journal of his voyage, p. 106. Chap. XI. _Solovioff's_ voyage--He reaches _Unalashka_, and passes two winters upon that island--Relation of what passed there--fruitless attempts of the natives to destroy the crew--Return of _Solovioff_ to _Kamtchatka_--Journal of his voyage in returning--Description of the islands of _Umnak_ and _Unalashka_, productions, inhabitants, their manners, customs, &c. &c. p. 131. Chap. XII. Voyage of _Otcheredin_--He winters upon _Umnak_--Arrival of _Levasheff_ upon _Unalashka_--Return of _Otcheredin_ to _Ochotsk_, p. 156. Chap. XIII. _Conclusion_--General position and situation of the _Aleütian_ and _Fox Islands_--their distance from each other--Further description of the dress, manners, and custom of the inhabitants--their feasts and ceremonies, &c. p. 164. PART II. Containing the Conquest of SIBERIA, and the History of the Transactions and Commerce between RUSSIA and CHINA, p. 175. Chap. I. First irruption of the _Russians_ into _Siberia_--second inroad--_Yermac_ driven by the Tzar of _Muscovy_ from the _Volga_, retires to _Orel_, a _Russian_ settlement--Enters _Siberia_, with an army of _Cossacs_--his progress and exploits--Defeats _Kutchum Chan_--conquers his dominions--cedes them to the Tzar--receives a reinforcement of _Russian_ troops--is surprized by _Kutchum Chan_--his defeat and death--veneration paid to his memory--_Russian_ troops evacuate _Siberia_--re-enter and conquer the whole country--their progress stopped by the _Chinese_, p. 177. Chap. II. Commencement of hostilities between the _Russians_ and _Chinese_--disputes concerning the limits of the two empires--treaty of _Nershinsk_--embassies from the court of _Russia_ to _Pekin_--treaty of _Kiachta_--establishment of the commerce between the two nations. p. 197. Chap. III. Account of the _Russian_ and _Chinese_ settlements upon the confines of _Siberia_--description of the _Russian_ frontier town _Kiachta_--of the _Chinese_ frontier town _Maitmatschin_--its buildings, pagodas, &c. p. 211. Chap. IV. Commerce between the _Chinese_ and _Russians_--list of the principal exports and imports--duties--average amount of the _Russian_ trade. p. 231. Chap. V. Description of _Zuruchaitu_--and its trade--transport of the merchandize through _Siberia_. p. 244. PART III. APPENDIX I. and II. containing SUPPLEMENTARY ACCOUNTS OF THE RUSSIAN DISCOVERIES, &c. &c. Appendix I. Extract from the journal of a voyage made by _Captain Krenitzin_ and _Lieutenant Levasheff_ to the _Fox Islands_, in 1768, 1769, by order of the _Empress of Russia_--they sail from _Kamtchatka_--arrive at _Beering's_ and _Copper Islands_--reach the _Fox Islands_--_Krenitzin_ winters at _Alaxa_--_Levasheff_ upon _Unalashka_--productions of _Unalashka_--description of the inhabitants of the _Fox Islands_--their manners and customs, &c. p. 251. N^o II. Concerning the longitude of _Kamtchatka_, and of the Eastern extremity of _Asia_, as laid down by the _Russian_ geographers. p. 267. N^o III. Summary of the proofs tending to shew, that _Beering_ and _Tschirikoff_ either reached _America_ in 1741, or came very near it. p. 277. N^o IV. List of the principal charts representing the _Russian_Discoveries. p. 281. N^o V. Position of the _Andreanoffsky Isles_ ascertained--number of the _Aleutian Isles_. p. 288. N^o VI. Conjectures concerning the proximity of the _Fox Islands_ to the continent of _America_. p. 291. N^o VII. Of the _Tschutski_--reports of the vicinity of _America_ to their coast, first propagated by them, seem to be confirmed by late accounts from those parts. p. 293. N^o VIII. List of the New Discovered Islands, procured from an _Aleütian_ chief--catalogue of islands called by different names in the account of the _Russian_ discoveries. p. 297. N^o IX. Voyage of _Lieutenant Synd_ to the North East of _Siberia_--he discovers a cluster of islands, and a promontory, which he supposes to belong to the continent of _America_, lying near the coast of the _Tschutski_. p. 300. N^o X. Specimen of the _Aleütian_ language. p. 303. N^o XI. Attempts of the _Russians_ to discover a North East passage--voyages from _Archangel_ towards the _Lena_--from the _Lena_ towards _Kamtchatka_--extract from _Muller's_ account of _Deshneff's_ voyage round _Tschukotskoi Noss_--narrative of a voyage made by _Shalauroff_ from the _Lena_ to _Shelatskoi Noss_. p. 304. Appendix II. _Tartarian_ rhubarb brought to _Kiachta_ by the _Bucharian_ merchants--method of examining and purchasing the roots--different species of rheum which yield the finest rhubarb--price of rhubarb in _Russia_--exportation--superiority of the _Tartarian_ over the _Indian_ rhubarb. p. 332. Table of the longitude and latitude of the principal places mentioned in this work. p. 344. PART I. CONTAINING I. PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS CONCERNING KAMTCHATKA, AND II. ACCOUNT OF THE NEW DISCOVERIES MADE BY THE RUSSIANS. PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS CONCERNING KAMTCHATKA, &c. CHAP. I. Discovery and Conquest of _Kamtchatka_--Present state of that Peninsula--Population--Tribute--Productions, &c. [Sidenote: First Discovery of Kamtchatka.] The Peninsula of Kamtchatka was not discovered by the Russians before the latter end of the last century. The first expedition towards those parts was made in 1696, by sixteen Cossacs, under the command of Lucas Semænoff Morosko, who was sent against the Koriacks of the river Opooka by Volodimir Atlafsoff commander of Anadirsk. Morosko continued his march until he came within four days journey of the river Kamtchatka, and having rendered a Kamtchadal village tributary, he returned to Anadirsk[5]. [Footnote 5: S. R. G. V. III. p. 72.] The following year Atlafsoff himself at the head of a larger body of troops penetrated into the Peninsula, took possession of the river Kamtchatka by erecting a cross upon its banks; and built some huts upon the spot, where Upper Kamtchatkoi Ostrog now stands. [Sidenote: That Peninsula conquered and colonised by the Russians.] These expeditions were continued during the following years: Upper and Lower Kamtchatkoi Ostrogs and Bolcheretsk were built; the Southern district conquered and colonised; and in 1711 the whole Peninsula was finally reduced under the dominion of the Russians. During some years the possession of Kamtchatka brought very little advantage to the crown, excepting the small tribute of furs exacted from the inhabitants. The Russians indeed occasionally hunted in that Peninsula foxes, wolves, ermines, sables, and other animals, whose valuable skins form an extensive article of commerce among the Eastern nations. But the fur trade carried on from thence was inconsiderable; until the Russians discovered the islands situated between Asia and America, in a series of voyages, the journals of which will be exhibited in the subsequent translation. Since these discoveries, the variety of rich furs, which are procured from those Islands, has greatly encreased the trade of Kamtchatka, and rendered it a very important branch of the Russian commerce. The Peninsula of Kamtchatka lies between 51 and 62 degrees of North latitude, and 173 and 182 of longitude from the Isle of Fero. It is bounded on the East and South by the Sea of Kamtchatka, on the West by the Seas of Ochotsk and Penshinsk, and on the North by the country of the Koriacs. [Sidenote: Present State of Kamtchatka.] It is divided into four districts, Bolcheresk, Tigilskaia Krepost, Verchnei or Upper Kamtchatkoi Ostrog, and Nishnei or Lower Kamtchatkoi Ostrog. [Sidenote: Government] The government is vested in the chancery of Bolcheresk, which depends upon and is subject to the inspection of the chancery of Ochotsk. The whole Russian force stationed in the Peninsula consists of no more than three hundred men[6]. [Footnote 6: Journal of St. Petersburg for April 1777.] [Sidenote: Population.] The present population of Kamtchatka is very small, amounting to scarce four thousand souls. Formerly the inhabitants were more numerous, but in 1768, that country was greatly depopulated by the ravages of the small-pox, by which disorder five thousand three hundred and sixty-eight persons were carried off. There are now only seven hundred and six males in the whole Peninsula who are tributary, and an hundred and fourteen in the Kuril Isles, which are subject to Russia. [Sidenote: Tribute.] The fixed annual tribute consists in 279 sables, 464 red foxes, 50 sea-otters with a dam, and 38 cub sea-otters. All furs exported from Kamtchatka pay a duty of 10 per cent. to the crown; the tenth of the cargoes brought from the new discovered islands is also delivered into the customs. [Sidenote: Volcanos.] Many traces of Volcanos have been observed in this Peninsula; and there are some mountains, which are at present in a burning state. The most considerable of these Volcanos is situated near the Lower Ostrog. In 1762 a great noise was heard issuing from the inside of that mountain, and flames of fire were seen to burst from different parts. These flames were immediately succeeded by a large stream of melted snow water, which flowed into the neighbouring valley, and drowned two Kamtchadals, who were at that time upon an hunting party. The ashes, and other combustible matter, thrown from the mountain, spread to the circumference of three hundred versts. In 1767 there was another discharge, but less considerable. Every night flames of fire were observed streaming from the mountain; and the eruption which attended them, did no small damage to the inhabitants of the Lower Ostrog. Since that year no flames have been seen; but the mountain emits a constant smoke. The same phænomenon is also observed upon another mountain, called Tabaetshinskian. [Sidenote: Productions.] The face of the country throughout the Peninsula is chiefly mountainous. It produces in some parts birch, poplars, alders, willows, underwood, and berries of different sorts. Greens and other vegetables are raised with great facility; such as white cabbage, turneps, radishes, beetroot, carrots, and some cucumbers. Agriculture is in a very low state, which is chiefly owing to the nature of the soil and the severe hoar frosts; for though some trials have been made with respect to the cultivation of corn, and oats, barley and rye have been sown; yet no crop has ever been procured sufficient in quality or quality to answer the pains and expence of raising it. Hemp however has of late years been cultivated with great success[7]. [Footnote 7: Journal of St. Petersburg.] Every year a vessel, belonging to the crown, sails from Ochotsk to Kamtchatka laden with salt, provisions, corn, and Russian manufactures; and returns in June or July of the following year with skins and furs. CHAP. II. General idea of the commerce carried on to the New Discovered Islands.--Equipment of the vessels.--Risks of the trade, profits, &c. Since the conclusion of Beering's voyage, which was made at the expence of the crown, the prosecution of the New Discoveries began by him has been almost entirely carried on by individuals. These persons were principally merchants of Irkutsk, Yakutsk, and other natives of Siberia, who formed themselves into small trading companies, and fitted out vessels at their joint expence. [Sidenote: Equipment of the vessels.] Most of the vessels which are equipped for these expeditions are two masted: they are commonly built without iron, and in general so badly constructed, that it is wonderful how they can weather so stormy a sea. They are called in Russian Skitiki or sewed vessels, because the planks are sewed together with thongs of leather. Some few are built in the river of Kamtchatka; but they are for the most part constructed at the haven of Ochotsk. The largest of these vessels are manned with seventy men, and the smallest with forty. The crew generally consists of an equal number of Russians and Kamtchadals. The latter occasion a considerable saving, as their pay is small; they also resist, more easily than the former, the attacks of the scurvy. But Russian mariners are more enterprising and more to be depended upon in time of danger than the others; some therefore are unavoidably necessary. [Sidenote: Expences attending this trade.] The expences of building and fitting out the vessels are very considerable: for there is nothing at Ochotsk but timber for their construction. Accordingly cordage, sails, and some provisions, must be brought from Yakutsk upon horses. The dearness of corn and flour, which must be transported from the districts lying about the river Lena, renders it impossible to lay-in any large quantity for the subsistence of the crew during a voyage, which commonly lasts three or four years. For this reason no more is provided, than is necessary to supply the Russian mariners with quass and other fermented liquors. From the excessive scarcity of cattle both at Ochotsk and [8]Kamtchatka very little provision is laid in at either of those places: but the crew provide themselves with a large store of the flesh of sea animals, which are caught and cured upon Beering's Island, where the vessels for the most part winter. [Footnote 8: In 1772 there were only 570 head of cattle upon the whole Peninsula. A cow sold from 50 to 60 Roubles, an ox from 60 to 100. A pound of fresh beef sold upon an average for 12-1/2 copecs. The excessive dearness of this price will be easily conceived, when it is known, that at Moscow a pound of beef sells for about three copecs. Journ. St. Petersb.] After all expences are paid, the equipment of each vessel ordinarily costs from 15,000 to 20,000 Roubles. And sometimes the expences amount to 30,000. Every vessel is divided into a certain number of shares, generally from thirty to fifty; and each share is worth from 300 to 500 Roubles. The risk of the trade is very great, as shipwrecks are common in the sea of Kamtchatka, which is full of rocks and very tempestuous. Besides, the crews are frequently surprised and killed by the islanders, and the vessels destroyed. [Sidenote: Profits.] In return the profits arising from these voyages are very considerable, and compensate the inconveniencies and dangers attending them. For if a ship comes back after having made a profitable voyage, the gain at the most moderate computation amounts to cent. per cent. and frequently to as much more. Should the vessel be capable of performing a second expedition, the expences are of course considerably lessened, and the shares are at a lower price. Some notion of the general profits arising from this trade (when the voyage is successful), may be deduced from the sale of a rich cargo of furs, brought to Kamtchatka, on the 2d of June, 1772, from the new-discovered islands, in a vessel belonging to Ivan Popoff. The tenth part of the skins being delivered to the customs, the remainder was distributed in fifty-five shares. Each share consisted of twenty sea-otters, sixteen black and brown foxes, ten red foxes, three sea-otter tails; and such a portion was sold upon the spot from 800 to 1000 Roubles: so that according to this price the whole lading was worth about 50,000 Roubles[9]. [Footnote 9: Georgi Reise Tom. I. p. 23, & seq. Journal of St. Petersburg.] CHAP. III. Furs and skins procured from _Kamtchatka_ and the New Discovered Islands. [Sidenote: Furs and Skins brought from Kamtchatka and the New Discovered Islands.] The principal furs and skins procured from the Peninsula of Kamtchatka and the New Discovered Islands are sea-otters, foxes, sables, ermines, wolves, bears, &c.--These furs are transported to Ochotsk by sea, and from thence carried to [10]Kiachta upon the frontiers of Siberia; where the greatest part of them are sold to the Chinese at a very considerable profit. [Footnote 10: See Part II. Chap. III.] [Sidenote: Sea-Otters.] Of all these furs the skins of the sea-otters are the richest and most valuable. Those animals resort in great numbers to the Aleutian and Fox Islands: they are called by the Russians Bobry Morski or sea-beavers, and sometimes Kamtchadal beavers, on account of the resemblance of their fur to that of the common beaver. From these circumstances several authors have been led into a mistake, and have supposed that this animal is of the beaver species; whereas it is the true sea-otter[11]. [Footnote 11: S.R.G. III. p. 530.] The female are called Matka or dams; and the cubs till five months old Medviedki or little bears, because their coat resembles that of a bear; they lose that coat after five months, and then are called Koschloki. The fur of the finest sort is thick and long, of a dark colour, and a fine glossy hue. They are taken four ways; struck with darts as they are sleeping upon their backs in the sea, followed in boats and hunted down till they are tired, surprised in caverns, and taken in nets. Their skins fetch different prices according to their quality. At Kamtchatka[12] the best sell for per skin from 30 to 40 Roubles. Middle sort 20 to 30 Worst sort 15 to 25 At Kiachta[13] the old and middle-aged sea-otter skins are sold to the Chinese per skin from 80 to 100 The worst sort 30 to 40. [Footnote 12: Journal St. Petersburg.] [Footnote 13: Pallas Reise. Part III. p. 137.] As these furs fetch so great a price to the Chinese, they are seldom brought into Russia for sale: and several, which have been carried to Moscow as a tribute, were purchased for 30 Roubles per skin; and sent from thence to the Chinese frontiers, where they were disposed of at a very high interest. [Sidenote: Different species of Foxes.] There are several species of Foxes, whose skins are sent from Kamtchatka into Siberia and Russia. Of these the principal are the black foxes, the Petsi or Arctic foxes, the red and stone foxes. The finest black foxes are caught in different parts of Siberia, and more commonly in the Northern regions between the Rivers Lena, Indigirka, and Kovyma: the black foxes found upon the remotest Eastern islands discovered by the Russians, or the Lyssie Ostrova, are not so valuable. They are very black and large; but the coat for the most part is as coarse as that of a wolf. The great difference in the fineness of the fur, between these foxes and those of Siberia, arises probably from the following circumstances. In those islands the cold is not so severe as in Siberia; and as there is no wood, the foxes live in holes and caverns of the rocks; whereas in the abovementioned parts of Siberia, there are large tracts of forests in which they find shelter. Some black foxes however are occasionally caught in the remotest Eastern Islands, not wholly destitute of wood, and these are of great value. In general the Chinese, who pay the dearest for black furs, do not give more for the black foxes of the new-discovered islands than from 20 to 30 Roubles per skin. The arctic or ice foxes are very common upon some of the New-Discovered Islands. They are called Petsi by the Russians, and by the Germans blue foxes. [Sidenote: Pennant's Synopsis.] Their natural colour is of a bluish grey or ash colour; but they change their coat at different ages, and in differerent seasons of the year. In general they are born brown, are white in winter, and brown in summer; and in spring and autumn, as the hair gradually falls off, the coat is marked with different specks and crosses. At Kiachta[14] all the several varieties sell upon an average to the Chinese per skin from 50 copecs to 2-2/3 Roubles. Stone Foxes at Kamtchatka per skin from 1 to 2-1/2 Red Foxes from 80 copecs to 1 80 copecs. At Kiachta from 80 copecs to 9 Common wolves skins at per skin 2 Best sort per skin from 8 to 16 Sables per ditto 2-1/2 to 10 [Footnote 14: Pallas Reise.] A pood of the best sea-horse teeth[15] sells At Yakutsk for 10 Roubles. Of the middling 8 Inferior ditto from 5 to 7. [Footnote 15: S. R. G. V. III.] Four, five, or six teeth generally weigh a pood, and sometimes, but very rarely, three. They are sold to the Chinese, Monguls, and Calmucs. ACCOUNT OF THE NEW DISCOVERIES MADE BY THE RUSSIANS IN THE EASTERN OCEAN, BETWEEN KAMTCHATKA AND AMERICA. TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN. WITH NOTES BY THE TRANSLATOR. ACCOUNT OF THE RUSSIAN DISCOVERIES. CHAP. I. Commencement and progress of the _Russian_ Discoveries in the sea of _Kamtchatka_--General division of the New Discovered Islands. A Thirst after riches was the chief motive which excited the Spaniards to the discovery of America; and which turned the attention of other maritime nations to that quarter. The same passion for riches occasioned, about the middle of the sixteenth century, the discovery and conquest of Northern Asia, a country, before that time, as unknown to the Europeans, as Thule to the ancients. [Sidenote: Conquest of Siberia.] The first foundation of this conquest was laid by the celebrated Yermac[16], at the head of a band of adventurers, less civilized, but at the same time, not so inhuman as the conquerors of America. By the accession of this vast territory, now known by the name of Siberia, the Russians have acquired an extent of empire never before attained by any other nation. [Footnote 16: The reader will find an account of this conquest by Yermac in Part II. Chap. I.] [Sidenote: Commencement of the New Discoveries.] The first project[17] for making discoveries in that tempestuous sea, which lies between Kamtchatka and America, was conceived and planned by Peter I. the greatest sovereign who ever sat upon the Russian throne, until it was adorned by the present empress. The nature and completion of this project under his immediate successors are well known to the public from the relation of the celebrated Muller. [Sidenote: Their progress.] No sooner had [18]Beering and Tschirikoff, in the prosecution of this plan, opened their way to islands abounding in valuable furs, than private merchants immediately engaged with ardour in similar expeditions; and, within a period of ten years, more important discoveries were made by these individuals, at their own private cost, than had been hitherto effected by all the expensive efforts of the crown. [Footnote 17: There seems a want of connection in this place, which will be cleared up by considering, that, by the conquest of Siberia, the Russians advanced to the shores of the Eastern Ocean, the scene of the discoveries here alluded to.] [Footnote 18: Beering had already made several expeditions in the sea of Kamtchatka, by orders of the crown, before he undertook the voyage mentioned in the text. In 1728, he departed from the mouth of the Kamtchatka river, in company with Tschirikoff. The purport of this voyage was to ascertain, whether the two Continents of Asia and America were separated; and Peter I. a short time before his death, had drawn up instructions with his own hand for that purpose. Beering coasted the Eastern shore of Siberia as high as latitude 67° 18´; but made no discovery of the opposite Continent. In 1729, he set sail again for the prosecution of the same design; but this second attempt equally failed of success. In 1741, Beering and Tschirikoff went out upon the celebrated expedition (alluded to in the text, and which is so often mentioned in the course of this work) towards the coasts of America. This expedition led the way to all the important discoveries since made by the Russians. Beering's vessel was wrecked in December of the same year; and Tschirikoff landed at Kamtchatka on the 9th of October, 1742. S. R. G. III. Nachrichten von See Reisen, &c. and Robertson's History of America, Vol. I. p. 273, & seq.] Soon after the return of Beering's crew from the island where he was ship-wrecked and died, and which is called after his name, the inhabitants of Kamtchatka ventured over to that island, to which the sea-otters and other sea-animals were accustomed to resort in great numbers. Mednoi Ostroff, or Copper Island, which takes that appellation from large masses of native copper found upon the beach, and which lies full in sight of Beering's Isle, was an easy and speedy discovery. These two small uninhabited spots were for some time the only islands that were known; until a scarcity of land and sea-animals, whose numbers were greatly diminished by the Russian hunters, occasioned other expeditions. Several of the vessels which were sent out upon these voyages were driven by stormy weather to the South-east; and discovered by that means the Aleütian Isles, situated about the 195th[19] degree of longitude, and but moderately peopled. [Footnote 19: The author reckons, throughout this treatise, the longitude from the first meridian of the isle of Fero. The longitude and latitude, which he gives to the Fox Islands, corresponds exactly with those in which they are laid down upon the General Map of Russia. The longitude of Beering's, Copper Island, and of the Aleütian Isles, are somewhat different. See Advertisement relating to the Charts, and also Appendix I. N^o IV.] From the year 1745, when it seems these islands were first visited, until 1750, when the first tribute of furs was brought from thence to Ochotsk, the government appears not to have been fully informed of their discovery. In the last mentioned year, one Lebedeff was commander of Kamtchatka. From 1755 to 1760, Captain Tsheredoff and Lieutenant Kashkareff were his successors. In 1760, Feodor Ivanovitch Soimonoff, governor of Tobolsk, turned his attention to the abovementioned islands; and, the same year, Captain Rtistsheff, at Ochotsk, instructed Lieutenant Shmaleff, the same who was afterwards commander in Kamtchatka, to promote and favour all expeditions in those seas. Until this time, all the discoveries subsequent to Beering's voyage were made, without the interposition of the court, by private merchants in small vessels fitted out at their own expence. [Sidenote: The Empress promotes all attempts towards New Discoveries.] The present Empress (to whom every circumstance which contributes to aggrandize the Russian empire is an object of attention) has given new life to these discoveries. The merchants engaged in them have been animated by recompences. The importance and true position of the Russian islands have been ascertained by an expensive voyage[20], made by order of the crown; and much additional information will be derived from the journals and charts of the officers employed in that expedition, whenever they shall be published. [Footnote 20: The author here alludes to the secret expedition of Captain Krenitzin and Levaheff, whose journal and chart were sent, by order of the Empress of Russia, to Dr. Robertson. See Robertson's History of America, Vol. I. p. 276 and 460. See Appendix I. N^o I.] Meanwhile, we may rest assured, that several modern geographers have erred in advancing America too much to the West, and in questioning the extent of Siberia Eastwards, as laid down by the Russians. It appears, indeed, evident, that the accounts and even conjectures of the celebrated Muller, concerning the position of those distant regions, are more and more confirmed by facts; in the same manner as the justness of his supposition concerning the form of the coast of the sea of Ochotsk[21] has been lately established. With respect to the extent of Siberia, it appears almost beyond a doubt from the most recent observations, that its Eastern extremity is situated beyond[22] 200 degrees of longitude. In regard to the Western coasts of America, all the navigations to the New Discovered Islands evidently shew, that, between 50 and 60 degrees of latitude, that Continent advances no where nearer to Asia than the [23]coasts touched at by Beering and Tschirikoff, or about 236 degrees of longitude. [Footnote 21: Mr. Muller formerly conjectured, that the coast of the sea of Ochotsk stretched South-west towards the river Ud; and from thence to the mouth of the Amoor South-east: and the truth of this conjecture had been since confirmed by a coasting voyage made by Captain Synd.] [Footnote 22: Appendix I. N^o I.] [Footnote 23: Appendix I. N^o II.] As to the New Discovered Islands, no credit must be given to a chart published in the Geographical Calendar of St. Petersburg for 1774; in which they are inaccurately laid down. Nor is the antient chart of the New Discoveries, published by the Imperial Academy, and which seems to have been drawn up from mere reports, more deserving of attention[24]. [Footnote 24: Appendix I. N^o IV.] [Sidenote: Position of the New Discovered Islands.] The late navigators give a far different description of the Northern Archipelago. From their accounts we learn, that Beering's Island is situated due East from Kamtchatkoi Noss, in the 185th degree of longitude. Near it is Copper Island; and, at some distance from them, East-south-east, there are three small islands, named by their inhabitants, Attak, Semitshi, and Shemiya: these are properly the Aleütian Isles; they stretch from West-north-west towards East-south-east, in the same direction as Beering's and Copper Islands, in the longitude of 195, and latitude 54. To the North-east of these, at the distance of 600 or 800 versts, lies another group of six or more islands, known by the name of the Andreanoffskie Ostrova. South-east, or East-south, of these, at the distance of about 15 degrees, and North by East of the Aleütian, begins the chain of Lyssie Ostrova, or Fox Islands: this chain of rocks and isles stretches East-north-east between 56 and 61 degrees of North latitude, from 211 degrees of longitude most probably to the Continent of America; and in a line of direction, which crosses with that in which the Aleütian isles lie. The largest and most remarkable of these islands are Umnak, Aghunalashka, or, as it is commonly shortened, Unalashka, Kadyak, and Alagshak. Of these and the Aleütian Isles, the distance and position are tolerably well ascertained by ships reckonings, and latitudes taken by pilots. But the situation of the Andreanoffsky Isles[25] is still somewhat doubtful, though probably their direction is East and West; and some of them may unite with that part of the Fox Islands which are most contiguous to the opposite Continent. [Footnote 25: These are the same islands which are called, by Mr. Stæhlin, Anadirsky Islands, from their supposed vicinity to the river Anadyr. See Appendix I. N^o V.] The main land of America has not been touched at by any of the vessels in the late expeditions; though possibly the time is not far distant when some of the Russian adventurers will fall in with that coast[26]. More to the North perhaps, at least as high as 70 degrees latitude, the Continent of America may stretch out nearer to the coast of the Tschutski; and form a large promontory, accompanied with islands, which have no connection with any of the preceding ones. That such a promontory really exists, and advances to within a very small distance from Tschukotskoi Noss, can hardly be doubted; at least it seems to be confirmed by all the latest accounts which have been procured from those parts[27]. That prolongation, therefore, of America, which by Delisle is made to extend Westward, and is laid down just opposite to Kamtchatka, between 50 and 60 degrees latitude, must be entirely removed; for many of the voyages related in this collection lay through that part of the ocean, where this imaginary Continent was marked down. [Footnote 26: Appendix I. N^o VI.] [Footnote 27: Appendix I. N^o VII.] It is even more than probable, that the Aleütian, and some of the Fox Islands, now well known, are the very same which Beering fell-in with upon his return; though, from the unsteadiness of his course, their true position could not be exactly laid down in the chart of that expedition[28]. [Footnote 28: This error is however so small, and particularly with respect to the more Eastern coasts and islands, as laid down in Beering's chart, such as Cape Hermogenes, Toomanoi, Shumaghin's Island, and mountain of St. Dolmar, that if they were to be placed upon the general map of Russia, which is prefixed to this work, they would coincide with the very chain of the Fox Islands.] As the sea of Kamtchatka is now so much frequented, these conjectures cannot remain long undecided; and it is only to be wished, that some expeditions were to be made North-east, in order to discover the nearest coasts of America. For there is no reason to expect a successful voyage by taking any other direction; as all the vessels, which have steered a more southerly course, have sailed through an open sea, without meeting with any signs of land. A very full and judicious account of all the discoveries hitherto made in the Eastern ocean may be expected from the celebrated Mr. Muller[29]. Meanwhile, I hope the following account, extracted from the original papers, and procured from the best intelligence, will be the more acceptable to the public; as it may prove an inducement to the Russians to publish fuller and more circumstantial relations. Besides, the reader will find here a narrative more authentic and accurate, than what has been published in the abovementioned calendar[30]; and several mistakes in that memoir are here corrected. [Footnote 29: Mr. Muller has already arranged and put in order several of the journals, and sent them to the board of admiralty at St. Petersburg, where they are at present kept, together with the charts of the respective voyages.] [Footnote 30: A German copy of the treatise alluded to in the text, was sent, by its author, Mr. Stæhlin Counsellor of State to the Empress of Russia, to the late Dr. Maty; and it is mentioned, in the Philosophical Transactions for 1774, under the following title: "A New Map and Preliminary Description of the New Archipelago in the North, discovered a few Years ago by the Russians in the N. E. beyond Kamtchatka." A translation of this treatise was published the same year by Heydinger.] CHAP. II. Voyages in 1745.--First discovery of the _Aleütian Isles_ by _Michael Nevodtsikoff_. A voyage made in the year 1745 by Emilian Bassoff is scarce worth mentioning; as he only reached Beering's Island, and two smaller ones, which lie South of the former, and returned on the 31st of July, 1746. [Sidenote: Voyage of Nevodtsikoff in 1745.] The first voyage which is in any wise remarkable, was undertaken in the year 1745. The vessel was a Shitik named Eudokia, fitted out at the expence of Aphanassei Tsebaefskoi, Jacob Tsiuproff and others; she sailed from the Kamtchatka river Sept. 19, under the command of Michael Nevodtsikoff a native of Tobolsk. [Sidenote: Discovers the Aleütian Islands.] Having discovered three unknown islands, they wintered upon one of them, in order to kill sea-otters, of which there was a large quantity. These islands were undoubtedly the nearest[31] Aleütian Islands: the language of the inhabitants was not understood by an interpreter, whom they had brought with them from Kamtchatka. For the purpose therefore of learning this language, they carried back with them one of the Islanders; and presented him to the chancery of Bolcheretsk, with a false account of their proceedings. This islander was examined as soon as he had acquired a slight knowledge of the Russian language; and as it is said, gave the following report. He was called Temnac, and Att was the name of the island of which he was a native. At some distance from thence lies a great island called Sabya, of which the inhabitants are denominated Rogii: these inhabitants, as the Russians understood or thought they understood him, made crosses, had books and fire-arms, and navigated in baidars or leathern canoes. At no great distance from the island where they wintered, there were two well-inhabited islands: the first lying E. S. E. and S. E. by South, the second East and East by South. The above-mentioned Islander was baptised under the name of Paul, and sent to Ochotsk. [Footnote 31: The small group of islands lying S. E. of Beering's Island, are the real Aleütian isles: they are sometimes called the Nearest Aleütian Islands; and the Fox Islands the Furthest Aleütian Isles.] As the misconduct of the ship's crew towards the natives was suspected, partly from the loss of several men, and partly from the report of those Russians, who were not concerned in the disorderly conduct of their companions, a strict examination took place; by which the following circumstances relating to the voyage were brought to light. [Sidenote: Narrative of the Voyage.] According to the account of some of the crew, and particularly of the commander, after six days sailing they came in sight of the first island on the 24th of September, at mid-day. They sailed by, and towards evening they discovered the second island; where they lay at anchor until the next morning. The 25th several inhabitants appeared on the coast, and the pilot was making towards shore in the small boat, with an intention of landing; but observing their numbers increase to about an hundred, he was afraid of venturing among them, although they beckoned to him. He contented himself therefore with flinging some needles amongst them: the islanders in return threw into the boat some sea-fowl of the cormorant kind. He endeavoured to hold a conversation with them by means of the interpreters, but no one could understand their language. And now the crew endeavoured to row the vessel out to sea; but the wind being contrary, they were driven to the other side of the same island, where they cast anchor. The 26th, Tsiuproff having landed with some of the crew in order to look for water, met several inhabitants: he gave them some tobacco and small Chinese pipes; and received in return a present of a stick, upon which the head of a seal was carved. They endeavoured to wrest his hunting gun from him; but upon his refusing to part with it and retiring to the small boat, the islanders ran after him; and seized the rope by which the boat was made fast to shore. This violent attack obliged Tsiuproff to fire; and having wounded one person in the hand, they all let go their hold; and he rowed off to the ship. The Savages no sooner saw that their companion was hurt, than they threw off their cloaths, carried the wounded person naked into the sea, and washed him. In consequence of this encounter the ship's crew would not venture to winter at this place, but rowed back again to the other island, where they came to an anchor. The next morning Tsiuproff, and a certain Shaffyrin landed with a more considerable party: they observed several traces of inhabitants; but meeting no one they returned to the ship, and coasted along the island. The following day the Cossac Shekurdin went on shore, accompanied by five sailors: two of whom he sent back with a supply of water; and remained himself with the others in order to hunt sea-otters. At night they came to some dwellings inhabited by five families: upon their approach the natives abandoned their huts with precipitation, and hid themselves among the rocks. Shekurdin no sooner returned to the ship, than he was again sent on shore with a larger company, in order to look out for a proper place to lay up the vessel during winter: In their way they observed fifteen islanders upon an height; and threw them some fragments of dried fish in order to entice them to approach nearer. But as this overture did not succeed, Tsiuproff, who was one of the party, ordered some of the crew to mount the height, and to seize one of the inhabitants, for the purpose of learning their language: this order was accordingly executed, notwithstanding the resistance which the islanders made with their bone spears; the Russians immediately returned with their prisoner to the ship. They were soon afterwards driven to sea by a violent storm, and beat about from the 2d to the 9th of October, during which time they lost their anchor and boat; at length they came back to the same island, where they passed the winter. Soon after their landing they found in an adjacent hut the dead bodies of two of the inhabitants, who had probably been killed in the last encounter. In their way the Russians were met by an old woman, who had been taken prisoner, and set at liberty. She was accompanied with thirty-four islanders of both sexes, who all came dancing to the sound of a drum; and brought with them a present of coloured earth. Pieces of cloth, thimbles, and needles, were distributed among them in return; and they parted amicably. Before the end of October, the same persons, together with the old woman and several children, returned dancing as before, and brought birds, fish, and other provision. Having passed the night with the Russians, they took their leave. Soon after their departure, Tsiuproff, Shaffyrin, and Nevodsikoff, accompanied with seven of the crew, went after them, and found them among the rocks. In this interview the natives behaved in the most friendly manner, and exchanged a baidar and some skins for two shirts. They were observed to have hatchets of sharpened stone, and needles made of bone: they lived upon the flesh of sea-otters, seals, and sea-lions, which they killed with clubs and bone lances. So early as the 24th of October, Tsiuproff had sent ten persons, under the command of Larion Belayeff, upon a reconnoitring party. The latter treated the inhabitants in an hostile manner; upon which they defended themselves as well as they could with their bone lances. This resistance gave him a pretext for firing; and accordingly he shot the whole number, amounting to fifteen men, in order to get at their wives. Shekurdin, shocked at these cruel proceedings, retired unperceived to the ship, and brought an account of all that had passed. Tsiuproff, instead of punishing these cruelties as they deserved, was secretly pleased with them; for he himself was affronted at the islanders for having refused to give him an iron bolt, which he saw in their possession. He had, in consequence of their refusal, committed several acts of hostilities against them; and had even formed the horrid design of poisoning them with a mixture of corrosive sublimate. In order however to preserve appearances, he dispatched Shekurdin and Nevodsikoff to reproach Belayeff for his disorderly conduct; but sent him at the same time, by the above-mentioned persons, more powder and ball. The Russians continued upon this island, where they caught a large quantity of sea otters, until the 14th of September, 1746; when, no longer thinking themselves secure, they put to sea with an intention of looking out for some uninhabited islands. Being however overtaken by a violent storm, they were driven about until the 30th of October, when their vessel struck upon a rocky shore, and was shipwrecked, with the loss of almost all the tackle, and the greatest part of the furs. Worn out at length with cold and fatigue, they ventured, the first of November, to penetrate into the interior part of the country, which they found rocky and uneven. Upon their coming to some huts, they were informed, that they were cast away upon the island of Karaga, the inhabitants of which were tributary to Russia, and of the Koraki tribe. The islanders behaved to them with great kindness, until Belayeff had the imprudence to make proposals to the wife of the chief. The woman gave immediate intelligence to her husband; and the natives were incensed to such a degree, that they threatened the whole crew with immediate death: but means were found to pacify them, and they continued to live with the Russians upon the same good terms as before. The 30th of May, 1747, a party of Olotorians made a descent upon the island in three baidars, and attacked the natives; but, after some loss on both sides, they went away. They returned soon after with a larger force, and were again forced to retire. But as they threatened to come again in a short time, and to destroy all the inhabitants who paid tribute, the latter advised the Russians to retire from the island, and assisted them in building two baidars. With these they put to sea the 27th of June, and landed the 21st of July at Kamtchatka, with the rest of their cargo, consisting of 320 sea-otters, of which, they paid the tenth into the customs. During this expedition twelve men were lost. CHAP. III. Successive voyages, from_ 1747 to 1753, to _Beering's_ and _Copper Island,_ and to the _Aleütian Isles_.--Some account of the inhabitants. In the year 1747[32] two vessels sailed from the Kamtchatka river, according to a permission granted by the chancery of Bolckeretsk for hunting sea-otters. One was fitted out by Andrew Wsevidoff, and carried forty-six men, besides eight Cossacs: the other belonged to Feodor Cholodiloff, Andrew Tolstyk, and company; and had on board a crew, consisting of forty-one Russians and Kamtchadals, with six Cossacs. [Footnote 32: It may be necessary to inform the reader, that, in this and the two following chapters, some circumstances are occasionally omitted, which are to be found in the original. These omissions relate chiefly to the names of some of the partners engaged in the equipments, and to a detail of immaterial occurrences prior to the actual departure of the vessels.] The latter vessel sailed the 20th of October, and was forced, by stress of weather and other accidents, to winter at Beering's Island. From thence they departed May the 31st, 1748, and touched at another small island, in order to provide themselves with water and other necessaries. They then steered S. E. for a considerable way without discovering any new islands; and, being in great want of provisions, returned into Kamtchatka River, August 14, with a cargo of 250 old sea-otter-skins, above 100 young ones, 148 petsi or arctic fox-skins, which were all slain upon Beering's Island. We have no sufficient account of Wsevidoff's voyage. All that is known amounts only to this, that he returned the 25th of July, 1749, after having probably touched upon one of the nearest Aleütian Isles which was uninhabited: his cargo consisted of the skins of 1040 sea-otters, and 2000 arctic foxes. [Sidenote: Voyage of Emilian Yugoff.] Emilian Yugoff, a merchant of Yakutsk, obtained from the senate of St. Petersburg the permission of fitting out four vessels for himself and his associates. He procured, at the same time, the exclusive privilege of hunting sea-otters upon Beering's and Copper Island during these expeditions; and for this monopoly he agreed to deliver to the customs the tenth of the furs. October 6, 1750, he put to sea from Bolcheresk, in the sloop John, manned with twenty-five Russians and Kamtchadals, and two Cossacs: he was soon overtaken by a storm, and the vessel driven on shore between the mouths of the rivers Kronotsk and Tschasminsk. October 1751, he again set sail. He had been commanded to take on board some officers of the Russian navy; and, as he disobeyed this injunction, the chancery of Irkutsk issued an order to confiscate his ship and cargo upon his return. The ship returned on the 22d of July, 1754, to New Kamtchatkoi Ostrog, laden with the skins of 755 old sea-otters, of 35 cub sea-otters, of 447 cubs of sea-bears, and of 7044 arctic fox-skins: of the latter 2000 were white, and 1765 black. These furs were procured upon Beering's and Copper Island. Yugoff himself died upon the last-mentioned island. The cargo of the ship was, according to the above-mentioned order, sealed and properly secured. But as it appeared that certain persons had deposited money in Yugoff's hand, for the purpose of equipping a second vessel, the crown delivered up the confiscated cargo, after reserving the third part according to the original stipulation. This kind of charter-company, if it may be so called, being soon dissolved for misconduct and want of sufficient stock, other merchants were allowed the privilege of fitting out vessels, even before the return of Yugoff's ship; and these persons were more fortunate in making new discoveries than the above-mentioned monopolist. [Sidenote: Voyage of the Boris and Glebb.] Nikiphor Trapesnikoff, a merchant of Irkutsk, obtained the permission of sending out a ship, called the Boris and Glebb, upon the condition of paying, besides the tribute which might be exacted, the tenth of all the furs. The Cossac Sila Sheffyrin went on board this vessel for the purpose of collecting the tribute. They sailed in August, 1749, from the Kamtchatka river; and re-entered it the 16th of the same month, 1753, with a large cargo of furs. In the spring of the same year, they had touched upon an unknown island, probably one of the Aleütians, where several of the inhabitants were prevailed upon to pay a tribute of sea-otter skins. The names of the islanders who had been made tributary, were Igya, Oeknu, Ogogoektack, Shabukiauck, Alak, Tutun, Ononushan, Rotogèi, Tschinitu, Vatsch, Ashagat, Avyjanishaga, Unashayupu, Lak, Yanshugalik, Umgalikan, Shati, Kyipago, and Oloshkot[33]; another Aleütian had contributed three sea-otters. They brought with them 320 best sea-otter skins, 480 of the second, and 400 of the third sort, 500 female and middle aged, and 220 medwedki or young ones. [Footnote 33: The author here remarks in a note, that the proper names of the islanders mentioned in this place, and in other parts, bear a surprising resemblance, both in their sound and termination, to those of the Greenlanders.] [Sidenote: Voyage of Andrew Tolstyk to the Aleütian Isles, 1749.] Andrew Tolstyk, a merchant of Selenginsk, having obtained permission from the chancery of Bolsheretsk, refitted the same ship which had made a former voyage; he sailed from Kamtchatka August the 19th, 1749, and returned July the 3d, 1752. According to the commander's account, the ship lay at anchor from the 6th of September, 1749, to the 20th of May, 1750, before Beering's Island, where they caught only 47 sea-otters. From thence they made to those Aleütian Islands, which were[34] first discovered by Nevodsikoff, and slew there 1662 old and middle-aged sea-otters, and 119 cubs; besides which, their cargo consisted of the skins of 720 blue foxes, and of 840 young sea-bears. [Footnote 34: See Chap. II.] The inhabitants of these islands appeared to have never before paid tribute; and seemed to be a-kin to the Tschuktski tribe, their women being ornamented with different figures sewed into the skin in the manner of that people, and of the Tungusians of Siberia. They differed however from them, by having two small holes cut through the bottom of their under-lips, through each of which they pass a bit of the sea-horse tush, worked into the form of a tooth, with a small button at one end to keep it within the mouth when it is placed in the hole. They had killed, without being provoked, two of the Kamtchadals who belonged to the ship. Upon the third Island some inhabitants had payed tribute; their names were reported to be Anitin, Altakukor, and Aleshkut, with his son Atschelap. The weapons of the whole island consisted of no more than twelve spears pointed with flint, and one dart of bone pointed with the same; and the Russians observed in the possession of the natives two figures, carved out of wood, resembling sea-lions. [Sidenote: Voyage of Vorobieff, 1750.] August 3, 1750, the vessel Simeon and John, fitted out by the above-mentioned Wsevidoff, agent for the Russian merchant A. Rybenskoi, and manned with fourteen Russians (who were partly merchants and partly hunters) and thirty Kamtchadals, sailed out for the discovery of new islands, under the command of the Cossac Vorobieff. They were driven by a violent current and tempestuous weather to a small desert island, whose position is not determined; but which was probably one of those that lie near Beering's Island. The ship being so shattered by the storm, that it was no longer in a condition to keep the sea, Vorobieff built another small vessel with drift-wood, which he called Jeremiah; in which he arrived at Kamtchatka in Autumn, 1752. Upon the above-mentioned island were caught 700 old and 120 cub sea-otters, 1900 blue foxes, 5700 black sea-bears, and 1310 Kotiki, or cub sea-bears. A voyage made about this time from Anadyrsk deserves to be mentioned. [Sidenote: Voyage of Novikoff and Bacchoff from Anadyrsk.] August 24, 1749, Simeon Novikoff of Yakutsk, and Ivan Bacchoff of Ustyug, agents for Ivan Shilkin, sailed from Anadyrsk into the mouth of the Kamtchatka river. They assigned the insecurity of the roads as their reason for coming from Anadyrsk to Kamtchatka by sea; on this account, having determined to risk all the dangers of a sea voyage, they built a vessel one hundred and thirty versts above Anadyr, after having employed two years and five months in its construction. [Sidenote: Narrative of te Voyage.] The narrative of their expedition is as follows. In 1748, they sailed down the river Anadyr, and through two bays, called Kopeikina and Onemenskaya, where they found many sand banks, but passed round them without difficulty. From thence they steered into the exterior gulph, and waited for a favourable wind. Here they saw several Tschutski, who appeared upon the heights singly and not in bodies, as if to reconnoitre; which made them cautious. They had descended the river and its bays in nine days. In passing the large opening of the exterior bay, they steered between the beach, that lies to the left, and a rock near it; where, at about an hundred and twenty yards from the rock, the depth of water is from three to four fathoms. From the opening they steered E. S. E. about fifty versts, in about four fathom water; then doubled a sandy point, which runs out directly against the Tshuktshi coast, and thus reached the open sea. From the 10th of July to the 30th, they were driven about by tempestuous winds, at no great distance from the mouth of the Anadyr; and ran up the small river Katirka, upon whose banks dwell the Koriacs, a people tributary to Russia. The mouth of the river is from sixty to eighty yards broad, from three to four fathoms deep, and abounds in fish. From thence they put again to sea, and after having beat about for some time, they at length reached Beering's Island. [Sidenote: Shipwreck upon Beering's Island.] Here they lay at anchor from the 15th of September to the 30th of October, when a violent storm blowing right from the sea, drove the vessel upon the rocks, and dashed her to pieces. The crew however were saved: and now they looked out for the remains of Beering's wreck, in order to employ the materials for the constructing of a boat. They found indeed some remaining materials, but almost entirely rotten, and the iron-work corroded with rust. Having selected however the best cables, and what iron-work was immediately necessary, and collected drift-wood during the winter, they built with great difficulty a small boat, whose keel was only seventeen Russian ells and an half long, and which they named Capiton. In this they put to sea, and sailed in search of an unknown island, which they thought they saw lying North-east; but finding themselves mistaken, they tacked about, and stood far Copper Island: from thence they sailed to Kamtchatka, where they arrived at the time above-mentioned. The new constructed vessel was granted in property to Ivan Shilkin as some compensation for his losses, and with the privilege of employing it in a future expedition to the New Discovered Islands. Accordingly he sailed therein on the 7th of October, 1757, with a crew of twenty Russians, and the same number of Kamtchadals: he was accompanied by Studentzoff a Cossac, who was sent to collect the tribute for the crown. An account of this expedition will be given hereafter[35]. [Footnote 35: See Chap. V.] [Sidenote: Voyage of Durneff, in the St. Nicholas, 1754.] August, 1754, Nikiphor Trapesnikoff fitted out the Shitik St. Nicholas, which sailed from Kamtchatka under the command of the Cossac Kodion Durneff. He first touched at two of the Aleütian Isles, and afterwards upon a third, which had not been yet discovered. He returned to Kamtchatka in 1747. His cargo consisted of the skins of 1220 sea-otters, of 410 female, and 665 cubs; besides which, the crew had obtained in barter from the islanders the skins of 652 sea-otters, of 30 female ditto, and 50 cubs. [Sidenote: Narrative of the Voyage.] From an account delivered in the 3d of May, 1758, by Durneff and Sheffyrin, who was sent as collector of the tributes, it appears that they sailed in ten days as far as Ataku, one of the Aleütian Islands; that they remained there until the year 1757, and lived upon amicable terms with the natives. [Sidenote: Description of the Aleütian Isles.] The second island, which is nearest to Ataku, and which contains the greatest number of inhabitants, is called Agataku; and the third Shemya: they lie from forty to fifty versts asunder. [Sidenote: Account of inhabitants.] Upon all the three islands there are (exclusive of children) but sixty males, whom they made tributary. The inhabitants live upon roots which grow wild, and sea animals: they do not employ themselves in catching fish, although the rivers abound with all kinds of salmon, and the sea with turbot. Their cloaths are made of the skins of birds and of sea-otters. The Toigon or chief of the first island informed them by means of a boy, who understood the Russian language, that Eastward there are three large and well peopled islands, Ibiya, Ricksa, and Olas, whose inhabitants speak a different language. Sheffyrin and Durneff found upon the island three round copper plates, with some letters engraved upon them, and ornamented with foliage, which the waves had cast upon the shore: they brought them, together with other trifling curiosities, which they had procured from the natives, to New Kamtchatkoi Ostrog. Another ship built of larchwood by the same Trapesnikoff, which sailed in 1752 under the conduct of Alexei Drusinin a merchant of Kursk, had been wrecked at Beering's Island, where the crew constructed another vessel out of the wreck, which they named Abraham. In this vessel they bore away for the more distant islands; but being forced back by contrary winds to the same island, and meeting with the St. Nicholas upon the point of sailing for the Aleütian Isles, they embarked on that ship, after having left the new constructed vessel under the care of four of their own sailors. The crew had slain upon Beering's Island five sea-otters, 1222 arctic foxes, and 2500 sea-bears: their share of the furs, during their expedition in the St. Nicholas, amounted to the skins of 500 sea-otters, and of 300 cubs, exclusive of 200 sea-otter-skins, which they procured by barter. CHAP. IV. Voyages from 1753 to 1756. Some of the further _Aleütian_ or _Fox Islands_ touched at by _Serebranikoff's_ vessel.--Some account of the Natives. Three vessels were fitted out for the islands in 1753, one by Cholodiloff, a second by Serebranikoff agent for the merchant Rybenskoy, and the third by Ivan Krassilnikoff a merchant of Kamtchatka. [Sidenote: Cholodiloff's Ship sails from Kamchatka 1753.] Cholodiloff's ship sailed from Kamtchatka, the 19th of August, manned with thirty-four men; and anchored the 28th before Beering's Island, where they proposed to winter, in order to lay-in a flock of provisions: as they were attempting to land, the boat overset, and nine of the crew were drowned. June 30, 1754, they stood out to sea in quest of new discoveries: the weather however proving stormy and foggy, and the ship springing a leak, they were all in danger of perishing: in this situation they unexpectedly reached one of the Aleütian islands, were they lay from the 15th of September until the 9th of July, 1755. In the autumn of 1754 they were joined by a Kamtchadal, and a Koriac: these persons, together with four others, had deserted from Trapesnikoff's crew; and had remained upon the island in order to catch sea-otters for their own profit. Four of these deserters were killed by the islanders for having debauched their wives: but as the two persons above-mentioned were not guilty of the same disorderly conduct, the inhabitants supplied them with women, and lived with them upon the best terms. The crew slew upon this island above 1600 sea-otters, and came back safe to Kamtchatka in autumn 1755. [Sidenote: Departure of Serebranikoff's Vessel.] Serebranikoff's vessel sailed in July 1753, manned also with thirty-four Russians and Kamtchadals: they discovered several new islands, which were probably some of the more distant ones; but were not so fortunate in hunting sea-otters as Cholodiloff's crew. They steered S. E. and on the 17th of August anchored under an unknown island; whose inhabitants spoke a language they did not understand. Here they proposed looking out for a safe harbour; but were prevented by the coming on of a sudden storm, which carried away their anchor. The ship being tost about for several days towards the East, they discovered not far from the first island four others: still more to the East three other islands appeared in sight; but on neither of these were they able to land. [Sidenote: Shipwrecked upon one of the more distant Islands.] The vessel continued driving until the 2d of September, and was considerably shattered, when they fortunately came near an island and cast anchor before it; they were however again forced from this station, the vessel wrecked upon the coast, and the crew with difficulty reached the shore. This island seemed to be right opposite to Katyrskoi Noss in the peninsula of Kamtchatka, and near it they saw three others. Towards the end of September Demitri Trophin, accompanied with nine men, went out in the boat upon an hunting and reconnoitring party: they were attacked by a large body of inhabitants, who hurled darts from a small wooden engine, and wounded one of the company. The first fire however drove them back; and although they returned several times to the attack in numerous bodies, yet they were always repulsed without difficulty. [Sidenote: Account of the Inhabitants.] These savages mark and colour their faces like the Islanders above-mentioned; and also thrust pieces of bone through holes made in their under-lips. Soon afterwards the Russians were joined in a friendly manner by ten islanders, who brought the flesh of sea-animals and of sea-otters; this present was the more welcome, as they had lived for some time upon nothing but small shell-fish and roots; and had suffered greatly from hunger. Several toys were in return distributed among the savages. [Sidenote: The Crew construct another Vessel, and return to Kamtchatka.] The Russians remained until June, 1754, upon this island: at that time they departed in a small vessel, constructed from the remains of the wreck, and called the St. Peter and Paul: in this they landed at Katyrskoi Noss; where having collected 140 sea-horse teeth, they got safe to the mouth of the Kamtchatka river. During this voyage twelve Kamtchadals deserted; of whom six were slain, together with a female inhabitant, upon one of the most distant islands. The remainder, upon their return to Kamtchatka, were examined; and from them the following circumstances came to light. The island, where the ship was wrecked, is about 70 versts long, and 20 broad. Around it lie twelve other islands of different sizes, from five to ten versts distant from each other. Eight of them appear to be no more than five versts long. All these islands contain about a thousand souls. The dwellings of the inhabitants are provided with no other furniture than benches, and mats of platted grass[36]. Their dress consists of a kind of shirt made of bird-skins, and of an upper garment of intestines stitched together; they wear wooden caps, ornamented with a small piece of board projecting forwards, as it seemed, for a defence against the arrows. They are all provided with stone knives, and a few of them possess iron ones: their only weapons are arrows with points of bone or flint, which they shoot from a wooden instrument. There are no trees upon the island: it produces however the cow-parsnip[37], which grows at Kamtchatka. The climate is by no means severe, for the snow does not lie upon the ground above a month in the year. [Footnote 36: Matten aus einem gevissen Krautgeflochten.] [Footnote 37: Heracleum.] [Sidenote: Departure of Krassilnikoff's Vessel.] Krassilnikoff's vessel sailed in 1754, and anchored on the 18th of October before Beering's Island; where all the ships which make to the New Discovered Islands are accustomed to winter, in order to procure a stock of salted provisions from the sea-cows and other amphibious animals, that are found in great abundance. Here they refitted the vessel, which had been damaged by driving upon her anchor; and having laid in a sufficient store of all necessaries, weighed the 1st of August, 1754. The 10th they were in sight of an island, whose coast was lined with such a number of inhabitants, that they durst not venture ashore. Accordingly they stood out to sea, and being overtaken by a storm, they were reduced to great distress for want of water; at length they were driven upon Copper Island, where they landed; and having taken in wood and water, they again set sail. [Sidenote: Shipwrecked upon Copper Island.] They were beat back however by contrary winds, and dropped both their anchors near the shore; but the storm increasing at night, both the cables were broken, and the ship dashed to pieces upon the coast. All the crew were fortunately saved; and means were found to get ashore the ship's tackle, ammunition, guns, and the remains of the wreck; the provisions, however, were mostly spoiled. Here they were exposed to a variety of misfortunes; three of them were drowned on the 15th of October, as they were going to hunt; others almost perished with hunger, having no nourishment but small shell-fish and roots. On the 29th of December great part of the ship's tackle, and all the wood, which they had collected from the wreck, was washed away during an high sea. Notwithstanding their distresses, they continued their hunting parties, and caught 103 sea-otters, together with 1390 blue foxes. [Sidenote: The Crew reach Beering's Island in two Baidars.] In spring they put to sea for Beering's Island in two baidars, carrying with them all the ammunition, fire-arms, and remaining tackle. Having reached that island, they found the small vessel Abraham, under the care of the four sailors who had been left ashore by the crew of Trapesnikoff's ship: but as that vessel was not large enough to contain the whole number, together with their cargo of furs, they staid until Serebranikoff's and Tolstyk's vessels arrived. These took in eleven of the crew, with their part of the furs. Twelve remained at Beering's Island, where they killed great numbers of arctic foxes, and returned to Kamtchatka in the Abraham, excepting two, who joined Shilkin's crew. CHAP. V. Voyages from 1756 to 1758. [Sidenote: Voyage of Andrean Tolstyk in 1756 to the Aleütian Isles.] September 17, 1756, the vessel Andrean and Natalia, fitted out by Andrean Tolstyk, merchant of Selenginsk, and manned with thirty-eight Russians and Kamtchadals, sailed from the mouth of the Kamtchatka river. The autumnal storms coming on, and a scarcity of provisions ensuing, they made to Beering's Island, where they continued until the 14th of June 1757. As no sea-otters came on shore that winter, they killed nothing but seals, sea-lions, and sea-cows; whose flesh served them for provision, and their skins for the coverings of baidars. June 13, 1757, they weighed anchor, and after eleven days sailing came to Ataku, one of the Aleütian isles discovered by Nevodsikoff. Here they found the inhabitants, as well of that, as of the other two islands, assembled; these islanders had just taken leave of the crew of Trapesnikoff's vessel, which had sailed for Kamtchatka. The Russians seized this opportunity of persuading them to pay tribute; with this view they beckoned the Toigon, whose name was Tunulgasen: the latter recollected one of the crew, a Koriac, who had formerly been left upon these islands, and who knew something of their language. A copper kettle, a fur and cloth coat, a pair of breeches, stockings and boots, were bestowed upon this chief, who was prevailed upon by these presents to pay tribute. Upon his departure for his own island, he left behind him three women and a boy, in order to be taught the Russian language, which the latter very soon learned. The Russians wintered upon this island, and divided themselves, as usual, into different hunting parties: they were compelled, by stormy weather, to remain there until the 17th of June, 1758: before they went away, the above-mentioned chief returned with his family, and paid a year's tribute. This vessel brought to Kamtchatka the most circumstantial account of the Aleütian isles which had been yet received. [Sidenote: Account of those Islands.] The two largest contained at that time about fifty males, with whom the Russians had lived in great harmony. They heard of a fourth island, lying at some distance from the third, called by the natives Iviya, but which they did not reach on account of the tempestuous weather. The first island is about an hundred versts long and from five to twenty broad. They esteemed the distance from the first to the second, which lies East by South, to be about thirty versts, and about forty from the latter to the third, which stands South East. The original dress of the islanders was made of the skins of birds, sea-otters and seals, which were tanned; but the greatest part had procured from the Russians dog-skin coats, and under-garments of sheep-skin, which they were very fond of. They are represented as naturally talkative, quick of apprehension, and much attached to the Russians. Their dwellings are hollowed in the ground, and covered with wooden roofs resembling the huts in the peninsula of Kamtchatka. Their principal food is the flesh of sea animals, which they harpoon with their bone lances; they also feed upon several species of roots and berries: namely [38]cloud-berries, crake-berries, bilberries, and services. The rivulets abound with salmon, and other fish of the trout kind similar to those of Kamtchatka; and the sea with turbot, which are caught with bone hooks. [Footnote 38: Rubus Chamæmorus--Empetrum--Myrtillus--Sorbus.] These islands produce quantities of small osiers and underwood, but no large trees: the sea however drives ashore fir and larch, sufficient for the construction of their huts. There are a great number of arctic foxes upon the first island, as well as sea-otters; and the shores, during stormy weather, are covered with wild geese and ducks. The Russians, according to the order of the chancery of Bolcheretsk, endeavoured to persuade the Toigon of these islands to accompany them to Kamtchatka, but without success: upon their departure they distributed among the islanders some linen, and thirteen nets for the purpose of catching sea-otters, which were very thankfully received. This vessel brought to Kamtchatka the skins of 5030 old and young sea-otters, of 1040 old and young arctic foxes, and of 330 Medwedki or cubs of sea-otters. In the year 1757, Ivan Nikiphoroff, a merchant of Moscow, sent out a vessel: but we have no further account of this voyage, than that she sailed to the Fox Islands, at least as far as Umnak. [Sidenote: Voyage of Ivan Shilkin in the Capiton 1757.] The small vessel Capiton, the same that was built upon Beering's Island, and which was given to the merchant [39]Ivan Shilkin, put to sea September 26, 1757, carrying on board the Cossac Ignatius Studentsoff, who has given an account of the voyage. [Footnote 39: See chap. III.] They had not long sailed, before they were driven back to the shore of Kamtchatka by stress of weather, and the vessel stranded; by which accident they lost the rudder and one of the crew. This misfortune prevented them from putting to sea again until the following year, with thirty-nine of the original crew, several persons being left behind on account of sickness. They made directly to Beering's Island, where they took up two of Krasilnikoff's crew[40], who had been shipwrecked. They again set sail in August of the same year, and touched at the nearest Aleütian Isles, after suffering greatly from storms. They then continued their course to the remoter islands lying between East and South East; and having passed by the first, they anchored before the second. A boat being immediately sent out towards the shore, the crew was attacked by a numerous body of islanders in so sudden a manner, that they had scarcely time to secure themselves by returning to the vessel. They had no sooner got aboard, than a violent gale of wind blowing from the shore broke the cable, and drove them out to sea. [Sidenote: Shipwrecked upon one of the Fox Islands.] The weather became suddenly thick and foggy; and under these circumstances the vessel was forced upon a small island at no great distance from the other, and shipwrecked. The crew got to shore with difficulty, and were able to save nothing but the fire-arms and ammunition. [Footnote 40: See chap. IV.] They had scarcely got to land, before they were beset by a number of savages, rowing in baidars from the Western point of the island. This attack was the more to be dreaded, because several of the Russians were disabled by cold and wet; and there remained only fifteen capable of defending themselves. They advanced however without hesitation to the islanders; and one Nicholas Tsiuproff (who had a slight knowledge of their language) accosted and endeavoured to sooth them, but without success. For upon their approach the savages gave a sudden shout, and saluting them at the same time with a volley of darts, wounded one person in the hand. Upon this the Russians fired, killed two of the assailants, and forced the remainder to retire: and although a fresh body appeared in sight, as if they were coming to the assistance of their companions, yet no new attack was made. Soon afterwards the savages left the island, and rowed across the strait. From the 6th of September to the 23d of April, they underwent all the extremities of famine: during that period their best fare was shell-fish and roots; and they were even at times reduced to still the cravings of their appetite with the leather, which the waves washed ashore from the wreck. Seventeen died of hunger, and the rest would soon have followed their companions, if they had not fortunately discovered a dead whale, which the sea had cast ashore. [Sidenote: The Crew construct a small Vessel, and are again shipwrecked.] They remained upon this island another winter, where they slew 230 sea-otters: and having built a small vessel out of the remains of the wreck, they put to sea in the beginning of summer 1760. They had scarcely reached one of the Aleütian islands, where Serebranikoff's vessel lay at anchor, when they were again shipwrecked, and lost all the remaining tackle and furs. Only thirteen of the crew now remained, who returned on board the above-mentioned vessel to Kamtchatka July 1751. CHAP. VI. Voyages in 1758, 1759, and 1760--to the _Fox Islands_--in the _St. Vladimir_, fitted out by _Trapesnikoff_--and in the _Gabriel_, by _Betshevin_--The latter under the command of _Pushkareff_ sails to _Alaksu_ or _Alachskak_, one of the remotest Eastern Islands hitherto visited--Some account of its inhabitants, and productions, which latter are different from those of the more Western Islands. [Sidenote: Voyage of the St. Vladimir, commanded by Paikoff, 1758.] September 1758, the merchant Simeon Krasilnikoff and Nikiphor Trapesnikoff fitted out two vessels for the purpose of catching sea-otters. One of these vessels, called the St. Vladimir, sailed the 28th under the command of Demetri Paikoff, carrying on board the Cossac Sila Shaffyrin as collector of the tribute, and a crew of forty-five men. In twenty-four hours they reached Beering's Island, where they wintered. July 16, 1759, they steered towards the South in order to discover land, but being disappointed, they bore away to the North for the Aleütian isles: being prevented however by contrary winds from reaching them, they sailed streight towards the distant islands, which are known at present under the name of Lyssie Ostrova or the Fox Islands. [Sidenote: Arrival at the Fox Island.] September 1, they reached the first of these, called by the natives Atchu, and by the Russians Goreloi or the Burnt Island: but as the coasts were very steep and craggy, they made to Amlach, lying at a small distance, where they determined to pass the winter. They divided themselves accordingly into three parties; the first, at the head of which was Alexèy Drusinin, went over to a small island called in the journal Sitkin; the Cossac Shaffyrin led the second, consisting of ten persons, to the island Atach; and Simeon Polevoi remained aboard with the rest of the crew. All these islands were well peopled; the men had bones thrust through their ears, under lips, and gristle of their noses; and the faces of the women were marked with blackish streaks made with a needle and thread in the skin, in the same manner as a Cossac one of the crew had observed before upon some of the Tschutski. The inhabitants had no iron; the points of their darts and lances were tipped with bone and flint. They at first imagined, that Amlach was uninhabited; but in one of their hunting parties they found a boy of eight years old, whom they brought with them: they gave him the name of Hermolai, and taught him the Russian language, that he might serve as an interpreter. After penetrating further they discovered an hut, wherein were two women, four men, and as many boys, whom they treated kindly, and employed in hunting, fishing, and in digging of roots. This kind behaviour encouraged others to pay frequent visits, and to exchange fish and flesh for goat's hair, horses manes, and glass beads. They procured also four other islanders with their wives, who dug roots for them: and thus the winter passed away without any disturbance. In the spring the hunting parties returned; during these excursions one man alone was killed upon the island Atach, and his fire-arms taken away by the natives. June 1760, the same parties were sent again to the same islands. Shaffyrin, who headed one of the parties, was soon afterwards killed, with eleven men, by the inhabitants of Atach, but for what reason is not known.--Drusinin received the first information of this massacre from some inhabitants of Sitkin, where he then was; and immediately set out with the remaining hunters to join their companions, who were left on board. Although he succeeded in regaining the vessel, their number was by this time so considerably reduced that their situation appeared very dangerous: he was soon however relieved from his apprehensions by the arrival of the merchant Betshevin's vessel at the island of Atchu[41]. The two crews entered into partnership: the St. Vladimir received twenty-two men, and transferred eleven of her own to the other vessel. The former wintered at Amlach, and the latter continued at anchor before Atchu. [Footnote 41: Atach and Atchu are two names for the same island, called also by the Russians Goreloi or Burnt Island.] [Sidenote: Voyage of Pushkareff, 1760.] This vessel, fitted out at the expence of Betshevin, a merchant of Irkutsk, was called Gabriel; and put to sea from the mouth of the Bolshaia Reka July 31st, 1760. She was manned with forty Russians and twenty Kamtchadals, and carried on board Gabriel Pushkareff, of the garrison of Ochotsk, Andrew Shdanoff, Jacob Sharypoff, Prokopèi Lobashkoff, together with Nikiphor Golodoff, and Aphanassei Oskoloff, Betshevin's agents. Having sailed through the second strait of the Kuril Isles, they reached the Aleütian Isles on the 24th of August. They stood out from thence in order to make new discoveries among those more remote islands, which lie in one continued chain to the extent of 15 degrees of longitude. [Sidenote: Reaches Atchu, one of the Fox Islands.] September 25 they reached Atchu, or Burnt Island, and found the above-mentioned ship the St. Vladimir, lying twenty versts from that island, before Amlach, in danger of being attacked by the islanders. They immediately joined crews in order to enable the enfeebled company of the St. Vladimir to continue hunting; and as it is usual in such cases, entered into a contract for the division of the profit. During that winter the two crews killed partly upon Siguyam, about 800 sea otters of different sizes, about 100 medwedki or cubs, some river otters, above 400 red, greyish, and black foxes, and collected twelve pood of sea-horse teeth. [Sidenote: Departs from thence.] In June, of the following year, the two crews were distributed equally on board the two vessels: Krassilnikoff's remained at Amlach, with an intention of returning to Kamtchatka, and Belshevin's put to sea from Atchu in quest of other islands. They touched first at Umnak where they met Nikiphoroff's vessel. Here they took in wood and water, and repaired their sails: they then sailed to the most remote island Alaksu[42], or Alachshak, where, having laid up the ship in a bay, they built huts, and made preparations for wintering. [Sidenote: Winters upon Alaksu.] This island was very well inhabited, and the natives behaved at first in a very friendly manner, for they trafficked with the Russians, and even delivered up nine of their children as hostages; but such was the lawless and irregular behaviour of the crew, that the islanders were soon irritated and provoked to hostilities. [Footnote 42: This is probably the same island which is laid down in Krenitzin's chart under the name of Alaxa.] In January 1762, Golodoff and Pushkareff went with a party of twenty men along the shore; and, as they were attempting to violate some girls upon the island Unyumga, were surprised by a numerous body of the natives: Golodoff and another Russian were killed, and three were wounded. Not long afterwards the watch of the crew was suddenly attacked by the islanders; four men were slain upon the spot, as many wounded, and the huts reduced to ashes. May 3, Lobaschkoff and another Russian were killed, as they were going to bathe in the warm springs, which lie about five versts from the haven: upon which seven of the hostages were put to death. The same month the natives attempted to surprise the Russians in their huts; but being fortunately discovered in time were repulsed by means of the fire arms. At length the Russians, finding themselves in continual danger from these attempts, weighed anchor, and sailed for Umnak, where they took up two inhabitants with their wives and children, in order to shew them other islands. They were prevented however by tempestuous weather from reaching them; and were driven out to sea Westward with such violence, that all their sails were carried away: at length on the 23d of September they struck against land, which they took for the peninsula of Kamtchatka; and they found it to be the district of Stobolikoi Ostrog. Six men were immediately dispatched in the small boat and two baidars to land: they carried with them several girls (who had been brought from the new discovered islands) in order to gather berries. Mean while the crew endeavoured to ply the ship to the windward. When the boat returned, those on board were scarcely able, on account of the storm, to row to the ship, and to catch hold of a rope, which was flung out to them. Two men remained with the baidars, and were afterwards carried by some Kamtchadals to New Kamtchatkoi Ostrog. The ship without one sail remaining was driven along the coast of Kamtchatka towards Avatcha, and about seventy versts from that harbour ran into the bay of Kalatzoff on the 25th of September. Their cargo consisted of the skins of 900 old and young sea-otters, and of 350 foxes. Pushkareff and his crew had during this voyage behaved with such inhumanity towards the islanders, that they were brought to trial in the year 1764; and the above-mentioned account is taken from the concurring evidence of several witnesses. It appears also, that they brought away from Atchu and Amleg two Aleütian men and three boys, Ivan an Aleütian interpreter, and above twenty women and girls whom they debauched. Ivan, and one of the boys whom they called Moses, were the only persons who arrived at Kamtchatka. Upon their first approach to that coast, fourteen women were sent ashore to dig roots and to gather berries. Of these, two ran away, and a third was killed, as they were returning to the ship by one Gorelin: upon this the others in a fit of despair leaped into the sea and were drowned. All the remaing Aleütians, excepting the two persons above-mentioned, were immediately thrown overboard by Pushkareff's order. The account which follows, although it is found in the depositions, deserves not to be entirely credited in all particulars. [Sidenote: Account of the Inhabitants of Alacksu.] The natives of the above-mentioned islands are very tall and strongly made. They make their cloaths of the skins of birds; and thrust bones through their under-lips by way of ornament. They were said to strike their noses until they bled, in order to suck the blood; but we are informed from subsequent accounts, that the blood thus drawn from themselves was intended for other purposes[43]. They were accused even of murdering their own children in order to drink their blood; but this is undoubtedly an invention of the criminals, who represented the islanders in the most hideous colours, in order to excuse their own cruelties. Their dwellings under-ground are similar to those of the Kamtchadals; and have several openings on the sides, through which they make their escape when the principal entrance is beset by an enemy. Their weapons consist of arrows and lances pointed with bone, which they dart at a considerable distance. [Footnote 43: It appears in the last chapter of this translation, that the islanders are accustomed to glue on the point of their darts with blood; and that this was the real motive to the practice mentioned in the text.] [Sidenote: Animals.] The island Alaksu is said to contain rein-deer, bears, wild boars, wolves, otters, and a species of dogs with long ears, which are very fierce and wild. And as the greatest part of these animals are not found upon those Fox Islands which lie nearer to the west, this circumstance seems to prove that Alaksu is situated at no great distance from the Continent of America. As to red, black, and grey foxes, there is so large a quantity, that they are seen in herds of ten or twenty at a time. Wood is driven upon the coast in great abundance. The island produces no large trees, having only some underwood, and a great variety of bulbs, roots, and berries. The coasts are frequented by large flocks of sea-birds, the same which are observed upon the shore of the sea of Penshinsk. [Sidenote: Voyage of the Peter and Paul to the Aleütian Islands, 1759.] August 4, 1759, the Peter and Paul, fitted out at the expence of the merchant Rybenskoi by his agent Andrew Serebranikoff, and manned with thirty-three persons, set sail from the mouth of the Kamtchatka river. They steered southwards until the 20th of September without seeing any land, when they stood for the Aleütian Isles, one of which they reached the 27th of September. They remained there until the 24th of June, 1761; during which time they killed upon this and the two other islands 1900 old and young sea-otters, and obtained 450 more by bartering with the islanders. The Cossac Minyachin, who was on board as collector of the tribute, calls in his account the first island by the Russian name of Krugloi, or Round Island, which he supposes to be about sixty versts in circumference: the largest island lies thirty versts from thence, and is about an hundred and fifty round: the smallest is about thirty versts from the latter, and is forty in circumference. These three islands contain several high rocky mountains. The number of inhabitants were computed to be about forty-two men, without reckoning women and children. CHAP. VII. Voyage of _Andrean Tolstyk_ in the _St. Andrean_ and _Natalia_--Discovery of some New Islands called _Andreanoffskye Ostrova_--Description of six of those Islands. [Sidenote: Voyage of Andrean Tolstyk in the St. Andrean and Natalia, 1760.] The most remarkable voyage hitherto made is that of the St. Andrean and Natalia, of which the following extract is drawn from the Journals of the two Cossacs, Peter Wasyutinskoi and Maxim Lasaroff. This vessel, fitted out by the above-mentioned merchant Andrean Tolstyk, weighed from the mouth of the Kamtchatka river September 27, 1760; she stood out to sea right Eastwards, and on the 29th reached Beering's Island. There she lay at anchor in a bay, from whence the crew brought all the tackle and lading ashore. Soon afterwards they were driven upon the shore by a violent autumnal storm, without any other damage than the loss of an anchor. Here they passed the winter; and having refitted their vessel, put to sea June 24, 1761: they passed by Copper Island, which lies about an hundred and fifty versts from the former, and steered S. E. towards the Aleütian Isles, which they did not reach before the 6th of August. [Sidenote: Reaches Ayagh, one of the Andreanoffikye Islands.] They cast anchor in an open bay near Attak, in order to procure an interpreter from the Toigon Tunulgasen; but the latter being dead, they sent presents to the Toigon Bakutun. As there were already three ships lying at anchor before this Island, on the 19th they again stood out to sea in quest of the more distant islands, for the purpose of exacting a tribute. They carried on board a relation of the Toigon Bakutun, who had a slight knowledge of the Russian language. They steered N. E. and N. E. by E. and were driven, on the 28th, by a high gale of wind towards an island, before which they immediately cast anchor. The following morning the two Cossacs with a party of eight persons went ashore to reconnoitre the island; they saw no inhabitants. August 30, the vessel was brought into a safe bay. The next day some of the crew were sent ashore to procure wood, that the ship might be refitted; but there were no large trees to be met with upon the whole island. Lasaroff, who was one of the party, had been there before in Serebranikoff's vessel: he called the island Ayagh or Kayachu; and another, which lay about the distance of twenty versts, Kanaga. As they were returning to the ship, they saw two islanders rowing in small canoes towards Kanaga, one of whom had served as an interpreter, and was known to Lasaroff. The latter accordingly made them a present of some fresh provision, which the others gratefully accepted, and then continued their course across the strait to Kanaga. Soon afterwards Lasaroff and eight men rowed over to that island, and having invited the Toigon, who was a relation of the above-mentioned interpreter, to pay them a visit at Kayachu, they immediately returned to the ship. Near the place where they lay at anchor, a rivulet falls into the bay; it flows from a lake that is about two or three versts in circumference, and which is formed from a number of small springs. Its course is about eight versts long; and in summer several species of salmon and other fish, similar to those which are found at Kamtchatka, ascend the stream as far as the lake. Lasaroff was employed in fishing in this rivulet, when the Toigon of Kanaga, accompanied with a considerable number of the natives in fifteen baidars, arrived at the ship: he was hospitably entertained, and received several presents. The Russians seized this opportunity of persuading the islanders to acknowledge themselves subject to the Empress, and to pay a regular tribute; to which they made no great objection. By means of the interpreter, the following information was obtained from the Toigon. The natives chiefly subsist upon dried fish and other sea animals. They catch [44]turbot of a very large size, and take seals by means of harpoons, to which they fasten bladders. They fish for cod with bone hooks, and lines made of a long and tough species of sea-weed, which they dip in fresh water and draw out to the size of a fine packthread. [Footnote 44: The author adds, that these turbot [paltus] weigh occasionally seven or eight pood.] As soon as the vessel was laid up in a secure place, Tolstyk, Vassyutin and Lasaroff, with several others, went in four baidars to Kanaga. The first remained upon that island, but the two others rowed in two baidars to Tsetchina, which is separated from Kanaga by a strait about seven versts in breadth: the islanders received them amicably, and promised to pay tribute. The several parties returned all safe to Kayachu, without having procured any furs. Soon afterwards Tolstyk dispatched some hunters in four baidars to Tagalak, Atchu, and Amlach, which lay to the East of Kayachu: none of these party met with any opposition from the natives: they accordingly remained with great tranquillity upon these several islands until the year 1764. Their success in hunting was not however very great; for they caught no more than 1880 full grown sea-otters, 778 middle-aged, and 372 cubs. [Sidenote: Description of the Andreanoffskye Islands.] The following is Lasaroff's description of the above-mentioned six islands[45] which lie in a chain somewhat to the North West of the Fox Islands, and must not be blended with them. The first certain account was brought by this vessel, the St. Andrean and Natalia, from whence they are called the Andreanoffskie Ostrova or the Islands of St. Andrean. [Footnote 45: These are the six Islands described by Mr. Stæhlin in his description of the New Archipelago. See Appendix I. N^o. V.] [Sidenote: Ayagh.] Ayagh is about an hundred and fifty versts in circumference: it contains several high and rocky mountains, the intervals of which are bare heath and moor ground: not one forest tree is to be found upon the whole island. The vegetables seem for the most part like those which grow in Kamtchatka. Of berries there are found [46]crow or crake-berries and the larger sort of bilberries, but in small quantities. Of the roots of burnet and all kinds of snake weed, there is such abundance as to afford, in case of necessity, a plentiful provision for the inhabitants. The above-mentioned rivulet is the only one upon the island. The number of inhabitants cannot sufficiently be ascertained, because the natives pass continually from island to island in their baidars. [Footnote 46: Empetrum, Vaccin. Uliginosum, Sanguisorba, & Bistorta.] [Sidenote: Kanaga.] Kanaga stands West from Ayagh, and is two hundred versts in circumference. It contains an high volcano where the natives find sulphur in summer. At the foot of this mountain are hot springs, wherein they occasionally boil their provision. There is no rivulet upon this island; and the low grounds are similar to those of Ayagh. The inhabitants are reckoned about two hundred souls. [Sidenote: Tsetchina.] Tsetchina lies Eastward about forty versts from Kanaga, and is about eighty in circumference. It is full of rocky mountains, of which the Bielaia Sopka, or the White Peak, is the highest. In the valley there are also some warm springs, but no rivulet abounding in fish: the island contains only four families. [Sidenote: Tagalak.] Tagalak is forty versts in circumference, ten East from Tsetchina: it contains a few rocks, but neither rivulets with fish, nor any vegetable production fit for nourishment. The coasts are rocky, and dangerous to approach in baidars. This island is also inhabited by no more than four families. [Sidenote: Atchu.] Atchu lies in the same position forty versts distant from Tagalak, and is about three hundred in circumference: near it is an harbour, where ships may ride securely at anchor. It contains many rocky mountains; and several small rivulets that fall into the sea, and of which one running Eastwards abounds in fish. The roots which have just before been mentioned, and bulbs of white lilies, are found there in plenty. Its inhabitants amount to about sixty souls. [Sidenote: Amlach.] Amlach is a mountainous island standing to the East more than seven versts from Atchu, and is also three hundred in circumference. It contains the same number of inhabitants as Atchu, has a commodious haven, and produces roots in abundance. Of several small rivulets there is one only which flows towards the North, that contains any fish. Besides these a cluster of other islands were observed stretching farther to the East, which were not touched upon. [Sidenote: Account of the Inhabitants.] The inhabitants of these six islands are tributary to Russia. They live in holes dug in the earth, in which they make no fires even in winter. Their clothes are made like shirts, of the skins of the [47]guillinot and puffin, which they catch with springes. Over these in rainy weather they wear an upper garment, made of the bladders and other dried intestines of seals and sea-lions oiled and stitched together. They catch cod and turbot with bone hooks, and eat them raw. As they never lay in a store of provision, they suffer greatly from hunger in stormy weather, when they cannot go out to fish; at which time they are reduced to live upon small shell-fish and sea-wrack, which they pick up upon the beach and eat raw. In May and June they kill sea-otters in the following manner: When the weather is calm, they row out to sea in several baidars: having found the animal, they strike him with harpoons, and follow him so closely, that he cannot easily escape. They take sea dogs in the same manner. In the severest weather they make no addition to their usual cloathing. In order to warm themselves in winter, whenever it freezes very hard, they burn a heap of dry grass, over which they stand and catch the heat under their clothes. The clothes of the women and children are made of sea-otter skins, in the same form as those belonging to the men. Whenever they pass the night at a distance from home, they dig a hole in the earth, and lay themselves down in it, covered only with their clothes and mats of platted grass. Regardless of every thing but the present moment, destitute of religion, and without the least appearance of decency, they seem but few degrees removed from brutes. [Footnote 47: Colymbus Troile, Alca Arctica.] As soon as the several baidars sent out upon hunting parties were returned, and the vessel got ready for their departure, the Toigons of these islands (excepting Kanaga) came in baidars to Tolstyk, accompanied with a considerable number of the natives; their names were Tsarkulini, Tshunila, Kayugotsk and Mayatok. They brought with them a voluntary tribute, making presents of pieces of dried salmon, and unanimously expressing their satisfaction upon the good conduct of the Russians. Tolstyk gave them in return some toys and other trifles, and desired them to recommend to the inhabitants of the other islands the like friendly behaviour towards the Russian merchants who should come amongst them, if they had a mind to be treated in the same manner. June 14, 1764, they sailed for Kamtchatka, and anchored on the 19th before Shemiya, one of the Aleütian Islands. The 21st they were forced from their anchor by tempestuous winds, and driven upon a rocky shore. This accident obliged them to send the lading ashore, and to draw the ship upon land in order to repair the damage, which was done not without great difficulty. On the 18th of August they stood out to sea and made towards Atchu, which they reached on the 20th. Having sprung a leak they again refitted the vessel; and, after taking on board the crew of a ship which had been lately cast away, they sailed for Kamtchatka. [Sidenote: The Vessel wrecked upon the Coast of Kamtchatka.] On the 4th of September they came in sight of that peninsula near Tzaschminskoi Ostrog; and on the 18th, as they were endeavouring to run into the mouth of the Kamtchatka river, they were forced by a storm upon the coast. The vessel was destroyed, and the greatest part of the cargo lost. CHAP. VIII. Voyage of the _Zacharias_ and _Elizabeth_, fitted out by _Kulkoff_, and commanded by _Drusinin_--They sail to _Umnak_ and _Unalashka_, and winter upon the latter island--The vessel destroyed, and all the crew, except four, murdered by the islanders--The adventures of these four _Russians_, and their wonderful escape. I Shall here barely mention that a vessel was fitted out in August, 1760, at the expence of Terrenti Tsebaëfskoi: but I shall have occasion to be very circumstantial in my accounts concerning several others, which sailed during the following years: more copious information concerning the Fox Islands having been procured from these voyages, although for the most part unfortunate, than from all the preceding ones. In 1762 four vessels sailed for the Fox Islands: of these only one returned safe to Kamtchatka. [Sidenote: Voyage of Drusinin in the Zacharias and Elizabeth, 1762.] The first was the Zacharias and Elizabeth, fitted out by Kulkoff, a merchant of Vologda and Company, under the command of Drusinin, and manned by thirty-four Russians, and three Kamtchadals. September the 6th, they weighed anchor from Ochotsk, and arrived October the 11th in the haven of St. Peter and Paul, where they wintered. June the 24th, 1763, they again put to sea, and having reached, after eleven days sailing, the nearest Aleütian Islands, they anchored before Atach. They staid here about fourteen days, and took up seven Russians who had been shipwrecked on this coast. Among these was Korelin, who returned to Kamtchatka, and brought back the following account of the voyage. July the 17th, they sailed from Atach towards the more distant islands. In the same month they landed upon an island, where the crew of the Andrean and Natalia was engaged in hunting; and, having laid in a provision of water, continued their voyage. [Sidenote: Arrival at Umnak.] In the beginning of September they arrived at Umnak, one of the Fox Islands, and cast anchor about a verst from the shore. They found there Glottoff's vessel, whose voyage will be mentioned in a succeeding chapter[48]. Drusinin immediately dispatched his first mate Maesnisk and Korelin, with thirty-four of the crew, to land. They passed over to the Eastern extremity of the island, which was distant about seventy versts from the vessel; and returned safe on the 12th of September. During this expedition, they saw several remains of fox-traps which had been set by the Russians; and met with several natives who shewed some tribute-quittances. The same day letters were brought by the islanders from Medvedeff and Korovin[49], who were just arrived at Umnak and Unalashka in two vessels fitted out by the merchants Protassoff and Trapesnikoff. Answers were returned by the same messengers. [Footnote 48: Chap. X.] [Footnote 49: See the following Chapter.] [Sidenote: Winters at Unalashka.] On the 22d, Drusinin sailed to the Northern point of Unalashka, which lies about fifteen versts from Umnak: the crew, having laid up the vessel in a safe harbour, and brought the lading ashore, made preparation to construct an hut. Soon after their arrival, two Toigons of the nearest village brought hostages of their own accord; their example was immediately followed by several of the more distant villages. Here they received information of an hunting party sent from Trapesnikoff's ship. Upon which Maesnyk also dispatched three companies upon the same errand, one consisting of eleven men, among whom was Korelin, under the command of Peter Tsekaleff; a second of the same number, under Michael Kudyakoff; and a third of nine men, under Yephim Kaskitsyn. Of these three parties, Tsekaleff's was the only one of which we have received any circumstantial account: for not a single person of the other two parties, or of the crew remaining on board, ever returned to Kamtchatka. Kaskitsyn remained near the haven, and the two other companies were dispatched to the Northern point of the island. Kudyakoff stopped at a place called Kalaktak, which contained about forty inhabitants; Tsekaleff went on to Inalok, which lies about thirty versts from Kalaktak. He found there a dwelling with about seventy inhabitants, whom he behaved to with kindness: he built an hut for himself and his companions, and kept a constant watch. [Sidenote: All the Crew, except four Russians, destroyed by the Natives.] December the 4th, six of the party being dispatched to look after the pit-falls, there remained only five Russians: namely, Peter Tsekaleff, Stephen Korelin, Dmitri Bragin, Gregory Shaffyrin, and Ivan Kokovin: the islanders took this opportunity of giving the first proofs of their hostile intentions, which they had hitherto concealed. As Tsekaleff and Shaffyrin were upon a visit to the islanders, the latter suddenly, and without any provocation, struck Tsekaleff upon the head with a club, and afterwards stabbed him with knives. They next fell upon Shaffyrin, who defended himself with an hatchet, and, though desperately wounded, forced his way back to his companions. Bragin and Korelin, who remained in the hut, had immediate recourse to their fire-arms; but Kokovin, who was at a small distance, was surrounded by the savages, and thrown down. They continued stabbing him with knives and darts, until Korelin came to his assistance; the latter having wounded two islanders, and driven away the others, brought Kokovin half-dead to the hut. [Sidenote: The Adventures of the four Russians upon Unalaskka.] Soon afterwards the natives surrounded the hut, which the Russians had taken the precaution to provide with shooting-holes. The siege lasted four days without intermission. The islanders were prevented indeed by the fire-arms from storming the hut; but whenever the Russians made their appearance, darts were immediately shot at them from all sides; so that they could not venture to go out for water. At length when Shaffyrin and Kokovin were a little recovered, they all sallied out upon the islanders with their guns and lances; three persons were killed upon the spot, and several wounded; upon which the others fled away and dispersed. During the siege the savages were seen at a little distance bearing some arms and caps, and holding them up in triumph: these things belonged to the six Russians, who had been sent to the pit-falls, and had fallen a sacrifice to the resentment of the natives. The latter no sooner disappeared, than the Russians dragged the baidar into the sea, and rowed without molestation out of the bay, which is about ten versts broad. They next landed near a small habitation: finding it empty they drew the baidar ashore, and went with their fire-arms and lances across the mountains towards Kalaktak, where they had left Kudyakoff's party. As they approached that place towards evening, they fired from the heights; but no signal being returned, they concluded, as was really the case, that this company had likewise been massacred by the inhabitants. They themselves narrowly escaped the same fate; for, immediately upon the report of the fire-arms, numerous bodies of the islanders made their appearance, and closely pursued the Russians: darkness however coming on, the latter found means to escape over the sandy shore of a bay to a rock, where they were sheltered, and could defend themselves. They here made so good a use of their arms, that the islanders thought proper to retire: the fugitives, as soon as their pursuers were withdrawn, seized the opportunity of proceeding towards the haven, where their vessel lay at anchor: they ran without interruption during the whole night, and at break of day, when they were about three versts from the haven, they espied a locker of the vessel lying on the shore. Struck with astonishment at this alarming discovery, they retreated with precipitation to the mountains, from whence they descried several islanders rowing in canoes, but no appearance of their own vessel. During that day they kept themselves closely concealed, and durst not venture again towards the haven before the evening. Upon their arrival they found the vessel broken to pieces, and the dead bodies of their companions lying mangled along the beach. Having collected all the provision which had been untouched by the savages, they returned to the mountains. The following day they scooped out a cavity at the foot of a mountain situated about three versts from the haven, and covered it with a piece of a sail. In the evening they returned to the haven, and found there an image of a saint and a prayer book; all the tackle and lading were taken away, excepting the sacks for provision. These sacks were made of leather: the natives had ript them up probably to see if they contained any iron, and had left them, together with the provision, behind as useless. The Russians collected all that remained, and dragged as much as they were able to carry into the mountains to their retreat, where they lived in a very wretched state from the 9th of December to the 2d of February, 1764. Mean while they employed themselves in making a little baidar, which they covered with the leather of the sacks. Having drawn it at night from the mountains to the sea, they rowed without waiting for break of day along the Northern coast of Unalaschka, in order to reach Trapesnikoff's vessel, which, as they had reason to think, lay at anchor somewhere upon the coast. They rowed at some distance from the shore, and by that means passed three habitations unperceived. The following day they observed at some distance five islanders in a baidar, who upon seeing them made to Makushinsk, before which place the fugitives were obliged to pass. Darkness coming on, the Russians landed on a rock, and passed the night ashore. Early in the morning they discovered the islanders advancing towards them from the bay of Makushinsk. Upon this they placed themselves in an advantageous post, and prepared for defence. The savages rowed close to the beach: part landing, and part remaining in their baidars, they commenced the assault by a volley of darts; and notwithstanding the Russians did great execution with their fire arms, the skirmish continued the whole day. Towards evening the enemy retired, and the fugitives betook themselves with their canoe to an adjoining cavern. The attack was again renewed during the night; but the Russians were so advantageously posted, that they repulsed the assailants without much difficulty. In this encounter Bragen was slightly wounded. They remained in this place three days; but the sea rising at a spring-tide into the rock, forced them to sally out towards a neighbouring cavern, which they reached without loss, notwithstanding the opposition of the islanders. They were imprisoned in this cave five weeks, and kept watch by turns. During that time they seldom ventured twenty yards from the entrance; and were obliged to quench their thirst with snow-water, and with the moisture dripping from the rock. They suffered also greatly from hunger, having no sustenance but small shell-fish, which they occasionally found means to collect, upon the beach. Compelled at length by extreme want, they one night ventured to draw their baidar into the sea, and were fortunate enough to get off unperceived. [Sidenote: Their Escape from Unalaschka to Trapesnikoff's vessel.] They continued rowing at night, but in the day they hid themselves on the shore; by this means they escaped unobserved from the bay of Makushinsk, and reached Trapesnikoff's vessel the 30th of March, 1764. What happened to them afterwards in company with the crew of this vessel will be mentioned in the succeeding chapter, Shaffyrin alone of all the four died of sickness during the voyage; but Korelin, Kohovin, and Bragin[50] returned safe to Kamtchatka. The names of these brave men deserve our admiration, for the courage and perseverance with which they supported and overcame such imminent dangers. [Footnote 50: These Russians were well known to several persons of credit, who have confirmed the authenticity of this relation. Among the rest the celebrated naturalist Mr. Pallas, whose name is well known in the literary world, saw Bragin at Irkutsk: from him he had a narrative of their adventures and escape; which, as he assured me, perfectly tallied with the above account, which is drawn from the journal of Korelin.] CHAP. IX. Voyage of the vessel called the _Trinity_, under the command of _Korovin_--Sails to the _Fox Islands_--Winters at _Unalashka_--Puts to sea the spring following--The vessel is stranded in a bay of the island _Umnak_, and the crew attacked by the natives--Many of them killed--Others carried off by sickness--They are reduced to great streights--Relieved by _Glottoff_, twelve of the whole company only remaining--Description of _Umnak_ and _Unalashka_. [Sidenote: Voyage of Korovin, 1762.] The second vessel which sailed from Kamtchatka in the year 1762, was the Trinity, fitted out by the trading company of Nikiphor Trapesnikoff, merchant of Irkutsk, under the command of Ivan Korovin, and manned with thirty-eight Russians and six Kamtchadals. [Sidenote: Departs from Kamtchatka.] September 15, they sailed down the Kamtchatka river, and stood out to sea the 29th, when they were driven at large for ten days by contrary winds. At last upon the 8th of October they came in sight of Beering's and Copper Island, where they cast anchor before the South side of the former. Here they were resolved to winter on account of the late season of the year. Accordingly they laid up the vessel in a secure harbour, and brought all the lading ashore. [Sidenote: Winters upon Beering's Island.] They staid here until the first of August, 1763: during that time they kilted about 500 arctic foxes and 20 sea-otters; the latter animals resorted less frequently to this island, in consequence of the disturbance given them by the Russian hunters. Korovin, having collected a sufficient store of provision, several skins of sea-cows for the coverings of baidars, and some iron which remained from the wreck of Beering's ship, prepared for his departure. Upon his arrival at Beering's Island the preceding autumn, he found there a vessel fitted out by Jacob Protassoff, merchant of Tiumen, under the command of Dennis Medvedeff[51]. Korovin had entered into a formal contract with Medvedeff for the division of the furs. Here he took on board ten of Medvedeff's crew, and gave him seven in return. August 1, Korovin put to sea from Beering's Island with thirty-seven men, and Medvedeff with forty-nine. [Sidenote: Reaches Unalashka.] They sailed without coming in sight of the Aleütian Isles: on the 15th, Korovin made Unalashka, where Glottoff lay at anchor, and Medvedeff reached Umnak. Korovin received the news of the latter's safe arrival, first by some islanders, and afterwards by letters; both vessels lay at no greater distance from each other than about an hundred and fifty versts, taking a streight line from point to point across the firth. [Footnote 51: This is the fourth vessel which sailed in 1762. As the whole crew was massacred by the savages, we have no account of the voyage. Short mention of this massacre is occasionally made in this and the following chapters.] Korovin cast anchor in a convenient bay at the distance of sixty yards from the shore. On the 16th he landed with fourteen men, and having found nothing but an empty shed, he returned to the vessel. After having taken a reinforcement, he again went ashore in order to look for some inhabitants. About seven versts from the haven, he came to two habitations, and saw three hundred persons assembled together. Among them were three Toigons, who recollected and accosted in a friendly manner one Barnasheff, a native of Tobolsk, who had been there before with Glottoff; they shewed some tribute-quittances, which they had lately received from the Cossac Sabin Ponomareff. Two of these Toigons gave each a boy of twelve years of age as an hostage, whom they passed for their children; and the third delivered his son of about fifteen years of age, the same who had been Glottoff's hostage, and whom Korovin called Alexèy. [Sidenote: Lays up the Ship.] With these hostages he returned to the ship, which he laid up in the mouth of a river, after having brought all the provision and lading ashore. Soon afterwards the three Toigons came to see the hostages; and informed Korovin, that Medvedeff's vessel rode securely at anchor before Umnak. September 15, when every thing was prepared for wintering, Korovin and Barnasheff set out in two baidars, each with nine men and one of the hostages, who had a slight knowledge of the Russian language. They went along the Northern coast of the island, towards its Western extremity, in order to hunt, and to enquire after a certain interpreter called Kashmak, who had been employed by Glottoff on a former occasion. Having rowed about twenty versts, they passed by a village, and landed at another which lay about five versts further. But as the number of inhabitants seemed to amount to two hundred, they durst not venture to the dwellings, but stayed by the baidar. Upon this the Toigon of the place came to them, with his wife and son: he shewed a tribute-quittance, and delivered his son, a boy of thirteen years of age and whom Korovin called Stepanka, as an hostage, for which he received a present of corals. They rowed now further to a third village, about fifteen versts from the former, where they found the interpreter Kashmak; the latter accompanied them to the two Toigons, who gave them a friendly reception, and shewed their tribute-quittances. A few natives only made their appearance; the others, as the Toigons pretended, were gone out to fish. The next morning each Toigon gave a boy as an hostage; one of the boys Korovin called Gregory, and the other Alexèy. The Russians were detained there two days by a violent storm; during which time a letter from Medvedeff was brought by an Aleütian, and an answer was returned by the same person. The storm at length somewhat abating, they rowed back to the next village, where they continued two nights without any apprehensions from the savages. At length Korovin returned in safety with the hostages to the crew. [Sidenote: Builds an Hut, and makes Preparations for Wintering.] In the beginning of October they built a winter-hut, partly of wood and partly of seal-skins, and made all the necessary preparations for hunting. On the 14th, two companies, each consisting of eleven men, were sent out upon an hunting party to the Eastern point of the island; they returned in four days with hostages. About sixty versts from the haven, they had met a party of twenty-five Russians, commanded by Drusinin. About the same time some Toigons brought a present of sturgeon and whale's blubber, and received in return some beads and provision. Korovin and his company now thought themselves secure; for which reason twenty-three men, under the command of the above-mentioned Barnasheff, were dispatched in two baidars upon an hunting party towards the Western point of the island. Eight muskets were distributed to each boat, a pistol and a lance to each man, and also a sufficient store of ammunition and provision. The following day two accounts were sent from Barnasheff; and letters were also received from the crew of Protassoff's vessel. From the 2d of November to the 8th of December, the Russians, who remained with Korovin, killed forty-eight dark-coloured foxes, together with an hundred and seventeen of the common sort: during this expedition one man was lost. Some of the natives came occasionally in baidars, and exchanged sea-otters and fox skins for corals. On the 8th of December letters were again brought from Barnasheff and also from the crew of Protassoff's ship. Answers were returned by the same messengers. After the departure of these messengers, the mother of Alexèy came with a message from the Toigon her husband importing, that a large number of islanders were making towards the ship. Upon this Korovin ordered the men to arms, and soon after seventy natives approached and held up some sea-otter skins. The Russians cried out that no more than ten at a time should come over the brook towards their hut: upon which the islanders left their skins with Korovin, and returned without attempting any hostilities. Their apprehensions were now somewhat quieted, but they were again raised by the arrival of three Kamtchadals belonging to Kulkoff's ship, who flew for protection to Korovin: they brought the account that the crew had been killed by the savages, and the vessel destroyed. It was now certain that the seventy islanders above-mentioned had come with hostile intentions. This information spread such a sudden panic among the Russians, that it was even proposed to burn the vessel, and to endeavour to find their companions, who were gone upon hunting parties. [Sidenote: The Russians attacked by the Natives.] That day however passed without any attack: but towards the evening of the 10th of December, the savages assembled in large bodies, and invested the hut on all sides. Four days and nights they never ceased annoying the Russians with their darts; two of the latter were killed, and the survivors were nearly exhausted by continual fatigue. Upon the fifth day the islanders took post in a neighbouring cavern, where they continued watching the Russians so closely during a whole month, that none of the latter durst venture fifty paces from their dwelling. Korovin, finding himself thus annoyed by the natives, ordered the hut to be destroyed: he then retired to his vessel, which was brought for greater security out of the mouth of the rivulet to the distance of an hundred yards from the beach. There they lay at anchor from the 5th of March to the 26th of April, during which time they suffered greatly from want of provision, and still more from the scurvy. During this period they were attacked by a large body of the natives, who advanced in forty baidars with the hopes of surprising the vessel. Korovin had been warned of their approach by two of the inhabitants, one of whom was a relation of the interpreter Kashmak: accordingly he was prepared for their reception. As soon as the savages came near the vessel, they brandished their darts and got ready for the attack. Korovin however had no sooner fired and killed one person, than they were struck with a panic and rowed away. They were so incensed at this failure of success, that they immediately put to death the two good-natured natives, who had betrayed their design to the Russians. Soon afterwards the father of Alexèy came and demanded his son, who was restored to him: and on the 30th of March Korovin and his three companions arrived as it is mentioned in the preceding chapter. By this reinforcement the number of the crew amounted to eighteen persons. [Sidenote: Korovin puts to Sea. The Vessel stranded upon Umnak.] April 26 Korovin put to sea from Unalashka with the crew and eleven hostages. The vessel was driven until the 28th by contrary winds, and then stranded in a bay of the island Umnak. The ammunition and sails, together with the skins for the construction of baidars, were brought ashore with great difficulty. During the disembarkation one sick man was drowned, another died as soon as he came to land, and eight hostages ran away amidst the general confusion. There still remained the faithful interpreter Kashmak and three hostages. The whole number of the Russians amounted to only sixteen persons; and of these three were sick of the scurvy. Under these circumstances they secured themselves between their baidar and some empty barrels, which they covered with seal-skins, while the sails were spread over them in form of a tent. Two Russians kept watch; and there being no appearance of any islanders, the others retired to sleep. [Sidenote: The Russians in Danger of being destroyed by the Natives.] Before break of day, about an hundred savages advancing secretly from the sea-side, threw their darts at the distance of twenty yards with such force, that many of them pierced through the baidar and the skins; others fell from above through the sails. By this discharge, the two persons who kept watch, together with the three hostages, were killed upon the spot; and all the Russians were wounded. The latter indeed were so effectually surprised, as to be prevented from having recourse to their fire-arms. In this distress Korovin sallied out, in company with four Russians, and attacked the enemy with lances: two of the savages were killed, and the others driven to flight. [Sidenote: The latter repulsed.] Korovin and his party were so severely wounded, that they had scarcely strength sufficient to return to their tent. During the night the storm increased to such a degree, that the vessel was entirely dashed to pieces. The greatest part of the wreck, which was cast on shore by the sea, was carried away by the islanders. They also broke to pieces the barrels of fat, emptied the sacks of provision, and destroyed most of the furs: having thus satisfied their resentment, they went away; and did not again make their appearance until the 30th of April. Upon their retiring, the Russians collected the wretched remains which had been left untouched by the savages, or which the waves had cast on shore since their departure. April 30, a body of an hundred and fifty natives advanced from the Eastern point of the island towards the tent; and, at the distance of an hundred yards, shot at the Russians with fire arms, but luckily without execution. They also set on fire the high grass, and the wind blew the flames towards the tent; but the Russians firing forced the enemy to flight, and gained time to extinguish the flames. This was the last attack which was made upon Korovin; although sickness and misery detained him and his companions upon this spot until the 21st of July. They then put to sea in a baidar eight yards long, which they had constructed in order to make to Protassoff's vessel, with whose fate they were as yet unacquainted. Their number was now reduced to twelve persons, among whom were six Kamtchadals. [Sidenote: The Russians discover the dead Bodies of their Countrymen who had been murdered by the Natives.] After having rowed ten days they landed upon the beach of the same island Umnak; there they observed the remains of a vessel which had been burnt, and saw some clothes, sails, and ropes, torn to pieces. At a small distance was an empty Russian dwelling, and near it a bath-room, in which they found, to their inexpressible terror, twenty dead bodies in their clothes. Each of them had a thong of leather, or his own girdle, fastened about the neck, with which he had been dragged along. Korovin and his companions recollected them to have been some of those who had sailed in Protassoff's vessel; and could distinguish among the rest the commander Medvedeff. They discovered no further traces of the remaining crew; and as none ever appeared, we have no account of the circumstances with which this catastrophe was attended. [Sidenote: Relieved from their Distresses by the Arrival of Glottoff.] After having buried his dead countrymen, Korovin and his companions began to build an hut: they were prevented however from finishing it, by the unexpected arrival of Stephen Glottoff[52], who came to them with a small party by land. Korovin and his companions accordingly joined Glottoff, and rowed the next day to his vessel. [Footnote 52: See the following Chapter.] Soon afterwards Korovin was sent with a party of twenty men to coast the island of Umnak, in order to discover if any part of Medvedeff's crew had made their escape from the general massacre: but his enquiries were without success. In the course of this expedition, as he lay at anchor, in September, before a small island situated between Umnak and Unalashka, some savages rowed towards the Russians in two large baidars; and having shot at them with fire-arms, though without effect, instantly retired. The same evening Korovin entered a bay of the island Umnak, with an intention of passing the night on shore: but as he came near the coast, a large number of savages in an hundred baidars surrounded and saluted him with a volley of darts. Korovin fired and soon dispersed them; and immediately made to a large baidar, which he saw at some distance, in hopes of finding some Russians. He was however mistaken; the islanders who were aboard landed at his approach, and, after shooting at him from their fire-arms, retired to the mountains. Korovin found there an empty baidar, which he knew to be the same in which Barnasheff had sailed, when he was sent upon an hunting party. Within were nothing but two hatchets and some iron points for darts. Three women were seized at the same time; and two natives, who refused to surrender themselves, were put to death. They then made to the dwelling, from which all the inhabitants had run away, and found therein pieces of Russian leather, blades of small knives, shirts, and other things, which had belonged to the Russians. All the information which they could procure from the women whom they had taken prisoners, was, that the crew had been killed, and this booty taken away by the inhabitants, who had retired to the island Unalashka. Korovin gave these women their liberty, and, being apprehensive of fresh attacks, returned to the haven. Towards winter Korovin, with a party of twenty-two men, was sent upon an hunting expedition to the Western point of Unalashka: he was accompanied by an Aleütian interpreter, called Ivan Glottoff. Being informed by some islanders, that a Russian ship, under the command of Ivan Solovioff[53], was then lying before Unalashka, he immediately rowed towards the haven where she was at anchor. On the way he had a sharp encounter with the natives, who endeavoured to prevent him from landing: of these, ten were killed upon the spot; and the remainder fled away, leaving behind them some women and children. [Footnote 53: Chap. XI.] Korovin staid three days aboard Solovioff's vessel, and then returned to the place where he had been so lately attacked. The inhabitants however, for this time, made no opposition to his landing; on the contrary, they received him with kindness, and permitted him to hunt: they even delivered hostages; and entered into a friendly traffic, exchanging furs for beads. They were also prevailed upon to restore several muskets and other things, taken from the Russians who had been massacred. A short time before his departure, the inhabitants again shewed their hostile intentions; for three of them came up to the Russian centinel, and suddenly fell upon him with their knives. The centinel however disengaging himself, and retreating into the hut, they ran away. The Toigons of the village protested ignorance of this treachery; and the offenders were soon afterwards discovered and punished. Korovin, as he was returning to Glottoff, was forced to engage with the islanders upon Unalashka, and also upon Umnak, where they endeavoured to prevent him from landing. Before the end of the year a storm drove the baidar upon the beach of the latter island; and the tempestuous weather setting in, they were detained there until the 6th of April, 1765. During this time they were reduced, from a scarcity of provision, to live chiefly upon sea-wrack and small shell fish. On the 22d they returned to Glottoff; and as they had been unsuccessful in hunting, their cargo of furs was very inconsiderable. Three days after his arrival, Korovin quitted Glottoff, and went over with five other Russians to Solovieff, with whom he returned the following year to Kamtchatka. The six Kamtchadals of Korovin's party joined Glottoff. [Sidenote: Korovin's Description of Umnak and Unalashka.] According to Korovin's account, the islands Umnak and Unalashka are situated not much more Northwards than the mouth of the Kamtchatka river; and, according to the ship's reckoning, about the distance of 1700 versts Eastwards from the same place. The circumference of Umnak is about two hundred and fifty versts; Unalashka is much larger. Both these islands are wholly destitute of trees; drift-wood is brought ashore in large quantities. There were five lakes upon the Northern coast of Unalashka, and but one upon Umnak, of which none were more than ten versts in circumference. These lakes give rise to several small rivulets, which flow only a few versts before they empty themselves into the sea: the fish enter the rivulets in the middle of April, they ascend the lakes in July, and continue there until August. Sea-otters and other sea-animals resort but seldom to these islands; but there is great abundance of red and black foxes. North Eastwards from Unalashka two islands appeared in sight, at the distance of five or ten versts; but Korovin did not touch at them. [Sidenote: Account of the Inhabitants.] The inhabitants of these islands row in their small baidars from one island to the other. They are so numerous, and their manner of life so unsettled, that their number cannot exactly be determined. Their dwelling caves are made in the following manner. They first dig an hole in the earth proportioned to the size of their intended habitation, of twenty, thirty, or forty yards in length, and from six to ten broad. They then set up poles of larch, firs, and ash driven on the coast by the sea. Across the top of these poles they lay planks, which they cover with grass and earth. They enter through holes in the top by means of ladders. Fifty, an hundred, and even an hundred and fifty persons dwell together in such a cave. They light little or no fires within, for which reason these dwellings are much cleaner than those of the Kamtchadals. When they want to warm themselves in the winter, they make a fire of dry herbs, of which they have collected a large store in summer, and stand over it until they are sufficiently warmed. A few of these islanders wear fur-stockings in winter; but the greatest part go bare-footed, and all are without breeches. The skins of cormorants, puffins, and sea-divers, serve for the mens clothing; and the women wear the skins of sea-bears, seals, and sea-otters. They sleep upon thick mats, which they twist out of a soft kind of grass that grows upon the shore, and have no other covering but their usual clothes. Many of the men have five or six wives; and he that is the best hunter or fisher has the greatest number. The women make their needles of the bones of birds wings, and use sinews for thread. Their weapons are bows and arrows, lances and darts, which they throw like the Greenlanders to the distance of sixty yards by means of a little hand-board. Both the darts and arrows are feathered: the former are about an ell and an half long; the shaft, which is well made considering their want of instruments, is often composed of two pieces that join into each other: the point is of flint, sharpened by beating it between two stones. These darts as well as the lances were formerly tipped with bone, but at present the points are commonly made of the iron which they procure from the Russians, and out of which they ingeniously form little hatchets and two-edged knives. They shape the iron by rubbing it between two stones, and whetting it frequently with sea-water. With these instruments and stone hatchets they build their baidars. They have a strange custom of cutting holes in the under-lip and through the gristle of the nose. They place in the former two little bones, wrought in the form of teeth, which project some inches from the face. In the nose a piece of bone is placed crossways. The deceased are buried with their boat, weapons, and clothes[54]. [Footnote 54: The author repeats here several circumstances which have been mentioned before, and many of them will occur again: but my office as a translator would not suffer me to omit them.] CHAP. X. Voyage of _Stephen Glottoff_--He reaches the _Fox Islands_--Sails beyond _Unalashka_ to _Kadyak_--Winters upon that Island--Repeated attempts of the Natives to destroy the Crew--They are repulsed, reconciled, and prevailed upon to trade with the _Russians_--Account of _Kadyak_--Its inhabitants--animals--productions--_Glottoff_ sails back to _Umnak_--Winters there--Returns to _Kamtchatka_--Journal of his voyage. Here follows one of the most memorable voyages yet made, which extended farther, and terminated more fortunately, than the last mentioned expeditions. [Sidenote: Voyage of Glottoff in the Andrean and Natalia, 1762.] Terenty Tsebaeffskoi and company, merchants of Lalsk, fitted out the Andrean and Natalia under the command of Stephen Glottoff, an experienced and skilful seaman of Yarensk. This vessel sailed from the bay of the river Kamtchatka the 1st of October, 1762, manned with thirty-eight Russians and eight Kamtchadals. In eight days they reached Mednoi Ostroff, or Copper Island, where having sought out a convenient harbour, they unloaded and laid up the vessel for the winter. [Sidenote: Winters upon Copper Island.] Their first care was to supply themselves with provisions; and they killed afterwards a quantity of ice-foxes, and a considerable number of sea-otters. For the benefit of the crown and their own use in case of need, they resolved to take on board all the remaining tackle and iron work of Beering's ship, which had been left behind on Commander's Island, and was buried in the beach. For this purpose they dispatched, on the 27th of May, Jacob Malevinskoy (who died soon after) with thirteen men in a baidar to that island, which was seventy versts distant. They brought back with them twenty-two pood of iron, ten of old cordage fit for caulker's use, some lead and copper, and several thousand beads. Copper Island has its name from the native copper found on the coast, particularly at the Western point on its South side. Of this native copper Malevinskoy brought with him two large pieces weighing together twelve pounds, which were picked up between a rock and the sea on a strand of about twelve yards in breadth. Amongst other floating bodies which the sea drives upon the shores of this Island, the true right camphor wood, and another sort of wood very white, soft, and sweet-scented, are occasionally found. [Sidenote: Sails to the Fox Islands.] Every preparation for continuing the voyage being made, they sailed from Copper Island the 26th of July, 1763, and steered for the Islands Umnak and Agunalashka, where Glottoff had formerly observed great numbers of black foxes. On account of storms and contrary winds, they were thirty days before they fetched Umnak. [Sidenote: Arrive at Kadyak.] Here they arrived the 24th of August, and without dropping anchor or losing any time, they resolved to sail further for the discovery of new islands: they passed eight contiguous to each other and separated by straits, which were to the best of their estimation from twenty to an hundred versts broad. Glottoff however did not land till he reached the last and most Eastward of these islands, called by the inhabitants Kadyak, from which the natives said it was not far to the coast of a wide extended woody continent. No land however was to be seen from a little island called by the natives Aktunak, which is situated about thirty versts more to the East than Kadyak. September 8th, the vessel ran up a creek, lying South East of Aktunak, through which a rivulet empties itself into the sea; this rivulet comes from a lake six versts long, one broad, and about fifty fathoms deep. During the ebb of the tide the vessel was left aground; but the return of the water set her again afloat. Near the shore were four large huts, so crouded with people, that their number could scarcely be counted: however, soon after Glottoff's arrival, all these inhabitants quitted their dwellings, and retired with precipitation. The next day some islanders in baidars approached the vessel, and accosted the people on board: and as Ivan Glottoff, the Aleütian interpreter, did not well understand the language of these islanders, they soon afterwards returned with a boy whom they had formerly taken prisoner from Isanak, one of the islands which lie to the West of Kadyak. Him the Aleütian interpreter perfectly understood: and by his means every necessary explanation could be obtained from the islanders. In this manner they conversed with the savages, and endeavoured to persuade them to become tributary; they used also every argument in their power to prevail upon them to give up the boy for an interpreter; but all their entreaties were for the present without effect. The savages rowed back to the cliff called Aktalin, which lies about three versts to the South of Kadyak, where they seemed to have habitations. On the 6th of September Kaplin was sent with thirteen men to the cliff, to treat peaceably with the islanders. He found there ten huts, from which about an hundred of the natives came out. They behaved seemingly in a friendly manner, and answered the interpreter by the boy, that they had nobody proper for an hostage; but that they would deliver up the boy to the Russians agreeable to their desire. Kaplin received him very thankfully, and brought him on board, where he was properly taken care of: he afterwards accompanied Glottoff to Kamtchatka, and was baptized by the name of Alexander Popoff, being then about thirteen years of age. For some days after this conference the islanders came off in companies of five, ten, twenty, and thirty: they were admitted on board in small numbers, and kindly received, but with a proper degree of circumspection. On the 8th of September the vessel was brought further up the creek without unloading her cargo: and on the 9th Glottoff with ten men proceeded to a village on the shore about two hundred yards from the vessel, where the natives had begun to reside: it consisted of three summer-huts covered only with long grass: they were from eight to ten yards broad, twelve long, and about four high: they saw there about an hundred men, but neither women nor children. Finding it impossible to persuade the savages to give hostages, Glottoff resolved to let his people remain together, and to keep a strong guard. [Sidenote: The Natives attack the Russians, but are defeated.] The islanders visited them still in small bodies; it was however more and more visible that their intentions were bad. At last on the 1st of October, by day break, a great number having assembled together in the remote parts of the island, came unexpectedly across the country. They approached very near without being discovered by the watch, and seeing nobody on deck but those on duty, shot suddenly into the vessel with arrows. The watch found refuge behind the quarter boards, and gave the alarm without firing. Glottoff immediately ordered a volley to be fired over their heads with small arms; upon which they immediately returned with great expedition. As soon as it was day there was no enemy to be seen: but they discovered a number of ladders, several bundles of hay in which the savages had put sulphur, likewise a quantity of birch-tree bark, which had been left behind in their precipitate flight. They now found it very necessary to be on their guard against the attempts of these perfidious incendiaries. Their suspicions were still further increased by the subsequent conduct of the natives: for though the latter came to the vessel in small bodies, yet it was observed that they examined every thing, and more particularly the watch, with the strictest attention; and they always returned without paying any regard to the friendly propositions of the Russians. On the 4th of October about two hundred islanders made their appearance, carrying wooden shields before them, and preparing with bows and arrows for an attack. Glottoff endeavoured at first by persuasion to prevail upen them to desist; but observing that they still continued advancing, he resolved to venture a sally. This intrepidity disconcerted the islanders, and they immediately retreated without making the least resistance. The 26th of October they ventured a third attack, and advanced towards the vessel for this purpose by day-break: the watch however gave the alarm in due time, and the whole crew were immediately under arms. The approach of day-light discovered to their view different parties of the enemy advancing under the protection of wooden screens. Of these moving breast-works they counted seven; and behind each from thirty to forty men armed with bone lances. Besides these a croud of armed men advanced separately to the attack, some of them bearing whale jaw-bones, and others wooden shields. Dissuasion proving ineffectual, and the arrows beginning to fall even aboard the ship, Glottoff gave orders to fire. [Sidenote: The Natives are finally repulsed by the Russians.] The shot from the small arms however not being of force enough to pierce the screens, the islanders advanced under their protection with steadiness and intrepidity. Glottoff nevertheless determined to risk a sally of his whole crew armed with muskets and lances. The islanders instantly threw down their screens, and fled with precipitation until they gained their boats, into which they threw themselves and rowed off. They had about seventeen large baidars and a number of small canoes. The screens which they left behind were made of three rows of stakes placed perpendicularly, and bound together with sea-weed and osiers; they were twelve feet broad, and above half a yard thick. [Sidenote: The Russians winter at Kadyak.] The islanders now appearing to be sufficiently intimidated, the Russians began to build a winter hut of floated wood, and waited in a body the appearance of spring without further annoyance. Although they saw nobody before the 25th of December, yet Glottoff kept his people together; sending out occasionally small hunting and fishing parties to the lake, which lay about five versts from the creek. During the whole winter they caught in the lake several different species of trout and salmon, soles, and herrings of a span and a half long, and even turbot and cod-fish, which came up with the flood into the lake. At last, on the 25th of December, two islanders came to the ship, and conversed at a distance by means of interpreters. Although proposals of peace, and trade were held out to them in the most friendly manner, yet they went off without seeming to put much confidence in these offers: nor did any of them appear again before the 4th of April, 1764. Want of sufficient exercise in the mean time brought on a violent scurvy among the crew, by which disorder nine persons were carried off. On the 4th of April four islanders made their appearance, and seemed to pay more attention to the proposals: one of them at last advanced, and offered to barter two fox-skins for beads. They did not set the least value upon other goods of various kinds, such as shirts, linen, and nankeen, but demanded glass beads of different colours, for which they exchanged their skins with pleasure. [Sidenote: The Natives are reconciled to the Russians.] This friendly traffic, together with Glottoff's entreaties, operated so powerfully, that, after holding a consultation with their countrymen, they returned with a solemn declaration, that their brethren would in future commit no hostilities against the Russians. From that time until their departure a daily intercourse was carried on with the islanders, who brought all sorts of fox and sea-otter skins, and received in exchange a stipulated number of beads. Some of them were even persuaded to pay a tribute of skins, for which receipts were given. Amongst other wares the Russians procured two small carpets, worked or platted in a curious manner, and on one side set close with beaver-wool like velvet: they could not however learn whether these carpets were wrought by the islanders. The latter brought also for sale well-dressed sea-otter skins, the hair of which was shorn quite short with sharp stones, in such a manner, that the remainder, which was of a yellowish brown colour, glistened and appeared like velvet. Their caps had surprising and sometimes very ornamental decorations: some of them had on the forepart combs adorned with manes like an helmet; others, seemingly peculiar to the females, were made of intestines stitched together with rein-deer hair and sinews in a most elegant taste, and ornamented on the crown with long streamers of hair died of a beautiful red. Of all these curiosities Glottoff carried samples to Kamtchatka[55]. [Footnote 55: These and several other ornaments of a similar kind are preserved in the cabinet of curiosities at the Academy of Sciences of St. Petersburg: a cabinet which well merits the attention of the curious traveller; for it contains a large collection of the dresses of the Eastern nations. Amongst the rest one compartment is entirely filled with the dresses, arms, and implements, brought from the new discovered islands.] [Sidenote: Animals of Kadyak.] The natives differ considerably in dress and language from the inhabitants of the other Fox Islands: and several species of animals were observed upon Kadyak, which are not to be found upon the other islands, viz. ermines, martens, beavers, river otters, wolves, wild boars, and bears: the last-mentioned animal was not indeed actually seen by the Russians, but the prints of its feet were traced. Some of the inhabitants had clothes made of the skins of rein-deer and jevras; the latter of which is a sort of small marmoset. Both these skins were probably procured from the continent of America[56]. Black, brown, and red foxes were seen in great numbers; and the coast abounds with sea-dogs, sea-bears, sea-lions, and sea-otters. The birds are cranes, geese, ducks, gulls, ptarmigans, crows, and magpies; but no uncommon species was any where discovered. [Sidenote: Productions.] The vegetable productions are bilberries, cranberries, wortleberries, and wild lily-roots. Kadyak likewise yields willows and alders, which circumstance affords the strongest proof that it lies at no great distance from the continent of America. The extent of Kadyak cannot be exactly ascertained, as the Russians, through apprehension of the natives, did not venture to explore the country. [Footnote 56: Although this conjecture is probable, yet, when the reader recollects that the island Alaksu is said to contain rein-deer, he will perceive that the inhabitants of Kadyak might have been supplied with the skins of that animal from thence. See p. 68.] [Sidenote: Account of the Inhabitants.] The inhabitants, like those of the Aleütian and nearer islands, make holes in the under-lips and through the gristle of the nose, in which they insert the bones of birds and animals worked into the form of teeth. Their clothes are made of the skins of birds, foxes, sea-otters, young rein-deer, and marmosets; they sew them together with sinews. They wear also fur-stockings of rein-deer skins, but no breeches. Their arms are bows, arrows, and lances, whose points, as well as their small hatchets, are of sharp flint: some few make knives and lance points of rein-deer bones. Their wooden shields are called kuyaky, which amongst the Greenlanders signifies a small canoe. Their manners are altogether rude. They have not the least disposition to give a courteous reception to strangers: nor does there appear amongst themselves any kind of deference or submission from one to another. Their canoes are some of them so small as to contain only one or two persons; others are large baidars similar to the women's boats of the Greenlanders. Their food consists chiefly of raw and dried fish, partly caught at sea with bone hooks, and partly in rivulets, in bagnets made of sinews platted together. They call themselves Kanagist, a name that has no small resemblance to Karalit; by which appellation, the Greenlanders and Esquimaux on the coast of Labradore distinguish themselves: the difference between these two denominations is occasioned perhaps by a change of pronunciation, or by a mistake of the Russian sailors, who may have given it this variation. Their numbers seem very considerable on that part of the island, where they had their fixed habitations. The island Kadyak[57] makes, with Aghunalashka, Umnak, and the small islands lying between them, a continued Archipelago, extending N. E. and E. N. E. towards America: it lies by the ship's reckoning in 230 degrees of longitude; so that it cannot be far distant from that part of the American coast which Beering formerly touched at. [Footnote 57: Kadyak is not laid down upon any chart of the new discovered islands: for we have no chart of Glottoff's voyage; and no other Russian navigator touched at that island.] The large island Alaksu, lying Northward from Kadyak where Pushkaref[58] wintered, must be still nearer the continent: and the account propagated by its inhabitants of a great promontory, called Atachtak, stretching from the continent N. E. of Alaksu, is not at all improbable. [Footnote 58: See Chap. VI.] Although the conduct of the islanders appeared more friendly, yet on account of their numbers Glottoff resolved not to pass another winter upon Kadyak, and accordingly prepared for his departure. He wanted hoops for repairing his water-casks; and being told by the natives that there were trees on the island at no great distance from the bay, he dispatched on the 25th of April Lukas Ftoruskin with eleven men for the purpose of felling wood. Ftoruskin returned the same day with the following intelligence: that after rowing along the South coast of the island forty or fifty versts from the haven, he observed, about half a verst from the shore, a considerable number of alders, similar to those found in Kamtchatka, growing in vallies between the rocks. The largest trunks were from two to four vershocks in diameter. Of this wood he felled as much as he had occasion for; and returned without having met with either islander or habitation. [Sidenote: Departure from Kadyak, May, 1764.] They brought the vessel down the creek in May; and, after taking in all the peltry and stores, left Kadyak on the 24th. Contrary winds retarded their voyage, and drove them near the island Alaksu, which they passed; their water being nearly exhausted, they afterwards landed upon another island, called Saktunk, in order to procure a fresh stock. [Sidenote: Arrival at Umnak.] At last on the 3d of July, they arrived again at Umnak, and anchored in a bay which Glottoff had formerly visited. He immediately went ashore in a baidar, and soon found out his former hut, which was in ruins: near it he observed another Russian dwelling, that had been built in his absence, in which lay a murdered Russian, but whose face none of them knew. Glottoff, resolving to procure further information, went across the island the 5th of July, accompanied by sixteen of his crew. He discovered the remains of a burnt vessel, some prayer books, images, &c.; all the iron work and cordage were carried off. Near the spot he found likewise a bathing room filled with murdered Russians in their clothes. From some marks, he concluded that this was the vessel fitted out by Protassoff; nor was he mistaken in his conjectures. Alarmed at the fate of his countrymen, Glottoff returned to the ship, and held a consultation upon the measures necessary to be taken; and it was unanimously resolved that they should endeavour to procure more intelligence concerning the vessel. In the mean time seven islanders came rowing off in baidars, and pretended that they wanted to trade. They shewed sea-otter skins at a distance, but would not venture on board; and desired by the interpreter Glottoff and two of his people to come on shore and barter. Glottoff however, having sufficient cause to distrust the savages, refused to comply with their demands: upon this they immediately landed, and shot from the shore with fire-arms, but without doing any execution. They were even bold enough to get into their canoes a second time, and to row near the vessel. In order if possible to procure intelligence from them, every method of persuading them to peace was tried by means of the interpreters; and at last one of them approached the ship and demanded victuals, which being thrown to him, he came on board. He then related the fate of the above-mentioned vessel, of which the islanders had made themselves masters; and gave likewise some intelligence concerning the remaining small body of fugitives under the command of Korovin. He also confessed, that their design was to entice Glottoff on shore, and then to kill him; for which purpose more than thirty islanders were posted in ambush behind the nearest rocks. After cutting off the leader, they imagined it would be an easy matter to seize upon the ship. Upon this information Glottoff detained the islander on board, and landing with a strong party attacked the savages; the latter shot with arrows, as well as from the muskets which they had seized, but without effect, and were soon forced to retire to their canoes. July the 14th a violent storm arose, in which Glottoff's vessel parted her cable, and was forced on shore without any other loss than that of an anchor. The crew likewise, through want of fresh provisions, began to grow so sickly, that they were almost in a defenceless state. Glottoff however, with ten men, set out the 28th of July for that part of the island, where according to information they expected to find Korovin. They discovered only parts of the wreck, but none of the crew, so that they now gave them up for lost. But on the 2d of August, as Glottoff was on his way back, five islanders approached him in canoes, and asked why the baidar had been out; to which a false answer being given, they told him, that on the other side of the island he would find Korovin with his people, who were building an hut on the side of the rivulet. Upon receiving this intelligence, Glottoff and his companions went over land to the place pointed out by the islanders, and found every thing agreeable to their information: in this Korovin had not the least share, not having been made privy to the transaction. The circumstances of his joining, and afterwards separating from Glottoff, have already been mentioned[59]. [Footnote 59: See the preceding Chapter.] [Sidenote: Glottoff winters upon Umnak.] Glottoff now resolved to winter upon Umnak, and accordingly laid up his vessel for that purpose. On the 2d of September Korovin, as is before related, was at his own desire sent out with a hunting party in two baidars. On his return, in May 1765, they had the first intelligence of the arrival of Solovioff's vessel, which lay before Unalashka, and of which an account shall be given[60]. None of the islanders appeared near the harbour during the winter, and there were none probably at that time upon Umnak; for Glottoff made excursions on all sides, and went once round the island. He likewise looked into the habitations of the islanders, and found them empty: he examined the country and caused a strict search to be made after the remains of the plundered vessel. [Footnote 60: Chap. XI.] According to his account Umnak is about 300 versts in circumference. It contains several small rivulets, which take their rise from lakes, and fall into the sea after a very short course. No trees were observed upon the island, and the vegetables were the same as those of Kamtchatka. The following summer small parties of the inhabitants were seen; but they immediately fled upon the approach of the Russians. Some of them however were at last persuaded to a friendly intercourse and to pay a tribute: by these means they got back part of the arms, anchors, and iron work, of the plundered vessel. They continued to barter with the natives during the summer of 1765, exchanging beads for the skins of foxes and sea-otters. [Sidenote: Departure from Umnak.] The following winter hunting parties were sent out in Umnak as well as to Unalashka; and in July 1766 Glottoff, without meeting with any more difficulties began his voyage homewards. We shall here conclude with giving a copy of the journal kept on board Glottoff's vessel, the Andrean and Natalia; from which inferences with regard to the situation of the islands may be drawn. [Sidenote: Journal of the Voyage.] Journal of Glottoff, on board the Andrean and Natalia. 1762. Oct. 1. Sailed from Kamtchatka Bay. 2. Wind Southerly, steered between E. and S. E. three hours. 3. Wind S. E. worked at N. E. course, 16 hours. 4. From midnight sailed East with a fair wind, 18 hours. 5. At Six o'clock A. M. discovered Beering's Island distant about 18 versts. 6. At 1 o'clock came to anchor on the South East point of Copper Island. 7. At 8 A. M. sailed to the South side of the Island, anchored there at 10 o'clock. 1763. July 26. Sailed from Copper Island at 5 P. M. 27. Sailed with a fair S. S. W. wind, 17 hours. 28. Made little way. 29. Drove--wind E. N. E. 30. Ditto. 31. Ditto. Aug. 1. Ditto. 2. At 11 A. M. wind N. E. steered E. 3. Wind W. S. W. sailed 8 knots an hour, 250 versts. 4. Wind South--sailed 150 versts. 5. Wind ditto--sailed 126 versts. 6. Wind ditto, 3 knots, 45 versts. 7. Calm. 8. During the night gentle S. E. wind steered, N. E. at 2-1/2 knots. 9. Forenoon calm. At 2 o'clock P. M. gentle N. E. wind, steered between E. N. E. and S. E. at the rate of three knots. 10. Morning, wind E. N. E. afterwards S. S. W. with which steered N. E. 11. At 5 o'clock the wind S. S. E. steered E. N. E. at the rate of three knots. 12. Wind S. steered E. at 2-1/2 knots, sailed 50 versts. 13. Wind S. S. E. steered E. at 4-1/2 knots, sailed 90 versts. 14. Wind W. N. W. at 2 knots, sailed 30 versts. 15. The wind freshened, at 4 knots, sailed 60 versts. 16. Wind N. N. E. steered E. S. E. at 3 knots, sailed 30 versts. 17. Wind E. S. E. and S. E. light breezes and changeable. 18. Wind S. E. steered N. E. at 3-1/2 knots, sailed in 12 hours 22 versts. 19. Wind S. and light breezes, steered E. at 3 knots, sailed in 8 hours 11 versts. 20. Before day-break calm; three hours after sun-rise a breeze sprung up at S. E. steered E. N. E. at 3 knots, and sailed 20 versts. 22. Calm. 23. Wind S. S. E. during the night, the ship sailed at the rate of 2 knots; the wind afterwards came round to the S. S. W. and the ship sailed at 5 to 6 knots these 24 hours 150 versts. 24. Saw land at day-break, at 3 knots sailed 45 versts. 25. Wind W. S. W. sailed along the coast these 24 hours 50 versts. 26. Wind N. W. steered N. E. at 5-1/2 knots, 100 versts. 27. Wind E. N. E. the ship drove towards land, on which discovered a high mountain. 28. Wind N. E. and stormy, the ship drove. 29. Wind N. W. steered E. N. E. at the rate of 3 knots. 30. Wind S. S. E. at 6 knots, steering again towards land. 31. A violent storm, Wind west. Sept. 1. Wind West, steered N. E. at the rate of 3 knots towards land. 2. Wind S. W. steered N. E. towards land at 5 knots. 3. Wind S. W. drove N. N. E. along the coast. 4. Wind W. N. W. steered N. E. at 4 knots, sailed 100 versts. 5. Wind N. W. steered E. N. E. at 3 knots, and towards evening came to anchor off the Island Kadyak. 1764 May 24. Sailed from Kadyak. 25. Wind N. W. and made but little way W. S. W. 26. Wind W. ship drove towards S. E. 27. Wind W. S. W. ship drove E. S. E. The same day the wind came round to the S. when steered again towards Kadyak. 28. Wind E. S. E. fell in with the island Alaska or Alaksu. 29. Wind S. W. steered N. W. 30. Wind W. N. W. the ship drove under the foresail. 31. Wind W. drove to the Southward. June 1. Wind W. S. W. landed on the Island Saktunak, for a supply of water. 2. Wind S. E. steered S. W. along the island at 3 knots. 3. Wind N. E. steered W. S. W. at the rate of 3 to 4 knots, sailing in these 24 hours 100 versts. 4. Calm. 5. At 8 o'clock A. M. a small breeze S. E. 6. Wind E. afterwards calm. Towards evening the wind S.E. steered S. W. at 3 knots, and unexpectedly discovered land ahead, which kept clear of with difficulty. From the 7th to the 10th at anchor off a small cliff. 10. A hard gale at S. the ship drove foul of the anchor, stood out to sea steering E. 11. Anchored again at a small distance from land. 13. Wind S. S. W. stood out to sea and steered E. S. E. 14. Wind W. S. W. steered S. S. E. at the rate of 1 knot. 15. Calm. 16. Wind S. steered W. at 1 knot, the ship drove a little to the Northward. 17. Wind S. S. E. steered W. S. W. at 3 knots. 18. Calm. 19. Ditto. 20. Wind N. E. steered S. W. and sailed this day about 87 versts. 21. The Wind blowing right ahead, came to anchor off an unknown island, where continued till the 25. When stood out to sea early in the morning. 26. Wind W. N. W. afterwards W. steered S. E. 27. Calm, in the night a small but favourable breeze. 28. Wind N. W. continued the course, at the rate of 2 to 3 knots[61]. 29. Wind N. E. steered W. at 3 to 4 knots, and saw land. 30. Wind N. E. steered S. W. at the rate of 7 knots. July 1. With the same wind and course, at the rate of 5 knots, sailed 200 versts. 2. Fell in with the island Umnak, and came to an anchor under a small island until next day; when brought the ship into the harbour, and laid her up. 1766. June 13. Brought the ship into the harbour, and continued at anchor there until the 3d of July. July 3. Got under way. 4. Wind E. 5. A South West wind drove the ship about 50 versts N. E. 6. Wind S. sailed about 60 versts W. 7. Wind W. S. W. the ship drove to the Northward. 8. Wind N. W. steered S. at the rate of one knot. 9. Wind N. W. steered the whole day W. S. W. 10. Wind S. S. W. sailed about 40 versts W. N. W. 11. Wind S. W. continued the same course, sailing only 5 versts. 12. Continued the same course, and sailed 55 versts. 13. For the most part calm. 14. Wind W. N. W. and stormy, the ship drove under the foresail. 15. Wind S. sailed on the proper course 100 versts. 16. Wind E. S. E. sailed W. S. W. at the rate of 6 knots, 100 versts. 17. Wind N. N. W. sailed S. W. at the rate of 2 knots, 30 versts. 18. Wind S. steered W. at the rate of 5 knots, and sailed 130 versts. 19. Wind S. W. the ship drove under the foresail. 20. Wind E. N. E. steered W. N. W. at the rate of 3 knots. 21. Wind E. N. E. at the rate of 4 to 5 knots, sailed 200 versts. 22. Wind N. E. at 4-1/2 knots, 150 versts. 23. Wind E. N. E. steered W. at 3 knots, 100 versts. 24. Wind E. steered W. at the rate of 3 knots, 50 versts. 25. Wind N. E. steered W. at 5 knots 100 versts. 26. The wind continued N. E. and freshened, steered W. at the rate of 7 knots, 200 versts. 27. A small breeze N. N. W. with which however sailed 150 versts. 28. Wind being W. S. W. drove 24 hours under bare-poles. 29. Wind South, steered W. at the rate of 2 knots, 48 versts--this day saw land. 30. Wind S. S. E. sailed, at the rate of 4 knots, 96 versts, and approached the land, which found to be the island Karaga--From the 1st to the 13th of August, continued our voyage towards the mouth of Kamtchatka river, sometimes plying to windward, sometimes driving, and at last arrived happily with a rich cargo. [Footnote 61: Lief man bey nordwest wind auf den curs zu 2 bis 3 knoten.] CHAP. XI. _Solovioff's_ voyage--he reaches _Unalashka_, and passes two winters upon that island--relation of what passed there--fruitless attempts of the natives to destroy the crew--Return of _Solovioff_ to _Kamtchatka_--journal of his voyage in returning--description of the islands _Umnak_ and _Unalashka_--productions--inhabitants--their manners--customs, &c. &c. [Sidenote: Voyage of Solovioff in the St. Peter and Paul, 1764.] In the year 1764, Jacob Ulednikoff, merchant of Irkutsk and company, fitted out a ship called the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, under the command of Ivan Solovioff: she sailed from the mouth of Kamtchatka river the 25th of August. The crew consisted of fifty-five men, amongst whom were some of the owners, and thirteen Kamtchadals. They steered at first S. E. with the wind at N. W. but on its coming southerly they afterwards shaped their course E. N. E. The 27th one of the Russian sailors died off Kamtchatka point; the 31st they made Beering's Island, which they passed leaving it on their left. The 1st and 2nd of September they were becalmed, and afterwards the wind springing up at W. S. W. they continued their former course; until the 5th they sailed on with the wind at south; but on the 5th and 6th, from changeable breezes and dead calms, made no progress; from the 7th to the 13th, they sailed E. S. E. with Southerly and Westerly winds; and from that time to the fifteenth East, with the wind at West. September 16, they made the island Umnak, where Solovioff had formerly been in Nikiphoroff's vessel. As they sailed along the Northern coast, three islanders came to them in baidars; but, the crew having no interpreter, they would not come on board. As they found no good bay on that shore, they proceeded through a strait of about a verst broad, which separates Umnak from Unalashka. [Sidenote: Arrival at Unalashka.] They lay-to during the night; and early on the 17th dropped anchor at the distance of about two hundred yards from the shore, in a bay on the North side of the last mentioned island. From thence the captain dispatched Gregory Korenoff at the head of twenty men in a baidar, with orders to land, reconnoitre the country, find out the nearest habitations, and report the disposition of the people. Korenoff returned the same day, with an account that he had discovered one of the dwelling-caves of the savages, but abandoned and demolished, in which he had found traces of Russians, viz. a written legend, and a broken musket-stock. In consequence of this intelligence, they brought the ship near the coast, and endeavoured to get into the mouth of a river called by the natives Tsikanok, and by the Russians Osernia, but were prevented by shallow water. They landed however their tackle and lading. No natives made their appearance until the 22d, when two of them came of their own accord, and welcomed the Russians on their arrival. They told their names, and were recognized by Solovioff; he had known them on a former expedition, when Agiak, one of the two, had served as an interpreter; the other, whose name was Kashmak, had voluntarily continued some time with the crew on the same occasion. These two persons recounted the particular circumstances which attended the loss of Kulkoff's, Protassoff's, and Trapesnikoff's vessels; from the last of which Kashmak had, with great hazard of his life, escaped by flight. Agiak had served as interpreter to Protassoff's company, and related that the islanders, after murdering the hunting detachments of the Russians, came to the harbour, and entered the ship under the most friendly appearances. Finding the crew in perfect security, they suddenly attacked and slew them, together with their commander. He added, that he had hid himself under a bench until the murderers were gone: that since that time, he, as well as Kashmak, had lived as fugitives; and in the course of their wanderings had learned the following intelligence from the girls who were gathering berries in the fields. The Toigons of Umnak, Akutan, and Toshko, with their relations of Unalashka, had formed a confederacy. They agreed not to disturb any Russians on their first landing, but to let them go out on different hunting excursions; being thus separated and weakened, the intention of the Toigons were to attack and cut them off at the same time, so that no one party should have assistance from any of the others. They acquainted him also with Glottoff's arrival at Umnak. These unfavourable reports filled Solovioff with anxiety; he accordingly doubled his watch, and used every precaution in his power against attacks from the savages. But wanting wood to repair his vessel, and wishing for more particular information concerning the situation of the island, he dispatched the 29th a party of thirty men, with the above-mentioned interpreter, to its western extremity. In three or four hours they rowed to Ankonom, a point of land, where they saw a village, consisting of two large caves, and over against it a little island at no great distance. The moment the inhabitants saw them approaching, they got into their baidars, and put out to sea, leaving their dwellings empty. The Russians found therein several skeletons, which, in the interpreter's opinion, were the remains of ten murdered sailors of Trapesnikoff's company. With much persuasion the interpreter prevailed on the islanders to return to the place which they had just quitted: they kept however at a wary distance, and were armed for whatever might occur. [Sidenote: Hostilities between Solovioff and the Natives.] Solovioff attempting to cut off their retreat, in order to secure if possible some hostages, they took the alarm, and began themselves the attack. Upon this the Russians fired upon and pursued them; four were killed, and seven taken prisoners, among whom was the Toigon of the little island Sedak. These prisoners, being bound and examined, confessed that a number of Korovin's crew had been murdered in this place; and the Toigon sent people to bring in a number of muskets, some kettles and tackle, which the natives had taken upon that occasion. They also brought intelligence that Korovin, with a party in two baidars, had taken shelter at a place called Inalga. Upon this information, letters were immediately sent to Korovin; upon the receipt of which he joined them the 2d of October. At the time of Korovin's arrival, the savages made another attack on Solovioff's watch with knives; which obliged the latter to fire, and six of the assailants were left dead on the spot. The captive Toigon excused this attempt of his people by ascribing it to their fears, lest Korovin out of revenge should put all the prisoners to death; on which account this effort was made to rescue them. Solovioff, for the greater security, sent the prisoners by land to the haven, while Korovin and his party went to the same place by sea. The Toigon however was treated kindly, and even permitted to return home on condition of leaving his son as an hostage. In consequence of this kind behaviour the inhabitants of three other villages, Agulak, Kutchlok, and Makuski presented hostages of their own accord. [Sidenote: Solovioff lays up the Vessel, and winters upon Unalashka.] From the remaining timber of the old dwelling the Russians built a new hut; and on the fourteenth they laid up the vessel. Koronoff was then sent upon a reconnoitring party to the Southern side of the island, which in that part was not more than five or six versts broad: he proceeded on with his companions, sometimes rowing in canoes, sometimes travelling by land and dragging them after. He returned the twentieth, and reported that he had found upon the coast on the further side of the island an empty habitation. That he rowed from thence Eastward along the shore, and behind the first point of land came to an island in the next bay; there he found about forty islanders of both sexes lodged under their baidars, who by his friendly behaviour had been induced to give him three hostages. These people afterwards settled in the above-mentioned empty hut, and came frequently to the harbour. On the 28th of October, Solovioff himself went also upon a reconnoitring party along the North coast, towards the North-East end of the island. He rowed from the first promontory across a bay; and found on the opposite point of land a dwelling place called Agulok, which lies about four hours row from the harbour. He found there thirteen men and about forty women and children, who delivered up several gun-barrels and ship-stores, and likewise informed him of two of Korovin's crew who had been murdered. November 5, they proceeded farther; and after five or six hours rowing, they saw on a point of land another dwelling called Ikutchlok, beyond which the interpreter shewed them the haven, where Korovin's ship had been at anchor. This was called Makushinshy Bay; and on an island within it they found two Toigons, called Itchadak and Kagumaga, with about an hundred and eighty people of both sexes employed in hunting sea-bears. These natives were not in the least hostile, and Solovioff endeavoured to establish and confirm a friendly intercourse between them and his people. He remained with them until the 10th, when the Toigons invited him to their winter quarters, which lay about five hours sail farther East: there he found two dwelling caves, each of forty yards square, near a rivulet abounding with fish which fell from a lake into a little bay. In the neighbourhood of this village is a hot spring below the sea mark, which is only to be seen at ebb tide. From hence he departed the 25th, but was forced back by storms, and detained there until the 6th of December. Kagumaga then accompanied him to another village called Totchikala; both the Toigon and the interpreter advised him to be on his guard against the natives, whom they represented as very savage, sworn enemies to the Russians, and the murderers of nine of Kulkoff's crew. Solovioff for these reasons passed the night on the open coast, and next morning sent the Toigon before to inspire the natives with more friendly sentiments. Some of them listened to his representations; but the greatest part fled upon Solovioff's approach, so that he found the place consisting of four large dwelling caves almost empty, in which he secured himself with suitable precaution. Here he found three hundred darts and ten bows with arrows, all which he destroyed, only reserving one bow and seventeen arrows as specimens of their arms. By the most friendly arguments he urged the few natives who remained to lay aside their enmity, and to persuade their leaders and relations to return to their habitations and live on terms of amity and friendship. On the 10th about an hundred men and a still greater number of women returned. [Sidenote: Renewal of Hostilities.] But the fairest speeches had no effect on these savages, who kept aloof and prepared for hostilities, which they began on the 17th by an open attack. Nineteen of them were killed, amongst whom was Inlogusak one of their leaders, and the most inveterate fomenter of hostilities against the Russians. The other leader Aguladock being alive confessed, that on receiving the first news of Solovioff's arrival they had resolved to attack the crew and burn the ship. Notwithstanding this confession, no injury was offered to him: in consequence of this kind usage he was prevailed upon to deliver up his son as an hostage, and to order his people to live on friendly terms with the Russians. During the month of January the natives delivered in three anchors, and a quantity of tackle which had been saved from a vessel formerly wrecked on that coast; and at the same time they brought three boys and two young girls as hostages and pledges of their future fidelity. January 25, Solovioff set out for the haven where his ship lay: before his departure the Toigons of Makushinsk paid of their own accord a double tribute. February 1, Kagumaga of Makushink, Agidalok of Totzikala, and Imaginak of Ugamitzi, Toigons of Unalashka, with a great number of their relations, came to Solovioff; they acquainted him with the arrival of a Russian ship at Unimak, the sixth island to the East of Agunalashka, adding that they knew none of the crew excepting a Kamtchadal named Kirilko, who had been there on a former occasion. They likewise informed him that the natives, after having cut off part of the crew who had been sent out in two baidars, had found means to overpower the remainder and to destroy the vessel. From the name of the Kamtchadal they concluded that this must have been another vessel fitted out by Nikiphor Trapesnikoff and company, of which no farther intelligence was ever received. Willing to procure farther intelligence, they endeavoured to persuade the Toigons to send a party of their people to the above-mentioned island; but the latter excused themselves, on account of the great distance and their dread of the islanders. February 16, Solovioff set out a second time for the West end of the island, where they had formerly taken prisoner, and afterwards set at liberty, the Toigon of Sedak. From thence he proceeded to Ikolga, which lies on the bay, and consists of only one hut. On the 26th he came to Takamitka, where there is likewise only one hut on a point of land by the side of a rivulet, which falls from the mountains into the sea. Here he met with Korovin, in whose company he cut the blubber of a whale, which the waves had cast on shore; after this Korovin went across the gulph to Umnak, and he proceeded to Ikaltshinsk, where on the 9th one of his party was carried off by sickness. March 15 he returned to the haven, having met with no opposition from the islanders during this excursion. On his return he found one of the crew dead, and a dreadful scurvy raging amongst the rest; of that distemper five Russians died in March, eight and a Kamtchadal in April, and six more in May. About this time the islanders were observed to pay frequent visits to the hostages; and upon enquiring privately into the reason, some of the latter discovered, that the inhabitants of Makushinsk had formed the design of cutting off the crew, and of making themselves masters of the vessel. Solovioff had now great reasons to be apprehensive, for the crew were afflicted with the scurvy to such a violent degree, that out of the whole number only twelve persons were capable of defending themselves. These circumstances did not escape the observation of the natives; and they were accordingly inspired with fresh courage to renew their hostilities. On the 27th of May the Russians perceived the Toigon of Itchadak, who had formerly paid a voluntary tribute, near the shore: he was accompanied by several islanders in three baidars. Solovioff calling to him by the interpreter he came on shore, but kept at a distance desiring a conference with some of his relations. Solovioff gave orders to seize him; and they were lucky enough to take him prisoner, together with two of his companions. He immediately confessed, that he had come with a view of enquiring of the hostages how many Russians were still remaining: having procured the necessary intelligence, his intention was to surprise the watch at a convenient season, and afterwards to set fire to the ship. As they saw several islanders row past the harbour at the same time, and the Toigon likewise informed them, that they were assembling to execute the abovementioned design; Solovioff resolved to be much upon his guard. They separated, however, without attempting any hostilities. June 5, Glottoff arrived at the harbour on a visit, and returned on the 8th to his ship. The captive Toigon was now set at liberty, after being seriously exhorted to desist from hostilities. In the course of this month two more of the crew died; so that the arrival of Korovin, who joined them about this time, with two of his own and two of Kulkoff's crew, was of course a very agreeable circumstance. The sick likewise began to recover by degrees. July 22, Solovioff, with a party of his people, in two baidars, made another excursion Northwards; he passed by the places formerly mentioned as far as Igonok, which lies ten versts beyond Totzikala. Igonok consists of one dwelling cave on the side of a rivulet, which falls from the mountains, and empties itself into the sea. The inhabitants amounted to about thirty men, who dwelt there with their wives and children. From thence Solovioff proceeded along the shore into a bay; five versts further he found another rivulet, which has its source among the hills and flows through a plain. Upon the shore of the same bay, opposite to the mouth of this rivulet, lay two villages, one of which only was inhabited; it was called Ukunadok, and consisted of six dwelling caves. About thirty-five of the inhabitants were at that time employed in catching salmon in the rivulet. Kulkoff's ship had lain at anchor about two miles from thence; but there were no remains of her to be found. After coming out of the bay he went forwards to the summer village Umgaina distant about seven or eight leagues, and situated on the side of a rivulet, which takes its rise in a lake abounding with salmon. Here he found the Toigon Amaganak, with about ten of the natives, employed in fishing. Fifteen versts farther along the shore they found another summer village called Kalaktak, where there was likewise another rivulet, which came from the hills. The inhabitants were sixty men and an hundred and seventy women and children: they gave Solovioff a very friendly reception; and delivered up two hostages, who were brought from the neighbouring island Akutan; with these he set out on his return, and on the 6th of August joined his crew. On the 11th he went over to the island Umnak, accompanied by Korovin, to bring off some ships stores left there by the latter; and returned to the haven on the 27th. On the 31st Shaffyrin died, the same person whose adventures have been already related. Sept. 19. Korenoff was sent northwards upon an hunting party; he returned the 30th of January, 1766. Although the Russians who remained at the haven met with no molestation from the natives during his absence; yet he and his companions were repeatedly attacked. Having distributed to the inhabitants of the several villages through which he passed nets for the purpose of catching sea-otters, he went to the East part of the island as far as Kalaktak, with an intention of hunting. Upon his arrival at that place, on the 31st of October, the inhabitants fled with precipitation; and as all his efforts to conciliate their affections were ineffectual, he found it requisite to be upon his guard. Nor was this precaution unnecessary; for on the following day they returned in a considerable body, armed with lances, made with the iron of the plundered vessels. Korenoff, however, and his companions, who were prepared to receive them, killed twenty-six, and took several prisoners; upon which the others became more tractable. Nov. 19. Korenoff, upon his return to the haven, came to Makushinsk, where he was kindly received by a Toigon named Kulumaga; but with regard to Itchadak, it was plain that his designs were still hostile. Instead of giving an account of the nets which had been left with him, he withdrew privately: and on the 19th of January, accompanied by a numerous body of islanders, made an attempt to surprise the Russians. Victory, however, again declared for Korenoff; and fifteen of the assailants, amongst whom was Itchadak himself, remained dead upon the spot. Kulumaga assured them, in the strongest manner, that the design had been carried on without his knowledge; and protested, that he had often prevented his friend from committing hostilities against the Russians. Korenoff returned to the haven on the 30th of January; and on the 4th of February he went upon another hunting expedition toward the Western point of the island. During this excursion he met with a party sent out by Glottoff, at a place called Takamitka; he then rowed over to Umnak, where he collected a small tribute, and returned on the 3d of March. During his absence Kyginik, Kulumaga's son, paid a visit to the Russians, and requested that he might be baptized, and be permitted to go aboard the vessel; his demand was immediately complied with. May 13th. Korovin went, with fourteen men, to Umnak, to bring off an anchor, which was buried in the sand. On his return preparations were made for their departure. Before the arrival of Korovin the hunters had killed 150 black and brown foxes; and the same number of old and young sea-otters; since his arrival they had caught 350 black foxes, the same number of common foxes, and 150 sea-otters of different sizes. This cargo being put on board, the interpreter Kashmak set at liberty, with a certificate of, and presents for his fidelity, and the hostages delivered up to the Toigons and their relations, who had assembled at the haven, Solovioff put to sea on the 1st of June, with an Easterly wind. Before his departure he received a letter from Glottoff, informing him that he was likewise preparing for his return. [Sidenote: Journal of the Voyage homewards.] June 2. The wind being contrary, they got but a small way from land. 5. Steered again towards the shore, came to an anchor, and sent a boat for a supply of water, which returned without having seen any body. 6. Weighed and steered W. with a S. E. wind. 7. Favourable wind at N. E. and in the afternoon at N. 8. Wind at N. W. and stormy, the ship drove under the foresail. 9 & 10. Sailed Northwards, with a Westerly wind. 11. Calm till noon; afterwards breeze sprung up at S. with which they steered W. till next day at noon; when the wind coming round to the West, they changed their course, and steered N. W. 12. Calm during the night. 13. A small breeze of Northerly wind, with which they steered W. in the afternoon it fell calm, and continued so till the 16. at noon, when a breeze springing up at East, they steered W. on which course they continued during the 18. with a S. S. E. wind. From the 19 to the 22. The wind was changeable from the S. W. to N. W. with which they still made a shift to get to the Westward. 23. The wind E. they steered betwixt N. & W. which course they continued the 24th, 25th, 26th, with a Northerly wind. 27. A. M. the wind changed to S. W. 28, 29, 30. Wind at West. July 1. The wind changed to E. with which they steered between W. and S. W. with little variations, till the 3d. 4. They reached Kamtchatkoi Noss, and on the 5th. Brought the ship, in good condition, into Kamtchatka river. [Sidenote: Solovioff's Description of the Fox Islands.] Solovioff's description of these islands and the inhabitants being more circumstantial, than the accounts given by former navigators, deserves to be inserted at full length. According to his estimation, the island Unalashka lies between 1500 and 2000 versts due East from the mouth of the Kamtchatka river: the other islands to the Eastward stretch towards N. E. He reckons the length of Akutan at eighty versts; Umnak at an hundred and fifty, and Unalashka at two hundred. No large trees were seen upon any of the islands which he touched at. They produce underwood, small shrubs, and plants, for the most part similar to the common species found in Kamtchatka. The winter is much milder than in the Eastern parts of Siberia, and continues only from November to the end of March. The snow seldom lies upon the ground for any time. Rein-deer, bears, wolves, ice-foxes, are not to be found on these islands; but they abound in black, grey, brown, and red foxes; for which reason they have got the name of Lyffie Ostrova, or Fox Islands. These foxes are stronger than those of Yakutsk, and their hair is much coarser. During the day they lie in caves and clifts of rocks; towards evening they come to the shore in search of food; they have long ago extirpated the brood of mice, and other small animals. They are not in the smallest degree afraid of the inhabitants, but distinguish the Russians by the scent; having experienced the effects of their fire-arms. The number of sea-animals, such as sea-lions, sea-bears, and sea-otters, which resort to these shores, are very considerable. Upon some of the islands warm springs and native sulphur are to be found. [Sidenote: Manners and Customs of the Inhabitants.] The Fox-islands are in general very populous; Unalashka, which is the largest island, is supposed to contain several thousand inhabitants. These savages live together in separate communities, composed of fifty, and sometimes of two or even three hundred persons; they dwell in large caves from forty to eighty yards long, from six to eight broad, and from four to five high. The roof of these caves is a kind of wooden grate, which is first spread over with a layer of grass, and then covered with earth. Several openings are made in the iop, through which the inhabitants go up and down by ladders: the smallest dwellings have two or three entrances of this sort, and the largest five or six. Each cave is divided into a certain number of partitions, which are appropriated to the several families; and these partitions are marked by means of stakes driven into the earth. The men and women sit on the ground; and the children lie down, having their legs bound together under them, in order to make them learn to sit upon their hams. Although no fire is ever made in these caves, they are generally so warm, that both sexes sit naked. These people obey the calls of nature openly, and without esteeming it indecent. They wash themselves first with their own urine, and afterwards with water. In winter they go always bare-footed; and when they want to warm themselves, especially before they go to sleep, they set fire to dry grass and walk over it. Their habitations being almost dark, they use particularly in winter a sort of large lamps, made by hollowing out a stone, into which they put a rush-wick and burn train oil. A stone so hollowed is called Tsaaduck. The natives[62] are whites with black hair; they have flat faces, and are of a good stature. The men shave with a sharp stone or knife, the circumference and top of the head, and let the hair which remains hang from the crown[63]. The women cut their hair in a streight line over the forehead; behind they let it grow to a considerable length, and tie it in a bunch. Some of the men wear their beards; others shave or pull them out by the roots. [Footnote 62: Von gesicht sind sie platt undweiss durchgaengig mit schwarzen haaren.] [Footnote 63: The original in this passage is somewhat obscure. Die maenner scheeren mit einem Scharfen Stein oder messer den Umkreiss des haarkopfs und die platte, und lassen die haare um die krone des kopfs rundum ueberhangen.] They mark various figures on their faces, the backs of their hands, and lower parts of their arms, by pricking them first with a needle, and then rubbing the parts with a sort of black clay. They make three incisions in the under-lip; they place in the middle one a flat bone, or a small coloured stone; and in each of the side-ones they fix a long pointed piece of bone, which bends and reaches almost to the ears. They likewise make a hole through the gristle of the nose, into which they put a small piece of bone in such a manner as to keep the nostrils extended. They also pierce holes in their ears, and wear in them what little ornaments they can procure. Their dress consists of a cap and a fur-coat, which reaches down to the knee. Some of them wear common caps of a party coloured bird-skin, upon which they leave part of the wings and tail. On the fore-part of their hunting and fishing caps they place a small board like a screen, adorned with the jaw-bones of sea-bears, and ornamented with glass beads, which they receive in barter from the Russians. At their festivals and dancing parties they use a much more showy sort of caps. Their fur-coats are made like shirts, being close behind and before, and are put on over the head. The mens dress is made of birds skins, but the womens of sea-otters and sea-bears. These skins are died with a sort of red earth, and neatly sewed with sinews, and ornamented with various stripes of sea-otter skins and leathern fringes. They have also upper garments made of the intestines of the largest sea-calves and sea-lions. Their vessels consist of two sorts: the larger are leathern boats or baidars, which have oars on both sides, and are capable of holding thirty or forty people. The smaller vessels are rowed with a double paddle, and resemble the canoes of the Greenlanders, containing only one or two persons: they never weigh above thirty pounds, being nothing but a thin skeleton of a boat covered with leather. In these however they pass from one island to another, and even venture out to sea to a considerable distance. In calm weather they go out in them to catch turbot and cod with bone-hooks and lines made of sinews or sea-weed. They strike fish in the rivulets with darts. Whales and other sea-animals thrown ashore by the waves are carefully looked after, and no part of them is lost. The quantity of provisions which they procure by hunting and fishing being far too small for their wants, the greatest part of their food consists of sea-wrack and shell-fish, which they find on the shore. No stranger is allowed to hunt or fish near a village, or to carry off any thing fit for food. When they are on a journey, and their provisions are exhausted, they beg from village to village, or call upon their friends and relations for assistance. They feed upon the flesh of all sorts of sea-animals, and generally eat it raw. But if at any time they choose to dress their victuals, they make use of an hollow stone; having placed the fish or flesh therein, they cover it with another, and close the interstices with lime or clay. They then lay it horizontally upon two stones, and light a fire under it. The provision which is intended for keeping is dried without salt in the open air. They gather berries of various sorts, and lily roots of the same species with those which grow wild at Kamtchatka. They are unacquainted with the manner of dressing the cow-parsnip, as practised in that Peninsula; and do not understand the art of distilling brandy or any other strong liquor from it. They are at present very fond of snuff, which the Russians have introduced among them. No traces were found of any worship, neither did they seem to have any sorcerers[64] among them. If a whale happens to be cast on shore, the inhabitants assemble with great marks of joy, and perform a number of extraordinary ceremonies. They dance and beat drums[65] of different sizes: they then cut up the fish, of which the greatest and best part is consumed on the spot. On such occasions they wear showy caps; and some of them dance naked in wooden masks, which reach down to their shoulders, and represent various sorts of sea-animals. Their dances consist of short steps forwards, accompanied with many strange gestures. [Footnote 64: In the last chapter it is said that there are sorcerers among them.] [Footnote 65: The expression in the original is "Schlagen auf grossen platten handpauken," which, being literally translated, signifies "They beat upon large flat hand-kettle drums of different sounds." By the accounts which I procured at Petersburg, concerning the form of these drums, they seem to resemble in shape those made use of by the sorcerers of Kamtchatka, and are of different sizes. I had an opportunity of seeing one of the latter at the Cabinet of Curiosities. It is of an oval form, about two feet long and one broad: it is covered only at one end like the tambour de basque, and is worn upon the arm like a shield.] Marriage ceremonies are unknown among them, and each man takes as many wives as he can maintain; but the number seldom exceeds four. These women are occasionally allowed to cohabit with other men; they and their children are also not unfrequently bartered in exchange for commodities. When an islander dies, the body is bound with thongs, and afterwards exposed to the air in a sort of wooden cradle hung upon a cross-bar, supported by forks. Upon these occasions they cry and make bitter lamentations. Their Toigons or Princes are those who have numerous families, and are skilful and successful in hunting and fishing. Their weapons consist of bows, arrows, and darts: they throw the latter very dexterously, and to a great distance from a hand-board. For defence they use wooden shields, called kuyakin. These islanders are, notwithstanding their savageness, very docile; and the boys, whom the Russians keep as hostages, soon acquire a knowledge of their language. CHAP. XII. Voyage of _Otcheredin_--He winters upon _Umnak_--Arrival of _Levasheff_ upon _Unalashka_--Return of _Otcheredin_ to _Ochotsk_. [Sidenote: Voyage of Otcheredin in the St. Paul, 1765.] In the year 1765 three merchants, namely, Orechoff of Yula, Lapin of Solikamsk, and Shiloff of Ustyug, fitted out a new vessel called the St. Paul, under the command of Aphanassei Otcheredin. She was built in the harbour of Ochotsk: his crew consisted of sixty-two Russians and Kamtchadals, and she carried on board two inhabitants of the Fox Islands named John and Timothy Surgeff, who had been brought to Kamtchatka and baptised. September 10, they sailed from Ochotsk, and arrived the 22d in the bay of Bolcheresk where they wintered. August 1, 1776, they continued their voyage, and having passed the second of the Kuril Isles, steered on the 6th into the open sea; on the 24th they reached the nearest of the Fox Islands, which the interpreters called [66]Atchak. A storm arising they cast anchor in a bay, but saw no inhabitants upon the shore. [Sidenote: Arrival at Umnak.] On the 26th they sailed again, discovered on the 27th Sagaugamak, along which they steered North East, and on the 31st came within seven miles of the island Umnak; where, on account of the lateness of the season and the want of provision and water, they determined to winter. Accordingly on the 1st of September, by the advice of the interpreters, they brought the vessel into a convenient bay near a point of land lying N. W. where they fastened it to the shore with cables. [Footnote 66: Called in a former journal Atchu, p. 63.] Upon their landing they discovered several pieces of a wreck; and two islanders, who dwelled on the banks of a rivulet which empties itself into the bay, informed them, that these were the remains of a Russian vessel, whose commander's name was Denys. From this intelligence they concluded that this was Protassoff's vessel, fitted out at Ochotsk. The inhabitants of Umnak, Unalashka, and of the Five Mountains, had assembled and murdered the crew, when separated into different hunting parties. The same islanders also mentioned the fate of Kulkoff's and Trapesnikoff's ships upon the island Unalashka. Although this information occasioned general apprehensions, yet they had no other resource than to draw the vessel ashore, and to take every possible precaution against a surprize. Accordingly they kept a constant watch, made presents to the Toigons and the principal inhabitants, and demanded some children as hostages. For some time the islanders behaved very peaceably, until the Russians endeavoured to persuade them to become tributary: upon which they gave such repeated signs of their hostile intentions, that the crew lived under continual alarms. In the beginning of September information was brought them of the arrival of a vessel, fitted out by Ivan Popoff merchant of Lalsk, at Unalashka. About the end of the said month the Toigon of the Five Mountains came to Otcheredin, and was so well satisfied with his reception, that he brought hostages, and not only assured them of his own friendship, but promised to use his influence with the other Toigons, and to persuade them to the same peaceable behaviour. But the other Toigons not only paid no regard to his persuasions, but even barbarously killed one of his children. From these and other circumstances the crew passed the winter under continual apprehensions, and durst not venture far from the harbour upon hunting parties. Hence ensued a scarcity of provisions; and hunger, joined to the violent attacks of the scurvy, made great havock amongst them, insomuch that six of them died, and several of the survivors were reduced to so weak a condition, that they were scarce able to move. The health of the crew being re-established in the spring, twenty-three men were sent on the 25th of June in two boats to the Five Mountains, in order to persuade the inhabitants to pay tribute. On the 26th they landed on the island Ulaga, where they were attacked with great spirit by a large body of the inhabitants; and though three of the Russians were wounded, yet the savages were repulsed with considerable loss: they were so terrified by their defeat, that they fled before the Russians during their continuance on that island. The latter were detained there by tempestuous weather until the 9th of July; during which time they found two rusty firelocks belonging to Protassoff's crew. On the 10th they returned to the harbour; and it was immediately resolved to dispatch some companies upon hunting expeditions. Accordingly on the 1st of August Matthew Poloskoff, a native of Ilinsk, was sent with twenty-eight men in two boats to Unalashka with the following orders; that if the weather and other circumstances were favourable, they were to make to Akutan and Akun, the two nearest islands to the East, but to proceed no further. In consequence of this, Poloskoff reached Akutan about the end of the month; and being kindly received by the inhabitants, he left six of his party to hunt; with the remainder he went to Akun, which lies about two versts from Akutan. From thence he dispatched five men to the neighbouring islands, where he was informed by the interpreters there were great quantities of foxes. Poloskoff and his companions continued the whole autumn upon Akun without being annoyed; but on the 12th of December the inhabitants of the different islands assembled in great numbers, and attacked them by land and sea. They informed Poloskoff, by means of the interpreters, that the Russians whom he had sent to the neighbouring islands were killed; that the two vessels at Umnak and Unalashka were plundered, and the crew put to death; and that they were now come to make him and his party share the same fate. The Russian fire-arms however kept them in due respect; and towards evening they dispersed. The same night the interpreter deserted, probably at the instigation of his countrymen, who nevertheless killed him, as it was said, that winter. January 16, the savages ventured to make a second attack. Having surprised the guard by night, they tore off the roof of the Russian dwelling, and shot down into the hut, making at the same time great outcries: by this unexpected assault four Russians were killed, and three wounded; but the survivors no sooner had recourse to their fire-arms, than the enemy was driven to flight. Meanwhile another body of the natives attempted to seize the two vessels, but without success; they however cut off the party of six men left by Poloskoff at Akutan, together with the five hunters dispatched to the contiguous islands, and two of Popoff's crew who were at the Westermost part of Unalashka. Poloskoff continued upon Akun in great danger until the 20th of February; when, the wounded being recovered, he sailed over with a fair wind to Popoff's vessel at Unalashka; and on the 10th of May returned to Otcheredin. In April Popoff's vessel being got ready for the voyage, all the hostages, whose number amounted to forty, were delivered to Otcheredin. July the 30th a vessel belonging to the same Popoff arrived from Beering's Island, and cast anchor in the same bay where Otcheredin's lay; and both crews entered into an agreement to share in common the profits of hunting. Strengthened by this alliance, Otcheredin prevailed upon a number of the inhabitants to pay tribute. August the 22d Otcheredin's mate was sent with six boats and fifty-eight men to hunt upon Unalashka and Akutan; and there remained thirty men with the vessels in the harbour, who kept constant watch. [Sidenote: Otcheredin receives an Account of Levasheff's Arrival at Unalashka.] Soon afterwards Otcheredin and the other commander received a letter from Levasheff Captain Lieutenant of the Imperial fleet, who accompanied Captain Krenitzin in the secret expedition to those islands. The letter was dated September 11, 1768: it informed them he was arrived at Unalashka in the St. Paul, and lay at anchor in the same bay in which Kulkoff's vessel had been lost. He likewise required a circumstantial account of their voyages. By another order of the 24th he sent for four of the principal hostages, and demanded the tribute of skins which had been exacted from the islanders. But as the weather was generally tempestuous at this season of the year, they deferred sending them till the spring. May the 31st Levasheff set sail for Kamtchatka; and in 1771 returned safely from his expedition at St. Petersburg. The two vessels remained at Umnak until the year 1770, during which time the crews met with no opposition from the islanders. They continued their hunting parties, in which they had such good fortune, that the share of Otcheredin's vessel (whose voyage is here chiefly related) consisted in 530 large sea-otter skins, 40 young ones and 30 cubs, the skins of 656 fine black foxes, 100 of an inferior sort, and about 1250 red fox skins. With this large cargo of furs Otcheredin set sail on the 22d of May, 1770, from Umnak, leaving Popoff's crew behind. A short time before their departure, the other interpreter Ivan Surgeff, at the instigation of his relations, deserted. [Sidenote: Return of Otcheredin to Ochotsk.] After having touched at the nearest of the Aleütian Islands, Otcheredin and his crew arrived on the 24th of July at Ochotsk. They brought two islanders with them, whom they baptized. The one was named Alexèy Solovieff; the other Boris Otcheredin. These islanders unfortunately died on their way to Petersburg; the first between Yakutsk and Irkutsk; and the latter at Irkutsk, where he arrived on the 1st of February, 1771. CHAP. XIII. Conclusion--General position and situation of the _Aleütian_ and _Fox Islands_--their distance from each other--Further description of the dress, manners, and customs of the inhabitants--their feasts and ceremonies, &c. [Sidenote: Position of Beering's and Copper Islands.] According to the latest informations brought by Otcheredin's and Popoff's vessels, the North West point of Commandorskoi Ostroff, or Beering's Island, lies due East from the mouth of the Kamtchatka river, at the distance of 250 versts. It is from 70 to 80 versts long, and stretches from North West to South East, in the same direction as Copper Island. The latter is situated about 60 or 70 versts from the South East point of Beering's Island, and is about 50 versts in length. [Sidenote: Of the Aleütian Isles.] About 300 versts East by South of Copper Island lie the Aleütian Isles, of which Attak is the nearest: it is rather larger than Beering's Island, of the same shape, and stretches from West to South East. From thence about 20 versts Eastwards is situated Semitshi, extending from West to East, and near its Eastern point another small island. To the South of the strait, which separates the two latter islands, and at the distance of 40 versts from both of them, lies Shemiya in a similar position, and not above 25 versts in length. All these islands stretch between 54 and 55 degrees of North latitude. [Sidenote: Of the Fox Islands.] The Fox Islands are situated E. N. E. from the Aleütians: the nearest of these, Atchak, is about 800 versts distant; it lies in about 56 degrees North latitude, and extends from W. S. W. towards E. N. E. It greatly resembles Copper Island, and is provided with a commodious harbour on the Notrh. From thence all the other islands of this chain stretch in a direction towards N. E. by East. The next to Atchak is Amlak, about 15 versts distant; it is nearly of the same size; and has an harbour on its South side. Next follows Sagaugamak, at about the same distance, but somewhat smaller; from that it is 50 versts to Amuchta, a small rocky island; and the same distance from the latter to Yunaksan, another small island. About 20 versts from Yunaksan there is a cluster of five small islands, or rather mountains, Kigalgist, Kagamila, Tsigulak, Ulaga, and Tana-Unok, and which are therefore called by the Russians Pät Sopki, or the Five Mountains. Of these Tana-Unok lies most to the N. E. towards which the Western point of Umnak advances within the distance of 20 versts. Umnak stretches from S. W. to N. E.; it is 150 versts in length, and has a very considerable bay on the West end of the Northern coast, in which there is a small island or rock, called Adugak; and on the South side is Shemalga, another rock. The Western point of Aghunalashka, or Unalashka, is separated from the East end of Umnak by a strait near 20 versts in breadth. The position of these two islands is similar; but Aghunalashka is much the largest, and is above 200 versts long. It is divided towards the N. E. into three promontories, one of which runs out in a Westerly direction, forming one side of a large bay on the North coast of the island: the second stretches out N. E. ends in three points, and is connected with the island by a small neck of land. The third or most Southerly one is separated from the last mentioned promontory by a deep bay. Near Unalashka towards the East lies another small island called Skirkin. About 20 versts from the North East promontory of Aghunalashka lie four islands: the first, Akutan, is about half as big as Umnak; a verst further is the small island Akun; a little beyond is Akunok; and lastly Kigalga, which is the smallest of these four, and stretches with Akun and Akunok almost from N. to S. Kigalga is situated about the 61st degree of latitude. About 100 versts from thence lies an island called Unimak[67], upon which Captain Krenitzin wintered; and beyond it the inhabitants said there was a large tract of country called Alashka, of which they did not know the boundaries. [Footnote 67: Krenitzin wintered at Alaxa, and not at Unimak. See Appendix I. N^o I.] The Fox Islands are in general very rocky, without containing any remarkable high mountains: they are destitute of wood, but abound in rivulets and lakes, which are mostly without fish. The winter is much milder than in Siberia; the snow seldom falls before the beginning of January, and continues on the ground till the end of March. There is a volcano in Amuchta; in Kagamila sulphur flows from a mountain; in Taga-Unok there are warm springs hot enough to boil provisions; and flames of sulphur are occasionally seen at night upon the mountains of Unalashka and Akutan. [Sidenote: Account of the Inhabitants of the Fox Islands.] The Fox Islands are tolerably populous in proportion to their size. The inhabitants are entirely free, and pay tribute to no one: they are of a middle stature; and live, both in summer and winter, in holes dug in the earth. No signs of religion were found amongst them. Several persons indeed pass for sorcerers, pretending to know things past and to come, and are accordingly held in high esteem, but without receiving any emolument. Filial duty and respect towards the aged are not held in estimation by these islanders. They are not however deficient in fidelity to each other; they are of lively and chearful tempers, though rather impetuous, and naturally prone to anger. In general they do not observe any rules of decency, but follow all the calls of nature publicly, and without the least reserve. They wash themselves with their own urine. [Sidenote: Their Food.] Their principal food consists in fish and other sea-animals, small shell-fish and sea-plants: their greatest delicacies are wild lilies and other roots, together with different kinds of berries. When they have laid in a store of provisions, they eat at any time of the day without distinction; but in case of necessity they are capable of fasting several days together. They seldom heat their dwellings; but when they are desirous of warming themselves, they light a bundle of hay, and stand over it; or else they set fire to train oil, which they pour into a hollow stone. They feed their children when very young with the coarsest flesh, and for the most part raw. If an infant cries, the mother immediately carries it to the sea-side, and be it summer or winter holds it naked in the water until it is quiet. This custom is so far from doing the children any harm, that it hardens them against the cold; and they accordingly go bare-footed through the winter without the least inconvenience. They are also trained to bathe frequently in the sea; and it is an opinion generallly received among the islanders, that by that means they are rendered bold, and become fortunate in fishing. [Sidenote: Dress.] The men wear shirts made of the skins of cormorants, sea-divers, and gulls; and, in order to keep out the rain, they have upper garments of the bladders and other intestines of sea-lions, sea-calves, and whales, blown up and dried. They cut their hair in a circular form close to their ears; and shave also a round place upon the top. The women, on the contrary, let the hair descend over the forehead as low as the eye-brows, and tie the remaining part in a knot upon the top of the head. They pierce the ears, and hang therein bits of coral which they get from the Russians. Both sexes make holes in the gristle of the nose, and in the under-lips, in which they thrust pieces of bone, and are very fond of such kind of ornaments. They mark also and colour their faces with different figures. They barter among one another sea-otters, sea-bears, clothes made of bird-skins and of dried intestines, skins of sea-lions and sea-calves for the coverings of baidars, wooden masks, darts, thread made of sinews and reindeer hair, which they get from the country of Alaska. Their houshold utensils are square pitchers and large troughs, which they make out of the wood driven ashore by the sea. [Sidenote: Arms.] Their weapons are bows and arrows pointed with flints, and javelins of two yards in length, which they throw from a small board. Instead of hatchets they use crooked knives of flint or bone. Some iron knives, hatchets, and lances, were observed amongst them, which they had probably got by plundering the Russians. According to the reports of the oldest inhabitants of Umnak and Unalashka, they have never been engaged in any war either amongst themselves or with their neighbours, except once with the people of Alashka, the occasion of which was as follows: The Toigon of Umnak's son had a maimed hand; and some inhabitants of Alashka, who came upon a visit to that island, fastened to his arm a drum, out of mockery, and invited him to dance. The parents and relations of the boy were offended at this insult: hence a quarrel ensued; and from that time the two people have lived in continual enmity, attacking and plundering each other by turns. According to the reports of the islanders, there are mountains upon Alashka, and woods of great extent at some distance from the coast. The natives wear clothes made of the skins of reindeer, wolves, and foxes, and are not tributary to any of their neighbours. The inhabitants of the Fox-islands seem to have no knowledge of any country beyond Alashka. [Sidenote: Feasts.] Feasts are very common among these islanders; and more particularly when the inhabitants of one island are visited by those of the others. The men of the village meet their guests beating drums, and preceded by the women, who sing and dance. At the conclusion of the dance the hosts invite them to partake of the feasts; after which ceremony the former return first to their dwellings, place mats in order, and serve up their best provision. The guests next enter, take their places, and after they are satisfied the diversions begin. First, the children dance and caper, at the same time making a noise with their small drums, while the owners of the hut of both sexes sing. Next, the men dance almost naked, tripping after one another, and beating drums of a larger size: when these are weary, they are relieved by the women, who dance in their clothes, the men continuing in the mean time to sing and beat their drums. At last the fire is put out, which had been kindled for the ceremony. The manner of obtaining fire is by rubbing two pieces of dry wood, or most commonly by striking two flints together, and letting the sparks fall upon some sea-otter's hair mixed with sulphur. If any sorcerer is present, it is then his turn to play his tricks in the dark; if not, the guests immediately retire to their huts, which are made on that occasion of their canoes and mats. The natives, who have several wives, do not withhold them from their guests; but where the owner of the hut has himself but one wife, he then makes the offer of a female servant. Their hunting season is principally from the end of October to the beginning of December, during which time they kill large quantities of young sea-bears for their clothing. They pass all December in feastings and diversions similar to that above mentioned: with this difference, however, that the men dance in wooden masks, representing various sea-animals, and painted red, green, or black, with coarse coloured earths found upon these islands. During these festivals they visit each other from village to village, and from island to island. The feasts concluded, masks and drums are broken to pieces, or deposited in caverns among the rocks, and never afterwards made use of. In spring they go out to kill old sea-bears, sea-lions, and whales. During summer, and even in winter when it is calm, they row out to sea, and catch cod and other fish. Their hooks are of bone; and for lines they make use of a string made of a long tenacious sea-weed, which is sometimes found in those seas near one hundred and sixty yards in length. Whenever they are wounded in any encounter, or bruised by any accident, they apply a sort of yellow root to the wound, and fast for some time. When their head achs, they open a vein in that part with a stone lancet. When they want to glue the points of their arrows to the shaft, they strike their nose till it bleeds, and use the blood as glue. Murder is not punished amongst them, for they have no judge. With respect to their ceremonies of burying the dead, they are as follow: The bodies of poor people are wrapped up in their own clothes, or in mats; then laid in a grave, and covered over with earth. The bodies of the rich are put, together with their clothes and arms, in a small boat made of the wood driven ashore by the sea: this boat is hung upon poles placed cross-ways; and the body is thus left to rot in the open air. The customs and manners of the inhabitants of the Aleütian Isles are nearly similar to those of the inhabitants of the Fox Islands. The former indeed are rendered tributary, and entirely subject to Russia; and most of them have a slight acquaintance with the Russian language, which they have learned from the crews of the different vessels who have landed there. PART II. CONTAINING THE CONQUEST OF SIBERIA, AND THE HISTORY OF THE TRANSACTIONS AND COMMERCE BETWEEN RUSSIA AND CHINA. CHAP. I. First irruption of the _Russians_ into _Siberia_--Second inroad--_Yermac_ driven by the Tzar of _Muscovy_ from the Volga, retires to _Orel_ a _Russian_ Settlement--Enters _Siberia_ with an army of _Cossacks_--His progress and exploits--Defeats _Kutchum Chan_--conquers his dominions--cedes them to the Tzar--receives a reinforcement of _Russian_ troops--is surprized by _Kutchum Chan_--his defeat and death--Veneration paid to his memory--_Russian_ troops evacuate _Siberia_--re-enter and conquer the whole country--their progress stopped by the _Chinese_. [Sidenote: First Irruption of the Russians into Siberia under the Reign of Ivan Vassilievitch I.] Siberia was scarcely known to the Russians before the middle of the sixteenth century[68]. For although an expedition was made, under the reign of Ivan Vassilievitch I. into the North Western Parts of that country, as far as the river Oby, by which several Tartar tribes were rendered tributary, and some of their chiefs brought prisoners to Moscow; yet this incursion bore a greater resemblance to the desultory inroads of barbarians, than to any permanent establishment of empire by a civilized nation. Indeed the effects of that expedition soon vanished; nor does any trace of the least communication with Siberia again appear in the Russian history before the reign of Ivan Vassilievitch II. At that period Siberia again became an object of attention, by means of one Anika Strogonoff, a Russian merchant, who had established some salt-works at Solvytshegodskaia, a town in the government of Archangel. [Footnote 68: S. R. G. VI. p. 199-211. Fis. Sib. Ges. Tom. I.] [Sidenote: Anika Strogonoff trades with the People of Siberia.] This person carried on a trade of barter with the inhabitants of the North-Western parts of Siberia, who brought every year to the abovementioned town large quantities of the choicest furs. Upon their return to their country Strogonoff was accustomed to send with them some Russian merchants, who crossed the mountains, and traded with the natives. By these means a considerable number of very valuable furs were procured at an easy rate, in exchange for toys and other commodities of trifling value. This traffic was continued for several years, without any interruption; during which Strogonoff rapidly amassed a very considerable fortune[69]. At length the Tzar Ivan Vassilievitch II. foreseeing the advantages which would accrue to his subjects, from establishing a more general and regular commerce with these people, determined to enlarge the communication already opened with Siberia. [Sidenote: Second Irruption of the Russians into Siberia in the Reign of Ivan Vassilievitch II.] Accordingly he sent a corps of troops into that country. They followed the same route which had been discovered by the Russians in the former expedition, and which was lately frequented by the merchants of Solvytshegodskaia. It lay along the banks of the Petschora, and from thence crossed the Yugorian mountains, which form the North Eastern boundary of Europe. These troops, however, do not seem to have passed the Irtish, or to have penetrated further than the Western branch of the river Oby. Some Tartar tribes were indeed laid under contribution; and a chief, whose name was Yediger, consented to pay an annual tribute of a thousand sables. But this expedition was not productive of any lasting effects; for soon afterwards Yediger was defeated, and taken prisoner by Kutchum Chan; the latter was a lineal descendant of the celebrated Zinghis Chan; and had newly established his empire in those parts. [Footnote 69: S. R. G. VI. p. 220-223. Fis. Sib. Ges. p. 182.] This second inroad was probably made about the middle of the sixteenth century; for the Tzar Ivan Vassilievitch assumed the title of Lord of all the Siberian lands so early as 1558, before the conquests made by Yermac in that kingdom[70]. But probably the name of Siberia was at that time only confined to the district then rendered tributary; and as the Russians extended their conquests, this appellation was afterwards applied to the whole tract of country which now bears that name. [Footnote 70: S. R. G. VI. p. 217.] For some time after the above-mentioned expedition, the Tzar does not appear to have made any attempts towards recovering his lost authority in those distant regions. But his attention was again turned to that quarter by a concurrence of incidents; which, though begun without his immediate interposition, terminated in a vast accession of territory. [Sidenote: Strogonoff forms Settlements upon the Kama and Tchussovaia.] Strogonoff, in recompence for having first opened a trade with the inhabitants of Siberia, obtained from the Tzar large grants of land; accordingly he founded colonies upon the banks of the rivers Kama and Tchussovaia; and these settlements gave rise to the entire subjection of Siberia by the refuge which they not long afterwards afforded to Yermac Timofeeff. This person was nothing more than a fugitive Cossac of the Don, and chief of a troop of banditti who infested the shores of the Caspian sea. But as he was the instrument by which such a vast extent of dominion was added to the Russian Empire, it will not be uninteresting to develop the principal circumstances, which brought this Cossac from the shores of the Caspian to the banks of the Kama; and to trace the progress which he afterwards made in the distant regions of Siberia. By the victories which the Tzar Ivan Vassilievitch had gained over the Tatars of Casan and Astracan, that monarch extended his dominions as far as the Caspian Sea; and thereby established a commerce with the Persians and Bucharians. [Sidenote: Yermac is driven from the Shores of the Caspian Sea. A. D. 1577.] But as the merchants who traded to those parts were continually pillaged by the Cossacs of the Don; and as the roads which lay by the side of that river, and of the Volga, were infested with those banditti; the Tzar sent a considerable force against them. Accordingly, they were attacked and routed; part were slain, part made prisoners, and the rest escaped by flight. Among the latter was a corps of six thousand Cossacs, under the command of the above-mentioned Yermac Timofeeff[71]. [Footnote 71: S. R. G. VI. p. 232. Fis. Sib. Ges. I. p. 185.] [Sidenote: He retires to Orel, one of the Russian Settlements.] That celebrated adventurer, being driven from his usual haunts, retired, with his followers, into the interior part of the province of Casan. From thence he directed his course along the banks of the Kama, until he came to Orel[72]. That place was one of the Russian settlements recently planted, and was governed by Maxim grandson of Anika Strogonoff. Yermac, instead of storming the place, and pillaging the inhabitants, acted with a degree of moderation unusual in a chief of banditti. Being hospitably received by Strogonoff, and supplied with every thing that was necessary for the subsistence of his troops, he fixed his winter quarters at that settlement. [Sidenote: Determines to invade Siberia.] His restless genius however did not suffer him to continue for any length of time in a state of inactivity; and from the intelligence he procured concerning the situation of the neighbouring Tartars of Siberia, he turned his arms toward that quarter. [Footnote 72: S. R. G. VI. p. 233.] [Sidenote: State of Siberia.] Siberia was at that time partly divided among a number of separate princes; and partly inhabited by the various tribes of independent Tartars. Of the former Kutchum Chan was the most powerful Sovereign. His dominions consisted of that tract of country which now forms the South Western part of the province of Tobolsk; and stretched from the banks of the Irtish and Oby to those of the Tobol and Tura. His principal residence was at Sibir[73], a small fortress upon the river Irish, not far from the present town of Tobolsk; and of which some ruins are still to be seen. Although his power was very considerable, yet there were some circumstances which seemed to ensure success to an enterprizing invader. He had newly acquired a large part of his territories by conquest; and had, in a great measure, alienated the affections of his idolatrous subjects by the intolerant zeal, with which he introduced and disseminated the Mahometan religion[74]. [Footnote 73: Several authors have supposed the name of Siberia to derive its origin from this fortress, soon after it was first taken by the Russians under Yermac. But this opinion is advanced without sufficient foundation; for the name of Sibir was unknown to the Tartars, that fort being by them called Isker. Besides, the Southern part of the province of Tobolsk, to which the name of Siberia was originally applied, was thus denominated by the Russians before the invasion of Yermac. This denomination probably first came from the Permians and Sirjanians, who brought the first accounts of Siberia to the Russians. S. R. G. VI. p. 180.] [Footnote 74: S. R. G. VI. p. 180.] Strogonoff did not fail of displaying to Yermac this inviting posture of affairs, as well with a view of removing him from his present station, as because he himself was personally exasperated against Kutchum Chan: for the latter had secretly instigated a large body of Tartars to invade the Russian settlements upon the river Tchussovaia; and had afterwards commenced open hostilities against them with a body of forces under the command of his cousin Mehemet Kul. And although both these attempts had failed of success, yet the troops engaged in them had left behind traces of havock and devastation too lasting to be easily effaced[75]. [Footnote 75: Fis. Sib. Ges. I. p. 187.] [Sidenote: Marches towards Siberia.] All these various considerations were not lost upon Yermac: having therefore employed the winter in preparations for his intended expedition, he began his march in the summer of the following year, 1578, along the banks of the Tchussovaia. The want of proper guides, and a neglect of other necessary precautions, greatly retarded his march, and he was overtaken by the winter before he had made any considerable progress. [Sidenote: Returns to Orel.] And at the appearance of spring he found his stock of provisions so nearly exhausted, that he was reduced to the necessity of returning to Orel. But this failure of success by no means extinguished his ardour for the prosecution of the enterprize; it only served to make him still more solicitous in guarding against the possibility of a future miscarriage. By threats he extorted from Strogonoff every assistance which the nature of the expedition seemed to require. Besides a sufficient quantity of provisions, all his followers, who were before unprovided with fire-arms, were supplied with muskets and ammunition; and, in order to give the appearance of a regular army to his troops, colours were distributed to each company, which were ornamented with the images of saints, after the manner of the Russians. Having thus made all previous arrangements, he thought himself in a condition to force his way into Siberia. [Sidenote: His second Expedition.] Accordingly, in the month of June, 1579, he set out upon this second expedition. His followers amounted to five thousand men; adventurers inured to hardships, and regardless of danger: they placed implicit confidence in their leader, and seemed to be all animated with one and the same spirit. [Sidenote: Arrives upon the Banks of the Tura.] He continued his route partly by land, and partly by water: the navigation however of the rivers was so tedious, and the roads so rugged and difficult, that eighteen months elapsed before he reached Tchingi, a small town upon the banks of the Tura[76]. [Footnote 76: S.R.G. VI. p. 243-248-262.] Here he mustered his troops, and found his army considerably reduced: part had been exhausted by fatigue, part carried off by sickness, and part cut off in skirmishes with the Tartars. The whole remaining number amounted to about fifteen hundred effective men; and yet with this handful of troops Yermac did not hesitate a moment in advancing against Kutchum Chan. That prince was already in a posture of defence; and resolved to guard his crown to the last extremity. Having collected his forces, he dispatched several flying parties against Yermac, himself remaining behind with the slower of his troops: but all these detachments were driven back with considerable loss; and worried in many successive skirmishes. Yermac continued his march without intermission, bearing down all resistance until he reached the center of his adversary's dominions. These successes however were dearly bought; for his army was now reduced to five hundred men. Kutchum Chan was encamped[77] at no great distance upon the banks of the Irtish, with a very superior force, and determined to give him battle. Yermac, who was not to be daunted by the inequality of numbers, prepared for the engagement with a confidence which never forsook him; his troops were equally impatient for action, and knew no medium between conquest and death. The event of the combat corresponded with this magnanimity. [Sidenote: Defeats Ketchum Chan. 1581.] After an obstinate and well fought battle, victory declared in favour of Yermac: the Tartars were entirely routed, and the carnage was so general, that Kutchum Chan himself escaped with difficulty. [Footnote 77: The place where the Tartar army lay encamped was called Tschuvatch: it is a neck of land washed by the Irtish, near the spot where the Tobob falls into that river. Fis. Sib. Ges. I. p. 203.] This defeat proved decisive: Kutchum Chan was deserted by his subjects; and Yermac, who knew how to improve as well as gain a victory, marched without delay to Sibir, the residence of the Tartar princes. He was well aware, that the only method to secure his conquest was to get possession of that important fortress. He expected therefore to have found in that place a considerable garrison, determined to sacrifice their lives in its defence. But the news of the late defeat had diffused universal consternation, and Sibir was entirely deserted. [Sidenote: Seats himself upon the Throne.] A body of troops whom he sent before him, to reduce the fortress, found it quite deserted: he himself soon after made his triumphant entry, and seated himself upon the throne without the least opposition. Here he fixed his residence, and received the allegiance of the neighbouring people, who poured in from all quarters upon the news of this unexpected revolution. The Tartars were so struck with his gallant intrepidity and brilliant exploits, that they submitted to his authority without hesitation, and acquiesced in the payment of the usual tribute. Thus this enterprising Cossac was suddenly exalted from the station of a chief of banditti to the rank of a sovereign prince. It does not appear from history whether it were at first his design to conquer Siberia, or solely to amass a considerable booty. The latter indeed seems the more probable conjecture. The rapid tide of success with which he was carried on, and the entire defeat of Kutchum Chan, afterwards expanded his views, and opened a larger scene to his ambition. But whatever were his original projects, he seems worthy, so far as intrepidity and prudence form a basis of merit, of the final success which flowed in upon him. For he was neither elated with unexpected prosperity, nor dazzled with the sudden glare of royalty: on the contrary, the dignity of his deportment was as consistent and unaffected, as if he had been born a sovereign. And now Yermac and his followers seemed to enjoy those rewards which they had dearly purchased by a course of unremitted fatigue, and by victories which almost exceeded belief. Not only the tribes in the neigbourhood of Sibir wore the appearance of the most unreserved submission; but even princes continued flocking in from distant parts, to acknowledge themselves tributary, and to claim his protection. [Sidenote: Precarious Situation of Yermac.] However, this calm was of short duration. Insurrections were concerted by Kutchum Chan; who, though driven from his dominions, yet still retained no small degree of influence over his former subjects. Yermac saw and felt the precariousness of his present grandeur; the inconsiderable number of his followers who had survived the conquest of Sibir, had been still further diminished by an ambuscade of the enemy; and as he could not depend on the affection of his new subjects, he found himself under the necessity either of calling in foreign assistance, or of relinquishing his dominion. Under these circumstances he had recourse to the Tzar of Muscovy; and made a tender of his new acquisitions to that monarch, upon condition of receiving immediate and effectual support. The judicious manner in which he conducted this measure, shews him no less able in the arts of negotiation than of war. One of his most confidential followers was dispatched to Moscow at the head of fifty Cossacs. [Sidenote: Cedes his Conquests to the Tzar of Muscovy.] He had orders to represent to the court the progress which the Russian troops, under the command of Yermac, had made in Siberia: he was artfully to add, that an extensive empire was conquered in the name of the Tzar; that the natives were reduced to swear allegiance to that monarch, and consented to pay an annual tribute. This representation was accompanied with a present of the choicest and most valuable furs[78]. [Sidenote: 1582.] The embassador was received at Moscow with the strongest marks of satisfaction: a public thanksgiving was celebrated in the cathedral; the Tzar acknowledged and extolled the good services of Yermac; he granted him a pardon for all former offences; and, as a testimony of his favour, distributed presents for him and his followers. Amongst those which were sent to Yermac was a fur robe, which the Tzar himself had worn, and which was the greatest mark of distinction that could be conferred upon a subject. To these was added a sum of money, and a promise of speedy and effectual assistance. [Footnote 78: S.R.G. VI. p. 304.] Meanwhile Yermac, notwithstanding the inferior number of his troops, did not remain inactive within the fortress of Sibir. He defeated all attempts of Kutchum Chan to recover his crown; and took his principal general prisoner. He made occasional inroads into the adjacent provinces, and extended his conquests up to the source of the river Taffda on one side, and on the other as far as the district which lies upon the river Oby above its junction with the Irtish. [Sidenote: Receives a Reinforcement of Russian troops.] At length the promised succours arrived at Sibir. They consisted of five hundred Russians, under the command of prince Bolkosky, who was appointed wayvode or governor of Siberia. Strengthened by this reinforcement, Yermac continued his excursions on all sides with his usual activity; and gained several bloody victories over different princes, who were imprudent enough to assert their independence. In one of these expeditions he laid siege to Kullara, a small fortress upon the banks of the Irtish, which still belonged to Kutchum Chan: but he found it so bravely defended by that monarch, that all his efforts to carry it by storm proved ineffectual. Upon his return to Sibir he was followed at some distance by that prince, who hung unperceived upon his rear; and was prepared to seize any fortunate moment of attack which might occur; nor was it long before a favourable opportunity presented itself. The Russians to the number of about three hundred lay negligently posted in a small island, formed by two branches of the Irtish. The night was obscure and rainy; and the troops, who were fatigued with a long march, reposed themselves without suspicion of danger. [Sidenote: Surprised by Kutchum Chan.] Kutchum Chan, apprised of their situation, silently advanced at midnight with a select body of troops; and having forded the river, came with such rapidity upon the Russians, as to preclude the use of their arms. In the darkness and confusion of the night, the latter were cut to pieces almost without opposition; and fell a resistless prey to those adversaries, whom they had been accustomed to conquer and despise. The massacre was so universal, that only one man is recorded to have escaped, and to have brought the news of this catastrophe to his countrymen at Sibir. [Sidenote: Death of Yermac.] Yermac himself perished in the rout, though he did not fall by the sword of the enemy. In all the hurry of surprise, he was not so much infected with the general panic, as to forget his usual intrepidity, which seemed to be encreased rather than abated by the danger of his present situation. After many desperate acts of heroism, he cut his way through the troops who surrounded him, and made to the banks of the Irtish[79]. Being closely pursued by a detachment of the enemy, he endeavoured to throw himself into a boat which lay near the shore; but stepping short, he fell into the water, and being incumbered with the weight of his armour, sunk instantly to the bottom[80]. [Footnote 79: Many difficulties have arisen concerning the branch of the Irtish in which Yermac was drowned; but it is now sufficiently ascertained that it was a canal, which some time before this catastrophe had been cut by order of that Cossac: Not far from the spot, where the Vagai falls into the Irtish, the latter river forms a bend of six versts; by cutting a canal in a streight line from the two extreme points of this sweep, he shortened the length of the navigation. S. R. G. p. 365-366.] [Footnote 80: Cyprian was appointed the first archbishop of Siberia, in 1621. Upon his arrival at Tobolsk, he enquired for several of the antient followers of Yermac who were still alive; and from them he made himself acquainted with the principal circumstances attending the expedition of that Cossac, and the conquest of Siberia. Those circumstances he transmitted to writing; and these papers are the archives of the Siberian history; from which the several historians of that country have drawn their relations. Sava Yefimoff, who was himself one of Yermac's followers, is one of the most accurate historians of those times. He carries down his history to the year 1636. Fis. Sib. Ges. I. p. 430.] His body was not long afterwards taken out of the Irtish, and exposed, by order of Kutchum Chan, to all the insults which revenge ever suggested to barbarians in the frenzy of success. But these first transports of resentment had no sooner subsided, than the Tartars testified the most pointed indignation at the ungenerous ferocity of their leader. The prowess of Yermac, his consummate valour and magnanimity, virtues which barbarians know how to prize, rose upon their recollection. They made a sudden transition from one extreme to the other: they reproached their leader for ordering, themselves for being the instruments of indignity to such venerable remains. At length their heated imaginations proceeded even to consecrate his memory: they interred his body with all the rites of Pagan superstition; and offered up sacrifices to his manes. [Sidenote: Veneration paid to his Memory.] Many miraculous stories were soon spread abroad, and met with implicit belief. The touch of his body was supposed to have been an instantaneous cure for all disorders; and even his clothes and arms were said to be endowed with the same efficacy. A flame of fire was represented as sometimes hovering about his tomb, and sometimes as stretching in one luminous body from the same spot towards the heavens. A presiding influence over the affairs of the chace and of war was attributed to his departed spirit; and numbers resorted to his tomb to invoke his tutelary aid in concerns so interesting to uncivilised nations. These idle fables, though they evince the superstitious credulity of the Tartars, convey at the same time the strongest testimony of their veneration for the memory of Yermac; and this veneration greatly contributed to the subsequent progress of the Russians in those regions[81]. [Footnote 81: Even so late as the middle of the next century, this veneration for the memory of Yermac had not subsided. Allai, a powerful prince of the Calmucs, is said to have been cured of a dangerous disorder, by mixing some earth taken from Yermac's tomb in water, and drinking the infusion. That prince is also reported to have carried with him a small portion of the same earth, whenever he engaged in any important enterprize. This earth he superstitiously considered as a kind of charm; and was persuaded that he always secured a prosperous issue to his affairs by this precaution. S.R.G. V. VI. p. 391.] With Yermac expired for a time the Russian empire in Siberia. [Sidenote: The Russians quit Siberia.] The news of his defeat and death no sooner reached the garrison of Sibir, than an hundred and fifty troops, the sad remains of that formidable army which had gained such a series of almost incredible victories, retired from the fortress, and evacuated Siberia. Notwithstanding this disaster, the court of Moscow did not abandon its design upon that country; which a variety of favourable circumstances still concurred to render a flattering object of Russian ambition. Yermac's sagacity had discovered new and commodious routes for the march of troops across those inhospitable regions. The rapidity with which he had overrun the territories of Kutchum Chan, taught the Russians to consider the Tartars as an easy prey. Many of the tribes who had been rendered tributary by Yermac, had testified a cheerful acquiescence under the sovereignty of the Tzar; and were inclined to renew their allegiance upon the first opportunity. Others looked upon all resistance as unavailing, and had learned, from dear-bought experience, to tremble at the very name of a Russian. The natural strength of the country, proved not to be irresistible when united, was considerably weakened by its intestine commotions. Upon the retreat of the garrison of Sibir, that fortress, together with the adjacent district, was seized by Seyidyak, son of the former sovereign, whom Kutchum Chan had dethroned and put to death. Other princes availed themselves of the general confusion to assert independency; and Kutchum Chan was able to regain only a small portion of those dominions, of which he had been stripped by Yermac. [Sidenote: The Russians re-enter Siberia.] Influenced by these motives, the court of Moscow sent a body of three hundred troops into Siberia, who penetrated to the banks of the Tura as far as Tschingi almost without opposition. There they built the fort of Tumen, and re-established their authority over the neighbouring district. Being soon afterwards reinforced by an additional number of troops, they were enabled to extend their operations, and to erect the fortresses of Tobolsk, Sungur, and Tara. [Sidenote: Re-conquer their antient Territories.] The erection of these and other fortresses was soon attended with a speedy recovery of the whole territory, which Yermac had reduced under the Russian yoke. This success was only the fore-runner of still greater acquisitions. [Sidenote: All Siberia conquered and colonized.] The Russians pushed their conquest far and wide: wherever they appeared, the Tartars were either reduced or exterminated. New towns were built and colonies were planted on all sides. Before a century had well elapsed, all that vast tract of country now called Siberia, which stretches from the confines of Europe to the Eastern Ocean, and from the Frozen Sea to the present frontiers of China, was annexed to the Russian dominions. [Sidenote: Progress of the Russians checked by the Chinese.] A still larger extent of territory had probably been won; and all the various tribes of independent Tartary which lie between the South-Eastern extremity of the Russian empire, and the Chinese Wall, would have followed the fate of the Siberian hordes, if the power of China had not suddenly interposed. CHAP. II. Commencement of hostilities between the _Russians_ and _Chinese_--Disputes concerning the limits of the two empires--Treaty of Nershinsk--Embassies from the court of _Russia_ to _Pekin_--Treaty of _Kiachta_--Establishment of the commerce between the two nations. Towards the middle of the seventeenth century, the Russians were rapidly extending themselves Eastward through that important territory, which lies, on each side of the river[82] Amoor. They soon reduced several independent Tungusian hordes; and built a chain of small fortresses along the banks of the above-mentioned river, of which the principal were Albasin, and Kamarskoi Ostrog. Not long afterwards, the Chinese under[83] Camhi conceived a similar design of subduing the same hordes. [Sidenote: Rise of animosities between the Russians and Chinese.] Accordingly the two great powers of Russia and China, thus pointing their views to the same object, unavoidably clashed; and, after several jealousies and intrigues, broke out into open hostilities about the year 1680. The Chinese laid siege to Kamarskoi Ostrog, and though repulsed in this attempt, found means to cut off several straggling parties of Russians. These animosities induced the Tzar Alexèy Michaelovitch to send an embassy to Pekin; but this measure did not produce the desired effect. [Sidenote: Albasin destroyed by the Chinese.] The Chinese attacked Albasin with a considerable force: having compelled the Russian garrison to capitulate, they demolished that and all the Russian forts upon the Amoor; and returned, with a large number of prisoners, to their own country. [Footnote 82: Amoor is the name given by the Russians to this river; it is called Sakalin-Ula by the Manshurs, and was formerly denominated Karamuran, or the Black River, by the Mongols. S.R.G. II. p. 293.] [Footnote 83: Camhi was the second emperor of the Manshur race, who made themselves masters of China in 1624. The Manshurs were originally an obscure tribe of the Tungusian Tartars, whose territories lay South of the Amoor, and bordered upon the kingdom of Corea, and the province of Leaotong. They began to emerge from obscurity at the beginning of the seventeenth century. About that time their chief Aischin-Giord reduced several neighbouring hordes; and, having incorporated them with his own tribe, under the general name of Manshur, he became formidable even to the Chinese. Shuntschi, grandson of this chief, by an extraordinary concurrence of circumstances, was raised while an infant to the throne of China, of which his successors still continue in possession. Shuntschi died in 1662, and was succeeded by Camhi, who is well known from the accounts of the jesuit missionaries. For an account of the revolution of China, see Duhalde, Descr. de la Chine, Bell's Journey to Pekin, and Fis. Sic. Ges. tom. I. p. 463.] [Sidenote: Albasin rebuilt by the Russians, is besieged by the Chinese.] Not long after their departure, a body of sixteen hundred Russians advanced along the Amoor; and constructed a new fort, under the old name of Albasin. The Chinese were no sooner apprised of their return, than they marched instantly towards that river, and sat down before Albasin with an army of seven thousand men, and a large train of artillery. They battered the new fortress for several weeks, without being able to make a breach, and without attempting to take it by storm. The besieged, though not much annoyed by the unskilful operations of the enemy, were exhausted with the complicated miseries of sickness and famine; and notwithstanding they continued to make a gallant resistance, they must soon have sunk under their distresses, if the Chinese had not voluntarily retired, in consequence of a treaty being set afoot between the two courts of Moscow and Pekin. For this purpose the Russian embassador Golowin had left Moscow so early as the year 1685, accompanied by a large body of troops, in order to secure his person, and enforce respect to his embassy. The difficulty of procuring subsistence for any considerable number of men in those desolate regions, joined to the ruggedness of the roads, and the length of the march, prevented his arrival at Selengisk until the year 1687. From thence messengers were immediately dispatched with overtures of peace to the Chinese government at Pekin. After several delays, occasioned partly by policy, and partly by the posture of affairs in the Tartar country through which the Chinese were to pass, embassadors left Pekin in the beginning of June 1689. Golovin had proposed receiving them at Albasin; but while he was proceeding to that fortress, the Chinese embassadors presented themselves at the gates of Nershinsk, escorted by such a numerous army, and such a formidable train of artillery, that Golovin was constrained, from motives of fear, to conclude the negotiation almost upon their own terms. The conferences were held under tents, in an open plain, near the town of Nershinsk; where the treaty was signed and sealed by the plenipotentaries of the two courts. When it was proposed to ratify it by oath, the Chinese embassadors offered to swear upon a crucifix; but Golovin preferred their taking an oath in the name of their own gods. [Sidenote: Treaty of Nershinsk.] This treaty first checked the progress of the Russian arms in those parts; and laid the foundations of an important and regular commerce between the two nations. By the first and second articles, the South-Eastern boundaries of the Russian empire were formed by a ridge of mountains, stretching North of the Amoor from the sea of Ochotsk to the source of the small river Gorbitza[84], then by that river to its influx into the Amoor, and lastly by the Argoon, from its junction with the Shilka up to its source. [Footnote 84: There are two Gorbitzas; the first falls into the Amoor, near the conflux of the Argoon and Shilka; the second falls into the Shilka. The former was meant by the Russians; but the Chinese fixed upon the latter for the boundary, and have carried their point. Accordingly the present limits are somewhat different from those mentioned in the text. They are carried from the point, where the Shilka and Argoon unite to form the Amoor, Westward along the Shilka, until they reach the mouth of tha Western Gorbitza; from thence they are continued to the source of the last-mentioned river, and along the chain of mountains as before. By this alteration the Russian limits are somewhat abridged.] By the fifth article reciprocal liberty of trade was granted to all the subjects of the two empires, who were provided with pass-ports from their respective courts[85]. [Footnote 85: S.R.G. II. p. 435.] This treaty was signed on the 27th of August, in the year 1689, under the reign of Ivan and Peter Alexiewitch, by which the Russians lost, exclusively of a large territory, the navigation of the river Amoor. The importance of this loss was not at that time understood; and has only been felt since the discovery of Kamtchatka, and of the islands between Asia and America. The products of these new-discovered countries might, by means of the Amoor, have been conveyed by water into the district of Nershinsk, from whence there is an easy transport by land to Kiachta: whereas the same merchandise, after being landed at Ochotsk, is now carried over a large tract of country, partly upon rivers of difficult navigation, and partly along rugged and almost impassable roads. [Sidenote: Rise of the Commerce with China.] In return, the Russians obtained what they long and repeatedly aimed at, a regular and permanent trade with the Chinese. The first intercourse between Russia and China commenced in the beginning of the seventeenth century[86]. At that period a small quantity of Chinese merchandise was procured, by the merchants of Tomsk and other adjacent towns, from the Calmucs. The rapid and profitable sale of these commodities encouraged certain Wayvodes of Siberia to attempt a direct and open communication with China. For this purpose several deputations were sent at different times to Pekin from Tobolsk, Tomsk, and other Russian settlements: these deputations, although they failed of obtaining the grant of a regular commerce, were nevertheless attended with some important consequences. The general good reception, which the agents met with, tempted the Russian merchants to send occasional traders to Pekin. By these means a faint connection with that metropolis was kept alive: the Chinese learned the advantages of the Russian trade, and were gradually prepared for its subsequent establishment. This commerce, carried on by intervals, was entirely suspended by the hostilities upon the river Amoor. But no sooner was the treaty of Nershinsk signed, than the Russians engaged with extraordinary alacrity in this favourite branch of traffic. The advantages of this trade were soon found to be so considerable, that Peter I. conceived an idea of still farther enlarging it. [Sidenote: Caravans allowed to trade to Pekin.] Accordingly, in 1692, he sent Isbrand Ives, a Dutchman in his service, to Pekin, who requested and obtained, that the liberty of trading to China, which by the late treaty was granted to individuals, should be extended to caravans. [Footnote 86: S.R.G. VIII. p. 504, & seq.] In consequence of this arrangement, successive caravans went from Russia to Pekin, where a caravansary was allotted for their reception; and all their expences during their continuance in that metropolis defrayed by the Emperor of China. The right of sending these caravans, and the profits resulting from them, belonged to the crown of Russia. In the mean time, private merchants continued as before to carry on a separate trade with the Chinese, not only at Pekin, but also at the head quarters of the Mongols. The camp of these roving Tartars was generally to be found near the conflux of the Orchon and Tola, between the Southern frontiers of Siberia and the Mongol desert. A kind of annual fair was held at this spot by the Russian and Chinese merchants; where they brought their respective goods for sale; and continued until they were disposed of. This rendezvous soon became a scene of riot and confusion; and repeated complaints were transmitted to the Chinese Emperor of the drunkenness and misconduct of the Russians. These complaints made a still greater impression from a coincidence of similar excesses, for which the Russians at Pekin had become notorious. Exasperated by the frequent representations of his subjects, Camhi threatened to expell the Russians from his dominions, and to prohibit them from carrying on any commerce, as well in China as in the country of the Mongols. [Sidenote: Embassy of Ismailoff to Pekin.] These untoward circumstances occasioned another embassy to Pekin, in the year 1719. Leff Vassilievitch Ismailoff, a captain of the Russian guards, who was sent embassador upon this occasion, succeeded in the negotiation, and adjusted every difficulty to the satisfaction of both parties. At his departure he was permitted to leave behind Laurence Lange, who had accompanied him to Pekin, in the character of agent for the caravans; for the purpose of superintending the conduct of the Russians. [Sidenote: Russians expelled from Pekin.] His residence however in that metropolis was but short; for he was soon afterwards compelled, by the Chinese, to return. His dismission was owing, partly, to a sudden caprice of that suspicious people, and partly to a misunderstanding, which had recently broke out between the two courts, in relation to some Mongol tribes who bordered upon Siberia. A small number of these Mongols had put themselves under the protection of Russia, and were immediately demanded by the Chinese; but the Russians refused compliance, under pretence that no article in the treaty of Nershinsk could, with any appearance of probability, be construed as extending to the Mongols. The Chinese were incensed at this refusal; and their resentment was still further inflamed by the disorderly conduct of the Russian traders, who, freed from all controul by the departure of their agent, had indulged, without restraint, their usual propensity to excess. This concurrence of unlucky incidents extorted, in 1722, an order from Camhi for the total expulsion of the Russians from the Chinese and Mongol territories. These orders were regorously executed; and all intercourse between the two nations immediately ceased. [Sidenote: Embassy of Ragusinski.] Affairs continued in this state until the year 1727, when the count Sava Vladislavitch Ragusinski, a Dalmatian in the service of Russia, was dispatched to Pekin. His orders were at all events to compose the differences between the two courts relating to the Mongol tribes; to settle the Southern frontiers of the Russian empire in that quarter; and to obtain the permission of renewing the trade with China. Accordingly that embassador presented a new plan for a treaty of limits and commerce to Yundschin, son and successor of Camhi; by which the frontiers of the two empires were finally traced as they exist at present, and the commerce established upon a permanent basis, calculated to prevent as far as possible all future sources of misunderstanding. This plan being approved by the emperor, Chinese commissioners were immediately appointed to negotiate with the Russian embassador upon the banks of the Bura, a small river which flows, South of the confines of Siberia, into the Orchon near its junction with the Selenga. [Sidenote: Treaty of Kiatchta.] At this conference, the old limits, which are mentioned in the treaty of Nershinsk, were continued from the source of the Argoon Westwards as far as the mountain Sabyntaban, which is situated at a small distance from the spot where the conflux of the two rivers Uleken and Kemtzak form the Yenisèi: this boundary separates the Russian dominions from the territory of the Mongols, who are under the protection of China. It was likewise stipulated, that for the future all negotiations should be transacted between the tribunal of foreign affairs at Pekin, and the board of foreign affairs at St. Petersburg; or in matters of inferior moment between the commanders of the frontiers[87]. [Footnote 87: This article was inserted, because the Chinese emperor, from a ridiculous idea of superiority, had contemptuously refused to hold any correspondence with the court of Russia.] The most important articles relating to commerce, were as follow: [Sidenote: Account of the Treaty relative to Commerce.] A caravan was allowed to go to Pekin every three years, on condition of its not consisting of more than two hundred persons; during their residence in that metropolis, their expences were no longer to be defrayed by the emperor of China. Notice was to be sent to the Chinese court immediately upon their arrival at the frontiers; where an officer was to meet and accompany them to Pekin. The privilege before enjoyed by individuals of carrying on a promiscuous traffic in the Chinese and Mongol territories was taken away, and no merchandize belonging to private persons was permitted to be brought for sale beyond the frontiers. For the purpose of preserving, consistently with this regulation, the privilege of commerce to individuals, two places of resort were appointed on the confines of Siberia: one called Kiatchta, from a rivulet of that name near which it stands; and the other Zuruchaitu: at these places a free trade was reciprocally indulged to the subjects of the two nations. A permission was at the same time obtained for building a Russian church within the precincts of their caravansary; and for the celebration of divine service, four priests were allowed to reside at Pekin[88]. The same favour was also extended to some Russian Scholars[89], for the purpose of learning the Chinese tongue; in order to qualify themselves for interpreters between the two nations. [Footnote 88: The first Russian church at Pekin was built for the accommodation of the Russians taken prisoners at Albasin. These persons were carried to Pekin, and the place appointed for their habitation in that city was called the Russian Street, a name it still retains. They were so well received by the Chinese, that, upon the conclusion of the treaty of Nershinsk, they refused to return to their native country. And as they intermarried with the Chinese women, their descendants are quite naturalized; and have for the most part adopted not only the language, but even the religion of the Chinese. Hence, the above-mentioned church, though it still exists, is no longer applied to the purpose of divine worship: its priest was transferred to the church, which was built within the walls of the caravansary.] [Footnote 89: The good effects of this institution have already been perceived. A Russian, whose name is Leontieff, after having resided ten years at Pekin, is returned to Petersburg. He has given several translations and extracts of some interesting Chinese publications, viz. Part of the History of China; the Code of the Chinese Laws; Account of the Towns and Revenues, &c. of the Chinese Empire, extracted from a Treatise of Geography, lately printed at Pekin. A short account of this Extract is given in the Journal of St. Petersburg for April, 1779.] This treaty, called the treaty of Kiachta, was, on the fourteenth of June, 1728, concluded and ratified by the count Ragusinski and three Chinese plenipotentaries upon the spot, where Kiachta was afterwards built: it is the basis of all transactions since carried on between Russia and China[90]. [Footnote 90: S.R.G. VIII. p. 513.] One innovation in the mode of carrying on the trade to China, which has been introduced since the accession of the present empress Catherine II. deserves to be mentioned in this place. [Sidenote: Caravans discontinued.] Since the year 1755 no caravans have been sent to Pekin. Their first discontinuance was owing to a misunderstanding between the two courts of Petersburg and Pekin in 1759. Their disuse after the reconciliation had taken place, arose from the following circumstances. The exportation and importation of many principal commodities, particularly the most valuable furs, were formerly prohibited to individuals, and solely appropriated to caravans belonging to the crown. By these restrictions the Russian trade to China was greatly shackled and circumscribed. [Sidenote: Monopoly of the Fur Trade abolished.] The present empress (who, amidst many excellent regulations which characterise her reign, has shewn herself invariably attentive to the improvement of the Russian commerce) abolished, in 1762, the monopoly of the fur trade, and renounced in favour of her subjects the exclusive privilege which the crown enjoyed of sending caravans to Pekin[91]. By these concessions the profits of the trade have been considerably encreased: the great expence, hazard, and delay, of transporting the merchandise occasionally from the frontiers of Siberia to Pekin, has been retrenched; and Kiachta is now rendered the center of the Russian and Chinese commerce. [Footnote 91: S.R.G. VIII. p. 520.] [Illustration: _VIEW of the Chinese Frontier Town_ MAIMATSCHIN _with the_ BROOK KIACHTA, _taken from the West_.] CHAP. III. Account of the _Russian_ and _Chinese_ settlements upon the confines of _Siberia_--description of the _Russian_ frontier town _Kiachta_--of the _Chinese_ frontier town _Maimatschin_--its buildings, pagodas, &c. By the last mentioned treaty it was stipulated, that the commerce between Russia and China should be transacted at the frontiers. [Sidenote: Russian and Chinese Settlement upon the Brook Kiachta.] Accordingly two spots were marked out for that purpose upon the confines of Siberia, where they border upon the Mongol desert; one near the brook Kiachta, and the other at Zuruchaitu. The description of the former of these places forms the subject of this chapter. This settlement consists of a Russian and Chinese town, both situated in a romantic valley, surrounded by high, rocky, and for the most part well-wooded, mountains. This valley is intersected by the brook Kiachta, which rises in Siberia, and, after washing both the Russian and Chinese town, falls into the Bura, at a small distance from the frontiers. [Sidenote: Situation of the Russian Frontier Town Kiachta.] The Russian settlement is called Kiachta from the abovementioned brook: it lies in 124 degrees 18 minutes longitude from the isle of Fero, and 35 degrees N. latitude, at the distance of 5514 versts from Moscow, and 1532 from Pekin. [Sidenote: The Fortress.] It consists of a fortress and a small suburb. The fortress, which is built upon a gentle rise, is a square enclosed with palisadoes, and strengthened with wooden bastions at the several angles. There are three gates, at which guards are constantly stationed: one of the gates faces the North, a second the South towards the Chinese frontiers, and a third the East close to the brook Kiachta. The principal public buildings in the fortress are a wooden church, the governor's house, the custom house, the magazine for provisions, and the guard-house. It contains also a range of shops and warehouses, barracks for the garrison, and several houses belonging to the crown; the latter are generally inhabited by the principal merchants. These buildings are mostly of wood. [Sidenote: Suburb.] The suburb, which is surrounded with a wooden wall covered at the top with chevaux de frize, contains no more than an hundred and twenty houses very irregularly built; it has the same number of gates as the fortress, which are also guarded. Without this suburb, upon the high road leading to Selenginsk, stand a few houses, and the magazine for rhubarb. This settlement is but indifferently provided with water both in quality and quantity; for although the brook Kiachta is dammed up as it flows by the fortress, yet it is so shallow in summer, that, unless after heavy rains, it is scarcely sufficient to supply the inhabitants. Its stream is troubled and unwholesome, and the springs which rise in the neighbourhood are either foul or brackish: from these circumstances, the principal inhabitants are obliged to send for water from a spring in the Chinese district. The soil of the adjacent country is mostly sand or rock, and extremely barren. If the frontiers of Russia were extended about nine versts more South to the rivulet of Bura; the inhabitants of Kiachta would then enjoy good water, a fruitful soil, and plenty of fish, all which advantages are at present confined to the Chinese. The garrison of Kiachta consists of a company of regular soldiers, and a certain number of Cossacs; the former are occasionally changed, but the latter are fixed inhabitants of the place. It is the province of the commander to inspect the frontiers, and, in conjunction with the president of the Chinese merchants, to settle all affairs of an inferior nature; but in matters of importance recourse must be had to the chancery of Selenginsk, and to the governor of Irkutsk. The Russian merchants, and the agents of the Russian trading company, are the principal inhabitants of Kiachta. The limits Westwards from this settlement to the river Selenga, and Eastwards as far as Tchikoi, are bounded with chevaux de frize, placed there to prevent a contraband trade in cattle, for the exportation of which a considerable duty is paid to the crown. All the outposts along the frontiers Westwards as far as the government of Tobolsk, and Eastwards to the mountains of snow, are under the command of the governor of Kiachta. The most elevated of the mountains that surround the valley of Kiachta, and which is called by the Mongols Burgultei, commands the Russian as well as the Chinese town; for this reason, the Chinese, at the conclusion of the last frontier treaty, demanded the cession of this mountain under the pretext, that some of their deified ancestors were buried upon its summit. The Russians gave way to their request, and suffered the boundary to be brought back to the North side of the mountain. [Sidenote: Maimatschin, the Chinese Frontier-Town.] The Chinese town is called, by the Chinese and Mongols, Maimatschin, which signifies fortress of commerce. The Russians term it the Chinese Village (Kitaiskaia Sloboda) and also Naimatschin, which is a corruption of Maimatschin. It is situated about an hundred and forty yards South of the fortress of Kiachta, and nearly parallel to it. Midway between this place and the Russian fortress, two posts about ten feet high are planted in order to mark the frontiers of the two empires: one is inscribed with Russian, the other with Manshur characters[92]. [Footnote 92: Upon the mountain to the West of Kiachta, the limit is again marked, on the Russian side by an heap of stones and earth, ornamented on the top with a cross; and on the Chinese by a pile of stones in the shape of a pyramid. Pallas Reise, P. III. p. 110.] Mainatschin has no other fortification than a wooden wall, and a small ditch of about three feet broad; the latter was dug in the year 1756, during the war between the Chinese and the Calmucs. The town is of an oblong form: its length is seven hundred yards, and its breadth four hundred. On each of the four sides a large gate faces the principal streets; over each of these gates there is a wooden guard-house for the Chinese garrison, which consists of Mongols in tattered clothes, and armed with clubs. Without the gate, which looks to the Russian frontiers, and about the distance of eight yards from the entrance, the Chinese have raised a wooden screen, so constructed as to intercept all view of the streets from without. This town contains two hundred houses and about twelve hundred inhabitants. It has two principal streets of about eight yards broad, crossing each other in the middle at right angles, with two by-streets running from North to South. They are not paved, but are laid with gravel, and kept remarkably clean. [Sidenote: Houses.] The houses are spacious, uniformly built of wood, of only one story, not more than fourteen feet high, plaistered and white-washed; they are constructed round a court yard of about seventy feet square, which is strewed with gravel, and has an appearance of neatness. Each house consists of a sitting room, some warehouses and a kitchen. In the houses of the wealthier sort the roof is made of plank; but in meaner habitations of lath covered over with turf. Towards the streets most of the houses have arcades of wood projecting forwards from the roof like a penthouse, and supported by strong pillars. The windows are large after the European manner, but on account of the dearness of glass and Russian talk are generally of paper, excepting a few panes of glass in the sitting room. The sitting room looks seldom towards the streets: it is a kind of shop, where the several patterns of merchandize are placed in recesses, fitted up with shelves, and secured with paper doors for the purpose of keeping out the dust. The windows are generally ornamented with little paintings, and the walls are hung with Chinese paper. Half the floor is of hard beaten clay; the other half is covered with boards, and rises about two feet in height. Here the family sit in the day-time and sleep at night. By the side of this raised part, and nearly upon the same level, there is a square brick stove, with a streight perpendicular cylindrical excavation, which is heated with small pieces of wood. From the bottom of this stove a tube descends, and is carried zigzag under the boarded floor above-mentioned, and from thence to a chimney which opens into the street. By this contrivance, although the stove is always open and the flame visible, yet the room is never troubled in the least degree with smoke. There is scarcely any furniture in the room, excepting one large dining table in the lower part, and two small lackered ones upon the raised floor: one of these tables is always provided with a chaffing dish, which serves to light their pipes when the stove is not heated. In this room there are several small niches covered with silken curtains, before which are placed lamps that are lighted upon festivals; these niches contain painted paper idols, a stone or metal vessel, wherein the ashes of incense are collected, several small ornaments and artificial flowers: the Chinese readily allow strangers to draw aside the curtains, and look at the idols. The Bucharian[93] merchants inhabit the South West quarter of Maimatschin. Their houses are not so large nor commodious as those of the Chinese, although the greatest part of them carry on a very considerable commerce. [Footnote 93: "The chief merchandizes which the Bucharians bring to Russia, are cotton, stuffs, and half-silks, spun and raw cotton, lamb-skins, precious stones, gold-dust, unprepared nitre, sal-ammoniac, &c." See Russia, or a complete Historical Account of all the nations that compose that empire. V. II. p. 141, a very curious and interesting work lately published.] [Sidenote: The Governor of Maimatschin.] The Surgutschèi, or governor of Maimatschin, has the care of the police, as well as the direction of all affairs relating to commerce: he is generally a person of rank, oftentimes a Mandarin, who has misbehaved himself in another station, and is sent here as a kind of punishment. He is distinguished from the rest by the crystal button of his cap, and by a peacock's[94] feather hanging behind. The Chinese give him the title of Amban, which signifies commander in chief; and no one appears before him without bending the knee, in which posture the person who brings a petition must remain until he receives the governor's answer. His salary is not large; but the presents which he receives from the merchants amount annually to a considerable sum. [Footnote 94: In China the princes of the blood wear three peacock's feathers, nobles of the highest distinction two, and the lower class of the nobility one. It is also a mark of high rank to drive a carriage with four wheels. The governor of Maimatschin rode in one with only two wheels. All the Chinese wear buttons of different colours in their caps, which also denote the rank. Pallas Reise, P. III. p. 126.] The most remarkable public buildings in Maimatschin, are the governor's house, the theatre, and two pagodas. [Sidenote: House of the Governor.] The governor's house is larger than the others, and better furnished; it is distinguished by a chamber where the court of justice is held, and by two high poles before the entrance ornamented with flags. [Sidenote: Theatre.] The theatre is situated close to the wall of the town near the great pagoda: it is a kind of small shed, neatly painted, open in front, and merely spacious enough to contain the stage; the audience stand in the street. Near it are two high poles, upon which large flags with Chinese inscriptions are hoisted on festivals. On such occasions the servants belonging to the merchants play short burlesque farces in honour of their idols. [Sidenote: The small Pagoda.] The smallest of the two Pagodas is a wooden building, standing upon pillars, in the centre of the town at the place where the two principal streets cross. It is a Chinese tower of two stories, adorned on the outside with small columns, paintings, and little iron bells, &c. The first story is square, the second octangular. [Sidenote: The Idol Tien.] In the lower story is a picture representing the God Tien, which signifies, according to the explanation of the most intelligent Chinese, the most high God, who rules over the thirty-two heavens. The Manshurs, it is said, call this idol Abcho; and the Mongols, Tingheru heaven, or the God of heaven. He is represented sitting with his head uncovered, and encircled with a ray[95] of glory similar to that which surrounds the head of our Saviour in the Roman catholic paintings; his hair is long and flowing; he holds in his right hand a drawn sword, and his left is extended as in the act of giving a benediction. On one side of this figure two youths, on the other a maiden and a grey-headed old man, are delineated. [Footnote 95: When Mr. Pallas obtained permission of the governor to see this temple, the latter assured him that the Jesuits of Pekin and their converts adored this idol. From whence he ingeniously conjectures, either that the resemblance between this idol, and the representations of our Saviour by the Roman Catholicks, was the occasion of this assertion; or that the Jesuits, in order to excite the devotion of the converts, have, out of policy, given to the picture of our Saviour a resemblance to the Tien of the Chinese. Pallas Reise, P. III. p. 119.] The upper story contains the picture of another idol in a black and white checquered cap, with the same figures of three young persons and a little old man. There are no altars in this temple, and no other ornaments excepting these pictures and their frames. It is opened only on festivals, and strangers cannot see it without permission. [Sidenote: The great Pagoda and its Idols.] The great Pagoda[96], situated before the governor's house, and near the principal gate looking to the south, is larger and more magnificent than the former. Strangers are allowed to see it at all times, without the least difficulty, provided they are accompanied by one of the priests, who are always to be found in the area of the temple. This area is surrounded with chevaux de frize: the entrance is from the south through two gates with a small building between them. In the inside of this building are two recesses with rails before them, behind which the images of two horses as big as life are coarsly moulded out of clay; they are saddled and bridled, and attended by two human figures dressed like grooms: the horse to the right is of a chesnut colour, the other is dun with a black mane and tail, the former is in the attitude of springing, the latter of walking. Near each horse a banner of yellow silk, painted with silver dragons, is displayed. [Footnote 96: The great Pagoda is omitted in the engraving of Maimatschin prefixed to this chapter; this omission was owing to the artist's being obliged to leave Kiachta before he had time to finish the drawing. In every other respect, the view, as I was informed by a gentleman who has been on the spot, is complete, and represented with the greatest exactness.] In the middle of this area are two wooden turrets surrounded with galleries; a large bell of cart iron which is struck occasionally with a large wooden mallet, hangs in the Eastern turret; the other contains two kettle drums of an enormous size, similar to those made use of in the religious ceremonies of the Calmucs. On each side of this area are ranges of buildings inhabited by the priest of the temple. This area communicates by means of an handsome gateway with the inner court, which is bordered on each side by small compartments open in front, with rails before them; in the inside of these compartments the legendary stories of the idols are exhibited in a series of historical paintings. At the farther extremity of this court stands a large building, constructed in the same style of architecture as the temple. The inside is sixty feet long and thirty broad: it is stored with antient weapons, and instruments of war of a prodigious size; such as spears, scythes, and long pikes, with broad blades, shields, coats of arms, and military ensigns representing hands[97], dragons heads, and other carved figures. All these warlike instruments are richly gilded, and ranged in order upon scaffolds along the wall. Opposite the entrance a large yellow standard, embroidered with foliage and silver dragons, is erected; under it, upon a kind of altar, there is a series of little oblong tables, bearing Chinese inscriptions. [Footnote 97: These hands resemble the manipulary standards of the Romans.] An open gallery, adorned on both sides with flower-pots, leads from the back door of the armoury to the colonade of the temple. In this colonade two slate tablets are placed, in wooden frames, about six feet high and two broad, with long inscriptions relating to the building of the temple. Before one of these plates a small idol of an hideous form stands upon the ground, enclosed in a wooden case. The temple itself is an elegant Chinese building, richly decorated on the outside with columns lackered, and gilded carved-work, small bells, and other ornaments peculiar to the Chinese architecture. Within there is a rich profusion of gilding, which corresponds with the gaudiness of the exterior. The walls are covered thick with paintings, exhibiting the most celebrated exploits of the principal idol. This temple contains five idols of a colossal stature, sitting cross-legged upon pedestals in three recesses, which fill the whole Northern side. [Sidenote: Ghessur Chan, the principal idol.] The principal idol is seated alone, in the middle recess, between two columns, entwined with gilded dragons. Large streamers of silk, hanging from the roof of the temple, veil in some measure the upper part of the image. His name is Ghedsur, or Ghessur Chan[98]; the Chinese call him Loo-ye, or the first and most antient; and the Manshurs, Guanlöe, or the superior god. He is of a gigantic size, surpassing more than fourfold the human stature, with a face glistening like burnished gold, black hair and beard. He wears a crown upon his head, and is richly dressed in the Chinese fashion: his garments are not moulded out of clay, as those of the other idols; but are made of the finest silk. He holds in his hands a kind of tablet, which he seems to read with deep attention. Two small female figures, resembling girls of about fourteen years of age, stand on each side of the idol, upon the same pedestal; one of which grasps a roll of paper. At the right-hand of the idol lie seven golden arrows, and at his left a bow. [Footnote 98: The Mongols and Calmucs call him by this name of Ghessur Chan; and although they do not reckon him among their divinities; yet they consider him as a great hero, the Bacchus and Hercules of Eastern Tartary, who was born at the source of the Choango, and who vanquished many monsters. They have in their language a very long history of his heroical deeds. His title, in the Mongol tongue, is as follows: Arban Zeeghi Essin Ghessur Bogdo Chan: the king of the ten points of the compass, or the monarch Ghessur Chan. I possess a copy of this manuscript, containing the History of Ghessur Chan; it is in the original Mongol language, and was a present from Mr. Pallas: I should be very happy to communicate it to any person versed in the Eastern languages.] Before the idol is a spacious enclosure, surrounded with rails, within which stands an altar with four colossal figures, intended probably to represent the principal mandarins of the deified Ghessur. Two of these figures are dressed like judges, and hold before them small tablets, similar to that in the hands of the principal idol. The two other figures are accoutred in complete armour: one wears a turban; and carries, upon the left shoulder, a large sword sheathed, with the hilt upwards. The other has an hideous copper-coloured face, a large belly, and grasps in his right hand a lance with a broad blade. Although all the remaining idols in the temple are of an enormous size, yet they are greatly surpassed in magnitude by Ghessur Chan. [Sidenote: Maooang.] The first idol in the recess to the right is called Maooang, or the Otschibanni of the Mongols. He has three ghastly copper-coloured faces, and six arms; two of his arms brandish two sabres cross ways over the head; a third bears a looking glass, and a fourth a kind of square, which resembles a piece of ivory. The two remaining arms are employed in drawing a bow, with an arrow laid upon it, ready to be discharged. This idol has a mirror upon his breast, and an eye in his navel: near it are placed two small figures; one holds an arrow, and the other a little animal. [Sidenote: Tsaudsing.] The next idol in the same recess is called by the Chinese Tsaudsing, or the gold and silver god; and by the Mongols Tsagan-Dsambala. He wears a black cap, and is dressed, after the Chinese fashion, in sumptuous robes of state; he bears in his hand a small jewel casket. Near him also stand two little figures, one of which holds a truncated branch. [Sidenote: Chusho.] In the recess to the left is the god Chusho, called by the Manshurs Chua-schan, and by the Mongols Galdi, or the Fire God. He is represented with a frightful fiery reddish face; clad in complete armour he wields a sword half drawn out of the scabbard, and seems on the point of starting up from his seat. He is attended by two little harlbadeers, one of whom is crying; and the other bears a fowl upon his hand, which resembles a sea-pheasant. [Sidenote: Niu-o.] The other idol in the same recess is the god of oxen, Niu-o. He appears to be sitting in a composed posture; he is habited like a Mandarin, and is distinguished by a crown upon his head. He has, in common with the other idols, a mirror upon his breast. The Chinese imagine him to be the same with the Yamandaga of the Mongols; and it is said his Manshurish name is Chain Killova; his Mongol name, which relates to the history of Ghessur, is Bars-Batir, the Hero of Tygers. Before these several idols there are tables, or altars, on which cakes, pastry, dried fruit, and flesh, are placed, on festivals and prayer days: on particular occasions even whole carcases of sheep are offered up. Tapers and lamps are kept burning day and night before the idols. Among the utensils of the temple, the most remarkable is a vessel shaped like a quiver, and filled with flat pieces of cleft reed, on which short Chinese devices are inscribed. These devices are taken out by the Chinese on new-years day, and are considered as oracles, which foretel the good or ill luck of the person, by whom they are drawn, during the following year. There lies also upon a table an hollow wooden black lackered helmet, which all persons of devotion strike with a wooden hammer, whenever they enter the temple. This helmet is regarded with such peculiar awe, that no strangers are permitted to handle it, although they are allowed to touch even the idols themselves. The first day of the new and full moon is appointed for the celebration of worship. Upon each of those days no Chinese ever fails to make his appearance once in the temple; he enters without taking off his cap[99], joins his hands before his face, bows five times to each idol, touches with his forehead the pedestal on which the idol sits, and then retires. Their principal festivals are held in the first month of their year, which answers to February. It is called by them, as well as by the Mongols, the white month; and is considered as a lucky time for the transaction of business; at that time they hoist flags before the temples; and place meat upon the tables of the idols, which the priests take away in the evening, and eat in the small apartments of the interior court. On these solemnities plays are performed in the theatre, in honour of the idols: the pieces are generally satyrical, and mostly written against unjust magistrates and judges. [Footnote 99: They do not take off their caps out of respect; for among the Chinese, as well as other Eastern nations, it is reckoned a mark of disrespect to uncover the head before a superior.] [Sidenote: Superstion of the Chinese.] But although the Chinese have such few ceremonies in their system of religious worship, yet they are remarkably infected with superstition. Mr. Pallas gives the following description of their behaviour at Maimatschin during an eclipse of the moon. At the close of the evening in which the eclipse appeared, all the inhabitants were indefatigable in raising an incessant uproar, some by hideous shrieks, others by knocking wood, and beating cauldrons; the din was heightened by striking the bell and beating the kettle drums of the great Pagoda. The Chinese suppose, that during an eclipse the wicked spirit of the air, called by the Mongols Arachulla, is attacking the moon; and that he is frightened away by these hideous shrieks and noises. Another instance of superstition fell under the observation, of Mr. Pallas, while he was at Maimatschin. A fire broke out in that town with such violence that several houses were in flames. None of the inhabitants, however, attempted to extinguish it; they stood indeed in idle consternation round the fire; and some of them sprinkled occasionally water among the flames, in order to sooth the fire god, who, as they imagined, had chosen their houses for a sacrifice. Indeed if the Russians had not exerted themselves in quenching the fire, the whole place would probably have been reduced to ashes[100]. [Footnote 100: This account of Kiachta and Maimatschin is taken from Mr. Pallas's description of Kiachta, in the journal of his travels through Siberia, p. iii. p. 109-126. Every circumstance relating to the religious worship of the Eastern nations is, in itself so interesting that I thought it would not be unacceptable to my readers to give a translation of the above passages respecting the Chinese Pagodas and Idols: although in a work treating of the new discoveries, and the commerce which is connected with them. In the abovementioned journal the ingenious author continues to describe from his own observations the manners, customs, dress, diet, and several other particulars relative to the Chinese; which, although exceedingly curious and interesting, are foreign to my present purpose, and would have been incompatible with the size of the present work. No writer has placed the religion and history of the Tartar-nations in a more explicit point of view than Mr. Pallas; every page in his interesting journal affords striking proofs of this assertion. He has lately thrown new lights upon this obscure subject, in a recent publication concerning the Tartars, who inhabit parts of Siberia, and the territory which lies between that country and the Chinese-wall. Of this excellent work the first volume appeared in 1776, and contains the genealogy, history, laws, manners, and customs, of this extraordinary people, as they are divided into Calmucs, Mongols, and Burats. The second volume is expected with impatience, and will ascertain, with minuteness and accuracy, the tenets and religious ceremonies which distinguish the votaries of Shamanism from the followers of Dalai-Lama, the two great sects into which these tribes are distinguished. Pallas Samlung historischer Nachrichten ueber die Mongolischen Volkerschafter.] CHAP. IV. Commerce between the _Chinese_ and _Russians_--list of the principal exports and imports--duties--average amount of the _Russian_ trade. [Sidenote: Merchants of Maimatschin.] The merchants of Maimatschin come from the Northern provinces of China, chiefly from Pekin, Nankin, Sandchue, and other principal towns. They are not settled at this place with their wives and families: for it is a remarkable circumstance, that there is not one woman in Maimatschin. This restriction arises from the policy of the Chinese government, which, totally prohibits the women from having the slightest intercourse with foreigners. No Chinese merchant engages in the trade to Siberia who has not a partner. These persons mutually relieve each other. One remains for a stated time, usually a year, at Kiachta; and when, his partner arrives with a fresh cargo of Chinese merchandize, he then returns home with the Russian commodities[101]. [Footnote 101: Pallas Reise, P. III. p. 125.] Most of the Chinese merchants understand the Mongol tongue, in which language commercial affairs are generally transacted. Some few indeed speak broken Russian, but their pronunciation is so soft and delicate, that it is difficult to comprehend them. They are not able to pronounce the R, but instead of it make use of an L; and when two consonants come together, which frequently occurs in the Russian tongue, they divide them by the interposition of a vowel[102]. This failure in articulating the Russian language seems peculiar to the Chinese, and is not observable in the Calmucs, Mongols, and other neighbouring nations[103]. [Footnote 102: Bayer, in his Museum Sinicum, gives several curious instances of the Chinese mode of articulating those sounds, which they have not in their own language. For instance they change B D R X Z into P T L S S. Thus for Maria they say Ma-li-ya; for crux, cu-lu-su; for baptizo, pa-pe-ti-so; for cardinalis, kia-ul-fi-na-li-su; for spiritus, su-pi-li-tu-su; for Adam, va-tam; for Eva, nge-va; for Christus, ki-li-su-tu-su; Hoc, est, corpus, meum--ho-ke, nge-su-tu, co-ul-pu-su, me-vum. Bayer, Mus. Sin. Tom. I. p. 15.] [Footnote 103: Pallas Reise, P. III. p. 134.] The commerce between the Russians and Chinese is entirely a trade of barter, that is, an exchange of one merchandize for another. The Russians are prohibited to export their own coin, nor indeed could the Chinese receive it, even should that prohibition be taken off; for no specie is current amongst them except bullion[104]. And the Russians find it more advantageous to take merchandize in exchange, than to receive bullion at the Chinese standard. The common method of transacting business is as follows. The Chinese merchant comes first to Kiachta, and examines the merchandize he has occasion for in the warehouse of the Russian trader; he then goes to the house of the latter, and adjusts the price over a dish of tea. Both parties next return to the magazine, and the goods in question are there carefully sealed in the presence of the Chinese merchant. When this ceremony is over, they both repair to Maimatschin; the Russian chooses the commodities he wants, not forgetting to guard against fraud by a strict inspection. He then takes the precaution to leave behind a person of confidence, who remains in the warehouse until the Russian goods are delivered, when he returns to Kiachta with the Chinese merchandize[105]. [Footnote 104: The Chinese have no gold or silver coin. These metals are always paid in bullion; and for the purpose of ascertaining the weight, every Chinese merchant is constantly provided with a pair of scales. As gold is very scarce in China, silver is the great vehicle of commerce. When several authors affirm that the Russians draw large quantities of silver from China, they mistake an accidental occurrence for a general and standing fact. During the war between the Chinese and Calmucs, the former had occasion to purchase at Kiachta provision, horses, and camels, for which they paid silver. This traffic brought such a profusion of that metal into Siberia, that its price was greatly reduced below its real value. A pound of silver was at that period occasionally sold at the frontiers for 8 or 9 roubles, which at present fetches 15 or 16. But since the conclusion of these wars by the total reduction of the Calmucs under the Chinese yoke, Russia receives a very small quantity of silver from the Chinese. S.R.G. III. p. 593 & seq. The silver imported to Kiachta is chiefly brought by the Bucharian merchants, who sell cattle to the Chinese in exchange for that metal, which they afterwards dispose of to the Russians for European manufactures. Gold-dust is also occasionally obtained from the same merchants; the quantity however of those metals procured at Kiachta is so inconsiderable, as scarcely to deserve mention. The whole sum imported to Kiachta, in 1777, amounted to only 18,215 roubles.] [Footnote 105: Pallas Reise, P. III. p. 135.] [Sidenote: Russian Exports.] The principal commodities which Russia exports to China are as follow: FURS and PELTRY. It would be uninteresting to enumerate all the furs and skins[106] brought for sale to Kiachta, which form the most important article of exportation on the side of the Russians. The most valuable of these furs are the skins of sea-otters, beavers, foxes, wolves, bears, Bucharian lambs, Astracan sheep, martens, sables, ermines, grey-squirrels. [Footnote 106: The list of all the furs and skins brought to Kiachta, with their several prices, is to be found in Pallas Reise, Part III. p. 136 to p. 142. See hereafter, p. 242.] The greatest part of these furs and skins are drawn from Siberia and the New Discovered Islands: this supply however is not alone fully adequate to the demand of the market at Kiachta. Foreign furs are therefore imported to St. Petersburg, and from thence sent to the frontiers. England alone furnishes a large quantity of beaver and other skins, which she draws from Hudson's Bay and Canada.[107] [Footnote 107: List of furs sent from England to Petersburg in the following years: Beaver-skins. Otter-skins. 1775, | 46460 | 7143 1776, | 27700 | 12086 1777, | 27316 | 10703 The finest Hudson's beavers have been sold upon an average at Petersburg from 70 to 90 roubles per 10 skins. Inferior ditto and best Canada beavers from 50 -- 75 Young or cub-beavers from 20 -- 35 Best otter-skins from 90 -- 100 Inferior ones from 60 -- 80 The qualities of these skins being very different occasion great variations in the prices. At Kiachta, the best Hudson's Bay beaver fetches from 7 to 20 roubles per skin. Otters' ditto 6 -- 35 Black foxes skins from Canada are also sometimes sent from England to Petersburg. At Kiachta they fetch from 1 to 100 roubles per skin.] CLOTH. Cloth forms the second article of exportation which Russia exports to China. The coarse sort is manufactured in Russia; the finer sort is foreign, chiefly English, Prussian, and French. An arshire of foreign cloth fetches, according to its fineness, from 2 to 4 roubles. Camlets. Calimancoes. Druggets. White flannels, both Russian and foreign. The remaining articles are, Rich stuffs. Velvets. Coarse linen, chiefly manufactured in Russia. Russia leather. Tanned hides. Glass ware and looking glasses. Hardware, namely, knives, scissars, locks, &c. Tin. Russian talk. Cattle, chiefly camels, horses, and horned cattle. The Chinese also pay very dear for hounds, greyhounds, barbets, and dogs for hunting wild boars. Provisions[108]. [Footnote 108: In the year 1772, the Chinese purchased meat at Kiachta, at the following prices: A pound of beef 3-2/3 copecs. lamb 2-1/2 Horse flesh for the Tartars 1/2. Pallas Reise, P. III. p.] Meal.--The Chinese no longer import such large quantities of meal as formerly, since they have employed the Mongols to cultivate the lands lying near the river Orchon[109], &c. &c. [Footnote 109: S. R. G. III. p. 495-571. Pallas Reise, P. III. p. 136-144.] [Sidenote: Imports.] List of the most valuable commodities procured from China. RAW AND MANUFACTURED SILK. The exportation of raw silk is prohibited in China under pain of death: large quantities however are smuggled every year into Kiachta, but not sufficient to answer the demands of the Russian merchants. A pood of the best sort is estimated at 150 roubles; of the worst sort at 75 The manufactured silks are of various sorts, fashions, and prices, viz. sattins, taffaties, damasks, and gauzes, scanes of silk died of all colours, ribbands, &c. &c. RAW AND MANUFACTURED COTTON. Raw cotton is imported in very large quantities; a great part of this commodity is employed in packing up the china ware, and by these means is conveyed into the inland part of Russia without any additional expence of carriage. A pood sells for--from 4 roubles, 80 cop. to 12. Of the manufactured cotton, that which the Russians call Kitaika, and the English Nankeen, has the most rapid sale. It is the most durable, and, in proportion to its goodness, the cheapest of all the Chinese stuffs; it is stained red, brown, green, and black. TEAS. The teas which are brought into Russia are much superior in flavour and quality to those which are sent to Europe from Canton. The original goodness of the teas is probably the same in both cases; but it is conjectured, that the transport by sea considerably impairs the aromatic flavour of the plant. This commodity, now become so favourite an object of European luxury, is esteemed by the Russian merchants the most profitable article of importation. At Kiachta a pound of the best tea[110] is estimated at 2 roubles. Common ditto at 1 Inferior at 40 copecs. [Footnote 110: At Petersburg a pound of the best green tea fetches 3 roubles.] PORCELAIN OF ALL SORTS. For some years past the Chinese have brought to Kiachta parcels of porcelain, painted with European figures, with copies of several favourite prints and images of the Grecian and Roman deities. Furniture, particularly Japan cabinets and cases, lackered and varnished tables and chairs, boxes inlaid with mother-of-pearl, &c. &c. Fans, toys, and other small wares. Artificial flowers. Tiger and Panther skins. Rubies[111], but neither in large quantities nor of great value. White lead, vermilion, and other colours. Canes. Tobacco. Rice. Sugar Candy. Preserved ginger, and other sweetmeats. Rhubarb[112]. Musk. [Footnote 111: Rubies are generally procured by smuggling; and by the same means pearls are occasionally disposed of to the Chinese, at a very dear rate. Pearls are much sought for by the Chinese; and might be made a very profitable article.] [Footnote 112: See Appendix II.] It is very difficult to procure the genuine Thibet musk, because the Chinese purchase a bad sort, which comes from Siberia, with which they adulterate that which is brought from Thibet[113]. [Footnote 113: S. R. G. III. p. 572-592. Pallas Reise, p. III. p. 144-153.] [Sidenote: Advantages of this Trade to Russia.] Russia draws great advantages from the Chinese trade. By this traffic, its natural productions, and particularly its furs and skins, are disposed of in a very profitable manner. Many of these furs procured from the most Easterly parts of Siberia, are of such little value that they would not answer the expence of carriage into Russia; while the richer furs, which are sold to the Chinese at a very high price, would, on account of their dearness, seldom meet with purchasers in the Russian dominions. In exchange for these commodities the Russians receive from China several valuable articles of commerce, which they would otherwise be obliged to buy at a much dearer rate from the European powers, to the great disadvantage of the balance of their trade. I have before observed, that formerly the exportation and importation of the most valuable goods were prohibited to individuals; at present only the following articles are prohibited. Among the exports, fire-arms and artillery; gunpowder and ball; gold and silver, coined and uncoined, stallions and mares; skins of deer, reindeer, elks, and horses; beaver's hair, potash, rosin, thread, and [114]tinsel-lace: among the imports, salt, brandy, poisons, copper-money, and rhubarb. [Footnote 114: Tinsel lace is smuggled to the Chinese, with considerable profit; for they pay nearly as much for it as if it was solid silver. S. R. G. III. p. 588.] The duties paid by the Russian-merchants are very considerable; great part of the merchandise is taxed at 25 per cent. Furs, cattle, and provisions, pay a duty of 23. Russian manufactures 18. One per cent. is also deducted from the price of all goods for the expence of deepening the river Selenga; and 7 per cent for the support of the custom-house. Some articles, both of export and import, pay no duty. The exported are, writing, royal, and post paper, Russia cloth of all sorts and colours, excepting peasants cloth. The imported are, satins, raw and stained cottons, porcelain, earthen-ware, glass corals, beads, fans, all musical instruments, furniture, lackered and enamelled ornaments, needles, white-lead, rice, preserved ginger, and other sweet-meats[115]. [Footnote 115: Pallas Reise, P. III. p. 154.] The importance of this trade will appear from the following table. [Sidenote: Table of exportation and importation.] Table of exportation and importation at Kiachta, in the year 1777. Rbles. Cop. Custom-house duties, 481,460. 59-1/2. Importation of Chinese goods, to the value of 1,466,497. 3-3/4. Of gold and silver 11,215. ----------------------- Total of Importation 1,484,712. 3-3/4. ----------------------- Exportation of Russian commodities 1,313,621. 35. From this table it appears, that the total sum of export and import amounts to 2,868,333. In this calculation however the contraband trade is not included, which is very large; and as the year 1777 was not so favourable to this traffic as the preceding ones[116], we may venture to estimate the gross amount of the average trade to China at near 4,000,000 Roubles. [Footnote 116: In the year 1770, 1771, 1772, the custom-house duties at Kiachta (according to Mr. Pallas, P. III. p. 154.) produced 550,000 roubles. By taking therefore the medium between that sum and 481,460, the amount of the duties in 1777, the average sum of the duties will be 515,730; and, as the duties in 1777 make nearly a sixth of the whole sum of exportation and importation, by multiplying 515,730 by 6, we have the gross amount of the average exports and imports at 3,094,380. But as several goods pay no duty, and as the contraband trade according to the lowest valuation is estimated at the fifth part of the exports and imports; the gross amount of the average trade to China may be fairly computed at near 4,000,000, the sum stated above.] CHAP. V. Description of Zuruchaitu--and its trade--Transport of the merchandise through Siberia. The general account of the Russian commerce to China has been given in the preceding chapter, because almost the whole traffic is confined to Kiachta. The description of Zuruchaitu, which was also fixed by the treaty of Kiachta for the purpose of carrying on the same trade, will be comprised of course in a narrow compass. [Sidenote: Description of Zuruchaitu.] Zuruchaitu is situated in 137° longitude, and 49°. 20´ N. latitude, upon the Western branch of the river Argoon, at a small distance from its source. It is provided with a small garrison, and a few wretched barracks surrounded with chevaux de frise. No merchants are settled at this place; they come every summer from Nershinsk, and other Russian towns in order to meet two parties of Mongol troops: these troops are sent from the Chinese towns Naun and Merghen, and arrive at the frontiers about July. They encamp near Zuruchaitu upon the other side of the river Argoon, and barter with the Siberian merchants a few Chinese commodities, which they bring with them. [Sidenote: Commerce.] Formerly the commerce carried on at Zuruchaitu was more considerable; but at present it is so trifling, that it hardly deserves to be mentioned. These Mongols furnish the district of Nershinsk with bad tea and tobacco, bad silks, and some tolerable cottons. They receive in return ordinary furs, cloth, cattle, and Russian leather. This trade lasts about a month or six weeks, and the annual duties of the customs amount upon an average to no more than 500 roubles. About the middle of August the Mongols retire; part proceed immediately to China, and the others descend the stream of the Amoor as far as its mouth, in order to observe if there has been no usurpation upon the limits. At the same time the Russian merchants return to Nershinsk, and, were it not for the small garrison, Zuruchaitu would remain uninhabited[117]. [Footnote 117: S. R. G. III. p. 465. Pallas Reise, P. III. p. 428.] [Sidenote: Transport of the Russian and Chinese Commodities through Siberia.] The Russian commodities are transported by land from Petersburg and Moscow to Tobolsk. From thence the merchants may embark upon the Irtish down to its junction with the Oby; then they either tow up their boats, or sail up the last mentioned river as far as Marym, where they enter the Ket, which they ascend to Makoffskoi Ostrog. At that place the merchandize is carried about ninety versts by land to the Yenisei. The merchants then ascend that river, the Tunguska, and Angara, to Irkutsk, cross the lake Baikal, and go up the river Selenga almost to Kiachta. It is a work of such difficulty to ascend the streams of so many rapid rivers, that this navigation Eastwards can hardly be finished in one summer[118]; for which reason the merchants commonly prefer the way by land. Their general rendezvous is the fair of Irbit near Tobolsk; from thence they go in sledges during winter to Kiachta where they arrive about February, the season in which the chief commerce is carried on with the Chinese. They buy in their route all the furs they find in the small towns, where they are brought from the adjacent countries. When the merchants return in spring with the Chinese goods, which are of greater bulk and weight than the Russian commodities, they proceed by water; they then descend the streams of most of the rivers, namely, the Selenga, Angara, Tunguska, Ket, and Oby to its junction with the Irtish; they ascend that river to Tobolsk, and continue by land to Moscow and Petersburg. [Footnote 118: Some of these rivers are only navigable in spring when the snow water is melting; in winter the rivers are in general frozen.] [Sidenote: Transport of the Furs from Kamtchatka to Kiachta.] Before the passage from Ochotsk to Bolcheresk was discovered in 1716, the only communication between Kamtchatka and Siberia was by land; the road lay by Anadirsk to Yakutsk. The furs[119] of Kamtchatka and of the Eastern isles are now conveyed from that peninsula by water to Ochotsk; from thence to Yakutsk by land on horse-back, or by rein-deer: the roads are so very bad, lying either through a rugged mountainous country, or through marshy forests, that the journey lasts at least six weeks. Yakutsk is situated upon the Lena, and is the principal town, where the choicest furs are brought in their way to Kiachta, as well from Kamtchatka as from the Northern parts of Siberia, which lay upon the rivers Lena, Yana, and Endigirka. At Yakutsk the goods are embarked upon the Lena, towed up the stream of that river as far as Vercholensk, or still farther to Katsheg; from thence they are transported over a short tract of land to the rivulet Buguldeika, down that stream to the lake Baikal, across that lake to the mouth of the Selenga, and up that river to the neighbourhood of Kiachta. [Footnote 119: The furs, which are generally landed upon the Eastern coast of Kamtchatka, are either sent by sea to Bolchoresk, or are transported across the Peninsula in sledges drawn by dogs. The latter conveyance is only used in winter: it is the usual mode of travelling in that country. In summer there is no conveyance, as the Peninsula contains neither oxen, horses, or rein-deer. S. R. G. III. p. 478.] In order to give the reader some notion of that vast tract of country, over which the merchandize is frequently transported by land carriage, a list of the distances is here subjoined. From Petersburg to Moscow 734 versts. Moscow to Tobolsk 2385 Tobolsk to Irkutsk 2918 Irkutsk to Kiachta 471 6508 From Irbit to Tobolsk 420 From Irkutsk to Nershinsk 1129 Nershinsk to Zuruchaitu 370 From Ochotsk to Yakutsk 927 Yakutsk to Irkutsk 2433 From Selenginsk to Zuruchaitu 850 Zuruchaitu to Pekin 1588 Kiachta to Pekin 1532 The Chinese transport their goods to Kiachta chiefly upon camels. It is four or five days journey from Pekin to the wall of China, and forty-six from thence across the Mongol desert to Kiachta[120]. [Footnote 120: Pallas Reise, P. III. p. 134.] PART III. APPENDIX I. & II. CONTAINING SUPPLEMENTARY ACCOUNTS OF THE RUSSIAN DISCOVERIES, &c. &c. [Illustration: KRENITZIN'S and LEVASHEFF'S _VOYAGE to the_ FOX ISLANDS _in 1768 and 1769_.] APPENDIX I. Extract from the journal of a voyage made by Captain _Krenitzin_ and Lieutenant _Levasheff_ to the _Fox Islands_, in 1768, 1769, by order of the Empress of _Russia_--they sail from _Kamtchatka_--arrive at _Beering's_ and _Copper Islands_--reach the _Fox Islands_--_Krenitzin_ winters at _Alaxa_--_Levasheff_ upon _Unalashka_--productions of _Unalashka_--description of the inhabitants of the _Fox Islands_--their manners and customs, &c. [Sidenote: Krenitzin and Levasheff sail from the Mouth of the Kamtchatka River, 1768.] On the 23d of July Captain Krenitzin sailed in the Galliot St. Catherine from the mouth of the Kamtchatka river towards America: he was accompanied by Lieutenant Levasheff, in the Hooker St. Paul. Their instructions were regulated by information derived from Beering's expedition in 1741. Shaping their course accordingly, they found themselves more to the North than they expected; and were told by the Russian traders and hunters, that a similar[121] mistake was committed in the chart of that expedition. These traders, who for some years past were accustomed to ramble to the distant islands in quest of furs, said that they were situated much more to the South, and farther East than was imagined. [Sidenote: They reach Beering's Island.] On the 27th they saw Commodore's or Beering's Island, which is low and rocky, especially to the S. W. On this side they observed a small harbour, distinguished by two hillocks like boats, and not far from it they found a fresh water lake. [Footnote 121: This passage is obscurely expressed. Its meaning may be ascertaining by comparing Krenitzin's chart with that of Beering's voyage prefixed to Muller's account of the Russian Discoveries. The route of Krenitzin's vessel was confidently to the North of the course held by Beering and Tschirikoff, and consequently he sailed through the middle of what they had supposed to be a continent, and which he found to be an open sea. See Robertson's History of America, p. 461, and p. 26, of this work. [Sidenote: and Copper Island.] To the S. E. lies another island, called by the Russians Mednoi Ostroff, or Copper Island, from a great quantity of copper found upon its N. E. coast, the only side which is known to the Russians. It is washed up by the sea, and covers the shore in such abundance, that many ships may load with it. Perhaps an India trader might make a profitable voyage from thence to China, where this metal is in high demand. This copper is mostly in a metallic or malleable state, and many pieces seem as if they had formerly been in fusion. The island is not high, but has many hillocks, each of which has the appearance of having formerly been the funnel of a volcano. We may here, once for all, observe, that all the islands represented in this chart[122] abound with such funnels, called in Russian Sopka, in so much that no island, however small, was found without one; and many of them consisted of nothing else. In short, the chain of islands here laid down may, without any violent stretch of imagination, be considered as thrown up by some late volcanos. The apparent novelty of every thing seems to justify this conjecture: nor can any objection be derived from the vegetable productions with which these islands abound; for the summer after the lower district of Zutphen in Holland was gained from the sea, it was covered over with wild mustard. All these lands are subject to violent and frequent earth-quakes, and abound in sulphur. The writer of the journal was not able to inform us whether any lava was found upon them; but he speaks of a party-coloured stone as heavy as iron. From this account it is by no means improbable, that the copper abovementioned has been melted in some eruption. [Footnote 122: Namely, the chart which is prefixed to this journal.] [Sidenote: Arrive at the Fox Islands.] After leaving Copper Island, no land was seen from either of the ships (which had parted company in a fog) till on the S. E. quarter of their tract, was discovered the chain of islands or head-lands laid down in the chart. These in general appeared low, the shore bad, without creeks, and the water between them very shallow. During their course outwards, as well as during their return, they had frequent fogs. It appears from the journal, as well as from the relation of the hunters, that it is very uncommon to have clear weather for five days together, even during summer. [Sidenote: Krenitzin winters at Alaxa.] The St. Catherine wintered in the straits of Alaxa, where they hauled her into shoal water. The instructions given to the captain set forth, that a private ship had in 1762 found there a commodious haven; but he looked for it in vain. The entrance of this strait from the N. E. was extremely difficult on account of flats, and strong currents both flood and ebb: the entrance however from the S. E. was afterwards found to be much easier with not less than 5-1/2 fathoms water. Upon surveying this strait, and the coast of Alaxa, many funnels were observed in the low grounds close to the shore, and the soil produced few plants. May not this allow one to suppose that the coast had suffered considerable changes since the year 1762? Few of the islands produce wood, and that only in the vallies by the rivulets. Unalga and Alaxa contain the most; they abound with fresh water streams, and even rivers; from which we may infer that they are extensive. The soil is in general boggy, and covered with moss; but Alaxa has more soil and produces much grass. [Sidenote: Levasheff winters upon Unalashka.] The St. Paul wintered in Unalashka. This wintering place was observed to lie in 53° 29´ North latitude, and its longitude from the mouth of Kamtchatka river, computed by the ship's journal, was 27° 05´ East[123]. Unalashka is about fifty miles long from N. E. to S. W. and has on the N. E. side three bays. One of them called Udagha stretches thirty miles E. N. E. and W. S. W. nearly through the middle of the island. Another called Igunck, lying N. N. E. and S. S. W. is a pretty good harbour, with three and a half fathom water at high tide, and sandy ground. It is well sheltered from the North swell at its entrance by rocks, some of which are under water. The tide flows here five feet at full and change, and the shore is in general bold and rocky, except in the bay, at the mouth of a small river. There are two burning mountains on this island, one called Ayaghish, and the other (by the Russians) the Roaring Mountain. Near the former is a very copious hot spring. The land is in general rocky, with loamy and clayey grounds; but the grass is extremely coarse, and unfit for pasture. Hardly any wood is to be found on it. [Sidenote: Productions of Unalashka.] Its plants are dwarf cherry ([124]Xylosteum of Tournefort), wortle berry, (Vaccinium Uliginosum of Linnæus), rasberry, farana and shikshu of Kamtchatka and kutage, larch, white poplar, pine and birch[125]. The land animals are foxes of different colours, mice, and weasels; there are also beavers[126], sea cats, and sea lions as at Kamtchatka. Among their fish we may reckon cod, perch, pilchards, smelts, roach, needle fish, terpugh, and tchavitcha. The birds are eagles, partridges, ducks, teals, urili, ari, and gadi. The animals for whose Russian names I can find no translations, are (excepting the Ari) described in Krashininikoff's History of Kamtchatka, or in Steller's relation contained in the second volume of the Memoirs of the Academy of Petersburgh. [Footnote 123: According to the general map of Russia, the mouth of the Kamtchatka river is in 178° 25´ from Fero. Unalashka therefore, according to this estimation, is 205° 30´ from Fero, or 187° 55´ 15´´ from Greenwich.] [Footnote 124: The Lonicera Pyrenaica of Linnæus. It is not a dwarf cherry, but a species of honeysuckle.] [Footnote 125: All the other journalists uniformly describe Unalashka as containing nothing but underwood; we must therefore suppose that the trees here mentioned were very low and small, and this agrees with what goes before, "hardly any wood is to be found on it."] [Footnote 126: By beavers the journalists certainly mean sea-otters, called by the Russians sea-beavers. See p. 12. For a description of the sea-otter, called by Linnæus Lutra Marina, see Nov. Com. Petr. vol. II. p. 367, et seq.] [Sidenote: Account of the Inhabitants of the Fox Islands.] The inhabitants of Alaxa, Umnak, Unalaksha, and the neighbouring islands, are of a middle stature, tawny brown colour, and black hair. In summer they wear coats (parki[127]) made of bird skins, over which, in bad weather, and in their boats, they throw cloaks, called kamli, made of thin whale guts. On their heads they wear wooden caps, ornamented with duck's feathers, and the ears of the sea-animal, called Scivutcha or sea-lion; they also adorn these caps with beads of different colours, and with little figures of bone or stone. In the partition of the nostrils they place a pin, about four inches long, made of the bone, or of the stalk of a certain black plant; from the ends of this pin or bodkin they hang, in fine weather and on festivals, rows of beads, one below the other. They thrust beads, and bits of pebble cut like teeth, into holes made in the under-lips. They also wear strings of beads in their ears, with bits of amber, which the inhabitants of the other islands procure from Alaxa, in exchange for arrows and kamli. [Footnote 127: Parki in Russian signifies a shirt, the coats of these islanders being made like shirts.] They cut their hair before just above the eyes, and some shave the top of their heads like monks. Behind the hair is loose. The dress of the women hardly differs from that of the men, excepting that it is made of fish-skins. They sew with bone needles, and thread made of fish guts, fastening their work to the ground before them with bodkins. They go with the head uncovered, and the hair cut like that of the men before, but tied up behind in a high knot. They paint their cheeks with strokes of blue and red, and wear nose-pins, beads, and ear-rings like the men; they hang beads round their neck, and checkered strings round their arms and legs. [Sidenote: Manners and Customs.] In their persons we should reckon them extremely nasty. They eat the vermin with which their bodies are covered, and swallow the mucus from the nose. Having washed themselves, according to custom, first with urine, and then with water, they suck their hands dry. When they are sick, they lie three or four days without food; and if bleeding is necessary, they open a vein with lancets made of flint, and suck the blood. Their principal nourishment is fish and whale fat, which they commonly eat raw. They also feed upon sea-wrack and roots, particularly the saran, a species of lily; they eat a herb, called kutage, on account of its bitterness, only with fish or fat. They sometimes kindle fire by catching a spark among dry leaves and powder of sulphur: but the most common method is by rubbing two pieces of wood together, in the manner practised at Kamtchatka[128], and which Vaksel, Beering's lieutenant, found to be in use in that part of North America which he saw in 1741. They are very fond of Russian oil and butter, but not of bread. They could not be prevailed upon to taste any sugar until the commander shewed the example; finding it sweet, they put it up to carry it home to their wives. [Footnote 128: The instrument made use of by the Kamtchadals, to procure fire, is a board with several holes in it, and a stick; the latter is put into the holes, and turned about swiftly, until the wood within the holes begins to burn, where there is tinder ready to catch the sparks. S. R. G. III. p. 205.] The houses of these islanders are huts built precisely in the manner of those in Kamtchatka, with the entry through a hole in the middle of the roof. In one of these huts live several families, to the amount of thirty or forty persons. They keep themselves warm by means of whale fat burnt in shells, which they place between their legs. The women set apart from the men. Six or seven of these huts or yourts make a village, of which there are sixteen in Unalashka. The islands seem in general to be well inhabited, as may be conjectured from the great number of boats which are seen continually plying along the shore. There are upwards of a thousand inhabitants on Unalashka, and they say that it was formerly much more populous. They have suffered greatly by their disputes with the Russians, and by a famine in the year 1762; but most of all from a change in their way of life. No longer contented with their original simplicity, they long for Russian luxuries: in order therefore to obtain a few delicacies, which are presently consumed, they dedicate the greatest part of their time to hunting, for the purpose of procuring furs for the Russians: by these means, they neglect to lay up a provision of fish and roots; and suffer their children frequently to die of hunger. Their principal food is fish, which they catch with bone hooks. Their boats, in which they row to a great distance from land, are made, like those of the Innuet or Esquimaux, of thin slips of wood and skins: these skins cover the top as well as the sides of the boat, and are drawn tight round the waist of the rower. The oar is a paddle, broad at both ends. Some of their boats hold two persons; one of whom rows, and the other fishes: but these kind of boats seem appropriated to their chiefs. They have also large boats capable of holding forty men. They kill birds and beasts with darts made of bone, or of wood tipped with sharpened stone: they use these kind of darts in war, which break with the blow given by them, and leave the point in the wound. The manners and character of these people are what we should expect from their necessitous situation, extremely rude and savage. The inhabitants however of Unalashka are somewhat less barbarous in their manners and behaviour to each other, and also more civil to strangers than the natives of the other islands; but even they are engaged in frequent and bloody quarrels, and commit murder without the least compunction. Their disposition engages them in continual wars, in which they always endeavour to gain their point by stratagem. The inhabitants of Unimak are formidable to all the rest; they frequently invade the other islands, and carry off women, the chief object of their wars. Alaxa is most subject to these incursions, probably because it is more populous and extensive. They all join in hating the Russians, whom they consider as general invaders, and therefore kill them wherever they can. The people of Unalashka however are more friendly; for Lieutenant Levasheff, being informed that there was a Russian vessel in the straits of Alaxa, prevailed on some Unalashkans to carry a letter, which they undertook, notwithstanding the danger they were exposed to from the inhabitants of the intervening islands. The journalist says, that these people have no kind of religion, nor any notion of a God. We observe however among them sufficient marks of such a religion as might be expected from people in their situation. For the journalist informs us, that they have fortune-tellers employed by them at their festivals. These persons pretend to foretel events by the information of the Kugans or Dæmons. In their divinations they put on wooden masks, made in the form in which they say the Kugan appeared to them; they then dance with violent motions, beating at the same time drums covered with fish skins. The inhabitants also wear little figures on their caps, and place others round their huts, to keep off the devils. These are sufficient marks of a savage religion. It is common for them to have two, three, or four wives, and some have also an object of unnatural affection, who is dressed like the women. The wives do not all live together, but, like the Kamtchadals, in different yourts. It is not unusual for the men to exchange their wives, and even sell them, in time of dearth, for a bladder of fat; the husband afterwards endeavours to get back his wife, if she is a favourite, and if unsuccessful he sometimes kills himself. When strangers arrive at a village, it is always customary for the women to go out to meet them, while the men remain at home: this is considered as a pledge of friendship and security. When a man dies in the hut belonging to his wife, she retires into a dark hole, where she remains forty days. The husband pays the same compliment to his favourite wife upon her death. When both parents die, the children are left to shift for themselves. The Russians found many in this situation, and some were brought for sale. In each village there is a sort of chief, called Tookoo, who is not distinguished by any particular rank or authority. He decides differences by arbitration, and the neighbours enforce the sentence. When he goes out to sea he is exempted from working, and has a servant, called Kalè, for the purpose of rowing the canoe; this is the only mark of his dignity: at all other times he labours like the rest. The office is not hereditary; but is generally conferred on him who is most remarkable for his personal qualities; or who possesses a great influence by the number of his friends. Hence it frequently happens, that the person who has the largest family is chosen. During their festivals, which are held after the fishing season ends in April, the men and women sing songs; the women dance, sometimes singly, and sometimes in pairs, waving in their hands blown bladders; they begin with gentle movements, which become at last extremely violent. The inhabitants of Unalashka are called Kogholaghi. Those of Akutan, and farther East to Unimak, are called Kighigusi; and those of Unimak and Alaxa are called Kataghayekiki. They cannot tell whence they have these names, and now begin to call themselves by the general name of Aleyut, given them by the Russians, and borrowed from some of the [129]Kuril islands. Upon being asked concerning their origin, they said that they had always inhabited these islands, and knew nothing of any other country beyond them. All that could be gathered from them was, that the greatest numbers came from Alaxa, and that they did not know whether that land had any bounds. The Russians surveyed this island very far to the N. E. in boats, being out about a fortnight, and set up a cross at the end of their survey. The boats of the islanders are like those of the Americans. It appears however from their customs and way of life, so far as these are not necessarily prescribed to them by their situation, that they are of Kamtchatdal original. Their huts, their manner of kindling fire, and their objects of unnatural affections, lead to this conjecture. Add to this, the almost continual Westerly winds, which must render the passage Westward extremely difficult. Beering and Tchirikoff could never obtain Easterly winds but by going to the Southward. [Footnote 129: I cannot find, that any of the Kuril Isles are called Aleyut in the catalogue of those islands given by Mr. Muller, S. R. G. III. p, 86-92. Neither are any of them laid down under that name in the Russian charts.] The Russians have for some years past been accustomed to go to these islands in quest of furs, of which they have imposed a tax on the inhabitants. The manner of carrying on this trade is as follows. The Russian traders go in Autumn to Beering's and Copper island, and there winter: they then employ themselves in catching the sea-cat, and afterwards the Scivutcha, or sea-lion. The flesh of the latter is prepared for food, and it is very delicate. They carry the skins of these sea-animals to the Eastern islands. Next summer they go Eastward, to the Fox-islands; and again lay their ships up for the winter. They then endeavour to procure, either by persuasion or force, the children of the inhabitants, particularly of the Tookoos, as hostages. This being accomplished, they deliver to the inhabitants fox-traps, and also skins for their boats, for which they oblige them to bring furs and provisions during the winter. After obtaining from them a certain quantity of furs, by way of tax, for which they give them quittances; the Russians pay for the rest in beads, false pearls, goat's wool, copper kettles, hatchets, &c. In the spring they get back their traps, and deliver up their hostages. They dare not hunt alone, nor in small numbers, on account of the hatred of the natives. These people could not, for some time, comprehend for what purpose the Russians imposed a tribute of skins, which were not to be their own property, but belonged to an absent person; for their Tookoos have no revenue. Nor could they be made to believe, that there were any more Russians than those who came among them; for in their own country all the men of an island go out together. At present they comprehend something of Kamtchatka, by means of the Kamtchadals and Koriacs who come along with the Russians; and on their arrival love to associate with people whose manner of life resembles their own. Krenitzin and Levasheff returned from this expedition into the mouth of the Kamtchatka river in autumn 1769. The chart which accompanies this journal was composed by the pilot Jacob Yakoff, under the inspection of the commanders[130] Krenitzin and Levasheff. The track of the St. Paul is marked both in going out and returning. The harbour of the St. Paul in the island Unalashka, and the straits of Alaxa, are laid down from observations made during the winter 1768; and the islands connected by bearings and distances taken during a cruise of the St. Paul twice repeated. [Footnote 130: Krenitzin was drowned soon after his return to Kamtchatka in a canoe belonging to the natives.] In this chart the variation is said to be In Lat. Long. Points 54° 40´. 204. 2 East. 52 20 201 1-1/2 52 50 198 1-1/2 53 20 192 30 1 53 40 188 1 54 50 182 30 0-3/4 55 00 180 30 0-3/4 N^o II. Concerning the longitude of _Kamtchatka_, and of the Eastern extremity of _Asia_, as laid down by the _Russian_ Geographers. [Sidenote: Longitude of the extreme Parts of Asia.] The important question concerning the longitude of the extreme parts of Asia has been so differently stated by the most celebrated geographers, that it may not be amiss to refer the curious reader to the principal treatises upon that subject. [Sidenote: by Mr. Muller and the Russian Geographers.] The proofs by which Mr. Muller and the Russian geographers place the longitude of the Eastern extremity of Asia beyond 200 degrees from the first meridian of Fero, or 180° 6´ 15´´ from Paris, are drawn from the observations of the satellites of Jupiter, made by Krassilnikoff at Kamtchatka, and in different parts of Siberia, and from the expeditions of the Russians by land and sea towards Tschukotskoi Noss. [Sidenote: by Mr. Engel.] Mr. Engel calls in question the exactness of these observations, and takes off twenty-nine degrees from the longitude of Kamtchatka, as laid down by the Russians. To this purpose he has given to the public, 1. Memoires et observations geographiques et critiques sur la situation des Pays Septentrionaux de l'Asie et de l'Amerique. A Lausanne, 1765. 2. Geographische und Critische Nachricht ueber die Lage der noerdlichen Gegenden von Asien und America. Mittau, 1772. [Sidenote: by Mr. Vaugondy.] It appears to Monsieur de Vaugondy, that there are not sufficient grounds for so extraordinary a diminution: accordingly he shortens the continent of Asia only eleven degrees of longitude; and upon this subject he has given the two following treatises: 1. Lettre au sujet d'une carte systematique des Pays Septentrionaux de l'Asie et de l'Amerique. Paris, 1768. 2. Nouveau systeme geographique, par lequel on concilie les anciennes connoissances sur les Pays au Nord Ouest de l'Amerique. Paris, 1774. [Sidenote: Mons. Buache supports the System of the Russians against Engel and Vaugondy.] In opposition to these authors, Monsieur Buache has published an excellent treatise, entitled Memoires sur les Pays de l'Asie et de l'Amerique. Paris, 1775. In this memoir he dissents from the opinions of Messrs Engel and Vaugondy; and defends the system of the Russian geographers in the following manner. Monsieur Maraldi, after comparing the observations of the satellites of Jupiter, taken at Kamtchatka by Krassilnikoff, with the tables, has determined the longitude of Ochotsk, Bolcheresk, and the port of St. Peter and Paul from the first meridian of Paris as follows: h ´ ´´ [131]Longitude of Ochotsk 9 23 30 of Bolcheresk 10 17 17 of the Port 10 25 5 Latitude of Ochotsk 59° 22´, of Bolcheresk 52° 55´, of the Port 53° 1´. [Footnote 131: Krassilnikoff compared his observations with corresponding ones taken at Petersburg, which gave results as follow: From comparing an observation of an eclipse of the first satellite, taken at Ochotsk the 17th of January, 1743, with an observation of an eclipse of the same satellite taken at Petersburg on the 15th of January in the same year, the difference of longitude between Petersburg and Ochotsk appeared to be 7^h. 31´ 29´´; from a comparison of two other similar observations the difference of longitude was 7^h. 31´ 3´´, a mean of which is 7^h. 31´ 34´´, being the true difference between the meridians of Petersburg and Ochotsk according to these observations. By adding the difference of the longitude between Petersburg and Paris, which is 1^h. 52´ 25´´, we have the longitude of Ochotsk from Paris 9^h. 23´ 59´´, which differs 29´´ only from the result of Mons. Maraldi. Nov. Comm. Pet. III. p. 470. In the same manner the longitude of Bolcheresk appears from the corresponding observations taken at that place and at Petersburg to be 10h. 20´ 22´´ differing from Mr. Maraldi about 2´ 5´´. Nov. Com. p. 469. But the longitude of the port of St. Peter and Paul, estimated in the same manner from corresponding observations, differs from the longitude as computed by Mons. Maraldi no more than 20 seconds, p. 469.] The comparison of the following results, deduced from corresponding observations[132] of the eclipses of Jupiter's satellites taken at Bolcheresk at the port of Peter and Paul by Krassilnikoff, and at Pekin by the Jesuit missionaries, will shew from their near agreement the care and attention which must have been given to the observations; and from hence there is reason to suppose, that the suspicions of inaccuracy imputed to Krassilnikoff are ill founded. [Footnote 132: Obs. Ast. Ecc. Sat. Jovis, &c. Nov. Com. Petr. vol. III. p. 452, &c. Obs. Ast. Pekini factæ. Ant. Hallerstein--Curante Max. Hell. Vindibonæ, 1768.] 1741, Old Stile. h ´ ´´ Jan. 27, Em. I Sat. 12 9 25 at the port of St. Peter and Paul. 9 20 35 at Pekin. ---------- Difference of the meridian at Pekin and the Port 2 48 50 ---------- h ´ ´´ Jan. 30, Imm. III Sat. 12 5 30 at the Port. 9 16 30 at Pekin. ---------- 2 49 0 ---------- h ´ ´´ Feb. 5, I Sat. 8 33 26 at the Port. 5 43 45 at Pekin. ---------- 2 49 41 ---------- h ´ ´´ Feb. 12, Em. I Sat. 10 28 49 7 39 29 ---------- 2 49 20 ----------- And the longitude from Paris to Pekin being 7 36 23 The difference of the meridians of Paris and the Port will be 10 25 36 Which differs only 31 seconds from the determination of Mr. Maraldi. 1741. Old Style. h ´ ´´ March 23, Em. II Sat. 10 55 2 at Bolcheresk. 8 14 0 at Pekin. ----------- 2 41 2 ----------- h ´ ´´ Dec. 31, Im. I Sat. 10 51 58 at Bolcheresk. 8 9 45 at Pekin. ----------- Difference of the meridians 2 42 13 of Pekin and Bolcheresk ----------- h ´ ´´ By taking the medium the difference of the longitude between Bolcheresk and Pekin will be found to be 2 41 37 Between Bolcheresk and Paris 10 18 0 Which differs only one minute and one second from the determination of Mr. Maraldi. In order to call in question the conclusions drawn from the observations of Krassilnikoff, Monsieur de Vaugondy pretends that the instruments and pendulums, which he made use of at Kamtchatka, were much damaged by the length of the journey; and that the person who was sent to repair them was an unskilful workman. But this opinion seems to have been advanced without sufficient foundation. Indeed Krassilnikoff[133] himself allows that his pendulum occasionally stopt, even when necessary to ascertain the true time of the observation. He admits therefore that the observations which he took under these disadvantages (when he could not correct them by preceding or subsequent observations of the sun or stars) are not to be depended upon, and has accordingly distinguished them by an asterisk; there are however a number of others, which were not liable to any exception of this kind; and the observations already mentioned in this number are comprised under this class. [Footnote 133: Nov. Com. Pet. III. p. 444.] * * * * * If the arguments which have been already produced should not appear sufficiently satisfactory, we have the further testimony of Mr. Muller, who was in those parts at the same time with Krassilnikoff, and who is the only competent judge of this matter now alive. For that respectable author has given me the most positive assurances, that the instruments were not damaged in such a manner as to effect the accuracy of the observations when in the hands of a skilful observer. [Sidenote: Accuracy of the Russian Geographers.] That the longitude of Kamtchatka is laid down with sufficient accuracy by the Russian geographers, will appear by comparing it with the longitude of Yakutsk; for as the latter has been clearly established by a variety of observations, taken at different times and by different persons, if there is any error in placing Kamtchatka so far to the East, it will be found in the longitude between Yakutsk and Bolcheresk. A short comparison therefore of some of the different observations made at Yakutsk will help to settle the longitude of Kamtchatka, and will still farther confirm the character of a skilful observer, which has been given to Krassilnikoff. Krassilnikoff in returning from Kamtchatka observed at Yakutsk several eclipses of the satellites of Jupiter, of which the following are mentioned by him as the most exact. 1744, Old Style. h ´ ´´ [134]Feb. 7. Imm. I. Sat. 11 18 35 somewhat doubtful. 22. Imm. II. Sat. 10 31 11} 29. Imm. II. Sat. 13 6 54} Mar. 1. Imm. I. Sat. 11 23 0} all exact. Apr. 9. Em. I. Sat. 12 23 50} [Footnote 134: Nov. Comm. Petr. T. III. p. 460.] The same eclipses, as calculated by the tables of Mr. Wargentin, for the meridian of Paris, are as follow: h ´ ´´ h ´ ´´ Feb. 7. Imm. I. 2 49 0 Difference of 8 29 35 27. Imm. I. 12 3 10 the meridians 8 21 1 29. Imm. II. 4 38 17 of Paris-- 8 28 37 Mar. 1. Imm. I. 3 3 37 and Yakutsk 8 29 23 Apr. 9. Em. I. 3 54 12 8 29 46 ---------- The mean of which is 8 29 5 ---------- The observations of Mr. Islenieff[135], made at Yakutsk in the year 1769, to which place he was sent to observe the transit of Venus, have received the sanction of the Imperial Academy. The longitude which he fixes for Yakutsk is 8^h 29´ 34´´. this corresponds, to a sufficient degree of exactness, with the longitude inferred from, the observations of Krassilnikoff. [Footnote 135: For Islenieff's observations at Yakutsk, see Nov. Com. Tom. XIV. Part III. p. 268 to 321.] Thus the longitude of Yakutsk from Paris being 8^h 29° 4´´. or in degrees 127 16 0. and of Bolcheresk 10 17 17, or in degrees 150° 19´ 15. the difference of the longitude of these two places, from astronomical observations, amounts to 1 48 8. or in degrees 27° 3´ 0. The latitude of Bolcheresk is 52° 55´ 0´´. and that of Yakutsk 62° 1´ 50´´. and the difference of their longitudes being from the preceding determination 27 3 0. the direct distance between the places measured on a great circle of the earth will appear by trigonometry to be 16° 57´. or about 1773 versts reckoning 104-1/2 versts to a degree. This distance consists partly of sea, and partly of land; and a constant intercourse is kept up between the two places, by means of Ochotsk, which lies between them. The distance by sea from Bolcheresk to Ochotsk is estimated by ships reckonings to be 1254 versts, and the distance by land from Ochotsk to Yakutsk is 927 versts, making altogether 2181. The direct distance deduced by trigonometry, (on a supposition that the difference of longitude between Bolcheresk and Yakutsk is 27° 3´.) is 1773, falling short of 2181 by 408. a difference naturally to be expected from considering, that neither roads by land, or the course of ships at sea, are ever performed precisely on a great circle of the earth, which is the shortest line that can be drawn on the earth's surface between two places. By this agreement between the distance thus estimated, and that deduced by computation, on supposing the difference of longitude between Yakutsk and Bolcheresk to be 27° 3´. it seems very improbable, that there should be an error of many degrees in the astronomical determination. Since then the longitude between Fero and Petersburgh is acknowledged to be 48°--that between Petersburgh and Yakutsk 99° 21´--and as the distance in longitude between Yakutsk and Bolcheresk cannot be materially less than 27° 3´. it follows that the longitude of Bolcheresk from Fero cannot be much less than 174° 24´. Where then shall we find place for so great an error as 27 degrees, which, according to Mr. Engel, or even of 11°. which, according to Mons. Vaugondy, is imputed to the Russian geographers, in fixing the longitude of Kamtchatka? From the isle of Fero Longitude of Yakutsk 147 0 0 of Ochotsk 160 7 0 of Bolcheresk 174 13 0 of the Port of St. Peter and Paul 176 10 0 [Sidenote: Longitude of the extreme parts of Asia determined by the Russians.] As no astronomical observations have been made further to the East than the Port of St. Peter and Paul, it is impossible to fix, with any degree of certainty, the longitude of the North-Eastern promontory of Asia. It appears however from Beering's and Synd's coasting voyages towards Tschukotskoi Noss, and from other expeditions to the parts by land and sea, that the coast of Asia in lat. 64. stretches at least 23° 2 30. from the Port, or to about 200° longitude from the Isle of Fero. N^o III. Summary of the proofs tending to shew, that _Beering_ and _Tschirikoff_ either reached _America_ in 1741, or came very near it. The coast which Beering reached, and called Cape St. Elias, lay, according to his estimation, in 58°. 28´. N. latitude, and in longitude 236°. from Fero: the coast touched at by Tschirikoff was situated in lat. 56°. long. 241°[136]. [Footnote 136: The reader will find the narrative of this voyage made by Beering and Tschirikoff in Muller's account of the Russian Discoveries, S. R. G. III. 193, &c.] [Sidenote: Arguments advanced by Steller to prove that Beering and Tschirikoff discovered America.] Steller, who accompanied Beering in his expedition towards America, endeavours to prove, that they discovered that continent by the following arguments[137]: The coasts were bold, presenting continued chains of high mountains, some of which were so elevated, that their tops were covered with snow, their sides were cloathed from the bottom to the top with large tracts of thick and fine wood[138]. [Footnote 137: See Krashininikoff's account of Kamtchatka, Chap. X. French Translation; Chap. IV. English translation.] [Footnote 138: The recent navigations in those seas strongly confirm this argument. For in general all the new discovered islands are quite destitute of trees; even the largest produce nothing but underwood, one of the most Easterly Kadyak alone excepted, upon which small willows and alders were observed growing in vallies at some distance from the coast. See p. 118.] Steller went ashore, where he remained only a few hours; during which time he observed several species of birds which are not known in Siberia: amongst these was the bird described by [139]Catesby, under the name of Blue Jay; and which has never yet been found in any country but North America. The soil was very different from that of the neighbouring islands, and at Kamtchatka: and he collected several plants, which are deemed by botanists peculiar to America. [Footnote 139: See Catesby's Natural History of Florida, Carolina, &c. This bird is called by Linnæus Corbus Cristatus. I have seen, in Mr. Pennant's MS account of the history of the animals, birds, &c. of N. America, and the Northern hemisphere, as high as lat. 60, an exact description of this bird. Whenever that ingenious author, to whom we are indebted for many elegant and interesting publications, gives this part of his labours to the world, the zoology of these countries will be fully and accurately considered.] The following list of these plants was communicated to me by Mr. Pallas: I insert them however without presuming to decide, whether they are the exclusive growth of North America: the determination of this point is the province of botany. Trillium Erectum. Fumaria Cucullaria. A species of Dracontium, with leaves like the Canna Indica. Uvularia Perfoliata. Heuchera Americana. Mimulus Luteus, a Peruvian plant. A species of Rubus, probably a variety of the Rubus Idæus, but with larger berries, and a large laciniated red calyx. None of these plants are found in Kamtchatka, or in any of the neighbouring islands[140]. [Footnote 140: According to Mr. Pallas, the plants of the new-discovered islands are mostly alpine, like those of Siberia; this he attributes to the shortness and coldness of the summer, occasioned by the frequency of the North winds. His words are: "Quoique les hivres de ces isles soient assez temperés par l'air de la mer, de façon que les neiges ne couvrent jamais la terre que par intervalles, la plupart des plantes y sont alpines, comme en Siberie, par la raison que l'eté y est tout aussi courte et froide, a cause des vents de nord qui y regnent." This passage is taken from a MS treatise in the French language, relative to the new-discovered islands communicated to me by my very learned and ingenious friend Mr. Pallas, professor of natural history at St. Petersburg; from which I have been enabled to collect a considerable degree of information. This treatise was sent to Mons. Buffon; and that celebrated naturalist has made great use of it in the fifth volume of his Supplement à l'Histoire Naturelle.] Though these circumstances should not be considered as affording decisive proofs, that Beering reached America; yet they will surely be admitted as strong presumptions, that he very nearly approached that continent[141]. [Footnote 141: The reader will recollect in this place, that the natives of the contiguous islands touched at by Beering and Tschirikoff "presented to the Russians the calumet, or pipe of peace, which is a symbol of friendship universal among the people of North America, and an usage of arbitrary institution peculiar to them." See Robertson's Hist. Am. vol. I. p. 276. S. R. G. III. p. 214.] N^o IV. List of the principal charts representing the Russian discoveries. The following is an authentic list of the principal charts of the Russian discoveries hitherto published. It is accompanied with a few explanatory remarks. [Sidenote: List of the Charts of the Russian Discoveries]. 1. Carte des nouvelles dècouvertes au nord de la mer du sud, tant à l'Est de la Siberie et du Kamtchatka, qu'à l'Ouest de la Nouvelle France dressé sur les memoires de Mr. de l'Isle, par Philippe Buache, 1750. A memoir relative to this chart was soon afterwards published, with the following title, Explication de la carte des nouvelles dècouvertes au Nord de la mer du sud par Mr. de l'Isle Paris, 1752, 4to. This map is alluded to, p. 26 of this work. 2. Carte des nouvelles dècouvertes entre la partie orientale de l'Asie et l'Occidentale de l'Amerique, avec des vues sur la grande terre réconnue, par les Russes, en 1741, par Phil. Buache, 1752. 3. Nouvelle carte des dècouvertes faites par des vaisseaux Russiens aux cotés inconnus de l'Amerique septentrionale avec les pais adjacens, dressés sur les memoires authentiques de ceux qui ont assisté à ces dècouvertes, et sur d'autres connoissances; dont on rend raison dans un memoire separé: à St. Petersburg, à l'Academie Imperiale des Sciences, 1754. 1758. This map was published under the inspection of Mr. Muller, and is still prefixed to his account of the Russian discoveries[142]. The part which exhibits the new discovered isles and the coast of America, was chiefly taken from the chart of Beering's expedition. Accordingly that continent is represented as advancing, between 50 and 60 degrees of latitude, to within a small distance of Kamtchatka. Nor could there be any reason to suspect, that such experienced sailors as Beering and Tschirikoff had mistaken a chain of islands for promontories belonging to America, until subsequent navigators had actually sailed through that very part, which was supposed to be a continent. [Footnote 142: This map was published by Jefferys under the following title: "A Map of the Discoveries made by the Russians on the North West coast of America, published by the Royal Academy of Sciences at Petersburg. Republished by Thomas Jefferys, Geographer to his Majesty, 1761."] 4. A second chart published by the Academy, but not under the inspection of Mr. Muller, bears the same title as the former. Nouvelle carte des dècouvertes faites par des vaisseaux Russiens aut côtés inconnus de l'Amerique, &c. 1773. It is for the most part a copy of a manuscript chart known in Russia by the name of the chart of the Promyshlenics, or merchant adventurers, and which was sketched from the mere reports of persons who had sailed to the New Discovered Islands. As to the size and position of the New Discovered Islands, this chart of the Academy is extremely erroneous: it is however free from the above-mentioned mistake, which runs through all the former charts, namely, the representing of the coast of America, between 50 and 60 degrees of latitude, as contiguous to Kamtchatka. It likewise removes that part of the same continent lying in latitude 66, from 210° longitude to 224°, and in its stead lays down a large island, which stretches between latitude 64° and 71° 30´, from 207° longitude to 218°, to within a small distance of both continents. But whether this latter alteration be equally justifiable or not, is a question, the decision of which must be left to future navigators[143]. [Footnote 143: Mr. Muller has long ago acknowledged, in the most candid and public manner, the incorrectness of the former chart, as far as it relates to the part which represents America, as contiguous to Kamtchatka: but he still maintains his opinion concerning the actual vicinity of the two continents in an higher latitude. The following quotation is taken from a letter written by Mr. Muller, in 1774, of which I have a copy in my possession. "Posterity must judge if the new chart of the Academy is to be preferred to the former one for removing the continent of America (which is represented as lying near the coast of Tschutski) to a greater distance. Synd, who is more to be trusted than the Promyschlenics, persists in the old system. He places America as near as before to Tschukotskoi Noss, but knows nothing of a large island called Alashka, which takes up the place of the continent, and which ought to be laid down much more to the South or South East."] 5. Carte du nouvel Archipel du Nord decouvert parles Russes dans la mer de Kamtchatka et d'Anadir. This chart is prefixed to Mr. Stæhlin's account of the New Northern Archipelago. In the English translation it is called, A Map of the New Northern Archipelago, discovered by the Russians in the seas of Kamtchatka and Anadyr. It differs from the last mentioned chart only in the size and position of a few of the islands, and in the addition of five or six new ones, and is equally incorrect. The New Discovered Islands are classed in this chart into three groups, which are called the Isles of Anadyr[144], the Olutorian[145] Isles, and the Aleütian Isles. The two last mentioned charts are alluded to, p. 26 of this work. [Footnote 144: Monsieur Buffon has adopted the apellation and erroneous representation of the isles of Anadyr, in his Carte de deux regions Polaires, lately published. See Supplement à l'Hist. Nat. vol. V. p. 615.] [Footnote 145: The Olotorian Isles are so named from the small river of Olotora, which flows into the sea at Kamtchatka, about latitude 61°. The following remarks upon this group of islands are taken from a letter of Mr. Muller mentioned in the last note. "This appellation of Olutorian Isles is not in use at Kamtchatka. These islands, called upon this chart Olutorians, lie according to the chart of the Promyschlenics, and the chart of the Academy, very remote from the river Olutora: and it seems as if they were advanced upon this chart nearer to Kamtchatka only in favour of the name. They cannot be situated so near that coast, because they were neither seen by Beering in 1728, nor by the Promyschlenics, Novikoff and Bacchoff, when they sailed in 1748 from the Anadyr to Beering's Island." See p. 42.] 6. An excellent map of the Empire of Russia, published by the geographical department of the Academy of Sciences at St. Petersburg in 1776, comprehends the greatest part of the New Discovered Islands. A reduced copy of this chart being prefixed to this work, I shall only mention the authorities from whence the compilers have laid down the New Discovered Islands. The Aleütian Isles are partly taken from Beering's chart, partly from [146]Otcheredin's, whose voyage is related in the eleventh chapter, and partly from other MS. charts of different navigators. The islands near the coast of the Tschutski are copied from Synd's chart. The Fox Islands are laid down from the chart of Otcheredin. The reader will perceive, that the position of the Fox Islands, upon this general map of Russia, is materially different from that assigned to them in the chart of Krenitzin's and Levasheff's voyage. In the former they are represented as stretching between 56° 61´ North latitude, and 210° and 230° longitude from the isle of Fero: in the latter they are situated between 51° 40´ and 55° 20´ latitude, and 199° 30´ and 207° 30´ longitude. According to the most recent accounts received from Petersburg, the position given to them upon this general map is considerably too much to the North and East; consequently that assigned to them upon Krenitzin's chart is probably the most to be depended upon. [Footnote 146: I have a MS. copy of Otcheredin's chart in my possession; but as the Fox Islands, in the general Map of Russia, are copied from thence, the reader will find them laid down upon the reduced map prefixed to this work. The anonymous author of the account of the Russian Discoveries, of whose work I have given a translation in Part I. seems to have followed, in most particulars, Otcheredin's chart and journal for the longitude, latitude, size, and position of the New Discovered Islands. For this reason, I should have had his chart engraved if the Fox Islands upon the general map had not been taken from thence: there seemed no occasion therefore for increasing the expence of this work, already too great from the number of charts, by the addition of another not absolutely necessary.] 7. Carte des dècouvertes Russes dans la mer orientale et en Amerique, pour servir à l'Essai[147] sur le commerce de Russie, 1778, Amsterdam. It is natural to expect, that a chart so recently published should be superior to all the preceding ones; whereas, on the contrary, it is by far the most incorrect representation of the New Discovered Islands which has yet appeared. [Footnote 147: The twelfth chapter of this Essay relates to the discoveries and commerce of the Russians in the Eastern Ocean. The account of the Russian discoveries is a translation of Mr. Stæhlin's Description of the New Northern Archipelago. In addition, he has subjoined an account of Kamtchatka, and a short sketch of the Russian commerce to the New Discovered Islands, and to America. If we may believe the author of this Essay, the Russians have not only discovered America, but they also every year form occasional settlements upon that continent, similar to those of the Europeans in Newfoundland. His words are: "Il est donc certain, que les Russes ont dècouvert le continent de l'Amérique; mais on peut assurer qu'ils n'y ont encore aucun port, aucun comptoir. Il en est des établissements de cette nation dans la grande terre, comme de ceux des nations Européennes dans l'isle de Terre Neve. Ses vaisseaux ou frégates arrivent en Amèrique; leurs equipages et les Cosaques chasseurs s'etablissent sur la côte; les uns se retranchent, et les autres y font la chasse et la pêche du chien marin et du narval. Ils reviennent ensuite au Kamtchatka, après avoir été relevès par d'autres frégates sur les mêmes parages, ou à des distances plus ou moins eloignés, &c. &c." See Essai sur le commerce de la Russie, p. 292-293. Thus the publick is imposed upon by fictitious and exaggerated accounts.] N^o V. Position of the _Andreanoffsky Isles_ ascertained--Number of the _Aleütian Isles_. [Sidenote: Position of the Andreanoffsky Isles.] When the anonymous author published his account of the Russian Discoveries in 1766, the position of the Andreanoffsky Isles was not ascertained. It was generally supposed, that they formed part of that cluster of islands, which Synd[148] fell in with in his voyage towards Tschukotskoi Noss; and Buffon[149] represents them to be the same with those laid down in Stæhlin's chart, under the name of Anadirsky Isles. The anonymous author in the passage here referred to, supposes them to be N. E. of the Aleütian Isles; "at the distance of 600 or 800 versts; that their direction is probably East and West, and that some of them may unite with that part of the Fox Islands which are most contiguous to the opposite continent." This conjecture was advanced upon a supposition that the Andreanoffsky Isles lay near the coast of the Tschutski; and that some of the Fox Islands were situated in latitude 61, as they are laid down upon the general map of Russia. But according to subsequent information, the Andreanoffsky Isles lie between the Aleütian and the Fox Islands, and complete the connection between Kamtchatka and America[150]. Their chain is supposed to begin in about latitude 53, near the most Easterly of the Aleütian Isles, and to extend in a scattered series towards the Fox Islands. The most North Easterly of these islands are said to be so near the most Southerly of the Fox Islands, that they seem occasionally to have been taken for them. An instance of this occurs in p. 61 and 62 of this work; where Atchu and Amlach are reckoned among the Fox Islands. It is however more probable, that they are part of the group called by the Aleütian chief Negho[151], and known to the Russians under the name of Andreanoffsky Islands, because they were supposed to have been first discovered by Andrean Tolstyk, whose voyage is related in the seventh chapter of the First Part. [Footnote 148: See N^o IX. of this Appendix.] [Footnote 149: Isles Anadyr ou Andrien. Supp. vol. V. p. 591.] [Footnote 150: P. 58. Some of the remoter islands are said to be E. S. E. of the Aleütian Isles; these must be either part of the Andreanoffsky Isles, or the most Southerly of the Fox Islands.] [Footnote 151: See N^o VIII. of this Appendix.] [Sidenote: Number of the Aleütian Isles.] I take this opportunity of adding, that the anonymous author, in describing the Aleütian Isles, both in the first and last chapter of the account of the Russian discoveries, mentions only three; namely, Attak, Semitshi, Shemiya. But the Aleütian Isles consist of a much larger number; and their chain includes all the islands comprehended by the islander in the two groups of Khao and Sasignan[152]. Many of them are laid down upon the general map of Russia; and some of them are occasionally alluded to in the journals of the Russian voyages[153]. [Footnote 152: See N^o VIII.] [Footnote 153: See p. 30, and particularly p. 46, where some of these islands are mentioned under the names of Ibiya, Kiska, and Olas.] N^o VI. Conjectures concerning the proximity of the _Fox Islands_ to the continent of _America_. The anonymous author, in the course of his account of the Russian discoveries, has advanced many proofs drawn from natural history, from which he supposes the Fox Islands to be at a small distance from the continent of America: hence he grounds his conjecture, that "the time is not far distant when some of the Russian navigators will fall in with that coast." [Sidenote: Proofs of the Vicinity of the Fox Islands to America.] The small willows and alders which, according to Glottoff, were found growing upon Kadyak, do not appear to have been sufficient either in size or quantity to ascertain, with any degree of certainty, the close vicinity of that island to America. River-otters, wolves, bears, and wild boars, which were observed upon the same island, will perhaps be thought to afford a stronger presumption in favour of a neighbouring continent; martens were also caught there, an animal which is not known in the Eastern ports of Siberia, nor found upon any of the other islands. All the above mentioned animals, martens alone excepted, were seen upon Alaksu, which is situated more to the North East than Kadyak, and also rein-deers and wild dogs. To these proofs drawn from natural history, we must add the reports of a mountainous country covered with forests, and of a great promontory called Atachtak, lying still more to the N. E. which were prevalent among the inhabitants of Alaksu and Kadyak. Although these circumstances have been already mentioned[154], yet I have thought proper to recapitulate them here, in order to lay before the reader in one point of view the several proofs advanced by the anonymous author, which seem to shew, that the Fox Islands are situated near America. Many of them afford, beyond a doubt, evident signs of a less open sea; and give certain marks of a nearer approach towards the opposite continent. But how far that distance may be supposed, must be left to the judgment of the reader; and remains to be ascertained by subsequent navigators. All that we know for certain, is, that as far as any Russian vessels have hitherto sailed, a chain of islands has been discovered lying E. or N. E. by E. from Kamtchatka, and stretching towards America. Part of this chain has only been touched at; the rest is unknown; and all beyond is uncertainty and conjecture. [Footnote 154: See p. 68 and 69-116-118-170.] N° VII. _Of the Tschutski--Reports of the vicinity of_ America _to their coast, first propagated by them, seem to be confirmed by late accounts from those parts._ [Sidenote: The Tschutski.] The Tschutski, it is well known, inhabit the North Eastern part of Siberia; their country is a small tract of land, bounded on the North by the Frozen Sea, on the East by the Eastern Ocean; on the South it borders upon river Anadyr, and on that of Kovyma to the West. The N. E. cape of this country is called Tschukotskoi-Noss, or the promontory of the Tschutski. Its inhabitants are the only people of Siberia who have not yet been subdued by the Russians. The anonymous author agrees with Mr. Muller in supposing, that America advances to within a small distance of the coast of the Tschutski; which he says "is confirmed by the latest accounts procured from these parts." The first intelligence concerning the supposed vicinity between Asia and America was derived from the reports of the Tschutski in their intercourse with the Russians. Vague and uncertain accounts, drawn from a barbarous people, cannot deserve implicit credit; but as they have been uniformly and invariably propagated by the inhabitants of those regions from the middle of the last century to the present time, they must merit at least the attention of every curious enquirer. [Sidenote: The Reports concerning the Proximity of America to their Coast.] These reports were first related in Muller's account of the Russian discoveries, and have been lately thought worthy of notice by Dr. Robertson[155], in his history of America. Their probability seems still further increased by the following circumstances. One Plenisner, a native of Courland, was appointed commander of Ochotsk, in the year 1760, with an express order from the court to proceed as far as [156] Anadirsk, and to procure all possible intelligence concerning the North Eastern part of Siberia, and the opposite continent. In consequence of this order Plenisner repaired to Anadirsk, and proceeded likewise to Kovimskoi Ostrog: the former of these Russian settlements is situated near the Southern; the latter near the Western limits of the Tschutski. Not content however with collecting all the information in his power from the neighbouring Koriacs, who have frequent intercourse with the Tschutski; he also sent one Daurkin into their country. This person was a native Tschutski, who had been taken prisoner, and bred up by the Russians: he continued two years with his countrymen, and made several expeditions with them to the neighbouring islands, which lie off the Eastern coast of Siberia. [Footnote 155: Hist. of America, vol. I. p. 274-277.] [Footnote 156: Anadirsk has been lately destroyed by the Russians themselves.] The sum of the intelligence brought back by this Daurkin was as follows: that Tschukotskoi-Noss is a very narrow peninsula; that the Tschutski carry on a trade of barter with the inhabitants of America; that they employ six days in passing the strait which separates the two continents: they direct their course from island to island, and the distance from the one to the other is so small, that they are able to pass every night ashore. More to the North he describes the two continents as approaching still nearer to each other, with only two islands lying between them. This intelligence remarkably coincided with the accounts collected by Plenisner himself among the Koriacs. Plenisner returned to Petersburg in 1776, and brought with him several [157]maps and charts of the North Eastern parts of Siberia, which were afterwards made use of in the compilation of the general map of Russia, published by the academy in 1776[158]. By these means the country of the Tschutski has been laid down with a greater degree of accuracy than heretofore. These are probably the late accounts from those parts which the anonymous author alludes to. [Footnote 157: The most important of these maps comprehends the country of the Tschutski, together with the nations which border immediately upon them. This map was chiefly taken during a second expedition made by major Pauloffsky against the Tschutski; and his march into that country is traced upon it. The first expedition of that Russian officer, in which he penetrated as far as Tschukotskoi-Noss, is related by Mr. Muller, S. R. G. III. p. 134--138. We have no account of this second expedition, during which he had several skirmishes with the Tschutski, and came off victorious; but upon his return was surprised and killed by them. This expedition was made about the year 1750.] [Footnote 158: This detail I procured during my continuance at Petersburg from several persons of credit, who had frequently conversed with Plenisner since his return to the capital, where he died in the latter end of the year 1778.] N^o VIII. List of the new-discovered Islands, procured from an _Aleütian_ chief--Catalogue of islands called by different names in the Account of the _Russian_ Discoveries. [Sidenote: Mr. Muller divides the new-discovered Islands into four Groups.] The subsequent list of the new-discovered islands was procured from an Aleütian chief brought to Petersburg in 1771, and examined at the desire of the Empress by Mr. Muller, who divides them into four principal groups. He regulates this division partly by a similarity of the language spoken by the inhabitants, and partly by vicinity of situation. [Sidenote: First Group, called Sasignan.] The first group[159], called by the islander Sasignan, comprehends, 1. Beering's Island. 2. Copper Island. 3. Otma. 4. Samya, or Shemiya. 5. Anakta. [Footnote 159: These two first groups probably belong to the Aleütian Isles.] [Sidenote: Khao, the second Group.] The second group is called Khao, and comprises eight islands: 1. Immak. 2. Kiska. 3. Tchetchina. 4. Ava. 5. Kavia. 6. Tschagulak. 7. Ulagama. 8. Amtschidga. [Sidenote: Negho, the third Group.] The third general name is Negho, and comprehends the islands known by the Russians under the name of Andreanoffskye Ostrova: Sixteen were mentioned by the islander, under the following names: 1. Amatkinak. 2. Ulak. 3. Unalga. 4. Navotsha. 5. Uliga. 6. Anagin. 7. Kagulak. 8. Illask, or Illak. 9. Takavanga, upon which is a volcano. 10. Kanaga, which has also a volcano. 11. Leg. 12. Shetshuna. 13. Tagaloon: near the coasts of the three last mentioned islands several small rocky isles are situated. 14. An island without a name, called by the Russians Goreloi[160]. 15. Atchu. 16. Amla. [Footnote 160: Goreloi is supposed by the Russian navigators to be the same island as Atchu, and is reckoned by them among the Fox Islands. See part I. p. 61. and N^o V. of this appendix.] [Sidenote: Kavalang, the fourth Group.] The fourth group is denominated Kavalang; and comprehends sixteen islands: these are called by the Russians Lyssie Ostrova, or the Fox Islands. 1. Amuchta. 2. Tschigama. 3. Tschegula. 4. Unistra. 5. Ulaga. 6. Tana-gulana. 7. Kagamin. 8. Kigalga. 9. Schelmaga. 10. Umnak. 11. Aghun-Alashka. 12. Unimga. At a small distance from Unimga, towards the North, stretches a promontory called by the islanders the Land of Black Foxes, with a small river called Alashka, which empties itself opposite to the last-mentioned island into a gulf proper for a haven. The extent of this land is not known. To the South East of this promontory lie four little islands. 13. Uligan. 14. Antun-dussume. 15. Semidit. 16. Senagak. [Sidenote: Islands called by different Names in the Russian Journals.] Many of these names are neither found in the journals or charts; while others are wanting in this list which are mentioned in both journals and charts. Nor is this to be wondered at; for the names of the islands have been certainly altered and corrupted by the Russian navigators. Sometimes the same name has been applied to different islands by the different journalists; at other times the same island has been called by different names. Several instances of these changes seem to occur in the account of the Russian discoveries: namely, Att, Attak, and Ataku. Shemiya and Sabiya. Atchu, Atchak, Atach, Goreloi or Burned Island. Amlach, Amlak, Amleg. Ayagh, Kayachu. Alaksu, Alagshak, Alachshak. Aghunalashka, Unalashka. N^o IX. Voyage of Lieutenant _Synd_ to the North East of _Siberia_--He discovers a cluster of islands, and a promontory, which he supposes to belong to the continent of _America_, lying near the coast of the _Tschutski_. In 1764 lieutenant Synd sailed from Ochotsk, upon a voyage of discovery towards the continent of America. He was ordered to take a different course from that held by the late Russian vessels, which lay due East from the coast of Kamtchatka. As he steered therefore his course more to the North East than any of the preceding navigators, and as it appears from all the voyages related in the first part of this work[161], that the vicinity of America is to be sought for in that quarter alone, any accurate account of this expedition would not fail of being highly interesting. It is therefore a great mortification to me, that, while I raise the reader's curiosity, I am not able fully to satisfy it. The following intelligence concerning this voyage is all which I was able to procure. It is accompanied with an authentic chart. [Footnote 161: See p. 27.] [Illustration: CHART of SYND's _VOYAGE toward Tschukotskoi Noss_.] In 1764 Synd put to sea from the port of Ochotsk, but did not pass (we know not by what accident) the southern Cape of Kamtchatka and Shushu, the first Kuril Isle, before 1766. He then steered his course North at no great distance from the coast of the Peninsula, but made very little progress that year, for he wintered South of the river Uka. The following year he sailed from Ukinski Point due East and North East, until he fell in with a cluster of islands[162] stretching between 61 and 62 degrees of latitude, and 195° and 202° longitude. These islands lie South East and East of the coast of the Tschutski; and several of them are situated very near the shore. Besides these small islands, he discovered also a mountainous coast lying within one degree of the coast of the Tschutski, between 64 and 66 North latitude; its most Western extremity was situated in longitude 38° 15´ from Ochotsk, or 199° 1´ from Fero. This island is laid down in his chart as part of the continent of America; but we cannot determine upon what proofs he grounds this representation, until a more circumstantial account of his voyage is communicated to the public. Synd seems to have made but a short stay ashore. Instead of endeavouring to survey its coasts, or of steering more to the East, he almost instantly shaped his course due West towards the course of the Tschutski, then turned directly South and South West, until he came opposite to Chatyrskoi Noss. From that point he continued to coast the peninsula of Kamtchatka, doubled the cape, and reached Ochotsk in 1768. [Footnote 162: These are certainly some of the islands which the Tschutski resort to in their way to what they call the continent of America.] N^o X. Specimen of the Aleütian language. Sun Agaiya Moon Tughilag Wind Katshik Water Tana Fire Kighenag Earth hut Oollae Chief Toigon Man Taiyaga Wood Yaga Shield Kuyak Sea otter Tscholota Name of the nation. Kanagist. One Tagatak Two Alag Three Kankoos Four Setschi Five Tshaw Six Atoo Seven Ooloo Eight Kapoé Nine Shiset Ten. Asok. It is very remarkable, that none of these words bear the least resemblance to those of the same signification, which are found in the different dialects spoken by the Koriaks, Kamtchadals, and the inhabitants of the Kuril Isles. N^o XI. Attempts of the _Russians_ to discover a North East passage--Voyages from _Archangel_ towards the _Lena_--From the _Lena_ towards _Kamtchatka_--Extract from _Muller's_ account of _Deschneff's_ voyage round _Tschukotskoi Noss_--Narrative of a voyage made by _Shalauroff_ from the _Lena_ to _Shelatskoi Noss_. The only communication hitherto known between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, or between Europe and the East Indies, is made either by sailing round the Cape of Good Hope, or by doubling Cape Horn. But as both these navigations are very long and dangerous, the great object of several late European voyages has been turned towards the discovery of a North East or a North West passage. As this work is entirely confined to the Russian navigations, any disquisition concerning the North West passage is totally foreign to the purpose; and for the same reason in what relates to the North East, these researches extend only to the attempts of the Russians for the discovery of that passage. The advocates for the North East passage have divided that navigation into three principal parts; and by endeavouring to shew that these three parts have been passed at different times, they conclude from thence, that the whole when taken collectively is practicable. These three parts are, 1. from Archangel to the Lena; 2. from the Lena to Kamtchatka; 3. from Kamtchatka to Japan. With respect to the latter, the connection between the seas of Kamtchatka and Japan first appeared from some Japanese vessels, which were wrecked upon the coast of Kamtchatka in the beginning of this century; and this communication has been unquestionably proved from several voyages made by the Russians from Kamtchatka to Japan[163]. [Footnote 163: S. R. G. III. p. 78, and p. 166, &c.] No one ever asserted that the first part from Archangel to the Lena was ever performed in one voyage; but several persons having advanced that this navigation has been made by the Russians at different times, it becomes necessary to examine the accounts of the Russian voyages in those seas. [Sidenote: Voyages from Archangel to the Yenisèi.] In 1734 lieutenant Morovieff sailed from Archangel toward the river Oby; and got no farther the first year than the mouth of the Petchora. The next summer he passed through the straits ef Weygatz into the sea of Kara; and coasted along the Eastern side of that sea, as high as latitude 72° 30´, but did not double the promontory which separates the sea of Kara from the Bay of Oby. In 1738, the lieutenants Malgyin and Skurakoff doubled that promontory with great difficulty, and entered the bay of Oby. During these expeditions the navigators met with great dangers and impediments from the ice. Several unsuccessful attempts were made to pass from the bay of Oby to the Yenisèi, which was at last effected, in 1738, by two vessels commanded by lieutenants Offzin and Koskeleff. [Sidenote: Unsuccessful Attempt to pass from the Yenisèi to the Lena.] The same year the pilot Feodor Menin sailed from the Yenisèi rowards the Lena: he steered North as high as lat. 73°. 15´. and when he came to the mouth of the Piasida he was stopped by the ice; and finding it impossible to force a passage, he returned to the Yenisèi[164]. [Footnote 164: P. 145 to 149.] [Sidenote: Voyage of Prontshistsheff from the Lena towards the Yenisèi.] July, 1735, lieutenant Prontshistsheff sailed from Yakutsk up the Lena to its mouth, in order to pass from thence by sea to the Yenisèi. The Western mouths of the Lena were so choaked up with ice, that he was obliged to pass through the most Easterly one; and was prevented by contrary winds from getting out until the 13th of August. Having steered North West along the islands which lie scattered before the mouths of the Lena, he found himself in lat. 70° 4´. He saw much ice to the North and North East; and observed ice-mountains from twenty-four to sixty feet in height. He steered betwixt the ice, which in no place left a free channel of greater breadth than an hundred or two hundred yards. The vessel being much damaged, on the 1st of September he ran up the mouth of the Olenek, which, according to his estimation, lies in 72° 30´, near which place he passed the winter[165]. [Footnote 165: Gmelin Reise, II. 425 to 427.] He got out of the Olenek the beginning of August in the following year; and arrived on the third at the mouth of the Anabara, which he found to lie in lat. 73° 1´. There he continued until the 10th, while some of the crew went up the country in search of some mines. On the 10th he proceeded on his voyage: before he reached the mouth of the Chatanga he was so entirely surrounded and hemmed in with ice, that it was not without great difficulty and danger he was able to get loose. He then observed a large field of ice stretching into the sea, on which account he was obliged to continue near the shore, and to run up the Chatanga. The mouth of this river was in lat 74° 9´. From thence he bent his course mostly Northward along the shore, until he reached the mouth of the Taimura on the 18th. He then proceeded further, and followed the coast towards the Piasida. Near the shore were several small islands, between which and the land the ice was immovably fixed. He then directed his course toward the sea, in order to pass round the chain of islands. At first he found the sea more free to the North of the islands, while he observed much ice lying between them. He came at length to the last island, situated in lat. 77° 25´. Between this island and the shore, as well as on the other side of the island which lay most to the North, the ice was firm and immovable. [Sidenote: Prevented by a Chain of Islands and the Ice from getting to the Yenisèi] He attempted however to steer still more to the North; and having advanced about six miles, he was prevented by a thick fog from proceeding: this fog being dispersed, he saw on each side, and before him, nothing but ice; that towards the sea was not fixed; but the accumulated masses were all so close, that the smallest vessel could not have worked its way through. Still attempting however to pass to the North; he was forced by the ice N. E. Apprehensive of being hemmed in, he returned to the Taimura; and from thence got, with much difficulty and danger, to the Olenek, on the 29th of August. This narrative of Prontshistsheff's expedition is extracted from the account of professor[166] Gmelin: according to Mr. Muller[167], who has given a cursory relation of the same voyage, Prontshistsheff did not quite reach the mouth of the Taimura; for he there found the chain of islands stretching from the continent far into the sea. The channels between the islands were so choaked up with ice, that it was impossible to force a passage: after steering as high as lat. 77° 25´, he found such a plain of fixed ice before him, that he had no prospect of getting any farther. Accordingly he returned to the Olenek. [Footnote 166: Gmelin Reise, vol. II. p. 427 to p. 434.] [Footnote 167: S. R. G. III. p. 149, 150.] Another attempt was made to pass from the Lena to the Yenisèi in 1739, by Chariton Laptieff, with equal bad success; and he relates, that between the rivers Piasida and Taimura, a promontory stretches into the sea which he could not double, the sea being entirely frozen up before he could pass round[168]. [Footnote 168: Gmelin Reise, p. 440. Mr. Muller says only, that Laptieff met with the same obstacles which forced Prontshistsheff to return. S. R. G. III. p. 150.] [Sidenote: Cape between the Rivers Chatanga and Piasida never yet doubled.] From all these circumstances we must collect, that the whole space between Archangel and the Lena has never yet been navigated; for in going East from the Yenisèi the Russians could get no farther than the mouth of the Piasida; and, in coming West from the Lena, they were stopped, according to Gmelin, North of the Piasida; and, according to Muller, East of the Taimura. The Russians, who sail almost annually from Archangel, and other towns, to Nova Zemla, for the purpose of catching sea-horses, seals, and white bears, make to the Western Coast; and no Russian vessel has ever passed round its North Eastern extremity[169]. [Footnote 169: Although this work is confined to the Russian Discoveries, yet as the N. E. passage is a subject of such interesting curiosity, it might seem an omission in not mentioning, that several English and Dutch vessels have passed through the Straits of Weygatz into the sea of Kara; they all met with great obstructions from the ice, and had much difficulty in getting through. See Histoire Gen. Des Voyages, tome XV. passim. In 1696 Heemskirk and Barentz, after having sailed along the Western coast of Nova Zemla, doubled the North Eastern cape lying in latitude 77° 20, and got no lower along the Eastern coast than 76°, where they wintered. See an account of this remarkable voyage in Girard Le Ver's Vraye Description De Trois Voyages De Mer, p. 13 to 45; and Hist. Gen. des Voy. tom. XV. p. 111 to 139. No vessel of any nation has ever passed round that Cape, which extends to the North of the Piasida, and is laid down in the Russian charts in about 78° latitude. We have already seen that no Russian vessel has ever got from the Piasida to the Chatanga, or from the Chatanga to the Piasida; and yet some authors have positively asserted, that this promontory has been sailed round. In order therefore to elude the Russian accounts, which clearly assert the contrary, it is pretended, that Gmelin and Muller have purposely concealed some parts of the Russian journals, and have imposed upon the world by a misrepresentation of facts. But without entering into any dispute on this head, I can venture to affirm, that no sufficient proof has been as yet advanced in support of this assertion; and therefore until some positive information shall be produced, we cannot deny plain facts, or give the preference to hearsay evidence over circumstantial and well attested accounts. Mr. Engel has a remarkable passage in his Essai sur une route par la Nord Est, which it may be proper to consider in this place, because he asserts in the most positive manner, that two Dutch vessels formerly passed three hundred leagues to the North East of Nova Zemla; from thence he infers that they must have doubled the above-mentioned Cape, which extends to the North of the Piasida, and have got at least as far East as the mouth of the Olenek. His words are L'Illustre Societé Royale, sous l'an 1675, rapporte ce voyage et dit, que peu d'années auparavant une Societé de merchands d'Amsterdam avoit fait une tentative pour chercher le passage du Nord Est, et équippa deux vaisseaux les quels etant passé au septante neuf ou huitantieme degrè de latitude, avoient poussè selon Wood, jusqu' à trois cent lieues à l'Est de la Nouvelle Zemble, &c. &c. Upon this fact he founds his proof that the navigation from Archangel to the Lena has been performed. Par consequent cette partie de la route a èté faite. He rests the truth of this account on the authority of the Philosophical Transactions, and of Captain Wood, who sailed upon a voyage for the discovery of the North East passage in 1676. The latter, in the relation of his voyage, enumerates several arguments which induced him to believe the practicability of the North East passage.--"The seventh argument," he says, "was another narration, printed in the Transactions, of two ships of late that had attempted the passage, sailed 300 leagues to the Eastward of Nova Zemla, and had after prosecuted the voyage, had there not a difference arose betwixt the undertakers and the East-India company." We here find that Captain Wood refers to the Philosophical Transactions for his authority. The narration printed in the Transactions, and which is alluded to by both Captain Wood and Mr. Engel, is to be found in Vol. IX. of the Philosophical Transactions, p. 209, for December, 1674. It consists of a very curious "Narrative of some observations made upon several voyages, undertaken to find a way for sailing about the North to the East-Indies; together with instructions given by the Dutch East-India Company for the discovery of the famous land of Jesso near Japan." These instructions were, in 1643, given to Martin Geritses Vries, captain of the ship Castricum, "who set out to discover the unknown Eastern coast of Tartary, the kingdom of Catay, and the West coast of America, together with the isles situate to the East of Japan, cried up for their riches of gold and silver." These instructions contain no relation of two Dutch vessels, who passed 300 leagues East of Nova Zemla. Mention is made of two Dutch vessels, "who were sent out in the year 1639, under the command of Captain Kwast, to discover the East coast of the Great Tartary, especially the famous gold and silver islands; though, by reason of several unfortunate accidents, they both returned re infectà." Short mention is afterwards made of Captain Kwast's journal, together with the writings of the merchants who were with him, as fallows: "That in the South Sea, at the 37-1/2 degrees Northern latitude, and about 400 Spanish, or 343 Dutch miles, that is, 28 degrees longitude East of Japan, there lay a very great and high island, inhabited by a white, handsome, kind and civilized people, exceedingly opulent in gold and silver, &c. &c." From these extracts it appears, that, in the short account of the journals of the two Dutch vessels, no longitude is mentioned to the East of Nova Zemla; but the discoveries of Kwast were made in the South sea, to which place he, as well as Captain Vries afterwards, must have sailed round the Cape of Good Hope. The author of the narrative concludes, indeed, that the N. E. passage is practicable, in the following words: "to promote this passage out of the East-Indies to the North into Europe, it were necessary to sail from the East-Indies to the Westward of Japan, all along Corea, to see how the sea-coasts trend to the North of the said Corea, and with what conveniency ships might sail as far as Nova Zemla, and to the North of the same. Where our author saith, that undoubtedly it would be found, that having passed the North corner of Nova Zemla, or, through Weygatz, the North end of Yelmer land, one might go on South-Eastward, and make a successful voyage." But mere conjectures cannot be admitted as evidence. As we can find no other information relative to the fact mentioned by Captain Wood and Mr. Engel, (namely, that two Dutch vessels have passed 300 leagues to the East of Nova Zemla) that we have no reason to credit mere assertions without proof: we may therefore advance as a fact, that hitherto we have no authentic account, that any vessel has ever passed the cape to the East of Nova Zemla, which lies North of the river Piasida. See Relation of Wood's Voyage, &c. in the Account of several late Voyages and Discoveries to the South and North, &c. London, 1694, p. 148. See also Engel, Mem. et Obs. Geog. p. 231 to 234. I should not have swelled my book with this extract, if the English translation of Mr. Muller's work was not extremely erroneous in some material passages. S. R. G. III. p. 8-20.] [Sidenote: Attempts of the Russians to pass from the Lena to Kamtchatka.] The navigation from the Lena to Kamtchatka now remains to be considered. If we may believe some authors, this navigation has been open for above a century and an half; and several vessels have at different times passed round the North Eastern extremity of Asia. But if we consult the Russian accounts, we shall find, that frequent expeditions have been unquestionably made from the Lena to the Kovyma; but that the voyage from the Kovyma round Tschukotskoi Noss, into the Eastern ocean, has been performed but once. According to Mr. Muller, this formidable cape was doubled in the year 1648. The material incidents of this remarkable voyage are as follow. [Sidenote: Narrative of Deshneff's voyage round Tschukotskoi-Noss.] "In 1648 seven kotches or vessels sailed from the mouth or the river Kovyma[170], in order to penetrate into the Eastern Ocean. Of these, four were never more heard of: the remaining three were commanded by Simon Deshneff, Gerasim Ankudinoff, two chiefs of the Cossacs, and Fedot Alexeeff, the head of the Promyshlenics. Deshneff and Ankudinoff quarrelled before their departure: this dispute was owing to the jealousy of Deshneff, who was unwilling that Ankudinoff should share with him the honour, as well as the profits, which might result from the expected discoveries. Each vessel was probably manned with about thirty persons; Ankudinoff's, we certainly know, carried that number. Deshneff promised before-hand a tribute of seven fables, to be exacted from the inhabitants on the banks of Anadyr; so sanguine were his hopes of reaching that river. This indeed he finally effected; but not so soon, nor with so little difficulty, as he had presumed. [Footnote 170: Mr. Muller calls it Kolyma.] On the 20th of June, 1648, the three vessels sailed upon this remarkable expedition from the river Kovyma. Considering the little knowledge we have of the extreme regions of Asia, it is much to be regretted, that all the incidents of this voyage are not circumstantially related. Deshneff[171], in an account of his expedition sent to Yakutsk, seems only as it were accidentally to mention his adventures by sea: he takes no notice of any occurrence until he reached the great promontory of the Tschutski; no obstructions from the ice are mentioned, and probably there were none; for he observes upon another occasion, that the sea is not every year so free from ice as it was at this time. He commences his narrative with a description of the great promontory: "It is," says he, "very different from that which is situated West of the Kovyma, near the river Tschukotskia. It lies between North and North East, and bends, in a circular direction, towards the Anadyr. It is distinguished on the Russian (namely, the Western) side, by a rivulet which falls into the sea, close to which the Tschutski have raised a pile, like a tower, with the bones of whales. Opposite the promontory, (it is not said on which side), are two islands, on which he observed people of the nation of the Tschutski, who had pieces of the sea-horse tooth thrust into holes made in their lips. With a good wind it is possible to sail from this promontory to the Anadyr in three days; and the journey by land may be performed in the same space of time, because the Anadyr falls into a bay." Ankudinoff's kotche was wrecked on this promontory, and the crew was distributed on board the two remaining vessels. On the 20th of September Deshneff and Fedot Alexeef went on shore, and had a skirmish with the Tschutski, in which Alexeef was wounded. The two vessels soon afterwards lost sight of each other, and never again rejoined. Deshneff was driven about by tempestuous winds until October, when he was shipwrecked (as it appears from circumstances), considerably to the South of the Anadyr, not far from the river Olutora. What became of Fedot Alexeff and his crew will be mentioned hereafter. Deshneff and his companions, who amounted to twenty-five persons, now sought for the Anadyr; but being entirely unacquainted with the country, ten weeks elapsed before they reached its banks at a small distance from its mouth: here he found neither wood nor inhabitants, &c. [Footnote 171: In order thoroughly to understand this narrative, it is necessary to inform the reader, that the voyage made by Deshneff was entirely forgotten, until the year 1736, when Mr. Muller found, in the archives of Yakutsk, the original accounts of the Russian navigations in the Frozen Ocean. These papers were extracted, under his inspection, at Yakutsk, and sent to Petersburg; where they are now preserved in the library belonging to the Imperial Academy of Sciences: they consist of several folio volumes. The circumstances relating to Deshneff are contained in the second volume. Soliverstoff and Stadukin, having laid claim to the discovery of the country on the mouth of the Anadyr, had asserted, in consequence of this claim, that they had arrived there by sea, after having doubled Tschukotskoi Noss. Deshneff, in answer, sent several memorials, petitions, and complaints, against Stadukin and Soliverstoff, to the commander of Yakutsk, in which he sets forth, that he had the sole right to that discovery, and refutes the arguments advanced by the others. From these memorials Mr. Muller has extracted his account of Deshneff's voyage. When I was at Petersburg I had an opportunity of seeing these papers: and as they are written in the Russian language, I prevailed upon my ingenious friend Mr. Pallas to inspect the part which relates to Deshneff. Accordingly Mr. Pallas, with his usual readiness to oblige, not only compared the memorials with Mr. Muller's account, but even took the trouble to make some extracts in the most material passages: these extracts are here subjoined; because they will not only serve to confirm the exactness of Mr. Muller; but also because they tend to throw some light on several obscure passages. In one of Deshneff's memorials he says, "To go from the river Kovyma to the Anadyr, a great promontory must be doubled, which stretches very far into the sea: it is not that promontory which lies next to the river Tschukotskia. Stadukin never arrived at this great promontory: near it are two islands, whose inhabitants make holes in their under-lips, and insert therein pieces of the sea-horse tush, worked into the form of teeth. This promontory stretches between North and North East: It is known on the Russian side by the little river Stanovie, which flows into the sea, near the spot where the Tschutski have erected a heap of whale-bones like a tower. The coast from the promontory turns round towards the Anadyr, and it is possible to sail with a good wind from the point to that river in three days and nights, and no more: and it will take up no more time to go by land to the same river, because it discharges itself into a bay." In another memorial Deshneff says, "that he was ordered to go by sea from the Indigirka to the Kovyma; and from thence with his crew to the Anadyr, which was then newly discovered. That the first time he sailed from the Kovyma, he was forced by the ice to return to that river; but that next year he again sailed from thence by sea, and after great danger, misfortunes, and with the loss of part of his shipping, arrived at last at the mouth of the Anadyr. Stadukin having in vain attempted to go by sea, afterwards ventured to pass over the chain of mountains then unknown; and reached by that means the Anadyr. Soliverstoff and his party, who quarrelled with Deshneff, went to the same place from the Kovyma by land; and the tribute was afterwards sent to the last mentioned river across the mountains, which were very dangerous to pass amidst the tribes of Koriacs and Yukagirs, who had been lately reduced by the Russians." In another memorial Deshneff complains bitterly of Soliverstoff; and asserts, "that one Severka Martemyanoff, who had been gained over by Soliverstoff, was sent to Yakutsk, with an account that he (Soliverstoff) had discovered the coasts to the North of the Anadyr, where large numbers of sea-horses are found." Deshneff hereupon says, that Soliverstoff and Stadukin never reached the rocky promontory, which is inhabited by numerous bodies of the Tichutski; over against which are islands whose inhabitants wear artificial teeth thrust through their under lips. This is not the first promontory from the river Kovyma, called Svatoi Noss; but another far more considerable, and very-well known to him (Deshneff), because the vessel of Ankunidoff was wrecked there; and because he had there taken prisoners some of the people, who were rowing in their boats; and seen the islanders with teeth in their lips. He also well knew, that it was still far from that promontory to the river Anadyr.] The following year he went further up the river, and built Anadirskoi Ostrog: here he was joined by some Russians on the 25th of April, 1650, who came by land from the river Kovyma. In 1652, Deshneff having constructed a vessel, sailed down the Anadyr as far as its mouth, and observed on the North side a sand bank, which stretched a considerable way into the sea. A sand bank of this kind is called, in Siberia, Korga. Great numbers of sea-horses were found to resort to the mouth of the Anadyr. Deshneff collected several of their teeth, and thought himself amply compensated by this acquisition for the trouble of his expedition. In the following year, Deshneff ordered wood to be felled for the purpose of constructing a vessel, in which he proposed sending the tribute which he had collected by sea to Yakutsk[172]. But this design was laid aside from the want of other materials. It was also reported, that the sea about Tschukotskoi Noss was not every year free from ice. [Footnote 172: That is, by sea, from the mouth of the Anadyr, round Tschukotskoi Noss to the river Lena, and then up that river to Yakutsk.] Another expedition was made in 1654 to the Korga, for the purpose of collecting sea-horse teeth. A Cossac, named Yusko Soliverstoff, was one of the party, the same who had not long before accompanied the Cossac Michael Stadukin, upon a voyage of discovery in the Frozen Sea. This person was sent from Yakutsk to collect sea-horse teeth, for the benefit of the crown. In his instructions mention is made of the river Yentshendon, which falls into the bay of Penshinsk, and of the Anadyr; and he was ordered to exact a tribute from the inhabitants dwelling near these rivers; for the adventures of Deshneff were not as yet known at Yakutsk. This was the occasion of new discontents. Soliverstoff claimed to himself the discovery of the Korga, as if he had sailed to that place in his voyage with Stadukin in 1649. Deshneff, however, proved that Soliverstoff had not even reached Tschukotskoi Noss, which he describes as nothing but bare rock, and it was but too well known to him, because the vessel of Ankudinoff was ship-wrecked there. "Tschukotskoi Noss," adds Deshneff, "is not the first promontory which presents itself under the name of Svatoi Noss[173]. It is known by the two islands situated opposite to it, whose inhabitants (as is before-mentioned) place pieces of the sea-horse tush into holes made in their lips. Deshneff alone had seen these people, which neither Stadukin nor Soliverstoff had pretended to have done: and the Korga, or sand-bank, at the mouth of the river Anadyr, was at some distance from these islands." [Footnote 173: We may collect from Deshneff's reasoning, that Soliverstoff, in endeavouring to prove that he had sailed round the Eastern extremity of Asia, had mistaken a promontory called Svatoi Noss for Tschukotskoi Noss: for otherwise, why should Deshneff, in his refutation of Soliverstoff, begin by asserting, that Svatoi Noss was not Tschukotskoi Noss? The only cape laid down in the Russian maps, under the name of Svatoi Noss, is situated 25 degrees to the West of the Kovyma: but we cannot possibly suppose this to be the promontory here alluded to; because, in sailing from the Kovyma towards the Anadyr, "the first promontory which presents itself" must necessarily be East of the Kovyma. Svatoi Noss, in the Russian language, signifies Sacred Promontory; and the Russians occasionally apply it to any cape which it is difficult to double. It therefore most probably here relates to the first cape, which Soliverstoff reached after he had sailed from Kovyma.] While Deschneff was surveying the sea-coast, he saw in an habitation belonging to some Koriacs a woman of Yakutsk, who, as he recollected, belonged to Fedot Alexieff. Upon his enquiry concerning the fate of her master, she replied, "that Fedot and Gerasim (Ankudinoff) had died of the scurvy; that part of the crew had been slain; that a few had escaped in small vessels, and have never since been heard off." Traces of the latter were afterwards found in the peninsula of Kamtchatka; to which place they probably arrived with a favourite wind, by following the coast, and running up the Kamtchatka river. When Volodimir Atlassoff, in 1697, first entered upon the reduction of Kamtchatka, he found that the inhabitants had already some knowledge of the Russians. A common tradition still prevails amongst them, that long before the expedition of Atlassoff, one[174] Fedotoff (who was probably the son of Fedot Alexeeff) and his companions had resided amongst them, and had intermarried with the natives. They still shew the spot where the Russian habitations stood; namely, at the mouth of the small river Nikul which falls into the Kamtchatka river, and is called by the Russians Fedotika. Upon Atlassoff's arrival none of the first Russians remained. They are said to have been held in great veneration, and almost deified by the inhabitants, who at first imagined that no human power could hurt them, until they quarrelled amongst themselves, and the blood was seen to flow from the wounds which they gave each other: and upon a separation taking place between the Russians, part of them had been killed by the Koriacs, as they were going to the sea of Penshinsk, and the remainder by the Kamtchadals. The river Fedotika falls into the Southern side of the Kamtchatka river about an hundred and eighty versts below Upper Kamtchatkoi Ostrog. At the time of the first expedition to Kamtchatka, in 1697, the remains of two villages still subsisted, which had probably been inhabited by Fedotoff and his companions: and no one knew which way they came into the peninsula, until it was discovered from the archives of Yakutsk in 1636. [Footnote 174: Fedotoff, in the Russian language, signifies the son of Fedot.] [175]No other navigator, subsequent to Deshneff, has ever pretended to have passed the North Eastern extremity of Asia, notwithstanding all the attempts which have been made to accomplish this passage, as well from[176] Kamtchatka as from the Frozen Ocean. [Footnote 175: Mr. Engel indeed pretends that lieutenant Laptieff, in 1739, doubled Tschukotskoi-Noss, because Gmelin says, that "he passed from the Kovyma to Anadirsk partly by water and partly by land." For Mr. Engel asserts the impossibility of getting from the Kovyma to Anadirsk, partly by land and partly by water, without going from the Kovyma to the mouth of the Anadyr by sea; and from thence to Anadirsk by land. But Mr. Muller (who has given a more particular account of the conclusion of this expedition) informs us, that Laptieff and his crew, after having wintered near the Indigirka, passed from its mouth in small boats to the Kovyma; and as it was dangerous, on account of the Tschutski, to follow the coast any farther, either by land or water, he went through the interior part of the country to Anadirsk, and from thence to the mouth of the Anadyr. Gmelin Reise, vol. II. p. 440. S. R. G. III. p. 157. Mention is also made by Gmelin of a man who passed in a small boat from the Kovyma round Tschukotskoi-Noss into the sea of Kamtchatka: and Mr. Engel has not omitted to bring this passage in support of his system, with this difference, that he refers to the authority of Muller, instead of Gmelin, for the truth of the fact. But as we have no account of this expedition, and as the manner in which it is mentioned by Gmelin implies that he had it merely from tradition, we cannot lay any stress upon such vague and uncertain reports. The passage is as follows: "Es find so gar Spuren vorhanden, dass ein Kerl mit einem Schifflein, das nicht viel groesser als ein Schifferkahn gevesen, von Kolyma bis Tschukotskoi-Noss vorbey, und bis nach Kamtschatka gekommen sey." Gmelin Reise, II. p. 437. Mem. et Obs. Geog. &c. p. 10.] [Footnote 176: Beering, in his voyage from Kamtchatka, in 1628, towards Tschukotskoi-Noss, sailed along the coast of the Tschutski as high as lat. 67° 18´. and observing the coast take a Westerly direction, he too hastily concluded, that he had passed the North Eastern extremity. Apprehensive, if he had attempted to proceed, of being locked in by the ice, he returned to Kamtchatka. If he had followed the shore, he would have found, that what he took for the Northern ocean was nothing more than a deep bay: and that the coast of the Tschutski, which he considered as turning uniformly to the West, took again a Northerly direction. S.R.G. III. p. 117.] [Illustration: _CHART of_ SHALAUROF's _Voyage_.] The following narrative of a late voyage performed by one Shalauroff, from the Lena towards Tschukotskoi-Noss, will shew the great impediments which obstruct a coasting navigation in the Frozen Sea, even at the most favourable season of the year. [Sidenote: Voyage of Shalauroff.] Shalauroff, having constructed a shitik at his own expence, went down the Lena in 1761. He was accompanied by an exiled midshipman, whom he had found at Yakutsk, and to whom we are indebted for the chart of this expedition. Shalauroff got out of the Southern mouth of the Lena in July, but was so much embarrassed by the ice, that he ran the vessel into the mouth of the Yana, where he was detained by the ice until the 29th of August, when he again set sail. Being prevented by the ice from keeping the open sea, he coasted the shore; and, having doubled Svatoi-Noss on the 6th of September, discovered at a small distance, out at sea, to the North, a mountainous land, which is probably some unknown island in the Frozen Sea. He was employed from the 7th to the 15th in getting through the strait between Diomed's island and the coast of Siberia; which he effected, not without great difficulty. From the 16th he had a free sea and a fair S. W. wind, which carried them in 24 hours beyond the mouth of the Indigirka. The favourable breeze continuing, he passed on the 18th the Alasca. Soon afterwards, the vessel approaching too near the shore was entangled amongst vast floating masses of ice, between some islands[177] and the main land. [Sidenote: Winters at the Mouth of the Kovyma.] And now the late season of the year obliged Shalauroff to look out for a wintering place; he accordingly ran the vessel into one of the mouths of the river Kovyma, where she was laid up. The crew immediately constructed an hut, which they secured with a rampart of frozen snow, and a battery of the small guns. The wild rein-deers resorted to this place in large herds, and were shot in great plenty from the enclosure. Before the setting in of winter, various species of salmon and trout came up the river in shoals: these fish afforded the crew a plentiful subsistence, and preserved them from the scurvy[178]. [Footnote 177: These islands are Medviedkie Ostrova, or the Bear Islands; they are also called Kreffstoffskie Ostrova, because they lie opposite the mouth of the small river Krestova. For a long time vague reports were propagated that the continent of America was stretched along the Frozen Ocean, very near the coasts of Siberia; and some persons pretended to have discovered its shore not far from the rivers Kovyma and Krestova. But the falsity of these reports was proved by an expedition made in 1764, by some Russian officers sent by Denys Ivanovitch Tschitcherin, governor of Tobolsk. These officers went in winter, when the sea was frozen, in sledges drawn by dogs, from the mouth of the Krestova. They found nothing but five small rocky islands, since called the Bear Islands, which were quite uninhabited; but some traces were found of former inhabitants, namely, the ruins of huts. They observed also on one of the islands a kind of wooden stage built of drift-wood, which seemed as if it had been intended for defence. As far as they durst venture out over the Frozen Sea, no land could be seen, but high mountains of ice obstructed their passage, and forced them to return. See the map of this expedition upon the chart of Shalauroff's voyage prefixed to this number.] [Footnote 178: Raw-fish are considered in those Northern countries as a preservative against the scurvy.] [Sidenote: Departure from thence in July.] The mouth of the Kovyma was not freed from ice before the 21st of July, 1762, when Shalauroff again put to sea, and steered until the 28th N. E. by N. E. 1/4 E. Here he observed the variation of the compass ashore, and found it to be 11° 15´´ East. The 28th a contrary wind, which was followed by a calm, obliged him to come to an anchor, and kept him stationary until the 10th of August, when a favourable breeze springing up he set sail; he then endeavoured to steer at some distance from shore, holding a more Easterly course, and N. E. by E. But the vessel was impeded by large bodies of floating ice, and a strong current, which seemed to bear Westward at the rate of a verst an hour. These circumstances very much retarded his course. On the 18th, the weather being thick and foggy, he found himself unexpectedly near the coast with a number of ice islands before him, which on the 19th entirely surrounded and hemmed in the vessel. He continued in that situation, and in a continual fog, until the 23d, when he got clear, and endeavoured by steering N. E. to regain the open sea, which was much less clogged with ice than near the shore. He was forced however, by contrary winds, S. E. and E. among large masses of floating ice. This drift of ice being passed, he again stood to the N. E. in order to double Shelatskoi Noss[179]; but before he could reach the islands lying near it, he was so retarded by contrary winds, that he was obliged, on account of the advanced season, to search for a wintering place. [Sidenote: Not being able to double Shelatskoi Noss returns towards the Kovyma.] He accordingly sailed South towards an open bay, which lies on the West side of Shelatskoi Noss, and which no navigator had explored before him. He steered into it on the 25th, and got upon a shoal between a small island, and a point of land which juts from the Eastern coast of this bay. Having got clear with much difficulty, he continued for a short time a S. E. course, then turned S. W. He then landed in order to discover a spot proper for their winter residence; and found two small rivulets, but neither trees nor drift wood. The vessel was towed along the Southerly side of the bay as far as the island Sabadèi. On the 5th of September, he saw some huts of the Tschutski close to the narrow channel between Sabadèi and the main land; but the inhabitants fled on his approach. [Footnote 179: He does not seem to have been deterred from proceeding by any supposed difficulty in passing Shelatskoi Noss, but to have veered about merely on account of the late season of the year. Shelatskoi Noss is so called from the Sshelagen, a tribe of the Tschutski, and has been supposed to be the same as Tschukotskoi Noss. S. R. G. III. p. 52.] Not having met with a proper situation, he stood out to sea, and got round the island Sabadèi on the 8th, when he fastened the vessel to a large body of ice, and was carried along by a current towards W. S. W. at the rate of five versts an hour. On the 10th, he saw far to the N. E. by N. a mountain, and steered the 11th and 12th towards his former wintering place in the river Kovyma. [Sidenote: Winters a second Time at the Kovyma, and returns to the Lena.] Shalauroff proposed to have made the following year another attempt to double Shelatskoi Noss; but want of provision, and the mutiny of the crew, forced him to return to the Lena in 1763. It is worth remarking, that during his whole voyage he found the currents setting in almost uniformly from the East. Two remarkable rocks were observed by Shalauroff near the point where the coast turns to the N. E. towards the channel which separates the island Sabadèi from the continent; these rocks may serve to direct future navigators: one is called Saetshie Kamen, or Hare's Rock, and rises like a crooked horn; the other Baranèi Kamen, or Sheep's Rock; it is in the shape of a pear, narrower at the bottom than at top, and rises twenty-nine yards above high-water mark. [Sidenote: Second Expedition of Shalauroff.] Shalauroff, who concluded from his own experience, that the attempt to double Tschukotskoi Noss, though difficult, was by no means impracticable, was not discouraged by his former want of success from engaging a second time in the same enterprize: he accordingly fitted out the same shitik, and in 1764 departed as before from the river Lena. We have no positive accounts of this second voyage; for neither Shalauroff or any of his crew have ever returned. The following circumstances lead us to conclude, that both he and his crew were killed near the Anadyr by the Tschutski, about the third year after their departure from the Lena. About that time the Koriacs of the Anadyr refused to take from the Russians the provision of flour, which they are accustomed to purchase every year. Enquiry being made by the governor of Anadirsk, he found that they had been amply supplied with that commodity by the Tschutski. The latter had procured it from the plunder of Shalauroff's vessel, the crew of which appeared to have perished near the Anadyr. [Sidenote: No Account of this Expedition, he and his Crew being killed by the Tschutski.] From these facts, which have been since confirmed by repeated intelligence from the Koriacs and Tschutski, it has been asserted, that Shalauroff had doubled the N. E. cape of Asia. But this assertion amounts only to conjecture; for the arrival of the crew at the mouth of the Anadyr affords no decisive proof that they had passed round the Eastern extremity of Asia; for they might have penetrated to that river by land, from the Western side of Tschukotskoi-Noss. In reviewing these several accounts of the Russian voyages in the Frozen Sea, as far as they relate to a North East passage, we may observe, that the cape which stretches to the North of the Piasida has never been doubled; and that the existence of a passage round Tschukotskoi Noss rests upon the single authority of Deshneff. Admitting however a practicable navigation round these two promontories, yet when we consider the difficulties and dangers which the Russians encountered in those parts of the Frozen Sea which they have unquestionably sailed through; how much time they employed in making an inconsiderable progress, and how often their attempts were unsuccessful: when we reflect at the same time, that these voyages can only be performed in the midst of a short summer, and even then only when particular winds drive the ice into the sea, and leave the shores less obstructed; we shall reasonably conclude, that a navigation, pursued along the coasts in the Frozen Ocean, would probably be useless for commercial purposes. A navigation therefore in the Frozen Ocean, calculated to answer any end of general utility, must (if possible) be made in an higher latitude, at some distance from the shores of Nova Zemla and Siberia. And should we even grant the possibility of sailing N. E. and East of Nova Zemla, without meeting with any insurmountable obstacles from land or ice; yet the final completion of a N. E. voyage must depend upon the existence of a free passage[180] between the coast of the Tschutski and the continent of America. But such disquisitions as these do not fall under the intention of this work, which is meant to state and examine facts, not to lay down an hypothesis, or to make theoretical enquiries[181]. [Footnote 180: I have said a _free passage_, because if we conclude from the narrative of Deshneff's voyage, that there really does exist such a passage; yet if that passage is only occasionally navigable (and the Russians do not pretend to have passed it more than once) it can never be of any general and commercial utility.] [Footnote 181: I beg leave to assure the reader, that throughout this whole work I have entirely confined myself to the Russian accounts; and have carefully avoided making use of any vague reports concerning the discoveries lately made by captains Cooke and Clerke in the same seas. Many of the geographical questions which have been occasionally treated in the course of this performance, will probably be cleared up, and the true position of the Western coasts of America ascertained, from the journals of those experienced navigators.] APPENDIX II. _Tartarian_ rhubarb brought to _Kiachta_ by the _Bucharian_ Merchants--Method of examining and purchasing the roots--Different species of rheum which yield the finest rhubarb--Price of rhubarb in _Russia_--Exportation--Superiority of the _Tartarian_ over the _Indian_ rhubarb. [Sidenote: Tartarian, or Turkey, Rhubarb.] Europe is supplied with rhubarb from Russia and the East Indies. The former is generally known by the name of Turkey rhubarb, because we used to import it from the Levant in our commerce with the Turks, who procured it through Persia from the Bucharians. And it still retains its original name, although instead of being carried, as before, to Constantinople, it is now brought to Kiachta by the Bucharian merchants, and there disposed of to the Russians. This appellation is indeed the most general; but it is mentioned occasionally by several authors, under the different denominations of Russian, Tartarian, Bucharian, and Thibet, Rhubarb. This sort is exported from Russia in large roundish pieces, freed from the bark, with an hole through the middle: they are externally of a yellow colour, and when cut appear variagated with lively reddish streaks. [Sidenote: Indian Rhubarb.] The other sort is called by the Druggists Indian Rhubarb; and is procured from Canton in longer, harder, heavier, more compact pieces, than the former; it is more astringent, and has somewhat less of an aromatic flavour; but, on account of its cheapness, is more generally used than the Tartarian or Turkey Rhubarb. [Sidenote: Tartarian Rhubarb procured at Kiachta.] The government of Russia has reserved to itself the exclusive privilege of purchasing rhubarb; it is brought to Kiachta by some Bucharian merchants, who have entered into a contract to supply the crown with that drug in exchange for furs. These merchants come from the town of Selin, which lies South Westward of the Koko-Nor, or Blue Lake toward Thibet. Selin, and all the towns of Little Bucharia; viz. Kashkar, Yerken, Atrar, &c. are subject to China. [Sidenote: The Rhubarb Plant grows upon the Mountains of Little Bucharia.] The best rhubarb purchased at Kiachta is produced upon a chain of rocks, which are very high, and for the most part destitute of wood: they lie North of Selin, and stretch as far as the Koko-Nor. The good roots are distinguished by large and thick stems. The Tanguts, who are employed in digging up the roots, enter upon that business in April or May. As fast as they take them out of the earth, they cleanse them from the soil, and hang them upon the neighbouring trees to dry, where they remain until a sufficient quantity is procured: after which they are delivered to the Bucharian merchants. The roots are wrapped up in woollen sacks, carefully preserved from the least humidity; and are in this manner transported to Kiachta upon camels. The exportation of the best rhubarb is prohibited by the Chinese, under the severest penalties. It is procured however in sufficient quantities, sometimes by clandestinely mixing it with inferior roots, and sometimes by means of a contraband trade. The College of Commerce at Petersburg is solely empowered to receive this drug, and appoints agents at Kiachta for that purpose. Much care is taken in the choice; for it is examined, in the presence of the Bucharian merchants, by an apothecary commissioned by government, and resident at Kiachta. [Sidenote: Care taken in examining the roots at Kiachta.] All the worm-eaten roots are rejected; the remainder are bored through, in order to ascertain their soundness; and all the parts which appear in the least damaged or decayed are cut away. By these means even the best roots are diminished a sixth part; and the refuse is burnt, in order to prevent its being brought another year[182]. [Footnote 182: Pallas Reise, part III. p. 155-157. When Mr. Pallas was at Kiachta, the Bucharian merchant, who supplies the crown with rhubarb, brought some pieces of white rhubarb (von milchveissen rhabarber) which had a sweet taste, and was equal in its effects to the best sort.] [Sidenote: Different Species of Rhubarb.] Linnæus has distinguished the different species of rhubarb by the names Rheum Palmatum, R. Rhaphonticum, [183]R. Rhabarbarum, R. Compactum, and R. Ribes. [Footnote 183: See Murray's edition of Linnæus Systema Vegetab. Gott. 1774. In the former editions of Linnæus Rheum Rhabarbarum is called R. Undulatum.] Botanists have long differed in their opinions, which of these several species is the true rhubarb; and that question does not appear to be as yet satisfactorily cleared up. [Sidenote: Rheum Palmatum.] However, according to the notion which is most generally received, it is supposed to be the Rheum[184] Palmatum; the seeds of which were originally procured from a Bucharian merchant, and distributed to the principal botanists of Europe. Hence this plant has been cultivated with great success; and is now very common in all our botanical gardens. The learned doctor [185]Hope, professor of medicine and botany in the university of Edinburgh, having made trials of the powder of this root, in the same doses in which the foreign rhubarb is given, found no difference in its effects; and from thence conclusions have been drawn with great appearance of probability, that this is the plant which produces the true rhubarb. But this inference does not appear to be absolutely conclusive; for the same trials have been repeated, and with similar success, upon the roots of the R. Rhaponticum and R. Rhabarbarum. [Footnote 184: Mr. Pallas (to whom I am chiefly indebted for this account of the Tartarian and Siberian Rhubarb) assured me, that he never found the R. Palmatum in any part of Siberia.] [Footnote 185: Phil. Trans. for 1765, p. 290.] [Sidenote: R. Rhaponticum.] The leaves of the R. Rhaponticum are round, and sometimes broader than they are long. This species is found abundantly in the loamy and dry deserts between the Volga and the Yaik[186], towards the Caspian Sea. It was probably from this sort that the name Rha, which is the Tartarian appellation of the river Volga, was first applied by the Arabian physicians to the several species of rheum. The roots however which grow in these warm plains are rather too astringent; and therefore ought not to be used in cases where opening medicines are required. The Calmucs call it Badshona, or a stomachic. The young shoots of this plant, which appear in March or April, are deemed a good antiscorbutic; and are used as such by the Russians. The R. Rhaponticum is not to be found to the West of the Volga. The seeds of this species produced at Petersburg plants of a much greater size than the wild ones: the leaves were large, and of a roundish cordated figure. [Footnote 186: The Yaik falls into the Caspian Sea, about four degrees to the East of the Volga.] [Sidenote: R. Rhabarbarum.] The R. Rhabarbarum grows in the crevices of bare rocky mountains, and also upon gravelly soils: it is more particularly found in the high vallies of the romantic country situated beyond Lake Baikal. Its buds do not shoot before the end of April; and it continues in flower during the whole month of May. The stalks of the leaves are eaten raw by the Tartars: they produce upon most persons, who are unaccustomed to them, a kind of sphasmodic contraction of the throat, which goes off in a few hours; it returns however at every meal, until they become habituated to this kind of diet. The Russians make use of the leaves in their hodge-podge: accordingly, soups of this sort affect strangers in the manner above mentioned. In Siberia the stalk is sometimes preserved as a sweet-meat; and a custom prevails among the Germans of introducing at their tables the buds of this plant, as well as of the Rheum Palmatum, instead of cauli-flower. [Sidenote: R. Rhaponticum.] The R. Rhaponticum which commonly grows near the torrents has, as well as the R. Rhabarbarum of Siberia, the upper part of its roots commonly rotten, from too much moisture: accordingly, a very small portion of the lower extremity is fit for use. The Russian College of Physicians order, for the use of their military hospitals, large quantities of these roots to be dug up in Siberia, which are prescribed under the name of rhapontic. But the persons employed in digging and preparing it are so ill instructed for that purpose, that its best juices are frequently lost. These roots ought to be drawn up in spring, soon after the melting of the snows, when the plant retains all its sap and strength; whereas they are not taken out of the ground before August, when they are wasted by the increase of the stem, and the expansion of the leaves. Add to this, that the roots are no sooner taken up, than they are immediately sliced in small pieces, and thus dried: by which means the medicinal qualities are sensibly impaired. [Sidenote: Method of drying the Roots of the R. Rhaponticum.] For the same roots, which in this instance were of such little efficacy, when dried with proper precaution, have been found to yield a very excellent rhubarb. The process observed for this purpose, by the ingenious Mr. Pallas, was as follows: The roots, immediately after being drawn out, were suspended over a stove, where being gradually dried, they were cleansed from the earth: by these means, although they were actually taken up in autumn, they so nearly resembled the best Tartarian rhubarb in colour, texture, and purgative qualities, that they answered, in every respect, the same medicinal purposes. A German apothecary, named Zuchert, made similar trials with the same success, both on the Rheum Rhabarbarum and R. Rhaponticum, which grow in great perfection on the mountains in the neighbourhood of Nershinsk. [Sidenote: Plantation of Rhubarb in Siberia.] He formed plantations of these herbs on the declivity of a rock[187], covered with one foot of good mould, mixed with an equal quantity of sand and gravel. If the summer proved dry, the plants were left in the ground; but if the season was rainy, after drawing out the roots he left them for some days in the shade to dry, and then replanted them. By this method of cultivation he produced in seven or eight years very large and sound roots, which the rock had prevented from penetrating too deep; and when they were properly dried, one scruple was as efficacious as half a drachm of Tartarian rhubarb. [Footnote 187: In order to succeed fully in the plantation of rhubarb, and to procure sound and dry roots, a dry, light soil with a rocky foundation, where the moisture easily filters off, is essentially necessary.] [Sidenote: The Roots of the R. Rhaponticum and R. Rhubarbarum, equal in their Effects to the Tartarian Rhubarb.] From the foregoing observations it follows, that there are other plants, besides the Rheum Palmatum, the roots whereof have been found to be similar both in their appearance and effects, to what is called the best rhubarb. And indeed, upon enquiries made at Kiachta concerning the form and leaves of the plant which produces that drug, it seems not to be the R. Palmatum, but a species with roundish scolloped leaves, and most probably the R. Rhaponticum: for Mr. Pallas, when he was at Kiachta, applied for information to a Bucharian merchant of Selin-Chotton, who now supplies the crown with rhubarb; and his description of that plant answered to the figure of the Rheum Rhaponticum. The truth of this description was still further confirmed by some Mongol travellers who had been in the neighbourhood of the Koko-Nor and Thibet; and had observed the rhubarb growing wild upon those mountains. [Sidenote: The true Rhubarb probably procured from different Species of Rheum.] The experiments also made by Zuchert and others, upon the roots of the R. Rhabarbarum and R. Rhaponticum, sufficiently prove, that this valuable drug was procured from those roots in great perfection. But as the seeds of the Rheum Palmatum were received from the father of the above-mentioned Bucharian merchant as taken from the plant which furnishes the true rhubarb, we have reason to conjecture, that these three species, viz. R. Palmatum, R. Rhaponticum, and R. Rhabarbarum, when found in a dryer and milder alpine climate, and in proper situations, are indiscriminately drawn up; whenever the size of the plant seems to promise a fine root. And perhaps the remarkable difference of the rhubarb, imported to Kiachta, is occasioned by this indiscriminate method of collecting them. Most certain it is, that these plants grow wild upon the mountains, without the least cultivation; and those are esteemed the best which are found near the Koko-Nor, and about the sources of the river Koango. Formerly the exportation of rhubarb was confined to the crown of Russia; and no persons but those employed by government were allowed the permission of sending it to foreign countries; this monopoly however has been taken off by the present empress, and the free exportation of it from St. Petersburg granted to all persons upon paying the duty. It is sold in the first instance by the College of Commerce for the profit of the Sovereign; and is preserved in their magazines at St. Petersburg. The current price is settled every year by the College of Commerce. [Sidenote: Price of Rhubarb in Russia.] It is received from the Bucharian merchants at Kiachta in exchange for furs; and the prime cost is rated at 16 roubles per pood. By adding the pay of the commissioners who purchase it, and of the apothecary who examines it, and allowing for other necessary expences, the value of a pood at Kiachta amounts to 25 roubles; add to this the carriage from the frontiers to St. Petersburg, and it is calculated that the price of a pood stands the crown at 30 roubles. The largest exportation of rhubarb ever known from Russia, was made in the year 1765, when 1350 pood were exported, at 65 roubles per pood. [Sidenote: Exportation of Rhubarb from St. Petersburg.] EXPORTATION of RHUBARB From St. PETERSBURG. { at 76-1/4 Dutch[188] dollars, In 1777, 29 poods 13 pounds { or 91 roubles, 30 copecs { per pood. In 1778, 23 poods 7 pounds, at 80 ditto, or 96 roubles. [Footnote 188: If we reckon a Dutch dollar, upon an average, to be worth 1 rouble 20 copecs.] In 1778, 1055 poods were brought by the Bucharian merchants to Kiachta; of which 680 poods 19 pounds were selected. The interior consumption of the whole empire of Russia for 1777 amounted to only 6 poods 5 pounds[189]. [Footnote 189: This calculation comprehends only the rhubarb purchased at the different magazines belonging to the College of Commerce; for what was procured by contraband is of course not included.] [Sidenote: Superiority of the Tartarian over the Indian Rhubarb.] The superiority of this Tartarian Rhubarb, over that procured from Canton, arises probably from the following circumstances. 1. The Southern parts of China are not so proper for the growth of this plant, as the mountains of Little Bucharia. 2. There is not so exact an examination made in receiving it from the Chinese at Canton, as from the Bucharians at Kiachta. For the merchants, who purchase this drug at Canton, are obliged to accept it in the gross, without separating the bad roots, and cutting away the decayed parts, as is done at Kiachta. 3. It is also probable, that the long transport of this drug by sea is detrimental to it, from the humidity which it must necessarily contract during so long a voyage. TABLE OF LONGITUDE AND LATITUDE. [Sidenote: Table of Longitude and Latitude.] For the convenience of the Reader, the following Table exhibits in one point of view the longitude and latitude of the principal places mentioned in this performance. Their longitudes are estimated from the first meridian of the Isle of Fero, and from that of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich. The longitude of Greenwich from Fero is computed at 17° 34´ 45´´. The longitude of the places marked * has been taken from astronomical observations. Latitude. Longitude. | | Fero. | Greenwich. | D. M. S. | D. M. S. | D. M. * Petersburg | 59 56 23 | 48 0 0 | 30 25[190] * Moscow | 55 45 45 | 55 6 30 | 37 31 * Archangel | 64 33 24 | 56 15 0 | 38 40 * Tobolsk | 58 12 22 | 85 40 0 | 68 26 * Tomsk | 56 30 0 | 102 50 0 | 85 15 * Irkutsk | 52 18 15 | 122 13 0 | 104 38 * Selenginsk | 51 6 0 | 124 18 30 | 106 44 Kiachta | 35 0 0 | 124 18 0 | 106 43 * Yakutsk | 62 1 50 | 147 0 0 | 129 25 * Ochotsk | 59 22 0 | 160 7 0 | 142 32 * Bolcheresk | 52 55 0 | 174 13 0 | 156 38 * Port of St. Peter and Paul | 53 1 0 | 176 10 0 | 158 36 Eastern Extremity of Siberia | 66 0 0 | 200 0 0 | 182 25 Unalashka (A) | 58 0 0 | 223 0 0 | 205 25 Unalashka (B) | 53 30 0 | 205 30 0 | 187 55 Key: (A) According to the general map of Russia (B) According to the chart of Krenitzin & Levasheff [Footnote 190: I have omitted the seconds in the longitude from Greenwich.] INDEX. A. _Agiak_, an interpreter, p. 133. _Aguladock_, a leader of the Unalashkans, taken prisoner by Solovioff, 139. _Agulok_, a dwelling-place on Unalashka, 137. _Aischin-Giord_, chief of the Manshurs at the beginning of the 17th century, 198. _Aktunak_, an island to the East of Kadyak, 108. _Akun_ (one of the Fox Islands), 159. _Akutan_ (one of the Fox Islands), 159. _Alaksu_, or _Alachshak_, one of the most remote Eastern islands, 65. Customs of the inhabitants, 68. Animals found on that island, _ib._ Conjectured to be not far from the continent of America, 69. _Alaxa_, one of the Fox Islands, 254. _Albasin_, and the other Russian forts on the Amoor, destroyed by the Chinese, 198. The Russians taken there refuse to return from Pekin, 208. _Aleütian Isles_ discovered, 21. 29. their situation and names, 24. Names of persons there, bear a surprising resemblance to those of the Greenlanders, 40. Inhabitants described, 41. 46. Account of those islands, 45. 55. The manners and customs of the inhabitants resemble those of the Fox Islands, 173. Are entirely subject to Russia, 174. Their number, 289. Specimen of the Aleütian language, 303. See _Fox Islands, Ibiya, Novodtsikoff, Tsiuproff_. _Alexeeff (Feodot)._ See _Deshneff_. _Aleyut._ See _Fox Islands_. _Allai_ (a prince of the Calmucs), his superstitious regard for the memory of Yermac, 194. _Amaganak_, a toigon of Unalashka, 143. _America_, most probable course for discovering the nearest coast of that continent, pointed out, 27. See _Islands, Delisle, Alaksu, Kadyak, Fox Islands, Steller_. _Amlach_, one of the Andreanoffskye Islands, 76. _Anadirsky Isles_, or _Isles of Anadyr_, so called by Mr. Stæhlin, and after him by Buffon, p. 25. 284-288. _Amoor_ river, called by the Manshurs Sakalin-Ula; and by the Mongols, Karamuran, or the Black River. _Andrianoffskie Islands_, their situation doubtful, 25. Description of, 74, 75. Must not be blended with the Fox Islands, 74. Account of the inhabitants, 77. Other islands beyond them to the East, _ibid._ Position of the Andreanoffskie-Islands, 289. _Arachulla_, supposed by the Chinese a wicked spirit of the air, 229. _Archangel_, voyages from thence to the Yenisèi, 305. _Artic_, or _Ice Foxes_, description of, 15. _Asia_, the first report of its vicinity to America, learned from the Tschutski, 293. _Atachtak_, a great promontory N. E. of Alaksu, 118. _Ataku_, one of the Aleütian Islands, 45. _Atchu_, one of the Andreanoffsky Islands, description of, 76. _Atchu, Atchak, Atach, Goreloi_, or _Burnt Island_, one of the Fox Islands, 61. _Atlassoff (Volodimir)_, takes possession of the river Kamtchatka, 4. _Atrar_, a town of Little Bucharia, 333. _Att_, one of the Aleütian Isles, 30. _Ayagh_, or _Kayachu_, one of the Andreanoffsky Islands, 72. Description of, 75. B. _Bacchoff._ See _Novikoff_. _Baranèi Kamen_, or _Sheep's Rock_, description of, 328. _Bear Islands._ See _Medvioedkie Ostrova_. _Beering_, his voyage made at the expence of the crown, 8. His voyage (with Tschirikoff) in search of a junction between Asia and America, in 1728 and 1729, unsuccessful, 20. Shipwrecked, _ibid._ and death on an island called after his name, 21. See _Discoveries, Steller_; see also p. 323. _Beering's Island_, the winter-station of all the ships sailing for the new-discovered islands, 52. _Belayeff (Larion)_, treats the inhabitants of the Aleütian Islands in an hostile manner; in which he is under-hand abetted by Tsiuproff, 34. _Bolcheretsk_, a district of Kamtchatka, 5. See _Kamtchatkoi Ostrogs_. _Bolkosky_ (prince), appointed waywode of Siberia, 190. See _Yermac_. _Boris and Glebb._ See _Trapesnikoff_. _Bucharia (Little)_, all subject to China, 333. _Buache_ (Mr.). See _Longitude_. _Burgoltei_, a mountain in the valley of Kiachta, 214. _Burnt Island._ See _Atchu_. _Buttons_ (of different colours), used as marks of distinction among the Chinese, 218. C. _Calumet of peace_, a symbol of friendship peculiar to America, 280. _Camhi_, the second Chinese emperor of the Manshur race, 197. Expels the Russians from his dominions, for their riots and drunkenness, 205. _Camphor wood_ (the true), drove by the sea on Copper Island, 107. _Caravans_ (Russian), allowed to trade to Pekin, 203. Discontinued, and why, 209. See _Russia_. _Chatanga_, the cape between that river and the Piasida never yet doubled, 309-313. _Chinese_, origin of the disputes between them and the Russians, 197. Hostilities commenced between them, 198. Treaty of Nershinsk concluded, 200. Beginning of the commerce between the two nations, 202. Their trade with the Russians, 208, &c. Reckon it a mark of disrepect to uncover the head to a superior, 228. Their superstition in regard to fires, 229. Manner of their pronouncing foreign expressions, 232. No specie but bullion current among them, 233. Advantage of the Chinese trade to Russia, 240. _Cholodiloff._ Voyage of a vessel fitted out by him, 48. _Chusho_, (or the Fire-god), a Chinese idol, 226. See _Chinese_. _Copper Island_, why so called, 21. 107. 252. Probable that all the hillocks in that country have formerly been vulcanoes, _ibid._ Subject to frequent earth-quakes, and abound in sulphur, 253. _Cyprian_ (first archbishop of Siberia), collects the archives of the Siberian history, 192. D. _Daurkin_ (a native Tschutski), employed by Plenisner to examine the islands to the East of Siberia, 295. The intelligence he brought back, _ibid._ _Delisle_, mistaken concerning the Western coast of America, 26. _Deshneff_, his voyage, 313. Extracts from his papers, 315, 316. His description of the great promontory of the Tschutski, 317. Ankudinoff's vessel wrecked on that promontory, _ibid._ Deshneff builds Anadirskoi-Ostrog on the river Anadyr, 318. Dispute between him and Soliverstoff, concerning the discovery of the Korga, 319, 320. No navigator since Deshneff pretends to have passed round the N. E. extremity of Asia, 322. _Discoveries._ The prosecution of those begun by Beering mostly carried on by individuals, 8. The vessels equipped for those discoveries described, _ibid._ Expences attending them, 9. Profits of the trade to the new discovered islands very considerable, 10. List of the principal charts of the Russian discoveries hitherto published, 281. _Dogs_, used for drawing carriages, 247. _Drusinin (Alexei)_, wrecked at Beering's Island, 46. His voyage to the Fox Islands, 80-88. Winters at Unalashka, 82. All the crew, except four Russians, viz. Stephen Korelin, Dmitri Bragin, Gregory Shaffyrin, and Ivan Kokovin, destroyed by the natives, 83. See _Unalashka_. _Durneff (Kodion)._ His voyage, 45. E. _Eclipse_, behaviour of the Chinese at one, 228. _Empress of Russia._ See _Russia_. _Engel_ (Mr.) Disputes the exactness of the longitudes laid down by Muller and the Russian geographers, 267. _Esquimaux Indians_, similarity between their boats and those of the Fox Islands, 260. 264. F. _Feathers_ (peacock's), used for a distinction of rank by the Chinese, 218. _Fedotika._ See _Nikul_. _Foxes_, different species of, described, 14. Value of their skins, 15. _Fox Islands_, sometimes called the farthest Aleütian Isles, 29. Their land and sea-animals, 148. Manners and customs of the inhabitants, 149. Warm springs and native sulphur to be found in some of them, 149. Their dress, 151. 169. Their vessels described, 152. Are very fond of snuff, 153. Their drums described, 154. Their weapons, 155. 170. Food of the inhabitants, 168. Their feasts, 171. Their funeral ceremonies, 173. Account of the inhabitants, 256-261. Their extreme nastiness, 258. Their boats made like those of the Esquimaux Indians in North America, 260. 264. Are said to have no notion of a God, 261; yet have fortune-tellers, who pretend to divination, by the information of spirits, _ibid._ The inhabitants called by the Russians by the general name of Aleyut, 263. Proofs of the vicinity of those islands to America, 291. G. _Geographers (Russian)_, their accuracy, 273. _Ghessur-Chan_, the principal idol at Maimatschin, 224. _Glotoff (Stephen)_, his voyage, 106-123. Winters upon Copper Island, 106. Arrives at Kadyak, the most Eastward of the Fox Islands, 108. Is attacked by the natives, whom he defeats, 110, and finally repulses, 112. Winters at Kadyak, 113. Is reconciled to the natives, 114. Curiosities procured by him at that island, _ibid._ No chart of his voyage, 117. Departs from Kadyak, and arrives at Umnak, 118. 119. Defeats a design formed against him by the natives, 120. Meets with Korovin, 121. Winters on Umnak, 122. Journal of his voyage, 124-130. See _Solovioff, Korovin_. ---- (_Ivan_), an Aleütian interpreter, 101. _Golodoff_, killed at Unyumga, 65. _Goreloi._ See _Atchu_. _Greenlanders_, their proper names nearly similar to those used in the Aleütian Isles, 40. H. _Hare's Rock._ See _Saetshie Kammen_. _Hot Springs_, found in Kanaga, 75. in Tsetchina, 76. I. _Ibiya, Ricksa_, and _Olas_, Three large populous islands to the East of the Aleütian Islands, 46. _Jesuits_, their compliance with the Chinese superstition, 220. _Igonok_, a village of Unalashka, 142. _Igunok_, a bay N. E. of Unalashka, 255. _Ikutchlok_, a dwelling place at Unalashka, 137. _Imperial Academy_, their chart of the New Discovered Islands, not to be depended on, 24. 27. _Indigirka_, a river of Siberia, 14. _Inlogusak_, a leader of the Unalashkans, killed, 139. _Isanak_, one of the islands to the West of Kadyak, 109. _Islands (New Discovered)_, first tribute brought from thence to Ochotsk, 22. List of those islands, according to Mr. Muller, 297. Their names altered and corrupted by the Russian navigators, 299. See _Aleütian Isles_ and _Fox Islands_. _Islenieff_ (Mr.), sent to Yakutsk to observe the transit of Venus, 274. _Itchadek_ and _Kagumaga_, two friendly Toigons, 137. _Ivan Shilkin_, his voyage, 57. 60. Shipwrecked on one of the Fox Islands, 58. Great distresses of his crew on that island, 59. Shipwrecked a second time, 60. _Ivan Vassilievitch_ I. makes the first irruption into Siberia, 177. _Ivan Vassilievitch_ II. took the title of _Lord of all the Siberian lands_ before the conquests of Yermac, 179. See _Russia_. _Ives (Isbrand)_, a Dutchman. Embassador from Peter I. to Pekin, 203. _Iviya_, one of the Aleütian Islands, 55. K. _Kadyak_, one of the Fox Islands, 35. The fondness of the natives for beads, 114. Animals and vegetables found there, 115. 116. Great reason to think it is at no great distance from the continent of America, 117. Account of the inhabitants, 118. See _Glottoff_. _Kagumaga._ See _Itchadek_. _Kalaktak_, a village of Unalashka, 143. _Kama_, a river, 180. _Kamtchatka_, discovered by the Russians, 3. The whole peninsula reduced by the Russians, 4. Of little advantage to the crown at first, but since the discovery of the islands between Asia and America its fur-trade is become a considerable branch of the Russian commerce, _ibid._ Its situation and boundaries, 5. Its districts, government, and population, _ibid_. Fixed and other tributes to the crown, 6. Its soil and climate not favourable to the culture of corn; but hemp has of late years been cultivated there with great success, 7. Supplied yearly with salt, provisions, corn, and manufactures, from Ochotsk, _ibid._ Rout for transporting furs from thence to Kiachta, 247. Manner of procuring fire there, and which Vaksel, Beering's lieutenant, found practised in that part of North America which he saw in 1741, 158. See _Morosko, Atlassoff, Koriacs, Ochotsk_ and _Penshinsk, Bolcheresk, Tigilskaia, Krepost, Verchnei, Nishnei, Kamtchatka Ostrogs, Volcanos, Furs and Skins_. _Kamtchatkoi Ostrogs_ (Upper and Lower) and Bolcheretsk built, 4. _Kanaga_, one of the Andreanoffsky Islands, 72. Description of, 75. _Karaga Island_, tributary to Russia, 35. See _Olotorians_. _Kashkar_, A town of Little Bucharia, 333. _Kashmak_, an interpreter employed by the Russians, 92. _Kataghayekiki_, name of the inhabitants of Unimak and Alaxa, 263. _Kayachu._ See _Ayagh_. _Kiachta_, a frontier town of Siberia, 12. Treaty concluded there between the Russians and Chinese, 206. 209. Is at present the centre of the Russian and Chinese commerce, 210. That place and Zuruchaitu agreed on for transacting the commerce between Russia and China, 211. Description of Kiachta, _ibid._ _Kighigusi_, inhabitants of Akutan so called, 263. _Kitaika_, a Chinese stuff, 238. _Kogholaghi_, inhabitants of Unalashka so called, 263. _Kopeikina_, a bay of the river Anadyr, 43. _Korenoff._ See _Solovioff_. _Korga_, A sand-bank at the mouth of the river Anadyr, 318. See _Soliverstoff_. _Koriacs_, their country the Northern boundary of Kamtchatka, 5. Tributary to Russia, 43. _Korovin (Ivan)_, his voyage 89-105. Arrives at Unalashka, his transactions there, 90-96. Builds an hut, and prepares for wintering, 93. Being attacked by the savages, destroys his hut, and retires to his vessel, 95. Attacked again, repulses the savages, and is stranded on the island of Umnak, 96. After different skirmishes with the natives, is relieved by Glottoff, 99. His description of Umnak and Unalashka, with their inhabitants, 103. See _Solovioff_. _Kovyma_, a river of Siberia, 14. _Krenitzin_ (Captain), commands a secret expedition, 23. _Krenitzin and Levasheff_, their journal and chart sent, by order of the Empress of Russia, to Dr. Robertson, 23. Extract from their journal, 251-255. They arrive at the Fox Islands, 253. Krenitzin winters at Alaxa, and Levasheff at Unalashka, 254. They return to the river of Kamtchatka, 266. Krenitzin drowned, _ibid._ See _Yakoff_. _Krassilnikoff_, Voyage of a vessel fitted out by him, 52. Shipwrecked on Copper Island, _ibid._ The crew return to Beering's Island, 53. _Krassilikoff_ (a Russian astronomer), his accuracy in taking the longitude of Kamtchatka, 273. _Krashininikoff_, his history of Kamtchatka, 256. _Krestova_, a river of Siberia, 324. _Krugloi_, or _Round Island_, one of the Aleütian Islands, 69. _Kulkoff_, his vessel destroyed, and his crew killed by the savages, 94. 