CHAPTER I.
THE ORIGINS OF RUSSIAN EXPANSION IN SIBERIA AND THE NATURAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE COUNTRY

Antiquity of Russian expansion in Asia, which is contemporary with that of Western Europe in the New World—Analogy between the North of Asia and the North of America—The three natural Zones of Siberia—Their climate, extent and capabilities—The Polar Zone is absolutely sterile and uninhabitable—The Forest Zone—The Meridional Zone, which is both cultivable and colonizable.

No sooner had Russia shaken off the yoke of the Tatars which weighed upon her for three centuries, and left its mark so deeply impressed as to be still visible, than, reformed and united, she began to expand beyond her natural confines. In this she only imitated the example of Spain, which a short time previously had been delivered from the Moors and united under the sceptre of Ferdinand and Isabella. Being essentially a continental country, without easy access to the sea, and having no difficult frontier to bar her expansion to the East, Russia turned her attention in that direction, and, defeating her old masters, annexed the Tatar kingdoms of Kazan and Astrakhan. This conquest extended her frontier to the immediate neighbourhood of the Ural Mountains. In the second half of the sixteenth century Tsar Ivan the Terrible found himself possessor of vast but sparsely-peopled regions, at a great distance from his capital, and extremely difficult of direct administration.

It is a remarkable coincidence that under these circumstances an organization should have been formed in Russia almost spontaneously with others of the same kind which were to prove of such great utility in the West—i.e., a great colonizing company, under Imperial charter. The Strogonofs, very rich merchants, who had extended their sphere of trading operations as far as the basin of the Kama, the great affluent of the Volga, addressed in 1558 a petition to the Tsar, in which they demanded a concession of the lands in that region, promising at the same time, in consideration of the grant, to build a city, develop the resources, and defend the country against the attacks of savage tribes. Ivan the Terrible acceded to their request, accorded them divers trading privileges, and conferred upon them the right to administer justice and to levy troops. Thus was organized a regular chartered company analogous with the East India Company and with those more recently formed in South Africa and on the banks of the Niger. The company in question began the conquest of Siberia.

The Strogonofs, once established on the Kama, experienced, as generally happens when a civilized people finds itself in contact with barbarous tribes, the necessity of extending further eastwards at the expense of their Tatar neighbours, if only to protect themselves from their depredations. In 1581 the Tsar gave them permission to employ a celebrated Cossack pirate, Ermak TimofÉef,^[7] who seized the city of Sibir, or Isker, then capital of Khan Kuchun, the principal Tatar chief of Western Siberia. Six years later the present city of Tobolsk rose on the site of Sibir.

We will not attempt to narrate the history of the conquest of Siberia, which strongly resembles the taking of North America by French pioneers at about the same time. When the Tatar tribes of the West had been driven towards the Southern Steppes, the Cossacks encountered little opposition from the poor hunters and fishermen whom they found in the district. In summer these Cossack adventurers navigated the rivers in canoes, whilst their winters were spent in block-houses, or ostrogs, surrounded by palisades not unlike the forts erected by the Hudson Bay Company. Soon they became very numerous, being attracted from the more civilized parts of Russia by the growing profits of the fur trade. In 1636 they had reached the mouth of the Yenissei, and a year later arrived on the banks of the Lena. In less than two years—that is, in 1639—they had discovered the shores of the Okhotsk, and fifty years later the whole continent had been traversed from end to end. In 1648 the Cossack adventurers Alexief and Dezhnief doubled the eastern extremity of Asia, and arrived at Kamtchatka, and in 1651 the Ataman Khabarof established himself on the Amur, where he discovered other adventurers, who had already descended this river in 1643. At this juncture the Russians found themselves face to face with the Manchus, who had just conquered China, and notwithstanding the heroic defence of their fortress at Albazine on two occasions, they were obliged in 1688 to abandon the middle and lower basins of the Amur to the Sons of Heaven in accordance with the treaty of Nertchinsk, a territory which they only reconquered from the degenerate Chinese in 1858.

To the west as well as to the east of Siberia the Russian frontiers remained scarcely altered until about the middle of the present century. It was only in 1847 that the Tsar’s troops were able to cross the arid zone of the Kirghiz Steppes. The policy of Peter the Great was directed towards Europe, and his dream was to extend Russia towards the West by the conquest of Constantinople—a fact which accounts for the extinction of zeal on the part of Russia with respect to her Asiatic possessions, which were now treated merely as penal settlements or as fields for scientific investigation, whenever the Sovereigns took it into their heads to become specially interested in such matters. The increase of Imperial authority and the more regular organization of the State had in the meantime subdued the adventurous and enterprising spirit of the Cossacks, and that particular class of men, half soldiers, half brigands, who had proved themselves such hardy pioneers at an earlier epoch, now disappeared, and in the middle of the eighteenth century Siberia was opened as a field of colonization. In spite of the many obstacles which the system of serfdom in Russia placed in the way of peasant emigration, in 1851 the population of Siberia had reached 2,400,000, a figure which, although not very large considering the immensity of the country, was in excess of the population of Canada at the same period, which numbered only 1,800,000 souls. From this point of view the Russians had no reason to be ashamed of their colonization, and, as a matter of fact, have none to-day. According to the census of January, 1897, there were 5,731,732 Siberians living on a territory of 4,812,800 square miles, whereas in 1891 there were only 4,833,000 Canadians inhabiting the 3,721,800 square miles known as the Dominion. The density of the population of Northern Asia is not much inferior to that of British North America, and it must not be forgotten that the conditions of life in Siberia are greatly inferior to those of Canada.

A comparison of the natural conditions existing in the northern regions of the old and the new world shows that they are nearly identical. Both consist for the most part of vast expanses of flat country, often covered with magnificent forests, and quite as frequently barren. Siberia, like Canada, is irrigated by noble rivers, which under a milder climate would constitute a superb network of intercommunication; but unfortunately both countries are hampered by an extremely rigorous climate, which imprisons these fine rivers during many months of the year under an impenetrably thick coating of ice. In the north of Siberia as well as of Canada the country is so intensely cold as to render agriculture impossible. That part, therefore, of both countries which is capable of exploitation is of extremely limited extent, consisting both in Russian Asia and in British North America of a ribbon-like zone some 3,720 miles in length and from 250 to 300 in width.

If Siberia resembles Canada in some things, it must be confessed that the latter country has every advantage in point of beauty and position. In the first place, Siberia is more to the north; that portion which approaches nearest to the Equator is situated about 43° latitude—that is to say, a little more to the north than the extreme south of Upper Canada, and, being on the Pacific, it is most distant from European Russia, whereas the corresponding part of Canada is the nearest to England, and washed by the Atlantic, the St. Lawrence, and the great lakes. On the other hand, that part of Siberia which is closest to Russia is covered to the south by barren steppes or by mountains which confine the centres of civilization between 54° and 57° latitude. Moreover, whereas the coast of Canada on the Pacific enjoys a much milder climate than the country situated on the other side of the Rocky Mountains, the regions of Siberia which border the Great Ocean are just as frigid as the rest of the country. The heights which separate the basin of the Amur from that of the Lena are not sufficiently elevated to form a barrier against piercing north winds, and the Japanese Archipelago interposes itself between the coast and the warm waters of the Black Current, which plays the same part in the Pacific as the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic. Thus it happens that the climate of Trans-Baikalia, where the rivers which, when united, form the Amur take their source, is one of the most rigorous in Siberia, and the sea is covered with ice in the port of Vladivostok, which lies in the same latitude as Marseilles, whereas, opposite on the American coast, seven degrees northward, the winters of British Columbia are not more severe than those of Holland or the West of Germany.

Notwithstanding its terrible climate, Siberia is not entirely uninhabitable; indeed, even on the borders of the Arctic Ocean humanity is represented by a few aboriginal Polar tribes, who wander from place to place in sledges drawn by dogs, and usually followed by a numerous herd of reindeer. The white man, however, cannot endure the conditions prevailing in the extreme north, and it is therefore necessary with a view to colonizing that one must learn to distinguish between the different parts of Siberia.