157. _Kullara_, a fortress belonging to Kutchum Chan, 190. _Kuril Isles_, subject to Russia, 5. _Kutchum Chan_ (a descendant of Zinghis Chan), defeats Yediger, and takes him prisoner, 179. The most powerful sovereign in Siberia, 182. See _Yermac, Sibir_. L. _Laptieff (Chariton)_, his unsuccessful attempt to pass from the Lena to the Yenisèi, 309. See p. 322. _Latitude of Bolcheresk_, Appendix I. N^o II. See _Longitude_. _Lena_, a river of Siberia, 14. Attempts of the Russians to pass from thence to Kamtchatka, 311. See _Menin_. _Leontieff_ (a _Russian_), has translated several interesting Chinese publications, 208. _Levasheff._ See _Krenitzin_ and _Levasheff_. _Lobaschkoff (Prokopèi)_, killed at Alaksu, 66. _Longitude_, of the extreme parts of Asia, by Mr. Muller and the Russian geographers, 267. By Mr. Engel, _ibid._ By Mr. Vaugondy, 268. The Russian system supported by Mons. Buache, against Engel and Vaugondy, _ibid._ See _Krassilnikoff_. _Longitude of Ochotsk, Bolcheresk_, and _St. Peter_ and _St. Paul_, 269. _Longitude_ and _Latitude_ of the principal places mentioned in this work, 344. _Lyssie Ostrova_, or _Fox Islands_, 14. Their situation and names, 25. Description of the inhabitants, 62. M. _Maimatschin_ (the Chinese frontier town), described, 214. Houses there described, 216. An account of the governor, 218. Theatre described, 219. The small pagoda, 220. The great pagoda, 221. Idols worshiped, _ibid._-227. See _Sitting-Rooms_. _Manshurs_, their origin, 197. _Maooang_, a Chinese idol, 225. _Mednoi Ostroff_, or _Copper Island_, Discovered, 21. See _Copper Island_. _Medvedeff (Dennis)_, his crew massacred by the savages, 90. He and part of Protassoff's crew found murdered on the island of Umnak, 99. _Menin (Feodor)_, his unsuccessful attempt to pass from the Yenisèi to the Lena, 306. _Merghen_, a Chinese town, 244. _Medviodkie Ostrova, Kreffstoffskie Ostrova_, or _Bear Islands_, Discovery of, 324. _Minyachin_ (a Cossac), a collector of the tribute, 69. _Mongol_, the commerce between the Russians and Chinese, mostly carried on in that tongue, 231. _Morosko (Lucas Semænoff)_, commanded the first expedition towards Kamtchatka, 3. _Muller_, (Mr.) His conjecture relating to the coast of the sea of Ochotsk, confirmed by Captain Synd, 23. Part of a letter written by him in 1774, concerning the vicinity of Kamtchatka and America, 283. His list of the New Discovered Islands, 297. N. _Nankin_, 231. _Naun_, a Chinese town, 244. _Nershinsk._ See _Chinese_. _Nevodtsikoff (Michael)_, sails from Kamtchatka river, 29. Discovers the Aleutian Islands, _ibid._ Narrative of his voyage, 31-36. _New Moon_, ceremonies observed at, by the Chinese, 228. _Nikul_, or _Fedotika_, a river which falls into that of Kamtchatka, 321. _Nishnei_, or _Lower Kamtchatkoi Ostrog_, a district of Kamtchatka, 5. _Niu-o_, Chinese idol, 226. _North East Passage_, Russians attempt to discover, 304-331. _Novikoff_ and _Bacchoff_, their voyage from Anadyrsk, 42. 44. Are shipwrecked on Beering's Island, where they build a small boat, and return to Kamtchatka, 44. O. _Oby_ (bay of), 306. _Ochotsk_ and _Penshinsk_, Western boundaries of Kamtchatka, 5. See _Kamtchatka, Muller_. _Offzin_ and _Koskeleff_ (Lieutenants), first effected the passage from the bay of Oby to the Yenisèi, 306. _Olas._ See _Ibiya_. _Olotorian Isles_, whence so called, 284. _Olotorians_, invade the island of Karaga, and threaten to destroy all the inhabitants who pay tribute to Russia, 36. _Onemenskaya_, a bay in the river Anadyr, 43. _Oracles (Chinese)_, 227. _Orel_, a Russian settlement, 181. _Otcheredin, (Aphanassei)_, his voyage to the Fox Islands, 156-163. Winters at Umnak, 157. The toigon of the Five Mountains gives him hostages, for which the other toigons kill one of his children, 158. A party sent by him to Ulaga repulsed the inhabitants, who had attacked them, 159. Is joined by Popoff from Beering's Island, and prevails on the inhabitants to pay tribute, 161. Receives an account of Levasheff's arrival at Unalashka, _ibid._ Returns to Ochotsk, with a large cargo, leaving Popoff at Umnak, 162. Brings home two islanders, who were baptized by the names of Alexey Solovieff and Boris Otcheredin, 163. See _Poloskoff_. P. _Pagoda._ See _Maimatschin_. _Paikoff (Demetri)_, his voyage, 61-63. _Pallas_, receives from Bragin a narrative of his adventures and escape, p. 88. Account of Kiachta and Maimatschin, extracted from his journal, p. 229. His publication concerning the Mongol tribes, 230. List of plants found by Steller upon the coast discovered by Beering in 1741, communicated by Mr. Pallas--quotation from a treatise of his, relative to the plants of the new-discovered islands, 279. Extracts made by him relative to Deshneff's voyage, p. 314-316. _Pauloffsky_, his expedition, in which, after several successful skirmishes with the Tschutski, he is surprised and killed by them, 296. _Peacock._ See _Feathers_. _Pekin._ Russian scholars allowed to settle there, to learn the Chinese tongue, 209. See _Caravans_. _Penshinsk_, 5. _Peter_ I. first projected making discoveries in the seas between Kamtchatka and America, 20. _Petersburg_, length of the different routs between that city and Pekin, 248. _Piasida_, a river of Siberia, 309. _Plenisner_ (a Courlander), sent on discoveries to the N. E. of Siberia, 294. See _Daurkin_. _Poloskoff, (Matthew)_, Sent by Otcheredin to Unalashka, 159. Spends the autumn at Akun, and after twice repulsing the savages, returns to Otcheredin, 159-161. _Popoff (Ivan)_, a vessel fitted out by him arrives at Unalashka, 158. See _Otcheredin_. _Prontshistsheff_ (Lieutenant), his unsuccessful attempt to pass from the Lena towards the Yenisèi, 306-309. _Protassoff_, he and his crew destroyed by the savages, 133. 157. See _Medvedeff_. _Pushkareff (Gabriel)_, his voyage, 64-69. Winters upon Alaksu, 65. He, with Golodoff and twenty others, attempting to violate some girls, on the island Unyumga, are set upon by the natives, and at last obliged to retreat, 65. 66. He and his crew tried for their inhuman behaviour to the islanders during their voyage, 67. R. _Rheum._ See _Rhubarb_. _Rhubarb_, that from Russia generally called Turkey Rhubarb, and why, 332. Description of, _ibid._ Indian rhubarb inferior to the Tartarian or Turkey, 333. A milk-white sort described, 334. Different species, 335-341. Planted in Siberia by M. Zuchert, a German apothecary, 338. Exportation of, 342. Superiority of the Tartarian over the Indian Rhubarb, accounted for, 342. _Ricksa._ See _Ibiya_. _Roaring Mountain._ See _Unalashka_. _Robertson_ (Dr.) See _Krenitzin and Levasheff_. _Round Island._ See _Krugloi_. _Russia_ (present Empress of), a great promoter of new discoveries, 22. No communication between that country and Siberia till the reign of Ivan Vassilievitch II. 178. The empress abolishes the monopoly of the fur-trade, and relinquishes the exclusive privilege of sending caravans to Pekin, 210. _Russia_, a curious and interesting "Historical Account of the nations which compose that Empire" lately published, 218. _Russians_, quit Siberia after the death of Yermac, 194. Recover their antient territories in that country, 195. Their progress checked by the Chinese, 196. Are expelled from the Chinese dominions, 205. Are allowed to build a church (and to have four priests to officiate in it) within their caravansary at Pekin, 208. Commerce between them and the Chinese carried on only by barter, 232. Method of transacting business between them, 233. Russian exports, 234-237. Imports, 237-239. Articles of trade prohibited to individuals, 240. Duties paid by the Russian merchants, 241. The Russians' manner of trading to the Fox Islands, 264. Their attempts to discover a North East passage, 304-331. Held in great veneration by the Kamtchadals, till they quarrelled among themselves, 321. See _Siberia, Chinese, Albasin, Lena_. S _Sabya_, an island at a distance from Att, 30. See _Att_. _Sacred Helmet_, at Maimatschin, 227. _Saetshie Kamen_, or _Hare's Rock_, Description of, 328. _Sagaugamak_, one of the Fox Islands, 157. _St. Petersburg_, the geographical calendar of not to be depended on, 24. _Saktunak_, an island near Alaksu, 119. _Sandchue_, a northern province of China, 231. _Sea-horse teeth_, their value, 16. _Sea-lion_, or _Scivutcha_, its flesh delicate food, 265. _Sea-otters_, Many writers mistaken concerning them, 12. Description of, _ibid._ Value of their skins, 13. _Selin_, a town of Little Bucharia, 333. _Serebranikoff_, voyage of a vessel fitted out by him, 49-52. Shipwrecked on an island opposite Katyrskoi Noss, in the peninsula of Kamtchatka, 50. Description of the island, 51. _Shaffyrin (Sila)_, a Cossac, collector of the tribute, 40. 45. 61. killed, 63. _Shalauroff_, his first voyage from the Lena, 323-328. Winters at a mouth of the Kovyma, 325. Not being able to double Sheletskoi Noss, returns to the Kovyma, winters there a second time, and returns to the Lena, 327. No account of his second expedition, he and his crew being killed by the Tschutski, 328. _Sheep's Rock._ See _Baranèi Kamen_. _Shelatskoi Noss_, whence that name is derived, 326. _Shemiya_, one of the Aleütian Islands, 78. _Shilkin (Ivan)_, his voyage, 45. Wrecked on one of the Fox Islands, 58. where the Russians are attacked by the savages, whom they repulse, 59. After suffering the greatest distress, they build a small vessel, in which they are a second time wrecked, and return at last in Serebranikoff's vessel to Kamtchatka, 59. 60. _Shuntschi_, The first Chinese emperor of the Manshur race, 198. _Shushu_, the first of the Kuril Isles, 301. _Sibir_, the principal residence of Kutchum Chan, 182. _Siberia_, conquest of by Yermac, 19. Second irruption of the Russians into that country, 179. State of at the time of Yermac's invasion, 182. Conjecture concerning the derivation of that name, _ibid._ Totally reduced by the Russians, 196. Transport of the Russian and Chinese commodities through that country, 245. See _Ivan Vassilievitch I. Russia. Kutchum Chan._ _Sitkin_, one of the Fox Islands, 62. _Sitting-rooms, (Chinese)_, described, 216. _Soliverstoff (Yusko)_, his expedition to the Korga, to collect sea-horses teeth, 319. _Solovioff (Ivan)_, his voyage, 131-155. Arrives at Unalashka, 132. Learns the particulars of a confederacy formed by the Toigons of Unalashka, Umnak, Akutan, and Toshko, against the Russians, 134. Is joined by Korovin, 135. Hostilities between him and the natives, _ibid._ Winters at Unalashka, with other transactions at that island, 136. Makes peace with the natives, and receives hostages, 139. Meets with Korovin, 140. His crew being greatly afflicted with the scurvy, the inhabitants of Makushinsk conspire to seize his vessel, 141. But are happily prevented, 142. Is visited by Glottoff, _ibid._ Receives hostages from the inhabitants of Kalaktak, 143. Sends Korenoff in different hunting parties, 144. Journal of his voyage homewards, 144. His description of the Fox Islands, 148. _Solvytshegodskaia._ See _Strogonoff_. _Steller_, His arguments to prove that Beering and Tschirikiff discovered America, 277. _Strogonoff (Anika)_, a Russian merchant, establishes a trade with Solvytshegodskaia in Siberia, 178. Makes settlements upon the Kama and Tschussovaia, 183. See _Yermac_. _Studentzoff_, a Cossac, collector of the tribute, 45. 57. _Svatoi Noss_, that name explained, 320. _Sulphur_ found on the island of Kanaga, 75. See _Copper Islands_. _Synd_ (capt.) his voyage to the N. E. of Siberia, 300. Discovers a cluster of islands, and a promontory, which he supposes to belong to America, 301. T. _Tabaetshinskian_, a mountain of Kamtchatka, emitting a constant smoke, 6. _Tagalak_, one of the Andreanoffskye Islands, description of, 76. _Tartarian Rhubarb._ See _Rhubarb_. _Tchingi_, a town on the banks of the Tura, 185. See _Yermac_. _Tea_, finer in Russia than in Europe, and why, 238. _Temnac_, an Aleutian interpreter, 30. _Tien_, an idol worshiped in the small pagoda at Maimatschin, 220. _Tigilskaia Krepost_, a district of Kamtchatka, 5. _Tolstyk, (Andrean)_, his voyage to the Aleutian Isles, in 1748, 30. Ditto, in 1756, 54. Ditto in 1760, 71-79. Discovers the Andreanoskie Islands, 72. Shipwrecked near the mouth of the Kamtchatka river, 79. _Toshko._ See _Solovioff_. _Totchikala_, a village of Unalashka, 138. _Trapesnikoff (Nikiphor)_, Boris and Glebb, a vessel fitted out by him, her voyage and return, 39. 40. &c. Another vessel fitted out by him destroyed, and the crew cut off, by the natives of Unimak, 140. _Tsaaduck_, a kind of lamp, 150. _Tsaudsing_, a Chinese idol, 226. _Tschirikoff._ See _Beering_. _Tschussovaia_ (a river). See _Strogonoff_. _Tschutski_, a people on the river Anadyr, 43. Boundaries of their country, 293. See _Asia_. _Tschukotskoi Noss_, the N. E. cape of the country of the Tschutski, 293. Stadukin and Soliverstoff claim the discovery of the passage round that promontory, 314. See _Deshneff, Svatoi Noss, Shelatskoi Noss_; see also p. 322. _Tschuvatch._ See _Yermac_. _Tsetchina_, one of the Andreanoffsky Islands, description of, 76. _Tsikanok_, or _Osernia_, a river of Unalashka, 133. _Tsiuproff_, his adventures at the Aleutian Islands, 32. See _Belayeff_. _Turkey Rhubarb._ See _Rhubarb_. U. _Vaksel._ See _Kamtchatka_. _Vassilievitch._ See _Ivan Vassilievitch_. _Vaugondy._ See _Longitude_. _Udagha_, a bay on the N. E. of Unalashka, 255. _Verchnei_, or _Upper Kamtchatkoi Ostrog_, a district of Kamtchatka, 5. _Ukunadok_, a village of Unalashka, 143. _Ulaga_, one of the Fox Islands. See _Otcheredin_. _Umgaina_, a village of Unalashka, 143. _Umnak_, one of the Fox Islands, 81. See _Korovin, Solovioff_. _Unalashka_, or _Agunalashka_, one of the Fox Islands, 82. Adventures of four Russians belonging to Drusinin's crew there, 84-88. Description of, 254. Ayaghish and the Roaring Mountain, two volcanos, on that island, 255. Productions, _ibid._ The inhabitants less barbarous than those of the other Fox Islands, 260. _Unimak_, an island to the East of Agunalashka, 139. See _Trapesnikoff_. _Unyumga._ See _Pushkareff, Golodoff_. _Volcanos_, some burning ones in Kamtchatka, and traces of many former ones to be observed there, 6. One eruption near Lower Ostrog in 1762, and another in 1767, _ibid._ An high volcano on the island of Kanaga, 75. See _Copper Island, Unalashka_. _Vorobieff_, his voyage, 42. W. _Wheels_, a carriage with four wheels a mark, of high distinction among the Chinese, 218. _White month_, explained, 228. _Women_, none allowed to live at Maimatschin, and why, 231. _Wsevidoff (Andrew)_, his voyage to the new-discovered Islands, 38. Y. _Yakoff (Jacob)_, composed the chart of Krenitzin and Levasheff's voyage, 266. _Yediger_ (a Tartar chief), pays tribute to the Russians, 179. See _Kutchum Chan_. _Yenisèi_, a river of Siberia, 305, & seq. _Yerken_, a town of Little Bucharia, 333. _Yermac_, being driven from the Caspian Sea, retires to Orel, 181, where he winters, and determines to invade Siberia, 182. To which he is instigated by Strogonoff, 183. Marches towards Siberia, and returns to Orel, 184. Sets out on a second expedition, and arrives at Tchingi, 185. Defeats Kutchum Chan at Tschuvatch, 186. Marches to Sibir, and seats himself on the throne, 187. Cedes his conquest to the Tzar of Muscovy, 189. Who sends him a reinforcement, under the command of prince Bolkosky, 190. Is surprised by Kutchum Chan, 191. And drowned, 192. Veneration paid to his memory, 193. See _Allai, Russians, Siberia, Ivan Vassielivitch_ II. _Yefimoff (Sava)_, one of Yermac's followers, an accurate historian of those times, 192. _Yugoff (Emilian)_, his voyage, 38. Dies on Copper Island, 39. Z. _Zuchert._ See _Rhubarb_. _Zuruchaitu._ Description of, 244. Its trade very inconsiderable, 245. See _Kiachta_. FINIS. BOOKS printed for T. CADELL. The History of England, from the invasion of Julius Cæsar to the Revolution. A new Edition, printed on a fine paper, with many Corrections and Additions; and a complete Index, 8 vols. Royal Paper, 7l. 7s. * * * Another Edition on small Paper, 4l. 10s. Another Edition in 8 vols. 8vo. 2l. 8s. 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26090	----	* * * * * TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible; please see detailed list of printing issues at the end of the text. * * * * * CONDEMNED AS A NIHILIST * * * * * MR. HENTY'S HISTORICAL TALES. THE CAT OF BUBASTES: A Story of Ancient Egypt. 5s. THE YOUNG CARTHAGINIAN: A Story of the Times of Hannibal. 6s. FOR THE TEMPLE: A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem. 6s. BERIC THE BRITON: A Story of the Roman Invasion. 6s. THE DRAGON AND THE RAVEN: or, The Days of King Alfred. 5s. WULF THE SAXON: A Story of the Norman Conquest. 6s. A KNIGHT OF THE WHITE CROSS: The Siege of Rhodes. 6s. IN FREEDOM'S CAUSE: A Story of Wallace and Bruce. 6s. THE LION OF ST. MARK: A Story of Venice in the 14th Century. 6s. ST. GEORGE FOR ENGLAND: A Tale of Cressy and Poitiers. 5s. A MARCH ON LONDON: A Story of Wat Tyler. 5s. BOTH SIDES THE BORDER: A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower. 6s. AT AGINCOURT: A Tale of the White Hoods of Paris. 6s. BY RIGHT OF CONQUEST: or, With Cortez in Mexico. 6s. ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S EVE: A Tale of the Huguenot Wars. 6s. BY PIKE AND DYKE: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic. 6s. BY ENGLAND'S AID: or, The Freeing of the Netherlands. 6s. UNDER DRAKE'S FLAG: A Tale of the Spanish Main. 6s. THE LION OF THE NORTH: A Tale of Gustavus Adolphus. 6s. WON BY THE SWORD: A Tale of the Thirty Years' War. 6s. WHEN LONDON BURNED: A Story of the Great Fire. 6s. ORANGE AND GREEN: A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick. 5s. A JACOBITE EXILE: In the Service of Charles XII. 5s. IN THE IRISH BRIGADE: A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain. 6s. THE BRAVEST OF THE BRAVE: or, With Peterborough in Spain. 5s. BONNIE PRINCE CHARLIE: A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden. 6s. WITH CLIVE IN INDIA: or, The Beginnings of an Empire. 6s. WITH FREDERICK THE GREAT: The Seven Years' War. 6s. WITH WOLFE IN CANADA: or, The Winning of a Continent. 6s. TRUE TO THE OLD FLAG: The American War of Independence. 6s. HELD FAST FOR ENGLAND: A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar. 5s. IN THE REIGN OF TERROR: The French Revolution. 5s. NO SURRENDER! A Tale of the Rising in La Vendée. 5s. A ROVING COMMISSION: A Story of the Hayti Insurrection. 6s. THE TIGER OF MYSORE: The War with Tippoo Saib. 6s. AT ABOUKIR AND ACRE: Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt. 5s. WITH MOORE AT CORUNNA: A Tale of the Peninsular War. 6s. UNDER WELLINGTON'S COMMAND: The Peninsular War. 6s. WITH COCHRANE THE DAUNTLESS: A Tale of his Exploits. 6s. THROUGH THE FRAY: A Story of the Luddite Riots. 6s. THROUGH RUSSIAN SNOWS: The Retreat from Moscow. 5s. ONE OF THE 28TH: A Story of Waterloo. 5s. IN GREEK WATERS: A Story of the Grecian War (1821). 6s. ON THE IRRAWADDY: A Story of the First Burmese War. 5s. THROUGH THE SIKH WAR: A Tale of the Punjaub. 6s. MAORI AND SETTLER: A Story of the New Zealand War. 5s. WITH LEE IN VIRGINIA: A Story of the American Civil War. 6s. BY SHEER PLUCK: A Tale of the Ashanti War. 5s. OUT WITH GARIBALDI: A Story of the Liberation of Italy. 5s. FOR NAME AND FAME: or, To Cabul with Roberts. 5s. THE DASH FOR KHARTOUM: A Tale of the Nile Expedition. 6s. CONDEMNED AS A NIHILIST: A Story of Escape from Siberia. 5s. WITH BULLER IN NATAL: or, A Born Leader. 6s. * * * * * [Illustration: GODFREY IS CAPTURED BY THE RUSSIAN POLICE.] * * * * * CONDEMNED AS A NIHILIST A STORY OF ESCAPE FROM SIBERIA BY G. A. HENTY Author of "Beric the Briton" "In Freedom's Cause" "The Lion of the North" "The Young Carthaginian" "Under Wellington's Command" &c. _ILLUSTRATED BY WALTER PAGET_ LONDON BLACKIE & SON, LIMITED, 50 OLD BAILEY, E.C. GLASGOW AND DUBLIN PREFACE. There are few difficulties that cannot be surmounted by patience, resolution, and pluck, and great as are the obstacles that nature and the Russian government oppose to an escape from the prisons of Siberia, such evasions have occasionally been successfully carried out, and that under far less advantageous circumstances than those under which the hero of this story undertook the venture. For the account of life in the convict establishments in Siberia I am indebted to the very valuable books by my friend the Rev. Dr. Lansdell, who has made himself thoroughly acquainted with Siberia, traversing the country from end to end and visiting all the principal prisons. He conversed not only with officials, but with many of the prisoners and convicts, and with Russian and foreign residents in the country, and his testimony as to the management of the prisons and the condition of the convicts is confirmed by other independent writers personally cognizant of the facts, and like him able to converse fluently in the language, and writing from intimate knowledge of the subject. G. A. HENTY. CONTENTS. CHAP. Page I. A GREAT CHANGE, 11 II. A CAT'S-PAW, 33 III. A HUNTING PARTY, 52 IV. A PRISONER, 67 V. AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE, 86 VI. AN ESCAPE, 104 VII. THE BURIAT'S CHILD, 123 VIII. THE MINES OF KARA, 142 IX. PRISON LIFE, 163 X. PREPARATIONS FOR FLIGHT, 182 XI. AFLOAT, 202 XII. WINTER, 222 XIII. HUNTING, 242 XIV. THE BREAK-UP OF WINTER, 262 XV. COASTING, 282 XVI. A SAMOYEDE ENCAMPMENT, 302 XVII. A SEA FIGHT, 322 XVIII. HOME AGAIN, 339 ILLUSTRATIONS. Page GODFREY IS CAPTURED BY THE RUSSIAN POLICE, _FRONTIS._ 70 A SUPPER OF ROASTED SQUIRRELS, 121 GODFREY PUNISHES KOBYLIN IN THE CONVICT PRISON, 166 SPEARING FISH BY TORCH-LIGHT, 218 GODFREY BRINGS DOWN AN ELK, 245 THE SLAUGHTERED WOLVES, 259 LUKA FACES THE BEAR, 277 GODFREY AND LUKA ESCAPING FROM THE SAMOYEDES, 318 MAP OF RUSSIAN EMPIRE, 80 CONDEMNED AS A NIHILIST. CHAPTER I. A GREAT CHANGE. Half a dozen boys were gathered in one of the studies at Shrewsbury. A packed portmanteau and the general state of litter on the floor was sufficient to show that it was the last day of term. "Well, I am awfully sorry you are going, Bullen; we shall all miss you. You would certainly have been in the football team next term; it is a nuisance altogether." "It is a nuisance; and I am beastly sorry I am leaving. Of course I have known for some time that I should be going out to Russia; but I did not think the governor would have sent me until after I had gone through the school. His letter a fortnight ago was a regular stumper. I thought I should have had another year and a half or two years, and, of course, that is just the jolliest part of school life. However, it cannot be helped." "You talk the language, don't you, Bullen?" "Well, I used to talk it, but I don't remember much about it now. You see I have been home six years. I expect I shall pick it up again fast enough. I should not mind it so much if the governor were out there still; but you see he came home for good two years ago. Still it won't be like going to a strange place altogether; and as he has been living there so long, I shall soon get to know lots of the English there. Still I do wish I could have had a couple of years more at Shrewsbury. I should have been content to have gone out then." "Well, it is time for us to be starting. I can hear the omnibus." In a few minutes the omnibus was filled with luggage inside and out; the lads started to walk to the station. As the train drew up there were hearty good-byes, and then the train steamed out of the station, the compartment in which Godfrey Bullen had taken his seat being filled with boys going, like himself, straight through to town. All were in high spirits, and Bullen, who had felt sorry at leaving school for the last time, was soon as merry as any of them. "You must mind what you are up to, Bullen," one of his companions said. "They are terrible fellows those Nihilists, they say." "They won't hurt Bullen," another put in, "unless he goes into the secret police. I should say he would make a good sort of secret policeman." "No, no; he is more likely to turn a Nihilist." "Bosh!" Bullen said, laughing. "I am not likely to turn a secret policeman; but I am more likely to do that than to turn Nihilist. I hate revolutionists and assassins, and all those sort of fellows." "Yes, we all know that you are a Tory, Bullen; but people change, you know. I hope we shall never see among the lists of Nihilists tried for sedition and conspiracy, and sentenced to execution, the name of one Godfrey Bullen." "Oh, they wouldn't execute Bullen!" another said; "they would send him to Siberia. Bullen's always good at fighting an uphill game, and he would show off to great advantage in a chain-gang. Do they crop their hair there, Bullen, and put on a gray suit, as I saw them at work in Portsmouth dockyard last year?" "I am more likely to see you working in a chain-gang at Portsmouth, Wilkinson, when I come back, than I am to form part of a convict gang in Siberia--at any rate for being a Nihilist. I won't say about other things, for I suppose there is no saying what a fellow may come to. I don't suppose any of the men who get penal servitude for forgery, and swindling, and so on, ever have any idea, when they are sixteen, that that is what they are coming to. At present I don't feel any inclination that way." "I should say you were not likely to turn forger anyhow, Bullen, whatever you take to." "Why is that, Parker?" "Because you write such a thundering bad hand that you would never be able to imitate anyone else's signature, unless he couldn't go farther than making a cross for his name, and the betting is about even that you would blot that." There was a roar of laughter, for Bullen's handwriting was a perpetual source of trouble to him, and he was continually losing marks for his exercises in consequence. He joined heartily in the laugh. "It is an awful nuisance that handwriting of mine," he said, "especially when one is going to be a merchant, you know. The governor has talked two or three times about my going to one of those fellows who teach you to write copperplate in twenty lessons. I shouldn't be surprised if he does let me have a course these holidays. I should not mind if he does, for my writing is disgusting." "Never mind, Bullen; bad handwriting is a sign of genius, you know. You have never shown any particular genius yet, except for rowing and boxing, and I suppose that is muscular genius; but you may blossom out in a new line some day." "I don't want to disturb the harmony of this last meeting, Parker, or I should bring my muscular genius into play at your expense." "No, no, Bullen," another boy said, "you keep that for Russia. Fancy Bullen polishing off a gigantic Cossack, or defending the Czar's life against half a dozen infuriated Nihilists. That would be the thing, Bullen. It would be better than trade any day. Why, you would get an estate as big as an English county, with ten thousand serfs, and sacks upon sacks of roubles." "What bosh you fellows talk!" Bullen laughed. "There is one thing I do expect I shall learn in Russia, and that is to skate. Fancy six months of regular skating, instead of a miserable three or four days. I shall meet some of you fellows some day at the Round Pond, and there you will be just working away at the outside edge, and I shall be joining in those skating-club figures and flying round and round like a bird." "What birds fly round and round, Bullen?" "Lots of them do, as you would know, Jordan, if you kept your eyes open, instead of being always on the edge of going to sleep. Swallows do, and eagles. Never mind, you fellows will turn yellow with jealousy when you see me." And so they laughed and joked until they reached London. Then there was another hearty good-bye all round, and in a couple of minutes they were speeding in hansoms to their various destinations. Godfrey Bullen's was Eccleston Square. His father was now senior partner in a firm that carried on a considerable business with the east of Europe. He had, when junior partner, resided at St. Petersburg, as the firm had at that time large dealings in the Baltic. From various causes this trade had fallen off a good deal, and the firm had dealt more largely with Odessa and the southern ports. Consequently, when at the death of the senior partner Mr. Bullen returned to England to take up the principal management of the affairs of the firm, it was not deemed advisable to continue the branch at St. Petersburg, and Ivan Petrovytch, a Russian trader of good standing, had been appointed their agent there. The arrangement had not worked quite satisfactorily. Petrovytch was an excellent agent as far as he went. The business he did was sound, and he was careful and conscientious; but he lacked push and energy, had no initiative, and would do nothing on his own responsibility. Mr. Bullen had all along intended that Godfrey should, on leaving school, go for a few years to Russia, and should, in time, occupy the same position there that he himself had done; but he had now determined that this should take place earlier than he had before intended. He thought that Godfrey would now more speedily pick up the language again, than if he remained another two or three years in England, and that in five or six years' time he might be able to represent the firm there, either in conjunction with Ivan Petrovytch or by himself. Therefore, ten days before the breaking-up of the school for the long holidays, he had written to Godfrey, telling him that he should take him away at the end of the term, and that in two or three months' time he would go out to St. Petersburg. Mr. Bullen's family consisted of two girls in addition to Godfrey. Hilda, the elder, was seventeen, a year older than the lad, while Ella was two years his junior. "Well, Godfrey," his father said, as, after the first greeting, they sat down to dinner, which had been kept back for half an hour for his arrival, "you did not seem very enthusiastic in your reply to my letter." "I did not feel very enthusiastic, father," Godfrey replied. "Of course one's two last years at school are just the jolly time, and I was really very sorry to leave. Still, of course you know what is best for me; and I dare say I shall get on very well at St. Petersburg." "I have no doubt of that, Godfrey. I have arranged for you to live with Mr. Petrovytch, as you will regain the language much more quickly in a Russian family than you would in an English one; besides, it will be handy for your work. In Russia merchants' offices are generally in their houses, and it is so with him; but, of course, you will know most of the English families. I shall write to several of my old friends, and I am sure they will do all they can for you; but I shall write more to my Russian acquaintances than to my English. The last are sure to call upon you when they hear you have come out; but it is not so easy to get a footing in Russian families, and you might be some time before you make acquaintances that way. Besides, it is much better for you to be principally in the Russian set than in the English, in the first place, because of the language; and in the second, because you will get a much better acquaintance with the country in general with them than among the English. "There are not many English lads of your own age out there--very few indeed; and those nearest your age would be young clerks. I have nothing whatever to say against young clerks; but, as a rule, they consort together, spend their evenings in each others' rooms or in playing billiards, or otherwise amuse themselves, and so learn very little of the language and nothing of the people. It is unfortunate that it should be so; but they are not altogether to blame, for, as I have said, the Russians, although friendly enough with Englishmen in business, in the club, and so on, do not as a rule invite them to their houses; and therefore the English, especially the class I am speaking of, are almost forced to associate entirely with each other and form a sort of colony quite apart from native society. I was fortunate enough to make some acquaintances among them soon after I went out, and your mother and I were much more in Russian society than is usual with our countrymen there. I found great advantage from it, and shall be glad for you to do the same. You will have one very great advantage, that you will be able to speak Russian fluently in a short time." "I don't think I remember much about it now, father." "I dare say not, Godfrey; that is to say, you know it, but you have lost a good deal of the facility of speaking it. You have always got on fairly enough with it when we have spoken it occasionally during your holidays since we have been in England, and in a very few weeks you will find that it has completely come back to you. You spoke it as you did English, indeed better, when you came over to school when you were ten, and in six years one does not forget a language. If you had been another five or six years older, no doubt you would have lost it a good deal; but even then you would have learnt it very much more quickly than you would have done had you never spoken it. Your mother and the girls have been grumbling at me a good deal for sending you away so soon." "It is horrid, father," Hilda said. "We have always looked forward so to Godfrey's coming home; and of course it would be better still as he got older. We could have gone about everywhere with him; and we shall miss him especially when we go away in summer." "Well, you must make the most of him this time then," her father said. "Have you settled where we are going?" Godfrey asked. "No, we would not settle until you came home, Godfrey," Mrs. Bullen said. "As this was to be your last holiday we thought we would give you the choice." "Then I vote for some quiet sea-side place, mother. We went to Switzerland last year, and as I am going abroad for ever so long I would rather stop at home now; and, besides, I would rather be quiet with you all, instead of always travelling about and going to places. Only, of course if the girls would rather go abroad, I don't mind." However, it was settled that it should be as Godfrey wished. "But I do think, father," Godfrey said, "that it will be a good thing if I had lessons in writing from one of those fellows who guarantee to teach you in a few lessons. I suppose that is all bosh; but if I got their system and worked at it, it might do me good. I really do write badly." The girls laughed. "I don't think that quite describes it, Godfrey," his father said. "If anyone asked me about your accomplishments I should say that you knew a good deal of Latin and Greek, that you had a vague idea of English, and that you could read, but unfortunately you were quite unable to write. According to my idea it is perfectly scandalous that at the great schools such an essential as writing is altogether neglected, while years are spent over Greek, which is of no earthly use when you have once left school. I suppose the very worst writers in the world are men who have been educated in public schools. "Well, I am glad you have had the good sense to suggest it, Godfrey. I had thought of it myself, but I was afraid you would think it was spoiling your last holidays at home. I will see about it to-morrow. I cannot get away very well for another fortnight. If you have a dozen lessons before we go, you can practise while we are away; and mind, from to-day we will talk nothing but Russian when we are alone." This had been indeed a common habit in the family since they had come home two years before, as the two girls and Mr. and Mrs. Bullen spoke Russian as fluently as English, and Mr. Bullen thought it was just as well that they should not let it drop altogether. Indeed on their travels in Switzerland they had several times come across Russians, and had made pleasant acquaintances from their knowledge of that language. The holidays passed pleasantly at Weymouth. Godfrey practised two hours a day steadily at the system of handwriting: and although he was, at the end of the holidays, very far from attaining the perfection shown in the examples produced by his teachers of the marvels they had effected in many of their pupils, he did improve vastly, and wrote a fair current hand instead of the almost undecipherable scrawl that had so puzzled and annoyed a succession of masters at Shrewsbury. After another month spent in London, getting his clothes and outfit, Godfrey started for St. Petersburg. On his last evening at home his father had a serious talk with him. "I have told Petrovytch," he said, "that you may possibly some day take up the agency with him, but that nothing is decided as to that at present, and that it will all depend upon circumstances. However, in any case, you will learn the ins and outs of the trade there; and if, at the end of a few years, you think that you would rather work by yourself than with him, I can send out a special clerk to work with you. On the other hand, it is possible that I may require you at home here. Venables has no family, and is rather inclined to take it easy. Possibly in a few years he may retire altogether, and I may want you at home. At five or six and twenty you should be able to undertake the management of the Russian part of the business, running out there occasionally to see that everything goes on well. I hope I need not tell you to be steady. There is a good deal too much drinking goes on out there, arising, no doubt, from the fact that the young men have no family society there, and nothing particular to do when work is over. "Stick to the business, lad. You will find Petrovytch himself a thoroughly good fellow. Of course he has Russian ways and prejudices, but he is less narrow than most of his countrymen of that class. Above all things, don't express any opinion you may feel about public affairs--at any rate outside the walls of the house. The secret police are everywhere, and a chance word might get you into a very serious scrape. As you get on you will find a good deal that you do not like. Even in business there is no getting a government contract, or indeed a contract at all, without bribing right and left. It is disgusting, but business cannot be done without it. The whole system is corrupt and rotten, and you will find that every official has his price. However, you won't have anything to do with this for the present. If I were you I should work for an hour or two a day with a German master. There are a great many Germans there, and you will find a knowledge of the language very useful to you. You see your Russian has pretty nearly come back to you during the last two months, and you will very soon speak it perfectly; so you will have no trouble about that." Godfrey found the long railway journey across the flat plains of Germany very dull, as he was unable to exchange a word with his fellow-passengers; but as soon as he crossed the Russian frontier he felt at home again, and enjoyed the run through the thickly-wooded country lying between Wilna and St. Petersburg. As he stepped out at the station everything seemed to come back vividly to his memory. It was late in October and the first snow had fallen, and round the station were a crowd of sledges drawn by rough little horses. Avoiding the importunities of the drivers of the hotel vehicles he hailed an Isvostchik in furred cap and coat lined with sheepskin. His portmanteaus were corded at the back of the sledge; he jumped up into the seat behind the driver, pulled the fur rug over his legs, and said, "Drive to the Vassili Ostrov, 52, Ulitsa Nicolai." The driver gave a peculiar cry, cracked his whip half a dozen times, making a noise almost as loud as the discharge of a pistol, and the horse went off at a sharp trot. "I thought your excellency was a foreigner," the driver said, "but I see you are one of us." "No, I am an Englishman, but I lived here till I was ten years old. The snow has begun earlier than usual, has it not?" "It won't last," the Isvostchik said. "Sometimes we have a week at this time of year, but it is not till December that it sets in in earnest. We may have droskies out again to-morrow instead of the sledges." "The sledges are the pleasantest," Godfrey said. "Yes, your excellency, for those that travel, but not for us. At night when we are waiting we can get into the drosky and sleep, while it is terrible without shelter. There are many of us frozen to death every winter." Godfrey felt a sense of keen enjoyment as the sledge glided along. There were many rough bumps and sharp swings, for the snow was not deep enough to cover thoroughly the roughness of the road below; but the air was brisk and the sun shone brightly, and he looked with pleasure at the people and costumes, which seemed, to his surprise, perfectly familiar to him. He was quite sorry when the journey came to an end at the house of Ivan Petrovytch. The merchant, whose office was on the ground-floor and who occupied the floor above (the rest of the house being let off by floors to other families), came out to greet him. "I am glad to see you, Godfrey Bullen," he said. "I should have sent to the station to meet you, but your good father did not say whether you would arrive by the morning or evening train; and as my driver did not know you, he would have missed you. I hope that all has gone well on the journey. Paul," he said to a man who had followed him out, "carry these trunks upstairs." After paying the driver Godfrey followed his host to the floor above. Petrovytch was a portly man, with a pleasant but by no means good-looking face. "Wife," he said as he entered the sitting-room, "this is Godfrey Bullen; I will leave him in your hands for the present, as I have some business that I must complete before we close." "My name," Mrs. Petrovytch said, "is Catharine. You know in this country we always address each other by our names. The high-born may use titles, but simple people use the Christian name and the family name unless they are very intimate, and then the Christian name only. I heard you speaking to my husband as you came in, so that you have not forgotten our language. I should have thought that you would have done so. I can remember you as quite a little fellow before you went away." "I have been speaking it for the last two months at home," Godfrey said, "and it has nearly come back to me." "And your father and mother and your sisters, are they all well?" "They are quite well, and my father and mother begged me to give their kind regards to you." At this moment the servant came in with the samovar, or tea-urn. "It is four o'clock now; we dine at five o'clock, when the office is closed. Many dine at one, but my husband likes it when he has done his work, as then he does not need to hurry." After drinking a tumbler of tea and eating a flat-cake or two with it, Godfrey went to his room to have a wash after his long journey, and to unpack some of his things. He thought that he should like both Petrovytch and his wife, but that the evenings would be dull if he had to spend them in the house. Of this, however, he had but little fear, for he was sure that between his father's friends and the acquaintances he might himself make he should be out as much as he liked. In the course of the next week Godfrey called at the houses of the various people to whom he had letters of introduction, and left them with the hall porter. His host told him that he thought he had better take a fortnight to go about the capital and see the sights before he settled down to work at the office; and as not only the gentlemen with whom he had left letters of introduction and his card--for in Russia strangers always call first--but many others of his father's friends called or invited him to their houses, he speedily made a large number of acquaintances. At the end of the fortnight he took his place in the office. At first he was of very little use there; for although he could talk and understand Russian as spoken, he had entirely forgotten the written characters, and it took him some little time before he could either read the business correspondence or make entries in the office books. Ivan Petrovytch did his best to assist him, and in the course of a month he began to master the mysteries of Russian writing. At five o'clock the office closed. Godfrey very frequently dined out, but if he had no engagement he took his meal with the merchant and his wife, and then sallied out and went either alone or with some of his acquaintances to a Russian theatre. With December, winter set in in earnest. The waters were frozen, and skating began. The season at St. Petersburg commenced about the same time, and as Godfrey was often sent with messages or letters to other business houses he had an opportunity of seeing the streets of St. Petersburg by day as well as by night. He was delighted with the scene on the Nevski Prospekt, the principal street of St. Petersburg. The footways were crowded with people: the wealthy in high boots, coats lined with sable, and caps to match; the poorer in equally ample coats, but with linings of sheep, fox, or rabbit skins, with the national Russian cap of fur with velvet top, and with fur-lined hoods, which were often drawn up over the head. The shops were excellent, reminding Godfrey rather of Paris than London. But the chief interest of the scene lay in the roadway. There were vehicles of every description, from the heavy sledge of the peasant, piled up with logs for fuel, or carrying, perhaps, the body of an elk shot in the woods, to the splendid turn-outs of the nobles with their handsome fur wraps, their coachmen in the national costume, and horses covered with brown, blue, or violet nets almost touching the ground, to prevent the snow from being thrown up from the animals' hoofs into the faces of those in the sledge. The harness was in most cases more or less decorated with bells, which gaily tinkled in the still air as the sledges dashed along. Most struck was Godfrey with the vehicles of the nobles who adhered to old Russian customs. The sledge was drawn by three horses; the one in the centre was trained to trot, while the two outside went at a canter. The heads of the latter were bent half round, so that they looked towards the side, or even almost behind them as they went. An English acquaintance to whom Godfrey expressed his surprise the first time he saw one of these sledges replied, "Yes, that is the old Russian pattern; and, curiously enough, if you look at Greek bas-reliefs and sculptures of the chariot of Phoebus, or at any other representations of chariots with three or four horses, you will see that the animals outside turn their heads in a similar manner." "But it must be horribly uncomfortable for the horses to have their heads turned round like that." "It is the effect of training. They are always tied up to the stables with their heads pulled in that way, until it becomes a second nature to go with them in that position." "It is a very curious idea," Godfrey said, "but it certainly looks nice. What magnificent beards all the drivers in the good sledges have!" "Yes, that again is an old Russian custom. A driver with a big beard is considered an absolute necessity for a well-appointed turn-out, and the longer and fuller the beard the higher the wages a man will command and the greater the pride of his employer." "It seems silly," Godfrey said. "But there is no doubt those fellows do look wonderfully imposing with their fur caps and their long blue caftans and red sashes and those splendid beards. They remind me of pictures of Neptune. Certainly I never saw such beards in England." Besides these vehicles there were crowds of public sledges, driven by the Isvostchiks, long rough country sledges laden perhaps with a dozen peasant women returning from market, light well-got-up vehicles of English and other merchants, dashing turn-outs carrying an officer or two of high rank, and others filled with ladies half buried in rich furs. The air was tremulous with the music of countless bells, and broken by the loud cracking of whips, with which the faster vehicles heralded their approach. These whips had short handles, but very long heavy thongs; and Godfrey observed that, however loud he might crack this weapon, it was very seldom indeed that a Russian driver ever struck one of his horses with it. Sometimes when Ivan Petrovytch told him that there was little to be done in the office, and that he need not return for an hour or two, Godfrey would stroll into the Isaac or Kasan cathedrals, both splendid structures, and wonder at the taste that marred their effect, by the profusion of the gilding lavished everywhere. He was delighted by the singing, which was unaccompanied by instruments, the bass voices predominating, and which certainly struck him as being much finer than anything he had ever heard in an English cathedral. There was no lack of amusement in the evening. Some of his English friends at once put Godfrey up as a member of the Skating Club. This club possessed a large garden well planted with trees. In this was an artificial lake of considerable extent, broken by wooded islets. This was always lit up of an evening by coloured lights, and twice in the week was thrown open upon a small payment to the public, when a military band played, and the grounds were brilliantly illuminated. The scene was an exceedingly gay one, and the gardens were frequented by the rank and fashion of St. Petersburg. The innumerable lights were reflected by the snow that covered the ground and by the white masses that clung to the boughs of the leafless trees. The ice was covered with skaters, male and female, the latter in gay dresses, tight-fitting jackets trimmed with fur, and dainty little fur caps. Many of the former were in uniform, and the air was filled with merry laughter and the ringing sound of innumerable skates. Sometimes parties of acquaintances executed figures, but for the most part they moved about in couples, the gentleman holding the lady's hand, or sometimes placing his arm round her waist as if dancing. Very often Godfrey spent the evening at the houses of one or other of his Russian or English friends, and occasionally went to the theatre. Sometimes he spent a quiet evening at home. He liked Catharine Petrovytch. She was an excellent housewife, and devoted to the comfort of her husband; but when not engaged in household cares she seldom cared to go out, and passed her time for the most part on the sofa. She was, like most other Russian ladies when at home and without visitors, very careless and untidy in her dress. Among the acquaintances of whom Godfrey saw most were two young students. One of them was the son of a trader in Moscow, the other of a small landed proprietor. He had met them for the first time at a fair held on the surface of the Neva, and had been introduced to them by a fellow-student of theirs, a member of a family with whom Godfrey was intimate. Having met another acquaintance he had left the party, and Godfrey had spent the afternoon on the ice with Akim Soushiloff and Petroff Stepanoff. He found them pleasant young men. He was, they told him, the first Englishman they had met, and asked many questions about his country. He met them several times afterwards, and one day they asked him if he would come up to their room. "It is a poor place," one said laughing. "But you know most of us students are poor, and have to live as best we can." "It makes no odds to me," Godfrey said. "It was a pretty bare place I had when I was at school. I shall be very glad to come up." The room which the students shared was a large one, at the top of a house in a narrow street. It was simply furnished enough, containing but two beds, a deal table, four chairs, and the indispensable stove, which kept the room warm and comfortable. "We are in funds just at present," Akim said. "Petroff has had a remittance, and so you find the stove well alight, which is not always the case." "But how do you manage to exist without a fire?" "We don't trouble the room much then," Petroff said. "We walk about till we are dead tired out, and then come up and sleep in one bed together for warmth, and heap all the coverings from the other bed over us. Oh, we get on very well! Food is cheap here if you know where to get it; fuel costs more than food. Now which will you take, tea or vodka?" Godfrey declared for tea. Some of the water from a great pot standing on the top of the stove was poured into the samovar. Some glowing embers were taken from the stove and placed in the urn, and in a few minutes the water was boiling, and three tumblers of tea with a slice of lemon floating on the top were soon steaming on the table. The conversation first turned upon university life in Russia, and then Petroff began to ask questions about English schools and universities, and then the subject changed to English institutions in general. "What a different life to ours!" Akim said. "And the peasants, are they comfortable?" "Well, their lives are pretty hard ones," Godfrey acknowledged. "They have to work hard and for long hours, and the pay is poor. But then, on the other hand, they generally have their cottages at a very low rent, with a good bit of garden and a few fruit trees. They earn a little extra money at harvest time, and though their pay is smaller, I think on the whole they are better off and happier than many of the working people in the towns." "And they are free to go where they like?" "Certainly they are free, but as a rule they don't move about much." "Then if they have a bad master they can leave him and go to someone else?" "Oh, yes! They would go to some other farmer in the neighbourhood. But there are seldom what you may call bad masters. The wages are always about the same through a district, and the hours of work, and so on; so that one master can't be much better or worse than another, except in point of temper; and if a man were very bad tempered of course the men would leave him and work somewhere else, so he would be the loser, as he would soon only get the very worst hands in the neighbourhood to work for him." "And they are not beaten?" "Beaten! I should think not," Godfrey said. "Nobody is beaten with us, though I think it would be a capital thing if, instead of shutting up people in prison for small crimes, they had a good flogging. It would do them a deal more good, and it would be better for their wives and families, who have to get on as best they can while they are shut up." "And nobody is beaten at all?" "No; there used to be flogging in the army and navy, but it was very rare, and is now abolished." "And not even a lord can flog his peasants?" "Certainly not. If a lord struck a peasant the peasant would certainly hit him back again, and if he didn't feel strong enough to do that he would have him up before the magistrates and he would get fined pretty heavily." "And how do they punish political prisoners?" "There are no political prisoners. As long as a man keeps quiet and doesn't get up a row, he may have any opinions he likes; he may argue in favour of a republic, or he may be a socialist or anything he pleases; but, of course, if he tried to kick up a row, attack the police, or made a riot or anything of that sort he would be punished for breaking the law, but that would have nothing to do with his politics." The two young men looked in surprise at each other. "But if they printed a paper and attacked the government?" Akim asked. "Oh, they do that! there are as many papers pitch into the government as there are in favour of the government; parties are pretty equally divided, you see, and the party that is out always abuses the party which is in power." "And even that is lawful?" "Certainly it is. You can abuse the government as much as you like, say that the ministers are a parcel of incompetent fools, and so on; but, of course, you cannot attack them as to their private life and character any more than you can anyone else, because then you would render yourself liable to an action for libel." "And you can travel where you like, in the country and out of the country, without official permits or passports?" "Yes, there is nothing like that known in England. Every man can go where he likes, and live where he likes, and do anything he likes, providing that it does not interfere with the rights of other people." "Ah! shall we ever come to this in Russia, Akim?" Petroff said. Akim made no answer, but Godfrey replied for him. "No doubt you will in time, Petroff; but you see liberties like these do not grow up in a day. We had serfs and vassals in England at one time, and feudal barons who could do pretty much what they chose, and it was only in the course of centuries that these things got done away with." At this moment there was a knock at the door. "It is Katia," Akim said, jumping up from his seat and opening the door. A young woman entered. She was pleasant and intelligent looking. "Katia, this is an English gentleman, a friend of ours, who has been telling us about his country. Godfrey, this is my cousin Katia; she teaches music in the houses of many people of good family." "I did not expect to find visitors here," the girl said smiling. "And how do you like our winter? it is a good deal colder than you are accustomed to." "It is a great deal more pleasant," Godfrey said: "I call it glorious weather. It is infinitely better than alternate rains and winds, with just enough frost occasionally to make you think you are going to do some skating, and then a thaw." "You are extravagant," the girl said, looking round; "it is a long time since I have felt the room as warm as this. I suppose Petroff has got his allowance?" "Yes, and a grumbling letter. My father has a vague idea that in some way or other I ought to pick up my living, though he never offers a suggestion as to how I should do it." The young woman went to the cupboard, fetched another tumbler and poured herself out some tea, and then chatted gaily about St. Petersburg, her pupils, and their parents. "Do you live at the house of one of your pupils?" Godfrey asked. "Oh no!" she said. "I don't mind work, but I like to be free when work is over. I board in an honest family, and live in a little room at the top of the house which is all my own and where I can see my friends." After chatting for some time longer Godfrey took his leave. As soon as he had gone the girl's manner changed. "Do you think you are wise to have him here, Akim?" "Why not?" the student asked in turn. "He is frank and agreeable, he is respectable, and even you will allow that it would be safer walking with him than some we know; we do not talk politics with him." "For all that I am sorry, Akim. You know how it will be; we shall get him into trouble. It is our fate; we have a great end in view; we risk our own lives, and although for the good of the cause we must not hesitate even if others suffer, I do hate with all my heart that others should be involved in our fortunes." "This is not like you, Katia," Petroff said. "I have heard you say your maxim is 'At any cost,' and you have certainly lived up to it." "Yes, and I shall live up to it," she said firmly; "but it hurts sometimes, Petroff; it hurt me just now when I thought that that lad laughing and chatting with us had no idea that he had better have thrust his hand into that stove than have given it to us. I do not shrink; I should use him as I should use anyone else, as an instrument if it were needful, but don't suppose that I like it." "I don't think there is any fear of our doing him harm," Akim said; "he is English, and would find no difficulty in showing that he knew nothing of us save as casual acquaintances; they might send him out of the country, but that would be all." "It would all depend," she said, "upon how he fell into their hands. If you happened to be arrested only as you were walking with him down the Nevski Prospekt he would be questioned, of course, but as soon as they learned who he was and that he had nothing to do with you, they would let him go. But if he were with us, say here, when we were pounced upon, and you had no time to pull the trigger of the pistol pointing into that keg of powder in the cupboard, he would be hurried away with us to one of the fortresses, and the chances are that not a soul would ever know what had become of him. Still it cannot be helped now; he may be useful, and as we give our own lives, so we must not shrink from giving others'. But this is not what I came here to talk to you about; have you heard of the arrest of Michaelovich?" "No," they both exclaimed, leaping from their seats. "It happened at three o'clock this morning," Katia said. "They surrounded the house and broke in suddenly, and rushed down into the cellar and found him at work. He shot two of them, and then he was beaten down and badly wounded." "Where were the other two?" Akim asked. "He sent them away but an hour before, but he went on working himself to complete the number of hand-bills. Of course he was betrayed. I don't think there are six people who knew where the press was; even I didn't know." "Where did you hear of it, Katia?" "Feodorina Samuloff told me; you know she often helps Michaelovich to work at the press; she thinks it must have been either Louka or Gasin. Why should Michaelovich have sent them away when he hadn't finished work if one or the other of them had not made some excuse so as to get out of the way before the police came? But that is nothing, there will be time to find out which is the traitor; they know nothing, either of them, except that they worked at the secret press with him; they were never much trusted. But Michaelovich is a terrible loss, he was always daring and full of expedients." "They will get nothing from him," Petroff said. "Not they," she agreed. "When do they ever get anything out of us? One of the outer-circle fellows like Louka and Gasin, who know nothing, who are instruments and nothing more, may tell all they know for gold, or for fear of the knout, but never once have they learned anything from one who knows. Fortunately the press was a very old one and there was but little type there, only just enough for printing small hand-bills; we have two others ready to set up." "Were there any papers there?" "No, Michaelovich was too careful for that." "I hear that old Libka died in prison yesterday," Akim said. "He is released from his suffering," Katia said solemnly. "Anything else, Akim?" "Yes, a batch of prisoners start for Siberia to-morrow, and there are ten of us among them." "Well, be careful for the next few days, Akim," Katia said; "don't do anything in the schools, it will not be long now before all is ready to strike a blow, and it is not worth while to risk anything until after that. I have orders that we are all to keep perfectly quiet till the plans are settled and we each get our instructions. Now I must go, I have two lessons to give this afternoon. It tries one a little to be talking to children about quavers and semiquavers when one's head is full of great plans, and you know that at any moment a policeman may tap you on the shoulder and take you off to the dungeons of St. Nicholas, from which one will never return unless one is carried out, or is sent to Siberia, which would be worse. Be careful; the police have certainly got scent of something, they are very active at present;" and with a nod she turned and left the room. "She is a brave girl," Akim said. "I think the women make better conspirators than we do, Petroff. Look at her. She was a little serious to-day because of Michaelovich, but generally she is in high spirits, and no one would dream that she thought of anything but her pupils and pleasure. Then there is Feodorina Samuloff. She works all day, I believe, in a laundry, and she looks as impassive as if she had been carved out of soap. Yet she is ready to go on working all night if required, and if she had orders she would walk into the Winter Palace and throw down a bomb (that would kill her as well as everyone else within its reach) with as much coolness as if she was merely delivering a message." CHAPTER II. A CAT'S-PAW. One evening a fortnight later Godfrey went with two young Englishmen to a masked ball at the Opera. It was a brilliant scene. Comparatively few of the men were masked or in costume, but many of the ladies were so. Every other man was in uniform of some kind, and the floor of the house was filled with a gay laughing crowd, while the boxes were occupied by ladies of the highest rank, several of the imperial family being present. He speedily became separated from his companions, and after walking about for an hour he became tired of the scene, and was about to make his way towards the entrance when a hand was slipped behind his arm. As several masked figures had joked him on walking about so vaguely by himself, he thought that this was but another jest. "You are just the person I wanted," the mask said. "I think you have mistaken me for some one else, lady," he replied. "Not at all. Now put up your arm and look as if I belong to you. Nonsense! do as you are told, Godfrey Bullen." "Who are you who know my name?" Godfrey laughed, doing as he was ordered, for he had no doubt that the masked woman was a member of one of the families whom he had visited. "You don't know who I am?" she asked. "How should I when I can see nothing but your eyes through those holes?" "I am Katia, the cousin of your friend Akim." "Oh, of course!" Godfrey said, a little surprised at meeting the music mistress in such an assembly. "I fancied I knew your voice, though I could not remember where I had heard it. And now what can I do for you?" The young woman hesitated. "We have got up a little mystification," she said after a pause, "and I am sure I can trust you; besides, you don't know the parties. There is a gentleman here who is supposed to be with his regiment at Moscow; but there is a sweetheart in the case, and you know when there are sweethearts people do foolish things." "I have heard so," Godfrey laughed, "though I don't know anything about it myself, for I sha'n't begin to think of such luxuries as sweethearts for years to come." "Well, he is here masked," the girl went on, "and unfortunately the colonel of his regiment is here, and some ill-natured person--we fancy it is a rival of his--has told the colonel. He is furious about it, and declares that he will catch him and have him tried by court-martial for being absent without leave. The only thing is, he is not certain as to his information." "Well, what can I do?" Godfrey asked. "How can I help him?" "You can help if you like, and that without much trouble to yourself. He is at present in the back of that empty box on the third tier. I was with him when I saw you down here, so I left him to say good-bye to his sweetheart alone, and ran down to fetch you, for I felt sure you would oblige me. What I thought was this: if you put his mask and cloak on--you are about the same height--it would be supposed that you are he. The colonel is waiting down by the entrance. He will come up to you and say, 'Captain Presnovich?' You will naturally say, 'By no means.' He will insist on your taking your mask off. This you will do, and he will, of course, make profuse apologies, and will believe that he has been altogether misinformed. In the meantime Presnovich will manage to slip out, and will go down by the early train to Moscow. It is not likely that the colonel will ever make any more inquiries about it, but if he does, some of Presnovich's friends will be ready to declare that he never left Moscow." "But can't he manage to leave his mask and cloak in the box and to slip away without them?" "No, that would never do. It is necessary that the colonel should see for himself that the man in the cloak, with the white and red bow pinned to it, is not the captain." "Very well, then, I will do it," Godfrey said. "It will be fun to see the colonel's face when he finds out his mistake; but mind I am doing it to oblige you." "I feel very much obliged," the girl said; "but don't you bring my name into it though." "How could I?" he laughed. "I do not see that I am likely to be cross-questioned in any way; but never fear, I will keep your counsel." By this time they had arrived at the door of the box. "Wait a moment," she said, "I will speak to him first." She was two minutes gone, and then opened the door and let him in. "I am greatly obliged to you, sir," a man said as he entered. "It is a foolish business altogether, but if you will enact my part for a few minutes you will get me out of an awkward scrape." "Don't mention it," Godfrey replied. "It will be a joke to laugh over afterwards." He placed the broad hat, to which the black silk mask was sewn, on his head, and Katia put the cloak on his shoulders. "I trust you," she said in a low voice as she walked with him to the top of the stairs. "There, I must go now. I had better see Captain Presnovich safely off, and then go and tell the young lady, who is a great friend of mine--it is for her sake I am doing it, you know, not for his--how nicely we have managed to throw dust in the colonel's eyes!" Regarding the matter as a capital joke, Godfrey went down-stairs and made his way to the entrance, expecting every moment to be accosted by the irascible colonel. No one spoke to him, however, and he began to imagine that the colonel must have gone to seek the captain elsewhere, and hoped that he would not meet him as he went down the stairs with Katia. He walked down the steps into the street. As he stepped on to the pavement a man seized him from behind, two others grasped his wrists, and before he knew what had happened he was run forward across the pavement to a covered sledge standing there and flung into it. His three assailants leapt in after him; the door was slammed; another man jumped on to the box with the driver; and two mounted men took their places beside it as it dashed off from the door. The men had again seized Godfrey's hands and held them firmly the instant they entered the carriage. "It is of no use your attempting to struggle," one of the men said, "there is an escort riding beside the sledge, and a dozen more behind it. There is no chance of a rescue, and I warn you you had best not open your lips; if you do, we will gag you." Godfrey was still half bewildered with the suddenness of the transaction. What had he been seized for? Who were the men who had got hold of him? and why were they gripping his wrists so tightly? He had heard of arbitrary treatment in the Russian army, but that a colonel should have a captain seized in this extraordinary way merely because he was absent from his post without leave was beyond anything he thought possible. "I thought I was going to have the laugh all on my side," he said to himself, "but so far it is all the other way." In ten minutes the carriage stopped for a moment, there was a challenge, then some gates were opened. Godfrey had already guessed his destination, and his feeling of discomfort had increased every foot he went. There was no doubt he was being taken to the fortress. "It seems to me that Miss Katia has got me into a horrible scrape of some kind," he said to himself. "What a fool I was to let myself be humbugged by the girl in that way!" Two men with lanterns were at the door of a building, at which the carriage, after passing into a large court-yard, drew up. Still retaining their grip on his wrists, two of the men walked beside him down a passage, while several others followed behind. An officer of high rank was sitting at the head of a table, one of inferior rank stood beside him, while at the end of the table were two others with papers and pens before them. "So you have captured him!" the general said eagerly. "Yes, your excellency," the man who had spoken to Godfrey in the carriage said respectfully. "Has he been searched?" "No, your excellency, the distance was so short, and I feared that he might wrench one of his hands loose. Moreover, I thought that you might prefer his being searched in your presence." "It is better so. Take off that disguise." As the hat and mask were removed the officer sprang to his feet and exclaimed, "Why, who is this? This is not the man you were ordered to arrest; you have made some confounded blunder." "I assure you, your excellency," the official said in trembling accents, "this is the only man who was there in the disguise we were told of. There, your excellency, is the bunch of white and red ribbons on his cloak." "And who are you, sir?" the general thundered. "My name, sir, is Godfrey Bullen. I reside with Ivan Petrovytch, a merchant living in the Vassili Ostrov." "But how come you mixed up in this business, sir?" the general exclaimed furiously. "How is it that you are thus disguised, and that you are wearing that bunch of ribbon? Beware how you answer me, sir, for this is a matter which concerns your life." "So far as I am concerned, sir," Godfrey said, "I am absolutely ignorant of having done any harm in the matter, and have not the most remote idea why I have been arrested. I may have behaved foolishly in allowing myself to take part in what I thought was a masquerade joke, but beyond that I have nothing to blame myself for. I went to the Opera-house, never having seen a masked ball before. I was alone, and being young and evidently a stranger, I was spoken to and joked by several masked ladies. Presently one of them came up to me. I had no idea who she was; she was closely masked, and I could see nothing of her face." He then repeated the request that had been made him. "Do you expect me to believe this ridiculous nonsense about this Captain Presnovich and his colonel?" "I can only say, sir, what I am telling you is precisely what happened, and that I absolutely believed it. It seemed to me a natural thing that a young officer might come to a ball to see a lady who perhaps he had no other opportunity of meeting alone. I see now that I was very foolish to allow myself to be mixed up in the affair; but I thought that it was a harmless joke, and so I did as this woman asked me." "Go on, sir," the general said in a tone of suppressed rage. "There is little more to tell, sir. I went up with this woman to the box she had pointed out, and there found this Captain Presnovich as I believed him to be. I put on his hat, mask, and cloak, walked down the stairs, and was leaving the Opera-house when I was arrested, and am even now wholly ignorant of having committed any offence." "A likely story," the general said sarcastically. "And this woman, did you see her face?" "No, sir, she was closely masked. I could not even see if she were young or old; and she spoke in the same disguised, squeaking sort of voice that all the others that had spoken to me used." "And that is your entire story, sir; you have nothing to add to it?" "Nothing whatever, sir. I have told you the simple truth." The general threw himself back in his chair, too exasperated to speak farther, but made a sign to the officer standing next to him to take up the interrogation. The questions were now formal. "Your name is Godfrey Bullen?" he asked. "It is." "Your nationality?" "British." "Your domicile?" Godfrey gave the address. "How long have you been in Russia?" "Four months." "What is your business?" "A clerk to Ivan Petrovytch." "How comes it that you speak Russian so well?" "I was born here, and lived up to the age of ten with my father, John Bullen, who was a well-known merchant here, and left only two years ago." "That will do," the general said impatiently. "Take him to his cell and search him thoroughly." Naturally the most minute search revealed nothing of an incriminating character. At length Godfrey was left alone in the cell, which contained only a single chair and a rough pallet. "I have put my foot in it somehow," he said to himself, "and I can't make head nor tail of it beyond the fact that I have made an ass of myself. Was the whole story a lie? Was the fellow's name Presnovich? if not, who was he? By the rage of the general, who, I suppose, is the chief of the police, it was evident he was frightfully disappointed that I wasn't the man he was looking for. Was this Presnovich somebody that girl Katia knew and wanted to get safely away? or was she made a fool of just as I was? She looked a bright, jolly sort of girl; but that goes for nothing in Russia, all sorts of people get mixed up in plots. If she was concerned in getting him away I suppose she fixed on me because, being English and a new-comer here, it would be easy for me to prove that I had nothing to do with plots or anything of that sort, whereas if a Russian had been in my place he might have got into a frightful mess over it. Well, I suppose it will all come right in the end. It is lucky that the weather has got milder or I should have had a good chance of being frozen to death; it is cold enough as it is." Resuming his clothes, which had been thrown down on the pallet, Godfrey drew the solitary rug over him, and in spite of the uncertainty of the position was soon fast asleep. He woke just as daylight was breaking, and was so bitterly cold that he was obliged to get up and stamp about the cell to restore circulation. Two hours later the cell door was opened and a piece of dark-coloured bread and a jug of water were handed in to him. "If this is prison fare I don't care how soon I am out of it," he said to himself as he munched the bread. "I wonder what it is made of! Rye!" The day passed without anyone coming near him save the jailer, who brought a bowl of thin broth and a ration of bread for his dinner. "Can't you get me another rug?" he asked the man. "If I have got to stop here for another night I shall have a good chance of being frozen to death." Just as it was getting dark the man came in again with another blanket and a flat earthenware pan half full of sand, on which was burning a handful or two of sticks; he placed a bundle of wood beside it. "That is more cheerful by a long way," Godfrey said to himself as the man, who had maintained absolute silence on each of his visits, left the cell. "No doubt they have been making a lot of inquiries about me, and find that I have not been in the habit of frequenting low company. I should not have had these indulgences if they hadn't. Well, it will be an amusement to keep this fire up. The wood is as dry as a bone luckily, or I should be smoked out in no time, for there is not much ventilation through that narrow loophole." The warmth of the fire and the additional blanket made all the difference, and in a couple of hours Godfrey was sound asleep. When he woke it was broad daylight, and although he felt cold it was nothing to what he had experienced on the previous morning. At about eleven o'clock, as near as he could guess, for his watch and everything had been removed when he was searched, the door was opened and a prison official with two warders appeared. By these he was conducted to the same room where he had been first examined. Neither of the officers who had then been there was present, but an elderly man sat at the centre of the table. "Godfrey Bullen," he said, "a careful investigation has been made into your antecedents, and with one exception, and that not, for various reasons, an important one, we have received a good report of you. Ivan Petrovytch tells us that you work in his office from breakfast-time till five in the afternoon, and that your evenings are at your own disposal, but that you generally dine with him. He gave us the names of the families with which you are acquainted, and where, as he understood, you spend your evenings when you are not at the Skating Club, where you generally go on Tuesdays and Fridays at least. We learn that you did spend your evenings with these families, and we have learned at the club that you are a regular attendant there two or three times a week, and that your general associates are:" and he read out a list which included, to Godfrey's surprise, the names of every one of his acquaintances there. "Therefore we have been forced to come to the conclusion that your story, incredible as it appeared, is a true one. That you, a youth and a foreigner, should have had the incredible levity to act in the way you describe, and to assume the disguise of a person absolutely unknown to you, upon the persuasion of a woman also absolutely unknown to you, well-nigh passes belief. Had you been older you would at once have been sent to the frontier; but as it is, the Czar, to whom the case has been specially submitted, has graciously allowed you to continue your residence here, the testimony being unanimous as to your father's position as a merchant, and to the prudence of his behaviour while resident here. But I warn you, Godfrey Bullen, that escapades of this kind, which may be harmless in England, are very serious matters here. Ignorantly, I admit, but none the less certainly, you have aided in the escape of a malefactor of the worst kind; and but for the proofs that have been afforded us that you were a mere dupe, the consequences would have been most serious to you, and even the fact of your being a foreigner would not have sufficed to save you from the hands of justice. You are now free to depart; but let this be a lesson to you, and a most serious one, never again to mix yourself up in any way with persons of whose antecedents you are ignorant, and in future to conduct yourself in all respects wisely and prudently." "It will certainly be a lesson to me, sir. I am heartily sorry that I was so foolish as to allow myself to be mixed up in such an affair, and think I can promise you that henceforth there will be no fault to be found in my conduct." In the ante-room Godfrey's watch, money, and the other contents of his pocket were restored to him. A carriage was in waiting for him at the outer door, and he was driven rapidly to the house of the merchant. "This is a nice scrape into which you have got yourself, Godfrey," Ivan Petrovytch said as he entered. "It is lucky for you that you are not a Russian. But how on earth have you got mixed up in a plot? We know nothing about it beyond the fact that you had been arrested, for, although a thousand questions were asked me about you, nothing was said to me as to the charge brought against you. We have been in the greatest anxiety about you. All sorts of rumours were current in the city as to the discovery of a plot to assassinate one of the grand-dukes at the Opera-house, and there are rumours that explosive bombs had been discovered in one of the boxes. It is said that the police had received information of the attempt that was to be made, and that every precaution had been taken to arrest the principal conspirator, but that in some extraordinary manner he slipped through their fingers. But surely you can never have been mixed up in that matter?" "That is what it was," Godfrey said, "though I had no more idea of having anything to do with a plot than I had of flying. I see now that I behaved like an awful fool." And he told the story to Petrovytch and his wife as he had told it to the head of the police. Both were shocked at the thought that a member of their household should have been engaged, even unwittingly, in such a treasonable affair. "It is a wonder that we ever saw you again," the merchant's wife exclaimed. "It is fortunate that we are known as quiet people or we might have been arrested too. I could not have believed that anyone with sense could be silly enough to put on a stranger's mantle and hat!" "But I thought," Godfrey urged, "that at masked balls people did play all sorts of tricks upon each other. I am sure I have read so in books. And it did seem quite likely--didn't it now?--that an officer should have come up to meet a young lady masked whom he had no chance of meeting at any other time. It certainly seemed to me quite natural, and I believe almost any fellow, if he were asked to help anyone to get out of a scrape like that, would do it." "You may do it in England or in France, but it doesn't do to take part in anything that you don't know for certain all about here. The wonder is they made any inquiries at all. If you had been a Russian the chances are that your family would never have heard of you again from the time you left to go to the opera. Nothing that you could have said would have been believed. Your story would have been regarded by the police as a mere invention. They would have considered it as certain that in some way or other you were mixed up in the conspiracy. They would have regarded your denials as simple obstinacy, and you would have been sent to Siberia for life." "I should advise you, Godfrey," Ivan Petrovytch said, "to keep an absolute silence about this affair. Mention it to no one. Everyone knows that something has happened to you, as the police have been everywhere inquiring; but there is no occasion to tell anyone the particulars. Of course rumours get about as to the action of the Nihilists and of the police, but as little is said as possible. It is, of course, a mere rumour that a plot was discovered at the Opera-house. Probably there were an unusual number of police at all the entrances, and a very little thing gives rise to talk and conjecture. People think that the police would not have been there had they not had suspicion that something or other was going to take place, and as everything in our days is put down to the Nihilists, it was naturally reported that the police had discovered some plot; and as two of the grand-dukes were there, people made sure it was in some way connected with them. "As nothing came of it, and no one was, as far as was known, arrested, it would be supposed that the culprit, whoever he was, managed to evade the police. Such rumours as these are of very common occurrence, and it is quite possible that there is not much more truth in them this time than there is generally; however, of one thing you may be sure, the police are not fonder than other people of being outwitted, and whether the man for whom they were in search was a Nihilist or a criminal of some other sort you certainly aided him to escape. You are sure to be watched for some time, and it will be known to the police in a very few hours if you repeat this story to your acquaintances; if they find you keep silence about it, they will give you credit for discretion, while it would certainly do you a good deal of harm, and might even now lead to your being promptly sent across the frontier, were it known that you made a boast of having outwitted them. "There is another reason. You will find that for a time most of your friends here will be a little shy of you. People are not fond of having as their intimates persons about whom the police are inquiring, and you will certainly find for a time that you will receive very few invitations to enter the houses of any Russians. It would be different, however, if it were known that the trouble was about something that had no connection with politics; therefore, I should advise you, when you are asked questions, to turn it off with a laugh. Say you got mixed up in an affair between a young lady and her lover, and that, like many other people, you found that those who mingle in such matters often get left in the lurch. You need not say much more than that. You might do anything here without your friends troubling much about it provided it had nothing to do with politics. Rob a bank, perpetrate a big swindle, run away with a court heiress, and as long as the police don't lay hands on you nobody else will trouble their heads about the affair; but if you are suspected of being mixed up in the most remote way with politics, your best friends will shun you like the plague." "I will take your advice certainly," Godfrey said, "and even putting aside the danger you point out, I should not be anxious to tell people that I suffered myself to be entrapped so foolishly." For some time, indeed, Godfrey found that his acquaintance fell away from him, and that he was not asked to the houses of any of the Russian merchants where he had been before made welcome. Cautious questions would be asked by the younger men as to the trouble into which he got with the police; but he turned these off with a laugh. "I am not going to tell the particulars," he said, "they concern other people. I can only tell you that I was fool enough to be humbugged by a pretty little masker, and to get mixed up in a love intrigue in which a young lady, her lover a captain in the army, and an irascible colonel were concerned, and that the young people made a cat's-paw of me. I am not going to say more than that, I don't want to be laughed at for the next six months;" and so it became understood that the young Englishman had simply got into some silly scrape, and had been charged by a colonel in the army with running away with his daughter, and he was therefore restored to his former footing at most of the houses that he had before visited. Two days after his release a note was slipped into Godfrey's hand by a boy as he went out after dinner for a walk. It was unsigned, and ran as follows:-- "Dear Godfrey Bullen, my cousin is in a great state of distress. She was deceived by a third person, and in turn deceived you. She has heard since that the story was an entire fiction to enable a gentleman for whom the police were in search to escape. She only heard last night of your arrest and release, and is in the greatest grief that she should have been the innocent means of this trouble coming upon you. You know how things are here, and she is overwhelmed with gratitude that you did not in defence give any particulars that might have enabled them to trace her, for she would have found it much more difficult than a stranger would have done to have proved her innocence. She knows that you did say nothing, for had you done so she would have been arrested before morning; not improbably we might also have found ourselves within the walls of a prison, since you met her at our room, and the mere acquaintanceship with a suspected person is enough to condemn one here. By the way, we have moved our lodging, but will give you our new address when we meet you, that is, if you are good enough to continue our acquaintance in spite of the trouble that has been caused you by the credulity and folly of my cousin." Godfrey, who had begun to learn prudence, did not open the letter until he returned home, and as soon as he had read it dropped it into the stove. He was pleased at its receipt, for he had not liked to think that he had been duped by a girl. From the first he had believed that she, like himself, had been deceived, for it had seemed to him out of the question that a young music mistress, who did not seem more than twenty years old, could have been mixed up in the doings of a desperate set of conspirators; however, he quite understood the alarm she must have felt, for though his story might have been believed owing to his being a stranger, and unconnected in any way with men who could have been concerned in a Nihilist plot, it would no doubt have been vastly more difficult for her to prove her innocence, especially as it was known that there were many women in the ranks of the Nihilists. It was a fortnight before he met either of the students, and he then ran against them upon the quay just at the foot of the equestrian statue of Peter the Great, opposite the Isaac Cathedral. They hesitated for a moment, but he held out his hand cordially. "Where have you been, and how is it I have not seen you before?" "We were afraid that you might not care to know us further," Akim said, "after the trouble that that foolish cousin of mine involved you in." "That would have been ridiculous," Godfrey said. "If we were to blame our friends for the faults of persons to whom they introduce us, there would be an end to introductions." "Everyone wouldn't think as you do," Akim said. "We both wished to meet you, and thank you for so nobly shielding her. The silly girl might be on her way to Siberia now if you had given her name." "I certainly should not have done that in any case. It is not the way of an Englishman to betray his friend, especially when that friend is a woman; but I thought even before I got your letter that she must in some way or other have been misled herself." "It was very good of you," Petroff said. "Katia has been in great distress over it. She thinks that you can never forgive her." "Pray tell her from me, Petroff, that I have blamed myself, not her. I ought not to have let myself be persuaded into taking any part in the matter. I entered into it as a joke, thinking it would be fine fun to see the old colonel's face, and also to help a pair of lovers out of a scrape. It would have been a good joke in England, but this is not a country where jokes are understood. At any rate it has been a useful lesson to me, and in future young ladies will plead in vain to get me to mix myself up in other people's affairs." "We are going to a students' party to-night," Petroff said. "One of our number who has just passed the faculty of medicine has received an appointment at Tobolsk. It is a long way off; but it is said to be a pleasant town, and the pay is good. He is an orphan, and richer than most of us, so he is going to celebrate it with a party to-night before he starts. Will you come with us?" "I should like it very much," Godfrey said; "but surely your friend would not wish a stranger there on such an occasion." "Oh, yes, he would! he would be delighted, he is very fond of the English. I will answer for it that you will be welcome. Meet us here at seven o'clock this evening; he has hired a big room, and there will be two or three dozen of us there--all good fellows. Most of them have passed, and you will see the army and navy, the law and medicine, all represented." Godfrey willingly agreed to go. He thought he should see a new phase of Russian life, and at the appointed hour he met the two students. The entertainment was held in a large room in a traktar or eating-house in a small street. The room was already full of smoke, a number of young men were seated along two tables extending the length of the room, and crossed by one at the upper end. Several were in military uniform, and two or three in that of the navy. Akim and Petroff were greeted boisterously by name as they entered. "I will talk to you presently," Akim shouted in reply to various invitations to take his seat. "I have a friend whom I must first introduce to Alexis." He and Petroff took Godfrey up to the table at the end of the room. "Alexis," Akim said, "I have brought you a gentleman whom I am sure you will welcome. He has proved himself a true friend, one worthy of friendship and honour. His name is Godfrey Bullen." There was general silence as Akim spoke, and an evident curiosity as to the stranger their comrade had introduced. The host, who had risen to his feet, grasped Godfrey's hand warmly. "I am indeed glad to meet you, Godfrey Bullen," he said. "My friends, greet with me the English friend of Akim and Petroff." There was a general thumping of glasses on the table, and two or three of those sitting near Alexis rose from their seats and shook hands with Godfrey, with a warmth and cordiality which astonished him. Room was made for him and his two friends at the upper end of one of the side tables, and when he had taken his seat the lad was able to survey the scene quietly. Numbers of bottles were ranged down the middle of the tables, which were of bare wood without cloth. These contained, as Petroff told him, wines from various parts of Russia. There were wines similar to sherry and Bordeaux, from the Crimea; Kahetinskoe, strongly resembling good burgundy, from the Caucasus; and Don Skoe, a sparkling wine resembling champagne, from the Don. Besides these were tankards of Iablochin Kavas, or cider; Grushevoi Kavas, or perry; Malovinoi, a drink prepared from raspberries; and Lompopo, a favourite drink on the shores of the Baltic. The conversation naturally turned on student topics, of tricks played on professors, on past festivities, amusements, and quarrels. No allusion of any kind was made to politics, or to the matters of the day. Jovial songs were sung, the whole joining in chorus with great animation. At nine o'clock waiters appeared with trays containing the indispensable beginning of all Russian feasts. Each tray contained a large number of small dishes with fresh caviar, raw herrings, smoked salmon, dried sturgeon, slices of German sausage, smoked goose, ham, radishes, cheese, and butter. From these the guests helped themselves at will, the servants handing round small glasses of Kümmel Liftofka, a spirit flavoured with the leaves of the black-currant, and vodka. Then came the supper. Before each guest was placed a basin of stehi, a cabbage soup, sour cream being handed round to be added to it; then came rastigai patties, composed of the flesh of the sturgeon and isinglass. This was followed by cold boiled sucking pig with horse-radish sauce. After this came roast mutton stuffed with buck-wheat, which concluded the supper. When the table was cleared singing began again, but Godfrey stayed no longer, excusing himself to his host on the ground that the merchant kept early hours, and that unless when he had specially mentioned that he should not be home until late, he made a point of being in between ten and eleven. He was again surprised at the warmth with which several of the guests spoke to him as he said good-night, and went away with the idea in his mind that among the younger Russians, at any rate, Englishmen must be much more popular than he had before supposed. One or two young officers had given him their cards, and said that they should be pleased if he would call upon them. "I have had a pleasant evening," he said to himself. "They are a jolly set of fellows, more like boys than men. It was just the sort of thing I could fancy a big breaking-up supper would be if fellows could do as they liked, only no head-master would stand the tremendous row they made with their choruses. However, I don't expect they very often have a jollification like this. I suppose our host was a good deal better off than most of them. Petroff said that he was the son of a manufacturer down in the south. I wonder what he meant when he laughed in that quiet way of his when I said I wondered that as his father was well off he should take an appointment at such an out-of-the-way place as Tobolsk. 'Don't ask questions here,' he said, 'those fellows handing round the meat may be government spies.' I don't see, if they were, what interest they could have in the question why Alexis Stumpoff should go to Tobolsk. "However, I suppose they make a point of never touching on private affairs where any one can hear them, however innocent the matter may be. It must be hateful to be in a country where, for aught you know, every other man you come across is a spy. I daresay I am watched now; that police fellow told me I should be. It would be a lark to turn off down by-streets and lead the spy, if there is one, a tremendous dance; but jokes like that won't do here. I got off once, but if I give them the least excuse again they may send me off to the frontier. I should not care much myself, but it would annoy the governor horribly, so I will walk back as gravely as a judge." CHAPTER III A HUNTING PARTY. Two days later Robson, an English merchant who had been one of the most intimate of Godfrey's acquaintances, and to whom he had confided the truth about his arrest, said to him: "You are not looking quite yourself, lad." "Oh, I am all right!" he said; "but it is not a pleasant thing having had such a close shave of being sent to Siberia; and it isn't only that. No doubt the police feel that they owe me a grudge for having been the means of this fellow, whoever he was, slipping through their fingers, and I shall be a suspected person for a long time. Of course it is only fancy, but I am always thinking there is some one following me when I go out. I know it is nonsense, but I can't get rid of it." "I don't suppose they are watching you as closely as that," Mr. Robson said, "but I do think it is likely that they may be keeping an eye on you; but if they are they will be tired of it before long, when they see that you go your own way and have nothing to do with any suspected persons. You want a change, lad. I have an invitation to join a party who are going up to Finland to shoot for a couple of days. It is more likely than not that we shall never have a chance of firing a shot, but it will be an outing for you, and will clear your brain. Do you think you would like it?" "Thank you very much, Mr. Robson, I should like it immensely. Petrovytch was saying this morning that he thought I should be all the better for a holiday, so I am sure he will spare me. I am nothing of a shot, in fact I never fired a shot at game in my life, though I have practised a bit with the rifle, but I am sure it will be very jolly whether we shoot anything or not." "Very well, then, be at the station to catch the seven o'clock train in the morning. It is a four hours' railway journey." "Is there anything to bring, sir?" "No, you can take a hand-bag and sleeping things, but beyond a bit of soap and a towel I don't suppose you will have need of anything, for you will most likely sleep at some farm-house, or perhaps in a woodman's hut, and there will not be any undressing. There are six of us going from here, counting you, but the party is got up by two or three men we know there. They tell me some of the officers of the regiment stationed there will be of the party, and they will have a hundred or so of their men to act as beaters. I have a spare gun that I will bring for you." The next morning Godfrey joined Mr. Robson at the station. A Mr. White, whom he knew well, was one of the party, and the other three were Russians. They had secured a first-class compartment, and as soon as they started they rigged up a table with one of the cushions and began to play whist. "You don't play, I suppose, Godfrey?" Mr. Robson said. "No, sir. I have played a little at my father's, but it will be a long time before I shall be good enough to play. I have heard my father say that there is better whist at St. Petersburg than in any place in the world." "I think he is right, lad. The Russians are first-rate players and are passionately fond of the game, and naturally we English here have had to learn to play up to their standard. The game is similar to that in England, but they score altogether differently." The four hours passed rapidly. Godfrey sometimes looked out of the window at the flat country they were passing through, but more often watched the play. They were met at the station by two of Mr. Robson's friends, and found that sledges were in readiness and they were to start at once. "We have ten miles to drive," one of them said. "The others went on early; they will have had one beat by the time we get there, and are then to assemble for luncheon." The road was good and the horses fast, so that the sledges flew along rapidly. Most of the distance was through forest, but the last half-mile was open, and the sledge drew up at a large farm-house standing in the centre of the cleared space, and surrounded at a distance of half a mile on all sides by the forest. A dozen men, about half of whom were in uniform, poured out from the door as the four sledges drew up. "You are just in time," one of them said. "The soup is ready and in another minute we should have set to." The civilians all knew each other, but the new-comers were introduced to the Russian colonel and his five officers. "Have you had any luck, colonel?" Mr. Robson asked. "Wonderful," the latter replied with a laugh. "A stag came along and every one of us had a shot at it, and each and every one is ready to take oath that he hit it, so that every one is satisfied. Don't you call that luck?" Mr. Robson laughed. "But where is the stag?" he asked, looking round. "That is more than any one can tell you. He went straight on, and carried off our twelve bullets. Captain Fomitch here, and in fact all my officers, are ready to swear that the deer is enchanted, and they have all been crossing themselves against the evil omen. Such a thing was never heard of before, for being such crack shots, all of us, of course there can be no doubt about our each having hit the stag when it was not more than a hundred yards away at the outside; but come in, the soup smells too good to wait, and the sight of that enchanted beast has sharpened my appetite wonderfully." Godfrey entered with the rest. Large as the farm-house was, the greater portion of the ground-floor was occupied by the room they entered. It was entirely constructed of wood blackened with smoke and age. A great fire burned on the hearth, and the farmer's wife and two maids were occupied with several large pots, some suspended over the fire, others standing among the brands. The window was low, but extended half across one side of the room, and was filled with small lattice panes. From the roof hung hams, sides of bacon, potatoes in network bags, bunches of herbs, and several joints of meat. A table extended the length of the room covered with plates and dishes that from their appearance had evidently been brought out from the town, and differed widely from the rough earthenware standing on a great dresser of darkened wood extending down one side of the room. At one end the great pot was placed, the cloth having been pushed back for the purpose, and the colonel, seizing the ladle, began to fill the earthenware bowls which were used instead of soup plates. "Each man come for his ration before he sits down," he said. "It would be better if you did not sit down at all, for I know well enough that when my countrymen sit down to a meal it is a long time before they get up again, and we have to be in the forest again in three-quarters of an hour." "Quite right, colonel," one of the hosts said; "this evening you may sit as long as you like, but if we are to have another drive to-day we must waste no time. A basin of soup and a plate of stew are all you will get now, with a cup of coffee afterwards to arm you against the cold, and a glass of vodka or kümmil to top up with. No, colonel, not any punch just now. Punch in the evening; but if we were to begin with that now, I know that there would be no shooting this afternoon." "What are the beaters doing?" Mr. Robson asked as they hastily ate their dinner. "They have brought their bread with them," the colonel said, "and our friends here have provided a deer almost as fine as that which carried off the twelve bullets. It was roasting over a fire in the forest when we went past, and I saw some black bottles which I guessed were vodka." "Yes, colonel, I ordered that they should have a glass each with their dinner, and another glass when they had done this afternoon." "They would not mind being on fatigue duty every day through the winter on those terms," the colonel said. "It is better for them than soldiering. We must mind that we don't shoot any of them, gentlemen. The lives of the Czar's soldiers are not to be lightly sacrificed, and next time, you know, the whole of the bullets may not hit the mark as they did this morning." "There really is some danger in it," Mr. Robson said to Godfrey, who was sitting next to him; "in fact, I should say there was a good deal of danger. However, I fancy the beaters all throw themselves down flat when they hear the crack of the first rifle." "I see most of them have got a gun as well as a rifle." "Yes, there is no saying what may come along, and, indeed, they are more likely to get birds than fur. I was told there are a good many elk in the forest, and the peasants have been bringing an unusual number in lately. A friend of mine shot two last week; but as our party did not get one in their first drive they are not likely to get any afterwards. Occasionally in these big drives a good many animals are inclosed, but as a rule the noise the soldiers make as they move along to take up their places is enough to frighten every creature within a couple of miles. I told you you were not likely to have to draw a trigger. Expeditions like this are rather an excuse for a couple of days' fun than anything else. The real hunting is more quiet. Men who are fond of it have peasants in their pay all over the country, and if one of these hears of a bear or an elk anywhere in his neighbourhood he brings in the news at once, and then one or two men drive out to the village, where beaters will be in readiness for them, and have the hunt to themselves. "I used to do a good deal of it the first few years I came out, but it is bitter cold work waiting for hours till a beast comes past, or trying to crawl up to him. After all, there is no great fun in putting a bullet into a creature as big as a horse at a distance of thirty or forty yards. But there, they are making a move. They are going to drink the coffee and vodka standing, which is wise, for after standing in the snow for four hours, as they have been doing, they are apt to get so sleepy after a warm meal that if we were to stop here much longer you would find half the number would not make a start at all." The sledges were brought up, and there was a three miles drive through the forest. Then the shooters were placed in a line, some forty or fifty yards apart, each taking his station behind a tree. Then a small bugler sounded a note. Godfrey heard a reply a long distance off. Three-quarters of an hour passed without any further sound being heard, and then Godfrey, who had been stamping his feet and swinging his arms to keep himself warm, heard a confused murmur. Looking along the line he saw that the others were all on the alert, and he accordingly took up his gun and began to gaze across the snow. The right-hand barrel was loaded with shot, the left with ball. Presently a shot rang out away on his right, followed almost immediately afterwards by another. After this evidence that there must be something in the forest he watched more eagerly for signs of life. Presently he saw a hare coming loping along. From time to time it stopped and turned its head to listen, and then came on again. He soon saw that it was bearing to the left, and that it was not going to come within his range. He watched it disappear among the trees, and two minutes later heard a shot. Others followed to the right and left of him, and presently a hare, which he had not noticed, dashed past at full speed, almost touching his legs. He was so startled for the moment that the hare had got some distance before he had turned round and was ready to fire, and he was in no way surprised to see it dash on unharmed by his shot. When there was a pause in the firing the shouting recommenced, this time not far distant, and he soon saw men making their way towards him through the trees. "It is all over now," Mr. Robson shouted from the next tree. "If they have not done better elsewhere than we have here the bag is not a very large one." "Did you shoot anything, Mr. Robson?" "I knocked a hare over; that is the only thing I have seen. What have you done?" "I think I succeeded in frightening a hare, but that was all," Godfrey laughed. "It ran almost between my legs before I saw it, and I think it startled me quite as much as my shot alarmed it." The bugle sounded again, and the party were presently collected round the colonel. The result of the beat was five hares, and a small stag that had fallen to the gun of Mr. White. "Much cry and little wool," Mr. Robson said. "A hundred beaters, twenty guns, and six head of game." Another short beat was organized, resulting in two stags and three more hares. One of the stags and the three hares were placed on a sledge to be taken back to the farm-house, and the rest of the game was given to the soldiers. A glass of vodka was served out to each of them, and, highly pleased with their day's work, the men slung the deer to poles and set out on their march of eight miles back to the town. "They will have done a tremendous day's work by the time they have finished," Godfrey said. "Eight miles out and eight miles back, and three beats, which must have cost them four or five miles' walking at least. They must have gone over thirty miles through the snow." "It won't be as much as that, though it will be a long day's work," the colonel said. "They came out yesterday evening and slept in a barn. Another company come out to-night to take their place." It was already dark by the time the party reached the farm-house, and after a cup of coffee all round they began to prepare the dinner. They were like a party of school-boys, laughing, joking, and playing tricks with each other. Two of them undertook the preparation of hare-soup. Two others were appointed to roast a quarter of venison, keeping it turning as it hung by a cord in front of the fire, and being told that should it burn from want of basting they would forfeit their share of it. The colonel undertook the mixing of punch, and the odour of lemons, rum, and other spirits soon mingled with that of the cooking. Godfrey was set to whip eggs for a gigantic omelette, and most of the others had some task or other assigned to them, the farmer's wife and her assistants not being allowed to have anything to do with the matter. The dinner was a great success. After it was over a huge bowl of punch was placed on the table, and after the health of the Czar and that of the Queen of England had been drunk, speeches were made, songs were sung, and stories told. While this was going on, the farmer brought in a dozen trusses of straw. These his wife and the maids opened and distributed along both sides of the room, laying blankets over them. It was not long before Godfrey began to feel very drowsy, the result of the day's work in the cold, a good dinner, the heated air of the room and the din, and would have gladly lain down; but his movement to leave the table was at once frustrated, and he was condemned to drink an extra tumbler of punch as a penalty. After that he had but a confused idea of the rest of the evening. He knew that many songs were sung, and that everyone seemed talking together, and as at last he managed to get away and lie down on the straw he had a vague idea that the colonel was standing on a chair making a final oration, with the punch-bowl turned upside down and worn as a helmet. Godfrey had not touched the wine at dinner, knowing that he would be expected to take punch afterwards, and he had only sipped this occasionally, except the glass he had been condemned to drink; and when he heard the colonel shout in a stentorian voice "To arms!" he got up and shook himself, and felt ready for another day's work, although many of the others were sitting up yawning or abusing the colonel for having called them so early. However, it was already light. Two great samovars were steaming, and the cups set in readiness on the table. Godfrey managed to get hold of a pail of water and indulged in a good wash, as after a few minutes did all the others; while a cup or two of tea and a few slices of fried bacon set up even those who were at first least inclined to rise. A quarter of an hour later the sledges were at the door, and the party started. The hunt was even less successful than that of the previous day. No stag was seen, but some ten hares and five brace of grouse were shot. At three o'clock the party assembled again at the farm-house and had another hearty meal, terminating with one glass of punch round; then they took their places in their sledges and were driven back to the town; the party for St. Petersburg started by the six-o'clock train, the rest giving them a hearty cheer as the carriage moved off from the platform. "Well, have you enjoyed it, Godfrey?" Mr. Robson asked. "Immensely, sir. It has been grand fun. The colonel is a wonderful fellow." "There are no more pleasant companions than the Russians," Mr. Robson said. "They more closely resemble the Irish than any people I know. They have a wonderful fund of spirits, enjoy a practical joke, are fond of sport, and have too a sympathetic, and one may almost say a melancholy vein in their disposition, just as the Irish have. They have their faults, of course--all of us have; and the virtue of temperance has not as yet made much way here. Society, in fact, is a good deal like that in England two or three generations back, when it was considered no disgrace for a man to sit after dinner at the table until he had to be helped up to bed by the servants. Now, White, you have got the cards, I think." Godfrey watched the game for a short time, then his eyes closed, and he knew nothing more until Mr. Robson shook him and shouted, "Pull yourself together, Godfrey. Here we are at St. Petersburg." Three days later, when Ivan Petrovytch came in to breakfast at eleven o'clock--for the inmates of the house had a cup of coffee or chocolate and a roll in their rooms at half-past seven, and office work commenced an hour later--Godfrey saw that he and his wife were both looking very grave. Nothing was said until the servant, having handed round the dishes, left the room. "Has anything happened?" Godfrey asked. "Yes, there is bad news. Another plot against the life of the Czar has been discovered. The Nihilists have mined under the road by which he was yesterday evening to have travelled to the railway-station. It seems that some suspicion was felt by the police. I do not know how it arose; at any rate at the last moment the route was changed. During the night all the houses in the suspected neighbourhood were searched, and in the cellar of one of them a passage was found leading under the road. A mine was heavily charged with powder, and was connected by wires to an electric battery; and there can be no doubt that had the Czar passed by as intended he would have been destroyed by the explosion. It is terrible, terrible!" "Did they find any one in the cellar?" Godfrey asked. "No one. The conspirators had no doubt taken the alarm when they heard that the route was changed, and the place was deserted. It seems that the shop above was taken four months ago as a store for the sale of coal and wood, and the cellar and an adjoining one were hired at the same time. There was also a room behind the shop, where the man and woman who kept it lived. They say that arrests have been made all over the city this morning, and we shall no doubt have a renewal of the wholesale trials that followed the assassination of General Mesentzeff, the head of the police, last autumn. It is terrible! These misguided men hope to conquer the empire by fear. Instead of that, they will in the end only strengthen the hands of despotism. I have always been inclined to liberalism, but I have wished for gradual changes only. For large changes we are not yet fit; but as education spreads and we approach the western standard, some power and voice ought to be given to all intelligent enough to use it; that is to say, to the educated classes. I would not--no one in his senses would--give the power of voting to illiterate and ignorant men, who would simply be tools in the hands of the designing and ambitious; but the peoples of the great towns, St. Petersburg, Moskow, Kieff, Odessa, and others should be permitted to send representatives--men of their own choice--to the provincial councils, which should be strengthened and given a real, instead of a nominal, voice in the control of affairs. "That was all I and thousands like me ever wished for in the present, but it would have been the first step towards a constitution which the empire, when the people become fit for it, might enjoy. That dream is over. These men, by their wild violence, have thrown back the reforms for half a century at least. They have driven the Czar to war against them; they have strengthened the hands of the men who will use their acts as an excuse for the extremest measures of repression; they have ranged on the other side all the moderate men like myself, who, though desirous of constitutional changes, shrink with horror from a revolution heralded by deeds of bloodshed and murder." "I quite agree with you," Godfrey said warmly. "Men must be mad who could counsel such abominable plans. The French Revolution was terrible, although it began peacefully, and was at first supported by all the best spirits of France; but at last it became a hideous butchery. But here in Russia it seems to me that it would be infinitely worse, for it is only in the towns that there are men with any education; and if it began with the murder of the Czar, what would it grow to?" "What, indeed!" Ivan Petrovytch repeated. "And yet, like the French Revolution, the pioneers of this movement were earnest and thoughtful men, with noble dreams for the regeneration of Russia." "But how did it begin?" "It may be said to have started about 1860. The emancipation of the serfs produced a sort of fever. Every one looked for change, but it was in the universities, the seminaries, and among the younger professional men that it first began. Prohibited works of all kinds, especially those of European socialists, were, in spite of every precaution at the frontier, introduced and widely circulated. Socialistic ideas made tremendous progress among the class I speak of, and these, by writing, by the circulation of prohibited papers, and so on, carried on a sort of crusade against the government, and indeed against all governments, carrying their ideas of liberty to the most extreme point and waging war against religion as well as against society. "In the latter respect they were more successful than in the former, and I regret to say that atheism made immense strides among the educated class. They had some profound thinkers among them: Tchernyshevsky, Dobroluboff, Mikhailoff, besides Herzen and Ogareff, the two men who brought out the _Kolokol_ in London in the Russian language, and by their agents spread it broadcast over Russia. The stifling of the insurrection in Poland strengthened the reactionary party. More repressive edicts were issued, with the usual result, that secret societies multiplied everywhere. Then came the revolution and commune in Paris, which greatly strengthened the spread of revolutionary ideas here. Another circumstance gave a fresh impetus to this. Some time before, there had been a movement for what was called the emancipation of women, and a perfect furore arose among girls of all classes for education. "There were no upper schools or colleges open to them in Russia, and they went in enormous numbers to Switzerland, especially to Zurich. Girls of the upper classes shared their means with the poorer ones, and the latter eked out their resources by work of all descriptions. Zurich, as you know, is a hotbed of radicalism, and those young women who went to learn soon imbibed the wildest ideas. Then came a ukase, ordering the immediate return home of all Russian girls abroad. It was undoubtedly a great mistake. In Switzerland they were harmless, but when they returned to Russia and scattered over the towns and villages, they became so many apostles of socialism, and undoubtedly strengthened the movement. So it grew. Men of good families left their homes, and in the disguise of workmen expounded their principles among the lower classes. Among these was Prince Peter Krapotkine, the rich Cossack Obuchoff, Scisoko and Rogaceff, both officers, and scores of others, who gave up everything and worked as workmen among workmen. "Innumerable arrests were made, and at one trial a thousand prisoners were convicted. So wholesale were the arrests that even the most enthusiastic saw that they were simply sacrificing themselves in vain, and about 1877 they changed their tactics. The prisons were crowded, and the treatment there of the political prisoners was vastly harder than that given to those condemned for the most atrocious crimes, as you may imagine when I tell you that in the course of the trial of that one batch I spoke of, which lasted four years, seventy-five of the prisoners committed suicide, went mad, or died. Then when the authorities thought Nihilism was stamped out by wholesale severity the matter assumed another phase. The crusade by preaching had failed, and the Nihilists began a crusade of terror. First police spies were killed in many places, then more highly placed persons, officers of the police, judges, and officials who distinguished themselves by their activity and severity. Then in the spring of last year Vera Zasulitch shot at General Trépoff, who had ordered a political prisoner to be flogged. She was tried by a jury, and the feeling throughout the country was so much in favour of the people who had been so terribly persecuted that she was acquitted. The authorities were furious, and every effort was made to find and re-arrest Vera; and a verdict of the court acquitting many of the accused in one of the trials was annulled by the Czar. "Well, you know, Godfrey Bullen, I am not one who meddles with politics. You have never heard me speak of them before, and I consider the aims of these men would bring about anarchy. An anarchy that would deluge the land with blood seems to me detestable and wicked. But I cannot but think the government has made a terrible mistake by its severity. These people are all enthusiastic fanatics. They see that things are not as they should be, and they would destroy everything to right them. Hate their aims as one may, one must admit that their conduct is heroic. Few have quailed in their trials. All preserve a calmness of demeanour that even their judges and executioners cannot but admire. They seem made of iron; they suffer everything, give up everything, dare everything for their faith; they die, as the Christian martyrs died in Rome, unflinching, unrepentant. If they have become as wild beasts, severity has made them so. Their propaganda was at first a peaceful one. It is cruelty that has driven them to use the only weapon at their disposal, assassination. "One man, for example, in 1877, Jacob Stefanovic, organized a conspiracy in the district of Sighirino. It spread widely among the peasants. The priests, violating the secret of the confessional, informed the police, but these, although using every effort, could learn no more. Hundreds of arrests were made, but nothing discovered. Learning that the priests had betrayed them the peasants no longer went to confession, and to avoid betraying themselves in a state of drunkenness abstained from the use of brandy; but one man, tired and without food, took a glass. It made him drunk, and in his drunkenness he spoke to the man who had sold him spirits. He was arrested, and although he did not know all, gave enough clue for the police to follow up, and all the leaders and over a thousand persons were arrested. Two thousand others, who were affiliated to the society, were warned in time and escaped. You can guess the fate of those who were captured. "Last year, three months before you came here, General Mezentsoff, the head of the police, was assassinated, and since then we know that it is open war between the Nihilists and the Czar. The police hush matters up, but they get abroad. Threatening letters reach the Czar in his inmost apartments, and it is known that several attempts have been made to assassinate him, but have failed. "One of the most extraordinary things connected with the movement is that women play a large part in it. Being in the thick of every conspiracy they are the life and soul of the movement, and they are of all classes. There are a score of women for whose arrest the authorities would pay any money, and yet they elude every effort. It is horrible. This is what comes of women going to Switzerland and learning to look upon religion as a myth and all authority as hateful, and to have wild dreams of an impossible state of affairs such as never has existed in this world. It is horrible, but it is pitiable. The prisons in the land are full of victims; trains of prisoners set off monthly for Siberia. It is enough to turn the brain to think of such things. How it is to end no one can say." But it was only in bated breath and within closed doors that the discovery of the Nihilist plot was discussed in St. Petersburg. Elsewhere it was scarcely alluded to, although, if mentioned, those present vied with each other in the violence of their denunciation of it; but when society from the highest to the lowest was permeated by secret agents of the police, and every word was liable to be reported and misinterpreted, a subject so dangerous was shunned by common consent. It was known, though, that large numbers of arrests had been made, but even those whose dearest friends had suddenly disappeared said no word of it in public, for to be even a distant acquaintance of such a person was dangerous. Yet apparently everything went on as usual: the theatres were as well filled; the Nevski as crowded and gay. CHAPTER IV. A PRISONER. Soon after this St. Petersburg was startled at the news that there had been a terrible explosion at the Winter Palace, and that the Czar and royal family had narrowly escaped with their lives. Upon the following evening Godfrey was walking down the Nevski, where groups of people were still discussing the terrible affair. He presently met Akim Soushiloff and Petroff Stepanoff. He had not seen them for some time, and as they had omitted to give him the address of the lodging into which they had moved, he was really glad to see them, for he liked them better than any of the Russians of his acquaintance, for both had an earnest manner and seemed to be free from narrow prejudices, sincere admirers of England, and on most subjects very well informed. "It is quite an age since I have seen you both," he said. "Where have you been hiding?" "We have been working harder than usual," Petroff said; "our last examinations are just coming off. But you said that you would come to see us, and you have never done so." "You did not tell me where you had moved to," Godfrey said, "or I should have done so long ago." "That was stupid indeed!" Akim said. "Have you an hour to spare now?" "Yes, I have nothing to do, and shall be very glad to come round and have a talk. This is a horrible business at the Winter Palace." "Horrible," Petroff said; "but it is just as well not to talk about it in the streets. Come along, we will take you to our place; we were just thinking of going back." A quarter of an hour's walking took them to the students' room, which was, like the last, at the top of the house. A lamp was lighted, the samovar placed on the table, and a little charcoal fire lit under it. A glass of vodka was handed round to pass the time until the water was boiling, pipes were brought out from the cupboard and filled, for cigars, which are cheap and good, are generally smoked in the streets in Russia by the middle and upper classes, pipes being only used there by Isvostchiks, labourers, and Englishmen. The conversation naturally for a time turned upon the explosion in the Winter Palace, the Russians expressing an indignation fully equal to that of Godfrey. Then they talked of England, both regretting that they were unable to speak the language. "I would give much to be able to read Shakespeare," Petroff said. "I have heard his works spoken of in such high terms by some of our friends who have studied your language, and I have heard, too, from them of your Dickens. They tell me it is like reading of another world--a world in which there are no officials, and no police, and no soldiers. That must be very near a paradise." "We have some soldiers," Godfrey laughed, "but one does not see much of them. About half of those we have at home are in two military camps, one in England and one in Ireland. There are the Guards in London, but the population is so large that you might go a week without seeing one, while in very few of the provincial towns are there any garrisons at all. There are police, and plenty of them, but as their business is only to prevent crime, they naturally don't play a prominent part in novels giving a picture of everyday life. As to officials, beyond rate-collectors we don't see anything of them, though there are magistrates, and government clerks, and custom officers, and that sort of thing, but they certainly don't play any prominent part in our lives." So they chatted for an hour, when at short intervals two other men came in. One was a tall handsome fellow who was introduced by Petroff as the son of Baron Kinkoff, the other was a young advocate of Moscow on a visit to St. Petersburg. Both, Godfrey observed, had knocked in a somewhat peculiar manner at the door, which opened, as he had noticed when they came in, only by a key. Akim observed a slight expression of surprise in Godfrey's face at the second knock, and said laughing: "Our remittances have not come to hand of late, Godfrey, and some of our creditors are getting troublesome, so we have established a signal by which we know our friends, while inconvenient visitors can knock as long as they like, and then go away thinking we are out." Godfrey chatted for a short time longer, and then got up to go. Akim went to the door with him. As it opened there was a sudden rush of men from outside that nearly knocked him down. Of what followed he had but a vague idea. Pistol shots rang out. There was a desperate struggle. He received a blow on the head which struck him to the ground, and an instant later there was a tremendous explosion. The next thing he knew was that he was being hauled from below some debris. As he looked round bewildered he saw that a considerable portion of the ceiling and of the roof above it had been blown out. Several bodies lay stretched on the floor. The room was still full of smoke, but by the light of two or three lanterns he perceived that the young baron, bleeding freely from a sabre wound across the forehead, was standing bound between two policemen with drawn swords. Policemen were examining the bodies on the floor, while others were searching the closets, cutting open the beds and turning out their contents. Akim lay on his back dead, and across him lay the young advocate. Of Petroff he could see nothing; the other bodies were those of policemen. Three of these near the door appeared to have been shot; the others were lying in contorted positions against the walls, as if they had been flung there by the force of the explosion. All this he saw in a state of vague wonderment, while the two policemen kneeling at his side were passing cords tightly round him. "This one still lives," one of the policemen said, stooping over the young advocate, "but I think he is nearly done for." "Never mind, bring him along with the others," a man in plain clothes said in tones of authority. "Get them away at once, we shall have half St. Petersburg here in a few minutes." Godfrey was lifted by the policemen, one at his head, and one at his feet, carried down-stairs, and flung into a vehicle at the door. Dully he heard a roar of excited shouts and questions, and the sharp orders of the police ranged round the vehicle. Three policemen took their places inside with him, and the vehicle drove off, slowly at first until it was free of the crowd, and then at a sharp gallop. Godfrey was conscious of but little as he went along; he had a vague idea of a warm moist feeling down the back, and wondered whether it was his own blood. Gradually his impressions became more and more indistinct, and he knew nothing more until he was conscious of a sensation of cold at the back of the head, and of a murmur of voices round him. Soon he was lifted up into a sitting position, and he felt that bandages were being wrapped round his head. Then he was laid down again, he heard a door slam and a key turn, and then he knew nothing more. When he awoke daylight was streaming in through a loophole high up in the wall. He tried to sit up, but could not, and looked round trying to recall where he was and what had happened. He was in a dark cell with no furniture save the straw on which he was lying. "It is a prison certainly," he muttered to himself. "How did I get here?" Then gradually the events of the night before came to his mind. There had been a terrible fight. Akim had been killed. There had been a tremendous explosion. The police had something to do with it. Was it all a dream, or was it real? Was he dreaming now? He was some time before he could persuade himself that it was all real, and indeed it was not until the door opened and two men entered that he felt quite sure that he, Godfrey Bullen, was really lying there in a prison cell, with a dull numbing pain at the back of his head, and too weak even to sit upright. One of the men leaned over him. Godfrey tried to speak, but could not do so above a whisper. "He will do now," the man said without paying any attention to his words. "He must have a thick skull or that sword-cut would have finished him. Give him some wine and water now, and some soup presently. We must not let him slip through our fingers." Some liquid was poured between his lips, and then he was left alone again. "Certainly it is all real," he said to himself. "Akim must have been killed, and I must be a prisoner. What in the world can it be all about?" He was too weak to think, but after another visit had been paid him, and he had been lifted up and given some strong broth, he began to think more clearly. "Can it have been a Nihilist arrest?" he thought to himself. "Akim and Petroff can never be Nihilists. The idea is absurd. I have never heard them say a word against the government or the Czar." Then he thought of their friend Katia, and how she had got him to aid in the escape of a Nihilist. "It is all nonsense," he murmured, "the idea of a girl like that being mixed up in a conspiracy." Then his ideas again became more and more confused, and when the doctor visited him again in the evening he was in a state of high fever, talking incoherently to himself. For seven days he continued in that state. There was no lack of care; the doctor visited him at very short intervals, and an attendant remained night and day beside him, applying cold bandages to his head, and carefully noting down in a book every word that passed his lips. Then a good constitution gradually triumphed over the fever, and on the eighth day he lay a mere shadow of himself, but cool and sensible, on a bed in an airy ward. Nourishing food was given to him in abundance, but it was another week before he was able to stand alone. Then one morning two attendants brought a stretcher to the side of his bed. He was assisted to put on his clothes, and was then placed on the stretcher and carried away. He was taken through long passages, up and down stairs, at last into a large room. Here he was lifted on the stretcher and placed in a chair. Facing him at a table were nine officers. "Prisoner," the president said, glancing at a large closely-written sheet of paper before him, "you are accused of taking part in a Nihilist conspiracy to murder the Czar." "I know nothing of any Nihilist conspiracy," Godfrey said. "I was accidentally in the room with my friends Akim and Petroff when the police entered." The president waved his hand impatiently. "That of course," he said. "Your name is Godfrey Bullen?" "Yes, sir." "Born in St. Petersburg, but of English parentage?" Godfrey bowed his head. "Three months since you took part in the plot by means of which the notorious Valerian Ossinsky escaped from the hands of the police, and you were the accomplice of Sophia Perovskaia in that matter." "I never heard the name before," Godfrey said. The president paid no attention, but went on: "You said at the time," he continued, reading from the notes, "that you did not know the woman who spoke to you, but it is known that she was an associate of Akim Soushiloff and Petroff Stepanoff, at whose place you were captured the other day. There is therefore no doubt that you know her." "I knew her under another name," Godfrey said; "but if I had been told she was Sophia Perovskaia, it conveyed nothing to me, for I had never heard of her." "You are committing yourself, prisoner," the president said coldly. "When examined you denied all acquaintance with the woman, and declared that she was a stranger." "Excuse me, sir," Godfrey said, "I said it was a masked woman, and that I did not see her face, which was perfectly true. I admit now that I did know who she was, but naturally as a gentleman I endeavoured to shield her in a matter concerning which I believed that she was as innocent as I was." A murmur of incredulity ran round the circle of officers. "A few days after that," the president went on, again reading from his notes, "you were present with Akim Soushiloff and Petroff Stepanoff at a supper in a trakir in Ossuloff Street. There were present on that occasion"--and he read a list of six names--"four of whom have since been convicted and punished, and two of whom, although not yet taken, are known to have been engaged in the murderous attempt at the Winter Palace. You were greeted there with significant enthusiasm, which was evidently a testimony on the part of these conspirators to the part you had played in the affair of Ossinsky." Godfrey felt that the meshes were closing round him. He remembered that he had wondered at the time why he had been received with such great cordiality. "Now," the president went on, "you are captured in the room of Akim Soushiloff and Petroff Stepanoff, who were both beyond doubt engaged in the plot at the Winter Palace, with two other equally guilty conspirators, and were doubtless deliberating on some fresh atrocity when interrupted by the agents of the police. You shared in the desperate resistance they made, which resulted in the death of eight police officers by pistol shot, or by the explosion of gunpowder, by which Petroff Stepanoff, who fired it, was also blown to pieces. What have you to say in your defence?" "I still say that I am perfectly innocent," Godfrey said. "I knew nothing of these men being conspirators in any way, and I demand to be allowed to communicate with my friends, and to obtain the assistance of an advocate." "An advocate could say nothing for you," the president said. "You do not deny any of the charges brought against you, which are, that you were the associate of these assassins, that you aided Sophia Perovskaia in effecting the escape of Valerian Ossinsky, that you received the congratulations of the conspirators at the banquet, and that you were found in this room in company with four of the men concerned in the attempt to assassinate the Czar. But the court is willing to be merciful, and if you will tell all you know with reference to this plot, and give the names of all the conspirators with whom you have been concerned, your offence will be dealt with as leniently as possible." "I repeat that I know nothing, and can therefore disclose nothing, sir, and I venture to protest against the authority of this court to try and condemn me, an Englishman." "No matter what is the nationality of the person," the president said coldly, "who offends against the laws of this country, he is amenable to its laws, and his nationality affords him no protection whatever. You will have time given you to think the matter over before your sentence is communicated to you. Remove the prisoner." Godfrey was laid on the stretcher again and carried away. This time he was taken, not to the room where he had been placed while ill, but to a dark cell where scarce a ray of light penetrated. There was a heap of straw in one corner, a loaf of black bread, and a jug of water. Godfrey when left alone shook up the straw to make it as comfortable as he possibly could, then sat down upon it with his back against the wall. "Well, this is certainly a go," he said to himself. "If there was one thing that seemed less likely than another, it was that I should get involved in this Nihilist business. In the first place, the governor specially warned me against it; in the second place, I have been extremely careful never to give any opinion on public affairs; and in the third place, if there is one thing I detest more than another it is assassination. I cannot say it is cowardly in these men. The Nihilists do more than risk their lives; they give their lives away to carry out their end. Still, though I own it is not cowardly, I hate it. The question is, what next? Petrovytch will, of course, write home to say that I am missing. I don't suppose he will have the slightest idea that I have been arrested as a Nihilist. I don't see how he could think so. He is more likely to think that I have been made away with somehow. No doubt my father will come out; but, of course, he won't learn any more than Petrovytch, unless they choose to tell him. I don't suppose they will tell him. I have heard that generally families of people they seize know nothing about it, unless they are arrested too. They may guess what has happened, but they don't know. In my case I should fancy the police would say nothing. "They will hear from the inquiries that my father makes that he has no suspicion of what has happened to me, and they will know if they did tell him our ambassador would be making a row. But even if the governor were to learn what had become of me, and were to insist upon learning what crime I am accused of committing, I do not see that things would be much better. They would hand over the notes of the evidence on which I was convicted, and, taking it altogether, I am bound to say I do not see how they could help convicting me. Short of catching me like a sort of Guy Fawkes blowing up the palace, the case is about as strong as it could be. I certainly have put my foot in it. I was acquainted with these two conspirators; through them I got acquainted with that confounded woman Katia, though it seems that wasn't her name. Then through her I helped this fellow Ossinsky to escape. Then, trying to shield her, I make matters twenty times worse; for while my answer before led them to believe that she was a perfect stranger to me, I was ass enough to let out just now that I knew her. Then there was that supper. I could not make out at the time why they greeted me so heartily. Now, of course, it is plain enough; and now, just after this blowing-up business, here am I caught with four notorious conspirators, and mixed up in a fight in which eight or ten policemen are killed, and the roof blown off a house. That would be circumstantial evidence enough to condemn a man in England, let alone Russia. "I don't suppose they are going to hang me, because they publish the names of the fellows they hang; but imprisonment for years in one of their ghastly dungeons is bad enough. If it is to be, it will be Siberia, I hope. There must be some way of getting out of a big country like that--north, south, east, or west. Well, I don't see any use bothering over it. I have got into a horrible scrape, there is no doubt about that, and I must take what comes." Godfrey was essentially of a hopeful nature, and always looked at the bright side of things. He was a strong believer in the adage, "Where there is a will, there is a way." He had been in his full share of scrapes at school, and had always made a rule of taking things easily. He now examined the cell. "Beastly place!" he said, "and horribly damp. I wonder why dungeons are always damp. Cellars at home are not damp, and a dungeon is nothing but a cellar after all. Well, I shall take a nap." The next day Godfrey was again taken before the tribunal, and again closely questioned as to his knowledge of the Nihilists. He again insisted that he knew nothing of them. "Of course I knew Akim Soushiloff and Petroff Stepanoff; but I had only been in their rooms once before, and the only person I met there before was the young woman who called herself Katia, but who you say was somebody else. This was at the lodgings they occupied before." "But you were found with Alexander Kinkoff and Paul Kousmitch." "They only arrived a short time before the police entered. I had never seen either of them before." These two prisoners had been examined before Godfrey entered, and had been questioned about him. Kousmitch had declared that he had never seen him before, and the court knew that the spies who had been watching the house had seen him enter but a short time before the police force arrived. As the two statements had been made independently it was thought probable that in this respect Godfrey was speaking the truth. Not so, however, his assertions that he was unacquainted with any of the other conspirators. He was again taken back to his cell, and for the next week saw no one but the warder who brought his bread and water, and who did not reply by a single word to any questions that he asked him. Godfrey did his best to keep up his spirits. He had learnt by heart at Shrewsbury the first two books of the Iliad, and these he daily repeated aloud, set himself equations to do, and solved them in his head, repeated the dates in Greek history, and went through everything he could remember as having learned. He occasionally heard footsteps above him, and wondered whether that also was a cell, and what sort of man the prisoner was. Once or twice at night, when all was quiet, he heard loud cries, and wondered whether they were the result of delirium or torture. His gruff jailer was somewhat won by his cheerfulness. Every day Godfrey wished him good morning as he visited the cell, inquired what the weather was like outside, expressed an earnest hope that silence didn't disagree with him, and generally joked and laughed as if he rather enjoyed himself than otherwise. At the end of the week an official entered the cell. "I have come to inform you, prisoner, that the sentence of death that had been passed upon you has, by the clemency of the Czar, been commuted to banishment for life to Siberia." "Very well, sir," Godfrey said. "I know, of course, that I am perfectly innocent of the crime of which I am charged; but as the Czar no doubt supposes that I am guilty of taking part in a plot against his life, I acknowledge and thank him for his clemency. I have no peculiar desire to visit Siberia, but at least it will be a change for the better from this place. I trust that it shall not be long before I start." As the official was unable to make out whether Godfrey spoke in mockery or not, he made no reply. "These Nihilists are men of iron," he said afterwards. "They walk to the scaffold with smiling faces; they exist in dungeons that would kill a dog in twenty-four hours, and nothing can tempt them to divulge their secrets; even starvation does not affect them. They are dangerous enemies, but it must be owned that they are brave men and women. This boy, for he is little more, almost laughed in our faces; and, in spite of his stay in that damp cell, seemed to be in excellent spirits. It is the same with them all, though I own that some of them do break down sometimes; but I think that those who commit suicide do so principally because they are afraid that, under pressure, they may divulge secrets against each other. Ossip, who attends that young fellow, says that he is always the same, and speaks as cheerfully to him every morning as if he were in a palace instead of in a dungeon." Two days later Godfrey was aroused in the night. "Why, it is not light yet," he said. "What are you disturbing me at this time for?" "Get up," the man said; "you are going to start." "Thank goodness for that!" Godfrey said, jumping up from his straw. "That is the best news that I have heard for a long time." In the court-yard seven prisoners were standing. They were placed at some distance from each other, and by each stood a soldier and a policeman. A similar guard took their places by the side of Godfrey as he came out. An official took charge of the whole party, and, still keeping a few paces apart, they sallied out through the prison doors and marched through the sleeping city. Perhaps Godfrey was the only one of the party who did not feel profoundly impressed. They were going to leave behind them for ever family and friends and country, and many would have welcomed death as an escape from the dreary prospect before them. Godfrey's present feeling was that of exhilaration. He had done his best to keep his mind at work, but the damp and unwholesome air of the cell had told upon him, enfeebled as he had been by the attack of fever. As he walked along now he drew in deep breaths of the brisk night air, and looked with delight at the stars glistening overhead. As to the future, just at that moment it troubled him but little. He knew nothing of Siberia beyond having heard that the prisoners there led a terrible life. That he should escape from it some time or other seemed to him a matter of course. How, he could form no idea until he got there; but as to the fact he had no misgiving, for it seemed to him ridiculous that in a country so enormous as Siberia a prisoner could not make his way out sooner or later. When they reached the railway-station a train stood in readiness. Each prisoner had a separate compartment, his two guards accompanying him. Godfrey addressed a word to his custodians. The policeman, however, said, "You are forbidden to speak," and in a minute or two the train moved off. Godfrey dozed occasionally until morning, and then looked out at the dark woods through which they passed for hours. Twice the train stopped at lonely stations, and the prisoners were supplied with food. In the afternoon Godfrey saw the gilded and painted domes of a great city, and knew that it must be Moscow. Here, however, they made no stay, but steamed straight through the station and continued their way. Godfrey slept soundly after it became dark, waking up once when the train came to a standstill. At early morning he was roused and ordered to alight, and in the same order as before the prisoners were marched through the streets of Nijni Novgorod to the bank of the Volga. Few people were yet abroad in the streets, but all they met looked pityingly at the group of exiles, a sight of daily occurrence in the springtime of the year. Ordinary prisoners, of whom from fifteen to twenty thousand are sent annually to Siberia, are taken down the Volga in a convict barge, towed by a steamer, in batches of six or seven hundred. Political prisoners are differently treated; they are carried on board the ordinary steamer, each having a separate cabin, and during the voyage they are allowed no intercourse whatever, either with each other or with the ordinary passengers. [Illustration: Map of Russian Empire] Of these there were a considerable number on board the steamer, as the season had but just begun, and merchants, traders, and officials were taking advantage of the river's being open to push forward into Siberia. At present, however, these were all below. The prisoners were conducted to the cabins reserved for them, and then locked in. Presently Godfrey heard a buzz of many voices and a general movement in the cabin outside, and the fact that he was a prisoner and cut off from the world came to him more strongly than it had hitherto done. An hour later there was a movement and shouting overhead. Then he felt the paddles revolving, and knew that the steamer was under way. He could, however, see nothing. A sort of shutter was fastened outside the scuttle, which gave him the opportunity to take a glimpse of the sky, but nothing of the shore or water. Nothing could be more monotonous than the journey, and yet the air and light that came down through the port-hole rendered it far more pleasant than existence in a prison cell. He knew, too, that, dull as it was in the cabin, there would be little to see on deck, for the shores of the rivers were everywhere flat and low. After twenty-four hours' travel the steamer stopped. Since Godfrey had been in Russia he had naturally studied the geography of the empire, and knew a good deal about the routes. He guessed, therefore, that the halt was at Kasan, the capital of the old Tartar kingdom. It was a break to him to listen to the noises overhead, to guess at the passengers who were leaving and coming on board, to listen to scraps of conversation that could be heard through the open port-hole, and to the shouts of farewell from those on board to those on shore as the vessel steamed on again. He knew that after two hours' more steaming down the Volga the vessel turned up the Kama, a large river running into it and navigable for 1400 miles. Up this the vessel steamed for three days and then reached Perm. In the evening Godfrey and his companions were disembarked and, strictly guarded as before, were marched to the railway-station, placed in a special carriage attached to a train, and after twenty-four hours' travel at the rate of about twelve miles an hour reached Ekaterinburg. This railway had only been open for a year, and until its completion this portion of the journey had been one of the most tiresome along the whole route, as the Ural Mountains intervene between Perm and Ekaterinburg; their height is not great here, and the railway crosses them at not more than 1700 feet above sea-level. On arriving at the station half the prisoners were at once placed in vehicles and the others were sent to the prison. Godfrey was one of the party that went on at once. The vehicle, which was called a telega, was a sort of narrow waggon without springs, seats, or cover; the bottom was covered with a deep layer of straw, and there were some thick rugs for coverings at night. It was drawn by three horses. Godfrey was in the last of the four vehicles that started together. His soldier guard took his place beside him, four mounted Cossacks rode, two on each side of the procession. The driver, a peasant, to whom the horses belonged, cracked his short-handled whip and the horses sprang forward. Siberian horses are wiry little animals, not taking to the eye, but possessing speed and great endurance. The post-houses are situated from twelve to twenty-five versts apart, according to the difficulty of the country, a verst being about two-thirds of an English mile. At these post-houses relays of horses are always kept in readiness for one or two vehicles, but word is sent on before when political prisoners are coming, and extra relays are obtained by the post-masters from the peasants. To Godfrey the sensation of being whirled through the air as fast as the horses could gallop was, after his long confinement, perfectly delightful, and he fairly shouted with joy and excitement. Now that they were past Ekaterinburg, Godfrey's guard, a good-tempered-looking young fellow, seemed to consider that it was no longer necessary to preserve an absolute silence, which had no doubt been as irksome to him as to his companion. "We can talk now. Why are you so merry?" "To be in the air again is glorious," Godfrey said, "I should not mind how long the journey lasted if it were like this. How far do we travel in carriages?" "To Tiumen, 300 versts; then we take steamer again, that is if you go farther." "You don't know where we are going to then?" "Not at all, it will be known at Tiumen; that is where these things are settled generally, but people like you are under special orders. You don't look very wicked;" and he smiled in a friendly way as he looked at the lad beside him. "I am not wicked at all, not in the way you think," Godfrey said. "Do not talk about that," the soldier interrupted, "I must not know anything about you; talk about other things, but not why you are here." Godfrey nodded. "If we go on beyond Tiumen we go by steamer, do we not?" "Yes, through Tobolsk to Tomsk, beyond that we shall drive. You are lucky, you people, that you drive, the others walk; it is long work, but not so long as it used to be, they say. I have been told that in the old times, when they started on foot from Moscow it took them sometimes two years to reach the farthest places. Now they have the railway, and the steamers on the river as far as Tomsk." "How do they take them in the steamers?" "They take them in great barges that are towed; we passed two on our way to Perm. They hold five or six hundred, there is a great iron cage on deck, and they let half the number up at a time in order to get air. They are always going along at this time of year, for they all go early in the season so as to get to the journey's end before the frosts set in." "But surely all these men cannot be guilty of great crimes," Godfrey said, "for I have heard that about twenty thousand a year are sent away?" "No, many of them are only lazy fellows who drink and will not work. We sent away three from my village the year before I was taken for a soldier. They were lazy and would not do their share of work, so the heads of the village met and decided that they should go to Siberia. They drew up a paper, which was sent to be confirmed by the judge of the district, and then soldiers came and took them away." "But you don't mean to say," Godfrey said, "that men are sent to prison all their lives because they are lazy." "Oh no, no one would think of such a thing as that! Men like these are only sent to the big towns, Tiumen, or Perm, or Tobolsk, and then they are settled on land or work in the towns, but they are free to do as they like. The country wants labour, and men who won't work at home and expect the community to keep them have to work here or else they would starve. Then there are numbers who are only guilty of some small offence. They have stolen something, or they have resisted the tax-gatherer, or something of that sort. They only go to prison for the term of their sentences, perhaps only three or four months, and then they too are free like the others, and can work in the towns, or trade if they happen to have money to set them up, or they can settle in a village and take up land and cultivate it. They can live where they like in Siberia. I had many rich men pointed out to me in Tobolsk who had come out as convicts." "You have been here before then?" Godfrey said. "Yes, this is my second journey. I hope I shall come no more. We get a little extra pay and are better fed than we are with the regiment, and we have no drill; but then it is sad. Last time I had one with me who had left his wife and family behind; he was always sad, he talked to me sometimes of them, there was no one else to talk to. He was here for life, and he knew he should never see them again. She was young and would marry again." "But she couldn't do that as long as he lived," Godfrey said. "Oh yes; from the day a prisoner crosses the frontier his marriage is annulled and his wife can marry again. She may come with him if she likes, but if she does she can never go back again." "And do many wives come?" "A good many," the soldier said; "but I only know what I have heard. I was with one of you last time, and it was only on the way back that I heard of things about the others. Formerly the guards remained in Siberia if they chose, it was too far to send them back to Russia; but now that the journey is done so quickly, and we can get back all the way from Tomsk by the rivers, except this little bit, we go back again as soon as we have handed over our charges. I did not go farther than Tomsk last time, and I was back at Nijni in less than three months after starting. What part of Russia do you come from?" "I am an Englishman." The soldier looked round in surprise. "I did not know Englishmen could speak our language so well; of course I noticed that your speech was not quite like mine, but I am from the south and I thought you must come from somewhere in the north or from Poland. How did--" and here he stopped. "But I must not ask that; I don't want to know anything, not even your name. Look there, we are just going to pass a convoy of other prisoners." In a minute or two they overtook the party. It consisted of about a hundred and fifty prisoners escorted by a dozen mounted Cossacks. The men were in prison garb of yellowish-brown stuff with a coloured patch in the back between the shoulders. They had chains fastened to rings round the ankles and tied up to their belts. They were not heavy, and interfered very little with their walking. The procession in no way accorded with Godfrey's preconceived idea. The men were walking along without much attempt at regular order. They were laughing and talking together or with their guards, and some of them shouted chaffing remarks to the four vehicles as they swept past them. "They do not look very unhappy," Godfrey said. "Why should they?" the soldier replied; "they are better off than they would be at home. Lots of men break the law on purpose to be sent out; it is a good country. They say wives get rid of their husbands by informing against them and getting them sent here. I believe there are quite as many husbands with scolding wives who get themselves sent here to be free of them. As long as they are on the road or employed in hard labour they are fed better than they ever were at home, better a great deal than we soldiers are. Even in the prisons they do not work so very hard, for it is difficult to find work for them; only if they are sent to the mines their lot is bad. Of that I know nothing, but I have heard. As for the rest, from what I have seen of it I should say that a convict here is better off than a peasant at home. But here we are at the post-house." CHAPTER V. AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE. The stay at the post-houses was very short. As soon as the vehicles were seen coming along the straight level road, the first set of horses were brought out, and the leading tarantass was ready to proceed in two or three minutes. The other horses were changed as quickly, and in less than ten minutes from their arrival the whole were on their way again. While the horses were being changed the prisoners were permitted to get out and stretch their legs, but were not allowed to exchange a word with each other or with anyone else. At every fourth stage a bowl of soup with a hunch of bread was brought to each prisoner by one of the guards at the ostrov or prison, where the convicts were lodged as they came along. There were rugs in the vehicles to lay over them at night when the air was sharp and chilly, although in the day the sun had great power, and the dust rose in clouds under the horses' feet. There was little of interest to be seen on the journey. Only round the villages was there any cultivation, and the plains stretched away unbroken save by small groups of cattle, horses, and sheep. Although Godfrey had not minded the shaking of the springless vehicle for the first stage or two, he felt long before he reached the journey's end as if every bone was dislocated. As a rule the road was good, but in some places, where it passed through swampy tracts, it had given in the spring thaw, and had been cut into deep ruts. Here the shaking as they passed along at night was tremendous. Godfrey and his companion were dashed against each other or against the sides with such force that Godfrey several times thought his skull was fractured, and he was indeed thankful when, after forty hours on the road, they drove into Tiumen. Tiumen is a town of over 15,000 inhabitants, and is the first town arrived at in Siberia proper, the frontier between Russia and that country running between Ekaterinburg and that town. Here the prisoners were at once placed on board a steamer, and Godfrey was glad indeed to throw himself down upon the bed, where he slept without waking until the steamer got under way in the morning. He was delighted to see that the port-hole was not, as in the first boat, blocked by an outside shutter, but that he could look out over the country as they passed along. For a time the scenery was similar to that which they had been passing over, bare and desolate; but it presently assumed a different character; fields of green wheat stretched away from the river side; comfortable-looking little villages succeeded each other rapidly as the steamer passed along, and save for the difference of architecture and the peculiar green domes and pinnacles of the little churches he might have been looking over a scene in England. The river was about two hundred yards wide here, a smooth and placid stream. The steamer did not proceed at any great pace, as it was towing behind it one of the heavy convict barges, and although the passage is ordinarily performed in a day and a half, it took them nearly a day longer to accomplish, and it was not until late in the afternoon of the third day that Tobolsk came in sight. Through his port-hole Godfrey obtained a good view of the town, containing nearly 30,000 inhabitants, with large government buildings, and a great many houses built of stone. It is built in a very unhealthy position, the country round being exceedingly low and marshy. After passing Tobolsk they entered the Obi, one of the largest rivers in Asia. The next morning the steamer again started for her sixteen-hundred-mile journey to Tomsk. The journey occupied eight days, the convict barge having been left behind at Tobolsk. The time passed tediously to Godfrey, for the banks were low and flat, villages were very rare, and the steamer only touched at three places. Herds of horses were seen from time to time roaming untended over the country. The only amusement was in watching the Ostjaks, the natives of the banks of the Obi. These people have no towns or villages, but live in rough tents made of skins. He saw many of them fishing from their tiny canoes, but the steamer did not pass near enough to them to enable him to get a view of them, as they generally paddled away towards the shore as the steamer approached. He heard afterwards that they are wonderfully skilful in the use of the bow, which they use principally for killing squirrels and other small animals. These bows are six feet long, the arrows four feet. The head is a small iron ball, so as to kill without injuring the fur of small animals, and the feats recorded of the English archers of old times are far exceeded by the Ostjaks. Even at long distances they seldom fail to strike a squirrel on the head, and Godfrey was informed by a man who had been present that he saw an Ostjak shoot an arrow high into the air, and cut it in two with another arrow as it descended, a feat that seemed to him altogether incredible, but is confirmed by the evidence of Russian travellers. Tomsk is situated on the river Tom, an affluent of the Obi. The town is about the same size as Tobolsk; the climate of the district is considered the best in Siberia; the land is fertile, and among the mountains are many valuable mines. Although a comparatively small province in comparison to Tobolsk on one side and Yeneseisk on the other, it contains an area of half a million square miles, and, excluding Russia, is bigger than any two countries of Europe together. It contains a rural population of 725,000-130,000 natives, chiefly Tartars and Kalmucs, and 30,000 troops. Here Godfrey was landed, and marched to the prison. Of these there are two, the one a permanent convict establishment, the other for the temporary detention of prisoners passing through. Godfrey slipped a few roubles into the hand of his guard, for his watch, money, and the other things in his pockets had been restored to him before starting on his journey. After two days' stop in the prison the journey was continued as before, a soldier sitting by the driver, a police-officer taking the place of the soldier who had before accompanied him. He began to speak to Godfrey as soon as they started. "We are not so strict now," he said. "You will soon be across the line into Eastern Siberia, and you will no longer meet people through whom you might send messages or letters. As to escape, that would be out of the question since you left Ekaterinburg, for none can travel either by steamer or post without a permit, or even enter an inn, and the document must be shown at every village." "But I suppose prisoners do escape sometimes," Godfrey said. "There have not been a dozen escapes in the last fifty years," the policeman said. "There are great numbers get away from their prisons or employments every year, but the authorities do not trouble about them; they may take to the mountains or forests, and live on game for a few months in summer, but when winter arrives they must come in and give themselves up." "What happens to them then?" Godfrey asked. "Perhaps nothing but solitary confinement for a bit, perhaps a beating with rods, just according to the temper of the chief official at the time. Perhaps if it is a bad case they are sent to the mines for a bit; that is what certainly happens when they are political prisoners." "Why can't they get right away?" "Where are they to go to?" the officer said with a laugh. "To the south there are sandy deserts where they would certainly die of thirst; to the north trackless forests, cold that would freeze a bullock solid in a night, great rivers miles wide to cross, and terrible morasses, to say nothing of the wolves who would make short work of you. The native tribes to the west, and the people of the desert, are all fierce and savage, and would kill anyone who came among them merely for his clothes; and, besides, they get a reward from government for every escaped prisoner they bring in alive or dead. No, we don't want bolts or bars to keep prisoners in here. The whole land is a prison-house, and the prisoners know well enough that it is better to live under a roof and to be well fed there than to starve in the forest, with the prospect of a flogging at the end of their holiday. Still there are thousands take to the woods in the summer. The government does not care. Why should it? It is spared the expense of feeding them, and if they starve to death or kill each other off in their quarrels (for the greater part of them would think no more of taking life than of killing a fowl) there is an end of all further trouble about them, for you understand, it is only the men who have life sentences, the murderers, and so on, that attempt to run away; the short-sentence men are not such fools. "No," he went on kindly, seeing that Godfrey looked depressed at what he had heard; "whatever you do don't think of running away. If you behave well, and gain the good opinion of the authorities, you won't find yourself uncomfortable. You will be made a clerk or a store-keeper, and will have a good deal of liberty after a time. If you try to run away, you will probably be sent to the mines; and though it is not so bad there as they say, it is bad enough." But even this prospect was not very cheering to Godfrey. Hitherto it had seemed to him that there could be no real difficulty, although there might be many hardships and privations, in making his escape from so vast a prison. He had told himself that it must be possible to evade pursuit in so vast a region; but now it seemed that nature had set so strong a wall round the country that the Russians did not even trouble themselves to pursue, confident that in time the prisoners must come back again. But he was not silent long. With the buoyancy of youth he put the question aside for the present with the reflection, "Where there is a will there is a way; anyhow some fellows have got away, and if they have done it, I can." Godfrey had not as yet realized his situation; the sentence "for life" had fallen upon his ears but not upon his mind; he still viewed the matter as he might have viewed some desperate scrape at school. He had, as he would have said, put his foot in it horribly; but that he should really have to pass his whole life in these wilds, should never see England again, his father, mother, or sisters, was a thing that his mind absolutely refused to grasp. "Of course I shall get away somehow." This had been the refrain that was constantly running through his mind, and even now a satisfactory reply to the assertion that not a dozen men had made their escape at once occurred to him. There was no motive to induce them to make their escape. They could not return to Russia, and in any other country they would be even more in exile than here, where everyone spoke their language, and where, as far as he had seen, the climate was as good as that of Russia, and the country no more flat and ugly. "There is nothing they can want to escape for," he repeated to himself. "I have everything to escape for, and I mean to do it." Having once re-established that view to his satisfaction, he began to chat away cheerfully again to his companion. "It is not everyone," he said, "who possesses my advantages, or who can travel five or six thousand miles by rail, steamer, and carriage, without ever having to put his hand in his pocket for a single kopec. The only objection to it is that they don't give me a return ticket." "That is an objection," the policeman agreed, smiling. "We are not going to travel night and day, as we did between Ekaterinburg and Tiumen, I hope?" "Oh, no; we shall only travel while it is light." "Well, that is a comfort. It was bad enough for that short distance. It would be something awful if it had to be kept up for a fortnight. How long shall we be before we get to Irkoutsk?" "About a month. I know nothing as to what will be done with you beyond that. You may, for anything I know, go to the mines at Nertchinsk, which are a long distance east beyond Irkoutsk; or you may go to Verkhoyansk, a Yakout settlement 3000 miles from Irkutsk, within the Arctic Circle. There are lots of these penal settlements scattered over the country. They do not send the ordinary convict population there. There is no danger from them; but the theory is that the politicals are always plotting, and therefore they are for the most part sent where by no possibility can they get up trouble." Godfrey set his lips hard together and asked no questions for the next half-hour. Although the journey was not continued by night the telega was still Godfrey's constant place of abode. Sometimes it was wheeled under a shed, sometimes it stood in the road, but in all cases the policeman was by his side night and day. Godfrey was indifferent whether he slept in a bed or in the telega, which, when the straw was fresh shaken up and a couple of rugs laid upon it, was by no means uncomfortable. The nights were not cold and no rain had fallen since he left Nijni. He further reflected that probably there would be fleas and other vermin in the post-houses, and that altogether he was a gainer instead of a loser by the regulation. He was pleased with the appearance of Atchinsk, a bright little town a day's journey from Tomsk. It was, like all the Siberian towns, built of wood, but the houses were all painted white or gray, picked out with bright colours. It stood in the middle of a large grass plain, with inclosed meadows of luxuriant herbage and bright flowers, among which large numbers of sheep and cattle were feeding. Beyond this the country again became dull and monotonous. Krasnoiarsk was the next town reached. Between this town and Kansk the country was again cultivated. Scarce a day passed without large gangs of convicts being overtaken on the road. For some distance Godfrey suffered terribly from mosquitoes, which swarmed so thickly that the peasants working in the fields were obliged to wear black veils over their faces. Fortunately he had been warned by his guard at Atchinsk that there would be trouble with these pests on further, and the man had, at his request, bought for him a few yards of muslin, under which they sat during the day and spread over the telega at night. It was, however, a long and dreary journey, and Godfrey was heartily glad when at last they saw the domes of Irkoutsk, a city of fifty thousand inhabitants. They drove rapidly through the town to the prison, where he was placed in a cell by himself. The morning after his arrival the warder entered with a man carrying a basin and shaving apparatus. "Confound it!" Godfrey muttered. "I have been expecting this ever since I saw the first gang of convicts, but I hoped they did not do it to us." It was of course useless to remonstrate. His hair, which had grown to a great length since he left St. Petersburg, was first cut short; then the barber lathered his head and set to work with a razor. Godfrey wondered what his particular style of hair was going to be. He had noticed that all the convicts were partially shaved. Some were left bare from the centre of the head down one side; others had the front half of the head shaved, while the hair at the back was left; some had only a ridge of hair running along the top of the head, either from the forehead to the nape of the neck or from one ear to the other. "He is shaving me like a monk," he said to himself as the work proceeded. "Well, I think that is the best after all, for with a cap on it won't show." When the barber had done he stepped back and surveyed Godfrey with an air of satisfaction; while the jailer, as he wrote down the particulars in a note-book, grinned. Godfrey passed his hand over his head and found that, as he supposed, he had been shaved half-way down to the ears; but in the middle of this bald place the barber had left a patch of hair about the size of half-a-crown which stood up perfectly erect. He burst into a shout of laughter, in which the other two men joined. The jailer patted him approvingly on the shoulder. "Bravo, young fellow!" he said, pleased at seeing how lightly Godfrey took it, for many of the exiles who had stood bravely the loss of their liberty were completely broken down by the loss of a portion of their hair, which branded them wherever they went as convicts. Godfrey was then taken out into a large court-yard and out through a gate into another inclosure. This had evidently been added but a very short time to the precincts of the prison. It was of considerable size, being four or five acres in extent, and was surrounded on three sides by a palisade some fourteen feet in height, of newly-sawn timber. The wall of the prison formed the fourth side of the square. In each corner of the inclosure was placed a clump of six little wooden huts. Two low fences ran across the inclosure at right angles to each other, dividing the space into four equal squares. Where the fences crossed each other there was an inclosure a few yards across, and in this were two sentry-boxes with soldiers, musket in hand, standing by them. A few men were listlessly moving about, while others were digging and working in small garden patches into which the inclosures were divided. The policeman who accompanied Godfrey led him to one of the little huts. He opened the door and went in. A young man was sitting there. "I have brought you a companion," the policeman said. "He will share your hut with you. You can teach him what is required." With this brief introduction he closed the door behind him and left. The young man had risen, and he and Godfrey looked hard at each other. "Surely we have met before!" the prisoner said. "I know your face quite well." "And I know yours also," Godfrey replied. "Now that you speak I know you. You are the young Englishman, Godfrey Bullen." "I am," Godfrey replied; "and you?" "Alexis Stumpoff." "So it is!" Godfrey exclaimed in surprise, and, delighted at this meeting, they shook hands cordially. "But what are you here for?" Godfrey asked. "I thought that you had obtained an appointment at Tobolsk." "Yes, I was sent out as assistant to the doctor of one of the prisons. I suppose you understood that it was not the sort of appointment one would choose." "I was certainly surprised when I heard that you were going so far away," Godfrey said, "as my friends told me that you had property. It seemed almost like going into banishment." "That was just what it was," the young doctor laughed. "I had been too outspoken in my political opinions, and one or two of our set had been arrested and sent out here; and when I was informed, on the day after I passed my examinations, that I was appointed to a prison at Tobolsk, it was also intimated to me that it would be more agreeable to go there in that capacity than as a prisoner. As I was also of that opinion, and as, to tell you the truth, some of our friends were for pushing matters a good deal farther than I cared about doing, I was not altogether sorry to get out of it." "But how is it that you are here as a prisoner?" Godfrey asked. "That is more than I can tell you. Some two months ago the governor of the prison entered my room with two warders, and informed me briefly that I was to be sent here as a prisoner. I had ten minutes given me to pack up my things for the journey, and half an hour later was in the cabin of a steamer, with a Cossack at the door. What it was for, Heaven only knows. I had never broken any regulations, never spoken to a political prisoner when in the hospital except to ask him medical questions, and had never opened my lips on politics to a soul there." "I think perhaps I can enlighten you," Godfrey said; and he related to him the attempt to blow up the emperor at the Winter Palace, and the fate of Petroff Stepanoff and Akim Soushiloff. "That does indeed explain it," Alexis said. "I was very intimate with both of them, and it is quite enough to have been intimate with two men engaged in a plot against the life of the Czar to ensure one a visit to Siberia. So that is it! I have thought of everything, and it seemed to me that it must have been something at St. Petersburg--that my name had been found on a list when some of the Nihilists were arrested, or something of that sort; for I certainly did join them, but that was before there was any idea of taking steps against the Czar. No wonder you are here, after being mixed up in that escape of Valerian Ossinsky, and then being caught again with four Nihilists just after that terrible attempt to blow up the Czar. I wonder they did not hang you." "I wonder too," Godfrey said. "I suppose if I had been a year or two older they would have done so; but I can assure you I had not the slightest idea that Petroff and Akim were Nihilists. I do think that the country is horribly misgoverned, but as a foreigner that was no business of mine; and however strongly I felt, I would have had nothing to do with men who tried to gain their end by assassination. I was just as innocent in the affair of Ossinsky. I behaved like a fool, I grant, but that was all. I had met the woman, who as I now know was Sophia Perovskaia, but she was only known to me then from having met her once in Petroff and Akim's room, and she was introduced to me as Akim's cousin Katia. I met her at the Opera-house, and she told me a cock-and-bull story about a young officer who had come to see a lady there, and had left his regiment at Moscow without leave to do so. His colonel, who was at the Opera-house, had heard of his being there and was looking for him, and I was persuaded to change dominoes with him to enable him to slip off." "Oh that was it!" Alexis said. "I wondered how you got mixed up in the affair, and still more why they let you out after your having been caught in what they considered a serious business. Well, here we are, victims both, and it is a curious chance that has thrown us together again." "Well, what is our life here?" Godfrey asked. Alexis shrugged his shoulders. "As a life it is detestable, though were it for a short time only there would be nothing to grumble about. We are fairly fed; we have each a patch of ground, where we can grow vegetables. The twelve men in these huts can visit and talk to each other. When that is said all is said. Oh, by the way, we are also permitted to make anything we like! that is, we can buy the materials if we have money, and the work can be sold in the town. There is one man has made himself a turning-lathe, and he makes all sorts of pretty little things. There is another man who was an officer in the navy; he carves little models of ships out of wood and bone. Another man paints. I have not decided yet what I shall do. I had two or three hundred roubles when I was sent off here, and as I only spent four or five on the road, I have plenty to last me for some time for tea and tobacco." "But how do you get them?" "The warders smuggle them in. It is an understood thing, and there is no real objection to it, though they are very strict about bringing in spirits. Still we can get vodka if we have a mind to; it is only a question of bribery." "How long are you here for, Alexis?" "Fifteen years." "I am supposed to be in for life," Godfrey said. "Fifteen years is as bad as life," the young doctor said. "What is the use of your life after having been shut up here for fifteen years?" "Well, I don't mean to stay, that is one thing," Godfrey said. "There can't be any difficulty in escaping from here." "Not the least in the world," Alexis said quietly. "But where do you propose to go?" "I have not settled yet. It seems to me that any one with pluck and energy ought to be able to make his way out of this country somehow; besides, from what I hear great numbers do get away, and take to the woods." "Yes, but they have to give themselves up again." "That may be; but I hear also that if they give themselves up a long way from the prison they escape from, and refuse to give any account whatever of themselves, they are simply sent to prison again as vagabonds. In that case they are treated as ordinary convicts. Now from what I hear, an ordinary convict is infinitely better off than a political one. Of course you have to associate with a bad lot; still that is better than almost solitary confinement. The work they have to do is not hard, and if they are well conducted they are let out after a time, whereas there is no hope for a political prisoner. At any rate, even if I knew that if I was retaken I should be hung at once, I should try it." "But the distance to the frontier is enormous, and even when you get there you would be arrested at the first place you come to if you have no papers; besides, how could you get through the winter?" "I should get through the winter somehow," Godfrey said stoutly. "There are hundreds and thousands of people in scattered villages who live through the winter. Why shouldn't I? I would make friends with the natives in the north, and live in their huts, and hunt with them. But I am not thinking of that. The distance is, as you say, enormous, and the cold terrible. My idea is to escape by the south." "It is a desert, Godfrey." "Oh they call it a desert to frighten people from trying to escape that way. But I know there is a caravan route by which the teas come from China; besides, there are tribesmen who wander about there and pick up a living somehow. I don't say that I am going to succeed; I only say I am going to try. I may lose my life or I may be sent back again. Very well, then, I will try again some other way. We are not far from the Chinese frontier here, are we?" "No; the frontier is at Kiakhta, not more than three or four hundred miles away." "What are the people like?" "They are called Buriats, and are a sort of Mongol tribe, living generally in tents and wandering with their flocks and herds through the country like the patriarchs of old." "If they have large flocks and herds," Godfrey said, "the reward the Russians offer for escaped convicts can't tempt them much. Most likely they are hospitable; almost all these wandering tribes are. If one had luck one might get befriended and stick for a time to one of these tribes in their wanderings south, and then get hold of some other people, and so get passed on. There can't be anything impossible in it, Alexis. We know that travellers have made their way through Africa alone. Mungo Park did, and lots of other people have done so, and some of the negro tribes are, according to all accounts, a deal more savage than the Asiatic tribes. Once among them it doesn't much matter which way one goes, whether it is east to China or west to Persia." Alexis sat and looked with some wonder at his companion. "By the saints, Godfrey Bullen, I begin to understand now how it is that your people, living in a bit of an island which could be pinched out of Russia and never missed, are colonizing half the world; how they go in ships to explore the polar seas, have penetrated Africa in all directions as travellers, go among the wildest people as missionaries. We are brought up to have everything done for us: to think as we are told to think, to have officials keep their eyes over us at every turn, to be punished if we dare to think independently, till we have come to be a nation of grown-up children. You are only a boy, if you will forgive my calling you so, and yet you talk about facing the most horrible dangers as coolly as if you were proposing going for a promenade on the Nevski. We won't talk any more about it now, for you have made me feel quite restless. There, you have been here two hours, and I have forgotten all my duties as host, and have not even offered you a cup of tea; it is shameful." And Alexis brought out a samovar and soon had water boiling and tea made. After they had drunk it they went out of the hut, and Godfrey was introduced to the other exiles. Two of them who lived together were quite old men; they had been professors at the University of Kieff, and were exiled for having in their lectures taught what were considered pernicious doctrines. There were three military and two naval officers, a noble, another doctor, and two sons of merchants. All received him cordially, and Godfrey saw that in any other place the society would be a pleasant one; but there was an air of settled melancholy in the majority of the faces, while the sentry fifty yards away, and the high prison wall behind, seemed ever in their minds. By common consent, as it seemed, no allusion was ever made to politics. They had all strong opinions, and had sacrificed everything for them, but of what use to discuss matters the course of which they were powerless to influence in the smallest degree. Free, there was probably not one of them but would again have striven in one way or another to bring about reforms, either by instructing the ignorant, rousing the intelligent, or frightening the powerful. But here, with no hope of returning, the whole thing was best forgotten. The past was dead to them, and they were without a future. The news that Godfrey brought of the blow that had been struck against the Czar roused them for a few days. The war then was still being carried on. Others were wielding the weapons they had forged, but of what had happened afterwards Godfrey was ignorant. Four men had been arrested or killed; but whether they had played an important part in the matter he knew not, nor whether others had shared their fate. All he could say was, that so far as he heard, numerous arrests had taken place. But the excitement caused by the news very speedily died away, and they again became listless and indifferent. All worked for a little time in their gardens, but beyond that only those who had made some sort of occupation for themselves had anything to interest themselves actively in. Sometimes they played chess, draughts, or cards, but they did so, as Godfrey observed, in a half-hearted manner, with the exception, indeed, of one of the professors, who was by far the strongest chess-player of the party, and who passed all his time in inventing problems which, when complete, he carefully noted down in a book, with their solutions. "When I am dead," he said one day to Godfrey, who was watching him, "they will send this book to a nephew of mine; you see I have written his name and address outside. He is a great chess-player, and will send it to England or France to be published; and it is pleasant for me to think that my work, even here in prison, may serve as an amusement to people out in the world." Except in the dulness and monotony of the life there was little to complain of, and Godfrey was surprised to find how far it differed from his own preconceived notions of the life of a political prisoner in Siberia. It was only when, by an effort, he looked ahead for years and tried to fancy the possibility of being so cut off from the world for life, that he could appreciate the terrible nature of the punishment. Better a thousand times to be one of the murderers in the prison behind the wall. They had work to occupy their time, and constantly changing associates, with the knowledge that by good conduct they would sooner or later be released and be allowed to live outside the prison. When at eight o'clock in the evening the prisoners were locked up in their huts, he endeavoured to learn everything that Alexis Stumpoff knew of Siberia. He found that his knowledge was much more extensive than he had expected. "As I came out nominally, Godfrey, as a free man, I brought with me every book I could buy on the country, and I almost got them by heart. It seemed to me that I was likely to be kept here for years, if not for life. I might be sent from one government prison to another, from Tobolsk to the eastern sea; therefore every place possessed an interest for me. Besides this, although I was not actually a political prisoner myself I was virtually so, and my sympathies were wholly with the prisoners, and I thought that I might possibly be able to advise and counsel men who came under my charge: to describe to them the places where they might have relations or friends shut up, and to dissuade those who, like yourself, meditated escape, for my studies had not gone far before I became convinced that this was well-nigh hopeless. I learned how strict were the regulations on the frontier, how impossible, even if this were reached, to journey on without being arrested at the very first village that a fugitive entered, and that so strict were they that although numbers of the convict establishments were within comparatively short distances of the frontier, escapes were no more frequent from them than from those three thousand miles to the east. When I say escapes I mean escapes from Siberia. Escapes from the prisons are of constant occurrence, since most of the work is done outside the walls. There are thousands, I might almost say tens of thousands, get away every spring, but they all have to come back again in winter. The authorities trouble themselves little about them, for they know that they must give themselves up in a few months." "Yes, my guard told me about that. He said they were not punished much when they came in." "Sometimes they are flogged; but the Russian peasant is accustomed to flogging and thinks but little of it. More often they are not flogged. They have, perhaps, a heavier chain, for the convicts all wear chains--we have an advantage over them there--and they are put on poorer diet for a time. They lose the remission of sentence they would obtain by good behaviour, that is all, even when they are recognized, but as a rule they take care not to give themselves up at the prison they left, but at one many hundred miles from it. In the course of the summer their hair has grown again. They assert stoutly that they are free labourers who have lost their papers, and who cannot earn their living through the winter. The authorities know, of course, that they are escaped convicts, but they have no means of identifying them. They cannot send them the rounds of a hundred convict establishments; so instead of a man being entered as Alexis Stumpoff, murderer, for instance, he is put down by the name he gives, and the word vagabond is added. The next year they may break out again; but in time the hardships they suffer in the woods become distasteful and they settle down to their prison life, and then, after perhaps six, perhaps ten years of good conduct they are released and allowed to settle where they will. So you see, Godfrey Bullen, how hopeless is the chance of escape." "Not at all," Godfrey said. "These men are most of them peasants--men without education and without enterprise, incapable of forming any plan, and wholly without resources in themselves. I feel as certain of escaping as I am of being here at present. I don't say that I shall succeed the first time, but, as you say yourself, there is no difficulty in getting away, and if I fail in one direction I will try in another." CHAPTER VI. AN ESCAPE. The evenings were spent principally in conversations about Siberia, Godfrey being eager to learn everything that he could about its geography and peoples. Alexis told him all he knew as to the mountains and rivers, the various native tribes, the districts where the villages were comparatively numerous, and the mighty forests that, stretching away to the Arctic Sea, could hardly be said to be explored. Books and paper were forbidden to the political prisoners, and so strict were the regulations that the warders would not under any considerations bring them in. But Godfrey wrote all the particulars that he judged might in any way be useful with a burnt piece of stick upon the table as Alexis gave them, and then learned them by heart, washing them off after he had done so. But few of the details Alexis could give him would be of any use in the attempt he first intended to make. The southern frontier was so temptingly close that it seemed absurd to turn from that and to attempt a tremendous journey north, involving the certainty of having to struggle through an Arctic winter, and to face the difficulties of the passage west, either by land or sea. Beyond the fact that from Irkutsk he would have to make for the southern point of Lake Baikal, some sixty miles away, and then strike about south-east for another two hundred through a country inhabited almost entirely by Buriats, the doctor could tell him little. "Kiakhta," he said, "or rather, as far as the Russians are concerned, Troitzkosavsk, which is a sort of suburb of Kiakhta, is the frontier town. Kiakhta is a sort of neutral town inhabited only by merchants, and by a treaty between Russia and China no officer or stranger is allowed to sleep there. Across the frontier, a few miles away, is the Chinese, or I suppose I should say the Mongol, town of Maimatchin. Beyond the fact that the people about there are Mongols rather than Chinese, and that such religion as they have is that of Thibet rather than China, for their priests are called lamas, I know nothing except that the caravan route from Kiakhta to Pekin is somewhere about a thousand miles, and that the camels do it in about thirty-five days." "Then they make about thirty miles a day," Godfrey said. "I suppose there must be wells at their halting-places." "Ah! that is another matter, Godfrey. You see a camel can go three days without water easily enough, and of course they would carry skins of water for the travellers." "Oh, that is no odds," Godfrey said. "One could walk the ninety miles easily enough in three days, and there would be no difficulty in carrying water enough for that time. Besides, one would of course join a caravan if one could. Luckily enough I had two hundred roubles in notes when I was captured, and they restored them as well as my watch and other things when I started. I suppose the Mongols are just as fond of money as other people. The Chinese are, certainly, and I might get some Chinese tea-merchant to let me go in his train for a consideration." The Russian laughed. "'Pon my word, Godfrey, I begin to think you will do it." "There can't be anything impossible in doing it," Godfrey said. "Why, did not Burton disguise himself and go with a caravan to Mecca and visit the holy places, and that was twenty times as difficult and dangerous. Going along the caravan route of course the difficulty is the language and the Buriats. If one could talk Mongol, or whatever the fellows call their language, it would be easy sailing; but I own that it is a difficult thing to get along and explain what you want with people who cannot understand a word you say. I suppose the Buriats speak Russian." "I should say that a great many of them do, Godfrey. I know there are missionaries and schools among them, and some of them live in settled villages, though they are so wedded to their own wandering life that they build their houses on the exact model of their tents, with a hole in the roof to let the smoke out. Still, as they deal with the towns and come in to sell their cattle and sheep and herds and so on, no doubt the greater part of them, at any rate on this side of the frontier, speak a certain amount of Russian. The difficulty will be to persuade them not to give you up." "But I can pay them more not to give me up than they can get for doing so," Godfrey said. "They would kill you for what you have, Godfrey. They are permitted to kill runaways, in fact encouraged to do so, and the reward is the same whether they are brought in dead or alive." "I should think, Alexis, it is easier to bring in a live man than a dead one." "I don't know," the Russian laughed. "I don't think a Buriat would find it very easy to take you any distance alive, but there would be no trouble in chucking you into a cart and bringing you here after the preliminary operation of knocking you on the head." Godfrey smiled. "You forget there would be some preliminary trouble in knocking me on the head, Alexis; but seriously, I don't think any natives who have been in contact at all with civilization are disposed to take life without some strong motive. Of course robbery would be a motive, but I should certainly have nothing about me that a Tartar or a Buriat--I suppose they are all something of the same thing--would covet. You were telling me yourself that many of these people have very large flocks and herds. Is it likely such people as these would cut a stranger's throat on the chance of finding a few roubles in his pocket?" "Well, one would think not, Godfrey; but of course they are not all rich." "No; they may not be rich, but you say they are always nomads. Well, people who are nomads must always have some sort of animals to carry their tents, and a certain amount, anyhow, of cattle, horses, or sheep. No, I don't at all believe in cutting throats without a motive." "But let us understand a little more about your intentions, Godfrey. Do you mean to climb over that fence and then to stroll away to the south with your hands in your pockets and your hat on one side of your head, and to ask the first man you come upon to direct you to the shortest road to Pekin?" Godfrey laughed. "No, not quite that, Alexis. These clothes did very well in St. Petersburg, and though they are all the worse for the journey here I daresay they would pass well enough in the streets of Irkutsk. The first thing to do will be to get some clothes, for as far as I could see coming along the natives all dress a good deal like the Russians. I suppose in winter they wrap up more in furs, or they may wear their furs differently, but any sort of peasant dress would do, as it would not excite attention, while this tweed suit would be singular even in the streets here." "That fur-lined great-coat would be all right, Godfrey." "Yes. I bought that at St. Petersburg. I don't know that it would go very well with a peasant's dress, and it is certainly not suitable for the time of year, though I shall take it with me if I can. If I could roll it up and carry it as a knapsack it would be first rate for sleeping in, besides it might do as something to exchange when one gets to places where money is of little use. If I can get hold of a pistol anyhow I shall be glad. A pistol will always produce civility if one meets only one or two men. The other things I should want are a box of matches for making fires, a good knife, or better still, a small axe, for chopping wood, and a bottle or skin for holding water." "You will be seized and sent back in a week, Godfrey." "Very well, then, there will be no harm done. I regard this as a sort of preliminary investigation. I shall ascertain the difficulties of travel in Siberia, and shall learn lessons for next time. I believe myself the true way is to strike one of the great rivers, to build or steal a boat, to go down in it to the Arctic Sea, and then to coast along until one gets to Norway; but that is a big affair, and besides it is a great deal too late in the year for it. When I attempt that I shall make off as early in the spring as possible." "Remember you may be flogged when you are caught, Godfrey." "Well, I shouldn't like to be flogged, but as you say the convicts don't think much of it, I suppose I could bear it. They used to flog in our army and navy till quite lately." "It is a dishonour," Alexis exclaimed passionately. Godfrey shrugged his shoulders. "The dishonour lies in the crime and not in the punishment," he said. "At our great public schools in England fellows are flogged. Well, there is no disgrace in it if it's only for breaking the rules or anything of that sort, but it would be a horrible dishonour if it were for thieving. All that sort of thing is absurd. I believe flogging is the best punishment there is. It is a lot better to give a man a couple of dozen and send him about his business, than it is to keep him for a year in prison at the public expense, and to have to maintain his wife and children also at the public expense while he is there. Besides, I thought you said the other day that they did not flog political prisoners." "Well, they don't, at least not at any of the large prisons; but in some of the small establishments, with perhaps a brutal drunken captain or major as governor, no doubt it may be done sometimes." "Well, I will take my chance of it." "And when do you think of starting?" Alexis asked after a pause. "Directly. I have only to decide how I am to get out after the door is locked, and to make a rope of some sort to climb the fence with. The blankets tied together will do for that. As to the getting out there is no difficulty. One only has to throw a blanket over that cross beam, get up on that, and get off one of the lining boards, displace a few tiles, crawl through." "I have half a mind to go with you, Godfrey." "Have you, Alexis? I should be awfully glad, but at the same time I would not say a word to persuade you to do it. You know I make light of it, but I know very well that there will be some danger and a tremendous lot of hardship to be gone through." "I don't think I am afraid of that, Godfrey," Alexis said seriously. "It is not that I have been thinking of ever since you began to talk to me of getting away. I consider it is a hundred to one against success; but, as you say, if we fail and get brought back no great harm is done. If we get killed or die of hunger and thirst, again no harm is done, for certainly life is not a thing to cling to when one is a prisoner in Siberia; but it is not that. You see I am differently situated to you. If you do succeed in getting away you go home, and you are all right; if I succeed in getting away what is to become of me? I speak Russian and German, but there would be no return for me to Russia unless some day when a new Czar ascends the throne, or on some such occasion, when a general amnesty is granted; but even that would hardly extend to political prisoners. What am I to do? So far as I can see I might starve, and after all one might almost as well remain here as starve in Pekin or in some Chinese port. Granted that I could work my way back to Europe on board ship, what should I do if I landed at Marseilles or Liverpool? I could not go through the streets shouting in German 'I am a doctor, who wants to be cured?'" "No, Alexis," Godfrey agreed, "you could not well do that; but I will tell you what you could do. Of course at the first place I get to, where there is a telegraph to England, I will send a message to my father to cable to some firm there to let me have what money I require. Very well. Then, of course, you would go home with me to England, and there is one thing I could promise you, and that is a post in my father's office. You know we trade with Russia, and though our correspondence is generally carried on in German, I am quite sure that my father would, after you had been my companion on such a journey as that we propose, make a berth for you in the office to undertake correspondence in Russian and German, and that he would pay a salary quite sufficient for you to live in comfort; or if you would rather, I am sure that he would find you means for going out and settling, say in the United States, in the part where German is the general language." "Then in that case, Godfrey," the Russian said, shaking his hand warmly, "I am your man. I think I should have gone with you anyhow; but what you have said quite decides me. Now, then, what is our first proceeding?" Godfrey laughed. "I should say to take an inventory of our belongings, Alexis, or rather of your belongings, for mine are very briefly described. Two hundred roubles in notes, a watch, a pocket-knife, the suit of clothes I stand up in, half a dozen pairs of socks, and three flannel shirts I bought on the way, one great-coat lined with fur; I think that is about all. It is a very small share. Yours are much more numerous." "More numerous, but not much more useful," Alexis said. "They let me bring one large portmanteau of clothes, but as I can't carry that away on my shoulders it is of very little use. All I can take in that way is a suit of clothes and a spare flannel shirt or two, and some socks. I have got two cases of surgical instruments. I will take a few of the most useful and some other things, a pair of forceps for instance. We may come across a Tartar with a raging tooth, and make him our friend for ever by extracting it, and I will put a bandage or two and some plaster in my pocket. They are things one ought always to carry, for one is always liable to get a hurt or a sprain. As to money, I have a hundred and twenty roubles; they are all in silver. I changed my paper at Tobolsk, thinking that silver would be more handy here. Unfortunately they took away my pistol, but a couple of amputating knives will make good weapons. I have got a leather waistcoat, which I will cut up and make from it a couple of sheaths. Of course I have got fur cloaks, one of them a very handsome one. I will take that and another. There ought to be no difficulty whatever in getting some one to give us two peasants' dresses in exchange for that coat, for all these people know something of the value of furs." "Yes, and if you can get a gun and some ammunition thrown into the bargain, Alexis, it will be most useful, for we may have to depend upon what we shoot sometimes." "Yes, that would be a great addition, Godfrey. Well, we will set about making the sheaths at once. I have got a store of needles and stout thread." "They will be useful to take with us," Godfrey said, "not only for mending our clothes, if we want it, but for exchange. Women have to sew all over the world, and even the most savage people can appreciate the advantage of a good needle." "That is so, Godfrey. I have got a packet of capital surgical needles, and some silk. I will put them in with the others; they won't take up much room. Well, shall we start to-morrow night?" "I think we had better wait for two or three days," Godfrey said. "We must save up some of our food." "Yes, we shall want some bread," Alexis agreed. "We can't well get that in through the warders, it would look suspicious, but I will get in some meat through them. We have got some of the last lot left, so we can do with very little bread." For the next two days they found plenty to occupy them, while their stock of bread was accumulating. One of the Russian's coats was cut up and made into two bags like haversacks, with a band to pass over the shoulder, for carrying their belongings. Straps were make of the cloth for fastening the great-coats knapsack fashion. They agreed that however long they might have to wait they must choose a stormy night for their flight, as otherwise they could hardly break through the roof and scale the fence without being heard by the sentries who kept watch night and day. They were eager to be off, for it was already the end of July, and the winter would be severe in the country over which they had to travel. On the fourth day a heavy rain set in, and in the evening it began to blow hard. "Now is our time," Godfrey said; "nothing could have been better." They had already loosened two of the lining boards of the roof, and as soon as they had been locked up for the night they removed these altogether. They packed their haversacks with the articles they had agreed to take, with six pounds of bread each and some meat, rolled four blankets up and knotted them tightly together, strapped up the three fur-lined cloaks, and placed the knives in their belts. Then without much difficulty they prised up one of the thick planks with which the hut was roofed. Godfrey got through the opening, and Alexis passed out to him the haversacks and coats, and then joined him, and they slid down the roof and dropped to the ground. The paling was but twenty yards behind the huts. As soon as they reached it Godfrey climbed upon his companion's shoulders, threw the loop of a doubled rope over one of the palisades and climbed on to the top. Then with the rope he pulled up the coats and haversacks and dropped them outside. Alexis pulled himself up by the rope; this was then dropped on the outside and he slid down by it. Godfrey shifted the rope on to the point of one of the palings, so that it could be easily shaken off from below, and then slipped down it. The rope shaken off and two of the blankets opened, the haversacks hung over their shoulders, and the great-coats strapped on, each put one of the twisted blankets over his shoulder, scarf fashion, wrapped the other round as a cloak, and then set out on their way. Fortunately the prison lay on the south side of the town and at a distance of half a mile from it; and as their course to the extremity of Lake Baikal lay almost due south, they were able to strike right across the country. The wind was from the north, and they had therefore only to keep their backs to it to follow the right direction. It was half-past ten when they started, for the nights were short, and had it not been that the sky was covered with clouds and the air thick with rain, it would not have been dark enough for them to make the attempt until an hour later. By three o'clock it was light again, but they knew there was little chance of their escape being discovered until the warders came to unlock the hut at six in the morning, as the planks they had removed from the roof were at the back of the hut, and therefore invisible to the sentries. "No doubt they will send a few mounted Cossacks out to search for us, as we are political prisoners," Alexis said; "but we may calculate it will be seven o'clock before they set out, and as this is the very last direction they will imagine we have taken we need not trouble ourselves about them; besides, we shall soon be getting into wooded country. I believe it is all wood round the lower end of the lake, and we shall be quite out of the way of traffic, for everything going east from Irkutsk is taken across the lake by steamer." After twelve hours' walking, with only one halt of half an hour for refreshment, they reached the edge of the forest, and after again making a hearty meal of their bread and cold meat, and taking each a sip from a bottle containing cold tea, they lay down and slept until late in the afternoon. "Well, we have accomplished so much satisfactorily," Alexis said. "Now we have to keep on to Kaltuk, at the extreme south-western point of the lake. It is a very small place, I believe, and that is where we must get what we want. We shall be there by the evening. We shall be just right, as it wouldn't do for us to go in until it is pretty nearly dark. A place of that sort is sure to have a store where they sell clothes and other things, and trade with the people round." They struck the lake a mile or two from its extremity, and following it until they could see the roofs of the houses lay down for an hour until it should be dark enough to enter. "We had better put on our fur coats," Alexis said. "The people all wear long coats of some fashion or other, and in the dusk we shall pass well enough." It was a village containing some fifty or sixty houses, for the most part the tent-like structures of the Buriats. They met no one in the street, and kept on until they saw a light in a window of a house larger than any others, and looking in saw that it was the place for which they were in search. Opening the door they went in and closed it behind them. A man came out from the room behind the shop. He stopped for a moment at seeing two strangers, then advanced with a suspicious look on his face. "Do you want a bargain?" Alexis asked him abruptly. "I have little money to buy with," he said sullenly. "That matters little, for we will take it out in goods." The man hesitated. Alexis drew out the long keen amputating knife. "Look here," he said. "We are not to be fooled with. You may guess what we are or not; it is nothing to us and nothing to you. We want some of your goods, and are ready to give you good exchange for them; we are not robbers. Here is this coat; look at it; it is almost unworn. I have used it only one winter. You can see it is lined with real sable, and it cost me three hundred roubles. At any rate, it is worth a hundred to you, even if you take out the lining, sell the skins separately, and burn the coat. Examine it for yourself." The shopkeeper did so. "They are good skins," he said, and Alexis could see that he quite appreciated their value. "Now," Alexis said, "I want two peasant dresses complete, coat, trousers, high boots, and caps. What do you charge for them?" "Twenty roubles each suit." "Very well. Pick two suits the right size for us, and lay them down on the counter. Now we want two pounds of brick-tea and two pounds of tobacco. We want two skins that will each hold a gallon or a gallon and a half of water, and a tin pot that will hold a quart, and two tin drinking mugs. We want a gun and ammunition; it need not be a new one. I see you have got half a dozen standing over there in the corner. What do you charge your customers for those? I see they are all old single barrels and flint-locks." "I charge fifteen roubles a piece." "Well we will take two of them, and we want two pounds of powder and six pounds of shot, and a couple of dozen bullets. Now add that up and see how much it comes to." "Ninety-two roubles," the man said. "Well, I tell you what. I will give you this cloak and twelve paper roubles for them. I don't suppose the goods cost you fifty at the outside, and you will get at least a hundred for the skins alone." "I will take it," the man said. "I take it because I cannot help it." "You take it because you are making an excellent bargain," Alexis said fiercely. "Now, mind, if you give the alarm when we have gone it will be worse for you. They won't catch us; but you will see your house on fire over your head before the week is past." Godfrey placed a ten-rouble note and two one-rouble notes on the table; they gathered up their goods and made them into a bundle, carefully loaded their guns, and put the powder and shot into their haversacks. Then Alexis lifted the bundle, and shouldering the guns they left the shop. "Will he give the alarm, do you think?" Godfrey asked. "Not he. He is thoroughly well satisfied. I daresay he will get a hundred and fifty roubles for the coat; besides, he knows that escaped convicts are desperate men, and that we should be likely to execute my threat. Besides, I don't suppose he would venture to stir out. For aught he knows we may be waiting just outside the shop to see what he does, and he will fear that he might get that hungry-looking knife into him if he came out to raise the alarm." All was quiet, and they were soon beyond the limits of the village, and struck out for the country. They held on for two or three miles, filled their water-skins at a little stream running towards the lake, and then entering a wood pushed on for some little distance, lighted a fire, and made themselves some tea. "We are fairly off now, Godfrey. We have become what they call wanderers, and should be safe enough among the Russian peasants, most of whom have been convicts in their time, in the villages north, for they are always willing enough to help men who have taken to the woods. Well, except in the villages, of which there are few enough about here, we are not likely to come upon them. From here to the frontier are Buriats, and indeed beyond the frontier. However as we have both got guns, we need not be afraid of any small party. Of course some of them have guns too; but I don't suppose they will be fools enough to risk throwing their lives away for nothing. At any rate there is one comfort. There is nothing to show that we are political prisoners now. We might be honest peasants if it were not for these confounded heads of hair." "I should think," Godfrey said, "we had better get rid of our hair altogether. It will be some time before it grows, but anything will be better than it is now." "We have got no scissors, Godfrey, and we have no soap. If we had, those knives of ours are sharp enough to shave with." "We can singe it off," Godfrey said. "Not now, but in the morning when we can see. I will do it for you, and you can do it for me. I would rather be bald-headed altogether than be such a figure as I am now." Accordingly in the morning they singed off their hair with red-hot brands, then they changed their clothes for those they had obtained the night before, folded up their great-coats, divided the tea, tobacco, and the greater part of the powder and shot between them, put a portion in their haversacks, and rolled the rest up in the coats, then strapped these to their shoulders and started on their way. "Now I feel ready for anything," Alexis said as they tramped along. "We have no weight to speak of to carry, and we have means of getting a meal occasionally. Now if we keep a little west of south we shall strike the Selenga river, which runs through Maimatchin, and then we shall be in China. We shall have to avoid the town, because I know there is a treaty between Russia and China about sending back exiles who cross the frontier. Still, when we get there we are at the starting-place of the caravans." "Is it a desert the whole distance?" "No. The first part is a mountainous country with two or three rivers to cross. I don't think the real desert is more than eight or ten days' march across. We shall certainly have no difficulty about water for some time to come. There are plenty of squirrels in these woods; at least I expect so, for they abound in all the forests. We must knock some of them over if we can. I believe they are not bad eating, though I never tried one. Then by the streams we ought to be able to pick up some wild duck, though of course at this time of year the greater portion of them are far north. Still I have great hopes we shall be able to keep ourselves in food with the assistance of what we may be able to buy occasionally. I think the only thing we have got to fear at this part of our journey is the Buriats. The thing I am really afraid of is the getting into China. I don't mean the frontier here; this is Mongolia, and it is only nominally Chinese; but when we get across the desert and enter China itself, I tell you frankly I don't see our way. We neither of us can speak a word of the language. We have no papers, and we may be arrested and shut up as suspicious vagabonds. There is one thing; at Kalgan, which is close to the Great Wall, there are Russian traders, and I should go boldly to them and ask their help. Russians out of Russia are sure to be liberal, though they may not dare to be so when they are at home, and I feel sure they would help us when we tell them our story, if we can only get at them. However we need not trouble ourselves much about that at present." Once beyond the forest they were in an undulating country, the hills sometimes rising to a considerable height. Occasionally they saw in the distance encampments of natives, with sheep, cattle, and horses in considerable numbers. They kept clear of these, although occasionally they had to make wide detours to do so. Time was no object to them, and they made but short journeys, for the Russian, who had never been accustomed to walk long distances, had blistered both his feet badly on the first night's journey, and the subsequent travelling had added to the inflammation. On the fourth evening they halted for the night on a little rivulet, after making only five or six miles. "It is no use, Alexis," Godfrey said; "we must stop here until your feet are quite well. We shall gain by it rather than lose, for when you are quite right again we could do our five-and-twenty or thirty miles a day easily, and might do forty at a push; but your feet will never get well if you go on walking, and it makes your journey a perfect penance; so I vote we establish ourselves here for three or four days. There is water and wood, and I dare say I shall be able to shoot something--at any rate you can't go on as you are now." "It is horribly annoying," Alexis said, "to be knocked up like this just at the start." "But it makes no difference," Godfrey urged. "We are not due at Pekin on any given day. It is very pleasant out here, where one can enjoy one's freedom and exult that there is no policeman or Cossack watching every movement. It would make no difference to me if we stopped here for a month. Now let me pull those boots off for you, then you can sit with your feet in this little pool." "Warm water would be better, Godfrey. If you will get the kettle to boil I will dip my two flannel shirts in and wrap them round and keep on at that. That will be better than cold water." "All right! I will soon get a fire alight. By Jove, they are bad!" he exclaimed, as Alexis pulled off his stocking. "They must have been hurting you desperately. Why did you not say how bad they were two days ago? We might as well have stopped then as now." "I hoped they would have got better when I put on these big boots instead of those I started with. But I did not think they were as bad as they are. I am afraid this is going to be a troublesome business, Godfrey." "Well, it can't be helped," Godfrey said cheerfully. "At any rate, don't worry on my account." The Russian's feet were indeed greatly swollen and inflamed. The skin had been rubbed off in several places, and the wounds had an angry look, their edges being a fiery red, which extended for some distance round them. "Well, you have plenty of pluck, Alexis, or you never could have gone on walking with such feet as those. I am sure I could not have done so." "We thought over most difficulties, Godfrey, that we might possibly have to encounter, but not of this." "No, we did not think of it, though we might really have calculated upon it. After being three or four months without walking twenty yards it is only natural one's feet should go at first. We ought to have brought some soap with us--I do not mean for washing, though we ought to have brought it for that--but for soaping the inside of our stockings. That is a first-rate dodge to prevent feet from blistering. Well, I must see about the fire. I will go up to those trees on the hillside. I daresay I shall be able to find some sticks there for lighting it. These bushes round here will do well enough when it is once fairly burning, but we shall have a great trouble to get them to light to begin with." [Illustration: A SUPPER OF ROASTED SQUIRRELS.] In half an hour he was back with a large faggot. "It is lucky," he said, "there is a fallen tree. So we shall have no difficulty about firewood. We ought to have brought a hatchet when we got the other things. These knives are first-rate for cutting meat and that sort of thing, but they are of no use for rough work. My old knife is better." While he was talking he was engaged in cutting some shavings off the sticks. Then he split up another into somewhat larger pieces, and laying them over the shavings, struck a match, and applied it. The flame shot up brightly, and in five minutes there was an excellent fire, on which the kettle was placed. "We had better have our dinner first, Godfrey. Then I can go on steadily with these fomentations while you take your gun and look round." "Perhaps that will be the best way," Godfrey said. "We have nothing left but six squirrels. We finished the last piece of bread this morning and the meat last night. How had we better do these squirrels?" "I will skin them, Godfrey, while you are seeing to the fire. Then we will spit them on a ramrod, and I will hold them in the flame." "I think we can manage better than that," Godfrey said, and he went to the bushes and cut two sticks of a foot long with a fork at one end. He stuck these in the ground, on the opposite sides of the fire. "There," he said, "you can lay the ramrod on these forks, and all you have got to do is to give it a turn occasionally." "How long do you suppose these things want cooking?" "Not above five minutes, I should think. I know that a steak only takes about eight minutes before a good fire, and these little beggars are not half the thickness of a steak. They are beginning to frizzle already, and the water is just on the boil." The squirrels were pronounced very good eating. When the meal was over Godfrey filled the kettle again and gave it to Alexis, and then, taking his gun, started down the valley. He was away three hours, and brought back twenty birds of various sorts, but for the most part small. "No very great sport," he said as he emptied his haversack. "However, they will do for breakfast, and I may have better luck to-morrow. There are some fish in the pools, but I do not see how we are to get them. I saw one spring out of the water; it must have weighed a couple of pounds." "You might shoot them, Godfrey, if you could find a place where the bank is pretty high so as to look down on the water." "So I could; I did not think of that. I must try to-morrow." "If it hadn't been for my feet," Alexis said, "we should have been down on the Selenga to-morrow, and we had calculated on being able to buy food at one of the villages there." "We shall be able to hold on here," Godfrey said, "for a few days, and I expect that one day's good tramp, when your feet are better, will take us there. After that we ought to have no great difficulty till we get down near the desert." CHAPTER VII. THE BURIAT'S CHILD. After three days' rest the Russian's feet were so much better that he said he should be able to make a start the next morning. Godfrey, however, would not listen to the proposal. "We are getting on all right," he said. "I am not much of a shot, but at any rate I am able to bag enough birds to keep us going, and though I have only succeeded in shooting one fish as yet, it was a good big one and was a real help to us. It is no use going on till your feet get really hard, for you would only be laming yourself again. It will be quite time enough to talk about making a start in three days' time." The next morning Godfrey was roughly awakened by a violent kick. Starting up he saw a group of six Buriats standing round them. Three of them had guns, which were pointed at the prisoners, the others were armed with spears. Resistance was evidently useless; their guns had been removed to a distance and the knives taken from their belts before they were roused. Godfrey held out his hands to show that he surrendered, and addressed the usual Russian salutation to them. The men were short, square-built figures, with large skulls, low foreheads, flat noses, and long eyes like those of the Chinese. Their cheek-bones were high and wide apart, the complexion a yellow-brown, and the hair jet black and worn in a platted tail down the back. They made signs to their prisoners to accompany them. Alexis pulled on his boots. Two of the men with guns stood guard over them while the others examined the stores, and were evidently highly pleased with the two brightly polished knives. "Rather an abrupt termination to our journey, Godfrey." "Painfully so. I was almost afraid everything was going on too well with us, Alexis. It began to look so easy that one could not understand why there should not be hundreds of prisoners every year make their way across." "I should not have minded so much," Alexis said, "if we had not got such a satisfactory kit together. We had everything we really wanted for a journey across Asia." "Except food and water, Alexis." "Well, yes, those are important items certainly, and if we had difficulty about it here in a decent sort of country, what might be expected on farther? Well, we have had our outing; I only hope they won't give us up at Irkutsk. I suppose it depends where their grazing-grounds are. There are another two months of summer; I wish we could have had our fling till then." Half a mile along the valley they came upon a tent, evidently belonging to the men who had taken them. They talked a good deal among themselves as they approached it, but went straight on without making a stop. "I expect they are taking us down to some chief or other, if they call them chiefs," Alexis said. "I expect they came out to hunt for horses or cattle that have strayed." Seven or eight miles farther the valley opened on to a plain, and a short distance in front of them, on the stream, stood ten tents, one of which was considerably larger than the others. Great flocks of sheep grazed on the plain, and at a distance they could see numbers of cattle, while some horses with their saddles on were hobbled near the tents. "I think we are lucky, Godfrey. The owner of all this must be a rich man, and can hardly covet the roubles he would get for giving us up. Besides, he is sure to talk Russian." As they came up to the huts they saw that their occupants were all gathered, talking excitedly in front of a large tent. One of the men ran on and then returned; the news he gave was evidently bad. He talked excitedly, pointing to his own leg about half-way between the knee and the ankle. The men broke into exclamations of regret. "I wonder what is the matter, Alexis; something has happened. I should think that someone must have met with an accident." "Without wishing ill to anyone, Godfrey, I sincerely wish it may be so, then I might be able to win their good-will." Little attention was paid to the party when they joined the group, all were too busy in discussing some event or other. Three or four minutes later a man came to the door of the tent and waved his hand, and gave some order. His dress was a handsome one. The little crowd fell back, but one of the men who had brought the captives in went up and spoke to him. He again waved his hand impatiently, and was turning to enter the tent when Alexis cried loudly: "I am a doctor, if anyone has been hurt I may be of service to him." The man stepped hastily forward. "Do you say you are a doctor?" "I am." "Come in then," he said abruptly, and entered the tent. "I will call you if you can be of any use," Alexis said to Godfrey as he followed him. The tent was a large one. Some handsome Koord carpets covered the ground. Facing the door was another opening leading into a small tent serving as the women's apartment. There were several piles of sheep-skins round the tent, and by one of these three women were standing. Two of these were richly dressed in gowns of handsome striped materials. They wore head-dresses of silver work with beads of malachite and mother-of-pearl, and had heavy silver ornaments hanging on their breasts. Their hair fell down their backs in two thick braids. The other woman was evidently of inferior rank. All were leaning over a pile of skins covered with costly furs, on which a boy of seven or eight years old was lying. His father, for such the man evidently was, said something in his own language, and the women turned eagerly to Alexis. "You are a Russian doctor!" one of the women exclaimed joyfully. "I am, lady," he said. "I graduated at St. Petersburg." "Can you do anything for my son?" she asked. "Half an hour ago he went up incautiously behind a young horse that had been driven in from the herd only yesterday and it kicked him. See, it is terrible," and she burst into tears. Alexis went forward and lifted a wet cloth that had been placed on the leg. A slight exclamation broke from his lips as he did so. The bone was evidently completely smashed, and one of the splintered ends projected through the skin. "He must die," the mother sobbed, "nothing can save him." The father did not speak, but looked inquiringly at Alexis. The latter made a sign to him to move to the other side of the tent. "Well," the Buriat asked, "must he die?" "There is no reason for his dying," Alexis said, "but there is no possibility of saving his leg, it must be amputated." "What would be the use of living without a leg?" the Buriat exclaimed. "A great deal of use," Alexis said quietly. "There are hundreds, aye thousands, of men in Russia who have lost a leg, some from an accident like this, or from a waggon going over them, some from a wound in battle. In some cases the leg is taken off much above the knee, but even then they are able to get about and enjoy their lives; but when it is below the knee, like this, they are able to do everything just the same as if they had both feet. They can walk and ride, and, in fact, do everything like others; besides, for such men there are people at St. Petersburg who make feet of cork, and when these are on, with a boot and trousers, or with a high boot, no one could tell that the wearer had not two feet. I have met men who had lost a leg, and they walked so well that I did not know till I was told that they had not two legs." "I will speak to his mother," the Buriat said, and returning to the women he spoke to them in their own language. At first they appeared shocked and even terrified at the idea, but as he went on, evidently repeating what Alexis had told him, the expression of their faces changed. The Buriat called Alexis across. "You cannot hesitate, lady," he said, "when your child's life is at stake. No Russian mother would do so for a moment. It may seem to you dreadful that he should have but one foot, but in a little time, even with so rough a limb as I could make for him, he would be running about and playing again, and, as I have been telling his father, he can obtain from St. Petersburg a foot so perfect that when wearing a high boot no one would suspect the misfortune that has happened to him." "Can he not be cured without that?" "No, lady. If it had been a simple fracture his leg might be bandaged up so that it would heal in time, but, as you can see for yourself, the bone is all splintered and broken, and unless something is done mortification will set in, and in a few days he will cease to live." "But are you sure that he will live if you do it?" "I am sure, lady, that the operation will not kill him. I believe that he will live, but that is in the hands of God. You see him now, the shock has prostrated him. He has but little life in him, and if he dies he will die from that and not from the taking off of his foot. But I do not think he will die, he is young and hardy, and on my faith as a Russian gentleman I believe that he will live." "It shall be tried," the Buriat said abruptly. "God has doubtless sent you here at this moment. Why otherwise should a doctor be brought to my door when this has happened? Do as you will." Alexis felt the boy's pulse. "I must wait," he said, "until he has recovered somewhat from the shock. Give him some warm milk with a spoonful, not more, of vodka in it. Your men have taken the knives that I and my friend carried; they were specially made for this, and we shall need them. Do not fear as to the operation, it is the most simple in surgery. Let him have the milk at once. Let him remain quiet upon his back, and do not let him attempt to move his leg. Do not tell him about this, it would frighten and agitate him. If I had medicines that we use in our hospitals I could send him to sleep so that he would know nothing about it, and when he woke up would be ignorant that his foot had been removed; but as there is none of it within a hundred miles of us we must manage it as we best can. Please tell your men to release my friend, I shall need his assistance." After bidding the woman heat some milk at once the Buriat went out and ordered Godfrey's guards to release him at once, and to restore to them their knives and all their other possessions. Alexis informed Godfrey of what had taken place, and what he proposed to do. "The operation would be a very easy one if we had chloroform and proper implements. Unfortunately there is no chance of their having such a thing as a fine saw, and how in the world I am to make a clean cut through the bone I do not know. The knife that you carry is just the right thing for the job; but how about a saw? If we could have chloroformed him, we could, after making the cuts through the flesh, have put the leg on a log of wood and have cut clean through the bone with a chopper. It would not be a good plan, for it would probably splinter the bone, but it might have been tried, but without chloroform it is not to be thought of." Godfrey thought for a moment. "The knives are of a very good steel, Alexis?" "Oh yes, of the very best steel!" "Is it hard steel like that of a razor?" "Yes, very much the same." "Then I should think it could be managed. I know the least thing will notch a razor. Now I should think if we took the large knife, and with my pocket-knife or with the edge of a hard stone notch the edge carefully all the way down, it would make a very good saw." "I should think it might do anyhow, Godfrey, and the idea is a very good one. Well, let us set about it at once. I can get a piece of fresh bone to try on; no doubt they kill a sheep here every day." They set to work and in ten minutes had notched the blade of the knife all the way down. Alexis had, as he expected, no trouble in obtaining a freshly-picked bone, and they found that the knife sawed through it very cleanly. Then Alexis went in to see the boy again. Before, he had been lying with his eyes half-closed, without a vestige of colour in his cheeks; the warm milk had done its work almost instantaneously, and he was perfectly conscious and there was a slight colour in his cheeks. His pulse had recovered strength wonderfully. Alexis nodded approvingly to the Buriat. He drew him outside the tent. "If I were you," he said, "I would send away all the people from the other huts. If the poor child screams they may get excited and rush in, and it is better that everything should be perfectly quiet. I should send away also the ladies, unless of course his mother particularly wishes to be with him; but it will be trying for her, and I own that I would rather not have anyone in the tent but you and my friend." The Buriat went inside; he returned in two or three minutes. "My wife will stay; my sister and the attendant will go." Then he called to the men who were standing at the doors of their huts: "The doctor says there must be silence for some time; he is going to do something and he wishes that all shall retire to a distance until I wave my hand for them to return. Will there be anything you want?" he asked Alexis. "A large jug of warm water," he said, "a bowl, and some soft rag--that is all. By the time that is ready I shall be. You will have to hold his leg, Godfrey," he went on as the Buriat returned to his tent. "You must hold it just under the knee as firmly as possible, so as to prevent the slightest movement. But I am going to try to mesmerize him. I have seen it done with perfect success, and at any rate it is worth trying. In the weak state he is in I ought to be able to succeed without difficulty. Now I want a couple of small flat stones with rounded edges, a strip of soft skin, and a bit of stick three or four inches long and as thick as your finger, to make a tourniquet with." By the time that these were ready a perfect stillness reigned in the camp. The whole of the natives had gone away to a distance of over a quarter of a mile, and were sitting in a group watching the tents, and, Godfrey had no doubt, debating hotly as to the folly of allowing a stranger to have anything to do with the son of their employer. He now followed Alexis into the tent, where all was in readiness. The child's head was slightly raised by a skin folded and placed under it. His mother knelt beside him. "What do you wish me to do?" the Buriat asked. "I wish you to stand beside him and aid his mother to hold him should he struggle, and I may need you to dip the rag into the warm water, squeeze it out, and give it me." "Of course he will struggle," the Buriat said; "we men can bear pain, but a child cannot." "I am going to try to put him to sleep," Alexis replied; "a sleep so sound that he will not wake with the pain. I do not say that I shall be able to, but I will try." The Buriat looked at Alexis as if he doubted his sanity. That a Russian doctor should be able to take off the child's leg was within his comprehension. He had once seen a man in the street of Irkutsk with only one arm, but that anyone could make a child sleep so soundly that he would not wake under such an operation seemed to him beyond the bounds of possibility. "Tell the child that I am going to do him good," Alexis said to the mother, "and that he is to look at my eyes steadily." He placed himself at the side of the couch and gazed down steadily at the child; then he began to make passes slowly down his face. For three or four minutes the black eyes looked into his unwinkingly, then the lids closed a little. Alexis continued his efforts, the lids drooped more and more until they closed completely. He continued the motions of his hand for another minute or two, then stooping he lifted an eyelid; the eye was turned upwards, so that the iris was no longer visible. "Thank God, he has gone off!" he said. "Now for the tourniquet. That is right; twist gradually now, Godfrey, and place the stone on the main artery. Now," he said to the Buriat, "hold this stick firm with one hand and place the other on his chest to prevent his moving. Do you lay your arm across him," this to the mother; "that is right. Kneel with your face against his. Now, Godfrey, grasp the leg just below the knee and hold it firmly." Godfrey did so, and then shut his eyes as he saw the doctor about to use the knife, expecting to hear a piercing scream from the child. There was no sound, however, and in a very few seconds he heard Alexis utter a low exclamation of satisfaction. He looked now; the flesh was already cut through and no cry had escaped the child. Another moment the foot and the lower portion of the leg came away at the point where the bone was crushed; then Alexis pushed the flesh upwards so as to expose another inch of the shin-bone, and then took the saw and cut through it. Some strands of silk lay close to his hand; with a long needle he took up the ends of the arteries and tied them with the silk; then he took hold of the stick of the tourniquet and loosened it a little. The result was satisfactory; the arteries were securely tied. Then he tightened it again and gave it to the Buriat to hold, wiped the wound with the damp rag, drew down the flesh over the end of the bone, brought up the flap of flesh from behind, and with a few stitches sewed it in its place. "It is all done," he said, rising to his feet. Then he passed his hand several times across the child's forehead. "Tell him softly, when he opens his eyes," he said to the mother, "that he will soon be well now, and that he must go to sleep." He continued the passes for some time, occasionally lifting the eyelid. "He is coming round now," he said at last. A few more passes and the child drowsily opened its eyes. His mother spoke to him softly, and with a faint smile he closed them again. Alexis stood quietly for another minute or two. "He is asleep now," he said to the Buriat; "you need hold him no longer." The tears were running down the man's cheeks; he seized one of the hands of Alexis and pressed it to his lips, while the mother, sobbing with joy, did the same to the other. To them it seemed almost a miracle. "Have some milk kept warm," Alexis said, "and give it to him when he awakes. Do not tell him anything about his foot having been taken off. Keep a blanket lying over him so that he will not see it It is well that he should not be agitated, but tell him that he must lie perfectly quiet and not move his leg, as it would hurt him if he did so. Now, chief, it would be as well if you called the others back and told your servant to get some breakfast, for my friend and I have had nothing to eat since your men woke us this morning." The Buriat went outside the tent and waved a blanket, and the others came running in at the signal. "Tell them not to make a noise," Alexis said; "the longer the child sleeps quietly the better." The Buriats uttered exclamations of the most profound astonishment when the chief told them that the Russian doctor had taken off the leg of the child without his feeling the slightest pain, and that there was every hope of his speedily recovering, whereupon they looked at Alexis with a feeling of respect amounting to awe. A sheep was at once killed, skinned, cut up, and placed in a great cooking pot over a fire; but long before this was done two great bowls of hot milk were brought out by the Buriat to Alexis and Godfrey, to enable them to hold on until the meal was prepared. At his order the men at once set about erecting a tent for them close to his own, and as soon as this was up, piles of soft skins were brought in. "That has been a lucky stroke indeed, Godfrey," Alexis said as they took possession of their new abode. "It has indeed, Alexis. Nothing could have been more providential. We are in clover as long as we choose to stop here. Do you think the child will recover?" "I think there is every hope of his doing so. These natives are as hard as nails. I don't suppose the child has ever had a day's illness in his life, and in this pure dry air there is little fear of the wound doing badly. The next thing to do is to make him a pair of crutches to get about with till he can bear to have a wooden stump on. The only nuisance is that we shall be delayed. As a doctor, I cannot very well leave my patient till he is fairly on the road towards recovery." "Certainly not," Godfrey agreed. "Well, I daresay we shall put away the time pleasantly enough here." Half an hour later two horses were brought up, and these with their saddles and bridles were presented by the Buriat to his guests, and were picketed by their tent. The next three weeks passed pleasantly; they rode, hunted, and shot. The little patient made rapid progress towards recovery, and at the end of that time was able to get about on two crutches Godfrey had made for him. "It is better that you should make them, Godfrey, and also the wooden leg when he is ready for it," Alexis had said. "It is just as well that their gratitude should be divided a little, so I will hand that part of the work over to you." The Buriats were delighted indeed when they saw the child hopping about the camp with his crutches, and their gratitude knew no bounds to their guests. Alexis had made no secret to the Buriat of their intention of trying to make their way to Pekin. He endeavoured in every way to dissuade them from it. "You will never find your way across the desert," he said, "and will die for want of water. The people are wild and savage. They are ruled by their lamas, and if they do not put you to death, which they would be likely to do for what you have, they will certainly send you back to Kiakhta and hand you over to the Russians there; and even if you got through the desert the Chinese would seize you and send you back. It would be madness to try. It would be better than that to go south and make for Thibet, although even that would be a desperate expedition. The tribes are wild and savage, the desert is terrible for those who do not know it. You would never find the wells, and would perish miserably of thirst even if you escaped being killed by the tribesmen. Still your chances would be greater than they would be of reaching Pekin. But you had far better make up your minds to live here. I will give you flocks and herds. You should be as of my family, and you, Alexis, should marry my sister, who is rich as well as pretty, for she owns a third of all the flocks and herds you see." Alexis warmly thanked the Buriat for the offer, but said they must take time to consider it. "One might do worse," he said, laughing, to Godfrey when they were alone. "The women are certainly a great deal better-looking than the men, and the girl would be considered fair-looking even in Russia. At any rate it would be vastly better being a Buriat here than being inside that prison at Irkutsk." "I agree with you there, Alexis; but it would be horrible being cut off here from the world for life." "But one is cut off in prison, Godfrey; and though I agreed to share your attempt I have never been very hopeful about its success, and I am still less hopeful now from what I hear of the difficulties ahead of us. As I said when you first talked of it, there must be some frightful difficulties here, or this would be the way by which convicts would always try to escape, and yet we have never heard of one doing so." "Yes, I begin to think myself I have made a mistake, Alexis, in choosing this route instead of a northern one. Besides, we shall have winter upon us in a very few weeks now, which would of course add tremendously to our difficulties. But you are not seriously thinking of stopping here, are you?" "I don't know, Godfrey. You see you have got a home and friends waiting for you if you do get away, I have nothing but exile. I do believe we shall never succeed in getting out through China, and I think we couldn't do better than stop here for a year or two. By the end of that time we may succeed in establishing relations by means of this Buriat with some of the tea merchants at Kiakhta, and getting one of them to smuggle us through with a caravan; but, at any rate, if you still hold to going I shall go too. I have no intention of deserting you, I can assure you." In another fortnight Godfrey had made a stump for the child. The hollow was lined with sheepskin to take off the jar, and it strapped firmly on to the limb. The wound was not quite sufficiently healed yet for the child to use it regularly, but when on first trying it he walked across the tent the joy of his father and mother knew no bounds. They had only been waiting for this to make a move, for the pasture had for some time been getting short, and on the following day the tents were pulled down, and for three days they journeyed east, and then finding a suitable spot again pitched their tents. They were now, as the Buriat told them, only some thirty miles from Kiakhta. Godfrey and Alexis had talked matters over during the journey. They agreed that the season was now too late for them to think of attempting the journey until the following spring, and had almost concluded that the attempt to get through China should be altogether abandoned. Going north there were the rigour of the climate and the enormous distances as obstacles, but the passage would be chiefly by water. There was no danger from the tribes they would have to pass through, no difficulties such as they might meet with from the opposition of the Chinese, and they had pretty well resolved to pass the winter with the Buriats and to make a start in the spring. Their host was greatly pleased when they informed him of their intention at any rate to spend the winter with them, for he hoped that before the spring Alexis would have made up his mind to accept his offer, and to settle down as a member of the tribe. The day after the Buriats pitched their fresh camp one of the men reported that he had seen a large bear at the edge of a forest two miles from the huts. Alexis and Godfrey at once took their guns, borrowed a couple of long spears and two hunting knives, and started for the wood, the native going with them to show them the exact spot where he had seen the bear. There was a good deal of undergrowth about, and they thought it probable that the animal was not far off. The Buriat had brought a dog with him, and the animal at once began sniffing the ground. His master encouraged it, and presently it started, sniffing the ground as it went. It had gone but a few hundred yards when it stopped before a thick clump of bushes and began growling furiously. They had a short consultation, and then the two friends took up their post one at each corner of the bushes, while the Buriat went round to the rear of the clump with his dog and began beating the bushes with his stick, while the dog barked and yelped. A minute later a bear broke out of the bushes within four yards of Alexis. The Russian levelled his gun. Godfrey heard a report far louder than usual, and something flew close to his head. A moment later he saw Alexis struck to the ground by the bear. Godfrey rushed up, and fired when within two paces of the animal, which with a fierce growl turned upon him. He sprang aside and plunged his spear deep into its side. The bear struck at the handle and broke it in two, and then rose on its hind-legs. Godfrey drew his knife and awaited its rush, but it stood stationary for half a minute, swayed to and fro, and then fell on its side. Godfrey leaned over it and plunged his knife in deep behind its shoulders, pressing it until the blade disappeared. Then feeling certain it was dead he ran to Alexis, who lay motionless on the ground. By the side of him lay the stock of the gun and a portion of the barrel; it had exploded, completely shattering the Russian's left hand. But this was not his only or even his most serious injury. The bear had struck him on the side of the head, almost tearing off a portion of the scalp and ear. The Buriat had by this time come round, and Godfrey bade him run to the camp at the top of his speed to fetch assistance. Feeling in his friend's pocket he drew out the bandage which Alexis always carried, and wrapped up as well as he could his shattered hand, of which the thumb and two first fingers were altogether missing; the wound on the head was, he felt, altogether beyond him. In less than half an hour the chief Buriat and four of his men dashed up on horseback. They had brought with them two poles and a hide to form a litter. The chief was deeply concerned when he saw how serious were the Russian's injuries. No time was lost in lashing the hides to the poles. Alexis was lifted and laid upon the litter, and two of the Buriats took the poles while the others led back the horses. As soon as he arrived in camp Godfrey bathed the wounds with warm water, and poured some spirits between the lips of the wounded man, but he gave no signs of consciousness. "I am afraid," he said to the Buriat, who was looking on anxiously, "that his skull is injured or there is concussion of the brain. The only thing that I can see will be for him to be carried at once to Kiakhta. There is sure to be a hospital there and doctors." "That would be best," the Buriat said; "but I will take a house there, and my wife and sister shall nurse him." "That will be better than going into the hospital," Godfrey agreed, "for two reasons. In the first, because Alexis would certainly get more careful nursing among his friends than in a hospital, and he might then avoid, if he survives his injuries, being again imprisoned." No time was lost. Four Buriats took the poles, Godfrey walked beside the litter, and the Buriat, his wife and sister, mounted and rode off to have everything ready for them when they arrived at Troitzkosavsk, the suburb of Kiakhta. It was late before they reached it. The Buriat met them half a mile outside the town, and at once conducted them to a house that he had hired from a friend established there. As soon as Alexis was laid upon a couch Godfrey and the Buriat went out and ascertained where one of the surgeons of the military hospital lived. On reaching the house they were shown by the Cossack who acted as the doctor's servant to his room. "A friend of mine has been badly injured by a bear," the Buriat said; "I wish you to come and see him at once. He is in a house I have taken near this. I will be responsible for all charges." The doctor looked keenly at Godfrey and then said, "I will come. You are not a Buriat?" he said to Godfrey as they started. "I am not, doctor; though I have been living with them for some time." "And the man who is ill, is he a Buriat?" "No, sir; he is a Russian, and a member of your own profession." "He is clever," the Buriat said. "He saved the life of my child by taking off his leg, and he is running about again now. He is as a brother to me, and I would gladly give a thousand cattle rather than that he should die." No other words were spoken until they arrived at the house. The surgeon stooped over Alexis, lifted one of his eyelids, and felt his pulse. "Concussion of the brain," he said; "a serious case. Bring me rags and hot water." He bathed the wound for some time and then carefully examined it. "There is a fracture of the skull," he said to Godfrey, "and I fancy there is a piece of bone pressing on the brain. Put wet cloths round his head for the present; I will go and fetch my colleague, and I will send down some ice from the hospital. His hand is bandaged up, what is the matter with that?" "His gun burst, doctor, and has mangled his hand dreadfully. That was how it was the bear got at him and struck him." The surgeon removed the bandages and examined it. "Keep it bathed with warm water until I return," he said. Half an hour later he came back with the other surgeon, a man older than himself, both carrying cases of instruments. The wound on the head was again examined. They then proceeded to operate, and in a few minutes removed a portion of splintered bone. Then the flap of skin was carefully replaced in its position, and a few stitches put in to hold it. The hand was then attended to. "No, I don't think it need come off," the senior surgeon said; "we may save the third and little fingers. At any rate we will try; if it does not do we can take the whole off afterwards." The operation was performed, then ordering the ice that had just been brought to be applied to the head, the surgeons left. "We will look in again early in the morning," one of them said to Godfrey, "and then we will have a chat with you." The women took it by turns to watch, and Godfrey, worn out by the excitement of the day, slept until morning. Alexis was restless, moving uneasily and muttering to himself. His eyes were open, but he took no notice of what was going on around him. The surgeon they had first seen came alone. "He is better," he said to the Buriat, "but he is very far from being out of danger yet. It will be a long illness, but I hope that we may be able to bring him round. I will send him some medicine presently. Keep cloths with cold water and ice to his head." He beckoned to Godfrey to follow him out of the room. "I don't want to ask any questions," he said, "about my patient. I have been called in by this Buriat to see a friend of his, and it does not concern me who or what he may be; but it is different with you. As a Russian officer I cannot be seeing you daily without reporting that I have met a person who scarcely appears to be what he seems. It is painful to me to be obliged to say so. I do not give advice any way. I only say that if you do not wish to be asked questions, it would be best for you to leave here after nightfall; until then, I shall not consider it necessary to make any report. I shall be back again once or twice to-day; you had better think the matter over." Godfrey had been thinking the matter over as he walked beside the litter, and had already arrived at a decision. It was evident that many weeks, if not months, must elapse before Alexis would be fit to sustain the hardships that would attend an attempt to escape, and he thought it probable that more than ever he would be inclined to throw in his lot with the wandering Buriats; he had therefore only himself to think about. He had foreseen that he would not be able to stop at Kiakhta without being exposed to being questioned, and that there remained therefore only the option of living with the Buriats during the winter or of giving himself up. The former plan would be the most advantageous in the event of his trying to reach Pekin; but the difficulties in that direction appeared to him so great that he shrank from the thought of facing them, especially as he should now be alone, and he preferred the idea of trying to escape by the north. In this case a further sojourn among the Buriats would be useless; in a Russian prison he would be able to pick up many valuable hints from the men with whom he would work, and might find someone ready to make the attempt with him. The difficulties of escape from prison did not seem very great, and would, he thought, be even less at one of the penal settlements than if confined in an ordinary jail. When, however, the doctor spoke to him, Godfrey only thanked him, and said he would speak with him again when he next called. The Buriat saw that he was looking serious when he returned to the room. "What did he say to you?" he asked. "Did he threaten to report you?" "He spoke very kindly," Godfrey replied. "But he said that it would be his duty to do so if I remained here." The Buriat shook his head. "I was thinking of that yesterday, and was afraid for you. Out on the plains there would have been none to question you; but here in the town a stranger is noticed at once, for every resident is known. You must make off at once. You can take my horse, we will watch over your friend. Once in my tents you will be safe." Godfrey thanked him warmly, but told him that he had not quite decided as to what he should do, but would let him know later on. Then, as he could do nothing for Alexis, he threw himself down on a pile of skins, and thought the matter over in every light. CHAPTER VIII. THE MINES OF KARA. Godfrey found it a difficult matter to decide what was best to be done; but after two hours' thinking his mind was quite made up. He did not stand in the same position as Alexis with the Buriats. It was Alexis who had laid them under such an obligation by saving their child's life. He himself was simply liked as the doctor's companion, and without Alexis the long months of winter would be dreary indeed. He thought that imprisonment would be preferable to living alone in a Buriat hut. Accordingly he rose at last, and told the Buriat that his course was decided. "I shall give myself up," he said. "I know that you would make me welcome in your tents; but from what you have told me, I see that there is no prospect whatever of an escape through China, and that if I go out to the plains I shall be there for life, while if I go to a prison I may in time be released, or at any rate I can again escape." "Whenever you come to us you will be welcome," the Buriat said. "For yourself, you know best; but we shall be all sorry to lose you. Is there anything I can do for you? I know the governor here, for I have had large dealings with him for sheep and cattle for the troops." "I shall be very glad if you will go with me to him," Godfrey said. "A word from you may be of great advantage to me. There are no prisons here, and I am most anxious to be sent to Nertchinsk and not to Irkutsk, because it was from there we escaped." The Buriat's wife and sister were sorry when they heard Godfrey's determination, but they were too much occupied with Alexis to try and dispute it. "When will you go?" the Buriat said. "At once, if you will take me. I have no preparations to make; I only cause extra trouble here, and can be of no assistance. But first, if you will procure paper, pen, and ink, I will write a letter for you to give to Alexis when he recovers, telling him why I leave him." The Buriat sent out one of his men, who presently returned with writing materials, and Godfrey then wrote a long letter to Alexis, explaining at length the reasons that actuated him in deciding to give himself up. "You are in good hands," he said, "and I could do nothing for you; and in any case I should have to leave you now, for did I not give myself up I must leave this evening, therefore I could do no good to you in any case. I know that you were half inclined to stay with the Buriats, and you will now have even greater reasons for doing so than before. If, however, you should at any future time change your mind and try to make your escape, I need not tell you how delighted I should be to see you in England. I inclose the address of my father's office, where you will be sure either to find me or to hear of me. But even if I have not got home you will receive the heartiest welcome when you tell him of our having been together and show him this letter, and you may rely upon it that my father will be able to procure a situation for you in London, even if he cannot find a berth for you in his own house of business." When he had finished he handed the letter to the Buriat to give to Alexis. "Here is money," the Buriat said, "which my wife found upon Alexis. You had better take it with you." "I cannot do that," Godfrey said, "it is his; I have some of my own. I know he would gladly give it to me if he were conscious; but I cannot take it now." "Very well," the Buriat said, "you are doubtless right; but at any rate you can take some from me. I am rich. I have many thousands of sheep and cattle. If you do not take it I shall be offended, and shall think that in some way we have displeased you. A thousand roubles are nothing to me; I have given as much for one suit of furs for my wife. You must take this; if you ever attempt to escape again, you will need money." After much debate Godfrey accepted five hundred roubles in notes, seeing that the Buriat would be really pained by his refusal, and knowing that the money would indeed be useful to him when he next tried to make his escape. Being anxious to hear the surgeon's next report about Alexis, Godfrey delayed his start until after his visit. "There is no change," the doctor said, after examining his patient, "nor did I expect there would be after such serious injuries as he has received. It would be strange, indeed, if he did not suffer from the shock. It may be some days before any change takes place. It is vastly better that he should be restless, or even wildly delirious, than lying unconscious as he was when I first saw him. Well, and what are you going to do, young fellow?" "I am going to give myself up," he said. "You have had enough of the plains, eh?" "Yes, sir, for the present." "Mind, don't be foolish enough to say that you have escaped; there is not the least occasion for that; that would make the case a great deal worse." "My friend here was going with me to the governor, doctor, to tell him that I have been living with him for some time." "Yes, that is all well enough; but if you give yourself up it is a confession that you have escaped; that won't do at all. I tell you what will be the best thing: I will go with you to Colonel Prescoff, the governor. I shall tell him the truth, that I was attending one of the Buriat's men, who had been badly injured by a bear, when I saw you there. I found that you could not give a good account of yourself, and had no papers, and that, therefore, as was my duty, I brought you to him. Then you must say that you have been working here and there, and that you come from, say, Tomsk. I suppose you have been there?" Godfrey smiled. "That is near enough," the doctor went on. "As for your papers, you lost them, or they were burnt or stolen from you. He won't ask you many questions. Then the Buriat will speak up for you--he is rather an important man, being one of the richest of his tribe--and say what he can for you. Is there anything you want done particularly?" "I want to be sent to Nertchinsk instead of to Irkutsk. I would rather work in the mines or anywhere else than be shut up in prison." "And besides, you would not be known?" the doctor laughed. "That is the principal thing, sir." "Whatever you do, my lad," the doctor said, "if you have been a political prisoner--mind, I don't ask the question, and don't want to know--but if you have been, don't let it out. It is better to have been a murderer than a Nihilist out here. I dare say the colonel would send you to Nertchinsk if your friend here asks him, but it is a good deal further and a more expensive journey." "I will gladly pay for the vehicle, sir." "Ah, well; if you will do that, I should think it could be managed. I will go in first with your friend and have a talk with the colonel, and we will see if we can put the matter straight for you before you are called in." Godfrey took his fur-lined coat, said good-bye to the two ladies, gently put his hand on his comrade's shoulder, and followed the doctor and his host. When they arrived at the governor's house the doctor left him in the room where two military clerks were writing, and went in with the Buriat to the governor. In five minutes the bell rang. An orderly answered it, and returning, bade Godfrey follow him. The governor was seated at a table, the doctor and the Buriat standing near. "So I hear," the colonel said, looking sharply at Godfrey, "that you are unable to give an account of yourself, and have nothing but a cock-and-bull story of having wandered about through the country. We understand what that means. However, our friend here," and he motioned to the Buriat, "speaks well of you, and says that you have done him some service. However that cannot be taken into consideration. It is clear that having no papers and no domicile, you are a vagabond, and as such must be committed to prison. You will be taken to Nertchinsk." Godfrey bowed. The colonel touched the bell again, and the orderly entered. "Take this man to the cells." The Buriat stepped forward and shook hands with Godfrey. "Come again," he said in a low voice, "you will always be welcome." The doctor nodded. "I shall see you before you start," he said. Godfrey saluted the colonel and followed the orderly out of the room. He was taken across a court-yard to a cell. "A good style of young fellow," the colonel said when he left. "He has either been an officer and got into some scrape with his colonel, or he is a political." "One or the other, colonel, no doubt," the doctor agreed. "Well, it is no business of mine," the colonel said. "I suppose he has had four or five months in the woods and wants to get into snug quarters again before winter. Well, good morning, gentlemen!" and his visitors took their leave. Late in the evening the doctor came into Godfrey's cell. "By the bye," he said, "I put your name down as Ivan Holstoff. It was as good as any other, and you had to be entered by some name. I feared that you might blurt out your own whatever it may be, and that might be fatal, for if you are a political prisoner your name will have been sent to every station where there are troops." "I am very much obliged to you, doctor, for your kindness," Godfrey said. "I will take care to remain Ivan Holstoff. How much am I to pay for the carriage?" "Your friend the Buriat has seen to that, and handed the governor money for a vehicle there and back, as the soldier in charge of you will have to return." "It is very good of him," Godfrey said gratefully. "Please tell him when you see him how much obliged I am to him for his kindness to me." "I think my patient will do," the doctor said. "He is quieter and less feverish this evening. I think he will pull round; and now good bye! I think you have done right in giving yourself up. You are but a lad yet, and with good conduct, now that you are entered only as a vagabond, you will get leave to work outside the prison in two or three years, and get a permit to settle anywhere in Siberia a couple of years later." The next morning at daybreak Godfrey was placed in a vehicle. A soldier mounted by the side of the driver, the latter shouted to his horses, and started at full gallop. Soon after leaving the town they passed a caravan of forty carts carrying tea. The soldier, who appeared a chatty fellow, told him they would be three months on their way to Moscow. At a town named Verchne Udinsk they regained the main road and turned east and continued their journey through Chita, a town of three thousand inhabitants, to Nertchinsk, a distance of six hundred miles. The country was hilly, and for the most part wooded, but varied at times by rolling prairies on which large herds of cattle were grazing. The journey was far more pleasant than that Godfrey had before made, for being no longer regarded as a political prisoner his guard chatted with him freely; and at night, instead of having to sleep in the vehicle in the open air, he was lodged in the convict stations, which, as the season was late, were for the most part unoccupied. He was glad, however, when he arrived at Nertchinsk, for the jolting of the springless vehicle was very trying. He did not see the governor of the prison, but was at once assigned to a cell there on the guard handing to the authorities the official report of the governor at Kiakhta. "You are to go on again to-morrow," the warder said to him that evening. "We are full here, and there is a party going on to Kara. You will go with them. The barber will be here to shave you directly. You have not been out very long, judging by the length of your hair. Here is your prison dress. You must put that on to-morrow instead of the one you have on, but you may carry yours with you if you like, it will be useful to you when your term in the prison is done." Accordingly the next morning Godfrey was taken into the court-yard, where some fifty other prisoners were assembled, and ten minutes later marched off under a guard of eight mounted Cossacks. He carried his peasant's clothes and fur coat rolled up into a bundle on his shoulder, and had, after he changed his dress, sewn up his money in the collar of his jacket with a needle and thread he had brought with him, keeping out some twenty roubles for present purposes. The journey occupied five days, the marches averaging twenty-five miles apiece. The prisoners talked and sung by the way, picked the blackberries and raspberries that grew thickly on the bushes by the wayside, and at night slept in the stations, their food consisting of very fair broth, with cabbage in it, meat, and black bread. Godfrey was asked no questions. He did not know whether this was because the convicts thought only of themselves, and had no curiosity about their companions, or whether it was a sort of etiquette observed among them. Godfrey was surprised to find how much the country differed from the ideas he had formed of Siberia. The forests were beautiful with a great variety of foliage. Late lilies bloomed by the roadside with flowers of other kinds, of whose names he was ignorant. To the north was a chain of hills of considerable height. The forest was alive with birds, and he frequently caught sight of squirrels running about among the branches. No objection was offered by the guards to their making purchases at the villages through which they passed, except that they would not allow them to buy spirits. At the first opportunity Godfrey laid out four or five roubles in tea and tobacco, some of which he presented to the guards, and divided the rest among his fellow-prisoners, who forthwith dubbed him "the count." At length Kara was reached. It was not a town, but purely a convict settlement, the prisoners being divided among four or five prisons situated two or three miles from each other. They were first marched to the most central of these. Here they were inspected by the governor, who had the details of each case reported by the authorities of the prisons they had left. They were at once divided into parties in accordance with the vacancies in the various prisons. Only four were left behind. These were taken to a guardroom until allotted to the various wards. One by one they were taken out, Godfrey being the last to be summoned. He was conducted to a room in which several convicts were seated writing; through this a long passage led to the governor's room. "You are known as Ivan Holstoff," the governor said when the warder had retired. "Yes, sir." "Age?" "Seventeen." "Charged with being a vagabond, found without papers or documents, and unable to give a satisfactory account of yourself." Godfrey bowed. The colonel glanced through the paper by his side signed by the governor at Kiakhta, and saying that the prisoner had been most favourably reported upon by a wealthy Buriat, a government contractor with whom he had been living out on the plains. "You persist in giving no further account of yourself?" the governor asked. "I would rather say nothing further, sir," Godfrey replied. "You are not a Russian," the governor said sharply. "I am a Russian born," the lad replied. "You speak with a slight accent." "I was away for some years from my country," Godfrey replied. "I suppose you would call yourself a student?" "Yes, sir, I was a student until lately." "You are a young lad to have got yourself into trouble. How was it? Do not tell me what crime you are charged with, but you can tell me anything else. It will go no farther, and there will be no record of what you say." Godfrey liked the officer's face. It was stern, but sternness is a necessity when a man is in charge of some three thousand prisoners, the greater proportion of whom are desperate men; but there was a kindness in the half-smile with which he spoke. "I am here, sir, from pure misfortune. I have no doubt most people you question declare they are innocent, and I do not expect you to believe me. The facts against me were very strong, so strong that I believe any jury would have convicted me upon them, but in spite of that I was innocent. I behaved like a fool, and was made the dupe of others, but beyond that I have nothing whatever to blame myself for or to regret." "It may be as you say," Colonel Konovovitch said. "I am not here to revise sentences, but to see them carried out. Conduct yourself well, lad, and in two years you will get a permit to reside outside the prison. Three years later you will be practically free, and can go where you like in Siberia and earn your living in any way you choose. Many of the richest men in the country have been convicts. I shall keep an eye on you, and shall make matters as easy for you as I can." He touched the bell, and the warder re-entered and led Godfrey away. The colonel sat for some little time in thought. He liked the lad's face and his manner, which, although perfectly respectful, had none of the servility with which Russians generally address their superiors. "He did not say that he was a Russian," he said to himself, "only that he was born in Russia. I should say from his appearance and manner that he was English. What was he sent out here for, I wonder? He may have been a clerk and been condemned for forgery or embezzlement. He may have been a political prisoner, most likely that I should say. He may have got mixed up in some of these Nihilist plots; if so, he has done well to become a vagabond. I can't help thinking he was speaking the truth when he declared he was innocent. Well, perhaps in the long run it will be the best for him. A clerk's lot is not a very bright one, and I should say he is likely to make his way anywhere. He has a hard two years' time before him among those scoundrels, but I should think he is likely to hold his own." Then he dismissed the subject from his thoughts and turned to a pile of papers before him. Godfrey, on leaving the presence of the governor, was taken by the warder to one of the prison blocks, and was handed over to the prison official in charge of it. He was taken to a small room and there furnished with a bag in which to keep his underclothing and other effects. "You will use this bag for a pillow at night," the official said. "What money you have you can either give to me to take charge of for you, or can hand it over to the head man of the room to lay out for you as you require it, or you can keep it yourself. If you choose to hold it yourself you had better keep a very sharp look-out; not that there are any professional thieves here, it is only for very serious offences that men are sent east of Irkutsk." Godfrey thanked the official, but said that what little he had he might as well keep with him. His money in paper was safely hidden in the lining of his convict jacket, and as he knew that that would be worn by night as well as by day, it was perfectly safe there. He was provided with some flannel shirts and other underclothing. "I see you have underclothing of your own," the official said; "but of course you have the regular allowance given you; if you run short of money you can sell them. Now come along with me." Godfrey was led into a large room, where the scene somewhat widely differed from what he had pictured to himself would be the interior of a prison at the dreaded mines of Kara. The room was large and fairly lofty; the walls were clean and whitewashed; down both sides ran benches, six feet wide, similar to one he had seen in an English guard-house. There were some sixty men in the room; some of these were lying upon the bed-places smoking pipes, others were sitting on them talking together or mending their clothes, and several parties were engaged in card-playing. Save for the ugly gray uniforms with the coloured patches in the centre of the back, significant of the term of imprisonment to which their wearers had been sentenced, and the strangely shaved heads of those present, he might have been in a singularly free-and-easy barrack-room. Most of the men looked up as the official entered. "A new comrade," he said. "Mikail Stomoff, do you take him in your charge;" and having said this he at once left the room. Mikail Stomoff, a big powerful man, came across to Godfrey. He was the starosta or head man of the ward, elected to the position by the votes of his fellow-prisoners. It was his duty to keep order and prevent quarrelling, and to see that the ward was swept out and kept tidy. He transacted all business for the prisoners, made their purchases outside, and was generally the intermediary between them and the authorities. In return for all this he was free from labour at the mines. "Well, my lad," he said, "you began early. How long are you in for, and what have you done?" "I am in here for being a vagabond," Godfrey said, "and I believe the punishment for that is five years." "A vagabond, eh? we have not many of them here. The wanderers generally work their way west. However, I daresay you had your reasons, and I don't know that you are not right, for most of us prefer hard work here to the dulness of the prisons in the west. Now, lad," he went on, dropping his voice, "if you have got any money do not say a word about it. You will be robbed to a certainty if you keep it yourself. The best thing you can do is to hand it over to me, and I will take care of it for you." Godfrey nodded, and putting his hand in his pocket pulled out the ten-rouble note he had set aside, and two or three smaller notes, and slipped them into the man's hand. "You can have it out as you want it," the man said; "and anything you want outside I can get for you out of it. The only thing prohibited is vodka." Some of the other men came round, and Godfrey thought he had never seen more villainous faces. Some of them were heavy, stolid, and stupid; others were fierce and passionate. "He is a vagabond," Mikail said to them. "I don't know what he has been before that, and if he is wise," and he gave a significant glance at Godfrey, "he will keep that to himself." "I should say he had been a political," one of the men said in a tone of contempt, for there was a certain jealousy of the politicals among the convict class; because, although their lot was really much harder than that of ordinary convicts, they were allowed to retain their own clothes, were lodged separately, and were almost all men of education, and in many cases of noble family. The feeling was evidenced by the indifference with which the rest of the men strolled away again when they heard the suggestion. "How do they all get tobacco?" Godfrey asked the starosta. "Is it part of the rations? Surely the money they may have when they come in here must soon be spent." "We may buy the tobacco," Mikail said. "Every man has something for his work. They pretend it is half the value of the work we do, but of course we know better than that. Still we all get something each day, and can spend it as we like. I don't think they allow smoking in the western prisons, but they do in all those east of Irkutsk. The authorities encourage it, indeed, for it is considered healthy and keeps away fever. There are no fevers in summer, but in winter, from so many men being shut up together, the air gets bad and sometimes we have outbreaks of fever." "But where do you buy your tobacco?" "People come to the prison gates and sell it as we come back from work. You can buy anything except vodka, and you can buy that, though not openly; it gets smuggled in." "How many hours do you work a day?" "Thirteen; but of course it is only for five months in the year. In winter the ground is too hard." "Too hard!" Godfrey repeated. "Why, it never gets cold in mines." "You don't think you are going to work underground, do you?" the man said; "there are very few underground mines here. It is all on the surface. There are some underground, because I have worked in them. I would rather work there than here. They can't look after you so sharp, and you can take it as easily as you like." Godfrey looked astonished. His ideas of the Siberian mines had been taken from stories written by men who had never been within thousands of miles of them, and who drew terrible pictures of the sufferings of exiles simply for the purpose of exciting feeling throughout Europe against the Russian government. "But it is very unhealthy in the mines underground, is it not?" "No; why should it be? It is much cooler and pleasanter working underground than it is in the dust and heat, I can tell you." "But I thought all quicksilver mines were unhealthy." "Quicksilver!" the man repeated; "there is not a quicksilver mine in all Siberia. There is gold and silver, but I don't believe there is a place where quicksilver is found. Anyhow there is not one that is worked. They have been gammoning you, young fellow." "Well, they have gammoned a good many other people too," Godfrey said. "I know I have read frightful accounts of the sufferings of prisoners in quicksilver mines." "Who wrote them?" Mikail asked. "There are a few convicts who may years afterwards be proved innocent, and allowed to return to Russia, but they are not the sort that would write lies about this place, for if they did they would soon find themselves on the road again. There are not a dozen men who have ever made their escape. Some of them may have invented lies for the sake of getting pity, and make themselves out to be hard used. Have you ever read any books by them?" "Only one," Godfrey said. "It was written by Baron Rosen; he was a political prisoner who was pardoned after being here a great many years. He described the life of political prisoners, of course, and even that was not very bad. Many of them had their wives with them, and they seem to have lived together pretty comfortably." "Ah! well, I don't think a political prisoner who came here now would say as much. They are sent to lonely settlements, many of them up at Yakutsk; though, of course, there are some down here. It is a horribly dull life. Some of them do work in the mines, but they are better off than those who have no work to do at all. I would rather be in for murder a hundred times than be a political; and what name do you go by, young fellow?" "I am entered as Ivan Holstoff." "That will do well enough. Don't you be fool enough to tell any one what your real name is. There are sneaks here as well as elsewhere who are glad enough to curry favour so as to get easy jobs, or to be let out sooner than they otherwise would be, by acting as spies; so you keep your real name to yourself. If it got to the ears of the governor he might find out what prison you escaped from and what you were in for, and if you were a political you would either be sent back there, or put with the politicals here, so keep it to yourself." "Shall I give you my watch?" "Yes, I think you had better. It would be of no good to anyone who took it as long as he was in here, but he would be able to sell it when he went to live outside. I will take care of it for you. I have got a safe where I keep the money and things locked. "We have got to work, and pretty hard, but I tell you we are a good bit better off than they are in the prisons of Russia. We have got plenty to eat, though I cannot say much for its niceness; anyhow we are a long way better fed than the soldiers who look after us; but here comes the food." A warder brought in a huge tray upon which were placed bowls of a sort of soup, while two others brought baskets piled up with huge chunks of black bread. Mikail took from a cupboard a spoon, and gave it to Godfrey. "You keep this for yourself," he said; "we don't have knives and forks, and do not want them." "Is this a day's allowance of bread?" Godfrey asked, as he took hold of one of the lumps. "No. You get as much as that in the morning. Our allowance is four pounds a day, two in the morning and two in the evening. The evening bread generally lasts for evening and morning soup, and we take the morning bread away with us to eat in the middle of the day." Godfrey sat down on the edge of the bed bench and ate his supper. As he looked at the men more carefully he saw that there were greater differences between them than he had at first noticed. Some of them he judged to have been gentlemen, and he afterwards found that there were three or four who had been officers in the army, but sentenced for grave military crimes. There were half a dozen in for forgery or embezzlement, and over thirty for murder. Some among the prisoners were Tartars. These were all in for murder or robbery with violence. "Where am I to sleep?" he presently asked Mikail. "I sleep in that corner next to the wall. Put your bag next to mine. They are not so likely to play tricks with you then." Godfrey was not sorry to lay himself down on the boards. There was no attempt at undressing on the part of any of the convicts. He would have thought the bed a very hard one a few months since; but he was now well contented with it, though he would have preferred rather more room on each side. "I suppose I ought to feel very miserable," he said to himself. "I can't make out why I don't. Here am I shut up with about a hundred as villainous-looking fellows as one could want to see--something like half of them murderers, all desperate criminals. I ought to be down in the dumps. It seems unnatural that I shouldn't be. I suppose I have a sort of Mark Tapley disposition, and get jolly under difficulties. Of course I should feel it more if I hadn't made up my mind to escape somehow. The colonel seems a good sort of fellow, and even the prisoners speak well of him. Then it is a comfort to hear that all that talk about the quicksilver mines was a lie, and the work is going to be no worse than a gold-digger would have in California or a navvy at home. There is no great hardship about that, at any rate for a time. If it was not for the thought of how horribly anxious they must be at home about me, I should not mind. It will be something to talk about all one's life. The first thing for me to do is to learn from the others as much as possible about the country. I have learned a lot about the geography of Siberia from Alexis, and have got a good idea about all the rivers. I dare say I shall learn a good deal more from some of these men. Another thing is to pick up as much of their language as I can from these Tartar fellows. They seem to be scattered pretty well all over the country. At least I have seen some of them all the way I have gone. I know there are other tribes. Those fishing chaps they call Ostjaks are the ones I should have most to do with. I expect one could get on with them if one happened to get them in the right vein. I suppose they speak some sort of dialect like that of these Tartars. At any rate I should think it would be sure to be near enough for the natives to understand each other. I believe Russian helps with all these languages, for the Russians are themselves only civilized Tartars. At any rate one of the first things to be done is to learn to speak the language, and I should be able to learn a lot about the country from them too. I have got eight or nine months before one can think of making a start, for of course it must be done in the spring. It is the end of September now, though I have lost all account of the days of the month." So he lay thinking for a long time, always confidently and hopefully. Soon after daylight the convicts were astir. "Is there any place where we can get water to wash?" he asked Mikail. "There is a tap and a trough out there in the yard," the man said, looking somewhat surprised at the request. Godfrey hurried out, threw off his jacket and shirt, turned the tap on to his head, and enjoyed a thorough sluice. Feeling vastly better for the wash, he slipped on his things again and went into the room. He was not surprised now that he had woke with something like a headache, for the air of the room was close and unwholesome. Breakfast similar to the supper the night before was soon served. Godfrey had plenty of bread left from the evening before, and put the piece now served out to him under his jacket. Half an hour later the convicts, ranged two and two, started for the mines. The distance was five miles. The heavy tools were taken in carts drawn by horses, and a guard of soldiers with loaded muskets marched beside the line. The mine was a large open cutting, and the prisoners were employed in digging the sand and carrying it on hand-barrows to the place where it was to be washed. The work was not entirely performed by prisoners, as there were many free labourers also employed. Godfrey was given a shovel, and his work consisted in loading the sand and gravel, as the pickmen got it down, on to the barrows. Being unaccustomed to work, his back ached and his hands were blistered by the end of the day; but he knew, from his experience in rowing, that this would pass off before long. At any rate the labour was far easier than he had anticipated. He had expected to see overseers with whips, but there was nothing of the sort. A few men directed the labour, and spoke sharply enough if they saw any of the prisoners shirking, but there was nothing to distinguish it from any other work of the kind, save the Cossack guards here and there leaning upon their muskets, and certainly the men worked no harder than ordinary labourers would do. Indeed, when the time was up and the prisoners started on their return towards the prison, the free labourers continued their work, and would do so, he afterwards learned, for some hours, as it would take a considerable time for all the sand obtained during the day to be thoroughly washed up and the gold extracted. Godfrey had at first looked narrowly at the sand as he shovelled it, for specks of gold, but had seen none; and indeed the proportion of gold at the mines of Kara was so small that they would not have paid if worked by free labour; but the produce served to lessen the expenses of the prisons, and the mines afforded work to the convicts. The prisoners were not forbidden to talk, and Godfrey, who had happened to be placed next to a young fellow of the better class, learned a good many particulars as to the mines. He had seen no women at them, and asked if they were not employed at that labour. "I never heard of such a thing," the other said. "They have to work; they wash and mend our clothes, and scrub the floors, and help the cooks, but that is all. After working for a certain time, according to the length of their sentence, they are allowed to live out of prison, and after a still further time are at liberty to settle down anywhere in Siberia they choose." "Have you been here long?" Godfrey asked. "I have been here three years," he said, "and I should be out by this time if I had not run away last year." "How did you get on?" "I got on well enough till the cold weather came. There are plenty of berries in the woods, and besides we occasionally came down and stole things from the carts waiting at night at the post-houses. We got a chest of tea once, and that lasted us all through the summer. There were ten of us together. Besides that, the people all along the road are very good to escaped prisoners. They dare not give them anything, because, if it were known they did so, they would be severely punished; but on the window-sill of almost every house is placed at night a plate with food on it, in case any wanderer should come along. Of course when winter came I had to give myself up." "Do you think escape altogether is possible?" "I don't say that it is not possible, for some have done it; but I suppose for every one who has tried it, hundreds have died. There is no living in the mountains in winter. Men do get free. There are a great many private mines, and in some of these they ask no questions, but are glad enough to engage anyone who comes along. After working there as a free labourer for a couple of years it is comparatively easy to move somewhere else, and in time one may even settle down as a free labourer in a town; but there is no getting right away then, for no one can leave Siberia without a passport giving particulars of all his life. "You are not thinking of trying, are you? because, if you will take my advice, you won't. It is all very well to go out for a summer holiday, but that is a very different thing from attempting an escape. I was a fool to try it, but I had such a longing to be in the woods that I could not help it. So now I shall be obliged to work here for a couple of years longer before I can live outside the prison. I am here for knocking down my colonel. We were both in love with the same girl. She liked me best, and her father liked him best. He was a tyrannical brute. One day he insulted me before her, and I knocked him down. I was tried for that, and he trumped up a lot of other charges against me; and there was no difficulty in getting plenty of hounds to swear to them. So you see here I am with a ten years' sentence. I don't know that I am not lucky." "How is that?" Godfrey asked. "There were half a dozen fellows in the regiment--I was one of them--who ventured to think for themselves. We had secret meetings, and were in communication with men of other regiments. Well, I was sent off before anything came of it. But they got hold of the names of the others when they arrested some Nihilists at Kieff, and they were all sent out here for life. I met one of them a few months back, and he told me so. So you see it was rather lucky that I knocked down the colonel when I did. Besides, it is ever so much better to be a convict than a political. I don't know how it was you had the luck to get turned in with us. I can tell you there is no comparison between their lot and ours. Still it is hateful, of course, living among such a gang as these fellows." "They look pretty bad," Godfrey said. "Bad is not the word for it," the other said. "A man I know who works as a clerk in the office told me that there are about two thousand two hundred prisoners in the six prisons of Kara, but of these only about a hundred and fifty are women. They are even worse than the men, for of the hundred and fifty there are a hundred and twenty-five murderesses, and of the others twelve are classed as vagabonds, and I suppose most of these are murderesses too. Out of the two thousand men there are about six hundred and seventy murderers. That is not such a big proportion as among the women, though, as there are nearly seven hundred classed as vagabonds, you would not be far wrong if you put down every other man as a murderer." "It is horrible," Godfrey said. "Well, it is not pleasant; but you must remember that a great many of these murderers may be otherwise pretty honest fellows. A great many of them have killed a man or woman when mad with vodka; some of the others have done it in a fit of jealousy; a few perhaps out of vengeance for some great wrong. The rest, I grant, are thoroughly bad. "By the way, my name is Osip Ivanoff. There are two or three decent fellows in our ward. I will introduce you to them this evening. It makes it pleasanter keeping together. We have got some cards, and that helps pass away the summer evenings. In winter it is too dark to play. There is only one candle in the ward; so there is nothing for it but to lay up and go to sleep as soon as it gets dark. There is the prison. I dare say you won't be sorry when you are back. The first three or four days' work is always trying." CHAPTER IX. PRISON LIFE. Godfrey found that there was no Sunday break in the work at Kara, but that once a fortnight the whole of the occupants of the ward had baths, and upon these days no work was done. Upon a good many saints' days they also rested; so that, practically, they had a holiday about once in every ten days. For his own part he would have been glad had the work gone on without these breaks. When the men started for work at five in the morning, and returned to the prison at seven at night, the great majority, after smoking a pipe or two, turned in at once, while upon the days when there was no work quarrels were frequent; and, what was to him still more objectionable, men told stories of their early lives, and seemed proud rather than otherwise of the horrible crimes they had committed. His own time did not hang at all heavy upon his hands. One of the Tartar prisoners who spoke Russian was glad enough to agree, in exchange for a sufficient amount of tobacco to enable him to smoke steadily while so employed, to teach him his own dialect. Godfrey found, as he had expected, a sufficient similarity between the two languages to assist him very greatly, and with two hours' work every evening, and a long bout on each holiday, he made rapid progress with it, especially as he got into the habit of going over and over again through the vocabulary of all the words he had learned, while he was at work in the mine. When not employed with the Tartar he spent his time in conversation with Osip Ivanoff and the little group of men of the same type. They spent much of their time in playing cards, whist being a very popular game in Russia. They often invited Godfrey to join them, but his mind was so much occupied with his own plans that he felt quite unable to give the requisite attention to the game. He soon learnt the methods by which order and discipline were maintained in the prisons. For small offences the punishment was a decrease in the rations, the prohibition of smoking--the prisoners' one enjoyment--and confinement to the room. The last part of the sentence was that which the prisoners most disliked. So far from work being hardship, the break which it afforded to the monotony of their life rendered the privation of it the severest of punishments, and Godfrey learned that there was the greatest difficulty in getting men to accept the position of starosta, in spite of the privileges and power the position gave, because he did not go out to work. For more serious offences men were punished by a flogging, more or less severe, with birch rods. For this, however, they seemed to care very little, although sometimes incapacitated for doing work for some days, from the effects of the beating. Lastly, for altogether exceptional crimes, or for open outbreaks of insubordination, there was the _plete_--flogging with a whip of twisted hide, fastened to a handle ten inches long and an inch thick. The lash is at first the same thickness as the handle, tapering for twelve inches, and then divided into three smaller lashes, each twenty-five inches long and about the thickness of the little finger. This terrible weapon is in use only at three of the Siberian prisons, of which Kara is one. From twenty to twenty-five lashes are given, and the punishment is considered equivalent to a sentence to death, as in many cases the culprit survives the punishment but a short time. The prisoners were agreed that at Kara the punishment of the _plete_ was extremely rare, only being given for the murder of a convict or official by one of the convicts. The quarrels among the prisoners, although frequent, and attended by great shouting and gesticulation, very rarely came to blows, the Russians having no idea of using their fists, and the contests, when it came to that, being little more than a tussle, with hair pulling and random blows. Had the prisoners had knives or other weapons ready to hand, the results would have been very different. Godfrey had not smoked until he arrived at Kara; but he found that in the dense atmosphere of the prison room it was almost necessary, and therefore took to it. Besides smoking being allowed as useful to ward off fevers and improve the health of the prisoners, it also had the effect of adding to their contentment, rendering them more easy of management, as the fear of the smoking being cut off did more to ensure ready obedience than even the fear of the stick. Tea was not among the articles of prison diet; but a samovar was always kept going by Mikail, and the tea sold to the prisoners at its cost price, and the small sum paid to the convicts sufficed to provide them with this and with tobacco. Vodka was but seldom smuggled in, the difficulty of bringing it in being great, and the punishment of those detected in doing so being severe. At times, however, a supply was brought in, being carried, as Godfrey found, in skins similar to those used for sausages, filled with the spirit and wound round and round the body. These were generally brought in when one or other of the prisoners had received a remittance, as most of them were allowed to receive a letter once every three months; and these letters, in the case of men who had once been in a good position, generally contained money. This privilege was only allowed to men after two years' unbroken good conduct. Godfrey's teacher in the Tartar language had been recommended to him by Osip as being the most companionable of the Tartar prisoners. He was a young fellow of three or four and twenty, short and sturdy, like most of his race, and with a good-natured expression in his flat face. He was in for life, having in a fit of passion killed a Russian officer who had struck him with a whip. He came from the neighbourhood of Kasan in the far west. Godfrey took a strong liking to him, and was not long before he conceived the idea that when he made his escape he would, if possible, take Luka with him. Such companionship would be of immense advantage, and would greatly diminish the difficulties of the journey. As for Luka, he became greatly attached to his pupil. The Tartars were looked down upon by their fellow-prisoners, and the terms of equality with which Godfrey chatted with them, and his knowledge of the world, which seemed to the Tartar to be prodigious, made him look up to him with unbounded respect. The friendship was finally cemented by an occurrence that took place three months after Godfrey arrived at the prison. Among the convicts was a man named Kobylin, a man of great strength. He boasted that he had committed ten murders, and was always bullying and tyrannizing the quieter and weaker prisoners. One day he passed where Luka and Godfrey were sitting on the edge of the plank bed talking together. Luka happened to get up just as he came along, and Kobylin gave him a violent push, saying, "Get out of the way, you miserable little Tartar dog." Luka fell with his head against the edge of the bench, and lay for a time half stunned. Godfrey leapt to his feet, and springing forward struck the bully a right-handed blow straight from the shoulder. The man staggered back several paces, and fell over the opposite bench. Then, with a shout of fury, he recovered his feet and rushed at Godfrey, with his arms extended to grasp him; but the lad, who had been one of the best boxers at Shrewsbury, awaited his onset calmly, and, making a spring forward just as Kobylin reached him, landed a blow, given with all his strength and the impetus of his spring, under the Russian's chin, and the man went backwards as if he had been shot. A roar of applause broke from the convicts. Mikail rushed forward, but Godfrey said to him: "Let us alone, Mikail. This fellow has been a nuisance in the ward ever since I came. It is just as well that he should have a lesson. I sha'n't do him any harm. Just leave us alone for a minute or two; he won't want much more." [Illustration: GODFREY PUNISHES KOBYLIN IN THE CONVICT PRISON.] The Russian rose slowly to his feet, bewildered and half stupefied by the blow and fall. He would probably have done nothing more; but, maddened by the taunts and jeers of the others, he gathered himself together and renewed the attack, but he in vain attempted to seize his active opponent. Godfrey eluded his furious rushes, and before he could recover himself, always succeeded in getting in two or three straight blows, and at last met him, as in his first rush, and knocked him off his feet. By this time Kobylin had had enough of it, and sat on the floor bewildered and crestfallen. Everything that a Russian peasant does not understand savours to him of magic; and that he, Kobylin, should have been thus vanquished by a mere lad seemed altogether beyond nature. He could not understand how it was that he had been unable to grasp his foe, or how that, like a stroke of lightning, these blows had shot into his face. Even the jeering and laughter of his companions failed to stir him. The Russian peasant is accustomed to be beaten, and is humble to those who are his masters. Kobylin rose slowly to his feet. "You have beaten me," he said humbly. "I do not know how; forgive me; I was wrong. I am ignorant, and did not know." "Say no more about it," Godfrey replied. "We have had a quarrel, and there is an end of it. There need be no malice. We are all prisoners here together, and it is not right that one should bully others because he happens to be a little stronger. There are other things besides strength. You behaved badly, and you have been punished. Let us smoke our pipes, and think no more about it." The sensation caused in the ward by the contest was prodigious, and the victory of this lad was as incomprehensible to the others as to Kobylin himself. The rapidity with which the blows were delivered, and the ease with which Godfrey had evaded the rushes of his opponent, seemed to them, as to him, almost magical, and from that moment they regarded Godfrey as being possessed of some strange power, which placed him altogether apart from themselves. Osip and the other men of the same stamp warmly congratulated Godfrey. "What magic is this?" Osip said, taking him by the shoulders and looking with wonder at him. "I have been thinking you but a lad, and yet that strong brute is as a child in your hands. It is the miracle of David and Goliath over again." "It is simply skill against brute force, Osip. I may tell you, what I have not told anyone before since I came here, that my mother was English. I did not say so, because, as you may guess, I feared that were it known and reported it might be traced who I was, and then, instead of being merely classed as a vagabond, I should be sent back to the prison I escaped from, and be put among another class of prisoners." "I understand, Ivan. Of course I have all along felt sure you were a political prisoner; and I thought, perhaps, you might have been a student in Switzerland, which would account for you having ideas different to other people." "No, I was sent for a time to a school in England, and there I learned to box." "So, that is your English boxing," Osip said. "I have heard of it, but I never thought it was anything like that. Why, he never once touched you." "If he had, I should have got the worst of it," Godfrey laughed; "but there was nothing in it. Size and weight go for very little in boxing; and a man knowing nothing about it has not the smallest chance against a fair boxer who is active on his legs." "But you did not seem to be exerting yourself," Osip said. "You were as cool and as quiet as if you had been shovelling sand. You even laughed when he rushed at you." "That is the great point of boxing, Osip. One learns to keep cool, and to have one's wits about one; for anyone who loses his temper has but a poor chance indeed against another who keeps cool. Moreover a man who can box well will always keep his head in all times of danger and difficulty. It gives him nerve and self-confidence, and enables him at all times to protect the weak against the strong." "Just as you did now," Osip said. "Well, I would not have believed it if I had not seen it. I am sure we all feel obliged to you for having taken down that fellow Kobylin. He and a few others have been a nuisance for some time. You may be sure there will be no more trouble with them after the lesson you have given." Luka's gratitude to Godfrey was unbounded, and from that time he would have done anything on his behalf, while the respect with which he had before regarded him was redoubled. Therefore when one day Godfrey said to him, "When the spring comes, Luka, I mean to try to escape, and I shall take you with me," the Tartar considered it to be a settled thing, and was filled with a deep sense of gratitude that his companion should deem him worthy of sharing in his perils. Winter set in in three weeks after Godfrey reached Kara, and the work at the mine had to be abandoned. As much employment as possible was made for the convicts. Some were sent out to aid in bringing in the trees that had been felled during the previous winter for firewood, others sawed the wood up and split it into billets for the stoves, other parties went out into the forest to fell trees for the next winter's fires. Some were set to whitewash the houses, a process that was done five times a year; but in spite of all this there was not work for half the number. The time hung very heavily on the hands of those who were unemployed. Godfrey was not of this number, for as soon as the work at the mine terminated he received an order to work in the office as a clerk. He warmly appreciated this act of kindness on the part of the commandant. It removed him from the constant companionship of the convicts, which was now more unpleasant than before, as during the long hours of idleness quarrels were frequent and the men became surly and discontented. Besides this he received regular pay for his work, and this was of importance, as it was necessary to start upon such an undertaking as he meditated with as large a store of money as possible. He had, since his arrival, refused to join in any of the proposals for obtaining luxuries from outside. The supply of food was ample, for in addition to the bread and soup there was, three or four times a week, an allowance of meat, and his daily earnings in the mines were sufficient to pay for tobacco and tea. Even the ten roubles he had handed over to Mikail remained untouched. One reason why he was particularly glad at being promoted to the office was that he had observed, upon the day when he first arrived, a large map of Siberia hanging upon the wall; and although he had obtained from Alexis and others a fair idea of the position of the towns and various convict settlements, he knew nothing of the wild parts of the country through which he would have to pass, and the inhabited portion formed but a small part indeed of the whole. During the winter months he seized every opportunity, when for a few minutes he happened to be alone in the office, to study the map and to obtain as accurate an idea as possible of the ranges of mountains. One day, when the colonel was out, and the other two clerks were engaged in taking an inventory of stores, and he knew, therefore, that he had little chance of being interrupted, he pushed a table against the wall, and with a sheet of tracing paper took the outline of the northern coast from the mouth of the Lena to Norway, specially marking the entrances to all rivers however small. He also took a tracing, giving the positions of the towns and rivers across the nearest line between the head of Lake Baikal and the nearest point of the Angara river, one of the great affluents of the Yenesei. The winter passed slowly and uneventfully. The cold was severe, but he did not feel it, the office being well warmed, and the heat in the crowded prison far greater than was agreeable to him. At Christmas there were three days of festivity. The people of Kara, and the peasants round, all sent in gifts for the prisoners. Every one laid by a little money to buy special food for the occasion, and vodka had been smuggled in. The convicts of the different prisons were allowed to visit each other freely, and although there was much drunkenness on Christmas Day there were no serious quarrels. All were on their best behaviour, but Godfrey was glad when all was over and they returned to their ordinary occupations again, for the thought of the last Christmas he had spent in England brought the change in his circumstances home to him more strongly than ever, and for once his buoyant spirits left him, and he was profoundly depressed, while all around him were cheerful and gay. Nothing surprised Godfrey more than the brutal indifference with which most of the prisoners talked of the crimes they had committed, except perhaps the indifference with which these stories were listened to. It seemed to him indeed that some of the convicts had almost a pride in their crimes, and that they even went so far as to invent atrocities for the purpose of giving themselves a supremacy in ferocity over their fellows. He noticed that those who were in for minor offences, such as robbery with violence, forgery, embezzlement, and military insubordination, were comparatively reticent as to their offences, and that it was those condemned for murder who were the most given to boasting about their exploits. "One could almost wish," he said one day to his friend Osip, "that one had the strength of Samson, to bring the building down and destroy the whole of them." "I am very glad you have not, if you have really a fancy of that sort. I have not the least desire to be finished off in that sudden way." "But it is dreadful to listen to them," Godfrey said. "I cannot understand what the motive of government can be in sending thousands of such wretches out here instead of hanging them. I can understand transporting people who have been convicted of minor offences, as, when their term is up, they may do well and help to colonize the country. But what can be hoped from such horrible ruffians as these? They have the trouble of keeping them for years, and even when they are let out no one can hope that they will turn out useful members of the community. They probably take to their old trade and turn brigands." "I don't think they do that. Some of those who escape soon after coming out might do so, but not when they have been released. They would not care then to run the risk of either being flogged to death by the _plete_ or kept in prison for the rest of their lives. Running away is nothing. I have heard of a man, who had run away repeatedly, being chained to a barrow which he had to take with him wherever he went, indoors and out. That is the worst I ever heard of, for as for flogging with rods these fellows think very little of it. They will often walk back in the autumn to the same prison they went from, take their flogging, and go to work as if nothing had happened. They are never flogged with the _plete_ for that sort of thing; that is kept for murder or heading a mutiny in which some of the officials have been killed. No; the brigands are chiefly composed of long-sentence men who have got away early, and who perhaps have killed a Cossack or a policeman who tried to arrest them, or some peasant who will not supply them with food. After that they dare not return, and so join some band of brigands in order to be able to keep to the woods through the winter. I think that very few of the men who have once served their time and been released ever come back again." During the winter the food, although still ample, was less than the allowance they had received while working. The allowance of bread was reduced by a pound a day, and upon Wednesdays and Fridays, which were fast days, no meat was issued except to those engaged in chopping up firewood or bringing in timber from the forest. Leather gloves were served out to all men working in the open air, but in spite of this their hands were frequently frost-bitten. The evenings would have been long indeed to Godfrey had it not been for his Tartar instructor; the two would sit on the bench in the angle of the room and would talk together in Tartar eked out by Russian. The young fellow's face was much more intelligent than those of the majority of his countrymen, and there was a merry and good-tempered expression in his eyes. They chatted about his home and his life there. His mother had been an Ostjak, and he had spent some years among her tribe on the banks both of the Obi and Yenesei, but had never been far north on either river. He took his captivity easily. His father and mother both died when he had been a child, and when he was not with the Ostjaks he had lived with his father's brother, who had, he said, "droves of cattle and horses." "If they would put me to work on a river," he said, "I should not mind. Here one has plenty to eat, and the work is not hard, and there is a warm room to sleep in, but I should like to be employed in cutting timber and taking it in rafts down the river to the sea. I love the river, and I can shoot. All the Ostjaks can shoot, though shooting has brought me bad luck. If I had not had my bow in my hand when that Russian struck me I should not be here now. It was all done in a moment. You see I was on the road when his sledge came along. The snow was fresh and soft, and I did not hear it coming. The horses swerved, nearly upsetting the sledge, and knocking me down in the snow. Then I got up and swore at the driver, and then the Russian, who was angry because the sledge had nearly been upset, jumped out, caught the whip from the driver and struck me across the face. It hurt me badly, for my face was cold. I had been in the wood shooting squirrels, and I hardly know how it was, but I fitted an arrow to the string and shot. It was all over in a moment, and there he lay on the snow with the arrow through his throat. I was so frightened that I did not even try to run away, and was stupid enough to let the driver hold me till some people came up and carried me off to prison; so you see my shooting did me harm. But it was hard to be sent here for life for a thing like that. He was a bad man that Russian. He was an officer in one of the regiments there, and a soldier who was in prison with me afterwards told me that there was great joy among the soldiers when he was killed." "But it was very wrong, Luka, to kill a man like that." "Yes; but then you see I hadn't time to think. I was almost mad with pain, and it was all done in a minute. I think it is very hard that I should be punished as much as I am when there are many here who have killed five or six people, or more, and some of them women, and they have no worse punishment than I have. Look at Kobylin; he was a bandit first of all, as I have heard him say over and over again. He beat his wife to death, because she scolded him for being drunk, then he took to the woods. The first he killed was a Jew pedlar, then he burnt down the house of the head-man of a village because he had put the police on his track. He killed him as he rushed out from the door, and his wife and children were burnt alive. He killed four or five others on the road, and when he was betrayed, as he was asleep in the hut, he cut down with an axe two of the policemen who came to arrest him. He is in for life, but he is a great deal worse than I am, is he not? "Then there is that little Koshkin, the man who is always walking about smiling to himself. He was a clerk to a notary, and he murdered his master and mistress and two servant women, and got away with the money and lived on it for a year; then he went into another family and did the same, but this time the police got on his track and caught him. Nine lives he took altogether, not in a passion or because they were cruel to him. I heard him say that he was quite a favourite, and how he used to sing to them and was trusted in every way. No, I say it isn't fair that I, who did nothing but just pay a man for a blow, should get as much as those two." "It does seem rather hard on you, but you see there cannot be a great variety of punishments. You killed a man, and so you had sentence for life. They can't give more than that, and if they were to give less there would be more murders than there are, for every one would think that they could kill at least one person without being punished very heavily for it." "I don't call mine murder at all," Luka said. "I would not kill a man for his money; but this was just a fight. Whiz went his whip across my face, and then whiz went my arrow." "Oh, it is not so bad, Luka, I grant. If you had killed a man in cold blood I would have had nothing to do with you. I could not be friends with a man who was a cold-blooded murderer. I could never give him my hand, or travel with him, or sleep by his side. I don't feel that with you. In the eye of the law you committed a murder, and the law does not ask why it was done, or care in what way it was done. The law only says you killed the man, and the punishment for that is imprisonment for life. But I, as a man, can see that there is a great difference in the moral guilt, and that, acting as you did in a fit of passion, suddenly and without premeditation, and smarting under an assault, it was what we should in England call manslaughter. Before I asked you to teach me, when Osip first said that he should recommend me to try you, I saw by the badge on your coat that you were in for murder, and if it had not been that he knew how it came about, I would not have had anything to do with you, even if I had been obliged to give up altogether my idea of learning your language." The starosta continued a steady friend to Godfrey. The lad acted as a sort of deputy to him, and helped him to keep the accounts of the money he spent for the convicts, and the balance due to them, and once did him real service. As Mikail's office was due to the vote of the prisoners, his authority over them was but slight, and although he was supported by a considerable majority of them there were some who constantly opposed him, and at times openly defied his authority. Had Mikail reported their conduct they would have been severely punished; but they knew he was very averse to getting any one into trouble, and that he preferred to settle things for himself. He was undoubtedly the most powerful man in the ward, and even the roughest characters feared to provoke him singly. On one occasion, however, after he had knocked down a man who had refused to obey his orders, six or seven of his fellow convicts sprung on him. Godfrey, Osip, and three or four of the better class of convicts rushed to his assistance, and for a few minutes there was a fierce fight, the rest of the prisoners looking on at the struggle but taking no active part one way or the other. The assailants were eventually overpowered, and nothing might have been said about the matter had it not been that one of Mikail's party was seriously injured, having an arm broken and being severely kicked. Mikail was therefore obliged to report the matter, and the whole of the men concerned in the attack upon him received a severe flogging. "I should look out for those fellows, Mikail," Godfrey said, "or they may injure you if they have a chance." Mikail, however, scoffed at the idea of danger. "They have got it pretty severely now," he said, "and the colonel told them that if there was any more insubordination he would give them the _plete_; and they have a good deal too much regard for their lives to risk that. You won't hear any more of it. They know well enough that I would not have reported them if I had not been obliged to do so, owing to Boulkin's arm being broken; therefore it isn't fair having any grudge against me. They have been flogged before most of them, and by the time the soreness has passed off they will have forgotten it." Godfrey did not feel so sure of that, and determined to keep his eye upon the men. He did not think they would openly assault the starosta, but at night one of them might do him an injury, relying upon the difficulty of proving under such circumstances who had been the assailant. The solitary candle that burned in the ward at night was placed well out of reach and protected by a wire frame. It could not, therefore, be extinguished, but the light it gave was so faint that, except when passing just under the beam from which it hung, it would be impossible to identify any one even at arm's-length. Two of those concerned in the attack on Mikail were the men of whom Luka had been speaking. Kobylin the bandit muttered and scowled whenever the starosta came near him, and there could be little doubt that had he met him outside the prison walls he would have shown him no mercy. Koshkin on the other hand appeared to cherish no enmity. "I have done wrong, Mikail," he said half an hour after he had had his flogging, "and I have been punished for it. It was not your fault; it was mine. These things will happen, you know, and there is no need for malice;" and he went about the ward smiling and rubbing his hands as usual and occasionally singing softly to himself. As Godfrey knew how submissive the Russians are under punishment he would have thought this perfectly natural had he not heard from Luka the man's history. That was how, he thought to himself, the scoundrel smiled upon the master and mistress he had resolved to murder. "Of the two I think there is more to be feared from him than from that villain Kobylin, who has certainly been civil enough to me since I gave him that thrashing. I will keep my eye on the little fellow." Of necessity the ward became quiet very soon after night set in. The men talked and smoked for a short time, but in an hour after the candle was lit the ward was generally perfectly quiet. Godfrey, working as he did indoors, was far less inclined for sleep than either the men who had been working in the forest or those who had been listlessly passing the day in enforced idleness, and he generally lay awake for a long time, either thinking of home and school-days, or in meditating over his plans for escape as soon as spring arrived, and he now determined to keep awake still longer. "They are almost all asleep by seven o'clock," he said to himself. "If any of those fellows intend to do any harm to Mikail they will probably do it by ten or eleven, there will be no motive in putting it off longer; and indeed the ward is quieter then than it is later, for some of them when they wake light a pipe and have a smoke, and many do so early in the morning so as to have their smoke before going to work." Five evenings passed without anything happening, and Godfrey began to think that he had been needlessly anxious, and that Mikail must understand the ways of his own people better than he did. The sixth evening had also passed off quietly, and when Godfrey thought that it must be nearly twelve o'clock he was about to pull his blanket up over his ear and settle himself for sleep when he suddenly caught sight of a stooping figure coming along. It was passing under the candle when he caught sight of it. He did not feel quite sure that his eyes had not deceived him, for it was but a momentary glance he caught of a dark object an inch or two above the level of the feet of the sleepers. Godfrey noiselessly pushed down his blanket, gathered his feet up in readiness for a spring, and grasped one of his shoes, which as usual he had placed behind the clothes-bag that served as his pillow. Several of the sleepers were snoring loudly, and intently as he listened he heard no footfall. In a few seconds, however, a dark figure arose against the wall at the foot of the bench; it stood there immovable for half a minute and then leaned over Mikail, placing one hand on the wall as if to enable him to stretch as far over as possible without touching the sleeper. Godfrey waited no longer but brought the shoe down with all his force on the man's head, and then threw himself upon him pinning him down for a moment upon the top of Mikail. The latter woke with a shout of surprise followed by a sharp cry of pain. Godfrey clung to the man, who, as with a great effort he rose, dragged him from the bed, and the two rolled on the ground together. Mikail's shout had awakened the whole ward and a sudden din arose. Mikail leapt from the bench and as he did so fell over the struggling figures on the ground. "Get hold of his hands, Mikail," Godfrey shouted, "he has got a knife and I can't hold him." But in the dark it was some time before the starosta could make out the figures on the floor. Suddenly Godfrey felt Mikail's hand on his throat. "That's me," he gasped. The hand was removed and a moment later he felt the struggles of his adversary cease, and there was a choking sound. "That is right, Mikail, but don't kill him," he said. At this moment the door at the end of the ward opened and two of the guard ran in with lanterns. They shouted orders to the convicts to keep their places on the benches. "This way," Mikail called, "there has been attempted murder, I believe." The guards came up with the lanterns. "What has happened to him?" one of them said, bending over the man who was lying insensible on the ground. "He is short of wind," Mikail said, "that is all that ails him; I had to choke him off." "But what is it all about?" "I don't know myself," Mikail said. "I was asleep when I felt a thump as if a cow had fallen on me, then I felt a sharp stab on the hip, two of them one after the other, then the weight was lifted suddenly off and I jumped up. As I put my feet on the ground I tumbled over Ivan here and--who is it? Hold the lantern close to his face--ah, Koshkin. What is it, Ivan, are you hurt?" "He ran his knife pretty deep into my leg once or twice," Godfrey said. "I got his arms pinned down, but I could not keep him from moving his hands. If we had lain quiet he would have hurt me seriously, I expect; but we were both struggling, so he only got a chance to give me a dig now and then." "But what is it all about, Ivan, for I don't quite understand yet?" Mikail asked. "I told you, Mikail, that fellow would do you a mischief. You laughed at me, but I was quite sure that that smiling manner of his was all put on. I have lain awake for the last five nights to watch, and to-night I just caught sight of something crawling along at the edge of the bench. He stood up at your feet and leant over, as I thought then, and I know now, to stab you, but I flung myself on him, and you know the rest of it." "Well, you have saved my life, there is no mistake about that," and Mikail lifted and laid him on the bench. "Now," he said to the guards, "you had better take that fellow out and put him in the guard cell, the cold air will bring him round as soon as you get him out of this room. You had better hold him tight when he does, for he is a slippery customer. When you have locked him up will one of you go round to the doctor's? This young fellow is bleeding fast, and I fancy I have lost a good deal of blood myself." As soon as the soldiers had left the ward carrying Koshkin between them Mikail called Osip and Luka. "Here," he said, "get the lad's things down from under his iron belt and try and stop the bleeding till the doctor comes. I feel a bit faint myself or I would ask no one else to do it." In ten minutes the doctor arrived. Godfrey had three cuts about half-way between the hip and the knee. "They are of no consequence except for the bleeding," the doctor said. "Has anyone got a piece of cord?" "There is a piece in my bag," Mikail replied. The doctor took it and made a rough tourniquet above the wounds, then drew the edges together, put in two stitches in each, and then strapped them up. Then he attended to Mikail. "You have had a narrow escape," he said; "the knife has struck on your hip bone and made a nasty gash, and there is another just below it. If the first wound had been two inches higher there would have been nothing to do but to bury you." "Well, this is a nice business," Mikail said, when the doctor had left. "To think of that little villain being so treacherous! You were right and I was wrong, Ivan, though how you guessed he was up to mischief is more than I can imagine." "Well, you know the fellow's history, Mikail, and that he had murdered nine people he had lived among and who trusted him. What could one expect from a villain like that?" "Oh, I know he is a bad one," Mikail said, "but I did not think he dare take the risk." "I don't suppose he thought there was much risk, Mikail. If I had been asleep he would have stabbed you to the heart, and when we found you dead in the morning who was to know what prisoner had done it?" "Well, it was a lucky thought my putting you next to me, young fellow; I meant it for your good not for my own, and now you see it has saved my life." "A kind action always gets its reward, Mikail--always, sooner or later; in your case it has been sooner, you see. Now I shall go off to sleep, for I feel as drowsy as if I had been up for the last three nights." CHAPTER X PREPARATIONS FOR FLIGHT. The next morning Godfrey and Mikail were by the doctor's orders carried to the hospital and placed in a comfortable and well-arranged ward. "You won't have to be here many days," the doctor said when he came round the ward. "I only had you brought here because the air is sweeter and better than it is in that room you were in." An hour later the governor with a clerk came in. Mikail was first called upon for his statement, which was written down by the clerk. "Had you any reason for supposing that the man had any special enmity against you?" the governor asked. "Only because of that flogging he had for the row in the ward last week, sir." "Ah, yes, he was one of those who attacked you then and was flogged; that accounts for it." Then Godfrey gave his account of what had happened. "Did you observe anything that made you specially watchful?" the governor asked. "I thought perhaps one of them might try to take revenge on Mikail, sir. One or two of them were very sullen and surly, and would, I thought, do him harm if they had the chance; but I suspected this man more than the others because he seemed so unnaturally pleasant, and as I had heard him boasting about the things for which he is here, I thought he was more dangerous than those who grumbled and threatened." The governor nodded. "Yes, he is a thorough-paced villain; you have done very well, young man, and I shall not forget it." Five days later there was a stir in front of the hospital, and Mikail, whose bed was by the side of the window, raised himself on his elbow and looked out. "It is a punishment parade," he said; "I expect they are going to flog Koshkin with the _plete_. No governor of a prison is allowed to do that until the circumstances of the case have been sent to the governor of the province, and the sentence receives his approval; that is no doubt what has caused the delay. All the prisoners are mustering." Godfrey, who was in the next bed, managed to draw himself on to Mikail's, and then to sit up so as to look out. The whole of the convicts of that prison, some eight hundred in number, were drawn up forming three sides of a square; in front of them, four paces apart, were a line of soldiers with fixed bayonets, while behind was another line. Then Koshkin, stripped to the waist, was brought forward and bound to a thick board having an iron leg, so that when laid down the board inclined to an angle of about thirty degrees. On this he was so strapped as to be perfectly immovable. Then a man approached with the dreaded whip and took his place on one side of the criminal. The governor then entered the square. He was attended by all the prison officials. His face was very grave and stern, and he walked along the lines, scrutinizing closely each man as he passed him. Then he took his place in the centre of the square and held up his hand. "This man," he said, "has attempted to murder the starosta of his ward, and is for this sentenced to fifty lashes. Let this be a lesson to all here." Then he signalled to the executioner, who brought down his lash with great force upon the bare back of the prisoner. A terrible cry broke from Koshkin. Two more blows were given, and then the executioner moved to the other side and delivered another three blows. In this way the lashes crossed each other at an angle. Godfrey could look no more, but crawled back on to his own bed. Mikail continued looking out until the punishment was over. "He has not bled," he said; "he will die." "How do you mean, Mikail?" "Well, that is how it is, Ivan. It is as the executioner likes, or as he is ordered. He can, according to the way he strikes, cut the flesh or not each stroke. If it bleeds the man seldom dies, if it doesn't there is little chance for him. There are several ways of flogging the prisoner, and his friends generally bribe the executioner; then he strikes with all his strength the first blow that is terrible, but it seems to numb the flesh somehow, and afterwards he does not strike so hard, and the prisoner hardly feels the blows. The worst is when he hits softly at first and then harder and harder, then the man feels every blow to the end; but they are obliged to hit hard, if not they get flogged themselves. I saw a case where the executioner had been well bribed and, therefore, hit gently, and the prisoner was taken down and he was tied up in his place and got twenty lashes. Years ago they used the _plete_ at all the prisons, now they only use it at three prisons, where the worst criminals are sent, and this is one of them." A week later they were both discharged from the hospital and returned to the ward. The first thing they heard on entering it was that Koshkin had died the night before. Godfrey went back to his work in the office. He was doubtful how he should be received in the ward, but he found that, except by Kobylin and four or five others, he was welcomed quite cordially. "You have done us all a service," Osip said. "There was sure to have been trouble sooner or later, and that flogging will cow these fellows for some time. This is only the second there has been since I came here--I mean, of course, at this prison. Besides, Mikail is a good fellow, and we all like him, and everyone would have been sorry if he had been killed." "What is he in for? I never asked before. Of course, I see that he has the murderer's badge on his back. Do you know how it happened? I never heard him speak of it." "Yes, he told us about it one evening, that was before he became starosta. Some vodka had been smuggled in and he had more than was good for him, and that opened his lips. He had been a charcoal-burner and having had the good fortune to escape the conscription he married. She was a pretty girl, and it seems that the son of a rich proprietor had taken a fancy to her, and when the next year's conscription came he managed by some unfair means to get Mikail's name put down again on the list. Such things can be done, you know, by a man with influence. Mikail ran away and took to the woods. He was hunted for two or three months in vain. Then someone betrayed him, and one morning he woke up in a hut he had built for himself and saw the place was surrounded by soldiers. "With the officers was the man who had injured him. Mikail was mad with fury, and rushing out with a big club he had cut he stretched the fellow dead on the ground--and served him right. However, of course Mikail was taken, tried, and condemned. He had killed a noble's son, and three weeks later was on his way to Siberia. His wife has followed him, and is living now in a village two miles away. Another six months and Mikail will have served his ten years, which is the least time a murderer can serve before he gets leave to live outside the prison. He is sure to get it then, his conduct has been always good, and no doubt this affair will count in his favour. His wife came out two years after he was sent here. She keeps herself by spinning and helping at a farm. It has been a good thing for Mikail, for it has kept him straight. If it had not been for that he would have taken to the woods long ago." "I don't call that a murder," Godfrey said indignantly. "If I had been on the jury I would never have convicted him. He was treated illegally and had the right to resist." "I don't blame him very much myself," Osip said. "Of course it would have been wiser to have submitted, and then to have tried to get off serving, but I don't suppose anyone would have listened to him. If it hadn't been a noble he killed I have no doubt he would have got off." "But you are noble yourself, Osip." "Yes, but that does not give me any marked advantage at present. Of course it will make a difference when I get out. My friends will send me money, and I shall live at Tobolsk and marry some wealthy gold-miner's daughter, and be in the best society. Oh, yes, it is an advantage being noble born, even in Siberia." Godfrey was quite touched with the joy that Luka manifested when, on his return from work, he found him in the ward. "Ah, my master," he exclaimed, with tears in his eyes, "why did you not tell me that you were watching? I would have kept awake all night and would have thrown myself on that dog; it would have made no matter if he had killed me. It would not have hurt me so much as it did to see you bleeding." "You must not call me master," Godfrey said, holding out his hand, which the Tartar seized and pressed to his forehead. "You and I are friends, there are no masters here." Godfrey learnt that every effort had been made by the authorities to discover how Koshkin had obtained the knife, but without success. He must have bribed one of the guards to fetch it in for him, but there was no tracing which had been concerned in the matter. All the prisoners had been searched and their bags examined, but no other weapons had been discovered. Godfrey did not hear a single word of pity for Koshkin, or of regret at his death. Indifference for others was one of the leading characteristics of the prisoners. Although living so long together they seldom appeared to form a friendship of any kind; each man lived for and thought only of his own lot. Godfrey observed that it was very seldom that a prisoner shared any dainty he had purchased with another, and it was only when three or four had clubbed together to get in a ham, a young sucking pig, or some vodka that they were seen to partake of it together. Some of the prisoners, indeed, scarcely ever exchanged a word with the rest, but moved about in moody silence paying no attention to what was going on around them. Some again were always quarrelling, and seemed to take a delight in stirring up others by giving them unpleasant nicknames, or by turning them into ridicule. "I am glad indeed, Mikail," Godfrey said, as he lay down beside the starosta that night, "that you were not seriously hurt. I only heard to-day that you had a wife waiting for you outside." "Yes, it is true," Mikail replied. "I never talk of her. I dare not even let myself think of her, it seems too great a happiness to be true; and something may occur, one never knows. Ah, Ivan, if it had not been for you what news would have been taken to her! Think of it, after her long journey out here; after waiting ten years for me, to hear that it was useless. I tremble like a leaf when I think of it. That night I lay awake all night and cried like a young child, not for myself, you know, but for her. She has taken a cottage already, and is furnishing it with her savings. She is allowed to write to me, you know, once every month. At first it was every three months. What happiness it was to me when my first five years was up and she could write once a month! Do you think I shall know her? She will have changed much. I tell myself that always; and I--I have changed much too, but she will know me, I am sure she will know me. I tremble now at the thought of our meeting, Ivan; but I ought not to talk so, I ought not to speak to you of my happiness--you, who have no friend waiting to see you." "I like to hear you talk of your wife, Mikail. My friends are a long way off indeed; but I hope that I shall see them before very long." "You think that you may be pardoned?" Mikail asked. "No, I mean to escape." "Ah, lad," Mikail said kindly, "I don't suppose there is ever a prisoner comes here who does not say to himself, I will escape. Every spring there are thousands who take to the woods, and scarce one of these but hopes never to see the inside of a prison again, and yet they come back, every one of them." "But there have been escapes, Mikail, therefore there is nothing impossible in it." "There are twenty thousand convicts cross the frontier every year, lad. There is not one man makes his escape in five years." "Well, I mean to be the man this five years, Mikail." "I would not try if I were you. Were you in on a life sentence for murder, or still worse, as a political prisoner, I would say try if you like, for you would have nothing to lose; but you have a good prospect now. I am sure you must have been a political, but now that you have been a wanderer you are so no longer. You have won the governor's good-will, and as soon as your time is up, perhaps before, you will be allowed to live outside the prison. If you go away in the spring you will, when you return as winter comes on, forfeit all this, and have to begin again. When you come out there will be my little hut ready for you, and such a welcome from my wife and me that you will forget how small and rough it is, and there you will live with us till your five years are up, and you can go anywhere you like in Siberia." "I thank you sincerely, Mikail, and I should, I am sure, be as happy as an exile could be with you and your faithful wife; but if I have to try afresh every year for twenty years I will break out and strive to escape. You know that I am English by my mother's side. I can tell you now that I am altogether English, and I will gain England or die. At any rate, if it is to be done I will do it. I have health and strength and determination. I have learnt all that there is to be learnt as to the difficulties of the journey. I have more to gain, more to strive for than other prisoners. Even if they escape they cannot return home. They must still be exiled from Russia; must earn their bread among strangers as they are earning it here. I have a home awaiting me--a father, mother, and sisters--to whom I shall come back as one from the grave. Why, man, the difficulties are nothing in comparison to the reward. A journey across Asia is as nothing to the journeys many of my countrymen have made across Africa. Here there is no fear of fever, of savage tribes, or savage beasts. It is in comparison a mere pleasure excursion. I may not succeed next time, just as I did not succeed last year, but succeed in the end I will." "I believe you," Mikail said earnestly, infected by Godfrey's enthusiasm. "Did you not overthrow, as if he were a babe, Kobylin, whom everyone else feared? Yes, if anyone can do it you can." At last the long winter was over, the thaw came, and the work at the mine was renewed. Godfrey was afraid that he might be still kept in the office, and he spoke to Mikail on the subject; the latter spoke to one of the officials, and told him that the prisoner Ivan Holstoff petitioned that he might be again put to work on the mine instead of being kept in the office, as he felt his health suffering from the confinement. Two days later Godfrey was called into the governor's room. "I hear that you have asked to go to the mine again, lad." "Yes, sir; I like active work better than sitting indoors all day." The colonel looked at him keenly. "You are doing well here, lad; it will be a pity to have to begin over again. I can guess what is in your thoughts. Think it over, lad, don't do anything rash; but if--," and he hesitated, "if you are headstrong and foolish, remember you will be better off here than elsewhere, and that I am never very hard on runaways. That will do; you will go out again with the gang to-morrow." "Thank you, sir," Godfrey said earnestly, and with a bow returned to his work at the desk in the next room. On the following day work at the mine was resumed. Godfrey at once began his preparations for his flight, and as a first step managed to conceal under a lump of rock a heavy hammer and a pick used in the work; he had already laid in a stock of a dozen boxes of matches. The next evening he said to Mikail when they had lain down for the night,-- "Now, Mikail, I want you to help me." "So you really mean to go?" "Yes, my mind is quite made up. I want you to get me in some things from outside." "I will get you anything if you will tell me what you want." "I want most of all two long knives." "Yes, knives are useful," Mikail said; "but they are awkward things to get. I dare not ask any of the people who trade here to get such a thing. Ah! I know what I will do; I am losing my head. I will steal you two from the kitchen; but that must be done the last thing, for if knives were missed there would be a great search for them. What is the next thing?" "I should like a coil of thirty or forty yards of fine rope, and some string. They are always useful things to have." "That is so," the convict assented. "Then I shall want some thread and needles." "There is no difficulty about that; I can buy them for you at the gate. I don't know what excuse to make to get you the rope, but I will think of something." "I don't think there is anything else, except that I should like these twenty roubles changed into kopecks." The man nodded. "When will you try?" "To-morrow. It is dark now by the time we leave off work; it will be easy to slip away then. Luka is going with me." "That is good," Mikail said, "he will be very useful; he is a good little fellow, and will be faithful to you. You had best keep steadily west, and give yourself up at Irkutsk. It is a rough road working round by the north of Lake Baikal; but you had better take that way, it is safer than by the south. But no doubt if you are careful you might go that way too. Then the summer after, if you can get away again, you can give up at Tomsk. Once fairly away from here there is no fear of your being overtaken; they never take the trouble to hunt the woods far, they know it is of no use. Remember, as long as you don't go too far from the road, you will light upon cottages and little farm-houses where you can get something to eat; but if you go too far into the woods you may starve. There will be no berries except strawberries yet, and strawberries are not much use to keep life together when you are travelling." "Oh, by the by, there is one more thing I want you to get for me if possible, and that is fish-hooks and line." "That is difficult," Mikail said; "however, a rouble or two will go a long way. But you must put off your start for another two or three days. The rope and the hooks will need time to get." It was, indeed, the fourth evening before Mikail told Godfrey that he had got everything except the knives. "I will manage to get these in the morning," he said, "when I go into the kitchen and see about breakfast. If I were you, I would put on those two spare shirts over the one you wear, and take your three spare pairs of stockings. Of course you will wind the rope round your waist. I suppose you will buy bread from the others, there are always plenty ready to sell; you had better take enough for two or three days. Cut it in slices, put them inside your upper shirt with the other things you take, your belt will keep them safe. Don't try to slip away unless you see a really good opportunity; it is no use being shot at. Besides, with those irons on your legs, they would soon overtake you. Better put it off for another time than to run any risk." Godfrey at once informed Luka that they were to try to escape on the following evening, told him to put on his spare shirts at night, gave him the matches, and told him to stow away in the morning as much bread as he could carry. The young Tartar made no reply beyond a pleasant nod; his confidence in his companion was unbounded. The next morning, while eating their breakfasts by the dim light of a candle, Mikail passed close to Godfrey and slipped two long knives into his hand; these he hid instantly inside his shirt. "I have got the bread," Mikail said; "it was better for me to buy it than you. I have put it under your bag." As it was quite dark in the corner of the room Godfrey had no difficulty in cutting up the hunks of bread, and concealing them without observation. Mikail strolled up while he was so engaged. Godfrey had already given him money for the various purchases, and he now pressed a hundred-rouble note into his hand, and said: "Now, Mikail, you must take this from me; it is not a present to you, but to your brave wife. When you get out you will want to do your share towards making the house she has got for you comfortable. Till you get your free ticket you will still be working in the mines like the others; and though you will get the same pay as free labourers then, it will be some time before you can lay much by. When your term is over you will want to take up a piece of land and farm, and you must have money for this until your crops grow." "I will not take it," the man said huskily; "it is a hundred roubles. I would not rob you; you will want every kopeck you have. The money would be a curse to me." "I have five hundred still left, Mikail, which will be ample for me. You will grieve me if you refuse to take it. It will be pleasant to me, whether I am taken again or whether I escape, to think that I have made one home happier for my stay here, and that you and your brave wife, in your comfortable home, think sometimes of the young fellow you were kind to." "If you wish it I will take it," Mikail said. "Feodora and I will pray before the _ikon_ to the saints morning and night to protect you wherever you may be." "Pray for me as Godfrey Bullen, Mikail; that is my real name. I am English, and it is to England I shall make my way." "Godfrey Bullen," the man repeated four or five times over. "I shall not forget it. Feodora and I will teach it to our children if the good God should send us any." "I should like to let you know if I get safely home," Godfrey said; "how can I write to you?" "I can receive letters when I am out of prison," Mikail said. "You know my name, Mikail Stomoff; put Karoff, that is the name of the village my wife lives at--Karoff, near Kara. If the letter does not come until my term is over, and I have left, I will leave word there where it can be forwarded to me." "I hope that you will get it long before that, Mikail. The journey is too long to do in one summer. I shall winter somewhere in the north, and I hope to be in England by the following autumn; therefore, if I have got safely away, you may look for a letter before the Christmas after next. If it does not come by that time, you will know that I have failed in my first attempt, and then you will, I hope, get one a year later. I shall, of course, be careful what I say; in case it should be opened and read, there will be nothing in it about your knowing that I intended to escape." "We shall look for it, Godfrey Bullen, we shall look for it always, and pray the good God to send it to us." The next morning when Godfrey rose he wrung Mikail's hand warmly. "God bless you," the starosta said with tears in his eyes. "I shall not come near you again; they would see that something was strange with me, and when you were missing, would guess that I knew you were going. May all the saints preserve you." Before they formed up to march to their work, Godfrey shook hands with his friend Osip. "I am going to try on our way back to-night," he said. "Good-bye, and good luck to you," Osip replied. "I would go with you if I was in for life; but I have lost two years already by running away, and I dare not try again." During the day Godfrey observed very carefully the spot where he had hidden the tools, so that he might be able to find it in the dark, piling three small stones one on the top of the other by the roadside at the point nearest to it. When work was over, he managed to fall in with Luka at the rear of the line. A Cossack marched alongside of him. "Five roubles," Godfrey whispered, "if you will let us drop behind." Five roubles was a large sum to the soldier. The life of the guards was really harder than that of the prisoners, except that they did no work, for they had to mount guard at night when the convicts slept, and their rations were much more scanty than those given to the working convicts, and they were accustomed to eke out their scanty pay by taking small bribes for winking at various infractions of the prison rules. The Cossack at once held out his hand. Godfrey slipped five rouble notes into it. They kept on till they reached a wood, where beneath the shadow of the trees it was already perfectly dark. The Cossack had stepped forward two or three paces and was walking by the next couple. "Now, Luka," Godfrey said, and the two sprang off the path among the trees. They waited two or three minutes, then returned to the road and hurried back to the mine. They had been the last party to start for the prison, and the place was quite deserted. It took them fully half an hour to find the tools. The rings round their ankles were sufficiently loose to enable the pick to be inserted between them and the leg; thrusting it in as far as it would go under the rivet, it was comparatively easy work to break off the head with the hammer. In ten minutes both were free. Leaving the chains and tools behind them, they made their way out of the cutting and struck across the country, and in an hour entered the forest. It was too dark here to permit them to proceed farther; they lay down and slept until day began to break, and then continued their way up the rising ground until, after four hours' walking, they were well among the mountains. They found an open space by the side of a rivulet where the wild strawberries grew thickly, and here they sat down and enjoyed a hearty meal of bread and strawberries. "Now we have got to keep along on this side of that range of mountains in front of us till we get to Lake Baikal," Godfrey said. "We will push on for a day or two, and then we must find some cottages, and get rid of these clothes. What we want above all things, Luka, are guns." "Yes, or bows and arrows," Luka said. "It would be as difficult to get them as guns. They don't use them in these parts, Luka." "I can make them," Luka said; "not as good as the Ostjaks' bows, but good enough to kill with." "That is satisfactory, Luka. If I can get hold of a gun and you can make a bow and arrows we shall do very well." For four days they continued their journey through the forest, gathering much fruit, chiefly strawberries and raspberries, and eating sparingly of their bread. At night they lit fires, for the evenings were still cold, and slept soundly beside them. On the fifth morning Godfrey said, "We must turn south now, Luka, our bread won't last more than two days at the outside, and we must lay in a fresh supply. We have kept as near west as we could, and we know by the mountains that we cannot be far wrong, still it may take us some time to find a village." To Godfrey's satisfaction they arrived at the edge of the forest early in the afternoon. "We cannot be very far from Nertchinsk," he said. "We must be careful here, for there are lots of mines in the neighbourhood." After walking for another three or four hours several large buildings were seen among the trees in the valley, and these it was certain belonged to one or other of the mines. When it became dark they descended still farther, and kept down until they came upon a road. This they followed until about midnight they came upon a small village. They found, as they had hoped, bread and other provisions upon several of the window-sills, and thankfully stowing these away again struck off to the hills. "This is capital," Godfrey said, as after getting well into the forest they lighted a fire, threw themselves down beside it, and made a hearty meal. "If we could rely upon doing as well as this always I should not mind how long our journey lasted. It is glorious to be out in these woods after that close prison." The Tartar nodded. The closeness of the air in the prison never troubled him, but he was quite ready to agree to anything that Godfrey might say. "Good in summer," he said, "but not very good in winter." "No, I expect not; but we shall have to make the best of it, Luka, for it is quite certain that we shall have to spend the winter out somewhere." "We will make skin coats and keep ourselves warm," Luka said confidently. "Make a good hut." "Yes, that part of the thing seems simple enough," Godfrey agreed; "the difficulty will be in feeding ourselves. But we need not bother about that now. Well, we had better go off to sleep, Luka; we have been tramping fully eighteen hours, and I feel as tired as a dog." In a few minutes they were fast asleep, but they were on their feet again at daybreak and journeyed steadily for the next three days, always keeping near the edge of the forest. On the fourth day they saw a small farm-house lying not far from the edge of the wood. "Here is the place that we have been looking for for the last week," Godfrey said. "This is where we must manage to get clothes. The question is, how many men are there there? Not above two or three, I should say. But anyhow we must risk it." They waited until they saw lights in the cottage, and guessed that the family had all returned from their work. "Now then, Luka, come along. You must look fierce, you know, and try to frighten them a bit. But mind, if they refuse and show fight we must go away without hurting them." Luka looked up in surprise. "Why that?" he asked. "You could beat that pig Kobylin as if he were a child, why not beat them and make them give?" "Because I am not going to turn robber, Luka. I know some of the runaways do turn robbers, and murder peasants and travellers. You know some of the men in the prison boasted of what they had done, but that is not our way. We are honest men though we have been shut up in prison. I am willing to pay for what I want as long as I have money, after that we shall see about it. If these people won't sell we shall find others that will." They went quietly up to the house, lifted the latch and walked in, holding their long knives in their hands. Two men were seated at table, three women and several children were near the fire. There was a general exclamation of alarm as the two convicts entered. "Do not fear," Godfrey said loudly; "we do not wish to rob anyone. We are not bandits, we are ready to pay for what we require, but that we must have." The men were both convicts who had long since served out their time. "What do you want?" one of them asked. "We want clothes. You need not be afraid of selling them to us. If we were captured to-morrow, which we don't mean to be, we will swear to you that we will not say where we obtained them. We are ready to pay the full value. Why should you not make an honest deal instead of forcing us to take life?" "We will sell them to you," one of the men said after speaking a few words in a low tone to the other, and then rising to his feet. "Sit down," Godfrey said sternly. "We want no tricks. Tell the women to fetch in the clothes." The man, seeing that Godfrey was determined, abandoned his intention of seizing a club and making a fight for it, and told one of the women to fetch some clothes down. She returned in a minute or two with a large bundle. "Pick out two suits, Luka, one for you and one for me." Luka was making a careful choice when Godfrey said, "Don't pick out the best, Luka, I don't want Sunday clothes, but just strong serviceable suits; they will be none the worse for a patch or two. Now," he said to the men, "name a fair price for those clothes and I will pay you." The peasants had not in the slightest degree believed that the convicts were going to pay them, and their faces lighted up. They hesitated as to the price. "Come, I will give you ten roubles. I am sure that is more than they are worth to you now." "Very well," the man said, "I am contented." Godfrey placed a ten-rouble note upon the table. "Now," he said, "we want a couple of hats." Two fairly good ones were brought down. "Is there nothing else?" the man asked, ready enough to sell now that he saw that he was to be paid fair prices. "We want some meat and bread, ten pounds of each if you have got it." "We have a pig we salted down the other day," the man said. "We have no bread--we are going to bake to-morrow morning but you can have ten pounds of flour." "That will do. We want a small frying-pan, a kettle, and two tin mugs. Have you got any tea in the house?" "I have got about a pound." "We will take it all. We can't bother ourselves about sugar, Luka, we must do without that; every pound tells. We have brought plenty of tobacco with us to last some time. Have you got a gun?" he asked the man suddenly. "Yes," he said, "we have got two. The wolves are troublesome sometimes in winter. Fetch the guns, Elizabeth." The guns were brought down. One was a double-barrel of German make, the other a long single-barrel. "How much do you want for this?" he asked, taking up the former. "I don't use it much," the man said, "one will be enough for me, I will take fifty roubles." "No, no," Godfrey said. "You value your goods too high; money is not as plentiful with me as all that. I can't go higher than twenty roubles," and he laid the gun down again. "I will take thirty," the man said. After a good deal of bargaining Godfrey obtained the gun, a flask of powder, and a bag of bullets and shot for twenty-five roubles. Then he paid for the other goods he had purchased. Luka made them into a bundle and lifted them all on to his shoulder. Then saying good-bye to the peasants they again started for the forest. "We are set up now, Luka." "Yes indeed," the Tartar replied. "We could journey anywhere now; we want but two or three blankets and some furs and we could travel to Moscow." "Yes, if we had one more thing, Luka." "What is that?" "Passports." "Yes, we should want those; but I daresay we could do without them." They enjoyed their suppers greatly that night, frying some pork and then some dough-cakes in the fat, and washing it down with numerous cups of tea. "The next thing will be for you to make a bow and arrows, Luka. I did not buy the other gun for two reasons: in the first place because we could not afford it, and in the second because you said you liked a bow best." Luka nodded. "I never shot with a gun," he said. "A bow is just as good, and makes no noise." "That is true enough, Luka. Well, I shall be a good deal more comfortable when we leave those convict clothes behind us. Of course we shall be just as liable to be seized and shut up as vagabonds when we cannot produce papers as if we were in our convict suits, but there is something disgusting in being dressed up in clothing that tells every one you are a murderer or a robber, and to know there is that patch between one's shoulders." Luka was quite indifferent to any sentimental considerations. Still he admitted that it was an advantage to get rid of the convict garb. In the morning they put on the peasants' clothes. As Godfrey was about the same size as the man whose garments he had got, the things fitted him fairly. Luka's were a good deal too large for him, but as the Russian peasants' clothes always fit them loosely, this mattered little. The other things were divided into two bundles of equal weight. Luka would willingly have carried the whole, pointing out that Godfrey had the gun and ammunition, but the latter said: "If you take the frying-pan and kettle and the two tin mugs that will make matters even, Luka." The two convict suits were left at the foot of the tree where they had slept. Godfrey first thought of throwing them on to the fire, but changed his mind, saying: "Some poor beggar whose clothes are worn out may come upon them, and be glad of them, some time during the summer; we may just as well let them lie here. Now, Luka, we must walk in good earnest. We ought to be able to make five-and-thirty miles a day over a tolerably level country, and at that rate we shall be a long way off before winter." The forests abounded with squirrels. Although Luka assured him that they were excellent eating, Godfrey could not bring himself to shoot at the pretty creatures. "It would be a waste of powder and shot, Luka," he said. "We have plenty of meat to go on with at present, when it is gone it will be time enough to begin to think of shooting game; besides, there are numbers of mines about this country, and the sound of a gun might bring out the Cossacks." CHAPTER XI. AFLOAT. It was a pleasant journey through the forest, with its thick and varied foliage, that afforded a shade from the sun's rays, with patches of open ground here and there bright with flowers. Godfrey had enjoyed it at first, but he enjoyed it still more after he had got rid of the convict badge. He had now no fear of meeting anyone in the woods except charcoal-burners or woodmen, or escaped convicts like themselves. By such they would not be suspected of being aught but what they seemed--two peasants; unless indeed, a hat should fall off. The first night after leaving the prison Godfrey had done his best to obliterate the convict brand, by singeing it off as he had done before. Each day the air grew warmer, and they could pick as they walked any quantity of raspberries and whortleberries. Luka always filled the kettle at each streamlet they came to, as they could never tell how long they would be before they arrived at another, and the supply rendered them independent, and enabled them to camp whenever they took a fancy to a spot. They walked steadily from sunrise to sunset, and as they went at a good pace Godfrey was sure that they were doing fully the thirty-five miles a day he had calculated on. Although Sundays had not been observed at the prison, and the work went on those days as on others, Godfrey had not lost count, and knew that it was on a Monday evening that they had broken out, and each Sunday was used as a day of rest. "We are travelling at a good pace, Luka," he said, "and thirty-five miles a day six days a week is quite enough, so on Sundays we will always choose a good camping ground by a stream, wash our clothes, and rest." They had little trouble about provisions. At lonely houses they could always obtain them, and there they were received very hospitably, the peasants often refusing absolutely to accept money, or at any rate giving freely of all the articles they themselves raised, and taking pay only for tea and sugar, which they themselves had to purchase. When no such places could be met with they went down to villages at night, and never failed to find bread and cakes on the window-sills, though it was not often that meat was there, for the peasants themselves obtained it but seldom. Godfrey had no fear of his money running short for a long time. The six hundred roubles with which he arrived at Kara had been increased by his earnings during the nine months he had been there. He had spent but a few kopecks a week for tea and tobacco, and his pay while he had been a clerk was a good deal larger than while he had been working in the mine. Luka, too, had saved every kopeck he had received from the day when Godfrey told him that he would take him with him when he ran away. He had even given up smoking, and was with difficulty persuaded by Godfrey to take some tobacco occasionally from him. Between them in the nine months they had laid by nearly a hundred roubles, and had, therefore, after deducting the money given by Godfrey to Mikail and that paid for the gun and clothes, over five hundred roubles for their journey. They were glad, indeed, when at last they saw the broad sheet of Lake Baikal. They had for some time been bearing to the north of west, and struck the lake some twenty miles from its head. There were a good many small settlements round the lake, a good deal of fishing being carried on upon it, although the work was dangerous, for terrible storms frequently swept down from the northern mountains and sent the boats flying into port. The lake is one of the deepest in the world, soundings in many places being over five thousand feet. Many rivers run into the lake, the only outflow being by the Angara. Baikal is peculiar as being the only fresh-water lake in the world where seals are found, about two thousand being killed annually. The shores are in most places extremely steep, precipices rising a thousand feet sheer up from the edge of the water, with soundings of a hundred and fifty fathoms a few yards from their feet. Fish abound in the lake, and sturgeon of large size are captured there. Godfrey knew that there were guard-houses with Cossacks on the road between the northern point of water and the steep mountains that rise almost directly from it. He had specially studied the geography of this region, and knew that after passing round the head of the lake there was a track across the hills by which they would, after travelling a hundred and fifty miles, strike the main road from Irkutsk to Yakutsk, near the town of Kirensk, on the river Lena. From Kirensk it would be but little more than a hundred miles to the nearest point on the Angara, which is one of the principal branches of the Yenesei. To gain this river would be a great point. The Lena, which was even nearer to the head of Lake Baikal, also flowed into the Arctic Sea; but its course was almost due north, and it would be absolutely hopeless to endeavour to traverse the whole of the north coast of Siberia. The Angara and the Yenesei, on the other hand, flowed north-west, and fell into the Arctic Sea near the western boundary of Siberia, and when they reached that point they would be but a short distance from Russia. It seemed to him that the only chance was by keeping by a river. In the great ranges of mountains in the north of Siberia there would be no means of obtaining food, and to cross such a district would be certain death. By the rivers, on the other hand, there would at least be no fear of losing their way. The journey could be shortened by using a canoe if they could obtain one, and if not, a raft. They would often find little native villages or huts by the banks, and would be able to obtain fish from them. Besides, they could themselves catch fish, and might possibly even winter in some native village. For all these reasons he had determined on making for the Angara. Buying a stock of dried fish at a little fishing village on the lake they walked to within a mile of its head, there they slept for the night, and started an hour before daybreak, passed the Cossack guard-house unseen just as the daylight was stealing over the sky, and then went along merrily. The road was not much used, the great stream of traffic passing across Lake Baikal, but was in fair condition, and they made good progress along it. Long before that, Luka had, after several attempts, made a bow to his satisfaction. It was formed of three or four strips of tough wood firmly bound together with waxed twine, they having procured the string and the wax at a farmhouse on the way. There was one advantage in taking this unfrequented route. The road between Irkutsk and Tomsk was, as Godfrey had learned on his outward journey, frequented by bands of brigands who had no hesitation in killing as well as plundering wayfarers. Here they were only likely to fall in with convicts who had escaped from Irkutsk or from convoys along the road, and were for the most part perfectly harmless, seeking only to spend a summer holiday in freedom, and knowing that when winter came on they would have to surrender themselves. Of such men Godfrey had no fear, his gun and his companion's bow and arrows rendered them too formidable to be meddled with, and until they came down upon the main road there was no chance of their meeting police officers or Cossacks. No villages were passed on the journey, and Godfrey, therefore, had no longer any hesitation in shooting the squirrels that frisked about among the trees. He found them, as Luka had said, excellent eating, although it required three or four of them to furnish anything like a meal. He soon, however, gave over shooting, for he found that Luka was at least as certain with his bow as he was with the gun, with the advantage that the blunt arrow did not spoil the skins. These, as Luka told him, were valuable, and they would be able to exchange them for food, the Siberian squirrel furnishing a highly-prized fur. Each day Luka brought down at least a dozen of these little creatures, and these, with their dried fish and cakes made of flour, afforded them excellent food on their way. After four days' walking across a lofty plateau they descended into a cultivated valley, and before them rose the cupolas of Kirensk, while along the valley flowed the Lena, as yet but a small river, although it would become a mighty flood before it reached the sea, nearly four thousand miles away. It would have to be crossed at Kirensk, and they sat down and held a long council as to how they had best get through the town. They agreed that it must be done at night, for in the daytime they certainly would have to produce passports. "There will not be much chance of meeting a Cossack or a policeman at one or two o'clock in the morning, Luka, and if there were any about we ought to be able to get past them in the dark." "If one stops us I can settle him," Luka said, tapping his knife. "No, no, Luka, we won't have any bloodshed if we can help it, though I do not mean to be taken. If a fellow should stop us and ask any questions, and try to arrest us, I will knock him down, and then we will make a bolt for it. There is no moon now, and it will be dark as pitch, so that if we kick out his lantern he would be unable to follow us. If he does, you let fly one of your blunted arrows at him. That will hit him quite hard enough, though it won't do him any serious damage. Of course, if there are several of them we must fight in earnest, but it is very unlikely we shall meet with even two men together at that time of night." Accordingly they went in among some trees and lay down, and did not move until they heard the church bells of the distant town strike twelve. Then they resumed their journey, keeping with difficulty along the road. Once in the valley it became broader and better kept. At last they approached the bridge. Godfrey had had some fear that there might be a sentry posted here, and was pleased to find it entirely deserted. "We will take off our shoes here, Luka, tie them with a piece of string, and hang them round our necks. We shall go noiselessly through the town then, while if we go clattering along in those heavy shoes, every policeman there may be in the streets will be on the look-out to see who we are." They passed, however, through the town without meeting either policeman or soldier. The streets were absolutely deserted, and the whole population seemed to be asleep. Once through the town they put on their shoes again, followed the road for a short distance, and then lay down under some trees to wait for daylight. Now that they were in the country they had no fear of being asked for passports, and it was not until the sun was well up that they continued their journey. Four miles farther they came upon a village, and went boldly into a small shop and purchased flour, tea, and such articles as they required. Just as they came out the village policeman came along. "Where do you come from?" he asked. "I don't ask you where you come from," Godfrey replied. "We are quiet men and hunters. We pay for what we get, and harm no one who does not interfere with us. See, we have skins for sale if there is anyone in the village who will buy them." "The man at the spirit-shop at the end of the village will buy them," the policeman said; "he gives a rouble a dozen for them." "Thank you," and with a Russian salutation they walked on. "Of course he suspects what we are," Godfrey said to his companion; "but there was no fear of his being too inquisitive. The authorities do not really care to arrest the wanderers during the summer months, as they know they will get them all when winter comes on; besides, in these villages all the people sympathize with us, and as we are armed, and not likely to be taken without a fight, it is not probable that one man would care to venture his life in such a matter." On arrival at the spirit-shop they went in. "The policeman tells us you buy skins at a rouble for a dozen. We have ten dozen." "Are they good and uninjured?" the man asked. "They are. There is not a hole in any of them." The man looked them through carefully. "I will buy them," he said. "Do you want money, or will you take some of it in vodka?" "We want money. We do not drink in summer when we are hunting." The man handed over ten rouble notes, and they passed out. A minute later the policeman strolled in. "Wanderers?" he said with a wink. The vodka seller shrugged his shoulders. "I did not ask them," he said. "They came to me with a good recommendation, for they told me that you had sent them here. So after that it was not for me to question them." "I told them you bought skins," the policeman said. "They seemed well-spoken fellows. The one with the bow was a Tartar or an Ostjak, I should say; he may have been a Yakute, but I don't think so. However, it matters little to me. If there was anything wrong they ought to have questioned them at Kirensk; they have got soldiers there. Why should I interfere with civil people, especially when one has a gun and the other arrows?" "That was just my opinion," the other said. "Well, here is a glass of vodka, and I will take one with you. They are good skins, all shot with a blunt arrow." Godfrey and his companion now took matters easily. There was no motive for hurrying, and they devoted themselves seriously to the chase. "We must have skins for the winter," Luka said. "I can dress and sew them. The squirrels are plentiful here, and if we set snares we may catch some foxes. We shall want some to make a complete suit with caps for each of us, and skins to form bags for sleeping in; but these last we can buy on the way. The hunters in summer bring vast quantities of skins down to the rivers to be taken up to Krasnoiarsk by steamer, and you can get elk skins for a rouble or two, which will do for sleeping bags, but they are too thick for clothing unless they are very well prepared. At any rate we will get as many squirrel skins as we can, both for clothes, and to exchange for commoner skins and high boots." It was three weeks after they had left Kirensk before they struck the Angara, near Karanchinskoe. They had traversed a distance, as the crow flies, of some eight hundred miles since leaving Kara, but by the route they had travelled it was at least half as far again, and they had been little over ten weeks on the journey. Luka had assured Godfrey that they would have no difficulty in obtaining a boat. "Everywhere there are fishing people on the rivers," he said. "There are Tunguses--they are all over Siberia. There are the Ostjaks on all the rivers. There are my own people, but they are more to the south, near Minusinsk, and from there to Kasan, and seldom come far north. In summer everyone fishes or hunts. I could make you a boat with two or three skins of bullocks or horses or elk, it only needs these and a framework of wood; but we can buy one for three or four roubles a good one. We want one strong and large and light, for the river is terribly swift. There are places where it runs nearly as fast as a horse can gallop." "Certainly we will get a good-sized one, Luka. If the river runs so swiftly we shall have no paddling to do, and therefore it will not matter at all about her being fast; besides, we shall want to carry a good load. We will not land oftener than we can help, and can sleep on board, and it will be much more comfortable to have a boat that one can move about in without being afraid of capsizing her. Whatever it costs, let us get a good boat." "We will get one," Luka said confidently. "We shall find Ostjaks' huts all along the banks, and at any of these, if they have not a boat that will suit us, they will make us one in two or three days." Avoiding the town, and passing through the villages at night, they kept along down the river bank for four days. The river was as wide as the Thames at Greenwich, with a very rapid current. They saw in some of the quiet reaches fishing-boats at work, some with nets, others with lines, and at night saw them spearing salmon and sturgeon by torch-light. Across the river they made out several of the yourts or summer tents of the Ostjaks, but it was not until the fourth day that they came upon a group of seven or eight of these tents on the river bank. The men were all away fishing, but the women came out to look at the strangers. As Luka spoke their dialect he had no difficulty in opening the conversation with them. He told them that he and his companion wanted to go down the river to Yeneseisk, and wished to buy a boat, a good one. The women said that some of the men would be in that evening, and that the matter could be arranged. "They will be glad to sell us a boat," Luka said to Godfrey. "They are very poor the Ostjaks; they have nothing but their tents, their boats, and their clothes. They live on the fish they catch, but fish are so plentiful they can scarce get anything for them, so they are very glad when they can sell anything for money." The Ostjak men arrived just before it became dark. They wore high flat-topped fur caps, a dress something like a long loose blouse, and trousers of fine leather tucked into boots that came up to the knee. Most of them had bows and arrows in addition to their fishing gear. Godfrey felt no uneasiness among these men as he would have done among the Buriats in the east, for they were now at a distance from any convict settlements, and these people would know nothing about the rewards offered to the natives in the neighbourhood of the mines for the arrest of prisoners. A present of some tobacco, of which Godfrey had laid in a large stock, put the Ostjaks into an excellent temper. Fish were broiling over the fire when they returned, and the two travellers joined them at their meal. After this was over and pipes lighted the subject of the boat was discussed. The Ostjaks were perfectly ready to trade. They said they would sell any of their six boats for three roubles, and that if they did not think any of these large enough they would build them a larger one in three days for six roubles. Godfrey had exchanged twenty roubles for kopecks at the first village they had passed after reaching the river, as he knew that notes would be of no use among the native tribes, and without bargaining he accepted the offer they made. After passing the night stretched by the fire they went down with the men in the morning to inspect the boats. They were larger than he had expected to find them, as the fishing population often shift their quarters by the river and travel in boats, taking their family, tent, and implements with them. "What do you think, Luka?" "They are large enough," Luka said, "but they are not in very good condition. I should say that farthest one would do very well; but let us have a look at the state of the skins." The boat was hauled ashore and carefully examined. Three or four of the skins were found to be old and rotten; the rest had evidently been renewed from time to time. "We will take this if you will put in four good skins," Luka said to the owner. "It will be six roubles if we put in fresh skins," the Ostjak said. "We will put in good skins and grease all the boat, and then it will be the same as new. The other skins were all new last year." "No," Luka said. "You said you would build a whole boat larger than this for six roubles." The men talked together. "We will do it for five roubles," they said at last, and Luka at once agreed to the terms. There was no time lost. The Ostjaks ordered the women to set about it at once, and leaving the matter in their hands went off to their fishing. Godfrey asked them to take him with them, leaving Luka to see to the repairs of the boat. The fishing implements were of the roughest kind. The hooks were formed of fish bones, bound together by fine gut; the lines were twisted strips of skin, strong gut attaching the hook to these lines; the bait was small pieces of fat, varied by strips of fish with the skin on them. Clumsy as the appliances were, jack, tench, and other fish were caught in considerable numbers, and among them two or three good-sized salmon. The nets were of coarse mesh, made of hemp, which grows wild in many parts of Siberia. They were some ten feet in depth and some twenty yards long. The upper ends were supported by floats made of bladders, and the whole anchored across the stream by ropes at the extremities, fastened to heavy stones. In these nets a considerable quantity of fish were taken. The fishing was over early, for there had been a good supply taken on the previous day, and as at this time of year they would not keep, it was useless obtaining more. When they reached shore the common sorts of fish were thrown to the dogs; a dozen of the best picked out, and with these two of the men started at once for the nearest village, where they would be sold for a few kopecks; the rest were handed over to the women, while the men proceeded to throw themselves down by the fire and smoke. Godfrey went to see how the women were getting on with the boat. They had already made a great deal of progress. The skins, which had been chosen by Luka from a pile in the hut, were already prepared by having fat rubbed into them. The hair was left on them, as that would come inside. The bad skins had been taken off, the others cut to fit, and now only required sewing into their places. As a matter of course Godfrey and Luka took their meals with the Ostjaks and greatly enjoyed the change of diet. They gladdened the hearts of their hosts by producing a packet of tea, of which a handful was poured into a pot of water boiling over the fire. The liquor was drunk with delight by the Ostjak men and women, but Godfrey could not touch it, for some of the fish had already been boiled in the water, which the Ostjaks had not thought it necessary to change. At night he went out again with them in the boats for a short time to see them spear salmon. A man holding a large torch made of strips of resinous wood stood in the bow of the boat, and on either side of him stood an Ostjak holding a long barbed spear. In a short time there were swirls on the surface of the river. These increased till the water round the boat seemed to boil. The Ostjaks were soon at work, and in half an hour twenty fine salmon were lying in the bottom of the boat, and then having caught as much as there was any chance of selling the natives they returned to their yourts. The next morning the work on the boat was resumed, and as all the women assisted it was finished in a very short time. Then melted fat was poured into the seams, and the whole boat vigorously rubbed with the same. By twelve o'clock it was finished. Then there was a little fresh bargaining for two salmon spears, a supply of torches, half a dozen common fox skins, and three large hides for stretching over the boat at night. Some of the lines and fish-hooks were also bought, and a few fish for present consumption, then Godfrey and Luka took their places in the boat, and bidding farewell to the Ostjaks paddled out into stream. The boat was some twenty feet long and six feet wide in the centre. It was almost flat-bottomed, and drew but two or three inches of water. A flat stone had been placed on a layer of clay in the bottom, and they had taken with them a bundle of firewood. Godfrey was in the highest spirits. It was true that the real dangers of the journey had not yet begun, but so far everything had gone very much better than he had anticipated. He had not thought there would be any chance of recapture, for he knew that unless they came into the towns the Russians took no trouble about the escaped convicts. All the convicts with whom he had spoken had agreed that there was little trouble in sustaining life in the forests during summer, for that even if they could not obtain food from the peasants they had only to carry off a sheep at night from the folds. "That is why the peasants are so ready to give," one said. "I don't say that they are not sorry for us, but the real reason is they know that if they did not give we should take, and instead of being harmless wanderers, as they call us, we should be driven to become bandits." Still Godfrey had anticipated much greater difficulties than they had met with; in fact up to the present time it had been simply a delightful tramp through the woods. The next part of the journey would, he expected, be no less pleasant. They had a large and comfortable boat, well adapted for the navigation of the river. There would be no difficulty as to food, for fish could be obtained in any quantities, and grain was, he had heard from some of the Tartar prisoners who knew that portion of the Yenesei, abundant and extraordinarily cheap. He seated himself in the stern of the boat with a paddle. There was no occasion to steer, for it mattered in no way whether the boat drove down the river bow or stern first; but at present it was an amusement to keep her straight with an occasional stroke with the paddle. Luka sat on the floorboards at the bottom of the boat, and set himself to work to manufacture from the squirrels' skins two fur caps of the same pattern as those worn by the Ostjaks. Godfrey had asked him to do so in order that they might be taken for members of that tribe by anyone looking at them from the villages on the banks. As to the dress it did not signify, as many of the more settled Ostjaks had adopted the Russian costume. Godfrey intended to fish as they drifted along, but they had at present at least as much fish on board as they could consume while it was good. Luka, as he worked, sang a lugubrious native ditty, while with his knife he trimmed the skins into shape. Having done this he proceeded to sew them together with great skill. "Why, you are quite a tailor, Luka," Godfrey remarked. "Every one sews with us," Luka replied. "The women do most, but in winter the boys help, and sometimes the men, to make rugs and robes of the skins of the beasts we have taken in the summer. What do you say, shall I leave these tails hanging down all round, except just in front? They often wear them so in winter." "But it is not winter now, Luka." "No, it is not winter; but you see the Ostjaks and most of the Russians wear their hair long, quite down to the neck. Our hair is growing, but at present it will only just lie down flat. If I leave on these black tails round the caps, at a little distance it will look like hair. Then, if you like, I can make two summer caps to put on when we land to buy anything." "Very well, Luka, I think the idea is a good one. The people do wear their hair long, and our close crops might excite attention. This is better than gold-digging at Kara, isn't it?" Luka nodded. "No good for man always to work," he said. "Good to lie quiet sometimes." "I don't know that I care about lying quiet generally, Luka, but it is pleasant to do so in a boat. I am keeping a look-out for wild-fowl, it would make a pleasant change to fish diet." "Not so far south as this. The Yenesei swarms with them in winter, but in summer they go north. Just before the frost begins you can shoot as many as you like." "That will be something to look forward to. When does the weather begin to get cold and dry?" "Where I lived the nights began to get cold at the end of September, but we shall be far down the Yenesei by that time, and it will begin early in the month." "We shall be a long way down," Godfrey said, "if we keep on at this pace. We must be going past the banks eight or nine versts an hour." "That is nothing; it will be more than twice that some times. The Angara between the lake and Irkutsk runs fifteen versts. When I was taken east we saw barges, each towed up-stream by twenty horses, and it took them sometimes four days, sometimes six, to make forty-five versts." As they went along they passed several fishing-boats, but as they were keeping in the middle of the stream, while the boats lay in the slacker water near the shore, there was no conversation. Twice the Ostjaks shouted to know where they were going, but Luka only replied by pointing down the stream. The journey was singularly uneventful. At night they lit a torch for a short time, and generally speared sufficient fish for the next day, but if not, they cut a strip or two from the back of one they had caught, baited three or four hooks and dropped them overboard, and never failed in a short time to fill up their larder. Sometimes they grilled the fish over the fire, sometimes fried them, sometimes cut them up in pieces that would go into the kettle, and boiled them. Occasionally, when evening approached, they paddled to the shore near a village, and Luka, whose Tartar face was in keeping with his dress, went boldly in and purchased tobacco, tea, and flour, and a large block of salt, occasionally bringing off a joint of meat, for which the price was only four kopecks, or about a penny a pound; five kopecks being worth about three halfpence according to the rate of exchange. A hundred kopecks go to the rouble; the silver rouble being worth from two and tenpence to three shillings and twopence, the paper rouble about two shillings. At first Godfrey had steered half the night and Luka the other half, but after the second night they gave this up as a waste of labour, as the boat generally drifted along near the middle of the river, and even had it floated in-shore no harm would have been done. The fox skins made them a soft bed, and they spread a couple of the large skins over the boat and were perfectly warm and comfortable. Godfrey thought that on an average they did a hundred and twenty miles a day. On the eighth day the river, which had been widening gradually, flowed into another and greater stream, the Yenesei. Hitherto they had been travelling almost due west, but the Yenesei ran north. As they floated down they had had much conversation as to their plans. It was now nearly the end of August, and it would not be long before winter was upon them. Another month and the Yenesei would be frozen, and they would be obliged to winter. The question was where should they do so? [Illustration: SPEARING FISH BY TORCH-LIGHT.] Now they were on the Yenesei Luka was on his native river, though his home was fully a thousand miles higher up. Godfrey had at first proposed that he should disembark here and make his way up the banks home, but the offer filled Luka with indignation. "What are you going to do without me?" he asked. "You can talk a little Tartar, quite enough to get on among my people, but how could you get on with the Ostjaks? Besides, even if I were to leave you, and I would rather die than do that, I could not go to my home, for in my native village I should be at once arrested and sent back to the mines. I might live among other Tartars, but what good would that be? They would be strangers to me. Why should I leave you, who have been more than a brother to me, to go among strangers? No, wherever you go I shall go with you, and when you get to your own land I shall be your servant. You can beat me if you like, but I will not leave you. Did you not, for my sake, strike down the man in the prison? Did you not take me with you, and have you not brought me hither? What could I have done alone? If you are tired of me shoot me, but as long as I live I will not leave you." Godfrey hastened to assure Luka that he had only spoken for his good, that he was well aware that without him he should have little chance of getting through the winter, and that nothing therefore was farther from his thoughts than to separate himself from him if he was willing to remain. It was some time before Luka was pacified, but when he at last saw that Godfrey had no intention whatever of leaving him behind if he were willing to go with him, he recovered his spirits and entered into the discussion as to where they had better winter. He had never been below the town of Yeneseisk, but he knew that the Ostjaks were to be found fully a thousand miles below that town, especially on the left bank of the river, but below that, and all along the right bank, the Tunguses and Yuraks were the principal tribes. It was finally agreed that they should keep on for at least eight hundred miles beyond Yeneseisk, and then haul up their boat and camp at some Ostjak village, and there remain through the winter. "We will get at Yeneseisk whatever you think the Ostjak will prize most--knives and beads for the women, and some cheap trinkets and looking-glasses. Some small hatchets, too, would probably be valued." "Yes," Luka said, "Ostjaks have told me that their kindred far down the river were more like the people to the extreme north by the sea. They are pagans there, and not like us to the south. They have reindeer which draw their sledges. They are very poor and know nothing. From them we can get furs, but we can buy goat-skins and sheep-skins at Yeneseisk." "We shall have to depend upon them for food," Godfrey said. "Why, we can get food for ourselves," Luka said somewhat indignantly. "When the cold begins, before the river freezes, we shall get great quantities of fish. They will freeze hard, and last till spring. Then, too, the river will be covered with birds. We shall shoot as many as we can of these, and freeze them too. Flour we must take with us, but flour is very cheap at Yeneseisk. Corn will not grow there, but they bring it down in great boats from the upper river." "But how do they get the boats back, Luka?" "They do not get them back; they break them up for firewood. Firewood is dear at Yeneseisk, and they get much more for the barges for fires than it cost to build them in the forests higher up." "Then how do they do for fires among the Ostjaks?" "I have heard they do not have wood fires; they kill seals. There are numbers of them farther down the river, and from their fat they make oil for lamps and burn these. We shall be in no hurry as we go down. We will float near the banks, and may kill some seals. What are you thinking of?" for Godfrey was looking rather serious. "I was thinking, Luka, that these things we are thinking of buying, the things to trade with the Ostjaks, you know, and the flour, and tea, and goat-skins, and so on, will take a good deal of money. We don't spend much now, but when we get into Russia we shall want money. We can't beg our way right across the country." "No;" Luka said, "but we shall not be idle all the winter." "How do you mean we shall not be idle, Luka?" "We must hunt; that is what the Ostjaks and Tunguses do. We must get skins of beaver, sable, ermine, and black foxes, and we must sell them at Turukhansk. There are Russian traders there. They do not live there in the winter, but come down in the spring to buy the skins that have been taken in the winter." "That sounds more cheerful," Godfrey said. "You had better get another flask of powder, and some more bullets and shot for me, Luka, and some better arrow-heads for yourself." "Yes, we shall want them more than anything. We can do without flour, but we cannot do without weapons." "Well, you must do the buying, Luka. They will take you for an Ostjak, from some village up the river, who has come in to lay in his stock of provisions for the winter. It is of no use my trying to pass here as a native, though in Russia I might be taken as a Russian." CHAPTER XII. WINTER. A few hours after entering the Yenesei they saw on the right bank of the river, which was now of great width, the domes of the town. They ran in to the shore a mile above it. "I shall not land, Luka," Godfrey said. "I don't want to be questioned. I shall put off, and drop our anchor a quarter of a mile out and fish. You must make two or three journeys if necessary." "The things will not be heavy, Godfrey, the flour is the only thing that will weigh much. I will get someone to help me down with that." They had already gone over and over again the list of purchases to be made. "I shall drop down a little nearer the town, Luka, when I think it is about time for you to be coming back, so you won't have so far to carry the things. Don't be more than three hours whether you have got anything or not, or I shall begin to feel anxious about you." Luka nodded, and went off. Godfrey paddled the boat out a short distance, let down the stone, and began to fish. He was under no real uneasiness as to the young Tartar, there was nothing about him to distinguish him from other natives, and as these would be about this time arriving in considerable numbers at Yeneseisk to sell the skins of the animals they had taken in the chase during the summer, and to lay in stores for the winter, it was unlikely in the extreme that anyone would even question him. Such indeed was the case. There were numbers of natives in the stores of the Russian traders, and he made his purchases without any question whatever being asked. He bought rather more hatchets, knives, and trinkets than they had agreed upon, and two sacks of flour, although he deemed the latter to be a luxury that they could very well dispense with altogether. Godfrey was just thinking of taking up his anchor and going down towards the town when he saw him returning, accompanied by two natives carrying the sacks. He pulled up his anchor and paddled to shore. "Have you got everything, Luka?" he asked. "Everything--powder, shot, and balls; tea, salt; ten knives, and eight axes; beads, four goat-skins, looking-glasses, tobacco, and flour;" and one by one he handed the articles as he named them into the boat. "How much flour is there, Luka?" "Two hundred pounds. I have got more trinkets than we said. They were very cheap. They look like gold and silver, and only cost ten kopecks apiece. I have also brought two bottles of vodka." "That is bad, Luka." "The two only cost a rouble," Luka said calmly; "they may be very useful to us; and I bought more tea and tobacco than we said." The men who had carried the flour had received a few kopecks for their trouble, and had gone off as soon as they had laid down their burdens. Directly the things were handed into the boat, Luka stepped in and they pushed off into the stream. "I have bought plenty of arrow-heads, and two steel spear heads and shafts." "I wondered what those short poles were." "They are of tough wood and the right length, ten feet long. They are good for seal-hunting and for bears." "Well, I think you have done capitally, Luka. You have made the money go a long way. I suppose you have spent the hundred roubles you took with you?" "I have four left. I think I have done very well. We have everything we shall want through the winter." "Well, we are fairly off for the north now," Godfrey said, in high spirits that everything was settled, and that for eight months at least there would not be the slightest risk of meeting with a Russian policeman or soldier. "Hurrah for the north, Luka, and for shooting and adventures!" Luka smiled. It was rarely he laughed, but he was always ready to smile when Godfrey addressed him. "The air feels brisk and cold to-day. We shall soon have winter upon us." "Yes; look there!" Luka said, pointing into the air ahead of them. "What is it? It looks like a long black streak." "Geese," Luka said. "It is a flight of wild geese from the north." As it approached Godfrey saw that the Tartar was right. A solitary bird led the way, two followed him closely, then came rank after rank widening out till it was a broad band of fully fifty abreast. Line after line they followed in almost military array, and extending in length fully a quarter of a mile. "Why, there must be thirty or forty thousand of them there," he exclaimed in amazement. "You will see bigger flocks than that," Luka said. "Why, all the river, from Minusinsk down to Turukhansk, more than 2000 miles, is well-nigh covered with birds. We shall have no lack of meat presently." During the day many flights similar to those first seen passed overhead, some larger, some containing only a score or two birds. The next day the numbers were still larger, whole battalions coming along almost incessantly. These were by no means confined to geese. There were gulls and swans, flocks of small birds of many kinds, flights of wild ducks--the latter, for the most part, flying much lower than the geese, which kept far overhead. "We had better land to-night," Luka said. "They fly close after dark, and the flocks will settle on the banks. We will shoot them as they come overhead. You may not see them well, but they are so thick that you can hardly miss them." Accordingly, when evening came on they landed, fastened the boat, took a couple of sheep-skins each to throw over their shoulders (for even in these two days the cold had sensibly increased), and lay down to await the coming of the birds. All day long the air had been full of their cries, but it had grown quieter now, though occasionally they heard a sharp cry of the leader of a flock, followed by a responsive note from the birds following him. From time to time Godfrey could hear the whirring sound of a multitude of wings as the flocks passed overhead. These became louder as the time went on, and he knew that they were flying lower. He had loaded his gun with heavy shot, and once or twice was disposed to fire, but Luka each time stopped him. "They are much too high yet. They will come close down presently." The stars were shining brightly, and Godfrey could make out the outlines of the geese as they passed overhead. Presently there was a sharp call a few hundred yards higher up the bank. "This lot are coming low," Luka whispered. "They are probably going to settle to feed. Get ready now." Godfrey lay with his gun pointed upwards; a minute later he heard the rustling of wings, which rose to a sound like a mighty wind, and then some forty yards overhead a dark cloud of birds swept along across the sky. Godfrey fired one barrel, waited a moment and then fired again. With a loud cry of surprise and alarm the flock divided in two, and almost instantly there were several heavy thuds on the ground close by. "Hurrah! we have got some of them," Godfrey said, and leaping up they ran to collect the fallen birds. There were five of them. "That is grand," he exclaimed in delight. "Will you shoot some more?" Luka asked. "No, we have as many as we can eat, Luka, for the next three days at least. It would be a waste of powder and shot to kill more, and worse still, it would be a waste of life. It is right to kill what we require as food, but to my mind there is nothing more wicked than taking life merely for amusement. I consider that we should well deserve any misfortune that might happen to us if we were to kill any one of God's creatures wantonly. One of our best poets has written: "'He prayeth best, who loveth best All things both great and small; For the dear God who loveth us, He made and loveth all.' "It makes me furious sometimes, Luka, when I read books of what is called sport, and find men boasting of killing numerous creatures merely for the pleasure of killing them. I feel that nothing would give me greater pleasure than to flog such brutes." Luka did not much understand this outburst of indignation, but as usual he grunted an assent, and carrying the birds they returned to the boat. "It is freezing to-night," the Tartar said as they stepped in. "I will lay the geese in the bow beyond the cover. They will be frozen by the morning." Godfrey was glad of the wrapping of warm furs that night, and even when he shook them off and looked out at sunrise, it was still so chilly that, after he had leaned over the side of the boat as usual, and sluiced his head with water, he was glad to take a paddle and work hard for a bit to keep himself warm. "Get the fire alight, Luka, and the kettle on," he said, "and cut up one of those geese. How are you going to get the feathers off? I suppose you will have to pluck them and singe them." "It would take much too long that. We can spare the feathers this time." So saying, with his knife he made a slight incision down the breast-bone, and then proceeded to tear off the skin, bit by bit, feathers and all. "That is a quick way," Godfrey said, "though it doesn't improve the bird's appearance; but that is a trifle. Never mind the bread, we shall have to do without that before long, and I feel as hungry as a hunter." In a very few minutes the fire was blazing, and portions of the goose frizzling over it, and in twenty minutes the meal was ready. Godfrey thought he had never eaten anything nicer; and the meat being much less rich than that of tame geese, he did very well without bread. For the next three days they made no pause, floating down night and day, the stream varying in speed from five to ten miles an hour. At points where the stream was most rapid, they paddled in towards the bank to avoid the waves raised by the river in its course. The light boat always floated easily over these, but she needed to be kept with her head to them; and Godfrey was afraid that a moment's carelessness might bring her broadside on to them, and therefore preferred to glide along at a somewhat slower rate near the shore. The river was now a mile and a half wide. To the left the country was flat, but on the right they could see hills rising far above each other. One or two small trading stations were seen on the right bank, but upon the left they passed only a few clusters of Ostjak yourts. On the right great pine forests came down in places to within a short distance of the river, but these were rarely seen on the left. On the fifth day after leaving Yeneseisk they saw a small trading station on the right bank. This Godfrey, who had got the geography of the river by heart, judged to be Peslovska, because it was one of the few trading stations which was not situated at a point where a tributary stream ran into the Yenesei. "We are far enough down now, Luka," he said. "We are not more than two hundred miles from Turukhansk. We will land at the next Ostjak huts we come to, and see if they are disposed to be friendly with us." "They will be friendly," Luka said confidently. "Why not? They are peaceable people, and they know that did they touch strangers they would be punished. There are Russian soldiers at Turukhansk. The Ostjaks are very poor. You have things to give them, and you want nothing of them." Twenty miles further they saw a group of seven huts on the left bank ahead of them, and paddling in landed close to them. Three or four canoes, much smaller than their own lay there, and as they climbed the lofty bank some of the Ostjaks came out from their huts. "What do you want?" one of them asked abruptly. "I am travelling with this gentleman, who has come from a far distant country to hunt and to shoot game here in winter. We would like to live beside your village and to hunt with you. You see he has a gun. He has many things as presents, and it will be well for the village where he settles. Here is some tobacco for all," and Luka handed a small roll of tobacco to each of the men. "We have also some presents for the women," and he produced two or three looking-glasses, and some rows of large blue and red beads. The women, who were listening in the huts, at once came out. "It is good," an old man, who seemed to be the leader of the Ostjaks, said. "Why should not the stranger live here with us and hunt with us if he chooses? He will be welcome. Let us help the strangers." The whole of the Ostjaks at once set to work. Godfrey chose a piece of level ground twenty or thirty yards lower down than the huts. He and Luka, aided by some of the men, carried the various articles out of the boat. While they were doing this, the women stuck some poles in the ground round the circle Godfrey had traced, and lashed them together in the middle with some strips of hide. The three large skins were placed against this on the northern side. Then the women paused. "You had better buy some more large skins if they have got them, Luka. Say that you will give a knife for hides enough to finish the huts with." The knives were large ones with rough handles and strong blades, and when Luka took one out from a bundle and said to the chief, "We will give this knife for enough skins to finish the hut," he gave an order to his wife, and she and two of the other women at once brought some elk hides from a pile lying by the side of his tent. A few stitches here and there with the needle made of a sharp fish-bone, with a thread of twisted gut, fastened the corners of the hides together, and in half an hour the tent was complete. The goat-skins were spread on the ground. The fox and other skins were made into two piles, one on each side of the tent, and all the goods stored inside. "This is splendid," Godfrey said; "here we are as snug as if we were born Ostjaks. I had no idea they would have made us so comfortable. We will give them a cup of tea all round, Luka, as a reward for their labours. We don't care for sugar, but the two pounds you bought at Yeneseisk will come in useful now. They will think a lot more of it if it is sweet. See if they have got a big kettle. That little thing of ours will only hold a couple of quarts." Upon inquiry the chief produced a cauldron, which he exhibited with great pride. It had evidently been used for melting down blubber. Luka carried it down to the water's edge, and then scrubbed it with sand until it was tolerably clean; then he rubbed it with wisps of coarse grass, filled it with water, and stood it on a fire that the Ostjaks had made from drift-wood picked up from the shore. In half an hour the water boiled. He put in two or three handfuls of tea and half a pound of sugar, let it boil for another minute or two, and then took the pot off the fire. Then he invited the Ostjaks to dip in their cups. In each of the huts they had a few tin mugs, for the expense and risk of carriage of crockery rendered the prices prohibitive, and even the tin mugs were prized as among their most precious possessions. Luka and Godfrey also dipped in their cups as an act of civility, but the latter made a wry face when it approached his lips, for the odour of the blubber was very strong, and he took an opportunity, when none of the Ostjaks were looking, to pour the contents of the tin upon the ground beside him; but to the Ostjaks the smell and flavour of blubber was no drawback, and men and women sat round the fire drinking the sweet liquor with great enjoyment, and evidently highly contented at the coming of this stranger among them. While they were partaking of it Godfrey heard a sound behind, and looking round saw a boy driving in several reindeer. He was delighted at the sight, not only because it promised hunting expeditions, but because they might aid to carry them across the frozen steppes, to the Obi, before the frost broke up. Talking with the Ostjaks Luka found that, as the temperature had been below freezing-point all day, they intended to commence fishing in earnest the next morning. The position of the huts had been specially selected for that purpose. The river made a sharp bend just above them, and the point threw the current across to the opposite bank, forming almost a back-water at the spot where the huts stood. It seemed strange to Godfrey, as he lay down that night, to be without the gentle motion of the boat to which he had been so long accustomed, and he lay awake for some time, not forgetting before he went to sleep to thank God for the wonderful success that had so far attended him, and to pray for a continuance of His protection. As soon as it was light the boats all put off, and anchoring a short distance out were soon engaged in fishing. Godfrey put down four lines, each with six of the hooks Mikail had purchased for him before starting from Kara. These were baited with strips of fish, and he and Luka were soon busy at work hauling in the fish. They were mostly jack or tench, and by the evening they had caught nearly a hundred. When they rowed to shore they found that they had been far more successful than any of the Ostjaks, this being due to the superiority of their hooks over the fish-bone contrivances of the natives. Following the example of the Ostjaks they laid the fish in lines in front of their tent to freeze during the night. After boiling their kettle, frying a couple of fish, and taking supper, they lighted two torches and again went out, returning before midnight with twenty-five salmon averaging fifteen pounds each. By the morning the fish were all frozen as hard as pieces of wood, and were then laid in a pile. For four days this work continued with equal success, and by the end of that time they had a pile of fish six feet square and three feet high, making, Godfrey calculated, nearly a ton of fish. They had observed that some of the Ostjaks had each morning brought in several wild geese and swans, and Luka learnt from them that there was a large marsh a mile away in which large flights of geese settled every night. Accompanied by two of the Ostjaks they started late in the evening for the spot. When they came near the marsh they could hear a low chattering noise as the birds fed on the aquatic grasses. Sometimes they heard cries in the air, answered by calls from the feeding birds, and followed speedily by a great rustling of wings as fresh flocks alighted. Godfrey and Luka had brought with them some fox-skins and sat wrapped up in them, but in spite of that they felt the cold as they waited hour after hour. Godfrey dozed off several times, and at last slept for three or four hours. He was awakened by a touch from Luka, and a low warning to keep silence. The morning was breaking. He found that the Ostjaks had built a sort of shelter of bushes, which had the effect of breaking the force of the north wind and of hiding them from the water-fowl. Raising his head cautiously he saw before him a sheet of shallow water; this was absolutely covered with geese, a few swans being seen here and there. Luka had warned him not to fire until the Ostjaks had shot all their arrows, as the sound of his gun would at once scare the whole flock. The edge of the water was about forty yards away. The Ostjaks and Luka had both made holes through the bushes in front of them so as to be able to shoot without exposing their heads. Moving gently Godfrey found a spot where he could see through the boughs. The natives were just ready to shoot. There were three swans close to the edge of the water, and the bows twanged almost together. Although he knew how marvellous was the shooting of the Ostjaks, he was nevertheless surprised at seeing that each of the birds was struck in the head, and was thus killed instantly without the slightest noise being made. Again and again they shot, and each arrow brought down its bird. Luka's third arrow was less successful; it wounded a bird on the neck, and with loud cries of pain and alarm it flew flapping across the pool. In an instant the whole mass of birds rose on the wing, circling round and round with loud cries. The natives, lying on their backs, shot arrow after arrow into the air, in each case transfixing a goose. Each had twelve arrows, and when they were exhausted Luka said, "Now, Godfrey, you can fire." Godfrey waited until a number of birds flew in a mass over him, and then discharged both barrels. Five geese fell, and then the whole vast flock flew away to the north, leaving the lagoon entirely deserted save by the floating bodies of their dead companions. "Arrow better than gun," Luka said as he rose. "Gun kill, but frighten all away. Arrow keep on killing." "That is true enough, Luka; there is no doubt the bow is the best for this sort of work; but I shall manage better another time." The birds were picked up. Twelve had fallen to each of the Ostjaks. Luka had eleven, and Godfrey five. It was a heavy burden to carry back to the huts. Godfrey and Luka's shares of the birds were laid by the pile of fish, with the exception of one which Luka proceeded to skin and hang up, while Godfrey saw to the fire and put on the kettle. When they had finished breakfast Godfrey said, "We will take three or four hours' sleep now, Luka, and then I am going down to have a look at that marsh." They accordingly started at mid-day. Godfrey made a detour round the lagoon, and a hundred yards beyond it, on the opposite side, found a clump of bushes that he thought would suit his purpose. With Luka's assistance he cleared a spot in the middle large enough for them to lie down on, and then returned to camp. They took their next meal early, and then, taking some furs to make themselves comfortable, again started round the lagoon. It was just sunset when they got there, and spreading two or three fox-skins on the ground, and throwing two over their shoulders, they waited. It was scarcely dusk when the first flock of geese passed close over their heads, on their way to the lagoon. Luka discharged two arrows, and then Godfrey fired his two barrels into them. Several fell, but the flock scattered with wild screams; but, after circling round and round for some time, settled in the lagoon. A quarter of an hour passed, and then another flock came along. All night the flocks continued to arrive at short intervals, and from each Godfrey brought down several. Luka's arrows were soon exhausted, but Godfrey continued firing until morning began to break. Then they got up to see the result of the night's shooting. Luka, although seldom excited, gave a shout of pleasure. The ground around them was thickly strewn with geese. Many were only wounded; but Luka, with a short, heavy stick, soon put them out of their pain, although not without several sharp chases. Then they collected and counted the birds. There were eighty-four in all. "Another night's shooting, Luka, and our larder will be full." Each taking up six geese, which was as much as they could carry, they returned to the tents, and then set out again, accompanied by all the boys and girls of the village; and this time the whole of the geese were carried to the hut. "It is an awful pity," Godfrey said, as he looked at the great pile, "that we haven't got anything we could use for holding the feathers. Well, we will have them picked anyhow. We can make a thick layer of them under the skins for the present. When it gets downright cold we can nestle in among them somehow." Accordingly the children were set to work to pluck the birds, which were then left out to freeze in the same way as the fish. That night and the next day they rested, and then had another night's shooting. The amount of success was as great as that which had attended the first. "We have plenty now to last us well on into the spring," Godfrey said as he looked at the great pile. "What is to be done next, Luka?" "Pour water over them and the fish and let them freeze." "Do they keep better that way, Luka?" "Yes; not get so dry." The Ostjaks had been astounded at the success of their visitors, both in fishing and shooting. Godfrey now had a conversation with their chief, and offered to shoot a supply of geese for the natives, if they would furnish him and his companion with a complete outfit of furs for the winter. This the chief at once agreed to, as they had a large supply of foxes' skins in camp, and these, with the exception of the rarer sorts, were practically worthless for the purpose of exchange. Godfrey made the chief another offer: to give him a hatchet, two knives, and six fish-hooks, if he would supply them with as much seal's flesh as they might require during the winter, and with blubber for lamps. The Ostjaks had already killed a good many seals; but the pursuit of them required time and patience, and Godfrey wanted to ensure a supply for the winter, although Luka told him they would have plenty of opportunities of getting seals then. Accordingly, for the next ten days the shooting was continued at night, Godfrey and Luka sleeping during the day, and leaving it to the young Ostjaks to collect and bring in the birds. The cold daily increased, and Godfrey began to feel much the want of warmer clothing. However, on the eighth day the Ostjaks brought in two suits. They were the joint work of the women of the village. As the Ostjaks were greatly pleased at the quantity of food coming in daily, which ensured them a sufficiency of meat throughout the winter, in addition to their own stock of fish, the work was well done. For each a closely-fitting shirt had been made of the squirrel skins they had brought down with them, with the fur inside. The trousers were of red fox-skin, with the hair outside. The upper garment was a long capote of the same fur, reaching down to the ankles, and furnished with a hood covering the head and face, with the exception of an opening from the eyes down to the mouth. In addition to these, was given to each as a present a pair of Ostjak boots. These were large and loose. They were made of goat-skins, rendered perfectly supple by grease and rubbing, and with the hair inside. They came up to the thighs, and had a thick sole made of layers of elk-hide. There was also for each a pair of socks of squirrel's skin, with the hair inside, and a pair of fingerless gloves of double skin, the fur being both inside and out, except in the palm, which was of single skin, with the fur inside. "Well, if it is cold enough to require all that," Godfrey said, "it will be cold indeed; but it will be awful walking about with it. Surely one can never want all those furs!" But in time Godfrey found that they were none too many, for at Turukhansk the thermometer in winter sometimes sinks to 60 degrees below zero. For a time, however, he found no occasion to use the capote, the fur shirt trousers and boots being amply sufficient, while the fur cap with the hanging tails kept his neck and ears perfectly warm. Already the ice was thick on the still reach of the river beside which the huts stood, although, beyond the shelter of the point, the Yenesei still swept along. The lagoon had been frozen over for some days, in spite of the water being kept almost perpetually in motion by the flocks of water-fowl, and the ground was as hard as iron. The Ostjaks were now for some days employed in patching up their huts and preparing them to withstand the cold of winter. An immense pile of firewood had been collected on the shore, for boughs of trees and drift-wood, brought down by the river, often came into the backwater, and these were always drawn ashore, however busied the men might be at the time in fishing. All through the summer every scrap of wood that came within reach had been landed, and the result was a great pile that would, they calculated, with the blubber they had stored, be sufficient to last them through the winter. "What will they do if fuel should run short?" Godfrey asked Luka. "They will cross the frozen river with their sledges to the forests. They would either take their huts down and establish themselves there, or would cut wood, fill their sledges, and bring it over. I have been talking to them. On the other side there are many Russian villages, for the post-road is on that side. In summer the carriages are drawn by horses; in winter they have reindeer. These people are very poor; the skins that they make their clothes with are all poor, the animals were torn by the dogs or injured--that is why they could not sell them. Those red fox-skins would have been worth two roubles each if they had been good; but the merchants will give nothing for those that are injured. They say it does not pay for the carriage. So they were glad to make them up for us." "What do they do with the reindeer?" "They milk them in summer, and in winter they let them to the owners of the post-stations. Of course, when they move they use them themselves." "What we want, Luka," Godfrey said, after sitting quiet for some time, "is more money. If we had that, we might hire sledges and reindeer as soon as the snow gets on the ground, and travel west; but of course there is no tempting these poor people to make such a journey without money to pay them well." "They will go hunting presently," Luka said. "You might get some good furs and sell them." "Yes; but I don't see why I should. No doubt many of the Russian peasants in the villages have guns; and if they don't get skins, why should I?" "A great many skins come down every year," the Tartar said. "Black fox is worth money, fifteen, twenty roubles; ermine is worth money; lots of them in the woods." "Well, we must hope for the best. If we can but get enough for them to take us across to the Obi, we ought to be able to coast round in a canoe to Archangel. But I don't think we could do it from this river in one season. The ice does not break up till June, and begins to form again in October. We can only rely upon three open months. I doubt whether we could get in that time from the Yenesei. However, it is of no use our bothering ourselves about that now." Another fortnight and the frost was so severe that the ice extended almost across the river, and a heavy fall of snow covered everything. As soon as it was deep enough Godfrey and Luka followed the example of the Ostjaks and raised a high wall of it encircling the tent to keep off the bitter north wind. Then the weather changed again. The wind set in from the south, and drenching rains fell. At the end of two or three days the ice on the river had disappeared, but it was not long before winter set in more bitterly than before. The ground became covered with the snow to a depth of upwards of three feet, and the river froze right across. The wall round the tent was rebuilt, Godfrey fashioning wooden shovels from some planks he found among the drift-wood. The Ostjaks took to their snow-shoes, and Godfrey fashioned for himself and Luka two pairs of runners, such as he had seen in use near St. Petersburg. These were about five feet long, by as many inches wide, and slightly turned up at each end. A strap was nailed across, under which the foot went. The ends were turned up by damping the wood and holding it over the fire, a string being fastened tightly from end to end, so as to keep the wood bent. When they were completed they practised with them steadily, and found that as soon as the surface of the snow hardened they could get along upon them at a good pace on level ground, completely distancing the Ostjaks on their broader snow-shoes. The Ostjaks evidently admired them greatly, but were too much wedded to their own customs to adopt them. Godfrey was so warmly clad that he felt the cold but little. His eyes, however, suffered from the glare of the snow, and he at once adopted spectacles, which were made for him by the Ostjaks. They were the shape of goggles, and made of skin with the hair on, narrow slits being cut in them, these slits being partly covered with the hair, and so shielding the eyes from the glare of the snow. They were fastened on by leathern straps, tied at the back of the head. The Ostjaks themselves seldom wore them, but they were used by Samoyedes, a kindred tribe, dwelling generally farther north, though many of them at times came down even as far as Yeneseisk. Early in November the Ostjaks prepared for a hunting expedition. The men, since they were confined to their huts by the snow, had been busy in manufacturing traps of various kinds and getting the sledges into order. On a large sledge, which was to be drawn by three reindeer, was placed the skins necessary for forming a tent. On these were piled a store of provisions, which were chopped out from the frozen masses by hatchets. On the smaller sledges were placed the traps and a quantity of the coarser kinds of frozen fish as food for the dogs. It had been settled that Godfrey and Luka should accompany them. They had contributed liberally from their store of geese and fish, and added to the load on the reindeer sledge their kettle, frying-pan, and a parcel of tea and tobacco. When all was ready the three reindeer were harnessed to the large sledge, one to each of the three small sledges, and soon after daybreak on the 5th of November they started, the Ostjaks being anxious to be off, for the weather again showed signs of breaking, and it might be another month before the river was permanently frozen for the winter. Six Ostjaks, including the chief, formed with Godfrey and Luka the hunting party; the others remained behind to look after the rest of the reindeer, as it was necessary to keep a space clear from snow, to enable them to get at the grass. They would, too, continue the fishing, keeping holes broken in the ice and catching fish by torch-light. The men walked with the sledges, which only went at a walking pace. Across the river the route was easy, the surface of the snow being crisp and hard, but it was hard work mounting the opposite bank, which was exceedingly steep. The reindeer pulled well, and at difficult points the men aided them. A short distance from the bank they crossed the post-road, and in another half-hour were in the forest. Godfrey had already been told that they would travel for several days before they began to hunt, as the villagers with their guns scared the wild animals from the forests in their neighbourhoods. There was no difficulty in travelling through the forest, for the pine-trees stood generally at some distance apart, and there was but little growth of underwood. All day they kept steadily on. When evening came they cut some young poles, erected their tent, and lit a fire in the centre. By this time Godfrey had become accustomed to the smoke, which escaped from the top of the tent by a hole. A couple of geese were cut up and broiled over the flame, and some cakes baked in the frying-pan, their pipes were lighted, and they lay down in a circle with their feet to the fire. For three more days the journey was continued. Then, as several tracks had been seen in the snow, they halted and prepared for the hunt. The method was simple. The men scattered in several directions, and when they struck upon a recent track followed it up. Each man took with him a dog, a certain amount of provisions, a box of matches from Godfrey's store, and a large skin to wrap himself in at night. Sometimes, as Godfrey found, the track had to be followed a long distance before they came up to the animal, which always travelled in zigzag courses hunting about for white mice and other prey. Sometimes it was found to have taken to a hole, and then a trap was set to catch it when it came out. The animals were principally ermine; but one or two sable, which are considerably larger, with much more valuable skins, and some martens were taken. All belong to the weasel family; the upper part of the ermine being brown in summer, but, like most animals in or near the arctic zone, changing into a pure white in winter, with the exception of the tail, which remains black as in summer. The ermine is but little larger than the English ferret, while the sable and marten are the size of large polecats. When the Ostjaks came up with them they either knocked them on the head with a club or shot them through the head. They were then carefully skinned, the bodies being thrown to the dogs for food. It had been agreed that the animals caught should be divided; but Godfrey felt that he was doing but little, for he was unable to shoot them, as this would have damaged their skins. However, he aided in tracking them down, and in setting traps when he traced them to a hole; and once or twice he came up with and killed one with a club. Occasionally he shot a squirrel--the little animals coming out from their nests in holes in the trees at the sound of footsteps, their curiosity costing them dear. After remaining four days at this spot the tent was pulled down and packed up, and they advanced another two days' journey into the forest. CHAPTER XIII. HUNTING. At the end of a fortnight one of the Ostjaks started with the large sledge for the huts, taking with him all the skins that had been collected. These had mounted up to a considerable number, the Ostjaks considering their luck to have been extraordinary, and putting it down in a great degree to their white companion, for whom they began to have an almost superstitious respect, since the way he had supplied their village with food for the winter seemed to them almost miraculous. The reindeer with the light sledge would accomplish the return journey in two days with ease, although the distance had taken them five days on their way out. It was to return with a fresh supply of provisions, especially for the dogs. The night after the sledge had left, the dogs barked fiercely for some time. They slept in the tent. Some of the Ostjaks made pillows of them, others allowed them to lie upon them, and they helped to keep the tent warm; the din when they began barking was prodigious. "What is it all about?" Godfrey shouted in Luka's ear. "I think it must be a bear," Luka shouted back. "Why don't they let the dogs out?" "They would drive the bears away, and it is too dark to see to shoot them. In the morning they will follow their track." The dogs presently ceased barking and with low growls lay down again. As soon as it was light the Ostjaks turned out and found great footmarks round the tent. Before starting from the huts Godfrey had exchanged the heads of their fishing-spears for the iron spear-heads they had purchased. Loading his gun with ball, Godfrey with Luka and four of the Ostjaks started in pursuit, taking six of the dogs, and a sledge, with them. On his long runners he would soon have left the Ostjaks behind; but Luka translated their warning that they must all keep together, for as there were two bears it would be dangerous to attack them in lesser numbers. In about an hour they arrived at a dense thicket, and it was evident that this was the lair of the bears until they took up their permanent winter quarters in a hollow tree. The dogs were urged to attack them, but could not be persuaded to enter far, confining themselves to barking fiercely. "How are we going to get at them?" Godfrey asked. The Ostjaks consulted together, and then they collected some dry pine needles and twigs, and two of them went to the windward side of the thicket and made a fire, upon which, as soon as it was fairly alight, they threw some dead leaves mixed with snow. "If they were to light the bushes themselves, it would drive them out quicker than that smoke," Godfrey said. "Not good, not good," Luka said earnestly. "Once catch fire, big flame run through forest, burn miles and miles." "I did not think of that," Godfrey said. "That would be a foolish trick." However, the smoke had the desired effect, and in a minute or two, two bears burst out on the other side, growling angrily. The dogs rushed at them, barking loudly but taking care to keep at a safe distance from their paws. The bears both raised themselves on their haunches. The Ostjak bows twanged and Godfrey fired. One of the bears rolled over, the other charged at his assailants. Godfrey fired his second barrel, then dropping his gun and grasping his spear, stood ready to meet the charge. But the bear did not reach him, for as it rose on its hind-legs the Ostjaks and Luka again shot their arrows, and the bear rolled over dead. The two animals were placed on the sledge, the reindeer harnessed, and, the Ostjaks taking ropes to aid it with its heavy burden, they returned to the tent. They had scarcely reached it when one of the other hunters returned with news that they had come upon the track of an elk. The bears were at once dragged into the tent, the entrance securely fastened to prevent a passing wolf or ounce from tearing them; then, taking with them this time all the dogs and the three sledges, they started, and in half an hour came to where the chief and his remaining followers were awaiting them. "They came along here yesterday afternoon," the chief said to Luka. "There is one big stag, and one young one, and three females." After three hours' walking they came to a spot where the snow was much trampled, and there were marks of animals having lain down. "That is where they slept," the chief said. "They are travelling south, but they will probably stop to feed before they have gone far; we may catch them then." He ordered one of the men to stop with the sledges, and the rest proceeded onwards. [Illustration: GODFREY BRINGS DOWN AN ELK.] Not a word was spoken now, and as they went they took the greatest pains not to brush against any branch or twig. The Ostjaks were now walking their fastest, and Godfrey had to exert himself to keep up with them. Their footfall was so light as to be scarce audible. After two hours' travelling they saw an opening among the trees, and here some young pines were growing thickly. The chief pointed significantly towards them, and Godfrey understood that the animals would probably be feeding there. They now went slowly, and the chief whispered orders that they were to make a circle round the opening and close round on the other side as noiselessly as possible. He himself would enter the thicket from the side on which he now was. The crackling of the pine twigs would drive them out on the other side. Very quietly they worked round and took up their stations, each standing behind a fir-tree, and then waited. They could hear the stamping of heavy hoofs and the occasional breaking of twigs. Presently there was a louder and more continuous sound of breaking bushes, and then with a sudden rush a great elk, followed by four others, burst out of the thicket. As they came along the Ostjaks stepped out from their hiding-places and let fly their deadly arrows. The leading elk came close to the tree behind which Godfrey was standing, and as it passed he fired both barrels, hitting it just behind the shoulder. The elk ran a few paces and then fell. Three out of the other four had been brought down by the Ostjak arrows; the young male escaped. The satisfaction of the Ostjaks was great; for here, in addition to the value of the skins, was food for themselves and the dogs for some time to come. A man was at once sent back for the sledges. While waiting for these the rest set out on various tracks of ermine they had passed on the way, and three of these and a marten were killed before the sledges came up. The big elk was placed on one sledge, one of the females on each of the others. The fourth was skinned, cut up, and divided among the three sledges. Lightly as the sledges ran over the snow the men were all obliged to harness themselves to ropes to assist the deer, and it was late in the evening before they arrived at the hut. The fire was lighted at once. Godfrey undertook the cooking, while the rest skinned the bears and elk, cut them up, and hung up the carcasses on boughs beyond the reach of the dogs. These had a grand feast off the offal while the men were regaling themselves with fresh elk steaks. For two months the hunting was continued with much success, then the Ostjaks said they would return home. Godfrey, however, was anxious to continue hunting; he had a small tent that had been made for him and Luka, and the Ostjak leader offered to leave one of the sledges with six dogs that had been trained to draught work. As soon as the Ostjaks had started on their return journey the tent, a store of provisions and furs, were packed in the sledge, and a fresh start made, as they had been in their present position for over a week. As they went along two of the poles were arranged so that they made a deep groove in the snow, by which they could find their way back to the starting-point. Two days' journey took them into a hilly country. They established themselves in a sheltered valley, and made that the centre from which they hunted. They were now twelve days' journey from the Yenesei and well beyond the range of ordinary hunting parties. They had soon reason to congratulate themselves on entering the more mountainous country, for here the game was much more abundant than it had been before. The dogs had by this time become attached to them, for Godfrey was fond of animals, and had petted them in a manner to which they were quite unaccustomed from their Ostjak masters. One of them especially, a young dog, had taken regularly to accompany Godfrey when hunting, and he found the animal of the greatest utility, as it was able to follow the back track with undeviating certainty. This was of importance, for there was but a short twilight each twenty-four hours, the sun being below the horizon except for an hour or two at noon, and they were obliged to carry torches while following the tracks of the smaller animals. Ermines were found in considerable numbers, and in the first week four fine sables were killed, as well as two martens and a bear; the latter was specially prized. They had brought a fortnight's provisions for themselves and the dogs, but they were anxious to eke these stores out as long as possible, as they could no longer depend upon getting fresh supplies from home. The bodies of the ermines were but a mouthful for one of the dogs, while the sables and martens gave them a mouthful all round. The bear, however, contained a large quantity of excellent food, and setting aside the hams for their own consumption they hung up the rest of the meat on a tree to serve out gradually among the dogs. They soon found, however, that they need be under no anxiety as to food, as foxes abounded, principally red, though two of the valuable black foxes fell to Godfrey's gun. They found many paths in the woods completely trodden down by animals. Here they used the Ostjak method of catching them: putting up a screen of branches across the track. Looking at these objects with suspicion, the animals invariably refused to try either to jump over or crawl through them, but went round at one end or the other. Here accordingly traps were fixed and many animals were taken. Intense as the cold was Godfrey felt it even less than he had anticipated. The wide-spreading woods broke the force of the winds, and while they could sometimes see the tops of the trees swaying beneath its force they scarcely felt a breath below. Luka knew nothing of the Esquimaux fashion of making snow-huts, and said he had never heard of it among the Ostjaks or Samoyedes. At each of the halts, however, Godfrey piled the snow high over the low tent of reindeer-skin which he had got the women to make for him according to his own plan. It resembled a tent _d'abri_, or shelter tent, seven feet long and as much wide, was permanently closed at one end, and had flaps crossing each other at the entrance. Instead of depending entirely upon the two uprights and the ridge-pole between them, Godfrey when erecting it put eight or ten poles on each side, stretching from the ridge out to the side of the tent, so as to support the skin under the snow they piled over it. The bottom was covered with a thick mat of furs, the sides were lined with them, and others were hung across the entrance, so that the cold was effectually kept out. A large fire was kept burning in front of the tent, and from this, from time to time, red embers were taken out and placed in a cooking-pot inside. At night two or three lamps, fed by oil melted down from the fat of the animals they killed, were kept alight, and in this way lying snugly in their sleeping-bags they felt perfectly warm and comfortable, although the temperature outside was from forty to fifty degrees below zero. The dogs slept outside, with the exception of the one of which Godfrey had made a special pet, it being allowed to share the tent with them. A high bank of snow was erected on each side of the entrance to the tent. This served further to break the force of the wind and to retain and reflect back the heat of the fire. The dogs therefore, being provided with a good supply of meat from the proceeds of the chase, did very well. One afternoon the sky was very thick and overcast, and Luka said he thought that they were going to have snow. "In that case, Luka," Godfrey said, "we will set to work to make things comfortable. If there is a heavy fall we might be almost buried here. Ordinarily it is sheltered, but if there is a wind, and I can see that it is blowing now, it might drift very deep in this hollow, and we might find ourselves completely snowed up. I think the tent is strong enough to stand any pressure, but it does not contain much air. We will cut down some strong poles and lay them side by side across the snow walls in front of the tent. The smoke will find its way out through them, and if a deep snow comes on it will save the dogs from being snowed up; besides, it will give us a lot of additional air, which we may want. Two or three hours will do it. The time won't be thrown away anyhow, for the branches we cut off and the poles themselves will do for firewood." The snow-flakes began to fall just as they finished the work--the result being a sort of flat-roofed shelter with snow walls ten feet long and six feet high, in front of the tent. A large quantity of firewood was piled up at the entrance to the shelter. "That is a capital idea, Luka," Godfrey said as they retired into the tent. "We can sit with the entrance of the tent open now if we like and get the benefit of the fire outside, for the air having to pass close by it on its way to us gets comparatively warm." When they went out to build up the fire for the last time before lying down, snow was falling steadily, and was already deep in front of the entrance to the shelter. The dogs had been well fed and lay thickly clustered round the fire, evidently greatly contented with the unusual luxury of a roof over them. Godfrey crawled into the tent again, closed the flaps, hung up a skin before them, and getting into his sleeping-bag lay there comfortably smoking his pipe and talking to Luka. "We are as snug here as if we were in a palace, Luka; but I should not like to be caught out in the woods to-night. Have you ever heard of any of the Ostjaks or Samoyedes being frozen to death?" "Couldn't be frozen if they had a hatchet and matches with them," he replied. "Can always chop down branches and make a hut and a fire in the middle to keep it warm. Then snow comes and covers it up and keeps out the wind. Out on the plains a man might get frozen if stupid, but he ought never to be if he knew what to do. He should look for a hollow where the snow had drifted deep, then make a hole in the side of the drift and crawl in. He ought to be quite warm there if furs are good. But they do not often get lost; they never go very far from huts when snow in the sky. Directly it comes on they would make for home. Can always get along in snow-shoes." "The Isvostchiks are often frozen in St. Petersburg in their sledges at night," Godfrey said. "They can't build huts in a town," Luka remarked; "they can't find snow deep enough to get into; town not good in winter." "Are there many wolves here, Luka? Do they often attack people?" "No, there is plenty of game in the woods. In Russia the game now, so I hear, is scarce, so the wolves must take to eating men; but here there is plenty of game, and so they do not often attack people. I have heard of hunters going out and never coming back again. Then people say wolves eat them, but not often so. May be killed by elk, or hurt by a falling tree, or climb hills and fall down. I do not think it is often the wolves. Wolves great cowards." "I am glad to hear it, Luka: I have heard them howl sometimes at night and wondered whether they would come this way." "Not come here," Luka said decidedly, "we keep plenty of big fire. All beasts afraid of fire. Then we have got dogs and guns. Much easier for wolves to attack elk; but even that they seldom do unless it is wounded or has injured itself." "Well, I think I will go off to sleep; my pipe is out and the hot tea has made me sleepy." After sleeping for some hours, Godfrey awoke with a strange feeling of oppression. Outside he could hear the dogs whimpering. "Wake up, Luka," he said, "it is very close in here. I fancy the snow must have drifted very deep and covered us up completely. Let us get up and see about it." It was quite dark outside, except that the embers of the fire threw a dull red light on the snow. The shelter seemed but half its former dimensions. The snow had drifted in at its entrance and lay in a bank piled up to the roof. "Bring your spear, Luka, and mine, and shove them up between these poles. We must make a few holes up through the snow if we can to let a little air in." The spears were pushed up and then worked a little to and fro to try to enlarge the hole. They were eight feet long, but Godfrey did not feel at all sure that they penetrated through the cover of snow. However, when they had made a dozen of these holes there was a distinct change in the air. "They have gone nearly through, if not quite, and anyhow they are near enough to the surface for the air to find its way out. Now we had better set to work at once to dig a passage out. That is one advantage of this shelter, there is a place to throw the snow back into." Going down on their hands and knees they soon scraped the snow away until they reached the entrance to the shelter. Here the snow weighted by the pressure above was much denser and harder, and they could cut out blocks with their hatchets. "Now," Godfrey said, "we must make a tunnel sloping upwards. It must be as steep as it can so that we are able to climb up, making steps to give us foothold. I will begin, for we only just want it wide enough for one. I will hand the blocks down to you as I cut them, and you pile them regularly along the sides here. As we fill the shelter up you must drive the dogs back into the tent. We shall want every inch of room for the snow before we get out." For hours they worked steadily, taking it by turns to cut and to pile. The last four feet were much more difficult than the first, the snow, being lighter and less packed, falling in upon them as they dug. Once Luka was completely buried, and Godfrey had to haul him back by the legs. The atmosphere inside, however, improved as they got upwards, being able to penetrate between the particles of the light snow. It was six hours before they both struggled out, followed by the dogs in an impetuous rush. It took them another couple of hours to clear away and beat down the snow sufficiently to make an easy entrance to the shelter. A fire was lighted outside and a meal cooked, for the lamps were quite sufficient to keep the tent sufficiently warm, and they would have been well-nigh stifled with smoke had they attempted to light the fire in the shelter. The snow was still falling and drifting, and the sky showed no signs of change. "The entrance will fill up again by to-morrow," Luka said, "and we shall have more trouble than ever to get out." "We must provide against that, Luka; we must build a sort of roof over the entrance here, and then we shall only have to start from this point again. Let us set to work and chop down some poles at once." After three hours' more work a cover was built over the entrance, and roofed with pine branches so as to prevent the snow from drifting in. "Now, Luka, there is one more job, and unfortunately a long one, but we must do that. We must get the snow that we have packed in the shelter below out of the way, for if by any chance this passage fell through, we should have nowhere to pile the snow; besides, we may have another passage as deep as the present one to dig to-morrow, for the snow is drifting down in clouds. It has deepened a couple of feet since we began to make the roof over the entrance." Luka, who was always ready to work, set to cheerfully, but the short twilight had faded into deep darkness before the work was completed. "If we had had a couple of good shovels with us, Luka, we should have made short work of this," Godfrey said as they retired below into their tent. "We could do as much work in an hour as one can in five with these tools. It is heart-breaking to shovel out snow with a hatchet. I am as tired as a dog. This is harder work than the gold-mines at Kara by a long way." "Yes," Luka said, "but there is no man with a gun." "No, that makes a difference, Luka, this is free work and the other isn't; not that one can call it exactly free when we have no choice but to do it." For another four days the snow continued to fall; but as the wind had dropped, and the snow no longer drifted, their work each morning was comparatively easy. "I wish it would stop," Godfrey said, "for we begin to want food for the dogs; our stock of dried fish has been exhausted since we were shut up. There is half a deer hanging to a branch of that tree close to the tent, but it is eight or ten feet below the snow, and as we can't calculate the exact position now it would be a big job to try to get at it." There was, however, no change in the aspect of the weather on the following morning, and Luka announced that beyond the tea and a handful or two of flour there was nothing whatever for breakfast, while the dogs had fasted on the previous day. "Well, Luka, there is nothing to do but to try and get at that venison. I have been thinking that it will be easiest to try from below; it is much quicker work chopping out the solid snow than it is trying to make a hole in that loose stuff at the surface. The tree was just about in a line with the front of the tent, wasn't it? and we hung the deer on a branch that stretched out nearly as far as the tent. I should say we hung it about half-way along that branch and not above twelve feet from the tent." Luka agreed as to the position. "Very well, then, as we know exactly the direction, and as the distance is but twelve feet, it ought not to take us very long to chop out a passage just big enough and high enough for one to crawl through. When we get near the place where we think it is, we must make the tunnel a good bit higher, for the bottom of the meat was quite five feet from the ground so that it should be well out of reach of the dogs. Now, will you go first or shall I?" "I will begin," Luka said. "We must make the passage wide enough to push the snow past us as we get it down." "Certainly we must, Luka. Make it pretty wide at the bottom, and make the top arched so as to stand the pressure from above." It was easy enough work at first, but became more difficult every foot they advanced, as the one behind had to crawl backward each time with the snow that the one at work passed back to him. At last the tunnel was driven twelve feet long, and the last four feet it had been given an upward direction, by which means less snow had to be removed than would have been the case had the bottom remained level with the ground and the height been increased. "We are a good twelve feet in now, Luka, and certainly high enough. Which way do you think we had better try?" Luka replied by calling one of the dogs and taking it with him to the end of the tunnel. The animal at once began to snuff about eagerly, and then to scratch violently to the right. "That will do," Luka said, pushing it back past him and taking its place. He had driven but a foot in the direction in which the dog was scratching when the hatchet struck something hard. It required some care to dig round the meat and make a hole large enough for Luka to stand up beside it and cut the cord by which it hung. The dogs yelped with joy when he dragged it back to the other end of the passage. The fire was made now in the passage under the roof they had made at the end of the first day's work, for outside the snow fell so fast that it damped the fire greatly, and as the smoke made its way out through the entrance it was no inconvenience to them below. A good-sized piece of raw meat was chopped off and given to each of the dogs. The ramrod was thrust through another large piece and held by Luka over the fire, and then Godfrey carried the rest of the joint outside and placed it in the fork of a tree. "It smells good, Luka," he said as he returned to the fire; "I wish it would attract a bear." Luka shook his head. "Bears are asleep, Godfrey; they are hunted in summer, and sometimes they may be found in the early part of the winter, but never when the snow is deep; they would die of hunger. There might be wolves, but we don't want them. Wolf skins fetch very little, and their flesh is only good for the dogs; we don't want wolves, but we must be on our guard. In such weather as this food is very scarce. They might come and attack us. Yesterday I heard howls once or twice. I think when we have done breakfast it will be better to take that meat down below." "Why, they wouldn't smell it as much as this cooked meat, Luka." "No, I was not thinking of that, but if they come we may want it." "You mean they might besiege us, Luka?" "Yes, shut us up here. Wolves very patient; wait a long time when they scent food." "Well, we will have the dogs sleep up here for the future. They will act as sentries, and there is none too much air down there. That reminds me, I will cut a long pole or two, fasten them together, and try and drive them down through the snow to the roof of the shelter below." Luka shook his head. "You might drive it down five or six feet, but you would never get it down to the roof, and if you did you could never pull it up again." "I don't know, Luka. I once saw them driving down some bars in tough clay when they were making a railway cutting at home. I think we might do it in the same way." Godfrey after breakfast cut a pole, chopping it off just below where two or three small branches had shot from it, leaving a bulge. This bulge he shaped and smoothed very carefully with his knife, so that it was in the form of a peg-top. "There," he said. "You see it is thicker here than it is anywhere else, so that the hole it makes will be a little larger than the pole itself, and instead of the snow holding the pole all the way down it will touch it only on this shoulder." This succeeded admirably. It was six feet long. They had cleared away the loose snow to a depth of eighteen inches, and both holding it were able to force the pole down as much more; then they hammered it with a billet of wood until only a foot showed; then they spliced another to it, and working it up and down jumped it in until they could again use the mallet, and at last struck on something solid, which could only be one of the beams forming the roof of the hut. Godfrey went below, and soon discovered the spot where the pole came down, and with his knife managed to clear away the snow round it. Then he went up and assisted Luka to withdraw the pole, which left a hole of about three inches in diameter. "That is a capital chimney," he said. "Now we will throw a few fir branches over it, to prevent the dogs treading here and shutting it up. I think the air looks rather lighter, Luka, and that the storm is nearly over. There is a howl again. I am afraid that we are going to have trouble with the wolves. Is there anything we can do?" Luka shook his head. "We might get up into trees," he said. "We should be safe there, but then we should lose the dogs." "That would never do, Luka; we should have to haul the sledge back a hundred and fifty miles. No, I'll tell you what we will do: we will cut down some young trees and block up our tunnel with beams, leaving three or four inches between each to fire through or use our spears." "That is a very good plan," Luka said. "We should be quite safe then." It took them some hours' work to carry out the idea. The middle of the tunnel was closed by a row of pointed stakes, some four inches in diameter, driven deep into the snow and reaching up to the roof of the shelter. An opening of a foot wide was left in the middle, another stake being placed beside it in readiness to fill it up if required. The operation was completed by the light of the fire, as it was pitch dark by the time it was done. Then another meal was cooked and eaten, and the brands carried below, where, at the bottom of the descent, the fire was now kindled. The dogs had for some time been growling angrily in the upper passage, and the fire was no sooner alight below than they broke into a chorus of fierce barking. "We had better bring them down here, Luka, and fill up the opening. I think the wolves must be gathering in numbers." Going up again they sent the dogs down, firmly lashed two cross-bars to the others, and to these lashed the pole they had left in readiness, thus completing the grating across the tunnel. As they worked the smoke from the fire below curled up round them. A few months before Godfrey would have found it almost insupportable, but by this time he had, like the natives, become so accustomed to it that it affected him very little. Still he said to Luka: "You had better break off the hot ends of the sticks so as to have a red fire only for the present, the smoke makes my eyes water so that I can scarcely see. Now the sooner those fellows come to get their first lesson the better." Kneeling by the grating, with his gun in his hand and his spear beside him, Godfrey gazed out, and could presently distinguish the outline of a number of moving figures. "I can see their eyes at the entrance," he said. "Shall I give them a shot, or will you send an arrow into them?" "You fire," Luka replied. "Bow makes no noise, gun will frighten them; besides, I have only twenty arrows and they would get broken. Better keep them till there is need." Godfrey levelled his gun, which was charged with buck-shot, and fired both barrels. Terrific yells and howls followed, and the opening was clear in a moment, though Godfrey could see two or three dark figures on the snow. There was a sound of whimpering and snarling, and then of a fierce fight outside. [Illustration: THE SLAUGHTERED WOLVES.] "They are killing and eating the wounded," Luka said; "when they have done that they will come again. Let them get close up next time." In a few minutes the entrance to the tunnel was darkened again, and then cleared. The dead wolves had been pulled away. Another quarter of an hour and the animals reappeared. As all was silent they gradually approached. Godfrey could hear their panting, and presently heard a noise against the bars. A moment later there was a rush and an outburst of snarling growls, then he and Luka drove their spears again and again between the bars, yells of pain following each stroke. The animals in front were unable to retreat, and the others behind crowded in upon them, maddened with the smell of blood, and all trying to get first at their prey. They quarrelled and fought among themselves, while their cries and growls were answered by the furious barking of the dogs in the shelter below. In two or three minutes Godfrey, who had reloaded his gun, fired both barrels into the mass, and at the flash and sound the wolves again fled. This time they did not venture to re-enter the passage. Occasionally one showed itself, and was instantly shot by Godfrey or Luka, who took turns on watch throughout the night. As soon as the dim light broke they removed the bar and issued out with the dogs. A dozen wolves lay dead outside the bars, seven were scattered round the entrance. Godfrey shot two more who were lurking under the trees, while Luka sent an arrow through another. "There are plenty of them about still," Godfrey said. "Let us get three or four of the dead ones upon a branch out of their reach as food for the dogs, drag the rest away from the entrance to the tunnel, and bring the others up from below. That will give them, with the three we have shot now, enough for a big meal. Then I should think they would move off." This was accordingly done, and they went below and cooked breakfast, while the dogs feasted on a dead wolf. Then they lay down for three hours' sleep. When they went up again the dead wolves had disappeared, only a few bones and the blood-marked snow showing where they had lain. Godfrey fired a couple of shots to scare away any that might be lingering in the neighbourhood, and then replacing the bars they went out hunting, and from that time heard no farther of the wolves. They continued their hunting, shifting their camp occasionally until it was time to rejoin the Ostjaks, and then travelled east. They struck the river some thirty miles below the camp, crossed at once and travelled up the other side until they arrived at the huts. They were heartily welcomed by the natives, and remained there for three days to rest the dogs. They were very glad of getting a supply of fish again. These the Ostjaks had in abundance, as they kept their frozen piles for food when the keenness of the wind rendered the cold so bitter that they were forced to remain in their huts. At other times they fished by torch-light at holes that they kept broken in the ice, spearing the fish, which were attracted by the light. The Ostjaks were surprised at the large number of skins, some of them of the most valuable kind, that Godfrey had brought back, and were impatient for a fresh start. They were this time absent for only six weeks, returning at the beginning of May. The hunt was marked by no adventure. They did fairly well, but were not fortunate in securing any skins of the black fox and but few of the sable. Upon their return the furs that had been taken during the two hunts with the Ostjaks were fairly divided, and Godfrey added his and Luka's shares to those they had themselves obtained. There were over fifty in all, including three black foxes, six sables, and ten martens, the rest being of inferior value. Then a list was made of the necessaries that Luka was to purchase at Turukhansk. These included ten pounds of brick tea, some copper nails if he could obtain them, a store of ammunition, some more fish-hooks, the largest kettle he could buy, a frying-pan, a few pounds of sugar, ten pounds of salt, some stout sheeting, thirty yards of duck canvas, three blocks, a coil or two of rope, needles and twine, a saw, a couple of chisels, and some other tools. "You must make the best bargain you can for the skins, Luka; I have no idea how much they are worth." The Ostjaks were, however, able to tell them the prices the traders pay for the skins of each animal, provided that they were fine specimens and in good condition. The black foxes were worth from fifty to a hundred roubles, the sables from thirty to fifty, the martens some ten roubles less; the other skins were worth from fifteen to thirty roubles. Luka took the sledge and a reindeer and started alone, having gone over the list of things required again and again until Godfrey was convinced that he was perfect. He took his sleeping-bag but no tent. He calculated that he should be away five days, as it would take him two to drive to Turukhansk, and a day there to make his purchases. On the fifth evening he returned, with everything he had been ordered to get, and a few other things that he thought would be useful. He had obtained in all six hundred and fifty roubles as the result of their six months' hunting, and of these had expended a hundred and seventy roubles. "We are well set up for money now, Luka," Godfrey said, as he added the notes to those he before possessed. "I have still four hundred roubles out of what I received from the Buriat, so we have now nearly nine hundred, which will be enough to pay our way to England from any point we may land at." CHAPTER XIV. THE BREAK-UP OF WINTER. Spring was rapidly approaching now. Occasionally for a day or two southerly winds set in and rain fell in torrents, then again the Arctic currents prevailed, and everything was frozen as hard as before. Flocks of geese passed over, flying north, but returned again when the cold set in afresh. Small birds, too, in great numbers made their appearance, crowding on patches of ground that the sun and rain had cleared of snow, fluttering round the tents in flocks, picking up scraps of food that had been thrown out, and keeping the dogs in a state of perpetual excitement. The Ostjaks said that the break-up of the ice might come any day, or it might be delayed for another month; it depended less upon the weather here than on that higher up. It is not the sun or the rain that breaks up the ice, but the rise of the river from the snow melting a thousand miles higher up, and all over the country drained by the rivers running into the Yenesei. The women were now making a canoe under Godfrey's instructions. He had often gone out in canoes on the Severn and on the sea when staying at watering-places there. The craft that had done them such good service before would not do for their present undertaking. They required a boat which should be fairly fast, sea-worthy, and yet light, for it might be necessary to carry it considerable distances. It was necessary that its dimensions should exceed those of an English canoe, for it must carry a considerable amount of food, although of course he meant to depend chiefly on the fishing-lines and gun. It was made five-and-twenty feet long, and three feet wide. The central compartment was thirteen feet long. This was covered in at the sides and ends, leaving an opening for them to sit and paddle, fifteen inches wide, and five feet long. Underneath the covered parts provisions, furs, cooking utensils, &c., could be stowed away on both sides, leaving room for them to lie down at full length in the centre. The two end compartments were entirely covered in, but had openings over which a cover was lashed, and could, if necessary, be used for holding stores; but Godfrey did not intend to put anything here except temporarily, as it was important that the canoe should be as buoyant and light as possible. The frame of the boat was built of the tough and elastic wood of which the Ostjaks made their bows. It was very light, the ribs being bound to the longitudinal pieces by fine gut. It was built, as nearly as Godfrey could lay them out, on the lines of an English cruising canoe. The deck strips were similarly lashed, and when the framework was completed Godfrey tested its strength by dropping it three feet to the ground, rolling it over and over, and trying it in a variety of ways. When fully satisfied with it the work of putting on the cover commenced. This was made of very soft and well-tanned reindeer hide, stretched as tightly as possible, and then rubbed with seal oil. The keel of the boat had been made very strong, as the rigidity of the whole craft depended upon this. It had been made flat, and the skins had been taken over it. When it was finished a false keel six inches in depth in the centre, tapering away to nothing at the ends, was fixed underneath. This keel was also made of tough wood, a little more than a quarter of an inch thick, but widening suddenly to over an inch where it touched the boat, in order that it might be securely fixed with screws to the keel inside. The boat was provided with a light mast, which could be stepped or unstepped at pleasure, and there were two stays of twisted leather, one fastening to each side of the boat. An iron ring with a cord travelled up and down the mast, the halliard running through a small block, as Luka had been able to obtain a sheave at Turukhansk. The sail was a lug made of sheeting, oiled, and the boat carried beside a triangular sail of very much smaller dimensions and stouter cloth for heavy weather. She also carried a small mizzen mast and sail. In rough weather the cockpit could be completely covered with a light apron with openings where the rowers sat, with a sort of collar, which could be lashed tightly round their waists. The edges of this apron could be lashed down over the gunwale round the cockpit. When completed the canoe itself, with its mast and sails, weighed but sixty pounds, and could be carried with ease by one person on his shoulder. The Ostjaks greatly admired the craft, which was entirely different from anything they had ever seen. The false keel puzzled them greatly, and Godfrey's explanations, even when aided by Luka, failed altogether in making them understand that it would have the effect of enabling the craft to sail near the wind without drifting to leeward. The additional draught of water was no inconvenience whatever in a craft designed for the sea, and it added materially to the strength of the canoe. On the 15th of May it was freezing hard. The natives going down to the water's edge in the morning reported a sudden rise of three feet in the river. It continued to rise all day, and by nightfall was fifteen feet above its former level. In the evening the north wind dropped suddenly, and an hour later it sprang up from the south, and by midnight a torrent of rain was falling. Godfrey could hear sounds like the reports of cannon above the pattering of the rain on the skins, and knew that it must be the ice breaking. In the morning when he looked out the whole mass of ice seemed to be moving. Black cracks showed everywhere across the white surface. The river had during the night risen another twenty feet. By mid-day the scene was a wild one indeed. No longer was the surface smooth. Hurrying along at the rate of fifteen miles an hour the great masses of ice were dashed against each other by the force of the current. Two miles lower down the river narrowed suddenly, and here a block was formed. Some of the pieces of ice were thrust down, others climbed over them, thrusting themselves one on the top of the other till a ridge thirty or forty feet high was formed from bank to bank. At times this gave way, and then the whole was whirled down the stream, while another ridge at once commenced to form. Godfrey walked down to the point and stood for hours looking at the scene. The great blocks of ice, six or eight feet thick, seemed almost to be endowed with vitality as they climbed one above the other, until thrust off the crest of the ridge by the pressure of those behind them. The din was prodigious, a crackling, rustling, roaring sound, with sharp explosions and deep muffled booming. The whole air seemed to quiver with sound, and the loudest shout would have been inaudible a yard or two away. Below the ridge the river, so long as the barrier stood, was comparatively clear, but from time to time great masses of ice that had been sunk by the pressure and swept along under the ridge came to the surface with a surge that lifted one end high out of the water, reminding Godfrey of the spring of some enormous fish; then the ice would come down with a mighty splash, and hasten away reeling and rocking on the rapid current. Entranced by this mighty conflict of the forces of nature, Godfrey stood there until seven or eight o'clock in the evening. It would be light for three hours yet, for the sun now only sank for a short time below the horizon. The rain was still falling heavily when he returned to his hut. The river had risen another thirty feet since the evening before, and the height of the bank had decreased from a hundred feet to about thirty. For two more days it rained incessantly. The river had now risen to its high-water mark, ten feet below the bank. Godfrey asked the Ostjaks if there was no fear of its overflowing, but they told him that there was no cause for uneasiness, for that at its present point it overflowed at many places both above and below them, and extended over a vast tract of country, and that at every additional foot it would spread so widely that it would speedily begin to fall again. The ridge had now ceased to form, although the river was still packed with floating masses. "In another two days," the Ostjaks' chief said, "the ice will be all gone except a few blocks. Much of the ice above is carried out by the floods and left to melt on the land as the water lowers, but even without that the river at its present rate would soon carry it all down." This Godfrey could well imagine, for at the rate of fifteen miles an hour over three hundred and sixty miles of the river would have been emptying daily. At the end of another three days but few blocks of ice were visible, and Godfrey now began to make preparations for his start. First the canoe was to be tried. She was taken down and placed in the water, and the sides under the half-decks were filled in with frozen geese and fish from the pile, which was still but little affected by the thaw. When she was thus brought down to nearly the weight she would have to carry, Godfrey and Luka took their places in her, dipped their paddles in the stream, shot out, and paddled about for some time in the still water behind the shelter of the point. Godfrey found to his satisfaction that she paddled easily, quite answering to his expectations. Then Luka, who had already practised the manoeuvre on shore, stepped the masts, fastened the stays, and hoisted the sails. There was a light breeze from the south, and the boat ran rapidly along before it till it was again abreast of the village, then she was put about and made short tacks in the dead-water. Godfrey found that she stood stiffly up to the canvas, and, as far as he could see, made little or no leeway. Then he returned to the village. The Ostjaks, who seldom made use of sails, and then only when dead before the wind, were perfectly astounded alike at the rapidity with which the boat glided through the water and at the ease with which she came about, and were astonished beyond measure at seeing her make a zigzag progress in the teeth of the wind. Early the next morning the rest of the preparations were completed. The tea, tobacco, cooking utensils, and other necessaries were stowed away under the deck astern of Godfrey, together with twenty pounds of fat. This had been carefully set aside for the purpose when animals were killed and cut up. It had been melted down in the chief's large pot and poured into a tin drinking-mug, in which four strands of unravelled cord had been placed to act as wicks. The tin was dipped in ice water, and in a few minutes the fat solidified, then the tin was dipped again, this time in hot water, and the short fat candle with its four wicks then came easily out, and the process was repeated. These candles weighed just about a pound each. Godfrey collected fat enough to make fifty, but being afraid of overburdening the canoe he decided that twenty must suffice, believing that he would be able to pick up drift-wood as they coasted along. A store of pine-wood torches was lashed on the deck on each side of the mast forward of Luka, the fishing spears, hatchets, and other articles for trade stowed away, the furs and their winter garments laid thickly at the bottom of the boat. They took with them Jack, Godfrey's favourite dog, and then, bestowing all the rest of their possessions on the Ostjaks, they took a hearty farewell of them, stepped on board, and started. They had at the last moment decided to take their old boat also with them. This was fastened by a tow-rope behind the canoe. It was filled with frozen provisions, having been first lined with rough furs, others were laid closely over them. In this way Godfrey calculated that they would remain frozen for a long time. The rest of the store of flour and a stock of firewood were added. As to the extra weight of towing the canoe it was immaterial, as until they reached the mouth of the river there would be no occasion for paddling, and beyond that the stock of provisions could be transferred to their own canoe to take the place of those used up on the way, and the craft could then be cast adrift. As there was a light breeze, however, the sail was hoisted, rather because it gave them steerage way than for any increase to their speed. As soon as the canoe shot out into the rougher water in the full force of the stream, Godfrey was still more delighted with the boat, the empty compartments fore and aft rendering her exceedingly buoyant. She had been built with somewhat higher sides than the canoes Godfrey had seen at home, and rose a good deal towards the ends; and she floated as lightly as a cork on the surface of the water. That afternoon they passed Turukhansk. Below this the river widened out. In the evening they lowered the sail, as they did not wish to run the risk of striking either the shore or a piece of ice that might have got delayed on its journey. All night they hurried on, lying snugly in the bottom of the boat with the apron closed overhead. In the morning they found they were not far from the left bank, and that the river now was more than four miles wide. The sail was again hoisted and breakfast made, after which they got out their lines and hooks, baited, and dropped them into the water. During the course of the day they caught several fish, and picked up a considerable quantity of floating wood, which they stowed in the large canoe. "I think, Luka," Godfrey said, "that instead of letting our old boat go we may as well keep it for a time. As long as there is wind, it makes no great difference to our speed, though, of course, it would be heavy if we were paddling. If we had bad weather we could land and turn it bottom upwards, and there would be a hut ready made for us. This canoe is all right for sleeping in when the water is smooth, but with its deep keel we could not sleep in it ashore." Luka was, as usual, quite of Godfrey's opinion. After this they made the old boat their kitchen, for there was but little room in the canoe for cooking purposes; and it was, moreover, a relief to get into the roomy craft where they could move about as they pleased. As drift-wood was abundant they made their fires entirely of this, keeping their candles for the time when they might have to leave their store-boat behind them. On the third day the river widened out greatly. They could no longer see the right bank, and Godfrey concluded that they were now in the Gulf of Yenesei. "The weather is going to change," Luka said the next morning; "the wind will soon be coming from the north; going to blow hard." "In that case, Luka, the sooner we are ashore the better. The current now is nothing like so swift as it was. I don't think we are going past the land at more than three miles an hour, but that would be quite enough if the wind comes from the north to knock up a nasty sea in no time. Let us get our paddles out; there is not a breath of wind." In half an hour they reached the shore, but had to coast along for some time before they found a place free of rocks. "This will do, Luka, we are not a minute too soon; those puffs just now were so strong that we made no way against them. Now, then, jump out and get the canoe high and dry." They had retained their long boots, and stepped out into water up to their knees. Then they lifted the canoe and carried it ashore. "It is heavier than it was when we put it in," Luka said. "I should think so. What with the furs and provisions, candles, and one thing and another, there must be a hundred and fifty pounds weight in her. There, put her down here, Luka, and let us get the other up. We must take the things out first. Quick, man, the wind is getting up fast. Isn't it cold; we shall want our fur jackets on directly." The firewood and provisions were carried up some distance above the water's edge, and then the boat was lifted and placed beside them. A thick sleet had now set in, and the wind was blowing with tremendous gusts. "Now, then, look about, Luka, and see if you can find a sheltered nook. I will pile stones into the well of the canoe so as to anchor her safely. If she were to be rolled over and over her skin would soon be cut to pieces." Before he had finished this Luka returned. "Good place here," he said. "Good shelter." "We'll finish this job first, Luka. This is much more important than our getting wet." As soon as it was done they went to the large canoe, and lifting it carried it away to the place Luka had found--a ridge of rock running back at a right angle from the shore, with a perpendicular face some twelve feet high. At one point there was a deep cleft in it, some eight feet wide at the mouth and narrowing gradually in. "Capital, Luka; we shall be as snug as possible here. Now, turn her over and take her in." The cleft was so deep that the stern of the boat was, when she was laid down bow foremost, fully fifteen feet inside the entrance. "Now it may blow as much as it likes," Godfrey said, "it won't hurt us here. Now do you go and get some of the firewood. I will fetch some skins from the canoe, and the sails." After getting out some provisions, the cooking utensils, and a couple of the candles, Godfrey returned to the boat. Then he made another journey for some more skins and the two sails. By this time the wind was blowing so fiercely that he could scarcely stagger along with his load. The sea was covered with white heads, and the waves were breaking noisily against the rocks. Luka had already brought up plenty of firewood, and had thrown a large skin over the furs containing the frozen fish, and piled stones on it to prevent its being blown away. "Now, where will you put the fire?" he asked. "If you put it inside it would burn the boat, if you put it outside it would be no good to us." "I quite see that, Luka. We must make ourselves comfortable, for this storm may last for days for anything I know. We must prop this end of the boat up so that we can sit upright under it with something to spare. We must pile up some stones a couple of feet high under each gunwale." In a quarter of an hour this was done. The sail was then laid over the boat, the ends being kept down by stones. "That is snug," Godfrey said. "Now we will put the mizzen over forward so as to keep the wind out right along." There were four feet of head room at the entrance to the boat tent, and in front of this the fire was soon lit, one of the pine torches being cut up to start it with. The skins were laid upon the ground, and taking off their wet coats they put on fur jackets. "Now we can see about breakfast, Luka." Luka had run down and filled the kettle, while Godfrey was fastening down the sail. This was placed on the fire, and as soon as it began to burn clear some of the fish they had caught the day before were laid on the glowing embers, together with two legs of a goose. "The thing we are going to have most trouble about, Luka, is fresh water," Godfrey said as they ate their breakfast. Luka looked surprised. "When we once get beyond the stream of the Yenesei," he went on, "the water will be salt." "Salt!" Luka repeated. "Yes, too salt to make tea with. We shall be all right for a time, no doubt. What with the melting snow and the rains we have had, there are sure to be lots of little streams running into the sea; but when the land dries we shall be in a bad way." Luka looked serious; this was altogether beyond his experience. "Of course if we can get plenty of fresh fish we shall get on fairly, as we sha'n't require much to drink. We will look about the rivers when I can get at the map. I know there is a small one called the Gida running in just between the mouths of the Yenesei and Obi; and there is the Kara on farther, and then the Petchora. As far as I can remember that is all that were marked, but of course there may be lots of little streams that were not put down. There is one thing, if we find that we generally get wind, and can keep the big boat with us, we could make her carry water as well as fuel. She would hold any quantity, for half a dozen barrels would not sink her above an inch. We should certainly get out of the difficulty that way. It gave me quite a fright at first. I felt so sure that I had thought of everything, and there, I never for a moment thought about the sea being salt. How it is blowing outside! It is lucky indeed you have found such a snug corner, Luka, for if we had been out in the open we could only have piled stones in the boat to prevent it blowing away, and lain at full length underneath her, which would be all well enough for one night, but would be a frightful nuisance if it had to go on for three or four days." So sheltered were they, indeed, that they scarce felt the wind that was howling above them, and were as comfortable beneath their boat as they had been in their hut by the river side. "When it is as rough as this in the gulf, Luka, it will be tremendous out at sea." Luka had never seen waves higher than those in some of the rapids of the upper river, and he was astonished at the white-headed waves and at the showers of spray they sent up as they struck the rocks. "Are the waves ever much bigger than this?" he asked. "Bigger! I should think so. Out in the open sea one of the waves would make a hundred of these." "Then they must break the vessels to pieces, Godfrey?" "No, they are built very stout and strong, and very big. They get broken to pieces if the sea drives them against rocks, and sometimes in very great storms get so beaten by the waves that the planks open and the water runs in and they sink." "I should not like to go to sea if the waves were like that," Luka said thoughtfully. "This is terrible. Why, if we had not come ashore in time the boat would have sunk." "She would have made a good fight for it, Luka. With the apron tied in round us we could stand a very heavy sea. So long as we keep her head to the waves the water might wash over us, but it could not get in; and even if it did fill the space where we sleep, the compartments at the ends are quite buoyant enough to keep her up." "What would you do if you were out in what you call a great sea, Godfrey?" "I should lash the mast and the sail and our paddles and the firewood together, fasten our mooring rope to them and throw them overboard, that would keep us head to sea--because these things would all float in the water, and the wind would not get hold of them. They call a contrivance like that a floating anchor. Then we would both lie down in the bottom, button the flaps over the holes in the cover, and lie there as snugly as possible. You see our weight would be down quite low in the boat then, and that would keep her steady. Oh, we should get on capitally if there were plenty of room for us to drift." "How far have we to go now?" "I can't exactly tell you. I wish I knew. From the long jagged cape, which is the northern point of land on the western side of the Gulf of Yenesei and forms the separation between it and the mouth of the Gulf of Obi, to Waigatz Straits, between the mainland and Waigatz Island, which lies south of the island called Nova Zembla, is about two hundred and fifty miles in a straight line, but I should think it is quite three times that if we have to follow all the ins and outs of the shore. From there to Archangel, if we go in to Archangel, is about three hundred and fifty miles more, cutting across everything. If we had a current with us, like the stream of the Yenesei, we should make very short work of it; but unfortunately there is nothing of that sort. Paddling steadily we might go three miles an hour--say a hundred miles in three days. If we had wind that would help us, of course we should go a great deal faster, because we should paddle and sail too." "But if we don't go to the place you call Archangel, where should we go?" "We should keep far north of it, Luka, and sailing in a straight line nearly due west, should strike the northern coast of Norway somewhere or other. I should say, from what I saw of it on the map, it would be five hundred miles from Waigatz. But that would be madness for us to attempt. We might get caught in terrible storms; we might get into fogs, and as we have no compass there we should lie, not knowing which way to go. No, we must stick to the land till we get to the mouth of the White Sea. With a favourable wind we should get across that in a day, and then go on coasting again till we get beyond the Russian frontier; then at the first village we come to we land, find out all about the distances, and arrange to get taken in reindeer sledges to some regular settlement." "What sort of people are they there?" Luka asked. "They are the same sort of people as the Samoyedes. I don't know that they are just the same. Anyhow, they speak the same sort of language. Well, you know the Northern Ostjaks we stayed with speak nearly the same as the Samoyedes. You could hardly get on with them at first, because their talk was so different to that of the Southern Ostjaks; but you got to speak it quite easily at last. So I have no doubt you will be able to make any natives you may meet, whether they are Samoyedes or anything else, understand you without difficulty. "What is it, Jack? What are you whining about?" he asked the dog, who, having made a hearty meal, had been lying down between them while they were talking, but who now sat up, snuffing and whining uneasily. "It may be either a fox or a bear," Luka said, making his way farther back into the hut, and returning with his bow and arrows, Godfrey's gun, and the two spears. "I hope it is a bear," Godfrey said as he removed the charges of shot, and rammed down bullets in their place. "We don't want any more skins, unless it happens to be a black fox, which would be worth having, but a supply of bear meat would come in very handy." The dog's whine presently changed into an angry growl. "Bear sure enough. I expect he knows of this place, and has come here for shelter. He had much better have left it alone. It is lucky for us that the fire has burnt low; it would have scared him if it had been blazing. Lie down, Jack." Lying perfectly still they presently heard a sharp snuffing noise, and a minute or two later a bear came round a corner of the rock. Astonished at the sight of the white object, the animal sat up on its haunches. "Now!" Luka exclaimed, and discharged his arrow at the same moment that Godfrey had pulled his trigger. The arrow struck the bear in the throat, and such was the force with which it was sent that the head showed at the back of the neck. Godfrey's bullet struck it in the chest, and the bear at once rolled over. Thinking it was killed, he crawled from under the boat and ran forward, but the animal suddenly rose to its feet; running up alongside, he placed the muzzle close to its ear and pulled the other trigger. [Illustration: LUKA FACES THE BEAR.] "It is dead now, Luka," he shouted as he bent over it. At the same moment he heard a cry of warning, and was simultaneously struck a heavy blow which stretched him on the ground beside the bear. It flashed through his mind that his assailant was the female bear. He had heard from the Ostjaks that the best plan, if attacked by an enraged bear, was to sham death, and he therefore lay without moving a muscle as he was struck down. He heard the twang of Luka's bow, and Jack's sharp barking close to his ear. Then with a deep angry growl the bear left him and rushed towards the tent. Godfrey at once sprang to his feet. He had not brought his spear with him as he crawled out, but he sprang to the fire and dragged out a brand. Luka had discharged another arrow, and Jack was harassing the bear by snapping at its hind-legs. In terror for the safety of the canoe rather than that of Luka, who could, he knew, well defend himself, Godfrey leapt forward and struck the bear across the nose with the brand. With a roar of fury it turned upon him, but as it did so it exposed its side to Luka, who discharged another arrow behind its shoulder. It rolled over and over, but again gained its feet. The pause, however, had given Luka time to emerge from under the boat with his spear in his hand, and running up he thrust it right through the body, and the bear fell over dead. Then he ran to Godfrey. "Are you hurt?" he asked. "I am hurt a bit, Luka, for I felt a sharp pain as the beast knocked me over, but I do not think it can be much. It was very lucky that we put our fur jackets on again; if it hadn't been for that, I expect he would have regularly laid open my shoulder." He took off his coat. The bear's claws had penetrated through the skin, and had scored three gashes on his shoulder. But these, Luka said, were of no great depth, and beyond making his arm stiff for paddling for a day or two would matter little. They at once set about skinning the two bears, put the four hams carefully aside, cut off most of the meat, gave Jack another hearty meal, and then retired again to their shelter. "My heart was in my mouth when I saw him rushing at the tent; if he had struck the boat, or thrown his weight upon it, it would have been a terrible business." "I was afraid too," Luka said. "I was just going to shoot again when you struck him on the nose, and so gave me a chance of hitting him in a vital spot. If it hadn't been for your blow I should hardly have stopped him; he was so close that even if I wounded him mortally he would have come down on the boat." "Well, it is fortunate it has ended so, Luka; it will be a lesson to me when I shoot a bear next to look out for its mate, and also not to leave my spear behind me, or to advance towards a bear I think dead until I have loaded my gun again." For two days longer they had to remain in their shelter; but the third morning when they awoke the wind had died away, and the sun was shining brightly. As there was still some sea on, Godfrey determined to stay another day and explore the coast a little. Leaving Luka to look after the boats and goods in case any more bears might be in the neighbourhood, he started with Jack. He was amazed at the quantity of birds that he met with--thrushes, wagtails, warblers, chifchaffs, fieldfares, and red-poles rose at every step. The air quivered with the song of innumerable larks, which mingled with those of the willow-warblers; snipe in considerable numbers sprang up and darted off with a sharp cry from almost under his feet; plovers circled round and round; ducks of various kinds passed between the shore, and, as Godfrey supposed, inland swamps or lakes; martins in great numbers darted hither and thither hawking for insects. Occasionally birds, which he supposed to be grouse, rose with a loud whirr. Short as was the time since the snow had cleared off the ground, spring had come in with marvellous rapidity. The grass was already well-nigh knee-deep, and flowers of various kinds were in full bloom. Where the ground was comparatively bare of grass, it was studded with the yellow blossoms of wild heart's-ease, and amongst some stunted alder-trees Godfrey found a dwarf rose already in bud, and wild onions and wild rhubarb in flower. Then he came upon a broad expanse of a shrub that looked to him like a rhododendron, with a flower with a strong aromatic scent. Several times he heard the call of a cuckoo. On a patch of sand there were some wild anemones in blossom. Godfrey pulled a bulb of wild onion, cut off a slice and tasted it. It was similar in flavour to the cultivated plant, but very sharp and acrid. However he set to work, and pulled up several dozen bulbs. They were small, not exceeding the size of a radish, but they would be very valuable, as one of them chopped fine would be sufficient to give a savour to a whole goose. Turning to the right and coming down upon the shore he saw that the edge of the water was fringed with seagulls of various kinds picking up tiny fish as the waves broke in sandy coves, or scuttling into the water and making sudden dips and dives into it. Farther out flocks of black ducks were feeding, while two or three pairs of swans passed overhead going north. Presently he saw three or four native huts ahead; some reindeer were grazing near them, and three boats were hauled upon the shore. These were doubtless Samoyedes. As soon as he caught sight of them he turned. He had heard that the Samoyedes, although more friendly than the Tunguses with strangers, were much less to be depended upon than the Ostjaks, and as he had no faith in being able to explain what he was doing there with his comparatively limited command of the Ostjak language, he thought it better to return at once to Luka. He found when he reached the tent that the Tartar was beginning to feel anxious, for he had been four hours absent. As they had abundance of food, and had no occasion to trade with the natives at present, they decided not to pay a visit to them. As soon as dinner had been cooked, they set to work to get everything in readiness for a start. The stores were taken out of the canoe, and she was carried down to within a few feet of the water. The tent was dismantled, and the boat also carried down. Then they devoted themselves for the rest of the afternoon to collecting more drift-wood, for the water was again falling, and the highest level it had reached was strewn with debris. As there was now no practical distinction between night and day they lay down and slept for four or five hours, then put the large canoe into the water, and placed the firewood in her, with the stock of flour, frozen meat, and the bears' flesh; then with the kettle and frying-pan they baled eight or ten buckets of water into her, for Godfrey did not know how soon the river would become brackish. They spread the bear-skin over all, then having carefully repacked the canoe, they put her also into the water, stepped the mast, took their places in her, hoisted the sail, and with the boat in tow started north again. The wind was from the south, and with the assistance of the current they went along rapidly; but, nevertheless, the paddles were got to work, as, now that they were fairly on their way again, every mile gained was of importance. They kept about a mile from shore so as to take advantage of the current. In twenty minutes the native encampment was passed. They saw no one moving about there, and supposed that they must all be asleep, for the sun was low down on the horizon. Godfrey's watch was still going, but as he had had no opportunity of comparing it with any other timepiece for just a year, he could only consider it to be an approximate guide. Once a month or so he had made a point of setting it. This he did by sticking up a pole and measuring the shadow it cast, knowing that this would be at its shortest at twelve o'clock. By this means he calculated that he was never more than half an hour wrong. The shore continued very flat, and once or twice they saw sand-banks stretching out a considerable distance. Sometimes both paddled, sometimes Godfrey steered only and Luka laid in his paddle. Three times in the course of the day the big canoe was pulled up, and Luka went on board and cooked a meal, the flat slab on which they lit their fire having been raised three or four inches above the bottom to keep it out of the water. Hitherto Godfrey had done all the steering when the boat was under sail, but he now instructed Luka. Little teaching was, indeed, needed, as the steering was done with the paddle, and Luka was accustomed to keeping the boat straight when paddling. He was, however, nervous with the sail, which was boomed straight out with a light spar Godfrey had cut for the purpose. However as the wind was dead aft there was no fear of this jibing so long as the boat's course was kept true; this was rendered all the more easy by the steady drag of the boat astern. Twelve hours after starting Godfrey told Luka to lie down and sleep, as he intended that so long as they had favourable winds they should continue their voyage without stopping. There was no occasion for going ashore. The bears' flesh would last them as long as it kept good, and they had plenty of water on board for at least a fortnight. In a few minutes Luka was sound asleep. Jack lay on the deck in front of him, sometimes sleeping, sometimes waking up, and giving a sharp bark in reply to the cry of a sea-gull passing overhead, or a flock of black ducks skimming along close to the surface of the water within fifty yards of the boat. CHAPTER XV. COASTING. The current was now losing its power, and Godfrey, dipping his hand into the water and then putting it to his lips, found that it was distinctly brackish, and congratulated himself upon having laid in a stock of water when he did. After Luka had slept for six hours, Godfrey roused him. "Now, Luka, you must take my place and steer; move very carefully else we shall capsize her. That is it. Now, if there is any change you lean forward and touch me; I shall wake in a moment. If the sail should shift over to the other side all you have got to do is to shift this sheet to its fastening on that side. With this light wind jibing does not matter at all, but if the wind freshens wake me at once." For a quarter of an hour Godfrey watched to see that Luka steered steadily, then he worked himself down in the cockpit and closed his eyes. It did not seem to him that he had been asleep long when Luka touched him. "I would not have woke you," Luka said; "but the land seems going right away from us." Godfrey sat up. "So it is, Luka! I should not be surprised if that is the extreme northern point. Of course it may be only a deep bay, but at any rate we must see." He looked at his watch, "Why, I have been asleep nearly seven hours. Now, Luka, you had better haul the boat alongside, and see about cooking. We forgot to try those onions yesterday. Cut one up small and put it in the pan with the meat. By the by, you had better tie a piece of cord to those four bears' hams, and let them tow overboard for two or three hours. The water must be quite salt now, and when you take them out we will rub a little fresh salt into them. They ought to keep well then." As soon as Luka had got into the boat--Jack jumping in with him, as he always made a point of superintending the cooking operations--Godfrey took his place in the stern, jibed the sail, which had before been on the port quarter, over to starboard, brought her head somewhat to the north of west, and hauled in the sheet. Lying over till the water nearly touched her gunwale, the light little craft would have gone speedily along had it not been for the drag of the boat astern. This, however, towed lightly, for she was loaded with but a very small proportion of the weight she would carry. Godfrey judged, by the objects on the shore, that they could not be going along less than three miles an hour. In six hours the land trended away due south, and he knew that they had now reached the first of the two deep bays they would have to pass before reaching the northern extremity of the Cape. He kept on his course, and an hour later, with the exception of the low coast nearly astern, no land was to be seen. Luka, who was paddling steadily, looked round. He had such implicit confidence in his companion that he was quite sure the boat was keeping the right course, but he had a vague sense of uneasiness at seeing nothing but sea around him. "How do you know which way to go?" he asked. "I know that by keeping on the same way we were going past the last land, we shall strike the coast again on the other side of this bay. I think it is twenty or thirty miles across. I can tell the way by the wind in the first place, and in the second place by the position of the sun. You see it is over my right shoulder at present; there is the mark of my shadow on the side. I have got to keep it about there, making some allowance for the change in the position of the sun." Luka understood this. "But suppose the wind was to change?" he said. "I should know it by the position of the sun. You see at present it comes nearly due south, and is blowing almost straight towards the sun; but if it were very cloudy, or at night when I could not see the sun, I should not be able to tell. Then after holding on till I felt sure that we were well past the mouth of this bay, I should put her about on the other tack, and should be sure to come upon the land sooner or later. Anyhow, even in the darkest night we should know if the wind had gone round to the north, as it would be so much colder. Besides, there is never a great shift of wind like that without knowing it; the one wind is sure to drop, and there would be something like a dead calm before the other set in. Anyhow, with a bright sun and a steady wind like this we cannot go wrong, and you will see land ahead in seven or eight hours." It was less than six hours when Godfrey saw the low land ahead, and they were presently coasting along it again with the wind free, for they were now running but little to the west of north. Thirty miles farther there was another break in the coast. "That was a first-rate map I made the tracing from," Godfrey said; "the coast-line is most accurately marked. Now we have another run of about the same distance as the last, then there is about fifty miles almost due north, then we shall be round this other Cape." They made the passage safely across, although it took them longer than the first, for the wind dropped lighter, and they had both to use their paddles. "We have just done it in time, Luka, and that is all. If we had been half an hour later there would be nothing for it but to anchor. Look at that white cloud on the water; that is a fog; we are only just in time. I am heading for that cove. Paddle hard, Luka, or it will be on us now before we get there." They had just entered the cove, which was forty or fifty feet wide, and ran as many yards into the land, when the fog rolled over them. "It is like a wet blanket," Godfrey said; "it is thirty or forty degrees colder than it was a minute back. Paddle very slowly and carefully now, Luka, and dip your paddle deeply in. I want to go as far up this creek as I can; but I don't want to run ashore." Very gently they paddled on until Godfrey felt the ground at a depth of about three feet. "That will do nicely," he said. "Now I will drop the anchor over." The anchor was one of Ostjak manufacture. It consisted of a long, flat, narrow stone weighing about six pounds; to each of the flat sides were lashed two pieces of fir, about an inch and a half in diameter. They projected a few inches below the stone, and were cut off just below a branch of about an inch in diameter and eight or ten inches long. These branches, when growing, bent downwards and slanted at an angle closely resembling that of the fluke of an anchor with the upright. The whole, therefore, was an excellent imitation of an anchor with four flukes, two on each side, the stone serving as a weight. This was thrown out of the bow of the canoe, and a couple of fathoms of line let out. Then Godfrey hauled up the larger boat and fastened it alongside. They could just make out the outline of the shore about fifteen feet on either side of them. "We must take to our fur jackets again, Luka; my teeth are chattering, and after working as hard as we have been doing for the last three or four hours it won't do to get a chill. I am as hungry as a hunter; we had breakfast at five o'clock by my watch, and it is three now." Luka soon lit the fire in the boat. The provisions in the canoe had been finished two days before, as they had been obliged to throw overboard what they had not eaten owing to its having become unfit for use. The food, however, wrapped up in furs in the boat was still solidly frozen. They cut a couple of fish out of the mass and placed them in the frying-pan; stuck a wooden skewer through some pieces of bear's meat and held them in the flame, and hung the bear's hams, as they did each time they cooked, in the smoke of the fire. "We must try to get some more fish next time we set sail, Luka. I am sure we passed through several shoals of fish by the swirling of the water." It was thirty-six hours before the fog cleared off, swept away by a south-westerly wind. As they had nothing to do but to eat and sleep during this time, they got up their anchor and hoisted their sail the moment the fog cleared off, and in eighteen hours reached the sharp point of the Cape. Rounding this, Godfrey said: "Now, Luka, we are at the mouth of the Gulf of Obi. It is nearly two hundred miles, according to this map, to the opposite side, and we daren't try to make that; besides, the wind has been getting more to the west and would be right in our teeth, for you see by this tracing the opposite point of land is a good bit to the south of west. There is nothing for it but for us to keep along this shore for something like a hundred and fifty miles. We can lay our course well with this wind. The gulf won't be more than eighty miles wide there, and we can strike across and coast down the opposite bank. It seems a long way round, but we shall do it as quickly as we should beating right across in the teeth of this wind. I doubt if we could do that at all with this craft behind us." Fortunately the wind was not high, or they could not have ventured out, as a heavy swell would have set in from the other side of the gulf. They kept their course within half a mile of the shore. "What are those black things on that low point?" Godfrey asked. "I can hear them barking. They must be tremendously big dogs, if they are dogs." "They are seals," Luka said; "they go right up the rivers in summer, and the Samoyedes and Yuruks kill great numbers on the coast. They eat the flesh and sell the teeth for ivory." "Well, we don't want them at present," Godfrey said; "but if we fall short of food we will see whether we can kill some. At present the great thing is to get on." Night and day the canoe kept on her way. Except when Godfrey was asleep Luka did not steer, for he did not like the management of the sail, especially now that the boat at times heeled over a great deal with the beam wind. He himself took his sleep by fits and starts two or three hours at a time, and except when cooking, paddled away assiduously. Twice Godfrey was lucky enough to bring down some ducks when a flock swept past the boat within shot. They had, too, a supply of fresh fish, for Godfrey now always had two lines out towing astern, with some white geese feathers fastened to the hooks as bait. Ordinarily they caught nothing, but they passed through several large shoals of fish, and at these times they pulled them out as fast as they could haul in and let go the lines, sometimes bringing in three or four at a time, as there were six hooks on each line. These fish were herrings, and they formed a welcome change. Luka had never seen one before, for although they penetrate for some distance up the great rivers, they never ascend to the upper waters. Jack, too, benefited greatly, for of late he had been kept on somewhat short rations, as they had now been reduced to the four half-cured bear's hams and a comparatively small stock of frozen food. On the fifth day after rounding the cape the wind, which had been gradually getting lighter, dropped altogether, and for the next two days both of them worked steadily with their paddles. "We must have made a good two hundred miles," Godfrey said; "and we could safely venture to strike across in such quiet weather as this, but there is a river marked on the chart as coming in somewhere here, and I want to find it if I can. There is water enough for another week, but it begins to taste horribly of skin, and besides that it has a considerable mixture of ashes. I am sure we must be very close to it; indeed, according to my calculation of two hundred miles, we ought to have passed it already. Anyhow, we will keep on until we get there." Godfrey was not far out, for late in the day they saw an opening of some fifty yards wide in the bank. They at once made for it, and entering it, paddled along as near the bank as they could go to avoid the current. Godfrey tasted the water from time to time, and after paddling for two hours pronounced it perfectly sweet. "We will land here, Luka. I am sure we both want to stretch our limbs a bit and have a rest. Look about for a good place to land; the banks are too steep to be able to get the big canoe up, but we can carry the other--it is light enough now." They presently found a place where a portion of the bank had fallen in and left a gap. Here they landed, moored the large canoe to the shore and carried the other up the bank. An exclamation of pleasure broke from Godfrey at the wide expanse of bright green dotted with flowers. Jack was exuberant in his delight, circling round and round like a wild thing, barking loudly and occasionally throwing himself down to roll. The two paddles were driven firmly into the ground, the sail unlaced from the yard, which was lashed to the paddles as a ridge-pole, over which the sail was thrown. The furs were taken out of the boat and spread in the tent. "We will have a cup of tea, Luka, and then turn in for twelve hours' sleep. I am sure we deserve it." After a long rest they woke thoroughly refreshed; then, while Luka was lighting a fire, Godfrey went down to the river, stripped, and had a short swim, the water being too cold to permit his stopping more than two or three minutes in it. When they had had breakfast he said: "Now, Luka, do you go down to the boat, take the firewood out, and then sluice the boat thoroughly with water and get it perfectly clean. By the time you have done that I shall be back, and we will then lift her out of the water and turn her bottom upwards to dry thoroughly. Then we will melt down some of that bear fat we saved and give her a thorough rubbing with it. But we will leave that job until to-morrow; it will take four-and-twenty hours for her to dry. I am going out with my gun to see what I can shoot. The whole place seems full of birds, though they are mostly small ones; still I might come across something better. You had better keep Jack with you." Godfrey's expedition was not a very successful one. He brought back four grouse and a dozen small birds, which he had killed with a single shot, firing into the thick of a flock that flew by overhead. The grouse were roasted for dinner, and Godfrey found to his satisfaction that Luka had baked a pile of cakes, this being the first time they had tasted bread for a fortnight, as it demanded more time and attention than they could spare to it in the boat. Luka told him that several flights of black duck had passed up the river while he had been at work at the boat, and volunteered to grease the boat next day if Godfrey would try to get a shot at them. "It will be of no use my trying to shoot them on the river," Godfrey said, "as I should have no means of picking them up; and I can tell you I found the water too cold this morning to care about stripping and swimming out for them. I will have another try on the plain. I saw four or five deer to-day, but only the first passed within shot, and as I had not a bullet in the gun he got off without my firing at him. I will try to-morrow if I can't stalk one." Accordingly the next day Godfrey set out. After an hour's walking he saw three deer. He worked round very cautiously so as to get a clump of bushes between him and them, and then crawled up to it and looked through. They were a hundred and fifty yards away, and he had no confidence in his gun at that distance. He stood for some time thinking, and then remembered he had read that on the American plains the deer were often decoyed into coming close up to the hunter by working upon their curiosity. He drew his ramrod out from his gun, put the cap he wore--which was the fur one with tails--on to the end of it, pushed this through the bushes, and began to wave it to and fro. The deer caught sight of it immediately, and stood staring at it for a minute or two, ready to bound away should the strange object seem to threaten danger. As nothing came of it, they began to move towards it slowly and with hesitation, until they gathered in a group at a distance of not more than fifty yards. Godfrey, while waving the cap with one hand, was holding his gun in readiness with the other. Feeling sure that he could not miss the mark now, he gently lowered the cap and raised his gun to his shoulder. Slight as was the movement it startled the deer; but as they turned to fly he fired both barrels at the shoulder of the one nearest to him, and had the satisfaction of seeing it fall, while its companions dashed away over the plain. He ran up to the fallen animal and found that it was already dead, both bullets having struck it in the region of the heart. He proceeded to cut off the head and the lower part of the legs, opened and cleaned it, and was then able to lift it on to his shoulder. As he neared the tent Jack came tearing along to meet him with loud barks of welcome. "Yes, I have got food for you for some time, Jack, though it does not seem to me that you do much to earn it." Luka was at work greasing the boat. Godfrey called him up on to the bank. "We must try and do something to preserve the meat, Luka." "Shall we rub it with salt, Godfrey?" "We can spare some salt, but not much. It would never do to be left without that. We can do well enough without bread, but we can't do without salt." "Smoke it well," Luka said. "We might try that, but I am afraid those hams are beginning to go." "Not smoke enough, Godfrey." "No, I suppose not." "They must have plenty, lots of smoke." "Well, there is plenty of wood to make smoke with." "We must keep it close," Luka said. "We ought to smoke it for two days." "We can keep it close enough by cutting some poles and making a circular tent with the sail. It will spoil its whiteness, but that is of no great consequence. You had better leave the boat for the present, Luka, and come with me and cut poles and boughs for the fire." Taking hatchets they started out and presently cut eight poles ten feet long. "Now which is the best wood for smoking it with?" "Pine makes the best smoke next to oak." "There are plenty of stunted pines about, and I should think some of this aromatic shrub with it would be good. I will make up two big bundles of that, and we will take them and the poles back first; then we will cut some pine boughs." As all these were obtained within a few hundred yards of the camp, they had soon materials for their fire. The poles were then stuck in a circle and lashed together at the top, the sail taken down and wrapped round it. It was not large enough, but by adding the storm-sail and the hide of the deer the covering was made complete. Then a number of sticks were tied from pole to pole across it. The deer-flesh was then cut up into strips of about a foot long, three or four inches wide, and half an inch thick; and these were hung over the sticks until the whole of the deer was so disposed of. The three remaining bear's hams were also hung up, and a fire of the pine-wood was then with some difficulty lighted and some of the sweet-smelling shrub laid on it. Godfrey, who had undertaken this part of the business while Luka went back to the boat, crawled out from the tent almost blinded. "By Jove!" he said as he closed the aperture, "if it is as bad as that now that it is only just lighted, the meat ought to be smoked as dry as a chip by to-morrow." Godfrey had nothing to do now but to watch the smoke rising from the opening at the top of the tent, opening the entrance a little whenever it slackened, drawing the sticks together with the iron ramrod, and throwing on a fresh armful of the fuel. Having finished greasing the boat, Luka did the same to the canoe. They spent the next twenty-four hours in alternately sleeping, collecting drift-wood on the river-bank, and attending to the fire, which had to be watched carefully, and some dry splinters added from time to time to get the green wood to keep alight. Every hour or two a piece of meat was taken out and examined, and in thirty hours from the time of lighting the fire Luka pronounced that it was done. The strips had shrivelled to half their former thickness and were almost black in colour. "They will give us plenty of work for our teeth, Luka," Godfrey said. "They look almost like shoe-leather, but perhaps they will be better than they look. I once tasted some smoked reindeer tongues--at least they called them reindeer tongues, but I do not suppose they were--and they were first-rate. Now there is nothing more to do; let us get ready for another start." The sail was taken off and the poles chopped into five-feet lengths. "We will lay them in the bottom of the boat, Luka, four longways and four crossways. As there are sixteen of them, that will make the top line five or six inches above the floor. Then we will lay our firewood on them. In that way it won't get wet with the water, and, what is quite as important, it won't dirty the water." This was done. The flour and deer's flesh were stowed on similar platforms fore and aft of the firewood and covered with skins. Some twelve buckets of water were then baled in. What remained of the frozen provisions was inspected; but it was agreed that as it had already melted a good deal, it would not be eatable much longer, and as they had food enough to last for some time, it was of no use keeping it. It was therefore broken up, Jack was allowed to eat as much as he wanted, and the rest was left. When everything was packed the canoe was carried down and placed in the water, and they took their places; Jack jumped on board, and a fresh start was made. As soon as they emerged from the small river, they struck out straight from the land. The wind was light and from the north, and both took their paddles. Their four days' rest had done them good, and the canoe, under the influence of sail and oar, went fast through the water. "Twenty-four hours ought to take us across," Godfrey said. "The gulf looks from eighty to ninety miles across at the point where the river runs into it. We must head rather to the south, for there is sure to be a current out in the middle, as the Obi is a big river." It was, however, thirty hours before they reached the opposite shore--Godfrey accounting for the difference on the supposition that the stream must have been a good deal stronger than they expected, and must have drifted them down a long way. They found, indeed, that even inshore they were passing the land at a rate of nearly two miles an hour. "That is all the better, Luka, for with this north wind our sail will be no good to us. We may as well get it down at once and stow it. The shores are muddy, I see; so we shall not hurt the canoe if we should drift up against it. That is a comfort, for we can both go to sleep. I am sure, after thirty hours' paddling with only two or three long easies, we deserve a rest. First of all we must have a meal. One does not know whether to call it dinner or supper when there is no night and we sleep just when we are tired." They had caught eight or ten fish as they came across, passing through a great shoal of herrings. In half an hour the kettle was boiling over the fire, the fish were hissing and crackling in the frying-pan over it, and a strip of deer's flesh, with the ramrod run through it, was frizzling. It was pronounced excellent. There was a slight aromatic bitterness that gave a zest and flavour to it, and the flesh inside was by no means so tough as Godfrey had expected to find it. When all three of the voyagers had satisfied their hunger, the brands were as usual extinguished, the embers thrown overboard; then returning to the canoe, they lay down, and were in a very few minutes fast asleep. They slept for six hours, and when they woke the land was no longer in sight. "It is lucky there is no fog," Godfrey said, "and that we have the sun to act as a compass. We can't be many miles out. We won't make straight for shore, Luka; we will head about north-west, so as to edge in gradually. There must be a good deal of current here, and it will be helping us along." In an hour the low line of coast was visible, and they then headed still more to the north. "There must be a good three-mile-an-hour current here," Godfrey observed presently. "We are going along first-rate past the shore. It took us over five days to come up. At this rate we shall go down in two." They paddled steadily for twelve hours, stopping once only to cook a meal. Then they went close inshore again, had supper, and slept. When they woke they found they were still within a mile of the shore, and the current was now taking them along no more than a mile an hour. "The gulf must be wide here, Luka. I don't think we should gain anything by going out four or five miles farther, so we will keep about as we are. We ought to be at the point by the end of to-day's work. We were two hundred miles up. I expect we drifted down five-and-twenty miles in crossing, and we must have passed the land at a good five miles an hour yesterday; so that we ought not to be more than thirty or forty miles from the point, for this peninsula does not go as far north as the other by twenty or thirty miles." After eight hours' paddling they found themselves at the mouth of a deep bay. "That is all right," Godfrey said, examining his tracing. "That land on the farther side of the bay is the northern point of the gulf. We will paddle across there and anchor by the shore for to-night. To-morrow we shall have a long paddle, for it is seventy or eighty miles nearly due west to a sheltered bay that lies just this side of Cape Golovina. Once round that, we have nearly four hundred miles to go nearly due south into Kara Bay. This long tongue of land we are working round is called the Yamal Peninsula. Once fairly down into Kara Bay, we shall leave Siberia behind us, and the land will be Russia." They struck across the bay, and landed under shelter of the cape. The land was higher here than any they had before met; and after their sleep Godfrey took his gun, accompanied by Jack, and ascended the hill. "It is rum," he said to himself, as he gazed over the wide expanse of sea to the north, "that this should be one sheet of ice in the winter. I do not like the look of those clouds away to the north. I think we are going to have either a fog or a gale. We won't make a move till we see. This coast seems rocky, and it won't do to make along it unless we have settled weather." He returned and told Luka, and then wandered away again, as he had seen that birds were very plentiful, and he returned in three hours to the boat with a dozen grouse, six ptarmigan, and a capercailzie. Godfrey was now a good shot, and the birds, never having been disturbed by the approach of man, were so tame that he had no difficulty whatever in making a bag. As he went down to the boat he congratulated himself that they had not made a start, for the sky was now overcast, and the wind was already blowing strongly. "We will have some bread to-day, Luka. These birds deserve something to eat with them, and our flour is holding out well. We have not eaten above twenty pounds since we started. I wish we had some yeast or something to make it rise. By the by I have an idea. Don't mix that till I come back, Luka." Here, as when he landed on the Yenesei, he had seen numbers of rough nests on the ground, the birds being so tame that they often did not fly off even when he passed quite close to them. He returned to a spot where he had seen these nests quite thick, and had no difficulty in collecting a large number of little eggs of a great variety of colour. "I expect about two out of every three are bad," he said. "We shall have to break them singly to find out the good ones. Fancy making a cake of sparrows' eggs!" Upon breaking them he found that not more than one in five was good. Still there were quite enough for the purpose. The frying-pan was used as a basin, and in this he made a sort of batter of eggs and flour. By the time he had done this four of the grouse were nearly roasted. He poured the batter into the empty kettle, melted some deer's fat in the pan, and then poured in the batter again. Then he washed out and filled the kettle, and placed it upon the fire. "Now, by the time the water is boiling, Luka, the batter and the grouse will be cooked. That is what we call a Yorkshire pudding at home; it will go splendidly with the birds." The pudding turned out really good, and they enjoyed the meal immensely, Jack having the bones of the four birds for his share, together with the solitary fish they had caught the day before. By the time they had finished they were glad to get up their tent, which they pitched with the entrance close to the fire, for even in the sheltered spot where they were fierce gusts of cold wind swept down upon them. The canvas of the tent was fastened down by heavy stones placed upon it, the furs brought in, and everything made snug. For three days the storm raged. "It is a nuisance losing so much time," Godfrey said. "It was somewhere about the middle of June when we started, and there are only three months of open weather here. Every day is of importance. I sha'n't so much mind when we get to the mouth of the Petchora, for I heard from one of the Russians in the prison that canoes often go as far as that from Archangel to trade, so I shall feel when I get there that we are getting into civilized regions. It is about four hundred miles from Kara Bay, so that we have a good eight hundred miles to travel before we get there. We can certainly paddle forty miles a day by sticking to it steadily; but allowing for another stoppage of four days, and we can't allow less than that, that will be a fortnight. How long have we been now, Luka? There is nothing to count time from." Luka shook his head. "Well, it is somewhere above three weeks," Godfrey went on; "so that by the time we get to the mouth of the Petchora, it will be the last week in July. That will give us a couple of months; but I fancy we can't count much on the weather in September. Still, if the canoes go from Archangel to Petchora and back, we ought to be able to do it from Petchora, for the distance from there to Archangel is a good deal less than from the mouth of the Yenesei to the Petchora. There is one thing, if the weather gets very bad on the way, or we get laid up by bad weather for a long time on the way to Petchora, we can go up the river, I hear, to a place called Ust Zlyma, and from there go overland to Archangel. It is about two hundred or two hundred and fifty miles across, and we could walk that in ten days. I am quite sure that we should not be suspected of being anything but what we look; and at Archangel there is sure to be a British consul, and he would put us up to the best plan of getting out of the country. However, there will be plenty of time to see about that as we get on." The wind fell on the morning of the fourth day, but it would be some hours before the sea would have gone down sufficiently for them to make a start. Godfrey again went out shooting, this time accompanied by Luka. Godfrey was as fortunate as he had been before, shooting three capercailzie and nineteen grouse; while Luka brought down with his arrows four capercailzie, which he found sitting on stunted trees. On their way back to the boat they collected a great quantity of eggs, and came upon a rabbit warren. "Do not shoot," Luka said, as Godfrey cocked his gun, "it will frighten them all into their holes. If you will go on with the dog, I will lie down here and will bring you as many rabbits as I can carry." Two hours later he came down to the tent with two dozen rabbits he had shot. After cooking two of them, and giving one to Jack as his share, they packed up all their belongings and again took to the canoe. They used their paddles until round the cape, and then heading westward hoisted their sail, for what wind there was was still from the north, and the help it afforded was sufficient greatly to reduce the labour of paddling. They kept steadily on, one or other taking occasional snatches of sleep. But with this exception, and that of the time spent by Luka in cooking, they continued to paddle until, forty hours after starting, they reached Cape Golovina, passing between it and Beloc Island. They did not make the halt they had intended under shelter of the cape, for the weather was fine, and Godfrey wanted to take advantage of the north wind as long as it lasted. Once round the cape they headed nearly due south, and the wind freshening a little, drove them along merrily, and they were able to cease paddling, and to take a fair proportion of sleep alternately. Luka was now getting more accustomed to the management of the sail, and no longer feared an occasional jibe, and night and day--if it could be called night when the sun never set--they continued their voyage along the coast of the Yamal Peninsula. At the end of the fourth day the wind freshened so much that the large sail was taken down and the leg-of-mutton sail substituted for it; but as the wind continued to rise, and the sea to get up fast, Godfrey began to look out for some spot into which to run for shelter. The coast was very indented and broken, and in two hours they passed the mouth of a deep bay into which the boat was at once directed, and was presently moored under the shelter of its northern bank. "She is a splendid sea-boat," Godfrey said. "If it wasn't for the boat in tow I should not mind what weather I was out in her." Their stay was of short duration, for in a few hours the wind sank again. "I don't think it is done yet," Godfrey said when they were beyond the shelter of the bay. "I fancy it will blow up again presently; still we may as well push on. I think it is rather more from the east than it was." For the next twenty-four hours, however, there was no very marked change in the force of the wind, but it had now veered round to the north-east. "We are getting well down now," Godfrey said. "We have been sailing for five days, and we have certainly been running a good three miles an hour from the time we rounded the cape. So we are three hundred and fifty miles down. I should say we must be entering Kara Bay." "Very bad weather coming," Luka said looking back. Godfrey turned round. A heavy black cloud was sweeping up with a misty line below it. "By Jove, you are right; that is a big squall and no mistake. There is no bay to run to here, Luka, and we could not get there in time if there was. We must do as I talked about. Quick, lower the sail down, there is not a moment to lose. No, wait until I bring her up head to the wind. Now, then, down with it. Now unstep the mast, lash that and the boom, the other sail, and its spar together; that is the way." And with their joint efforts the work was accomplished in a couple of minutes. "Now, then, fasten this rope to your end, Luka; I will tie the other end to mine. That is right. It is long enough to make a good big angle. Now fasten the head-rope to the middle; be sure it is put in the middle, Luka. That is right. Now, launch it overboard." The work was done as quickly as it is described, and in three minutes from the time the mast was lowered the canoe was riding to the floating anchor. "Now then, Luka, on with the apron." "Shall we sit up?" "No; we will lie down, cover up the holes, and lash them carefully when we are in. It is going to be a drencher, and it is of no use our getting wet through to begin with. We could not do anything with the paddles." They had scarcely made themselves snug when, with a roar, a deluge of rain fell on the deck and cover, and a moment later even this sound was partly deadened by the howl of the wind. Although their heads were close together, Godfrey felt that it would be utterly useless to make any remark. He felt under no uneasiness, for, with their weight well down and anchored head to sea, he felt sure that the light canoe would ride over anything like a cork bottle. The motion of the boat rapidly increased, but she herself rode lightly over the waves. As these increased the jerking of the boat behind at her rope became more and more violent, and the canoe quivered from end to end with the shocks. "This will never do," Godfrey said to himself. "The boat will pull the stern out of her. It will be an awful loss to cut her adrift, but it can't be helped." He unlashed the fastenings of the cover of the circular hole above him, reached his hand forward and got hold of Luka's paddle, and passed it with his own out through the hole. Then he sat up himself. Confident as he felt in the canoe, he was almost frightened at the wild aspect of the sea. The wind was literally howling, driving the rain before it with a force that stung Godfrey's neck as it struck it. He got out a strip of deer-skin lashing, of which there was a supply always close at hand under the deck, lashed the paddles together, and then, leaning aft, lashed them at the centre firmly to the tow-rope. Then with some difficulty he got out his knife and cut the rope close to its fastening; the paddles flew overboard, and the boat drifted rapidly astern, the drag of the paddles being, as Godfrey observed with satisfaction, sufficient to keep her head to wind. Then he wriggled himself down underneath the apron again and lashed down the cover of the hole. CHAPTER XVI A SAMOYEDE ENCAMPMENT. The action of the canoe was altogether changed as soon as it was released from the strain of the boat behind. There was no more tugging and jarring, but she rose and fell on the waves almost imperceptibly. "Well, Jack, old fellow, what do you think of it?" Godfrey said to the dog as it nestled up close to him. "Here we are now, out in a regular storm. It is lucky we have plenty of sea-room, Jack. I reckon it is seventy or eighty miles across to the other side of the gulf, and I don't suppose she can drag those spars through the water much more than a mile an hour. So we have plenty of time before us. We must both put away as much time in sleep as we can. We have lost almost all our provisions, old boy, and our water, which was of still more consequence. It is very lucky I always made a rule of having the kettle filled and put on board here after each meal and of keeping a dozen pounds of meat here. I thought we might be obliged to cast the boat adrift suddenly. Well, if we have luck, we may find it again. We shall both drift in the same line, and there is no reason why she shouldn't live through it. The stock of firewood has gone down, and she has not got above a couple of hundred pounds' weight in her altogether. I am afraid she will take enough salt water on board to spoil our supply of fresh, but I think we are drifting pretty straight for the Kara River. I calculated that it lay dead to leeward of us when the wind went to the north-west." It was a considerable time before Godfrey went off to sleep owing to the rapid changes of the angle at which he was lying. Sometimes his head was two or three feet higher than his feet, and directly afterwards the position was exactly reversed. The rolling was but slight, and this he scarcely felt, being too tightly packed in along with the furs and the dog to move much. But at last the noise of the water and the roar of the wind lulled him to sleep. He woke once, and then went off again, and his watch told him that he had been altogether asleep twelve hours. When he next woke, he felt at once that the motion was slighter than it had been and that the wind had greatly abated. "Are you asleep, Luka?" he shouted. "I am not asleep now," Luka replied drowsily. "The storm is pretty nearly over; I will get the cover off and look round, and then we will see if we can't boil some water and have some tea. We have never used any of those candles yet; this will be a good opportunity to try them." Unlashing and removing the cover, Godfrey sat up and looked round. The gale had broken. Black clouds were hurrying past overhead, but there were patches of blue sky. The sea was still very heavy, but it was rarely that the canoe dipped her nose under a wave, so lightly did she rise and fall over them. "In a few hours we shall have our sail up again, Luka," he said as the Tartar thrust his head up through his opening. It was but for a moment. He instantly dived under again and replaced the cover, appalled at the sea, which was infinitely rougher than anything he had ever before witnessed. "It looks pretty bad, doesn't it?" Godfrey said, laughing, as he, too, resumed his position of shelter. "It is terrible," Luka said. "I expect it has been worse. At any rate, as you can see we have got through it without taking a drop of water on board, thanks to the floating anchor. Now I will pass the kettle forward to you. Be very careful with it, for it is all the water we have." "All the water! Why, what has become of the boat?" Luka exclaimed. "I had to cut her adrift half an hour after the squall struck us. Did not you hear me look out when I took your paddle?" "I felt you take the paddle, but there was too much noise to hear anything, and I was too frightened to listen. I thought that surely we should go to the bottom. Why did you cut her loose?" "Because she was tugging so hard. She would have pulled us to pieces, and it was better to let her go than to risk that. She will have drifted the same way we have done, only she will have gone three times as fast, for she was a good deal higher out of water, and the paddles which I fastened on to her head-rope won't have anything like the hold on the water that our spars have. We will keep in the same direction when we get our sails up, and if she has lived through it we shall very likely find her ashore somewhere along the coast. Now be sure you lash that kettle securely to the deck-beam, Luka. Put it as near one side as you can get it, then there will be room for you to lie alongside and watch it. But stop! Before you fasten it pour out half a mugful of water for Jack. He doesn't like tea, and there will be nothing but tea for him after we have once made it." The candle was lighted and fixed under the kettle, but the four wicks gave out such an odour that Godfrey was glad to sit up again and remain outside, until a nudge from Luka told him that the tea was ready. They ate with it some slices of raw bear's ham. Luka offered to cook it, but Godfrey had had the candle put out the moment he got under the cover and would not hear of its being lighted again. "It is not at all bad raw," he said. "They eat raw ham in Germany, and that last smoking it got was almost as good as cooking it. I expect the sea will have gone down in a few hours, and then we can have a regular meal; but if you were to light that smelly thing again now it would make me ill. Now, Jack, I will light my pipe and look out again, and you shall come out too for a breath of fresh air. I will hold you tight and see that you don't go over." In twelve hours the sea had almost gone down. The floating anchor was hauled up and unlashed, the masts were stepped, the large sail hoisted, and, free from the dead weight that had hitherto checked her speed, the little craft sped along gaily before the gentle wind, Godfrey keeping her as near as possible dead before it, on the chance that they might catch sight of the boat. "If we drifted a mile an hour and she drifted three," he said, "she would have gained four-and-twenty miles while we were asleep, and perhaps since then she has been gaining a mile an hour; so she is from thirty-five to forty miles ahead of us, and must be quite half-way across the gulf. Anyhow, we need not begin to look out yet; we are going about four knots an hour, I should think, and I don't suppose she is going more than one. In about ten hours we must begin to look about for her." Before the end of that time the sea had gone quite down, and the wind had fallen so light that Godfrey thought they were scarce making three knots an hour. "I hope it won't fall altogether," he said, "for as we have no paddles it would be awkward for us." "Two of the bottom boards will do for paddles." "Yes, I know that, Luka, I am steering with one of them; but they would do very little good, for they are so thin that they would break off directly we put any strength on to them." Godfrey occasionally stood up and looked round, but could see no signs of the boat, and indeed could hardly have done so unless he had passed within a couple of miles at most of her. "The wind may have changed a little," he said, "though I don't think it has done so. Anyhow, I will head a little more to the south, so as to be sure that we shall strike the shore to the east both of the Kara River and the point she is likely to drift to." Four hours later they made out land ahead of them, some six miles away as they guessed, and holding on reached it in two hours and a half's time. They stepped out as soon as they got into shallow water, carried the canoe ashore, drank a mug of cold tea and ate some raw meat, and then lay down for a long sleep. When they woke they collected some drift-wood and lighting a fire, cooked some meat. "What are you going to do, Godfrey?" Luka asked. "Are you going to set out at once to look for the boat?" "No, we had better wait for a few hours. She may not have drifted to the shore yet, though I do not think she can be far off; still it is as well to give her plenty of time. At any rate we can shoot some birds, so the time won't be lost." Having made a fair bag and been absent from the canoe for five hours they returned, and after cutting up a capercailzie and grilling it over the fire, they got the boat into the water and started. They had sailed about eight miles to the west when Luka exclaimed, "There is something there by the shore close to that point. It may be the boat; it may be a rock." It was another quarter of an hour before Godfrey was able to assure himself that it was really the boat. "Thank God for that, Luka!" he exclaimed. "We have reason to thank Him for a great many things. I do so every hour, and I hope you do so too. But finding the boat again safe seems to me the greatest blessing we have had yet; I don't know what we should have done without it." Another quarter of an hour brought them to the point. The boat lay just afloat, bumping on the sand as each little wave lifted and left her. They sprang out of the canoe into shallow water and threw out the anchor, and then waded to the boat. She had about four inches of water in her, but was entirely uninjured. "Hurrah!" Godfrey shouted, "she is as good as ever. Now, Luka, get everything out of her as soon as you can, then we can turn her over and empty her, put the things in again, and be off at once. We have got no time to lose, for you must remember there is not much more than a quart of cold tea left in the kettle. I am sure the Kara River can't be very far off, but I can't say whether it is three miles or thirty." In half an hour they were again afloat and working their paddles to assist the sail. Two hours later Luka said, "Huts on that point ahead of us." "So there are," Godfrey said. "Six or eight of them and a lot of cattle." "Reindeer!" Luka corrected. "Samoyede village." "Why, there must be hundreds of them," Godfrey said in surprise. "Yes, the Ostjaks told me in our old camp that many of the Samoyedes had five hundred, and some of them a thousand reindeer. They keep them just as we do cattle. Their wealth is counted by their reindeer. They make their clothes of its skin; its milk and flesh are their chief food. It draws their sledges, and when they want money they can sell some of them." "Did you ask how much they can be sold for?" "Yes, the Ostjaks said that they were worth here two or three roubles each." "Then if there are many of these encampments along the shore, Luka, we need not trouble about food; and if anything happens to our boat we can make a couple of sledges, buy four reindeer, and start by land." "Then we should have to wait until winter," Luka said. "Yes, that would be a nuisance; but it would not be so very long to wait. I had no idea reindeer were so cheap. If I had I think instead of spending the winter hunting I would have bought some reindeer and started to drive. Still it would have been a terrible journey, and perhaps we have done better as it is. Well, shall we land? What do you think?" "We don't want anything," Luka said. "The Samoyedes are generally friendly. They are not like the Tunguses and Yuraks. But you see there are but two of us, and we have hatchets and knives and other things they value. If we wanted anything I should say let us land, but as we don't it would be better to go on." "You are right, Luka. I don't suppose there would be any risk of being robbed; still it is just as well not to run even the smallest chance of trouble when everything is going on so well." On passing the point on which the encampment was situated they saw a wide opening. "The Kara!" Godfrey exclaimed joyously. "We will cross to the other side, and coast up on that shore till the water becomes fresh." It required four hours' sailing and paddling before they got beyond the influence of the sea, then they landed, shot and hunted for a couple of days, took in a fresh supply of water, and started again. "We have passed the line of the Ural Mountains now," Godfrey said. "The Kara rises in that range. We may almost consider ourselves in Russia." One morning Luka woke Godfrey soon after he had lain down for his turn of sleep. "Fog coming," he said. Godfrey sat up and looked round. "That it is, Luka. We must head for shore directly." He seized his paddle, but the fog cloud had drifted rapidly down upon them, and before they were half-way to shore drifts of white cloud floated past them on the water, and five minutes later they were surrounded by a dense white wall, so thick that even the canoe towing behind was invisible. They ceased paddling. "There is nothing to do but to wait," Godfrey said. "Get your fur coat on; it is bitterly cold. There is one comfort, what wind there is is towards the shore, and we shall drift that way." "I can't feel any wind at all," Luka said. "No, it is very slight; but there must have been some to bring this fog down from the north. We were not more than half a mile from the shore when it closed in upon us. If we only drift fifty yards an hour we shall be there in time. Let us have a cup of tea and then we will rig up the cover and turn in. We have a lot of sleep to make up for. There is one comfort, there is no chance of our being run down." Godfrey saw by his watch when he woke that he had been asleep for four hours, and he sat up and looked round. The fog was as thick as before. The movement woke Luka, and he too sat up. "Listen, Luka!" Godfrey exclaimed as he was about to speak. "I heard a bird chirp." The sound was repeated. "It is over there," Godfrey said. "Hurrah! we shall soon be ashore," and they seized their paddles. After rowing for a minute or two they stopped and again listened. "There it is again," Godfrey said; "right ahead. Paddle gently, Luka; we sha'n't see the shore until we are on it, and we must not risk running head on to a rock." Presently something dark appeared just in front of the canoe. "Hold water!" Godfrey exclaimed, and as they stopped her way the boat drifted quietly against a rock. They brought her broadside to it and stepped out. "That is a comfort. The fog can last for a week now. Let us get the canoe ashore. We can moor the boat; the water is as smooth as glass, and there is no risk whatever of her damaging herself. Bring an armful of firewood ashore," he went on as they laid the canoe down gently on a flat rock. "I will look about for a place for the tent." "Do not go far or you will lose yourself." "I will take care of that. I won't go beyond speaking distance." Godfrey soon found a patch of sand large enough for the tent, and this was soon erected and a fire lit. Jack as usual indulged in a wild scamper, but returned to Godfrey's whistle. "Don't go too far, Jack, or you will be losing your way too." The fog did not clear off for another forty-eight hours, but when at the end of that time they looked out of their tent the sky was clear and the birds were singing gaily. The ground rose almost perpendicularly behind them to a height of from twenty to thirty feet. It was rocky, with some deep indentations. "We will do some shooting, Luka; but as there may be some natives near we will hide the canoe. It is no use running any risks. We will stow the tent and get everything packed before we start, and then we shall be able to set out when we return." The canoe was packed and carried some fifty yards along the shore, and then laid behind a great boulder that had fallen at the mouth of a cleft in the rock. "Shall we pull up the boat?" Luka asked. "No, I don't think that is worth while. There is nothing there worth stealing. The natives have got plenty of fish of their own, no doubt, and drift-wood too. Now let us be off." The birds were scarcer than usual, and they wandered a long distance before they had made up anything like their usual bag. "We have been eight hours out," Godfrey said, looking at his watch. "We may as well have a meal before we start back. It will take us two or three hours to get to the boat again. There will be no loss of time. It takes no longer cooking here than it would there, and we may as well carry the birds inside as out." They were engaged in eating their meal when Jack suddenly gave an angry growl, and looking up they saw a party of a dozen Samoyedes with bows and arrows at a distance of fifty yards behind them. They sprang to their feet. "Shall I shoot?" Luka asked. "No, no, Luka, their intentions may be friendly. Besides, though we might kill three or four of them they would riddle us with arrows. We had best meet them as friends." When the Samoyedes came up Luka gave them the ordinary salutation of friendship. "Where come from?" the man who seemed to be the leader of the natives asked suspiciously. "A long way from the east," Luka said, pointing in that direction. "Who are you?" "Ostjak," Luka said, knowing that the Samoyedes would have heard of that tribe, but would know nothing of his own. "Who this?" the native asked, pointing to Godfrey. "A friend of Ostjaks," Luka said, "come to hunt and shoot. I come with him." "This Samoyede country," the native said; "not want Ostjaks here." "We do no harm," Luka said. "We go west, far along, not want Samoyede country. Buy milk of Samoyedes. Good friends." The Samoyedes talked together, and then the leader said "Come!" Without any appearance of hesitation Godfrey and Luka set off with the natives. Their language, though differing from that of the northern Ostjaks, was sufficiently alike for them to be able to understand each other. "Do you think they mean to be friendly?" Godfrey asked in Russian. "I don't know," Luka replied. "Perhaps not made up their minds yet." "They are going down to the coast, that is a comfort, Luka; they are going to the west of our boats. I suppose they have an encampment there. I expect they heard my gun and have been following us at a distance until they saw us sit down." "Must have seen them," Luka said. "Only one may have been following us, and may have sent the others back to fetch up the rest from their tents. Well, it does not matter now they have got us. If they ask where we came from, as I expect they will, you had better tell them, Luka, we came in a boat. They will guess it without our telling, and will very likely look for it. It is better to make no concealment." Two hours' walking brought them to a little valley, in the middle of which ran a small stream. They followed it down for half a mile, and then at a sudden turn they saw the sea in front of them, a cluster of ten Samoyede yourts and a herd of reindeer feeding on the slope behind them. A number of women and children and five or six old men came out to look at them as they approached. "Sit down and let us talk," the leader said as they reached the village, and set the example by seating himself by a large fire. Godfrey and Luka at once did the same. "The Ostjak and his friend have come very far," he said. "A long distance," Luka replied. "We have travelled many days and are going to the Petchora." "Have you reindeer? Did you walk all the way?" "No, we have no reindeer; we came in a boat. You will find it along the shore." "How far?" "About an hour's walk I should say." The Samoyede gave an order, and two of the men at once left the circle, got into a canoe, and paddled away. "The strangers will stay here for a day or two. We have plenty of milk and fish." Luka nodded. "We are in no hurry to go on. We have plenty of time to reach the Petchora before the winter sets in." The Samoyede spoke to one of the women, and she set to work to clear out one of the tents. The chief got up and walked away, and the conference was evidently over. Three hours later they saw the canoe reappear at the mouth of the river with the boat towing behind it. The Samoyedes gathered on the shore to examine it, evidently surprised at its form and size, which differed entirely from their own, which were little craft capable of holding two at most. They tasted the water at the bottom of the boat and found it to be fresh. The stove for cooking spoke for itself, and as there was firewood, meat, flour, and some rough furs, there seemed all that was necessary for a journey. When they returned the chief asked Luka: "Is that Ostjak canoe?" "Yes; but it is built much larger than our canoes generally are, as it was for long journey." Presently the women brought a large bowl of reindeer milk and some fried fish. As they were eating, four of the men who were standing behind suddenly threw themselves upon Godfrey and Luka, while the others closed in, and in a minute they were securely bound hand and foot. Godfrey made no struggle, for he felt that it would be useless and might result in his being shot or stabbed. The hatchets and knives were taken from their belts, and they were then carried to the tent and thrown down. Jack had fought fiercely, biting several of the natives, until he was struck with a spear in the shoulder by the chief, when he limped off uttering piercing yells. "What do you think they mean to do with us, Luka?" Godfrey asked. "Will they hand us over to the Russians, do you think? Cowardly blackguards. I wish now we had fought at first." "No, won't hand us to Russians; too far off. They don't think of that; they have taken us for the sake of our hatchets and knives and of your gun. Perhaps they will keep us to work for them. Perhaps they will cut our throats." "It is not a pleasant look-out either way. Still, if they keep us, we are safe to get away before long; we must hope for the best. I wonder they haven't taken my ammunition and the other things." "Not know about pockets," Luka said. "They would have taken them if they had." Two or three hours later the Samoyedes came in and carefully examined the captives' lashings. Their hands were tied behind them with reindeer thongs, which were so tightly bound that they almost cut into the skin, and their feet were equally firmly lashed. In a few minutes the sound of talk ceased and the camp became quiet. "I suppose it is their bedtime," Godfrey said. "If the fools do not set a guard over us we shall soon be free." "How is that?" Luka asked. "We will gnaw through one of the thongs, of course, there can be no difficulty about that; we will give them an hour to get to sleep and then we will set to work. What is that? Ah, Jack, is it you?" as the dog crept in between them with low whines. "Poor old chap, you did your best. I can't pat you now. Roll yourself to the door and look out, Luka." "There are three of them sitting by a fire, but it will be darker presently and they will not see us"--for although it could scarcely be called night the sun now dipped for an hour or two below the horizon at midnight. "Well, see or not see, we will go, Luka. If we are to be killed it shall be making a fight for it, and not having our throats cut like sheep. Now, I think you are more accustomed to chewing tough food than I am, so I will roll over on my face, and do you set to work and bite through the thong." Luka's sharp teeth cut through the twisted hide in five minutes. It was a quarter of an hour more before Godfrey's hands recovered their usual feeling. As soon as they were efficient he unfastened the thongs round his companion's wrists and those round their feet. "Now then, Luka, put your head out and see if you can see my gun." "Gun sure to be in chief's tent," Luka said. He looked out. "Can't see gun. My bow and arrows are lying on ground by chief's tent." "Very well, then, you had better crawl round and fetch them first, that will be something to begin a fight with anyhow. Here, I will slit open the tent behind with my knife, then you can crawl along past the others till you get to the chief's tent without those fellows at the fires seeing you. I am more afraid of those beastly dogs giving the alarm than of the men." Godfrey cut a slit with his pocket-knife in the reindeer-skin covering, and then Luka crawled out. He lay flat on his stomach and dragged himself along, looking, as Godfrey thought, in the twilight, just like the seals he had seen crawling over the rocks. He passed three of the yourts and then turned off. In four or five minutes he reappeared with his bow and quiver of arrows and two native spears. He crawled back as carefully as he had gone. "Give me the knife, Godfrey." Godfrey handed it to him. "You are not going to kill anyone, Luka? If they attack us, of course we shall shoot them down in self-defence, but I would not have anyone killed in cold blood on any account." The Tartar shook his head. "I am not going to kill anyone. I looked into the tent; the gun is leaning by the side of the chief. Women and children are lying all round. Couldn't get in. I will cut a slit in skin and take gun." "It will be first-rate if you can manage that, Luka. We can make a good fight of it if you can manage to get the gun." Godfrey was able to watch Luka's proceedings now. He stopped behind the fourth tent, placed his ear against the skin and listened intently. Then he inserted the blade in the skin two feet above the ground and very quietly, with a sawing motion, cut downwards. Then he began at the top again and made a horizontal cut four or five inches long, and then cut again down to the ground, removing the flap of skin. He peered into the tent, then he inserted his arm, a moment later he withdrew it with the gun, and then returned to Godfrey. The latter's first step was to charge the gun, for he had fired two shots while Luka was cooking the meal before they were surprised. "Now, Luka, which do you think we had better do, make for the canoes or go off on foot?" "We want big canoe," Luka said. "Can't well do without it. We had better go to that." "I think so too," Godfrey said. "If we can once get on board we can beat them off. Of course there is more risk of being discovered that way, but I think we had better chance it." They kept along for some distance on the side of the hill, and then, when about a hundred yards from the huts, crawled down to the river, crept back along the bank until they reached the boat, which was hauled up with the native canoes on shore. "How are we to get it down, Luka?" Godfrey whispered. "If we stand up to carry it down those fellows by the fire, who are not twenty yards away, must see us. If we try to push it down we are safe to make a noise." "Wait a moment, give me knife again," Luka said; and having obtained it he went along the line of canoes, cutting and slicing the skins from end to end. Then he returned to Godfrey. "They can't follow now," he said. "Once on board we are safe." "I have been thinking, Luka, our best plan will be to lie down one on each side, and to hoist her up as well as we can, and move her forward inch by inch." Luka nodded, and they separated to carry out their plan, when Jack decided the matter by leaping on board, and sending the paddles with a rattle to the bottom of the boat. "Jump up, Luka, and in with her." As they sprang up there was a shout from the three natives by the fire, which was answered by the fierce barking of two or three score of dogs. After a moment's hesitation two of the natives rushed back to their yourts for their bows, while the third, who happened to have his close at hand, fitted an arrow and discharged it hastily. As they were running the boat down it missed its mark, and before he could shoot again the boat was in the water, and they had sprang on board. The native ran down to the edge with his bow bent, but Luka's bow twanged and the man fell back with an arrow through his body. They seized the paddles and drove the boat twenty yards into the stream, when the whole of the Samoyedes rushed down to the bank and began to discharge their arrows. [Illustration: GODFREY AND LUKA ESCAPING FROM THE SAMOYEDES.] "Lie flat down, Luka," Godfrey said, setting the example, "the stream will take us." There was a great jabber of voices on the bank. "The chief is telling them to take to their canoes," Luka said laughing. "You will hear some shouts directly. The water won't begin to come in through the slits till they put their weight in the canoes." Godfrey lifted his head for a moment and saw five or six of the natives on the bank abreast of him, standing in readiness to shoot. Quickly as he withdrew it again two arrows struck the boat within a few inches of the point where he had looked over. "Luka," he said, "we must get a little further out; I am afraid the stream might set us in towards the bank. I will put my cap upon a piece of firewood and hoist it up. They will shoot at it, and the moment they do we must both spring up and give two or three strong strokes to take her further out." Lying flat on his back at the bottom of the boat, Godfrey raised his cap; almost instantaneously there were three or four sharp taps on the side of the boat, and one arrow passed through it but an inch above his chest. In a moment he sat upright with a paddle in his hand, and a couple of sharp strokes sent the boat out into the centre of the current. At this moment they heard a series of yells and splashes. "Lucky for them," Luka laughed, "I made the slits so big. If they had got out farther they would all have been drowned: these people are not able to swim." "No, I should think not," Godfrey said. "They don't look as if water had ever touched them from the day they were born. We are safe now, in ten minutes we shall be clear of the river, and have only got to paddle back and fetch our canoe." "We may have to fight yet," Luka said. "Sure to follow us. The meat and flour is all gone. I expect they gave it to their dogs. That is what made them sleep so sound. They will know that we shall have to land somewhere to get food, and think they will have us then. They will mend canoes very quick, and some of them will come after us." "It will be worse for them if they do," Godfrey said. "With my gun and your bow we could keep a score of canoes at a distance. Still, as you say, we may have trouble in getting our canoe. However, we must have that if we have to fight the whole tribe for it." Godfrey looked up from time to time. He could do so safely now, for they were fifty yards from the bank, and there was time for him to withdraw his head before an arrow could reach him. The natives, however, had ceased to follow the boat, having doubtless run back when they heard their companions' cries. Godfrey thought it as well not to take to the paddles until they were well out of the river, lest one might have run on and hidden himself in a clump of bushes. As soon as they were out of the river they took up the paddles, and rowed straight out for a distance of a couple of miles. "How long will they be in patching up their canoes, Luka?" "They will do it in an hour," Luka said. "The women will sew the slits together, and the men melt fat and smear over." "Very well. Then we had better turn now and make for the place where the canoe is hid. They won't expect us to land so soon, and most of the men will be waiting to follow with the canoes. If only four or five follow us along the bank we can manage them easily enough. Fortunately, the canoe is light enough for one of us to carry it down to the water. While you are doing that I can keep them off. This boat paddles a lot heavier than the other, Luka." Luka grunted in assent. "Do you think you will know the place where you hid the canoe?" Godfrey asked presently. "Let us go close in to see," Luka said. "We went ashore in fog. I don't know how it looks from the sea. The coast is all alike here. We must keep very close." "How far along do you think it is, Luka?" "It can't be much more than an hour to paddle," Luka replied. "The Samoyedes were away three hours to fetch the boat, and they were in no hurry and had to tow her back with their canoe." For half an hour they kept the boat parallel with the land, and then inclined towards the shore. Presently Luka said, "There are six men walking along on bank." "Well, there won't be six left to walk back," Godfrey replied grimly, "if they interfere with us. Now, Luka, it is nearly an hour since we turned; we will go in within a hundred yards of the shore. Those bows of theirs are not like yours, they won't carry more than forty or fifty yards. Now, I will just give those gentlemen a hint that they had better keep away from the edge of the cliff;" and so saying he laid down his paddle, and took up his gun and fired. He aimed high, as he wished to frighten and not hurt. The natives instantly disappeared from the edge. "Now, Luka, do you keep on paddling; I will watch the top of the bank, and if one of them shows his head I will fire. They won't suspect we have any idea of landing, and will probably keep a bit back. All we want is time to land and climb the bank. Keep inshore now, so that next time I fire I may be able to send the bullet pretty close. This gun is not much use at more than fifty yards' distance." Only once did Godfrey see a head above the bank, and the instant he did so he fired. "That will show them we are keeping a sharp look-out; I don't think they will come near for some little time now. I daresay they are puzzling themselves, first, why we are coming this way, and secondly, why we are keeping so close." "There is the place where we had tent," Luka exclaimed suddenly. "Do you see the ashes of the fire?" "That is it, sure enough. Now, run ashore and dash up the bank." As soon as the canoe touched the shore they leapt out and ran up the bank. Not twenty yards away were the Samoyedes. Godfrey uttered a shout and raised his gun to his shoulder, and the natives with a yell ran off at full speed. "Now, Luka, do you go and get the canoe in the water. Be careful; if you find it heavy for you with the stores on board, take them out; there is no occasion for hurry. Those fellows won't venture within range of my gun again; they will keep at a distance, and send up word to the tents that we have landed. So take your time over it; if you were to make a slip and damage the canoe it would be fatal to us." The natives stopped at a distance of a quarter of a mile, and then, as Godfrey expected, one of them started at a run back towards the village. In ten minutes Godfrey heard a shout from below, and looking round saw the canoe safely by the side of the boat. He ran down and took his place in her, and they paddled out towing the boat behind them. CHAPTER XVII. A SEA FIGHT As soon as they had reached a distance of two or three hundred yards from the shore Godfrey ceased paddling. "Now we can talk matters over, Luka. There is no occasion for hurry now. If these fellows in the canoes are disposed to fight we can't prevent them. They will certainly be out of the river before we could get back there; and even if we did pass first they could easily overtake us, for those light craft of theirs would go two feet to our one unless we had wind for our sail. So we may as well take things easy, and decidedly the first thing to do is to wash and dress Jack's wound, and then to get some tea and something to eat. We have had nothing since we were caught yesterday between twelve and one o'clock. "What a lucky thing it was we hid the canoe, Luka!" he went on, as the Tartar pulled the boat up alongside the canoe and began to prepare to light a fire. "The chances are we should not have been able to get her off as well as the boat, and even if we had they would have taken out all our stores. The meat we might replace, but the loss of the tea and tobacco, and above all of the matches, would have been terrible; besides, they would have got our spare hatchets and knives, the fish-hooks and lines, and all our furs. We don't want the furs for warmth now, but it would make a deal of difference to our comfort if we had to sleep on hard boards. I do not know how to feel thankful enough that we hid the canoe away." "We could not have gone without our things," Luka said. "We would have fought them all and killed them rather than lose our tea and tobacco." Godfrey laughed at his companion's earnestness. "I think that would have been paying too dearly for them, Luka. Still we should have missed them badly." Just as they had finished their meal they saw some black spots ahead of them close inshore. "I should not be surprised if they have been picking up those fellows who followed us, Luka. No doubt the man who ran back would tell them they could do nothing against our arms. But I don't think they will dare attack us in our boat even if they have got all the men there. There were only twelve at first, not counting the old men who were in their camp when we were brought there. You shot one of them, so there are only eleven, even if they have got on board those who followed us. I have always heard that they are plucky little fellows, but I do not think they would be fools enough to attack us on the water. I feel sure they can't have any intention of doing so. I expect their original idea was to hover about us night and day, and then, when we went ashore to get food, to steal the boat and hunt us down. Now they find we have got a second boat they will see that it is a longer job than they expected, for they will guess that our real valuables are on board the boat we hid, and that we may have enough provisions here to last for some time." The canoes, as they approached them, sheered off to a distance of a quarter of a mile, and then gathered together evidently in consultation. Then they turned and paddled rapidly back again, soon leaving the canoe and boat far behind. "I wonder what they are up to now?" Godfrey said; "some mischief I have no doubt." "Perhaps more yourts on farther? They might send on a man with fast reindeer a long way ahead, so that they might attack us with forty or fifty canoes." "So they might, Luka. That would be very awkward, and we should be afraid of landing anywhere. They may pass the news on from camp to camp for any number of miles. Yes, that is a very serious business. The only thing I see for it is to make right out beyond sight of land, and then push on as fast as we can. Fortunately they don't know anything about our sail, and as they left us so fast just now they will reckon that we cannot make much more than two miles an hour; while, when we get the wind, we can go six if we help with the paddles. We may as well keep on as we are at present, as if determined to keep near the land till, at any rate, we are some distance past the mouth of the river. There is not likely to be another of their camps for some distance along, for, of course, they would always be near a river, as they must have water for themselves and their reindeer." Paddling quietly, they continued on their course until they had passed the mouth of the river. When they had gone half a mile they saw nine canoes, each containing one man, come out from the river and follow them. "They mean to stick to us," Godfrey said uneasily. "I'm afraid we are going to have a lot of trouble with them, Luka." After paddling for another two hours they turned their heads seaward. The canoes did the same. In four hours more the land had almost disappeared, but the clump of canoes still maintained their position behind them. "It is of no use going out any further, Luka. We are a long way out of sight of any one on shore now. Now let us head west again." An hour later one of the canoes left the group and paddled rapidly towards the land. "That is what their game is," Godfrey said. "They have sent off to tell their friends ashore the course we are taking, and do what we will they will keep them informed of it. We may have a fleet of canoes out at any moment after us. Do you think we could leave them behind if we were to cast off the boat?" Luka shook his head decidedly. "No; their canoes are very small; paddle quick, much quicker than we could." "She is very fast, Luka." "Yes; but too many things on board. If we threw over everything--food, and kettles, and dog, and furs--we might go as fast as they could; but even then I think they would beat us." "Well, we won't try that anyhow, Luka; I would rather risk a fight than that. I don't see anything to do but to wait for the wind. It is not often calm like this long, and we have had it three or four days already. If we do get a wind we can certainly beat them by cutting loose the boat." "Beat them anyhow," Luka said. "With wind and paddles they might keep up with us rowing very hard for a bit; but men tire, wind never tires. We sure to beat them at last. I think we shall have wind before very long." "I hope so, Luka; and not too much of it. Well, as we can't get away from them by paddling, Luka, we may as well lower our lines. We have only got two or three days' provisions on board, and we may just as well lay in a stock while we can." The hooks were baited with pieces of meat and lowered, and the paddles laid in. Scarcely were the lines out when Godfrey felt a fierce tug. "Hulloa!" he exclaimed, "I have got something bigger than usual." He hauled up, and gave a shout of satisfaction as he pulled a cod of fully ten pounds weight from the water. Five minutes later Luka caught one of equal size. "That will do, Luka. I will throw mine into the boat, and we will keep yours on board. Now we have got among cod there is no fear of our not getting plenty of food. I know they catch enormous quantities off the northern coast of Norway, and it is evident that they come as far as these waters. It is some time since we tried this deep-sea fishing, which accounts for our not having caught any before." "Are they good fish?" Luka asked. "I have never seen any like them." "First-rate, Luka, especially if we had some oyster sauce to eat with them; as we haven't we must do without. They are capital, and they are not full of bones like the herrings. Now we will paddle on again. You leave that fish alone, Jack; you shall have some of it for supper." "There is a dark line on the water over there," Luka said presently, "wind coming." "That is a comfort, Luka." Half an hour later the breeze came up to them. "Shall I get up the sail, Godfrey?" Godfrey did not reply for a minute or two. "Yes, I think we may as well, Luka. Whether we go fast or slow these fellows will be able to send word on shore, and we may as well tire them a bit." The sails were hoisted, Godfrey took the sheet and laid in his paddle. "The wind may freshen," he said, "and it would not do to fasten the sheet." Luka, who seemed tireless, continued paddling, and the boats went through the water at a considerably faster pace than before. The effect on their pursuers was at once visible. Instead of paddling in a leisurely manner in a close group, the paddles could be seen to flash faster and faster. "They have to row pretty hard to keep up with us now," Luka said, looking over his shoulder at them. "Up to now they felt comfortable, think everything right, and quite sure to catch us presently. Now they begin to see it is not so easy after all." They maintained their relative positions till the sun was near the horizon. "It is ten o'clock, Luka, the sun will set in half an hour. You lay your paddle in, and get us a cup of tea and a bit of that dry meat. You had better boil the kettle over one of the candles. Then you lie down to sleep for four hours, after that I will take a turn. We are a deal better off than those fellows behind; they must keep on paddling all night, and as they only have one man in each boat there is no relief for them." Luka did as he was ordered. After drinking his tea Godfrey lighted his pipe, and Luka lay down. Godfrey did not feel very sleepy, although he had not closed his eyes the night before; but they had had a long bout of sleep when compelled to keep their tent by the fog, and the excitement of the chase kept him up now. As it grew dusk he could see that the canoes drew closer, but he had no hope, in any case, of giving them the slip, for it was never perfectly dark. When, four hours later, he woke Luka the sky was brightening again. "More wind come presently," the Tartar said, looking at the sky. "I won't lie down just yet, Luka. It will be quite light in half an hour, and I want to have a good look towards the shore before I go to sleep." Luka at once took the paddle. The wind was perceptibly freshening and the canoe was slipping fast through the water. "Now, Luka," Godfrey said presently, "stand up and have a look round. Be careful how you do it; it would not do to capsize her now." Two minutes later Luka exclaimed, "I see them; a whole lot of canoes, twenty or thirty, over there," and he pointed towards the shore but somewhat ahead of them. "Sit down, Luka, and I will stand up and have a look. Yes, it is as much as they will do to cut us off. They did not calculate on our coming along so fast. I will luff up a little more, and we shall pass ahead of them however hard they paddle." So saying he sat down, hauled in the sheet and headed nearer to the wind. "The fellows behind won't see them for some time," he said. "The canoes must be four miles away at least, and I don't suppose they could see each other more than half that distance, being so low in the water. If we had just a little more wind we should do it nicely." Half an hour later the sheet was eased again, and the boat resumed her former course, as Godfrey saw that he should pass well ahead of the canoes coming out from the shore, and she moved faster with the wind abeam than she did close-hauled. Even while sitting down the canoes could be seen now. The natives were paddling their hardest, and the light craft danced over the surface of the water, which was now beginning to be ruffled by the breeze. Half an hour later they joined the pursuers astern, and their yells could be heard although they were half a mile away. Godfrey counted them as he passed ahead of the fleet, and there were thirty-three canoes, each with two paddlers. "The yourts must be thick along the coasts here, Luka; they must have gathered up all those canoes from at least half a dozen camps. Now I will lend you a hand." He eased the sheet still further, so that the boat should heel over less, and fastened it in a loose knot, which could be slipped in an instant. Then he betook himself to his paddle. "Those fellows behind have had a long row out against the wind, and have no doubt been working their hardest ever since they caught sight of our sail. A stern-chase is a long chase. I fancy the wind has freshened a little, but it is very little." Occasionally he looked back over his shoulder. "They are gaining slowly, Luka, but they are a good half mile behind us still, and it will take them two or three hours to pick that up. I am quite sure now that if we cut the boat adrift we can forge ahead, hand over hand, but that must be a last resource; it is almost a matter of life and death to be able to keep it with us. Still it is a satisfaction to know that if the worse comes to the worst we can get away from them." Jack fully entered into the excitement of the chase, taking his seat on the covering near the stern, and barking defiance at their pursuers. Another hour's paddling and the space between the canoe and the natives was lessened by half. "Now, Luka, I will send them a couple of bullets as a reminder that we have got weapons." Laying in his paddle he took his gun, turned round and knelt looking astern, and fired both barrels at the fleet of canoes. He had not taken any particular aim, for the gun was of little use at a distance exceeding a hundred yards, and the motion of the canoe would have prevented anything like accuracy of shooting even with a rifle. He intended to frighten rather than to hurt, and gave the gun a considerable elevation. He saw, however, the men in one of the canoes cease paddling and drop behind the rest, and could make out that one of its occupants was doing something. "I hit one of the canoes, Luka; I fancy they are trying to patch up the hole." He loaded the gun again, this time with his largest-sized shot, laid it down and resumed his paddle. "I have put in buck-shot this time, Luka; I don't want to kill any of the poor beggars, and the shot will spread. I have put in double charges so as to give them a good dose as they come up. Small shot would be of no use, it would not get through those thick leather coats of theirs. Now, then, let us send her along." The wind was certainly freshening, for it was not until another four or five miles had been traversed that the canoes had crept up to within a hundred yards' distance. At last Godfrey felt it was time to fire again, and waiting till the canoes were within about seventy yards' distance he fired both barrels, slightly shifting his aim between each shot. A series of yells arose from the canoes, four or five of them at once dropped behind. "Paddle your hardest, Luka, while I load again, the beggars are coming up fast now." The natives with yells of fury were sending their canoes through the foaming water, and were but fifty yards away when he again fired. This time five or six of the natives dropped their paddles, and two of the canoes were upset. A volley of arrows fell thickly round the boat, and one or two spears skimmed along the water close to it. Godfrey seized his paddle again. "Head towards the shore, Luka," he said; and as the boat headed round he slackened the sheet and so brought the wind nearly dead aft. The boat was on an even keel now, and they could feel by the lessened strain on the paddles that her speed was considerably increased. In two or three minutes Godfrey looked round; the canoes were a hundred yards behind. "We are gaining on them, Luka." Another ten minutes and the interval was more than doubled. "They are beginning to get tired," Godfrey said. "We are going a good deal faster, of course, now we have got the wind astern, but I do not think they are going as fast as they did, and I expect that last dose of buck-shot took the heart out of them a good deal. They had reckoned that we should be only able to fire once or twice before they came up, and that I should use bullets; but that handful of buck-shot evidently peppered a good many of them, and they know if they come up they will have four more barrels at least among them. I think the fighting is all over now." Another hour and the canoes were a mile astern, and the land was now but four or five miles away. Godfrey thought that he could safely resume his course west, especially as the wind had distinctly freshened. "I will lay in my paddle now, Luka. I must give all my attention to the sail. I expect they will give it up. They will think when they see me cease paddling that we know we can get away from them whenever we like." Godfrey's surmise turned out correct; the natives did not attempt to follow, but held on their course straight for the land, paddling slowly now. They were in two divisions, five or six of the canoes being a good deal astern of the others, those with single rowers that had followed them so long having dropped behind to pick up the occupants of the canoes that had capsized. In several of the canoes in this division Godfrey could make out that only one man was paddling, and guessed that the other was more or less disabled by the shot. "I don't think we shall be troubled any more by them," he said; "they will be a couple of hours before they reach land, by which time we shall be out of sight, and even reindeer will hardly take the news along the shore with all its deep indentations as quickly as we shall sail; besides, I fancy, they will come to the conclusion that the game is not worth the candle. Now lay in your paddle and let us have breakfast comfortably. It is just twelve o'clock." Day after day they coasted along, passed through Waigatz Straits, between the island of that name and the mainland, then touched at four islands lying across the mouth of a large and deep bay, and then held on until they reached the mouth of the Petchora. The distance to this point from the Kara River was, Godfrey calculated, about three hundred and fifty miles. It took them fifteen days to cover that distance, as they stopped and spent a day shooting several times, for they were not fortunate along here in catching many fish as they went. On passing one of the islands Godfrey shot a seal, the flesh of which they found was by no means bad. The weather continued very fine, but there was so little wind that during the whole distance they did not once put up their sail, but depended entirely upon their paddles. Upon one of their shooting expeditions Godfrey had the good luck to shoot a very fine black fox. They had had their meal and were stretched at full length by the fire. Luka had gone off to sleep. Godfrey was almost dozing when he heard a slight rustle in the grass, and opening his eyes saw a black fox standing at a distance of ten paces. It had evidently been attracted by the smell of some fish they had been frying, and stood with its nose in the air sniffing. Godfrey's gun was lying beside him, the left-hand barrel he always kept loaded with ball. His hands stole quietly to it, and as he grasped it he sat up and fired a snap shot at the fox as it turned and darted away. To his surprise as well as delight it rolled over. "There is a piece of luck, Luka," he said, as the latter sprang to his feet bow in hand at the report. "That is a pure fluke, for I fired without raising the gun or taking the least aim." Luka examined the fox. "It is one of the largest I ever saw," he said, "and the fur is in splendid condition." "Its skin will come in handy, Luka. We must put in and replenish our stores at Droinik, at the mouth of the Petchora. We are running very short of tea and tobacco, we have been very extravagant lately, and we have had no flour since those scamps robbed us. It is very lucky Jack was so sound asleep. I often scold you, Jack, for being such a sleepy little beggar, but for once it is lucky, for if you had heard the fox coming he would have been off without my getting a shot at him." Accordingly when they reached the mouth of the Petchora they landed three miles from Droinik, and Luka, taking the fox-skin and those of other smaller animals they had shot during their excursions, went into the town, and returned with four pounds of tea, as much tobacco, forty pounds of flour, two large tin kettles, each capable of holding a gallon of water, to carry an extra supply, and sixty silver roubles. "I am heartily glad you are back, Luka, for I have been nearly eaten alive; the mosquitoes are awful--worse, I think, than at any place we have landed." They had indeed entirely given up sleeping ashore since their forced stay on the Gulf of Obi, always pushing off two or three hundred yards from the shore and anchoring, for the mosquitoes were terrible; and upon their hunting expeditions they always smeared their faces, necks, and hands thickly over with bears' fat, but even with this they suffered severely. Nowhere, indeed, are mosquitoes so great a scourge as along the shores of the Arctic Sea. They had already determined that they would at any rate make for the Kanin Peninsula, and would then be guided by the weather. If it still remained calm and quiet, they would sail across the entrance to the White Sea, and coast along until they reached the frontier of Norway, which would be about four hundred miles from the point of the Kanin Peninsula; if the weather showed signs of changing they would go up the White Sea to Archangel, which would be about the same distance. Two days' paddling took them to the western mouth of the bay, the course from here lay due west to Kolgueff Island, nearly two hundred miles away. Godfrey did not hesitate to strike for it, as it was seventy or eighty miles saved, and there was no risk of missing it. Four long days' paddling took them there, and an equal time brought them to the western point of the Kanin Peninsula. The weather continued still and clear, the sea was as smooth as glass, and there were no signs of change; but September had begun, and every hour was of importance. They therefore determined now to abandon the boat, which made a considerable difference in their speed. "Our candles will do for cooking. We have still forty pounds of dried flesh, and twenty of flour, and we may expect to get a few fish anyhow. Our three kettles will hold two gallons and a half of water, enough to last us seven or eight days. In three days at most we ought to strike the coast again, and we are sure to find some streams running down to the sea in a very short time, so we will risk it. We know that the two of us can send her along a good five miles an hour." Accordingly the dried meat and flour were transferred to the canoe, the kettles were filled up with fresh water, and, after taking a long drink and letting Jack lap as much as he could take, they took their seats in the canoe again, threw off the tow-rope and started due west. Accustomed as they now were to the work, and their muscles hardened by exercise, they sent the boat rapidly through the water. "We mustn't exert ourselves too much, Luka," Godfrey said after the first quarter of an hour. "A long slow stroke is the one to send her along, and we can keep that up for any time. We must do our very best till we sight the coast again. After the way she behaved in that storm I am not afraid of wind, but I am horribly afraid of fog. If we had but a compass it would not matter to us one way or other; but if a fog came down when we are a good way off the land, there would be nothing to do but to lay in our paddles and wait, even if it lasted for a fortnight. Still, as long as there is no change of weather, there does not seem any reason why a fog should set in; but I shall not feel happy till we have got the land alongside of us." For three days the paddles were kept going, each taking alternately six hours' sleep, and working together for twelve. Jack having nothing to do was the most uneasy of the party, sometimes lying down with his nose between his paws, sometimes getting up and giving a series of short impatient barks. Early on the second day they were fortunate in passing through a large shoal of herrings. Godfrey laid in his paddles and attended to the lines, and in half an hour had forty-five fish. After that they paid no further attention to fishing, being now amply supplied with food. The herrings, too, required less water than the dried meat. They fried them over the candles, and whenever their mouths were parched they chewed a piece of raw herring and found great relief from it. Jack was allowed two raw herrings a day; with that and a very small allowance of water he did very well. On the third day a light southerly wind sprang up, and they at once hoisted their sail and found that it eased their labour materially. "I should think we ought to see the land to-night, Luka; three days at eighty miles a day is two hundred and forty miles. If we don't see it by evening, we must head a little more to the south. Of course we cannot depend very accurately on our steering, and we may have been going a trifle north of west all this time. But it is all right, for the coast we are making for keeps on trending north, and we are certain to hit it sooner or later." At six o'clock they had a meal which Luka had been cooking, and then Godfrey said, "Now I will have my six hours' sleep." He stood up to change places and let Luka come astern to steer, when he exclaimed, "Look, is that a cloud ahead of us, or is it land?" "Land!" Luka said after gazing at it attentively. "It is high land." All idea of sleep was given up. Godfrey seized his paddle again, and in four hours they were within a mile of the land. It differed widely from the low coast they had so long been passing. Steep hills rose from the very edge of the shore, clad in many places with pine forests. They were not long before they found a suitable place to land, and soon had the canoe ashore and the tent erected, for the nights were already becoming unpleasantly cold. Luka went into the woods, and soon returned with some dried branches and a quantity of pine cones. Godfrey cut three sticks and made a tripod, from which the small kettle was suspended, and fish and meat were soon grilling over the fire. As soon as the kettle boiled a handful of tea was dropped into it, and it was taken off the fire. The three companions made an excellent meal, then Luka and Godfrey lighted their pipes and sat smoking by the fire for half an hour, and then lay down in the tent for a sound sleep. When Godfrey woke he found that Luka was already up. He had stirred up the embers, put on fresh wood, filled the kettle and hung it over the fire, and had then evidently sauntered off into the wood. Godfrey, after the luxury of a rapid bathe, began to prepare breakfast, and by the time it was ready Luka came down with a dozen squirrels he had shot. "Lots of them in the wood," he said; "if stop here three or four days, get lots of skins." "I don't think they would be much good to us, Luka, though those you shot will be useful for food; but I have been obliged to stand with my head over the smoke of the fire to keep off these rascally mosquitoes, and my face was so swelled with their bites when I woke that I could hardly see out of my eyes till I bathed my face with cold water. The sooner we are off the better, if we don't want to be eaten alive." Accordingly, as soon as the meal was finished they packed up and continued their voyage. After eight hours' paddling they came upon the mouth of a river. "This must be the Seriberka," Godfrey said. "That is the only river marked in the map anywhere about here. We will paddle a mile or two up and fill our kettles. If it is that river, we shall come upon an island a few miles off the coast, in another twenty or thirty miles. See, Luka, how near we are getting to the end of the map. We are not very much more than a hundred miles from this line; that is the division between Russia and Norway. Once we land on the other side of that line we are free." In seven or eight hours after leaving the river, Godfrey said, "There is Kildina Island, Luka. We will land over there instead of upon this shore. There may be some Laplanders about, and there is a Russian place called Kola about twenty miles up a river a little way past the island, and the natives might take us there if they came upon us, for they would not understand either Ostjak or the Samoyede dialect, and I don't suppose they would talk Russian. Anyhow, we may as well be on the safe side. After coming seven or eight thousand miles we won't run any risk of a failure in the last hundred. I don't much like the look of the sky away to the north. I fancy we are going to have a storm. Thank God it did not come two days earlier." They landed on the island, hauled up the boat, then Godfrey took some time in finding a hollow where they could light a fire without risk of its being seen on the mainland, as, if there were Lapps there, they might cross in their canoes to see who had made it. They had no trouble in collecting plenty of drift-wood along the shore, and carefully choosing the driest, so as to avoid making a great smoke, they lit a fire and erected the tent to leeward of it, so that the smoke might blow through it, and so keep out their enemies the mosquitoes. Godfrey's prediction about the weather was speedily verified. The wind got up very rapidly, and in two hours was blowing a gale from the north. "No fear of canoes coming across," Luka said. "No fear at all. I don't suppose there was any real risk of it in any case, but I feel more nervous now than I have done all the time. At any rate the storm has made it perfectly safe. There will soon be a sea on that no canoe could face." For three days the storm raged, and they were glad to resume their fur jackets. Jack lay coiled up in the furs in the tent, and nothing could persuade him to move except for breakfast and dinner. They waited twelve hours after the gale ceased to allow the sea to go down and then started again, hoisting their sail as there was enough wind to help them. CHAPTER XVIII. HOME AGAIN. Godfrey felt in wild spirits as they hoisted their sail, for the end of the journey was close at hand, and, unless some altogether unforeseen misfortune were to befall them, they would have accomplished an undertaking that had been deemed almost impossible. They kept well out from land, increasing the distance as they sailed west until they were some ten miles out, for the map showed that some five-and-twenty miles from the point where they had camped a rocky peninsula jutted out. In three hours they could make out its outline, for the land was bold and high, and it took them another four hours before they were abreast of its eastern point, Cape Navalok. Then they coasted along the peninsula until they arrived at Cape Kekour, its western point. They had now been paddling nearly twelve hours, for Godfrey was too impatient to be content with the sail only. Just before they arrived at the cape, Luka, seeing a good place for landing, suggested a halt. "No, no," Godfrey said, "we will not risk another landing. We have been marvellously fortunate up to now, and it would be folly to run even the slightest risk when we are so near the end of our journey. We will keep on. There are only thirty or forty more miles to go, and then we shall enter the Voranger Fiord. Then we shall be in Norway. Think of that, Luka! We can snap our fingers at the Russians, and tell everyone we meet that we have escaped from their prisons." "Who shall we meet?" Luka asked. "Ah, that is more than I can tell you. The sooner we meet some one the better. Norway is not like this country we have been passing along; it is all covered with great mountains and forests. I don't know anything about the coast, but I fancy it is tremendously rocky, and we should have a poor chance there if caught in another storm from the north. There are Laplanders, who are people just like the Samoyedes, and who have got reindeer; if we find any of them, as I hope we shall, we ought to be all right. We have got a hundred silver roubles, and if you show a man money and make signs you want to go somewhere, and don't much care where, he is pretty safe to take you. Now you take a sleep, Luka. I will steer. There is no occasion to paddle, the wind is taking us along nearly three miles an hour, and time is no particular object to us now. You get three hours, then I will take three, and then we will set to with the paddles again." Eight hours later they could make out high land on the starboard bow, and knew that they were approaching the entrance to the fiord. They had not taken to their paddles again, for the wind had freshened, and they were going fast through the water. Luka cooked a meal, and as it was growing dark the land closed in on both sides to a distance of about eight miles. An hour later they saw lights on their right hand. "Hurrah!" Godfrey exclaimed, "there is a village there. We won't land to-night. We might find it difficult to get a place to sleep in. One night longer on board won't do us any harm. Thank God we are fairly out of Russia at last, and shall land as free men in the morning." They drew in towards the shore a mile or so above the lights, and paddled cautiously on until close to the land. There they dropped their anchor overboard, and, wearied out by their long row, were speedily sound asleep. It was broad daylight when they woke. Godfrey, when he sat up, gave a loud cheer, which set Jack off barking wildly. "Look!" Godfrey shouted, "it is a town, and there are two steamboats lying there. Thank God, our troubles are all over. You had better get breakfast, Luka. It is of no use going ashore till people are awake." Breakfast over the anchor was at once pulled up, and in a quarter of an hour they were alongside a quay. Their appearance was so similar to that of the Lapps that they themselves would have attracted but little notice, but the canoe was so different in its appearance to those used by these people that several persons stood on the little quay watching them as they came alongside. Their surprise at the boat was increased when Godfrey came up on to the quay. No Laplander or Finn of his height had ever been seen, and moreover, his face and hands were clean. They addressed him in a language that he did not understand. He replied first in English, then in Russian. Apparently they recognized the latter language, and one of them motioned to Godfrey to follow him. "You wait here till I come back, Luka. I daresay the people are honest enough, but I don't want any of our furs or things stolen now that we have got to the end of our journey." He then followed his conductor to a large house in the principal street, where he went in to a sort of office and spoke to a man sitting there. Then he went out, and in a minute returned with a gentleman. "Do you speak English, sir?" Godfrey said. "I speak it a little," the gentleman replied in surprise at hearing the language from one who looked like a Laplander. "Do you speak Russian better?" Godfrey next asked. "Yes," he replied in that language. "I know Russian well. And who are you?" "I am an Englishman. I was resident in St. Petersburg when I was seized and condemned to exile in Siberia as a Nihilist, although I was perfectly innocent of the charge. I was taken to the mines of Kara in the east of Siberia, but made my escape, descended the Yenesei, and have coasted from there in a canoe." The man looked at him incredulously. "I am not surprised that you doubt my story," Godfrey said. "If you will come down with me to the wharf you will see the canoe in which I made the journey. I built it on the Yenesei. I have with me a Tartar who escaped with me and shared my fortunes." The merchant put on his hat and walked down to the wharf. "It is a strange craft," he said, "though I have seen some at Christiania similar in form but smaller, built of wood, that Englishmen have brought over. And is it possible that you have sailed from the mouth of the Yenesei in her?" "There has been no great difficulty about it," Godfrey said. "We have kept near the coast, and have generally landed when bad weather came on. I have a gun, and with that and fishing there has been no difficulty about food. The journey has been a long one. It is seventeen months since I left Kara. I am provided with Russian money, sir, and shall be glad if you can tell me what is my best way of getting back to England." "It is fortunate indeed that you did not arrive here two days later, for the last steamer will sail for Hamburg to-morrow. She touches at many ports on her way, but I don't know that you can do better than go to Hamburg, whence there is a steamer nearly every day to England. If you had been two days later you would have lost her, for the season is just over, and you would then have had to travel by land and river down to Tornea on the Gulf of Bothnia. But come up with me to my house; I am the agent here for the steamer. What are you going to do with your canoe?" "I shall take her home with me just as she stands," Godfrey said. "And the Tartar?" "Yes, the Tartar and the dog." "Very well. Stay here for ten minutes," he said to Luka, "I will send a man down to help you up with the canoe. We may as well put it in my yard," he went on as he started back with Godfrey. "The people are as honest as the day, but they might be pulling it about and examining it, and it is just as well to stow it away safe. Well, this is a wonderful escape of yours! During the twenty years I have been here, it has never happened before." "I wonder it has not been done many times," Godfrey said. "Canoes go from Archangel to the Petchora, which is quite half-way to the mouth of the Obi, and there is no more difficulty between the Petchora and the Yenesei than there is on this side. The first thing to do now is to get some clothes." "The first thing to do, I think, is to get some breakfast," the trader said. "I have already had some breakfast on board," Godfrey said; "but I daresay I can eat another." "I will warrant you can. Your breakfast was probably of the roughest." "It was," Godfrey admitted. "I have not eaten a piece of real bread for more than a year. We haven't had much of anything made of flour since we started in the canoe in June; but one gets to do without bread very well." "I have not asked you your name yet," the trader said. "It is Godfrey Bullen. My father is head of a firm in London that does a good deal of trade with Russia. He was Living in St. Petersburg a good many years. That is how it is that I speak the language." "I was wondering how it was that you spoke it so well. Now, then, let me introduce you to my wife and family. This is an English gentleman, wife," he said in his own language to a pleasant-looking lady. "He does not look like it, but when I tell you that he has made his escape from Siberia in a canoe it will account for it." Godfrey found that his early meal had in no way abated his appetite. The breakfast was an excellent one, but he confined himself to bread and butter, and thought he had never tasted anything so good in his life. He learned that his host was an importer of goods of all kinds, and did the principal trade at Vadsö, besides supplying all the villages on the fiord. "If you had been here a few days earlier," he said, "you would have found a countryman of yours, a Mr. Clarke, who almost monopolizes the whaling trade here. He owns three steamers, and has a great melting-down establishment. I myself send great quantities of cod to Hamburg by steamer. Most of the boats here work for me." After breakfast Godfrey gave his host a sketch of his adventures. "It has been a wonderful journey," his host said when he concluded. "I have heard of one or two cases where men have made their way to Archangel, and thence by land to our frontier, but I never heard of anyone attempting it by sea before. It was a perilous journey indeed, and required a knowledge of canoeing, which no Russian prisoner would be likely to have. Then you were certainly fortunate in having a companion with you who was at home with those Ostjaks. Still, as you brought him with you for that purpose, that was forethought rather than luck." "Which is the first port at which the steamer will stop that I can send a telegram from?" The merchant laughed. "If you go down-stairs into the office, and go through the door to your left hand, you will find yourself in a telegraph office." "Really?" "Yes, really. We have had the telegraph here for some little time." Godfrey rushed down-stairs, and sent off a telegram as follows:-- "_Have just arrived here. Made my escape from prison at Kara, in Siberia. Seventeen months on the way. Am in first-rate health. Start to-morrow by steamer to Hamburg. Hope all are well. Have plenty of money._" He directed it to his father's office, so that the news might be broken gradually to his mother. In the afternoon the answer came:-- "_Thank God for His mercies. All well. I shall cross to Hamburg to meet you._" While Godfrey was being made much of by the merchant and his family, and, indeed, by many of their acquaintances, who, upon hearing the news, came in to see him and inquire into the wonderful voyage, Luka was no less a centre of attraction to the fishermen, and was so generously treated that long before it became dark he was obliged to be assisted, in a state of inebriation, to a pallet that had been prepared for him. Godfrey was annoyed when he heard it; "but," as his host said, "after being eighteen months, and, for aught I know, eighteen months before that, without touching liquor, very little would be likely to produce an effect upon him. I daresay it is his talking as much as the spirit that has turned his head; besides, you know, the lower class of Russians and Tartars are all fond of spirits." "I shall not be angry with him in the morning," Godfrey said, "because I do think that it is pardonable; but I shall talk seriously to him about it, and tell him that if he is coming home to England with me he must give up spirits. He has done without them so long that it can't be any hardship." "What are you going to do with him?" "I have not the most remote idea," Godfrey laughed. "If he likes to return to his people I daresay my father would be able, through the Russian embassy, to get a pardon for him and permission to go back; but I don't think he has any notion of that. He lost his parents when he was a child, and I never heard him express the slightest desire to go back again. He has attached himself to me heart and soul, and I think looks upon it as a settled thing that he will be always with me. I don't know in what capacity, still, I suppose, something will be found for him." The steamer was to start at nine o'clock on the following morning, and by that hour Godfrey, Luka, and Jack were on board and the canoe carefully stowed on deck. Both had obtained a complete fit-out from the merchant's stores, and although Godfrey's garments would scarcely have passed muster in London, they did very well for the voyage. Luka was greatly amused at his own appearance in European garb, though Godfrey thought he looked much better in his Ostjak costume. "We will rig him out fresh when I get him home," he said to the merchant. "I don't know what he looks like now in that greatcoat and billycock hat." The merchant stayed on board until the last moment. As soon as he got into his boat the paddles began to revolve and the steamer started on her way. She was ten days on her voyage, ascending many of the fiords, landing or taking on board cargo or passengers. Godfrey enjoyed the voyage greatly. The scenery was magnificent, and eagerly as he desired to be at home, he was almost sorry when the end approached. It had been so strange to have nothing to do but to sit and watch the shore, to eat and to sleep. Luka had been very penitent over his little excess at Vadsö, and had solemnly promised Godfrey to abstain from spirits in future; and he, too, enjoyed the voyage in his way, eating enormously, and drinking vast quantities of tea and coffee. Godfrey had sent off one or two telegrams from the ports at which he touched, so that his father might be able to judge when the ship was likely to arrive; and when one morning early the vessel steamed up to the wharf at Hamburg Godfrey saw him waiting there. It was a joyful meeting indeed, and it was not until they were alone together at an hotel, Luka being left down-stairs in charge of the canoe, that they were enabled to begin to talk. "Did you know what had become of me, father?" "Yes, my boy. Petrovytch telegraphed to me that you had been missing three days, and I at once went over to St. Petersburg. He thought that you had fallen into bad hands, and had been murdered and thrown into the Neva; but remembering that you had got into that silly scrape before with the police, I thought it possible that, coming, as your absence did, directly after the affair at the Winter Palace, suspicion had fallen on you again. I went to the head of the police; he declined to give me any information. Then I set the embassy at work, and they found out that you had been arrested with some desperate Nihilists. At last they obtained a sight of the records of the court-martial before which you had been tried, and told me that the case was so strong against you that nothing could be done; indeed, had it not been for your youth, and the fact that you were a British subject, you would certainly have been executed. I tried everything, but I found it absolutely useless. The embassy recommended me to let the matter drop for the present, and in time, perhaps, when the Nihilist scare passed off, it might be possible to interest some minister or other in your favour and obtain a reversion of your sentence. Then a few months later came the assassination of the Czar, and, of course, that rendered it more hopeless than ever, and all we could hope for was, that in the course of years we might again move in the matter. Of course it has been a terrible business for us all. But we won't talk about that now. Thank God it is over, and that you have returned to us. But what madness, Godfrey, to mix yourself up with these people!" "Indeed, father, I was perfectly innocent, though I cannot blame the court-martial for finding me guilty." And he then gave his father the details of his connection with the two Nihilists Akim Soushiloff and Petroff Stepanoff, and of the circumstances of his arrest in their room. "I am very glad to hear that, Godfrey. Not that it makes any actual matter now, but because, after the warning I had given you to avoid the society of any people holding extreme opinions, it seemed to me you must have showed an incredible amount of wilfulness and folly in getting yourself mixed up with these desperate conspirators. I am heartily glad to find that I was mistaken, and that, except as regards that foolish business at the theatre, you have really not been to blame in the matter, and have been altogether a victim of circumstances. Now, tell me how you got away. And first, who is that queer-looking little fellow with your canoe?" "He is my comrade and friend, father. He escaped from prison with me, and is devoted to me; but for him I should have had no chance whatever of making my way through all the difficulties of the journey." And he then gave his father an outline of their adventures from the time of their leaving Kara. When he had finished, Mr. Bullen went down-stairs and saw Luka, and shook hands with him heartily, telling him in Russian that he had heard from Godfrey how much he owed to him, and assuring him that he need have no fear for the future. Two days later the party arrived at home. There is no occasion to say anything as to the joy of that meeting. The three years of hardship and roughing it had converted the careless school-boy into a powerful young fellow. His spirits were as high and he was as full of fun as of old; but the experience he had gone through had strengthened his character, had given him self-reliance and confidence, and had, as his father and mother soon saw, had a very beneficial effect in forming his character. Two or three days after his arrival Godfrey wrote to Mikail. It was a very guarded letter, because he knew that it would be opened by the prison authorities, but it thanked him for the kindness he had shown to him while in prison, and expressed a hope that, now that he would have obtained partial freedom, and would be united to his wife, he would succeed and prosper. He inclosed a five-hundred-rouble note from his father as a present in return for the kindness he had shown him, and he also inclosed a directed envelope, so that he could acknowledge the receipt of the letter. An answer written by the priest of the village--for Mikail was unable to write--came at the end of five months. It was expressed in the most grateful terms. He had been released four months after Godfrey left, and the governor had, as a reward for his good conduct, allowed him to work for a farmer instead of in the mines. He said that he was perfectly happy, and that, as he should now be able to purchase a small farm for himself, he should be sure to do well. "I have a boy," he said, "who was born three months ago; we have christened him Godfrey, in memory of the night when you saved my life at the risk of your own." Luka was for some time a difficulty. He absolutely refused to return to Russia, and was for a time established as doorkeeper at the office, but in the spring after Godfrey's return the latter took him down with him to a house Mr. Bullen had just purchased near Richmond. Luka was so delighted with the country that he was established there, and became a sort of general factotum, assisting in the garden, stables, or house, wherever he could make himself useful, and being in special charge of a sailing boat that Godfrey keeps on the river. He had picked up a good deal of English from Godfrey on their travels, and soon came to speak it fairly, and being regarded as a friend by all the family, he is in every way perfectly contented with his lot. Four years after Godfrey's return, a clerk one day came into the office with the news that a gentleman wished to speak to him, and Godfrey was astounded at the entry of Alexis. "I have come," the Russian said. "You told me to come, and I have done so." "I am delighted to see you, Alexis. I had thought of you as married and settled among the Buriats." "I did marry," Alexis said; "but three years afterwards I lost my wife. What was I to do? I could not remain all my life a wandering shepherd, afraid ever to enter a town or to speak with a civilized being; so I sold my flocks and herds. You know my wife owned a third of those of the Buriat. He was a rich man and bought most of them, and for the rest I found other purchasers. Then he negotiated for me with one of the tea merchants, and I managed to go as a driver with one of his caravans to Pekin." "And what do you mean to do, Alexis? I can still keep my promise, and make a berth for you here in the office." "I thank you, my friend," Alexis said; "but I shall return to my profession. I am a doctor, you know, and have my Russian diplomas. I shall learn your language, and study in your hospitals for a time; then I shall set up here. I believe you have many Russians in your poorer districts; and as, besides, I speak German, I should be able to obtain a sufficient practice. Moreover, I have brought with me orders on a bank here for five thousand pounds, which I paid into their branch at Hong-Kong. I will get you to invest that for me, and you will see that it will give me an income sufficient for all my wants." Alexis carried out his plans, and has now a large although not very remunerative practice among the Russian and German colony in the East End of London. He married the daughter of a clergyman there, and remains fast friends with Godfrey, who has now set up an establishment of his own, of which Luka is major-domo, and special guardian and playmate to Godfrey's little boys. Godfrey has not returned to Russia, but is his father's right hand in the London business; at the same time he is free to visit St. Petersburg did he wish to do so, as Mr. Bullen drew up a full statement of his case, and this having been forwarded by the Russian ambassador, with a strong recommendation on his part, a reversal of the sentence of the court-martial was obtained, and a full pardon granted to him. It is not probable, however, that he will again set foot on Russian soil, his experiences as a prisoner in Siberia having been, as he says, ample for a lifetime. THE END. * * * * * "English boys owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Henty."--_Athenæum._ Blackie & Son's Illustrated Story Books _HISTORICAL TALES BY_ G. A. HENTY -- With Kitchener in the Soudan: A Tale of Atbara and Omdurman. With 10 Illustrations by W. RAINEY, R.I., and 3 Maps. 6s. In carrying out various special missions with which he is entrusted the hero displays so much dash and enterprise that he soon attains an exceptionally high rank for his age. In all the operations he takes a distinguished part, and adventure follows so close on adventure that the end of the story is reached all too soon. "Mr. Henty has collected a vast amount of information about the reconquest of the Soudan, and he succeeds in impressing it upon his reader's mind at the very time when he is interesting him most."--_Literary World._ -- With the British Legion: A story of the Carlist Wars. With 10 Illustrations by WAL PAGET. 6s. The hero joins the British Legion, which was raised by Sir de Lacy Evans to support the cause of Queen Christina and the infant Queen Isabella, and as soon as he sets foot on Spanish soil his adventures begin. Arthur is one of Mr. Henty's most brilliant heroes, and the tale of his experiences is thrilling and breathless from first to last. "It is a rattling story told with verve and spirit."--_Pall Mall Gazette._ -- The Treasure of the Incas: A Tale of Adventure in Peru. With 8 Illustrations by WAL PAGET, and a Map. 5s. The heroes of this powerful story go to Peru to look for the treasure which the Incas hid when the Spaniards invaded the country. Their task is both arduous and dangerous, but though they are often disappointed, their courage and perseverance are at last amply rewarded. "The interest never flags for one moment, and the story is told with vigour." --_World._ [Illustration: _From WITH THE BRITISH LEGION_ BY G. A. HENTY (See page 1)] * * * * * STORIES BY G. A. HENTY G. A. HENTY -- With Roberts to Pretoria: A Tale of the South African War. With 12 Illustrations by WILLIAM RAINEY, R.I., and a Map. 6s. The hero takes part in the series of battles that end in the disaster at Magersfontein, is captured and imprisoned in the race-course at Pretoria, but escapes in time to fight at Paardeberg and march with the victorious army to Bloemfontein. He rides with Colonel Mahon's column to the relief of Mafeking, and accomplishes the return journey with such despatch as to be able to join in the triumphant advance to Pretoria. "In this story of the South African war Mr. Henty proves once more his incontestable pre-eminence as a writer for boys."--_Standard._ -- Both Sides the Border: A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower. With 12 page Illustrations by RALPH PEACOCK. 6s. The hero casts in his lot with the Percys, and becomes esquire to Sir Henry, the gallant Hotspur. He is sent on several dangerous and important missions in which he acquits himself with great valour. "With boys the story should rank among Mr. Henty's best."--_Standard._ "A vivid picture of that strange past ... when England and Scotland ... were torn by faction and civil war."--_Onward._ -- Through Russian Snows: or, Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow. With 8 page Illustrations by W. H. OVEREND. 5s. Julian Wyatt becomes, quite innocently, mixed up with smugglers, who carry him to France, and hand him over as a prisoner to the French. He subsequently regains his freedom by joining Napoleon's army in the campaign against Russia. "The story of the campaign is very graphically told."--_St. James's Gazette._ "One of Mr. Henty's best books, which will be hailed with joy by his many eager readers."--_Journal of Education._ "Is full of life and action."--_Journal of Education._ -- Out with Garibaldi: A Story of the Liberation of Italy. With 8 page Illustrations by W. RAINEY, R.I., and two Maps. 5s. Mr. Henty makes the liberation of Italy by Garibaldi the groundwork of an exciting tale of adventure. The hero is an English lad who joins the expedition and takes a prominent part in the extraordinary series of operations that ended in the fall of the Neapolitan kingdom. "A first-rate story of stirring deeds."--_Daily Chronicle._ "Full of hard fighting, gallant rescues, and narrow escapes."--_Graphic._ * * * * * BLACKIE'S STORY BOOKS FOR BOYS G. A. HENTY -- At the Point of the Bayonet: A Tale of the Mahratta War. With 12 Illustrations by WAL PAGET, and 2 Maps. 6s. Harry Lindsay is carried off to the hills and brought up as a Mahratta. At the age of sixteen he becomes an officer in the service of the Mahratta prince at Poona, and afterwards receives a commission in the army of the East India Company. His courage and enterprise are rewarded by quick promotion, and at the end of the war he sails for England, where he succeeds in establishing his right to the family estates. "A brisk, dashing narrative."--_Bookman._ -- Under Wellington's Command: A Tale of the Peninsular War. With 12 page Illustrations by WAL PAGET. 6s. In this stirring romance Mr. Henty gives us the further adventures of Terence O'Connor, the hero of _With Moore at Corunna_. We are told how, in alliance with a small force of Spanish guerrillas, the gallant regiment of Portuguese levies commanded by Terence keeps the whole of the French army in check at a critical period of the war, rendering invaluable service to the Iron Duke and his handful of British troops. "An admirable exposition of Mr. Henty's masterly method of combining instruction with amusement."--_World._ -- To Herat and Cabul: A Story of the First Afghan War. With 8 full-page Illustrations by C. M. SHELDON, and Map. 5s. The hero takes a distinguished part in the defence of Herat, and subsequently obtains invaluable information for the British army during the first Afghan war. He is fortunately spared the horrors of the retreat from Cabul, and shares in the series of operations by which that most disastrous blunder was retrieved. "We can heartily commend it to boys, old and young."--_Spectator._ -- With Cochrane the Dauntless: A Tale of his Exploits. With 12 page Illustrations by W. H. MARGETSON. 6s. It would be hard to find, even in sensational fiction, a more daring leader than Lord Cochrane, or a career which supplies so many thrilling exploits. The manner in which, almost single-handed, he scattered the French fleet in the Basque Roads is one of the greatest feats in English naval history. "As rousing and interesting a book as boys could wish for."--_Saturday Review._ "This tale we specially recommend."--_St. James's Gazette._ * * * * * STORIES BY G. A. HENTY G. A. HENTY -- Redskin and Cow-Boy: A Tale of the Western Plains. With 12 page Illustrations by ALFRED PEARSE. 6s. Hugh Tunstall accompanies a frontiersman on a hunting expedition on the Plains, and then seeks employment as a cow-boy on a cattle ranch. His experiences during a "round up" present in picturesque form the toilsome, exciting, adventurous life of a cow-boy; while the perils of a frontier settlement are vividly set forth. Subsequently, the hero joins a wagon-team, and the interest is sustained in a fight with, and capture of, brigands. "A strong interest of open-air life and movement pervades the whole book."--_Scotsman._ -- With Buller in Natal: or, A Born Leader. With 10 page Illustrations by W. RAINEY, R.I., and a Map. 6s. The heroic story of the relief of Ladysmith forms the theme of one of the most powerful romances that have come from Mr. Henty's pen. When the war breaks out, the hero, Chris King, and his friends band themselves together under the title of the Maritzburg Scouts. From first to last the boy scouts are constantly engaged in perilous and exciting enterprises, from which they always emerge triumphant, thanks to their own skill and courage, and the dash and ingenuity of their leader. "Just the sort of book to inspire an enterprising boy."--_Army and Navy Gazette._ -- By England's Aid: or, The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604). With 10 page Illustrations by ALFRED PEARSE, and 4 Maps. 6s. Two English lads go to Holland in the service of one of "the fighting Veres". After many adventures one of the lads finds himself on board a Spanish ship at the defeat of the Armada, and escapes from Spain only to fall into the hands of the Corsairs. He is successful, however, in getting back to Spain, and regains his native country after the capture of Cadiz. "Boys know and love Mr. Henty's books of adventure, and will welcome his tale of the freeing of the Netherlands."--_Athenæum._ -- Condemned as a Nihilist: A Story of Escape from Siberia. With 8 page Illustrations by WAL PAGET. 5s. Godfrey Bullen, a young Englishman resident in St. Petersburg, becomes involved in various political plots, resulting in his seizure and exile to Siberia. After an unsuccessful attempt to escape, he gives himself up to the Russian authorities. Eventually he escapes, and reaches home, having safely accomplished a perilous journey which lasts nearly two years. "The escape from Siberia is well told and the description of prison life is very graphic."--_Academy._ [Illustration: _From THE TREASURE OF THE INCAS_ BY G. A. HENTY (See page 1)] * * * * * G. A. HENTY -- Maori and Settler: A Story of the New Zealand War with 8 page Illustrations by ALFRED PEARSE. 5s. The Renshaws lose their property and emigrate to New Zealand. Wilfrid, a strong, self-reliant lad, is the mainstay of the household. The odds seem hopelessly against the party, but they succeed in establishing themselves happily in one of the pleasantest of the New Zealand valleys. "A book which all young people, but especially boys, will read with avidity."--_Athenæum._ -- Beric the Briton: A Story of the Roman Invasion of Britain. With 12 page Illustrations by W. PARKINSON. 6s. Beric is a boy-chief of a British tribe which takes a prominent part in the insurrection under Boadicea: and after the defeat of that heroic queen he continues the struggle in the fen-country. Ultimately Beric is defeated and carried captive to Rome, where he succeeds in saving a Christian maid by slaying a lion in the arena, and is rewarded by being made the personal protector of Nero. Finally, he escapes and returns to Britain, where he becomes a wise ruler of his own people. "He is a hero of the most attractive kind.... One of the most spirited and well-imagined stories Mr. Henty has written."--_Saturday Review._ "His conflict with a lion in the arena is a thrilling chapter."--_School Board Chronicle._ "Full of every form of heroism and pluck."--_Christian World._ -- The Dash for Khartoum: A Tale of the Nile Expedition. With 10 page Illustrations by JOHN SCHÖNBERG and J. NASH. 6s. In the record of recent British history there is no more captivating page for boys than the story of the Nile campaign, and the attempt to rescue General Gordon. For, in the difficulties which the expedition encountered, and in the perils which it overpassed, are found all the excitement of romance, as well as the fascination which belongs to real events. "_The Dash for Khartoum_ is your ideal boys' book."--_Tablet._ "It is literally true that the narrative never flags a moment."--_Academy._ "_The Dash for Khartoum_ will be appreciated even by those who don't ordinarily care a dash for anything."--_Punch._ -- With Wolfe in Canada: or, The Winning of a Continent. With 12 page Illustrations by GORDON BROWNE. 6s. Mr. Henty tells the story of the struggle between Britain and France for supremacy on the North American continent. The fall of Quebec decided that the Anglo-Saxon race should predominate in the New World; that Britain, and not France, should take the lead among the nations. "A moving tale of military exploit and thrilling adventure."--_Daily News._ * * * * * G. A. HENTY -- Held Fast for England: A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar. With 8 page Illustrations by GORDON BROWNE. 5s. The story deals with one of the most memorable sieges in history. The hero, a young Englishman resident in Gibraltar, takes a brave and worthy part in the long defence, and we learn with what bravery, resourcefulness, and tenacity the Rock was held for England. "There is no cessation of exciting incident throughout the story."--_Athenæum._ -- In the Irish Brigade: A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain. With 12 page Illustrations by CHARLES M. SHELDON. 6s. The hero is a young officer in the Irish Brigade, which for many years after the siege of Limerick formed the backbone of the French army. He goes through many stirring adventures, successfully carries out dangerous missions in Spain, saves a large portion of the French army at Oudenarde, and even has the audacity to kidnap the Prime Minister of England. "A stirring book of military adventure."--_Scotsman._ -- At Agincourt: A Tale of the White Hoods of Paris. With 12 page Illustrations by WAL PAGET. 6s. Sir Eustace de Villeroy, in journeying from Hampshire to his castle in France, made young Guy Aylmer one of his escort. Soon thereafter the castle was attacked, and the English youth displayed such valour that his liege-lord made him commander of a special mission to Paris. This he accomplished, returning in time to take part in the campaign against the French which ended in the glorious victory for England at Agincourt. "Cannot fail to commend itself to boys of all ages."--_Manchester Courier._ -- A Final Reckoning: A Tale of Bush Life in Australia. With 8 page Illustrations by W. B. WOLLEN. 5s. The hero, a young Englishman, emigrates to Australia, where he gets employment as an officer in the mounted police. A few years of active work gain him promotion to a captaincy. In that post he greatly distinguishes himself, and finally leaves the service and settles down as a squatter. "A stirring story capitally told."--_Guardian_. * * * * * "Young readers have no better friends than Blackie & Son."--_Westminster Gazette._ Blackie & Son's Story Books for Boys G. MANVILLE FENN Dick o' the Fens: A Romance of the Great East Swamp. With 12 page Illustrations by FRANK DADD. 6s. Dick o' the Fens and Tom o'Grimsey are the sons of a squire and a farmer living in Lincolnshire. Many sketches of their shooting and fishing experiences are related, while the record of the fenmen's stealthy resistance to the great draining scheme is full of keen interest. The ambushes and shots in the mist and dark, and the long-baffled attempts to trace the lurking foe, are described with Mr. Fenn's wonted skill. "Mr. Fenn has here very nearly attained perfection. Life in the Fens in the old ante-drainage days is admirably reproduced. We have not of late come across a historical fiction, whether intended for boys or for men, which deserves to be so heartily praised as regards plot, incidents, and spirit. It is its author's masterpiece as yet."--_Spectator._ -- Nat the Naturalist: A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas. With 8 page Pictures by GORDON BROWNE. 5s. The boy Nat and his uncle go on a voyage to the islands of the Eastern seas to seek specimens in natural history, and their adventures there are full of interest and excitement. The descriptions of Mr. Ebony, their black comrade, and of the scenes of savage life sparkle with genuine humour. "This book encourages independence of character, develops resource, and teaches a boy to keep his eyes open."--_Saturday Review._ -- The Golden Magnet: A Tale of the Land of the Incas. With 12 page Illustrations by GORDON BROWNE. 3s. The tale is of a romantic youth, who leaves home to seek his fortune in South America. He is accompanied by a faithful companion, who, in the capacity both of comrade and henchman, does true service, and shows the dogged courage of an English lad during their strange adventures. "There could be no more welcome present for a boy. There is not a dull page, and many will be read with breathless interest."--_Journal of Education._ * * * * * [Illustration: _From THE DIAMOND SEEKERS_ BY ERNEST GLANVILLE (See page 11)] Dr. GORDON STABLES, R.N. In the Great White Land: A Tale of the Antarctic Ocean. With 6 Illustrations by J. A. WALTON. 3s. 6d. This is a most fascinating story from beginning to end. It is a true picture of what daring healthful British men and boys can do, written by an author whose name is a household word wherever the English language is spoken. All is described with a master's hand, and the plot is just such as boys love. "The narrative goes with a swing and a dash from start to finish."--_Public Opinion._ ERNEST GLANVILLE The Diamond Seekers: A Story of Adventure in South Africa. With 8 Illustrations by WILLIAM RAINEY, R.I. 6s. The discovery of the plan of the diamond mine, the dangers incurred in reaching the wild, remote spot in an armoured wagon, and the many incidents of farm and veldt life, are vividly described by an author who knows the country well. "We have seldom seen a better story for boys."--_Guardian._ Capt. F. S. BRERETON, R.A.M.C. One of the Fighting Scouts: A Tale of Guerrilla Warfare in South Africa. With 8 Illustrations by STANLEY L. WOOD, and a Map. 5s. This story deals with the guerrilla aspect of the Boer War, and shows how George Ransome is compelled to leave his father's farm and take service with the British. He is given the command of a band of scouts as a reward for gallantry, and with these he punishes certain rebels for a piece of rascality, and successfully attacks Botha's commando. Thanks to his knowledge of the veldt he is of signal service to his country, and even outwits the redoubtable De Wet. "Altogether an unusually good story."--_Yorkshire Post._ -- Under the Spangled Banner: A Tale of the Spanish-American War. With 8 Illustrations by PAUL HARDY. 5s. Hal Marchant is in Cuba before the commencement of hostilities. A Spaniard who has been frustrated in an attempt to rob Hal's employer attacks the hacienda and is defeated, but turns the tables by denouncing Hal as a spy. The hero makes good his escape from Santiago, and afterwards fights for America both on land and at sea. The story gives a vivid and at the same time accurate account of this memorable struggle. "Just the kind of book that a boy would delight in."--_Schoolmaster._ FREDERICK HARRISON The Boys of Wynport College. With 6 Illustrations by HAROLD COPPING. 3s. _New Edition._ The hero and his chums differ as widely in character as in personal appearance. We have Patrick O'Fflahertie, the good-natured Irish boy; Jack Brookes, the irrepressible humorist; Davie Jackson, the true-hearted little lad, on whose haps and mishaps the plot to a great extent turns; and the hero himself, who finds in his experiences at Wynport College a wholesome corrective of a somewhat lax home training. "A book which no well-regulated school-boy should be without."--_Whitehall Review._ LÉON GOLSCHMANN Boy Crusoes: A Story of the Siberian Forest. Adapted from the Russian by LÉON GOLSCHMANN. With 6 page Illustrations by J. FINNEMORE, R.I. 3s. 6d. Two Russian lads are so deeply impressed by reading _Robinson Crusoe_ that they run away from home. They lose their way in a huge trackless forest, and for two years are kept busy hunting for food, fighting against wolves and other enemies, and labouring to increase their comforts, before they are rescued. "This is a story after a boy's own heart."--_Nottingham Guardian._ MEREDITH FLETCHER Every Inch a Briton: A School Story. With 6 page Illustrations by SYDNEY COWELL. 3s. 6d. This story is written from the point of view of an ordinary boy, who gives an animated account of a young public-schoolboy's life. No moral is drawn; yet the story indicates a kind of training that goes to promote veracity, endurance, and enterprise; and of each of several of the characters it might be truly said, he is worthy to be called, "Every Inch a Briton". "In _Every Inch a Briton_ Mr. Meredith Fletcher has scored a success."--_Manchester Guardian._ EDGAR PICKERING In Press-Gang Days. With 4 illustrations by W. S. STACEY. 2s. 6d. _New Edition._ In this story Harry Waring is caught by the Press-gang and carried on board His Majesty's ship _Sandwich_. He takes part in the mutiny of the Nore, and shares in some hard fighting on board the _Phoenix_. He is with Nelson, also, at the storming of Santa Cruz, and the battle of the Nile. "It is of Marryat, that friend of our boyhood, we think as we read this delightful story; for it is not only a story of adventure, with incidents well-conceived and arranged, but the characters are interesting and well-distinguished."--_Academy._ FRED SMITH The Boyhood of a Naturalist. With 6 page Illustrations. 3s. 6d. _New Edition._ Few lovers of Nature have given to the world a series of recollections so entertaining, so vigorous, and so instinct with life as these delightful reminiscences. The author takes the reader with him in the rambles in which he spent the happiest hours of his boyhood, a humble observer of the myriad forms of life in field and copse, by stream and hedgerow. "We cannot too highly recommend the book to all readers."--_Guardian._ The World of Animal Life. Edited by FRED SMITH. Profusely Illustrated with Engravings after F. SPECHT and other eminent artists. 5s. The aim of _The World of Animal Life_ is to give in non-scientific language an account of those inhabitants of the land, sea, and sky with whose names we are all familiar, but concerning whose manner of life the majority of us have only the haziest conceptions. "An admirable volume for the young mind enquiring after Nature."--_Birmingham Gazette._ EDGAR PICKERING An Old-Time Yarn: Adventures in the West Indies and Mexico with Hawkins and Drake. With 6 page Illustrations by ALFRED PEARSE. 3s. 6d. The hero sails from Plymouth in the flagship of Master John Hawkins. Divers are the perils through which he passes. Chief of these are the destruction of the English ships by the treacherous Spaniards, the fight round the burning vessels, the journey of the prisoners to the city of Mexico, the horrors of the Inquisition, and the final escape to England. "An excellent story of adventure.... The book is thoroughly to be recommended."--_Guardian._ CLIVE PHILLIPPS-WOLLEY Gold, Gold in Cariboo: A Story of Adventure in British Columbia. With 4 Illustrations by G. C. HINDLEY. 2s. 6d. _New Edition._ Ned Corbett, a young Englishman, and his companion set out with a pack-train in order to obtain gold on the upper reaches of the Fraser River. After innumerable adventures, and a life-and-death struggle with the Arctic weather of that wild region, they find the secret gold-mines for which they have toilsomely searched. "It would be difficult to say too much in favour of _Gold, Gold in Cariboo_. We have seldom read a more exciting tale of wild mining adventure in a singularly inaccessible country. There is a capital plot, and the interest is sustained to the last page."--_The Times._ ROBERT LEIGHTON The Golden Galleon. With 6 Illustrations by W. RAINEY, R.I. 3s. _New Edition._ Gilbert Oglander, and his friend, Timothy Trollope, join in Lord Thomas Howard's expedition to intercept the Spanish treasure-fleet from the West Indies, and are on board _The Revenge_ in the memorable fight between that one little man-of-war and fifty-three great galleons of Spain. After the battle come storm and shipwreck, and the lads, having drifted for days, find refuge on board a derelict galleon, whence they are rescued and brought home to England. "A well-constructed and lively historical romance."--_Spectator._ S. BARING-GOULD Grettir the Outlaw: A Story of Iceland in the days of the Vikings. With 6 page Illustrations by M. ZENO DIEMER. 3s. A narrative of adventure of the most romantic kind. No boy will be able to withstand the magic of such scenes as the fight of Grettir with the twelve bearserks, the wrestle with Karr the Old in the chamber of the dead, the combat with the spirit of Glam the thrall, and the defence of the dying Grettir by his younger brother. "Has a freshness, a freedom, a sense of sun and wind and the open air, which make it irresistible."--_National Observer._ C. J. CUTCLIFFE HYNE The Captured Cruiser: or, Two Years from Land. With 6 page Illustrations by F. BRANGWYN. 3s. 6d. The central incidents deal with the capture, during the war between Chili and Peru, of an armed cruiser. The heroes and their companions break from prison in Valparaiso, board this warship in the night, overpower the watch, escape to sea under the fire of the forts, and finally, after marvellous adventures, lose the cruiser among the icebergs near Cape Horn. "The two lads and the two skippers are admirably drawn. Mr. Hyne has now secured a position in the first rank of writers of fiction for boys."--_Spectator._ -- Stimson's Reef: With 4 page Illustrations by W. S. STACEY. 2s. 6d. This is the extended log of a cutter which sailed from the Clyde to the Amazon in search of a gold reef. It relates how they discovered the buccaneer's treasure in the Spanish Main, fought the Indians, turned aside the river Jamary by blasting, and so laid bare the gold of _Stimson's Reef_. "Few stories come within hailing distance of Stimson's Reef in startling incidents and hairbreadth 'scapes. It may almost vie with Mr. R. L. Stevenson's _Treasure Island_."--_Guardian._ * * * * * [Illustration: _From ONE OF THE FIGHTING SCOUTS_ BY CAPT. F. S. BRERETON (See page 11)] * * * * * R. STEAD Grit will Tell: The Adventures of a Barge-boy. With 4 Illustrations by D. CARLETON SMYTH. Cloth, 2s. 6d. A lad whose name has been lost amidst early buffetings by hard fortune suffers many hardships at the hands of a bargeman, his master, and runs away. The various adventures and experiences with which he meets on the road to success, the bear-hunt in which he takes part, and the battle at which he acts as war correspondent, form a story of absorbing interest and after a boy's own heart. "A thoroughly wholesome and attractive book."--_Graphic._ HARRY COLLINGWOOD The Pirate Island. With 6 page Illustrations by C. J. STANILAND and J. R. WELLS. 3s. _New Edition._ By a deed of true gallantry the hero's whole destiny is changed, and, going to sea, he forms one of a party who, after being burned out of their ship in the South Pacific, are picked up by a pirate brig and taken to the "Pirate Island". After many thrilling adventures, they ultimately succeed in effecting their escape. "A capital story of the sea; indeed in our opinion the author is superior in some respects as a marine novelist to the better-known Mr. Clark Russell."--_Times._ FLORENCE COOMBE Boys of the Priory School. With 4 page Illustrations by HAROLD COPPING. 2s. 6d. The interest centres in the relations of Raymond and Hal Wentworth, and the process by which Raymond, the hero of the school, learns that in the person of his ridiculed cousin there beats a heart more heroic than his own. "It is an excellent work of its class, cleverly illustrated with 'real boys' by Mr. Harold Copping."--_Literature._ JOHN C. HUTCHESON Afloat at Last: A Sailor Boy's Log. With 6 page Illustrations by W. H. OVEREND. 3s. 6d. From the stowing of the vessel in the Thames to her recovery from the Pratas Reef on which she is stranded, everything is described with the accuracy of perfect practical knowledge of ships and sailors; and the incidents of the story range from the broad humours of the fo'c's'le to the perils of flight from, and fight with, the pirates of the China Seas. "As healthy and breezy a book as one could wish."--_Academy._ * * * * * Blackie & Son's Story Books for Girls ETHEL F. HEDDLE A Mystery of St. Rule's. With 8 Illustrations by G. DEMAIN HAMMOND, R.I. 6s. _Illustrated Edition._ "The author has been amazingly successful in keeping her secret almost to the end. Yet the mystery attending a stolen diamond of great value is so skilfully handled that several perfectly innocent persons seem all but hopelessly identified with the disappearance of the gem. Cleverly, however, as this aspect of the story has been managed, it has other sources of strength."--_Scotsman._ "The chief interest ... lies in the fascinating young adventuress, who finds a temporary nest in the old professor's family, and wins all hearts in St. Rule's by her beauty and her sweetness."--_Morning Leader._ "Into the dignified atmosphere of a northerly academic town Miss Ethel Heddle introduces a coil of events worthy of Wilkie Collins."--_Manchester Guardian._ KATHARINE TYNAN A Girl of Galway. With 8 full-page Illustrations by JOHN H. BACON. 6s. When Bertha Grace is on the threshold of young womanhood, she goes to stay with her grandfather in Ireland, with the trust from her mother of reconciling him and his son, Bertha's father. Bertha finds her grandfather a recluse and a miser, and in the hands of an underling, who is his evil genius. How she keeps faith with her mother and finds her own fate, through many strange adventures, is the subject of the story. "Full of the poetic charm we are accustomed to find in the works of that gifted writer."--_World._ CAROLINE AUSTIN Cousin Geoffrey and I. With 6 full-page Illustrations by W. PARKINSON. 3s. The only daughter of a country gentleman finds herself unprovided for at her father's death, and for some time lives as a dependant upon her kinsman. Life is saved from being unbearable to her by her young cousin Geoffrey, who at length meets with a serious accident for which she is held responsible. She makes a brave attempt to earn her own livelihood, until a startling event brings her cousin Geoffrey and herself together again. "Miss Austin's story is bright, clever, and well developed."--_Saturday Review._ ELLINOR DAVENPORT ADAMS A Queen among Girls. With 6 Illustrations by HAROLD COPPING. Cloth, 3s. 6d. Augusta Pembroke is the head of her school, the favourite of her teachers and fellow-pupils, who are attracted by her fearless and independent nature and her queenly bearing. She dreams of a distinguished professional career; but the course of her life is changed suddenly by pity for her timid little brother Adrian, the victim of his guardian-uncle's harshness. The story describes the daring means adopted by Augusta for Adrian's relief. "An interesting and well-written narrative, in which humour and a keen eye for character unite to produce a book happily adapted for modern maidens."--_Globe._ -- A Girl of To-Day. With 6 page Illustrations by G. D. HAMMOND, R.I. 3s. 6d. "What are Altruists?" humbly asks a small boy. "They are only people who try to help others," replies the Girl of To-Day. To help their poorer neighbours, the boys and girls of Woodend band themselves together into the _Society of Altruists_. That they have plenty of fun is seen in the shopping expedition and in the successful Christmas entertainment. "It is a spirited story. The characters are true to nature and carefully developed. Such a book as this is exactly what is needed to give a school-girl an interest in the development of character."--_Educational Times._ FRANCES ARMSTRONG A Girl's Loyalty. With 6 Illustrations by JOHN H. BACON. Cloth, 3s. 6d. New Edition. When she was still but a child, Helen Grant received from her grandfather, on his death-bed, a secret message. The brief words remained fast in her memory, and dominated her whole career. She was loyal to her trust, however, and to her friends in the hour of their need. For the girl was possessed of that quick courage which leaps up in a shy nature when evil-doers have to be unmasked, and wrongs made right. "The one book for girls that stands out this year is Miss Frances Armstrong's _A Girl's Loyalty_."--_Review of Reviews._ G. NORWAY A True Cornish Maid. With 6 page Illustrations by J. FINNEMORE. 3s. 6d. The heroine of the tale is sister to a young fellow who gets into trouble in landing a contraband cargo on the Cornish coast. In his extremity the girl stands by her brother bravely, and by means of her daring scheme he manages to escape. "The success of the year has fallen, we think, to Mrs. Norway, whose _True Cornish Maid_ is really an admirable piece of work."--_Review of Reviews._ * * * * * [Illustration: _From A MYSTERY OF ST. RULE'S_ BY ETHEL F. HEDDLE (See page 17)] * * * * * ROSA MULHOLLAND (LADY GILBERT) The Girls of Banshee Castle. With 6 Illustrations by JOHN H. BACON. Cloth, 3s. 6d. _New Edition._ Three girls, with an old governess, migrate from Kensington to the West of Ireland. Belonging as they do to "the ould family", the girls are made heartily welcome in the cabins of the peasantry, where they learn many weird and curious tales from the folk-lore of the district. An interesting plot runs through the narrative, but the charm of the story lies in its happy mingling of Irish humour and pathos. "Is told with grace, and brightened by a knowledge of Irish folk-lore, making it a perfect present for a girl in her teens."--_Truth._ -- Gianetta: A Girl's Story of Herself. With 6 full-page Illustrations by LOCKHART BOGLE. 3s. The story of a changeling who is suddenly transferred to the position of a rich English heiress. She develops into a good and accomplished woman, and has gained too much love and devotion to be a sufferer by the surrender of her estates. ANNIE E. ARMSTRONG Violet Vereker's Vanity. With 6 full-page Illustrations by G. DEMAIN HAMMOND, R.I. 3s. 6d. The heroine was an excellent girl in most respects. But she had one small weakness, which expressed itself in a snobbish dislike of her neighbours, the Sugdens, whose social position she deemed beneath her own. In the end, however, the girl acknowledged her folly, with results which are sure to delight the reader. "A book for girls that we can heartily recommend, for it is bright, sensible, and with a right tone of thought and feeling."--_Sheffield Independent._ ALICE CORKRAN Margery Merton's Girlhood. With 6 full-page Illustrations by GORDON BROWNE. 3s. 6d. The experiences of an orphan girl who in infancy is left by her father an officer in India--to the care of an elderly aunt residing near Paris. The accounts of the various persons who have an after influence on the story are singularly vivid. "_Margery Merton's Girlhood_ is a piece of true literature, as dainty as it is delicate, and as sweet as it is simple."--_Woman's World._ ELIZA F. POLLARD For the Red Rose. With 4 Illustrations by JAMES DURDEN. 2s. 6d. A gipsy finds a little girl in the forest of Wimbourne, after the sacking of the castle by the Yorkists. He carries her to the camp and she is adopted by the tribe. The story tells how, when some years later Margaret of Anjou and her son are wrecked on the coast of England, the gipsy girl follows the fortunes of the exiled queen, and by what curious chain of events her own origin is discovered. "This is a good story, and of special interest to lovers of historical romance."--_Court Circular._ MRS. E. J. LYSAGHT Brother and Sister: With 6 page Illustrations by GORDON BROWNE. 3s. 6d. A story showing, by the narrative of the vicissitudes and struggles of a family which has "come down in the world", and of the brave endeavours of its two younger members, how the pressure of adversity is mitigated by domestic affection, mutual confidence, and hopeful honest effort. "A pretty story, and well told. The plot is cleverly constructed, and the moral is excellent."--_Athenæum._ ANNE BEALE The Heiress of Courtleroy. With 8 full-page Illustrations by T. C. H. CASTLE. 5s. Mimica, the heroine, comes to England as an orphan, and is coldly received by her uncle. The girl has a brave nature, however, and succeeds in saving the estate from ruin and in reclaiming her uncle from the misanthropical disregard of his duties as a landlord. "One of the very best of girl's books we have seen."--_Sheffield Telegraph._ SARAH TYTLER A Loyal Little Maid. With 4 page Illustrations by PAUL HARDY. 2s. 6d. This pretty story is founded on a romantic episode of Mar's rebellion. A little girl has information which concerns the safety of her father in hiding, and this she firmly refuses to divulge to a king's officer. She is lodged in the Tolbooth, where she finds a boy champion, whom in future years she rescues in Paris from the _lettre de cachet_ which would bury him in the Bastille. "Has evidently been a pleasure to write, and makes very enjoyable reading."--_Literature._ * * * * * [Illustration: _From THE FAIRCLOUGH FAMILY_ BY MRS. HENRY CLARKE (See page 24)] * * * * * GERALDINE MOCKLER The Four Miss Whittingtons: A Story for Girls. With 8 full-page Illustrations by CHARLES M. SHELDON. 5s. This story tells how four sisters, left alone in the world, went to London to seek their fortunes. They had between them £400, and this they resolved to spend on training themselves for the different careers for which they were severally most fitted. On their limited means this was hard work, but their courageous experiment was on the whole very successful. "A story of endeavour, industry, and independence of spirit."--_World._ ALICE STRONACH A Newnham Friendship. With 6 full-page Illustrations by HAROLD COPPING. 3s. 6d. A sympathetic description of life at Newnham College. After the tripos excitements, some of the students leave their dream-world of study and talk of "cocoas" and debates and athletics to begin their work in the real world. Men students play their part in the story, and in the closing chapters it is suggested that marriage has its place in a girl graduate's life. "Foremost among all the gift-books suitable for school-girls this season stands Miss Alice Stronach's _A Newnham Friendship_."--_Daily Graphic._ BESSIE MARCHANT The Secret of the Everglades. With 4 Illustrations by A. A. DIXON. 2s. 6d. The father of the Osneys is supposed to have been killed whilst trapping in the Everglades of Florida. The family organize a series of expeditions to search for their father; but the secret of the swamp is hard to solve, and the end of the book is reached before the mystery is made clear. "A fresh and original story of incident and adventure in the mysterious Florida swamps. An excellent and engrossing story."--_St. James's Gazette._ -- Three Girls on a Ranch: A Story of New Mexico. With 4 page Illustrations by W. E. WEBSTER. 2s. 6d. The Lovell family emigrate from England to New Mexico, where they settle on a ranch. Mr. Lovell is delicate and unfit for farming, but the three eldest girls take upon themselves the burden of working the ranch. They have adventures of a perilous kind, and the story of their mishaps and how they overcame them is throughout both exciting and stimulating. "A story with a fresh, bright theme, well handled."--_Nottingham Guardian._ "A rousing book for young people."--_Queen._ MRS. HENRY CLARKE The Fairclough Family. With 6 Illustrations by G. D. HAMMOND, R.I. Cloth, 3s. 6d. It was matter for amazement when Ronald Hammersley fell in love with Kathy Fairclough, who was considered a blue-stocking, instead of with her younger sister Nell, whom Mrs. Hammersley had chosen for him. Why Mrs. Hammersley desired her wealthy stepson to marry one of Dr. Fairclough's penniless daughters was a secret. How the secret became known, and nearly wrecked the happiness of Kathy and Ronald, is told in the story. But all ends well, and to the sound of marriage bells. "One of those stories which all girls enjoy."--_World._ J. M. CALLWELL A Little Irish Girl. Illustrated by H. COPPING. 2s. 6d. An orphaned family inherit a small property on the coast of Clare. The two youngest members of the party have some thrilling adventures in their western home. They encounter seals, smugglers, and a ghost, and lastly, by most startling means, they succeed in restoring their eldest brother to his rightful place as heir to the ancestral estates. "Sure to prove of thrilling interest to both boys and girls."--_Literary World._ E. EVERETT-GREEN Miriam's Ambition. With illustrations. 2s. 6d. Miriam's ambition is to make someone happy, and her endeavour carries with it a train of incident, solving a mystery which had thrown a shadow over several lives. A charming foil to her grave elder sister is to be found in Miss Babs, a small coquette of five, whose humorous child-talk is so attractive. "Miss Everett-Green's children are real British boys and girls, not small men and women. Babs is a charming little one."--_Liverpool Mercury._ EMMA LESLIE Gytha's Message: A Tale of Saxon England. With Illustrations. 2s. 6d. We get a glimpse of the stirring events taking place at that period; and both boys and girls will delight to read of the home life of Hilda and Gytha, and of the brave deeds of the impulsive Gurth and the faithful Leofric. "This is a charmingly told story. It is the sort of book that all girls and some boys like, and can only get good from."--_Journal of Education._ * * * * * Blackie & Son's Finely Illustrated Books for Children STEWART ORR--JOHN BRYMER Two Merry Mariners. Pictures by STEWART ORR; Verses by JOHN BRYMER. Cover design and 24 pages in full colour. Picture boards, cloth back, 6s. This delightful volume tells in picture and verse how Dick and his friend the Hare sailed to the Downy Isle, the adventures they met with in that strange country, their encounter with the Dragon, and their remarkable voyage home. Mr. Orr exhibits in these designs a rare combination of humorous invention with brilliant draughtsmanship and command of colour, and the author supports him with a series of racy verses. "The illustrations are masterpieces of drollery."--_Manchester Courier._ "The verses are very funny and original."--_World._ JOHN HASSALL--CLIFTON BINGHAM Six and Twenty Boys and Girls. Pictures by JOHN HASSALL; Verses by CLIFTON BINGHAM. 25 pages in full colour, and 24 pages of letterpress. Picture boards, 9 inches by 11-1/4 inches, cloth back, 3s. 6d.; also cloth elegant, 5s. Most of us know some at least of the little girls and boys portrayed by Mr. Hassall in this amusing picture-book. As depicted with Mr. Hassall's inimitable skill, and described in humorous verse by Mr. Bingham, they may challenge comparison with the classic Struwwelpeter. Each picture is not only attractive and amusing in itself, but furnishes a hint of virtues to be imitated or faults to be avoided. "Exactly hits the mark."--_Scotsman._ "A most original picture-book."--_World._ MRS. PERCY DEARMER Roundabout Rhymes. With 20 full-page Illustrations in colour by Mrs. PERCY DEARMER. Imperial 8vo, cloth extra, 2s. 6d. A charming volume of verses and colour pictures for little folk--rhymes and pictures about most of the everyday events of nursery life. "The best verses written for children since Stevenson's _Child's Garden_."--_The Guardian._ STEWART ORR--JOHN BRYMER Gammon and Spinach: Pictures by STEWART ORR. Verses by JOHN BRYMER. Cover design and 24 pages in Full Colour. Picture boards, cloth back, 6s. In _Gammon and Spinach_ Mr. Stewart Orr has produced a picture-book unique of its kind. Nothing could be more droll than the situations in which he represents the frog, the pig, the mouse, the elephant, and the other well-known characters who appear in his pages. Little folk will find in these pictures a source of endless delight, and the artistic skill which they display will have a special appeal to children of an older growth. "Merry and handsome enough to make thousands of friends among little folk, what with its original verses and its amusing pictures."--_Literary World._ "The book should attain a wide popularity in the nursery."--_Morning Post._ H. B. NEILSON--JOHN BRYMER Games and Gambols. Illustrated by HARRY B. NEILSON; with Verses by JOHN BRYMER. 26 pages in colour, and 24 pages of letterpress. Picture boards, 9 inches by 11-1/4 inches, cloth back, 2s. 6d.; also cloth elegant, 3s. 6d. Mr. Neilson surpasses himself in these irresistible colour pictures representing the animal world at play. The great test match between the Lions and the Kangaroos, Mrs. Mouse's Ping-Pong Party, Mr. Bruin playing Golf, Towser's Bicycle Tour, and the Kittens _v._ Bunnies Football Match, are a few among the many droll subjects illustrated in this amusing and original series. "Mr. Neilson has a positive genius for making animals comic."--_Academy._ "Children will revel in his work."--_Daily Graphic._ FRED SMITH The Animal Book. A Natural History for Little Folk. With a Coloured Frontispiece and 34 full-page Illustrations by F. SPECHT. Crown quarto, 11-1/4 inches by 9-1/2 inches, picture boards, cloth back, 2s. 6d. This book consists of a series of bright and instructive sketches of the better-known wild beasts, describing their appearance, character and habits, and the position they hold in the animal kingdom. The text is printed in a large, clear type, and is admirably illustrated with powerful, realistic pictures of the various creatures in their native state by that eminent animal artist F. Specht. "A work of the greatest value to the young."--_Eastern Morning News._ * * * * * [Illustration: _From SIX AND TWENTY BOYS AND GIRLS_ BY JOHN HASSALL--CLIFTON BINGHAM (See page 25)] * * * * * OUR DARLING'S FIRST BOOK Bright Pictures and Easy Lessons for Little Folk. Quarto, 10-1/8 inches by 7-3/4 inches, picture boards, 1s.; cloth, gilt edges, 2s. An interesting and instructive picture lesson-book for very little folk. Beginning with an illustrated alphabet of large letters, the little reader goes forward by easy stages to word-making, reading, counting, writing, and finally to the most popular nursery rhymes and tales. "The very perfection of a child's alphabet and spelling-book."--_St. James's Budget._ ELLINOR DAVENPORT ADAMS Those Twins! With a Frontispiece and 28 Illustrations by S. B. PEARSE. Cloth elegant, 2s. 6d. Two little rogues are the twins, Horatio and Tommy; but loyal-hearted and generous to boot, and determined to resist the stern decree of their aunt that they shall forsake the company of their scapegrace grown-up cousin Algy. So they deliberately set to work to "reform" the scapegrace; and succeed so well that he wins back the love of his aunt, and delights the twins by earning a V. C. in South Africa. "A merry story for young and old."--_World._ A. B. ROMNEY Little Village Folk. With 37 Illustrations by ROBERT HOPE. 2s. 6d. A series of delightful stories of Irish village children. Miss Romney opens up a new field in these beautiful little tales, which have the twofold charm of humour and poetic feeling. "A story-book that will be welcomed wherever it makes its way."--_Literary World._ MY NEW STORY-BOOK Stories, Verses, and Pictures for the Little Ones. 290 pages, of which 48 are in colour. Cloth, 2s. 6d. A treasury of entertainment for the nursery. The contents are extremely varied both as regards the text and the illustrations, and carefully designed to meet the tastes of the little ones. The many bright colour pictures will be in themselves a never-failing source of delight. "A fascinating little volume, well filled with stories and quaint and pretty illustrations."--_Guardian._ * * * * * STORIES BY GEORGE MAC DONALD (NEW AND UNIFORM EDITION) A Rough Shaking. With 12 page Illustrations by W. PARKINSON. Crown 8vo, cloth elegant, 3s. 6d. Clare, the hero of the story, is a boy whose mother is killed at his side by the fall of a church during an earthquake. The kindly clergyman and his wife, who adopt him, die while he is still very young, and he is thrown upon the world a second time. The narrative of his wanderings is full of interest and novelty, the boy's unswerving honesty and his passion for children and animals leading him into all sorts of adventures. He works on a farm, supports a baby in an old deserted house, finds employment in a menagerie, becomes a bank clerk, is kidnapped, and ultimately discovers his father on board the ship to which he has been conveyed. At the Back of the North Wind. With 75 Illustrations by ARTHUR HUGHES, and a Frontispiece by LAURENCE HOUSMAN. Crown 8vo, cloth elegant, 3s. 6d. "In _At the Back of the North Wind_ we stand with one foot in fairyland and one on common earth. The story is thoroughly original, full of fancy and pathos."--_The Times._ Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood. With 36 Illustrations by ARTHUR HUGHES. Crown 8vo, cloth elegant, 3s. 6d. "Dr. Mac Donald has a real understanding of boy nature, and he has in consequence written a capital story, judged from their stand-point, with a true ring all through which ensures its success."--_The Spectator._ The Princess and the Goblin. With 30 Illustrations by ARTHUR HUGHES, and a Frontispiece by LAURENCE HOUSMAN. Crown 8vo, cloth elegant, 3s. 6d. In the sphere of fantasy George Mac Donald has very few equals, and his rare touch of many aspects of life invariably gives to his stories a deeper meaning of the highest value. His _Princess and Goblin_ exemplifies both gifts. A fine thread of allegory runs through the narrative of the adventures of the young miner, who, amongst other marvellous experiences, finds his way into the caverns of the gnomes, and achieves a final victory over them. The Princess and Curdie. With Frontispiece and 30 Illustrations by HELEN STRATTON. Crown 8vo, cloth elegant, 3s. 6d. A sequel to _The Princess and the Goblin_, tracing the history of the young miner and the princess after the return of the latter to her father's court, where more terrible foes have to be encountered than the grotesque earth-dwellers. * * * * * [Illustration: Some Children's Picture-Books (See page 32)] * * * * * NEW "GRADUATED" SERIES _With coloured frontispiece and black-and-white illustrations_ No child of six or seven should have any difficulty in reading and understanding _unaided_ the pretty stories in the 6d. series. In the 9d. series the language used is slightly more advanced, but is well within the capacity of children of seven and upwards, while the 1s. series is designed for little folk of somewhat greater attainments. If the stories are read _to_ and not _by_ children, it will be found that the 6d. 9d. and 1s. series are equally suitable for little folk of all ages. "GRADUATED" STORIES AT A SHILLING Holidays at Sunnycroft. By Annie S. Swan. _New Edition._ At Lathom's Siege. By Sarah Tytler. Fleckie. By Bessie Marchant. Elsie Wins. By Ellinor Davenport Adams Bears and Dacoits. By G. A. Henty. Crusoes of the Frozen North. By Dr. Gordon Stables. A Saxon Maid. By Eliza F. Pollard. Uncle Bob. By Meredith Fletcher. Jack of Both Sides. By Florence Coombe. Do Your Duty! By G. A. Henty. Terry. By Rosa Mulholland (Lady Gilbert). "GRADUATED" STORIES AT NINEPENCE Gipsy Dick. By Mrs. Henry Clarke. Two to One. By Florence Coombe. Cherrythorpe Fair. By Mabel Mackness. Little Greycoat. By Ellinor Davenport Adams. Tommy's Trek. By Bessie Marchant. That Boy Jim. By Mrs. Henry Clarke. The Adventures of Carlo. By Katharine Tynan. The Shoeblack's Cat. By W. L. Rooper. Three Troublesome Monkeys. By A. B. Romney. The Little Red Purse. By Jennie Chappell. "GRADUATED" STORIES AT SIXPENCE Hi-Tum, Ti-Tum, and Scrub. By Jennie Chappell. Edie's Adventures. By Geraldine Mockler. Two Little Crusoes. By A. B. Romney. The Lost Doll. By Jennie Chappell. Bunny and Furry. By Geraldine Mockler. Bravest of All. By Mabel Mackness. Winnie's White Frock. By Jennie Chappell. Lost Toby. By M. S. Haycraft. A Boy Cousin. By Geraldine Mockler. Travels of Fuzz and Buzz. By Geraldine Mockler. Teddy's Adventures. By Mrs. Henry Clarke. NEW CHILDREN'S PICTURE-BOOKS Each of these books contains many full-page and other illustrations, a number of which are in colour. The text is printed in bold type, and comprises bright and humorous stories and rhymes, specially written for the purpose. IN DOORS AND OUT | STORY-BOOK TIME Each contains 38 colour pages, over 40 full-page black-and-white Illustrations, and a large number of Vignettes. Quarto, 10-1/8 inches by 7-3/4 inches, picture boards, 2s. 6d. each; cloth, gilt edges, 3s. 6d. each. TWO SHILLING SERIES _Quarto, 10-1/8 inches by 7-3/4 inches_ Faithful Friends. My Book of Nursery Stories. My Very Best Book Arm-chair Stories. My Very Own Picture-Book. Cosy Corner Stories. Our Darling's First Book Twenty pages in colour. Cloth, gilt edges, 2s.; picture boards, 1s. EIGHTEENPENNY SERIES _Cloth, 5-1/2 inches by 6-7/8 inches_ My Pretty Picture-Book. Sunbeams. SIXPENNY SERIES _Quarto, 10-1/8 inches by 7-3/4 inches_ Bow-Wow Picture-Book. Cats and Kits. Friends at the Farm. Once upon a Time. Long, Long Ago. Fairy Tales for Little Folk. Smiles and Dimples. Little Bright-Eyes. For Kittie and Me. As Nice as Nice Can Be. Round the Mulberry Bush. Little Rosebud. For My Little Darling. For Dolly and Me. My Own Story-Book. Play-time Pictures. Bed-time Stories. For Little Chicks. The cover and seven pages in colour. Picture boards. ONE SHILLING SCRIPTURE SERIES _Picture boards. Quarto, 10-1/8 inches by 7-3/4 inches_ Stories from the Life of Christ Twenty pages in colour. Picture boards, 1s.; cloth, gilt edges, 2s. SIXPENNY SCRIPTURE SERIES Glad Tidings The Good Shepherd Gentle Jesus * * * * * TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible, including obsolete and variant spellings. Obvious typographical errors in punctuation (misplaced quotes and the like) have been fixed. Corrections [in brackets] in the text are noted below: Inconsistent spelling?: Irkutsk (throughout) and Irkoutsk (pages 92, 94) Yuruks (page 287) and Yuraks (pages 220, 309) Mesentzeff (page 62) and Mezentsoff (page 66) Moskow (page 62), although Moscow elsewhere page 32: added quote "He is released from his suffering," Katia said solemnly. "Anything else, Akim?["] page 35: added quote as he entered. ["]It is a foolish business altogether, but if page 41: typo corrected "That is more cheerful by a long way," Godfrey said to himself as the man, who had mantained[maintained] absolute silence on page 46: added quote of being mixed up in the most remote way with politics, your best friends will shun you like the plague.["] page 61: extra quote removed grave. Nothing was said until the servant, having handed round the dishes, left the room.["] page 69: typo corrected Ireland. There are the Guards in London, but the populalation[population] is so large that you might go a week without seeing page 117: added quote political prisoners now. We might be honest peasants if it were not for these confounded heads of hair.["] page 122: typo corrected "we should have been down on the Selinga[Selenga] to-morrow, and we had calculated page 132: extra quote removed lifting the eyelid. "He is coming round now," he said at last.["] A few more passes and the child drowsily opened page 198: added hyphen On the fourth day they saw a small farm[-]house lying not far from the edge of the wood. page 240: added hyphen fishing, keeping holes broken in the ice and catching fish by torch[-]light. The men walked with the sledges, which only page 250: typo corrected "The isvostchiks[Isvostchiks] are often frozen in St. Petersburg in page 276: added comma "It may be either a fox or a bear," Luka said[,] making his way farther back into the hut, and returning with his 
37536	----	EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY EDITED BY ERNEST RHYS FICTION THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JULIUS BRAMONT THE PUBLISHERS OF _EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY_ WILL BE PLEASED TO SEND FREELY TO ALL APPLICANTS A LIST OF THE PUBLISHED AND PROJECTED VOLUMES TO BE COMPRISED UNDER THE FOLLOWING THIRTEEN HEADINGS: TRAVEL SCIENCE FICTION THEOLOGY & PHILOSOPHY HISTORY CLASSICAL FOR YOUNG PEOPLE ESSAYS ORATORY POETRY & DRAMA BIOGRAPHY REFERENCE ROMANCE [Illustration: Decoration] IN FOUR STYLES OF BINDING: CLOTH, FLAT BACK, COLOURED TOP; LEATHER, ROUND CORNERS, GILT TOP; LIBRARY BINDING IN CLOTH, & QUARTER PIGSKIN LONDON: J. M. DENT & SONS, LTD. NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO. A TALE WHICH HOLDETH CHILDREN FROM PLAY & OLD MEN FROM THE CHIMNEY CORNER SIR PHILIP SIDNEY THE HOUSE _of the_ DEAD _or Prison Life in Siberia_ BY FEDOR DOSTOÏEFFSKY [Illustration: Decoration] LONDON: PUBLISHED by J.M. DENT & SONS LTD AND IN NEW YORK BY E. P. DUTTON & CO FIRST ISSUE OF THIS EDITION 1911 REPRINTED 1914 INTRODUCTION "The Russian nation is a new and wonderful phenomenon in the history of mankind. The character of the people differs to such a degree from that of the other Europeans that their neighbours find it impossible to diagnose them." This affirmation by Dostoïeffsky, the prophetic journalist, offers a key to the treatment in his novels of the troubles and aspirations of his race. He wrote with a sacramental fervour whether he was writing as a personal agent or an impersonal, novelist or journalist. Hence his rage with the calmer men, more gracious interpreters of the modern Sclav, who like Ivan Tourguenieff were able to see Russia on a line with the western nations, or to consider her maternal throes from the disengaged, safe retreat of an arm-chair exile in Paris. Not so was _l'âme Russe_ to be given her new literature in the eyes of M. Dostoïeffsky, strained with watching, often red with tears and anger. Those other nations, he said--proudly looking for the symptoms of the world-intelligence in his own--those other nations of Europe may maintain that they have at heart a common aim and a common ideal. In fact they are divided among themselves by a thousand interests, territorial or other. Each pulls his own way with ever-growing determination. It would seem that every individual nation aspires to the discovery of the universal ideal for humanity, and is bent on attaining that ideal by force of its own unaided strength. Hence, he argued, each European nation is an enemy to its own welfare and that of the world in general. To this very disassociation he attributed, without quite understanding the rest of us, our not understanding the Russian people, and our taxing them with "a lack of personality." We failed to perceive their rare synthetic power--that faculty of the Russian mind to read the aspirations of the whole of human kind. Among his own folk, he avowed, we would find none of the imperviousness, the intolerance, of the average European. The Russian adapts himself with ease to the play of contemporary thought and has no difficulty in assimilating any new idea. He sees where it will help his fellow-creatures and where it fails to be of value. He divines the process by which ideas, even the most divergent, the most hostile to one another, may meet and blend. Possibly, recognising this, M. Dostoïeffsky was the more concerned not to be too far depolarised, or say de-Russified, in his own works of fiction. But in truth he had no need to fear any weakening of his natural fibre and racial proclivities, or of the authentic utterance wrung out of him by the hard and cruel thongs of experience. We see the rigorous sincerity of his record again in the sheer autobiography contained in the present work, _The House of the Dead_. It was in the fatal winter of 1849 when he was with many others, mostly very young men like himself, sentenced to death for his liberal political propaganda; a sentence which was at the last moment commuted to imprisonment in the Siberian prisons. Out of that terror, which turned youth grey, was distilled the terrible reality of _The House of the Dead_. If one would truly fathom how deep that reality is, and what its phenomenon in literature amounts to, one should turn again to that favourite idyllic book of youth, by my countrywoman Mme. Cottin, _Elizabeth, or the Exiles of Siberia_, and compare, for example, the typical scene of Elizabeth's sleep in the wooden chapel in the snow, where she ought to have been frozen to death but fared very comfortably, with the Siberian actuality of Dostoïeffsky. But he was no idyllist, though he could be tender as Mme. Cottin herself. What he felt about these things you can tell from his stories. If a more explicit statement in the theoretic side be asked of him, take this plain avowal from his confession books of 1870-77:-- "There is no denying that the people are morally ill, with a grave, although not a mortal, malady, one to which it is difficult to assign a name. May we call it 'An unsatisfied thirst for truth'? The people are seeking eagerly and untiringly for truth and for the ways that lead to it, but hitherto they have failed in their search. After the liberation of the serfs, this great longing for truth appeared among the people--for truth perfect and entire, and with it the resurrection of civic life. There was a clamouring for a 'new Gospel'; new ideas and feelings became manifest; and a great hope rose up among the people believing that these great changes were precursors of a state of things which never came to pass." There is the accent of his hope and his despair. Let it prove to you the conviction with which he wrote these tragic pages, one that is affecting at this moment the destiny of Russia and the spirit of us who watch her as profoundly moved spectators. JULIUS BRAMONT. BIBLIOGRAPHY (_Dostoïeffsky's works, so far as they have appeared in English._) Translations of Dostoïeffsky's novels have appeared as follows:--Buried Alive; or, Ten Years of Penal Servitude in Siberia, translated by Marie v. Thilo, 1881. In Vizetelly's One Volume Novels: Crime and Punishment, vol. 13; Injury and Insult, translated by F. Whishaw, vol. 17; The Friend of the Family and the Gambler, etc., vol. 22. In Vizetelly's Russian Novels: The Idiot, by F. Whishaw, 1887; Uncle's Dream; and, The Permanent Husband, etc., 1888. Prison Life in Siberia, translated by H. S. Edwards, 1888; Poor Folk, translated by L. Milman, 1894. See D. S. Merezhkovsky, Tolstoi as Man and Artist, with Essay on Dostoïeffsky, translated from the Russian, 1902; M. Baring, Landmarks in Russian Literature (chapter on Dostoïeffsky), 1910. CONTENTS PART I CHAP. PAGE I. TEN YEARS A CONVICT 1 II. THE DEAD-HOUSE 7 III. FIRST IMPRESSIONS 24 IV. FIRST IMPRESSIONS (_continued_) 43 V. FIRST IMPRESSIONS (_continued_) 61 VI. THE FIRST MONTH 80 VII. THE FIRST MONTH (_continued_) 95 VIII. NEW ACQUAINTANCES--PETROFF 110 IX. MEN OF DETERMINATION--LUKA 125 X. ISAIAH FOMITCH--THE BATH--BAKLOUCHIN 133 XI. THE CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS 152 XII. THE PERFORMANCE 171 PART II I. THE HOSPITAL 194 II. THE HOSPITAL (_continued_) 209 III. THE HOSPITAL (_continued_) 225 IV. THE HUSBAND OF AKOULKA 248 V. THE SUMMER SEASON 264 VI. THE ANIMALS AT THE CONVICT ESTABLISHMENT 286 VII. GRIEVANCES 302 VIII. MY COMPANIONS 325 IX. THE ESCAPE 344 X. FREEDOM! 363 PRISON LIFE IN SIBERIA. PART I. CHAPTER I. TEN YEARS A CONVICT In the midst of the steppes, of the mountains, of the impenetrable forests of the desert regions of Siberia, one meets from time to time with little towns of a thousand or two inhabitants, built entirely of wood, very ugly, with two churches--one in the centre of the town, the other in the cemetery--in a word, towns which bear much more resemblance to a good-sized village in the suburbs of Moscow than to a town properly so called. In most cases they are abundantly provided with police-master, assessors, and other inferior officials. If it is cold in Siberia, the great advantages of the Government service compensate for it. The inhabitants are simple people, without liberal ideas. Their manners are antique, solid, and unchanged by time. The officials who form, and with reason, the nobility in Siberia, either belong to the country, deeply-rooted Siberians, or they have arrived there from Russia. The latter come straight from the capitals, tempted by the high pay, the extra allowance for travelling expenses, and by hopes not less seductive for the future. Those who know how to resolve the problem of life remain almost always in Siberia; the abundant and richly-flavoured fruit which they gather there recompenses them amply for what they lose. As for the others, light-minded persons who are unable to deal with the problem, they are soon bored in Siberia, and ask themselves with regret why they committed the folly of coming. They impatiently kill the three years which they are obliged by rule to remain, and as soon as their time is up, they beg to be sent back, and return to their original quarters, running down Siberia, and ridiculing it. They are wrong, for it is a happy country, not only as regards the Government service, but also from many other points of view. The climate is excellent, the merchants are rich and hospitable, the Europeans in easy circumstances are numerous; as for the young girls, they are like roses and their morality is irreproachable. Game is to be found in the streets, and throws itself upon the sportsman's gun. People drink champagne in prodigious quantities. The caviare is astonishingly good and most abundant. In a word, it is a blessed land, out of which it is only necessary to be able to make profit; and much profit is really made. It is in one of these little towns--gay and perfectly satisfied with themselves, the population of which has left upon me the most agreeable impression--that I met an exile, Alexander Petrovitch Goriantchikoff, formerly a landed proprietor in Russia. He had been condemned to hard labour of the second class for assassinating his wife. After undergoing his punishment--ten years of hard labour--he lived quietly and unnoticed as a colonist in the little town of K----. To tell the truth, he was inscribed in one of the surrounding districts; but he resided at K----, where he managed to get a living by giving lessons to children. In the towns of Siberia one often meets with exiles who are occupied with instruction. They are not looked down upon, for they teach the French language, so necessary in life, and of which without them one would not, in the distant parts of Siberia, have the least idea. I saw Alexander Petrovitch the first time at the house of an official, Ivan Ivanitch Gvosdikof, a venerable old man, very hospitable, and the father of five daughters, of whom the greatest hopes were entertained. Four times a week Alexander Petrovitch gave them lessons, at the rate of thirty kopecks silver a lesson. His external appearance interested me. He was excessively pale and thin, still young--about thirty-five years of age--short and weak, always very neatly dressed in the European style. When you spoke to him he looked at you in a very attentive manner, listening to your words with strict politeness, and with a reflective air, as though you had placed before him a problem or wished to extract from him a secret. He replied clearly and shortly; but in doing so, weighed each word, so that one felt ill at ease without knowing why, and was glad when the conversation came to an end. I put some questions to Ivan Gvosdikof in regard to him. He told me that Goriantchikoff was of irreproachable morals, otherwise Gvosdikof would not have entrusted him with the education of his children; but that he was a terrible misanthrope, who kept apart from all society; that he was very learned, a great reader, and that he spoke but little, and never entered freely into a conversation. Certain persons told him that he was mad; but that was not looked upon as a very serious defect. Accordingly, the most important persons in the town were ready to treat Alexander Petrovitch with respect, for he could be useful to them in writing petitions. It was believed that he was well connected in Russia. Perhaps, among his relations, there were some who were highly placed; but it was known that since his exile he had broken off all relations with them. In a word--he injured himself. Every one knew his story, and was aware that he had killed his wife, through jealousy, less than a year after his marriage; and that he had given himself up to justice; which had made his punishment much less severe. Such crimes are always looked upon as misfortunes, which must be treated with pity. Nevertheless, this original kept himself obstinately apart, and never showed himself except to give lessons. In the first instance I paid no attention to him; then, without knowing why, I found myself interested by him. He was rather enigmatic; to talk with him was quite impossible. Certainly he replied to all my questions; he seemed to make it a duty to do so; but when once he had answered, I was afraid to interrogate him any longer. After such conversations one could observe on his countenance signs of suffering and exhaustion. I remember that, one fine summer evening, I went out with him from the house of Ivan Gvosdikof. It suddenly occurred to me to invite him to come in with me and smoke a cigarette. I can scarcely describe the fright which showed itself in his countenance. He became confused, muttered incoherent words, and suddenly, after looking at me with an angry air, took to flight in an opposite direction. I was very much astonished afterwards, when he met me. He seemed to experience, on seeing me, a sort of terror; but I did not lose courage. There was something in him which attracted me. A month afterwards I went to see Petrovitch without any pretext. It is evident that, in doing so, I behaved foolishly, and without the least delicacy. He lived at one of the extreme points of the town with an old woman whose daughter was in a consumption. The latter had a little child about ten years old, very pretty and very lively. When I went in Alexander Petrovitch was seated by her side, and was teaching her to read. When he saw me he became confused, as if I had detected him in a crime. Losing all self-command, he suddenly stood up and looked at me with awe and astonishment. Then we both of us sat down. He followed attentively all my looks, as if I had suspected him of some mysterious intention. I understood he was horribly mistrustful. He looked at me as a sort of spy, and he seemed to be on the point of saying, "Are you not soon going away?" I spoke to him of our little town, of the news of the day, but he was silent, or smiled with an air of displeasure. I could see that he was absolutely ignorant of all that was taking place in the town, and that he was in no way curious to know. I spoke to him afterwards of the country generally, and of its men. He listened to me still in silence, fixing his eyes upon me in such a strange way that I became ashamed of what I was doing. I was very nearly offending him by offering him some books and newspapers which I had just received by post. He cast a greedy look upon them; he then seemed to alter his mind, and declined my offer, giving his want of leisure as a pretext. At last I wished him good-bye, and I felt a weight fall from my shoulders as I left the house. I regretted to have harassed a man whose tastes kept him apart from the rest of the world. But the fault had been committed. I had remarked that he possessed very few books. It was not true, then, that he read so much. Nevertheless, on two occasions when I drove past, I saw a light in his lodging. What could make him sit up so late? Was he writing, and if that were so, what was he writing? I was absent from our town for about three months. When I returned home in the winter, I learned that Petrovitch was dead, and that he had not even sent for a doctor. He was even now already forgotten, and his lodging was unoccupied. I at once made the acquaintance of his landlady, in the hope of learning from her what her lodger had been writing. For twenty kopecks she brought me a basket full of papers left by the defunct, and confessed to me that she had already employed four sheets in lighting her fire. She was a morose and taciturn old woman. I could not get from her anything that was interesting. She could tell me nothing about her lodger. She gave me to understand all the same that he scarcely ever worked, and that he remained for months together without opening a book or touching a pen. On the other hand, he walked all night up and down his room, given up to his reflections. Sometimes, indeed, he spoke aloud. He was very fond of her little grandchild, Katia, above all when he knew her name; on her name's-day--the day of St. Catherine--he always had a requiem said in the church for some one's soul. He detested receiving visits, and never went out except to give lessons. Even his landlady he looked upon with an unfriendly eye when, once a week, she came into his room to put it in order. During the three years he had passed with her, he had scarcely ever spoken to her. I asked Katia if she remembered him. She looked at me in silence, and turned weeping to the wall. This man, then, was loved by some one! I took away the papers, and passed the day in examining them. They were for the most part of no importance, merely children's exercises. At last I came to a rather thick packet, the sheets of which were covered with delicate handwriting, which abruptly ceased. It had perhaps been forgotten by the writer. It was the narrative--incoherent and fragmentary--of the ten years Alexander Petrovitch had passed in hard labour. This narrative was interrupted, here and there, either by anecdotes, or by strange, terrible recollections thrown in convulsively as if torn from the writer. I read some of these fragments again and again, and I began to doubt whether they had not been written in moments of madness; but these memories of the convict prison--"Recollections of the Dead-House," as he himself called them somewhere in his manuscript--seemed to me not without interest. They revealed quite a new world unknown till then; and in the strangeness of his facts, together with his singular remarks on this fallen people, there was enough to tempt me to go on. I may perhaps be wrong, but I will publish some chapters from this narrative, and the public shall judge for itself. CHAPTER II. THE DEAD-HOUSE Our prison was at the end of the citadel behind the ramparts. Looking through the crevices between the palisade in the hope of seeing something, one sees nothing but a little corner of the sky, and a high earthwork, covered with the long grass of the steppe. Night and day sentries walk to and fro upon it. Then one perceives from the first, that whole years will pass during which one will see by the same crevices between the palisades, upon the same earthwork, always the same sentinels and the same little corner of the sky, not just above the prison, but far and far away. Represent to yourself a court-yard, two hundred feet long, and one hundred and fifty feet broad, enclosed by an irregular hexagonal palisade, formed of stakes thrust deep into the earth. So much for the external surroundings of the prison. On one side of the palisade is a great gate, solid, and always shut; watched perpetually by the sentinels, and never opened, except when the convicts go out to work. Beyond this, there are light and liberty, the life of free people! Beyond the palisade, one thought of the marvellous world, fantastic as a fairy tale. It was not the same on our side. Here, there was no resemblance to anything. Habits, customs, laws, were all precisely fixed. It was the house of living death. It is this corner that I undertake to describe. On penetrating into the enclosure one sees a few buildings. On each side of a vast court are stretched forth two wooden constructions, made of trunks of trees, and only one storey high. These are convicts' barracks. Here the prisoners are confined, divided into several classes. At the end of the enclosure may be seen a house, which serves as a kitchen, divided into two compartments. Behind it is another building, which serves at once as cellar, loft, and barn. The centre of the enclosure, completely barren, is a large open space. Here the prisoners are drawn up in ranks, three times a day. They are identified, and must answer to their names, morning, noon, and evening, besides several times in the course of the day if the soldiers on guard are suspicious and clever at counting. All around, between the palisades and the buildings there remains a sufficiently large space, where some of the prisoners who are misanthropes, or of a sombre turn of mind, like to walk about when they are not at work. There they go turning over their favourite thoughts, shielded from all observation. When I met them during those walks of theirs, I took pleasure in observing their sad, deeply-marked countenances, and in guessing their thoughts. The favourite occupation of one of the convicts, during the moments of liberty left to him from his hard labour, was to count the palisades. There were fifteen hundred of them. He had counted them all, and knew them nearly by heart. Every one of them represented to him a day of confinement; but, counting them daily in this manner, he knew exactly the number of days that he had still to pass in the prison. He was sincerely happy when he had finished one side of the hexagon; yet he had to wait for his liberation many long years. But one learns patience in a prison. One day I saw a prisoner, who had undergone his punishment, take leave of his comrades. He had had twenty years' hard labour. More than one convict remembered seeing him arrive, quite young, careless, thinking neither of his crime nor of his punishment. He was now an old man with gray hairs, with a sad and morose countenance. He walked in silence through our six barracks. When he entered each of them he prayed before the holy image, made a deep bow to his former companions, and begged them not to keep a bad recollection of him. I also remember one evening, a prisoner, who had been formerly a well-to-do Siberian peasant, so called. Six years before he had had news of his wife's remarrying, which had caused him great pain. That very evening she had come to the prison, and had asked for him in order to make him a present! They talked together for two minutes, wept together, and then separated never to meet again. I saw the expression of this prisoner's countenance when he re-entered the barracks. There, indeed, one learns to support everything. When darkness set in we had to re-enter the barrack, where we were shut up for all the night. It was always painful for me to leave the court-yard for the barrack. Think of a long, low, stifling room, scarcely lighted by tallow candles, and full of heavy and disgusting odours. I cannot now understand how I lived there for ten entire years. My camp bedstead was made of three boards. This was the only place in the room that belonged to me. In one single room we herded together, more than thirty men. It was, above all, no wonder that we were shut up early. Four hours at least passed before every one was asleep, and, until then, there was a tumult and uproar of laughter, oaths, rattling of chains, a poisonous vapour of thick smoke; a confusion of shaved heads, stigmatised foreheads, and ragged clothes disgustingly filthy. Yes, man is a pliable animal--he must be so defined--a being who gets accustomed to everything! That would be, perhaps, the best definition that could be given of him. There were altogether two hundred and fifty of us in the same prison. This number was almost invariably the same. Whenever some of them had undergone their punishment, other criminals arrived, and a few of them died. Among them there were all sorts of people. I believe that each region of Russia had furnished its representatives. There were foreigners there, and even mountaineers from the Caucasus. All these people were divided into different classes, according to the importance of the crime; and consequently the duration of the punishment for the crime, whatever it might be, was there represented. The population of the prison was composed for the most part of men condemned to hard labour of the civil class--"strongly condemned," as the prisoners used to say. They were criminals deprived of all civil rights, men rejected by society, vomited forth by it, and whose faces were marked by the iron to testify eternally to their disgrace. They were incarcerated for different periods of time, varying from eight to ten years. At the expiration of their punishment they were sent to the Siberian districts in the character of colonists. As to the criminals of the military section, they were not deprived of their civil rights--as is generally the case in Russian disciplinary companies--but were punished for a relatively short period. As soon as they had undergone their punishment they had to return to the place whence they had come, and became soldiers in the battalions of the Siberian Line.[1] Many of them came back to us afterwards, for serious crimes, this time not for a small number of years, but for twenty at least. They then formed part of the section called "for perpetuity." Nevertheless, the perpetuals were not deprived of their right. There was another section sufficiently numerous, composed of the worst malefactors, nearly all veterans in crime, and which was called the special section. There were sent convicts from all the Russias. They looked upon one another with reason as imprisoned for ever, for the term of their confinement had not been indicated. The law required them to receive double and treble tasks. They remained in prison until work of the most painful character had to be undertaken in Siberia. "You are only here for a fixed time," they said to the other convicts; "we, on the contrary, are here for all our life." I have heard that this section has since been abolished. At the same time, civil convicts are kept apart, in order that the military convicts may be organised by themselves into a homogeneous "disciplinary company." The administration, too, has naturally been changed; consequently what I describe are the customs and practices of another time, and of things which have since been abolished. Yes, it was a long time ago; it seems to me that it is all a dream. I remember entering the convict prison one December evening, as night was falling. The convicts were returning from work. The roll-call was about to be made. An under officer with large moustaches opened to me the gate of this strange house, where I was to remain so many years, to endure so many emotions, and of which I could not form even an approximate idea, if I had not gone through them. Thus, for example, could I ever have imagined the poignant and terrible suffering of never being alone even for one minute during ten years? Working under escort in the barracks together with two hundred "companions;" never alone, never! However, I was obliged to get accustomed to it. Among them there were murderers by imprudence, and murderers by profession, simple thieves, masters in the art of finding money in the pockets of the passers-by, or of wiping off no matter what from the table. It would have been difficult, however, to say why and how certain prisoners found themselves among the convicts. Each of them had his history, confused and heavy, painful as the morning after a debauch. The convicts, as a rule, spoke very little of their past life, which they did not like to think of. They endeavoured, even, to dismiss it from their memory. Amongst my companions of the chain I have known murderers who were so gay and so free from care, that one might have made a bet that their conscience never made them the least reproach. But there were also men of sombre countenance who remained almost always silent. It was very rarely any one told his history. This sort of thing was not the fashion. Let us say at once that it was not received. Sometimes, however, from time to time, for the sake of change, a prisoner used to tell his life to another prisoner, who would listen coldly to the narrative. No one, to tell the truth, could have said anything to astonish his neighbour. "We are not ignoramuses," they would sometimes say with singular pride. I remember one day a ruffian who had got drunk--it was sometimes possible for the convicts to get drink--relating how he had killed and cut up a child of five. He had first tempted the child with a plaything, and then taking it to a loft, had cut it up to pieces. The entire barrack, which, generally speaking, laughed at his jokes, uttered one unanimous cry. The ruffian was obliged to be silent. But if the convicts had interrupted him, it was not by any means because his recital had caused their indignation, but because it was not allowed to speak of such things. I must here observe that the convicts possessed a certain degree of instruction. Half of them, if not more, knew how to read and write. Where in Russia, in no matter what population, could two hundred and fifty men be found able to read and write? Later on I have heard people say, and conclude on the strength of these abuses, that education demoralises the people. This is a mistake. Education has nothing whatever to do with moral deterioration. It must be admitted, nevertheless, that it develops a resolute spirit among the people. But this is far from being a defect. Each section had a different costume. The uniform of one was a cloth vest, half brown and half gray, and trousers with one leg brown, the other gray. One day while we were at work, a little girl who sold scones of white bread came towards the convicts. She looked at them for a time and then burst into a laugh. "Oh, how ugly they are!" she cried; "they have not even enough gray cloth or brown cloth to make their clothes." Every convict wore a vest made of gray cloth, except the sleeves, which were brown. Their heads, too, were shaved in different styles. The crown was bared sometimes longitudinally, sometimes latitudinally, from the nape of the neck to the forehead, or from one ear to another. This strange family had a general likeness so pronounced that it could be recognised at a glance. Even the most striking personalities, those who dominated involuntarily the other convicts, could not help taking the general tone of the house. Of the convicts--with the exception of a few who enjoyed childish gaiety, and who by that alone drew upon themselves general contempt--all the convicts were morose, envious, frightfully vain, presumptuous, susceptible, and excessively ceremonious. To be astonished at nothing was in their eyes the first and indispensable quality. Accordingly, their first aim was to bear themselves with dignity. But often the most composed demeanour gave way with the rapidity of lightning. With the basest humility some, however, possessed genuine strength; these were naturally all sincere. But strangely enough, they were for the most part excessively and morbidly vain. Vanity was always their salient quality. The majority of the prisoners were depraved and perverted, so that calumnies and scandal rained amongst them like hail. Our life was a constant hell, a perpetual damnation; but no one would have dared to raise a voice against the internal regulations of the prison, or against established usages. Accordingly, willingly or unwillingly, they had to be submitted to. Certain indomitable characters yielded with difficulty, but they yielded all the same. Prisoners who when at liberty had gone beyond all measure, who, urged by their over-excited vanity, had committed frightful crimes unconsciously, as if in a delirium, and had been the terror of entire towns, were put down in a very short time by the system of our prison. The "new man," when he began to reconnoitre, soon found that he could astonish no one, and insensibly he submitted, took the general tone, and assumed a sort of personal dignity which almost every convict maintained, just as if the denomination of convict had been a title of honour. Not the least sign of shame or of repentance, but a kind of external submission which seemed to have been reasoned out as the line of conduct to be pursued. "We are lost men," they said to themselves. "We were unable to live in liberty; we must now go to Green Street."[2] "You would not obey your father and mother; you will now obey thongs of leather." "The man who would not sow must now break stones." These things were said, and repeated in the way of morality, as sentences and proverbs, but without any one taking them seriously. They were but words in the air. There was not one man among them who admitted his iniquity. Let a stranger not a convict endeavour to reproach him with his crime, and the insults directed against him would be endless. And how refined are convicts in the matter of insults! They insult delicately, like artists; insult with the most delicate science. They endeavour not so much to offend by the expression as by the meaning, the spirit of an envenomed phrase. Their incessant quarrels developed greatly this special art. As they only worked under the threat of an immense stick, they were idle and depraved. Those who were not already corrupt when they arrived at the convict establishment, became perverted very soon. Brought together in spite of themselves, they were perfect strangers to one another. "The devil has worn out three pairs of sandals before he got us together," they would say. Intrigues, calumnies, scandal of all kinds, envy, and hatred reigned above everything else. In this life of sloth, no ordinary spiteful tongue could make head against these murderers, with insults constantly in their mouths. As I said before, there were found among them men of open character, resolute, intrepid, accustomed to self-command. These were held involuntarily in esteem. Although they were very jealous of their reputation, they endeavoured to annoy no one, and never insulted one another without a motive. Their conduct was on all points full of dignity. They were rational, and almost always obedient, not by principle, or from any respect for duty, but as if in virtue of a mutual convention between themselves and the administration--a convention of which the advantages were plain enough. The officials, moreover, behaved prudently towards them. I remember that one prisoner of the resolute and intrepid class, known to possess the instincts of a wild beast, was summoned one day to be whipped. It was during the summer, no work was being done. The Adjutant, the direct and immediate chief of the convict prison, was in the orderly-room, by the side of the principal entrance, ready to assist at the punishment. This Major was a fatal being for the prisoners, whom he had brought to such a state that they trembled before him. Severe to the point of insanity, "he threw himself upon them," to use their expression. But it was above all that his look, as penetrating as that of a lynx, was feared. It was impossible to conceal anything from him. He saw, so to say, without looking. On entering the prison, he knew at once what was being done. Accordingly, the convicts, one and all, called him the man with the eight eyes. His system was bad, for it had the effect of irritating men who were already irascible. But for the Commandant, a well-bred and reasonable man, who moderated the savage onslaughts of the Major, the latter would have caused sad misfortunes by his bad administration. I do not understand how he managed to retire from the service safe and sound. It is true that he left after being called before a court-martial. The prisoner turned pale when he was called; generally speaking, he lay down courageously, and without uttering a word, to receive the terrible rods, after which he got up and shook himself. He bore the misfortune calmly, philosophically, it is true, though he was never punished carelessly, nor without all sorts of precautions. But this time he considered himself innocent. He turned pale, and as he walked quietly towards the escort of soldiers he managed to conceal in his sleeve a shoemaker's awl. The prisoners were severely forbidden to carry sharp instruments about them. Examinations were frequently, minutely, and unexpectedly made, and all infractions of the rule were severely punished. But as it is difficult to take away from the criminal what he is determined to conceal, and as, moreover, sharp instruments are necessarily used in the prison, they were never destroyed. If the official succeeded in taking them away from the convicts, the latter procured new ones very soon. On the occasion in question, all the convicts had now thrown themselves against the palisade, with palpitating hearts, to look through the crevices. It was known that this time Petroff would not allow himself to be flogged, that the end of the Major had come. But at the critical moment the latter got into his carriage, and went away, leaving the direction of the punishment to a subaltern. "God has saved him!" said the convicts. As for Petroff, he underwent his punishment quietly. Once the Major had gone, his anger fell. The prisoner is submissive and obedient to a certain point, but there is a limit which must not be crossed. Nothing is more curious than these strange outbursts of disobedience and rage. Often a man who has supported for many years the most cruel punishment, will revolt for a trifle, for nothing at all. He might pass for a madman; that, in fact, is what is said of him. I have already said that during many years I never remarked the least sign of repentance, not even the slightest uneasiness with regard to the crime committed; and that most of the convicts considered neither honour nor conscience, holding that they had a right to act as they thought fit. Certainly vanity, evil examples, deceitfulness, and false shame were responsible for much. On the other hand, who can claim to have sounded the depths of these hearts, given over to perdition, and to have found them closed to all light? It would seem all the same that during so many years I ought to have been able to notice some indication, even the most fugitive, of some regret, some moral suffering. I positively saw nothing of the kind. With ready-made opinions one cannot judge of crime. Its philosophy is a little more complicated than people think. It is acknowledged that neither convict prisons, nor the hulks, nor any system of hard labour ever cured a criminal. These forms of chastisement only punish him and reassure society against the offences he might commit. Confinement, regulation, and excessive work have no effect but to develop with these men profound hatred, a thirst for forbidden enjoyment, and frightful recalcitrations. On the other hand I am convinced that the celebrated cellular system gives results which are specious and deceitful. It deprives a criminal of his force, of his energy, enervates his soul by weakening and frightening it, and at last exhibits a dried up mummy as a model of repentance and amendment. The criminal who has revolted against society, hates it, and considers himself in the right; society was wrong, not he. Has he not, moreover, undergone his punishment? Accordingly he is absolved, acquitted in his own eyes. In spite of different opinions, every one will acknowledge that there are crimes which everywhere, always, under no matter what legislation, are beyond discussion crimes, and should be regarded as such as long as man is man. It is only at the convict prison that I have heard related, with a childish, unrestrained laugh, the strangest, most atrocious offences. I shall never forget a certain parricide, formerly a nobleman and a public functionary. He had given great grief to his father--a true prodigal son. The old man endeavoured in vain to restrain him by remonstrance on the fatal slope down which he was sliding. As he was loaded with debts, and his father was suspected of having, besides an estate, a sum of ready money, he killed him in order to enter more quickly into his inheritance. This crime was not discovered until a month afterwards. During all this time the murderer, who meanwhile had informed the police of his father's disappearance, continued his debauches. At last, during his absence, the police discovered the old man's corpse in a drain. The gray head was severed from the trunk, but replaced in its original position. The body was entirely dressed. Beneath, as if by derision, the assassin had placed a cushion. The young man confessed nothing. He was degraded, deprived of his nobiliary privileges, and condemned to twenty years' hard labour. As long as I knew him I always found him to be careless of his position. He was the most light-minded, inconsiderate man that I ever met, although he was far from being a fool. I never observed in him any great tendency to cruelty. The other convicts despised him, not on account of his crime, of which there was never any question, but because he was without dignity. He sometimes spoke of his father. One day for instance, boasting of the hereditary good health of his family, he said: "My father, for example, until his death was never ill." Animal insensibility carried to such a point is most remarkable--it is, indeed, phenomenal. There must have been in this case an organic defect in the man, some physical and moral monstrosity unknown hitherto to science, and not simply crime. I naturally did not believe in so atrocious a crime; but people of the same town as himself, who knew all the details of his history, related it to me. The facts were so clear that it would have been madness not to accept them. The prisoners once heard him cry out during his sleep: "Hold him! hold him! Cut his head off, his head, his head!" Nearly all the convicts dreamed aloud, or were delirious in their sleep. Insults, words of slang, knives, hatchets, seemed constantly present in their dreams. "We are crushed!" they would say; "we are without entrails; that is why we shriek in the night." Hard labour in our fortress was not an occupation, but an obligation. The prisoners accomplished their task, they worked the number of hours fixed by the law, and then returned to the prison. They hated their liberty. If the convict did not do some work on his own account voluntarily, it would be impossible for him to support his confinement. How could these persons, all strongly constituted, who had lived sumptuously, and desired so to live again, who had been brought together against their will, after society had cast them up--how could they live in a normal and natural manner? Man cannot exist without work, without legal, natural property. Depart from these conditions, and he becomes perverted and changed into a wild beast. Accordingly, every convict, through natural requirements and by the instinct of self-preservation, had a trade--an occupation of some kind. The long days of summer were taken up almost entirely by our hard labour. The night was so short that we had only just time to sleep. It was not the same in winter. According to the regulations, the prisoners had to be shut up in the barracks at nightfall. What was to be done during these long, sad evenings but work? Consequently each barrack, though locked and bolted, assumed the appearance of a large workshop. The work was not, it is true, strictly forbidden, but it was forbidden to have tools, without which work is evidently impossible. But we laboured in secret, and the administration seemed to shut its eyes. Many prisoners arrived without knowing how to make use of their ten fingers; but they learnt a trade from some of their companions, and became excellent workmen. We had among us cobblers, bootmakers, tailors, masons, locksmiths, and gilders. A Jew named Esau Boumstein was at the same time a jeweller and a usurer. Every one worked, and thus gained a few pence--for many orders came from the town. Money is a tangible resonant liberty, inestimable for a man entirely deprived of true liberty. If he feels some money in his pocket, he consoles himself a little, even though he cannot spend it--but one can always and everywhere spend money, the more so as forbidden fruit is doubly sweet. One can often buy spirits in the convict prison. Although pipes are severely forbidden, every one smokes. Money and tobacco save the convicts from the scurvy, as work saves them from crime--for without work they would mutually have destroyed one another like spiders shut up in a close bottle. Work and money were all the same forbidden. Often during the night severe examinations were made, during which everything that was not legally authorised was confiscated. However successfully the little hoards had been concealed, they were sometimes discovered. That was one of the reasons why they were not kept very long. They were exchanged as soon as possible for drink, which explains how it happened that spirits penetrated into the convict prison. The delinquent was not only deprived of his hoard, but was also cruelly flogged. A short time after each examination the convicts procured again the objects which had been confiscated, and everything went on as before. The administration knew it; and although the condition of the convicts was a good deal like that of the inhabitants of Vesuvius, they never murmured at the punishment inflicted for these peccadilloes. Those who had no manual skill did business somehow or other. The modes of buying and selling were original enough. Things changed hands which no one expected a convict would ever have thought of selling or buying, or even of regarding as of any value whatever. The least rag had its value, and might be turned to account. In consequence, however, of the poverty of the convicts, money acquired in their eyes a superior value to that really belonging to it. Long and painful tasks, sometimes of a very complicated kind, brought back a few kopecks. Several of the prisoners lent by the week, and did good business that way. The prisoner who was ruined and insolvent carried to the usurer the few things belonging to him and pledged them for some halfpence, which were lent to him at a fabulous rate of interest. If he did not redeem them at the fixed time the usurer sold them pitilessly by auction, and without the least delay. Usury flourished so well in our convict prison that money was lent even on things belonging to the Government: linen, boots, etc.--things that were wanted at every moment. When the lender accepted such pledges the affair took an unexpected turn. The proprietor went, immediately after he had received his money, and told the under officer--chief superintendent of the convict prison--that objects belonging to the State were being concealed, on which everything was taken away from the usurer without even the formality of a report to the superior administration. But never was there any quarrel--and that is very curious indeed--between the usurer and the owner. The first gave up in silence, with a morose air, the things demanded from him, as if he had been waiting for the request. Sometimes, perhaps, he confessed to himself that, in the place of the borrower, he would not have acted differently. Accordingly, if he was insulted after this restitution, it was less from hatred than simply as a matter of conscience. The convicts robbed one another without shame. Each prisoner had his little box fitted with a padlock, in which he kept the things entrusted to him by the administration. Although these boxes were authorised, that did not prevent them from being broken into. The reader can easily imagine what clever thieves were found among us. A prisoner who was sincerely devoted to me--I say it without boasting--stole my Bible from me, the only book allowed in the convict prison. He told me of it the same day, not from repentance, but because he pitied me when he saw me looking for it everywhere. We had among our companions of the chain several convicts called "innkeepers," who sold spirits, and became comparatively rich by doing so. I shall speak of this further on, for the liquor traffic deserves special study. A great number of prisoners had been deported for smuggling, which explains how it was that drink was brought secretly into the convict prison, under so severe a surveillance as ours was. In passing it may be remarked that smuggling is an offence apart. Would it be believed that money, the solid profit from the affair, possesses often only secondary importance for the smuggler? It is all the same an authentic fact. He works by vocation. In his style he is a poet. He risks all he possesses, exposes himself to terrible dangers, intrigues, invents, gets out of a scrape, and brings everything to a happy end by a sort of inspiration. This passion is as violent as that of play. I knew a prisoner of colossal stature who was the mildest, the most peaceable, and most manageable man it was possible to see. We often asked one another how he had been deported. He had such a calm, sociable character, that during the whole time that he passed at the convict prison, he never quarrelled with any one. Born in Western Russia, where he lived on the frontier, he had been sent to hard labour for smuggling. Naturally, then, he could not resist his desire to smuggle spirits into the prison. How many times was he not punished for it, and heaven knows how much he feared the rods. This dangerous trade brought him in but slender profits. It was the speculator who got rich at his expense. Each time he was punished he wept like an old woman, and swore by all that was holy that he would never be caught at such things again. He kept his vow for an entire month, but he ended by yielding once more to his passion. Thanks to these amateurs of smuggling, spirits were always to be had in the convict prison. Another source of income which, without enriching the prisoners, was constantly and beneficently turned to account, was alms-giving. The upper classes of our Russian society do not know to what an extent merchants, shopkeepers, and our people generally, commiserate the "unfortunate!"[3] Alms were always forthcoming, and consisted generally of little white loaves, sometimes of money, but very rarely. Without alms, the existence of the convicts, and above all that of the accused, who are badly fed, would be too painful. These alms are shared equally between all the prisoners. If the gifts are not sufficient, the little loaves are divided into halves, and sometimes into six pieces, so that each convict may have his share. I remember the first alms, a small piece of money, that I received. A short time after my arrival, one morning, as I was coming back from work with a soldier escort, I met a mother and her daughter, a child of ten, as beautiful as an angel. I had already seen them once before. The mother was the widow of a poor soldier, who, while still young, had been sentenced by a court-martial, and had died in the infirmary of the convict prison while I was there. They wept hot tears when they came to bid him good-bye. On seeing me the little girl blushed, and murmured a few words into her mother's ear, who stopped, and took from a basket a kopeck which she gave to the little girl. The little girl ran after me. "Here, poor man," she said, "take this in the name of Christ." I took the money which she slipped into my hand. The little girl returned joyfully to her mother. I preserved that kopeck a considerable time. FOOTNOTES: [1] Goriantchikoff became himself a soldier in Siberia, when he had finished his term of imprisonment. [2] An allusion to the two rows of soldiers, armed with green rods, between which convicts condemned to corporal punishment had and still have to pass. But this punishment now exists only for convicts deprived of all their civil rights. This subject will be returned to further on. [3] Men condemned to hard labour, and exiles generally, are so called by the Russian peasantry. CHAPTER III. FIRST IMPRESSIONS During the first weeks, and naturally the early part of my imprisonment, made a deep impression on my imagination. The following years on the other hand are all mixed up together, and leave but a confused recollection. Certain epochs of this life are even effaced from my memory. I have kept one general impression of it, always the same; painful, monotonous, stifling. What I saw in experience during the first days of my imprisonment seems to me as if it had all taken place yesterday. Such was sure to be the case. I remember perfectly that in the first place this life astonished me by the very fact that it offered nothing particular, nothing extraordinary, or to express myself better, nothing unexpected. It was not until later on, when I had lived some time in the convict prison, that I understood all that was exceptional and unforeseen in such a life. I was astonished at the discovery. I will avow that this astonishment remained with me throughout my term of punishment. I could not decidedly reconcile myself to this existence. First of all, I experienced an invincible repugnance on arriving; but oddly enough the life seemed to me less painful than I had imagined on the journey. Indeed, prisoners, though embarrassed by their irons went to and fro in the prison freely enough. They insulted one another, sang, worked, smoked pipes, and drank spirits. There were not many drinkers all the same. There were also regular card parties during the night. The labour did not seem to me very trying; I fancied that it could not be the real "hard labour." I did not understand till long afterwards why this labour was really hard and excessive. It was less by reason of its difficulty, than because it was forced, imposed, obligatory; and it was only done through fear of the stick. The peasant works certainly harder than the convict, for, during the summer, he works night and day. But it is in his own interest that he fatigues himself. His aim is reasonable, so that he suffers less than the convict who performs hard labour from which he derives no profit. It once came into my head that if it were desired to reduce a man to nothing--to punish him atrociously, to crush him in such a manner that the most hardened murderer would tremble before such a punishment, and take fright beforehand--it would be necessary to give to his work a character of complete uselessness, even to absurdity. Hard labour, as it is now carried on, presents no interest to the convict; but it has its utility. The convict makes bricks, digs the earth, builds; and all his occupations have a meaning and an end. Sometimes, even the prisoner takes an interest in what he is doing. He then wishes to work more skilfully, more advantageously. But let him be constrained to pour water from one vessel into another, or to transport a quantity of earth from one place to another, in order to perform the contrary operation immediately afterwards, then I am persuaded that at the end of a few days the prisoner would strangle himself or commit a thousand crimes, punishable with death, rather than live in such an abject condition and endure such torments. It is evident that such punishment would be rather a torture, an atrocious vengeance, than a correction. It would be absurd, for it would have no natural end. I did not, however, arrive until the winter--in the month of December--and the labour was then unimportant in our fortress. I had no idea of the summer labour--five times as fatiguing. The prisoners, during the winter season, broke up on the Irtitch some old boats belonging to the Government, found occupation in the workshops, took away the snow blown by hurricanes against the buildings, or burned and pounded alabaster. As the day was very short, the work ceased at an early hour, and every one returned to the convict prison, where there was scarcely anything to do, except the supplementary work which the convicts did for themselves. Scarcely a third of the convicts worked seriously, the others idled their time and wandered about without aim in the barracks, scheming and insulting one another. Those who had a little money got drunk on spirits, or lost what they had saved at gambling. And all this from idleness, weariness, and want of something to do. I learned, moreover, to know one suffering which is perhaps the sharpest, the most painful that can be experienced in a house of detention apart from laws and liberty. I mean, "forced cohabitation." Cohabitation is more or less forced everywhere and always; but nowhere is it so horrible as in a prison. There are men there with whom no one would consent to live. I am certain that every convict, unconsciously perhaps, has suffered from this. The food of the prisoners seemed to me passable; some declared even that it was incomparably better than in any Russian prison. I cannot certify to this, for I was never in prison anywhere else. Many of us, besides, were allowed to procure whatever nourishment we wanted. As fresh meat cost only three kopecks a pound, those who always had money allowed themselves the luxury of eating it. The majority of the prisoners were contented with the regular ration. When they praised the diet of the convict prison, they were thinking only of the bread, which was distributed at the rate of so much per room, and not individually or by weight. This last condition would have frightened the convicts, for a third of them at least would have constantly suffered from hunger; while, with the system in vogue, every one was satisfied. Our bread was particularly nice, and was even renowned in the town. Its good quality was attributed to the excellent construction of the prison ovens. As for our cabbage-soup, it was cooked and thickened with flour. It had not an appetising appearance. On working days it was clear and thin; but what particularly disgusted me was the way it was served. The prisoners, however, paid no attention to that. During the three days that followed my arrival, I did not go to work. Some respite was always given to prisoners just arrived, in order to allow them to recover from their fatigue. The second day I had to go out of the convict prison in order to be ironed. My chain was not of the regulation pattern; it was composed of rings, which gave forth a clear sound, so I heard other convicts say. I had to wear them externally over my clothes, whereas my companions had chains formed, not of rings, but of four links, as thick as the finger, and fastened together by three links which were worn beneath the trousers. To the central ring was fastened a strip of leather, tied in its turn to a girdle fastened over the shirt. I can see again the first morning that I passed in the convict prison. The drum sounded in the orderly room, near the principal entrance. Ten minutes afterwards the under officer opened the barracks. The convicts woke up one after another and rose trembling with cold from their plank bedsteads, by the dull light of a tallow candle. Nearly all of them were morose; they yawned and stretched themselves. Their foreheads, marked by the iron, were contracted. Some made the sign of the Cross; others began to talk nonsense. The cold air from outside rushed in as soon as the door was opened. Then the prisoners hurried round the pails full of water, one after another, and took water in their mouths, and, letting it out into their hands, washed their faces. Those pails had been brought in the night before by a prisoner specially appointed, according to the rules, to clean the barracks. The convicts chose him themselves. He did not work with the others, for it was his business to examine the camp bedsteads and the floors, to fetch and carry water. This water served in the morning for the prisoners' ablutions, and the rest during the day for ordinary drinking. That very morning there were disputes on the subject of one of the pitchers. "What are you doing there with your marked forehead?" grumbled one of the prisoners, tall, dry, and sallow. He attracted attention by the strange protuberances with which his skull was covered. He pushed against another convict round and small, with a lively rubicund countenance. "Just wait." "What are you crying out about? You know that a fine must be paid when the others are kept waiting. Off with you. What a monument, my brethren!" "A little calf," he went on muttering. "See, the white bread of the prison has fattened him." "For what do you take yourself? A fine bird, indeed." "You are about right." "What bird do you mean?" "You don't require to be told." "How so?" "Find out." They devoured one another with their eyes. The little man, waiting for a reply, with clenched fists, was apparently ready to fight. I thought that an encounter would take place. It was all quite new to me; accordingly I watched the scene with curiosity. Later on I learnt that such quarrels were very innocent, that they served for entertainment. Like an amusing comedy, it scarcely ever ended in blows. This characteristic plainly informed me of the manners of the prisoners. The tall prisoner remained calm and majestic. He felt that some answer was expected from him, if he was not to be dishonoured, covered with ridicule. It was necessary for him to show that he was a wonderful bird, a personage. Accordingly, he cast a side look on his adversary, endeavouring, with inexpressible contempt, to irritate him by looking at him over his shoulders, up and down, as he would have done with an insect. At last the little fat man was so irritated that he would have thrown himself upon his adversary had not his companions surrounded the combatants to prevent a serious quarrel from taking place. "Fight with your fists, not with your tongues," cried a spectator from a corner of the room. "No, hold them," answered another, "they are going to fight. We are fine fellows, one against seven is our style." Fine fighting men! One was here for having sneaked a pound of bread, the other is a pot-stealer; he was whipped by the executioner for stealing a pot of curdled milk from an old woman. "Enough, keep quiet," cried a retired soldier, whose business it was to keep order in the barrack, and who slept in a corner of the room on a bedstead of his own. "Water, my children, water for Nevalid Petrovitch, water for our little brother, who has just woke up." "Your brother! Am I your brother? Did we ever drink a roublesworth of spirits together?" muttered the old soldier as he passed his arms through the sleeves of his great-coat. The roll was about to be called, for it was already late. The prisoners were hurrying towards the kitchen. They had to put on their pelisses, and were to receive in their bi-coloured caps the bread which one of the cooks--one of the bakers, that is to say--was distributing among them. These cooks, like those who did the household work, were chosen by the prisoners themselves. There were two for the kitchen, making four in all for the convict prison. They had at their disposal the only kitchen-knife authorised in the prison, which was used for cutting up the bread and meat. The prisoners arranged themselves in groups around the tables as best they could in caps and pelisses, with leather girdles round their waists, all ready to begin work. Some of the convicts had kvas before them, in which they steeped pieces of bread. The noise was insupportable. Many of the convicts, however, were talking together in corners with a steady, tranquil air. "Good-morning and good appetite, Father Antonitch," said a young prisoner, sitting down by the side of an old man, who had lost his teeth. "If you are not joking, well, good-morning," said the latter, without raising his eyes, and endeavouring to masticate a piece of bread with his toothless gums. "I declare I fancied you were dead, Antonitch." "Die first, I will follow you." I sat down beside them. On my right two convicts were conversing with an attempt at dignity. "I am not likely to be robbed," said one of them. "I am more afraid of stealing myself." "It would not be a good idea to rob me. The devil! I should pay the man out." "But what would you do, you are only a convict? We have no other name. You will see that she will rob you, the wretch, without even saying, 'Thank you.' The money I gave her was wasted. Just fancy, she was here a few days ago! Where were we to go? Shall I ask permission to go into the house of Theodore, the executioner? He has still his house in the suburb, the one he bought from that Solomon, you know, that scurvy Jew who hung himself not long since." "Yes, I know him, the one who sold liquor here three years ago, and who was called Grichka--the secret-drinking shop." "I know." "_All_ brag. You don't know. In the first place it is another drinking shop." "What do you mean, another? You don't know what you are talking about. I will bring you as many witnesses as you like." "Oh, you will bring them, will you? Who are you? Do you know to whom you are speaking?" "Yes, indeed." "I have often thrashed you, though I don't boast of it. Do not give yourself airs then." "You have thrashed me? The man who will thrash me is not yet born; and the man who did thrash me is six feet beneath the ground." "Plague-stricken rascal of Bender?" "May the Siberian leprosy devour you with ulcers!" "May a chopper cleave your dog of a head." Insults were falling about like rain. "Come, now, they are going to fight. When men have not been able to conduct themselves properly they should keep silent. They are too glad to come and eat the Government bread, the rascals!" They were soon separated. Let them fight with the tongue as much as they wish. That is permitted. It is a diversion at the service of every one; but no blows. It is, indeed, only in extraordinary cases that blows were exchanged. If a fight took place, information was given to the Major, who ordered an inquiry or directed one himself; and then woe to the convicts. Accordingly they set their faces against anything like a serious quarrel; besides, they insulted one another chiefly to pass the time, as an oratorical exercise. They get excited; the quarrel takes a furious, ferocious character; they seem about to slaughter one another. Nothing of the kind takes place. As soon as their anger has reached a certain pitch they separate. That astonished me much, and if I relate some of the conversations between the convicts, I do so with a purpose. Could I have imagined that people could have insulted one another for pleasure, that they could find enjoyment in it? We must not forget the gratification of vanity. A dialectician, who knows how to insult artistically, is respected. A little more, and he would be applauded like an actor. Already, the night before, I noticed some glances in my direction. On the other hand, several convicts hung around me as if they had suspected that I had brought money with me. They endeavoured to get into my good graces by teaching me how to carry my irons without being incommoded. They also gave me--of course in return for money--a box with a lock, in order to keep safe the things which had been entrusted to me by the administration, and the few shirts that I had been allowed to bring with me to the convict prison. Not later than next morning these same prisoners stole my box, and drank the money which they had taken out of it. One of them became afterwards a great friend of mine, though he robbed me whenever an opportunity offered itself. He was, all the same, vexed at what he had done. He committed these thefts almost unconsciously, as if in the way of a duty. Consequently I bore him no grudge. These convicts let me know that one could have tea, and that I should do well to get myself a teapot. They found me one, which I hired for a certain time. They also recommended me a cook, who, for thirty kopecks a month, would arrange the dishes I might desire, if it was my intention to buy provisions and take my meals apart. Of course they borrowed money from me. The day of my arrival they asked me for some at three different times. The noblemen degraded from their position, here incarcerated in the convict prison, were badly looked upon by their fellow prisoners; although they had lost all their rights like the other convicts, they were not looked upon as comrades. In this instinctive repugnance there was a sort of reason. To them we were always gentlemen, although they often laughed at our fall. "Ah! it's all over now. Mossieu's carriage formerly crushed the passers-by at Moscow. Now Mossieu picks hemp!" They knew our sufferings, though we hid them as much as possible. It was, above all, when we were all working together that we had most to endure, for our strength was not so great as theirs, and we were really not of much assistance to them. Nothing is more difficult than to gain the confidence of the common people; above all, such people as these! There were only a few of us who were of noble birth in the whole prison. First, there were five Poles--of whom further on I shall speak in detail--they were detested by the convicts more, perhaps, than the Russian nobles. The Poles--I speak only of the political convicts--always behaved to them with a constrained and offensive politeness, scarcely ever speaking to them, and making no endeavour to conceal the disgust which they experienced in such company. The convicts understood all this, and paid them back in their own coin. Two years passed before I could gain the good-will of my companions; but the greater part of them were attached to me, and declared that I was a good fellow. There were altogether--counting myself--five Russian nobles in the convict prison. I had heard of one of them even before my arrival as a vile and base creature, horribly corrupt, doing the work of spy and informer. Accordingly, from the very first day I refused to enter into relations with this man. The second was the parricide of whom I have spoken in these memoirs. The third was Akimitch. I have scarcely ever seen such an original; and I have still a lively recollection of him. Tall, thin, weak-minded, and terribly ignorant, he was as argumentative and as particular about details as a German. The convicts laughed at him; but they feared him, on account of his susceptible, excitable, and quarrelsome disposition. As soon as he arrived, he was on a footing of perfect equality with them. He insulted them and beat them. Phenomenally just, it was sufficient for him that there was injustice, to interfere in an affair which did not concern him. He was, moreover, exceedingly simple. When he quarrelled with the convicts, he reproached them with being thieves, and exhorted them in all sincerity to steal no more. He had served as a sub-lieutenant in the Caucasus. I made friends with him the first day, and he related to me his "affair." He had begun as a cadet in a Line regiment. After waiting some time to be appointed to his commission as sub-lieutenant, he at last received it, and was sent into the mountains to command a small fort. A small tributary prince in the neighbourhood set fire to the fort, and made a night attack, which had no success. Akimitch was very cunning, and pretended not to know that he was the author of the attack, which he attributed to some insurgents wandering about the mountains. After a month he invited the prince, in a friendly way, to come and see him. The prince arrived on horseback, without suspecting anything. Akimitch drew up his garrison in line of battle, and exposed to the soldiers the treason and villainy of his visitor. He reproached him with his conduct; proved to him that to set fire to the fort was a shameful crime; explained to him minutely the duties of a tributary prince; and then, by way of peroration to his harangue, had him shot. He at once informed his superior officers of this execution, with all the details necessary. Thereupon Akimitch was brought to trial. He appeared before a court-martial, and was condemned to death; but his sentence was commuted, and he was sent to Siberia as a convict of the second class--condemned, that is to say, to twelve years' hard labour and imprisonment in a fortress. He admitted willingly that he had acted illegally, and that the prince ought to have been tried in a civil court, and not by a court-martial. Nevertheless, he could not understand that his action was a crime. "He had burned my fort; what was I to do? Was I to thank him for it?" he answered to my objections. Although the convicts laughed at Akimitch, and pretended that he was a little mad, they esteemed him all the same by reason of his cleverness and his precision. He knew all possible trades, and could do whatever you wished. He was cobbler, bootmaker, painter, carver, gilder, and locksmith. He had acquired these talents at the convict prison, for it was sufficient for him to see an object, in order to imitate it. He sold in the town, or caused to be sold, baskets, lanterns, and toys. Thanks to his work, he had always some money, which he employed in buying shirts, pillows, and so on. He had himself made a mattress, and as he slept in the same room as myself he was very useful to me at the beginning of my imprisonment. Before leaving prison to go to work, the convicts were drawn up in two ranks before the orderly-room, surrounded by an escort of soldiers with loaded muskets. An officer of Engineers then arrived, with the superintendent of the works and a few soldiers, who watched the operations. The superintendent counted the convicts, and sent them in bands to the places where they were to be occupied. I went with some other prisoners to the workshop of the Engineers--a low brick house built in the midst of a large court-yard full of materials. There was a forge there, and carpenters', locksmiths', and painters' workshops. Akimitch was assigned to the last. He boiled the oil for the varnish, mixed the colours, and painted tables and other pieces of furniture in imitation walnut. While I was waiting to have additional irons put on, I communicated to him my first impressions. "Yes," he said, "they do not like nobles, above all those who have been condemned for political offences, and they take a pleasure in wounding their feelings. Is it not intelligible? We do not belong to them, we do not suit them. They have all been serfs or soldiers. Tell me what sympathy can they have for us. The life here is hard, but it is nothing in comparison with that of the disciplinary companies in Russia. There it is hell. The men who have been in them praise our convict prison. It is paradise compared to their purgatory. Not that the work is harder. It is said that with the convicts of the first class the administration--it is not exclusively military as it is here--acts quite differently from what it does towards us. They have their little houses there I have been told, for I have not seen for myself. They wear no uniform, their heads are not shaved, though, in my opinion, uniforms and shaved heads are not bad things; it is neater, and also it is more agreeable to the eye, only these men do not like it. Oh, what a Babel this place is! Soldiers, Circassians, old believers, peasants who have left their wives and families, Jews, Gypsies, people come from Heaven knows where, and all this variety of men are to live quietly together side by side, eat from the same dish, and sleep on the same planks. Not a moment's liberty, no enjoyment except in secret; they must hide their money in their boots; and then always the convict prison at every moment--perpetually convict prison! Involuntarily wild ideas come to one." As I already knew all this, I was above all anxious to question Akimitch in regard to our Major. He concealed nothing, and the impression which his story left upon me was far from being an agreeable one. I had to live for two years under the authority of this officer. All that Akimitch had told me about him was strictly true. He was a spiteful, ill-regulated man, terrible above all things, because he possessed almost absolute power over two hundred human beings. He looked upon the prisoners as his personal enemies--first, and very serious fault. His rare capacities, and, perhaps, even his good qualities, were perverted by his intemperance and his spitefulness. He sometimes fell like a bombshell into the barracks in the middle of the night. If he noticed a prisoner asleep on his back or his left side, he awoke him and said to him: "You must sleep as I ordered!" The convicts detested him and feared him like the plague. His repulsive, crimson countenance made every one tremble. We all knew that the Major was entirely in the hands of his servant Fedka, and that he had nearly gone mad when his dog "Treasure" fell ill. He preferred this dog to every other living creature. When Fedka told him that a convict, who had picked up some veterinary knowledge, made wonderful cures, he sent for him directly and said to him, "I entrust my dog to your care. If you cure 'Treasure' I will reward you royally." The man, a very intelligent Siberian peasant, was indeed a good veterinary surgeon, but he was above all a cunning peasant. He used to tell his comrades long after the affair had taken place the story of his visit to the Major. "I looked at 'Treasure,' he was lying down on a sofa with his head on a white cushion. I saw at once that he had inflammation, and that he wanted bleeding. I think I could have cured him, but I said to myself, 'What will happen if the dog dies? It will be my fault.' 'No, your noble highness,' I said to him, 'you have called me too late. If I had seen your dog yesterday or the day before, he would now be restored to health; but at the present moment I can do nothing. He will die.' And 'Treasure' died." I was told one day that a convict had tried to kill the Major. This prisoner had for several years been noticed for his submissive attitude and also his silence. He was regarded even as a madman. As he possessed some instruction he passed his nights reading the Bible. When everybody was asleep he rose, climbed up on to the stove, lit a church taper, opened his Gospel and began to read. He did this for an entire year. One fine day he left the ranks and declared that he would not go to work. He was reported to the Major, who flew into a rage, and hurried to the barracks. The convict rushed forward and hurled at him a brick, which he had procured beforehand; but it missed him. The prisoner was seized, tried, and whipped--it was a matter of a few moments--carried to the hospital, and died there three days afterwards. He declared during his last moments that he hated no one; but that he had wished to suffer. He belonged to no sect of fanatics. Afterwards, when people spoke of him in the barracks, it was always with respect. At last they put new irons on me. While they were being soldered a number of young women, selling little white loaves, came into the forge one after another. They were, for the most part, quite little girls who came to sell the loaves that their mothers had baked. As they got older they still continued to hang about us, but they no longer brought bread. There were always some of them about. There were also married women. Each roll cost two kopecks. Nearly all the prisoners used to have them. I noticed a prisoner who worked as a carpenter. He was already getting gray, but he had a ruddy, smiling complexion. He was joking with the vendors of rolls. Before they arrived he had tied a red handkerchief round his neck. A fat woman, much marked with the small-pox, put down her basket on the carpenter's table. They began to talk. "Why did you not come yesterday?" said the convict, with a self-satisfied smile. "I did come; but you had gone," replied the woman boldly. "Yes; they made us go away, otherwise we should have met. The day before yesterday they all came to see me." "Who came?" "Why, Mariashka, Khavroshka, Tchekunda, Dougrochva" (the woman of four kopecks). "What," I said to Akimitch, "is it possible that----?" "Yes; it happens sometimes," he replied, lowering his eyes, for he was a very proper man. Yes; it happened sometimes, but rarely, and with unheard of difficulties. The convicts preferred to spend their money in drink. It was very difficult to meet these women. It was necessary to come to an agreement about the place, and the time; to arrange a meeting, to find solitude, and, what was most difficult of all, to avoid the escorts--almost an impossibility--and to spend relatively prodigious sums. I have sometimes, however, witnessed love scenes. One day three of us were heating a brick-kiln on the banks of the Irtitch. The soldiers of the escort were good-natured fellows. Two "blowers" (they were so-called) soon appeared. "Where were you staying so long?" said a prisoner to them, who had evidently been expecting them. "Was it at the Zvierkoffs that you were detained?" "At the Zvierkoffs? It will be fine weather, and the fowls will have teeth, when I go to see them," replied one of the women. She was the dirtiest woman imaginable. She was called Tchekunda, and had arrived in company with her friend, the "four kopecks," who was beneath all description. "It's a long time since we have seen anything of you," says the gallant to her of the four kopecks; "you seem to have grown thinner." "Perhaps; formerly I was good-looking and plump, whereas now one might fancy I had swallowed eels." "And you still run after the soldiers, is that so?" "All calumny on the part of wicked people; and after all, if I was to be flogged to death for it, I like soldiers." "Never mind your soldiers, we're the people to love; we have money." Imagine this gallant with his shaved crown, with fetters on his ankles, dressed in a coat of two colours, and watched by an escort. As I was now returning to the prison, my irons had been put on. I wished Akimitch good-bye and went away, escorted by a soldier. Those who do task work return first, and, when I got back to the barracks, a good number of convicts were already there. As the kitchen could not have held the whole barrack-full at once, we did not all dine together. Those who came in first were first served. I tasted the cabbage soup, but, not being used to it, could not eat it, and I prepared myself some tea. I sat down at one end of the table, with a convict of noble birth like myself. The prisoners were going in and out. There was no want of room, for there were not many of them. Five of them sat down apart from the large table. The cook gave them each two ladles full of soup, and brought them a plate of fried fish. These men were having a holiday. They looked at us in a friendly manner. One of the Poles came in and took his seat by our side. "I was not with you, but I know that you are having a feast," exclaimed a tall convict who now came in. He was a man of about fifty years, thin and muscular. His face indicated cunning, and, at the same time, liveliness. His lower lip, fleshy and pendant, gave him a soft expression. "Well, have you slept well? Why don't you say how do you do? Well, now my friends of Kursk," he said, sitting down by the side of the feasters, "good appetite? Here's a new guest for you." "We are not from the province of Kursk." "Then my friends from Tambof, let me say?" "We are not from Tambof either. You have nothing to claim from us; if you want to enjoy yourself go to some rich peasant." "I have Maria Ikotishna [from "ikot," hiccough] in my belly, otherwise I should die of hunger. But where is your peasant to be found?" "Good heavens! we mean Gazin; go to him." "Gazin is on the drink to-day, he's devouring his capital." "He has at least twenty roubles," says another convict. "It is profitable to keep a drinking shop." "You won't have me? Then I must eat the Government food." "Will you have some tea? If so, ask these noblemen for some." "Where do you see any noblemen? They're noblemen no longer. They're not a bit better than us," said in a sombre voice a convict who was seated in the corner, who hitherto had not risked a word. "I should like a cup of tea, but I am ashamed to ask for it. I have self-respect," said the convict with the heavy lip, looking at me with a good-humoured air. "I will give you some if you like," I said. "Will you have some?" "What do you mean--will I have some? Who would not have some?" he said, coming towards the table. "Only think! When he was free he ate nothing but cabbage soup and black bread, but now he is in prison he must have tea like a perfect gentleman," continued the convict with the sombre air. "Does no one here drink tea?" I asked him; but he did not think me worthy of a reply. "White rolls, white rolls; who'll buy?" A young prisoner was carrying in a net a load of calachi (scones), which he proposed to sell in the prison. For every ten that he sold, the baker gave him one for his trouble. It was precisely on this tenth scone that he counted for his dinner. "White rolls, white rolls," he cried, as he entered the kitchen, "white Moscow rolls, all hot. I would eat the whole of them, but I want money, lots of money. Come, lads, there is only one left for any of you who has had a mother." This appeal to filial love made every one laugh, and several of his white rolls were purchased. "Well," he said, "Gazin has drunk in such a style, it is quite a sin. He has chosen a nice moment too. If the man with the eight eyes should arrive--we shall hide him." "Is he very drunk?" "Yes, and ill-tempered too--unmanageable." "There will be some fighting, then?" "Whom are they speaking of?" I said to the Pole, my neighbour. "Of Gazin. He is a prisoner who sells spirits. When he has gained a little money by his trade, he drinks it to the last kopeck; a cruel, malicious animal when he has been drinking. When sober, he is quiet enough, but when he is in drink he shows himself in his true character. He attacks people with the knife until it is taken from him." "How do they manage that?" "Ten men throw themselves upon him and beat him like a sack without mercy until he loses consciousness. When he is half dead with the beating, they lay him down on his plank bedstead, and cover him over with his pelisse." "But they might kill him." "Any one else would die of it, but not he. He is excessively robust; he is the strongest of all the convicts. His constitution is so solid, that the day after one of these punishments he gets up perfectly sound." "Tell me, please," I continued, speaking to the Pole, "why these people keep their food to themselves, and at the same time seem to envy me my tea." "Your tea has nothing to do with it. They are envious of you. Are you not a gentleman? You in no way resemble them. They would be glad to pick a quarrel with you in order to humiliate you. You don't know what annoyances you will have to undergo. It is martyrdom for men like us to be here. Our life is doubly painful, and great strength of character can alone accustom one to it. You will be vexed and tormented in all sorts of ways on account of your food and your tea. Although the number of men who buy their own food and drink tea daily is large enough, they have a right to do so, you have not." He got up and left the table a few minutes later. His predictions were already being fulfilled. CHAPTER IV. FIRST IMPRESSIONS (_continued_). Hardly had M. --cki--the Pole to whom I had been speaking--gone out when Gazin, completely drunk, threw himself all in a heap into the kitchen. To see a convict drunk in the middle of the day, when every one was about to be sent out to work--given the well-known severity of the Major, who at any moment might come to the barracks, the watchfulness of the under officer who never left the prison, the presence of the old soldiers and the sentinels--all this quite upset the ideas I had formed of our prison; and a long time passed before I was able to understand and explain to myself the effects, which in the first instance were enigmatic indeed. I have already said that all the convicts had a private occupation, and that this occupation was for them a natural and imperious one. They are passionately fond of money, and think more of it than of anything else--almost as much as of liberty. The convict is half-consoled if he can ring a few kopecks in his pocket. On the contrary, he is sad, restless, and despondent if he has no money. He is ready then to commit no matter what crime in order to get some. Nevertheless, in spite of the importance it possesses for the convicts, money does not remain long in their pockets. It is difficult to keep it. Sometimes it is confiscated, sometimes stolen. When the Major, in a sudden perquisition, discovered a small sum amassed with great trouble, he confiscated it. It may be that he laid it out in improving the food of the prisoners, for all the money taken from them went into his hands. But generally speaking it was stolen. A means of preserving it was, however, discovered. An old man from Starodoub, one of the "old believers," took upon himself to conceal the convicts' savings. I cannot resist my desire to say some words about this man, although it takes me away from my story. He was about sixty years old, thin, and getting very gray. He excited my curiosity the first time I saw him, for he was not like any of the others; his look was so tranquil and mild, and I always saw with pleasure his clear and limpid eyes, surrounded by a number of little wrinkles. I often talked with him, and rarely have I met with so kind, so benevolent a being. He had been consigned to hard labour for a serious crime. A certain number of the "old believers" at Starodoub had been converted to the orthodox religion. The Government had done everything to encourage them, and, at the same time, to convert the other dissenters. The old man and some other fanatics had resolved to "defend the faith." When the orthodox church was being constructed in their town they set fire to the building. This offence had brought upon its author the sentence of deportation. This well-to-do shopkeeper--he was in trade--had left a wife and family whom he loved, and had gone off courageously into exile, believing in his blindness that he was "suffering for the faith." When one had lived some time by the side of this kind old man, one could not help asking the question, how could he have rebelled? I spoke to him several times about his faith. He gave up none of his convictions, but in his answers I never noticed the slightest hatred; and yet he had destroyed a church, and was far from denying it. In his view, the offence he had committed and his martyrdom were things to be proud of. There were other "old believers" among the convicts--Siberians for the most part--men of well-developed intelligence, and as cunning as all peasants. Dialecticians in their way, they followed blindly their law, and delighted in discussing it. But they had great faults; they were haughty, proud, and very intolerant. The old man in no way resembled them. With full more belief in religious exposition than others of the same faith, he avoided all controversy. As he was of a gay and expansive disposition he often laughed--not with the coarse cynical laugh of the other convicts, but with a laugh of clearness and simplicity, in which there was something of the child, and which harmonised perfectly with his gray head. I may perhaps be in error, but it seems to me that a man may be known by his laugh alone. If the laugh of a man you are acquainted with inspires you with sympathy, be assured that he is an honest man. The old man had acquired the respect of all the prisoners without exception; but he was not proud of it. The convicts called him grandfather, and he took no offence. I then understood what an influence he must have exercised on his co-religionists. In spite of the firmness with which he supported his prison life, one felt that he was tormented by a profound, incurable melancholy. I slept in the same barrack with him. One night, towards three o'clock in the morning, I woke up; I heard a slow, stifling sob. The old man was sitting upon the stove--the same place where the convict who had wished to kill the Major was in the habit of praying--and was reading from his manuscript prayer-book. As he wept I heard him repeating: "Lord, do not forsake me. Master, strengthen me. My poor little children, my dear little children, we shall never see one another again." I cannot say how much this moved me. We used to give our money then to this old man. Heaven knows how the idea got abroad in our barrack that he could not be robbed. It was well known that he hid somewhere the savings deposited with him, but no one had been able to discover his secret. He revealed it to us; to the Poles, and myself. One of the stakes of the palisade bore a branch which apparently belonged to it, but it could be taken away, and then replaced in the stake. When the branch was removed a hole could be seen. This was the hiding-place in question. I now resume the thread of my narrative. Why does not the convict save up his money? Not only is it difficult for him to keep it, but the prison life, moreover, is so sad that the convict by his very nature thirsts for freedom of action. By his position in society he is so irregular a being that the idea of swallowing up his capital in orgies, of intoxicating himself with revelry, seems to him quite natural if only he can procure himself one moment's forgetfulness. It was strange to see certain individuals bent over their labour only with the object of spending in one day all their gains, even to the last kopeck. Then they would go to work again until a new debauch, looked forward to months beforehand. Certain convicts were fond of new clothes, more or less singular in style, such as fancy trousers and waistcoats; but it was above all for the coloured shirts that the convicts had a pronounced taste; also for belts with metal clasps. On holidays the dandies of the prison put on their Sunday best. They were worth seeing as they strutted about their part of the barracks. The pleasure of feeling themselves well dressed amounted with them to childishness; indeed, in many things convicts are only children. Their fine clothes disappeared very soon, often the evening of the very day on which they had been bought. Their owners pledged them or sold them again for a trifle. The feasts were generally held at fixed times. They coincided with religious festivals, or with the name's day of the drunken convict. On getting up in the morning he would place a wax taper before the holy image, then he said his prayer, dressed, and ordered his dinner. He had bought beforehand meat, fish, and little patties; then he gorged like an ox, almost always alone. It was very rare to see a convict invite another convict to share his repast. At dinner the vodka was produced. The convict would suck it up like the sole of a boot, and then walk through the barracks swaggering and tottering. It was his desire to show all his companions that he was drunk, that he was carrying on, and thus obtain their particular esteem. The Russian people feel always a certain sympathy for a drunken man; among us it amounted really to esteem. In the convict prison intoxication was a sort of aristocratic distinction. As soon as he felt himself in spirits the convict ordered a musician. We had among us a little fellow--a deserter from the army--very ugly, but who was the happy possessor of a violin on which he could play. As he had no trade he was always ready to follow the festive convict from barrack to barrack grinding him out dance tunes with all his strength. His countenance often expressed the fatigue and disgust which his music--always the same--caused him; but when the prisoner called out to him, "Go on playing, are you not paid for it?" he attacked his violin more violently than ever. These drunkards felt sure that they would be taken care of, and in case of the Major arriving would be concealed from his watchful eyes. This service we rendered in the most disinterested spirit. On their side the under officer, and the old soldiers who remained in the prison to keep order, were perfectly reassured. The drunkard would cause no disturbance. At the least scare of revolt or riot he would have been quieted and then bound. Accordingly the inferior officers closed their eyes; they knew that if vodka was forbidden all would go wrong. How was this vodka procured? It was bought in the convict prison itself from the drink-sellers, as they were called, who followed this trade--a very lucrative one--although the tipplers were not very numerous, for revelry was expensive, especially when it is considered how hardly money was earned. The drink business was begun, continued, and ended in rather an original manner. The prisoner who knew no trade, would not work, and who, nevertheless, desired to get speedily rich, made up his mind, when he possessed a little money, to buy and sell vodka. The enterprise was risky, it required great daring, for the speculator hazarded his skin as well as liquor. But the drink-seller hesitated before no obstacles. At the outset he brought the vodka himself to the prison and got rid of it on the most advantageous terms. He repeated this operation a second and a third time. If he had not been discovered by the officials, he now possessed a sum which enabled him to extend his business. He became a capitalist with agents and assistants, he risked much less and gained much more. Then his assistants incurred risk in place of him. Prisons are always abundantly inhabited by ruined men without the habit of work, but endowed with skill and daring; their only capital is their back. They often decide to put it into circulation, and propose to the drink-seller to introduce vodka into the barracks. There is always in the town a soldier, a shopkeeper, or some loose woman who, for a stipulated sum--rather a small one--buys vodka with the drink-seller's money, hides it in a place known to the convict-smuggler, near the workshop where he is employed. The person who supplies the vodka, tastes the precious liquid almost always as he is carrying it to the hiding-place, and replaces relentlessly what he has drunk by pure water. The purchaser may take it or leave it, but he cannot give himself airs. He thinks himself very lucky that his money has not been stolen from him, and that he has received some kind of vodka in exchange. The man who is to take it into the prison--to whom the drink-seller has indicated the hiding-place--goes to the supplier with bullock's intestines which after being washed, have been filled with water, and which thus preserves their softness and suppleness. When the intestines have been filled with vodka, the smuggler rolls them round his body. Now, all the cunning, the adroitness of this daring convict is shown. The man's honour is at stake. It is necessary for him to take in the escort and the man on guard; and he will take them in. If the carrier is artful, the soldier of the escort--sometimes a recruit--does not notice anything particular; for the prisoner has studied him thoroughly, besides which he has artfully combined the hour and the place of meeting. If the convict--a bricklayer for example--climbs up on the wall that he is building, the escort will certainly not climb up after him to watch his movements. Who then, will see what he is about? On getting near the prison, he gets ready a piece of fifteen or twenty kopecks, and waits at the gate for the corporal on guard. The corporal examines, feels, and searches each convict on his return to the barracks, and then opens the gate to him. The carrier of the vodka hopes that he will be ashamed to examine him too much in detail; but if the corporal is a cunning fellow, that is just what he will do; and in that case he finds the contraband vodka. The convict has now only one chance of salvation. He slips into the hand of the under officer the piece of money he holds in readiness, and often, thanks to this manoeuvre, the vodka arrives safely in the hands of the drink-seller. But sometimes the trick does not succeed, and it is then that the sole capital of the smuggler enters really into circulation. A report is made to the Major, who sentences the unhappy culprit to a thorough flogging. As for the vodka, it is confiscated. The smuggler undergoes his punishment without betraying the speculator, not because such a denunciation would disgrace him, but because it would bring him nothing. He would be flogged all the same, the only consolation he could have would be that the drink-seller would share his punishment; but as he needs him, he does not denounce him, although having allowed himself to be surprised, he will receive no payment from him. Denunciation, however, flourishes in the convict prison. Far from hating spies or keeping apart from them, the prisoners often make friends of them. If any one had taken it into his head to prove to the convicts all the baseness of mutual denunciation, no one in the prison would have understood. The former nobleman of whom I have already spoken, that cowardly and violent creature with whom I had already broken off all relations immediately after my arrival in the fortress, was the friend of Fedka, the Major's body-servant. He used to tell him everything that took place in the convict prison, and this was naturally carried back to the servant's master. Every one knew it, but no one had the idea of showing any ill-will against the man, or of reproaching him with his conduct. When the vodka arrived without accident at the prison, the speculator paid the smuggler and made up his accounts. His merchandise had already cost him sufficiently dear; and that the profit might be greater, he diluted it by adding fifty per cent. of pure water. He was ready, and had only to wait for customers. The first holiday, perhaps even on a week-day, a convict would turn up. He had been working like a negro for many months in order to save up, kopeck by kopeck, a small sum which he was resolved to spend all at once. These days of rejoicing had been looked forward to long beforehand. He had dreamt of them during the endless winter nights, during his hardest labour, and the perspective had supported him under his severest trials. The dawn of this day so impatiently awaited, has just appeared. He has some money in his pocket. It has been neither stolen from him nor confiscated. He is free to spend it. Accordingly he takes his savings to the drink-seller, who, to begin with, gives vodka which is almost pure--it has been only twice baptized--but gradually, as the bottle gets more and more empty, he fills it up with water. Accordingly the convict pays for his vodka five or six times as much as he would in a tavern. It may be imagined how many glasses, and, above all, what sums of money are required before the convict is drunk. However, as he has lost the habit of drinking, the little alcohol which remains in the liquid intoxicates him rapidly enough; he goes on drinking until there is nothing left; he pledges or sells all his new clothes--for the drink-seller is at the same time a pawnbroker. As his personal garments are not very numerous he next pledges the clothes supplied to him by the Government. When the drink has made away with his last shirt, his last rag, he lies down and wakes up the next morning with a bad headache. In vain he begs the drink-seller to give him credit for a drop of vodka in order to remove his depression; he experiences a direct refusal. That very day he sets to work again. For several months together, he will weary himself out while looking forward to such a debauch as the one which has now disappeared in the past. Little by little he regains courage while waiting for such another day, still far off, but which ultimately will arrive. As for the drink-seller, if he has gained a large sum--some dozen of roubles--he procures some more vodka, but this time he does not baptize it, because he intends it for himself. Enough of trade! it is time for him to amuse himself. Accordingly he eats, drinks, pays for a little music--his means allow him to grease the palm of the inferior officers in the convict prison. This festival lasts sometimes for several days. When his stock of vodka is exhausted, he goes and drinks with the other drink-sellers who are waiting for him; he then drinks up his last kopeck. However careful the convicts may be in watching over their companions in debauchery, it sometimes happens that the Major or the officer on guard notices what is going on. The drunkard is then dragged to the orderly-room, his money is confiscated if he has any left, and he is flogged. The convict shakes himself like a beaten dog, returns to barracks, and, after a few days, resumes his trade as drink-seller. It sometimes happens that among the convicts there are admirers of the fair sex. For a sufficiently large sum of money they succeed, accompanied by a soldier whom they have corrupted, in getting secretly out of the fortress into a suburb instead of going to work. There in an apparently quiet house a banquet is held at which large sums of money are spent. The convicts' money is not to be despised, accordingly the soldiers will sometimes arrange these temporary escapes beforehand, sure as they are of being generously recompensed. Generally speaking these soldiers are themselves candidates for the convict prison. The escapades are scarcely ever discovered. I must add that they are very rare, for they are very expensive, and the admirers of the fair sex are obliged to have recourse to other less costly means. At the beginning of my stay, a young convict with very regular features excited my curiosity; his name was Sirotkin, he was in many respects an enigmatic being. His face had struck me, he was not more than twenty-three years of age, and he belonged to the special section; that is to say, he was condemned to hard labour in perpetuity. He accordingly was to be looked upon as one of the most dangerous of military criminals. Mild and tranquil, he spoke little and rarely laughed; his blue eyes, his clear complexion, his fair hair gave him a soft expression, which even his shaven crown did not destroy. Although he had no trade, he managed to get himself money from time to time. He was remarkably lazy, and always dressed like a sloven; but if any one was generous enough to present him with a red shirt, he was beside himself with joy at having a new garment, and he exhibited it everywhere. Sirotkin neither drank nor played, and he scarcely ever quarrelled with the other convicts. He walked about with his hands in his pockets peacefully, and with a pensive air. What he was thinking of I cannot say. When any one called to him, to ask him a question, he replied with deference, precisely, without chattering like the others. He had in his eyes the expression of a child of ten; when he had money he bought nothing of what the others looked upon as indispensable. His vest might be torn, he did not get it mended, any more than he bought himself new boots. What particularly pleased him were the little white rolls and gingerbread, which he would eat with the satisfaction of a child of seven. When he was not at work he wandered about the barracks; when every one else was occupied, he remained with his arms by his sides; if any one joked with him, or laughed at him--which happened often enough--he turned on his heel without speaking and went elsewhere. If the pleasantry was too strong he blushed. I often asked myself for what crime he could have been condemned to hard labour. One day when I was ill, and lying in the hospital, Sirotkin was also there, stretched out on a bedstead not far from me. I entered into conversation with him; he became animated, and told me freely how he had been taken for a soldier, how his mother had followed him in tears, and what treatment he had endured in military service. He added that he had never been able to accustom himself to this life; every one was severe and angry with him about nothing, his officers were always against him. "But why did they send you here?--and into the special section above all! Ah, Sirotkin!" "Yes, Alexander Petrovitch, although I was only one year with the battalion, I was sent here for killing my captain, Gregory Petrovitch." "I heard about that, but I did not believe it; how was it that you killed him?" "All that was told you was true; my life was insupportable." "But the other recruits supported it well enough. It is very hard at the beginning, but men get accustomed to it and end by becoming excellent soldiers. Your mother must have pampered you and spoiled you. I am sure that she fed you with gingerbread and with sweet milk until you were eighteen." "My mother, it is true, was very fond of me. When I left her she took to her bed and remained there. How painful to me everything in my military life was; after that all went wrong. I was perpetually being punished, and why? I obeyed every one, I was exact, careful. I did not drink, I borrowed from no one--it's all up with a man when he begins to borrow--and yet every one around me was harsh and cruel. I sometimes hid myself in a corner and did nothing but sob. One day, or rather one night, I was on guard. It was autumn: there was a strong wind, and it was so dark that you could not see a speck, and I was sad, so sad! I took the bayonet from the end of my musket and placed it by my side. Then I put the barrel to my breast and with my big toe--I had taken my boot off--pressed the trigger. It missed fire. I looked at my musket and loaded it with a charge of fresh powder. Then I broke off the corner of my flint, and once more I placed the muzzle against my breast. Again there was a misfire. What was I to do? I said to myself. I put my boot on, I fastened my bayonet to the barrel, and walked up and down with my musket on my shoulder. Let them do what they like, I said to myself; but I will not be a soldier any longer. Half-an-hour afterwards the captain arrived, making his rounds. He came straight upon me. 'Is that the way you carry yourself when you are on guard?' I seized my musket, and stuck the bayonet into his body. Then I had to walk forty-six versts. That is how I came to be in the special section." He was telling no falsehood, yet I did not understand how they could have sent him there; such crimes deserve a much less severe punishment. Sirotkin was the only one of the convicts who was really handsome. As for his companions of the special section--to the number of fifteen--they were frightful to behold with their hideous, disgusting physiognomies. Gray heads were plentiful among them. I shall speak of these men further on. Sirotkin was often on good terms with Gazin, the drink-seller, of whom I have already spoken at the beginning of this chapter. This Gazin was a terrible being; the impression that he produced on every one was confusing or appalling. It seemed to me that a more ferocious, a more monstrous creature could not exist. Yet I have seen at Tobolsk, Kameneff, the brigand, celebrated for his crimes. Later, I saw Sokoloff, the escaped convict, formerly a deserter, who was a ferocious creature; but neither of them inspired me with so much disgust as Gazin. I often fancied that I had before my eyes an enormous, gigantic spider of the size of a man. He was a Tartar, and there was no convict so strong as he was. It was less by his great height and his herculean construction, than by his enormous and deformed head, that he inspired terror. The strangest reports were current about him. Some said that he had been a soldier, others that he had escaped from Nertchinsk, and that he had been exiled several times to Siberia, but had always succeeded in getting away. Landing at last in our convict prison, he belonged there to the special section. It appeared that he had taken a pleasure in killing little children when he had attracted them to some deserted place; then he frightened them, tortured them, and after having fully enjoyed the terror and the convulsions of the poor little things, he killed them resolutely and with delight. These horrors had perhaps been imagined by reason of the painful impression that the monster produced upon us; but they seemed probable, and harmonised with his physiognomy. Nevertheless, when Gazin was not drunk, he conducted himself well enough. He was always quiet, never quarrelled, avoided all disputes as if from contempt for his companions, just as though he had entertained a high opinion of himself. He spoke very little, all his movements were measured, calm, resolute. His look was not without intelligence, but its expression was cruel and derisive like his smile. Of all the convicts who sold vodka, he was the richest. Twice a year he got completely drunk, and it was then that all his brutal ferocity exhibited itself. Little by little he got excited, and began to tease the prisoners with venomous satire prepared long beforehand. Finally when he was quite drunk, he had attacks of furious rage, and, seizing a knife, would rush upon his companions. The convicts who knew his herculean vigour, avoided him and protected themselves against him, for he would throw himself on the first person he met. A means of disarming him had been discovered. Some dozen prisoners would rush suddenly upon Gazin, and give him violent blows in the pit of the stomach, in the belly, and generally beneath the region of the heart, until he lost consciousness. Any one else would have died under such treatment, but Gazin soon got well. When he had been well beaten they would wrap him up in his pelisse, and throw him upon his plank bedstead, leaving him to digest his drink. The next day he woke up almost well, and went to his work silent and sombre. Every time that Gazin got drunk, all the prisoners knew how his day would finish. He knew also, but he drank all the same. Several years passed in this way. Then it was noticed that Gazin had lost his energy, and that he was beginning to get weak. He did nothing but groan, complaining of all kinds of illnesses. His visits to the hospital became more and more frequent. "He is giving in," said the prisoners. At one time Gazin had gone into the kitchen followed by the little fellow who scraped the violin, and whom the convicts in their festivities used to hire to play to them. He stopped in the middle of the hall silently examining his companions one after another. No one breathed a word. When he saw me with my companions, he looked at us in his malicious, jeering style, and smiled horribly with the air of a man who was satisfied with a good joke that he had just thought of. He approached our table, tottering. "Might I ask," he said, "where you get the money which allows you to drink tea?" I exchanged a look with my neighbour. I understood that the best thing for us was to be silent, and not to answer. The least contradiction would have put Gazin in a passion. "You must have money," he continued, "you must have a good deal of money to drink tea; but, tell me, are you sent to hard labour to drink tea? I say, did you come here for that purpose? Please answer, I should like to know." Seeing that we were resolved on silence, and that we had determined not to pay any attention to him, he ran towards us, livid and trembling with rage. At two steps' distance, he saw a heavy box, which served to hold the bread given for the dinner and supper of the convicts. Its contents were sufficient for the meal of half the prisoners. At this moment it was empty. He seized it with both hands and brandished it above our heads. Although murder, or attempted, was an inexhaustible source of trouble for the convicts--examinations, counter-examinations, and inquiries without end would be the natural consequence--and though quarrels were generally cut short, when they did not lead to such serious results, yet every one remained silent and waited. Not one word in our favour, not one cry against Gazin. The hatred of all the prisoners for all who were of gentle birth was so great that every one of them was evidently pleased to see that we were in danger. But a fortunate incident terminated this scene, which must have become tragic. Gazin was about to let fly the enormous box, which he was turning and twisting above his head, when a convict ran in from the barracks, and cried out: "Gazin, they have stolen your vodka!" The horrible brigand let fall the box with a frightful oath, and ran out of the kitchen. "Well, God has saved them," said the prisoners among themselves, repeating the words several times. I never knew whether his vodka had been stolen, or whether it was only a stratagem invented to save us. That same evening, before the closing of the barracks, when it was already dark, I walked to the side of the palisade. A heavy feeling of sadness weighed upon my soul. During all the time that I passed in the convict prison I never felt myself so miserable as on that evening, though the first day is always the hardest, whether at hard labour or in the prison. One thought in particular had left me no respite since my deportation--a question insoluble then and insoluble now. I reflected on the inequality of the punishments inflicted for the same crimes. Often, indeed, one crime cannot be compared even approximately to another. Two murderers kill a man under circumstances which in each case are minutely examined and weighed. They each receive the same punishment; and yet by what an abyss are their two actions separated! One has committed a murder for a trifle--for an onion. He has killed on the high-road a peasant who was passing, and found on him an onion, and nothing else. "Well, I was sent to hard labour for a peasant who had nothing but an onion!" "Fool that you are! an onion is worth a kopeck. If you had killed a hundred peasants you would have had a hundred kopecks, or one rouble." The above is a prison joke. Another criminal has killed a debauchee who was oppressing or dishonouring his wife, his sister, or his daughter. A third, a vagabond, half dead with hunger, pursued by a whole band of police, was defending his liberty, his life. He is to be regarded as on an equality with the brigand who assassinates children for his amusement, for the pleasure of feeling their warm blood flow over his hands, of seeing them shudder in a last bird-like palpitation beneath the knife which tears their flesh! They will all alike be sent to hard labour; though the sentence will perhaps not be for the same number of years. But the variations in the punishment are not very numerous, whereas different kinds of crimes may be reckoned by thousands. As many characters, so many crimes. Let us admit that it is impossible to get rid of this first inequality in punishment, that the problem is insoluble, and that in connection with penal matters it is the squaring of the circle. Let all that be admitted; but even if this inequality cannot be avoided, there is another thing to be thought of--the consequences of the punishment. Here is a man who is wasting away like a candle; there is another one, on the contrary, who had no idea before going into exile that there could be such a gay, such an idle life, where he would find a circle of such agreeable friends. Individuals of this latter class are to be found in the convict prison. Now take a man of heart, of cultivated mind, and of delicate conscience. What he feels kills him more certainly than the material punishment. The judgment which he himself pronounces on his crime is more pitiless than that of the most severe tribunal, the most Draconian law. He lives by the side of another convict, who has not once reflected on the murder he is expiating, during the whole time of his sojourn in the convict prison. He, perhaps, even considers himself innocent. Are there not, also, poor devils who commit crimes in order to be sent to hard labour, and thus to escape the liberty which is much more painful than confinement? A man's life is miserable, he has never, perhaps, been able to satisfy his hunger. He is worked to death in order to enrich his master. In the convict prison his work will be less severe, less crushing. He will eat as much as he wants, better than he could ever have hoped to eat, had he remained free. On holidays he will have meat, and fine people will give him alms, and his evening's work will bring him in some money. And the society one meets with in the convict prison, is that to be counted for nothing? The convicts are clever, wide-awake people, who are up to everything. The new arrival can scarcely conceal the admiration he feels for his companions in labour. He has seen nothing like it before, and he will consider himself in the best company possible. Is it possible that men so differently situated can feel in an equal degree the punishment inflicted? But why think about questions that are insoluble? The drum beats, let us go back to barracks. CHAPTER V. FIRST IMPRESSIONS (_continued_) We were between walls once more. The doors of the barracks were locked, each with a particular padlock, and the prisoners remained shut up till the next morning. The verification was made by a non-commissioned officer accompanied by two soldiers. When by chance an officer was present, the convicts were drawn up in the court-yard, but generally speaking they were identified in the buildings. As the soldiers often made mistakes, they went out and came back in order to count us again and again, until their reckoning was satisfactory, then the barracks were closed. Each one contained about thirty prisoners, and we were very closely packed in our camp bedsteads. As it was too soon to go to sleep, the convicts occupied themselves with work. Besides the old soldier of whom I have spoken, who slept in our dormitory, and represented there the administration of the prison, there was in our barrack another old soldier wearing a medal as rewarded for good conduct. It happened often enough, however, that the good-conduct men themselves committed offences for which they were sentenced to be whipped. They then lost their rank, and were immediately replaced by comrades whose conduct was considered satisfactory. Our good-conduct man was no other than Akim Akimitch. To my great astonishment, he was very rough with the prisoners, but they only replied by jokes. The other old soldier, more prudent, interfered with no one, and if he opened his mouth, it was only as a matter of form, as an affair of duty. For the most part he remained silent, seated on his little bedstead, occupied in mending his own boots. That day I could not help making to myself an observation, the accuracy of which became afterwards apparent: that all those who are not convicts and who have to deal with them, whoever they may be--beginning with the soldiers of the escort and the sentinels--look upon the convicts in a false and exaggerated light, expecting that for a yes or a no, these men will throw themselves upon them knife in hand. The prisoners, perfectly conscious of the fear they inspire, show a certain arrogance. Accordingly, the best prison director is the one who experiences no emotion in their presence. In spite of the airs they give themselves, the convicts prefer that confidence should be placed in them. By such means, indeed, they may be conciliated. I have more than once had occasion to notice their astonishment at an official entering their prison without an escort, and certainly their astonishment was not unflattering. A visitor who is intrepid imposes respect. If anything unfortunate happens, it will not be in his presence. The terror inspired by the convicts is general, and yet I saw no foundation for it. Is it the appearance of the prisoner, his brigand-like look, that causes a certain repugnance? Is it not rather the feeling that invades you directly you enter the prison, that in spite of all efforts, all precautions, it is impossible to turn a living man into a corpse, to stifle his feelings, his thirst for vengeance and for life, his passions, and his imperious desire to satisfy them? However that may be, I declare that there is no reason for fearing the convicts. A man does not throw himself so quickly nor so easily upon his fellow-man, knife in hand. Few accidents happen; sometimes they are so rare that the danger may be looked upon as non-existent. I speak, it must be understood, only of prisoners already condemned, who are undergoing their punishment, and some of whom are almost happy to find themselves in the convict prison; so attractive under all circumstances is a new form of life. These latter live quiet and contented. As for the turbulent ones, the convicts themselves keep them in restraint, and their arrogance never goes too far. The prisoner, audacious and reckless as he may be, is afraid of every official connected with the prison. It is by no means the same with the accused whose fate has not been decided. Such a one is quite capable of attacking, no matter whom, without any motive of hatred, and solely because he is to be whipped the next day. If, indeed, he commits a fresh crime his offence becomes complicated. Punishment is delayed, and he gains time. The act of aggression is explained; it has a cause, an object. The convict wishes at all hazards to change his fate, and that as soon as possible. In connection with this, I myself have witnessed a physiological fact of the strangest kind. In the section of military convicts was an old soldier who had been condemned to two years' hard labour, a great boaster, and at the same time a coward. Generally speaking, the Russian soldier does not boast. He has no time for doing so, even had he the inclination. When such a one appears among a multitude of others, he is always a coward and a rogue. Dutoff--that was the name of the prisoner of whom I am speaking--underwent his punishment, and then went back to the same battalion in the Line; but, like all who are sent to the convict prison to be corrected, he had been thoroughly corrupted. A "return horse" re-appears in the convict prison after two or three weeks' liberty, not for a comparatively short time, but for fifteen or twenty years. So it happened in the case of Dutoff. Three weeks after he had been set at liberty, he robbed one of his comrades, and was, moreover, mutinous. He was taken before a court-martial and sentenced to a severe form of corporal punishment. Horribly frightened, like the coward that he was, at the prospect of punishment, he threw himself, knife in hand, on to the officer of the guard, as he entered his dungeon on the eve of the day that he was to run the gauntlet through the men of his company. He quite understood that he was aggravating his offence, and that the duration of his punishment would be increased; but all he wanted was to postpone for some days, or at least for some hours, a terrible moment. He was such a coward that he did not even wound the officer whom he had attacked. He had, indeed, only committed this assault in order to add a new crime to the last already against him, and thus defer the sentence. The moment preceding the punishment is terrible for the man condemned to the rods. I have seen many of them on the eve of the fatal day. I generally met with them in the hospital when I was ill, which happened often enough. In Russia the people who show most compassion for the convicts are certainly the doctors, who never make between the prisoners the distinctions observed by other persons brought into direct relations with them. In this respect the common people can alone be compared with the doctors, for they never reproach a criminal with the crime that he has committed, whatever it may be. They forgive him in consideration of the sentence passed upon him. Is it not known that the common people throughout Russia call crime a "misfortune," and the criminal an "unfortunate"? This definition is expressive, profound, and, moreover, unconscious, instinctive. To the doctor the convicts have naturally recourse, above all when they are to undergo corporal punishment. The prisoner who has been before a court-martial knows pretty well at what moment his sentence will be executed. To escape it he gets himself sent to the hospital, in order to postpone for some days the terrible moment. When he is declared restored to health, he knows that the day after he leaves the hospital this moment will arrive. Accordingly, on quitting the hospital the convict is always in a state of agitation. Some of them may endeavour from vanity to conceal their anxiety, but no one is taken in by that; every one understands the cruelty of such a moment, and is silent from humane motives. I knew one young convict, an ex-soldier, sentenced for murder, who was to receive the maximum of rods. The eve of the day on which he was to be flogged, he had resolved to drink a bottle of vodka in which he had infused a quantity of snuff. The prisoner condemned to the rods always drinks, before the critical moment arrives, a certain amount of spirits which he has procured long beforehand, and often at a fabulous price. He would deprive himself of the necessaries of life for six months rather than not be in a position to swallow half a pint of vodka before the flogging. The convicts are convinced that a drunken man suffers less from the sticks or whip than one who is in cold blood. I will return to my narrative. The poor devil felt ill a few moments after he had swallowed his bottle of vodka. He vomited blood, and was carried in a state of unconsciousness to the hospital. His lungs were so much injured by this accident that phthisis declared itself, and carried off the soldier in a few months. The doctors who had attended him never knew the origin of his illness. If examples of cowardice are not rare among the prisoners, it must be added that there are some whose intrepidity is quite astounding. I remember many instances of courage pushed to the extreme. The arrival in the hospital of a terrible bandit remains fixed in my memory. One fine summer day the report was spread in the infirmary that the famous prisoner, Orloff, was to be flogged the same evening, and that he would be brought afterwards to the hospital. The prisoners who were already there said that the punishment would be a cruel one, and every one--including myself I must admit--was awaiting with curiosity the arrival of this brigand, about whom the most unheard-of things were told. He was a malefactor of a rare kind, capable of assassinating in cold blood old men and children. He possessed an indomitable force of will, and was fully conscious of his power. As he had been guilty of several crimes, they had condemned him to be flogged through the ranks. He was brought, or, rather carried, in towards evening. The place was already dark. Candles were lighted. Orloff was excessively pale, almost unconscious, with his thick curly hair of dull black without the least brilliancy. His back was skinned and swollen, blue, and stained with blood. The prisoners nursed him throughout the night; they changed his poultices, placed him on his side, prepared for him the lotion ordered by the doctor; in a word, showed as much solicitude for him as for a relation or benefactor. Next day he had fully recovered his faculties, and took one or two turns round the room. I was much astonished, for he was broken down and powerless when he was brought in. He had received half the number of blows ordered by the sentence. The doctor had stopped the punishment, convinced that if it were continued Orloff's death would inevitably ensue. This criminal was of a feeble constitution, weakened by long imprisonment. Whoever has seen prisoners after having been flogged, will remember their thin, drawn-out features and their feverish looks. Orloff soon recovered his powerful energy, which enabled him to get over his physical weakness. He was no ordinary man. From curiosity I made his acquaintance, and was able to study him at leisure for an entire week. Never in my life did I meet a man whose will was more firm or inflexible. I had seen at Tobolsk a celebrity of the same kind--a former chief of brigands. This man was a veritable wild beast; by being near him, without even knowing him, it was impossible not to recognise in him a dangerous creature. What above all frightened me was his stupidity. Matter, in this man, had taken such an ascendant over mind, that one could see at a glance that he cared for nothing in the world but the brutal satisfaction of his physical wants. I was certain, however, that Kareneff--that was his name--would have fainted on being condemned to such rigorous corporal punishment as Orloff had undergone; and that he would have murdered the first man near him without blinking. Orloff, on the contrary, was a brilliant example of the victory of spirit over matter. He had a perfect command over himself. He despised punishment, and feared nothing in the world. His dominant characteristic was boundless energy, a thirst for vengeance, and an immovable will when he had some object to attain. I was not astonished at his haughty air. He looked down upon all around him from the height of his grandeur. Not that he took the trouble to pose; his pride was an innate quality. I don't think that anything had the least influence over him. He looked upon everything with the calmest eye, as if nothing in the world could astonish him. He knew well that the other prisoners respected him; but he never took advantage of it to give himself airs. Nevertheless, vanity and conceit are defects from which scarcely any convict is exempt. He was intelligent and strangely frank in talking too much about himself. He replied point-blank to all the questions I put to him, and confessed to me that he was waiting impatiently for his return to health in order to take the remainder of the punishment he was to undergo. "Now," he said to me with a wink, "it is all over. I shall have the remainder, and shall be sent to Nertchinsk with a convoy of prisoners. I shall profit by it to escape. I shall get away beyond doubt. If only my back would heal a little quicker!" For five days he was burning with impatience to be in a condition for leaving the hospital At times he was gay and in the best of humours. I profited by these rare occasions to question him about his adventures. Then he would contract his eyebrows a little; but he always answered my questions in a straightforward manner. When he understood that I was endeavouring to see through him, and to discover in him some trace of repentance, he looked at me with a haughty and contemptuous air, as if I were a foolish little boy, to whom he did too much honour by conversing with him. I detected in his countenance a sort of compassion for me. After a moment's pause he laughed out loud, but without the least irony. I fancy he must, more than once, have laughed in the same manner, when my words returned to his memory. At last he wrote down his name as cured, although his back was not yet entirely healed. As I also was almost well, we left the infirmary together and returned to the convict prison, while he was shut up in the guard-room, where he had been imprisoned before. When he left me he shook me by the hand, which in his eyes was a great mark of confidence. I fancy he did so, because at that moment he was in a good humour. But in reality he must have despised me, for I was a feeble being, contemptible in all respects, and guilty above all of resignation. The next day he underwent the second half of his punishment. When the gates of the barracks had been closed, it assumed, in less than no time, quite another aspect--that of a private house, of quite a home. Then only did I see my convict comrades at their ease. During the day the under officers, or some of the other authorities, might suddenly arrive, so that the prisoners were then always on the look-out. They were only half at their ease. As soon, however, as the bolts had been pushed and the gates padlocked, every one sat down in his place and began to work. The barrack was lighted up in an unexpected manner. Each convict had his candle and his wooden candlestick. Some of them stitched boots, others sewed different kinds of garments. The air, already mephitic, became more and more impure. Some of the prisoners, huddled together in a corner, played at cards on a piece of carpet. In each barrack there was a prisoner who possessed a small piece of carpet, a candle, and a pack of horribly greasy cards. The owner of the cards received from the players fifteen kopecks [about sixpence] a night. They generally played at the "three leaves"--Gorka, that is to say: a game of chance. Each player placed before him a pile of copper money--all that he possessed--and did not get up until he had lost it or had broken the bank. Playing was continued until late at night; sometimes the dawn found the gamblers still at their game. Often, indeed, it did not cease until a few minutes before the opening of the gates. In our room--as in all the others--there were beggars ruined by drink and play, or rather beggars innate--I say innate, and maintain my expression. Indeed, in our country, and in all classes, there are, and always will be, strange easy-going people whose destiny it is to remain always beggars. They are poor devils all their lives; quite broken down, they remain under the domination or guardianship of some one, generally a prodigal, or a man who has suddenly made his fortune. All initiative is for them an insupportable burden. They only exist on condition of undertaking nothing for themselves, and by serving, always living under the will of another. They are destined to act by and through others. Under no circumstances, even of the most unexpected kind, can they get rich; they are always beggars. I have met these persons in all classes of society, in all coteries, in all associations, including the literary world. As soon as a party was made up, one of these beggars, quite indispensable to the game, was summoned. He received five kopecks for a whole night's employment; and what employment it was! His duty was to keep guard in the vestibule, with thirty degrees (Réaumur) of frost, in total darkness, for six or seven hours. The man on watch had to listen for the slightest noise, for the Major or one of the other officers of the guard would sometimes make a round rather late in the night. They arrived secretly, and sometimes discovered the players and the watchers in the act--thanks to the light of the candles, which could be seen from the court-yard. When the key was heard grinding in the padlock which closed the gate, it was too late to put the lights out and lie down on the plank bedsteads. Such surprises were, however, rare. Five kopecks was a ridiculous payment even in our convict prison, and the exigency and hardness of the gamblers astonished me in this as in many cases: "You are paid, you must do what you are told." This was the argument, and it admitted of no reply. To have paid a few kopecks to any one gave the right to turn him to the best possible account, and even to claim his gratitude. More than once it happened to me to see the convicts spend their money extravagantly, throwing it away on all sides, and, at the same time, cheat the man employed to watch. I have seen this in several barracks on many occasions. I have already said that, with the exception of the gamblers, every one worked. Five only of the convicts remained completely idle, and went to bed on the first opportunity. My sleeping place was near the door. Next to me was Akim Akimitch, and when we were lying down our heads touched. He used to work until ten or eleven at making, by pasting together pieces of paper, multicolour lanterns, which some one living in the town had ordered from him, and for which he used to be well paid. He excelled in this kind of work, and did it methodically and regularly. When he had finished he put away carefully his tools, unfolded his mattress, said his prayers, and went to sleep with the sleep of the just. He carried his love of order even to pedantry, and must have thought himself in his inner heart a man of brains, as is generally the case with narrow, mediocre persons. I did not like him the first day, although he gave me much to think of. I was astonished that such a man could be found in a convict prison. I shall speak of Akimitch further on in the course of this book. But I must now continue to describe the persons with whom I was to live a number of years. Those who surrounded me were to be my companions every minute, and it will be understood that I looked upon them with anxious curiosity. On my left slept a band of mountaineers from the Caucasus, nearly all exiled for brigandage, but condemned to different punishments. There were two Lesghians, a Circassian, and three Tartars from Daghestan. The Circassian was a morose and sombre person. He scarcely ever spoke, and looked at you sideways with a sly, sulky, wild-beast-like expression. One of the Lesghians, an old man with an aquiline nose, tall and thin, seemed to be a true brigand; but the other Lesghian, Nourra by name, made a most favourable impression upon me. Of middle height, still young, built like a Hercules, with fair hair and violet eyes; he had a slightly turned up nose, while his features were somewhat of a Finnish cast. Like all horsemen, he walked with his toes in. His body was striped with scars, ploughed by bayonet wounds and bullets. Although he belonged to the conquered part of the Caucasus, he had joined the rebels, with whom he used to make continual incursions into our territory. Every one liked him in the prison by reason of his gaiety and affability. He worked without murmuring, always calm and peaceful. Thieving, cheating, and drunkenness filled him with disgust, or put him in a rage--not that he wished to quarrel with any one; he simply turned away with indignation. During his confinement he committed no breach of the rules. Fervently pious, he said his prayers religiously every evening, observed all the Mohammedan fasts like a true fanatic, and passed whole nights in prayer. Every one liked him, and looked upon him as a thoroughly honest man. "Nourra is a lion," said the convicts; and the name of "Lion" stuck to him. He was quite convinced that as soon as he had finished his sentence he would be sent to the Caucasus. Indeed, he only lived by this hope, and I believe he would have died had he been deprived of it. I noticed it the very day of my arrival. How was it possible not to distinguish this calm, honest face in the midst of so many sombre, sardonic, repulsive countenances! Before I had been half-an-hour in the prison, he passed by my side and touched me gently on the shoulder, smiling at the same time with an innocent air. I did not at first understand what he meant, for he spoke Russian very badly; but soon afterwards he passed again, and, with a friendly smile, again touched me on the shoulder. For three days running he repeated this strange proceeding. As I soon found out, he wanted to show me that he pitied me, and that he felt how painful the first moment of imprisonment must be. He wanted to testify his sympathy, to keep up my spirits, and to assure me of his good-will. Kind and innocent Nourra! Of the three Tartars from Daghestan, all brothers, the two eldest were well-developed men, while the youngest, Ali, was not more than twenty-two, and looked younger. He slept by my side, and when I observed his frank, intelligent countenance, thoroughly natural, I was at once attracted to him, and thanked my fate that I had him for a neighbour in place of some other prisoner. His whole soul could be read in his beaming countenance. His confident smile had a certain childish simplicity; his large black eyes expressed such friendliness, such tender feeling, that I always took a pleasure in looking at him. It was a relief to me in moments of sadness and anguish. One day his eldest brother--he had five, of whom two were working in the mines of Siberia--had ordered him to take his yataghan, to get on horseback, and follow him. The respect of the mountaineers for their elders is so great that young Ali did not dare to ask the object of the expedition. He probably knew nothing about it, nor did his brothers consider it necessary to tell him. They were going to plunder the caravan of a rich Armenian merchant, and they succeeded in their enterprise. They assassinated the merchant and stole his goods. Unhappily for them, their act of brigandage was discovered. They were tried, flogged, and then sent to hard labour in Siberia. The Court admitted no extenuating circumstances, except in the case of Ali. He was condemned to the minimum punishment--four years' confinement. These brothers loved him, their affection being paternal rather than fraternal. He was the only consolation of their exile. Dull and sad as a rule, they had always a smile for him when they spoke to him, which they rarely did--for they looked upon him as a child to whom it would be useless to speak seriously--their forbidding countenances lightened up. I fancied they always spoke to him in a jocular tone, as to an infant. When he replied, the brothers exchanged glances, and smiled good-naturedly. He would not have dared to speak to them first by reason of his respect for them. How this young man preserved his tender heart, his native honesty, his frank cordiality without getting perverted and corrupted during his period of hard labour, is quite inexplicable. In spite of his gentleness, he had a strong stoical nature, as I afterwards saw. Chaste as a young girl, everything that was foul, cynical, shameful, or unjust filled his fine black eyes with indignation, and made them finer than ever. Without being a coward, he would allow himself to be insulted with impunity. He avoided quarrels and insults, and preserved all his dignity. With whom, indeed, was he to quarrel? Every one loved him, caressed him. At first he was only polite to me; but little by little we got into the habit of talking together in the evening, and in a few months he had learnt to speak Russian perfectly, whereas his brothers never gained a correct knowledge of the language. He was intelligent, and at the same time modest and full of delicate feeling. Ali was an exceptional being, and I always think of my meeting him as one of the lucky things in my life. There are some natures so spontaneously good and endowed by God with such great qualities that the idea of their getting perverted seems absurd. One is always at ease about them. Accordingly I had never any fears about Ali. Where is he now? One day, a considerable time after my arrival at the convict prison, I was stretched out on my camp-bedstead agitated by painful thoughts. Ali, always industrious, was not working at this moment. His time for going to bed had not arrived. The brothers were celebrating some Mussulman festival, and were not working. Ali was lying down with his head between his hands in a state of reverie. Suddenly he said to me: "Well, you are very sad!" I looked at him with curiosity. Such a remark from Ali, always so delicate, so full of tact, seemed strange. But I looked at him more attentively, and saw so much grief, so much repressed suffering in his countenance--of suffering caused no doubt by sudden recollections--that I understood in what pain he must be, and said so to him. He uttered a deep sigh, and smiled with a melancholy air. I always liked his graceful, agreeable smile. When he laughed, he showed two rows of teeth which the first beauty in the world would have envied him. "You were probably thinking, Ali, how this festival is celebrated in Daghestan. Ah, you were happy there!" "Yes," he replied with enthusiasm, and his eyes sparkled. "How did you know I was thinking of such things?" "How was I not to know? You were much better off than you are here." "Why do you say that?" "What beautiful flowers there are in your country! Is it not so? It is a true paradise." "Be silent, please." He was much agitated. "Listen, Ali. Had you a sister?" "Yes; why do you ask me?" "She must have been very beautiful if she is like you?" "Oh, there is no comparison to make between us. In all Daghestan no such beautiful girl is to be seen. My sister is, indeed, charming. I am sure that you have never seen any one like her. My mother also is very handsome." "And your mother was fond of you?" "What are you saying? Certainly she was. I am sure that she has died of grief, she was so fond of me. I was her favourite child. Yes, she loved me more than my sister, more than all the others. This very night she has appeared to me in a dream, she shed tears for me." He was silent, and throughout the rest of the night did not open his mouth; but from this very moment he sought my company and my conversation; although very respectful, he never allowed himself to address me first. On the other hand he was happy when I entered into conversation with him. He spoke often of the Caucasus, and of his past life. His brothers did not forbid him to converse with me; I think even that they encouraged him to do so. When they saw that I had formed an attachment to him, they became more affable towards me. Ali often helped me in my work. In the barrack he did whatever he thought would be agreeable to me, and would save me trouble. In his attentions to me there was neither servility nor the hope of any advantage, but only a warm, cordial feeling, which he did not try to hide. He had an extraordinary aptitude for the mechanical arts. He had learnt to sew very tolerably, and to mend boots; he even understood a little carpentering--everything in short that could be learnt at the convict prison. His brothers were proud of him. "Listen, Ali," I said to him one day, "why don't you learn to read and write the Russian language, it might be very useful to you here in Siberia?" "I should like to do so, but who would teach me?" "There are plenty of people here who can read and write. I myself will teach you if you like." "Oh, do teach me, I beg of you," said Ali, raising himself up in bed; he joined his hands and looked at me with a suppliant air. We went to work the very next evening. I had with me a Russian translation of the New Testament, the only book that was not forbidden in the prison. With this book alone, without an alphabet, Ali learnt to read in a few weeks, and after a few months he could read perfectly. He brought to his studies extraordinary zeal and warmth. One day we were reading together the Sermon on the Mount. I noticed that he read certain passages with much feeling; and I asked him if he was pleased with what he read. He glanced at me, and his face suddenly lighted up. "Yes, yes, Jesus is a holy prophet. He speaks the language of God. How beautiful it is!" "But tell me what it is that particularly pleases you." "The passage in which it is said, 'Forgive those that hate you!' Ah! how divinely He speaks!" He turned towards his brothers, who were listening to our conversation, and said to them with warmth a few words. They talked together seriously for some time, giving their approval of what their young brother had said by a nodding of the head. Then with a grave, kindly smile, quite a Mussulman smile (I liked the gravity of this smile), they assured me that Isu [Jesus] was a great prophet. He had done great miracles. He had created a bird with a little clay on which he breathed the breath of life, and the bird had then flown away. That, they said, was written in their books. They were convinced that they would please me much by praising Jesus. As for Ali, he was happy to see that his brothers approved of our friendship, and that they were giving me, what he thought would be, grateful words. The success I had with my pupil in teaching him to write, was really extraordinary. Ali had bought paper at his own expense, for he would not allow me to purchase any, also pens and ink; and in less than two months he had learnt to write. His brothers were astonished at such rapid progress. Their satisfaction and their pride were without bounds. They did not know how to show me enough gratitude. At the workshop, if we happened to be together, there were disputes as to which of them should help me. I do not speak of Ali, he felt for me more affection than even for his brothers. I shall never forget the day on which he was liberated. He went with me outside the barracks, threw himself on my neck and sobbed. He had never embraced me before, and had never before wept in my presence. "You have done so much for me," he said; "neither my father nor my mother have ever been kinder. You have made a man of me. God will bless you, I shall never forget you, never!" Where is he now, where is my good, kind, dear Ali? Besides the Circassians, we had a certain number of Poles, who formed a separate group. They had scarcely any relations with the other convicts. I have already said that, thanks to their hatred for the Russian prisoners, they were detested by every one. They were of a restless, morbid disposition: there were six of them, some of them men of education, of whom I shall speak in detail further on. It was from them that during the last days of my imprisonment I obtained a few books. The first work I read made a deep impression upon me. I shall speak further on of these sensations, which I look upon as very curious, though it will be difficult to understand them. Of this I am certain, for there are certain things as to which one cannot judge without having experienced them oneself. It will be enough for me to say that intellectual privations are more difficult to support than the most frightful, physical tortures. A common man sent to hard labour finds himself in kindred society, perhaps even in a more interesting society than he has been accustomed to. He loses his native place, his family; but his ordinary surroundings are much the same as before. A man of education, condemned by law to the same punishment as the common man, suffers incomparably more. He must stifle all his needs, all his habits, he must descend into a lower sphere, must breathe another air. He is like a fish thrown upon the sand. The punishment that he undergoes, equal for all criminals according to the law, is ten times more severe and more painful for him than for the common man. This is an incontestable truth, even if one thinks only of the material habits that have to be sacrificed. I was saying that the Poles formed a group by themselves. They lived together, and of all the convicts in the prison, they cared only for a Jew, and for no other reason than because he amused them. Our Jew was generally liked, although every one laughed at him. We only had one, and even now I cannot think of him without laughing. Whenever I looked at him I thought of the Jew Jankel, whom Gogol describes in his Tarass Boulba, and who, when undressed and ready to go to bed with his Jewess in a sort of cupboard, resembled a fowl; but Isaiah Fomitch Bumstein and a plucked fowl were as like one another as two drops of water. He was already of a certain age--about fifty--small, feeble, cunning, and, at the same time, very stupid, bold, and boastful, though a horrible coward. His face was covered with wrinkles, his forehead and cheeks were scarred from the burning he had received in the pillory. I never understood how he had been able to support the sixty strokes he received. He had been sentenced for murder. He carried on his person a medical prescription which had been given to him by other Jews immediately after his exposure in the pillory. Thanks to the ointment prescribed, the scars were to disappear in less than a fortnight. He had been afraid to use it. He was waiting for the expiration of his twenty years (after which he would become a colonist) in order to utilise his famous remedy. "Otherwise I shall not be able to get married," he would say; "and I must absolutely marry." We were great friends: his good-humour was inexhaustible. The life of the convict prison did not seem to disagree with him. A goldsmith by trade, he received more orders than he could execute, for there was no jeweller's shop in our town. He thus escaped his hard labour. As a matter of course, he lent money on pledges to the convicts, who paid him heavy interest. He arrived at the prison before I did. One of the Poles related to me his triumphal entry. It is quite a history, which I shall relate further on, for I shall often have to speak of Isaiah Fomitch Bumstein. As for the other prisoners there were, first of all, four "old believers," among whom was the old man from Starodoub, two or three Little Russians, very morose persons, and a young convict with delicate features and a finely-chiselled nose, about twenty-three years of age, who had already committed eight murders; besides a band of coiners, one of whom was the buffoon of our barracks; and, finally, some sombre, sour-tempered convicts, shorn and disfigured, always silent, and full of envy. They looked askance at all who came near them, and must have continued to do so during a long course of years. I saw all this superficially on the first night of my arrival, in the midst of thick smoke, in a mephitic atmosphere, amid obscene oaths, accompanied by the rattling of chains, by insults, and cynical laughter. I stretched myself out on the bare planks, my head resting on my coat, rolled up to do duty in lieu of a pillow, not yet supplied to me. Then I covered myself with my sheepskin, but, thanks to the painful impression of this evening, I was unable for some time to get to sleep. My new life was only just beginning. The future reserved for me many things which I had not foreseen, and of which I had never the least idea. CHAPTER VI. THE FIRST MONTH Three days after my arrival I was ordered to go to work. The impression left upon me to this day is still very clear, although there was nothing very striking in it, unless one considers that my position was in itself extraordinary. The first sensations count for a good deal, and I as yet looked upon everything with curiosity. My first three days were certainly the most painful of all my terms of imprisonment. My wandering is at an end, I said to myself every moment. I am now in the convict prison, my resting-place for many years. Here is where I am to live. I come here full of grief, who knows that when I leave it I shall not do so with regret? I said this to myself as one touches a wound, the better to feel its pain. The idea that I might regret my stay was terrible to me. Already I felt to what an intolerable degree man is a creature of habit, but this was a matter of the future. The present, meanwhile, was terrible enough. The wild curiosity with which my convict companions examined me, their harshness towards a former nobleman now entering into their corporation, a harshness which sometimes took the form of hatred--all this tormented me to such a degree that I felt obliged of my own accord to go to work in order to measure at one stroke the whole extent of my misfortune, that I might at once begin to live like the others, and fall with them into the same abyss. But convicts differ, and I had not yet disentangled from the general hostility the sympathy here and there manifested towards me. After a time the affability and good-will shown to me by certain convicts gave me a little courage, and restored my spirits. Most friendly among them was Akim Akimitch. I soon noticed some kind, good-natured faces in the dark and hateful crowd. Bad people are to be found everywhere, but even among the worst there may be something good, I began to think, by way of consolation. Who knows? These persons are perhaps not worse than others who are free. While making these reflections I felt some doubts, and, nevertheless, how much I was in the right! The convict Suchiloff, for example; a man whose acquaintance I did not make until long afterwards, although he was near me during nearly the whole period of my confinement. Whenever I speak of the convicts who are not worse than other men, my thoughts turn involuntarily to him. He acted as my servant, together with another prisoner named Osip, whom Akim Akimitch had recommended to me immediately after my arrival. For thirty kopecks a month this man agreed to cook me a separate dinner, in case I should not be able to put up with the ordinary prison fare, and should be able to pay for my own food. Osip was one of the four cooks chosen by the prisoners in our two kitchens. I may observe that they were at liberty to refuse these duties, and give them up whenever they might think fit. The cooks were men from whom hard labour was not expected. They had to bake bread and prepare the cabbage soup. They were called "cook-maids," not from contempt, for the men chosen were always the most intelligent, but merely in fun. The name given to them did not annoy them. For many years past Osip had been constantly selected as "cook-maid." He never refused the duty except when he was out of sorts, or when he saw an opportunity of getting spirits into the barracks. Although he had been sent to the convict prison as a smuggler, he was remarkably honest and good-tempered (I have spoken of him before); at the same time he was a dreadful coward, and feared the rod above all things. Of a peaceful, patient disposition, affable with everybody, he never got into quarrels; but he could never resist the temptation of bringing spirits in, notwithstanding his cowardice, and simply from his love of smuggling. Like all the other cooks he dealt in spirits, but on a much less extensive scale than Gazin, because he was afraid of running the same risks. I always lived on good terms with Osip. To have a separate table it was not necessary to be very rich; it cost me only one rouble a month apart from the bread, which was given to us. Sometimes when I was very hungry I made up my mind to eat the cabbage soup, in spite of the disgust with which it generally filled me. After a time this disgust entirely disappeared. I generally bought one pound of meat a day, which cost me two kopecks--[5 kopecks = 2 pence.] The old soldiers, who watched over the internal discipline of the barracks, were ready, good-naturedly, to go every day to the market to make purchases for the convicts. For this they received no pay, except from time to time a trifling present. They did it for the sake of their peace; their life in the convict prison would have been a perpetual torment had they refused. They used to bring in tobacco, tea, meat--everything, in short, that was desired, always excepting spirits. For many years Osip prepared for me every day a piece of roast meat. How he managed to get it cooked was a secret. What was strangest in the matter was, that during all this time I scarcely exchanged two words with him. I tried many times to make him talk, but he was incapable of keeping up a conversation. He would only smile and answer my questions by "yes" or "no." He was a Hercules, but he had no more intelligence than a child of seven. Suchiloff was also one of those who helped me. I had never asked him to do so, he attached himself to me on his own account, and I scarcely remember when he began to do so. His principal duty consisted in washing my linen. For this purpose there was a basin in the middle of the court-yard, round which the convicts washed their clothes in prison buckets. Suchiloff had found means for rendering me a number of little services. He boiled my tea-urn, ran right and left to perform various commissions for me, got me all kinds of things, mended my clothes, and greased my boots four times a month. He did all this in a zealous manner, with a business-like air, as if he felt all the weight of the duties he was performing. He seemed quite to have joined his fate to mine, and occupied himself with all my affairs. He never said: "You have so many shirts, or your waistcoat is torn;" but, "We have so many shirts, and our waistcoat is torn." I had somehow inspired him with admiration, and I really believe that I had become his sole care in life. As he knew no trade whatever his only source of income was from me, and it must be understood that I paid him very little; but he was always pleased, whatever he might receive. He would have been without means had he not been a servant of mine, and he gave me the preference because I was more affable than the others, and, above all, more equitable in money matters. He was one of those beings who never get rich, and never know how to manage their affairs; one of those in the prison who were hired by the gamblers to watch all night in the ante-chamber, listening for the least noise that might announce the arrival of the Major. If there was a night visit they received nothing, indeed their back paid for their want of attention. One thing which marks this kind of men is their entire absence of individuality, which they seem entirely to have lost. Suchiloff was a poor, meek fellow; all the courage seemed to have been beaten out of him, although he had in reality been born meek. For nothing in the world would he have raised his hand against any one in the prison. I always pitied him without knowing why. I could not look at him without feeling the deepest compassion for him. If asked to explain this, I should find it impossible to do so. I could never get him to talk, and he never became animated, except when, to put an end to all attempts at conversation, I gave him something to do, or told him to go somewhere for me. I soon found that he loved to be ordered about. Neither tall nor short, neither ugly nor handsome, neither stupid nor intelligent, neither old nor young, it would be difficult to describe in any definite manner this man, except that his face was slightly pitted with the small-pox, and that he had fair hair. He belonged, as far as I could make out, to the same company as Sirotkin. The prisoners sometimes laughed at him because he had "exchanged." During the march to Siberia he had exchanged for a red shirt and a silver rouble. It was thought comical that he should have sold himself for such a small sum, to take the name of another prisoner in place of his own, and consequently to accept the other's sentence. Strange as it may appear it was nevertheless true. This custom, which had become traditional, and still existed at the time I was sent to Siberia, I, at first, refused to believe, but found afterwards that it really existed. This is how the exchange was effected: A company of prisoners started for Siberia. Among them there are exiles of all kinds, some condemned to hard labour, others to labour in the mines, others to simple colonisation. On the way out, no matter at what stage of the journey, in the Government of Perm, for instance, a prisoner wishes to exchange with another man, who--we will say he is named Mikhailoff--has been condemned to hard labour for a capital offence, and does not like the prospect of passing long years without his liberty. He knows, in his cunning, what to do. He looks among his comrades for some simple, weak-minded fellow, whose punishment is less severe, who has been condemned to a few years in the mines, or to hard labour, or has perhaps been simply exiled. At last he finds such a man as Suchiloff, a former serf, sentenced only to become a colonist. The man has made fifteen hundred versts [about one thousand miles] without a kopeck, for the good reason that a Suchiloff is always without money; fatigued, exhausted, he can get nothing to eat beyond the fixed rations, nothing to wear in addition to the convict uniform. Mikhailoff gets into conversation with Suchiloff, they suit one another, and they strike up a friendship. At last at some station Mikhailoff makes his comrade drunk, then he will ask him if he will "exchange." "My name is Mikhailoff," he says to him, "condemned to what is called hard labour, but which, in my own case, will be nothing of the kind, as I am to enter a particular special section. I am classed with the hard-labour men, but in my special division the labour is not so severe." Before the special section was abolished, many persons in the official world, even at St. Petersburg, were unaware even of its existence. It was in such a retired corner of one of the most distant regions of Siberia, that it was difficult to know anything about it. It was insignificant, moreover, from the number of persons belonging to it. In my time they numbered altogether only seventy. I have since met men who have served in Siberia, and know the country well, and yet have never heard of the "special section." In the rules and regulations there are only six lines about this institution. Attached to the convict prison of ---- is a special section reserved for the most dangerous criminals, while the severest labours are being prepared for them. The prisoners themselves knew nothing of this special section. Did it exist temporarily or constantly? Neither Suchiloff nor any of the prisoners being sent out, not Mikhailoff himself could guess the significance of those two words. Mikhailoff, however, had his suspicion as to the true character of this section. He formed his opinion from the gravity of the crime for which he was made to march three or four thousand versts on foot. It was certain that he was not being sent to a place where he would be at his ease. Suchiloff was to be a colonist. What could Mikhailoff desire better than that? "Won't you change?" he asks. Suchiloff is a little drunk, he is a simple-minded man, full of gratitude to the comrade who entertains him, and dare not refuse; he has heard, moreover, from other prisoners, that these exchanges are made, and understands, therefore, that there is nothing extraordinary, unheard-of, in the proposition made to him. An agreement is come to, the cunning Mikhailoff, profiting by Suchiloff's simplicity, buys his name for a red shirt, and a silver rouble, which are given before witnesses. The next day Suchiloff is sober; but more liquor is given to him. Then he drinks up his own rouble, and after a while the red shirt has the same fate. "If you don't like the bargain we made, give me back my money," says Mikhailoff. But where is Suchiloff to get a rouble? If he does not give it back, the "artel" [_i.e._, the association--in this case of convicts] will force him to keep his promise. The prisoners are very sensitive on such points: he must keep his promise. The "artel" requires it, and, in case of disobedience, woe to the offender! He will be killed, or at least seriously intimidated. If indeed the "artel" once showed mercy to the men who had broken their word, there would be an end to its existence. If the given word can be recalled, and the bargain put an end to after the stipulated sum has been paid, who would be bound by such an agreement? It is a question of life or death for the "artel." Accordingly the prisoners are very severe on the point. Suchiloff then finds that it is impossible to go back, that nothing can save him, and he accordingly agrees to all that is demanded of him. The bargain is then made known to all the convoy, and if denunciations are feared, the men looked upon as suspicious are entertained. What, moreover, does it matter to the others whether Mikhailoff or Suchiloff goes to the devil? They have had gratuitous drinks, they have been feasted for nothing, and the secret is kept by all. At the next station the names are called. When Mikhailoff's turn arrives, Suchiloff answers "present," Mikhailoff replies "present" for Suchiloff, and the journey is continued. The matter is not now even talked about. At Tobolsk the prisoners are told off. Mikhailoff will become a colonist, while Suchiloff is sent to the special section under a double escort. It would be useless now to cry out, to protest, for what proof could be given? How many years would it take to decide the affair, what benefit would the complainant derive? Where, moreover, are the witnesses? They would deny everything, even if they could be found. That is how Suchiloff, for a silver rouble and a red shirt, came to be sent to the special section. The prisoners laughed at him, not because he had exchanged--though in general they despised those who had been foolish enough to exchange a work that was easy for a work that was hard--but simply because he had received nothing for the bargain except a red shirt and a rouble--certainly a ridiculous compensation. Generally speaking, the exchanges are made for relatively large sums; several ten-rouble notes sometimes change hands. But Suchiloff was so characterless, so insignificant, so null, that he could scarcely even be laughed at. We lived a considerable time together, he and I; I had got accustomed to him, and he had formed an attachment for me. One day, however--I can never forgive myself for what I did--he had not executed my orders, and when he came to ask me for his money I had the cruelty to say to him, "You don't forget to ask for your money, but you don't do what you are told." Suchiloff remained silent and hastened to do as he was ordered, but he suddenly became very sad. Two days passed. I could not believe that what I had said to him could affect him so much. I knew that a person named Vassilieff was claiming from him in a morose manner payment of a small debt. Suchiloff was probably short of money, and did not dare to ask me for any. "Suchiloff, you wish, I think, to ask me for some money to pay Vassilieff; take this." I was seated on my camp-bedstead. Suchiloff remained standing up before me, much astonished that I myself should propose to give him money, and that I remembered his difficult position; the more so as latterly he had asked me several times for money in advance, and could scarcely hope that I should give him any more. He looked at the paper I held out to him, then looked at me, turned sharply on his heel and went out. I was as astonished as I could be. I went out after him, and found him at the back of the barracks. He was standing up with his face against the palisade and his arms resting on the stakes. "What is the matter, Suchiloff?" I asked him. He made no reply, and to my stupefaction I saw that he was on the point of bursting into tears. "You think, Alexander Petrovitch," he said, in a trembling voice, in endeavouring not to look at me, "that I care only for your money, but I----" He turned away from me, and struck the palisade with his forehead and began to sob. It was the first time in the convict prison that I had seen a man weep. I had much trouble in consoling him; and he afterwards served me, if possible, with more zeal than ever. He watched for my orders, but by almost imperceptible indications I could see that his heart would never forgive me for my reproach. Meanwhile other men laughed at him and teased him whenever the opportunity presented itself, and even insulted him without his losing his temper; on the contrary, he still remained on good terms with them. It is indeed difficult to know a man, even after having lived long years with him. The convict prison had not at first for me the significance it was afterwards to assume. I was at first, in spite of my attention, unable to understand many facts which were staring me in the face. I was naturally first struck by the most salient points, but I saw them from a false point of view, and the only impression they made upon me was one of unmitigated sadness. What contributed above all to this result was my meeting with A----f, the convict who had come to the prison before me, and who had astonished me in such a painful manner during the first few days. The effect of his baseness was to aggravate my moral suffering, already sufficiently cruel. He offered the most repulsive example of the kind of degradation and baseness to which a man may fall when all feeling of honour has perished within him. This young man of noble birth--I have spoken of him before--used to repeat to the Major all that was done in the barracks, and in doing so through the Major's body-servant Fedka. Here is the man's history. Arrived at St. Petersburg before he had finished his studies, after a quarrel with his parents, whom his life of debauchery had terrified, he had not shrunk for the sake of money from doing the work of an informer. He did not hesitate to sell the blood of ten men in order to satisfy his insatiable thirst for the grossest and most licentious pleasures. At last he became so completely perverted in the St. Petersburg taverns and houses of ill-fame, that he did not hesitate to take part in an affair which he knew to be conceived in madness--for he was not without intelligence. He was condemned to exile and ten years' hard labour in Siberia. One might have thought that such a frightful blow would have shocked him, that it would have caused some reaction and brought about a crisis; but he accepted his new fate without the least confusion. It did not frighten him; all that he feared in it was the necessity of working, and of giving up for ever his habits of debauchery. The name of convict had no effect but to prepare him for new acts of baseness, and more hideous villainies than any he had previously perpetrated. "I am now a convict, and can crawl at ease, without shame." That was the light in which he looked upon his new position. I think of this disgusting creature as of some monstrous phenomenon. During the many years I have lived in the midst of murderers, debauchees, and proved rascals, never in my life did I meet a case of such complete moral abasement, determined corruption, and shameless baseness. Among us there was a parricide of noble birth. I have already spoken of him; but I could see by several signs that he was much better and more humane than A----f. During the whole time of my punishment, he was never anything more in my eyes than a piece of flesh furnished with teeth and a stomach, greedy for the most offensive and ferocious animal enjoyments, for the satisfaction of which he was ready to assassinate anyone. I do not exaggerate in the least; I recognised in A----f one of the most perfect specimens of animality, restrained by no principles, no rule. How much I was disgusted by his eternal smile! He was a monster--a moral Quasimodo. He was at the same time intelligent, cunning, good-looking, had received some education, and possessed a certain capacity. Fire, plague, famine, no matter what scourge, is preferable to the presence of such a man in human society. I have already said that in the convict prison espionage and denunciation flourished as the natural product of degradation, without the convicts thinking much of it. On the contrary, they maintained friendly relations with A----f. They were more affable with him than with any one else. The kindly attitude towards him of our drunken friend, the Major, gave him a certain importance, and even a certain worth in the eyes of the convicts. Later on, this cowardly wretch ran away with another convict and the soldier in charge of them; but of this I shall speak in proper time and place. At first, he hung about me, thinking I did not know his history. I repeat that he poisoned the first days of my imprisonment so as to drive me nearly to despair. I was terrified by the mass of baseness and cowardice in the midst of which I had been thrown. I imagined that every one else was as foul and cowardly as he. But I made a mistake in supposing that every one resembled A----f. During the first three days I did nothing but wander about the convict prison, when I did not remain stretched out on my camp-bedstead. I entrusted to a prisoner of whom I was sure, the piece of linen which had been delivered to me by the administration, in order that he might make me some shirts. Always on the advice of Akim Akimitch, I got myself a folding mattress. It was in felt, covered with linen, as thin as a pancake, and very hard to any one who was not accustomed to it. Akim Akimitch promised to get me all the most essential things, and with his own hands made me a blanket out of a piece of old cloth, cut and sewn together from all the old trousers and waistcoats which I had bought from various prisoners. The clothes delivered to them, when they have been worn the regulation time, become the property of the prisoners. They at once sell them, for however much worn an article of clothing may be, it always possesses a certain value. I was very much astonished by all this, above all at the outset, during my first relations with this world. I became as low as my companions, as much a convict as they. Their customs, their habits, their ideas influenced me thoroughly, and externally became my own, without affecting my inner self. I was astonished and confused as though I had never heard or suspected anything of the kind before, and yet I knew what to expect, or at least what had been told me. The thing itself, however, produced on me a different impression from the mere description of it. How could I suppose, for instance, that old rags possessed still some value? And, nevertheless, my blanket was made up entirely of tatters. It would be difficult to describe the cloth out of which the clothes of the convicts were made. It was like the thick, gray cloth manufactured for the soldiers, but as soon as it had been worn some little time it showed the threads and tore with abominable ease. The uniform ought to have lasted for a whole year, but it never went so long as that. The prisoner labours, carries heavy burdens, and the cloth naturally wears out, and gets into holes very quickly. Our sheepskins were intended to be worn for three years. During the whole of that time they served as outer garments, blankets, and pillows, but they were very solid. Nevertheless, at the end of the third year, it was not rare to see them mended with ordinary linen. Although they were now very much worn, it was always possible to sell them at the rate of forty kopecks a piece, the best preserved ones even at the price of sixty kopecks, which was a great sum for the convict prison. Money, as I have before said, has a sovereign value in such a place. It is certain that a prisoner who has some pecuniary resources suffers ten times less than the one who has nothing. "When the Government supplies all the wants of the convict, what need can he have for money?" reasoned our chief. Nevertheless, I repeat that if the prisoners had been deprived of the opportunity of possessing something of their own, they would have lost their reason, or would have died like flies. They would have committed unheard-of crimes; some from wearisomeness or grief, the others, in order to get sooner punished, and, according to their expression, "have a change." If the convict who has gained some kopecks by the sweat of his brow, who has embarked in perilous undertakings in order to conquer them, if he spends this money recklessly, with childish stupidity, that does not the least in the world prove that he does not know its value, as might at first sight be thought. The convict is greedy for money, to the point of losing his reason, and, if he throws it away, he does so in order to procure what he places far above money--liberty, or at least a semblance of liberty. Convicts are great dreamers; I will speak of that further on with more detail. At present I will confine myself to saying that I have heard men, who had been condemned to twenty years' hard labour, say, with a quiet air, "when I have finished my time, if God wishes, then----" The very words hard labour, or forced labour, indicate that the man has lost his freedom; and when this man spends his money he is carrying out his own will. In spite of the branding and the chains, in spite of the palisade which hides from his eyes the free world, and encloses him in a cage like a wild beast, he can get himself spirits and other delights; sometimes even (not always), corrupt his immediate superintendents, the old soldiers and non-commissioned officers, and get them to close their eyes to his infractions of discipline within the prison. He can, moreover--what he adores--swagger; that is to say, impress his companions and persuade himself for a time, that he enjoys more liberty than he really possesses. The poor devil wishes, in a word, to convince himself of what he knows to be impossible. This is why the prisoners take such pleasure in boasting and exaggerating in burlesque fashion their own unhappy personality. Finally, they run some risk when they give themselves up to this boasting; in which again they find a semblance of life and liberty--the only thing they care for. Would not a millionaire with a rope round his neck give all his millions for one breath of air? A prisoner has lived quietly for several years in succession, his conduct has been so exemplary that he has been rewarded by special exemptions. Suddenly, to the great astonishment of his chiefs, this man becomes mutinous, plays the very devil, and does not recoil from a capital crime such as assassination, violation, etc. Every one is astounded at the cause of this unexpected explosion on the part of a man thought incapable of such a thing. It is the convulsive manifestation of his personality, an instinctive melancholia, an uncontrollable desire for self-assertion, all of which obscures his reason. It is a sort of epileptic attack, a spasm. A man buried alive who suddenly wakes up must strike in a similar manner against the lid of his coffin. He tries to rise up, to push it from him, although his reason must convince him of the uselessness of his efforts. Reason, however, has nothing to do with this convulsion. It must not be forgotten that almost every voluntary manifestation on the part of a convict is looked upon as a crime. Accordingly, it is a perfect matter of indifference to them whether this manifestation be important or insignificant, debauch for debauch, danger for danger. It is just as well to go to the end, even as far as a murder. The only difficulty is the first step. Little by little the man becomes excited, intoxicated, and can no longer contain himself. For that reason it would be better not to drive him to extremities. Everybody would be much better for it. But how can this be managed? CHAPTER VII. THE FIRST MONTH (_continued_) When I entered the convict prison I possessed a small sum of money; but I carried very little of it about with me, lest it should be confiscated. I had gummed some banknotes into the binding of my New Testament--the only book authorised in the convict prison. This New Testament had been given to me at Tobolsk, by a person who had been exiled some dozens of years, and who had got accustomed to see in other "unfortunates" a brother. There are in Siberia people who pass their lives in giving brotherly assistance to the "unfortunates." They feel the same sympathy for them that they would have for their own children. Their compassion is something sacred and quite disinterested. I cannot help here relating in some words a meeting which I had at this time. In the town where we were then imprisoned lived a widow, Nastasia Ivanovna. Naturally, none of us were in direct relations with this woman. She had made it the object of her life to come to the assistance of all the exiles; but, above all, of us convicts. Had there been some misfortune in her family? Had some person dear to her undergone a punishment similar to ours? I do not know. In any case, she did for us whatever she could. It is true she could do very little, for she was very poor. But we felt when we were shut up in the convict prison that, outside, we had a devoted friend. She often brought us news, which we were very glad to hear, for nothing of the kind reached us. When I left the prison to be taken to another town, I had the opportunity of calling upon her and making her acquaintance. She lived in one of the suburbs, at the house of a near relation. Nastasia Ivanovna was neither old nor young, neither pretty nor ugly. It was difficult, impossible even, to know whether she was intelligent and well-bred. But in her actions could be seen infinite compassion, an irresistible desire to please, to solace, to be in some way agreeable. All this could be read in the sweetness of her smile. I passed an entire evening at her house, with other companions of my imprisonment. She looked us straight in the face, laughed when we laughed, did everything we asked her, in conversation was always of our opinion, and did her best in every way to entertain us. She gave us tea and various little delicacies. If she had been rich we felt sure she would have been pleased, if only to be able to entertain us better and offer for us some solid consolation. When we wished her "good-bye," she gave us each a present of a cardboard cigar-case as a souvenir. She had made them herself--Heaven knows how--with coloured paper, the paper with which school-boys' copy-books are covered. All round this cardboard cigar-case she had gummed, by way of ornamentation, a thin edge of gilt paper. "As you smoke, these cigar-cases will perhaps be of use to you," she said, as if excusing herself for making such a present. There are people who say, as I have read and heard, that a great love for one's neighbour is only a form of selfishness. What selfishness could there be in this? That I could never understand. Although I had not much money when I entered the convict prison, I could not nevertheless feel seriously annoyed with convicts who, immediately on my arrival, after having deceived me once, came to borrow of me a second, a third time, and even oftener. But I admitted frankly that what did annoy me was the thought that all these people, with their smiling knavery, must take me for a fool, and laugh at me just because I lent the money for the fifth time. It must have seemed to them that I was the dupe of their tricks and their deceit. If, on the contrary, I had refused them and sent them away, I am certain that they would have had much more respect for me. Still, though it vexed me very much, I could not refuse them. I was rather anxious during the first days to know what footing I should hold in the convict prison, and what rule of conduct I should follow with my companions. I felt and perfectly understood that the place being in every way new to me, I was walking in darkness, and it would be impossible for me to live for ten years in darkness. I decided to act frankly, according to the dictates of my conscience and my personal feeling. But I also knew that this decision might be very well in theory, and that I should, in practice, be governed by unforeseen events. Accordingly, in addition to all the petty annoyances caused to me by my confinement in the convict prison, one terrible anguish laid hold of me and tormented me more and more. "The dead-house!" I said to myself when night fell, and I looked from the threshold of our barracks at the prisoners just returned from their labours and walking about in the court-yard, from the kitchen to the barracks, and _vice versâ_. As I examined their movements and their physiognomies I endeavoured to guess what sort of men they were, and what their disposition might be. They lounged about in front of me, some with lowered brows, others full of gaiety--one of these expressions was seen on every convict's face--exchanged insults or talked on indifferent matters. Sometimes, too, they wandered about in solitude, occupied apparently with their own reflections; some of them with a worn-out, pathetic look, others with a conceited air of superiority. Yes, here, even here!