The country has been judiciously divided into three zones, which are, proceeding from north to south, the Tundra (or Arctic Moss) Zone, the Great Forest Zone, and lastly the Agricultural Zone; the south and south-west of the last-named includes the steppes, as well as the Altai and Sayan Mountains. It would be impossible to trace a line of exact demarcation between these different zones, for the transition is extremely gradual; but, speaking generally, the land situated north of 63° and 64° latitude is barren of all vegetation excepting mosses and lichens. The subsoil is eternally frozen, but the surface thaws in summer very slightly, thereby turning the country into one vast marsh. The rivers remain frozen during nine months of the year. Under these circumstances, cultivation is out of the question. To the south-western limit of this zone, at Beriozof on the Obi, the medium temperature all the year round is 5° C. below zero, and in winter it goes down to 23°. The average in summer is 13·5°, and that of the hottest month 18°, which is about the same as the heat in Paris in July; but the warm weather lasts so short a time as to be useless for agricultural purposes. To the east the climate becomes rapidly severe, and at Verkhoyansk, a village situated in the Yakutsk district, latitude 67°, one of the coldest regions in our hemisphere is reached. The average throughout the year is 17° C. below zero; during the three winter months it is 47°, and in January 49°. The minimum is about 68° below zero. What characterizes this dreadful region is that to the extreme cold in winter succeeds a very short but relatively warm summer. The medium thermometrical reading during the warm season is 13°, which rises to 15° for the month of July, during which the mercury sometimes rises to 25° in the shade. The difference between the temperature of the warmest and the coldest months of the year is about 64°, that is to say, four times what it is in Paris. It is very remarkable that in whatever direction you go from Verkhoyansk, even northward, the climate becomes less rigorous, thanks to the comparative mildness of the winter. As to the summer, it scarcely merits the name, falling to 9° and even to 3° C. on the borders of the Arctic Ocean.

In such unfavourable conditions, it is not surprising that the 1,600,000 square miles which comprise the Tundra Zone only support between 60,000 and 80,000 inhabitants, mostly Samoyeds, Ostiaks, Chuckchis, Lamuts, and other miserable Arctic tribes, among whom live, or rather vegetate, a few Russian officials and a fairly numerous group of exiles. The reindeer, whilst serving as a means of transport, is also used as food, and its hide furnishes the natives with clothing. There is no other domestic animal excepting the powerful Polar dog which drags the sleighs. Whether this part of Siberia will ever become of any ultimate use is at present hard to say, but we may take it for granted that it will only be through the discovery of a mineral wealth, the existence of which is unknown at the present time, that the Polar Zone of Siberia will ever attract even a temporary settlement of colonists.

To the south of the Tundra begin the Great Forests. At first the trees are sparse and stunted, and only an experienced botanist can recognise the distinctive characteristics of the larch; the trees, however, become loftier as the climate moderates and the summer lengthens. The larches, firs and pines rise to a great height, and become at last so thick as to prevent the sun drying the damp soil of the Taiga, or primeval forest. The banks of the rivers are invariably covered by immense marshes, the most extensive of which are those to be met with in the neighbourhood of the Obi and the Irtysh. When the snow begins to melt, the inundations extend to considerably over six miles on either side of the ill-defined river-banks. The climate of this region is extremely severe, the winters frightfully cold, but the summers fairly warm. The frost lasts only seven instead of eight months; the subsoil, however, is eternally frozen, and agriculture is only possible in certain spots and demands constant attention. It is evident, however, that this zone, which covers about 2,320,000 square miles, that is to say about half Siberia, will never be able to support a dense population; still, with its great forests it is much more valuable than the more northern or Polar regions. If it is possible to prevent these Siberian forests from undergoing the same process of devastation which has befallen those of Northern America, they may become of enormous value. Moreover, there exist in their midst some very important gold-mines, especially near the Yenissei and in the basin of the Olekma, one of the tributaries of the Lena, not a few of which are already being satisfactorily exploited. There is therefore hope that in due time these vast regions now covered with forests and marshes may be able to support a much larger population than the actual one, which does not exceed 700,000 souls, mostly Russians and natives.

If we abstract from the total extent of Siberia the 1,600,000 square miles of Tundra, and the 2,320,000 square miles of forest land, there remain nearly 900,000 square miles which form the cultivable zone, the only one which will ever be capable of supporting anything like a dense population. This region is not perceptibly distinguishable from that of the forests by any marked change in the landscape, unless it be to the west, where the great green trees that usually flourish in milder climes form an agreeable contrast to the everlasting pines and firs. Then, again, the presence of cereals is very noticeable, the late summer being of sufficient length to enable wheat, barley and oats to ripen. So long as the seed remains under the snow it matters little how intense the cold may be above; but when once the snow melts it becomes absolutely necessary for the heat to be sufficiently great during a prolonged period to enable the grain to germinate, and above all it is necessary that the autumnal frosts should not occur before the corn has had sufficient time to ripen. At Nertchinsk in Trans-Baikalia the winter is often much more rigorous than at Beriozof on the Obi, and yet corn ripens in the neighbourhood of the first-named town, for the simple reason that the temperature between May and September, although not many degrees higher, remains equable much longer. It is rather to the brief period during which the sun has any power than to the intensity of the heat or the excess of cold that may be attributed the difficulty of rendering these extreme northern regions of any agricultural value. Notwithstanding that the cultivable zone of Siberia is so extremely limited, it covers an area five times the size of France and equal to half the cultivable sphere of Russia in Europe, which is also afflicted with glacial and sterile zones. This more fortunate section of Siberia may, and doubtless will, offer for a long time to come an admirable field for Russian emigration.

Siberia a prolongation of Russia in Europe—Marked resemblance in scenery and climate between the two countries—Insignificance of the indigenous population, especially towards the West—Facilities of colonization—Preponderance of the Russian element in the agricultural zone—Indigenous elements: Polar tribes diminishing; Mongol population increasing, but much more slowly than the Russian—Asiatic immigration to the east of the cultivable zone—Heterogeneous elements imported from Europe—Jews and Raskolniks.

After crossing the beautifully wooded valleys and the chain of hills known as the Ural Mountains, the traveller arrives at Cheliabinsk, situated in the Great Plain, and can scarcely believe that 1,200 miles of railway separate him from Moscow, so striking is the resemblance between the scenery around him and that of Central Russia, notably in the Governments of Tula and Riazan. In the open spaces rise tufts of delicate verdure, beyond which, here and there, appear the gray outlines of some village, consisting of rows of wooden houses surrounded by fields. The only striking difference between the appearance of this country and Central Russia consists in the predominance of the birch between the Ural and the Obi. For nearly 1,200 miles no other tree shades the absolutely flat country. It is the same with the wild flowers, among which I noticed the Kaborski tchaÏ, with its long pink spiral blossoms, which recall those of the digitalis. It is not surprising that a Russian territory bearing such a singular resemblance to the mother country should prove attractive to Russian emigrants. The winter here, however, is undoubtedly both longer and colder; the summer is a little hotter, and the mosquitoes much more troublesome; but, on the other hand, land is freer, and the peasant is no longer confined in the very narrow space granted in the old country to his father at the time of the emancipation of the serfs, and which, at his death, he has been obliged to share with his brothers. If one is surprised to notice during the first few days’ journey by the Trans-Siberian Railway so few villages, the reason is not far to find. The line passes a little to the south of the colonized region, and borders the insufficiently-watered steppes where the Kirghiz graze their cattle. From time to time the traveller perceives in the plain the circular huts and even the tents of these nomads, and not unfrequently at the stations he may meet with a number of them, with their beady black eyes, their yellow complexions, and their closely-shaven heads contrasting picturesquely with the fair locks and long yellow beards of the red-shirted Mujiks. A little to the north, after passing the Obi, the Kirghiz disappear, although the town of Tomsk still possesses a mosque, said to be the most northern in the world.

It is estimated that these Tatars do not exceed 90,000. The majority profess Islamism, whilst a few have been converted to the Orthodox faith, and a smaller proportion still remain pagans. Only a fraction dwell in the towns. Besides this Tatar tribe, some 20,000 Mongols, called Kalmucks, inhabit the Altai Mountains. In the north may still be found other aborigines of a very inferior type, known as Ostiaks. They are supposed to be of Finnish origin, and do not exceed 40,000 in number, and are exclusively engaged in hunting and fishing. It is stated that at one time they were fairly civilized, but they have been gradually driven back by the Russians into the Arctic and sterile regions, and have become decimated by drink and other vices, the unfortunate result of contact with a superior race. Further north of the forest-line and the Tundra region wander a few Polar tribes called Samoyeds, who, owing to the extremely arid nature of the soil and the rigour of the climate, have never come into contact with European civilization. There are about 20,000 of them, and owing to the unfavourable social and climatic conditions under which they exist, it is not likely that they will increase. The purely Russian population, to whom the agricultural zone almost exclusively belongs, forms about nineteen-twentieths of the 3,356,000 inhabitants of Western Siberia, which itself contains three-fifths of the population of all Siberia.

The richest section of the Government of Tobolsk consists of a narrow band of land running between the marshes of the northern regions and the sterile steppes of the southern. At Tomsk this cultivable zone widens when it passes the Obi, and the character of the scenery changes to pleasant hills and valleys, in which latter the earth is still sufficiently thick and rich to entirely cover the rocky formation below. The leaf-bearing trees are finer, and are interspersed with splendid specimens of Siberian fir and the extremely picturesque Siberian cedar-tree. Occasionally these trees group themselves together, and form a sort of wood or plantation; at other times they grow singly along the roadside, being thus cultivated in order to supply sleepers for the railway or as superior fuel. The fields are full of beautiful flowers, and the general appearance of the country is that of a fine park, forming a very agreeable contrast to the monotonous Barabinsk Steppe, with its infrequent and stunted birches. The plateau which stretches between the two rivers Tom and Chulym, affluents of the Obi, at a height of between 800 and 900 feet above the level of the plain, is extremely fertile, the vegetation being most varied, and the whole region is vastly superior in point of picturesqueness to any hitherto visited. The valley of the Yenissei, dominated to the east by mountains and traversed by the magnificent river, is extremely beautiful. The water runs rapidly, is remarkably clear, and in more than one place the majestic stream widens to over 1,000 yards.

Once the traveller has passed the Yenissei, he leaves the tedious plains behind him, and finds himself among pleasant hills and valleys, which are rapidly becoming highly cultivated. The post-road, which crosses from the west to the east, from Tiumen, at the foot of the Ural, to Stretensk on the Amur, sometimes follows the course of the rivers, and at others rises to a considerable height above them. On either side rise veritable walls of gigantic Siberian pines, with red trunks, sombre verdure, interspersed by magnificent larches of a lighter shade of green and of more regular shape, and by fir-trees and cedars, whose cones contain those little seeds which the Siberians are so fond of chewing. On the banks of the more important rivers, and at every ten to twenty miles’ distance, the traveller now passes numbers of little towns and villages, surrounded by arable land, which form, however, but very insignificant oases in the midst of these interminable forests. It is, however, along this post-road, in the valley of the Yenissei, and on the banks of two or three other rivers, that almost the entire population of Central Siberia is concentrated. Here, as elsewhere, the Russian element predominates; for out of the 570,000 inhabitants of the government of Yenissei there are not more than 50,000 natives, who, moreover, live principally in the forests to the north.

The population of the Government of Irkutsk includes about 500,000 inhabitants, of whom 100,000 are Buriats, mostly shepherds and farmers. They were originally Mongols, and still practise Buddhism, and live principally on the slopes of the Sayan chain of mountains, which runs close to the Chinese frontier. To the east of the great Lake Baikal, which is 440 miles in length by 30 to 60 in width, and which by reason of its mountainous shores recalls the lakes of Scotland, is a region that contains the only really beautiful scenery in Siberia. This section of the country has always entertained close relations with China. Trans-Baikalia in former times supplied the Emperors at Peking with their finest game. The whole district of the Verkhne-Udinsk, comprising the basin of the Selenga, the principal affluent of the Baikal, is frequently and not inappropriately called Russian Mongolia. On the summit of the Ahmar Dabam, a chain of mountains which dominates Lake Baikal, I perceived for the first time a fetish-tree with its branches bedecked with parti-coloured rags. On the eastern slope I also discovered a Lamasery. The scantily cultivated plateau to the north, which is watered by the Vitim, a tributary of the Lena, was, it appears, not populated at the time of the arrival of the Russians, and even to-day it only contains a few villages peopled by wretched Mujiks. This region before the annexation of the right bank and of the lower valley of the Amur was used as a sort of military encampment. At the present time it is governed by a military rÉgime, whose administration is concentrated in the hands of a Governor, invariably a general in the army. Of the 670,000 inhabitants, one-third are natives, one-third peasants, or inhabitants of its gloomy little towns, and the other third consists of Cossacks, who are only distinguishable from the peasants by wearing a yellow band on their caps and trousers. Instead of paying taxes, they have to submit to certain military obligations. Although they are Cossacks by name and by race, they possess none of the brilliant military qualities which distinguish their European kinsmen. The two territories annexed by Russia in 1858 at the expense of China, the Province of the Amur, and the southern portion of the Littoral Province—the only one which is of the least value—are scarcely inhabited, and were even less peopled at the time of the arrival of the Russians, when they possessed not more than 10,000 Manchus, and about as many natives, engaged in hunting and fishing, and belonging to several declining tribes. The Manchus have remained and are prospering; the other tribes are gradually passing away. Some 20,000 or 30,000 Korean and Chinese emigrants have settled in the neighbourhood of Vladivostok. The Russian immigration, however, forms at least five-sixths of the 112,000 inhabitants of the Province of the Amur, and more than two-thirds of the 214,000 of the coast province, of whom 30,000 natives live in the Arctic regions, where the whites leave them in peace. The newly-acquired Chinese territory includes at least 140,000 Russians out of the 175,000 inhabitants. It must, however, be remembered that this remarkable majority is mainly due to the concentration of troops which has taken place since the Chino-Japanese War, which so profoundly modified the political condition of the Far East.

The following table is formed from official sources—chiefly from the census taken on January 28, 1897, and marks the area and the total population of the nine Siberian provinces:

The southern agricultural region of Siberia, in contradistinction to the frozen zone to the north, is mainly inhabited by European settlers. The proportion of these over the native population is greatest in the west, and decreases towards the east, where, however, it still remains superior by about two-thirds, so that we need not hesitate to conclude that out of the 5,000,000 people living on this long strip of land, more than four million and a half are of European origin. Nevertheless, it must not be forgotten that the indigenous Mongol and Turki population, which is immensely superior to the poor tribes of fishermen and hunters who wander about the northern zone, does not diminish, but continues to increase, much less rapidly, however, than the Russians, who are constantly being reinforced by emigration. Fortunately the feeling between these two distinct elements is excellent; the Russians, being of Oriental extraction, do not hold those racial prejudices which are so marked among the Anglo-Saxons. The religious question, which is of course an obstacle to any attempt at a fusion between the Orthodox and the Buddhist population, is also not very intense or intricate. The Russian is essentially tolerant, in opposition to his Government, which is the reverse. The Orthodox emigrants have no objection to a Pagoda or a Lamasery being erected alongside of their own churches and monasteries. I remember seeing, while travelling, from Cheliabinsk to Omsk, the Metropolitan of the last-named town, who happened to be in the train, get out at a certain station to visit a church which was being built, and to bestow his benediction upon a crowd of Mujiks who had assembled for the purpose of receiving it. Whilst the ceremony was in progress, a few feet further on five Tatar travellers had stretched their carpets, and, with their faces turned Meccawards, were going through the elaborate gymnastics connected with Mussulman devotion. The Mujiks, who were crowding forward to kiss their priest’s hand, never dreamt of disturbing the Mohammedan worshippers, but watched them quite respectfully. I doubt very much whether in any part of Europe three centuries ago, when the populace was not more developed in the intellectual sense than are these poor Mujiks, such a scene of tolerance could ever have been witnessed. The Russian Government accords the utmost liberty to its subjects in Asia in matters of religion. The origin of Russian official intolerance in Europe is in the main purely political, and if it considers Buddhists and Mussulmans in Siberia less objectionable than Catholics and Protestants, it is simply because the followers of these divergent creeds are the representatives of former and very dangerous enemies, and are, moreover, perpetually endeavouring to impose their doctrine upon anyone with whom they come into contact.