--their cap balanced on the side of their head, their sheepskin coat picturesquely over the shoulder, insolence in their eyes and mockery on their lips. "Here is the world to which I am condemned, in which, in spite of myself, I must somehow live," I said to myself. I endeavoured to question Akim Akimitch, with whom I liked to take my tea, in order not to be alone, for I wanted to know something about the different convicts. In parenthesis I must say that the tea, at the beginning of my imprisonment, was almost my only food. Akim Akimitch never refused to take tea with me, and he himself heated our tin tea-urns, made in the convict prison and let out to me by M----. Akim Akimitch generally drank a glass of tea (he had glasses of his own) calmly and silently, then thanked me when he had finished, and at once went to work on my blanket; but he had not been able to tell me what I wanted to know, and did not even understand my desire to know the dispositions of the people surrounding me. He listened to me with a cunning smile which I have still before my eyes. No, I thought, I must find out for myself; it is useless to interrogate others. The fourth day, the convicts were drawn up in two ranks, early in the morning, in the court-yard before the guard-house, close to the prison gates. Before and behind them were soldiers with loaded muskets and fixed bayonets. The soldier has the right to fire on the convict if he tries to escape. But, on the other hand, he is answerable for his shot, if there was no absolute necessity for him to fire. The same thing applies to revolts. But who would think of openly taking to flight? The Engineer officer arrived accompanied by the so-called "conductor" and by some non-commissioned officers of the Line, together with sappers and soldiers told off to superintend the labours of the convicts. The roll was called. Then the convicts who were going to the tailors' workshop started first. These men worked inside the prison, and made clothes for all the inmates. The other exiles went into the outer workshops, until at last arrived the turn of the prisoners destined for field labour. I was of this number--there were altogether twenty of us. Behind the fortress on the frozen river were two barges belonging to the Government, which were not worth anything, but which had to be taken to pieces in order that the wood might not be lost. The wood was in itself all but valueless, for firewood can be bought in the town at a nominal price. The whole country is covered with forests. This work was given to us in order that we might not remain with our arms crossed. This was understood on both sides. Accordingly, we went to it apathetically; though just the contrary happened when work had to be done, which would be profitable, or when a fixed task was assigned to us. In this latter case, although prisoners were to derive no profit from their work, they tried to get it over as soon as possible, and took a pride in doing it quickly. When such work as I am speaking of had to be done as a matter of form, rather than because it was necessary, task work could not be asked for. We had to go on until the beating of the drum at eleven o'clock called back the convicts. The day was warm and foggy, the snow was on the point of melting. Our entire band walked towards the bank behind the fortress, shaking lightly their chains hid beneath their garments: the sound came forth clear and ringing. Two or three convicts went to get their tools from the dépôt. I walked on with the others. I had become a little animated, for I wanted to see and know in what this field labour consisted, to what sort of work I was condemned, and how I should do it for the first time in my life. I remember the smallest particulars. We met, as we were walking along, a townsman with a long beard, who stopped and slipped his hand into his pocket. A prisoner left our party, took off his cap and received alms--to the extent of five kopecks--then came back hurriedly towards us. The townsman made the sign of the cross and went his way. The five kopecks were spent the same morning in buying cakes of white bread which were shared equally among us. In my squad some were gloomy and taciturn, others indifferent and indolent. There were some who talked in an idle manner. One of these men was extremely gay, heaven knows why. He sang and danced as we went along, shaking and ringing his chains at each step. This fat and corpulent convict was the very one who, on the very day of my arrival during the general washing, had a quarrel with one of his companions about the water, and had ventured to compare him to some sort of bird. His name was Scuratoff. He finished by shouting out a lively song of which I remember the burden: They married me without my consent, When I was at the mill. Nothing was wanting but a balalaika [the Russian banjo]. His extraordinary good-humour was justly reproved by several of the prisoners, who were offended by it. "Listen to his hallooing," said one of the convicts, "though it doesn't become him." "The wolf has but one song; this Tuliak [inhabitant of Tula] is stealing it from him," said another, who could be recognised by his accent as a Little Russian. "Of course I am from Tula," replied Scuratoff; "but we don't stuff ourselves to bursting as you do in your Pultava." "Liar! what did you eat yourself? Bark shoes and cabbage soup?" "You talk as if the devil fed you on sweet almonds," broke in a third. "I admit, my friend, that I am an effeminate man," said Scuratoff with a gentle sigh, as though he were really reproaching himself for his effeminacy. "From my most tender infancy I was brought up in luxury, fed on plums and delicate cakes. My brothers even now have a large business at Moscow. They are wholesale dealers in the wind that blows; immensely rich men, as you may imagine." "And what did you sell?" "I was very successful, and when I received my first two hundred----" "Roubles? impossible!" interrupted one of the prisoners, struck with amazement at hearing of so large a sum. "No, my good fellow, not two hundred roubles, two hundred blows of the stick. Luka; I say Luka!" "Some have the right to call me Luka, but for you I am Luka Kouzmitch," replied rather ill-temperedly a small, feeble convict with a pointed nose. "The devil take you, you are really not worth speaking to; yet I wanted to be civil to you. But to continue my story; this is how it happened that I did not remain any longer at Moscow. I received my fifteen last strokes and was then sent off, and was at----" "But what were you sent for?" asked a convict who had been listening attentively. "Don't ask stupid questions. I was explaining to you how it was I did not make my fortune at Moscow; and yet how anxious I was to be rich, you could scarcely imagine how much." Many of the prisoners began to laugh. Scuratoff was one of those lively persons, full of animal spirits, who take a pleasure in amusing their graver companions, and who, as a matter of course, received no reward except insults. He belonged to a type of men, to whose characteristics I shall, perhaps, have to return. "And what a fellow he is now!" observed Luka Kouzmitch. "His clothes alone must be worth a hundred roubles." Scuratoff had the oldest and greasiest sheepskin that could be seen. It was mended in many different places with pieces that scarcely hung together. He looked at Luka attentively from head to foot. "It is my head, friend," he said, "my head that is worth money. When I took farewell of Moscow, I was half consoled, because my head was to make the journey on my shoulders. Farewell, Moscow, I shall never forget your free air, nor the tremendous flogging I got. As for my sheepskin, you are not obliged to look at it." "You would like me, perhaps, to look at your head?" "If it was really his own natural property, but it was given him in charity," cried Luka Kouzmitch. "It was a gift made to him at Tumen, when the convoy was passing through the town." "Scuratoff, had you a workshop?" "What workshop could he have? He was only a cobbler," said one of the convicts. "It is true," said Scuratoff, without noticing the caustic tone of the speaker. "I tried to mend boots, but I never got beyond a single pair." "And were you paid for them?" "Well, I found a fellow who certainly neither feared God nor honoured either his father or his mother, and as a punishment, Providence made him buy the work of my hands." The men around Scuratoff burst into a laugh. "I also worked once at the convict prison," continued Scuratoff, with imperturbable coolness. "I did up the boots of Stepan Fedoritch, the lieutenant." "And was he satisfied?" "No, my dear fellows, indeed he was not; he blackguarded me enough to last me for the rest of my life. He also pushed me from behind with his knee. What a rage he was in! Ah! my life has deceived me. I see no fun in the convict prison whatever." He began to sing again. Akolina's husband is in the court-yard. There he waits. Again he sang, and again he danced and leaped. "Most unbecoming!" murmured the Little Russian, who was walking by my side. "Frivolous man!" said another in a serious, decided tone. I could not make out why they insulted Scuratoff, nor why they despised those convicts who were light-hearted, as they seemed to do. I attributed the anger of the Little Russian and the others to a feeling of personal hostility, but in this I was wrong. They were vexed that Scuratoff had not that puffed-up air of false dignity with which the whole of the convict prison was impregnated. They did not, however, get annoyed with all the jokers, nor treat them all like Scuratoff. Some of them were men who would stand no nonsense, and forgive no one voluntarily or involuntarily. It was necessary to treat them with respect. There was in our band a convict of this very kind, a good-natured, lively fellow, whom I did not see in his true light until later on. He was a tall young fellow, with pleasant manners, and not without good looks. There was at the same time a very comic expression on his face. He was called the Sapper, because he had served in the Engineers. He belonged to the special section. But all the serious-minded convicts were not so particular as the Little Russian, who could not bear to see people gay. We had in our prison several men who aimed at a certain pre-eminence, either in virtue of skill at their work, of their general ingenuity, of their character, or their wit. Many of them were intelligent and energetic, and reached the point they were aiming at--pre-eminence, that is to say, and moral influence over their companions. They often hated one another, and they excited general envy. They looked upon other convicts with a dignified air, that was full of condescension; and they never quarrelled without a cause. Favourably looked upon by the administration, they in some measure directed the work, and none of them would have lowered himself so far as to quarrel with a man about his songs. All these men were very polite to me during the whole time of my imprisonment, but not at all communicative. At last we reached the bank; a little lower down was the old hulk, which we were to break up, stuck fast in the ice. On the other side of the water was the blue steppe and the sad horizon. I expected to see every one go to work at once. Nothing of the kind. Some of the convicts sat down negligently on wooden beams that were lying near the shore, and nearly all took from their pockets pouches containing native tobacco--which was sold in leaf at the market at the rate of three kopecks a pound--and short wooden pipes. They lighted them while the soldiers formed a circle around them, and began to watch us with a tired look. "Who the devil had the idea of sinking this barque?" asked one of the convicts in a loud voice, without speaking to any one in particular. "Were they very anxious, then, to have it broken up?" "The people were not afraid to give us work," said another. "Where are all those peasants going to work?" said the first, after a short silence. He had not even heard his companion's answer. He pointed with his finger to the distance, where a troop of peasants were marching in file across the virgin snow. All the convicts turned negligently towards this side, and began from mere idleness to laugh at the peasants as they approached them. One of them, the last of the line, walked very comically with his arms apart, and his head on one side. He wore a tall pointed cap. His shadow threw itself in clear lines on the white snow. "Look how our brother Petrovitch is dressed," said one of my companions, imitating the pronunciation of the peasants of the locality. One amusing thing--the convicts looked down on peasants, although they were for the most part peasants by origin. "The last one, too, above all, looks as if he were planting radishes." "He is an important personage, he has lots of money," said a third. They all began to laugh without, however, seeming genuinely amused. During this time a woman selling cakes came up. She was a brisk, lively person, and it was with her that the five kopecks given by the townsman were spent. The young fellow who sold white bread in the convict prison took two dozen of her cakes, and had a long discussion with the woman in order to get a reduction in price. She would not, however, agree to his terms. At last the non-commissioned officer appointed to superintend the work came up with a cane in his hand. "What are you sitting down for? Begin at once." "Give us our tasks, Ivan Matveitch," said one of the "foremen" among us, as he slowly got up. "What more do you want? Take out the barque, that is your task." Then ultimately the convicts got up and went to the river, but very slowly. Different "directors" appeared, "directors," at least, in words. The barque was not to be broken up anyhow. The latitudinal and longitudinal beams were to be preserved, and this was not an easy thing to manage. "Draw this beam out, that is the first thing to do," cried a convict who was neither a director nor a foreman, but a simple workman. This man, very quiet and a little stupid, had not previously spoken. He now bent down, took hold of a heavy beam with both hands, and waited for some one to help him. No one, however, seemed inclined to do so. "Not you, indeed, you will never manage it; not even your grandfather, the bear, could do it," muttered some one between his teeth. "Well, my friend, are we to begin? As for me, I can do nothing alone," said, with a morose air, the man who had put himself forward, and who now, quitting the beam, held himself upright. "Unless you are going to do all the work by yourself, what are you in such a hurry about?" "I was only speaking," said the poor fellow, excusing himself for his forwardness. "Must you have blankets to keep yourselves warm, or are you to be heated for the winter?" cried a non-commissioned officer to the twenty men who seemed to loathe to begin work. "Go on at once." "It is never any use being in a hurry, Ivan Matveitch." "But you are doing nothing at all, Savelieff. What are you casting your eyes about for? Are they for sale, by chance? Come, go on." "What can I do alone?" "Set us tasks, Ivan Matveitch." "I told you before that I had no task to give you. Attack the barque, and when you have finished we will go back to the house. Come, begin." The prisoners began work, but with no good-will, and very indolently. The irritation of the chief at seeing these vigorous men remain so idle was intelligible enough. While the first rivet was being removed it suddenly snapped. "It broke to pieces," said the convict in self-justification. It was impossible, then, they suggested, to work in such a manner. What was to be done? A long discussion took place between the prisoners, and little by little they came to insults; nor did this seem likely to be the end of it. The under officer cried out again as he agitated his stick, but the second rivet snapped like the first. It was then agreed that hatchets were of no use, and that other tools must be procured. Accordingly, two prisoners were sent under escort to the fortress to get the proper instruments. Waiting their return, the other convicts sat down on the bank as calmly as possible, pulled out their pipes and began again to smoke. Finally, the under officer spat with contempt. "Well," he exclaimed, "the work you are doing will not kill you. Oh, what people, what people!" he grumbled, with an ill-natured air. He then made a gesture, and went away to the fortress, brandishing his cane. After an hour the "conductor" arrived. He listened quietly to what the convicts had to say, declared that the task he gave them was to get off four rivets unbroken, and to demolish a good part of the barque. As soon as this was done the prisoners could go back to the house. The task was a considerable one, but, good heavens! how the convicts now went to work! Where now was their idleness, their want of skill? The hatchets soon began to dance, and soon the rivets were sprung. Those who had no hatchets made use of thick sticks to push beneath the rivets, and thus in due time and in artistic fashion, they got them out. The convicts seemed suddenly to have become intelligent in their conversation. No more insults were heard. Every one knew perfectly what to say, to do, to advise. Just half-an-hour before the beating of the drum, the appointed task was executed, and the prisoners returned to the convict prison fatigued, but pleased to have gained half-an-hour from the working time fixed by the regulations. As regards myself, I have only one thing to say. Wherever I stood to help the workers I was never in my place; they always drove me away, and generally insulted me. Any one of the ragged lot, any miserable workman who would not have dared to say a syllable to the other convicts, all more intelligent and skilful than he, assumed the right of swearing at me if I went near him, under pretext that I interfered with him in his work. At last one of the best of them said to me frankly, but coarsely: "What do you want here? Be off with you! Why do you come when no one calls you?" "That is it," added another. "You would do better to take a pitcher," said a third, "and carry water to the house that is being built, or go to the tobacco factory. You are no good here." I was obliged to keep apart. To remain idle while others were working seemed a shame; but when I went to the other end of the barque I was insulted anew. "What men we have to work!" was the cry. "What can be done with fellows of this kind?" All this was said spitefully. They were pleased to have the opportunity of laughing at a gentleman. It will now be understood that my first thought on entering the convict prison was to ask myself how I should ever get on with such people. I foresaw that such incidents would often be repeated; but I resolved not to change my conduct in any way, whatever might be the result. I had decided to live simply and intelligently, without manifesting the least desire to approach my companions; but also without repelling them, if they themselves desired to approach me; in no way to fear their threats or their hatred; and to pretend as much as possible not to be affected by them. Such was my plan. I saw from the first that they would despise me, if I adopted any other course. When I returned in the evening to the convict prison, having finished my afternoon's work, fatigued and harassed, a deep sadness took possession of me. "How many thousands of days have I to pass like this one?" Always the same thought. I walked about alone and meditated as night fell, when, suddenly, near the palisade behind the barracks, I saw my friend, Bull, who ran towards me. Bull was the dog of the prison; for the prison has its dog as companies of infantry, batteries of artillery, and squadrons of cavalry have theirs. He had been there for a long time, belonged to no one, looked upon every one as his master, and lived on the remains from the kitchen. He was a good-sized black dog, spotted with white, not very old, with intelligent eyes, and a bushy tail. No one caressed him or paid the least attention to him. As soon as I arrived I made friends with him by giving him a piece of bread. When I patted him on the back he remained motionless, looked at me with a pleased expression, and gently wagged his tail. That evening, not having seen me the whole day--me, the first person who in so many years had thought of caressing him--he ran towards me, leaping and barking. It had such an effect on me that I could not help embracing him. I placed his head against my body. He placed his paws on my shoulders and looked me in the face. "Here is a friend sent to me by destiny," I said to myself, and during the first weeks, so full of pain, every time that I came back from work I hastened, before doing anything else, to go to the back of the barracks with Bull, who leaped with joy before me. I took his head in my hands and kissed it. At the same time a troubled, bitter feeling pressed my heart. I well remember thinking--and taking pleasure in the thought--that this was my one, my only friend in the world--my faithful dog, Bull. CHAPTER VIII. NEW ACQUAINTANCES--PETROFF Time went on, and little by little I accustomed myself to my new life. The scenes I had daily before me no longer afflicted me so much. In a word, the convict prison, its inhabitants, and its manners, left me indifferent. To get reconciled to this life was impossible, but I had to accept it as an inevitable fact. I had driven entirely away from me all the anxiety by which I had at first been troubled. I no longer wandered through the convict prison like a lost soul, and no longer allowed myself to be subjugated by my anxiety. The wild curiosity of the convicts had had its edge taken off, and I was no longer looked upon with that affectation or insolence previously displayed. They had become indifferent to me, and I was very glad of it. I began to feel at home in the barracks. I knew where to go and sleep at night; gradually I became accustomed to things the very idea of which would formerly have been repugnant to me. I went every week regularly to have my head shaved. We were called every Saturday one after another to the guard-house. The regimental barbers lathered our skulls with cold water and soap, and scraped us afterwards with their saw-like razors. Merely the thought of this torture gives me a shudder. I soon found a remedy for it--Akim Akimitch pointed it out to me--a prisoner in the military section who for one kopeck shaved those who paid for it with his own razor. This was his trade. Many of the prisoners were his customers merely to avoid the military barbers, yet these were not men of weak nerves. Our barber was called the "major," why, I cannot say. As far as I know he possessed no points of resemblance with any major. As I write these lines I see clearly before me the "major" and his thin face. He was a tall fellow, silent, rather stupid, absorbed entirely by his business; he was never to be seen without a strop in his hand, on which day and night he sharpened a razor, which was always in admirable condition. He had certainly made this work the supreme object of his life; he was really happy when his razor was quite sharp and his services were in request; his soap was always warm, and he had a very light hand--a hand of velvet. He was proud of his skill, and used to take with a careless air the kopeck he received; one might have thought that he worked from love of his art, and not in order to gain money. A----f was soundly corrected by our real Major one day, because he had the misfortune to say the "major" when he was speaking of the barber who shaved him. The real Major was in a violent rage. "Blackguard," he cried, "do you know what a major is?" and according to his habit he shook A----f violently. "The idea of calling a scoundrel of a convict a 'major' in my presence." From the first day of my imprisonment I began to dream of my liberation. My favourite occupation was to count thousands and thousands of times in a thousand different manners the number of days that I should have to pass in prison. I thought of that only, and every one deprived of his liberty for a fixed time does the same; of that I am certain. I cannot say that all the convicts had the same degree of hopefulness, but their sanguine character often astonished me. The hopefulness of a prisoner differs essentially from that of a free man. The latter may desire an amelioration in his position, or a realisation of some enterprise which he has undertaken, but meanwhile he lives, he acts; he is swept away in the whirlwind of real life. Nothing of the kind takes place in the case of the convict for life. He lives also in a way, but not being condemned to a fixed number of years, he takes a vaguer view of his situation than the one who is imprisoned for a definite term. The man condemned for a comparatively short period feels that he is not at home; he looks upon himself, so to say, as on a visit; he regards the twenty years of his punishment as two years at most; he is sure that at fifty, when he has finished his sentence, he will be as young and as lively as at thirty-five. "We have time before us," he thinks, and he strives obstinately to dispel discouraging thoughts. Even a man sentenced for life thinks that some day an order may arrive from St. Petersburg--"Transport such a one to the mines at Nertchinsk and fix a term for his detention." It would be famous, first because it takes six months to get to Nertchinsk, and the life on the road is a hundred times preferable to the convict prison. He would finish his time at Nertchinsk, and then--more than one gray-haired old man speculates in this way. At Tobolsk I have seen men fastened to the wall by a chain about two yards long; by their side they have their bed. They are thus chained for some terrible crime committed after their transportation to Siberia; they are kept chained up for five, ten years. They are nearly all brigands, and I only saw one of them who looked like a man of good breeding; he had been in some branch of the Civil Service, and spoke in a soft, lisping way; his smile was sweet but sickly; he showed us his chain, and pointed out to us the most convenient way of lying down. He must have been a nice person! All these poor wretches are perfectly well-behaved; they all seem satisfied, and yet their desire to finish their period of chains devours them. Why? it will be asked. Because then they will leave their low, damp, stifling cells for the court-yard of the convict prison, that is all. These last places of confinement they will never leave; they know that those who have once been chained up will never be liberated, and they will die in irons. They know all this, and yet they are very anxious to be no longer chained up. Without this hope could they remain five or six years fastened to a wall, and not die or go mad? I soon understood that work alone could save me, by fortifying my health and my body, whereas incessant restlessness of mind, nervous irritation, and the close air of the barracks would ruin them completely. I should go out vigorous and full of elasticity. I did not deceive myself, work and movement were very useful to me. I saw one of my comrades, to my terror, melt away like a piece of wax; and yet, when he was with me in the convict prison, he was young, handsome, and vigorous; when he left his health was ruined, and his legs could no longer support him. His chest, too, was oppressed by asthma. "No," I said to myself, as I gazed upon him; "I wish to live, and I will live." My love for work exposed me in the first place to the contempt and bitter laughter of my comrades; but I paid no attention to them, and went away with a light heart wherever I was sent. Sometimes, for instance, to break and pound alabaster. This work, the first that was given to me, is easy. The engineers did their utmost to lighten the task-work of all the gentlemen; this was not indulgence, but simple justice. Would it not have been strange to require the same work from a labourer as from a man whose strength was less by half, and who had never worked with his hands? But we were not "spoilt" in this way for ever, and we were only spared in secret, for we were severely watched. As real severe work was by no means rare, it often happened that the task given to us was beyond the strength of the gentlemen, who thus suffered twice as much as their comrades. Generally three or four men were sent to pound the alabaster, and nearly always old men or feeble ones were chosen. We were of the latter class. A man skilled in this particular kind of work was sent with us. For several years it was always the same man, Almazoff by name. He was severe, already in years, sunburnt, and very thin, by no means communicative, moreover, and difficult to get on with. He despised us profoundly; but he was of such a reserved disposition that he never broke it sufficient to call us names. The shed in which we calcined the alabaster was built on a sloping and deserted bank of the river. In winter, on a foggy day, the view was sad, both on the river and on the opposite shore, even to a great distance. There was something heartrending in this dull, naked landscape, but it was still sadder when a brilliant sun shone above the boundless white plain. How one would have liked to fly away beyond this steppe, which began on the opposite shore and stretched out for fifteen hundred versts to the south like an immense table-cloth. Almazoff went to work silently, with a disagreeable air. We were ashamed not to be able to help him more effectually, but he managed to do his work without our assistance, and seemed to wish to make us understand that we were acting unjustly towards him, and that we ought to repent our uselessness. Our work consisted in heating the oven in order to calcine the alabaster that we had got together in a heap. The day following, when the alabaster was entirely calcined, we turned it out. Each one filled a box of alabaster, which he afterwards crushed. This work was not disagreeable. The fragile alabaster soon became a white, brilliant dust. We brandished our heavy hammers, and dealt such formidable blows, that we admired our own strength. When we were tired we felt lighter, our cheeks were red, the blood circulated more rapidly in our veins. Almazoff would then look at us in a condescending manner, as he would have looked at little children. He smoked his pipe with an indulgent air, unable, however, to prevent himself from grumbling. When he opened his mouth he was never otherwise, and he was the same with every one. At bottom I believe he was a kind man. They gave me another kind of labour, which consisted in working the turning wheel. This wheel was high and heavy, and great efforts were necessary to make it go round, above all when the workmen from the workshop of the engineers used to make the balustrade of a staircase or the foot of a large table, which required almost the whole trunk. No one man could have done the work alone. To two convicts, B---- (formerly gentleman) and myself, this work was given nearly always for several years, whenever there was anything to turn. B---- was weak, even still young, and somewhat sympathetic. He had been sent to prison a year before me, with two companions who were also of noble birth. One of them, an old man, used to pray day and night. The prisoners respected him greatly for it. He died in prison. The other one was quite a young man, fresh-coloured, strong, and courageous. He had carried his companion B---- for several hundred versts, seeing that at the end of the first half-stage he had fallen down from fatigue. Their friendship for one another was something to see. B---- was a perfectly well-bred man, of noble and generous disposition, but spoiled and irritated by illness. We used to turn the wheel well together, and the work interested us. As for me, I found the exercise most salutary. I was very--too--fond of shovelling away the snow, which we generally did after the hurricanes, so frequent in the winter. When the hurricane had been raging for an entire day, more than one house would be buried up to the windows, even if it was not covered over entirely. The hurricane ceased, the sun reappeared, and we were ordered to disengage the houses, barricaded as they were by heaps of snow. We were sent in large bands, sometimes the whole of the convicts together. Each of us received a shovel and had an appointed task to do, which it sometimes seemed impossible to get through. But we all went to work with a good-will. The light dust-like snow had not yet congealed, and was frozen only on the surface. We removed it in enormous shovelfuls, which were dispersed around us. In the air the snow-dust was as brilliant as diamonds. The shovel sank easily into the white glittering mass. The convicts did this work almost always with gaiety, the cold winter air and the exercise animated them. Every one felt himself in better spirits, laughter and jokes were heard, snowballs were exchanged, which after a time excited the indignation of the serious-minded convicts, who liked neither laughter nor gaiety. Accordingly these scenes finished almost always in showers of insults. Little by little the circle of my acquaintances increased, although I never thought of making new ones. I was always restless, morose, and mistrustful. Acquaintances, however, were made involuntarily. The first who came to visit me was the convict Petroff. I say visit, and I retain the word, for he lived in the special division which was at the farthest end of the barracks from mine. It seemed as if no relations could exist between him and me, for we had nothing in common. Nevertheless, during the first period of my stay, Petroff thought it his duty to come towards me nearly every day, or at least to stop me when, after work, I went for a stroll at the back of the barracks as far as possible from observation. His persistence was disagreeable to me; but he managed so well that his visits became at last a pleasing diversion, although he was by no means of a communicative disposition. He was short, strongly built, agile, and skilful. He had rather an agreeable voice, and high cheek-bones, a bold look, and white, regular teeth. He had always a quid of tobacco in his mouth between the lower lip and the gums. Many of the convicts had the habit of chewing. He seemed to me younger than he really was, for he did not appear to be more than thirty, and he was really forty. He spoke to me without any ceremony, and behaved to me on a footing of equality with civility and attention. If, for instance, he saw that I wished to be alone, he would talk to me for about two minutes and then go away. He thanked me, moreover, each time for my kindness in conversing with him, which he never did to any one else. I must add that his relations underwent no change not only during the first period of my story, but for several years, and that they never became more intimate, although he was really my friend. I never could say exactly what he looked for in my society, nor why he came every day to see me. He robbed me sometimes, but almost involuntarily. He never came to me to borrow money; so that what attracted him was not personal interest. It seemed to me, I know not why, that this man did not live in the same prison with me, but in another house in the town, far away. It appeared as though he had come to the convict prison by chance in order to pick up news, to inquire for me, in short, to see how I was getting on. He was always in a hurry, as though he had left some one for a moment who was waiting for him, or as if he had given up for a time some matter of business. And yet he never hurried himself. His look was strongly fixed, with a slight air of levity and irony. He had a habit of looking into the distance above the objects near him, as though he were endeavouring to distinguish something behind the person to whom he was talking. He always seemed absent-minded. I sometimes asked myself where he went when he left me, where could Petroff be so anxiously expected? He would simply go with a light step to one of the barracks or to the kitchen, and sit down to hear the conversation. He listened attentively, and joined in with animation; after which he would suddenly become silent. But whether he spoke or kept silent, one could always see on his countenance that he had business somewhere else, and that some one was waiting for him in the town, not very far away. The most astonishing thing was that he never had any business--apart, of course, from the hard labour assigned to him. He knew no trade, and had scarcely ever any money. But that did not seem to grieve him. Why did he speak to me? His conversation was as strange as he himself was singular. When he noticed that I was walking alone at the back of the barracks he made a stand, and turned towards me. He walked very fast, and when I turned he was suddenly on his heel. He approached me walking, but so quickly that he seemed to be going at a run. "Good-morning." "Good-morning." "I am not disturbing you?" "No." "I wish to ask you something about Napoleon. I wanted to ask you if he is not a relation of the one who came to us in the year 1812." Petroff was a soldier's son, and knew how to read and write. "Of course he is." "People say he is President. What President--and of what?" His questions were always rapid and abrupt, as though he wished to know as soon as possible what he asked. I explained to him of what Napoleon was President, and I added that perhaps he would become Emperor. "How will that be?" I explained it to him as well as I could; Petroff listened with attention. He understood perfectly all I told him, and added, as he leant his ear towards me: "Hem! Ah, I wished to ask you, Alexander Petrovitch, if there are really monkeys who have hands instead of feet, and are as tall as a man?" "Yes." "What are they like?" I described them to him, and told him what I knew on the subject. "And where do they live?" "In warm climates. There are some to be found in the island of Sumatra." "Is that in America? I have heard that people there walk with their heads downwards." "No, no; you are thinking of the Antipodes." I explained to him as well as I could what America was, and what the Antipodes. He listened to me as attentively as if the question of the Antipodes had alone caused him to approach me. "Ah, ah! I read last year the story of the Countess de la Vallière. Arevieff had bought this book from the Adjutant. Is it true or is it an invention? The work is by Dumas." "It is an invention, no doubt." "Ah, indeed. Good-bye. I am much obliged to you." And Petroff disappeared. The above may be taken as a specimen of our ordinary conversation. I made inquiries about him. M---- thought he had better speak to me on the subject, when he learnt what an acquaintance I had made. He told me that many convicts had excited his horror on their arrival; but not one of them, not even Gazin, had produced upon him such a frightful impression as this Petroff. "He is the most resolute, most to be feared of all the convicts," said M----. "He is capable of anything, nothing stops him if he has a caprice. He will assassinate you, if the fancy takes him, without hesitation and without the least remorse. I often think he is not in his right senses." This declaration interested me extremely; but M---- was never able to tell me why he had such an opinion of Petroff. Strangely enough, for many years together I saw this man and talked with him nearly every day. He was always my sincere friend, though I could not at the time tell why, and during the whole time he lived very quietly, and did nothing extreme. I am moreover convinced that M---- was right, and that he was perhaps a most intrepid man and the most difficult to restrain in the whole prison. And why so, I can scarcely explain. This Petroff was that very convict who, when he was called up to receive his punishment, had wished to kill the Major. I have told you the latter was saved by a miracle--that he had gone away one minute before the punishment was inflicted. Once when he was still a soldier--before his arrival at the convict prison--his Colonel had struck him on parade. Probably he had often been beaten before, but that day he was not in a humour to bear an insult, in open day, before the battalion drawn up in line. He killed his Colonel. I don't know all the details of the story, for he never told it to me himself. It must be understood that these explosions only took place when the nature within him spoke too loudly, and these occasions were rare; as a rule he was serious and even quiet. His strong, ardent passions were not burnt out, but smouldering, like burning coals beneath ashes. I never noticed that he was vain, or given to bragging like so many other convicts. He hardly ever quarrelled, but he was on friendly relations with scarcely any one, except, perhaps, Sirotkin, and then only when he had need of him. I saw him, however, one day seriously irritated. Some one had offended him by refusing him something he wanted. He was disputing on the point with a tall convict, as vigorous as an athlete, named Vassili Antonoff, known for his nagging, spiteful disposition. The man, however, who belonged to the class of civil convicts, was far from being a coward. They shouted at one another for some time, and I thought the quarrel would finish like so many others of the same kind, by simple interchange of abuse. The affair took an unexpected turn. Petroff only suddenly turned pale, his lips trembled, and turned blue, his respiration became difficult. He got up, and slowly, very slowly, and with imperceptible steps--he liked to walk about with his feet naked--approached Antonoff; at once the noise of shouting gave place to a death-like silence--a fly passing through the air might have been heard--every one anxiously awaited the event. Antonoff pointed to his adversary. His face was no longer human. I was unable to endure the scene, and I left the prison. I was certain that before I got to the staircase I should hear the shrieks of a man who was being murdered; but nothing of the kind took place. Before Petroff had succeeded in getting up to Antonoff, the latter threw him the object which had caused the quarrel--a miserable rag, a worn-out piece of lining. Of course afterwards, Antonoff did not fail to call Petroff names, merely as a matter of conscience, and from a feeling of what was right, in order to show that he had not been too much afraid; but Petroff paid no attention to his insults, he did not even answer him. Everything had ended to his advantage, and the insults scarcely affected him; he was glad to have got his piece of rag. A quarter of an hour later he was strolling about the barracks quite unoccupied, looking for some group whose conversation might possibly gratify his curiosity. Everything seemed to interest him, and yet he remained apparently indifferent to all he heard. He might have been compared to a workman, a vigorous workman, whom the work fears; but who, for the moment, has nothing to do, and condescends meanwhile to put out his strength in playing with his children. I did not understand why he remained in prison, why he did not escape. He would not have hesitated to get away if he had really desired to do so. Reason has no power on people like Petroff unless they are spurred on by will. When they desire something there are no obstacles in their way. I am certain that he would have been clever enough to escape, that he would have deceived every one, that he would have remained for a time without eating, hid in a forest, or in the bulrushes of the river; but the idea had evidently not occurred to him. I never noticed in him much judgment or good sense. People like him are born with one idea, which, without being aware of it, pursues them all their life. They wander until they meet with some object which apparently excites their desire, and then they do not mind risking their head. I was sometimes astonished that a man who had assassinated his Colonel for having been struck, would lie down without opposition beneath the rods, for he was always flogged when he was detected introducing spirits into the prison. Like all those who had no settled occupation, he smuggled in spirits; then, if caught, he would allow himself to be whipped as though he consented to the punishment, and confessed himself in the wrong. Otherwise they would have killed him rather than make him lie down. More than once I was astonished to see that he was robbing me in spite of his affection for me; but he did so from time to time. Thus he stole my Bible, which I had asked him to carry to its place. He had only a few steps to go; but on his way he met with a purchaser, to whom he sold the book, at once spending the money he had received on vodka. Probably he felt that day a violent desire for drink, and when he desired something it was necessary that he should have it. A man like Petroff will assassinate any one for twenty-five kopecks, simply to get himself a pint of vodka. On any other occasion he will disdain hundreds and thousands of roubles. He told me the same evening of the theft he had committed, but without showing the least sign of repentance or confusion, in a perfectly indifferent tone, as though he were speaking of an ordinary incident. I endeavoured to reprove him as he deserved, for I regretted the loss of my Bible. He listened to me without hesitation very calmly. He agreed that the Bible was a very useful book, and sincerely regretted that I had it no longer; but he was not for one moment sorry, though he had stolen it. He looked at me with such assurance that I gave up scolding him. He bore my reproaches because he thought I could not do otherwise than I was doing. He knew that he ought to be punished for such an action, and consequently thought I ought to abuse him for my own satisfaction, and to console myself for my loss. But in his inner heart he considered that it was all nonsense, to which a serious man ought to be ashamed to descend. I believe even that he looked upon me as a child, an infant, who does not yet understand the simplest things in the world. If I spoke to him of anything, except books and matters of knowledge, he would answer me, but only from politeness, and in laconic phrases. I wondered what made him question me so much on the subject of books. I looked at him carefully during our conversation to assure myself that he was not laughing at me; but no, he listened seriously, and with an attention which was genuine, though not always maintained. This latter circumstance irritated me sometimes. The questions he put to me were clear and precise, and he always seemed prepared for the answer. He had made up his mind once for all that it was no use speaking to me as to other matters, and that, apart from books, I understood nothing. I am certain that he was attached to me, and much that fact astonished me; but he looked upon me as a child, or as an imperfect man. He felt for me that sort of compassion which every stronger being feels for a weaker; he took me for--I do not know what he took me for. Although this compassion did not prevent him from robbing me, I am sure that in doing so he pitied me. "What a strange person!" he must have said to himself, as he lay hands on my property; "he does not even know how to take care of what he possesses." That, I think, is why he liked me. One day he said to me as if involuntarily: "You are too good-natured, you are so simple, so simple that one cannot help pitying you. Do not be offended at what I was saying to you, Alexander Petrovitch," he added a minute afterwards, "it is not ill-meant." People like Petroff will sometimes, in times of trouble and excitement, manifest themselves in a forcible manner; then they find the kind of activity which suits them; they are not men of words; they could not be instigators and chiefs of insurrections, but they are the men who execute and act; they act simply without any fuss, and run just to throw themselves against an obstacle with bared breast, neither thinking nor fearing. Every one follows them to the foot of the wall, where they generally leave their life. I do not think Petroff can have ended well, he was marked for a violent end; and if he is not yet dead, that only means that the opportunity has not yet presented itself. Who knows, however? He will, perhaps, die of extreme old age, quite quietly, after having wandered through life, here and there, without an object; but I believe M---- was right, and that Petroff was the most determined man in the whole convict prison. CHAPTER IX. MEN OF DETERMINATION--LUKA It is difficult to speak of these men of determination. In the convict prison, as elsewhere, they are rare. They can be known by the fear they inspire; people beware of them. An irresistible feeling urged me first of all to turn away from them, but I afterwards changed my point of view, even in regard to the most frightful murderers. There are men who have never killed any one, and who, nevertheless, are more atrocious than those who have assassinated six persons. It is impossible to form an idea of certain crimes, of so strange a nature are they. A type of murderers that one often meets with is the following: A man lives calmly and peacefully. His fate is a hard one, but he puts up with it. He is a peasant attached to the soil, a domestic serf, a shopkeeper, or a soldier. Suddenly he finds something give way within him; what he has hitherto suffered he can bear no longer, and he plunges his knife into the breast of his oppressor or his enemy. He then goes beyond all measure. He has killed his oppressor, his enemy. That can be understood--there was cause for that crime; but afterwards he does not assassinate his enemies alone, but the first person he happens to meet he kills for the pleasure of killing--for an abusive word, for a look, to make an equal number, or only because some one is standing in his way. He behaves like a drunken man--a man in a delirium. When once he has passed the fatal line, he is himself astonished to find that nothing sacred exists for him. He breaks through all laws, defies all powers, and gives himself boundless license. He enjoys the agitation of his own heart and the terror that he inspires. He knows all the same that a frightful punishment awaits him. His sensations are probably like those of a man who, looking down from a high tower on to the abyss yawning at his feet, would be happy to throw himself head first into it in order to bring everything to an end. That is what happens with even the most quiet, the most commonplace individuals. There are some even who give themselves airs in this extremity. The more they were quiet, self-effacing before, the more they now swagger and seek to inspire fear. The desperate men enjoy the horror they cause; they take pleasure in the disgust they excite; they perform acts of madness from despair, and care nothing how it must all end, or seem impatient that it should end as soon as possible. The most curious thing is that their excitement, their exaltation, will last until the pillory. After that the thread is cut, the moment is fatal, and the man becomes suddenly calm, or, rather, he becomes extinct, a thing without feeling. In the pillory all his strength fails him, and he begs pardon of the people. Once at the convict prison, he is quite different. No one would ever imagine that this white-livered chicken had killed five or six men. There are some men whom the convict prison does not easily subdue. They preserve a certain swagger, a spirit of bravado. "I say, I am not what you take me for; I have sent six fellows out of the world," you will hear them boast; but sooner or later they have all to submit. From time to time, the murderer will amuse himself by recalling his audacity, his lawlessness when he was in a state of despair. He likes at these moments to have some silly fellow before whom he can brag, and to whom he will relate his heroic deeds, by pretending not to have the least wish to astonish him. "That is the sort of man I am," he says. And with what a refinement of prudent conceit he watches him while he is delivering his narrative! In his accent, in every word, this can be perceived. Where did he acquire this particular kind of artfulness? During the long evening of one of the first days of my confinement, I was listening to one of these conversations. Thanks to my inexperience I took the narrator for the malefactor, a man with an iron character, a man to whom Petroff was nothing. The narrator, Luka Kouzmitch, had "knocked over" a Major, for no other reason but that it pleased him to do so. This Luka Kouzmitch was the smallest and thinnest man in all the barracks. He was from the South. He had been a serf, one of those not attached to the soil, but who serve their masters as domestics. There was something cutting and haughty in his demeanour. He was a little bird, but had a beak and nails. The convicts sum up a man instinctively. They thought nothing of this one, he was too susceptible and too full of conceit. That evening he was stitching a shirt, seated on his camp-bedstead. Close to him was a narrow-minded, stupid, but good-natured and obliging fellow, a sort of Colossus, Kobylin by name. Luka often quarrelled with him in a neighbourly way, and treated him with a haughtiness which, thanks to his good-nature, Kobylin did not notice in the least. He was knitting a stocking, and listening to Luka with an indifferent air. Luka spoke in a loud voice and very distinctly. He wished every one to hear him, though he was apparently speaking only to Kobylin. "I was sent away," said Luka, sticking his needle in the shirt, "as a brigand." "How long ago?" asked Kobylin. "When the peas are ripe it will be just a year. Well, we got to K----v, and I was put into the convict prison. Around me there were a dozen men from Little Russia, well-built, solid, robust fellows, like oxen, and how quiet! The food was bad, the Major of the prison did what he liked. One day passed, then another, and I soon saw that all these fellows were cowards. "'You are afraid of such an idiot?' I said to them. "'Go and talk to him yourself,' and they burst out laughing like brutes that they were. I held my tongue. "There was one fellow so droll, so droll," added the narrator, now leaving Kobylin to address all who chose to listen. "This droll fellow was telling them how he had been tried, what he had said, and how he had wept with hot tears. "'There was a dog of a clerk there,' he said, 'who did nothing but write and take down every word I said. I told him I wished him at the devil, and he actually wrote that down. He troubled me so, that I quite lost my head.'" "Give me some thread, Vasili; the house thread is bad, rotten." "There is some from the tailor's shop," replied Vasili, handing it over to him. "Well, but about this Major?" said Kobylin, who had been quite forgotten. Luka was only waiting for that. He did not go on at once with his story, as though Kobylin were not worth such a mark of attention. He threaded his needle quietly, bent his legs lazily beneath him, and at last continued as follows: "I excited the fellows to such an extent that they all called out against the Major. That same morning I had borrowed the 'rascal' [prison slang for knife] from my neighbour, and had hid it, so as to be ready for anything. When the Major arrived, he was as furious as a madman. 'Come now, you Little Russians,' I whispered to them, 'this is not the time for fear.' But, dear me, all their courage had slipped down to the soles of their feet, they trembled! The Major came in, he was quite drunk. "'What is this, how do you dare? I am your Tzar, your God,' he cried. "When he said that he was the Tzar and God, I went up to him with my knife in my sleeve. "'No,' I said to him, 'your high nobility,' and I got nearer and nearer to him, 'that cannot be. Your "high nobility" cannot be our Tzar and our God.' "'Ah, you are the man, it is you,' cried the Major; 'you are the leader of them.' "'No,' I answered, and I got still nearer to him; 'no, your "high nobility," as every one knows, and as you yourself know, the all-powerful God present everywhere is alone in heaven. And we have only one Tzar placed above every one else by God himself. He is our monarch, your "high nobility." And, your "high nobility," you are as yet only Major, and you are our chief only by the grace of the Tzar, and by your merits.' "'How? how? how?' stammered the Major. He could not speak, so astounded was he. "This is how I answered, and I threw myself upon him and thrust my knife into his belly up to the hilt. It had been done very quickly; the Major tottered, turned, and fell. "I had thrown my life away. "'Now, you fellows,' I cried, 'it is for you to pick him up.'" I will here make a digression from my narrative. The expression, "I am the Tzar! I am God!" and other similar ones were once, unfortunately, too often employed in the good old times by many commanders. I must admit that their number has seriously diminished, and perhaps even the last has already disappeared. Let me observe that those who spoke in this way were, above all, men promoted from the ranks. The grade of officer had turned their brain upside down. After having laboured long years beneath the knapsack, they suddenly found themselves officers, commanders, and nobles above all. Thanks to their not being accustomed to it, and to the first excitement caused by their promotion, they contracted an exaggerated idea of their power and importance relatively to their subordinates. Before their superiors such men are revoltingly servile. The most fawning of them will even say to their superiors that they have been common soldiers, and that they do not forget their place. But towards their inferiors they are despots without mercy. Nothing irritates the convicts so much as such abuses. These overweening opinions of their own greatness; this exaggerated idea of their immunity, causes hatred in the hearts of the most submissive men, and drives the most patient to excesses. Fortunately, all this dates from a time that is almost forgotten, and even then the superior authorities used to deal very severely with abuses of power. I know more than one example of it. What exasperates the convicts above all is disdain or repugnance manifested by any one in dealing with them. Those who think that it is only necessary to feed and clothe the prisoner, and to act towards him in all things according to the law, are much mistaken. However much debased he may be, a man exacts instinctively respect for his character as a man. Every prisoner knows perfectly that he is a convict and a reprobate, and knows the distance which separates him from his superiors; but neither the branding irons nor chains will make him forget that he is a man. He must, therefore, be treated with humanity. Humane treatment may raise up one in whom the divine image has long been obscured. It is with the "unfortunate," above all, that humane conduct is necessary. It is their salvation, their only joy. I have met with some chiefs of a kind and noble character, and I have seen what a beneficent influence they exercised over the poor, humiliated men entrusted to their care. A few affable words have a wonderful moral effect upon the prisoners. They render them as happy as children, and make them sincerely grateful towards their chiefs. One other remark--they do not like their chiefs to be familiar and too much hail-fellow-well-met with them. They wish to respect them, and familiarity would prevent this. The prisoners will feel proud, for instance, if their chief has a number of decorations; if he has good manners; if he is well-considered by a powerful superior; if he is severe, but at the same time just, and possesses a consciousness of dignity. The convicts prefer such a man to all others. He knows what he is worth, and does not insult others. Everything then is for the best. "You got well skinned for that, I suppose," asked Kobylin. "As for being skinned, indeed, there is no denying it. Ali, give me the scissors. But, what next; are we not going to play at cards to-night?" "The cards we drank up long ago," remarked Vassili. "If we had not sold them to get drink they would be here now." "If!---- Ifs fetch a hundred roubles a piece on the Moscow market." "Well, Luka, what did you get for sticking him?" asked Kobylin. "It brought me five hundred strokes, my friend. It did indeed. They did all but kill me," said Luka, once more addressing the assembly and without heeding his neighbour Kobylin. "When they gave me those five hundred strokes, I was treated with great ceremony. I had never before been flogged. What a mass of people came to see me! The whole town had assembled to see the brigand, the murderer, receive his punishment. How stupid the populace is!--I cannot tell you to what extent. Timoshka the executioner undressed me and laid me down and cried out, 'Look out, I am going to grill you!' I waited for the first stroke. I wanted to cry out, but could not. It was no use opening my mouth, my voice had gone. When he gave me the second stroke--you need not believe me unless you please--I did not hear when they counted two. I returned to myself and heard them count seventeen. Four times they took me down from the board to let me breathe for half-an-hour, and to souse me with cold water. I stared at them with my eyes starting from my head, and said to myself, 'I shall die here.'" "But you did not die," remarked Kobylin innocently. Luka looked at him with disdain, and every one burst out laughing. "What an idiot! Is he wrong in the upper storey?" said Luka, as if he regretted that he had condescended to speak to such an idiot. "He is a little mad," said Vassili on his side. Although Luka had killed six persons, no one was ever afraid of him in the prison. He wished, however, to be looked upon as a terrible person. CHAPTER X. ISAIAH FOMITCH--THE BATH--BAKLOUCHIN. But the Christmas holidays were approaching, and the convicts looked forward to them with solemnity. From their mere appearance it was easy to see that something extraordinary was about to arrive. Four days before the holidays they were to be taken to the bath; every one was pleased, and was making preparations. We were to go there after dinner. On this occasion there was no work in the afternoon, and of all the convicts the one who was most pleased, and showed the greatest activity, was a certain Isaiah Fomitch Bumstein, a Jew, of whom I spoke in my fifth chapter. He liked to remain stewing in the bath until he became unconscious. Whenever I think of the prisoner's bath, which is a thing not to be forgotten, the first thought that presents itself to my memory is of that very glorious and eternally to be remembered, Isaiah Fomitch Bumstein, my prison companion. Good Lord! what a strange man he was! I have already said a few words about his face. He was fifty years of age, his face wrinkled, with frightful scars on his cheeks and on his forehead, and the thin, weak body of a fowl. His face expressed perpetual confidence in himself, and, I may almost say, perfect happiness. I do not think he was at all sorry to be condemned to hard labour. He was a jeweller by trade, and as there was no other in the town, he had always plenty of work to do, and was more or less well paid. He wanted nothing, and lived, so to say, sumptuously, without spending all that he gained, for he saved money and lent it out to the other convicts at interest. He possessed a tea-urn, a mattress, a tea-cup, and a blanket. The Jews of the town did not refuse him their patronage. Every Saturday he went under escort to the synagogue (which was authorised by the law); and he lived like a fighting cock. Nevertheless, he looked forward to the expiration of his term of imprisonment in order to get married. He was the most comic mixture of simplicity, stupidity, cunning, timidity, and bashfulness; but the strangest thing was that the convicts never laughed, or seriously mocked him--they only teased him for amusement. Isaiah Fomitch was a subject of distraction and amusement for every one. "We have only one Isaiah Fomitch, we will take care of him," the convicts seemed to say; and as if he understood this, he was proud of his own importance. From the account given to me it appeared he had entered the convict prison in the most laughable manner (it took place before my arrival). Suddenly one evening a report was spread in the convict prison that a Jew had been brought there, who at that moment was being shaved in the guard-house, and that he was immediately afterwards to be taken to the barracks. As there was not a single Jew in the prison, the convicts looked forward to his entry with impatience, and surrounded him as soon as he passed the great gates. The officer on service took him to the civil prison, and pointed out the place where his plank bedstead was to be. Isaiah Fomitch held in his hand a bag containing the things given to him, and some other things of his own. He put down his bag, took his place at the plank bedstead, and sat down there with his legs crossed, without daring to raise his eyes. People were laughing all round him. The convicts ridiculed him by reason of his Jewish origin. Suddenly a young convict left the others, and came up to him, carrying in his hand an old pair of summer trousers, dirty, torn, and mended with old rags. He sat down by the side of Isaiah Fomitch, and struck him on the shoulder. "Well, my dear fellow," said he, "I have been waiting for the last six years; look up and tell me how much you will give for this article," holding up his rags before him. Isaiah Fomitch was so dumbfounded that he did not dare to look at the mocking crowd, with mutilated and frightful countenances, now grouped around him, and did not speak a single word, so frightened was he. When he saw who was speaking to him he shuddered, and began to examine the rags carefully. Every one waited to hear his first words. "Well, cannot you give me a silver rouble for it? It is certainly worth that," said the would-be vendor smiling, and looking towards Isaiah Fomitch with a wink. "A silver rouble! no; but I will give you seven kopecks." These were the first words pronounced by Isaiah Fomitch in the convict prison. A loud laugh was heard from all sides. "Seven kopecks! Well, give them to me; you are lucky, you are indeed. Look! Take care of the pledge, you answer for it with your head." "With three kopecks for interest; that will make ten kopecks you will owe me," said the Jew, at the same time slipping his hand into his pocket to get out the sum agreed upon. "Three kopecks interest--for a year?" "No, not for a year, for a month." "You are a terrible screw, what is your name?" "Isaiah Fomitch." "Well, Isaiah Fomitch, you ought to get on. Good-bye." The Jew examined once more the rags on which he had lent seven kopecks, folded them up, and put them carefully away in his bag. The convicts continued to laugh at him. In reality every one laughed at him, but, although every prisoner owed him money, no one insulted him; and when he saw that every one was well disposed towards him, he gave himself haughty airs, but so comic that they were at once forgiven. Luka, who had known many Jews when he was at liberty, often teased him, less from malice than for amusement, as one plays with a dog or a parrot. Isaiah Fomitch knew this and did not take offence. "You will see, Jew, how I will flog you." "If you give me one blow I will return you ten," replied Isaiah Fomitch valiantly. "Scurvy Jew." "As scurvy as you like; I have in any case plenty of money." "Bravo! Isaiah Fomitch. We must take care of you. You are the only Jew we have; but they will send you to Siberia all the same." "I am already in Siberia." "They will send you farther on." "Is not the Lord God there?" "Of course, he is everywhere." "Well, then! With the Lord God, and money, one has all that is necessary." "What a fellow he is!" cries every one around him. The Jew sees that he is being laughed at, but does not lose courage. He gives himself airs. The flattery addressed to him causes him much pleasure, and with a high, squealing falsetto, which is heard throughout the barracks, he begins to sing, "la, la, la, la," to an idiotic and ridiculous tune; the only song he was heard to sing during his stay at the convict prison. When he made my acquaintance, he assured me solemnly that it was the song, and the very air, that was sung by 600,000 Jews, small and great, when they crossed the Red Sea, and that every Israelite was ordered to sing it after a victory gained over an enemy. The eve of each Saturday the convicts came from the other barracks to ours, expressly to see Isaiah Fomitch celebrating his Sabbath. He was so vain, so innocently conceited, that this general curiosity flattered him immensely. He covered the table in his little corner with a pedantic air of importance, opened a book, lighted two candles, muttered some mysterious words, and clothed himself in a kind of chasuble, striped, and with sleeves, which he preserved carefully at the bottom of his trunk. He fastened to his hands leather bracelets, and finally attached to his forehead, by means of a ribbon, a little box, which made it seem as if a horn were starting from his head. He then began to pray. He read in a drawling voice, cried out, spat, and threw himself about with wild and comic gestures. All this was prescribed by the ceremonies of his religion. There was nothing laughable or strange in it, except the airs which Isaiah Fomitch gave himself before us in performing his ceremonies. Then he suddenly covered his head with both hands, and began to read with many sobs. His tears increased, and in his grief he almost lay down upon the book his head with the ark upon it, howling as he did so; but suddenly in the midst of his despondent sobs he burst into a laugh, and recited with a nasal twang a hymn of triumph, as if he were overcome by an excess of happiness. "Impossible to understand it," the convicts would sometimes say to one another. One day I asked Isaiah Fomitch what these sobs signified, and why he passed so suddenly from despair to triumphant happiness. Isaiah Fomitch was very pleased when I asked him these questions. He explained to me directly that the sobs and tears were provoked by the loss of Jerusalem, and that the law ordered the pious Jew to groan and strike his breast; but at the moment of his most acute grief he was suddenly to remember that a prophecy had foretold the return of the Jews to Jerusalem, and he was then to manifest overflowing joy, to sing, to laugh, and to recite his prayers with an expression of happiness in his voice and on his countenance. This sudden passage from one phase of feeling to another delighted Isaiah Fomitch, and he explained to me this ingenious prescription of his faith with the greatest satisfaction. One evening, in the midst of his prayers, the Major entered, followed by the officer of the guard and an escort of soldiers. All the prisoners got immediately into line before their camp-bedsteads. Isaiah Fomitch alone continued to shriek and gesticulate. He knew that his worship was authorised, and that no one could interrupt him, so that in howling in the presence of the Major he ran no risk. It pleased him to throw himself about beneath the eyes of the chief. The Major approached within a few steps. Isaiah Fomitch turned his back to the table, and just in front of the officer began to sing his hymn of triumph, gesticulating and drawling out certain syllables. When he came to the part where he had to assume an expression of extreme happiness, he did so by blinking with his eyes, at the same time laughing and nodding his head in the direction of the Major. The latter was at first much astonished; then he burst into a laugh, called out, "Idiot!" and went away, while the Jew still continued to shriek. An hour later, when he had finished, I asked him what he would have done if the Major had been wicked enough and foolish enough to lose his temper. "What Major?" "What Major! Did you not see him? He was only two steps from you, and was looking at you all the time." But Isaiah Fomitch assured me as seriously as possible that he had not seen the Major, for while he was saying his prayers he was in such a state of ecstasy that he neither saw nor heard anything that was taking place around him. I can see Isaiah Fomitch wandering about on Saturday throughout the prison, endeavouring to do nothing, as the law prescribes to every Jew. What improbable anecdotes he told me! Every time he returned from the synagogue he always brought me some news of St. Petersburg, and the most absurd rumours imaginable from his fellow Jews of the town, who themselves had received them at first hand. But I have already spoken too much of Isaiah Fomitch. In the whole town there were only two public baths. The first, kept by a Jew, was divided into compartments, for which one paid fifty kopecks. It was frequented by the aristocracy of the town. The other bath, old, dirty, and close, was destined for the people. It was there that the convicts were taken. The air was cold and clear. The prisoners were delighted to get out of the fortress and have a walk through the town. During the walk their laughter and jokes never ceased. A platoon of soldiers, with muskets loaded, accompanied us. It was quite a sight for the town's-people. When we had reached our destination, the bath was so small that it did not permit us all to enter at once. We were divided into two bands, one of which waited in the cold room while the other one bathed in the hot one. Even then, so narrow was the room that it was difficult for us to understand how half of the convicts could stand together in it. Petroff kept close to me. He remained by my side without my having begged him to do so, and offered to rub me down. Baklouchin, a convict of the special section, offered me at the same time his services. I recollect this prisoner, who was called the "Sapper," as the gayest and most agreeable of all my companions. We had become intimate friends. Petroff helped me to undress, because I was generally a long time getting my things off, not being yet accustomed to the operation; and it was almost as cold in the dressing-room as outside the doors. It is very difficult for a convict who is still a novice to get his things off, for he must know how to undo the leather straps which fasten on the chains. These leather straps are buckled over the shirt, just beneath the ring which encloses the leg. One pair of straps costs sixty kopecks, and each convict is obliged to get himself a pair, for it would be impossible to walk without their assistance. The ring does not enclose the leg too tightly. One can pass the finger between the iron and the flesh; but the ring rubs against the calf, so that in a single day the convict who walks without leather straps, gets his skin broken. To take off the straps presents no difficulty. It is not the same with the clothes. To get the trousers off is in itself a prodigious operation, and the same may be said of the shirt whenever it has to be changed. The first who gave us lessons in this art was Koreneff, a former chief of brigands, condemned to be chained up for five years. The convicts are very skilful at the work, and do it readily. I gave a few kopecks to Petroff to buy soap and a bunch of the twigs with which one rubs oneself in the bath. Bits of soap were given to the convicts, but they were not larger than pieces of two kopecks. The soap was sold in the dressing-room, as well as mead, cakes of white flour, and boiling water; for each convict received but one pailful, according to the agreement made between the proprietor of the bath and the administration of the prison. The convicts who wished to make themselves thoroughly clean, could for two kopecks buy another pailful, which the proprietor handed to them through a window pierced in the wall for that purpose. As soon as I was undressed, Petroff took me by the arm and observed to me that I should find it difficult to walk with my chains. "Drag them up on to your calves," he said to me, holding me by the arms at the same time, as if I were an old man. I was ashamed at his care, and assured him that I could walk well enough by myself, but he did not believe me. He paid me the same attention that one gives to an awkward child. Petroff was not a servant in any sense of the word. If I had offended him, he would have known how to deal with me. I had promised him nothing for his assistance, nor had he asked me for anything. What inspired him with so much solicitude for me? Represent to yourself a room of twelve feet long by as many broad, in which a hundred men are all crowded together, or at least eighty, for we were in all two hundred divided into two sections. The steam blinded us; the sweat, the dirt, the want of space, were such that we did not know where to put a foot down. I was frightened and wished to go out. Petroff hastened to reassure me. With great trouble we succeeded in raising ourselves on to the benches, by passing over the heads of the convicts, whom we begged to bend down, in order to let us pass; but all the benches were already occupied. Petroff informed me that I must buy a place, and at once entered into negotiations with the convict who was near the window. For a kopeck this man consented to cede me his place. After receiving the money, which Petroff held tight in his hand, and which he had prudently provided himself with beforehand, the man crept just beneath me into a dark and dirty corner. There was there, at least, half an inch of filth; even the places above the benches were occupied, the convicts swarmed everywhere. As for the floor there was not a place as big as the palm of the hand which was not occupied by the convicts. They sent the water in spouts out of their pails. Those who were standing up washed themselves pail in hand, and the dirty water ran all down their body to fall on the shaved heads of those who were sitting down. On the upper bench, and the steps which led to it, were heaped together other convicts who washed themselves more thoroughly, but these were in small number. The populace does not care to wash with soap and water, it prefers stewing in a horrible manner, and then inundating itself with cold water. That is how the common people take their bath. On the floor could be seen fifty bundles of rods rising and falling at the same time, the holders were whipping themselves into a state of intoxication. The steam became thicker and thicker every minute, so that what one now felt was not a warm but a burning sensation, as from boiling pitch. The convicts shouted and howled to the accompaniment of the hundred chains shaking on the floor. Those who wished to pass from one place to another got their chains mixed up with those of their neighbours, and knocked against the heads of the men who were lower down than they. Then there were volleys of oaths as those who fell dragged down the ones whose chains had become entangled in theirs. They were all in a state of intoxication of wild exultation. Cries and shrieks were heard on all sides. There was much crowding and crushing at the window of the dressing-room through which the hot water was delivered, and much of it got spilt over the heads of those who were seated on the floor before it arrived at its destination. We seemed to be fully at liberty; and yet from time to time, behind the window of the dressing-room, or through the open door, could be seen the moustached face of a soldier, with his musket at his feet, watching that no serious disorder took place. The shaved heads of the convicts, and their red bodies, which the steam made the colour of blood, seemed more monstrous than ever. On their backs, made scarlet by the steam, stood out in striking relief the scars left by the whips and the rods, made long before, but so thoroughly that the flesh seemed to have been quite recently torn. Strange scars. A shudder passed through me at the mere sight of them. Again the volume of steam increased, and the bath-room was now covered with a thick, burning cloud, covering agitation and cries. From this cloud stood out torn backs, shaved heads; and, to complete the picture, Isaiah Fomitch howling with joy on the highest of the benches. He was saturating himself with steam. Any other man would have fainted away, but no temperature is too high for him; he engages the services of a rubber for a kopeck, but after a few moments the latter is unable to continue, throws away his bunch of twigs, and runs to inundate himself with cold water. Isaiah Fomitch does not lose courage, he runs to hire a second rubber, then a third; on these occasions he thinks nothing of expense, and changes his rubber four or five times. "He stews well, the gallant Isaiah Fomitch," cry the convicts from below. The Jew feels that he goes beyond all the others, he has beaten them; he triumphs with his hoarse falsetto voice, and sings out his favourite air which rises above the general hubbub. It seemed to me that if ever we met in hell we should be reminded of the place where we then were. I could not resist a wish to communicate this idea to Petroff. He looked all round him, but made no answer. I wished to buy a place for him on the bench by my side; but he sat down at my feet and declared that he felt quite at his ease. Baklouchin meanwhile bought us some hot water which he would bring to us as soon as we wanted it. Petroff offered to clean me from head to foot, and he begged me to go through the preliminary stewing process. I could not make up my mind to it. At last he rubbed me all over with soap. I wished to make him understand that I could wash myself, but it was no use contradicting him and I gave myself up to him. When he had done with me he took me back to the dressing-room, holding me up, and telling me at each step to take care, as if I had been made of porcelain. He helped me to put on my clothes, and when he had finished his kindly work he rushed back to the bath to have a thorough stewing. When we got back to the barracks I offered him a glass of tea, which he did not refuse. He drank it and thanked me. I wished to go to the expense of a glass of vodka in his honour, and I succeeded in getting it on the spot. Petroff was exceedingly pleased. He swallowed his vodka with a murmur of satisfaction, declared that I had restored him to life, and then suddenly rushed to the kitchen, as if the people who were talking there could not decide anything important without him. Now another man came up for a talk. This was Baklouchin, of whom I have already spoken, and whom I had also invited to take tea. I never knew a man of a more agreeable disposition than Baklouchin. It must be admitted that he never forgave a wrong, and that he often got into quarrels. He could not, above all, endure people interfering with his affairs. He knew, in a word, how to take care of himself; but his quarrels never lasted long, and I believe that all the convicts liked him. Wherever he went he was well received. Even in the town he was looked upon as the most amusing man in the world. He was a man of lofty stature, thirty years old, with a frank, determined countenance, and rather good-looking, with his tuft of hair on his chin. He possessed the art of changing his face in such a comic manner by imitating the first person he happened to see, that the people around him were constantly in a roar. He was a professed joker, but he never allowed himself to be slighted by those who did not enjoy his fun. Accordingly, no one spoke disparagingly of him. He was full of life and fire. He made my acquaintance at the very beginning of my imprisonment, and related to me his military career, when he was a sapper in the Engineers, where he had been placed as a favour by people of influence. He put a number of questions to me about St. Petersburg; he even read books when he came to take tea with me. He amused the whole company by relating how roughly Lieutenant K---- had that morning handled the Major. He told me, moreover, with a satisfied air, as he took his seat by my side, that we should probably have a theatrical representation in the prison. The convicts proposed to get up a play during the Christmas holidays. The necessary actors were found, and, little by little, the scenery was prepared. Some persons in the town had promised to lend women's clothes for the performance. Some hopes were even entertained of obtaining, through the medium of an officer's servant, a uniform with epaulettes, provided only the Major did not take it into his head to forbid the performance, as he had done the previous year. He was at that time in ill-humour through having lost at cards, and he had been annoyed at something that had taken place in the prison. Accordingly, in a fit of ill-humour, he had forbidden the performance. It was possible, however, that this year he would not prevent it. Baklouchin was in a state of exultation. It could be seen that he would be one of the principal supporters of the meditated theatre. I made up my mind to be present at the performance. The ingenuous joy which Baklouchin manifested in speaking of the undertaking was quite touching. From whispering, we gradually got to talk of the matter quite openly. He told me, among other things, that he had not served at St. Petersburg alone. He had been sent to R---- with the rank of non-commissioned officer in a garrison battalion. "From there they sent me on here," added Baklouchin. "And why?" I asked him. "Why? You would never guess, Alexander Petrovitch. Because I was in love." "Come now. A man is not exiled for that," I said, with a laugh. "I should have added," continued Baklouchin, "that it made me kill a German with a pistol-shot. Was it worth while to send me to hard labour for killing a German? Only think." "How did it happen? Tell me the story. It must be a strange one." "An amusing story indeed, Alexander Petrovitch." "So much the better. Tell me." "You wish me to do so? Well, then, listen." And he told me the story of his murder. It was not "amusing," but it was indeed strange. "This is how it happened," began Baklouchin; "I had been sent to Riga, a fine, handsome city, which has only one fault, there are too many Germans there. I was still a young man, and I had a good character with my officers. I wore my cap cocked on the side of my head, and passed my time in the most agreeable manner. I made love to the German girls. One of them, named Luisa, pleased me very much. She and her aunt were getters-up of fine linen. The old woman was a true caricature; but she had money. First of all I merely passed under the young girl's windows; but I soon made her acquaintance. Luisa spoke Russian well enough, though with a slight accent. She was charming. I never saw any one like her. I was most pressing in my advances; but she only replied that she would preserve her innocence, that as a wife she might prove worthy of me. She was an affectionate, smiling girl, and wonderfully neat. In fact, I assure you, I never saw any one like her. She herself had suggested that I should marry her, and how was I not to marry her? Suddenly Luisa did not come to her appointment. This happened once, then twice, then a third time. I sent her a letter, but she did not reply. 'What is to be done?' I said to myself. If she had been deceiving me she could easily have taken me in. She could have answered my letter and come all the same to the appointment; but she was incapable of falsehood. She had simply broken off with me. 'This is a trick of the aunt,' I said to myself. I was afraid to go to her house. "Even though she was aware of our engagement, we acted as if she were ignorant of it. I wrote a fine letter in which I said to Luisa, 'If you don't come, I will come to your aunt's for you.' She was afraid and came. Then she began to weep, and told me that a German named Schultz, a distant relation of theirs, a clockmaker by trade, and of a certain age, but rich, had shown a wish to marry her--in order to make her happy, as he said, and that he himself might not remain without a wife in his old age. He had loved her a long time, so she told me, and had been nourishing this idea for years, but he had kept it a secret, and had never ventured to speak out. 'You see, Sasha,' she said to me, 'that it is a question of my happiness; for he is rich, and would you prevent my happiness?' I looked her in the face, she wept, embraced me, clasped me in her arms. "'Well, she is quite right,' I said to myself, 'what good is there in marrying a soldier--even a non-commissioned officer? Come, farewell, Luisa. God protect you. I have no right to prevent your happiness.' "'And what sort of a man is he? Is he good-looking?' "'No, he is old, and he has such a long nose.' "She here burst into a fit of laughter. I left her. 'It was my destiny,' I said to myself. The next day I passed by Schultz' shop (she had told me where he lived). I looked through the window and saw a German, who was arranging a watch, forty-five years of age, an aquiline nose, swollen eyes, a dress-coat with a very high collar. I spat with contempt as I looked at him. At that moment I was ready to break the shop windows, but 'What is the use of it?' I said to myself; 'there is nothing more to be done: it is over, all over.' I got back to the barracks as the night was falling, and stretched myself out on my bed, and--will you believe it, Alexander Petrovitch?--began to sob--yes, to sob. One day passed, then a second, then a third. I saw Luisa no more. I had learned, however, from an old woman (she was also a washerwoman, and the girl I loved used sometimes to visit her), that this German knew of our relations, and that for that reason he had made up his mind to marry her as soon as possible, otherwise he would have waited two years longer. He had made Luisa swear that she would see me no more. It appeared that on account of me he had refused to loosen his purse-strings, and kept Luisa and her aunt very close. Perhaps he would yet change his idea, for he was not very resolute. The old woman told me that he had invited them to take coffee with him the next day, a Sunday, and that another relation, a former shopkeeper, now very poor, and an assistant in some liquor store, would also come. When I found that the business was to be settled on Sunday, I was so furious that I could not recover my cold blood, and the following day I did nothing but reflect. I believe I could have devoured that German. On Sunday morning I had not come to any decision. As soon as the service was over I ran out, got into my great-coat, and went to the house of this German. I thought I should find them all there. Why I went to the German, and what I meant to say to him, I did not know myself. "I slipped a pistol into my pocket to be ready for everything; a little pistol which was not worth a curse, with an old-fashioned lock--a thing I had used when I was a boy, and which was really fit for nothing. I loaded it, however, because I thought they would try to kick me out, and that the German would insult me, in which case I would pull out my pistol to frighten them all. I arrived. There was no one on the staircase; they were all in the work-room. No servant. The one girl who waited upon them was absent. I crossed the shop and saw that the door was closed--an old door fastened from the inside. My heart beat; I stopped and listened. They were speaking German. I broke open the door with a kick. I looked round. The table was laid; there was a large coffee-pot on it, with a spirit lamp underneath, and a plate of biscuits. On a tray there was a small decanter of brandy, herrings, sausages, and a bottle of some wine. Luisa and her aunt, both in their Sunday best, were seated on a sofa. Opposite them, the German was exhibiting himself on a chair, got up like a bridegroom, and in his coat with the high collar, and with his hair carefully combed. On the other side, there was another German, old, fat, and gray. He was taking no part in the conversation. When I entered, Luisa turned very pale. The aunt sprang up with a bound and sat down again. The German became angry. What a rage he was in! He got up, and walking towards me, said: "'What do you want?' "I should have lost my self-possession if anger had not supported me. "'What do I want? Is this the way to receive a guest? Why do you not offer him something to drink? I have come to pay you a visit.' "The German reflected a moment, and then said, 'Sit down.' "I sat down. "'Here is some vodka. Help yourself, I beg.' "'And let it be good,' I cried, getting more and more into a rage. "'It is good.' "I was enraged to see him looking at me from top to toe. The most frightful part of it was, that Luisa was looking on. I took a drink and said to him: "'Look here, German, what business have you to speak rudely to me? Let us be better acquainted. I have come to see you as friends.' "'I cannot be your friend,' he replied. 'You are a private soldier.' "Then I lost all self-command. "'Oh, you German! You sausage-seller! You know how much you are in my power. Look here; do you wish me to break your head with this pistol?' "I drew out my pistol, got up, and struck him on the forehead. The women were more dead than alive; they were afraid to breathe. The eldest of the two men, quite white, was trembling like a leaf. "The German seemed much astonished. But he soon recovered himself. "'I am not afraid of you,' he said, 'and I beg of you, as a well-bred man, to put an end to this pleasantry. I am not afraid of you!' "'You are afraid! You dare not move while this pistol is presented at you.' "'You dare not do such a thing!' he cried. "'And why should I not dare?' "'Because you would be severely punished.' "May the devil take that idiot of a German! If he had not urged me on, he would have been alive now. "'So you think I dare not?' "'No.' "'I dare not, you think?' "'You would not dare!' "'Wouldn't I, sausage-maker?' I fired the pistol, and down he sank on his chair. The others uttered shrieks. I put back my pistol in my pocket, and when I returned to the fortress, threw it among some weeds near the principal entrance. "Inside the barracks I laid on my bed, and said to myself, 'I shall be taken away soon.' One hour passed, then another, but I was not arrested. "Towards evening I felt so sad, I went out at all hazards to see Luisa; I passed before the house of the clockmaker's. There were a number of people there, including the police. I ran on to the old woman's and said: "'Call Luisa!' "I had only a moment to wait. She came immediately, and threw herself on my neck in tears. "'It is my fault,' she said. 'I should not have listened to my aunt.' "She then told me that her aunt, immediately after the scene, had gone back home. She was in such a fright that she fell and did not speak a word; she had uttered nothing. On the contrary, she ordered her niece to be as silent as herself. "'No one has seen her since,' said Luisa. "The clockmaker had previously sent his servant away, for he was afraid of her. She was jealous, and would have scratched his eyes out had she known that he wished to get married. "There were no workmen in the house, he had sent them all away; he had himself prepared the coffee and collation. As for the relation, who had scarcely spoken a word all his life, he took his hat, and, without opening his mouth, went away. "'He is quite sure to be silent,' added Luisa. "So, indeed, he was. For two weeks no one arrested me nor suspected me the least in the world. "You need not believe me unless you choose, Alexander Petrovitch. "These two weeks were the happiest in my life. I saw Luisa every day. And how much she had become attached to me! "She said to me through her tears: 'If you are exiled, I will go with you. I will leave everything to follow you.' "I thought of making away with myself, so much had she moved me; but after two weeks I was arrested. The old man and the aunt had agreed to denounce me." "But," I interrupted, "Baklouchin, for that they would only have given you from ten to twelve years' hard labour, and in the civil section; yet you are in the special section. How does that happen?" "That is another affair," said Baklouchin. "When I was taken before the Council of War, the captain appointed to conduct the case began by insulting me, and calling me names before the Tribunal. I could not stand it, and shouted out to him: 'Why do you insult me? Don't you see, you scoundrel! that you are only looking at yourself in the glass?' "This brought a new charge against me. I was tried a second time, and for the two things was condemned to four thousand strokes, and to the special section. When I was taken out to receive my punishment in the _Green Street_, the captain was at the same time sent away. He had been degraded from his rank, and was despatched to the Caucasus as a private soldier. Good-bye, Alexander Petrovitch. Don't fail to come to our performance." CHAPTER XI. THE CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS The holidays were approaching. On the eve of the great day the convicts scarcely ever went to work. Those who had been assigned to the sewing workshops, and a few others, went to work as usual; but they went back almost immediately to the convict prison, separately, or in parties. After dinner no one worked. From the early morning the greater part of the convicts were occupied with their own affairs, and not with those of the administration. Some were making arrangements for bringing in spirits, while others were seeking permission to see their friends, or to collect small accounts due to them for the work they had already executed. Baklouchin, and the convicts who were to take part in the performance, were endeavouring to persuade some of their acquaintances, nearly all officers' servants, to procure for them the necessary costumes. Some of them came and went with a business-like air, solely because others were really occupied. They had no money to receive, and yet seemed to expect a payment. Every one, in short, seemed to be looking for a change of some kind. Towards evening the old soldiers, who executed the convicts' commissions, brought them all kinds of victuals--meat, sucking-pigs, and geese. Many prisoners, even the most simple and most economical, after saving up their kopecks throughout the year, thought they ought to spend some of them that day, so as to celebrate Christmas Eve in a worthy manner. The day afterwards was for the convicts a still greater festival, one to which they had a right, as it was recognised by law. The prisoners could not be sent to work that day. There were not three days like it in all the year. And, moreover, what recollections must have been agitating the souls of those reprobates at the approach of such a solemn day! The common people from their childhood kept the great festival in their memory. They must have remembered with anguish and torments these days which, work being laid aside, are passed in the bosom of the family. The respect of the convicts for that day had something imposing about it. The drunkards were not at all numerous; nearly every one was serious, and, so to say, preoccupied, though they had for the most part nothing to do. Even those who feasted most preserved a serious air. Laughter seemed to be forbidden. A sort of intolerant susceptibility reigned throughout the prison; and if any one interfered with the general repose, even involuntarily, he was soon put in his proper place, with cries and oaths. He was condemned as though he had been wanting in respect to the festival itself. This disposition of the convicts was remarkable, and even touching. Besides the innate veneration they have for this great day, they foresee that in observing the festival they are in communion with the rest of the world; that they are not altogether reprobates lost and cast off by society. The usual rejoicings took place in the convict prison as well as outside. They felt all that. I saw it, and understood it myself. Akim Akimitch had made great preparations for the festival. He had no family recollections, being an orphan, born in a strange house, and put into the army at the age of fifteen. He could never have experienced any great joys, having always lived regularly and uniformly in the fear of infringing the rules imposed upon him, nor was he very religious; for his acquired formality had stifled in him all human feeling, all passions and likings, good or bad. He accordingly prepared to keep Christmas without exciting himself about it. He was saddened by no painful, useless recollection. He did everything with the punctuality imposed upon him in the execution of his duties, and in order once for all to get through the ceremony in a becoming manner. Moreover, he did not care to reflect upon the importance of the day, had never troubled his brain about it, even while he was executing his prescribed duties with religious minuteness. If he had been ordered the day following to do contrary to what he had done the evening before he would have done it with equal submission. Once in life, once, and once only, he had wished to act by his own impulse--and he had been sent to hard labour for it. This lesson had not been lost upon him, although it was written that he was never to understand his fault. He had yet become impressed with this salutary moral principle: never to reason in any matter because his mind was not equal to the task of judging. Blindly devoted to ceremonies, he looked with respect at the sucking-pig which he had stuffed with millet-seed, and which he had roasted himself (for he had some culinary skill), just as if it had not been an ordinary sucking-pig which could have been bought and roasted at any time, but a particular kind of animal born specially for Christmas Day. Perhaps he had been accustomed from his tender infancy to see that day a sucking-pig on the table, and he may have concluded that a sucking-pig was indispensable for the proper celebration of the festival. I am certain that if by ill-luck he had not eaten this particular kind of meat on that day, he would have been troubled with remorse all his life for not having done his duty. Until Christmas morning he wore his old vest and his old trousers, which had long been threadbare. I then learned that he kept carefully in his box his new clothes which had been given to him four months before, and that he had not put them on once, in order that he might wear them for the first time on Christmas Day. He did so. The evening before he took his new clothes out of his trunk, unfolded, examined them, cleaned them, blew on them to remove the dust, and when he was convinced that they were perfect, probably tried them on. The dress became him perfectly; all the different garments suited one another. The waistcoat buttoned up to the neck, the collar, straight and stiff like cardboard, kept his chin in its proper place. There was a military cut about the dress; and Akim Akimitch, as he wore it, smiled with satisfaction, turning himself round and round, not without swagger, before a little mirror adorned with a gilt border. One of the waistcoat-buttons alone seemed out of place; Akim Akimitch remarked it, and at once set it right. He tried on the vest again and found it irreproachable. Then he folded up his things as before, and with a satisfied mind locked them up in his box until the next day. His skull was sufficiently shaved; but, after careful examination, Akim Akimitch came to the conclusion that it was not in good condition, his hair had imperceptibly sprung up. He accordingly went immediately to the "Major" to be properly shaved according to the rules. In reality no one would have dreamed of looking at him next day, but he was acting conscientiously in order to fulfil all his duties. This care lest the smallest button, the least thread of an epaulette, the slightest string of a tassel should go wrong, was engraved in his mind as an imperious duty, and in his heart as the image of the most perfect order that could possibly be attained. As one of the "old hands" in the barracks, he saw that hay was brought and strewed about on the floor; the same thing was done in the other barracks. I do not know why, but hay was always strewed on the ground at Christmas time. As soon as Akim Akimitch had finished his work he said his prayers, stretched himself on his bed, and went to sleep, with the sleep of a child, in order to wake up as early as possible the next day. The other convicts did the same. It must be added that all of them went to bed, but sooner than usual. They gave up their ordinary evening work that day. As for playing cards, no one would have dared even to speak of such a thing; every one was anxiously expecting the next morning. At last this morning arrived. At an early hour, even before it was light, the drum was sounded, and the under officer, whose duty it was to count the convicts, wished them a happy Christmas. The prisoners answered him in an affable and amiable tone by expressing a like wish. Akim Akimitch, and many others, who had their geese and their sucking-pigs, went to the kitchen, after saying their prayers, in a hurried manner to see where their victuals were and how they were being cooked. Through the little windows of our barracks, half hidden by the snow and the ice, could be seen, flaring in the darkness, the bright fire of the two kitchens where six stoves had been lighted. In the court-yard, where it was still dark, the convicts, each with a half pelisse round his shoulders, or perhaps fully dressed, were hurrying towards the kitchen. Some of them, meanwhile--a very small number--had already visited the drink-sellers. They were the impatient ones, but they behaved becomingly, possibly much better than on ordinary days; neither quarrels nor insults were heard, every one understood that it was a great day, a great festival. The convicts went even to visit the other barracks in order to wish the inmates a happy Christmas; that day a sort of friendship seemed to exist between them all. I will remark in passing that the convicts have scarcely ever any intimate friendships. It was very rare to see a man on confidential terms with any other man, as, in the outer world. We were generally harsh and abrupt in our mutual relations. With some rare exceptions this was the general tone adopted and maintained. I went out of the barracks like the others. It was beginning to get late. The stars were paling, a light, icy mist was rising from the earth, and spirals of smoke were ascending in curls from the chimneys. Several convicts whom I met wished me, with affability, a happy Christmas. I thanked them and returned their wishes. Some of them had never spoken to me before. Near the kitchen, a convict from the military barracks, with his sheepskin on his shoulder, came up to me. Recognising me, he called out from the middle of the court-yard, "Alexander Petrovitch." He ran towards me. I waited for him. He was a young fellow, with a round face and soft eyes, and not at all communicative as a rule. He had not spoken to me since my arrival, and seemed never to have noticed me. I did not know on my side what his name was. When he came up, he remained planted before me, smiling with a vacuous smile, but with a happy expression of countenance. "What do you want?" I asked, not without astonishment. He remained standing before me, still smiling and staring, but without replying to my question. "Why, it is Christmas Day," he muttered. He understood that he had nothing more to say, and now hastened into the kitchen. I must add that, after this we scarcely ever met, and that we never spoke to one another again. Round the flaming stoves of the kitchen the convicts were rubbing and pushing against one another. Every one was watching his own property. The cooks were preparing the dinner, which was to take place a little earlier than usual. No one began to eat before the time, though a good many wished to do so; but it was necessary to be well-behaved before the others. We were waiting for the priest, and the fast preceding Christmas would not be at an end until his arrival. It was not yet perfectly light, when the corporal was already heard shouting out from behind the principal gate of the prison: "The kitchen; the kitchen." These calls were repeated without interruption for about two hours. The cooks were wanted in order to receive gifts brought from all parts of the town in enormous numbers; loaves of white bread, scones, rusks, pancakes, and pastry of various kinds. I do not think there was a shop-keeper in the whole town who did not send something to the "unfortunates." Amongst these gifts there were some magnificent ones, including a good many cakes of the finest flour. There were also some very poor ones, such as rolls worth two kopecks a piece, and a couple of brown rolls, covered lightly over with sour cream. These were the offerings of the poor to the poor, on which a last kopeck had often been spent. All these gifts were accepted with equal gratitude, without reference to the value or the giver. The convicts, on receiving the offerings, took off their caps and thanked the donors with low bows, wishing them a happy Christmas, and then carried the things to the kitchen. When a number of loaves and cakes had been collected, the elders of each barrack were called, and it was for them to divide the whole in equal portions among all the sections. The division excited neither protest nor annoyance. It was made honestly, equitably. Akim Akimitch, helped by another prisoner, divided between the convicts of our barracks the share assigned to us, and gave to each of us what came to him. Every one was satisfied. No objection was made by any one. There was not the least manifestation of envy, and it occurred to no one to deceive another. When Akim Akimitch had finished at the kitchen, he proceeded religiously to dress himself, and did so with a solemn air. He buttoned up his waistcoat button by button, in the most punctilious manner. Then, when he had got his new clothes on, he went to pray, which occupied him a considerable time. Numbers of convicts fulfilled their religious duties, but these were for the most part old men. The young men scarcely ever prayed. The most they did was to make the sign of the cross when they rose from table, and that happened only on festival days. Akim Akimitch came up to me as soon as he had finished his prayer, to express to me the usual good wishes. I invited him to have some tea, and he returned my politeness by offering me some of his sucking-pig. After some time Petroff came up to address to me the usual compliments. I think he had been already drinking, and although he seemed to have much to say, he scarcely spoke. He stood up before me for some seconds, and then went back to the kitchen. The priest was now expected in the military section of the barracks. This section was not constructed like the others. The camp-bedsteads were arranged all along the wall, and not in the middle of the room as in all the others, so that it was the only one in which the middle was not obstructed. It had been probably arranged in this manner so that in case of necessity it might be easier to assemble the convicts. A small table had been prepared in the middle of the room, and a holy image placed upon it, before which burned a little lamp. At last the priest arrived, with the cross and holy water. He prayed and chanted before the image, and then turned towards the convicts, who one after the other came and kissed the cross. The priest then walked through all the barracks, sprinkling them with holy water. When he got to the kitchen he praised the bread of the convict prison, which had quite a reputation in town. The convicts at once expressed a desire to send him two loaves of new bread, still hot, which an old soldier was ordered to take to his house forthwith. The convicts walked back after the cross with the same respect as they had received it. Almost immediately afterwards, the Major and the Commandant arrived. The Commandant was liked, and even respected. He made the tour of the barracks in company with the Major, wished the convicts a happy Christmas, went into the kitchen, and tasted the cabbage soup. It was excellent that day. Each convict was entitled to nearly a pound of meat, besides which there was millet-seed in it, and certainly the butter had not been spared. The Major saw the Commandant to the door, and then ordered the convicts to begin dinner. Each endeavoured not to be under the Major's eyes. They did not like his spiteful, inquisitorial look from behind his spectacles as he wandered from right to left, seeking apparently some disorder to repress, some crime to punish. We dined. Akim Akimitch's sucking-pig was admirably roasted. I could never understand how, five minutes after the Major left, there was a mass of drunken prisoners, whereas as long as he remained every one was perfectly calm. Red, radiant faces were now numerous, and the balalaiki [Russian banjoes] soon appeared. Then came the little Pole, playing his violin, a convivial prisoner having engaged him for the whole day to play lively dance-tunes. The conversation became more animated and more noisy, but the dinner ended without great disorders. Every one had had enough. Some of the old men, serious-minded convicts, went immediately to bed. So did Akim Akimitch, who probably thought it was a duty to go to sleep after dinner on festival days. The "old believer" from Starodoub, after having slumbered a little, climbed up on to the top of the stove, opened his book, and prayed the entire day until late in the evening without interruption. The spectacle of so shameless an orgie was painful to him, he said. All the Circassians left the table. They looked with curiosity, but with a touch of disgust, at this drunken society. I met Nourra. "Aman, aman," he said, with a burst of honest indignation, and shaking his head. "What an offence to Allah!" Isaiah Fomitch lighted, with an arrogant and obstinate air, a candle in his favourite corner, and went to work in order to show that in his eyes this was no holiday. Here and there card parties were arranged. The convicts did not fear the old soldiers, but men were placed on the look-out in case the under officer should suddenly come in. He made a point, however, of seeing nothing. The officer of the guard made altogether three rounds. The prisoners, if they were drunk, hid themselves at once. The cards disappeared in the twinkling of an eye. I fancy that he had made up his mind not to notice any contraventions of an unimportant kind. Drunkenness was not an offence that day. Little by little every one became more or less gay. Then there were some quarrels. The greater number of the prisoners, however, remained calm, amusing themselves with the spectacle of those who were intoxicated. Some of these drank without limit. Gazin was triumphant. He walked about with a self-satisfied air, by the side of his camp bedstead, beneath which he had concealed his spirits, previously buried beneath the snow behind the barracks, in a secret place. He smiled knowingly when he saw customers arrive in crowds. He was perfectly calm. He had drunk nothing at all; for it was his intention to regale himself the last day of the holidays, after he had emptied the pockets of the other prisoners. Throughout the barracks the drunkenness was becoming infernal. Singing was heard, and the songs were giving way to tears. Some of the prisoners walked about in bands, sheepskin on shoulder, striking with a haughty air the strings of their balalaiki. A chorus of from eight to ten men had been formed in the special section. The singing here was excellent, with its accompaniments of balalaiki and guitars. Songs of a truly popular kind were rare. I remember one which was admirably sung: Yesterday, I, a young girl, Went to the feast. A variation was introduced previously unknown to me. At the end of the song these lines were added: At my house, the house of a young girl, Everything is in order. I have washed the spoons, I have turned out the cabbage-soup, I have wiped down the panels of the door, I have cooked the patties. What they chiefly sang were prison songs; one of them, called "As it happened," was very humorous. It related how a man amused himself, and lived like a prince until he was sent to the convict prison, where he fared very differently. Another song, only too popular, set forth how the hero of it had formerly possessed capital, but had now nothing but captivity. Here is a true convict's song: The day breaks in the heavens, We are waked up by the drum. The old man opens the door, The warder comes and calls us. No one sees us behind the prison walls, Nor how we live in this place. But God, the Heavenly Creator, is with us He will not let us perish. Another still more melancholy, but with a superb melody, was sung to tame and incorrect words. I can remember a few of the verses: My eyes no more will see the land, Where I was born; To suffer torments undeserved, Will be my punishment. The owl will shriek upon the roof, And raise the echoes of the forest. My heart is broken down with grief. No, never more shall I return. This song is often sung; not as a chorus, but always as a solo. When the work is over, a prisoner goes out of the barracks, sits down on the threshold, meditates with his chin resting on his hand, and then drawls out his song in a high falsetto. One listens to him, and the effect is heart-breaking. Some of our convicts had beautiful voices. Meanwhile it was getting dusk. Wearisomeness and general depression were making themselves felt through the drunkenness and the debauchery. The prisoner, who an hour beforehand was holding his sides with laughter, now sobbed in a corner, exceedingly drunk; others were fighting, or wandering in a tottering manner through the barracks, pale, very pale, and seeking whom to quarrel with. These poor people had wished to pass the great festival in the most joyous manner, but, gracious heaven, how painful the day was for all of them! They had passed it in the vague hope of a happiness that was not to be realised. Petroff came up to me twice. As he had drunk very little he was calm; but until the last moment he expected something which he made sure would happen, something extraordinary, and highly diverting. Although he said nothing about it, this could be seen from his looks. He ran from barrack to barrack without fatigue. Nothing, however, happened; nothing except general intoxication, idiotic insults from drunkards, and general giddiness of heated heads. Sirotkin wandered about also, dressed in a brand-new red shirt, going from barrack to barrack, and good-looking as usual. He also was on the watch for something to happen. The spectacle became insupportably repulsive, indeed nauseating. There were some laughable things, but I was too sad to be amused by them. I felt a deep pity for all these men, and felt strangled, stifled, in the midst of them. Here two convicts were disputing as to which should treat the other. The dispute lasts a long time; they have almost come to blows. One of them has, for a long time past, had a grudge against the other. He complains, stammering as he does so, and tries to prove to his companion that he acted unjustly when, a year before, he sold a pelisse and concealed the money. There was more than this too. The complainant is a tall young fellow, with good muscular development, quiet, by no means stupid, but who, when he is drunk, wishes to make friends with every one, and to pour out his grief into their bosom. He insults his adversary with the intention of becoming reconciled to him later on. The other man, a big, massive person, with a round face, as cunning as a fox, had perhaps drunk more than his companion, but appeared only slightly intoxicated. This convict has character, and passes for a rich man; he has probably no interest in irritating his companion, and he accordingly leads him to one of the drink-sellers. The expansive friend declares that his companion owes him money, and that he is bound to stand him a drink "if he has any pretensions to be considered an honest man." The drink-seller, not without some respect for his customer, and with a touch of contempt for the expansive friend (for he was drinking at the expense of another man), took a glass and filled it with vodka. "No, Stepka, you must pay, because you owe me money." "I won't tire my tongue talking to you any longer," replied Stepka. "No, Stepka, you lie," continues his friend, taking up a glass offered to him by the drink-seller. "You owe me money, and you must be without conscience. You have not a thing about you that you have not borrowed, and I don't believe your very eyes are your own. In a word, Stepka, you are a blackguard." "What are you whining about? Look, you are spilling your vodka." "If you are being treated, why don't you drink?" cries the drink-seller, to the expansive friend. "I cannot wait here until to-morrow." "I will drink, don't be frightened. What are you crying out about? My best wishes for the day. My best wishes for the day, Stepan Doroveitch," replies the latter politely, as he bows, glass in hand, towards Stepka, whom the moment before he had called a blackguard. "Good health to you, and may you live a hundred years in addition to what you have lived already." He drinks, gives a grunt of satisfaction, and wipes his mouth. "What quantities of brandy I have drunk," he says, gravely speaking to every one, without addressing any one in particular, "but I have finished now. Thank me, Stepka Doroveitch." "There is nothing to thank you for." "Ah! you won't thank me. Then I will tell every one how you have treated me, and, moreover, that you are a blackguard." "Then I shall have something to tell you, drunkard that you are," interrupts Stepka, who at last loses patience. "Listen and pay attention. Let us divide the world in two. You shall take one half, I the other. Then I shall have peace." "Then you will not give me back my money?" "What money do you want, drunkard?" "My money. It is the sweat of my brow; the labour of my hands. You will be sorry for it in the other world. You will be roasted for those five kopecks." "Go to the devil." "What are you driving me for? Am I a horse?" "Be off, be off." "Blackguard!" "Convict!" And the insults exchanged were worse than they had been before the visit to the drink-seller. Two friends are seated separately on two camp-bedsteads. One is tall, vigorous, fleshy, with a red face--a regular butcher. He is on the point of weeping; for he has been much moved. The other is tall, thin, conceited, with an immense nose, which always seems to have a cold, and little blue eyes fixed upon the ground. He is a clever, well-bred man, and was formerly a secretary. He treats his friend with a little disdain, which the latter cannot stand. They have been drinking together all day. "You have taken a liberty with me," cries the stout one, as with his left hand he shakes the head of his companion. To take a liberty signifies, in convict language, to strike. This convict, formerly a non-commissioned officer, envies in secret the elegance of his neighbour, and endeavours to make up for his material grossness by refined conversation. "I tell you, you are wrong," says the secretary, in a dogmatic tone, with his eyes obstinately fixed on the ground, and without looking at his companion. "You struck me. Do you hear?" continues the other, still shaking his dear friend. "You are the only man in the world I care for; but you shall not take a liberty with me." "Confess, my dear fellow," replies the secretary, "that all this is the result of too much drink." The corpulent friend falls back with a stagger, looks stupidly with his drunken eyes at the secretary, and suddenly, with all his might, sends his fist into the secretary's thin face. Thus terminates the day's friendship. The dear friend disappears beneath the camp-bedstead unconscious. One of my acquaintances enters the barracks. He is a convict of the special section, very good-natured, and gay, far from stupid, and jocular without malice. He is the man who, on my arrival at the convict prison, was looking out for a rich peasant, who spoke so much of his self-respect, and ended by drinking my tea. He was forty years old, had enormous lips, and a fat, fleshy, red nose. He held a balalaika, and struck negligently its strings. He was followed by a little convict, with a large head, whom I knew very little, and to whom no one paid any attention. Now that he was drunk he had attached himself to Vermaloff, and followed him like his shadow, at the same time gesticulating and striking with his fist the wall and the camp-bedsteads. He was almost in tears. Vermaloff did not notice him any more than if he had not existed. The most curious point was that these two men in no way resembled one another, neither by their occupations nor by their disposition. They belonged to different sections, and lived in separate barracks. The little convict was named Bulkin. Vermaloff smiled when he saw me seated by the stove. He stopped at some distance from me, reflected for a moment, tottered, and then came towards me with an affected swagger. Then he swept the strings of his instrument, and sung, or recited, tapping at the same time with his boot on the ground, the following chant: My darling! With her full, fair face, Sings like a nightingale; In her satin dress, With its brilliant trimming, She is very fair. This song excited Bulkin in an extraordinary manner. He agitated his arms, and shrieked out to every one: "He lies, my friends; he lies like a quack doctor. There is not a shadow of truth in what he sings." "My respects to the venerable Alexander Petrovitch," said Vermaloff, looking at me with a knowing smile. I fancied even he wished to embrace me. He was drunk. As for the expression, "My respects to the venerable so-and-so," it is employed by the common people throughout Siberia, even when addressed to a young man of twenty. To call a man old is a sign of respect, and may amount even to flattery. "Well, Vermaloff, how are you?" I replied. "So, so. Nothing to boast of. Those who really enjoy the holiday have been drinking since early morning." Vermaloff did not speak very distinctly. "He lies; he lies again," said Bulkin, striking the camp-bedsteads with a sort of despair. One might have sworn that Vermaloff had given his word of honour not to pay any attention to him. That was really the most comic thing about it; for Bulkin had not quitted him for one moment since the morning. Always with him, he quarrelled with Vermaloff about every word; wringing his hands, and striking with his fists against the wall and the camp bedsteads till he made them bleed, he suffered visibly from his conviction that Vermaloff "lied like a quack doctor." If Bulkin had had hair on his head, he would certainly have torn it in his grief, in his profound mortification. One might have thought that he had made himself responsible for Vermaloff's actions, and that all Vermaloff's faults troubled his conscience. The amusing part of it was that Vermaloff continued. "He lies! He lies! He lies!" cried Bulkin. "What can it matter to you?" replied the convicts, with a laugh. "I must tell you, Alexander Petrovitch, that I was very good-looking when I was a young man, and the young girls were very fond of me," said Vermaloff suddenly. "He lies! He lies!" again interrupted Bulkin, with a groan. The convicts burst into a laugh. "And well I got myself up to please them. I had a red shirt, and broad trousers of cotton velvet. I was happy in those days. I got up when I liked; did whatever I pleased. In fact----" "He lies," declared Bulkin. "I inherited from my father a stone house, two storeys high. Within two years I made away with the two storeys; nothing remained to me but the street door. Well, what of that. Money comes and goes like a bird." "He lies!" declared Bulkin, more resolutely than before. "Then when I had spent all, I sent a letter to my relations, that they might send me some money. They said that I had set their will at naught, that I was disrespectful. It is now seven years since I sent off my letter." "And any answer?" I asked, with a smile. "No," he replied, also laughing, and almost putting his nose in my face. He then informed me that he had a sweetheart. "You a sweetheart?" "Onufriel said to me the other day: 'My young woman is marked with small-pox, and as ugly as you like; but she has plenty of dresses, while yours, though she may be pretty, is a beggar.'" "Is that true?" "Certainly, she is a beggar," he answered. He burst into a laugh, and the others laughed with him. Every one indeed knew that he had a _liaison_ with a beggar woman, to whom he gave ten kopecks every six months. "Well, what do you want with me?" I said to him, wishing at last to get rid of him. He remained silent, and then, looking at me in the most insinuating manner, said: "Could not you let me have enough money to buy half-a-pint? I have drunk nothing but tea the whole day," he added, as he took from me the money I offered him; "and tea affects me in such a manner that I am afraid of becoming asthmatic. It gives me the wind." When he took the money I offered him, the despair of Bulkin went beyond all bounds. He gesticulated like a man possessed. "Good people all," he cried, "the man lies. Everything he says--everything is a lie." "What can it matter to you?" cried the convicts, astonished at his goings on. "You are possessed." "I will not allow him to lie," continued Bulkin, rolling his eyes, and striking his fist with energy on the boards. "He shall not lie." Every one laughed. Vermaloff bowed to me after receiving the money, and hastened, with many grimaces, to go to the drink-seller. Then only he noticed Bulkin. "Come!" he said to him, as if the latter were indispensable for the execution of some design. "Idiot!" he added, with contempt, as Bulkin passed before him. But enough about this tumultuous scene, which, at last, came to an end. The convicts went to sleep heavily on their camp-bedsteads. They spoke and raged during their sleep more than on the other nights. Here and there they still continued to play at cards. The festival looked forward to with such impatience was now over, and to-morrow the daily work, the hard labour, will begin again. CHAPTER XII. THE PERFORMANCE. On the evening of the third day of the holidays took place our first theatrical performance. There had been much trouble about organising it. But those who were to act had taken everything upon themselves, and the other convicts knew nothing about the representation except that it was to take place. We did not even know what was to be played. The actors, while they were at work, were always thinking how they could get together the greatest number of costumes. Whenever I met Baklouchin he snapped his fingers with satisfaction, but told me nothing. I think the Major was in a good humour; but we did not know for certain whether he knew what was going on or not, whether he had authorised it, or whether he had determined to shut his eyes and be silent, after assuring himself that everything would take place quietly. He had heard, I fancy, of the meditated representation, and said nothing about it, lest he should spoil everything. The soldiers would be disorderly, or would get drunk, unless they had something to divert them. Thus I think the Major must have reasoned, for it will be only natural to do so. I may add that if the convicts had not got up a performance during the holidays, or done something of the kind, the administration would have been obliged to organise some sort of amusement; but as our Major was distinguished by ideas directly opposed to those of other people, I take a great responsibility on myself in saying that he knew of our project and authorised it. A man like him must always be crushing and stifling some one, taking something away, depriving some one of a right--in a word, for establishing order of this character he was known throughout the town. It mattered nothing to him that his exactions made the men rebellious. For such offences there were suitable punishments (there are some people who reason in this way), and with these rascals of convicts there was nothing to do but to treat them very severely, deal with them strictly according to law. These incapable executants of the law did not in the least understand that to apply the law without understanding its spirit is to provoke resistance. They are quite astonished that, in addition to the execution of the law, good sense and a sound head should be expected from them. The last condition would appear to them quite superfluous; to require such a thing is vexatious, intolerant. However this may be, the Sergeant-Major made no objection to the performance, and that was all the convicts wanted. I may say in all truth that if throughout the holidays there were no disorders in the convict prison, no sanguinary quarrels, no robberies, that must be attributed to the convicts being permitted to organise their performance. I saw with my own eyes how they got out of the way of those of their companions who had drunk too much, and how they prevented quarrels on the ground that the representation would be forbidden. The non-commissioned officer made the prisoners give their word of honour that they would behave well, and that all would go off quietly. They gave it with pleasure, and kept their promise religiously. They were much flattered at finding their word of honour accepted. Let me add that the representation cost nothing, absolutely nothing, to the authorities, who were not called upon to spend a farthing. The theatre could be put up and taken down within a quarter of an hour; and, in case an order stopping the performance suddenly arrived, the scenery could have been put away in a second. The costumes were concealed in the convicts' boxes; but first of all let me say how our theatre was constructed, what were the costumes, and what the bill, that is to say, the pieces that were to be played. To tell the truth, there was no written playbill, not, at least, for the first representation. It was ready only for the second and third. Baklouchin composed it for the officers and other distinguished visitors who might deign to honour the performance with their presence, including the officer of the guard, the officer of the watch, and an Engineer officer. It was in honour of these that the playbill was written out. It was supposed that the reputation of our theatre would extend to the fortress, and even to the town, especially as there was no theatre at N----: a few amateur performances, but nothing more. The convicts delighted in the smallest success, and boasted of it like children. "Who knows?" they said to one another; "when our chiefs hear of it they will perhaps come and see. Then they will know what convicts are worth, for this is not a performance given by soldiers, but a genuine piece played by genuine actors; nothing like it could be seen anywhere in the town. General Abrosimoff had a representation at his house, and it is said he will have another. Well, they may beat us in the matter of costumes, but as for the dialogue that is a very different thing. The Governor himself will perhaps hear of it, and--who knows?--he may come himself." They had no theatre in the town. In a word, the imagination of the convicts, above all after their first success, went so far as to make them think that rewards would be distributed to them, and that their period of hard labour would be shortened. A moment afterwards they were the first to laugh at this fancy. In a word, they were children, true children, when they were forty years of age. I knew in a general way the subjects of the pieces that were to be represented, although there was no bill. The title of the first was _Philatka and Miroshka Rivals_. Baklouchin boasted to me, at least a week before the performance, that the part of Philatka, which he had assigned to himself, would be played in such a manner that nothing like it had ever been seen, even on the St. Petersburg stage. He walked about in the barracks puffed up with boundless importance. If now and then he declaimed a speech from his part in the theatrical style, every one burst out laughing, whether the speech was amusing or not; they laughed because he had forgotten himself. It must be admitted that the convicts, as a body, were self-contained and full of dignity; the only ones who got enthusiastic at Baklouchin's tirades were the young ones, who had no false shame, or those who were much looked up to, and whose authority was so firmly established that they were not afraid to commit themselves. The others listened silently, without blaming or contradicting, but they did their best to show that the performance left them indifferent. It was not until the very last moment, the very day of the representation, that every one manifested genuine interest in what our companions had undertaken. "What," was the general question, "would the Major say? Would the performance succeed as well as the one given two years before?" etc., etc. Baklouchin assured me that all the actors would be quite at home on the stage, and that there would even be a curtain. Sirotkin was to play a woman's part. "You will see how well I look in women's clothes," he said. The Lady Bountiful was to have a dress with skirts and trimmings, besides a parasol; while her husband, the Lord of the Manor, was to wear an officer's uniform, with epaulettes, and a cane in his hand. The second piece that was to be played was entitled, _Kedril, the Glutton_. The title puzzled me much, but it was useless to ask any questions about it. I could only learn that the piece was not printed; it was a manuscript copy obtained from a retired non-commissioned officer in the town, who had doubtless formerly participated in its representation on some military stage. We have, indeed, in the distant towns and governments, a number of pieces of this kind, which, I believe, are perfectly unknown and have never been printed, but which appear to have grown up of themselves, in connection with the popular theatre, in certain zones of Russia. I have spoken of the popular theatre. It would be a good thing if our investigators of popular literature would take the trouble to make careful researches as to this popular theatre which exists, and which, perhaps, is not so insignificant as may be thought. I cannot think that everything I saw on the stage of our convict prison was the work of our convicts. It must have sprung from old traditions handed down from generation to generation, and preserved among the soldiers, the workmen in industrial towns, and even the shopkeepers in some poor, out-of-the-way places. These traditions have been preserved in some villages and some Government towns by the servants of the large landed proprietors. I even believe that copies of many old pieces have been multiplied by these servants of the nobility. The old Muscovite proprietors and nobles had their own theatres, in which their servants used to play. Thence comes our popular theatre, the originals of which are beyond discussion. As for _Kedril, the Glutton_, in spite of my lively curiosity, I could learn nothing about it, except that demons appeared on the stage and carried Kedril away to hell. What did the name of Kedril signify? Why was he called Kedril and not Cyril? Was the name Russian or foreign? I could not resolve this question. It was announced that the representation would terminate with a musical pantomime. All this promised to be very curious. The actors were fifteen in number, all vivacious men. They were very energetic, got up a number of rehearsals which sometimes took place behind the barracks, kept away from the others, and gave themselves mysterious airs. They evidently wished to surprise us with something extraordinary and unexpected. On work days the barracks were shut very early as night approached, but an exception was made during the Christmas holidays, when the padlocks were not put to the gates until the evening retreat--nine o'clock. This favour had been granted specially in view of the play. During the whole duration of the holidays a deputation was sent every evening to the officer of the guard very humbly "to permit the representation and not to shut at the usual hour." It was added that there had been previous representations, and that nothing disorderly had occurred at any of them. The officer of the guard must have reasoned as follows: There was no disorder, no infraction of discipline at the previous performance, and the moment they give their word that to-night's performance shall take place in the same manner, they mean to be their own police--the most rigorous police of all. Moreover, he knew well that if he took it upon himself to forbid the representation, these fellows (who knows, and with convicts?) would have committed some offence which would have placed the officer of the guard in a very difficult position. One final reason insured his consent: To mount guard is horribly tiresome, and if he authorised the performance he would see the play acted, not by soldiers, but by convicts, a curious set of people. It would certainly be interesting, and he had a right to be present at it. In case the superior officer arrived and asked for the officer of the guard, he would be told that the latter had gone to count the convicts and close the barracks; an answer which could easily be made, and which could not be disproved. That is why our superintendents authorised the performance; and throughout the holidays the barracks were kept open each evening until the retreat. The convicts had known beforehand that they would meet with no opposition from the officer of the guard. They were quite quiet about him. Towards six o'clock Petroff came to look for me, and we went together to the theatre. Nearly all the prisoners of our barracks were there, with the exception of the "old believer" from Tchernigoff, and the Poles. The latter did not decide to be present until the last day of the representation, the 4th of January, after they had been assured that everything would be managed in a becoming manner. The haughtiness of the Poles irritated our convicts. Accordingly they were received on the 4th of January with formal politeness, and conducted to the best places. As for the Circassians and Isaiah Fomitch, the play was for them a genuine delight. Isaiah Fomitch gave three kopecks each time, except the last, when he placed ten kopecks on the plate; and how happy he looked! The actors had decided that each spectator should give what he thought fit. The receipts were to cover the expenses, and anything beyond was to go to the actors. Petroff assured me that I should be allowed to have one of the best places, however full the theatre might be; first, because being richer than the others, there was a probability of my giving more; and, secondly, because I knew more about acting than any one else. What he had foreseen took place. But let me first describe the theatre. The barrack of the military section, which had been turned into the theatre, was fifteen feet long. From the court-yard one entered, first an ante-chamber, and afterwards the barrack itself. The building was arranged, as I have already mentioned, in a particular manner, the beds being placed against the wall, so as to leave an open space in the middle. One half of the barrack was reserved for the spectators, while the other, which communicated with the second building, formed the stage. What astonished me directly I entered, was the curtain, which was about ten feet long, and divided the barrack into two. It was indeed a marvel, for it was painted in oil, and represented trees, tunnels, ponds, and stars. It was made of pieces of linen, old and new, given by the convicts; shirts, the bandages which our peasants wrap round their feet in lieu of socks, all sewn together well or ill, and forming together an immense sheet. Where there was not enough linen, it had been replaced by writing paper, taken sheet by sheet from the various office bureaus. Our painters (among whom we had our Bruloff) had painted it all over, and the effect was very remarkable. This luxurious curtain delighted the convicts, even the most sombre and most morose. These, however, like the others, as soon as the play began, showed themselves mere children. They were all pleased and satisfied with a certain satisfaction of vanity. The theatre was lighted with candle ends. Two benches, which had been brought from the kitchen, were placed before the curtain, together with three or four large chairs, borrowed from the non-commissioned officers' room. These chairs were for the officers, should they think fit to honour the performance. As for the benches, they were for the non-commissioned officers, engineers, clerks, directors of the works, and all the immediate superiors of the convicts who had not officer's rank, and who had come perhaps to take a look at the representation. In fact, there was no lack of visitors. According to the days, they came in greater or smaller numbers, while for the last representation there was not a single place unoccupied on the benches. At the back the convicts stood crowded together; standing up out of respect to the visitors, and dressed in their vests, or in their short pelisses, in spite of the suffocating heat. As might have been expected, the place was too small; so all the prisoners stood up, heaped together--above all in the last rows. The camp-bedsteads were all occupied; and there were some amateurs who disputed constantly behind the stage in the other barrack, and who viewed the performance from the back. I was asked to go forward, and Petroff with me, close to the benches, whence a good view could be obtained. They looked upon me as a good judge, a connoisseur, who had seen many other theatres. The convicts remarked that Baklouchin had often consulted me, and that he had shown deference to my advice. Consequently they thought that I ought to be treated with honour, and to have one of the best places. These men are vain and frivolous, but only on the surface. They laughed at me when I was at work, because I was a poor workman. Almazoff had a right to despise us gentlemen, and to boast of his superior skill in pounding the alabaster. His laughter and raillery were directed against our origin, for we belonged by birth to the caste of his former masters, of whom he could not preserve a good recollection; but here at the theatre these same men made way for me; for they knew that about this matter I knew more than they did. Those, even, who were not at all well disposed towards me, were glad to hear me praise the performance, and gave way to me without the least servility. I judged now by my impressions of that time. I understood that in this new view of theirs there was no lowering of themselves; rather a sentiment of their own dignity. The most striking characteristic of our people is its conscientiousness, and its love of justice; no false vanity, no sly ambition to reach the first rank without being entitled to do so; such faults are foreign to our people. Take it from its rough shell, and you will perceive, if you study it without prejudice, attentively, and close at hand, qualities which you would never have suspected. Our sages have very little to teach our people. I will even say more; they might take lessons from it. Petroff had told me innocently, on taking me into the theatre, that they would pass me to the front, because they expected more money from me. There were no fixed prices for the places. Each one gave what he liked, and what he could. Nearly every one placed a piece of money in the plate when it was handed round. Even if they had passed me forward in the hope that I should give more than others, was there not in that a certain feeling of personal dignity? "You are richer than I am. Go to the first row. We are all equal here, it is true; but you pay more, and the actors prefer a spectator like you. Occupy the first place then, for we are not here with money, and must arrange ourselves anyhow." What noble pride in this mode of action! In final analysis not love of money, but self-respect. There was little esteem for money among us. I do not remember that one of us ever lowered himself to obtain money. Some men used to make up to me, but from love of cunning and of fun rather than in the hope of obtaining any benefit. I do not know whether I explain myself clearly. I am, in any case, forgetting the performance. Let me return to it. Before the rise of the curtain, the room presented a strange and animated look. In the first place, the crowd pressed, crushed, jammed together on all sides, but impatient, full of expectation, every face glowing with delight. In the last ranks was the grovelling, confused mass of convicts. Many of them had brought with them logs of wood, which they placed against the wall, on which they climbed up. In this fatiguing position they paused to rest themselves by placing both hands on the shoulders of their companions, who seemed quite at ease. Others stood on their toes, with their heels against the stove, and thus remained throughout the representation, supported by those around them. Massed against the camp-bedsteads was another compact crowd; for here were some of the best places of all. Five convicts had hoisted themselves up to the top of the stove, whence they had a commanding view. These fortunate ones were extremely happy. Elsewhere swarmed the late arrivals, unable to find good places. Every one conducted himself in a becoming manner, without making any noise. Each one wished to show advantageously before the distinguished persons who were visiting us. Simple and natural was the expression of these red faces, damp with perspiration, as the rise of the curtain was eagerly expected. What a strange look of infinite delight, of unmixed pleasure, was painted on these scarred faces, these branded foreheads, so dark and menacing at ordinary times! They were all without their caps, and as I looked back at them from my place, it seemed to me that their heads were entirely shaved. Suddenly the signal is given, and the orchestra begins to play. This orchestra deserves a special mention. It consisted of eight musicians: two violins, one of which was the property of a convict, while the other had been borrowed from outside; three balalaiki, made by the convicts themselves; two guitars, and a tambourine. The violins sighed and shrieked, and the guitars were worthless, but the balalaiki were remarkably good; and the agile fingering of the artists would have done honour to the cleverest executant. They played scarcely anything but dance tunes. At the most exciting passages they struck with their fingers on the body of their instruments. The tone, the execution of the motive, were always original and distinctive. One of the guitarists knew his instrument thoroughly. It was the gentleman who had killed his father. As for the tambourinist, he really did wonders. Now he whirled round the disk, balanced on one of his fingers; now he rubbed the parchment with his thumb, and brought from it a countless multitude of notes, now dull, now brilliant. At last two harmonigers join the orchestra. I had no idea until then of all that could be done with these popular and vulgar instruments. I was astonished. The harmony, but, above all, the expression, the very conception of the motive, were admirably rendered. I then understood perfectly, and for the first time, the remarkable boldness, the striking abandonment, which are expressed in our popular dance tunes, and our village songs. At last the curtain rose. Every one made a movement. Those who were at the back raised themselves upon the point of their feet; some one fell down from his log. At once there were looks that enjoined silence. The performance now began. I was seated not far from Ali, who was in the midst of the group formed by his brothers and the other Circassians. They had a passionate love of the theatre, and did not miss one of our evenings. I have remarked that all the Mohammedans, Circassians, and so on, are fond of all kinds of representations. Near them was Isaiah Fomitch, quite in a state of ecstasy. As soon as the curtain rose he was all ears and eyes; his countenance expressed an expectation of something marvellous. I should have been grieved had he been disappointed. The charming face of Ali shone with a childish joy, so pure that I was quite happy to behold it. Involuntarily, whenever a general laugh echoed an amusing remark, I turned towards him to see his countenance. He did not notice it, he had something else to do. Near him, placed on the left, was a convict, already old, sombre, discontented, and always grumbling. He also had noticed Ali, and I saw him cast furtive glances more than once towards him, so charming was the young Circassian. The prisoners always called him Ali Simeonitch, without my knowing why. In the first piece, _Philatka and Miroshka_, Baklouchin, in the part of Philatka, was really marvellous. He played his rôle to perfection. It could be seen that he had weighed each speech, each movement. He managed to give to each word, each gesture, a meaning which responded perfectly to the character of the personage. Apart from the conscientious study he had made of the character, he was gay, simple, natural, irresistible. If you had seen Baklouchin you would certainly have said that he was a genuine actor, an actor by vocation, and of great talent. I have seen Philatka several times at the St. Petersburg and Moscow theatres, and I declare that none of our celebrated actors was equal to Baklouchin in this part. They were peasants, from no matter what country, and not true Russian moujiks. Moreover, their desire to be peasant-like was too apparent. Baklouchin was animated by emulation; for it was known that the convict Potsiakin was to play the part of Kedril in the second piece, and it was assumed--I do not know why--that the latter would show more talent than Baklouchin. The latter was as vexed by this preference as a child. How many times did he not come to me during the last days to tell me all he felt! Two hours before the representation he was attacked by fever. When the audience burst out laughing, and called out "Bravo, Baklouchin! what a fellow you are!" his figure shone with joy, and true inspiration could be read in his eyes. The scene of the kisses between Kiroshka and Philatka, in which the latter calls out to the daughter, "Wife, your mouth," and then wipes his own, was wonderfully comic. Every one burst out laughing. What interested me was the spectators. They were all at their ease, and gave themselves up frankly to their mirth. Cries of approbation became more and more numerous. A convict nudged his companion with his elbow, and hastily communicated his impressions, without even troubling himself to know who was by his side. When a comic song began, one man might be seen agitating his arms violently, as if to engage his companions to laugh; after which he turned suddenly towards the stage. A third smacked his tongue against his palate, and could not keep quiet a moment; but as there was not room for him to change his position, he hopped first on one leg, then on the other; towards the end of the piece the general gaiety attained its climax. I exaggerate nothing. Imagine the convict prison, chains, captivity, long years of confinement, of task-work, of monotonous life, falling away drop by drop like rain on an autumn day; imagine all this despair in presence of permission given to the convicts to amuse themselves, to breathe freely for an hour, to forget their nightmare, and to organise a play--and what a play! one that excited the envy and admiration of our town. "Fancy those convicts!" people said: everything interested them, take the costumes for instance. It seemed very strange, but then to see, Nietsvitaeff, or Baklouchin, in a different costume from the one they had worn for so many years. He is a convict, a genuine convict, whose chains ring when he walks; and there he is, out on the stage with a frock-coat, and a round hat, and a cloak, like any ordinary civilian. He has put on hair, moustaches. He takes a red handkerchief from his pocket and shakes it, like a real nobleman. What enthusiasm is created! The "good landlord" arrives in an aide-de-camp uniform, a very old one, it is true, but with epaulettes, and a cocked hat. The effect produced was indescribable. There had been two candidates for this costume, and--will it be believed?--they had quarrelled like two little schoolboys as to which of them should play the part. Both wanted to appear in military uniform with epaulettes. The other actors separated them, and, by a majority of voices, the part was entrusted to Nietsvitaeff; not because he was more suited to it than the other, and that he bore a greater resemblance to a nobleman, but only because he had assured them all that he would have a cane, and that he would twirl it and rap it out grand, like a true nobleman--a dandy of the latest fashion--which was more than Vanka and Ospiety could do, seeing they have never known any noblemen. In fact, when Nietsvitaeff went to the stage with his wife, he did nothing but draw circles on the floor with his light bamboo cane, evidently thinking that this was the sign of the best breeding, of supreme elegance. Probably in his childhood, when he was still a barefooted child, he had been attracted by the skill of some proprietor in twirling his cane, and this impression had remained in his memory, although thirty years afterwards. Nietsvitaeff was so occupied with his process that he saw no one, he gave the replies in his dialogue without even raising his eyes. The most important thing for him was the end of his cane, and the circles he drew with it. The Lady Bountiful was also very remarkable; she came on in an old worn-out muslin dress, which looked like a rag. Her arms and neck were bare. She had a little calico cap on her head, with strings under her chin, an umbrella in one hand, and in the other a fan of coloured paper, with which she constantly fanned herself. This great lady was welcomed with a wild laugh; she herself, too, was unable to restrain herself, and burst out more than once. The part was filled by the convict Ivanoff. As for Sirotkin, in his girl's dress, he looked exceedingly well. The couplets were all well sung. In a word, the piece was played to the satisfaction of every one; not the least hostile criticism was passed--who, indeed, was there to criticise? The air, "Sieni moi Sieni," was played again by way of overture, and the curtain again went up. _Kedril, the Glutton_, was now to be played. Kedril is a sort of Don Juan. This comparison may justly be made, for the master and the servant are both carried away by devils at the end of the piece; and the piece, as the convicts had it, was played quite correctly; but the beginning and the end must have been lost, for it had neither head nor tail. The scene is laid in an inn somewhere in Russia. The innkeeper introduces into a room a nobleman wearing a cloak and a battered round hat; the valet, Kedril, follows his master; he carries a valise, and a fowl rolled up in blue paper; he wears a short pelisse and a footman's cap. It is this fellow who is the glutton. The convict Potsiakin, the rival of Baklouchin, played this part, while the part of the nobleman was filled by Ivanoff, the same who played the great lady in the first piece. The innkeeper (Nietsvitaeff) warns the nobleman that the room is haunted by demons, and goes away; the nobleman is interested and preoccupied; he murmurs aloud that he has known that for a long time, and orders Kedril to unpack his things and to get supper ready. Kedril is a glutton and a coward. When he hears of devils he turns pale and trembles like a leaf; he would like to run away, but is afraid of his master; besides, he is hungry, he is voluptuous, he is sensual, stupid, though cunning in his way, and, as before said, a poltroon; he cheats his master every moment, though he fears him like fire. This type of servant is a remarkable one in which may be recognised the principal features of the character of Leporello, but indistinct and confused. The part was played in really superior style by Potsiakin, whose talent was beyond discussion, surpassing as it did in my opinion that of Baklouchin himself. But when the next day I spoke to Baklouchin I concealed my impression from him, knowing that it would give him bitter pain. As for the convict who played the part of the nobleman, it was not bad. Everything he said was without meaning, incomparable to anything I had ever heard before; but his enunciation was pure and his gestures becoming. While Kedril occupies himself with the valise, his master walks up and down, and announces that from that day forth he means to lead a quiet life. Kedril listens, makes grimaces, and amuses the spectators by his reflections "aside." He has no pity for his master, but he has heard of devils, would like to know what they are like, and thereupon questions him. The nobleman replies that some time ago, being in danger of death, he asked succour from hell. Then the devils aided and delivered him, but the term of his liberty has expired; and if the devils come that evening, it will be to exact his soul, as has been agreed in their compact. Kedril begins to tremble in earnest, but his master does not lose courage, and orders him to prepare the supper. Hearing of victuals, Kedril revives. Taking out a bottle of wine, he taps it on his own account. The audience expands with laughter; but the door grates on its hinges, the winds shakes the shutters, Kedril trembles, and hastily, almost without knowing what he is doing, puts into his mouth an enormous piece of fowl, which he is unable to swallow. There is another gust of wind. "Is it ready?" cries the master, still walking backwards and forwards in his room. "Directly, sir. I am preparing it," says Kedril, who sits down, and, taking care that his master does not see him, begins to eat the supper himself. The audience is evidently charmed with the cunning of the servant, who so cleverly makes game of the nobleman; and it must be admitted that Poseikin, the representative of the part, deserved high praise. He pronounced admirably the words: "Directly, sir. I--am--preparing--it." Kedril eats gradually, and at each mouthful trembles lest his master shall see him. Every time that the nobleman turns round Kedril hides under the table, holding the fowl in his hand. When he has appeased his hunger, he begins to think of his master. "Kedril, will it soon be ready?" cries the nobleman. "It is ready now," replies Kedril boldly, when all at once he perceives that there is scarcely anything left. Nothing remains but one leg. The master, still sombre and pre-occupied, notices nothing, and takes his seat, while Kedril places himself behind him with a napkin on his arm. Every word, every gesture, every grimace from the servant, as he turns towards the audience to laugh at his master's expense, excites the greatest mirth among the convicts. Just at the moment when the young nobleman begins to eat, the devils arrive. They resemble nothing human or terrestrial. The side-door opens, and the phantom appears dressed entirely in white, with a lighted lantern in lieu of a head, and with a scythe in its hand. Why the white dress, scythe, and lantern? No one could tell me, and the matter did not trouble the convicts. They were sure that this was the way it ought to be done. The master comes forward courageously to meet the apparitions, and calls out to them that he is ready, and that they can take him. But Kedril, as timid as a hare, hides under the table, not forgetting, in spite of his fright, to take a bottle with him. The devils disappear, Kedril comes out of his hiding-place, and the master begins to eat his fowl. Three devils enter the room, and seize him to take him to hell. "Save me, Kedril," he cries. But Kedril has something else to think of. He has now with him in his hiding-place not only the bottle, but also the plate of fowl and the bread. He is now alone. The demons are far away, and his master also. Kedril gets from under the table, looks all round, and suddenly his face beams with joy. He winks, like the rogue he is, sits down in his master's place, and whispers to the audience: "I have now no master but myself." Every one laughs at seeing him masterless; and he says, always in an under-tone and with a confidential air: "The devils have carried him off!" The enthusiasm of the spectators is now without limits. The last phrase was uttered with such roguery, with such a triumphant grimace, that it was impossible not to applaud. But Kedril's happiness does not last long. Hardly has he taken up the bottle of wine, and poured himself out a large glass, which he carries to his lips, than the devils return, slip behind, and seize him. Kedril howls like one possessed, but he dare not turn round. He wishes to defend himself, but cannot, for in his hands he holds the bottle and the glass, from which he will not separate. His eyes starting from his head, his mouth gaping with horror, he remains for a moment looking at the audience with a comic expression of cowardice that might have been painted. At last he is dragged, carried away. His arms and legs are agitated in every direction, but he still sticks to his bottle. He also shrieks, and his cries are still heard when he has been carried from the stage. The curtain falls amid general laughter, and every one is delighted. The orchestra now attacks the famous dance tune Kamarinskaia. First it is played softly, pianissimo; but little by little, the motive is developed and played more lightly. The time is quickened, and the wood, as well as the strings of the balalaiki, is made to sound. The musicians enter thoroughly into the spirit of the dance. Glinka [who has arranged the Kamarinskaia in the most ingenious manner, and with harmonies of his own devising, for full orchestra] should have heard it as it was executed in our Convict Prison. The pantomimic musical accompaniment is begun; and throughout the Kamarinskaia is played. The stage represents the interior of a hut. A miller and his wife are sitting down, one mending clothes, the other spinning flax. Sirotkin plays the part of the wife, and Nietsvitaeff that of the husband. Our scenery was very poor. In this piece, as in the preceding ones, imagination had to supply what was wanting in reality. Instead of a wall at the back of the stage, there was a carpet or a blanket; on the right, shabby screens; while on the left, where the stage was not closed, the camp-bedsteads could be seen; but the spectators were not exacting, and were willing to imagine all that was wanting. It was an easy task for them; all convicts are great dreamers. Directly they are told "this is a garden," it is for them a garden. Informed that "this is a hut," they accept the definition without difficulty. To them it is a hut. Sirotkin was charming in a woman's dress. The miller finishes his work, takes his cap and his whip, goes up to his wife, and gives her to understand by signs, that if during his absence she makes the mistake of receiving any one, she will have to deal with him--and he shows her his whip. The wife listens, and nods affirmatively her head. The whip is evidently known to her; the hussey has often deserved it. The husband goes out. Hardly has he turned upon his heel, than his wife shakes her fist at him. There is a knock; the door opens, and in comes a neighbour, miller also by trade. He wears a beard, is in a kuftan, and he brings as a present a red handkerchief. The woman smiles. Another knock is heard at the door. Where shall she hide him? She conceals him under the table, and takes up her distaff again. Another admirer now presents himself--a farrier in the uniform of a non-commissioned officer. Until now the pantomime had gone on capitally; the gestures of the actors being irreproachable. It was astounding to see these improvised players going through their parts in so correct a manner; and involuntarily one said to oneself: "What a deal of talent is lost in our Russia, left without use in our prisons and places of exile!" The convict who played the part of the farrier had, doubtless, taken part in a performance at some provincial theatre, or had played with amateurs. It seemed to me, in any case, that our actors knew nothing of acting as an art, and bore themselves in the meanest manner. When it was his turn to appear, he came on like one of the classical heroes of the old repertory--taking a long stride with one foot before he raised the other from the ground, throwing back his head on the upper part of his body and casting proud looks around him. If such a gait was ridiculous on the part of classical heroes, still more so was it when the actor was representing a comic character. But the audience thought it quite natural, and accepted the actor's triumphant walk as a necessary fact, without criticising it. A moment after the entry of the second admirer there is another knock at the door. The wife loses her head. Where is the farrier to be concealed? In her big box. It fortunately is open. The farrier disappears within it and the lid falls upon him. The new arrival is a Brahmin, in full costume. His entry is hailed by the spectators with a formidable laugh. This Brahmin is represented by the convict Cutchin, who plays the part perfectly, thanks, in a great measure, to a suitable physiognomy. He explains in the pantomime his love of the miller's wife, raises his hands to heaven, and then clasps them on his breast. There is now another knock at the door--a vigorous one this time. There could be no mistake about it. It is the master of the house. The miller's wife loses her head; the Brahmin runs wildly on all sides, begging to be concealed. She helps him to slip behind the cupboard, and begins to spin, and goes on spinning without thinking of opening the door. In her fright she gets the thread twisted, drops the spindle, and, in her agitation, makes the gesture of turning it when it is lying on the ground. Sirotkin represented perfectly this state of alarm. Then the miller kicks open the door and approaches his wife, whip in hand. He has seen everything, for he was spying outside; and he indicates by signs to his wife that she has three lovers concealed in the house. Then he searches them out. First, he finds the neighbour, whom he drives out with his fist. The frightened farrier tries to escape. He raises, with his head, the cover of the chest, and is at once seen. The miller thrashes him with his whip, and for once this gallant does not march in the classical style. The only one now remaining is the Brahmin, whom the husband seeks for some time without finding him. At last he discovers him in his corner behind the cupboard, bows to him politely, and then draws him by his beard into the middle of the stage. The Brahmin tries to defend himself, and cries out, "Accursed, accursed!"--the only words pronounced throughout the pantomime. But the husband will not listen to him, and, after settling accounts with him, turns to his wife. Seeing that her turn has come, she throws away both wheel and spindle, and runs out, causing an earthen pot to fall as she shakes the room in her fright. The convicts burst into a laugh, and Ali, without looking at me, takes my hand, and calls out, "See, see the Brahmin!" He cannot hold himself upright, so overpowering is his laugh. The curtain falls, and another song begins. There were two or three more, all broadly humorous and very droll. The convicts had not composed them themselves, but they had contributed something to them. Every actor improvised to such purpose that the part was a different one each evening. The pantomime ended with a ballet, in which there was a burial. The Brahmin went through various incantations over the corpse, and with effect. The dead man returns to life, and, in their joy, all present begin to dance. The Brahmin dances in Brahminical style with the dead man. This was the final scene. The convicts now separated, happy, delighted, and full of praise for the actors and gratitude towards the non-commissioned officers. There was not the least quarrel, and they all went to bed with peaceful hearts, to sleep with a sleep by no means familiar to them. This is no fantasy of my imagination, but the truth, the very truth. These unhappy men had been permitted to live for some moments in their own way, to amuse themselves in a human manner, to escape for a brief hour from their sad position as convicts; and a moral change was effected, at least for a time. The night is already quite dark. Something makes me shudder, and I awake. The "old believer" is still on the top of the high porcelain stove praying, and he will continue to pray until dawn. Ali is sleeping peacefully by my side. I remember that when he went to bed he was still laughing and talking about the theatre with his brothers. Little by little I began to remember everything; the preceding day, the Christmas holidays, and the whole month. I raised my head in fright and looked at my companions, who were sleeping by the trembling light of the candle provided by the authorities. I look at their unhappy countenances, their miserable beds; I view this nakedness, the wretchedness, and then convince myself that it is not a frightful night there, but a simple reality. Yes, it is a reality. I hear a groan. Some one has moved his arm and made his chains rattle. Another one is agitated in his dreams and speaks aloud, while the old grandfather is praying for the "Orthodox Christians." I listened to his prayer, uttered with regularity, in soft, rather drawling tones: "Lord Jesus Christ have mercy upon us." "Well, I am not here for ever, but only for a few years," I said to myself, and I again laid my head down on my pillow. Part II. CHAPTER I. THE HOSPITAL Shortly after the Christmas holidays I felt ill, and had to go to our military hospital, which stood apart at about half a verst (one-third of a mile) from the fortress. It was a one-storey building, very long, and painted yellow. Every summer a great quantity of ochre was expended in brightening it up. In the immense court-yard stood buildings, including those where the chief physicians lived, while the principal building contained only wards intended for the patients. There were a good many of them, but as only two were reserved for the convicts, these latter were nearly always full, above all in summer, so that it was often necessary to bring the beds closer together. These wards were occupied by "unfortunates" of all kinds: first by our own, then by military prisoners, previously incarcerated in the guard-houses. There were others, again, who had not yet been tried, or who were passing through. In this hospital, too, were invalids from the Disciplinary Company, a melancholy institution for bringing together soldiers of bad conduct, with a view to their correction. At the end of a year or two, they come back the most thorough-going rascals that the earth can endure. When a convict felt that he was ill, he told the non-commissioned officer, who wrote the man's name down on a card, which he then gave to him and sent him to the hospital under the escort of a soldier. On his arrival he was examined by a doctor, who authorised the convict to remain at the hospital if he was really ill. My name was duly written down, and towards one o'clock, when all my companions had started for their afternoon work, I went to the hospital. Every prisoner took with him such money and bread as he could (for food was not to be expected the first day), a little pipe, and pouch containing tobacco, with flint, steel, and match-paper. The convicts concealed these objects in their boots. On entering the hospital I experienced a feeling of curiosity, for a new aspect of life was now presented. The day was hot, cloudy, sad--one of those days when places like a hospital assume a particularly disagreeable and repulsive look. Myself and the soldier escorting me went into the entrance room, where there were two copper baths. There were two convicts waiting there with their warders. An assistant surgeon came in, looked at us with a careless and patronising air, and went away still more carelessly to announce our arrival to the physician on duty. Soon the physician arrived. He examined me, treating me in a very affable manner, and gave me a paper on which my name was inscribed. The ordinary physician of the wards reserved for the convicts was to make the diagnosis of my illness, to prescribe the fitting remedies, together with the necessary diet. I had already heard the convicts say that their doctors could not be too much praised. "They are fathers to us," they would say. I took my clothes off to put on another costume. Our clothes and linen were taken away, and we were given hospital linen instead, to which were added long stockings, slippers, cotton nightcaps, and a dressing-gown of a very thick brown cloth, which was lined, not with linen, but with filth. The dressing-gown was indeed very filthy, but I soon understood its utility. We were afterwards taken to the convict wards, which were at the head of a long corridor, very high, and very clean. The external cleanliness was quite satisfactory. Everything that could be seen shone; so, at least, it seemed to me, after the dirtiness of the convict prison. The two prisoners, whom I had found in the entrance hall, went to the left of the corridor, while I entered a room. Before the padlocked door walked a sentinel, musket on shoulder; and not far off was the soldier who was to replace him. The sergeant of the hospital guard ordered him to let me pass, and suddenly I found myself in the middle of a long narrow room, with beds to the number of twenty-two arranged against the walls. Three or four of them were still unoccupied. These wooden beds were painted green, and, as is notoriously the case with all hospital beds in Russia, were doubtless inhabited by bugs. I went into a corner by the side of the windows. There were very few prisoners dangerously ill and confined to their beds. The inmates of the hospital were, for the most part, convalescents, or men who were slightly indisposed. My new companions were stretched out on their couches, or walking about up and down between the rows of beds. There was just space enough for them to come and go. The atmosphere of the ward was stifling with the odour peculiar to hospitals. It was composed of various emanations, each more disagreeable than the other, and of the smell of drugs; though the stove was kept well heated all day long, my bed was covered with a counterpane, which I took off. The bed itself consisted of a cloth blanket lined with linen, and coarse sheets of more than doubtful cleanliness. By the side of the bed was a little table with a pitcher and a pewter mug, together with a diminutive napkin, which had been given to me. The table could, moreover, hold a tea-urn for those patients who were rich enough to drink tea. These men of means, however, were not very numerous. The pipes and the tobacco pouches--for all the patients smoked, even the consumptive ones--could be concealed beneath the mattress. The doctors and the other officials scarcely ever made searches, and when they surprised a patient with a pipe in his mouth, they pretended not to see. The patients, however, were very prudent, and smoked always at the back of the stove. They never smoked in their beds except at night, when no rounds were made by the officers commanding the hospital. Until then I had not been in any hospital in the character of patient, so that everything was quite new to me. I noticed that my entry had mystified some of the prisoners. They had heard of me, and all the inmates now looked upon me with that slight shade of superiority which recognised members of no matter what society show to one newly admitted among them. On my right was lying down a man committed for trial--an ex-secretary and the illegitimate son of a retired captain--accused of having made false money. He had been in the hospital nearly a year. He was not in the least ill, but he assured the doctors that he had an aneurism, and he so thoroughly convinced them that he escaped both the hard labour and the corporal punishment to which he had been sentenced. He was sent a year later to T----k, where he was attached to an asylum. He was a vigorous young fellow of eight-and-twenty, cunning, a self-confessed rogue, and something of a lawyer. He was intelligent, had easy manners, but was very presumptuous, and suffered from morbid self-esteem. Convinced that there was no one in the world a bit more honest or more just than himself, he did not consider himself at all guilty, and never kept this assurance to himself. This personage was the first to address me, and he questioned me with much curiosity. He initiated me into the ways of the hospital; and, of course, began by telling me that he was the son of a captain. He was very anxious that I should take him for a noble, or at least, for some one connected with the nobility. Soon afterwards an invalid from the Disciplinary Company came and told me that he knew a great many nobles who had been exiled; and, to convince me, he repeated to me their christian names and their patronymics. It was only necessary to see the face of this soldier to understand that he was lying abominably. He was named Tchekounoff, and came to pay court to me, because he suspected me of having money. When he saw a packet of tea and sugar, he at once offered me his services to make the water boil and to get me a tea-urn. M. D. S. K---- had promised to send me my own by one of the prisoners who worked in the hospital, but Tchekounoff arranged to get me one forthwith. He got me a tin vessel, in which he made the water boil; and, in a word, he showed such extraordinary zeal, that it drew down upon him bitter laughter from one of the patients, a consumptive man, whose bed was just opposite mine, Usteantseff by name. This was the soldier condemned to the rods, who, from fear, had swallowed a bottle of vodka, in which he had infused tobacco, this bringing on lung disease. I have spoken of him above. He had remained silent until now, stretched out on his bed, and breathing with difficulty. He looked at me all the time with a very serious air. He did not take his eyes from Tchekounoff, whose civility irritated him. His extraordinary gravity rendered his indignation comic. At last he could stand it no longer. "Look at this fellow! He has found his master," he said, stammering out the words with a voice strangled by weakness, for he had now not long to live. Tchekounoff, much annoyed, turned round. "Who is the fellow?" he asked, looking at Usteantseff, with contempt. "Why, you are a flunkey," replied Usteantseff, as confidently as if he had possessed the right of calling Tchekounoff to order. "I a fellow?" "Yes, you are a flunkey; a true flunkey. Listen, my good friends. He won't believe me. He is quite astonished, the brave fellow." "What can that matter to you? You see when they don't know how to make use of their hands that they are not accustomed to be without servants. Why should I not serve him, buffoon with a hairy snout?" "Who has a hairy snout?" "You!" "I have a hairy snout?" "Yes; certainly you have." "You are a nice fellow, you are. If I have a hairy snout, you have a face like a crow's egg." "Hairy snout! The merciful Lord has settled your account. You would do much better to keep quiet and die." "Why? I would rather prostrate myself before a boot than before a slipper. My father never prostrated himself, and never made me do so." He would have continued, but an attack of coughing convulsed him for some minutes. He spat blood, and a cold sweat broke out on his low forehead. If his cough had not prevented him from speaking, he would have continued to declaim. One could see that from his look; but in his powerlessness he could only move his hand, the result of which was that Tchekounoff spoke no more about the matter. I quite understood that the consumptive patient hated me much more than Tchekounoff. No one would have thought of being angry with him or of looking down upon him by reason of the services he was rendering me, and the few kopecks that he tried to get from me. Every one understood that he did it all in order to get himself a little money. The Russian people are not at all susceptible on such points, and know perfectly well how to take them. I had displeased Usteantseff, as my tea had also displeased him. What irritated him was that, in spite of all, I was a gentleman, even with my chains; that I could not do without a servant, though I neither asked for nor desired one. In reality I tried to do everything for myself, in order not to appear a white-handed, effeminate person, and not to play the part which excited so much envy. I even felt a little pride on this point; but, in spite of every thing--I do not know why--I was always surrounded by officious, complaisant people, who attached themselves to me of their own free will, and who ended by governing me. It was I rather who was their servant; so that, whether I liked it or not, I was made to appear to every one a noble, who could not do without the services of others, and who gave himself airs. This exasperated me. Usteantseff was consumptive, and, therefore, irascible. The other patients only showed me indifference, tinged with a shade of contempt. They were occupied with a circumstance which now presents itself to my memory. I learned, as I listened to their conversation, that there was to be brought into the hospital that evening a convict who, at that moment, was receiving the rods. The prisoners were looking forward to this new arrival with some curiosity. They said, however, that his punishment was but slight--only five hundred strokes. I looked round. The greater number of genuine patients were, as far as I could observe, affected by scurvy and diseases of the eyes--both peculiar to this country. The others suffered from fever, lung disease, and other illnesses. The different illnesses were not separated; all the patients were together in the same room. I have spoken of genuine patients, for certain convicts had come in merely to get a little rest. The doctors admitted them from pure compassion, above all, if there were any vacant beds. Life in the guard-house and in the prison was so hard compared with that of the hospital, that many persons preferred to remain lying down in spite of the stifling atmosphere and the rules against leaving the room. There were even men who took pleasure in this kind of life. They belonged nearly all to the Disciplinary Company. I examined my new companions with curiosity. One of them puzzled me very much. He was consumptive, and was dying. His bed was a little further on than that of Usteantseff, and was nearly beside mine. He was named Mikhailoff. I had seen him in the Convict Prison two weeks before, when he was already seriously ill. He ought to have been under treatment long before, but he bore up against his malady with surprising courage. He did not go to the hospital until about the Christmas holidays, to die three weeks afterwards of galloping consumption. He seemed to have burned out like a candle. What astonished me most was the terrible change in his countenance. I had noticed him the very first day of my imprisonment. By his side was lying a soldier of the Disciplinary Company--an old man with a bad expression on his face, whose general appearance was disgusting. But I am not going to enumerate all the patients. I just remember this old man simply because he made an impression on me, and initiated me at once into certain peculiarities of the ward. He had a severe cold in the head, which made him sneeze at every moment, even during his sleep, as if firing salutes, five or six times running, while each time he called out, "My God, what torture!" Seated on his bed he stuffed his nose eagerly with snuff, which he took from a paper bag, in order to sneeze more strongly, and with greater regularity. He sneezed into a checked cotton pocket-handkerchief which belonged to him, and which had lost its colour through perpetual washing. His little nose then became wrinkled in a most peculiar manner with a multitude of wrinkles, and his open mouth exhibited broken teeth, decayed and black, and red gums moist with saliva. When he sneezed into his handkerchief he unfolded it and wiped it on the lining of his dressing-gown. His proceedings disgusted me so much that involuntarily I examined the dressing-gown I had just put on myself. It exhaled a most offensive odour, which contact with my body helped to bring out. It smelt of plasters and medicaments of all kinds. It seemed as though it had been worn by patients from time immemorial. The lining had, perhaps, been washed once, but I would not swear to it. Certainly, at the time I put it on, it was saturated with lotions, and stained by contact with poultices and plasters of all imaginable kinds. The men condemned to the rods, having undergone their punishment, were brought straight to the hospital, their backs still bleeding. As compresses and as poultices were placed on their wounds, the dressing-gown they wore over their wet shirt received and retained the droppings. During all the time of my hard labour I had to go to the hospital, which often happened, I always put on, with mistrust and abhorrence, the dressing-gown that was delivered to me. As soon as Tchekounoff had given me my tea (I will say, in parenthesis, that the water brought in in the morning, and not renewed throughout the day, was soon corrupted, soon poisoned by the fetid air), the door opened, and the soldier, who had just received the rods, was brought in under a double escort. I saw, for the first time, a man who had just been whipped. Later on many were brought in, and whenever this happened it caused great distress to the patients. These unfortunate men were received with grave composure, but the nature of the reception depended nearly always on the enormity of the crime committed, and, consequently, the number of strokes administered. The criminals most cruelly whipped, and who were celebrated as brigands of the first order, enjoyed more respect and attention than a simple deserter, a recruit, like the one who had just been brought in. But in neither case was any particular sympathy manifested, nor were any annoying remarks made. The unhappy man was attended to in silence, above all if he was incapable of attending to himself. The assistant-surgeons knew that they were entrusting their patients to skilful and experienced hands. The usual treatment consisted in applying very often to the back of the man who had been whipped a shirt or a piece of linen steeped in cold water. It was also necessary to withdraw skilfully from the wounds the twigs left by the rods which had been broken on the criminal's back. This last operation was particularly painful to the patients. The extraordinary stoicism with which they supported their sufferings astonished me greatly. I have seen many convicts who had been whipped, and cruelly, I can tell you. Well, I do not remember one of them uttering a groan. Only after such an experience, the countenance becomes pale, decomposed, the eyes glitter, the look wanders, and the lips tremble so that the patient sometimes bites them till they bleed. The soldier who had just come in was twenty-three years of age; he had a good muscular development, and was rather a fine man, tall, well-made, with a bronzed skin. His back, uncovered down to the waist, had been seriously beaten, and his body now trembled with fever beneath the damp sheet with which his back was covered. For about an hour and a half he did nothing but walk backwards and forwards in the room. I looked at his face: he seemed to be thinking of nothing; his eyes had a strange expression, at once wild and timid; they seemed to fix themselves with difficulty on the various objects. I fancied I saw him looking attentively at my hot tea; the steam was rising from the full cup, and the poor devil was shivering and clattering his teeth. I invited him to have some; he turned towards me without saying a word, and taking up the cup, swallowed the tea at one gulp, without putting sugar in it. He tried not to look at me, and when he had finished he put the cup back in silence without making a sign, and then began to walk up and down as before. He was in too much pain to think of speaking to me or thanking me. As for the other prisoners, they abstained from questioning him; when once they had applied compresses they paid no more attention to him, thinking probably it would be better to leave him alone, and not to worry him by their questions and compassion. The soldier seemed quite satisfied with this view. Meanwhile, night came on and the lamp was lighted; some of the patients possessed candlesticks of their own, but these were not numerous. In the evening the doctor came round, after which a non-commissioned officer on guard counted the patients and closed the room. The prisoners could not speak in too high terms of their doctors. They looked upon them truly as fathers and respected them. These doctors had always something pleasant to say, a kind word even for reprobates, who appreciated it all the more because they knew it was said in all sincerity. Yes, these kind words were really sincere, for no one would have thought of blaming the doctors had they shown themselves cross and inhuman; they were kind purely from humanity. They understood perfectly that a convict who is sick has as much right to breathe pure air as any other person, even though the latter might be a great personage. The convalescents there had a right to walk freely through the corridors to take exercise, and to breathe air less pestilential than that of our infirmary, which was close and saturated with deleterious emanations. In our ward, when once the doors had been closed in the evening, they had to remain closed throughout the night, and under no pretext was one of the inmates allowed to go out. For many years an inexplicable fact troubled me like an insoluble problem. I must speak of it before going on with my description. I am thinking of the chains which every convict is obliged to wear, however ill he may be; even consumptives have died beneath my eyes with their legs loaded with irons. Everybody was accustomed to it, and regarded it as an inevitable fact. I do not think any one, even the doctors, would have thought of demanding the removal of the irons from convicts who were seriously ill, not even from the consumptive ones. The chains, it is true, were not exceedingly heavy; they did not in general weigh more than eight or ten pounds, which is a supportable burden for a man in good health. I have been told, however, that after some years the legs of the convicts dry up and waste away. I do not know whether it is true. I am inclined to think it is; the weight, however light it may be (say not more than ten pounds), if it is fixed to the leg for ever, increases the general weight in an abnormal manner, and at the end of a certain time must have a disastrous effect on its development. For a convict in good health this is nothing, but the same cannot be said of one who is sick. For the convicts who were seriously ill, for the consumptive ones whose arms and legs dry up of themselves, this last straw is insupportable. Even if the medical authorities claimed alleviation for the consumptive patients alone, it would be an immense benefit, I assure you. I shall be told convicts are malefactors, unworthy of compassion; but ought increased severity to be shown towards him on whom the finger of God already weighs? No one will believe that the object of this aggravation is to reform the criminal. The consumptive prisoners are exempted from corporal punishment by the tribunal. There must be some mysterious, important reason for all this, but what it is, it is impossible to understand. No one believes--it is impossible to believe--that a consumptive man will run away. Who can think of such a thing, especially if the illness has reached a certain degree of intensity? It is impossible to deceive the doctors and make them mistake a convict in good health for one who is in a consumption, for this malady is one that can be recognised at the first glance. Moreover, can the irons prevent the convict not in good health from escaping? Not in the least. The irons are a degradation and shame, a physical and moral burden; but they would not hinder any one attempting to escape. The most awkward and least intelligent convict can saw through them, or break the rivets by hammering at them with a stone. Chains, then, are a useless precaution; and if the convicts wear them as a punishment, should not this punishment be spared to dying men? As I write these lines, a face stands out from my memory: that of a dying man, a man who died in consumption, this same Mikhailoff, whose bed was nearly opposite me, and who expired, I think, four days after my arrival at the hospital. When I spoke above of the consumptive patients, I was only reproducing involuntarily the sensations and ideas which occurred to me on the occasion of this death. I knew Mikhailoff very little; he was a young man of twenty-five at most, not very tall, thin, and with a fine face; he belonged to the "special section," and was remarkable for his strange, but soft and sad taciturnity; he seemed to have "dried up" in the convict prison, to use an expression employed by the convicts who had a good recollection of him. I remember he had very fine eyes. I really cannot tell why I think of that. He died at three o'clock in the afternoon on a clear, dry day. The sun was darting its brilliant rays obliquely through the greenish, frozen panes of our room. A torrent of light inundated the unhappy patient, who had lost all consciousness, and was several hours dying. From the early morning his sight became confused; he was unable to recognise those who approached him. The convicts would gladly have done anything to relieve him, for they saw he was in great suffering. His respiration was painful, deep, and irregular; his breast rose and fell violently, as though he were in want of air; he cast his blanket and his clothes far from him. Then he began to tear up his shirt, which seemed to him a terrible burden. It was taken off. Then it was frightful to see this immensely long body, with fleshless arms and legs, with beating breast, and ribs which were as clearly marked as those of a skeleton. There was nothing now on this skeleton but a cross and the irons, from which his dried-up legs might easily have freed themselves. A quarter of an hour before his death everything was silent in our ward, and the inmates spoke only in whispers. The convicts walked on the tips of their toes. From time to time they exchanged remarks on other subjects, and cast a furtive glance at the dying man. The rattling in his throat grew more and more painful. At last, with a trembling hand, he felt the cross on his breast and endeavoured to tear it off; it was also weighing upon him, suffocating him. It was taken off. Ten minutes afterwards, he died. Some one then knocked at the door in order to give notice to the sentinel; the warder entered, looked at the dead man with a vacant air, and went away to get the assistant-surgeon. The assistant-surgeon was a good fellow enough, but a little too much occupied with his personal appearance, otherwise very agreeable; he soon arrived, went up to the corpse with long strides which made a noise in the silent ward, and felt the dead man's pulse with an unconcerned air which seemed to have been put on for the occasion. He then made a vague gesture with his hand and went out. Information was given at the guard-house; for the criminal was an important one (he belonged to the special section), and in order to register his death it was necessary to go through some formalities. While we were waiting for the hospital guard to come, one of the prisoners said in a whisper, "The eyes of the defunct might as well be closed." Another one profited by this remark, and approaching Mikhailoff in silence, closed his eyes; then perceiving on the pillow the cross which had been taken from his neck, he took it and looked at it, put it down, and crossed himself. The face of the dead man was becoming ossified; a ray of white light was playing on the surface and illuminated two rows of white, good teeth which sparkled between his thin lips, glued to the gums by the mouth. The non-commissioned officer on guard arrived at last, musket on shoulder, helmet on head, accompanied by two soldiers; he approached the corpse, slackening his pace with an air of uncertainty. Then he examined with a side glance the silent prisoners, who looked at him with a sombre expression. At one step from the dead man he stopped short, as if suddenly nailed to the spot; the naked, dried-up body, loaded with irons, had impressed him; he undid his chin-strap, removed his helmet (which was not at all necessary for him to do), and made the sign of the cross; he had a gray head, the head of a soldier who had seen much service. I remember that by his side stood Tchekounoff, an old man who was also gray. He looked all the time at the non-commissioned officer, and followed all his movements with strange attention. They glanced across, and I saw that Tchekounoff also trembled. He bit and closed his teeth, and said to the non-commissioned officer, as if involuntarily, at the same time nodding his head in the direction of the dead man, "He had a mother, too!" These words went to my heart. Why had he said them? and how did this idea occur to him? The corpse was raised with the mattress; the straw creaked, the chains dragged along the ground with a sharp ring; they were taken up and the body was carried out. Suddenly all spoke once more in a loud voice. The non-commissioned officer in the corridor could well be heard crying out to some one to go for the blacksmith. It was necessary to take the dead man's irons off. But I have digressed from my subject. CHAPTER II. THE HOSPITAL (_continued_). The doctors used to visit the wards in the morning, towards eleven o'clock; they appeared all together, forming a procession, which was headed by the chief physician. An hour and a half before, the ordinary physician had made his round. He was a quiet young man, always affable and kind, much liked by the prisoners, and thoroughly versed in his art; they only found one fault with him, that he was "too soft." He was, in fact, by no means communicative, he seemed confused in our presence, blushed sometimes, and changed the quantity of food at the first representation of the patient. I think he would have consented to give them any medicine they desired: in other respects an excellent young man. A doctor in Russia often enjoys the affection and respect of the people, and with reason, as far as I have been able to see. I know that my words would seem a paradox, above all when the mistrust of this same people for foreign drugs and foreign doctors is taken into account; in fact, they prefer, even when suffering from a serious illness, to address themselves year after year to a witch, or employ old women's remedies (which, however, ought not to be despised), rather than consult a doctor, or go into the hospital. In truth, these prejudices may be above all attributed to causes which have nothing to do with medicine, namely, the mistrust of the people for anything which bears an official and administrative character; nor must it be forgotten that the common people are frightened and prejudiced in regard to the hospitals, by the stories, often absurd, of fantastic horrors said to take place within them. Perhaps, however, these stories have a basis of truth. But what repels them above all, is the Germanism of the hospitals, the idea that during their illness they will be attended to by foreigners, the severity of the diet, the heartlessness of the surgeons and doctors, the dissection and autopsy of the bodies, etc. The common people reflect, moreover, that they will be attended by nobles--for in their view the doctors belong to the nobility. Once they have made acquaintance with them (there are exceptions, no doubt, but they are rare), their fears vanish. This success must be attributed to our doctors, especially the young ones, who, for the most part, know how to gain the respect and affection of the people. I speak now of what I myself have seen and experienced in many cases and in different parts, and I think matters are the same everywhere. In some distant localities the doctors receive presents, make profit out of their hospitals, and neglect the patients; sometimes they forget even their art. This happens, no doubt; but I am speaking of the majority, inspired as it is by that spirit, that generous tendency which is regenerating the medical art. As for the apostates, the wolves in the sheep-fold, they may excuse themselves, and cast the blame on the circumstances amid which they live; but they are absurd, inexcusable, especially if they are no longer humane; it is precisely the humanity, affability, and brotherly compassion of the doctor which prove most efficacious remedies for the patients. It is time to stop these apathetic lamentations on the circumstances surrounding us. There may be truth in the lament, but a cunning rogue who knows how to take care of himself never fails to blame the circumstances around him when he wishes his faults to be forgiven--above all, if he writes or speaks with eloquence. I have again departed from my subject; I wish only to say that the common people mistrust and dislike officialism and the Government doctors, rather than the doctors themselves; but on personal acquaintance many prejudices disappear. Our doctor generally stopped before the bed of each patient, questioned him seriously and attentively, then prescribed the remedies, potions, etc. He sometimes noticed that the pretended invalid was not ill at all; he had come to take rest after his hard work, and to sleep on a mattress in a warm room, far preferable to the naked planks in a damp guard-house among a mass of pale, broken-down men, waiting for their trial. In Russia the prisoners in the House of Detention are almost always broken down, which shows that their moral and material condition is worse even than those of the convicts. In cases of feigned sickness our doctor would describe the patient as suffering from _febris catharalis_, and sometimes allowed him to remain a week in the hospital. Every one laughed at this _febris catharalis_, for it was known to be a formula agreed upon between the doctor and the patient to indicate no malady at all. Often the robust invalid who abused the doctor's compassion remained in the hospital until he was turned out by force. Our doctor was worth seeing then. Confused by the prisoner's obstinacy, he did not like to tell him plainly that he was cured and offer him his leaving ticket, although he had the right to send him away without the least explanation on writing the words, _sanat. est_. First he would hint to him that it was time to go, and then would beg him to leave. "You must go, you know you are cured now, and we have no place for you, we are very much cramped here, etc." At last, ashamed to remain any longer, the patient would consent to go. The physician-in-chief, although compassionate and just (the patients were much attached to him), was incomparably more severe and more decided than our ordinary physician. In certain cases he showed merciless severity which only gained for him the respect of the convicts. He always came into the room accompanied by all the doctors of the hospital, when his assistants visited all the beds and diagnosed on each particular case; he stopped longest at the beds of those who were seriously ill, and had an encouraging word for them. He never sent back the convicts who arrived with _febris catharalis_; but if one of them was determined to remain in the hospital, he certified that the man was cured. "Come," he would say, "you have had your rest; now go, you must not take liberties." Those who insisted upon remaining, were, above all, the convicts who were worn out by field labour, performed during the great summer heat, or prisoners who had been sentenced to be whipped. I remember that they were obliged to be particularly severe, merely in order to get rid of one of them. He had come to be cured of some disease of the eyes, which were red all over; he complained of suffering a sharp pain in the eyelids. He was incurable; plasters, blisters, leeches, nothing did him any good; and the diseased organ remained in the same condition. Then it occurred to the doctors that the illness was feigned, for the inflammation neither became worse nor better; and they soon understood that a comedy was being played, although the patient would not admit it. He was a fine young fellow, not ill-looking, though he produced a disagreeable impression upon all his companions; he was suspicious, sombre, full of dissimulation, and never looked any one straight in the face; he also kept himself apart as if he mistrusted us all. I remember that many persons were afraid that he would do some one harm. When he was a soldier he had committed some small theft, he had been arrested and condemned to receive a thousand strokes, and afterwards to pass into a disciplinary company. To put off the moment of punishment, the prisoners, as I have already said, will do incredible things. On the eve of the fatal day, they will stick a knife into one of their chiefs, or into a comrade, in order that they may be tried again for this new offence, which will delay their punishment for a month or two. It matters little to them that their punishment be doubled or tripled, if they can escape this time. What they desire is to put off temporarily the terrible minute at whatever cost, so utterly does their heart fail them. Many of the patients thought the man with the sore eyes ought to be watched, lest in his despair he should assassinate some one during the night; but no precaution was taken, not even by those who slept next to him. It was remarked, however, that he rubbed his eyes with plaster from the wall, and with something else besides, in order that they might appear red when the doctor came round; at last the doctor-in-chief threatened to cure him by-means of a seton. When the malady resists all ordinary treatment, the doctors determine to try some heroic, however painful, remedy. But the poor devil did not wish to get well, he was either too obstinate or too cowardly; for, however painful the proposed operation may be, it cannot be compared to the punishment of the rods. The operation consists in seizing the patient by the nape of the neck, taking up the skin, drawing it back as much as possible, and making in it a double incision, through which is passed a skein of cotton about as thick as the finger. Every day at a fixed hour this skein is pulled backwards and forwards in order that the wound may continually suppurate and may not heal; the poor devil endured this torture which caused him horrible suffering, for several days. At last he consented to quit the hospital. In less than a day his eyes became quite well; and, as soon as his neck was healed, he was sent to the guard-house which he left next day to receive the first thousand strokes. Painful is the minute which precedes such a punishment; so painful, that perhaps I am wrong in taxing with cowardice those convicts who fear it. It must be terrible; for the convicts to risk a double or triple punishment, merely to postpone it. I have spoken, however, of convicts who have thus wished to quit the hospital before the wounds caused by the first part of the flogging were healed, in order to receive the last part and make an end of it. For life in a guard-room is certainly worse than in a convict prison. The habit of receiving floggings helps in some cases to give intrepidity and decision to convicts. Those who have been often flogged, are hardened both in body and mind, and have at last looked upon such a punishment as merely a disagreeable incident no longer to be feared. One of our convicts of the special section was a converted Tartar, who was named Alexander, or Alexandrina, as they called him in fun at the convict prison; who told me how he had received 4,000 strokes. He never spoke of this punishment except with amusement and laughter; but he swore very seriously that if he had not been brought up in his horde, from his most tender infancy, on whipping and flogging--and as the scars which covered his back, and which refused to disappear, were there to testify--he would never have been able to support those 4,000 strokes. He blessed the education of sticks that he had received. "I was beaten for the least thing, Alexander Petrovitch," he said one evening, when we were sitting down before the fire. "I was beaten without reason for fifteen years, as long as I can ever remember, and several times a day. Any one who liked beat me; so that, at last, it made no impression upon me." I do not know how it was he became a soldier, for perhaps he lied, and had always been a deserter and vagabond. But I remember his telling me one day of the fright he was seized with when he was condemned to receive 4,000 strokes for having killed one of his officers. "I know that they will punish me severely," he said to himself, "that, accustomed as I am to be whipped, I shall perhaps die on the spot. The devil! 4,000 strokes is not a trifle; and then all my officers were in a fearful temper with me on account of this affair. I knew well that it would not be 'rose-water.' I even believed that I should die under the rods. I determined to get baptized. I said to myself, that perhaps they would not then flog me, at any rate it was worth trying, my comrades had told me that it would be of no good. But,' I said to myself, 'who knows? perhaps they will pardon me, they will have more compassion on a Christian than on a Mohammedan. They baptized me, and give me the name of Alexander; but, in spite of that, I had to take my flogging; they did not let me off a single stroke; I was, however, very savage. 'Wait a bit,' I said to myself, 'and I will take you all in'; and, would you believe it, Alexander? I did take them all in. I knew how to look like a dead man; not that I appeared altogether without life, but I looked as if I were on the point of breathing my last. They led me in front of the battalion to receive my first thousand; my skin was burning, I began to howl. They gave me my second thousand, and I said to myself, 'It's all over now.' I had lost my head, my legs seemed broken, so I fell to the ground, with the eyes of a dead man. My face blue, my mouth full of froth, I no longer breathed. When the doctor came he said I was on the point of death. I was carried to the hospital, and at once returned to life. Twice again they flogged me. What a rage they were in! I took them all in on each occasion. I received my third thousand, and died again. On my word, when they gave me the last thousand each stroke ought to have counted for three, it was like a knife in my heart. Oh, how they did beat me! They were so severe with me. Oh, that cursed fourth thousand! it was well worth three firsts put together. If I had pretended to be dead when I had still 200 to receive, I think they would have finished me; but they did not get the better of me. I had them again and again, for they always thought it was all over with me, and how could they have thought otherwise? The doctor was sure of it. But as for the 200 which I had still to receive, they might have struck as hard as they liked--they were worth 2,000; I only laughed at them. Why? Because, when I was a youngster, I had grown up under the whip. Well, I am well, and alive now; but I have been beaten in the course of my life," he repeated, with a passive air, as he brought his story to an end. As he did so, he seemed to recollect and count anew the blows he had received. After a brief silence, he said: "I cannot count them, nor can any one else; there are not figures enough." He looked at me, and burst into a laugh, so simple and natural, that I could not help smiling in return. "Do you know, Alexander Petrovitch, when I dream at night, I always dream that I am being flogged. I dream of nothing else." He, in fact, talked in his sleep, and woke up the other prisoners. "What are you yelling about, you demon?" they would say to him. This strong, robust fellow, short in stature, about forty-four years of age, active, good-looking, lived on good terms with every one, though he was very fond of taking what did not belong to him, and afterwards got beaten for it. But each of our convicts who stole got beaten for their thefts. I will add to these remarks that I was always surprised at the extraordinary good-nature, the absence of rancour with which these unhappy men spoke of their punishment, and of the chiefs superintending it. In these stories, which often gave me palpitation of the heart, not a shadow of hatred or rancour could be detected; they laughed at what they had suffered like children. It was not the same, however, with M--tçki, when he told me of his punishment. As he was not a noble, he had been sentenced to be flogged. He had never spoken to me of it, and when I asked him if it were true, he replied affirmatively in two brief words, but with evident suffering, and without looking at me. He at the same time turned red, and when he raised his eyes, I saw flames burning in them, while his lips trembled with indignation. I felt that he would not forget, that he could never forget this page of his history. Our companions generally on the other hand (though theirs might have been exceptions), looked upon their adventures with quite another eye. It is impossible, I sometimes thought, that they can be conscious of their guilt, and not acknowledge the justice of their punishment; above all, when their offences were against their companions and not against some chief. The greater part of them did not acknowledge their guilt. I have already said that I never observed in them the least remorse, even when the crime had been committed against people of their own station. As for the crimes committed against a chief, they did not even speak of them. It seems to me that for those cases, they had special views of their own. They looked upon them as accidents caused by destiny, by fatality, into which they had fallen unconsciously as the result of some extraordinary impulse. The convict always justifies the crimes he has committed against his chief; he does not trouble himself about the matter. But he admits that the chief cannot share his view, and consequently, that he must naturally be punished, and then he will be quits with him. The struggle between the administration and the prisoner is of the severest character on both sides. What in a great measure justifies the criminal in his own eyes, is his conviction that the people among whom he has been born and has lived will acquit him. He is certain that the common people will not look upon him as a lost man, unless, indeed, his crime has bean committed against persons of his own class, against his brethren. He is quite calm about that; supported by his conscience, he will not lose his moral tranquillity, and that is the principal thing. He feels himself on firm ground, and has no particular hatred for the knout, when once it has been administered to him. He knows that it was inevitable, and consoles himself by thinking that he was neither the first nor the last to receive it. Does the soldier detest the Turk whom he fights? Not in the least! yet he sabres him, hacks him to pieces, kills him. It must not be thought, moreover, that all of these stories were told with indifference and in cold blood. When the name of Jerebiatnikof was mentioned, it was always with indignation. I made the acquaintance of this officer during my first stay in the hospital--only by the convicts' stories, it must be understood. I afterwards saw him one day when he was commanding the guard at the convict prison; he was about thirty years old, very stout and very strong, with red cheeks hanging down on each side, white teeth, and a formidable laugh. One could see in a moment that he was in no way given to reflection. He took the greatest pleasure in whipping and flogging, when he had to superintend the punishment. I must hasten to say that the other officers looked upon Jerebiatnikof as a monster, and the convicts did the same. This was in the good old time, which is not very very far off, but in which it is already difficult to believe executioners delighted in their office. But, generally speaking, the strokes were administered without enthusiasm. This lieutenant was an exception, and he took a real pleasure and delight in punishment. He had a passion for it, and liked it for its own sake; he looked to this art for unnatural delights in order to tickle and excite his base soul. A prisoner is conducted to the place of punishment. Jerebiatnikof is the officer superintending the execution. Arranging a long line of soldiers, armed with heavy rods, he walks along the front with a satisfied air, and encourages each one to do his duty, conscientiously or otherwise--the soldiers know before what "otherwise" means. The criminal is brought out. If he does not yet know Jerebiatnikof, if he is not in the secret of the mystery, the Lieutenant plays him the following trick--one of the inventions of Jerebiatnikof, very ingenious in this style of thing. The prisoner, whose back has been bared, and whom the non-commissioned officers have fastened to the butt end of a musket in order to drag him afterwards through the whole length of the "Green Street." He begs the officer in charge, with a plaintive and tearful voice, not to have him struck too hard, not to double the punishment by any undue severity. "Your nobility!" cries the unhappy wretch, "have pity on me, treat me fraternally, so that I may pray God throughout my life for you. Do not destroy me, show mercy!" Jerebiatnikof had waited for this. He now suspended the execution, and engaged the prisoner in conversation, speaking to him in a sentimental, compassionate tone. "But, my good fellow," he would say, "what am I to do? It is the law that punishes you--it is the law." "Your nobility! You can make it everything; have pity upon me." "Do you really think that I have no pity on you? Do you think it is any pleasure to me to see you whipped? I am a man, am I not? Answer me, am I not a man?" "Certainly, your nobility. We know that the officers are our fathers and we their children. Be to me a venerable father," the prisoner would cry, seeing some possibility of escaping punishment. "Then, my friend, judge for yourself. You have a brain to think with, you know I am human, I ought to take compassion on you, sinner though you be." "Your nobility says the absolute truth." "Yes, I ought to be merciful to you however guilty you may be. But it is not I who punish you, it is the law. I serve God and my country, and consequently I commit a grave sin if I mitigate the punishment fixed by the law. Only think of that!" "Your nobility!" "Well, what am I to do? Only think, I know that I am doing wrong, but it shall be as you wish; I will have mercy upon you, you shall be punished lightly. But if I really do this on one occasion, if I show mercy, if I punish you lightly, you will think that at another time I shall be merciful, and you will recommence your follies. What do you say to that?" "Your nobility, preserve me! Before the throne of the heavenly Creator, I----" "No, no; you swear that you will behave yourself." "May the Lord cause me to die this moment and in the next world." "Do not swear in that way, it is a sin; I shall believe you if you will give me your word." "Your nobility." "Well, listen, I will have mercy on you on account of your tears, your orphan's tears, for you are an orphan, are you not?" "Orphan on both sides, your nobility, I am alone in the world." "Well, on account of your orphan's tears I have pity on you," he added, in a voice so full of emotion, that the prisoner could not sufficiently thank God for having sent him so good an officer. The procession went out, the drum rolled, the soldiers brandished their arms. "Flog him," Jerebiatnikof would roar from the bottom of his lungs, "flog him! burn him! skin him alive! Harder! harder! Give it harder to this orphan! Give it him, the rogue." The soldiers lay on the strokes with all their might on the back of the unhappy wretch, whose eyes dart fire, and who howls while Jerebiatnikof runs after him in front of the line, holding his sides with laughter--he puffs and blows so that he can scarcely hold himself upright. He is happy. He thinks it droll. From time to time his formidable resonant laugh is heard, as he keeps on repeating, "Flog him! thrash him! this brigand! this orphan!" He had composed variation on this motive. The prisoner has been brought to undergo his punishment. He begs the lieutenant to have pity on him. This time Jerebiatnikof does not play the hypocrite; he is frank with the prisoner. "Look, my dear fellow, I will punish you as you deserve, but I can show you one act of mercy. I will not attach you to the butt end of the musket, you shall go along in a new style, you have only to run as hard as you can along the front, each rod will strike you as a matter of course, but it will be over sooner. What do you say to that, will you try?" The prisoner, who has listened, full of mistrust and doubt, says to himself: Perhaps this way will not be so bad as the other. If I run with all my might, it will not last quite so long, and perhaps all the rods will not touch me. "Well, your nobility, I consent." "I also consent. Come, mind your business," cries the lieutenant to the soldiers. He knew beforehand that not one rod would spare the back of the unfortunate wretch; the soldier who failed to hit him would know what to expect. The convict tries to run along the "Green Street," but he does not go beyond fifteen men before the rods rain upon his poor spine like hail; so that the unfortunate man shrieks out, and falls as if he had been struck by a bullet. "No, your nobility, I prefer to be flogged in the ordinary way," he says, managing to get up, pale and frightened. While Jerebiatnikof, who knew beforehand how this affair would end, held his sides and burst into a laugh. But I cannot relate all the diversions invented by him, and all that was told about him. My companions also spoke of a Lieutenant Smekaloff, who fulfilled the functions of Commandant before the arrival of our present Major. They spoke of Jerebiatnikof with indifference, without hatred, but also without exalting his high achievements. They did not praise him, they simply despised him, whilst at the name of Smekaloff the whole prison burst into a chorus of laudation. The Lieutenant was by no means fond of administering the rods; there was nothing in him of Jerebiatnikof's disposition. How did it happen that the convicts remembered his punishments, severe as they were, with sweet satisfaction. How did he manage to please them. How did he gain the popularity he certainly enjoyed? Our companions, like Russian people in general, were ready to forget their tortures if a kind word was said to them; I speak of the effect itself without analysing or examining it. It is not difficult, then, to gain the affections of such a people and become popular. Lieutenant Smekaloff had gained such popularity, and when the punishments he had directed were spoken of, they were always mentioned with a certain sympathy. "He was as kind as a father," the convicts would sometimes say, as, with a sigh, they compared him with their present chief, the Major who had replaced him. He was a simple-minded man, and kind in a manner. There are chiefs who are naturally kind and merciful, but who are not at all liked and are laughed at; whereas, Smekaloff had so managed that all the prisoners had a special regard for him; this was due to innate qualities, which those who possess them do not understand. Strange thing! There are men who are far from being kind, and who have yet the talent of making themselves popular; they do not despise the people who are beneath their rule. That, I think, is the cause of this popularity. They do not give themselves lordly airs; they have no feeling of "caste;" they have a certain odour of the people; they are men of birth, and the people at once sniff it. They will do anything for such men; they will gladly change the mildest and most humane man for a very severe chief, if the latter possesses this sort of odour, and especially if the man is also genial in his way. Oh! then he is beyond price. Lieutenant Smekaloff, as I have said, ordered sometimes very severe punishments. But he seemed to inflict them in such a way, that the prisoners felt no rancour against him. On the contrary, they recalled his whipping affairs with laughter; he did not punish frequently, for he had no artistic imagination. He had invented only one practical joke, a single one which amused him for nearly a year in our convict prison. This joke was dear to him, probably, because it was his only one, and it was not without humour. Smekaloff assisted himself at the executions, joking all the time, and laughing at the prisoner as he questioned him about the most out-of-the-way things, such, for instance, as his private affairs. He did this without any bad motive, and simply because he really wished to know something about the man's affairs. A chair was brought to him, together with the rods which were to be used for chastising the prisoner. The Lieutenant sat down and lighted his long pipe; the prisoner implored him. "No, comrade, lie down. What is the matter with you?" The convict stretched himself on the ground with a sigh. "Can you read fluently?" "Of course, your nobility; I am baptized, and I was taught to read when I was a child." "Then read this." The convict knows beforehand what he is to read, and knows how the reading will end, because this joke has been repeated more than thirty times; but Smekaloff knows also that the convict is not his dupe any more than the soldier who now holds the rods suspended over the back of the unhappy victim. The convict begins to read; the soldiers armed with the rods await motionless. Smekaloff ceases even to smoke, raises his hand, and waits for a word fixed upon beforehand. At the word, which from some double meaning might be interpreted as the order to start, the Lieutenant raises his hand, and the flogging begins. The officer bursts into a laugh, and the soldiers around him also laugh; the man who is whipping laughs, and the man who is being whipped also. CHAPTER III. THE HOSPITAL[4] (_continued_). I have spoken here of punishments and of those who have administered them, because I got a very clear idea on the subject during my stay in the hospital. Until then I knew of them only by general report. In our room were confined all the prisoners from the battalion who were to receive the spitzruten [rods], as well as those from the military establishment in our town and in the district surrounding it. During my first few days I looked at all that surrounded me with such greedy eyes that these strange manners, these men who had just been flogged or were about to be flogged, left upon me a terrible impression. I was agitated, frightened. As I listened to the conversation or narratives of the other prisoners on this subject, I put to myself questions which I endeavoured in vain to solve. I wished to know all the degrees of the sentences; the punishments, and their shades; and to learn the opinion of the convicts themselves. I tried to represent to myself the psychological condition of the men flogged. It rarely happened, as I have already said, that the prisoner approached the fatal moment in cold blood, even if he had been beaten several times before. The condemned man experiences a fear which is very terrible, but purely physical--an unconscious fear which upsets his moral nature. During my several years' stay in the convict prison I was able to study at leisure the prisoners who wished to leave the hospital, where they had remained some time to have their damaged backs cured before receiving the second half of their punishment. This interruption in the punishment is always called for by the doctor who assists at the execution. If the number of strokes to be received is too great for them to be administered all at once, it is divided according to advice given by the doctor on the spot. It is for him to see if the prisoner is in a condition to undergo the whole of his punishment, or if his life is in danger. Five hundred, one thousand, and even one thousand five hundred strokes with the stick are administered at once. But if it is two or three thousand the punishment is divided into two or three doses. Those whose back had been cured after the first administration, and who are to undergo a second, were sad, sombre and silent the day they went out, and the evening before. They were almost in a state of torpor. They engaged in no conversation, and remained perfectly silent. It is worthy of remark that the prisoners avoid addressing those who are about to be punished, and, above all, never make any allusion to the subject, neither in consolation nor in superfluous words. No attention whatever is paid to them, which is certainly the best thing for the prisoner. There are exceptions, however. The convict Orloff, of whom I have already spoken, was sorry that his back did not get more quickly cured, for he was anxious to get his leave-ticket in order that he might take the rest of his flogging, and then be assigned to a convoy of prisoners, when he meant to escape during the journey. He had a passionate, ardent nature, and with only that object in view. A cunning rascal, he seemed very pleased when he first came; but he was in a state of abnormal excitement, though he endeavoured to conceal it. He had been afraid of being left on the ground, and dying before half of his punishment had been undergone. He had heard steps taken in his case, by the authorities, when he was still being tried, and he thought he could not survive the punishment. But when he had received his first dose he recovered his courage. When he came to the hospital I had never seen such wounds as his; but he was in the best spirits. He now hoped to be able to live. The stories which had reached him were untrue, or the execution would not have been interrupted. He now began to think of a long Siberian journey, possibly of escaping to liberty, fields, and forests. Two days after he had left the hospital he came back to die--on the very couch which he had occupied during my stay there. He had been unable to support the second half of his punishment; but I have already spoken of this man. All the prisoners without exception, even the most pusillanimous, even those who were beforehand tormented night and day, supported it courageously when it came. I scarcely ever heard groans during the night following the execution; our people, as a rule, knew how to endure pain. I questioned my companion often in reference to this pain, that I might know to what kind of suffering it might be compared. It was no idle curiosity which urged me. I repeat that I was moved and frightened; but it was in vain, I could get no satisfactory reply. "It burns like fire!" was the general answer; they all said the same thing. First I tried to question M--tski. "It burns like fire! like hell! It seems as if one's back were in a furnace." I made one day a strange observation, which may or may not have been well founded, although the opinion of the convicts themselves confirms my views; namely, that the rods are the most terrible punishment in use among us. At first it seems absurd, impossible, yet five hundred strokes of the rods, four hundred even, are enough to kill a man. Beyond five hundred death is almost certain; the most robust man will be unable to support a thousand rods, whereas five hundred sticks are endured without much inconvenience, and without the least risk in the world of losing one's life. A man of ordinary build supports a thousand sticks without danger; even two thousand sticks will not kill a man of ordinary strength and constitution. All the convicts declared that rods were worse than sticks or ramrods. "Rods hurt more and torture more!" they said. They must torture more than sticks, that is certain, that is evident; for they irritate much more forcibly the nervous system, which they excite beyond measure. I do not know whether any person still exists, but such did a short time ago, to whom the whipping of a victim procured a delight which recalls the Marquis de Sade and the Marchioness Brinvilliers. I think this delight must consist in the sinking of the heart, and that these nobles must have experienced pain and delight at the same time. There are people who, like tigers, are greedy for blood. Those who have possessed unlimited power over the flesh, blood, and soul of their fellow-creatures, of their brethren according to the law of Christ, those who have possessed this power and who have been able to degrade with a supreme degradation, another being made in the image of God; these men are incapable of resisting their desires and their thirst for sensations. Tyranny is a habit capable of being developed, and at last becomes a disease. I declare that the best man in the world can become hardened and brutified to such a point, that nothing will distinguish him from a wild beast. Blood and power intoxicate; they aid the development of callousness and debauchery; the mind then becomes capable of the most abnormal cruelty in the form of pleasure; the man and the citizen disappear for ever in the tyrant; and then a return to human dignity, repentance, moral resurrection, becomes almost impossible. That the possibility of such license has a contagious effect on the whole of society there is no doubt. A society which looks upon such things with an indifferent eye, is already infected to the marrow. In a word, the right granted to a man to inflict corporal punishment on his fellow-men, is one of the plague-spots of our society. It is the means of annihilating all civic spirit. Such a right contains in germ the elements of inevitable, imminent decomposition. Society despises an executioner by trade, but not a lordly executioner. Every manufacturer, every master of works, must feel an irritating pleasure when he reflects that the workman he has beneath his orders is dependent upon him with the whole of his family. A generation does not, I am sure, extirpate so quickly what is hereditary in it. A man cannot renounce what is in his blood, what has been transmitted to him with his mother's milk; these revolutions are not accomplished so quickly. It is not enough to confess one's fault. That is very little! Very little indeed! It must be rooted out, and that is not done so quickly. I have spoken of the executioners. The instincts of an executioner are in germ in nearly every one of our contemporaries; but the animal instincts of the man have not developed themselves in a uniform manner. When they stifle all other faculties, the man becomes a hideous monster. There are two kinds of executioners, those who of their own will are executioners and those who are executioners by duty, by reason of office. He who, by his own will, is an executioner, is in all respects below the salaried executioner, whom, however, the people look upon with repugnance, and who inspires them with disgust, with instinctive mystical fear. Whence comes this almost superstitious horror for the latter, when one is only indifferent and indulgent to the former? I know strange examples of honourable men, kind, esteemed by all their friends, who found it necessary that a culprit should be whipped until he would implore and beg for mercy; it seemed to them a natural thing, a thing recognised as indispensable. If the victim did not choose to cry out, his executioner, whom in other respects I should consider a good man, looked upon it as a personal offence; he meant, in the first instance, to inflict only a light punishment, but directly he failed to hear the habitual supplications, "Your nobility!" "Have mercy!" "Be a father to me!" "Let me thank God all my life!" he became furious, and ordered that fifty more blows should be administered, hoping thus, at last, to obtain the necessary cries and supplications; and at last they came. "Impossible! he is too insolent," cried the man in question, very seriously. As for the executioner by office, he is a convict who has been chosen for this function. He passes an apprenticeship with an old hand, and as soon as he knows his trade remains in the convict prison, where he lives by himself. He has a room, which he shares with no one. Sometimes, indeed, he has a separate establishment, but he is always under guard. A man is not a machine. Although he whips by virtue of his office, he sometimes becomes furious, and beats with a certain pleasure. Notwithstanding he has no hatred for his victim, a desire to show his skill in the art of whipping may sharpen his vanity. He works as an artist; he knows well that he is a reprobate, and that he excites everywhere superstitious dread. It is impossible that this should exercise no influence upon him, and not irritate his brutal instincts. Even little children say that this man has neither father nor mother. Strange thing! All the executioners I have known were intelligent men, possessing a certain degree of conceit. This conceit became developed in them through the contempt which they everywhere met with, and was strengthened, perhaps, by the consciousness of the fear with which they inspired their victims, and of the power over unfortunate wretches. The theatrical paraphernalia surrounding them developed, perhaps, in them a certain arrogance. I had for some time an opportunity of meeting and observing at close quarters an ordinary executioner. He was a man about forty, muscular, dry, with an agreeable, intelligent face, surrounded by long curly hair. His manners were quiet and grave, his general demeanour becoming. He replied clearly and sensibly to all questions put to him, but with a sort of condescension as if he were in some way my superior. The officers of the guard spoke to him with a certain respect, which he fully appreciated, for which reason, in presence of his chiefs, he became polite, and more dignified than ever. He never departed from the most refined politeness. I am sure that, when I was speaking to him, he felt incomparably superior to the man who was addressing him. I could read that in his countenance. Sometimes he was sent under escort, in summer, when it was very hot, to kill the dogs of the town with a long, very thin spear. These wandering dogs increased in numbers with such prodigious rapidity, and became so dangerous during the dog days, that, by the decision of the authorities, the executioner was ordered to destroy them. This degrading duty did not in any way humiliate him. It should have been seen with what gravity he walked through the streets of the town, accompanied by a soldier escorting him; how, with a single glance, he frightened the women and children; and how, from the height of his grandeur, he looked down upon the passers-by generally. Executioners live at their ease. They have money to travel comfortably, and drink vodka. They derive most of their income from presents which the prisoners condemned to be flogged slip into their hands before the execution. When they have to do with convicts who are rich, they then fix a sum to be paid in proportion to the means of the victim. They will exact thirty roubles, sometimes more. The executioner has no right to spare his victim; and he does so at the risk of his own back. But for a suitable present he agrees not to strike too hard. People almost always give what he asks; should they in any case refuse, he would strike like a savage; and it is in his power to do so. He sometimes exacts a heavy sum from a man who is very poor. Then all the relations of the victim are put in movement. They bargain, try and beat him down, supplicate him; but it will not be well if they do not succeed in satisfying him. In such a case the superstitious fear inspired by the executioner stands them in good part. I had been told the most wonderful things--that at one blow the executioner can kill his man. "Is this your experience?" I asked. Perhaps so. Who knows? Their tone seemed to decide, if there could be any doubt about it. They also told me that he can strike a criminal in such a way that he will not feel the least pain, and without leaving a scar. Even when the executioner receives a present not to whip too severely, he gives the first blow with all his strength. It is the custom! Then he administers the other blows with less severity, above all if he has been well paid. I do not know why this is done. Is it to prepare the victim for the succeeding blows, which will appear less painful after the first cruel one; or do they want to frighten the criminal, so that he may know with whom he has to deal; or do they simply wish to display their vigour from vanity? In any case the executioner is slightly excited before the execution, and he is conscious of his strength and of his power. He is acting at the time; the public admires him, and is filled with terror. Accordingly, it is not without satisfaction that he cries out to his victim, "Look out! you are going to have it!"--customary and fatal words which precede the first blow. It is difficult to imagine a human being degraded to such a point. The first day of my stay at the hospital I listened attentively to the stories of the convicts, which broke the monotony of the long days. In the morning, the doctor's visit was the first diversion. Then came dinner, which it will be believed was the most important affair of our daily life. The portions were different according to the nature of the illness: some of the prisoners received nothing but broth with groats in it; others nothing but gruel; others a kind of semolina, which was much liked. The convicts ended by becoming effeminate and fastidious. The convalescents received a piece of boiled beef. The best food, which was reserved for the scorbutic patients, consisted of roast beef with onions, horseradish, and sometimes a small glass of spirits. The bread was, according to the illness, black or brown; the precision preserved in distributing the rations would make the patients laugh. There were some who took absolutely nothing; the portions were exchanged in such a way that the food intended for one patient was eaten by another: those who were being kept on low diet, who received only small rations, bought those of the scorbutic patients; others would give any price for meat. There were some who ate two entire portions; it cost them a good deal, for they were generally sold at five kopecks each. If one had no meat to sell in our room the warder was sent to another section, and if he could not find any there he was asked to get some from the military "infirmary"--the free infirmary, as we called it. There were always patients ready to sell their rations; poverty was general, and those who possessed a few kopecks used to send out to buy cakes and white bread, or other delicacies, at the market. Warders executed these commissions in a disinterested manner. The most painful moment was that which followed the dinner; some went to sleep, if they had no other way of passing their time; others either wrangled or told stories in a loud voice. When no new patients were brought in, everything became very dull. The arrival of a new patient caused always a certain excitement, above all, if no one knew anything about him; he was questioned about his past life. The most interesting ones were the birds of passage: they had always something to tell. Of course they never spoke of their own little faults. If the prisoner did not enter upon this subject himself, no one questioned him about it. The only thing he was asked was, what quarter he came from? who were with him on the road? what state the road was in? where he was being taken to? etc. Stimulated by the stories of the new comers, our comrades in their turn began to tell what they had seen and done; what was most talked about was the convoys, those in command of them, the men who carried the sentences into execution. About this time, too, towards evening, the convicts who had been scourged came up; they always made a rather strong impression, as I have said; but it was not every day that any of these were brought to us, and everybody was bored to extinction, when nothing happened to give a fillip to the general relaxed and indolent state of feeling. It seemed, then, as though the sick themselves were exasperated at the very sight of those near them. Sometimes they squabbled violently. Our convicts were in high glee when a madman was taken off for medical examination; sometimes those who were sentenced to be scourged, feigned insanity that they might get off. The trick was found out, or it would sometimes be that they voluntarily gave up the pretence. Prisoners, who during two or three days had done all sorts of wild things, suddenly became steady and sensible people, quieted down, and, with a gloomy smile, asked to be taken out of the hospital. Neither the other convicts nor the doctors said a word of remonstrance to them about the deceit, or brought up the subject of their mad pranks. Their names were put down on a list without a word being said, and they were simply taken elsewhere; after the lapse of some days they came back to us with their backs all wounds and blood. On the other hand, the arrival of a genuine lunatic was a miserable thing to see all through the place. Those of the mentally unsound who were gay, lively, who uttered cries, danced, sang, were greeted at first with enthusiasm by the convicts. "Here's fun!" said they, as they looked on the grins and contortions of the unfortunates. But the sight was horribly painful and sad. I have never been able to look upon the mad calmly or with indifference. There was one who was kept three weeks in our room: we would have hidden ourselves, had there been any place to do it. When things were at the worst they brought in another. This one affected me very powerfully. In the first year, or, to be more exact, during the first month of my exile, I went to work with a gang of kiln men to the tileries situate at two versts from our prison. We were set to repairing the kiln in which the bricks were baked in summer. That morning, in which M--tski and B. made me acquainted with the non-commissioned officer, superintendent of the works. This was a Pole already well on in life, sixty years old at least, of high stature, lean, of decent and even somewhat imposing exterior. He had been a long time in service in Siberia, and although he belonged to the lower orders he had been a soldier, and in the rising of 1830--M--tski and B. loved and esteemed him. He was always reading the Vulgate. I spoke to him; his talk was agreeable and intelligent; he told a story in a most interesting way; he was straightforward and of excellent temper. For two years I never saw him again, all I heard was that he had become a "case," and that they were inquiring into it; and then one fine day they brought him into our room; he had gone quite mad. He came in yelling, uttering shouts of laughter, and began to dance in the middle of the room with indecent gestures which recalled the dance known as Kamarinskaïa. The convicts were wild with enthusiasm; but, for my part, account for it as you will, I felt utterly miserable. Three days after, we were all of us upset with it; he got into violent disputes with everybody, fought, groaned, sang in the dead of the night; his aberrations were so inordinate and disgusting as to bring our very stomachs up. He feared nobody. They put the strait-waistcoat on him; but we were no whit better off for it, for he went on quarreling and fighting all round. At the end of three weeks, the room put up an unanimous entreaty to the head doctor that he might be removed to the other apartment reserved for the convicts. But after two days, at the request of the sick people in that other room, they brought him back to our infirmary. As we had two madmen there at once, both rooms kept sending them back and forward, and ended by taking one or the other of the two lunatics, turn and turn about. Everybody breathed more freely when they took them away from us, a good way off, somewhere or other. There was another lunatic whom I remember--a very remarkable creature. They had brought in, during the summer, a man under sentence, who looked like a solid and vigorous fellow enough, of about forty-five years. His face was sombre and sad, pitted with small-pox, with little red and swollen eyes. He sat down by my side. He was extremely quiet; spoke to nobody, and seemed utterly absorbed in his own deep reflections. Night fell; then he addressed me, and, without a word of preface, told me in a hurried and excited way--as if it were a mighty secret he were confiding--that he was to have two thousand strokes with the rod; but that he had nothing to fear, as the daughter of Colonel G---- was taking steps on his behalf. I looked at him with surprise, and observed that, as I saw the affair, the daughter of a Colonel could be of little use in such a case. I had not yet guessed what sort of person I had to do with, for they had brought him to the hospital as a bodily sick person, not mentally. I then asked him what illness he was suffering from. He answered that he knew nothing about it; that he had been sent among us for something or other; but that he was in good health, and that the Colonel's daughter had fallen in love with him. Two weeks before she had passed in a carriage before the guard-house, where he was looking through the barred window, and she had gone head over ears in love at the mere sight of him. After that important moment she had come three times to the guard-house on different pretexts. The first time with her father, ostensibly to visit her brother, who was the officer on service; the second with her mother, to distribute alms to the prisoners. As she passed in front of him she had muttered that she loved him and would get him out of prison. He told me all this nonsense with minute and exact details; all of it pure figment of his poor disordered head. He believed devoutly and implicitly that his punishment would be graciously remitted. He spoke very calmly, and with all assurance of the passionate love he had inspired in this young lady. This odd and romantic delusion about the love of quite a young girl of good breeding, for a man nearly fifty years and afflicted with a face so disfigured and gloomy, simply showed the fearful effect produced by the fear of the punishment he was to have, upon the poor, timid creature. It may be that he had really seen some one through the bars of the window, and the insanity, germinating under excess of fear, had found shape and form in the delusion in question. This unfortunate soldier, who, it may be warranted, had never given a thought to young ladies, had got this romance into his diseased fancy, and clung convulsively to this wild hope. I heard him in silence, and then told the story to the other convicts. When these questioned him in their natural curiosity, he preserved a chastely discreet silence. Next day the doctor examined him. As the madman averred that he was not ill, he was put down on the list as qualified to be sent out. We learned that the physician had scribbled "_Sanat. est_" on the page, when it was quite too late to give him warning. Besides, we were ourselves not by any means sure what was really the matter with the man. The error was with the authorities who had sent him to us, without specifying for what reason it was thought necessary to have him come into the hospital--which was unpardonable negligence. However, two days later the unhappy creature was taken out to be scourged. We understood that he was dumbfounded by finding, contrary to his fixed expectation, that he really was to have the punishment. To the last moment he thought he would be pardoned, and when conducted to the front of the battalion, he began to cry for help. As there was no room or bedding-place now in our apartment they sent him to the infirmary. I heard that for eight entire days he did not utter a single word, and remained in stupid and misery-stricken mental confusion. When his back was cured they took him off. I never heard a single further word about him. As to the treatment of the sick and the remedies prescribed, those who were but slightly indisposed paid no attention whatever to the directions of the doctors, and never took their medicines; while, speaking generally, those really ill were very careful in following the doctor's orders; they took their mixtures and powders; they took all the possible care they could of themselves; but they preferred external to internal remedies. Cupping-glasses, leeches, cataplasms, blood-lettings--in all which things the populace has so blind a confidence--were held in high honour in our hospital. Inflictions of that sort were regarded with satisfaction. There was one thing quite strange, and to me interesting. Fellows, who stood without a murmur the frightful tortures caused by the rods and scourges, howled, and grinned, and moaned for the least little ailment. Whether it was all pretence or not, I really cannot say. We had cuppings of a quite peculiar kind. The machine with which instantaneous incisions in the skin are produced, was all out of order, so they had to use the lancet. For a cupping, twelve incisions are necessary; with a machine these are not painful at all, for it makes them instantaneously; with the lancet it is a different affair altogether--that cuts slowly, and makes the patient suffer. If you have to make ten openings there will be about one hundred and twenty pricks, and these very painful. I had to undergo it myself; besides the pain itself, it caused great nervous irritation; but the suffering was not so great that one could not contain himself from groaning if he tried. It was laughable to see great, hulking fellows wriggling and howling. One couldn't help comparing them to some men, firm and calm enough in really serious circumstances, but all ill-temper or caprice in the bosom of their families for nothing at all; if dinner is late or the like, then they'll scold and swear; everything puts them out; they go wrong with everybody; the more comfortable they really are, the more troublesome are they to other people. Characters of this sort, common enough among the lower orders, were but too numerous in our prison, by reason of our company being forced on one another. Sometimes the prisoners chaffed or insulted the thin-skins I speak of, and then they would leave off complaining directly; as if they only wanted to be insulted to make them hold their tongues. Oustiantsef was no friend of grimacings of this kind, and never let slip an opportunity of bringing that sort of delinquent to his bearings. Besides, he was fond of scolding; it was a sort of necessity with him, engendered by illness and also his stupidity. He would first fix his gaze upon you for some time, and then treat you to a long speech of threatening and warning, and a tone of calm and impartial conviction. It looked as though he thought his function in this world was to watch over order and morality in general. "He must poke his nose into everything," the prisoners with a laugh used to say; for they pitied, and did what they could to avoid conflicts with him. "Has he chattered enough? Three waggons wouldn't be too much to carry away all his talk." "Why need you put your oar in? One is not going to put himself about for a mere idiot. What's there to cry out about at a mere touch of a lancet?" "What harm in the world do you fancy _that_ is going to do you?" "No, comrades," a prisoner strikes in, "the cuppings are a mere nothing. I know the taste of them. But the most horrid thing is when they pull your ears for a long time together. That just shuts you up." All the prisoners burst out laughing. "Have you had them pulled?" "By Jove, yes, I should think he had." "That's why they stick upright, like hop-poles." This convict, Chapkin by name, really had long and quite erect ears. He had long led a vagabond life, was still quite young, intelligent, and quiet, and used to talk with a dry sort of humour with much seriousness on the surface, which made his stories very comical. "How in the world was I to know you had had your ears pulled and lengthened, brainless idiot?" began Oustiantsef, once more wrathfully addressing Chapkin, who, however, vouchsafed no attention to his companion's obliging apostrophe. "Well, who did pull your ears for you?" some one asked. "Why, the police superintendent, by Jove, comrades! Our offence was wandering about without fixed place of abode. We had just got into K----, I and another tramp, Eptinie; he had no family name, that fellow. On the way we had fixed ourselves up a little in the hamlet of Tolmina; yes, there is a hamlet that's got just that name--Tolmina. Well, we get to the town, and are just looking about us a little to see if there's a good stroke of tramp-business to do, after which we mean to flit. You know, out in the open country you're as free as air; but it's not exactly the same thing in the town. First thing, we go into a public-house; as we open the door we give a sharp look all round. What's there? A sunburnt fellow in a German coat all out at elbows, walks right up to us. One thing and another comes up, when he says to us: "'Pray excuse me for asking if you have any papers [passport] with you?' "'No, we haven't.' "'Nor have we either. I have two comrades besides these with me who are in the service of General Cuckoo [forest tramps, _i.e._, who hear the birds sing]. We have been seeing life a bit, and just now haven't a penny to bless ourselves with. May I take the liberty of requesting you to be so obliging as to order a quart of brandy?' "'With the greatest pleasure,' that's what we say to him. So we drink together. Then they tell us of a place where there's a real good stroke of business to be done--a house at the end of the town belonging to a wealthy merchant fellow; lots of good things there, so we make up our minds to try the job during the night; five of us, and the very moment we are going at it they pounce on us, take us to the station-house, and then before the head of the police. He says, 'I shall examine them myself.' Out he goes with his pipe, and they bring in for him a cup of tea; a sturdy fellow it was, with whiskers. Besides us five, there were three other tramps, just brought in. You know, comrades, that there's nothing in this world more funny than a tramp, because he always forgets everything he's done. You may thump his head till you're tired with a cudgel; all the same, you'll get but one answer, that he has forgotten all about everything. "The police superintendent then turns to me and asks me squarely, "'Who may you be?' "I answer just like all the rest of them: "'I've forgotten all about it, your worship.' "'Just you wait; I've a word or two more to say to you. I know your phiz.' "Then he gives me a good long stare. But I hadn't seen him anywhere before, that's a fact. "Then he asks another of them, 'Who are you?' "'Mizzle-and-scud, your worship.' "'They call you Mizzle-and-scud?' "'Precisely that, your worship.' "'Well and good, you're Mizzle-and-scud! And you?' to a third. "'Along-of-him, your worship.' "'But what's your name--your name?' "'Me? I'm called Along-of-him, your worship.' "'Who gave you that name, hound?' "'Very worthy people, your worship. There are lots of worthy people about; nobody knows that better than your worship.' "'And who may these "worthy people" be?' "'Oh, Lord, it has slipped my memory, your worship. Do be so kind and gracious as to overlook it.' "'So you've forgotten them, all of them, these "worthy people"?' "'Every mother's son of them, your worship.' "'But you must have had relations--a father, a mother. Do you remember them?' "'I suppose I must have had, your worship; but I've forgotten about 'em, my memory is so bad. Now I come to think about it, I'm sure I had some, your worship.' "'But where have you been living till now?' "'In the woods, your worship.' "'Always in the woods?' "'Always in the woods!' "'Winter too?' "'Never saw any winter, your worship.' "'Get along with you! And you--what's your name?' "'Hatchets-and-axes, your worship.' "'And yours?' "'Sharp-and-mum, your worship.' "'And you?' "'Keen-and-spry, your worship.' "'And not a soul of you remembers anything that ever happened to you.' "'Not a mother's son of us anything whatever.' "He couldn't help it; he laughed out loud. All the rest began to laugh at seeing him laugh! But the thing does not always go off like that. Sometimes they lay about them, these police, with their fists, till you get every tooth in your jaw smashed. Devilish big and strong these fellows, I can tell you. "'Take them off to the lock-up,' said he. 'I'll see to them in a bit. As for you, stop here!' "That's me. "'Just you go and sit down there.' "Where he pointed to there was paper, a pen, and ink; so thinks I, 'What's he up to now?' "'Sit down,' he says again; 'take the pen and write.' "And then he goes and clutches at my ear and gives it a good pull. I looked at him in the sort of way the devil may look at a priest. "'I can't write, your worship.' "'Write, write!' "'Have mercy on me, your worship!' "'Write your best; write, write!' "And all the while he keeps pulling my ear, pulling and twisting. Pals, I'd rather have had three hundred strokes of the cat; I tell you it was hell. "'Write, write!' that was all he said." "Had the fellow gone mad? What the mischief was it? "Bless us, no! A little while before, a secretary had done a stroke of business at Tobolsk: he had robbed the local treasury and gone off with the money; he had very big ears, just as I have. They had sent the fact all over the country. I answered to that description; that's why he tormented me with his 'Write, write!' He wanted to find out if I could write, and to see my hand. "'A regular sharp chap that! Did it hurt?' "'Oh, Lord, don't say a word about it, I beg.' "Everybody burst out laughing. "'Well, you did write?' "'What the deuce was there to write? I set my pen going over the paper, and did it to such good account that he left off torturing me. He just gave me a dozen thumps, regulation allowance, and then let me go about my business: to prison, that is.' "'Do you really know how to write?' "'Of course I did. What d'ye mean? Used to very well; forgotten the whole blessed thing, though, ever since they began to use pens for it.'" Thanks to the gossip talk of the convicts who filled the hospital, time was somewhat quickened for us. But still, Almighty God, how wearied and bored we were! Long, long were the days, suffocating in their monotony, one absolutely the same as another. If only I had had a single book. For all that I went often to the infirmary, especially in the early days of my banishment, either because I was ill or because I needed rest, just to get out of the worse parts of the prison. In those life was indeed made a burden to us, worse even than in the hospital, especially as regards the effect upon moral sentiment and good feeling. We of the nobility were the never-ceasing objects of envious dislike, quarrels picked with us all the time, something done every moment to put us in the wrong, looks filled with menacing hatred unceasingly directed on us! Here, in the sick-rooms, one lived on a sort of footing of equality, there was something of comradeship. The most melancholy moment of the twenty-four hours was evening, when night set in. We went to bed very early. A smoky lamp just gave us one point of light at the very end of the room, near the door. In our corner we were almost in complete darkness. The air was pestilential, stifling. Some of the sick people could not get to sleep, would rise up, and remain sitting for an hour together on their beds, with their heads bent, as though they were in deep reflection. These I would look at steadily, trying to guess what they might be thinking of; thus I tried to kill time. Then I became lost in my own reveries; the past came up to me again, showing itself to my imagination in large powerful outlines filled with high lights and massive shadows, details that at any other time would have remained in oblivion, presented themselves in vivid force, making on me an impression impossible under any other circumstances. Then I would begin to muse dreamily on the future. When shall I leave this place of restraint, this dreadful prison? Whither betake myself? What will then befall me? Shall I return to the place of my birth? So I brood, and brood, until hope lives once again in my soul. Another time I would begin to count, one, two, three, etc., to see if sleep could be won that way. I would set sometimes as far as three thousand, and was as wakeful as ever. Then somebody would turn in his bed. Then there's Oustiantsef coughing, that cough of the hopelessly-gone consumptive, and then he would groan feebly, and stammer, "My God, I've sinned, I've sinned!" How frightful it was, that voice of the sick man, that broken, dying voice, in the midst of that silence so dead and complete! In a corner there are some sick people not yet asleep, talking in a low voice, stretched on their pallets. One of them is telling the story of his life, all about things infinitely far off; things that have fled for ever; he is talking of his trampings through the world, of his children, his wife, the old ways of his life. And the very accent of the man's voice tells you that all those things are for ever over for him, that he is as a limb cut off from the world of men, cut off, thrown aside; there is another, listening intently to what he is saying. A weak, feeble sort of muttering and murmuring comes to one's ear from far-off in the dreary room, a sound as of far-off water flowing somewhere.... I remember that one time, during a winter night that seemed as if it would never end, I heard a story which at first seemed as if it were the stammerings of a creature in nightmare, or the delirium of fever. Here it is: FOOTNOTE: [4] What I relate about corporal punishment took place during my time. Now, as I am told, everything is changed, and is changing still. CHAPTER IV. THE HUSBAND OF AKOULKA It was late at night, about eleven o'clock. I had been sleeping some time and woke up with a start. The wan and weak light of the distant lamp barely lit the room. Nearly everybody was fast asleep, even Oustiantsef; in the quiet of the night I heard his difficult breathing, and the rattlings in his throat with every respiration. In the ante-chamber sounded the heavy and distant footsteps of the patrol as the men came up. The butt of a gun struck the floor with its low and heavy sound. The door of the room was opened, and the corporal counted the sick, stepping softly about the place. After a minute or so he closed the door again, leaving a fresh sentinel there; the patrol went off, silence reigned again. It was only then that I observed two prisoners, not far from me, who were not sleeping, and who seemed to be holding a muttered conversation. Sometimes, in fact, it would happen that a couple of sick people, whose beds adjoined and who had not exchanged a word for weeks, would all of a sudden break out into conversation with one another, in the middle of the night, and one of them would tell the other his history. Probably they had been speaking for some considerable time. I did not hear the beginning of it, and could not at first seize upon their words, but little by little I got familiar with the muttered sounds, and understood all that was going on. I had not the least desire for sleep on me, so what could I do but listen. One of them was telling his story with some warmth, half-lying on his bed, with his head lifted and stretched towards his companion. He was plainly excited to no little degree; the necessity of speech was on him. The man listening was sitting up on his pallet, with a gloomy and indifferent air, his legs stretched out flat on the mattress, and now and again murmured some words in reply, more out of politeness than interest, and kept stuffing his nose with snuff from a horn box. This was the soldier Techérévin, one of the company of discipline; a morose, cold-reasoning pedant, an idiot full of _amour propre_; while the narrator was Chichkof, about thirty years old; this was a civilian convict, whom up to that time I had not at all observed; and during the whole time I was at the prison I never could get up the smallest interest in him, for he was a conceited, heady fellow. Sometimes he would hold his tongue for weeks together, and look sulky and brutal enough for anything; then all of a sudden he would strike into anything that was going on, behave insufferably, go into a white heat about nothing at all, and tell you long stories with nothing in them whatever about one barrack or another, blowing abuse on all the world, and acting like a man beside himself. Then some one would give him a hiding, and he would have another fit of silence. He was a mean and cowardly fellow, and the object of general contempt. His stature was low, he had little flesh on him, he had wandering eyes, though they sometimes got mixed and seemed filled with a stupid sort of thinking. When he told you anything he worked himself into a fever, gesticulated wildly, suddenly broke off and went to another subject, lost himself in fresh details, and at last forgot altogether what he was talking about. He often got into squabbles, this Chichkof, and when he poured insult on his adversary, he spoke with a sentimental whine and was affected nearly to tears. He was not a bad hand at playing the _balalaika_, and had a weakness for it; on fête days he would show you his dancing powers when others set him at it, and he danced by no means badly. You could easily enough make him do what you wanted ... not that he was of a complying turn, but he liked to please and to get intimate with fellows. For some considerable time I couldn't understand the story Chichkoff was telling; that night I mean. It seemed to me as though he were constantly rambling from the point to talk of something else. Perhaps he had observed that Tchérévine was paying little attention to the narrative, but I fancy that he was minded to overlook this indifference, so as not to take offence. "When he went out on business," he continued, "every one saluted him politely, paid him every respect ... a fellow with money that." "You say that he was in some trade or other." "Yes; trade indeed! The trading class in my country is wretchedly ill-off; just poverty-stricken. The women go to the river and fetch water from ever such a distance to water their gardens. They wear themselves to the very bone, and, for all that, when winter comes, they haven't got enough to make a mere cabbage soup. I tell you it's starvation. But that fellow had a good lump of land, which his labourers cultivated; he had three. Then he had hives, and sold his honey; he was a cattle-dealer too; a much respected man in our parts. He was very old and quite gray, his seventy years lay heavy on his old bones. When he came to the market-place with his fox-skin pelisse, everybody saluted him. "'Good-day, daddy Aukoudim Trophimtych!' "'Good-day,' he'd return. "'How are you getting along;' he never looked down on any one. "'God keep you, Aukoudim Trophimtych!' "'How goes business with you?' "'Business is as good as tallow's white with me; and how's yours, daddy?' "'We've just got enough of a livelihood to pay the price of sin; always sweating over our bit of land.' "'Lord preserve you, Aukoudim Trophimtych!' "He never looked down on anybody. All his advice was always worth having; every one of his words was worth a rouble. A great reader he was, quite a man of learning; but he stuck to religious books. He would call his old wife and say to her, 'Listen, woman, take well in what I say;' then he would explain things. His old Marie Stépanovna was not exactly an old woman, if you please; it was his second wife; he had married her to have children, his first wife had not brought him any. He had two boys still quite young, for the second of them was born when his father was close on sixty; Akoulka, his daughter, was eighteen years old, she was the eldest." "Your wife? Isn't it so?" "Wait a bit, wait. Then Philka Marosof begins to kick up a row. Says he to Aukoudim: 'Let's split the difference. Give me back my four hundred roubles. I'm not your beast of burden; I don't want to do any more business with you, and I don't want to marry your Akoulka. I want to have my fling now that my parents are dead. I'll liquor away my money, then I'll engage myself, 'list for a soldier; and in ten years I'll come back here a field-marshal!' Aukoudim gave him back his money--all he had of his. You see he and Philka's father had both put in money and done business together. "'You're a lost man,' that's what he said to Philka. "'Whether I'm a lost man or not, old gray-beard, you're the biggest cheat I know. You'd try to screw a fortune out of four farthings, and pick up all the dirt about to do it with. I spit upon it. There you are piling up here, digging deep there, the devil only knows why. I've got a will of my own, I tell you. All the same I won't take your Akoulka; I've slept with her already.' "'How dare you insult a respectable father--a respectable girl? When did you sleep with her, you spawn of the sucker, you dog, you hound, you----?' said Aukoudim shaking with passion. (Philka told us all this later). "'I'll not only not marry your daughter, but I'll take good care that nobody marries her, not even Mikita Grigoritch, for she's a disreputable girl. We had a fine time together, she and I, all last autumn. I don't want her at any price. All the money in the world wouldn't make me take her.' "Then the fellow went and had high jinks for a while. All the town was as one man in sending up a cry against him. He got a lot of other fellows round him, for he had a heap of money. Three months he had of it. Such recklessness as you never heard of. Every penny went. "'I want to see the end of this money. I'll sell the house; everything; then I'll 'list or go on the tramp.' "He was drunk from morning to evening, and went about with a carriage and pair. "The girls liked him well, I tell you, for he played the guitar very nicely." "Then it is true that he had been too well with this Akoulka?" "Wait, wait, can't you? I had just buried my father. My mother lived by baking gingerbread. We got our livelihood by working for Aukoudim; barely enough to eat, a precious hard life it was. We had a bit of land the other side of the woods, and grew corn there; but when my father died I went on a spree. I made my mother give me money; but I had to give her a good hiding first." "You were very wrong to beat her; a great sin that?" "Sometimes I was drunk the whole blessed day. We had a house that was just tumbling to pieces with dry rot, still it was our own; we were as near famished as could be; for weeks together we had nothing but rags to chew. Mother nearly killed me with one stupid trick or another, but I didn't care a curse. Philka Marosof and I were always together day and night. 'Play the guitar to me,' he'd say, 'and I'll lie in bed the while. I'll throw money to you, for I'm the richest chap in the world!' The fellow could not speak without lying. There was only one thing. He wouldn't touch a thing if it had been stolen. 'I'm no thief, I'm an honest man. Let's go and daub Akoulka's door with pitch,[5] for I won't have her marry Mikita Grigoritch, I'll stick to that.' "The old man had long meant to give his daughter to this Mikita Grigoritch. He was a man well on in life, in trade too, and wore spectacles. When he heard the story of Akoulka's bad conduct, he said to the old father, 'That would be a terrible disgrace for me, Aukoudim Trophimtych; on the whole, I've made up my mind not to marry; it's to late.' "So we went and daubed Akoulka's door all over with pitch. When we'd done that her folks beat her so that they nearly killed her. "Her mother, Marie Stépanovna, cried, 'I shall die of it,' while the old man said, 'If we were in the days of the patriarchs, I'd have hacked her to pieces on a block. But now everything is rottenness and corruption in this world.' Sometimes the neighbours from one end of the street to the other heard Akoulka's screams. She was whipped from morning to evening, and Philka would cry out in the market-place before everybody: "Akoulka's a jolly girl to get drunk with. I've given it those people between the eyes, they won't forget me in a hurry.' "Well, one day, I met Akoulka, she was going for water with her bucket, so I cried out to her: 'A fine morning, pet Akoulka Koudimovna! you're the girl who knows how to please fellows. Who's living with you now, and where do you get your money for your finery?' That's just what I said to her; she opened her eyes as wide as you please. No more flesh on her than on a log of wood. She had only just given me a look, but her mother thought she was larking with me, and cried from her door-step, 'Impudent hussy, what do you mean by talking with that fellow?' And from that moment they began to beat her again. Sometimes they hided her for an hour together. The mother said, 'I give her the whip because she isn't my daughter any more.'" "She was then as bad as they said?" "Now you just listen to my story, nunky, will you? Well, we used to get drunk all the time with Philka. One day when I was abed, mother comes and says: "'What d'ye mean by lying in bed, you hound, you thief!' She abused me for some time, then she said, 'Marry Akoulka. They'll be glad to give her to you, and they'll give three hundred roubles with her.' "'But,' says I, 'all the world knows that she's a bad girl----' "'Hist, the marriage ceremony cures all that; besides, she'll always be in fear of her life from you, so you'll be in clover together. Their money would make us comfortable; I've spoken about the marriage already to Marie Stépanovna, we're of one mind about it.' "So I say, 'Let's have twenty roubles down on the spot, and I'll have her.' "Well, you needn't believe it unless you please, but I was drunk right up to the wedding-day. Then Philka Marosof kept threatening me all the time. "'I'll break every bone in your body, a nice fellow you to be engaged, and to Akoulka; if I like I'll sleep every blessed night with her when she's your wife.' "'You're a hound, and a liar,' that's what I said to him. But he insulted me so in the street, before everybody, that I ran to Aukoudim's and said, 'I won't marry her unless I have fifty roubles down this moment.'" "And they really did give her to you in marriage?" "Me? Why not, I should like to know? We were respectable people enough. Father had been ruined by a fire a little before he died; he had been a richer man than Aukoudim Trophimtych. "'A fellow without a shirt to his back like you ought to be only too happy to marry my daughter;' that's what old Aukoudim said. "'Just you think of your door, and the pitch that went on it,' I said to him. "'Stuff and nonsense,' said he, 'there's no proof whatever that the girl's gone wrong.' "'Please yourself. There's the door, and you can go about your business; but give back the money you've had!' "Then Philka Marosof and I settled it together to send Mitri Bykoff to Father Aukoudim to tell him that we'd insult him to his face before everybody. Well, I had my skin as full as it could hold right up to the wedding-day. I wasn't sober till I got into the church. When they took us home after church the girl's uncle, Mitrophone Stépanytch, said: "'This isn't a nice business; but it's over and done now.' "Old Aukoudim was sitting there crying, the tears rolled down on his gray beard. Comrade, I'll tell you what I had done: I had put a whip into my pocket before we went to church, and I'd made up my mind to have it out of her with that, so that all the world might know how I'd been swindled into the marriage, and not think me a bigger fool than I am." "I see, and you wanted her to know what was in store for her. Ah, was----?" "Quiet, nunky, quiet! Among our people I'll tell you how it is; directly after the marriage ceremony they take the couple to a room apart, and the others remain drinking till they return. So I'm left alone with Akoulka; she was pale, not a bit of colour on her cheeks; frightened out of her wits. She had fine hair, supple and bright as flax, and great big eyes. She scarcely ever was known to speak; you might have thought she was dumb; an odd creature, Akoulka, if ever there was one. Well, you can just imagine the scene. My whip was ready on the bed. Well, she was as pure a girl as ever was, not a word of it all was true." "Impossible!" "True, I swear; as good a girl as any good family might wish." "Then, brother, why--why--why had she had to undergo all that torture? Why had Philka Marosof slandered her so?" "Yes, why, indeed?" "Well, I got down from the bed, and went on my knees before her, and put my hands together as if I were praying, and just said to her, 'Little mother, pet, Akoulka Koudimovna, forgive me for having been such an idiot as to believe all that slander; forgive me. I'm a hound!' "She was seated on the bed, and gazed at me fixedly. She put her two hands on my shoulders and began to laugh; but the tears were running all down her cheeks. She sobbed and laughed all at once. "Then I went out and said to the people in the other room, 'Let Philka Marosof look to himself. If I come across him he won't be long for this world.' "The old people were beside themselves with delight. Akoulka's mother was ready to throw herself at her daughter's feet, and sobbed. "Then the old man said, 'If we had known really how it was, my dearest child, we wouldn't have given you a husband of that sort.' "You ought to have seen how we were dressed the first Sunday after our marriage--when we left church! I'd got a long coat of fine cloth, a fur cap, with plush breeches. She had a pelisse of hareskin, quite new, and a silk kerchief on her head. One was as fine as the other. Everybody admired us. I must say I looked well, and pet Akoulka did too. One oughtn't to boast, but one oughtn't to sing small. I tell you people like us are not turned out by the dozen." "Not a doubt about it." "Just you listen, I tell you. The day after my marriage I ran off from my guests, drunk as I was, and went about the streets crying, 'Where's that scoundrel of a Philka Marosof? Just let him come near me, the hound, that's all!' I went all over the market-place yelling that out. I was as drunk as a man could be, and stand. "They went after me and caught me close to Vlassof's place. It took three men to get me back again to the house. "Well, nothing else was spoken about all over the village. The girls said, when they met in the market-place, 'Well, you've heard the news--Akoulka was all right!' "A little while after I do come across Philka Marosof, who said to me before everybody, strangers to the place, too, 'Sell your wife, and spend the money on drink. Jackka the soldier only married for that; he didn't sleep one night with his wife; but he got enough to keep his skin full for three years.' "I answered him, 'Hound!' "'But,' says he, 'you're an idiot! You didn't know what you were about when you married--you were drunk. How could you tell all about it?' "So off I went to the house, and cried out to them 'You married me when I was drunk.' "Akoulka's mother tried to fasten herself on me; but I cried, 'Mother, you don't know about anything but money. You bring me Akoulka!' "And didn't I beat her! I tell you I beat her for two hours running, till I rolled on the floor myself with fatigue. She couldn't leave her bed for three weeks." "It's a dead sure thing," said Tchérévine phlegmatically; "if you don't beat them they---- Did you find her with her lover?" "No; to tell the truth, I never actually caught her," said Chichkoff after a pause, speaking with effort; "but I was hurt, a good deal hurt, for every one made fun of me. The cause of it all was Philka. 'Your wife is just made for everybody to look at,' said he. "One day he invited us to see him, and then he went at it. 'Do just look what a good little wife he has! Isn't she tender, fine, nicely brought up, affectionate, full of kindness for all the world? I say, my lad, have you forgotten how we daubed their door with pitch?' I was full at that moment, drunk as may be; then he seized me by the hair and had me down upon the ground before I knew where I was. 'Come along--dance; aren't you Akoulka's husband? I'll hold your hair for you, and you shall dance; it will be good fun.' 'Dog!' said I to him. 'I'll bring some jolly fellows to your house,' said he, 'and I'll whip your Akoulka before your very eyes just as long as I please.' Would you believe it? For a whole month I daren't go out of the house, I was so afraid he'd come to us and drag my wife through the dirt. And how I did beat her for it!" "What was the use of beating her? You can tie a woman's hands, but not her tongue. You oughtn't to give them a hiding too often. Beat 'em a bit, then scold 'em well, then fondle 'em; that's what a woman is made for." Chichkoff remained quite silent for a few moments. "I was very much hurt," he went on; "I began it again just as before. I beat her from morning till night for nothing; because she didn't get up from her seat the way I liked; because she didn't walk to suit me. When I wasn't hiding her, time hung heavy on my hands. Sometimes she sat by the window crying silently--it hurt my feelings sometimes to see her cry, but I beat her all the same. Sometimes her mother abused me for it: 'You're a scoundrel, a gallows-bird!' 'Don't say a word or I'll kill you; you made me marry her when I was drunk, you swindled me.' Old Aukoudim wanted at first to have his finger in the pie. Said he to me one day: 'Look here, you're not such a tremendous fellow that one can't put you down;' but he didn't get far on that track. Marie Stépanovna had become as sweet as milk. One day she came to me crying her eyes out and said: 'My heart is almost broken, Ivan Semionytch; what I'm going to ask of you is a little thing for you, but it is a good deal to me; let her go, let her leave you, daddy Ivan.' Then she throws herself at my feet. 'Do give up being so angry! Wicked people slander her; you know quite well she was good when you married her.' Then she threw herself at my feet again and cried. But I was as hard as nails. 'I won't hear a word you have to say; what I choose to do, I do, to you or anybody, for I'm crazed with it all. As to Philka Marosof, he's my best and dearest friend.'" "You'd begun to play your pranks together again, you and he?" "No, by Jove! He was out of the way by this time; he was killing himself with drink, nothing less. He had spent all he had on drink, and had 'listed for a soldier, as substitute for a citizen body in the town. In our parts, when a lad makes up his mind to be substitute for another, he is master of that house and everybody there till he's called to the ranks. He gets the sum agreed on the day he goes off, but up to then he lives in the house of the man who buys him, sometimes six whole months, and there isn't a horror in the whole world those fellows are not guilty of. It's enough to make folks take the holy images out of the house. From the moment he consents to be substitute for the son of the family then he considers himself their patron and benefactor, and makes them dance as he pipes, or else he goes off the bargain. "So Philka Marosof played the very mischief at the home of this townsman. He slept with the daughter, pulled the master of the house by the beard after dinner, did anything that came into his head. They had to heat the bath for him every day, and, what's more, give him brandy fumes with the steam of the bath: and he would have the women lead him by the arms to the bath room.[6] "When he came back to the man's house after a revel elsewhere, he would stop right in the middle of the road and cry out: "'I won't go in by the door; pull down the fence!' "And they actually _had_ to pull down the fence, though there was the door right at it to let him in. That all came to an end though, the day they took him to the regiment. That day he was sobered sufficiently. The crowd gathered all through the street. "'They're taking off Philka Marosof!' "He made a salute on all sides, right and left. Just at that moment Akoulka was returning from the kitchen-garden. Directly Philka saw her he cried out to her: "'Stop!' and down he jumped from the cart and threw himself down at her feet. "'My soul, my sweet little strawberry, I've loved you two years long. Now they're taking me off to the regiment with the band playing. Forgive me, good honest girl of a good honest father, for I'm nothing but a hound, and all you've gone through is my fault.' "Then he flings himself down before her a second time. At first Akoulka was exceedingly frightened; but she made him a great bow, which nearly bent her double. "'Forgive me, too, my good lad; but I am really not at all angry with you.' "As she went into the house I was at her heels. "'What did you say to him, you she-devil, you?' "Now you may believe it or not as you like, but she looked at me as bold as you please, and answered: "'I love him better than anything or anybody in this world.' "'I say!' "That day I didn't utter one single word. Only towards evening I said to her: 'Akoulka, I'm going to kill you now.' I didn't close an eye the whole night. I went into the little room leading to ours and drank kwass. At daybreak I went into the house again. 'Akoulka, get ready and come into the fields.' I had arranged to go there before; my wife knew it. "'You are right,' said she. 'It's quite time to begin reaping. I've heard that our labourer is ill and doesn't work a bit.' "I put to the cart without saying a word. As you go out of the town there's a forest fifteen versts in length. At the end of it is our field. When we had gone about three versts through the wood I stopped the horse. "'Come, get up, Akoulka; your end is come.' "She looked at me all in a fright, and got up without a word. "'You've tormented me enough. Say your prayers.' "I seized her by the hair--she had long, thick tresses--I rolled them round my arm. I held her between my knees; took out my knife; threw her head back, and cut her throat. She screamed; the blood spurted out. Then I threw away my knife. I pressed her with all my might in my arms. I put her on the ground and embraced her, yelling with all my might. She screamed; I yelled; she struggled and struggled. The blood--her blood--splashed my face, my hands. It was stronger than I was--stronger. Then I took fright. I left her--left my horse and began to run; ran back to the house. "I went in the back way, and hid myself in the old ramshackle bath-house, which we never used now. I lay myself down under the seat, and remained hid till the dead of the night." "And Akoulka?" "She got up to come back to the house; they found her later, a hundred steps from the place." "So you hadn't finished her?" "No." Chichkoff stopped a while. "Yes," said Tchérévine, "there's a vein; if you don't cut it at the first the man will go on struggling; the blood may flow fast enough, but he won't die." "But she was dead all the same. They found her in the evening, and she was cold. They told the police, and hunted me up. They found me in the night in the old bath. "And there you have it. I've been four years here already," added he, after a pause. "Yes, if you don't beat 'em you make no way at all," said Tchérévine sententiously, taking out his snuff-box once more. He took his pinches very slowly, with long pauses. "For all that, my lad, you behaved like a fool. Why, I myself--I came upon my wife with a lover. I made her come into the shed, and then I doubled up a halter and said to her: "'To whom did you swear to be faithful?--to whom did you swear it in church? Tell me that?' "And then I gave it her with my halter--beat her and beat her for an hour and a half; till at last she was quite spent, and cried out: "'I'll wash your feet and drink the water afterwards.' "Her name was Crodotia." FOOTNOTES: [5] Daubing the door of a house, where a young girl lives, is done to show that she is dishonoured. [6] A mark of respect paid in Russia formerly, now disused. CHAPTER V. THE SUMMER SEASON April is come; Holy Week is not far off. We set about our summer tasks. The sun becomes hotter and more brilliant every day; the atmosphere has the spring in it, and acts upon our nervous system powerfully. The convict, in his chains, feels the trembling influence of the lovely days like any other creature; they rouse desires in him, inexpressible longings for his home, and many other things. I think that he misses his liberty, yearns for freedom more when the day is filled with sunlight than during the rainy and melancholy days of autumn and winter. You may observe this positively among convicts; if they _do_ feel a little joy on a beautiful clear day, they have a reaction into greater impatience and irritability. I noticed that in spring there was much more squabbling in our prison; there was more noise, the yelling was greater, there were more fights; during the working hours we would see a man sometimes fixed in a meditative gaze, which seemed lost in the blue distance somewhere, the other side of the Irtych, where stretched the boundless plain, with its flight of hundreds of versts, the free Kirghiz Steppe. Long-drawn sighs came to one's ear, sighs breathed from the depths of the chest; it might seem that the air of those wide and free regions, haunted by their thought, forced the convicts to draw deep respirations, and was a sort of solace to their crushed and fettered souls. "Ah!" cries at last the poor prisoner all at once, with a long, sighing cry; then he seizes his pick furiously, or picks up the bricks, which he has to carry from one place to another. But after a brief minute he seems to forget the passing impression, and begins laughing, or insulting people near, so fitful is his humour; then he attacks the work he has to do with unusual fire, labours with might and main, as if trying to stifle by fatigue the grief that has him by the throat. You see they are fellows of unimpaired vigour, all in the very flower of life, with all their physical and other strength about them. How heavy the irons are during this season! All this is not sentimentality, it is the report of rigorous observation. During the hot season, under a fiery sun, when all one's being, all one's soul, is vividly conscious of, and intimately feels, the unspeakably strong resurrection of nature going on everywhere, it is more difficult to support the confinement, the perpetual surveillance, the tyranny of a will other than one's own. Besides this, it is in spring with the first song of the lark that throughout all Siberia and Russia men set out on the tramp; God's creatures, if they can, break their prison and escape into the woods. After the stifling ditch where they work, after the boats, the irons, the rods and whips, they go vagabondizing where they please, wherever they can make it out best; they eat and drink what they can get, 'tis all the time pot-luck with them; and by night they sleep undisturbed in the woods or in a field, without a care, without the agony of knowing themselves in prison, as if they were God's own birds; their "good-night" is said to the stars, and the eye that watches them is the eye of God. Not altogether a rosy life, by any means; sometimes hunger and fatigue are heavy on them "in the service of General Cuckoo." Often enough the wanderers have not a morsel of bread to keep their teeth going for days and days. They have to hide from everybody, run to earth like marmots; sometimes they are driven to robbery, pillage--nay, even murder. "Send a man there and he becomes a child, and just throws himself on all he sees"; that is what people say of those transported to Siberia. This saying may be applied even more fitly to the tramps. They are almost all brigands and thieves, by necessity rather than inclination. Many of them are hardened to the life, irreclaimable; there are convicts who go off after having served their time, even after they have been put on some land as their own. They ought to be happy in their new state, with their daily bread assured them. Well, it is not so; an irresistible impulse sends them wandering off. This life in the woods, wretched and fearful as it is, but still free and adventurous, has a mysterious seduction for those who have experienced it; among these fugitives you may find to your surprise, people of good habit of mind, peaceable temper, who had shown every promise of becoming settled creatures--good tillers of the land. A convict will marry, have children, live for five years in the same place, then all of a sudden he will disappear one fine morning, abandoning wife and children, to the stupefaction of his family and the whole neighbourhood. One day, I was shown at the convict establishment one of these deserters of the family hearthstone. He had committed no crime--at least, he was under suspicion of none--but all through his life he had been a deserter, a deserter from every post. He had been to the southern frontier of the empire, the other side of the Danube, in the Kirghiz Steppe, in Eastern Siberia, the Caucasus, in a word, everywhere. Who knows? under other conditions this man might have been a Robinson Crusoe, with the passion of travel so on him. These details I have from other convicts, for he did not like talk, and never opened his mouth except when absolutely necessary. He was a peasant, of quite small size, of some fifty years, very quiet in demeanour, with a face so still as to seem quite without any sort of meaning, impassive almost to idiotcy. His delight was to sit for hours in the sun humming a sort of song between his teeth so softly, that five steps off he was inaudible. His features were, so to speak, petrified; he ate little, principally black bread; he never bought white bread or spirits; my belief is, he never had had any money, and that he couldn't have counted it if he had. He was indifferent to everything. Sometimes he fed the prison dogs with his own hand, a thing no one else was known to do; (speaking generally, Russians don't like giving dogs things to eat from the hand). People said that he had been married, twice even, and that he had children somewhere. Why he had been sent as a convict, I have not the least idea. We fellows were always fancying that he would escape; but his hour did not come, or perhaps had come and gone; anyhow, he went through with his punishment without resistance. He seemed an element quite foreign to the medium wherein he had his being, an alien, self-concentrated creature. Still, there was nothing in this deep surface calm which could be trusted; yet, after all, what good would it have been to him to escape from the place? Compared with life at the convict prison, the vagabond age of the forests is as the joys of Paradise. The tramp's lot is wretched enough, but at least free. So it is that every prisoner all over the soil of Russia, becomes restless with the first rays of the smiling spring. Comparatively few form any settled plan for flight, they fear the hindrances in the way and the punishment that may ensue; only one in a hundred, not more, make up his mind to it, but how to do it is a thought that never ceases to haunt the minds of the ninety-nine others. Filled as they are with this longing, anything that looks like giving a chance of success is a comfort to them; then they set about comparing the facts with cases of successful escape. I speak only of prisoners after and under sentence, for prisoners not yet tried and condemned, are much more ready to try at an escape. And those who have been sentenced, rarely get away unless they attempt it in early days. When they have spent two or three years of their time, they put them to a sort of credit-account in their minds, and conclude that it is better to finish with the law and be put on land as a free man, rather than forfeit that time if they fail in escaping, which is always a possibility. Certainly not more than one convict in ten succeeds in _changing his lot_. Those who do, are nearly always men sentenced to an extremely long punishment, or for life. Fifteen, twenty years seem like an eternity to them. Then there is the branding, which is a great difficulty in the way of complete escape. _Changing your lot_ is a technical expression. When a convict is caught trying to escape, he is subjected to formal interrogatory, and will say he wanted to _change his lot_. This somewhat literary formula exactly represents the act in question. No escaped prisoner ever hopes to become a perfectly free man, for he knows that it is nearly impossible; what he looks for is to be sent to some other convict establishment, or to be put on the land, or to be tried again for some offence committed when on the tramp; in a word, to be sent anywhere else, it matters not where, so that he get out of his present prison which has become insufferable to him. All these fugitives, unless they find some unexpected shelter for the winter, unless they meet some one interested in concealing them, or if--last resort--they cannot procure--and sometimes a murder does it--the legal document, which enables them to go about unmolested everywhere; all these fugitives present themselves in crowds, during the autumn, in the towns and at the prisons; they confess themselves to be escaped tramps, pass the winter in jail, and live in the secret hope of getting away the following summer. On me, as well as others, the spring exercised its influence. Well do I remember the avidity with which my gaze fed upon the horizon through the gaps in the palisades; long, long did I stand with my head glued to the pickets, obstinately and insatiably gazing on the grass greening in the ditch surrounding the fortress, and at the blue of the distant sky as it grew denser and denser. My anguish, my melancholy, were heavier on me; as each day wore away the jail became odious, detestable. Hatred for me, as a man of the nobility, filled the hearts of the convicts during these first years, and this feeling of theirs simply poisoned my life for me. Often did I ask to be sent to the hospital, when there was no need of it, merely to be out of the punishment part of the place, to feel myself out of the range of this unrelenting and implacable hostility. "You nobles have beaks of iron, and you tore us to pieces with your beaks when we were serfs," is what the convicts used to say to us. How I envied the people of the lower class who came into the place as prisoners! It was different with them, they were in comradeship with all there from the very first moment. So was it that in the spring, Freedom showing herself as a sort of phantom of the season, the joy diffused throughout all Nature, translated themselves within my soul into a more than doubled melancholy and nervous irritability. As the sixth week of Lent came I had to go through my religious exercises, for the convicts were divided by the sub-superintendent into seven sections--answering to the weeks in Lent--and these had to attend to their devotions according to this roster. Each section was composed of about thirty men. This week was a great solace to me; we went two or three times a day to the church, which was close to the prison. I had not been in church for a long time. The Lenten services, familiar to me from early childhood in my father's house, the solemn prayers, the prostrations--all stirred in me the fibres of the memory of things long, long past, and woke my earliest impressions to fresh life. Well do I remember how happy I was when at morn we went into God's house, treading the ground which had frozen in the night, under the escort of soldiers with loaded guns; the escort remained outside the church. Once within we were massed close to the door so that we could scarcely hear anything except the deep voice of the ministering deacon; now and again we caught a glimpse of a black chasuble or the bare head of the priest. Then it came into my mind how, when a child, I used to look at the common people who formed a compact mass at the door, and how they would step back in a servile way before some important epauletted fellow, or some nobleman with a big paunch, some lady splendidly dressed and of high devotion who, in a hurry to get at the front benches, and ready for a row if there was any difficulty as to their being honoured with the best of places. As it seemed to me then, it was only _there_, near the church door, not far from the entry, that prayer was put up with genuine fervour and humility, only there that, when people did prostrate themselves on the floor it was done with real abasement of self and full sense of unworthiness. And now I myself was in that place of the common people, no, not in their place, for we who were there were in chains and degradation. Everybody kept himself at a distance from us. We were feared, and alms were put in our hands as if we were beggars; I remember that all this gave me the strange sensation of a refined and subtle pleasure. "Let it even be so!" such was my thought. The convicts prayed with deep fervour; every one of them had with him his poor farthing for a little candle, or for their collection for the church expenses. "I too, I am a man," each one of them perhaps said, as he made his offering; "before God we are all equal." After the six o'clock mass we went up to communion. When the priest, _ciforium_ in hand, recited the words, "Have mercy on me as Thou hadst on the thief whom Thou didst save," nearly all the convicts prostrated themselves, and their chains clanked; I think they took these words literally as applied to themselves, and not as being in Scripture. Holy Week came. The authorities presented each of us with an Easter egg, and a small piece of wheaten bread. The townspeople loaded us with benevolences. As at Christmas there was the priest's visitation with the cross, inspecting visit of the heads of departments, larded cabbage, general enlargement of soul, and unlimited lounging, the only difference being, that one could now walk about in the court-yard, and warm oneself in the sun. Everything seemed filled with more light, larger than in the winter, but also more fraught with sadness. The long, endless, summer days seemed peculiarly unbearable on Church holidays. Work days were at least shortened to our sense by the fatigue of work. Our summer labours were much more trying than the winter tasks; our business was principally that of carrying out engineering works. The convicts were set to building, digging, bricklaying, or repairing Government buildings, locksmith's work, or carpentering, or painting. Others went into the brick-fields, and that was looked upon by us as the hardest of all we had laid on us. The brick-fields were situated about four versts from the fortress; through all the summer they sent there, every morning at six o'clock, a gang of fifty convicts. For this gang they used to pick out workmen who had learned no trade in particular. The convicts took with them their bread for the day, the distance was too great for them to come back, eight useless versts, for dinner with the others, so they had a meal when they returned in the evening. Work was assigned to each for the day, but there was so much of it that it was all a man could do, nay, more, to get to the end of it. First, we had to dig and carry the clay, moisten it, and mould it in the ditch, and then make a goodly quantity of bricks, two hundred or so, sometimes fifty more than that. I was only twice sent to the brick-field. The convicts sent to this labour came back in the evening dead tired, and every one of them complained of the others, that he had had the worst of the work put on him. I believe that reproaches of this kind were a pleasure, a consolation to them. Some of them, however, liked the brick-field work, because they got away from the town, and to the banks of the Irtych into open, agreeable country, with the sky overhead; the surroundings were more agreeable than those frightful Government buildings. They were allowed to smoke there in all freedom, and to remain lying down for half-an-hour or so, which was a great pleasure. As for me, I was sent to one of the shops, or else to pound up alabaster, or to carry bricks, which last job I had for two months together. I had to take my tale of bricks from the banks of the Irtych to a distance of about 140 yards, and to pass the ditch of the fortress before getting to the barrack which they were putting up. This work suited me well enough, although the cord with which I carried my bricks sawed my shoulders; what particularly pleased me was that my strength increased sensibly. At the outset I could not carry more than eight bricks at once; each of them weighed about twelve pounds. I got to be able to carry twelve, or even fifteen, which delighted me much. You wanted physical as well as moral strength to be able to bear all the discomforts of that accursed life. There was this, too: I wanted, when I left the place, really to live, not to be half-dead. I took pleasure in carrying my bricks, then; it was not merely that this labour strengthened my body, but because it took me always to the banks of the Irtych. I speak often of this spot, it was the only one where we saw God's _own_ world, a pure and bright horizon, the free desert steppes, whose bareness always produced a strange impression on me. All the other workyards were in the fortress itself, or in its neighbourhood; and the fortress, from the earliest days I was there, was the object of my hatred, and, above all, its appurtenant buildings. The house of the Major Commandant seemed to me a repulsive, accursed place. I never could pass it without casting upon it a look of detestation; while at the river-bank I could forget my miserable self as I sent my gaze over the immense desert space, just as a prisoner may when he looks at the world of freedom through the barred casement of his dungeon. Everything in that place was dear and gracious to my eyes; the sun shining in the infinite blue of heaven, the distant song of the Kirghiz that came from the opposite bank. Sometimes I would fix my sight for a long while upon the poor smoky cabin of some _baïgouch_; I would study the bluish smoke as it curled in the air, the Kirghiz woman busy with her two sheep.... The things I saw were wild, savage, poverty-stricken; but they were free. I would follow the flight of a bird threading its way in the pure transparent air; now it skims the water, now disappears in the azure sky, now suddenly comes to view again, a mere point in space. Even the poor wee floweret fading in a cleft of the bank, which would show itself when spring began, fixed my attention and would draw my tears.... The melancholy of this first year of convict life and hard labour was unendurable, too much for my strength. The anguish of it was so great, I could not notice my immediate surroundings at all; I merely shut my eyes and would not see. Among the creatures with spoiled lives with whom I had to live, I did not yet note those who were capable of thinking and feeling, in spite of their external repulsiveness. There came not to my ears (or if there did I knew it not) one word of kindliness in the midst of the rain of poisonous talk that came down all the time. Still one such utterance there was, simple, straightforward, of pure motive, and it came from the heart of a man who had suffered and endured more than myself. But it is useless to enlarge on this. The great fatigue I underwent was a source of satisfaction, it gave me hope of sound sleep. During the summer sleep was torment, more intolerable than the closeness and infection winter brought with it. Some of the nights were certainly very beautiful. The sun, which had not ceased to inundate the court-yard all the day, hid itself at last. The air freshened, and the night, the night of the steppe, became comparatively cold. The convicts, until shut up in their barracks, walked about in groups, especially on the kitchen side; for that was the place where questions of general interest were by preference discussed, and comments were made upon the rumours from without, often absurd indeed, but always keenly exciting to these men cut off from the world. For example, we suddenly learn that our Major had been roughly dismissed from his post. Convicts are as credulous as children; they know the news to be false, or most unlikely, and that the fellow who brings it is a past master in the art of lying, Kvassoff; for all that they clutch at the nonsensical story, go into high delight over it, are much consoled, and at last quite ashamed to have been duped by a Kvassoff. "I should like to know who'll show _him_ the door?" cries one convict; "don't you fear, he's a fellow who knows how to stick on." "But," says another, "he has his superiors over him." This one is a warm controversialist, and has seen the world. "Wolves don't feed on one another," says a third gloomily, half to himself. _This_ one is an old fellow, growing gray, and he always takes his sour cabbage soup into a corner, and eats it there. "Do you think his superiors will take _your_ advice whether they shall show him the door or not?" adds a fourth, who doesn't seem to care about it at all, giving a stroke to his balalaïka. "Well, why not?" replies the second angrily; "if you _are_ asked, answer what's in your mind. But no, with us fellows it's all mere cry, and when you ought to go at things with a will, everybody sneaks out." "That's _so_!" says the one playing with the balalaïka. "Hard labour and prison are just the things to cause _that_." "It was like that the other day," says the second one, without hearing the remark made to him. "There was a little wheat left, sweepings, a mere nothing; there was some idea of turning the refuse into money; well, look here, they took it to him, and he confiscated it. All economy, you see. Was that _so_, and was it right--yes or no?" "But whom can you complain to?" "To whom? Why, the 'spector (_Inspector_) who's coming." "What 'spector?" "It's true, pals, a 'spector is coming soon," said a youthful convict, who had got some sort of knowledge, had read the "Duchesse de la Vallière," or some book of that sort, and who had been Quartermaster in a regiment; a bit of a wag, whom, as a man of information, the convicts held in a sort of respect. Without paying the least attention to the exciting debate, he goes straight to the cook, and asks him for some liver. Our cooks often deal in victuals of that kind; they used to buy a whole liver, cut it in pieces, and sell it to the other convicts. "Two kopecks' worth, or four?" asks cook. "A four-kopeck cut; I'll eat, the others shall look on and long," says this convict. "Yes, pals, a general, a real general, is coming from Petersburg to 'spect all Siberia; it's so, heard it at the Governor's place." This news produces an extraordinary effect. For a quarter of an hour they ask each other who this General can be? what's his title? whether his grade is higher than that of the Generals of our town? The convicts delight in discussing ranks and degrees, in finding out who's at the head of things, who can make the other officials crook their backs, and to whom he crooks his own; so they get up an argument and quarrel about their Generals, and rude words fly about, all in honour of these high officers--fights, too, sometimes. What interest can _they_ possibly have in it? When one hears convicts speaking of Generals and high officials one gets a measure of their intelligence as they were while still in the world before the prison days. It cannot be concealed that among our people, even in much higher circles, talk about generals and high officials is looked upon as the most serious and refined conversation. "Well, you see, they _have_ sent our Major to the right about, don't ye?" observes Kvassoff, a little, rubicund, choleric, small-brained fellow, the same who had announced the supersession of the Major. "We'll just grease their palm for them," this, in staccato tones from the morose old fellow in the corner who had finished his sour cabbage soup. "I should think he would grease their palms, by Jove," says another; "he has stolen money enough, the brigand. And, only think, he was only a regimental Major before he came here. He's feathered his nest. Why, a little while ago he was engaged to the head priest's daughter." "But he didn't get married; they turned him off, and that shows he's poor. A pretty sort of fellow to get engaged! He's got nothing but the coat on his back; last year, Easter time, he lost all he had at cards. Fedka told me so." "Well, well, pals, I've been married myself, but it's a bad thing for a poor devil; taking a wife is soon done, but the fun of it is more like an inch than a mile," observes Skouratoff, who had just joined in the general talk. "Do you fancy we're going to amuse ourselves by discussing _you_?" says the ex-quartermaster in a superior manner. "Kvassoff, I tell you you're a big idiot! If you fancy that the Major can grease the palm of an Inspector-General you've got things finely muddled; d'ye fancy they send a man from Petersburg just to inspect your Major? You're a precious dolt, my lad; take it from me that it is so." "And you fancy because he's a General he doesn't take what's offered?" said some one in the crowd in a sceptical tone. "I should think he did indeed, and plenty of it whenever he can." "A dead sure thing that; gets bigger, and more, and worse, the higher the rank." "A General _always_ has his palm greased," says Kvassoff, sententiously. "Did _you_ ever give them money, as you're so sure of it?" asks Baklouchin, suddenly striking in, in a tone of contempt; "come, now, did you ever see a General in all your life?" "Yes." "Liar!" "Liar, yourself!" "Well, boys, as he _has_ seen a General, let him say _which_. Come, quick about it; I know 'em all, every man jack." "I've seen General Zibert," says Kvassoff in tones far from sure. "Zibert! There's no General of that name. That's the General, perhaps, who was looking at your back when they gave you the cat. This Zibert was, perhaps, a Lieutenant-Colonel; but you were in such a fright just then, you took him for a General." "No! Just hear me," cries Skouratoff, "for I've got a wife. There was really a General of that name, a German, but a Russian subject. He confessed to the Pope, every year, all about his peccadilloes with gay women, and drank water like a duck, at least forty glasses of Moskva water one after the other; that was the way he got cured of some disease. I had it from his valet." "I say! And the carp didn't swim in his belly?" this from the convict with the balalaïka. "Be quiet, fellows, can't you--one's talking seriously, and there they are beginning their nonsense again. Who's the 'spector that's coming?" This was put by a convict who always seemed full of business, Martinof, an old man who had been in the Hussars. "Set of lying fellows!" said one of the doubters. "Lord knows where they get it all from; it's all empty talk." "It's nothing of the sort," observes Koulikoff, majestically silent hitherto, in dogmatic tones. "The man coming is big and fat, about fifty years, with regular features, and proud, contemptuous manners, on which he prides himself." Koulikoff is a Tsigan, a sort of veterinary surgeon, makes money by treating horses in town, and sells wine in our prison. He's no fool, plenty of brain, memory well stocked, lets his words fall as carefully as if every one of 'em was worth a rouble. "It's true," he went on very calmly, "I heard of it only last week; it's a General with bigger epaulettes than most, and he's going to inspect all Siberia. They grease his palm well for him, that's sure enough; but not our Major with his eight eyes in his head. He won't dare to creep in about _him_, for you see, pals, there are Generals and Generals, as there are fagots and fagots. It's just this, and you may take it from me, our Major will remain where he is. _We're_ fellows with no tongue, we've no right to speak; and as to our chiefs here, they're not going to say a word against him. The 'spector will come into our jail, give a look round, and go off at once; he'll say it was all right." "Yes, but the Major's in a fright; he's been drunk since morning." "And this evening he had two van-loads of things taken away; Fedka says so." "You may scrub a nigger, he'll never be white. Is it the first time you've seen him drunk, hey?" "No! It will be a devil of a shame if the General does nothing to him," said the convicts, who began to get highly excited. The news of the arrival of the Inspector went through the prison. The prisoners went everywhere about the court-yard retailing the important fact. Some held their tongues and kept cool, trying to look important; some were really indifferent to it. Some of the convicts sat down on the steps of the doors to play the balalaïka, while some went on with their gossip. Some groups were singing in a drawling voice, but the whole court-yard was upset and excited generally. About nine o'clock they counted us, and quartered us in our barracks, which were closed for the night. A short summer night it was, so we were roused up at five o'clock in the morning, yet nobody had managed to sleep before eleven, for up to that hour there was conversation and all sort of movement was going on; sometimes, too, games of cards were made up, as in winter. The heat was intolerable, stifling. True, the open window let in some of the cool night air, but the convicts kept tossing themselves on their wooden beds as if delirious. Fleas countless. There were enough of them in winter; but when spring came they multiplied in proportions so formidable that I couldn't believe it before I had to endure them. And as the summer went on the worse it was with them. I found out that one _could_ get used to fleas; but for all that, the torment of them is so great that it throws you into a fever; even when you get slumber you quite feel it is not sleep, you are half delirious, and know it. At last, towards morning, when the enemy is tired and you are deliciously asleep in the freshness of the early hours, suddenly sounds the pitiless morning drum-call. How you curse as you hear them, those sharp, quick strokes; you cower in your semi-pelisse, and then--you can't help it--comes the thought that it will be so to-morrow, the day after, for many, many years, till you are set at liberty. When _will_ it come, this freedom, freedom? Where _is_ it in this world? _Where_ is it hiding? You _have_ to get up, they are walking about you in all directions. The usual noisy row begins. The convicts dress, and hurry to their work. It's true you have an hour you can spend in sleep at noon. What we had been told about the Inspector was really true. The reports were more confirmed every day; and at last it became certain that a General, high in office, was coming from Petersburg to inspect all Siberia, that he was already at Tobolsk. Every day we learned something fresh about it. These rumours came from the town. They told us that there was alarm in all quarters, and that everybody was making preparations to show himself in as favourable a light as might be. The authorities were organising receptions, balls, fêtes of every kind. Gangs of convicts were sent to level the ways in the fortress, smooth away hummocks in the ground, paint the palings and other wood-work, to plaster, do up, and generally repair everything that was conspicuous. Our prisoners perfectly well understood the object of this labour, and their discussions became all the more animated and excited. Their imaginations passed all bounds. They even set about formulating some demands to be set before the General on his arrival, but that did not prevent their going on with their quarrels and violent speeches. Our Major was on hot coals. He came continually to visit the jail, shouted, and threw himself angrily on the fellows more than usual, sent them to the guard-room and punishment for a mere nothing, and watched very severely over the cleanliness and good order of the barracks. Just then, there occurred a little event which did not at all painfully affect this officer as one might have expected, but, on the contrary, caused him a lively satisfaction. One of the convicts struck another with an awl right in the chest, in a place quite near the heart. The delinquent's name was Lomof; the name the victim was known by in the jail was Gavrilka. He was one of those seasoned tramps I've spoken about earlier. Whether he had any other name, I don't know; I never heard any attributed to him, except that one, Gavrilka. Lomof had been a peasant comfortably off in the Government of T----, and district of K----. There were five of them living together, two brothers Lomof, and three sons. They were quite rich peasants; the talk throughout the district was that they had more than 300,000 roubles in paper money. They worked at currying and tanning; but their chief business was usury, harbouring tramps, and receiving stolen goods; all sorts of petty irregular doings. Half the peasants of their district owed them money, and so were in their clutches. They passed for being intelligent and full of cunning, and gave themselves very great airs. A great personage of their province had stopped on his way once at the father Lomof's house, and this official had taken a fancy to him, because of his hardy and unscrupulous talk. Then they took it in their heads they might do exactly as they pleased, and mixed themselves up more and more with illegal doings. Everybody had a grievance against them, and would like to have seen them a hundred feet under the ground; but they got bolder and bolder every day. They were not afraid of the local police or the district tribunals. At last fortune betrayed them; their ruin came, not out of their secret crimes, but from an accusation which was all calumny and falsehood. Ten versts from their hamlet they had a farm where six Kirghiz labourers, long since brought down by them to be no better than slaves, used to pass the autumn. One fine day these Kirghiz were found murdered. An inquiry was set on foot that lasted long, thanks to which no end of atrocious things were brought to light. The Lomofs were accused of having assassinated their workmen. They had themselves told their story to the convicts, all the jail knew it perfectly; they were suspected of owing a great deal of money to the Kirghiz, and, as they were full of greed and avarice in spite of their large fortunes, it was believed they had paid the debt by taking the lives of the poor fellows. While the inquiry and trial went on, their property melted away utterly. The father died, the sons were transported; one of these, with the uncle, was condemned to fifteen years of hard labour. Now, they were perfectly innocent of the crime imputed to them. One fine day Gavrilka, a thorough-paced rascal, known as a tramp, but of very gay and lively turn, avowed himself the author of the crime. As a matter of fact I don't know whether he actually made this avowal himself, but what is sure is that the convicts held him to be the murderer of the Kirghiz. This Gavrilka, while still tramping about, had been mixed up in some way with the Lomofs (his confinement in one jail was for quite a short sentence, for desertion from the army and tramping). He had cut the throats of the Kirghiz--three other marauding fellows had been in it with him--in the hope of setting themselves up a bit with the plunder of the farm. The Lomofs were no favourites with us, I really don't know why. One of them, the nephew, was a sturdy fellow, intelligent and sociable; but his uncle, the one that struck Gavrilka with the awl, was a choleric, stupid rustic, always quarrelling with the convicts, who knocked him about like plaster. All the jail liked Gavrilka for his gaiety and good-humour. The Lomofs got to know, like the rest, that he was the man who committed the crime they were condemned for; but they never got into any quarrel with him. Gavrilka paid no attention whatever to them. The row with Uncle Lomof began about some disgusting girl they had quarrelled over. Gavrilka had boasted of the favour she had shown him. The peasant, mad with jealousy, ended by driving an awl into his chest. Although the Lomofs had been ruined by their trial and sentence, they passed in the jail for being very rich. They had money, a samovar, and drank tea. Our Major knew all about it, and hated the two Lomofs, sparing them no vexation. The victims of his hate explained it by a desire to have them grease his palm well, but they could not, or would not, bring themselves to do it. If Uncle Lomof had struck his awl one hair's breadth further in Gavrilka's breast he would certainly have killed him; as it was, the wound did not much signify. The affair was reported to the Major. I think I see him now as he came up out of breath, but with visible satisfaction. He addressed Gavrilka in an affable, fatherly way: "Tell me, lad, can you walk to the hospital or must they carry you there? No, I think it will be better to have a horse; let them put a horse to this moment!" he cried out to the sub-officer with a gasp. "But I don't feel it at all, your worship; he's only given me a bit of a prick, your worship." "You don't know, my dear fellow, you don't know; you'll see. A nasty place he's struck you in. All depends upon the place. He has given it you just below the heart, the scoundrel. Wait, wait!" he howled to Lomof. "I've got you tight; take him to the guard-house." He kept his promise. Lomof was tried, and, though the wound was slight, there was plainly malice aforethought; his sentence of hard labour was extended for several years, and they gave him a thousand strokes with the rod. The Major was delighted. The Inspector arrived at last. The day after he reached the town, he came to the convict establishment to make his inspection. It was a regular fête-day. For some days everything had been brilliantly clean, washed with great precision. The convicts were all just shaven, their linen quite white and without a stain. (According to the regulations, they wore in summer waistcoats and pantaloons of canvas. Every one had a round black piece sown in at the back, eight centimetres in diameter.) For a whole hour the prisoners had been drilled as to what they should answer, the very words to be used, particularly if the high functionary should take any notice of them. There had been even regular rehearsals. The Major seemed to have lost his head. An hour before the coming in of the Inspector, all the convicts were at their posts, as stiff as statues, with their little fingers on the seams of their pantaloons. At last, just about one o'clock the Inspector made his entry. He was a General, with a most self-sufficing bearing, so much so, that the mere sight of it must have sent a tremor into the hearts of all the officials of West Siberia. He came in with a stern and majestic air, followed by a crowd of Generals and Colonels doing service in our town. There was a civilian, too, of high stature and regular features, in frock-coat and shoes. This personage bore himself very independently and airily, and the General addressed him every moment with exquisite politeness. This civilian also had come from Petersburg. All the convicts were terribly curious as to who he could be, such an important General showing him such deference? We learned who he was and what his office later, but he was a good deal talked about before we knew. Our Major, all spick and span, with orange-coloured collar, made no too favourable impression upon the General; the blood-shot eyes and fiery rubicund complexion plainly told their own story. Out of respect for his superior he had taken off his spectacles, and stood some way off, as straight as a dart, in feverish expectation that something would be asked of him, that he might run and carry out His Excellency's wishes; but no particular need of his services seemed to be felt. The General went all through the barracks without saying a word, threw a glance into the kitchen, where he tasted the sour cabbage soup. They pointed me out to him, telling him that I was an ex-nobleman, who had done this, that, and the other. "Ah!" answered the General. "And how does he conduct himself?" "Satisfactorily for the time being, your Excellency, satisfactorily." The General nodded, and left the jail in a couple of minutes more. The convicts were dazzled and disappointed, and did not know what to be at. As to laying complaints against the Major, that was quite over, could not be thought of. He had, no doubt, been quite well assured as to this beforehand. CHAPTER VI. THE ANIMALS AT THE CONVICT ESTABLISHMENT Gniedko, a bay horse, was bought a little while afterwards, and the event furnished a much more agreeable and interesting diversion to the convicts than the visit of the high personage I have been talking about. We required a horse at the jail for carrying water, refuse matter, etc. He was given to a convict to take care of and use; this man drove him, under escort, of course. Our horse had plenty to do morning and night; it was a worthy sort of beast, but a good deal worn, and had been in service for a long time already. One fine morning, the eve of St. Peter's Day, Gniedko, our bay, who was dragging a barrel of water, fell all of a heap, and gave up the ghost in a few minutes. He was much regretted, so all the convicts gathered round him to discuss his death. Those who had served in the cavalry, the Tsigans, the veterinary fellows, and others, showed a profound knowledge of horses in general and fiercely argued the question; but all that did not bring our bay horse to life again; there he was stretched out and dead, with his belly all swollen. Every one thought it incumbent on him to feel about the poor thing with his hands; finally the Major was informed of what Providence had done in the horse's case, and it was decided that another should be bought at once. St. Peter's Day, quite early after mass, all the convicts being together, horses that were on sale were brought in. It was left to the prisoners to choose an animal, for there were some thorough experts among them, and it would have been difficult to take in 250 men, with whom horse-dealing had been a speciality. Tsigans, Lesghians, professional horse-dealers, townsmen, came in to deal. The convicts were exceedingly eager about the matter as each fresh horse was brought up, and were as amused as children about it all. It seemed to tickle their fancy very much, that they had to buy a horse like free men, just as if it was for themselves and the money was to come out of their own pockets. Three horses were brought and taken away before purchase; the fourth was settled on. The horse-dealers seemed astonished and a little awed at the soldiers of the escort who watched the business. Two hundred men, clean shaven, branded as they were, with chains on their feet, were well calculated to inspire respect, all the more as they were in their own place, at home so to speak, in their own convict's den, where nobody was ever allowed to come. Our fellows seemed to be up to no end of tricks for finding out the real value of a horse brought up; they carefully examined it, handled it with the most serious demeanour, went on as if the welfare of the establishment was bound up with the purchase of this beast. The Circassians took the liberty of jumping upon his back: their eyes shone wildly, they chatted rapidly in their incomprehensible dialect, showed their white teeth, dilating the nostrils of their hooked copper-coloured noses. There were some Russians who paid the most lively attention to their discussion, and seemed ready to jump down their throats; they did not understand a word, but it was plain they did what they could to gather from the expression of the eyes of the fellows whether the horse was good or not. But what could it matter to a convict, especially to some of them, who were creatures altogether down and done for, who never ventured to utter a single word to the others? What _could_ it matter to such as these, whether one horse or another was bought? Yet it seemed as if it did. The Circassians appeared to be most relied on for their opinion, and besides these a foremost place in the discussion was given to the Tsigans, and those who had formerly been horse-dealers. There was a regular sort of duel between two convicts--the Tsigan Koulikoff, who had been a horse-dealer and stealer, and another who had been a professional veterinary, a tricky Siberian peasant, who had been at the establishment and at hard labour for some time, and who had succeeded in getting all Koulikoff's practice in the town. I ought to mention that the veterinary practitioners at the prison, though without diploma, were very much sought after, and that not only the townspeople and tradespeople, but high officials in the city, took their advice when their horses fell ill, rather than that of several regularly diplomatised veterinaries who were at the place. Till Jolkin came, the Siberian peasant Koulikoff had had plenty of clients from whom he had had fees in good hard cash. He was looked on as quite at the head of his business. He was a Tsigan all over in his doings, liar and cheat, and not at all the master of his art he boasted of being. The income he made had raised him to be a sort of aristocrat among our convicts; he was listened to and obeyed, but he spoke little, and expressed an opinion only in great emergencies. He blew his own trumpet loudly, but he really was a fellow of great energy; he was of ripe age, and of quite marked intelligence. When he spoke to us of the nobility, he did so with exquisite politeness and perfect dignity. I am sure that if he had been suitably dressed, and introduced into a club at the capital with the title of Count, he would have lived up to it; played whist, talked to admiration like a man used to command, and one who knew when to hold his tongue. I am sure that the whole evening would have passed without any one guessing that the "Count" was nothing but a vagabond. He had very probably had a very large and varied experience in life; as to his past, it was quite unknown to us. They kept him among the convicts who formed a special section reserved from the others. But no sooner had Jolkin come--he was a simple peasant, one of the "old believers," but just as tricky as it was possible for a moujik to be--the veterinary glory of Koulikoff paled sensibly. In less than two months the Siberian had got from him all his town practice, for he cured in a very short time horses Koulikoff had declared incurable, and which had been given up by the regular veterinaries. This peasant had been condemned and sent to hard labour for coining. It is an odd thing he should ever have been tempted to go into that line of business. He told us all about it himself, and joked about their wanting three coins of genuine gold to make one false. Koulikoff was not a little put out at this peasant's success, while his own glory so rapidly declined. There was he who had had a mistress in the suburbs, who used to wear a plush jacket and top-boots, and here he was now obliged to turn tavern-keeper; so everybody looked out for a regular row when the new horse was bought. The thing was very interesting, each of them had his partisans; the more eager among them got to angry words about it on the spot. The cunning face of Jolkin was all wrinkled into a sarcastic smile; but it turned out quite differently from what was expected. Koulikoff had not the least desire for argument or dispute, he managed cunningly without that. At first he gave way on every point, and listened deferentially to his rival's criticisms, then he caught him up sharply on some remark or other, and pointed out to him modestly but firmly that he was all wrong. In a word, Jolkin was utterly discomfited in a surprisingly clever way, so Koulikoff's side was quite well pleased. "I say, boys, it's no use talking; you can't trip _him_ up. He knows what he is about," said some. "Jolkin knows more about the matter than he does," said others; not offensively, however. Both sides were ready to make concessions. "Then, he's got a lighter hand, besides having more in his head. I tell you that when it comes to stock, horses, or anything else, Koulikoff needn't duck under to anybody." "Nor need Jolkin, I tell you." "There's nobody like Koulikoff." The new horse was selected and bought. It was a capital gelding--young, vigorous, and handsome; an irreproachable beast altogether. The bargaining began. The owner asked thirty roubles; the convicts wouldn't give more than twenty-five. The higgling went on long and hotly. At length the convicts began laughing. "Does the money come out of your own purse?" said some. "What's the good of all this?" "Do you want to save for the Government cashbox?" cried others. "But it's money that belongs to us all, pals," said one. "Us all! It's plain enough that you needn't trouble to grow idiots, they'll come up of themselves without it." At last the business was settled at twenty-eight roubles. The Major was informed, the purchase sanctioned. Bread and salt were brought at once, and the new boarder led in triumph into the jail. There was not one of the convicts, I think, that did not pat his neck or caress his head. The day we got him he was at once put to fetching water. All the convicts gazed on him curiously as he pulled at his barrel. Our waterman, the convict Roman, kept his eyes on the beast with a stupid sort of satisfaction. He was formerly a peasant, about fifty years of age, serious and silent, like all the Russian coachmen, whose behaviour would really seem to acquire some extra gravity by reason of their being always with horses. Roman was a quiet creature, affable all round, said little, took snuff from a box. He had taken care of the horses at the jail for some time before that. The one just bought was the third given into his charge since he came to the place. The coachman's office fell, as a matter of course, to Roman; nobody would have dreamed of contesting his right to it. When the bay horse dropped and died, nobody dreamed of accusing Roman of imprudence, not even the Major. It was the will of God, that was all; as to Roman, he knew his business. That bay horse had become the pet of the jail at once. The convicts were not particularly tender fellows; but they could not help coming to pet him often. Sometimes when Roman, returning from the river, shut the great gate which the sub-officer had opened, Gniedko would stand quite still waiting for his driver, and turning to him as for orders. "Get along, you know the way," Roman would cry to him. Then Gniedko would go off peaceably to the kitchen and stop there, and the cooks and other servants of the place would fill their buckets with water, which Gniedko seemed to know all about. "Gniedko, you're a trump! He's brought his water-barrel himself. He's a delight to see!" they would cry to him. "That's true; he's only a beast, but he knows all that's said to him." "No end of a horse is our Gniedko!" Then the horse shook his head and snorted, just as if he really understood all about his being praised; then some one would bring him bread and salt; and when he had finished with them he would shake his head again, as if to say, "I know you; I know you. I'm a good horse, and you're a good fellow." I was quite fond of regaling Gniedko with bread. It was quite a pleasure to me to look at his nice mouth, and to feel his warm, moist lips licking up the crumbs from the palm of my hand. Our convicts were fond of live things, and if they had been allowed would have filled the barracks with birds and domestic animals. What could possibly have been better than attending to such creatures for raising and softening the wild temper of the prisoners? But it was not permitted; it was not in the regulations; and, truth to say, there was no room there for many creatures. However, in my time some animals had established themselves in the jail. Besides Gniedko, we had some dogs, geese, a he-goat--Vaska--and an eagle, which remained only a short time. I think I have said before that _our_ dog was called Bull, and that he and I had struck up a friendship; but as the lower orders regard dogs as impure animals undeserving of attention, nobody minded him. He lived in the jail itself; slept in the court-yard; ate the leavings of the kitchen, and had no hold whatever on the sympathy of the convicts; all of whom he knew, however, and regarded as masters and owners. When the men assigned to work came back to the jail, at the cry of "Corporal," he used to run to the great gate and gaily welcome the gang, wagging his tail and looking into every man's eyes, as though he expected a caress. But for several years his little ways were as useless as they were engaging. Nobody but myself did caress him; so I was the one he preferred to all others. Somehow--I don't know in what way--we got another dog. Snow he was called. As to the third, Koultiapka, I brought him myself to the place when he was but a pup. Our Snow was a strange creature. A telega had gone over him and driven in his spine, so that it made a curve inside him. When you saw him running at a distance, he looked like twin-dogs born with a ligament. He was very mangy, too, with bleary eyes, and his tail was hairless, and always hanging between his legs. Victim of ill-fate as he was, he seemed to have made up his mind to be always as impassive as possible; so he never barked at anybody, for he seemed to be afraid of getting into some fresh trouble. He was nearly always lurking at the back of the buildings; and if anybody came near he rolled on his back at once, as though he meant to say, "Do what you like with me; I've not the least idea of resisting you." And every convict, when the dog upset himself like that, would give him a passing obligatory kick, with "Ouh! the dirty brute!" But Snow dared not so much as give a groan; and if he was too much hurt, would only utter a little, dull, strangled yelp. He threw himself down just the same way before Bull or any other dog when he came to try his luck at the kitchen; and he would stretch himself out flat if a mastiff or any other big dog came barking at him. Dogs like submission and humility in other dogs; so the angry brute quieted down at once, and stopped short reflectively before the poor, humble beast, and then sniffed him curiously all over. I wonder what poor Snow, trembling with fright, used to think at such moments. "Is this brigand of a fellow going to bite me?"--no doubt something like that. When he had sniffed enough at him, the big brute left him at once, having probably discovered nothing in particular. Snow used then to jump to his feet, and join a lot of four-footed fellows like him who were running down some yutchka or other. Snow knew quite well that no yutchka would ever condescend to the like of him, that she was too proud for that, but it was some consolation to him in his troubles to limp after her. As to decent behaviour, he had but a very vague notion of any such thing. Being totally without any hope in his future, his highest aim was to get a bellyful of victuals, and he was cynical enough in showing that it was so. Once I tried to caress him. This was such an unexpected and new thing to him that he plumped down on the ground quite helplessly, and quivered and whined in his delight. As I was really sorry for him I used to caress him often, so as soon as he caught sight of me he began to whine in a plaintive, tearful way. He came to his end at the back of the jail, in the ditch; some dogs tore him to pieces. Koultiapka was quite a different style of dog. I don't know why I brought him in from one of the workshops, where he was just born; but it gave me pleasure to feed him, and see him grow big. Bull took Koultiapka under his protection, and slept with him. When the young dog began to grow up, Bull was remarkably complaisant with him. He allowed the pup to bite his ears, and pull his skin with his teeth; he played with him as mature dogs are in the habit of doing with the youngsters. It was a strange thing, but Koultiapka never grew in height at all, only in length and breadth. His hide was fluffy and mouse-coloured; one of his ears hung down, while the other was always cocked up. He was, like all young dogs, ardent and enthusiastic, yelping with pleasure when he saw his master, and jumping up to lick his face precisely as if he said: "As long as he sees how delighted I am, I don't care; let etiquette go to the devil!" Wherever I was, at my call, "Koultiapka," out he came from some corner, dashing towards me with noisy satisfaction, making a ball of himself, and rolling over and over. I was exceedingly fond of the little wretch, and I used to fancy that destiny had reserved for him nothing but joy and pleasure in this world of ours; but one fine day the convict Neustroief, who made women's shoes and prepared skins, cast his eye on him; something had evidently struck him, for he called Koultiapka, felt his skin, and turned him over on the ground in a friendly way. The unsuspicious dog barked with pleasure, but next day he was nowhere to be found. I hunted for him for some time, but in vain; at last, after two weeks, all was explained. Koultiapka's natural cloak had been too much for Neustroief, who had flayed him to make up with the skin some boots of fur-trimmed velvet ordered by the young wife of some official. He showed them me when they were done, their inside lining was magnificent; all Koultiapka, poor fellow! A good many convicts worked at tanning, and often brought with them to the jail dogs with a nice skin, which soon were seen no more. They stole them or bought them. I remember one day I saw a couple of convicts behind the kitchens laying their heads together. One of them held in a leash a very fine black dog of particularly good breed. A scamp of a footman had stolen it from his master, and sold it to our shoemakers for thirty kopecks. They were going to hang it; that was their way of disposing of them; then they took the skin off, and threw the body into a ditch used for _ejecta_, which was in the most distant corner of the court, and which stank most horribly during the summer heats, for it was rarely seen to. I think the poor beast understood the fate in store for him. It looked at us one after another in a distressed, scrutinising way; at intervals it gave a timid little wag with its bushy tail between its legs, as though trying to reach our hearts by showing us every confidence. I hastened away from the convicts, who finished their vile work without hindrance. As to the geese of the establishment, they had established themselves there quite fortuitously. Who took care of them? To whom did they belong? I really don't know; but they were a huge delight to our convicts, and acquired a certain fame throughout the town. They had been hatched in the convict establishment somewhere, and their head-quarters was the kitchen, whence they emerged in gangs of their own, when the gangs of convicts went out to their work. But as soon as the drum beat and the prisoners massed themselves at the great gate, out ran the geese after them, cackling and flapping their wings, then they jumped one after the other over the elevated threshold of the gateway; while the convicts were at their work, the geese pecked about at a little distance from them. As soon as they had done and set out for the jail, again the geese joined the procession, and people who passed by would cry out, "I say, there are the prisoners with their friends, the geese!" "How did you teach them to follow you?" some one would ask. "Here's some money for your geese," another said, putting his hand in his pocket. In spite of their devotion to the convicts they had their necks twisted to make a feast at the end of the Lent of some year, I forget which. Nobody would ever have made up his mind to kill our goat Vaska, unless something particular had happened; as it did. I don't know how it got into our prison, or who had brought it. It was a white kid, and very pretty. After some days it had won all hearts, it was diverting and winning. As some excuse was needed for keeping it in the jail, it was given out that it was quite necessary to have a goat in the stables; but he didn't live there, but in the kitchen principally; and after a while he roamed about all over the place. The creature was full of grace and as playful as could be, jumped on the tables, wrestled with the convicts, came when it was called, and was always full of spirits and fun. One evening, the Lesghian Babaï, who was seated on the stone steps at the doors of the barracks among a crowd of other convicts, took it into his head to have a wrestling bout with Vaska, whose horns were pretty long. They butted their foreheads against one another--that was the way the convicts amused themselves with him--when all of a sudden Vaska jumped on the highest step, lifted himself up on his hind legs, drew his fore-feet to him and managed to strike the Lesghian on the back of the neck with all his might, and with such effect that Babaï went headlong down the steps to the great delight of all who were by as well as of Babaï himself. In a word, we all adored our Vaska. When he attained the age of puberty, a general and serious consultation was held, as the result of which, he was subjected to an operation which one of the prison veterinaries executed in a masterly manner. "Well," said the prisoners, "he won't have any goat-smell about him, that's one comfort." Vaska then began to lay on fat in the most surprising way. I must say that we fed him quite unconscionably. He became a most beautiful fellow, with magnificent horns, corpulent beyond anything. Sometimes as he walked, he rolled over on the ground heavily out of sheer fatness. He went with us out to work too, which was very diverting to the convicts and all others who saw; and everybody got to know Vaska, the jailbird. When they worked at the river bank, the prisoners used to cut willow branches and other foliage, and gather flowers in the ditches to ornament Vaska. They used to twine the branches and flowers round his horns and decorate his body with garlands. Vaska then came back at the head of the gang in a splendid state of ornamentation, and we all came after in high pride at seeing him such a beauty. This love for our goat went so far that prisoners raised the question, not a very wise one, whether Vaska ought not to have his horns gilded. It was a vain idea; nothing came of it. I asked Akim Akimitch, the best gilder in the jail, whether you really could gild a goat's horns. He examined Vaska's quite closely, thought a bit, and then said that it could be done, but that it would not last, and would be quite useless. So nothing came of it. Vaska would have lived for many years more, and, no doubt, have died of asthma at last, if, one day as he returned from work at the head of the convicts, his path had not been crossed by the Major, who was seated in his carriage. Vaska was in particularly gorgeous array. "Halt!" yelled the Major. "Whose goat is that?" They told him. "What! a goat in the prison! and that without my leave? Sub-officer!" The sub-officer received orders to kill the goat without a moment's delay; flay him, and sell his skin; and put the proceeds to the prisoners' account. As to the meat, he ordered it to be cooked with the convicts' cabbage soup. The occurrence was much discussed; the goat was much mourned; but nobody dared to disobey the Major. Vaska was put to death close to the ditch I spoke of just now. One of the convicts bought the carcase, paying a rouble and fifty kopecks. With this money white bread was bought for everybody. The man who had bought the goat sold him at retail in a roasted state. The meat was delicious. We had also, during some time, in our prison a steppe eagle; a quite small species. A convict brought it in, wounded, half-dead. Everybody came flocking around it; it could not fly, its right wing being quite powerless; one of its legs was badly hurt. It gazed on the curious crowd wrathfully, and opened its crooked beak, as if prepared to sell its life dearly. When we had looked at him long enough, and the crowd dispersed, the lamed bird went off, hopping on one paw and flapping his wing, and hid himself in the most distant part of the place he could find; there he huddled himself in a corner against the palings. During the three months that he remained in our court-yard he never came out of his corner. At first we went to look at him pretty often, and sometimes they set Bull at him, who threw himself forward with fury, but was frightened to go too near, which mightily amused the convicts. "A wild chap that! He won't stand any nonsense!" But Bull after a while got over his fright, and began to worry him. When he was roused to it, the dog would catch hold of the bird's bad wing, and the creature defended itself with beak and claws, and then got up closer into his corner with a proud, savage sort of demeanour, like a wounded king, fixing his eyes steadily on the fellows looking at his misery. They tired of the sport after a while, and the eagle seemed quite forgotten; but there was some one who, every day, put close to him a bit of fresh meat and a vessel with some water. At first, and for several days, the eagle would eat nothing; at last, he made up his mind to take what was left for him, but he never could be got to take anything from the hand, or in public. Sometimes I succeeded in watching his proceedings at some distance. When he saw nobody, and thought he was alone, he ventured upon leaving his corner and limping along the palisade for a dozen steps or so, then went back; and so forwards and backwards, precisely as if he were taking exercise for his health under medical orders. As soon as ever he caught sight of me he made for his corner as quickly as he possibly could, limping and hopping. Then he threw his head back, opened his mouth, ruffled himself, and seemed to make ready for fight. In vain I tried to caress him. He bit and struggled as soon as he was touched. Not once did he take the meat I offered him, and all the time I remained by him he kept his wicked, piercing eye upon me. Lonely and revengeful he waited for death, defying, refusing to be reconciled with everything and everybody. At last the convicts remembered him, after two months of complete forgetfulness, and then they showed a sympathy I did not expect of them. It was unanimously agreed to carry him out. "Let him die, but let him die in freedom," said the prisoners. "Sure enough, a free and independent bird like that will never get used to the prison," added others. "He's not like us," said some one. "Oh well, he's a bird, and we're human beings." "The eagle, pals, is the king of the woods," began Skouratof; but that day nobody paid any attention to him. One afternoon, when the drum beat for beginning work, they took the eagle, tied his beak (for he struck a desperate attitude), and took him out of the prison on to the ramparts. The twelve convicts of the gang were extremely anxious to know where he would go to. It was a strange thing: they all seemed as happy as though they had themselves got their freedom. "Oh, the wretched brute. One wants to do him a kindness, and he tears your hand for you by way of thanks," said the man who held him, looking almost lovingly at the spiteful bird. "Let him fly off, Mikitka!" "It doesn't suit _him_ being a prisoner; give him his freedom, his jolly freedom." They threw him from the ramparts on to the steppe. It was just at the end of autumn, a gray, cold day. The wind whistled on the bare steppe and went groaning through the yellow dried-up grass. The eagle made off directly, flapping his wounded wing, as if in a hurry to quit us and get himself a shelter from our piercing eyes. The convicts watched him intently as he went along with his head just above the grass. "Do you see him, hey?" said one very pensively. "He doesn't look round," said another; "he hasn't looked behind once." "Did you happen to fancy he'd come back to thank us?" said a third. "Sure enough, he's free; he feels it. It's _freedom_!" "Yes, freedom." "You won't see him any more, pals." "What are you about sticking there? March, march!" cried the escort, and all went slowly to their work. CHAPTER VII. GRIEVANCES At the outset of this chapter, the editor of the "Recollections" of the late Alexander Petrovitch Goriantchikoff thinks it his duty to communicate what follows to his readers. "In the first chapter of the 'Recollections of the House of the Dead,' something was said about a parricide, of noble birth, who was put forward as an instance of the insensibility with which the convicts speak of the crimes they have committed. It was also stated that he refused altogether to confess to the authorities and the court; but that, thanks to the statements of persons who knew all the details of his case and history, his guilt was put beyond all doubt. These persons had informed the author of the 'Recollections,' that the criminal had been of dissolute life and overwhelmed with debts, and that he had murdered his father to come into the property. Besides, the whole town where this parricide was imprisoned told his story in precisely the same way, a fact of which the editor of these 'Recollections' has fully satisfied himself. It was further stated that this murderer, even when in the jail, was of quite a joyous and cheerful frame of mind, a sort of inconsiderate giddy-pated person, although intelligent, and that the author of the 'Recollections' had never observed any particular signs of cruelty about him, to which he added, 'So I, for my part, never could bring myself to believe him guilty.' "Some time ago the editor of the 'Recollections of the House of the Dead,' had intelligence from Siberia of the discovery of the innocence of this 'parricide,' and that he had undergone ten years of the imprisonment with hard labour for nothing; this was recognised and avowed by the authorities. The real criminals had been discovered and had confessed, and the unfortunate man in question set at liberty. All this stands upon unimpeachable and authoritative grounds." To say more would be useless. The tragical facts speak too clearly for themselves. All words are weak in such a case, where a life has been ruined by such an accusation. Such mistakes as these are among the dreadful possibilities of life, and such possibilities impart a keener and more vivid interest to the "Recollections of the House of the Dead," which dreadful place we see may contain innocent as well as guilty men. To continue. I have said that I became at last, in some sense, accustomed, if not reconciled, to the conditions of convict life; but it was a long and dreadful time before I was. It took me nearly a year to get used to the prison, and I shall always regard this year as the most dreadful of my life, it is graven deep in my memory, down to the very least details. I think that I could minutely recall the events and feelings of each successive hour in it. I have said that the other prisoners, too, found it as difficult as I did to get used to the life they had to lead. During the whole of this first year, I used to ask myself whether they were really as calm as they seemed to be. Questions of this kind pressed themselves upon me. As I have mentioned before, all the convicts felt themselves in an alien element to which they could not reconcile themselves. The sense of home was an impossibility; they felt as if they were staying, as a stage upon a journey, in an evil sort of inn. These men, exiles for and from life, seemed either in a perpetual smouldering agitation, or else in deep depression; but there was not one who had not his ordinary ideas of one thing or another. This restlessness, which, if it did not come to the surface, was still unmistakable; those vague hopes of the poor creatures which existed in spite of themselves, hopes so ill-founded that they were more like the promptings of incipient insanity than aught else; all this stamped the place with a character, an originality, peculiarly its own. One could not but feel when one went there that there was nothing like it anywhere else in the whole world. There everybody went about in a sort of waking dream; nor was there anything to relieve or qualify the impressions the place made on the system of every man; so that all seemed to suffer from a sort of hyperæsthetic neurosis, and this dreaming of impossibilities gave to the majority of the convicts a sombre and morose aspect, for which the word morbid is not strong enough. Nearly all were taciturn and irascible, preferring to keep to themselves the hopes they secretly and vainly cherished. The result was, that anything like ingenuousness or frank statement was the object of general contempt. Precisely because these wild hopings were impossible, and, despite themselves, were felt to be so, confessed to their more lucid selves to be so, they kept them jealously concealed in the most secret recesses of their souls; while to renounce them was beyond their powers of self-control. It may be they were ashamed of their imagination. God knows. The Russian character is, in its normal conditions, so positive and sober in its way of looking at life, so pitiless in criticism of its own weaknesses. Perhaps it was this inward misery of self-dissatisfaction which was at the bottom of the impatience and intolerance the convicts showed among themselves, and of the cruel biting things they said to each other. If one of them, more naïve or impartial than the rest, put into words what every one of them had in his mind, painted his castles in the air, told his dreams of liberty, or plans of escape, they shut him up with brutal promptitude, and made the poor fellow's life a burden to him with their sarcasms and jests. And I think those did it most unscrupulously who had perhaps themselves gone furthest in cherishing futile hopes, and indulging in senseless expectations. I have said, more than once, that those among them who were marked by simplicity and candour were looked on rather as being stupid and idiotic; there was nothing but contempt for them. The convicts were so soured and, in the wrong sense, sensitive, that they positively hated anything like amiability or unselfishness. I should be disposed to classify them all broadly, as either good or bad men, morose or cheerful, putting by themselves, as a sort of separate creatures, the ingenious fellows who could not hold their tongues. But the sour-tempered were in far the greatest majority; some of these were talkative, but these were usually of slanderous and envious disposition, always poking their noses into other people's business, though they took good care not to let anybody have a glimpse of the secret thoughts of their _own_ souls; that would have been against the fashions and conventions of this strange, little world. As to the fellows who were really good--very few indeed were they--these were always very quiet and peaceable, and buried their hopes, if they had any, in strict silence; but more of real faith went with their hopes than was the case with the gloomy-minded among the convicts. Stay, there was one category further among our convicts, which ought not to be forgotten; the men who had lost all hope, who were despairing and desperate, like the old man of Starodoub; but these were very few indeed. The old man of Starodoub! This was a very subdued, quiet, old man; but there were some indications of what went on in him, which he could not help giving, and from which, I could not help seeing, that his inward life was one of intolerable horror; still he had _something_ to fall back upon for help and consolation--prayer, and the notion that he was a martyr. The convict who was always reading the Bible, of whom I spoke earlier, the one that went mad and threw himself, brick in hand, upon the Major, was also probably one of those whom hope had altogether abandoned; and, as it is perfectly impossible to go on living without hope of some sort, he threw away his life as a sort of voluntary sacrifice. He declared that he attacked the Major though he had no grievance in particular; all he wanted was to have some torments inflicted on himself. Now, what sort of psychological operation had been going on in _that_ man's soul? No man lives, can live, without having _some_ object in view, and making efforts to attain that object. But when object there is none, and hope is entirely fled, anguish often turns a man into a monster. The object _we_ all had in view was liberty, and getting out of our place of confinement and hard labour. So I try to place our convicts in separately-defined classes and categories; but it cannot well be done. Reality is a thing of infinite diversity, and defies the most ingenious deductions and definitions of abstract thought, nay, abhors the clear and precise classifications we so delight in. Reality tends to infinite subdivision of things, and truth is a matter of infinite shadings and differentiations. Every one of us who were there had his own peculiar, interior, strictly personal life, which lay altogether outside of the world of regulations and our official superintendence. But, as I have said before, I could not penetrate the depths of this interior life in the early part of my prison career, for everything that met my eyes, or challenged my attention in any way, filled me with a sadness for which there are no words. Sometimes I felt nothing short of hatred for poor creatures whose martyrdom was at least as great as mine. In those first days I envied them, because they were among persons of their own sort, and understood one another; so I thought, but the truth was that their enforced companionship, the comradeship where the word of command went with the whip or the rod, was as much an object of aversion to them as it was to myself, and every one of them tried to keep himself as much to himself as possible. This envious hatred of them, which came to me in moments of irritation, was not without its reasonable cause, for those who tell you so confidently that a cultivated man of the higher class does not suffer as a mere peasant does, are utterly in the wrong. That is a thing I have often heard said, and read too. In the abstract, the notion seems correct, and it is founded in generous sentiment, for all convicts are human beings alike; but in reality it is different. In the real living facts of the problem there come in a quantity of practical complications, and only experience can pronounce upon these: experience which I have had. I do not mean to lay it down peremptorily, that the nobleman and the man of culture feel more acutely, sensitively, deeply, because of their more highly developed conditions of being. On the other hand, it is impossible to bring all souls to one common level or standard; neither the grade of education, nor any other thing, furnishes a standard according to which punishment can be meted out. It is a great satisfaction to me to be able to say that among these dreadful sufferers, in a state of things so barbarous and abject, I found abundant proof that the elements of moral development were not wanting. In our convict establishment there were men whom I was familiar with for several years, and whom I looked upon as wild beasts and abhorred as such; well, all of a sudden, when I least expected it, these very men would exhibit such an abundance of feeling of the best kind, so keen a comprehension of the sufferings of others, seen in the light of the consciousness of their own, that one might almost fancy scales had fallen from their eyes. So sudden was it as to cause stupefaction; one could scarcely believe one's eyes or ears. Sometimes it was just the other way: educated men, well brought up, would occasionally display a savage, cynical brutality which nearly turned one's stomach, conduct of a kind impossible to excuse or justify, however much you might be charitably inclined to do so. I lay no stress on the entire change in the habits of life, the food, etc., as to which there come in points where the man of the higher classes suffers so much more keenly than the peasant or working man, who often goes hungry when free, while he always has his stomach-full in prison. We will leave all that out. Let it be admitted that for a man with some force of character these external things are a trifle in comparison with privations of a quite different kind; for all that, such total change of material conditions and habits is neither an easy nor a slight thing. But in the convict's _status_ there are elements of horror before which all other horrors pale, even the mud and filth everywhere about, the scantiness and uncleanness of the food, the irons on your limbs, the suffocating sense of being always held tight, as in a vice. The capital, the most important point of all is, that after a couple of hours or so, every new-comer to a convict establishment, who is of the lower class, shakes down into equality with the rest; he is _at home_ among them, he has his "freedom" of this city of the enslaved, this community of convicted scoundrels, in which one man is superficially like every other man; he understands and is understood, he is looked upon by everybody as _one of themselves_. Now all this is _not_ so in the case of the nobleman. However kindly, just-minded, intelligent a man of the higher class may be, every soul there will hate and despise him during long years; they will neither understand nor believe in him, not one whit. He will be neither friend nor comrade in their eyes; if he can get them to stop insulting him it will be as much as he can do, but he will be alien to them from the first to the last, he will have to feel the grief of a ceaseless, hopeless, causeless solitude and sequestration. Sometimes it is the case that sheer ill-will on the part of the prisoners has nothing to do with bringing about this state of things, it simply cannot be helped; the nobleman is not one of the gang, and there's the whole secret. There is nothing more horrible than to live out of the social sphere to which you properly belong. The peasant, transported from Taganrog to Petropavlosk, finds there Russian peasants like himself; between him and them there can be mutual intelligence; in an hour they will be friends, and live comfortably together in the same izba or the same barrack. With the nobleman it is wholly otherwise; a bottomless abyss separates him from the lower classes, _how_ deep and impassable is only seen when a nobleman forfeits his position and becomes as one of the populace himself. You may be your whole life in daily relations with the peasant, forty years you may do business with him regularly as the day comes--let us suppose it so, at all events--by the calls of official position or administrative duty; you may be his benefactor, all but a father to him--well, you'll never know what is at the bottom of the man's mind or heart. You may think you know something about him, but it is all optical illusion, nothing more. My readers will charge me with exaggeration, but I am convinced I am quite right. I don't go on theory or book-reading in this; in my case the realities of life have given me only too ample time and opportunity for reviewing and correcting my theoretic convictions, which, as to this, are now fixed. Perhaps everybody will some day learn how well founded I am in what I say about this. All this was theory when I first went into the convict establishment, but events, and things observed, soon came to confirm me in such views, and what I experienced so affected my system as to undermine its health. During the first summer I wandered about the place, so far as I was free to move, a solitary, friendless man. My moral situation was such that I could not distinguish those among the convicts who, in the sequel, managed to care for me a little in spite of the distance that always remained between us. There _were_ there men of my own position, ex-nobles like myself, but their companionship was repugnant to me. Here is one of the incidents which obliged me to see at the outset, how solitary a creature I was, and all the strangeness of my position at the place. One day in August, a fine warm day, about one o'clock in the afternoon, a time when, as a rule, everybody took a nap before resuming work, the convicts rose as one man and massed themselves in the court-yard. I had not the slightest idea, up to that moment, that anything was going on. So deeply had I been sunk in my own thoughts, that I saw nearly nothing of what was happening about me of any kind. But it seems that the convicts had been in a smouldering sort of unusual agitation for three days. Perhaps it had begun sooner; so I thought later when I remembered stray remarks, bits of talk that had come to my ears, the palpable increase of ill-humour among the prisoners, their unusual irritability for some time past. I had attributed it all to the trying summer work, the insufferably long days; to their dreamings about the woods, and freedom, which the season brought up; to the nights too short for rest. It may be that all these things came together to form a mass of discontent, that only wanted a tolerably good reason for exploding; it was found in the food. For several days the convicts had not concealed their dissatisfaction with it in open talk in their barracks, and they showed it plainly when assembled for dinner or supper; one of the cooks had been changed, but, after a couple of days, the new comer was sent to the right-about, and the old one brought back. The restlessness and ill-humour were general; mischief was brewing. "Here are we slaving to death, and they give us nothing but filth to eat," grumbled one in the kitchen. "If you don't like it, why don't you order jellies and blanc-mange?" said another. "Sour cabbage soup, why, that's _good_. I delight in it; there's nothing more juicy," exclaimed a third. "Well, if they gave you nothing but beef, beef, beef, for ever and ever, would you like _that_?" "Yes, yes; they ought to give us meat," said a fourth; "one's almost killed at the workshops; and, by heaven! when one has got through with work there one's hungry, hungry; and you don't get anything to satisfy your hunger." "It's true, the victuals are simply damnable." "He fills his pockets, don't you fear!" "It isn't your business." "Whose business is it? My belly's my own. If we were all to make a row about it together, you'd soon see." "Yes." "Haven't we been beaten enough for complaining, dolt that you are?" "True enough! What's done in a hurry is never well done. And how would you set about making a raid over it, tell me that?" "I'll tell you, by God! If everybody will go, I'll go too, for I'm just dying of hunger. It's all very well for those who eat at a better table, apart, to keep quiet; but those who eat the regulation food----" "There's a fellow with eyes that do their work, bursting with envy _he_ is. Don't his eyes glisten when he sees something that doesn't belong to him?" "Well, pals, why don't we make up our minds? Have we gone through enough? They flay us, the brigands! Let's go at them." "What's the good? I tell you ye must chew what they give you, and stuff your mouth full of it. Look at the fellow, he wants people to chew his food for him. We're in prison, and have got to stand it." "Yes, that's it; we're in prison." "That's it always; the people die of hunger, and the Government fills its belly." "That's true. Our eight-eyes (_the Major_) has got finely fat over it; he's bought a pair of gray horses." "He don't like his glass at all, that fellow," said a convict ironically. "He had a bout at cards a little while ago with the vet; for two hours he played without a half-penny in his pocket. Fedka told me so." "That's why we get cabbage soup that's fit for nothing." "You're all idiots! It doesn't matter; _nothing_ matters." "I tell you if we all join in complaining we shall see what he has to say for himself. Let's make up our minds." "_Say_ for himself? You'll get his fist on your pate; that's just all." "I tell you they'll have him up, and try him." All the prisoners were in great agitation; the truth is, the food was execrable. The general anguish, suffering, and suspense seemed to be coming to a head. Convicts are, by disposition, or, as such, quarrelsome and rebellious; but a general revolt is rare, for they can never agree upon it; we all of us felt that since there was, as a rule, more violent talk than doing. This time, however, the agitation did not fall to the ground. The men gathered in groups in their barracks, talking things over in a violent way, and going over all the particulars of the Major's misdoings, and trying to get to the bottom of them. In all affairs of that sort there are ringleaders and firebrands. The ringleaders on such occasions are generally rather remarkable fellows, not only in convict establishments, but among all large organisations of workmen, military detachments, etc. They are always people of a peculiar type, enthusiastic men, who have a thirst for justice, very naïve, simple, and strong, convinced that their desires are fully capable of realisation; they have as much sense as other people; some are of high intelligence; but they are too full of warmth and zeal to measure their acts. When you come across people who really do know how to direct the masses, and get what they want, you find a quite different sort of popular leaders, and one excessively rare among us Russians. The more usual type of leader, the one I first alluded to, does certainly in some sense accomplish their object, so far as bringing about a rising is concerned; but it all ends in filling up the prisons and convict establishments. Thanks to their impetuosity they always come off second-best; but it is this impetuosity that gives them their influences over the masses; their ardent, honest indignation does its work, and draws in the more irresolute. Their blind confidence of success seduces even the most hardened sceptics, although this confidence is generally based on such uncertain, childish reasons that it is wonderful how people can put faith in them. The secret of their influence is that they put themselves at the head, and _go_ ahead, without flinching. They dash forward, heads down, often without the least knowledge worth the name of what they are about, and have nothing about them of the jesuitical practical faculty by dint of which a vile and worthless man often hits his mark and comes uppermost, and will sometimes come all white out of a tub of ink. They _must_ dash their skulls against stone walls. Under ordinary circumstances these people are bilious, irascible, intolerant, contemptuous, often very warm, which really after all is part of the secret of their strength. The deplorable thing is that they never go at what is the essential, the vital part of their task, they always go off at once into details instead of going straight to their mark, and this is their ruin. But they and the mob understand one another; that makes them formidable. I must say a few words about this word "grievance." Some of the convicts had been transported in connection with a "grievance;" these were the most excited among them, notably a certain Martinoff, who had formerly served in the Hussars, an eager, restless, and choleric, but a worthy and truthful, fellow. Another, Vassili Antonoff, could work himself up into anger coolly and collectedly; he had a generally impudent expression, and a sarcastic smile, but he, too, was honest, and a man of his word, and of no little education. I won't enumerate; there were plenty of them. Petroff went about in a hurried way from one group to another. He spoke few words, but he was quite as highly excited as any one there, for he was the first to spring out of the barrack when the others massed themselves in the court-yard. Our sergeant, who acted as sergeant-major, came up very soon in quite a fright. The convicts got into rank, and politely begged him to tell the Major that they wanted to speak with him and put him a few questions. Behind the sergeant came all the invalids, who ranked themselves in face of the convicts. What they asked the sergeant to do frightened the man out of his wits almost, but he dared not refuse to go and report to the Major, for if the convicts mutinied, God only knows what might happen. All the men set over us showed themselves great poltroons in handling the prisoners; then, even if nothing further worse happened, if the convicts thought better of it and dispersed, the sub-officer was still in duty bound to inform the authorities of what had been going on. Pale, and trembling with fright, he went headlong to the Major, without even an effort to bring the convicts to reason. He saw that they were not minded to put up with any of his talk, no doubt. Without the least idea of what was going on, I went into rank myself (it was only later that I heard the earlier details of the story). I thought that the muster-roll was to be called, but I did not see the soldiers who verify the lists, so I was surprised, and began to look about me a little. The men's faces were working with emotion, and some were ghostly pale. They were sternly silent, and seemed to be thinking of what they should say to the Major. I observed that many of the convicts seemed to wonder at seeing me among them, but they turned their glances away from me. No doubt they thought it strange that I should come into the ranks with them, and join in their remonstrances, and could not quite believe it. Then they turned round to me again in a questioning sort of way. "What are you doing here?" said Vassili Antonoff, in a loud, rude voice; he happened to be close to me, and a little way from the rest; the man had always hitherto been scrupulously polite to me. I looked at him in perplexity, trying to understand what he meant by it; I began to see that something extraordinary was up in our prison. "Yes, indeed, what are you about here? Go off into the barrack," said a young fellow, a soldier-convict, whom I did not know till then, and who was a good, quiet lad, "this is none of _your_ business." "Have we not fallen into rank," I answered, "aren't we going to be mustered?" "Why, _he's_ come, too," cried one of them. "Iron-nose,"[7] said another. "Fly-killer," added a third, with inexpressible contempt for me in his tone. This new nickname caused a general burst of laughter. "These fellows are in clover everywhere. We are in prison, with hard labour, I rather fancy; they get wheat-bread and sucking-pig, like great lords as they are. Don't you get your victuals by yourself? What are you doing here?" "Your place is not here," said Koulikoff to me brusquely, taking me by the hand and leading me out of the ranks. He was himself very pale; his dark eyes sparkled with fire, he had bitten his under lip till the blood came; he wasn't one of those who expected the Major without losing self-possession. I liked to look at Koulikoff when he was in trying circumstances like these; then he showed himself just what he was in his strong points and weak. He attitudinised, but he knew how to act, too. I think he would have gone to his death with a certain affected elegance. While everybody was insulting me in words and tones, his politeness was greater than ever; but he spoke in a firm and resolved tone which admitted of no reply. "We are here on business of our own, Alexander Petrovitch, and you've got to keep out of it. Go where you like and wait till it's over ... here, your people are in the kitchens, go there." "They're in hot quarters down there." I did in fact see our Poles at the open window of the kitchen, in company with a good many other convicts. I did not well know what to be at; but went there followed by laughter, insulting remarks, and that sort of muttered growling which is the prison substitute for the hissings and cat-calls of the world of freedom. "He doesn't like it at all! Chu, chu, chu! Seize him!" I had never been so bitterly insulted since I was in the place. It was a very painful moment, but just what was to be expected in the excessive excitement the men were labouring under. In the ante-room I met T--vski, a young nobleman of not much information, but of firm, generous character; the convicts excepted him from the hatred they felt for the convicts of noble birth; they were almost fond of him; every one of his gestures denoted the brave and energetic man. "What are you about, Goriantchikoff?" he cried to me; "come here, come here!" "But what is _it_ all about?" "They are going to make a formal complaint, don't you know it? It won't do them a bit of good; who'll pay any attention to convicts? They'll try to find out the ringleaders, and if we are among them they'll lay it all on us. Just remember what we have been transported for. They'll only get a whipping, but we shall be put regularly to trial. The Major detests us all, and will be only too happy to ruin us; all his sins will fall on our shoulders." "The convicts would tie us hands and feet and sell us directly," added M--tski, when we got into the kitchen. "They'll never have mercy on _us_," added T--vski. Besides the nobles there were in the kitchen about thirty other prisoners who did not want to join in the general complaints, some because they were afraid, others because of their conviction that the whole proceeding would prove quite useless. Akim Akimitch, who was a decided opponent of everything that savoured of complaint, or that could interfere with discipline and the usual routine, waited with great phlegm to see the end of the business, about which he did not care a jot. He was perfectly convinced that the authorities would put it all down immediately. Isaiah Fomitch's nose drooped visibly as he listened in a sort of frightened curiosity to what we said about the affair; he was much disturbed. With the Polish nobles were some inferior persons of the same nation, as well as some Russians, timid, dull, silent fellows, who had not dared to join the rest, and who waited in a melancholy way to see what the issue would be. There were also some morose, discontented convicts, who remained in the kitchen, not because they were afraid, but that they thought this half-revolt an absurdity which could not succeed; it seemed to me that these were not a little disturbed, and their faces were quite unsteady. They saw clearly that they were in the right, and that the issue of the movement would be what they had foretold, but they had a sort of feeling that they were traitors who had sold their comrades to the Major. Jolkin--the long-headed Siberian peasant sent to hard labour for coining, the man who got Koulikoff's town practice from him--was there also, as well as the old man of Starodoub. None of the cooks had left their post, perhaps because they looked upon themselves as belonging specially to the authorities of the place, whom it would be unbecoming, therefore, to join in opposing. "For all that," said I to M--tski, "except these fellows, all the convicts are in it," and no doubt I said it in a way that showed misgivings. "I wonder what in the world _we_ have to do with it?" growled B----. "We should have risked a good deal more than they had we gone with them; and why? _Je hais ces brigands._[8] Why, do you think that they'll bring themselves up to the scratch after all? I can't see what they want putting their heads in the lion's mouth, the fools." "It'll all come to nothing," said some one, an obstinate, sour-tempered old fellow. Almazoff, who was with us too, agreed heartily in this. "Some fifty of them will get a good beating, and that's all the good they'll all get out of it." "Here's the Major!" cried one; everybody ran to the windows. The Major had come up, spectacles and all, looking as wicked as might be, towering with passion, red as a turkey-cock. He came on without a word, and in a determined manner, right up to the line of the convicts. In conjunctures of this sort he showed uncommon pluck and presence of mind; but it ought not to be overlooked that he was nearly always half-seas over. Just then his greasy cap, with its yellow border, and his tarnished silver epaulettes, gave him a Mephistophelic look in my excited fancy. Behind him came the quartermaster, Diatloff, who was quite a personage in the establishment, for he was really at the bottom of all the authorities did. He was an exceedingly capable and cunning fellow, and wielded great influence with the Major. He was not by any means a bad sort of man, and the convicts were, in a general way, not ill-inclined towards him. Our sergeant followed him with three or four soldiers, no more; he had already had a tremendous wigging, and there was plenty more of the same to come, if he knew it. The convicts, who had remained uncovered, cap in hand, from the moment they sent for the Major, stiffened themselves, every man shifting his weight to the other leg; then they remained motionless, and waited for the first word, or the first shout rather, to come from him. They had not long to wait. Before he had got more than one word out, the Major began to shout at the top of his voice; he was beside himself with rage. We saw him from the windows running all along the line of convicts, dashing at them here and there with angry questions. As we were a pretty good distance off, we could not hear what he said or their replies. We only heard his shouts, or rather what seemed shouting, groaning, and grunting beautifully mingled. "Scoundrels! mutineers! to the cat with ye! Whips and sticks! The ringleaders? _You're_ one of the ringleaders!" throwing himself on one of them. We did not hear the answer; but a minute after we saw this convict leave the ranks and make for the guard-house. Another followed, then a third. "I'll have you up, every man of you. I'll---- Who's in the kitchen there?" he bawled, as he saw us at the open windows. "Here with all of you! Drive 'em all out, every man!" Diatloff, the quartermaster, came towards the kitchens. When we had told him that _we_ were not complaining of any grievance, he returned, and reported to the Major at once. "Ah, those fellows are not in it," said he, lowering his tone a bit, and much pleased. "Never mind, bring them along here." We left the kitchen. I could not help feeling humiliation; all of us went along with our heads down. "Ah, Prokofief! Jolkin too; and you, Almazof! Here, come here, all the lump of you!" cried the Major to us, with a gasp; but he was somewhat softened, his tone was even obliging. "M--tski, you're here too?... Take down the names. Diatloff, take down all the names, the grumblers in one list and the contented ones in another--all, without exception; you'll give me the list. I'll have you all before the Committee of Superintendence.... I'll ... brigands!" This word "_list_" told. "We've nothing to complain of!" cried one of the malcontents, in a half-strangled sort of voice. "Ah, you've nothing to complain of! _Who's_ that? Let all those who have nothing to complain of step out of the ranks." "All of us, all of us!" came from some others. "Ah, the food is all right, then? You've been put up to it. Ringleaders, mutineers, eh? So much the worse for them." "But, what do you mean by that?" came from a voice in the crowd. "Where is the fellow that said that?" roared the Major, throwing himself to where the voice came from. "It was you, Rastorgouïef, you; to the guard-house with you." Rastorgouïef, a young, chubby fellow of high stature, left the ranks and went with slow steps to the guard-house. It was not he who had said it, but, as he was called out, he did not venture to contradict. "You fellows are too fat, that's what makes you unruly!" shouted the Major. "You wait, you hulking rascal, in three days you'd---- Wait! I'll have it out with you all. Let all those who have nothing to complain of come out of the ranks, I say----" "We're not complaining of anything, your worship," said some of the convicts with a sombre air; the rest preserved an obstinate silence. But the Major wanted nothing further; it was his interest to stop the thing with as little friction as might be. "Ah, _now_ I see! _Nobody_ has anything to complain of," said he. "I knew it, I saw it all. It's ringleaders, there are ringleaders, by God," he went on, speaking to Diatloff. "We must lay our hands on them, every man of them. And now--now--it's time to go to your work. Drummer, there; drummer, a roll!" He told them off himself in small detachments. The convicts dispersed sadly and silently, only too glad to get out of his sight. Immediately after the gangs went off, the Major betook himself to the guard-house, where he began to make his dispositions as to the "ringleaders," but he did not push matters far. It was easy to see that he wanted to be done with the whole business as soon as possible. One of the men charged told us later that he had begged for forgiveness, and that the officer had let him go immediately. There can be no doubt that our Major did not feel firm in the saddle; he had had a fright, I fancy, for a mutiny is always a ticklish thing, and although this complaint of the convicts about the food did not amount really to mutiny (only the Major had been reported to about it, and the Governor himself), yet it was an uncomfortable and dangerous affair. What gave him most anxiety was that the prisoners had been unanimous in their movement, so their discontent had to be got over somehow, at any price. The ringleaders were soon set free. Next day the food was passable, but this improvement did not last long; on the days ensuing the disturbance, the Major went about the prison much more than usual, and always found something irregular to be stopped and punished. Our sergeant came and went in a puzzled, dazed sort of way, as if he could not get over his stupefaction at what had happened. As to the convicts, it took long for them to quiet down again, but their agitation seemed to wear quite a different character; they were restless and perplexed. Some went about with their heads down, without saying a word; others discussed the event in a grumbling, helpless kind of way. A good many said biting things about their own proceedings as though they were quite out of conceit with themselves. "I say, pal, take and eat!" said one. "Where's the mouse that was so ready to bell the cat?" "Let's think ourselves lucky that he did not have us all well beaten." "It would be a good deal better if you thought more and chattered less." "What do _you_ mean by lecturing me? Are you schoolmaster here, I'd like to know?" "Oh, you want putting to the right-about." "Who are you, I'd like to know?" "I'm a man! What are you?" "A man! You're----" "You're----" "I say! Shut up, do! What's the good of all this row?" was the cry from all sides. On the evening of the day the "mutiny" took place, I met Petroff behind the barracks after the day's work. He was looking for me. As he came near me, I heard him exclaim something, which I didn't understand, in a muttering sort of way; then he said no more, and walked by my side in a listless, mechanical fashion. "I say, Petroff, your fellows are not vexed with us, are they?" "Who's vexed?" he asked, as if coming to himself. "The convicts with us--with us nobles." "Why should they be vexed?" "Well, because we did not back them up." "Oh, why should you have kicked up a dust?" he answered, as if trying to enter into my meaning: "you have a table to yourselves, you fellows." "Oh, well, there are some of you, not nobles, who don't eat the regulation food, and who went in with you. We ought to back you up, we're in the same place; we ought to be comrades." "Oh, I _say_. Are you our comrades?" he asked, with unfeigned astonishment. I looked at him; it was clear that he had not the least comprehension of my meaning; but I, on the other hand, entered only too thoroughly into his. I saw now, quite thoroughly, something of which I had before only a confused idea; what I had before guessed at was now sad certainty. It was forced on my perceptions that any sort of real fellowship between the convicts and myself could never be; not even were I to remain in the place as long as life should last. I was a convict of the "special section," a creature for ever apart. The expression of Petroff when he said, "are we comrades, how can that be?" remains, and will always remain before my eyes. There was a look of such frank, naïve surprise in it, such ingenuous astonishment that I could not help asking myself if there was not some lurking irony in the man, just a little spiteful mockery. Not at all, it was simply meant. I was not their comrade, and could not be; that was all. Go you to the right, we'll go to the left! your business is yours, ours is ours. I really fancied that, after the mutiny, they would attack us mercilessly so far as they dared and could, and that our life would become a hell. But nothing of the sort happened; we did not hear the slightest reproach, there was not even an unpleasant allusion to what had happened, it was all simply passed over. They went on teasing us as before when opportunity served, no more. Nobody seemed to bear malice against those who would not join in, but remained in the kitchens, or against those who were the first to cry out that they had nothing to complain of. It was all passed over without a word, to my exceeding astonishment. FOOTNOTES: [7] An insulting phrase which is untranslatable. [8] French in the original Russian. CHAPTER VIII. MY COMPANIONS As will be understood, those to whom I was most drawn were people of my own sort, that is, those of "noble" birth, especially in the early days; but of the three ex-nobles in the place, who were Russians, I knew and spoke to but one, Akim Akimitch; the other two were the spy A----n, and the supposed parricide. Even with Akim I never exchanged a word except when in extremity, in moments when the melancholy on me was simply unendurable, and when I thought I really never should have the chance of getting close to any other human being again. In the last chapter I have tried to show that the convicts were of different types, and tried to classify them; but when I think of Akim Akimitch I don't know how to place him, he was quite _sui generis_, so far as I could observe, in that establishment. There may be, elsewhere, men like him, to whom it seemed as absolutely a matter of indifference whether he was a free man, or in jail at hard labour; at that place he stood alone in this curious impartiality of temperament. He had settled down in the jail as if he was going to pass his whole life, and didn't mind it at all. All his belongings, mattress, cushions, utensils, were so ordered as to give the impression that he was living in a furnished house of his own; there was nothing provisional, temporary, bivouac-like, about him, or his words, or his habits. He had a good many years still to spend in punishment, but I much doubt whether he ever gave a thought to the time when he would get out. He was entirely reconciled to his condition, not because he had made any effort to be so, but simply out of natural submissiveness; but, as far as his comfort went, it came to the same thing. He was not at all a bad fellow, and in the early days his advice and help were quite useful to me; but sometimes, I can't help saying it, his peculiarities deepened my natural melancholy until it became almost intolerable anguish. When I became desperate with silence and solitude of soul, I would get into talk with him; I wanted to hear, and reply to _some_ words falling from a living soul, and the more filled with gall and hatred with all our surroundings they had been, the more would they have been in sympathy with my wretched mood; but he would just barely talk, quietly go on sizing his lanterns, and then begin to tell me some story as to how he had been at a review of troops in 18--, that their general of division was so-and-so, that the manoeuvring had been very pretty, that there had been a change in the skirmisher's system of signalling, and the like; all of it in level imperturbable tones, like water falling drop by drop. He did not put any life into them even when he told me of a sharp affair in which he had been, in the Caucasus, for which his sword had got the decoration of the Riband of St. Anne. The only difference was, that his voice became a little more measured and grave; he lowered his tones when he pronounced the name "St. Anne," as though he were telling a great secret, and then, for three minutes at least, did not utter a word, but only looked solemn. During all that first year I had strange passages of feeling, in which I hated Akim Akimitch with a bitter hatred, I am sure I cannot say why, moments when I would despairingly curse the fate which made him my next neighbour on my camp-bed, so close indeed that our heads nearly touched. An hour afterwards I bitterly reproached myself for such extravagance. It was, however, only during my first year of confinement that these violent feelings overpowered me. As time went on, I got used to Akim Akimitch's singular character, and was ashamed of my former explosions. I don't remember that he and I ever got into anything like an open quarrel. Besides the three Russian nobles of whom I have spoken, there were eight others there during my time; with some of whom I came to be on a footing of intimate friendship. Even the best of them were morbid in mind, exclusive, and intolerant to the very last degree; with two of them I was obliged to discontinue all spoken intercourse. There were only three who had any education, B--ski, M--tski, and the old man, J--ski, who had formerly been a professor of mathematics, an excellent fellow, highly eccentric, and of very narrow mental horizon in spite of his learning. M--tski and B--ski were of a mould quite different from his. Between M--tski and myself there was an excellent understanding from the first set-off. He and I never once got into any sort of dispute; I respected him highly, but could never become sincerely attached to him, though I tried to. He was sour, embittered, and mistrustful, with much self-control; this was quite antipathetic to me; the man had a closed soul, closed to everybody, and he made you feel it. I felt it so strongly that perhaps I was wrong about it. After all, his character, I must say, was stamped with both nobleness and strength. His inveterate scepticism made him very prudent in his relations with everybody about him, and in conducting these he gave proof of remarkable tact and skill. Sceptic as he was, there was another and a reverse side in his nature, for in some things he was a profound and unalterable believer with faith and hope unshakable. In spite of his tact in dealing with men, he got into open hostilities with B--ski and his friend T--ski. The first of these, B--ski, was a man of infirm health, of consumptive tendency, irascible, and of a weak, nervous system; but a good and generous man. His nervous irritability went so far that he was as capricious as a child; a temperament of that kind was too much for me there, so I soon saw as little of B--ski as I could possibly help, though I never ceased to like him much. It was just the other way so far as M--tski was concerned; with him I always was on easy terms, though I did not like him at all. When I edged away from B--ski, I had to break also, more or less, with T--ski, of whom I spoke in the last chapter, which I much regretted, for, though of little education, he had an excellent heart; a worthy, very spiritual man. He loved and respected B--ski so much that those who broke with that friend of his he regarded as his personal enemies. He quarrelled with M--tski on account of B--ski, and they kept up the difference a long while. All these people were as bilious as they could be, humoursome, mistrustful, the victims of a moral and physical supersensitiveness. It is not to be wondered at; their position was trying indeed, much more so than ours; they were all exiled, transported, for ten or twelve years; and what made their sojourn in the prison most distressing to them was their rooted, ingrained prejudice, especially their unfortunate way of regarding the convicts, which they could not get over; in their eyes the unhappy fellows were mere wild beasts, without a single recognisable human quality. Everything in their previous career and their present circumstances combined to produce this unhappy feeling in them. Their life at the jail was perpetual torment to them. They were kindly and conversible with the Circassians, with the Tartars, with Isaiah Fomitch; but for the other prisoners they had nothing but contempt and aversion. The only one they had any real respect for was the aged "old believer." For all this, during all the time I spent at the convict establishment, I never knew a single prisoner to reproach them with either their birth, or religious opinions, or convictions, as is so usual with our common people in their relations with people of different condition, especially if these happen to be foreigners. The fact is, they cannot take the foreigner seriously; to the Russian common people he seems a merely grotesque, comical creature. Our convicts had and showed much more respect for the Polish nobles than for us Russians, but I don't think the Poles cared about the matter, or took any notice of the difference. I spoke just now of T--ski, and have something more to say of him. When he had with his friend to leave the first place assigned to them as residence in their banishment to come to our fortress, he carried his friend B---- nearly the whole way. B---- was of quite a weak frame, and in bad health, and became exhausted before half of the first march was accomplished. They had first been banished to Y--gorsk, where they lived in tolerable comfort; life was much less hard there than in our fortress. But in consequence of a correspondence with the exiles in one of the other towns--a quite innocent exchange of letters--it was thought necessary to remove them to our jail to be under the more direct surveillance of the government. Until they came M--tski had been quite alone, and dreadful must have been his sufferings in that first year of his banishment. J--ski was the old man always deep in prayer, of whom I spoke a little earlier. All the political convicts were quite young men while J--ski was at least fifty years old. He was a worthy, gentlemanlike person, if eccentric. T--ski and B--ski detested him, and never spoke to him; they insisted upon it that he was too obstinate and troublesome to put up with, and I was obliged to admit it was so. I believe that at a convict establishment--as in every place where people have to be together, whether they like it or not--people are more ready to quarrel with and detest one another than under other circumstances. Many causes contributed to the squabbles that were, unfortunately, always going on. J--ski was really disagreeable and narrow-minded; not one of those about him was on good terms with him. He and I did not come to a rupture, but we were never on a really friendly footing. I fancy that he was a strong mathematician. One day he explained to me in his half-Russian, half-Polish jargon, a system of astronomy of his own; I have been told that he had written a work upon the subject which the learned world had received with derision; I fancy his reasonings on some things had got twisted. He used to be on his knees praying for a whole day sometimes, which made the convicts respect him exceedingly during the remnant of life he had to pass there; he died under my eyes at the jail after a very trying illness. He had won the consideration of the prisoners, from the first moment of his coming in, on account of what had happened with the Major and him. When they were brought afoot from Y--gorsk to our fortress, they were not shaved on the road at all, their hair and beards had grown to great lengths when they were brought before the Major. That worthy foamed like a madman; he was wild with indignation at such infraction of discipline, though it was none of their fault. "My God! did you ever see anything like it?" he roared; "they are vagabonds, brigands." J--ski knew very little Russian, and fancied that he was asking them if they were brigands or vagabonds, so he answered: "We are political prisoners, not rogues and vagabonds." "So-o-o! You mean impudence! Clod!" howled the Major. "To the guard-house with him; a hundred strokes of the rod at once, this instant, I say!" They gave the old man the punishment; he lay flat on the ground under the strokes without the slightest resistance, kept his hand in his teeth, and bore it all without a murmur, and without moving a muscle. B--ski and T--ski arrived at the jail as this was all going on, and M--ski was waiting for them at the principal gate, knowing that they were just coming in; he threw himself on their neck, although he had never seen them before. Utterly disgusted at the way the Major had received them, they told M--ski all about the cruel business that had just occurred. M--ski told me later that he was quite beside himself with rage when he heard it. "I could not contain myself for passion," he said, "I shook as though with ague. I waited for J--ski at the great gate, for he would come straight that way from the guard-house after his punishment. The gate was opened, and there I saw pass before me J--ski, his lips all white and trembling, his face pale as death; he did not look at a single person, and passed through the groups of convicts assembled in the court-yard--they knew a noble had just been subjected to punishment--went into the barrack, went straight to his place, and, without a word, dropped down on his knees for prayer. The prisoners were surprised and even affected. When I saw this old man with white hairs, who had left behind him at home a wife and children, kneeling and praying after that scandalous treatment, I rushed away from the barrack, and for a couple of hours felt as if I had gone stark, staring, raving mad, or blind drunk.... From that first moment the convicts were full of deference and consideration for J--ski; what particularly pleased them, was that he did not utter a cry when undergoing the punishment." But one must be fair and tell the truth about this sort of thing; this sad story is not an instance of what frequently occurs in the treatment by the authorities of transported noblemen, Russian or Polish; and this isolated case affords no basis for passing judgment upon that treatment. My anecdote merely shows that you may light upon a bad man anywhere and everywhere. And if it happen that such a one is in absolute command of a jail, and if he happen to have a grudge against one of the prisoners, the lot of such a one will be indeed very far from enviable. But the administrative chiefs who regulate and supervise convict labour in Siberia, and from whom subordinates take their tone as well as their orders, are careful to exercise a discriminating treatment in the case of persons of noble birth, and, in some cases, grant them special indulgences as compared with the lot of convicts of lower condition. There are obvious reasons for this; these heads of departments are nobles themselves, they know that men of that class must not be driven to extremity; cases have been known where nobles have refused to submit to corporal punishment, and flung themselves desperately on their tormentors with very grave and serious consequences indeed; moreover--and this, I think, is the leading cause of the good treatment--some time ago, thirty-five years at least, there were transported to Siberia quite a crowd of noblemen;[9] these were of such correct and irreproachable demeanour, and held themselves so high, that the heads of departments fell into the way, which they never afterwards left, of regarding criminals of noble birth and ordinary convicts in quite a different manner; and men in lower place took their cue from them. Many of these, no doubt, were little pleased with that disposition in their superiors; such persons were pleased enough when they could do exactly as they liked in the matter, but this did not often happen, they were kept well within bounds; I have reason to be satisfied of this and I will say why. I was put in the second category, a classification of those condemned to hard labour, which was primarily and principally composed of convicts who had been serfs, under military superintendence; now this second category, or class, was much harder than the first (of the mines) or the third (manufacturing work). It was harder, not only for the nobles but for the other convicts too, because the governing and administrative methods and _personnel_ in it were wholly military, and were pretty much the same in type as those of the convict establishments in Russia. The men in official position were severer, the general treatment more rigorous than in the two other classes; the men were never out of irons, an escort of soldiers was always present, you were always, or nearly so, within stone walls; and things were quite different in the other classes, at least so the convicts said, and there were those among them who had every reason to know. They would all have gladly gone off to the mines, which the law classified as the worst and last punishment, it was their constant dream and desire to do so. All those who had been in the Russian convict establishments spoke with horror of them, and declared that there was no hell like them, that Siberia was a paradise compared with confinement in the fortresses in Russia. If, then, it is the case that we nobles were treated with special consideration in the establishment I was confined in, which was under direct control of the Governor-General, and administered entirely on military principles, there must have been some greater kindliness in the treatment of the convicts of the first and third category or class. I think I can speak with some authority about what went on throughout Siberia in these respects, and I based my views, as to this, upon all that I heard from convicts of these classes. We, in our prison, were under much more rigorous surveillance than was elsewhere practised; we were favoured with no sort of exemptions from the ordinary rules as regards work and confinement, and the wearing of chains; we could not do anything for ourselves to get immunity from the rules, for I, at least, knew quite well that, _in the good old time which was quite of yesterday_, there had been so much intriguing to undermine the credit of officials that the authorities were greatly afraid of informers, and that, as things stood, to show indulgence to a convict was regarded as a crime. Everybody, therefore, authorities and convicts alike, was in fear of what might happen; we of the nobles were thus quite down to the level of the other convicts; the only point we were favoured in was in regard to corporal punishment--but I think that we should have had even that inflicted on us had we done anything for which it was prescribed, for equality as to punishment was strictly enjoined or practised; what I mean is, that we were not wantonly, causelessly, mishandled like the other prisoners. When the Governor got to know of the punishment inflicted on J--ski, he was seriously angry with the Major, and ordered him to be more careful for the future. The thing got very generally known. We learned also that the Governor-General, who had great confidence in our Major, and who liked him because of his exact observance of legal bounds, and thought highly of his qualities in the service, gave him a sharp scolding. And our Major took the lesson to heart. I have no doubt it was this prevented his having M--ski beaten, which he would much have liked to do, being much influenced by the slanderous things A--f said about M----; but the Major could never get a fair pretext for doing so, however much he persecuted and set spies upon his proposed victim; so he had to deny himself that pleasure. The J--ski affair became known all through the town, and public opinion condemned the Major; some persons reproached him openly for what he had done, and some even insulted him. The first occasion on which the man crossed my path may as well be mentioned. We had alarming things reported to us--to me and another nobleman under sentence--about the abominable character of this man, while we were still at Tobolsk. Men who had been sentenced a long while back to twenty-five years of the misery, nobles as we were, and who had visited us so kindly during our provisional sojourn in the first prison, had warned us what sort of man we were to be under; they had also promised to do all they could for us with their friends to see that he hurt us as little as possible. And, in fact, they did write to the three daughters of the Governor-General, who, I believe, interceded on our behalf with their father. But what could he do? No more, of course, than tell the Major to be fair in applying the rules and regulations to our case. It was about three in the afternoon that my companion and myself arrived in the town; our escort took us at once to our tyrant. We remained waiting for him in the ante-chamber while they went to find the next-in-command at the prison. As soon as the latter had come, in walked the Major. We saw an inflamed scarlet face that boded no good, and affected us quite painfully; he seemed like a sort of spider about to throw itself on a poor fly wriggling in its web. "What's your name, man?" said he to my companion. He spoke with a harsh, jerky voice, as if he wanted to overawe us. My friend gave his name. "And you?" said he, turning to me and glaring at me behind his spectacles. I gave mine. "Sergeant! take 'em to the prison, and let 'em be shaved at the guard-house, civilian-fashion, hair off half their skulls, and let 'em be put in irons to-morrow. Why, what sort of cloaks have you got there?" said he brutally, when he saw the gray cloaks with yellow sewn at the back which they had given to us at Tobolsk. "Why, that's a new uniform, begad--a new uniform! They're always getting up something or other. That's a Petersburg trick," he said, as he inspected us one after the other. "Got anything with them?" he said abruptly to the gendarme who escorted us. "They've got their own clothes, your worship," replied he; and the man carried arms, just as if on parade, not without a nervous tremor. Everybody knew the fellow, and was afraid of him. "Take their clothes away from them. They can't keep anything but their linen, their white things; take away all their coloured things if they've got any, and sell them off at the next sale, and put the money to the prison account. A convict has no property," said he, looking severely at us. "Hark ye! Behave prettily; don't let me have any complaining. If I do--cat-o'-nine-tails! The smallest offence, and to the sticks you go!" This way of receiving me, so different from anything I had ever known, made me nearly ill that night. It was a frightful thing to happen at the very moment of entering the infernal place. But I have already told that part of my story. Thus we had no sort of exemption or immunity from any of the miseries inflicted there, no lightening of our labours when with the other convicts; but friends tried to help us by getting us sent for three months, B--ski and me, to the bureau of the Engineers, to do copying work. This was done quietly, and as much as possible kept from being talked about or observed. This piece of kindness was done for us by the head engineers, during the short time that Lieutenant-Colonel G--kof was Governor at our prison. This gentleman had command there only for six short months, for he soon went back to Russia. He really seemed to us all like an angel of goodness sent from heaven, and the feeling for him among the convicts was of the strongest kind; it was not mere love, it was something like adoration. I cannot help saying so. How he did it I don't know, but their hearts went out to him from the moment they first set eyes on him. "He's more like a father than anything else," the prisoners kept continually saying during all the time he was there at the head of the engineering department. He was a brilliant, joyous fellow. He was of low stature, with a bold, confident expression, and he was all gracious kindness to the convicts, for whom he really did seem to entertain a fatherly sort of affection. How was it he was so fond of them? It is hard to say, but he seemed never to be able to pass a prisoner without a bit of pleasant talk and a little laughing and joking together. There was nothing that smacked of authority in his pleasantries, nothing that reminded them of his position over them. He behaved just as if he was one of themselves. In spite of this kind condescension, I don't remember any one of the convicts ever failing in respect to him or taking the slightest liberty--quite the other way. The convict's face would light up in a wonderful, sudden way when he met the Governor; it was odd to see how the face smiled all over, and the hand went to the cap, when the Governor was seen in the distance making for the poor man. A word from him was regarded as a signal honour. There are some people like that, who know how to win all hearts. G--kof had a bold, jaunty air, walked with long strides, holding himself very straight; "a regular eagle," the convicts used to call him. He could not do much to lighten their lot materially, for his office was that of superintending the engineering work, which had to be done in ways and quantities, settled absolutely and unalterably by the regulations. But if he happened to come across a gang of convicts who had actually got through their work, he allowed them to go back to quarters before beat of drum, without waiting for the regulation moment. The prisoners loved him for the confidence he showed in them, and because of his aversion for all mean, trifling interferences with them, which are so irritating when prison superiors are addicted to that sort of thing. I am absolutely certain that if he had lost a thousand roubles in notes, there was not a thief in the prison, however hardened, who would not have brought them to him, if the man lit on them. I am sure of it. How the prisoners all felt for him, and with him when they learned that he was at daggers drawn with our detested Major. That came about a month after his arrival. Their delight knew no bounds. The Major had formerly served with him in the same detachment; so, when they met, after a long separation, they were at first boon companions, but the intimacy could not and did not last. They came to blows--figuratively--and G--kof became the Major's sworn enemy. Some would have it that it was _more_ than figuratively, that they came to actual fisticuffs, a likely thing enough as far as the Major was concerned, for the man had no objection to a scrimmage. When the convicts heard of the quarrel they really could not contain their delight. "Old Eight-eyes and the Commandant get on finely together! _He's_ an eagle; but the other's a _bad 'un_!" Those who believed in the fight were mighty curious to know which of the two had had the worst of it, and got a good drubbing. If it had been proved there had been no fighting our convicts, I think, would have been bitterly disappointed. "The Commandant gave him fits, you may bet your life on it," said they; "he's a little 'un, but as bold as a lion; the other one got into a blue funk, and hid under the bed from him." But G--kof went away only too soon, and keenly was he regretted in the prison. Our engineers were all most excellent fellows; we had three or four fresh batches of them while I was there. "Our eagles never remain very long with us," said the prisoners; "especially when they are good and kind fellows." It was this G--kof who sent B--ski and myself to work in his bureau, for he was partial to exiled nobles. When he left, our condition was still fairly endurable, for there was another engineer there who showed us much sympathy and friendship. We copied reports for some time, and our handwriting was getting to be very good, when an order came from the authorities that we were to be sent back to hard labour as before; some spiteful person had been at work. At bottom we were rather pleased, for we were quite tired of copying. For two whole years I worked in company with B--ski, all the time in the shops, and many a gossip did we have about our hopes for the future and our notions and convictions. Good B--ski had a very odd mind, which worked in a strange, exceptional way. There are some people of great intelligence who indulge in paradox unconscionably; but when they have undergone great and constant sufferings for their ideas and made great sacrifices for them, you can't drive their notions out of their heads, and it is cruel to try it. When you objected something to B--ski's propositions, he was really hurt, and gave you a violent answer. He was, perhaps, more in the right than I was as to some things wherein we differed, but we were obliged to give one another up, very much to my regret, for we had many thoughts in common. As years went on M--tski became more and more sombre and melancholy; he became a prey to despair. During the earliest part of my imprisonment he was communicative enough, and let us see what was going on in him. When I arrived at the prison he had just finished his second year. At first he took a lively interest in the news I brought, for he knew nothing of what had been going on in the outer world; he put questions to me, listened eagerly, showed emotion, but, bit by bit, his reserve grew on him and there was no getting at his thoughts. The glowing coals were all covered up with ashes. Yet it was plain that his temper grew sourer and sourer. "_Je hais ces brigands_,"[10] he would say, speaking of convicts I had got to know something of; I never could make him see any good in them. He really did not seem to fully enter into the meaning of anything I said on their behalf, though he would sometimes seem to agree in a listless sort of way. Next day it was just as before: "_je hais ces brigands_." (We used often to speak French with him; so one of the overseers of the works, the soldier, Dranichnikof, used always to call us _aides chirurgiens_, God knows why!) M--tski never seemed to shake off his usual apathy except when he spoke of his mother. "She is old and infirm," he said; "she loves me better than anything in the world, and I don't even know if she's still living. If she learns that I've been whipped----" M--tski was not a noble, and had been whipped before he was transported. When the recollection of this came up in his mind he gnashed his teeth, and could not look anybody in the face. In the latest days of his imprisonment he used to walk to and fro, quite alone for the most part. One day, at noon, he was summoned to the Governor, who received him with a smile on his lips. "Well, M--tski, what were your dreams last night?" asked the Governor. Said M--tski to me later, "When he said that to me a shudder ran through me; I felt struck at the heart." His answer was, "I dreamed that I had a letter from my mother." "Better than that, better!" replied the Governor. "You are free; your mother has petitioned the Emperor, and he has granted her prayer. Here, here's her letter, and the order for your dismissal. You are to leave the jail without delay." He came to us pale, scarcely able to believe in his good fortune. We congratulated him. He pressed our hands with his own, which were quite cold, and trembled violently. Many of the convicts wished him joy; they were really glad to see his happiness. He settled in Siberia, establishing himself in our town, where a little after that they gave him a place. He used often to come to the jail to bring us news, and tell us all that was going on, as often as he could talk with us. It was political news that interested him chiefly. Besides the four Poles, the political convicts of whom I spoke just now, there were two others of that nation, who were sentenced for very short periods; they had not much education, but were good, simple, straightforward fellows. There was another, A--tchoukooski, quite a colourless person; one more I must mention, B--in, a man well on in years, who impressed us all very unfavourably indeed. I don't know what he had been sentenced for, although he used to tell us some story or other about it pretty frequently. He was a person of a vulgar, mean type, with the coarse manner of an enriched shopkeeper. He was quite without education, and seemed to take interest in nothing except what concerned his trade, which was that of a painter, a sort of scene-painter he was; he showed a good deal of talent in his work, and the authorities of the prison soon came to know about his abilities, so he got employment all through the town in decorating walls and ceilings. In two years he beautified the rooms of nearly all the prison officials, who remunerated him handsomely, so he lived pretty comfortably. He was sent to work with three other prisoners, two of whom learned the business thoroughly; one of these, T--jwoski, painted nearly as well as B--in himself. Our Major, who had rooms in one of the government buildings, sent for B--in, and gave him a commission to decorate the walls and ceilings there, which he did so effectively, that the suite of rooms of the Governor-General were quite put out of countenance by those of the Major. The house itself was a ramshackle old place, while the interior, thanks to B--in, was as gay as a palace. Our worthy Major was hugely delighted, went about rubbing his hands, and told everybody that he should look out for a wife at once, "a fellow _can't_ remain single when he lives in a place like that;" he was quite serious about it. The Major's satisfaction with B--in and his assistants went on increasing. They occupied a month in the work at the Major's house. During those memorable days the Major seemed to get into a different frame of mind about us, and began to be quite kind to us political prisoners. One day he sent for J--ski. "J--ski," said he, "I've done you wrong; I had you beaten for nothing. I'm very sorry. Do you understand? I'm very sorry. I, Major ----" J--ski answered that he understood perfectly. "Do you understand? I, who am set over you, I have sent for you to ask your pardon. You can hardly realise it, I suppose. What are you to me, fellow? A worm, less than a crawling worm; you're a convict, while I, by God's grace,[11] am a Major; Major ----, _do_ you understand?" J--ski answered that he quite well understood it all. "Well, I want to be friends with you. But can you appreciate what I'm doing? Can you feel the greatness of soul I'm showing--feel and appreciate it? Just think of it; I, I, the Major!" etc. etc. J--ski told me of this scene. There was, then, some human feeling left in this drunken, unruly, and tormenting brute. Allowing for the man's notions of things, and feeble faculties, one cannot deny that this was a generous proceeding on his part. Perhaps he was a little less drunk than usual, perhaps more; who can tell? The Major's glorious idea of marrying came to nothing; the rooms got all their bravery, but the wife was not forthcoming. Instead of going to the altar in that agreeable way, he was pulled up before the authorities and sent to trial. He received orders to send in his resignation. Some of his old sins had found him out, it seems; things done when he had been superintendent of police in our town. This crushing blow came down upon him without notice, quite suddenly. All the convicts were greatly rejoiced when they heard the great news; it was high day and holiday all through the jail. The story went abroad that the Major sobbed, and cried, and howled like an old woman. But he was helpless in the matter. He was obliged to leave his place, sell his two gray horses, and everything he had in the world; and he fell into complete destitution. We came across him occasionally afterwards in civilian, threadbare clothes, and wearing a cap with a cockade; he glanced at us convicts as spitefully and maliciously as you please. But without his Major's uniform, all the man's glory was gone. While placed over us, he gave himself the airs of a being higher than human, who had got into coat and breeches; now it was all over, he looked like the lackey he was, and a disgraced lackey to boot. With fellows of this sort, the uniform is the only saving grace; that gone, all's gone. FOOTNOTES: [9] The Decembrists. [10] French in the original Russian. [11] Our Major was not the only officer who spoke of himself in that lofty way; a good many officers did the same, men who had risen from the ranks chiefly. CHAPTER IX. THE ESCAPE A little while after the Major resigned, our prison was subjected to a thorough reorganization. The "hard labour" hitherto inflicted, and the other regulations, were abolished, and the place put upon the footing of the military convict establishments of Russia. As a result of this, prisoners of the second category were no longer sent there; this class was, for the future, to be composed of prisoners who were regarded as still on the military footing, that is to say, men who, in spite of sentence, did not forfeit for ever their civic _status_. They were soldiers still, but had undergone corporal punishment; they were sentenced for comparatively short periods, six years at most; when they had served their time, or in case of pardon, they went into the ranks again, as before. Men guilty of a second offence were sentenced to twenty years of imprisonment. Up to the time I speak of, we had a section of soldier-prisoners among us, but only because they did not know where else to dispose of them. Now the place was to be occupied by soldiers exclusively. As to the civilian convicts, who were stripped of all civic rights, branded, cropped, and shaven, these were to remain in the fortress to finish their time; but as no fresh prisoners of this class were to come in, and those there would get their discharge successively, at the end of ten years there would be no civilian convicts left in the place, according to the arrangements. The line of division between the classes of prisoners there was maintained; from time to time there came in other military criminals of high position, sent to our place for security, before being forwarded to Eastern Siberia, for the more aggravated penalties that awaited them there. There was no change in our general way of life. The work we had to do and the discipline observed were the same as before; but the administrative system was entirely altered, and made more complex. An officer, commandant of companies, was assigned to be at the head of the prison; he had under his orders four subaltern officers who mounted guard by turns. The "invalids" were superseded by twelve non-commissioned officers, and an arsenal superintendent. The convicts were divided into sections of ten, and corporals chosen among them; the power of these over the others was, as may be supposed, nominal. As might be expected, Akim Akimitch got this promotion. All these new arrangements were confided to the Governor to carry out, who remained in superior command over the whole establishment. The changes did not go further than this. At first the convicts were not a little excited by this movement, and discussed their new guardians a good deal among themselves, trying to make out what sort of fellows they were; but when they saw that everything went on pretty much as usual they quieted down, and things resumed their ordinary course. We had got rid of the Major, and that was something; everybody took fresh breath and fresh courage. The fear that was in all hearts grew less; we had some assurance that in case of need we could go to our superiors and lodge our complaint, and that a man could not be punished without cause, and would not, unless by mistake. Brandy was brought in as before, although we had subaltern officers now where "invalids" were before. These subalterns were all worthy, careful men, who knew their place and business. There were some among them who had the idea that they might give themselves grand airs, and treat us like common soldiers, but they soon gave it up and behaved like the others. Those who did not seem to be well able to get into their heads what the ways of our prison really were, had sharp lessons about it from the convicts themselves, which led to some lively scenes. One sub-officer was confronted with brandy, which was of course too much for him; when he was sober again we had a little explanation with him; we pointed out that he had been drinking with the prisoners, and that, accordingly, etc. etc.; he became quite tractable. The end of it was that the subalterns closed their eyes to the brandy business. They went to market for us, just as the invalids used to, and brought the prisoners white bread, meat, anything that could be got in without too much risk. So I never could understand why they had gone to the trouble of turning the place into a military prison. The change was made two years before I left the place; I had two years to bear of it still. I see little use in recording all I saw and went through later at the convict establishment day by day. If I were to tell it all, all the daily and hourly occurrences, I might write twice or thrice as many chapters as this book ought to contain, but I should simply tire the reader and myself. Substantially all that I might write has been already embodied in the narrative as it stands so far; and the reader has had the opportunity of getting a tolerable idea of what the life of a convict of the second class really was. My wish has been to portray the state of things at the establishment, and as it affected myself, accurately and yet forcibly; whether I have done so others must judge. I cannot pronounce upon my own work, but I think I may well draw it to a close; as I move among these recollections of a dreadful past, the old suffering comes up again and all but strangles me. Besides, I cannot be sure of my memory as to all I saw in these last years, for the faculty seems blunted as regards the later compared with the earlier period of my imprisonment, there is a good deal I am sure I have quite forgotten. But I remember only too well how very, very slow these last two years were, how very sad, how the days seemed as if they never would come to evening, something like water falling drop by drop. I remember, too, that I was filled with a mighty longing for my resurrection from that grave which gave me strength to bear up, to wait, and to hope. And so I got to be hardened and enduring; I lived on expectation, I counted every passing day; if there were a thousand more of them to pass at the prison I found satisfaction in thinking that one of them was gone, and only nine hundred and ninety-nine to come. I remember, too, that though I had round me a hundred persons in like case, I felt myself more and more solitary, and though the solitude was awful I came to love it. Isolated thus among the convict-crowd I went over all my earlier life, analysing its events and thoughts minutely; I passed my former doings in review, and sometimes was pitiless in condemnation of myself; sometimes I went so far as to be grateful to fate for the privilege of such loneliness, for only that could have caused me so severely to scrutinise my past, so searchingly to examine its inner and outer life. What strong and strange new germs of hope came in those memorable hours up in my soul! I weighed and decided all sorts of issues, I entered into a compact with myself to avoid the errors of former years, and the rocks on which I had been wrecked; I laid down a programme for my future, and vowed that I would stick to it; I had a sort of blind and complete conviction that, once away from that place, I should be able to carry out everything I made my mind up to; I looked for my freedom with transports of eager desire; I wanted to try my strength in a renewed struggle with life; sometimes I was clutched, as by fangs, by an impatience which rose to fever heat. It is painful to go back to these things, most painful; nobody, I know, can care much about it at all except myself; but I write because I think people will understand, and because there are those who have been, those who yet will be, like myself, condemned, imprisoned, cut off from life, in the flower of their age, and in the full possession of all their strength. But all this is useless. Let me end my memoirs with a narrative of something interesting, for I must not close them too abruptly. What shall it be? Well, it may occur to some to ask whether it was quite impossible to escape from the jail, and if during the time I spent there no attempt of the kind was made. I have already said that a prisoner who has got through two or three years thinks a good deal of it, and, as a rule, concludes that it is best to finish his time without running more risks, so that he may get his settlement, on the land or otherwise, when set at liberty. But those who reckon in this way are convicts sentenced for comparatively short times; those who have many years to serve are always ready to run some chances. For all that the attempts at escape were quite infrequent. Whether that was attributable to the want of spirit in the convicts, the severity of the military discipline enforced, or, after all, to the situation of the town, little favourable to escapes, for it was in the midst of the open steppe, I really cannot say. All these motives no doubt contributed to give pause. It was difficult enough to get out of the prison at all; in my time two convicts tried it; they were criminals of importance. When our Major had been got rid of, A--v, the spy, was quite alone with nobody to back him up. He was still quite young, but his character grew in force with every year; he was a bold, self-asserting fellow, of considerable intelligence. I think if they had set him at liberty he would have gone on spying and getting money in every sort of shameful way, but I don't think he would have let himself be caught again; he would have turned his experiences as a convict to far too much good for that. One trick he practised was that of forging passports, at least so I heard from some of the convicts. I think this fellow was ready to risk everything for a change in his position. Circumstances gave me the opportunity of getting to the bottom of this man's disposition and seeing how ugly it was; he was simply revolting in his cold, deep wickedness, and my disgust with him was more than I could get over. I do believe that if he wanted a drink of brandy, and could only have got it by killing some one, he would not have hesitated one moment if it was pretty certain the crime would not come out. He had learned there, in that jail, to look on everything in the coolest calculating way. It was on him that the choice of Koulikoff--of the special section--fell, as we are to see. I have spoken before of Koulikoff. He was no longer young, but full of ardour, life, and vigour, and endowed with extraordinary faculties. He felt his strength, and wanted still to have a life of his own; there are some men who long to live in a rich, abounding life, even when old age has got hold of them. I should have been a good deal surprised if Koulikoff had _not_ tried to escape; but he did. Which of the two, Koulikoff and A--v, had the greater influence over the other I really cannot say; they were a goodly couple, and suited each other to a hair, so they soon became as thick as possible. I fancy that Koulikoff reckoned on A--v to forge a passport for him; besides, the latter was of the noble class, belonged to good society, a circumstance out of which a good deal could be made if they managed to get back into Russia. Heaven only knows what compacts they made, or what plans and hopes they formed; if they got as far as Russia they would at all events leave behind them Siberia and vagabondage. Koulikoff was a versatile man, capable of playing many a part on the stage of life, and had plenty of ability to go upon, whatever direction his efforts took. To such persons the jail is strangulation and suffocation. So the two set about plotting their escape. But to get away without a soldier to act as escort was impossible; so a soldier had to be won. In one of the battalions stationed at our fortress was a Pole of middle life--an energetic fellow worthy of a better fate--serious, courageous. When he arrived first in Siberia, quite young, he had deserted, for he could not stand his sufferings from nostalgia. He was captured and whipped. During two years he formed part of the disciplinary companies to which offenders are sent; then he rejoined his battalion, and, showing himself zealous in the service, had been rewarded by promotion to the rank of corporal. He had a good deal of self-love, and spoke like a man who had no small conceit of himself. I took particular notice of the man sometimes when he was among the soldiers who had charge of us, for the Poles had spoken to me about him; and I got the idea that his longing for his native country had taken the form of a chill, fixed, deadly hatred for those who kept him away from it. He was the sort of man to stick at nothing, and Koulikoff showed that his scent was good, when he pitched on this man to be an accomplice in his flight. This corporal's name was Kohler. Koulikoff and he settled their plans and fixed the day. It was the month of June, the hottest of the year. The climate of our town and neighbourhood was pretty equable, especially in summer, which is a very good thing for tramps and vagabonds. To make off far after leaving the fortress was quite out of the question, it being situated on rising ground and in uncovered country, for though surrounded by woods, these are a considerable distance away. A disguise was indispensable, and to procure it they must manage to get into the outskirts of the town, where Koulikoff had taken care some time before to prepare a den of some sort. I don't know whether his worthy friends in that part of the town were in the secret. It may be presumed they were, though there is no evidence. That year, however, a young woman who led a gay life and was very pretty, settled down in a nook of that same part of the city, near the county. This young person attracted a good deal of notice, and her career promised to be something quite remarkable; her nickname was "Fire and Flame." I think that she and the fugitives concerted the plans of escape together, for Koulikoff had lavished a good deal of attention and money on her for more than a year. When the gangs were formed each morning, the two fellows, Koulikoff and A--v, managed to get themselves sent out with the convict Chilkin, whose trade was that of stove-maker and plasterer, to do up the empty barracks when the soldiers went into camp. A--v and Koulikoff were to help in carrying the necessary materials. Kohler got himself put into the escort on the occasion; as the rules required three soldiers to act as escort for two prisoners, they gave him a young recruit whom he was doing corporal's duty upon, drilling and training him. Our fugitives must have exercised a great deal of influence over Kohler to deceive him, to cast his lot in with them, serious, intelligent, and reflective man as he was, with so few more years of service to pass in the army. They arrived at the barracks about six o'clock in the morning; there was nobody with them. After having worked about an hour, Koulikoff and A--v told Chilkin that they were going to the workshop to see some one, and fetch a tool they wanted. They had to go carefully to work with Chilkin, and speak in as natural a tone as they could. The man was from Moscow, by trade a stove-maker, sharp and cunning, keen-sighted, not talkative, fragile in appearance, with little flesh on his bones. He was the sort of person who might have been expected to pass his life in honest working dress, in some Moscow shop, yet here he was in the "special section," after many wanderings and transfers among the most formidable military criminals; so fate had ordered. What had he done to deserve such severe punishment? I had not the least idea; he never showed the least resentment or sour feeling, and went on in a quiet, inoffensive way; now and then he got as drunk as a lord; but, apart from that, his conduct was perfectly good. Of course he was not in the secret, so he had to be thrown off the scent. Koulikoff told him, with a wink, that they were going to get some brandy, which had been hidden the day before in the workshop, which suited Chilkin's book perfectly; he had not the least notion of what was up, and remained alone with the young recruit, while Koulikoff, A--v, and Kohler betook themselves to the suburbs of the town. Half-an-hour passed; the men did not come back. Chilkin began to think, and the truth dawned upon him. He remembered that Koulikoff had not seemed at all like himself, that he had seen him whispering and winking to A--v; he was sure of that, and the whole thing seemed suspicious to him. Kohler's behaviour had struck him, too; when he went off with the two convicts, the corporal had given the recruit orders what he was to do in his absence, which he had never known him do before. The more Chilkin thought over the matter the less he liked it. Time went on; the convicts did not return; his anxiety was great; for he saw that the authorities would suspect him of connivance with the fugitives, so that his own skin was in danger. If he made any delay in giving information of what had occurred, suspicion of himself would grow into conviction that he knew what the men intended when they left him, and he would be dealt with as their accomplice. There was no time to lose. It came into his mind, then, that Koulikoff and A--v had become markedly intimate for some time, and that they had been often seen laying their heads together behind the barracks, by themselves. He remembered, too, that he had more than once fancied that they were up to something together. He looked attentively at the soldier with him as escort; the fellow was yawning, leaning on his gun, and scratching his nose in the most innocent manner imaginable; so Chilkin did not think it necessary to speak of his anxieties to this man: he told him simply to come with him to the engineers' workshops. His object was to ask if anybody there had seen his companions; but nobody there had, so Chilkin's suspicions grew stronger and stronger. If only he could think that they had gone to get drunk and have a spree in the outskirts of the town, as Koulikoff often did. No, thought Chilkin, that was _not_ so. They would have told him, for there was no need to make a mystery of that. Chilkin left his work, and went straight back to the jail. It was about nine o'clock when he reached the sergeant-major, to whom he mentioned his suspicions. That officer was frightened, and at first could not believe there was anything in it all. Chilkin had, in fact, expressed no more than a vague misgiving that all was not as it should be. The sergeant-major ran to the Major, who in his turn ran to the Governor. In a quarter-of-an-hour all necessary measures were taken. The Governor-General was communicated with. As the convicts in question were persons of importance, it might be expected that the matter would be seriously viewed at St. Petersburg. A--v was classed among political prisoners, by a somewhat random official proceeding, it would seem; Koulikoff was a convict of the "special section," that is to say, as a criminal of the blackest dye, and, what was worse, was an ex-soldier. It was then brought to notice that according to the regulations each convict of the "special section" ought to have two soldiers assigned as escort when he went to work; the regulations had not been observed as to this, so that everybody was exposed to serious trouble. Expresses were sent off to all the district offices of the municipality, and all the little neighbouring towns, to warn the authorities of the escape of the two convicts, and a full description furnished of their persons. Cossacks were sent out to hunt them up, letters sent to the authorities of all adjoining Governmental districts. And everybody was frightened to death. The excitement was quite as great all through the prison; as the convicts returned from work, they heard the tremendous news, which spread rapidly from man to man; all received it with deep, though secret satisfaction. Their emotion was as natural as it was great. The affair broke the monotony of their lives, and gave them something to think of; but, above all, it was an escape, and as such, something to sympathise with deeply, and stirred fibres in the poor fellows which had long been without any exciting stimulus; something like hope and a disposition to confront their fate set their hearts beating, for the incident seemed to show that their hard lot was not hopelessly unchangeable. "Well, you see they've got off in spite of them! Why shouldn't we?" The thought came into every man's mind, and made him stiffen his back and look at his neighbours in a defiant sort of way. All the convicts seemed to grow an inch taller on the strength of it, and to look down a bit upon the sub-officers. The heads of the place soon came running up, as you may imagine. The Governor now arrived in person. We fellows looked at them all with some assurance, with a touch of contempt, and with a very set expression of face, as though to say: "Well, you there? We can get out of your clutches when we've a mind to." All the men were quite sure there would be a general searching of everything and everybody; so everything that was at all contraband was carefully hidden; for the authorities would want to show that precious wisdom of theirs which may be reckoned on after the event. The expectation was verified; there was a mighty turning of everything upside down and topsy-turvy, a general rummage, with the discovery of exactly nothing, as they might have known. When the time came for going out to work after dinner the usual escorts were doubled. When night came, the officers and sub-officers on service came pouncing on us at every moment to see if we were off our guard, and if anything could be got out of us; the lists were gone over once more than the usual number of times, which extra mustering only gave more trouble for nothing; we were hunted out of the court-yard that our names might be gone through again. Then, when in barrack, they reckoned us up another time, as if they never could be done with the exercise. The convicts were not at all disturbed by all this bustling absurdity. They put on a very unconcerned demeanour, and, as is always the case in such a conjuncture, behaved in the prettiest manner all that evening and night. "We won't give them any handle anyhow," was the general feeling. The question with the authorities was whether some among us were not in complicity with those who had got away, so a careful watch was kept over our doings, and a careful ear for our conversations; but nothing came of it. "Not such fools, those fellows, as to leave anybody behind who was in the secret!" "When you go at that sort of thing you lie low and play low!" "Koulikoff and A--v know enough to have covered up their tracks. They've done the trick in first-rate style, keeping things to themselves; they've mizzled, the rascals; clever chaps, those, they could get through shut doors!" The glory of Koulikoff and A--v had grown a hundred cubits higher than it was. Everybody was proud of them. Their exploit, it was felt, would be handed down to the most distant posterity, and outlive the jail itself. "Rattling fellows, those!" said one. "Can't get away from here, eh? _That's_ their notion, is it? Just look at those chaps!" "Yes," said a third, looking very superior, "but who _is_ it that has got away? Tip-top fellows. _You_ can't hold a candle to them." At any other time the man to whom anything of that sort was said would have replied angrily enough, and defended himself; now the observation was met with modest silence. "True enough," was said. "Everybody's not a Koulikoff or an A--v, you've got to show what you're made of before you've a right to speak." "I say, pals, after all, why do we remain in the place?" struck in a prisoner seated by the kitchen window; he spoke drawlingly, but the man, you could see, enjoyed it all; he slowly rubbed his cheek with the palm of his hand. "Why do we stop? It's no life at all, we've been buried, though we're alive and kicking. Now _isn't_ it so?" "Oh, curse it, you can't get out of prison as easy as shaking off an old boot. I tell you it sticks to your calves. What's the good of pulling a long face over it?" "But, look here; there is Koulikoff now," began one of the most eager, a mere lad. "Koulikoff!" exclaimed another, looking askance at the young fellow. "Koulikoff! They don't turn out Koulikoffs by the dozen." "And A--v, pals, there's a lad for you!" "Aye, aye, he'll get Koulikoff just where he wants him, as often as he wants him. He's up to everything, he is." "I wonder how far they've got; that's what _I_ want to know," said one. Then the talk went off into details: Had they got far from the town? What direction did they go off in? _Which_ gave them the best chance? Then they discussed distances, and as there were convicts who knew the neighbourhood well, these were attentively listened to. Next, they talked over the inhabitants of the neighbouring villages, of whom they seemed to think as badly as possible. There was nobody in the neighbourhood, the convicts believed, who would hesitate at all as to the course to be pursued; nothing would induce them to help the runaways; quite the other way, these people would hunt them down. "If you only knew what bad fellows these peasants are! Rascally brutes!" "Peasants, indeed! Worthless scamps!" "These Siberians are as bad as bad can be. They think nothing of killing a man." "Oh, well, our fellows----" "Yes, that's it, they may come off second best. Our fellows are as plucky as plucky can be." "Well, if we live long enough, we shall hear something about them soon." "Well, now, what do you _think_? Do you think they really will get clean away?" "I am sure, as I live, that they'll never be caught," said one of the most excited, giving the table a great blow with his fist. "Hm! That's as things turn out." "I'll tell you what, friends," said Skouratof, "if I once got out, I'd stake my life they'd never get me again." "_You?_" Everybody burst out laughing. They would hardly condescend to listen to him; but Skouratof was not to be put down. "I tell you I'd stake my life on it!" with great energy. "Why, I made my mind up to _that_ long ago. I'd find means of going through a key-hole rather than let them lay hands on me." "Oh, don't you fear, when your belly got empty you'd just go creeping to a peasant and ask him for a morsel of something." Fresh laughter. "I ask him for victuals? You're a liar!" "Hold your jaw, can't you? We know what you were sent here for. You and your Uncle Vacia killed some peasant for bewitching your cattle."[12] More laughter. The more serious among them seemed very angry and indignant. "You're a liar," cried Skouratof; "it's Mikitka who told you that; I wasn't in that at all, it was Uncle Vacia; don't you mix my name up in it. I'm a Moscow man, and I've been on the tramp ever since I was a very small thing. Look here, when the priest taught me to read the liturgy, he used to pinch my ears, and say, 'Repeat this after me: Have pity on me, Lord, out of Thy great goodness;' and he used to make me say with him, 'They've taken me up and brought me to the police-station out of Thy great goodness,' and the like. I tell you that went on when I was quite a little fellow." All laughed heartily again; that was what Skouratof wanted; he liked playing clown. Soon the talk became serious again, especially among the older men and those who knew a good deal about escapes. Those among the younger convicts who could keep themselves quiet enough to listen, seemed highly delighted. A great crowd was assembled in and about the kitchen. There were none of the warders about; so everybody could give vent to his feelings in talk or otherwise. One man I noticed who was particularly enjoying himself, a Tartar, a little fellow with high cheek-bones, and a remarkably droll face. His name was Mametka, he could scarcely speak Russian at all, but it was odd to see the way he craned his neck forward into the crowd, and the childish delight he showed. "Well, Mametka, my lad, _iakchi_." "_Iakchi, ouk, iakchi!_" said Mametka as well as he could, shaking his grotesque head. "_Iakchi._" "They'll never catch them, eh? _Iok._" "_Iok, iok!_" and Mametka waggled his head and threw his arms about. "You're a liar, then, and I don't know what you're talking about. Hey!" "That's it, that's it, _iakchi_!" answered poor Mametka. "All right, good, _iakchi_ it is!" Skouratof gave him a thump on the head, which sent his cap down over his eyes, and went out in high glee, and Mametka was quite chapfallen. For a week or so a very tight hand was kept on everybody in the jail, and the whole neighbourhood was repeatedly and carefully searched. How they managed it I cannot tell, but the prisoners always seemed to know all about the measures taken by the authorities for recovering the runaways. For some days, according to all we heard, things went very favourably for them; no traces whatever of them could be found. Our convicts made very light of all the authorities were about, and were quite at their ease about their friends, and kept saying that nothing would ever be found out about them. All the peasants round about were roused, we were told, and watching all the likely places, woods, ravines, etc. "Stuff and nonsense!" said our fellows, who had a grin on their faces most of the time, "they're hidden at somebody's place who's a friend." "That's certain; they're not the fellows to chance things, they've made all sure." The general idea was, in fact, that they were still concealed in the suburbs of the town, in a cellar, waiting till the hue and cry was over, and for their hair to grow; that they would remain there perhaps six months at least, and then quietly go off. All the prisoners were in the most fanciful and romantic state of mind about the things. Suddenly, eight days after the escape, a rumour spread that the authorities were on their track. This rumour was at first treated with contempt, but towards evening there seemed to be more in it. The convicts became much excited. Next morning it was said in the town that the runaways had been caught, and were being brought back. After dinner there were further details; the story was that they had been seized at a hamlet, seventy versts away from the town. At last we had fully confirmed tidings. The sergeant-major positively asserted, immediately after an interview with the Major, that they would be brought into the guard-house that very night. They were taken; there could be no doubt of it. It is difficult to convey an adequate idea of the way the convicts were affected by the news. At first their rage was great, then they were deeply dejected. Then they began to be bitter and sarcastic, pouring all their scorn, not on the authorities, but on the runaways who had been such fools as to get caught. A few began this, then nearly all joined, except a small number of the more serious, thoughtful ones, who held their tongues, and seemed to regard the thoughtless fellows with great contempt. Poor Koulikoff and A--v were now just as heartily abused as they had been glorified before; the men seemed to take a delight in running them down, as though in being caught they had done something wantonly offensive to their mates. It was said, with high contempt, that the fellows had probably got hungry and couldn't stand it, and had gone into a village to ask bread of the peasants, which, according to tramp etiquette, it appears, is to come down very low in the world indeed. In this supposition the men turned out to be quite mistaken; for what had happened was that the tracks of the runaways out of the town were discovered and followed up; they were ascertained to have got into a wood, which was surrounded, so that the fugitives had no recourse but to give themselves up. They were brought in that night, tied hands and feet, under armed escort. All the convicts ran hastily to the palisades to see what would be done with them; but they saw nothing except the carriages of the Governor and the Major, which were waiting in front of the guard-house. The fugitives were ironed and locked up separately, their punishment being adjourned till the next day. The prisoners began all to sympathise with the unhappy fellows when they heard how they had been taken, and learned that they could not help themselves, and the anxiety about the issue was keen. "They'll get a thousand at least." "A thousand, is it? I tell you they'll have it till the life is beaten out of them. A--v may get off with a thousand, but the other they'll kill; why, he's in the 'special section.'" They were wrong. A--v was sentenced to five hundred strokes, his previous good conduct told in his favour, and this was his first prison offence. Koulikoff, I believe, had fifteen hundred. The punishment, upon the whole, was mild rather than severe. The two men showed good sense and feeling, for they gave nobody's name as having helped them, and positively declared that they had made straight for the woods without going into anybody's house. I was very sorry for Koulikoff; to say nothing of the heavy beating he got; he had thrown away all his chances of having his lot as a prisoner lightened. Later he was sent to another convict establishment. A--v did not get all he was sentenced to; the physicians interfered, and he was let off. But as soon as he was safe in the hospital he began blowing his trumpet again, and said he would stick at nothing now, and that they should soon see what he would do. Koulikoff was not changed a bit, as decorous as ever, and gave himself just the same airs as ever; manner or words to show that he had had such an adventure. But the convicts looked on him quite differently; he seemed to have come down a good deal in their estimation, and now to be on their own level every way, instead of being a superior creature. So it was that poor Koulikoff's star paled; success is everything in this world. FOOTNOTE: [12] The expression of the original is untranslatable; literally "you killed a cattle-kill." This phrase means murder of a peasant, male or female, supposed to bewitch cattle. We had in our jail a murderer who had done this cattle-kill.--DOSTOÏEFFSKY'S NOTE. CHAPTER X. FREEDOM! This incident occurred during my last year of imprisonment. My recollection of what occurred this last year is as keen as of the events of the first years; but I have gone into detail enough. In spite of my impatience to be out, this year was the least trying of all the years I spent there. I had now many friends and acquaintances among the convicts, who had by this time made up their minds very much in my favour. Many of them, indeed, had come to feel a sincere and genuine affection for me. The soldier who was assigned to accompany my friend and myself--simultaneously discharged--out of the prison, very nearly cried when the time for leaving came. And when we were at last in full freedom, staying in the rooms of the Government building placed at our disposal for the month we still spent in the town, this man came nearly every day to see us. But there were some men whom I could never soften or win any regard from--God knows why--and who showed just the same hard aversion for me at the last as at the first; something we could not get over stood between us. I had more indulgences during the last year. I found among the military functionaries of our town old acquaintances, and even some old schoolfellows, and the renewal of these relations helped me. Thanks to them I got permission to have some money, to write to my family, and even to have some books. For some years I had not had a single volume, and words would fail to tell the strange, deep emotion and excitement which the first book I read at the jail caused me. I began to devour it at night, when the doors were closed, and read it till the break of day. It was a number of a review, and it seemed to me like a messenger from the other world. As I read, my life before the prison days seemed to rise up before me in sharp definition, as of some existence independent of my own, which another soul had had. Then I tried to get some clear idea of my relation to current events and things; whether my arrears of knowledge and experience were too great to make up; whether the men and women out of doors had lived and gone through many things and great during the time I was away from them; and great was my desire to thoroughly understand what was _now_ going on, _now_ that I could know something about it all at last. All the words I read were as palpable things, which I wanted rather to feel sensibly than get mere meaning out of; I tried to see more in the text than _could_ be there. I imagined some mysterious meanings that _must_ be in them, and tried at every page to see allusions to the past, with which my mind was familiar, whether they were there or not; at every turn of the leaf I sought for traces of what had deeply moved people before the days of my bondage; and deep was my dejection when it was forced on my mind that a new state of things had arisen; a new life, among my kind, which was alien to my knowledge and my sentiments. I felt as if I was a straggler, left behind and lost in the onward march of mankind. Yes, there were indeed arrears, if the word is not too weak. For the truth is, that another generation had come up, and I knew it not, and it knew not me. At the foot of one article I saw the name of one who had been dear to me; with what avidity I flung myself on _that_ paper! But the other names were nearly all new to me; new workers had come upon the scene, and I was eager to know their doings and themselves. It made me feel nearly desperate to have so few books, and to know how hard it would be to get more. At an earlier date, in the old Major's time, it was a dangerous thing indeed to bring books into the jail. If one was found when the whole place was searched, as was regularly done, great was the disturbance, and no efforts were spared to find out how they got in, and who had helped in the offence. I did not want to be subjected to insulting scrutiny, and, if I had, it would have been useless. I _had_ to live without books, and did, shut up in myself, tormenting myself with many a question and problem on which I had no means of throwing any light. But I can _never_ tell it all. It was in winter that I came in, so in winter I was to leave, on the anniversary-day. Oh, with what impatience did I look forward to the thrice-blessed winter! How gladly did I see the summer die out, the leaves turn yellow on the trees, the grass turn dry over the wide steppe! Summer is gone at last! the winds of autumn howl and groan, the first snow falls in whirling flakes. The winter, so long, long-prayed for, is come, come at last. Oh, how the heart beats with the thought that freedom was really, at last, at last, close at hand. Yet it was strange, as the time of times, the day of days, grew nearer and nearer, so did my soul grow quieter and quieter. I was annoyed at myself, reproached myself even with being cold, indifferent. Many of the convicts, as I met them in the court-yard when the day's work was done, used to get out, and talk with me to wish me joy. "Ah, little Father Alexander Petrovitch, you'll soon be out now! And here you'll leave us poor devils behind!" "Well, Mertynof, have you long to wait still?" I asked the man who spoke. "I! Oh, good Lord, I've seven years of it yet to weary through." Then the man sighed with a far-away, wandering look, as if he was gazing into those intolerable days to come.... Yes, many of my companions congratulated me in a way that showed they really felt what they said. I saw, too, that there was more disposition to meet me as man to man, they drew nearer to me as I was to leave them; the halo of freedom began to surround me, and caring for that they cared more for me. It was in this spirit they bade me farewell. K--schniski, a young Polish noble, a sweet and amiable person, was very fond, about this time, of walking in the court-yard with me. The stifling nights in the barracks did him much harm, so he tried his best to keep his health by getting all the exercise and fresh air he could. "I am looking forward impatiently to the day when _you_ will be set free," he said with a smile one day, "for when you go I shall _realise_ that I have just one year more of it to undergo." Need I say what I can yet not help saying, that freedom in idea always seemed to us who were there something _more_ free than it ever can be in reality? That was because our fancy was always dwelling upon it. Prisoners always exaggerate when they think of freedom and look on a free man; we did certainly; the poorest servant of one of the officers there seemed a sort of king to us, everything we could imagine in a free man, compared with ourselves at least; he had no irons on his limbs, his head was not shaven, he could go where and when he liked, with no soldiers to watch and escort him. The day before I was set free, as night fell I went _for the last time_ all through and all round the prison. How many a thousand times had I made the circuit of those palisades during those ten years! There, at the rear of the barracks, had I gone to and fro during the whole of that first year, a solitary, despairing man. I remember how I used to reckon up the days I had still to pass there--thousands, thousands! God! how long ago it seemed. There's the corner where the poor prisoned eagle wasted away; Petroff used often to come to me at that place. It seemed as if the man would never leave my side now; he would place himself by my side and walk along without ever saying a word, as though he knew all my thoughts as well as myself, and there was always a strange, inexplicable sort of wondering look on the man's face. How many a mental farewell did I take of the black, squared beams in our barracks! Ah, me! How much joyless youth, how much strength for which use there was none, was buried, lost in those walls!--youth and strength of which the world might surely have made _some_ use. For I must speak my thoughts as to this: the hapless fellows there were perhaps the strongest, and, in one way or another, the most gifted of our people. There was all that strength of body and of mind lost, hopelessly lost. Whose fault is that? Yes; whose fault _is_ that? The next day, at an early hour, before the men were mustered for work, I went through all the barracks to bid the men a last farewell. Many a vigorous, horny hand was held out to me with right good-will. Some grasped and shook my hand as though all their hearts went with the act; but these were the more generous souls. Most of the poor fellows seemed so much to feel that, for them, I was already a man changed by what was coming, that they could feel scarce anything else. They knew that I had friends in the town, that I was going away at once to _gentlemen_, that I should sit at their table as their equal. This the poor fellows felt; and, although they did their best as they took my hand, that hand could not be the hand of an equal. No; I, too, was a gentleman now. Some turned their backs on me, and made no reply to my parting words. I think, too, that I saw looks of aversion on some faces. The drum beat; all the convicts went to their work; and I was left to myself. Souchiloff had got up before everybody that morning, and now set himself tremblingly to the task of getting ready for me a last cup of tea. Poor Souchiloff! How he cried when I gave him my clothes, my shirts, my trouser-straps, and some money. "'Tain't that, 'tain't that," he said, and he bit his trembling lips, "it's that I am going to lose you, Alexander Petrovitch! What _shall_ I do without you?" There was Akim Akimitch, too; him, also, I bade farewell. "Your turn to go will come soon, I pray," said I. "Ah, no! I shall remain here long, long, very long yet," he just managed to say, as he pressed my hand. I threw myself on his neck; we kissed. Ten minutes after the convicts had gone out, my companion and myself left the jail _for ever_. We went to the blacksmith's shop, where our irons were struck off. We had no armed escort, we went there attended by a single sub-officer. It was convicts who struck off our irons in the engineers' workshop. I let them do it for my friend first, then went to the anvil myself. The smiths made me turn round, seized my leg, and stretched it on the anvil. Then they went about the business methodically, as though they wanted to make a very neat job of it indeed. "The rivet, man, turn the rivet first," I heard the master smith say; "there, so, so. Now, a stroke of the hammer!" The irons fell. I lifted them up. Some strange impulse made me long to have them in my hands for one last time. I couldn't realise that, only a moment before, they had been on my limbs. "Good-bye! Good-bye! Good-bye!" said the convicts in their broken voices; but they seemed pleased as they said it. Yes, farewell! Liberty! New life! Resurrection from the dead! Unspeakable moment! THE END THE TEMPLE PRESS, PRINTERS, LETCHWORTH 
45167	----	Transcriber's note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). Small capital text has been replaced with all capitals. The carat character (^) indicates that the following letter is superscripted (example: M^r.). If two or more letters are superscripted they are enclosed in curly brackets (example: MOUN^{T.S}). * * * * * [Illustration: PAGODA AND GARDENS OF THE EMPEROR'S SUMMER PALACE, YUEN-MIN-YUEN. Photo. by Beato. (_Frontispiece._)] THE SIBERIAN OVERLAND ROUTE FROM PEKING TO PETERSBURG, THROUGH THE DESERTS AND STEPPES OF MONGOLIA, TARTARY, &c. BY ALEXANDER MICHIE. [Illustration: TOMB AT THE DEPOT, PEKING.] LONDON: JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 1864. PREFACE. The following work has but moderate claims, I fear, to public attention; and it would probably not have seen the light at all but for the urgent request of friends, who think better of it than the author does. It has no pretensions to any higher merit than that of being a plain narrative of the journey, and an impartial record of my own impressions of the people among whom I travelled. Although some portions of the route have been eloquently described by Huc and others, I am not aware that any continuous account of the whole journey between the capitals of China and Russia has appeared in the English language for nearly a century and a half. Important changes have occurred in that period; and, if I may judge of others by myself, I suspect that many erroneous notions are afloat respecting the conditions of life in these far-off regions, and more especially in Siberia. Observation has modified my own pre-conceived opinions on many of the subjects touched on in the following pages, and I am not without a hope that they will be found to contain some information which may be new to many people in this country. If I have indulged in irrelevant digressions, I can only say that I have limited myself to those reflections which naturally suggested themselves in the course of my travels; and the subjects I have given most prominence to are simply those which happened to be the most interesting to myself. My thanks are due to various friends for useful hints, confirming and correcting my own observations; but I am especially indebted for some valuable notes on Siberia, its social phenomena, gold mines, &c., to Edwin E. Bishop, Esq., whose long residence in the country, and perfect acquaintance with the language and customs of the people, constitute him an authority on all matters connected with that part of the world. 22, BERKELEY SQUARE, _October 28th, 1864_. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. SHANGHAI TO TIENTSIN. PAGE John Bell--"Overland" routes--Peking a sealed book--Jesuits-- Opening of China--Chinese jealousy of Mongolia--Errors of British policy--Their results--Preparations for journey-- Leave Shanghae--Yang-tse-kiang-- Changes in its channel-- Elevation of the delta--Chinese records of inundations--The Nanzing--Shantung promontory in a fog--Chinese coasters-- Advantages of steam--Our fellow-passengers--Peiho river-- Intricate navigation--Sailors in China--Tientsin--New settlement--Municipal council--Improvements--Trade--Beggars-- Health--Sand-storms--Gambling 1 CHAPTER II. TIENTSIN TO PEKING. Modes of travelling--Carts, horses, boats--Filthy banks of the Peiho--Voyage to Tungchow--Our boat's crew--Chinese distances-- Traffic on the Peiho--Temple at Tungchow--Mercantile priests-- Ride to Peking--Millet--Eight-mile bridge--Resting place-- Tombs--Filial piety--Cemeteries--Old statues--Water communication into Peking--Grain supply 23 CHAPTER III. PEKING. Walls of Peking--Dust and dirt--Street obstructions--The model inn--Restaurant--Our boon companions--Peking customs--Rule of thumb--British legation--Confucian temple--Kienloong's pavilion--Lama temple--Mongol chants--Roman and Bhuddist analogies--Mongols and Chinese--Hospitality of lay brother-- Observatory--Street cries--Temple of Heaven--Theatres-- European residents--Medical mission under Dr. Lockhart-- Chinese jealousy of Mongolia--Russian diplomacy--Reckoning with our host--Ice--Paper-money 32 CHAPTER IV. PEKING TO CHAN-KIA-KOW. Return to Tungchow--Disappointment--Priest conciliated by Russian language--Back to Peking--Negotiations--Ma-foo's peculation--Chinese honesty and knavery--Loading the caravan--Mule-litters--Leave Peking--Sha-ho--Cotton plant-- Nankow--Crowded inn--Difficult pass--Inner "great wall"-- Cha-tow--Chinese Mahommedans--Religious toleration--Christians in disfavour--Change of scene--Hwai-lai--Ruins of bridge--Bed of old river--Road traffic--Watch-towers--Chi-ming-i--Legend of monastery--the Yang-ho--Pass--Shan-shui-pu--Coal-- Suen-wha-fu--Ride to Chan-kia-kow 56 CHAPTER V. CHAN-KIA-KOW. Arrival at Chan-kia-kow--Focus of Trade--Mixed population-- Wealth--Mongols--Russians--Name of Kalgan--Chinese friends--Russian hospitality--Disappointment--Proposed excursion to Bain-tolochoi--Camels at last procured-- Noetzli returns to Tientsin--The pass--Mountains--Great Wall--The horse-fair--Dealers--Ox-carts--Transport of wood from Urga--Shoeing smiths--Our Russian host arrives--The "Samovar"--Tea-drinking in Russia--Change of temperature-- Elevation of Chan-kia-kow--Preparations for the desert-- Cabbages--Warm boots--Camels arrive--Leave Chan-kia-kow-- The pass--Superiority of mules, &c., over camels 72 CHAPTER VI. MONGOLIA. Leave China--Mishap in the pass--Steep ascent--Chinese perseverance--Agricultural invasion--Our first encampment-- Cold night--Pastoral scene--Introduction to the Mongols--The land of tents--Our conductors--Order of march--Mongol chants--The lama--Slow travelling--Pony "Dolonor"--Night travelling--Our Mongols' tent--Argols--Visitors--Mongol instinct--Camels quick feeders--Sport--Antelopes--Lame camels--Scant pastures--Endurance of Mongols--Disturbed sleep--Optical illusions--"Yourt," Mongol tent--Domestic arrangements--Etiquette--Mongol furniture--Sand-grouse-- Track-- Wind and rain--A wretched night--Comfortless encampment--Camels breaking down--The camel seasons--No population--No grass--Mingan 83 CHAPTER VII. MONGOLIA--_continued_. Visitors at Mingan--Trading--Scene with a drunken Mongol-- Good horsemen--Bad on foot--Knowledge of money--Runaway pony--A polite shepherd--Gunshandak--Wild onions--Halt-- Expert butcher--Mongol sheep, extraordinary tails--A Mongol feast--Effects of diet--Taste for fat explained--Mongol fasts--Our cooking arrangements--Camel ailings--Maggots-- Rough treatment--Ponies falling off--Live in hopes--Dogs-- The harvest moon--Waiting for Kitat--Lamas and their inhabitants--Resume the march--Meet caravan--Stony roads--Disturbed sleep--Gurush--Negotiations at Kutul-usu-- Salt plains--Sporting lama--Ulan-Khada--Trees--Reach Tsagan-tuguruk--Lamas and black men--Small temple--Musical failure--Our new acquaintances--Horse-dealing--Greed of Mongols--Fond of drink--A theft--The incantation--Kitat returns--Camel lost--Vexatious delay--Start from Tsagan-tuguruk 102 CHAPTER VIII. MONGOLIA--_continued_. Marshes--Camels dislike water--Chinese caravan--Travellers' tales--Taryagi--Looking for cattle in the dark-- Butyn-tala--An addition to our party--Russian courier-- Water-fowl--Bad water--Kicking camel--Pass of Ulin-dhabha-- Mongols shifting quarters--Slip 'tween the cup and the lip--Mountains--The north wind--Guntu-gulu--An accident-- Medical treatment--Protuberant ears--Marmots--Ice--Dark night--Bain-ula--Living, not travelling--Charm of desert life--Young pilgrim--Grand scenery--Steep descent--Obon-- Horror of evil spirits--Mongol and Chinese notions of devils--Dread of rain--A wet encampment--Snow--The White Mountains--The Bactrian camel--Capability of enduring cold-- Job's comforters--Woods appear--The yak--Change of fuel 122 CHAPTER IX. URGA TO KIACHTA. Maimachin in sight--A snow storm--Hasty encampment--Tolla in flood--Delay--Intercourse with Mongols--The night watches--Tellig's family--Rough night--Scene at the Tolla-- Crossing the river--the "Kitat" redivivus--His hospitality--How Mongols clean their cups--Maimachin--The Russian consulate--Russian ambition--Its prospects--The Urga, or camp--Kuren--Fine situation--Buildings-- Horse-shoeing--Hawkers--The lamaseries--An ascetic--The Lama-king--Relations between Chinese emperors and the Lama power--Urga and Kara Korum--Historical associations--Prester John and Genghis Khan--Leave Urga--Slippery paths-- More delays--The pass--A snow storm--Fine scenery--Rich country--Another bugbear--The Boro valley--Cultivation-- Khara-gol--The pass--Lama courier--Shara-gol--Winter quarters--The transmigration--Iro-gol--Forced march-- Kiachta in sight 141 CHAPTER X. MONGOLS--HISTORICAL NOTES. Early history of Huns--Wars with China--Dispersion--Appear in Europe--Attila--His career--And death--Turks--Mixture of races--Consanguinity of Huns and Mongols--Genghis--His conquests--Divisions of his empire--Timour--A Mahommedan-- His wars--And cruelties--Baber--The Great Mogul in India-- Dispersion of tribes--Modern divisions of the Mongols-- Warlike habits--Religions--The causes of their success in war considered--Their heroes--Their characters--And military talents--Superstition--Use of omens-- Destructiveness and butcheries of the Huns and Mongols-- Antagonistic traits of character--Depraved moral instincts--Necessity of culture to develop human feelings--Flesh-eating not brutalising--Dehumanising tendency of war--Military qualities of pastoral peoples-- Dormant enthusiasm of the Mongols 166 CHAPTER XI. MONGOLS--PHYSICAL AND MENTAL CHARACTERISTICS. Physical characteristics--Meanness--Indolence--Failure in agriculture--Hospitality--Its origin--Pilfering--Honesty-- Drunkenness--Smoking--Ir'chi or Kumiss--Morality--Of lamas--Women fond of ornaments--Decency of dress-- Physique--Low muscular energy--A wrestling match--Bad legs--Bow-legged--Its causes--Complexions--Eyes--Absence of beard--Comparison with Chinese and Japanese--Effect of habits on physical development--Animal instincts in nomads--Supply the place of artificial appliances-- Permanence of types of character--Uniformity in primitive peoples--Causes that influence colour of skin--Mongol powers of endurance--Low mental capacity--Its causes-- Superstition produced by their habits--Predisposed to spiritual thraldom--The lamas and their practices-- Prayers--Knaveries of lamas--Vagabond lamas--The spread of Bhuddism--Superior to Shamanism--Shaman rites--Political result of Bhuddism--The Mongol kings--Serfs 185 CHAPTER XII. KIACHTA. Approach Kiachta--Maimachin--Chinese elegance--The frontier--Russian eagle--The commissary of the frontier-- "Times" newspaper--Kiachta--Troitskosarfsk--Meet a countryman--Part from our Mongols--Their programme--A Russian bath--Siberian refinement--Streets and pavement-- Russian conveyances--Aversion to exercise-- Semi-civilisation--Etiquette--Mixture of peoples--Wealth of Russian merchants--Narrow commercial views--The Chinese of Maimachin--Domestic habits--Russian and Chinese characters compared--Chinese more civilised than the Russians--The Custom-house--Liberal measures--Our droshky-- Situation of Kiachta--Supplies--Population--Hay-market-- Fish--The garden--Domestic gardening--Climate salubrious-- Construction of houses--Stoves--Russian meals--Commercial importance of Kiachta--Inundation of the Selenga-- Travelling impracticable--Money-changing--New travelling appointments--Tarantass--Passports--Danger of delay--Prepare to start--First difficulty--Siberian horses--Post-bell 203 CHAPTER XIII. KIACHTA TO THE BAIKAL. Leave Troitskosarfsk--Hilly roads--Bouriats--The first post-station--Agreeable surprise--Another stoppage--A night on the hill-side--Hire another carriage--Reach the Selenga--The ferry--Selenginsk--A gallery of art-- Cultivation--Verchne Udinsk--Effects of the inundation-- Slough of despond--Fine scenery--A dangerous road--A press of travellers--Favour shown us--Angry Poles-- Ilyensk--An obsequious postmaster--Tidy post-house--A night at Ilyensk--Treachery suspected--Roads destroyed-- Difficult travelling--An old Pole--Baikal lake--Station at Pasoilské--A night scene--The Selenga river--And valley--Agriculture--Cattle, sheep, pigs, dogs 223 CHAPTER XIV. LAKE BAIKAL TO IRKUTSK. Morning scene at Pasoilské--Better late than never-- Victimised--Russian junks--Primitive navigators--Storms on the Baikal--Scene at the shipping port--Religious ceremony--A polite officer--Inconvenience of the Baikal route--Engineering enterprise--More delay--Fares by the Baikal steamer--Crowing and crouching--The embarkation--The General Karsakof--A naval curiosity--The lake--Its depth-- And area--The "Holy Sea"--The passage--Terra firma-- Custom-house delay--Fine country--Good roads--Hotels Amoor and Metzgyr 234 CHAPTER XV. IRKUTSK. In sight of Irkutsk--Handsome town--Wrong hotel--Bad accommodation--Suffocation--Bad attendance--The cuisine-- Venerable eggs--Billiards--Meet a friend--Beauties of Irkutsk--Milliners--Bakers--Tobacconists--Prison-- Convicts--Benevolence of old ladies--Equipages--Libraries-- Theatre--Population--Governor--Generalship--The levée-- Governing responsibilities--Importance of commerce-- Manufactures insignificant--Education--Attractions of Siberia--Society--Polish exiles--The Decembrists--The sentence of banishment--Its hereditary effect--Low standing of merchants--Discomforts of travelling--Engage a servant--The prodigal--A mistake--Early winter--The Angara--Floating-bridge--Parting view of Irkutsk 246 CHAPTER XVI. IRKUTSK TO KRASNOYARSK. Leave Irkutsk--Roads and rivers--Capacity for sleep-- Bridges--Break-neck travelling--Endurance of Russian ponies--Verst-posts--Appalling distances--Irregular feeding--Tea _versus_ grog--River Birusa--Boundary of Irkutsk and Yenisei--Stoppage--The telegraph wires-- Improved roads--River Kan--The ferrymen--Kansk--A new companion--Prisoner of war--Advantages and disadvantages of travelling in company--Improved cultivation--A snow-storm--Cold wind--Absurd arrangement of stations-- The river Yenisei--Mishap at the ferry--The approach to Krasnoyarsk--The town--Population--Hotel--Travellers' accounts--Confusion at the station--The black-book--The courier service 262 CHAPTER XVII. KRASNOYARSK TO TOMSK. Sledges--Sulky yemschiks--Progress to Achinsk--Limit of Eastern Siberia--Game--The Chulim--Difficult ferry-- Government of Tomsk--Bad roads again--Job's comforters-- Mariinsk--An accident--And another--Resources of a yemschik--A drive through a forest--Ishimskaya--A day too late--A sporting Pole--Disappointment--Annoying delay--Freezing river--A cold bath--Sledge travelling--A night scene--Early birds--Arrive in Tomsk--Our lodging-- Religion of Russians--Scruples of a murderer--Population and situation of Tomsk--Fire Insurance--Climate of Tomsk-- Supply of water--Carefulness and hardiness--Skating--Demure little boys--An extinct species--The gold diggings--The Siberian tribes 273 CHAPTER XVIII. TOMSK TO OMSK. Refitting--The optician--The feather-pillow question--A friend in need--A dilemma--Schwartz's folly--Old Barnaul leaves us--We leave Tomsk--A weary night--A Russian dormitory--Construction of houses--Cross the Tom--And the Ob--Enter the Baraba steppe--Kolivan--The telegraph--The ladies of Baraba--Game--Windmills--A frozen marsh--Kainsk-- Reach Oms--Outbreaks on the Kirghis steppe--Russian aggression--Its effects on different tribes 290 CHAPTER XIX. OMSK TO OCHANSK. Leave Omsk--Recruiting--Cross the Irtish--Tukalinsk-- Yalootorofsk--Reach Tumen--Improved posting--Snowroads-- Ekaterineburg--Mint--Precious stones--Iron works-- Englishmen in Siberia--Iron mines--Fish trade--A recruiting scene--Temperature rising--Game--The Urals--Disappointing-- A new companion--The boundary between Europe and Asia-- Yermak the Cossack--Discovery and conquest of Siberia-- Reach Perm--Too late again--Progress of inland navigation-- Facilities for application of steam--Water routes of Siberia--Railways--Tatars--Cross the Kama to Ochansk-- Dissolving view of snow roads 305 CHAPTER XX. RUSSIAN AND SIBERIAN PEASANTRY. Siberian and Russian peasantry--The contrast--Freedom and slavery--Origin of Siberian peasants--Their means of advancement--Exiles--Two classes--Their offences and punishments--Privileges after release--Liberality of the government--Its object--Extent of forest--One serf-proprietor in Siberia--Exemptions from conscription-- Rigour of the climate on the Lena and Yenisei--Settlers on Angara exempted from taxes--Improvement of Siberian peasants--A bright future--Amalgamation of classes--Slavery demoralising to masters--The emancipation of the serfs-- Its results 320 CHAPTER XXI. KAZAN.--POLISH EXILES. Road to Kazan--Polish prisoners--Arrive at Kazan--More croaking--Temptations to delay--Sell our sledge--View of Kazan--The ferry at the Volga--Ice-boats and icebergs--The military--Tatars--Polish exiles--Kindly treated by their escort--Erroneous ideas on this subject--The distribution of exiles in Siberia--Their life there--The Polish insurrection--Its objects--Imprudence--Consequences--Success would have been a second failure 331 CHAPTER XXII. KAZAN TO PETERSBURG. A day lost--The moujik's opportunity--Return to Kazan--Hotel "Ryazin"--Grease and butter--Evening entertainment--Try again--The ferry--A term of endearment--Ferrymen's devotions--A Jew publican--"Pour boire"--Villages and churches--The road to Nijni--Penance--A savage--A miserable night--Reach Nijni--"Sweet is pleasure after pain"--The great fair--Nijni under a cloud--Delights of railway travelling--A contrast--Reach Moscow--Portable gas--Foundling hospital--The Moscow and Petersburg railway--Grandeur of Petersburg--Late season--Current topics--Iron-clads--The currency--Effects of Crimean war-- Russian loyalty--Alexander II. as a reformer--Leave Petersburg 343 CHAPTER XXIII. RUSSIA AND CHINA. Earlier intercourse--Analogies and contrasts--Progress of Russia and decadence of China--Permanence of Chinese institutions--Arrogance justified--Not really bigoted-- Changes enforced by recent events--The rebellion-- Fallacious views in parliament--British interest in China--A bright future--Railways--Telegraphs--Machinery and other improvements--Resources to be developed--Free cities 357 POSTSCRIPT 401 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE PAGODA AND GARDENS OF THE EMPEROR'S SUMMER PALACE, YUEN-MIN-YUEN. (From a Photograph by Beato) _Frontispiece._ TOMB AT THE DEPOT. PEKING. (From a Photograph by Beato) _Vignette._ TUNG CHOW PAGODA. (From a Photograph by Beato) 27 WALLS OF PEKING. (From a Photograph by Beato) 32 PAVILION OF THE SUMMER PALACE OF YUEN-MIN-YUEN. (From a Photograph by Beato) 37 THIBETIAN MONUMENT IN LAMA TEMPLE. PEKING. (From a Photograph by Beato) 42 GREAT TEMPLE OF HEAVEN. PEKING. (From a Photograph by Beato) 48 PART OF THE EMPEROR'S PALACE, YUEN-MIN-YUEN. DESTROYED 1860. (From a Photograph by Beato) 55 THE NANKOW PASS 63 HALT IN THE DESERT OF GOBI 104 FORDING THE TOLLA NEAR URGA 147 VIEW OF EKATERINBURG. SIBERIA. (From a Russian Photograph). 307 [Illustration: A GENERAL MAP OF NORTHERN ASIA. _M^r. Michie's route coloured._ _London John Murray, Albemarle S^t_] THE SIBERIAN OVERLAND ROUTE FROM PEKING TO PETERSBURG. CHAPTER I. SHANGHAE TO TIENTSIN. The charming narrative of John Bell, of Antermony, who, in the reign of Peter the Great, travelled from Petersburg to Peking in the suite of a Russian ambassador, inspired me with a longing desire to visit Siberia and other little-known regions through which he passed. Having occasion to return to England, after a somewhat protracted residence on the coast of China, an opportunity presented itself of travelling through the north of China, Mongolia, and Siberia, on my homeward journey. This is, indeed, the real "overland route" from China, and it may as properly be styled "maritime," as the mail route per P. & O. steamers "overland." The so-called overland route has, however, strong temptations for a person eager to get home. There is a pleasing simplicity about the manner of it which is a powerful attraction to one who is worn out with sleepless nights in a hot climate. It is but to embark on a steamer; attend as regularly at meal times as your constitution will permit; sleep, or what is the same thing, read, during the intervals; and fill up the blanks by counting the passing hours and surveying your fellow passengers steeped in apoplectic slumbers under the enervating influence of the tropics. The sea route has, moreover, a decided advantage in point of time. In forty-five or fifty days I could have reached England from Shanghae by steamer: the land journey viâ Siberia I could not hope to accomplish in less than ninety days. But the northern route had strong attractions for me in the kind of vague mystery that invests the geography of strange countries, and the character, manners, and customs of their inhabitants. Ever-recurring novelties might be expected to keep the mind alive; and active travelling would in a great measure relieve the tedium of a long and arduous journey. Of the two, therefore, I preferred the prospect of being frozen in Siberia to being stewed in the Red Sea. The heat of Shanghae in the summer was intense and almost unprecedented, the supply of ice was fast undergoing dissolution, and an escape into colder regions at such a time was more than usually desirable. A few years ago it would have been about as feasible to travel from China to England by way of the moon as through Peking and Mongolia. Peking was a sealed book, jealously guarded by an arrogant, because an ignorant, government. Little was known of the city of the khans except what the Jesuits had communicated in the last century, and what that prince of travellers, Marco Polo, had handed down from the middle ages. No foreigner dared show his face there, except in the guise of a native, and even then at the risk of being detected and subjected to the greatest indignities. The Jesuits, it is true, in the face of the prohibition, continued to smuggle themselves into China, and even into Peking itself, and their perseverance and tenacity of purpose are entitled to all praise. But they occasionally paid dearly for their temerity, and not unfrequently got themselves and their "Christians" into hot water with the authorities. This received the high-sounding name of "persecution;" and if any one lost his life for meddling in other people's affairs, or interfering with the prerogative of the government, he was honoured with the name of a "martyr." The Jesuits had their day of power in China, and if they had but used it modestly they might still have stood at the elbow of the Emperor. They were tried and found wanting, expelled from Peking, and China was closed against foreigners, not, it must be confessed, without some reason. All that has been changed again. The curtain has risen once more; foreigners are free to traverse the length and breadth of China, and to spy out the nakedness of the land. The treaty of Tientsin and convention of Peking, ratified in November, 1860, which opened up China to travellers for "business or pleasure," was largely taken advantage of in the following year. In 1861, foreign steamers penetrated by the great river Yang-tsze into the heart of China. Four enterprising foreigners explored the river to a distance of 1800 miles from the sea, and many other excursions were set on foot by foreigners, in regions previously known only through the accounts of Chinese geographers or the partial, imperfect, and in some instances obsolete, descriptions of the older Jesuits. Mongolia, being within the dominions of the Emperor of China, was included in the passport system; and although the Chinese government has made a feeble attempt to impose restrictions on foreign travellers in that region on the ground that, although Chinese, it is not China, up to the present time no serious obstacles have been placed in the way of free intercourse in Mongolia; nor can the plain language of the treaty be limited in its interpretation, unless the ministers of the treaty powers should voluntarily abandon the privilege now enjoyed. It is devoutly to be hoped that no envoy of Great Britain will again commit the error of waiving rights once granted by the Chinese. However unimportant such abandoned rights may appear, experience has shown that the results are not so. Sir Michael Seymour's war at Canton in 1856-7 could never have occurred if our undoubted right to reside in that city had been insisted on some years previously. Our disaster at the Taku forts in 1859 would have been prevented if the right of our minister to reside in Peking had not, in a weak moment, been waived. What complications have not arisen in Japan, from our consenting to undo half Lord Elgin's treaty and allowing the port of Osaca to remain closed to our merchantmen! We cannot afford to make concessions to Asiatic powers. Give them an inch and they will take an ell: then fleets and armies must be brought into play to recover ground we have lost through sheer wantonness. Too late to join a party who preceded me, I had some difficulty in finding a companion for the journey, but had the good fortune to make the acquaintance of a young gentleman from Lyons, who purposed going to France by the Siberian route with or without a companion. We at once arranged matters to our mutual satisfaction, and proceeded with the preparations necessary for the journey. Having the advantage of excellent practical advice on this head from gentlemen who had already gone over the ground, we had little difficulty in getting up our outfit. A tent was indispensable for Mongolia, and we got a very commodious one from a French officer. A military cork mattress, with waterproof sheets, proved invaluable in the desert. Our clothing department was inconveniently bulky, because we had to provide both for very hot and very cold weather. The commissariat was liberally supplied, rather overdone, as it turned out, but that was a fault on the safe side. The accounts we heard of the "hungry desert," where nothing grows but mutton, induced us to lay in supplies not only for an ordinary journey across, but for any unforeseen delay we might encounter on the way. We had first to get to Tientsin, six hundred miles from Shanghae, and two steamers were under despatch for that port. I embarked on board the _Nanzing_, Captain Morrison, about midnight on the 28th July, 1863. Taking advantage of the bright moon, we steamed cautiously down the river Wong-poo for fourteen miles, past the village of Woosung, "outside the marks," and into the great river Yang-tsze, where we cast anchor for the night. It would be hazardous to attempt the navigation of the estuary of the Yang-tsze, even in bright moonlight. Its banks are so flat as to afford no marks to steer by. The estuary is very wide, but the deep water channel is narrow, with extensive shallows on either side. The upper parts of the Yang-tsze-kiang, where the river narrows to a mile or two in breadth, and flows through a bolder country, are more easy of navigation. In the broad part of the river, near its mouth, the deep water channels have a tendency to shift their positions. The surveys of the river from its mouth to Nanking, made in 1842, were found inapplicable in 1861. Where shallows were marked in 1842, deep water was found in 1861, and dry patches were found where the navigable channels were before. The delta of this noble river is rapidly growing into dry land; the "banks" are fast rising into islands, and the channels of the river becoming more circumscribed. The rapidity with which this process is going on is most remarkable. From a point nearly fifty miles from the mouth of the river it is divided into two great branches, called by hydrographers the north and the south entrances. Twenty years ago extensive shallows lay between, and many a good ship found a final resting-place on these treacherous banks. The most dangerous of these are now above water, and are visible from a distance sufficient to enable the pilot to keep clear of them. In the small river Wang-poo also, at and below the town of Shanghae, the land is gaining considerably on the water. An island has formed and is still growing near the mouth of the Wang-poo, known to pilots as the "middle-ground." Until a very few years ago it was entirely under water. In the year 1855 I was aground on the top of it in a schooner near low water, and the rising tide floated us off easily. The island is now so high as to remain uncovered in the highest spring tides. Thus, in the space of eight years, this island has risen more than twelve, and probably not less than eighteen feet. The formation is extending itself downwards; the tail of the island stretching away under water brought up many vessels in 1862 and 1863, where there was plenty of water a year or two before. On the south shore of the Yang-tsze-kiang the lines of embankment mark the different stages of the aggression of the land on the water. When a dry flat was formed liable to inundations in high tides, an embankment of mud was built for the protection of the inhabitants who settled on the reclaimed land. In process of time more land was made, and another embankment formed. Thus three distinct lines of embankment, several miles inland from the present water line, are to be traced from below Woosung towards Hang-chow Bay, and a very large tract of good arable land has been reclaimed from the river, or, as the Chinese call it, the sea, within comparatively modern times. From the causes we see now in active operation, it is easy to trace the formation of the vast alluvial plain which now supports so many millions of inhabitants. There are, indeed, intimations in the Chinese records of some of these changes. Islands in the sea are mentioned but a few centuries back, which are now hills in inhabited districts. In the dawn of Chinese history allusions are made to a great flood which desolated the land, and the Emperor Yaou has been immortalised for his achievements in subduing and regulating the waters. Yaou reigned about 2200 B.C., and the rising of the waters in his time has been referred by some to the Noachian deluge. But the Chinese empire at that time extended as far south as the Great River, and included three great valleys. It is not an improbable conjecture therefore that there was a large circumference of debateable land barely reclaimed from the sea. With the imperfect means then at command for keeping out the water it is easy to suppose that an unusually high tide would break down the defences and overflow the flat country. It may also be, of course, that then, as now, the Yellow River caused trouble by arbitrarily changing its course, and the patriotic labours of Yaou may have been limited to damming up that wayward stream, which has been called "China's sorrow." But the chronicles of the great inundation do not appear to have been satisfactorily explained, and it may be said of the annals of the reigns of Yaou and Shun, that the interest which attaches to them is in direct proportion to their obscurity. A few hours' steaming on the 29th took us out of the turbid waters of the Yang-tsze-kiang, but during the whole of that day we continued in shallow water of a very light sea-green colour. The weather was fine, and though still extremely hot, the fresh sea air soon produced a magical effect on our enfeebled digestion. The voyage was as pleasant as a good ship, a good table, and a courteous commander could make it. On the 30th a thick fog settled down on the water, and on the following morning all eyes were anxiously straining after the Shantung promontory, which was the turning-point of our voyage. By dead reckoning we were close to it, but there is no accounting for the effect of the currents that sweep round this bold headland. The tide rushes into the Gulf of Pecheli by one side of the entrance, and out at the other. But from the conformation of the gulf the tidal currents are subject to disturbances from various causes, of which the direction of the wind is the most potent. A north-westerly wind keeps the tide wave at bay, and drives the water out of the gulf, until its level has been lowered several feet below that of the ocean. Great irregularities in the ebb and flow are occasioned by this; and when the cause ceases to act, the reaction is proportionate to the amount of disturbance; the pent-up waters from without flow in with impetuosity, and the equilibrium is restored. In the dense fog, our commander could only crawl along cautiously, stopping now and again to listen for the sound of men's voices, or the barking of dogs, take soundings, and watch for any indications of the near vicinity of land. At length, to our great joy, the fog lifted over a recognisable point of the promontory, and immediately settled down again. The glimpse was sufficient however, and the good steamer was at once headed westward, for the mouth of the Peiho river, and bowled along fearlessly on her way. As the sun rose higher the mist was dispersed, and the bold rugged outline of the Shantung coast was unveiled before us. The clear blue water was alive with Chinese coasting craft, small and large, of most picturesque appearance. The heavy, unwieldy junks of northern China lay almost motionless, their widespread sails hanging idly to the mast, for there was just wind enough to ripple the surface of the water in long patches, leaving large spaces of glassy smoothness untouched by the breeze. The crews of the northern junks are hardy stalwart fellows, inured to labour, and zealous in their work. Their vessels are built very low-sided, to enable them to be propelled by oars when the wind fails them. The crews work cheerily at their oars, both night and day, when necessary, keeping time to the tune of their half-joyous, half-melancholy boat-songs. With all their exertions, however, they drive the shapeless lump but slowly through the water, and one cannot help feeling pity for the poor men, and regret for the waste of so much manual labour. It is to be hoped that this hardy race of seamen will find more fruitful fields wherein to turn their strength to account when foreign vessels and steamers have superseded the time-honoured but extravagant system of navigation in China. This end has, indeed, been already reached to a certain extent. China has been imbued with the progressive spirit of the world, to the great advantage both of themselves and foreigners. The southern coasts swarm with steamers, and the Gulf of Pecheli, in this the third year from the opening of foreign trade in the north, was regularly visited by trading steamers. In all discussions in England on the subject of the development of trade in China, the vast coasting trade is generally overlooked, as a matter in which we have no interest. This is a mistake, however, for foreigners have a considerable share in that trade directly, and their steamers and sailing vessels are employed to a very large extent by the Chinese merchants. All produce is very materially reduced in price to the consumer by the facilities for competition among merchants which improved communication affords, and by the diminution in expenses of carriage, which is the necessary result. The rapidity with which foreign vessels can accomplish their voyages as compared with Chinese junks enables the native trader to make so many more ventures in a given time, that he can afford to take smaller profits than formerly, and yet on the average be no loser. Or even if the average results of the year's trade be less profitable to individuals than before, its benefits are spread over a greater number, and, in the aggregate, suffer no diminution. The general interests of the country have been subserved in an important degree by the extension of the coasting trade, where no disturbing influences have been at work; and the prosperity of the general population cannot fail to react favourably on the mercantile class, through whom the prosperity primarily comes. Chefoo, the new settlement on the Shantung coast, is frequently a port of call for steamers trading between Shanghae and Tientsin. We did not touch there in the _Nanzing_, but passed at a distance of twelve miles from the bluff rocky headland from which the settlement takes its name. Before darkness had closed in the view we had reached the Mia-tau group of islands which connect the mountain ranges of Shantung, by a continuous chain, with the Liau-tung promontory at the north of the entrance of the Gulf of Pecheli. There is not much difficulty or danger in getting through these islands even at night, but it is always an object to a navigator to reach them before dark. The course is then clear for the Peiho, and he has a whole night's straight run before him with nothing to look out for. The Peiho river must be an awkward place to "make," except in clear weather. The land is lower even than that of the valley of the Yang-tsze-kiang; the shoal water runs out a long distance into the gulf; and a dangerous sand spit, partly above, and partly under water, stretches fifty miles out to sea on the north of the approach to the river. On reaching the outer anchorage, where vessels of heavy draught lie, the celebrated Taku forts are dimly visible in the haze of the horizon, and masts may be seen inside the river, but the low land on either side is still invisible. A shoal bar, with a very hard bottom, lies between the outer anchorage and the river, and the _Nanzing_, drawing less than ten feet, was obliged to anchor outside until the rising tide enabled her to get in. Our Chinese fellow passengers, who had kept remarkably quiet during the voyage, as is their invariable custom, became animated as we ran in between the Taku forts. They were a motley crowd of all classes of people--mercantile, literary, and military. The students who go to Peking to undergo examinations for literary degrees travel now in great numbers by steamer, and doubtless many who, from want of means, want of time, or from any other cause, might hesitate before undertaking such a long journey by the old land route, are now enabled, by means of the coasting steamers, to accomplish the object so deeply cherished by all Chinese literati. The "plucked" ones, and there are many such in China, can now more easily renew their efforts. Men have been known to repair year after year to the examination-hall from their youth upwards, and get plucked every time,--yet, undaunted by constant failure, they persevere in their vain exertions to the winter of their days. The country that can produce such models of perseverance in a hopeless cause may claim to possess elements of vitality, and the usual proportion of fools. Among our Chinese passengers was an athlete from Fokien, who was bound to Peking to try his prowess in archery. He was a man of great muscular power, fat, and even corpulent. It is remarkable that the training system adopted for the development of the muscles should produce so much fat. I had not observed this before in the Chinese; indeed, the few feats of strength I have seen performed by them have been by men well proportioned and free from fat. But the Japanese wrestlers, who are carefully trained, are generally fat. The entrance to the Peiho was, as usual, crowded with native and foreign craft, and so narrow and tortuous is the river that great care is necessary to work a long steamer through without accident. Tientsin is distant from Taku, by the windings of the river, between sixty and seventy miles. By the cart road it is only thirty-six. The _Nanzing_ made good way up the river until darkness compelled her to anchor. In the morning the difficulties of the inland navigation began. The river was actually too small for a steamer over two hundred feet long, the turns were too sharp, the ordinary means of handling a steamer were no longer of any avail,--we hauled round several bad turns by means of anchors passed on shore in the boats, but were at length baffled after running the steamer's nose into cabbage-gardens, breaking down fences, and alarming the villagers, who turned out _en masse_ to watch the iron monster as she struggled to force a passage out of her natural element. Partly out of compassion for the men, who were worn out with the uncongenial toil of trudging knee-deep through heavy mud, planting anchors and picking them up again, and partly from some vague hope of a change of tide in the afternoon, the steamer was brought to anchor and hands piped to dinner. The crews of steamers on the coast of China are usually of a cosmopolite character, chiefly Malays, with a boat's crew of Chinese, the foreign element being reduced to a minimum comprising the officers and engineers. Asiatic sailors do very well when there are plenty of them, the estimate of their value being two of them to one European. They sail for lower wages, but not low enough to compensate the ship-owner for the additional numbers that are necessary. But the Asiatics are more easily handled than Europeans; their regular "watches" may be broken in upon with impunity; they are easier fed, and less addicted to quarrelling with their bread and butter than Europeans, and more especially Englishmen. But any doubt on the part of a shipmaster as to what crew he will employ, will generally be solved by the sailors themselves, who, if English or American, will desert at every port the vessel touches at. Having my saddle and bridle handy I landed at a village, and borrowing a horse from the farmers, rode to Tientsin, which was only some eight miles distant by the road. The heat was scorching, but greatly mitigated by the mass of bright green foliage that covered the whole country. The soil though dry and dusty is rich to exuberance, fruit grows in great abundance, and, for China, in great perfection. Apples, pears, peaches, apricots, loquats, grapes, are common everywhere in the north, which may be considered the orchard of China. The waving crops of millet, interspersed with patches of beans, and here and there strips of hemp, fill up a vast green ground dotted thickly with villages and pretty clumps of trees. The houses form a dull contrast to the cheerful aspect of the country. In most of the villages they are constructed of mud and straw, which becomes hard enough to be impervious to rain, but the dull parched colour, the small apertures for doors and windows, and general cheerlessness of exterior painfully oppress the sight. The dust of the roads is also an unfavourable medium through which to view the tame though rich beauties of the country. The north of China is cursed with dust, the roads generally are as bad as the road to Epsom on a "Derby day," when that happy event happens to come off in dry weather. I got back to the _Nanzing_ in time for the final effort to double the difficult corner. The first attempt was successful, and we steamed on gaily through fields and gardens, washing the banks with the wave formed in our wake, which sometimes broke over the legs of unwary celestials who stood gazing after the steamer in stupid wonder like a cow at a railway train. The Chinese take such mishaps good-naturedly--the spectators are always amused, and the victims themselves when the shock of surprise passes off laugh at the joke. The most serious obstacle to our progress had yet to come, however, the "double," a point where the river bends abruptly like the figure S compressed vertically. Extra caution being used there, the appliances of anchors and warps were efficacious, and we passed the double successfully. The smoke of the _Waratah_, a steamer that left Shanghae the day before us, and which we had passed at sea, now appeared over the trees close to us. There were several reaches of the river between us, however, and we traced the black column of smoke passing easily round the bends that had caused us such difficulty. The _Waratah_ was gaining on us fast, and late in the evening her black hull appeared under our stern, while the _Nanzing_ was jammed at the last bend of the river, unable either to get round herself or to make room for the smaller vessel. Hours were spent in ineffectual endeavours to proceed--the tantalised _Waratah_ could stand it no longer--the captain thought he saw room to pass us, and came up at full speed between us and the bank. But as the sailors say "night has no eyes" even when the moon is shining, and our friend paid for his temerity by crashing his paddle box against our bow. Time and patience enabled us to reach Tientsin at midnight on the 1st August, after spending half as much time in the Peiho river as the whole sea voyage had occupied. I have said enough, and probably much more than enough, to demonstrate the difficulty of navigating the Peiho river with vessels not adapted to it. No vessel should attempt it that is over one hundred and fifty feet in length, for though the risk of loss from stranding is extremely small, the loss of time to large vessels must be serious. A marvellous transformation had taken place in Tientsin since my previous visit to it in 1861. At that time the few European merchants who had settled there were confined to the Chinese town, the filthiest and most offensive of all the filthy places wherein celestials love to congregate. Now in 1863, the "settlement," that necessary adjunct of every treaty port in China, had been made over to foreigners, laid out in streets, and a spacious quay and promenade on the river bank formed, faced riverwards with solid masonry, the finest thing of the kind in China, throwing into the shade altogether the famous "bund" at Shanghae. The affairs of the settlement are administered by a thoroughly organised "municipal council" after the example of Shanghae, the "model settlement." The newly opened ports have an immense advantage over the original five in having the experience of nearly twenty years to guide them in all preliminary arrangements. That experience shows first--although the soundness of the deduction has been questioned by some able men--the desirability of securing foreign settlements where merchants, consuls, and missionaries may live in a community of their own entirely distinct from the native towns, within which they may put in operation their own police regulations, lay out streets to their own liking, drain, light, and otherwise improve the settlement, levy and disburse their own municipal taxes, and, in short, conduct their affairs as independent communities. These settlements have the further advantage of being susceptible of defence in times of disturbance with the minimum risk of complication between the treaty powers and the Chinese government. Much of the importance Shanghae has achieved of late years is due to the foreign settlement which, being neutral ground and defensible, has become a city of refuge for swarms of Chinese who had been ousted from their homesteads by the rebels. The cosmopolite character of the Shanghae settlement has entailed various inconveniences, which it is thought might be obviated in the new settlements by keeping the different foreign nationalities distinct. Time has not yet pronounced on the success of this experiment. There will probably be a difficulty in putting it thoroughly in practice; no arbitrary regulations will be able to prevent nationalities from fusing into each other to such an extent as the higher laws of interest and policy may dictate. And it will be impossible in practice to subject a mixed community to the laws of any one power. In the meantime concessions are claimed from the Chinese government by each of the treaty powers separately, and so far they have been granted. Whether the isolation of the various concessions be permanent or not, it secures for them at the outset more unanimity in laying out streets and framing preliminary regulations for their good government hereafter. This is of great importance, and the experience of Shanghae is most valuable in this respect. The narrowness of the streets in the settlement there--twenty-two feet--is a standing reproach on the earlier settlers who, with short-sighted cupidity, clung with tenacity to every inch of land at a time when land was cheap and abundant. This fatal error has been avoided in the recent settlements. The municipality of Shanghae established under the auspices of Sir Rutherford (then Mr.) Alcock, at that time British consul, has on the whole proved such a success that the same system has been adopted in the new settlements. The legality of the institution has often been questioned, but the creation of some such authority was a necessity at the time, and it has worked so well for ten years that it has not only subsisted, but gathered strength and influence by the unanimous will of the community. Several fine European houses were already built and inhabited on the Tientsin settlement. The ground had been well raised, so as to keep the new town dry, and ensure it a commanding position. It is about two miles lower down the river than the native town, has a fine open country round it, and plenty of fresh air. It is several degrees cooler in the British settlement than in the Chinese town, and altogether the very best site for the purpose has been selected. The merchants retain their offices in the Chinese town, riding or sailing to and fro every day. This system will probably continue to be practised for some time longer, or perhaps altogether, for the convenience of the Chinese dealers. A small minority of the foreign merchants would compel all to retain their business premises in Tientsin, and nothing less than an almost entire unanimity among them would effect the transfer to the new town. As a dépôt of trade, Tientsin labours under certain disadvantages; the shallow bar outside, and intricate navigation of the river, prevent any but small craft from trading there. Larger vessels do sometimes, or rather did,--for I fancy the practice is discontinued,--repair to the outer anchorage. But the expense of lighterage, and the detention incurred in loading or discharging at such a distance from the port, are so great as to drive such competitors out of the field. The other drawback to Tientsin is the severe winter, and the early closing of the river by ice. This generally happens before the end of November, and the ice does not break up before February or March. However, Tientsin is the feeder of a large tract of country containing a large consuming population, and the trade is no doubt destined to increase. Much disappointment has, indeed, been felt that the extraordinary start made, chiefly in the sale of foreign manufactures, in the first year of its existence as a port of foreign trade, has not been followed up. This may be explained, however, by the circumstance that in 1860-61 manufactured goods were extremely depressed by over-supply in the south of China. These goods were introduced into Tientsin, and sold direct to the Chinese there, untaxed by the intermediate profits and charges they formerly had to bear when sold in Shanghae, and thence forwarded by Chinese merchants, in Chinese junks, to Tientsin and the north. Prices in Tientsin soon fell so low that the merchants were tempted into large investments during 1861. The markets of the interior became overstocked, and, before the equilibrium was restored, the cotton famine began to be felt, and prices of goods (the Tientsin trade is chiefly opium and cotton goods) rose so high as to deter purchasers, and in a material degree to reduce the consumption of foreign cottons. Another circumstance also operated adversely to a maintenance of the lively trade that grew up in 1861. There were no exports in Tientsin suitable to any foreign market. The foreign trade was therefore limited to the sale of imports, which were paid for in specie. A heavy drain of bullion was the result, more than the resources of the country could bear for any length of time. This of itself was enough to check the further development of trade; for though the precious metals were merely transferred from one part of the country to another, no counter-balancing power then existed by which they could be circulated back to the districts whence they came. There is no good reason why produce suitable to foreign markets should not be found in Tientsin. Wool and tallow will no doubt be obtainable in considerable quantities in process of time, for the country is full of sheep and cattle, and Tientsin is only six days' journey from the frontier of Mongolia, where flocks and herds monopolise the soil. I must mention a circumstance connected with the Tientsin trade, which is remarkable among an eminently commercial people like the Chinese. At the opening of the trade, in the end of 1860, the relative values of gold and silver varied fifteen per cent. between Tientsin and Shanghae. Gold was purchased for silver in the north, and shipped to Shanghae, at a large profit, and a good many months elapsed before an equilibrium was established. In and about Tientsin, as almost everywhere else in China, the population is well affected towards foreigners. The British troops that garrisoned Tientsin from 1860 till 1862 left behind them the very best impressions on the inhabitants. Not that these troops were any better than any other well-disciplined troops would have been, but the Chinese had been taught to regard foreigners as a kind of aquatic monsters, cruel and ferocious; so when the horrible picture resolved itself into human beings, civil and courteous in their disposition, honestly paying for all they wanted, of vast consumptive powers in the matter of beef and mutton, fruit and vegetables, and, on the whole, excellent customers, the Chinese took kindly to the estimable invaders, and had cause to regret their departure. Foreign merchants were held in high estimation from the first. The free hospitals for Chinese, set on foot by the army surgeons, not only did a great deal of good in alleviating suffering, but prepared the way for mutual good feeling in the after intercourse between natives and foreigners. It has been questioned whether the Chinese, as a race, are susceptible of gratitude. But, at any rate, the respectable classes are sufficiently charitable themselves to appreciate philanthropy in others; and, in the self-imposed and gratuitous labours of the surgeons for the benefit of the sick poor, they saw an example of pure benevolence, which could not but excite their admiration. The population of Tientsin is supposed to be about 400,000, residing chiefly in the suburbs, for trade is generally carried on without the walls, not only here, but in all Chinese cities. There is an unusually large proportion of beggars about Tientsin, and loathsome objects they are, as they whine about the streets, half clad, in tatters, starved, and often covered with sores. They never sleep but on the ground. At night, when the streets are quiet, the beggars may be discovered huddled together at every corner and on every door-step. Begging is an institution in China, and to qualify for the craft, men have been said to burn out their own eyes, in order to excite compassion for their blindness. A Chinese householder seldom allows a beggar to go away empty. Charity is cheap; a handful of rice, one copper cash, value the fourth part of a farthing, suffices to induce the disgusting object to move on to the next shop. The beggars have seldom any cause to starve in China, but they do very often, and it is probable they bring diseases on themselves in their efforts to excite pity, which carry them off very rapidly. In winter, especially in the north, they seem to die off like mosquitoes, and no one takes any notice of them except to bury them--for the Chinese don't like to leave dead bodies about the streets. In spring they reappear--not the identical beggars, certainly--but very similar ones, and the ranks of the profession are kept filled. The wealthier natives of Tientsin, traders and shopkeepers, are fond of good living and gambling. They are robust people, and bear up well against the effects of late hours and gross dissipation. The close, filthy atmosphere in which they live and breathe does not seem to injure their health. Epidemics do make great havoc among them occasionally; one year it is cholera, another year it is small-pox; but the general healthiness of the people does not seem to suffer. The climate is exceedingly dry. Little rain or snow falls; but when it does rain, the whole heavens seem to fall at once, not in torrents, but in sheets of water. The peculiar sand-storms, so common in the north of China, have not as yet been satisfactorily investigated. They often come on after a sultry day. A yellow haze appears in the sky, darkening the sun; then columns of fine dust are seen spinning round in whirlwinds. At that stage every living thing seeks shelter, and those who are afield are lucky if they are not caught in the blinding storm before they reach their houses. But even a closely shut-up house affords but half protection, for the fine powdery dust insinuates itself through the crevices of doors and windows, and is palpably present in your soup and your bread for some time after. The most obvious source whence these sand-storms come, is the great sandy desert of Mongolia, but such an hypothesis is hardly sufficient to account for all the phenomena which accompany the sand-storms. It has been supposed that they are due to some peculiar electrical condition of the atmosphere. The Chinese are passionately addicted to gambling, and the endless variety of games of chance in common use among them does credit to their ingenuity and invention, for it is not likely that they have learned anything from their neighbours. The respectable merchant, who devotes the hours of daylight assiduously to his business, sparing no labour in adjusting the most trifling items of account, will win or lose thousands of dollars overnight with imperturbable complacency. Every grade of society is imbued with the passion. I have amused myself watching the coolies in the streets of Tientsin gambling for their dinner. The itinerant cooks carry with them, as part of the wonderful epitome of a culinary establishment with which they perambulate the streets, a cylinder of bamboo, containing a number of sticks on which are inscribed certain characters. These mystic symbols are shaken up in the tube, the candidate for hot dumpling draws one, and according to the writing found on it, so does he pay for his repast. So attractive is gambling in any form to the Chinese, that a Tientsin coolie will generally prefer to risk paying double for the remote chance of getting a meal for nothing. On one occasion I volunteered to act as proxy for a hungry coolie who was about to try his luck. The offer was accepted with eagerness, and I was fortunate enough to draw my constituent a dinner for nothing. I was at once put down as a professor of the black art, and literally besieged by a crowd of others, all begging me to do them a similar favour, which, of course, I prudently declined. Had I indeed been successful a second time, the dispenser of the tempting morsels would certainly have protested against my interference as an invasion of his prerogative, which is to win, and not to lose. The Chinese gamblers are, of course, frequently ruined by the practice. They become desperate after a run of ill luck; every consideration of duty and interest is sunk, and they play for stakes which might have startled even the Russian nobles, who used to gamble for serfs. In the last crisis of all, a dose of opium settles all accounts pertaining to this world. In games of skill the Chinese are no less accomplished. Dominoes, draughts, chess, and such like, are to be seen in full swing at every tea-house, where the people repair to gossip and while away the evening. The little groups one sees in these places exhibit intense interest in their occupation; the victory is celebrated by the child-like exultation of the winner, and any pair of Chinese draught-players may have sat for Wilkie's celebrated picture. CHAPTER II. TIENTSIN TO PEKING. There are several modes of going from Tientsin to Peking. The most common is in a mule cart, which is not exactly a box, but a board laid on wheels with a blue cotton covering arched over it. The cart is not long enough to enable one to lie down full length, nor is it high enough to enable him to sit upright in the European fashion. It has no springs; the roads are generally as rough as negligence can leave them; it is utterly impossible to keep out the dust; and the covering gives but slight protection from the sun. A ride in a Chinese cart is exquisite torture to a European. It is true that experience teaches those who are so unfortunate as to need it several "dodges" by which to mitigate their sufferings, such as filling the cart entirely with straw, and then squeezing into the middle of it. But then the traveller must have some means of securing the feet to prevent being pitched out bodily, and he must hold on to the frame-work of the side by both hands to break the shock of sudden jerks. With all that he will come off his journey feeling in every bone of his body as if he had been passed through a mangle. That the Chinese do not suffer from such treatment I can only attribute to a deficiency in their nervous system. If they suffered in anything like the same degree that a European does, they would have invented a more comfortable conveyance before the Christian era. But the only improvement in comfort I ever heard of is in the carts made for the great mandarins, which have the wheels placed far back, so that between the axle-tree and the saddle the shafts may have an infinitesimal amount of spring in them. The next mode of travelling is on horseback, which, if you happen to have your own saddle and bridle, is very pleasant, provided the weather is not too hot or too cold. There are plenty of inns on the road-side where you can rest and refresh yourself; but woe betide the luckless traveller who, like myself, nauseates the Chinese _cuisine_, should he have neglected to provide himself with a few creature comforts to his own liking. The weather was excessively hot, and judging that there would be many calls on our stamina before our long journey was done, we prudently husbanded our strength at the outset. We therefore chose the slower but more luxurious (!) means of conveyance by boat up the Peiho river to Tungchow, a walled city twelve miles from Peking. Boat travelling in the north has not been brought to such a state of perfection as in the creek and canal country in Chekiang and Keangsoo. In the latter provinces it is practically the only means of travelling, and though slow, is most comfortable. In the north the boats are a smaller edition of those used for transporting merchandise, the only convenience they have being a moveable roof. In two such craft our party embarked on the night of 5th August, 1861, and at 11 p.m., by moonlight, we languidly shoved off from the filthy banks of the Peiho river, the few friends who were kind enough to see us off, with a refinement of politeness worthy of a Chinaman, refusing a parting glass, knowing that we had none to spare. Our sails were of little assistance, so after threading our way through the fleet of boats that lay anyhow in the first two reaches, our stout crews landed with their towing line, by which means we slowly and painfully ascended the stream. Tientsin, as I have said, is the filthiest of all filthy cities; and the essence of its filth is accumulated on the banks of the river, forming an excellent breakwater, which grows faster than the water can wash it away. The putrid mass is enough, one would think, to breed a plague, and yet the water used by the inhabitants is drawn from this river! It was pleasant, indeed, to escape from this pestilential atmosphere, and to inhale the cool fresh air of the country for an hour or two before turning in, as we reflected on the long and tedious journey we had before us, embracing the whole breadth of the continents of Asia and Europe. The voyage to Tungchow was monotonous in the extreme. Nothing of the country could be seen; for though the water was high enough at the time to have enabled us to look over the low flat banks, the standing crops effectually shut in our view. Four days were occupied in travelling 400 li. We had engaged double crews, in order that we might proceed night and day without stopping, but it was really hard work for them, and we did not like to press them too much. There is no regular towing path on the banks of the Peiho, and at night the men floundered in the wet mud amongst reeds. A youngster of the crew gave us a great deal of trouble--always shirking his work and complaining of hunger. He was a wag, however, and kept both us and the crew in amusement. I have noticed in nearly all Chinese boat-crews there is a character of this sort, whose business seems to be to work as little as possible himself, and keep up a running fire of wit to beguile the toil of the others. A good story-teller is much valued among them. We had also an old man, whose chief business was to boil rice and vegetables for the others, and to steer the boat. His kitchen duties were no sinecure, for the men did get through an incredible quantity of rice in the course of the day. Rice is a poor thing to work on; it is a fuel quickly consumed, and requires constant renewal. It is the nature of Chinese boatmen to be constantly asking for money. The custom is to pay about half the fare in advance before starting, and the other half when the journey is completed. But no sooner are you fairly under way, than a polite request is made for money to buy rice. It is in vain you remind them of the dollars you have just paid as a first instalment. That has gone to the owner of the boat, of course, but as for them, the boatmen, they have nothing to eat, and cannot go on. Defeated in your arguments you nevertheless remain firm in your purpose; the morning, noon, and evening meals succeed each other in due course. Every one is to be the last, and is followed by the most touching appeals to your benevolence--they will go down on their knees, they will whine and cry, they will beat frantically on their empty stomachs, and tell you "they are starving" in tones and gestures that ought properly to melt the heart of a stone. It is in vain that you deride their importunity; it is in vain that you reproach them with their improvidence. You sternly order them to their work, but are met by the unanswerable question, how can they work without food? You--if you have gone through the ordeal before--know well that you will have no trouble on this score on the second day out. Has any one ever tried to arrive at the exact value of a Chinese measure of distance? Their li has no doubt been reduced to so many yards, feet, and inches, equal to about one-third of an English mile, on paper; but on the road it is the vaguest term possible. Ask a countryman how far it is to Chung-dsz, and he will answer after a great deal of prevarication ten li. Walk about that distance and inquire again, and you are told it is fifteen li. This will puzzle you if you are a stranger, but go on another half mile, and you find you are at your destination. In the common acceptation of the word, I am convinced it is more a measure of time than distance, and 100 li is an average day's journey. Our Tientsin boatmen put this very prominently when questioned, as they were nearly every hour of the day, as to how far we still were from Tungchow, one of them answered, "If you travel quick it is about 100 li, but if slow it is well on to 200!" [Illustration: TUNG CHOW PAGODA. (Page 27.)] In the first part of our journey we met with no traffic on the river, but towards Tungchow we passed large fleets of junks bound upwards and a few bound down. John Bell says of this river, "I saw many vessels sailing down the stream towards the south-east. And I was informed there are nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine vessels constantly employed on this river; but why confined to such an odd number I could neither learn nor comprehend." I should say that during the 140 years that have elapsed since that was written the fleet is more likely to have been shorn of a few odd thousands than increased by the odd unit. On the fourth day, as we were panting for breath, with the thermometer standing at 97° Fahr., and with anxious eyes contemplating our almost empty ice-box, the pagoda of Tungchow was descried over the tall reeds on the river bank, and we soon were made fast in front of a temple called Fang-wang-meaou. At this point the Peiho dwindles away into a very small and shallow stream, and practically Tungchow is the head of the navigation, the shipping port of Peking, and the beginning of the land carriage to the north-west provinces of China. The Fang-wang-meaou is much used by Russians as a dépôt for their goods in transit from Tientsin and Shanghae to Siberia. We found a considerable quantity of tea stored in the temple waiting for transport. In this temple, therefore, by the favour of the reverend personages who preside over it, we bestowed our _impedimenta_, and took up our quarters for the night in a wing of the building. The Bhuddist priests are in the habit of transacting business for strangers, and we therefore entered into negotiation with them to provide us carriage either by mules or camels, from Tungchow to Chan-kia-kow, the frontier town between China and Mongolia. We thought by this arrangement we could ride to Peking, do what we wanted there in the way of getting passports, &c., and return to Tungchow and take our departure thence. This proved a delusion, and lost us some valuable time. There is nothing remarkable about the city of Tungchow. It is situated on a dead level. From a tower on the wall a view of the country is obtained, including the mountains north of Peking. There is a tall pagoda in the city, but as it has no windows in it, it is useless as a look-out. I found here two ponies that I had sent from Tientsin, in charge of a Chinese "ma-foo" or groom, who agreed to accompany me as far as Chan-kia-kow. My object was to be independent of the Chinese carts at Peking and on the road, and I looked forward to taking one, if not both, of my ponies a considerable distance into the desert of Mongolia. I strongly recommend this plan to any one travelling in that quarter. On the 10th of August I rode to Peking, the rest of the party following in carts. This would no doubt be a very pretty ride at another season of the year, but in the month of August the millet crops stand as high as twelve and fifteen feet, completely shutting in the road for nearly the whole distance. At eight li from Tungchow we passed the village and handsome stone bridge of _Pa-li-keaou_ or "eight-mile-bridge," which euphonious name gives a title to a distinguished French general. There are no "high" roads, but many bye-roads, and it is not difficult to lose one's way amongst the standing millet. Many parts of the country are very prettily wooded, and there is a half-way house at a well-shaded part of the road, where you naturally dismount to rest yourself under a mat shed, and indulge yourself with hot tea, than which nothing is more refreshing on a hot day, provided the decoction be not too strong, and is unadulterated by the civilised addition of sugar or milk. You may eat fruit here also if you are not afraid of the consequences (but take care that it is ripe), and some naked urchins will cut fresh grass for your beasts. This little place, like many others of its kind, is a "howf" for many loafers, who seek the cool shade, and sit sipping their boiling tea, and languidly fanning themselves while they listen abstractedly to the conversation of the wayfarers. As we near Peking we come to some slight undulations, and notice some very pretty places with clumps of old trees about them. These are principally graves of great men, and it is remarkable to observe how much attention is paid by the Chinese to the abodes of their dead. Wealthy people will pass their lives in a dismal hovel, something between a pig-stye and a rabbit-warren, into which the light of day can scarcely penetrate; the floors of earth or brick-paved, or if the party is luxurious, he may have a floor of wood, encrusted with the dirt of a generation. But these same people look forward to being buried under a pretty grove of trees, in a nicely kept enclosure, with carefully cultivated shrubs and flowers growing round. Some of the loveliest spots I have seen in China are tombs, the finest I remember being at the foot of the hill behind the city of Chung-zu, near Foo-shan, on the Yang-tsze-kiang. These tombs, adorned with so much taste and care, were in strange contrast with the general rottenness around. But armies have since been there, and it is probable that the angel of destruction has swept it all away. I am unable to say from what feeling springs this tender regard for tombs among the Chinese. It may be that they consider the length of time they have to lie in the last resting-place, reasonably demands that more care be bestowed on it than on the earthly tenement of which they have so short a lease. Or it may arise simply out of that strong principle of filial piety so deeply engraven in the Chinese mind, and which leads them to make great sacrifices when required to do honour to the names of their ancestors. From whatever motive it comes, however, this filial piety, which even death does not destroy, is an admirable trait in the Chinese character; and I have even heard divines point to the Chinese nation--the most long-lived community the world has seen--as an illustration of the promise attached to the keeping of the fifth commandment. The greatest consolation a Chinaman can have in the "hour of death" is that he will be buried in a coffin of his own selection, and that he has children or grandchildren to take care of his bones. It is to this end that parents betroth their children when young, and hasten the marriages as soon as the parties are marriageable. To this end also I believe polygamy is allowed by law, or at all events not interdicted. If a Chinaman could have the promise made to him, "Thou shalt never want a man to stand before me," he would live at ease for the rest of his days. There are no cemeteries in China, that I know of, except where strangers congregate--when they of a family, a district, or even a province, combine to buy a piece of ground to bury their dead in. In hilly countries pretty sites are always selected for tombs. In the thickly settled parts of the country every family buries its own dead in its own bit of ground. Thus, when they sell land for building purposes, negotiations have to be entered into for removing the coffins of many forgotten generations. The bones are carefully gathered up and put into earthenware jars, and labelled. This operation is profanely called "potting ancestors." These jars are then buried somewhere else--of course with great economy of space. A house built on the site of an old grave that is suspected of having been only partially emptied, would remain tenantless for ever, and if the ghosts of the departed did not destroy the house, the owner would be compelled to do so. But I am getting away from the Peking road. Amongst the tombs of great families, outside the walls of the city, are many old marble colossal sculptures of men and animals. The same figures, in limestone, are common in other parts of the country. These sculptures are all more or less dilapidated; some of the figures are still erect; many have fallen down and got broken; and many have been ploughed in. There is nothing remarkable about the workmanship of these, although the colossal size of some of them is striking. They are interesting as memorials of departed greatness, and record their silent protest against the corruption, decay, and degeneracy that has brought the Chinese empire so low. Water communicating with the Peiho river goes up to the walls of Peking, but is not navigable. It forms a quiet lagoon, the delight of great flocks of the most beautiful ducks and geese. The streams that run through the city can also be connected with the water outside through the arches in the wall; and I am told the intention of those truly great men, who conceived and executed the grand canal, was to bring the water through the city and into the imperial quarters by navigable canals, so that the grain-junks from Keangsoo, which were to supply the capital with food, might be brought in to the gate of the Emperor's palace. It is not to be wondered at that this scheme should have broken down, considering the engineering difficulties attending it. CHAPTER III. PEKING. Nothing of the city of Peking is visible until you are close under the walls, and then the effect is really imposing. The walls are high, massive, and in good repair. The double gates, with their lofty and large three-storied towers over them, and the general solid appearance, inspire one with some of the admiration which poor old Marco Polo used to evince when speaking of the glories of Kambalic, or the city of the Grand Khan. Once inside the walls you instinctively exclaim, What a hot, dusty place this is! and you call to mind that that is exactly what everybody told you long before its threshold was polluted by barbarian footsteps. Peking is celebrated for its carts, its heat, and its dust. If it rained much the streets would be a sea of mud. We pursue our way along the sandy tracks between the city wall and the buildings of the town for a mile or two, then plunge into the labyrinth of streets, crowded, dirty and odoriferous. We are being conducted to an inn which is to be better than any that foreigners have been admitted to before. [Illustration: WALLS OF PEKING From a photograph. (Page 32.)] In our way we crossed the main street which leads from the imperial city straight to the Temples of Heaven and Earth. This street is very wide, and has been very fine, but now more than half its width is occupied by fruit, toy, and fish stalls. The centre of the street has been cut up by cart-wheels for many centuries, and is full of holes and quagmires, so that the practicable portion of this wide thoroughfare is narrowed down to nothing. So it is with all the wide streets of Peking. They are never made. Filth accumulates incredibly fast; and the wider the street the dirtier it is, because it can hold the more. At last we arrived at this paragon of inns, and passing through the courtyard, where the horses and mules of travellers were tied up, we threaded our way as far into the interior of the establishment as we could get, and then called the landlord. He pretended to make a great to-do about receiving us, and strongly urged that we would find much better accommodation at the West-end. This was not to be thought of, and we soon installed ourselves in a room--but such a room! and such an inn! and such attendance! and such filth everywhere! I have slept in a good many Chinese inns of all sorts, but the meanest road-side hostelry I have ever seen is a degree better than this swell inn in this fashionable city of Kanbalu. Our room was at the far end of the labyrinthine passages, and was evidently constructed to exclude light and air. It was almost devoid of furniture. We certainly could make shift for sleeping accommodation, for travellers can manage with wonderfully little in that way; but we were miserably off for chairs, the only thing we had to sit upon being small wooden stools on four legs, the seat being about five inches wide. There was no getting anything to eat in this establishment, so we fell in with the Peking custom of dining at a restaurant, and we found a very good one on the opposite side of the street. This was a nice cheerful place, with good airy rooms, and comfortable cushioned seats--much frequented by the Pekingese. Here we always got a good dinner, and met good society. We could not stomach the pure native messes, but as they had always abundance of good mutton and fish (kept alive on the premises till wanted), also rice, clean and white, with a little preliminary instruction in our manner of living, the _cuisinière_ hit off our taste to a nicety. We had our own knives and forks to eat with, and our own good liquor to season the repast, so in Peking we may be said to have lived well. We used to meet a strange mixture of people in this restaurant--natives of Canton, Yunnan, Szechune, Shansi--in short, of every part of China; men whose lawful occasions brought them to the capital. Most of them were merchants, and I presume the students who flock to Peking in such number form little cliques of their own. These fellows lead a very jovial life. About seven o'clock, or a little later, they assemble in parties already made up, and dinner is laid, each party having a separate room. They eat heartily, and seem thoroughly to enjoy each other's society. They don't hurry over their dinner, and they have such an infinity of small dishes, that their repast spreads itself over several hours. They are very quiet at the first onset, but as they warm up with their wine, they get very noisy, and make the whole place ring with the sounds of merriment. They drink their wine hot, out of small porcelain cups, and instead of a decanter, a tea-kettle is put on the table. We used to amuse ourselves by going from one party to another, and joining for a few minutes in their conviviality. They were always pleased to see us, and made us sit down and drink with them. We reciprocated their hospitality, and when we had administered a glass of wine to one of them, he would sip it with an air of grave meditation, then slap his paunch vigorously, and, holding up his right thumb, would exclaim with emphasis "Haou!" "super-excellent." They have a methodical manner of drinking, which is no less entertaining to spectators, than agreeable to themselves. The libations are regulated by a game of forfeits, engaged in by two at a time. The challenger holds out one or more fingers, accompanying the action by certain set phrases. The other has to reply promptly to the word and the pantomime, the penalty for a mistake being to drink a cup of wine. They begin this process quietly and soberly, but when an obstinate antagonist is found, who replies to the challenge five or six times running without a break-down, the contest becomes exciting. They gradually rise from their seats, and approach each other across the table, their faces grow red, as their shouting gets louder, and the repartee more spirited, until they reach a climax of passion which flesh and blood could not long sustain, and then explode like a bomb-shell amid tremendous bursts of unearthly yells from the full company. The loser sips his liquor with resignation; and the victor generally joins him, by way of showing himself a generous adversary. I have heard of drinking "by rule of thumb," in our own country, but this has probably nowhere been reduced to a science so much as in China. About nine or ten, a long string of carts (the cabs of Peking), would be collected at the door, the parties would begin to break up, and go their several ways to the theatres, or other evening amusements. They generally make a night of it, and that class of the Chinese are everywhere late in their habits. I never met a more robust-looking, or more jovial, hearty set of men, than these, our boon companions of Peking. On arriving in Peking, I lost no time in calling on Sir F. Bruce, our minister there, to get passports put in train. I was fortunate enough to meet Sir Frederick, as he had just come in for a day from his retreat in the hills. He has occupied a temple situated on the hills, some twenty miles from Peking, which forms an admirable summer residence, free from the putrid smells of the city, and with a temperature many degrees cooler,--no mean advantage when the thermometer stands about 90°. The building set apart for the English legation in Peking is, from an eastern point of view, magnificent. It was a "foo," or ducal palace, has large space for garden ground round the principal building, while the smaller buildings would easily accommodate a full regiment of soldiers. We found that it would take several days to get our papers in order; for not only was my passport to be got, but my companion had to get his through the French legation. There was nothing for it but to make ourselves easy, having done all that we could do to accelerate our business. Now, at another season of the year, I could have spent a week in Peking with pleasure, but in the month of August one cannot go out with any degree of comfort or safety, except in the morning or evening, and then the streets are full either of blinding dust, or black mire, in which your horse is always splashing up to his hocks. However, we tried to make the best of it, and I was fortunate enough to meet my old friend, Dr. Lockhart, who had lived long enough in Peking to know the ropes, and who was good-natured enough to show me round the principal objects of interest in the city. Another difficulty besets the sight-seer in Peking, and that is the "magnificent distances" between the various places one wants to see. However, by sallying forth betimes, we did manage to visit a few of the many interesting objects in this old city; for there is nothing really worthy of note in China, except what bears the stamp of antiquity. The Confucian temple was the first object of our curiosity. Here the great sage is worshipped by the Emperor once a year, without the medium of paintings or images. In the central shrine there is merely a small piece of wood, a few inches long, standing upright, with a few characters inscribed on it, the name of the sage, I believe. On the sides are a number of still smaller wooden labels, representing the disciples and commentators who have elucidated the writings of Confucius. The temple contains a number of stone tablets, on which are engraved the record of honours conferred on literary men, and to obtain a place here is the acme of the ambition of Chinese scholars. In the courtyard there are a number of pine trees, said to have been planted during the reign of the Mongol dynasty, more than 500 years ago. These trees have been stunted in their growth, however, from want of room, and considering their age, their size is disappointing. The courtyard is adorned by a variety of stone sculptures, the gifts of successive emperors and dynasties. The present dynasty has been rather jealous of its predecessors in this respect, especially of the Ming, and has replaced many fine relics of their time by new ones of its own. There are, however, several Mongol tablets to the fore in the Confucian temple. A connoisseur can at once, from the style, fix the date of any of these works of art, and when in doubt, the inscriptions are for the most part sufficiently legible to tell their own tale. In another part of the building there are some very curious old stones, drum-shaped, dating from 800 years B.C. These have been carefully preserved, but the iron tooth of time has obliterated most of the writing on them. The curious old characters are still to some extent legible, however. The building itself is, from a Chinese point of view, a noble one, and singularly enough, it is kept in perfect order, in strange contrast to Chinese temples and public buildings generally. It has a magnificent ceiling, very high, and the top of the interior walls are ornamented by wooden boards, richly painted, bearing the names of the successive emperors in raised gilt characters. On the accession of an emperor he at once adds his name to the long list. [Illustration: PAVILION OF THE SUMMER PALACE OF YUEN-MIN-YUEN. (Page 37.)] The hall erected by the learned Emperor Kienloong, although modern (he reigned from 1736 to 1796), is a magnificent pavilion, not very large, but beautifully finished, and in perfect good taste. The pavilion is roofed with the imperial yellow tiles. Round it is a promenade paved with white marble, with balustrades of the same. At a little distance from the pavilion stands a triumphal arch, massive and elegant. The pavilion is intended to be viewed through the arch, from a stand-point a few yards behind it, so that the arch forms a frame for the main building. The effect produced is peculiar and striking, and does infinite credit to the taste of old Kienloong, who, by the bye, seems to have done everything that has been done in modern times to beautify the capital. The pavilion stands in the middle of a large open square, on two sides of which, under a shed, stand double rows of stone tablets, six or seven feet high. On these tablets are engraved, in clear and distinct characters, the whole of the Chinese classics, in such a manner that they can be printed from. Many copies have actually been struck off from these tablets, and are held in very high esteem. The great lamasery is outside the city, but the lama temple or monastery inside is also well worthy of notice, whether from the vast quantity of bricks and mortar that go to make the range of buildings, the extent of the grounds attached to it, including a fine wooded park, or from the internal economy of the establishment itself. Two thousand Mongol lamas are maintained here by the bounty of the Emperor.[1] The other lamaseries are in the same manner liberally endowed by the government. The Chinese emperors feel that they have but a slight hold on their Mongol subjects, scattered as they are over a vast desert, where no Chinese troops could penetrate, even were the Chinese a match for the Mongols in a military point of view, which they never were. The independence of the Mongols would be rather a gain than a loss to China in its immediate results, but it would establish a warlike race on their borders, which has been the terror of China from the earliest times. No doubt, ages of peace have done much to subdue the warlike spirit of the Mongols, but they retain their ancient habits and lead a life of privation and hardship from the cradle to the grave. They are susceptible of the greatest enthusiasm, and at a word from their chiefs they would be ready to follow them to death or glory. A few years of fighting would render the Mongol hordes as formidable to a non-military nation like the Chinese, as they were in the days of the terrible Genghis Khan. In the present enfeebled condition of China an irruption of Mongols would be irresistible, and would sweep everything before it like a flood. The Chinese government are quite alive to such a possible contingency, and hence the care they take to conciliate the Mongols. Their forty-eight kings (of whom San-go-lin-sin is one), nominally tributary to China, are really pensioned by the Emperor, and every inducement is held out to the Mongol lamas to settle in the monasteries in Peking. Here they live in comfort and luxury unknown in their deserts. Their friends have every facility for visiting them, and carrying back to the "land of grass" their reports of the goodness of the Chinese Emperor. The lamas are taken from all parts of Mongolia--we conversed with several from Dolonor and Kuren (Urga), and many others from the north and south, the names of whose districts were not included in my geographical vocabulary. These large Mongol communities, under the eye and hand of the Emperor, answer the double purpose of conciliators on the one hand, and of hostages for the loyalty of distant tribes on the other. The Mongols are as little a match for the Chinese in craft, as they are superior to them in martial energy. It is supposed that the Chinese government have a deep design in supporting and encouraging lamaism, an institution which makes nearly one-third of the Mongol race celibats--for there are female as well as male lamas--the object being to keep down the population of the tribes. [1] The first Emperor of the Manchu line originated the scheme, but it has been greatly extended by his successors. However, the simple-minded Mongols lead a comfortable, easy life in Peking, free from care, and with no occupation except chanting their prayers. I was fortunate enough to witness one of their religious services in the great temple. The building is raised some ten feet from the ground, a fine flight of steps running round the four sides of it. The roof is very high, and the sides are open all round. The lamas muster leisurely out of their cells, dressed in dirty red cotton garments, and armed with an enormous yellow cap, with something of a helmet shape, and crested with a long fringe made, I think, of camel's hair. They carry the cap for the most part under their arm, seldom wearing it on the head. About 200 of them assembled in the temple, and sung a chant which lasted about half an hour. The effect was very striking and solemn, for the music was good, and one or two of the lamas had the finest bass voices I ever heard. The apparent earnestness with which the whole congregation joined in the service, and the deep, devotional character of the music, riveted our attention with an irresistible power. So different was it from the ludicrous mockery of sacred things perpetrated by the Chinese Bhuddists, during whose most solemn services I have seen a dirty fellow push his way through the devotees and coolly light his pipe at the candles burning on the altar. The analogies between the Bhuddist and Roman Catholic forms of worship have been so hackneyed by writers that it may seem impertinent in me to allude to them. But I cannot help drawing attention to the manner in which M. Huc endeavours to explain them. The analogies are most complete in the Yellow Cap Lama sect, the origin of which is described at length by Huc. In the thirteenth century, in the country of Amdo, bordering on Thibet, a child miraculously conceived was born with a white beard, and from his birth gave utterance to profound sayings concerning the destiny of man. His name was Tsong-Kamba. This prodigy of a child became an ascetic, devoting himself to meditation and prayer. A holy stranger from the west visited him, and amazed him by his sanctity and learning. The stranger was remarkable for his long nose. After instructing Tsong-Kamba for a few years in the mysteries of religion the holy man died; but Tsong-Kamba became a great reformer, and originated the new sect of the Yellow Cap Lamas. Huc clutches at this tradition, and thinks he sees in the mysterious visitor of Tsong-Kamba a Christian missionary, many of whom had penetrated about that period into Tartary. The premature death of the master left incomplete the instruction of the disciple, who, failing to attain Christianity, stopped short as a reformer of Bhuddism. After the service we had some talk with the lamas, who were pleased to see us, and treated us with every civility. They all speak, and many of them write, Chinese; and in that language we communicated with them. The ethnical difference between two races supposed to be of the same origin could not be more apparent than in the case of these Mongols and the Chinese by whom they were surrounded. The Mongols have all an unintellectual cast of countenance, low narrow foreheads, and a simple and open expression. Their features are not very different from the Chinese. They have the high cheek-bones, small eyes, and some other characteristics of their neighbours; but their noses are on the whole not so short and flat, nor their faces so rounded. It is not so easy to tell in what the difference between them and the Chinese consists, but the distinction is so marked that I hardly believe it possible for any one to mistake a Mongol for a Chinese. The Mongols have unsuspecting honesty written on their faces. The Chinese, from north to south, bear the stamp of craft and cunning, and are much superior in intellect to the Mongols. It is only necessary to remark the physiognomies of the two races to understand how the Chinese outwit the Mongols in their dealings with them, and how the Chinese name has in consequence become a bye-word among the Mongols for everything that is detestable. It should not be forgotten of course that it is probably the worst class of Chinese with whom the Mongols come in contact. They are mostly adventurers who seek their fortunes among the Tartars, for the hard life they are compelled to live in these outlying countries is not at all suitable to the Chinese taste. The better sort of merchants are therefore not likely to wander so far; and those that do go are in the first instance below the average moral standard of the Chinese, and, when liberated from the restraint of public opinion in their own country, they are likely to deteriorate still more. It would also appear to be true that demoralisation naturally grows out of the intercourse between two races, one of whom is in a marked degree inferior to the other in intellectual capacity. In commercial dealings the Chinese find it so easy to overreach the simple Mongols, and the temptation to do so is so strong, that the habit is engendered, which soon becomes part of the character of the Chinese in Tartary. The Mongols, on their part, learn to form a low estimate of the honour of human nature. They know they are victimised by the Chinese, but they are powerless to escape from it; hence they, by a very natural process, acquire a settled hatred to the whole race. [Illustration: THIBETIAN MONUMENT IN LAMA TEMPLE. PEKING. (Page 42.)] But we have not yet seen the great gilt image of Bhudda, which stands in a separate building erected for the purpose. We failed in getting in on the first visit, but afterwards succeeded. The image is seventy-two feet high, well formed, and symmetrically proportioned. By a series of narrow and steep staircases we ascend several stories, at each getting a view of a part of the image. At the top of all we get out on a balcony, from which a good view of the city and environs is obtained. The Grand Lama of this monastery is a Chaberon or living Bhudda, of whom there are several in Mongolia; and as such he is a sacred person, and a man of great authority among Mongols, whether lamas or laymen. We had business to transact with this incarnation of Bhudda, but, on inquiring for him, we learned that he had left on some holy mission to the great lamasery at Dolonor, a Mongol town a few days' journey north-west of Peking. We had a letter from the head priest of the Fang-wang temple at Tungchow, who, though not belonging to the Lama sect, which so far as I am aware consists exclusively of Tartars, was nevertheless on easy terms with the Grand Lama. The purport of the letter was to recommend us to the attentions of the Grand Lama, and to request him to give us another letter to the lamas of a monastery in Mongolia, a short distance beyond the Great Wall at Chan-kia-kow, to enlist their services in procuring camels for our journey across the desert of Gobi. We anticipated some difficulty about this, and wished to have as many strings to our bow as possible. The letter was written in Mongol, and put in an envelope addressed in Manchu, for the priest at Tung-chow was a learned man. No one in the monastic brotherhood could be found who could read the Manchu address, and they had great difficulty in finding one who could master the Mongol characters in which the letter itself was written. We were surprised that they should not be able to read their own language, and on inquiry found that lamas are not taught to read Mongol as a necessary branch of study. They all learn the Lama writing, which they call "Tangut," but which must be Thibetian, as all their books and prayers are written in that character, and those lamas who live in Peking generally learn to read a little Chinese for their own convenience. While the letter was being deciphered we were introduced to the lay brother of the monastery, the confidant of the Grand Lama, and factotum in all secular affairs. A fine, hard-headed, swarthy complexioned, rough-and-ready burly fellow he was, and he received us with his rude native hospitality, showing us into the room, and making us sit on the very _kang_ used by the absent Bhudda. Being naturally slow of comprehension, and his secretary being equally slow and uncertain in deciphering the missive, the old fellow had many questions and cross-questions to ask, with many repetitions, which all being carried on in a very loud tone of voice, as if he had been bawling to a man on the main-top, began to get rather tiresome. Having satisfied himself about the contents of the letter, he entered into conversation with Noetzli, who, having been in Mongolia before, and in the very monastery of Bain-tolochoi to which we sought to be accredited, very adroitly led the conversation to that subject, and soon showed our Mongol friend that he knew all about the locality and the personal appearance of the head Lama there, whose chief characteristic seemed to be that he was inordinately fat. No sooner had our friend convinced himself that Noetzli had actually been the guest of the fat Lama, than he took us yet closer into his confidence, ordered the letter to be written, and at the same time despatched a boy into the street with some money in his hand. When the letter was finished, and we rose to leave, the old fellow, on hospitable thoughts intent, protested, seized our hats, and by main force pushed us back to the seat of the Grand Lama. To keep us in play he put fruit before us, but we did not know what it was all about until our breakfast was brought in in a large basin. It consisted of about twenty pounds of plain boiled mutton, without bread, rice, potatoes, or vegetables of any kind. All we had to eat with it was a solution of salt, soy, vinegar, and sugar. Eat we must, there was no help for it, and we honestly set ourselves to do as full justice to the unsavoury meal as we were capable of, although we had a good breakfast waiting us at home, that is, at our restaurant, our host all the while standing over us like a taskmaster to keep us up to our work. When no entreaties would make us eat more, with looks and expressions of pitying regret, our uncouth friend showed us how Mongols eat mutton by taking out a good-sized piece with his fingers, and dropping it down his throat. Then turning to the youngsters who crowded the room he pitched lumps of mutton to each of them, who, in like manner, gobbled it like hungry eagles. Our reception at the Lama temple gave us a fair idea of Mongol hospitality and habits, and impressed us favourably with the former. A long ride through the dirty streets of Peking, in a hot sun, was the least agreeable part of our morning's work. The old Observatory on the Wall is interesting as a monument of the early astronomical tastes of the Chinese emperors, and of the ingenuity of the Jesuits. It was first erected by the Ming before the Jesuits came to China, or, at all events, before they began to be influential, and afterwards greatly enlarged and improved under the auspices of the Jesuits. There is even an old instrument cast out and lying dishonoured in the grass--an orrery, if I rightly remember, dating from the Mongol dynasty, 600 years old. It is probable that the Chinese or Mongols were then in advance of European nations in their knowledge of celestial phenomena. The great celestial globe made under the direction of Verbiest, is a superb casting in bronze, and although the instrument sent from Paris is the finest in the Observatory, Father Verbiest's celestial globe was the most interesting to me as a specimen of what a clever man can do under almost insuperable difficulties. Since the fall of the Jesuits little attention seems to have been paid to, or use made of, the Observatory, and the teaching of those talented men is well nigh lost. The Temple of Heaven, or, as some people call it, the Altar of Heaven, is situated near the south wall of the city. We had several miles to go to it from our residence, in a direct line south, along the main street from the centre gate between the Tartar and Chinese cities. The street is wide and straight, but very dirty, and blocked up with trumpery stalls of all sorts, and kept alive by the incessant shouts of boys and old women. "Apples! fine apples, to be sold cheap,--those who have no money can't have any," reminded us of the pathetic story of "Simple Simon." Jugglers also disported themselves in the street and attracted good audiences to witness the swallowing and disgorging of huge stones, feats of strength, and other miracles. The poor juggler does not seem to take much by his motions, however, for, after swallowing an intolerable quantity of stone, and throwing up large bricks, and allowing them to break themselves on his head, thereby creating baldness on the crown, and otherwise amusing a distinguished circle of spectators for twenty minutes, he mildly solicits "cash," and has a wretched pittance thrown into the ring, much as one would throw a bone to a dog. I could not help wishing him some more useful outlet for his talents. Another man would stand with a white painted board in his hand, slightly covered with ink in a half-liquid state, and, while conversing with the crowd, he would, by means of his thumb and fingers, throw off such excellent representations of fishes, birds, &c., with every fin, scale, and feather done to the life, as one never sees in the most highly finished Chinese paintings. The talent displayed by these peripatetic artists proves conclusively that the Chinese do possess the skill to draw after nature. Then why don't they do it? A question more easily asked than answered. But we are supposed to be on the road to the Temple of Heaven. After walking two miles or so down this great street, we suddenly come to a break in the houses. There is no more street, but a large open space before us, lying very low, the road being continued on a raised causeway, on the same level as the street we have left. This space was originally a parade-ground. It is now a mud-puddle, cut up in all directions by innumerable cart-ruts, and most unsightly to behold. But the Temple of Heaven itself is now in sight, the outer wall stretching from a point abreast of us on the left to the south gate of the city, which is dimly visible in the distance over the miscalled parade-ground. The great centre pavilion, with its blue roof and large gilt top, resplendent in the afternoon sun, shoots up into the air, the most conspicuous object to be seen in all Peking. The outer wall alluded to encloses a square mile of ground. Opposite to the Temple of Heaven, and on our right, is the Temple or Altar of the Earth, where the emperors of China repair according to traditional custom on the first day of spring to inaugurate the happy season by ploughing the first furrow. The little boy who now wields the sceptres of the khans must be too young to hold a plough, and I suppose he does it by commission, if indeed he is not too degenerate to do it at all. Entering the outer gate of the Temple of Heaven, we are ushered into a large park, beautifully laid out with avenues of trees, and with regular well-paved walks. The whole place is terribly overgrown with long grass, and the neatly paved walks are all but obliterated by the same. As we proceed we come to a number of rather fine buildings for the accommodation of the priests. We saw none of these gentry, however, and the outer gate is kept by a dirty coolie, who takes a fee for opening it. The great pavilion stands on the top of a high causeway, the best part of a mile long, with flights of steps leading up to it at various parts. The causeway is beautifully paved with square stones, so regular and well fitted that the joinings can be traced in straight parallel lines along the whole length, except where the line of sight is intercepted by rank grass shooting up through them. The altar is in the great pavilion, which is a circular building of three storys, each story having wide eaves projecting over it, all covered with bright blue enamelled tiles. The roof of the building is of the same material, and is rather a sharply-pitched cone surmounted by a large round gilt ball. The whole effect is bright and beautiful. The pavilion is ascended from the causeway by flights of white marble steps, and a promenade of the same material runs all round it. On the causeway, and at some distance from the altar, are large massive arches with gates in them, and beyond the arches, at a great distance, there is another pavilion of similar construction to the principal one, but much smaller, being only one story high, where the Emperor comes once a-year to worship the true God, or, as some call it, the Dragon. Be that as it may, however, this is doubtless the purest form of worship known to the Chinese. When the Emperor takes his place in the small pavilion the gates of the arches are thrown open, and through them he can see afar off the altar of Heaven, or the Dragon throne, as you may please to call it. Sacrifices are made on those occasions; a large house or temple is set apart for the slaughter of the animals, and another circular tower of green bricks stands near it, where the remains of the sacrifices are buried. The whole plan of this splendid monument is nobly conceived, and would do credit to the most advanced nation in the world. Unhappily, it seems now to be utterly uncared for. The pavements on which so much care, labour, and money have been expended, are being rapidly covered up with grass. The avenues are like a wilderness, and weeds are even taking root in the beautiful blue-tiled roofs, which, if not soon ruined by it, will at all events be twisted out of their symmetrical proportions. It is melancholy to see that what men of large and enlightened ideas have been at such pains to build, the present degenerate race do not consider it worth while to hire half-a-dozen coolies to keep in order. No further proof is necessary of the state of imbecility into which the Chinese rulers have fallen than this, that in their own city they should allow such a monument of the active energy of their ancestors to go to wreck and ruin for want of a little looking after. I do not see how good government can be looked for in the distant provinces when the body politic is so rotten at the core. [Illustration: GREAT TEMPLE OF HEAVEN. PEKING. P. JUSTYNE. DEL J. COOPER, S^c. From a photograph by Beato. (Page 48.)] My opportunities did not allow of my seeing more of the great sights of Peking, but we have not yet done the theatres. It was, of course, necessary to patronise some of these establishments, and they afford great facilities for admitting people whose time is not all their own. Ours certainly was our own, but we had let it out for other purposes, and could only steal an hour now and then to give up to this enjoyment. The theatres are open all day long, and all night, too, for anything I know. The acting goes on incessantly--one piece following another without interruption. The favourite pieces with the actors, and by a natural inference with the audience, are old historical heroic pieces, which are performed in a wretched falsetto sing-song voice, and accompanied by the most die-away pantomimic gestures, even in the chief male characters, painfully monotonous to European ears and eyes. They are heavy and slow, but afford great scope for the display of _outré_ costumes, overlaid with fiery dragons and hideous forms, which delight the eye of the Chinese. The theatres at Peking are certainly superior, both in the get-up and acting, to anything else of the kind I have seen in China, and some comic pieces we saw were so admirably acted that we, knowing scarcely a word, could follow the story throughout. The houses were always crowded, and the audience seemed to take more interest in the performance than is usual in the south of China, no doubt owing to the language used being the Peking dialect, which is but indifferently understood by provincial audiences. On our entrance to a theatre we were always civilly greeted by the officers, and shown up to the most eligible places in the galleries, where we met people from all parts of the country, not excepting swell Cantonese, all dressed in spotless white muslin, as light and airy as if made from the gossamer's web. We were at once beset by half-naked peripatetic vendors of fruits, cakes, and comfits, and even cups of hot tea. The tea was very refreshing in such a hot place, but our neighbours insisted on giving us little dumplings and other Chinese delicacies, whose component parts we could not even guess. It was useless refusing--that was regarded as mock-modesty. We could only take a quiet opportunity of depositing the suspicious viands in our pockets, and give them to the first dirty urchin we met in the street. The Chinese themselves go on crunching ground nuts, melon-seeds, and rubbish of that sort, the whole time. Women do not act in China except under very exceptional circumstances. The female part is acted by men, who, thanks to their naturally effeminate appearance, make up very well as women, and the squeaky voice which they practise helps them out. Actors are by no means held in high repute in China, and they are in general very ill paid. One of the best actors, who was also highly esteemed as a singer, that is a squeaker, lodged at our hotel, and he informed us that he earned on an average about half a dollar a day. Our lodging being in the Chinese city, was far removed from the European residents, who all live in the Tartar quarter, and the gate between the two is closed at sunset. We therefore saw less of our respective countrymen than we might otherwise have done. The foreign community in Peking is but small, and foreign trade being interdicted in the capital, is not likely to be very much increased. There are the Russian, English, French, American, and I suppose now the Prussian legations, all well quartered in commodious official buildings. The Russian is the smallest, because the oldest. At the time of its establishment it was a great thing to have a place at all, without quarrelling about the size of it. The head of the foreign custom-house lives in Peking, and there are a few student interpreters attached to him, who are in training for the custom-house service. Two Church missionaries also reside in Peking, and last, not least, Dr. Lockhart, who has established a medical mission under the auspices of the London Missionary Society, on the plan of the one he for many years successfully conducted in Shanghae. Whatever may have been the past success of medical missions as an indirect means of introducing Christianity into China, there can hardly be a doubt that they are of all methods the best calculated to attain the objects for which they have been organised. The Chinese are pre-eminently irreligious, I mean with reference to their own nominal creed--Bhuddism. They are too keenly intent on minding their worldly affairs to have any thought to spare for higher considerations. They are entirely free from the fanaticism which animates other pagan races. Their temples and priesthood are universally despised and neglected. The only semblance of religious observances practised by the bulk of the people, is a very low kind of superstition, and that sits lightly on them as a rule wherever dollars stand in the way. It is not unfair to say that they are devoid of the religious faculty, and are "sunk in material interests." Hence, the didactic inculcation of strange doctrines is foolishness to them who are indifferent to any doctrine whatever. Of course I only speak from a secular point of view, without forgetting that the most impossible things are easy to the Omnipotent; and he would be a bold man who would venture to circumscribe the possible results that the future may develop from the dissemination of the Bible among a reading, and on the whole not an unthinking people. But the medical missionary presents Christianity in its most attractive phase, that is, associated with a noble philanthropy, after the example of the Founder of our religion, who always accompanied his teaching with healing the sick. And there is perhaps no form of mere philanthropy so powerful to exact gratitude from the most unlikely objects, as that of alleviating pain. The Chinese are probably more open to this mode of reaching their hearts than to any other. In my rambles in out-of-the-way places in China, I have frequently been appealed to for medical aid by poor people who had heard of the repute of foreign doctors, both for skill and benevolence. And although the Chinese character is the most hopeless one to expect gratitude from, still I affirm that if anything can touch them with the sense of an obligation, it is the ministering to their fleshly infirmities; and in the case of medical missions, they cannot escape the connection between them and the religion that prompts them. But I fear I am getting into too deep waters. No difficulty was experienced in getting our passports, although it was intimated to Sir F. Bruce that the passport for Mongolia was not exactly a thing which could be demanded under the treaty, and therefore that the issue of such a document might at any time be refused by the Chinese authorities without infringing any of the treaty stipulations, the argument being, that Mongolia, though tributary to China, is not a part of the Chinese empire, in the treaty interpretation of the word. This is fudge, of course, but as long as they grant the passports, all right. When they refuse, it will be time to argue about it. They are no doubt a little jealous about foreigners poking about in Mongolia: their own hold on it is so uncertain, and the encroachments of the Russians so gigantic of late years in other quarters, that is, in Manchuria, that the Chinese government, who now, if never before, feels its own decrepitude, does not know which way to turn for security against aggression. As usual with them, they, in their blindness to their own best interests, do just the wrong thing. Two schemes for telegraphic communication from Europe through Mongolia have been proposed to them, both from English sources: both have been rejected, from the general and ignorant dread they have of foreigners establishing stations in Mongolia. Now were their eyes opened they must see that it is not from England or France they have anything to fear of aggression in that part of their dominions; but from Russia alone. But were English or French subjects to settle, for any purpose whatever, in the Mongolian steppes, under authority from the Chinese government, no better guarantee could be secured against Russian aggression. As it now stands, the Russians are left alone in the field. When they really want to have telegraphic stations in Mongolia, they will not be refused, and before many years are over a large slice of Mongolia will be Russian. The Russians have certain winning ways of their own, altogether foreign to our system of diplomatic procedure, of getting what they want from the Chinese. While we are spending millions in sending armies to fight the Chinese, for questions which are as much or more for their own interests as for ours, and then as conquerors astonishing the Chinese by the moderation of our demands, the Russians are in the most amicable manner possible pushing forward their frontiers, and slicing off a thousand miles of Chinese coast, all the while maintaining their position as friendly allies of the Chinese, in contradistinction to the English barbarians, who are always blustering and fighting, in utter defiance of the rules of courtesy. After all it may be as well so. Our interest as a commercial people is to develop the resources of the world. The Russians will certainly do this better than the Chinese in those wild northern regions; at all events, a desert on the one hand, and a wilderness on the other, cannot be made much less productive than they are. But the Chinese cannot be expected to view the matter in this light, and yet they are so infatuated as to nurse the snake in their bosom to the exclusion of others who would be likely to checkmate his designs. The Russian government has shown a strange penchant for annexing vast deserts to its dominions. Much may it make out of them; but if half the enterprise and money had been expended in improving the condition of the enormous territory it already possesses, the Russian empire would have been too powerful for all Europe. But that is their own affair. The last thing to be done in Peking was to settle our bills at the hotel (!) and restaurant, and exorbitant enough they were. On asking the proprietor of the hotel for his account, he replied, "Oh! pay what you like." "In that case," said we, "we like to pay nothing." "All right, as you please," with the most lofty indifference, answered our host. Driven almost wild by his coolness, we tendered about six times what we should have paid for better entertainment anywhere else. The wretch turned up his nose at it with a supercilious air that nearly roused the British lion. The restaurant was as unconscionable in its demands, but we had something substantial for our money there, and did not so much object; but to pay through the nose for a corner to sleep in, which no gentleman would think fit for his hounds, did go sorely against the grain. I cannot imagine what makes things so dear in Peking, nor do I believe they are so dear to the initiated. One thing is cheap, and that is ice, and the most refreshing sight we saw during our stay in the capital, was the cartloads of the precious commodity being carried about in large square blocks; and how did we pity our friends whom we had left in Shanghae, sweltering through the worst part of the summer without this luxury--I ought to say necessary--in such a climate. No care is taken of ice in Peking. It is collected and thrown into large pits, and may melt as much as it likes. If there was any chance of its falling short, it would simply be a question of a few thousand tons more to be thrown into the heap in the winter. [Illustration: PART OF THE EMPEROR'S PALACE, YUEN-MIN-YUEN. DESTROYED 1860.] The local bank-notes in Peking are a great convenience. They are issued in amounts from 1000 cash (about a dollar) and upwards, and are in universal use in the city. The use of them saves the natives from lugging about huge strings of copper cash, the only coinage of China, 50 lbs. weight of which are worth about sixty shillings. These notes are not current outside the city walls, however, and here is an inconvenience; for whatever cash balance you may have in that medium must be paid away for something or other before you leave. It would be possible to change them for copper cash or Sycee silver, but that would involve delay and perhaps trouble. CHAPTER IV. PEKING TO CHAN-KIA-KOW. On the 14th of August, having arranged all our affairs in Peking, we set out for Tung-chow, where we had left the priests to provide us transport to Chan-kia-kow. Disappointment awaited us--nothing was done. We were very angry, and a hot discussion ensued between us and the head priest, but we could make neither rhyme nor reason out of him. Here was a dilemma. Ought we to wait till the morrow, and try ourselves to hire beasts of burden at Tung-chow, with this shaven head probably plotting against us? Or ought we to start by break of day with our whole baggage to Peking, and trust to arranging matters there? To do that even, we were helpless, unless the priests were on our side. We resolved, therefore, to conciliate the monk. At this juncture M. Noetzli, who had kindly volunteered to accompany us so far, being acquainted with the ways of the road, addressed the priest in Russian. The effect was marked and instantaneous--the priest's countenance changed--he opened himself out--explained the true causes why he had not been able to get the mules, and suggested that we should get carts to take our baggage to Peking the next day. He would accompany us himself, and help us to negotiate for transport in Peking. That settled, we felt relieved, and ate our frugal dinner in peace and comfort. I must explain the wonderful effect produced by the use of the Russian language. I have already intimated that this Fang-wang temple has been constantly used by the Russians as a dépôt. Intimate relations have grown up between the Russians and the priests, and mutual confidence and kindliness has been the result. Several of the priests have learnt the Russian language in their frequent intercourse with the Russians. The priests know no other foreigners. On our own merits we could do nothing with them; but the moment a connecting link seemed to be shown between us and the Russians, we were regarded as belonging to a privileged class. Next morning, we were again on the road to Peking, bag and baggage. We rode, Noetzli on a mule, which was quiet and tractable enough till a straw touched his tail, when he bounded off, kicking and jumping, floundered in a rut, pitched Noetzli over his head, then tenderly kicked him. _Mem._--Never ride a mule if you can help it, they are uncouth, unmanageable brutes. Our late landlord in Peking greeted us obsequiously on our return, and our old friends at the restaurant were no less delighted that their newly acquired art of cooking mutton chops was again in requisition. Our clerical friend soon appeared with a large, old-fashioned, blue cotton umbrella. We at once went with him to a shop where mules and litters were to be hired, and after the preliminary salutations and cups of tea, we asked for mules, and were told off-hand that they had none. This we knew to be untrue, because we had seen them. We tried several others, but met with the same reply. This looked hopeful, indeed, and it seemed there was nothing left for us that day, but to go to the theatre, where we saw some good acting and an audience thoroughly enjoying it; and so we drowned our own troubles for a time. The next expedient was to order as good a dinner as our ingenuity could devise, out of the materials at hand. A good dinner is a wonderful soother, and has been, perhaps, too much overlooked by philosophers. The next day, 16th of August, our priest, worn out in our service, came and reported himself sick. He had feverish symptoms, for which we administered quinine. This break-down of our mainstay was unfortunate, for as we could not get on with his assistance, how could we manage without it? The mule-proprietors still maintained in the morning that there were no mules to be had; but at mid-day they sent to say we could have as many as we liked, at slightly exorbitant prices. We thereupon engaged eight pack-mules at four taels[2] each, and three mule-litters at eight taels each, to convey us and our belongings to Chan-kia-kow, distant about 400 li, or a four days' journey. It is difficult to divine why it was that these crafty dealers so obstinately maintained the non-existence of the mules. They refused even to listen to an offer on the first day. They were prepared to demand an extortionate price, and we were equally prepared to pay it, but they determined to play with us a little, in order to work our feelings up to the requisite pitch. And when they had reduced us to despair, they thought we would be in a proper frame of mind to accede to their demands, however extravagant they might be. But now everything was satisfactorily arranged, and the mules were to be sent to us early in the morning. The fare amounted to sixty taels in all, of which we paid one-third on the signing of the contract, one-third when the mules were loaded, and the balance on arrival at Chan-kia-kow. [2] 1 tael equal to 6s. 6d. My ma-foo now made himself very busy. Up to this time he had done little but entertain me with cock-and-bull stories about his late master, and his reasons for leaving his service, at every favourable opportunity appealing to me for my opinion, as to whether he was a "good man." I always answered in the negative, but he solaced himself with the reflection that I would find him out and do him justice when we got to Chan-kia-kow. Now that we were about starting, we thought of many little things we wanted for our comfort on the journey, and who so eligible to make the purchases as "ma-foo." His eagle eye discerned in this a fine scope for his energies, for nothing tickles a Chinaman so much as to have money passing through his hands. "Ma-foo" set to work manfully, and was proceeding very satisfactorily to all parties, bringing the articles we wanted, and rendering an account of the prices paid, until he brought me a coarse cotton bag, which he put in at two dollars. "No," I said, "I won't have it at that price. Take it back to the shop." By and by, he re-appeared with the bag, and offered it for a dollar and a-half. I refused it; and sent him back to the shop. After a while, he returned to the charge with the wretched bag: told me he could not take it back, but reduced his demand to one dollar. I asked him how he could afford to sell it for one dollar, seeing he had paid two for it. "Maskee--you take it." I saw he was "stuck" with it, and that if he failed to realise, he would be under the necessity of stealing something from me to make up for his loss. I therefore accepted it--not without making him confess that he had paid only one dollar for the bag. It was now my turn to ask him where his vaunted goodness was, seeing he tried to cheat me of a dollar. He only grinned, and said, in this instance he was a "little" bad. He was but an inexperienced knave. A clever Chinaman, that is, an ordinary average Chinaman, would have managed an affair of that kind so adroitly as to defy suspicion, except the general feeling one always experiences that all Chinamen are rogues. But small peculations are considered by the Chinese as their legitimate game. When they are intrusted with commissions, they look on it as a sacred duty to scrape as much as they can out of the affair for themselves. This runs through the whole race, and every grade of society, from the highest official in the empire to the meanest beggar. In case these remarks should be taken to contain a general sweeping charge of dishonesty against the whole Chinese race, I must explain myself a little more fully. The system of peculation is recognised in China, as a legitimate source of emolument; and within certain limits, arbitrarily fixed by custom, it is not held to be inconsistent with honesty. The government connive at it to an alarming extent, by paying responsible officers mere nominal salaries, leaving it to their own ingenuity to improve their fortunes. But with all that, it is a rare thing for a Chinaman to betray a trust; the best proof of which is that they are trusted, under the slenderest of guarantees, with large sums of money. Among the respectable class of merchants, their word is as good as their bond. A bargain once concluded is unflinchingly adhered to. Their slipperiness is exhausted in the preliminary negotiations. Their "cheating" is conducted on certain broad and well understood principles. But for practical honesty, the Chinese may well excite the admiration of many who think themselves vastly superior. When we were at war with the Viceroy of Canton, the European factories were burnt, and foreigners compelled to abandon the place, leaving a great deal of property in the hands of Chinese merchants. Repudiation never occurred to these Chinamen's minds. On the contrary, they found their way to Hong-kong, during the blockade of the Canton river, for the purpose of settling accounts with the foreigners. China contains good and bad in about the same proportion as other countries. Old John Bell says of them:--"They are honest, and observe the strictest honour and justice in their dealings. It must, however, be acknowledged, that not a few of them are much addicted to knavery, and well skilled in the art of cheating. They have, indeed, found many Europeans as great proficients in that art as themselves." A very fair summary of Chinese character. Bright and early in the morning the mules and litters came, and we were three hours at work, loading and arranging everything. It required a good deal of management, as the loads are not lashed on the mules' backs, but balanced, so that they must be pretty equally divided on each side of the pack-saddle. We had somehow nine mules instead of eight. We had under 3000 lbs. weight of baggage to carry. That did not give a full load to each mule, for they are reputed to carry 300 catties, or 400 lbs. each. The loads of our team averaged 325 lbs. The mule litter, used in the north of China, is a large palanquin suspended on the backs of two mules, length-wise. Strong leather bands connect the points of the shafts, resting on the saddles of the respective mules. An iron pin, fixed in the top of the saddle, passes through a hole in the leather, and so keeps it in its place. The shafts are, of course, a good length, to reach from one mule to the other, and to leave the animals plenty of room to walk. There is, consequently, a good deal of spring in the machine. The motion is not at all disagreeable; compared with a cart, it is luxurious. There is hardly room in the palanquin to stretch out full length, but in other respects it is very commodious, having room in the bottom for a good quantity of baggage. About 10 o'clock on the 17th August our caravan moved slowly out of the courtyard of the inn, which we left with no regret, and we slowly felt our way through the dusty, crowded streets of Peking towards the North Gate, which was our exit from the city. I was on horseback, intending to get into my litter should the sun prove too powerful, which it did when we got to the sandy plain a little way outside the city. The slow pace of the mules was most disheartening, but I had yet to learn much patience in travelling. Our first resting-place was at Sha-ho, a village sixty li or twenty miles from Peking. Here we made ourselves a dinner, and fed the cattle. There are two very fine old stone bridges at Sha-ho, but the river that runs under them is only a ditch now. It was drawing late in the afternoon before we were on the road again, and we had not gone many miles before darkness came. The country is well cultivated with cereals, the chief crop being Barbadoes millet, standing from ten to fifteen feet high. Strips of cotton plants appear here and there. It is a delicate-looking plant in this part of the country. The last five miles of the road to Nankow is very rough and stony, and as the night was dark when we passed it, our animals had great difficulty in keeping their legs. About 11 p.m. we arrived at the inn at Nankow, and created a scene of no small confusion by our entry into the courtyard. It was already filled with travellers' gear of all sorts, and it was long before we could pick out a clear space to unload our mules. The fitful glimmer of the dimmest of all lanterns helped to make the darkness visible, but did not assist us in clearing the heels of horses, mules, and donkeys that were straggling all over the place. In the midst of the Babel of tongues, and the senseless yells of our fellow-travellers, as they one after another awoke in a nightmare, we were fain to retreat to our dormitory, and with a scant supper, lay down to rest hoping to find everything in its place in the morning. The village of Nankow is at the entrance of the mountain pass of that name. It is for this pass alone that the mule-litters are necessary, for it would be impossible to take any wheeled carriage through. In a Russian sketch of the route from Peking to Kiachta, it is stated that the road is passable for carriages throughout. There are several very difficult rocky passes on the road, but this one at Nankow is, I am certain, impracticable for carriages. [Illustration: THE NANKOW PASS. (Page 63.)] On the 18th August, early in the morning, we entered the defile. It is indeed a terrible road, over huge boulders of rock. The pass is about thirteen miles in length, and for the greater part of that distance nothing breaks the monotony of the precipitous mountain wall on either side. The remains of several old forts are seen in the pass, showing the importance that has been attached to it in former times. It certainly is the key of the position, and the last step of an invader towards Peking. But it is so well defended by nature, that a handful of men could keep an army at bay, if any were so bold as to attempt to force this thirteen miles of defile. The care bestowed on the defences hereabouts shows the terror inspired by the Mongols and other outer tribes in the hearts of the rulers of China. Our mules struggled gallantly with their loads, slipping and tripping at every step, and landed us at the outside of the pass, without accident of any kind, but not without a good deal of wear and tear of hoof. They even kept up almost their full travelling pace of three miles an hour. At the northern exit from the pass a branch of one of the inner "Great Walls" crosses. It is out of repair, but still the archway over the port is good, and it would puzzle anyone to get in or out of the pass without going through the gate. At a small walled town, called Cha-tow, just clear of the pass, we halted for our mid-day meal, at a very good inn. The inns hereabouts are nearly all kept by Mahommedans, called in Chinese "Hwuy-Hwuy." The modicum of extraneous civilisation they have acquired, through the religion of the Prophet, is sufficient to mark them as more intelligent and enterprising than their fellows. It is not likely that their tenets are very strictly kept, but they are sufficiently so to enable the Mohammedans to keep together, and form communities and associations of their own. Mine host at Cha-tow asked me for some wine, on which I read him a lecture on the duty of abstinence inculcated by the Prophet. He admitted this was so, but said they were not over strait-laced in those parts. The Mohammedans have their mosques at Tientsin, Peking, and in most large cities in the north and west of China. They are evidently left unmolested in the exercise of their religion, and enjoy every social privilege. The Chinese government is really very tolerant of all religious opinions, and the Chinese as a race are so supremely indifferent to religious matters, that they are the last people in the world who would be likely to work themselves up to fanatical persecution. They are all too busy to attend to such matters. The Chinese government has, no doubt, shown itself jealous of the propagation of the Christian religion, but it is its political tendencies only that frighten them. They have a wholesome recollection of the ambitious projects of the Jesuits in their day of influence,[3] and they have been constantly kept in hot water by the Propaganda. They have to meet ever-recurrent demands by the self-constituted champion of religion in the East, for the murder of some French or Italian priest in some unheard-of part of the country, where he had no right to be, except at his own proper peril. They see in every native convert a contingent _casus belli_ with some powerful state, and very naturally seek to check the spread of such dangerous doctrines by all indirect means. This unfortunate mixing-up of politics with religion has been a deadly blow to the real advancement of Christianity in China. And the abuse of the Christian vocabulary by the Taeping rebels is not calculated to prepossess the Chinese authorities in favour of the Western faith. Japan is another country where the government, and I may say also the people, are utterly indifferent to religion, but where the Christian religion has been, and is, tabooed with a vigour unsurpassed in the history of the world. And who that has read the story of the introduction of Christianity into that country by the Jesuits, can blame the government of Japan for its arbitrary exercise of power? [3] Father Gerbillon, a Jesuit, was the Chinese plenipotentiary who concluded the treaty of Nerchinsk with the Russians, in 1689. Huc laments the low status of the Chinese Christians, as compared with the Mussulmen, and attributes it to the want of self-assertion. When a Christian gets into trouble his brethren hide themselves. Huc would have driven them to the other extreme. He advocated strong associations by which the Christians might "awe" the Mandarins, as if there must necessarily be antagonism between the two. The inference from which must be either that the Christians are systematically persecuted, as such, or that they are in the habit of committing offences against society. The Chinese government and people have a horror of secret societies and of any political associations whatever. But if Huc's converts had been content to live like ordinary good citizens, neither shrinking from nor courting publicity, they would probably have disarmed suspicion and escaped molestation. Above all, if Huc and his clerical brethren could have divested themselves of the character of spies who had crept into China in defiance of the law of the land, for purposes which the government could not understand, and therefore assumed to be pernicious, they might have saved their disciples from some annoyance, or, as they love to call it, persecution. In the inn at Chatow, and in all the other inns north of Peking, we found a large cauldron of boiling mutton in a central position in the kitchen. This is kept boiling from morning till night; and the broth, which, by itself, is by no means unpalatable, is always handy as a stock for any messes the wayfarers may fancy. A youth spends his time in kneading chow-patties, which he does very skilfully and rapidly. These are torn and thrown in pieces into the boiling mass, and, when sufficiently done, are served out with a due proportion of broth, as a savoury dish for a hungry man. The "steward of the cauldron," as Huc would probably have called him, has acquired great expertness in serving out his stuff. With a variety of ladles, all sieves, more or less fine, he will serve up either the plain broth, or nimbly seize any of the morsels that are tumbling about in confusion in the pot. Mutton is cheap and abundant here, and is the staple article of food. The sheep are pastured on many hill-sides that are not fit for anything else, and the constant droves of sheep that come in from Mongolia, for the supply of Peking, pass along this road, and are no doubt to be had cheap. We now enter a plain about ten miles broad, bounded on either side by bold mountain ranges running east and west. We cross the plain obliquely towards the northern mountain chain. This plain must be elevated more than 1000 feet. The air was fresher than about Peking, and a very marked difference was apparent in the fertility of the soil. The millet and other crops were stunted, the soil was arid and rather stony. The hills are quite bare, but a few trees are dotted over the plain. At Hwai-lai-hien, a good-sized walled town, we halted for the night. Outside the city is a very large stone bridge, evidently of the same period as those at Sha-ho. Five gothic-shaped arches are still standing, and another is detached at a distance of some 200 feet, the intermediate part of the bridge having no doubt been destroyed. There is no water now in the river, but the bed is still well marked, and the old embankments remain, about 500 or 600 yards apart. The old bed of the river is in a high state of cultivation now. I find the following notice of this bridge and this river in Bell's Travels. He does not, indeed, give the name of the town, but, tracing up his march from stage to stage, between the Great Wall and Peking, it is evident that Hwai-lai is the station referred to. He says: "About noon, next day, we came to a large, populous, and well-built city, with broad streets, as straight as a line. Near this place runs a fine river, which appears navigable, having across it a noble stone bridge, of several arches, and paved with large square stones." Bell also makes frequent allusion to an earthquake, which did great damage to this part of the country in July, 1719. Many towns and villages were half destroyed, and some were wholly laid in ruins, and "vast numbers of people" were engulfed. "I must confess," says Bell, "it was a dismal scene to see everywhere such heaps of rubbish." The district being subject to earthquakes, makes it probable that the fine bridge has been destroyed by that agency. But what has become of the fine navigable river that existed in 1720, and has now disappeared? Has it also been upset by an earthquake? The river was probably the Kwei-ho, which now runs in another direction, but some of the gentlemen of Peking or Tientsin, who have explored the country, will no doubt elucidate this interesting question. On the 19th we made an early start, and went at a very steady pace towards the northern chain of mountains. On approaching them we turned slightly to the left, and skirted the base of the hills. We met a good deal of traffic on the road here, all goods being carried on the backs of mules and donkeys. Coal formed a conspicuous object, on its way to Peking, where it is used to a considerable extent. Immense flocks of sheep are continually passing in the direction of Peking, and we also met a good many herds of horses bound the same way. Our mid-day halt was at Shacheng, a walled town. All over this country are the ruins of old forts; and a line of square towers, with a good many blanks, runs nearly in the direction of the road. If these forts could speak they could tell a tale of many a hard-fought battle before and after the Mongol conquest of China. This part of the country was hotly contested by Genghis Khan; and, in the years 1212 and 1213, the town of Suen-wha-foo, and other places in the neighbourhood, were several times taken and re-taken. "A bloody battle" was fought near Hway-lai, wherein Genghis defeated the Kin, a Manchu dynasty who then ruled Kitay or Northern China. The pass at Nankow, and its fortresses, were taken by Chepe, one of Genghis's generals. A story is somewhere told that, in olden times, when intelligence was transmitted through the country by beacon fires lighted on these towers, an emperor was cajoled by one of his ladies to give the signal of alarm and summon his generals and officers from all quarters. The word was given, and the signal flashed through the Chinese dominions. The Mandarins assembled in the capital to repel the invader, but, finding they had merely been used as playthings to amuse a woman, they returned in wrath to the provinces. By and by the Tartars did come; the alarm was again given; but this time no one responded to the emperor's call for aid. At Chi-ming-i, another walled town, we had done our day's work, but it was too early to halt, so we pushed on to a small village called Shan-shui-pu. At Chi-ming-i we met the Yang-ho, a small river that seems to lose itself in the sand. Turning northwards we followed the course of the Yang-ho, and entered another defile. The scenery at the entrance of the pass, where the opening is wide, with a number of valleys running into the hills, and snug-looking villages nestling in cosy nooks, is a relief from the dull monotony of the plain on the one side, and from the wild rocky barriers on the other. It is a romantic little spot, full of verdure, and completely sheltered from the north winds. It has therefore been a favourite resort for ecclesiastics; for, with all their dullness, the Chinese priests have everywhere displayed excellent taste in the selection of sites for their temples and monasteries. The following pretty legend of the place is given by Bell, and, as he says, it is a fair specimen of the numerous fabulous stories which the Chinese imagination delights to feed upon:--"Near this place is a steep rock, standing on a plain, inaccessible on all sides, except to the west, where a narrow winding path is cut in the rock, which leads to a Pagan temple and nunnery built upon the top of it. These edifices make a pretty appearance from the plain, and, as the story goes, were built from the foundation, in one night, by a lady, on the following occasion. This lady was very beautiful, virtuous, and rich, and had many powerful princes for her suitors. She told them she intended to build a temple and a monastery of certain dimensions, with her own hands, in one night, on the top of this rock; and whoever would undertake to build a stone bridge over a river in the neighbourhood, in the same space of time, him she promised to accept for a husband. All the lovers having heard the difficult task imposed on them, returned to their respective dominions, except one stranger, who undertook to perform the hard condition. The lover and the lady began their labour at the same time, and the lady completed her part before the light appeared; but as soon as the sun was risen, she saw, from the top of the rock, that her lover had not half finished his bridge, having raised only the pillars for the arches. Failing, therefore, in his part of the performance, he also was obliged to depart to his own country, and the lady (poor lady!) passed the remainder of her days in her own monastery." The Yang-ho had been flooded a few weeks before. It had now subsided, but still it came down from the hills roaring like a cataract. It runs through the pass, and falls not less than 200 feet in a distance of five miles. We followed its course through the mountains, sometimes close to the river. The noise of it at times was deafening, and one of my ponies could with difficulty be kept on the path from fright at the noise. The road became very difficult as we ascended the pass, and it grew dark long before we reached our halting-place, Shan-shui-pu. When we got there we found but poor accommodation. We managed to eat some rice and eggs, and surveyed the premises to find a decent place to sleep, but without success. Six Mongol travellers were lying on the ground in the outer yard, side by side, their sleep undisturbed by the noise our party made in coming into the hostelry. We slept in our litters. Coal is worked in this neighbourhood, but in a very imperfect way. As far as I could detect, it is merely scooped out of the hill-sides where the seam happens to crop out. At half-past five next morning we left Shan-shui-pu. The road continued very rocky for a mile or two, and led through an undulating country. We then got on to another terrace very much like the one we crossed yesterday, and bounded by two parallel ranges of hills. At Suen-wha-fu, a large walled city, we halted to breakfast in a very comfortable inn, much frequented by Russian travellers, who had inscribed their names on the walls as far back as 1858. Mr. Noetzli and I rode ahead of the caravan in order to reach Chan-kia-kow early, and see how the land lay. Chan-kia-kow was the critical point in our journey, and we were naturally anxious to manage matters there with proper address. If we could but get camels to carry us across the desert to Kiachta, we were safe from all annoyance and delay for the rest of our journey. So we innocently thought; but the sequel will show how short-sighted we were. CHAPTER V. CHAN-KIA-KOW. We reached Chan-kia-kow at 1 o'clock, after a hard ride. It is a large, straggling town, lying in a valley surrounded on three sides by mountains, and is bounded on the north by the Great Wall, which descends precipitously from the brow of the hill, crosses the valley, and up the other side. The town of Chan-kia-kow has a character peculiarly its own. It derives its importance from its being the focus of the trade between Russia and China. All goods to and from Kiachta must pass this way, whether on the direct route for the Hu-quang provinces or _viâ_ Tientsin. The result is a large "foreign" population--that is, of Chinese from other provinces. Many of these men have passed most of their lives in Kiachta, and speak Russian. Most of them are wealthy; indeed, the Kiachta trade has been the means of enriching both Chinese and Russians, and many of both nations who have been engaged in it have amassed large fortunes. There is an outward appearance of wealth in Chan-kia-kow, and more show of newness than one meets with in other of their fusty old towns. Some new temples have lately been built by the merchants, and new archways, of which the paint is fresh and good, a thing rarely seen in China. This being the frontier town between China and Mongolia, attracts considerable numbers of Mongols, who bring in their camels to hire for the transport of goods across the desert, and drive in their sheep, cattle, and horses for sale, taking back with them in exchange store of brick-tea and small articles of various sorts, such as pipes, tobacco, &c. The Russians, also, have had a factory here for a few years, and altogether a rare motley crowd is the population of Chan-kia-kow. The Russians call it Kalgan, a name of Mongol origin, meaning, according to Bell, "the everlasting wall." But it is more probably a corrupt form of Halgan, or Khalgan, signifying a gate. The name is quite out of use among the modern Mongols, who invariably employ the Chinese name. Mr. Noetzli first endeavoured to hunt up some of his Chinese acquaintance, and a tedious business it was, in the interminably long streets, and in a rather hot sun, fatigued as we were with a long ride. After several false scents, we hit on the establishment of a Shanse man who had been thirty years in Kiachta. He and his household spoke good Russian, and he was proud to serve up tea, European fashion, with cups and saucers, sugar and teaspoons. This was very acceptable to us; and we rested as long as we could under his roof, while he entertained us with much interesting conversation, and many cups of the cheering beverage. Having got directions by which to find out the Russians, who had lately gone into new quarters, we soon traced them out in a neat little house built on the hill-side, out of town, that is, beyond the Great Wall, in the narrow pass leading into Mongolia. Mr. Noetzli, being already acquainted with some of them, and speaking a little Russian, we soon made friends with them, and induced them to invite us to take up our quarters with them. So, tying up our beasts, we abandoned ourselves to tea-drinking for an hour or two. The Russians were exceedingly kind and hospitable to us. We were much more comfortable with them than we could hope to be in a Chinese inn; but we derived other advantages from living with the Russians which were of more importance to us. We were not friendless; the cunning Chinese could not look on us merely in the light of victims who had come there to be choused and swindled. Our negotiations for transport would pass through the hands of our Russian friends, who were accustomed to deal in such matters. So far all was well. But Mr. Noetzli had sent an express on some time before to ask the Russians to prepare us camels. Had they done it? No. This looked black rather, but we resigned ourselves to circumstances, confidently believing that things would mend when they came to the worst. We now prepared to play our last card, which was that Mr. Noetzli should go, accompanied by Chebekin, the Russian factotum, a most indefatigable fellow, who speaks Mongol like a native, to a Lama convent, called Bain-tolochoi, two days' journey into Mongolia. There they were to discover a certain priest, to whom Noetzli was accredited by the lamas at Peking, and endeavour to get him to advise some of his Mongol brethren to give us camels. The simple Mongols reverence their lamas, and will readily execute their behests, even at great personal inconvenience. This lama was a man of great influence in his own circle, and we were a little sanguine about the result, if only a favourable reception could be had. It was arranged, therefore, that our two friends should set out on horseback on the morrow, while we kicked our heels about in idleness and suspense at Chan-kia-kow. The next morning, 21st of August, while we were at breakfast, two Mongols came lounging into the place. One of them was the courier who carries the post-bag to Kiachta, who was hanging about waiting for post-day; the other was a friend of his, but apparently a stranger to our hosts. We took the opportunity of asking about camels, and Chebekin set to work palavering. In a quarter of an hour the whole thing was settled, we were to have camels in four days, and we should be ready to start on the fifth day. The price we paid for eight camels (we really had twelve) for 800 miles, was 150 taels (£50), and two bricks of tea to the ferryman of a certain river. Thus we were once more at ease in our minds; the two scouts were well pleased to see their horses unsaddled again, and we were all happy together. The next day Mr. Noetzli left us to return to Tientsin, and we were rather in a bad plight, not being able to communicate with our Russian friends, except in Chinese, a language of which we were almost wholly ignorant. One of them vigorously rubbed up some English he had once learned, and in a few days made great progress. While we are waiting for our camels we have plenty of time to see Chan-kia-kow, but after all there is not much to see. The view from the house where we lived was across the pass, and looked straight on the mountain wall on the other side. So close were we to the mountain that the sun was several hours up before he was seen topping the hill. The Great Wall runs over the ridges of these hills, nearly east and west. This structure is entirely in ruins here. The rubbish that once composed it remains and marks the line. Many of the towers are still standing. I doubt if the wall ever has been so massive in this quarter as near its eastern terminus, where I crossed it a few years ago. Where the Great Wall crosses the town of Chan-kia-kow it is kept in good repair, and has a good solid arch with a gate which is closed nominally at sunset. There is no traffic from the town except through this port, and all Mongols and Chinese dismount in passing. One of our amusements in Chan-kia-kow was to attend the horse-fair which is held every morning on an esplanade just outside the city on the Mongol side of the Great Wall. It is a most exciting scene, and attracts a great concourse of people. Several hundred ponies, chiefly Mongol, are here exposed for sale every morning. They are tied up in line on either side, leaving the middle space clear, and are taken out in turns and ridden up and down the open space by wild-looking jockeys, who show off their paces to the highest advantage. The fast ones are galloped as hard as their legs can carry them from end to end of the course, pulling up dead short, about ship and back again, the riders all the while holding out their whip hand at full length, and yelling like infuriated demons. There are generally half a dozen on the course at a time, all going full tilt, and brushing past each other most dexterously. They go tearing through the crowd of spectators without checking their pace, and yet it is rare for any one to get ridden over. Amongst these ponies are many extraordinary trotters, and many trained to artificial paces. These are generally more sought after by purchasers than the gallopers. A number of men hang about the horse-fair who act as brokers between buyers and sellers. These men are invariably Chinese. They soon attached themselves to us, offering their services, and descanting on the merits of the various steeds that were constantly scouring past us. Their mode of making and receiving offers is to pull their long sleeves down and communicate with each other by the touch of the fingers. This seems to be more of a traditional ceremony than anything else, for when they have made a bid with so much show of secrecy, they frequently continue the bargaining _vivâ voce_ in the hearing of the whole multitude. The prices of the ponies sold varied from five taels to twenty, or say from thirty shillings to six guineas. We had occasion to make some purchases, and paid about ten taels each for very good useful ponies. One of mine that I had brought from Tientsin had got a very bad sore back from the last day's ride with a badly fitting saddle. He was useless to me in that condition, and I sold him to a horsedealer for five taels. Large droves of cattle and sheep came in from Mongolia, but the sale of these is not carried on with so much ostentation as that of the horses. We daily, almost hourly, observed long strings of ox-carts coming down through the pass loaded with short square logs of soft wood. The carts are of the roughest description, and have not, I think, a bit of iron in their construction. This wood is brought from the mountains near Urga, across the desert of Gobi, a distance of 600 miles, and is chiefly used in the manufacture of coffins by the Chinese. These ox caravans travel very slowly, a journey of 600 miles occupying forty days or more; but it is a cheap and convenient mode of conveyance. The animals feed themselves on the way, and cost very little to start with. Camels could do the work, but a camel is a wretched object in harness, and is quite unable to drag even a light cart through a steep pass. Horses or oxen have to do this work for them. The pass at Chan-kia-kow is very stony for some fifteen miles, and the oxen have to be shod with thin iron plates. The Chinese farriers at Chan-kia-kow are very expert at shoeing cattle and horses. They don't attempt to make a shoe to fit any particular hoof, but keep a stock on hand, and selecting the nearest size, they hammer the shoe approximately to the shape of the hoof. They don't trouble themselves to cut the hoof down much, and you can have your beast shod on all four feet in a remarkably short time. The head of the Russian establishment had been absent on a journey to Peking. He returned while we were in his house, travelling, as we had done, in a mule-litter. Amongst his travelling gear that we saw turned out of the palanquin was a small sized "_samovar_," or tea-urn, which is the greatest institution in Russia, and as we were first introduced to it in Chan-kia-kow I must give some account of it here. _Samovar_ is composed of two Russian words, meaning, I believe, "self-boiling." It is a very simple and admirable contrivance for boiling water quickly, and keeping it boiling, without which it is impossible to make tea fit to drink. The samovar is an elegantly shaped vase, made of brass, with a tube about two and a half inches in diameter going down the centre from top to bottom. A charcoal fire burns in this tube, and, as the water is all round it, a large "heating-surface" is obtained, and the water is acted on very rapidly. Samovars are made of all sizes, the capacity being estimated in tea cups. An average sized one contains twenty to twenty-five cups, or rather glasses, for it is customary among the Russians to drink tea out of tumblers. Those who can afford it drink very good tea, and they are probably the most accomplished tea-drinkers in the world; our countrywomen might even learn a lesson from them in the art of tea-making. They use small earthenware tea-pots, and their first principle seems to be to supply the pot bountifully with the raw material. The infusion comes off very strong, and they judge of its strength by the colour in the glass. They put but a little tea in the glass, and then dilute it with boiling water from the samovar, in about the proportions of the whiskey and water in toddy. As a rule, they use sugar and milk, or cream, when procurable. At Chan-kia-kow it was not to be had, for the Chinese do not use milk, or any preparation from it; and it probably never occurred to the Russians that they might keep their own cow for a mere song. The Russian gets through an amazing quantity of tea in the course of a day, and I verily believe they consume more per head than the Chinese themselves. The samovar is almost constantly blowing off steam--morning, noon, and night it is to be seen on the table, and they never stop sipping tea while there is any water left. It is as much a necessary of life with them as their daily bread, or tobacco to an inveterate smoker, and their attachment to their own way of making it, is strikingly exhibited by the fact, that a Russian, travelling among the Chinese, where every possible facility for tea-making is at hand, should consider it essential to his comfort to carry his own samovar about with him. During our stay at Chan-kia-kow, we experienced a considerable change in the weather. The first two days it was hot, but with a fresher and more elastic atmosphere than about Peking. This is probably due to the elevation, and the vicinity of mountains. We had ascended by successive passes and terraces from Peking about 2500 feet, which is approximately the elevation of Chan-kia-kow. A thunder-squall on the 21st of August cooled the air so much that we had to sleep under a blanket that night. Next morning was quite chilly with the thermometer at 71°. At mid-day on the 23rd it stood at 72°, and on the morning of the 24th it was 65°. It got warmer again afterwards, but we began to think there was something in the Russian warnings of great cold in Mongolia, and we did not regret being well provided with blankets and furs. As the time drew near for our departure we seriously set to work to supply ourselves with necessaries for the journey across the desert. Our Mongol friends had contracted to carry us to Kiachta in thirty days, but to provide against accidents we allowed a good deal more. Although we were well supplied for the desert journey with preserved provisions, wine, and bottled porter, the opportunity of procuring fresh vegetables was too tempting to be overlooked. At Chan-kia-kow we found some of the finest cabbages[4] in the world, carrots, &c. Potatoes are also to be had in the season, but we were too early. These and some fresh beef equipped us fully in that department. [4] These cabbages are said to have been originally introduced from Russia. Then we had to purchase two carts to travel in. The Russians and Chinese always travel so, for it would be too fatiguing to ride on a camel all the way, they go so long at a stretch--sixteen to eighteen hours without stopping. The carts are built on the same principle as those in use about Peking and Tientsin, but larger. They are drawn by camels. We essayed to make these purchases, and soon found one cart in good order, barring the wheels. We then asked a wheelwright to make a pair of wheels for it, but he would have charged more for the wheels than the cost of a new cart, completely furnished. It was evident that we could not manage these matters without being shamelessly imposed upon, and we therefore begged our good friends, the Russians, to take our business in hand. Everything now went smoothly. Two carts were quickly found, second-hand, and at moderate prices. When we had got them we found they wanted harness, that is, sundry strips of leather thongs, attached to the points of the shafts, and which are secured in a very primitive, but effective, way to the saddle gear of the camels. Then the covers of our carts looked rather weather-beaten, and it would be cold in Mongolia. New felt covers had therefore to be obtained, and for extra warmth, nailed on over the old ones. Our wheels would want oiling. We must therefore have five catties of oil, cost 500 cash. But how to carry it? A pot was requisite--cost 150 cash more. There was really no end to the small things that suggested themselves. We had ponies--extra felt saddle cloths were wanted to protect their backs. And how were we to catch them when turned out to graze during our halts? Hobbles must be got for this. We also took some dry food for our ponies to eat when the grass was very thin, but they would not look at it, and we had eventually to throw it away to lighten our camels. What with extra rope, a bag of charcoal, covers for our baggage in case of rain, lanterns, and a variety of other things, we made up a formidable list of odds and ends. The account rendered filled a sheet of foolscap, but the whole amount of our purchases at Chan-kia-kow, exclusive of the first cost of two carts, came to less than six pounds, and this included several pairs of felt boots and a couple of goat-skin jackets. No one travelling that way (unless it be in the early summer), should omit to procure a couple of pairs of these felt boots. There is nothing like them for warmth, and they can be got large enough to pull over your other boots. I used mine nearly all the way to Moscow, and rarely experienced the sensation of cold feet, though exposed in all sorts of carriages, and in severe weather. On the 25th of August, the Mongol gave notice that the camels were at hand, and on the 26th they came into the courtyard, uttering that disagreeably plaintive cry that is peculiar to the camel, and more particularly to the juveniles. The camels looked very large and ungainly in the small enclosure, but the Mongols soon made room by making them kneel down close together, when they immediately commenced chewing the cud. The Mongols manage their camels by means of a tweak passed through the nose, with a thin string attached. They pull the string with a slight jerk, saying "Soh, Soh," and the animal, screaming the while, falls on his knees, and with three oscillating movements he is flat down with his belly on the ground. The Mongols had already tackled our baggage and arranged it to their own satisfaction, so as to suit not only the weight each camel was to carry, but to balance one side equally with the other. Each package is well lashed up with stout rope, leaving a short loop. In loading, a package is lifted up on each side simultaneously, the loops crossed over the camel's back between the humps, one loop passed through the other, and secured by a wooden pin. The load is then allowed to fall, the weight comes on the wooden pin, and so keeps it in its place. The back of the camel is protected by a series of pieces of thick felt, ingeniously laid round the humps, on the sides, and very thickly over the hollow between the humps. This mass of felt is kept in its place by means of a frame-work of wood on each side, lashed together across the camel's back. Some hours were occupied in adjusting the camel loads and getting all ready for the start. We did not hurry, as we could not afford to forget anything now, as we were about to plunge into the desert, where we would be as entirely thrown on our own resources as if we were in a ship at sea. Horses had to be hired to take our carts through the pass, a distance of fifteen miles, the camels being unequal to the task. The camel has little strength in proportion to his size. His formation peculiarly adapts him to carry weight, his whole strength being concentrated in the arch of his back; and yet in proportion he carries much less than a mule, that is, considerably less than double. For draught purposes, as I have already mentioned, the camel is ill adapted. His pace is remarkably slow, and in short he is only fit to work in deserts where, comparatively speaking, no other animal can live. His faculty of going for many days without food or water, and of nourishing himself on any sort of vegetable growth that comes in his way, is invaluable to his nomad masters. CHAPTER VI. MONGOLIA. We left Chan-kia-kow on horseback, escorted by three of our kind Russian friends, Messieurs Weretenikoff, Iguminoff, and Beloselutsoff, who accompanied us a few miles up the pass, and bid us God speed. It took a long time for our camel-drivers to form the order of march, and we had got far ahead of them. So, coming to a spot where there was a little grass, we dismounted to give our beasts a feed, thus putting in practice a maxim which travellers in strange countries learn by daily experience to adopt for themselves and their beasts,--to eat when they can. My pony, being rather sharp in the back, I had over-done him with thick saddle-cloths in my anxiety to preserve him in ridable condition; for though very old he was a rare good one, but viciously inclined, having once before had his paws on my shoulders. As the camels hove in sight, I essayed to mount, but had not got into my seat when, what with the pony's capers and bad saddling, I came to grief, and was left sprawling on my face on the stones, which spoiled my physiognomy and my temper at the same time, and nearly obliterated one optic. It was painful to contemplate my brave steed careering about with my good saddle under his belly, and reins going all to pieces amongst his legs. The vision of a month's riding vanished away in a moment. A ray of hope dawned on me as I saw my favourite settle down in a small enclosure, bearing a poor crop of under-grown millet, but there was no one near to catch him. After a little, the husband-man appeared, and stoutly remonstrated with me for turning my cattle into his field. I was in no mood to tolerate abuse, for my abraded skin was smarting considerably. I offered the aggrieved agriculturist the alternative of catching my pony, or leaving him where he was. The Mongols, and also the Chinese borderers, are very expert in catching horses--their favourite dodge is to crawl up to his head on all-fours. My friend tried this, but he was unfortunately too fat, and when he got his hand within an inch and a-half of the remnant of my poor bridle, the pony started off and went straight back at full gallop in the direction of Chan-kia-kow. My heart died within me at the sight. The camels having now come up, one of the men went in pursuit, and with the assistance of the country people brought back the renegade, with the loss of my bridle and one stirrup--not so bad as I expected. The pass is a narrow gorge between steep hills, with little cultivated corners here and there. A small stream trickles down the side, and the road is strewn with round pebbles, which gives it the appearance of the bed of a river. The ascent is very steady and regular, gaining considerably more than 2000 feet in fifteen miles. The road is tolerable all the way, until about the top of the ascent, which is very rough and rocky. Rather late in the evening we got to our halting-place well on to the table land, which is at an elevation of 5300 feet above the sea. The Chinese are the most patient and persevering agriculturists in the world. They have pushed their aggressions through the pass at Chan-kia-kow--on the hill-sides, where-ever they can find soil enough to hold together--and into the skirts of the desert itself. They get but a poor return for their labour, however; their crops seem to struggle for bare existence, and the farmers must depend more on their live stock than their crops. In other parts of Mongolia the Chinese have been more successful in extending their civilising influence into the prairie. In the kingdom of the Ouniots, further to the north, Huc tells us that since the Chinese, following their invariable custom, began to penetrate into the country of the Mongols, about the middle of the seventeenth century, the forests have disappeared from the hills, the prairies have been cleared by fire, and the new cultivators have exhausted the fecundity of the soil. "It is probably to _their system of devastation_ that we must attribute the extreme irregularity of the seasons which now desolate this unhappy land." A curse seems to have rested on the industrious invaders. The seasons are out of joint. Droughts are frequent, then sand-storms and hurricanes, then torrents of rain which wash away fields and crops together in a general deluge, and the land is thenceforth incapable of being ploughed. Famines follow, and the people torment themselves with presentiments of calamity. That all this is due to the Chinese agriculturists is hard to comprehend. It is not their practice elsewhere to "exhaust the fecundity of the soil." Huc propounds the new and strange doctrine that cultivation of deserts is a system of devastation. The truth seems to be that Huc, with the strong partiality he always evinces to the Mongols, was over-credulous of their stories. The Mongols, very naturally, consider themselves aggrieved by the Chinese. The latter first bought the right of cultivating the prairie, and, as their numbers increased, the weaker race necessarily gave way, moving their tents and their sheep further and further into the desert. The poor Mongols now see, with feelings of sorrow, the plough desecrating the ground where their fathers fed their flocks; they look with hopeless regret on the past as a kind of golden age, which their fancy dresses in a halo of peace, happiness, and prosperity. The hated Kitat at once suggests himself as the cause of these changes, and the Mongols delight to feed their hatred out of the copious store of their imagination. A process exactly analogous has been going on in the country of the Manchus, where the arable soil has been occupied by Chinese colonists, almost to the entire exclusion of the natives. Hatred is strongly developed there also; but I can answer for it that there, at least, cultivation has not exhausted the fecundity of the soil, nor devastated the country. The Chinese also with whom Huc conversed would readily admit the superiority of the past. They have a reverence for antiquity, and whenever they could spare a thought from the stern realities of the present, they would mourn their hard fate, and exalt the glories of the past. The sun had been very hot all day, but when we came to pitch our tent at night we were shivering with cold, and could with difficulty hold the hammer to drive the pins into the ground. It is always chilly at night in Mongolia, even in the hot weather, but we were not prepared for such a degree of cold on the 26th August, in latitude 41°. All our blankets were brought into requisition, and we passed a comfortable night. Next morning the thermometer, which was under a blanket, showed 35° Fahrenheit. The morning of the 27th of August was as bright and cheery as the most lively fancy could paint. The air resounded with the notes of hosts of skylarks, which one does not often hear in these far-off regions. The sun warmed up fast, and in a few hours dried up the heavy dew that lay on the grass in the early morning. The pasture was exceedingly rich, and sprinkled with "gowans" and other wild flowers, which imparted a delicious fragrance to the fresh morning air. Many herds of cattle and horses were scattered over the plain, the Mongol herdsmen incessantly galloping round their flocks to keep them together, their shouts audible from great distances in the still air, and the perpetual movement of vast numbers of parti-coloured beasts gave an animation to the scene which was quite exhilarating to the spirits. A small brook trickled tortuously through the plain, where we managed to kill a few snipe, greatly to the delight of the straggling Mongols, who rode up to us from various quarters. The only building in sight was a temple which we had passed in the night, and which was the last brick-and-mortar structure we were to see for many days. We were now fairly among the dwellers in tents, and began to realise what it was to be cut off from civilised life; for, whatever may be the various opinions of Chinese civilisation in its higher developments, you can at all events obtain in China every necessary and many luxuries for money. In the "Land of Grass" we had to depend on our own resources, but with the comfortable assurance that these were amply sufficient for us. Our introduction to nomad life was under happy auspices, and we were at the outset favourably impressed with the Mongols and their country, an impression which never entirely wore out, even under very adverse circumstances. I never till that morning experienced the consciousness of absolute _freedom_. Many Mongol visitors rode up to our encampment, bringing plentiful supplies of new milk, cheese, and other preparations from milk very like Devonshire cream. About 8 o'clock the camels were got in, and we made a start, halting again at noon near the "yourts" of some Lama friends of our camel-drivers. This was a short stage, and we endeavoured to remonstrate with our conductor, but as at that time we could not understand a word of each other's language, the broad Saxon merely provoking a volley of guttural Mongol, we made no progress towards a mutual understanding. We were again favoured with numerous visitors, and our conductor had evidently serious business to negotiate, which occupied the whole afternoon. It ended in his exchanging his pony for another, and getting a fresh camel. It was close on sunset before the camels were loaded, and a fresh start effected. During our halt we had time to make the acquaintance of our camel-drivers. The chief was a Lama named Tup-tchun, a good, easy man, with all the native simplicity of his race. He was the responsible man to us, and I believe owned the camels. He had two assistants; the first a clansman of his own, Tellig by name, a fine, good-natured, bullet-headed, swarthy-complexioned, indefatigable fellow, the equanimity of whose temper nothing could ever disturb. The Lama placed his whole confidence in Tellig, and we naturally did the same as we became better acquainted with the excellence of his character. The other had a name I never could pronounce, so I will not attempt to spell it. He had some taint of wickedness in his eye, and showed more craft and cunning than the average Mongol. He could likewise speak a few words of Chinese, hence we gave him the nickname of _Kitat_, the Mongol name for Chinese, a word abominated by all true Mongols. He stoutly rebelled for a long time against his new name, but it greatly amused his companions, and, as he was never called by any other appellative, he was compelled at last to answer to Kitat. The order of our march was this. One of the Mongols on a camel rode ahead, leading the next camel by a string from his nose. Half the caravan followed him in single file, each camel being slightly attached to the preceding by his nose-string. The other driver, also on a camel, brought up the rear-guard in the same way. The Lama was more privileged, for he never took any active part in leading the caravan, but rode about on a pony, talking now to Tellig, now to the Kitat, and now to us, then suddenly breaking out into some of his wild native chants. He had a fine sonorous voice, and his singing was a pleasant relief from the monotony of the way, and when Tellig joined in chorus they made the welkin ring. The Mongols sing with their natural voice, and have far more music in their souls than the squeaking Chinese. The Lama indulged himself in a gossip with every traveller he met, and would often be left out of sight, but with his active pony he could easily overtake the slow-moving camels. When he descried a Mongol yourt in the distance he seldom missed a chance of riding up to it, to bestow his benediction on the inmates, and drink tea with them. Nor was the Lama entirely useless on the march, for the rearward camels were frequently getting loose, and dropping into the rear, as Tellig and the Kitat seldom thought of looking behind them. The moment a camel feels himself at liberty he stops to graze. I have never seen one voluntarily follow his leader. Great delay occurred sometimes from this cause, and the Lama saved us much time by riding after a stray camel, dexterously catching up the nose-string with his whip-handle, and leading the straggler up to the caravan. The leading-string of the camel is fastened to the gear of his leader in such a loose manner that a very slight resistance is enough to undo it. The reason for this is that if the string were secured firmly, any check in the rear camel, or the leading one advancing from a halt before the rear one was ready, would tear the camel's nose. A nose once broken in this way, it is difficult to find good holding ground for the tweak, and the Mongols are therefore very economical of camels' noses. As for ourselves, we each had two ponies to ride, and we varied our manner of travelling by alternately sitting in our carts and riding our ponies. We also walked a good deal with our guns, for the pace of the camels was so slow that we could range at will over the country, and still keep up with the caravan. The camel's pace is slow and sure, the average of a day's march being two miles an hour. The actual pace is of course quicker, but the frequent stoppages to adjust loads, and from camels breaking loose, reduce it to two miles per hour. Sitting in the cart is never very agreeable. The track is not cut up with ruts like a road in China, and the jolting is considerably less; but it is difficult to get a comfortable posture without lying down, and sitting in the front of the vehicle you are unpleasantly near the odour that exudes from the pores of the camel's hide, to which it requires a long apprenticeship to get accustomed. It is most uninteresting, besides, to sit for an hour or two contemplating the ungainly form of the ugliest of all created things, and to watch his soft spongy foot spreading itself out on the sand, while you reckon that each of these four feet must move 700,000 times before your journey is accomplished. Our ponies were tied behind the carts, and all went quietly except my old one "Dolonor," who was sagacious enough to break his halter regularly, and follow the caravan in his own way, which was to trot a few hundred yards ahead and apply himself vigorously to the grass until the caravan had passed some distance, when he would trot up and repeat the operation. With all that he fell off in condition more than any of the others. Starting at sunset, as I have said, we proceeded all night without stopping. It was a fine moonlight night, but an uncomfortable one for us. Not knowing we were to travel all night, we were unprepared for sleeping in our carts, and suffered a good deal from cold and disturbed rest. With every precaution to close them in, the carts are thoroughly well ventilated; but subsequent experience taught us to roll up warmly, for most of our nights in the desert were spent in our carts on the road. At sunrise on the 28th my thermometer beside my bed stood at 43°. At 8 o'clock we halted and pitched our tents. Our Mongols had a tent for themselves, made of thin blue cotton stuff, and black inside with the smoke of years. Their contract with us included tent accommodation, as also fuel and water; but we congratulated ourselves daily on being provided with our own commodious and substantial bit of canvas. The Mongols make their fire in the tent and lounge round it while the pot is boiling. Some of the smoke manages to escape through the opening that answers the purpose of a door, running from the apex of the tent to the ground in the shape of a triangle. For the rest they don't seem to mind it, although it is almost suffocating to those who are unaccustomed to it. I noticed the eyes of the Mongols have mostly a bloodshot hard appearance, often showing no white at all, attributable no doubt to the argol smoke in which they pass so much of their time. The tents being pitched, the next operation is to procure a supply of _argols_, or more correctly _ar'ch'l_, which is dried cow or horse dung, and is to be found all over the desert. So long as we were in a populous part of the country, that is, if there were three Mongol yourts within as many miles of us, we were saved the trouble of going out to gather them, for our tents were seldom up for many minutes before a woman would appear bearing a large basket of the precious material. This seems to be the ordinary custom of the Mongols, and is a part of the genuine hospitality they show to strangers. Our halting-places were selected with a view to water. There is no scarcity of water in the desert, but a stranger would be sorely puzzled to find it, for there is nothing to mark the position of the wells. The Mongols have an instinctive knowledge of the country, and in order to encamp near good water they make their march an hour or two longer or shorter as the case may be. When the caravan halts, one of the Mongols is despatched on a camel with two water-buckets to fetch water from the well, generally some distance from the line of march. The buckets have a head to them with two holes in it stopped with wooden plugs. The water is poured out of the larger hole at the side, while the smaller one in the centre is opened to admit the air, to enable the water to pass out freely. In selecting a halting-place, the Mongols generally contrive to combine a good bit of pasture with the vicinity of water, for this is naturally of much importance to them, as the only feeding the animals get is a few hours' grazing during the halt, and that only once in twenty-four hours. Before the tent is set up the camels are unloaded and set free to graze, the horses are taken to water, and then hobbled and let loose. The camels are not supposed to want water, and they very rarely get it. Their lips and mouth are peculiarly adapted to quick feeding, the lips being long and very pliable, and the incisor teeth projecting outwards. They gather up a good mouthful of grass in a very short time, even where it is exceedingly scant, and as their food requires little or no mastication, they are enabled to take in a full daily supply of food in a few hours. So far, Mongolia is a succession of plains and gentle undulations, much resembling the long swell of the ocean, and here and there the country is a little rough and hilly. The undulations stretch across our track from east to west. The whole face of the country looks like the sea. There is not a tree or any object to break the monotony of the vast expanse, but occasionally the yourt or tent of a Mongol family. The sunrise and sunset encourage the illusion, and the camel has been aptly called the ship of the desert. The sun was hot during the day, but the thermometer in the shade only showed 73° at noon. Yesterday it was 71°. After dinner we went out with our guns and bagged a few small birds of the curlew kind. We also came across a flock of wild geese, but, as usual, they were very wild. We had a chase after a herd of animals which have been called wild goats. The Chinese call them _whang-yang_, or yellow sheep: other tribes call them _dzeren_. The Mongols give them a name of their own, _gurush_, and do not associate them with either sheep or goats. They are really a kind of antelope (_Procapra gutturosa_), the size of a fallow deer, and of a yellowish brown colour, approaching to white about the legs. They are exceedingly swift and very shy, and as the country is so flat it is almost impossible to get within shot of them. They are usually found in large herds of several hundreds. We subsequently tried to stalk them on horseback, and did get some long random shots at them with a rifle, but to manage this properly there ought to be three or four people well mounted and with plenty of time. Our poor tired ponies were not fit for such work, and we never stopped the caravan for the sake of sport. Some of the Mongols do hunt the gurush, both on horseback and on foot. I never witnessed any successes, but they must shoot them sometimes, to pay for their powder and shot. They use a small-bored rifle, which has a rest placed about six inches from the muzzle, by which means they can lie on their face and take their aim, the muzzle being raised well clear of the ground by means of the rest. We had a long halt to-day, partly in consequence of a crack being discovered in one of the camels' feet. This is an infirmity they are subject to, and if sand and grit were allowed to get in, the animal would become lame and useless. The remedy, which is always at hand, is to sew a square patch of stout leather over the part affected, which they do in the roughest cobbler fashion. With a flat needle slightly curved they pierce the horny part of the sole, and fasten the patch by means of leather thongs at each corner. This is only a temporary measure, and when a camel is taken that way, he must soon be turned out to grass. The Mongols have no trouble in getting at a camel's feet. They first make him squat down, and then two of them go at him with a sudden push and roll him over on his broadside, one of them keeping his head down while the other operates on the foot. The animal screams a good deal while he is being turned over, but once down he resigns himself helplessly to his fate. We did not get off till five o'clock in the afternoon. The night was cloudy and no dew fell, and consequently it was not nearly so cold as the night before. The difference in temperature between a cloudy and a clear night is very marked in Mongolia. We were now leaving the good pastures and the numerous herds of cattle behind, and on the morning of the 29th August we found ourselves getting into a very desert country with only a little scrub grass, of which our poor ponies found it hard work to make a meal. No horses or cattle were seen in this part, and the country seemed only capable of supporting sheep and camels. About eleven o'clock we halted, and encamped on almost bare sand. Not a single "yourt" was in sight, and, for the first time, we had no visitors. This must have been a relief to our Mongols, for they were compelled by custom and their natural hospitality to receive and be civil to all comers, and it was not easy for them to snatch even an hour's sleep. This must have been a great privation, for their mode of travelling all night precluded their getting any sleep at all, except on the backs of their camels while on the march, and in their tent during the six hours' halt in the day; and as that was broken up by cooking and eating, pitching and striking tents, loading and unloading camels, and other necessary matters, and the frequent and protracted visits from neighbouring yourts, or travellers on the road, our poor Tartars had often to go for days together with hardly any sleep at all. But they never complained, and certainly were never betrayed into any rudeness to their inconsiderate countrymen. We started again at 4.30 in the afternoon, and continued through gentle undulations, proceeding, as before, all through the night. Before morning we passed some rocky places over low hills, which sadly disturbed our sleep in the carts--in fact, our usual night's rest, while on the move, was far from being uninterrupted or comfortable, and it was only our fatigue and exposure to the air all day that enabled us to sleep at all under such circumstances. The rough hilly part was again succeeded by low undulations continually unfolding before us, and which became painfully monotonous to the eye. Distances are altogether deceptive, partly owing to the smooth, unbroken surface of the country, and partly to the mirage which is always dancing on the horizon, making small objects look large, and sometimes lifting them up into the air and giving them a variety of fantastic shapes. About 11 o'clock on the 30th of August we halted, and went through our usual process of cooking and eating. We began to find that one meal a day did not suit our habits, and we soon learned to keep out a certain quantity of biscuit and cold meat when we had it, so that we could make a breakfast or a supper without stopping to unload the camels. To these materials we added a handful of tea or some chocolate-paste, and in the morning rode up on our ponies to any yourt we happened to see that was smoking, and there made our breakfast. In the evening we often managed to do the same, but it frequently happened that we had no opportunity of doing this. But I have not explained what a "yourt" is. It is simply the habitation of a Mongol family--a tent, but of a more permanent construction than the ordinary travelling tent. It consists of a frame of light trellis work covered with thick felt, is circular in form, with a conical shaped roof, but nearly flat. A hole in the apex of the roof lets out the smoke from the argol fire which burns all day in the middle of the tent. At night, when the fire is out, and before the inmates retire to rest, the hole in the roof is covered up. I did not measure the upright part of the wall of the tent, but it is under five feet, and you cannot enter without stooping. The tent is about fifteen feet in diameter. A piece of felt hanging from the top forms a door. The Mongols sleep on mats laid on the ground, and pack very close. They have no bedding, but sleep generally in their clothes, merely loosing their girdles. In addition to the family, I have frequently observed a number of young kids brought into the tent for shelter on cold nights. When the owner decides on moving to better pastures, his yourt is packed up in a few hours and laid on the back of a camel, or, failing that, two oxen answer the purpose. Although yourt is the name always used by foreigners, I never heard it from a Mongol. They call it "gi-rai," as distinguished from a travelling tent, which they call "mai-chung." Such are the dwellings of the Mongols, and so much are they attached to them, that even where they live in settled communities, as in Urga, where they have every facility for building wooden houses, they still stick to their yourts, merely enclosing them with a rough wooden paling. In the whole journey I did not meet with a single instance of a Mongol living in a house, or in anything else than a yourt or girai. The Mongols are very superstitious, and certain rules of etiquette have to be observed in riding up to and entering a yourt. One of these is that all whips must be left outside the door, for to enter a yourt with a whip in the hand would be very disrespectful to the residents. Huc explains this almost in the words--"Am I a dog that you should cross my threshold with whips to chastise me?" There is a right and a wrong way of approaching a yourt also. Outside the door there are generally ropes lying on the ground, held down by stakes for the purpose of tying up their animals when they want to keep them together. There is a way of getting over or round these ropes that I never learned, but, on one occasion, the ignorant breach of the rule on our part excluded us from the hospitality of the family. The head of the house was outside his yourt when we rode up; we saluted him with the customary _Mendo! Mendo!_ &c.; but the only response we got was a volley of quiet abuse, in which our salutation was frequently, repeated in ironical tones, as much as to say, "Mendo! Mendo! you come to my tent with sugared words on your lips, and disregard the rules of civility, which a child would be ashamed of doing. Mendo! Mendo! If you do not know how to conduct yourselves like gentlemen, you had better go about your business." So we turned and went away, not in a rage, for we knew we had committed some grave offence against propriety. The furniture of a Mongol yourt is very simple. A built-up fireplace in the middle of the floor is the only fixture. A large flat iron pan for cooking, or, if the parties are luxurious, they may possess two such utensils, and sport two fireplaces, by which means they can boil their mutton and water for their tea at the same time. A basin to hold milk, and a good large jug with a spout for the same purpose, and for the convenience of boiling it at the fire while the big pan is on, comprise all their kitchen and table service. Each person carries his own wooden _ei-iga_, or cup, in his bosom, and, so armed, is ready to partake of whatever is going anywhere; and his small pocket-knife, by which he can cut up his quota of mutton. A wooden box serves as a wardrobe for the whole family. No tables or chairs are necessary, and I found no trace of a toilet service. These, with a few mats on the ground for squatting on by day, and sleeping on by night, comprise all the actual furniture of a yourt. To-day, 30th August, we killed some sand-grouse. They were of the same species as those found about Peking and Tientsin (the _Pallas_ sand-grouse), but were in much finer condition. They were fat, and of such excellent flavour that they would be considered a delicacy anywhere. All their crops which we dissected were full of small black beetles, and the same was the case with the curlew we killed. We fell in with a herd of gurush, and had some long shots; but we were never fortunate enough to bag any of these animals. In leaving the caravan there is always more or less danger of getting lost. It has happened more than once to travellers. But still there is a beaten track all the way through the desert, which is distinctly marked in the grassy parts, and even in the sand it is traceable. In winter it may be obliterated, but still I think, with ordinary care, one ought not to lose himself in the desert. At 6 p.m. we had returned to our caravan and again took the road. It came on very windy at night, with some rain, and as the winds were always from the north, and consequently in our teeth, we were miserably cold and uncomfortable in the carts, so much so that we ardently hoped that the Mongols, who were more exposed than we, would propose a halt. We could not do so ourselves, for that would have given the Mongols an excuse for all manner of delays in our journey, but we would have been glad to consent had we been asked. There was nothing for it, however, but to bear our burden patiently. The few bottles of water and milk we invariably carried with us in the carts were exhausted, and being much in want of something, we knew not what, we ordered the Mongols to stop at the first yourt they saw. This they did at 11 o'clock, and having turned out an old woman we asked for water. They had none of that precious beverage (and if they had it might have been bad), but we got some boiled milk. I did not really want anything, but during the time the Mongols were negotiating with the lady, our carts were turned with the backs to the wind, and it seemed that I had never known what enjoyment was till then. It lasted but a quarter of an hour. The inexorable camels turned their noses to the wind again, and I spent the night in manipulating blankets and contorting limbs, but all to no purpose, for the merciless gale swept under and over and through me. In the morning as soon as daylight came we got out of our cold quarters and on to our ponies, stopped at a yourt where we indulged in a cup of hot chocolate, and warmed ourselves at the hospitable fire. In this yourt we found a record of the party who had preceded us on the journey, dated 11th June. Our poor Mongols and their camels were fatigued, and we did not object to an early halt on the 31st August. We camped in a very desert place, scarcely any grass at all; shot grouse for breakfast, and tried to believe that we were comfortable. But we were not, for if we had no other annoyance, the impossibility of keeping the blowing sand out of our food was an evil hard to bear patiently. Everything, even the inside of our boxes, was filled with sand. Every means was tried in vain to prevent it from blowing under our tent. We walked about most of the day and tried to shoot, but the guns were nearly blown out of our hands, and that resource for the destitute had to be abandoned in despair. About 4 in the afternoon we started again, wind still blowing a gale. The road became very rough, which was an additional reason for a restless night. We had many stoppages besides, and much shouting all through the night, which seriously disturbed our fitful naps, and in the morning it was painfully evident that our poor camels were breaking down. One of them had several times refused to go on, and had eventually lain down with his load, and resisted all persuasion to rise. He had to be unloaded and the extra weight distributed among the stronger ones, at the risk of breaking them down also. The truth is the camels were not in condition when we started. We were too early for them. The practice of the Mongols is to work their camels hard from the autumn to the spring. Before the summer comes everything is taken out of them; their humps get empty and lie flat on their backs; their feet get out of order, and they have mostly bad sore backs. They are then taken off the road and turned out to grass. About this time they shed their long hair and become naked, and all through the hot weather the Mongol camel is the most miserable object that can be imagined. In the early autumn they have recruited their strength, their humps are firm and stand erect, their backs are healed, and they begin the campaign fresh and strong. Our progress during the night was very slow, and towards morning the road became sandy--in some places very heavy. The cart-camels now suffered most, sweating and struggling with their work in a way that was far from reassuring to us who had the greater part of the journey still before us. The whitened bones of camels are scattered all over the desert, but in this place they were more numerous than ever. I believe the camels always die on the road. They are worked till they drop, and when one of a caravan fairly breaks down, there is no alternative but to leave it to die on the sand. Yourts are few and far between, and few cattle are to be seen; there is barely grass enough to support sheep and camels. We pushed on till 11 o'clock, and encamped at Mingan, where there were no yourts actually in sight, but several within a few miles. There was really little or nothing to eat, and our trusty steeds were palpably suffering from their long stages and short commons. Serious misgivings crossed our minds as to the probability of our ponies carrying us much further, and we were concerned for them as well as for ourselves, for they had done our work well so far, and we felt kindly to them as the patient companions of our journey. CHAPTER VII. MONGOLIA--_continued_. Our lama received sundry visitors at Mingan, and had evidently some business to transact with them, for we soon saw him in earnest converse with some of the strangers in his tent, passing their hands into each others' sleeves as if bargaining with the fingers. This resulted in the sale of one of our camels--the one that had broken down. Our conductor had more matters to settle than that, however, but he was prevented by circumstances beyond his control. The fact is that on such occasions the Mongols consider it indispensable to imbibe freely of spirits, and our lama had to stand a bottle of _samshu_, a very ardent spirit made from rice. The Mongols drink liberally when they have a chance, and the Mingan lama was no exception to the rule, for in a short time he got so drunk as to become unmanageable. He began by breaking the tent-poles, no slight calamity in a country without wood; he soon became helpless, and lay down on his back, refusing absolutely to move. All idea of further business was abandoned, and the drunken Mongol's friends were ashamed, not so much at the exhibition he was making, but at the mischief he had perpetrated. He could hardly lie on his back, but they deemed that no valid objection to his riding on horseback. They therefore caught his pony, by main force lifted him on, and put the reins in his hands. The pony started off across the plain in the direction of his home, quietly enough at first; but the drunken rider began to swing about and stretch out his right hand, as the Mongols do when they want to excite their ponies to unusual exertion. The pony went off at full gallop, throwing up clouds of sand behind him as he went; the rider's motions became more and more centrifugal until at last he rolled over and sprawled full length on the sand, apparently with no intention of moving. His friends rode after his pony, caught it, and hobbled it beside its master, and as evening was drawing on they left them both to their fate. Another of the party, not so far gone, was merrily drunk. He tried to work up a dispute with our Mongols, and promised us some amusement, but he also was got on his pony by the persuasion of his son, who was with him. The boy was ashamed of his papa, and did his best to take him off the field. They made several false starts together, but the old fellow grew warmer and more excited, again and again turning his horse's head and returning to our tent to "have it out." At last the young one prevailed, and they rode off together and disappeared in the distance. We were now left alone, at sunset, and our poor lama was left lamenting on his bad day's work, his waste of much good liquor to no purpose, and his broken tent-poles. The Mongols are a pitiable set on foot, with their loose clumsy leather boots, but they are at home on horseback. From their earliest years they may be said to live on horseback, and the women are almost as expert as the men, mounting any animal that comes handiest, whether horse, cow, or camel, with or without saddle. Huc says he never saw a Mongol unhorsed; but probably he never saw a dead-drunk lama forcibly put on a fiery steed. Our lama received Sycee silver for the camel he sold. Silver is not much in use among the Mongols, their only real currency being very coarse brick tea. But it is a mistake to suppose, as has been stated, that they are ignorant of the value of money. We got away about 7 in the evening. The wind had fortunately lulled, and we passed a pretty comfortable night on the road, which was alternately hard and sandy. My "Dolonor" pony, that had been voluntarily following the caravan, began to find the pastures getting too poor even for him, who had the privilege of grazing day and night. The last two days he remained faithful, but on the morning of the 2nd September, finding matters getting from bad to worse, he pricked up his ears, about ship, and galloped straight back by the way we had come. This was not much to be surprised at, all things considered, and I could not help commending him for his sagacity. The "Kitat" was despatched on his camel in quest of the fugitive before I was awake. Had I been consulted I certainly should not have consented to such a wild-goose chase, but the Mongols thought themselves bound in honour not to lose anything, although it was not in the contract that they were to look after ponies on the journey. [Illustration: HALT IN THE DESERT OF GOBI. (Page 104.)] It was a very dry morning, but we got water for ourselves and our horses passing Borolji. The well there was very deep, and we were indebted to the friendly aid of some Mongols, who happened to have driven their cattle in to water, for obtaining a supply for our beasts. The head shepherd had brought with him a small bucket made of sheepskin, attached to the end of a long pole to enable him to reach the water. His own beasts were very thirsty and impatient to drink; the horses especially crowded eagerly round the well, neighing, biting, and kicking each other in their efforts to gain the best places. Nevertheless, the polite Mongol drew water for us first, and allowed us to continue our march. We kept on till 1.30, when we pitched our tents on the steppe, called "Gunshandak." No grass at all grows here, but the sand is slightly shaded with green by a small wild leek, that grows in form much like the Mongolian grass. We had frequently observed this plant already sprinkled amongst the grass, but in Gunshandak it flourishes to the exclusion of everything else. The sheep and camels thrive on it. Our ponies also ate it freely, perhaps because they could get nothing else, and when our cattle were brought in from feeding they had a strong smell of onions about them. The Kitat not having come up with my pony, we did not hurry away, and our Mongols availed themselves of the delay to buy and kill a goat from a neighbouring flock. We also bought a sheep for two rubles, or about six shillings. The seller, on being asked to kill it, told us we might do it ourselves. This was not to be thought of, and our own Mongols were too much occupied with their goat. We had, therefore, to resort to a little craft, for the sheep must certainly be put to death before we could eat it. Addressing the man, we said, how can we lamas kill an animal? This was sufficient. "Oh, you are lamas!" and he proceeded at once to business. The dexterity with which these Mongols kill and cut up a sheep is truly marvellous. They kill with a small knife which they insert into the belly, just below the breast-bone. Death is almost instantaneous. The object of this mode of slaughter is to save the blood inside the animal. Skinning is an easy process and soon done. The sheep is laid on his back on the sand, the skin is spread out on either side, a strip down the back being left attached while the cutting up is going on. The skin thus serves as a table, and so well does it answer the purpose that they will cut up a sheep into small pieces, and put everything, including lights and liver, on the skin, without ever touching the sand. The Mongols have a perfect practical knowledge of the anatomy of the sheep, and sever every joint with perfect ease, with only a small pocket-knife, no other instrument being used in any part of the process. The rapidity with which the whole thing is done, is astonishing. Our butcher was unluckily called away during the operation to retrieve a young camel that had been crying for its dam all the morning, and had now broken its tether, so that I could not time him accurately. I shall not state the number of minutes usually occupied from the time a sheep is purchased till the mutton is ready for the pot, for I could hardly expect to be believed. On removing the intestines, &c., the blood is found all together in a pool. It is then carefully baled out and put into the cooking pan, or _taga_, for nothing is thrown away here. We gave ours to the butcher, as also the skin and the whole of the inside, except liver and kidneys. The wandering Mongols scent a sheep-killing like vultures, and there are never wanting some old women to lend a hand in making black-puddings, and such like, who are rewarded for their trouble by a share of the feast; for among the Mongols the first instalment of their sheep is eaten in less than half an hour from the time it is killed. The Mongol sheep are generally in good condition, but there is no fat about them at all, except in the tail, which is a heavy lump of pure suet, said to weigh sometimes ten pounds. The condition of the animal is judged by the weight of the tail. The Mongols use but little water in cleaning their mutton. The ubiquitous old woman, who instals herself as pudding-maker, handles the intestines in a delicate and artistic manner. She first of all turns them all inside out, and then coils them up into hard, sausage-shaped knots, without stuffing, which take up very little space in the pot. These and all the other loose things are first put into the pot, with the addition of as much of the meat as it will hold. The pot is filled so full that the water does not cover the meat, but that is of no consequence to the Mongols. It is soon cooked, and quickly eaten. When sufficiently boiled, one of the company adroitly snatches the meat, piece by piece, from the boiling cauldron, with his fingers, and distributes it in fair proportions to the anxious expectants seated round. They never burn their fingers by this snap-dragon process. Their manner of eating mutton is most primitive, and I will also say disgusting. Each person gets a large lump or two, either in his lap, or on the mat on which he sits. He then takes a piece in his left hand as big as he can grasp; and, with the inevitable small knife in his right, he cuts off nuggets of mutton, using his thumb as a block, in the manner of cutting Cavendish tobacco. They literally bolt their mutton, and use no salt, bread, or sauce of any kind in eating it. When they have got all the meat off, they pare and scrape the bones very carefully, and when that is done, they break the bones up, and eat the marrow. Nothing is thrown away, except part of the eye, and the trotters. The tail is considered a delicacy, and is reserved for the head lama, or the honoured guest, who generously shares it with the others. I need only say that this mass of rich suet is eaten as I have described above. When the solid part of the entertainment has been despatched, they put up their knives after wiping them on their clothes, and then proceed to drink the broth in their wooden cups. If they have any millet, they like to throw a little into the broth as they drink it. The millet gets softened a little as the cup is rapidly replenished, but no further cooking is necessary. When the broth is finished, they put clean water into the taga with a handful or two of brick tea, and go to sleep while it is boiling. The tea so made has of course a greasy appearance, and this practice of cooking everything in the same pot has probably given rise to the belief that they boil mutton and tea together, eating the leaves of the tea with the mutton. There may be Tartar tribes who do this, but the Khalkas Mongols certainly do not. The tea leaves, or rather stalks,--for their bricks are made up of tea dust and timber,--are always thrown away. It is necessary to boil the tea to get anything out of it at all, and it is of course bitter and ill flavoured. I have drunk it when hard up; and when it is well diluted with milk it is not unpalatable, when you can get nothing else. The Mongol tastes no doubt seem to us very unrefined, but they are natural. The great esteem in which they hold the fat as compared with the lean of mutton, is a plain expression of the direction in which their ordinary regimen is defective. It is well known that fat and farinaceous foods ultimately fulfil the same purposes in the human economy; they mutually compensate, and one or other is absolutely necessary. We thus find fat and oils eagerly sought after, wherever, as among the Mongols and Esquimaux, the cultivation of cereals is forbidden by soil and climate. The value of a scale of diet does not, as might at first sight be supposed, consist in the prominence of any one article, but depends on the different ingredients which are necessary to sustain health, being duly proportioned; and wherever the food of a people is necessarily composed of one substance almost exclusively, the natural appetite will always mark out as delicacies those which are deficient. It is to this want of due proportion in the elements of diet that we must attribute the comparative muscular weakness of the Mongols, in spite of the abundant supply of mutton and the bracing air of the desert. The coolies of China and Japan greatly excel them in feats of strength, and in power of endurance, because the rice on which they feed contains a more varied proportion of the elements that nourish life, the poor quality of the fare being compensated by the incredible quantities which they consume. Our Mongols having slept off their first meal and drunk their tea, put the pot on the fire again, and cooked the remainder of the goat, on which they had another heavy blow-out late in the afternoon. The rapacity and capacity of a Mongol stomach is like that of a wild beast. They are brought up to eat when they can, and fast when they must, and their digestion is never deranged by either of these conditions. They very much resemble their own camels in those useful qualities so necessary to the inhabitants of a desert. Our Mongols had really eaten nothing since leaving Chan-kia-kow. They had fasted for seven days at least, and gone almost entirely without sleep all that time, and yet suffered nothing from the fatigue they must have endured. They had certainly some millet seed and some Chinese dough, a little of which they put into their tea as they drank it, but of actual food they had none. They had now laid in a supply which would last them another week. They seldom carry meat with them, finding it more convenient to take it in their stomachs. Lest it be thought that we also adopted the Mongol way of living, I must explain that we had a very complete set of cooking utensils, plates, knives and forks, and every other accessory to civilised feeding. We certainly had to a great extent to educate ourselves to live on one meal a day, but that was but a distant approach to the Mongol habit of eating but once a week. We made a long day of it on the steppe Gunshandak, hoping every hour that the Kitat would return. The country was so desert that there was no population, and only two yourts were near us. Our encampment was some distance off the track, and we had consequently no visits from travellers, so we spent a very quiet day. In the afternoon the camels were brought in, and Tellig and the lama examined them all narrowly. Their condition was really becoming serious, for not only were they tired and worn out, but their backs were getting very bad. They are very subject to this. Nearly all of them had large deep holes in their backs, which penetrated almost through the flesh between the ribs. Maggots breed very fast in these wounds, and every few days the Mongols probe deep into the wound with a bit of stick, and scoop the vermin out. The animals complain a little during this operation, but on the whole they bear their ills with marvellous patience. While the camels are grazing, the crows sit on their backs and feed on the worms. It did seem cruel to put heavy loads on such suffering creatures, but what else could be done? Our ponies were falling off fast from want of food and rest. It was severe on them to go eighteen hours without eating. But they were, comparatively speaking, a luxury, and could be dispensed with. The camels were essential, and could not be replaced in the desert. The lama betrayed considerable anxiety for his camels, and began to talk of getting fresh ones at a place called _Tsagan-tuguruk_, where there is a _sumé_ or temple. We gathered from him that his family lived there, and that he could easily exchange his camels for fresh ones, if only he could reach that rendezvous. But Tsagan-tuguruk was four days' journey from us, and our used-up cattle did not look as if they could hold out so long. But we live in hope, for it is foolish to anticipate misfortunes. We have hitherto met no caravans since leaving China, excepting long trains of ox-carts carrying timber from Urga. The day wore on and no Kitat appeared. The Mongols strained their eyes to descry some sign on the horizon, then looked anxiously at the sun fast sinking in the west, and made up their minds to remain in the steppe all night. The Mongols have no means of judging of time except by guessing from the height of the sun or moon. I speak only of my own experience, for Huc says they can tell the time of day by looking at a cat's eyes. For my part I did not see a cat in the whole of Mongolia. Dogs they have in plenty. They are of the same breed as the common dog of China, but rather larger and with thicker coats. They are useful to the shepherds and are good watch dogs, not so thoroughly domestic as their Chinese congeners, but will run after one a great distance from their yourt barking ferociously. They are great curs, however, and their bark is worse than their bite. It is a singular thing that the Mongols do not feed their dogs; nor do the Chinese, as a rule. They are supposed to forage for themselves, and in Mongolia they must be put to great straits occasionally. The day had been very warm, and, the air being still, in the evening we slept in the carts. It was always warmer and more comfortable to sleep in the tent, but our bedding had to be moved, and the oftener that was done the more sand got into our blankets. The nights in Mongolia were beautiful, sky very clear, and stars bright. The "harvest moon," that had been such a boon to us in our night travelling, now rose late. In a few days it would be over, and we should have dark nights to travel in. After a luxurious night's rest, the first we had had for a week, we awoke to see the sun rise on the steppe, and almost fancied ourselves at sea. So indeed we were in a figurative sense, for there was still no appearance of the missing Mongol. We were now in the humour to take things patiently; and the sheep we had killed yesterday enabled us to prepare a breakfast that for a desert might fairly be called sumptuous. The day was passed in idleness, for not a feather of a bird was to be seen to afford an excuse for taking our guns out. Visits were paid and received between us and the Mongols who lived in the two yourts near us, and our lama fraternised with them, and got the women to bring us argols and water. The women, as a rule, keep the house and do the cooking and darning, only going out after the flocks when the men are out of the way. The lamas carry their principle of not killing animals to an extremity that is sorely inconvenient to themselves. They are not exempt from parasitical connections; in fact, the person of a lama, considered as a microcosm, is remarkably well inhabited. He cannot, with his own hand, "procure the transmigration" of any animal, in case it should contain the soul of his grandfather, or some past or future Bhudda; but when the population presses on the means of subsistence, something must be done. In this juncture the services of some benevolent female are called in, the lama strips to the waist, and commits his person and his garment to her delicate and practised manipulation. We determined to start at sunset, Kitat or no Kitat, and with one long-lingering look over the vast plain we had crossed, at sunset we did start. We soon met a caravan of sixty camels, which was refreshing to our eyes as evidence of the travelling season having fairly commenced, affording us a better hope of finding fresh camels. We had again to encounter rough stony roads during the night; in fact, we seemed just to come to the bad roads as we were going to sleep. How was it that we did not sometimes by accident stumble on a bit of soft ground at night-time? The roads were perhaps not so bad as our nocturnal imagination, stimulated by want of proper rest, painted them. But whether or no, we had nothing to complain of on this occasion, having enjoyed a sound unbroken sleep the previous night; and surely one good night out of two is enough for any reasonable being. In the morning, passing over some rather steeper undulations than usual, and in a very desert country, we came across a herd of gurush. Some ineffectual shots were fired as usual. It was tantalising in the extreme not to be able to bag one of these fine animals when met with in such numbers as would have delighted the heart of Gordon Cumming. About two o'clock we halted at Kutul-usu, where we were agreeably surprised to find no less than six yourts near our encampment, which was remarkable considering the scarcity of grass. There is no grass at all, in fact, and our beasts return from their grazing redolent of onions. A large ox-cart caravan was also encamped at this place. Our lama had long and earnest conversations with the Mongols of Kutul-usu, and there was much going to and fro between our tents and the yourts. There was something in the wind--we could not divine what--until the lama again broached the subject of _Tsagan-tuguruk_, the place where he expected new camels. His proposal was that he should ride ahead on a pony, and get the camels ready by the time the caravan came up. There were grave objections to this course, for we were already short-handed from the absence of the Kitat, and were we to be left with only one camel-driver, we should never be able to keep the caravan together. The lama was importunate, and at last we consented to his plan on condition: 1st, that he should find a substitute to assist Tellig with the caravan; and 2nd, that he should provide us with fresh ponies at Tsagan-tuguruk. The substitute was soon found in an active-looking, wiry old man with very bad eyes. The sun had set some time before the discussions and preparations were concluded, and we were consequently compelled to remain till the moon rose, which was not before eleven o'clock--half the night gone and no progress made. We had a rough night as usual, but we are getting into a more broken country. In the morning we passed one of the numerous salt plains that are spread over the great desert. Sometimes there is water in them and sometimes not. This one was dry, but had a white scurf of salt on the ground. A dark-green plant grows in tufts over these plains, and is eaten by the animals in the absence of grass; indeed, I am not sure whether the camels don't prefer it. It was a hot thirsty day, and we were at great trouble to find a yourt in which to rest and make chocolate in the morning. We did discover one eventually after riding many miles, and there we fell in with a sporting lama with two good-looking ponies, riding one and leading the other. This seemed a good opportunity for business, and my companion soon concluded an exchange operation, giving a pony with an incipient sore back and two dollars to boot, for a good old sound one of the lama's. We were in some doubt about finding our caravan, having let it get a long way out of sight; but the wandering lama, having a direct interest in discovering our party to get his two dollars, soon scented them out by the same kind of instinct that directs a bee to his distant hive. We took him some miles back out of his way, but these people seem to care little in which direction they go, or how much time they may lose in going from one place to another. The facility with which our Mongol friends found their way in the open desert had often excited our admiration. At the end of a night's march, although interrupted by numerous accidental stoppages, they were never at a loss to know where they were. They needed no land-mark to guide them, and in pitching their tent near a well they never made a mistake as to its position. The explanation seems to be that certain instincts are developed in proportion to the want of artificial aids. Thus Chinese sailors cruise about their dangerous coast by a kind of rule of thumb, and are able to judge of their position in darkness and fog where scientific navigators would be at fault. In Australia also it is found that the best bush-ranger is generally the most ignorant man of the party. The effect of education being to cause men to trust more and more to acquired knowledge, the faculty of perception, which is possessed in a high degree by the lower animals, becomes weakened for want of exercise. Instinct and education mutually compensate each other; and the lower we descend in the scale of humanity,--the nearer man approaches to the condition of the inferior animals,--the more does his mere instinct predominate over his higher mental faculties. The senses are very acute in primitive peoples, because of the constant exercise they get, or rather because of the necessity which compels them to be guided by the senses in their daily lives. For to hear or see abstractedly, or for pleasure or instruction, is a different thing from using these senses with the conviction that the supply of food perhaps depends on the accuracy of their indications. As we approached our halting-place, _Ulan-Khada_, we witnessed a remarkable phenomenon, which was a few dwarf trees, scorched and scraggy, but still alive, growing in a sheltered nook in a pass over some rocky hills. A little rill filters through the stone and sand, and fresh soft grass is found in modest quantity beside the water. Ulan-Khada is in a hollow surrounded by high ground, and three yourts were seen from our camp. The wild leek still prevails. The following day we stopped at Ude, and early on the morning of the 7th of September, to our great joy, we reached the land of promise,--the well-watered, grassy plain of Tsagan-tuguruk. There was something cheering in the very name, associated as it had been in our minds with the hoped-for end of our troubles and uncertainties. Vast flocks and herds were seen in all directions, and yourts in good number, though at great distances from each other. Our lama, Tup-chun, was not here, but at his family yourt, said to be six miles off. It was clear we must make a day of it, at least, at Tsagan-tuguruk, and we at once proceeded to make acquaintance with the natives of the nearest yourts, who came to visit us. The next move was to buy a sheep, for we had been out of mutton for some days, the hot sun preventing our keeping it long. A Mongol jumped on his pony, and galloped off to his flock, caught a big, fat sheep, swung it across the pommel of his saddle, and rode back with it to our tent. That was soon done, but now came the lama question again. Were we lamas, or Chara-chun? Now, _Chara-chun_ means, literally, "black man," and is the name applied to all Mongols who are not lamas. To one or other of the two classes we must belong. But we certainly were not black men, that was clear; and if not black men, we were necessarily lamas. The Mongols worked out the conclusion satisfactorily in their own minds, and lent cheerful aid in killing and dressing our mutton, for that was the great practical issue of the question. We had heard much from Tellig and others of the sume, or temple of Tuguruk, and we took a few Mongols with us and started off to visit it. It is a neat little house built of stone, but the smallest place of worship perhaps in the world, smaller even than some missionary chapels I have seen. A priest came out of a neighbouring yourt, and opened the door for us. The interior was covered all over with dust, but we were already so dusty that we did not scruple to sit down. Half the space was occupied by the materials for making yourts, apparently new; and no doubt left by some wandering Mongol for safe custody. A second priest soon joined us, and the two together took down two old brass trumpets, like the Chinese bagpipes, to give us some music. These instruments were so dusty inside and out, and their joints so loose, that no sound of any kind could be produced from them. The priests puffed and blew as if they would have burst their boilers, but the rusty old brass would yield no sound. Among our new acquaintances was a youth of fifteen, called _Haltsundoriki_, the most active and intelligent of the Mongols we had met with. He was much interested in us and our belongings, and during our few days' stay at this place, he came regularly every morning, and stayed with us till nightfall. He was a most willing servant to us, collecting argols, lighting our fire, washing our dishes, taking our ponies to water, and making himself universally useful. As our visitors increased in numbers, they crowded our tent inconveniently, especially at meal-times, for they had a nasty habit of fingering everything they saw. _Haltsundoriki_ was therefore installed as master of the ceremonies, and vigorously did he exercise his authority over young and old. It was quite understood that he might bore us as much as he liked himself, but he was not to permit any one else to do it. He used the utmost freedom with all his countrymen who came in his way, riding their horses or camels without asking leave, and levying contributions on all and sundry in the shape of tobacco, cheese, or anything they might happen to possess. He furnished us with amusement by chaffing and playing practical jokes on his friends, without regard to age or sex. His wit was in a great measure lost on us, but we made great progress in the Mongol language under his tuition. Although not a lama, he was educated, and could read and write both Mongol and Tangut. He was probably the son of some small chieftain who lived in the neighbourhood, and had had an opportunity of seeing better society than the cowherds. On intimating that we were prepared to do a little horse-dealing, we at once set in motion several Mongols on their ponies. Armed with a long light pole, with a large loop at the end of it, they ride at the drove, and singling out the one they want, they generally manage to throw the loop over his head without much difficulty. An old hand, that has been hunted for a good many years, will sometimes lead them a chase of an hour or two; for though the pony that is ridden is always the fleetest, the hunted one doubles and dodges his pursuer in every possible way. My Chan-kia-kow pony was so done up as to be useless, and I exchanged him for a big, strong beast, with doubtful feet, but the most likely I could find. We were much pestered for biscuit, liquor, and empty bottles. It was useless to tell our persecutors that we were on a long journey, and required all our supplies. They have no consideration for travellers, and would eat you up to the last morsel of food you possessed. We found it a good plan to give them porter when they asked for drink. The wry faces it produced were most comical, and they never asked for more. As for the empty bottles, we reserved them to requite any little services that were performed for us, and to pay for milk. One old hag, a she-lama, came begging for drink, and would not be denied. Her arguments were after this sort:--"You are a lama, and I am a lama, and we are brethren, and our hearts are in unison; therefore it is right that you should give me this bottle of wine." The only reply to such an appeal would be:--"True, I am a lama, and you are a lama, &c., but as the bottle is in my possession, it is right it should remain so." The old woman would still go rummaging about the tent, and it would have been rude to turn her out _vi et armis_. At length she came across a bottle uncorked, and pouring a little of its contents into the palm of her hand, she licked it up with her tongue. The effect was remarkable, her features were screwed up in hideous contortions, she went out of the tent spitting, and did not ask for any more drink. The bottle proved to contain spirits of wine which we used for boiling coffee. The first theft we were conscious of was perpetrated during our stay at Tsagan-tuguruk. Hitherto we had relied implicitly on the honesty of the Mongols, leaving all our small things lying about at the mercy of our numerous visitors. But now a few nick-nacks that our lama had asked me to take charge of for him, were stolen out of my cart during the night. We were very angry at this, and proclaimed aloud that we would allow no Mongol to come near our tent till the thief was discovered, and the property restored. It was impossible, however, to stem the tide; and it seemed hard, moreover, to punish the whole tribe for the misdeed of one who might have no connection with the neighbourhood. We deemed it quite fair, however, to stop their biscuit and brandy. On the return of the lama, we reported the theft, but he received the news with perfect equanimity. In the evening he got two other lamas to perform the prescribed incantation for the purpose of discovering the thief. They performed their task in a Mongol yourt with bell, book, and candle (literally, as regards the bell and the book), reciting many yards of lama prayers, while they told their beads. Our lama had asked us for some wine for the ceremony. This was poured into three small brass cups which stood on the table (the family box, or chest of drawers) during the ceremony. It was too tedious to see it out, but our lama informed us next morning that the incantation had been successful (of course)--that they had discovered who the thief was, but as to catching him and recovering the property, that seemed as far off as ever. On the second day of our halt the Kitat arrived, in company with a friend, both on camels, and with my pony, "Dolonor." He had managed to lose his own camel in the chase, and had come up to us on one borrowed from his companion. The lama gave him a cold reception, lamenting bitterly over the loss of his camel. As to the pony, he came full of spirits, but being rather poor when he ran away, the six days' hard hunting in the desert had not improved his condition, and I wished they had left him where he was. We were two days kicking our heels about in the utmost impatience before our lama deigned to make his appearance with the new camels. As soon as he came, Tellig started on an expedition to see his friends, who also lived some six or eight miles off, and did not return till the next day. The lama, instead of preparing for the journey, went dilly-dallying about, drinking tea and gossiping with all the old women in the country, which we considered a wanton waste of _our_ time, and we exhibited the feelings natural to us under such circumstances. The lama tried every device to keep us till the 10th, but we were desperate, and forced them to commence packing late at night, which was no easy matter in the dark, with unwilling workmen. Tellig was civil and good-natured. The Kitat showed the cloven foot so disagreeably as to provoke some rough treatment, which led to his leaving our service. I suspect this had already been arranged, for a substitute was found at a moment's notice. The new camels not having been tried in harness, were first put into the empty carts, and carefully led about for some time, before they could be depended on for steadiness. All this occupied a good many hours in a very cold night, and it was midnight before we got away from Tsagan-tuguruk. Two friends of the lama accompanied us on our first stage, which was only a few miles, for we were halted before daylight. The lama's business matters had not been quite settled, and he had a few more last words with his two friends. The packing, so hurriedly done in the dark, had all to be done over again. While these little matters were being arranged, we had time to take stock of our new establishment. The camels were certainly fat and fresh, humps full and erect, backs whole, with only the marks of old scars. The camel department could not be in a better state than it was. Kitat's substitute turned out to be a lama, a good-natured looking fellow, whom we afterwards discovered to be well-meaning but stupid. He could speak a few words of Chinese, and we therefore christened him, in contradistinction to our chief of the staff, who was _the_ lama _par excellence_, the "Kitat lama." We further observed that _the_ lama had somehow got rid of his pony, and now rode a camel, which looked ominous for the success or even the preservation of our equestrian stock; for the lama hated camels, and never rode one himself when he could help it. CHAPTER VIII. MONGOLIA--_continued_ The grass was still copiously sprinkled with onions. As we advanced we crossed some marshy ground with a good deal of water, enough to make it necessary to pick the way judiciously, for the camel hates water or slippery mud. Their broad soft feet don't sink into the mud sufficiently to enable them to get a good foot-hold like a horse, and their long weedy legs are so loosely knit together, that they run a great risk of splitting up when their feet slip. A caravan of seventeen camels, that had accompanied us since morning, took a wrong road across the marshes and stuck, the camels being unable to proceed. Our lama took a round-about road, for which we abused him at the time; but when he saw the other caravan brought up all standing on the short cut, he merely pointed it out to us with a triumphant chuckle, and quietly asked, "Who knows the road?" A 60-camel caravan was passed encamped near the marsh. It was from Urga, and probably from Kiachta, loaded with merchandise for China, and for account of Chinese. Two celestials were in charge of the goods, jolly roystering fellows, with whom we stopped awhile and held such conversation as to the road, the state of the pastures, time occupied, &c., as will usually occur to travellers in such regions. It was curious to notice how untruthful these travellers' stories generally were. They seemed to say whatever came uppermost in their minds, as a man of a happy disposition will often say, "It is a fine day," when it is raining cats and dogs. But yet if you are to believe _nothing_ of what you hear on the road, you will deprive yourself of a great deal of information which might be valuable; and if you believe _all_, you will keep yourself and your people constantly in hot water. It is difficult to steer a safe course between too much credulity on the one hand, and too little faith on the other. We halted again at 2 o'clock at _Taryagi_, a region unpeopled; but we were near a shallow lagoon, with thick chalk-coloured water. It was most unpalatable, but the Mongols seemed to like it. It is easier for them to draw their water from a pool than to fetch it from a distant well; and to cover their indolence, they invariably assure you that the wells are salt. You are of course obliged to accept their explanations, for if they were to assert that there were no wells at all, you would not be a bit the wiser. Although the pastures were pretty fair at Taryagi, our camels were not allowed to graze, the reason being, that in their condition, they would blow themselves out in a couple of hours to such an extent, that they would not be fit to work. It was pitch dark before we got ready to start. We had difficulty in collecting the beasts, particularly the ponies, and a young unruly camel. Our two Chan-kia-kow lanterns were sufficient to make the darkness visible, but no more. The Mongols, when looking for cattle in the dark, stoop down to the ground and scan the horizon round. In a steppe, this plan is very useful, for if the animal is not very far off, his outline can be descried against the horizon. At daylight we were in the steppe _Butyn-tala_, where another large caravan was encamped. This steppe has also a great deal of surface water in it, and in the small valleys round it. The grass is pretty good, and cattle abundant. Game was again met with in Butyn-tala. Our next halt was near _Sain-kutul_, where there were good pastures, but shocking water. We really could not drink it, and, as the day was still hot, we had to suffer from thirst. Milk was of no use, and only aggravated our sufferings. At Sain-kutul, a strange Mongol (a lama) rode up on a camel, and after the usual greetings, he undid his camel's load, and took up his quarters in the tent of our people. On inquiry, we found he was going to _Kuren_ (Urga of the Russians), and gave us to understand we might have his company if we liked. He had started from his home with his one camel to perform a long journey, without any of the necessaries usually carried on such a journey, trusting that Bhuddha would furnish a table for him in the wilderness, and a covering as well, by directing him to the tent of some travellers who were better provided than himself. He was a man of a mean character. Our first impressions of him were decidedly unfavourable, and subsequent experience confirmed them. Not that the man ever did anything wrong; on the contrary, his conduct was regulated by the strictest rules of propriety. But that merely served to aggravate his offence, for it gave us no excuse for disliking him. On the first day of our acquaintance I lent a hand to lash up his gear, not from any desire to help him, but from the same motive that induces people to twirl their thumbs for want of some more intellectual amusement; or children to pull and haul at anything they can lay hands on, more especially where they have a chance of doing mischief. As I was pulling at his ropes, the fellow looked up in my face, and, with the most abject expression, but with great gravity, said, "_Sain chung! Sain chung!_" Good man! Good man! The Mongols use this expression in two senses, one with a meaning, and one without. Now, in which sense soever this individual used it, it was equally bad, and I much fear I never forgave him for it. Indeed if he had asked forgiveness (which he did not) I could not have believed him sincere. And this man was to stick to us like the old man of the sea all the way to Urga! He affected great learning too--knew all the lama books, according to his own account, and had been to Tangut. Whether by Tangut the Mongols mean the old country of Tangut, or whether it means Thibet, I am unable to say. It is most probably the latter, and the confusion of names is very likely to have occurred from the fact that Tangut was peopled with a Thibetian race. After leaving Sain-kutul, we were joined by a Russian courier, a lama, mounted on a camel, a very unusual thing, for they generally ride horses, changing them every twenty or thirty miles. The courier, knowing Russ, tried to get up a conversation with us in that language, which we evaded, for we had already discovered the advantage of passing for Russians. It would, indeed, have been useless to explain to the lama that we were not Russians. It would probably have staggered his belief to begin with, for I am persuaded that more than half the Mongol population believe Mongolia to be in the centre of the world, with Russia at one end, and China at the other. The Russian courier or postal service through Mongolia is all done by lamas, whom an idle roaming life seems to suit better than it does the black men. They perform the distance from Chan-kia-kow to Kiachta, 780 miles, in eleven or twelve days easily, by means of their relays of horses. This seems very fast travelling, compared with our weary thirty days' journey; but it is really very slow, and if the courier were pushed, he could do the distance in six days even, with the same facilities as they have at present, excepting, perhaps, that the rider should be relieved once. We met several of them on the road, and they travel as if time were no object to them; for example, the courier now alluded to kept company with us at our two mile an hour pace from 6 o'clock in the evening till 10 next day. Others of them on ponies have done the same thing, and I know they spend their time in yourts, gossiping and drinking tea for hours together. In short, the couriers to and from Kiachta take matters exceedingly easy. There are three couriers monthly; one for the Russian government, starting from Peking, and two for the Kiachta merchants; the latter go to and from Tientsin. The Russian government courier is entirely under the control of the Chinese government, and is also, I believe, at its expense. The merchants' posts are managed by themselves. Near _Ichi Khapstil_ we encamped in rather good pastures, and near a large pond of very dirty water, with wild fowl on it. A large kind of duck, nearly all white, and dab-chicks, were the tenants of this pond, but we elsewhere saw many species of wild fowl. Six of our camels were now allowed to eat and drink, after fasting for four days, to our knowledge, and perhaps a couple of days before they were brought to us. The water from the pond was nauseous. I could not touch it, and suffered severely from thirst in consequence. In the afternoon, when we had started the caravan, I rode all over the country on every side looking for water, but could not find any, except a mere puddle where horses and cattle had pitted the wet mud with foot-prints. Into these holes a little water had collected, and we were fain to stoop down and drink with eagerness the filthy liquid that, at another time, would have turned my stomach. But we were happily getting out of the watery region, and before night we got into a yourt to make tea, and found delicious spring-water. The camel that was drawing my cart did a very unusual thing during this evening. He set to kicking so violently that at first I was afraid he would smash everything to pieces, but, as every blow was delivered on the solid part of the machine, no damage was done, except to the camel's own legs. He would not desist until he had so mauled himself that he could hardly stand on his legs. And when the pain had a little subsided he would resume the kicking, but with less and less energy, until he was fairly defeated. During the fits he was dangerous to approach, for, by the formation of a camel's hind legs, the lower extremities spread out widely from the hocks, and the feet, in kicking, project considerably beyond the perpendicular of the shaft. Tellig did, in fact, get knocked over in this way. This was the only instance in my experience of one of these patient animals getting out of temper. The face of the country was now fast changing its character, being broken up into irregular elevations, and was more grassy. We hoped the worst part of the desert had been left behind, as we gradually got into an inhabited region. Passing _Sharra-sharatu_, where there were many yourts, we proceeded to _Shibetu_, in the middle of a hilly country. Our next stage took us to the _Ulin-dhabha_ mountains, the only ones worthy the name we had seen in Mongolia. The road rises gradually towards the mountains from 3700 feet to 4900 feet, which is the elevation of the pass. The pass is an easy one, and forms a deep cutting into the mountains. The pass opens out a fine valley on the north, which was alive with men and beasts moving about; yourts packed up and laid on the backs of cows, camels, &c., and on rude wooden carts; flocks of sheep, and droves of cattle being driven here and there. The Mongols were moving to winter quarters. In the summer season they spread all over the desert and find enough food to support their beasts, but in the winter they try to get into some sheltered place where there is enough grass to keep their beasts alive during those dreary months. The few touches of north wind we had lately felt warned the inhabitants of the steppes of the approach of winter, and of the necessity of seeking a more hospitable region. Near _Bombatu_, where we halted, the grass was luxuriant, and our half-starved ponies enjoyed it thoroughly. But, unfortunately, when our beasts are in clover our men are fagged out. Tellig especially, who has had most of the work, is nearly done for want of sleep and from constant exposure on the back of his camel. There was no end to the ox-cart caravans that passed us on the way to China. There are between 100 and 200 carts in each, and they followed so close on one another that it seemed as if there was a continuous line of them for the whole length of a night's march. Their tinkling bells have a strange, but not unpleasant, effect as they move slowly along. On the 15th September the lama made an excuse of buying sheep for himself and us, to halt at 9 a.m. some miles south of the steppe _Guntu-gulu_. We had been but two days without meat, but the Mongols had eaten nothing for six days. We had made several ineffectual attempts to buy sheep, and that very morning we had concluded a bargain for one, but the owner in catching the sheep missed his mark as he sprang forward to clutch it, and fell sprawling on his face. Of course we laughed, in common with the Mongol spectators, and whether the fellow was angry at being the occasion of merriment to us, or whether he considered his accident as a providential intimation that he was to sell no sheep that day, I cannot tell; but he obstinately declined to have anything more to say to us on the subject of sheep-selling. The pony I had got at Tsagan-tuguruk had gone all to the bad with his feet. The roads had been very stony all the way, and his hoofs were too far gone to bear rough travelling. I bartered him, therefore, for two good sheep, and now I had only the skeleton of Dolonor left. High mountains appeared fifteen miles east of us (if one may venture to estimate distance in such a country), and we began to hope for something like scenery. It blew fresh and cold from S.-W., and in the afternoon it came round to N.-W., a regular _choinar salchin_, or north wind, a word of horrible signification to Mongols. And if dreaded in September what must it be in January? I often wondered how the wretches get through their dreary winter. They are taken very suddenly with these cold northers. The day may be fine, and almost oppressively warm. A cloud comes over, and drops as much water as you would get out of a watering-pan. Then the north wind pipes up, and in a few hours you have made the transition from a tropical summer to worse than an Arctic winter, for the biting wind cuts into the bone. In the face of a sharp norther we entered on the steppe _Guntu-gulu_, which seemed to be about five miles broad, but it proved the best part of a day's march, so deceptive are distances without prominent marks. A scene occurred in the steppe which delayed us a night, and might have proved serious enough to arrest our progress altogether. One of our guns went off in the cart (we always kept them loaded and handy), the charge went through some bedding, then the wooden back of the cart, and ricochetted from a wooden bar outside, miraculously clearing the camel that was following within two yards of the cart, and describing a curve over the whole line; one of the pellets hit the lama who was bringing up the rear, at a distance of full sixty yards, and made a groove on the outside of the flap of his ear. It bled profusely; in fact, the first notice he had of the injury was the streams of blood that suffused his neck and shoulders. He roared in terror, thinking he was _at least_ killed; stopped the caravan; dismounted from his camel, and committed himself to the care of Tellig and the Kitat lama. The tent was hastily put up, and all made ready for a halt. Tellig and the others were greatly alarmed, and disturbed in their minds, and we were somewhat uncertain of the view their superstitious fanaticism might lead them to take of the affair. Luckily we had just got clear of another very large caravan, and were spared the officious assistance of a crowd of people. There was a pool of water close by, and we sent for repeated supplies of it, washing the ear, and letting it bleed freely. The wound was nothing at all, but the profuse bleeding frightened the Mongols. Our policy was to look wise; and my companion being provided with a neatly got-up little case containing various articles of the _materia medica_, it was produced, and inspired a proper amount of blind faith in the minds of our Mongol friends. The wound was washed with arnica, and a piece of sticking-plaster put on it so successfully, that it completely stopped the bleeding, and made a very neat finish. The Mongols looked on with much wonder and reverence at our proceedings, and if any idea at retaliation for the injury had crossed their minds, it was now giving place to a feeling of gratitude for our surgical assistance. The lama was helpless from fright, and we had him lifted to his tent, where we made him recline on a bed that had been extemporised for him with boxes and things packed behind him on the windy side. A towel was tied round his head to keep the cold out, and he was made as comfortable as our means would allow. He looked sad and woe-begone, and we could with difficulty suppress a smile at the utter prostration of mind that the sight of his own blood had induced. He now imagined he had pains in his head, throat, and chest, and seeing him so entirely a victim to his fears, we were obliged to humour them a little, prescribing for his various symptoms with great care. The first thing we ordered him was a measured glass of brandy, knowing him to be partial to that liquor. This roused him a little, and his pluck began to return. We then prescribed tea, which was soon made, and, as he improved in spirits, we ordered mutton, knowing they had some scraps left from their morning's feast. All that done, we allowed him to smoke, and finally prescribed a good night's rest. In the morning we inquired for our patient and found him well, but much inclined to remain in his shell till the north wind was over. This was a little too much of a good thing; so when we had carefully examined him all over, and scrutinised all his symptoms, we were compelled to pronounce him fit to travel. He could not get out of it, but reluctantly mounted his camel, his head still tied up in a white towel, to the wonderment of the wandering Tartars we encountered on our march. It certainly never was my fortune to be so well treated by a doctor, but as the faculty in this country depend so much on popularity, a similar mode of treatment with the majority of their patients would be well worth their consideration. I may here observe that the Mongols have their ears very protuberant, like an elephant's. The accident to the lama was a godsend to us in procuring us a night's rest. The wind blew mercilessly across the steppe, so that sleeping in our carts with their backs turned to the wind, we could not keep warm. What it would have been, marching in the teeth of it with our front exposed, may be imagined by those who have experienced these cutting winds, for the fronts of our carts were, with all our care, but indifferently closed by sheets of felt, fastened as securely as we could manage, but utterly ineffective to keep out a gale of wind. Most of the steppes in the desert are inhabited by a small marmot, like a rat, which burrows in the ground. Its custom is to sit on its haunches (it has only a rudimentary tail) beside its hole, uttering a chirping noise when alarmed, and then dropping into its hole, turning round immediately with only its head out to see if the apprehended danger is imminent, and then disappearing altogether. Each hole has several roads to it, extending to about twenty or thirty yards from the hole. The little animal seems never to stray from the beaten track, and is so secure of reaching its retreat, that it will allow you almost to tread on it before it begins to scamper home. Where these animals abound, the ground is furrowed in all directions by their roads. On the margins of their holes a heap of grass and herbs is piled up, which Huc thought was for the purpose of sheltering the animals from the winter winds. I have too much faith in their instinct to believe that, however, for, once in their burrows underground, no wind can touch them. It is more probable that the stores of vegetable matter so collected are intended for winter forage, which they collect with great industry during the autumn. Our ponies were very fond of nibbling at these heaps of drying grass, and turning them over with their noses, a practice which we did our best to discourage. It was in fact a kind of sacrilege to destroy wantonly the stores of food that these interesting creatures had with so much forethought and months of patient labour accumulated against the evil day. In Guntu-gulu we met with another marmot of nearly similar habits, but much larger. It is in size and colour like a hare, but heavier and clumsier in its movements. Its burrows are as large as a rabbit's. It is found at a considerable distance from its hole, and is more easily alarmed than its neighbour, because less easily concealed. When slightly alarmed, it makes rapidly for its hole, and there sits till the danger approaches too near. Then, cocking up its short tail and uttering a chirp, it disappears into its hole. We could never get within shot of these animals. As to the little fellows, we got so close to them that it would have been cruelty to shoot them, as we had no means of preserving the skin. The larger ones burrow in stony places, and with their short legs, strong claws, and wiry hair, somewhat resemble the badger or racoon. They might be the _Lepus pusillus_, or "calling hare," if it were not that that species is positively said never to be found farther east than the Oby. The wind lulled at sunset, and we had a fine frosty night. The morning of the 17th September showed us the first _bonâ fide_ ice, and from that time we had frost during all the remainder of the journey. It was a moonless night, the roads were indifferent, the Mongols hungry and tired, and they therefore took it on themselves to halt for some hours before daylight to make tea near _Khulustu-tologoi_. From there we crossed the steppe _Borelju_, meeting the usual array of ox-cart caravans, and encamped at 10 o'clock near the entrance to a pass leading through a ridge of hills. The sharp clear outline of _Bain-ula_ (rich mountain), ten to sixteen miles distant on our right, and the modest elevations at the foot of which we were encamped, made a pretty bit of scenery after such a monotonous succession of steppes. We had now been twenty-two days in Mongolia, and had become strongly imbued with the habits of the people we were living amongst. To have imagined that we were _travelling_ at such a slow pace would have been misery. But there was nothing to make us believe we were travelling. Now and then a vague idea would cross our minds that some day we ought to see Kiachta, but that was of short duration, and our daily routine all went to keep up the illusion that we were dwellers in the desert. There was nothing to mark our daily stages, no church spires or road-side inns, not even a mile post. Those fine euphonious names of places I have given indicate nothing. They might with as much propriety be given to various parts of the ocean. We had entirely identified ourselves with the wandering Tartars, and were content to live in the desert with much the same feeling that the Israelites must have experienced during their desert journeyings, that there was a promised land dimly figured out to them--that is to say, their apprehension of the reality of it was dim; but the thought of ever arriving there had but slight influence on their daily life. The regular supply of manna was to their minds much more important than the bright future to which their leaders looked forward. And so it is with the greater part of mankind. With all its drawbacks, there is a charm about desert life which is worth something to a man who has undergone the worry of incessant occupation. You are safe there from the intrusions of mail steamers and electric telegraphs, and "every day's report of the wrong and outrage with which earth is filled." The longer you live in such quiet solitudes the more independent you feel of the great struggling world without. It is a relief to turn your back on it for a while, and betake yourself to the children of nature, who, if they lack the pleasures, lack also many of the miseries, and some of the crimes, which accompany civilisation. The day turned out very warm, so much so, that we were glad to get shelter from the sun under our canvas until 3 o'clock, when we were again in the saddle. The pass proved a fine valley, rich in grass. Another long string of caravans was met with, most of the carts empty, and bound from Urga to Dolonor. Why they were empty we could not ascertain, but conjectured that they could not get loaded before winter, of which the late severe weather had given them warning, and that they were bound at all hazards to get home to winter quarters. Some days before this we had picked up a young pilgrim, a lama, on a journey to the great lamasery at Urga, there to pass a certain time in study. The boy was performing a journey of between 200 and 300 miles alone and on foot. He carried nothing in the world with him except the clothes on his back and a few musty papers containing lama prayers, carefully tied up between two boards which he carried in his bosom. He had no provisions with him, still less any money, but depended solely on the well-known hospitality of his countrymen for his daily bread and his night's lodging. I thought there was something heroic in a boy of fifteen undertaking such a journey under such circumstances, but the Mongols thought nothing of it. Our caravan offered him a good opportunity of performing his journey comfortably, which he at once and without ceremony availed himself of. His first appearance was in one of our halts, where he was discovered in the tent of our Mongols, as if he had dropped from the clouds, and our three Mongols had thenceforth to fill two extra mouths, which must have been a considerable tax on them. The boy was at once placed on our effective staff, and we christened him _Paga-lama_, or "Little Lama," a name not much relished at first, but he soon became reconciled to it. The little lama had left his mother's tent in summer, a few days before; winter had now overtaken him--for there is no autumn or spring in Mongolia--and he was all too thinly clad for such inclement weather. Our lama, seeing the boy pinched with cold in these biting north winds, with the genuine hospitality of a Mongol gave up one of his coats to him, thus unconsciously practising a Christian precept to which few Christians in my experience pay so much practical respect. The little lama's loose leather boots, and particularly the felt stockings inside of them, were considerably travel-worn; and, with all his management, he could not keep his red toes covered from the cold. But he was patient and enduring, and very thankful for what he had got. He had no more long marches to make on foot, for our lama generally contrived to put him on a camel. On the morning of the 18th of September, we found ourselves starting from a halt at 6 o'clock, which caused a row between us and the Mongols; for though the night had been cold and dark enough to give them an excuse, we admitted no excuses for extra stoppages, and we had been stopped most of the night. It was a cold, raw morning, with a heavy leaden sky, and a fresh southerly wind, very unusual weather in Mongolia. We soon came to a point where the road seemed to terminate abruptly on the brow of a precipice, and it was now plain that we could not have proceeded further without good daylight. From our elevated position we came suddenly on a view of scenery of surpassing magnificence. An amphitheatre of mountains lay before us, rising up in sharp ridges, and tumbled about in the wildest confusion, like the waves of the sea in a storm. The crests of many of them were crowned with patches of wood, and to us, who had lived so long in the flat, treeless desert, the effect of this sudden apparition was as if we had been transported to fairy land. We had to cross a wide valley that lies half encircled at the foot of the mountains, and our descent was almost precipitous for 500 feet. We had to get out and walk, and the camels had enough to do to get the empty carts down safely. On the top of the high ground, and at the beginning of the descent, is a large _obon_, or altar, consisting of a cairn of stones. There are many of them in different parts of Mongolia. They are much respected by the Mongols, and have a religio-superstitious character. It is considered the duty of every traveller to contribute something to the heap, the orthodox contribution being undoubtedly a stone. Our lama seldom troubled himself to dismount, and find a stone, but contented himself with plucking a handful of hair from the hump of his camel, and allowing it to be wafted to the _obon_, if the wind should happen to take it there. At the same time he saved his conscience by mumbling a few words from the form of prayer prescribed for such occasions. At the more important _obons_, however, such as the one which has led to these remarks, which are always placed at difficult or dangerous passes, he rode a-head of the caravan, dismounted, and with solemn words and gestures propitiated the good genius of the mountain. The Mongols have a great horror of evil spirits, and have strong faith in the personality, not of one, but many devils. In this respect, they are like the Chinese Buddhists, but I never could detect that they worshipped the devil, as their neighbours do, the whole drift of whose religious ceremonies always seemed to me to be to charm away or make terms with evil spirits. This is, of course, only negative evidence as regards the Mongols, and that from a very slight experience, but the tone of religious sentiment among them is more healthy and elevating, encouraging the belief that devils are not among their objects of worship. They don't speak of the _tchutgour_, or devil, in the same flippant way as the Chinese do of their _kwei_, and although they attribute diseases and misfortunes to _tchutgour_ influences, only to be counteracted by lama incantations, they hold that good men, and especially good lamas, never can _see_ a _tchutgour_. I have tried to joke with them on the subject, and turn their _tchutgour_ notions into ridicule, but the Mongols, though easily amused on any other subject, were sensitively anxious on this, and never spoke of it without serious concern. The rapid and complete recovery of our lama from what seemed to him and his friends a deadly wound, was the cause of no small congratulation to them as establishing the moral excellence of his character, by means of a severe ordeal--as it were a hand-to-hand contest with the powers of evil. As we advanced across the valley a few drops of rain fell. A halt was summarily ordered, and the Mongols began to run about, hastily unloading camels and unrolling tents, with horror depicted on their faces, muttering to themselves, "_borro beina_," "the rain is coming." There is so little rain in Mongolia, that no great preparations are made for it, and a smart shower disconcerts travelling Mongols as if they were poultry. Before our tents were got up, the rain was falling heavily, and we were all well drenched, but when we had got safely under the canvas, the real misery of our situation flashed upon us--the argols were wet, and we could get no fire! The poor Mongols resigned themselves to their fate with enviable philosophy, looking on their misfortune as one of the chances of war. We were not so well trained in the school of adversity, however, and could not tolerate the idea of sitting in our wet clothes during that cold, rainy day. Besides, past experience had taught us to look for the dreaded north wind after rain, and how could we abide its onset in such a condition? There was but one source from which we could obtain fuel, and that was to break up one of our cases of stores, and burn the wood. This was also wet, but not saturated like the argols, and after some difficulty we lighted a fire in our tent, and gave the Mongols enough to make them a fire also, by which to boil their tea. We were richly rewarded by their looks and expressions of gratitude for such an unexpected blessing. The rain continued all day till sunset, when it cleared up, and the wind came round to N.-W., piping up in the usual manner. We got our tent shifted round, back to wind, and made ourselves exceedingly comfortable. With waterproof sheets and a light cork mattress, the wet ground was of no account, and we could always manage to keep our blankets dry. In the morning the ground was white with snow, and the north wind blowing more pitilessly than ever. A few driving showers of snow fell for some hours after sunrise, and we waited till 10 o'clock before resuming our journey towards the mountains _Tsagan-dypsy_ which bounded the plain in our front. _Tsagan_ meaning "white," we thought the name highly appropriate, as we gazed the live-long day on their snow-clad slopes. It was a trying day to all of us, and I never suffered so much from cold. The sun seldom showed his face, and the air was charged with black, heavy snow-clouds, which only the violence of the wind prevented from falling. It was impossible to endure the wind, either in cart or on horseback. There was nothing for it but to walk, but that was no easy performance in the teeth of such a gale, and we were fain to take shelter behind the carts, supporting ourselves by holding on to them. I estimated that I walked twenty miles in that way. The camels breasted the storm bravely, and even seemed to enjoy it. The Bactrian camel, at least the Mongol variety, is peculiarly adapted for cold climates. In a hot day he is easily fatigued, and seems almost to melt away in perspiration under his load (hence our constantly travelling at night, in the early part of our journey, and resting in the heat of the day), but in cold weather he braces himself up to his work, and the colder it gets, the better he is. We were entertained by the few travellers we met with alarming accounts of the state of the river Tolla, which was said to be in flood, and impassable. We paid little heed to such Job's comforters, knowing the Asiatic proneness to figurative language; but our lama was disconsolate, and began to look like a man who feels that some great calamity is hanging over him. On gaining the Tsagan-dypsy mountains we enter a long, narrow, but very pretty valley, watered by the small river _Kul_, which runs into the _Tolla_. The mountains on both sides of us were well wooded, chiefly with fir with yellow feathery leaves, and small birch. The fir grows to no great size, probably because it is in too great demand for sale in China. Several wood-cutting stations were observed in this valley of the Kul, where the timber is collected and the ox-carts loaded, of which we met so many in the desert. With the woods, several new birds appear, conspicuous among which are magpies, jackdaws, and pigeons. The _Yak_, or "long-haired ox," or "grunting ox" (_Poëphagus grunniens_), also now appear in considerable numbers. They are smaller than the average Mongol ox, but seem to be very strong and hardy. They are used solely for draught purposes. It has been supposed that these animals are peculiar to Thibet, but they appear to be also indigenous in Mongolia. Passing through the Kul valley, our lama purchased two small trees for firewood, giving in exchange half a brick of tea. It was joyfully intimated to us that we should want no more argols, but should find wood all the rest of the journey. The intelligence pleased us not so much on account of the prospect of a more civilised fuel to burn than argols, for, cooking as we did, in the open air, there was not much to choose between the two; but we received it as a tangible evidence that we had really passed the great desert, and were henceforth to travel in a country of mountains and "shaggy wood." CHAPTER IX. URGA TO KIACHTA. Just as we came in sight of the river _Tolla_, and with our glasses could make out the houses in the Chinese settlement of _Mai-machin_ beyond, a heavy, blinding shower of snow came on, which neither man nor beast could face, in the teeth of such a wind as was blowing. The camels were halted and tents hastily pitched, but not before the ground was covered with snow. The storm did not, however, prevent visitors from coming to us from the numerous caravans that were encamped round us in the valley. Eager inquiries were made as to the state of the river, and the information received was to us more gloomy, because more definite, than before. The stream was very rapid, and the water very high. The only boat they had fit to cross it had been swept away by the force of the current, and in an attempt to ford it, two men and a horse had been drowned that very day. Our informants were in a similar predicament to ourselves, and some of them had been waiting several days for an opportunity to cross. We could no longer discredit these statements, and we acquiesced in our adverse fate to the best of our ability; but it was sorely trying to our patience to be stuck there in sight of _Urga_, the first great break in our journey through Mongolia, with only a little bit of a river between. We were consoled as usual under such circumstances by a good dinner, to the preparation of which we always devoted special care, when we were stopped by compulsion. A few hours' kindly converse with the Mongols in their tent served to while away the long evening. They are, in many things, very much like children, and easily amused. Our simplest plan was to select one of the company, generally the Kitat lama, and make him the subject of a series of imaginary stories that we had heard of him in distant parts. The Mongols are always ready to enjoy a joke at the expense of their friends, though the individual directly interested does not seem to appreciate it. It is a very tender point with a lama to be asked how his wife and family are, as their vows exclude them from matrimonial happiness (or otherwise). They have a long list of stereotyped salutations, which are hurriedly exchanged by travellers as they pass on the road, and more deliberately and sententiously delivered on entering a tent. Tender inquiries after the flocks and herds, wives and children, are among the number, but the latter of course is never addressed to lamas. We, in our ignorance, were not supposed to know the lama _régime_, and we could always shock the feelings of a strange lama by asking after the _chuchung_ (wife), and thereby raise a laugh among the listeners. During our night encampments it was considered necessary for one of the party to keep watch and ward over the goods and chattels, for the Mongols are not so honest as they usually get credit for. Foreigners are disposed to put more confidence in them than they do in each other, and they must surely know their own countrymen best. If a Chinaman were asked what he took such precautions for, he would probably say against wolves and tigers; but the plain-spoken Mongols bluntly tell you that thieves are their bugbear. The expression they generally use for thieves is _mochung_, "bad men," and it is questionable whether they recognise any other kind of badness. They don't break up the night into different watches, but one keeps guard the whole night through, the others taking it in turns on subsequent nights. The lama, by virtue of his position as head of the party, gave himself a dispensation, and the onus of watching fell on Tellig and the Kitat lama. When we had strapped down the door of our tent, made all snug for the night, and retired under the blankets with a book, a candle burning on the ground, we used to receive visits from Tellig in his rounds. Lying down on the ground, he would insinuate his large bullet head under the curtain of the tent, and scan us carefully to see if we were asleep. If awake, he would ask us for a light to his pipe, and for permission to smoke it in the tent, as, in the high wind, it would be difficult to keep it alight outside. He would then lie and smoke with half his body inside the tent and half out, and on such occasions he would become very confidential, giving us most interesting accounts of his family affairs. He had a yourt near Tsagan-tuguruk, and in that yourt he had a wife that he was greatly attached to, and two boys that he was very proud of,--one four years old and the other two. He had moderate possessions in cattle, which, in his absence, were cared for by his brother. He had been a long time separated from his family, and while we were at Tsagan-tuguruk he had stolen a few hours to ride over and see his "chickens and their dam"; but our impetuous haste to get away had cut his visit very short. Tellig's story brought qualms of compunction to our mind for what now seemed inconsiderate treatment; for he had, from the first, had all the hard work, and none of the indulgences; moreover he had always done for us cheerfully what he was in no wise bound to do. The wind continued to howl eerily the whole night, and our canvas flapped about like the sails of a ship in stays. The morning was still bitterly cold, and the sky darkened by heavy snow clouds driving furiously. It required no small resolution to turn out of our warm beds that morning; and I am sure if either of us had been travelling alone, he would have been inclined to lie quiet till called for. But we were each afraid of showing the white feather, and of being twitted with impeding the progress of the journey; we therefore mutually forced ourselves to get up. The Mongols were making no move. As for Tellig, he had just gone to sleep after his night's watching, and it seemed nothing could ever be done without him. With considerable trouble we overcame the _vis inertiæ_ of Mr. Lama, and persuaded him to ride down with us to the bank of the river to reconnoitre. The horses were brought in from the hill-side where they had spent the night trying to pick out a few blades of grass from among the stones. My "Dolonor" looked down in the mouth, and did not snort at his master, which heretofore he had never failed of doing on every occasion. The poor brute was completely doubled up with the cold, and could hardly move one leg past another. I immediately presented him to a Mongol, but I am afraid, with his old age and miserable condition, he could not last many more such nights. A great concourse of people were assembled on the bank of the _Tolla_, many who wanted to cross, and many hangers-on, who make a living by assisting travellers to cross the river. Mongols kept riding backwards and forwards between the river and the various caravans encamped in Kul valley, all bent on the same errand as ourselves. But there was no crossing the Tolla that day. The stream was foaming and roaring like a cataract, with a current of nearly seven miles an hour. It was deep enough to take a man up to the neck, and the bottom was strewn with large round pebbles, making fording difficult, even had the current been moderate and the water shallower. What the boat was like that had been swept away I cannot say; but there was only left a raft made of hollow trees lashed together, and, in the present state of the river, inadequate to any purpose whatever. In the motley crowd there assembled, every one had some sage advice to offer; communications were carried on at the highest pitch of many stentorian lungs, and the place was like another Babel. All concurred in the impossibility of crossing; some thought it would be practicable to-morrow, others were less hopeful. There was nothing for us to do but to admire the truly magnificent scenery with which we were surrounded. The valley of the Kul runs north, and enters the larger valley of the Tolla at right angles. The general aspect of the mountains that overhang Urga is bare, the woods being scattered in small patches. The Tolla rushes out of a gorge in the mountains to the east, and is completely hidden by brushwood and willows, until it debouches on the opening formed by the Kul, its tributary. The Tolla hugs the left side of the valley, leaving a wide flat on the right, over which lies the road to _Maimachin_ and _Urga_. The day continued black and stormy till sunset. In the evening the wind moderated, and at night the stars shone out in all their splendour. The morning of the 21st of September was charming, a bright sun and a blue sky, with hard frost on the ground. The air was still, and the concert of mingled sounds, of cattle lowing, dogs barking, and the general hubbub among the wild Mongols who were in motion in all quarters, was soothing to the feelings. It felt like a summer day, in spite of the hard crust under our feet. I am persuaded that unbroken fine weather would become very tiresome and monotonous; it can only be thoroughly enjoyed by contrast with stormy antecedents. We again left the caravan to ride to the river, and, like Noah's dove, we returned with the olive-branch in our mouth. The waters had subsided a little, and some camels had actually crossed. There was no doubt of it, for we saw them with our own eyes standing dripping on the bank. The lama of course made difficulties, but we forced him to the attempt, and got the caravan moved down to the water by 2 o'clock. There were two reasons why he felt reluctance to force a passage to-day; first, we had our carts to get through, which was, of course, much more difficult, and even risky, than merely walking a camel through the water with a load on his back. This objection we met by offering to leave our carts behind. The next objection, which the lama did not think it judicious to name to us, but which was nevertheless to him the more cogent of the two, was that he would require many assistants, and in the present condition of the ford, with so many people waiting to cross, they exacted onerous terms for their assistance; for even the simple unsophisticated Mongols understand the mercantile laws of supply and demand. The regular ford was still too deep, and a more eligible spot was selected, half a mile higher up the stream, where it is divided into three branches, with low flat islands between. The three branches make up a breadth of several hundred yards, and the opposite shore is concealed from view by the small trees and underwood that grow on the islands. The scene at this ford was most animated and exciting. Before proceeding to do anything, a great deal of jabbering had to be gone through, but once the plan of action was settled, our assistants set to work energetically. The two ponies of my companion were taken possession of, each bestridden by a Mongol, with his nether garments either stripped off altogether, or tucked up to his hips. Each took the nose-string of a camel and plunged into the ice-cold water. The camels were wretched, turning their long necks every way to avert their timid eyes from the water, of which they have an instinctive dread. Moral suasion is vigorously applied to a camel's hind-quarters by half a dozen men armed with cudgels, but he still hesitates. The pony in his turn gets tired, standing in the cold water, and tries to back out just as the camel is feeling his way with his fore feet. The rider is equally impatient, with his bare legs dangling in the water, and plies his steed vigorously with his heels. It is all a question of time, and both animals are eventually launched into the stream. The camel's footing on the loose slippery stones is very insecure, and when the deep part is reached, it requires all his strength to prevent the current from floating him clean off his legs. He knows his danger, and trembles in every muscle. The same struggle occurs at each of the three branches, and we all watch the progress of the first detachment with breathless anxiety, as we see the pony gradually sinking till only his head and shoulders are above water. When they are safely landed on _terra firma_, the two camels are unloaded, and brought back in the same way to fetch the two carts. The carts have in the meantime been emptied of our bedding, and various small necessaries we usually kept there, which are lashed up in bundles, and covered with waterproof sheets, ready to put on the back of a camel. The passage of the carts was the most ticklish business of all. They were all wood, except the iron-work about the wheels. Would they sink or swim? If the latter, it would be impossible to cross them in such a current. One was actually floated away, camel and all, but luckily fetched up on a shoal place lower down, whence it was recovered with slight damage. We crossed with the last batch, two on a camel. A Mongol sat behind me, and made me lean over against the current, to give the camel a bias in that direction; but I confess to having felt momentarily nervous, as the poor beast staggered and hesitated in a strong eddying current that almost carried him off his legs. Four hours had been occupied in crossing the Tolla, during all which time the two ponies and their riders were in the water. The men's legs had become a bright red colour, and their teeth chattered audibly; but they were cheery and light-hearted, and only laughed at their hardships. A dram when it was all over made them as happy as kings. They are undoubtedly a fine hardy race, these Mongols; no wonder that they make such admirable soldiers. All sorts of people were crossing the Tolla with us, among whom were some very old men travelling on horseback. One old woman I observed also, infirm and almost blind, crossing on a pony, her son riding alongside of her and holding her on. These people all take off their boots and trowsers, and carry them on the saddle to put on dry at the other side. [Illustration: FORDING THE TOLLA NEAR URGA. (Page 147.)] We were now a good mile from the road, and it was getting dark. We could not travel further that night, and did not wish to put up our tent. We therefore accepted an escort, and the proffered hospitality of a Mongol, and galloped to his yourt, which was near the Urga road. The plain is grassy, but rather stony, and intersected by many small watercourses running out of the Tolla. Our host was none other than the _Kitat_, whom we had so summarily dismissed, or at least compelled to send in his resignation, at Tsagan-tuguruk. He received us with open arms in his yourt, and commended us to the good offices of the lady who presided over the cauldron. Whether she was his own wife, or somebody else's wife, we could not clearly determine, but she performed the household duties with exemplary assiduity. A piece of a sheep was immediately put on the fire, while the Kitat and the wife plied us with milk and cheese, and did their best to entertain us with their lively conversation, which turned chiefly on the passage of the Tolla, with an occasional allusion to Tsagan-tuguruk. We, all the while, tried to analyse the motives that actuated the Kitat in going out of his way to show us such civility, seeing we had last parted with him on very indifferent terms. Did he intend to heap coals of fire on our heads? or to show us that Mongols bear no malice? Or was he proud to show his friends that he had such distinguished guests in his tent? I believe he was moved by none of these considerations, but simply by the feeling of true hospitality that is natural to all Mongols. It turned out that the feast our host had prepared was solely for us, for he himself was already engaged to dine with our lama and his Tolla-river friends when they should come up. We were visited by many Mongols, some of whom appeared to belong to the family, and spent a very pleasant evening. When bed-time came, and the fire was out, the hole in the roof was covered over, and the yourt was cleared of all but ourselves, the Kitat and the lady. Many valuable hours were lost next morning in settling with the Mongols for their services of the preceding day. It cost three taels in all--about a guinea--a sum which seemed to our lama exorbitant, and caused many rueful shakes of his shaven head. During the bustle of preparation, a heartless robbery was committed on me. A small pic-nic case, containing a drinking-glass, knife, fork and spoon, was stolen out of the cart. If they had stolen a horse, or our tent, or box of Sycee silver, I could have born it with equanimity, but the loss of articles so constantly in use was hard to bear. I missed them every hour of the day, and it was of course impossible to replace them. I was compelled, on emergencies, thereafter to use the _ei-iga_ of some stray Mongol, which went much against the grain. They are so uncleanly in their habits that their wooden cups get frequently encrusted with dirt. Their usual mode of cleaning them is to give the inside of the cup a scrape with the back of the thumb-nail, or, when they mean to be very particular, they clean their cup in the same manner as a dog cleans a plate. Having bought another pony for myself from the Kitat, first, because I wanted it; and second, because I wanted to acknowledge his hospitality, we formed the order of march, which was this: Tellig, mounted on a pony, to accompany us and pilot us to Maimachin and Urga, and then follow after the caravan, which was to take a short cut from Maimachin and cut off a corner at Urga, not passing through the town at all. Maimachin is a Chinese commercial settlement about two miles from the ford of the Tolla, established, as the Mongols believe, for the purpose of swindling them. It is a unique-looking place, built of wood for the most part, the outer wall enclosing the whole, as also the fences round each compound, being made of rough poles placed uprightly and close together. It is entered by a gate, which has the appearance of being in constant use. The mutual jealousies of the two races lead them both to seclude themselves for their own protection. The Chinese shopkeepers in the settlement are well-to-do people, mostly, I believe, Shansi men. We rode about the streets for some time trying to find a few necessaries we required, but were not very successful. At last we stopped at a blacksmith's shop to try and get our ponies shod. The artisan to whom we addressed ourselves did not understand us, but ran into the next shop and brought out a well-dressed young fellow, who at once addressed us in Russian. He could not comprehend our ignorance of that language; but he soon condescended to speak Chinese, which a Chinaman never will do if he can get on in any other language. We could not deal with the man, however, and being short of time we yielded to Tellig's importunity, and turned our heads towards Urga. The streets of Maimachin are canals of black mire, and so uneven that our beasts could with difficulty keep their legs. We were heartily glad to get out into the open air again. On the way to Urga we passed a large house nearly finished, on a rising ground, and in a fine commanding position. It is the house of the Russian consul; but Tellig would not have it so,--said he knew the Russian house, and would take us there all right. He certainly did take us to a Russian piggery, where a few so-called merchants lived in the most barbarous and filthy condition. We could not even communicate with them, except in the little we had picked up of the Mongol language. To see the consul we had to go all the way back again to the big house we had passed. Mr. Shishmaroff, the vice-consul in charge, received us very hospitably, and treated us to a civilised breakfast on a clean white tablecloth. It was a greater luxury to us than probably even our host imagined, for we had not seen an egg for twenty-seven days, there being no fowls in Mongolia. Mr. Shishmaroff must lead a very solitary life in Urga, having no one with whom to associate but the high Chinese mandarin and the Mongol deputy-khan. His house-supplies are, for the most part, brought from Kiachta, the Russian frontier town, 175 miles distant. The Russian government keeps up a considerable establishment at Urga, the consul having a body-guard of twenty Cossacks, besides the twenty Russian carpenters who are at work on the new house, and other hangers-on. The object of such an expensive establishment, at a place like Urga, where Russia has no interests whatever to protect, can only be divined by the light of its traditional policy of progress in Asia. It has long been considered[5] that the Khingan chain of mountains running east and west past Urga to the head waters of the river Amoor forms the "natural boundary" of Siberia, and consequently advantage has been taken of disputes between the Mongol khans of former times and some Russian merchants who had penetrated as far as Urga, to gain a foot-hold there, which will certainly never be relinquished until the whole tract of country enclosed by these mountains and by the river Kerulun, the head stream of the Amur, to Lake Hurun or Dalainor, has been annexed to Siberia. After that, the "natural boundary" will be discovered to lie still farther to the south. Russia is in no hurry to enter on the possession of this new territory, but, in the mean time, the country has been surveyed, and is included in Russian maps of Eastern Siberia. The transfer will be made quietly, and without bloodshed, when the favourable moment comes, for none understand better than Russian diplomatists the _suaviter in modo_ when it suits their purpose. No one will be much a loser by the change. The Emperor of China will lose his nominal suzerainty over a country that even now probably costs him more than it is worth. The Mongol tribes, with their chiefs, would merely become subjects of one autocrat instead of another; but everything else would probably go on as at present until time brought gradual changes. The Chinese merchants don't care a straw about who is king as long as they are left to their peaceful occupations; and the Russian government is too enlightened to throw any obstacles in the way of a trade which has done more than anything else to develop the resources of the Siberian deserts. [5] See Bell of Antermony. The name, _Urga_, or the camp, is not in common use. The Mongols call it _Kuren_ or _Ta Kuren_, which Huc translates the "great enclosure." The situation of the town, or camp, or whatever it may be called, is romantic in the extreme. It stands on a wide plateau about a mile from the Tolla. Behind the Kuren is a bold and rugged mountain range which shelters it from the northerly gales, while in front there is never wanting a pleasing prospect for the eye to rest upon in the roughly wooded mountains beyond the Tolla, that hem in the valley of that river. The river itself is hardly seen from the town, being concealed by the growth of brushwood on its banks and on the low islands that lie in the stream. The population is scattered over the plateau, without much reference to regularity of arrangement, and instead of streets the dwellings of the Mongols are separated by crooked passages. The only buildings in the place are temples, official residences, and the houses occupied by Chinese or Russians. The Mongols live in tents, as they do in the desert, with this difference, that each family surrounds itself with a wooden palisade as a protection from thieves, who are numerous among the pilgrims, who resort on pious missions to the Kuren. A man was found to shoe our ponies, which he did well and expeditiously, and at a very moderate charge, about half the sum demanded at Maimachin. The shoeing-smith was a Chinaman--of course--for it seems the Mongols never do, under any circumstances, shoe their horses. They have no hard roads, it is true, to contend with, but even the gravelly sand of many parts of the desert does sometimes wear down the soles of their horses' feet, and particularly the toes, until the animal becomes useless. They seldom allow them to get so bad as that, however, as the large herds they possess afford them the means of frequently changing their saddle-horses. There are no shops in the Kuren, that being contrary to the Mongol nature. All things necessary for desert life are to be purchased for bricks of tea in a large open space where a great bazaar is held under booths, principally by Mongol women. There you may purchase horses, cattle, tents, leather harness, saddles, beef, mutton, caps for lamas or black men, female ornaments, felt,--in short everything within the scope of Mongol imagination. Our small purchases were effected very satisfactorily--no attempt was made to impose on us because we were strangers, and we had reason to congratulate ourselves that we were not at the mercy of Chinese. In nothing is the contrast between Mongols and Chinese more marked than in the common honesty of shopkeepers or hawkers. It may indeed be said with truth that mercantile honesty allows a man to get as much as he can for his goods, but it is very doubtful whether such a maxim can properly be stretched so as to justify a shopkeeper in taking a customer at a disadvantage. The nucleus of the Mongol settlement at Urga is the Great Lamasery of the Guison-tamba or Lama-king of the Mongols. In this monastery, and in the minor ones round it, it has been said that 30,000 lamas reside, which estimate, however, must be received with caution. The two great lamaseries of Dobodorsha and Daichenalon are built in an indentation of the mountains that form the northern valley which opens into the valley of the Tolla at Urga. As our route from Urga lay on the slope of the opposite side of the valley, and our time was exhausted, we had not the chance of visiting these temples. The buildings are of vast extent, as plain almost as if they were barracks; but what ornamentation there is about them is quiet and in good taste. They differ considerably from the Chinese style of architecture, and are no doubt Thibetan. An inscription in the Thibetan language has been placed on the slope of the hill above the monasteries. The characters are formed by means of white stones, and the size of them is such as to render the writing perfectly legible at the distance of a mile. All good lamas esteem it an honour to be able to say they have made a pilgrimage to the Kuren, and these devotees come from enormous distances--some from the Manchurian wildernesses in the far east, and others from the frontiers of Thibet.[6] There are many small shrines on the plateau on which the town stands, erected for the convenience of those ascetics who are desirous of commending themselves to the favour of Bhudda and to the respect of their fellows. I observed one of these deluded people performing a journey to a shrine, which was then about a quarter of a mile from him. He advanced by three measured steps one stage, made sundry prostrations, falling flat on his face on the stony ground, repeated prayers, and then advanced again. I know not from what distance he had come, or how long it was since he had commenced this slow and painful march; but, on a rough calculation, we made out that it would take him two days more, at the same rate of progress, to reach the goal. [6] Huc. The Lama-king of the Kuren is regarded by the Mongols as a god. He can never die--he only transmigrates. The whole of the Kalkas tribes are under his sway, and this personage is consequently an object of constant jealousy to the emperors of China, who keep an anxious watch over his proceedings. The lama system has been greatly humoured by the Chinese emperors from early times, and the theocracy of Mongolia and Thibet is mainly of their creation. The secular sovereignty of these nations became spiritual by an accident or an after-thought, and does not, like the Japanese, trace back into the dawn of history its descent from the gods. The last independent king of Thibet finding himself in great trouble from within and from without, escaped from the cares of government by becoming a lama. This happened about the year 1100 A.D., and, in a few years afterwards, Thibet became subject to China. When Kublai became Emperor of China he made a lama of Thibet king, and the kings who succeeded the Mongols in China followed up the idea of conciliating the lama power by making eight of them kings. These afterwards (A.D. 1426) took the title of grand lama, and the chief of them became the Dalai-lama of Thibet,[7] who from that time to this has been the head of the Bhuddist religion and the vassal king of Thibet. It would have been impossible, under any circumstances, for the Dalai-lama to have maintained a real surveillance over the widely-scattered tribes who acknowledged his spiritual sway; and in fact his authority over his distant dependents began to be greatly relaxed from the time that the emperors of China completed the subjection of all the tribes who now inhabit what is called Chinese Tartary. The Emperor Kang-hi, under whose reign this was accomplished, promoted the independence of the lama-king of the Kalkas with a view to severing the tie that bound them to their neighbours the Eleuths or Kalmuks, and in order to accustom the vassal chiefs of the various tribes to look more and more to the Chinese emperors for government and protection. By this wise policy the Chinese government sought to divert the Mongols from forming any combination which might threaten the stability of the foreign rule to which the tribes had just been subjected. The Chinese ambassadors at the court of the Dalai-lama, men of great talent, and trained in diplomatic subtlety, furthered these purposes of their government by holding in check the pretensions of the Dalai-lama, while appearing to support him, and, by indirect means, neutralising his authority whenever the exercise of it seemed to clash with the Chinese policy. The lama-king of the Kalkas has therefore become virtually independent of his spiritual superior at Lassa, for whom he has about the same regard as Napoleon has for the Pope. [7] Histoire des Huns, De Guignes, Paris, 1756. The "Urga" of the Kalkas has not always been where it stands now. In 1720,[8] it was on the river Orkhon, near its confluence with the Selenga, some distance north of the present Urga. But some time before that date the Kalkas had their head-quarters where the Urga now stands, for we read[9] of the Eleuths having "destroyed the magnificent temple, which the Kutuchtu had built near the river Tula, of yellow varnished bricks," about the year 1688. [8] Bell. [9] Un. Hist., vol. iv. p. 77. The mountain fastnesses of the Khangai range, stretching south-west from Urga, and bordering the great desert, are eminently favourable to the assembling of armies, and afford a safe retreat for fugitive tribes. The richness of the pastures, and the abundance of water supplied by the larger rivers, and by the mountain streams that are found in every ravine, afford sustenance for unlimited herds and flocks. The first Huns had their head-quarters not far from Urga long before the Christian era. The site of the old Mongol capital of Kara Korum is about 160 miles from Urga in a south-west direction. Thence the Mongols issued forth to conquer Asia and Europe, and thither they returned, when driven out of China in 1368, to found the new empire of the Yuen of the north, under a Grand Khan of the Kalkas. There also flourished Ung-Khan, celebrated in the 12th century, from his name having been used by the Nestorians as a stalking-horse for perpetrating what has generally been considered as a gigantic hoax on the Pope and various European sovereigns. The Nestorians caused it to be reported that they had converted this potentate and his subjects to Christianity; and that the Khan had been by them baptised under the name of John. Letters were written in the name of this "Prester John" as he was called, to his royal brethren in the west. These seem to have been credited as genuine, for more than one mission was despatched from European courts to make the acquaintance of this most Christian king. There is, perhaps, as much reason to believe as to doubt the conversion of this prince. These expeditions, if they failed in their main purpose, were at least the means of giving to the world much curious information concerning the inhabitants of the Great Tartary. "Prester John," or, to call him by his right name, Ung-Khan, was the most powerful Tartar prince of his day. Genghis, then called Temoujin, when a very young man, repaired to the court of Ung-Khan to seek aid to repress disturbances among his own tribes, and soon became commander-in-chief of Ung-Khan's armies, in which capacity he displayed the high military qualities which afterwards made him master of nearly the whole civilised world. He was a great favourite with the Khan, and all went on smoothly until the unlucky day when Ung-Khan's daughter fell in love with young Temoujin. The course of true love did not run smooth with him, for his rivals being fired with enmity, began to plot against him with the Khan, who in time yielded to their instigation, and betrayed his best friend. Temoujin remained true to his colours long after he lost the confidence of the Khan; but the discovery of a deeply-laid plot against his life at length brought him to an open rupture with his sovereign. They fought a pitched battle between the rivers Tolla and Kerlon, probably at a short distance eastward from the present Urga. Ung-Khan's forces had greatly the advantage in numbers, but the Khan was no match for his accomplished general. Temoujin gained a decisive victory. The Khan escaped from the field of battle, but was soon afterwards killed, and his dynasty destroyed. Temoujin now found himself master of the situation, and was installed at Kara-Korum in 1206, under the title of Genghis-Khan. Having done our business at the Kuren, we started rather late in the afternoon in pursuit of the camels. The route lay about north through a valley. It was bad travelling, owing to the rough nature of the ground. It is naturally soft and boggy, and the melted snow in the low ground had greatly aggravated the evil. When past the great monasteries, we got on higher ground on the slope of the hills, but this was, if possible, more slippery than the low road, for the melting snow above kept up a continuous supply of moisture which made the road very difficult even for horses. We soon came upon the traces of camels, which we had no difficulty in identifying by the side-slips down the hill made by their broad splay feet. This is always dangerous work for camels, and we had some apprehension of accidents from "splitting," or dislocating the hip joints. We were in consequence not ill-pleased to come upon the caravan a little after sunset, encamped in a narrow ravine looking west, and at the foot of a steep pass. Several of the camels had fallen, but fortunately none were injured. It was a fine moonlight night, and we tried to get our people to proceed on the journey; but the camels could not draw the carts over the pass, steep as it was, and with such slippery roads. Bullocks had been sent for, and they were expected every hour, of course, but it might have been evident to us that they had no intention of coming before morning. Anyhow we would not be the occasion of delay, and therefore slept in our carts ready for a move at any moment. At daylight on the 23rd of September the bullocks came, two for each cart, accompanied by a young woman and a boy, who proceeded to harness them in a very slow and deliberate manner. The beasts did their work, but with difficulty, owing to the broken character of the road. On the top of the pass our lama paid his respects to an obon, by throwing a large piece of wood on it, and the bullocks took the carts safely down the other side of the pass, which was quite as steep as the ascent. We then proceeded with the camels through valleys and undulations, among fine mountain scenery, avoiding the main road, and striking off through various bye-paths, all apparently well known to our conductors. At 3 p.m. we halted off Narim valley to dine, intending to take advantage of the moonlight to resume our night travelling. But as bad luck would have it a snowstorm came on, and we had to remain where we were till morning. All hopes of mending our pace from Urga to Kiachta now vanished. We had already lost two good nights out of the four, or at most five days which is considered ample time for the journey; and if the stormy weather were to continue, which it looked very like doing, we might be the whole winter on the road. The beasts had little to eat but snow all night. In the morning the ground was white, but the storm was over. Our old enemy the wind began early in the day to stir the twigs of the trees, and though he came in like a lamb, we had but too sure a presentiment of what was coming. It blew fiercely all day, and we walked during the greater part of it. The slight covering of snow on the ground soon melted under the combined action of the sun and wind. The latter agency is certainly the more powerful of the two, when the atmosphere is above freezing temperature. Our nights were always very frosty, but the sun had still sufficient influence during the middle of the day to moisten the surface of the ground. Over a steep pass and down into another valley we joined the main road, which is now very broad and good. Our march continued to be diversified by valleys and undulations, the scene constantly changing, and now and again opening out enchanting views of scenery, with every variety of rock and river, wooded hills and high mountain ranges tumbling on each other. The wind, that had blown bitterly cold all day, lulled at sunset; the sky continued clear, and we had a calm frosty night. Halted at 10 p.m. in _Gurun-dsata_, a broad rich valley, with abundant grass, and supporting vast herds of cattle, which the clear moonlight revealed to us. The beauties of this spot were only fully discovered at sunrise the next morning, which being calm and fine, we were in the best humour to enjoy the rocky, woody, and pastoral scenes around us. It was plain we had got into a country altogether different from the Mongol steppes. The valleys are all watered by streams, and the soil susceptible of high cultivation. We are now frightened with another bugbear, in the shape of an unfordable river, the _Khara-gol_, or "black-river." It seemed we were destined to be delayed by every possible contrivance of nature, for these rivers are very rarely flooded. Were it otherwise, some device would certainly have been found to meet the emergency. It was all the more hard, therefore, that these paltry little Mongol rivers should get themselves up into such a state of fury just when we were passing through the country. During our march towards Khara river, we struck the river _Boro_, a tributary of the Khara, which waters a fine broad valley containing the largest Mongol population we had seen anywhere collected in one place. As we followed the course of the Boro down the valley, we passed several apparently separate communities, all rich in cattle. A novel sight here met our eye, the cultivation of a coarse kind of rye, called by the Mongols, _boota_. They were harvesting this as we passed, carting it to the yourts in a rough sort of wooden cart, and stacking it up. This seems to show that the Mongols are not naturally averse to cultivation, when they are favourably circumstanced for carrying it out. Some of their tribes, such as those in Western Toumet, mentioned by Huc, do indeed systematically cultivate the ground. The sun had set before we got to the end of the valley, and we encamped in the evening not far from the left bank of the Khara-gol, sending out the lama with a native of the district to survey a crossing for the morning. Early on the 26th we advanced to the river at a place higher up than the usual ford. Carts were unloaded, and the passage effected in the same way as the Tolla, but, the river being much smaller, less time was lost in the operation. There is always a busy scene at these fords, particularly when a drove of cattle have to be got over. One poor man spent the whole morning in fruitless endeavours to drive half-a-dozen cattle through the river, but the neighbours at last came to his assistance, and led them through one by one. There was a steep pass before us, a few miles distant, and at a yourt near the Khara four sturdy little yaks were engaged to get our carts over. A young lama courier, well versed in the Russian language, whom we found in the yourt, where he had spent the night, afforded us no end of fun all the morning. He was a great wag, and affected to be a man of the world, travelling constantly as he did between the court of Peking and Kiachta. He chaffed our lama more than he liked, criticising his cattle, and offering to buy him out. As a specimen of how these couriers do their work, this young scamp had not only spent the whole night in a yourt, but waited in the morning for our party, and kept company with us till near mid-day. The pass is up a steep and rugged ravine, thickly wooded with white-skinned birch-trees. The trees do not grow to any size before they rot in the heart, and become hollow, when the wind blows them over. Few of them have a proper trunk, but two or three strong suckers shooting up from the root. It makes excellent firewood, but is unfit for any other purpose. In the ascent the view is entirely shut in by the woods, but on the top, near the _Obon_, is a clear space, from which an imposing view is obtained of the hills and dales behind and before us, with the Boro valley spread out at our feet. In the descent we plunge again into the thick woods, emerging at the foot into a long valley leading to _Bain-gol_. This is a very small river, with soft, boggy ground on either side, very bad walking for camels. The river, like the others we had crossed, runs westwards and northwards. On the north side of Bain-gol we halted from sunset till midnight, and at daylight entered another fine, long valley, through which runs the _Shara-gol_, the "yellow," or "sandy river," for it may be translated either way. In this valley the grass grew more luxuriantly than we had yet seen. Crowds of Mongols were settled here, and the valley was covered with enormous herds of cattle. The people were busy cutting the long grass with scythes, which they handle very skilfully, and stacking it up round their yourts. This grassy spot was selected for wintering in, and is no doubt less populous in the summer season, when the grass is green and abundant in the country. A steep pass takes us out of this valley, but we still follow to the left the course of the river for some distance. We halted about 4 o'clock, the lama having ridden to a distant yourt to buy a sheep. He could not bring it with him, but must needs return to our tent, and send Tellig, who was a "black man," to fetch the sheep, thereby losing much valuable time. The lama notions on this subject are absurd in the extreme. They will not kill an animal, nor will they carry it to be killed. But they will bargain for and purchase the animal for the purpose of getting it killed, and they will eat it after it is killed, thus becoming "accessory after the fact," as well as before it. I never could understand the logic of this practical application of the doctrine of transmigration, for it always appeared to me that on the hypothesis of the soul of Bhudda or any relative being in captivity in the body of a sheep, it would be a simple act of charity to release it by procuring the transmigration. It rained a little at sunset, but no gale of wind followed, as on former occasions. At midnight we proceeded over a stiff sandy pass, and got the carts through by putting an extra camel to each of them. This was followed by another stiff pass, a little sandy, but road pretty good, and so on through the night, till we descended about 9 o'clock next day to the banks of the _Iro-gol_, a smooth flowing river, 100 yards wide, and ten feet deep. Seeing hosts of caravans on both sides of the river we expected to have to "wait a wee" before we could get across, but were agreeably surprised to find a passage ready for us in a few hours. Rafts made of hollowed trees lashed together transport the baggage, the camels and horses, unloaded, are led from the boats, and swim across. The current of the Iro was about three miles an hour. The right bank of the river at the place we crossed is a great flat, but the left bank is hilly and well wooded, and apparently closed in by bluffs on the right bank above and below us, for the river is very tortuous. It forms altogether a very pretty valley. We had to spend a good many hours basking in the warm sunshine, waiting for all the force to get over. When the caravan was ready to start we induced the lama to ride ahead with us through _Talabulyk_, taking a sackful of mutton to be boiled at some yourt ready for Tellig and his friend when they came up. By this means we saved much time, and gave the Mongols no excuse for another halt. One long march would bring us to Kiachta, and we were the more anxious to lose no time, because a storm, or some other unforeseen event, might delay us again. We travelled hard all night over rough roads, through dense pine forests, and shortly after daylight we came out on a rather sandy open space, across which, at a distance of eight miles, Tellig pointed out two white specks, informing us, with an air of triumph, that that was Kiachta. They were two of the church spires that form landmarks for all Russian towns. Here we were, then, at last, on the 29th of September, at the end of a journey which had sometimes seemed interminable. Thirty-four days in travelling 780 miles! Think of that, ye who fly about the country in express trains. Of course the high Russian officials who pass occasionally between Peking and St. Petersburg have a quicker mode of getting across Mongolia. The post horses kept for the couriers are at their disposal, and by some pre-arrangement they have relays all the way, and so they travel in their own comfortable carriages from Kiachta to Peking in twelve days or so. CHAPTER X. MONGOLS--HISTORICAL NOTES. A peculiar interest surrounds these wandering tribes of the desert. In them we see the living representatives of the ancient Huns, and of the yet more ancient Scythians. Of them came Attila, "the Scourge of God," who with his barbarian hordes shook the foundations of Europe in the fifth century, and accelerated the downfall of the old Roman empire; of them came also the redoubtable warriors who desolated Asia and Europe six hundred years ago. The Mongol tribes are exceedingly conservative in their habits; their fashions never change. A description of their manners in the time of Genghis, or even of Attila, is equally applicable now. Everything goes to show that in the form of their tents, in their dress, their social customs, and their mode of life, the Mongols of to-day have changed but little since they first became known to history. The early history of the Huns is involved in obscurity. They appear to have existed as a pastoral people, inhabiting the east of the desert of Gobi from about 1200 B.C., during which time they were frequently at war with the Chinese. The first authentic accounts of them date from about the year 200 B.C., when they greatly extended their empire, and became very formidable neighbours to China. It was in the third century before the Christian era that the Chinese built the famous wall as a protection from the inroads of the warlike Huns, who, notwithstanding, laid China under tribute. Vouti, of the Han dynasty (died 87 B.C.), gained a bloody victory over the Huns, and was the first to break their power in China. He followed up his military success by the application of the craft for which his race was, even at that early date, distinguished. By diligently promoting dissension among the tribes he succeeded in severing many of them from their allegiance to the Tanjou, the title then adopted by the kings of the Huns. The Tanjou himself became afterwards a vassal to the Chinese emperors, and was fain to lick the dust for a dependent kingship. About 100 years after the birth of Christ, the Huns were broken up and scattered. The Huns of the South, who had previously seceded from the main body, and had established their dynasty in alliance with China, held together till the year 216 A.D. The Northern Huns, being distressed by a great famine, were attacked by the tribes whom they had so long oppressed, and were compelled to seek safety in flight. From that era we must date the migrations of the Hunnish tribes. They were again subdivided. One branch wandered to the coast of the Caspian Sea, where they settled, and became modified in their character under the influence of a more genial climate; their nomad habits were gradually abandoned; and they became civilised. These were called the White Huns. Another branch migrated in a north-westerly direction, and in their march had to contend with a more rigorous climate. Exasperated by their struggles with the elements and with many enemies, they retained all their savageness in their new settlement on the Volga. These restless warriors had barely secured their own existence in the west, when they began to attack their neighbours. After conquering the Alani, a nation only a little less barbarous than themselves, and adding to their own forces those of the vanquished tribes, the Huns became the terror of the Goths, and these also fell a prey to the invaders before the end of the fourth century of the Christian era. But the power of these wandering tribes was always liable to be paralysed by the jealousies of rival chiefs. Their notions of government were crude; hereditary succession was held of little account among them. The Huns were only formidable to their neighbours when they were under the leadership of chiefs who possessed sufficient vigour to rise pre-eminent over all others, and the talent or the craft to secure to themselves absolute power. Attila was one of these. The Huns were already in the ascendant when he came to the throne; but his genius, energy, and insatiable ambition soon rendered them the terror of all Europe, and himself the greatest barbarian that ever wielded the sceptre. Attila had a body-guard of subject kings. His effective force has been variously estimated at half-a-million and at seven hundred thousand men. He enriched himself with the spoils of all nations; yet in the height of his barbaric pride he retained in camp the simple habits of his ancestors. Having subdued every hostile tribe within his reach, and incorporated their armies with his own, he threw the whole weight of his forces on the corrupt and degenerate Roman Empire, which was brought to the feet of the conqueror and compelled to accept conditions of peace the most degrading that the insolence of the invader could dictate. Desolation everywhere followed the march of Attila, for destruction was ever the glory of the barbarians. As the old Huns lived by predatory warfare, so the hosts of Attila were actuated, only in a higher degree, by the savage instincts of wild beasts. But their power only held together while there was food for pillage, and a master mind to direct their enterprise. And thus their reign of terror in Europe was of brief duration. A heavy debauch cut short the career of Attila, and he died an inglorious death in his own bed from the bursting of an artery. The empire of his creation collapsed after his death amid contending factions; and in A.D. 468, just fifteen years after the death of Attila, the empire of the Huns was utterly destroyed, and their name disappeared from history. The shepherds tended their flocks in the steppes of Tartary, and 700 years passed away before another chief arose to summon the scattered tribes to his standard. During that period sundry insignificant dynasties succeeded each other on the outskirts of the Chinese dominions. The Turks also appeared in the interval, and established a formidable power, which lasted from the sixth to the eighth century. They issued from the Altai mountains, where they had served the Geougen Tartars who had overwhelmed the Huns after the death of Attila. The Turks, or Turki, reduced the Geougen, and, it is said, almost extirpated them. These Turks have been supposed to have been identical in race with the Huns who preceded, and the Mongols who followed, them.[10] But there is much reason to doubt their consanguinity.[11] The great skill in iron working for which the original Turks were distinguished, seems sufficient to mark a difference between them and the ancestors of the pure Mongols. They shaved the beard also in token of grief, and were considered by the Persians handsome men.[12] The Huns and Mongols had almost no beard, and in the eyes of all writers who have thought it worth while to describe their persons, they were remarkable for their deformity. [10] De Guignes. Hist. des Huns. [11] Memoirs of Baber. Erskine's Introd. [12] Un Hist. vol. iii. p. 365. It would, however, be a hopeless task to unravel the descent of the various races miscalled Tartars. The old Chinese records have preserved little more than the catalogue of kings and battles, and of the rise and fell of dynasties. The Tartar powers that have successively risen up in Asia have never been composed of a homogeneous race. Their names, even have generally been taken from some small tribe or family which accident rendered prominent; and the names Tartar, Turk, and Mongol, have been perpetuated and misapplied to armies and confederations of mixed races. The wanderings of these mixed tribes, the dissolution of empires which arose among them, and the reconstruction of these empires under new combinations, have constantly tended to the amalgamation in blood and language of races distinct in origin, but following the same nomadic habits. Their mode also of dealing with prisoners of war, and the conditions which they imposed on conquered nations, conduced still more to the fusion and confusion of races. It was unusual with the Huns or Mongols to spare their prisoners, unless they could employ them either as slaves or soldiers, or make profit by their ransom. The men were massacred, and the eligible women were appropriated by the conquerors. A supply of women was exacted as tribute from subject states. This gross indignity was ruthlessly imposed on the Chinese; and "a select band of the fairest maidens of China was annually devoted to the rude embraces of the Huns."[13] These practices must have tended greatly to enhance the perplexity of ethnologists in attempting to analyse the masses of men who, by the vicissitudes of war, were from time to time assembled under one standard, and received the name of the dominant family. [13] Gibbon, vol. iii. p. 363. When the Huns appeared in Europe, however, they were portrayed by the Goths and Romans in graphic but distorted terms. Through the haze of these hideous caricatures,[14] and the fabulous origin which fear and hatred attributed to the Huns, we cannot fail to identify in them the form and features of the modern Mongols. Whatever be the descent of the numerous Turki tribes, and whatever changes may have been brought about by intermixture, change of climate, &c., in the pastoral peoples, the great race of the Mongols has in the main preserved its manners and its characteristics through all its revolutions and migrations, and has proved its unity in blood with the Huns of Attila. The Mongols are certainly far from being a handsome people, but the Romans, themselves models of symmetry, greatly exaggerated their deformity. The barbarians were esteemed so fiendish in their aspect, that the Goths, to account for the phenomenon, were obliged to invent the fable of the descent of the Huns from the unholy union of Scythian witches with infernal spirits. They were inhumanly ugly. Attila himself was hideous. Yet that did not deter the young Princess Honoria from betraying, or feigning, a passion for him. That spirited lady, with a courage worthy of a better cause, found means of secretly communicating with the king of the Huns, and urged him to claim her as his bride. [14] Ibid. p. 371. In the thirteenth century, Genghis became Khan[15] of all the Mongols, who under him were once more the terror of the world. Genghis had already conquered the Naimans, a powerful people in their day; and invaded Tangout. When he had assembled under his standard the tribes of his own people and of the nations whom he had conquered, he was impelled by his restless ambition to keep them in motion. The lust of conquest became his ruling passion, and every new trophy added fuel to its flame. He first invaded Kitai, or northern China, overran the territories of the then powerful Kin, desolated their cities and villages, and massacred their people, and then retired to the river Tolla to recruit, having added to his army many Chinese of all ranks. The seven years' campaign in the west followed shortly after, during which Genghis conquered Persia and Bukhara, destroyed many populous cities, and put to the sword prodigious numbers of human beings. His lieutenants extended their ravages still further westward, while Genghis himself returned to his head-quarters at Kara-Korum. Kitai was again invaded, and Tangout subjugated. On the death of Genghis, in 1227, the succession to the Khanate fell to his son Oktai, who followed up the conquest of China according to instructions delivered by Genghis on his death-bed. But the empire had become so unwieldy, and the distances that separated the divisions of it so vast, that it could no longer subsist in its integrity. It was soon split up into sections, which were parcelled out to the descendants of Genghis. Some reigned in Persia, and some in Kapchak, a territory stretching from the Caspian Sea to Kazan, and covering a large portion of the steppe of the Kirghis. The little dynasty of the Nogai Tartars was also founded in Europe by a descendant of Genghis. The Tartar kingdoms of Kazan and the Crimea were both offshoots from the khans of Kapchak. Batou, Khan of Kapchak, or the Golden Horde, took Moscow and wasted the Russian provinces. Kublai, who succeeded to China, was the greatest of them all. In addition to that country, he possessed Pegu, Thibet, and the whole of Tartary; while Cochin China, Tonquin, and Corea paid him tribute. He was, moreover, acknowledged by all the other khans as their chief. But the whole continent of Asia lay between him and his vassals, and his suzerainty soon became a name only, and in course of time the form also was discontinued. [15] The title of Khan was first assumed by the Geougen, in the fifth century. The Mongols were, however, incapable of maintaining a settled government. The expeditions to subjugate Japan having proved fruitless, there was no other country left for them to conquer; this quiescent state was unnatural to them, and Chinese culture demoralised them in less than a hundred years. Russia was held by a tenure more suitable to the nomad habits of the Mongols. Armies had to be maintained, and the khans of the Golden Horde found occupation in keeping down the Russian princes. They therefore held their supremacy in Europe, until they did the work of their enemies by quarrelling amongst themselves, but their yoke was not finally shaken off till the fifteenth century. Before the empires founded by the family of Genghis had been wholly broken up, another great Mongol conqueror appeared in the person of Timour, or Tamerlane. Born under happier auspices, and brought up in contact with more civilised people, Timour added to the native ferocity and the ambition of universal empire of his ancestors, the arts and some of the refinements of education. He was, moreover, a zealous Mahommedan, and drew from the Koran encouragements in his career of conquest, and excellent moral maxims which seemed in strange contrast with his life. In a military point of view, Timour's life was a brilliant success. Before his death he placed twenty-seven crowns on his head; he conquered India, and boasted that he had penetrated northwards to the region of perpetual day. His conquests outstripped those of Alexander. "On the eastern bank of the Hyphasis, on the edge of the Desert, the Macedonian hero halted and wept; the Mogul entered the desert, reduced the fortress of Batnir, and stood in arms before Delhi."[16] He captured Delhi, and "purified his soldiers in the blood of the idolaters." Timour, when he was seventy years old, resolved to re-conquer China, from which country the family of Genghis had been recently expelled. He despatched his armies from Samarcand for the expedition, but he himself died on the way, in 1405, and his empire fell to pieces through the incapacity of his sons. [16] Gibbon, vol. ix. p. 10. Timour had perhaps the honour of shedding more blood than any of his predecessors; but, like them, he was incapable of governing what he had conquered. His boast that a child might carry a purse of gold from the east to the west, could be justified only on the supposition that he had pacified Asia by making it a solitude. He was considered a usurper by the Mongols of his day. He made war on his own people because they were idolaters; yet the modern Mongols worship him, beguiling their long evenings in their tents by chanting invocations to his memory. The next great Mongol who left his mark on the world was Timour's great-grandson Baber, who conquered Delhi in 1528, and founded there the dynasty of the Great Mogul. But Baber was ashamed of his descent, and despised the Mongol character. It was probably to his throwing off the barbarism of his ancestors, that his family owed the permanence of their Indian empire. The last scion of this royal house died in misery at Rangoon, in 1862. On the disruption of the Mongol empire, founded by Genghis, and built on by his successors, the tribes who composed it were dispersed far and wide over Europe and Asia, from the Great Wall of China to the Volga and the Black Sea. Their dynastic divisions were numerous, but the Mongol blood was soon lost in many of these. The Khans were often followed into conquered territories by a small proportion only of their own race, sometimes by a few families, and sometimes by a few individuals only, their armies being mainly composed of alien elements. These handfuls of men soon lost their national characteristics under the influence of a settled life, and contact with races better trained in the arts of peace. The numerical superiority of the people among whom they lived, must necessarily have absorbed them; and it would be hard now to trace the Mongol blood in the descendants of the Tartars of the Crimea, of Kazan, of Nogai, or of Kapchak. The homogeneous race of the Mongols may now be divided into the Kalkas, the Kalmuks, and the Bouriats. The Kalkas, who take their name from a small river rising in the Siolki mountains in Manchuria, are a numerous people, occupying the north of the Great Desert. They may be called the Mongols proper, if any are entitled to that name. The Kalmuks, so nicknamed by the Mahommedan Tartars, inhabit the Russian province of Astrakhan. A remarkable exodus of these people took place in 1770-71, on which occasion half a million of the Kalmuks of the Volga fled from the tyranny of Catherine II., and directed their march eastward by the route by which their ancestors had so often travelled to Europe. During their eight months' pilgrimage they were goaded to despair by hunger, weariness, and savage enemies; and when they at last found shelter in the dominions of the Emperor of China, they had been reduced to half their number. The Emperor Kienloong allotted to them a settlement in the province of Dsungaria, on the north-west of the desert. The Eleuths on the south-east of the desert are also of the race of the Kalmuks. The black Kalmuks are settled near the sources of the river Obi, north of the Altai mountains. The Bouriats in the Siberian province of Trans-baikal, although of true Mongol origin, do not appear to have been much mixed up in the military movements of the other tribes. They were nevertheless a warlike people, were subdued by the family of Genghis in the thirteenth century, and made a respectable stand against the Russians in the seventeenth. There are other tribes of Mongols within the modern limits of China proper, though north of the Great Wall. Some of these till the ground, but they are principally kept up as the reserve army of China. From the earliest times, these wandering tribes, when not united in a crusade against the human race at large, were constantly at war with each other. These feuds were continued with varying results for several centuries after their empire was broken up; but the adroitness of the Chinese on the one side, and the brute force of Russia on the other, have subdued the turbulent spirit of the Mongol hordes, who for the last hundred years have been quiet subjects of these two empires. The Mongols, Kalmuks, and Bouriats are all Bhuddists, while the other Tartar tribes, with whom the Mongols have been associated in their wars, are almost all Mahommedans. The history of the wars of the Huns and Mongols exhibits some curious psychical phenomena. First, we see these barbarous tribes, living in the most primitive condition, ignorant of everything beyond the range of animal instinct, vanquishing in fair fight the most warlike and civilised nations that then existed. By the weight of their masses, and the impetuosity of their onslaught, stimulated by the ferocity of fanaticism, the barbarians broke in on the old empires, which they overwhelmed like a flood. Civilisation bowed the neck to barbarism: matter triumphed over mind. And yet the materials of which these formidable hosts were composed were in themselves feeble and innocuous. When we see the descendants of the Huns quietly feeding their sheep in their native deserts, harmless and kind-hearted, simple and contented, it is hard to conceive that out of such a race could have come the conquerors of the world. Their power indeed was a matter of pure accident, that is to say, it lay dormant until accident raised up men with ability to use it. The shepherds have little power of reasoning, and no notions of self-government; but they are willing machines in the hands of a man of strong intellect, who can exact from them the worship due to a divinity. Under such a leader they can be handled like a pack of hounds, with which they have a close affinity in the instinct of obedience and unreasoning courage: animal qualities which are invaluable to the schemes of the master-mind. The heroes of the Mongol tribes have been few and far between. The marvel is that such a people could produce heroes at all. Their great conquerors were not men of ordinary ability, but of vast genius, rendered all the more conspicuous by their untutored barbarism. None but great minds could have controlled and directed the movements of such multitudes. The words of the khan were inexorable laws; without the ruling spirit nothing could be done. China was saved from a second conquest by the accident of the death of Timour; and it has been said that the fate of Europe at one time depended on the digestion of a barbarian under the Great Wall of China. Nor were the Mongol leaders animated by blind ferocity. They had an object in their wars, which was nothing less than the sovereignty of the world. Their courage was high, and they occasionally fought desperate battles. But that was not their usual custom. Attila, and Genghis, and Timour, all showed remarkable caution. They calculated the chances of a battle or a campaign with the deliberation of experienced generals, and declined engagements against heavy odds when they could effect a retreat without discouraging their troops. Attila, the rudest of them all, was a skilful diplomatist. He penetrated into Gaul, not so much by force of arms as by the craft he displayed in playing off one faction against another, and so distracting the counsels of his enemies. The secret of the ascendency of the Mongol chiefs lay mainly in the skill with which they used the potent instrument of superstition. The shepherds, illiterate and brutish, had a blind awe of the supernatural, which it was the policy of their leaders to encourage. Attila became miraculously possessed of the sword of the Scythian Mars, and thenceforth bore a sacred character which was confirmed to him by his early successes. A divine origin was attributed to the ancestors of Genghis. He was styled the son of God, and was popularly believed to have been born of a virgin.[17] The Turks traced their descent from a youth who was nursed by a she-wolf, a fable probably borrowed from that of Romulus and Remus. [17] Gibbon, vol. iv. p. 322, and note. The kings of the Huns and Mongols excited the enthusiasm of their armies by the use of omens. When unfavourable to their plans, the omens were either disregarded or explained away by the chiefs, who were probably incredulous, but at all events possessed the resolution to rise superior to the oracles. Thus when Attila had raised the siege of Orleans, and was pressed in his retreat by a powerful army of Goths and Romans, the auguries were against him, and his troops were dispirited. But Attila, considering that a defeat would be less disastrous to him than flight, rallied the sinking courage of the Huns by an eloquent oration, in which, with consummate ingenuity, he turned the very advantages of the enemy into encouragements to himself. Their well-chosen posts, their strict alliance and close order, he affected to attribute to fear alone. He plied his people also with arguments from the doctrine of fate, and persuaded them that they were as safe in the thick of the fight as in their own tents. In the desperate battle which ensued, Attila outdid himself in personal valour, and the Huns fought furiously; the slaughter on both sides was prodigious; but when night came Attila was fain to retire within his camp. The result of the action was nevertheless creditable to his sagacity, for he was still so formidable in defeat that his enemies compared him to a lion at bay, and they dared not renew the attack. Timour, who lived in a more enlightened age, or rather among a more enlightened people, and was himself educated in Mohammedanism, rose to a higher flight in the use and contempt of auguries. Instead of examining the entrails of animals, he consulted the planets and the Koran. When marching on Delhi his astrologers could not educe any favourable indication from the stars, but Timour refused to hamper his plans by such considerations, telling his astrologers that fortune does not depend on the stars, but on the Creator of them. The Huns and Mongols were distinguished from other men, chiefly by their waste of human life. They may be said to have depopulated Asia. The flourishing cities that once existed in the deserts of Tartary have been utterly destroyed; the history of many of them has been lost; and where large populations cultivated arts and industry, one may now see only the tent of a herdsman in the vast solitude. The savages boasted that grass never grew where the feet of their horses had trod, and that a horse might run without stumbling over the places where the great cities had stood. The conquerors built towers and pyramids of the heads of their enemies, that is, their prisoners--not soldiers only--but whole populations whom they massacred in cold blood. But yet, though ferocious, the barbarians were not, strictly speaking, cruel. Their systematic slaughter must be otherwise accounted for, and in a way even more humiliating to human nature. The morality of the kings, khans or emperors may be assumed to have been on a par with that of the people; it was in intellect only that they were pre-eminent. Attila, in the midst of his sins against mankind, was accessible to pity. His own people loved him. Genghis aspired to the honour of a wise legislator, and primitive though his code was, his motives for devising it were honourable. He encouraged trade so far as he knew how; patronised the sciences, and favoured the missionaries of all persuasions. He was both just and generous, and if he had but governed, instead of killing, the people he conquered, it is possible that he might have been a benefactor to mankind. Yet, in three cities alone, Genghis caused more than four millions of people to be slaughtered. But the strange paradox comes out in more vivid colours in the character of Timour, who, compared with his predecessors, was civilised and humane. Amongst his exploits was the massacre of one hundred thousand people at Delhi. He exacted from Ispahan a contribution of seventy thousand, and from Bagdad of ninety thousand human heads to build towers with. Although a Mahommedan he did not spare his co-religionists, but slew indiscriminately all who seemed to stand in his way. When he grew old, and was satiated with blood and glory, he repented. But his repentance was the most curious episode in the monster's history. He planned a pious mission to China, and in announcing his resolve to his council, he told them that the conquests he had made were not obtained _without some violence_, which had occasioned the death of a great number of God's creatures. To atone for past crimes he determined to perform some good action, namely, to _exterminate the idolaters of China_.[18] [18] Un. Hist. vol. v. p. 57. By what law or standard of ethics can such an abuse of the moral faculties be judged? And how can such antagonistic traits of character be reconciled? The Mongols did not practise the cruelties that have so often disgraced more refined peoples. Tortures were exceptional among them, perhaps because their invention had not risen to such a pitch. Noble captives were paraded in chains, but that was done rather to glorify the victor than to punish the victim. The Mongol massacres seem to have been dictated less by positive than negative considerations. Their low estimate of the value of human life lay at the bottom of it all. The slaughter of the population of a great city was no more in their eyes than the destruction of so many vermin. Their towers of human heads were to the primitive barbarians what the trophies of the chace are to sportsmen. Being guided by animal instincts alone, they were unconscious of any wrong. So low is the moral condition of uncultivated races, "the children of nature," that human feelings can only grow in them after ages of gradual education. The social virtues, and even the natural affections, are only developed in their full force by means of artificial or civilised life, just as the perfectability of plants is only attained by the aid which art gives to nature. So, then, the artificial state is in a sense more natural to man than the natural or primitive condition of savages. His moral nature needs culture as much as his intellect does; and artificial life alone can bring out man's natural qualities. The affections of the Huns and Mongols were little more than such as they possessed in common with the lower animals. They loved their children after a fashion, and sometimes they loved a favourite wife. But if we desire to test the quality of the paternal affection of such people, let us look at the half-tamed barbarian Peter the Great, who condemned and executed his own son, after inviting him to surrender under the promise of a full pardon. The theory has been advanced that the exclusively animal diet of the shepherds rendered them ferocious,[19] and that their familiarity with the blood of their sheep excited their passion for the blood of their fellow-creatures. But neither of these hypotheses is founded on fact. The elaborate cruelties of the vegetarians of China and Japan supply a sufficient answer to the first. The Chinese have racked their ingenuity to multiply tortures, and a fat rice-eater will sip up his tea and fan himself with perfect _sang-froid_, while he causes the nails of a victim to be pulled out. When their blood is up the Chinese are as savage as the Mongols, and by so much the more cruel as their superior intellects supply to them varieties in the enjoyment of their blood-thirstiness. [19] "Il est certain que les grands mangeurs de viande sont en général cruels et féroces plus que les autres hommes. Cette observation est de tous les lieux et de tous les temps; la barbarie anglaise est connue."--Emile de Rousseau. Gibbon, iii. p. 350. To the second observation it may be replied that the professional butchers are not the least humane class of civilised society; their occupation does not impair their human sympathies. A wild beast may be excited by the taste of blood, but it is merely from the instinct that impels him to seek his natural food. The brutalising influence of war itself is well known. To this rule there are few exceptions. Even among Christian nations, in whom the degrading tendency is counteracted by education and social culture, the hero of many battles is but too apt to value his men at so much per head. Barbarians, with no controlling power to check the natural bent of their passions, exhibit the full dehumanising effects of war. They glory in the mere shedding of blood, as a hunter delights in the death of his game. Yet this savage passion is far removed from simple cruelty, and may be quite compatible with a low form of goodness of heart. Although at first sight the simple life of pastoral peoples does not seem likely to produce a race of warriors, yet the very simplicity of their habits peculiarly adapts them for warlike enterprises. The incentives to war would not be wanting to wandering tribes with no fixed boundary; for they would be constantly invading each others' pasture grounds. Hence, the habits of predatory warfare would be induced. Their hardiness and endurance would enable them to sustain the fatigue of long marches, privations and exposure. Such a community needs no commissariat. Their food is the flesh of their cattle or horses, which, being accustomed to eat grass only, can always feed themselves on the way. Their tents might even be dispensed with, and the ground would serve them for a camp. Their indifference to life renders unnecessary any provision for the care of the sick or the wounded. They are not hampered in their movements by any tie to localities. The whole world is alike to them. Their life in war, involving the long marches and countermarches which wear out other troops, was little different from their ordinary habits in peace. Their enthusiasm made them formidable. Their ignorance rendered them unscrupulous. They destroyed the noblest monuments of learning and industry with the same wantonness that prompts a child to pull to pieces the finest piece of mechanism. They set no value on anything, and it was a pleasant recreation for them to destroy what they could neither appreciate nor understand. The spoils of civilisation allured them to new conquests. Victory inflated their fanaticism. Defeat subdued their spirit for the time, but they had always a retreat open in the deserts of Asia where they were at least safe from the retaliation of the civilised nations whom they had oppressed. In their career of devastation they were often stimulated by necessity. When their earlier successes had attracted great numbers to the victorious standard, it was impossible to maintain the vast multitude stationary. First, their pastures would soon become exhausted; and, secondly, their leaders could only maintain their own character and their ascendency over their followers by active operations. The alien troops, who entered largely into the composition of their armies, were always ready to secede from their forced allegiance. Any symptom of weakness or incapacity in the chief would be the signal for a general disruption. Out of this necessity for perpetual motion doubtless arose the Mongol vision of universal empire. The military enthusiasm in the Mongols is only dormant, not dead. We have seen, four or five years ago, with what alacrity Sang-ko-lin-sin, himself a Kalka Mongol, and one of the forty-eight kings, brought a force into the field to bar our entrance into Peking, and with what zeal and energy the Mongol troops acquitted themselves. Given a sufficient motive, and a man to lead them, and the shepherds could soon be put in motion again. By nature they are faithful to their chiefs, and their head lama has but to hold up his finger to stir up the sleeping prowess of the shepherds. Nor is it likely that the sanguinary passions, common to barbarians, have been eradicated in the Mongols. Quiet and peaceful as they are among their flocks, they would be as fierce in war as in the bloodiest days of their history. CHAPTER XI. MONGOLS--PHYSICAL AND MENTAL CHARACTERISTICS. The following physical characteristics of the Mongolian race, by a gentleman who resided many years among the Bouriats in Trans-baikal, are equally applicable to the tribes in Mongolia proper, and to some extent also to the Chinese. "The high cheek-bones; the oblique, elongated eye, dark and piercing; the flat nose, with compressed nostrils; the strong black straight hair; the large protuberant ears; the small sharp chin; the want of beard in the men, till late in life; the general gravity of expression, and cautious, inquisitive mode of address, are so many marks of this tribe of men, never to be mistaken, and never to be found so strongly developed in any other."[20] [20] Scottish Congreg. Mag., Dec. 1841. There is nothing noble or generous in the Mongol character, and those tribes who have afforded the widest field for observation, are said to be naturally servile to superiors and tyrannical to inferiors. Their _meanness_ is remarkable. They are not too proud to beg the smallest trifle, and a man well blessed with this world's goods thinks it no disgrace to receive alms. The habits they have inherited qualify them admirably for the lazy nomad life which they lead. But they have no heart for work in the sense of regular, steady occupation. Fatigue and privation they make no account of, but it goes quite against the grain with them to do a day's work. They sadly lack energy and enterprise, and are easily discouraged. The Mongols proper are seldom tempted to leave the beaten track of their pastoral life, and even the Bouriats, who live amongst Russians, and have incentives to exertion, show little disposition to depart in anything from their traditional mode of life. The Russian government has tried to make them farmers, but with very little success. Every Bouriat family is compelled by law to cultivate a few acres of ground. Government supplies them with seed, generally rye, on condition that an equal quantity be returned to the government granary the following year, or its equivalent in money paid. They are subject to bad seasons in those regions. A backward, dry spring, with no rain before June, is of not unfrequent occurrence; in such seasons the crops don't ripen before the autumn frosts come, and the year's labour is lost. The seed corn must, nevertheless, be delivered back to the granary, and the Bouriat agriculturist loses heart. The cardinal virtue of the Mongol tribes is hospitality, which is as freely exhibited to perfect strangers, as to neighbours, from whom a return may be expected. Indeed, the nomad life would be intolerable without this mutual good-feeling and readiness to assist, to feed, and to shelter travellers. The absence of trades, and of the amenities of settled communities, renders the Mongol people mutually dependent, and hospitality becomes simply a necessity among them. At the pitching and striking of tents, at sheep-shearing and felt-making, the assistance of neighbours is required by all in turn. When cattle stray, the neighbours help to catch them. When a Mongol is on a journey in the desert, he is dependent on the hospitality of the families whose tents he may pass on his way, and he will always be welcome. The Mongols are also attracted to each other's quarters to hear news, or for the mere satisfaction of talking. In such a sparsely peopled country, this feeling makes a stranger all the more welcome. Although rather addicted to petty pilfering, the Mongols are, in a general way, honest. At any rate, they will not betray a trust committed to them. The fidelity of servants is universal, and theft, robbery, and assault, are of rare occurrence among them. Their most prevalent vice is drunkenness; and, although drinking, and even smoking, are prohibited by the sacerdotal law, the living example of the priests is more powerful than the dead letter of the law. Those Mongols who wander to the frontier of China or Russia, supply themselves with tobacco, and distribute it to their friends in the desert. Every one carries a pipe with a small brass bowl, like the Chinese. A steel and flint are invariably attached to the tobacco-pouch. The Mongols also take snuff, using a stone bottle, with an ivory spoon attached to the stopper, after the Chinese fashion. Chinese liquor they use very sparingly, and only on great occasions of bargaining or merry-making. They use a spirit of their own very extensively, and as it is made out of milk, an article which is very abundant among pastoral people, their supply of the spirit is almost unlimited. They call it _ir'chi_, or in the Bouriat dialect _araki_, a name applied by the Mongols to all liquors indiscriminately. It is better known to Europeans by the name of _kumiss_. The following account of the mode in which the spirit is distilled from milk is interesting: "The milk, previously soured and fermented, is put into a large iron kettle, over which is inverted a wooden dish, fitted to the edge of the former, and luted with cow-dung. One end of a bent wooden tube is inserted into a hole in the inverted dish, and at the other end is placed a cast-iron pot to receive the liquid as it comes over. When the fire has made the contents of the kettle boil, the vapour is condensed within the tube, and passes into the receiving vessel in the form of ardent spirit."[21] The spirit is fit to drink whenever it is made, and as it is more than usually plentiful when the pastures are richest, that is the season of the greatest excesses. Any sort of milk may be used, but mare's milk is said to make the most approved liquor. The Mongols are inclined to be uproarious in their cups; and squabbles often occur, but they seldom come to anything very serious. [21] Scot. Cong. Mag., Feb. 1842. The morality of the Mongols is about a fair average of that of the rest of mankind, perhaps purer than that of more civilised countries. Their customs admit of polygamy, but it is too expensive to be very common, as each wife has to be in a manner bought of her father for a certain number of oxen, horses, or camels. They have a strong objection to marrying within their own families, or tribes, considering all the descendants of one father or head of a tribe as brothers and sisters, however distant their actual relationship may be. "So universal is this custom," says the writer already quoted, "that I never knew or heard of an instance of its being violated." The lamas are all celibats, but seeing this class numbers one fourth or one fifth of the male population, it might safely be predicated of them that their vows are not strictly kept. As a matter of fact, the celibacy of the lamas is in very many instances a merely nominal thing. The lama may not marry, but he can take to himself a "disciple;" children will be born to him in the natural course of events, and no great public scandal will be excited thereby. Hence a standing joke among the laity is to ask tenderly for the health of Mrs. Lama. The Mongol women are childishly fond of small ornaments for their hair. Any kind of tinsel, or small glass ware, is highly valued by them. Before marriage, the women wear their hair disposed in plaits which hang straight down. Ornaments of coral, or other articles, are suspended from the plaits. After marriage the hair is collected into two thick ties, one at each side, falling down over the front of the shoulders, and adorned according to the fancy or means of the wearer. They wear a kind of tiara round the head, which is ornamented with coral, glass, strings of mock pearls, or any kind of gaudy trinkets they can pick up. They also wear sometimes, instead of the ordinary cap, a coronet of soft fur, fastened round the head, and projecting over the brow, which gives them, at first sight, a rakish appearance. The Mongols, one and all, evince great regard for decency in their dress and habits. Their inner garments consist of cotton trousers, tightly fastened by a scarf round the waist, and a long flowing robe of the same material. These are generally of blue. The long sheepskin is kept in reserve for night-work, or cold days. They never appear uncovered outside of their tents, even in hot weather. In this respect they contrast remarkably with all other natives in hot climates with whom I am acquainted. In physical development, the Mongols do not rank very high. They are in stature below the middle height, but moderately stout. Short necks are common, but many thin, scraggy necks are also met with. They do not get corpulent like the Chinese. They look healthy and robust. Their muscular energy is rather low, which may be due to their avoiding all regular work, and partly perhaps to their exclusively animal diet. Wrestling is one of their favourite amusements, and the trained wrestlers are proud of their skill in the art. A square-built lama challenged me to wrestle with him at Tsagan-tuguruk. There was a great concourse of people present, and to have declined the contest would have been as bad as a defeat. I therefore determined to risk the trial. I soon found that being totally ignorant of the art, I had to act solely on the defensive. After some ineffectual attempts the lama threw me. I had a firm hold of him, however, and we both came down together, the lama under. Having come out of the ordeal better than I expected, I had no wish to try another round, and the lama also had enough. It was my turn to challenge then, and considering that the honour of my country required it, I offered to box my antagonist, which honour he respectfully declined. This incident exhibited to me the muscular weakness of one of the best-made men I met among the Mongols. But their weakest point is their legs, which are rarely exercised. The Mongols begin from their earliest years to ride on horseback. If they have but to go a few hundred yards, they will ride if possible, in preference to walking. They walk with the gait of a duck; indeed, were their legs good--which they are not--the heavy shapeless leather boots they wear would prove an effectual bar to walking. These boots come up near the knee, are made of nearly uniform size, so that the largest feet will go easily into any of their boots. Thick stockings are also used, and the foot has ample play with all that. They are nearly all bow-legged, a circumstance that might be explained by their constant habit of riding, or by the pressure that is put on them when infants to make them sit cross-legged, were it not frequently developed in children before the age when nurses begin to cross their legs. The phenomenon may nevertheless be the indirect result of both these causes. The habits of the tribes being fixed and uniform for many ages, the bow-legged tendency which these habits are calculated to produce, may have been gradually impressed on the race as a permanent feature, by the mystery of hereditary influence. Thus the peculiarity, although originally accidental, would become permanent and constitutional. The Mongol is rarely seen standing upright. He is either sitting on horseback, or crouching in a tent. The Mongols are rather dark-complexioned; the face and hands, which are constantly exposed to sun and weather, are deeply bronzed; the skin is very coarse; the covered parts of the body are much lighter than the exposed parts, but among the men there is nothing like a white skin. The whitest of them are yellowish. During our ablutions the whiteness of our skins was a subject of constant remark among the Mongols, although the skin of our faces became, by constant exposure to the sun while in Mongolia, as dark as that of the Mongols themselves. The Mongols, nevertheless, have often a ruddy complexion, but it is uncommon among the men. The women are much fairer than the men, and are much less exposed to the sun, being mostly in the tents attending to household duties. Their faces, although rough and weather-beaten more or less, have all a "roseate hue." Old women frequently become pasty white in the face. Their children are born fair skinned, and with brownish hair, which gradually becomes darker as they grow up. Shades of brown are however not unfrequent even in adults, and a tendency to curl is sometimes observable. Their eyes are seldom quite black, but run on various shades of brown. The white of the eye is usually "bloodshot" in middle-aged men, probably from two causes, exposure to wind and weather, and the argol smoke of their tent fires. They live, without any inconvenience, in an atmosphere of sharp biting smoke, which our eyes could not tolerate. The small eyes of the Mongols are shaded by heavy wrinkled eyelids, which, in many instances, are permanently contracted, giving the eye a peculiarly keen expression, as it peers out from under the mass of soft muscle that surrounds it. This feature is entirely absent in children, and is no doubt produced in adults by exposure to glare and the habit of straining after distant objects in a dry sandy country. The almost entire absence of beard is a remarkable feature in the Mongolians. As regards this and other marks of race, it may be useful to compare the Mongols with their near neighbours the Chinese. The two races have a sufficient number of broad characteristics in common to warrant their classification under one great type of mankind. But their differences are also well marked, and are deserving of attention. The northern districts of China are not very different from Mongolia in point of climate. Both have a short but hot summer, and an extremely rigorous winter, differing only in degree. Both climates are dry. The northern Chinese assimilate more closely than any other of their countrymen to the Mongol habit of life. They eat animal food rather extensively, and drink strong liquor freely. Yet in physical development they are further removed from the Mongols in some features than even the southern Chinese who live on rice, fish, and vegetables. In the matter of beards, which led to this comparison, the northern Chinese are in a marked degree more hairy than their southern compatriots, and these again than the natives of Mongolia. In none of them is the beard developed till towards middle life; yet they all attain the age of puberty earlier than Europeans. The beef-eaters of northern China are tall, muscular, and robust, as much superior to the Mongols as they are to their own countrymen who lead a different life. But with their animal diet the northern Chinese eat copiously of vegetable and farinaceous food, while the Mongols live almost exclusively on mutton. The regularity of habits which prevail in settled populations may also have its influence in the general physical development of the people. The nomads have certain qualities cultivated to excess, and others almost entirely unused. The animal instincts are naturally found highly developed amongst the Mongols. The sense of sight is very acute in them; they are sensitive to indications of changes of weather, and so with various other instincts which to these wandering tribes supply the wants of a more artificial life, and enable them to exist in a state of nature. Individuality is in a great measure lost among such people. The habits and education of each individual among them are identical. Their pursuits are all the same. The very same faculties, both physical and mental, are kept in exercise among the whole tribe, and that through many generations, so that they have become hereditary, and indelibly imprinted on the race. A Mongol who was not a good horseman would be as anomalous as one that was inhospitable. The uniformity of life among the members of these nomad tribes, while it keeps back many faculties, the exercise of which is necessary to the existence of civilised people, also renders the type of whole tribes constant, so that no one individual differs greatly in external features from another. In civilised communities, where the division of labour has become so indispensable as to be in itself one great criterion of civilisation, a variety of types are evolved even in a single lifetime. A tailor can never be mistaken for a blacksmith, nor a soldier for a sailor; but tribes whose habits compel each family to be independent, as it were, of all the rest of the world, whose wants are limited by the means of supplying them, and among whom different occupations are almost unknown, do necessarily present a remarkable uniformity. It would be unsound to generalise too freely, and there are of course the individual distinctions of physiognomy as well marked as among other races, but these differences are more limited in their scope. Some trades are known to the Mongols, such as felt-making, tanning and dressing skins, iron, copper, and silver work, saddle-making, &c. In more settled parts they also make harness, carts, and sledges; and printing from blocks, after the manner of the Chinese and Japanese, is also known among them. These arts are most cultivated among the Bouriats in Siberia, who, by their contact with the Russians, and from the nature of the country they inhabit, are thrown more in the way of artificial life than the desert tribes. To the casual observer, at least, the Mongols do not present the same individual differences as their neighbours, the Chinese. In complexion they are nearly all alike, although the skin seems to get darker as the face becomes wrinkled with age, which might seem to favour the idea that the brownish skin of the Mongols is due as much to their habits as to their descent, or the effects of climate. But the causes which influence colour are very obscure. In Siberia, where Sclavonic races have been settled for nearly two centuries, living side by side with Mongol tribes, and exposed to the same climatic influences, these show no signs of variation from the complexion of their ancestors, as it is exhibited by their European representatives. Again, the Portuguese settlers in Macao, who degenerate very rapidly, become in two or three generations much darker in the skin than the native Chinese. It is not the smoky atmosphere of their tents that darkens the skin of the Mongols, for in that case, the women, who are more exposed to it, would be darker than the men, the reverse of which is the case. A comparison with the Japanese again would seem to show that exposure exercises at the most an insignificant effect in darkening the skin. The Japanese live much within doors, and are careful to protect themselves from the sun when they stir abroad by means of broad-brimmed hats and umbrellas. Great differences of complexion exist among them, whether regarded as individuals or classes; but it is safe to say they are on the whole quite as dark as the Mongols. The contrast between men and women is singularly marked, the women having fair clear complexions, often rosy. Yet the Japanese women are a good deal out of doors, and are fairer skinned than the Chinese women, who are only blanched by confinement to the house and exclusion from light and air. The Mongols, although deficient in muscular energy, and incapacitated for sustained activity, are nevertheless gifted with great powers of endurance. I have already noticed their capacity for enduring prolonged fasts, and their ability to go several days and nights without sleep, with equal impunity. The sudden and important changes to which their climate is subject, are also borne without any great suffering. From a hot summer, they are plunged, with but slight gradations, into an extremely rigorous winter, when the temperature falls very low, and is accompanied by keen cutting winds, that sweep over the steppes with merciless fury, and from which they have no better protection than their tents. The Mongol tribes stand low in the scale of mental capacity. Scattered over vast deserts, remote from civilised man, they are ignorant by necessity. Their intellectual faculties have no stimulus to exertion. Their aims in life, and their whole worldly ambition, are limited to flocks and herds. While there is grass enough to feed the sheep, and sheep enough to feed the men, they have little else to disturb their quiet equanimity. Thus they lead an idle careless life, free from thought and everything that might disturb the negative happiness they enjoy. This kind of existence is truly a low form, having more affinity with the animal than the mental side of human nature, while at the same time it is to be observed that they are almost entire strangers to the varied emotions that fill up the existence of a civilised being; so that both their intellectual and moral qualities are dwarfed and partially destroyed. The prostrate mental condition of the people predisposes them to the domination of superior minds, and when their highly superstitious tendencies are considered, it is not surprising that they are among the most priest-ridden races in the world. It is not easy to say why these people should be more easily imposed upon than others, excepting that ignorance is always found to go hand-in-hand with this mental weakness. The wild solitary life of the desert is also, no doubt, eminently favourable to belief in the supernatural and mysterious. A man who frequently passes days and nights with no society, except the howling waste below, and the deep blue sky above, has his imagination set free from the trammels of the world of fact. He has no resources but in the spirit-world, and it is not unnatural that his fancy should people the air with superior intelligences, whose voices are heard in the desert winds or the rustling leaves of the forest. Under these conditions of life, the poor nomads are in a proper frame of mind to become the thralls of any one who will undertake to interpret for them the spiritual mysteries on which their imagination runs riot. The lamas fill this office, and are treated with unbounded respect by the masses. The religion of the Mongols is Bhuddism, a superstition which numbers more votaries than any other existing religion, true or false. But the fact is, they are Bhuddists only in name; that is to say, the laity are almost wholly ignorant of the doctrines of Bhuddism. Even the lamas have but vague and confused ideas about it. Their prayers are conned by rote, and these priests are generally ignorant of the Thibetan language in which they are written. The Mongol religion may indeed be called Lamaism, its leading doctrine being faith, implicit and absolute, in the authoritative teaching of the lamas, and that not in any well-digested system of belief settled and fixed by the united wisdom of the sect, but in such interpretation of spiritual matters as any individual lama may choose to give. The gods are deified lamas. The Dalai Lama of Thibet is a god incarnate, as is also the Lama king of the Mongols; and even the ordinary lamas, whose name is legion, are considered as off-shoots from deity in a sense that entitles them to the worship of common mortals. The abstruse doctrines of the metempsychosis and the future state, are studied by the recluses who live in the retirement of the great monasteries, and spend their time in prayer and meditation. But the every-day lama, although he carries a pocketful of musty papers, in which the eighteen hells and twenty-six heavens are elucidated, cares little for these things. He has more practical matters to attend to than meditating on the Bhuddist notion of bliss consummated by absorption into Bhudda--complete repose--in other words, annihilation. His written liturgies are a powerful spell by which he maintains his moral influence over the people, and it is none the less powerful that neither party fully comprehends their meaning. More regard is paid to the quantity than to the quality of their prayers, and to facilitate their devotions an ingenious machine is in common use, consisting of a roller containing a string of prayers. This is sometimes turned by hand, and sometimes it is attached to a windmill! So long as it is turned round by some means, the efficacy of the prayers is considered the same. No doubt it is. The petitions are long-winded and multifarious. The following, from one of the lama liturgies, is a specimen: "From the fear of the king, from the fear of robbers, from the fear of fire, from the fear of water, from the fear of loss, from the fear of enemies, from the fear of famine; of thunder, of untimely death, earthquakes, thunderbolts, of the king's judgment, of the tengri, of the loo, of wild beasts, &c., keep me and all men in safety." [22] [22] First-fruits of a Mission to Siberia. Cape Town. 1847. The general drift of their religious observances is towards securing immunity from the "ills that flesh is heir to," rather than towards providing for a future state. Both objects are aimed at, but the materialistic greatly preponderates. Medical knowledge is of course at a low ebb among these wandering people. The lamas are their physicians. When a child or a horse is taken ill, the ignorant people are taught to believe that an evil spirit is present, which can only be exorcised by the incantations of a lama. In every doubt and difficulty a lama is consulted. He is at once a detective officer, justice of the peace, priest and physician. His blessing is at all times efficacious. His power over disease is unquestioned. There is virtue for good or evil in all his acts. His authority to declare what is right and what is wrong is never doubted. The punishments he may inflict for violation of his precepts are borne patiently. In a word, the lamas are the beginning and the end, at once the ministers and the objects of religion to the simple Mongols. Their persons are held sacred, and they wear a sacred dress consisting of a red cotton garment with a collar of black velvet, and a cap of peculiar shape. Their heads are shaven all over, which is a sufficient distinction from the laymen, who shave the head only in front of the crown, wearing a tail like the Chinese. Wherever a lama goes he is received with open arms, and assumes the place of honour in any tent which he may deign to enter. The priestly tyranny of these functionaries opens a wide door to the most heartless knavery, and dishonest lamas who oppress and eat up the people are very common. Were the lama order restricted to one class of people, it is possible their victims might rise in rebellion against their assumption of authority. But the lamas are drawn from every tribe and household. The second son of every family is generally set apart from his birth as a priest. In childhood and youth he is regarded as a superior being in his parental tent. The place of honour is assigned to him from the time he is able to sit cross-legged. When an opportunity offers, the little devotee repairs to a monastery, where he may learn the Thibetan characters and the rudiments of the lama prayers. Great numbers of lamas reside permanently in these monasteries, which are supported by contributions from the people, or endowed by the Emperor of China. The lama unattached receives no pay, and has therefore to support himself, as the rest of his countrymen do, by feeding sheep and cattle. His special services are paid for according to his cupidity or the wealth of his employers. Many of them grow rich on the spoils of their deluded votaries. Some others, of ultra-nomadic proclivities, keep no cattle and own no tents. They simply roam about where fancy directs, and live on the people whose tents they pass. These are not much respected, but are, nevertheless, hospitably entertained wherever they go. The spread of Bhuddism eastward over Mongolia, China, and Japan, the deep hold it has taken on the people of those countries, to the extinction almost of pre-existing superstitions, are most remarkable phenomena. Looking at the degenerate form of the religion that has sprung up in Mongolia, and the ignorance of the people, tending strongly to adherence to the dogmas of their fathers, it seems wonderful that Bhuddism should have had vitality enough to supersede the ancient Shamanism. The Bhuddistic doctrines, involved and obscure as they are, certainly filled up a blank that must have been felt even among the most unthinking races, for Shamanism had no reference to a future life. In this respect Bhuddism is more elevating than Shamanism, and when first introduced into a new country, it was probably in a purer form, and untarnished by the many abuses that have grown out of it in its subsequent history. Among the Bouriats, Shamanism was almost universal as late as one hundred and fifty years ago. Up to that time it was the only superstition known to the northern nomads. The Shaman worship was directed to the material heavens and heavenly bodies--fire, earth and water, wild beasts and birds, and the malignant spirits of the air, called tengri. Its ritual consisted very little in prayers, but mainly of animal sacrifices. Some curious facts connected with the Shaman superstition are given by Mr. Swan in the "Scottish Congregational Magazine." As a preventive against cattle being killed by lightning, a horse is devoted to the god of thunder--light grey or white being preferred. He is brought to the door of his owner's tent, and while the Shaman ceremonies are going on, a cup of milk is placed on his back. When the ceremonies are concluded, the horse is cast loose, the milk falls, and the animal is thenceforth sacred. No one may use him again, and, when he dies, his tail and mane are cut off and twisted into those of another horse, who, from that time, also becomes sacred to the god of thunder. They also had a ceremony of a scapegoat, which in its details coincided most singularly with that of the Levitical institution. The Shaman offerings usually consisted of three animals sacrificed at once--part of the flesh was eaten, and the rest, stuck on a pole, was consumed by crows or magpies. Another strange practice of the Shamans, and one which is common also among the lamas, betrays the intellectual imbecility of the people who could tolerate and be deceived by it. To exorcise the evil spirit out of a sick person, an effigy of straw is made, and clothed in the garments of the patient. The priests proceed to kill the man of straw, then convey it away and burn it. The unsophisticated devil is supposed to be watching these proceedings, and to mistake the effigy for the sick person; so that when it is destroyed, this most accommodating spirit considers his own malignant purpose accomplished, and at once leaves the sick person, who thereupon recovers. It is even said that human victims are used for this purpose by the rich in Mongolia and Thibet. The Shamans were simply sorcerers. Their ceremonies were wild fanatical ravings, and their ranks were usually filled by persons of diseased brains. The people generally were reluctant to become Shamans, and a severe illness was often held to be an intimation to the person affected of the desire of the Spirits that he or she should become a "medium." The Bouriats learned Bhuddism from the Mongols, their kinsmen. About the beginning of the eighteenth century a mission was sent from Siberia to Thibet. The members of it returned as lamas and brought the paraphernalia of the new religion with them, built a temple, and set up Bhuddism. The Shamans were then gradually superseded by the lamas in the districts of Trans-baikal--sacrifices gave place to prayers--and a purely materialist superstition to one which recognised the necessity of providing against a future existence. When, and under what circumstances, the Mongols proper embraced Bhuddism, is not so easy to determine. The Chinese received it in the first, and the Japanese in the sixth century of the Christian era; but it does not appear to have been known to the Mongols before the time of Genghis. It was probably during the wandering career of the hordes under his leadership, that the lamas insinuated themselves into influence over the untutored shepherds. The higher culture which they had acquired, even by their partial education, would mark them in the eyes of the rude Tartars as a superior order of magicians; and their ascendancy over the Mongol intellects would be natural and easy. There are traditions of Lamaism in the district of the Ortous before the time of Genghis, but as that part of the desert had frequently been incorporated with China, the existence of Bhuddist monasteries there is not inconsistent with the supposition that the Mongol tribes became Bhuddists only after the wars of Genghis. It would appear that Mohammedanism also was introduced into China by means of the armies of Genghis, which traversed Asia in every direction from the Great Wall of China to the Volga. The Bhuddism, or Lamaism, of the Mongols, serves the important purpose of binding the tribes together by one common bond of union. The adoration they are taught to pay to their Dalai Lama is such as to give that personage a power over them greater, probably, than is exercised by any crowned head over his people. The Dalai Lama is the Pope of the Mongols. He is a valuable ally to the Chinese Emperor, and would be a dangerous enemy. When Russia comes to carry out any aggressive design in Mongolia, the Great Lama of the Kalkas will be the instrument used; and the Consular establishment at Urga, if it succeeds in gaining over the Lama king to the Russian views, will not have been kept up in vain. To conciliate this dignitary the Chinese Emperors liberally endow monasteries, and support and encourage Lamaism in every way possible;--but the Russian Emperors will find no difficulty in securing the attachment of the Lama when their plans are matured. The Mongol people, though in a sense slaves or serfs to their chiefs, really enjoy every liberty. They pay tithes to their lords of the produce of their herds, but there is no exaction, and no apparent discontent. The forty-eight chieftains enjoy the Chinese title of _wang_, _i.e._, prince, or king, and though tributary to the Emperor, they receive from him more than they pay. Their allegiance is, in reality, purchased by the Chinese court, and they are certainly faithful to their salt. CHAPTER XII. KIACHTA. As we approached the Russian frontier we reflected on the savage condition in which we had been living for so long, and were not without some anxiety as to how we should brook the glimmering of civilisation which we might expect to find, even in that remote corner of Christendom. It was also uncertain what reception we would meet with from the Russian officials, for although we had every reason to anticipate cordiality and friendly assistance, still political complications in Europe might have altered the relations of either of our respective countries with the court of Russia, and difficulties might possibly be raised. I had not forgotten the advice of a Russian official, high in the confidence of his Government, to defer my journey till more tranquil times. While indulging in these vain surmises, a smart shower of snow diverted our attention to other matters. The Chinese town of Maimachin has first to be passed through. It is surrounded by a modern palisade, and looks mean enough externally, but improves vastly on acquaintance. The streets are regular, wide (for China), and tolerably clean. The houses are solid, tidy, and tastefully decorated, with pretty little courtyards, and ornamental screens for their doors, &c. The Chinese settlers have evidently improved by contact with the Russians, for the style of their houses in Maimachin, where the Chinese are only sojourners away from their own country, is superior to what one usually sees, even in fashionable cities in China proper. The _yamun_, or Government office, is at the far end of Maimachin, and is presided over by a Mongol. Beyond the Yamun is an open square, which is considered neutral ground between Russia and China. On the Russian side of the square we pass through a gate and are in Kiachta, under the wing of the great Russian eagle, which we see paraded everywhere over our heads. The black and white posts, said to have been a pet fancy of that miserable pedant, Paul Petrovitch, that offend the eye everywhere in Russia; the elegant houses with white-washed walls and red or green roofs; the gorgeous churches with tall tapering spires; and the wide streets, with nobody in them, are all taken in at the first glance through the gateway, and establish it beyond doubt that we are really in the territory of the Czars. With little trouble we found out Mr. Pfaffius, Commissary of the Frontier, an office established in lieu of the governorship which had been abolished. The Commissary received us in a very friendly manner, gave me some letters that had overtaken me from China, files of the "Times" newspaper up to the 5th of August, and finally, to my great joy and comfort, announced that he had instructions from his superiors to facilitate my journey homewards, in consequence of an application from Lord Napier to the authorities at St. Petersburg. Nothing could be more satisfactory, and we had only now to get lodgings and make ourselves easy for a little. Kiachta itself is but a small place, and contains few inhabitants, except the Commissary and his dependents, and the Russian merchants who are engaged in the China trade. The general population lives at Troitskosarfsk, which is a good-sized town, about two miles from Kiachta. Thither we proceeded with our caravan, and soon fell into comfortable quarters by the kind assistance of my countryman, Mr. Grant. The day was wearing on, and our Mongols were in a hurry to get back to their grazing-ground. The camels were soon relieved of their burdens, but we could hardly realise that they were now unloaded for the last time in our service. The lama called us to count over the packages, and see whether everything was right; he then received the balance of his contract money, and was off. We did not charge him the forfeit he was liable to for the four days' over-time. Tellig received a small present, which gratified him beyond measure, for he never considered that he had done anything to lay us under an obligation to him. We really felt sorry to part from our Mongols, especially the faithful Tellig, and we could not help commiserating them as we thought of the severe season they had to pass on those dreary steppes, so intolerable in September, that one would suppose flesh and blood could not withstand the cruel cold of winter. They had in view a return cargo from a Chinaman in Maimachin, and, after a few days' rest, they would probably be on the march again towards the Great Wall of China. They had no intention of laying up any part of the winter, that being in fact their busiest season, and they would be in Kiachta again about December. What a miserable life it seems to live day and night almost on the back of a stinking camel! And yet these people, in the midst of hardships, are as happy as the day is long. One of our first objects of inquiry at Kiachta was a Russian bath, which we found in the house where we lodged, and anything so exquisitely luxurious I never experienced, burdened as I was with a month's sand and dust, which we had no efficient means of getting rid of in the desert. The Mongols, indeed, never attempt to wash themselves, being only too glad to get water enough to boil their mutton and make their tea, and that is generally carried from a considerable distance, for a yourt is never found very close to a well. I never could get an explanation of this, but presume it is so ordained by law, to prevent any one family from monopolising a well. Although the Mongols do not wash at all, they did not look so dirty as we did after twenty-four hours travel,--either the dust does not stick to them, or it does not show on their darker-coloured skins. Anyhow, it does not inconvenience them, and all the purifying I have seen them attempt is a rough wipe they occasionally give to their greasy mouths with the skirt of their garment, either calico or sheepskin. We were agreeably surprised to find so much refinement in this outpost of Siberia. The houses are mostly large and comfortable. All are built of wood, and mostly of round logs dovetailed together at the ends, and caulked with moss, giving them a massive warm look, even from outside. Those of greater pretensions are faced outside with planed wood, painted white, which, with their red or green painted roofs, give a cheerful air to the whole place. The churches are a great ornament to the town. They are all three built of brick, and white-washed, the tall cupolas being painted green. The streets are well kept, which is not difficult to do, seeing that the ground is dry, and there is no great traffic to cut up the roads. Several of the streets are provided with wooden side-walks, which are very agreeable to the feet where the planking is sound, but in many places it has given way, exposing dangerous pitfalls to nocturnal or inebriated pedestrians. Every Russian above the rank of a _moujik_ (peasant) drives in some sort of a vehicle; and there are all sorts in Kiachta, from the droshkie, pure and simple, drawn by one or two shaggy Siberian ponies, to the luxurious carriage of "the swell," mounting a coachman, and perhaps a footman in livery, and drawn by two well-bred showy little horses from the west. The Russians never ride for pleasure or exercise; in this respect resembling the Chinese, who never ride, walk, dance, or do anything that they can afford to pay some one else to do for them. A few of the Kiachta notabilities, who have been put under strict regimen by their doctors, certainly may be seen in the afternoon taking a constitutional, closely muffled up in their fur over-coats, which they hug round them with both hands, greatly impeding the free movement of the limbs. Fast walking would, however, probably be considered derogatory to the dignity of their station. These solitary and sombre-looking figures, covered up to the eyes, look like assassins, and the imagination can easily picture to itself a dagger concealed under the ample folds of the cloak as they pace slowly along in the dusk on the open road between Kiachta and Troitskosarfsk. The Russians generally have a lurking consciousness that they are but half civilised, and they are quite aware that they are so esteemed by the rest of Europe. Hence they are at unusual pains to maintain punctiliously the external forms of civilised life, mistaking the husk for the kernel. The tailors and milliners of Kiachta are as particular, and their customers perhaps more so, about getting the latest Parisian fashions, as their contemporaries in the most fashionable towns in Europe or even America. A morning visit in a shooting-coat to a merchant in Kiachta would grievously shock his sense of propriety, and if such an outlandish garb were to meet the ultra-refined eyes of his wife, the probable consequences to her delicate system are too serious to contemplate, albeit she is "fat, fair, and forty," and will challenge you in champagne on a proper occasion till all is blue. I had the misfortune to be the innocent cause of an alarming attack to a gentleman, who was civil enough to call at an unexpectedly early hour in the morning, by appearing before him in slippers and a Chinese sleeping-dress. The apparition paralysed him for two minutes, nor did he entirely recover his equanimity during the interview. It is this mistaken notion of what constitutes civilisation that induces the well-to-do Russian to wear expensive furs, simply because they are expensive, and to drink English bottled porter, not because he likes it, but because it costs twelve shillings a bottle. In the streets and in the bazaar (Gostinnaidvor) a strange mixture of races is seen. The hairy, greasy, drunk-when-he-can Russian moujik; the small-eyed cunning Russian shop-keeper; a sprinkling of fine, dirty, rough-looking Bouriats, a Tartar tribe subject to Russia; a few Mongols who have business,--for their authorities, instigated by the Chinese government, are jealously watchful of their crossing the frontier,--and a few astute Chinese, the most business-like of the whole crowd. The merchants of Kiachta are mostly reported to be enormously wealthy--several millions of roubles are not considered too much to ascribe to the most prosperous of them. These great fortunes are doubtless for the most part mythical, and as mammon is devoutly worshipped here, and the Russian "swell" has no qualities but wealth to recommend him to the respect of his countrymen, their reputed millions are merely a figure of speech, by which the public mean to express their appreciation of character. That the Kiachta merchants are, on the whole, wealthy, there is no doubt, and the most approved means for attaining that desirable condition seems to be to fail periodically. On those occasions the gentleman makes a journey to Nijni-novgorod and Moscow to see his creditors,--offers them fifty kopeks in the rouble or--nothing. The composition is accepted for various reasons: first, because it would be too much trouble to dispute it, and secondly, because the said creditors have made a good thing out of the connection, and hope to do so again. All this being satisfactorily arranged, the merchant starts afresh in the old line, having in the meantime added "house to house, and field to field." I would not be supposed to insinuate that this is a common practice in Kiachta, but some instances were pointed out to me of Croesuses who had passed through the ordeal more than once, rising higher in public estimation each time, as their worldly prosperity increased. Large profits are made, or rather have been made, in the Kiachta trade, both with China and the west of Russia. Almost every merchant has a shop either in the bazaar at Troitskosarfsk or in Kiachta, and their principle in business is rather to do little with large profits, than to accept smaller profits with a greatly extended trade. They don't seem to try to undersell each other, but rather combine to tax the public heavily for all the necessaries of life. The prices of nearly all articles in the shops are extravagant, even allowing for the expensive carriage their goods have to bear from the great distances most of them have to come. Were they to be content with such profits as would be considered ample in any other civilised country, they would place the necessaries of life, and even luxuries, within the reach of a vast number of people whose means do not at present admit of expensive indulgences, and thereby increase consumption to an extent that would in the long run bring them in greater aggregate profits than they now realise, and indirectly add to the general prosperity and well-being of the place. For one bottle of porter they now sell at three and four roubles, they would sell ten at one-and-a-half or two roubles; and so with other things. But the Russians have no notions of expansion, and the merchants are far behind the Government in commercial enlightenment. The recent measure of opening the Russian sea-ports to the import of tea direct from China, has utterly disconcerted the Kiachta people, who looked on the overland tea-trade through Siberia, with its sure snug profits, as part of their inheritance; and bitter complaints are heard on all sides at such an arbitrary interference with their prerogative. They considered themselves to have a vested right to supply the Russian people with dear tea for ever. The Chinese of Maimachin are likewise reputed wealthy, and no doubt they are, to judge by their portly figures. This is considered a sure sign of prosperity in China, where rolling in wealth, and rolling in fat, are often considered synonymous terms. I have, however, known the criterion prove frequently fallacious. The Chinese merchants of Maimachin live there without their families, and consider themselves as mere sojourners, although many of them spend the best part of their lives there. They have an unconquerable aversion to moving their families from the spot where they and their fathers were born; and even within the bounds of their own country they rarely migrate for good from one district to another, unless driven to such a step by some potent cause, such as a visitation from the "rebels." The Russians and Chinese are peculiarly suited to each other in the commercial, as well as in the diplomatic departments. They have an equal regard for truth, for the Russian, spite of his fair complexion, is at the bottom more than half Asiatic. There is nothing original about this observation, but it serves to explain how it is that the Russians have won their way into China by quiet and peaceable means, while we have always been running our head against a stone wall, and never could get over it without breaking it down. The Russian meets the Chinese as Greek meets Greek: craft is encountered with craft, politeness with politeness, and patience with patience. They understand each other's character thoroughly, because they are so closely alike. If some matter has to be negotiated, it is quite understood that each begins as far from the subject as possible: much conversation takes place on both sides; many pipes are smoked, and many cups of tea sipped, while they are beating about the bush. They receive each other's statements for what they are worth, that is, not as being intended to convey any definite signification, but as merely put in for the purpose of concealing their real purpose and to smooth the way to the object in view. Of course much valuable time is lost by this circumlocution, but it is a matter of apparent indifference to either party whether the negotiation is concluded in one day, or three days, or three weeks. They prefer their own way of dealing, and don't understand any other. When either Russian or Chinese meets a European, say an Englishman, he instinctively recoils from the blunt, straightforward, up-and-down manner of coming to business at once; and the Asiatic either declines a contest which he cannot fight with his own weapons, or, seizing the weak point of his antagonist, he angles with him until he wearies him into acquiescence. As a rule, the Asiatic has the advantage. His patient equanimity, and heedlessness of the waste of time, are too much for the impetuous haste of the European. This characteristic of the Russian trading classes has enabled them to insinuate themselves into the confidence of the Chinese; to fraternise and identify themselves with them, and as it were make common cause with them in their daily life; while the European holds himself aloof, and only comes in contact with the Chinese when business requires it,--for all the rest, a great gulf separates them in thoughts, ideas, and the aims of life. The Russians and Chinese are equally low in their tastes; intellectual and manly recreations are equally foreign to them, while eating and drinking, play-going and gambling, are the congenial amusements of both alike. I have been told that the Russian merchants of Kiachta, when they wish to treat each other to something worthy of a highly cultivated mind, order a Chinese dinner in Maimachin, a feast that most Europeans would rather undergo the incipient stages of starvation than come within the smell of. But in this and other things the Russians pay tribute to the superior civilisation of the Chinese, all the more genuine that it is unconsciously done. That the Chinese are the more civilised of the two, I am thoroughly convinced. Their notions of civilisation certainly run in a different groove from those of Christian nations, but it is a spontaneous growth, and genuine of its kind. But the Russians, after all that they have borrowed from their western neighbours, remain barbarians at bottom; and their living in large houses, and drinking expensive wines, serve merely to exhibit, in more striking colours, the native barbarism of the stock on which these twigs of a higher order of life have been engrafted. This does not, of course, apply to the educated gentlemen of Russia, the _nous autres_, who constitute a higher caste, and who have been largely leavened with foreign blood, but only to the middle and lower ranks. There is no middle class in Russia, as we understand the term, but there is a pretty large number of merchants who have risen from the condition of serfs, many of them very rich, and who must be taken to represent the middle class, but between whom and the gentlemen in uniform there is as impassable a barrier as between a merchant in Japan and a daimio. The Chinese far outstrip the Russians as a nation of shopkeepers, and in commercial matters generally have more enlarged and liberal ideas. Much of this is due to the non-interference of Government with trade. The restrictions of shops to one locality in Russian towns has its advantages and disadvantages; but the licence fees required for admission to the guilds, and for permission to open a shop in the bazaar, are so onerous as to exclude that class of small shopkeepers who are the life and soul of Chinese cities. The largest building in Kiachta is called the Custom House, but it is no longer used as such, all duties on merchandise having been recently abolished through the enlightened exertions of the present Governor-General of Eastern Siberia, who has done much to develop trade in his government. And truly the whole of that inaccessible region, including the Amoor provinces, is so ill-favoured by nature in its geographical position, and so thinly inhabited by a race who have had all enterprize ground out of them by centuries of oppression, that it is only by coaxing and nursing that prosperity can ever take root and flourish. The old Custom House is now occupied by the chief of _postes_ and some other Government officials. It is situated on an elevation above the town and at the far end of Troitskosarfsk, at as great a distance as possible from the residence of the Commissary of the Frontier, who holds his court at the opposite extremity of Kiachta. Having much business to transact at both these places, we hired a droshkie by the day at two roubles, an old shabby looking machine, very groggy on the springs, with two wild half-broken ponies tied to it with ropes, and an unkempt _moujik_ on the box. In this turn-out we rattled along the dusty streets of Kiachta, passed by everything we saw excepting costermongers' carts. I felt very small, perched on the old rattle-trap, and had it not been for the "honour of the thing" I would infinitely have preferred walking or riding, but that was not to be thought of in a Russian, and especially a Siberian, town. Our reputation was at stake. Kiachta lies snugly in a hollow between hills of sand and fir-trees, well sheltered from the northerly winds, and opening out southwards towards Mongolia. A small rivulet runs through the ravine, which turns west through the sandy plain on the Mongol side of the frontier, and falls into the general receptacle of the other rivers we had crossed. Kiachta and Troitskosarfsk are said to contain 20,000 inhabitants, who are pretty well supplied with provisions from the interior. Great numbers of peasants' carts may be seen in the morning bringing in the products of their farms and gardens to market. All the common vegetables are to be had in abundance; good beef and mutton of course, though the Russians, for some unexplained reason, eat very little mutton. The supplies for Kiachta come from great distances, and the peasants start from their homes long before break of day. They generally hunt in couples, the man with his sheepskin coat hung on him, leading the horse and riding by turns, while the good-wife, swaddled up into a round bundle of clothing, and booted to the knees, sits on the top of the cabbages. A large square in the centre of Troitskosarfsk is set apart as a corn and hay market, and is provided with sundry weights and scales sanctioned by the proper authorities. Here the vendors of agricultural produce assemble, and generally manage to get rid of their stocks by an early hour in the afternoon. Everything seems to be sold by weight in Russia, but they can hardly carry this to the same extent as the Chinese, who sell live chickens by weight, and by way of making up for any deficiency stuff their crops with sand, which adds an ounce or two to the aggregate weight, but produces death in a very short time. This trick used to be played off on masters of steamers, who thought to do a service to their countrymen at Shanghae, where provisions were at famine prices, by bringing a few hundred fowls from other ports where they were to be had cheap. The mortality in the middle passage was so great, however, that the second day generally threw a very different light on the venture. Kiachta is also well supplied with excellent fish, the sturgeon among others, from the river Selenga, and it was here for the first time that we indulged ourselves in fresh caviar. In this town there is a public recreation ground within a neat enclosure, where ladies promenade in the afternoon to inhale the fresh air, or exhibit the latest thing in bonnets, for Russians don't care much for air or exercise. Some retired nooks there are in the enclosure, suggestive of love-making at a more genial season, but they looked dreary enough in September, with a hard frost on the ground, and snow on the neighbouring hills. The whole goes by the name of "the garden," and in the three short months of summer it may possibly show something to justify this appellation. The mere attempt at gardening under such difficulties as a Siberian climate imposes, is creditable to the enterprise of the Kiachtaites, and it were much to be wished that the sun would shine on their efforts. The severity of the weather drives those who have a taste for flowers to cultivate them in their houses, which they do very successfully. Many of their rooms are like greenhouses, furnished round with large flowering shrubs in pots, very pleasant to the eye, whatever may be the effect of so much vegetation on human health. The plants are put out into gardens during the short summer, and withdrawn to the warm rooms when the chill winds give notice that winter is near. The climate of Kiachta is very cold in winter, and pretty hot in summer. The air is very dry, soil sandy, and little or no rain or snow falls. It lies in lat. 50° 15', and at an elevation of 2200 feet above the sea. The population is reputed to be healthy, and old people of eighty and upwards are as lively as crickets. The houses are very comfortable, so far at least as warmth constitutes comfort, and in severe climates it is undoubtedly the first essential. The massive wooden walls well caulked with moss, which is said to be better and more lasting than oakum, are well adapted to exclude cold. They have all double windows a few inches apart, with the space between filled with cotton wool along the sill. The rooms are heated by large closed stoves or ovens, which are used for cooking as well as warming the house. In general, one stove is made to heat several rooms, being built into the corner presenting one face to each apartment. The great drawback in all this is the absolute want of ventilation, which was to us very trying and disagreeable, but the Russians are accustomed to live in health in the close stuffy atmosphere of their houses. The temperature of their rooms is kept up to about + 16° Reaumur (68° Fahrenheit), and varies but little from that range. They use a great deal of firewood, which is cheap in the neighbourhood of those vast primæval forests, and in the yards of Kiachta immense stores of this fuel are piled up for winter use. The Russian manner of living was not quite suitable to us, although more regular than we had lately been accustomed to. They eat but one meal a-day, and that about twelve or one o'clock. The everlasting samovar fills up the morning and evening with its incessant bubbling and spluttering. Much tea-drinking is calculated to take the edge off a ravenous appetite, and in addition to the fluid we were fain to eat all the little cakes that usually accompany the samovar, in order to tide over the long twenty-four hours that interfered between regular meals. The stock dish of the Russians is a vegetable soup, with beef boiled in it. It is called _shtchee_, and is good or bad, according to the materials available for its manufacture, and the skill of the cook. Our cook in Kiachta was a lady of the mature age of eighty-two, who was justly proud of her attainments. The _shtchee_ is enough of itself to make a substantial meal, as the _bouilli_ is served up with it; but it is generally followed by a solid piece of roast beef. The bread is very good and white, but a strange custom prevails of putting black bread on the table along with the white, for the apparent purpose of showing off by contrast the extreme whiteness of the white, for no one ever touches the black when he can get the other. The real black bread is heavier, and as clammy as if potatoes entered largely into its composition. It is used almost exclusively by the peasants, and is doubly economical, being in the first instance cheap in price, and moreover a very little of it goes a long way, as it resists digestion as long as a hard-boiled egg. The black bread used by the well-to-do classes is a compromise, and is of a black-brown colour, known as _demi-blanc_. The Kiachta community is for the most part permanent. The official portion of it is of course migratory, as the Government _employés_ look for promotion to other regions, but some of them also settle down in Kiachta and found families. Many of the merchants also move westward, or intend to do so, but the whole substratum of peasants, artisans and tradesmen is a settled population. They talk little of Petersburg and Moscow, and when they do, it is with a kind of distant awe, as if these holy places belonged to a higher world. Irkutsk is the centre of their thoughts, the pivot on which they move. Whatever is defective in Kiachta is sure to be found in perfection in Irkutsk; the best hotels, horses, carriages, doctors, houses, churches, shops--everything--are there. A journey to Irkutsk is not an unfrequent occurrence, but a journey to Moscow is something to be talked about on every convenient occasion for the remainder of one's life-time. The town was founded in 1728, as an _entrepôt_ of the caravan trade with China, and to that alone does it owe its importance. Tea has always been much the largest item in this trade, and although Kiachta must continue to command the trade between China and Eastern Siberia, the direct importation of sea-borne teas to the Baltic ports cuts off an important source of prosperity from Kiachta. The mercantile community have, up to last year, endeavoured to compete with their rivals, and pushed into China to purchase the tea in the same markets; but the conditions of the trade are so much altered that they are deprived of their former facilities for bartering Russian produce, and in other respects the caravan trade is too heavily weighted ever to compete successfully with the long sea route. Even in Russia, wedded as the masses are to prejudice, common sense must gain the day in the end, particularly where roubles and kopeks are in question. We did not grudge ourselves a few days' rest at Kiachta, considering we had accomplished the most tedious part of the journey, and henceforward would get over the ground as fast as horses' legs could carry us. But no such luck was in store for us. The first news we had from the commissary and others, was that the whole country between the shores of the Baikal lake and Kiachta was inundated by the flooding of the river Selenga. It seemed that our adverse fortune was to follow us along the whole journey. We need not have been surprised, however, at the intelligence we received of the condition of the Selenga, since into it all the rivers we had crossed in Mongolia discharge themselves. The post from Europe was long overdue, and no news had been received from the Baikal for ten days. We were constrained perforce to remain quiescent until the waters should subside, and a day or two after our arrival a courier who came with the missing mail reported a slight improvement in the communication, he having succeeded in carrying the mail in small boats from station to station. Our time was not, however, misspent, for we had a number of preparations to make for our journey. In the first place we had to exchange our Chinese silver into Russian paper money. We were prepared of course to lose on this operation, but were agreeably surprised to find we had got off with only about one per cent. For one tael of sycee we received 2_r._ 15_kop._, which, at the then value of three shillings to the rouble, gave us 6_s._ 5-4/10_d._ for our tael, which was worth roundly 6_s._ 6_d._ We had then our ponies and carts to dispose of, and my pony was quickly sold for ten roubles, of which my share was eight, that is twenty-four shillings for what cost thirty-two,--so far so good. But, when we came to offer the carts for sale, difficulties presented themselves. No one had ever heard of such articles being sold in Kiachta. This seemed strange, for the Chinese--if not the Russians--use no other conveyance in their frequent journeys to China. The carts are made only in China, and therefore ought to be at a premium in Kiachta. But the Russians were not to be reasoned with in this way, but maintained that it was hopeless to attempt to sell our carts, and we abandoned the idea. We happened, however, to mention the subject to some Chinese in Maimachin, and having persuaded them to come to Troitskosarfsk, and see the articles, we concluded a bargain, on the eve of our departure, for sixty-five roubles, about half what they cost. It was necessary to our comfort to purchase a tarantass, or large travelling carriage. It was possible to travel without one, using the _kibitka_, or small carriage, provided at the post-stations; but that mode of travelling involved the annoyance of changing at every station, which, with our huge amount of baggage, would have been intolerable. We had some trouble to find a tarantass, and when we had got one it was not quite what it should have been--indeed we should have done better to have used the post kibitkas as far as Irkutsk, and bought a tarantass there, where we would have had a better selection. In Maimachin we purchased some goat skins, with hair twelve inches long. These we had sown together into a sack for each of us to put our legs into when sitting in the carriage; a very simple contrivance, well worthy of the attention of all travellers in those regions in cold weather, and which contributed in no small degree to our comfort on the road. The remnant of our stores, &c., tent, saddles, and such like, had to be abandoned in Kiachta, and we could only make room in the tarantass for a little brandy, and some tins of bacon, and smoked tongues. Hitherto we had trusted nothing to the chance supplies of provisions that might be found on the road; but now, being in a civilised (?) country, we depended solely on its resources, such as they were. We had no trouble with our papers in Kiachta, and our luggage was never looked at; neither did we require to take out a Russian passport, but merely had to get our Peking ones viséd for Irkutsk by the master of police, which formality enabled us to obtain from the chief of the posts a padaroshna, or pass for post-horses, which are entirely under Government control. In addition to this, Mr. Pfaffius supplied us with a special pass, to give greater effect to the padaroshna, and to ensure us proper attention from the various station masters as far as Irkutsk. This document was to be exchanged for a similar one, which we hoped to obtain from the higher authorities at the provincial capital. We experienced the greatest civility and ready assistance from all the Russian officials with whom we came in contact in Kiachta, and the bugbear of troublesome interference by the authorities vanished away. We soon got tired waiting for better news of the state of the roads between us and Lake Baikal, and determined to start on the 7th of October at all hazards. The steady frosty weather, with occasional falls of snow, gave us warning of winter, and of the uncertainty of getting our heavy carriage over half-frozen rivers. Every day was important at such a critical season, and the motherly counsels of the good old lady we were living with, to postpone our journey till December, when the snow roads would be in perfect order, only made us the more impatient to be off. Had we stayed another day we might have been tempted to give ear to these reiterated remonstrances against tempting Providence by starting at such a time. Some hours were occupied in loading our tarantass, for we discovered to our dismay that the machine, large as it was, was still too small for our baggage and ourselves. After several attempts to dovetail unwieldy boxes into corners and use up all smaller articles as broken stowage, we eventually succeeded, between the inside and the outside of the machine, to get everything on board, and with a severe struggle we squeezed ourselves in, horizontally, between the baggage and the hood of the conveyance. Our padaroshna was for three horses, but when the driver brought them to be harnessed, and saw the load he had to drag, he at once protested against going with less than four. We felt that he was quite right, but to establish a character it was necessary that we should be firm at the outset. To have admitted the necessity for four horses would have exposed us to all manner of impositions at the successive stations, where our ignorance of Russ would have placed us at the mercy of every ruffian of a postmaster. With great misgivings, therefore, we started with our three horses, driven by a Bouriat _yemschik_. The tarantass is a strong roughly made four-wheeled carriage, placed on poles, which rest across the two axletrees. The poles are made of soft wood, but have some spring in them, and the tarantass is at least more comfortable on rough roads than a Chinese two-wheeled cart. The hood comes well forward, and with an apron that comes up nearly to the top, and a curtain that can be let down from the front of the hood, the tarantass can be pretty well closed in. The "horses" are only ponies, a little over thirteen hands high, strong shaggy little brutes, full of beans and of great endurance. They are harnessed, or rather tied, to the vehicle, or, as the Russians like to call it, the _equipage_, in the loosest possible manner. A stout steady one is put in the shafts without any traces, the collar being secured to the forward part of the shafts by strong leather bands. A wooden tree arched over the collar and fixed to the shafts by its two ends, has a bearing rein running from the top, and kept rather tight on the horse's mouth. A bell is also suspended from the top of this cumbrous-looking apparatus, which denotes to all whom it may concern that it jingles over a post-horse. The bell is an intolerable nuisance on the road, but it is of some use in arriving at a station to announce the important event to the station-keeper, who peradventure may be asleep. The other horses are attached by rope traces to the axletrees, or any part of the outside of the tarantass which may be available for making fast a rope. Each horse is independent of the others, and any, except the middle one, may get off the road, kick, fall, or do what he likes, without disturbing the general equilibrium. The favourite number of horses in Russia is three, which they call a _troilki_--they all go abreast, whether the number be two or six. Everything about the "turn out" is of the loosest and rudest construction--the wheels have plenty of scope, and oscillate three or four inches on the axle, so as to be easily oiled. Something is constantly going wrong--the wonder is that the whole arrangement does not break down on the road beyond the hope of remedy; but the Russians are very clever at making shifts, and with the constant demands that are made on their resources, their talents are kept in full exercise. CHAPTER XIII. KIACHTA TO LAKE BAIKAL. We got out of Troitskosarfsk about three o'clock in the afternoon, for as we intended to travel as the Russians do, night and day, it made no difference at what time of the day or night we commenced the journey. The first stage led us over rather hilly roads, in many places heavy with sand. The hills around have a sandy appearance, but after crossing the first ridge we opened out fine broken scenery with richly wooded heights. Our _yemschik_, or driver, being a Bouriat, we were able to converse with him in his mother-tongue, for though the Bouriats grow up speaking Russian, they preserve their own domestic institutions, and among themselves speak their own language, which, with some slight differences, is identical with that spoken by the Mongols of the Great Desert. The first station we arrived at was Ust Kiachtinské, which is a fair-sized village of small wooden houses, with a very neat little church. We were prepared for all the horrors of a Siberian post-station, but found instead a new station-house, well kept and scrubbed inside, warm and clean. It is twenty-three and a-half versts, or nearly sixteen miles, from Troitskosarfsk. Our doubts and fears regarding our ability to deal with Russians, of whose language we were ignorant, awed us into great circumspection at this, the first point where we were left to our unaided resources. Our first anxiety was to maintain our prestige among the Russians, for, that failing, we should have been helpless indeed. The only sure way of saving our name under the circumstances was to decline all discussion, and as far as possible hold our tongues. This succeeded very well at Ust Kiachtinské--four horses were put to our tarantass, and no extra fare asked. The post had left that day, and the poor jades allotted to us had already performed one stage over very heavy roads, and were in no condition to drag our unwieldy equipage. Our Bouriat yemschik had not gone very far over the soft sand before he discovered this, and after exhausting all his persuasion to no good purpose, he sent a message to the station by a chance Russian whom we met on the road. In answer to this a fifth horse was sent from the post-house. The yemschik resumed his efforts to proceed, and by dint of yelling, carressing, and whipping, we got along a few miles further. A nasty steep hill lay before us, and arrested our progress finally for the night. When the yemschik had bawled himself hoarse, and had goaded his horses to despair, he entreated us, first in Russian, and then in Mongol, to get out and unload the carriage. It was a cold dark night, and we were warmly wedged into the carriage in a way that if we got out we could never have readjusted our beds in the dark. Finding us deaf to remonstrance, our poor yemschik took the horses out and let them graze--made a fire for himself of the end of a fallen tree, and waited patiently for morning. When daylight came we found ourselves in a thick wood, half way up the hill. An hour and a half was spent in unloading and getting the vehicle over the hill. After which we proceeded slowly to the station Piravolofské, which we reached at 8 o'clock. On the road we passed several villages, with some cultivated enclosures farmed by Russians, who also keep a good many cattle. It was plain that we could not go on so heavily laden, for even if horses could draw our tarantass, the machine itself would certainly break down, and we should run the risk of being wrecked on the road beyond the reach of assistance. We therefore determined if possible to secure an extra carriage at Piravolofské. To this the station-keeper demurred, and told us that with only one padaroshna it was impossible to horse two equipages. The pass from the commissary was efficacious in removing his doubts, and after expending all his eloquence in proving the impossibility of complying with our request, he quietly ordered a _kibitka_, into which we transferred a portion of our dead weight, and we went on our way rejoicing. The roads were rather sandy and a good deal up and down hill. At 2 o'clock we passed Paravotné station, where we had _shtchee_. We then proceeded by a good road up a long valley through which runs a tributary of the Selenga. Turning with the river into another valley to our left, we again encountered sandy and hilly roads. We soon struck the Selenga, a fine deep river, running through a wide valley, hemmed in by steep and well-wooded hills. A ferry-boat which was in attendance carried us across easily, horses, carriages, and all. The people who manned the boat were Russians and Bouriats, some of them showing unmistakeable marks of mixed blood. The river had fallen about twelve feet by the marks on the rock. A few miles from the ferry lies the small, but rather pretty town of Selenginsk. It has commodious barracks, one fine church, and some good houses. The station-master at Selenginsk was an old, fat, consequential and surly fellow. His room was adorned with some poor pictures, among which was an engraving of Catherine II. The companions of his solitude were a wretched-looking girl, maid-of-all-work, and a small cur, trained to perform certain tricks before travellers, on whom it seemed to depend for its daily bread. This old fellow was too important a personage in his own estimation to allow us to pass without challenging our right to the two carriages, but by dint of holding our tongue we conquered his objections as effectually as if we had greased his palm with roubles. Night was on before we got away from Selenginsk. At 11 o'clock we passed Arbusofské, and at 5 next morning we passed Nijni Ubukunské. A bitterly cold morning was the 9th of October. Passed through a well-peopled valley, in good cultivation compared with what we had seen, though still far short of what it might be. The valley runs north-east to Verchne Udinsk, a considerable town. We did not go round by that town, but turned off at Mohinski into a valley on our left, and struck the Selenga again, keeping on the left bank of the river. We now began to experience the effects of the recent inundations. Although the flood had abated very much, the water in the river was still high, and the flat banks were great marshes. The road had been almost obliterated by the flood, and new tracks had been struck out through the driest parts, over large boulders, deep holes filled with water, and heavy mud. The horses floundered, but struggled bravely, and the yemschiks vociferated for miles, through this impracticable compound of land and water. We were five hours in going sixteen miles. The valley narrows to a steep gorge through which the Selenga forces its way under a shade of overhanging trees that almost conceals it from view. The river was running about four miles an hour, but so smoothly and silently, that the current would have been hardly perceptible but for the floating branches of trees borne on its surface. The scenery is most beautiful. The perpendicular walls of rock that form the gorge are thickly wooded with pine and birch, which, combined with the willows that grow in great luxuriance on the low banks of the river, and seem to stretch their branches almost across the water, give quite a tropical appearance to the valley. The road through the gorge is scarped out of the rock, and rises to a good height above the river. It is narrow in the parts which are entirely artificial, so narrow that in some places there is not room for two vehicles to pass. The grandeur of the scenery faded away before our eyes as we looked down from the height into the deep abyss below. The edge of the precipice is guarded by a rough, strong, wooden parapet, without which, restive horses and drunken yemschiks would inevitably be immolated by the score at this dangerous place. At 3 p.m. we arrived at Poloviné station, simultaneously with a number of other travellers from various quarters. The long interruption of travelling from the flooding of the country, had accumulated a great many on the west of Baikal lake, and now they crowded on all at once. Amongst our fellow-travellers were several government officers, and two loquacious Poles from Irkutsk. The station could not furnish horses for half of the number, and as we had all arrived together, it was a question who should get them. We required seven for our two carriages in the then state of the roads, and it was no small satisfaction to us to find that the postmaster assigned to us the precedence. The government officers made no remark, but simply ordered the samovar to make tea. The Russian travellers also took it very quietly. But the two Poles were not so easily appeased. We could glean a few words from the volleys of abuse with which they indulged themselves, the gist of which was anathemas on the Russian government, the postal system, and things in general, winding up with a threat to set up a "republic" in Siberia. Leaving our exasperated friends to digest the venom of their spleen, we rattled away over good roads along the left bank of the Selenga, till we arrived at dusk at the post station of Ilyensk, six versts short of the town of that name. The postmaster here was an old sergeant who kept house with his aged wife. She seemed to be a good sort of woman, for the house was in capital order, the wooden floor clean scrubbed, and the walls beautifully white. Tables and chairs were in the like good trim, as were also the pots and pans and crockery. The sergeant received us with open arms, and was obsequiously civil. It is probable that the yemschiks who had conducted us from Poloviné had passed the word to him of our being distinguished personages, whom all good postmasters delighted to honour. When the little man had acquitted himself of his bowing and scraping, he began to expatiate on the coldness of the night and the badness of the road that lay before us. The end of it was that he pressed us, with his most winning grimaces, to make ourselves comfortable under his roof for the night, and proceed at daylight next morning towards the Baikal. We were but too willing to listen to the voice of the charmer, for experience had taught us that night travelling in Siberia is no great luxury. Having therefore satisfied ourselves that we should be in good time to catch the steamer on the Baikal, which makes two trips a week, we resigned ourselves with a good conscience to the kind solicitations of our host. When supper was over and bedtime came, visions of Russian vermin began to haunt us, and seriously disturbed our prospects of rest. The most careful scrutiny of the apartment, however, led to no discoveries of a disagreeable nature, beyond the shoals of small cockroaches which the heat of the room brought out in high condition. These animals are inoffensive enough in their habits, but restless, and ever on the move, running to and fro over the room and everything in it. They emit a fetid odour, which is the most unpleasant thing about them, particularly when you inadvertently crush them. But the close, oven-heat of the room itself was in my case a sufficient objection to sleeping there, and the tarantass was to me the more attractive dormitory of the two. Indeed, when well wrapped up with furs, and only a part of the face exposed to the frost, the tarantass affords sleeping accommodation that might well be envied by a king, provided always there is no jolting over rough roads to disturb the sleeper. The jingling of bells at various periods of the night announced the arrival of other travellers, and in the morning we found that one party of Russian officers, whom we had left drinking tea at Poloviné, had come and gone without stopping at Ilyensk. Another party of merchants had arrived later, and were all ready to start again when we got out of bed. We were naturally, though perhaps unjustly, suspicious of the Russians, and the first thought that flashed across our minds, on surveying our situation, was that we had been duped by the post-master into remaining all night at Ilyensk in order to let the others get a clear start of us on the road. It was of the last importance to reach the shore of Lake Baikal, from which we were still ninety versts distant, in time to save the steamer, and in the bad state of the roads it was impossible for us to calculate the length of time we should require to travel the distance. The advantage we had been induced to yield to our fellow-travellers might prove fatal to our own success, for although horses would be kept for us at Ilyensk, there might be a scarcity at the following stations, and our neighbours having the lead might take every available beast, leaving none for us. Under such circumstances the old sergeant was regarded with very different feelings from those we entertained of him when we retired to rest the night before. He did not escape a fair quota of abuse, but he still protested that his intentions were honourable. Great haste was made to get our horses in, and we had faint hopes of overtaking some of our friends. The road from Ilyensk was good for fifteen versts, and quite level. Beyond that it had been completely destroyed by the recent floods, and the country was full of lagoons. The bridges were washed away, and their _débris_ were scattered about over the fields. The main road was quite impracticable, and by-paths were struck out wherever the fancy, or topographical knowledge of the yemschik directed him. It was a wild chase for many weary miles, through great sheets of water, over high banks, and wide deep ditches, which were charged at full gallop, the lumbering machine being got over apparently by the sheer force of momentum. We then plunged into a dense forest where a lane had been cut out, leaving the stumps of the trees still sticking up. The ravines had been roughly bridged over with new-cut trees, overlaid with branches. This road, besides being as rough as wheeled carriage ever travelled on, was very circuitous, and our stage of twenty-four versts by the main road was stretched out to not much short of double that distance by the tracks we were compelled to follow. It says something, however, for the energy of the government, that the emergency should have been met so promptly. Their postal communication had not been interrupted a fortnight before this new road had been cut through the wood, on the slope of a hill above the reach of inundation. Changed horses at Tarakanofské, a small miserable station, and at 1.30 reached Kabansk, a neat town with a pretty church. Here we dined, and proceeded at 2.30. The high mountains west of the Baikal were now distinctly visible. At the next station, Stepné-dvaretské, the postmaster was a Pole, a fine old gentleman, who was exiled under Nicholas in 1854. He appeared very anxious to talk about the affairs of Poland, but we had not acquired enough Russian to make conversation very interesting to either party, and besides we were in a hurry, and daylight was fast failing. The old fellow exulted in the expectation of foreign intervention in Poland, and became radiant with delight when we revealed our respective nationalities. After leaving Stepné-dvaretské we soon reached the shore of the lake, when we turned to the left, and followed the coast-line, through occasional thickets and wide lagoons, till we reached Pasoilské, the terminus of the Trans-Baikal post-road. The station-house was full of travellers waiting for the steamer to cross the water. The fixed time of her departure was 9 o'clock the next morning, and the crowd of travellers spent the night in the post-house. No beds, and few seats are provided at these places. Men, women, and children roll themselves down on the floor indiscriminately, and sleep soundly through the incessant turmoil and noise that would make night hideous to nervous people. It is often impossible to thread one's way into the dormitory without treading on half the people who are sleeping among the bundles of clothing that cover the floor; but aggressions of that sort, being of common occurrence, are borne with stoical indifference. I slept as usual in the tarantass, and was lulled to sleep by the harmony of a howling wind, and the loud murmur of the waves of the lake that washed the sandy beach within a few yards of me. The Selenga is formed in Mongolia by the junction of a number of small streams south of Lake Kosgol, 230 miles south-west from Kiachta. It is afterwards joined by the Orkhon, and its tributaries from the Kinghan mountains. The length of this river has been computed at 300 miles, which is probably near the mark. It is singularly rich in fish, among which is the sturgeon. The fisheries are a great blessing to the people who inhabit the valley, among whom fish forms a staple article of diet. The Selenga falls into the Baikal, by several mouths, about twenty miles north of Pasoilské. That part of the coast would not be so convenient for the steamer to cross at, and would moreover make the crossing so much longer. But as the Selenga itself is navigable, by properly constructed vessels, from its mouth to a point higher than Selenginsk, the steamer route may possibly be eventually diverted to the river. The valley of the Selenga is hemmed in to a narrow compass by mountains as far down as Ilyensk. Thence, downwards, the two mountain barriers diverge gradually, leaving a fine open valley, which widens to about forty miles on the coast of the lake. This valley supports a pretty large agricultural population, and the peasants seem all well-to-do. Agriculture is certainly not in an advanced state, if Europe be taken as a standard, but still a large portion of the valley is enclosed and cultivated; weeds are kept down; and stubble looks like stubble, and not merely grass of a different shade of colour from the surrounding pastures, which is the characteristic of the fields nearer Kiachta. The soil is light, dry, and friable; furrows don't hold their shape. The crops are chiefly cereals--wheat, barley, rye, and oats. There is an immense tract of uncleared country in the Selenga valley, only wanting hands to fell trees and bring the soil under the plough, to make this a rich and fertile region. The slopes of the hills are also capable of cultivation, but centuries will probably elapse before they are required. In the meantime, both hills and plains bear magnificent crops of timber, which will keep the Siberians in fuel and building material for a thousand years to come. Cattle are abundant, but under-bred and rather small. The milk cows are poor, which is singular considering that milk is such a valuable item in the subsistence of the people. They have a good hardy breed of sheep, which are nearly all black. Pigs are also very common in the villages. They are a peculiar breed, very active, do not grow to any size, rather long in the legs, and bristly. Their owners do not seem to feed their stock much, if at all, and consequently the animals have to follow their own instincts of self-preservation. They may be seen in the morning trooping it down the street at a steady trot, turning neither to the right hand nor to the left, until some edible substance arrests their attention. They are not very particular about what they eat, and they manage, by dint of rapid movements, to eke out a subsistence off the odds and ends to be found in the streets, and the roots they can burrow out of the fields. Many of these Siberian pigs are of a brown colour, which is uncommon in the porcine race. The dogs of Siberia are of the ubiquitous breed which is common all over China, Japan, and many other countries, and is nearly akin to our own collie dog. Chapter XIV. LAKE BAIKAL TO IRKUTSK. The post-house of Pasoilské was all alive at an early hour on the 11th of October. Cart-loads of wood were piled on the fires. All the samovars were in requisition at once, and the company waited patiently, or impatiently, for their turn to come, for a Russian is very useless until he has guzzled three or four tumblers of tea. The "postilions," as they call the soldiers who travel with the mail-bags, and other hangers-on, generally came off best. Their instinct leads them to make friends with kitchen-maids, and the kitchen being their centre of attraction, it goes hard if they don't get their tea in good time. The kitchen was the only place where one could get a wash, which is a difficult operation to the unskilful. No basin is provided, but an urchin, or a robust maiden, holds a pitcher of water, the contents of which you receive by instalments in the hollow of your two hands, and with good management you succeed in getting a few drops to your face. While we were all stretching our necks to catch a glimpse of the steamer, every moment expected to heave in sight, an officer gave us the valuable hint that our tarantass could not be embarked at Pasoilské, there being no boat there capable of conveying it to the steamer. This was unwelcome intelligence to receive at the eleventh hour, but it was confirmed by the post-master who, however, had told us a different story the night before. The "shipping port" was nine versts further south, and thither we had to transport our carriage. It was off the government post-road, and private horses had to be hired at rather an exorbitant rate. But there was no time to lose, and the Russian had us on the hip, an advantage which none know better how to turn to account. The road runs along a narrow sand-spit between the Baikal and the inner lagoons. It is very heavy, and the water has broken in on it in some places. The sand-spit runs out to a point forming a sheltered harbour inside for vessels of light draught. The entrance round the point has a shoal sand-bar, somewhat dangerous, running across it. Several Russian barges, rigged very much like Japanese junks, with one enormous mast placed near the centre of the vessel, and of about 150 tons burthen, lay aground discharging their cargoes on the shore. Several more were lying at anchor in the harbour. These vessels are of the rudest construction, and the most primitive model--very short, enormously high-sided, and of great beam. They have preposterously large rudders like the Chinese and Japanese junks. Their "lines" are so imperfect that no ordinary rudder would steer them. They must be incapable of any nautical movement except running before the wind. They carry large crews, chiefly Bouriats. Their heavy main-sail and rudder necessitates plenty of hands, and when in harbour (where they seem to spend most of their time) the large crew is useful in loading and discharging cargo. When we consider the kind of craft, and the quality of their crews, by which the Baikal has been navigated, it is easy to account for the terrible stories of the storms that frequently spread destruction over the surface of the lake. That the lake, like other lakes similarly shut in by high mountains, is subject to sudden and violent storms, fraught with danger to crazy barks and unskilful navigators, there can be no doubt; but we had occasion to observe that a very gentle zephyr indeed is accounted a storm on the Baikal. It is said that a peculiar phenomenon is sometimes observed in the lake,--a wave, or succession of waves, bubbling up from the bottom in the calmest weather as if moved by submarine influences. But it is not likely that this, or other anomalous convulsions in the waters of the Baikal are of frequent occurrence. But, although such phenomena have no doubt fortified the popular superstitious dread with which the lake is regarded, it is of the wind-storms that the Russian sailors and travellers are so apprehensive. There is only one house at the port, which belongs to the company who own the steamers, as also many of the sailing craft that cross the lake. In the house we met but one traveller, all the others having stopped at Pasoilské to join the steamer there. There was a large concourse of people, however, engaged in landing and shipping cargo, and the scene was most animated. The sand-flat was covered with merchandise, in bales done up in cow-hides, casks, and all manner of packages--that from the west waiting to be carted away to the post-road for China or the Amoor river,--and eastern produce, principally Chinese, waiting shipment. The people moved about with more business-like energy than we had yet observed amongst Russians. The whole traffic with the Amoor crosses the Baikal here, as does also that with the south-eastern provinces of Siberia, which includes all Russian trade with China, excepting what finds its way to Semipalatinsk, further west on the Khirgis steppe. Large caravans of one-horse carts, laden with merchandise, are constantly met with on the post-road. The heavy portion of the trade naturally goes eastward, for all the clothing, all the luxuries, and much of what may be considered the necessaries of life of the Siberian cities, are supplied from Western Russia. Siberia has not much to send in return, except furs, the precious metals, and Chinese produce. While we were waiting for the arrival of the steamer, we were roused by a wild kind of chant outside, and presently a procession of three Russian priests, with long hair and long beards, came into the room where we were sitting, and after doing reverence to the picture of the saint, stuck up in a corner of the room, they besprinkled the apartment with holy water, and retired. It was Sunday, and this imposing ceremony served to remind the Russians of that circumstance. An officer from the Amoor country showed us great civility here, and made the time pass very pleasantly. He was worn with hard travelling, having ridden a long distance through forests where no proper road had yet been made. The usual way of travelling up the Amoor is by steamer, as far as the navigation is practicable, which is as high as the junction of the Shilka. But the steamers often tow huge barges, laden with grain, which greatly retards their progress, and besides, they are almost constantly breaking down. So that, where time is important, the shortest way is to ride until the regular post-road is struck. This gentleman gave us some interesting information regarding the new road now being constructed by the government from Irkutsk to Kiachta, round the south end of Lake Baikal. The present route across the lake is very inconvenient, and not always safe. In summer and winter the communication by the lake is pretty regular; but during the interregnum between the seasons it is very uncertain. When ice is forming on the lake it is always doubtful whether the steamer can cross with safety, and she is probably laid up for the winter sooner than is really necessary, from fear of being nipped by ice. Again, when the ice is melting, it would be hazardous to leave on the surface the post-stations which are used in winter traffic, for on such a large sheet of water, exposed to gales of wind, the ice may break up suddenly when thaw has once set in. This has actually happened: on one occasion a sudden break-up in the ice submerged a post-station with all the men, horses, &c., belonging to it. Thus the post establishments will generally be cleared off in spring, some time before the navigation is open. The inconvenience of depending on this one route for the transport of merchandise and gold has long been felt by the government, but the nature of the country on the southern shores of the Baikal presents almost insuperable difficulties to road-making. The precipitous mountain ranges in that region are at present impassable, except on foot or horseback, and dangerous even then. Our informant once tried it in winter, and had to abandon his horse to perish in the snow, saving his own life with difficulty. The road now being made is scarped out of the rock in the same way as the one I have described in the gorge in the Selenga valley. It is only worked at in winter when the peasants are frozen out of the mines and fields. One of the means employed to split the rocks, is to make enormous bonfires of trees when the temperature is very low (-30° to -40° Réaumur), the action of heat on the stone causing huge masses to crack, and enabling the workmen to dislodge it. This is necessarily a slow process. Several years have already been spent on it, and a good many more will elapse before the work is completed. When this road is finished it will materially shorten the distance between Irkutsk and Kiachta. At noon a white column of wood-smoke on the horizon announced the approach of the steamer, and in a couple of hours she came-to off the port, dropped a barge which she had towed across, and proceeded to Pasoilské to embark mails and passengers. Her return was expected at 4 o'clock, but she did not appear till 6. It was then getting dark, and to our surprise it was unanimously pronounced too stormy for us to embark that night. It was even hinted that the steamer might run across to the other side of the lake where there was good shelter, and return next day to take us across. It was vain for us to remonstrate against this folly, though the wind was so light that we really could hardly tell which way it was blowing--with a chorus of bawling Russians all speaking at once. We had but to wait, and it was some consolation to us to hear the steamer's cable rattling through the hawse-pipe. She had dropped anchor in the offing, and, unless the "gale" increased, would remain there till morning. The rates of passage by steamer across the lake are eight roubles first class, and five roubles deck passage, say twenty-four and fifteen shillings respectively. Distance about seventy miles. No table is kept on board. The freight on our tarantass was twenty roubles. Freight on general cargo is thirty kopeks per pood, equal to sixty shillings per ton. There seems to be no fixed rule as to passengers' baggage, but the agent is always open to an "arrangement." We were to pay the regular freight on ours, and the agent, to save himself the trouble of weighing it, asked us how much we had. I forget what the quantity was, but say it was ten poods. "Oh, then we will call it fifteen," said the agent. Our indignation was of course roused at this. We appealed to the Russian officer before mentioned, who laid it on so smartly to the agent for first asking us for the weight, and then assuming that we were necessarily trying to cheat him, that the wretch got frightened, and took our baggage free. This afforded the officer an opportunity, which the higher classes in Russia never let slip, of commenting on the low state of Russian morality, that is, of the merchant and moujik class, as distinguished from _nous autres_. In the early morning the hive was all animation again. The clumsiest of boats were manned by crowds of Bouriats, with short paddles, to tow out to the steamer two of those huge barges that were lying in the harbour. The steamer was unable to approach nearer the shore than half a mile, owing to the shoalness of the water. The towing business pays the steamer well, and there are always numbers of sailing craft waiting at both ends for their turn to be towed across. Time is no object with them, and they miss many opportunities of sailing over with a fair wind, while waiting for the steamer to tow them. The trade is highly remunerative, as at present conducted, but it would pay much better to keep a smart steamer running regularly with mails and passengers, and a good tug to do nothing but tow barges. Half the number of these would then do as much work as the whole fleet does at present. A little healthy competition would work great results, but the Russians are fonder of combinations and monopolies than competition. When the two barges had got their hawsers on board the steamer, one of the boats embarked our tarantass and ourselves, with a few other passengers who had turned up, and by eight o'clock we stood on the deck of the _General Karsakof_, so named after the present governor-general of Eastern Siberia. She is a rare specimen of naval architecture, and might have been built any time the last hundred years. Roughly put together, clumsy and unshapely, she would be a curiosity in any other part of the world; and for dirt I am certain she has not her match. The engines, which are of fifty horse-power, are the only redeeming feature in the vessel. They were made by an Englishman in Western Siberia. It is no doubt a great thing to have floated a steamer at all on the Baikal lake, but while they were about it the builders might have produced something more ship-shape. The _General Karsakof_ and her sister ship are coining money for their owners, however, and _they_ have no reason to be dissatisfied with their property. We made but slow progress with the two lumbering barges in tow. There was a slight head wind at first, and our speed was about one mile per hour. Latterly the barges made sail, and we got on better. Our course lay obliquely across the lake, about W.S.W. towards Listni-nijni at the head of the lower Angara. Had the weather been less severe we should have been tempted to keep the deck, and enjoy the sublime scenery with which we were surrounded. Both shores of the lake are very mountainous, those on the south-eastern side being highest, and covered with snow down to the water's edge. There was very little snow on the western side, the snow showers up to that time having been very slight and partial. The water of the lake, away from land, is of a very deep blue, almost black. Its depths have never been fathomed, probably from the want of proper tackle, for I am not aware that any ocean-sounding apparatus has ever been used on the Baikal. It has been said, I know not on what authority, that "no bottom" has been found at three thousand fathoms; but much that has been said of the Baikal is exaggerated, and I greatly doubt whether such a depth has been satisfactorily established. I was informed by a gentleman on the spot, personally acquainted with that part of the country, that the deepest soundings yet obtained in the lake were two hundred fathoms, and that beyond that depth nothing was known. It is only in a few places where soundings have not been taken. The lake is over 300 miles in length, averaging about thirty in breadth; it covers a surface of 11,000 square miles, and is 1300 feet above the sea level. It is fed by two considerable rivers, the Little Angara on the north, and the Selenga on the east. It has only one outlet, the Great Angara, on the west, which drains the waters of the lake into the great river Yenisei, and that again into the Frozen Ocean. It is estimated that the water so drained, out of the lake does not amount to more than one-tenth of the quantity poured into it. This estimate may be a little wide of the mark, but there can be no doubt of the fact that the lake receives a large surplus of water above what it gives out, which the quantity lost by evaporation must be utterly inadequate to account for. The level of the water fluctuates only a few feet between seasons. Baikal is a Mongol name. In saintly Russia it is called the Holy Sea, and among the peasant navigators it is considered high treason to call it a lake. So much for the much be-written Baikal. To return to the _General Karsakof_. She is puffing and spluttering, with no apparent result but the rapid diminution of the pile of firewood which cumbered her deck. The passengers, mostly on deck, wrapped in huge furs, sit patiently wherever sitting-room can be found, facing the keen air with unruffled equanimity. Their noses look a little blue, but what of that?