The Russian colonization of Siberia has been carried out without the aid of any other European nationality. There are only a few hundred other Europeans settled in the country, the greater number of whom are French people. I was much amused at the little station at Sokur, about nine leagues from the Obi, to find a buffet kept by a Frenchwoman, a peasant who had married a Bessarabian, and who had only been in Siberia a year, after having, however, spent several in Southern Russia. Her buffet was arranged with a greater degree of taste and comfort than those in charge of the Russians, who, however, keep everything scrupulously neat and clean. The worthy lady had forgotten her fluent French, but had not yet acquired fluent Russian. At Tomsk I fell in with another Frenchwoman, who kept a bookshop, and in nearly all the towns along the great post-road at Irkutsk, Blagovyeshchensk, Khabarofsk, and Vladivostok, I found French shopkeepers, some of whom had been thirty years in the country. They seemed to entertain a distinct preference for photography.

Now that Siberia is at last thrown open to civilization, foreigners will, of course, become much more numerous, and already many engineers are to be found in various parts of the mining districts; but for all this, I do not think that at any period the Russian colony will be greatly influenced thereby.

We may, therefore, conclude that, from the ethnological point of view, as well as from the geographical, Siberia is merely a prolongation of Russian Europe, or of what is known as Greater Russia. It is true that a few heterogeneous elements exist of the same sort as those to be met with in Russia itself: Poles and Germans from the Baltic provinces, and the descendants of exiles, or even exiles themselves; and thus it comes to pass that in all the larger towns, at Tomsk, Krasnoyarsk and Irkutsk, Catholic and Lutheran churches abound. On the other hand, there are synagogues in nearly all the secondary towns. Israel is fully represented in Siberia, and the little town of Kainsk between the Omsk and the Obi is popularly known as the Jerusalem of Siberia. There are also about 100,000 Raskolniks, followers of a reform which took place in the liturgy of the Orthodox Church in the seventeenth century. This, however, is, needless to say, a purely Russian contingent. The Raskolniks exist in every part of Siberia, but in the province of the Amur they form about a tenth of the population, and are also very numerous in Trans-Baikalia. They are mainly the descendants of people belonging to this particular sect, who were originally exiled from Russia in the eighteenth century. Their chief peculiarity consists in their love of temperance and horror of every sort of innovation. Nothing would induce them to take even a cup of coffee or tea. In our time the members of certain curious sects, that of the Eunuchs, for instance, are exiled into Siberia, and confined to a village in the territory of the Yakutsk, in the Tundra Zone. According to the belief of these eccentric persons, Napoleon I. was a reincarnation of the Messiah, and they believe he rests in the sleep of death on the shores of Lake Baikal until a time when an angel shall awaken him and place him at the head of an amazing host destined to establish the reign of God in all parts of the world. The Raskolniks, owing to their temperate habits and their industry, are generally considered to be a very valuable element in the population of the country.

Enormous preponderance of the rural and peasant population in Siberia—Siberian Mujiks—Their rude and primitive manner of life—Excellent quality of the land, and backward methods of cultivating it—Mediocre and irregular manner of raising cereals—The necessity and difficulty of improving agricultural operations—The absence of large and enterprising ownership in Siberia a disadvantage.

Siberia resembles Russia not only in the matter of its immensity, its loneliness, the duration of its winters, monotonous expanse of its plains and enormous forest lands, but also in the leading characteristics of its peasantry; but in Asia and Russia these seem accentuated, possibly by reason of the peculiarity of the surroundings among which they are compelled to live. Even more than in Russia is this class of the people essentially rural; the exploitation of the gold-mines is the only other industry of any importance, and it employs relatively few people in comparison with its yield.

In Siberia great landlords are conspicuous by their absence. The only nobles mentioned by the official statistics are a few functionaries whose lands will be found on the other side of the Ural, and the only rich people in the country are the merchants residing in the towns, who occasionally add to their incomes, mainly derived from trade, by a certain interest in mining speculations. Some of these worthy people build themselves handsome country houses, but they do not take much interest in agriculture. A few concessions of land were made in the middle of the century, but they have long since passed out of the hands of their original owners into those of the Mujiks, to whom they have been ‘let,’ but these do not appear to care about their prosperity. All the rest of the land belongs either to the Government or to small farmers, who rent it from the Crown.

The Siberian peasant lives exactly as do his brethren in Russia, in villages or hamlets. Isolated houses are rare, the agglomeration of dwellings being an absolute necessity of the conditions of that collective and communal proprietorship which prevails throughout the Tsar’s dominions. A Siberian village is, therefore, a reproduction of a Russian village. On either side of the road is a succession of low, one-story houses built of dark wood, and separated from each other by yards, at the back of which are the stables. The appearance of these dwellings is exceedingly dreary, for they are invariably built of rough wood, blackened by age. Occasionally, however, some few planks are painted a vivid white. The usual doleful aspect of these villages is sometimes enlivened, especially in the larger ones, by the presence of a brick church, with cupolas painted a vivid green. In the hamlets these chapels are only outwardly distinguished from the rest of the isbas by an iron cross.

If anything, the general appearance of these Siberian villages is even more dreary and depressing than that of their counterparts in European Russia, where the houses are often gaily painted. Here they are built entirely of unhewn wood, like the log-huts of the Far West. Then, the few domestic animals to be seen wandering about the roadway are not reassuring, for the dogs look like wolves, and the enormous black pigs like wild boars. Nevertheless, I am of opinion that the Siberian peasant is better off than his Russian brother. His isbas are certainly more spacious, although, to be sure, six, seven, and even ten, persons are usually crowded into two or three tiny rooms, the immense stove in the centre of which, in winter, is usually used as a bedstead by the entire family, whereby whatever air otherwise might be admitted is hermetically excluded. For all that, I have never seen in Siberia any of those miserable hovels to be found in Russia, but undoubtedly the manners and customs of the Siberian peasants are even more primitive than those of the Russians. They possess less knowledge of hygiene and cleanliness, and are absolutely ignorant of everything calculated to render life in the least degree agreeable or rational. During the six winter months the Siberian keeps his house rigorously shut, excluding even a breath of air; in summer he does the same, for the double windows of the two or three very small sleeping-rooms are never opened on any pretext. These Siberian peasants are, moreover, astonishingly lazy and apathetic. Their only pleasure in life consists in dreaming away the time whilst smoking their pipes, and in drinking vodka, not to enliven themselves, but simply to get dead-drunk. Whilst the men are at the public-house the women stand by their open doors, listless and gossiping, indolently watching their fair-haired children, who, with only a red shirt on, fabricate the time-honoured dirt-pies of universal childhood in the mud or else roll about in the dust. Work is limited to what is absolutely indispensable, and the Siberian peasant is much happier doing nothing than in working to obtain what his fellows in other countries would consider the necessaries of life, but which he looks upon as ludicrously superfluous. Every village possesses a herd of cows, which you may watch in the early morning hours straggling off to the pastures, driven along by two or three old men or urchins, and although you can always get excellent milk, butter is very scarce, and cheese unknown. As to a garden, even for the cultivation of necessary vegetables, I have never seen one in the hundred villages I have visited, excepting, indeed, in Trans-Baikalia, where I perceived one or two attached to the stanitsas belonging to some Cossacks. It is not because vegetables will not grow, but because the peasants will not cultivate them. In the towns in the Amur district, such as Blagovyeshchensk, Khabarofsk, and a few others, vegetables are to be obtained, but even these are brought over by the Chinese from the opposite bank of the river.