--every other portion of their body is warmly covered. The saloon, so called, is under deck, cold and cheerless. It was occupied by a few Russian officers and ourselves, who, between intervals of sleep, called for the samovar, and sipped tea _ad libitum_, the only kind of entertainment the steamer seemed capable of providing. All travellers in Russia carry their own tea and sugar. I presume some one navigated the steamer, but I never could discover who occupied this important post. She was steered mostly by Bouriats, who take it very easy, sitting all the time on neat little stools to that end provided. We succeeded eventually in reaching the western shore. We were eighteen hours crossing, the distance being seventy miles. A good little harbour, with deep water, shelters the steamers at Listni-nijni. A pier has been built for the vessel to go alongside, and everything would be perfect were the easterly shelter a little more complete. The captain of the steamer now appears on the scene to superintend the disembarkation. He is charged by government with the examination of the padaroshnas of passengers, which gives the authorities a check on any unauthorised persons going about the country. It was 3 o'clock, and a bitterly cold morning, when we landed in the government of Irkutsk, but, as the steamer had been expected, there was no difficulty in getting horses at the station. A few versts beyond the station we observed a great bonfire blazing on the road-side, and certain wild-looking figures gliding about between the fire and a small hut close by. On reaching the spot, we detected a black and white bar suspended across the road, intimating that we were under arrest for the time being. The unearthly figures that reflected from their faces the fitful glare of the burning logs resolved themselves into men, clad in the grey great-coat of the Russian soldiers. Our luggage, it seemed, had to be examined here, which involved the torture of turning out of our warm berths. The officials were inexorable. Not knowing who was chief,--for as usual they all spoke at once, and every one seemed more officious than another,--we did not know whom to bribe; and, after turning out of our tarantass, we were not at all in a humour to bribe anybody. The officers of the customs, for such we assumed them to be, took plenty of time to turn over our boxes before opening any of them, but finding at last that the coveted coin was not forthcoming, they opened one or two packages for form's sake, repacked them, and performed the ceremony of putting a seal on them. We were then furnished with a certificate, which we were instructed to produce at Irkutsk, failing to do which it would be the worse for us. We never did produce it, and never were asked for it. Indeed this was the first and last time our baggage was looked at during the whole journey through Siberia and Russia. The other passengers by the steamer came up after us, and passed the barrier without stopping. We should have done the same, no doubt, had we been better acquainted with the language. The country west of Baikal, like that east of Baikal, is a vast forest, but not so mountainous. Between the lake and Irkutsk there is a great deal of cleared ground, and a considerable population. The Russian cottages are bare-looking, but neat and substantial. Their cattle-yards are mere open wooden palings, unsheltered and dreary-looking. The road runs along the right bank of the Angara, the river that runs out of Lake Baikal, and falls into the Yenisei, about 1200 miles below Irkutsk. The water of the Angara is perfectly clear. From the Baikal to Irkutsk we pass through a very fine country, whether regarded from a tourist or agricultural point of view. The cleared portion is in an advanced state of cultivation, carefully fenced, and very fertile. The people have more of the appearance of men who mean to make a living out of the soil, than any we had seen further east. The bold mountain scenery of the environs of the lake has disappeared, giving place to richly-wooded undulating hills, which are shown to great advantage by the intervals of villages and ploughed land. The rapid river flowing between steep banks, generally covered with trees or brushwood down to the water's edge, works its way circuitously through the hills, and gives a finish to as fine a bit of scenery as can anywhere be seen. The road to Irkutsk is in capital order. Our horses were good, and our yemschiks willing, and by 11 o'clock we had rattled over the forty miles between the Baikal and Irkutsk. This distance is divided into three stages. At the last station the post-master was a German, of a Jewish cast of face, who seemed to be hired to tout for the Amoor Hotel in Irkutsk, which is the most popular with strangers. We had been specially warned against this establishment, and had the address of another, Metzgyr by name, which our yemschik pretended to know, and we started on our last stage with the understanding that we were to be conveyed to Metzgyr Hotel. CHAPTER XV. IRKUTSK. The sun shone brightly on the domes and cupolas of Irkutsk when they burst on the view; the effect of the dazzling white walls and bright green roofs of the churches was strikingly beautiful. Before entering the town, our yemschik descended from the box, and tied up the bells of the horses, in deference to a municipal law of the town, and in mercy to the inhabitants. The streets of Irkutsk are straight, wide, and well kept. Indeed the main streets are too wide, and have always a more or less desolate appearance. Our yemschik was again catechised about Metzgyr Hotel, but, after all, drove us into a hotel which, after unloading our gear, turned out to be the Amoor. The combined action of two conspirators was too much for us, and we had but to make the best of our situation. We were indeed too travel-worn to be particular about our quarters. A room was allotted to us, facetiously said to contain four bed-chambers. On inquiring for the said chambers we were pointed by the _maltchik_ (boy) to certain corners and recesses, in which, by skilful dove-tailing, it was certainly possible to find sleeping-room for four people. Beds there were none, but there was a good solid floor, a plain hard sofa, three chairs, and a table. There was no fire-place in the room, the temperature being kept up by blazing furnaces opening in the corridor. The windows were hermetically sealed for the winter. Our first and last sensation, during our occupancy of that apartment, was suffocation, only to be relieved by active out-door exercise. The room was adorned by a few pictures, and a large placard, framed and hung up in a conspicuous place, advertised the prix-courant of liquors, cabs, billiards, and viands. Here we found _côtelettes_ and _bifsteks_, admirably adapted to the Russian spelling. The attendance was of a very mean order. An unkempt urchin in tattered habiliments, did the duty of maid-of-all-work, always in the way when not wanted, now and again disturbing the time-honoured dust of our fusty chamber by besoms and dish-cloths, but never to be found when he was required. No bells are provided for the convenience of visitors, and you may roar yourself hoarse with cries of _maltchik_ or _tchelavek!_ before any one will deign even to answer _sey tchass!_ This word, literally interpreted, means directly, but it may be more practically translated to-morrow, or next week, or when convenient. It is only thrown out to allay your impatience, and keep you in play while the tchelavek is eating his dinner, or gossiping with the cook. No progress can be made till you have discovered his retreat, when the _à posteriori_ argument of boot leather may be applied with good effect. This is the only form of entreaty that can impress a low Russian with respect, and one application will generally suffice. All things considered, there is not much to complain of in the culinary department, but the service is enough to blunt the keenest appetite in the world. Everything is cold, dirty, and miserable. A good beefsteak is put on the table hot, but you have to wait twenty minutes for something to eat with it; then knives and forks are wanting, and when you flatter yourself all is in order, and you begin your dinner, salt is found to be missing. All that can be tolerated, but oh take care of the eggs! In Siberia they keep a stock of these in a fossil state for the entertainment of the unwary, for probably no Russian would be so green as to ask for them. At first we doubted whether Russians recognised any difference between a new-laid egg, and one that had been addled for six months. But, whatever their own proclivities may be, they do know a fresh egg when they see it. We succeeded at last in getting some only "suspicious," by taking hold of the boy in a menacing manner, and vowing that we would dash in his face every bad egg he should bring to us. In a building separate from the hotel is a dining-room and tap-room, as also a billiard-room, with two tables. This part of the establishment is almost entirely monopolised by military officers, who play billiards all the morning, dine at the table d'hôte at 2 o'clock, and continue billiard-playing all the afternoon. Their billiard-cues have no leather tips, and the one table we attempted to play on was so uneven, from about twenty patches in the cloth, that we soon tired of seeing the balls steeple-chasing across the table. The dining-room is a large oblong, the walls covered with pictures of gentlemen in cocked hats and epaulettes, in a very low gaudy style of art. In the centre of one wall is a full-length portrait of the present emperor, which, with all its artistic defects, is nevertheless a fair likeness of his Imperial Majesty. The Russians are a loyal race, and naturally fond of pictures, whether of saints, or tsars, or heroes. At the Amoor Hotel, I was greatly pleased to meet a friend and countryman who was travelling from St. Petersburg to China. The effect of this unexpected meeting was exhilarating, and I don't know whether it gave us most pleasure to recount the circumstances of our journey from China, or to hear our friend's experiences of that part of the road homewards which still lay before us. We certainly had no comfortable news to give each other. In exchange for the horrors of the road through Western Siberia, we threw in the picture of what a month's ride across the Mongolian steppes in November would be. Irkutsk is a town that will bear a close inspection. The houses are all large, and as handsome as wooden buildings can well be made. The sombre hue of the external walls is the only unsightly feature about the place; but the general aspect of the town is so well relieved by the numerous handsome churches and other public buildings, that the whole effect is pleasing. The streets are adorned with many fine shops, where every European luxury is obtainable for money. Tailors and milliners are very fond of parading flourishing sign-boards in French, and even in that remote corner of the world, Paris is looked to as the seat of fashion. The _gostinnoi-dvor_ is well supplied with all the staple articles of merchandise, including every variety of fur. We purchased very good Congou tea in the bazaar at 1 ruble 35 kopeks per pound, equal to four shillings. Bakers are in great force in Irkutsk, many of them Germans. _Frantsooski khleb_ (French bread) is all the rage in Siberia, and this sign is adopted by all bakers indiscriminately. The "French bread" is simply white bread made into rolls. It is very good, and being unobtainable in the country villages, travellers carry a supply with them from one town to another. The tobacconists of Irkutsk are famed in Eastern Siberia for their "papiros," or paper cigars, which they make out of Turkish tobacco. The Russians, almost without exception of age or sex, smoke quantities of tobacco in the shape of papiros. In Irkutsk itself, however, "Moscow" is considered a better brand for papiros than "Irkutsk." The prison occupies the corner of two streets. It has one iron-grated window facing the street, at which the prisoners are always to be seen clamouring for alms. The Russians are very charitable and give a great deal to these prisoners. It is very common also in the streets for passers-by, especially old ladies, to stop the convicts who are employed under a guard of Cossacks in carrying water, &c., and give them money. This is so much a matter of course that when any well-dressed person, suspected of being charitably disposed, is seen approaching a convict, the Cossacks halt by instinct. Every resident in Irkutsk who can afford it keeps a carriage. Their horses are very showy in harness, and there are enough of them generally to be seen in the street to be an ornament to the place. The droshky service is also very good. The drivers always go fast and their horses are generally fresh and fiery. There are several good libraries in Irkutsk, branches of scientific societies, a theatre, a newspaper, and other concomitants of cultivation. On the whole, I confess that my pre-conceived notions of Siberian life proved utterly fallacious. I had pictured to myself a barren, inhospitable climate, unfit for the habitation of any except those who were compelled by law to exist there, and who necessarily had to suffer every privation. Instead of that, I found settled communities, not only enjoying all the amenities of civilised life, but living in expensive luxury, and many of them in extravagance. Irkutsk, like most other Siberian towns, is named after a river. It has a settled population of 23,000, but in winter, when the gold-washing ceases, the population is swelled by the addition of about 4000 miners, who pass the winter in town, and manage to spend every farthing of their earnings before the mining season comes round again. The town derives great importance from its being the residence of the governor-general and the capital of Eastern Siberia, which not only includes the Amoor country, but that large tract recently acquired from China, and now called Primorsky, or the Maritime Region. The heads of the police, military, financial, and post departments, have their offices in Irkutsk, which not only gives a tone to society, but keeps a large substratum of subordinate officers, with their families, about the place, and indirectly tends to promote the general prosperity. An archbishop also resides in Irkutsk. On the second day of our stay in Irkutsk we visited the governor-general, and made the acquaintance of the chief of police, who put our papers in train. The governor-general holds a levée once a week, which happened to be on the day of our visit. About twenty persons in full dress presented themselves, including a number of officers, among whom we recognised with difficulty some of our late fellow-travellers. A number of peasants were assembled in the hall long before the appointed hour. They wore the most woe-begone visages, and each seemed to have his own special grievance. Each was armed with a scroll of paper, probably a petition, that he had got some one to write for him. These petitions were being patiently examined by an aide-de-camp, who seemed to decide on which were fit to be presented to his chief. The governor-general of Eastern Siberia has no sinecure. He has on his shoulders the affairs of a region larger than the whole of Europe, and which is yet but in the infancy of its development. The population is certainly scant, but it is composed of heterogeneous tribes, and the mere scarcity of population enhances the difficulty of general progress. A scattered population is, _ipso facto_, deprived on the one hand of the great stimulant to improvement which rivalry imparts to large communities, and on the other, of the facilities for carrying out the aspirations after better things which it may have. These disadvantages are a serious obstacle to any people, but to a race not naturally progressive, they are doubly so. Russia is not one of those countries where government ought to hold aloof from the affairs of the people. It may greatly err in doing too much; but something it must do if Russia is to follow even at a great distance in the march of development. The people will not put the government in motion, but the government must lead the people in every step. In Eastern Siberia there is vast scope for the energy of a man of administrative ability and singleness of purpose. Untold wealth lies under its soil. With its iron and coal and lead, and the natural fertility of a large portion of its soil, it might by well-directed enterprise, become to a great extent independent of the world; while the fine rivers that traverse the country offer means of water-communication perhaps unequalled, certainly unsurpassed, in any other country. Very much has been done of late years to utilise these natural privileges; but much more remains to be done. And it depends greatly on the governor-general, whose vice-regal power is almost as absolute as the sway of the Tsar himself, whether the commercial and productive resources of those regions will continue to develop under the same enlightened impulse as heretofore. Another element of the importance of Irkutsk is to be found in the circumstance that it is the commercial centre of Eastern Siberia. The houses of business of the out-stations, such as Kiachta, have mostly their head-quarters in Irkutsk. It is the principal dépôt on the highway between Western Russia, and China and the Amoor provinces; and a great deal of wealth has been accumulated there by persons engaged in trade. The manufactures of this place, and indeed of Siberia generally, are insignificant and hardly worth alluding to. Manufactures of all kinds in Irkutsk employ a few hundred workmen, the principal works being in leather and soap. In a country so rich in minerals this need not be so. It only needs an enterprising population to turn the resources of the country to account, and cheapen many of those articles of daily consumption which the land carriage from Europe makes so exorbitantly dear in Siberia. This, and the other great towns in Siberia, are well provided with educational institutions, and every good family employs private tutors and governesses. Education is prized by the higher classes, but utterly neglected by the lower, which include, generally speaking, the merchants. The society of Siberia is, on the whole, as good as in Russia proper. The higher class are generally of the Russian nobility, who, either to retrieve their broken fortunes, or with a view to more rapid advancement in rank, go out to Siberia to fill high official stations. Three, and in some cases two, years of public service in Siberia count for five years in Russia. There are other inducements to men of rank and intelligence to seek their fortunes in Siberia, among which may be named the greater scope for ambition which a half-settled country affords, and the freedom from the curse of cliques and intrigue which exist in Petersburg, and which only a few can hope to turn to their own advantage. A man's individuality counts for more in a country where he meets few of his peers, and that consideration may possibly weigh with some of them. Many of the proprietors of gold-diggings are scions of the highest class of Russian aristocracy. These, and most of the officials, have generally their families with them in Siberia; and although they never lose their hold of Russia, practically Siberia is their home. They spare no expense in the education of their children, and hence the amount of both native and foreign talent that is employed in teaching. Foreign artists and men of science are frequently to be met with in Siberia, and are much sought after and hospitably entertained in the highest circles. The educated Russians, being conscious of their native deficiencies, have a high appreciation of talent, whencesoever it comes. Of late years Siberian society has received large accessions of educated people in the Polish political exiles, who are mostly students and professors in the universities, members of the Roman Catholic priesthood, and artists. But what has done more, perhaps, than anything else to give a high tone to the upper classes in Siberia, and to stamp their manners with elegance, is the thirty years' residence of the political exiles of 1825, so-called Decembrists. On the day of the accession of the late Emperor Nicholas, a widespread conspiracy against him was discovered before it was quite ripe for action. Growing out of the general discontent which had hatched the abortive plot against the life of Alexander I., it assumed a definite shape and formidable magnitude during the three weeks' interregnum which occurred between the death of Alexander and the accession of Nicholas, during which time Nicholas had been coquetting with the crown, before formally intimating his acceptance of it. The army was involved, and many of the officers of the Imperial Guard were deeply committed. The premature discovery of the conspiracy disconcerted the most active leaders of the malcontents, and when the crisis came, the rebellious troops were reduced by whole regiments who backed out at the last moment, and the few thousands who were left found themselves deserted by many of their officers. The forlorn hope assembled in St. Isaac's Square on the 26th of December, and the very first act of Nicholas's reign was to blow the insurgents to atoms with artillery, and cut up the flying remnant with cavalry. A fearful day of reckoning followed this ill-fated attempt. A searching inquiry was at once instituted, conducted by commissioners. It lasted nearly half a year. Instigated by fear, and the thirst for vengeance, the government interpreted the most trivial circumstances into treason. The leaders of the insurrection were mostly young men of good families, but they were indirectly encouraged by noblemen of great wealth and power. All this was ferreted out in the protracted investigation. The end of it was the capital punishment of a few of the most active instigators of the plot, and the exile of the rest to Siberia. Among these exiles were many members of the highest aristocracy. Their wives in most instances followed them into Siberia, which they were permitted by government to do, on certain conditions. One condition was, that the wives of exiles should come under an obligation never to return from the land of their banishment. Another was, that all their correspondence should pass through the hands of the governor-general in Siberia, and the ministry of secret police in St. Petersburg. This latter condition their ingenuity enabled them easily to evade. These ladies, among whom were princesses, countesses, and others of rank, fortune, and refinement, soon began to be influential in Siberia. Their husbands, who had been condemned to labour in the mines for various terms, some to ten, others to twenty-five years, and some others for life, were never detained much more than one year at any of their penal settlements. None were ever compelled to labour at all, except a few who were refractory, or who had committed misdemeanours while in Siberia. As time wore on, and the fury of the government abated, the interest of the friends and relations of the exiles induced the governor-general of Eastern Siberia to look favourably on them. They were then permitted to reside in, and to register themselves as residents of, various villages in the different provinces of Siberia. It was not long before they were allowed to reside in the larger towns, and once there, they soon built for themselves elegant houses in such places as Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk, and Yeniseisk, where they lived openly and in comparative comfort, and took up their natural position as the _élite_ of society. But though fortune seemed to smile on them, the exiles were politically dead, that being the inexorable sentence of the law which drove them from their native country. Children were born to them in Siberia, but although they took up the position in society which their birth and education entitled them to, they were, nevertheless, in the eye of the law, illegitimate, and incapable of enjoying any social or political rights. The sins of the fathers were visited on the children to interminable generations. Not only could the children of exiles not inherit their father's hereditary titles, but they were debarred even from bearing their own family name! And they inherited their parents' exile in never being permitted to return to Russia. This has, no doubt, been in some instances evaded, by daughters marrying Russian noblemen, and returning to Russia under cover of their husband's names, but such procedure was nevertheless strictly against the law. Thus did the Decembrists expiate their political offences in their own persons, and in their descendants', for full thirty years, until the accession of the present emperor. As the iron rule of Nicholas was inaugurated by an act of crushing severity, so the milder sway of Alexander II. was marked at its outset by an act of mercy to the exiles of his father. A free pardon, with permission to return to Russia, was granted to all the survivors. Their children, born in Siberia, had their father's hereditary honours and full political rights restored to them. It is by such measures as this that Alexander II. has made his name respected and beloved by his people. The influence of political exiles of various periods has made an ineradicable impression on the urban communities of Siberia, but the Decembrists, from their education and polish, have certainly done most to form the nucleus of good society there. The mercantile class in Siberia, and indeed all over Russia, stands decidedly low in the social scale. A merchant, though enormously rich, and doing a very large business, is essentially a huckster. In manners they are little removed from the common peasant, from which class they have generally sprung. They are for the most part illiterate themselves, and, until very lately, have been incapable of appreciating the advantages of education for their children. They are widely separated from the upper classes, who regard them with unmixed contempt. The line of distinction between the nobility and the substrata of society is more broadly drawn in Russia than in any other country, excepting in the empire of Japan, where, however, the mercantile, and classes in our estimation below them, are well educated. This distinction of ranks is undoubtedly a relic of barbarism, but whether the mean tastes of what ought to be the middle classes in Russia be the cause, or the effect, of their relatively low status in society, they both mutually act and re-act on each other as cause and effect, and so the evil constantly perpetuates itself. While resting in Irkutsk, we employed ourselves casting about for means of attaining the maximum of comfort, that is to say, the minimum of hardship, for the remaining part of the journey. We had learned the mode of travelling, and thought we knew exactly where reform could be applied with most effect. The greatest annoyance the traveller experiences in Russia and Siberia, is the necessity of paying horse hire at each station. It is bad enough during the day, but to turn out of a warm nest two or three times in a night, to banter postmasters and yemschiks, settle your fare to the next station, and see that your wheels are oiled, is simply intolerable, especially when the thermometer is anything you like below zero. The postmasters, with the most laudable desires possible, cannot cheat you. In every station is exhibited a placard, framed and glazed, signed and sealed by high functionaries, stating the distance in versts to each of the two nearest stations, and the fare in roubles and in kopeks, which, in Eastern Siberia, and also as far west as Tumen, is one kopek and a-half per verst per horse, that is, a little over three farthings per mile. Besides this, you are expected to pay twelve kopeks, or fourpence, for oiling wheels, which is necessary, on an average, at every third station. Then, if you use a post-carriage, or _kibitka_, another fourpence is due for that at every station. The drink-money, or _navodku_, due to the yemschik, must on no account be forgotten, for the speed with which you will be driven on the next stage will bear some proportion to the amount of drink-money which you are reported to have given for the preceding. Money does not always procure speed, but speed will always draw money. In the anxiety to award the due meed of merit a nice estimate must be made of the value of the service rendered, and the reward fixed at ten, fifteen, or twenty kopeks, or nothing at all, as the case may require. The condition of the roads and horses, over which the yemschik has no control, must be carefully weighed in this important calculation. But while nobody can attempt to cheat you with any decent prospect of success, it is always open to the station-keeper to say he has no change to give you. To meet this dodge you must carry a bag of coppers, which, unless it weighs nearly a hundred weight, will not last you from one town to another where alone the coin is procurable. Then, again, it was not to be denied that our knowledge of Russian was too limited for our purpose, in the event of our getting into any real difficulty, from the thousand and one accidents to which travellers in such a country are liable. We contrived to magnify all these imaginary difficulties in our own eyes, when a young Russian, bearing the German name of his father, Schwartz, waited on us to offer his services on the road as far as St. Petersburg. He had literally devoured his patrimony with riotous living, and had been in all employments, from clerk in a government office in Irkutsk, to actor in the provincial theatre, and was now bent on returning to his family, like the prodigal, as he was, without a shirt to his back. His antecedents were nothing to us: seeing he was a Russian, spoke German perfectly, French intelligibly, as also a few words of English which he had picked up from grooms in St. Petersburg. We settled with him at once, giving him fifteen roubles down, to furnish him with clothes to cover his limbs from the cold--for the rest he was to work his passage to Petersburg. An agreement was duly drawn up and signed, and, to conform to Russian formalities, it was certified by the police, on which a special passport for him was issued. When all was in order, a creditor of Schwartz's appeared, and lodged a claim against him for the sum of ten roubles, which we had of course to pay, or forego the valuable services of the scamp. The ten roubles was not very alarming, but the number of similar demands that might follow, inspired us with sore misgivings on Schwartz's account. The more we actually paid for him, the stronger arguments we should have to go on paying. To save the equivalent of the fifteen roubles we had already given him, it was well worth while to pay other ten. But when we had spent twenty-five roubles on him, we should only have a stronger reason to pay twenty more, which, at that stage of the proceedings, would be evidently throwing good money after bad. After grave deliberation we determined, illogically as I confess, to pay the ten roubles demanded, and stop there. By good luck we were not called upon for more roubles. But our experience with Schwartz proved so unsatisfactory, that it would have been an economy to pay a hundred roubles to get rid of him. He was a trouble and a dead loss to us from first to last. His only real use was, as a standing butt for invective. His follies were, at the same time, aggravating and amusing. When he left at a post-station some of the things of which we had given him charge, it was a solace to us to know that he had also lost an extra pair of his own boots. And when we missed a preserved ox tongue, which had been put into water to soak at a previous station, it relieved our resentful feelings mightily to make Schwartz go without his dinner. Snow fell in Irkutsk on the 17th October, and for two days, sledges were at work in the streets. The sun was powerful enough on the 18th to melt it a little during the middle of the day. But still there was the snow, a fortnight before its regular time, and we were just too late to be able to get over the rivers while they were still open for boats. It was an early winter in Eastern Siberia: that world-renowned individual, the "oldest inhabitant," only recollected one season in which snow-roads were practicable in Irkutsk as early as the 1st October, Russian date, or 13th, new style. The 19th was a fine hard morning, with a sky slightly overcast; and on that day we resumed our nomad life, after six days' rest. The River Angara flows through Irkutsk, but there is only a small portion of the town on the left bank. The Irkut, rising in the mountainous region near Kosogol, on the frontier, south-west of Irkutsk, falls into the Angara opposite the town. The post-road crosses the Angara below the confluence. The crossing is effected by means of a most efficient floating bridge, which consists of a boat held by a strong warp to an anchor dropped about 500 yards up the stream in mid-channel. The slack of the warp is buoyed up by three boats at equal intervals. In crossing, the boat's head is pointed obliquely across the stream by means of a large oar over the stem. The strength of the current does the rest. The boat swings on her anchor until she is laid alongside the landing on the opposite bank. The boat is double-bottomed, with a spacious platform on deck, and a moveable rail on each side. There is room on deck for three or four carriages to stand, and the passage is effected without taking the horses out. The Angara flows as clear as crystal out of the Baikal, and maintains its purity after receiving the Irkut. It is deep at Irkutsk, and the current is nearly six miles an hour. The town again appears to good advantage from the left bank of the Angara. The river banks are in themselves rather picturesque, and when the water, the pretty white spires of the town, and thick woods around, are combined in one view, the effect is beautiful, and the traveller retains a pleasing impression of Irkutsk. CHAPTER XVI. IRKUTSK TO KRASNOYARSK. For the first two stages from Irkutsk we caught occasional glimpses of high mountain ranges at a great distance to the south-west. But the dense forest soon shut in our view. The roads were tolerably good, and we rumbled along expeditiously and comfortably. The country maintains the same characteristics as already noted--thick woods for the most part, with clear patches here and there, and villages at intervals of a few miles; while its surface is pleasantly varied with hill and dale, and if only there were less forest to enable one to see round him, it would be a very cheerful drive. Innumerable small rivers have to be crossed in ferry-boats, which help to break the monotony of the journey. Reading is next to impossible on Russian roads, and the art of sleeping--when there is nothing better to do--is a most valuable accomplishment to the traveller. We had attained considerable proficiency in this, and I have been ferried across a river amid the hubbub of taking out and putting in horses, and rolling the carriage into and out of the ferry-boat, without suffering any interruption of a profound slumber. Being eager to make up lost time, we drove our yemschiks hard with drink-money, and they certainly responded heartily to the stimulant. The roads are very steep, and nothing has been done in the way of cuttings or embankments. The ravines have generally small streamlets running along the bottom, which is ragged and broken. These are bridged over in a rough-and-ready manner. But the ascents and descents are fearfully steep. When a heavy carriage starts down a hill with three rats of ponies in front of it, one only bearing the weight of the vehicle, no earthly power can stop it. The drag on the wheel is of little use. The only safety is in the plan the Russian drivers adopt of going full tilt from top to bottom, to the delight of Siberian ponies--dashing over the wooden bridge like madmen, and halfway up the opposite hill before they draw rein. There is a fascinating excitement about this mode of charging a ravine which kills all sense of danger, except, perhaps, when the road is slippery with snow, well polished with sledges. Under these circumstances it is only the more necessary to urge the beasts at top speed; but a qualm of nervousness will occasionally rise, unbidden, until you have learned to confide implicitly in the infallibility of the yemschiks and their high-mettled steeds. The ponies are always in prime condition for work. Little or no attention is paid to them in the stable or out of it, but they have always as much corn as they can eat, and they are notoriously good feeders. They are capable of a great amount of continuous hard work. On an average every one of them travels two stages a day, both ways, for they always return to their own station. That is equal to about forty miles with a loaded carriage, and the same distance back, with an empty one, on the same day. When the roads are tolerable they go at a good speed. We have travelled eighteen miles at a stretch within an hour and a half. The roads seldom admit of this rate of travelling, however, being generally, saving the bridges and the original cutting through the woods, left pretty much to nature. Along the whole length of the post-road the distances from station to station are marked at every verst by wooden poles, painted black and white; and at each station a high post indicates the distances from the chief towns. A feeling of depression always came over me on spelling out the interesting word St. Petersburg, and finding it was more than 6000 versts or 4000 miles off. It was a tedious business to reduce such an imposing figure as that. After Irkutsk we had got it under the 6000. When wearied out with rough travelling, the few versts to the next halt were painful enough, and on such occasions the 5000 odd were really appalling. We never stopped by day or night, unless compelled by force of circumstances. Our meals were consequently uncertain and irregular, both as to time, quantity, and quality. At most of the stations shtchee and beef could be had about mid-day, though unless it was ready we did not wait for it, but pushed on, trusting to what we might pick up in a chance way, and having our small stock of preserved meat to fall back upon, should everything else fail. Twice a day we drank tea. The Russians lose a great deal of time in tea-drinking at the post-stations. Give them plenty of tea, and they care little for food. Indeed they encourage the habit partly to blunt the appetite. It suits their constitutions, but it certainly did not answer with us, to be jolted and tumbled about on bad roads with a stomach full of fluid. Besides the loss of time was an object to us, but of little account apparently to the Russians. A sufficiency of solid food can be disposed of in a very few minutes, not so boiling tea, and I have constantly seen Russians slowly sipping quarts of the decoction long after their horses were ready for the road. In a very cold night the hot tea is no doubt acceptable, but one tumbler of hot grog is worth a gallon of tea, and occupies less time and less room. After three days and nights' travelling we arrived at the Birusanskaya station, distant from Irkutsk 638 versts, or 426 miles, which was very fair going, all things considered. In that distance we had only passed one town--Nijni-udinsk. Birusanskaya stands on the right bank of the river Birusa, which, at this part of its course, divides the government of Irkutsk from that of Yenisei. This river, as well as those crossed to the eastward, rises in the mountain ranges near the southern frontier of Siberia. They all flow northward, and fall into the Angara, before its junction with the Yenisei. At Birusanskaya we were told that the river was impassable on account of the ice, and that there were no horses, with a number of similar stories, more or less true. It was night, and we were not the only sufferers; so, as soon as we had fairly exhausted all the persuasive means at our disposal, we quietly went to roost like the rest. At 10 o'clock next morning we were furnished with horses, and drove to the river. It was fast freezing over, and at the regular crossing there was too much ice at the edges to admit of the ferry-boat's "communicating." Another crossing had therefore to be used, where there was no proper road on either side of the river, and which consequently involved much loss of time. On leaving the river, and before joining the post-road, a tract of prairie ground had to be crossed, all holes and hillocks, and anything but an eligible road for wheeled carriages. The distance from home seemed to diminish suddenly as we came in sight of the telegraph wires which had been carried as far as the river Birusa. The posts were put up at some parts of the road eastward. Coils of wire were lying at every station, and the workmen were busy stretching and carrying it on. The posts are tall rough spars, placed at intervals of one hundred yards, and only two wires are used. The telegraph was completed to Irkutsk in December last. A marked improvement in the roads was observable in the government of Yenisei. They had been macadamised, and although the stones had been overlaid with a coating of mud during the early part of autumn, it was not so deep as to become very rough with traffic. In some parts a thin covering of snow lay on the ground, and sledges were in use in such places. In the middle of the night (a very cold one) of the 23rd October, we arrived at the river Kan, which, from the town of Kansk, flows nearly west, and joins the Yenisei north of Krasnoyarsk. The ferrymen were all on the opposite shore with their boats, and of course asleep, and we were anything but sanguine of rousing them. We called lustily, but the echo of our shouts alone responded, as if in mockery. "You may call spirits from the vasty deep," &c. But either we must get over, or shiver on the banks of this river Styx till day-light. Fortunately the yemschiks were as impatient as ourselves, and possessing stentorian lungs, they plied them vigorously, until at last a gruff response from the log-hut on the other side was vouchsafed. Then some low mutterings were heard (for the air was so still and frosty that you might have heard a pin fall), then a little rumbling of oars and heavy footsteps on the loose deck-boards of the ferry-boat, some splashing in the water, and in due time the boat itself, with the grim ferrymen in beards and sheepskins, was seen approaching us. The town of Kansk is a verst and a half from the ferry. The sharp air had affected all and sundry at the post-station of Kansk, for a deep sleep had fallen on them. With a little perseverance we knocked them up, in anything but an amiable frame of mind, and it was near 4 o'clock, a.m., before the sleepy yemschiks had got the horses in. We had picked up a fellow-traveller the day before, and arranged to travel in company, if possible, as far as Tomsk. He was carrying gold from Irkutsk to Barnaul, which is the great place for smelting it. Our first introduction to him was at the Birusa river, which he excited our jealousy by crossing in advance of us. To get a rise out of him we promised extra drink-money to our yemschik if he would pass him, which he did. The Russian was annoyed at being passed, and at the next station he recorded his grievances in the book kept for that purpose. We left him there drinking tea, and soon after we missed some things which we had in the hurry left behind. Our new friend came up with us at the next station, and brought with him the missing articles. This began to make us feel kindly to him, and as we encountered him at every station, we soon got intimate, and he ended by proposing to keep company with us, dining and drinking tea together. His name was Vasil Vasilovitch Something or other (I never could catch his family name), but as his talk turned greatly on the charms of Barnaul, we gave him the nickname of Old Barnaul. He tried hard to speak French and English, but as he had only acquired about ten words of the former, and five of the latter, we could only get on with a conglomeration of Russian, French, and English, or through the interpretation of Schwartz. "_Prendre thé_--very good," was about his highest effort in philology. Old Barnaul talked much of San Francisco, whither he had been carried as a prisoner on board H.M.S. Pique, during the Crimean War. He was captured at Sitka, and after spending some time at San Francisco, studying American character, and acquiring his modicum of the English language, he found his way back in an American vessel to Sitka. Old Barnaul had a cossack in full accoutrements, _i. e._, armed with a long sword, a most kind, good-natured Russian soldier, who was infinitely more useful to us than the empty-headed Schwartz. Travelling in company has its arguments _pro_ and _con_. First, _pro_--you have the chance of exciting in the respective yemschiks the noble ambition of landing you first at the next station, by holding out the promise to each of extra drink-money if he wins. This is also exhilarating to yourself, as in every stage of the journey you have the excitement of a race to beguile the tedium of the way. Then, by preconcerted arrangement, you determine at what station you will dine or drink tea, so that whichever of you arrives first can make the necessary preparations. Second, _con_. You throw a heavier burden on the yemschiks at the stations, and thereby protract the usual time required to change horses. And you run the risk of stopping the whole party by the greater number of horses you call for all at once, for there may often be horses for one traveller, where there are not enough for two. On the whole, it retards progress, just as in the case of vessels keeping company on the water, the speed obtained is somewhat less than that of the slowest of the convoy. To the west of Kansk, the country is nearly cleared of wood, and is for the most part rather flat. Cultivation becomes more general, and the clear view occasionally obtained over the bare country, revealed many large villages dotted here and there. The wind rose early in the day, and sent a cold chill through us as we drove up in its teeth. While halting at a station, a smart shower of snow fell, and caught our tarantass, half-open in front, and face to wind. It was fast filling with snow, and we rebuked Schwartz for his negligence. He at once transferred the responsibility from his own shoulders, by going out into the yard and kicking the first yemschik he met, which seems to be the most civil kind of salutation a Russian moujik expects. When the shower stopped, it was not difficult to shake out the snow from our blankets, and what was left was no great inconvenience to us, for the air was too cold to allow it to melt. The road was kept clean by the wind, which drove the snow before it like fine sand drift. But the wind was a sad inconvenience to us, and this was perhaps the only day on which our heavy furs and blankets were inadequate to retain warmth. The roads were excellent, however, and we went merrily along. We found the inconvenience of travelling with Old Barnaul, on coming to a station where horses were obtainable for us, being privileged, but none for him. The "cold without," and a good dinner within, induced us to wait a few hours until he could get horses. Besides, the Yenisei river was before us, and we were assured that the passage could not be effected in such a wind. Very late at night we reached Basailsk, a station ten versts short of the Yenisei. There we remained all night, and next morning drove on to the river. Here was one instance, out of many, of the absurd situations that have been chosen for many of the post-stations in Siberia, with reference to the rivers. The station is nearly always placed at some distance from the river, sometimes only one or two versts. Horses have to be harnessed and driven to the river, there unharnessed again, transported across the water, and put to again on the other side. This extra work and loss of time would be saved by placing the station on the bank of the river, and so by having one on each side, the horses need never be ferried over at all. The Yenisei is a noble river, the largest in Siberia. Its banks are bold, but very bare, while the lack of timber, and general baldness of the country, give the scene a bleak and inhospitable aspect. The sprinkling of snow that hung about the crevices served to intensify the gloom. It was questionable whether we could cross the Yenisei in the face of the wind, which blew in strong gusts from the north-west, but we managed to get our establishments into a boat, rather small for the load she had, but quite large enough for the power available to propel her. She was headed straight across the stream, pulled by four men in the bow, and steered by the usual rudely made oar over the stern. They made very little way with her, and when we had reached the right bank of the river, we had dropped about a mile down stream. A horse was ready on the other side to tow the boat up to the proper landing-place. A rope was passed ashore, but before it was properly secured to the horse, the end slipped, a gust of wind caught the boat, and she was blown from the shore. This was too good an opportunity for jabbering and gesticulation to be lost on our lusty crew, and accordingly to this luxury they abandoned themselves, while the unfortunate boat, bearing us, the unfortunate passengers, was being blown out to the middle of the stream by the wind, and at the same time gliding swiftly down the river. When the crew had recovered themselves a little, they hesitated about which shore they ought to make for; and at last concluded it would be best to go back again to the left bank, which we reached at a point three miles below our original starting-place. The men landed, and went to the town to fetch horses to tow the boat up again. We walked to the town also to seek some shelter from the biting wind, and wait the arrival of the boat. She got up at noon, and we made a fresh start to cross, which was successfully accomplished the second time. A used-up team of horses awaited us, and we travelled slowly to Krasnoyarsk. Amid a great deal of grass and waste land, the country round Krasnoyarsk is well cultivated, but very bare. The town is situated on a raised plateau in a large valley. Like other Siberian towns its streets are wide, straight, and clean, with dull-looking wooden houses, and handsome churches. There is something incongruous in this combination. The churches are undoubtedly highly ornamental to the town--it would be poor indeed without them--but the contrast between their snow-white walls and spires, and the earth-colour of the houses, is too great. They seem to have no connection with each other. Krasnoyarsk, though the government town of Yeniseisk, is comparatively a small place, its population being something under 10,000. As an exception to the general rule, its name is not derived from a river, but means "red cliff." The station-master at Krasnoyarsk combines with his official duties the business of hotel-keeper, an arrangement admirably convenient for travellers. The station hotel is a very good one from a Siberian point of view, and we were induced to shake down in it for the night from a variety of reasons, chiefly because we were very tired, and it was snowing heavily. Other travellers from the west were there at the same time, and we were entertained by their accounts of the state of the roads from Nijni-novgorod. It was amusing to hear the different reports of travellers, and compare them. Most of them were absolutely contradictory, and we were constrained to come to the conclusion that Russian travellers fill up the blanks in conversation with whatever comes uppermost, without taxing their memory to the extent necessary to give an accurate statement of their experience. The amount of attention which the efficient management of the hotel exacted from the landlord left him no time for the duties of his less remunerative position of postmaster. All the postal arrangements were in dire confusion in the morning, when we wished to start on our journey, yemschiks drunk, and no one at his post. We lost the whole morning waiting for horses, which was so vexatious that we resolved to record our complaint in "the book." At every post-station a black book is kept in a corner of a room on a small table, to which it is attached by a cord, and sealed. It is open for public inspection, and every traveller has the privilege of writing in it any grievance he may have suffered from inattention, incivility, or unwarrantable delay on the part of yemschiks or postmasters. The director-general of posts makes a periodical tour, and examines the black book of every station. The complaints of government couriers are, perhaps, the only ones that excite much attention. Everything else in the posting system is made subordinate to the rapid despatch of government intelligence. Horses can never be refused to a courier on any pretence whatever, for the station-keepers are obliged, at all times, to keep a certain number in reserve for such emergencies. When news of importance has to be transmitted, it can be done with very great rapidity by means of an _estafette_, which will carry news from Kiachta to St. Petersburg, a distance of over four thousand miles, in less than twenty days. The rapidity with which the Russian government has, on certain occasions, obtained important news from China, proves the efficiency of the courier service. The signing of the treaties at Tientsin in 1858, and the Taku disaster in 1859, were known at St. Petersburg some two weeks before the official despatches reached this country. And now that the telegraph has been extended to Irkutsk, the Russians receive news from the Chinese commercial ports, on the direct steamer route, a good many days earlier than we can, even by telegraph from Suez. The capture of Nanking, for example, was reported in England _viâ_ St. Petersburg on the 11th September, while our Suez telegram did not reach till the 23rd. CHAPTER XVII. KRASNOYARSK TO TOMSK. It had snowed all night in Krasnoyarsk, and sledges were actively employed in the streets next day. The conveyance given to us for our extra baggage was a sledge. Old Barnaul could not get horses, so we left him behind. He managed to hire private horses for one stage, and came up to us at the next station. The roads were good, but yemschiks sulky, and we were driven along at a snail's pace. When drink money was asked for, we upbraided the yemschik for his contumacy. He appealed to the "regulations," which only authorise a speed of eight versts per hour. We had nothing to object to this. But as the yemschik defended himself by the strict letter of the law, we could avail ourselves of it also, and there was nothing about drink money in the "regulations." The wind had fortunately subsided, but the cold was intense. The country west of Krasnoyarsk continued very bare. The crisp snow made travelling easy, and later in the day we managed to mend our pace, making good way during the night, and arriving early on the following morning at the town of Achinsk, 166 versts, or 110 miles, from Krasnoyarsk. There are two pretty churches in Achinsk, and the houses are rather handsome for a small town of two or three thousand inhabitants. It is situated near the river Chulim, which trends westward and joins the Ob. Achinsk is the last town of the government of Yenisei, and also stands on the boundary line between eastern and western Siberia. The country is more woody near Achinsk, and game of various kinds is abundant. We here for the first time tasted the _ryabchik_, a bird something between a pheasant and a partridge in size and in flavour. While at Achinsk we were bluntly told we could not cross the Chulim, owing to the quantity of floating ice. The river is one verst and a-half from the town. The postmaster offered to drive us there, but said we should have to come back, unless we chose to encamp on the bank of the river. When we did get there, we succeeded, after a long debate, in inducing the boatmen to ferry us over. But for a full hour they stoutly refused to take the tarantass. The large boats had been laid aside, and smaller and more handy craft, better fitted for threading their way through thick blocks of ice, were being used. With patience, however, we gained our point, and got tarantass and all across the river, though not without considerable difficulty and danger. We now entered the government of Tomsk, a fact of which the state of the roads would have been sufficient evidence. All through the government of Yenisei, a distance by our route of 350 miles, the roads are well kept up, with side drains and cross drains to keep them dry; but in Tomsk government the roads were far worse than nature made them, for traffic had ruined them and made them all but impassable. During the wet weather of early autumn they had been a mass of soft mud, which was cut up by wheels and horses' feet to a fearful extent. The frost caught them in that condition, and the result can be more easily imagined than described. The main road had been in fact abandoned, until enough snow should fall to fill up the inequalities; and in the meantime by-roads had to be struck out through the forest, that being the only practicable means of travelling at all. It is considered that between the autumn and the snow there are "no roads," and no Russian travels at that season unless under the most urgent circumstances. In the post regulations it is laid down that travellers can demand to be driven at the rate of ten versts per hour in summer, eight in autumn, and twelve in winter, from December to March. These rates are, in practice, greatly increased in summer and winter, but, in the month of October, it is hard work to average even the government speed. The state of the road beyond Achinsk had necessitated the subdivision of the stages, by erecting temporary intermediate stations. The whole of the arrangements were in confusion; so much so that after an early breakfast in Achinsk, we found no opportunity of dining till near midnight. The cold continued very severe. Our freezing breath kept our faces in a mass of ice, large icicles formed on the horses' muzzles, and they were white all over with hoar frost, formed by the perspiration freezing on their hair. Our bread, and everything we had, was frozen through. As we toiled on, painfully and slowly, on the 28th of October we met travellers who assured us of the impossibility of crossing the Kiya river at Mariinsk. We had learned, however, rather to take courage from this kind of Job's comfort with which we were so often entertained on the road; and we did not hesitate to advance to the river, which we reached at seven in the evening. An hour sufficed to persuade the ferrymen to tempt the crossing, and another hour saw us over the water and in the town of Mariinsk. We were fain to rest our aching bones a little, and finding a very civil but garrulous postmaster, a Pole, we dined comfortably at the station, and started again at midnight. On the preceding night we had come to grief, by the wheel of our tarantass sinking into a pit that had been dug for a telegraph post, and then filled with snow. With the assistance of a peasant whom chance threw in our way, and a stout pole for a lever, the vehicle was extricated; but we had not gone two stages from Mariinsk before the same wheel fell suddenly to pieces without any immediate provocation. We were a number of miles from any station when this accident occurred, but the yemschik, being no doubt accustomed to similar mischances in driving four-wheeled carriages through tangled woods, proceeded at once to put us in temporary travelling order. He cut down a pretty stout tree, one end of which he laid on the axle of the fore wheels, while the other end rested on the ground behind the carriage. This formed a bridge for the axle of the hind wheel (the broken one) to rest upon, and by that simple expedient we got safely to the station, Berikulskoé. The accident delayed us a whole day at the station. Old Barnaul parted company with us to proceed to Tomsk, which was then only 120 miles distant. On entering the village, a blacksmith, spying our condition, and smelling a job, followed us to the station. We settled with him to repair our wheel, which was equivalent to making a new one all but the tire, for the sum of six roubles, and it was finished in the afternoon. At this point we discovered that our special pass had been left five stations behind us. It was a serious matter to lose a document so essential to inspire postmasters with respect, and we wrote to the station where we supposed it had been left, requesting it might be forwarded to us. During the day, however, the post from Irkutsk passed, and brought us the paper, for which delicate attention we felt duly grateful. From Berikulskoé we resumed the circuitous tracks through the forest. During the night our yemschik contrived to drive us up against a tree, to the irretrievable injury of the hood of our tarantass. Misfortunes seemed to come thick upon us and our ill-fated tarantass. Indeed, considering the terrible ordeal it had passed through, it was surprising that it had held together so long. Apprehension is lively in the dark hours, and visions of a final break down haunted us all that night, as we threaded our way in the deep shade of the forest, pitching and rolling like a ship in a storm. Our minds were sensibly relieved on reaching the town of Ishimskaya, at daybreak on the 30th of October. Here we found Old Barnaul and his Cossack sleeping soundly on the boards. He had arrived the evening before, but had allowed himself to be cajoled into resting all night, and now it was too late to cross the river. The post that had passed us the day before had crossed the river in a boat at midnight, but since then the ice had set in so strong that the passage was impossible. It was therefore necessary to wait at the station till the ice on the river was strong enough to bear horses and carriages. The station-master was a Pole, a very good sort of fellow, who would talk on any subject but Poland. He was something of a sportsman, possessed two old guns and some under-bred pointers. His wealth consisted in three curious old-fashioned watches, which he offered for sale. One was by Dent, and he informed us he had bought it of a traveller for 125 roubles. As the force of circumstances compelled us to spend the day at Ishimskaya, we endeavoured to make the most of it, and tried to induce the postmaster to accompany us on a shooting excursion. This he declined, but proffered us all the topographical information necessary to enable us to find the game for ourselves. So armed, we plunged into the woods, and beat about for hours among the snow without the satisfaction of seeing a feather, or finding traces on the snow of anything but vermin. We returned about sunset, tired and cold, spite of all our walking, and an irreverent magpie, on the outskirts of the town, paid the penalty of our disappointment. The delay at this outlandish place was the more vexatious that it was within less than a day's march from Tomsk, where we purposed resting a day or two to refit. On the second morning we again stirred up the postmaster, but he absolutely refused to attempt the crossing with our tarantass. One traveller had come to grief that same morning trying to get a carriage over the ice. We resolved, however, to go without the tarantass, packing up a few necessaries in a small sledge, which we had drawn over the river by one horse, two more being sent from the station and put to on the other side. Old Barnaul accompanied us. The tarantass we left behind in charge of Schwartz, with orders to follow on as soon as the ice was strong enough to bear the carriage. Let it not be supposed that the same place that was open for boats on the 29th of October was frozen strong enough to bear horses and sledges thirty-six hours afterwards. When the river is freezing the ferry is removed to some distance, where a passage is kept open as long as possible by the constant traffic of boats. During that time the usual crossing at the post-road is left to freeze quietly, so that by the time the temporary ferry is no longer practicable, the ice at the regular ferry may be thick enough to bear the traffic. Old Barnaul managed to slip on the ice and fall into a hole that had been broken by the horses' feet. A more miserable-looking object, on his emersion from the cold bath, I never saw. In the sledge his clothes became sheets of hard ice, but we were, fortunately for him, delayed for want of horses at the second station from Ishimskaya, so that the old man had time to melt down his congealed habiliments. A good deal of snow fell during the day, but still the roughness of the road was but slightly mitigated thereby. The sledge was comparatively easy, however, the runners lying on two or more hillocks at once, instead of jolting up and down each separate lump, like the wheel of a carriage. During the night we were again stopped, with a number of other travellers, for want of horses, and it was 3 o'clock on the morning of the 1st November ere we entered on the last stage before Tomsk. Our sledges were quite open, and we could but abandon ourselves to the enjoyment of a night scene more gorgeous than fancy ever pictured. The snow had ceased falling, and the sky was clear and cloudless. Not a breath of wind stirred. It was a little past full moon, and the pure white surface of the ground sparkled in the bright moonlight as if it had been strewn with diamonds. Some of the finest constellations were high above the horizon. Orion, Taurus, and Gemini were conspicuous; and Sirius was never seen in greater splendour. Towards daybreak, Venus appeared in all her glory, and completed the most brilliant group of celestial phenomena the human eye ever rested on. There is a peculiar transparency in the Siberian sky, both by night and by day, but it needs a still frosty night to show it off to its best advantage. Long before daylight we passed numerous trains of peasants, with their sledges, driving towards Tomsk with their daily supplies of provisions for the market. Before sunrise we entered the town of Tomsk, and were not sorry when Old Barnaul conducted us to a lodging-house, where we could thaw ourselves and take rest. We were made excessively comfortable there by the old lady and her daughters. The _cuisine_ was excellent, attendance good, and charges very moderate. Our room was adorned with a number of pictures. Christ and the apostles, with some others of saints, were most conspicuous. A view of Kazan, the column of Alexander at St. Petersburg, coloured German lithographs of the bombardment of Sevastopol and the battle of Inkermann, and, finally, a certificate, signed and sealed, purporting that the old lady had made a donation to "the Church" in 1846. Great value appeared to be set on this document, but whether the lady regarded her good deed as laying up treasures in heaven, or thought the evidence of it, given under the hands of holy men, to be proof against ill luck, is not easy to say. It is difficult to separate the religion of Russians from the gross superstition with which it is mixed up. The upper classes, as a whole, keep aloof from religious observances, while the peasant class are constantly crossing themselves to churches and saints, and never will enter a room without uncovering the head and doing reverence to the picture of the saint that always faces them as they enter the door. Many excellent men are to be found in the Russian priesthood, but as a class they certainly do not stand high. The Russian government has always used the clergy to work on the illiterate masses by means of their superstitious fanaticism. The cross was borne in front of the troops in St. Isaac's Square when Nicholas put down the insurrection of 1825. And the Empress Catherine II., whose life was the reverse of all piety, invoked the protection of the saints in order to excite the enthusiasm of the people. The Russian peasants are pharisaical in their observance of saints' days and fast days, but their sense of religion stops there. A characteristic anecdote, illustrative of the religious sentiments of the Russian moujik, was told us at Tomsk. A moujik killed a traveller on the road, and robbed him. In his pocket was found a cake made with fat, which the moujik, being hungry, was preparing to eat, when he suddenly recollected that it was a fast day, on which it was unlawful to eat animal food. His religious creed, which placed no obstacle in the way of murder and robbery, was inexorable in the matter of eating meat on a fast day. Tomsk is not equal to Irkutsk in size or population, and lacks the mathematical symmetry which distinguishes the latter town. The buildings in Tomsk are also less elegant, but they have an air of more homely comfort than those of Irkutsk. Its architectural defects are, however, amply compensated by the superior advantages of its site, as it is built upon several hills, sloping on one side to the river Tom, and on the other side forming deep ravines, which gives the town a picturesque and even romantic appearance. A good many houses are built of brick, which the Russians call _stone_. On the outskirts there are great assemblages of small, miserable-looking, wooden huts, which help to disfigure the town. The principal houses are insured against fire, and the emblem of the "Salamander" Fire Office, nailed on the outer wall or over the door, meets the eye everywhere. Fires are by no means common, which is surprising considering the combustible material of which the cities are constructed, and the necessity of keeping up large fires during at least six months of the year. Nor do the inhabitants display any extraordinary caution in their habits, for though smoking in the streets (where it could not possibly do any harm) is strictly prohibited in Russia and Siberia, smoking within doors is universally practised by all classes. Tomsk has been considered the coldest town in Siberia on the same parallel of latitude. The temperature in winter is as low as -30° to -40° Réaumur (-35° to -58° Fahrenheit), but it is becoming milder. An English lady, who had resided there a dozen years, informed us that during that period a marked improvement in the climate was noticeable. The extension of agriculture has probably been the means of producing this change. During our stay in Tomsk the thermometer showed -8° to -13° Réaumur (14° to 3° Fahrenheit). Excellent water is procured from the river. Water-carrying is quite a trade, employing a number of people from morning till night. A large hole in the ice is kept open, whence the water is carried up the steep bank in buckets, and conveyed through the town in carts, which are kept perfectly water-tight by the thick coating of ice that accumulates from the water dropped in filling. All classes in Siberia are careful to cover themselves well from the cold. Wealthy people muffle up in expensive furs, and the peasants attain the same end by means of sheep-skins or deer-skins, which cost very little. No peasant is so poor as to be without very substantial gauntlets, made of stout leather with some warm substance inside, which protect both hands and wrists. They make little of the cold, however, when their avocations necessitate the endurance of it. In Tomsk, for example, it is not uncommon for the women to do their washing on the ice. Cutting a hole with an axe, they will stand or kneel over the water till their work is done, without even the appearance of hurrying. How they escape frost-bite it is hard to understand. A few boys were seen skating on the river at Tomsk, but so few in number, and so grave in their demeanour, that it was sad to see them. Elsewhere we had observed skating in a small way, and in some villages small sledges even were used as playthings for children, but all so demurely as to be suggestive of the absence of real enjoyment. It may be that the Siberians make little of the ice because they have so much of it. But all roystering games in which the exuberant spirits of youth in other countries delight, are conspicuous by their absence in Siberia, and the _genus_, _little boy_, may almost be classed among the extinct mammals. So much the worse is it for the country. The youth who grow up without a taste for manly exercises are very likely, in maturer years, to betake themselves to in-door recreations of the most unprofitable kind. Many of the largest mining proprietors have their town residences in Tomsk, and about four thousand workmen are in the habit of wintering in the towns, and spending their earnings there. I will here note a few particulars relative to mining in Siberia, supplied by a gentleman of extensive personal experience in that department. Siberia is rich in nearly all mineral treasures; but little attention has been paid to any but gold and silver, and even few of the latter mines have been worked. The richest gold-diggings that have ever been worked in Siberia are situated in the northern part of the government of Yeniseisk, but they are now nearly worked out. Very rich diggings, or mines, have also been worked in the Altai-saian chain, or "White Mountains," in the south of the same province, on the Chinese frontier. Within a recent period, gold has likewise been worked in the northern part of the government of Irkutsk, and in the Trans-baikal regions, which have only lately been thrown open to private enterprise. Within the last two or three years, gold discoveries in the Amoor districts have attracted thither many exploring parties, but I have not ascertained what success has attended their efforts. Gold-diggings are to be met with in nearly all the uninhabited parts of Siberia. But in western Siberia the gold-fields are almost worked out, so that they are now of little value, and are carried on only in a small way. In the Kirghis steppe there is one very rich silver mine, called the Zmeiewskoi, the property of a private family in Tomsk, the descendants of the first discoverer of gold in Siberia. This gentleman turned his discovery to good account. He was the first who worked gold-diggings in Siberia, and obtained many immunities from the government, who have always eagerly promoted the working of that metal. In his lifetime, he amassed a colossal fortune, and at his death, left mining property of enormous value. His successors, however, contrived to dissipate their inheritance by various means; but the silver mine in the Kirghis steppe has once more raised them to affluence. The government gold, silver, copper, and iron mines are worked by criminals, condemned to hard labour, after having undergone corporal punishment for capital offences. They receive no pay for their labour, but only food and clothing enough to keep body and soul together. The works are all under the control and management of officers trained in the mine corps, called Mining Engineers. These officers are strongly imbued with the national weakness of peculation, and their position affords them ample opportunities for promoting their own personal interests. Generally far removed, in uninhabited regions, from the surveillance of superiors, no efficient check can be put on their doings. As a necessary consequence of this state of matters, all government mining works are very far behind private ones in machinery, and indeed in everything else essential to their efficiency, and are therefore unproductive. So far from being a source of revenue to the government, they are, for the most part, a constant expense. These mines are all private property of the Crown, and within the last five years the Emperor, despairing of being able to work them to a profit, has proposed leasing them out to private individuals, and would now gladly do so were persons of sufficient capital and enterprise to come forward. Private gold-diggings and mines, and, in a few instances, silver mines also, generally situated in entirely uninhabited parts of Siberia, are ceded by government to private individuals on certain conditions. The applicant must be either a hereditary nobleman, or he must have the right of doing business as a merchant of the second class, and must pay the dues of the second guild. The portion of ground ceded to him is seven versts (nearly five miles) in length, and one hundred fathoms in breadth. The place always chosen is along the margin of a stream flowing through the mountains. Hence the elongated form of the allotment is adopted, in order to include as much water privilege as possible. The claimant may, however, if he chooses, take a greater breadth, but in that case the length must be reduced so as to give the same area. The river, or stream, is always included in the claim, as the richest gold is often found in its bed. The land, once allotted, is the property of the claimant only until it has been entirely worked out, or has been thrown up and abandoned, when it reverts to the Crown. Or, if not worked by the claimant at least one out of every three years, the claim is forfeited to the government, who may let it out to another applicant. The object of the government is to promote the working of gold, in order to secure the revenue from it, which is of some importance, as all gold must be delivered to the mint at a fixed price, which leaves a good profit to the government. Then, as to the manner of working the mines. To get at the gold-sands an upper layer of earth, varying in depth from five up to thirty-five or forty feet, must be carted away. On the depth and extent of earth necessary to be removed principally depends the value of a gold-digging, and the first business of the speculator is to discover whether the gold-sands are rich enough to pay for the removal of the upper strata. To ascertain this, shafts are sunk at various distances over the ground where the works are proposed to be opened, and the exact depth of the upper layer taken. Then the gold-sands are bored through, and their depth ascertained. The proportion of gold contained in a given quantity of sand is next ascertained. With these _data_, an easy calculation will show the practical miner whether the claim will be remunerative. The outlay in buildings and machinery necessary to start the work is very heavy, the expense of conveying the materials to the spot being alone a considerable item. For what are considered small works, employing from four to five hundred workmen, at least ten thousand pounds must be laid out in buildings and machinery. The works require a constant expense to keep up, and alterations and additions are frequently needed. After all, the works must be abandoned as valueless when the claim is worked out, or given up as unremunerative, as the cost of removing them to an inhabited region would far exceed the saleable value of the materials. Many diggings employ as many as two, and even three, thousand workmen. The largest item in the working expenses is the wear and tear of horseflesh, and one horse for every two men employed is considered necessary in the calculation of the years expenses. Provisions for the men, and corn and hay for the cattle, are brought during the winter months from distances of four or five hundred versts, and do not cost much. The free peasant seldom goes to work at the diggings, for, if at all industriously inclined, he can earn much more by agriculture at home. The workmen employed at the diggings are generally convicts sent to Siberia for theft and minor offences. Bad characters of all sorts, drunkards, vagabonds, men who will not settle to any steady work, convicts who have paid the penalty of the law, but have not found homes of their own--these are the kind of men who find a refuge in the gold-diggings. When all his money is gone, the digger engages himself to a proprietor for three roubles per month (equal to nine shillings). This looks a small sum for an able-bodied man to earn, but his regular wages is a matter of minor importance to the scapegrace who thus engages himself. His primary object is to obtain the _hand-money_, amounting to five or ten pounds sterling, which is paid him by his employer on making the contract. Out of this sum, as much of his debt is paid as the authorities are cognizant of, and with the whole of the balance he proceeds deliberately to get drunk, the extent and duration of his _spree_ depending solely on the amount of money in his possession. He is then ready to proceed to the gold-works, and with one or two hundred comrades, under the charge of a couple of clerks, he is despatched to the scene of his labours. On arriving there, the digger has invariably to be clothed from head to foot by his master, and generally by the opening of the summer months, the beginning of the gold-washing season, the workman has contracted a debt to his master equal to twenty or twenty-five pounds sterling. The working-season lasts about 110 days in the year, and terminates invariably on the 11-23 September. To enable the workman to reduce his debt, and possibly have some money in hand on receiving his discharge at the end of the season, he is handsomely paid for all extra work he may do, over and above the daily task assigned to each. No holidays, Sundays, or Saints' days are allowed to a workman who is in debt. The law compels him to work on these days. What with compulsory and voluntary labour, a workman has it in his power to earn from five to seven pounds sterling per month. But he must work very hard to do it. The bell is rung at half-past two in the morning; by three o'clock he must be at work, all weathers. He seldom can leave off before nine in the evening. He is allowed half-an-hour for breakfast, an hour for dinner, half-an-hour for tea, and he takes his supper after the labour of the day is finished. The task generally set for the day is the breaking up and carting away of two cubic fathoms of earth to every five men and two horses. Extra work is allowed up to one-half of the daily task, and for extra work the workman receives pay at nearly ten times the rate of his contract wages. If a workman finds a piece of gold he is also paid extra for that according to its value. When not working "extra," the five men are allowed to leave the field as soon as their task is done, whatever hour of the day it may be. The workmen at these gold-diggings are well fed, as indeed their excessive labour renders it necessary they should be. Each man is allowed from one pound to one pound and a-half of beef _per diem_. This is a luxury to him, for the Russian peasant at home seldom can afford to eat meat except on great holidays. Salt, buckwheat or other grain, and as much bread as he can eat, are daily issued to the workman. His lodging is made as comfortable as possible, every care being taken to have the barracks dry, warm, and well ventilated. Their health is also in a general way well-cared for. Every gold-digging has a fully equipped hospital, with a superintendent in charge, who must have some medical knowledge. A qualified surgeon either resides on the premises or on a neighbouring establishment, his services being paid for jointly by two or more proprietors. The surgeon has then the general superintendence of hospitals, and the care of the sick over the district. The proprietor of these works in fact takes as much care of his workmen as he would do of his horses, knowing well that unless they are kept healthy and contented, it would be impossible to exact the desired amount of work out of them. Besides the fixed rations of food, large stocks of corn-brandy (_vodka_) are kept for the men, who each get a tumblerful of the liquor two or three times a month, by way of counteracting the effect of the rawness of the climate. Of clothing also, large magazines are kept by the proprietors, and the workmen supplied with them as required for winter or summer wear. Tobacco is also considered a necessary, and is extensively consumed by all Russians. It is thought to be anti-scorbutic, and good for the climate. Supplies of brick tea are kept on hand, and of this article every workman consumes at least one pound per month. All these articles are supplied to the labourer in advance of his wages, and reckoned up when he gets his discharge. But even should he be deeply in debt the supplies are not withheld, the proprietor wisely considering that one sick man would be a dead loss far exceeding the cost of the few extras he might need. The proprietor obtains all the goods he requires at wholesale prices, in the principal commercial and manufacturing towns, and they are supplied to the workmen at lower prices than they themselves could purchase them. The goods are always of the best quality, and it would not be considered respectable for a proprietor of gold-diggings to take a profit from his workmen on the articles supplied to them. To the original cost is added the expense of transit, and at the most an interest of three or four per cent. on the outlay. Even the latter item is not always charged. When the gold-washing season is all over, the majority of the workmen find their way to some of the large towns with the balance of wages in hand, and spend the winter in riot and wantonness, often no doubt in great misery, until the next season comes round. They seldom or never think of saving money, or of bettering their condition. CHAPTER XVIII. TOMSK TO OMSK. While waiting for our servant to come up with the tarantass, we had sundry matters to look to in Tomsk before committing ourselves once more to the road, of which we continued to hear shocking accounts. Our portmanteaus were so smashed by the concussions the hard rough roads had exposed us to, as to be unfit for further service, and it was necessary to replace them with Russian _chemadáns_. This is an excellent contrivance for rough travelling; being constructed of soft leather, hard knocks have no effect, and it is capable of being so tightly lashed up as to be practically waterproof. It has also this advantage over an ordinary trunk or portmanteau, that whether it is full or not, there is no empty space left in it to block up the carriage where there is no room to spare. A few accessories, in the way of fur gloves and such like, completed our wardrobe so far. To replace a broken thermometer we were led into an optician's establishment, managed by some clever Germans. Here we were surprised to find as good an assortment of instruments as is usually to be met with in any similar establishment in this country. Telescopes, microscopes, transit-instruments, theodolites, and all kinds of surveying instruments, of excellent workmanship, were there for sale. Everything, except the very simplest articles, was of foreign make, many of them German, but mostly French. We had been strongly advised at the outset of our Siberian travels to provide ourselves with feather pillows, after the manner of the Russians, to use as buffers between our prominent bones and the hard substance of the carriage. Judging that our bedding would suffice, we, with the vanity of ignorance, rejected these good counsels in defiance of the well-known travelling maxim which inculcates the wisdom of taking your cue from the people of the country. Our carcases had been so unmercifully knocked about on the road to Tomsk, that we dared not go farther without pillows. It was not so easy to find them, however; for although Tomsk is said to be celebrated for them we could not hit on the right place to buy them. They are sold at about fourteen roubles per pood (36 lbs.). Our landlady was appealed to, but she avowed that there was not, and never could have been, any such thing in Tomsk, least of all had she any to dispose of. We were actually beginning to despair of pillows when a young Russianised German introduced himself to us, and, as usual in such _rencontres_, the conversation turned on civilisation. We happened to allude to the pillow difficulty, as proving the primitive state of society in Tomsk. On this our friend at once undertook to provide us. He went first to the old lady, and then to the younger members, none of whom he had seen before, and spent full half an hour ingratiating himself with them. The pillow question was in due time gently hinted at, and before very long one, and then another, and another, was produced, until we had pillows to our hearts' content. Delighted with his success, we begged our friend to tell us how he had achieved it. "First," he said, in very good English, "you must beat about the bush with these ---- Russians; you must flatter them and humbug them. Then you must talk about everything but _the_ thing. If you want to buy a horse, you must pretend you want to sell a cow, and so work gradually round to the point in view." He went on to tell us how he had coaxed and cajoled the good people into parting with their pillows, and how he backed up his requests by a touching appeal to their sense of hospitality. "You have two distinguished foreigners in your house, they are very good people, and you ought to treat them with the kindness due to strangers from distant countries. When Russians go to their country they are well treated. But if you refuse this small favour to these people, they will go home and tell their countrymen what beasts the Russians are," &c. We were in a dilemma about the mode of travelling from Tomsk. Our tarantass was very much the worse for the wear, and on bad roads it might break down at any time. It would hardly be safe to leave the town with it. It would be equally imprudent to purchase a sledge, for there was very little snow; none fell during our stay, and there was reported to be none to the westward. We might of course use the post-carriages, but that mode of travelling has many inconveniences. It is uncomfortable in the extreme to sit in, and it necessitates changing at every station. The nuisance of turning out luggage, and turning out one's-self, every few hours, multiplies tenfold all the horrors of the road. Had we listened to the advice proffered to us on all hands in Tomsk we should have remained there till snow fell, which might be in one week or in six. We were entertained with terrible accounts of the road through the Baraba steppe, and the post had been six days coming from Kolivan, a town only 120 miles from Tomsk. The delay was attributed entirely to the roads, but making due allowance for Russian vagueness, we thought it just as likely to have been due to the difficulty of crossing some of the large rivers. In this uncertainty a diversion occurred in the advent of Schwartz, on the third day, minus the tarantass. He had been talked into the impossibility of getting it over the ice, and was induced to sell it for the small sum of ten roubles silver. The Russians designate their paper money by the high-sounding term "silver" roubles, _lucus à non lucendo_. This crowning act of folly, coupled with the fact of his having left behind (or sold) sundry articles which were in the tarantass, determined us to give Mr. Schwartz "the sack," and nothing but reflection on the probable consequences of his being left with no money, and a blighted character, to the "cold charity of the world," caused us to relent. Old Barnaul left us a few hours after Schwartz's arrival. His destination lay nearly due south from Tomsk, a few stations beyond which town the road to Barnaul branches off from the Moscow road. The old gentleman refused to leave us entirely by ourselves, and had cheerfully sacrificed two whole days of his time, simply to keep us company until our own man came up. There was much genuine kindness in this, as in all his intercourse with us, and we parted with the pleasantest recollections on both sides (I hope). Having made all necessary arrangements for resuming our journey, and armed ourselves with a pass from the Director-General of Posts for Western Siberia, we started on the 5th November in a post kibitka, with the intention of buying a sledge when we found an opportunity, and snow enough to use it. It was late in the afternoon before we got away from Tomsk, and dark before we emerged from the thick wood into which we plunged on leaving the town. The post-station had been at a village eighteen versts from Tomsk, but on arriving there we learned that it had been removed that very day to a place more convenient for crossing the river Tom, or on the other side of the Tom, for it was hard to deduce any positive conclusion from the various and partially contradictory statements we heard. At all events, be the new station where it might, our yemschiks refused to drive us any further than the old station in the village. To be cast adrift with our baggage in a village where no accredited officer of the government was located, would have consigned us to unknown troubles. We refused, therefore, to let the yemschiks go, but insisted on their proceeding to the next station, wherever it might be. The assistance of the starust, or village elder, was invoked, and he, with a few peasants, piloted us at our request to the river Tom, that we might examine for ourselves the state of the crossing. The ice was good, and apparently strong enough to bear the carriages, but the yemschiks lapsed into a state of mulish obstinacy, and refused to stir. The starust and his satellites, all speaking at once, held forth vigorously on general topics for the edification of the company, and went to bed. As for us, we had simply to keep possession of the carriages, and leave the rest to time. The yemschiks would get hungry, the horses would certainly have to be fed, and we might hope that when they got tired of waiting they would go on. With this idea we committed ourselves to rest in the kibitka. It was sadly deficient in comfort, as compared with our old tarantass. The kibitka is open in front, and rather over-ventilated everywhere. Cold kept sleep from our eyes for a time, while our ears were regaled with spasmodic bursts of indignation from the yemschiks, who now threatened to take us back to Tomsk, bag and baggage. To these attacks we offered nothing but passive resistance, and even the yemschiks wearied of a discussion so entirely one-sided. We were lulled to sleep in time by the chanting of some wild native airs by a Russian family in a neighbouring house. Their songs, many of them very sweet, are mostly, if not all, of the plaintive order. A drunken "brute of a husband," whom his poor wife was trying to decoy homewards, was the only incident that broke in upon the dead stillness of the night scene in the village of Kaltarskaya. There stood our wearied horses in the street that livelong night, bearing their sufferings from cold and hunger with resignation. How the yemschiks bestowed themselves during the night I know not. One at least must have kept awake to watch the horses. As morning approached the cold proved too much for my somnolence, and I was fain to turn out and grope my way into the house that had until the previous day been the post-station. On getting the door of a room open, the warm, fulsome exhalations of closely pent-up human beings that greeted the nostrils were enough to have produced a revolution in a sensitive stomach. The hard breathing of some, and the more sonorous articulations of others, enabled me to ascertain the positions of the heads of most of the sleepers, but still with every care I came into collision with sundry legs and trunks in my voyage across the floor in quest of a clear space where I might stretch myself. At length I discovered an unoccupied bench or table, and yielded to the luxury of sleep till daylight. When I again opened my eyes, my night companions had begun to stir about. Some were engaged in their toilet, which consists in stretching legs and arms, yawning a little, shaking up their clothes, and tightening the scarf which forms their girdle. By stooping low on entering the room I had escaped a broken head from a false ceiling which was used as a sleeping bunk. This is a common arrangement in post-houses, where the family of the post-master and all the yemschiks and hangers-on of the establishment are often jumbled up together, some climbing up to the top of the brick stove to sleep, and others lying on the boarded floor or ceiling which overhangs part of the room like a hay-loft. The Russian houses generally are built on traditional principles, the first thing aimed at being the exclusion of _air_, and consequently cold. They always feel warm, the temperature during the day being kept up to a pretty uniform scale by the large stoves. At night the fires go out, but the house retains its heat until about daylight in the morning, when it begins to feel a little chilly. There is scarcely one perfectly level floor in the country, and many of the houses, especially the old ones, are tipped up at one end so that the line of the roof makes a very wide angle with the level ground. Some indeed tumble over altogether, where the owners are too poor or too indifferent to take them down before they progress so far towards demolition. This phenomenon is not caused by the sinking of one end from the timbers rotting in the ground, but by the action of frost in the earth, which, unless the uprights are sunk deep enough, expands with cold so much as to heave up the foundations of the houses. Early in the morning our yemschiks had made up their minds to take us over the river and to the next station. They had first to obtain the services of some peasants from the village, to pilot them over the ice. This local knowledge was necessary to enable them to avoid holes that had been only recently frozen, and other dangerous places. The Tom was here a fine broad expanse of ice, white with snow, very rough and lumpy. The crossing was satisfactorily effected, and we made the best of our way during the day through a flat, barren, and most uninteresting country, but still well wooded. A little snow fell, but only to tantalise us, for the ground never got covered more than half an inch. Soon after daylight on the 7th, we arrived at a station on the right bank of the river Ob, which was the most formidable-looking obstacle to progress we had yet encountered. But as we had only ourselves and our baggage to get over, no serious difficulties were made, though we were threatened with trouble from a gang of drunken ice-men. The Ob, Obe, Obi or Oby, for all these spellings are used, is a noble river, and at the point where we crossed it is nearly half-a-mile wide. The current is rapid, and ice had only formed along the edges of the water. The difficulty in crossing arose from the huge masses of floating ice that were carried rapidly down by the current. To avoid being shut in by these small icebergs required all the dexterity of the adepts who manned the ferry-boat. Not only skill, but real hard work was necessary. Poles and boat-hooks were vigorously plied. The short paddle-oars were of comparatively little use; but by hooking on to the floating ice and hauling round them, then shoving off into clear water for a short space, and hooking on to the next lump of ice, we managed to thread our way through. The current had carried us down stream, but it was not nearly so strong on the left side of the channel, and there was a good breadth of clear water there which enabled the men to recover their lost ground. On reaching the landing-place, a rope was passed ashore, that is, to the solid ice, and the boat hauled up bodily far enough on the ice to enable horses to fetch the luggage. The sides and bottom of the boat being thickly coated with ice, enabled the men to slide her about with great facility. From Tomsk our course had turned southerly, following the course of the river Tom, and striking the Ob obliquely. From the Ob we turned west again, and entered the great Baraba steppe. Two stages from the Ob we reached the town of Kolivan, which is perhaps the most dreary, cold-looking town in Siberia, situated in a perfectly bare country, and exposed to every wind that blows. It possessed a peculiar interest for us, however, as being the then most easterly telegraph station in Siberia. The Tomsk station had been completed, but the manager had not arrived to inaugurate the opening when we left. Kolivan, being a second-rate station, only Russian messages could be sent; but having got a gentleman in Tomsk to write one out in that language, I was enabled to send a telegram from Kolivan to St. Petersburg, a distance of 2700 miles. Many repetitions were necessary in the transmission of this message, but it was delivered with perfect accuracy in thirty-six hours. The Siberian telegraph, being now completed as far as Irkutsk, will no doubt be extended in time to the Amoor country. It is also probable that a branch will be formed from Irkutsk to Kiachta, and the Russians in Siberia confidently believe that their government will establish a line across Mongolia to Peking. The Baraba steppe is, for the most part, one vast marsh, extending from the left bank of the river Ob westward to Tumen. It borders on the Kirghis steppe on the south, and is apparently a continuation of it. Its natural features are barren, being at the best a succession of wild prairies. The grass is long and coarse, but there is so much water on the ground that, in the summer season, the grass can hardly be available for pasture. The steppe is bare of wood, with the exception of strips here and there of dwarf birch-trees, which struggle for existence. In some of its more elevated parts, trees grow to a good size, but these spots are like oases in the desert. The inhabitants of the steppe are few, and lack the comforts enjoyed by the natives of other parts of Siberia. Villages are thinly scattered, and poor and mean-looking. The principal subsistence of the people consists in their cattle, and at every village a large tract of common land is fenced in for pasture. At the stations in Baraba the post-master is seldom found at home, the domestic part of the establishment being generally left in charge of women, and the posting-department in that of the senior yemschik. The women in the steppe, we were informed, are mostly Kirghis, called by the Russians by the generic name of Tartars. The Kirghis women are physically superior to Russian women of the same class,--cleaner, better dressed, and handsomer. They have, in many instances, blue eyes and fair complexions, in marked contrast to the Kalmuks and Mongols. In manners they are more cheerful than the Russians. Game abounds in the steppe. Blackcock were in some parts met with in great numbers. Pure white pheasants and _ryabchik_ are plentiful, and, I have been told, though I did not see any, that the ptarmigan and capercailzie are also to be found. The most conspicuous objects in the steppe are the windmills, a number of which are to be found round every village. These are the only marks that exist in the country, and they indicate the positions of the villages long before any other evidence of habitation is visible. They are primitive in construction. In order to face the wind the whole fabric is moved round on its axis by means of a clumsy, but powerful lever. The road through Baraba looks like a strip of ploughed land in a desert, and was frozen so roughly that if solely depended on, traffic would soon have been brought to a stand. As it was, the heavy cart caravans were stopped for a time, and very few travellers were met with on this part of the journey. We rarely travelled on the road at all, only crossing it occasionally in quest of tracks through the open country. The frozen marsh greatly facilitated our progress. There was enough grass overspreading the ice to enable the horses to keep a footing, and by taking advantage of every sheet of ice we came to, we managed, by circuitous paths, to keep clear of the main road. The weather was mild in the steppe. The sun was strong enough in the middle of the day to melt the thin covering of snow that lay on the ground; and even the nights were not so cold as we had experienced to the eastward. Snow fell occasionally, but not enough to make a sledge-road. Slow as our progress was, it was quicker than we could have anticipated, and it was some satisfaction to keep ahead of the post which left Tomsk at the same time with us. Our yemschiks in the steppe were an unusually drunken set, but though often in jeopardy, we escaped without accident, saving one upset. Passing Kainsk on the 9th, we reached the town of Omsk at midnight on the 11th, putting up at the Hôtel Moscow, an establishment of the same empty, comfortless character as other Siberian hotels. Omsk is built round a hill at the junction of the Om river with the Irtish. It has a population of about 12,000; and is at present the residence of the Governor-General of Western Siberia. This functionary had recently made a tour to the Kirghis frontier, where some disputes had occurred between the Russian soldiers at the outposts and the Kirghis tribes. These _émeutes_ are of constant occurrence. The Cossacks at the Russian stations make raids on their own account on the Kirghis people, and subject them to very rough treatment. An outbreak among the Kirghis occurs, which requires a military force to subdue. An expedition for this purpose is sent every year to the Kirghis steppe--the Russian outposts are pushed further and further south--more disturbances occur, and so the frontier is, year by year, extended, on the pretext of keeping the peace. That has been the system pursued by the Russian Government in all its aggressions in Asia. Siberia is dotted all over with old forts, which have become obsolete as the country has become quiet and settled under Russian sway. One of the strongest of these works is on the hill that stands in the middle of the town of Omsk. It is almost intact, and still kept up after a fashion. On the Kirghis frontier forts continue to be planted as footholds on the soil, and centres from which outlying territories may be subjugated. A great deal of injustice, oppression, and cruelty have unquestionably attended the aggressions of Russia among the various Asiatic races, but in the long run the results have been rather beneficial than prejudicial to the tribes. The Kirghis who live as Russian subjects in the province of Omsk, are probably more comfortable than their semi-nomad brethren who feed their cattle on the southern steppes. The Mongol tribes who dwell under the auspices of Russia under the name of Bouriats, are more cultivated, and lead a more civilised life than the Mongols proper. They enjoy some degree of comfort, and have undoubtedly improved by their contact with the Russians. The wild hunting tribes, again, who inhabit the forests of Northern Manchuria, recently annexed to Russia, are said to have longed greatly to be transferred from allegiance to the autocrat of China to that of the Tsar. On the whole, the ambitious projects of Russia have been the means of spreading the benefits of civilisation and Christianity (in a much diluted form, it must be confessed) to many savage tribes. Highroads have been opened through deserts, and commerce has followed in the wake of conquest. The tribes who have become Russian enjoy, under the shelter of a strong government, immunity from war with neighbouring tribes, to which they were in former times constantly exposed, and have at least the opportunity of giving more attention to the arts of peace. Of course many bad, as well as good, results have flowed from the contact of Russians with these barbarous people. Those who were too low in the scale of humanity to bear the shock of a superior order of life, have been demoralised by it. The Tunguses and Ostiaks, who live in the northern parts of the provinces of the Irkutsk and Yeniseisk, are of a very low order of savages. The Tunguses are thievish, treacherous and cowardly, and live solely by fishing and hunting. The Ostiaks live almost entirely on and about the water, eat little else but fish when they can get it. They wander as far north as the Frozen Ocean. When deprived of their usual food in winter, they are reduced to eating carrion and garbage of all kinds. In their habits they are filthily dirty. Small-pox and drunkenness together make frightful havoc in their numbers. These tribes have been greatly injured by their contact with Russians. Naturally addicted to drunkenness, they have been supplied with ardent spirits to their heart's content by the invaders. The use of money being unknown to them, they only receive brandy in exchange for their services and products. They supply the gold-diggings with game, which brings them in return large quantities of spirits. They also act as guides to exploring parties, and such services are invariably requited with brandy. To obtain this liquor seems indeed to be the main object of their lives, and they have recourse to the most extraordinary expedients to gain their purpose. They are low idolaters, but they know how to turn to account the solicitude of the Russian Church for proselytising. They will allow themselves to be baptised in consideration of a bottle of brandy, but on the next favourable opportunity, they will pass over to another part of the country, and again offer themselves as candidates for baptism, if a similar inducement be held out. Brandy is fast ruining these people, and in a few generations they are likely to become extinct--a catastrophe which will have been greatly accelerated by the Russian settlers. The reverse of this is the case with the nomad tribes who are spread over the steppes of the southern districts of Siberia. Their nomad habits have been so far circumscribed that they remain for many years together in the same places, moving only to suit the seasons and the pastures for their horses. They have a fixed place where they live in spring, but move off for the summer months, then again to winter quarters. At each of these encampments they leave their tents of felt or skins standing, thus evincing great confidence in the security of life and property. These tribes use tents of the same construction as those of the Mongols; but, unlike them, they care little for the rearing of horned cattle or sheep, their wealth consisting in horses, of which they keep large herds. They do not practise agriculture, but live a great deal by the chase, and a few of them carry on a kind of wandering trade. They obtain bread and other necessaries of life in barter for the skins of wild animals, but never part with their horses until hard pressed by necessity. If they have no skins, they will rather want bread than sell their horses. These tribes respect themselves, and command the respect of others by the strict sobriety of their habits, their general honesty, and cleanliness. They are mostly Mahometans. In many respects these people stand higher than the Russians, and are not likely to be demoralised by them. Another Mahometan tribe may be mentioned in this category--the _Yakuts_, who occupy some of the northern part of the province of Irkutsk. They are no longer nomads, although they still live in tents. The Yakuts are very industrious people, rear large herds of horses and cattle, occupy themselves with trade, are skilled in ironwork, and have more recently taken to agriculture. They bear the character of sobriety, and are much more cleanly in their habits than any neighbouring tribes. The Yakuts have a tradition that they were once settled in the province of Kazan, whence they were expelled during the great irruption of Tartars into Russia, and wandered to their present habitat before they settled. The wildest and most unmanageable of all the Siberian aborigines are the _Khargasses_, who live about the Altai mountains on the Chinese frontiers, in the south of the provinces of Yeniseisk and Irkutsk. The Khargasses are quite nomad, carrying tent and all with them when they move. They are said to be fierce and treacherous, perfectly uncivilised, and idolaters. It is a common practice with them when the time for the collection of their _essak_, or poll-tax, comes, to strike their tents, and cross the mountains to Chinese territory. There they remain until some similar claim is made on them on behalf of the Emperor of China, when they again pack up and return to Siberia. The Khargasses are great hunters, and live on the produce of their guns. They own no cattle, their riches consisting of reindeer and guns, like the Tunguses. We saw two small tug steamers and six huge barges frozen-in at the junction of the Om with the Irtish. These barges go as far as Tumen with their cargoes, but of this more hereafter. As there was still too little snow on the roads to warrant us in buying a sledge, we were obliged to continue undergoing the torture of a small kibitka, changing at every station. Sleep had now become out of the question, and if we could get a nap once in forty-eight hours we had to be satisfied. Eating was almost equally irregular, for the steppe afforded but few opportunities of enjoying a good meal. And yet this rough mode of life rather improved my health than otherwise. The constant exposure to the clear bracing Siberian air was certainly most beneficial, and I am convinced of this, that with all its ice and snow, there is no finer--that is, more salubrious--climate in the world than Siberia. CHAPTER XIX. OMSK TO OCHANSK. On the 11th November, we bade adieu to Omsk at an early hour in the evening. At the end of the second stage, forty-four versts from Omsk, we came to the river Irtish. At the station we found an officer travelling with a courier's _padaroshna_, who had failed in an attempt to cross the river in the dark. This was a sufficient hint that _we_ had no chance, so we quietly lay by till morning, spending the night in the station in the company of the officer aforesaid. He was bound to the town of Tara, some distance north of the place we met him. His mission was to convey recruits thence to St. Petersburg. They are marched at the rate of thirty versts a day, which was slow enough to make us feel grateful for the moderate progress we had ourselves been making. Recruiting was going on very extensively in Siberia at this time. In Russia proper, and in the territories subject to it, recruiting is carried out on similar principles. The empire is divided into two zones, southern and northern. In each zone recruits are levied every alternate five years. They are chosen from among the free peasants and agriculturists, and when levies are made, every proprietor tries to get rid of a bad subject. The usual levy is one in every thousand of the men; but the government always takes into consideration circumstances that may entitle certain provinces or districts to partial exemption,--such as a bad harvest, or other similar misfortunes, to which agriculture and cattle-breeding are liable. When these circumstances occur, the suffering districts frequently have the term of the levy postponed a certain number of years, and in many cases they are wholly exempted. All that is applicable to times of peace. In war time, the frequency, as well as the per-centage of the levies, depends entirely on the exigencies of the government. For instance, during the Crimean War, recruiting in Eastern Siberia occurred twice in one year, and beginning at one man in a thousand, it increased gradually to seven in a thousand. The peasants on the rivers Lena and Yenisei are exempted from furnishing recruits on certain conditions, such as providing horses for travellers, and conveying the post, for which services they are of course paid besides. The peasants on the Angara enjoy similar exemption in consideration of their providing pilots for that very dangerous river. Next morning we crossed the Irtish on the ice, without difficulty, and re-entered a frozen marsh, exactly similar to that part of the steppe which lies east of Omsk, windmills and all. Late in the evening, we passed through the town of Tukalinsk. At daylight on the 15th, passed Ishim. It snowed steadily all that day, and we soon had practicable sledge-roads, which enabled us to travel 160 miles a day. Early on the 16th, we passed through Yalootorofsk, and the same evening arrived at Tumen. Finding at Tumen a very comfortable covered sledge for sale at the post-station, we immediately purchased it, as well as a smaller one for the accommodation of Mr. Schwartz and the baggage. The posting from Tumen westward is better organised than in Eastern Siberia. It is managed, not by government, but by a private company. No scarcity of horses is ever complained of in the company's line; for government takes care that the work is well done. But not the least of the improvements we experienced was, that we no longer required to pay the fare at every station. At Tumen we paid our _progon_ through to Ekaterineburg, and had no more trouble about it. In consideration of these facilities, double the government rate of fare is charged by the company from Tumen to Perm. Eastward the rate is about three-farthings per mile per horse. Westward from Tumen it is three-halfpence per horse. [Illustration: VIEW OF EKATERINBURG. SIBERIA. From a photograph. (Page 307.)] We are now fairly through the great marshy steppe. The country from Tumen is undulating, and thick pine forests reappear. We were in thorough condition to enjoy the soft luxury of travelling in a warm sledge, gliding so smoothly over the snow that at times we could not tell whether it was in motion; and it is not very surprising that we slept the greater part of the way to Ekaterineburg. Hunger even could not seduce us out of our snug retreat. The distance from Tumen to Ekaterineburg is 240 miles,--time occupied thirty-five hours. This is far from being a quick rate for sledge travelling, but the roads had not yet been properly formed, and in many places even the ground was quite bare of snow, the little that had fallen having been blown away by the wind. Ekaterineburg is first sighted at some miles' distance through the vista formed by the road. A few scattered streets of small log houses form the outskirts of the town, and give one a poor opinion of the place. On emerging from the forest the town itself bursts on the view, and produces an impression of elegance, comfort, and even grandeur. It is spread over a large surface, and is divided into two parts by the river Irchet, which, though a small stream, widens out here to the dimensions of a lake. The situation of the town shows it off to better advantage than the other towns we had passed through as more of it can be seen at once. The proportion of brick-built houses to wooden ones is much larger, and the array of handsome churches and public buildings is more imposing. The bridge which connects the two portions of the town enhances considerably the beautiful effect of the whole. Although an improvement on the rest, especially in the matter of stone houses, Ekaterineburg presents a strong family likeness to the other large towns in Siberia, and is a fair specimen of the general type. The population is about 19,000. The government mint is the most important building in Ekaterineburg. The principal coinage is copper, and I think I am right in stating that all the copper currency of Russia and Siberia is coined there. The Ural (pronounced by Russians _Oo-rál_) range, at the foot of which stands the town, is rich in precious stones, the cutting and setting of which is a standing occupation for a great number of people. The government lapidary establishment was formerly celebrated, but through neglect or mismanagement it has sadly fallen off of late, and very little of interest is now to be seen there. Strangers in Ekaterineburg are beset by little boys of most agreeable address, regular walking polyglots, who bring for sale amethysts, topazes, and other stones, with heaps of malachite, which latter is the most abundant in the neighbourhood. There are several large iron-foundries in this place, the best one belonging to an Englishman who has been many years resident in Siberia. The mention of this gentleman recalls pleasing recollections of the kindness we received from him and his family on the day we rested there. It is refreshing to meet a countryman in such a far-off region, and this circumstance greatly enhances one's appreciation of true hospitality. There is a fair sprinkling of Englishmen scattered over Siberia, and there is considerable scope for their enterprise, both in private undertakings and as government servants. One gentleman who preceded us a few days in the homeward journey had lived some years at Stretnoi, the head of the Amoor navigation, in charge of the government machine-shop there. His salary is 3000 roubles silver (_i.e._ paper) per annum, with the perquisites of a house, fire, and light. He was so well satisfied with his post that he was then travelling to England to return with his family to Stretnoi, some 2000 versts beyond the Baikal lake. This instance out of many shows first that the English skill in machinery is prized by the Russian government, and also that even the most remote districts of Siberia are not very disagreeable as places of residence. But to return to Ekaterineburg. The iron mines now being worked are at the convenient distance of 100 miles from the town, and the cost of transit of the pig-iron is comparatively small. This town is therefore advantageously situated for iron-work, and a large quantity is turned out every year. Most of the iron-work for Siberia goes from this place. The boilers and engines for the Baikal steamers are made in Ekaterineburg, and transported nearly 2400 miles to their destination. The workmen in the English foundries are chiefly Germans and Russians, with English foremen. Experience has proved the remarkable fact that English workmen deteriorate in Siberia. The native Russians are excellent workmen under skilful superintendence. Some few of them have intellect enough to be trusted with the more responsible departments of their business, but such cases are quite exceptional. They are in general mere imitators, exhibiting no power to think for themselves. A large fish-curing trade is carried on here. The fish is brought from the great rivers, chiefly the Ob, near its mouth. About 50,000 poods, equal to 1,800,000 lbs. avoirdupois, are salted annually in this town. Recruiting was going on actively here also. Having occasion to call on the master of police on a little matter of business, we drove up in a sledge to his office, but found the doorway and the portion of the street immediately adjoining it, so crowded with rough-looking moujiks wildly vociferating, that we could neither get in, nor even make our presence known, for some time. These were recruits who were being registered, passing one by one into the bureau, and coming out again by the same crowded doorway. It seemed to be quite an understood thing that each recruit should drop kopeks into the hands of the _gendarmes_ who acted as door-keepers. By dint of hard pushing we succeeded in insinuating ourselves into the passage, but only to find a yet more impenetrable crowd inside. Sickened by the exhalations of so many unclean animals in sheep-skins, half suffocated in the frowsy atmosphere within, and crushed in the living mass till we had to fight for breath like a person in a nightmare, we were glad to escape into the fresh air, and abandon the purpose of our visit. The moujiks were followed to the rendezvous by their wives, who made confusion worse confounded by their frantic yelling and pushing, each one eager to get her own _protégé_ into a good place. There were many hundreds of them, and one day would not suffice to register them all at the rate they were then progressing. The temperature was ominously high on the 18th of November,--only one degree of frost. Some days previously it had been down to -15° Réaumur (-2° Fahrenheit). We were fairly committed to sledge travelling, and there was so little snow on the ground that a few hours' thaw would have melted away our charming sledge road. The frost set in about the usual time at Ekaterineburg, October 1/13, but the snow there as elsewhere was late. The hills and forests in the neighbourhood are well stocked with game. Black-cock, white partridges, _ryabchik_, reindeer, elk, and hares, are more or less abundant. Wolves are also common, but there are no wild boar. Game is plentiful in most parts of Siberia, but the Russians are no great sportsmen, except those who make a living by hunting. The nomad tribes are, however, expert in the use of the rifle. Ekaterineburg is the most westerly town in Siberia, lying at the foot of the Ural mountains which separate Europe from Asia. I had formed great conceptions of this mountain chain, but the illusion was dispelled when, on inquiring for the Urals, I was pointed to densely wooded undulating hills, in appearance not more imposing than the Lammermoor range in Scotland. I know not why they are so darkly shaded on most of our maps, and made to look like a formidable barrier between the two continents. They certainly cover a broad expanse of country, but in elevation they are really insignificant, and rendered still more so in appearance by their very gradual rise from the level country. The elevation in the latitude of Ekaterineburg is little more than 2000 feet above the sea, and the plain on the Siberian side being between 800 and 1000 feet in elevation, the gentle slope of the mountains makes them look diminutive. While settling about our horses at the post-station of Ekaterineburg, we fell in with an elderly German lady, who was going to start the same day for St. Petersburg. As she spoke very little Russian, it occurred to her friends that it would be a good thing for her to travel with us. There was plenty of room for her in our sledge, and we willingly consented to take her in. This was arranged accordingly. But old ladies (and young ones too) like to have their own way, and she discovered that she had too much luggage to go comfortably with ours in one sledge, besides little baskets of sweet cakes and knick-knacks, of which she had laid in a store for the journey, and which were likely to come to harm lying under our feet. She therefore determined to travel in her own sledge, where she could munch cakes at pleasure, but keeping company with us for the sake of the collateral protection our escort afforded. At six in the evening of the 19th we left Ekaterineburg with our convoy, and about ten at night we reached the highest point of the road on the ridge of the Ural. In a heavy fall of snow we turned out to see the obelisk which has been erected there, as the boundary stone between Europe and Asia. It is a plain stone with no other inscription than the word "Europe" on one side and "Asia" on the other. It is said to have been erected in honour of Yermak, the Cossack robber-chief, who atoned for his other offences by discovering, and partly conquering, Siberia for the Russians in the end of the sixteenth century. It is quite unaccountable that the vast country of Siberia should have been left to be discovered by Yermak at such a late period. It was well known to the Tartars, for the dynasty of Genghis had extended their conquests there, and yet the Russians, during their communications with the Mongols of the Golden Horde which subsisted for two hundred years, had never learned what was beyond the Ural mountains. Yermak compelled by some accident to "leave his country," _i.e._, being outlawed, found his way, with some two hundred adventurers, across the Ural. After pillaging the Tartars for some time, his handful of troops, _i.e._, robbers, became so wasted with constant fighting that he could no longer maintain himself among his numerous enemies. It then occurred to Yermak to return to Moscow, announce his discovery, and make his peace with the Tsar. The robber was promoted to the rank of a hero, and was appointed to command an expedition for the conquest of Siberia. Yermak first crossed the Ural in 1580, and in 1660 nearly all the Siberian tribes were subjugated by Russia. After a night's travelling we were still among the outlying spurs of the Ural range, well wooded with pine and birch, the former in greater variety than on the eastern side of the chain. On the road to Perm we passed through many cleared spaces, with villages and farms at short intervals. On the 21st we reached Perm, a very flourishing manufacturing and commercial town on the left bank of the river Kama. Perm is the first (or last) town in Europe, and a little earlier in the season it would have been our last stage of road travelling. But we were too late and too early all the way through. The river Kama was not frozen, but so much floating ice was coming down, that the steamers which run between Perm and Nijni-novgorod had been taken off and sent down the Volga to Astrachan for the winter. Only a few small craft were left for repairs to their machinery. We met some more English workers in iron in Perm, and they seemed to have a good winter's work before them. A few weeks earlier, we should have embarked on one of the passenger steamers at Perm, steamed down the Kama as far as Kazan, where it joins the Volga, then up the latter from Kazan to Nijni-novgorod. This voyage would have been accomplished in five days, the whole of which time would have been available for sleep, but no luck fell in our way. Not only must we continue our journey by land, but it was very doubtful whether we could even cross the Kama at all, owing to the velocity of the current and the weight of ice that was borne downwards. The ferry is not at Perm, but at a point fifty versts lower down. The navigation of the Russian and Siberian rivers is making astonishing progress. There are now no less than 370 tugs on the Kama and Volga, and new steamers are being added every year. One company runs steamers from Nijni to Perm, and two from Nijni down the Volga to Astrachan. The Volga Steam Navigation Company is managed by an Englishman at Nijni-novgorod, and in his hands has proved a very remunerative undertaking. Under Russian direction it had been quite the reverse. Nearly all the steamers are of foreign construction. Many come from the German ports, and many from England. They are usually sent to Russia in pieces, but several have steamed across the North Sea, and have made their own way into the very heart of the country by means of the canals in communication with the rivers. The facilities enjoyed by Russia and Siberia for inland navigation are so vast, as to afford almost unlimited scope for capital and enterprise in introducing steam. It is, of course, a serious disadvantage that vessels have to be built in foreign countries, but there is no good reason why this should continue. If the authorities had encouraged the working of their own iron and coal mines with half the zeal they have misapplied to the gold-diggings, the country would have been further advanced in real wealth than it is. The Russian statesmen must sooner or later learn that mere gold no more constitutes wealth than tallow or any other article that has a mercantile value. The capital and labour consumed in procuring a given quantity of the precious metals would have probably produced a higher marketable equivalent, if coal and iron had been the object. At any rate, iron would have proved a surer basis for the propagation of wealth than gold. When steamers, for example, are built in Siberia, the manufacturing profits will, in the first instance, be disseminated in the country, and the gold that would, as now, be sent abroad for their purchase, may lie in the bowels of the earth, and no one be a loser by it. A good deal has already been done on the Siberian rivers, and the heavy traffic between Irkutsk and the west is conveyed for the most part in barges, which on the Om and Irtish are towed by steamers. The mere navigation of rivers in the Russian dominions is not new, but in former times the barges were incapable of ascending the rapid streams. They were constructed merely for the one trip down stream, and on reaching their destination and discharging their cargoes, they were broken up for fire-wood. The water communication between Eastern Siberia and Western Russia is necessarily very circuitous from the circumstance that the great rivers in Siberia run from south to north, and fall into the Frozen Ocean. For example, the distance by water from Omsk to Tumen is 3000 versts, and by land only 632. The Amoor and its tributaries form an exception, flowing eastward and falling into the Sea of Ochotsk. To begin at the extreme east; the grand water-route now used for goods is from the Pacific up the Amoor as far as the Shilka. Thence to the Baikal land carriage is at present used, but the Shilka itself is capable of navigation much higher up. The London and China Telegraph, August 15, 1864, reports that a steamer has lately ascended this river and its tributary the Ingoda as far as Chita, the government town of Trans-Baikal. From the Baikal the communication is by water down the Angara to Irkutsk, and 1400 miles beyond that town, to the junction of the Angara with the Yenisei, in the north of the province of Irkutsk. The water-route on the Angara below the town of Irkutsk is only used for traffic to the north. Goods in transit for Europe go by land from Irkutsk to Tomsk. From the west, the Siberian water-route begins at Tumen, proceeding down the Irtish from Tobolsk, then up the Ob and the Tom as far as Tomsk. Then, if for the northern part of Eastern Siberia, land carriage from Tomsk to Krasnoyarsk; from the latter town down the Yenisei to the towns of Yeniseisk and Turukhansk, beyond which the country is inhabited only by wandering Tunguses and Ostiaks. There are other important water-routes in Siberia, such as that from Tumen by the Ob and Irtish to Semipalatinsk on the Kirghis steppe; and from Irkutsk down the Lena to Yakutsk, but the lines of greatest traffic are those running east and west. The ice interposes a serious difficulty in the navigation of these rivers, especially in the more northern parts, where the summer is very short, and frost sets in early. Goods are frequently caught in the ice, and in some parts of the rivers, they may be frozen up for six, or even eight months together. This risk would, of course, be greatly diminished were steam in more general use. The duration of a voyage could then be calculated with tolerable certainty, and a convenient port reached after the premonitory indications of freezing-up had shown themselves. Steam would also afford the means of expediting goods so much quicker, that the heavy part of the year's traffic might be conveyed by the rivers during the open season. A project for improving the water communication in Siberia was set on foot by an enterprising Russian in 1859. The scheme was revived in 1862, and the projector was supported by a Hamburg banker, and assisted by a Russian colonel of engineers. Their intention was to form a complete water route from Tumen to Kiachta, first by the rivers Ob, Tom, Tchulim and Ket. From the last-named, a canal thirty to thirty-five miles in length would have to be cut into the river Yenisei. From the Yenisei, the Angara would be used to its source in the Baikal lake. From the lake the route would be up the Selenga to a point about eighteen miles from Kiachta. Thus, by one cutting, of, at the most, thirty-five miles, clear and uninterrupted water conveyance would be established from near the Ural mountains to the frontier of China. But the difficulties in the way of this enterprise are very serious. The river Angara is, in its present state, not navigable except down stream. In a distance of 800 miles below Irkutsk, there are no less than seventy-eight rapids and dangerous passes, some of which it would be impossible even for a steamer to ascend. Native craft shoot the rapids when the water is high, and effect a passage down the river, but of course never return. To render that part of the river fit for navigation, rocks would have to be blasted and cleared away. Above Irkutsk also, there are one or two places on the Angara that would have to be cleared before the steamers could ply with safety on the river. But supposing all that accomplished, to carry out the water communication with efficiency, steamers of various classes suited to the depth of water, and the nature of the different rivers, would be necessary, thereby adding greatly to the expense. On the whole, the cost of clearing out the channel of the Angara, and other minor items of expense, would be so enormous that it is highly improbable the scheme will ever be carried out; certainly not for some generations to come. All that can now be done is to improve the water communication at present in use in so far as steam traffic is practicable. Before the Angara is cleared of rocks, railways will probably traverse Siberia. Not that I consider the construction of railways in that region nearer than a remote possibility. For, although Siberia would be no exception to the general rule that railways make traffic for themselves, yet the cost must bear some proportion to the return. The length of railway necessary to connect the traffic of the various distant parts would be enormous, and as these matters are managed in Russia, would probably cost three times the amount that would be required in any other country. There is no capital in Russia available for such a purpose, and foreign capital will find many more attractive investments than Siberian railways. From Perm we were driven by "Tatárs," who are capital coachmen. We first met these Western Tatárs at Ekaterineburg, where they live in peace and good will with the Russians. They have no apparent affinity with the Mongol races, but yet they betray, in their manner of life, their descent from nomad tribes. Many of them are engaged in trade, but they prefer hawking to settling in a shop; and even when they have opened shops they like to sally forth with a "pack" on their shoulders and roam about the great towns with their merchandise. The general and sweeping misapplication of the name of Tartar, or Tatar, to the various wandering tribes of Asia, has led some persons to doubt whether there ever was any one tribe properly entitled to the appellation. The name has been too widespread--say from China to Russia--not to have had a foundation in fact, and there is not much doubt that an insignificant tribe of the Mongol family was known to its neighbours, and called its people by the name of Tatars. But the dominant tribes, even of the Mongols, have always repudiated the appellative; and although the Russian-speaking "Tatars" of the west acknowledge the name as applied to them, it is much in the same sense as an English-speaking Chinese calls himself a Chinaman (_Chee_naman) to accommodate himself to western phraseology, although the term has no equivalent in his own language. It is indeed curious to trace old names of countries and races to merely accidental circumstances. The name of China in use among the Mongols and Russians, is still _Kitai_, which is the _Kathay_ of Marco Polo, and the name of the northern part of China during the reign of the Mongol dynasty. The name originated with a northern tribe, also called the _Liau_, who pushed the frontiers of their empire into North China, and held sway there from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries, and who, defeated by the Niu-ché, retired into the desert, and at a later period founded the formidable empire of Khara Khitan, or the Black Khitan, near the source of the river Obi. But the name of Tartar has been liberally bestowed on all those Asiatic tribes who led a roving life, and of whose history little or nothing was known. The Chinese, for reasons somewhat similar, term all "outer" nations "barbarians," just as the Jews grouped all who were beyond their own pale under the comprehensive title of "gentiles;" and the ancients gave the name of Scythians to all the barbarians of Asia, of whom they could not give any more definite account. Arriving at the last station before crossing the Kama, late at night, we were compelled to wait till morning, as no inducement would prevail on the men to attempt the ferry at that hour, although there was a bright moon. The truth was the men were all so hard worked during the day as to be unfit for anything at night. In the morning, however, we got across with our sledges, and proceeded to Ochansk, a small town three versts from the right bank of the river, where we breakfasted. During the 22nd the frost disappeared for a few hours, and to our confusion the snow vanished so rapidly during the short time as to leave us in many places bare ground to drive our sledges over. The sight was really appalling, for all our hopes of ease and comfort for the journey rested on the snow. It was absolutely essential to us, seeing we were committed to sledges, and when we saw the black patches appearing here and there, we could sympathise in the despair which a fish must feel when abandoned by its native element and left panting on dry land. A westerly wind got up, and increased to a gale in the afternoon, coming round to north in the evening. This brought cold weather back again, and that night was one of the most severe we encountered in the whole journey. With the extreme cold the wind fell, and a dead calm ensued, which lasted a night and a day. The hard frost converted the soft, melting snow into a magnificent sledge-road, so far as it went; but all the way to Kazan we were plagued with bare places where the wind or sun had been most powerful. CHAPTER XX. RUSSIAN AND SIBERIAN PEASANTRY. We had not travelled far into Russia proper, before the difference in the condition of the peasantry there, and in Siberia, forced itself on our attention. The houses in Russia are decidedly inferior to those in Siberia. They lack the air of rude comfort peculiar to the latter. Windows are broken and stuffed with straw, and roofs are out of repair. Women and children are ill-clad and squalid. The men are haggard, abject, and degraded. Everything is suggestive of poverty, negligence, and misery. In remarkable contrast to these phenomena are the outward circumstances of the peasants in Siberia. As I have intimated in the course of this narrative, these latter are well clad, well housed, and at least adequately fed. They have something of independence in their bearing, and the condition of their families, as well as the tasteful decorations often met with in their houses, evince a certain amount of self-respect. The difference is easily accounted for--the explanation lies in the words _serf_ and _no serf_, and it illustrates the inevitable effects of slavery on a people. And if slavery, in its modified form of serfdom, can so deeply mark the character of the subjects of it, what may be expected from the pure, uncompromising "institution?" The Siberian free peasant is the descendant of a convict. This applies to almost the whole Russian population of Eastern Siberia, as also to the great proportion of that of Western Siberia. In the latter region there are still the descendants of many of those Cossacks who followed the renowned Yermak in his victorious march across the Ural, and who continue in the enjoyment of certain privileges granted to them by the Empress Catharine. But Eastern Siberia, by far the richest of the two, may be said to be entirely peopled by the descendants of convicts. These belong to two categories--those who are condemned for capital crimes, and those who are expatriated for minor offences. The criminal who belongs to the first category, when he has undergone the corporal punishment allotted to him, and served his term (generally mitigated) of hard labour in the government mines, has a portion of land granted him, on being released from his confinement. He may cultivate as much ground as he chooses to clear, using the timber for building purposes or fuel. He is exempt from the payment of taxes, and from the conscription. The children of these convicts, born in Siberia, enjoy the same privileges, but they are still what are called _minors_, and do not possess the rights of a free peasant. For example, they are disqualified from holding any honorary appointment in the village or community where they may reside. Such disabilities may be, and frequently are overcome by means of money; for an industrious peasant has an opportunity of saving, and it is not an unusual thing for them to become rich. Many of the most wealthy men in Siberia at the present moment--large gold-digging proprietors, merchants, &c., are the descendants in the second or third generation of convicts who have undergone the penalty of the law. These men generally manage to "write themselves up," by a judicious application of their money, and then by paying the dues of one of the three guilds of merchants, they obtain a status in society, and enjoy the right of trading; they often make fortunes, either in trade, gold-digging, or other enterprises. The other class of criminals is composed of those who have been exiled for minor offences such as theft; and of serfs, who, before their great emancipation in 1859, were liable to be sent to Siberia for any offence against their masters, or even for no offence at all, but from sheer caprice. I met an old woman in Tomsk who had been exiled on the latter count. She had inadvertently stuck a needle into the wall, and her mistress, with the nervousness that a bad conscience produces, took it into her head that the serf intended to bewitch her. For this offence the old wretch (though I dare say she was young then) was sent to the police, to be despatched to Siberia with the next batch of government exiles, and the official record stated she was so sent "by the will of her master." Well, these convicts not possessing the rights of free citizenship, are, on arriving in Siberia, appointed to reside in, or registered as belonging to, a certain district of the province where the Governor-General may determine to colonise them. After three years' residence, certain advancement is held out to these people, if they can produce a certificate of good behaviour. They are allowed to marry, to become settlers, to clear and cultivate land at pleasure. They are exempt from taxes for the space of twelve years; and after that they only pay a trifle. These convicts are, however, legally dead, can never hold property in their own name, and of course can never return to Russia. But so far from this latter restriction being a real hardship, if a return to their native air were permitted them, it is highly improbable that any would avail themselves of the privilege. Siberia is really the land of promise to them. The descendants of these convicts become free agriculturists, and live in independence. They pay to government a tax of from three to four pounds, sterling, per head,[23] per annum, which is very much higher than the tax levied on the peasants of Russia proper. But there the peasant had, in addition to the small tax to government, an _obrok_ to pay to his master, amounting on an average to about four pounds sterling a year. The Russian peasant, before the emancipation, got nothing in return for this tax, but was bound body and soul to his master, and unable to do anything to better his condition that was not entirely agreeable to the arbitrary will of his owner. The peasant in Siberia, on the other hand, is absolutely free in all things to follow the bent of his own will. He has no master to dread and serve, and owes obedience to nothing but the law of the land. The Siberian peasantry are treated with every liberality by the government, whose ruling purpose with respect to that country is to colonise it with industrious communities, who will turn its natural wealth to account, and become an arm of support to the state. For the single tax above-mentioned, the peasant receives as much land as he can clear, as much timber as he chooses to fell, and no rent is required from him. The land he has worked is his own. No other person can disturb his possession, and the government even cannot claim from him any portion of the land so acquired without his formal renunciation. The primeval forest may be said to cover the whole of Siberia--the cleared spaces are as drops in the bucket, and the bare steppes, where timber is scant, bear but an insignificant proportion to the whole. In the immediate vicinity of some of the large towns, where the people have been burning wood for two hundred years, a palpable impression has been made on the forest, and there it has been found necessary to restrict the cutting of wood to certain limits, both as to the quantity consumed, and the boundaries within which trees may be felled. These restrictions are enforced with a view to securing the growth of young wood within a convenient distance of the towns. [23] This tax is levied on every male above 18 years of age. There is but one Siberian nobleman and proprietor of serfs in existence,--Mr. Rodinkoff, Counsellor of State and Vice-Governor of the Province of Yeniseisk, a kind-hearted, good old man. His grandfather received from the Empress Catharine a grant of lands and peasants in Siberia on the terms of Russian serfdom. But neither he nor his successors ever attempted to exercise proprietary rights over their peasants, who lived very much as the free peasants do. One of the family, the brother of the present proprietor, broke through the custom of his fathers, and paid the penalty of his life for his imprudence. He attempted to put in force his full signorial rights, and to levy contributions on his peasants, as in Russia proper. The consequence was that he was murdered in one of his excursions to visit his estate, within thirty miles of the town of Krasnoyarsk. The present proprietor seldom interferes with, or visits his peasants, but contents himself with the modest imposts of wood for winter fuel for his town residence, and hay for his horses, with which they cheerfully supply him. In the matter of recruiting, the Siberian peasants have always been leniently dealt with. In many parts of the country they are exempted altogether for certain considerations. Those who settle on the rivers Lena and Yenisei, are exempt from all taxes and recruiting, on condition that they supply travellers with post-horses, and convey the government post, for both which services they are, moreover, paid at a higher rate even than in other parts of the country. This privilege extends from near Irkutsk to the frozen ocean on the Lena, and from the town of Yeniseisk to the frozen ocean on the Yenisei. The extreme severity of the climate, and the inhospitable nature of the soil in these regions render it necessary to encourage settlers, and so to secure uninterrupted communication through the country. There is no spring, and no autumn in these parts. Three months, and in some districts less, of summer, is all the time allowed them for cultivation of the soil. The rest of the year is winter, during which snow lies to the depth of from seven to upwards of twenty feet. The temperature then falls to 30°, 40°, and in some parts 50° Reaumur of frost (equal to -35°, -58°, and -80°, Fahrenheit). No corn grows, and but few vegetables, but the country abounds with wild animals such as bear, elk, deer, sables, foxes, squirrels. The inhabitants become expert hunters, and make a good living out of the furs they obtain. The settlers in the river Angara are also exempted from taxes of all kinds, and from recruiting, on condition of their supplying government and private travellers with skilful pilots and guides, for which they are of course likewise well requited by those who employ them. This is necessary on the Angara, that river being one of the most dangerous in the world. Being the only river that runs out of the Baikal Lake, a heavy volume of water is forced down into it, and during its course from the lake to its confluence with the Yenisei, it is full of falls and rapids, which can only be passed with safety under the guidance of pilots of local skill and knowledge. The amenities of free life enjoyed by the peasants of Siberia have produced the unmistakeable effect of, in some measure, eradicating the impress of slavish degradation which centuries of servility had stamped on the whole race of moujiks. The hereditary marks of the yoke are still too plainly to be seen, and many generations will probably pass from the scene before even the Siberian Russians can claim to be really civilised. But it is a great thing to have made such a good start on the road to improvement. The progress made is not likely to be lost; each stage of advancement rather becomes a guarantee for still greater, and more rapid progress in the future. The feeling of independence has taken deep root in the minds of these freemen, and it would be no longer possible to enslave them, without causing a revolution. Their ideas have been enlarged. Industry and economy are seen to have their full reward. The security of life and property, and the liberation from the arbitrary dictates of a superior will, give the people encouragement to cultivate their talents in the full faith that their labours shall not be in vain. Unlimited wealth is open to all who have the energy to seek it. Great numbers of the Siberian peasants have amassed fortunes already. Other tastes naturally flow from worldly prosperity, and already among the merchants who have enriched themselves from the ranks of the peasants, education is beginning to attract attention. In due time mental culture will, no doubt, spread downwards, and the distinction of classes, which has so greatly retarded the progress of civilisation in Russia, may gradually be smoothed away. The amalgamation of classes will consolidate and strengthen the whole body politic, and should that happy consummation ever be realised in Russia, Siberia will have the honour of leading the way. The barriers that obstruct free intercourse between the different strata of society are already partially broken down, greatly to the advantage of all. For slavery or serfdom exercises a demoralising influence on masters and slaves alike. The institution in Russia crushed the energy of life out of the serfs, and almost destroyed their thinking faculties--so much so that centuries of freedom may be inadequate to enable the emancipated to rise to their proper level of intelligence. While the serfs were thus degraded and kept down to a position but little superior to that of domestic animals, their masters, having no community of feeling with them, were actuated by the single motive of extorting the maximum revenues out of their human property. The cares of management devolved on the serfs, and the masters, being for the most part almost as much as the serfs shut out from their legitimate share in public affairs, abandoned themselves to extravagant pleasures and dissipation, or to mischievous intrigues. Without any healthy occupation for body or mind, a highly artificial mode of life developed itself in the ranks of the wealthy serf-proprietors, the sole refuge from which was in the military or civil appointments of the government. Practical education was wanting in the great body of them, so that when their source of revenue was taken away by the liberation of their serfs, they broke down from the want of any resources within themselves by which they might have maintained their standing in society, and even have improved their pecuniary condition in other careers. There were very many exceptions to this, but such was the necessary tendency of the institution of serfdom, and such was the actual fate of those proprietors who allowed their energy to be sapped by the unnatural life to which they were born. It was probably the growing prosperity of Siberia, and the marked superiority of the condition of the population there, that induced the government to emancipate the serfs of Russia proper. The importance of this great measure can hardly be over-estimated, and I doubt whether the Emperor Alexander II. has received the full credit due to him for the enlightened liberality which dictated, and the noble courage which carried into execution, this truly magnificent conception. It is well known that the most determined hostility of the great majority of the nobles was arrayed against the measure, which, from their point of view, threatened to sweep away at one blow their whole worldly wealth. The Emperor stood almost alone, being supported by a small, and not overwise minority. His life was several times in jeopardy. But he maintained his purpose with singular pertinacity through three years of discussion and deliberation, during which the ill-timed zeal of his supporters raised serious difficulties in his way by trying to drive matters too fast. At the end of three years the ukase was signed, and in two years more twenty-three millions of male serfs, with the corresponding number of females, were set free. Whether we consider the vast numbers of men and women whose destiny was involved, the radical character of the change effected, the formidable opposition which had to be borne down, or the germs of expansion which it implanted into the Russian people, moulding the whole future history of the nation, this act of the Emperor of Russia stands unrivalled as a measure of reform in the history of the world. Many other reforms have been introduced during the present reign, but the emancipation of the serfs is an achievement in itself worthy of a lifetime. Peter the Great did much to promote the progress of the material prosperity of his country, and considering the barbarous character of his education, and of the age in which he lived, more than established his claim to the title of _Great_. Catharine made her reign "glorious;" Nicholas made his name terrible; but to Alexander II. belongs the immortal honour of liberating his people from slavery. The full results of this great work will only be manifested in future ages. The serfs have now, as it were, been born to political life--their education is but beginning. With freedom, industry will grow; the comforts of life will be enjoyed; intelligence will spread, and higher aspirations will be infused into the servile millions. In course of time the Russian population will be capable of exercising the rights of freemen, and the day may come when even the despotism of the government may yield something to the claims of the people for representation. Already a change for the better is observable among the liberated serfs. Each had a piece of land allotted to him, varying from eight to twenty acres, with the right to farm or purchase more. Residents in Russia have noted an increase in the productiveness of many parts of the country, in consequence of the improved system of agriculture that has been initiated since every man began to grow his own crops, instead of slaving his life away for behoof of a master whom he seldom saw, and who took little interest in the management of his property. Even the character of the people is already sensibly ameliorated. They show more self-reliance and self-respect than formerly, and their increased industry is implied in the greater production of the country. The effect of the emancipation on the nobles has been various. The spendthrift portion of them have been ruined by it, as also those who had not the ability, foresight, or resolution to take timely measures to meet the consequences of the social revolution. Others lost heavily, to the extent of half or two-thirds of their incomes; but, facing the emergency in a practical spirit, they betook themselves to useful employments, with a view to improving their circumstances; and many of these have regained by such means all that they had lost. The more prudent and economical proprietors, who devoted themselves to the improvement of their estates, and were fully prepared for the change, have been positively gainers by the movement; for, besides making more out of their property by efficient management and free labour than they could extort from their serfs, they have the indemnity paid by government to the credit side of their accounts. The highly exasperated feelings displayed by the majority in the first instance cooled down considerably during the five years which elapsed between the first notice of the intended reform and the actual consummation of it. The Russians are tolerably well accustomed to arbitrary measures, and their feelings are not naturally very deep. But the nobles were still far from being satisfied, and the mutterings of general discontent that were heard long after the inauguration of the new regime, continued to be a cause of anxiety to the Emperor. The dissatisfaction of the nobles was fed from various causes apart from the serf question. A pretty general reform of abuses was instituted about the same period. Many time-honoured privileges and monopolies were invaded, to the prejudice of those who were battening on the spoils of office. Matters continued in a critical state until the perpetration of the infamous deeds of incendiarism which preceded the Polish insurrection. These occurrences brought all the best part of the population to the side of the government, and restored the wavering loyalty of the nobles and military officers; and the malcontents, whose nefarious gains in public offices of trust and otherwise were put an end to, were fain to sink their grievances in oblivion. CHAPTER XXI. KAZAN--POLISH EXILES. We passed through a great deal of bare, flat and uninteresting country on the road to Kazan. The ground being covered with snow, we could not judge of the soil, but farming villages were tolerably numerous, and a fair amount of population seemed to find a subsistence there. Oaks, of which we saw none on the Siberian side of the Ural range, now began to appear. The birch trees grow straight and tall, and pines were less conspicuous in the woods. The number of Polish prisoners we found on the road threatened seriously to impede our march. We had met them occasionally in Siberia, but between Perm and Kazan we encountered companies of them on the way, and at almost every station. The resources of the posting establishment were severely taxed to provide horses for so many travellers at once, and we had frequently to wait till the Poles were gone, and then take the tired horses they had brought from the last station. The Poles travelled in the same manner as we did, in large sledges containing three or four people, sometimes more. Those who could not be accommodated with sledges had carts, or _telégas_, which were more or less crowded. None of them travelled a-foot. All were well clothed in furs. On the whole I was surprised to find such a number of people travelling with so much comfort. When we met a party of them in a post-station we were very short of room, unless when we happened to be there first. Then the cooking establishment was entirely monopolised by the exiles when it pleased the officer in charge to dine them. On such occasions we postponed our repast to the next station. The prisoners are invariably treated with kindness and consideration by the officer in charge and by the _gensdarmes_. They are under close surveillance, but I did not see any of the prisoners in irons, though I was informed that some of them were so. I remember one fat, jolly fellow in charge of one of the detachments of prisoners. He was a captain in the army, and had hard work to console himself in his forlorn situation. He did not at all like the service he was engaged in; indeed he seemed to feel his banishment to Siberia more than the exiles themselves. He envied our destination homewards, and took occasion to bemoan himself a little. "Ah! you are happy," said he; "in a few days you will be in Moscow, but I, poor devil, must go to Tobolsk with _gensdarmes_"--accompanied by an expressive shrug of the shoulders, and downcasting of the eyes. He made companions of some of the prisoners; one in particular he seemed to be on cordial terms with. The officer told us this prisoner had held a commission under Garibaldi, and had been lately captured leading a band in Poland. He was a handsome young fellow, with a wild look in his eye. As for the rest of the prisoners, there was nothing remarkable about them. They ate well and talked loudly; the din of their voices at a post-station was intolerable. They joked and laughed a great deal, by way of keeping their spirits up I suppose; but no indication whatever was given that they were exiles undergoing the process of banishment. If one might judge from appearances, I should say they rather liked it. On the 24th of November, late at night, we reached Kazan, a fine old town, the name of which is closely bound up with the ancient history of Russia. I found a letter waiting me at the post-office there, in answer to my telegram from Kolyvan, which was a comfort. How I got into the post-office at eleven o'clock at night, and how the men happened to be there in their places at that hour, I was not very clear about. But it was explained that two posts were then expected, one from the east and one from the west, and that when I hammered at the door they thought it was at least one of them. Arriving in Kazan very late, we took up our quarters for the night at the station hotel, where we were half suffocated as usual by the close fusty atmosphere of a room kept up to + 16° Reaumur (68° Fahrenheit), no air being ever allowed to enter. In the morning we began to hear ominous warnings about the Volga. The ice was coming down in big lumps, and our sledge could not be got across--so we were informed. It was seven versts from the station to the ferry. We might drive there and see for ourselves, but then it would have been excessively disagreeable to have to return defeated. We consulted a Russian gentleman to whom we had a letter of introduction, but no comfort was to be got from him. The state of the river was as bad as it could be, and he strongly advised us not to leave Kazan until the Volga was hard frozen. The voice of the tempter had been saying "wait, wait," at every point of our journey from Kiachta to Kazan, but as we had not listened before, we were not likely to do it now, when so near the end of our journey. I could not help remarking how singularly we had been baulked by contumacious rivers during the two months that had passed since we encountered the Tolla in Mongolia. They were always just in the impassable crisis when we happened to reach them, and last of all the Volga gave us trouble, a river that we never reckoned on crossing at all. A little earlier we should have passed up the river in a steamboat. A little later we should have driven up the Volga on the ice, for that is an almost direct road to Nijni-Novgorod. But of course we hit the wrong time, just betwixt and between. The river must however be crossed if we would proceed. An offer of twenty roubles being made for the sledge, we sold it to the post-master. It was he who persuaded us that we could not take it further, and of course we thought ourselves "done" in consequence. We got our traps stowed in two post-chaises and drove towards the ferry on the Volga. In leaving the main town of Kazan we crossed over a causeway, or embanked road, through a marsh which connects the town with a kind of suburb. The view of Kazan from the other side of the swamp is very fine. It is built on high ground, and its spires and domes show to great advantage from a distance. In the summer season, when tree leaves and green grass are out, the environs of Kazan must be very pleasing to the eye; for even in November, when the country was one great snowy waste, bleak and cheerless, the town looked really handsome. The best houses, as well as public buildings, are built of brick, indeed a wooden house is rather the exception there. Having crossed a flat tract of country, we reached the Volga at a point about five miles from Kazan, and as many above its confluence with the Kama. It is truly a noble river, and the high banks enable one to get a sort of bird's-eye view of the broad sheet of water. I should rather say a compound of water, ice, and snow, for the surface of the river was covered with large blocks of ice, loaded with snow, moving rapidly down the stream, with a few open spots of clear water here and there. There was great commotion at the ferry among moujiks, Cossacks, and Tartars. Several boats were busy conveying passengers across, but they made slow work of it. The men refused to start from either side until they saw, or thought they saw, sufficient space clear to hold out some hope of their being able to effect the passage. They would wait an hour or more for a favourable opportunity to start, and even then they were just as likely to be carried down by the driving ice as to fetch the opposite landing. One boat was jammed in mid-channel and borne down in a perfectly unmanageable condition for two or three miles, until the moving icebergs voluntarily released her, when she was got to land at a place where it was impossible to get horses or sledges near, owing to the precipitous nature of the bank. The model of these boats is beautifully adapted to this kind of iceberg navigation. Their sides are cut away, so that a straight line is drawn from the gunwale to the keel. A section of the boat is represented by the letter V, but the angle formed by the two sides is much greater than that in the usual form of that letter, so that the boats are very flat. They may be nipped between two fields and no damage be done, as there is nothing for the ice to get hold of. Did the boats present a perpendicular side to the edge of it, they could not escape destruction. We unfortunately had ample time to make observations on the navigation of the Volga and other matters that came under our notice, for we were compelled to kick our heels about the whole day, without finding a boat disengaged. Long before dark the men stopped work for the day, to make sure they would not be caught in the dusk of the evening essaying a passage which demanded all their wits in broad daylight. The first hour or two passed pleasantly enough while we entertained ourselves watching the process of a river freezing. A margin of thick ice had already formed along the bank, strong enough to arrest the progress of the "pack" in its downward course, when borne against the projecting points. The floating ice-fields crashed with great impetuosity on the fixed ice, were shattered by the shock, and, urged by the force of the current, the fragments were piled up one above another in huge chaotic masses. When left still for a short time the pile congealed, and in a few hours was ready to serve as a barrier to stop more of the pack and annex it to the mass. During that one day the solid ice was extended six or eight feet, and with continued frost a very few days would suffice to freeze over the whole river. The military were in great force on the banks of the Volga, and carried everything their own way, regardless of the interests of the general public, as represented by the few civilians who presented themselves as candidates for the middle passage. We had seen some of the soldiery before this time, but they were so-called "Cossacks" of the old type. Those we encountered at Kazan, and on the Volga, were smartly set off with French military caps, and had really a soldier-like bearing. The traditional grey over-coat was universal, but there was enough of innovation in their get-up to mark the recent improvement that has taken place in the Russian soldier. I shall probably allude in the sequel to the army reforms introduced into Russia during the present reign. A good many Tartars were sprinkled among the crowd that infested the landing-place at the Volga ferry. They usually wear a round fur cap, somewhat different from that worn by the Russian moujik. Their physiognomy is widely removed from the Sclavonic type. They have the flat features of the Mongol races, but are not to be confounded with any of them. The ferry-boats were engaged the whole day in conveying Polish exiles across the river, bound for Siberia. It is a sad sight to see so many people in captivity, and still more so to see a number of women accompanying the exiles. It is quite common for the wives, daughters, and mothers of the political convicts to follow their relatives into Siberia. This is not discouraged by the Russian government; on the contrary, every facility is granted to enable the families to emigrate, and they have always the means of travelling in company. The object of the government is to colonise Siberia, so that the more people go there the better. Besides, the residence of families in exile offers some guarantee against any attempt at a return to their native country. Two old ladies I particularly noticed coming out of a boat, accompanied by two soldiers. They were both well dressed in black silk and warm fur cloaks. One of them was extremely old, and unable to walk. She stooped a great deal, and leaned on a crutch while standing on the ice. The other was also very frail. We pitied these old creatures, exposed as they were day after day in such inclement weather, compelled to undergo the hardships and privations inseparable from all Russian and Siberian travelling. They were treated with great kindness by the soldiers, who lifted them carefully out of the boat, carried them to their sledges, which were in waiting, and put them in as tenderly as if they had been their own mothers. After carefully wrapping them up with their furs, a Cossack got in beside each of the ladies, and they drove off to Kazan. A girl who was with them was equally well attended to by the officer in command of the party, who seemed to consider the Polish maiden to be his especial charge. Much has been said and written on this Polish question, and an unusual number of distorted and exaggerated statements have gained currency in Europe on the subject. It is certain that neither the oppressors nor the oppressed are to be implicitly trusted as regards their veracity, and it is not easy, in consequence, to sift out the bare unvarnished truth. But, leaving out of sight for a moment the actual merits of the question, as between the Russian government and the rebellious Poles, the fate of the exiles is by no means such a hard one as is too commonly supposed. I have taken pains to inquire into this, and the more I have heard about it from persons well able to judge, the more have I been convinced that the Poles in Siberia are very much better off than the average of those in Poland. The Russians to a man condemn them, and justify their government in the measures that have been adopted to put down the insurrection. But their feelings of loyalty to the Emperor may possibly warp their judgment. The foreign residents who have no such influence to sway their opinions, may be considered impartial in the matter; and they, on the whole, indorse the Russian views as regards the Poles. Those English residents in Siberia with whom I have conversed, assert that the Polish exiles enjoy a degree of peace, comfort, and prosperity, that they were altogether strangers to in their own country. Wealth, talent, industry, and education have the most ample scope in Siberia, and are set free from those distractions which sap healthy enterprise in a country torn with civil wars. I have already given some hints of the position occupied by Russian political exiles in Siberia, and I need not dwell on the subject now, further than to say that the Poles are treated with still greater leniency and consideration. That the exiles are, on the whole, dissatisfied, there can be no doubt. But the more sensible of them admit that their worldly circumstances are improved by going to Siberia. Many of them are pleased at the change, and would not willingly return home if it were open to them to do so. So long as they remain in Poland, they say, they are at the mercy of every band of malcontents, who have nothing of their own to lose. In revolutionary times they are constrained, in spite of themselves, to take part in the proceedings, and to sacrifice their time, property, and everything else to schemes of which they may strongly disapprove. They never feel secure from the consequences of the folly of their hot-headed countrymen. They have no heart to work, when they are liable, at any moment, to be involved in ruin by the rashness of some insurrectionary party. But Siberia offers an escape from all this strife and endless conspiracy, and some of them hail with delight the sentence that exiles them to a more congenial soil. No one, indeed, who has observed, in an impartial manner, the conditions of life in Siberia and Russia respectively, will be disposed to doubt that the former is really the more attractive residence, and although it is remarkable, it is not incredible, that many Poles should deliberately prefer it to their own country. As a precautionary measure, the Russian government has always studied to scatter the exiles over Siberia, to prevent any large communities of them from congregating in one place. The governor-general of Western Siberia has the power of distributing them as he may see fit. All the exiles are taken to Tobolsk as a rendezvous, and are there told off to the various districts they are destined to reside in. In their final distribution there is great room for favouritism, as well as for the gratification of malevolence on the part of the governor; some of the exiles may be sent to the large towns, and others to wild, uninhabited regions, and inhospitable climates. Oppression and cruelty have doubtless been in former days practised on them, and may possibly still, to some extent, exist. But, in the main, they are treated kindly, both while travelling, and in their appointed residences. Whatever sentence may have been awarded (speaking of criminals), it is invariably mitigated in practice. The stigma of exile is no bar to their well-doing in Siberia. Everything combines to make their lives pleasant, except that one element of bitterness, the ever-present consciousness that they are under the ban of the law, and doomed never to return to their own unhappy country. That one consideration is, no doubt, powerful enough, in ardent and sensitive minds, to neutralise all the elements of happiness that their banishment affords; but time mellows it down to a vague, latent feeling of oppression, and sympathy with those of their countrymen who may still be engaged in the hopeless struggle for independence. Those of the exiles who have sense enough to accept their lot in a philosophical spirit, and do not weary their lives out in chafing under their fate, have comparatively little cause for dissatisfaction. The object of the Russian government is not so much to punish the insurgents, as to colonise Siberia with people of education and intelligence. Attempts to escape are punished with the utmost severity; but these attempts are rare. Mrs. Atkinson relates a story of a Pole who was caught in a desperate effort to return to Europe, and sent to the mines. The same is still the stock-story served up for the entertainment of travellers, the ten years or more that have elapsed not having apparently supplied another instance. There cannot be much difference of opinion on the question of the spoliation of Poland by the three great powers. Although the vices inherent in the Polish constitution rendered the subjugation of the country by its powerful neighbours almost inevitable, nothing can justify the unscrupulous proceedings of Russia and her two satellites in seizing it. But in the immediate causes that prompted the recent insurrection, and the measures adopted by the Russian government to quell it, the Poles have perhaps received more sympathy, and the Russians more odium, than they deserved. It is certain that the Emperor was liberally disposed towards the Poles; but they aspired, not to greater liberty, but to absolute independence of Russia. As was well shown by the correspondent of the "Times," no reform, however radical, would conciliate them while they were connected with Russia, and the easy rule of Alexander II. was the very thing that enabled the Poles to rebel, which, under the iron hand of Nicholas, was impossible. It is, doubtless, a legitimate grievance that a highly cultured people, as the Poles are, should be governed by semi-barbarous Russians; but, on the other hand, the superior intelligence of the Poles found its full value in Russia. They were rapidly gaining posts of trust and emolument in the imperial service, and I have heard it said, by a person eminently qualified to judge, that if they had but postponed their insurrection for ten years, they would then have had no cause to rebel, because by that time they would have virtually governed Russia as much as Russia governs Poland. If the Poles had possessed the practical philosophy of the Chinese, they might have overcome their conquerors by a process somewhat analogous to that by which the latter people have successively out-civilised the various Tartar powers, and overrun their territories. But they cast to the winds their opportunities, and committed their destiny to the hazard of a desperate venture, in which success was, humanly speaking, impossible. The only result, indeed, that could reasonably have been expected from this fatal enterprise was that the old relations between the two countries should be replaced on the footing of a rigorous despotism on the one hand, and absolute subjection on the other. Without attempting to extenuate the severities, often arbitrary, and cruelly unjust, that have been practised on the Poles by the Russian officials in the later stages of the insurrection, due allowance should be made for the exaggerations inseparable from one-sided accounts, especially in times of great excitement. And it is reasonable that their fair share of responsibility for the blood that has been needlessly shed, should be borne by the leaders of the movement, who with suicidal rashness plunged their country into a war, which a little calm reflection might have shown them was hopeless from the beginning. It is well also to note that, since the rebellion has been finally put down, the Russian government has evinced no vindictive feeling towards the subjugated Poles; but, on the contrary, has set itself to improve their condition by the establishment of many liberal measures, social and educational, the progress of which was interrupted by the outbreak of the insurrection. But supposing even that the insurrection had been successful, what substantial advantage would have accrued to Poland? A return to the conditions existing before the partition, the hostile factions and the confederations more tyrannical even than Russia, would not have been a great improvement. And Poland would then have been a small, weak, and poor kingdom, surrounded by three powerful enemies, who would never want a _casus belli_. How long would the kingdom have been likely to maintain its existence under such conditions? CHAPTER XXII. KAZAN TO PETERSBURG. When, far on in the afternoon, we saw no prospect of effecting a crossing of the Volga that day, we were glad to pack our traps into the first sledge that offered, and make our way back to Kazan. We were not the only disappointed ones, but the other westward-bound travellers, having more practical knowledge than ourselves, took the precaution to drive down in a town sledge, without their baggage, to reconnoitre the ferry. With our bulky _impedimenta_, we were in a condition eminently favourable for being victimised by the rapacious rascals who repaired to the spot with horses and sledges, attracted thither by the same instinct that brings the eagles to the carcase. In the first instance, we had been charged the fare for fourteen versts, for a stage that was acknowledged to be only seven--no better reason being alleged for the charge than that it was "necessary." The sledge had been sent back to the post-station, after being discharged of our persons and appurtenances, and at the end of the day we found ourselves at the mercy of a set of wide-mouthed moujiks, with the most exalted ideas of the value of their services. The hotel "Ryazin," where we took up our quarters, had the reputation of being one of the most fashionable in Kazan, as was made apparent to us by the thick atmosphere of stale tobacco-smoke that pervaded the long narrow corridors, and close pent-up rooms. Deeming ourselves to have entered a country so far civilised that we could get anything for money, and feeling greatly in need of consolation under the defeat we had sustained, we mustered courage to order a bottle of wine with our dinner. We had carefully eschewed liquor at the hotels in Siberia, not expecting great things there, and from a desire to discourage a taste which we should rarely have the means of gratifying. In old Kazan we had more confidence, and the classical names and aristocratic prices on the "wine card" of the Ryazin gave promise of something good. But we were only tantalised--the wine was not only of no recognisable species, but positively nauseous. We did get good fresh butter, however, an article, strange to say, scarce in Siberia, notwithstanding the abundance of milk. It is worth notice that the Russians have but one word, _maslo_, to signify butter, cart-grease, and oil in general. Can it be possible that the confusion of ideas frequently caused by this circumstance has given rise to the exaggerated, but generally believed, reports of the foul feeding of the Russians? A diorama was being exhibited in a distant part of the huge building of the hotel. The pictures were mostly copies of originals in the Hermitage at St. Petersburg, and their merits were extolled after the usual fashion by the exhibitor in French and Russian. The attendance was fair, but the entertainment very so-so. The only impression I carried away was that the Russians of Kazan were easily amused. On the following morning we again proceeded to the Volga to try our luck. The river had totally changed its appearance during the night. The thick masses of conglomerated ice and snow had disappeared. The open water had shifted from the right to the left bank, and the middle of the river was covered with a thin sheet of new ice, floating downwards. A boat was soon loaded by ourselves and a few other passengers, and half-a-dozen lusty moujiks tracked us slowly up the stream by means of a rope. Sometimes a towing path on the high bank was used, and sometimes a path was extemporised on the margin of solid ice, which in places was piled up in high sharp peaks that entangled the towing-rope. The master of the boat urged on his team, familiarly addressing them as "dogs," which I am bound in charity to consider as a term of endearment, when applied to Russian moujiks. When we had gained a position whence we could cross the river easily, the crew was brought on board, and the boat launched into mid-stream. The thin ice was easily broken up by poles and boat-hooks, and no great difficulty was experienced in effecting this passage. The Russian ferrymen have a very inconvenient habit of stopping to cross themselves, and mutter invocations to the saints while in the most critical situation. They do this sometimes at starting, but invariably when in the middle of the river. I frequently felt that we were put in peril by this ultra-superstitious practice, for often at the moment when the greatest care is needed to pilot the boat through treacherous ice-fields, the whole crew lay down their oars, take off their hats, and perform the ceremony. The Chinese sailors beat gongs and burn joss paper to ensure good luck on their voyage, but they are too sensible to endanger themselves by such superstitious observances, and on the whole, show less confidence in supernatural aid than in the appliances within their own control. "Prayer and provender never hinder a journey," is an excellent maxim within reasonable limits, but the practice of Russian ferrymen shows how the best of rules may be abused. A number of small steamers were frozen in on the right bank of the Volga, as also a fleet of hulks elegantly fitted up with rooms on deck. These were the floating steam-boat and other offices, government offices, &c. In the season, when the navigation is open, and passenger steamers, tugs, and barges are plying to and fro, this part of the Volga must be a busy scene. A sledge was sent for us at the farther side, and we were once more _en route_. A tap-room, kept by a very low kind of Jew, is conveniently situated near the ferry on the right bank. Here the boatmen indulge themselves freely in liquor out of the proceeds of the harvest they make while the ice is forming. We got slightly warmed with tea in this house, but the publican objected to our drinking our own brandy "on the premises." The law was on his side, and we could say nothing, but the alternative of drinking the poison which he was licensed to sell was too repulsive, even had our need been greater than it was. At Kazan and the Volga we observed that the Russian _pourboire_ changed from _na vodku_ ("for brandy") to _na tsai_ ("for tea"), the latter being the common expression in Russia proper, and the former the current phrase in Siberia. Tea drinking is considered a matter of superlative importance in Russia. When a cab is hired for the day, the driver will ask for a quarter of an hour "to drink tea," and a little money on account to provide the means of doing so. People repair at stated times to a _trakteer_, or tavern, in Moscow and Petersburg to drink tea. After the opera, parties retire for the same purpose. It does not follow that tea is always the beverage patronised on these occasions. The tea drinking at midnight is more likely to consist of caviar, ryabchick, and champagne. Our road lay parallel with the general line of the Volga, occasionally approaching near to some of the elbows of the river. The country is flat and marshy, but well cultivated, and farming villages are numerous. The villages and small towns are built on raised ground, whether naturally or artificially raised, I am uncertain. The most remarkable feature in the towns is the extraordinary number of churches. In one very small place I counted eight. Oaks are abundant in the country between Kazan and Nijni-Novgorod, and the beech trees grow to a good size, and in beautiful form. The forest has been cleared away to make room for agriculture, and the bare flat is only relieved by the clumps of gnarled oak and the fine avenues of birch, which are planted in double rows on each side of the post-road. In winter, they looked handsome in their nakedness, and in the summer heats they will afford a grateful shade to travellers on the road for some hundreds of miles. The roads were bad; but habit had inured us to that. The postal arrangements were, however, worse than anything we had experienced. The reason was obvious. This part of the road being only used for a few weeks, between the closing of the Volga navigation and the complete freezing of the river, no provision is made for the comfort of travellers in the way of covered conveyances. Having parted with our own sledge, we travelled _peracladnoi_, that is, changing at every station. No covered sledges could be procured for love or money, but so long as we could use sledges, the discomfort was not intolerable, although the snow became gradually scantier as we advanced westward. On the 28th, however, the little snow that remained melted, and some rain and sleet fell. Sledge-travelling was discontinued, and we had to resort to the _telega_, simply an open cart without any springs. For the whole day we did dreadful penance in these lumbering vehicles, over the most atrocious roads that can be imagined. Our progress was, of course, slow in the extreme, and to complete the catalogue of our miseries, a heavy shower of sleet fell, which soaked our furs and wraps to such an extent that we could hardly bear their weight. In this pitiable condition we reached the last station before Nijni at 10 o'clock at night. We had resolved to pass the night there, and get our clothes dried before morning, deeming further exposure to the cold dangerous to our health. The surly brute of a postmaster, whom it was our misfortune to meet, put his veto on our intentions. I shall never forget his face, nor his blue coat and brass buttons. He was one of those slaves, dressed in a little brief authority, whose sole experience had been the iron heel of tyranny planted on his neck, and whose one idea, when not licking the dust himself, was to make others do so if possible. It is a necessary result of a slavish education in some minds, that they cannot conceive of any other relation in life, than that of oppressor and oppressed. For the honour of Russian postmasters in general, I am glad to say that such specimens as the jack-in-office at Kstavo are rare. He refused us a fire, or a room, or any means of making ourselves decently comfortable, so after shivering for an hour we determined to resume our journey to Nijni. A hard frost had set in, accompanied by a keen wind that cut us to the bone. The misery we suffered during the last stage of our journey, was beyond all description. Never was I more grateful than when we gained admission to the hotel "Russia" at Nijni-Novgorod, at four o'clock next morning. Under the genial influence of a warm room and a dry bed, our miseries were soon forgotten, and the horrible experiences of the night dissolved into a dream that helped to intensify present enjoyment. "Sweet is pleasure after pain." There is no rest without labour, and happiness itself would be insipid without a seasoning of misery. Life, to be really enjoyed, must be chequered with light and shadow. The bright passages remain vivid in the memory, while the darker shades fade into forgetfulness. The time to see Nijni-Novgorod is during the great fair which is held in July, and which attracts to the spot people of every race and language. The Nijni fair is one of the great commercial events in Russia. Goods are brought to it from vast distances, and as much business is done there in a few days as in many months in the larger cities. There are several other great fairs still held in Russia, such as the one at Irbit, in the west of Siberia. They are relics of an unsettled state of society, and will no doubt gradually give way before modern civilisation. The enormous cost of transport necessarily incurred in bringing merchandise to the fair, and in carrying it away again to its destination, does not equal the guild dues, and other charges, which the traders would have to bear, in order to do the same business in Moscow or Petersburg. The consuming population are, therefore, taxed out of all reason, with no advantage to the merchants, or to the government revenue. One merchant may, for example, take his wares from Moscow or Kiev to the fair at Nijni, and sell them to another, who carries them back to the point whence they were originally despatched, and the double expense of carriage may still be less than the cost of transacting the same business in the towns.[24] It cannot be that such a state of affairs can long withstand the inevitable march of enlightenment. [24] "Russ. Shores of the Black Sea."--L. Oliphant. We of course saw Nijni-Novgorod at a disadvantage. The town was comparatively empty; the steam traffic which keeps the neighbourhood alive during the summer was all over for the season, and the rivers Volga and Oka looked deserted. The snow was melting fast, and the streets were a mass of slush. This, with a leaden sky and drizzling rain, rendered the town as miserable as can be imagined. The Oka joins the Volga at Nijni, and the town is situated on a high peninsula between the two rivers. The suburb in which the great fair is held is opposite the town, on the other side of the Oka, and there also is the terminus of the railway. At the time we passed, there was but one train a day to Moscow. It started at about four o'clock in the afternoon, and was calculated to arrive at Moscow--three hundred miles--about six or seven next morning. Our journey virtually terminated with our joining the railway, for though still some 2500 miles from London, we had no more hardships to look forward to, no toilsome days, or sleepless nights, no hard fare, and no struggles with the elements. It was hard to realise the superlative comfort of a railway carriage in our shaken and shattered condition. It seemed too good to be true. The varied incidents of our four months of travel crowded on the memory, and we soon dropped into a delicious sleep amid confused visions of drunken yemschiks, broken wheels, diabolical roads, icebergs, and ferry-boats, with deserts and strings of camels dimly shadowed in the back ground. In the grey of the morning, we found ourselves in Moscow the Holy, and were soon comfortably settled in M. Billet's hotel. Our progress towards civilised comfort culminated here, and the luxury of bed and board at M. Billet's seemed a full compensation for the miseries of the road. To do justice to the delights of Moscow would require a higher inspiration than I am blessed with, and all I could say about the Kremlin, its palaces and churches, the theatres, operas, &c., has been much better said already. The few days spent there seemed very short. Should I ever be tempted to revisit the fine old city, however, I hope the municipal council will have made some arrangement for lighting the streets with gas. In this respect they are sadly behind the age; and in a gay population like that of Moscow, which lives mostly at night, it is surprising that illumination has not before now been demanded by the popular voice. The portable gas which is carted about the streets in hogsheads, is a wretched makeshift. The sudden exhaustion of the supply of light frequently causes a theatrical performance to be interrupted until another hogshead of gas is procured; and during the interregnum young Russia delights in electrifying the audience by yelling and whistling, as if they would bring the house down. A large building on the outskirts of Moscow was pointed out to us as the foundling hospital, a great institution in Russia, one of whose chief uses seems to be to rear ballet-girls, and most efficiently does it perform its functions. From Moscow to Petersburg by railway is a monotonous and uninteresting journey, especially in winter. The country is flat and bare; here and there a patch of winter wheat struggled through the thin covering of snow, but the general aspect in the month of December was that of a desert. The only town of note on the line is Tver, on the Volga, where the railway crosses that river. In the construction of the line, the convenience of the various small towns has not been consulted. It was a purely imperial project to connect Moscow with Petersburg. It is said that when the engineers, who were engaged in the construction of the line, applied to the Emperor to know what curves they should make so as to pass through the most populous towns, he laid a ruler on the map, drew a straight line from Petersburg to Moscow, and bade them follow it. Railways, like all other public works in Russia, have been constructed at enormous expense, from the peculations of the officials who had to do with them. It is related of the Emperor Nicholas, that when he had failed to impress certain Persian ambassadors with the magnificence of his capital, he turned in despair to Prince Menschikoff, and asked him whether there was nothing that would astonish them. The prince suggested that they might be shown the accounts of the Moscow railway. We were not so favourably impressed with Petersburg, as a place of residence, as we had been with Moscow. It is a magnificent city, no doubt; its quays, bridges, "perspectives," palaces, and squares present a faultless exterior, and leave an impression of grandeur on the memory that makes other things small by comparison. But the chill of officialism rests on the place; it was created out of a swamp by the fiat of an emperor, and the imperial will is all-pervading still; you cannot shake off the idea. Looking down the "Nevsky," you take in at a glance miles of street laid out with mathematical accuracy, and the effect is very striking; you admire the magnificent Nicholas bridge that spans the Neva, a work that made the fortune of others besides the architect; in short, you admire everything separately and collectively about the capital, but the reflection always crops up that this fine city and the glory of it exists by the will of the emperor. Moscow is antiquated; its streets are not so straight, nor so wide, nor so regular; its buildings are not so imposing; but it is a natural and spontaneous growth; there is a more homely and comfortable air about it than Petersburg; and it was not built for the admiration of the world, but because people wanted houses to live in. Petersburg lacks the historical interest that invests the old capital, and it will be long before it displaces the holy city in the affections of the Russians, who one and all have a kind of superstitious reverence for Moscow. The Czars also hold the old city in high esteem, and are said to regard the Kremlin as the focus and ultimate asylum of their power. The season was late in Petersburg. Up to the middle of December the little snow that fell melted. The temperature varied from a little above to a little below the freezing point. Some days the Neva brought down masses of floating ice from Lake Ladoga, and on other days the river was quite clear. I fear the pork-butchers of the interior were premature in sending in their supplies of frozen pigs, for they seemed very likely to get thawed in the mild atmosphere of Petersburg. The sky was constantly overcast, and the few hours of daylight were consequently cut short at both ends. Everything conspired to throw a gloom over the place, and the people were longing for their snow roads and their sledges, their races and games on the Neva, and the pleasures of their winter season. The "Court" was at Tsarskoe-selo, writing despatches, while the Polish insurrection, the proposed congress of Paris, and the financial difficulties of the government, supplied food for gossip to all circles in the city. The reply of the Emperor to the invitation of his "good brother," as published in the _Journal_, excited universal admiration. And as for the currency crisis, everyone had some nostrum of his own which would infallibly put things right, but none of them seemed to touch the essential point, the supply of bullion. Great activity prevailed in the government dockyards, where a number of iron-clads were being built. One of these building yards was close to Miss Benson's, where I lived, and we got the full benefit of the clanging of hammers, from a very early hour in the morning, till the latest hour at night at which we happened to be awake. I believe they worked day and night, as if busily preparing for war. Some vessels had been hurried out of England unfinished, and enormous quantities of iron-plating, and other materials, had been imported from England for vessels to be constructed in Russia. The yards we were shown through were all under the superintendence of English firms, and Englishmen occupy responsible positions in the admiralty. The number of iron-cased frigates in progress at Petersburg and Kronstadt, is sufficient to account for the abstraction of bullion from the government treasury in such amounts as to derange the paper currency of the country. But the financial disturbance is of some years' standing, although it has gradually been getting worse. It dates from the Crimean war, which drained the resources of Russia, both in men and treasure, to an extent which the government has been reluctant to admit. The difficulty was met at the time by the increased issue of paper-money, which government has never been able to redeem. The crisis was not much felt until the Polish insurrection again taxed the energies of the government, while it was still languishing under the effects of the Crimean war, and unprepared for this fresh demand on its resources. This was probably the real reason why the government was so slow to meet the emergency in Poland with adequate means. More paper-money had to be issued, unrepresented by bullion, and unconvertible. The paper currency became depreciated twelve to fifteen per cent. below its ostensible value, and in the uncertainty that prevailed as to the future, business was for a time brought almost to a stand. All the financiers of Russia have been labouring to restore the equilibrium, but as yet their best laid schemes have failed, for none of them has discovered the means of replenishing the bank treasury. The most casual observer cannot fail to mark the respect in which all classes in Russia hold the Emperor. In the most distant provinces, indeed, the peasants regard the Czar as a kind of demi-god who, if he could only be informed of their grievances, would set all to rights. But in Petersburg, where his majesty may be seen any day in the street, divested of ethereal attributes, the people love him. The contrast between the reign of the present emperor and that of his father is very striking. Formerly the interests of agriculture, manufactures, and commerce were sacrificed to the ambitious schemes of the Czar. The military glory of the empire, and the imperial projects of aggrandisement absorbed the energies of government; and to promote these ends the substance of the country was wasted. That is all changed now. The Emperor Alexander II. from the time of his accession has devoted his energies to the amelioration of the condition of the people, to the encouragement of native industry, to the economising of the national resources, and to promoting the efficiency of the executive. Reforms have been set on foot in all departments of the state,--military, legislative, financial, and social. Success has attended many of these new measures; many are still in progress; but the great work is only begun. It is an important step gained, however, that the government has become alive to the need of administrative reform, and if the life of the present monarch be spared to the age of his father, he will have left his country a century in advance of where he found it. The Russian soldier is now smart and well equipped, well armed, well fed, and well treated. Military discipline has been greatly improved, and the men have now to go through regular courses of gymnastics. The army is undergoing a transformation. Recruiting is more regular. The term of service has been reduced to fifteen years, but practically it is much less. The soldiers begin to look like civilised beings, and to acquire self-respect. Important reforms in the legislature of Russia have also been introduced. The term of penal servitude has been greatly reduced. A project of law-reform which will include trial by jury is under deliberation. This, if carried, will be a startling innovation in Russia; and will no doubt be the precursor of many other popular measures. A budget is now published yearly, which, though it is not of much practical utility, is nevertheless in some sort a recognition of the political rights of the people. The police, customs, and the navy are all being subjected to improvements more or less important; in short, the spirit of reform has been so active, that its influence pervades every institution, except perhaps the Church. Some evils have necessarily attended the recent changes. For example, the abolition of the brandy farm, and the substitution of a system of excise, by reducing the cost, has increased the consumption of spirits among the peasantry. The fatal consequences of excess threatened to be alarming in some parts of the country, and I heard great complaints in Siberia of the increase of drunkenness. But as a financial measure it has been very successful. The excise duty on spirits in 1863 gave the government 117,000,000 silver (_i.e._, paper) roubles, which is more than one-third of its gross annual revenue. The revenues of the Russian government are still susceptible of great development. The system of corruption that prevailed so long that it had become almost respectable, has been attacked, but it must be rooted up before the government can reap the full harvest of its own financial resources. This is not a matter of easy accomplishment, however, as the men from whom the Emperor is entitled to look for support are themselves directly interested in the continuance of the old system of universal peculation. The vast extent of territory also over which the government executive is diffused, adds greatly to the difficulty of the radical reform of time-honoured abuses. No annoyance of any kind, either about passports or luggage was experienced by us in arriving at, or departing from Petersburg; but the pleasantest impression the Czarish capital left on my mind was that of the kindness and hospitality of my own countrymen, and of all others whom I happened to meet there. CHAPTER XXIII. RUSSIA AND CHINA. One cannot travel for four months through the two largest empires in the world, without reflecting on the analogies and contrasts which they mutually present, and trying to figure out the causes which have been working such different results in each, since they first became acquainted with one another. Analogies in the manners, customs, and modes of thought of the two races are constantly turning up; and their resemblance to the Chinese has become a proverb among the Russians themselves. Both empires were subjugated in the thirteenth century by the Mongol-Tartar hordes under the descendants of Genghis; and both succeeded in expelling the invaders from their respective territories. From that time the histories of Russia and China have been closely interwoven; their frontiers have been gradually approaching each other, as Russia extended her conquests eastward, and China westward; and for the last two hundred years the advancing wave of Russian aggression has impinged on the whole northern line of the outlying deserts and wildernesses which own the sway of China. The triumphal advance of the Russians over the aboriginal tribes of Siberia was checked when it came in contact with the superior civilisation and higher military organisation of the Chinese; and, after a five years' war, China was in a position to impose conditions on Russia, which was done by the treaty of Nerchinsk, 1689. But the Russian schemes have never been abandoned. With the patience of the Asiatic, combined with the determination of the European, Russia has contested the frontiers of China with slow and fluctuating, but ultimately certain, success. Sometimes by force of arms, sometimes by diplomatic craft, by every device that cunning could suggest, Russia has made good her progress in Chinese territory from point to point, until the last grand _coup_ of General Ignatieff in 1860 crowned all her endeavours with success. By making dexterous use of the victory of the Anglo-French troops at Peking, he, with a stroke of the pen, transferred to Russia the whole coast of Manchu-Tartary, from the mouth of the Amur river to the frontier of Corea. When China first encountered Russia in the debates about the frontier, every advantage was on the side of the former. China was in the position of a powerful, wealthy, populous, and civilised nation, dealing with barbarians. If men were wanted, the warlike Manchus were ready at call. If money was wanted, the resources of China, with her vast producing population, were immeasurably superior to those of Russia, and perhaps to any country in the world at that time. The Chinese were acting on the defensive, and near home. The government was vigorous and intelligent, and naturally confident of its own superiority. The Russian people were, on the other hand, ignorant, servile, and degraded. Their government was not much better; and their military resources could only be drawn from vast, thinly peopled, unproductive steppes. Peter the Great infused new life into Russia by the energy of his own character, and the judicious encouragement of foreigners, by which means he tried to graft civilisation on his unpromising stock. Amid his varied cares he did not forget his supposed interests in the far east; but both he and his successors found China too hard a nut to crack. The Manchu emperors had consolidated their power in China, and from the days of Kanghi, who drove the Russians from the districts they had occupied on the Amoor in 1688, till the early part of the present century, China was strong and prosperous. The Czars could do no more than send embassies, chiefly charged with mercantile questions, to the "Khan of Khans," at Peking. The Russian ambassadors were treated as suppliants at Peking; their reception was such as was accorded to the missions from subject states--in Chinese phrase, "tribute bearers." But Russia was all the while making rapid strides in her own internal progress; foreign inventions, and foreign enterprise, were largely subsidised, and Russia became a great military power. The passion for aggrandisement was strongly developed in Peter, in Catherine II., and in Nicholas; but still Russia could only knock at the gates of China by means of peaceful missions, and China could still afford to be supercilious. But while Russia progressed, China at the best was stationary; and, since the first English war in 1839-41, the germ of decay which the effeminate luxury of the Chinese court had implanted into the Manchu dynasty, born in a hardier climate, has rapidly spread over the whole complex machine of Chinese government. The degenerate Manchu emperors, forgetting the wisdom of their fathers, abandoned themselves to flatterers, discontinued the manly sports to which their predecessors attached so much importance, neglected the affairs of government, and wallowed in sensuality. The last emperor, Hienfung, died almost in the prime of life of the grossest debauchery. A wide-spread corruption was the natural result of the demoralisation of the court, and injustice and oppression pressed heavily on the people. Brigandage on a gigantic scale appeared, and soon wasted the fairest provinces of China, running riot for ten years almost unchecked by the imbeciles who ruled at the capital and in the provinces. The whole fabric was ready to fall to pieces, and only waited for some determined will to take the reins out of the hands that were no longer able to hold them. Up to the last, however, the self-blinded rulers of China refused to believe in their vulnerability, until the fatal delusion was rudely dissipated by the capture of Peking itself by the Anglo-French forces in 1860. The empire lay prostrate at the feet of her conquerors, whose moderation in the hour of victory was the marvel of the vanquished. But China's extremity was Russia's opportunity; and the subtlety of Russian diplomacy was never exhibited to greater advantage than on this occasion. The Russian minister had affected warm friendship to the Chinese government in its troubles, and volunteered indirect assistance to it in the impending struggle with the foreigner. But the moment he saw the Chinese government at its wits' end, he swooped down on it with unscrupulous demands, which included the cession to Russia of the whole sea-coast of Manchuria, and the large tract of country from the Usuri and Amoor rivers to the Sea of Japan. The Chinese were in no condition to demur, and to aid them in coming to a conclusion, they were gently told that in the event of non-compliance, the vengeance of the Czar would be more terrible than the chastisement they were then smarting from. The treaty was made, and Russia triumphed. The substantial loss to China of the Manchurian forests was inconsiderable; but the importance of the gain to Russia can hardly be over-rated. Up to that time, Russia had possessed no harbours on the Pacific that were not closed by ice for half the year. This new accession of maritime territory gives to Russia many excellent harbours, particularly towards its southern extremity, which are open several months longer than the harbour of Nikolaefsk at the mouth of the Amoor. The new harbours in Manchuria are moreover of easier access, not only shortening the voyage from Europe or China by some 600 or 700 miles, but affording great advantages over Nikolaefsk in the simplicity of navigation. The present helpless condition of China is in a great measure owing to the contempt of military affairs which a long peace had engendered. The Chinese people are eminently averse to fighting, and consequently to all military matters. They have a proverb which illustrates this: "Haou tih pu ta ting; Haou jin pu tso-ping." Of good iron you don't make a nail; Of a good man you don't make a soldier. They are too intent on industrial pursuits to waste men, time, or money in feeding armies. Hence they are at the mercy not only of foreign armed powers, but of any band of native ruffians who may organise a pillaging expedition. An enlightened and energetic government, alive to the progress of other nations, would have seen that an efficient standing army was not only compatible with the prosperity of the country, but absolutely essential to its existence; and would have made a military nation of the Chinese in spite of their more peaceful proclivities. But the government of China has for half a century been the reverse of this. Blind and deluded, it has wrapped itself up in false security, trusting to ancient prestige and adroitness in negotiation to keep the wolf from the door, and has let the military element slip through its fingers. The paper wall collapsed at the first touch of the hostile foreigner. The government lost the respect of its own people, and became more than ever a by-word among the nations. The ascendancy of Russia, on the other hand, is due directly to her military organisation. Her frequent struggles in Europe compelled her to look well to her armies; and the ambition of universal dominion, deeply rooted in the Russian autocrats from Peter downwards, and probably even long before Peter's time, was a powerful stimulant to military enterprise. The constant wars of aggression in Asia gave employment to large armies, wasted them, and called for continual drafts of new troops. Everything combined to make Russia a great military nation. The absolute despotism of the Czars, allied to projects of vast ambition, was eminently favourable to such a result. This very despotism and lust of conquest probably grew up under the all-pervading influence of the Mongols. Genghis bequeathed to his successors the sovereignty of the world, just as Peter the Great did five centuries later. The Mongol khans taught the Russian princes how to oppress the people. The extortion which these vassals practised under the sanction of the dreaded Mongol name, inured the rulers to tyranny, and the people to submission. When the invaders were expelled, therefore, it was natural that the arbitrary habits of the Russian princes should be retained. It was also a natural reaction of ideas for the Russians, when their time came, to turn the tables on their late conquerors. They had seen Tartar hordes, moved by one strong will, overrun Asia, and rule a large portion of Europe. Why should not emancipated Russia issue forth from Europe and subjugate Asia? But whencesoever the idea of the conquest of Asia had its origin, the history of Russia for the last two centuries shows how persistently it has been followed up through each successive reign, and how remarkably it has ruled the policy of the Czars from Peter to Nicholas. It was no small advantage to Russia, considered as an Asiatic nation, and not the least barbarous among them, to live on the confines of European civilisation. The Czars have been wise enough to avail themselves of the advanced knowledge, and the energy to apply it, which their European neighbours possessed. They cannot be said to have civilised Russia by this fusion of foreign materials, but they have certainly succeeded in making her a powerful nation. It is not probable that the Russian government could ever have held its head so high in the counsels of Europe without this extraneous aid; and although they might, from their native resources, have overcome the nomad tribes of the Asiatic steppes, they could hardly have been in a position to dictate terms to China. The Chinese government has had similar opportunities of using foreign science, and mechanical and other inventions, though in a less degree. But it has, till lately, despised and rejected them, and has paid dearly for its mistake. In one respect the two empires greatly resemble each other, and that is in the general venality of their officials, high and low. The fact is recognised, to a certain extent, by the governments, and being probably considered irremediable, they seem to make the best of it by placing men in responsible positions, with salaries ludicrously inadequate to provide for the ordinary necessities of life. This has proved one potent cause of the decline of China. In Russia the vigour of the government has risen superior to the evil. Official dishonesty may have done incalculable injury to the prosperity of the country, but the will of the Czars makes its voice heard to the remotest corner of their unwieldy empire. The provincial officers have great latitude for defeating the ends of justice and good government from sordid motives, and, in a general way, the government will not scrutinise their conduct very closely. But nothing is allowed to obstruct the execution of an ukase from Petersburg, and the government is, on the whole, well served. Everything in Russia has been made subservient to the glory of the Czars and the military status of the country, and every consideration is sacrificed to the furtherance of that one object. It cannot be denied that the warlike and aggressive policy of Russia has been productive of much good. The hidden wealth of desert regions has been to some extent at least developed, and highways of commerce have been opened up through forests peopled with wild animals and their hunters. The plough has been driven over old battle-fields, and populations have been settled where all was desolation before. These, and such like, have been the good results which may be considered as a set-off against the evils of war. How different have been the issues of the infatuated "peace at any price" policy of China, where fertile plains are being daily converted into battle-fields! These, however, are but some of the external or accidental circumstances which have modified the characters of the two empires, and variously influenced their destinies. The essential causes of the progress of Russia and the decadence of China lie much deeper. Some people would tell us that Russia is in the young, vigorous and growing stage of its national life, just emerging from barbarism, when every step must be towards improvement, because, from their low starting point, deterioration would be impossible; while China, on the contrary, has long since reached maturity, has outlived the natural term of national existence; its industries, arts, learning, social life, and all that constitutes civilisation, have reached a point beyond which they cannot advance; that the zenith of its glory has been passed; and that, in the natural course of things, the only advance it can now make must be towards decay and dissolution. But that theory of the decline of China does not hold good. The mass of the people have not degenerated; they are as fresh and vigorous as ever they were. It is the government only that has become old and feeble; and a change of dynasty may yet restore to China the lustre which legitimately belongs to so great a nation. The indestructible vitality of Chinese institutions has preserved the country unchanged through many revolutions. The high civilisation of the people, and their earnestness in the pursuit of peaceful industries, have enabled them to maintain their national existence through more dynastic changes than, perhaps, any other country or nation has experienced. "La nation (chinoise)," says De Guignes, "s'est trouvée renfermée dans des bornes naturelles et fortifiée, jusqu'à un certain point, contre les étrangers. D'ailleurs ces étrangers ont toujours été barbares; ainsi lorsque quelquefois ils ont été assez puissants pour pénétrer dans la Chine et pour s'emparer de cet empire, l'attachement inviolable des Chinois à leurs anciens usages a forcé les vainqueurs d'adopter les lois des vaincus. L'empire a changé de maîtres sans changer de lois. Lorsqu'un jour les Tartares, qui le possèdent à présent, seront chassés par une famille chinoise, il n'y aura que le nom de Tartare d'aboli; le gouvernement sera toujours le même, et la nation se retrouvera dans l'état où elle était il y a deux mille ans."[25] [25] Hist. des Huns, tom. iii. p. 93. The barbarian invaders had nothing to substitute for the institutions of the Chinese, and they made no permanent impression on the nation. So far from being able to grind down the people, the result of their successive conquests has been rather to open up new fields of enterprise to the industrious Chinese, who have gradually appropriated to themselves the territories of their conquerors. Thus the Manchu Tartars have been edged back into the forests by the energetic Chinese colonists, have lost their influence, become absorbed in many parts of their country, and are now almost extinct as a nation. The unprecedentedly long existence of the Chinese nation, of their language and literature, their laws and their philosophy, has naturally produced in the people a high veneration for antiquity. Their geographical position isolated them from all the rest of the world, excepting the rude nomads of Tartary. So, for many ages, they saw no people equal to themselves in education and intelligence, and no laws like their own. They were constrained to despise the barbarism, even while they feared the power, of their neighbours or their enemies. Their intercourse with the Romans was not sufficiently close to give them much idea of the culture of that people, and they judged of mankind at large by their experience of the Tartars. It was therefore in the nature of things that an overweening self-satisfaction should spring up among them, which would ripen into arrogance. They came to think themselves _the_ nation, the "middle kingdom," the centre of the world, and to look upon all foreign races as "outer barbarians." Whatever _we_ may think of this national conceit now, there can be no question that, up to a recent period, the Chinese were justified in their high opinion of themselves, and their contempt for all other races, languages and laws. It is necessary to keep this in view, in order rightly to appreciate the character of the Chinese. They are very generally supposed to be so proud and bigoted that they cling with blind affection to the traditions of the past, insensible to excellence of any kind that is new, or of extraneous origin. But this notion of their character is wide of the truth. As their own greatness comes from ancient times, and they have passed the culminating point of their civilisation, so their reason dictates to them reverence for the past, just as their experience has taught them to despise everything external. The intercourse between the Chinese and the civilised nations of Europe has, in the first instance, brought out the weak side of the Chinese character into prominent relief, and held it up to the derision of the world; but as that intercourse has become more intimate and thorough, it has afforded a rational explanation of some apparently anomalous traits of character, and has produced among those of the Chinese who have come within its influence, modifications in their views of relative superiority. Ideas that have grown with the growth of a people, through many ages, are not likely to be eradicated in a day; but, if founded on reason, they will yield to reason, when it has shown them to be erroneous; and the adoption of new ideas is likely to be permanent in proportion to the slow and gradual nature of the transition. The Chinese first encountered modern Europeans in small numbers, and in the outposts of their empire. They naturally applied to these visitors the rules whereby they had from time immemorial been taught to manage strangers or barbarians. The Western adventurers who repaired to the shores of China were actuated by purely utilitarian motives; and to promote their own objects they were not above pandering to the arrogance of the Chinese. Had their policy been different, indeed, they had but slight opportunities of exhibiting their superiority in culture and civilisation; and their numbers were too insignificant to have made any marked impression. The result of the earlier intercourse between Europeans and Chinese was, therefore, rather to confirm than destroy the self-esteem of the latter, who continued to regard the new tribe as belonging to the category of barbarians. The East India Company did its share in perpetuating the Chinese conceit, by submitting to every indignity that was offered to it for the sake of trade. The natural tendency of this course of action, so soon as the controlling power of the company was removed, was to bring on quarrels, the history of which everyone knows. In these wars, which succeeded each other between 1839 and 1860, the superiority of European civilisation asserted itself in China; the government was first compelled to acknowledge the power of the foreigner, and it is now learning something of the moral qualities of nations whom it had affected to regard as beasts.[26] For the first time in their history, the Chinese came into contact with a people superior to themselves. No precedent could be found to guide them in the great emergency, and hence the aggression of Europeans inevitably entailed disaster on China, which experience alone could have enabled them to avoid. The ascendancy of Europeans in China is now a fact accomplished and irrevocable, accepted by the natives themselves, and therefore destined to work important changes on the condition of the people and their government. [26] soo-tung-po (a celebrated chinese classic author), says, "the e and the teih" (the former term being used to designate foreigners), "are like the brute creation, and cannot be governed by the same rules of government as those of the central nation. if liberal rules of government were applied to them, it would infallibly give rise to rebellious confusion. the ancient kings knew this well, and therefore ruled them without laws (or by misrule). this is therefore the most judicious mode of governing them."--_amherst's voyage; lindsay's report._ The people have been quick to appreciate the advantages which foreign appliances offered to them in the conduct of their business. For many years their merchants have been employing European vessels in the coasting trade, induced by economy, despatch, and the facilities for insurance thus secured. The extension of sea-board opened to foreign enterprise by Lord Elgin's treaty, and the free navigation of the great river Yangtsze-Kiang, have attracted a large fleet of steamers to the coast and rivers of China. These are chiefly employed, and in many instances owned, by natives. In everything the Chinese have exhibited a remarkable freedom from prejudice. They are much too practical to allow any freak of fancy to influence them in matters in which they have a tangible interest. The Chinese government also has shown, in the most emphatic manner, the high value it sets on European aid, both in civil and military affairs. The alacrity with which it has adopted the modern engines of war at the dictation of foreigners in whom it had confidence, proves conclusively that the conservative government of China is not so wedded to its own traditions as to reject innovations indiscriminately. It may be slow in coming to a conclusion, and is naturally jealous of any reform which is imperfectly understood. But it only wants convincing evidence of the utility of any measure that may be suggested to ensure its adoption. And on those occasions when the government may appear most reluctant to leave the beaten track, there may be other motives for this besides mere obstinacy. Its prestige is in peril; indeed, may be said to be already to a great extent lost. The wholesale introduction of foreign improvements would place the government at the mercy of its foreign _employés_, and its existence as an active and responsible power would be virtually destroyed. The attempt to amalgamate foreign ideas of progress with ancient precedent and stagnation is at best a hazardous experiment, if any value is to be attached to the preservation of the integrity of the government. Great allowance must therefore be made for the difficult position in which Chinese statesmen find themselves. Reforms they know to be necessary; but their duty is so to temper them that they may be adopted with the least possible shock to indigenous institutions. And, even if they foresee the ultimate collapse of these institutions, still their prudence would lead them so to restrain the influx of new ideas, that changes might not be too sudden or sweeping. The Chinese nation is at present in a crisis of its history, in which it is peculiarly susceptible of external influences; and as its foreign relations become more and more consolidated, these influences are brought to bear from various quarters and in constantly increasing force. Great Britain having by far the largest stake in the country, and the largest share of the responsibility attaching to the necessary interference in its affairs, the state and prospects of China demand from us a little more attention than is usually bestowed upon them; for the destiny of that great empire, and our own future interests, will be to some extent moulded by our present policy. The problem that is now being worked out in that country is one of which history affords no clue to the solution. The nation has been convulsed for fourteen years by a great insurrection. That is nothing new to the Chinese; but the conditions are vastly altered. According to precedent, some powerful Tartar or Chinese prince would have appeared to aid the government in quelling the rebellion, and then seat himself on the throne. Or the empire might have been dismembered between two independent dynasties. Some such solution may still be found, though it is not easy to see whence the movement is to come. Were the other European powers out of the way, Russia would be almost in a position to grasp at the sovereignty of China. Had the crisis occurred a hundred years ago, and our interest in the country been as great as it is now, China might have become a second India. But none of these contingencies is now feasible. The integrity of China, and the independence of its government, are sufficiently hedged round by the jealousies of rival powers. The cause of the insurrection, and the great difficulty in the way of a settlement of Chinese affairs, and of the re-establishment of order, lie in the utter prostration of the Imperial government. This circumstance, which would have been the strength of the insurrectionary party had they possessed the elements of cohesion or administrative capacity, tends only to prolong the weary struggle. The rebels have forfeited the respect of all classes, except the most profligate, or the most ignorant. Their dynastic ambition has been made a convenient battle-cry to cover their crimes. They have no policy but devastation, and have neither the disposition nor the ability to govern. Even if they succeeded in crushing the existing government, they would still have to be subjugated in their turn by some other power, before tranquillity could be restored to the country. The Imperial government has been at last awakened to the importance of quelling the rebellion, which for many years was only trifled with. The division of authority in the provinces prevented that combined action which alone could have met the exigencies of the situation. It was considered a great success, if a body of insurgents was merely chased out of one province into another. The efforts of the Imperial government were, and are still, constantly nullified by the private interests of the provincial authorities. That is one of the greatest abuses that their peculiar system of government is liable to. The armies that are levied from time to time to defend the provinces are mere local bands, under the control of the governor or his deputies, over whose acts the Imperial government has little or no check. If left entirely to itself, it is doubtful whether the present government would ever have been able to make head against the rebellion at all. What has been accomplished towards that end has been mainly due to the moral support of foreign powers, and the active services of European military officers. The necessity of centralising the government more and more has been made obvious to the Prince Regent. That is one of the reforms most urgently needed to secure efficiency and economy in the administration. The old system worked well enough in quiet times, and as long as there was no disturbing element. But the extension of foreign influence along the coast, and in the interior of the country, is constantly stirring up questions of Imperial interest, the inevitable result of which is to sink local customs, and to place foreign relations at all the ports on one level. The embassies at Peking have helped to bring all local and provincial questions home to the Imperial government in a more direct manner than ever was done before. The British minister, deeply impressed with the advantages that must result to China from the centralisation of the government, has striven by all legitimate means to promote it. He has only been partially successful, it is true, and in his despatches of June last he betrays disappointment at the result of his efforts. But still a good deal has been done, and every day's experience must teach the government the necessity of strengthening its own authority, and of exercising a more direct and active control over the provincial governors than heretofore. The attitude of France and England towards the belligerents in China is anomalous. Their principle at first was strict neutrality, but the rapid extension of commercial intercourse has rendered this course impracticable. The Imperial government has been tamed into granting us a treaty advantageous to us, but much more so to China herself. By this treaty several new ports of trade were opened on the coast; access to Peking, and the residence of foreign ministers there, were secured. But above all, the Yang-tsze-Kiang was thrown open to foreign trade and navigation. That noble river had been closed to commerce for about eight years. The rebellion had devastated the country on both sides; the cities on its banks were in ruins, and their populations dispersed or destroyed. From a point five hundred miles from the sea, downwards, to Chin-Kiangfoo, scarcely a sail was seen on that vast expanse of water. Such was the state of things in 1861, when the navigation was opened to foreigners. Now the muddy waters are ploughed by a large fleet of steamers; the greatest activity prevails everywhere; cities are being rapidly rebuilt, and populations are returning. The products of the interior are freely interchanged with those of the sea-board, and a new life has been imparted to great tracts of country. The lion's share of this new trade has as usual fallen to the natives. It is they who chiefly supply cargoes for the foreign steamers, and native trading craft everywhere crowd the river. These events brought us into contact with the rebels, who held, and still hold, Nanking as their head-quarters. From that point they commanded the river on both sides, and it became necessary that the British authorities should make arrangements for the protection of commerce. Amicable relations with them were attempted to be established, but, as was natural, it soon appeared that our interests clashed with the assumed rights of the insurgents, and that our close alliance with the Imperial government was incompatible with similar relations with its enemies. But the programme which the Taepings announced touched us more nearly than that. The conquests which they proposed to themselves included some of the very ports which were then being opened on the river, an event which would have nipped the root of that new development of trade. Our interest in China, as politicians are constantly telling us, is purely commercial. But peace is essential to the prosperity of commerce, and the present state of confusion and civil war is inimical to it. Early in 1862 the rebels menaced Shanghae in great force, drawing a cordon of forts round the city, and cutting off the supplies from the interior. Provisions rose to famine prices, and the vast population of the city and suburbs was forced to undergo a siege. Some years before that time circumstances had compelled the British government to undertake the protection of the treaty-ports, and more especially Shanghae, as being the most important of them, and the most open to attack from the rebels, who held the whole country in rear of it. But, in 1862, it became imperative to do more than that. The little garrison placed there for the defence of the city, might be kept under arms for months, or even years, ready to repel an attack when the invaders should come within range of the city walls; the population would live in a chronic state of panic, many of them would leave (as they did); trade would be paralysed; the city and foreign settlement would be a mere fortified camp, cut off from all communication with the interior of the country. In this crisis Sir James Hope, then naval commander-in-chief, came to the front. That officer was well acquainted with the character of the Taepings; he had had a great deal of communication with them, and had tried every means in his power to induce them to change their manners, so as to secure the respect of their countrymen and of foreigners. He had also repeatedly warned them of the disastrous consequences which would follow any demonstration on their part against the consular ports, Shanghae in particular. The state of affairs in Shanghae, in the beginning of 1862, made it clear to Sir James Hope that the effective protection of the city involved the necessity of such aggressive operations as would clear the country in the immediate vicinity. Without waiting for instructions, therefore, he assumed the responsibility of immediate action, and commenced a campaign against the Taeping strongholds, which extended over a space of nine months, and ended in the dispersion of these marauders from that portion of country included in a radius of thirty miles from Shanghae. This is a practical illustration of what the policy of the British government has been, and how it has from time to time submitted to circumstances. At first we have the theoretical principle of strict neutrality broadly asserted; then we are compelled to violate that principle in our own defence; an emergency arises in which the officers on the spot have to choose the alternative of an armed protection of British property, necessarily including a portion of the territories of the Imperial government, or the abandonment of British interests to destruction. Our own government confirms the decision of its officers--hence, first the ports themselves, and then the arbitrary thirty-mile radius are placed under foreign protection. At such a distance from the scene of operations, amid such rapid changes in the posture of affairs, and with such important interests at stake, it would be impossible for Downing Street to frame a code of instructions for officers in China which would apply to all possible contingencies, and impolitic to frame them on the pattern of the laws of the Medes and Persians. The abstract principle of non-intervention is very excellent in itself, but to adhere to it when our own material interests are directly assailed, would be pure infatuation. Expediency and self-interest must, after all, be our rule in China as elsewhere. Our government at home, and its officers abroad, have always had a dread of complications in China, but much as they have studied to steer clear of them, they have step by step been sucked in, and the end is not yet. The disturbances that have ruined so many of the richest districts in China are incompatible with the free course of trade. We have, therefore, a direct interest in the restoration of peace. The present government of China is on friendly, and even confidential, terms with us; it has shown great readiness to cement still closer our mutual relations. It is, moreover, such as it is, and with all its rottenness, the representative of order, and the rallying point for whatever remains of patriotism in the country. The insurgents, on the other hand, are hopelessly given up to their propensities for desolation. If, therefore, peace is to be restored to China at all, within the present generation, it can only be by the subjugation of the insurgents, and the ascendancy of the Imperial government. With this view Admiral Hope first supported the American, Ward, a soldier of fortune, but a man of energy and genius, who disciplined and led a Chinese force in the service of the Imperial government. Following up the same line of policy, men and material were subsequently lent to the force, and, after Ward's death, a great number of her Majesty's officers and men were permitted to join it, and the little army was placed under the command of Captain (now Lieutenant-Colonel) Gordon of the Engineers. Under that officer the force grew to be a formidable power. Its career during the twelve months or so of Gordon's command was, with one or two exceptions, a series of brilliant successes. It can no longer be said that the Chinese do not make good soldiers. Under leaders in whom they have confidence, they exhibit the highest military qualities. Gordon was, perhaps, the first who taught Chinese troops to overcome a repulse. The result of Gordon's campaign has been to recover from the rebels the whole of the province of Keangsoo, between the Grand Canal and the sea. He has cut the Taeping rebellion in halves. The capture of Soochow, last December, gave him the command of the Grand Canal, and enabled him to interrupt communications thereby between the rebel garrisons of Nanking and Hangchow. Leaving the latter point to be acted on by the Franco-Chinese, who had Ningpo for their base, Gordon followed the Grand Canal towards Nanking, and captured all the cities that lay between. Nanking itself would probably have fallen an easy prey to him, but at that juncture he was compelled to resign his commission in the Chinese army. The service was, from the first, distasteful to him, from the position he occupied in relation to the Chinese officers with whom he had to act. The treachery perpetrated by the foo-tai, or governor of the province, at the capture of Soochow, in putting to death the rebel chiefs who had surrendered to Gordon, disgusted him; and, failing to obtain satisfaction from the government for this outrage on his own good faith, he determined to quit the service. The Queen's order in council which permitted him to serve the Emperor of China was withdrawn, and the "ever victorious" army has been disbanded, with what consequences the future will disclose. It will be always a difficult thing for an officer with a high sense of honour, and with proper self-respect, to serve the Chinese government on its own terms, though it would be comparatively easy for a military adventurer, who is less particular, to build up his own fortunes in such a career. The system of management which places the forces of the empire under the control of local authorities, whose interests are frequently antagonistic to those of the nation and the Imperial government, precludes foreign officers from attaining their proper position. They are liable to be called upon to participate in proceedings of which their humanity disapproves. They have to listen to the constant complaints of disaffected troops in arrears of pay. They never can calculate with certainty on next month's supplies, and their men are always on the verge of mutiny. The disbursements for troops are provided out of the provincial treasuries, and hence the provincial authorities have a direct interest in levying as small a number of men as possible, and in doling out their pay in such measure only as may suffice to prevent a general rising. The scheme of supplying the Chinese government with a steam fleet failed for this, among other reasons, that Captain Osborn declined to serve under any mere provincial authority. Whether the Chinese government will now of itself be able to give the _coup-de-grace_ to the Taepings, or whether, through the incapacity and venality of local officials, anarchy will again distress the newly-conquered districts, is a question of serious import both to them and to us. The policy to be pursued by the British government in China, in any emergency that may arise, will demand honest consideration. It has been too much the fashion of political agitators to treat the subject flippantly, and to make the "China question" a parliamentary shuttle-cock. The general indifference to the subject which prevails in and out of Parliament, affords ample scope for misrepresentation, and some of the men to whom the country looks for sound views are often guilty of hiding their light under a bushel. To go no further back than the last debate on China, as reported in the "Times," June 1st, 1864, we there find ample illustration of the fallacious arguments advanced by a certain class of politicians when dealing with this subject. Mr. Bright is very solicitous to clear his friends, who had preceded him in the debate, from the imputation of party motives, that their statements may carry the more weight. The disclaimer will naturally apply _à fortiori_ to himself. But "_qui s'excuse s'accuse_." How does Mr. Bright treat those who ventured to express opinions at variance with his own? An honourable member, desirous of obtaining light on the question, sought for it in the prosaic region of fact. Applying to the most authentic sources within his reach, he had collected opinions from a number of persons who had a practical knowledge of the country. These various opinions were remarkably concurrent, but they did not suit Mr. Bright's argument. He therefore considers them "uninteresting," and accounts for their unanimity by insinuating that the honourable member had concocted them all himself! The ponderous speech of Mr. Cobden is as remarkable for what it omits as for what it contains. His object seemed to be to show, first, that our commerce in China was not worth protecting at all; and, secondly, that he had an infallible scheme of his own which would secure the ends that the policy of the government had failed in attaining. The facts he adduces in support of his argument are judiciously selected; the inferences he draws from them are framed to suit his foregone conclusions, but have no kind of reference to the relation between one fact and another. Causes and effects are blended in a fantastic medley, well calculated to throw dust in the eyes of the unwary, but fatal to the elucidation of truth. Mr. Cobden excludes from his view of the China trade the most important part of it, selecting the smallest item--the direct exports from this country--as a criterion of our commercial progress in China. His deductions from such a partial view of facts must necessarily be worthless. But, even on the narrow ground he has chosen, his conclusions are all forced. He avoids saying so in plain language, but the only inference that can be drawn from his line of argument, is that the successive re-actions that have occurred in the advancement of our export trade to China have been the result of our war policy there, and of the closer intimacy of our political and social relations with that country. If Mr. Cobden means anything, he means that. Now what do the facts say, even as Mr. Cobden himself has stated them? After the peace of 1842, our exports increased steadily up to 1845, in which year they doubled the value of 1835, the year that followed the abolition of the East India Company's monopoly. For ten years, after 1845, the value of our exports fell to a lower level. Yet during that time we were at peace with China. A marked falling off occurred in 1854, but that was caused by the prostration of trade consequent on the outbreak of the Taeping rebellion, a circumstance wholly overlooked by Mr. Cobden. The wars of 1856-60 were followed by an unprecedented increase in our exports in 1859, 1860 and 1861. Mr. Cobden is perfectly right in saying that the trade of these years was vastly overdone, and a recoil was inevitable. But even in the two following years, when the re-action was operating in full force, the export returns showed a vast increase beyond the highest point reached in 1845, or in any year previous to 1859. At this point, Mr. Cobden, probably discovering that he had _proved too much_, shifts his ground to the single article--cotton. If, as the member for Portsmouth said, Mr. Cobden considers Manchester as the centre of the world, the cotton test is probably to his mind the most infallible. The exports of cotton goods to China fell from 243,000,000 yards in 1861, to 80,000,000 yards in 1862; and to 46,000,000 yards in 1863. "That," says Mr. Cobden, "is the character of the business you are transacting in China." A word from Mr. Cobden would have explained the diminution of the export of cotton goods on an hypothesis, not at all involving the general decadence of our trade with China. The cotton famine had raised the value of the raw material to two shillings per pound, and the enhanced price which the manufactured goods cost to the Chinese naturally diminished consumption. Again, the Chinese happened, at the beginning of the cotton famine, to be over supplied with cheaper and better goods, and old stocks had to be used up before a response to the exorbitant prices paid in Manchester or an active resumption of business could be looked for. While surveying our relations with China from the "cotton" point of view, Mr. Cobden might have had the candour to acknowledge the handsome contributions of the raw material which Lancashire has received _from_ China during the last three years. Sir Frederick Bruce is a better authority than Mr. Cobden on Chinese affairs, and he says, in a report to the Foreign Office, dated Peking, June 7th, and published in the "Times," September 7th, 1864, "The import trade has increased from 41,000,000 taels (about 13,000,000_l._) in 1860 (the last year before the opening of the Yang-tsze and the northern ports), to 81,000,000 taels (about 27,000,000_l._), in 1863. The increase is due in a great measure to the large and increasing trade from the ports on the Yang-tsze in Chinese produce of all descriptions." The vastly increasing trade in imports into this country from China, compared with which the exports are a bagatelle, Mr. Cobden passes over as having no bearing on the question. The opium revenue to the Indian government is also overlooked. The large shipping interest engaged in the China trade goes for nothing in Mr. Cobden's estimate, but it is nevertheless of great importance to the country, even though the vessels are not all owned in Lancashire, and do not all carry cotton. The amount of capital that British ship-owners find employment for in connection with China, is not limited to the large fleet of vessels engaged in the direct trade with this country, but is spread all over the coast and rivers of China. In the dispatch above quoted, Sir F. Bruce states that the entries of foreign shipping in China have increased from 293,568 tons, in 1860, to 996,890 tons in 1863. The interest which British merchants, and through them the nation at large, possess in the prosperity of China is widely ramified. They are closely involved in the local and coasting trade; large amounts of British capital are sunk in fixed property of various kinds at all the open ports; and such investments are increasing at a rapid rate. These things lie under the surface, and are not generally considered in estimates that are formed in this country of the actual stake Great Britain has in China. But they are none the less real on that account. Theorists may say what they will, but our establishment on the territory of China is a great and important fact; and whether the process which led to it was theoretically correct or not, it will be impossible to undo it. Not only are we fixed in China ourselves, but large native populations at the treaty parts have thrown in their fortunes with ours, to abandon whom would bring calamities on the Chinese for which it would baffle Mr. Cobden to find a remedy. To reverse our progress is, however, the policy or the hobby of Mr. Cobden. He would not only undo what has been done, but he would urge the Government on to a new career of conquest in China, without even a pretext for war. He would seize two more islands on the coast in order to make free ports which would draw trade away from those now established. "Get two other small islands ... merely establish them as free ports; I don't ask you to do more." Mr. Cobden does not commit himself to say how the islands are to be acquired, but he knows very well there is but one way of acquiring them. And supposing we took possession of two islands, how many would France take? and if England were to lead the way in such schemes of aggrandisement, would the ambition of France stop short at islands? Many high-handed proceedings have been laid to the charge of this country, but this scheme of spoliation would surpass everything else of the kind. Mr. Cobden would probably suggest purchasing the islands, which would be, at least, a civil way of putting it. But the whole scheme is so purely utopian that one marvels that a practical thinker could have shown such contempt for his audience as to propound it. Hong-Kong is the model on which Mr. Cobden would shape his new colonies; very flattering to Hong-Kong, perhaps, but betraying an incredible forgetfulness of the whole history of that colony. The "London and China Telegraph," of 13th June last, in commenting on Mr. Cobden's speech, shows clearly that the advancement of Hong-Kong as a port of trade was due to purely adventitious circumstances; and that for many years, when it rested on its own merits for success, it was an absolute failure, and a constant expense to the country. If Mr. Cobden aspires to be a second Stamford Raffles, he is beginning at the wrong end. Our policy in China will be more safely left to the chapter of accidents than to visionaries. We have hard facts to deal with, and not phantoms of a lively imagination. The suppression of the Taeping rebellion cannot fail to produce remarkable effects on the condition of the Chinese people. They are ripe for great changes, not in the government or social institutions (the first is of little or no importance to the people, and the second are stereotyped), but in their relation to the progress of the world. Amid all political convulsions the people have remained unchanged, and that mainly because they are a non-political people. They are indifferent to affairs of state, but intent on their own business. Yet they have the faculty of self-government developed in an eminent degree. They are quiet, orderly, and industrious; averse to agitation of any kind, and ready to endure great sacrifices for the sake of peace. Such a people are easily governed, and their instinct of self-government is one important element in their longevity as a nation; it has enabled successive dynasties, often weak and vacillating, arbitrary and corrupt, to control three hundred millions of people. This constitutes the elasticity by which they regain lost ground after any temporary disturbance. Let the present reign of brigandage be destroyed, and the people will soon rise again; like pent-up waters they will flow into their former channels, and in a few years scarcely a trace of desolation would be left. In this prediction we have the experience of various episodes, even of the present rebellion, to guide us. The rapidity with which the city of Shanghae was re-built, after its destruction during the rebel occupation of 1853-5, was astonishing. Other cities have been re-built and re-peopled with equal rapidity. Han-Kow, on the great river, has been several times sacked and destroyed by the rebels, and in a short time after each visitation it was worth plundering again. The important city of Soo-chow, captured from the rebels last December, is reported in June following to be showing signs of commercial life, although the surrounding country was still the theatre of war. The Chinese people have, however, little cause for confidence in the efficiency or the stability of their own government; they have on the other hand implicit faith in foreigners. It is obvious, therefore, that any guarantee from Western powers that peace should be maintained in the districts once recovered from the rebels, would stimulate the commercial and industrial energies of the people, and materially contribute to the renewed prosperity of the country. The prosperity of China is, then, intimately interwoven with our own, for vast fields of enterprise would now be opened out to Europeans which have heretofore been closed. Its resources have been developed to the utmost, perhaps, that a fossil civilisation, unaided by modern invention, is capable of. The Chinese have been ahead of the world from time immemorial in agriculture, commercial economy, manufactures, and all industries; in short, in everything that constitutes material wealth; but now in these later days the world has in some things got a little ahead, and is waiting to impart its new accomplishments to them. The vast mineral wealth of the country has been but partially taken advantage of. Its coal, iron, gold, and silver have hitherto been worked by the most primitive and inadequate machinery. But we are prepared to teach the natives how to economise their forces, and to make the most of the natural resources of their country; and they are being prepared to receive the lesson. The avidity with which the Chinese have grasped at the advantages offered to them by the steamers that now ply on the coast, and on the great river, is an earnest of their readiness to appreciate any other western inventions that are commended by their practical utility. The favourable introduction of steam on the Chinese rivers, and the popularity with which their earlier career was attended, were indeed due to fortuitous circumstances. On the Yangtsze Kiang steamers had not to compete with an old-established native trade--that had been for many years dead--but they reopened a commercial route that had been closed, and, at the time, they offered the only feasible means of navigating the great river. Under different conditions they would have had to work their way slowly into the favour of the Chinese; but now, having established a foothold, they will certainly maintain the position they have assumed, and the Chinese would be sorry to return to their former _régime_, under which they could hardly hope to accomplish in a month what is now easily performed in three or four days.[27] [27] "Owing to the violence of the winds, and the rapidity of the current in certain places, the application of steam to navigation was required before the Yangtsze could be made available as a highway for transport. The decks of the steamers are now crowded with Chinese passengers, and their holds are filled with produce destined, not for foreign export, but for Chinese consumption. The practical advantages of foreign inventions are thus brought home to masses of the population in the very centre of China, and they can now avail themselves of the natural outlet for the productions of those rich internal provinces, instead of being driven to the slow and circuitous method of artificial water communication, and exposed to the exactions of the officials of the different provinces they had to pass through."--SIR F. BRUCE. There is still great room for the extension of steam traffic in the interior of China, and great need of it. For the present, however, foreigners are limited by the provisions of the existing treaties, to the ports formally opened by those treaties. Steamers may penetrate as far up the great river as Hankow, 600 miles from the sea; but the upper Yangtsze, which is navigable by steamers for 500 miles above that, must still be left to the monopoly of uncouth barges, which are slowly tracked up-stream by men who labour like beasts of burden. The navigation of the Poyang and Tung-ting lakes which communicate with the Yang-tsze; the Peiho river between Tientsin and Tungchow; the western river from Canton to the province of Kwangsi, and many other water routes--all practicable for properly constructed vessels--are equally excluded from foreign enterprise. The native traders on these routes are deprived of the aid which steam has afforded them in other quarters, and that by a decision of their government which, from a cosmopolitan point of view, is arbitrary and unjust. Inexperience may excuse the Chinese government for this narrow and pernicious jealousy, but what shall we say of European diplomatists who, in full view of the advantages which, as the past has shown, must accrue to natives and foreigners alike from the spread of foreign intercourse in China, would diminish "the points of contact" from a nervous, and not very rational, apprehension of possible complications? Much has been said of the ruffianism that our newly established commerce on the Yangtsze Kiang has let loose on the great river. It cannot be denied; but it would be singular indeed if, with a weak government, a deplorably inefficient executive, and a timid people, outrages should not be committed. In every community there must be lawless characters whom physical force, or the dread of it, alone can restrain from criminal acts. Under existing circumstances in China, it is the duty of each foreign state to control its own subjects; but it is manifestly unfair to circumscribe the legitimate privileges of a whole community, in order to punish a few unworthy members of it. Such a policy can only be dictated by indolence in seeking out and punishing offenders. But the instances on record of piracy and other crimes on the Yangtsze Kiang, although authentic, are apt to engender exaggerated views of their relative importance. They are made unduly conspicuous by rhetoricians, who, on the other hand, ignore the smooth under-current of affairs which is silently conveying blessings to many thousands of people. These occasional outrages are, after all, mere excrescences on a system that, in an essential manner, ministers to the well-being of whole populations who would otherwise be in penury. At the worst, the good vastly outbalances the evil; and, to take the lowest view of the matter, it were better even that the lawless proceedings of a few rowdies should go on unchecked, rather than that the remedy for them should be found in the curtailment of a trade of such great promise. It must never be forgotten that it is the natives of China who derive the chief benefit from foreign commercial intercourse; and that, while arbitrary restrictions on the plain meaning of treaties, by which it has been sought to limit the application of their provisions, are unjust to foreigners, the refusal to extend foreign intercourse is an injustice of which the Chinese people have a right to complain. The unexampled success of steamers in China, within the three past years, has paved the way for a similar result for railways. The Chinese, having satisfied themselves of the advantages that accrue to them from the former, will be perfectly ready to avail themselves of the latter. They are not naturally given to travel, that is, they travel for profit and not for pleasure. But the facilities for locomotion which steamers now afford them have created a large and increasing passenger traffic. The steamers on the coast and on the rivers are usually crowded with Chinese passengers, who seek very moderate accommodation, and therefore can be carried economically. The shortening of a month's journey to one of a few days has induced many thousands to travel who did not think of it before. It is, therefore, a fair inference that the greater economy of time which railways would secure would enable millions to travel who are at present excluded from it. The mere monopolising by railways of the revenues of the present passage-boats, and other means of passenger communication, in certain districts, would be but a trifle compared with the new traffic which railways would create for themselves in such a populous and eminently commercial country. And, perhaps, no other country of equal area presents fewer natural obstacles to the construction of long lines of railway. This has been shown by the investigations of Sir Macdonald Stephenson, who has lately published a full report on the subject. The labour, and many of the materials, are to be found in the localities where they would be wanted. It may safely be assumed, also, that in no other country would railway investments be more remunerative, if organised on a uniform and comprehensive plan, such as that proposed by Sir M. Stephenson. The most populous parts of China are alluvial plains, either fed by great navigable rivers, or intersected in all directions by networks of canals. With regard to the great water routes, which are open to large vessels, it is very problematical whether railways could supersede, or even compete with, navigation in the carrying of bulky goods. It could not be expected, for example, that on the proposed line from Hankow to Shanghae, following the course of the great river for 650 miles, goods should be conveyed as economically as in steamers that can navigate the river easily, carrying 2000 tons of cargo. But in those parts of the plain where very small craft only can be used, a railway may easily supersede the present means of transport. The saving of time would, perhaps, in all cases attract the passenger traffic to the railways, and that alone would probably be amply sufficient to support them remuneratively. There are many large tracts of country in China less thickly peopled than the rich plains, and which do not possess the same facilities of water communication. In the north the traffic is conducted by means of caravans, necessarily slow and expensive; and in some parts of central China, goods are transported on men's backs. In such regions railways would not only be highly remunerative, but would be an inestimable boon in opening up those parts of the country which, being less favoured by nature, have been kept far behind in wealth and prosperity. To compensate for these natural disadvantages of the north, the Grand Canal was cut to connect the city of Hang-chow with Peking. That stupendous work required constant repairs to maintain its efficiency, and a considerable annual outlay of money. In the disorders of the last ten years the necessary funds for this purpose have either not been raised, or have been misappropriated, and the Grand Canal has consequently gone to ruin. The importance which has been attached to this great line of communication by successive dynasties for 900 years, point to the track of the canal as favourable for a line of railway. Of all the branches of Sir M. Stephenson's scheme this is the most obviously desirable. A railway that would restore, and vastly increase the old traffic on the Grand Canal, would do for the forty populous cities it would touch at, what steam navigation has done for the marts on the banks of the great river. Although Peking and the commercial cities of North China are accessible by sea for eight months in the year, and in the direct communication between them and the southern coast ports, there is less urgent need of improvement, yet the time now occupied in travelling from Peking to its nearest shipping port is as great as the whole journey to Nanking or Shanghae by railway would take. The benefits which the railway would bring to the inland cities, more remote from the sea or from navigable rivers than Peking, would be incalculable. In the correspondence published by Sir M. Stephenson, to show the prospective results of the introduction of railways into China, rather too much stress has been laid on their bearing on foreign trade, and especially on the transport of tea from the interior to the shipping ports. There is nothing in the saving of a few hundred miles of a long sea voyage to compensate for the cost of transporting goods by railway. And the conveyance of tea would be a more insignificant item in the whole traffic of railways than it has already become in that of the steamers that trade in the heart of the tea districts. The whole question of the foreign trade of China may be put on one side so far as the railway scheme is concerned. The success of railways, and the need of them, rest on a much broader and surer basis. The internal trade of China; the interchange of the products of the diverse climates and soils that are included in the limits of the empire itself--is what really gives life and activity to the people. It is to that source alone that the promoters of railways ought to look for a guarantee of their success. The whole foreign trade in tea does not probably exceed one tenth of the native; and yet tea forms but a small proportion of the inland trade of China. In the consideration of the railway question, therefore, the more such irrelevant matter is kept out of account, the more likely are sound general conclusions to be arrived at. The lines to be established should be determined solely with a view to supplying the wants of the Chinese in the broadest sense. But if a desire to benefit this or that port, or this or that party, be permitted to influence the direction of the undertaking, it will probably be at the expense of its ultimate success. The political advantages that would flow from the use of railways would be no less important than the commercial. It would bring the distant provinces within reach of the government, and enable it more effectually to centralise its authority, without which it is no longer possible to govern China well. Peking is in the worst situation that could have been selected for the seat of government; that is, from a Chinese point of view. It was convenient as a citadel for the Tartars while they were consolidating their power, as its vicinity to their native wilds kept open for them an easy retreat in the event of revolution. And, while their vigour remained fresh, the enfeebling influence of distance from the provinces was neutralised by the energy of the executive. But in the process of degeneracy which the Manchu dynasty, like its predecessors, has undergone, the remoteness of the capital has been a fertile cause of misrule, corruption, and distress in the provinces. The natural capital of China is Nanking or Hang-chow, or some other easily accessible point in the central provinces. The railway scheme, by connecting all parts of the empire in rapid daily communication, would bring the government face to face with its officers; local abuses would be exposed, if not corrected, and imperial and national interests would cease to be at the mercy of corrupt, mendacious, and treacherous provincial authorities. Nothing would so surely save the existing government from the annihilation which threatens it; restore order throughout the country; and promote the well-being of all classes. The local famines and inundations to which China has in all ages been liable, and which, from the absence of proper communications, have occasionally entailed great suffering on the people, would, under the reign of railways, lose their horrors. The brigandage with which the government keeps up a desultory and unsatisfactory struggle over an area too wide for rapid or decisive results, would die a natural death, were railways in operation. Their moral effect alone would do much to keep down local risings, and the facility they would afford for the transport of troops would enable the government to act with promptitude at the point required; and instead of keeping up half-disciplined, disaffected, and idle hordes, often worse than useless, and yet very expensive, a small, compact, well-equipped force, with the power of motion which railways would supply, would do the work better, and at a mere fraction of the expense. Railways would be very popular with the Chinese people, whose readiness to support them is proved by their capitalists offering to invest in shares. But will the consent of the Imperial government be granted to the project? Without its co-operation nothing can be done; and this therefore is the question which will have to be primarily decided. In the first place there is the _vis inertiæ_--the aversion to innovation--to be got over. That can be accomplished if the government can be convinced of the advantage of the proposed scheme. Then, on the other hand, the representatives of foreign powers at the court of Peking may, from national jealousy, influence the government against any reform emanating from Great Britain. But the determination of the Chinese government will depend most of all on the view which the British minister or _chargé d'affaires_ may happen to take of it; and he may meet the projectors with active or lukewarm support, or with positive opposition. The conciliatory and upright spirit which has ruled Sir Frederick Bruce's intercourse with the Chinese government has inspired it with unlimited confidence in the British minister, whose counsels have in consequence acquired great weight in Peking. It is earnestly to be hoped that his successor will avail himself of the good impressions Sir Frederick leaves behind him to promote with all assiduity those reforms and improvements which, while subserving the best interests of China, will also redound to the honour and the profit of our own country. It is the duty of our ministers to maintain the legitimate influence of this country in China. Our actual interest in that empire greatly outweighs that of any other people; but we are in some danger of losing our prestige, and allowing other powers to rival us. We failed in the telegraphic scheme through Mongolia, but the Russians will certainly accomplish it. The Lay-Osborn fleet failed, but the French and the Americans will supply its place. We have withdrawn British officers from the Chinese service; but the French and Americans remain. Railways will, some day, be established in China; the people are as ripe for their introduction now as they ever will be; if we miss the opportunity, some other nation will seize it, and, with or without us, China will have railways. The electric telegraph would of course accompany railways, if, indeed, it does not precede them. I am not prepared to speak of the adaptability of the Chinese hieroglyphics to telegraphy, but the Chinese people and government have a keen appreciation of the importance of the rapid transmission of intelligence. This is shown by the admirable system of government expresses, and the extent to which carrier-pigeons have been used to influence the exchange markets of China. The vast area of the Chinese empire would render telegraphic communication more than ordinarily acceptable, and, in the present age of the world, even necessary. It needs no great stretch of imagination to predict that the free use of machinery in China will yet do much to enrich the nation, and to ameliorate the condition of the poorer classes. Many parts of the country are suffering from overpopulation. Their economy in food, clothing, and housing, together with the great fertility of the soil in such districts as the plains of Che-kiang and Keang-soo, enable an incredibly large population to find a subsistence there. But 800 persons on the square mile is too much, even for the richest part of China, to support efficiently. A large proportion of these people is consequently underfed, poorly clad, and miserably lodged; they suffer the penalties of civilised life without its comforts, and their physical and mental development are seriously impaired. The Chinese do not possess within themselves any remedy for this state of things; economy of their means and moderation in their desires have already been cultivated to perfection. Their manual industry is unexampled, and leaves no room for improvement. Their diligence in taxing the resources of their soil cannot be exceeded. The surplus population might certainly find an outlet in foreign lands, but the Chinese people as a whole are singularly averse to emigration. The greatest boon that could be conferred on these people, and the only feasible means of raising many thousands of them from the lowest depths of poverty, would be the introduction of new industries which would give them profitable employment, which at present they are excluded from. A promising field is open for this. The perseverance of the Chinese is proverbial, and the perfection they have attained in making the most out of the means at their disposal has been the admiration of the whole world. But they are still strangers to the modern mechanical appliances of Europe and America for economising human labour. Compared therefore with the attainments of western nations, the material resources of China are wasted. The division of labour, as practised in the agricultural districts of China, is diametrically opposed to the principle advanced by Adam Smith. Each family grows, spins, weaves, and wears its own cotton; and so with many other products. This system has the advantage of keeping the people employed all the year round, and there may no doubt be a great deal to be said in its favour. But to what purpose--with what results--is all this labour spent? The practical answer to this is, that it has happened that England has imported raw cotton from China, manufactured it, returned it to China two years afterwards, and sold the cotton cloth cheaper than the article could be produced by domestic labour on the spot where it is grown. It is, of course, to a small extent only, that England can compete in manufactured cotton with the native product of China. But that it should be possible at all, first to buy the raw material at such an enhanced price over the cost to the natives as will induce them to part with it, then to send it 15,000 miles across the sea, and the same distance back again, and spite of the enormous expenses incurred in the operation, still to supply the manufactured article at a lower cost than the natives produce it at, proves that a vast amount of labour is misapplied in this branch of Chinese industry. And yet their manufacture of cotton has, perhaps, been brought to a higher state of efficiency than any other. Their coal and iron are worked in the most primitive manner. Both articles are supplied from abroad, although existing in great abundance in the country. The native coal that is sold in the markets of China costs from thirty to forty shillings per ton, and is so poor in quality that English coal is more economical at double the price. By proper appliances, and a better system of working, the quality of Chinese coal might be greatly improved, and the cost diminished. It would be endless to enumerate the various departments in which steam and machinery might be advantageously applied in China. Sugar and paper may be mentioned, as also the various oils used by the Chinese, all produced and consumed in the country in enormous quantities, and all susceptible of great improvement both in the cost and quality of the preparations. In everything that constitutes the wealth of the country we see the same disproportion between the power expended, and the results obtained, as has been instanced in the case of cotton. The waste of human labour is multiplied by the vast and varied products of the country; and the field offered for the expansion of new enterprises is commensurate with the size and population of the Chinese empire. The introduction of machinery into the interior of the country, and its application to the manufactures that now employ the people, will only be secured by a slow and gradual process. Great opposition would be met with, particularly at the outset; for, though we may claim for the Chinese a freedom from prejudice equal to any other people, it would be absurd to expect of them more enlightenment than our own countrymen have shown, when put to the test by innovations which threatened to supersede manual labour. The Chinese will be convinced, as usual, by results. When they find the materials of wealth which they now possess multiplied to them by the cheapness of the necessaries of life, they will not be slow in following up the idea. The elevation of the poorer classes, when profitable occupation is supplied to them, will create new wants, while it provides the means of gratifying them. The benefits accruing to China will naturally react on this country precisely to that extent to which a commercial nation must always profit by the increasing wealth of its customers. In small matters also, the social condition of the Chinese people is in a fair way of being improved by their contact with restless and progressive foreigners. Gas, which is now being introduced into Hong-Kong and Shanghae--a simple thing in itself--may nevertheless do something towards elevating the Chinese, and preparing them for more important advances. The erection of water-works, for the supply of the large cities, would be a boon of no ordinary value to those populations who live on the alluvial plains. The impure water, drawn from turbid rivers and canals which are the receptacles of filth, is a fertile cause of disease in many localities. These communities might be supplied with pure filtered water at a lower cost than is at present paid for the mere carriage of the unwholesome compound now obtained from sources as putrid as the Thames. One successful experiment would probably demonstrate the necessity of extending water-works to most of the populous cities in the empire.[28] [28] Shanghae, from its situation and over-crowded population, is one of the greatest sufferers from the want of pure water; and there cannot be a doubt that this circumstance has contributed, in no slight degree, to the sickliness that has prevailed there for several years past, as the increase in the population tends more and more to the defilement of the river,--the only source whence water is obtained. The question of water-supply for that settlement having been submitted to practical and experienced engineers in London, the result of their calculations is, that a system of water-works, with reservoirs beyond the influence of sewage, would provide each household with an unlimited supply of pure, filtered water, at about one-fourth of the expense which is at present incurred in merely carrying water from the river to the houses. Messrs. Simpson and Giles have further demonstrated that, at the proposed rate of one shilling per 1,000 gallons, a large return would be secured on the capital necessary to be invested in the works. We may therefore hope that at no distant day the inhabitants of Shanghae, at least, will enjoy this great blessing. Nor is the influence of European intercourse with China limited in its scope to the mere commercial, manufacturing, and other material pursuits of the people. Their notions of good government must be inevitably modified by it, and no one can estimate the extent to which a few Europeans, by their superior force of character, may impress the huge multitudes of China. Circumstances have rendered Shanghae the great focus from which these external influences are brought to bear on the natives. The distracted state of the surrounding country first brought numbers of fugitives, both rich and poor, to seek shelter under the ægis of foreign flags, until an enormous population has accumulated on the ground set apart for the residence of foreigners. The kind of small republic which the Europeans set up for their own protection, and for the due regulation of the natives who crowded into the settlement, became popular with the Chinese; its functions became more and more important; and accessions of power were from time to time added to it, but always inadequate to the efficient discharge of its constantly increasing duties. The Chinese like the municipal administration of Shanghae, because, although heavily taxed, they at least know how the revenue is applied, and they enjoy more or less personal protection, and immunity from extortion. The system has worked with more harmony than could have been expected, considering that it to a certain extent rivals the provincial government. It has at any rate taken deep root, and may possibly be the precursor of similar growths at other commercial towns. In any disruption of the Chinese power that may result from the present disorganised condition of the empire, these anomalous foreign "settlements" will certainly play an important part. The weakness of the government of the country and the disorders which accompany it, while impairing the prosperity of the settlements as commercial _emporia_, tend to strengthen their political influence. The prestige which naturally accompanies a European residence, and the guarantee of security to life and property, with or without armed protection, which it holds out to the Chinese people, render these consular ports asylums of authority in times of anarchy, and will naturally maintain them as commercial centres when the government of the country has crumbled away. In them a nucleus of power will be preserved, which will facilitate the reconstruction of a government, should the present one be broken up, and in this way these commercial settlements may yet prove of essential service to the Chinese nation. They may possibly grow into free, independent republics, an issue which the leading journal has more than once predicted. In an article of June 2, 1864, the "Times" says:--"The free cities we hope to see are those which grow of their own accord, and which arise out of the circumstances of an abundant commerce and an unsettled country. If the nations of Europe would agree to stand aloof, we should very soon see little commercial republics intrenching themselves and extending themselves upon the shores of China; just such cities as arose upon the coast of Africa, and in later history upon the coasts of Italy, when similar dangers compelled traders to draw together for defence and self-government. We believe that our cheapest and our best policy is not to establish, but to favour the growth of such communities as may develop themselves into free cities. Nor can we expect that this development will be the work of a day, or that so great a ruin as that which is mouldering over the heads of one-third of the human race can fall, and be reformed into modern habitations, without many clouds of dust and some terrible catastrophes." Should such be the destiny of these trading ports, no class will have more cause for satisfaction than the body of Chinese who may reside in them, who regard with pleasure every advance of foreign influence, and would be glad to live in peace under any power strong enough to maintain it. POSTSCRIPT. Events have progressed rapidly in China since the foregoing chapter was written. Lieutenant-Colonel Gordon, after resigning his commission in the Chinese army for the reasons I have mentioned, apparently considered that it would be too hazardous at such a juncture to leave the Government entirely to its own devices. He accordingly remained, with the approval of Major-General Brown, to instruct and advise them, and he has had the satisfaction to witness the crowning success of all his labours, in the fall of Nanking, and the extinction of the Taeping rebellion. The two provinces of Che-Kiang and Keang-soo--the richest and most populous in China--are now freed from rebels, and have had peace and order once more restored to them. It may require some little time entirely to reassure the populations of these provinces of the security of life and property in districts that have so long languished under the devastating effects of civil war; but there is now every reason to suppose that the reign of anarchy has been banished for many years to come, and that the pacified region will soon enjoy the prosperity which its natural advantages must bring, enhanced, as it must inevitably be, by the extended intercourse with foreigners which has not yet had an opportunity of bearing its full fruit. This success of the Imperial arms has naturally resulted from the acceptance of foreign Ministers at the Court of Peking, and the introduction of China into the family of nations, which is the great triumph of the policy inaugurated by Lord Palmerston twenty-four years ago, and steadfastly followed up by that statesman through good and evil report. Whether the scattered remnants of the Taepings will again become formidable from their concentration in the province of Kiang-si, beyond the reach of the immediate foreign aid which has led to their dispersion, will depend very much on the vigour of the Imperial Government at Peking. If it realises the gravity of the position, and the truth of the maxim that prevention is better than cure, it will adopt timely and energetic measures to anticipate a reorganisation of the Taepings. But, however that may be, it is pretty certain that if the provisions of the Treaty were carried out in the broad sense evidently contemplated by the framers of it; if the Poyang lake and the rivers which communicate with it were freely opened to foreign trade; if Europeans were permitted to reside at the commercial marts of Kiang-si, their moral weight alone, especially after the campaign just concluded in Keang-soo and Che-Kiang, would go far to prevent any further demonstration of the rebels in that quarter. The authorities at Peking may yet find cause to regret that their suspicion of friendly foreigners has deprived them of such important auxiliaries at many of their most vulnerable points. _October 27._ [Illustration: THE WATER COMMUNICATION OF NORTHERN ASIA, BETWEEN KIAKHTA & THE URAL MOUN^{T.S} _London. John Murray Albemarle Street._ _Stanford's Geographical Estab^t London_] * * * * * Transcriber's note: Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. Irregularities and inconsistencies (such as hyphenation) in the text have been retained as printed. The illustrations have been moved so that they do not break up paragraphs, thus the page number of the illustration might not match the page number in the List of Illustrations. Missing page numbers are page numbers that were not shown in the original text. The cover for the eBook version of this book was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain. Page 30: "which leads them to make great sacrifices when required to do honour to the manes of their ancestors" ... "manes" has been changed to "names". 
13806	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original extraordinary illustrations. See 13806-h.htm or 13806-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/3/8/0/13806/13806-h/13806-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/3/8/0/13806/13806-h.zip) Two spellings, "Tunguse" and "Tunguze," are used throughout the book for the same tribe. The caption of Illustrations #55, 58, 103, 144 differ from the captions given in the table and were not changed. OVERLAND THROUGH ASIA: PICTURES OF SIBERIAN, CHINESE, AND TARTAR LIFE Travels and Adventures in Kamchatka, Siberia, China, Mongolia, Chinese Tartary, and European Russia, with Full Accounts of the Siberian Exiles, Their Treatment, Condition, and Mode of Life; a Description of the Amoor River, and the Siberian Shores of the Frozen Ocean; with an Appropriate Map, and Nearly 200 Illustrations by THOMAS W. KNOX. Author of _Camp Fire And Cotton Field_ 1871 [Illustration: FRONTISPIECE, THE AUTHOR IN SIBERIAN COSTUME] PREFACE. Fourteen years ago Major Perry McD. Collins traversed Northern Asia, and wrote an account, of his journey, entitled "A Voyage Down the Amoor." With the exception of that volume no other work on this little known region has appeared from the pen of an American writer. In view of this fact, the author of "Overland Through Asia" indulges the hope that his book will not be considered a superfluous addition to the literature of his country. The journey herein recorded was undertaken partly as a pleasure trip, partly as a journalistic enterprise, and partly in the interest of the company that attempted to carry out the plans of Major Collins to make an electric connection between Europe and the United States by way of Asia and Bering's Straits. In the service of the Russo-American Telegraph Company, it may not be improper to state that the author's official duties were so few, and his pleasures so numerous, as to leave the kindest recollections of the many persons connected with the enterprise. Portions of this book have appeared in Harper's, Putnam's, The Atlantic, The Galaxy, and the Overland Monthlies, and in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper. They have been received with such favor as to encourage their reproduction wherever they could be introduced in the narrative of the journey. The largest part of the book has been written from a carefully recorded journal, and is now in print for the first time. The illustrations have been made from photographs and pencil sketches, and in all cases great care has been exercised to represent correctly the costumes of the country. To Frederick Whymper, Esq., artist of the Telegraph Expedition, and to August Hoffman, (Photographer,) of Irkutsk, Eastern Siberia, the author is specially indebted. The orthography of geographical names is after the Russian model. The author hopes it will not be difficult to convince his countrymen that the shortest form of spelling is the best, especially when it represents the pronunciation more accurately than does the old method. A frontier justice once remarked, when a lawyer ridiculed his way of writing ordinary words, that a man was not properly educated who could spell a word in only one way. On the same broad principle I will not quarrel with those who insist upon retaining an extra letter in Bering and Ohotsk and two superfluous letters in Kamchatka. Among those not mentioned in the volume, thanks are due to Frederick Macrellish, Esq., of San Francisco, Hon. F.F. Low of Sacramento, Alfred Whymper, Esq., of London, and the many gentlemen connected with the Telegraph Expedition. There are dozens and hundreds of individuals in Siberia and elsewhere, of all grades and conditions in life, who have placed me under numberless obligations. Wherever I traveled the most uniform courtesy was shown me, and though conscious that few of those dozens and hundreds will ever read these lines, I should consider myself ungrateful did I fail to acknowledge their kindness to a wandering American. T.W.K. ASTOR HOUSE, N.Y., Sept. 15, 1870. [Illustration: LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS By TAY & COX 105 Nassau St. N.Y.] 1. FRONTISPIECE, THE AUTHOR IN SIBERIAN COSTUME 2. CHARACTER DEVELOPED 3. ASPINWALL TO PANAMA 4. SLIGHTLY MONOTONOUS 5. MONTGOMERY STREET IN HOLIDAY DRESS 6. SAN FRANCISCO, 1848 7. CHINESE DINNER 8. OVER SIX FEET 9. STEAMSHIP WRIGHT IN A STORM 10. A SEA SICK BOOBY 11. WRECK OF THE SHIP CANTON 12. ALEUTIANS CATCHING WHALES 13. BREACH OF ETIQUETTE 14. UNEXPECTED HONORS 15. RUSSIAN MARRIAGE 16. RUSSIAN POPE AT HOME 17. A SCALY BRIDGE 18. RUSSIAN TEA SERVICE 19. CHANGE FOR A DOLLAR 20. COW AND BEAR 21. A KAMCHATKA TEAM 22. REPULSE OF THE ASSAILANTS 23. VIEW OF SITKA 24. PLENTY OF TIME 25. RUSSIAN OFFICERS AT MESS 26. ASCENDING THE BAY 27. TAKING THE CENSUS 28. LIGHT-HOUSE AT GHIJIGA 29. TOWED BY DOGS 30. KORIAK YOURT 31. DISCHARGING A DECK LOAD 32. REINDEER RIDE 33. TAIL PIECE, REINDEER 34. WAGON RIDE WITH DOGS 35. YEARLY MAIL 36. DOGS FISHING 37. TEACHINGS OF EXPERIENCE 38. BOAT LOAD OF SALMON 39. AN EFFECTIVE PROTEST 40. NOTHING BUT BONES 41. TAIL PIECE--NATIVE WOMAN 42. SEEING OFF 43. LIFE ON THE AMOOR 44. A GILYAK VILLAGE 45. ABOUT FULL 46. TAIL PIECE--A TURN OUT 47. ON THE AMOOR 48. CASH ACCOUNT 49. WOODING UP 50. BEAR IN PROCESSION 51. PRACTICE OF MEDICINE 52. MANJOUR MERCHANT 53. GILYAK MAN 54. GILYAK WOMAN 55. PEASANTS BY MOONLIGHT 56. TAIL PIECE--THE NET 57. TEN MILES AN HOUR 58. GOLDEE HOUSE AT NIGHT 59. THE HYPOCONDRIAC 60. "NOT FOR JOE" 61. TAIL PIECE--SCENE ON THE RIVER 62. RECEPTION AT PETROVSKY 63. ARMED AND EQUIPPED 64. GENERAL ACTIVITY 65. TAIL PIECE--FLASK 66. MANJOUR BOAT 67. A PRIVATE TEMPLE 68. FISHING IMPLEMENTS 69. CHINESE FAMILY PICTURE 70. MANJOUR TRAVELING CARRIAGE 71. TAIL PIECE--TOWARDS THE SUN 72. THE AMMUNITION WAGON 73. FINISHING TOUCH 74. EMIGRANTS ON THE AMOOR 75. SA-GA-YAN CLIFF 76. RIFLE SHOOTING 77. TAIL PIECE--GAME 78. PREPARING FOR WINTER 79. TAIL PIECE 80. STRATENSK, EASTERN SIBERIA 81. A SIBERIAN TARANTASS 82. TAIL PIECE 83. FAVORITE BED 84. CONCENTRATED ENERGIES 85. PRISONERS AT CHETAH 86. ON THE HILLS NEAR CHETAH 87. BOURIAT YOURTS 88. A MONGOL BELL 89. A MONGOL BELLE 90. CATCHING SHEEP 91. A COLD BATH 92. TAIL PIECE 93. OUR FERRY BOAT 94. EQUAL RIGHTS 95. AMATEUR CONCERT IN SIBERIA 96. CHINESE MANDARIN 97. INTERIOR OF CHINESE TEMPLE 98. THROUGH ORDINARY EYES 99. THROUGH CHINESE EYES 100. LEGAL TENDER 101. RUSSIAN PETS 102. PONY EXPRESS 103. A DISAGREEABLE APPENDAGE 104. SUSPENDED FREEDOM 105. PUNISHMENT FOR BURGLARY 106. CHOPSTICK, FORK, AND SAUCER 107. CHINESE THEATRE 108. CHINESE TIGER 109. CHINESE PUNISHMENT 110. PROVISION DEALER 111. CHINESE MENDICANTS 112. THE FAVORITE 113. FEMALE FEET AND SHOE 114. A LOTTERY PRIZE 115. A PEKIN CAB 116. A CHINESE PALANQUIN 117. PRIEST IN TEMPLE OF CONFUCIUS 118. COMFORTS AND CONVENIENCES 119. FILIAL ATTENTION 120. TAIL PIECE--OPIUM PIPE 121. A MUSICAL STOP 122. NANKOW PASS 123. RACING AT THE KALGAN FAIR 124. STREET IN KALGAN 125. IN GOOD CONDITION 126. LOST IN THE DESERT OF GOBI 127. MONGOL DINNER TABLE 128. CROSSING THE TOLLA 129. THE SCHOOLMASTER 130. TAIL PIECE 131. WILD BOAR HUNT 132. A WIFE AT IRKUTSK 133. NO WIFE AT IRKUTSK 134. A SOUDNA 135. AFTER THE EARTHQUAKE 136. LAKE BAIKAL IN WINTER 137. A SPECIMEN 138. TAIL PIECE--THE WORLD 139. GOV. GENERAL KORSACKOFF 140. VIEW--IRKUTSK 141. A COLD ATTACHMENT 142. QUEEN OF GREECE 143. EMPEROR OF RUSSIA 144. TAIL PIECE--TWIN BOTTLES 145. HOME OF TWO EXILES--REAL, IMAGINARY 146. TAIL PIECE--QUARTERS 147. TARTAR CAVALRY 148. SIBERIAN EXILES 149. TAIL PIECE 150. A VASHOK 151. A KIBITKA 152. FAREWELL TO IRKUTSK 153. OUR CONDUCTOR 154. JUMPING CRADLE HOLES 155. VALLEY OF THE YENESEI 156. WOLF HUNT 157. HYDRAULIC MINING 158. TAIL PIECE 159. DOWN HILL 160. DOGS AMONG ICE 161. JUMPING THE FISSURES 162. THE TEAM 163. TAIL PIECE 164. IN THE MINE 165. STRANGE COINCIDENCE 166. TAIL PIECE 167. THE ELOPEMENT 168. THE FIGHT 169. THE CATASTROPHE 170. TAIL PIECE 171. THE POLKEDOVATE 172. MAKING EXPLANATION 173. AFTER THE BATH 174. TAIL PIECE 175. THE DRIVER'S TOILET 176. WOMEN SPINNING 177. FLOGGING WITH STICKS 178. TAIL PIECE 179. LOST IN A SNOW STORM 180. FATAL RESULT 181. TAIL PIECE 182. EXCUSE MY FAMILIARITY 183. FROSTED HORSES 184. VIEW OF EKATERINEBURG 185. EUROPE AND ASIA 186. A RUSSIAN BEGGAR 187. BEGGARS IN KAZAN 188. THE IMMERSION 189. RUSSIAN PRIEST 199. TAIL PIECE 191. GREAT BELL OF MOSCOW 192. VIEW OF THE NEVSKI PROSPECT, ST. PETERSBURG 193. TAIL PIECE--MEETING AN OLD FRIEND Contents CHAPTER I. Off from New York--Around the world by steam--Value of a letter of credit--A cure for sea sickness--Doing the Isthmus--An exciting porpoise race--Glimpse of San Francisco--Trip to the Yo Semite Valley--From the Golden Gate into the Pacific CHAPTER II. A strange company--Difficulties of sea life--A tall man and a short room--How the dog went to sleep--A soapy cabin--Catching a booby--Two Sundays together--A long lost wreck--Incidents at sea--Manner of catching whales in Alaska--A four footed pilot--Dog stories--How to take an observation--Coast of Asia--Entering Avatcha bay--An economical light keeper CHAPTER III. In a Russian port--Hail Columbia--Petropavlovsk--Volcanoes and earth-quakes--Directions for making a Russian town--A Kamchadale wedding--Standing up with the bride--A hot ceremony--A much married pope--Russian religious practices--Drinking with the priest and what came of it CHAPTER IV. Vegetation in Kamchatka--Catching salmon--A scaly bridge--An evening on shore--Samovars and tea drinking--The fur trade--Bear hunting--What a cow brought home one day--Siberian dogs--A musical town--The adventures of Norcum--Training a team--Sledges and how to manage them--A voyage under the Polish flag--Monument to Captain Clerke--The allied attack--The battle of Petropavlovsk CHAPTER V. Bering's voyages--Discovery of Alaska--Shipwreck and death of Bering--The Russian-American Company--The first governor of Alaska--Promushleniks--Russian settlement in California--Account of Russian explorations--Character of the country--Its extent and resources--Advantages and disadvantages of the Alaska purchase CHAPTER VI. Leaving Kamchatka--Farewell to the ladies--A new kind of telegraph--Entering the Ohotsk sea--From Steam to sail--Sleeping among chronometers--Talking by-signs--A burial at sea--A Russian funeral--Land in sight--Ghijiga bay CHAPTER VII. Baggage for shore travel--Much wine and little bread--A perplexing dilemma--How to take the census--Siberian beds--Towed by dogs--Encounter with a beast--Coaxing a team with clubs--The Koriaks--Their manners and customs--Comical cap for a native--A four footed currency--Yourts and Balagans--Curious marriage ceremony--Lightening a boat in a storm--Very strong whisky--Riding on a reindeer--An intoxicating mushroom--An electric devil--a Siberian snow storm--How a party was lost CHAPTER VIII. How a pointer became a bull dog--Coral in high latitudes--Sending Champagne to Neptune--Arrival at Ohotsk--Three kinds of natives--A lunch with the ladies--A native entertainment--A mail once a year--A lover's misfortune--An astonished American--Hunting a bear and being hunted--An unfortunate ride CHAPTER IX. At sea again--Beauties of a Northern sky--Warlike news and preparing for war--The coast of Japan--An exciting moment--A fog bell of sea lions--Ready for fight--De Castries' bay--A bewildered fleet--Goodbye to the Variag--In the straits of Tartary--A difficult sleeping place--A Siberian mirage--Entering the Amoor river CHAPTER X. On shore at Nicolayevsk--An American Consul--Visiting the Governor--Machine shops on the Amoor with American managers--The servant girl question--A Gilyak boat full of salmon--An unfortunate water carrier--The Amoor Company--Foreign and native merchants--Raising sheep among tigers--Rats eating window glass--Riding in a cart CHAPTER XI. Up the Amoor--Seeing off a friend--A Siberian steamboat--How the steamboats are managed--Packages by post--Curiosities of the Russian mail service--An unhappy bride--Hay barges--Gilyak villages--Visiting a village--Bad for the nose--Native dogs--Interviewing a Gilyak lady--A rapid descent CHAPTER XII. The monastery of Eternal Repose--Curious religious customs--Features of the scenery--Passengers on our boat--An adventurous merchant--Captured by the Chinese--A pretty girl and her fellow passenger--Wooding up--An Amoor town--The telegraph--How it is built and operated--A native school--Fighting the tiger--Religious practices of the Gilyaks--Mistaken kindness CHAPTER XIII. Stepanoff and his career--A Manjour boat--Catching salmon--A sturgeon pen--The islands of the Amoor--A night scene at a wooding station--A natural cathedral--The birds of the Amoor--The natives of the country--Interviewing a native Mandarin CHAPTER XIV. Entering a Goldee house--Native politeness--What to do with a tame eagle--An intelligent dog team--An exciting race--A Mongol belle--Visiting a Goldee house at night--A reception in a shirt--Fish skin over-coats--Curious medical custom--Draw poker on the Amoor river--Curiosity--Habarofka--"No turkey for me"--A visit on shore--Experience with fleas CHAPTER XV. First view of China--A beautiful region--Petrovsky--Women in the water--An impolite reception--A scanty population--Visiting a military post--Division of labor for a hunting excursion--The Songaree--A Chinese military station--Resources of the Songaree--Experience of a traveler--Hunting a tiger--A perilous adventure CHAPTER XVI. Ekaterin--Nikolskoi--The Province of the Amoor--Character of the Cossack--The Buryea Mountains--A man overboard--Passing a mountain chain--Manjour boats--Bringing pigs to market--Women in the open air--A new tribe of natives--Rest for a bath--Russian caviar--How it is made--Feeding with a native--A heavy drink--A fleet of fishing boats CHAPTER XVII. Scenery on the middle Amoor--A military colony--Among the Manjours--A Manjour temple--A Chinese naval station--A crew of women--Strange ways of catching fish--The city of Igoon--Houses plastered with mud--Visiting a harem--Talking pigeon-Chinese--Visiting the prison CHAPTER XVIII. The mouth of the Zeya--Blagoveshchensk--Kind reception by the governor--Attending a funeral--A polyglot doctor and his family--Intercourse with the Chinese--A visit to Sakhalin-Oula--A government office--A Chinese traveling carriage--Visiting a Manjour governor--A polite official--A Russian Mongol reception--Curiosities of the Chinese police system--Advice to the Emperor of China CHAPTER XIX. A deer-hunting picnic--Russian ploughing--Nursing a deer gazelle--A shot and what came of it--The return and overturn--The Siberian gazelle--A Russian steam bath--How to take it--On a new steamer--The cabin of the Korsackoff--A horse opera--An intoxicated priest--Private stock of provisions--The dove a sacred bird--Emigrant rafts--A Celestial guard house CHAPTER XX. The upper Amoor--Sagayan cliff--- Hunting for gold--Rich gold mines in the Amoor valley--The Tungusians--A goose for a cigar--An awkward rifle--Albazin--The people in Sunday dress--The siege of Albazin--Visiting the old fort CHAPTER XXI. A sudden change--Beef preserved with laurel leaves--A Russian settler--New York pictures in a Russian house--The Flowery Kingdom--Early explorations--The conquest of the Amoor--A rapid expedition--The Shilka and the Argoon--An old settled country--A lady in the case--Hotels for the exiles--Stratensk--A large crowd--- End of a long steamboat ride CHAPTER XXII. A hotel at Stratensk--A romantic courtship--Starting overland--A difficult ferry--A Russian posting carriage--Good substitute for a trunk--"Road Agent" in Siberia--Rights of travelers--Kissing goes by favor--Captain John Franklin's equipage--Value of a ball--Stuck in the mud--The valley of the Nertcha--Reaching Nerchinsk CHAPTER XXIII. An extensive house--A Russian gold miner--Stories of the exiles--Polish exiles--"The unfortunates"--The treatment of prisoners--Attempts to escape--Buying a tarantass--Light marching order--A bad road--Sleeping on a stove--The valley of the Ingodah--Two hours in a mud hole--Recklessness of drivers--Arrival at Chetah CHAPTER XXIV. Location of Chetah--Prisoners in chains--Ingenuity of the exiles--Learning Hail Columbia in two hours--A governor's mansion--A hunting party--Siberian rabbits--Difficulties of matrimony--Religion in Siberia--An artillery review--Champagne and farewells--Crossing a frozen stream--Inconvenience of traveling with a dog--Crossing the Yablonoi Mountains--Approaching the Arctic Ocean CHAPTER XXV. A cold night--Traveling among the Mongols--The Bouriats and their dwellings--An unpleasant fire--The Bhuddist religion--Conversions among the natives--An easy way of catching sheep--A Mongol bell--A Mongol belle--A late hour and a big dog--Bullocks under saddle--An enterprising girl--Sleeping in a carriage--Arrival at Verkne Udinsk--Walking in the market place--Stories of Siberian robbers--An enterprising murderer--Gold and iron mines on the Selenga CHAPTER XXVI. Crossing a river on the ice--A dangerous situation--Dining on soup and caviar--Caravans of tea--The rights of the road--How the drivers treat each other--Selenginsk--An old exile--Troubled by the nose--Lodged by the police--A housekeeper in undress--An amateur concert--Troitskosavsk and Kiachta--Crossing the frontier--Visiting the Chinese governor CHAPTER XXVII. In the Chinese empire--A city without a woman--A Chinese court of justice--Five interpretations--Chinese and Russian methods of tea making--A Chinese temple--Sculpture in sand stone--The gods and the Celestials--The Chinese idea of beauty--The houses in Maimaichin--Chinese dogs--Bartering with the merchants--The Chinese ideas of honesty--How they entertained us--The Abacus CHAPTER XXVIII. Russian feast days--A curious dinner custom--Novel separation of the sexes--The wealth of Kiachta--The extent of the tea trade--Dodging the custom house--Foreign residents of Kiachta--Fifteen dogs in one family--The devil and the telegraph--Russian gambling--Dinner with the Chinese governor--Chinese punishments--Ingredients of a Chinese dinner--Going to the theatre in midday--Two dinners in one day--Farewell to Kiachta CHAPTER XXIX. Trade between America and China--The first ship for a Chinese port--Chinese river system--The first steamboat on a Chinese river--The Celestials astonished--A nation of shop-keepers--Chinese insurance and banking systems--The first letters of credit--Railways in the empire--The telegraph in China--Pigeon-English--The Chinese treaty CHAPTER XXX. The great cities of China--Pekin and its interesting features--The Chinese city and the Tartar one--Rat peddlers, jugglers, beggars, and other liberal professionals--The rat question in China--Tricks of the jugglers--Mendicants and dwarfs--"The house of the hen's feathers"--How small feet became fashionable--Fashion in America and China--Gambling in Pekin--An interesting lottery prize--Executions by lot--Punishing robbers--Opposition to dancing--The temple of Confucius--Temples of Heaven and Earth--The famous Summer Palace--Chinese cemeteries--Coffins as household ornaments--Calmness at death CHAPTER XXXI. A journey through Mongolia--Chinese dislike to foreign travel--Leaving Pekin--How to stop a mule's music--The Nankow Pass--A fort captured because of a woman--The great wall of China--Loading the pack mules--Kalgan--Mosques and Pagodas--A Mongol horse fair--How a transaction is managed--A camel journey on the desert--How to arrange his load--A Mongolian cart--A brisk trade in wood for coffins CHAPTER XXXII. Entering the desert of Gobi--Instincts of the natives--An antelope hunt--Lost on the desert--Discovered and rescued--Character of the Mongols--Boiled mutton, and how to eat it--Fording the Tolla river--An exciting passage--Arrival at Urga--A Mongol Lamissary--The victory of Genghis Khan--Chinese couriers--Sheep raising in Mongolia--Holy men in abundance--Inconvenience of being a lama--A praying machine--Arrival at Kiachta CHAPTER XXXIII. Departure from Kiachta--An agreeable companion--Making ourselves comfortable--A sacred village--Hunting a wild boar--A Russian monastery--Approaching Lake Baikal--Hunting for letters--"Doing" Posolsky--A pile of merchandise--A crowded house--Rifle and pistol practice--A Russian soudna--A historic building--A lake steamer in Siberia--Exiles on shore--A curious lake--Wonderful journey over the ice--The Holy Sea--A curious group--The first custom house--Along the banks of the Angara--A strange fish--Arrival at Irkutsk CHAPTER XXXIV. Turned over to the police--Visiting the Governor General--An agreeable officer in a fine house--Paying official visits--German in pantomime--The passport system--Cold weather--Streets, stores, and houses at Irkutsk--Description of the city--The Angara river--A novel regulation--A swinging ferry boat--Cossack policeman--An alarm of fire--"Running with the machine" in Russia--Markets at Irkutsk--Effects of kissing with a low thermometer CHAPTER XXXV. Society in Irkutsk--Social customs--Lingual powers of the Russians--Effect of speaking two languages to an infant--Intercourse of the Siberians with Polish exiles--A hospitable people--A ceremonious dinner--Russian precision--A long speech and a short translation--The Amoorski Gastinitza--Playing billiards at a disadvantage--Muscovite superstition--Open house and pleasant tea-parties--A wealthy gold miner CHAPTER XXXVI. The exiles of 1825--The Emperor Paul and his eccentricities--Alexander I.--The revolution of 1825--Its result--Severity of Nicholas--Hard labor for life--Conditions of banishment--A pardon after thirty years--Where the Decembrists live--The Polish question--Both sides of it--Banishments since 1863--The government policy--Difference between political and criminal exiles--Colonists--Drafted into the army--Pension from friends--Attempts to escape--Restrictions find social comforts--How the prisoners travel--The object of deportation--Rules for exiling serfs CHAPTER XXXVII. Serfdom and exile--Peter I. and Alexander II.--Example of Siberia to old Russia--Prisoners in the mines--A revolt--The trial of the insurgents--Sentence and execution--A remarkable escape--Piotrowski's narrative--Free after four years CHAPTER XXXVIII. Preparing to leave Irkutsk--Change from wheels to runners--Buying a suit of fur--Negotiations for a sleigh--A great many drinks--Peculiarities of Russian merchants--Similarities of Russians and Chinese--Several kinds of sleighs--A Siberian saint--A farewell dinner--Packing a sleigh--A companion with heavy baggage--Farewell courtesies--Several parting drinks--Traveling through a frost cloud--Effect of fog in a cold night--A monotonous snow scape--Meals at the stations--A jolly party--An honest population--Diplomacy with the drivers CHAPTER XXXIX. A Siberian beverage--The wine of the country--An unhappy pig--Tea caravans for Moscow--Intelligence of a horse--Champagne frappé--Meeting the post--How the mail is carried--A lively shaking up--Board of survey on a dead horse--Sleeping rooms in peasant houses--Kansk--A road with no snow--Putting our sleighs on wheels--A deceived Englishman--Crossing the Yenesei--Krasnoyarsk--Washing clothes in winter--A Siberian banking house--The telegraph system--No dead-heads--Fish from the Yenesei--A Siberian Neptune--Going on a wolf hunt--How a hunt is managed--An exciting chase and a narrow escape CHAPTER XL. Beggars at Krasnoyarsk--A wealthy city--Gold mining on the Yenesei--Its extent and the value of the mines--How the mining is conducted--Explorations, surveys, and the preparation of the ground--Wages and treatment of laborers--Machines for gold washing--Regulations to prevent thefts--Mining in frozen earth--Antiquity of the mines--The native population--An Eastern legend--The adventures of "Swan's Wing"--Visit to lower regions--Moral of the story CHAPTER XLI. A philosophic companion--Traveling with the remains of a mammoth--Talking against time--Sleighs on wheels--The advantages of "cheek"--A moonlight transfer--Keeping the feast days--Getting drunk as a religious duty--A slight smash up--A cold night--An abominable road--Hunting a mammoth--Journey to the Arctic Circle--Natives on the coast--A mammoth's hide and hair--Ivory hunting in the frozen North--A perilous adventure--Cast away in the Arctic ocean--Fight with a polar bear--A dangerous situation--Frozen to the ice--Reaching the shore CHAPTER XLII. A runaway horse--Discussion with a driver--A modest breakfast--A convoy of exiles--Hotels for the exiles--Charity to the unfortunate--Their rate of travel--An encounter at night--No whips in the land of horses--Russian drivers and their horses--Niagara in Siberia--Eggs by the dizaine--Caught in a storm--A beautiful night--Arrival at Tomsk--An obliging landlord--A crammed sleigh--Visiting the governor--Description of Tomsk--A steamboat line to Tumen--Schools in Siberia CHAPTER XLIII. A frozen river--On the road to Barnaool--An unpleasant night--Posts at the road side--Very high wind--A Russian bouran--A poor hotel--Greeted with American music--The gold mines of the Altai mountains--Survey of the mining-district--General management of the business--The museum at Barnaool--The imperial zavod--Reducing the ores--Government tax on mines--A strange coincidence CHAPTER XLIV. Society at Barnaool--A native coachman--An Asiatic eagle--The Kirghese--The original Tartars--Russian diplomacy among the natives--Advance of civilization--Railway building in Central Asia--Product of the Kirghese country--Fairs in Siberia--Caravans from Bokhara--An adventure among the natives--Capture of a native prince--A love story and an elopement--A pursuit, fight, and tragic end of the journey CHAPTER XLV. Interview with a Persian officer--A slow conversation--Seven years of captivity--A scientific explorer--Relics of past ages--An Asiatic dinner--Cossack dances--Tossed up as a mark of honor--Trotting horses in Siberia--Washing a paper collar--On the Baraba steppe--A long-ride--A walking ice statue--Traveling by private teams--Excitement of a race--How to secure honesty in a public solicitor--Prescription for rheumatism CHAPTER XLVI. A monotonous country--Advantages of winter travel--Fertility of the steppe--Rules for the haying season--Breakfasting on nothing--A Siberian apple--Delays in changing horses--Universal tea drinking--Tartars on the steppe--Siberian villages--Mode of spinning in Russia--An unsuccessful conspiracy--How a revolt was organized--A conspirator flogged to death--The city of Tobolsk--The story of Elizabeth--The conquest of Siberia--Yermak and his career CHAPTER XLVII. Another snow storm--Wolves in sight--Unwelcome visitors--Going on a wolf chase--An unlucky pig--Hunting at night--A hungry pack--Wolves in every direction--The pursuers and the pursued--A dangerous turn in the road--A driver lost and devoured--A narrow escape--Forest guards against bears and wolves--A courageous horse--The story of David Crockett CHAPTER XLVIII Thermometer very low--Inconvenience of a long beard--Fur clothing in abundance--Natural thermometers--Rubbing a freezing nose--A beautiful night on the steppe--Siberian twilights--Thick coat for horses--The city of Tumen--Magnificent distances--Manufacture of carpets--A lucrative monopoly--Arrival at Ekaterineburg--Christmas festivities --Manufactures at Ekaterineburg--- The Granilnoi Fabric--Russian iron and where it comes from--The Demidoff family--A large piece of malachite--An emperor as an honest miner CHAPTER XLIX. Among the stone workers--A bewildering collection--Visit to a private "Fabric"--The mode of stone cutting--Crossing the mountains--Boundary between Europe and Asia--Standing in two continents at once--Entering Europe by the back door--In the valley of the Kama--Touching appeal by a beggar--The great fair at Irbit--An improved road--A city of thieves--Tanning in Russia--Evidence of European civilization--Perm--Pleasures of sleigh riding--The road fever--The Emperor Nicholas and a courier--A Russian sleighing song CHAPTER L. Among the Votiaks--Malmouish--Advice to a traveler--Dress and habits of the Tartars--Tartar villages and mosques--A long night--Overturned and stopped--Arrival at Kazan--New Year's festivities--Russian soldiers on parade--Military spirit of the Romanoff family--Anecdote of the Grand Duke Michel--The conquest of Kazan--An evening in a ball-room--Enterprise of Tartar peddlers--Manufactures and schools--A police secret--The police in Russia CHAPTER LI. Leaving Kazan--A Russian companion--Conversation with a phrase book--A sloshy street--Steamboats frozen in the ice--Navigation of the Volga--The Cheramess--Pity the unfortunate--A road on the ice--Merchandise going Westward--Villages along the Volga--A baptism through the ice--Religion in Russia--Toleration and tyranny--The Catholics in Poland--The Old Believers--The Skoptsi, or mutilators--Devotional character of the Russian peasantry--Diminishing the priestly power--Church and state--End of a long sleigh ride--Nijne Novgorod--At the wrong hotel--Historical monuments--Entertained by the police CHAPTER LII. Starting for Moscow--Jackdaws and pigeons--At a Russian railway station--The group in waiting--The luxurious ride--A French governess and a box of _bon-bons_--Cigarettes and tea--Halting at Vladimir--Moscow through the frost--Trakteers--The Kremlin of Moscow--Objects of interest--The great bell--The memorial cannon--Treasures of the Kremlin--Wonderful churches of Moscow--The Kitai Gorod--The public market--Imperial Theatre and Foundling Hospital--By rail to St. Petersburg--Encountering an old friend CHAPTER I. It is said that an old sailor looking at the first ocean steamer, exclaimed, "There's an end to seamanship." More correctly he might have predicted the end of the romance of ocean travel. Steam abridges time and space to such a degree that the world grows rapidly prosaic. Countries once distant and little known are at this day near and familiar. Railways on land and steamships on the ocean, will transport us, at frequent and regular intervals, around the entire globe. From New York to San Francisco and thence to our antipodes in Japan and China, one may travel in defiance of propitious breezes formerly so essential to an ocean voyage. The same untiring power that bears us thither will bring us home again by way of Suez and Gibraltar to any desired port on the Atlantic coast. Scarcely more than a hundred days will be required for such a voyage, a dozen changes of conveyance and a land travel of less than a single week. The tour of the world thus performed might be found monotonous. Its most salient features beyond the overland journey from the Atlantic to the Pacific, would be the study of the ocean in breeze or gale or storm, a knowledge of steamship life, and a revelation of the peculiarities of men and women when cribbed, cabined, and confined in a floating prison. Next to matrimony there is nothing better than a few months at sea for developing the realities of human character in either sex. I have sometimes fancied that the Greek temple over whose door "Know thyself" was written, was really the passage office of some Black Ball clipper line of ancient days. Man is generally desirous of the company of his fellow man or woman, but on a long sea voyage he is in danger of having too much of it. He has the alternative of shutting himself in his room and appearing only at meal times, but as solitude has few charms, and cabins are badly ventilated, seclusion is accompanied by _ennui_ and headache in about equal proportions. [Illustration: CHARACTER DEVELOPED.] Wishing to make a journey round the world, I did not look favorably upon the ocean route. The proportions of water and land were much like the relative quantities of sack and bread in Falstaff's hotel bill. Whether on the Atlantic or the Pacific, the Indian, or the Arctic, the appearance of Ocean's blue expanse is very much the same. It is water and sky in one place, and sky and water in another. You may vary the monotony by seeing ships or shipping seas, but such occurrences are not peculiar to any one ocean. Desiring a reasonable amount of land travel, I selected the route that included Asiatic and European Russia. My passport properly endorsed at the Russian embassy, authorized me to enter the empire by the way of the Amoor river. A few days before the time fixed for my departure, I visited a Wall street banking house, and asked if I could obtain a letter of credit to be used in foreign travel. "Certainly sir," was the response. "Will it be available in Asia?" "Yes, sir. You can use it in China, India, or Australia, at your pleasure." "Can I use it in Irkutsk?" "Where, sir?" "In Irkutsk." "Really, I can't say; what _is_ Irkutsk?" "It is the capital of Eastern Siberia." The person with whom I conversed, changed from gay to grave, and from lively to severe. With calm dignity he remarked, "I am unable to say, if our letters can be used at the place you mention. They are good all over the civilized world, but I don't know anything about Irkutsk. Never heard of the place before." I bowed myself out of the establishment, with a fresh conviction of the unknown character of the country whither I was bound. I obtained a letter of credit at the opposition shop, but without a guarantee of its availability in Northern Asia. In a foggy atmosphere on the morning of March 21, 1866, I rode through muddy streets to the dock of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company. There was a large party to see us off, the passengers having about three times their number of friends. There were tears, kisses, embraces, choking sighs, which ne'er might be repeated; blessings and benedictions among the serious many, and gleeful words of farewell among the hilarious few. One party of half a dozen became merry over too much champagne, and when the steward's bell sounded its warning, there was confusion on the subject of identity. One stout gentleman who protested that he _would_ go to sea, was led ashore much against his will. After leaving the dock, I found my cabin room-mate a gaunt, sallow-visaged person, who seemed perfectly at home on a steamer. On my mentioning the subject of sea-sickness, he eyed me curiously and then ventured an opinion. "I see," said he, "you are of bilious temperament and will be very ill. As for myself, I have been a dozen times over the route and am rarely affected by the ship's motion." Then he gave me some kind advice touching my conduct when I should feel the symptoms of approaching _mal du mer_. I thanked him and sought the deck. An hour after we passed Sandy Hook, my new acquaintance succumbed to the evils that afflict landsmen who go down to the sea in ships. Without any qualm of stomach or conscience, I returned the advice he had proffered me. I did not suffer a moment from the marine malady during that voyage, or any subsequent one.[A] [Footnote A: A few years ago a friend gave me a prescription which he said would prevent sea-sickness. I present it here as he wrote it. "The night before going to sea, I take a blue pill (5 to 10 grains) in order to carry the bile from the liver into the stomach. When I rise on the following morning, a dose of citrate of magnesia or some kindred substance finishes my preparation. I take my breakfast and all other meals afterward as if nothing had happened." I have used this prescription in my own case with success, and have known it to benefit others.] The voyage from New York to San Francisco has been so often 'done' and is so well watered, that I shall not describe it in detail. Most of the passengers on the steamer were old Californians and assisted in endeavoring to make the time pass pleasantly. There was plenty of whist-playing, story telling, reading, singing, flirtation, and a very large amount of sleeping. So far as I knew, nobody quarreled or manifested any disposition to be riotous. There was one passenger, a heavy, burly Englishman, whose sole occupation was in drinking "arf and arf." He took it on rising, then another drink before breakfast, then another between Iris steak and his buttered roll, and so on every half hour until midnight, when he swallowed a double dose and went to bed. He had a large quantity in care of the baggage master, and every day or two he would get up a few dozen pint bottles of pale ale and an equal quantity of porter. He emptied a bottle of each into a pitcher and swallowed the whole as easily as an ordinary man would take down a dose of peppermint. The empty bottles were thrown overboard, and the captain said that if this man were a frequent passenger there would be danger of a reef of bottles in the ocean all the way from New York to Aspinwall. I never saw his equal for swallowing malt liquors. To quote from Shakspeare, with a slight alteration: "He was a man, take him for half and half, I ne'er shall look upon his like again." [Illustration: ASPINWALL TO PANAMA.] We had six hours at Aspinwall, a city that could be done in fifteen minutes, but were allowed no time on shore at Panama. It was late at night when we left the latter port. The waters were beautifully phosphorescent, and when disturbed by our motion they flashed and glittered like a river of stars. Looking over the stern one could half imagine our track a path of fire, and the bay, ruffled by a gentle breeze, a waving sheet of light. The Pacific did not belie its name. More than half the way to San Francisco we steamed as calmly and with as little motion as upon a narrow lake. Sometimes there was no sensation to indicate we were moving at all. [Illustration: SLIGHTLY MONOTONOUS.] Even varied by glimpses of the Mexican coast, the occasional appearance of a whale with its column of water thrown high into the air, and the sportive action of schools of porpoises which is constantly met with, the passage was slightly monotonous. On the twenty-third day from New York we ended the voyage at San Francisco. On arriving in California I was surprised at the number of old acquaintances I encountered. When leaving New York I could think of only two or three persons I knew in San Francisco, but I met at least a dozen before being on shore twelve hours. Through these individuals, I became known to many others, by a rapidity of introduction almost bewildering. Californians are among the most genial and hospitable people in America, and there is no part of our republic where a stranger receives a kinder and more cordial greeting. There is no Eastern iciness of manner, or dignified indifference at San Francisco. Residents of the Pacific coast have told me that when visiting their old homes they feel as if dropped into a refrigerator. After learning the customs of the Occident, one can fully appreciate the sensations of a returned Californian. [Illustration: MONTGOMERY STREET IN HOLIDAY DRESS.] Montgomery street, the great avenue of San Francisco, is not surpassed any where on the continent in the variety of physiognomy it presents. There are men from all parts of America, and there is no lack of European representatives. China has many delegates, and Japan also claims a place. There are merchants of all grades and conditions, and professional and unprofessional men of every variety, with a long array of miscellaneous characters. Commerce, mining, agriculture, and manufactures, are all represented. At the wharves there are ships of all nations. A traveler would find little difficulty, if he so willed it, in sailing away to Greenland's icy mountains or India's coral strand. The cosmopolitan character of San Francisco is the first thing that impresses a visitor. Almost from one stand-point he may see the church, the synagogue, and the pagoda. The mosque is by no means impossible in the future. [Illustration: SAN FRANCISCO, 1848.] In 1848, San Francisco was a village of little importance. The city commenced in '49, and fifteen years later it claimed a population of a hundred and twenty thousand.[B] No one who looks at this city, would suppose it still in its minority. The architecture is substantial and elegant; the hotels vie with those of New York in expense and luxury; the streets present both good and bad pavements and are well gridironed with railways; houses, stores, shops, wharves, all indicate a permanent and prosperous community. There are gas-works and foundries and factories, as in older communities. There are the Mission Mills, making the warmest blankets in the world, from the wool of the California sheep. There are the fruit and market gardens whose products have a Brobdignagian character. There are the immense stores of wine from California vineyards that are already competing with those of France and Germany. There are--I may as well stop now, since I cannot tell half the story in the limits of this chapter. [Footnote B: I made many notes with a view to publishing two or three chapters upon California. I have relinquished this design, partly on account of the un-Siberian character of the Golden State, and partly because much that I had written is covered by the excellent book "Beyond the Mississippi," by Albert D. Richardson, my friend and associate for several years. The particulars of his death by assassination are familiar to many readers.] [Illustration: CHINESE DINNER.] During my stay in California, I visited the principal gold, copper, and quicksilver mines in the state, not omitting the famous or infamous Mariposa tract. In company with Mr. Burlingame and General Van Valkenburg, our ministers to China and Japan, I made an excursion to the Yosemite Valley, and the Big Tree Grove. With the same gentlemen I went over the then completed portion of the railway which now unites the Atlantic with the Pacific coast, and attended the banquet given by the Chinese merchants of San Francisco to the ambassadors on the eve of their departure. A Chinese dinner, served with Chinese customs;--it was a prelude to the Asiatic life toward which my journey led me. I arrived in San Francisco on the thirteenth of April and expected to sail for Asia within a month. One thing after another delayed us, until we began to fear that we should never get away. For more than six weeks the time of departure was kept a few days ahead and regularly postponed. First, happened the failure of a contractor; next, the non-arrival of a ship; next, the purchase of supplies; and so on through a long list of hindrances. In the beginning I was vexed, but soon learned complacency and gave myself no uneasiness. Patience is an admirable quality in mankind, and can be very well practiced when, one is waiting for a ship to go to sea. On the twenty-third of June we were notified to be on board at five o'clock in the evening, and to send heavy baggage before that hour. The vessel which was to receive us, lay two or three hundred yards from the wharf, in order to prevent the possible desertion of the crew. Punctual to the hour, I left the hotel and drove to the place of embarkation. My trunk, valise, and sundry boxes had gone in the forenoon, so that my only remaining effects were a satchel, a bundle of newspapers, a dog, and a bouquet. The weight of these combined articles was of little consequence, but I positively declare that I never handled a more inconvenient lot of baggage. While I was descending a perpendicular ladder to a small boat, some one abruptly asked if that lot of baggage had been cleared at the custom house. Think of walking through a custom house with my portable property! Happily the question did not come from an official. It required at least an hour to get everything in readiness after we were on board. Then followed the leave taking of friends who had come to see us off and utter their wishes for a prosperous voyage and safe return. The anchor rose slowly from the muddy bottom; steam was put upon the engines, and the propeller whirling in the water, set us in motion. The gang-way steps were raised and the rail severed our connection with America. It was night as we glided past the hills of San Francisco, spangled with a thousand lights, and left them growing fainter in the distance. Steaming through the Golden Gate we were soon on the open Pacific commencing a voyage of nearly four thousand miles. We felt the motion of the waves and became fully aware that we were at sea. The shore grew indistinct and then disappeared; the last visible objects being the lights at the entrance of the bay. Gradually their rays grew dim, and when daylight came, there were only sky and water around us. "Far upon the unknown deep, With the billows circling round Where the tireless sea-birds sweep; Outward bound. "Nothing but a speck we seem, In the waste of waters round, Floating, floating like a dream; Outward bound." CHAPTER II. The G.S. Wright, on which we were embarked, was a screw steamer of two hundred tons burthen, a sort of pocket edition of the new boats of the Cunard line. She carried the flag and the person of Colonel Charles S. Bulkley, Engineer in Chief of the Russo-American Telegraph Expedition. She could sail or steam at the pleasure of her captain, provided circumstances were favorable. Compared with ocean steamers in general, she was a very small affair and displayed a great deal of activity. She could roll or pitch to a disagreeable extent, and continued her motion night and day, I often wished the eight-hour labor system applied to her, but my wishing was of no use. Besides Colonel Bulkley, the party in the cabin consisted of Captain Patterson, Mr. Covert, Mr. Anossoff, and myself. Mr. Covert was the engineer of the steamer, and amused us at times with accounts of his captivity on the Alabama after the destruction of the Hatteras. Captain Patterson was an ancient mariner who had sailed the stormy seas from his boyhood, beginning on a whale ship and working his way from the fore-castle to the quarter deck. Mr. Anossoff was a Russian gentleman who joined us at San Francisco, in the capacity of commissioner from his government to the Telegraph Company. For our quintette there was a cabin six feet by twelve, and each person had a sleeping room to himself. Colonel Bulkley planned the cabin of the Wright, and I shall always consider it a misfortune that the Engineer-in-Chief was only five feet seven in his boots rather than six feet and over like myself. The cabin roof was high enough for the colonel, but too low for me. Under the skylight was the only place below deck where I could stand erect. The sleeping rooms were too short for me, and before I could lie, at full length in my berth, it was necessary to pull away a partition near my head. The space thus gained was taken from a closet containing a few trifles, such as jugs of whiskey, and cans of powder. Fortunately no fire reached the combustibles at any time, or this book might not have appeared. [Illustration: OVER SIX FEET.] There was a forward cabin occupied by the chief clerk, the draughtsman, the interpreter, and the artist of the expedition, with the first and second officers of the vessel. Sailors, firemen, cook and cabin boys all included, there were forty-five persons on board. Everybody in the complement being masculine, we did not have a single flirtation during the voyage. I never sailed on a more active ship than the Wright. In ordinary seas, walking was a matter of difficulty, and when the wind freshened to a gale locomotion ceased to be a pastime. Frequently I wedged myself into my berth with books and cigar boxes. On the first day out, my dog (for I traveled with a dog) was utterly bewildered, and evidently thought himself where he did not belong. After falling a dozen times upon his side, he succeeded in learning to keep his feet. The carpenter gave him a box for a sleeping room, but the space was so large that, his body did not fill it. On the second day from port he took the bit of carpet that formed his bed and used it as a wedge to keep him in position. From, that time he had no trouble, though he was not fairly on his sea legs for nearly a week. Sometimes at dinner our soup poured into our laps and seemed engaged in reconstructing the laws of gravitation. The table furniture was very uneasy, and it was no uncommon occurrence for a tea cup or a tumbler to jump from its proper place and turn a somersault before stopping. We had no severe storm on the voyage, though constantly in expectation of one. In 1865 the Wright experienced heavy gales with little interruption for twelve days. She lost her chimney with part of her sails, and lay for sixteen hours in the trough of the sea. The waves broke over her without hindrance and drenched every part of the ship. Covert gave an amusing account of the breaking of a box of soap one night during the storm. In the morning the cabin, with all it contained, was thoroughly lathered, as if preparing for a colossal shave. Half way across the ocean we were followed by sea-birds that, curiously enough, were always thickest at meal times. Gulls kept with us the first two days and then disappeared, their places being taken by boobies. The gull is a pretty and graceful bird, somewhat resembling the pigeon in shape and agility. The booby has a little resemblance to the duck, but his bill is sharp pointed and curved like a hawk's. Beechey and one or two others speak of encountering the Albatross in the North Pacific, but their statements are disputed by mariners of the present day. The Albatross is peculiar to the south as the gull to the north. Gulls and boobies dart into the water when any thing is thrown overboard, and show great dexterity in catching whatever is edible. At night they are said to sleep on the waves, and occasionally we disturbed them at their rest. [Illustration: STEAMSHIP WRIGHT IN A STORM.] [Illustration: A SEA-SICK BOOBY.] One day we caught a booby by means of a hook and line, and found him unable to fly from the deck. It is said that nearly all sea-birds can rise only from the water. We detained our prize long enough to attach a medal to his neck and send him away with our date, location, and name. If kept an hour or more on the deck of a ship these birds become seasick, and manifest their illness just as an able-bodied landsman, exhibits an attack of marine malady. Strange they should be so affected when they are all their lives riding over the tossing waves. About thirty miles from San Francisco are the Farralone Islands, a favorite resort of sea-birds. There they assemble in immense numbers, particularly at the commencement of their breeding season. Parties go from San Francisco to gather sea-birds eggs at these islands, and for some weeks they supply the market. These eggs are largely used in pastry, omelettes, and other things, where their character can be disguised, but they are far inferior to hens' eggs for ordinary uses. There were no islands in any part of our course, and we found but a single shoal marked on the chart. We passed far to the north of the newly discovered Brooks Island, and kept southward of the Aleutian chain. Since my return to America I have read the account of a curious discovery on an island of the North Pacific. In 1816, the ship Canton, belonging to the East India Company, sailed from Sitka and was supposed to have foundered at sea. Nothing was heard of her until 1867, when a portion of her wreck was found upon a coral island of the Sybille group. The remaining timbers were in excellent preservation, and the place where the crew had encamped was readily discernible. The frame of the main hatchway had been cast up whole, and a large tree was growing through it. The quarter board bearing the word "Canton," lay near it, and revealed the name of the lost ship. No writing or inscription to reveal the fate of her crew, could be found anywhere. [Illustration: WRECK OF THE SHIP CANTON.] On Friday, July thirteenth, we crossed the meridian of 180° from London, or half around the world. We dropped a day from our reckoning according to the marine custom, and appeared in our Sunday dress on the morrow. Had we been sailing eastward, a day would have been added to our calendar. A naval officer once told me that he sailed eastward over this meridian on Sunday. On the following morning the chaplain was surprised to receive orders to hold divine service. He obeyed promptly, but could not understand the situation. With a puzzled look he said to an officer-- "This part of the ocean must be better than any other or we would not have Sunday so often." Sir Francis Drake, who sailed around the world in the time of Queen Elizabeth, did not observe this rule of the navigator, and found on reaching England that he had a day too much. In the Marquesas Islands the early missionaries who came from the Indies made the mistake of keeping Sunday on Saturday. Their followers preserve this chronology, while later converts have the correct one. The result is, there are two Sabbaths among the Christian inhabitants of the cannibal islands. The boy who desired two Sundays a week in order to have more resting time, might be accommodated by becoming a Marquesas colonist. On the day we crossed this meridian we were three hundred miles from the nearest Aleutian Islands, and about eight hundred from Kamchatka. The boobies continued around us, but were less numerous than a week or ten days earlier. If they had any trouble with their reckoning, I did not ascertain it. A day later we saw three "fur seal" playing happily in the water. We hailed the first and asked his longitude, but he made no reply. I never knew before that the seal ventured so far from land. Yet his movements are as carefully governed as those of the sea-birds, and though many days in the open water he never forgets the direct course to his favorite haunts. How marvelous the instinct that guides with unerring certainty over the trackless waters! A few ducks made their appearance and manifested a feeling of nostalgia. Mother Carey's chickens, little birds resembling swallows, began to flit around us, skimming closely along the waves. There is a fiction among the sailors that nobody ever saw one of these birds alight or found its nest. Whoever harms one is certain to bring misfortune upon himself and possibly his companions. A prudent traveler would be careful not to offend this or any other nautical superstition. In case of subsequent danger the sailors might remember his misdeed and leave him to make his own rescue. Nearing the Asiatic coast we saw many whales. One afternoon, about cigar time, a huge fellow appeared half a mile distant. His blowing sounded like the exhaust of a western steamboat, and sent up a respectable fountain of spray. Covert pronounced him a high pressure affair, with horizontal engines and carrying ninety pounds to the inch. After sporting awhile in the misty distance, the whale came near us. It was almost calm and we could see him without glasses. He rose and disappeared at intervals of a minute, and as he moved along he rippled the surface like a subsoil plough on a gigantic scale. After ten or twelve small dives, he threw his tail in air and went down for ten minutes or more. When he reappeared he was two or three hundred yards from his diving place. Once he disappeared in this way and came up within ten feet of our bows. Had he risen beneath us the shock would have been severe for both ship and whale. After this manoeuvre he went leisurely around us, keeping about a hundred yards away. "He is working his engines on the slow bell," said our engineer, "and keeps his helm hard-a-port." We brought out our rifles to try this new game, though the practice was as much a trial of skill as the traditional 'barn at ten paces.' Several shots were fired, but I did not see any thing drop. The sport was amusing to all concerned; at any rate the whale didn't seem to mind it, and we were delighted at the fun. When his survey was finished he braced his helm to starboard, opened his throttle valves and went away to windward. We estimated his length at a hundred and twenty feet, and thought he might register 'A 1,' at the proper office. Captain Patterson called him a 'bow head,' good for a hundred barrels of oil and a large quantity of bone. The Colonel proposed engaging him to tow us into port. Covert wished his blubber piled in our coal bunkers; the artist sketched him, and the draughtsman thought of putting him on a Mercator's projection. For my part I have written the little I know of his life and experiences, but it is very little. I cannot even say where he lodges, whose hats he wears, when his notes fall due, or whether he ever took a cobbler or the whooping cough. Of course this incident led to stories concerning whales. Captain Patterson told about the destruction of the ship Essex by a sperm whale thirty or more years ago. The Colonel described the whale fishery as practiced by the Kamchadales and Aleutians. These natives have harpoons with short lines to which they attach bladders or skin bags filled with air. A great many boats surround a whale and stick him with as many harpoons as possible. If successful, they will so encumber him that his strength is not equal to the buoyancy of the bladders, and in this condition he is finished with a lance. A great feast is sure to follow his capture, and every interested native indulges in whale-steak to his stomach's content. [Illustration: ALEUTIANS CATCHING WHALES.] The day before we came in sight of land, my dog repeatedly placed his fore feet upon the rail and sniffed the wind blowing from the coast. His inhalations were long and earnest, like those of a tobacco smoking Comanche. In her previous voyage the Wright carried a mastiff answering to the name of Rover. The colonel said that whenever they approached land, though long before it was in sight, Rover would put his paws on the bulwarks and direct his nose toward the shore. His demonstrations were invariably accurate, and showed him to possess the instinct of a pilot, whatever his lack of training. He did not enjoy the ocean and was always delighted to see land. In 1865 an Esquimaux dog was domiciled on the barque Golden Gate, on her voyage from Norton Sound to Kamchatka. He ran in all parts of the vessel, and made himself agreeable to every one on board. At Petropavlovsk a Kamchadale dog became a passenger for San Francisco. Immediately on being loosed he took possession aft and drove the Esquimaux forward. During the whole passage he retained his place on the quarter deck and in the cabin. Occasionally he went forward for a promenade, but he never allowed the other dog to go abaft the mainmast. The Esquimaux endeavored to establish amicable relations, but the Kamchadale rejected all friendly overtures. I heard of a dog on one of the Honolulu packets that took his turn at duty with the regularity of a sailor, coming on deck when his watch was called and retiring with it to the forecastle. When the sails flapped from any cause and the clouds indicated a sudden shower, the dog gave warning with a bark--on the sea. I ventured to ask my informant if the animal stood the dog watch, but the question did not receive a definite answer. What a wonderful thing is the science of navigation. One measures the sun's height at meridian; looks at a chronometer; consults a book of mystical figures; makes a little slate work like a school-boy's problem; and he knows his position at sea. Twelve o'clock, if there be neither fog nor cloud, is the most important hour of a nautical day. A few minutes before noon the captain is on deck with his quadrant. The first officer is similarly provided, as he is supposed to keep a log and practice-book of his own. Ambitious students of navigation are sure to appear at that time. On the Wright we turned out four instruments, with twice as many hands to hold them. A minute before twelve, _conticuere omnes_. "Eight bells." "Eight bells, sir." The four instruments are briefly fixed on the sun and the horizon, the readings of the scale are noted, and the quartette descend to the practice of mathematics. A few minutes later we have the result. "Latitude 52° 8' North, Longitude 161° 14' East. Distance in last twenty-four hours two hundred forty-six miles." The chart is unrolled, and a few measurements with dividers, rule and pencil, end in the registry of our exact position. Unlike the countryman on Broadway or a doubting politician the day before election, we do know where we are. The compass, the chronometer, the quadrant; what would be the watery world without them! On the twenty-fourth of July we were just a month at sea. In all that time we had spoken no ship nor had any glimpse of land, unless I except a trifle in a flower pot. The captain made his reckoning at noon, and added to the reading-- "Seventy-five miles from the entrance of Avatcha Bay. We ought to see land before sunset." About four in the afternoon we discovered the coast just where the captain said we should find it. The mountains that serve to guide one toward Avatcha Bay were exactly in the direction marked on our chart. To all appearances we were not a furlong from our estimated position. How easily may the navigator's art appear like magic to the ignorant and superstitious. The breeze was light, and we stood in very slowly toward the shore. By sunset we could see the full outline of the coast of Kamchatka for a distance of fifty or sixty miles. The general coast line formed the concavity of a small arc of a circle. As it was too late to enter before dark, and we did not expect the light would be burning, we furled all our sails and lay to until morning. By daybreak we were under steam, and at five o'clock I came on deck to make my first acquaintance with Asia. We were about twenty miles from the shore, and the general appearance of the land reminded me of the Rocky Mountains from Denver or the Sierra Nevadas from the vicinity of Stockton. On the north of the horizon was a group of four or five mountains, while directly in front there were three separate peaks, of which one was volcanic. Most of these mountains were conical and sharp, and although it was July, nearly every summit was covered with snow. Between and among these high peaks there were many smaller mountains, but no less steep and pointed. As one sees it from, the ocean, Kamchatka appears more like a desolate than a habitable country. It requires very good eyesight to discover the entrance of Avatcha Bay at a distance of eight or ten miles, but the landmarks are of such excellent character that one can approach without hesitation. The passage is more than a mile wide. Guarding it on the right is a hill nearly three hundred feet high, and standing almost perpendicular above the water. At the left is a rock of lesser height, terminating a tongue or ridge of land. On the hill is a light-house and signal station with a flag staff. Formerly the light was only exhibited when a ship was expected or seen, but in 1866, orders were given for its maintainance every night during the summer months. Years ago, on the coast of New Hampshire, a man from the interior was appointed light keeper. The day he assumed his position was his first on the sea-shore. Very soon there were complaints that his lights did not burn after midnight. On being called to account by his superior, he explained-- "Well, I thought all the ships ought to be in by midnight, and I wanted to save the ile." CHAPTER III. As one leaves the Pacific and enters Avatcha Bay he passes high rocks and cliffs, washed at their base by the waves. The loud-sounding ocean working steadily against the solid walls, has worn caverns and dark passages, haunted by thousands of screaming and fluttering sea-birds. The bay is circular and about twenty miles in diameter; except at the place of entrance it is enclosed with hills and mountains that give it the appearance of a highland lake. All over it there is excellent anchorage for ships of every class, while around its sides are several little harbors, like miniature copies of the bay. At Petropavlovsk we hoped to find the Russian ship of war, Variag, and the barque Clara Bell, which sailed from San Francisco six weeks before us. As we entered the bay, all eyes were turned toward the little harbor. "There is the Russian," said three or four voices at once, as the tall masts aird wide spars of a corvette came in sight. "The Clara Bell, the Clara Bell--no, it's a brig," was our exclamation at the appearance of a vessel behind the Variag. "There's another, a barque certainly,--no, it's a brig, too," uttered the colonel with an emphasis of disgust. Evidently his barque was on the sea. Rounding the shoal we moved toward the fort, the Russian corvette greeting us with "Hail Columbia" out of compliment to our nationality. We carried the American flag at the quarter and the Russian naval ensign at the fore as a courtesy to the ship that awaited us. As we cast anchor just outside the little inner harbor, the Russian band continued playing Hail Columbia, but our engineer played the mischief with the music by letting off steam. As soon as we were at rest a boat from the corvette touched our side, and a subordinate officer announced that his captain would speedily visit us. Very soon came the Captain of The Port or Collector of Customs, and after him the American merchants residing in the town. Our gangway which we closed at San Francisco was now opened, and we once more communicated with the world. Petropavlovsk (Port of Saints Peter and Paul) is situated in lat. 53° 1' North, long. 158° 43' East, and is the principal place in Kamchatka. It stands on the side of a hill sloping into the northern shore of Avatcha Bay, or rather into a little harbor opening into the bay. Fronting this harbor is a long peninsula that hides the town from all parts of the bay except those near the sea. The harbor is well sheltered from winds and furnishes excellent anchorage. It is divided into an inner and an outer harbor by means of a sand spit that extends from the main land toward the peninsula, leaving an opening about three hundred yards in width. The inner harbor is a neat little basin about a thousand yards in diameter and nearly circular in shape. Some of the mountains that serve as landmarks to the approaching mariner, are visible from the town, and others can be seen by climbing the hills in the vicinity. Wuluchinski is to the southward and not volcanic, while Avatcha and Korianski, to the north and east, were smoking with a dignified air, like a pair of Turks after a champagne supper. Eruptions of these volcanoes occur every few years, and during the most violent ones ashes and stones are thrown to a considerable distance. Captain King witnessed an eruption of Avatcha in 1779, and says that stones fell at Petropavlovsk, twenty-five miles away, and the ashes covered the deck of his ship. Mr. Pierce, an old resident of Kamchatka, gave me a graphic description of an eruption in 1861. It was preceded by an earthquake, which overturned crockery on the tables, and demolished several ovens. For a week or more earthquakes of a less violent character occurred hourly. Besides the Variag we found in port the Russian brig Poorga and the Prussian brig Danzig, the latter having an American captain, crew, hull, masts, and rigging. Two old hulks were rotting in the mud, and an unseaworthy schooner lay on the beach with one side turned upward as if in agony. "There be land rats and water rats," according to Shakspeare. Some of the latter dwelt in this bluff-bowed schooner and peered curiously from the crevices in her sides. [Illustration: BREACH OF ETIQUETTE.] The majority of our visitors made their calls very brief. After their departure, I went on shore with Mr. Hunter, an American resident of Petropavlovsk. In every house I visited I was pressed to take _petnatzet copla_ (fifteen drops,) the universal name there for something stimulating. The drops might be American whisky, French brandy, Dutch gin, or Russian vodka. David Crockett said a true gentleman is one who turns his back while you pour whisky into your tumbler. The etiquette of Kamchatka does not permit the host to count the drops taken by his guest. Take a log village in the backwoods of Michigan or Minnesota, and transport it to a quiet spot by a well sheltered harbor of Lilliputian size. Cover the roofs of some buildings with iron, shingles or boards from other regions. Cover the balance with thatch of long grass, and erect chimneys that just peer above the ridge poles. Scatter these buildings on a hillside next the water; arrange three-fourths of them in a single street, and leave the rest to drop wherever they like. Of course those in the higgledy-piggledy position must be of the poorest class, but you can make a few exceptions. Whitewash the inner walls of half the buildings, and use paper or cloth to hide the nakedness of the other half. This will make a fair counterfeit of Petropavlovsk. Inside each house place a brick stove or oven, four or five feet square and six feet high. Locate this stove to present a side to each of two or three rooms. In each side make an aperture two inches square that can be opened or closed at will. The amount of heat to warm the rooms is regulated by means of the apertures. Furnish the houses with plain chairs, tables, and an occasional but rare piano. Make the doors very low and the entries narrow. Put a picture of a saint in the principal room of every house, and adorn the walls with a few engravings. Make a garden near each house, and let a few miscellaneous gardens cling to the hillside and strive to climb it. Don't forget to build a church, or you will fail to represent a Russian town. Petropavlovsk has no vehicle of any kind except a single hand cart. Consequently the street is not gashed with wheel ruts. We were invited to 'assist' at a wedding that happened in the evening after our arrival. The ceremony was to begin at five o'clock, and was a double affair, two sisters being the brides. A Russian wedding requires a master of ceremonies to look after the affair from beginning to end. I was told it was the custom in Siberia (but not in European Russia) for this person to pay all expenses of the wedding, including the indispensable dinner and its fixtures. Such a position is not to be desired by a man of limited cash, especially if the leading characters are inclined to extravagance. Think of being the conductor of a diamond wedding in New York or Boston, and then paying the bills! [Illustration: UNEXPECTED HONORS.] The steward of the Variag told me he was invited to conduct a wedding shortly after his arrival at Petropavlovsk. Thinking it an honor of which he would hereafter be proud, he accepted the invitation. Much to his surprise on the next day he was required to pay the cost of the entertainment. The master of ceremonies of the wedding under consideration was Mr. Phillipeus, a Russian gentleman engaged in the fur trade. The father of the brides was his customer, and doubtless the cost of the wedding was made up in subsequent dealings. As the party emerged from the house and moved toward the church, I could see that Phillipeus was the central figure. He had a bride on each arm, and each bride was clinging to her prospective husband. The women were in white and the men in holiday dress. Behind the front rank were a dozen or more groomsmen and bridesmaids. Behind these were the members of the families and the invited relatives, so that the cortége stretched to a considerable length. Each of the groomsmen wore a bow of colored ribbon on his left arm and a smaller one in the button hole. The children of the families--quite a troop of juveniles--brought up the rear. The church is of logs, like the other buildings. It is old, unpainted, and shaped like a cross, lacking one of the arms. The doors are large and clumsy, and the entrance is through a vestibule or hall. The roof had been recently painted a brilliant red at the expense of the Variag's officers. On the inside, the church has an antiquated appearance, but presents such an air of solidity as if inviting the earthquakes to come and see it. There were no seats in the building, nor are there seats of any kind in the edifices of the same character in any part of Russia. It is the theory of the Eastern Church that all are equal before God. In His service, no distinction is made; autocrat and subject, noble and peasant, stand or kneel in the same manner while worshipping at His altars. As we entered, we found the wedding party standing in the center of the church; the spectators were grouped nearer the door, the ladies occupying the front. With the thermometer at seventy-two, I found the upright position a fatiguing one, and would have been glad to send for a camp stool. Colonel Bulkley had undertaken to escort a lady, and as he stood in a conspicuous place, his uniform buttoned to the very chin and the perspiration pouring from his face, the ceremony appeared to have little charm for him. The service began under the direction of two priests, each dressed in a long robe extending to his feet, and wearing a chapeau like a bell-crowned hat without a brim. "The short one," said a friend near me, pointing to a little, round, fat, oily man of God, "will get very drunk when he has the opportunity. Watch him to-night and see how he leaves the dinner party." Priests of the Greek Church wear their hair very long, frequently below the shoulders, and parted in the middle, and do not shave the beard. Unlike those of the Catholic Church, they marry and have homes and families, engaging in secular occupations which do not interfere with their religious duties. During the evening after the wedding, I was introduced to "the pope's wife;" and learned that Russian priests are called popes. As the only pope then familiar to my thoughts is considered very much a bachelor, I was rather taken aback at this bit of information. The drink-loving priest was head of a goodly sized family, and resided in a comfortable and well furnished dwelling. [Illustration: RUSSIAN MARRIAGE.] At the wedding there was much recitation by the priests, reading from the ritual of the Church, swinging of censers, singing by the chorus of male voices, chanting and intonation, and responses by the victims. There were frequent signs of the cross with bowing or kneeling. A ring was used, and afterwards two crowns were held over the heads of the bride and bridegroom. The fatigue of holding these crowns was considerable, and required that those who performed the service should be relieved once by other bridesmen. After a time the crowns were placed on the heads they had been held over. Wearing these crowns and preceded by the priests, the pair walked three times round the altar in memory of the Holy Trinity, while a portion of the service was chanted. Then the crowns were removed and kissed by each of the marrying pair, the bridegroom first performing the osculation. A cup of water was held by the priest, first to the bridegroom and then to the bride, each of whom drank a small portion. After this the first couple retired to a little chapel and the second passed through the ordeal. The preliminary ceremony occupied about twenty minutes, and the same time was consumed by each couple. There is no divorce in Russia, so that the union was one for life till death. Before the parties left the church they received congratulations. There was much hand-shaking, and among the women there were decorous kisses. Our party regretted that the custom of bride kissing as practiced in America does not prevail in Kamchatka. When the affair was ended, the whole cortége returned to the house whence it came, the children carrying pictures of the Virgin and saints, and holding lighted candles before them. The employment of lamps and tapers is universal in the Russian churches, the little flame being a representation of spiritual existence and a symbol of the continued life of the soul. The Russians have adapted this idea so completely that there is no marriage, betrothal, consecration, or burial, in fact no religious ceremony whatever without the use of lamp or taper. In the house of every adherent to the orthodox Russian faith there is a picture of the Virgin or a saint; sometimes holy pictures are in every room of the house. I have seen them in the cabins of steamboats, and in tents and other temporary structures. No Russian enters a dwelling, however humble, without removing his hat, out of respect to the holy pictures, and this custom extends to shops, hotels, in fact to every place where people dwell or transact business. During the earlier part of my travels in Russia, I was unaware of this custom, and fear that I sometimes offended it. I have been told that superstitious thieves hang veils or kerchiefs before the picture in rooms where they depredate. Enthusiastic lovers occasionally observe the same precaution. Only the eyes of the image need be covered, and secrecy may be obtained by turning the picture to the wall. The evening began with a reception and congratulations to the married couples. Then we had tea and cakes, and then came the dinner. The party was like the African giant imported in two ships, for it was found impossible to crowd all the guests into one house. Tables were set in two houses and in the open yard between them. The Russians have a custom of taking a little lunch just before they begin dinner. This lunch is upon a side table in the dining room, and consists of cordial, spirits or bitters, with morsels of herring, caviar, and dried meat or fish. It performs the same office as the American cocktail, but is oftener taken, is more popular and more respectable. After the lunch we sat down to dinner. Fish formed the first course and soup the second. Then we had roast beef and vegetables, followed by veal cutlets. The feast closed with cake and jelly, and was thoroughly washed down with a dozen kinds of beverages that cheer _and_ inebriate. The fat priest was at table and took his lunch early. His first course was a glass of something liquid, and he drank a dozen times before the soup was brought. Early in the dinner I saw him gesturing toward me. "He wants to take a glass with you," said some one at my side. I poured out some wine, and after a little trouble in touching glasses we drank each other's health. Not five minutes later he repeated his gestures. To satisfy him I filled a glass with sherry, as there was no champagne handy at the moment, and again went through the clinking process. As my glass was large I put it down after sipping a few drops, but the old fellow objected. Draining and inverting his glass, he held it as one might suspend a rat by the tail, and motioned me to do the same. Luckily he soon after conceived a fondness for one of the Wright's officers, and the twain fell to drinking. The officer, assisted by three men, went on board late at night, and was reported attempting to wash his face in a tar-bucket and dry it with a chain cable. About midnight the priest was taken home on a shutter. [Illustration: RUSSIAN POPE AT HOME.] There were toasts in a large number, with a great deal of cheering, drinking, and smoking. About ten o'clock the dinner ended, and arrangements were made for a dance. Dancing was not among my accomplishments, and I retired to the ship, satisfied that on my first day in Asia I had been treated very kindly--and very often. For two days more the wedding festivities continued, etiquette requiring the parties to visit all who attended the dinner. On the third day the hilarity ceased, and the happy couples were left to enjoy the honeymoon with its promise of matrimonial bliss. May they have many years of it. CHAPTER IV. The name of Kamchatka is generally associated with snow-fields, glaciers, frozen mountains, and ice-bound shores. Its winters are long and severe; snow falls to a great depth, and ice attains a thickness proportioned to the climate. But the summers, though short, are sufficiently hot to make up for the cold of winter. Vegetation is wonderfully rapid, the grasses, trees and plants growing as much in a hundred days as in six months of a New England summer. Hardly has the snow disappeared before the trees put forth their buds and blossoms, and the hillsides are in all the verdure of an American spring. Men tell me they have seen in a single week the snows disappear, ice break in the streams, the grass spring up, and the trees beginning to bud. Nature adapts herself to all her conditions. In the Arctic as in the Torrid zone she fixes her compensations and makes her laws for the best good of her children. It was midsummer when we reached Kamchatka, and the heat was like that of August in Richmond or Baltimore. The thermometer ranged from sixty-five to eighty. Long walks on land were out of question, unless one possessed the power of a salamander. The shore of the bay was the best place for a promenade, and we amused ourselves watching the salmon fishers at work. Salmon form the principal food of the Kamchadales and their dogs. The fishing season in Avatcha Bay lasts about six weeks, and at its close the salmon leave the bay and ascend the streams, where they are caught by the interior natives. In the bay they are taken in seines dragged along the shore, and the number of fish caught annually is almost beyond computation. Some years ago the fishery failed, and more than half the dogs in Kamchatka starved. The following year there was a bountiful supply, which the priests of Petropavlovsk commemorated by erecting a cross near the entrance of the harbor. The supply is always larger after a scarcity than in ordinary seasons. The fish designed for preservation are split and dried in the sun. The odor of a fish drying establishment reminded me of the smells in certain quarters of New York in summer, or of Cairo, Illinois, after an unusual flood has subsided. One of our officers said he counted three hundred and twenty distinct and different smells in walking half a mile. In 1865 one of the merchants started the enterprise of curing salmon for the Sandwich Island market. He told me he paid three roubles, (about three greenback dollars,) a hundred (in number) for the fresh fish, delivered at his establishment. Evidently he found the speculation profitable, as he repeated it the following year. [Illustration: A SCALY BRIDGE.] When the salmon ascend the rivers they furnish food to men and animals. The natives catch them in nets and with spears, while dogs, bears, and wolves use their teeth in fishing. Bears are expert in this amusement, and where their game is plenty they eat only the heads and backs. The fish are very abundant in the rivers, and no great skill is required in their capture. Men with an air of veracity told me they had seen streams in the interior of Kamchatka so filled with salmon that one could cross on them as on a corduroy bridge! The story has a piscatorial sound, but it _may_ be true. House gardening on a limited scale is the principal agriculture of Kamchatka. Fifty years ago, Admiral Ricord introduced the cultivation of rye, wheat, and barley with considerable success, but the inhabitants do not take kindly to it. The government brings rye flour from the Amoor river and sells it to the people at cost, and in case of distress it issues rations from its magazines. When I asked why there was no culture of grain in Kamchatka, they replied: "What is the necessity of it? We can buy it at cost of the government, and need not trouble ourselves about making our own flour." There is not a sawmill on the peninsula. Boards and plank are cut by hand or brought from California. I slept two nights in a room ceiled with red-wood and pine from San Francisco. On my second evening in Asia I passed several hours at the governor's house. The party talked, smoked, and drank tea until midnight, and then closed the entertainment with a substantial supper. An interesting and novel feature of the affair was the Russian manner of making tea. The infusion had a better flavor than any I had previously drank. This is due partly to the superior quality of the leaf, and partly to the manner of its preparation. The "samovar" or tea-urn is an indispensable article in a Russian household, and is found in nearly every dwelling from the Baltic to Bering's Sea. "Samovar" comes from two Greek words, meaning 'to boil itself.' The article is nothing but a portable furnace; a brazen urn with a cylinder two or three inches in diameter passing through it from top to bottom. The cylinder being filled with coals, the water in the urn is quickly heated, and remains boiling hot as long as the fire continues. An imperial order abolishing samovars throughout all the Russias, would produce more sorrow and indignation than the expulsion of roast beef from the English bill of fare. The number of cups it will contain is the measure of a samovar. Tea pots are of porcelain or earthenware. The tea pot is rinsed and warmed with hot water before receiving the dry leaf. Boiling water is poured upon the tea, and when the pot is full it is placed on the top of the samovar. There it is kept hot but not boiled, and in five or six minutes the tea is ready. Cups and saucers are not employed by the Russians, but tumblers are generally used for tea drinking, and in the best houses, where it can be afforded, they are held in silver sockets like those in soda shops. Only loaf sugar is used in sweetening tea. When lemons can be had they are employed to give flavor, a thin slice, neither rolled nor pressed, being floated on the surface of the tea. [Illustration: RUSSIAN TEA SERVICE.] The Russians take tea in the morning, after dinner, after lunch, before bed-time, in the evening, at odd intervals in the day or night, and they drink a great deal of it between drinks. In rambling about Petropavlovsk I found the hills covered with luxuriant grass, sometimes reaching to my knees. Two or three miles inland the grass was waist high on ground covered with snow six weeks before. Among the flowers I recognized the violet and larkspur, the former in great abundance. Earlier in the summer the hills were literally carpeted with flowers. I could not learn that any skilled botanist had ever visited Kamchatka and classified its flora. Among the arboreal productions the alder and birch were the most numerous. Pine, larch, and spruce grow on the Kamchatka river, and the timber from them is brought to Avatcha from the mouth of that stream. The commercial value of Kamchatka is entirely in its fur trade. The peninsula has no agricultural, manufacturing, or mining interest, and were it not for the animals that lend their skins to keep us warm, the merchant would find no charms in that region. The fur coming from Kamchatka was the cause of the Russian discovery and conquest. For many years the trade was conducted by individual merchants from Siberia. The Russian American Company attempted to control it early in the present century, and drove many competitors from the fields. It received the most determined opposition from American merchants, and in 1860 it abandoned Petropavlovsk, its business there being profitless. In 1866 I found the fur trade of Kamchatka in the control of three merchants: W.H. Boardman, of Boston, J.W. Fluger, of Hamburg, and Alexander Phillipeus, of St. Petersburg. All of them had houses in Petropavlovsk, and each had from one to half a dozen agencies or branches elsewhere. To judge by appearances, Mr. Boardman had the lion's share of the trade. This gentleman's father began the Northwest traffic sometime in the last century, and left it as an inheritance about 1828. His son continued the business until bought off by the Hudson Bay Company, when he turned his attention to Kamchatka. Personally he has never visited the Pacific Ocean. Mr. Fluger had been only two years in Kamchatka, and was doing a miscellaneous business. Boardman's agent confined himself to the fur trade, but Fluger was up to anything. He salted salmon for market, sent a schooner every year into the Arctic Ocean for walrus teeth and mammoth tusks, bought furs, sold goods, kept a dog team, was attentive to the ladies, and would have run for Congress had it been possible. He had in his store about half a cord of walrus teeth piled against a back entrance like stove wood. Phillipeus was a roving blade. He kept an agent at Petropavlovsk and came there in person once a year. In February he left St. Petersburg for London, whence he took the Red Sea route to Japan. There he chartered a brig to visit Kamchatka and land him at Ayan, on the Ohotsk Sea. From Ayan he went to Yakutsk, and from that place through Irkutsk to St. Petersburg, where he arrived about three hundred and fifty days after his departure. I met him in the Russian capital just as he had completed the sixth journey of this kind and was about to commence the seventh. If he were a Jew he should be called the wandering Jew. Trade is conducted on the barter principle, furs being low and goods high. The risks are great, transport is costly, and money is a long time invested before it returns. The palmy days of the fur trade are over; the product has greatly diminished, and competition has reduced the percentage of profit on the little that remains. There was a time in the memory of man when furs formed the currency of Kamchatka. Their employment as cash is not unknown at present, although Russian money is in general circulation. [Illustration: CHANGE FOR A DOLLAR] There is a story of a traveler who paid his hotel bill in a country town in Minnesota and received a beaver skin in change. The landlord explained that it was legal tender for a dollar. Concealing this novel cash under his coat, the traveler sauntered into a neighboring store. "Is it true," he asked carelessly, "that a beaver skin is legal tender for a dollar?" "Yes, sir," said the merchant; "anybody will take it." "Will you be so kind, then," was the traveler's request, "as to give me change for a dollar bill?" "Certainly," answered the merchant, taking the beaver skin and returning four muskrat skins, current at twenty-five cents each. The sable is the principal fur sought by the merchants in Kamchatka, or trapped by the natives. The animal is caught in a variety of ways, man's ingenuity being taxed to capture him. The 'yessak,' or 'poll-tax' of the natives is payable in sable fur, at the rate of a skin for every four persons. The governor makes a yearly journey through the peninsula to collect the tax, and is supposed to visit all the villages. The merchants go and do likewise for trading purposes. Mr. George S. Cushing, who was long the agent of Mr. Boardman in Kamchatka, estimated the product of sable fur at about six thousand skins annually. Sometimes it exceeds and sometimes falls below that figure. About a thousand foxes, a few sea otters and silver foxes, and a good many bears, may be added, more for number than value. Silver foxes and otters are scarce, while common foxes and bears are of little account. A black fox is worth a great deal of money, but one may find a white crow almost as readily. Bears are abundant, but their skins are not articles of export. The beasts are brown or black, and grow to a disagreeable size. Bear hunting is an amusement of the country, very pleasant and exciting until the bear turns and becomes the hunter. Then there is no fun in it, if he succeeds in his pursuit. A gentleman in Kamchatka gave me a bearskin more than six feet long, and declared that it was not unusually large. I am very glad there was no live bear in it when it came into my possession. There is a story of a man in California who followed the track of a grizzly bear a day and a half. He abandoned it because, as he explained, "it was getting a little too fresh." One day, about two years before my visit, a cow suddenly entered Petropavlovsk with a live bear on her back. The bear escaped unhurt, leaving the cow pretty well scratched. After that event she preferred to graze in or near the town, and never brought home another bear. [Illustration: COW AND BEAR.] Kamchatka without dogs would be like Hamlet without Hamlet. While crossing the Pacific my _compagnons du voyage_ made many suggestions touching my first experience in Kamchatka. "You won't sleep any the first night in port. The dogs will howl you out of your seven senses." This was the frequent remark of the engineer, corroborated by others. On arriving, we were disappointed to find less than a hundred dogs at Petropavlovsk, as the rest of the canines belonging there were spending vacation in the country. About fifteen hundred were owned in the town. Very few Kamchadale dogs can bark, but they will howl oftener, longer, and louder than any 'yaller dog' that ever went to a cur pound or became sausage meat. The few in Petropavlovsk made much of their ability, and were especially vocal at sunset, near their feeding time. Occasionally during the night they try their throats and keep up a hailing and answering chorus, calculated to draw a great many oaths from profane strangers. In 1865 Colonel Bulkley carried one of these animals to California. The dog lifted up his voice on the waters very often, and received a great deal of rope's ending in consequence. At San Francisco Mr. Covert took him home, and attempted his domestication. 'Norcum,' (for that was the brute's name,) created an enmity between Covert and all who lived within hearing distance, and many were the threats of canicide. Covert used to rise two or three times every night and argue, with a club, to induce Norcum to be silent. While I was at San Francisco, Mr. Mumford, one of the Telegraph Company's directors, conceived a fondness for the dog, and took him to the Occidental Hotel. On the first day of his hotel life we tied Norcum on the balcony in front of Mumford's room, about forty feet from the ground. Scarcely had we gone to dinner when he jumped from the balcony and hung by his chain, with his hind feet resting upon a cornice. A howling wilderness is nothing to the noise he made before his rescue, and he gathered and amused a large crowd with his performance. He passed the night in the western basement of the hotel, and spoiled the sleep of a dozen or more persons who lodged near him. When we left San Francisco, Norcum was residing in the baggage-room at the Occidental, under special care of the porters, who employed a great deal of muscle in teaching him that silence was a golden virtue. The Kamchadale dogs are of the same breed as those used by the Esquimaux, but are said to possess more strength and endurance. The best Asiatic dogs are among the Koriaks, near Penjinsk Gulf, the difference being due to climate and the care taken in breeding them. Dogs are the sole reliance for winter travel in Kamchatka, and every resident considers it his duty to own a team. They are driven in odd numbers, all the way from three to twenty-one. The most intelligent and best trained dog acts as a leader, the others being harnessed in pairs. No reins are used, the voice of the driver being sufficient to guide them. [Illustration: A KAMCHATKA TEAM.] Dogs are fed almost entirely upon fish. They receive their rations daily at sunset, and it is always desirable that each driver should feed his own team. The day before starting on a journey, the dog receives a half ration only, and he is kept on this slender diet as long as the journey lasts. Sometimes when hungry they gnaw their reindeer skin harnesses, and sometimes they do it as a pastime. Once formed, the habit is not easy to break. Two kinds of sledges are used, one for travel and the other for transporting freight. The former is light and just large enough for one person with a little baggage. The driver sits with his feet hanging over the side, and clings to a bow that rises in front. In one hand he holds an iron-pointed staff, with which he retards the vehicle in descending hills, or brings it to a halt. A traveling sledge weighs about twenty-five pounds, but a freight sledge is much heavier. A good team will travel from forty to sixty miles a day with favorable roads. Sometimes a hundred a day may be accomplished, but very rarely. Once an express traveled from Petropavlovsk to Bolcheretsk, a hundred and twenty-five miles, in twenty-three hours, without change of dogs. Wolves have an inconvenient fondness for dog meat, and occasionally attack travelers. A gentleman told me that a wolf once sprang from the bushes, seized and dragged away one of his dogs, and did not detain the team three minutes. The dogs are cowardly in their dispositions, and will not fight unless they have large odds in their favor. A pack of them will attack and kill a single strange dog, but would not disturb a number equaling their own. Most of the Russian settlers buy their dogs from the natives who breed them. Dogs trained to harness are worth from ten to forty roubles (dollars) each, according to their quality. Leaders bring high prices on account of their superior docility and the labor of training them. Epidemics are frequent among dogs and carry off great numbers of them. Hydrophobia is a common occurrence. The Russian inhabitants of Kamchatka are mostly descended from Cossacks and exiles. There is a fair but not undue proportion of half breeds, the natural result of marriage between natives and immigrants. There are about four hundred Russians at Petropavlovsk, and the same number at each of two other points. The aboriginal population is about six thousand, including a few hundred dwellers on the Kurile Islands. No exiles have been sent to Kamchatka since 1830. One old man who had been forty years a colonist was living at Avatcha in 1866. He was at liberty to return to Europe, but preferred remaining. In 1771 occurred the first voyage from Kamchatka to a foreign port, and curiously enough, it was performed under the Polish flag. A number of exiles, headed by a Pole named Benyowski, seized a small vessel and put to sea. Touching at Japan and Loo Choo to obtain water and provisions, the party reached the Portuguese colony of Macao in safety. There were no nautical instruments or charts on the ship, and the successful result of the voyage was more accidental than otherwise. Close by the harbor of Petropavlovsk there is a monument to the memory of the ill-fated and intrepid navigator, La Perouse. It bears no inscription, and was evidently built in haste. There is a story that a French ship once arrived in Avatcha Bay on a voyage of discovery. Her captain asked the governor if there was anything to commemorate the visit of La Perouse. "Certainly," was the reply; "I will show it to you in the morning." During the night the monument was hastily constructed of wood and sheet iron, and fixed in the position to which the governor led his delighted guest. Captain Clerke, successor to Captain Cook, of Sandwich Island memory, died while his ships were in Avatcha Bay, and was buried at Petropavlovsk. A monument that formerly marked his grave has disappeared. Captain Lund and Colonel Bulkley arranged to erect a durable memorial in its place. We prepared an inscription in English and Russian, and for temporary purposes fixed a small tablet on the designated spot. Americans and Russians formed the party that listened to the brief tribute which one of our number paid to the memory of the great navigator. In the autumn of 1854, a combined English and French fleet of six ships suffered a severe repulse from several land batteries and the guns of a Russian frigate in the harbor. Twice beaten off, their commanders determined an assault. They landed a strong force of sailors and marines, that attempted to take the town in the rear, but the Kamchadale sharpshooters created a panic, and drove the assailants over a steeply sloping cliff two hundred feet high. [Illustration: REPULSE OF THE ASSAILANTS.] Naturally the natives are proud of their success in this battle, and mention it to every visitor. The English Admiral committed suicide early in the attack. The fleet retired to San Francisco, and returned in the following year prepared to capture the town at all hazards, but Petropavlovsk had been abandoned by the Russians, who retired beyond the hills. An American remained in charge of a trading establishment, and hoisted his national colors over it. The allies burned the government property and destroyed the batteries. There were five or six hundred dogs in town when the fleet entered the bay. Their violent howling held the allies aloof a whole day, under the impression that a garrison should be very large to have so many watch-dogs. CHAPTER V. The first project for making discoveries in the ocean east of Kamchatka was formed by Peter the Great. Danish, German, and English navigators and _savans_ were sent to the eastern coast of Asia to conduct explorations in the desired quarter, but very little was accomplished in the lifetime of the great czar. His successors carried out his plans. In June, 1741, Vitus Bering, the first navigator of the straits which bear his name, sailed from Avatcha Bay. Passing south of the islands of the Aleutian chain, Bering steered to the eastward, and at length discovered the American continent. "On the 16th of July," says Steller, the naturalist and historian of the expedition, "we saw a mountain whose height was so great as to be visible at the distance of sixteen Dutch miles. The coast of the continent was much broken and indented with bays and harbors." The nearest point of land was named Cape St. Elias, as it was discovered on St. Ellas' day. The high mountain received the name of the saint, and has clung to it ever since. When Bering discovered Russian America he had no thought it would one day be sold to the United States, and there is nothing to show that he ever corresponded with Mr. Seward about it. He sailed a short distance along its coast, visited various islands, and then steered for Kamchatka. The commander was confined to his cabin by illness, and the crew suffered severely from scurvy. "At one period," says Steller, "only ten persons were capable of duty, and they were too weak to furl the sails, so that the ship was left to the mercy of the elements. Not only the sick died, but those who pretended to be healthy fainted and fell down dead when relieved from their posts." In this condition the navigators were drifted upon a rocky island, where their ship went to pieces, but not until all had landed. Many of the crew died soon after going on shore, but the transfer from the ship appeared to diminish the ravages of the scurvy. Commander Bering died on the 8th of December, and was buried in the trench where he lay. The island where he perished bears his name, but his grave is unmarked. An iron monument to his memory was recently erected at Petropavlovsk. No human dwellers were found on the island. Foxes were numerous and had no fear of the shipwrecked mariners. "We killed many of them," Steller adds, "with our hatchets and knives. They annoyed us greatly, and we were unable to keep them from entering our shelters and stealing our clothing and food." The survivors built a small vessel from the wreck, and succeeded in reaching Avatcha in the following summer. "We were given up for dead," says the historian, "and the property we left in Kamchatka had been appropriated by strangers." The reports concerning the abundance of fur-bearing animals on Bering's Island and elsewhere, induced private parties to go in search of profit. Various expeditions were fitted out in ships of clumsy construction and bad sailing qualities. The timbers were fastened with wooden pins and leathern thongs, and the crevices were caulked with moss. Occasionally the cordage was made from reindeer skins, and the sails from the same material. Many ships were wrecked, but this did not frighten adventurous merchants. Few of these voyages were pushed farther than the Aleutian islands. The natives were hostile and killed a fair proportion of the Russian explorers. In 1781 a few merchants of Kamchatka arranged a company with a view to developing commerce in Russian America. They equipped several ships, formed a settlement at Kodiak and conducted an extensive and profitable business. Their agents treated the natives with great cruelty, and so bad was their conduct that the emperor Paul revoked their privileges. A new company was formed and chartered in July, 1779, under the title of the Russian-American Company. It succeeded the old concern, and absorbed it into its organization. The Russian-American Company had its chief office in St. Petersburg, where the Directors formed a kind of high court of appeal. It was authorized to explore and place under control of the crown all the territories of North-Western America not belonging to any other government. It was required to deal kindly with the natives, and endeavor to convert them to the religion of the empire. It had the administration of the country and a commercial monopoly through its whole extent. All other merchants were to be excluded, no matter what their nationality. At one time so great was the jealousy of the Company's officers that no foreign ship was allowed within twenty miles of the coast. The Imperial Government required that the chief officer of the company should be commissioned in the service of the crown, and detailed to the control of the American Territory. His residence was at Sitka, to which the principal post was removed from Kodiak. In the early history of the Company there were many encounters with the natives, the severest battle taking place on the present site of Sitka. The natives had a fort there, and were only driven from it after a long and obstinate fight. The first colony that settled at Sitka was driven away, and all traces of the Russian occupation were destroyed. After a few years of conflict, peace was declared, and trade became prosperous. The Company occupied Russian America and the Aleutian Islands, and pushed its traffic to the Arctic Ocean. It established posts on the Kurile Islands, in Kamchatka, and along the coast of the Ohotsk Sea. It built churches, employed priests, and was quite successful in converting the natives to Christianity. Having a monopoly of trade and being the law giver to the natives, the Company had things in pretty much its own way. The governor at Sitka was the autocrat of all the American Russians. There was no appeal from his decision except to the Directory at St. Petersburg, which was about as accessible as the moon. The natives were reduced to a condition of slavery; they were compelled to devote the best part of their time to the company's labor, and the accounts were so managed as to keep them always in debt. Alexander Baranoff was the first governor, and continued more than twenty years in power. He managed affairs to his own taste, paying little regard to the wishes of the Directory, or even of the Emperor, when they conflicted with his own. The Russians in the company's employ were _Promushleniks_, or adventurers, enlisted in Siberia for a term of years. They were soldiers, sailors, hunters, fishermen, or mechanics, according to the needs of the service. Their condition was little better than that of the natives they held in subjection. The territory was divided into districts, each under an officer who reported to the Chief at Sitka. The Directory was not troubled so long as profits were large, but the government had suspicions that the Company's reign was oppressive. An exploring expedition under Admiral Krusenstern visited the North Pacific in 1805; the reports of the Admiral exposed many abuses and led to changes. A more rigid supervision followed, and produced much good. The government insisted upon appointing officers of integrity and humanity to the chief place at Sitka. For many years the Company prospered. In 1812 it founded the colony of Ross, on the coast of California, and a few years later prepared to dispute the right of the Spanish Governor to occupy that region. The natives were everywhere peaceable, and the dividends satisfied the stockholders. The slaughter of the fur-bearing animals was injudiciously conducted, and led to a great decrease of revenue. The last dividend of importance (12 per cent.) was in 1853. After that year misfortune seemed to follow the Company. Its trade was greatly reduced, partly by the diminished fur production and partly by the illicit traffic of independent vessels along the coast. Several ships were lost, one in 1865, with a valuable cargo of furs. In 1866 the Company's stock, from a nominal value of 150, had fallen to about 80, and the Company was even obliged to accept an annual subsidy of 200,000 roubles from the Government. So late as February, 1867, it received a loan of 1,000,000 roubles from the Imperial Bank. Probably a few years more would have seen the total extinction of the Company, and the reversion of all its rights and expenses to the Crown. In 1866 the fleet of the Russian-American Company comprised two sea steamers, six ships, two brigs, one schooner, and several smaller craft for coasting and inland service. During the Crimean war the Company's property was made neutral on condition of its taking no part in hostilities. Two of its ships were captured and burned for an alleged violation of neutrality. The Company leased a portion of its territory to the Hudson Bay Company, and allowed it to establish hunting and trading posts. A strip of land bordering the ocean was thus in English hands, and gave access to a wide region beyond the Coast Mountains. Not content with what was leased, the Hudson Bay Company deliberately seized a locality on the Yukon river when it had no right. It built Fort Yukon and secured much of the interior trade of Russian America. When our Secretary of State purchased the Emperor's title to the western coast of America, there were various opinions respecting the sagacity of the transaction. No one could say what was the intrinsic value of the country, either actual or prospective. The Company never gave much attention to scientific matters. The Russian government had made some explorations to ascertain the character and extent of the rivers, mountains, plains, and swamps that form the country. In 1841 Lieutenant Zagoyskin commenced an examination of the country bordering the rivers, and continued it for two years. He traced the course of the Kuskokvim and the lower portions of the Yukon, or Kvikpak. His observations were chiefly confined to the rivers and the country immediately bordering them. He made no discoveries of agricultural or mineral wealth. Fish and deer-meat, with berries, formed the food of the natives, while furs were their only articles of trade. [Illustration: VIEW OF SITKA] Russian America is of great extent, superficially. It is agreeably diversified with mountains, hills, rolling country, and table land, with a liberal amount of _pereval_ or undulating swamp. In the northern portion there is timber scattered along the rivers and on the mountain slopes; but the trees and their quantity are alike small. In the southern parts there are forests of large trees, that will be valuable when Oregon and Washington are exhausted. Along the coast there are many bays and harbors, easy of access and well sheltered. Sitka has a magnificent harbor, never frozen or obstructed with ice. Gold is known to exist in several localities. A few placer mines have been opened on the Stikeen river, but no one knows the extent of the auriferous beds, in the absence of all 'prospecting' data. I do not believe gold mining will ever be found profitable in Russian America. The winters are long and cold, and the snows are deep. The working season is very short, and in many localities on the mainland 'ground ice' is permanent at slight depths. Veins of copper have been found near the Yukon, but so far none that would pay for developing. Building stone is abundant, and so is ice. Neither is of much value in commerce. The fur trade was the chief source of the Company's revenue. The principal fur-bearing animals are the otter, seal, beaver, marten, mink, fox, and a few others. There is a little trade in walrus teeth, mammoth tusks, whalebone, and oil. The rivers abound in fish, of which large quantities are annually salted and sent to the Pacific markets. The fisheries along the coast are valuable and of the same character as those on the banks of Newfoundland. Agriculture is limited to a few garden vegetables. There are no fruit trees, and no attempts have thus far been made to introduce them. The number of native inhabitants is unknown, as no census has ever been taken. I have heard it estimated all the way from twenty to sixty thousand. The island and sea coast inhabitants are of the Esquimaux type, while those of the interior are allied to the North American Indians. The explorers for the Western Union Telegraph Company found them friendly, but not inclined to labor. Some of the natives left their hunting at its busiest season to assist an exploring party in distress. The change of rulers will prove a misfortune to the aboriginal. Very wisely the Russian American Company prohibited intoxicating liquors in all dealings with the natives. The contraband stuff could only be obtained from, independent trading ships, chiefly American. With the opening of the country to our commerce, whisky has been abundant and accessible to everybody. The native population will rapidly diminish, and its decrease will be accompanied by a falling off in the fur product. Our government should rigidly continue the prohibitory law as enforced by the Russian officials. The sale of his American property was an excellent transaction on the part of the Emperor. The country brought no revenue worth the name, and threatened to be an expensive ornament in coming years. It required a sea voyage to reach it, and was upon a continent which Russia does not aspire to control. It had no strategic importance in the Muscovite policy, and was better out of the empire than in it. The purchase by ourselves may or may not prove a financial success. Thus far its developments have not been promising. When the country has been thoroughly examined, it is possible we may find stores of now unknown wealth. Politically the acquisition is more important. The possession of a large part of the Pacific coast, indented with many bays and harbors, is a matter of moment in view of our national ambition. The American eagle can scream louder since its cage has been enlarged, and if any man attempts to haul down that noble bird, scoop him from the spot. CHAPTER VI. Colonel Bulkley determined to sail on the 6th of August for Anadyr Bay, and ordered the Variag to proceed to the Amoor by way of Ghijiga. Early in the morning the corvette changed her moorings and shook a reef from her telescopic smoke stack, and at nine o'clock I bade adieu to the Wright and went on board the Variag, to which I was welcomed by Capt. Lund, according to the Russian custom, and quartered in the room specially designed for the use of the Admiral. The ladies were on the nearest point of the beach, and just before our departure the Captain and most of his officers paid them a farewell visit. Seizing the tow line of the Danzig, which we were to take to sea, we steamed from the harbor into the Pacific, followed by the cheers of all on board the Wright and the waving of ladies' handkerchiefs till lost in the distance. We desired to pass the fourth, or Amphitrite, channel of the Kurile Islands; the weather was so thick that we could not see a ship's length in any direction, and all night men stood with axes ready to cut the Danzig's tow line in case any sudden danger should appear. The fog lifted just as we neared the channel, and we had a clear view on all sides. We cast off the Danzig when fairly out of the Pacific. During the two days the Variag had her in tow we maintained communication by means of a log line and a junk bottle carefully sealed. Casting our bottle on the waters, we allowed it to drift along side the Danzig, where it could be fished up and opened. Answers were returned in the same mail pouch. One response was in liquid form, and savored of gin cocktail, fabricated by the American captain. An hour after dropping the Danzig we stopped our engines and prepared to run under sail. The whole crew was called on deck to hoist out the screw, a mass of copper weighing twenty-five thousand pounds, and set in a frame raised or lowered like a window sash. With strong ropes and the power of three hundred men, the frame and its contents were lifted out of water, and the Variag became a sailing ship. The Russian government is more economical than our own in running ships of war. Whenever possible, sails are used instead of steam. A few years ago a Russian Admiral was transferred from active to retired service because he burned too much coal. The Variag was 2100 tons burthen, and carried seventeen guns, with a crew of 306 men. She was of the fleet that visited New York in 1863, and her officers recounted many pleasant reminiscences of their stay in the United States. While wintering in Japanese waters she was assigned to assist the telegraph enterprise, and reported as soon as possible at Petropavlovsk; but the only service demanded was to proceed to the mouth of the Amoor by way of Ghijiga and Ohotsk. The officers of the Variag were, a captain, a commander, four lieutenants, six sub-lieutenants, an officer of marines with a cadet, a lieutenant of naval artillery, two sailing masters, two engineers, a surgeon, a paymaster, and a priest. As near as I could ascertain, their pay, including allowances, was about three-fourths that of American officers of similar grades. They received three times as much at sea as when awaiting orders, and this fact led them to seek constant service. In the ward room they read, wrote, talked, smoked, and could play any games of amusement except cards. Card playing is strictly forbidden by the Russian naval regulations. The sailors on the corvette were robust and powerful fellows, with appetites to frighten a hotel keeper. Russian sailors from the interior of the empire are very liable to scurvy. Those from Finland are the best for long voyages. Captain Lund once told me the experience of a Russian expedition of five ships upon a long cruise. One ship was manned by Finlanders, and the others carried sailors from the interior. The Finlanders were not attacked with scurvy, but the rest suffered severely. "All the Russians," said the captain, "make good sailors, but those from the maritime provinces are the best seamen." Early in the voyage it was interesting to see the men at dinner. Their table utensils were wooden spoons and tubs, at the rate of ten spoons and one tub to every ten men. A piece of canvas upon the deck received the tub, which generally contained soup. With their hats off, the men dined leisurely and amicably. Soup and bread were the staple articles of food. Cabbage soup _(schee)_ is the national diet of Russia, from the peasant up to the autocrat. Several times on the voyage we had soup on the captain's table from the supply prepared for the crew, and I can testify to its excellence. The food of the sailors was carefully inspected before being served. When the soup was ready, the cook took a bowl of it, with a slice of bread and a clean spoon, and delivered the whole to the boatswain. From the boatswain it went to the officer of the deck, and from him to the chief officer, who delivered it to the captain. The captain carefully examined and tasted the soup. If unobjectionable, the bowl was returned to the galley and the dinner served at once. A sailor's ration in the Russian navy is more than sufficient for an ordinary appetite and digestion. The grog ration is allowed, and the boatswain's call to liquid refreshment is longer and shriller than for any other duty. At the grog tub the sailor stands with uncovered head while performing the ceremonial abhorred of Good Templars. As of old in our navy, grog is stopped as a punishment. The drink ration can be entirely commuted and the food ration one half, but not more. Many sailors on the Variag practiced total abstinence at sea, and as the grog had been purchased in Japan at very high cost, the commutation money was considerable. Commutation is regulated according to the price of the articles where the ship was last supplied. I was told that the sailor's pay, including ordinary allowances, is about a hundred roubles a year. The sum is not munificent, but probably the Muscovite mariner is no more economical than the American one. In his liberty on shore he will get as drunk as the oft quoted 'boiled owl.' _En passant_ I protest against the comparison, as it is a slander upon the owl. At Petropavlovsk there was an amusing fraternization between the crews of the Variag and the Wright. The American sailors were scattered among the Russians in the proportion of one to six. Neither understood a word of the other's language, and the mouth and eye were obliged to perform the duties of the ear. The flowing bowl was the manual of conversation between the Russians and their new friends. The Americans attempted to drink against fearful odds, and the result was unfortunate. They returned sadly intoxicated and were unfit for social or nautical duties until the next day. When the Variag was at New York in 1863, many of her sailors were entrapped by bounty-brokers. When sailors were missing after liberty on shore, a search through the proper channels revealed them converted into American soldiers, much against their will. Usually they were found at New York, but occasionally a man reached the front before he was rescued. Some returned to the ship dressed as zouaves, others as artillerists; some in the yellow of cavalry, and so on through our various uniforms. Of course they were greatly jeered by their comrades. Everyone conversant with Russian history knows that Peter the Great went to England, and afterward to Holland, to study ship building. He introduced naval construction from those countries, and brought from Holland the men to manage his first ships and teach his subjects the art of navigation. As a result of his enterprise, the principal parts of a Russian ship have English or Dutch names, some words being changed a little to adapt them to Russian pronunciation. The Dutch navigators exerted great influence upon the nautical language of Russia. To illustrate this Captain Lund said: "A Dutch pilot or captain could come on my ship and his orders in his own language would be understood by my crew. I mean simply the words of command, without explanations. On the other hand, a Dutch crew could understand my orders without suspecting they were Russian." Sitting among the officers in the ward-room, I endeavored to accustom my ear to the sound of the Russian language and learn to repeat the most needed phrases. I soon acquired the alphabet, and could count up to any extent; I could spell Russian words much as a schoolboy goes through his 'first reader' exercise, but was unable to attain rapid enunciation. I could never get over the impression that the Muscovite type had been set up by a drunken printer who couldn't read. The R's looked the wrong way, the L's stood bottom upward, H's became N's, and C's were S's, and lower case and small caps were generally mixed up. The perplexities of Russian youth must be greater than ours, as they have thirty-six letters in their alphabet and every one of them must be learned. A brief study of Slavonic verbs and nouns convinced me they could never be acquired grammatically in the short time I proposed remaining in Russia, and so I gave them up. What a hindrance to a traveler and literal man of the world is this confusion of tongues! There is no human being who can make himself verbally understood everywhere on this little globe. In the Russian empire alone there are more than a hundred spoken languages and dialects. The emperor, with all his erudition, has many subjects with whom he is unable to converse. What a misfortune to mankind that the Tower of Babel was ever commenced! The architect who planned it should receive the execration of all posterity. The apartment I occupied was of goodly size, and contained a large writing desk. My bed was parallel to the keel, and hung so that it could swing when the ship rolled. Previous to my embarkation the room was the receptacle of a quantity of chronometers, sextants, charts, and other nautical apparatus. There were seventeen chronometers in one box, and a few others lay around loose. I never had as much time at my command before or since. Twice a day an officer came to wind these chronometers and note their variation. There were marine instruments enough in that room to supply a dozen sea-captains, but if the entire lot had been loan'd me, I never could have ascertained the ship's position without asking somebody who knew it. [Illustration: PLENTY OF TIME.] The partition separating me from the ward-room was built after the completion of the ship, and had a way of creaking like a thousand or more squeaky boots in simultaneous action. Every time we rolled, each board rubbed against its neighbor and waked the echoes of the cabin. The first time I slept in the room the partition seemed talking in Russian, and I distinctly remember that it named a majority of the cities and many noble families throughout the empire. After the first night it was powerless to disturb me. I thought it possible that on leaving the ship I might be in the condition of the woman, whose husband, a fearful snorer, was suddenly called from home. The lady passed several sleepless nights, until she hit upon the expedient of calling a servant with the coffee mill. The vigorous grinding of that household utensil had the effect of a powerful opiate. At eight o'clock every morning, Yakuff, (the Russian for Jacob,) brought me a pitcher of water. When my toilet was over, he appeared with a cup of tea and a few cakes. We conversed in the beginning with a sign language, until I picked up enough Russian to ask for tea, water, bread, and other necessary things. At eleven we had breakfast in the captain's cabin, where we discussed steaks, cutlets, tea, and cigars, until nearly noon. Dinner at six o'clock was opened with the never failing zakushka, or lunch, the universal preparative of the empire, and closed with tea and cigars. At eight o'clock tea was served again. After it, any one who chose could partake of the cup which cheers and inebriates. [Illustration: RUSSIAN OFFICERS AT MESS.] One morning during my voyage a sailor died. The ocean burial occurred on the following day, and was conducted according to the ceremonial of the Eastern Church. At the appointed time, I went with Captain Lund to the place of worship, between decks. The corpse was in a canvas coffin, its head and breast being visible. The coffin, partially covered with the naval ensign, lay on a wide plank about two feet above the deck. At its head the priest was reading the burial service, while near him there was a group of sailors forming the choir. Captain Lund and several officers stood at the foot of the coffin, each holding a burning taper. The service lasted about twenty minutes, and consisted of reading by the priest and responses by the choir. The censer was repeatedly swung, as in Catholic ceremonials, the priest bowing at the same time toward the sacred picture. Simultaneously all the candles were extinguished, and their several men advanced and kissed a small cross lying upon the coffin. The priest read a few lines from a written paper and placed it with the cross on the breast of the corpse. The coffin was then closed and carried upon the plank to the stern of the ship. After a final chant by the choir, one end of the plank was lifted, and a single splash in the water showed where the body went down. During the service the flag floated at half mast. It was soon lowered amid appropriate music, which ended the burial at sea. On the third day after leaving the Pacific we were shrouded in fog, but with it we had a fine southerly breeze that carried us rapidly on our course. The fog was so dense that we obtained no observation for four days, but so accurate was the sailing master's computation that the difference between our observed and estimated positions was less than two miles. When the fog rose we were fairly in Ghijiga Bay, a body of water shaped like a narrow V. Sharp eyes looking ahead discovered a vessel at anchor, and all hoped it was the Clara Bell. As we approached she developed into a barque, and gave us comfort, till her flag completed our delight. We threw the lead and began looking for anchorage. Nine, eight, seven fathoms were successively reported, and for some minutes the depth remained at six and a half. A mile from the Clara Bell we dropped anchor, the ship trembling from, stem to stern as the huge chain ran through the hawse-hole. We were at the end of a nine days voyage. CHAPTER VII. We were fifteen miles from the mouth of Ghijiga river, the shoals forbidding nearer approach. The tide rises twenty-two feet in Ghijiga Bay, and to reach the lighthouse and settlement near the river, even with small boats, it is necessary to go with the tide. We learned that Major Abasa, of the Telegraph service, was at the light-house awaiting our arrival, and that we must start before midnight to reach the landing at the proper time. Captain Lund ordered a huge box filled with provisions and other table ware, and threw in a few bottles of wine as ballast. I was too old a traveler to neglect my blankets and rubber coat, and found that Anossoff was as cautious as myself. We prolonged our tea-drinking to ten o'clock and then started. Descending the ship's side was no easy matter. It was at least three feet from the bottom of the gang-way ladder to the water, and the boat was dancing on the chopping sea like a pea on a hot shovel. Captain Lund descended first, followed by Anossoff. Then I made my effort, and behind me was a grim Cossack. Just as I reached the lowest step a wave swung the boat from the ship and left me hanging over the water. The Cossack, unmindful of things below, was backing steadily toward my head. I could not think of the Russian phrase for the occasion and was in some dilemma how to act. I shouted 'Look out' with such emphasis that the man understood me and halted with his heavy boots about two inches above my face. Clinging to the side ropes and watching my opportunity, I jumped at the right moment and happily hit the boat. The Cossack jumped into the lap of a sailor and received a variety of epithets for his carelessness. There are fourteen ways in the Russian language of calling a man a ---- fool, and I think all of them were used. [Illustration: ASCENDING THE BAY.] Wind and tide opposed each other and tossed us rather uncomfortably. The waves breaking over the bow saturated the Cossack and sprinkled some of the sailors. At the stern we managed to protect ourselves, though we caught occasionally a few drops of spray. Wrapped in my overcoat and holding a bear-skin on my knees, I studied the summer night in that high northern latitude. At midnight it seemed like day break, and I half imagined we had wrongly calculated the hours and were later than we supposed. Between sunset and sunrise the twilight crept along the horizon from Occident to Orient. Further north the inhabitants of the Arctic circle were enjoying the light of their long summer day. What a contrast to the bleak night of cold and darkness that stretches with faint glimmerings of dawn through nearly half the year. The shores of the bay were high perpendicular banks, sharply cut like the bluffs at Vicksburg. There are several head-lands, but none project far enough to form harbors behind them. The bottom furnishes good anchoring ground, but the bay is quite open to southerly winds. Captain Lund dropped his chin to his breast and slept soundly. Anossoff raised his coat collar and drew in his head like a tortoise returning into his shell, but with all his efforts he did not sleep. I was wakeful and found that time dragged slowly. The light-house had no light and needed none, as the darkness was far from profound. In approaching the mouth of the river we discovered a cluster of buildings, and close at hand two beacons, like crosses, marking the direction of the channel. There was a little surf breaking along the beach as our keel touched the ground. Our blankets came dripping from the bottom of the boat, and my satchel had taken water enough to spoil my paper collars and a dozen cigars. My greatest calamity on that night was the sudden and persistent stoppage of my watch. An occurrence of little moment in New York or London was decidedly unpleasant when no trusty watchmaker lived within four thousand miles. Major Abasa and the Ispravnik of Ghijiga escorted us from the landing to their quarters, where we soon warmed ourselves with hot tea, and I took opportunity and a couple of bearskins and went to sleep. Late in the day we had a dinner of soup, pork and peas, reindeer meat, and berry pudding. The deer's flesh was sweet and tender, with a flavor like that of the American elk. In this part of Siberia there are many wide plains (_tundras_) covered with moss and destitute of trees. The blueberry grows there, but is less abundant than the "maroska," a berry that I never saw in America. It is yellow when ripe, has an acid flavor, and resembles the raspberry in shape and size. We ate the maroska in as many forms as it could be prepared, and they told us that it grew in Scotland, Scandinavia, and Northern Russia. [Illustration: TAKING THE CENSUS.] The ordinary residents at the mouth of Ghijiga river were the pilot and his family, with three or four Cossacks to row boats on the bay. The natives of the vicinity came there occasionally, but none were permanent citizens. The arrival of the Variag and Clara Bell gave unusual activity to the settlement, and the Ispravnik might have returned a large population had he imitated the practice of those western towns that take their census during the stay of a railway train or a steamboat. There was once, according to a rural historian, an aspiring politician in Tennessee who wanted to go to Congress. There were not inhabitants enough in his district to send him, and so he placed a couple of his friends at the railway station to take the names of passengers as they visited the refreshment saloon and entered or left the depot. In a short time the requisite constituency was secured and sworn to, so that the aspirant for official honor accomplished the wish of his heart. [Illustration: LIGHT-HOUSE AT GHIJIGA.] The light-house on the promontory is a hexagonal edifice ten feet in diameter and height; it is of logs and has a flat top covered with dirt, whereon to kindle a fire. The interior is entered by a low door, and I found it floored with two sticks of wood and a mud puddle. One could reach the top by climbing a sloping pole notched like an American fence-post. The pilot resides at the foot of the bluff, and is expected to visit this beacon daily. A cannon, old enough to have served at Pultawa, stands near the light-house, in a condition of utter helplessness. The houses were furnished quite primitively. Beds were of bearskins and blankets, and the floor was the only bedstead. There were rustic tables of hewn boards, and benches without backs. In a storehouse there was a Fairbanks' scale, somewhat worn and rusty, and I found a tuneless melodeon from Boston and a coffee mill from New York. The town of Ghijiga is on the bank of the river, twelve miles from the light-house, and the route thither was overland or by water, at one's choice. Overland there was a footpath crossing a hill and a wet tundra. The journey by water was upon the Ghijiga river; five versts of rowing and thirteen of towing by men or dogs. As it was impossible to hire a horse, I repudiated the overland route altogether, and tried a brief journey on the river, but could not reach the town and return in time for certain engagements. Ghijiga has a population of less than three hundred, and closely resembles Petropavlovsk. Two or three foreign merchants go there annually with goods to exchange for furs which the Russian traders gather. The inhabitants are Russians or half breeds, the former predominating. The half breeds are said to possess all the vices of both races with the virtues of neither. Mr. Bilzukavitch, the Ispravnik of Ghijiga, was a native of Poland, and governed seventy-two thousand square miles of territory, with a population of sixteen hundred taxed males. His military force comprised thirty Cossacks with five muskets, of which three were unserviceable. The native tribes included in the district of Ghijiga are the Koriaks and Chukchees; the Koriaks readily pay tribute and acknowledge the Russian authority, but the Chukchees are not yet fairly subdued. They were long in open war with the Russians, and though peace is now established, many of them are not tributary. Those who visit the Russian towns are compelled to pay tribute and become Imperial subjects before selling or purchasing goods. The Ispravnik is an artist of unusual merit, as evinced by an album of his sketches illustrating life in Northern Siberia. Some of them appeared like steel engravings, and testified to the skill and patience of the man who made them. On my second day at Ghijiga I tried a river journey with a dog team. The bottom of the boat was on the 'dug-out' principle, and the sides were two planks meeting in sharp and high points at the ends. I had a seat on some bearskins on the plank flooring, and found it reasonably comfortable. One man steered the boat, another in the bow managed the towline, and a third, who walked on land, drove the dogs. We had seven canines--three pairs and a leader--pulling upon a deerskin towline fastened to a thole-pin. It was the duty of the man in the bow to regulate the towline according to circumstances. The dogs were unaccustomed to their driver, and balky in consequence. Two of them refused to pull when we started, and remained obstinate until persuaded with sticks. The driver used neither reins nor whip, but liberally employed the drift wood along the banks. Clubs were trumps in that day's driving. The team was turned to the left by a guttural sound that no paper and ink can describe, and to the right by a rapid repetition of the word 'ca.' [Illustration: TOWED BY DOGS] Occasionally the path changed from one bank to the opposite. At such times we seated the dogs in the bow of the boat and ferried them over the river. In the boat they were generally quiet, though inclined to bite each other's legs at convenient opportunities. One muddy dog shook himself over me; I forgave him, but his driver did not, the innocent brute receiving several blows for making his toilet in presence of passengers. The Koriaks have a habit of sacrificing dogs to obtain a fortunate fishery. The animals are hung on limbs of trees, and the sacrifice always includes the best. Major Abasa urged them to give only their worthless dogs to the evil spirit, assuring them the fishery would result just as well, and they promised to try the experiment. Dogs were scarce and expensive in consequence of a recent canine epidemic. Only a day before our arrival three dogs developed hydrophobia and were killed. The salmon fishery was very poor in 1866, and the inhabitants of the Ghijiga district were relying upon catching seals in the autumn. At Kolymsk, on the Kolyma river, the authorities require every man to catch one-tenth more than enough for his own use. This surplus is placed in a public storehouse and issued in case of famine. It is the rule to keep a three years supply always at hand. Several seasons of scarcity led to the adoption of the plan. We were frequently visited by the natives from a Koriak village near the light-house. Their dress was of deer skin, and comprised a kotlanka, or frock, pantaloons, and boots, or leggings. Winter garments are of deer skin with its hair remaining, but summer clothing is of dressed skins alone. These natives appear below the ordinary stature, and their legs seemed to me very small. Ethnologists are divided concerning the origin of the Koriaks, some assigning them to the Mongol race and others to the Esquimaux. The Koriaks express no opinion on the disputed point, and have none. Both sexes dress alike, and wear ornaments of beads in their ears. They have a curious custom of shaving the back part of the head, _a la moine_. Fashion is as arbitrary among the Koriaks as in Paris or New York, and dictates the cut of garments and the style of hair dressing with unyielding severity. Like savages everywhere, these natives manifest a fondness for civilized attire. A party visited the Clara Bell and obtained some American clothing. One man sported a cast-off suit, in which he appeared as uneasy as an organ grinder's monkey in a new coat. Another wore a sailor's jacket from the Variag, and sported the number '19' with manifest pride. A third had a fatigue cap, bearing the letters 'U.S.' in heavy brass, the rest of his costume being thoroughly aboriginal. One old fellow had converted an empty meat can into a hat without removing the printed label "stewed beef." I gave him a pair of dilapidated gloves, which he donned at once. The Koriaks are of two kinds, wandering and settled. The wanderers have great numbers of reindeer, and lead a migratory life in finding pasturage for their herds. The settled Koriaks are those who have lost their deer and been forced to locate where they can subsist by fishing. The former are kind and hospitable; the latter generally the reverse. Poverty has made them selfish, as it has made many a white man. All are honest to a degree unusual among savages. When Major Abasa traveled among them in the winter of 1865, they sometimes refused compensation for their services, and were scrupulously careful to guard the property of their guests. Once the Major purposely left some trivial articles. The next day a native brought them forward, and was greatly astonished when pay was offered for his trouble. "This is your property," was the response; "we could not keep it in our tents, and it was our duty to bring it to you." The wandering Koriaks estimate property in deer as our Indians count in horses. It is only among the thousands that wealth is eminently respectable. Some Koriaks own ten or twelve thousand deer, and one fortunate native is the possessor of forty thousand in his own name, (O-gik-a-mu-tik.) Though the wealthiest of his tribe, he does not drive fast horses, and never aspired to a seat in Congress. How much he has missed of real life! Reindeer form the circulating medium, and all values are expressed in this four-footed currency. The animal supplies nearly every want. They eat his meat and pick his bones, and not only devour the meat, but the stomach, entrails, and their contents. When they stew the mass of meat and half digested moss, the stench is disgusting. Captain Kennan told me that when he arrived among the Koriaks the peculiar odor made him ill, and he slept out of doors with the thermometer at -35° rather than enter a tent where cooking was in progress. [Illustration: KORIAK YOURT.] The Koriaks build their summer dwellings of light poles covered with skin, or bark. Their winter habitations are of logs covered with earth and partly sunk into the ground, the crevices being filled with moss. The summer dwellings are called _balagans_, and the winter ones _yourts_, but the latter name is generally applied to both. A winter yourt has a hole in the top, which serves for both chimney and door. The ladder for the descent is a hewn stick, with holes for one's feet, and leans directly over the fire. Whatever the outside temperature, the yourt is suffocatingly hot within, and no fresh air can enter except through the top. When a large fire is burning and a thick volume of smoke pours out, the descent is very disagreeable. Russians and other white men, even after long practice, never attempt it without a shudder. The yourt is generally circular or oblong, and its size is proportioned to the family of the owner. The fire is in the center, and the sleeping apartments are ranged around the walls. These apartments, called 'polags,' are about six feet square and four or five high, partitioned with light poles and skin curtains. Owing to the high temperature the natives sleep entirely naked. Sometimes in the coldest nights their clothing is hung out of doors to rid it of certain parasites not unknown in civilization. Benumbed with, frost, the insects lose their hold and fall into the snow, to the great comfort of those who nursed and fed them. The body of a Koriak, considered as a microcosm, is remarkably well inhabited. Captain Kennan gave me a graphic description of the Koriak marriage ceremonial. The lover must labor for the loved one's father, not less than one nor more than five years. No courtship is allowed during this period, and the young man must run the risk of his love being returned. The term of service is fixed by agreement between the stern parent and the youth. At an appointed day the family and friends are assembled in a yourt, the old women being bridesmaids. The bride is placed in one polag and the bridegroom in the next. At a given signal a race commences, the bride leading. Each must enter every polag, and the man must catch his prize in a specified way before she makes the circuit of the yourt. The bridesmaids, armed with long switches, offer every assistance to the woman and equal hindrance to the man. For her they lift the curtains of the polags, but hold them down against her pursuer and pound him with their switches. Unless she stops voluntarily it is utterly impossible to overtake her within the circuit. If she is not overtaken the engagement is 'off,' and the man must retire or serve again for the privilege of another love chase. Generally the pursuit is successful; the lover doubtless knows the temper of the lovee before becoming her father's apprentice. But coquettes are not unknown in Koriakdom, and the pursuing youths are sometimes left in the lurch--or the polags. Should the lover overtake the maiden, before making the circuit, both remain seven days and nights in a polag. Their food is given them under the curtain during that period, and they cannot emerge for any purpose whatever. The bridesmaids then perform a brief but touching ceremonial, and the twain are pronounced one flesh. Northeast of Ghijiga is the country of the Chukchees, a people formerly hostile to the Koriaks. The feuds are not entirely settled, but the ill feeling has diminished and both parties maintain a dignified reserve. The Chukchees are hunters and traders, and have large herds of reindeer but very few dogs. They are the most warlike of these northern races, and long held the Russians at bay. They go far from shore with their _baydaras_, or seal skin boats, visiting islands along the coast, and frequently crossing to North America. Their voyages are of a mercantile character, the Chukchee buying at the Russian towns and selling his goods among the Esquimaux. At Ghijiga I made a short voyage in a baydara. The frame appeared very fragile, and the seal skin covering displayed several leaks. I was unwilling to risk myself twenty feet from land, but after putting me ashore the Koriak boatman pulled fearlessly into the bay. The Chukchee trader has a crew of his own race to paddle his light canoe. Occasionally the baydaras are caught in storms and must be lightened. I have the authority of Major Abasa that in such case the merchant keeps his cargo and throws overboard his crew. Goods and furs are costly, but men are cheap and easily replaced. The crew is entirely reconciled to the state of affairs, and drowns itself with that resignation known only to pagans. "But," I asked, "do not the men object to this kind of jettison?" "I believe not," was the major's reply; "they are only discharging their duty to their employer. They go over the side just as they would step from an over-laden sledge." [Illustration: DISCHARGING A DECK LOAD.] I next inquired if the trader did not first throw out the men to whom he was most indebted, but could not obtain information on that point. It is probable that with an eye to business he disposes promptly of his creditors and keeps debtors to the last. What a magnificent system of squaring accounts! The Chukchees have mingled much with whalemen along Anadyr Bay and the Arctic Ocean, and readily adopt the white man's vices. They drink whisky without fear, and will get very drunk if permitted. When Captain Macrae's telegraph party landed at the mouth of the Anadyr the natives supposed the provision barrels were full of whisky, and became very importunate for something to drink. The captain made a mixture of red pepper and vinegar, which he palmed off as the desired article. All were pleased with it, and the hotter it was the better. One native complained that its great heat burned the skin from his throat before he could swallow enough to secure intoxication. The fame of this whisky was wide-spread. Captain Kennan said he heard at Anadyrsk and elsewhere of its wonderful strength, and was greatly amused when he arrived at Macrae's and heard the whole story. Many of these natives have learned English from whalemen and speak enough to be understood. Gov. Bilzukavitch visited Anadyrsk in the spring of 1866, and met there a Chukchee chief. Neither spoke the other's language, and so the governor called his Koriak servant. The same dilemma occurred, as each was ignorant of the other's vernacular. There was an awkward pause until it was discovered that both Koriak and Chukchee could speak English. Business then proceeded without difficulty. [Illustration: REINDEER RIDE.] Among the Chukchees a deer can be purchased for a pound of tobacco, but the price increases as one travels southward. With the Koriaks it is four or five roubles, at Ohotsk ten or fifteen, and on the banks of the Amoor not often less than fifty. South of the Amoor the reindeer is not a native. I am inclined to discredit marry stories of the wonderful swiftness of this animal. He sometimes performs remarkable journeys, but ordinarily he is outstripped by a good dog team. Reindeer have the advantage of finding their food under the snow, while provision for dogs must be carried on the sledge. When turned out in winter, the deer digs beneath the snow and seeks his food without troubling his master. The American sailors when they have liberty on shore in these northern regions, invariably indulge in reindeer rides, to the disgust of the animals and their owners. The deer generally comes to a halt in the first twenty yards, and nothing less than building a fire beneath him can move him from his tracks. There is a peculiar mushroom in Northeastern Siberia spotted like a leopard and surmounted with a small hood. It grows in other parts of Russia, where it is poisonous, but among the Koriaks it is simply intoxicating. When one finds a mushroom of this kind he can sell it for three or four reindeer. So powerful is this fungus that the fortunate native who eats it remains drunk for several days. By a process of transmission which I will not describe, as it might offend fastidious persons, half a dozen individuals may successively enjoy the effects of a single mushroom, each of them in a less degree than his predecessor. Like savages every where, these northern natives are greatly pleased with pictures and study them attentively. I heard that several copies of American illustrated papers were circulating among the Chukchees, who handled them with great care. There is a superstitious reverence for pictures mingled with childlike curiosity. People possessing no written language find the pictorial representations of the civilized world the nearest approach to savage hieroglyphics. The telegraph was an object of great wonder to all the natives. In Ghijiga a few hundred yards of wire were put up in the spring of 1866. Crowds gathered to see the curiosity, and many messages were exchanged to prove that the machine really spoke. At Anadyrsk Captain Kennan arranged a small battery and held in his pocket the key that controlled the circuit. Then the marvel began. The instrument told when persons entered or left the room, when any thing was taken from the table without permission, or any impropriety committed. Even covered with a piece of deer skin, it could see distinctly. With the human tendency to ascribe to the devil anything not understood, these natives looked upon the telegraph as supernatural. As it showed no desire to harm them, they exhibited no fear but abundance of respect. The Chukchees and Koriaks are creditable workers in metals and ivory. I saw animal representations rudely but well cut in ivory, and spear-heads that would do credit to any blacksmith. Their hunting knives, made from hoop-iron, are well fashioned, and some of the handles are tastefully inlaid with copper, brass, and silver. In trimming their garments they are very skillful, and cut bits of deerskin into various fantastic shapes. At Ghijiga I bought a kotlanka, intending to wear it in my winter travel. Its sleeves were purposely very long, and the hood had a wide fringe of dogskin to shield the face. I could never put the thing on with ease, and ultimately sold it to a curiosity hunter. Gloves and mittens, lined with squirrel skin, are made at Ghijiga, and worn in all the region within a thousand miles. A great hindrance to winter travel in Northeastern Siberia is the prevalence of _poorgas_, or snow storms with wind. On the bleak tundras where there is no shelter, the poorgas sweep with pitiless severity. Some last but a few hours, with the thermometer ten or twenty degrees below zero. Sometimes the wind takes up whole masses of snow and forms drifts several feet deep in a few moments. Travelers, dogs, and sledges are frequently buried out of sight, and remain in the snow till the storm is over. Dogs begin to howl at the approach of a poorga, long before men can see any indication of it. They display a tendency to burrow in the snow if the wind is cold and violent. Poorgas do not occur at regular intervals, but are most prevalent in February and March. A few years ago a party of Koriaks crossing the great tundra north of Kamchatka encountered a severe storm. It was of unusual violence, and soon compelled a halt. Dogs and men burrowed into the snow to wait the end of the gale. Unfortunately they halted in a wide hollow that, unperceived by the party, filled with a deep drift. The snow contains so much air that it is not difficult to breathe in it at a considerable depth, and the accumulation of a few feet is not alarming. Hour after hour passed, and the place grew darker, till two men of the party thought it well to look outside. Digging to the surface, the depth proved much greater than expected. Quite exhausted with their labor, they gained the open air, and found the storm had not ceased. Alarmed for their companions they tried to reach them, but the hole where they ascended was completely filled. The snow drifted rapidly, and they were obliged to change their position often to keep near the surface. When the poorga ended they estimated it had left fifty feet of snow in that spot. Again endeavoring to rescue their companions, and in their weak condition finding it impossible, they sought the nearest camp. In the following summer the remains of men and dogs were found where the melting snow left them. They had huddled close together, and probably perished from suffocation. [Illustration: TAIL PIECE, REINDEER] CHAPTER VIII. We remained four days at Ghijiga and then sailed for Ohotsk. For two days we steamed to get well out of the bay, and then stopped the engines aird depended upon canvas. A boy who once offered a dog for sale was asked the breed of the pup. "He _was_ a pointer," replied the youth; "but father cut off his ears and tail last week and made a bull-dog of him." Lowering the chimney and hoisting the screw, the Yariag became a sailing ship, though her steaming propensities remained, just as the artificial bull-dog undoubtedly retained the pointer instinct. The ship had an advantage over the animal in her ability to resume her old character at pleasure. On the fourth day, during a calm, we were surrounded by sea-gulls like those near San Francisco. We made deep sea soundings and obtained specimens of the bottom from depths of two or three hundred fathoms. Near the entrance of Ghijiga Bay we brought up coral from eighty fathoms of water, and refuted the theory that coral grows only in the tropics and at a depth of less than two hundred feet. The specimens were both white and red, resembling the moss-like sprigs often seen in museums. The temperature of the water was 47° Fahrenheit. Captain Lund told me coral had been found in the Ohotsk sea in latitude 55° in a bed of considerable extent. Every day when calm we made soundings, which were carefully recorded for the use of Russian chart makers. Once we found that the temperature of the bottom at a depth of two hundred fathoms, was at the freezing point of water. The doctor proposed that a bottle of champagne should be cooled in the marine refrigerator. The bottle was attached to the lead and thrown overboard. "I send champagne to Neptune," said the doctor. "He drink him and he be happy." When the lead returned to the surface it came alone. Neptune drank the champagne and retained the bottle as a souvenir. One day the sailors caught a gull and painted it red. When the bird was released he greatly alarmed his companions, and as long as we could see them, they shunned his society. At least eighty miles from land we had a dozen sparrows around us at once. A small hawk seized one of these birds and seated himself on a spar for the purpose of breakfasting. A fowling piece brought him to the deck, where we examined and pronounced him of the genus _Falco_, species _NISUS_, or in plain English, a sparrow hawk. During the day we saw three varieties of small birds, one of them resembling the American robin. The sailors caught two in their hands, and released them without injury. Approaching Ohotsk a fog bank shut out the land for an hour or two, and when it lifted we discovered the harbor. A small sand-bar intervened between the ocean and the town, but did not intercept the view. As at Petropavlovsk, the church was the most prominent object and formed an excellent landmark. With my glass I surveyed the line of coast where the surf was breaking, but was long unable to discover an entering place. The Ohota river is the only harbor, and entirely inaccessible to a ship like the Variag. Descending the ship's side after we anchored, I jumped when the boat was falling and went down five or six feet before alighting. Both hands were blistered as the gang-way ropes passed through them. Keeping the beacons carefully in line, we rolled over the bar on the top of a high wave, and then followed the river channel to the landing. Many years ago Ohotsk was the most important Russian port on the waters leading to the Pacific. Supplies for Kamchatka and Russian America were brought overland from Yakutsk and shipped to Petropavlovsk, Sitka, and other points under Russian control. Many ships for the Pacific Ocean and Ohotsk sea were built there. I was shown the spot where Bering's vessel was constructed, with its cordage and extra sails of deerskin, and its caulking of moss. Billings' expedition in a ship called Russia's Glory, was organized here for an exploration of the Arctic ocean. At one time the Government had foundries and workshops at Ohotsk. The shallowness of water on the bar was a great disadvantage, as ships drawing more than twelve feet were unable to enter. Twenty years ago the government abandoned Ohotsk for Ayan, and when the Amoor was opened it gave up the latter place. The population, formerly exceeding two thousand, is now less than two hundred. We landed on a gravelly beach, where we were met by a crowd of Cossacks and "Lamuti." The almond-shaped eyes and high cheek bones of the latter betray their Mongolian origin. As I walked among them each hailed me with _sdrastveteh_, the Russian for 'good-morning.' I endeavored to reply with the same word, but my pronunciation was far from accurate. Near these natives there were several Yakuts and Tunguze, with physiognomies unlike the others. The Russian empire contains more races of men than any rival government, and we frequently find the population of a single locality made up from two or more branches of the human family. In this little town with not more than ten or twelve dozens of inhabitants, there were representatives of the Slavonic, the Tartar, and the Mongolian races. We found Captain Mahood, of the Telegraph service, in a quiet residence, where he had passed the summer in comparitive idleness. He had devoted himself to exploring the country around Ohotsk and studying the Russian language. "We don't expect to starve at present," said the captain; "Providence sends us fish, the emperor sends us flour, and the merchants furnish tea and sugar. We have lived so long on a simple bill of fare that we are almost unfitted for any other." We had a lunch of dried fish, tea, whisky, and cigars, and soon after went to take tea at a house where most of the Variag's officers were assembled. The house was the property of three brothers, who conducted the entire commerce of Ohotsk. The floor of the room where we were feasted was of hewn plank, fastened with enormous nails, and appeared able to resist anything short of an earthquake. The windows were double to keep out the winter's cold, but on that occasion they displayed a profusion of flower pots. The walls were papered, and many pictures were hung upon them. Every part of the room was scrupulously clean. [Illustration: WAGON RIDE WITH DOGS.] Three ladies were seated on a sofa, and a fourth occupied a chair near them. The three were the wives of the merchant brothers, and the fourth a visiting friend. One with black eyes and hair was dressed tastefully and even elaborately. The eldest, who acted as hostess, was in black, and her case in receiving visitors would have done credit to a society dame in St. Petersburg. By way of commencement we had tea and _nalifka_, the latter a kind of currant wine of local manufacture and very well flavored. They gave us corned beef and bread, each person taking his plate upon his knee as at an American pic-nic, and after two or three courses of edibles we had coffee and cigarettes, the latter from a manufactory at Yakutsk. According to Russian etiquette each of us thanked the hostess for her courtesy. Out in the broad street there were many dogs lying idle in the sunshine or biting each other. A small wagon with a team of nine dogs carried a quantity of tea and sugar from the Variag's boats to a warehouse. When the work was finished I took a ride on the wagon, and was carried at good speed. I enjoyed the excursion until the vehicle upset and left me sprawling on the gravel with two or three bruises and a prejudice against that kind of traveling. By the time I gained my feet the dogs were disappearing in the distance, and fairly running away from the driver. Possibly they are running yet. An old weather beaten church and equally old barracks are near each other, an appropriate arrangement in a country where church and state are united. The military garrison includes thirty Cossacks, who are under the orders of the Ispravnik. They row the pilot boat when needed, travel on courier or other service, guard the warehouses, and when not wanted by government labor and get drunk for themselves. The governor was a native of Poland, and it struck me as a curious fact that the ispravniks of Kamchatka, Ghijiga, and Ohotsk were Poles. Cows and dogs are the only stock maintained at Ohotsk. The former live on grass in summer, and on hay and fish in whiter. Though repeatedly told that cows and horses in Northeastern Siberia would eat dried fish with avidity, I was inclined to skepticism. Captain Mahood told me he had seen them eating fish in winter and appearing to thrive on it. What was more singular, he had seen a cow eating fresh salmon in summer when the hills were covered with grass. There is a story that Cuvier in a fit of illness, once imagined His Satanic Majesty standing before him. "Ah!" said the great naturalist, "horns, hoofs; graniverous; needn't fear him." I wonder if Cuvier knew the taste of the cows at Ohotsk? No ship had visited Ohotsk for nearly a year before our arrival, though half a dozen whalers had passed in sight. A steamer goes annually from the Amoor with a supply of flour and salt on government account. The mail comes once a year, so that the postmaster has very little to do for three hundred and sixty-four days. Sometimes the mail misses, and then people must wait another twelvemonth for their letters. What a nice residence it would be for a young man whose sweetheart at a distance writes him every day. He would get three hundred and sixty-five letters at once, and in the case of a missing mail, seven hundred and thirty of them. [Illustration: YEARLY MAIL.] Bears are quite numerous around Ohotsk, and their dispositions do not savor of gentleness. Only a few days before our visit a native was partly devoured within two miles of town. Many of the dogs are shrewd enough to catch their own fish, but have not learned how to cure them for winter use. When at Ohotsk I went to the bank of the river as the tide was coming in, and watched the dogs at their work. Wading on the sand bars and mud flats till the water was almost over their backs, they stood like statues for several minutes. Waiting till a salmon was fairly within reach, a dog would snap at him with such accuracy of aim that he rarely missed. I kept my eye on a shaggy brute that stood with little more than his head out of water. His eyes were in a fixed position, and for twelve or fifteen minutes he did not move a muscle. Suddenly his head disappeared, and after a brief struggle he came to shore with a ten-pound salmon in his jaws. None of the cows are skilled in salmon catching. [Illustration: DOGS FISHING.] Two or three years ago a mail carrier from Ayan to Yakutsk was visited by a bear during a night halt. The mail bag was lying by a tree a few steps from the Cossack, and near the bank of a brook. The bear seized and opened the pouch, regardless of the government seal on the outside. After turning the letter package several times in his paws, he tossed it into the brook. The Cossack discharged his pistol to frighten the bear, and then fished the letters from the water. It is proper to say the package was addressed to an officer somewhat famous for his bear-hunting proclivities. When we left Ohotsk at the close of day, we took Captain Mahood and the governor to dine with us, and when our guests departed we hoisted anchor and steamed away. Captain Lund burned a blue light as a farewell signal, and we could see an answering fire on shore. Our course lay directly southward, and when our light was extinguished we were barely visible through the distance and gloom. "But true to our course, though our shadow grow dark, We'll trim our broad sail as before; And stand by the rudder that governs the bark, Nor ask how we look from the shore." CHAPTER IX. On the Ohotsk Sea we had calms with light winds, and made very slow progress. One day while the men were exercising at the guns, the look out reported a sail. We were just crossing the course from Ayan to Ghijiga, and were in the Danzig's track. The strange vessel shortened sail and stood to meet us, and before long we were satisfied it was our old acquaintance. At sunset we were several miles apart and nearing very slowly. The night was one of the finest I ever witnessed at sea; the moon full and not a cloud visible, and the wind carrying us four or five miles an hour. The brig was lying to, and we passed close under her stern, shortening our sail as we approached her. Everybody was on deck and curious to learn the news. "SDRASTVETEH," shouted Captain Lund when we were in hearing distance. "SDRASTVETEH," responded the clear voice of Phillipeus; and then followed the history of the Danzig's voyage. "We had a good voyage to Ayan, and staid there four days. We are five days out, and passed through a heavy gale on the second day. Going to Ghijiga." Then we replied with the story of our cruise and asked for news from Europe. "War in progress. France and Austria against Prussia, Italy, and Russia. No particulars." By this time the ships were separated and our conversation ended. It was conducted in Russian, but I knew enough of the language to comprehend what was said. There was a universal "eh!" of astonishment as the important sentence was completed. Here were momentous tidings; France and Russia taking part in a war that was not begun when I left America. A French fleet was in Japanese waters and might be watching for us. It had two ships, either of them stronger than the Variag. As the Danzig disappeared we went below. "I hoped to go home at the end of this voyage," said the captain as we seated around his table; "but we must now remain in the Pacific. War has come and may give us glory or the grave; possibly both." For an hour we discussed the intelligence and the probabilities of its truth. As we separated, Captain Lund repeated with emphasis his opinion that the news was false. "I do not believe it," said he; "but I must prepare for any emergency." In the wardroom the officers were exultant over the prospect of promotion and prize money. The next day the men were exercised at the guns, and for the rest of the voyage they could not complain of ennui. The deck was cleared of all superfluous rubbish, and we were ready for a battle. The shotted case for the signal books was made ready, and other little preparations attended to. I seemed carried back to my days of war, and had vivid recollections of being stormed at with shot and shell. From Ohotsk to the mouth of the Amoor is a direct course of about four hundred miles. A light draught steamer would have made short work of it, but we drew too much water to enter the northern passage. So we were forced to sail through La Perouse Straits and up the Gulf of Tartary to De Castries Bay. The voyage was more than twelve hundred miles in length, and had several turnings. It was like going from New York to Philadelphia through Harrisburg, or from Paris to London through Brussels and Edinboro'. A good wind came to our relief and took us rapidly through La Perouse straits. There is a high rock in the middle of the passage covered with sea-lions, like those near San Francisco. In nearly all weather the roaring of these creatures can be heard, and is a very good substitute for a fog-bell. I am not aware that any government allows a subsidy to the sea-lions. We saw the northern coast of Japan and the southern end of Sakhalin, both faint and shadowy in the fog and distance. The wind freshened to a gale, and we made twelve knots an hour under double reefed mainsails and topsails. In the narrow straits we escaped the heavy waves encountered at sea in a similar breeze. Turning at right angles in the Gulf of Tartary, we began to roll until walking was no easy matter. The wind abated so that by night we shook out our reefs and spread the royals and to'gallant sails to keep up our speed. As we approached De Castries the question of war was again discussed. "If I find only one French ship there," said the captain, "I shall proceed. If there are two I cannot fight them, and must run to San Francisco or some other neutral port." Just then San Francisco was the last place I desired to visit, but I knew I must abide the fortunes of war. We talked of the possibility of convincing a French captain that we were engaged in an international enterprise, and therefore not subject to capture. Anossoff joined me in arranging a plan to cover contingencies. As we approached De Castries we could see the spars of a large ship over the islands at the entrance of the harbor. A moment later she was announced. "A corvette, with steam up." She displayed her flag--an English one. As we dropped anchor in the harbor a boat came to us, and an officer mounted the side and descended to the cabin. The ship proved to be the British Corvette Scylla, just ready to sail for Japan. Escaping her we did not encounter Charybdis. The mission of the Scylla was entirely pacific, and her officer informed us there had been war between Prussia and Austria, but at last accounts all Europe was at peace. The war of 1866 was finished long before I knew of its commencement. De Castries Bay is on the Gulf of Tartary, a hundred and thirty-five miles from Nicolayevsk. La Perouse discovered and surveyed it in 1787, and named it in honor of the French Minister of Marine. It is in Lat. 51° 28' N., Lon. 140° 49' E., and affords good and safe anchorage. Near the entrance are several islands, which protect ships anchored behind them. The largest of these islands is occupied as a warehouse and coal depot, and has an observatory and signal station visible from the Gulf. The town is small, containing altogether less than fifty buildings. It is a kind of ocean port to Nicolayevsk and the Amoor river, but the settlement was never a flourishing one. Twelve miles from the landing is the end of Lake Keezee, which opens into the Amoor a hundred and fifty miles from its mouth. It was formerly the custom to send couriers by way of Lake Keezee and the Amoor to Nicolayevsk to notify consigners and officials of the arrival of ships. Now the telegraph is in operation and supercedes the courier. In 1855 an English fleet visited De Castries in pursuit of some Russian vessels known to have ascended the Gulf. When the fleet came in sight there were four Russian ships in port, and a few shots were exchanged, none of them taking effect. During a heavy fog in the following night and day the Russians escaped and ascended the Straits of Tartary toward the Amoor. The Aurora, the largest of these ships, threw away her guns, anchors, and every heavy article, and succeeded in entering the Amoor. The English lay near De Castries, and could not understand where the Russians had gone, as the southern entrance of the Amoor was then unknown to geographers. We reached this port on the morning of September eleventh. The Variag could go no further owing to her draft of water, but fortunately the Morje, a gunboat of the Siberian fleet, was to sail for Nicolayevsk at noon, and we were happily disappointed in our expectations of waiting several days at De Castries. About eleven o'clock I left the Variag and accompanied Captain Lund, the doctor, and Mr. Anassoff into the boat dancing at the side ladder. Half an hour after we boarded the Morje she was under way, and we saw the officers and men of the corvette waving us farewell. The Morje drew eight feet of water, and was admirably adapted to the sea coast service. There were several vessels of this class in the Siberian fleet, and their special duty was to visit the ports of Kamchatka, North Eastern Siberia, and Manjouria, and act as tow boats along the Straits of Tartary. The officers commanding them are sent from Russia, and generally remain ten years in this service. At the end of that time, if they wish to retire they can do so and receive half-pay for the rest of their lives. This privilege is not granted to officers in other squadrons, and is given on the Siberian station in consequence of the severer duties and the distance from the centers of civilization. In its military service the government makes inducements of pay and promotion to young officers who go to Siberia. I frequently met officers who told me they had sought appointments in the Asiatic department in preference to any other. The pay and allowances are better than in European Russia, promotion is more rapid, and the necessities of life are generally less costly. Duties are more onerous and privations are greater, but these drawbacks are of little consequence to an enterprising and ambitious soldier. The Morje had no accommodations for passengers, and the addition to her complement was something serious. Captain Lund, the doctor, Mr. Anassoff, and myself were guests of her captain. The cabin was given to us to arrange as best we could. My proposal to sleep under the table was laughed at as impracticable. I knew what I was about, having done the same thing years before on Mississippi steamers. When you must sleep on the floor where people may walk about, always get under the table if possible. You run less risk of receiving boot heels in your mouth and eyes, and whole acres of brogans in your ribs. The navigation of the Straits of Tartary is very intricate, the water being shallow and the channel tortuous. From De Castries to Cape Catherine there is no difficulty, but beyond the cape the channel winds like the course of the Ohio, and at many points bends quite abruptly. The government has surveyed and buoyed it with considerable care, so that a good pilot can take a light draught steamer from De Castries to Nicolayevsk in twelve or fifteen hours. Sailing ships are greatly retarded by head winds and calms, and often spend weeks on the voyage. In 1857 Major Collins was nineteen days on the barque Bering from one of these ports to the other. [Illustration: TEACHINGS OF EXPERIENCE.] In the straits we passed four vessels, one of them thirty days from De Castries and only half through the worst of the passage. The water shoals so rapidly in some places that it is necessary to sound on both sides of the ship at once. Vessels drawing less than ten feet can pass to the Ohotsk sea around the northern end of Sakhalin island, but the channel is even more crooked than the southern one. We anchored at sunset, and did not move till daybreak. At the hour of sunset, on this vessel as on the corvette, we had the evening chant of the service of the Eastern church. While it was in progress a sentinel on duty over the cabin held his musket in his left hand and made the sign of the cross with his right. Soldier and Christian at the same moment, he observed the outward ceremonial of both. The crew, with uncovered beads, stood upon the deck and chanted the prayer. As the prayer was uttered the national flag, lowered from the mast, seemed, like those beneath it, to bow in adoration of the Being who holds the waters in the hollow of His hand, and guides and controls the universe. While passing the straits of Tartary we observed a mirage of great beauty, that pictured the shores of Sakhalin like a tropical scene. We seemed to distinguish cocoa and palm trees, dark forests and waving fields of cane, along the rocky shores, that were really below the horizon. Then there were castles, with lofty walls and frowning battlements, cloud-capped towers, gorgeous palaces, and solemn temples, rising among the fields and forests, and overarched with curious combinations of rainbow hues. The mirage frequently occurs in this region, but I was told it rarely attained such beauty as on that occasion. Sakhalin island, which separates the Gulf of Tartary from the Ohotsk sea, extends through nine degrees of latitude and belongs partly to Russia and partly to Japan. The Japanese have settlements in the Southern portion, engaging in trade with the natives and catching and curing fish. The natives are of Tunguze origin, like those of the lower Amoor, and subsist mainly upon fish. The Russians have settlements at Cape Dui, where there is excellent coal in veins eighteen feet thick and quite near the coast. Russia desired the entire island, but the Japanese positively refuse to negotiate. Some years ago the Siberian authorities established a colony near the Southern extremity, but its existence was brief. At three o'clock in the afternoon of September eleventh we entered the mouth of the Amoor, the great river of Asiatic Russia. The entrance is between two Capes or headlands, seven miles apart and two or three hundred feet high. The southern one, near which we passed, is called Cape Pronge, and has a Gilyak village at its base. Below this cape the hills border the Gulf and frequently show precipitous sides. The shallow water at their base renders the land undesirable for settlement. The timber is small and indicates the severity of the cold seasons. In their narrowest part the Straits are eight miles wide and frozen in winter. The natives have a secure bridge of ice for at least four months of the year. De Castries Bay is generally filled with ice and unsafe for vessels from October to March. From the time we entered the Gulf of Tartary the water changed its color, growing steadily dirtier until we reached the Amoor. At the mouth of the river I found it a weak tea complexion, like the Ohio at its middle stage, and was told that it varied through all the shades common to rivers according to its height and the circumstances of season. I doubt if it ever assumes the hue of the Missouri or the Sacramento, though it is by no means impossible. Passing Cape Pronge and looking up the river, a background of hills and mountains made a fine landscape with beautiful lights and shadows from the afternoon sun. The channel is marked with stakes and buoys and with beacons along the shore. The pilots when steering frequently turned their backs to the bow of the steamer and watched the beacons over the stern. As we approached Nicolayevsk there was a mirage that made the ships in port appear as if anchored in the town itself. We passed Chinyrack, the fortress that guards the river, and is surrounded, as if for concealment, with a grove of trees. Along the bank above Chinyrack there are warehouses of various kinds, all belonging to government. Soon after dark we anchored before the town, and below several other vessels. My sea travel was ended till I should reach Atlantic waters. CHAPTER X. At Nicolayevsk it is half a mile from the anchorage to the shore. A sand spit projects from the lower end of the town and furnishes a site for government workshops and foundries. Above this tongue of land the water is shallow and allows only light draft and flat bottomed boats to come to the piers. All sea-going vessels remain, in midstream, where they are discharged by lighters. There is deeper water both above and below the town, and I was told that a change of site had been meditated. The selection of the spot where Nicolayevsk stands was owing to the advantages of the sand spit as a protection to river boats. After dining on the Morje we went on shore, and landed at a flight of wooden steps in the side of a pier. The piers of Nicolayevsk are constructed with 'cribs' about twenty feet apart and strong timbers connecting them. The flooring was about six feet above water, and wide enough for two teams to pass. Turning to the left at the end of the pier, we found a plank sidewalk ascending a sloping road in the hillside. The pier reminded me of Boston or New York, but it lacked the huge warehouses and cheerful hackmen to render the similarity complete. "This is Natchez, Mississippi," I said as we moved up the hill, "and this is Cairo, Illinois," as my feet struck the plank sidewalk. The sloping road came to an end sooner than at Natchez, and the sidewalk did not reveal any pitfalls like those in Cairo a few years ago. The bluff where the city stands is about fifty feet high, and the ascent of the road so gentle that one must be very weak to find it fatiguing. The officers who came on shore with me went to the club rooms to pass the evening. I sought the residence of Mr. H.G.O. Chase, the Commercial Agent of the United States, and representative of the house of Boardman. I found him living very comfortably in bachelor quarters that contained a library and other luxuries of civilization. In his sitting-room there was a map of the Russian empire and one of Boston, and there were lithographs and steel engravings, exhibiting the good taste of the owner. Rising early the next morning, I began a study of the town. Nicolayevsk was founded in 1853 in the interest of the Russian government, but nominally as a trading post of the Russian American Company. Very soon it became a military post, and its importance increased with the commencement of hostilities between Russia and the Western powers in 1854. Foundries were established, fortifications built, warehouses erected, and docks laid out from time to time, until the place has attained a respectable size. Its population in 1866 was about five thousand, with plenty of houses for all residents. Nicolayevsk is emphatically a government town, five-sixths of the inhabitants being directly or indirectly in the emperor's employ. "What is this building?" I asked, pointing to a neat house on the principal street. "The residence of the Admiral," was the reply. "And this?" "That is the Chancellerie." "And this?" "The office of the Captain of the Port." So I questioned till three-fourths the larger and better establishments had been indicated. Nearly all were in some way connected with government. Many of the inhabitants are employed in the machine shops, others in the arsenals and warehouses, and a goodly number engage in soldiering. The multitude of whisky shops induces the belief that the verb 'to soldier' is conjugated in all its moods and tenses. The best part of the town is along its front, where there is a wide and well made street called 'the Prospect.' The best houses are on the Prospect, and include the residences of the chief officials and the merchants. On the back streets is the '_Slobodka_,' or poorer part of the town. Here the laborers of every kind have their dwellings, and here the _lafka_ is most to be found. Lafkas are chiefly devoted to liquor selling, and are as numerous in proportion to the population as beer-shops in Chicago. I explored the '_slobodka_,' but did not find it attractive. Dogs were as plentiful and as dubious in breed and character as in the Sixth Ward or near Castle Garden. The church occupies a prominent position in the foreground of the town, and, like nearly all edifices at Nicolayevsk, is built of logs. Back of it is the chancellerie, or military and civil office, with a flag-staff and semaphore for signalling vessels in the harbor. Of other public buildings I might name the naval office, police office, telegraph house, and a dozen others. On the morning after my arrival I called on Admiral Fulyelm, the governor of the Maritime Provinces of Eastern Siberia. The region he controls includes Kamchatka and all the seacoast down to Corea, and has an area of nearly seven hundred and fifty thousand square miles. He had been only a few months in command, and was busily at work regulating his department. He spoke English fluently, and was well acquainted with America and American affairs. During my voyage on the Variag I heard much of the charming manners of Madame Fulyelm, and regretted to learn she was spending the summer in the country. The machine shops, foundries, and dock-yard are described in Russian by the single word 'port.' I visited the port of Nicolayevsk and found it more extensive than one might expect in this new region. There were machines for rolling, planing, cutting, casting, drilling, hammering, punching, and otherwise treating and maltreating iron. There were shops for sawing, planing, polishing, turning, and twisting all sorts of wood, and there were other shops where copper and brass could take any coppery or brassy shape desired. To sum up the port in a few words, its managers can make or repair marine and other engines, and produce any desired woodwork for house building or ship repairing. They build ships and equip them with machinery ready for sea. The establishment is under the direct supervision of Mr. Woods, an American citizen of Scotch birth. Mr. Elliott, a Massachusetts Yankee, and Mr. Laney, an Englishman, are connected with the affair. Mr. Elliott had become a permanent fixture by marrying a Russian woman and purchasing a commodious house. The three men appeared to take great pride in what they had accomplished in perfecting the port. It was a little curious to see at the mouth of the Amoor a steam fire engine from the Amoskeag Works at Manchester, N.H. The engine was labelled 'Amoor' in Russian characters, and appeared to be well treated. A house was assigned it, and watchmen were constantly on duty. The whole town being of wood it is highly important that the engine should act promptly in case of fire. The supply of hose was ample for all emergencies. Several heavy guns were shown me, which were hauled overland from the Ural Mountains during the Crimean war and brought in boats down the Amoor. The expense of transporting them must have been enormous, their journey by roads to the head of the river being fully three thousand miles. I spent a morning with Mr. Chase in calling upon several foreign merchants and their families. The most prominent of the merchants is Mr. Ludorf, a German, who went there in 1856, and has transacted a heavy business on the Amoor and in Japan and China. Mrs. Ludorf followed her husband in 1858, and was the first foreign lady to enter Nicolayevsk. The most interesting topic to Mr. Chase and the ladies was that of cooks. Within two weeks there had been much trouble with the _chefs de cuisine_, and every housekeeper was in deep grief. Servants are the universal discomfort from the banks of the Hudson to those of the Amoor. Man to be happy must return to the primitive stages of society before cooks and housemaids were invented. The hills around Nicolayevsk are covered with forests of small pines. Timber for house building purposes is rafted from points on the Amoor where trees are larger. Formerly the town was in the midst of a forest, but the vicinity is now pretty well cleared. Going back from the river, the streets begin grandly, and promise a great deal they do not perform. For one or two squares they are good, the third square is passable, the fourth is full of stumps, and when you reach the fifth and sixth, there is little street to be found. I never saw a better illustration of the road that commenced with a double row of shade trees, and steadily diminished in character until it became a squirrel-track and ran up a tree. There is very little agriculture in the vicinity, the soil and climate being unfavorable. The chief supply of vegetables comes from the settlements on the south bank of the river up to Lake Keezee, and along the shores of the lake. All the ordinary garden vegetables are raised, and in some localities they attain goodly size. Every morning there was a lively scene at the river's edge in front of the town. Peasants from the farming settlements were there with articles for sale, and a vigorous chaffering was in progress. There were soldiers in grey coats, sailors from the ships in the harbor, laborers in clothing more or less shabby, and a fair sprinkling of aboriginals. To an American freshly arrived the natives were quite a study. They were of the Mongol type, their complexions dark, hair black, eyes obliquely set, noses flat, and cheek bones high. Most of them had the hair plaited in a queue after the Chinese fashion. Some wore boots of untanned skin, and a few had adopted those of Russian make. They generally wear blouses or frocks after the Chinese pattern, and the most of them could be readily taken for shabby Celestials. Their hats were of two kinds, some of felt and turned up at the sides, and others of decorated birch bark shaped like a parasol. These hats were an excellent protection against sun and rain, but could hardly be trusted in a high wind. All these men were inveterate smokers, and carried their pipes and tobacco pouches at their waists. Most had sheath knives attached to belts, and some carried flint, steel, and tinder. They formed picturesque groups, some talking with purchasers and others collected around fires or near their piles of fish. [Illustration: BOAT LOAD OF SALMON.] As I stood on the bank, a Gilyak boat came near me with a full cargo of salmon. The boat was built very high at bow and stern, and its bottom was a single plank, greatly curved. It was propelled by a woman manipulating a pair of oars with blades shaped like spoon-bowls, beaten flat, which she pulled alternately with a kind of 'hand-over-hand' process. This mode of rowing is universal among the Gilyaks, but does not prevail with other natives along the Amoor. Whenever I approached a group of Gilyaks I was promptly hailed with _'reba! reba!'