In addition to laziness, the Siberian peasant adds the most surprising obstinacy, which is not precisely a bad quality, when, as in the case of the English, it serves to increase their dogged activity; but in Siberia it is simply another incentive to do nothing. Once a Siberian peasant has made up his mind to play dolce far niente, no power, Divine or human, will induce him to budge. I have often heard Europeans say that Siberia is the only country where you cannot get work done even for money; and this is perfectly true, for on certain holidays it matters little what you may offer, you will not get a coachman to take you a five-mile drive. The Siberian would rather lose money than earn it against his will.

If inertia is happiness, then the Siberians must be the happiest people on earth. They disdain progress and would rather die than better their condition. Their motto is, ‘What sufficed for our fathers is surely good enough for us,’ and this is the invariable answer a peasant will give you if you venture to suggest any sort of change for the better in his condition. His favourite texts from Holy Scripture are those which flatter his habit of intellectual stagnation, those which preach resignation and abstention, but certainly not those which teach action and effort. ‘He who is contented with little will not be forgotten by God,’ was the text I once saw stuck up in the waiting-room of one of the dirtiest stations in Trans-Baikalia. It struck me as being particularly appropriate, both to the place and the people. The prevailing lack of energy and perseverance, which has been noticed by travellers in every part of the Tsar’s Empire, seems to me to be one of the radical characteristics of the Russian nature. It may possibly derive its origin from the influences of Tatar blood, which was so largely infused among the lower classes of Russians from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century at the time of Tatar domination. Then, again, it must be remembered that extreme cold, like extreme heat, produces apathy, especially upon the men, who are thereby condemned to remain for many months inactive, and whose minds, owing to their excessive ignorance, are a blank.

Siberian peasants are supremely ignorant. In 1894 the Government of Tobolsk, the most progressive of any in respect of education, numbered only 19,100 children frequenting the schools out of a population of 1,400,000 souls. In the towns the proportion of scholars was 4·63 per 100, but in the country districts it did not rise to 1·05. One must not, however, be too severe on the Siberians for showing so poor an educational result, for we must not forget the enormous distance between village and village, and the difficulties of obtaining schoolmasters, owing mainly to the excessive ignorance in which the lower orders of Russians are plunged. Notwithstanding the very considerable progress which has been made in this direction in the last few years, there is probably no country in the world where reading and writing would be of greater advantage, for during at least one-half of the year the Siberian has literally nothing to do but to think, or, better, to dream, his life away.

Serfdom has never existed in Siberia, which accounts for the Mujiks having a much more independent air than their brethren in European Russia. They have, however, in common with these latter, that peculiar sort of charity which has been well called the ‘pity of the Slav.’ It is, however, not an active virtue, but a sort of dreamy pitifulness which induces these poor people to help each other, but does not prevent them from being exceedingly suspicious of strangers. They will, however, invariably leave on the sill outside their windows a hunk of bread or a jug of milk for the benefit of some escaped convict or some wretched outcast. Unfortunately, however, the extreme ignorance and the innate laziness of these people prevent their extracting from the soil much that, at a very small cost of labour, would greatly increase both their wealth and their comfort.

The soil of Siberia is exceedingly rich. The famous tchernozium, or black earth of Southern Russia, covers a great part of the Meridional Zone of the provinces of Tobolsk and Tomsk. The upper valleys of the Obi and the Yenissei, sheltered from the north winds, enjoy a milder climate than the plains, and are excellent for the growth of all sorts of cereals. On the borders of the Angara, the great tributary of Lake Baikal and on that of the Lower Amur, and its tributary rivers and its affluents, which are marshy, there are enormous tracts of extremely fertile land, but the methods of cultivation are of the most primitive. Then, again, the vast majority of the rural population obstinately refuses to work in the fields. All along the great postal highway, which stretches from the Ural to the Amur, and beyond to Kiakhta, the manner in which the peasants earn their living is considerably modified. They exist by trafficking along this main road, along which pass manufactured goods imported from Europe, which are forwarded to Central Siberia, the great caravans of the tea merchants, the gangs of exiles, and lastly the ordinary travellers. As this road is the only one which goes from west to east, it is very animated. Even in summer, when the traffic is not so active—the tea caravans only pass in winter—I have rarely seen fewer than 100 transports of one sort or another per day. Although every postmaster is obliged to keep no fewer than forty horses, and each carriage rarely requires more than three, occasionally it is impossible to secure a conveyance, and one is obliged to ask the peasants for assistance, which they are very ready to afford, making you pay from three to four roubles (six to eight shillings) for a relay of twenty-five versts (sixteen miles), a sum which, if they see that they have to deal either with somebody who is in a great hurry, or with a wealthy traveller, they persistently increase in the most barefaced manner. In winter the transport of tea also enables them to make considerable sums of money.

Thus it is that the country folk in these latitudes neglect agriculture, considering it merely as an accessory. In the neighbourhood of the villages you will find a few fields and pastures, where the cows, horses, and sometimes a few black sheep, are sent out to graze under the care of two or three boys or old men, or sometimes without any shepherd at all. A wooden barrier prevents their escaping into the neighbouring forest.

The number of horses in Siberia is very great. In the government of Tomsk in 1894 there were 1,360,000 horses to a population of only 1,700,000, that is to say, 80 horses per 100 inhabitants. In the government of the Yenissei the proportion is over 90 per 100 inhabitants, and the same proportion prevails in the government of Irkutsk. Almost the only other country where there are almost as many horses as men is, besides Russian Central Asia, the Argentine Republic, where there are 112 per 100 inhabitants. In the United States there are but 22, and in France only 7. The proportion of horned cattle is also very considerable, being about 60 per 100 inhabitants, rising in Eastern Siberia, in Tobolsk and Tomsk, to 80, whereas in the Yenissei and Irkutsk districts there are about 3 beasts per family. The greater part of these are cows. Bullocks are very scarce, not being employed either for food or burden. It is only along the Kirghiz Steppes, in the country traversed by the Trans-Siberian railway between the Urals and Omsk, and the region immediately below this line, that milk is used. The rain falls in this region very slightly, and the land is not cultivable, but purely arable, and as the Kirghiz are extremely capable herdsmen, the results are very satisfactory, and they export their cattle largely into Russian Europe, and even beyond. I remember coming across a train full of bullocks which were being conveyed to St. Petersburg, and I know of at least one large house in Moscow which receives weekly from the little town of Kurgan, situated on the railway line, many thousands of pounds of butter, a great part of which is exported thence to Hamburg.

If one wishes to become acquainted with the real Siberian farmers, one must leave aside the highroads and plunge into the country. True, the villages become much less numerous, but then they are surrounded by more extensive fields. In those districts which were first colonized in the Government of Tobolsk some rather thickly-peopled places are occasionally to be found, especially in the northern steppe between 55° and 58° latitude. In the Government of Tomsk a more inhabited region will likewise be met with to the south of the zone of the immense but well-wooded marshlands; but in this province, as in that of the Yenissei, the southern portion, instead of being covered by sterile steppes, contains the magnificently wooded valleys of the upper Obi, the Yenissei, and their affluents, which very naturally attract the greater number of Russian emigrants.

The agricultural resources in the districts of Barnaul, Biisk, Minusinck and Kansk, are extremely rich, and, besides excellent land, splendid water, and a relatively mild and agreeable climate, there are a variety of minerals. More to the east, if we wish to avoid the ever-silent desert, or the taiga, we must, on leaving the highroad, enter some of the valleys at the foot of the mountains on the Chinese frontier, on the borders of which the whole population is at present concentrated. The aspect of this region, however, differs very little from that crossed by the post-road between Irkutsk to the great prison of Alexandrof, where we behold fine wheat-fields and herds of cattle wherever there is an opening in the thick but marshy woodlands. Excepting for the extent of the cultivated lands which surround them, the appearance of the villages, however, does not change in the least. There is never a vestige of a garden or of any sort of verdure near the houses, unless, indeed, it be a few flowers growing in pots, which are never arranged on the ledge outside the window, but in the interior, and form, together with a few icons and the portraits of their Imperial Majesties, the only attempt at ornamentation indulged in by the inhabitants of these essentially comfortless and inartistic dwellings.

The only crops of the least value in Siberia are those of the various cereals, of which about 150,000,000 bushels are harvested, mostly in the western part of the country, which is not only the most thickly populated, but also the freest of forests.

The rest of Siberia, that is to say, the provinces watered by the Amur and the territory of the Irkutsk, which are very thinly peopled, does not produce a total of more than 5,500,000 bushels. Wheat, generally sown in spring, and oats form each about 30 per cent. of the total cereal product of Siberia. The balance is made up of rye, barley and buckwheat. The arable land has to undergo, especially when first reclaimed from the steppe, the usual process of preparation, manuring, etc. The Siberian peasants have not acquired even the most rudimentary knowledge of agricultural science, and, consequently, often have to abandon their farms. On the other hand, in certain favourable regions, in the Governments of Tobolsk and Tomsk, where the earth is exceptionally rich, the pastures have gone on fairly well for over a hundred years without any sensible diminution in the excellence of their grazing properties. However, land is so abundant in Siberia that often the peasants, when they find after they have reclaimed it that its productive qualities decrease, rather than be bothered with a repetition of the processes of manuring, etc., pack up their traps and migrate elsewhere, literally, to ‘fresh woods and pastures new,’ where probably the foot of man has never trod.

In Siberia, as stated already, great land-owners are non-existent. The soil is, therefore, exclusively in the hands of the peasants, but up to the present the mir collective communal property-ship, as is found throughout Russia, is quite exceptional, and then only in the more sparsely peopled parts of the west. Since 1896, however, the Government has decided to introduce, if not practically, at least theoretically, the mir principle as it exists in European Russia. Nevertheless, in Siberia the commune is not supposed to possess property, but simply to hold it on the principle of usufruct, the whole land belonging to the Crown. In those parts of the country which are nearly uninhabited the zaÏmka system still holds good, whereby a peasant, although he may be a resident in a village, is allowed to build himself a hut on the steppe or in the forest where he passes the summer, and where he can cultivate and even enclose one or two large fields which are supposed to belong to him, and which he can sell or give away as he pleases, and which, in point of fact, he owns by right of being the first occupant; but this system is only provisional. With the increase of population it gives place to another, whereby the peasant is not considered an absolute proprietor, but only for so long as he chooses to cultivate his land properly. From the moment he ceases to comply with this condition another man can take his land. Everybody is allowed to cut hay in the prairies where he likes, and the pastures and woods are common property. On the other hand, it is forbidden to enclose any forest or pasture-land.

The climate of Siberia is naturally opposed to the cultivation of cereals, which have to struggle against droughts, autumnal fogs, and late and early frosts. During the last ten years some very interesting meteorological observations have been made at Irkutsk, whereby it has been discovered that July is the only month in which it never freezes. Then, again, in the government of Tobolsk, and to the west of that of Tomsk, in addition to these climatic drawbacks, the crops are often devastated by myriads of kobylkas, a sort of locust or grasshopper which comes from the Kirghiz Steppes. Under these circumstances, agriculture in Siberia may well be said to be an even more arduous way of earning a livelihood than it is in Russia proper. It not unfrequently happens that the crops fail utterly, and during the last ten years it has been noticed that these disasters are mainly due to increasing impoverishment of the soil. The irregular condition of the crops is all the more disastrous in Siberia because of the lack of means of communication which impedes the easy transport of corn from one district to another, and results in enormous fluctuations in prices, that often spell ruin to the unfortunate peasants. The introduction of the railway to Irkutsk occasioned a notable reduction in the price of bread in Eastern Siberia, but, on the other hand, the principal line, unfortunately, transports agricultural products from Siberia to the region of the Volga.

But a matter which is even of greater importance than that of intercommunication are the extremely antiquated methods of cultivation which the peasants insist upon retaining. In the first place, their notions of preparing the reclaimed soil for culture are absolutely barbarous. All they do is to scratch up the immediate surface of the earth with a sort of plough which dates from the Iron Age, and then sow their crop. When the field is exhausted, which, not having been properly manured, it very soon is, it is abandoned for a period of years until it recovers some of its reproductive qualities. With improved agricultural implements the earth could be more deeply ploughed, and at a very little distance beneath the surface it is almost invariably extremely rich. The question is how to induce the peasants to change methods which have been handed down to them from their ancestors through the ages. It is of course much to be regretted that in Siberia there exists no great land-owners wealthy enough to introduce modern improvements, and thus teach their humbler neighbours the value of progress by practical illustration; but until means of communication are facilitated and improved it will be difficult to induce men of wealth and education to settle in a country which, however naturally rich it may be, is, to say the best of it, exceptionally unattractive. Even in Russia, where so many noblemen, owing to the great losses which they sustained at the time of the emancipation of the serfs, have abandoned their lands to the peasants, and have retired to the larger towns, there are yet to be found men who have had the courage to face reverses, and who have taken their estates in hand on scientific principles, introducing the latest improvements in agricultural implements, and thereby have influenced for the better the peasantry by even inducing some of them to abandon their primeval methods of agriculture. This desirable state of affairs, however, cannot exist in Siberia, at least for the present. Then, again, there is another advantage which would accrue from the presence of rich land-owners in Siberia, namely, contact with persons of superior education and culture, which in the end would doubtless affect the peasantry for the better. In Russia the peasantry form a compact body which, by reason of its singular position in the social sphere, is absolutely unable to receive or absorb any influences from the more educated classes. This is a state of affairs which it is highly desirable should cease in the Asiatic colonies, where at present it is even more strongly marked than in Russia itself. The problem of the future of Siberia is the possibility and feasibility of inducing important land-owners to settle in the country.

Importance of the Siberian mines—The gold-mines—Insufficiency of organization principally due to unfavourable climatic influences—Railway extension would bring about an increase in the value of the mining industries—Silver, copper, and iron mines.

However productive Siberia may eventually become, it can never solely depend for its prosperity upon its agricultural resources. Happily, the subsoil is richer than the upper crust, on account of the great abundance of ore of various kinds which it conceals. The gold and silver mines, however, alone, up to the present, have been worked to any extent, although a few of the iron mines have been slightly exploited. Even in the case of gold, however, only the alluvial mines have been touched in those valleys where gold exists, and nowhere have the rock veins been opened. More can hardly be expected in a country which is nearly destitute of the proper means of transport; hence the extreme difficulty of conveying the necessarily heavy and elaborate machinery required for the extraction of the gold from the rock. Then, again, the rock ore is only to be found at great distances from inhabited centres in unexplored forests and mountainous regions. The diggings, on the other hand, are much easier, demanding no other implements than a sieve and a spade. The siftings have been exploited in great numbers from end to end of Siberia, their takings proving, since 1895, equal to two-thirds of the gold product of the whole of the Russian Empire, the fourth largest gold-centre in the world, coming immediately after the United States, Australia, and the Transvaal. The amount of gold abstracted from the Siberian mines since 1895 amounts to not less than £5,000,000, and this figure, high as it is, is, in all probability, much under the mark, the miners very often retaining a good deal of their findings for themselves. The Government is the only buyer of Siberian gold. It has the right to claim on purchasing the gold from the miners between 15 and 20 per cent. of the ore. This system of taxation is extremely pernicious, since it tempts the miners, as already stated, to conceal the real amount of their takings. An increase in the surface tax would compensate for the suppression of the official claim upon the net product, and would put an end to a great deal of fraud. I have been assured that a reform in this sense may soon be expected. The enforced obligation of selling to the State becomes, in the long-run, exceedingly irksome to concessionaires, because it forces them to send their gold to a great distance, to the laboratories at Tomsk and Irkutsk, where the official agents analyze it to determine its value, whereas, of course, it would be much simpler to send it direct to Europe, and there sell it to speculators who would promptly pay the price demanded. Another drawback in the present system is that the miners have often to wait a long time for ready cash, which is absolutely necessary to them in their business. Sometimes the Government keeps them waiting until their gold has reached St. Petersburg, and they are ultimately obliged to discount it according to the very high tariff rates prevailing in Siberia. The transport of the metal to Europe by the State is as expensive as it is troublesome, since it has to be conveyed to Moscow and St. Petersburg in charge of a military escort. I have on several occasions seen between the Yenissei and Lake Baikal carts bringing gold from the mines, escorted by three or four soldiers ready to fire on the least signs of possible attack. Another drawback to the Siberian mining industries are the primitive implements used in abstracting the ore from the soil, which, as M. Levat, a distinguished engineer, very truly observed to me, were of a sort that apparently dated from the days of Homer. Under these circumstances, it is the custom in Siberia to work the surface of the mine only, and after enough ore has been extracted from it, to abandon the place entirely.