_ (fish! fish!) I shook my head and uttered _nierte_ (no,) and our conversation ceased. The salmon were in piles along the shore or lying in the native boats. Fishing was not a monopoly of the Gilyaks, as I saw several Russians engaged in the business. They appeared on the best terms with their aboriginal neighbors. Salmon are abundant in the Amoor and as much a necessity of life as in Northern Siberia. They are not as good as in Kamchatka, and I believe it is the rule that the salmon deteriorates as one goes toward the south. Possibly the quality of the Amoor salmon is owing to the time the fish remain in the brackish waters of the Straits of Tartary. The fishing season is the only busy portion of the year with the natives. [Illustration: AN EFFECTIVE PROTEST.] The town is supplied with water by carts like those used in many places along our Western rivers. For convenience in filling the driver goes into the stream until the water is pretty well up his horse's sides. A bucket attached to a long handle is used for dipping, and moves very leisurely. I saw one driver go so far from shore that his horse protested in dumb but expressive show. The animal turned and walked to land, over-setting the cart and spilling the driver into the water. There was a volley of Russian epithets, but the horse did not observe them. At a photographic establishment I purchased several views of the city and surrounding region. I sought a watch dealer in the hope of replacing my broken time piece, but was unsuccessful. I finally succeeded in purchasing a cheap watch of so curious workmanship that it ran itself out and utterly stopped within a week. One evening in the public garden a military band furnished creditable music, and I was told that it was formed by selecting men from the ranks, most of whom had never played a single note on any instrument. Writers on Russia twenty years ago said that men were frequently assigned to work they had never seen performed. If men were wanted for any government service a draft was made, just as for filling the army, and when the recruits arrived they were distributed. One was detailed for a blacksmith, and straightway went to his anvil and began. Another was told to be a machinist, and received his tools. He seated himself at his bench, watched his neighbor at work, and commenced with little delay. Another became a glass-blower, another a lapidary, another a musician, and so on through all the trades. I have heard that an Ohio colonel in our late war had a fondness for never being outdone by rivals. One day his chaplain told him that a work of grace was going on in the army. "Fifteen men," said he, "were baptized last Sunday in Colonel Blank's regiment, and the reformation is still going on." Without replying the colonel called his adjutant. "Captain," was the command, "detail twenty men for baptism at once. I won't be outdone by any other ---- regiment in the army." Near the river there are several large buildings, formerly belonging to the Amoor Company, an institution that closed its affairs in the summer of 1866. After the opening of the Amoor this company was formed in St. Petersburg with a paid up or guaranteed capital of nearly half a million pounds sterling. Its object was the control of trade on the Amoor and its tributaries, and the general development of commerce in Northern Asia. It began operations in 1858, but was unfortunate from the beginning. In 1859 it sent out three ships, two of which were lost between De Castries and Nicolayevsk. Each of them had valuable cargoes, and the iron and machinery for two river steamers. The third ship arrived safely, and a steamer which she brought was put together during the winter. It struck a rock and sunk on its first voyage up the river. The misfortunes of the company in following years did not come quite as thick, but their number was ample. The company's dividends were invariably Hibernian. It lost money from the beginning, and after spending two and a half million dollars, closed its affairs and went up in a balloon. The Russian government has been disappointed in the result of opening the Amoor. Ten years ago it was thought a great commerce would spring up, but the result has been otherwise. There can be no traffic where there are no people to trade with, and when the Amoor was opened the country was little better than a wilderness. The natives were not a mercantile community. There was only one Manjour city on the bank of the Amoor, and for some time its people were not allowed to trade with Russians. Even when it was opened it had no important commerce, as it was far removed from the silk, tea, or porcelain districts of China. Plainly the dependence must be upon colonization. The Amoor was peopled under government patronage, many settlers coming from the Trans-Baikal province, and others from European Russia. Nearly all were poor and brought very little money to their new homes. Many were Cossacks and soldiers, and not reconciled to hard labor. During the first two years of their residence the Amoor colonists were supplied with flour at government expense, but after that it was expected they could support themselves. Most of the colonies were half military in their character, being composed of Cossacks, with their families. On the lower part of the Amoor, outside the military posts, the settlers were peasants. Flour was carried from St. Petersburg to the Amoor to supply the garrison and the newly arrived settlers. The production is not yet sufficient for the population, and when I was at Nicolayevsk I saw flour just landed from Cronstadt. The settlers had generally reached the self-sustaining point, but they did not produce enough to feed the military and naval force. Until they do this the Amoor will be unprofitable. On the upper Amoor flour was formerly brought from the Trans-Baikal province to supply the settlements down to Habarofka. In 1866 there was a short crop in that province and a good one on the upper Amoor. A large quantity of wheat and rye,--I was told fifty thousand bushels,--was taken to the Trans-Baikal and sold there. On the whole the Amoor country is very good for agriculture, and will sustain itself in time. The import trade is chiefly in American and German hands, and comprises miscellaneous goods, of which they told me at least fifty per cent. were wines and intoxicating liquors! The Russian emperor should make intemperance a penal offence and issue an edict against it. A Boston house was the first foreign one opened here, and then came a German one. Others followed, principally from America, the Sandwich Islands, Hamburg, and Bremen. Most of the Americans have retired from the field, two were closing when I was at the Amoor, and Mr. Boardman's was the only house in full operation. There were three German establishments, and another of a German-American character. All the cereals can be grown on the Amoor, and the yield is said to be very good. When its production is developed, wheat can be exported to China and the Sandwich Islands at a good profit. Until 1864 the government prohibited the export of timber, although it had inexhaustible quantities growing on the Amoor and its tributaries. I saw at Nicolayevsk and elsewhere oak and ash of excellent quality. The former was not as tough as New England oak, but the ash could hardly be excelled anywhere, and I was surprised to learn that no one had attempted its export to California, where good timber for wagons and similar work is altogether wanting. Pine trees are large, straight, tough, and good-fibred. They ought to compete in Chinese ports with pine lumber from elsewhere. [Illustration: NOTHING BUT BONES.] There is a peculiar kind of oak, the Maackia, suitable for cabinet work. Some exports of wool, hides, and tallow have been made, but none of importance. One cargo of ice has been sent to China, but it melted on the way from improper packing. A Hong Kong merchant once ordered a cargo of hams from the Amoor, and when he received it and opened the barrels he found they contained nothing but bones. As the bone market was low at that time he did not repeat his order. Flax and hemp will grow here, and might become profitable exports. There is excellent grazing land and no lack of pasturage, but at present bears make fearful havoc among the cattle and sheep. In some localities tigers are numerous, particularly among the Buryea Mountains, where the Cossacks make a profession of hunting them. The tiger is not likely to become an article of commerce, but on the contrary is calculated to retard civilization. With increased agriculture, pork can be raised and cured, and the Russians might find it to their advantage to introduce Indian corn, now almost unknown on the Amoor. At present hogs on the lower Amoor subsist largely on fish, and the pork has a very unpleasant flavor. The steward of the Variag told me that in 1865, when at De Castries, he had two small pigs from Japan. A vessel just from the Amoor had a large hog which had been purchased at Nicolayevsk. The captain of the ship offered his hog for the two pigs, on the plea that he wished to keep them during his voyage. As the hog was three times the weight of the pigs the steward gladly accepted the proposal, and wondered how a man who made so absurd a trade could be captain of a ship. On killing his prize he found the pork so fishy in flavor that nobody could eat it. The whole hog went literally to the dogs. Nicolayevsk is a free port of entry, and there are no duties upon merchandise anywhere in Siberia east of Lake Baikal. Since the opening of commerce, in 1865, the number of ships arriving annually varies from six or eight to nearly forty. In 1866 there were twenty-three vessels on government, and fifteen on private account. The government vessels brought flour, salt, lead, iron, machinery, telegraph material, army and navy equipments, and a thousand and one articles included under the head of 'government stores.' The private ones, (three of them American,) brought miscellaneous cargoes for the mercantile community. There were no wrecks in that year, or at any rate, none up to the time of my departure. At the Amoor I first began to hear those stories of peculation that greet every traveler in Russia. According to my informants there were many deficiencies in official departments, and very often losses were ascribed to 'leakage,' 'breakage,' and damage of different kinds. "Did you ever hear," said a gentleman to me, "of rats devouring window-glass, or of anchors and boiler iron blowing away in the wind?" However startling such phenomena, he declared they had been known at Nicolayevsk and elsewhere in the empire. I think if all the truth were revealed we might learn of equally strange occurrences in America during the late war. The Russians have explored very thoroughly the coast of Manjouria in search of good harbors. Below De Castries the first of importance is Barracouta Bay, in Latitude 49°. The government made a settlement there in 1853, but subsequently abandoned it for Olga Bay, six degrees further south. Vladivostok, or Dominion of the East, was occupied in 1857, and a naval station commenced. A few years later, Posyet was founded near the head of the Corean peninsula, and is now growing rapidly. It has one of the finest harbors on the Japan Sea, completely sheltered, easily defended, and affording superior facilities for repairing ships of war or commerce. It is free from ice the entire year, and has a little cove or bay that could be converted into a dry dock at small expense. In 1865 Posyet was visited by ten merchant vessels; it exported fifteen thousand poods of _beche de mer_, the little fish formerly the monopoly of the Feejees, and of which John Chinaman is very fond. It exported ten thousand poods of bean cake, and eleven times that quantity of a peculiar sea-grass eaten by the Celestials. Ginseng root was also an article of commerce between Posyet and Shanghae. Russia appears in earnest about the development of the Manjourian coast, and is making many efforts for that object. The telegraph is completed from Nicolayevsk to the new seaport, and a post route has been established along the Ousuree. From San Francisco to the mouth of the Amoor I did not see a wheeled vehicle, with the exception of a hand cart and a dog wagon. At Nicolayevsk there were horses, carts, and carriages, and I had my first experience of a horse harnessed with the Russian yoke. The theory of the yoke is, that it keeps the shafts away from the animal's sides, and enables him to exert more strength than when closely hedged. I cannot give a positive opinion on this point, but believe the Russians are correct. The yoke standing high above the horse's head and touching him nowhere, has a curious appearance when first seen. I never could get over the idea while looking at a dray in motion, that the horse was endeavoring to walk through an arched gateway and taking it along with him. The shafts were wide apart and attached by straps to the horse's collar. All the tension came through the shafts, and these were strengthened by ropes that extended to the ends of the forward axle. Harnesses had a shabby, 'fixed up' appearance, with a good deal of rope in their composition. Why they did not go to pieces or crumble to nothing, like the deacon's One Horse Shay, was a mystery. Before leaving Nicolayevsk I enjoyed a ride in one of its private carriages. The vehicle was open, its floor quite low, and the wheels small. We had two horses, one between the shafts and wearing the inevitable yoke. The other was outside, and attached to an iron single-tree over the forward wheel. Three horses can be driven abreast on this kind of carriage. The shaft horse trotted, while the other galloped, holding his head very low and turned outward. This is due to a check rein, which keeps him in a position hardly natural. The orthodox mode in Russia is to have the shaft horse trotting while the other runs as described; the difference in the motion gives an attractive and dashy appearance to the turnout. Existence would be incomplete to a Russian without an equipage, and if he cannot own one he keeps it on hire. The gayety of Russian cities in winter and summer is largely due to the number of private vehicles in constant motion through the streets. [Illustration: TAIL PIECE--NATIVE WOMAN] CHAPTER XI. I arranged to ascend the Amoor on the steamer Ingodah, which was appointed to start on the eighteenth of September. My friend Anossoff remained at Nicolayevsk during the winter, instead of proceeding to Irkutsk as I had fondly hoped. I found a _compagnon du voyage_ in Captain Borasdine, of General Korsackoff's staff. In a drenching rain on the afternoon of the seventeenth, we carried our baggage to the Ingodah, which lay half a mile from shore. We reached the steamer after about twenty minutes pulling in a whale-boat and shipping a barrel of water through the carelessness of an oarsman. At Nicolayevsk the Amoor is about a mile and a half wide, with a depth of twenty to thirty-five feet in the channel. I asked a resident what he thought the average rapidity of the current in front of the town. "When you look at it or float with it," said he, "I think it is about three and a half miles. If you go against it you find it not an inch less than five miles." The rowers had no light task to stem the rapid stream, and I think it was about like the Mississippi at Memphis. The boat was to leave early in the morning. I took a farewell dinner with Mr. Chase, and at ten o'clock received a note from Borasdine announcing his readiness to go to the steamer. Anossoff, Chase, and half a dozen others assembled to see us off, and after waking the echoes and watchmen on the pier, we secured a skiff and reached the Ingodah. The rain was over, and stars were peeping through occasional loop-holes in the clouds. [Illustration: SEEING OFF.] 'Seeing off' consumed much time and more champagne. As we left the house I observed Chase and Anossoff each putting a bottle in his pocket, and remarking the excellent character of their ballast. From the quantity that revealed itself afterward the two bottles must have multiplied, or other persons in the party were equally provided. To send off a friend in Russia requires an amount of health-drinking rarely witnessed in New York or Boston. If the journey is by land the wayfarer is escorted a short distance on his route, sometimes to the edge of the town, and sometimes to the first station. Adieus are uttered over champagne, tea, lunch--and champagne. It was nearly daybreak when our friends gave us the last hand-shake and went over the side. Watching till their boat disappeared in the gloom, I sought the cabin, and found the table covered with a beggarly array of empty bottles and a confused mass of fragmentary edibles. I retired to sleep, while the cabin boy cleared away the wreck. The sun rose before our captain. When I followed their example we were still at anchor and our boilers cold as a refusal to a beggar. Late in the morning the captain appeared; about nine o'clock fire was kindled in the furnace, and a little past ten we were under way. As our anchor rose and the wheel began to move, most of the deck passengers turned in the direction of the church and devoutly made the sign of the cross. As we slowly stemmed the current the houses of Nicolayevsk and the shipping in its front, the smoking foundries, and the pine-covered hills, faded from view, and with my face to the westward I was fairly afloat on the Amoor. The Ingodah was a plain, unvarnished boat, a hundred and ten feet long, and about fifteen feet beam. Her hull was of boiler iron, her bottom flat, and her prow sharp and perpendicular. Her iron, wood work, and engines were brought in a sailing ship to the Amoor and there put together. She had two cabins forward and one aft, all below deck. There was a small hold for storing baggage and freight, but the most of the latter was piled on deck. The pilot house was over the forward cabin, and contained a large wheel, two men, and a chart of the river. The rudder was about the size of a barn door, and required the strength of two men to control it. Had she ever refused to obey her helm she would have shown an example of remarkable obstinacy. Over the after cabin there was a cook-house, where dwelt a shabby and unwholesome cuisinier. Between the wheels was a bridge, occupied by the captain when starting or stopping the boat; the engines, of thirty horse power, were below deck, under this bridge. The cabins, without state rooms, occupied the whole width of the boat. Wide seats with cushions extended around the cabins, and served as beds at night. Each passenger carried his own bedding and was his own chambermaid. The furniture consisted of a fixed table, two feet by ten, a dozen stools, a picture of a saint, a mirror, and a boy, the latter article not always at hand. The cabins were unclean, and reminded me of the general condition of transports during our late war. Can any philosopher explain why boats in the service of government are nearly always dirty? The personnel of the boat consisted of a captain, mate, engineer, two pilots, and eight or ten men. The captain and mate were in uniform when we left port, but within two hours they appeared in ordinary suits of grey. The crew were deck hands, roustabouts, or firemen, by turns, and when we took wood most of the male deck passengers were required to assist. On American steamboats the after cabin is the aristocratic one; on the Amoor the case is reversed. The steerage passengers lived, moved, and had their being and baggage aft the engine, while their betters were forward. This arrangement gave the steerage the benefit of all cinders and smoke, unless the wind was abeam or astern. Steam navigation on the Amoor dates from 1854. In that year two wooden boats, the Shilka and the Argoon, were constructed on the Shilka river, preparatory to the grand expedition of General Mouravieff. Their timber was cut in the forests of the Shilka, and their engines were constructed at Petrovsky-Zavod. The Argoon was the first to descend, leaving Shilikinsk on the 27th of May, 1854, and bringing the Governor General and his staff. It was accompanied by fifty barges and a great many rafts loaded with military forces to occupy the Amoor, and with provisions for the Pacific fleet. The Shilka descended a few months later. She was running in 1866, but the Argoon, the pioneer, existed less than a decade. In 1866 there were twenty-two steamers on the Amoor, all but four belonging to the government. The government boats are engaged in transporting freight, supplies, soldiers, and military stores generally, and carrying the mail. They carry passengers and private freight at fixed rates, but do not give insurance against fire or accidents of navigation. Passengers contract with the captain or steward for subsistence while on board. Deck passengers generally support themselves, but can buy provisions on the boat if they wish. The steward may keep wines and other beverages for sale by the bottle, but he cannot maintain a bar. He has various little speculations of his own and does not feed his customers liberally. On the Ingodah the steward purchased eggs at every village, and expected to sell them at a large profit in Nicolayevsk. When we left him he had at least ten bushels on hand, but he never furnished eggs to us unless we paid extra for them. One cabin was assigned to Borasdine and myself, save at meal times, when two other passengers were present. One end of it was filled with the mail, of which there were eight bags, each as large as a Saratoga trunk and as difficult to handle. The Russian government performs an 'express' service and transports freight by mail; it receives parcels in any part of the empire and agrees to deliver them in any other part desired. From Nicolayevsk to St. Petersburg the charges are twenty-five copecks (cents) a pound, the distance being seven thousand miles. It gives receipts for the articles, and will insure them at a charge of two per cent. on their value. Goods of any kind can be sent by post through Russia just as by express in America. Captain Lund sent a package containing fifty sable skins to his brother in Cronstadt, and another with a silk dress pattern to a lady in St. Petersburg. In the mail on the Ingodah there were twelve hundred pounds of sable fur sent by Mr. Chase to his agent in St. Petersburg. Money to any amount can be remitted, and its delivery insured. I have known twenty thousand roubles sent on a single order. Parcels for transportation by post must be carefully and securely packed. Furs, silks, clothing, and all things of that class are enveloped in repeated layers of oil cloth and canvas to exclude water and guard against abrasion. Light articles, like bonnets, must be packed with abundance of paper filling them to their proper shape, and very securely boxed. A Siberian lady once told me that a friend in St. Petersburg sent her a lot of bonnets, laces, and other finery purchased at great expense. She waited a long time with feminine anxiety, and was delighted when told her box was at the post office. What was her disappointment to find the articles had been packed in a light case which was completely smashed. She never made use of any part of its contents. In crossing Siberian rivers the mail is sometimes wet, and it is a good precaution to make packages waterproof. A package of letters for New York from Nicolayevsk I enveloped in canvas, by advice of Russian friends, and it went through unharmed. [Illustration: SCENES ON THE AMOOR.] The post wagons are changed at every station, and the mail while being transferred is not handled with care. Frail articles must be boxed so that no tossing will injure them. My lady friend told me of a bride who ordered her trousseau from St. Petersburg and prepared for a magnificent wedding. The precious property arrived forty-eight hours before the time fixed for the ceremony. Moving accidents by flood and field had occurred. The bridal paraphernalia was soaked, crushed, and reduced to a mass that no one could resolve into its original elements. The wedding was postponed and a new supply of goods ordered. The mail is always in charge of a postillion, who is generally a Cossack, and his duty is much like that of a mail agent in other countries. He delivers and receives the sacks of matter at the post offices, and guards them on the road. During our voyage on the Ingodah there was no supervision over the mail bags after they were deposited in our cabin. I passed many hours in their companionship, and if Borasdine and I had chosen to rifle them we could have done so at our leisure. Possibly an escape from the penalties of the law would have been less easy. Our cook was an elderly personage, with thin hair, a yellow beard, and a much neglected toilet. On the first morning I saw him at his ablutions, and was not altogether pleased with his manner. He took a half-tumbler of water in his mouth and then squirted the fluid over his hands, rubbing them meanwhile with invisible soap. He was quite skillful, but I could never relish his dinners if I had seen him any time within six hours. His general appearance was that of having slept in a gutter without being shaken afterwards. The day of our departure from Nicolayevsk was like the best of our Indian summer. There was but little wind, the faintest breath coming now and then from the hills on the southern bank. The air was of a genial warmth, the sky free from clouds and only faintly dimmed with the haze around the horizon. The forest was in the mellow tints of autumn, and the wide expanse of foliferous trees, dotted at frequent intervals with the evergreen pine, rivalled the October hues of our New England landscape. Hills and low mountains rose on both banks of the river and made a beautiful picture. The hills, covered with forest from base to summit, sloped gently to the water's edge or retreated here and there behind bits of green meadow. In the distance was a background of blue mountains glowing in sunshine or dark in shadow, and varying in outline as we moved slowly along. The river was ruffled only by the ripples of the current or the motion of our boat through the water. Just a year earlier I descended the Saint Lawrence from Lake Ontario to Quebec. I saw nothing on the great Canadian river that equaled the scenery of my first day's voyage on the Amoor. Soon after leaving Nicolayevsk we met several loads of hay floating with the current to a market at the town. On the meadows along the river the grass is luxuriant, and hay requires only the labor of cutting and curing. During the day we passed several points where haymaking was in progress. Cutting was performed with an instrument resembling the short scythe used in America for cutting bushes. After it was dried, the hay was brought to the river bank on dray-like carts. An American hay wagon would have accomplished twice as much, with equal labor. The hay is like New England hay from natural meadows, and is delivered at Nicolayevsk for six or eight dollars a ton. Cattle and horses thrive upon it, if I may judge by the condition of the stock I saw. For its transportation two flat-bottomed boats are employed, and held about twelve feet apart by timbers. A floor on these timbers and over the boats serves to keep the hay dry. Men are stationed at both ends of the boats, and when once in the stream there is little to do beside floating with the current. A mile distant one of these barges appears like a haystack which an accident has set adrift. We saw many Gilyak boats descending the river with the current or struggling to ascend it. The Gilyaks form the native population in this region and occupy thirty-nine villages with about two thousand inhabitants. The villages are on both banks from the mouth of the river to Mariensk, and out of the reach of all inundations. Distance lends enchantment to the view of their houses, which will not bear close inspection. [Illustration: A GILYAK VILLAGE.] Some of the houses might contain a half dozen families of ordinary size, and were well adapted to the climate. While we took wood at a Gilyak village I embraced the opportunity to visit the aboriginals. The village contained a dozen dwellings and several fish-houses. The buildings were of logs or poles, split in halves or used whole, and were roofed with poles covered with a thatch of long grass to exclude rain and cold. Some of the dwelling houses had the solid earth for floors, while others had floorings of hewn planks. The store houses were elevated on posts like those of an American 'corn barn,' and were wider and lower than the dwellings. Each storehouse had a platform in front where canoes, fishing nets, and other portable property were stowed. These buildings were the receptacles of dried fish for the winter use of dogs and their owners. The elevation of the floor serves to protect the contents from dogs and wild animals. I was told that no locks were used and that theft was a crime unknown. The dwellings were generally divided into two apartments; one a sort of ante room and receptacle of house-keeping goods, and the other the place of residence. Pots, kettles, knives, and wooden pans were the principal articles of household use I discovered. At the storehouses there were several fish-baskets of birch or willow twigs. A Gilyak gentleman does not permit fire carried into or out of his house, not even in a pipe. This is not owing to his fear of conflagrations, but to a superstition that such an occurrence may bring him ill luck in hunting or fishing. It was in the season of curing fish, and the stench that greeted my nostrils was by no means delightful. Visits to dwellings or magazines would have been much easier had I possessed a sponge saturated with cologne water. Fish were in various stages of preparation, some just hung upon poles, while others were nearly ready for the magazine. The manner of preparation is much the same as in Kamchatka, save that the largest fish are skinned before being cut into strips. The poorest qualities go to the dogs, and the best are reserved for bipeds. Though the natives do the most of the fishing on the Amoor, they do not have a monopoly of it, as some of the Russians indulge in the sport. One old fellow that I saw had a boat so full of salmon, that there was no room for more. Now and then a fish went overboard, causing an expression on the boatman's face as if he were suffering from a dose of astonishment and toothache drops in equal proportions. There were dogs everywhere, some lying around loose, and others tied to posts under the storehouses. Some walked about and manifested an unpleasant desire to taste the calves of my legs. All barked, growled, and whined in a chorus like a Pawnee concert. There were big dogs and little dogs, white, black, grey, brown, and yellow dogs, and not one friendly. They did not appear courageous, but I was not altogether certain of their dispositions. Their owners sought to quiet them, but they refused comfort. [Illustration: ABOUT FULL.] Those dogs had some peculiarities of those in Kamchatka, but their blood was evidently much debased; they appeared to be a mixture of Kamchadale, greyhound, bull dog, and cur, the latter predominating. They are used for hunting at all seasons, and for towing boats in summer and dragging sledges in winter. I was told that since the Russian settlement of the Amoor the Gilyak dogs have degenerated, in consequence of too much familiarity with Muscovite canines. Nicolayevsk appeared quite cosmopolitan, in the matter of dogs, and it was impossible to say what breed was most numerous. One day I saw nineteen in a single group and no two alike. Near the entrance of the village an old man was repairing his nets, which were stretched along a fence. He did not regard us as we scrutinized his jacket of blue cotton, and he made no response to a question which Borasdine asked. Further along were two women putting fish upon poles for drying, and a third was engaged in skinning a large salmon. The women did not look up from their work, and were not inclined to amiability. They had Mongol features, complexion, eyes, and hair, the latter thick and black. Some of the men wear it plaited into queues, and others let it grow pretty much at will. Each woman I saw had it braided in two queues, which hung over her shoulders. In their ears they wore long pendants, and their dresses were generally arranged with taste. When recalled by the steam whistle we left the village and took a short route down a steep bank to the boat. In descending, my feet passed from under me, and I had the pleasure of sliding about ten yards before stopping. Had it not been for a Cossack who happened in my way I should have entered the Amoor after the manner of an otter, and afforded much amusement to the spectators, though comparatively little to myself. The sliding attracted no special attention as it was supposed to be the American custom, and I did not deem it prudent to make an explanation lest the story might bring discredit to my nationality. [Illustration: TAIL PIECE--A TURN OUT] CHAPTER XII. I had a curiosity to examine the ancient monuments at Tyr, opposite the mouth of the Amgoon river, but we passed them in the night without stopping. There are several traditions concerning their origin. The most authentic story gives them an age of six or seven hundred years. They are ascribed to an emperor of the Yuen dynasty who visited the mouth of the Amoor and commemorated his journey by building the 'Monastery of Eternal Repose.' The ruined walls of this monastery are visible, and the shape of the building can be easily traced. In some places the walls are eight or ten feet high. Mr. Collins visited the spot in 1857 and made sketches of the monuments. He describes them situated on a cliff a hundred and fifty feet high, from which there is a magnificent view east and west of the Amoor and the mountains around it. Toward the south there are dark forests and mountain ridges, some of them rough and broken. To the north is the mouth of the Amgoon, with a delta of numerous islands covered with forest, while in the northwest the valley of the river is visible for a long distance. Back from the cliff is a table-land several miles in width. This table-land is covered with oak, aspen, and fir trees, and has a rich undergrowth of grass and flowers. On a point of the cliff there are two monuments. A third is about four hundred yards away. One is a marble shaft on a granite pedestal; a second is entirely granite, and the third partly granite and partly porphyry. The first and third bear inscriptions in Chinese, Mongol, and Thibetan. One inscription announces that the emperor Yuen founded the Monastery of Eternal Repose, and the others record a prayer of the Thibetans. Archimandrate Avvakum, a learned Russian, who deciphered the inscriptions, says the Thibetan prayer _Om-mani-badme-khum_ is given in three languages.[C] [Footnote C: Abbe Hue in his 'Recollections of a journey through Thibet and Tartary,' says:-- "The Thibetans are eminently religious. There exists at Lassa a touching custom which we are in some sort jealous of finding among infidels. In the evening as soon as the light declines, the Thibetans, men, women, and children, cease from all business and assemble in the principal parts of the city and in the public squares. When the groups are formed, every one sits down on the ground and begins slowly to chant his prayers in an undertone, and this religious concert produces an immense and solemn harmony throughout the city. The first time we heard it we could not help making a sorrowful comparison between this pagan town, where all prayed in common, with the cities of the civilized world, where people would blush to make the sign of the cross in public. "The prayer chanted in these evening meetings varies according to the season of the year; that which they recite to the rosary is always the same, and is only composed of six syllables, _om-mani-badme-khum_. This formula, called briefly the _mani_, is not only heard from every mouth, but is everywhere written in the streets, in the interior of the houses, on every flag and streamer floating over the buildings, printed in the Landzee, Tartar, and Thibetan characters. The Lamas assert that the doctrine contained in these words is immense, and that the whole life of man is not sufficient to measure its depth and extent."] The lowest of the monuments is five and the tallest eight feet in height. Near them are several flat stones with grooves in their surface, which lead to the supposition of their employment for sacrificial purposes. Mr. Chase told me at Nicolayevsk that he thought one of the monuments was used as an altar when the monastery flourished. There are no historical data regarding the ruins beyond those found on the stones. Many of the Russians and Chinese believe the site was selected by Genghis Khan, and the monastery commemorated one of his triumphs. The natives look upon the spot with veneration, and frequently go there to practice their mysterious rites. Before leaving Nicolayevsk I asked the captain of the Irigodah how fast his boat could steam. "Oh!" said he, "ten or twelve versts an hour." Accustomed to our habit of exaggerating the powers of a steamer, I expected no more than eight or nine versts. I was surprised to find we really made twelve to fifteen versts an hour. Ten thousand miles from St. Louis and New Orleans I at last found what I sought for several years--a steamboat captain who understated the speed of his boat! Justice to the man requires the explanation that he did not own her. [Illustration: ON THE AMOOR.] My second day on the Amoor was much like the first in the general features of the scenery. Hills and mountains on either hand; meadows bounding one bank or the other at frequent intervals; islands dotted here and there with pleasing irregularity, or stretching for many miles along the valley; forests of different trees, and each with its own particular hue; a canopy of hazy sky meeting ranges of misty peaks in the distance; these formed the scene. Some one asks if all the tongues in the world can tell how the birds sing and the lilacs smell. Equally difficult is it to describe with pen upon paper the beauties of that Amoor scenery. Each bend of the stream gave us a new picture. It was the unrolling of a magnificent panorama such as no man has yet painted. And what can I say? There was mountain, meadow, forest, island, field, cliff, and valley; there were the red leaves of the autumn maple, the yellow of the birch, the deep green of pine and hemlock, the verdure of the grass, the wide river winding to reach the sea, and we slowly stemming its current. How powerless are words to describe a scene like this! The passengers of our boat were of less varied character than those on a Mississippi steamer. There were two Russian merchants, who joined us at meal times in the cabin but slept in the after part of the boat. One was owner of a gold mine two hundred miles north of Nicolayevsk, and a general dealer in everything along the Amoor. He had wandered over Mongolia and Northern China in the interest of commerce, and I greatly regretted my inability to talk with him and learn of the regions he had visited. He was among the first to penetrate the Celestial Empire under the late commercial treaty, and traveled so far that he was twice arrested by local authorities. He knew every fair from Leipsic to Peking, and had been an industrious commercial traveler through all Northern Asia. Once, below Sansin, on the Songaree river, he was attacked by thieves where he had halted for the night. With a single exception his crew was composed of Chinese, and these ran away at the first alarm. With his only Russian companion he attempted to defend his property, but the odds were too great, especially as his gun could not be found. He was made prisoner and compelled to witness the plundering of his cargo. Every thing valuable being taken, the thieves left him. In the morning he proceeded down the stream. Not caring to engage another crew, he floated with the current and shared with his Russian servant the labor of steering. The next night he was robbed again, and the robbers, angry at finding so little to steal, did not leave him his boat. After much difficulty he reached a native village and procured an old skiff. With this he finished his journey unmolested. There were fifteen or twenty deck passengers, a fair proportion being women and children. Among the latter was a black eyed girl of fifteen, in a calico dress and wearing a shawl pinned around a pretty face. On Sunday morning she appeared in neat apparel and was evidently desirous of being seen. There were two old men dressed in coarse cloth of a 'butternut' hue, that reminded me of Arkansas and Tennessee. The morning we started one of them was seated on the deck counting a pile of copper coin with great care. Two, three, four times he told it off, piece by piece, and then folded it carefully in the corner of his kerchief. In all he had less than a rouble, but he preserved it as if it were a million. [Illustration: CASH ACCOUNT.] The baggage of the deck passengers consisted of boxes and household furniture in general, not omitting the ever-present samovar. This baggage was piled on the deck and was the reclining place of its owners by day. In the night they had the privilege of the after cabin, where they slept on the seats and floor. 'Wooding up' was not performed with American alacrity. To bring the steamer to land she was anchored thirty feet from shore, and two men in a skiff carried a line to the bank and made it fast. With this line and the anchor the boat was warped within ten feet of the shore, another line keeping the stern in position. An ordinary plank a foot wide made the connection with the solid earth. These boats have no guards and cannot overhang the land like our Western craft. Wood was generally piled fifty, a hundred, or five hundred feet from the landing place, wherever most convenient to the owner. No one seems to think of placing it near the water's edge as with us; they told me that this had been done formerly, and the freshets had carried the wood away. The peasants, warned by their loss, are determined to keep on the safe side. When all was ready the deck hands went very leisurely to work. Each carried a piece of rope which he looped around a few sticks of wood as a boy secures his bundle of school books. The rope was then slung upon the shoulder, the wood hanging over the back of the carrier and occasionally coming loose from its fastenings. No man showed any sign of hurrying, but all acted as if there were nothing in the world as cheap as time. One day I watched the wooding operation from beginning to end. It took an hour and a half and twelve men to bring about four cords of wood on board. There was but one man displaying any activity, and _he_ was falling from the plank into the river. [Illustration: WOODING UP.] The Russian measure of wood is the _sajene_ (fathom.) and a sajene of wood is a pile a fathom long, wide, and high. The Russian marine fathom measures six feet like our own, but the land fathom is seven feet. It is by the land fathom that everything on solid earth is measured. A stick seven feet long is somewhat inconvenient, and therefore they cut wood half a fathom in length. We landed our first freight at Nova Mihalofski, a Russian village on the southern bank of the river. The village was small and the houses were far from palatial. The inhabitants live by agriculture in summer, sending their produce to Nicolayevsk, and by supplying horses for the postal service in winter. I observed here and at other villages an example of Russian economy. Not able to purchase whole panes of window glass the peasants use fragments of glass of any shape they can get. These are set in pieces of birch bark cut to the proper form and the edges held by wax or putty. The bark is then fastened to the window sash much as a piece of mosquito netting is fixed in a frame. Near Springfield, Missouri, I once passed a night in a farmer's house. The dwelling had no windows, and when we breakfasted we were obliged to keep the door open to give us light, though the thermometer was at zero, with a strong wind blowing. "I have lived in this house seventeen years," said the owner; "have a good farm and own four niggers." But he could not afford the expense of a window, even of the Siberian kind! Ten or fifteen miles above this village we reached Mihalofski, containing a hundred houses and three or four hundred inhabitants. From the river this town appeared quite pretty and thriving; the houses were substantially built, and many had flower gardens in front and neat fences around them. Between the town and the river there were market gardens in flourishing condition, bearing most of the vegetables in common use through the north. The town is along a ridge of easy ascent, and most of the dwellings are thirty or forty feet above the river. Its fields and gardens extend back from the river wherever the land is fertile and easiest cleared of the forest. On the opposite side of the river there are meadows where the peasants engage in hay cutting. The general appearance of the place was like that of an ordinary village on the lower St. Lawrence, though there were many points of difference. In several rye fields the grain had been cut and stacked. Near our landing was a mill, where a man, a boy, and a horse were manufacturing meal at the rate of seven poods or 280 pounds a day. The whole machinery was on the most primitive scale. Entering the house of the mill-owner I found the principal apartment quite neat and well arranged, its walls being whitewashed and decorated with cheap lithographs and wood-cuts. Among the latter were several from the Illustrated London News and _L'Illustration Universelle_. The sleeping room was fitted with bunks like those on steamboats, though somewhat wider. There was very little clothing on the beds, but several sheepskin coats and coverlids were hanging on a fence in front of the house. Borasdine had business at the telegraph station, whither I accompanied him. The operator furnished a blank for the despatch, and when it was written and paid for he gave a receipt. The receipt stated the hour and minute when the despatch was taken, the name of the sender, the place where sent, the number of words, and the amount paid. This form is invariably adhered to in the Siberian telegraph service. The telegraph on the lower Amoor was built under the supervision of Colonel Romanoff and was not completed at the time of my visit. It commenced at Nicolayevsk and followed the south bank of the Amoor to Habarofka at the mouth of the Ousuree. At Mariensk there was a branch to De Castries, and from Habarofka the line extended along the Ousuree and over the mountains to Posyet and Vladivostok. From Habarofka it was to follow the north bank of the Amoor to the Shilka, to join the line from Irkutsk and St. Petersburg. Arrangements have been made recently to lay a cable from Posyet to Hakodadi in Japan, and thence to Shanghae and other parts of China. When the cable proposed by Major Collins is laid across the Pacific Ocean, and the break in the Amoor line is closed up, the telegraph circuit around the globe will be complete. The telegraph is operated on the Morse system with instruments of Prussian manufacture. Compared to our American instruments the Prussian ones are quite clumsy, though they did not appear so in the hands of the operators. The signal key was at least four times as large as ours, and could endure any amount of rough handling. The other machinery was on a corresponding scale. A merchant who knew Mr. Borasdine invited us to his house, where he brought a lunch of bread, cheese, butter, and milk for our entertainment. Salted cucumbers were added, and the repast ended with tea. In the principal room there was a Connecticut clock in one corner, and the windows were filled with flowers, among which were the morning glory, aster, and verbena. Several engravings adorned the walls, most of them printed at Berlin. We purchased a loaf of sugar, and were shown a bear-skin seven feet long without ears and tail. The original and first legitimate owner of the skin was killed within a mile of town. In addition to his commerce and farming, this merchant was superintendent of a school where several Gilyak boys were educated. It was then vacation, and the boys were engaged in catching their winter supply of fish. At the merchant's invitation we visited the school buildings. The study room was much like a backwoods schoolroom in America, having rude benches and desks, but with everything clean and well made. The copy-books exhibited fair specimens of penmanship. On a desk lay a well worn reading book containing a dozen of �sop's fables translated into Russian and profusely illustrated. It corresponded to an American 'Second Reader.' There was a dormitory containing eight beds, and there was a wash-room, a dining-room, and a kitchen, the latter separate from the main building. Close at hand was a forge where the boys learned to work in iron, and a carpenter shop with a full set of tools and a turning lathe. The superintendent showed me several articles made by the pupils, including wooden spoons, forks, bowls, and cups, and he gave me for a souvenir a seal cut in pewter, bearing the word 'Fulyhelm' in Russian letters, and having a neatly turned handle. The school is in operation ten months of each year. The superintendent said the children of the Russian peasants could attend if they wished, but very few did so. The teacher was a subordinate priest of the Eastern church. The expense of the establishment was paid by Government, with the design of making the boys useful in educating the Gilyaks. The Gilyaks of the lower Amoor are pagans, and the attempts to Christianize them have not been very successful thus far. Their religion consists in the worship of idols and animals, and their priests or _shamans_ correspond to the 'medicine man' of the American Indians. Among animals they revere the tiger, and I was told no instance was known of their killing one. The remains of a man killed by a tiger are buried without ceremony, but in the funerals of other persons the Gilyaks follow very nearly the Chinese custom. The bear is also sacred, but his sanctity does not preserve him from being killed. [Illustration: BEAR IN PROCESSION.] In hunting this beast they endeavor to capture him alive; once taken and securely bound he is placed in a cage in the middle of a village, and there fattened upon fish. On fete-days he is led, or rather dragged, in procession, and of course is thoroughly muzzled and bound. Finally a great day arrives on which Bruin takes a prominent part in the festival by being killed. There are many superstitious ceremonies carefully observed on such occasions. The ears, jawbones, and skull of the bear are hung upon trees to ward off evil spirits, and the flesh is eaten, as it is supposed to make all who partake of it both fortunate and courageous. I did not have the pleasure of witnessing any of these ursine festivals, but I saw several bear cages and looked upon a bear while he lunched on cold salmon. If the bear were more gentle in his manners he might become a household pet among the Gilyaks; but at present he is not in favor, especially where there are small children. Ermines were formerly domesticated for catching rats, the high price of cats confining their possession to the wealthy. Cats have a half-religious character and are treated with great respect. Since the advent of the Russians the supply is very good. Before they came the Manjour merchants used to bring only male cats that could not trouble themselves about posterity. The price was sometimes a hundred roubles for a single mouser, and by curtailing the supply the Manjours kept the market good. The Gilyaks, like nearly all the natives of Northern Asia, are addicted to Shamanism. The shaman combines the double function of priest and doctor, ministering to the physical and spiritual being at the same time. When a man is taken sick he is supposed to be attacked by an evil spirit and the shaman is called to practice exorcism. There is a distinct spirit for every disease and he must be propitiated in a particular manner. While practicing his profession the shaman contorts his body and dances like one insane, and howls worse than a dozen Kamchadale dogs. He is dressed in a fantastic manner and beats a tambourine during his performance. To accommodate himself to the different spirits he modulates his voice, changes the character of his dance, and alters his costume. Both doctor and patient are generally decked with wood-shavings while the work is going on. Sometimes an effigy of the sick person is prepared, and the spirit is charmed from the man of flesh to the one of straw. The shaman induces him to take up lodgings in this effigy, and the success of his persuasion is apparent when the invalid recovers. If the patient dies the shaman declares that the spirit was one over which he had no control, but he does not hesitate to take pay for his services. [Illustration: PRACTICE OF MEDICINE.] A Russian traveler who witnessed one of these exorcisms said that the shaman howled so fearfully that two Chinese merchants who were present out of curiosity fled in very terror. The gentleman managed to endure it to the end, but did not sleep well for a week afterward. The Gilyaks believe in both good and evil spirits, but as the former do only good it is not thought necessary to pay them any attention. All the efforts are to induce the evil spirits not to act. They are supposed to have power over hunting, fishing, household affairs, and the health and well-being of animals and men. The shamans possess great power over their superstitious subjects, and their commands are rarely refused. I heard of an instance wherein a native caught a fine sable and preserved the skin as a trophy. Very soon a man in the village fell ill. The shaman after practicing his art announced that the spirit commanded the sable skin to be worn by the doctor himself. The valuable fur was given up without hesitation. A Russian traveler stopping one night in a Gilyak house discovered in the morning that his sledge was missing, and was gravely told that the spirit had taken it. In 1814 the small pox raged in one of the tribes living on the Kolyma river, and the deaths from it were numerous. The shamans practiced all their mysteries, and invoked the spirits, but they could not stop the disease. Finally, after new invocations, they declared the evil spirits could not be appeased without the death of Kotschen, a chief of the tribe. This chief was so generally loved and respected that the people refused to obey the shamans. But as the malady made new progress, Kotschen magnanimously came forward and was stabbed by his own son. In general the shamans are held in check by the belief that should they abuse their power they will be long and severely punished after death. This punishment is supposed to occur in a locality specially devoted to bad shamans. A good shaman who has performed wonderful cures receives after death a magnificent tomb to his memory. The Russians think that with educated Gilyaks they can succeed in winning the natives to Christianity, especially when the missionaries are skilled in the useful arts of civilized life. Hence the school in Mihalofski, and it has so far succeeded well in the instruction of the boys. Russian and Gilyak children were working in the gardens in perfect harmony, and there was every indication of good feeling between natives and settlers. CHAPTER XIII. On leaving Mihalofski we took the merchant and two priests and dropped them fifteen miles above, at a village where a church was being dedicated. The people were in their holiday costume and evidently awaited the priests. The church was pointed out, nestling in the forest just back of the river bank. It seemed more than large enough for the wants of the people, and was the second structure of the kind in a settlement ten years old. I have been told, but I presume not with literal truth, that a church is the first building erected in a Russian colony. At night we ran until the setting of the moon, and then anchored. It is the custom to anchor or tie up at night unless there is a good moon or very clear starlight. An hour after we anchored the stars became so bright that we proceeded and ran until daylight, reaching Mariensk at two in the morning. I had designed calling upon two gentlemen and a lady at Mariensk, but it is not the fashion in Russia to make visits between midnight and daybreak. Borasdine had the claim of old acquaintance and waked a friend for a little talk. This town is at the entrance of Keezee lake, and next to Nicolayevsk is the oldest Russian settlement on the lower Amoor. It was founded by the Russian American Company in the same year with Nicolayevsk, and was a trading post until the military occupation of the river. Difficulties of navigation have diminished its military importance, the principal rendezvous of this region being transferred to Sofyesk. On an island opposite Mariensk is the trace of a fortification built by Stepanoff, a Russian adventurer who descended the Amoor in 1654. Stepanoff passed the winter at this point, and fortified himself to be secure against the natives. He seems to have engaged in a general business of filibustering on joint account of himself and his government. In the winter of his residence at this fortress he collected nearly five thousand sable skins as a tribute to his emperor--and himself. Morning found us at Sofyesk taking a fresh supply of wood. This town was founded a few years ago, and has a decided appearance of newness. There is a wagon road along the shore of Keezee lake and across the hills to De Castries Bay. Light draft steamboats can go within twelve miles of De Castries. Surveys have been made with the design of connecting Keezee Lake and the Gulf of Tartary by a canal. A railway has also been proposed, but neither enterprise will be undertaken for many years. I passed an hour with the post commander, who had just received a pile of papers only two months from St. Petersburg, the mail having arrived the day before. The steamer Telegraph lay at the landing when we arrived; among her passengers was a Manjour merchant, who possessed an intelligent face, quite in contrast with the sleepy Gilyaks. He wore the Manjour dress, consisting of wide trowsers and a long robe reaching to his heels; his shoes and hat were Chinese, and his robe was held at the waist with a silk cord. His hair was braided in the Chinese fashion, and he sported a long mustache but no beard. [Illustration: MANJOUR MERCHANT.] A few versts above Sofyesk we met a Manjour merchant evidently on a trading expedition. He had a boat about twenty-five feet long by eight wide, with a single mast carrying a square sail. His boat was full of boxes and bales and had a crew of four men. A small skiff was towed astern and another alongside. These Manjour merchants are quite enterprising, and engage in traffic for small profits and large risks when better terms are not attainable. Before the Russian occupation all the trade of the lower Amoor was in Manjour hands. Boats annually descended from San-Sin and Igoon bringing supplies for native use. Sometimes a merchant would spend five or six months making his round journey. The merchants visited the villages on the route and bargained their goods for furs. There was an annual fair at the Gilyak village of Pul, below Mariensk, and this was made the center of commerce. The fair lasted ten days, and during that time Pul was a miniature Nijne Novgorod. Manjour and Chinese merchants met Japanese from the island of Sakhalin, Tunguse from the coast of the Ohotsk Sea, and others from, the head waters of the Zeya and Amgoon. There were Gilyaks from the lower Amoor and various tribes of natives from the coast of Manjouria. A dozen languages were spoken, and traffic was conducted in a patois of all the dialects. Cloth, powder, lead, knives, and brandy were exchanged for skins and furs. A gentleman who attended one of these fairs told me that the scene was full of interest and abounded in amusing incidents. Of late years the navigation of the Amoor has discontinued the fair of Pul. The Manjour traders still descend the river, but they are not as numerous as of yore. With a good glass from the deck of the steamer I watched the native process of catching salmon. The fishing stations are generally, though not always, near the villages. The natives use gill nets and seines in some localities, and scoop nets in others. Sometimes they build a fence at right angles to the shore, and extend it twenty or thirty yards into the stream. This fence is fish-proof, except in a few places where holes are purposely left. The natives lie in wait with skiffs and hand-nets and catch the salmon, as they attempt to pass these holes. I watched a Gilyak taking fish in this way, and think he dipped them up at the rate of two a minute; when the fish are running well a skiff can be filled in a short time. Sometimes pens of wicker work are fixed to enclose the fish after they pass the holes in the fence. The salmon in this case has a practical illustration of life in general: easy to get into trouble but difficult to get out of it. [Illustration: GILYAK MAN.] For catching sturgeon they use a circular net five feet across at the opening, and shaped like a shallow bag. One side of the mouth is fitted with corks and the other with weights of lead or iron. Two canoes in mid stream hold this net between them, at right angles to the current. The sturgeon descending the river enters the trap, and the net proceeds of the enterprise are divided between the fishermen. It requires vision or a guide to find a fishing station, but the sense of smell is quite sufficient to discover where salmon are dressed and cured. The offal from the fish creates an unpleasant stench and no effort is made to clear it away. The natives and their dogs do not consider the scent disagreeable and have no occasion to consult the tastes or smell of others. The first time I visited one of their fish-curing places I thought of the western city that had, after a freshet, 'forty-five distinct and different odors beside several wards to hear from.' Above Mariensk the Amoor valley is often ten or twenty miles wide, enclosing whole labyrinths of islands, some of great extent. These islands are generally well out of water and not liable to overflow. Very few have the temporary appearance of the islands of the lower Mississippi. Here and there were small islands of slight elevation and covered with cottonwoods, precisely like those growing between Memphis and Cairo. [Illustration: GILYAK WOMAN.] The banks of this part of the Amoor do not wash like the alluvial lands along the Mississippi and Missouri, but are more like the shores of the Ohio. They are generally covered with grass or bushes down to the edge of the water. There are no shifting sand-bars to perplex the pilot, but the channel remains with little change from year to year. I saw very little drift wood and heard no mention of snags. The general features of the scenery were much like those below Mihalofski. The numerous islands and the labyrinth of channels often permit boats to pass each other without their captains knowing it. One day we saw a faint line of smoke across an island three or four miles wide; watching it closely I found it was in motion and evidently came from a descending steamboat. On another occasion we missed in these channels a boat our captain was desirous of hailing. Once while General Monravieff was ascending the river he was passed by a courier who was bringing him important despatches. [Illustration: NIGHT SCENE--GROUP OF PEASANTS] The pilot steers with a chart of the river before him, and relies partly upon his experience and partly upon the delineated route. Sometimes channels used at high water are not navigable when the river is low, and some are favorable for descent but not for ascent. In general the pilotage is far more facile than on the Mississippi, and accidents are not frequent. The peasants always came to the bank where we stopped, no matter what the hour. At one place where we took wood at night there was a picturesque group of twenty-five or thirty gathered around a fire; men and women talking, laughing, smoking, and watching the crew at work. The light, of the fire poured full upon a few figures and brought them into strong relief, while others were half hidden in shadow. Of the men some wore coats of sheepskin, others Cossack coats of grey cloth; some had caps of faded cloth, and others Tartar caps of black sheepskin. Red beards, white beards, black beards, and smooth faces were played upon by the dancing flames. The women, were in hoopless dresses, and held shawls over their heads in place of bonnets. A hundred versts above Sofyesk the scenery changed. The mountains on the south bank receded from the river and were more broken and destitute of trees. Wide strips of lowland covered with forest intervened between the mountains and the shore. On the north the general character of the country remained. I observed a mountain, wooded to the top and sloping regularly, that had a curious formation at its summit. It was a perpendicular shaft resembling Bunker Hill Monument, and rising from the highest point of the mountain; it appeared of perfect symmetry, and seemed more like a work of art than of nature. On the same mountain, half way down its side, was a mass of rock with towers and buttresses that likened it to a cathedral. These formations were specially curious, as there were no more of the kind in the vicinity. Borasdine observed the rocks soon after I discovered them, and at first thought they were ancient monuments. There were many birds along the shore. Very often we dispersed flocks of ducks and sent them flying over islands and forests to places of safety. Snipe were numerous, and so were several kinds of wading and swimming birds. Very often we saw high in air the wild geese of Siberia flying to the southward in those triangular squadrons that they form everywhere over the world. These birds winter in the south of China, Siam, and India, while they pass the summer north of the range of the Yablonoi mountains. The birds of the Amoor belong generally to the species found in the same latitudes of Europe and America, but there are some birds of passage that are natives of Southern Asia, Japan, the Philippine Islands, and even South Africa and Australia. Seven-tenths of the birds of the Amoor are found in Europe, two-tenths in Siberia, and one-tenth in regions further south. Some birds belong more properly to America, such as the Canada woodcock and the water ouzel; and there are several birds common to the east and west coasts of the Pacific. The naturalists who came here at the Russian occupation found two Australian birds on the Amoor, two from tropical and sub-tropical Africa, and one from Southern Asia. The number of stationary birds is not great, in consequence of the excessive cold in winter. Mr. Maack enumerates thirty-nine species that dwell here the entire year. They include eagles, hawks, jays, magpies, crows, grouse, owls, woodpeckers, and some others. The birds of passage generally arrive at the end of April or during May, and leave in September or October. It is a curious fact that they come later to Nicolayevsk than to the town of Yakutsk, nine degrees further north. This is due to differences of climate and the configuration of the country. The lower Amoor is remarkable for its large quantities of snow, and at Nicolayevsk it remains on the ground till the end of May. South of the lower Amoor are the Shanalin mountains, which arrest the progress of birds. On the upper Amoor and in Trans-Baikal very little snow falls, and there are no mountains of great height. The day after leaving Sofyesk I observed a native propelling a boat by pulling both oars together. On my expressing surprise my companion said: "We have passed the country of the Gilyaks who pull their oars alternately, and entered that of the Mangoons and Goldees. The manner of rowing distinguishes the Gilyaks from all others." The Mangoons, Goldees, and Gilyaks differ in much the same way that the tribes of American Indians are different. They are all of Tungusian or Mongolian stock, and have many traits and words in common. Their features have the same general characteristics and their languages are as much alike as those of a Cheyenne and Comanche. Each people has its peculiar customs, such as the style of dress, the mode of constructing a house, or rowing a boat. All are pagans and indulge in Shamanism, but each tribe has forms of its own. All are fishers and hunters, their principal support being derived from the river. The Goldee boat was so much like a Gilyak one that I could see no difference. There was no opportunity to examine it closely, as we passed at a distance of two or three hundred feet. Besides their boats of wood the Goldees make canoes of birch bark, quite broad in the middle and coming to a point at both ends. In general appearance these canoes resemble those of the Penobscot and Canadian Indians. The native sits in the middle of his canoe and propels himself with a double-bladed oar, which he dips into the water with regular alternations from one side to the other. The canoes are flat bottomed and very easy to overturn. A canoe is designed to carry but one man, though two can be taken in an emergency. When a native sitting in one of them spears a fish he moves only his arm and keeps his body motionless. At the Russian village of Gorin there was an Ispravnik who had charge of a district containing nineteen villages with about fifteen hundred inhabitants. At Gorin the river is two or three miles wide, and makes a graceful bend. We landed near a pile of ash logs awaiting shipment to Nicolayevsk. The Ispravnik was kind enough to give me the model of a Goldee canoe about eighteen inches long and complete in all particulars. It was made by one Anaka Katonovitch, chief of an ancient Goldee family, and authorized by the emperor of China to wear the uniform of a mandarin. The canoe was neatly formed, and reflected favorably upon the skill of its designer. I boxed it carefully and sent it to Nicolayevsk for shipment to America. The Ispravnik controlled the district between Habarofka and Sofyesk on both banks of the river, his power extending over native and Russian alike. He said that this part of the Amoor valley was very fertile, the yield of wheat and rye being fifteen times the seed. The principal articles cultivated were wheat, rye, hemp, and garden vegetables, and he thought the grain product of 1866 in his district would be thirty thousand poods of wheat and the same of rye. With a population of fifteen hundred in a new country, this result was very good. The Goldees do not engage in agriculture as a business. Now and then there was a small garden, but it was of very little importance. Since the Russian occupation the natives have changed their allegiance from China to the 'White Czar,' as they call the Muscovite emperor. Formerly they were much oppressed by the Manjour officials, who displayed great rapacity in collecting tribute. It was no unusual occurrence for a native to be tied up and whipped to compel him to bring out all his treasures. The Goldees call the Manjours 'rats,' in consequence of their greediness and destructive powers. The Goldees are superior to the Gilyaks in numbers and intelligence, and the Manjours of Igoon and vicinity are in turn superior to the Goldees. The Chinese are more civilized than the Manjours, and call the latter 'dogs.' The Manjours take revenge by applying the epithet to the Goldees, and these transfer it to Mangoons and Gilyaks. The Mangoons are not in large numbers, and live along the river between the Gilyaks and Goldees. Many of the Russian officials include them with the latter, and the captain of the Ingodah was almost unaware of their existence. A peculiar kind of fence employed by the Russian settlers on this part of the Amoor attracted my attention. Stakes were driven into the ground a foot apart and seven feet high. Willow sticks were then woven between these stakes in a sort of basket work. The fence was impervious to any thing larger than a rat, and no sensible man would attempt climbing it, unless pursued by a bull or a sheriff, as the upper ends of the sticks were very sharp and about as convenient to sit upon as a row of harrow-teeth. It reminded me of a fence in an American village where I once lived, that an enterprising fruit-grower had put around his orchard,--a structure of upright pickets, and each picket armed with a nail in the top. One night four individuals bent on stealing apples, were confronted by the owner and a bull-dog and forced to surrender or leap the fence. Three of them were "treed" by the dog; the fourth sprang over the fence, but left the seat of his trousers and the rear section of his shirt, the latter bearing in indelible ink the name of the wearer. The circumstantial evidence was so strong against him that he did not attempt an alibi, and he was unable to sit down for nearly a fortnight. [Illustration: TAIL PIECE--THE NET] CHAPTER XIV. I took the first opportunity to enter a Goldee house and study the customs of the people. A Goldee dwelling for permanent habitation has four walls and a roof. The sides and ends are of hewn boards or small poles made into a close fence, which is generally double and has a space six or eight inches wide filled with grass and leaves. Inside and out the dwelling is plastered with mud, and the roofs are thatch or bark held in place by poles and stones. Sometimes they are entirely of poles. The doors are of hewn plank, and can be fastened on the inside. The dwellings are from fifteen to forty feet square, according to the size of the family. In one I found a grandfather and his descendants; thirty persons at least. There are usually two windows, made of fish skin or thin paper over lattices. Some windows were closed with mats that could be rolled up or lowered at will. The fire-place has a deep pan or kettle fixed over it, and there is room for a pot suspended from a rafter. Around the room is a divan, or low bench of boards or wicker work, serving as a sofa by day and a bed at night. When dogs are kept in the house a portion of the divan belongs to them, and among the Mangoons there is a table in the center specially reserved for feeding the dogs. I found the floors of clay, smooth and hard. Near the fire-place a little fire of charcoal is kept constantly burning in a shallow hole. Pipes are lighted at this fire, and small things can be warmed over it. Household articles were hung upon the rafters and cross beams, and there was generally a closet for table ware and other valuables. The cross-beams were sufficiently close to afford stowage room for considerable property. Fish-nets, sledges, and canoes were the most bulky articles I saw there. Part of one wall was reserved for religious purposes, and covered with bear-skulls and bones, horse-hair, wooden idols, and pieces of colored cloth. Occasionally there were badly-painted pictures, purchased from the Chinese at enormous prices. Sometimes poles shaped like small idols are fixed before the houses. A Goldee house is warmed by means of wooden pipes under the divan and passing out under ground to a chimney ten or fifteen feet from the building. Great economy is shown in using fuel and great care against conflagrations. I was not able to stand erect in any Goldee houses I entered. Like all people of the Mongolian race, the natives pretended to have little curiosity. When we landed at their villages many continued their occupations and paid no attention to strangers. Above Gorin a Goldee gentleman took me into his house, where a woman placed a mat on the divan and motioned me to a seat. The man tendered me a piece of dried fish, which I ate out of courtesy to my hosts. Several children gathered to look at me, but retired on a gesture from _pater familias_. I am not able to say if the fact that my eyes were attracted to a pretty girl of seventeen had anything to do with the dispersal of the group. Curiosity dwells in Mongol breasts, but the Asiatics, like our Indians, consider its exhibition in bad taste. Outside this man's house there were many scaffoldings for drying fish. A tame eagle was fastened with a long chain to one of the scaffolds; he was supposed to keep other birds away and was a pet of his owner. There were many dogs walking or lying around loose, while others were tied to the posts that supported the scaffolds. The dogs of the Goldees are very intelligent. One morning Mr. Maack missed his pots which he had left the night before full of meat. After some search they were found in the woods near the village, overturned and empty. Several dogs were prowling about and had evidently committed the theft. Fearing to be interrupted at their meal they carried the pots where they could eat at leisure. While steaming up the river I frequently saw temporary dwellings of poles and bark like our Indian wigwams. These were at the fishing stations upon sand bars or low islands. The afternoon following our departure from Gorin I counted about thirty huts, or _yourts_, on one island, and more than fifty boats on the river. For half a mile the scene was animated and interesting. Some boats were near the shore, their inmates hauling seines or paddling up or down the stream. In one heavily laden boat there was one man steering with a paddle. Four men towed the craft against the current, and behind it was another drawn by six dogs. Out in the river were small skiffs and canoes in couples, engaged in holding nets across the direction of the current. The paddles wore struck regularly and slowly to prevent drifting down the stream. [Illustration: TEN MILES AN HOUR.] One boat with two men rowing and another steering attempted a race with the steamer and fairly passed us, though we were making ten miles an hour. All these natives are very skillful in managing their boats. When we passed near a boat we were greeted with '_Mendow, mendow,'_ the Mongol word of welcome. Sometimes we were hailed with the Russian salutation of '_sdrastveteh_.' In one boat I saw a Goldee belle dressed with considerable taste and wearing a ring in the cartilage of her nose. How powerful are the mandates of Fashion! This damsel would scorn to wear her pendants after the manner of Paris and New York, while the ladies of Broadway and the Boulevards would equally reject the Goldee custom. The natives of this part of the Amoor have a three-pronged spear like a Neptune's trident, and handle it with much dexterity. The spear-head is attached to a long line, and when a fish is struck the handle is withdrawn. The fish runs out the line, which is either held in the hand or attached to a bladder floating on the water. Ropes and nets are made from hemp and the common sting nettle, the latter being preferred. The nettle-stalks are soaked in water and then dried and pounded till the fibres separate. Ropes and cords are equal to those of civilized manufacture, though sometimes not quite as smooth. Thread for sewing and embroidery comes from China, and is purchased of Manjour traders. The night after we left Gorin the boat took wood at the village of Doloe. It was midnight when we arrived, and as I walked through the village nearly all the inhabitants were sleeping. The only perambulating resident was very drunk and manifested a desire to embrace me, but as I did not know his language and could not claim relationship I declined the honor. Near the river there was a large building for government stores and a smaller one for the men guarding it. A few hundred yards distant there was a Goldee village, and for want of something better Borasdine proposed that we should call on one of its inhabitants. We took a Russian peasant to guide and introduce us, our credentials and passports having been left on the steamer. As we approached the first house we were greeted by at least a dozen dogs. They barked on all keys and our guide thought it judicious to provide himself with a stick; but I must do the brutes the justice to say that they made no attempt at dentistry upon our legs. Some of them were large enough to consume ten pounds of beef at a sitting, and some too small for any but ornamental purposes. The door was not locked and the peasant entered without warning, while we stood outside among the dogs. Our guide aroused the chief of the establishment and made a light; a strip of birch bark was used, and it took a good deal of blowing on the fire coals before a flame was produced. When we entered we found the proprietor standing in a short garment and rubbing his oblique eyes to get himself thoroughly awake. Near the place he had vacated, the lady of the house was huddled under a coverlid about as large as a postage stamp, and did not appear encumbered with much clothing. Three or four others had waked and made some attempt to cover themselves. At least a dozen remained asleep and lay in a charming condition of nudity. The Goldee houses are heated to a high degree, and their inmates sleep without clothing. The delay in admitting us was to permit the head of the house to dress in reception costume, which he did by putting on his shirt. After wishing this aboriginal a long and happy life, and thanking him for his courtesy, we departed. I bumped my head against the rafters both in entering and leaving, and found considerable difference between the temperature in the house and out of it. The peasant offered to guide us to visit more Goldees, but we returned to the boat and retired to sleep. The Russian peasants and the natives live in perfect harmony and are of mutual advantage and assistance. The peasant furnishes the native with salt, flour, and other things, while the latter catches fish, enough for both. Each has a peaceable disposition, and I was told that quarrels were of rare occurrence. The Chinese call the natives _Yu-pi-ta-tze_, which in English means 'wearers of fish-skins.' I saw many garments of fish-skins, most of them for summer use. The operation of preparing them is quite simple. The skins are dried and afterward pounded, the blows making them flexible and removing the scales. This done they are ready to be sewn into garments. [Illustration: A GOLDEE HOUSE] A coat of this material embroidered and otherwise decorated is far from ugly, and sheds water like India rubber. Fish skins are used in making sails for boats and for the windows of houses. A Russian who had worn a Goldee coat said it was both warm and waterproof, and he suggested that it would be well to adopt fish-skin garments in America. The Goldees and Mangoons practice Shamanism in its general features, and have a few customs peculiar to themselves. At a Goldee village I saw a man wearing a wooden representation of an arm, and learned that it is the practice to wear amulets to cure disease, the amulet being shaped like the part affected. A lame person carries a small leg of wood, an individual suffering from dyspepsia a little stomach, and so on through a variety of disorders. A hypochondriac who thought himself afflicted all over had covered himself with these wooden devices, and looked like a museum of anatomy on its travels. I thought the custom not unknown in America, as I had seen ladies in New York wearing hearts of coral and other substances on their watch-chains. Evidently the fashion comes from l'Amour. [Illustration: THE HYPOCHONDRIAC.] The morning after leaving Doloe we had a rain-storm with high wind that blew us on a lee shore. The river was four or five miles wide where the gale caught us, and the banks on both sides were low. The islands in this part of the river were numerous and extensive. At one place there are three channels, each a mile and a half wide and all navigable. From one bank to the other straight across the islands is a distance of nineteen miles. The wind and weather prevented our making much progress on that day; as the night was cloudy we tied up near a Russian village and economised the darkness by taking wood. At a peasant's house near the landing four white-headed children were taking their suppers of bread and soup under the supervision of their mother. Light was furnished from an apparatus like a fishing jack attached to the wall; every few minutes the woman fed it with a splinter of pine wood. Very few of the peasants on the Amoor can afford the expense of candles, and as they rarely have fire-places they must burn pine splinters in this way. Along the Amoor nearly every peasant house contains hundreds, and I think thousands, of cockroaches. They are quiet in the day but do not fail to make themselves known at night. The table where these children were eating swarmed with them, and I can safely say there wore five dozen on a space three feet square. They ran everywhere about the premises except into the fire. Walls, beds, tables, and floors were plentifully covered with these disagreeable insects. The Russians do not appear to mind them, and probably any one residing in that region would soon be accustomed to their presence. Occasionally they are found in bread and soup, and do not improve the flavor. Life on the steamboat was a trifle monotonous, but I found something new daily. Our steward (who is called _Boofetchee_ in Russian) brought me water for washing when I rose in the morning, and the samovar with tea when I was dressed. Borasdine rose about the time I did and joined me at tea. Then we had breakfast of beef and bread with potatoes about eleven or twelve o'clock, and dinner at six. The intervals between meals were variously filled. I watched the land, talked with Borasdine, read, wrote, smoked, and contemplated the steward, but never imagined him a disguised angel. I looked at the steerage passengers and the crew, and think their faces are pretty well fixed in memory. Had I only been able to converse in Russian I should have found much more enjoyment. As for the cook it is needless to say that I never penetrated the mysteries of his realm. Little games of cards wore played daily by all save myself; I used to look on occasionally but never learned the games. One of the Russian games at cards is called poker, and is not much unlike that seductive amusement so familiar to the United States. Whence it came I could not ascertain, but it was probably taken there by some enterprising American. Some years ago a western actor who was able to play Hamlet, Richelieu, Richard III., Claude Melnotte, and draw-poker, made his way to Australia, where he delighted the natives with his dramatic genius. But though he drew crowded houses his cash box was empty, as the treasurer stole the most of the receipts. He did not discharge him as there was little prospect of finding a better man in that country; but he taught him draw-poker, borrowed five dollars to start the game, and then every morning won from the treasurer the money taken at the door on the previous night. As we approached the Ousuree there was a superior magnificence in the forest. The trees on the southern bank grew to an enormous size in comparison, with those lower down the river. Naturalists say that within a short distance in this region may be found all the trees peculiar to the Amoor. Some of them are three or four feet in diameter and very tall and straight. The elm and larch attain the greatest size, while the ash and oak are but little inferior. The cork-tree is two feet through, and the maackia--a species of oak with a brown, firm wood--grows to the diameter of a foot or more. In summer the foliage is so dense that the sun's rays hardly penetrate, and there is a thick 'chapparel' that makes locomotion difficult. Just below the Ousuree the settlers had removed the under growth over a small space and left the trees appearing taller than ever. In a great deal of travel I have never seen a finer forest than on this part of the Amoor. I do not remember anything on the lower Mississippi that could surpass it. Tigers and leopards abound in these forests, and bears are more numerous than agreeable. Occasionally one of these animals dines upon a Goldee, but the custom is not in favor with the natives. It is considered remarkable that the Bengal tiger, belonging properly to a region nearer the equator, should range so far north. On some of its excursions it reaches 53° North Latitude, and feeds upon reindeer and sables. The valley of the Amoor is the only place in the world outside of a menagerie where all these animals are found together. The tropical ones go farther north and the Arctic ones farther south than elsewhere. It is the same with the vegetable kingdom. The mahogany and cork tree grow here, and the bark of the latter is largely used by the natives. On the slopes of the mountains a few miles away are the Siberian pine, the Ayan spruce, and here and there a larch tree. Cedars and fir trees are abundant and grow to a great size. The whole appearance of the region is one of luxuriance and fertility. The mouth of the Ousuree is a mile wide, and the stream is said to be magnificent through its whole length. Its sources are in Latitude 44°, and its length is about five hundred miles. While I was at Nicolayevsk Admiral Fulyelm said to me: "I have just returned from a voyage on the Ousuree. It is one of the loveliest rivers I ever saw. The valley bears such a resemblance to a settled country with alternate parks and open country that I almost looked to see some grand old mansion at every bend of the stream." A little past noon we sighted the town and military post of Habarofka at the mouth of the Ousuree. It stands on a promontory overlooking both rivers, and presents a pleasing appearance from the Amoor. The portion first visible included the telegraph office and storehouses, near which a small steamer was at anchor. A Manjour trading boat was at the bank, its crew resting on shore; a piece of canvas had been spread on the ground and the men were lounging upon it. One grave old personage, evidently the owner of the boat, waved his hand toward us in a dignified manner, but we could not understand his meaning. Coming to shore we narrowly missed running over a Goldee boat that crossed our track. Our wheel almost touched the stern of the craft as we passed it, but the occupants appeared no wise alarmed. Two women were rowing and a man steering, while a man and a boy were idle in the bow. A baby, strapped into a shallow cradle, lay in the bottom of the boat near the steersman. The young Mongol was holding his thumb in his mouth and appeared content with his position. The town was in a condition of rawness like a western city in its second year; there was one principal street and several smaller ones, regularly laid out. As in all the Russian settlements on the Amoor the houses were of logs and substantially built. Passing up the principal street we found a store, where we purchased a quantity of canned fruit, meats, and pickles. [Illustration: "NONE FOR JOE."] These articles were from Boston, New York, and Baltimore, and had American labels. The pictures of poaches, strawberries, and other fruits printed on the labels were a great convenience to the Russian clerk who served us. He could not read English, but understood pictorial representations. On the boat we gave the cans to the steward, to be opened when we ordered. The pictures were especially adapted to this youth as he read no language whatever, including his own. On one occasion a quantity of devilled turkey was put up in cans and sent to the Amoor, and the label was beautified with a picture of His Satanic Majesty holding a turkey on the end of a fork. The natives supposed that the devil was in the cans and refused to touch them. The supply was sent back to Nicolayevsk, where it was eaten by the American merchants. Accompanying Borasdine I called upon the officer in command. We were ushered through two or three small rooms into the principal apartment, which contained a piano of French manufacture. Three or four officers and as many ladies enabled us to pass an hour very pleasantly till the steam whistle recalled us, but we did not leave until two hours after going on board. Two or three men had been allowed on shore and were making themselves comfortable in a _lafka_. Two others went for them, but as they did not return within an hour the police went to search for both parties. When all were brought to the steamer it was difficult to say it the last were not first--in intoxication. Several passengers left us at Habarofka, among them the black eyed girl that attracted the eyes of one or two passengers in the cabin; as we departed she stood on the bank and waved us an adieu. In the freight taken at this point there were fifteen chairs of local manufacture; they were piled in the cabin and did not leave us much space, when we considered the number and size of the fleas. On my first night on the Ingodah the fleas did not disturb me as I came after visiting hours and was not introduced. On all subsequent nights they were persevering and relentless; I was bitten until portions of my body appeared as if recovering from a Polynesian tattoo. They used to get inside my under clothing by some mysterious way and when there they walked up and down like sentries on duty and bit at every other step. It was impossible to flee from them, and they appointed their breakfasts and lunches at times most inconvenient to myself. If I were Emperor of Russia I would issue a special edict expelling fleas from my dominions and ordering that the labor expended in scratching should be devoted to agriculture or the mechanic arts. I suggested that the engines should be removed from the Ingodah and a treadmill erected for the fleas to propel the boat. There have been exhibitions where fleas were trained to draw microscopic coaches and perform other fantastic tricks; but whatever their ability I would wager that the insects on that steamboat could not be outdone in industry by any other fleas in the world. One of my standard amusements was to have a grand hunt for these lively insects just before going to bed, and I have no doubt that the exercise assisted to keep me in good health. I used to remove my clothing, which I turned inside out and shook very carefully. Then I bathed from head to foot in some villainous brandy that no respectable flea would or could endure; after this ablution was ended, I donned my garments, wrapped in my blanket, and proceeded to dream that I was a hen with thirteen chickens, and doomed to tear up an acre of ground for their support. [Illustration: TAIL PIECE--SCENE ON THE RIVER] CHAPTER XV. When I rose in the morning after leaving Habarofka the steward was ready with his usual pitcher of water and basin. In Siberia they have a novel way of performing ablutions. They rarely furnish a wash-bowl, but in place of it bring a large basin of brass or other metal. If you wish to wash hands or face the basin is placed where you can lean over it. A servant pours from a pitcher into your hands, and if you are skillful you catch enough water to moisten your face. Frequently the peasants have a water-can attached to the wall of the house in some out-of-the-way locality. The can has a valve in the bottom opened from below like a trapdoor in a roof. By lifting a brass pin that projects from this valve one can fill his hands with water without the aid of a servant. While I was arranging my toilet the steward pointed out of the cabin window and uttered the single word "Kitie"--emphasizing the last syllable. I looked where he directed and had my first view of the Chinese empire. "Kitie" is the Russian name of China, and is identical with the Cathay of Marco Polo and other early travelers. I could not see any difference between Kitie on one hand and Russia on the other; there were trees and bushes, grass and sand, just as on the opposite shore. In the region immediately above the Ousuree there are no mountains visible from the river, but only the low banks on either hand covered with trees and bushes. Here and there were open spaces appearing as if cleared for cultivation. With occasional sand bars and low islands, and the banks frequently broken and shelving, the resemblance to the lower Mississippi was almost perfect. Mr. Maack says of this region: "In the early part of the year when the yellow blossoms of the Lonicera chrysantha fill the air with their fragrance, when the syringas bloom and the Hylonecon bedecks large tracts with a bright golden hue, when corydales, violets, and pasque flowers are open, the forests near the Ousuree may bear comparison in variety of richness and coloring with the open woods of the prairie country. Later in the year, the scarcity of flowers is compensated by the richness of the herbage, and after a shower of rain delicious perfumes are wafted towards us from the tops of the walnut and cork trees." A little past noon we touched at the Russian village of Petrovsky. At this place the river was rapidly washing the banks, and I was told that during three years nearly four hundred feet in front of the village had been carried away. The single row of houses forming the settlement stands with a narrow street between it and the edge of the bank. The whole population, men, women, and children, turned out to meet us. The day was cool and the men were generally in their sheepskin coats. The women wore gowns of coarse cloth of different colors, and each had a shawl over her head. Some wore coats of sheepskin like those of the men, and several were barefooted. Two women walked into the river and stood with utter nonchalance where the water was fifteen inches deep. I immersed my thermometer and found it indicated 51°. Walking on shore I was nearly overturned by a small hog running between my legs. The brute, with a dozen of his companions, had pretty much his own way at Petrovsky, and after this introduction I was careful about my steps. These hogs are modelled something like blockade runners: with great length, narrow beam, and light draft. They are capable of high speed, and would make excellent time if pursued by a bull-dog or pursuing a swill-bucket. [Illustration: RECEPTION AT PETROVSKY.] A peasant told us there were wild geese in a pond near by, and as the boat remained an hour or more to take wood, Borasdine and I improvised a hunting excursion. It proved in every sense a wild-goose chase, as the birds flew away before we were in shooting distance. Not wishing to return empty-handed we purchased two geese a few hundred yards from the village, and assumed an air of great dignity as we approached the boat. We subsequently ascertained that the same geese were offered to the steward for half the price we paid. Just above Petrovsky we passed the steamer Amoor, which left Nicolayevsk a week before us with three barges in tow. With such a heavy load her progress was very slow. Barges on the Amoor river are generally built of iron, and nearly as large as the steamers. They are not towed alongside as on the Mississippi, but astern. The rope from the steamer to the first barge is about two hundred feet long, and the barges follow each other at similar distances. Looking at this steamer struggling against the current and impeded by the barges, brought to mind Pope's needless Alexandrine: "That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along." Each barge has a crew, subordinate, of course, to the captain of the tow-boat. This crew steers the barge in accordance with the course of the steamer, looks after its welfare, and watches over the freight on board. In case it fastens on a sand bar the crew remains with it, and sometimes has the pleasure of wintering there. The barge is decked like a ship, and has two or three hatchways for receiving and discharging freight. Over each hatchway is a derrick that appears at a distance not unlike a mast. Above Petrovsky the banks generally retain their level character on the Russian side. Cliffs and hills frequently extend to the water on the Chinese shore, most of the land being covered with forests of foliferous trees. Some of the mountains are furrowed along their sides as regularly as if turned with a gigantic plow. Near the villages of Ettoo and Dyrki the cliffs are precipitous and several hundred feet high; at their base the water is deep and the current very strong. On the north shore the plain is generally free from tall trees, but has a dense growth of grass and bushes. Sand-banks are frequent, and the islands are large and numerous. This region is much frequented during the fishing season, and the huts of the natives, their canoes and drying scaffolds are quite numerous. There are but few fixed villages, the country not being desirable for permanent habitation. Near one village there was a gently sloping hillside about a mile square with a forest of oak so scattered that it had a close resemblance to an American apple-orchard. The treaty between Russia and China, fixing the boundaries between the two empires, contains a strange oversight. Dated on the 14th of November, 1860, it says: "Henceforth the eastern frontier between the two empires shall commence from the junction of the rivers Shilka and Argoon, and will follow the course of the River Amoor to the junction of the river Ousuree with the latter. The land on the left bank (to the north) of the River Amoor belongs to the empire of Russia, and the territory on the right bank (to the south) to the junction of the River Ousuree, to the empire of China." The treaty further establishes the boundaries from the mouth of the Ousuree to the sea of Japan, and along the western region toward Central Asia. It provides for commissioners to examine the frontier line. It declares that trade shall be free of duty along the entire line, and removes all commercial restrictions. It gives the merchants of Kiachta the right of going to Pekin, Oorga, and Kalgan; allows a Russian consulate at Oorga, and permits Russian merchants to travel anywhere in China. It annuls former treaties, and establishes a postal arrangement between Pekin and Kiachta. I presume the oversight in the treaty was on the part of the Chinese, as the Russians are too shrewd in diplomacy to omit any point of advantage. Nothing is said about the land in the Amoor. "The land on the north bank is Russian, and on the south bank Chinese." What is to be the nationality of the islands in the river? Some of them are large enough to hold a population of importance, or be used, as the sites of fortifications. There are duchies and principalities in Europe of less territorial extent than some islands of the Amoor. When Russia desires them she will doubtless extend her protection, and I observed during my voyage that several islands were occupied by Russian settlers for hay-cutting and other purposes. Why could not an enterprising man of destiny like the grey-eyed Walker or unhappy Maximilian penetrate the Amoor and found a new government on an island that nobody owns? Quite likely his adventure would result like the conquests of Mexico and Nicaragua, but this probability should not cause a man of noble blood to hesitate. Below the Ousuree the Russian villages were generally on the south bank of the river, but after passing that stream I found them all on the north side. The villages tributary to China consisted only of the settlements of Goldees and Mangoons, or their temporary fishing stations. The Chinese empire contains much territory still open to colonization, and I imagine that it would be to the interest of the Celestial government to scatter its population more evenly over its dominions. Possibly it does not wish to send its subjects into regions that may hereafter fall into the hands of the emperor of Russia. There is a great deal of land in Manjouria adapted to agriculture, richly timbered and watered, but containing a very small population. Millions of people could find homes where there are now but a few thousands. A Russian village and military post seventeen miles below the mouth of the Songaree is named Michael Semenof, in honor of the Governor General of Eastern Siberia. We landed before the commandant's house, where two iron guns pointed over the river in the direction of China. However threatening they appeared I was informed they were unserviceable for purposes of war, and only employed in firing salutes. A military force was maintained there, and doubtless kept a sharp watch over the Chinese frontier. The soldiers appeared under good sanitary regulations, and the quarters of the Commandant indicated an appreciation of the comforts of life. The peasants that gathered on the bank were better dressed than those of Petrovsky and other villages. The town is on a plain covered with a scattered growth of oaks. Below this place the wood furnished us was generally ash or poplar; here it was oak, somewhat gnarly and crooked, but very good for steamboat fuel. One design of the colonization of the Amoor is to furnish a regular supply of wood to the government steamers. The peasants cut the wood and bring it to the bank of the river. Private steamers pay cash for what they purchase; the captains of the government boats gives vouchers for the wood they take, and these vouchers are redeemed at the end of the season of navigation. About sixty thousand roubles worth of wood is consumed annually by government, and twelve thousand on private account. While the boat took wood Borasdine and I resumed our hunting, he carrying a shot-gun and I an opera glass; with this division of labor we managed to bag a single snipe and kill another, which was lost in the river. My opera glass was of assistance in finding the birds in the grass; they were quite abundant almost within rifle-shot of town, and it seemed strange that the officers of the post did not devote their leisure to snipe hunting. Our snipe was cooked, for dinner, and equalled any I ever saw at Delmonico's. We had a wild goose at the same meal, and after a careful trial I can pronounce the Siberian goose an edible bird. He is not less cunning than wild geese elsewhere, but with all his adroitness he frequently falls into the hands of man and graces his dinner table. On the northern horizon, twenty or thirty miles from Michael Semenof, there is a range of high and rugged mountains. As we left the town, near the close of day, the clouds broke in the west and the sunshine lighted up these mountains and seemed to lift them above their real position. With the red and golden colors of the clouds; the lights and shadows of the mountains; the yellow forests of autumn, and the green plains near the river; the stillness broken only by our own motion or the rippling of the river, the scene was 'most fair to look upon.' I have never seen sunsets more beautiful than those of the Amoor. [Illustration: ARMED AND EQUIPPED.] I rose early in the morning to look at the mouth of the Songaree. Under a cloudy moon I could distinguish little beyond the outline of the land and the long low water line where the Amoor and Songaree sweep at right angles from their respective valleys. Even though it was not daylight I could distinguish the line of separation, or union, between the waters of the two streams, just as one can observe it where the Missouri and Mississippi unite above Saint Louis. I would have given much to see this place in full daylight, but the fates willed it otherwise. This river is destined at some time to play an important part in Russian and Chinese diplomacy. At present it is entirely controlled by China, but it appears on all the late maps of Eastern Siberia with such minuteness as to indicate that the Russians expect to obtain it before long. Formerly the Chinese claimed the Songaree as the real Amoor, and based their argument on the fact that it follows the general course of the united stream and carried a volume of water as large as the other. They have now abandoned this claim, which the Russians are entirely willing to concede. Once the fact established that the Songaree is the real Amoor, the Russians would turn to the treaty which gives them "all the land north of the Amoor." Their next step would be to occupy the best part of Manjouria, which would be theirs by the treaty. By far the larger portion of Manjouria is drained by the Songaree and its tributaries. The sources of this river are in the Shanalin mountains, that separate Corea from Manjouria, and are ten or twelve thousand feet high. They resemble the Sierra Nevadas in having a lake twelve miles in circumference as high in air as Lake Tahoe. The affluents of the Songaree run through a plateau in some places densely wooded while in others it has wide belts of prairie and marshy ground. A large part of the valley consists of low, fertile lands, through which the river winds with very few impediments to navigation. Very little is known concerning the valley, but it is said to be pretty well peopled and to produce abundantly. M. De la Bruniere when traveling to the country of the Gilyaks in 1845, crossed this valley, and found a dense population along the river, but a smaller one farther inland. The principal cities are Kirin and Sansin on the main stream, and Sit-si-gar on the Nonni, one of its tributaries. The Songaree is navigable to Kirin, about thirteen hundred versts from the Amoor, and it is thought the Nonni can be ascended to Sit-si-gar. The three cities have each a population of about a hundred thousand. According to the treaty of 1860 Russian merchants with proper passports may enter Chinese territory, but no more than two hundred can congregate in one locality. Russian merchants have been to all the cities in Manjouria, but the difficulties of travel are not small. The Chinese authorities are jealous of foreigners, and restrict their movements as much as possible. The Russians desire to open the Songaree to commerce, but the Chinese prefer seclusion. A month before my visit a party ascended the river to ascertain its resources. A gentleman told me the Chinese used every means except actual force to hinder the progress of the steamer and prevent the explorers seeing much of the country. Whenever any one went on shore the people crowded around in such numbers that nothing else could be seen. Almost the whole result of the expedition was to ascertain that the river was navigable and its banks well peopled. In the dim light of morning I saw some houses at the junction of the rivers, and learned they were formerly the quarters of a Manjour guard. Until 1864 a military force, with two or three war junks, was kept at the mouth of the Songaree to prevent Russian boats ascending. Mr. Maximowicz, the naturalist, endeavored in 1859 to explore the river as far as the mouth of the Nonni. Though his passport was correct, the Manjour guard ordered him to stop, and when he insisted upon proceeding the Celestial raised his matchlock. Maximowicz exhibited a rifle and revolver and forced a passage. He was not molested until within forty miles of San-Sin, when the natives came out with flails, but prudently held aloof on seeing the firearms in the boat. Finding he could not safely proceed, the gentleman turned about when only twenty-five miles below the city. After passing the Songaree I found a flat country with wide prairies on either side of the river. In the forest primeval the trees were dense and large, and where no trees grew the grass was luxuriant. The banks were alluvial and evidently washed by the river during times of freshet. There were many islands, but the windings of the river were more regular than farther down. I saw no native villages and only two or three fishing stations. Those acquainted with the river say its banks have fewer inhabitants there than in any other portion. On the Russian shore there were only the villages established by government, but notwithstanding its lack of population, the country was beautiful. With towns, plantations, and sugar-mills, it would greatly resemble the region between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. I could perceive that the volume of the river was much diminished above its junction with the Songaree. At long and rare intervals snags were visible, but not in the navigable channel. We took soundings with a seven foot pole attached to a rope fastened to the rail of the boat. A man threw the pole as if he were spearing fish, and watched the depth to which it descended. The depth of water was shouted in a monotonous drawl. "_Sheiste; sheiste polivinnay; sem; sem polivinnay;_" and so on through the various quantities indicated. I thought the manner more convenient than that in use on some of our western rivers. While smoking a cigar on the bridge I was roused by the cry of "_tigre! tigre_!" from Borasdine. I looked to where he pointed on the Chinese shore and could see an animal moving slowly through the grass. It may have been a tiger, and so it was pronounced by the Russians who saw it; I have never looked upon a real tiger outside of a menagerie, and am not qualified to give an opinion. I brought my opera glass and Borasdine Iris rifle, but the beast did not again show himself. Provoked by this glimpse my companions retired to the cabin and made a theoretical combat with the animal until dinner time. The day was made memorable by a decent dinner; the special reason for it was the fact that Borasdine had presented our caterer with an old coat. I regretted I could not afford to reduce my wardrobe, else we would have secured another comfortable repast. Both steward and cook were somewhat negligently clad, and possibly a spare garment or two might have opened their hearts and larders. Of course the sight of the tiger led to stories about his kindred, and we whiled away a portion of the evening in narrating incidents of a more or less personal character. An officer, who was temporarily our fellow-passenger, on his way to one of the Cossack posts, a few miles above, gave an account of his experience with a tiger on the Ousuree. I was out (said he) on a survey that we were making on behalf of the government to establish the boundary between Russia and China. The country was then less known than now; there were no settlements along the river, and with the exception of the villages of the natives, thirty or forty miles apart, the whole country was a wilderness. At one village we were warned that a large tiger had within a month killed two men and attacked a third, who was saved only by the sudden and unexpected appearance of a party of friends. We prepared our rifles and pistols, to avoid the possibility of their missing fire in case of an encounter with the man-stealing beast. Rather reluctantly some of the natives consented to serve us as guides to the next village. We generally found them ready enough to assist us, as we paid pretty liberally for their services, and made love to all the young women that the villages contained. With an eye to a successful campaign, I laid in a liberal supply of trinkets to please these aboriginals, and found that they served their purposes admirably. So the natives were almost universally kind to us, and their reluctance to accompany us on this occasion showed the great fear they entertained of the tiger. We were camped on the bank of the Ousuree, about ten miles from the village, and passed the night without disturbance. In the morning, while we were preparing for breakfast, one of the natives went a few hundred yards away, to a little pond near, where he thought it possible to spear some salmon. He waded out till he was immersed to his waist, and then with his spear raised, stood motionless as a statue for several minutes. Suddenly he darted the spear into the water and drew out a large salmon, which he threw to the shore, and their resumed his stationary position. In twenty minutes he took three or four salmon, and then started to return to camp. Just as he climbed the bank and had gathered his fish, a large tiger darted from the underbrush near by, and sprung upon him as a cat would spring upon a mouse. Stopping not a moment, the tiger ran up the hillside and disappeared. I was looking toward the river just as the tiger sprang upon him, and so were two of the natives; we all uttered a cry of astonishment, and were struck motionless for an instant, though only for an instant. The unfortunate man did not struggle with the beast, and as the latter did not stop to do more than seize him, I suspected that the fright and suddenness of the attack had caused a fainting fit. I and my Russian companion seized our rifles, and the natives their spears, and started in pursuit. We tracked the tiger through the underbrush, partly by the marks left by his feet, but mainly by the drops of blood that had fallen from his victim. Going over a ridge, we lost the trail, and though we spread out and searched very carefully, it was nearly an hour before we could resume the pursuit. Every minute seemed an age, as we well knew that the tiger would thus gain time to devour his prey. Probably I was less agitated than the natives, but I freely and gladly admit that I have never had my nerves more unstrung than on that occasion, though I have been in much greater peril. We searched through several clumps of bushes, and examined several thickets, in the hope of finding where the tiger had concealed himself. The natives approached all these thickets with fear and trembling, so that most of the searching was done by the Russian members of the party. Just as we were beating around a little clump of bushes, fifteen or twenty yards across, my companion on the other side shouted: "Look out; the tiger is preparing to spring upon you." Instantly I cocked my rifle and fired into the bushes; they were so dense that I could hardly discern the outline of the beast, who had me in full view, and was crouching preparatory to making a leap. I called to my friend to shoot, as the density of the thicket made it very probable that my fire would be lost, by the ball glancing among the shrubbery. But my friend was in the same predicament, and I quickly formed a plan of operations. [Illustration: GENERAL ACTIVITY.] We were both good shots, and I thought our safety lay in killing the beast as he rose in the air. Aiming at his head, I stepped slowly backward, and shouted to my friend to cover the tiger and shoot as he sprang. All this occurred in less time than I tell of it. Hardly had I stepped two paces backward when the tiger leaped toward me. As he rose, his throat was exposed for a moment, and I planted a bullet in his breast. Simultaneously a ball from the other rifle struck his side. We fired so closely together that neither of us heard the report of the other's weapon. The tiger gave a roar of agony, and despite the wounds he received, either of which would have been fatal, he completed his spring so nearly that he caught me by the foot and inflicted a wound that lamed me for several months, and left permanent scars. The natives, hearing the report of our rifles, came to our assistance, and so great was their reverence for the tiger, that they prostrated themselves before his quivering body, and muttered some words which I could not understand. Though assured that the beast was dead, they hesitated to enter the thicket to search for the body of their companion, and it was only on my leading the way that they entered it. We found the remains of the poor native somewhat mutilated, though less so than I expected. There was no trace of suffering upon his features, and I was confirmed in my theory that he fainted the moment he was seized, and was not conscious afterward. His friends insisted upon burying the body where they found it, and said it was their custom to do so. They piled logs above the grave, and after the observance of certain pagan rites, to secure the repose of the deceased, they signified their readiness to proceed. The tiger was one of the largest of his kind. I had his skin carefully removed, and sent it with my official report to St. Petersburg. A Chinese mandarin who met me near Lake Hinka offered me a high price for the skin, but I declined his offer, in order to show our Emperor what his Siberian possessions contained. [Illustration: TAIL PIECE--FLASK] CHAPTER XVI. On the morning of September 28th we arrived at Ekaterin-Nikolskoi, a flourishing settlement, said to contain nearly three hundred houses. It stood on a plateau forty feet above the river, and was the best appearing village I had seen since leaving Habarofka. The people that gathered on the bank were comfortably clad and evidently well fed, but I could not help wondering how so many could leave their labor to look at a steamboat. The country was considered excellent for agriculture, yielding abundantly all the grains that had been tried. On the Amoor the country below Gorin belongs to the Maritime province, which has its capital at Nicolayevsk. Above Gorin is the Province of The Amoor, controlled by the governor at Blagoveshchensk. In the Maritime Province the settlers are generally of the civilian or peasant class, while in the Amoor Province they are mostly Cossacks. The latter depend more upon themselves than the former, and I was told that this was one cause of their prosperity. Many peasants in the Maritime Province do not raise enough flour for their own use, and rely upon government when there is a deficiency. It is my opinion that the Emperor does too much for some of his subjects in the eastern part of his dominions. In Kamchatka and along the coast of the Ohotsk sea the people are supplied with flour at a low price or for nothing, a ship coming annually to bring it. It has been demonstrated that agriculture is possible in Kamchatka. When I asked why rye was not raised there, one reply was: "We get our flour from government, and have no occasion to make it." Now if the government would furnish the proper facilities for commencing agriculture, and then throw the inhabitants on their own resources, I think it would make a decided change for the better. A self-reliant population is always the best. Some of the colonists on the Amoor went there of their own accord, induced by liberal donations of land and materials, while others were moved by official orders. In Siberia the government can transfer a population at its will. A whole village may be commanded to move ten, a hundred, or a thousand miles, and it has only to obey. The people gather their property, take their flocks and herds, and move where commanded. They are reimbursed for losses in changing their residence, and the expense of new houses is borne by government. A community may be moved from one place to another, and the settlers find themselves surrounded by their former neighbors. The Cossacks are moved oftener than the peasants, as they are more directly subject to orders. I found the Cossack villages on the Amoor were generally laid out with military precision, the streets where the ground permitted being straight as sunbeams, and the houses of equal size. Usually each house had a small yard or flower garden in its front, but it was not always carefully tended. Every village has a chief or headman, who assigns each man his location and watches over the general good of his people. When Cossacks are demanded for government service the headman makes the selection, and all cases of insubordination or dispute are regulated by him. A Cossack is half soldier and half citizen. He owes a certain amount of service to the government, and is required to labor for it a given number of days in the year. He may be called to travel as escort to the mail or to an officer, to watch over public property, to row a boat, construct a house, or perform any other duty in his power. In case of war he becomes a soldier and is sent wherever required. As a servant of government he receives rations for himself and family, but I believe he is not paid in money. The time belonging to himself he can devote to agriculture or any other employment he chooses. The Cossacks reside with their families, and some of them acquire considerable property. A Russian officer told me there were many wealthy Cossacks along the Argoon river on the boundary between Russia and China. They trade across the frontier, and own large droves of cattle, horses, and sheep. Some of their houses are spacious and fitted with considerable attempt at luxury. The Amoor settlements are at present too young to possess much wealth. Soon after leaving Ekaterin-Nikolskoi we entered the Buryea or Hingan mountains. This chain extends across the valley of the Amoor at nearly right angles, and the river flows through it in a single narrow defile. The mountains first reach the river on the northern bank, the Chinese shore continuing low for thirteen miles higher up. There are no islands, and the river, narrowed to about half a mile, flows with a rapid current. In some places it runs five miles an hour, and its depth is from fifty to a hundred feet. The mountains come to the river on either bank, sometimes in precipitous cliffs, but generally in regular slopes. Their elevation is about a thousand feet, and they are covered to their summits with dense forests of foliferous and coniferous trees. Occasionally the slopes are rocky or covered with loose debris that does not give clinging room to the trees. The undergrowth is dense, and everything indicates a good vegetation. The mountains are of mica-schist, clay-slate, and rocks of similar origin resting upon an axis of granite. Porphyry has been found in one locality. According to the geologists there are indications of gold and other precious metals, and I would not be surprised if a thorough exploration led to valuable discoveries. As the boat struggled against the current in this mountain passage I spent most of the time on deck. The tortuous course of the river added much to the scenic effect. Almost every minute the picture changed. Hill, forest, cliff, and valley assumed different aspects as we wound our sinuous way up the defile. Here and there were tiny cascades breaking over the steep rocks to the edge of the river, and occasionally a little meadow peeped out from the mountain valleys. Some features of the scenery reminded me of the Highlands of the Hudson, or the Mississippi above Lake Pepin. At times we seemed completely enclosed in a lake from which there was no escape save by climbing the hills. Frequently it was impossible to discover any trace of an opening half a mile in our front. Had we been ascending an unexplored river I should have half expected to find it issuing like a huge spring from the base of a high mountain. The Russian villages in these mountains are located in the valleys of streams flowing to the Amoor. In one bend we found a solitary house newly-erected and waiting its occupants who should, keep the post-station in winter. We sent a Cossack ashore in a skiff at this point, and he came near falling into the river while descending the steps at the steamer's side. While returning from the bank one of the men in the skiff broke an oar and fell overboard, which obliged us to back the steamer nearly half a mile down the river to pick him up. The unlucky individual was arrayed in the only suit of clothes he possessed, and was hung up to dry in the engine room. A mile above this landing place we passed two Manjour boats ascending the stream. These boats were each about twenty feet long, sitting low in the water with the bow more elevated than the stern, and had a mast in the center for carrying a small sail. In the first boat I counted six men, four pushing with poles, one steering, and the sixth, evidently the proprietor, lying at ease on the baggage. Where the nature of the ground permits the crew walk along the shore and tow the boat. The men were in cotton garments and conical hats, and their queues of hair hung like ships pennants in a dead calm, or the tails of a group of scared dogs. They seemed to enjoy themselves, and were laughing merrily as we went past them. They waved their hands up the stream as if urging us to go ahead and say they were coming. The one reclining was a venerable personage, with a thin beard fringing a sedate visage, into which he drew long whiffs and comfort from a Chinese pipe. These boats were doubtless from Kirin or San-Sin, on their way to Igoon. The voyage must be a tedious one to any but a Mongol, much like the navigation of the Mississippi before the days of steam-boats. In spite of the great advantages to commerce, the Manjours resisted to the last the introduction of steam on the Amoor just as they now oppose it on the Songaree. [Illustration: MANJOUR BOAT.] In the language of the natives along its banks the Amoor has several names. The Chinese formerly called the Songaree 'Ku-tong,' and considered the lower Amoor a part of that stream. Above the Songaree the Amoor was called 'Sakhalin-Oula,' (black water,) by the Manjours and Chinese. The Goldees named it 'Mongo,' and the Gilyaks called it 'Mamoo.' The name Amoor was given by the Russians, and is considered a corruption of the Gilyak word. When Mr. Collins descended, in 1857, the natives near Igoon did not or would not understand him when he spoke of the Amoor. They called the river 'Sakhalin,' a name which the Russians gave to the long island at the mouth of the Amoor. As the Mongolian maps do not reach the outside world I presume the Russian names are most likely to endure with geographers. The upper part of the defile of the Buryea Mountains is wider and has more meadows than the lower portion. On one of these meadows, where there is a considerable extent of arable land, we found the village of Raddevski, named in honor of the naturalist Raddy, who explored this region. The resources here were excellent, if I may judge by the quantity and quality of edibles offered to our steward. The people of both sexes flocked to the landing with vegetables, bread, chickens, butter, and other good things in much larger quantity than we desired. There was a liberal supply of pigs and chickens, with many wild geese and ducks. We bought a pig and kept him on board three or four days. He squealed without cessation, until our captain considered him a bore, and ordered him killed and roasted. Pigs were generally carried in bags or in the arms of their owners. One day a woman brought a thirty pound pig suspended over her shoulder. The noise and kicking of the brute did not disturb her, and she held him as unconcernedly as if he were an infant. Finding no market for her property, she turned it loose and allowed it to take its own way home. Milk was almost invariably brought in bottles, and eggs in boxes or baskets. Eggs were sold by the dizaine (ten,) and not as with us by the dozen. At Raddevski several kinds of berries were offered us, but only the blackberry and whortleberry were familiar to my eyes. One berry, of which I vainly tried to catch the Russian name, was of oblong shape, three-fourths an inch in length, and had the taste of a sweet grape. It was said to grow on a climbing vine. Cedar nuts were offered in large quantities, but I did not purchase. Here, as elsewhere on the lower Amoor, men and women labor together in the fields and engage equally in marketing at the boats. I was much amused in watching the commercial transactions between the peasants and our steward. I could not understand what was said, but the conversation in loud tones and with many words had much the appearance of an altercation. Several times I looked around expecting to see blows, but the excitement was confined to the vocal organs alone. The passage of the Amoor through the Buryea mountains is nearly a hundred miles in length. Toward the upper end the mountains are more precipitous and a few peaks rise high above the others, like The Sentinels in Yosemite valley. The last cliff before one reaches the level country is known as Cape Sverbef, a bold promontory that projects into the river and is nearly a thousand feet high. Not far from this cliff is a flat-topped mountain remarkable for several crevices on its northern side, from which currents of cold air steadily issue. Ice forms around these fissures in midsummer, and a thermometer suspended in one of them fell in an hour to 30° Fahrenheit. An hour after passing the mountains I saw a dozen conical huts on the Chinese shore and a few dusky natives lounging in front of them. They reminded me of the lodges of our noble red men as I saw them west of the Missouri several years before. Instead of being Cheyennes or Sioux they proved to be Birars, a tribe of wandering Tunguse who inhabit this region. Their dwellings wore of light poles covered with birch bark. One of the native gentlemen was near the bank of the river in the attitude of an orator, but not properly dressed for a public occasion. His only garments were a hat and a string of beads, and he was accompanied by a couple of young ladies in the same picturesque costume, minus the hat and beads. These Tungusians lead a nomadic life. Above the mouth of the Zeya there are two other tribes of similar character, the Managres and Orochons. The principal difference between them is that the former keep the horse and the latter the reindeer. The Birars have no beasts of burden except a very few horses. None of these people live in permanent houses, but move about wherever attracted by fishing or the chase. During spring and summer they generally live on the banks of the river, where they catch and cure fish. Their scaffoldings and storehouses were like those of the natives already described, and during their migrations are left without guards and universally respected. Their fish are dried for winter use, and they sell the roe of the sturgeon to the Russians for making caviar. My first acquaintance with caviar was at Nicolayevsk, and I soon learned to like it. It is generally eaten with bread, and forms an important ingredient in the Russian lunch. On the Volga its preparation engages a great many men, and the caviar from that river is found through the whole empire. Along the Amoor the business is in its infancy, the production thus far being for local consumption. I think if some enterprising American would establish the preparation of caviar on the Hudson where the sturgeon is abundant, he could make a handsome profit in shipping it to Russia. The roe is taken from the fish and carefully washed. The membrane that holds the eggs together is then broken, and after a second washing the substance is ready for salting. One kind for long carriage and preservation is partially dried and then packed and sealed in tin cans. The other is put in kegs, without pressing, and cannot be kept a long time. In the autumn and winter the natives are hunters. They chase elk and deer for their flesh, and sables, martens, and squirrels for their furs. Squirrels are especially abundant, and a good hunter will frequently kill a thousand in a single season. The Siberian squirrel of commerce comes from this region by way of Irkutsk and St. Petersburg. The natives hunt the bear and are occasionally hunted by him. At one landing a Birar exhibited an elk skin which he wished to exchange for tobacco, and was quite delighted when I gave him a small quantity of the latter. He showed me a scar on his arm where a bear had bitten him two or three years before. The marks of the teeth and the places where the flesh was torn could be easily seen, but I was unable to learn the particulars of his adventure. These Tungusians are rather small in stature, and their arms and legs are thin. Their features are broad, their mouths large and lips narrow, and their hair is black and smooth, the men having very little beard. Their clothing is of the skins of elk and deer, with some garments of cotton cloth of Chinese manufacture. Most of the men I saw wore a belt at the waist, to which several articles of daily use were attached. At each Russian settlement above the mountains I observed a large post painted in the official colors and supporting a board inscribed with the name of the village. It was fixed close to the landing place, and evidently designed for the convenience of strangers. One of my exercises in learning the language of the country was to spell the names on these signs. I found I could usually spell much faster if I knew beforehand the name of a village. It was like having a Bohn's translation of a Latin exercise. At the village of Inyakentief I saw the first modern fortification since leaving Nicolayevsk,--a simple lunette without cannon but with several hundred cannon shot somewhat rusty with age. The governor of this village was a prince by title, and evidently controlled his subjects very well. I saw Madame the princess, but did not have the pleasure of her acquaintance. She was dressed in a costume of which crinoline, silk, and ribbons were component parts, contrasting sharply with the coarse garments of the peasant women. This village had recently sold a large quantity of wheat and rye to the government. It had the best church I had seen since leaving Nicolayevsk, and its general appearance was prosperous. Among the women that came to the boat was one who recognized Borasdine as an old acquaintance. She hastened back to her house and brought him two loaves of bread made from wheat of that year's growth. As a token of friendship he gave her a piece of sugar weighing a pound or two and a glass of bad brandy that brought many tears to her eyes. I think she was at least fifteen minutes drinking the fiery liquid, which she sipped as one would take a compound of cayenne pepper and boiling water. The worst 'tanglefoot' or 'forty-rod' from Cincinnati or St. Louis would have been nectar by the side of that brandy. The country for a hundred miles or more above the Buryea mountains was generally level. Here and there were hills and ridges, and in the background on the south a few mountains were visible. There were many islands which, with the banks of alluvium, were evidently cut by the river in high freshets. Where the beach sloped to the water there was a little driftwood, and I could see occasional logs resting upon islands and sand bars. When taken in a tumbler the water of the Amoor appeared perfectly clear, but in the river it had a brownish tinge. There were no snags and no floating timber. I never fancied an iron boat for river travel owing to the ease of puncturing it. On the Mississippi or Missouri it would be far from safe, but on the Amoor there are fewer perils of navigation. More boats have been lost there from carelessness or ignorance than from accidents really unavoidable. The Amoor is much like what the Mississippi would be with all its snags removed and its channel made permanent. While among the islands I saw a small flotilla of boats in line across a channel, and after watching them through a glass discovered they were hauling a net. There were ten or twelve summer huts on the point of an island, and the boats were at least twice as many. A dozen men on shore were hauling a net that appeared well filled with fish. I do not think a single native looked up as we passed. Possibly they have a rule there not to attend to outside matters when exercising their professions. CHAPTER XVII. The second day above the mountains we passed a region of wide prairie stretching far to the north and bearing a dense growth of rank grass and bushes, with a few clumps of trees. On the Chinese side there were hills that sloped gently to the river's edge or left a strip of meadow between them and the water. Many hills were covered with a thin forest of oaks and very little underbrush. At a distance the ground appeared as if carefully trimmed for occupation, especially as it had a few open places like fields. In the sere and yellow leaf of autumn these groves were charming, and I presume they are equally so in the fresh verdure of summer. If by some magic the Amoor could be transferred to America, and change its mouth from the Gulf of Tartary to the Bay of New York, a multitude of fine mansions would soon rise on its banks. Among the islands that stud this portion of the river we passed the steamer Constantine with two barges in tow. She left Nicolayevsk twelve days before us, and her impediments made her journey a slow one. Her barges were laden with material for the Amoor telegraph, then under construction. About the same time we met the Nicolai towing a barge with a quantity of cattle destined for the garrison at the mouth of the river. The Nicolai was the property of a merchant (Mr. Ludorf) at Nicolayevsk. The village of Poyarkof, where we stopped for wood, impressed me very favorably. It was carefully laid out, and its single street had a wide and deep ditch on each side, crossed by little bridges. The houses were well built and had an air of neatness, while all the fences were substantial. Very few persons visited the boat, most of the inhabitants being at work in the fields. We walked through the settlement, and were shown specimens of wheat and rye grown in the vicinity. Four or five men, directed by a priest, were building a church, and two others were cutting plank near by with a primitive 'up-and-down' saw. The officer controlling the village was temporarily absent with the farm laborers. All around there were proofs of his energy and industry. This village was one of the military colonies of the Province of the Amoor. When in proper hands the military settlement is preferable to any other, as the men are more accustomed to obeying orders and work in greater harmony than the peasants. What is most needed is an efficient and energetic chief to each village, who has and deserves the confidence of his people. With enough of the _fortiter in re_ to repress any developments of laziness and prevent intemperance, such a man can do much for the government and himself. If His Imperial Majesty will take nine-tenths of his present military force on the Amoor, place it in villages, allow the men to send for their families, and put the villages in the hands of proper chiefs under a general superintendent, he will take a long step toward making the new region self-sustaining. We have ample proof in America that an army is an expensive luxury, and the cost of maintaining it is proportioned to its strength. The verb 'to soldier' has a double meaning in English, and will bear translation. On distant stations like the Amoor, the military force could be safely reduced to a small figure in time of peace. Less play and more work would be better for the country and the men. As we proceeded up the river there was another change of the native population. The tents of the Birars disappeared, and we entered the region of the Manjours and Chinese. The captain called my attention to the first Manjour village we passed. The dwellings were one story high, their walls being of wood with a plastering of mud. The chimneys were on the outside like those of the Goldees already described, and the roofs of the houses were thatched with straw. The Manjour villages are noticeable for the gardens in and around them. Each house that I saw had a vegetable garden that appeared well cultivated. In the corner of nearly every garden I observed a small building like a sentry box. In some doubt as to its use, I asked information of my Russian friends, and learned it was a temple where the family idols are kept and the owners go to offer their prayers. [Illustration: A PRIVATE TEMPLE.] Near each village was a grove which enclosed a public temple on the plan of a church in civilized countries. The temple was generally a square house, built with more care and neatness than the private dwellings. On entering, one found himself in a kind of ante-room, separated from the main apartment by a pink curtain. This curtain has religious inscriptions in Chinese and Manjour. In the inner apartment there are pictures of Chinese deities, with a few hideous idols carved in wood. A table in front of the pictures receives the offerings of worshippers. The Manjours appear very fond of surrounding their temples with trees, and this is particularly noticeable on account of the scarcity of wood in this region. Timber comes from points higher up the Amoor, where it is cut and rafted down. Small trees and bushes are used as fuel and always with the strictest economy. The grove around the temple is held sacred, as among the Druids in England, and I presume a native would suffer long from cold before cutting a consecrated tree. Along the river near the first village several boats were moored or drawn on the bank out of reach of the water. A few men and women stood looking at us, and some of them shouted '_mendow_' when we were directly opposite their position. Of course we returned their salutation. Unlike the aboriginals lower down the river, the Manjours till the soil and make it their chief dependence. I saw many fields where the grain was uncut, and others where it had been reaped and stacked. The stacks were so numerous in proportion to the population that there must be a large surplus each year. Evidently there is no part of the Amoor valley more fertile than this. Horses and cattle were grazing in the meadows and looked up as we steamed along. We passed a dozen horses drinking from the river, and set them scampering with our whistle. The horse is used here for carrying light loads, but with heavy burdens the ox finds preference. Along the Chinese shore I frequently saw clumsy carts moving at a snail-like pace between the villages. Each cart had its wheels fixed on an axle that generally turned with them. Frequently there was a lack of grease, and the screeching of the vehicle was rather unpleasant to tender nerves. Near the village we met a Manjour boat, evidently the property of a merchant. The difference between going with and against the current was apparent by comparing the progress of this boat with the one I saw in the Buryea mountains. One struggled laboriously against the stream, but the other had nothing to do beyond keeping where the water ran swiftest. This one carried a small flag, and was deeply laden with merchandise. The crew was dozing and the man at the helm did not appear more than half awake. Villages were passed in rapid succession, and the density of the population was in agreeable contrast to the desolation of many parts of the lower Amoor. It was a panorama of houses, temples, groves, and fields, with a surrounding of rich meadows and gentle hills. There was a range of low mountains in the background, but on the Russian shore the flat prairie continued. In the middle of the afternoon we passed the town of Yah-tou-kat-zou, situated on the Chinese shore where the river makes a bend toward the north and east. It had nothing of special interest, but its gardens were more extensive and more numerous than in the villages below. Just above it there was a bay forming a neat harbor containing several boats and barges. When the Chinese controlled the Amoor they occupied this bay as a dock-yard and naval station. Had my visit been ten or twelve years earlier I should have seen several war junks anchored here. When the Russians obtained the river the Chinese transferred their navy to the Songaree. From this ancient navy yard the villages stretched in a nearly continuous line along the southern bank, and were quite frequent on the northern one. We saw three Manjour women picking berries on the Russian shore. One carried a baby over her shoulders much after the manner of the American Indians. These women wore garments of blue cotton shaped much like the gowns of the Russian peasants. Near them a boat was moving along the shore, carrying a crew consisting of a man, a boy, and a dog. The boat, laden with hay, was evidently destined for 'cows and a market.' Near it was another boat rowed by two men, carrying six women and a quantity of vegetables. Some of the women were sorting the vegetables, and all watched our boat with interest. From the laughter as we passed I concluded the remarks on our appearance were not complimentary. The scene on this part of the river was picturesque. There were many boats, from the little canoe or 'dug-out,' propelled by one man, up to the barge holding several tons of merchandise. The one-man boats were managed with a double-bladed oar, such as I have already described. Nearly every boat that carried a mast had a flag or streamer attached to it, and some had dragons' heads on their bows. Would Lindley Murray permit me to say that I saw one barge manned by ten women? [Illustration: FISHING IMPLEMENTS.] Though subsisting mainly by agriculture and pastoral pursuits, the Manjours devote considerable time to fishing. One fishing implement bore a faint resemblance to a hand-cart, as it had an axle with two small wheels and long handles. A frame over the axle sustained a pole, to which a net was fastened. The machine could be pushed into the water and the net lowered to any position suitable for entrapping fish. Occasionally I saw a native seated on the top of a tripod about ten feet high, placed at the edge of the river. Here he fished with pole, net, or spear, according to circumstances. He always appeared to me as if left there during a freshet and waiting for the river to rise and let him off. At one place two boys were seated cross-legged near the water and fishing with long poles. They were so intent in looking at us that they did not observe the swell of the steamer until thoroughly drenched by it. As they stood dripping on the sand they laughed good-naturedly at the occurrence, and soon seated themselves again at their employment. Late in the afternoon I saw a village larger than all the others, lying in a bend of the river, stretching three or four miles along the bank and a less distance away from it. This was Igoon, the principal place of the Chinese on the Amoor, and once possessing considerable power. Originally the fort and town of Igoon were on the left bank of the river, four miles below the present site. The location was changed in 1690, and when the new town was founded it grew quite rapidly. For a long time it was a sort of Botany Bay for Pekin, and its early residents were mostly exiles. At present its population is variously estimated from twenty to fifty thousand. The Chinese do not give any information on this point, and the Russian figures concerning it are based upon estimates. Igoon was formerly the capital of the Chinese 'Province of the Arnoor,' but is now destitute of that honor. The seat of government was removed about twenty years ago to Sit-si-gar. As we approached Igoon I could see below it many herds of cattle and horses driven by mounted men. There was every appearance of agricultural prosperity. It was near the end of harvest, and most of the grain was stacked in the fields. Here and there were laborers at work, and I could see many people on the bank fronting the river. Around the city were groves enclosing the temples which held the shrines consecrated to Mongol worship, as the cross is reverenced by the followers of the Christian faith. The city had a sombre look, as all the houses were black. The buildings were of wood plastered with mud, and nearly all of one story. Over the temples in the city there were flag-staffs, but with no banners hanging from them or on the outer walls. The governor's house and the arsenals were similarly provided with tall poles rising from the roofs, but here as elsewhere no flags were visible. Along the beach there were many rafts of logs beside numerous boats either drawn on shore or moored to posts or stakes. Fishermen and boys were sitting cross-legged near the water, and the inattention of several caused their drenching by our swell. Idle men stood on the bank above the beach, nearly all smoking their little brass pipes with apparent unconcern. Men and women, principally the latter, were carrying water from the river in buckets, which they balanced from the ends of a neck-yoke. We dropped anchor and threw a line that was made fast by a young Manjour. On shore we met several residents, who greeted us civilly and addressed the captain in Russian. Most of the Manjour merchants have learned enough Russian to make a general conversation, especially in transacting business. I was introduced as an American who had come a long distance purposely to see Igoon. The governor was absent, so that it was not possible to call on him. We were shown to a temple near at hand, a building fifteen feet by thirty, with a red curtain at the door and a thick carpet of matting over a brick pavement. The altar was veiled, but its covering was lifted to allow me to read, if I could, the inscription upon it. It stood close to the entrance, like the screen near the door of a New York bar-room. There were several pictures on the walls, a few idols, and some lanterns painted in gaudy colors. Outside there were paintings over the door, some representing Chinese landscapes. The windows were of lattice work, the roof had a dragon's head at each end of the ridge, and a mosaic pavement extended like a sidewalk around the entire building. Our guide, who lived near, invited us to his house. We entered it through his office, which contained a table, three or four chairs, and a few account books. Out of this we walked into a large apartment used for lounging by day and sleeping at night. Its principal furniture was a wide divan, at one side, where the bed clothing of three or four persons was rolled into neat bundles. It turned out on inquiry that the man lived in two houses, the principal part of his family being domiciled several squares away. As time pressed we did not stop longer than to thank him for his attention. The streets of Igoon reminded me of New York under the contract system four or five years ago. We walked through one street upon a narrow log fixed in the mud, and steadied ourselves against a high fence. On a larger thoroughfare there were some dry spots, but as there were two logs to walk upon we balanced very well. Chinese streets rarely have sidewalks, and every pedestrian must care for himself the best way he can. The rains the week before my visit had reduced the public ways to a disagreeable condition. Were I to describe the measurement of the Broadway of Igoon, I should say its length was two miles, more or less, its width fifty feet, and its depth two feet. Our captain carried a sword cane which confused him a little as the lower part occasionally stuck in the mud and came off. This exposition of weapons he evidently wished to avoid. On the principal street I found several stores, and, true to the instinct of the American abroad, stopped to buy something. The stores had the front open to the street, so that one could stand before the counter and make his purchases without entering. The first store I saw had six or seven clerks and very little else, and as I did not wish a Chinese clerk I moved to another shop. For the articles purchased I paid only five times their actual value, as I afterward learned. The merchants and their employees appeared to talk Russian quite fluently, and were earnest in urging me to buy. One of them imitated the tactics of Chatham street, and became very voluble over things I did not want. Holding up an article he praised its good qualities and named its price. "Five roubles; very good; five roubles." I shook my head. "Four roubles; yes; good; four roubles." Again I made a negation. "Three roubles; very good; yes." I continued shaking my head as he fell to two and a half, two, and finally to one rouble. I left him at that figure, or it is possible he would have gone still lower. "They are great rascals," said Borasdine as we walked away. "They ask ten times the real price and hope to cheat you in some way. It is difficult to buy anything here for its actual value." We went through more streets and more mud, passing butchers' shops where savage dogs growled with that amiable tone peculiar to butcher dogs everywhere. We passed tea shops, shoe shops, drug stores, and other establishments, each with a liberal number of clerks. Labor must be cheap, profits large, or business brisk, to enable the merchants to maintain so many employees. At the end of a long street we came to the guard-house, near the entrance of the military quarters. We entered the dirty barrack, but saw nothing particularly interesting. I attempted to go inside the room where the instruments of punishment were kept, but the guard stood in the way and would not move. The soldiers in this establishment had evidently partaken of a beverage stronger than tea, as they were inclined to too much familiarity. One patted me on the shoulder and pressed my hand affectionately, indulging the while in snatches of Chinese songs. In the prison were two or three unfortunates with their feet shackled so as to prevent their stepping more than four inches at a time. While we stood there a gaily dressed officer rode past us on a magnificent horse, reminding me of an American militia hero on training day. We looked at the fence of palisades, and stepped under the gateway leading to the government quarter. Over the gate was a small room like the drawbridge room in a castle of the middle ages. Twenty men could be lodged there to throw arrows, hot water, or Chinese perfumery on the invading foe. A Manjour acquaintance of our captain invited us to visit his house. We entered through the kitchen, where there was a man frying a kind of 'twisted doughnut' in vegetable oil. The flour he used was ground in the Manjour mills, and lacked the fineness of European or American flour. Judging by the quantity of food visible the family must have been a large one. The head of the household proclaimed himself a Tartar, and said he was the proprietor of four wives. I smoked a cigar with him, and during our interview Borasdine hinted that we would like to inspect his harem. After a little decorous hesitation, he led us across an open and muddy courtyard to a house where a dozen women were in the confusion of preparing and eating supper. With four wives one must have a proportionate number of servants and retainers, else he cannot maintain 'style.' Such a scene of confusion I never saw before in one man's family. There were twelve or fifteen children of different ages and sexes, and not one silent. Some were at table, some quarreling, some going to sleep, and some waking. Two women were in serious dispute, and the Tartar words poured out freely. The room was hot, stifling, and filled with as many odors as the city of Cologne, and we were glad to escape into the open air as soon as possible. I did not envy that Mongol gentleman his domestic bliss, and am inclined to think he considered it no joke to be as much married as he was. I did not sec any pretty women at Igoon, but learned afterward that they exist there. The Manjour style of hair-dressing attracts the eye of a stranger. The men plait the hair after the Chinese manner, shaving the fore part of the head. The women wind theirs in a peculiar knot, in about the position of the French chignon. They pierce this knot with two long pins like knitting needles, and trim it with bright ribbons and real or artificial flowers. The fashion is becoming, and, excluding the needles, I would not be surprised to see it in vogue in Western civilization within half a dozen years. The men wore long blue coats of cotton or silk, generally the former, loose linen trousers, fastened at the knee or made into leggings, and Chinese shoes or boots of skin. The women dress in pantaletts and blue cotton gowns with short, loose sleeves, above which they wear at times a silk cape or mantle. They have ear rings, bracelets, and finger rings in profusion, and frequently display considerable taste in their adornment. It was nearly sunset when we landed at Igoon, and when we finished our visit to the Tartar family the stars were out. The delay of the boat was entirely to give me a view of a Chinese-Manjour city. Darkness put an end to sight-seeing, and so we hastened to the steamer, followed by a large crowd of natives. [Illustration: A CHINESE FAMILY PICTURE.] We took three or four Manjour merchants as passengers to Blagoveshchensk. One of them spent the evening in our cabin, but would neither drink alcoholic beverages nor smoke. This appeared rather odd among a people who smoke persistently and continually. Men, women, and children are addicted to the practice, and the amount of tobacco they burn is enormous. CHAPTER XVIII. At daylight on the morning after leaving Igoon, we were passing the mouth of the Zeya, a river half a mile wide, flowing with a strong current. It was along this river that the first white men who saw the Amoor found their way. It is said to be practicable for steam navigation three or four hundred miles from its mouth. At present four or five thousand peasants are settled along the Zeya, with excellent agricultural prospects. As I came on deck rubbing my half-opened eyes, I saw a well-built town on the Russian shore. "Blagoveshchensk," said the steward, as he waved his arm in that direction. I well knew that the capital of the Province of the Amoor was just above the mouth of the Zeya. It stands on a prairie fifteen or twenty feet above the river, and when approached from the south its appearance is pleasing. The houses are large and well built, and each has plenty of space around it. Some of them have flower gardens in front, and a public park was well advanced toward completion at the time of my arrival. A wharf extended into the river at an angle of forty degrees with the shore. The steamer Korsackoff was moored at this wharf, with a barge nearly her own size. The Ingodah tied to the bank just below the wharf, and was welcomed by the usual crowd of soldiers and citizens, with a fair number of Manjours from the other bank. On landing, I called upon Colonel Pedeshenk, the governor of the Province, and delivered my letters of introduction. The Colonel invited me to dine with him that day, and stated that several officers of his command would be present. After this visit and a few others, I went with Captain Borasdine to attend the funeral of the late Major General Bussy. This gentleman was five years governor of the Province of the Amoor, and resigned in 1866 on account of ill-health. He died on his way to St. Petersburg, and the news of his death reached Blagoveshchensk three days before my arrival. I happened to reach the town on the morning appointed for the funeral service. The church was crowded, everybody standing, according to the custom prevailing in Russia. Colonel Pedeshenk and his officers were in full uniform, and almost all present held lighted candles. Five or six priests, with an Archbishop, conducted the ceremonies. The services consisted of a ritual, read and intoned by the priests, with chanting by the choir of male voices. The Archbishop was in full robes belonging to his position, and his long gray beard and reverend face gave him a patriarchal appearance. When the ceremony was finished the congregation opened to the right and left to permit the governor and officers to pass out first. From beginning to end the service lasted about an hour. Colonel Pedeshenk had been governor but a few months, and awaited confirmation in his position. Having served long on the staff of General Bussy, he was disposed to follow in the footsteps of his predecessor and carry out his plans for developing the resources of his district. At the appointed hour I went to dine at the governor's, where I found eight or ten officers and the young wife of Colonel Pedeshenk. We spent a half-hour on the balcony, where there was a charming view of the river and the Chinese shore with its background of mountains. The governor's house was more like a mansion in a venerable town than in a settlement less than ten years old. The reception hall would have made a good ball-room anywhere out of the large cities. The charming young madame did not speak English but was fluent in French. She was from Irkutsk, and had spent several years in the schools and society of St. Petersburg. She had many reminiscences of the capital, and declared herself delighted with her home on the Amoor. After dinner we retired to the balcony for prosaic tea drinking and a poetical study of the glories of an autumn sunset behind the hills of Manjouria. There was no hotel in the town, and I had wondered where I should lodge. Before I had been half an hour on shore, I was invited by Dr. Snider, the surgeon in chief of the province, to make my home at his house. The doctor spoke English fluently, and told me he learned it from a young American at Ayan several years before. He was ten years in government service at Ayan, and met there many of my countrymen. Once he contemplated emigrating to New Bedford at the urgent solicitation of a whaling captain who frequently came to the Ohotsk sea. Dr. Snider was from the German provinces of Russia, and his wife, a sister of Admiral Fulyelm, was born in Sweden. They usually conversed in German but addressed their children in Russian. They had a Swedish housemaid who spoke her own language in the family and only used Russian when she could not do otherwise. Madame Snider told me her children spoke Swedish and Russian with ease, and understood German very well. They intended having a French or English governess in course of time. "I speak," said the doctor, "German with my wife, Swedish to the housemaid, Russian to my other servants, French with some of the officers, English with occasional travelers, and a little Chinese and Manjour with the natives over the river." Blagoveshchensk has a pretty situation, and I should greatly prefer it to Nicolayevsk for permanent habitation. In the middle of the Amoor valley and at the mouth of the Zeya, its commercial advantages are good and its importance increases every year. It was founded in 1858 by General Mouravieff, but did not receive any population worthy of mention until after the treaty of Igoon in 1860. The government buildings are large and well constructed, logs being the material in almost universal use for making walls. A large unfinished house for the telegraph was pointed out to me, and several warehouses were in process of erection. Late one afternoon the captain of the steamer Korsackoff invited me to visit Sakhalin-Oula-Hotun (city of the black river) on the opposite shore. Though called a city it cannot justly claim more than two thousand inhabitants. There was a crowd on the bank similar to the one at Igoon, most of the women and girls standing with their arms folded in their sleeves. Several were seated close to the water and met the same misfortune as those in similar positions at Igoon. The Korsackoff made a much greater swell than the Ingodah, and those who caught its effects were well moistened. We landed from, the steamer's boat and ascended the bank to the village. Several fat old Manjours eyed us closely and answered with great brevity our various questions. Sakhalin-Oula stretches more than a mile along the bank, but extends only a few rods back from the river. Practically it consists of a single street, which is quite narrow in several places. The houses are like those of Igoon, with frames of logs and coverings of boards, or with log walls plastered with mud. The windows of stores and dwellings are of lattice work covered with oiled paper, glass being rarely used. The roofs of the buildings were covered with thatch of wheat straw several inches thick, that must offer excellent facilities for taking fire. Probably the character of this thatch accounts for the chimneys rising ten or fifteen feet from, the buildings. I saw several men arranging one of these roofs. On a foundation of poles they laid bundles of straw, overlapping them as we overlap shingles, and cutting the boards to allow the straw to spread evenly. This kind of covering must be renewed every two or three years. Several thatches were very much decayed, and in one of them there was a fair growth of grass. The village was embowered in trees in contrast to the Russian shore where the only trees were those in the park. I endeavored to ascertain the cause of this difference, but could not. The Russians said there was often a variation of three or four degrees in the temperature of the two banks, the Chinese one being the milder. Timber for both Chinese and Russian use is cut in the forests up the Amoor and rafted down. Sakhalin-Oula abounded in vegetable gardens, which supplied the market of Blagoveshchensk. The number of shops both there and at Igoon led me to consider the Manjours a population of shop-keepers. Dr. Snider said they brought him everything for ordinary table use, and would contract to furnish at less than the regular price, any article sold by the Russian merchants. In their enterprise and mode of dealing they were much like the Jews of Europe and America, which may account for their being called Manjours. Once a month during the full moon they come to Blagoveshchensk and open a fair, which continues seven days. They sell flour, buckwheat, beans, poultry, eggs, vegetables, and other edible articles. The Russians usually purchase a month's supply at these times, but when they wish anything out of the fair season the Manjours are ready to furnish it. We walked along a narrow street, less muddy than the streets of Igoon, and passed several cattle yards enclosed with high fences, like California corrals. In one yard there were cattle and horses, so densely packed that they could not kick freely. Groups of natives stared at us while smoking their little pipes, and doubtless wondered why we came there. Several eyed me closely and asked my companions who and what I could be. The explanation that I was American conveyed no information, as very few of them ever heard of the land of the free and the former home of the slave. One large building with a yard in front and an inscription over its gate was pointed out as a government office. Several employees of the Emperor of China were standing at the gateway, all smoking and enjoying the evening air. At a hitching post outside the gate there were three saddled horses of a breed not unlike the 'Canadian.' The saddles would be uncomfortable to an American, cavalry officer, though not so to a Camanche Indian. According to my recollection of our equestrian savage I think his saddle is not much unlike the Mongolians'. Beyond this establishment we entered a yard in front of a new and well-built house. Near the door was the traveling carriage of the governor of Igoon, who had arrived only an hour or two before. The carriage was a two-wheeled affair, not long enough to permit one to lie at full length nor high enough to sit bolt upright. It had no springs, the frame resting fairly on the axles. The top was rounded like that of a butcher's cart and the sides were curtained with blue cloth that had little windows or peep-holes. I looked behind the curtain and saw that the sides and bottom were cushioned to diminish the effect of jolting. Two or three small pillows, round and hard, evidently served to fill vacancies and wedge the occupant in his place. [Illustration: MANJOUR TRAVELING CARRIAGE.] The shafts were like those of a common dray, and the driver's position was on a sort of shelf within ten inches of the horse's tail. There was room for a postillion on the shelf with the driver, the two sitting back to back and their legs hanging over the side. The wheel-tires were slightly cogged as if made for use in a machine, and altogether the vehicle did not impress me as a comfortable one. Being without springs it gives the occupant the benefit of all jolting, and as the Chinese roads are execrable, I imagine one might feel after a hundred miles in such a conveyance very much as if emerging from an encounter with a champion prize-fighter. Sometimes the Chinese officials set the wheels of their carts very far aft so as to get a little spring from the long shafts. Even with this improvement the carriage is uncomfortable, and it is no wonder that the Chinese never travel when they can avoid it. Entering a hall that led to a larger apartment, we reached the presence of the governor of Igoon. He was seated on a mat near the edge of a wide divan, his legs crossed like a tailor's at his work. He was in a suit of light-colored silk, with a conical hat bearing a crystal ball on the top. It is generally understood that the grade of a Chinese official may be known by the ball he wears on his hat. Thus there are red, blue, white, yellow, green, crystal, copper, brass, _et cetera_, according to the rank of the wearer. These balls take the place of the shoulder-strap and epaulettes of western civilization, and it must be admitted that they occupy the most conspicuous position one could select. As I am not versed in details of the orders of Chinese rank I will not attempt to give the military and civil status of my new acquaintance. I learned that he was a general in the army, had displayed skill and bravery in subduing the rebellion, and been personally decorated by the Emperor. He was enjoying his pipe and a cup of tea, resting the latter on a little table at his side. He was an old man,--of how many years I dare not try to guess,--with a thin gray beard on his short chin, and a face that might have been worn by the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance. I was introduced as an American who had come to see China, and especially the portion bordering on the Amoor. We shook hands and I was motioned to a seat at his side on the edge of the divan. Tea and cigars opened the way to a slow fire of conversation. I spoke in French with Borasdine, who rendered my words in Russian to the governor's interpreter. The principal remarks were that we were mutually enchanted to see each other, and that I was delighted at my visit to Igoon and Sakhalin-Oula. Several officials entered and bowed low before the governor, shaking their clenched hands at him during the obeisance. One wore a red and another a yellow ball, the first being in a black uniform and the second in a white one. The principal feature of each uniform was a long coat reaching below the knees, with a cape like the capes of our military cloaks. Both dresses were of silk, and the material was of excellent quality. The floor of the room was of clay, beaten smooth and cleanly swept. The furniture consisted of the divan before mentioned, with two or three rolls of bedding upon it, a Chinese table, and two Chinese and three Russian chairs. The walls were covered with various devices produced from the oriental brain; and an American clock and a French mirror showed how the Celestials have become demoralized by commerce with outside barbarians. The odor from the kitchen filled the room, and as we thought the governor might be waiting for his supper, we bade him good evening and returned to the boat and the Russian shore. During my stay at Blagoveshchensk I was invited to assist at a visit made by the governor of Igoon to Colonel Pedeshenk. The latter sent his carriage at the appointed hour to bring the Chinese dignitary and his chief of staff. A retinue of ten or twelve officers followed on foot, and on entering the audience hall they remained standing near the door. The greetings and hand-shakings were in the European style, and after they were ended the Chinese governor took a seat and received his pipe from his pipe-bearer. He wore a plain dress of grey silk and a doublet or cape of blue with embroidery along the front. He did not wear his decorations, the visit being unofficial. In addition to the ball on his hat he wore a plume or feather that stood in a horizontal position. His chief of staff was the most elaborately dressed man of the party, his robes being more gaily decorated than the governor's. The members of the staff wore mandarin balls of different colors, and all had feathers in their hats. The governor's hair was carefully done up, and I suspect his queue was lengthened with black silk. Conversation was carried on through the Colonel's interpreter, and ran upon various topics. General Bussy's death was mentioned in terms of regret, and then followed an interchange of compliments between the two governors who met for the first time. After this the Chinese governor spoke of my visit to Sakhalin-Oula, and said I was the first American he ever met in his province. "How did I come from America," he asked, "and how far had I traveled to reach Blagoveshchensk?" The interpreter named the distance and said I came to the Amoor in a ship connected with the telegraph service. "When would the telegraph be finished?" He was told that within two or three years they would probably be able to send messages direct to America. Then he asked if the railway would not soon follow the telegraph. He had never seen either, but understood perfectly their manner of working. He expressed himself pleased at the progress of the telegraph enterprise, but did not intimate that China desired anything of the kind. The interview lasted about an hour, and ended with a leave-taking after the European manner. There is much complaint among the Russians that the treaty of 1860 is not carried out by the Chinese. It is stipulated that trade shall be free along the entire boundary between the two empires, and that merchants can enter either country at will. The Chinese merchants are not free to leave their own territory and visit Russia, but are subject to various annoyances at the hands of their own officials. I was repeatedly informed at Blagoveshchensk that the restrictions upon commerce wore very serious and in direct violation of the stipulations. One gentleman told me: "Every Manjour trader that brings anything here pays a tax of twenty to fifty per cent, for permission to cross the river. We pay now a third more for what we purchase than when we first settled here. The merchants complain of the restriction, and sometimes, though rarely, manage to evade it. Occasionally a Manjour comes to me offering an article twenty or thirty per cent, below his usual price, explaining that he smuggled it and requesting me not to expose him." I asked if the taxation was made by the Chinese government, and was answered in the negative. "Thee police of Igoon and Sakhalin-Oula regulate the whole matter. It is purely a black-mail system, and the merchant who refuses to pay will be thrown into prison on some frivolous charge. The police master of Igoon has a small salary, but has grown very wealthy in a few years. The Russian and Chinese governors have considered the affair several times, but accomplish nothing. On such occasions the Chinese governor summons his police-master and asks him if there is any truth in the charges of the corruption of his subordinates. Of course he declares everything correct, and there the matter ends." How history repeats itself! Compare this with the conduct of certain Treasury officials along the Mississippi during our late war. The cases were exactly parallel. The government scandalized, trade restricted, and merchants plundered, to fill the pockets of rapacious officers! I began to think the Mongol more like the Anglo-Saxon than ethnologists believe, and found an additional argument for the unity of the human race. If I knew the Emperor of China I should counsel him to open his oblique eyes. If he does not he may find the conduct of the Igoon police a serious affair for his dominions. Russia, like Oliver Twist, desires more. When the opportunity comes she will quietly take possession of Manjouria and hold both banks of the Amoor. If the treaty of 1860 continues to be violated the Governor General of Eastern Siberia will have an excellent excuse for taking the district of Igoon and all it contains under his powerful protection. On the day I reached Blagoveshchensk I saw an emigrant camp near the town. The emigrants had just landed from the rafts with which they descended the Amoor. They came from Astrachan, near the mouth of the Volga, more than five thousand miles away, and had been two years on their travels. They came with wagons to the head waters of the Amoor, and there built rafts, on which they loaded everything, including wagons and teams, and floated to their destination. I did not find their wagons as convenient as our own, though doubtless they are better adapted to the road. The Russian wagon had a semi-circular body, as if a long hogshead were divided lengthwise and the half of it mounted on wheels, with the open part uppermost. There was a covering of coarse cloth over a light framework, lower and less wide than our army wagons. Household goods fill the wagons, and the emigrants walk for the most part during all their land journey. I spent a few minutes at the camp near the town, and found the picture much like what I saw years ago beyond the Mississippi. Men were busy with their cattle and securing them for the night; one boy was bringing water from the river, and another gathering fuel for the fire; a young woman was preparing supper, and an older one endeavored, under shelter of the wagon-cover, to put a crying child to sleep. Westward our star of empire takes its way. Russian emigration presses eastward, and seeks the rising, as ours the setting sun. [Illustration: TAIL PIECE--TOWARDS THE SUN] CHAPTER XIX. During my stay at Blagoveshchensk the governor invited me to assist at a gazelle hunt. At nine o'clock on the day appointed we assembled at the house of the chief of staff. I breakfasted before going there, but it was necessary to discuss the coming hunt over a second breakfast. Six or eight ladies were of the party, and the affair had the general appearance of a picnic. The governor seated me in his carriage at the side of Madame Pedeshenk, and we led the company to the field of expected slaughter. With four horses abreast,--two attached to a pole and two outside,--we dashed over an excellent road leading back from the town. There were three other carriages and two or three common wagons, in which the occupants rode on bundles of hay. There was a little vehicle on two wheels,--a sort of light gig with a seat for only one person,--driven by a lady. Five or six officers were on horseback, and we had a detachment of twenty mounted Cossacks to 'beat the bush.' Excluding the Cossacks and drivers, there were about thirty persons in the party. A mysterious wagon laden with boxes and kegs composed, the baggage train. The governor explained that this wagon contained the ammunition for the hunters. No gazelle could have looked upon those kegs and boxes without trembling in his boots. A range of low hills six miles from town was the spot selected for the hunt. There were nine armed men to be stationed across this range within shooting distance of each other. The Cossacks were to make a circuitous route and come upon the hills two or three miles away, where, forming a long line and making much noise, they would advance in our direction. Any game that happened in the way would be driven to us. We were to stand our ground with firmness and shoot any gazelle that attacked us. I determined to fight it out on that line. The road from Blagoveshchensk led over a birch-covered plain to the bank of the Zeya, four miles away. We passed on the right a small mill, which was to be replaced in the following year by a steam flouring establishment, the first on the Amoor. On reaching the Zeya I found a village named Astrachanka, in honor of Astrachan at the mouth of the Volga. The settlers had lived there three or four years, and were succeeding well in agriculture. They were of the class known as German Mennonites, who settled on the steppes of Southern Russia at the commencement of the present century. They are members of the Lutheran church, and famed for their industry and their care in managing their flocks and fields. The governor praised them warmly, and expressed the kindest hopes for their prosperity. [Illustration: THE AMMUNITION WAGON.] We left the road near the village and passed through a field in the direction of the hunting ground. Two men were at work with a yoke of oxen and a plough, whose beam rested on the axle of a pair of wheels. The yoke was like the one in use everywhere along the Amoor, and was made of two pieces of thick plank, one above and the other below the animals' necks, with wooden pins to join them and bear the strain. The plough was quite primitive and did not stir the soil like an American or English plough. At the hunting ground we alighted and took our stations. The governor stood under a small oak, and the ladies rested on the grass near him. I went to the next post up the hollow, and the other hunters completed the line. Dr. Snider went to aid me in taking "a dear gazelle, To glad me with its soft black eye." He was armed with a cigar, while I had a double-barreled gun, loaded at (not to) the muzzle. The Cossacks went to rouse the game, but their first drive resulted in nothing beyond a prodigious noise. When they started for the second drive I followed the doctor in a temporary visit to the ladies. During this absence from duty a large gazelle passed within ten steps of my station. I ran toward my post, but was not as nimble as the frightened deer. "_Tirez_" commanded the governor. "Fire," shouted the doctor. And I obeyed the double injunction. The distance was great and the animal not stationary. I fired, and the governor fired, but the only effect was to quicken the speed of our game. I never knew a gazelle to run faster. Three weeks later I saw a beast greatly resembling him running on a meadow a thousand miles from Blagoveshchensk. Whether it was the same or another I will not attempt to say. A few minutes after this failure the horn of the hunter was heard on the hill, and two gazelles passed the line, but no game was secured. The governor proposed a change of base, and led us where the mysterious wagon had halted. The 'ammunition' was revealed. There were carpets and cloths on the grass, plates, knives and forks, edibles in variety, wine, ale, and other liquids, and the samovar steaming merrily at our side. I think we acquitted ourselves better at this part of the hunt than at any other. The picnic did not differ much from an American one, the most noticeable feature being the substantial character of solids and liquids. Most of us sat on the grass and stumps, the number of camp-stools not exceeding half a dozen. Finishing the lunch we took a new hunting spot and managed to kill a gazelle and a large hare. A fourth drive brought no game, and we returned to enjoy another lunch and drink a Russian beverage called 'jonca.' In its preparation a pound or two of loaf sugar in a single lump is fixed on a wire frame above a copper pan. A bottle of cognac is poured over the sugar and set on fire. The sugar melts, and when the fire is almost extinguished a bottle of claret and one of champagne are added. The compound is taken hot, and has a sweet and very smooth taste. The Russians are fond of producing this beverage when they have foreign guests, and if taken freely it has a weakening tendency. The captain of the Variag told me he had placed several British officers under his table by employing this article, and there was a rumor that the Fox embassy to St. Petersburg was quite severely laid out by means of 'jonca.' The lunch finished we discharged our guns and returned to town at a rapid pace. While descending the bank of a brook our horses turned suddenly and nearly overset the carriage. The doctor and I jumped out to lighten the lower side, and were just in season to keep the wheels on the ground. Madame Pedeshenk followed into the arms of the strong doctor, but the governor, true to the martial instinct, remained in his place and gave instructions to the driver. We did not re-enter the carriage until it was across the brook; the horses were exercised rather violently during the remainder of the journey. I think the gazelle we killed was identical with the antelope of our western plains. He had a skin of the same color and a white tail, that retreating flag-of-truce so familiar to our overland emigrants. His feet, head, and body were shaped like the antelope's, and his eye had that liquid tenderness so often observed in the agile rover near the foot of the Rocky Mountains. Gazelles abound through the Amoor valley to within a hundred miles of the sea-coast. Many are killed every autumn and winter in the valley of the Zeya and along the middle Amoor. The flesh is eaten and the skin used for winter coats and similar articles. The commerce of Blagoveshchensk is in the hands of half a dozen merchants, one French, one German, and the rest Russian. The Amoor company before its affairs were ended kept there one of its principal stores, which was bought, with stock and good will, by the company's clerk. The wants of the officers, soldiers, and civilians in the town and its vicinity are sufficient to create a good local trade. Prices are high, nearly double those of Nicolayevsk, and the stocks of goods on hand are neither large nor well selected. Officers complained to me of combinations among the merchants to maintain prices at an exorbitant scale. I staid four days at Blagoveshchensk, and as the season was growing late was quite anxious to depart. The days were charming, corresponding to our Indian Summer, and the nights cool and frosty. The passenger on our steamer from Igoon said ice would be running in the river in twenty-five days unless the season should be unusually mild. Russians and Chinese were preparing for cold weather, and I wished to do the same farther westward. Borasdine contemplated a land journey in case we were delayed more than five days. The Korsackoff was the only steamer to ascend the river, and she was waiting for the Constantine to bring her a barge. On the evening of the 5th October the governor informed me the Korsackoff would start on the next day, barge or no barge. This was cheering, and I celebrated the occasion by boiling myself in a Russian bath. I look upon the bath as one of the blessings of Russia. At the end of a journey, when one is sore and stiff in the joints, it is an effectual medicine. After it the patient sleeps soundly, and rises in the morning thoroughly invigorated. Too much bathing deadens the complexion and enfeebles the body, but a judicious amount is beneficial. It is the Russian custom, not always observed, to bathe once a week. The injury from the bath is in consequence of too high temperature of steam and water, causing a severe shock to the system. Taken properly the bath has no bad effects, and will cure rheumatism, some forms of neuralgia, and several other acute diseases. The bath-house is a building of two, and generally three, rooms. In the outer room you undress, and your _chelavek_, or servant, does the same. If there is but another room you are led directly into it, and find a hot fire in a large stove. There is a cauldron of hot water and a barrel of cold water close at hand. The tools of the operator are a bucket, two or three basins, a bar of soap, a switch of birch boughs, and a bunch of matting. If there are three apartments the second is only an ante-room, not very warm and calculated to prepare you for the last and hottest of all. The chelavek begins by throwing a bucket of warm water over you. He follows this with another, and then a third, fourth, and fifth, each a little warmer than its predecessor. On one side of the room is a series of benches like a terrace or flight of large steps. You are placed horizontally on a bench, and with warm water, soap, and bunch of matting the servant scrubs you from head to foot with a manipulation more thorough than gentle. The temperature of the room is usually about 110° Fahrenheit, but it may be more or less. It induces vigorous perspiration, and sets the blood glowing and tingling, but it never melts the flesh nor breaks the smallest blood vessel. The finishing touch is to ascend the platform near the ceiling and allow the servant to throw water upon hot stones from the furnace. There is always a cloud of steam filling the room and making objects indistinct. You easily become accustomed to the ordinary heat, but when water is dropped upon the stones there is a rush of blistering steam. It catches you on the platform and you think how unfortunate is a lobster when he goes to pot and exchanges his green for scarlet. I declined this _coup de grace_ after a single experience. To my view it is the objectionable feature of the Russian bath. I was always content after that to retire before the last course, and only went about half way up the terrace. The birchen switch is to whip the patient during the washing process, but is not applied with unpleasant force. To finish the bath you are drenched with several buckets of water descending from hot to cold, but not, as some declare, terminating with ice water. This little fiction is to amuse the credulous, and would be 'important if true.' Men have sometimes rushed from the bath into a snow bank, but the occurrence is unusual. Sometimes the peasants leave the bath for a swim in the river, but they only do so in mild weather. In all the cities there are public bath rooms, where men are steamed, polished, and washed in large numbers. In bathing the Russians are more gregarious than English or Americans. A Russian would think no more of bathing with several others than of dining at a hotel table. Nearly every private house has its bath room, and its frequent use can hardly fail to be noticed by travelers. [Illustration: FINISHING TOUCH.] On the morning of the 6th the Constantine arrived, having left the Korsackoff's barge hard aground below Igoon. So we were to start unencumbered. I took my baggage to the Korsackoff, and was obliged to traverse two barges before I reached the boat. Twelve o'clock was the hour appointed for our departure, and at eleven the fires were burning in the furnaces. A hundred men were transferring freight from the Constantine to the Korsackoff, and made a busy scene. Four men carrying a box of muskets ran against me on a narrow plank, and had not my good friend the doctor seized me I should have plunged headlong into the river. The hey-day in my blood was tame; I had no desire to fall into _l'Amour_ at that season. At eleven there came an invitation to lunch with the governor at two. "How is this?" I said to the doctor; "start at twelve and lunch here two hours later!" Smiling the doctor replied: "I see you have not yet learned our customs. The governor is the autocrat, and though the captain positively declares he will start at noon you need not be uneasy. He will not go till you are on board, and very likely you will meet him at lunch." At two o'clock I was at the governor's, where I found the anxious captain. When our lunch was finished Madame Pedeshenk gave me some wild grapes of native production. They were about the size of peas, and quite acid in taste. With cultivation they might be larger and better flavored, just as many of our American grapes have improved in the past twenty years. Some of the hardier grapes might be successfully grown on the middle Amoor, but the cold is too long and severe for tender vines. Attached to his dwelling the governor has a hot-house that forms a pleasant retreat in winter. He hopes to introduce vines and raise hot-house grapes in Siberia within a few years. I walked to the boat with Doctor and Madame Snider, our promenade being enlivened by a runaway horse that came near dragging a cart over us. The governor and his lady were there, with nearly all the officers, and after saying adieu I stepped on board, and we left the pier. We waved kerchiefs again and again as long as waves could be seen. There was a cabin on the Korsackoff about eight feet square, with four small rooms opening out of it. Borasdine and I had two of these. My apartment had two bunks and no bedding, but the deficiency was atoned for by a large number of hungry and industrious fleas. Of my blankets and pillow I made my own bed, and slept in it as on the Ingodah. My only chair was a camp stool I carried from San Francisco with the design of giving it away on reaching the end of my water travel. Going on board the steamer I met a drunken priest endeavoring to walk to the pier, and in the cabin I found another lying on a sofa, and, as I supposed, very ill. Borasdine observed my look of compassion, and indicated by signs the cause of the malady. The priest going ashore had been saying farewell to the one on board, and their partings were such as press the life from out young hearts and bottles. Our holy passenger did not feel himself again until the next day. There are many good men among the priests of the Eastern church in Siberia, but it must also be admitted there are many bad ones. In a country where the clergy wields as great power as in Russia the authorities should take care that the representatives of the church set a good example. The intemperance so prevalent among the peasantry is partly due to the debaucheries of the priesthood. Where the people follow their religious leaders with blind faith and obey their commands in all the forms of worship, are they not in danger of following the example of drunkenness? Russian officers frequently spoke of the condition of the church in Eastern Siberia, and declared with emphasis that it needed reformation. "Our priests," said one, "have carried our religion wherever our armies have carried conquest, and their efforts to advance Christianity deserve all praise. But abuses exist and have grown up, and the whole system needs to be arranged anew." We had much freight on board, consisting chiefly of muskets for the province of the Trans-Baikal. There were many passengers that lived literally on deck. They were aft of the engines and above our cabin. On deck we had the forward part of the boat as on the Ingodah. The deck passengers were soldiers, and Cossacks in their long grey coats, and peasants of all ages in garments of sheepskin. There were women with infants, and women without infants, the former being the more numerous. They were on deck day and night, unless when opportunity offered to go on shore. They did their cooking at the galley or at a stove near the stern of the boat. They never made any noise or disturbance, beyond the usual confusion where many persons are confined in a small space. There were three horses tied just over my cabin with only a single plank between their heels and my head. Nearly every night their horse polkas and galops disturbed my sleep. Sometimes early in the morning, when the frost was biting, they would have kicking matches of twenty or thirty minutes, conducted with the greatest vigor. The temporary stable was close to the cabin skylight, so that we had the odors of a barn-yard without extra charge. This would have been objectionable under other circumstances, but the cabin was so dirty that one could not be fastidious about trifles. The captain had a neat cabin of his own on the upper deck, and did not trouble himself much about the quarters of his passengers, as the regulations do not require him to look after their welfare. He was a careful commander and prompt in discharging his duties. By law steamboat captains cannot carry their wives on board. This officer had a little arrangement by which he was able to keep the word of promise to the ear and break it to the hope. We were short of fuel at starting, and barely escaped trouble in consequence. The first pile visible contained only a cord or two; we took this and several posts that had been fixed in the ground to mark the locality. When this supply was burned we cut up our landing planks and all the spare bits of wood we could find. A court of inquiry was held over the horse-troughs, but they were considered too much water-soaked for our purpose. As a last resort I had a pound of candles and a flask of brandy, but we happily reached a wood-station without using my light baggage. The Korsackoff was an iron boat of a hundred horse power, with hull and engines of English make. Her cabins were very small and as dirty as diminutive. There was no cabin steward, and I sincerely believe there had never been one. We were warned of this before leaving Blagoveshchensk, and by way of precaution purchased enough bread, pickles, cheese, mustard, preserves, candles, etc., to stock a modest grocery. We bought eggs at the landings, and arranged for the samovar every morning. We engaged a Cossack passenger as our servant for the voyage, and when we wished our eggs boiled we sent him with them to the cook. Of course we had an arrangement with the latter functionary. Our next move was to make terms with the captain's steward for a dinner at the hour when he fed his chief. Our negotiations required much diplomacy, but our existence depended upon it, and what will not man accomplish when he wants bread and meat? We spread our table in one of our rooms. For breakfast we took tea and boiled eggs, and for dinner we had cabbage soup, roast beef or fowl, and cutlets. The cook succeeded very well, and as our appetites were pretty sharp we voted the dinners a success. We used our own bread, tea, pickles, and preserves, employing the latter as a concluding dish. Our Cossack was not very skillful at housework, and made many blunders in serving. Frequently he brought the soup tureen before arranging the table, and it took him some time to learn the disadvantage of this practice. Leaving Blagoveshchensk the country continued level near the river, but the mountains gradually approached it and on the south bank they came to the water fifteen or twenty miles above Sakhalin-Oula. On the north the plain was wider, but it terminated about forty miles above Blagoveshchensk,--a series of low hills taking its place. The first day we ran twenty-five or thirty versts before sunset. The river was less than a mile wide, and the volume of water sensibly diminished above the Zeya. As the hills approached the river they assumed the form of bluffs or headlands, with plateaus extending back from their summits. The scenery reminded me of Lake Pepin and the region just above it. On the northern shore, between these bluffs and the river, there was an occasional strip of meadow that afforded clinging room to a Russian village. At two or three settlements there was an abundance of hay and grain in stacks, and droves of well fed cattle, that indicated the favorable character of the country. At most villages along the Amoor I found the crow and magpie abundant and very tame. At Blagoveshchensk several of these birds amused me in sharing the dinner of some hogs to the great disgust of the latter. When the meal was finished they lighted on the backs of the hogs and would not dismount until the latter rolled in the dirt. No one appears to think them worth shooting, and I presume they do no damage. One day walking on shore I saw a flock of pigeons, and returned to the boat for Borasdine's gun. As I took it I remarked that I would shoot a few pigeons for dinner. "Never think of it," said my friend. "And why?" "Because you will make the peasants your enemies. The news would spread that you had killed a pigeon, and every peasant would dislike you." "For what reason?" "The pigeon or dove is held sacred throughout Russia. He is the living symbol of the Holy Spirit in the faith of the Eastern church, and he brought the olive branch to The Ark when the flood had ceased. No Russian would harm one of these birds, and for you to do so would show disrespect to the religion of the country." I went on shore again, but without a gun. Every day we saw rafts moving with the stream or tied along the shore. They were of logs cut on the upper Amoor, and firmly fastened with poles and withes. An emigrant piles his wagon and household goods on a raft, and makes a pen at one side to hold his cattle. Two or three families, with as many wagons and a dozen or twenty animals, were frequently on one raft. A pile of earth was the fire place, and there was generally a tent or shelter of some kind. Cattle were fed with hay carried on board, or were turned ashore at night to graze. [Illustration: EMIGRANTS ON THE AMOOR.] Some rafts were entirely laden with cattle on their way to market or for government use at Nicolayevsk. This is the most economical mode of transportation, as the cattle feed themselves on shore at night, and the rafts float with the current by day. A great deal of heavy freight has been carried down the Amoor in this way, and losses are of rare occurrence. The system is quite analogous to the flat-boat navigation of the Mississippi before steamboats were established. We met a few Russian boats floating or propelled by oars, one of them having a crew of six Cossacks and making all haste in descending. We supposed it contained the mail due at Blagoveshchensk when we left. The government has not enough steamers to perform its service regularly, and frequently uses row boats. The last mail at Blagoveshchensk before my arrival came in a rowboat in fifteen days from Stratensk. Ascending the river we made slow progress even without a barge. Our machinery was out of order and we only carried half steam. We ran only by day, and unfortunately the nights had a majority of the time. We frequently took wood in the middle of the day, and on such occasions lost from one to three hours. Our average progress was about sixty miles a day. I could not help contrasting this with journeys I have made on the Mississippi at the rate of two hundred miles in twenty-four hours. A government boat has no occasion to hurry like a private one, and the pilot's imperfect knowledge of the Amoor operates against rapidity. In time I presume the Siberian boats will increase their speed. The second day from Blagoveshchensk we were where the Amoor flows twenty-five versts around a peninsula only one verst wide. Just above this, at the village of Korsackoff, was the foot of another bend of twenty-eight versts with a width of three. Borasdine and I proposed walking and hunting across the last neck of land, but the lateness of the hour forbade the excursion, as we did not wish to pass the night on shore, and it was doubtful if the boat could double the point before dark. We should have crossed the first peninsula had it not been in Chinese territory. To prevent possible intrusion the Celestials have a guard-house at the bend. At the guard-house we could see half a dozen soldiers with matchlocks and lances. There was a low house fifteen or twenty feet square and daubed with mud according to the Chinese custom. There was a quantity of rubbish on the ground, and a couple of horses were standing ready saddled near it. Fifty feet from the house was a building like a sentry-box, with two flag-staffs before it; it was the temple where the soldiers worshipped according to the ceremonies of their faith. I have been much with the army in my own country, but never saw a military post of two buildings where one structure was a chapel. Above the village of Kazakavitch, at the upper extremity of the bend, there was some picturesque scenery. On one side there were precipitous cliffs two or three hundred feet high, and on the other a meadow or plateau with hills in the background. The villages on this part of the river are generally built twenty or thirty feet above high water mark. They have the same military precision that is observed below the Zeya, and each has a bath house set in the bank. Frequently we found these bath houses in operation, and on one occasion two boys came out clad in the elegant costume of the Greek Slave, without her fetters. They gazed at the boat with perfect _sang froid_, the thermometer being just above freezing point. The scene reminded me of the careless manners of the natives at Panama. Opposite Komarskoi the cliffs on the Chinese shore are perpendicular, and continue so for several miles. At their base there is a strong current, where we met a raft descending nearly five miles an hour. In going against the stream our pilots did not seek the edge of the river like their brethren of the Mississippi, but faced the current in the center. Possibly they thought a middle course the safest, and remembered the fate of the celebrated youth who took a short route when he drove the sun. Two miles above the settlement is Cape Komara, a perpendicular or slightly overhanging rock of dark granite three hundred feet high. Nothing but a worm or an insect could climb its face, and a fall from its top into the river would not be desirable. The Russians have erected a large cross upon the summit, visible for some distance up and down the river. Above this rock, which appears like a sentinel, the valley is wider and the stream flows among many islands. We saw just below this rock a Manjour boat tied to the shore, the crew breakfasting near a fire and the captain smoking in apparent unconcern at a little distance. On the opposite bank there was a Chinese custom-house and military station. It had the same kind of house and temple and the same number of men and horses as the post farther down. Had it possessed a pile of rubbish and a barking dog the similarity would have been complete. There is abundance of water in the Amoor except for drinking purposes. I was obliged to adopt the plan of towing a bottle out of the cabin window till it filled. The deck passengers used to look with wonder on my foreign invention, and doubtless supposed I was experimenting for scientific purposes. I have heard of a captain on the Ohio who forbade water to his passengers on account of the low stage of the river. Possibly the Russian captains are fearful that too much use of water may affect navigation in future years. CHAPTER XX. There is a sameness and yet a variety in the scenery of the Amoor two or three hundred miles above Komarskoi. The sameness is in the general outlines which can be described; the variety is in the many little details of distance, shadow, and coloring, which no pen can picture. In the general features there are cliffs, hills, ravines, islands, and occasional meadows, with forests of birch, pine, larch, and willow. The meadows are not abundant, and the attractions to settlers generally small. The hills are rugged and, though well timbered, not adapted to agriculture. The pine forests are dark and gloomy, and the leafless birches make the distant hills appear as if thinly snow-clad. The willows are generally upon the islands, and grow with great luxuriance. The large meadows are occupied by Russian settlers. Many little streams enter the Amoor on both sides, but chiefly from the north. There is a famous cliff called Sa-ga-yan, where the river has washed and undermined the high bank so that portions fall away every few years. The current strikes this hill with great force, and where it is reflected the water is broken like the rapids above Niagara. It is a dangerous spot for small boats, and very difficult for them to ascend. When the expedition of 1854 descended the Amoor several barges were drawn into an eddy at this cliff and nearly swamped. Captain Fulyelm and Mr. Collins, in 1857, were in danger and trouble, especially where the current rebounds from the shore. When our steamer struck this rapid it required all the strength of our engines to carry us through. I desired to examine the shore, but had no opportunity. Mr. Collins found the bank composed of amygdaloid sand, decomposed rock and sandstone, with many traces of iron. On the beach were chalcedony, cornelian, and agate. Two veins of coal have been traced in the cliff, and it is thought a large deposit exists there. The natives have a story that the cliff smokes whenever a human being approaches it, but I saw no indications of smoke as I passed. They consider it the abode of evil spirits, and hold it in great dread. [Illustration: SA-GA-YAN CLIFF.] The Russians told me that a few wreaths of smoke were visible in summer, caused probably by the decomposition of several coal seams on the upper side of the mountain. Up to the present time no coal has been mined along the Amoor, though enough is known to exist. The cheapness and abundance of wood will render coal of little importance for many years to come. Nicolayevsk is supplied with coal from Sakhalin Island, where it is abundant and easily worked. Iron ore has been discovered on the upper Amoor and in the Buryea Mountains. Captain Anossoff proposes to erect a smelting establishment at Blagoveshchensk, supplying it with iron ore from the Buryea region and with coal from the Zeya. Copper and silver exist in several localities, but the veins have not been thoroughly examined. The mountains are like those in the Nerchinsk district that have yielded so richly in precious metals. Captain Anossoff is the brother of my companion across the Pacific, and has seen ten years service in Eastern Siberia. Most of that time he has passed on the Amoor and its tributary streams. In many places he found rich deposits of gold, the last and best being on the Oldoi river, about a hundred miles north of Albazin. A ton of earth yielded six hundred dollars worth of gold. I saw the specimens which the captain took out in person. The gold was like the best gulch or scale gold in California, with nuggets up to four or five ounces in weight. Gold has been found in other localities. On several tributaries of the Ousuree the Chinese have conducted washings for many years. The Russian settlers near Posyet find gold in the streams flowing into the sea. An engineer officer assured me the washings in that region could be made profitable. The government has recently opened the Amoor and its tributaries to private enterprise and invited its citizens to search for gold where they please. This is a concession in the right way, and partially abandons the claim hitherto enforced that all mines belong to the Imperial family. Some of the surveys of Captain Anossoff have been for private parties at St. Petersburg, and the development of the mineral resources of the Amoor is confidently expected in a few years. At present the lack of laborers and machinery is a great drawback, but as the country grows older the mining facilities will increase. It is not impossible that a gold fever will sometime arise on the Amoor and extend to America. Much of the country I saw along the Amoor resembles the gold-bearing regions on the Pacific coast. While we were taking wood at a village above Sa-ga-yan I walked on shore and stopped at a little brook flowing from the hills. Carelessly digging with a stick in the bottom of this brook I brought up some black sand, which I washed on a piece of bark. The washing left two or three shining particles that had every appearance of gold. I wrapped them in a leaf to carry on board the steamer, but as I afterward lost envelope and contents, the value of my discovery is to this day unknown. The original inhabitants along this part of the Amoor are wandering Tungusians, in no great number and with little wealth. We saw their huts on both banks, principally the southern one. At a Russian village where we stopped there was a Managre hut or yourt of light poles covered with birch bark. The covering was wound around the framework in horizontal strips that overlapped at the edges like shingles on a house-roof. Entering the hut I found a varied assortment of deer skins, cooking and other utensils, dogs, dirt, and children. I gave a small coin to one of the latter, and was immediately surrounded by others who wished to be remembered. The mother of the infants sent one of them to me with a freshly killed goose, which I declined accepting. The head of the establishment examined my watch attentively, but I think his curiosity was simulated, as he must have seen marry watches among the Russians. Not to be outdone in curiosity, I admired the trappings attached to his belt. These were a knife, a pipe, pouches for bullets, tinder, powder, tobacco, and flints, a pointed iron for cleaning a pipe, and two or three articles whose use I could not ascertain. His dress was a deerskin frock and leggings, and his cap of Chinese felt cloth was in several thicknesses and fitted close to his head. Outside the hut Borasdine gave the man a cigar, but the gift was not appreciated. The native preferred tobacco and was better satisfied when I gave him enough to fill his pipe. The Managres smoke the Manjourian tobacco, which is raised in large quantities along the middle Amoor and the Songaree. It is much like Connecticut leaf, but has a more pungent flavor, and lacks the delicacy of Havana tobacco. Men, women, and children are alike addicted to its use. Our new acquaintance was a hunter, and allowed us, though with hesitation, to look at his rifle. It had a flint lock of curious construction, the hammer being drawn back to a horizontal position and held in place by a notched piece of bone. The breech-pin was gone, and a piece of stone fixed in the stock filled its place. The breech of the stock was but little larger than the other part, and seemed very awkwardly contrived. A forked stick is carried to form a rest, that ensures the accuracy of aim. Powder and lead are so expensive that great economy is shown in their use. I was told these natives were excellent marksmen, and rarely missed a shot. When within proper distance of their game they place their supporting sticks very quickly and with such caution as to make no noise. [Illustration: RIFLE SHOOTING.] One intoxicated aboriginal stood in the group of Cossacks on the bank and appeared quarrelsome, but found the Russians too good-natured for his purpose. A light shower scattered the crowd and left the inebriate addressing a horse and a wood-pile. On the 11th of October the weather was like summer, the air still and clear and my thermometer standing at 71 degrees. During the night I found it necessary to take an extra blanket, and at noon of the 12th the thermometer was at 45°, with a cloudy sky and a breeze from the northeast. This change of twenty-six degrees was too much for comfort, but of little consequence compared to my subsequent experience. Instances have been known of a change of seventy degrees in twelve hours from a sudden shifting of the wind. On the morning of the 13th we had a light fall of snow, with the air at freezing point and the water at 40°.[D] [Footnote D: I here enter a protest against the Fahrenheit thermometer, and think all who have used it to any extent will join me in preferring the Centigrade or Reaumer scales. Centigrade has the freezing point at zero and the boiling point at 100°. Reaumer freezes at zero and boils at 80°. Fahrenheit very clumsily freezes at 32° and boils at 212°. The difference in the graduation of the scale is of much less consequence than the awkwardness of beginning the reading at 32°. The Russians use Reaumer's method, and I always envied them their convenience of saying 'there are so many degrees of cold,' or 'so many of heat,' while I was forced to count from 32° to use my national scale.] We passed a rock projecting far into the river, with precipitous sides and a sharp summit visible for some distance along the Amoor. Below it is a small harbor, where the Russian steamer Mala Nadeshda (Little Hope) passed the winter of 1855. She was on her way to Stratensk, carrying Admiral Puchachin on his return from a mission to Japan. Caught by ice the Nadeshda wintered under shelter of this rock, while the Admiral became a horse marine and mounted a saddle for a ride of four hundred miles. Since that time the rock has borne the name of the boat it protected. In most of the villages there are schools for educating the boys of the Cossacks and peasants. Some pupils are admitted free, while from others a small fee is required. Occasionally I saw boys flocking to the schools at sound of the master's bell, or coming out at recess or dismissal. I had no opportunity to inspect one of these establishments, but presume my description of the one at Mihalofski will answer for all. The youths were as noisy as school-boys everywhere, and when out of restraint indulged in the same hilarity as if born on the banks of the Hudson or the Thames. At noon on the 14th we stopped at Albazin to leave passengers and take wood. It was Sunday, and the population appeared in its best clothing, a few of the women sporting crinoline, and all wearing their best calicoes. Among the men there were Cossacks and soldiers in their grey coats or in plain cloth and sheepskin. I saw a few Yakuts with the narrow eyes of the Tunguze and their clothing of deerskin. A few Orochons stood apart from the Russians, but not less observant of the boat and those on board. Outside the village were three or four conical yourts belonging to the aboriginals. It is said this people formerly lived in the province of Yakutsk, whence they emigrated to the Amoor in 1825. One of their chiefs has a hunting knife with the initials of the Empress Catherine. It was presented to an ancestor of the present owner. Albazin is finely situated on a plateau fifty feet high and extending some distance back to the mountains. Opposite is a small river abounding in fish, and in front an island several thousand acres in extent and very fertile. Though less than seven years old, Albazin had already begun to sell grain for transportation to Nerchinsk. A steamer laden with grain left for Stratensk three days before our arrival. Albazin is of historical interest to the Russians. In the year 1669 a Polish adventurer named Chernigofsky built a fort at Albazin. That his men might not be without the comforts of religion he brought a priest, who founded a church at the new settlement. It is related that when organizing his expedition he forcibly seized this priest and kept him under guard during the journey to the Amoor. The Chinese twice besieged Albazin, once with eighteen thousand men, and afterward with nearly double that number. The Russians resisted a long time, and were only driven from the Amoor by the famous treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689. When I landed at Albazin, Captain Porotof, superintendent of the Russian settlements between that point and Komarskoi, guided me through the ruins. The present village of Albazin is inside the line of Chinese works, and the church occupies the interior of the old fort. All the lines of intrenchment and siege can be easily seen, the fort being distinctly visible from the river. Its walls are about ten feet high, and the ditch is partially filled from the washing of earth during the many years since the evacuation. A drain that carries water from the church has cut a hole through the embankment. In it I could see the traces of the trees and brushwood used in making the fort. In the fort and around it cannon shot, bullets, arrow heads, and pieces of pottery are frequently found. A few years ago a magazine of rye was discovered, the grains being perfect and little injured by time. Captain Porotof gave me two Chinese cannon shot recently found there and greatly roughened on the surface by the action of rust. The position and arrangement of their batteries and lines of circumvallation show that the Chinese were skilled in the art of war. Albazin was valuable to the early adventurers on account of the fine sables taken in its vicinity. It is important now for the same reason. The Albazin sable is the best on the Amoor; that of the Buryea mountains is next, and that from Blagoveshchensk is third in grade. At several places I saw these furs, but found none of them equaling the furs of Kamchatka. Some interesting stories about the siege of Albazin are told by the Russians. While the siege was progressing and the garrison was greatly distressed for want of food, Chernigofsky sent a pie weighing forty or fifty pounds to the Chinese commander to convince him that the fort was abundantly supplied. The latter was so delighted with the gift that he sent back for more, but his request was unheeded. He probably saw through the little game they were attempting to play on him and determined to beat them at it. History does not say whether the pie was pork, mutton, or anything else. Possibly the curs of Albazin may have entered into its composition. [Illustration: TAIL PIECE--GAME] CHAPTER XXI. Above Albazin the Amoor steadily narrows; the hills are more rugged; the trees less luxuriant; the meadows fewer, and the islands less extensive. On the morning of the 15th my thermometer was at +16°, and the trees on the shore were white with frost. The deck passengers shivered around the engines and endeavored to extract heat from them. The cabin passengers, excepting myself, were wrapped in their fur coats as if it were midwinter. I walked about in my ordinary clothing, finding the air bracing but not uncomfortable. I could not understand how the Russians felt the cold when it did not affect me, and was a little proud of my insensibility to frost. Conceit generally comes of ignorance, and as I learned, wisdom I lost my vanity about resisting cold. Nearly every day on the Korsackoff I was puzzled at finding laurel leaves in the soup, and did not understand it till I saw a barrel of beef opened. There were lots of laurel leaves packed with the meat, and I learned that they assist the preservative qualities of the salt and give an agreeable flavor. I can speak in favor of the latter theory, but know nothing about the former. The ancient Romans wore laurel crowns, but they did not prevent the decline and fall of their empire. Possibly the Russians may have better success in saving their beef by the use of the laurel. During a fog on the river we grazed a rock, slid upon a sandbar, and then anchored, as we should have done at first. When in motion we employed all possible time, and, considering the state of our engines, made very good progress. Borasdine learned from our Cossack the explanation of this haste. "The pilots, firemen, and nearly all the crew," said the Cossack, "have their wives at Stratensk, and are anxious to winter with them. If the boat is frozen in below there they must remain till she thaws out again. Consequently their desire to finish the voyage before the ice is running." At Igiratiena I met Colonel Shobeltsin, an officer identified with all the movements for the final occupation of the Amoor. In 1852 he made a journey from Irkutsk to Nicolayevsk, following a route up to that time untraveled. He accompanied Mouravieff's expedition in 1854, and was afterward intimately connected with colonization enterprises. A few years ago he retired from service and settled at this village. His face indicates his long and arduous service, and I presume he has seen enough hardship to enjoy comfort for the rest of his days. His house was the best on the Amoor above Blagoveshchensk and very comfortably furnished. In the principal room there were portraits of many Russian notabilities, with lithographs and steel engravings from various parts of the world. Among them were two pictures of American country life, bearing the imprint of a New York publisher. I had frequently seen these lithographs in a window on Nassau street, little thinking I should find them on the other side of the world. One room was quite a museum and contained a variety of articles made by Manjours and Tunguze. There were heads of deer, sable, and birds, while a quantity of furs hung near the door. With a spirit of hospitality the Colonel prepared us a breakfast during our brief stay, and invited us to join him in the beverage of the country. When we returned to the boat the steward was superintending the killing of a bullock at the bank. Half a dozen wolfish dogs were standing ready to breakfast as soon as the slaughtering was over. A Cossack officer in a picturesque costume stood on the bank near the boat. He wore an embroidered coat of sheepskin, the wool inside, a shaggy cap of coal-black wool, and a pair of fur-topped boots. All his garments were new and well fitting, and contrasted greatly with the greasy and long used coats of the Cossacks on the boat. Sheepskin garments can look more repulsive than cloth ones with equal wearing. Age can wither and custom stale their infinite variety. Winding among the mountains and cliffs that enclose the valley we reached in the evening a village four miles below the head of the Amoor. I rose at daybreak on the 17th to make my adieus to the river. The morning was clear and frosty, and the stars were twinkling in the sky, save in the east where the blush of dawn was visible. The hills were faintly touched with a little snow that had fallen during the night. The trunks of the birches rose like ghosts among the pines and larches of the forest, while craggy rocks pushed out here and there like battlements of a fortress. The pawing steamer with her mane of stars breasted the current with her prow bearing directly toward the west. "Just around that point," said the first officer of the Korsackoff as he directed his finger toward a headland on the Chinese shore, "you will see the mouth of the Argoon on the left and the Shilka on the right;--wait a moment, it is not quite time yet." When we rounded the promontory dawn had grown to daylight, and the mountains on the south bank of the Argoon came into view. A few minutes later I saw the defile of the Shilka. Between the streams the mountains narrowed and came to a point a mile above the meeting of the waters. On the delta below the mountains is the Russian village and Cossack post of Oust-Strelka (Arrow Mouth,) situated in Latitude 53° 19' 45" North, and Longitude 121° 50' 7" East. It is on the Argoon side of the delta and contains but a few houses. I knew by the smoke that so gracefully curled in the cold atmosphere that the inhabitants were endeavoring to make themselves comfortable. The Amoor is formed by the union of these rivers, just as the Ohio is formed by the Allegheny and Monongahela. Geographers generally admit that the parent stream of a river is the one whose source is farthest from the junction. The Argoon flows from the lake Koulon, which is filled by the river Kerolun, rising in the Kentei Khan mountains in Northern Mongolia. Together the Argoon and Kerolun have a development of more than a thousand miles. There are many Cossacks settled along the Argoon as a frontier guard. The river is not navigable, owing to numerous rocks and rapids. Genghis Khan, who subdued China and began that wonderful career of Tartar conquest that extended to Middle Europe, was born on the banks of the Kerolun. Some of his early battles were fought in its valley. The Shilka is formed by the Onon and Ingodah, that rise in the region north of the head waters of the Kerolun. From the sources of the Onon to Oust-Strelka is a distance of seven hundred and fifty miles. There are many gold mines along this river, and the whole mountain chain is known to be rich in minerals. Including its tributaries on both sides and at its formation, the Amoor as it flows into the Gulf of Tartary drains a territory of 766,000 square miles. There is a little island just below the point of land extending between the two rivers. As we approached it the steamer turned to the right and proceeded up the Shilka, leaving the Amoor behind us. I may never see this great river again, but I shall never forget its magnificent valley and its waters washing the boundaries of two empires and bringing the civilization of the East and West in contact. I shall never forget its many islands, among which we wound our tortuous way; its green meadows, its steep cliffs, and its blue mountains, that formed an ever-changing and ever beautiful picture. I shall never forget its forests where the yellow hues of autumn contrasted with the evergreen pine and its kindred, and which nature has lavishly spread to shield the earth from the pitiless storm and give man wherewith to erect his habitation and light his hearthstone with generous fire. Mountain, hill, forest, island, and river will rise to me hereafter in imagination as they rose then in reality. A voyage along the entire course of the Amoor is one that the longest lifetime cannot efface from the memory. For a hundred and sixty years the little post of Oust-Strelka was the most easterly possession of Russia in the Amoor valley. In 1847 Lieutenant General Mouravieff, having been appointed Governor General of Eastern Siberia, determined to explore the river. In the following spring he sent an officer with four Cossacks to descend the Amoor as far as was prudent. The officer took a liberal supply of presents for the people along the banks, and was instructed to avoid all collisions with the natives and not to enter their towns. From the day of his departure to the present nothing has ever been heard of him or his men. Diligent inquiries have been made among the natives and the Chinese authorities, but no information gained. It is supposed the party were drowned by accident, or killed by hostile residents along the river. In 1850 and the three following years the mouth of the Amoor was examined and settlements founded, as already described. The year 1854 is memorable for the first descent of the Amoor by a military expedition. The outbreak of the Crimean war rendered it necessary to supply the Russian fleet in the Pacific. The colonies on the Pacific needed provisions, and the Amoor offered the only feasible route to send them. General Mouravieff made his preparations, and obtained the consent of his government to the important step. He asked the permission of the Chinese, but those worthies were as dilatory as usual, and Mouravieff could not wait. He left Shilikinsk on the 27th of May, escorted by a thousand soldiers with several guns, and carrying an ample supply of provisions for the Pacific fleet. The Chinese made no actual opposition, but satisfied themselves with counting the boats that passed. Mouravieff supplied the fleet at the mouth of the Amoor, and then returned by way of Ayan to Irkutsk. The troops were left to garrison the fortified points on or near the sea. In 1855 three more expeditions left Shilikinsk with soldiers and colonists. General Mouravieff accompanied the first of these expeditions and went directly to Nicolayevsk. The allied fleet attempted to enter the Amoor but could not succeed. The general sent his compliments to the English Admiral and told him to come on if he could and he should be warmly received. In 1856 a few Cossack posts were established along the river, and in the next year nearly three thousand Cossacks were sent there. The Chinese made a formal protest against these movements, and there were fears of a hostile collision. The reverses that China suffered from the English and French prevented war with Russia, and in 1858 Mouravieff concluded a treaty at Igoon by which the Russian claim to the country north of the Amoor and east of the Ousuree was acknowledged. The Russians were thus firmly established, and the development of the country has progressed peacefully since that period. As the Argoon from its mouth to Lake Kerolun forms the boundary between the empires I lost sight of China when we entered the Shilka. As I shivered on the steamer's bridge, my breath congealing on my beard, and the hills beyond the Amoor and Argoon white with the early snow of winter, I could not see why the Celestials call their land the 'Central Flowery Kingdom.' The Shilka has a current flowing four or five miles an hour. The average speed of the Korsackoff in ascending was about four miles. The river wound among mountains that descended to the water without intervening plateaus, and only on rare occasions were meadows visible. The forests were pine and larch, with many birches. The lower part of the Shilka has very little agricultural land, and the only settlements are the stations kept by a few Cossacks, who cut wood for the steamers and supply horses to the post and travelers in winter. The first night after leaving the Amoor there was a picturesque scene at our wooding station. The mountains were revealed by the setting moon, and their outline against the sky was sharply defined. We had a large fire of pine boughs burning on the shore, and its bright flames lighted both sides of the river. The boatmen in their sheepskin coats and hats walked slowly to and fro, and gave animation to the picture. While I wrote my journal the horses above me danced as though frolicking over a hornet's nest, and reduced sentimental thoughts to a minimum. To render the subject more interesting two officers and the priest grew noisy over a triple game of cards and a bottle of vodki. I wrote in my overcoat, as the thermometer was at 30° with no fire in the cabin. We frequently met rafts with men and horses descending to supply the post stations, or bound on hunting excursions. I was told that the hunters float down the river on rafts and then make long circuits by land to their points of departure. The Siberian squirrel is very abundant in the mountains north of the Shilka, and his fur is an important article of commerce. We stopped at Gorbitza, near the mouth of the Gorbitza river, that formerly separated Russia and China and was the boundary up to 1854. Above this point the villages had an appearance of respectable age not perceptible in the settlements along the Amoor. Ten or twelve miles from our wooding place we met ice coming out of the Chorney river, but it gave us no inconvenience. The valley became wider and the hills less abrupt, while the villages had an air of irregularity more pleasing than the military precision on the Amoor. I saw many dwellings on which decay's effacing fingers were busy. The telegraph posts were fixed above Gorbitza, but the wires had not been strung. There were many haystacks at the villages, and I could see droves of cattle and sheep on the cleared hills. At one landing I found a man preparing his house for winter by calking the seams with moss. Under the eaves of another house there were many birds that resembled American swallows. I could not say whether they were migratory or not, but if the former they were making their northern stay a late one. Their twitterings reminded me of the time when I used to go at nightfall, 'when the swallows homeward fly,' and listen to the music without melody as the birds exchanged their greetings, told their loves, and gossipped of their adventures. [Illustration: PREPARING FOR WINTER.] Just at sunset we reached Shilikinsk, a town stretching nearly two miles along the river, on a plateau thirty feet high. We stopped in the morning where there was abundance of wood, but only took enough to carry us to Shilikinsk. There was a lady in the case. Our first officer had a feminine acquaintance at the town, and accordingly wished to stop for wood, and, if possible, to pass the night there. His plan failed, as no wood could be discovered at Shilikinsk, though our loving mate scanned every part of the bank. We had enough fuel to take us a few miles farther, where we found wood and remained for the night. The disappointed swain pocketed his chagrin and solaced himself by playing the agreeable to a lady passenger. I saw in the edge of the town a large building surrounded with a palisaded wall. "What is that?" I asked, pointing to the structure new to my eyes. "It is a station for exiles," was my friend's reply, "when they pass through the town. They generally remain here over night, and sometimes a few days, and this is their lodging. You will see many such on your way through Siberia." "Is it also the prison for those who are kept here permanently?" "No; the prison is another affair. The former prison at Shilikinsk has been converted into a glass manufactory. Just behind it is a large tannery, heretofore celebrated throughout Eastern Siberia for its excellent leather." As we proceeded the country became more open and less mountainous, and I saw wide fields on either side. A road was visible along the northern bank of the river, sometimes cut in the hillside where the slope was steep. On the southern bank there was no road beyond that for local use. The telegraph followed the northern side, but frequently left the road to take short cuts across the hills. We struck a rock ten miles from our journey's end, and for several minutes I thought we should go gracefully to the bottom. We whirled twice around on the rock before we left it, and our captain feared we had sprung a leak. When once more afloat Borasdine and I packed our baggage and prepared for the shore. We ate the last of our preserves and gave sundry odds and ends to the Cossacks. As a last act we opened the remaining bottles of a case of champagne, and joined officers and fellow passengers in drinking everybody's health. Late in the afternoon of the 20th October we were in sight of Stratensk. The summer barracks were first visible, and a moment later I could see the church dome. In nearly all Russian towns the churches are the first objects visible on arriving and the last on departing. Tho house of worship is no less prominent in the picture of a Russian village than the ceremonies of religion in the daily life of the people. There was a large crowd on the bank to welcome us. Officers, soldiers, merchants, Cossacks, peasants, women, children, and dogs were in goodly numbers. Our own officers were in full uniform to make their calls on shore. The change of costume that came over several passengers was interesting in the extreme. At last the steamer ceased her asthmatic wheeze and dropped her anchor at the landing. We gave our baggage to a Cossack to take to the hotel. Soon as the rush over the plank was ended I walked ashore from the Korsackoff for the last time. So ended, for the present, my water journeying. I had zig-zagged from New York a distance, by my line of travel, not less than fifteen thousand miles. The only actual land route on my way had been forty-seven miles between Aspinwall and Panama. I had traveled on two ocean passenger-steamers, one private steamer of miniature size, a Russian corvette, a gunboat of the Siberian fleet, and two river boats of the Amoor flotilla. Not a serious accident had occurred to mar the pleasure of the journey. There had been discomforts, privations, and little annoyances of sufficient frequency, but they only added interest to the way. The proverb well says there is no rose without a thorn, and it might add that the rose would be less appreciable were there no thorn. Half our pleasures have their zest in the toil through which they are gained. In travel, the little hardships and vexations bring the novelties and comforts into stronger relief, and make the voyager's happiness more real. It is an excellent trait of human nature that the traveler can remember with increased vividness the pleasing features of his journey while he forgets their opposites. Privations and discomforts appeal directly to the body; their effect once passed the physical system courts oblivion. Pleasures reach our higher being, which experiences, enjoys, and remembers. [Illustration: TAIL PIECE] CHAPTER XXII. Stratensk is neither large nor handsome. The most I saw of it was near the hotel whither we went from the boat. The rooms we were shown into faced the river, and had high walls decorated with a few pictures. My apartment had a brick stove in one corner, a table, three or four chairs, and a wide sofa or cushioned bench without a back. This last article served as bed by night and seat by day. No bed clothing is furnished in a Siberian hotel, each traveler being expected to carry his own supply. The government has a foundry and repair shop two miles above the town, where several steamers pass the winter and have their machinery repaired. Immediately on arrival we sent to request Mr. Lovett, the gentleman in charge of the works, to call upon us. He responded promptly, and came while we were at supper. Being English and with a slight tendency to _embonpoint_, he readily accepted several bottles of 'Bass & Co.' that remained from our small stores. He was accompanied by Captain Ivashinsoff, who spoke English easily and well. His knowledge of it was obtained rather romantically as the story was told me. Two years earlier this officer happened in Hong Kong and during his stay an American vessel arrived. Her captain had been seriously ill for some weeks and totally incapable of duty. The first mate died on the voyage, and the second was not equal to the difficulties of navigation. The captain was accompanied by his daughter, who had been several years at sea and learned the mysteries of Bowditch more as a pastime than for anything else. In the dilemma she assumed control of the ship, making the daily observation and employing the mate as executive officer. When they reached Hong Kong the captain was just recovering. The young woman came on shore, saw and conquered the Russian. Neither spoke the other's language, and their conversation was conducted in French. After their marriage they began to study, and had made such progress that I found the captain speaking good English, and learned that the lady was equally fluent in Russian. She was living at Stratensk at the time of my visit, and I greatly regretted that our short stay prevented my seeing her. She was a native of Chelsea, Massachusetts, and was said to enjoy her home on the Amoor. Three or four steamers were in winter quarters, and the Korsackoff was to join them immediately. Both at Stratensk and Nicolayevsk it is the custom to remove the machinery from steamers during winter. It is carefully housed to prevent its rusting, and I presume to lessen the loss in case of fire or damage from breaking ice. We talked with our new friends till late in the evening, and then prepared to continue our journey. Lovett gave me his blessing and a feather pillow; the former to cover general accidents and the latter to prevent contusions from the jolting vehicle. Borasdine obtained a Cossack to accompany us on the road and ordered our baggage made ready. The Cossack piled it into a wagon and it was transported to the ferry landing and dumped upon the gravel. We followed and halted in front of the palisaded hotel of the exiles. The ferry boat was on the opposite shore, four or five hundred yards away. Borasdine called, but the boatmen did not rise. "Dai sloopka!" (send a boat.) After a moment's pause he repeated: "Dai sloopka!" He added the usually magic word "courier!" but it had no effect. He shouted repeatedly and grew hoarse. Then I lifted up my voice like a pelican in the wilderness, but with no better effect. When we had almost reached the pitch of despair a man appeared from behind a wood pile and tried his vocal organs in our behalf. At his second call a reply was given, and very soon a light twinkled at the ferry house. [Illustration: STRATENSK, EASTERN SIBERIA.] The boat was a long time coming, and while we waited its arrival a drunken Bouriat made himself unpleasantly familiar. As often as I changed my position he would come to my side and endeavor to rest his dirty arm on my shoulder. I finally walked through a pile of brushwood and crooked sticks, which was too much for the native with his weak knees and muddy brain. After struggling with a persistency that would have been commendable had the object to be attained been commensurate to the effort, he became inextricably tangled, and I left him in the loving embrace of a decayed tree-top. The boat came with four shaggy ferrymen, who had some difficulty in reaching land. It was a kind of large skiff, high at both ends and having a platform, like that of a hay-scale, in the center. The platform projected a foot or more beyond the sides of the boat, and had no railing to prevent a frightened horse or drunken man going overboard. This is the general style of river ferry boats in Siberia. The boatmen do not appear very skillful in handling them, but I learned that serious accidents were very rare. We piled our baggage and left the shore, running upon two rocks and colliding with a sandbar before getting fairly away. I fell asleep during the crossing, satisfied that the crew did not need my assistance. We landed where the road is cut into the rocky bank, and were obliged to lift the baggage over a pile of stony debris. The boatmen said it was impossible to go to the regular landing, but I suspect they wished an extra gratuity for handling our impedimenta. Before the work was finished they regretted their manoeuvre. As we touched the shore one man went to the station to bring horses and a vehicle. Borasdine and I scrambled over the rocks to the road fifteen feet above the water, and by the time the crew brought up our baggage the conveyance arrived. It was what the Russians call a _telyaga_, drawn by three horses. This carriage is of Quaker simplicity. There are four wheels on wooden axles, with rough but strong 'reaches.' A body, shaped something like an old-fashioned baby-cart, rests upon the reaches or on poles fixed over them. The hood protects against wind and rain from behind, and the best of the vehicles have boots buttoned in front and attached to the hoods. The driver sits on the bow directly behind the shaft-horse, and one part of his duty is to keep from falling off. The traveler spreads his baggage inside as evenly as possible to form a bed or cushion. Angular pieces should be discarded, as the corners are disagreeable when jolted against one's sides. Two shafts are fixed in the forward axle, and a horse between them forms a sort of _point d'appui_. Any number from one to six can be tied on outside of him. The fault of our baggage was that we, or rather I, had too much. Worst of all, I had a wooden trunk that I proposed throwing away at Nicolayevsk, but had been told I could carry to Irkutsk without trouble. It could not ride inside, or if it did we could not. We placed the small articles in the interior of the vehicle, and tied the trunk and Borasdine's _chemadan_ on the projecting poles behind. The _chemadan_ is in universal use among Siberian travelers, and admirably adapted to the road. It is made of soft leather, fastens with a lacing of deer-skin thongs, and can be lashed nearly water tight. It will hold a great deal,--I never saw one completely filled,--and accommodates itself to the shape of its aggregate contents. It can be of any size up to three or four feet long, and its dimensions are proportioned to each other about like those of an ordinary pocket-book. A great advantage is the absence of sharp corners and the facility of packing closely. We acted contrary to the custom of the country in tying our baggage behind. There are gentlemen of the road in Siberia as there are 'road agents' in California. The Siberian highwaymen rarely disturb the person of a traveler, but their chief amusement is to cut away outside packages. As a precaution we mounted our Cossack on the trunk, but before we went a mile he fell from his perch in spite of his utmost efforts to cling to the vehicle. After that event he rode by the driver's side. On seeing Lovett at Stratensk my first question related to the condition of the road. "Horrid," said he. "The worst time to travel. There has been much rain and cold weather. You will find mud either soft or frozen most of the way to Chetah." Before we started the driver brought an additional horse, and after a preliminary kick or two we took the road. For a few miles we went up and down hills along the edge of the river, where the route has been cut at much labor and expense. This was not especially bad, the worst places being at the hollows between the hills where the mud was half-congealed. When we left the river we found the mud that Lovett prophesied. Quality and quantity were alike disagreeable. All roads have length more or less; ours had length, breadth, depth, and thickness. The bottom was not regular like that of the Atlantic, but broken into inequalities that gave an uneasy motion to the telyaga. To travel in Siberia one must have a _padaroshnia_, or road pass, from the government authorities, stating the number of horses to which he is entitled. There are three grades of padaroshnia; the first for high officials and couriers; the second for officers on ordinary business; and the third for civilian travelers. The first and second are issued free to those entitled to receive them, and the third is purchased at the rate of half a copeck a verst. These papers serve the double purpose of bringing revenue to government and preventing unauthorized persons traveling about the country. A traveler properly provided presents his papers at a post-station and receives horses in his turn according to the character of his documents. A person with a courier's pass is never detained for want of animals; other travelers must take their chance. Of course the second class of passport precedes the third by an inflexible rule. Suppose A has a second class and B a third class padaroshnia. A reaches a station and finds B with a team ready to start. If there are no more horses the _smotretal_ (station master) detaches the animals from B's vehicle and supplies them to A. B must wait until he can be served; it may be an hour, a day, or a week. The stations are kept by contract. The government locates a station and its lessee is paid a stipulated sum each year. He agrees to keep the requisite horses and drivers, the numbers varying according to the importance of the route. He contracts to carry the post each way from his station to the next, the price for this service being included in the annual payment. He must keep one vehicle and three horses at all times ready for couriers. Couriers, officers, and travelers of every kind pay at each station the rate fixed by law. In Kamchatka and North Eastern Siberia the post route is equipped with dog-teams, just as it has horses in more southerly latitudes. In the northern part of Yakutsk the reindeer is used for postal or traveling service. A padaroshnia calls for a given number of horses, usually three, without regard to the number of persons traveling upon it. Generally the names of all who are to use it are written on the paper, but this is not absolutely necessary. Borasdine had a padaroshnia and so had I, but mine was not needed as long as we kept together. The post carriages must be changed at every station. Constant changing is a great trouble, especially if one has much baggage. In a wet or cold night when you have settled comfortably into a warm nest, and possibly fallen asleep, it is an intolerable nuisance to turn out and transfer. To remedy this evil one can buy a _tarantass_, a vehicle on the general principle of the telyaga, but larger, stronger, and better in every way. When he buys there is a scarcity and the price is high, but when he has finished his journey and wishes to sell, it is astonishing how the market is glutted. At Stratensk I endeavored to purchase a tarantass, but only one could be had. This was too rheumatic for the journey, and very groggy in the springs, so at the advice of Lovett I adhered to the telyaga. The Russians apply the term 'equipage' to any vehicle, whether on wheels or runners, and with or without its motive power. It is a generic definition, and can include anything drawn by horses, dogs, deer, or camels. The word sounds very well when applied to a fashionable turnout, but less so when speaking of a dirt-cart or wheelbarrow. The same word, 'equipage,' is used in Russian as in French to denote a ship's crew. In this connection I heard an amusing story, vouched for as correct. A few years after the disappearance of Sir John Franklin the English Admiralty requested the Russian government to make inquiries for the lost navigator along the coast and islands of the Arctic Ocean. An order to that effect was sent to the Siberian authorities, and they in turn commanded all subordinates to inquire and report. A petty officer some where in Western Siberia was puzzled at the printed order to 'inquire concerning the English Captain, John Franklin, and his equipage.' In due time he reported: "I have made the proper inquiries. I can learn nothing about Captain Franklin; but in one of my villages there is an old sleigh that no one claims, and it may be his equipage." We carried one and sometimes two bells on the yoke of our shaft-horse to signify that we traveled by post. Every humbler vehicle was required to give us the entire road, at least such was the theory. Sometimes we obtained it, and sometimes the approaching drivers were asleep, and the horses kept their own way. When this occurred our driver generally took an opportunity to bring his whip lash upon the sleeper. It is a privilege he enjoys when driving a post carriage to strike his delinquent fellow man if in reach. I presume this is a partial consolation for the kicks and blows occasionally showered upon himself. Humanity in authority is pretty certain to give others the treatment itself has received. Only great natures will deal charity and kindness when remembering oppression and cruelty. I was not consulted when our telyaga was built, else it would have been wider and longer. When our small parcels were arranged inside there was plenty of room for one but hardly enough for two. Borasdine and I were of equal height, and neither measured a hair's breadth less than six feet. When packed for riding I came in questionable shape, my body and limbs forming a geometric figure that Euclid never knew. Notwithstanding my cramped position I managed to doze a little, and contemplated an essay on a new mode of triangulation. We rattled our bones over the stones and frozen earth, and dragged and dripped through the mud to the first station. As we reached the establishment our Cossack and driver shouted "_courier!_" in tones that soon brought the smotretal and his attendants. They rubbed their half-open eyes and bestirred themselves to bring horses. The word 'courier' invigorates the attachés of a post route, as they well know that the bearer of a courier's pass must not be delayed. Ten minutes are allowed for changing a courier's horses, and the change is often made in six or eight minutes. The length of a journey depends considerably upon the time consumed at stations. [Illustration: A SIBERIAN TARANTASS.] Here we found a tarantass, neither new nor elegant, but strong and capacious. We hired it to Nerchinsk, and our Cossack transferred the baggage while four little rats of ponies were being harnessed. The harness used on this road was a combination of leather and hemp in about equal proportions. There were always traces of ropes more or less twisted. It is judicious to carry a quantity of rope in one's vehicle for use in case of accident. A Russian _yemshick_ (driver) is quite skillful in repairing breakages if he can find enough rope for his purpose. The horses, like many other terrestrial things, were better than they appeared, and notwithstanding the bad road they carried us at good speed. I was told that the horses between Stratensk and Lake Baikal were strangers to corn and oats, and not over familiar with hay. Those at the post stations must be fed in the stable, but nearly all others hunt their own food. In summer they can easily do this, but in winter they subsist on the dry grass standing on the hills and prairies. There is little snow in this region, but when it falls on the pastures the horses scrape it away to reach the grass. They are never blanketed, in the coldest weather, and the only brushing they receive is when they run among bushes. In the government of Yakutsk there are many horses that find their own living in winter as in summer. They eat grass, moss, fish, bushes, and sometimes the bark of trees. Captain Wrangell tells of the great endurance of these beasts, and says that like all other animals of that region they shed their coats in the middle of summer. At the second station the smotretal sought our horses among the village peasants, as he had none of his own. He explained that a high official had passed and taken the horses usually kept for the courier. This did not satisfy Borasdine, who entered complaint in the regulation book, stating the circumstances of the affair. At every station there is a book sealed to a small table and open to public inspection. An aggrieved traveler is at liberty to record a statement of his trouble. At regular intervals an officer investigates the affairs of every station. Complaints are examined, and offences treated according to their character. This wholesome regulation keeps the station masters in proper restraint. Day had fairly opened through a dense fog when our delay ended. While we descended a long hill one of our hinder wheels parted company and took a tangent to the road side. We were in full gallop at the time, but did not keep it up long. A pole from a neighboring fence, held by a Pole from Warsaw, lifted the axle so that the wheel could be replaced. I assisted by leaving the carriage and standing at the roadside till all was ready. We had some doubts about the vehicle holding together much longer, but it behaved very well. The tarantass is a marvel of endurance. To listen to the creaking of its joints, and observe its air of infirmity, lead to the belief that it will go to pieces within a few hours. It rattles and groans and threatens prompt analysis, but some how it continues cohesive and preserves its identity hundreds of miles over rough roads. We were merciless to the horses as they were not ours and we were in a hurry. When the driver allowed them to lag, Borasdine ejaculated 'POSHOL!' with a great deal of emphasis and much effect. This word is like 'faster' in English, and is learned very early in a traveler's career in Russia. I acquired it before reaching the first station on my ride, and could use it very skillfully. In the same connection are the words '_droghi_' ('touch up,') '_skorey_' ('hurry,') and '_stupie_' ('go ahead.') All these commands have the accent upon the last syllable, and are very easy to the vocal organs. I learned them all and often used them, but to this day I do not know the Russian word for 'slower.' I never had occasion to employ it while in the empire, except once when thrown down an icy slope with a heap of broken granite at its base, and at another time when a couple of pretty girls were standing by the roadside and, as I presumed, wanted to look at me. From Stratensk to Nerchinsk, a distance of sixty miles, our road led among hills, undulating ground, meadows, and strips of steppe, or prairie, sometimes close to the river, and again several miles away. The country is evidently well adapted to agriculture, the condition of the farms and villages indicating prosperity. I saw much grain in stacks or gathered in small barns. As it was Sunday no work was in progress, and there were but few teams in motion anywhere. The roads were such that no one would travel for pleasure, and the first day of the week is not used for business journeys. From the top of a hill I looked into the wide and beautiful valley of the Nertcha, which enters the Shilka from the north. On its left bank and two or three miles from its mouth is the town of Nerchinsk with five or six thousand inhabitants. Its situation is charming, and to me the view was especially pleasing, as it was the first Russian town where I saw evidences of age and wealth. The domes of its churches glistened in the sunlight that had broken through the fog and warmed the tints of the whole picture. The public buildings and many private residences had an air of solidity. Some of the merchants' houses would be no discredit to New York or London. The approach from the east is down a hill sloping toward the banks of the Nertcha. We entered the gateway of Nerchinsk, and after passing some of the chief buildings drove to the house of Mr. Kaporaki, where we were received with open arms. Borasdine and his acquaintance kissed affectionately, and after their greeting ended I was introduced. We unloaded from the tarantass, piled our baggage in the hallway, and dismissed the driver with the borrowed vehicle. Almost before we were out of our wrappings the samovar was steaming, and we sat down to a comforting breakfast, with abundance of tea. And didn't we enjoy it after riding eight or ten hours over a road that would have shaken skimmilk into butter? You bet we did. [Illustration: TAIL PIECE] CHAPTER XXIII. The heaviest fortunes at Nerchinsk have been made in commerce and gold mining, principally the latter. I met one man reputed to possess three million roubles, and two others who were each put down at over a million. Mr. Kaporaki, our host, was a successful gold miner, if I may judge by what I saw. His dwelling was an edifice somewhat resembling Arlington House, but without its signs of decay. The principal rooms I entered were his library, parlor, and dining-room; the first was neat and cozy, and the second elaborately fitted with furniture from St. Petersburg. Both were hung with pictures and paintings, the former bearing French imprints. His dining-room was in keeping with the rest of the establishment, and I could hardly realize that I was in Siberia, five thousand miles from the Russian capital and nearly half that distance from the Pacific Ocean. The realization was more difficult when our host named a variety of wines ready for our use. Would we take sherry, port, or madiera, or would we prefer Johannisberg, Hockheimer, or Verzenay? Would we try Veuve Cliquot, or Carte d'Or? A box of genuine Havanas stood upon his library table, and received our polite attention. We arrived about ten in the morning, and on consenting to remain till afternoon a half dozen merchants were invited to join us at dinner. Mr. Kaporaki's gold mines were on the tributaries of the Nertcha, about a hundred miles away. From his satisfied air in showing specimens and figures I concluded his claims were profitable. The mining season had just closed, and he was footing up his gains and losses for the year. The gold he exhibited was in coarse scales, with occasional nuggets, and closely resembled the product I saw a few months earlier of some washings near Mariposa. The gold on the Nertcha and its tributaries is found in the sand and earth that form the bed of the streams. Often it is many feet deep and requires much 'stripping.' I heard of one _priesk_ (claim) where the pay-dirt commenced sixty-five feet from the surface. Notwithstanding the great expense of removing the superincumbent earth, the mine had been worked to a profit. Twenty or thirty feet of earth to take away is by no means uncommon. The pay-dirt is very rich, and the estimates of its yield are stated at so many _zolotniks_ of gold for a hundred poods of earth. From one pood of dirt, of course unusually rich, Mr. Kaporaki obtained 24 zolotniks, or three ounces of gold. In another instance ten poods of dirt yielded 90 zolotniks of gold. The ordinary yield, as near as I could ascertain, was what a Californian would call five or six cents to the pan. Each of these merchant-miners pays to the government fifteen per cent. of all gold he obtains, and is not allowed to sell the dust except to the proper officials. He delivers his gold and receives the money for it as soon as it is melted and assayed. It was hinted to me that much gold was smuggled across the frontier into China, and never saw the treasury of his Imperial Majesty, the Czar. The Cossacks of the Argoon keep a sharp watch for traffic of this kind. "They either," said my informant, "deliver a culprit over to justice or, what is the same thing, compel him to bribe them heavily to say nothing." Nerchinsk formerly stood at the junction of the Nertcha and Shilka, on the banks of both rivers, but the repeated damage from floods caused its removal. Even on its present site it is not entirely safe from inundation, the lower part of the town having been twice under water and in danger of being washed away. Many of the present inhabitants are exiles or the descendants of exiles, Nerchinsk having been a place of banishment for political and criminal offenders during the last hundred years. Those condemned to work in the mines were sent to Great Nerchinsk Zavod, about two hundred miles away. The town was the center of the military and mining district, and formerly had more importance than at present. Many participants in the insurrection of 1825 were sent there, among them the princes Trubetskoi and Volbonskoi. After laboring in the mines and on the roads of Nerchinsk, they were sent to Chetah, where they were employed in a polishing mill. In many stories about Siberian exiles, published in England and America, Nerchinsk has occupied a prominent position. As far as I could observe it is not a place of perpetual frost and snow, its summers being warm though brief. In winter it has cold winds blowing occasionally from the Yablonoi mountains down the valley of the Nertcha. The region is very well adapted to agriculture, and the valley as I saw it had an attractive appearance. The product of the Nerchinsk mines has been silver, gold, and lead. The search for silver and lead has diminished since the mines were opened to private enterprise. At one time 40,000 poods of lead were produced here annually, most of it being sent to the Altai mountains to be employed in reducing silver. In most places where explored the country is rich in gold, and I have little doubt that thorough prospecting would reveal many placers equaling the best of those in California. Very few exiles are now sent to Nerchinsk in comparison with the numbers formerly banished there. Under the reign of Nicholas and his father Nerchinsk received its greatest accessions, the Polish revolutions and the revolt of 1825 contributing largely to its population. Places of exile have always been selected with relation to the offence and character of the prisoners. The worst offenders, either political or criminal, were generally sent to the mines of Nerchinsk, their terms of service varying from two to twenty years, or for life. I was told that the longest sentence now given is for twenty years. The condition of prisoners in former times was doubtless bad, and there are many stories of cruelty and extortion practiced by keepers and commandants. The dwellings of prisoners were frequently no better than the huts of savages; their food and clothing were poor and insufficient; they were compelled to labor in half frozen mud and water for twelve or fourteen hours daily, and beaten when they faltered. The treatment of prisoners depended greatly upon the character of the commandant of the mines. Of the brutality of some officials and the kindness of others there can be little doubt. We have sufficient proof of the varied qualities of the human heart in the conduct of prison-keepers in America during our late war. There have been many exaggerations concerning the treatment of exiles. I do not say there has been no cruelty, but that less has occurred than some writers would have us believe. Before leaving America I read of the rigorous manner in which the sentence of the conspirators of 1825 was carried out. According to one authority the men were loaded with chains and compelled to the hardest labor in the mines under relentless overseers. They were badly lodged, fed with insufficient food, and when ill had little or no medical treatment. Nearly all these unfortunates were of noble families and never performed manual labor before reaching the mines. They had been tenderly reared, and were mostly young and unused to the hardships of life outside the capitals. Thrust at once into the mines of Siberia they could hardly survive a lengthened period of the cruelty alleged. Most of them served out their sentences and retained their health. Some returned to Europe after more than thirty years exile, and a few were living in Siberia at the time of my visit, forty-one years after their banishment. I conclude they were either blessed with more than iron constitutions, or there is some mistake in the account of their suffering and privation. Many attempts have been made to escape from these mines, but very few were completely successful. Some prisoners crossed into China after dodging the vigilant Cossacks on the frontier, but they generally perished in the deserts of Mongolia, either by starvation or at the hands of the natives. I have heard of two who reached the Gulf of Pecheli after many hardships, where they captured a Chinese fishing boat and put to sea. When almost dead of starvation they were picked up by an English barque and carried to Shanghae, where the foreign merchants supplied them with money to find their way to Paris. A better route than this was by the Amoor, before it was open to Russian navigation. Many who escaped this way lost their lives, but others reached the seacoast where they were picked up by whalers or other transient ships. In 1844 three men started for the Ohotsk sea, traveling by way of the Yablonoi mountains. They had managed to obtain a rifle, and subsisted upon game they killed, and upon berries, roots, and the bark of trees. They escaped from the mines about midsummer, and hoped by rapid travel to reach the coast before winter overtook them. One of the men was killed by falling from a rock during the first month of the journey. The others buried their dead companion as best they could, marking his grave with a cross, though with no expectation it would again be seen by human eyes. Traversing the mountains and reaching the tributaries of the Aldan river, they found their hardships commencing. The country was rough and game scarce, so that the fugitives were exhausted by fatigue and hunger. They traveled for a time with the wandering Tunguze of this region, and were caught by the early snows of winter when the coast was still two hundred miles away. They determined to wait until spring before crossing the mountains. Unluckily while with the Tunguze they were seen by a Russian merchant, who informed the authorities. Early in the spring they were captured and returned to their place of imprisonment. The region around the Yablonoi mountains is so desolate that escape in that direction is almost impossible. By way of the post route to Lake Baikal it is equally difficult, as the road is carefully watched and there are few habitations away from the post villages and stations. No one can travel by post without a padaroshnia, and this can only be procured at the chief towns and is not issued to an unknown applicant. I heard a story of a young Pole who attempted, some years ago, to escape from exile. He was teacher in a private family and passed his evenings in gambling. At one time he was very successful at cards, and gained in a single week three thousand roubles. With this capital he arranged a plan of escape. By some means he procured a padaroshnia, not in his own name, and announced his intention to visit his friends a few miles away. As he did not return promptly search was made, and it was found that a person answering his description had started toward Lake Baikal. Pursuit naturally turned in that direction, exactly opposite to his real course of flight. He traveled by post with his padaroshnia and reached the vicinity of Omsk without difficulty. Very injudiciously he quarreled with the drivers at a post station about the payment of ten copecks, which he alleged was an overcharge. The padaroshnia was examined in consequence of the quarrel and found applicable to a Russian merchant of the third class, and not for a nobleman, which he claimed to be. The station-master arrested the traveler and sent him to Omsk, when his real character was ascertained. On the third day of captivity he bribed his guards and escaped during the night. He remained free more than a month, but was finally recaptured and sent to Irkutsk. At Nerchinsk I resumed my efforts to purchase a tarantass, but my investigations showed the Nerchinsk market 'out' of everything in the tarantass line and no promise of a new crop. Fortune and Kaporaki favored me, and found a suitable vehicle that I could borrow for the journey to Irkutsk. I was to answer for its safety and deliver it to a designated party on my arrival there. The regulations did not permit, or at least encourage, Borasdine to invest in vehicles. A courier is expected, unless in winter, to travel by the post carriages. All breakages in that case are at the expense of government, with the possible exception of the courier's bones and head. If a carriage breaks down he takes another and leaves the wreck for the station men to pick up. If he should buy a tarantass and it gave out he would be forced to leave it till he came again, or sell it at any price offered. Nothing that relates to his personal comfort is allowed to detain a courier. He can stop only for change of team, hasty meals, and when leaving or taking despatches on his route. Sometimes a river gets high and refuses to respect his padaroshnia, or a severe and blinding storm stops all travel. A courier's pass is supposed to command everything short of the elements, and I have a suspicion that some Russians believe it powerful _with_ the elements. A courier ought to travel with only his baggage and servant, the former not exceeding 200 pounds. Borasdine had Cossack and baggage in proper quantity; adding me and my impedimenta, he was hardly in light moving order. I suggested that he drop me and I would trust to luck and my padaroshnia. I had confidence in the good nature of the Russians and my limited knowledge of the language. I could exhibit my papers, ask for horses, say I was hungry, and was perfectly confident I could pay out money as long as it lasted. But my companion replied that an extra day on the route would make no difference in his catching the boat to cross Lake Baikal, and we would remain together until new difficulties arose. Having dined we visited the post-station and ordered horses sent to the house of our host. The servants filled our tarantass with baggage, while their master filled us with champagne. The vehicle displayed the best carrying capacity, as it had room for more when our hearts were too full for utterance, save in a half breathed sigh. We rattled out of Kaporaki's yard and down to the Nertcha, where we had a ferry-boat like the one at Stratensk, though a little larger. The horses were detached and remained on the bank until the tarantass was safely on board. There was not much room for them, but they managed to find standing places. By the time we were over the river it was night, and the sentinel stars had set their watch in the sky. We found the road an unpleasant combination of snow, dirt, and water. We had four weak little horses, and the driver told us they had made one journey to the station and back again since morning. In the Russian posting system the horses carry loads only one way. The driver takes your vehicle to the station, where he is allowed to rest himself and horses one hour and then starts on his return. In ordinary seasons when the traveling is good, each team of horses will make two round trips in twenty-four hours. This gives them from fifty to seventy miles daily travel, half of it without load and at a gentle pace. After the third station the road improved, the snow and mud diminishing and leaving a comparatively dry track. The stations were generally so uncomfortably hot as to put me in a perspiration, and I was glad to get out of doors. The temperature was about 70° Fahrenheit, and the air at night contained odors from the breath and boots of dormant _moujiks_. The men sleep on the floor and benches, but the top of the stove is the favorite couch. The stove is of brick as already described, and its upper surface is frequently as wide as a common bed. Sometimes the caloric is a trifle abundant, but I have rarely known it complained of. [Illustration: FAVORITE BED.] I could never clearly understand the readiness and ability of the Russians to endure contrasts of heat and cold with utter complacence and without apparent ill effect. I have seen a yemshick roused at midnight from the top of a stove where he was sleeping in a temperature of eighty-five or ninety degrees. He made his toilet by tightening his waist-belt and putting on his boots. When the horses were ready he donned his cap and extra coat, thrust his hands into mittens, and mounted the front of a sleigh. The cold would be anywhere from ten to fifty degrees below zero, but the man rarely appeared to suffer. In severe weather I hesitated to enter the stations on account of the different temperature of the house and the open air, but the Russians did not seem to mind the sudden changes. All natives of Northern Siberia subject themselves without inconvenience to extremes of heat and cold. Major Abasa told me that when the cold was 40° below zero he had found the Koriaks in their yourts with a temperature 75° above. They passed from one to the other without a change of clothing and without perspiring. At night they ordinarily slept in their warm dwellings, but when traveling they rested in the snow under the open sky. In his exploration around Penjinsk Gulf the major saw a woman sleep night after night on the snow in the coldest weather with no covering but the clothing she wore in the day. She would have slept equally well if transferred to a hot room. The Yakuts and Tunguze are equally hardy. Captain Wrangell gives examples of their endurance, especially of living in warm rooms or sleeping on the ice at a low temperature. Captain Cochrane, the English Pedestrian, had a wonderful experience with some natives that guided him from the Lena to the Kolyma. Though the Captain was an old traveler and could support much cold and fatigue, he was greatly outdone by his guides. He could never easily accommodate himself to wide extremes of heat and cold, and I believe this is the experience of nearly all persons not born and reared under a northern sky. The road from Nerchinsk to Chetah is through an undulating country, the hills in many places being high enough to merit the name of mountains. Sometimes we followed the valley of the Ingodah, and again we left it to wind over the hills and far away where the bluffs prevented our keeping near the stream. When we looked upon the river from these mountains the scene was beautiful, and I shall long retain my impression of the loveliness of the Ingodah. Mr. Collins described this valley nine years before me, and with one exception I can confirm all he said of its charms. He had the good fortune to travel in spring when the flowers were in bloom, whereas my journey was late in autumn. My English friend at Stratensk spoke of this particular feature of the country, and described the thick carpet of blossoms that in some places almost hid the grass from view. To compensate for the long and dreary winter Nature spreads her floral beauties with lavish hand, and converts the once ice-bound region into a landscape of beautiful and fragrant flowers. The valley is fertile and well cultivated, villages and farm houses being frequent. The road was excellent, wide, and well made; much labor had been expended upon it during the last two years. Its up and down-ishness was not to my liking, as the horses utterly refused to gallop in ascending hills a mile or two long. The descent was less difficult, but unfortunately we could not have it all descent. We had equal quantities of rising and falling, with the difference against us that we were ascending the valley. Fortunately the road was dry and in some places we found it dusty. Late in the afternoon we halted for dinner, ordering the samovar almost before we stopped the tarantass. We ordered eggs and bread, and in hopes of something substantial Borasdine consulted the mistress of the house. He returned with disgust pictured on his countenance. "Have they anything?" I asked. "Nothing." "Nothing at all?" "No; nothing but mutton." Nothing but mutton! _I_ was entirely reconciled. When it came I made a fine dinner, but he took very little of it. There are great flocks of sheep belonging to the Bouriats in Eastern Siberia, and they form the chief support of that people. Curiously enough the Russians rarely eat mutton, though so abundant around them. Borasdine told me it seldom appeared on a Siberian table, and I observed that both nobles and peasants agreed in disliking it. While at dinner we caught sight of a pretty face and figure, more to my fellow traveler's taste than the _piece de resistance_ of our meal. After dinner we passed over a hill and entered a level region where we found plenty of mud. About midnight the yemshick exhibited his skill by driving into a mudhole where there was solid ground on both sides. We were hopelessly stuck, and all our cries and utterances were of no avail. The Cossack and the driver could accomplish nothing, and we were obliged to descend from the carriage. We required our subordinates to put their shoulders to the wheels, though the operation covered them with mud. While they lifted we shouted to the horses, Borasdine in Russian and I in French and English. Twenty minutes of this toil accomplished nothing. Then we unloaded all our baggage down to the smallest articles. Another effort and we were still in our slough of despond. I retreated to a neighboring fence and returned with a stout pole. The Cossack brought another, and we arranged to lift the fore wheels to somewhere near the surface. It was my duty to urge the horses, and I flattered myself that I performed it. I had the driver's whip to assist my utterance; the others lifted, while I struck and shouted. We had a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull all together, and pulled out of the depths. I attributed no small part of the success to the effect of American horse-vocabulary upon Russian quadrupeds. When we reloaded it was refreshing to observe the care with which the Cossack had placed our pillows on the wet ground and piled heavy baggage over them. Borasdine expressed his objection to this plan in such form that the Cossack was not likely to repeat the operation. The motion of the tarantass, especially its jolting over the rough parts of the route, gave me a violent headache, the worst I ever experienced. The journey commenced too abruptly for my system to be reconciled without complaint. Nearly four months I had been almost constantly on ships and steamboats, all my land riding in that time not amounting to thirty miles. I came ashore at Stratensk and began travel with a Russian courier over Siberian roads at the worst season of the year. It was like leaving the comforts of a Fifth Avenue parlor to engage in wood-sawing. At every bound of the vehicle my brain seemed ready to burst, and I certainly should have halted had we not intended delaying at Chetah. [Illustration: CONCENTRATED ENERGIES.] A Russian yemshick centers his whole duty in driving his team. He gives no thought to the carriage or the persons inside; they must look out for their own interest. Let him come to a hill, rough or smooth, rocky or gravelly, provided there be no actual danger, he descends at his best speed. Sometimes the horses trot, and again they gallop down a long slope. Near the bottom they set out on a full run, as if pursued by a pack of hungry wolves. They dash down the hill, across the hollow, and part way up the opposite ascent without slacking speed. The carriage leaps, bumps, and rattles, and the contents, animate or inanimate, are tossed violently. If there is a log bridge in the hollow the effect is more than electric. The driver does not even turn his head to regard his passengers. If the carriage holds together and follows it is all that concerns him. At first I was not altogether enamored of this practice. But as I never suffered actual injury and the carriages endured their rough treatment, I came in time to like it. As a class the Russian yemshicks are excellent drivers, and in riding behind more than three hundred of them I had abundant opportunity to observe their skill. They are not always intelligent and quick to devise plans in emergencies, but they are faithful and know the duties of their profession. For speed and safety I would sooner place myself in their hands than behind professional drivers in New York. They know the rules of the road, the strength and speed of their horses, and are almost uniformly good natured. We reached Chetah at five in the morning and roused the inmates of the only hotel. The sleepy _chelavek_ showed us to a room containing two chairs, two tables, and a dirty sofa. The Cossack brought our baggage from the tarantass, and we endeavored to sleep. When we rose Borasdine went to call upon the governor while I ordered breakfast on my own account. Summoning the _chelavek_ I began, "_Dai samovar, chi, saher e kleb_," (give the samovar, tea, bread, and sugar.) This accomplished, I procured beefsteaks and potatoes without difficulty. I spoke the language of the country in a fragmentary way, but am certain my Russian was not half as bad as the beefsteak. CHAPTER XXIV. Chetah stands on the left bank of the Ingodah, nearly three hundred miles above Stratensk, and is the capital of the Trans-Baikal province. For many years it was a small town with a few hundred inhabitants, but the opening of the Amoor in 1854 changed its character. Below this point the Ingodah is navigable for boats and rafts, and during the early years of the Amoor occupation much material was floated down from Chetah. In 1866 its population, including the garrison, was about five thousand. Many houses were large and well fitted, and all were of wood. The officers lived comfortably, but complained of high rents. The governor's mansion is the largest and best, and near it is the club-house where weekly soirees are held. I attended one of these and found a pleasant party. There was music and dancing, tea-drinking and card-playing, gossip and silence at varied and irregular intervals. Some of the officers read selections from Russian authors, and others recited pieces of prose and poetry. There were dialogues, evidently humorous to judge by the mirth they produced, and there was a paper containing original contributions. The association appeared prosperous, and I was told that its literary features were largely due to the efforts of the governor. There is a _gastinni-dvor_ or row of shops and a market-place surrounded with huckster's stalls, much like those near Fulton Ferry. Desiring to replace a broken watch-key I found a repair shop and endeavored to make my inquiries in Russian. "_Monsieur parle le Francais, je crois_," was the response to my attempt, and greatly facilitated the transaction of business. Before I left New York an acquaintance showed me a photograph of a Siberian, who proved to be the watchmaker thus encountered. Walking about the streets I saw many prisoners at work under guard, most of them wearing fetters. Though I became accustomed during my Siberian travels to the sight of chains on men, I could never hear their clanking without a shudder. The chains worn by a prisoner were attached at one end to bands enclosing his ankles and at the other to a belt around his waist. The sound of these chains as the men walked about was one of the most disagreeable I ever heard, and I was glad to observe that the Russians did not appear to admire it. The prisoners at Chetah were laboring on the streets, preparing logs for house-building, or erecting fences. Most of the working parties were under guard, but the overseers did not appear to push them severely. Some were taking it very leisurely and moved as if endeavoring to do as little as possible in their hours of work. I was told that they were employed on the eight hour system. Their dress was coarse and rough, like that of the peasants, but had no marks to show that its wearer was a prisoner. [Illustration: PRISONERS AT CHETAH.] There were between three and four thousand prisoners in the province of the Trans-Baikal. About one-sixth of them were at Chetah and in its vicinity. The prisoners were of two classes--political and criminal--and their punishment varied according to their offence. Some were sentenced to labor in chains, and others to labor without chains. Some could not go out without a guard, while others had more freedom. Some were sentenced to work in prison and others were imprisoned without labor. Some were exiled to Siberia but enjoyed the liberty of a province, a particular district, or a designated town or village. Some were allowed a certain amount of rations and others supported themselves. In fact there were all grades of prisoners, just as we have all grades in our penitentiaries. The Polish revolution in 1863 sent many exiles to the country east of Lake Baikal. Among the prisoners at the time of my journey there was a Colonel Zyklinski confined in prison at a village north of Chetah. He had a prominent part in the Polish troubles, and was captured at the surrender of the armies. He served in America under M'Clellan during the Peninsular campaign, and was in regular receipt of a pension from our government. The Trans-Baikal Province is governed by Major General Ditmar, to whom I brought letters of introduction. When Borasdine returned from his visit he brought invitation to transfer our quarters to the gubernatorial mansion, where we went and met the governor. I found him an agreeable gentleman, speaking French fluently, and regretting the absence of Madame Ditmar, in whose praise many persons had spoken. At dinner I met about twenty persons, of whom more than half spoke French and two or three English. A military band occupied the gallery over the dining-room. When General Ditmar proposed "the United States of America," my ears were greeted with one of our national airs. It was well played, and when I said so they told me its history. On hearing of my arrival the governor summoned his chief musician and asked if he knew any American music. The reply was in the negative. The governor then sent the band-master to search his books. He soon returned, saying he had found the notes of "Hail Columbia." "Is that the only American tune you have?" asked the general. "Yes, sir." "Have your band learn to play it by dinner time." The order was obeyed, and the American music accompanied the first regular toast. It was repeated at the club-rooms and on two or three other occasions during my stay in Chetah, and though learned so hastily it was performed as well as by any ordinary band in our army. The principal rooms in General Ditmar's house had a profusion of green plants in pots and tubs of different sizes. One apartment in particular seemed more like a greenhouse than a room where people dwelt. Whether so much vegetation in the houses affects the health of the people I am unable to say, but I could not ascertain that it did. The custom of cultivating plants in the dwellings prevails through Siberia, especially in the towns. I frequently found bushes like small trees growing in tubs, and I have in mind several houses where the plants formed a continuous line half around the walls of the principal rooms. The devotion to floriculture among the Siberians has its chief impulse in the long winters, when there is no out-door vegetation visible beyond that of the coniferous trees. I can testify that a dwelling-which one enters on a cold day in midwinter appears doubly cheerful when the eye rests upon a luxuriance of verdure and flowers. Winter seems defeated in his effort to establish universal sway. The winters in this region are long and cold, though very little snow falls. Around Chetah and in most of the Trans-Baikal province there is not snow enough for good sleighing, and the winter roads generally follow the frozen rivers. Horses, cattle, and sheep subsist on the dead and dry grass from October to April, but they do not fare sumptuously every day. North and south of the head-waters of the Ingodah and Orion there are mountain ranges, having a general direction east and west. Away to the north the Polar sea and the lakes and rivers near it supply the rain and snow-clouds. As they sweep toward the south these clouds hourly become less and their last drops are wrung from them as they strike the slopes of the mountains and settle about their crests. The winter clouds from the Indian Ocean and Caspian Sea rarely pass the desert of Gobi, and thus the country of the Trans-Baikal has a climate peculiar to itself. During my stay at Chetah a party was organized to hunt gazelles. There were ten or fifteen officers and about twenty Cossacks, as at Blagoveshchensk. Up to the day of the excursion the weather was delightful, but it suddenly changed to a cloudy sky, a high wind, and a freezing temperature. The scene of action was a range of hills five or six miles from town. We went there in carriages and wagons and on horseback, and as we shivered around a fire built by the Cossacks near an open work cabin, we had little appearance of a pleasure party. [Illustration: ON THE HILLS NEAR CHETAH.] The first drive resulted in the death of two rabbits and the serious disability of a third. One halted within twenty steps of me and received the contents of my gun-barrel. I reloaded while he lay kicking, and just as I returned the ramrod to its place the beast rose and ran into the thick bushes. I hope he recovered and will live many years. He seemed gifted with a strong constitution, and I heard several stories of the tenacity of life displayed by his kindred. The rabbit or hare (_lepus variabilis_) abounds in the valley of the Amoor and generally throughout Siberia. He is much larger than the New England rabbit I hunted in my boyhood, and smaller than the long-eared rabbit of the Rocky Mountains and California. He is grey or brown in summer and white in winter, his color changing as cold weather begins. No snow had fallen at Chetah, but the rabbits were white as chalk and easily seen if not easily killed. The peasants think the rabbit a species of cat and refuse to eat his flesh, but the upper classes have no such scruples. I found him excellent in a roast or stew and admirably adapted to destroying appetites. Our day's hunt brought us one gazelle, six rabbits, one lunch, several drinks, and one smashed wagon. I saw at Chetah a chess board in a box ten inches square with a miniature tree six inches high on its cover. The figure of a man in chains leaning upon a spade near a wheelbarrow, stood under the tree. The expression of the face, the details of the clothing, the links of the chains, the limbs of the tree, and even the roughness of its bark, were carefully represented. It was the work of a Polish exile, who was then engaged upon something more elaborate. Chessmen, tree, barrow, chains, and all, were made from black bread! The man took part of his daily allowance, moistened it with water, and kneaded it between his fingers till it was soft like putty. In this condition he fashioned it to the desired shape. When I called upon the watchmaker he told me of an American recently arrived from Kiachta. Two hours later while writing in my room I heard a rap at my door. On opening I found a man who asked in a bewildered air, "_Amerikansky doma?_" "_Dah_," I responded. "_Parlez vous Francais_?" was his next question. "_Oui, Monsieur, Francais ou Anglais_." "Then you are the man I want to find. How do you do?" It was the American, who had come in search of me. He told me he was born in England and was once a naturalized citizen of the United States. He had lived in New York and Chicago, crossed the Plains in 1850, and passed through all the excitements of the Pacific coast, finishing and being finished at Frazer's River. After that he went to China and accompanied a French merchant from Shanghae across the Mongolian steppes to Kiachta. He arrived in Chetah a month before my visit, and was just opening a stock of goods to trade with the natives. He was about to begin matrimonial life with a French lady whose acquaintance he made in Kiachta. He had sent for a Catholic priest to solemnize the marriage, as neither of the high contracting parties belonged to the Russian church. The priest was then among the exiles at Nerchinsk Zavod, three hundred miles away, and his arrival at Chetah was anxiously looked for by others than my new acquaintance. The Poles being Catholics have their own priests to attend them and minister to their spiritual wants. Some of these priests are exiles and others voluntary emigrants, who went to Siberia to do good. The exiled priests are generally permitted to go where they please, but I presume a sharp watch is kept over their actions. When there is a sufficient number of Poles they have churches of their own and use exclusively the Romish service. The Germans settled in Russia, as well as Russians of German descent, usually adhere to the Lutheran faith. The Siberian peasants almost invariably speak of a Lutheran church as a 'German' one, and in like manner apply the name 'Polish' to Catholic churches. The government permits all religious denominations in Siberia to worship God in their own way, and makes no interference with spiritual leaders. Minor sects corresponding to Free Lovers, Shakers, and bodies of similar character, are not as liberally treated as the followers of any recognized Christian faith. Of course the influence of the government is for the Greek Church, but it allows no oppression of Catholics and Lutherans. So far as I could observe, the Greek Church in Siberia and the Established Church in England occupy nearly similar positions toward dissenting denominations. Three days after my arrival General Ditmar started for Irkutsk, preceded a few hours by my late traveling companion. In the afternoon following the general's departure I witnessed an artillery parade and drill, the men being Cossacks of the Trans-Baikal province. The battery was a mounted one of six guns, and I was told the horses were brought the day before from their summer pastures. The affair was creditable to officers and men, the various evolutions being well and rapidly performed. The guns were whirled about the field, unlimbered, fired, dismounted, and passed through all the manipulations known to artillerists. At the close of the review the commanding officer thanked his men and praised their skill. He received the response, simultaneously spoken, "We are happy to please you," or words of like meaning. At every parade, whether regular or Cossack, this little ceremony is observed. As the men marched from the field to their quarters they sang one of their native airs. These Cossacks meet at stated intervals for drill and discipline, and remain the balance of the time at their homes. The infantry and cavalry are subject to the same regulation, and the musters are so arranged that some part of the Cossack force is always under arms. After the review I dined with a party of eighteen or twenty officers at the invitation of Captain Erifayeff of the governor's staff. The dinner was given in the house where my host and his friend, Captain Pantoukin, lived, _en garcon_. The Emperor of Russia and the President of the United States were duly remembered, and the toasts in their honor were greeted with appropriate music. In conversation after dinner, I found all the officers anxious to be informed concerning the United States. The organization of our army, the relations of our people after the war, our mode of life, manners, and customs, were subjects of repeated inquiry. On the morning of the 26th October, Captain Molostoff, who was to be my companion, announced his readiness to depart. I made my farewell calls, and we packed our baggage into my tarantass, with the exception of the terrible trunk that adhered to me like a shadow. As we had no Cossack and traveled without a servant, there was room for the unwieldy article on the seat beside the driver. I earnestly advise every tourist in Siberia not to travel with a trunk. The Siberian ladies manage to transport all the articles for an elaborate toilet without employing a single 'dog house' or 'Saratoga.' If they can do without trunks, of what should not man be capable? Our leave-taking consumed much time and champagne, and it was nearly sunset before we left Chetah. It is the general custom in Siberia to commence journeys in the afternoon or evening, the latter extending anywhere up to daybreak. As one expects to travel night and day until reaching his destination, his hour of starting is of no consequence. Just before leaving he is occupied in making farewell calls, and is generally 'seen off' by his friends. In the evening he has no warm bed to leave, no hasty toilet to make, and no disturbed household around him. With a vehicle properly arranged he can settle among his furs and pillows and is pretty likely to fall asleep before riding many miles. I was never reconciled to commencing a journey early in the morning, with broken sleep, clothing half arranged, and a 'picked-up' breakfast without time to swallow it leisurely. On leaving Chetah we crossed a frozen stream tributary to the Ingodah, and proceeded rapidly over an excellent road. We met several carts, one-horse affairs on two wheels, laden with hay for the Chetah market. One man generally controlled three or four carts, the horses proceeding in single file. The country was more open than on the other side of Chetah, and the road had suffered little in the rains and succeeding cold. For some distance we rode near two lines of telegraph; one was a temporary affair erected during the insurrection of 1866, while the other was the permanent line designed to connect America with Europe by way of Bering's Straits. The poles used for this telegraph are large and firmly set, and give the line an appearance of durability. The Captain was fond of dogs and had an English pointer in his baggage. During the day the animal ran near the carriage, and at night slept at his master's feet. He was well inclined toward me after we were introduced, and before the journey ended he became my personal friend. He had an objectionable habit of entering the tarantass just before me and standing in the way until I was seated. Sometimes when left alone in the carriage he would not permit the yemshicks to attach the horses. On two or three occasions of this kind the Captain was obliged to suspend his tea-drinking and go to pacify his dog. Once as a yemshick was mounting the box of the tarantass, 'Boika' jumped at his face and very nearly secured an attachment to a large and ruddy nose. Spite of his eccentricities, he was a good dog and secured the admiration of those he did not attempt to bite. We passed the Yablonoi mountains by a road far from difficult. Had I not been informed of the fact I could have hardly suspected we were in a mountain range. The Yablonoi chain forms the dividing ridge between the head streams of the Amoor and the rivers that flow to the Arctic Ocean. On the south we left a little brook winding to reach the Ingodah, and two hours later crossed the Ouda, which joins the Selenga at Verkne Udinsk. The two streams flow in opposite directions. One threads its way to the eastward, where it assists in forming the Amoor; the other through the Selenga, Lake Baikal, and the Yenesei, is finally swallowed up among the icebergs and perpetual snows of the far north. "One to long darkness and the frozen tide; One to the Peaceful Sea." CHAPTER XXV. Beyond the mountains the cold increased, the country was slightly covered with snow, and the lakes were frozen over. In the mountain region there is a forest of pines and birches, but farther along much of the country is flat and destitute of timber. Where the road was good our tarantass rolled along very well, and the cold, though considerable, was not uncomfortable. I found the chief inconvenience was, that the moisture in my breath congealed on my beard and the fur clothing near it. Two or three times beard and fur were frozen together, and it was not always easy to separate them. From the Yablonoi mountains to Verkne Udinsk there are very few houses between the villages that form the posting stations. The principal inhabitants are Bouriats, a people of Mongol descent who were conquered by Genghis Khan in the thirteenth century and made a respectable fight against the Russians in the seventeenth. Since their subjugation they have led a peaceful life and appear to have forgotten all warlike propensities. Their features are essentially Mongolian, and their manners and customs no less so. Some of them live in houses after the Russian manner, but the yourt is the favorite habitation. The Bouriats cling to the manners of their race, and even when settled in villages are unwilling to live in houses. At the first of their villages after we passed the mountains I took opportunity to visit a yourt. It was a tent with a light frame of trellis work covered with thick felt, and I estimated its diameter at fifteen or eighteen feet. In the center the frame work has no covering, in order to give the smoke free passage. A fire, sometimes of wood and sometimes of dried cow-dung, burns in the middle of the yourt during the day and is covered up at night. I think the tent was not more than five and a half feet high. There was no place inside where I could stand erect. The door is of several thicknesses of stitched and quilted felt, and hangs like a curtain over the entrance. [Illustration: BOURIAT YOURTS.] The eyes of the Bouriats were nearly always red, a circumstance explainable by the smoke that fills their habitations and in which they appear to enjoy themselves. In sleeping they spread mats and skins on the ground and pack very closely. Two or three times at the stations in the middle of the night I approached their dwellings and listened to the nasal chorus within. Tho people are early risers, if I may judge by the hours when I used to find them out of floors. As to furniture, they have mats and skins to sit upon by day and convert into beds at night. There are few or no tables, and little crockery or other household comforts. They have pots for boiling meat and heating water, and a few jugs, bottles, and basins for holding milk and other liquids. A wooden box contains the valuable clothing of the family, and there are two or three bags for miscellaneous use. In the first yourt I entered I found an altar that was doubtless hollow and utilized as a place of storage. A few small cups containing grain, oil, and other offerings were placed on this altar, and I was careful not to disturb them. Their religion is Bhudistic, and they have their lamas, who possess a certain amount of sanctity from the Grand Lama of Thibet. The lamas are numerous and their sacred character does not relieve or deprive them of terrestrial labor and trouble. Many of the lamas engage in the same pursuits as their followers, and are only relieved from toil to exercise the duties of their positions. They perform the functions of priest, physician, detective officer, and judge, and are supposed to have control over souls and bodies, to direct the one and heal the other. Man, woman, child, or animal falling sick the lama is summoned. Thanks to the fears and superstitions of native thieves he can generally find and restore stolen articles, and has the power to inflict punishment. The Russian priests have made very few converts among the Bouriats, though laboring zealously ever since the conquest of Siberia. In 1680 a monastery was founded at Troitsk for the especial purpose of converting the natives. The number who have been baptized is very small, and most of them are still pagans at heart. Two English missionaries lived a long time at Selenginsk, but though earnest and hard working I am told they never obtained a single proselyte. It is a curious fact in the history of the Bouriats that Shamanism was almost universal among them two hundred years ago; practically it differed little from that of the natives on the Amoor. Toward the end of the seventeenth century a mission went from Siberia to Thibet, and its members returned as lamas and bringing the paraphernalia of the new religion which they at once declared to their people. The Bhudistic faith was thus founded and spread over the country until Shamanism was gradually superseded. Traces of the old superstition are still visible in certain parts of the lama worship. Most of their religious property, such as robes, idols, cups, bells, and other necessaries for the Bhudhist service come from Thibet. A Russian gentleman gave me a bell decorated with holy inscriptions and possessing a remarkably fine tone. Its handle was the bust and crown of a Bhudhist idol, and the bell was designed for use in religious services; it was to be touched only by a disciple of the true faith, and its possession prophesied good fortune. Since my return to America it occupied a temporary place on the dining-table of a New England clergyman. [Illustration: A MONGOL BELL.] The Bouriats manufacture very few articles for their own use; they sell their sheep to the Russians, and buy whatever they desire. Their dress is partly Mongol and partly Russian, the inconvenient portions of the Chinese costume being generally rejected. Their caps were mostly conical in shape, made of quilted cloth and ornamented with a silken tassel attached to the apex. Their trowsers had a Chinese appearance, but their coats were generally of sheepskin, after the Russian model. Their waist-belts were decorated with bits of steel or brass. They shave the head and wear the hair in a queue like the Chinese, but are not careful to keep it closely trimmed. A few are half Mongol and half Russian, caused no doubt by their owners being born and reared under Muscovite protection. I saw many pleasing and intelligent countenances, but few that were pretty according to Western notions. There is a famous Bouriat beauty of whose charms I heard much and was anxious to gaze upon. Unfortunately it was two o'clock in the morning when we reached the station where she lived. The unfashionable hour and a big dog combined to prevent my visiting her abode. [Illustration: A MONGOL BELLE.] From the mountains to Verkne Udinsk most of our drivers were Bouriats. They were quite as skillful and daring as the Russian yemshicks, and took us at excellent speed where the road was good. The station-masters were Russian, but frequently all their employees were of Mongol blood. Some part of the carriage gave way on the road, and it was necessary to repair it at a station. A Bouriat man-of-all-work undertook the job and performed it very well. While waiting for the repairs I saw some good specimens of iron work from the hands of native blacksmiths. The Bouriats engage in very little agriculture. Properly they are herdsmen, and keep large droves of cattle, horses, and sheep, the latter being most numerous. I saw many of their flocks near the road we traveled or feeding on distant parts of the plain. The country was open and slightly rolling, timber being scarce and the soil more or less stony. Each flock of sheep was tended by one or more herdsmen armed with poles like rake-handles, and attached to each pole was a short rope with a noose at the end. This implement is used in catching sheep, and the Bouriats are very skillful in handling it. I saw one select a sheep which became separated from the flock before he secured it. The animal while pursued attempted to double on his track. As he turned the man swung his pole and caught the head of the sheep in his noose. It reminded me of lasso throwing in Mexico and California. [Illustration: CATCHING SHEEP.] In looking at these flocks I remembered a conundrum containing the inquiry, "Why do white sheep eat more hay than black ones?" The answer was, "Because there are more of them." In Siberia the question and its reply would be incorrect, as the white sheep are in the minority. In this the sheep of Siberia differ materially from those I ever saw in any other country. The flocks presented a great variety of colors, or rather, many combinations of white and black. Their appearance to an American eye was a very peculiar and novel one. At one station a beggar crouched on the ground near the door asked alms as we passed him. I threw him a small coin, which he acknowledged by thrice bowing his head and touching the earth. I trust this mode of acknowledging courtesy will never be introduced in my own country. We frequently met or passed small trains of two-wheeled carts, some laden with merchandise and others carrying Bouriat or Russian families. Most of these carts were drawn by bullocks harnessed like horses between shafts. Occasionally I saw bullocks saddled and ridden as we ride horses, though not quite as rapidly. A few carts had roofs of birch bark to shield their occupants from the rain; from appearances I judged these carts belonged to emigrants on their way to the Amoor. At the crossing of a small river we found the water full of floating ice that drifted in large cakes. There was much fixed ice at both edges and we waited an hour to have it cut away. When the smotretal announced that all was ready we proceeded to the river and found it anything but inviting. The Bouriat yemshick pronounced it safe, and as he was a responsible party we deferred to his judgment. While we waited a girl rode a horse through the stream without hesitation. [Illustration: A COLD BATH.] We had four horses harnessed abreast and guided by the yemshick. Two others were temporarily attached ahead under control of a Bouriat. As we drove into the river the horses shrank from the cold water and ice that came against their sides. One slipped and fell, but was soon up again. The current drifted us with it and I thought for a moment we were badly caught. The drivers whipped and shouted so effectively that we reached the other side without accident. On the second evening we had a drunken yemshick who lost the road several times and once drove us into a clump of bushes. As a partial excuse the night was so dark that one could not see ten feet ahead. About two o'clock in the morning we reached the station nearest to Verkne Udinsk. Here was a dilemma. Captain Molostoff had business at Verkne Udinsk which he could not transact before nine or ten in the morning. There was no decent hotel, and if we pushed forward we should arrive long before the Russian hour for rising. We debated the question over a steaming samovar and decided to remain at the station till morning. By starting after daylight we might hope to find the town awake. The travelers' room at the station was clean and well furnished, but heated to a high temperature. The captain made his bed on a sofa, but I preferred the tarantass where the air was cool and pure. I arranged my furs, fastened the boot and hood of the carriage, and slept comfortably in a keen wind. At daylight the yemshicks attached horses and called the captain from the house. He complained that he slept little owing to the heat. Boika was in bad humor and opened the day by tearing the coat of one man and being kicked by another. The ground was rougher and better wooded as we came near the junction of the Ouda and Selenga, and I could see evidences of a denser population. On reaching the town we drove to the house of Mr. Pantoukin, a brother of an officer I met at Chetah. The gentleman was not at home and we were received by his friend Captain Sideroff. After talking a moment in Russian with Captain Molostoff, our new acquaintance addressed me in excellent English and inquired after several persons at San Francisco. He had been there four times with the Russian fleet, and appeared to know the city very well. Verkne Udinsk is at the junction of the Ouda and Selenga rivers, three hundred versts from Irkutsk and four hundred and fifty from Chetah. It presents a pretty appearance when approached from the east, when its largest and best buildings first catch the eye. It has a church nearly two hundred years old, built with immensely thick walls to resist occasional earthquakes. A large crack was visible in the wall of a newer church, and repairs were in progress. In its earlier days the town had an important commerce, which has been taken away by Irkutsk and Kiachta. It has a few wealthy merchants, who have built fine houses on the principal street. I walked through the _gastinni-dvor_ but found nothing I desired to purchase. There were many little articles of household use but none of great value. Coats of deerskin were abundant, and the market seemed freshly supplied with them. My costume was an object of curiosity to the hucksters and their customers, especially in the item of boots. The Russian boots are round-toed and narrow. I wore a pair in the American fashion of the previous year and quite different from the Muscovite style. There were frequent touches of elbows and deflections of eyes attracting attention to my feet. A large building overlooking the town was designated as the jail, and said to be rapidly filling for winter. "There are many vagabonds in this part of the country," said my informant. "In summer they live by begging and stealing. At the approach of winter they come to the prisons to be housed and fed during the cold season. They are generally compelled to work, and this fact causes them to leave as early as possible in the spring. Had your journey been in midsummer you would have seen many of these fellows along the road." While speaking of this subject my friend told me there was then in prison at Verkne Udinsk a man charged with robbery. When taken he made desperate resistance, and for a long time afterward was sullen and obstinate. Recently he confessed some of his crimes. He was a robber by profession and acknowledged to seventeen murders during the last three years! Once he killed four persons in a single family, leaving only a child too young to testify against him. The people he attacked were generally merchants with money in their possession. Robberies are not frequent in Siberia, though a traveler hears many stories designed to alarm the timorous. I was told of a party of three persons attacked in a lonely place at night. They were carrying gold from the mines to the smelting works, and though well armed were so set upon that the three were killed without injury to the robbers. I was not solicitous about my safety as officers were seldom molested, and as I traveled with a member of the governor's staff I was pretty well guarded. Officers rarely carry more than enough money for their traveling expenses, and they are better skilled than merchants in handling fire arms and defending themselves. Besides, their molestation would be more certainly detected and punished than that of a merchant or chance traveler. My tarantass had not been materially injured in the journey, but several screws were loose and there was an air of general debility about it. Like the deacon's one-horse shay in its eightieth year, the vehicle was not broken but had traces of age about it. As there was considerable rough road before me I thought it advisable to put everything in order, and therefore committed the carriage to a blacksmith. He labored all day and most of the night putting in bolts, nuts, screws, and bits of iron in different localities, and astonished me by demanding less than half I expected to pay, and still more by his guilty manner, as if ashamed at charging double. The iron used in repairing my carriage came from Petrovsky Zavod, about a hundred miles southeast of Verkne Udinsk. The iron works were established during the reign of Peter the Great, and until quite recently were mostly worked by convicts. There is plenty of mineral coal in the vicinity, but wood is so cheap and abundant that charcoal is principally used in smelting. I saw a specimen of the Petrovsky ore, which appeared very good. The machine shops of these works are quite extensive and well supplied. The engines for the early steamers on the Amoor were built there by Russian workmen. There are several private mining enterprises in the region around Yerkne Udinsk. Most of them have gold as their object, and I heard of two or three lead mines. During the night of my stay at this town Captain Sideroff insisted so earnestly upon giving up his bed that politeness compelled me to accept it. My blankets and furs on the floor would have been better suited to my traveling life especially as the captain's bed was shorter than his guest. I think travelers will agree with me in denouncing the use of beds and warm rooms while a journey is in progress. They weaken the system and unfit it for the roughness of the road. While halting at night the floor or a hard sofa is preferable to a soft bed. The journey ended, the reign of luxuries can begin. [Illustration: TAIL PIECE] CHAPTER XXVI. When we left Verkne Udinsk we crossed the Selenga before passing the municipal limits. Our ferry-boat was like the one at Stratensk, and had barely room on its platform for our tarantass. A priest and an officer who were passengers on the steamer from Blagoveshchensk arrived while we were getting on board the ferry-boat. They had been greatly delayed on the way from Stratensk, and waited two days to cross the Nercha. The Selenga was full of ice, some cakes being larger than the platform of our boat. The temperature of the air was far below freezing, and it was expected the river would close in a day or two. It might shut while we were crossing and confine us on the wretched flat-boat ten or twelve hours, until it would be safe to walk ashore. However, it was not my craft, and as there were six or eight Russians all in the same boat with me, I did not borrow trouble. The ice-cakes ground unpleasantly against each other and had things pretty much their own way. One of them grated rather roughly upon our sides. I do not know there was any danger, but I certainly thought I had seen places of greater safety than that. When we were in the worst part of the stream two of the ferrymen rested their poles and began crossing themselves. I could have excused them had they postponed this service until we landed on the opposite bank or were stuck fast in the ice. The Russian peasants are more dependant on the powers above than were even the old Puritans. The former abandon efforts in critical moments and take to making the sign of the cross. The Puritans trusted in God, but were careful to keep their powder dry. [Illustration: OUR FERRY BOAT.] A wide sand bank where we landed was covered with smooth ice, and I picked my way over it much like a cat exercising on a mirror. The tarantass was pushed ashore, and as soon as the horses were attached a rapid run took them up the bank to the station. A temporary track led across a meadow that furnished a great deal of jolting to the mile. Eight versts from Verkne Udinsk the road divides, one branch going to Kiachta and the other to Lake Baikal and Irkutsk. A pleasing feature of the route was the well-built telegraph line, in working order to St. Petersburg. It seemed to shorten the distance between me and home when I knew that the electric current had a continuous way to America. Puck would put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes. From China to California, more than half the circuit of the globe, we can flash a signal in a second of time, and gain by the hands of the clock more than fourteen hours. From the point of divergence the road to Kiachta ascends the valley of the Selenga, while that to Irkutsk descends the left bank of the stream. I found the Kiachta route rougher than any part of the way from Chetah to Verkne Udinsk, and as the yemshick took us at a rattling pace we were pretty thoroughly shaken up. At the second station we had a dinner of _stchee_, or cabbage soup, with bread and the caviar of the Selenga. This caviar is of a golden color and made from the roe of a small fish that ascends from Lake Baikal. It is not as well liked as the caviar of the Volga and Amoor, the egg being less rich than that of the sturgeon, though about the same size. If I may judge from what I saw, there is less care taken in its preparation than in that of the Volga. The road ascended the Selenga, but the valley was so wide and we kept so near its edge that the river was not often visible. The valley is well peopled and yields finely to the agriculturalist. Some of the farms appeared quite prosperous and their owners well-to-do in the world. The general appearance was not unlike that of some parts of the Wabash country, or perhaps better still, the region around Marysville, Kansas. Russian agriculture does not exhibit the care and economy of our states where land is expensive. There is such abundance of soil in Siberia that every farmer can have all he desires to cultivate. Many farms along the Selenga had a 'straggling' appearance, as if too large for their owners. _Per contra_, I saw many neat and well managed homesteads, with clean and comfortable dwellings. With better implements of husbandry and a more thorough working of the soil, the peasants along the Selenga would find agriculture a sure road to wealth. Under the present system of cultivation the valley is pleasing to the eye of a traveler who views it with reference to its practical value. There were flocks of sheep, droves of cattle and horses, and stacks of hay and grain; everybody was apparently well fed and the houses were attractive. We had good horses, good drivers, and generally good roads for the first hundred versts. Sometimes we left the Selenga, but kept generally parallel to its course. The mountains beyond the valley were lofty and clearly defined. Frequently they presented striking and beautiful scenery, and had I been a skillful artist they would have tempted me to sketch them. The night came upon us cold and with a strong wind blowing from the north. We wrapped ourselves closely and were quite comfortable, the dog actually lolling beneath our sheepskin coverlid. Approaching Selenginsk we found a few bits of bad road and met long caravans laden with tea for Irkutsk. These caravans were made up of little two-wheeled carts, each drawn by a single horse. From six to ten chests of tea, according to the condition of the roads, are piled on each cart and firmly bound with cords. There is one driver to every four or five carts, and this driver has a dormitory on one of his loads. This is a rude frame two and a half by six feet, with sides about seven inches high. With a sheepskin coat and coverlid a man contrives to sleep in this box while his team moves slowly along the road or is feeding at a halting place. All the freight between Kiachta and Lake Baikal is carried on carts in summer and on one-horse sleds in winter. From Kiachta westward tea is almost the only article of transport, the quantity sometimes amounting to a million chests per annum. The tea chests are covered with raw hide, which protects them, from rain and snow and from the many thumps of their journey. The teams belong to peasants, who carry freight for a stipulated sum per pood. The charges are lower in winter than in summer, as the sledge is of easier draft than the cart. The caravans travel sixteen hours of every twenty-four, and rarely proceed faster than a walk. The drivers are frequently asleep and allow the horses to take their own pace. The caravans are expected to give up the whole road on the approach of a post carriage, and when the drivers are awake they generally obey the regulation. Very often it happened that the foremost horses turned aside of their own accord as we approached. They heard the bells that denoted our character, and were aware of our yemshick's right to strike them if they neglected their duty. The sleeping drivers and delinquent horses frequently received touches of the lash. There was little trouble by day, but at night the caravan horses were less mindful of our comfort. Especially if the road was bad and narrow the post vehicles, contrary to regulation, were obliged to give way. [Illustration: EQUAL RIGHTS.] It was three or four hours before daylight when we reached Selenginsk, and the yemshick removed his horses preparatory to returning to his station. I believe Selenginsk is older than Verkne Udinsk, and very much the senior of Irkutsk. The ancient town is on the site of the original settlement, but frequent inundations caused its abandonment for the other bank of the river, five versts away. New Selenginsk, which has a great deal of antiquity in its appearance, is a small town with a few good houses, a well built church, and commodious barracks. During the troubles between China and Russia concerning the early occupation of the Amoor and encroachments on the Celestial frontier, Selenginsk was an important spot. It was often threatened by the Chinese, and sustained a siege in 1687. A convention was held there in 1727, and some provisions of the treaty then concluded are still in force. Mr. Bestoujeff, one of the exiles of 1825, was living at Selenginsk at the time of my visit. There were two brothers of this name concerned in the insurrection, and at the expiration of their sentences to labor they were settled at this place. Subsequently they were joined by three sisters, who sacrificed all their prospects in life to meet their brothers in Siberia. The family was permitted to return to Europe when the present emperor ascended the throne, but having been so long absent the permission was never accepted. The river was full of floating ice and could not be crossed in the night, and we ordered horses so that we might reach the bank at dawn. Both banks of the river were crowded with carts, some laden and others empty. A government officer has preference over dead loads of merchandise, and so we were taken in charge without delay. To prevent accidents the horses were detached, and the carriage pushed on the ferry-boat by men. The tamed unfiery steeds followed us with some reluctance, and shivered in the breeze during the voyage. We remained in the tarantass through the whole transaction. The ice ran in the river as at Verkne Udinsk, but the cakes were not as large. Our chief ferryman was a Russian, and had a crew of six Bouriats who spoke Mongol among themselves and Russian with their commander. From Selenginsk to Kiachta, a distance of ninety versts, the road is hilly and sandy. We toiled slowly up the ascents, and our downward progress was but little better. We met several caravans where the road was narrow and had but one beaten track. In such cases we generally found it better to turn aside ourselves than to insist upon our rights and compel the caravan to leave the road. The hills were sandy and desolate, and I could not see any special charm in the landscape. I employed much of the day in sleeping, which may possibly account for the lack of minute description of the road. The only point where the cold touched me was at the tip of my nose, where I left my _dehar_ open to obtain air. The Russian dehar is generally made of antelope or deer skin, and forms an admirable defence against cold. Mine reached to my heels, and touched the floor when I stood erect. When the collar was turned up and brought together in front my head was utterly invisible. The sleeves were four or five inches longer than my arms, and the width of the garment was enough for a man and a boy. I at first suspected I had bought by mistake a coat intended for a Russian giant then exhibiting in Moscow. This article of apparel is comfortable only when one is seated or extended in his equipage. Walking is very difficult in a dehar, and its wearer feels about as free to move as if enclosed in a pork-barrel. It was a long time before I could turn my collar up or down without assistance, and frequently after several efforts to seize an outside object I found myself grasping the ends of my sleeves. The warmth of the garment atones for its cumbersome character, and its gigantic size is fully intentional. The length protects the feet and legs, the high collar warms the head, and the great width of the dehar allows it to be well wrapped about the body. The long sleeves cover the hands and preserve fingers from frost bites. Taken as a whole it is a mental discomfort but a physical good, and may be considered a necessary nuisance of winter travel in Siberia. At Ust Kiachta, the last station before reaching our journey's end, we were waited upon by a young and tidy woman in a well-kept room. It was about nine in the evening when we reached Troitskosavsk, and entered town among the large buildings formerly occupied as a frontier custom house. As there was no hotel we drove to the house of the Police Master, the highest official of the place. I had letters to this gentleman, but did not find him at home. His brother took us in charge and sent a soldier to direct us to a house where we could obtain lodgings. It is the custom in Siberian towns to hold a certain number of lodging places always ready for travelers. These are controlled by the Police Master, to whom strangers apply for quarters. Whether he will or no, a man who has registered lodging rooms with the police must open them to any guest assigned him, no matter what the hour. It was ten o'clock when we reached our destined abode. We made a great deal of noise that roused a servant to admit us to the yard. The head of the household came to the door in his shirt and rubbed his eyes as if only half awake. His legs trembled with the cold while he waited for our explanations, and it was not till we were admitted that he thought of his immodest exposure. I would not wish it inferred that no one can find lodgings until provided by the police. On the contrary, it is rarely necessary to obtain them through this channel. Travelers are not numerous, and the few strangers visiting Siberia are most cordially welcomed. Officers are greeted and find homes with their fellow officers, while merchants enjoy the hospitalities of men of their class. We ordered the samovar, and being within Parrott-gun range of China we had excellent tea. I passed the night on a sofa so narrow that I found it difficult to turn over, and fairly rolled to the floor while endeavoring to bestow myself properly. While finishing my morning toilet I received a visit from Major Boroslofski, Master of Police, who came to acknowledge General Ditmar's letter of introduction. He tendered the hospitalities of the place, and desired me to command his services while I remained. We had two rooms with a bedstead and sofa, besides lots of chairs, mirrors, tables, and flower pots. Then we had an apartment nearly thirty feet square, that contained more chairs, tables, and flower pots. In one corner there was a huge barrel-organ that enabled me to develop my musical abilities. I spent half an hour the morning after our arrival in turning out the national airs of Russia. Molostoff amused himself by circulating his cap before an invisible audience and collecting imperceptible coin. While dancing to one of my liveliest airs he upset a flower pot, and the crash that followed brought our concert to a close. Two sides of the large room were entirely bordered with horticultural productions, some of them six or eight feet high. [Illustration: AMATEUR CONCERT IN SIBERIA.] Troitskosavsk and Kiachta have a sort of husband and wife singleness and duality. They are about two miles apart, the former having five or six thousand inhabitants and the latter about twelve hundred. In government, business, and interest the two places are one, the Master of Police having jurisdiction over both, and the merchants living indifferently in one or the other. Many persons familiar with the name of Kiachta never heard of the other town. It may surprise London merchants who send Shanghai telegrams "via Kiachta" to learn that the wires terminate at Troitskosavsk, and do not reach Kiachta at all. The treaty which established trade between Russia and China at Kiachta provided that no one should reside there except merchants engaged in traffic. No officer could live there, nor could any person whatever beyond merchants and their employees and families remain over night. No stone buildings except a church could be erected, and visits of strangers were to be discouraged. Kiachta was thus restricted to the business of a trading post, and the town of Troitskosavsk, two miles away, was founded for the residence of the officials, outside traders, and laborers. Most of the restrictions above mentioned exist no longer, but the towns have not quite lost their old relations. There is an excellent road from one to the other, and the carriages, carts, and pedestrians constantly thronging it present a lively scene. The police master tendered his equipage and offered to escort me in making calls upon those I wished to know. Etiquette is no less rigid in Siberian towns and cities than in Moscow and St. Petersburg. One must make ceremonial visits as soon as possible after his arrival, officials being first called upon in the order of rank and civilians afterward. Officers making visits don their uniforms, with epaulettes and side arms, and with all their decorations blazing on their breasts. Civilians go in evening dress arranged with fastidious care. The hours for calling are between eleven A.M. and three P.M. A responsive call may be expected within two days, and must be made with the utmost precision of costume. Arrayed for the occasion I made eight or ten visits in Kiachta and Troitskosavsk. The air was cold and the frost nipped rather severely through my thin boots as we drove back from Kiachta. After an early dinner we went to Maimaichin to visit the _sargootchay_, or Chinese governor. We passed under a gateway surmounted with the double-headed eagle, and were saluted by the Cossack guard as we left the borders of the Russian empire. Outside the gateway we traversed the neutral ground, two hundred yards wide, driving toward a screen or short wall of brick work, on which a red globe was represented. We crossed a narrow ditch and, passing behind the screen, entered a gateway into Maimaichin, the most northern city of China. CHAPTER XXVII. From 1727 to 1860 nearly all the trade between Russia and China was transacted at Kiachta and Maimaichin. The Russians built the one and the Chinese the other, exclusively for commercial purposes. To this day no Chinese women are allowed at Maimaichin. The merchants consider themselves only sojourners, though the majority spend the best part of their lives there. Contact with Russians has evidently improved the Celestials, as this little frontier city is the best arranged and cleanest in all China. After passing the gateway, the street we entered was narrow compared to our own, and had but a single carriage track. On the sidewalks were many Chinese, who stopped to look at us, or rather at me. We drove about two hundred yards and turned into an enclosure, where we alighted. Near at hand were two masts like flag-staffs, gaily ornamented at the top but bearing no banners. Our halting place was near the Temple of Justice, where instruments of punishment were piled up. There were rattans and bamboos for flogging purposes by the side of yokes, collars, and fetters, carefully designed for subduing the refractory. There was a double set of stocks like those now obsolete in America, and their appearance indicated frequent use. To be cornered in these would be as unpleasant as in Harlem or Erie. From this temple we passed through a covered colonnade and entered an ante-room, where several officers and servants were in attendance. Here we left our overcoats and were shown to another apartment where we met the sargootchay. His Excellency shook hands with me after the European manner. His son, a youth of sixteen, was then presented, and made the acquaintance of Major Boroslofski. The sargootchay had a pleasing and interesting face of the true Chinese type, with no beard beyond a slight mustache, and a complexion rather paler than most of his countrymen. He wore the dress of a Mandarin, with the universal long robe and a silk jacket with wide sleeves. [Illustration: A CHINESE MANDARIN.] After the ceremony of introduction was ended the sargootchay signed for us to be seated. He took his own place on a divan, and gave the 'illustrious stranger' the post of honor near him. Tea and cigars were brought, and we had a few moments of smoky silence. The room was rather bare of furniture, and the decorations on the walls were Russian and Chinese in about equal proportion. I noticed a Russian stove in one corner and a samovar in the adjoining room. The sargootchay had been newly appointed, and arrived only a week before. I presume his housekeeping was not well under way. The interview was as interesting as one could expect where neither party had anything important to say to the other. We attempted conversation which expressed our delight at meeting and the good-will of our respective countries toward each other. The talk was rather slow, as it went through many translations in passing between me and my host. Tea and smoke were of immense service in filling up the chinks. When I wished to say anything to the sargootchay I spoke in French to Major Boroslofski, who sat near me. The major then addressed his Bouriat interpreter in Russian. This interpreter turned to a Mongol-Chinese official at his side and spoke to him in Mongol. The latter translated into Chinese for the understanding of his chief. The replies of the sargootchay returned by the same route. I have a suspicion that very little of what we really said ever reached its destination. His reply to one remark of mine had no reference to what I said, and the whole conversation was a curious medley of compliments. Our words were doubtless polarized more than once in transmission. We had tea and sweetmeats, the latter in great variety. The manner of preparing tea did not please me as well as the Russian one. The Chinese boil their tea and give it a bitter flavor that the Russians are careful to avoid. They drink it quite strong and hot, using no milk or sugar. Out of deference to foreign tastes they brought sugar for us to use at our liking. After the tea and sweetmeats the sargootchay ordered champagne, in which we drank each other's health. At the close of the interview I received invitation to dine with His Excellency two days later and witness a theatrical performance. Our adieus were made in the European manner, and after leaving the sargootchay we visited a temple in the northern part of the town. We passed through a large yard and wound among so many courts and colonnades that I should have been sorely puzzled to find my way out alone. The public buildings of Maimaichin are not far from each other, but the routes between them are difficult for one whose ideas of streets were formed in American cities. On passing the theatre we were shown two groups larger than life in rooms on opposite sides of a covered colonnade. They were cut in sand-stone, one representing a rearing horse which two grooms were struggling to hold. The other was the same horse walking quietly under control of one man. The figures evidently came from Greek history, and I had little doubt that they were intended to tell of Alexander and Bucephalus. I learned that the words 'Philip of Macedon' were the literal translation of the Chinese title of the groups. How or when the Celestials heard the story of Alexander, and why they should represent it in stone, I cannot imagine. No one could tell the age and origin of these works of art. On the walls of buildings near the temple there were paintings from Chinese artists, some of them showing a creditable knowledge of perspective. 'John' can paint very well when he chooses, and any one conversant with his skill will testify that he understands perspective. Why he does not make more use of it is a mystery that demands explanation. When we entered the temple it was sunset, and the gathering shadows rendered objects indistinct. From the character of the windows and the colonnades outside I suppose a 'dim religious light' prevails there at all times. The temple contains several idols or representations of Chinese deities in figures larger than life, dressed with great skill and literally gotten up regardless of expense. Their garments were of the finest silk, and profusely ornamented with gold, silver, and precious stones. There were the gods of justice, peace, war, agriculture, mechanics, love, and prosperity. The god of love had a most hideous countenance, quite in contrast to that of the gentle Cupid with whom the majority of my readers are doubtless familiar. The god of war brandished a huge sword, and reminded me of the leading tragedian of the Bowery Theatre ten years ago. The temple was crowded with idols, vases, censers, pillars, and other objects, and it was not easy for our party to move about. In the middle of the apartment there were tables supporting offerings of cooked fowls and other edibles. These articles are eaten by the attendants at the temple, but whether the worshippers, know this fact or believe their gods descend to satisfy their appetites, I cannot say. To judge from what I saw the Chinese are accustomed to decorate their houses of worship at great cost. There were rich curtains and a thousand and one articles of more or less value filling the greater part of the temple. Lanterns and chandeliers displayed the skill and patience of the Chinese in manipulating metals. There were imitations of butterflies and other insects, and of delicate leaves and flowers in metal, painted or burnished in the color of the objects represented. The aggregate time consumed in the manufacture of these decorations must be thousands of years. In a suspended vase I saw one boquet which was a clever imitation of nature, with the single exception of odor. The Chinese make artificial roses containing little cups which they fill with rose-water. On our return we found the gate closed, and were obliged to wait until the ponderous key was brought to open it. The officer controlling the gate made no haste, and we were delayed in a crowd of Chinese men and dogs for nearly fifteen minutes. It was a peculiar sensation to be shut in a Chinese town and fairly locked in. It is the custom to close the gates of Kiachta and Maimaichin and shut off all communication between sunset and sunrise. The rule is less rigidly enforced than formerly. [Illustration: INTERIOR OF CHINESE TEMPLE] After this introduction I visited Maimaichin almost every day until leaving for Irkutsk. Maimaichin means 'place of trade,' and the name was given by the officer who selected the site. The town is occupied by merchants, laborers, and government employees, all dwelling without families. The sargootchay is changed every three years, and it was hinted that his short term of office sufficed to give him a fortune. The houses were only one story high and plastered with black mud or cement. The streets cross at right angles, but are not very long, as the town does not measure more than half a mile in any direction. At the intersection of the principal streets there are towers two or three stories high, overlooking the town, and probably intended for use of the police. Few houses are entered directly from the street, most of them having court yards with gateways just wide enough for a single cart or carriage. The dwelling rooms and magazines open upon the court yards, which are provided with folding gates heavily barred at night. Apart from the public buildings the houses were pretty much alike. Every court yard was liberally garnished with dogs of the short-nosed and wide-faced breed peculiar to China. They were generally chained and invariably made an unpleasant tumult. The dwelling rooms, kitchens, and magazines had their windows and doors upon the yards, the former being long and low with small panes of glass, talc, or oiled paper. In the magazines there were generally two apartments, one containing most of the goods, while the other was more private and only entered by strangers upon invitation. At the end of each room there was a divan, where the inmates slept at night or sat by day. Near the edge of the divan, was a small furnace, where a charcoal fire burned constantly. The rooms were warmed by furnaces with pipes passing beneath the divans or by Russian stoves. In every place I visited there were many employees, and I did not understand how all could be kept busy. Everything was neat and well arranged, and the Chinese appeared very particular on the subject of dust. I attempted to buy a few souvenirs of my visit, but very little was to be purchased. Few strangers come to Maimaichin, and the merchants have no inducement to keep articles rarely called for. I found they were determined to make me pay liberally. "How much?" I asked on picking up an article in one of their shops. "_Chetira ruble_" (four roubles) was the reply. My Russian companion whispered me not to buy, and after a few moments chaffering we departed. In a neighboring shop I purchased something precisely similar for one rouble, and went away rejoicing. On exhibiting my prize at Kiachta I learned that I paid twice its real value. The Chinese merchants are frequently called scoundrels from their habit of overreaching when opportunity occurs. In some respects they are worse and in others better than the same class of men in Western nations. The practice of asking much more than they expect to receive prevails throughout their empire, and official peculation confined in certain limits is considered entirely consistent with honesty. Their cheating, if it can be called by that name, is conducted on certain established principles. A Chinese will 'beat about the bush,' and try every plan to circumvent the man with whom he deals, but when he once makes a bargain he adheres to it unflinchingly. Among the merchants I was told that a word is as good as a bond. Their slipperiness is confined to preliminaries. China contains good and bad like other countries, but in some things its merchants rank higher than outside barbarians. When the English were at war with the Viceroy of Canton, the foreigners were driven out and compelled to leave much property with Chinese merchants. These Chinese never thought of repudiation, but on the contrary made their way to Hong Kong during the blockade of the Canton river for the purpose of settling with the foreigners. Old John Bell of Antermony, who traveled to Pekin in the reign of Peter the Great, in the suite of a Russian Ambassador, makes the following observations on the Chinese: "They are honest, and observe the strictest honor and justice in their dealings. It must, however, be acknowledged that not a few of them are much addicted to knavery and well skilled in the art of cheating. They have, indeed, found many Europeans as great proficients in that art as themselves." In the shops at Maimaichin there is no display of goods, articles being kept in closets, drawers, show-cases, and on shelves, whence they are taken when called for. This arrangement suggests the propriety of the New York notice: "If you don't see what you want, ask for it." Many things are kept in warerooms in other parts of the building, and brought when demanded or the merchant thinks he can effect a sale. In this way they showed me Thibet sheep skins, intended for lining dressing-gowns, and of the most luxurious softness. There were silks and other goods in the piece, but the asking prices were very high. I bought a few small articles, but was disappointed when I sought a respectable assortment of knick-knacks. One of the merchants admired my watch and asked through my Russian friend how much it cost. I was about to say in Russian, 'two hundred roubles,' when my friend checked me. "_Dites un enorme prix; deux mille roubles au moins_" Accordingly I fixed the price at two thousand roubles. Probably the Chinaman learned the real value of the watch from this exaggerated figure better than if I had spoken as I first intended. The merchants were courteous and appeared to have plenty of time at command. They brought sweetmeats, confectionery, and tea, in fact the latter article was always ready. They gave us crystalized sugar, resembling rock candy, for sweetening purposes, but themselves drank tea without sugar or milk. They offered us pipes for smoking, and in a few instances Russian cigarettes. I found the Chinese tobacco very feeble and the pipes of limited capacity. It is doubtless owing to the weakness of their tobacco that they can smoke so continuously. The pipe is in almost constant requisition, the operator swallowing the smoke and emitting it in a double stream through his nostrils. They rarely offered us Chinese wine, as that article is repugnant to any but Celestials. Sometimes they brought sherry and occasionally champagne. [Illustration: THROUGH ORDINARY EYES.] I was interested in studying the decorations on window screens and fans, and the various devices on the walls. The Chinese mind runs to the hideous in nearly everything fanciful, and most of its works of art abound in griffins and dragons. Even the portrait of a tiger or other wild beast is made to look worse than the most savage of his tribe. If there ever was a dog with a mouth such as the Chinese artists represent on their canines, he could walk down his own throat with very little difficulty. [Illustration: THROUGH CHINESE EYES] The language spoken in the intercourse of Russians and Chinese at Kiachta is a mongrel tongue in which Russian predominates. It is a 'pigeon-Russian' exactly analagous to the 'pigeon English' of Shanghai, Hong Kong, and San Francisco. The Chinese at Maimaichin can reckon in Russian and understand the rudiments of that language very well. I observed at Maimaichin, as at San Francisco, the tendency to add an 'o' sound to monosyllabic consonant words. A Chinese merchant grew familiar during one of my visits, and we exchanged lingual lessons and cards. He held up a tea-spoon and asked me its name. I tried him repeatedly with 'spoon,' but he would pronounce it 'spoonee' in spite of my instructions. When I gave him a card and called it such, he pronounced it 'cardee.' His name was Chy-Ping-Tong, or something of the kind, but I was no more able to speak it correctly than was he to say 'spoon.' He wrote his name in my note-book and I wrote mine in his. Beyond the knowledge of possessing chirographic specimens of another language, neither party is wiser. Whoever has visited St. Petersburg or Moscow has doubtless seen the _abacus_, or calculating machine used in Russian shops. It is found throughout the empire from the German frontier to Bering's Straits, not only in the hands of merchants but in many private houses. It consists of a wooden frame ordinarily a foot long and six inches wide. There are ten metal wires strung across this frame, and ten balls of wood on each wire. The Russian currency is a decimal one, and by means of this machine computations are carried on with wonderful rapidity. I have seen numbers added by a boy and a machine faster than a New York bank teller could make the same reckoning. It requires long practice to become expert in its use, but when once learned it is preferred by all merchants, whether native or foreign. I saw the same machine at Maimaichin, and learned that it was invented by the Chinese. The Celestials of San Francisco employ it in precisely the same manner as their countrymen in Mongolia. Beside the Chinese dwellers in Maimaichin there are many Mongol natives of the surrounding region, most of them engaged in transporting merchandise to and from the city. I saw several trains of their little two-wheeled carts bringing tea from the southward or departing with Russian merchandise, and in one visit I encountered a drove of camels on the neutral ground. CHAPTER XXVIII. I have already mentioned the prevalence of feast-days, both national and personal. During my stay in Kiachta there were several of these happy occasions, and I was told they would last the entire winter. One man opened his house on his name's day, and another on that of his wife. A third received friends on the anniversary of his daughter's birth, and a fourth had a regular house-warming. Each kept open mansion in the forenoon and greeted all who came. There was a grand dinner in the afternoon, followed by a _soiree dansame_ and a supper at a late hour. In a population like that of Kiachta there is a weekly average of at least three feast days for the entire year. During my stay Major Boroslofski had a morning reception on the anniversary of the death of a child, but there was naturally neither dinner nor dance after it. The dinner and dancing parties were much alike, the same company being present at all. Even the servants were the same, there being a regular organization to conduct household festivities. At the first dinner I attended there were about forty persons at table, all of the sterner sex. According to the custom among Russian merchants the ladies were by themselves in another room. Between their apartment and ours there was a large room, corresponding, as I thought, to the neutral ground between Kiachta and Maimaichin. Doors were open, and though nobody occupied the _terre neutrale_ during dinner, both parties retired to it at the end of the meal. The dinner would have been a success in St. Petersburg or Paris; how much more was it a triumph on the boundary between China and Siberia. Elegant and richly furnished apartments, expensive table ware, and a profusion of all procurable luxuries, were the attractions of the occasion. We had apples from European Russia, three thousand miles westward, and grapes from Pekin, a thousand miles to the south. There were liberal quantities of dried and preserved fruits, and the wines were abundant and excellent. Of the local productions we had many substantials, till all appetites were satisfied. According to Russian custom the host does not partake of the dinner, but is supposed to look after the welfare of his guests. At Kiachta I found this branch of etiquette carefully observed. Two or three times during the dinner the host passed around the entire table and filled each person's glass with wine. Where he found an unemptied cup he urged its drainage. After we left the table tea was served, and I was fain to pronounce it the best I ever tasted. The evening entertainments for those who did not dance consisted of cards and conversation, principally the former. Tea was frequently passed around, and at regular intervals the servants brought glasses of iced champagne. The houses of the Kiachta merchants are large and well built, their construction and adornment requiring much outlay. Nearly all the buildings are of two stories and situated in large court yards. There is a public garden, evidently quite gay and pretty in summer. The church is said to be the finest edifice of the kind in Eastern Siberia. The double doors in front of the altar are of solid silver, and said to weigh two thousand pounds avoirdupois. Besides these doors I think I saw nearly a ton of silver in the various paraphernalia of the church. There were several fine paintings executed in Europe at heavy cost, and the floors, walls, and roof of the entire structure were of appropriate splendor. The church was built at the expense of the Kiachta merchants. Troilskosavsk contains some good houses, but they are not equal in luxury to those at Kiachta. Many dwellings in the former town are of unpainted logs, and each town has its gastinni-dvor, spacious and well arranged. I visited the market place every morning and saw curious groups of Russians, Bouriats, Mongols, and Chinese, engaged in that little commerce which makes the picturesque life of border towns. From 1727 to 1860 the Kiachta merchants enjoyed almost a monopoly of Chinese trade. Fortunes there are estimated at enormous figures, and one must be a four or five-millionaire to hold respectable rank. Possibly many of these worldly possessions are exaggerated, as they generally are everywhere. The Chinese merchants of Maimaichin are also reputed wealthy, and it is quite likely that the trade was equally profitable on both sides of the neutral ground. Money and flesh have affinities. These Russian and Chinese Astors were almost invariably possessed of fair, round belly, with good capon lined. They have the spirit of genuine hospitality, and practice it toward friends and strangers alike. The treaty of 1860, which opened Chinese ports to Russian ships, was a severe blow to Kiachta and Maimaichin. Up to that time only a single cargo of tea was carried annually into Russia by water; all the rest of the herb used in the empire came by land. Unfortunately the treaty was made just after the Russian and Chinese merchants had concluded contracts in the tea districts; these contracts caused great losses when the treaty went into effect, and for a time paralized commerce. Kiachta still retains the tea trade of Siberia and sends large consignments to Nijne Novgorod and Moscow. There is now a good percentage of profit, but the competition by way of Canton and the Baltic has destroyed the best of it. Under the old monopoly the merchants arranged high prices and did not oppose each other with quick and low sales. The Kiachta teas are far superior to those from Canton and Shanghae. They come from the best districts of China and are picked and cured with great care. There is a popular notion, which the Russians encourage, that a sea voyage injures tea, and this is cited as the reason for the character of the herb brought to England and America. I think the notion incorrect, and believe that we get no first class teas in America because none are sent there. I bought a small package of the best tea at Kiachta and brought it to New York. When I opened it I could not perceive it had changed at all in flavor. I have not been able to find its like in American tea stores. Previous to 1850 all trade at Kiachta was in barter, tea being exchanged for Russian goods. The Russian government prohibited the export of gold and silver money, and various subterfuges were adopted to evade the law. Candlesticks, knives, idols, and other articles were made of pure gold and sold by weight. Of course the goods were "of Russian manufacture." Before 1860 the importation of tea at Kiachta was about one million chests annually, and all of good quality and not including brick tea. The "brick tea" of Mongolia and Northern China is made from stalks, large leaves, and refuse matter generally. This is moistened with sheep's or bullock's blood and pressed into brick-shaped cakes. When dried it is ready for transportation, and largely used by the Mongols, Bouriats, Tartars, and the Siberian peasantry. In some parts of Chinese Tartary it is the principal circulating medium of the people. Large quantities are brought into Siberia, but "brick-tea" never enters into the computation of Kiachta trade. [Illustration: LEGAL TENDER.] Since 1860 the quantity of fine teas purchased at Kiachta has greatly fallen off. The importation of brick-tea is undiminished, and some authorities say it has increased. None of the merchants speak any language but Russian, and most of them are firmly fixed at Kiachta. They make now and then journeys to Irkutsk, and regard such a feat about as a countryman on the Penobscot would regard a visit to Boston. The few who have been to Moscow and St. Petersburg have a reputation somewhat analogous to that of Marco Polo or John Ledyard. Walking is rarely practiced, and the numbers of smart turnouts, compared to the population, is pretty large. There is no theatre, concert-room, or newspaper office at Kiachta, and the citizens rely upon cards, wine, and gossip for amusement. They play much and win or lose large sums with perfect nonchalance. Visitors are rare, and the advent of a stranger of ordinary consequence is a great sensation. Kiachta and Maimaichin stand on the edge of a Mongolian steppe seven or eight miles wide. Very little snow falls there and that little does not long remain. Wheeled carriages are in use the entire year. The elevation is about twenty-five hundred feet above sea level. There was formerly a custom house at Troitskosavsk, where the duties on tea were collected. After the occupation of the Amoor the government opened all the country east of Lake Baikal to free trade. The custom house was removed to Irkutsk, where all duties are now arranged. There were two Englishmen and one Frenchman residing at Kiachta. The latter, Mr. Garnier, was a merchant, and was about to many a young and pretty Russian whose mother had a large fortune and thirteen dogs. The old lady appeared perfectly clear headed on every subject outside of dogs. A fortnight before my visit she owned fifteen, but the police killed two on a charge of biting somebody. She was inconsolable at their loss, took her bed from grief, and seriously contemplated going into mourning. I asked Garnier what would be the result if every dog of the thirteen should have his day. "Ah!" he replied, with a sigh, "the poor lady could never sustain it. I fear it would cause her death." One Englishman, Mr. Bishop, had a telegraph scheme which he had vainly endeavored for two years to persuade the stubborn Chinese to look upon with favor. The Chinese have a superstitious dread of the electric telegraph, and the government is unwilling to do anything not in accordance with the will of the people. A few years ago some Americans at Shanghae thought it a good speculation to construct a telegraph line between that city and the mouth of the river. The distance was about fifteen miles, and the line when finished operated satisfactorily. The Chinese made no interference, either officially or otherwise, with its construction. [Illustration: RUSSIAN PETS.] They did not understand its working, but supposed the foreigners employed agile and invisible devils to run along the wires and convey intelligence. All went well for a month or two. One night a Chinese happened to die suddenly in a house that stood near a telegraph pole. A knowing Celestial suggested that one of the foreign devils had descended from the wire and killed the unfortunate native. A mob very soon destroyed the dangerous innovation. The other Englishman, Mr. Grant, was the projector and manager of a Pony Express from Kiachta to Pekin. He forwarded telegrams between London and Shanghae merchants, any others who chose to employ him. He claimed that his Mongol couriers made the journey to Pekin in twelve days, and that he could outstrip the Suez and Ceylon telegraph and steamers. He seemed a permanent fixture of Kiachta, as he had married a Russian lady, the daughter of a former governor. All these foreigners placed me under obligations for various favors, and the two Britons were certainly more kind to me than to each other. [Illustration: PONY EXPRESS.] I spent an evening at the club-rooms, where there was some heavy card-playing. One man lost nine hundred roubles in half an hour, and they told me that such an occurrence was not uncommon. In all card playing I ever witnessed in Russia there was 'something to make it interesting.' Money is invariably staked, and the Russians were surprised when I said, in answer to questions, that people in America generally indulged in cards for amusement alone. Ladies had no hesitation in gambling, and many of them followed it passionately. '_Chaque pays a sa habitude_,' remarked a lady one evening when I answered her query about card playing in America. It was the Russian fashion to gamble, and no one dreamed of making the slightest concealment of it. Though I saw it repeatedly I could never rid myself of a desire to turn away when a lady was reckoning her gains and losses, and keeping her accounts on the table cover. Russian card tables are covered with green cloth and provided with chalk pencils and brushes for players' use. Cards are a government monopoly. [Illustration: CHINESE COLLAR] [Illustration: SUSPENDED FREEDOM.] On the day fixed for my dinner with the sargoochay I accompanied the Police Master and Captain Molostoff to Maimaichin. As we entered the court yard of the government house several officers came to receive us. In passing the temple of Justice I saw an unfortunate wretch undergoing punishment in a corner of the yard. Ho was wearing a collar about three feet in diameter and made of four inch plank. It was locked about his neck, and the man was unable to bring his hand to his head. A crowd was gazing at the culprit, but he seemed quite unconcerned and intent upon viewing the strangers. The Chinese have a system of yokes and stocks that seem a refinement of cruelty. They have a cheerful way of confining a man in a sort of cage about three feet square, the top and bottom being of plank and the sides of square sticks. His head passes through the top, which forms a collar precisely like the one described above, while the sides are just long enough to force him to stand upon the tip of his toes or hang suspended by his head. In some instances a prisoner's head is passed through a hole in the bottom of a heavy cask. He cannot stand erect without lifting the whole weight, and the cask is too long to allow him to sit down. He must remain on his knees in a torturing position, and cannot bring his hands to his head. He relies on his friends to feed him, and if he has no friends he must starve. The jailers think it a good joke when a man loses the number of his mess in this way. [Illustration: PUNISHMENT FOR BURGLARY.] The sargoochay met us in the apartment where our reception took place. He seated us around a table in much the same manner as before. While we waited dinner I exhibited a few photographs of the Big Trees of California, which I took with me at Molostoff's suggestion. I think the representative of His Celestial Majesty was fairly astonished on viewing these curiosities. The interpreter told him that all trees in America were like those in the pictures, and that we had many cataracts four or five miles high. To handle our food we had forks and chopsticks, and each guest had a small saucer of _soy_, or vinegar, at his right hand. The food was roast pig and roast duck, cut into bits the size of one's thumb nail, and each piece was to be dipped in the vinegar before going into the mouth. Then there were dishes of hashed meat or stew, followed by minced pies in miniature. I was a little suspicious of the last articles and preferred to stick to the pig. [Illustration: CHOPSTICKS, FORK, & SAUCER.] We had good claret and bad sherry, followed by Chinese wine. Champagne was brought when we began drinking toasts. Chinese wine, _sam-shoo,_ is drank hot, from cups holding about a thimbleful. It is very strong, one cup being quite sufficient. The historic Bowery boy drinking a glass of Chinese wine might think he had swallowed a pyrotechnic display on Fourth of July night. We conversed as before, going through English, French, Russian, Mongol, and Chinese, and after dinner smoked our pipes and cigars. The sargoochay had a pipe with a slender bowl that could be taken out for reloading, like the shell of a Remington rifle. A single whiff served to exhaust it, and the smoke passing through water became purified. An attendant stood near to manage the pipe of His Excellency whenever his services were needed. We endeavored to smoke each others' pipes and were quite satisfied after a minute's experience. His tobacco was very feeble, and I presume mine was too strong for his taste. The sargoochay had ordered a theatrical display in my honor, though it was not 'the season,' and the affair was hastily gotten up. When all was ready he led the way to the theatre; the pipe-bearer came respectfully in our rear, and behind him was the staff and son of the sargoochay. The stage of the theatre faced an open court yard, and was provided with screens and curtains, but had no scenery that could be shifted. About thirty feet in front of the stage was a pavilion of blue cloth, open in front and rear. We were seated around a table under this pavilion, and drank tea and smoked while the performance was in progress. There was a crowd of two or three hundred Chinese between the pavilion and the stage. The Mongol soldiers kept an open passage five or six feet wide in front of us so that we had an unobstructed view. [Illustration: CHINESE THEATRE.] A comedy came first, and I had little difficulty in following the story by the pantomime alone. Female characters were represented by men, Chinese law forbidding women to act on the stage. Certain parts of the play were open to objections on account of immodesty, but when no ladies are present I presume a Chinese audience is not fastidious. The comedy was followed by something serious, of which I was unable to learn the name. I supposed it represented the superiority of the deities over the living things of earth. First, there came representations of different animals. There were the tiger, bear, leopard, and wolf, with two or three beasts whose genera and species I could not determine. There was an ostrich and an enormous goose, both holding their heads high, while a crocodile, or something like it, brought up the rear. Each beast and bird was made of painted cloth over light framework, with a man inside to furnish action. While the tiger was making himself savage the mask fell off, and revealed the head of a Chinese. A rent in the skin of the ostrich disclosed the arm of the performer inside. The animals were not very well made, and the accident to the tiger's head reminded me of the Bowery elephant whose hind legs became very drunk and fell among the orchestra, leaving the fore legs to finish the play. [Illustration: CHINESE TIGER.] Each animal made a circuit of the stage, bowed to the sargoochay, and retired. Then came half a dozen performers, only one being visible at a time. They were dressed, as I conjectured, to represent Chinese divinities, and as each appeared upon the stage he made a short recitation in a bombastic tone. The costumes of these actors were brilliantly decorated with metal ornaments, and there was a luxuriance of beard on most of the performer's faces, quite in contrast to the scanty growth which nature gave them. When the deities were assembled the animals returned and prostrated themselves in submission. A second speech from each actor closed the theatrical display. During all the time we sat under the pavilion the crowd looked at me far more intently than at the stage. An American was a great curiosity in the city limits of Maimaichin. The performance began about two o'clock and lasted less than an hour. At its close we thanked the sargoochay for his courtesy, and returned to Kiachta. One of my Russian acquaintances had invited me to dine with him; "you can dine with the sargoochay at one o'clock," he said, "and will be entirely able to enjoy my dinner two hours later." I found the dinner at Maimaichin more pleasing to the eye than the stomach, and returned with a good appetite. Some years ago the Russian government abolished the office of Governor of Kiachta and placed its military and kindred affairs in the hands of the Chief of Police. Diplomatic matters were entrusted to a 'Commissary of the Frontier,' who resided at Kiachta, while the Chief of Police dwelt at Troitskosavsk. When I arrived there, Mr. Pfaffius, the Commissary of the Frontier, was absent, though hourly expected from Irkutsk. Mr. Pfaffius arrived on the third day of my visit, and invited me to a dinner at his house on the afternoon of my departure for Irkutsk. As the first toast of the occasion he proposed the President of the United States, and regretted deeply the misfortune that prevented his drinking the health of Mr. Lincoln. In a few happy remarks he touched upon the cordial feeling between the two nations, and his utterance of good-will toward the United States was warmly applauded by all the Russians present. In proposing the health of the Emperor I made the best return in my power for the courtesy of my Muscovite friends. CHAPTER XXIX. In the year 1786 a vessel of three hundred and fifty tons burden sailed from an American port for Canton. She was the first to carry the flag of the United States to the shores of Cathay, and to begin a commerce that has since assumed enormous proportions. European nations had carried on a limited trade with the Chinese before that time, but they were restricted to a single port, and their jealousy of each other prevented their adopting those measures of co-operation that have recently proved so advantageous. China was averse to opening her territory to foreign merchants, and regarded with suspicion all their attempts to gain a foothold upon her soil. On the north, since 1727, the Russians had a single point of commercial exchange. In the south Canton was the only port open to those who came to China by sea, while along the coast-line, facing to the eastward, the ports were sealed against foreign intrusion. Commerce between China and the outer world was hampered by many restrictions, and only its great profits kept it alive. But once fairly established, the barbarian merchants taught the slow-learning Chinese that the trade brought advantage to all engaged in it. Step by step they pressed forward, to open new ports and extend commercial relations, which were not likely to be discontinued, if only a little time were allowed to show their value. As years rolled on, trade with China increased. For a long time the foreigners trading with China had no direct intercourse with the General Government, but dealt only with the local and provincial authorities. It was not until after the famous "Opium War" that diplomatic relations were opened with the court at Pekin, and a common policy adopted for all parts of the empire, in its dealings with the outer world. Considering the extremely conservative character of the Chinese, their adherence to old forms and customs, their general unwillingness to do differently from their ancestors, and the not over-amiable character of the majority of the foreigners that went there to trade, it is not surprising that many years were required for commercial relations to grow up and become permanent. The wars between China and the Western powers did more than centuries of peace could have done to open the Oriental eyes. Austria's defeat on the field of Sadowa advanced and enlightened her more than a hundred years of peace and victory could have done, at her old rate of progress. The victories of the allied forces in China, culminating in the capture of Pekin and dictation of terms by the foreign leaders, opened the way for a free intercourse between the East and West, and the immense advantages that an unrestricted commerce is sure to bring to an industrious, energetic, and economical people. With a river-system unsurpassed by that of any other nation of the world, China relied upon navigation by junks, which crept slowly against the current when urged by strong winds, and lay idle or were towed or poled by men when calms or head-breezes prevailed. Of steam applied to propulsion, she had no knowledge, until steamboats of foreign construction appeared in her waters and roused the wonder of the oblique-eyed natives by their mysterious powers. The first steamboat to ascend a Chinese river created a greater sensation than did the Clermont on her initial voyage along the Hudson or her Western prototype, several years later, among the Indians of the upper Missouri.[E] In 1839 the first steam venture was made in China. An English house placed a boat on the route between Canton and Macao, and advertised it to carry freight and passengers on stated days. For the first six months the passengers averaged about a dozen to each trip--half of them Europeans, and the rest natives. The second half-year the number of native patrons increased, and by the end of the second year the boat, on nearly every trip, was filled with Chinese. The trade became so lucrative that another boat was brought from England and placed on the route, which continued to be a source of profit until the business was overdone by opposition lines. As soon as the treaties permitted, steamers were introduced into the coasting-trade of China, and subsequently upon the rivers and other inland waters. The Chinese merchants perceived the importance of rapid and certain transportation for their goods in place of the slow and unreliable service of their junks, and the advance in rates was overbalanced by the increased facilities and the opportunities of the merchants to make six times as many ventures annually as by the old system. [Footnote E: A gentleman once described to me the sensation produced by the first steam vessel that ascended one of the Chinese rivers. "It was," said he, "a screw steamer, and we were burning anthracite coal that made no smoke. The current was about two miles an hour, and with wind and water unfavorable, the Chinese boats bound upward were slowly dragged by men pulling at long tow-lines. We steamed up the middle of the stream, going as rapidly as we dared with our imperfect knowledge, and the necessity of constant sounding. Our propeller was quite beneath the water, and so far as outward appearance went there was no visible power to move us. Chinamen are generally slow to manifest astonishment, and not easily frightened, but their excitement on that occasion was hardly within bounds. Men, women, and children ran to see the monster, and after gazing a few moments a fair proportion of them took to their heels for safety. Dogs barked and yelped on all the notes of the chromatic scale, occasional boats' crews jumped to the shore, and those who stuck to their oars did their best to get out of our way."] Probably there is no people in the world that can be called a nation of shop-keepers more justly than the Chinese; thousands upon thousands of them are engaged in petty trade, and the competition is very keen. Of course, where there is an active traffic the profits are small, and any thing that can assist the prompt delivery of merchandise and the speedy transmission of intelligence, money, credits, or the merchant himself, is certain to be brought into full use. No accurate statistics are at hand of the number of foreign steamers now in China, but well-informed parties estimate the burden of American coasting and river-vessels at upward of thirty thousand tons, while that of other nationalities is much larger. Steamboats, with a burden of more than ten thousand tons, are owned by Chinese merchants, and about half that quantity is the joint property of Chinese and foreigners. In managing their boats and watching the current expenses, the Chinese are quite equal to the English and Americans, and are sometimes able to carry freight upon terms ruinous to foreign competitors. Foreign systems of banking and insurance have been adopted, and work successfully. The Chinese had a mode of banking long before time European nations possessed much knowledge of financial matters; and it is claimed that the first circulating-notes and bills-of-credit ever issued had their origin during a monetary pressure at Pekin. But they were so unprogressive that, when intercourse was opened with the Western World, they found their own system defective, and were forced to adopt the foreign innovation. Insurance companies were first owned and managed by foreigners at the open ports, and as soon as the plan of securing themselves against loss by casualties was understood by the Chinese merchants, they began to form companies on their own account, and carry their operations to the interior of the empire. All the intricacies of the insurance business--even to the formation of fraudulent companies, with imaginary officers, and an explosion at a propitious moment--are fully understood and practised by the Chinese. By the facilities which the advent of foreigners has introduced to the Chinese, the native trade along the rivers and with the open ports has rapidly increased. On the rivers and along the coast the steamers and native boats are actively engaged, and the population of the open ports has largely increased in consequence of the attractions offered to the people of all grades and professions. The greatest extension has been in the foreign trade, which, from small beginnings, now amounts to more than nine hundred millions of dollars annually. Where formerly a dozen or more vessels crept into Canton yearly, there are now hundreds of ships and steamers traversing the ocean to and from the accessible points of the coast of the great Eastern Empire. America has a large share of this commerce with China, and from the little beginning, in 1786, she has increased her maritime service, until she now has a fleet of sailing ships second to none in the world, and a line of magnificent steamers plying regularly across the Pacific, and bringing the East in closer alliance with the West than ever before. [Illustration: CHINESE PUNISHMENT.] Railways will naturally follow the steamboat, and an English company is now arranging to supply the Chinese with a railway-system to connect the principal cities, and especially to tap the interior districts, where the water communications are limited. There is no regular system of mail-communication in China; the Government transmits intelligence by means of couriers, and when merchants have occasion to communicate with persons at a distance they use private expresses. Foreign and native merchants, doing an extensive business, keep swift steamers, which they use as despatch-boats, and sometimes send them at heavy expense to transmit single messages. It has happened that, on a sudden change of markets, two or more houses in Hong Kong or Shanghae have despatched boats at the same moment; and some interesting and exciting races are recorded in the local histories. The barriers of Chinese exclusion were broken down when the treaties of the past ten years opened the empire to foreigners, and placed the name of China on the list of diplomatic and treaty powers. The last stone of the wall that shut the nation from the outer world was overthrown when the court at Pekin sent an embassy, headed by a distinguished American, to visit the capitals of the Western nations, and cement the bonds of friendship between the West and the East. It was eminently fitting that an American should be selected as the head of this embassy, and eminently fitting, too, that the ambassador of the oldest nation should first visit the youngest of all the great powers of the world. America, just emerged from the garments of childhood, and with full pride and consciousness of its youthful strength, presents to ruddy England, smiling France, and the other members of the family of nations, graybeard and dignified China, who expresses joy at the introduction, and hopes for a better acquaintance in the years that are to come. During his residence at Pekin, Mr. Burlingame interested himself in endeavoring to introduce the telegraph into China, and though meeting with opposition on account of certain superstitions of the Chinese, he was ultimately successful. The Chinese do not understand the working of the telegraph--at least the great majority of them do not--and like many other people elsewhere, with regard to any thing incomprehensible, they are inclined to ascribe it to a satanic origin. In California, the Chinese residents make a liberal use of the telegraph; though they do not trouble themselves with an investigation of its workings, they fully appreciate its importance. John, in California, is at liberty to send his messages in "pigeon-English," and very funny work he makes of it occasionally. Chin Lung, in Sacramento, telegraphs to Ming Yup, in San Francisco, "You me send one piecee me trunk," which means, in plain language, "Send me my trunk." Mr. Yup complies with the request, and responds by telegraph, "Me you trunkee you sendee." The inventor of pigeon-English is unknown, and it is well for his name that it has not been handed down; he deserves the execration of all who are compelled to use the legacy he has left. It is just as difficult for a Chinese to learn pigeon-English as it would be to learn pure and honest English, and it is about as intelligible as Greek or Sanscrit to a newly-arrived foreigner. In Shanghae or Hong Kong, say to your Chinese _ma-foo_, who claims to speak English, "Bring me a glass of water," and he will not understand you. Repeat your order in those words, and he stands dumb and uncomprehending, as though you had spoken the dialect of the moon. But if you say, "You go me catchee bring one piecee glass water; savey," and his tawny face beams intelligence as he obeys the order. In the phrase, "pigeon-English," the word pigeon means "business," and the expression would be more intelligible if it were "business-English." Many foreigners living in China have formed the habit of using this and other words in their Chinese sense, and sometimes one hears an affair of business called "a pigeon." A gentleman whom I met in China used to tell, with a great deal of humor, his early experiences with the language. "When I went to Shanghae," said he, "I had an introduction to a prominent merchant, who received me very kindly, and urged me to call often at his office. A day or two later I called, and inquired for him. 'Won't be back for a week or two,' said the clerk; 'he has gone into the country, about two hundred miles, after a little pigeon.' I asked no questions, but as I bowed myself out, I thought, 'He must be a fool, indeed. Go two hundred miles into the country after a pigeon, and a little one at that! He has lost his senses, if he ever possessed any.'" Nearly all the trade with China is carried on at the Southern and Eastern ports, and comparatively few of the foreign merchants in China have ever been at Pekin, which was opened only a few years ago. But the war with the allied powers, the humiliation of the government, the successes of the rebels, and the threatened extinction of the ruling dynasty, led to important changes of policy. The treaty of Tientsin, in 1860, opened the empire as it had never been open before. Foreigners could travel in China where they wished, for business or pleasure, and the navigable rivers were declared free to foreign boats. Pekin was opened to travelers but not to foreign merchants; but it is probable that commerce will be carried to that city before long. There is an extensive trade at Tientsin, ninety miles south of the capital, and when it becomes necessary to carry it to the doors of the palace of the Celestial ruler, the diplomats will not be slow to find a sufficient pretext for it. CHAPTER XXX. The great cities of China are very much alike in their general features. None of them have wide streets, except in the foreign quarters, and none of them are clean; in their abundance of dirt they can even excel New York, and it would be worth the while for the rulers of the American metropolis to visit China and see how filthy a city can be made without half trying. The most interesting city in China is Pekin, for the reason that it has long been the capital, and contains many monuments of the past greatness and the glorious history of the Celestial empire. Its temples are massive, and show that the Chinese, hundreds of years ago, were no mean architects; its walls could resist any of the ordinary appliances of war before the invention of artillery, and even the tombs of its rulers are monuments of skill and patience that awaken the admiration of every beholder. Throughout China Pekin is reverentially regarded, and in many localities the man who has visited it is regarded as a hero. Though the capital, it is the most northern city of large population in the whole empire. Pekin is divided into the Chinese city and the Tartar one, the division was made at the time of the Tartar conquest, and for many years the two people refused to associate freely. A wall separates the cities; the gates through it are closed at night, and only opened when sufficient reason is given. If the party who desires to pass the gate can give no verbal excuse he has only to drop some money in the hands of the gate-keeper, and the pecuniary apology is considered entirely satisfactory. Time has softened the asperities of Tartar and Chinese association, so that the two people mingle freely, and it is impossible for a stranger to distinguish one from the other. Many Chinese live in the Tartar town and transact business, and I fancy that they would not always find it easy to explain their pedigree, or, at all events, that of some of their children. The foreign legations are in the Tartar city, for the reason that the government offices are there, and also for the reason that it is the most pleasant, (or the least unpleasant,) part of Pekin to reside in. All the embassies have spacious quarters, with the exception of the Russian one, which is the oldest; when it was established there it was a great favor to be allowed any residence whatever. [Illustration: PROVISION DEALER.] From the center gate between the Chinese and Tartar cities there is a street two or three miles long, and having the advantages of being wide, straight, and dirty. It is blocked up with all sorts of huckster's stalls and shops, and is kept noisy with the shouts of the people who have innumerable articles for sale. Especially in summer is there a liberal assemblage of peddlers, jugglers, beggars, donkey drivers, merchants, idlers, and all the other professions and non-professions that go to make up a population. The peddlers have fruit and other edibles, not omitting an occasional string of rats suspended from bamboo poles, and attached to cards on which the prices, and sometimes the excellent qualities of the rodents, are set forth. It is proper to remark that the Chinese are greatly slandered on the rat question. As a people they are not given to eating these little animals; it is only among the poorer classes that they are tolerated, and then only because they are the cheapest food that can be obtained. I was always suspicious when the Chinese urged me to partake of little meat pies and dumplings, whose components I could only guess at, and when the things were forced upon me I proclaimed a great fondness for stewed duck and chicken, which were manifestly all right. But I frankly admit that I do not believe they would have inveigled me into swallowing articles to which the European mind is prejudiced, and my aversion arose from a general repugnance to hash in all forms--a repugnance which had its origin in American hotels and restaurants. The jugglers are worth a little notice, more I believe than they obtain from their countrymen. They attract good audiences along the great street of Pekin, but after swallowing enough stone to load a pack-mule, throwing up large bricks and allowing them to break themselves on his head, and otherwise amusing the crowd for half an hour or so, the poor necromancer cannot get cash enough to buy himself a dinner. Those who feel disposed to give are not very liberal, and their donations are thrown into the ring very much as one would toss a bone to a bull-dog. Sometimes a man will stand with a white painted board, slightly covered with thick ink, and while talking with his auditors he will throw off, by means of his thumb and fingers, excellent pictures of birds and fishes, with every feather, fin, and scale done with accuracy. Such genius ought to be rewarded, but it rarely receives pecuniary recognition enough to enable its possessor to dress decently. Other slight-of-hand performances abound; the Chinese are very skillful at little games of thimble-rig and the like, and when a stranger chooses to make a bet on their operations they are sure to take in his money. In sword-swallowing and knife-throwing, the natives of the Flowery Kingdom are without rivals, and the uninitiated spectator can never understand how a man can make a breakfast of Asiatic cutlery without incurring the risk of dyspepsia. [Illustration: CHINESE MENDICANTS.] China is the paradise of beggars--I except Italy from the mendicant list--so far as numbers are concerned, though they do not appear to flourish and live in comfort. There are many dwarfs, and it is currently reported at Pekin that they are produced and cultivated for the special purpose of asking alms. One can be very liberal in China at small expense, as the smallest coin is worth only one-fifteenth of a cent, and a shilling's worth of "cash" can be made to go a great way if the giver is judicious. Many of the beggars are blind, and they sometimes walk in single file under the direction of a chief; they are nearly all musicians, and make the most hideous noises, which they call melody. Anybody with a sensitive ear will pay them to move on where they will annoy somebody beside himself. Many of the beggars are almost naked, and they attract attention by striking their hands against their hips and shouting at the top of their voices. One day the wife of the French minister at Pekin gave some garments to those who were the most shabbily dressed; the next morning they returned as near naked as ever, and some of them entirely so. Outside of the Tartar city there is a beggar's lodging house, which bears the name of "the House of the Hen's Feathers." It is a hall, with a floor of solid earth and a roof of thin laths caulked and plastered with mud. The floor is covered with a thick bed of feathers, which have been gathered in the markets and restaurants of Pekin, without much regard to their cleanliness. There is an immense quilt of thick felt the exact size of the hall, and raised and lowered by means of mechanism. When the curfew tolls the knell of parting day, the beggars flock to this house, and are admitted on payment of a small fee. They take whatever places they like, and at an appointed time the quilt is lowered. Each lodger is at liberty to lie coiled up in the feathers, or if he has a prejudice in favor of fresh air, he can stick his head through one of the numerous holes that the coverlid contains. A view of this quilt when the heads are protruding is suggestive of an apartment where dozens of dilapidated Chinese have been decapitated. All night long the lodgers keep up a frightful noise; the proprietor, like the individual in the same business in New York, will tell you, "I sells the place to sleep, but begar, I no sells the sleep with it." The couch is a lively one, as the feathers are a convenient warren for a miscellaneous lot of living things not often mentioned in polite society. In the southern cities of China one sees fewer women in the street than in the north. Those that appear in public are always of the poorer classes, and it is rare indeed that one can get a view of the famous small-footed women. The odious custom of compressing the feet is much less common at Pekin than in the southern provinces. The Manjour emperors of China opposed it ever since their dynasty ascended the throne, and on several occasions they issued severe edicts against it. The Tartar and Chinese ladies that compose the court of the empresses have their feet of the natural size, and the same is the case with the wives of many of the officials. But such is the power of fashion that many of these ladies have adopted the theatrical slipper, which is very difficult to walk with. No one can tell where the custom of compressing the feet originated, but it is said that one of the empresses was born with deformed feet, and set the fashion, which soon spread through the empire. The jealousy of the men and the idleness and vanity of the women have served to continue the custom. Every Chinese who can afford it will have at least one small-footed wife, and she is maintained in the most perfect indolence. For a woman to have a small foot is to show that she is of high birth and rich family, and she would consider herself dishonored if her parents failed to compress her feet. [Illustration: THE FAVORITE.] When remonstrated with about the practice, the Chinese retort by calling attention to the compression of the waist as practiced in Europe and America. "It is all a matter of taste," said a Chinese merchant one day when addressed on the subject. "We like women with small feet and you like them with small waists. What is the difference?" And what _is_ the difference? The compression is begun when a girl is six years old, and is accomplished with strong bandages. The great toe is pressed beneath the others, and these are bent under, so that the foot takes the shape of a closed fist. The bandages are drawn tighter every month, and in a couple of years the foot has assumed the desired shape and ceased to grow. [Illustration: FEMALE FEET AND SHOE.] Very often this compression creates diseases that are difficult to heal; it is always impossible for the small-footed woman to walk easily, and sometimes she cannot move without support. To have the finger-nails very long is also a mark of aristocracy; sometimes the ladies enclose their nails in silver cases, which are very convenient for cleansing the ears of their owner or tearing out the eyes of somebody else. Walking along the great street of Pekin, one is sure to see a fair number of gamblers and gambling houses. Gambling is a passion with the Chinese, and they indulge it to a greater extent than any other people in the world. It is a scourge in China, and the cause of a great deal of the poverty and degradation that one sees there. There are various games, like throwing dice, and drawing sticks from a pile, and there is hardly a poor wretch of a laborer who will not risk the chance of paying double for his dinner on the remote possibility of getting it for nothing. The rich are addicted to the vice quite as much as the poor, and sometimes they will lose their money, then their houses, their lands, their wives, their children, and so on up to themselves, when they have nothing else that their adversaries will accept. The winter is severe at Pekin, and it sometimes happens that men who have lost everything, down to their last garments, are thrust naked into the open air, where they perish of cold. Sometimes a man will bet his fingers on a game, and if he loses he must submit to have them chopped off and turned over to the winner. [Illustration: A LOTTERY PRIZE.] There is a tradition that one of the Chinese emperors used to get up lotteries, in which the ladies of the court were the prizes. He obtained quite a revenue from the business, which was popular with both the players and the prizes, as the latter were enabled to obtain husbands without the trouble of negotiation. The lottery has a place in the Chinese courts of justice. There is one mode of capital punishment in which a dozen or twenty knives are placed in a covered basket, and each knife is marked for a particular part of the body. The executioner puts his hand under the cover and draws at random. If the knife is for the toes, they are cut off one after another; if for the feet, they are severed, and so on until a knife for the heart or neck is reached. Usually the friends of the victim bribe the executioner to draw early in the game a knife whose wound will be fatal, and he generally does as he agrees. The bystanders amuse themselves by betting as to how long the culprit will stand it. Facetious dogs, those Chinese. To enumerate all the ways of inflicting punishment in China would be to fill a volume. Punishment is one of the fine arts, and a man who can skin another elegantly is entitled to rank as an artist. The bastinado and floggings are common, and then they have huge shears, like those used in tin shops, for snipping off feet and arms, very much as a gardener would cut off the stem of a rose. Some years ago the environs of Tientsin were infested by bands of robbers who were suspected of living in villages a few miles away. The governor was ordered by the imperial authority to suppress these robberies, and in order to get the right persons he sent out his soldiers and arrested everybody, old and young, in the suspected villages. Of course there were innocent persons among the captives, but that made no difference; some of them were blind, and others crippled, but the police had orders to bring in everybody. The prisoners were summarily tried; some of them had their heads cut off, others were imprisoned, and others were whipped. Nobody escaped without some punishment; the result was that the robber bands were broken up and the robberies ceased. [Illustration: A CHINESE PALANQUIN.] [Illustration: A PEKIN CAB.] It is not easy to go about Pekin. It is a city of magnificent distances, and the sights which one wants to see are far apart. The streets are bad, being dusty in dry weather and muddy when it rains, and the carriage way is cut up with deep ruts that make riding very uncomfortable. The cabs of Pekin are little carts, just large enough for two persons of medium size. They are without springs, and not very neatly arranged inside. If one does not like them he can walk or take a palanquin--there are plenty of palanquins in the city, and they do not cost an exorbitant sum. They are not very commodious, but infinitely preferable to the carts. The comforts of travel are very few in China. A Chinese never travels for pleasure, and he does not understand the spirit that leads tourists from one end of the world to the other in search of adventure. When he has nothing to do he sits down, smokes his pipe, and thinks about his ancestors. He never rides, walks, dances, or takes the least exercise for pleasure alone. It is business and nothing else that controls his movements. When an English ship touched at Hong Kong some years ago, the captain gave a ball to the foreign residents, and invited several Chinese merchants to attend the festivities. One heavy old merchant who had never before seen anything of the kind, looked on patiently, and when the dance was concluded he beckoned the captain to his side and asked if he could not get his servants to do that work and save him the trouble. [Illustration: PRIEST IN TEMPLE OF CONFUCIUS.] One of the great curiosities of Pekin is the temple of Confucius, where once a year the Emperor worships the great sage without the intervention of paintings or images. In the central shrine there is a small piece of wood, a few inches long, standing upright and bearing the name of Confucius in Chinese characters. The temple contains several stone tablets, on which are engraved the records of honor conferred on literary men, and it is the height of a Chinese scholar's ambition to win a place here. There are several fine trees in the spacious court yard, and they are said to have been planted by the Mongol dynasty more than five hundred years ago. The building is a magnificent one, and contains many curious relics of the various dynasties, some of them a thousand years old. The ceiling is especially gorgeous, and the tops of the interior walls are ornamented with wooden boards bearing the names of the successive emperors in raised gilt characters. As soon as an emperor ascends the throne he at once adds his name to the list. The Temple of Heaven and the Temple of Earth are also among the curiosities of Pekin. The former stands in an enclosed space a mile square, and has a great central pavilion, with a blue roof, and a gilt top that shines in the afternoon sun like the dome of St. Isaac's church at St. Petersburg. The enclosed space includes a park, beautifully laid out with avenues of trees and with regular, well paved walks. In the park are some small buildings where the priests live, that is to say, they are small compared with the main structure, though they are really fine edifices. The great pavilion is on a high causeway, and has flights of steps leading up to it from different directions. The pavilion is three stories high, the eaves of each story projecting very far and covered with blue enameled tiles. An enormous gilt ball crowns the whole, and around the building there is a bewildering array of arches and columns, with promenades and steps of white marble, evincing great skill and care in their construction. Unfortunately, the government is not taking good care of the temple, and the grass is growing in many places in the crevices of the pavements. The Temple of Earth is where the emperor goes annually to witness the ceremony of opening the planting season, and to inaugurate it by ploughing the first furrow. The ceremony is an imposing one, and never fails to draw a large assemblage. One of the most interesting objects in the vicinity of Pekin previous to 1860 was "Yuen-ming Yuen," or the summer palace of the emperor, Kien Loong. It was about eight miles northwest of the city, and bore the relation to Pekin that Versailles does to Paris. I say _was_, because it was ravaged by the English and French forces in their advance upon the Chinese capital, and all the largest and best of the buildings were burned. The country was hilly, and advantage was taken of this fact, so that the park presented every variety of hill, dale, woodland, lawn, garden, and meadow, interspersed with canals, pools, rivulets, and lakes, with their banks in imitation of nature. The park contained about twelve square miles, and there were nearly forty houses for the residence of the emperor's ministers, each of them surrounded with buildings for large retinues of servants. The summer palace, or central hall of reception, was an elaborate structure, and when it was occupied by the French army thousands of yards of the finest silk and crape were found there. These articles were so abundant that the soldiers used them for bed clothes and to wrap around other plunder. The cost of this palace amounted to millions of dollars, and the blow was severely felt by the Chinese government. The park is still worth a visit, but less so than before the destruction of the palace. In the country around Pekin there are many private burying grounds belonging to families; the Chinese do not, like ourselves, bury their dead in common cemeteries, but each family has a plot of its own. Sometimes a few families combine and own a place together; they generally select a spot in a grove of trees, and make it as attractive as possible. The Chinese are more careful of their resting places after death than before it; a wealthy man will live in a miserable hovel, but he looks forward to a commodious tomb beneath pretty shade trees. The tender regard for the dead is an admirable trait in the Chinese character, and springs, no doubt, from that filial piety which is so deeply engraved on the Oriental mind. [Illustration: COMFORTS AND CONVENIENCES.] [Illustration: FILIAL AFFECTION.] In Europe and America it is the custom not to mention coffins in polite society, and the contemplation of one is always mournful. But in China a coffin is a thing to be made a show of, like a piano. In many houses there is a room set apart for the coffins of the members of the family, and the owners point them out with pride. They practice economy to lay themselves out better than their rivals, and sometimes a man who has made a good thing by swindling or robbing somebody, will use the profits in buying a coffin, just as an American would treat himself to a gold watch or diamond pin. The most elegant gift that a child can make to his sick father is a coffin that he has paid for out of his own labor; it is not considered a hint to the old gentleman to hand in his checks and get out of the way, but rather as a mark of devotion which all good boys should imitate. The coffins are finely ornamented, according to the circumstances of the owner, and I have heard that sometimes a thief will steal a fine one and commit suicide--first arranging with his friends to bury him in it before his theft is discovered. If he is not found out he thinks he has made a good thing of it. Whenever the Chinese sell ground for building purposes they always stipulate for the removal of the bones of their ancestors for many generations. The bones are carefully dug up and put in earthen jars, when they are sealed up, labeled, and put away in a comfortable room, as if they were so many pots of pickles and fruits. Every respectable family in China has a liberal supply of potted ancestors on hand, but would not part with them at any price. Nothing can surpass the calm resignation with which the Chinese part with life. They die without groans, and have no mental terror at the approach of death. Abbe Hue says that when they came for him to administer the last sacraments to a dying convert, their formula of saying that the danger was imminent, was in the words, "The sick man does not smoke his pipe." When a Chinese wishes to revenge himself upon another he furtively places a corpse upon the property of his enemy. This subjects the man on whose premises the body is found to many vexatious visits from the officials, and also to claims on the part of the relations of the dead man. The height of a joke of this kind is to commit suicide on another man's property in such a way as to appear to have been murdered there. This will subject the unfortunate object of revenge to all sorts of legal vexations, and not unfrequently to execution. Suicide for revenge would be absurd in America, but is far from unknown at the antipodes. [Illustration: TAIL PIECE--OPIUM PIPE] CHAPTER XXXI. It was my original intention to make a journey from Kiachta to Pekin and back again, but the lateness of the season prevented me. I did not wish to be caught in the desert of Gobi in winter. I talked with several persons who had traversed Mongolia, and among them a gentleman who had just arrived from the Chinese capital. I made many notes from his recital which I found exceedingly interesting. For a time the Chinese refused passports to foreigners wishing to cross Mongolia; but on finding their action was likely to cause trouble, they gave the desired permission, though accompanying it with an intimation that the privilege might be suspended at any time. The bonds that unite Mongolia to the great empire are not very strong, the natives being somewhat indifferent to their rulers and ready at any decent provocation to throw off their yoke. Though engaged in the peaceful pursuits of sheep-tending, and transporting freight between Russia and China, they possess a warlike spirit and are capable of being roused into violent action. They are proud of tracing their ancestry to the soldiers that marched with Genghis Khan, and carried his victorious banners into Central Europe; around their fires at night no stories are more eagerly heard than those of war, and he who can relate the most wonderful traditions of daring deeds may be certain of admiration and applause. The first "outside barbarian," other than Russians, who attempted this overland journey, was a young French Count, who traveled in search of adventure. Proceeding eastward from St. Petersburg, he reached Kiachta in 1859. After some hesitation, the governor-general of Eastern Siberia appointed him secretary to a Russian courier _en route_ for Pekin. He made the journey without serious hindrance, but on reaching the Chinese capital his nationality was discovered, and he was forced to return to Siberia. From Pekin the traveller destined for Siberia passes through the northern gate amid clouds of dust or pools of mud, according as the day of his exit is fair or stormy. He meets long strings of carts drawn by mules, oxen, or ponies, carrying country produce of different kinds to be digested in the great maw of the Imperial city. Animals with pack-saddles, swaying under heavy burdens, swell the caravans, and numerous equestrians, either bestriding their steeds, or sitting sidewise in apparent carelessness, are constantly encountered. Now and then an unruly mule causes a commotion in the crowd by a vigorous use of his heels, and a watchful observer may see an unfortunate native sprawling on the ground in consequence of approaching too near one of the hybrid beasts. Chinese mules _will_ kick as readily as their American cousins; and I can say from experience, that their hoofs are neither soft nor delicate. They can bray, too, in tones terribly discordant and utterly destructive of sleep. The natives have a habit of suppressing their music when it becomes positively unbearable, and the means they employ may be worth notice. A Chinaman says a mule cannot bray without elevating his tail to a certain height; so to silence the beast he ties a stone to that ornamental appendage, and depends upon the weight to shut off the sound. Out of compassion to the mule, he attaches the stone so that it rests upon the ground and makes no strain as long as the animal behaves himself. [Illustration: A MUSICAL STOP.] A Chinese pack-mule will carry about four hundred pounds of dead weight, if properly adjusted. The loads are not lashed on the animals' backs, but simply balanced; consequently, they must be very nicely divided and arranged on each side of the saddles. On the road from Pekin the track is so wretched, and the carts so roughly made, that journeying with wheeled vehicles is next to an impossibility. Travelers go on horseback--if their circumstances allow--and by way of comfort, especially if there be ladies in the party, they generally provide themselves with mule-litters. The mule-litter is a goodly-sized palanquin, not quite long enough for lying at full length, but high enough to allow the passenger to sit erect. There is a box or false flooring in the bottom, to accommodate baggage in small parcels that can be easily stowed. A good litter has the sides stuffed to save the occupant from bruises; and with plenty of straw and a couple of pillows, he generally finds himself quite comfortable. The body is fastened to two strong and flexible poles that extend fore and aft far enough to serve as shafts for a couple of mules. At the ends of the shafts their points are connected by stout bands of leather that pass over the saddles of the respective mules; each band is kept in place by an iron pin fixed in the top of the saddle, and passing through a hole in the leather. As the shafts are long enough to afford the animals plenty of walking room, there is a good deal of spring to the concern, and the motion is by no means disagreeable. Sometimes the bands slip from the shafts, and in such case the machine comes to the ground with a disagreeable thump; if the traveler happens to be asleep at the time he can easily imagine he is being shot from a catapult. Just outside of Pekin there is a sandy plain, and beyond it a fine stretch of country under careful cultivation, the principal cereal being millet, that often stands ten or twelve feet high. Some cotton is grown, but the region is too far north to render its culture profitable. About twenty miles from Pekin is the village of Sha-ho, near two old stone bridges that span a river now nearly dried away. The village is a sort of half-way halting place between. Pekin and the Nankow pass, a rocky defile twelve or fifteen miles long. The huge boulders and angular fragments of stone have been somewhat worn down and smoothed by constant use, though they are still capable of using up a good many mule-hoofs annually. With an eye to business, a few traveling farriers hang about this pass, and find occasional employment in setting shoes. Chinese shoeing, considered as a fine art, is very much in its infancy. Animals are only shod when the nature of the service requires it; the farriers do not attempt to make shoes to order, but they keep a stock of iron plates on hand, and select the nearest size they can find. They hammer the plate a little to fit it to the hoof and then fasten it on; an American blacksmith would be astonished at the rapidity with which his Chinese brother performs his work. The pass of Nankow contains the remains of several old forts, which were maintained in former times to protect China from Mongol incursions. The natural position is a strong one, and a small force could easily keep at bay a whole army. Just outside the northern entrance of the pass there is a branch of one of the "Great Walls" of China. It was built some time before _the_ Great Wall. Foreigners visiting Pekin and desiring to see the Great Wall are usually taken to Nankow, and gravely told they have attained the object they seek. Perhaps it is just as well for them to believe so, since they avoid a journey of fifty miles farther over a rough road to reach the real Great Wall; besides, the Chinese who have contracted to take them on the excursion are able to make a nice thing of it, since they charge as much for one place as for the other. The country for a considerable distance is dotted with old forts and ruins, and the remains of extensive earthworks. Many battles were fought here between the Chinese and the Mongols when Genghis Khan made his conquest. For a long time the assailants were kept at bay, but one fortress after another fell into their hands, and finally the capture of the Nankow pass by Che-pee, one of Genghis Khan's generals, laid Pekin at their mercy. [Illustration: NANKOW PASS.] There is a tradition that the loss of the first line of northern forts was due to a woman. Intelligence was transmitted in those days by means of beacon fires, and the signals were so arranged as to be rapidly flashed through the empire. Once a lady induced the Emperor to give the signal and summon his armies to the capital. The Mandarins assembled with their forces, but on finding they had been simply employed at the caprice of a woman, they returned angrily to their homes. By-and-by the enemy came; the beacon fires were again lighted; but this time the Mandarins did not heed the call for assistance. The Great Wall--the real one--crosses the road at Chan-kia-kow, a large and scattered town lying in a broad valley, pretty well enclosed by mountains. The Russians call the town Kalgan (gate), but the natives never use any other than the Chinese name. In maps made from Russian authorities, Kalgan appears, while in those taken from the Chinese, the other appellation is used. Kalgan (I stick to the Russian term, as more easily pronounced, though less correct) is the centre of the transit trade from Pekin to Kiachta, and great quantities of tea and other goods pass through it annually. Several Russians are established there, and the town contains a population of Chinese from various provinces of the empire, mingled with Mongols and Thibetans in fair proportion. The religion is varied, and embraces adherents to all the branches of Chinese theology, together with Mongol lamas and a considerable sprinkling of Mahommedans. There are temples, lamissaries, and mosques, according to the needs of the faithful; and the Russian inhabitants have a chapel of their own, and are thus able to worship according to their own faith. The mingling of different tribes and kinds of people in a region where manners and morals are not severely strict, has produced a result calculated to puzzle the present or future ethnologist. Many of the merchants have grown wealthy, and take life as comfortably as possible; they furnish their houses in the height of Chinese style, and some of them have even sent to Russia for the wherewith to astonish their neighbors. The Great Wall runs along the ridge of hills in a direction nearly east and west; where it crosses the town it is kept in good repair, but elsewhere it is very much in ruins, and could offer little resistance to an enemy. Many of the towers remain, and some of them are but little broken. They seem to have been better constructed than the main portions of the wall, and, though useless against modern weapons, were, no doubt, of importance in the days of their erection. The Chinese must have held the Mongol hordes in great dread, to judge by the labor expended to guard against incursions. As Kalgan is the frontier town between China and Mongolia, many Mongols go there for all purposes, from trading down to loafing. They bring their camels to engage in transporting goods across the desert, and indulge in a great deal of traffic on their own account. They drive cattle, sheep, and horses from their pastures farther north, and sell them for local use, or for the market at Pekin. Mutton is the staple article of food, and nearly always cheap and abundant. The hillsides are covered with flocks, which often graze where nothing else can live. In the autumn, immense numbers of sheep are driven to Pekin, and sometimes the road is fairly blocked with them. Every morning there is a horse-fair on an open space just beyond the Great Wall, and on its northern side. The modes of buying and selling horses are very curious, and many of the tricks would be no discredit to American jockeys. The horses are tied or held wherever their owners can keep them, and in the centre of the fair grounds there is a space where the beasts are shown off. They trot or gallop up and down the course, their riders yelling as if possessed of devils, and holding their whips high in air. These riders are generally Mongols; their garments flutter like the decorations of a scarecrow in a morning breeze, and their pig-tails, if not carefully triced up, stand out at right angles like ships' pennants in a northeast gale. Notwithstanding all the confusion, it rarely happens that anybody is run over, though there are many narrow escapes. [Illustration: RACING AT THE KALGAN FAIR.] The fair is attended by two classes of people--those who want to trade in horses, and those who don't; between them they manage to assemble a large crowd. There are always plenty of curbstone brokers, or intermediaries, who hang around the fair to negotiate purchases and sales. They have a way of conducting trades by drawing their long sleeves over their hands, and making or receiving bids by means of the concealed fingers. This mode of telegraphing is quite convenient when secrecy is desired, and prevails in many parts of Asia. Taverneir and other travelers say the diamond merchants conduct their transactions in this manner, even when no one is present to observe them. [Illustration: STREET IN KALGAN.] Unless arrangements have been made beforehand, it will be necessary to spend three or four days at Kalgan in preparing for the journey over the desert. Camels must be hired, carts purchased, baggage packed in convenient parcels, and numerous odds and ends provided against contingencies. Of course, there is generally something forgotten, even after careful attention to present and prospective wants. But we are off at last. The start consumes the greater part of a day, as it is best to have nothing done carelessly at the outset. The heavy baggage is loaded upon the camels, the animals lying down and patiently waiting while their cargoes are stowed. Pieces of felt cloth are packed between and around their humps, to prevent injury from the cords that sustain the bundles. The drivers display much ingenuity in arranging the loads so that they shall be easily balanced, and the sides of the beasts as little injured as possible. Spite of precautions, the camels get ugly sores in their sides and backs, which grow steadily worse by use. Occasionally their hoofs crack and fill with sand, and when this occurs, their owner has no alternative but to rest them a month or two, or risk losing their services altogether. The principal travel over the desert is in the cold season. In the autumn, the camels are fat, and their humps appear round and hard. They are then steadily worked until spring, and very often get very little to eat. As the camel grows thin, his humps fall to one side, and the animal assumes a woe-begone appearance. In the spring, his hair falls off; his naked skin wrinkles like a wet glove, and he becomes anything but an attractive object. [Illustration: IN GOOD CONDITION.] As a beast of burden, the camel is better than for purposes of draft. He can carry from six hundred to eight hundred pounds, if the load be properly placed on his back; but when he draws a cart the weight must be greatly diminished. In crossing Mongolia, heavy baggage is carried on camels, but every traveler takes a cart for riding purposes, and alternates between it and his saddle horse. The cart is a sort of dog-house on two wheels; its frame is of wood, and has a covering of felt cloth, thick enough to ward off a light fall of rain, and embarrass a heavy one. It is barely high enough to allow a man to sit erect, but not sufficiently long to enable him to lie at full length. The body rests directly upon the axle, so that the passenger gets the full benefit of every jolt. The camel walks between the shafts, and his great body is the chief feature of the scenery when one looks ahead. The harness gives way occasionally, and allows the shafts to fall to the ground; when this happens, the occupant runs the risk of being dumped among the ungainly feet that propel his vehicle. One experience of this kind is more than satisfactory. After passing a range of low mountains north of Kalgan, the road enters the table-land of Mongolia, elevated about five thousand feet above the sea. The country opens into a series of plains and gentle swells, not unlike the rolling prairies of Kansas and Nebraska, with here and there a stretch of hills. Very often not a single tree is visible, and the only stationary objects that break the monotony of the scene are occasional yourts, or tents of the natives. All the way along the road there are numerous trains of ox-carts, and sometimes they form a continuous line of a mile or more. Those going southward are principally laden with logs of wood from the valley of the Tolla, about two hundred miles from the Siberian frontier. The logs are about six or seven feet long, and their principal use is to be cut into Chinese coffins. Many a gentleman of Pekin has been stowed in a coffin whose wood grew in the middle of Mongolia; and possibly when our relations with the empire become more intimate, we shall supply the Chinese coffin market from the fine forests of our Pacific coast. CHAPTER XXXII. North of Kalgan the native habitations are scattered irregularly over the country wherever good water and grass abound. The Mongols are generally nomadic, and consult the interest of their flocks and herds in their movements. In summer they resort to the table-land, and stay wherever fancy or convenience dictates; in winter they prefer the valleys where they are partially sheltered from the sharp winds, and find forage for their stock. The desert is not altogether a desert; it has a great deal of sand and general desolation to the day's ride, but is far from being a forsaken region where a wolf could not make a living. Antelopes abound, and are often seen in large droves as upon our Western plains; grouse will afford frequent breakfasts to the traveler if he takes the trouble to shoot them; there are wild geese, ducks, and curlew in the ponds and marshes; and taken for all in all, the country might be much worse than it is--which is bad enough. The flat or undulating country is, of course, monotonous. Sunset and sunrise are not altogether unlike those events on the ocean, and if a traveler wishes to feel himself quite at sea, he has only to wander off and lose his camp or caravan. The natives make nothing of straying out of sight, and seem to possess the instincts which have been often noted in the American Indian. Without landmarks or other objects to guide them, they rarely mistake their position, even at night, and can estimate the extent of a day's journey with surprising accuracy. Where a stranger can see no difference between one square mile of desert and a thousand others, the Mongol can distinguish it from all the rest, though he may not be able to explain why. Perception is closely allied to instinct, and as fast as we are developed and educated the more we trust to acquired knowledge and the less to the unaided senses. Of course it is quite easy for a stranger to be lost in the Mongolian desert beyond all hope of finding his way again, unless some one comes to his aid. A Russian gentleman told me his experience in getting lost there several years ago. "I used," said he, "to have a fondness for pursuing game whenever we sighted any, which was pretty often, and as I had a couple of hardy ponies, I did a great deal of chasing. One afternoon I saw a fine drove of antelopes, and set out in pursuit of them. The chase led me further than I expected: the game was shy, and I could not get near enough for a good shot; after a long pursuit I gave up, and concluded to return to the road. Just as I abandoned the chase the sun was setting. My notion of the direction I ought to go was not entirely clear, as I had followed a very tortuous course in pursuing the antelopes. "I was not altogether certain which way I turned when I left the road. It was my impression that I went to the eastward and had been moving away from the sun; so I turned my pony's head in a westerly direction and followed the ridges, which ran from east to west. Hour after hour passed away, the stars came out clear and distinct in the sky, and marked off the progress of the night as they, slowly moved from east to west. I grew hungry, and thirsty, and longed most earnestly to reach the caravan. My pony shared my uneasiness, and moved impatiently, now endeavoring to go in one direction and now in another. Thinking it possible that he might know the proper route better than I, I gave him free rein, but soon found he was as much at fault as myself. Then I fully realized I was lost in the desert. "Without compass or landmark to guide me, there was no use in further attempts to find the caravan. Following the Mongol custom, I carried a long rope attached to my saddle-bow, and with this I managed to picket the pony where he could graze and satisfy his hunger. How I envied his ability to eat the grass, which, though scanty, was quite sufficient. I tried to sleep, but sleeping was no easy matter. First, I had the consciousness of being lost. Then I was suffering from hunger and thirst, and the night, like all the nights in Mongolia, even in midsummer, was decidedly chilly, and as I had only my ordinary clothing, the cold caused me to shiver violently. The few snatches of sleep I caught were troubled with many dreams, none of them pleasant. All sorts of horrible fancies passed through my brain, and I verily believe that though I did not sleep half an hour in the whole night, the incidents of my dreams were enough for a thousand years. [Illustration: LOST IN THE DESERT OF GOBI.] "Thoughts of being devoured by wild beasts haunted me, though in truth I had little of this fate to fear. The only carnivorous beasts on the desert are wolves, but as game is abundant, and can be caught with ordinary exertion, they have no occasion to feed upon men. About midnight my fears were roused by my pony taking alarm at the approach of some wild beast. He snorted and pulled at his rope, and had it not been for my efforts to soothe him, he would have broken away and fled. I saw nothing and heard nothing, though I fancied I could discover half a dozen dark forms on the horizon, and hear a subdued howl from an animal I supposed to be a wolf. "Morning came. I was suffering from hunger, and more from thirst. My throat was parched, my tongue was swollen, and there was a choking sensation as if I were undergoing strangulation. How I longed for water! Mounting my horse, I rode slowly along the ridge toward the west, and after proceeding several miles, discovered a small lake to my right. My horse scented it earlier than I, and needed no urging to reach it. Dismounting, I bent over and drank from the edge, which was marked with the tracks of antelopes, and of numerous aquatic birds. The water was brackish and bitter, but I drank it with eagerness. My thirst was satisfied, but the water gave me a severe pain in my stomach, that soon became almost as unendurable as the previous dryness. I stood for some minutes on the shore of the lake, and preparing to remount my horse, the bridle slipped from my hand. Mongol ponies are generally treacherous, and mine proved no exception to the rule. Finding himself free, he darted off and trotted back the way we had come. "I know that search would be made for me, and my hope now lay in some one coming to the lake. It did not require long deliberation to determine me to remain in the vicinity of the water. As long as I was near it I could not perish of thirst; and moreover, the Mongols, who probably knew of the lake, might be attracted here for water, and, if looking for me, would be likely to take the lake in the way. Tying my kerchief to my ramrod, which I fixed in the ground, I lay down on the grass and slept, as near as I could estimate, for more than two hours. "Seeing some water-fowl a short distance away, I walked in their direction, and luckily found a nest among the reeds, close to the water's edge. The six or eight eggs it contained were valuable prizes; one I swallowed raw, and the others I carried to where I left my gun. Gathering some of the dry grass and reeds, I built a fire and roasted the eggs, which gave me a hearty meal. The worst of my hardships seemed over. I had found water--bad water, it is true--but still it was possible to drink it; by searching among the reeds I could find an abundance of eggs; my gun could procure me game, and the reeds made a passable sort of fuel. I should be discovered in a few days at farthest, and I renewed my determination to remain near the lake. "The day passed without any incident to vary the monotony. Refreshed by my meal and by a draught from a small pool of comparatively pure water, I was able to sleep most of the afternoon, so as to keep awake during the night, when exercise was necessary to warmth. About sunset a drove of antelopes came near me, and by shooting one I added venison to my bill of fare. In the night I amused myself with keeping my fire alive, and listening to the noise of the birds that the unusual sight threw into a state of alarm. On the following morning, as I lay on my bed of reeds, a dozen antelopes, attracted by my kerchief fluttering in the wind, stood watching me, and every few minutes approaching a few steps. They were within easy shooting distance, but I had no occasion to kill them. So I lay perfectly still, watching their motions and admiring their beauty. "All at once, though I had not moved a muscle, they turned and ran away. While I was wondering what could have disturbed them I heard the shout of two Mongol horsemen, who were riding toward me, and leading my pony they had caught a dozen miles away. A score of men from the caravan had been in search of me since the morning after my disappearance, and had ridden many a mile over the desert." The Mongols are a strong, hardy, and generally good-natured race, possessing the spirit of perseverance quite as much as the Chinese. They have the free manners of all nomadic people, and are noted for unvarying hospitality to visitors. Every stranger is welcome, and has the best the host can give; the more he swallows of what is offered him, the better will be pleased the household. As the native habits are not especially cleanly, a fastidiously inclined guest has a trying time of it. The staple dish of a Mongol yourt is boiled mutton, but it is unaccompanied with capers or any other kind of sauce or seasoning. A sheep goes to pot immediately on being killed, and the quantity that each man will consume is something surprising. When the meat is cooked it is lifted out of the hot water and handed, all dripping and steamy, to the guests. Each man takes a large lump on his lap, or any convenient support, and then cuts off little chunks which he tosses into his mouth as if it were a mill-hopper. The best piece is reserved for the guest of honor, who is expected to divide it with the rest; after the meat is devoured they drink the broth, and this concludes the meal. Knives and cups are the only aids to eating, and as every man carries his own "outfit," the Mongol dinner service is speedily arranged. The entire work consists in seating the party around a pot of cooked meat. [Illustration: MONGOL DINNER TABLE.] The desert is crossed by various ridges and small mountain chains, that increase in frequency and make the country more broken as one approaches the Tolla, the largest stream between Pekin and Kiachta. The road, after traversing the last of these chains, suddenly reveals a wide valley which bears evidence of fertility in its dense forests, and the straggling fields which receive less attention than they deserve. The Tolla has an ugly habit of rising suddenly and falling deliberately. When at its height, the stream has a current of about seven miles an hour, and at the fording place the water is over the back of an ordinary pony. The bottom of the river consists of large boulders of all sizes from an egg up to a cotton bale, and the footing for both horses and camels is not specially secure. The camels need a good deal of persuasion with clubs before they will enter the water; they have an instinctive dread of that liquid and avoid it whenever they can. Horses are less timorous, and the best way to get a camel through the ford is to lead him behind a horse and pound him vigorously at the same time. When the river is at all dangerous there is always a swarm of natives around the ford ready to lend a hand if suitably compensated. They all talk very much and in loud tones; their voices mingle with the neighing of horses, the screams of camels, the roaring of the river, and the laughter of the idlers when any mishap occurs. The confused noises are in harmony with the scene on either bank, where baggage is piled promiscuously, and the natives are grouped together in various picturesque attitudes. Men with their lower garments rolled as high as possible, or altogether discarded, walk about in perfect nonchalance; their queues hanging down their backs seem designed as rudders to steer the wearers across the stream. [Illustration: CROSSING THE TOLLA] About two miles from the ford of the Tolla there is a Chinese settlement, which forms a sort of suburb to the Mongol town of Urga. The Mongols have no great friendship for the Chinese inhabitants, who are principally engaged in traffic and the various occupations connected with the transport of goods. Between this suburb and the main town the Russians have a large house, which is the residence of a consul and some twenty or thirty retainers. The policy of maintaining a consulate there can only be explained on the supposition that Russia expects and intends to appropriate a large slice of Mongolia whenever opportunity offers. She has long insisted that the chain of mountains south of Urga was the "natural boundary," and her establishment of an expensive post at that city enables her to have things ready whenever a change occurs. In the spirit of annexation and extension of territory the Russians can fairly claim equal rank with ourselves. I forget their phrase for "manifest destiny," and possibly they may not be willing that I should give it. Urga is not laid out in streets like most of the Chinese towns; its by-ways and high-ways are narrow and crooked, and form a network very puzzling to a stranger. The Chinese and Russian settlers live in houses, and there are temples and other permanent buildings, but the Mongols live generally in yourts, which they prefer to more extensive structures. Most of the Mongol traffic is conducted in a large esplanade, where you can purchase anything the country affords, and at very fair prices. The principal feature of Urga is the lamissary or convent where a great many lamas or holy men reside. I have heard the number estimated at fifteen thousand, but cannot say if it be more or less. The religion of the Mongols came originally from Thibet, by direct authority of the Grand Lama, but a train of circumstances which I have not space to explain, has made it virtually independent. The Chinese government maintains shrewd emissaries among these lamas, and thus manages to control the Mongols and prevent their setting up for themselves. As a further precaution it has a lamissary at Pekin, where it keeps two thousand Mongol lamas at its own expense. In this way it is able to influence the nomads of the desert, and in case of trouble it would possess a fair number of hostages for an emergency. About the year 1205 the great battle between Timoujin and the sovereign then occupying the Mongol throne was fought a short distance from Urga. The victory was decisive for the former, who thus became Genghis Khan and commenced that career of conquest which made his name famous. Great numbers of devotees from all parts of Mongolia visit Urga every year, the journey there having something of the sacred character which a Mahommedan attaches to a pilgrimage to Mecca. The people living at Urga build fences around their dwellings to protect their property from the thieves who are in large proportion among the pious travelers. From Urga to the Siberian frontier the distance is less than two hundred miles; the Russian couriers accomplish it in fifty or sixty hours when not delayed by accidents, but the caravans require from four to eight days. There is a system of relays arranged by the Chinese so that one can travel very speedily if he has proper authority. Couriers have passed from Kiachta to Pekin in ten or twelve days; but the rough road and abominable carts make them feel at their journey's end about as if rolled through a patent clotheswringer. A mail is carried twice a month each way by the Russians. Several schemes have been proposed for a trans-Mongolian telegraph, but thus far the Chinese government has refused to permit its construction. The desert proper is finished before one reaches the mountains bordering the Tolla; after crossing that stream and leaving Urga the road passes through a hilly country, sprinkled, it is true, with a good many patches of sand, but having plenty of forest and frequently showing fertile valleys. These valleys are the favorite resorts of the Mongol shepherds and herdsmen, some of whom count their wealth by many thousand animals. In general, Mongolia is not agricultural, both from the character of the country and the disposition of the people. A few tribes in the west live by tilling the soil in connection with stock raising, but I do not suppose they take kindly to the former occupation. The Mongols engaged in the caravan service pass a large part of their lives on the road, and are merry as larks over their employment. They seem quite analogous to the teamsters and miscellaneous "plainsmen" who used to play an important part on our overland route. A large proportion of the men engaged in this transit service are lamas, their sacred character not excusing them, as many suppose, from all kinds of employment. Many lamas are indolent and manage in some way to make a living without work, but this is by no means the universal character of the holy men. About one-fifth of the male population belong to the religious order, so that there are comparatively few families which do not have a member or a relative in the pale of the church. If not domiciled in a convent or blessed by fortune in some way, the lama turns his hand to labor, though he is able at the same time to pick up occasional presents for professional service. Many of them act as teachers or schoolmasters. Theoretically he cannot marry any more than a Romish priest, but his vows of celibacy are not always strictly kept. One inconvenience under which he labors is in never daring to kill anything through fear that what he slaughters may contain the soul of a relative, and possibly that of the divine Bhudda. A lama will purchase a sheep on which he expects to dine, and though fully accessory before and after the fact, he does not feel authorized to use the knife with his own hand. Even should he be annoyed by fleas or similar creeping things (if it were a township or city the lama's body could return a flattering census,) he must bear the infliction until patience is thoroughly exhausted. At such times he may call an unsanctified friend and subject himself and garments to a thorough examination. [Illustration: THE SCHOOLMASTER.] Every lama carries with him a quantity of written prayers, which he reads or recites, and the oftener they are repeated the greater is their supposed efficacy. Quantity is more important than quality, and to facilitate matters they frequently have a machine, which consists of a wheel containing a lot of prayers. Sometimes it is turned by hand and sometimes attached to a wind-mill; the latter mode being preferred. Abbe Hue and others have remarked a striking similarity between the Bhuddist and Roman Catholic forms of worship and the origin of the two religions. Hue infers that Bhuddism was borrowed from Christianity; on the other hand, many lamas declare that the reverse is the case. The question has caused a great deal of discussion first and last, but neither party appears disposed to yield. The final stretch of road toward the Siberian frontier is across a sandy plain, six or eight miles wide. On emerging from the hills at its southern edge the dome of the church in Kiachta appears in sight, and announces the end of Mongolian travel. No lighthouse is more welcome to a mariner than is the view of this Russian town to a traveler who has suffered the hardships of a journey from Pekin. [Illustration: TAIL PIECE] CHAPTER XXXIII. The week I remained at Kiachta was a time of festivity from beginning to end. I endeavored to write up my journal but was able to make little more than rough notes. The good people would have been excusable had they not compelled me to drink so much excellent champagne. The amiable merchants of Kiachta are blessed with such capacities for food and drink that they do not think a guest satisfied until he has swallowed enough to float a steamboat. I found an excellent _compagnon du voyage_, and our departure was fixed for the evening after the dinner with Mr. Pfaffius. A change from dinner dress to traveling costume was speedily made, and I was _gotovey_ when my friend arrived with several officers to see us off. About eight o'clock we took places in my tarantass, and drove out of the northern gate of Troitskosavsk. My traveling companion was Mr. Richard Maack, Superintendent of Public Instruction in Eastern Siberia. He was just finishing a tour among the schools in the Trans-Baikal province, and during fourteen years of Siberian life, he had seen a variety of service. He accompanied General Mouravieff oil the first expedition down the Amoor, and wrote a detailed account of his journey. Subsequently he explored the Ousuree in the interest of the Russian Geographical Society. He said that his most arduous service was in a winter journey to the valley of the Lena, and along the shores of the Arctic Ocean. The temperature averaged lower than in Dr. Kane's hibernation on the coast of Greenland, and once remained at -60° for nearly three weeks. Of five persons comprising the party, Maack is the only survivor. One of his companions fell dead in General Mouravieff's parlor while giving his account of the exploration. We determined to be comfortable on the way to Irkutsk. We put our baggage in a telyaga with Maack's servant and took the tarantass to ourselves. The road was the same I traveled from Verkne Udinsk to Kiachta, crossing the Selenga at Selenginsk. We slept most of the first night, and timed our arrival at Selenginsk so as to find the school in session. During a brief halt while the smotretal prepared our breakfast, Maack visited the school-master at his post of duty. Over the hills behind a lake about a day's ride from Selenginsk there is a Bouriat village of a sacred character. It is the seat of a large temple or lamisary whence all the Bouriats in Siberia receive their religious teachings. A grand lama specially commissioned by the great chief of the Bhuddist faith at Thibet, presides over the lamisary. He is supposed to partake of the immortal essence of Bhudda, and when his body dies, his spirit enters a younger person who becomes the lama after passing a certain ordeal. The village is wholly devoted to religious purposes, and occupied exclusively by Bouriats. I was anxious to visit it, but circumstances did not favor my desires. We made both crossings of the Selenga on the ice without difficulty. It was only a single day from the time the ferry ceased running until the ice was safe for teams. We reached Verkne Udinsk late in the evening, and drove to a house where my companion had friends. The good lady brought some excellent nalifka of her own preparation, and the more we praised it the more she urged us to drink. What with tea, nalifka, and a variety of solid food, we were pretty well filled during a halt of two hours. It was toward midnight when we emerged from the house to continue our journey. Maack found his tarantass at Verkne Udinsk, and as it was larger and better than mine we assigned the latter to Evan and the baggage, and took the best to ourselves. Evan was a Yakut whom my friend brought from the Lena country. He was intelligent and active, and assisted greatly to soften the asperities of the route. With my few words of Russian, and his quick comprehension, we understood each other very well. During the first few hours from Verkne Udinsk the sky was obscured and the air warm. My furs were designed for cold weather, and their weight in the temperature then prevailing threw me into perspiration. In my dehar I was unpleasantly warm, and without it I shivered. I kept alternately opening and closing the garment, and obtained very little sleep up to our arrival at the first station. While we were changing horses the clouds blew away and the temperature fell several degrees. Under the influence of the cold I fell into a sound sleep, and did not heed the rough, grater-like surface of the recently frozen road. From Verkne Udinsk to Lake Baikal, the road follows the Selenga valley, which gradually widens as one descends it. The land appears fertile and well adapted to farming purposes but only a small portion is under cultivation. The inhabitants are pretty well rewarded for their labor if I may judge by the appearance of their farms and villages. Until reaching Ilyensk, I found the cliffs and mountains extending quite near the river. In some places the road is cut into the rocks in such a way as to afford excitement to a nervous traveler. The villages were numerous and had an air of prosperity. Here and there new houses were going up, and made quite a contrast to the old and decaying habitations near them. My attention was drawn to the well-sweeps exactly resembling those in the rural districts of New England. From the size of the sweeps, I concluded the wells were deep. The soil in the fields had a loose, friable appearance that reminded me of the farming lands around Cleveland, Ohio. One of the villages where we changed horses is called Kabansk from the Russian word '_Kaban_' (wild boar). This animal abounds in the vicinity and is occasionally hunted for sport. The chase of the wild boar is said to be nearly as dangerous as that of the bear, the brute frequently turning upon his pursuer and making a determined fight. We passed the Monastery of Troitska founded in 1681 for the conversion of the Bouriats. It is an imposing edifice built like a Russian church in the middle of a large area surrounded by a high wall. Though it must have impressed the natives by its architectural effects it was powerless to change their faith. [Illustration: WILD BOAR HUNT.] As it approaches Lake Baikal the Selenga divides into several branches, and encloses a large and very fertile delta. The afternoon following our departure from Verkne Udinsk, we came in sight of the lake, and looked over the blue surface of the largest body of fresh water in Northern Asia. The mountains on the western shore appeared about eight or ten miles away, though they were really more than thirty. We skirted the shore of the lake, turning our horses' heads to the southward. The clear water reminded me of Lake Michigan as one sees it on approaching Chicago by railway from the East. Its waves broke gently on a pebbly beach, where the cold of commencing winter had changed much of the spray to ice. There was no steamer waiting at Posolsky, but we were told that one was hourly expected. Maack was radiant at finding a letter from his wife awaiting him at the station. I enquired for letters but did not obtain any. Unlike my companion. I had no wife at Irkutsk. [Illustration: A WIFE AT IRKUTSK.] [Illustration: NO WIFE AT IRKUTSK.] The steamboat landing is nine versts below the town, and as the post route ended at Posolsky, we were obliged to engage horses at a high rate, to take us to the port. The alternate freezing and thawing of the road--its last act was to freeze--had rendered it something like the rough way in a Son-of-Malta Lodge. The agent assured us the steamer would arrive during the night. Was there ever a steamboat agent who did not promise more than his employers performed? According to the tourist's phrase the port of Posolsky can be 'done' in about five minutes. The entire settlement comprised two buildings, one a hotel, and the other a storehouse and stable. A large quantity of merchandise was piled in the open air, and awaited removal. It included tea from Kiachta, and vodki or native whiskey from Irkutsk. There are several distilleries in the Trans-Baikal province, but they are unable to meet the demand in the country east of the lake. From what I saw _in transitu_ the consumption must be enormous. The government has a tax on vodki equal to about fifty cents a gallon, which is paid by the manufacturers. The law is very strict, and the penalties are so great that I was told no one dared attempt an evasion of the excise duties, except by bribing the collector. The hotel was full of people waiting for the boat, and the accommodations were quite limited. We thought the tarantass preferable to the hotel, and retired early to sleep in our carriage. A teamster tied his horses to our wheels, and as the brutes fell to kicking during the night, and attempted to break away, they disturbed our slumbers. I rose at daybreak and watched the yemshicks making their toilet. The whole operation was performed by tightening the girdle and rubbing the half-opened eyes. Morning brought no boat. There was nothing very interesting after we had breakfasted, and as we might be detained there a whole week, the prospect was not charming. We organized a hunting excursion, Maack with his gun and I with my revolver. I assaulted the magpies which were numerous and impertinent, and succeeded in frightening them. Gulls were flying over the lake; Maack desired one for his cabinet at Irkutsk, but couldn't get him. He brought down an enormous crow, and an imprudent hawk that pursued a small bird in our vicinity. His last exploit was in shooting a partridge which alighted, strange to say, on the roof of the hotel within twenty feet of a noisy crowd of yemshicks. The bird was of a snowy whiteness, the Siberian partridge changing from brown to white at the beginning of winter, and from white to brown again as the snow disappears. A "soudna" or sailing barge was anchored at the entrance of a little bay, and was being filled with tea to be transported to Irkutsk. The soudna is a bluff-bowed, broad sterned craft, a sort of cross between Noah's Ark and a Chinese junk. It is strong but not elegant, and might sail backward or sidewise nearly as well as ahead. Its carrying capacity is great in proportion to its length, as it is very wide and its sides rise very high above the water. Every soudna I saw had but one mast which carried a square sail. These vessels can only sail with the wind, and then not very rapidly. An American pilot boat could pass a thousand of them without half trying. About noon we saw a thin wreath of smoke betokening the approach of the steamer. In joy at this welcome sight we dined and bought tickets for the passage, ours of the first class being printed in gold, while Evan's billet for the deck was in Democratic black. It cost fifteen roubles for the transport of each tarantass, but our baggage was taken free, and we were not even required to unload it. [Illustration: A SOUDNA.] There is no wharf at Posolsky and no harbor, the steamers anchoring in the open water half a mile from shore. Passengers, mails, and baggage are taken to the steamer in large row boats, while heavy freight is carried in soudnas. The boat that took us brought a convoy of exiles before we embarked. They formed a double line at the edge of the lake where they were closely watched by their guards. When we reached the steamer we found another party of prisoners waiting to go on shore. All were clad in sheepskin pelisses and some carried extra garments. Several women and children accompanied the party, and I observed two or three old men who appeared little able to make a long journey. One sick man too feeble to walk, was supported by his guards and his fellow prisoners. Though there was little wind, and that little blew from shore, the boat danced uneasily on the waves. Our carriages came off on the last trip of the boat, and were hoisted by means of a running tackle on one of the steamer's yards. While our embarkation was progressing a crew of Russians and Bouriats towed the now laden soudna to a position near our stern. When all was ready, we took her hawser, hoisted our anchor and steamed away. For some time I watched the low eastern shore of the lake until it disappeared in the distance. Posolsky has a monastery built on the spot where a Russian embassador with his suite was murdered by Bouriats about the year 1680. The last objects I saw behind me were the walls, domes, and turrets of this monastery glistening in the afternoon sunlight. They rose clear and distinct on the horizon, an outwork of Christianity against the paganism of Eastern Asia. The steamer was the _Ignalienif_, a side wheel boat of about 300 tons. Her model was that of an ocean or coasting craft, she had two masts, and could spread a little sail if desired. Her engines were built at Ekaterineburg in the Ural Mountains, and hauled overland 2500 miles. She and her sister boat, the _General Korsackoff_, are very profitable to their owners during the months of summer. They carry passengers, mails, and light freight, and nearly always have one or two soudnas in tow. Their great disadvantage at present is the absence of a port on the eastern shore. The navigation of Lake Baikal is very difficult. Storms arise with little warning, and are often severe. At times the boats are obliged to remain for days in the middle of the lake as they cannot always make the land while a gale continues. There was very little breeze when we crossed, but the steamer was tossed quite roughly. The winds blowing from the mountains along the lake, frequently sweep with great violence and drive unlucky soudnas upon the rocks. The water of the lake is so clear that one can see to a very great depth. The lake is nearly four hundred miles long by about thirty or thirty-five in width; it is twelve hundred feet above the sea level, and receives nearly two hundred tributaries great and small. Its outlet, the Angara, is near the southwestern end, and is said to carry off not more than a tenth of the water that enters the lake. What becomes of the surplus is a problem no one has been able to solve. The natives believe there is an underground passage to the sea, and sonic geologists favor this opinion. Soundings of 2000 feet have been made without finding bottom. On the western shore the mountains rise abruptly from the water, and in some places no bottom has been found at 400 feet depth, within pistol shot of the bank. This fact renders navigation dangerous, as a boat might be driven on shore in even a light breeze before her anchors found holding ground. The natives have many superstitions concerning Lake Baikal. In their language it is the "Holy Sea," and it would be sacrilege to term it a lake. Certainly it has several marine peculiarities. Gulls and other ocean birds frequent its shores, and it is the only body of fresh water on the globe where the seal abounds. Banks of coral like those in tropical seas exist in its depths. [Illustration: AFTER THE EARTHQUAKE.] The mountains on the western shore are evidently of volcanic origin, and earthquakes are not unfrequent. A few years ago the village of Stepnoi, about twenty miles from the mouth of the Selenga, was destroyed by an earthquake. Part of the village disappeared beneath the water while another part after sinking was lifted twenty or thirty feet above its original level. Irkutsk has been frequently shaken at the foundations, and on one occasion the walls of its churches were somewhat damaged. Around Lake Baikal there are several hot springs, some of which attract fashionable visitors from Irkutsk during the season. [Illustration: LAKE BAIKAL IN WINTER] The natives say nobody was ever lost in Lake Baikal. When a person is drowned there the waves invariably throw his body on shore. The lake does not freeze until the middle of December, and sometimes later. Its temperature remains pretty nearly the same at all seasons, about 48° Fahrenheit. In winter it is crossed on the ice, the passage ordinarily occupying about five hours. The lake generally freezes when the air is perfectly still so that the surface is of glossy smoothness until covered with snow. A gentleman in Irkutsk described to me his feelings when he crossed Lake Baikal in winter for the first time. The ice was six feet thick, but so perfectly transparent that he seemed driving over the surface of the water. The illusion was complete, and not wholly dispelled when he alighted. "Starting from the western side, the opposite coast was not visible, and I experienced" said my friend, "the sensation of setting out in a sleigh to cross the Atlantic from Liverpool to New York." In summer and in winter communication is pretty regular, but there is a suspension of travel when the ice is forming, and another when it breaks up. This causes serious inconvenience, and has led the government to build a road around the southern extremity of the lake. The mountains are lofty and precipitous, and the work is done at vast expense. The road winds over cliffs and crags sometimes near the lake and again two thousand feet above it. Largo numbers of peasants, Bouriats, and prisoners have been employed there for several years, but the route was not open for wheeled vehicles at the time I crossed the lake. One mode of cutting the road through the mountains was to build large bonfires in winter when the temperature was very low. The heat caused the rock to crack so that large masses could be removed, but the operation was necessarily slow. The insurrection of June, 1866, occurred on this road. Formerly a winter station was kept on the ice half-way across the lake. By a sudden thaw at the close of one winter the men and horses of a station were swallowed up, and nothing was known of them until weeks afterward, when their bodies were washed ashore. Since this catastrophe the entire passage of the lake, about forty miles, is made without change of horses. We left Posolsky and enjoyed a sunset on the lake. The mountains rise abruptly on the western and southeastern shores, and many of their snow covered peaks were beautifully tinged by the fading sunlight. The illusion regarding distances was difficult to overcome, and could only be realized by observing how very slowly we neared the mountains we were approaching. The atmosphere was of remarkable purity, and its powers of refraction reminded me of past experience in the Rocky Mountains. We had sunset and moon-rise at once. 'Adam had no more in Eden save the head of Eve upon his shoulder.' The boat went directly across and then followed the edge of the lake to Listvenichna, our point of debarkation. There was no table on board. We ordered the samovar, made our own tea, and supped from the last of our commissary stores. Our fellow passengers in the cabin were two officers traveling to Irkutsk, and a St. Petersburg merchant who had just finished the Amoor Company's affairs. We talked, ate, drank, smoked, and slept during the twelve hours' journey. Congratulate us on our quick passage! On her very next voyage the steamer was eight days on the lake, the wind blowing so that she could not come to either shore. To be cooped on this dirty and ill-provided boat long enough to cross the Atlantic is a fate I hope never to experience. There is a little harbor at Listvenichna and we came alongside a wharf. Maack departed with our papers to procure horses, and left me to look at the vanishing crowd. Take the passengers from the steerage of a lake or river steamer in America, dress them in sheepskin coats and caps, let them talk a language you cannot understand, and walk them into a cloud of steam as if going overboard in a fog, and you have a passable reproduction of the scene. A bright fire should be burning on shore to throw its contrast of light and shadow over the surroundings and heighten the picturesque effect. Just as the deck hands were rolling our carriages on shore my companion returned, and announced our horses ready. We sought a little office near the head of the wharf where the chief of the '_tamojna_' (custom house) held his court. This official was known to Mr. Maack, and on our declaring that we had no dutiable effects we were passed without search. As before remarked all the country east of Lake Baikal is open to free trade. This result has been secured by the efforts of the present governor general of Eastern Siberia. Under his liberal and enlightened policy he has done much to break down the old restrictions and develop the resources of a country over which he holds almost autocratic power. It was about three in the morning when we started over the frozen earth. Two miles from the landing we reached the custom house barrier where a pole painted with the government colors stretched across the road. Presenting our papers from the chief officer we were not detained. On the steamer when we were nearing harbor our conversation turned upon the custom house. It was positively asserted that the officials were open to pecuniary compliments, much, I presume like those in other lands. The gentleman from the Amoor had considerable baggage, and prepared a five rouble note to facilitate his business. Evidently he gave too little or did not bribe the right man, as I left him vainly imploring to be let alone in the centre of a pile of open baggage, like Marius in the ruins of Carthage. The road follows the right bank of the Angara from the point where it leaves the lake. The current here is very strong, and the river rushes and breaks like the rapids of the St. Lawrence. For several miles from its source it never freezes even in the coldest winters. During the season of ice this open space is the resort of many waterfowl, and is generally enveloped in a cloud of mist. At the head of the river rises a mass of rock known as _Shaman Kamen_ (spirit's rock). It is held in great veneration by the natives, and is believed to be the abode of a spirit who constantly overlooks the lake. When shamanism prevailed in this region many human sacrifices were made at the sacred rock. The most popular method was by tying the hands of the victim and tossing him into the 'hell of waters' below. Many varieties of fish abound in the lake, and ascend its tributary rivers. The fishery forms quite a business for the inhabitants of the region, who find a good market at Irkutsk. The principal fish taken are two or three varieties of sturgeon, the herring, pike, carp, the _askina_, and a white fish called _tymain_. There is a remarkable fish consisting of a mass of fat that burns like a candle and melts away in the heat of the sun or a fire. It is found dead on the shores of the lake after violent storms. A live one has never been seen. [Illustration: A SPECIMEN.] The distance to Irkutsk from our landing was about forty miles, and we hoped to arrive in time for breakfast. A snow storm began about dayliglit, so that I did not see much of the wooded valley of the river. We met a train of sixty or seventy carts, each carrying a cask of vodki. This liquid misery was on its way to the Trans-Baikal, and the soudna which brought a load of tea would carry vodki as a return cargo. The clouds thinned and broke, the snow ceased falling, and the valley became distinct. While I admired its beauty, we reached the summit of a hill and I saw before me a cluster of glittering domes and turrets, rising from a wide bend in the Angara. At first I could discern only churches, but very soon I began to distinguish the streets, avenues, blocks, and houses of a city. We entered Irkutsk through its eastern gate, and drove rapidly along a wide street, the busiest I had yet seen in Asiatic Russia. Just as the sun burst in full splendor through the departing clouds, I alighted in the capital of Oriental Siberia, half around the world from my own home. [Illustration: TAIL PIECE--THE WORLD] CHAPTER XXXIV. As we entered the city a Cossack delivered a letter announcing that I was to be handed over to the police, who had a lodging ready for me. On learning of my presence at Kiachta the Governor General kindly requested an officer of his staff to share his rooms with me. Captain Paul, with whom I was quartered, occupied pleasant apartments overlooking the _gastinni-dvor_. He was leading a bachelor life in a suite of six rooms, and had plenty of space at my disposal. That I might lose no time, the Chief of Police stationed the Cossack with a letter telling me where to drive. I removed the dust and costume of travel as soon as possible, and prepared to pay my respects to the Governor General. My presentation was postponed to the following day, and as the Russian etiquette forbade my calling on other officials before I had seen the chief, there was little to be done in the matter of visiting. The next morning I called upon General Korsackoff, delivered my letters of introduction, and was most cordially welcomed to Irkutsk. The Governor General of Eastern Siberia controls a territory larger than all European Russia, and much of it is not yet out of its developing stage. He has a heavy responsibility upon his shoulders in leading his subjects in the way best for their interests and those of the crown. Much has been done under the energetic administration of General Korsackoff and his predecessor, and there is room to accomplish much more. The general has ably withstood the cares and hardships of his Siberian life. He is forty-five years of age, active and vigorous, and capable of doing much before his way of life is fallen into the sere and yellow leaf. Like Madame De Stael, he possesses the power of putting visitors entirely at their ease. To my single countrywomen I will whisper that General Korsackoff is of about medium height, has a fair complexion, blue eyes, and Saxon hair, and a face which the most crabbed misanthrope could not refuse to call handsome. He is unmarried, and if rumor tells the truth, not under engagement. [Illustration: GOV. GEN'L KORSACKOFF.] The Governor General lives in a spacious and elegant house on the bank of the Angara, built by a merchant who amassed an immense fortune in the Chinese trade. On retiring from business he devoted his time and energies to constructing the finest mansion in Eastern Siberia. It is a stone building of three stories, and its halls and parlors are of liberal extent. Furniture was brought from St. Petersburg at enormous cost, and the whole establishment was completed without regard to expense. At the death of its builder the house was purchased by government, and underwent a few changes to adapt it to its official occupants. On the opposite bank of the river there is a country seat, the private property of General Korsackoff, and his dwelling place in the hot months. It was my good fortune that Mr. Maack was obliged by etiquette to visit his friends on returning from his journey. I arranged to accompany him, and during that day and the next we called upon many persons of official and social position. These included the Governor and Vice Governor of Irkutsk, the chief of staff and heads of departments, the mayor of the city, and the leading merchants. Succeeding days were occupied in receiving return visits, and when these were ended I was fairly a member of the society of the Siberian capital. The evening after my arrival I returned early to my lodgings to indulge in a Russian bath. Captain Paul was absent, but his servant managed to inform me by words and pantomime that all was ready. On the captain's return the man said he had told me in German that the bath was waiting. "How did you speak German?" asked the captain, aware that his man knew nothing but Russian. "Oh," said the servant, "I rubbed my hands over my face and arms and pointed toward the bath-room." On the morning after my arrival the proprietor of the house asked for my passport; when it returned it bore the visa of the chief of police. There is a regulation throughout Russia that every hotel keeper or other householder shall register his patrons with the police. By this means the authorities can trace the movements of '_suspects_' and prevent unlicensed travel. In Siberia the plan is particularly valuable in keeping exiles on the spots assigned them. At St. Petersburg and Moscow the police keep a directory and hold it open to the public. When I reached the capital and wished to find some friends who arrived a few days before me, I obtained their address from this directory. Those who sought my whereabouts found me in the same way. The weather was steadily cold--about zero Fahrenheit--and was called mild for the season by the residents of Irkutsk. I brought from New York a heavy overcoat that braved the storms of Broadway the winter before my departure. My Russian friends pronounced it _nechevo_ (nothing,) and advised me to procure a '_shooba,_' or cloak lined with fur. The shooba reaches nearly to one's feet, and is better adapted to riding than walking. It can be lined according to the means and liberality of the wearer. Sable is most expensive, and sheepskin the least. Both accomplish the same end, as they contain about equal quantities of heat. The streets of Irkutsk are of good width and generally intersect at right angles. Most of the buildings are of wood, and usually large and well built. The best houses are of stone, or of brick covered with plaster to resemble stone. Very few dwellings are entered directly from the street, the outer doors opening into yards according to the Russian custom. To visit a person you pass into an enclosure through a strong gateway, generally open by day but closed at night. A '_dvornik_' (doorkeeper) has the control of this gate, and is responsible for everything within it. Storehouses and all other buildings of the establishment open upon the enclosure, and frequently two or more houses have one gate in common. The stores or magazines are numerous, and well supplied with European goods. Some of the stocks are very large, and must require heavy capital or excellent credit to manage them. Tailors and milliners are abundant, and bring their modes from Paris. Occasionally they paint their signs in French, and display the latest novelties from the center of fashion. Bakers are numerous and well patronized. '_Frantsooski kleb_,' (French bread,) which is simply white bread made into rolls, is popular and largely sold in Irkutsk. One of my daily exercises in Russian was to spell the signs upon the stores. In riding I could rarely get more than half through a word before I was whisked out of sight. I never before knew how convenient are symbolic signs to a man who cannot read. A picture of a hat, a glove, or a loaf of bread was far more expressive to my eye than the word _shapka_, _perchatki_, or _kleb_, printed in Russian letters. The Russians smoke a great deal of tobacco in paper cigarettes or '_papiros_.' Everywhere east of Lake Baikal the papiros of Irkutsk is in demand, and the manufacture there is quite extensive. In Irkutsk and to the westward the brand of Moscow is preferred. The consumption of tobacco in this form throughout the empire must be something enormous. I have known a party of half a dozen persons to smoke a hundred cigarettes in an afternoon and evening. Many ladies indulge in smoking, but the practice is not universal. I do not remember any unmarried lady addicted to it. Irkutsk was founded in 1680, and has at present a population of twenty-eight or thirty thousand. About four thousand gold miners spend the winter and their money in the city. Geographically it is in Latitude 52° 40' north, and Longitude 104° 20' east from Greenwich. Little wind blows there, and storms are less frequent than at Moscow or St. Petersburg. The snows are not abundant, the quantity that falls being smaller than in Boston and very much less than in Montreal or Quebec. In summer or winter the panorama of Irkutsk and its surroundings is one of great beauty. [Illustration: VIEW IN IRKUTSK.] There are twenty or more churches, of which nearly all are large and finely placed. Several of them were planned and constructed by two Swedish engineer officers captured at Pultawa and exiled to Siberia. They are excellent monuments of architectural skill, and would be ornamental to any European city. The Angara at Irkutsk is about six hundred yards wide, and flows with a current of six miles an hour. It varies in height not more than ten or twelve inches during the entire year. It does not freeze until the middle of January, and opens early in May. There are two swinging ferries for crossing the river. A stout cable is anchored in mid-stream, and the ferry-boat attached to its unanchored end. The slack of the cable is buoyed by several small boats, over which it passes at regular intervals. The ferry swings like a horizontal pendulum, and is propelled by turning its sides at an angle against the current. I crossed on this ferry in four minutes from bank to bank. There are many public carriages in the streets, to be hired at thirty copecks the hour; but the drivers, like their profession everywhere, are inclined to overcharge. Every one who thinks he can afford it, keeps a team of his own, the horses being generally of European stock. A few horses have been brought from St. Petersburg; the journey occupies a full year, and the animals, when safely arrived, are very costly. Private turnouts are neat and showy, and on a fine afternoon the principal drives of the city are quite gay. General Korsackoff has a light wagon from New York for his personal driving in summer. I found here a curious regulation. Sleighs are prohibited by municipal law from carrying bells in the limits of the city. Reason: in a great deal of noise pedestrians might be run over. In American cities the law requires bells to be worn. Reason: unless there is a noise pedestrians might be run over. "You pays your money and you takes your choice." Cossack policemen watch the town during the day, and at night there are mounted and foot patrols carrying muskets with fixed bayonets. Every block and sometimes every house has its private watchman, and at regular intervals during the night you may hear these guardians thumping their long staves on the pavement to assure themselves and others that they are awake. The fire department belongs to the police, and its apparatus consists of hand engines, water carts, and hook and ladder wagons. There are several watch towers, from which a semaphore telegraph signals the existence of fire. An electric apparatus was being arranged during my stay. During my visit there was an alarm of fire, and I embraced the opportunity to see how the Russians 'run with the machine.' When I reached the street the engines and water carts were dashing in the direction of the fire. The water carts were simply large casks mounted horizontally on four wheels; a square hole in the top served to admit a bucket or a suction hose. Those carts bring water from the nearest point of supply, which may be the river or an artificial reservoir, according to the locality of the fire. Engines and carts are drawn by horses, which appear well selected for strength and activity. All the firemen wore brass helmets. The burning house was small and quite disengaged from others, and as there was no wind there was no danger of a serious conflagration. The Chief of Police directed the movements of his men. The latter worked their engines vigorously, but though the carts kept in active motion the supply of water was not equal to the demand. For some time it seemed doubtful which would triumph, the flames or the police. Fortune favored the brave. The building was saved, though in a condition of incipient charcoalism. The Chief of Police wore his full uniform and decorations as the law requires of him when on duty. During the affair he was thoroughly spattered with water and covered with dirt and cinders. When he emerged he presented an appearance somewhat like that of a butterfly after passing through a sausage machine. A detachment of soldiers came to the spot but did not form a cordon around it. Every spectator went as near the fire as he thought prudent, but was careful not to get in the way. Two or three thousand officers, soldiers, merchants, exiles, moujiks, women, boys, and beggars gathered in the street to look at the display. The Russian fire engines and water carts with their complement of men, and each drawn by three horses abreast, present a picturesque appearance as they dash through the streets. The engines at Irkutsk are low-powered squirts, worked by hand, less effective than the hand engines used in America twenty or thirty years ago, and far behind our steamers of the present day. In Moscow and St. Petersburg the fire department has been greatly improved during the past ten years, and is now quite efficient. The markets of Irkutsk are well supplied with necessaries of life. Beef is abundant and good, at an average retail price of seven copecks a pound. Fish and game are plentiful, and sell at low figures. The _rebchik_, or wood-hen, is found throughout Siberia, and is much cheaper in the market than any kind of domestic fowl. Pork, veal, and mutton are no more expensive than beef, and all vegetables of the country are at corresponding rates. In fact if one will eschew European luxuries he can live very cheaply at Irkutsk. Everything that comes from beyond the Urals is expensive, on account of the long land carriage. Champagne costs five or six roubles a bottle, and a great quantity of it is drank. Sherry is from two to seven roubles according to quality, and the same is the case with white and red wines. The lowest price of sugar is thirty copecks the pound, and it is oftener forty-five or fifty. Porter and ale cost two or three roubles a bottle, and none but the best English brands are drank. The wines are almost invariably excellent, and any merchant selling even a few cases of bad wine would very likely lose his trade. Clothes and all articles of personal wear cost about as much as in St. Louis or New Orleans. Labor is neither abundant nor scarce. A good man-servant receives ten to fifteen roubles a month with board. Wood comes in soudnas from the shores of Lake Baikal and is very cheap. These vessels descend the river by the force of the current, but in going against it are towed by horses. The principal market place is surrounded with shops where a varied and miscellaneous lot of merchandise is sold. I found ready-made clothing, crockery, boots, whisky, hats, furniture, flour, tobacco, and so on through a long list of saleable and unsaleable articles. How such a mass could find customers was a puzzle. Nearly all the shops are small and plain, and there are many stalls or stands which require but a small capital to manage. A great deal of haggling takes place in transactions at these little establishments, and I occasionally witnessed some amusing scenes. The best time to view the market is on Sunday morning, when the largest crowd is gathered. My first visit was made one Sunday when the thermometer stood at -15° Fahrenheit. The market houses and the open square were full of people, and the square abounded in horses and sleds from the country. A great deal of traffic was conducted on these sleds or upon the solid snow-packed earth. The crowd comprised men, women, and children of all ages and all conditions in life. Peasants from the country and laborers from the city, officers, tradesmen, heads of families, and families without heads, busy men, and idlers, were mingled as at a popular gathering in City Hall Park. Everybody was in warm garments, the lower classes wearing coats and pelisses of sheepskin, while the others were in furs more or less expensive. Occasionally a drunken man was visible, but there were no indications of a tendency to fight. The intoxicated American, eight times out of ten, endeavors to quarrel with somebody, but our Muscovite neighbor is of a different temperament. When drunk he falls to caressing and gives kisses in place of blows. [Illustration: A COLD ATTACHMENT.] The most novel sight that day in the market at Irkutsk was the embrace of two drunken peasants. They kissed each other so tenderly and so long that the intense cold congealed their breath and froze their beards together. I left them as they were endeavoring to arrange a separation. A few beggars circulated in the crowd and gathered here and there a copeck. The frost whitened the beards of the men and reddened the cheeks of the women. Where hands were bared to the breeze they were of a corned-beefy hue, and there were many persons stamping on the ground or swinging their arms to keep up a circulation. The little horses, standing, were white with frost, but none of them covered with blankets. The Siberian horses are not blanketed in winter, but I was told they did not suffer from cold. Their coats are thick and warm and frequently appear more like fur than hair. Everything that could be frozen had succumbed to the frost. There were frozen chickens, partridges, and other game, thrown in heaps like bricks or stove wood. Beef, pork, and mutton, were alike solid, and some of the vendors had placed their animals in fantastic positions before freezing them. In one place I saw a calf standing as if ready to walk away. His skin remained, and at first sight I thought him alive, but was undeceived when a man overturned the unresisting beast. Frozen fish were piled carelessly in various places, and milk was offered for sale in cakes or bricks. A stick or string was generally frozen into a corner of the mass to facilitate carrying. One could swing a quart of milk at his side or wrap it in his kerchief at discretion. There were many peripatetic dealers in cakes and tea, the latter carrying small kettles of the hot beverage, which they served in tumblers. Occasionally there was a man with a whole litter of sucking pigs frozen solid and slung over his shoulder or festooned into a necklace. The diminutive size of these pigs awakened reflections upon the brevity of swinish life. CHAPTER XXXV. Custom is the same at Irkutsk as in all fashionable society of the empire. Visits of ceremony are made in full dress-uniform for an officer and evening costume for a civilian. Ceremonious calls are pretty short, depending of course upon the position and intimacy of the parties. The Russians are very punctilious in making and receiving visits. So many circumstances are to be considered that I was always in dread of making a mistake of etiquette somewhere. Nearly all my acquaintances in Irkutsk spoke French or English, though comparatively few conversed with me in the latter tongue. The facility with which the Russians acquire language has been often remarked. Almost all Russians who possess any education, are familiar with at least one language beside their own. Very often I found a person conversant with two foreign languages, and it was no unusual thing to find one speaking three. I knew a young officer at Irkutsk who spoke German, French, English, and Swedish, and had a very fair smattering of Chinese, Manjour, and Japanese. A young lady there conversed well and charmingly in English, French, and German and knew something of Italian. It was more the exception than the rule that I met an officer with whom I could not converse in French. French is the society language of the Russian capital, and one of the first requisites in education. Children are instructed almost from infancy. Governesses are generally French or English, and conversation with their charges is rarely conducted in Russian. Tutors are generally Germans familiar with French. There is no other country in the world where those who can afford it are so attentive to the education of their children. This attention added to the peculiar temperament of the Russians makes them the best linguists in the world. An English gentleman and lady, the latter speaking Russian fluently, lived in Siberia several years. During their sojourn a son was born to them. It was a long time before he began talking, so long in fact, that his parents feared he would be dumb. When he commenced he was very soon fluent in both English and Russian. His long hesitation was doubtless caused by the confusion of two languages. [Illustration: QUEEN OF GREECE.] The present emperor is an accomplished linguist, but no exception in this particular to the Imperial family in general. The Queen of Greece, a niece of the Emperor of Russia, is said to be very prompt to learn a new language whenever it comes in her way, and when she was selected for that royal position she conquered the greek language in a very short time. French is the leading foreign language among the Russians, and the second rank is held by the German. Of late years English has become very popular, and is being rapidly acquired. The present _entente cordiale_ between Russia and the United States is exerting an influence for the increased study of our language. Why should we not return the compliment and bestow a little attention upon the Slavonic tongue? Most persons in society at Irkutsk were from European Russia or had spent some time in Moscow at St. Petersburg. Of the native born Siberians there were few who had not made a journey beyond the Ural Mountains. Among the officials, St. Petersburg was usually the authority in the matter of life and habit, while the civilians turned their eyes toward Moscow. Society in Irkutsk was not less polished than in the capitals, and it possessed the advantage of being somewhat more open and less rigid than under the shadow of the Imperial palace. Etiquette is etiquette in any part of the empire, and its forms must everywhere be observed. But after the social forms were complied, with there was less stiffness than in European Russia. Some travelers declare that they found Siberian society more polished than that of Old Russia. On this point I cannot speak personally, as my stay in the western part of the empire was too brief to afford much insight into its life. There may be some truth in the statement. Siberia has received a great many individuals of high culture in the persons of its political exiles. Men of liberal education, active intellects, and refined manners have been in large proportion among the banished Poles, and the exiles of 1825 included many of Russia's ablest minds. The influence of these exiles upon the intelligence, habits, and manners of the Siberians, has left an indelible mark. As a new civilization is more plastic than an old one, so the society of Northern Asia may have become more polished than that of Ancient Russia. I could learn of only six of my countrymen who had been at Irkutsk before me. Of these all but two passed through the city with little delay, and were seen by very few persons. I happened to reach Siberia when our iron-clad fleet was at Cronstadt, and its officers were being feasted at St. Petersburg and elsewhere. The Siberians regretted that Mr. Fox and his companions could not visit them, and experience their hospitality. So they determined to expend their enthusiasm on the first American that appeared, and rather unexpectedly I became the recipient of the will of the Siberians toward the United States. Two days after my arrival I was visited by Mr. Hamenof, one of the wealthiest merchants of Irkutsk. As he spoke only Russian, he was accompanied by my late fellow-traveler who came to interpret between us, and open the conversation with-- "Mr. Hamenof presents his compliments, and wishes you to dine with him day after to-morrow." I accepted the invitation, and the merchant departed. Maack informed me that the dinner would be a ceremonious one, attended by the Governor General and leading officials. About forty persons were present, and seated according to rank. The tables were set on three sides of a square apartment, the post of honor being in the central position facing the middle of the room. The dinner was served in the French manner, and but for the language and uniforms around me, and a few articles in the bill of fare, I could have thought myself in a private parlor of the _Trois Freres_ or the _Cafe Anglais_. Madame Ditmar, the wife of the governor of the Trans-Baikal, was the only lady present. When the champagne appeared, Mr. Hamenof proposed "The United States of America," and prefaced his toast with a little speech to his Russian guests. I proposed the health of the Emperor, and then the toasts became irregular and applied to the Governor General, the master of the house, the ladies of Siberia, the Russo-American Telegraph, and various other persons, objects, and enterprises. From the dinner table we adjourned to the parlors where tea and coffee were brought, and most of the guests were very soon busy at the card tables. On reaching my room late at night, I found a Russian document awaiting me, and with effort and a dictionary, I translated it into an invitation to an official dinner with General Korsackoff. Five minutes before the appointed hour I accompanied a friend to the Governor General's house. As we entered, servants in military garb took our shoobas, and we were ushered into a large parlor. General Korsackoff and many of the invited guests were assembled in the parlor, and within two minutes the entire party had gathered. As the clock struck five the doors were thrown open, and the general led the way to the dining hall. I found at Irkutsk a great precision respecting appointments. When dinners were to come off at a fixed hour all the guests assembled from three to ten minutes before the time specified. I never knew any one to come late, and all were equally careful not to come early. No one could be more punctual than General Korsackoff, and his example was no doubt carefully watched and followed. It is a rule throughout official circles in Russia, if I am correctly informed, that tardiness implies disrespect. Americans might take a few lessons of the Russians on the subject of punctuality. [Illustration: EMPEROR OF RUSSIA.] The table was liberally decorated with flowers and plants, and the whole surroundings were calculated to make one forget that he was in cold and desolate Siberia. A band of music was stationed in the adjoining parlor, and furnished us with Russian and American airs. At the first toast General Korsackoff made a speech in Russian, recounting the amity existing between the two nations and the visit of our special embassy to congratulate the Emperor on his escape from assassination. He thought the Siberians felt no less grateful at this mark of sympathy than did the people of European Russia, and closed by proposing, "The President, Congress, and People of the United States." The toast was received with enthusiasm, the band playing Yankee Doodle as an accompaniment to the cheering. The speech was translated to me by Captain Linden, the private Secretary of the Governor General, who spoke French and English fluently. Etiquette required me to follow with a toast to the emperor in my little speech. I spoke slowly to facilitate the hearing of those who understood English. The Captain then translated it into Russian. General Korsackoff spoke about four minutes, and I think my response was of the same length. Both speeches were considered quite elaborate by the Siberians, and one officer declared it was the longest dinner-table address the general ever made. Two days later at another dinner I asked a friend to translate my remarks when I came to speak. He asked how long I proposed talking. "About three minutes," was my reply. "Oh," said he, "you had better make it one or two minutes. You made a long speech at the Governor General's, and when you dine with a person of less importance he will not expect you to speak as much." I had not taken this view of the matter, as the American custom tends to brevity on the ascending rather than on the descending scale. Ten years earlier Major Collins dined with General Mouravieff in the same hall where I was entertained. After dinner I heard a story at the expense of my enterprising predecessor. It is well known that the Major is quite a speech maker at home, and when he is awakened on a favorite subject he has no lack either of ideas or words. On the occasion just mentioned, General Mouravieff gave the toast, "Russia and America," Major Collins rose to reply and after speaking six or eight minutes came to a pause. Captain Martinoff, who understood English, was seated near the Major. As the latter stopped, General Mouravieff turned to the Captain and asked: "Will you be kind enough to translate what has been said?" "_Blagodariete_," (he thanks you) said the captain. The Major proceeded six or eight minutes more and paused again. "Translate," was the renewed command of the Governor General. "He thanks you very much." Again another period of speech and the address was finished. "Translate if you please," the general suggested once more to his aid. "He thanks you very much indeed." The Major was puzzled, and turning to Captain Martinoff remarked that the Russian language must be very comprehensive when a speech of twenty minutes could be translated in three or four words. On days when I was disengaged I dined at the _Amoorski Gastinitza_ or Amoor Hotel. The hotel comprised two buildings, one containing the rooms of lodgers, and the other devoted to restaurant, dining and billiard rooms. In the dining department there were several rooms, a large one for a restaurant and table d'hote, and the rest for private parties. Considering the general character of Russian hotels the one at Irkutsk was quite creditable. In its management, cookery, and service it would compare favorably with the establishments on Courtlandt Street or Park Row. In the billiard room there were two tables on which I sometimes complied with a request to 'show the American game.' The tables had six pockets each, and as the cues had no leather tips, there was an unpleasant clicking whenever they wore used. The Russian game of billiards is played with five balls, and the science consists in pocketing the balls. The carom does not count. The first time I dined at the hotel the two candles burned dimly, and we called for a third. When it was brought the servant drew a small table near us and placed the extra candle upon it. I asked the reason for his doing so, and it was thus explained. There is a superstition in Russia that if three lighted candles are placed upon a table some one in the room will die within a year. Everybody endeavors to avoid such a calamity. If you have two candles and order another, the servant will place the third on a side table or he will bring a fourth and make your number an even one. There was formerly a theatre at Irkutsk, but it was burned a few years ago, and has not been rebuilt. During my stay there was a musical concert in the large hall of the officers' club, and a theatrical display was prepared but not concluded before my departure. At the concert a young officer, Captain Lowbry, executed on the piano several pieces of his own composition, and was heartily applauded by the listeners. Once a week there was a social party at the club house where dancing, cards, billiards, and small talk continued till after midnight. Nearly every one in society kept 'open house' daily. In most of the families where I was acquainted tea was taken at 8 P.M., and any friend could call at that hour without ceremony. The samovar was placed on the table, and one of the ladies presided over the tea. Those who wished it could sit at table, but there was no formal spreading of the cloth. Tea was handed about the room and each one took it at his liking. I have seen in these social circles a most pleasing irregularity in tea drinking. Some were seated on sofas and chairs, holding cups and saucers in their hands or resting them upon tables; other stood in groups of two, three, or more; others were at cards, and sipped their tea at intervals of the games; and a few were gathered around the hostess at the samovar. The time passed in whatever amusements were attainable. There were cards for some and conversation for others, with piano music, little dances and general sports of considerable variety. Those evenings at Irkutsk were delightful, and I shall always remember them with pleasure. What with visits, dinners, balls, suppers, social evenings, and sleigh rides, I had little time to myself, and though I economized every minute I did not succeed in finishing my letters and journal until the very day before my departure. The evening parties lasted pretty late. They generally closed with a supper toward the wee small hours, and the good nights were not spoken until about two in the morning. There is a peculiarity about a Russian party,--whether a quiet social assemblage or a stately ball,--that the whole house is thrown open. In America guests are confined to the parlors and the dancing and supper apartments, from the time they leave the cloaking rooms till they prepare for departure. In Russia they can wander pretty nearly where they please, literally "up stairs, down stairs, or in my lady's chamber." Of course all the rooms are prepared for visitors, but I used at first to feel a shrinking sensation when I sauntered into the private study and work room of my official host, or found myself among the scent bottles and other toilet treasures of a lady acquaintance. This literal keeping of 'open house' materially assists to break the stiffness of an assemblage though it can hardly be entirely convenient to the hosts. Immediately after my entertainment with General Korsackoff, the mayor of Irkutsk invited me to an official dinner at his house. This was followed a few days later by a similar courtesy on the part of Mr. Trepaznikoff, the son of a wealthy merchant who died a few years ago. Private dinners followed in rapid succession until I was qualified to speak with practical knowledge of the Irkutsk cuisine. No stranger in a strange land was ever more kindly taken in, and no hospitality was ever bestowed with less ostentation. I can join in the general testimony of travelers that the Russians excel in the ability to entertain visitors. Mr. Kartesheftsoff, the Mayor, or _Golovah_ as he is called, resided in a large house that formerly belonged to Prince Trubetskoi, one of the exiles of 1825. My host was an extensive owner of gold mines, and had been very successful in working them. He was greatly interested in the means employed in California for separating gold from earth, and especially in the 'hydraulic' process. On my first visit Madame Kartesheftsoff spoke very little French. She must have submitted her studies to a thorough revision as I found her a week later able to conduct a conversation with ease. There were other instances of a vigorous overhauling of disused French and English that furnished additional proof of the Russian adaptability to foreign tongues. To reach the golovah's house we crossed, the Ouska-kofka, a small river running through the northern part of Irkutsk; it had been recently frozen, and several rosy-cheeked boys were skating on the ice. The view from the bridge is quite picturesque, and the little valley forms a favorite resort in certain seasons of the year. The water of the Ouska-kofka is said to be denser than that of the Angara, and on that account is preferred for culinary purposes. [Illustration: TAIL PIECE--TWIN BOTTLES] CHAPTER XXXVI. I have made occasional mention of the exiles of 1825, and it may be well to explain how they went to Siberia. In the early part of the present century Russia was not altogether happy. The Emperor Paul, called to the throne by the death of Catherine II., did not display marked ability, but, 'on the contrary, quite the reverse.' What his mother had done for the improvement of the country he was inclined to undo. Under his reign great numbers were banished to Siberia upon absurd charges or mere caprice. The emperor issued manifestoes of a whimsical character, one of which was directed against round hats, and another against shoe strings. The glaring colors now used upon bridges, distance posts, watch boxes, and other imperial property, were of his selection, and so numerous were his eccentricities that he was declared of unsound mind. In March, 1801, he was smothered in his palace, which he had just completed. It is said that within an hour after the fact of his death was known round hats appeared on the street in great numbers. Alexander I. endeavored to repair some of the evils of his father's reign. He recalled many exiles from Siberia, suppressed the secret inquisition, and restored many rights of which the people had been deprived. His greatest abilities were displayed during the wars with France. After the general peace he devoted himself to inspecting and developing the resources of the country, and was the first, and thus far the only, emperor of Russia to cross the Ural Mountains and visit the mines of that region. His death occurred during a tour through the southern provinces of the empire. Some of his reforms were based upon the principles of other European governments, which he endeavored to study. On his return from England he told his council that the best thing he saw there was the opposition in Parliament. He thought it a part of the government machinery, and regretted it could not be introduced in Russia. Constantine, the eldest brother of Alexander I., had relinquished his right to the crown, thus breaking the regular succession. From the time of Paul a revolutionary party had existed, and once at least it plotted the assassination of Alexander. There was an interregnum of three weeks between the death of Alexander and the assumption of power by his second brother, Nicholas. The change of succession strengthened the revolutionists, and they employed the interregnum to organize a conspiracy for seizing the government. The conspiracy was wide spread, and included many of the ablest men of the day. The army was seriously implicated. The revolutionists desired a constitutional government, and their rallying cry of "CONSTITUTIA!" was explained to the soldiers as the name of Constantine's wife. The real design of the movement was not confided to the rank and file, who supposed they were fighting for Constantine and the regular succession of the throne. Nicholas learned of the conspiracy the day before his ascension; the Imperial guard of the palace was in the plot, and expected to seize the emperor's person. The guard was removed during the night and a battalion from Finland substituted. It is said that on receiving intelligence of the assembling of the insurgents, the emperor called his wife to the chapel of the palace, where he spent a few moments in prayer. Then taking his son, the present emperor, he led him to the soldiers of the new guard, confided him to their protection, and departed for St. Isaac's Square to suppress the revolt. The soldiers kept the boy until the emperor's return, and would not even surrender him to his tutor. The plot was so wide-spread that the conspirators had good promise of success, but whole regiments backed out at the last moment and left only a forlorn hope to begin the struggle. Nicholas rode with his officers to St. Isaac's square, and twice commanded the assembled insurgents to surrender. They refused, and were then saluted with "the last argument of kings." A storm of grape shot, followed by a charge of cavalry, put in flight all who were not killed, and ended the insurrection. A long and searching investigation followed, disclosing all the ramifications of the plot. The conspirators declared they were led to what they undertook by the unfortunate condition of the country and the hope of improving it. Nicholas, concealed behind a screen, heard most of the testimony and confessions, and learned therefrom a wholesome lesson. The end of the affair was the execution of five principal conspirators and the banishment of many others to Siberia. The five that suffered capital punishment were hanged in front of the Admiralty buildings in St. Petersburg. One rope was broken, and the victim, falling to the ground, suffered such agony that the officer in charge of the execution sent to the emperor asking what to do. "Take a new rope and finish your duty," was the unpitying answer of Nicholas. The accession of Nicholas and the attempted revolt occurred on the 14th December, (O.S.) 1825. Within six months from that date the most of the conspirators reached Siberia. They were sent to different districts, some to labor in the mines for specified periods, and others to become colonists. They included some of the ablest men in Russia, and were nearly all young and enterprising. Many of them were married, and were followed into exile by their wives, though the latter were only permitted to go to Siberia on condition of never returning. Each of the exiles was deprived of all civil or political rights, and declared legally dead. His property was confiscated to the crown, and his wife considered a widow and could marry again if she chose. To the credit of the Russian women, not one availed herself of this privilege. I was told that nearly every married exile's family followed him, and some of the unmarried ones were followed by their sisters and mothers. I have previously spoken of the effect of the unfortunates of the 14th December upon the society and manners of Siberia. These men enjoyed good social positions, and their political faults did not prevent their becoming well received. Their sentence to labor in the mines was not rigorously enforced, and lasted but two or three years at farthest. They were subsequently employed at indoor work, and, as time wore on and passion subsided, were allowed to select residences in villages. Very soon they were permitted to go to the larger towns, and once there, those whose wives possessed property in their own right built themselves elegant houses and took the position to which their abilities entitled them. [Illustration: HOME OF TWO EXILES.] General Korsackoff told me that when he first went to serve in Siberia there was a ball one evening at the Governor General's. Noticing one man who danced the Mazurka splendidly, he whispered to General Mouravieff and asked his name. "That," said Mouravieff, "is a revolutionist of 1825. He is one of the best men of society in Irkutsk." After their first few years of exile, the Decembrists had little to complain of except the prohibition to return to Europe. To men whose youth was passed in brilliant society and amid the gayeties of the capital, this life in Siberia was no doubt irksome. Year after year went by, and on the twenty-fifth anniversary of their banishment they looked for pardon. Little else was talked of among them for some weeks, but they were doomed to disappointment. Nicholas had no forgiving disposition, and those who plotted his overthrow were little likely to obtain favor, even though a quarter of a century had elapsed since their crime. But the death of Nicholas and the coronation of Alexander II. wrought a change for the exiles. Nicholas began his reign with an act of severity; Alexander followed his ascension with one of clemency. By imperial ukase he pardoned the exiles of 1825, restored them to their civil and political rights, and permitted their return to Europe. As the fathers were legally dead when sent into exile, the children born to them in Siberia were illegitimate in the eye of the law and could not even bear their own family name. Properly they belonged to the government, and inherited their father's exile in not being permitted to go to Europe. The ukase removed all these disabilities and gave the children full authority to succeed to their father's hereditary titles and social and political rights. These exiles lived in different parts of Siberia, but chiefly in the governments of Irkutsk and Yeneseisk. But the thirty years of the reign of Nicholas were not uneventful. Death removed some of the unfortunates. Others had dwelt so long in Siberia that they did not wish to return to a society where they would be strangers. Some who were unmarried at the time of their exile had acquired families in Siberia, and thus fastened themselves to the country. Not more than half of those living at the time of Alexander's coronation availed themselves of his permission to return to Russia. The princes Trubetskoi and Volbonskoi hesitated for some time, but finally concluded to return. Both died in Europe quite recently. Their departure was regretted by many persons in Irkutsk, as their absence was quite a loss to society. I heard some curious reminiscences concerning the Prince Volbonskoi. It was said that his wife and children, with the servants, were the occupants of the large and elegant house, the prince living in a small building in the court yard. He had a farm near the town and sold the various crops to his wife. Both the princes paid great attention to educating their children and fitting them for ultimate social position in Europe. While in Irkutsk I saw one of the Decembrists who had grown quite wealthy as a wine merchant. Another of these exiles was mentioned, but I did not meet him. Another resided at Selenginsk, a third near Verkne Udinsk, and a fourth near Lake Baikal. There are several at other points, but I believe the whole number of the Decembrists now in Siberia is less than a dozen. Forty-two years have brought them to the brink of the grave, and very soon the active spirits of that unhappy revolt will have passed away. The other political exiles in Siberia are almost entirely Poles. Every insurrection in Poland adds to the population of Asiatic Russia, and accomplishes very little else. The revolt of 1831 was prolific in this particular, and so was that of 1863. Revolutions in Poland have been utterly hopeless of success since the downfall and division of the kingdom, but the Poles remain undaunted. I do not propose entering into a discussion of the Polish question, as it would occupy too much space and be foreign to the object of my book; but I will briefly touch a few points. The Russians and Poles were not inclined to amiability when both had separate governments. Europe has never been converted to Republican principles, and however much the Western powers may sympathize with Poland, they would be unwilling to adopt for themselves the policy they desire for Russia. England holds India and Ireland, regardless of the will of Indians and Irish. France has her African territory which did not ask to be taken under the tri-color, and we are all aware of the relations once held by her emperor toward Mexico. It is much easier to look for generosity and forbearance in others than in ourselves. Those who are disposed to shed tears over the fate of Poland, should remember that the unhappy country has only suffered the fortune of war. When Russia and Poland began to measure swords the latter was the more powerful, and for a time overran a goodly portion of the Muscovite soil. We all know there has been a partition of Poland, but are we equally aware that the Russia of Rurik and Ivan IV. was partitioned in 1612 by the Swedes (at Novgorod) and the Poles (at MOSCOW?) In 1612 the Poles held Moscow. The Russians rose against them in that year, just as the Poles have since risen against the Russians, but with a different result. The Polish exiles of 1881 and previous years were pardoned by the same ukase that liberated the Russian exiles of 1825. Just before the insurrection of 1863 there were not many Poles in Siberia, except those who remained of their own free will. The last insurrection caused a fresh deportation, twenty-four thousand being banished beyond the Ural Mountains. Ten thousand of these were sent to Eastern Siberia, the balance being distributed in the governments west of the Yenesei. The decree of June, 1867, allowed many of these prisoners to return to Poland. The government has always endeavored to scatter the exiles and prevent their congregating in such numbers as to cause inconvenience. The prime object of deportation to Siberia is to people the country and develop its natural wealth. Though Russia occupies nearly an eighth of the land on the face of the globe, her population numbers but about seventy millions. It is her policy to people her territory, and she bends her energies to this end. She does not allow the emigration of her subjects to any appreciable extent, and she punishes but few crimes with death. Notwithstanding her general tolerance on religious matters, she punishes with severity a certain sect that discourages propagation. There are other facts I might mention as illustrations were it not for the fastidiousness of the present age. Siberia is much more in need of population than European Russia, and exiles are sent thither to become inhabitants. So far as the matter of sentence goes there is little difference between political and criminal exiles. The sentence is in accordance with the offence to be punished, and may be light or severe. Some exiles are simply banished to Siberia, and can do almost anything except go away. They may travel as they choose, engage in business, and even hold official position. It is no bar to their progress that they emigrated involuntarily. If they forget their evil ways and are good citizens, others will be equally oblivious and encourage them. They have special inducements to become colonists and till the soil or develop its mineral wealth. With honesty and industry they have at least a fair chance in life. Some exiles are confined to certain districts, governments, towns, or villages, and must report at stated intervals to the Chief of Police. These intervals are not the same in all cases, but vary from one day to a month, or even more. Some are not allowed to go beyond specified limits without express permission from the authorities, while others may absent themselves as they choose during the intervals of reporting to the police. Some can engage in whatever business they find advantageous, while others are prohibited certain employments but not restricted as to others. If a man is sentenced to become a colonist, the government gives him a house or means to build it, a plot of ground, and the necessary tools. He is not allowed to be any thing else than a colonist. Criminals of a certain grade cannot engage in commerce, and the same restriction applies to 'politiques.' No criminal can be a teacher, either in a public or private school, and no politique can teach in a public school. While I was in Siberia an order was issued prohibiting the latter class engaging in any kind of educational work except music, drawing, and painting. Many criminal and political offenders are 'drafted in the army' in much the same manner that our prisons sent their able-bodied men into military service during our late war. Their terms of enlistment are various, but generally not less than fifteen years. The men receive the pay and rations of soldiers, and have the possibility of promotion before them. They are sent to regiments stationed at distant posts in order to diminish the chances of desertion. The Siberian and Caucasian regiments receive the greater portion of these recruits. Many members of the peculiar religious sect mentioned elsewhere are sent to the Caucasian frontier. They are said to be very tractable and obedient, but not reliable for aggressive military operations. An exile may receive from his friends money to an amount not exceeding twenty-five roubles a month. If his wife has property of her own she may enjoy a separate income. Those confined in prisons or kept at labor may receive money to the same extent, but it must pass through the hands of the officials. Of course the occupants of prisons are fed by government, and so are those under sentence of hard labor. The men restricted to villages and debarred from profitable employment receive monthly allowances in money and flour, barely enough for their subsistence. There are complaints that dishonest officials steal a part of these allowances, but the practice is not as frequent as formerly. A prisoner's comfort in any part of the world depends in a great measure upon the character of the officer in charge of him. Siberia offers no exception to this rule. Formerly the Polish exiles enjoyed more social freedom than at present. The cause of the change was thus explained to me: Five or six years ago a Polish noble who had been exiled lived at Irkutsk and enjoyed the friendship of several officers. The Amoor had been recently opened, and this man asked and obtained the privilege of visiting it, giving his parole not to leave Siberia. At Nicolayevsk he embraced the opportunity to escape, and advised others to do the same. This breach of confidence led to greater circumspection, and the distrust was increased by the conduct of other exiles. Since that time the Poles have been under greater restraint. Many books on Russia contain interesting stories of the brutality toward exiles, both on the road and after they have reached their destination. Undoubtedly there have been instances of cruelty, just as in every country in Christendom, but I do not believe the Russians are worse in this respect than other people. I saw a great many exiles during my journey through Siberia. Frequently when on the winter road I met convoys of them, and never observed any evidence of needless severity. Five-sixths of the exiles I met on the road were in sleighs like those used by Russian merchants when traveling. There were generally three persons in a sleigh, and I thought them comfortably clad. I could see no difference between them and their guards, except that the latter carried muskets and sabres. Any women among them received special attention, particularly when they were young and pretty. I saw two old ladies who were handled tenderly by the soldiers and treated with apparent distinction. When exiles were on foot, their guards marched with them and the women of the party rode in sleighs. The object of deportation is to people Siberia; if the government permitted cruelties that caused half of the exiles to die on the road, as some accounts aver, it would be inconsistent with its policy. As before mentioned, the ripe age to which most of the Decembrists lived, is a proof that they were not subjected to physical torture. In the eyes of the government these men were the very worst offenders, and if they did not suffer hardships and cruelties it is not probable that all others would be generally ill-used. I do not for a moment suppose exile is either attractive or desirable, but, so far as I know, it does not possess the horrors attributed to it. The worst part of exile is to be sent to hard labor, but the unpleasant features of such punishment are not confined to Siberia. Plenty of testimony on this point can be obtained at Sing Sing and Pentonville. It is unpleasant to leave one's home and become an involuntary emigrant to a far country. The Siberian road is one I would never travel out of pure pleasure, and I can well understand that it must be many times disagreeable when one journeys unwillingly. But, once in Siberia, the worldly circumstances of many exiles are better than they were at home. If a man can forget that he is deprived of liberty, and I presume this is the most difficult thing of all, he is not, under ordinary circumstances, very badly off in Siberia. Certainly many exiles choose to remain when their term of banishment is ended. A laboring man is better paid for his services and is more certain of employment than in European Russia. He leads a more independent life and has better prospects of advancement than in the older civilization. Many Poles say they were drawn unwillingly into the acts that led to their exile, and if they return home they may be involved in like trouble again. In Poland they are at the partial mercy of malcontents who have nothing to lose and can never remain at ease. In Siberia there are no such disturbing influences. About ten thousand exiles are sent to Siberia every year. Except in times of political disturbance in Poland or elsewhere, nearly all the exiles are offenders against society or property. The notion that they are generally 'politiques,' is very far from correct. As well might one suppose the majority of the convicts at Sing Sing were from the upper classes of New York. The regular stream of exiles is composed almost entirely of criminal offenders; occasional floods of revolutionists follow the attempts at independence. I made frequent inquiries concerning the condition of the exiles, and so far as I could learn they were generally well off. I say 'generally,' because I heard of some cases of poverty and hardship, and doubtless there were others that I never heard of. A large part of the Siberian population is made up of exiles and their descendants. A gentleman frequently sent me his carriage during my stay at Irkutsk. It was managed by an intelligent driver who pleased me with his skill and dash. One evening, when he was a little intoxicated, my friend and myself commented in French on his condition, and were a little surprised to find that he understood us. He was an exile from St. Petersburg, where he had been coachman to a French merchant. The clerk of the hotel was an exile, and so was one of the waiters. _Isvoshchiks_, or hackmen, counted many exiles in their ranks, and so did laborers of other professions. Occasionally clerks in stores, market men, boot makers, and tailors ascribed their exile to some discrepancy between their conduct and the laws. I met a Polish gentleman in charge of the museum of the geographical society of Eastern Siberia, and was told that the establishment rapidly improved in his hands. Two physicians of Irkutsk were 'unfortunates' from Warsaw, and one of them had distanced all competitors in the extent and success of his practice. Then there were makers of cigarettes, dealers in various commodities, and professors of divers arts. Some of the educated Siberians I met told me they had been taught almost entirely by exiles. Before the abolition of serfdom a proprietor could send his human property into exile. He was not required to give any reason, the record accompanying the order of banishment stating only that the serf was exiled "by the will of his master." This privilege was open to enormous abuse, but happily the ukase of liberty has removed it. The design of the system was no doubt to enable proprietors to rid themselves of serfs who were idle, dissolute, or quarrelsome, but had not committed any act the law could touch. A proprietor exiling a serf was required to pay his traveling expenses of twenty-five roubles, and to furnish him an outfit of summer and winter clothing. A wife was allowed to follow her husband, with all their children not matured, and all their expenses were to be paid. The abuse of the system consisted in the power to banish a man who had committed no offence at all. The loss of services and the expense of exiling a serf may have been a slight guarantee against this, but if the proprietor were an unprincipled tyrant or a sensualist, (and he might be both,) there was no protection for his subjects. It has happened that the best man on an estate incurred the displeasure of his owner and went to Siberia in consequence. Exile is a severe punishment to the Russian peasant, who clings with enduring tenacity to the place where his youthful days were passed. Every serf exiled for a minor offense or at the will of his master was appointed on his arrival in Siberia to live in a specified district. If he could produce a certificate of good behavior at the end of three years, he was authorized to clear and cultivate as much land as he wished. If single he could marry, but he was not compelled to do so. He was exempt from taxes for twelve years, and after that only paid a trifle. He had no master and could act for himself in all things except in returning to Russia. He was under the disadvantage of having no legal existence, and though the land he worked was his own and no one could disturb him, he did not hold it under written title. The criminal who served at labor in the mines was placed, at the expiration of his sentence, in the same category as the exile for minor offences. Both cultivated land in like manner and on equal terms. Some became wealthy and were able to secure the privileges of citizenship. [Illustration: TAIL PIECE--QUARTERS] CHAPTER XXXVII. The descendants of exiles are in much greater number than the exiles themselves. Eastern Siberia is mainly peopled by them, and Western Siberia very largely so. They are all free peasants and enjoy a condition far superior to that of the serf under the system prevalent before 1859. Many of them have become wealthy through gold mining, commerce, and agriculture, and occupy positions they never could have obtained had they lived in European Russia. I know a merchant whose fortune is counted by millions, and who is famous through Siberia for his enterprise and generosity. He is the son of an exiled serf and has risen by his own ability. Since I left Siberia I learn with pleasure that the emperor has honored him with a decoration. Many of the prominent merchants and proprietary miners were mentioned to me as examples of the prosperity of the second and third generation from banished men. I was told particularly of a wealthy gold miner whose evening of life is cheered by an ample fortune and two well educated children. Forty years ago his master capriciously sent him to Siberia. The man found his banishment 'the best thing that could happen.' The system of serfdom never had any practical hold in Siberia. There was but one Siberian proprietor of serfs in existence at the time of the emancipation. This was Mr. Rodinkoff of Krasnoyarsk, whose grandfather received a grant of serfs and a patent of nobility from the empress Catherine. None of the family, with a single exception, ever attempted more than nominal exercise of authority over the peasants, and this one paid for his imprudence with his life. He attempted to put in force his full proprietary rights, and the result was his death by violence during a visit to one of his estates. The difference between the conditions of the Russian and Siberian peasantry was that between slavery and freedom. The owner of serfs had rarely any common interest with his people, and his chief business was to make the most out of his human property. Serfdom was degrading to master and serf, just as slavery degraded owner and slave. The moujik bore the stamp of servility as the negro slave bore it, and it will take as much time to wear it away in the one as the other. Centuries of oppression in Russia could not fail to open a wide gulf between the nobility and those who obeyed them. Thanks to Alexander the work of filling this gulf has begun, but it will require many years and much toil to complete it. The comparative freedom enjoyed in Siberia was not without visible result. The peasants were more prosperous than in Russia, they lived in better houses and enjoyed more real comforts of life. The absence of masters and the liberty to act for themselves begat an air of independence in the peasant class that contrasted agreeably with the cringing servility of the serf. Wealth was open to all who sought it, and the barriers between the different ranks of society were partially broken down. The peasants that acquired wealth began to cultivate refined tastes. They paid more attention to the education of their children than was shown by the same class in Russia, and the desire for education rapidly increased. The emancipation of the serfs in Russia was probably brought about by the marked superiority of the Siberian population in prosperity and intelligence. In coming ages the Russians will revere the name of Alexander not less than that of Peter the Great. To the latter is justly due the credit of raising the nation from barbarism; the former has the immortal honor of removing the stain of serfdom. The difficulties in the way were great and the emperor had few supporters, but he steadily pursued his object and at length earned the eternal gratitude of his people. Russia is yet in her developing stage. The shock of the change was severe and not unattended with danger, but the critical period is passed, and the nation has commenced a career of freedom. The serf has been awakened to a new life, and his education is just commencing. Already there is increased prosperity in some parts of the empire, showing that the free man understands his new condition. The proprietors who were able to appreciate and prepare for the change have been positively benefited, while others who continued obstinate were ruined. On the whole the derangement by the transition has been less than many friends of the measure expected, and by no means equal to that prophesied by its opponents. But the grandest results in the nation's progress are yet to come, and it is from future generations that Alexander will receive his warmest praise. The working of mines on government account has greatly diminished in the past few years, and the number of hard labor convicts in Siberia more than equals the capacity of the mines. When the political exiles, after the revolution of 1863, arrived at Irkutsk, the mines were already filled with convicts. The 'politiques' sentenced to hard labor were employed in building; roads, most of them being sent to the southern end of Lake Baikal. In June, 1866, seven hundred and twenty prisoners were sent to this labor, and divided into eight or ten parties to work on as many sections of the road. Before the end of the month a revolt occurred. Various accounts have been given and different motives assigned for it. I was told by several Poles that the prisoners were half starved, and the little food they received was bad. Hunger and a desire to escape were the motives to the insurrection. On the other hand the Russians told me the prisoners were properly fed, and the revolt must be attributed entirely to the hope of escaping from Siberia. I obtained from an officer, who sat on the court-martial which investigated the affair, the following particulars: On the 24th of June, (O.S.,) the working party at Koultoukskoi, the western end of the road, disarmed its guard by a sudden and bloodless attack. The insurgents then moved eastward along the line of the road, and on their way overpowered successively the guards of the other parties. Many of the prisoners refused to take part in the affair and remained at their work. A Polish officer named Sharamovitch assumed command of the insurgents, who directed their march toward Posolsky. [Illustration: TARTAR CAVALRY.] As soon as news of the affair reached Irkutsk, the Governor General ordered a battalion of soldiers by steamer to Posolsky. On the 28th of June a fight occurred at the river Bestriya. The insurgents were defeated with a loss of twenty-five or thirty men, while the force sent against them lost five men and one officer. The Polish leader was among the killed. After the defeat the insurgents separated in small bands and fled into the mountains. They were pursued by Tartar cavalry, who scoured the country thoroughly and retook all the fugitives. The insurrection caused much alarm at its outbreak, as it was supposed all prisoners in Siberia were in the conspiracy. Exaggerated reports were spread, and all possible precautions taken, but they proved unnecessary. The conspiracy extended no farther than the working parties on the Baikal road. The prisoners were brought to Irkutsk, where a court-martial investigated the affair. A Russian court-martial does not differ materially from any other in the manner of its proceedings. It requires positive evidence for or against a person accused, and, like other courts, gives him the benefit of doubts. My informant told me that the court in this case listened to all evidence that had any possible bearing on the question. The sitting continued several weeks, and after much deliberation the court rendered a finding and sentence. In the finding the prisoners were divided into five grades, and their sentences accorded with the letter of the law. The first grade comprised seven persons, known to have been leaders in the revolt. These were sentenced to be shot. In the second grade there were a hundred and ninety-seven, who knew the design to revolt and joined in the insurrection. One-tenth of these were to suffer death, the choice being made by lot; the remainder were sentenced to twenty years labor. The third grade comprised a hundred and twenty-two, ignorant of the conspiracy before the revolt, but who joined the insurgents. These received an addition of two or three years to their original sentences to labor. The fourth grade included ninety-four men, who knew the design to revolt but refused to join the insurgents. These were sentenced "to remain under suspicion." In the fifth and last grade there were two hundred and sixty, who were ignorant of the conspiracy and remained at their posts. Their innocence was fully established, and, of course, relieved them from all charge. It was found that the design of the insurgents was to escape into Mongolia and make their way to Pekin. This would have been next to impossible, for two reasons: the character of the country, and the treaty between China and Russia. The region to be traversed from the Siberian frontier toward Pekin is the Mongolian steppe or desert. The only food obtainable on the steppe is mutton from the flocks of the nomad inhabitants. These are principally along the road from Kiachta, and even there are by no means numerous. The escaping exiles in avoiding the road to ensure safety would have run great risk of starvation. The treaty between China and Russia requires that fugitives from one empire to the other shall be given up. Had the exiles succeeded in crossing Mongolia and reaching the populous parts of China, they would have been once more in captivity and returned to Russian hands. The finding of the court-martial was submitted to General Korsackoff for approval or revision. The general commuted the sentence of three men in the first grade to twenty years labor. Those in the second grade sentenced to death were relieved from this punishment and placed on the same footing as their companions. In the third grade the original sentence (at the time of banishment) was increased by one or two years labor. Other penalties were not changed. During my stay in Irkutsk the four prisoners condemned to death suffered the extreme penalty, the execution occurring in the forest near the town. A firing party of forty-eight men was divided into four squads. According to the custom at all military executions one musket in each squad was charged with a blank cartridge. The four prisoners were shot simultaneously, and all died instantly. Two of them were much dejected; the others met their deaths firmly and shouted "_Vive la Pologne_" as they heard the order to fire. I was told that the crowd of people, though large, was very quiet, and moved away in silence when the execution was over. Very few officers and soldiers were present beyond those whose duty required them to witness or take part in the affair. One of the most remarkable escapes from Siberia was that of Rufin Piotrowski, a Polish emigrant who left Paris in 1844 to return to his native country, with impossible plans and crude ideas for her relief. The end of his journey was Kamimetz, in Podolia, where he gave himself out as a Frenchman, who had come to give private lessons in foreign languages, and received the usual permit from the authorities without exciting any suspicion. He was soon introduced into the best society; and the better to shield his connections, he chose the houses of Russian employés. His security rested upon his not being supposed to understand the Polish language; and, during the nine months that he remained, he obtained such command over himself, that the police had not the slightest suspicion of his being a Pole. The warning voice came from St. Petersburg, through the spies in Paris. Early one winter's morning he was roughly shaken out of slumber by the director of police, and carried before the governor of the province, who had come specially on this errand. His position was represented to him as one of the greatest danger, and he was recommended to make a full confession. This for many days he refused to do, until a large number of those who were his accomplices were brought before him; and their weary, anxious faces induced him to exclaim loudly, and in his native tongue--"Yes, I am a Pole, and have returned because I could not bear exile from my native land any longer. Here I wished to live inoffensive and quiet, confiding my secret to a few countrymen; and I have nothing more to say." An immediate order was made out for the culprit's departure to Kiev. According to the story he has published his sufferings were frightful, and were not lessened when they stopped at a hut, where some rusty chains were brought out, the rings of which were thrust over his ankles: they proved much too small, and the rust prevented the bars from turning in the sockets, so that the pain was insupportable. He was rudely carried and thrown into the carriage, and thus arrived in an almost insensible condition at the fortress of Kiev. After many months' detention in this prison, being closely watched and badly treated, he was sentenced to hard labor in Siberia for life, degraded from his rank as a noble, and ordered to make the journey in chains. As soon as this was read to him, he was taken to a kibitka, with three horses, irons were put on, and he was placed between two armed soldiers; the gates of the fortress were shut, and the road to Siberia was before him. An employee came up to M. Piotrowski, and timidly offered him a small packet, saying--"Accept this from my saint." The convict not understanding, he added, "You are a Pole, and do not know our customs. It is my fête-day, when it is above all a duty to assist the unfortunate. Pray, accept it, then, in the name of my saint, after whom I am called." The packet contained bread, salt, and money. Night and day the journey continued, with the utmost rapidity, for about a month, when, in the middle of the night, they stopped at the fortress of Omsk, where he was placed for a few hours with a young officer who had committed some breach of discipline. They talked on incessantly until the morning, so great was the pleasure of meeting with an educated person. A map of Siberia was in the room, which Piotrowski examined with feverish interest. "Ah!" said his companion, "are you meditating flight? Pray, do not think of it: many of your fellow-countrymen have tried it, and never succeeded." At midday he was brought before Prince Gortchakoff, and the critical moment of his fate arrived: he might either be sent to some of the government factories in the neighborhood, or to the mines underground. An hour passed in cruel suspense while this was debated. At length one of the council announced to him that he was to be sent to the distillery of Ekaterinski, three hundred miles to the north of Omsk. The clerks around congratulated him on his destination, and his departure was immediate. On a wintry morning he reached a vast plain near the river Irtish, on which a village of about two hundred wooden huts was built around a factory. When introduced into the clerks' office, a young man who was writing jumped up and threw himself into his arms: he also was a Pole from Cracow, a well-known poet, and sent away for life as "a measure of precaution." Soon they were joined by another political criminal: these spoke rapidly and with extreme emotion, entreating their new friend to bear everything in the most submissive and patient manner, as the only means of escaping from menial employment, and being promoted to the clerks' office. Not long was he permitted to rest. A convict came and ordered him to take a broom and sweep away a mass of dirt that some masons had left; a murderer was his companion; and thus he went on until nightfall, when his two friends were permitted to visit him, in the presence of the soldiers and convicts, most of the latter of whom had been guilty of frightful crimes. Thus day after day passed on, in sweeping, carrying wood and water, amid snow and frost. His good conduct brought him, in a year and a half, to the office, where he received ten francs a month and his rations, and the work was light. During this time he saw and conversed with many farmers and travelers from a distance, and gained every information about the roads, rivers, etc., with a view to the escape he was ever meditating. Some of the natives unite with the soldiers in exercising an incessant supervision over the convicts, and a common saying among the Tartars is: "In killing a squirrel you get but one skin, whilst a convict has three--his coat, his shirt, and his skin." Slowly and painfully he collected the materials for his journey. First of all, a passport was an essential. A convict who had been sentenced for making false money, still possessed an excellent stamp of the royal arms; this Piotrowski bought for a few francs. The sheet of paper was easily obtained in the office, and the passport forged. After long waiting, he procured a Siberian wig--that is, a sheepskin with the wool turned in, to preserve the head from the cold--three shirts, a sheepskin bournouse, and a red velvet cap bordered with fur--the dress of a well-to-do peasant. On a sharp frosty night he quitted Ekaterinski for Tara, having determined to try the road to the north for Archangel, as the least frequented. A large fair was shortly to be held at Irbit, at the foot of the Urals, and he hoped to hide himself in the vast crowd of people that frequented it. Soon after he had crossed the river a sledge was heard behind him. He trembled for his safety--his pursuers were perhaps coming. "Where are you going?" shouted the peasant who drove it. "To Tara." "Give me ten sous, and I will take you." "No; it is too much. I will give eight." "Well, so let it be. Jump in quickly." He was set down in the street; and knocking at a house, inquired in the Russian fashion--"Have you horses to hire?" "Yes--a pair. Where to?" "To Irbit. I am a commercial traveler, and going to meet my master. I am behind my time, and wish to go as quickly as possible." No sooner had they set off than a snow-storm came on, and the driver lost his way. They wandered about all night in the forest, and it was impossible to describe the anguish and suffering Piotrowski endured. "Return to Tara," said he, as the day broke; "I will engage another sledge; and you need not expect any money from me, after the folly you have shown in losing your way." They turned, but had hardly gone a mile before the driver jumped up, looked around, and cried--"This is our road." Then making up for lost time, he set him down at a friend's house, where he procured some tea and fresh horses. On he went in safety, renewing his horses at small expense, until late at night, when he suffered from a most unfortunate robbery. He had not money at hand to pay the conductor. They turned into a public-house, where a crowd of drunken people were celebrating the carnival. He drew out some paper-money to get change, when the crowd coming round, some one seized his papers, among which were several rouble notes, his invaluable passport, and a note in which he had minutely inscribed all the towns and villages he must pass through on the road to Archangel. He was in despair. The very first day, a quarter of his money was gone, and the only thing by which he hoped to evade suspicion, his passport. He dare not appeal to the police, and was obliged to submit. Regret and hesitation were not to be thought of. He soon found himself on the high-road to Irbit, crowded with an innumerable mass of sledges, going or returning to the fair. It is the season of gain and good humor, and the people show it by unbounded gaiety. Piotrowski took courage, returned the salutations of the passers-by--for how could he be distinguished in such a crowd? The gates of Irbit were reached on the third day. "Halt, and shew your passport," cried an official; but added in a whisper--"Give me twenty copecks, and pass quickly." The demand was willingly gratified, and with some difficulty he procured a night's lodging, lying on the floor amidst a crowd of peasants, who had previously supped on radish-soup, dried fish, oatmeal gruel, with oil and pickled cabbage. Up at daybreak, he took care to make the orthodox salutations, and passing rapidly through the crowded town, he walked out of the opposite gate, for, henceforwards, his scanty funds demanded that the journey should be made on foot. In the midst of a heavily falling snow, he managed to keep the track, avoiding the villages, and, when hungry, drawing a piece of frozen bread from his bag. At nightfall, he buried himself in the forest, hollowed a deep hole in the snow, and found a hard but warm bed, where he gained the repose he so greatly needed. Another hard day, with a dry cutting wind, forced him to ask for shelter at night in a cottage, which was granted without hesitation. He described himself as a workman, going to the iron-foundries at Bohotole, on the Ural Mountains. Whilst the supper was preparing, he dried his clothes, and stretched himself on a bench with inexpressible satisfaction. He fancied he had neglected no precautions; his prayers and salutations had been made; and yet suspicion was awakened, as it appeared, by the sight of his three shirts, which no peasant possesses. Three men entered, and roughly shook him from sleep, demanding his passport. "By what right do you ask for it? Are you police?" "No; but we are inhabitants of the village." "And can you enter houses, and ask for passports! Who can say whether you do not mean to rob me of my papers? But my answer is ready. I am Lavrenti Kouzmine, going to Bohotole; and it is not the first time I have passed through the country." He then entered into details of the road and the fair at Irbit, ending by showing his permission to pass, which, as it bore a stamp, satisfied these ignorant men. "Forgive us," said they. "We thought you were an escaped convict; some of them pass this way." Henceforward, he dared not seek the shelter of a house. From the middle of February to the beginning of April, in the midst of one of the severest winters ever known, his couch was in the snow. Frozen bread was his food for days together, and the absence of warm aliments brought him face to face with the terrible spectres of cold and hunger. The Urals were reached, and he began to climb their wooded heights. On passing through a little village at nightfall, a voice cried: "Who is there?" "A traveler." "Well, would you like to come and sleep here?" "May God recompense you, yes; if it will not inconvenience you." An aged couple lived there--good people, who prepared a meagre repast, which seemed a feast to Piotrowski: the greatest comfort of all being that he could take off his clothes. [Illustration: SIBERIAN EXILES.] They gave him his breakfast, and would not accept any remuneration but his warm and cordial thanks. One evening Piotrowski's life was nearly extinct. The way was lost, the hail pierced his skin, his supply of bread was exhausted, and after vainly dragging his weary limbs, he fell into a kind of torpor. A loud voice roused him--"What are you doing here?" "I am making a pilgrimage to the monastery of Solovetsk, but the storm prevented my seeing the track, and I have not eaten for several days." "It is not surprising. We who live on the spot often wander away. There, drink that." The speaker gave him a bottle containing some brandy, which burned him so fearfully, that in his pain he danced about. "Now try to calm yourself," said the good Samaritan, giving him some bread and dried fish, which Piotrowski ate ravenously, saying--"I thank you with all my heart. May God bless you for your goodness." "Ah, well, do not say so much; we are both Christians. Now, try to walk a little." He was a trapper; and led him into the right path, pointing out a village inn where he could get rest and refreshment. Piotrowski managed to crawl to the place, and then fainted away. When he recovered himself, he asked for radish-soup, but could not swallow it; and toward noon he fell asleep on the bench, never awaking until the same time on the next day, when the host roused him. Sleep, rest, and warmth restored him, and he again started on his long pilgrimage. The town of Veliki-Ustiug was reached, where he determined to change his character and become a pilgrim, going to pray to the holy images of Solovetsk, on the White Sea. There are four of these holy places to which pious Russians resort, and everywhere the wayfarers are well received, hospitality and alms being freely dispensed to those who are going to pray for the peace of the donor. Passports are not rigorously exacted, and he hoped to join himself to a company, trusting to be less marked than if alone. As he was standing irresolute in the market-place, a young man accosted him, and finding that they were bound to the same place, invited him to join their party. There were about twenty; but no less than two thousand were in the city on their way, waiting until the thaw should have opened the Dwina for the rafts and boats which would transport them to Archangel, and then to Solovetsk. It was a scene for Chaucer: the half-idiot, who sought to be a saint; the knave who played upon the charity of others; and the astute hypocrite. The rafts are loaded with corn, and the pilgrims receive a free passage; or a small sum of money is given them, if they consent to row; from forty to sixty sailors being required for each, the oars consisting of a thin fir-tree. Piotrowski was only too happy to increase his small store of money by working. At the break of day, before starting, the captain cried--"Seat yourselves, and pray to God." Every one squatted down like a Mussulman for a moment, then rose and made a number of salutations and crossings; and next, down to the poorest, each threw a small piece of money into the river to secure a propitious voyage. Fifteen days passed, during which Piotrowski learned to be an expert oarsman. Then the golden spires of Archangel rose before them; a cry of joy was uttered by all; and the rowers broke off the lower parts of their oars with a frightful crash, according to the universal custom. It was a heartfelt prayer of gratitude that Piotrowski raised to God for having brought him thus far in safety. How pleasant was the sight of the ships, with their flags of a thousand colors, after the snow and eternal forests of the Urals! But there was again disappointment. He wandered along the piers, but could not find a single vessel bound for France or Germany, and not daring to enter the cafes, where perhaps the captains might have been, he left Archangel in sadness, determined to skirt the coast towards Onega. He would thus pass the celebrated monastery without the necessity of stopping, and pretend that he was proceeding to Novgorod and Moscow on the same pious pilgrimage. Through marshes and blighted fir-plantations the weary wayfarer sped, the White Sea rising frequently into storms of the utmost grandeur; but the season was lovely, and the sun warm, so that camping out offered less hardship. The wolves howled around him, but happily he never saw them. Many soldiers, who were Poles, were established at different points to take charge of the canals. Having reached Vytegra, he was accosted on the shore by a peasant, who asked where he was going. On hearing his story, he said--"You are the man I want. I am going to St. Petersburg. My boat is small, and you can assist me to row." The crafty fellow evidently intended to profit by the pilgrim's arms without wages; but, after long debate, he agreed to supply Piotrowski with food during the transport. It seemed strange, indeed, to go to the capital--like running into the jaws of the lion--but he seized every occasion to pass on, lest his papers should be asked for. As they coasted down through Lake Ladoga and the Neva, they took in some women as passengers, who were servants, and had been home to see their parents. One of them, an aged washerwoman, was so teased by the others, that Piotrowski took her part, and in return she offered him some very useful assistance. "My daughter," she said, "will come to meet me, and she will find you a suitable lodging." It will be guessed with what joy he accepted the proposal; and during all the time spent in the boat, no one came to ask for passports. The house she took him to was sufficiently miserable; as the Russians say, "It was the bare ground, with the wrist for a pillow." He asked his hostess if he must see the police to arrange the business of his passport. "No," she said. "If you only stay a few days, it is useless. They have become so exacting, that they would require me to accompany you, and my time is too precious." As he passed along the quays, looking for a ship, his eyes rested on one to sail for Riga on the following morning. He could scarcely master his emotion. The pilot on board called out--"If you want a place to Riga, come here." "I certainly want one; but I am too poor to sail in a steamer. It would cost too much." He named a very small sum, and said--"Come; why do you hesitate?" "I only arrived yesterday, and the police have not _visé_ my passport." "That will occupy three days. Go without a visé. Be here at seven o'clock, and wait for me." Both were to their time. The sailor said, "Give me some money," and handed him a yellow paper; the clock struck; the barrier was opened, and, like a dream, he was safely on the ocean. From Riga he went through Courland and Lithuania. The difficulty of crossing the Russian frontier into Prussia was still to be managed. He chose the daytime; and when sentinels had each turned their backs, he jumped over the wall of the first of the three glacis. No noise was heard. The second was tried, and the firing of pistols showed that he was perceived. He rushed on to the third, and, breathless and exhausted, gained a little wood, where for many hours he remained concealed. He was in Prussia. Wandering on through Mernel, Tilsit, and Konigsberg, he decided at the last place to take a ship the next morning to Elbing, where he would be near to Posen, and among his compatriots. Sitting down on a heap of stones, he intended taking refuge for the night in a corn-field; but sleep overcame him, and he was rudely awakened in the darkness by a policeman. His stammering and confused replies awakened suspicion, and to his shame and grief, he was carried off to prison. He announced himself as a French cotton-spinner, but returning from Russia, and without a passport. Not a word he said was believed. At length, after a month's detention, weary of being considered a concealed malefactor, he asked to speak to M. Fleury, a French advocate, who assisted at his trial. To him he confessed the whole truth. Nothing could equal his advocate's consternation and astonishment. "What a misfortune!" he said. "We must give you up to the Russians; they have just sent many of your countrymen, across the frontier. There is but one way. Write to Count Eulenberg; tell your story, and trust to his mercy." After ten days he received a vague reply, desiring him to have patience. The affair got wind in the town, and a gentleman came to him, asking if he would accept him as bail. Efforts had been made in his favor, and the police were ready to set him free. M. Kamke, his kind friend, took him home, and entertained him for a week; but an order came from Berlin to send the prisoner back to Russia, and he received warning in time to escape. Letters to various friends on the way were given him, to facilitate his journey; and just four years after he had left Paris he reached it in safety again, after having crossed the Urals, slept for months in the snow, jumped over the Russian frontier in the midst of balls, and passed through so many sufferings and privations. [Illustration: TAIL PIECE] CHAPTER XXXVIII. I remained in Irkutsk until snow fell, and the winter roads were suitable for travel. One day the moving portion of the city was on wheels: the next saw it gliding on runners. The little sleighs of the _isvoshchiks_ are exactly like those of St. Petersburg and Moscow,--miniature affairs where you sit with your face within six inches of the driver's back, and cannot take a friend at your side without much crowding. They move rapidly, and it is a fortunate provision that they are cheap. In all large cities and towns of Russia many _isvoshchiks_ go to spend the winter. With a horse and little sleigh and a cash capital sufficient to buy a license, one of these enterprising fellows will set up in business. Nobody thinks of walking in Moscow or St. Petersburg, unless his journey or his purse is very short. It is said there are thirty thousand sleighs for public hire in St. Petersburg alone, during the winter months, and two-thirds that number in Moscow. The interior towns are equally well supplied in proportion to their population. One may naturally suppose that accidents are frequent where there are many vehicles and fast driving is the fashion. Accidents are rare from the fact that drivers are under severe penalties if they run over any one. Furthermore the horses are quick and intelligent, and being driven without blinkers, can use their eyes freely. To my mind this plan is better than ours, and most foreigners living in Russia are inclined to adopt it. Considered as an ornament a blinker decorates a horse about as much as an eye shade does a man. With the first fall of snow, I began preparations for departure. I summoned a tailor and gave orders for a variety of articles in fur and sheep-skin for the road. He measured me for a coat, a cap, a pair of stockings, and a sleigh robe, all in sheep-skin. He then took the size of my ears for a pair of lappets, and proposed fur socks to be worn under the stockings. When the accumulated result of his labors was piled upon the floor of my room, I was alarmed at its size, and wondered if it could ever be packed in a single sleigh. Out of a bit of sable skin a lady acquaintance constructed a mitten for my nose, to be worn when the temperature was lowest. It was not an improvement to one's personal appearance though very conducive to comfort. To travel by _peraclodnoi_ (changing the vehicle at every station) is bad enough in summer but ten times bad in winter. To turn out every two or three hours with the thermometer any distance below zero, and shift baggage and furs from one sleigh to another is an absolute nuisance. Yery few persons travel by _peraclodnoi_ in winter, and one does not find many sleighs at the post stations from the fact that they are seldom demanded. Nearly all travelers buy their sleighs before starting, and sell them when their journeys are ended. I surveyed the Irkutsk market and found several sleighs 'up' for sale. Throughout Siberia a sleigh manufactured at Kazan is preferred, it being better made and more commodious than its rivals. My attention was called to several vehicles of local manufacture but my friends advised me not to try them. I sought a _Kazanski kibitka_ and with the aid of an intelligent _isvoshchik_ succeeded in finding one. Its purchase was accomplished in a manner peculiarly Russian. The seller was a _mischanin_ or Russian merchant of the peasant class. Accompanied by a friend I called at his house and our negotiation began over a lunch and a bottle of nalifka. We said nothing on the subject nearest my heart and his, for at least a half hour, but conversed on general topics. My friend at length dropped a hint that I thought of taking up my residence at Irkutsk. This was received with delight, and a glass of nalifka, supplementary to at least half a dozen glasses I had already swallowed. "Why don't you come to sleighs at once, and settle the matter?" I asked. "He probably knows what we want, and if we keep on at this rate I shall need a sleigh to go home in." "Don't be impatient," said my friend; "you don't understand these people; you must angle them gently. When you want to make a trade, begin a long way from it. If you want to buy a horse, pretend that you want to sell a cow, but don't mention the horse at first. If you do you will never succeed." We hedged very carefully and finally reached the subject. This was so overpowering that we took a drink while the merchant ordered the sleigh dragged into the court yard. We had another glass before we adjourned for the inspection, a later one when we returned to the house, and another as soon as we were seated. After this our negotiations proceeded at a fair pace, but there were many vacuums of language that required liquid filling. After endeavoring to lower his price, I closed with him and we clenched the bargain with a drink. Sleighs were in great demand, as many persons were setting out for Russia, and I made sure of my purchase by paying on the spot and taking a glass of nalifka. As a finale to the transaction, he urged me to drink again, begged my photograph, and promised to put an extra something to the sleigh. The Siberian peasant classes are much like the Chinese in their manner of bargaining. Neither begins at the business itself, but at something entirely different. A great deal of time, tea, and tobacco is consumed before the antagonists are fairly met. When the main subject is reached they gradually approach and conclude the bargain about where both expected and intended. An American would come straight to the point, and dealing with either of the above races his bluntness would endanger the whole affair. In many matters this patient angling is advantageous, and nowhere more so than in diplomacy. Every one will doubtless acknowledge the Russians unsurpassed in diplomatic skill. They possess the faculty of touching gently, and playing with their opponents, to a higher degree than any nation of Western Europe. Other things being equal, this ability will bring success. There are several descriptions of sleigh for Siberian travel. At the head, stands the _vashok_, a box-like affair with a general resemblance to an American coach on runners. It has a door at each side and glass windows and is long enough for one to lie at full length. [Illustration: A VASHOK.] Three persons with limited baggage can find plenty of room in a vashok. A _kibitka_ is shaped much like a tarantass, or like a New England chaise stretched to about seven feet long by four in width. There is a sort of apron that can be let down from the hood and fastened with straps and buckles to the boot. The boot can be buttoned to the sides of the vehicle and completely encloses the occupants. The vashok is used by families or ladies, but the kibitka is generally preferred by men on account of the ability to open it in fine weather, and close it at night or in storms. A sleigh much like this but less comfortable is called a _povoska_. In either of them, the driver sits on the forward part with his feet hanging over the side. His perch is not very secure, and on a rough road he must exercise care to prevent falling off. "Why don't you have a better seat for your driver?" I asked of my friend, when negotiating for a sleigh. "Oh," said he, "this is the best way as he cannot go to sleep. If he had a better place he would sleep and lose time by slow traveling." A sleigh much used by Russian merchants is shaped like an elongated mill-hopper. It has enormous carrying capacity, and in bad weather can be covered with matting to exclude cold and snow. It is large, heavy, and cumbersome, and adapted to slow travel, and when much luggage is to be carried. All these concerns are on runners about thirty inches apart, and generally shod with iron. On each side there is a fender or outrigger which serves the double purpose of diminishing injury from collisions and preventing the overturn of the sleigh. It is a stout pole attached to the forward end of the sleigh, and sloping downward and outward toward the rear where it is two feet from the runner, and held by strong braces. On a level surface it does not touch the snow, but should the sleigh tilt from any cause the outrigger will generally prevent an overturn. In collision with other sleighs, the fender plays an important part. I have been occasionally dashed against sleds and sleighs when the chances of a smash-up appeared brilliant. The fenders met like a pair of fencing foils, and there was no damage beyond the shock of our meeting. [Illustration: A KIBITKA.] The horses are harnessed in the Russian manner, one being under a yoke in the shafts, and the others, up to five or six, attached outside. There is no seat in the interior of the sleigh. Travelers arrange their baggage and furs to as good a level as possible and fill the crevices with hay or straw. They sit, recline, or lie at their option. Pillows are a necessity of winter travel. I exchanged my trunk for a chemadan of enormous capacity, and long enough to extend across the bottom, of my sleigh. For the first thousand versts, to Krasnoyarsk, I arranged to travel with a young officer of engineers whose baggage consisted of two or three hundred pounds of geological specimens. For provisions we ordered beef, cabbage soup, little cakes like 'mince turnovers,' and a few other articles. Tea and sugar were indispensable, and had a prominent place. Our soups, meat, pies, _et cetera_ were frozen and only needed thawing at the stations to be ready for use. The day before my departure was the peculiar property of Saint Inakentief, the only saint who belongs especially to Siberia. Everybody kept the occasion in full earnest, the services commencing the previous evening when nearly everybody got drunk. I had a variety of preparations in the shape of mending, making bags, tying up bundles and the like, but though I offered liberal compensation neither man-servant nor maid-servant would lend assistance. Labor was not to be had on any terms, and I was obliged to do my own packing. There are certain saints' days in the year when a Russian peasant will no more work than would a Puritan on Sunday. All who could do so on the day above mentioned visited the church four miles from Irkutsk, where Saint Inakentief lies buried. I occupied the fashionable hours of the two days before my departure in making farewell visits according to Russian etiquette. Not satisfied with their previous courtesy my friends arranged a dinner at the club rooms for the last evening of my stay at Irkutsk. The other public dinners were of a masculine character, but the farewell entertainment possessed the charm of the presence of fifteen or twenty ladies. General Shelashnikoff, Governor of Irkutsk, and acting Governor General during the absence of General Korsackoff, presided at the table. We dined directly before the portraits of the last and present emperors of Russia, and as I looked at the likeness of Nicholas I thought I had never seen it half as amiable. After the dinner the tables disappeared with magical rapidity and a dance began. While I was talking in a corner behind a table, a large album containing views of Irkutsk was presented to me as a souvenir of my visit. The _golovah_ was prominent in the presentation, and when it was ended he urged me to be his _vis a vis_ in a quadrille. Had he asked me to walk a tight rope or interpret a passage of Sanscrit, I should have been about as able to comply. My education in 'the light fantastic' has been extremely limited, and my acquaintances will testify that nature has not adapted me to achievements in the Terpsichorean art. I resisted all entreaties to join the dance up to that evening. I urged that I never attempted it a dozen times in my life, and not at all within ten years. The golovah declared he had not danced in twenty-five years, and knew as little of the art as I did. There was no more to be said. I resigned myself to the pleasures awaiting me, and ventured on the floor very much as an elephant goes on a newly frozen mill-pond. Personal diffidence and a regard for truth forbid a laudatory account of my success. I did walk through a quadrille, but when it came to the Mazurka I was as much out of place as a blind man in a picture gallery. My arrangement to travel with the geologic officer and his heavy baggage fell through an hour before our starting time. A now plan was organized and included my taking Captain Paul in my sleigh to Krasnoyarsk. Two ladies of our acquaintance were going thither, and I gladly waited a few hours for the pleasure of their company. When my preparations were completed, I drove to the house of Madame Rodstvenny whence we were to set out. The madame and her daughter were to travel in a large kibitka, and had bestowed two servants with much baggage and provisions in a vashok. With our three vehicles we made a dignified procession. We dined at three o'clock, and were ready to start an hour later. Just before leaving the house all were seated around the principal room, and for a minute there was perfect silence. On rising all who professed the religion of the Greek Church bowed to the holy picture and made the sign of the cross. This custom prevails throughout Russia, and is never omitted when a journey is to be commenced. There was a gay party to conduct us to the first station, conveniently situated only eight miles away. At the ferry we found the largest assemblage I saw in Irkutsk, not excepting the crowd at the fire. The ferry boat was on the other side of the river, and as I glanced across I saw something that caused me to look more intently. It was a little past sunset, and the gathering night showed somewhat indistinctly the American and Russian flags floating side by side on the boat. My national colors were in the majority. The scene was rendered more picturesque by a profusion of Chinese lanterns lighting every part of the boat. The golovah stood at my side to enjoy my astonishment. It was to his kindness and attention that this farewell courtesy was due. He had the honor of unfurling the first American flag that ever floated over the Angara--and his little surprise raised a goodly sized lump in the throat of his guest. [Illustration: FAREWELL TO IRKUTSK.] Our party was so large that the boat made two journeys to ferry us over the water. I remained till the last, and on the bank of the river bade adieu to Irkutsk and its hospitable citizens. I may not visit them again, but I can never forget the open hearted kindness I enjoyed. The Siberians have a climate of great severity, but its frosts and snows have not been able to chill the spirit of genuine courtesy, as every traveler in that region can testify. Hospitality is a custom of the country, and all the more pleasing because heartily and cheerfully bestowed. The shades of night were falling fast as I climbed the river bank, and began my sleigh ride toward the west. The arched gateway at Irkutsk close by the ferry landing, is called the Moscow entrance, and is said to face directly toward the ancient capital. As I reached the road, I shouted "_poshol_" to the yemshick, and we dashed off in fine style. At the church or monastery six versts away, I overtook our party. The ladies were in the chapel offering their prayers for a prosperous journey. When they emerged we were ready to go forward over a road not remarkable for its smoothness. At the first station our friends joined us in taking tea. Cups, glasses, cakes, champagne bottles, cakes and cold meats, crept somehow from mysterious corners in our vehicles. The station master was evidently accustomed to visits like this, as his rooms were ready for our reception. We were two hours in making our adieus, and consuming the various articles provided for the occasion. There was a general kissing all around at the last moment. We packed the ladies in their sleigh, and then entered our own. As we left the station our friends joined their voices in a farewell song that rang in our ears till lost in the distance, and drowned by nearer sounds. Our bells jingled merrily in the frosty air as our horses sped rapidly along the road. We closed the front of our sleigh, and settled among our furs and pillows. The night was cold, but in my thick wrappings I enjoyed a tropical warmth and did not heed the low state of the thermometer. Our road for seventy versts lay along the bank of the Angara. A thick fog filled the valley and seemed to hug close to the river. In the morning every part of our sleigh except at the points of friction, was white with frost. Each little fibre projecting from our cover of canvas and matting became a miniature stalactite, and the head of every nail, bolt, and screw, buried itself beneath a mass like oxydised silver. Everything had seized upon and congealed some of the moisture floating in the atmosphere. Our horses were of the color, or no color, of rabbits in January; it was only by brushing away the frost that the natural tint of their hair could be discovered, and sometimes there was a great deal of frost adhering to them. During my stay at Irkutsk I noticed the prevalence of this fog or frost cloud. It usually formed during the night and was thickest near the river. In the morning it enveloped the whole city, but when the sun was an hour or two in the heavens, the mist began to melt away. It remained longest over the river, and I was occasionally in a thick cloud on the bank of the Angara when the atmosphere a hundred yards away was perfectly clear. The moisture congealed on every stationary object. Houses and fences were cased in ice, its thickness varying with the condition of the weather. Trees and bushes became masses of crystals, and glistened in the sunlight as if formed of diamonds. I could never wholly rid myself of the impression that some of the trees were fountains caught and frozen when in full action. The frost played curious tricks of artistic skill, and its delineations were sometimes marvels of beauty. Any one who has visited St. Petersburg in winter remembers the effect of a fog from the Gulf of Finland after a period of severe cold. The red granite columns of St. Isaac's church are apparently transformed into spotless marble by the congelation of moisture on their surface. In the same manner I have seen a gray wall at Irkutsk changed in a night and morning to a dazzling whiteness. The crystalline formation of the frost had all the varieties of the kaleidoscope without its colors. I slept well during the night, awaking occasionally at the stations or when the sleigh experienced an unusually heavy thump. In the morning I learned we had traveled a hundred and sixty versts from Irkutsk. The road was magnificent after leaving the valley of the Angara, and the sleigh glided easily and with very little jolting. "No cloud above, no earth below; A universe of sky and snow." I woke to daylight and found a monotonous country destitute of mountains and possessing few hills. It was generally wooded, and where under cultivation near the villages there was an appearance of fertility. There were long distances between the clusters of houses, and I was continually reminded of the abundant room for increase of population. We stopped for breakfast soon after sunrise. The samovar was ordered, and our servants brought a creditable supply of toothsome little cakes and pies. These with half a dozen cups of tea to each person prepared us for a ride of several hours. We dined a little before sunset, and for one I can testify that full justice was done to the dinner. Very little can be had at the stations on this road, so that experienced travelers carry their own provisions. One can always obtain hot water, and generally bread, and eggs, but nothing else is certain. In winter, provisions can be easily carried as the frost preserves them alike from decaying or crushing. Soup, meats, bread, and other edibles can be carried on long routes with perfect facility. There is a favorite preparation for Russian travel under the name of _pilmania_. It is a little ball of minced meat covered with dough, the whole being no larger than a robin's egg. In a frozen state a bag full of pilmania is like the same quantity of walnuts or marbles, and can be tossed about with impunity. When a traveler wishes to dine upon this article he orders a pot of boiling water and tosses a double handful of pilmania into it. After five minutes boiling the mass is ready to be eaten in the form of soup. Salt, pepper, and vinegar can be used with it to one's liking. Our _diner du voyage_ consisted of pilmania, roast beef, and partridge with bread, cakes, tea, and quass. Our table furniture was somewhat limited, and the room was littered with garments temporarily discarded. The ladies were crinolineless, and their coiffures were decidedly not Parisian. My costume was a cross between a shooting outfit and the everyday dress of a stevedore, while my hair appeared as if recently dressed with a currant bush. Captain Paul was equally unpresentable in fastidious parlors, but whatever our apparel it did not diminish the keenness of our appetites. The dinner was good, and the diners were hungry and happy. Fashion is wholly rejected on the Siberian road, and each one makes his toilet without regard to French principles and tastes. According to Russian custom, somebody was to be thanked for the meal. As the dinner came from the provisions in the servants' sleigh we presented our acknowledgments to Madame Rodstvenny. With the forethought of an experienced traveler the lady had carefully provided her edibles and so abundant was her store that my supply was rarely drawn upon. We were more like a pic-nic party than a company of travelers on a long journey in a Siberian winter. Mademoiselle was fluent in French, and charming in its use. The only drawback to general conversation was my inability to talk long with Madame except by interpretation. In our halts we managed to pass the time in tea-drinking, conversation, and sometimes with music of an impromptu character. I remember favoring air appreciative audience with a solo on a trunk key, followed by mademoiselle and the captain in a duett on a tin cup and a horn comb covered with letter paper. There was very little scenery worthy of note. The villages generally lay in single streets each containing from ten to a hundred houses. Between these clusters of dwellings there was little to be seen beyond a succession of wooded ridges with stretches of open ground. The continued snow-scape offered no great variety on the first day's travel, and before night I began to think it monotonous. The villages were from ten to twenty miles apart, and very much the same in general characteristics. The stations had a family likeness. Each had a travelers' room more or less comfortable, and a few apartments for the smotretal and his attendants. The travelers' room had some rough chairs, one or two hard sofas or benches, and the same number of tables. While the horses were being changed we had our option to enter the station or stay out of doors. I generally preferred the latter alternative on account of the high temperature of the waiting rooms, which necessitated casting off one's outer garment on entering. During our halts I was fain to refresh myself with a little leg stretching and found it a great relief. The first movement at a station is to present the padaroshnia and demand horses. Marco Polo says, that the great Khan of Tartary had posting stations twenty-five miles apart on the principal roads of his empire. A messenger or traveler carried a paper authorizing him to procure horses, and was always promptly supplied. The padaroshnia is of ancient date, if Marco be trustworthy. It is not less important to a Russian traveler at present than to a Tartar one in earlier times. Our documents were efficacious, and usually brought horses with little delay. The size of our party was a disadvantage as we occasionally found one or two sets of horses ready but were obliged to wait a short time for a third. Paul had a permit to impress horses in the villages while I carried a special passport requesting the authorities to 'lend me all needed assistance.' This was generally construed into despatching me promptly, and we rarely failed with a little persuasion and money, to secure horses for the third sleigh. When we entered the stations for any purpose the sleighs and their contents remained unguarded in the streets, but we never lost anything by theft. With recollections of my experience at stage stations in America, I never felt quite at ease at leaving our property to care for itself. My companions assured me that thefts from posting vehicles seldom occur although the country numbers many convicts among its inhabitants. The native Siberians have a reputation for honesty, and the majority of the exiles for minor offences lead correct lives. I presume that wickedly inclined persons in villages are deterred from stealing on account of the probability of detection and punishment. So far as my experience goes the inhabitants of Siberia are more honest that those of European Russia. In Siberia our sleighs required no watching when we left them. After passing the Ural mountains it was necessary to hire a man to look after our property when we breakfasted and dined. The horses being the property of the station we paid for them at every change. On no account was the _navodku_ or drink-money to the driver forgotten, and it varied according to the service rendered. If the driver did well but made no special exertion we gave him eight or ten copecks, and increased the amount as we thought he deserved. On the other hand if he was obstinate and unaccommodating he obtained nothing. If he argued that the regulations required only a certain speed we retorted that the regulations said nothing about drink-money. In general we found the yemshicks obliging and fully entitled to their gratuities. We went at breakneck pace where the roads permitted, and frequently where they did not. A travelers' speed depends considerably on the drink-money he is reported to have given on the previous stage. If illiberal to a good driver or liberal to a bad one he cannot expect rapid progress. The regulations require a speed of ten versts (6-2/3 miles) per hour for vehicles not on government service. If the roads are bad the driver can lessen his pace, but he must make all proper exertion to keep up to the schedule. When they are good and the driver is thirsty (as he generally is), the regulations are not heeded. We arranged for my sleigh to lead, and that of the servants to bring up the rear. Whatever speed we went the others were morally certain to follow, and our progress was frequently exciting. Money was potent, and we employed it. Fifteen copecks was a liberal gratuity, and twenty bordered on the munificent. When we increased our offer to twenty-five or thirty it was pretty certain to awaken enthusiasm. Sometimes the pecuniary argument failed, and obliged us to proceed at the legal rate. In such cases we generally turned aside and placed the ladies in advance. We made twelve, fourteen, or sixteen versts per hour, and on one occasion I held my watch, and found that we traveled a trifle less than twenty-two versts or about fourteen and a half miles in sixty minutes. I do not think I ever rode in America at such a pace (without steam) except once when a horse ran away with me. Ordinarily we traveled faster than the rate prescribed by regulation, and only when the roads were bad did we fall below it. We studied the matter of drink-money till it became an exact science. About noon on the first day from Irkutsk we took a yemshick who proved sullen in the highest degree. The country was gently undulating, and the road superb but our promises of navodku were of no avail. We offered and entreated in vain. As a last resort we shouted in French to the ladies and suggested that they take the lead. Our yemshick ordered his comrade to keep his place, and refused to turn aside to allow him to pass. He even slackened his speed and drew his horses to a walk. Our stout-armed _garcon_ took a position on our sleigh, and by a fistic argument succeeded in turning us aside. We made only fair progress, and were glad when the drive was ended. When we began our rapid traveling, I had fears that the sleigh would go to pieces in consequence, but was soon convinced that everything was lovely. The sport was exciting, and greatly relieved the monotony of travel. We were so protected by furs, pillows, blankets, and hay, that our jolting and bounding had no serious result. The ladies enjoyed it as much as ourselves, and were not at all inconvenienced by any ordinary shaking. Once at the end of a furious ride of twenty versts, I found the madame asleep and learned that she had been so since leaving the last station. I have ridden much in American stage coaches, and witnessed some fine driving in the west and in California. But for rapidity and dash, commend me always to the Siberian yemshicks. CHAPTER XXXIX. On the second morning we stopped at Tulemsk to deliver several boxes that encumbered the sleighs. The servants have a way of putting small articles, and sometimes large ones, in the forward end of the vehicle. They are no special annoyance to a person of short stature, but in my own case I was not reconciled to the practice. A Russian sleigh is shaped somewhat like a laundry smoothing-iron, much narrower forward than aft, so that a traveler does not usually find the space beneath the driver a world too wide for his shrunk shanks. We thawed out over a steaming samovar with plenty of hot tea. The lady of the house brought a bottle of nalifka of such curious though agreeable flavor that I asked of what fruit it was made. "Nothing but orange peel," was the reply. Every Siberian housewife considers it her duty to prepare a goodly supply of nalifka during the autumn. A glass jar holding two or three gallons is filled to the neck with any kind of fruit or berries, currants and gooseberries being oftenest used. The jar is then filled with native whisky, and placed in a southern window where it is exposed to the sunlight and the heat of the room for ten days. The whisky is then poured off, mixed with an equal quantity of water, placed in a kettle with a pound of sugar to each gallon, and boiled for a few minutes. When cooled and strained it is bottled and goes to the cellar. Many Siberians prefer nalifka to foreign wines, and a former governor-general attempted to make it fashionable. He eschewed imported wine and substituted nalifka, but his example was not imitated to the extent he desired. Our halt consumed three or four hours. After we started an unfortunate pig was found entangled in the framework of my sleigh, and before we could let him out he was pretty well bruised and shaken up. How he came there we were puzzled to know, but I do not believe he ever willingly troubled a sleigh again. We encountered many caravans of sleds laden with merchandise. They were made up much like the trains I described between Kiachta and Lake Baikal, there being four or five sleds to each man. The horses generally guided themselves, and followed their leaders with great fidelity. While we were stopping to make some repairs near the foot of a hill, I was interested in the display of equine intelligence. As a caravan reached the top of the hill each horse stopped till the one preceding him had descended. Holding back as if restrained by reins he walked half down the descent, and then finished the hill and crossed the hollow below it at a trot. One after another passed in this manner without guidance, exactly as if controlled by a driver. I noticed that the horses were quite skillful in selecting the best parts of the road. I have occasionally seen a horse pause when there were three or four tracks through the snow, and make his choice with apparent deliberation. I recollect a school boy composition that declared in its first sentence, 'the horse is a noble animal,' but I never knew until I traveled in Siberia how much he is entitled to a patent of nobility. In the daytime we had little trouble with these caravans, as they generally gave us the road on hearing our bells. If the way was wide the horses usually turned aside of their own accord; where it was narrow they were unwilling to step in the snow, and did not until directed by their drivers. If the latter were dilatory our yemshicks turned aside and revenged themselves by lashing some of the sled horses and all the drivers they could reach. In the night we found more difficulty as the caravan horses desired to keep the road, and their drivers were generally asleep. We were bumped against innumerable sleds in the hours of darkness. The outriggers alone prevented our sleighs going to pieces. The trains going eastward carried assorted cargoes of merchandise for Siberia and China. Those traveling westward were generally loaded with tea in chests, covered with cowhide. The amount of traffic over the principal road through Siberia is very large. When we halted for dinner I brought a bottle of champagne from, my sleigh. It was the best of the 'Cliquot' brand and frozen as solid as a block of ice. It stood half an hour in a warm room before thawing enough to drip slowly into our glasses and was the most perfect _champagne frappé_ I ever saw. A bottle of cognac was a great deal colder than ordinary ice, and when we brought it into the station the moisture in the warm room congealed upon it to the thickness of card-board. After this display I doubted the existence of latent heat in alcohol. Just as we finished dinner the post with five vehicles was announced. We hastened to put on our furs and sprang into the sleighs with the least possible delay. There was no fear that we should lose the first and second set of horses, but the last one might be taken for the post as the ladies had only a third-class padaroshnia. The yemshicks were as anxious to escape as ourselves, as the business of carrying the mail does not produce navodka. The post between Irkutsk and Krasnoyarsk passes twice a week each way, and we frequently encountered it. Where it had just passed a station there was occasionally a scarcity of horses that delayed us till village teams were brought. A postillion accompanies each convoy, and is responsible for its security. Travelers sometimes purchase tickets and have their vehicles accompany the post, but in so doing their patience is pretty severely taxed. The postillion is a soldier or other government employé, and must be armed to repel robbers. One of these conductors was a boy of fourteen who appeared under heavy responsibility. I watched him loading a pistol at a station and was amused at his ostentatious manner. When the operation was completed he fixed the weapon in his belt and swaggered out with the air of the heavy tragedian at the Old Bowery. Another postillion stuck around with pistols and knives looked like a military museum on its travels. [Illustration: THE CONDUCTOR.] From our dining station we left the main road, and traveled several versts along the frozen surface of the Birusa river. The snow lay in ridges, and as we drove rapidly over them we were tossed like a yawl in a hopping sea. It was a foretaste of what was in store for me at later periods of my journey. The Birusa is rich in gold deposits, and the government formerly maintained extensive mining establishments in its valley. About nine o'clock in the evening we voted to take tea. On entering the station I found the floor covered with a dormant mass, exhaling an odor not altogether spicy. I bumped my head against a sort of wide shelf suspended eighteen or twenty inches from the ceiling, and sustaining several sleepers. "Here" said Paul, "is another _chambre á coucher_" as he attempted to pull aside a curtain at the top of the brick stove. A female head and shoulders were exposed for an instant, until a stout hand grasped and retained the curtain. The suspended shelf or false ceiling is quite common in the peasant houses, and especially at the stations. The yemshicks and other attachés of the concern are lodged here and on the floor, beds being a luxury they rarely obtain. Frequently a small house would be as densely packed as the steerage of a passenger ship, and I never desired to linger in these crowded apartments. A Russian house has little or no ventilation, and the effect of a score of sleepers on the air of a room is 'better imagined than described.' On the road west of Irkutsk the rules require each smotretal to keep ten teams or thirty horses, ready for use. Many of them have more than that number, and the villages can supply any ordinary demand after the regular force is exhausted. Fourteen yemshicks are kept at every station, and always ready for service. They are boarded at the expense of the smotretal, and receive about five roubles each per month, with as much drink-money as they can obtain. Frequently they make two journeys a day to the next station, returning without loads. They appeared on the most amiable terms with each other, and I saw no quarreling over their work. On our first and second nights from Irkutsk the weather was cold, the thermometer standing at fifteen or twenty degrees below zero. On the third day the temperature rose quite rapidly, and by noon it was just below the freezing point. Our furs designed for cold weather became uncomfortably warm, and I threw off my outer garments and rode in my sheepskin coat. In the evening we experienced a feeling of suffocation on closing the sleigh, and were glad to open it again. We rode all night with the wind beating pleasantly against our faces, and from time to time lost our consciousness in sleep. For nearly two days the warm weather continued, and subjected us to inconveniences. We did not travel as rapidly as in the colder days, the road being less favorable, and the horses diminishing their energy with the increased warmth. Some of our provisions were in danger of spoiling as they were designed for transportation only in a frozen state. Between Nijne Udinsk and Kansk the snow was scanty, and the road occasionally bad. The country preserved its slightly undulating character, and presented no features of interest. Where we found sufficient snow we proceeded rapidly, sometimes leaving the summer road and taking to the open ground, and forests on either side. We pitched into a great many _oukhabas_, analagous to American "hog wallows" or "cradle holes." To dash into one of these at full speed gives a shock like a boat's thumping on the shore. It is only with pillows, furs, and hay that a traveler can escape contusions. In mild doses _oukhabas_ are an excellent tonic, but the traveler who takes them in excess may easily imagine himself enjoying a field-day at Donnybrook Fair. [Illustration: JUMPING CRADLE HOLES.] An hour before reaching Kansk one of our horses fell dead and brought us to a sudden halt. The yemshick tried various expedients to discover signs of life but to no purpose. Paul and I formed a board of survey, and sat upon the beast; the other sleighs passed us during our consultation, and were very soon out of sight. When satisfied that the animal, as a horse, was of no further use, the yemshick pulled him to the roadside, stripped off his harness, and proceeded with our reduced team. I asked who was responsible for the loss, and was told it was no affair of ours. The government pays for horses killed in the service of couriers, as these gentlemen compel very high speed. On a second or third rate padaroshnian the death of a horse is the loss of its owner. Horses are not expensive in this region, an ordinary roadster being worth from fifteen to twenty roubles. Within a mile of Kansk the road was bare of snow, and as we had but two horses to our sleigh I proposed walking into town. We passed a long train of sleds on their way to market with loads of wood and hay. Tea was ready for us when we arrived at the station, and we were equally ready for it. After my fifth cup I walked through the public square as it was market day, and the people were in the midst of traffic. Fish, meat, hay, wood, and a great quantity of miscellaneous articles were offered for sale. In general terms the market was a sort of pocket edition of the one at Irkutsk. I practiced my knowledge of Russian in purchasing a quantity of rope to use in case of accidents. Foreigners were not often seen there if I may judge of the curiosity with which I was regarded. Kansk is a town of about three thousand inhabitants, and stands on the Kan, a tributary of the Yenesei. We were told there was little snow to the first station, and were advised to take five horses to each sleigh. We found the road a combination of thin snow and bare ground, the latter predominating. We proceeded very well, the yemshicks maintaining sublime indifference to the character of the track. They plied their whips vigorously in the probable expectation of drink-money. The one on my sleigh regaled us with an account of the perfectly awful condition of the road to Krasnoyarsk. About sunset we changed horses, thirty versts from Kansk, and found no cheering prospect ahead. We drowned our sorrows in the flowing tea-cup, and fortified ourselves with a large amount of heat. Tea was the sovereign remedy for all our ills, and we used it most liberally. We set out with misgivings and promised liberal rewards to the yemshicks, if they took us well and safely. The road was undeniably bad, with here and there a redeeming streak of goodness. Notwithstanding the jolts I slept pretty well during the night. In the morning we took tea fifty versts from Krasnoyarsk, and learned there was absolutely no snow for the last thirty versts before reaching the city. There was fortunately a good snow road to the intervening village where we must change to wheels. Curiously enough the snow extended up to the very door of the last station, and utterly disappeared three feet beyond. Looking one way we saw bare earth, while in the other direction there was a good road for sleighing. At this point we arranged our programme over the inevitable cakes and tea. The ladies were to leave their vashok until their return to Irkutsk ten or twelve days later. The remaining sleighs were unladen and mounted upon wheels. We piled our baggage into telyagas with the exception of a few articles that remained in the sleighs. The ladies with their maid took one wagon, while Paul and myself rode in another, the man servant conveying the sleighs. The whole arrangement was promptly effected; the villagers scented a job on our arrival, and were ready for proposals. My sleigh was lifted and fastened into a wagon about as quickly as a hackman would arrange a trunk. _Place aux dames toujours._ We sent away the ladies half an hour in advance of the rest of the party. Our telyaga was a rickety affair, not half so roomy as the sleigh, but as the ride was short the discomfort was of little consequence. We had four ill conditioned steeds, but before we had gone twenty rods one of the brutes persistently faced about and attempted to come inside the vehicle, though he did not succeed. After vain efforts to set him right, the yemshick turned him loose, and he bolted homeward contentedly. We climbed and descended a long hill near the village, and then found a level country quite free from snow, and furnishing a fine road. I was told that very little snow falls within twenty miles of Krasnoyarsk, and that it is generally necessary to use wheels there in the winter months. The reason was not explained to me, but probably the general configuration of the country is much like that near Chetah. Krasnoyarsk lies on the Yenesei which has a northerly course into the Arctic Ocean. The mountains bounding the valley are not lofty, but sufficiently high to wring the moisture from the snow clouds. Both above and below Krasnoyarsk, there is but little snow even in severe seasons. Our animals were superbly atrocious, and made good speed only on descending grades. We were four hours going thirty versts, and for three-fourths that distance our route was equal to the Bloomingdale Road. Occasionally we saw farm houses with a dejected appearance as if the winter had come upon them unawares. From the quantity of ground enclosed by fences I judged the land was fertile, and well cultivated. Toward sunset we saw the domes of Krasnoyarsk rising beyond the frozen Yenesei. We crossed the river on the ice, and passed near several women engaged in rinsing clothes. A laundress does her washing at the house, but rinses her linen at the river. In summer this may be well enough, but it seemed to me that the winter exercise of standing in a keen wind with the thermometer below zero, and rinsing clothes in a hole cut through the ice was anything but agreeable. It was a cold day, and I was well wrapped in furs, but these women were in ordinary clothing, and some had bare legs. They stood at the edges of circular holes in the ice, and after 'swashing' the linen a short time in the water, wrung it with their purple hands. How they escaped frost bites I cannot imagine. The Yenesei is a magnificent river, one of the largest in Siberia. It is difficult to estimate with accuracy any distance upon ice, and I may be far from correct in considering the Yenesei a thousand yards wide at Krasnoyarsk. The telegraph wires are supported on tall masts as at the crossing of the Missouri near Kansas City. In summer there are two steamboats navigating the river from Yeneseisk to the Arctic Ocean. Rapids and shoals below Krasnoyarsk prevent their ascending to the latter town. The tributaries of the Yenesei are quite rich in gold deposits, and support a mining business of considerable extent. Krasnoyarsk derives its name from the red hills in its vicinity, and the color of the soil where it stands. It is on the left bank of the Yenesei, and has about ten thousand inhabitants. It was nearly night when we climbed the sloping road in the hillside, and reached the level of the plateau. The ladies insisted that we should occupy their house during our stay, and utterly forbade our going to the hotel. While walking up the hill the captain hailed a washerwoman, and asked for the residence of Madame Rodstvenny. Her reply was so voluminous, and so rapidly given that my friend was utterly bewildered, and comprehended nothing. To his astonishment I told him that I understood the direction. "_C'est impossible_," he declared. "By no means," I replied. "The madame lives in a stone house to the left of the gastinni dvor. The washerwoman said so." Following my advice we found the house. As we entered the courtyard, the captain begged to know by what possibility I understood in his own language what he could not. I explained that while the woman spoke so glibly I caught the words "_doma, kamen, na leva, gastinni dvor_." I understood only the essential part of her instruction, and was not confused by the rest. I was somewhat reluctant to convert a private house into a hotel as I expected to remain four or five days. But Siberian hospitality does not stop at trifles, and my objections were promptly overruled. After toilet and dinner, Paul and I were parboiled in the bath house of the establishment. An able-bodied moujik scrubbed me so thoroughly as to suggest the possibility of removing the cuticle. In the morning I went to the bank to change some large bills into one-rouble notes for use on the road. Horses must be paid for at every station, and it is therefore desirable to carry the smallest notes with abundance of silver and copper to make change. The bank was much like institutions of its class elsewhere, and transacted my business promptly. The banks in Siberia are branches of the Imperial Bank at St. Petersburg. They receive deposits, and negotiate exchanges and remittances just like private banks, but do not undertake risky business. The officers are servants of the government, and receive their instructions from the parent bank. My finances arranged, I went to the telegraph office to send a message to a friend. My despatch was written in Russian, and I paid for message and response. A receipt was given me stating the day, hour, and minute of filing the despatch, its destination, address, length, and amount paid. When I received the response I found a statement of the exact time it was filed for transmission, and also of its reception at Krasnoyarsk. This is the ordinary routine of the Russian telegraph system. I commend it to the notice of interested persons in America. There is no free telegraphing on the government lines, every despatch over the wires being paid for by somebody. If on government business the sender pays the regular tariff and is reimbursed from the treasury. I was told that the officers of the telegraph paid for their own family messages, but had the privilege of conversing on the lines free of charge. High position does not confer immunity. When the Czarevitch was married, General Korsackoff sent his congratulations by telegraph, and received a response from the Emperor. Both messages were paid for by the sender without reduction or trust. I found the general features of Krasnoyarsk much like those of Irkutsk. Official and civilian inhabitants dressed, lived, walked, breathed, drank, and gambled like their kindred nearer the east. It happened to be market day, and the public square was densely crowded. I was interested in observing the character and abundance of the fish offered for sale. Among those with a familiar appearance were the sturgeon, perch, and pike, and a small fish resembling our alewife. There was a fish unknown to me, with a long snout like a duck's bill, and a body on the extreme clipper model. All these fish are from the Yenesei, some dwelling there permanently while others ascend annually from the Arctic Ocean. All in the market were frozen solid, and the larger ones were piled up like cord-wood. From the bank overlooking the river there is a fine view of the valley of the Yenesei. There are several islands in the vicinity, and I was told that in the season of floods the stream has a very swift current. It is no easy work to ferry across it, and the boats generally descend a mile or two while paddling over. A few years ago a resident of Krasnoyarsk made a remarkable voyage on this river. He had been attending a wedding several miles away on the other bank, and started to return late at night so as to reach the ferry about daybreak. His equipage was a wooden telyaga drawn by two powerful horses. Having partaken of the cup that inebriates, the man fell asleep and allowed his horses to take their own course. Knowing the way perfectly they came without accident to the ferry landing, their owner still wrapped in his drunken slumber. [Illustration: VALLEY OF THE YENESEI.] The boat was on the other side, and the horses, no doubt hungry and impatient, plunged in to swim across. The telyaga filled with water, but had sufficient buoyancy not to sink. The cold bath waked and sobered the involuntary voyager when about half way over the river. He had the good sense, aided by fright, to remain perfectly still, and was landed in safety. Those who saw him coming in the early dawn were struck with astonishment, and one, at least, imagined that he beheld Neptune in his marine chariot breasting the waters of the Yenesei. My informant vouched for the correctness of the story, and gave it as an illustration of the courage and endurance of Siberian horses. According to the statement of the condition of the river, the beasts could have as easily crossed the Mississippi at Memphis in an ordinary stage of water. Wolves are abundant in the valley of the Yenesei, though they are not generally dangerous to men. An officer whom I met there told me they were less troublesome than in Poland, and he related his experience with them in the latter country while on a visit to the family of a young lady to whom he was betrothed. I give his story as nearly as possible in his own words. "One day my friend Rasloff proposed a wolf hunt. We selected the best horses from his stable; fine, quick, surefooted beasts, with a driver who was unsurpassed in all that region for his skill and dash. The sleigh was a large one, and we fitted it with a good supply of robes and straw, and put a healthy young pig in it to serve as a decoy. We each had a gun, and carried a couple of spare guns, with plenty of ammunition, so that we could kill as many wolves as presented themselves. "Just as we were preparing to start, Christina asked to accompany us. I suggested the coldness of the night, and Rasloff hinted that the sleigh was too small for three. But Christina protested that the air, though sharp, was clear and still, and she could wrap herself warmly; a ride of a few hours would do her more good than harm. The sleigh, she insisted, was a large one, and afforded ample room. 'Besides,' she added, 'I will sit directly behind the driver, and out of your way, and I want to see a wolf-hunt very much indeed.' "So we consented. Christina arrayed herself in a few moments, and we started on our excursion. "The servants were instructed to hang out a light in front of the entrance to the courtyard. It was about sunset when we left the chateau and drove out upon the plain, covered here and there with patches of forest. The road we followed was well trodden by the many peasants on their way to the fair at the town, twenty-five miles away. We traveled slowly, not wishing to tire our horses, and, as we left the half dozen villages that clustered around the chateau, we had the road entirely to ourselves. The moon rose soon after sunset, and as it was at the full, it lighted up the plain very clearly, and seemed to stand out quite distinct from the deep blue sky and the bright stars that sparkled everywhere above the horizon. We chatted gayly as we rode along. The time passed so rapidly that I was half surprised, when Rasloff told me to get ready to hunt wolves. "The pig had been lying very comfortably in the bottom, of the sleigh, and protested quite loudly as we brought him out. The rope had been made ready before we started from home, and so the most we had to do was to turn the horses around, get our guns ready, and throw the pig upon the ground. He set up a piercing shriek as the rope dragged him along, and completely drowned our voices. Paul had hard work to keep the horses from breaking into a run, but he succeeded, and we maintained a very slow trot. Christina nestled in the place she had agreed to occupy, and Rasloff and I prepared to shoot the wolves. "We drove thus for fifteen or twenty minutes. The pig gradually became exhausted, and reduced his scream to a sort of moan that was very painful to hear. I began to think we should see no wolves, and return to the chateau without firing our guns, when suddenly a howl came faintly along the air, and in a moment, another and another. "'There,' said Rasloff; 'there comes our game, and we shall have work enough before long.' "A few moments later I saw a half dozen dusky forms emerging from the forest to the right and behind us. They seemed like moving spots on the snow, and had it not been for their howling I should have failed to notice them as early as I did. They grew more and more numerous, and, as they gathered behind us, formed a waving line across the road that gradually took the shape of a crescent, with the horns pointing toward our right and left. At first they were timid, and kept a hundred yards or more behind us, but as the hog renewed his scream, they took courage, and approached nearer. "By the time they were within fifty yards there were two or three hundred of them--possibly half a thousand. I could see every moment that their numbers were increasing, and it was somewhat impatiently that I waited Rasloff's signal to fire. At last he told me to begin, and I fired at the center of the pack. The wolf I struck gave a howl of pain, and his companions, roused by the smell of blood, fell upon and tore him to pieces in a moment. Rasloff fired an instant after me, and then we kept up our firing as fast as possible. As the wolves fell, the others sprung upon them, but the pack was so large that they were not materially detained by stopping to eat up their brethren. They continued the pursuit, and what alarmed me, they came nearer, and showed very little fear of our guns. "We had taken a large quantity of ammunition--more by half than we thought would possibly be needed--but its quantity diminished so rapidly as to suggest the probability of exhaustion. The pack steadily came nearer. We cut away the pig, but it stopped the pursuit only for a moment. Directly behind us the wolves were not ten yards away; on each side they were no further from the horses, who were snorting with fear, and requiring all the efforts of the driver to hold them. We shot down the beasts as fast as possible, and as I saw our danger I whispered my thoughts to Rasloff. "He replied to me in Spanish, which Christina did not understand, that the situation was really dangerous, and we must prepare to get out of it. 'I would stay longer,' he suggested, 'though there is a good deal of risk in it; but we must think of the girl, and not let her suspect anything wrong, and, above all, must not risk her safety.' "Turning to the driver, he said, in a cheery tone: "'Paul, we have shot till we are tired out. You may let the horses go, but keep them well in control.' "While he spoke a huge wolf sprang from the pack and dashed toward one of the horses. Another followed him, and in twenty seconds the line was broken and they were upon us. One wolf jumped at the rear of the sleigh and caught his paws upon it. Rasloff struck him with the butt of his gun, and at the same instant he delivered the blow, Paul let the horses have their way. Rasloff fell upon the edge of the vehicle and over its side. Luckily, his foot caught in one of the robes and held him for an instant--long enough to enable me to seize and draw him back. It was the work of a moment, but what a moment! "Christina had remained silent, suspecting, but not fully comprehending our danger. As her brother fell she screamed and dropped senseless to the bottom of the sleigh. I confess that I exerted all my strength in that effort to save the brother of my affianced, and as I accomplished it, I sank powerless, though still conscious, at the side of the girl I loved. Rasloff's right arm was dislocated by the fall, and one of the pursuing wolves had struck his teeth into his scalp as he was dragging over the side, and torn it so that it bled profusely. How narrow had been his escape! "'Faster, faster, Paul!' he shouted; 'drive for your life and for ours.' "Paul gave the horses free rein, and they needed no urging. They dashed along the road as horses rarely ever dashed before. In a few minutes I gained strength enough to raise my head, and saw, to my unspeakable delight, that the distance between us and the pack was increasing. We were safe if no accident occurred and the horses could maintain their pace. "One horse fell, but, as if knowing his danger, made a tremendous effort and gained his feet. By-and-by we saw the light at the chateau, and in a moment dashed into the courtyard, and were safe." [Illustration: A WOLF HUNT.] CHAPTER XL. I found at Krasnoyarsk more beggars than in Irkutsk, in proportion to the population. Like beggars in all parts of the empire, they made the sign of the cross on receiving donations. A few were young, but the great majority were old, tattered, and decrepid, who shivered in the frosty air, and turned purple visages upon their benefactors. The peasantry in Russia are liberal to the poor, and in many localities they have abundant opportunities to practice charity. With its abundance of beggars Krasnoyarsk can also boast a great many wealthy citizens. The day before my departure one of these Siberian Croesuses died, and another was expected to follow his example before long. A church near the market place was built at the sole expense of this deceased individual. Its cost exceeded seven hundred thousand roubles, and its interior was said to be finely decorated. Among the middle classes in Siberia the erection of churches is, or has been, the fashionable mode of public benefaction. The endowment of schools, libraries, and scientific associations has commenced, but is not yet fully popular. The wealth of Krasnoyarsk is chiefly derived from gold digging. The city may be considered the center of mining enterprises in the government of Yeneseisk. Two or three thousand laborers in the gold mines spend the winter at Krasnoyarsk, and add to the volume of local commerce. The town of Yeneseisk, three hundred versts further north, hibernates an equal number, and many hundreds are scattered through the villages in the vicinity. The mining season begins in May and ends in September. In March and April the clerks and superintendents engage their laborers, paying a part of their wages in advance. The wages are not high, and only those in straitened circumstances, the dissolute, and profligate, who have no homes of their own, are inclined to let themselves to labor in gold mines. Many works are extensive, and employ a thousand or more laborers each. The government grants mining privileges to individuals on certain conditions. The land granted must be worked at least one year out of every three, else the title reverts to the government, and can be allotted again. The grantee must be either a hereditary nobleman or pay the tax of a merchant of the second guild, or he should be able to command the necessary capital for the enterprise he undertakes. His title holds good until his claim is worked out or abandoned, and no one can disturb him on any pretext. He receives a patent for a strip of land seven versts long and a hundred fathoms wide, on the banks of a stream suitable for mining purposes. The claim extends on both sides of the stream, and includes its bed, so that the water may be utilized at the will of the miner. Sometimes the grantee desires a width of more than a hundred fathoms, but in such case the length of his claim is shortened in proportion. It requires a large capital to open a claim after the grant is obtained. The location is often far from any city or large town, where supplies are purchased. Transportation is a heavy item, as the roads are difficult to travel. Sometimes a hundred thousand roubles will be expended in supplies, transportation, buildings, and machinery, before the work begins. Then men must be hired, taken to the mines, clothed, and furnished with, proper quarters. The proprietor must have at hand a sufficient amount of provisions, medical stores, clothing, and miscellaneous goods to supply his men during the summer. Everything desired by the laborer is sold to him at a lower price than he could buy elsewhere, at least such is the theory. I was told that the mining proprietors make no profits from their workmen, but simply add the cost of transportation to the wholesale price of the merchandise. The men are allowed to anticipate their wages by purchase, and it often happens that there is very little due them at the end of the season. Government regulations and the interest of proprietors require that the laborers should be well fed and housed and tended during sickness. Every mining establishment maintains a physician either on its own account or jointly with a neighbor. The national dish of Russia, _schee_, is served daily, with at least a pound of beef. Sometimes the treatment of the men lapses into negligence toward the close of the season, especially if the enterprise is unfortunate; but this is not the case in the early months. The mining proprietors understand the importance of keeping their laborers in good health, and to secure this end there is nothing better than proper food and lodging. Vodki is dealt out in quantities sufficiently small to prevent intoxication, except on certain feast-days, when all can get drunk to their liking. No drinking shops can be kept on the premises until the season's work is over and the men are preparing to depart. Every laborer is paid for extra work, and if industrious and prudent his wages will equal thirty-five or forty roubles a month beside his board. While in debt he is required by law to work every day, not even resting on Saints' days or Sundays. The working season lasting only about four months, early and late hours are a necessity. When the year's operations are ended the most of the men find their way to the larger towns, where they generally waste their substance in riotous living till the return of spring. As in mining communities everywhere, the prudent and economical are a minority. The mines in the government of Yeneseisk are generally on the tributaries of the Yenesei river. The valley of the Pit is rich in gold deposits, and has yielded large fortunes to lucky operators during the past twenty years. Usually the pay-dirt begins twenty or thirty feet below the surface, and I heard of a mine that yielded handsome profits though the gold-bearing earth was under seventy feet of soil. Prospecting is conducted with great care, and no mining enterprise is commenced without a thorough survey of the region to be developed. Wells or pits are dug at regular intervals, the exact depth and the character of the upper earth being noted. This often involves a large expenditure of money and labor, and many fortunes have been wasted, by parties whose lucky star was not in the ascendant, in their persistent yet unsuccessful search for paying mines. Solid rock is sometimes struck sooner or later after commencing work, which renders the expense of digging vastly greater. In such cases, unless great certainty exists of striking a rich vein of gold beneath, the labor is suspended, the spot vacated, and another selected with perhaps like results. Occasionally some sanguine operator will push his well down through fifty feet of solid rock at a great outlay, and with vast labor, to find himself possessed of the means for a large fortune, while another will find himself ruined by his failure to strike the expected gold. When the pay-dirt is reached, its depth and the number of zolotniks of gold in every pood taken out are ascertained. With the results before him a practical miner can readily decide whether a place will pay for working. Of course he must take many contingent facts into consideration, such as the extent of the placer, the resources of the region, the roads or the expense of making them, provisions, lumber, transportation, horses, tools, men, and so on through a long list. The earth over the pay-dirt is broken up and carted off; its great depth causes immense wear of horseflesh. A small mine employs three or four hundred workmen, and larger ones in proportion. I heard of one that kept more than three thousand men at work. The usual estimate for horses is one to every two men, but the proportion varies according to the character of the mine. The pay-dirt is hauled to the bank of the river, where it is washed in machines turned by water power. Various machines have been devised for gold-washing, and the Russians are anxious to find the best invention of the kind. The one in most general use and the easiest to construct is a long cylinder of sheet iron open at both ends and perforated with many small holes. This revolves in a slightly inclined position, and receives the dirt and a stream of water at the upper end. The stones pass through the cylinder and fall from the opposite end, where they are examined to prevent the loss of 'nuggets.' Fine dirt, sand, gold, and water pass through the perforations, and are caught in suitable troughs, where the lighter substance washes away and leaves the black sand and gold. Great care is exercised to prevent thefts, but it does not always succeed. The laborers manage to purloin small quantities, which they sell to contraband dealers in the larger towns. The government forbids private traffic in gold dust, and punishes offences with severity; but the profits are large and tempting. Every gold miner must send the product of his diggings to the government establishment at Barnaool, where it is smelted and assayed. The owner receives its money value, minus the Imperial tax of fifteen per cent. The whole valley of the Yenesei, as far as explored, is auriferous. Were it not for the extreme rigor of its climate and the disadvantages of location, it would become immensely productive. Some mines have been worked at a profit where the earth is solidly frozen and must be thawed by artificial means. One way of accomplishing this is by piling wood to a height of three or four feet and then setting it on fire. The earth thawed by the heat is scraped off, and fresh fires are made. Sometimes the frozen earth is dug up and soaked in water. Either process is costly, and the yield of gold must be great to repay the outlay. A gentleman in Irkutsk told me he had a gold mine of this frozen character, and intimated that he found it profitable. The richest gold mines thus far worked in Siberia are in the government of Yeneseisk, but it is thought that some of the newly opened placers in the Trans-Baikal province and along the Amoor will rival them in productiveness. [Illustration: HYDRAULIC MINING.] In Irkutsk I met a Russian who had spent some months in California, and proposed introducing hydraulic mining to the Siberians. No quartz mines have been worked in Eastern Siberia, but several rich leads are known to exist, and I presume a thorough exploration would reveal many more. I saw excellent specimens of gold-bearing quartz from the governments of Irkutsk and Yeneseisk. One specimen in particular, if in the hands of certain New York operators, would be sufficient basis for a company with a capital of half a million. In the Altai and Ural mountains quartz mills have been in use for many years. The Siberian gold deposits were made available long before Russia explored and conquered Northern Asia. There are many evidences in the Ural mountains of extensive mining operations hundreds of years ago. Large areas have been dug over by a people of whom the present inhabitants can give no account. It is generally supposed that the Tartars discovered and opened these gold mines shortly after the time of Genghis Khan. The native population of the valley of the Yenesei comprises several distinct tribes, belonging in common to the great Mongolian race. In the extreme north, in the region bordering the Arctic Ocean, are the Samoyedes, who are of the same blood as the Turks. The valley of the Lena is peopled by Yakuts, whose development far exceeds that of the Samoyedes, though both are of common origin. The latter are devoted entirely to the chase and the rearing of reindeer, and show no fondness for steady labor. The Yakuts employ the horse as a beast of burden, and are industrious, ingenious, and patient. As much as the character of the country permits they till the soil, and are not inclined to nomadic life. They are hardy and reliable laborers, and live on the most amicable terms with the Russians. Before the opening of the Amoor the carrying trade from Yakutsk to Ohotsk was in their hands. As many as forty thousand horses used to pass annually between the two points, nearly all of them owned and driven by Yakuts. Most of these natives have been converted to Christianity, but they still adhere to some of their ancient practices. On the road, for example, they pluck hairs from their horse's tails and hang them upon trees to appease evil spirits. Some of the Russians have imbibed native superstitions, and there is a story of a priest who applied to a shaman to practice his arts and ward off evil in a journey he was about to make. Examples to the natives are not always of the best, and it would not be surprising if they raised doubts as to the superiority of Christian faith. A traveler who had a mixed party of Cossacks and natives, relates that the former were accustomed to say their prayers three or four times on evenings when they had plenty of leisure and omit them altogether when they were fatigued. At Nijne Kolymsk Captain Wrangell found the priests holding service three times on one Sunday and then absenting themselves for two weeks. South of Krasnoyarsk are the natives belonging to the somewhat indefinite family known as Tartars. They came originally from Central Asia, and preserve many Mongol habits added to some created by present circumstances. Some of them dwell in houses, while others adhere to yourts of the same form and material as those of the Bouriats and Mongols. They are agriculturists in a small way, but only adopt tilling the soil as a last resort. Their wealth consists in sheep, cattle, and horses, and when one of them has large possessions he changes his habitation two or three times a year, on account of pasturage. A gentleman told me that he once found a Tartar, whose flocks and herds were worth more than a million roubles, living in a tent of ordinary dimensions and with very little of what a European would call comfort. These natives harmonize perfectly with the Russians, of whom they have a respectful fear. Like their kindred in Central Asia, these Tartars are excellent horsemen, and show themselves literally at home in the saddle. Dismounted, they step clumsily, and are unable to walk any distance of importance. On horseback they have an easy and graceful carriage, and are capable of great endurance. They show intense love for their horses, caressing them constantly and treating their favorite riding animals as household pets. In all their songs and traditions the horse occupies a prominent place. One of the most popular Tartar songs, said to be of great antiquity, relates the adventures of "Swan's Wing," a beautiful daughter of a native chief. Her brother had been overpowered by a magician and carried to the spirit laird. According to the tradition the horse he rode came to Swan's Wing and told her what had occurred. The young girl begged him to lead her by the road the magician had taken, and thus guided, she reached the country of the shades. Assisted by the horse she was able to rescue her brother from the prison where he was confined. On her return she narrated to her people the incidents of her journey, which are chanted at the present time. The song tells how one of the supernatural guardians was attracted by her beauty and became her _valet de place_ during her visit. Near the entrance of the grounds she saw a fat horse in a sandy field, and a lean one in a meadow. A thin and apparently powerless man was wading against a torrent, while a large and muscular one could not stop a small brook. "The first horse," said her guide, "shows that a careful master can keep his herds in good condition with scanty pasturage, and the second shows how easily one may fail to prosper in the midst of plenty. The man stemming the torrent shows how much one can accomplish by the force of will, even though the body be weak. The strong man is overpowered by the little stream, because he lacks intelligence and resolution." She was next led through several apartments of a large building. In the first apartment several women were spinning incessantly, while others attempted to swallow balls of hemp. Next she saw women holding heavy stones in their hands and unable to put them down. Then there were parties playing without cessation upon musical instruments, and others busy over games of chance. In one room were men and dogs enraged and biting each other. In a dormitory were many couples with quilts of large dimensions, but in each couple there was an active struggle, and its quilt was frequently pulled aside. In the last hall of the establishment there were smiling couples, at peace with all the world and 'the rest of mankind.' The song closes with the guide's explanation of what Swan's Wing had seen. "The women who spin now are punished because in their lives they continued to spin after sunset, when they should be at rest. "Those who swallow balls of hemp were guilty of stealing thread by making their cloth too thin. "Those condemned to hold heavy stones were guilty of putting stones in their butter to make it heavy. "The parties who make music and gamble did nothing else in their life time, and must continue that employment perpetually. "The men with the dogs are suffering the penalty of having created quarrels on earth. "The couples who freeze under ample covering are punished for their selfishness when mortals, and the couples in the next apartment are an example to teach the certainty of happiness to those who develop kindly disposition." The region of the Lower Yenesei contains many exiles whom the government desired to remove far from the centers of population. These include political and criminal prisoners, whose offences are of a high grade, together with the members of a certain religious order, known as "The Skoptsi." The latter class is particularly obnoxious on account of its practice of mutilation. Whenever an adherent of this sect is discovered he is banished to the remotest regions, either in the north of Siberia or among the mountains of Circassia. It is the only religious body relentlessly persecuted by the Russian government, and the persecution is based upon the sparseness of population. Some of these men have been incorporated into regiments on the frontier, where they prove obedient and tractable. Those who become colonists in Siberia are praised for their industry and perseverance, and invariably win the esteem of their neighbors. They are banished to distant localities through fear of their influence upon those around them. Most of the money-changers of Moscow are reputed to believe in this peculiar faith. Many prominent individuals were exiled to the Lower Yenesei and regions farther eastward, under former sovereigns. Count Golofkin, one of the ministers of Catherine II., was banished to Nijne Kolymsk, where he died. It is said that he used to put himself, his servants, and house in deep mourning on every anniversary of Catherine's birthday. Two officers of the court of the emperor Paul were exiled to a small town on the Yenesei, where they lived until recalled by Alexander I. The settlers on the Angara are freed from liability to conscription, on condition that they furnish rowers and pilots to boats navigating that stream. The settlers on the Lena enjoy the same privilege under similar terms. On account of the character of the country and the drawbacks to prosperity, the taxes are much lighter than in more favored regions. In the more northern districts there is a considerable trade in furs and ivory. The latter comes in the shape of walrus tusks, and the tusks and teeth of the mammoth, which are gathered on the shores of the Arctic Ocean and the islands scattered through it. This trade is less extensive than it was forty or fifty years ago. [Illustration: TAIL PIECE] CHAPTER XLI. I spent three days in Krasnoyarsk, chiefly employed upon my letters and journal. My recent companions were going no farther in my direction, and knowing this beforehand, I arranged with a gentleman at Irkutsk to travel with him from Krasnoyarsk. He arrived two days behind me, and after sending away a portion of his heavy baggage, was ready to depart. There was no snow to the first station, and so we sent our sleighs on wheels and used the post carriages over the bare ground. A peasant who lived near the station sought me out and offered to transport my sleigh for three roubles and a little drink-money. As I demurred, he proposed to repair, without extra charge, one of my fenders which had come to grief, and we made a bargain on this proposition. My companion, Dr. Schmidt, had recently returned from a mammoth-hunting expedition within the Arctic circle. He had not secured a perfect specimen of this extinct beast, but contented himself with some parts of the stupendous whole, and a miscellaneous collection of birds, bugs, and reptiles. He despatched a portion of his treasures by post; the balance, with his assistant, formed a sufficient load for one sleigh. The doctor was to ride in my sleigh, while his assistant in another vehicle kept company with the relicts. The kegs, boxes, and bundles of Arctic zoology did not form a comfortable couch, and I never envied their conductor. On the day fixed for our departure we sent our papers to the station in the forenoon, and were told we could be supplied at sunset or a little later. This was not to our liking, as we desired to reach the first station before nightfall. A friend suggested an appeal to the Master of the post, and together we proceeded to that functionary's office. An amiable, quiet man he was, and listened to our complaint with perfect composure. After hearing it he summoned the smotretal with his book of records, and an animated discussion followed. I expected to see somebody grow indignant, but the whole affair abounded in good nature. The conversation was conducted with the decorum of a school dialogue on exhibition day. In half an hour by the clock I was told I could have a troika at once, in consideration of my special passport. "Wait a little," whispered my friend in French, "and we will have the other troika for Schmidt." So I waited, kicking my heels about the room, studying the posters on the walls, eyeing a bad portrait of the emperor, and a worse one of the empress, and now and then drawing near the scene of action. The clerks looked at me in furtive glances. At every pronunciation of my name, coupled with the word "Amerikansky," there was a general stare all around. I am confident those attachés of the post office at Krasnoyarsk had a perfect knowledge of my features. In exactly another half hour our point and the horses were gained. When we entered the office it was positively declared there were no horses to be had, and it was a little odd that two troikas and six horses, could be produced out of nothing, and each of them at the end of a long talk. I asked an explanation of the mystery, but was told it was a Russian peculiarity that no American could understand. The horses came very promptly, one troika to Schmidt's lodgings and the other to mine. The servants packed my baggage into the little telyaga that was to carry me to the first station. Joining Schmidt with the other team, we rattled out of town on an excellent road, and left the red hills of Krasnoyarsk. The last object I saw denoting the location of the town was a church or chapel on a high cliff overlooking the Yenesei valley. The road lay over an undulating region, where there were few streams and very little timber. The snow lay in little patches here and there on the swells least exposed to the sun, but it did not cover a twentieth part of the ground. In several hollows the mud had frozen and presented a rough surface to our wheels. Our telyaga had no springs, and when we went at a rapid trot over the worst places the bones of my spinal column seemed engaged in a struggle for independence. A thousand miles of such riding would have been too much for me. A dog belonging to Madame Radstvenny's house-keeper followed me from Krasnoyarsk, but did not show himself till we were six or eight versts away. Etiquette, to say nothing of morality, does not sanction stealing the dog of your host, and so I arranged for the brute's return. In consideration of fifty copecks the yemshick agreed to take the dog on his homeward trip and deliver him in good order and condition at Krasnoyarsk. Just before reaching the first station we passed through a village nearly four miles long, but only a single street in width. The station was at the extreme end of the village; our sleighs were waiting for us, and so were the men who brought them from Krasnoyarsk. There was no snow for the next twenty versts, and consequently the sleighs needed further transportation. Schmidt's sleigh was dragged empty over the bare ground, but mine, being heavier, was mounted upon wheels. Other difficulties awaited us. There was but one troika to spare and only one telyaga. We required two vehicles for ourselves and baggage, but the smotretal could not accommodate us. We ordered the samovar, and debated over our tea. I urged my friend to try the effect of my special passport, which had always been successful in Paul's hands. He did so after our tea-drinking, but the document was powerless, the smotretal doubtless arguing that if the paper were of consequence we should have shown it on our arrival. We sent it to the _starost_, or head man of the village, but that worthy declined to honor it, and we were left to shift for ourselves. Evidently the power of the Governor General's passport was on the wane. The document was a request, not an order, and therefore had no real force. Paul always displayed it as if it were an Imperial ukase. His manner of spreading the double page and exhibiting seal and signature carried authority and produced horses. The amiable naturalist had none of the quality called 'cheek,' and the adoption of an authoritative air did not accord with his character. He subsequently presented the passport as if he thought it all-powerful, and on such occasions it generally proved so. A man who wishes to pass a doorkeeper at a caucus, enter a ladies' car on a railway, or obtain a reserved seat in a court room, is much more certain of success if he advances with a confident air than if he hesitates and appears fearful of ejection. Humanity is the same the world over, and there is more than a shadow of truth in the saying that society values a man pretty much as he appears to value himself. I can testify that the smotretals in Siberia generally regarded our papers according to our manner of showing them. We took tea a second time, parlayed with the yemshicks and their friends, and closed by chartering a team at double the regular rates. Just before reaching the snow we passed the sleighs, and halted for them to come up. My sleigh was very soon ready, and we rejoiced at our transfer of baggage. During the change a bottle of cognac disappeared mysteriously, and I presume we shall never see it again. The other and more cumbersome articles preserved their numbers faithfully. Our party halting in the moonlight and busy about the vehicles, presented a curiously picturesque appearance. Schmidt was in his Arctic costume, while I wore my winter dress, minus the dehar. The yemshicks were wrapped in their inevitable sheepskins, and bustled about with unwavering good humor. In the sleigh we were at home, and had a roof to cover us; we made very good speed to the station, where we found no horses. The floor of the travelers' room was covered with dormant figures, and after bumping my head over the doorway, I waded in a pond of bodies, heads, and legs. The moon was the only light, and its beams were not sufficient to prevent my stepping on several sleepers, and extracting Russian oaths for my carelessness. "Now for it," I whispered to the good-natured doctor, as we waked the smotretal. "Make him think our papers are important." The official rubbed his eyes over the passport, and then hastened to arouse the starost. The latter ordered horses from the village without delay. It had been a fete-day in honor of the Emperor, and most of the villagers were drunk, so that it required some time to assemble the requisite yemshicks and horses. A group of men and women from an evening party passed the station, and amused us with native songs. An inebriated moujik, riding on a small sled, turned from the road to enter the station yard. One side of the sled passed over a log, and as the man had not secured his balance, he rolled out of sight in a snow drift. I watched him as he emerged, much as Neptune might appear from the crest of a foamy wave. The Siberians keep all the Imperial fete-days with scrupulous exactness, and their loyalty to the emperor is much akin to religious awe. The whole Imperial family is the object of great respect, and whatever is commanded in the name of the emperor meets the most cheerful acquiescence. One finds the portrait of Alexander in almost every house, and I never heard the name of that excellent ruler mentioned disrespectfully. If His Majesty would request that his subjects abstain from vodki drinking on Imperial fete-days, he would do much toward their prosperity. It would be an easy beginning in the cause of temperance, as no one could consider it out of place for the emperor to prescribe the manner of celebrating his own festivals. The work once begun in this way, would be likely to lead to good results. Drunkenness is the great vice of the Russian peasant, and will never be suppressed without the active endeavors of the government. [Illustration: DOWN HILL.] When we started from the station we ran against the gate post, and were nearly overturned in consequence. My head came against the side of the sleigh with a heavy thump that affected me more than it did the vehicle. We descended a long hill at a full run, and as our yemshick was far from sober I had a lively expectation of a general smash at the bottom. About half way down the descent we met a sleigh and dashed our fenders against it. The strong poles rubbed across each other like fencing foils, and withstood the shock finely. At sunset there were indications of a snow storm, in the gradual ascent of the thermometer. An hour past midnight the temperature was above freezing point, and the sleigh runners lost that peculiar ringing sound that indicates cold weather. I threw off my furs and endeavored to sleep, but accomplished little in that direction. My clothing was too thick or too thin. Without my furs I shivered, and with them I perspired. My sleigh robe was too much for comfort, and the absence of it left something to be desired. Warm weather is a great inconvenience in a Siberian winter journey. The best temperature for travel is from five to fifteen degrees below the freezing point. The road was abominable, though it might have been worse. It was full of drifts, bare spots, and _oukhabas_, and our motion was as varied as a politician's career. Sometimes it was up, then down, then sidewise, and then all ways at once. We pitched and rolled like a canoe descending the Lachine rapids, or a whale-boat towed by a hundred-barrel "bow-head." In many places the snow was blown from the regular road, and the winter track wound through fields and forests wherever snow could be found. There was an abundance of rocks, stumps, and other inequalities to relieve the monotony of this mode of travel. We went much out of our way to find snow, and I think we sometimes increased, by a third or a half, the distance between stations. The road was both horizontally and vertically tortuous. My companion took every occurrence with the utmost coolness, and taught me some things in patience I had not known before. He was long accustomed to Siberian travel, having made several scientific journeys through Northern Asia. In 1859 the Russian Geographical Society sent him to visit the Amoor valley and explore the island of Sakhalin. His journey thither was accomplished in winter, and when he returned he brought many valuable data touching the geology and the vegetable and animal life of the island. He told me he spoke the American language, having learned it among my countrymen at Nicolayevsk, but had never studied English. His journey to the Arctic Circle was made on behalf of the Russian Academy of Science, of which he was an active member. In 1865 the captain of a Yenesei steamer learned that some natives had discovered the perfectly preserved remains of a mammoth in latitude 67°, about a hundred versts west of the river. He announced the fact to a _savant_, who sent the intelligence to St. Petersburg. Scientific men deemed the discovery so important that they immediately commissioned Dr. Schmidt to follow it up. The doctor went to Eastern Siberia in February, and in the following month proceeded down the Yenesei to Turuhansk, where he remained four or five weeks waiting for the season of warmth and light. He was accompanied by Mr. Lopatin, a Russian geologist, and a staff of three or four assistants. They carried a photographic apparatus, and one of the sensations of their voyage was to take photographs at midnight in the light of a blazing sun. When the Yenesei was free of ice the explorers, in a barge, descended from Turuhansk to the landing place nearest the mammoth deposit. Several Cossacks accompanied the party from Turuhansk, and assisted in its intercourse with the natives. The latter were peacefully inclined, and gladly served the men who came so recently from the emperor's dwelling place. They brought their reindeer and sledges, and guided the explorers to the object of their search. The country in the Arctic Circle has very little vegetation, and the drift wood that descends the Yenesei is an important item to the few natives along the river. The trees growing north of latitude 66° are very small, and as one nears the coast of the Frozen Ocean they disappear altogether. The principal features of the country are the wide _tundras_, or moss-covered plains, similar to those of North Eastern Siberia. The scattered aboriginals are Tunguse and Samoyedes. Their chief employment is the chase in winter, fishing in summer, and the care of their reindeer at all seasons. Reindeer form their principal wealth, and are emphatically the circulating medium of the country. Dr. Schmidt told me he rode in a reindeer sledge from the river to within a short distance of the mammoth. It was the month of June, but the snow had not disappeared and nothing could be accomplished. A second visit several weeks later was more successful. In the interval the party embarked on the steamer which makes one or two journeys every summer to the Arctic Ocean in search of fish, furs, and ivory. A vigorous traffic is maintained during the short period that the river remains open. On the return from the Arctic Ocean, the season was more favorable to mammoth-hunting. Unfortunately the remains were not perfect. The skeleton was a good deal broken and scattered, and some parts were altogether lacking. The chief object of the enterprise was to obtain the stomach of the mammoth so that its contents could be analyzed. It is known that the beast lived upon vegetable food, but no one has yet ascertained its exact character. Some contend that the mammoth was a native of the tropics, and his presence in the north is due to the action of an earthquake. Others think he dwelt in the Arctic regions, and never belonged in the tropics. "If we had found his stomach," said the doctor, "and ascertained what kind of trees were in it, this question would have been decided. We could determine his residence from the character of his food." Though making diligent search the doctor found no trace of the stomach, and the great point is still open to dispute. He brought away the under jaw of the beast, and a quantity of skin and hair. The skin was half an inch thick, and as dry and hard as a piece of sole leather. The hair was like fine long bristles, and of a reddish brown color. From the quantity obtained it is thought the animal was pretty well protected against ordinary weather. The doctor gave me a cigar tube which a Samoyede fabricated from a small bone of the mammoth. He estimated that the beast had been frozen about ten thousand years in the bank where he found him, and that his natural dwelling place was in the north. The country was evidently much warmer when the mammoth, roamed over it than now, and there is a belief that some convulsion of the earth, followed by a lowering of the temperature, sealed the remains of the huge beasts in the spots where they are now discovered. In the year 1799 a bank of frozen earth near the mouth of the Lina, in Latitude 77° broke away and revealed the body of a mammoth. Hair, skin, flesh and all, had been completely preserved by the frost. In 1806 a scientific commission visited the spot, but the lapse of seven years proved of serious consequence. There had been a famine in the surrounding region, and the natives did not scruple to feed their dogs from the store of flesh which nature had preserved. Not supposing the emperor desired the bones of the beast they carried away such as they fancied. The teeth of the bears, wolves, and foxes were worse than the tooth of Time, and finished all edible substance the natives did not take. Only the skeleton remained, and of this several bones were gone. All that could be found was taken, and is now in the Imperial collection at St. Petersburg. The remains of the mammoth show that the beast was closely akin to the elephant, but had a longer and more compressed skull, and wore his tusks in a different manner. Tusks have been found more than nine feet long, and I am told that one discovered some years ago, exceeds ten feet in length. The skull from the Lena mammoth weighed four hundred and some odd pounds. Others have been found much larger. The mammoth was evidently an animal that commanded the respect of the elephant, and other small fry quadrupeds. Bones of the rhinoceros and hippopotamus abound in Northern Siberia, and like those of the mammoth are found in the frozen earth. In the last century the body of a rhinoceros of an extinct species was found on the river Vilouy, a tributary of the Lena. In the museum at St. Petersburg there is a head of the Arctic rhinoceros on which the skin and tendons remain, and a foot of the same animal displays a portion of its hair. The claws of an enormous bird are also found in the north, some of them three feet long, and jointed through their whole length like the claws of an ostrich. Captain Wrangell and other explorers say the mammoth bones are smaller on the Arctic islands than on the main land, but are wonderfully increased in quantity. For many years the natives and fur traders have brought away large cargoes, but the supply is not yet exhausted. The teeth and tusks on the islands are more fresh and white than those of the Continent. On the Lachoff Islands the principal deposit was on a low sand bank, and the natives declared that when the waves receded after an easterly wind, a fresh supply was always found. One island about latitude 80° was said to be largely composed of mammoth bones. I presume this statement should be received with a little caution. During the doctor's expedition the supply of provisions was not always abundant, but there was no absolute scarcity. The party lived for some time on fish, and on the flesh of the reindeer. A story was told that the explorers were reduced to subsisting on the mammoth they discovered, and hence their failure to bring away portions of the flesh. Mammoth cutlets and soup were occasionally proposed for the entertainment of the _savants_ on their return to Irkutsk. One of my acquaintances had a narrow escape from death on the ice during an expedition toward Kotelnoi Island, and the chain lying to the east of it, generally known as New Siberia. It was early in the spring--somewhat later than the time of the ordinary winter journeys--that he set out from the mouth of the Lena, hoping to reach Kotelnoi Island, and return before the weather became warm. He had four dog teams, and was accompanied by a Russian servant and two Yakut natives, whom he engaged for a voyage down the Lena, and the expedition across the ice. It was known that a quantity of ivory had been gathered on the island, and was waiting for transportation to the Lena; to get this ivory was the object of the journey. I will tell the story in the words of the narrator, or as nearly as I can do so from recollection. "We reached the island without serious trouble; the weather was clear and cold, and the traveling quite as good as we expected. Where the ice was level we got along very well, though there were now and then deep fissures caused by the frost, and which we had some difficulty in crossing. Frequently we were obliged to detach the dogs from the sleds and compel them to jump singly across the fissures. The sledges were then drawn over by hand, and once on the other side the teams were re-harnessed, and proceeded on their way. The ice was seven or eight feet thick, and some of the fissures were a yard wide at the surface, and tapered to a wedge shape at the bottom. It was not absolutely dangerous, though very inconvenient to fall into one of the crevices, and our dogs were very careful to secure a good foothold on the edges where they jumped. [Illustration: DOGS AMONG ICE.] "The second day out we got among a great many hummocks, or detached pieces of bergs, that caused us much trouble. They were so numerous that we were often shut out from the horizon, and were guided solely by the compass. Frequently we found them so thick that it was impossible to break a road through them, and after working for an hour or two, we would be compelled to retrace our steps, and endeavor to find a new route. Where they formed in ridges, and were not too high, we broke them down with our ice-hatchets; the work was very exhausting to us, and so was the task of drawing the sledges to the poor dogs. "Just as we left the level ice, and came among these hummocks, the dogs came on the fresh track of a polar bear, and at once started to follow him. My team was ahead, and the dogs set out in full chase, too rapidly for me to stop them, though I made every effort to do so. The other teams followed close upon us, and very soon my sledge overturned, and the dogs became greatly mixed up. The team of Nicolai, my servant, was likewise upset close to mine, and we had much trouble to get them right again. Ivan and Paul, the two Yakuts, came up and assisted us. Their dogs following on our track had not caught the scent of the bear so readily as ours, and consequently were more easily brought to a stop. "We set the sledges right, and when we were ready to start, the sharp eyes of Ivan discovered the bear looking at us from behind a hummock, and evidently debating in his mind whether to attack us or not. Leaving the teams in charge of Paul, I started with Nicolai and Ivan to endeavor to kill the bear. Nicolai and myself were armed with rifles, while Ivan carried a knife and an ice-hatchet. "The bear stood very patiently as we approached; he was evidently unaccustomed to human visitors, and did not understand what we were about. The hummock where he stood was not very steep, and I thought it best to get a position a little above him for better safety, in case we had a sharp fight after firing our first shot. We took our stand on a little projection of ice a few feet higher than where he was, and about thirty paces distant; I arranged that Nicolai should fire first, as I was a better shot than he, and it would be best for me to have the reserve. Nicolai fired, aiming at the bear's heart, which was well protected, as we knew, by a thick hide and a heavy mass of flesh. "The shot was not fatal. The bear gave a roar of pain, and sprang toward us. I waited until he placed his huge fore paws over the edge of the little ridge where we stood, and exposed his throat and chest. He was not more than ten feet away, and I buried the bullet exactly where I wished. But, notwithstanding both our shots, the animal was not killed, but lifted himself easily above the shelf, and sprang toward us. "We retreated higher up to another shelf, and as the bear attempted to climb it, Nicolai struck him with the butt of his rifle, which the beast warded off with his paw, and sent whirling into the snow. But at the same instant Ivan took his opportunity to deal an effective blow with his ice-hatchet, which he buried in the skull of the animal, fairly penetrating his brain. The blow accomplished what our shots had not. Bruin fell back, and after a few convulsive struggles, lay dead at our feet. "We hastened back to the teams, and brought them forward. We were not absent more than twenty minutes, but by the time we returned several Arctic foxes had made their appearance, and were snuffing the air, preparatory to a feast. We drove them off, and very soon, the dogs were enjoying a meal of fresh meat, that we threw to them immediately on removing the skin of the bear, which the Yakuts accomplished with great alacrity. The beast was old and tough, so that most of his flesh went to the dogs, part of it being eaten on the spot, while the rest was packed on the sledges for future use. "We had no other incidents of importance until our return from the island. The weather suddenly became cloudy, and a warm wind set in from the southward. The snow softened so that the dogs could with difficulty draw the sledges, even when relieved of our weight. We walked by their side, encouraging them in every possible way, and as the softness of the snow increased, it became necessary to throw away a part of the loads. Our safety required that we should reach the land as soon as possible, since there were many indications that the ice was about to break up. After sixteen hours of continuous dragging, we stopped, quite exhausted, though still thirty miles from land, as it was absolutely impossible for men or dogs to proceed further without rest. I was so utterly worn out that I sank upon the snow, hardly able to move. The Yakuts fed the dogs, and then lay down at their side, anxiously waiting the morning to bring us relief. "Just as the day was opening, I was awakened by a rumbling noise, and a motion below me, followed by a shout from Ivan. "'The ice is breaking up!' "I sprang to my feet, and so did my companions. The dogs were no less sensible of their danger than ourselves, and stirred uneasily while giving vent to plaintive whines. The wind from the south had increased; it was blowing directly off the land, and I could see that the ice was cracking here and there under its influence, and the whole field was in motion. Dark lanes appeared, and continued to increase in width, besides growing every minute more numerous. I ordered all the loads thrown from the sledges, with the exception of a day's provisions for men and dogs, and a few of our extra garments. When this was done--- and it was done very speedily--- we started for the shore. [Illustration: JUMPING THE FISSURES.] "We jumped the dogs over the smaller crevices without serious accident, but the larger ones gave us a great deal of trouble. On reaching them, we skirted along their edges till we could find a cake of ice large enough to ferry us over. In this way we crossed more than twenty openings, some of them a hundred yards in width. Do not suppose we did so without being thrown several times in the water, and on one occasion four of the dogs were drowned. The poor brutes became tangled in their harness, and it was impossible to extricate them. All the dogs seemed to be fully aware of their danger, and to understand that their greatest safety lay in their obeying us. I never saw them more obedient, and they rarely hesitated to do what we commanded. It grieved me greatly to see the dogs drowning when we were unable to help them, but could only listen to their cries for help, until stifled by the water. "We toiled all day, and night found us five miles from shore, with a strip of open water between us and land. Here and there were floating cakes of ice, but the main body had been blown off by the wind and promised to be a mile or two further to the north before morning. "I determined to wait for daylight, and then endeavor to reach the shore on cakes of ice. The attempt would be full of danger, but there was nothing else to be done. Reluctantly I proposed abandoning the dogs, but my companions appealed to me to keep them with us, as they had already saved our lives, and it would be the basest ingratitude to desert them. I did not require a second appeal, and promised that whatever we did, the dogs should go with us if possible. "Imagine the horror of that night! We divided the little food that remained, men and dogs sharing alike, and tried to rest upon the ice. We had no means of making a fire, our clothing was soaked with water, and, during the night, the wind shifted suddenly to the northward and became cold. I was lying down, and fell asleep from utter exhaustion; though the cold was severe, I did not think it dangerous, and felt quite unable to exercise to keep warm. The Yakuts, with Nicolai, huddled among the dogs, and were less wearied than I. When they shouted to me at daybreak, I slowly opened my eyes, and found that I could not move. I was frozen fast to the ice! "Had I been alone there would have been no escape. My companions came to my relief, but it was with much difficulty that they freed me from my unpleasant situation. When we looked about, we found that our circumstances had greatly changed during the night. The wind had ceased, and the frost had formed fresh ice over the space where there was open water the day before. It was out of the question to ferry to land, and our only hope lay in driving the sledges over the new ice. I ordered the teams to be made ready, and to keep several hundred yards apart, so as to make as little weight as possible on one spot. I took one sledge, Nicolai another, and the Yakuts the third. Our fourth sledge was lost at the time of our accident the day before. [Illustration: THE TEAM.] "Our plan was to drive at full speed, to lessen the danger of breaking through. Once through the ice, there would have been no hope for us. We urged the dogs forward with loud cries, and they responded to our wishes by exerting all their strength. We went forward at a gallop. I reached the shore in safety, and so did Nicolai, but not so the poor Yakuts. "When within a mile of the land I heard a cry. I well knew what it meant, but I could give no assistance, as a moment's pause would have seen me breaking through our frail support. I did not even dare to look around, but continued shouting to the dogs to carry them to land. Once there, I wiped the perspiration from my face, and ventured to look over the track where I came. "The weight of the two men upon one sledge had crushed the ice, and men, dogs and sledge had fallen into the water. Unable to serve them in the least, we watched till their struggles were ended, and then turned sorrowfully away. The ice closed over them, and the bed of the Arctic Ocean became their grave." CHAPTER XLII. In the morning after our departure from Krasnoyarsk we reached a third station, and experienced no delay in changing horses. The road greatly improved, but we made slow progress. When we were about two versts from the station one of our horses left the sleigh and bolted homeward. The yemshick went in pursuit, but did not overtake the runaway till he reached the station. During his absence we sat patiently, or rather impatiently, in our furs, and I improved the opportunity to go to sleep. When we wore properly reconstructed we moved forward, with my equipage in the rear. The mammoth sleigh went at a disreputably low speed. I endeavored to persuade our yemshick to take the lead, but he refused, on the ground that the smotretal would not permit it. Added to this, he stopped frequently to make pretended arrangements of the harness, where he imagined it out of order. To finish my irritation at his manoeuvres, he proposed to change with a yemshick he met about half way on his route. This would bring each to his own station at the end of the drive, and save a return trip. The man had been so dilatory and obstinate that I concluded to take my opportunity, and stubbornly refused permission for the change. This so enraged him that he drove very creditably for the rest of the way. "Both of them Jews," he said to the attendants at the station when we arrived. His theory as to our character was something like this. Of the male travelers in Siberia there are practically but two classes--officers and merchants. We could not be officers, as we wore no uniform; therefore we were merchants. The trading class in Siberia comprises Russians of pure blood and Jews, the former speaking only their own language and never using any other. As the yemshick did not understand our conversation, he at once set us down as Israelites in whom there was any quantity of guile. We breakfasted on pilmania, bread, and tea while the horses were being changed, and I managed to increase our bill of fare with some boiled eggs. The continual jolting and the excessive cold gave me a good appetite and excellent digestion. Our food was plain and not served as at Delmonico's, but I always found it palatable. We stopped twice a day for meals, and the long interval between dinner time and breakfast generally made me ravenously hungry by morning. The village where the obstinate yemshick left us, had a bad reputation on the scale of honesty, but we suffered no loss there. At another village said to contain thieves, we did not leave the sleigh. About noon we met a convoy of exiles moving slowly along the snowy road. The prisoners were walking in double column, but without regularity and not attempting to 'keep step.' Two soldiers with muskets and fixed bayonets marched in front and two others brought up the rear. There were thirty or more prisoners, all clad in sheepskin garments, their heads covered with Russian hoods, and their hands thrust into heavy mittens. Behind the column there were four or five sleighs containing baggage and foot-sore prisoners, half a dozen soldiers, and two women. The extreme rear was finished by two soldiers, with muskets and fixed bayonets, riding on an open sledge. The rate of progress was regulated by the soldiers at the head of the column. Most of the prisoners eyed us as we drove past, but there were several who did not look up. At nearly every village there is an _ostrog_, or prison, for the accommodation of exiles. It is a building, or several buildings, enclosed with a palisade or other high fence. Inside its strong gate one cannot easily escape, and I believe the attempt is rarely made. Generally the rooms or buildings nearest the gate are the residences of the officers and guards, the prisoners being lodged as far as possible from the point of egress. The distance from one station to the next varies according to the location of the villages, but is usually about twenty versts. Generally the ostrog is outside the village, but not far away. The people throughout Siberia display unvarying kindness to exiles on their march. When a convoy reaches a village the inhabitants bring whatever they can spare, whether of food or money, and either deliver it to the prisoners in the street or carry it to the ostrog. Many peasants plant little patches of turnips and beets, where runaway prisoners may help themselves at night without danger of interference if discovered by the owner. In every party of exiles, each man takes his turn for a day in asking and receiving charity, the proceeds being for the common good. In front of my quarters in Irkutsk a party of prisoners were engaged several days in setting posts. One of the number accosted every passer by, and when he received any thing the prisoners near him echoed his 'thank you.' Many couples were engaged, under guard, in carrying water from the river to the prison. One man of each couple solicited 'tobacco money' for both. The soldiers make no objection to charity toward prisoners. I frequently observed that when any person approached with the evident intention of giving something to the water carriers, the guards halted to facilitate the donation. Very often on my sleigh ride I met convoys of exiles. On one occasion as we were passing an ostrog the gate suddenly opened, and a dozen sleighs laden with prisoners emerged and drove rapidly to the eastward. Five-sixths of the exiles I met on the road were riding, and did not appear to suffer from cold. They were well wrapped in sheepskin clothing, and seated, generally three together, in the ordinary sleighs of the country. Formerly most exiles walked the entire distance from Moscow to their destination, but of late years it has been found better economy to allow them to ride. Only certain classes of criminals are now required to go on foot. All other offenders, including 'politiques,' are transported in vehicles at government expense. Any woman can accompany or follow her husband into exile. Those on foot go from one station to the next for a day's march. They travel two days and rest one, and unless for special reasons, are not required to break the Sabbath. Medical officers are stationed in the principal towns, to look after the sanitary condition of the emigrants. The object being to people the country, the government takes every reasonable care that the exiles do not suffer in health while on the road. Of course those that ride do not require as much rest as the pedestrians. They usually stop at night at the ostrogs, and travel about twelve or fourteen hours a day. Distinguished offenders, such as the higher class of revolutionists, officers convicted of plotting against the state or robbing the Treasury, are generally rushed forward night and day. To keep him secure from escape, an exile of this class is sometimes chained to a soldier who rides at his side. One night, between Irkutsk and Krasnoyarsk, I was awakened by an unusual motion of the sleigh. We were at the roadside passing a column of men who marched slowly in our direction. As I lifted our curtain and saw the undulating line of dark forms moving silently in the dim starlight, and brought into relief against the snow hills, the scene appeared something more than terrestrial. I thought of the array of spectres that beleaguered the walls of Prague, if we may trust the Bohemian legend, and of the shadowy battalions described by the old poets of Norseland, in the days when fairies dwelt in fountains, and each valley was the abode of a good or evil spirit. But my fancies were cut short by my companion briefly informing me that we were passing a convoy of prisoners recently ordered from Irkutsk to Yeneseisk. It was the largest convoy I saw during my journey, and included, as I thought, not less than two hundred men. In the afternoon of the first day from Krasnoyarsk we reached Achinsk, a town of two or three thousand inhabitants, on the bank of the Chulim river. We were told the road was so bad as to require four horses to each sleigh to the next station. We consented to pay for a horse additional to the three demanded by our padaroshnia, and were carried along at very good speed. Part of the way was upon the ice, which had formed during a wind, that left disagreeable ridges. We picked out the best places, and had not our horses slipped occasionally, the icy road would not have been unpleasant. On the bare ground which we traversed in occasional patches after leaving the river, the horses behaved admirably and made little discrimination between sand and snow. Whenever they lagged the yemshick lashed them into activity. I observed in Siberia that whip cracking is not fashionable. The long, slender, snapping whips of Western Europe and America are unknown. The Siberian uses a short stock with a lash of hemp, leather, or other flexible substance, but never dreams of a snapper at its end. Its only use is for whipping purposes, and a practiced yemshick can do much with it in a short time. The Russian drivers talk a great deal to their horses, and the speech they use depends much upon the character and performance of the animals. If the horse travels well he may be called the dove or brother of his driver, and assured that there is abundance of excellent hay awaiting him at home. Sometimes a neat hint is given that he is drawing a nice gentleman who will be liberal and enable the horse to have an extra feed. Sometimes the man rattles off his words as if the brute understood everything said to him. An obstinate or lazy horse is called a variety of names the reverse of endearing. I have heard him addressed as '_sabaka_,' (dog); and on frequent occasions his maternity was ascribed to the canine race in epithets quite disrespectful. Horses came in for an amount of profanity about like that showered upon army mules in America. It used to look a little out of place to see a yemshick who had shouted _chort!_ and other unrefined expressions to his team, devoutly crossing himself before a holy picture as soon as his beasts were unharnessed. A few versts from Achinsk we crossed the boundary between Eastern and Western Siberia. The Chulim is navigable up to Achinsk, and during the past two years steamers have been running between this town and Tomsk. The basin of the Ob contains nearly as many navigable streams as that of the Mississippi, and were it not for the severity of the climate, the long winter, and the northerly course of the great river, this valley might easily develop much wealth. But nature is unfavorable, and man is powerless to change her laws. On changing at the station we again took four horses to each sleigh, and were glad we did so. The ground was more bare as we proceeded, and obliged us to leave the high road altogether and seek a track wherever it could be found. While we were dashing through a mass of rocks and stumps one of our horses fell dead, and brought us to a sudden halt. In his fall he became entangled with the others, and it required some minutes to set matters right. The yemshick felt for the pulse of the beast until fully satisfied that no pulse existed. Happily we were not far from a station, so that the reduction of our team was of no serious consequence. In this region I observed cribs like roofless log houses placed near the roadside at intervals of a few hundred yards. They were intended to hold materials for repairing the road. On the upper waters of the Chulim there is a cascade of considerable beauty, according to the statement of some who never saw it. A few years ago a Siberian gold miner discovered a cataract on the river Hook, in the Irkutsk government, that he thought equal to Niagara, and engaged an artist to make a drawing of the curiosity. On reaching the spot, the latter individual found the cascade a very small affair. Throughout Russia, Niagara is considered one of the great wonders of the world, and nothing could have been more pleasing to the Siberians than to find its rival in their own country. When I first began traveling in Siberia a gentleman one day expressed the hope of seeing America before long, but added, "much pleasure of my visit will be lacking now that you have lost Niagara." I could not understand him, and asked an explanation. "Why," said he, "since Niagara has been worn away to a continuous rapid it must have lost all its grandeur and sublimity. I shall go there, but I cannot enjoy it as I should have enjoyed the great cataract." I explained that Niagara was as perfect as ever, and had no indication of wearing itself away. It appeared that some Russian newspaper, misled, I presume, by the fall of Table Rock, announced that the whole precipice had broken down and left a long rapid in place of the cataract. Several times during my journey I was called upon to correct this impression. At the third station beyond Achinsk we found a neat and well kept room for travelers. We concluded to dine there, and were waited upon by a comely young woman whose _coiffure_ showed that she was unmarried. She brought us the samovar, cooked our pilmania, and boiled a dizaine of eggs. Among the Russians articles which we count by the dozen are enumerated by tens. "_Skolka stoit, yieetsa_?" (How much do eggs cost), was generally answered, "_Petnatzet capecka, decetu_" (fifteen copecks for ten.) Only among the Western nations one finds the dozen in use. While we were at dinner the cold sensibly increased, and on exposing my thermometer I found it marking -18° Fahrenheit. Schmidt wrapped himself in all his furs, and I followed his example. Thus enveloped we filled the entire breadth of our sleigh and could not turn over with facility. A sharp wind was blowing dead ahead, and we closed the front of the vehicle to exclude it. The snow whirled in little eddies and made its way through the crevices at the junction of our sleigh-boot with the hood. I wrapped a blanket in front of my face for special protection, and soon managed to fall asleep. The sleigh poising on a runner and out-rigger, caused the doctor to roll against me during the first hour of my slumber, and made me dream that I was run over by a locomotive. When I waked I found my breath had congealed and frozen my beard to the blanket. It required careful manipulation to separate the two without injury to either. When we stopped to change horses after this experience, the stars were sparkling with a brilliancy peculiar to the Northern sky. The clear starlight, unaided by the moon, enabled us to see with great distinctness. I could discover the outline of the forest away beyond the village, and trace the road to the edge of a valley where it disappeared. Every individual star appeared endeavoring to outshine his rivals, and cast his rays to the greatest distance. Vesta, Sirius, and many others burned with a brightness that recalled my first view of the Drummond light, and seemed to dazzle my eyes when I fixed my gaze upon them. The road during the night was rough but respectable, and we managed to enjoy a fair amount of slumber in our contracted _chambre a deux_. Before daylight we reached a station where a traveling bishop had just secured two sets of horses. Though outside the jurisdiction of General Korsackoff, I exhibited my special passport knowing it could not, at all events, do any harm. Out of courtesy the smotretal offered to supply us as soon as the bishop departed. The reverend worthy was dilatory in starting, and as we were likely to be delayed an hour or two, we economized the time by taking tea. I found opportunity for a short nap after our tea-drinking was over, and only awoke when the smotretal announced, "_loshadi gotovey"_ In the forenoon we entered upon the steppe where trees were few and greatly scattered. Frequently the vision over this Siberian prairie was uninterrupted for several miles. There was a thin covering of snow on the open ground, and the dead grass peered above the surface with a suggestion of summer fertility. Shortly after noon I looked through the eddies of snow that whirled in the frosty air, and distinguished the outline of a church. Another and another followed, and very soon the roofs and walls of the more prominent buildings in Tomsk were visible. As we entered the eastern gate of the city, and passed a capacious powder-magazine, our yemshick tied up his bell-tongues in obedience to the municipal law. Our arrival inside the city limits was marked by the most respectful silence. We named a certain hotel but the yemshick coolly took us to another which he assured us was "_acleechny_" (excellent). As the exterior and the appearance of the servants promised fairly, we made no objection, and allowed our baggage unloaded. The last I saw of our yemshick he was receiving a subsidy from the landlord in consideration of having taken us thither. The doctor said the establishment was better than the one he first proposed to patronize, so that we had no serious complaint against the management of the affair. Hotel keepers in Siberia are obliged to pay a commission to whoever brings them patrons, a practice not unknown, I believe, in American cities. We engaged two rooms, one large, and the other of medium size. The larger apartment contained two sofas, ten or twelve chairs, three tables, a boy, a bedstead, and a chamber-maid. The boy and the maid disappeared with a quart or so of dirt they had swept from the floor. We ordered dinner, and took our ease in our inn. Our baggage piled in one corner of the room would have made a creditable stock for an operator in the "Elbow Market" at Moscow. We thawed our beards, washed, changed our clothing, and pretended we felt none the worse for our jolting over the rough road from Krasnoyarsk. The hotel, though Asiatic, was kept on the European plan. The landlord demanded our passports before we removed our outer garments, and apologized by saying the regulations were very strict. The documents went at once to the police, and returned in the morning with the visa of the chief. Throughout Russia a hotel proprietor generally keeps the passports of his patrons until their bills are paid, but this landlord trusted in our honor, and returned the papers at once. The visa certified there were no charges against us, pecuniary or otherwise, and allowed us to remain or depart at our pleasure. It is a Russian custom for the police to be informed of claims against persons suspected of intent to run away. The individual cannot obtain authority to depart until his accounts are settled. Formerly the law required every person, native and foreign, about to leave Russia, to advertise his intention through a newspaper. This formula is now dispensed with, but the intending traveler must produce a receipt in full from his hotel keeper. At the hotel we found a gentleman from Eastern Siberia on his way to St. Petersburg. He left Irkutsk two days behind me, passed us in Krasnoyarsk, and came to grief in a partial overturn five miles from Tomsk. He was waiting to have his broken vehicle thoroughly repaired before venturing on the steppe. He had a single vashok in which he stowed himself, wife, three children, and a governess. How the whole party could be packed into the carriage I was at a loss to imagine. Its limits must have been suggestive of the close quarters of a can of sardines. We used our furs for bed clothing and slept on the sofas, less comfortably I must confess than in the sleigh. The close atmosphere of a Russian house is not as agreeable to my lungs as the open air, and after a long journey one's first night in a warm room is not refreshing. There was no public table at the hotel; meals were served in our room, and each item was charged separately at prices about like those of Irkutsk. In the morning we put on our best clothes, and visited the gubernatorial mansion. The governor was at St. Petersburg, and we were received by the Vice-Governor, an amiable gentleman of about fifty years, who reminded me of General S.R. Curtis. Before our interview we waited ten or fifteen minutes at one end of a large hall. The Vice-Governor was at the other end listening to a woman whose streaming eyes and choked utterance showed that her story was one of grief. The kind hearted man appeared endeavoring to soothe her. I could not help hearing the conversation though ignorant of its purport, and, as the scene closed, I thought I had not known before the extent of pathos in the Russian language. We had a pleasant interview with the vice-governor who gave us passports to Barnaool, on learning that we wished to visit that place. Among those who called during our stay was the golovah of Tomsk, a man whose physical proportions resembled those of the renowned Wouter Van Twiller, as described by Washington Irving. Every golovah I met in Siberia was of aldermanic proportions, and I wondered whether physical developments had any influence in selections for this office. Just before leaving the governor's residence, we were introduced to Mr. Naschinsky, of Barnaool, to whom I had a letter of introduction from his cousin, Paul Anossoff. As he was to start for home that evening, we arranged to accompany him. Our visit ended, we drove through the principal streets, and saw the chief features of the town. Tomsk takes its name from the river Tom, on whose banks it is built. It stands on the edge of the great Baraba steppe, and has about twenty thousand inhabitants of the usual varied character of a Russian population. I saw many fine houses, and was told that in society and wealth the city was little inferior to Irkutsk. Here, as at other places, large fortunes have been made in gold mining. Several heavy capitalists were mentioned as owners of concessions in the mining districts. Many of their laborers passed the winter at Tomsk in the delights of urban life. The city is of considerable importance as it controls much of the commerce of Siberia. The site is picturesque, being partly on the low ground next the river, and partly on the hills above it. In contemplating the location, I was reminded of Quebec. I found much activity in the streets and market places, and good assortments of merchandise in the shops. Near our hotel, over a wide ravine, was a bridge, constantly traversed by vehicles and pedestrians, and lighted at night by a double row of lamps. Some long buildings near the river, and just outside the principal market had a likeness to American railway stations, and the quantities of goods piled on their verandas aided the illusion. About noon the market-place was densely crowded, and there appeared a brisk traffic in progress. There was a liberal array of articles to eat, wear, or use, with a very fair quantity for which no use could be imagined. In summer there is a waterway from Tomsk to Tumen, a thousand miles to the westward, and a large amount of freight to and from Siberia passes over it. Steamers descend the Tom to the Ob, which they follow to the Irtish. They then ascend the Irtish, the Tobol, and the Tura to Tumen, the head of navigation. The government proposes a railway between Perm and Tumen to unite the great water courses of Europe and Siberia. A railway from Tomsk to Irkutsk is among the things hoped for by the Siberians, and will be accomplished at some future day. The arguments urged against its construction are the length of the route, the sparseness of population, and the cheap rates at which freight is now transported. Probably Siberia would be no exception to the rule that railways create business, and sustain it, but I presume it will be many years before the locomotive has a permanent way through the country. Some years ago it was proposed to open a complete water route between Tumen and Kiachta. The most eastern point that a steamer could attain in the valley of the Ob is on the river Ket. A canal about thirty miles long would connect the Ket with the Yenesei, whence it was proposed to follow the Angara, Lake Baikal, and the Selenga to Oust Kiachta. But the swiftness of the Angara, and its numerous rapids, seventy-eight in all, stood in the way of the project. At present no steamers can ascend the Angara, and barges can only descend when the water is high. To make the channel safely navigable would require a heavy outlay of money for blasting rocks, and digging canals. I could not ascertain that there was any probability of the scheme being realized. In 1866 twelve steamers were running between Tumen and Tomsk. These boats draw about two feet of water, and tow one or more barges in which freight is piled. No merchandise is carried on the boats. Twelve days are consumed in the voyage with barges; without them it can be made in a week. All the steamers yet constructed are for towing purposes, the passenger traffic not being worth attention. The golovah of Tomsk is a heavy owner in these steamboats, and he proposed increasing their number and enlarging his business. A line of smaller boats has been started to connect Tomsk with Achinsk. The introduction of steam on the Siberian rivers has given an impetus to commerce, and revealed the value of certain interests of the country. An active competition in the same direction would prove highly beneficial, and bye and bye they will have the railway. During my ride about the streets the isvoshchik pointed out a large building, and explained that it was the seminary or high school of Tomsk. I was told that the city, like Irkutsk, had a female school or "Institute," and an establishment for educating the children of the priests. The schools in the cities and large towns of Siberia have a good reputation, and receive much praise from those who patronize them. The Institute at Irkutsk is especially renowned, and had during the winter of 1866 something more than a hundred boarding pupils. The gymnasium or school for boys was equally flourishing, and under the direct control of the Superintendent of Public Instruction for Eastern Siberia. The branches of education comprise the ordinary studies of schools everywhere--arithmetic, grammar, and geography, with reading and writing. When these elementary studies are mastered the higher mathematics, languages, music, and painting follow. In the primary course the prayers of the church and the manner of crossing one's self are considered essential. Most of those who can afford It employ private teachers for their children, and educate them at home. The large schools in the towns are patronized by the upper and middle classes, and sometimes pupils come from long distances. There are schools for the peasant children, but not sufficiently numerous to make education general. It is a lamentable fact that the peasants as a class do not appreciate the importance of knowledge. Hitherto all these peasant schools have been controlled by the church, the subordinate priests being appointed to their management. Quite recently the Emperor has ordered a system of public instruction throughout the empire. Schools are to be established, houses built, and teachers paid by the government. Education is to be taken entirely from, the hands of the priests, and entrusted to the best qualified instructors without regard to race or religion. The common school house in the land of the czars! Universal education among the subjects of the Autocrat! Well may the other monarchies of Europe fear the growing power and intelligence of Russia. May God bless Alexander, and preserve him many years to the people whose prosperity he holds so dearly at heart. [Illustration: TAIL PIECE] CHAPTER XLIII. When we left Tomsk in the evening, the snow was falling rapidly, and threatened to obliterate the track along the frozen surface of the river. There were no post horses at the station, and we were obliged to charter private teams at double the usual rates. The governor warned us that we might have trouble in securing horses, and requested us to refer to him if the smotretal did not honor our pada ashnia. We did not wish to trespass further on his kindness, and concluded to submit to the extortion and say nothing. The station keeper owned the horses we hired, and we learned he was accustomed to declare his regular troikas "out" on all possible occasions. Of course, a traveler anxious to proceed, would not hesitate long at paying two or three roubles extra. We dashed over the rough ice of the Tom for a few versts and then found a road on solid earth. We intended to visit Barnaool, and for this purpose left the great road at the third station, and turned southward. The falling snow beat so rapidly into our sleigh that we closed the vehicle and ignored the outer world. Mr. Naschinsky started with us from Tomsk, but after a few stations he left us and hurried away at courier speed toward Barnaool. He proved an _avant courier_ for us, and warned the station masters of our approach, so that we found horses ready. On this side road the contract requires but three troikas at a station. Three sleighs together were an unusual number, so that the smotretals generally obtained one or both our teams from the village. On the last half of the route the yemshicks did not take us to the stations but to the houses of their friends where we promptly obtained horses at the regular rates. The peasants between Tomsk and Barnaool own many horses, and are pleased at the opportunity to earn a little cash with them. Snow, darkness, and slumber prevented our seeing much of the road during the night. In the morning, I found we were traveling through an undulating and generally wooded country, occasionally crossing rivers and small lakes on the ice. The track was a wonderful improvement over that between Tomsk and Krasnoyarsk. The stations or peasant houses where we changed horses, were not as good as those on the great road. The rooms were frequently small and heated to an uncomfortable degree. In one house, notwithstanding the great heat, several children were seated on the top of the stove, and apparently enjoying themselves. The yemshicks and attendants were less numerous than on the great road, but we could find no fault with their service. On one course of twenty versts our sleigh was driven by a boy of thirteen, though seemingly not more than ten. He handled the whip and reins with the skill of a veteran, and earned an extra gratuity from his passengers. The road was marked by upright poles ten or twelve feet high at distances of one or two hundred feet. There were distance posts with the usual black and white alternations, but the figures were generally indistinct, and many posts were altogether wanting. On the main road through the whole length of Siberia, there is a post at every verst, marking in large numbers the distance to the first station on either side of it. At the stations there are generally posts that show the distance to Moscow, St. Petersburg, and the provincial or 'government' capitals on either side. For a long time I could never rid myself of a sensation of 'goneness' when I read the figures indicating the distance to St. Petersburg. Above seven thousand they were positively frightful; between six and seven thousand, they were disagreeable to say the least. Among the five thousand and odd versts, I began to think matters improving, and when I descended below four thousand, I felt as if in my teens. The proverb says, "a watched pot never boils." I can testify that these distance figures diminished very slowly, and sometimes they seemed to remain nearly the same from day to day. The snow storm that began when we left Tomsk, continued through the night and the following day. The air was warm, and there was little wind, so that our principal inconvenience was from the snow flakes in our faces, and the gradual filling of the road. Toward sunset a wind arose. Every hour it increased, and before midnight there was good prospect of our losing our way or being compelled to halt until daybreak. The snow whirled in thick masses through the air, and utterly blinded us when we attempted to look out. The road filled with drifts, and we had much difficulty in dragging through them. The greatest personal inconvenience was the sifting of snow through the crevices of our sleigh cover. At every halt we underwent a vigorous shaking to remove the superfluous snow from our furs. A storm with high winds in this region takes the name of _bouran_. It is analogous to the _poorga_ of Northeastern Siberia and Kamchatka, and may occur at any season of the year. Bourans are oftentimes very violent, especially in the open steppe. Any one who has experienced the norther of Texas, or the _bora_ of Southern Austria, can form an idea of these Siberian storms. The worst are when the thermometer sinks to twenty-five degrees or more below zero, and the snow is dashed about with terrific fury. At such times they are almost insupportable, and the traveler who ventures to face them runs great risk of his life. Many persons have been lost in the winter storms, and all experienced voyagers are reluctant to brave their violence. In summer the wind spends its force on the earth and sand which it whirls in large clouds. A gentleman told me he had seen the dry bed of a river where there were two feet of sand, swept clean to the rock by the strength of the wind alone. A little past daylight the sleigh came to a sudden stop despite the efforts of all concerned. The last hundred versts of our ride we had four horses to each sleigh, and their united strength was not more than sufficient for our purpose. The drift where we stopped was at least three feet deep, and pretty closely packed. We, that is to say, the horses and yemshicks, made several efforts but could not carry the sleigh through. The mammoth sleigh came up and the two yemshicks trod a path through the worst part of the drift. The doctor and I descended from the vehicle, and assisted by looking on. The sleigh thus lightened, was dragged through the obstruction but unfortunately turned on its beam ends, and filled with snow before it could be righted. The bouran was from the south, and raised the temperature above the freezing point. The increasing heat became uncomfortable after the cold I had experienced. The horses did not turn white from perspiration as in colder days, and the exertion of travel set them panting as in summer. The drivers carefully knotted their (the horses') tails to prevent them (the tails) from filling with snow, but the precaution was not entirely successful. The snow was of the right consistency for a school boy's frolic, and would have thrown a group of American urchins into ecstacies. Whenever our pace quickened to a trot or gallop, the larboard horse threw a great many snowballs with his feet. He seemed to aim at my face, and every few minutes I received what the prize ring would call 'plumpers in the peeper, and sockdolagers on the potato-trap.' We drove into Barnaool about forty-four hours after leaving Tomsk. At the hotel we found three rooms containing chairs and tables in profusion, but not a bed or sofa. Of course we were expected to supply our own bedding, and need not be particular about a bedstead. The worst part of the affair was the wet condition of our furs. My sheepskin sleigh robe was altogether too damp for use, and I sent it to be dried in the kitchen. Several of my fur garments went the same way. Even my shooba, which I carried in a bag, had a feeling of dampness when I unfolded it, and in fact the only dry things about us, were our throats. We set things drying as best we could, and then ordered dinner. Before our sleighs were unloaded, a policeman took our passports and saved us all trouble of going to the station. In the evening I accompanied Dr. Schmidt on a visit to a friend and fellow member of the Academy of Science. We found a party of six or eight persons, and, as soon as I was introduced, a gentleman despatched a servant to his house. The man returned with a roll of sheet music from which our host's daughter favored us with the "Star Spangled Banner," and "Hail Columbia," as a greeting to the first American visitor to Barnaool. On our return to our lodgings we made our beds on the floor, and slept comfortably. The dampness of the furs developed a rheumatic pain in my shoulder that stiffened me somewhat inconveniently. We breakfasted upon cakes and tea at a late hour in the morning, and then went to pay our respects to General Freeze, the Nachalnik or Director of Mines, and to Colonel Filoff, chief of the smelting works. Both these officers were somewhat past the middle age, quiet and affable, and each enjoyed himself in coloring a meerschaum. They have been engaged in mining matters during many years, and are said to be thoroughly versed in their profession. After visiting these gentlemen we called upon other official and civilian residents of the city. Barnaool is the center of direction of the mining enterprises of the Altai mountains, and has a population of ten or twelve thousand. Almost its entire business is in someway connected with mining affairs, and there are many engineer officers constantly stationed there. I met some of these gentlemen during my stay, and was indebted to them for information concerning the manner of working mines and reducing ores. The city contains a handsome array of public buildings, including the mining bureau, the hospital, and the zavod or smelting establishment. General Freeze, the Nachalnik, is director and chief, not only of the city but of the entire mining district of which Barnaool is the center. The first discoveries of precious metals in the Altai regions were made by one of the Demidoffs who was sent there by Peter the Great. A monument in the public square at Barnaool records his services, in ever during brass. I was shown an autograph letter from the Empress Elizabeth giving directions to the Nachalnik who controlled the mines during her reign. The letter is kept in an ivory box on the table around which the mining board holds its sessions. The mines of this region are the personal property of the Emperor, and their revenues go directly to the crown. I was told that the government desires to sell or give these mines into private hands, in the belief that the resources of the country would be more thoroughly developed. The day before my departure from Barnaool, I learned that my visit had reference to the possible purchase of the mining works by an American company. I hastened to assure my informant that I had no intention of buying the Altai mountains or any part of them. The Nachalnik visits all mines and smelting works in his district at least once a year, and is constantly in receipt of detailed reports of operations in progress. His power is almost despotic, and like the governors of departments throughout all Siberia, he can manage affairs pretty much in his own way. There are no convict laborers in his district, the workmen at the mines and zavods being peasants subject to the orders of government. Each man in the district may be called upon to work for the Emperor at fixed wages of money and rations. I believe the daily pay of a laborer is somewhat less than forty copecks. A compromise for saints days and other festivals is made by employing the men only two weeks out of three. Relays are so arranged as to make no stoppage of the works except during the Christmas holidays. I saw many sheets of the geological map of the Altai region, which has been a long time in preparation, and will require several years to complete. Every mountain, hill, brook, and valley is laid down by careful surveyors, and when the map is finished it will be one of the finest and best in the world. One corps is engaged in surveying and mapping while another explores and opens mines. When the snows are melted in the spring, and the floods have receeded from the streams, the exploring parties are sent into the mountains. Each officer has a particular valley assigned him, and commands a well equipped body of men. He is expected to remain in the mountains until he has finished his work, or until compelled to leave by the approach of winter. The party procures meat from game, of which there is nearly always an abundant supply. Holes are dug at regular intervals, on the system I have already described in the mines of the Yenesei. The rocks in and around the valley are carefully examined for traces of silver, and many specimens have been collected for the geological cabinet at Barnaool. Maps are made showing the locality of each test hole in the valley, and the spot whence every specimen of rock is obtained. On the return of the party its reports and specimens are delivered to the mining bureau. The ores go to the laboratory to be assayed, and the specimens of rock are carefully sorted and examined. Gold washings are conducted on the general plan of those in the Yeneseisk government, the details varying according to circumstances. A representation of the principal silver mine--somewhat on the plan of Barnum's "Niagara with Real Water"--was shown me in the museum. In general features the mines are not materially unlike silver mines elsewhere. There are shafts, adits, and levels just as in the mines of Colorado and California. The Russians give the name of _priesk_ to a mine where gold is washed from the earth. The silver mine with its shafts in the solid rock is called a _roodnik._ As before stated, the word _zavod_ is applied to foundries, smelting works, and manufactories in general. Colonel Filoff invited the doctor and myself to visit the zavod at Barnaool on the second day after our arrival. As he spoke no language with which I was familiar, the colonel placed me in charge of a young officer fluent in French, who took great pains to explain the _modus operandi_. The zavod is on a grand scale, and employs about six hundred laborers. It is enclosed in a large yard with high walls, and reminded me of a Pennsylvania iron foundry or the establishment just below Detroit. A sentry at the gate presented arms as we passed, and I observed that the rule of no admittance except on business was rigidly enforced. [Illustration: IN THE MINE.] In the yard we were first taken to piles of ore which appeared to an unpracticed eye like heaps of old mortar and broken granite. These piles were near a stream which furnishes power for moving the machinery of the establishment. The ore was exposed to the air and snow, but the coal for smelting was carefully housed. There were many sheds for storage within easy distance of the furnaces. The latter were of brick with tall and substantial chimneys, and the outer walls that surrounded the whole were heavily and strongly built. Charcoal is burned in consequence of the cheapness and abundance of wood. I was told that an excellent quality of stove coal existed in the vicinity, and would be used whenever it proved most economical. Nearly all the ore contains copper, silver, and lead, while the rest is deficient in the last named article. The first kind is smelted without the addition of lead, and sometimes passes through six or seven reductions. For the ore containing only copper and silver the process by evaporation of lead is employed. Formerly the lead was brought from Nerchinsk or purchased in England, the land transport in either case being very expensive. Several years ago lead was found in the Altai mountains, and the supply is now sufficient for all purposes. The lead absorbs the silver, and leaves the copper in the refuse matter. This was formerly thrown away, but by a newly invented process the copper is extracted and saved. The production of silver in the Altai mines is about a thousand and fifty poods annually, or forty thousand pounds avoirdupois. The silver is cast into bars or cakes about ten inches square, and weighing from seventy to a hundred pounds each. Colonel Filoff showed us into the room where the silver is stored. Two soldiers were on guard and six or eight others rested outside. A sergeant brought a sealed box which contained the key of the safe. First the box and then the safe were opened at the colonel's order, and when we had satisfied our curiosity, the safe was locked and the key restored to its place of deposit. The colonel carried the seal that closed the box, and the sergeant was responsible for the integrity of the wax. The cakes had a dull hue, somewhat lighter than that of lead, and were of a convenient shape for handling. Each cake had its weight, and value, and result of assay stamped upon it, and I was told that it was assayed again at St. Petersburg to guard against the algebraic process of substitution. About thirty poods of gold are extracted from every thousand poods of silver after the treasure reaches St. Petersburg. The silver is extracted from the lead used to absorb it, the latter being again employed while the former goes on its long journey to the banks of the Neva. The ore continues to pass through successive reductions until a pood of it contains no more than three-fourths a zolotink of silver; less than that proportion will not pay expenses. I was told that the annual cost of working the mines equaled the value of the silver produced. The gold contained in the silver is the only item of profit to the crown. About thirty thousand poods of copper are produced annually in this district, but none of the copper zavods are at Barnaool. [Illustration: STRANGE COINCIDENCE.] All gold produced from the mines of Siberia, with the exception of that around Nerchinsk, is sent to Barnaool to be smelted. This work is performed, in a room about fifteen feet square, the furnaces being fixed in its centre like parlor stoves of unusual size. The smelting process continues four months of each year, and during this time about twelve hundred poods of gold are melted and cast into bars. This work, for 1866, was finished a few days before my arrival, and the furnaces were utterly devoid of heat. In the yard at the zavod, I saw a dozen or more sleds, and on each of them there was an iron-bound box filled with bars of gold. This train was ready to leave under strong guard for St. Petersburg. The morning after my visit to the zavod it was reported that a soldier guarding the sled train had been killed during the night. The incident was a topic of conversation for the rest of my stay, but I obtained no clear account of the affair. All agreed that a sentinel was murdered, and one of the boxes plundered of several bars of gold, but beyond this there were conflicting statements. It was the first occurrence of the kind at Barnaool, and naturally excited the peaceful inhabitants. The doctor trusted that the affair would not be associated with our visit, and I quite agreed with him. It is to be hoped that the future historian of Barnaool will not mention, the murder and robbery in the same paragraph with the distinguished arrival of Dr. Schmidt and an American traveler. The rich miners send their gold once a year to Barnaool, the poorer ones twice a year. Those in pressing need of money receive certificates of deposit as soon as their gold is cast into bars, and on these certificates they can obtain cash at the government banks. The opulent miners remain content till their gold reaches the capital, and is coined. Four or six months may thus elapse after gold has left Barnaool before its owner obtains returns. [Illustration: TAIL PIECE.] CHAPTER XLIV. The society of Barnaool consists of the mining and other officers, with a larger proportion of families than at Irkutsk. It had a more quiet and reserved character than the capital of Eastern Siberia, but was not the less social and hospitable. Many young officers of the mining and topographical departments pass their summers in the mountains and their winters in Barnaool. The cold season is therefore the gayest, and abounds in balls, parties, concerts, and amateur theatricals. The former theatre has been converted into a club-room. There is a good proportion, for a Siberian town, of elegant and luxuriant houses. The furniture and adornments were quite as extensive as at Irkutsk or Tomsk, and several houses that I visited would have been creditable in Moscow or St. Petersburg. It is no little wonder to find all the comforts and luxuries of Russian life in the southern part of Siberia, on the borders of the Kirghese steppes. The large and well arranged museum contained more than I could even glance over in a single day. There were models of machines used in gold-washing, quartz mills fifty years old, and almost identical with those of the present day; models of furnaces and zavods in various parts of Siberia, and full delineations of the principal silver mines of the Altai. There was a curious steam engine, said to have been made at Barnaool in 1764, and used for blowing the furnaces. I saw a fine collection of minerals, birds, beasts, and other curiosities of the Altai. Particular attention was called to the stuffed skins of two enormous tigers that were killed several years ago in the southern part of the district. One of them fell after a long fight, in which he killed one of his assailants and wounded two others. The museum contains several dead specimens of the bearcoot, or eagle of the Altai. I saw a living bird of this species at the house of an acquaintance. The bearcoot is larger than the American eagle, and possesses strength enough to kill a deer or wolf with perfect ease. Dr. Duhmberg, superintendent of the hospitals, told me of an experiment with poison upon one of these birds. He began by giving half a grain of _curavar_, a poison from South America. It had no perceptible effect, the appetite and conduct of the bird being unchanged. A week later he gave four grains of strychnine, and saw the bird's feathers tremble fifteen minutes after the poison was swallowed. Five hours later the patient was in convulsions, but his head was not affected, and he recovered strength and appetite on the next day. A week later the bearcoot swallowed seven grains of curavar, and showed no change for two days. On the second evening he went into convulsions, and died during the night. The Kirghese tame these eagles and employ them in hunting. A gentleman who had traveled among the Kirghese told me he had seen a bearcoot swoop down upon a full grown deer and kill him in a few minutes. Sometimes when a pack of wolves has killed and begun eating a deer, the feast will be interrupted by a pair of bearcoots. Two birds will attack a dozen wolves, and either kill or drive them away. Barnaool is quite near the Kirghese steppes. One of my acquaintances had a Kirghese coachman, a tall, well formed man, with thick lips and a coppery complexion. I established a friendship with this fellow, and arranged that he should sit for his portrait, but somehow he was never ready. He brought me two of his kindred, and I endeavored to persuade the group to be photographed. There was a superstition among them that it would be detrimental to their post mortem repose if they allowed their likenesses on this earth when they themselves should leave it. I offered them one, two, three, and even five roubles, but they stubbornly refused. Their complexions were dark, and their whole physiognomy revealed the Tartar blood. They wore the Russian winter dress, but had their own costume for state occasions. In this part of Siberia Kirghese are frequently found in Russian employ, and are said to be generally faithful and industrious. A considerable number find employment at the Altai mines, and a great many are engaged in taking cattle and sheep to the Siberian markets. The Kirghese lead a nomadic life, making frequent change of residence to find pasturage for their immense flocks and herds. The different tribes are more or less hostile to each other, and have a pleasant habit of organizing raids on a colossal scale. One tribe will suddenly swoop down upon another and steal all portable property within reach. They do not mind a little fighting, and an enterprise of this kind frequently results in a good many broken heads. The chiefs believe themselves descended from the great warriors of the ancient Tartar days, and boast loudly of their prowess. The Kirghese are brave in fighting each other, but have a respectful fear of the Russians. Occasionally they plunder Russian traders crossing the steppes, but are careful not to attack unless the odds are on their own side. The Russians have applied their diplomacy among the Kirghese and pushed their boundaries far to the southward. They have purchased titles to districts controlled by powerful chiefs, and after being fairly settled have continued negotiations for more territory. They make use of the hostility between the different tribes, and have managed so that nearly every feud brought advantages to Russia. Under their policy of toleration they never interfere with the religion of the conquered, and are careful not to awaken prejudices. The tribes in the subjugated territory are left pretty much to their own will. Every few years the chain of frontier posts is pushed to the southward, and embraces a newly acquired region. Western Siberia is dotted over with abandoned and crumbling forts that once guarded the boundary, but are now far in the interior. Some of these defences are near the great road across the Baraba steppe. The Kirghese do not till the soil nor engage in manufactures, except of a few articles for their own use. They sell sheep, cattle, and horses to the Russians, and frequently accompany the droves to their destination. In return for their flocks and herds they receive goods of Russian manufacture, either for their own use or for traffic with the people beyond. Their wealth consists of domestic animals and the slaves to manage them. Horses and sheep are legal tender in payment of debts, bribes, and presents. In the last few years Russian conquest in Central Asia has moved so fast that England has taken alarm for her Indian possessions. The last intelligence from that quarter announces a victory of the Russians near Samarcand, followed by negotiations for peace. If the Muscovite power continues to extend over that part of Asia, England has very good reason to open her eyes. I never conversed with the Emperor on this topic, and cannot speak positively of his intentions toward Asia, but am confident he has fixed his eye upon conquest as far south of the Altai as he can easily go. That his armies may sometime hoist the Russian flag in sight of the Indo-English possessions, is not at all improbable. But that they will either attempt or desire an aggressive campaign against India is quite beyond expectation. It is but a few years ago that English travelers were killed for having made their way into Central Asia in disguise, and Vambery, the Hungarian traveler, was considered to have performed a great feat because he returned from there with his life. There is now the Tashkend _Messenger_, a Russian paper devoted to the interests of that rich province. Moscow merchants are establishing the Bank of Central Asia, having its headquarters at Tashkend and a branch at Orenburg, and Tashkend will soon be in telegraphic communication with the rest of the world. A plan has been proposed to open Central Asia to steam boat navigation. The river Oxus, or Amoo-Daria, which flows through Bakhara and Khiva, emptying into the Aral sea, was once a tributary of the Caspian. Several steamers have been placed upon it, and others are promised soon. The dry bed of the old channel of the Oxus is visible in the Turcoman steppe at the present day. The original diversion was artificial, and the dikes which direct it into the Aral are said to be maintained with difficulty. It has been proposed to send an expedition to remove these barriers and turn the river into its former bed. Coupled with this project is another to divert the course of the Syr-Daria and make it an affluent of the Oxus. This last proposition was half carried out two hundred years ago, and its completion would not be difficult. By the first project, Russia would obtain a continuous water-way from Nijne Novgorod on the Volga to Balkh on the Amoo-Daria, within two hundred miles of British India. The second scheme carried out would bring Tashkend and all Central Asia under commercial control, and have a political effect of no secondary importance. A new route might thus be opened to British India, and European civilization carried into a region long occupied by semi-barbarian people. Afghanistan would be relieved from its anarchy and brought under wholesome rule. The geographical effect would doubtless be the drying up of the Aral sea. A railway between Balkh and Delhi would complete an inland steam route between St. Petersburg and Calcutta. Surveys have been ordered for a Central Asiatic Railway from Orenburg or some point farther south, and it is quite possible that before many years the locomotive will be shrieking over the Tartar steppes and frightening the flocks and herds of the wandering Kalmacks and Kirghese. A railway is in process of construction from the Black Sea to the Caspian, and when this is completed, a line into Central Asia is only a question of time. The Russians have an extensive trade with Central Asia. Goods are transported on camels, the caravans coming in season for the fairs of Irbit and Nijne Novgorod. The caravans from Bokhara proceed to Troitska, (Lat. 54° N., Lon. 61° 20' E.,) Petropavlovsk, (Lat. 54° 30' N., Lon. 69° E.,) and Orenburg, (Lat. 51° 46' N., Lon. 55° 5' E.) There is also a considerable traffic to Sempolatinsk, (Lat. 50° 30' N., Lon. 80° E.) The Russian merchandise consists of metals, iron and steel goods, beads, mirrors, cloths of various kinds, and a miscellaneous lot "too numerous to mention." Much of the country over which these caravans travel is a succession of Asiatic steppes, with occasional salt lakes and scanty supplies of fresh water. After passing the Altai mountains and outlying chains the routes are quite monotonous. Fearful bourans are frequent, and in certain parts of the route they take the form of sand storms. A Russian army on its way to Khiva twenty-five years ago, was almost entirely destroyed in one of these desert tempests. Occasionally the caravans suffer severely. The merchandise from Bokhara includes raw cotton, sheepskins, rhubarb, dried fruits, peltries, silk, and leather, with shawl goods of different kinds. Cotton is an important product, and in the latter part of my journey I saw large quantities going to Russian factories. Three hundred years ago a German traveler in Russia wrote an account of 'a wonderful plant beyond the Caspian sea.' "Veracious people," says the writer, "tell me that the _Borauez_, or sheep plant, grows upon a stalk larger than my thumb; it has a head, eyes, and ears like a sheep, but is without sensation. The natives use its wool for various purposes." I heard air interesting story of an adventure in which one of the Kirghese, who was living among the Russians at the time of my visit to Barnaool, played an important part. He was a fine looking fellow, whose tribe lived between the Altai Mountains and Lake Ural, spending the winters in the low lands and the summers in the valleys of the foot-hills. He was the son of one of the patriarchs of the tribe, and was captured, during a baranta or foray, by a chief who had long been on hostile terms with his neighbors. The young man was held for ransom, but the price demanded was more than his father could pay, and so he remained in captivity. He managed to ingratiate himself with the chief of the tribe that captured him, and as a mark of honor, and probably as an excuse for the high ransom demanded, he was appointed to live in the chief's household. He was allowed to ride with the party when they moved, and accompany the herdsmen; but a sharp watch was kept on his movements whenever he was mounted, and care was taken that the horses he rode were not very fleet. The chief had a daughter whom he expected to marry to one of his powerful neighbors, and thereby secure a permanent friendship between the tribes. She was a style of beauty highly prized among the Asiatics, was quite at home on horseback, and understood all the arts and accomplishments necessary to a Kirghese maiden of noble blood. It is nothing marvelous that the young captive, Selim, should become fond of the charming Acson, the daughter of his captor. His fondness was reciprocated, but, like prudent lovers everywhere, they concealed their feelings, and to the outer world preserved a most indifferent exterior. Selim thought it best to elope, and broached his opinion to Acson, who readily favored it. They concluded to make the attempt when the tribe was moving to change its pasturage, and their absence would not be noticed until they had several hours start and were many miles on their way. They waited until the chief gave the order to move to another locality, where the grass was better. Acson managed to leave the tent in the night, under some frivolous pretext, and select two of her father's best horses, which she concealed in a grove not far away. By previous arrangement she appeared sullen and indignant toward Selim, who, mounted on a very sorry nag, set off with a party of men that were driving a large herd of horses. The latter were ungovernable, and the party became separated, so that it was easy for Selim to drop out altogether and make his way to the grove where the horses were concealed. In the same way Acson abandoned the party she started with, and within an hour from the time they left the _aool_, or encampment, the lovers met in the grove. [Illustration: THE ELOPEMENT.] It was a long way to Selim's tribe, but he knew it was somewhere in the mountains to the north and west, having left its winter quarters in the low country. The pair said their prayers in the true Mahommedan style, and then, mounting their horses, set out at an easy pace to ascend the valley toward the higher land. Their horses were in excellent condition, but they knew it would be necessary to ride hard in case they were pursued, and they wished to reserve their strength for the final effort. An hour before nightfall, they saw, far down the valley, a party in pursuit. The party was riding rapidly, and from appearances had not caught sight of the fugitives. After a brief consultation the latter determined to turn aside at the first bend of the valley, and endeavor to cross at the next stream, while leaving the pursuers to go forward and be deceived. They turned aside, and were gratified to see from a place of concealment the pursuing party proceed up the valley. The departure of the fugitives was evidently known some time earlier than they expected, else the pursuit would not have begun so soon. Guided by the general course of the hills, the fugitives made their way to the next valley, and, as the night had come upon them, they made a camp beneath a shady tree, picketing their horses, and eating such provisions as they had brought with them. In the morning, just as their steeds were saddled and they were preparing to resume their journey, they saw their pursuers enter the valley a mile or two below them, and move rapidly in their direction. Evidently they had turned back after losing the track, and found it without much delay. But their horses wore more weary than those of the fleeing lovers, so that the latter were confident of winning the race. Swift was the flight and swift the pursuit. The valley was wide and nearly straight, and the lovers steadily increased the distance between them and their pursuers. They followed no path, but kept steadily forward, with their faces toward the mountains. Their pursuers, originally half a dozen, diminished to five, then to four, and as the hours wore on Selim found that only two were in sight. But a new obstacle arose to his escape. [Illustration: THE FIGHT] He knew that the valley he was ascending was abruptly enclosed in the mountains, and escape would be difficult. Further to the east was a more practicable one, and he determined to attempt to reach it. Turning from the valley, he was followed by his two pursuers, who were so close upon him that he determined to fight them. Acson had brought away one of her father's scimetars, and with this Selim prepared to do battle. Finding a suitable place among the rocks, he concealed his horses, and with Acson made a stand where he could fight to advantage. He took his position on a rock just over the path his pursuers were likely to follow, and watched his opportunity to hurl a stone, which knocked one of them senseless. The other was dismounted by his horse taking fright, and before he could regain his saddle, Selim was upon him. A short hand-to-hand fight resulted in Selim's favor. Leaving his adversaries upon the ground, one of them dead and the other mortally wounded, Selim called Acson and returned to his horses. Both the fugitives were thoroughly exhausted on reaching the valley, and found to their dismay that a stream they were obliged to cross was greatly swollen with recent rains in the mountains. They were anxious to put the stream between them and their remaining pursuers, and after a brief halt they plunged in with their horses. Selim crossed safely, his horse stemming the current and landing some distance below the point where he entered the water. Acson was less fortunate. While in the middle of the stream her horse stumbled upon a stone, and sprang about so wildly as to throw her from the saddle. Grasping the limb of a tree overhanging the water, she clung for a moment, but the horse sweeping against her, tore the support from her hand. With a loud cry to her terror-stricken lover, she sank beneath the waters and was dashed against the rocks a hundred yards below. [Illustration: THE CATASTROPHE.] Day became night, the stars sparkled in the blue heavens; the moon rose and took her course along the sky; the wind sighed among the trees; morning tinged the eastern horizon, and the sun pushed above it, while Selim paced the banks of the river and watched the waters rolling, rolling, rolling, as they carried his heart's idol away from him forever, and it was not until night again approached that he mounted his steed and rode away, heart-broken, and full of sadness. He ultimately made his way to his own tribe, but years passed before he recovered from the crushing weight of that blow; and when I saw him there was still upon his countenance a deep shadow which will never be removed. Such is the story of Selim and Acson. A more romantic one is hardly to be found. [Illustration: TAIL PIECE] CHAPTER XLV. One morning while I was in Barnaool the doctor left me writing, and went out for a promenade. In half an hour he returned accompanied by a tall, well-formed man with a brunette complexion, and hair and mustache black as ebony. His dress was Russian, but the face impressed me as something strange. "Let me introduce you," said the doctor, "to an officer of the Persian army. He has been eight years from home, and would like to talk with an American." We shook hands, and by way of getting on familiar footing, I opened my cigar case. Dr. Schmidt translated our conversation, the Persian speaking Russian very fairly. His story was curious and interesting. He was captured in 1858 near Herat, by a party of predatory Turcomans. His captors sold him to a merchant at Balkh where he remained sometime. From Balkh he was sold to Khiva, and from Khiva to Bokhara, whence he escaped with a fellow captive. I asked if he was compelled to labor during his captivity, and received a negative reply. Soldiers and all others except officers are forced to all kinds of drudgery when captured by these barbarians. Officers are held for ransom, and their duties are comparatively light. Russian slaves are not uncommon in Central Asia, though less numerous than formerly. The Kirghese cripple their prisoners by inserting a horse hair in a wound in the heel. A man thus treated is lamed for life. He cannot use his feet in escaping, and care is taken that he does not secure a horse. The two fugitives traveled together from Bokhara, suffering great hardships in their journey over the steppes. They avoided all towns through fear of capture, and subsisted upon whatever chance threw in their way. Once when near starvation they found and killed a sheep. They ate heartily of its raw flesh, and before the supply thus obtained was exhausted they reached the Russian boundary at Chuguchak. One of the twain died soon afterward, and his companion in flight came to Barnaool. The authorities would not let him go farther without a passport, and he had been in the town nearly a year at the time of my visit. Through the Persian ambassador at St. Petersburg, he had communicated, with his government at Teheran, and expected his passport in a few weeks. During the eight years that had elapsed since his capture this gentleman heard nothing from his own country. He had learned to speak Russian but could not read it. I told him of the completion of the Indo-European telegraph by way of the Euphrates and the Persian Gulf, and the success of electric communication between England and India. Naturally he was less interested concerning the Atlantic cable than about the telegraph in his own country. We shook hands at parting, and mutually expressed a wish to meet again in Persia and America. After his departure, the doctor commented upon the intelligent bearing and clear eye of the Persian, and then said: "I have done several strange and unexpected things in my life, but I never dreamed I should be the interpreter between a Persian and an American at the foot of the Altai mountains." I met at Barnaool, a Prussian gentleman Mr. Radroff, who was sent to Siberia by the Russian Academy of Science. He knew nearly all the languages of Europe, and had spent some years in studying those of Central Asia. He could converse and read in Chinese, Persian, and Mongol, and I don't know how many languages and dialects of lesser note. His special mission was to collect information about the present and past inhabitants of Central Asia, and in this endeavor he had made explorations in the country of the Kirghese and beyond Lake Balkask. He was preparing for a journey in 1867 to Kashgar. Mr. Radroff possessed many archaeological relics gathered in his researches, and exhibited drawings of many tumuli. He had a curious collection of spear heads, knives, swords, ornaments, stirrup irons, and other souvenirs of ancient days. He discoursed upon the ages of copper, gold, and iron, and told the probable antiquity of each specimen he brought out. He gave me a spear head and a knife blade taken from a burial mound in the Kirghese country. "You observe," said he, "they are of copper and were doubtless made before the discovery of iron. They are probably three thousand years old, and may be more. In these tumuli, copper is found much better preserved than iron, though the latter is more recently buried." At this gentleman's house, I saw a Persian soldier who had been ten years in captivity among the Turcomans, where he was beaten and forced to the lowest drudgery, and often kept in chains. After long and patient waiting he escaped and reached the Siberian boundary. Having no passport, and unable to make himself understood, he was sent to Barnaool and lodged in prison where he remained nearly two years! The Persian officer above mentioned, heard of him by accident, and procured his release. Mr. Radroff had taken the man as a house servant and a teacher of the Persian language. I heard him read in a sonorous voice several passages from the Koran. His face bore the marks of deep suffering, and gave silent witness to the story of his terrible captivity in the hands of the Turcomans. His incarceration at Barnaool was referred to as an "unfortunate oversight." Escaping from barbarian slavery he fell into a civilized prison, and must have considered Christian kindness more fanciful than real. He expected to accompany his countryman on his return to Persia. The day before our departure, we were invited to a public dinner in honor of our visit. It took place at the club rooms, the tables being set in what was once the parquet of the theatre. The officials, from General Freeze downward, were seated in the order of their rank, and the post of honor was assigned to the two strangers. No ladies were present, and the dinner, so far as its gastronomic features went, was much like a dinner at Irkutsk or Kiachta. At the second course my attention was called to an excellent fish peculiar to the Ob and Yenesei rivers. It is a species of salmon under the name of Nalma, and ascends from the Arctic Ocean. Beef from the Kirghese steppes elicited our praise, and so did game from the region around Barnaool. At the end of the dinner I was ready to answer affirmatively the inquiry, "all full inside?" At the appearance of the champagne, Colonel Taskin of the mining engineers made a brief speech in English, and ended by proposing the United States of America and the health of the American stranger. Dr. Schmidt translated my response as well as my toast to the Russian empire, and especially the inhabitants of Barnaool. The doctor was then honored for his mammoth hunt, and made proper acknowledgment. Then we had personal toasts and more champagne with Russian and American music, and champagne again, and then we had some more champagne and then some champagne. When the tables were removed, we had impromptu dancing to lively music, including several Cossack dances, some familiar and others new to me. There is one of these dances which usually commences by a woman stepping into the centre of the room and holding a kerchief in her right hand. Moving gracefully to the music, she passes around the apartment, beckoning to one, hiding her face from another, gesticulating with extended arms before a third, and skilfully manipulating the kerchief all the while. When this sentimental pantomime is ended, she selects a partner and waves the kerchief over him. He pretends reluctance, but allows himself to be dragged to the floor where the couple dance _en deux_. The dance includes a great deal of entreaty, aversion, hope, and despair, all in dumb show, and ends by the lady being led to a seat. I saw this dance introduced in a ballet at the Grand Theatre in Moscow, and wondered why it never appeared on the stage outside the Russian empire. One of the gentlemen who danced admirably had recovered the use of his legs two years before, after being unable to walk no less than twenty-eight years. He declared himself determined to make up for lost time, and when I left the hall, he continued entertaining himself. During the dancing, a party gathered around where I stood and I observed that every lady was assembling as if to witness some fun. "Be on your watch," a friend whispered, "they are going to give you the _polkedovate_." The _polkedovate_ is nothing more nor less than a tossing up at the hands of a dozen or twenty Russians. It has the effect of intoxicating a sober man, but I never heard that it sobered a drunken one. Major Collins was elevated in this way at Kiachta, and declares that the effect, added to the champagne he had previously taken, was not at all satisfactory. Remembering his experience, and fearing I might go too high or come too low, I was glad when a diversion was made in my favor by a gentleman coming to bid me good night. [Illustration: THE POLKEDOVATE.] The custom of tossing up a guest is less prevalent in Siberia than ten or twenty years ago. It was formerly a mark of high respect, but I presume few who were thus honored would have hesitated to forego the distinguished courtesy. One of the gentlemen I met at dinner had a passion for trotting horses. He asked me many questions about the famous race horses in America, from Lady Suffolk down to the latest two-twenties. I answered to the best of my abilities, but truth required me to say I was not authority in equine matters. The gentleman treated me to a display of trotting by a Siberian horse five years old, and carefully trained. I forget the exact figures he gave me, but believe they were something like two-thirty to the mile. To my unhorsy eye, the animal was pretty, and well formed, and I doubt not he would have acquitted himself finely on the Bloomingdale Road. The best horses in Siberia are generally from European Russia, the Siberian climate being unfavorable to careful breeding. Kirghese horses are excellent under the saddle, but not well reputed for draught purposes. I gave out some washing at Barnaool, and accidentally included a paper collar in the lot. When the laundress returned the linen, she explained with much sorrow the dissolution of the collar when she attempted to wash it. I presume it was the first of its kind that ever reached the Altai mountains. [Illustration: MAKING EXPLANATION.] We arranged to leave Barnaool at the conclusion of the dinner at the club room. First we proceeded to the house of Colonel Taskin where we took 'positively the last' glass of champagne. Our preparations at our lodgings were soon completed, and the baggage carefully stowed. A party of our acquaintances assembled to witness our departure, and pass through a round of kissing as the yemshick uttered 'gotovey.' They did not make an end of hand-shaking until we were wrapped and bundled into the sleigh. It was a keen, frosty night with the stars twinkling in the clear heavens as we drove outside the yard of our hotel. Horses, driver, and travelers were alike exhilarated in the sharp atmosphere and we dashed off at courier pace. The driver was a musical fellow, and endeavored to sing a Russian ballad while we were galloping over the glistening snow. We had a long ride before us. The wide steppe of Baraba, or Barabinsky, lies between Barnaool and the foot of the Ural mountains. There was no town where we expected to stop before reaching Tumen, fifteen hundred versts away. As the luxuries of life are not abundant on this road we stored our sleighs with provisions, and hoped to add bread and eggs at the stations. Our farewell dinner was considered a sufficient preparation for at least a hundred and fifty versts. I nestled down among the furs and hay which formed my bed, leaned back upon the pillows and exposed only a few square inches of visage to the nipping and eager air. A few versts from town we stuck upon an icy bank where the smooth feet of our horses could not obtain holding ground. After a while we attached one horse to a long rope, and enabled him to pull from the level snow above the bank. I expected the yemshick would ask us to lighten the sleigh by stepping out of it. An American driver would have put us ashore without ceremony, but custom is otherwise in Siberia. Horses and driver are engaged to take the vehicle and its burden to the next station, and it is the traveler's privilege to remain in his place in any emergency short of an overturn. The track was excellent, having been well trodden since the storm. We followed our former road a hundred versts from Barnaool, and then turned to the left to strike the great post route near Kiansk. It was necessary to cross the river Ob, and as we reached the station near it during the night, we waited for daylight. The ice was sufficiently thick and firm, but the danger arose from holes and thin places that could not be readily discovered in the dark. While crossing we met a peasant who had tumbled into one of these holes, and been fished out by his friends. He looked unhappy, and no doubt felt so. His garments were frozen stiff, and altogether he resembled a bronze statue of Franklin after a freezing rain storm. [Illustration: AFTER THE BATH.] The thermometer fell on the first night to fifteen degrees below zero, and to about -20° just before sunrise. The colder it grew the better was our speed, the horses feeling the crisp air and the driver being anxious to complete his stage in the least time possible. With uniform roads and teams one can judge pretty fairly of the temperature by the rate at which he travels. From Barnaool we did not have the horses of the post, but engaged our first troikas of a peasant who offered his services. Our yemshick took us to his friend at the first station, and this operation was regularly repeated. Occasionally our two yemshicks had different friends, and our sleighs were separately out-fitted. When this was the case the teams were speedily attached out of a spirit of rivalry. We frequently endeavored to excite the yemshicks to the noble ambition of a race by offering a few copecks to the winner. When the teams were furnished from different houses the temper of emulation roused itself spontaneously. Twice we left the post route to make short cuts that saved thirty or forty miles travel. On those side roads we found plenty of horses, and were promptly served. The inhabitants of the steppe are delighted at the opportunity to carry travelers at post rates. The latter are saved the trouble of exhibiting their _padarashnia_ at every station, and generally prefer to employ private teams. The horses were small, wiry beasts of Tartar breed, and utter strangers to combs and brushes. While at breakfast on the second morning we were accosted by an old and decrepid beggar. The fellow wore a decoration consisting of a box six or seven inches square, suspended on his breast by a strap around his neck. Though seedy enough to set up business on his own account, he explained that he was begging for the church. His honesty was evidently in question as the box was firmly locked and had an aperture in the top for receiving money. We each gave ten copecks into his hand, and I observed that he did not drop the gratuity into the box. I was reminded of the man who owed a grudge against a railroad line, and declared that the company should never have another cent of his money. A friend asked how he would prevent it, as he frequently traveled over the road. "Easy enough," was the calm reply, "I shall hereafter pay my fare to the conductor." The morning after reaching Barnaool, I had a fine twinge of rheumatism that adhered during my stay. Quite to my surprise it left me on the second day after our departure, and like the bad boy in the story never came back again. The medical faculty can have the benefit of my experience, and prescribe as follows for their rheumatic patients. "st. nt. o. lg. sl. S. r. = ther. - z "Start at night on a long sleigh ride over a Siberian road with the thermometer below zero." A bouran arose in the afternoon of the second day, but was neither violent nor very cold. At Barnaool I had my sleigh specially prepared to exclude drifting snow. I ordered a liberal supply of buttons and straps to fasten the boot to the hood, besides an overlapping flap of thick felt to cover the crevice between them. The precaution was well taken, and with our doors thoroughly closed we were not troubled with much snow. The drivers were exposed on the outside of the sleigh, and had the full benefit of the wind. At the end of the first drive after this storm commenced our yemshick might have passed for an animated snow statue. The road was tolerable, and a great improvement upon that from Krasnoyarsk to Tomsk. [Illustration: TAIL PIECE] CHAPTER XLVI. The great steppe of Baraba is quite monotonous, as there is very little change of scenery in traveling over it. Whoever has been south or west from Chicago, or west from Leavenworth, in winter, can form a very good idea of the steppe. The winter appearance is much like that of a western prairie covered with snow. Whether there is equal similarity in summer I am unable to say. The country is flat or slightly undulating, and has a scanty growth of timber. Sometimes there were many versts without trees, then there would be a scattered and straggling display of birches, and again the growth was dense enough to be called a forest. The principal arboreal productions are birches, and I found the houses, sheds, and fences in most of the villages constructed of birch timber. The open part of the steppe, far more extensive than the wooded portion, was evidently favorable to the growth of grass, as I saw a great deal protruding above the snow. There are many marshy and boggy places, covered in summer with a dense growth of reeds. They are a serious inconvenience to the traveler on account of the swarms of mosquitoes, gnats, and other tormenting insects that they produce. While crossing the Baraba swamps in summer, men and women are obliged to wear veils as a protection against these pests. Horses are sometimes killed by their bites, and frequently became thin in flesh from the constant annoyance. A gentleman told me that once when crossing the swamps one of his horses, maddened by the insects, broke from the carriage and fled out of sight among the tall reeds. The yemshicks, who knew the locality, said the animal would certainly be killed by his winged pursuers in less than twenty-four hours. There is much game on the steppe in summer, birds being more numerous than beasts. The only winter game we saw was the white partridge, (_kurupatki_,) of which we secured several specimens. The steppe is fertile, and in everything the soil can produce the people are wealthy. They have wheat, rye, and oats in abundance, but pay little attention to garden vegetables. In 1866 the crops were small in all parts of Siberia west of Lake Baikal, and I frequently heard the peasants complaining of high prices. They said such a season was almost unprecedented. On the steppe oats were forty copecks, and wheat and rye seventy copecks a pood; equaling about thirty cents and seventy-five cents a bushel respectively. In some years wheat has been sold for ten copecks the pood, and other products at proportionate prices. We paid twelve copecks the dizaine for eggs, which frequently sell for one-third that sum. The fertility of the soil cannot be turned to great account, as there is no general market. Men and horses engaged in the transportation and postal service create a limited demand, but there is little sale beyond this. With so small a market there are very few rich inhabitants on the steppe; and with edibles at a cheap rate, there are few cases of extreme poverty. We rarely saw beggars, and on the other hand we found nobody who was able to dress in broadcloth and fine linen and fare sumptuously every day. Hay is abundant, and may be cut on any unclaimed part of the steppe. I was told that in some places the farmers of a village assemble on horseback at an appointed time. At a given signal all start for the haying spots, and the first arrival has the first choice. There is enough for all, and in ordinary seasons no grass less than knee high is considered worth cutting. At the villages we generally obtained excellent bread of unbolted wheat flour, rye being rarely used. There were many windmills of clumsy construction, the wheels having but four wings, and the whole concern turning on a pivot to bring its face to the wind. No bolting apparatus has been introduced, and the machinery is of the simplest and most primitive character. It was a period of fasting, just before Christmas, and our whole obtainable bill of fare comprised bread and eggs. As we reached a certain station we asked what we could get to eat. "Everything," was the prompt reply of the smotretal. We were hungry, and this information was cheering. "Give us some _schee_, if you please," said the doctor. An inquiry in the kitchen showed this edible to be 'just out.' "Some beef, then?" There was no beef to be had. Cutlets were alike negatived. "Any pilmania?" was our next inquiry. "_Nierte; nizniu_." The 'everything' hunted down consisted of eggs, bread, and hot water. We brought out a boiled ham, that was generally our _piece de resistance_, and made a royal meal. If _trichina spiralis_ existed in Siberian ham, it was never able to disturb us. We found no fruit as there are no orchards in Siberia. Attempts have been made to cultivate fruit, but none have succeeded. A little production about the size of a whortleberry was shown me in Eastern Siberia, where it was pickled and served up as a relish with meat. "This is the Siberian apple," said the gentleman who first exhibited it, "and it has degenerated to what you see since its introduction from Europe." On dissecting one of these little berries, I found it possessed the anatomy of the apple, with seeds smaller than pin-heads. Kotzebue and other travelers say there are no bees in Siberia, but the assertion is incorrect. I saw native honey enough to convince me on this point, and learned that bees are successfully raised in the southern part of Asiatic Russia. We were not greatly delayed in our team changing, though we lost several hours in small instalments. We had two sleighs, and although there were anywhere up to a dozen men to prepare them, the harnessing of one team was generally completed before the other was led out. When the horses were ready, the driver often went to fetch his dehar and make his toilet. In this way we would lose five or ten minutes, a small matter by itself, but a large one when under heavy multiplication. [Illustration: THE DRIVER'S TOILET.] We took breakfast and dinner daily in the peasants' houses, which we found very much like the stations. We carried our own tea and sugar, and with a fair supply of provisions, added what we could obtain. Tea was the great solace of the journey, and proved, above all others, the beverage which cheers. I could swallow several cups at a sitting, and never failed to find myself refreshed. It is far better than vodki or brandy for traveling purposes, and many Russians who are pretty free drinkers at home adhere quite closely to tea on the road. The merchant traveler drinks enormous quantities, and I have seen a couple of these worthies empty a twenty cup samovar with no appearance of surfeit. So much hot liquid inside generally sets them into a perspiration. Nothing but loaf sugar is used, and there is a very common practice of holding a lump in one hand and following a sip of the unsweetened tea with a nibble at the sugar. When several persons are engaged in this rasping process a curious sound is produced. There are many Tartars living on the steppe, but we saw very little of them, as our changes were made at the Russian villages. Before the reign of Catherine II. there was but a small population between Tumen and Tomsk, and the road was more a fiction than a fact. The Governor General of Siberia persuaded Catherine to let him have all conscripts of one levy instead of sending them to the army. He settled them in villages along the route over the steppe, and the wisdom of his policy was very soon apparent. The present population is made up of the descendants of these and other early settlers, together with exiles and voluntary emigrants of the present century. Several villages have a bad reputation, and I heard stories of robbery and murder. In general the dwellers on the steppe are reputable, and they certainly impressed me favorably. I was told by a Russian that Catherine once thought of giving the Siberians a constitution somewhat like that of the United States of America, but was dissuaded from so doing by one of her ministers. [Illustration: WOMEN SPINNING.] The villages were generally built each in a single street, or at most, in two streets. The largest houses had yards, or enclosures, into which we drove when stopping for breakfast or dinner. The best windows were of glass or talc, fixed in frames, and generally made double. The poorer peasants contented themselves with windows of ox or cow stomachs, scraped thin and stretched in drying. There were no iron stoves In any house I visited, the Russian _peitcha_ or brick stove being universal. Very often we found the women and girls engaged in spinning. No wheel is used for this purpose, the entire apparatus being a hand spindle and a piece of board. The flax is fastened on an upright board, and the fingers of the left hand gather the fibres and begin the formation of a thread. The right hand twirls the spindle, and by skillful manipulation a good thread is formed with considerable rapidity. A great deal of hemp and flax is raised upon the steppe, and we found rope abundant, cheap, and good. I bought ten fathoms of half-inch rope for forty copecks, a peasant bringing it to a house where we breakfasted. When I paid for it the mistress of the house quietly appropriated ten copecks, remarking that the rope maker owed her that amount. She talked louder and more continuously than any other woman I met in Siberia, and awakened my wonder by going barefooted into an open shed and remaining there several minutes. She stood in snow and on ice, but appeared quite unconcerned. Our thermometer at the time showed a temperature of 21° below zero. The only city on the steppe is Omsk, at the junction of the Om and Irtish, and the capital of Western Siberia. It is said to contain twelve thousand inhabitants, and its buildings are generally well constructed. We did not follow the post route through Omsk, but took a cut-off that carried us to the northward and saved a hundred versts of sleigh riding. The city was founded in order to have a capital in the vicinity of the Kirghese frontier, but since its construction the frontier line has removed far away. In 1834 a conspiracy, extending widely through Siberia, was organized at Omsk. M. Piotrowski gives an account of it, from which I abridge the following: It was planned by the Abbe Sierosiuski, a Polish Catholic priest who had been exiled for taking part in the rebellion of 1831. He was sent to serve in the ranks of a Cossack regiment in Western Siberia, and after a brief period of military duty was appointed teacher in the military school at Omsk. His position gave him opportunity to project a rebellion. His plan was well laid, and found ready supporters among other exiles, especially the Poles. Some ambitious Russians and Tartars were in the secret. The object was to secure the complete independence of Siberia and the release of all prisoners. In the event of failure it was determined to march over the Kirghese steppes to Tashkend, and attempt to reach British India. Everything was arranged, both in Eastern and Western Siberia. The revolt was to begin at Omsk, where most of the conspirators were stationed, and where there was an abundance of arms, ammunition, supplies, and money. The evening before the day appointed for the rising, the plot was revealed by three Polish soldiers, who confessed all they knew to Colonel Degrave, the governor of Omsk. Sierosiuski and his fellow conspirators in the city were at once arrested, and orders were despatched over the whole country to secure all accomplices and suspected persons. About a thousand arrests were made, and as soon as news of the affair reached St. Petersburg, a commission of inquiry was appointed. The investigations lasted until 1837, when they were concluded and the sentences confirmed. [Illustration: FLOGGING WITH STICKS.] Six principal offenders, including the chief, were each condemned to seven thousand blows of the _plette_, or stick, while walking the gauntlet between two files of soldiers. This is equivalent to a death sentence, as very few men can survive more than four thousand blows. Only one of the six outlived the day when the punishment was inflicted, some falling dead before the full number of strokes had been given. The minor offenders were variously sentenced, according to the extent of their guilt, flogging with the stick being followed by penal colonization or military service in distant garrisons. It is said that the priest Sierosiuski while undergoing his punishment recited in a clear voice the Latin prayer, "Misere mei, Deus, secundum magnam misericordium tuam." On approaching the Irtish we found it bordered by hills which presented steep banks toward the river. The opposite bank was low and quite level. It is a peculiarity of most rivers in Russia that the right banks rise into bluffs, while the opposite shores are low and flat. The Volga is a fine example of this, all the way from Tver to Astrachan, and the same feature is observable in most of the Siberian streams that reach the Arctic Ocean. Various conjectures account for it, but none are satisfactory to scientific men. Steamboats have ascended to Omsk, but there is not sufficient traffic to make regular navigation profitable. We crossed the Irtish two hundred and seventy versts south of Tobolsk, a city familiar to American readers from its connection with the "Story of Elizabeth." The great road formerly passed through Tobolsk, and was changed when a survey of the country showed that two hundred versts might be saved. Formerly all exiles to Siberia were first sent to that city, where a "Commission of Transportation" held constant session. From Tobolsk the prisoners were told off to the different governments, provinces, districts, and 'circles,' and assigned to the penalties prescribed by their sentences. Many prominent exiles have lived in the northern part of the government of Tobolsk, especially at Beresov on the river Ob. Menshikoff, a favorite of Peter the Great, died there in exile, and so did the Prince Dolgorouki and the count Osterman. It is said the body of Menshikoff was buried in the frozen earth at Beresov, and found perfectly preserved a hundred years after its interment. In that region the ground never thaws more than a foot or two from the surface; below to an unknown depth it is hardened by perpetual frost. Many Poles have been involuntary residents of this region, and contributed to the development of its few resources. North of Tobolsk, the Ostiaks are the principal aboriginals, and frequently wander as far south as Omsk. Before the Russian occupation of Siberia the natives carried on a trade with the Tartars of Central Asia, and the abundance and cheapness of their furs made them attractive customers. Marco Polo mentions a people "in the dark regions of the North, who employ dogs to draw their sledges, and trade with the merchants from Bokhara." There is little doubt he referred to the Ostiaks and Samoyedes. A Polish lady exiled to Beresov in 1839, described in her journal her sensation at seeing a herd of tame bears driven through the streets to the market place, just as cattle are driven elsewhere. She records that while descending the Irtish she had the misfortune to fall overboard. The soldier escorting her was in great alarm, at the accident, and fairly wept for joy when she was rescued. He explained through his tears that her death would have been a serious calamity to him. "I shall be severely punished," he said, "if any harm befalls you, and, for my sake, I hope you won't try to drown yourself, but will keep alive and well till I get rid of you." Tobolsk is on the site of the Tartar settlement of Sibeer, from which the name of Siberia is derived. In the days of Genghis Khan northern Asia was overrun and wrested from its aboriginal inhabitants. Tartar supremacy was undisputed until near the close of the sixteenth century, when the Tartars lost Kazan and everything else west of the Urals. During the reign of Ivan the Cruel, a difficulty arose between the Czar and some of the Don Cossacks, and, as the Czar did not choose to emigrate, the Cossacks left their country for their country's good. Headed by one Yermak, they retired to the vicinity of the Ural mountains, where they started a marauding business with limited liability and restricted capital. Crossing the Urals, Yermak subjugated the country west of the Irtish and founded a fortress on the site of Sibeer. He overpowered all the Tartars in his vicinity, and received a pardon for himself and men in return for his conquest. The czar, as a mark of special fondness, sent Yermak a suit of armor from his own wardrobe. Yermak went one day to dine with some Tartar chiefs, and was arrayed for the first time in his new store clothes. One tradition says he was treacherously killed by the Tartars on this occasion, and thrown in the river. Another story says he fell in by accident, and the weight of his armor drowned him. A monument at Tobolsk commemorates his deeds. No leader rose to fill Yermak's place, and the Russians became divided into several independent bands. They had the good sense not to quarrel, and remained firm in the pursuit of conquest. They pushed eastward from the Irtish and founded Tomsk in 1604. Ten years later the Tartars united and attempted to expel the Russians. They surrounded Tomsk and besieged it for a long time. Russia was then distracted by civil commotions and the war with the Poles, and could not assist the Cossacks. The latter held out with great bravery, and at length gained a decisive victory. From that time the Tartars made no serious and organized resistance. Subsequent expeditions for Siberian conquest generally originated at Tomsk. Cossacks pushed to the north, south, and east, forming settlements in the valley of the Yenesei and among the Yakuts of the Lena. In 1639 they reached the shores of the Ohotsk sea, and took possession of all Eastern Siberia to the Aldan mountains. I believe history has no parallel to some features of this conquest. A robber-chieftain with a few hundred followers,--himself and his men under ban, and, literally, the first exiles to Siberia--passes from Europe to Asia. In seventy years these Cossacks and their descendants, with, little aid from others, conquered a region containing nearly five million square miles. Everywhere displaying a spirit of adventure and determined bravery, they reduced the Tartars to the most perfect submission. The cost of their expeditions was entirely borne by individuals who sought remuneration in the lucrative trade they opened. The captured territory became Russian, though the government had neither paid for nor controlled the conquest. I saw the portrait and bust of Yermak, but no one could assure me of their fidelity. The face was thoroughly Russian, and the lines of character were such as one might expect from the history of the man. He was represented in the suit of armor he wore at his death. [Illustration: TAIL PIECE] CHAPTER XLVII. The evening after we passed the Irtish, a severe bouran arose. As the night advanced the wind increased. The road was filled and apparently obliterated. The yemshicks found it difficult to keep the track, and frequently descended to look for it. Each interval of search was a little longer than the preceding one, so that we passed considerable time in impatient waiting. About midnight we reached a station, where we were urged to rest until morning, the people declaring it unsafe to proceed. A slight lull in the storm decided us and the yemshicks to go forward, but as we set out from the station it seemed like driving into the spray at the foot of Niagara. Midway between the station, we wandered from the route and appeared hopelessly lost, with the prospect of waiting until morning. Just before nightfall, we saw three wolves on the steppe, pointing their sharp noses in our direction, and apparently estimating how many dinners our horses would make. Whether they took the mammoth into account I cannot say, but presume he was not considered. Wolves are numerous in all Siberia, and are not admired by the biped inhabitants. When our road seemed utterly lost, and our chances good for a bivouac in the steppe, we heard a dismal howl in a momentary lull of the wind. "VOLK," (wolf,) said the yemshick, who was clearing away the snow near the sleigh. Again we heard the sound, and saw the horses lift their ears uneasily. An instant later the fury of the wind returned. The snow whirled in dense clouds, and the roaring of the tempest drowned all other sounds. Had there been fifty howling wolves, within a hundred yards of us, we could have known nothing until they burst upon us through the curtain of drifting snow. It was a time of suspense. I prepared to throw off my outer garments in case we were attacked, and roused the doctor, who had been some time asleep. At the cry of "wolf," he was very soon awake, though he did not lose that calm serenity that always distinguished him. The yemshicks continued their search for the road, one of them keeping near the sleigh and the other walking in circles in the vicinity. Our position was not enviable. [Illustration: LOST IN A SNOW STORM.] To be served up _au natural_ to the lupine race was never my ambition, and I would have given a small sum, in cash or approved paper, for a sudden transportation to the Astor House, but with my weight and substance, all the more desirable to the wolves, a change of base was not practicable. Our only fire-arms were a shot-gun and a pistol, the latter unserviceable, and packed in the doctor's valise. Of course the wolves would first eat the horses, and reserve us for dessert. We should have felt, during the preliminaries, much like those unhappy persons, in the French revolution, who were last in a batch of victims to the guillotine. After long delay the road was discovered, and as the wolves did not come we proceeded. We listened anxiously for the renewal of their howling, but our ears did not catch the unwelcome sound. The doctor exhibited no alarm. As he was an old traveler, I concluded to follow his example, and go to sleep. In ordinary seasons wolves are not dangerous to men, though they commit more or less havoc among live stock. Sheep and pigs are their favorite prey, as they are easily captured, and do not resist. Horses and cattle are overpowered by wolves acting in packs; the hungry brutes displaying considerable strategy. A gentleman told me he once watched a dozen wolves attacking a powerful bull. Some worried him in front and secured his attention while others attempted to cut his ham-strings. The effort was repeated several times, the wolves relieving each other in exposed positions. At length the bull was crippled and the first part of the struggle gained. The wolves began to lick their chops in anticipation of a meal, and continued to worry their expected prey up to the pitch of exhaustion. The gentleman shot two of them and drove the others into the forest. He could do no more than put the bull out of his misery. On departing he looked back and saw the wolves returning to their now ready feast. The best parts of Russia for wolf-hunting are in the western governments, where there is less game and more population than in Siberia. It is in these regions that travelers are sometimes pursued by wolves, but such incidents are not frequent. It is only in the severest winters, when driven to desperation by hunger, that the wolves dare to attack men. The horses are the real objects of their pursuit, but when once a party is overtaken the wolves make no nice distinctions, and horses and men are alike devoured. Apropos of hunting I heard a story of a thrilling character. "It had been," said the gentleman who narrated the incident, "a severe winter in Vitebsk and Vilna. I had spent several weeks at the country residence of a friend in Vitebsk, and we heard, during the latter part of my stay, rumors of the unusual ferocity of the wolves. "One day Kanchin, my host, proposed a wolf-hunt. 'We shall have capital sport,' said he, 'for the winter has made the wolves hungry, and they will be on the alert when they hear our decoy.' "We prepared a sledge, one of the common kind, made of stout withes, woven like basket-work, and firmly fastened to the frame and runners. It was wide enough for both of us and the same height all around so that we could shoot in any direction except straight forward. We took a few furs to keep us warm, and each had a short gun of large bore, capable of carrying a heavy load of buck-shot. Rifles are not desirable weapons where one cannot take accurate aim. As a precaution we stowed two extra guns in the bottom of the sledge. "The driver, Ivan, on learning the business before him, was evidently reluctant to go, but as a Russian servant has no choice beyond obeying his master, the man offered no objection. Three spirited horses were attached, and I heard Kanchin order that every part of the harness should be in the best condition. "We had a pig confined in a strong cage of ropes and withes, that he might last longer than if dragged by the legs. A rope ten feet long was attached to the cage and ready to be tied to the sledge. "We kept the pig in furs at the bottom of the sledge, and drove silently into the forest. The last order given by Kanchin was to open the gates of the courtyard and hang a bright lantern in front. I asked the reason of this, and he replied with a smile: 'If we should be going at full speed on our return, I don't wish to stop till we reach the middle of the yard.' "As by mutual consent neither uttered a word as we drove along. We carried no bells, and there was no creaking of any part of the sledge. Ivan did not speak but held his reins taut and allowed the horses to take their own pace. In his secure and warm covering the pig was evidently asleep. The moon and stars were perfectly unclouded, and there was no motion of anything in the forest. The road was excellent, but we did not meet or pass a single traveler. I do not believe I ever _felt_ silence more forcibly than then. "The forest in that region is not dense, and on either side of the road there is a space of a hundred yards or more entirely open. The snow lay crisp and sparkling, and as the country was but slightly undulating we could frequently see long distances. The apparent movement of the trees as we drove past them caused me to fancy the woods rilled with animate forms to whom the breeze gave voices that mocked us. "About eight versts from the house we reached a cross road that led deeper into the forest. '_Naprava,_' in a low voice from my companion turned us to the right into the road. Eight or ten versts further Kanchin, in the same low tone, commanded '_Stoi._' Without a word Ivan drew harder upon his reins, and we came to a halt. At a gesture from my friend the team was turned about. "Kanchin stepped carefully from the sledge and asked me to hand him the rope attached to the cage. He tied this to the rear cross-bar, and removing his cloak told me to do the same. Getting our guns, ammunition, and ourselves in readiness, and taking our seats with our backs toward the driver, we threw out the pig and his cage and ordered Ivan to proceed. "The first cry from the pig awoke an answering howl in a dozen directions. The horses sprang as if struck with a heavy hand, and I felt my blood chill at the dismal sound. The driver with great difficulty kept his team from breaking into a gallop. Five minutes later, a wolf came galloping from the forest on the left side where I sat. "'Don't fire till he is quite near,' said Kanchin, 'we shall have no occasion to make long shots.' "The wolf was distinctly visible on the clean snow, and I allowed him to approach within twenty yards. I fired, and he fell. As I turned to re-load Kanchin raised his gun to shoot a wolf approaching the right of the sledge. His shot was successful, the wolf falling dead upon the snow. "I re-loaded very quickly, and when I looked up there were three wolves running toward me, while as many more were visible on Kanchin's side. My companion raised his eyes when his gun was ready and gave a start that thrilled me with horror. Ivan was immovable in his place, and holding with all his might upon the reins. "'_Poshol!_' shouted Kanchin. "The howling grew more terrific. Whatever way we looked we could see the wolves emerging from the forest; "'With their long gallop, which can tire, The hounds' deep hate, the hunter's fire.' "Not only behind and on either side but away to the front, I could see their dark forms. We fired and loaded and fired again, every shot telling but not availing to stop the pursuit. "The driver did not need Kanchin's shout of '_poshol_!' and the horses exerted every nerve without being urged. But with all our speed we could not outstrip the wolves that grew every moment more numerous. If we could only keep up our pace we might escape, but should a horse stumble, the harness give way, or the sledge overturn, we were hopelessly lost. We threw away our furs and cloaks keeping only our arms and ammunition. The wolves hardly paused over these things but steadily adhered to the pursuit. "Suddenly I thought of a new danger that menaced us. I grasped Kanchin's arm and asked how we could turn the corner into the main road. Should we attempt it at full speed the sledge would be overturned. If we slackened our pace the wolves would be upon us. "I felt my friend trembling in my grasp but his voice was firm. "'When I say the word,' he replied, giving me his hunting knife, 'lean over and cut the rope of the decoy. That will detain them a short time. Soon as you have done so lie down on the left side of the sledge and cling to the cords across the bottom.' "Then turning to Ivan he ordered him to slacken speed a little, but only a little, at the corner, and keep the horses from running to either side as he turned. This done Kanchin clung to the left side of the sledge prepared to step upon its fender and counteract, if possible, our centrifugal force. "We approached the main road, and just as I discovered the open space at the crossing Kanchin shouted,-- "'Strike!' "I whipped off the rope in an instant and we left our decoy behind us. The wolves stopped, gathered densely about the prize, and began quarreling over it. Only a few remained to tear the cage asunder. The rest, after a brief halt, continued the pursuit, but the little time they lost was of precious value to us. "We approached the dreaded turning. Kanchin placed his feet upon the fender and fastened his hands into the net-work of the sledge. I lay down in the place assigned me, and never did drowning man cling to a rope more firmly than I clung to the bottom of our vehicle. As we swept around the corner the sledge was whirled in air, turned upon its side and only saved from complete oversetting by the positions of Kanchin and myself. "Just as the sledge righted, and ran upon both runners, I heard a piercing cry. Ivan, occupied with his horses, was not able to cling like ourselves; he fell from his seat, and hardly struck the snow before the wolves were upon him. That one shriek that filled my ears was all he could utter. The reins were trailing, but fortunately where they were not likely to be entangled. The horses needed no driver; all the whips in the world could not increase their speed. Two of our guns wore lost as we turned from the by-road, but the two that lay under me in the sledge were providentially saved. We fired as fast as possible into the dark mass that filled the road not twenty yards behind us. Every shot told but the pursuit did not lag. To-day I shudder as I think of that surging mass of gray forms with eyes glistening like fireballs, and the serrated jaws that opened as if certain of a feast. [Illustration: FATAL RESULT.] "A stern chase is proverbially a long one. If no accident happened to sledge or horses we felt certain that the wolves which followed could not overtake us. "As we approached home our horses gave signs of lagging, and the pursuing wolves came nearer. One huge beast sprang at the sledge and actually fastened his fore paws upon it. I struck him over the head with my gun and he released his hold. A moment later I heard the barking of our dogs at the house, and as the gleam of the lantern caught my eye I fell unconscious to the bottom of the sledge. I woke an hour later and saw Kanchin pacing the floor in silence. Repeatedly I spoke to him but he answered only in monosyllables. "The next day, a party of peasants went to look for the remains of poor Ivan. A few shreds of clothing, and the cross he wore about his neck, were all the vestiges that could be found. For three weeks I lay ill with a fever and returned to St. Petersburg immediately on my recovery. Kanchin has lived in seclusion ever since, and both of us were gray-haired within six months." Before the construction of the railway between Moscow and Nijne Novgorod there were forest guards at regular intervals to protect the road from bears and wolves. The men lived in huts placed upon scaffoldings fifteen or twenty feet high. This arrangement served a double purpose; the guards could see farther than on the ground and they were safe from nocturnal attacks of their four-footed enemies. One evening at a dinner party, I heard several anecdotes about wolves, of which I preserve two. "I was once," said a gentleman, "pursued by ten or twelve wolves. One horse fell and we had just time to cut the traces of the other, overturn our sleigh and get under as in a cage, before the wolves overtook us. We thought the free horse would run to the village and the people would come to rescue us. What was our surprise to see him charge upon the wolves, kill two with his hoofs and drive away the rest. When the other horse recovered we harnessed our team and drove home." "And I," said another, "was once attacked when on foot. I wore a new pelisse of sheep-skin and a pair of reindeer-skin boots. Wolves are fond of deer and sheep, and they eat skin and all when they have a chance. The brutes stripped off my pelisse and boots without harming my skin. Just as I was preparing to give them my woolen trousers, some peasants came to my relief." Although I feared my auditors would be incredulous, I told the story of David Crockett when treed by a hundred or more prairie wolves. "I shot away all my ammunition, and threw away my gun and knife among them, but it was no use. Finally, I thought I would try the effect of music and began to sing 'Old Hundred.' Before I finished the first verse every wolf put his fore paws to his ears and galloped off." My story did not produce the same results upon my audience, but almost as marked a one, for all appreciated its humor, and before I had fairly finished a burst of laughter resounded through the room, and it was unanimously voted that Americans could excel in all things, not excepting Wolf Stories. [Illustration: TAIL PIECE] CHAPTER XLVIII. The many vehicles in motion made a good road twelve hours after the storm ceased. The thermometer fell quite low, and the sharp frost hardened the track and enabled the horses to run rapidly. I found the temperature varying from 25° to 40° below zero at different exposures. This was cold enough, in fact, too cold for comfort, and we were obliged to put on all our furs. When fully wrapped I could have filled the eye of any match-making parent in Christendom, so far as quantity is concerned. The doctor walked as if the icy and inhospitable North had been his dwelling-place for a dozen generations, and promised to continue so a few hundred years longer. We were about as agile as a pair of prize hogs, or the fat boy in the side show of a circus. My beard was the greatest annoyance that showed itself to my face, and I regretted keeping it uncut. It was in the way in a great many ways. When it was outside my coat I wanted it in, and when it was inside it would not stay there. It froze to my collar and seemed studying the doctrine of affinity. A sudden motion in such case would pull my chin painfully and tear away a few hairs. It was neither long nor heavy, but could hold a surprising quantity of snow and ice. It would freeze into a solid mass, and when thawing required much attention. The Russian officers shave the chin habitually, and wear their hair pretty short when traveling. I made a resolution to carry my beard inviolate to St. Petersburg, but frequently wished I had been less rash. A mustache makes a very good portable thermometer for low temperatures. After a little practice one can estimate within a few degrees any stage of cold below zero, Fahrenheit. A mustache will frost itself from the breath and stiffen slowly at zero, but It does not become solid. It needs no waxing to enable it to hold its own when the scale descends to -10° or thereabouts, and when one experiences -15° and so on downward, he will feel as if wearing an icicle on his upper lip. The estimate of the cold is to be based on the time required for a thorough hardening of this labial ornament, and of course the rule is not available if the face is kept covered. There is a traveler's story that a freezing nose in a Russian city is seized upon and rubbed by the bystanders without explanation. In a winter's residence and travel in Russia I never witnessed that interesting incident, and am inclined to scepticism regarding it. The thermometer showed -53° while I was in St. Petersburg, and hovered near that figure for several days. Though I constantly hoped to see somebody's nose rubbed I was doomed to disappointment. I did observe several noses that might have been subjected to friction, but it is quite probable the operation would have enraged the rub_bee_. [Illustration: EXCUSE MY FAMILIARITY.] During our coldest nights on the steppe we had the unclouded heavens in all their beauty. The stars shone in scintillating magnificence, and seemed nearer the earth than I ever saw them before. In the north was a brilliant aurora flashing in long beams of electric light, and forming a fiery arch above the fields of ice and snow. Oh, the splendor of those winter nights In the north! It cannot be forgotten, and it cannot be described. Twilight is long in a Siberian winter, both at the commencement and the close of day. Morning is the best time to view it. A faint glimmer appears in the quarter where the sun is to rise, but increases so slowly that one often doubts that he has really seen it. The gleam of light grows broader; the heavens above it become purple, then scarlet, then golden, and gradually change to the whiteness of silver. When the sun peers above the horizon the whole scene becomes dazzlingly brilliant from the reflection of his rays on the snow. In the coldest mornings there is sometimes a cloud or fog-bank resting near the earth, from the congelation and falling of all watery particles in the atmosphere. When the sun strikes this cloud and one looks through it the air seems filled with millions of microscopic gems, throwing off many combinations of prismatic colors, and agitated and mingled by some unseen force. Gradually the cloud melts away as it receives the direct rays of light and heat. [Illustration: FROSTED HORSES.] The intense cold upon the road affects horses by coating them, with white frost. Their perspiration congeals and covers them as one may see the grass covered in a November morning. Nature has dressed these horses warmly, and very often their hair may justly be called fur. They do not appear to suffer from the cold; they are never blanketed, and their stables are little better than open sheds. One of their annoyances is the congelation of their breath, and in the coldest weather the yemshicks are frequently obliged to break away the icicles that form around their horses' mouths. I have seen a horse reach the end of a course with his nose encircled in a row of icy spikes, resembling the decoration sometimes attached to a weaning calf. In a clear morning or evening of the coldest days the smoke from the chimneys in the villages rises very slowly. Gaining a certain height, it spreads out as if unable to ascend farther. It is always light in color and density, and when touched by the sun's rays appears faintly crimsoned or gilded. Once when we reached a small hill dominating a village, I could see the cloud of smoke below me agitated like the ground swell of the ocean. I had only a moment to look upon it ere we descended to the level of the street. I have not recorded the incidents of each day on the steppe in chronological order, on account of their similarity and monotony. Just one week after our departure from Barnaool we observed that the houses were constructed of pine instead of birch, and the country began to change in character. At a station where a fiery-tempered woman required us to pay in advance for our horses, we were only twenty versts from Tumen. It is but a step from the sublime to the ridiculous, and it is only a steppe (a thousand miles wide) between Tomsk and Tumen. Travelers from Irkutsk to St. Petersburg consider their journey pretty nearly accomplished on getting thus far along. The Siberians make light of distances that would frighten many Americans. "From Tumen you will have only sixteen hundred versts to the end of the railway," said a gentleman to me one day. A lady at Krasnoyarsk said I ought to wait until spring and visit her gold mines. I asked their locality, and received the reply, "Close by here; only four hundred versts away. You can go almost there in a carriage, and will have only a hundred and twenty versts on horseback." The best portion of Tumen is on a bluff eighty or a hundred feet above the river Tura. The lower town spreads over a wide meadow, and its numerous windmills at once reminded me of Stockton, California. We happened to arrive on market day, when the peasants from the surrounding country were gathered in all their glory for purposes of traffic. How such a lot of merchandise of nearly every kind under the Siberian sun could find either buyer or seller, it is difficult to imagine. The market-place was densely thronged, but there seemed to be very little traffic in progress. The population of Tumen is about twenty thousand, and said to be rapidly increasing. The town is prosperous, as its many new and well-built houses bear witness. It has shorn Tobolsk of nearly all her commerce, and left her to mourn her former greatness. It is about three hundred versts from the ridge of the Urals, and at the head of navigation on the Tura. Half a dozen steamers were frozen in and awaited the return of spring, their machinery being stored to prevent its rusting. In the public square of Tumen there was a fountain, the first I saw in Siberia. Men, women, boys, and girls were filling buckets and barrels, which they dragged away on sleds. When we returned from our drive, and were seated at dinner, the cook brought a quantity of "Tumen carpets" for sale. He used all his eloquence upon me, but in vain. These carpets were made by hand in the villages around Tumen, their material being goat's hair. From their appearance I judged that a coarse cloth was "looped" full of thread, which was afterward cut to a plush surface. Some of the figures were quite pretty. These carpets can be found in nearly every peasant house in Western Siberia, where they are used as bed and table coverings, floor mats, and carriage robes. From Tumen to Nijne Novgorod the post is in the hands of a company, and one can buy a ticket for any distance he chooses. We bought to Ekaterineburg, 306 versts, paying nine copecks a verst for each vehicle. At the stations it is only necessary to show the ticket, which will bring horses without delay. The company has a splendid monopoly, protected by an imperial order forbidding competition. The peasants would gladly take travelers at lower rates if the practice were permitted. The only thing they can do is to charter their horses to the company at about one-third the ticket prices. Alexander would make many friends among the people by curtailing the monopoly. From the Tura the country became undulating as we approached the Urals, but we passed no rugged hills. A great deal of the road lay between double rows of birch trees, that serve for shade in summer and do much to prevent the drifting of snow in winter. Forests of fir appeared on the slopes, and were especially pleasing after the half-desolation of the steppe. The villages had a larger and more substantial appearance, that indicated our approach to Europe. Long trains laden with freight from Perm, blocked the way and delayed us. A few collisions made our sleigh tremble, and in two instances turned it on its beam ends. We were ahead of the tea trains that left Irkutsk with the early snows, so that we passed few sledges going in our own direction. The second night found us so near Ekaterineburg that we halted a couple of hours for the double purpose of taking tea and losing time. At the last station, about six in the morning, we were greeted with Christmas festivities. While we waited in the traveler's room, two boys sung or chanted several minutes, and then begged for money. We gave them a few copecks, and their success brought two others, who were driven away by the smotretal. I was told that poor children have a privilege of begging in this manner on Christmas morning. There are many beggars in the towns and villages of the Urals, and in summer there is a fair supply of highwaymen. Several beggars surrounded our sleigh as we prepared to depart and seemed determined to make the most of the occasion. The undulations of the road increased, and the fir woods became thicker as we approached Ekaterineburg, nestled on the bank of the Isset. Just outside the town we passed a large zavod, devoted to the manufacture of candles. An immense quantity of tallow from the Kirghese steppes undergoes conversion into stearine at this establishment, and the production supplies candles to all Siberia and part of European Russia. As we entered the _slobodka_ and descended rapidly toward the river, the bells were clanging loudly and the population was generally on its way to church. The men were in their best shoobas and caps, while the women displayed the latest fashions in winter cloaks. Several pretty faces, rosy from the biting frost, peered at the strangers, who returned as many glances as possible. Our yemshick took us to the Hotel de Berlin, and, for the first time in eighteen hundred versts, we unloaded our baggage from the sleighs. Breakfast, a bath, and a change of clothes prepared me for the sights of this Uralian city. For sight-seeing, the time of my arrival was unfortunate. Every kind of work was suspended, every shop was closed, and nothing could be done until the end of the Christmas holidays. I especially desired to inspect the _Granilnoi Fabric_, or Imperial establishment for stone cutting, and the machine shop where all steam engines for Siberia are manufactured. But, as everything had yielded to the general festivities, I could not gratify my desire. Ekaterineburg is on the Asiatic side of the Urals, though belonging to the European government of Perm. It has a beautiful situation, the Isset being dammed so as to form a small lake in the middle of the city. Many of the best houses overlook this lake, and, from their balconies, one can enjoy charming views of the city, water, and the dark forests of the Urals. The principal street and favorite drive passes at the end of the lake, and is pretty well thronged in fine weather. There are many wealthy citizens in Ekaterineburg, as the character of the houses will attest. I was told there was quite a rage among them for statuary, pictures, and other works of art. Special care is bestowed upon conservatories, some of which contain tropical plants imported at enormous expense. The population is about twenty thousand, and increases very slowly. [Illustration: VIEW OF EKATERINEBURG.] The city is the central point of mining enterprises of the Ural mountains, and the residence of the Nachalnik, or chief of mines. The general plan of management is much like that already described at Barnaool. The government mines include those of iron, copper, and gold, the latter being of least importance. Great quantities of shot, shell, and guns have been made in the Urals, as well as iron work for more peaceful purposes. Beside the government works, there are numerous foundries and manufactories of a private character. In various parts of the Ural chain some of the zavods are of immense extent, and employ large numbers of workmen. At Nijne Tagilsk, for example, there is a population of twenty-five thousand, all engaged directly or indirectly in the production of iron. The sheet iron so popular in America for parlor stoves and stove pipe, comes from Ekaterineburg and its vicinity, and is made from magnetic ore. The bar iron of the Urals is famous the world over for its excellent qualities, and commands a higher price than any other. Great quantities of iron are floated in boats down the streams flowing into the Kama and Volga. Thence it goes to the fair at Nijne Novgorod, and to the points of shipment to the maritime markets. The development of the wealth of the Urals has been largely due to the Demidoff family. Nikite Demidoff was sent by Peter the Great, about the year 1701, to examine the mines on both sides of the chain. He performed his work thoroughly, and was so well satisfied with the prospective wealth of the region that he established himself there permanently. In return for his services, the government granted a large tract to the Demidoffs in perpetuity. The famous malachite mines are on the Demidoff estate, but are only a small portion of the mineral wealth in the original grant. I have heard the Demidoff family called the richest in Russia--except the Romanoff. Many zavods in the Urals were planned and constructed by Nikite and his descendants, and most of them are still in successful operation and have undergone no change. The iron works of the Urals are very extensive, and capable of supplying any reasonable demand of individual or imperial character. At Zlatoust there is a manufactory of firearms and sword blades that is said to be unsurpassed in the excellence of its products. The sabres from Zlatoust are of superior fineness and quality, rivaling the famous blades of Damascus and Toledo. Close by the little lake in Ekaterineburg is the _Moneta Fabric,_ or Imperial mint, where all the copper money of Russia is coined. It is an extensive concern, and most of its machinery was constructed in the city. The copper mines of the Urals are the richest in Russia, and possess inexhaustible wealth. Malachite--an oxide of copper--is found here in large quantities. I believe the only mines where malachite is worked are in the Urals, though small specimens of this beautiful mineral have been found near Lake Superior and in Australia. About twenty-five years ago an enormous mass of malachite, said to weigh 400 tons, was discovered near Tagilsk. It has since been broken up and removed, its value being more than a million roubles. Sir Roderick Murchison, while exploring the Urals on behalf of the Russian government, saw this treasure while the excavations around it were in progress. According to his account it was found 280 feet below the surface. Strings of copper were followed by the miners until they unexpectedly reached the malachite. Other masses of far less importance have since been found, some of them containing sixty per cent. of copper. The gold mines of the Ural are less extensive now than formerly, new discoveries not equaling the exhausted placers. They are principally on the Asiatic slope, in the vicinity of Kamenskoi. The Emperor Alexander First visited the mines of the Ural in 1824, and personally wielded the shovel and pickaxe nearly two hours. A nugget weighing twenty-four pounds and some ounces was afterward found about two feet ibelow the point where His Majesty 'knocked off' work. A monument now marks the spot, and contains the tools handled by the Emperor. CHAPTER XLIX. I had several commissions to execute for the purchase of souvenirs at Ekaterineburg, and lost no time in visiting a dealer. While we were at breakfast an itinerant merchant called, and subsequently another accosted us on the street. At ordinary times, strangers are beset by men and boys who are walking cabinets of semi-precious stones. A small boy met me in the corridor of the hotel and repeated a lapidarious vocabulary that would have shamed a professor of mineralogy. At the dealer's, I was very soon in a bewildering collection of amethyst, beryl, chalcedony, topaz, tourmaline, jasper, aquamarine, malachite, and other articles of value. The collection numbered many hundred pieces comprising seals, paper, weights, beads, charms for watch chains, vases, statuettes, brooches, buttons, etc. The handles of seals were cut in a variety of ways, some representing animals or birds, while a goodly portion were plain or fluted at the sides. The prettiest work I saw was in paper weights. There were imitations of leaves, flowers, and grapes in properly tinted stone fixed upon marble tablets either white or colored. Equal skill was displayed in arranging and cutting these stones. I saw many beautiful mosaics displaying the stones of the Ural and Altai mountains. Natural crystals were finely arranged in the shape of miniature caves and grottoes. Beads were of malachite, crystal, topaz, and variegated marble, and seemed quite plentiful. Malachite is the most abundant of the half-precious stones of the Ural, crystal and topaz ranking next. Aquamarine was the most valuable stone offered. It is not found in the Urals but comes from Eastern Siberia. In another establishment there were little busts of the Emperor and other high personages in Russia, cut in crystal and topaz. I saw a fine bust of Yermak, and another of the elder Demidoff, both in topaz. A crystal bust of Louis Napoleon was exhibited, and its owner told me it would be sent to the _Exposition Universelle_. Learning that I was an American, the proprietor showed me a half completed bust of Mr. Lincoln, and was gratified to learn that the likeness was good. The bust was cut in topaz, and when finished would be about six inches high. Though no work was in progress I had opportunity to look through a private "fabric." Stone cutting is performed as by lapidaries every where with small wheels covered with diamond dust or emery. Each laborer has his bench and performs a particular part of the work under the direction of a superintendent. Wages were very low, skilled workmen being paid less than ordinary stevedores in America. For three roubles, I bought a twelve sided topaz, an inch in diameter with the signs of the zodiac neatly engraved upon it. In London or New York, the cutting would have cost more than ten times that amount. The Granilnoi Fabric employs about a hundred and fifty workmen, but no private establishment supports more than twenty-five. The Granilnoi Fabric was to be sold in 1867, and pass out of government control. The laborers there were formerly crown peasants, and became free under the abolition ukase of Alexander II. The palace and Imperial museum at St. Petersburg contain wonderful illustrations of their skill. Diamonds have been sought in the Urals, and the region is said to resemble the diamond districts of Brazil. They have been found in but a single instance, and there is a suspicion that the few discovered on that occasion were a "plant." We remained two days at Ekaterineburg, repairing sleighs and resting from fatigue. On account of the holidays, we paid double prices for labor, and were charged double by drosky drivers. At the hotel, the landlord wished to follow the same custom, but we emphatically objected. A theatrical performance came off during our stay, but we were too weary to witness it. Near the hotel there was a "live beast show" almost an exact counterpart of what one sees in America. Music, voluble doorkeepers, gaping crowd of youngsters, and canvas pictures of terrific combats between beasts and snakes, all were there. According to our custom we prepared to start in the evening for another westward stride. The thermometer was low enough to give the snow that crisp, metallic sound under the runners only heard in cold weather. We took tickets for Kazan, and ordered horses at nine o'clock. As we left the city, we passed between two monument-like posts, marking the gateway. Two or three versts away, we passed the zavod of Verkne Issetskoi, an immense concern with a population sufficient to found a score of western cities. In this establishment is made a great deal of the sheet-iron that comes to America. The material is of so fine a quality that it can be rolled to the thickness of letter paper without breaking. Every thing at the zavod is on a grand scale even to the house of the director, and his facilities for entertaining guests. All was silent at the time of our passage, the workmen being busy with their Christmas festivities. Leaving the zavod we were once more among the forests of the Urals, and riding over the low hills that form this part of the range. The road was good, but there were more _oukhabas_ than suited my fancy. I was on constant lookout for the steep road leading over the range, but failed to find it. Before leaving New York a friend suggested that I should have a severe journey over the Ural mountains which were deeply shaded on the map we consulted. I can assure him it was no worse than a sleigh ride anywhere else on a clear, frosty night. The ascent is so gradual that one does not perceive it at all. Ekaterineburg stands eight hundred feet above the sea; the pass, twenty-four miles distant, is only nine hundred feet higher. The range is depressed at this point, but nowhere attains sufficient loftiness to justify its prominence on the maps. In Ekaterineburg I asked for the mountains. "There they are," said the person of whom I enquired, and he waved his hand toward a wooded ridge in the west. The designated locality appeared less difficult of passage than the hills opposite Cincinnati. "Don't fail to tell the yemshick to stop at the boundary." This was my injunction several times repeated as we changed horses at the first station. Eight or ten versts on our second course, the sleigh halted and the yemshick announced the highest point on the road. I stepped from the sleigh and waded through a deep snowdrift to the granite obelisk erected by the first Alexander to mark the line between the two continents. It Is a plain shaft--- Bunker Hill monument in miniature--bearing the word "EUROPE" on one side, and "ASIA" on the other. Two fir trees planted by His August Majesty are on opposite sides of the monument. [Illustration: EUROPE AND ASIA.] A snow-drift in the middle of a frosty night is not the place for sentimental musings. I rested a foot in each of two continents at the same moment, but could not discover any difference in their manners, customs, or climate. Regaining the sleigh, I nestled into my furs, and soon fell asleep. I was in Europe. I had accomplished the hope and dream of my boyhood. But in my most romantic moments, I had not expected to stand for the first time in Europe on the ridge of the Ural Mountains. [Illustration: A RUSSIAN BEGGAR.] After passing the boundary, we dashed away over the undulating road, and made a steady though, imperceptible descent into the valley of the Kama. As I commenced my first day in Europe, the sunbeams wavered and glistened on the frost-crystals that covered the trees, and the flood of light that poured full into my opening eyes was painfully dazzling. Where we halted for breakfast, the station was neat and commodious, and its rooms well furnished. We fared sumptuously on cutlets and eggs, with excellent bread. Just as we were seated in the sleigh, a beggar made a touching appeal, as explained by the doctor, in behalf of the prophet Elias. The prophet's financial agent was of so unprepossessing appearance that we declined investing. Beggars often ask alms in the interest of particular saints, and this one had attached himself to Elias. We met many sledges laden with goods _en route_ to the fair which takes place every February at Irbit. This fair is of great importance to Siberia, and attracts merchants from all the region west of Tomsk. From forty to fifty million roubles worth of goods are exchanged there during the four weeks devoted to traffic. The commodities from Siberia are chiefly furs and tea, those from Europe comprise a great many articles. Irbit is on the Asiatic side of the Ural mountains, about two hundred versts northeast of Ekaterineburg. It is a place of little consequence except during the time of the fair. After entering Europe, we relied upon the stations for our meals, carrying no provisions with us except tea and sugar. We knew the peasants would be well supplied with edibles during Christmas holidays, and were quite safe in depending upon them. A traveler in Russia must consult the calendar before starting on a journey, if he would ascertain what provision he may, or may not, find among the people. Congour was the first town of importance, and has an unenviable reputation for its numerous thieves. They do not molest the post vehicles unless the opportunity is very favorable, their accomplishments being specially exercised upon merchandise trains. Sometimes when trains pass through Congour the natives manage to steal single vehicles and their loads. The operation is facilitated by there being only one driver to five or six teams. This town is also famous for its tanneries, the leather from Congour having a high reputation throughout Russia. Peter the Great was at much trouble to teach the art of tanning to his subjects. At present, the Russians have very little to learn from others on that score. Peter introduced tanning from Holland and Germany, and when the first piece of leather tanned in Russia was brought to him he took it between his teeth and exerted all the strength of his jaws to bite through it. The leather resisted his efforts, and so delighted the monarch that he decreed a pension to the successful tanner. The specimen, with the marks of his teeth upon it, is still preserved at St. Petersburg. While waiting for dinner at Congour, I contemplated some engravings hanging in the public room at the station. Four of them represented scenes in "Elizabeth, or the exiles of Siberia," a story which has been translated into most modern languages. These engravings were made in Moscow several years ago, and illustrated the most prominent incidents in the narrative. There were many things to remind me I was no longer in Siberia, and especially on the Baraba steppe. Snows were deeper, and the sky was clearer. The level country was replaced by a broken one. Forests of pine and fir displayed regular clearings, and evinced careful attention. Villages were more numerous, larger and of greater antiquity. Stations were better kept and had more the air of hotels. Churches appeared more venerable and less venerated. Beggars increased in number, and importunity. In Asia the yemshick was the only man at a station who asked "navodku," but in Europe the _chelavek_ or _starost_ expected to be remembered. In Asia, the gratuity was called "Navodku" or whisky money; in Europe, it was "_nachi_," tea money. During the second night, we reached Perm and halted long enough to eat a supper that made me dream of tigers and polar bears during my first sleep. In entering, we drove along a lighted street with substantial houses on either side, but without meeting man or beast. This street and the station were all I saw of a city of 25,000 inhabitants. In summer travelers for Siberia usually leave the steamboat at this point, and begin their land journey, the Kama being navigable thus far in ordinary water. Perm is an important mining center, and contains several foundries and manufactories on an extensive scale. The doctor assured me that after the places I had visited in Siberia, there was nothing to be seen there--and I saw it. A deep snow had been trodden into an uneven road in this part of the journey. At times it seemed to me as if the sleigh and all it contained would go to pieces in the terrific thumps we received. We descended hills as if pursued by wolves or a guilty conscience, and it was generally our fate to find a huge oukhaba just when the horses were doing their best. I think the sleigh sometimes made a clear leap of six or eight feet from the crest of a ridge to the bottom of a hollow. The leaping was not very objectionable, but the impact made everything rattle. I could say, like the Irishman who fell from a house top, "'twas not the fall, darling, that hurt me, but stopping so quick at the end." When the roads are rough the continual jolting of the sleigh is very fatiguing to a traveler, and frequently, during the first two or three days of his journey, throws him into what is very properly designated the road fever. His pulse is quick, his blood warm, his head aches, his whole frame becomes sore and stiff, and his mind is far from being serene and amiable. In the first part of my land journey I had the satisfaction of ascertaining by practical experience the exact character of the road-fever. My brain seemed ready to burst, and appeared to my excited imagination about as large as a barrel; every fresh jolt and thump of the vehicle gave me a sensation as if somebody were driving a tenpenny nail into my skull; as for good-nature under such circumstances that was out of the question, and I am free to confess that my temper was not unlike that of a bear with a sore head. Where the roads are good, or if the speed is not great, one can sleep very well in a Russian sleigh; I succeeded in extracting a great deal of slumber from my vehicle, and sometimes did not wake for three or four hours. Sometimes the roads are in such wretched condition that one is tossed to the height of discomfort, and can be very well likened to a lump of butter in a revolving churn. In such cases sleep is almost if not wholly, impossible, and the traveler, proceeding at courier speed, must take advantage of the few moments' halt at the stations while the horses are being changed. As he has but ten or fifteen minutes for the change he makes good use of his time and sleeps very soundly until his team is ready. During the Crimean war, while the Emperor Nicholas was temporarily sojourning at Moscow, a courier arrived one day with important dispatches from Sebastopol. He was commissioned to deliver them to no one but His Majesty, and waited in the ante-room of the palace while his name and business were announced. Overcome by fatigue he fell asleep; when the chamberlains came to take him to the Imperial presence they were quite unable to rouse him. The attendants shook him and shouted, but to no purpose beyond making so much disturbance as to bring the Emperor to the ante-room. Nicholas ordered them to desist, and then, standing near the officer, said, in an ordinary voice, "_Vashe prevoschoditelstvo, loshadi gotovey_" (Your horses are ready, your Excellency). The officer sprang to his feet in an instant, greatly to the delight of the Emperor and to his own confusion when he discovered where he was. The Russians have several popular songs that celebrate the glories of sleigh-riding. I give a translation of a portion of one of them, a song that is frequently repeated by the peasants in the vicinity of Moscow and Nijne Novgorod. It is proper to explain that a _troika_ is a team of three horses abreast, the _douga_ is the yoke above the shaft-horse's neck, and Valdai is the town on the Moscow and St. Petersburg road where the best and most famous bells of Russia are made. A RUSSIAN SLEIGHING SONG. Away, away, along the road The fiery troika bounds, While 'neath the douga, sadly sweet, The Valdai bell resounds. Away, away, we leave the town, Its roofs and spires behind, The crystal snow-flakes dance around As o'er the steppe we wind. Away, away, the glittering stars Shine greeting from above, Our hearts beat fast as on we glide, Swift as the flying dove. CHAPTER L. We found the road much better after leaving the government of Perm and entering that of Viatka. The yemshicks we took in this region were "Votiaks," descendants of the Finnish races that dwelt there before the Russian conquest. They had the dark physiognomy of the Finns, and spoke a mixture of their own language and Russian. They have been generally baptized and brought into the Greek churches, though they still adhere to some of their ancient forms of worship. They pay taxes to the crown, but their local administration is left to themselves. Approaching Malmouish we had a sullen driver who insisted upon going slowly, even while descending hills. Indignantly I suggested giving the fellow a kick for his drink money. The doctor attempted to be stern and reproved the delinquent, but ended with giving him five copecks and an injunction to do better in future. I opposed making undeserved gratuities, and after this occurrence determined to say no more about rewards to drivers during the rest of the journey. Memorandum for travelers making the Siberian tour: An irritable disposition, (like mine,) should not be placed with an amiable one, (like the doctor's.) If misery loves company, so does anger; and a petulant man should have an associate who _can_ be ruffled. After leaving the Votiaks, we entered the country of the Tartars, the descendants of the followers of Genghis Khan, who carried the Mongol standard into Central Europe. Russia remained long under their yoke, and the Tartars of the present day live as a distinct people in various parts of the empire. They are nearly all Mohammedans, and the conversion of one of them to Christianity is a very rare occurrence. My attention was called to their mosques in the villages we passed, the construction being quite unlike that of the Russian churches. A tall spire or minaret, somewhat like the steeple of an American church, rises in the center of a Tartar mosque and generally overlooks the whole village. No bells are used, the people being called to prayer by the voice of a crier. These Tartars have none of the warlike spirit of their ancestors, and are among the most peaceful subjects of the Russian emperor. They are industrious and enterprising, and manage to live comfortably. Their reputation for shrewdness doubtless gave rise to the story of the difficulty of catching a Tartar. At the stations we generally found Russian smotretals with Tartar attendants. Blacksmiths, looking for jobs, carefully examined our sleighs. One found my shafts badly chafed where they touched the runners, and offered to iron the weak points for sixty copecks. I objected to the delay for preparing the irons. "_Grotovey, Grotovey; piet minute_" said the man, producing the ready prepared irons from one pocket and a hammer and nails from another. By the time the horses were led out the job was completed. I should have been better satisfied if one iron had not come off within two hours, and left the shaft as bare as ever. The Tartars speak Russian very fairly, but use the Mongol language among themselves. They dress like the Russians, or very nearly so, the most distinguishing feature being a sort of skull cap like that worn by the Chinese. Their hair is cut like a prize fighter's, excepting a little tuft on the crown. Out of doors they wore the Russian cap over their Mohammedan one--unconsciously symbolizing their subjection to Muscovite rule. These Tartars drove horses of the same race as those in the Baraba steppe. They carried us finely where the road permitted, and I had equal admiration for the powers of the horses and the skill of their drivers. In the night, after passing Malmouish, the weather became warm. I laid aside my dehar only a half hour before the thermometer fell, and set me shivering. About daybreak it was warmer, and the increasing temperature ushered in a violent storm. It snowed and it blowed, and it was cold, frosty weather all day and all night. We closed the sleigh and attempted to exclude the snow, but our efforts were vain. The little crevices admitted enough to cover us in a short time, and we very soon concluded to let the wind have its own way. The road was filled, and in many places we had hard work to get through. How the yemshicks found the way was a mystery. Once at a station, when the smotretal announced "gotovey," I was actually unable to find the sleigh, though it stood not twenty feet from the door. The yemshicks said they were guided by the telegraph posts, which followed the line of road. We were four hours making twenty-five versts to the last station before reaching Kazan. We took a hearty supper of soup, eggs, and bread, under a suspicion that we might remain out all night. Once the mammoth sleigh came up with us in the dark, and its shafts nearly ran us through. Collisions of this kind happened occasionally on the road, but were rarely as forcible as this one. We were twice on our beam ends and nearly overturned, and on several occasions stuck in the snow. By good luck we managed to arrive at Kazan about 2 A. M. On reaching the hotel, we were confronted by what I thought a snow statue, but which proved to be the _dvornik_, or watchman. Our baggage was taken up stairs, while we shook the snow from our furs. The samovar shortened our visages and filled our stomachs with tea. We retired to rest upon sofas and did not rise until a late hour. It happened to be New Year's, and the fashionable society of Kazan was doing its congratulations. I drove through the principal part of the city and found an animated scene. Numberless and numbered droskies were darting through the streets, carrying gayly dressed officers making their ceremonious calls. Soldiers were parading with bands of music, and the lower classes were out in large numbers. The storm had ceased, the weather was warm, and everything was propitious for out-door exercise. The soldiers were the first I had seen since entering Europe, and impressed me favorably with the Russian army. They wore grey uniforms, like those I saw in Siberia, and marched with a regular and steady stride. It was not till I had reached St. Petersburg that I saw the _elite_ of the Emperor's military forces. The reforms of Alexander have not left the army untouched. Great improvements have been made in the last twelve or fifteen years. More attention has been paid to the private soldiers than heretofore, their pay being increased and time of service lessened. The Imperial family preserves its military character, and the present Emperor allows no laxity of discipline in his efforts to elevate the men in the ranks. It is said of the grand duke Michel, uncle of Alexander II., that he was a most rigid disciplinarian. His great delight was in parades, and he never overlooked the least irregularity. Not a button, not a moustache even, escaped his notice, and whoever was not _en regle_ was certain to be punished. He is reported to have said,-- "I detest war. It breaks the ranks, deranges the soldiers, and soils their uniforms."[F] [Footnote F: The land forces of Russia are formed of two descriptions of troops--the regular troops properly so called, and the feudal militia of the Cossacks and similar tribes. The regular army is recruited from the classes of peasants and artisans partly and principally by means of a conscription, partly by the adoption of the sons of soldiers, and partly by voluntary enlistment. Every individual belonging to these classes is, with a few exceptions, liable to compulsory service, provided he be of the proper age and stature. The nominal strength of the Russian army, according to the returns of the ministry of War, is as follows: 1. _Regular Army_. Peace-footing. War-footing. Infantry......... 364,422 694,511 Cavalry.......... 38,306 49,183 Artillery........ 41,831 48,773 Engineers........ 13,413 16,203 ------- ------- Total.................. 457,875 808,670 2. _Army of First Reserve_. Troops of the line........ 80,455 74,561 Garrison in regiments..... 80,455 23,470 Garrison in battalions.... 19,830 29,862 ------- ------- Total................... 100,285 127,925 3. _Army of Second Reserve_. Troops of all arms........ 254,036 199,380 ------- --------- General total........... 812,096 1,135,975 Among the irregular troops of Russia, the most important are the Cossacks. The country of the Don Cossacks contains from 600,000 to 700,000 inhabitants. In case of necessity, every Cossack, from 15 to 60 years, is bound to render military service. The usual regular military force, however, consists of 54 cavalry regiments, each numbering 1,044 men, making a total of 56,376. The Cossacks are reckoned in round numbers as follows: In Military Heads. service. On the Black Sea............................ 125,000 18,000 Great Russian Cossacks on the Caucasian Line 150,000 18,000 Don Cossacks................................ 440,000 66,000 Ural Cossacks............................... 50,000 8,000 Orenburg Cossacks........................... 60,000 10,000 Siberian Cossacks........................... 50,000 9,000 ------- ------- Total..................................... 875,000 129,000 The Russian navy consists of two great divisions--the fleet of the Baltic and that of the Black Sea. Each of these two fleets is again subdivided into sections, of which three are in or near the Baltic and three in or near the Black Sea, to which must be added the small squadrons of galleys, gunboats, and similar vessels. According to an official report, the Russian fleet consisted last year of 290 steamers, having 38,000 horse power, with 2,205 guns, besides 29 sailing vessels, with 65 guns. The greater and more formidable part of this navy was stationed in the Baltic. The Black Sea fleet numbered 43; the Caspian, 39; the Siberian or Pacific, 30; and the Lake Aral or Turkistan squadron, 11 vessels. The rest of the ships were either stationed at Kronstadt and Sweaborg or engaged in cruising in European waters. The iron-clad fleet of war consisted, at the commencement of 1868, of 24 vessels, with an aggregate of 149 guns, as follows: 2 Frigates, one of 18, and one of 24 guns.... 42 guns. 3 Floating Batteries of 14, 16, and 27 guns.. 57 guns. 2 Corvettes of 8 guns........................ 16 guns. 6 Monitors of 2 guns each.................... 12 guns. 11 Turret ships of 2 guns each................ 22 guns. -- --- Total, 24 iron-clads with............................ 149 guns. The Imperial navy was manned at the beginning of 1868 by 60,230 sailors and marines, under the command of 3,791 officers, among whom are 119 admirals and generals.] I had a letter to Colonel Molostoff, the brother of a Siberian friend and _compagnon du voyage_. I knew the colonel would not be at home on the first day of the year, as he had many relatives and friends to visit. So I sent the letter to his house, and accompanied Schmidt on a call upon Dr. Freeze, a prominent physician of Kazan. Madam Freeze was a native of Heidelburg, and evidently loved the Rhine better than the Volga. She gave me a letter to her brother in Moscow, where she promised me an introduction to a niece of the poet Goethe. In the evening Colonel Molostoff called at the hotel and took me to the New Year's ball of the nobility of Kazan. There was a maze of apartments belonging to the nobility club,--the dancing room being quite as elegant and as spacious as the large hall of the Fifth Avenue Hotel. I found files of English, French, and German papers in the reading-room, and spent a little while over the latest news from America. The male portion of the assemblage consisted of officers and civilians, the former in the majority. There was a perfect blaze of stars and gay uniforms, that quite outshone the evening dress of the civilians. As Kazan is old, populous, and wealthy, it is needless to add that the ladies were dressed just like those of St. Petersburg or Paris. I was introduced to several officials, among them the governor, who had recently assumed command. Colonel Molostoff introduced me to three ladies who spoke English, but hardly had I opened conversation with the first before she was whisked away into the dance. The second and the third followed the same fate, and I began to look upon ball-room acquaintance as an uncertainty. "Now," said the colonel, "I will introduce you to one who is not young, but she is charming, and does not dance." We went to seek her, but she was in the midst of a gay party just preparing for a visit to the lunch room. I was so utterly wearied after my long ride that conversation was a great effort, and I could hardly keep my eyes from closing. I had promised to join a supper party at three o'clock, but midnight found me just able to stand. Fearful that I might bring discredit upon America by going to sleep during the festivities, I begged an excuse and returned to my hotel. Five minutes after entering my room I was in the land of dreams. In the treasury of the Kremlin of Moscow the royal crown of Kazan is preserved. The descendants of Genghis Khan founded the city and made it the seat of their European power. For three centuries it remained a menace to Russia, and held the princes of Muscovy in fear and dread. But as the Russians grew in strength Kazan became weaker, and ultimately fell under the Muscovite control. Ivan the Terrible determined to drive the Tartars from the banks of the Volga. After three severe and disastrous campaigns, and a siege in which assailant and assailed displayed prodigies of valor, Kazan was stormed and captured. The kingdom was overthrown, and the Russian power extended to the Urals. The cruelties of Ivan the Terrible were partially forgiven in return for his breaking the Tartar yoke. A pyramidal monument marks the burial place of the Russians who fell at the capture of the city, and the positions of the besiegers are still pointed out; but I believe no traces of the circumvallation are visible. The walls of the Tartar fortress form a part of the present Kremlin, but have been so rebuilt and enlarged that their distinctive character is gone. Nicholas called Kazan the third capital of his empire, and the city is generally admitted first in importance after St. Petersburg and Moscow. Its position is well chosen on the banks of a small river, the Kazanka, which joins the Volga six versts away. On a high bluff stretching into a plateau in the rear of the city and frowning defiantly toward the west, its position is a commanding one. On the edge of this bluff is the Kremlin, with its thick and high walls enclosing the governor's palace and other public buildings, all overlooked by a lofty bell-tower. Every part of the city gives evidence of wealth. The population is about sixty thousand, including, I presume, the military garrison. There are twelve or fifteen thousand Tartars, who live in a quarter of the city specially assigned them. They are said to be industrious and peaceful, and some of them have amassed great wealth. I saw a Tartar merchant at the ball on New Year's eve, and was told that his fortune was one of the best in Kazan. I can testify personally to the energy of Tartar peddlers. On my first morning at the hotel I was visited by itinerant dealers in hats, boots, dressing gowns, and other articles of wear. The Tartars at Moscow are no less active than their brethren of Kazan, and very shrewd in their dealings. Every one of them appears to believe that strangers visit Russia for the sole purpose of buying dressing gowns. I took a drive through the Tartar quarter, or _Katai Gorod_, of Kazan, and inspected (but did not read) the signs over the shops. The houses are little different from those in the Russian quarter, and the general appearance of the streets was the same. I glanced at several female faces in defiance of Mohammedan law, which forbids women unveiling before strangers. On one occasion when no Tartar men were visible, a young and pretty woman removed her veil and evidently desired to be looked at. I satisfied my curiosity, and expressed admiration in all the complimentary Russian adjectives I could remember. As we passed a butcher's shop, my isvoshchik intimated that horse meat was sold there. The Tartars are fond of equine flesh, and prefer it to beef. On the Kirghese steppes the horse is prominent in gastronomic festivities. Kazan is famous throughout Russia for the extent and variety of its manufactures. Russians and Tartars are alike engaged in them, and the products of their industry bear a good reputation. The city has printing establishments on an extensive scale, one of them devoted to Tartar literature. Several editions of the Koran have been printed here for the faithful in Northern and Central Asia. The University of Kazan is one of the most celebrated institutions of learning in Russia, and has an excellent board of professors. Special attention is devoted to the Asiatic languages and literature, but no other branch of knowledge is neglected. I met the Professor of Persian literature, and found him speaking English and French fluently. I was invited to look through the museum and cabinet attached to the university, but time did not permit. There is a ladies' seminary in equally good reputation for its educational facilities. One morning, about two weeks before my arrival at Kazan, the early risers passing this seminary discovered the body of a young man hanging upon the fence. It was clad only in a shirt, and no other clothing could be found. No one recognized the features of the individual, and the occupants of the seminary professed utter ignorance of the affair. As might be expected, great excitement followed the discovery. Visits of the sterner sex were absolutely forbidden, and the young maidens in the building were placed under surveillance. The gentleman who told me the story, said: "It is very strange, especially as the public can learn nothing about the young man's identity." While conversing with a high official at Nijne Novgorod, a few days later, I referred to this affair and expressed my surprise that the police could not trace it out. "That is to say," he replied, with a shrug of the shoulders, "that the police have suppressed the particulars. It is a scandalous occurrence that may as well be kept from the public." One thing was quite certain: if the police thought proper to conceal the details of this affair, there was no likelihood of their publication. In Russia the police exercise a power much greater than in the United States. Those who have visited France and Austria can form a pretty correct idea of the Russian system, the three countries being nearly alike in this respect. The police has supervision over the people in a variety of ways; controls the fire department, looks after the general health, and provides for the well-being of society. Every man, woman, and child is considered under its surveillance, and accounted for by some member of the force. Passports are examined by the police, and if _en regle_, the owners are not likely to be troubled. Taxes are collected, quarrels adjusted, and debts paid through its agency. Almost everybody has heard of the secret police of Russia, and many questions have been asked me about it. I cannot throw much light upon it, and if I could it would not be a secret police. I never knowingly came in contact with the shadow, neither did I have the slightest reason to fear it. If my letters were opened and read, those familiar with my manuscript will agree that the police had a hard time of it. If anybody dogged my steps or drew me into conversation to report my opinions at the _bureau secret_, I never knew it. The servants who brought my cutlets and tea, the woman who washed my linen, or the dvornik who guarded the door, may have been spies upon me; but, if so, I didn't see it. Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise. People talk politics in Russia with apparent freedom, more so than I expected to find. Men and women expressed their opinions with candor (as I believe,) and criticised what they saw wrong in their government. The Russian journals possess more freedom than those of Paris, and the theatres can play pretty nearly what they like. Official tyranny or dishonesty can be shown up by the press or satirized on the stage more freely and safely than in the country of Napoleon Third, with all its boasted freedom. I once read a story in which an Englishman in Austria is represented saying to his companion, "No gentleman meddles with the politics of the countries he visits." I made it my rule in Russia never to start the subject of politics in conversation with anybody. Very often it was started, and I then spoke as freely as I would have spoken in New York. If my opinion was asked upon any point, I gave it frankly, but never volunteered it. I believe the Golden Rule a good one for a traveler. We Americans would think it very rude for a foreigner to come here and point out to us our faults. But for all that, a great many of us visit Europe and have no hesitation in telling the subjects of the various monarchies a variety of impolite truths. During the reign of Nicholas, the secret police was much more extensive than at present. The occurrences of 1825 and subsequent years led to a close surveillance of men in all stations of life. It was said under Nicholas that when three men were assembled, one was a spy and another might be. Doubtless the espionage was rigid, but I never heard that it affected those who said or did nothing objectionable. Under Alexander II. the stability of the throne hardly requires the aid of a detective force, and, if what I was told be true, it receives very little. The police have a standing order to arrest any person who speaks to the Emperor in the promenade at the Public Garden. One day Nicholas recognized in the crowd a favorite comedian, and accosted him with a few words of encouragement. The actor thanked his majesty for his approval, and the two separated. A stupid policeman arrested the actor, and hurried him to prison on the charge of violating the law. "But the emperor spoke to me first," was the apology. "No matter," replied the policeman; "you spoke to the emperor, and must be arrested." At the theatre that evening Nicholas was in the imperial box, utterly ignorant of what had occurred to his favorite. The performance was delayed, the audience impatient, manager frantic, and the emperor finally sent to know the cause of the curtain remaining down. The actor did not come, and after waiting some time, His Majesty went home. Next morning the prisoner was released, and during the day the emperor learned what had occurred. Sending for the victim of police stupidity, he asked what reparation could be made for his night in prison. "I beg your majesty," was the frank request, "never to speak to me again in the Public Garden." Nicholas promised compliance. He also made a pecuniary testimonial at the comedian's next benefit. CHAPTER LI. Dr. Schmidt sold his sleigh and left Kazan by diligence the day after our arrival. I remained four days, and, when ready to start, managed to pick up a young Russian who was going to Nijne Novgorod. Each of us spoke two languages, but we had no common tongue. I brushed up all the Russian I had learned, and compelled it to perform very active service. Before our companionship ended I was astonished to find what an extensive business of conversation could be conducted with a limited capital of words. Our communications were fragmentary and sometimes obscure, but we rarely became "hopelessly stuck." When my knowledge of spoken words failed I had recourse to a "Manual of Russian-English conversation," in which there were phrases on all sorts of topics. Examining the book at leisure one would think it abundantly fertile; but when I desired a particular phrase it was rarely to be found. As a last resource we tried Latin, but I could not remember a hundred words out of all my classics. A regular thaw had set in, and the streets were in a condition of 'slosh' that reminded me of Broadway in spring. When we left the hotel, a crowd of attendants gathered to be remembered pecuniarily. The yemshick tied his horses' tails in the tightest of knots to prevent their filling with snow and water. At the western gate we found a jam of sleds and sleighs, where we stuck for nearly half an hour, despite the efforts of two soldier policemen. When able to proceed we traversed a high causeway spanning the Kazanka valley and emerged into a suburb containing a large foundry. A mosque and a church, side by side, symbolized the harmony between Tartar and Russian. Passing this suburb we reached the winter station of many steamboats and barges, among which we threaded our way. Seven versts from Kazan we reached the bank of the Volga. The first view of the road upon the river was not inviting. There were many pools of surface water, and the continuous travel had worn deep hollows in the snow and ice. Some of the pools into which our yemshick drove appeared about as safe as a mill-pond in May. As the fellow ought to know his route I said nothing, and let him have his own way. We met a great many sleds carrying merchandise, and passed a train going in our direction. One driver carelessly riding on his load was rolled overboard, and fell sidewise into a deep mass of snow and water. He uttered an imprecation, and rose dripping like a boiled cabbage just lifted out of a dinner pot. We headed obliquely across the river toward a dozen tow-boats frozen in the ice. The navigation of the Volga employs more than four hundred steamers, three-fourths of which are tows. Dead walls in Kazan frequently displayed flaming announcements, that reminded me of St. Louis and New Orleans. The companies run a sharp rivalry in freight and passenger traffic, their season lasting from April to October. The gross receipts for 1866 of one company owning thirty-four boats, was one million, two hundred and fifty-three thousand, and some odd roubles. This, after deducting running expenses, would not leave a large amount of profit. The surplus in the case of that company was to be applied to paying debts. "Not a copeck," said my informant, "will the stockholders receive in the shape of dividends." I did not obtain any full and clear information touching the navigation of the Volga. The steamboats run from Tver, on the Moscow and St. Petersburg railway, to Astrachan, at the mouth of the river. The best part of the business is the transport of goods and passengers,--chiefly the former,--to the fair at Nijne Novgorod. The river is full of shifting sand-bars, and the channel is very tortuous, especially at low water. The first company to introduce steam on the Volga was an English one. Its success induced many Russians to follow its example, so that the business is now over done. Here, as in the Siberian rivers, the custom prevails of carrying freight in barges, which are towed by tugs. All the steamers I saw were side-wheelers. We changed horses on the south bank of the Volga, only twelve versts from Kazan. The right bank of the river presents an unbroken line of hills or bluffs, while the opposite one is generally low. The summer road from Kazan westward follows the high ground in the vicinity of the river, but often several versts away. The winter road is over the ice of the Volga, keeping generally pretty near the bank. A double line of pine or other boughs in the ice marks the route. These boughs are placed by the Administration of Roads, under whose supervision the way is daily examined. No one is allowed to travel on the ice until the officials declare it safe. Night came upon us soon after passing the first station. The road was a combination of pitch-holes, water, soft snow, and detours to avoid dangerous places. The most unpleasant drives were when we left the river to change horses at the villages on the high bank. It was well enough going up, but in descending the sleigh sometimes endeavored to go ahead of the horses. Once we came near going over a perpendicular bank sixty or eighty feet high. Had we done so, our establishment would have not been worth fifty cents a bushel at the bottom of the bank. Back from the Volga on this part of the route there were many villages of Cheramess, a people of Tartar descent who preserve many of their ancient customs. They are thoroughly loyal to Russia, and keep the portrait of the emperor in nearly every cottage. In accordance with their custom of veiling women they hang a piece of gauze over the picture of the empress. While changing horses, we were beset by many beggars, whose forlorn appearance entitled them to sympathy. I purchased a number of blessings, as each beggar made the sign of the cross over me on receiving a copeck. Russian beggars are the most devout I ever saw, and display great familiarity with the calendar of saints. One morning at Kazan I stood at my hotel window watching a beggar woman soliciting alms. Several poorly dressed peasants gave her each a copeck or two, and both giver and receiver made the sign of the cross. One decrepid old man gave her a loaf of bread, blessing it devoutly as he placed it in her hands. So far as I saw not a single well dressed person paid any attention to the mendicant. 'Only the poor can feel for the poor.' [Illustration: BEGGARS IN KAZAN.] We encountered a great deal of merchandise, carried invariably upon, one-horse sleds. Cotton, and wool in large sacks were the principal freight going westward, while that moving toward Kazan was of a miscellaneous character. The yemshicks were the worst I found on the whole extent of my sleigh ride. They generally contented themselves with the regulation speed, and it was not often that the promise of drink-money affected them. I concluded that money was more easily obtained here than elsewhere on the route. Ten copecks were an important item to a yemshick in Siberia, but of little consequence along the Volga. [Illustration: THE IMMERSION.] Villages were numerous along the Volga, and most of them were very liberally supplied with churches. We passed Makarief, which was for many years the scene of the great fair of European Russia. Fire and flood alike visited the place, and in 1816 the fair was transferred to Nijne Novgorod. One of the villages has a church spire that leans considerably toward the edge of the river. About fifty versts from Nijne Novgorod the population of a large village was gathered, in Sunday dress, upon the ice. A baptism was in progress, and as we drove past the assemblage we caught a glimpse of a man plunging through a freshly cut hole. Half a minute later he emerged from the crowd and ran toward the nearest house, the water dripping from his garments and hair. As we passed around the end of the village, I looked back and saw another person running in the same direction. Converts to the Russian church are baptized by immersion, and, once received in its bosom, they continue members until death do them part. What I have said of the church in Siberia will apply throughout all Russia. The government is far more tolerant in the matter of religion than that of any Roman Catholic country in Europe, and might reprove Great Britain pretty sharply for its religious tyrannies in unhappy Ireland. Every one in Russia can worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience, provided he does not shock the moral sense of civilization in so doing. Every respectable form of Christian worship enjoys full liberty, and so does every respectable form of paganism and anti-Christianity. The Greek faith is the acknowledged religion of the government, and the priests, by virtue of their partly official character, naturally wield considerable power. The abuse or undue employment of that power is not (theoretically) permitted, however much the church may manifest its zeal. Every effort is made to convert unbelievers, but no man is forced to accept the Greek faith. Traveling through Russia one may see many forms of worship. He will find the altars of Shamanism, the temples of Bhudha, the mosques of Islam, and the synagogues of Israel. On one single avenue of the Russian capital he will pass in succession the churches of the Greek, the Catholic, the Armenian, the Lutheran, and the Episcopal faith. He will be told that among the native Russians there are nearly fifty sects of greater or less importance. There are some advantages in belonging to the church of state, just as in England, but they are not essential. I am acquainted with officers in the military, naval, and civil service of the government who are not, and never have been, members of the Greek church. I never heard any intimation that their religion had been the least bar to their progress. The Pope, in his encyclical of October, 1867, complains of the conduct of the Russian government toward the Catholics in Poland. No doubt Alexander has played the mischief with the Pope's faithful in that quarter, but not on account of their religion. In Warsaw a Russian officer, a Pole by birth, told me of the misfortunes that had fallen upon the Catholic monastery and college in that city. "We found in the insurrection," said the officer, "that the monks were engaged in making knives, daggers, cartridges, and other weapons. The priests were the active men of the rebellion, and did more than any other class to urge it forward, and here is a specimen of iron-mongery from the hands of the monks. We found two hundred of these in the college recently suppressed. Many more were distributed and used." As he spoke he opened a drawer and showed me a short dagger fitting into a small handle. The point of the blade had been dipped in poison, and was carefully wrapped in paper. The instrument was used by sticking it into somebody in a crowd, and allowing it to remain. Death was pretty certain from a very slight scratch of this weapon. If this gentleman's story is correct, and it was corroborated by others, the Russian persecution of the Polish Catholics is not entirely without reason. Among the dissenters in the Greek church there is a body called _Staroviersty_ (Old Believers). The difference between them and the adherents of the orthodox faith is more ritualistic than doctrinal. Both make the sign of the cross, though each has its own way of holding the fingers in the operation. The Staroviersty do not use tobacco in any form, and their mode of life is generally quite rigid. Under Catherine and Paul they were persecuted, and, as a matter of course, increased their numbers rapidly. For the past sixty years oppression has been removed, and they have done pretty nearly as they liked. They are found in all parts of the empire, but are most numerous in the vicinity of the Ural mountains. Russia has its share of fanatical sects, some of whom push their religion to a wonderful extreme. One sect has a way of sacrificing children by a sort of slow torture in no way commendable. Another sect makes a burnt offering of some of its adherents, who are selected by lot. They enter a house prepared for the occasion, and begin a service of singing and prayer. After a time spent in devotions, the building is set on fire and consumed with its occupants. Another sect which is mentioned elsewhere practices the mutilation of masculine believers, and steals children for adoption into their families. Against all these fanatics the government exercises its despotic power. The peasants are generally very devout, and keep all the days of the church with becoming reverence. There is a story that a moujik waylaid and killed a traveler, and while rifling the pockets of his victim found a cake containing meat. Though very hungry he would not eat the cake, because meat was forbidden in the fast then in force. [Illustration: RUSSIAN PRIEST.] The government is endeavoring to diminish the power and influence of the priests, and the number of saints' days, when men must abstain from, labor. Heretofore the priests have enjoyed the privilege of recruiting the clergy from their own members. When a village priest died his office fell to his son, and if he had no male heir the revenues went to his eldest daughter until some priest married her and took charge of the parish. By special order of the emperor any vacancy is hereafter to be filled by the most deserving candidate. It is said that during the Crimean war the governor of Moscow notified the pastor of the English church in that city that the prayer for the success of Her Brittanic Majesty's armies must be omitted. The pastor appealed to the emperor, who replied that prayers of regular form might continue to be read, no matter what they contained. The governor made no further interference. About three o'clock in the afternoon of the second day from Kazan, the yemshick pointed out the spires of Nijne Novgorod, on the southern bank of the Volga. A fleet of steamers, barges, and soudnas lay sealed in the ice along the shore, waiting for the moving of the waters. The road to the north bank was marked with pine boughs, that fringed the moving line of sleighs and sledges. We threaded our way among the stationary vessels, and at length came before the town. A friend had commended me to the Hotel de la Poste, and I ordered the yemshick to drive there. With an eye to his pocket the fellow carried me to an establishment of the same name on the other side of the Oka. I had a suspicion that I was being swindled, but as they blandly informed me that no other hotel with that title existed, I alighted and ordered my baggage up. This was the end of my sleigh ride. I had passed two hundred and nine stations, with as many changes of horses and drivers. Nearly seven hundred horses had been attached to my sleigh, and had drawn me over a road of greatly varied character. Out of forty days from Irkutsk, I spent sixteen at the cities and towns on the way. I slept twenty-six nights in my sleigh with the thermometer varying from thirty-five degrees above zero to forty-five below, and encountered four severe storms and a variety of smaller ones. Including the detour to Barnaool, my sleigh ride was about thirty-six hundred miles long. From Stratensk by way of Kiachta to Irkutsk, I traveled not far from fourteen hundred miles with wheeled vehicles, and made ninety-three changes. My whole ride from steam navigation on the Amoor to the railway at Nijne Novgorod was very nearly five thousand miles. There was a manifest desire to swindle me at the bogus Hotel de la Poste. Half a dozen attendants carried my baggage to my room, and each demanded a reward. When I gave the yemshick his "na vodka," an officious attendant suggested that the gentleman should be very liberal at the end of his ride. I asked for a bath, and they ordered a sleigh to take me to a bathing establishment several squares away. My proposition to be content for the present with a wash basin was pronounced impossible, until I finished the argument with my left boot. The waiter finally became affectionate, and when I ordered supper he suggested comforts not on the bill of fare. The landlord proposed to purchase my sleigh and superfluous furs, and we concluded a bargain at less than a twelfth of their cost. After a night's rest I recrossed the Oka and drove to the town. Here I found the veritable Hotel de la Poste, to which I immediately changed my quarters. The house overlooked a little park enclosing a pond, where a hundred or more persons were skating. The park was well shaded, and must be quite pleasant in summer. The town hardly deserves the name of Nijne (Lower) Novgorod, as it stands on a bluff nearly two hundred feet above the river. Its lower town contains little else than small shops, storehouses, poor hotels, and steamboat offices. The Kremlin, or fortress, looks down from a very picturesque position, and its strong walls have a defiant air. From the edge of the bluff the view is wide; the low field and forest land on the opposite side of the river, the sinuous Volga and its tributary, the Oka, are all visible for a long distance. Opposite, on a tongue of land between the Volga and the Oka, is the scene of the fair of Nijne Novgorod, the greatest, I believe, in the world. There are many fine houses in the upper town, with indications of considerable wealth. I had a letter of introduction to the Chief of Police, Colonel Kretegin, who kindly showed me the principal objects of interest in and around the Kremlin. The monument to the memory of Minin Sukhoruky possessed the greatest historical importance. This man, a peasant and butcher, believed himself called to deliver Russia from the Poles in 1612. He awakened his countrymen, and joined a Russian noble in leading them to expel the invaders. A bronze monument at Moscow represents Minin starting on his mission. The memorial at Nijne is of a less elaborate character. We drove through the fair grounds, which wore as empty of occupants as Goldsmith's deserted village. It is laid out like a regular town or city, and most of its houses are substantially built. So much has been written about this commercial center that I will not attempt its description, especially as I was not there in fair season. The population of the town--ordinarily forty thousand--becomes three hundred thousand during the fair. More than half a million persons have visited the city in a single summer, and the value of goods sold or exchanged during each fair is about two hundred millions of roubles. Colonel Kretegin told me that the members of the Fox embassy were much astonished at finding American goods for sale at Nijne Novgorod. It would be difficult to mention any part of the civilized world where some article of our manufacture has not penetrated. [Illustration: TAIL PIECE] CHAPTER LII. At the close of the second day at Nijne Novgorod I started for Moscow. As we drove from the hotel to the railway the jackdaws, perched everywhere on the roofs, were unusually noisy. Leaving Asia and entering Europe, the magpie seemed to give place to the jackdaw. The latter bird inhabits the towns and cities east of the Ural mountains, and we frequently saw large flocks searching the debris along the Volga road. He associates freely with the pigeon, and appears well protected by public sentiment. Possibly his uneatable character and his fancied resemblance to the pigeon saves him from being knocked in the head. Pigeons are very abundant in all Russian cities, and their tameness is a matter of remark among foreign visitors. The railway station is across the Oka and near the site of the annual fair. We went at a smashing pace down hill and over the ice to the other side, narrowly missing several collisions. At the railway I fell to the charge of two porters, who carried my baggage while I sought the ticket office. A young woman speaking French officiated at the desk, and furnished me with a _billet de voyage_ to Moscow. In the waiting room a hundred or more persons were gathered. The men were well wrapped in furs, and among the ladies hoods were more numerous than bonnets. Three-fourths of the males and a third of the females were smoking cigarettes, and there was no prohibition visible. In accordance with the national taste the chief article sold at the _buffet_ was hot tea in tumblers. Some one uttered "Sibeerski" as, clad in my dehar, I walked past a little group. To keep up appearances and kill time I drank tea, until the door opened and a rush was made for the train. There is an adage in Germany that three kinds of people--fools, princes, and Americans--travel first class. To continue Russian pretences, and by the advice of a friend, I took a second class ticket, and found the accommodation better than the average of first class cars in America. How strange was the sensation of railway travel! Since I last experienced it, I had journeyed more than half around the globe. I had been tossed on the Pacific and adjacent waters, had ascended the great river of northern Asia, had found the rough way of life along the frozen roads beyond the Baikal, and ended with that long, long ride over Siberian snows. I looked back through a long vista of earth and snow, storm and sunshine, starlight and darkness, rolling sea and placid river, rugged mountains and extended plains. The hardships of travel were ended as I reached the land of railways, and our motion as we sped along the track seemed more luxurious than ever before. Contrasted with the cramped and narrow sleigh, pitching over ridges and occasionally overturning, the carriage where I sat appeared the perfection of locomotive skill. How sweet is pleasure after pain. Sunshine is brightest in the morning, and prosperity has a keener zest when it follows adversity. To be truly enjoyed, our lives must be chequered with light and shadow, and varied with different scenes. The railway between Nijne Novgorod and Moscow is about two hundred and fifty miles in length, and was built by French and Russian capital combined. There is only one passenger train each way daily, at a speed not exceeding twenty miles an hour. In the compartment where I sat there was a young French woman, governess in a family at Simbirsk, with a Russian female servant accompanying her. The governess was chatty, and invited me to join her in a feast of bon-bons, which she devoured at a prodigious rate. The servant was becomingly silent, and solaced herself with cigarettes. The restaurants along the road are quite well supplied, especially those where full meals are provided. Two hours after starting we halted ten minutes for tea and cigarettes. Two hours later we had thirty minutes for supper, which was all ready at our arrival. About midnight we stopped at the ancient city of Vladimir, where there is a cathedral founded in the twelfth century. Stepping from the train to get a night glimpse of the place, I found a substantial supper (or breakfast) spread for consumption. In justice to the Russians, I am happy to say very few patronized this midnight table. At daybreak I rubbed the frost from a window and looked upon a stretch of snow and frost, with peasant cottages few and far between. An hour later, our speed slackened. Again cleaning the glass and peering through it, a large city came in sight. It was Moscow,--"Holy Moscow,"--the city of the Czars, and beloved of every Russian. Suffering through Tartar, Polish, and French occupations, it has survived pillage, massacre, fire, and famine, and remains at this day the most thoroughly national of the great cities of the empire. The towers and domes of its many churches glittered in the morning sunlight as they glittered half a century ago, when Napoleon and his soldiers first climbed the hills that overlook the city. It was a long drive from the station to the hotel. The morning was clear and cold, and the snow in the streets had been ground into a sand-like mass several inches deep. The solid foundation beneath was worn with hollows and ridges, that vividly recalled the oukhabas of the post road. Streets were full of sleds and sleighs, the latter dashing at a rapid rate. In the region near the station there were so many signs of '_Trakteer_' as to suggest the possibility of one half the inhabitants selling tea, beer, and quass to the other half. Near the center of the city the best shops displayed signs in French or English, generally the former. Of course I went early to the Kremlin. Who has ever read or talked of Moscow without its historic fortress? Entering by the Sacred Gate, I lifted my hat in comformity to the custom, from which not even the emperor is exempt. One of my school-books contained a description of the Czar Kolokol, or Great Bell, and stated that a horse and chaise could pass through the hole where a piece was broken from one side. Possibly the miniature vehicle of Tom Thumb could be driven through, but, certainly, no ordinary one-horse shay could have any prospect of success. The hole is six feet in height, by about a yard wide at the bottom, and narrows like a wedge toward the top. The height and diameter of the bell are respectively nineteen feet four inches by twenty feet three inches. It weighs 444,000 pounds. It was cast in 1733, by order of the Empress Anne, and the hole in its side was made by the falling of some rafters during a fire in 1737. It remained buried in the ground until 1836, when it was raised and placed on its present pedestal by order of the Emperor Nicholas. [Illustration: GREAT BELL OF MOSCOW.] To enumerate all the wonders of the Kremlin would consume much time and space. Somebody tells of a Yankee gazing at Niagara, and lamenting that a magnificent water power should run to waste. I could not help wondering how many miles of railway could be built from the proceeds of the mass of wealth inside the Kremlin. Diamonds, rubies, pearls, crowns, sceptres, thrones, princely and priestly robes, are gathered in such numbers that eye and brain become weary in their contemplation. The most interesting of these treasures are those around which cling historic associations. The crowns of the kingdoms of Kazan and Astrachan point to the overthrow of Tartar power in Europe, while the throne of Poland symbolizes the westward course of the Muscovite star of empire. There are flags borne or captured in Russia's victories, from the storming of Kazan and the defence of Albazin down to the suppression of Polish revolt. Mute and dumb witnesses of the misfortunes of the _Grand Armee_ are the long rows of cannon that lie near the Kremlin palace. Three hundred and sixty-five French guns tell of Napoleon's disastrous march to Moscow. The holiest part of holy Moscow is within the Kremlin. In the church of the Assumption, the czars of Russia, from John the Terrible down to the present day, have been crowned. In the Michael church, until the accession of Peter the Great, the Rurik and Romanoff dynasties were buried; while another church witnessed their baptism, and marriage. What a wonderful amount of gold and jewels are visible in the churches and chapels of the Kremlin! The floor of one is of jasper and agate; pearl and amethyst and onyx adorn the inner walls of another. One has vast pillars of porphyry, and the domes and turrets of all are liberally spread or starred with gold. The pictures of the infant Saviour and his mother are hung with necklaces of jewels, each of them almost a fortune. One might easily think that the wealth of Ormuz or of Ind had been gathered to adorn the shrines of the most oriental Christian faith. I visted the Imperial Theatre, which the Muscovites pronounce the finest in the world. To my mind it is only equaled by La Scala at Milan, or San Carlo at Naples. Outside it reminded me of our _ci-devant_ Academy of Music. Inside it was gorgeous, well arranged, and spacious. [Illustration: VIEW ON THE NEVSKI PROSPECT--ST. PETERSBURGH.] The _Kitai Gorod,_ or Chinese town of Moscow, is close by the Kremlin and outside its walls. The only feature worthy the name of this part of the city is the number of Tartar inhabitants and the immense bazaar, or Gustinni Dvor, where the principal trade of Moscow has been centered for nearly three hundred years. The quantity of goods in the bazaar is something enormous. A Russian said to me: "If half the houses in Moscow were stripped of furniture, ornaments, and all things save the walls and roofs; if their inhabitants were plundered of all clothing and personal goods except their bank accounts,--the _gastinni dvor_ could supply every deficiency within two hours. You may enter the bazaar wearing nothing but your shirt, and can depart in an hour dressed and decorated in any manner you choose, and riding in your carriage with driver and footman in livery." The railway between St. Petersburg and Moscow is a government affair, and forms nearly a direct line from one city to the other. It is said that the emperor Nicholas placed a ruler on the map and drew a line from one capital to the other to mark the route the engineers must follow. Notwithstanding the favorable character of the country the cost of the road was enormous, in consequence of alleged peculations. There is a story that the government once wished to make a great impression upon a Persian embassy. All the marvels of St. Petersburg and Moscow were exhausted, but the oriental embassadors remained serene and unmoved. "What shall we do to surprise them," the emperor demanded of his prime minister. "Nothing is better, sire," replied that official, "than to tell them the cost of the Imperial railway." One hears more about stealing and bribe taking in Russia than in any other country I ever visited. The evil is partly on account of low salaries and great expense of living, and partly due to ancient custom. The emperor has endeavored to establish a reform in this particular, but the difficulties are very great because of the secret character of "palm-greasing," It is related that a German _savant_ once remarked to Nicholas that he could do Russia a great service by breaking up the system of financial corruption. "To get such a project in action," replied the emperor, "I must begin by bribing my prime minister." Of the country between the capitals I saw very little. In the cars the double windows, covered with frost, were about as transparent as a drop curtain. We stopped at a great many capacious and well built stations, where there was abundant opportunity for feeding and drinking. The journey commenced at two in the afternoon, and was finished at ten on the following morning. The distance, according to official measurement, is four hundred and three miles. The train halted at the station nearest St. Petersburg, and as we stood a moment upon the platform, we saw the great, gilded dome of St. Isaac's cathedral rising over the city. In St. Petersburg my first duty was to take breakfast, a bath, and a change of clothes at a hotel, and then, to drive to the banker's for letters from home. I had not seen an American for five months; as I alighted from my droshky, a well-dressed individual looked at me, and not to be outdone I returned his glance. Our eyes peered over two fur collars that exposed very little of our faces. After a moment's hesitation each of us spoke the other's name, and I experienced the double pleasure of meeting in one individual a countryman and an old friend. [Illustration: TAIL PIECE--MEETING AN OLD FRIEND] [Illustration: MAP _to accompany_ THOS. W. KNOX'S "Overland through Asia"]