Owing to the geological formation of the country, the more important Siberian mines will not be found, as in California, on the mountain slopes, but at depths covered by marshlands. Their exploitation, therefore, is much more costly, as it is necessary before commencing operations to cart away an immense quantity of the upper surface of the earth. Hence it happens that if a mine is disturbed at the surface, and then abandoned by the miners, it is, so to speak, spoilt, as any attempt to work it again in all probability will result in disappointment. For this reason, many excellent mines in the basin of the Obi and of the Yenissei have been already exhausted, and the centre of the mining industry in these regions has been transferred to the banks of the Amur and the Lena, and this notwithstanding the many difficulties the miners have to face, as the soil hereabouts is invariably frozen for about twenty yards in depth, and work can only be pursued for about 120 consecutive days in the year. The miners’ salaries, too, are exceedingly high. In the diggings at Olekma, an affluent of the Lena, wages are 3s. 4d. per diem, that is to say, double what they are on the Yenissei, and eight times as much as in the neighbourhood of Semipalatinsk, where the Kirghiz workmen receive only fivepence. Notable progress, however, has been made in these regions during the last few years, as the mines are gradually leaving the hands of adventurers and small associations, to be concentrated in those of important companies, financed by the richer Siberian merchants, and even by large Russian firms. The great mining company of Olekma extracted in 1880 £1,000,000 worth of gold, and maintained its reputation at £680,000 in 1896, proving this mine to be one of the richest in the world. With the introduction of proper means of transport, and, above all, a liberal reform in the legislation, doubtless the Siberian mines would become infinitely more valuable than they are at present.

Already European capitalists are paying attention to Asiatic Russia, and one or two important groups of French mining engineers during the past three years have been inspecting those parts of the country which are said to be richest in ore. I was never more surprised than to find on board a boat on the Amur two English engineers, whose acquaintance I had made in December, 1895, in the far-away goldfields of the Transvaal. All that the mines of Siberia need to become of enormous value are sufficient capital and up-to-date methods of working them. The silver mines of Nertchinsk, which in old times had an unenviable reputation as the site of the most terrible Siberian penal settlement, are now of little value. On the other hand, copper, iron, and coal-beds are distributed in great abundance in various parts of the country, and seem to constitute its principal and most permanent source of wealth. The copper mines have not been exploited at all, but are known to exist in the Upper Yenissei, in the districts of the Minusinsk, celebrated throughout Siberia for its agricultural prosperity; others may be discovered more to the west, on the Irtysh. Iron is found in great quantity in the western regions, in the Altai Mountains, on the borders of the Yenissei, and in the valley of the Angara, and to the east in Trans-Baikalia, where its iron mines have been fairly well exploited, but hitherto not on any considerable scale. Coal will certainly be found in considerable abundance in the western plains, and in the last few years a vast coal area has been found, beginning about 150 miles south of the Trans-Siberian line near the town of Kuznetsk, and extending to the Upper Obi. In 1887 a new and still larger field was discovered at about 80 miles east of Tomsk, and, moreover, close to the railway line. At the extremity of Siberia, near Vladivostok, and, consequently, close to the sea, other coal-beds have been opened of late.

Siberian industries are at present very limited, and consist of a few unimportant distilleries, breweries, brick-kilns, match manufactories, etc. It is therefore evident that for some long time to come the inhabitants will be compelled to devote their attention and energies to the development of the natural products of the soil. All new countries are forced to do this in the first stages of their civilization, and since the United States, New Zealand, and Australia failed in manufactures in their earlier days, Siberia may surely content herself by following in their wake.

Special character of trade in Siberia—Importance of the tea transport—Kiakhta—The annual arrival of tea at the Irkutsk Customs-house—Road followed by the tea caravan—Dilatory and expensive methods of transport—Comparison between the land road vi Kiakhta and the sea-route vi Odessa—Other articles of commerce, exportation of cereals, etc.

Commerce is much more important in Siberia than either agriculture or manufacture, and forms the basis of all the great fortunes that have been made in the country. Siberian commerce is mainly concerned with transport, and if we except the traffic in gold by the Government, the only other objects of export are cereals and furs. The importation, on the other hand, is very limited, consisting merely of manufactured articles necessary for the material comfort of a very scanty and primitive population, whose wants are correspondingly few. The commerce of the country would be infinitesimal were it not that nearly all the tea consumed in Russia passes through Siberia.^[8] Tea in Russia occupies even a more important position than it does in England. The average Russian takes between a dozen and fifteen cups per day, and he will not travel without his tea, tea-pot, and his sugar, and the samovar, a sort of glorified kettle, is never absent from every table in Russia, and is always full of hot water ready to moisten the leaves of the plant that comforts but does not intoxicate. The Russians make their infusion very weak, pouring the boiling water a great many times over the same leaves. The peasantry, unlike the English of the lower classes, who like their tea very strong, use the same leaves over and over again until the decoction ends by being only straw-coloured water. This explains the fact that whilst the Russians drink three times as much tea as the English, the quantity of it imported into Russia is at least two-thirds less than that which China and India send annually to Great Britain.

It was by the overland route that the Russians first came in contact with the Chinese somewhere towards the end of the seventeenth century, and their commerce with the Celestial Empire continued until the middle of the present century exclusively overland. Almost all the tea which enters Russia has to pass through the town of Kiakhta, about 180 miles south-east of Irkutsk as the crow flies, but 430 miles by the postal-road, which is only used during two short periods of the year, the first in December and the second in spring, when, owing to the quantity of ice on Lake Baikalia, navigation is impossible. During the rest of the year the tea is transported across the lake, in winter on sledges, and in summer by steamers, whereby not less than 93 miles are gained. Occasionally, as, for instance, on the banks of the Solenga, the road rises to about 4,000 feet above the level of Lake Baikalia. Here the scenery becomes extremely fine, and the traveller obtains between the branches of the magnificent trees glimpses of the beautiful lake far below, forming a very welcome change to the monotony of the plain in which the caravans spend the greater part of their journey. Kiakhta consists of three parts: the town of Troitskosavsk, about two miles north of the Russo-Chinese Frontier; the town of Kiakhta proper, which is on the immediate frontier, but on Russian territory; and separated from the last only by a strip of neutral ground a hundred yards wide is the Chinese town of Maimatchin. Troitskosavsk is the most important of the three, and offers an exceedingly agreeable aspect to the traveller who has been obliged to climb up the reverse side of the steep and barren hill overlooking the town. The houses lining the road are of wood, comfortable, and painted a light colour. Even the lateral streets are well kept, and it is, taking it for all in all, the cleanest town I have seen in all Siberia. One soon realizes that the tea trade supplies the whole population with ample means of earning a livelihood, and also that the wealthy take an interest in their town. On one side of the road, for instance, is the communal school, built out of funds originally intended for the erection of barracks, but, soldiers not being required, the place was converted into a school, munificently supported by the merchants of the city. The children pay a small entrance fee. Opposite stands another very large educational establishment, also supported by voluntary contributions.

The dwellings of the principal tea merchants are situated at Troitskosavsk, whose population numbers quite 7,000 souls; but it is at Kiakhta,^[9] on the frontier, that the tea-leaves are manipulated. The two towns are linked by an excellent road, which passes between desolate-looking sand-hills, sparsely covered with wretched fir-trees. The blue outline of the mountains of Mongolia closes in the horizon to the south. The houses of the wealthier inhabitants are painted white, as is the church, the interior of which is extremely rich with massive silver candelabras and a gorgeous iconostase. Beyond a group of isbas, where the workmen dwell, and half hidden by the cupolas of the church, stands the vast but very low one-storied building of the Tea Warehouse. Such is Kiakhta, through which passes annually into the Russian Empire from 40,000,000 to 60,000,000 pounds of tea, costing, before the Custom duties are paid, between £1,500,000 to £2,000,000. The following are the figures obtained from the tea registers during the last five years, kindly supplied to me by the authorities at Kiakhta.

The tea begins to pour into Kiakhta in winter from the month of November to February. In December it is not at all an uncommon thing to see as many as 5,000 boxes delivered daily. The total number of boxes of tea which passed the Customs in 1896 was 412,869.

The tea harvest in China takes place generally in spring, the first gathering of the leaves occurring in April, the fourth and the last in June. The latter is compressed into bricks, is of very inferior quality, and bought only by the poorer people. The great tea-market is Hankow on the Yang-tsze. All the great Russian houses have representatives who arrive here annually to purchase, and expedite the tea either by sea, vi Odessa, or overland by Kiakhta. We must not, however, imagine that caravan tea, which the Russians consider to be the finest, is all carried overland. Far from it, but then the purchasers are not supposed to know this, as there exists a prejudice to the effect that tea which travels by water is thereby deteriorated, which is nonsense, since all tea must perform a journey by water of greater or less length. Even that which is destined for Kiakhta is sent by boat to Tien-tsin, whence it has to ascend the Pei-ho on junks, and it is only packed on the camels’ backs at Kalgan, at the foot of the Great Wall. Thence it has to perform a journey of not less than 900 miles across the desert before it reaches Urga, the sacred town of Mongolia, which is situated at a distance of 160 miles south of Kiakhta. Transport can only take place in the month of October, when the roads begin to get hardened by the first frosts, and the camels have returned from the pasture lands where they pass the greater part of the summer. These camels are hired from the Mongolians, and there is great competition among the merchants to secure them, the Russians endeavouring to obtain the greater number of beasts before anybody else so as to secure the first crop of tea. A certain quantity of tea is also brought to Kiakhta on little Mongolian carts, which invariably return home carrying with them three pieces of wood, an article which is almost valueless in Siberia, but very dear in China, where it is resold at a profit.

The camels are unloaded at Kiakhta, and the wicker-boxes or baskets, each containing from 100 to 160 pounds of tea, are divested of the light covering of camel’s hair which sufficed to protect them during the journey across the Desert of Obi, where rain is almost unknown. For the rest of the journey through Siberia it is necessary to screen them with a waterproof covering made of camel’s hide, the hair being turned inwards. Whilst the process of enveloping the boxes is proceeding it is almost impossible to bear the intolerable stench. The tea, compressed into bricks, each weighing two pounds and a half, is next sorted, dusted, and those which have been in any degree damaged are separated from the rest and sold at a low price. Then the whole of the tea, be it in leaf or brick, is packed on the sleighs and conveyed, as already stated, across country, partly by water, partly over the routes already described. At Irkutsk, however, the Custom-house officers examine a few of the cases, and stamp the rest with a leaden brand, and the caravan is allowed to proceed to its destination.

The earlier teas which arrive are conveyed by sledge to Irbit, a town on the eastern slopes of the Ural, but beyond the confines of Siberia, and in the Government of Perm. Between February 1st and March 1st Irbit is the scene of an immense fair, which attracts merchants from all parts of Siberia. The principal goods dealt in are Chinese tea, furs from the north and east, and light manufactured articles from Russian Europe. The total sold in the year 1880 amounted to £5,286,000, which has been considerably exceeded since.

The principal tea caravans do not arrive in the region of the Obi before the beginning of April, the sleighs proceeding very slowly, and the stoppages by the way being frequent. Boats convey the fragrant merchandise between Tomsk, Tura, and Tiumen, terminal stations on the Ural Railway, whence they are conveyed to Perm. Here they are shipped up the river Kama, and finally embarked on the Volga and taken to Nijni-Novgorod, the chief centre of the tea trade in Russia. Thence the railways distribute the merchandise over the empire. The results of the tardier crops arrive at Irkutsk, where they are embarked on the Angara and conveyed by boat to the meeting of that river with the Yenissei, where, as it is impossible to ascend the latter, the rudely-constructed boats in which it has hitherto performed the journey are broken up and sold for firewood. By this road only 330 miles are performed by land to Tomsk. Some of the merchants, in order to avoid as much as possible the overland route, take a much longer one by water vi Uliasutai, a city in Western Mongolia on the Upper Yenissei. The above will suffice to give the reader an idea of some of the exceptional difficulties which the tea merchants have to encounter in conveying their very perishable freight across Northern Asia into Russia, the journey taking not less than a year from the date of the gathering of the leaves. The following official data, registered in 1893, of the expense incurred in conveying a single pood, or thirty-six pounds (English), of tea from Han-Keou to Nijni-Novgorod will suffice to afford a fair notion of the great cost of transport.

On the other hand, the same quantity of tea transported from Hankow to Nijni, vi the Suez Canal and Odessa, and thence by train to Nijni, costs only thirteen shillings. From these facts it can easily be understood that the great commerce of Kiakhta is purely artificial and abnormal, and exists simply thanks to the enormous difference between the Custom-house duties at Odessa and those at Irkutsk. At the former place the duty is £3 6s. per pood, or thirty-six pounds, for all kinds of tea, whereas at Kiakhta it is only £2 on leaf tea and 5s. 4d. on brick. The insignificance of this latter tax is very important, because brick tea is the only sort which is used in Siberia east of the Volga, the greater part of the leaf tea being forwarded to Russia. On the other hand, notwithstanding its many inconveniences, the tea transport across Russia is a most important factor in Siberian existence, since it furnishes the means of livelihood to thousands of people living along the great postal-road, and indeed is a sort of subvention which the Russian tea-drinkers pay to Siberia, and one which the Government very wisely keeps up by maintaining the high tariff at Odessa. It is interesting to follow the increasing value of a pood (thirty-six pounds) of tea on its way from Irkutsk to Nijni. On entering Siberia at the former place from China it only costs £2 5s. By this time it is already paying the cost of its transport from Hankow, the expenses of insurance, etc., costing about £1 3s., the Custom-house duties amount to about £2, that is, £3 2s. credit, and the transfer thence to Nijni will add about thirteen shillings to its value; so that when we take into account an interest of three shillings on the capital employed we find that a product which cost less than ten roubles where it grew and where it was first purchased, by the time it reaches the market costs forty-eight roubles, nearly five times its original value. On the greater part of the leaf tea which passes through Odessa, the Russian pays on every pound of tea at 3s. 2d. he purchases 1s. to the Treasury. The total amount of Custom-house duties paid on tea at Irkutsk amounted in 1896 to £1,050,361.

Independently of tea, the land commerce between the Russian Empire and China is, comparatively speaking, insignificant, and rarely exceeds £265,000. The principal object of import is Russia leather, and the chief article from China is a very light but strong sort of silk, much worn in Siberia during the summer. For the rest, the trade between Siberia and Russia consists mainly in cereals and flour, but it is difficult to obtain exact statistics on account of the many lines of communication which have been recently opened since the introduction of the railway.

Scarcity of towns and their slight importance—Their administration and commerce—Resemblance to the towns in the Russian provinces—Introduction of telephones and electric light—Intellectual progress—University at Tomsk—The drama at Irkutsk—The crisis through which these towns are passing.

The absence of large manufactures doubtless accounts in a measure for the fact that Siberia, according to the census of 1897, only contains eleven towns inhabited by over 10,000 souls. Eight of these (including the two cities of Tomsk and Irkutsk, which have each 50,000 inhabitants) are situated on the postal-road which passes from the foot of the Ural to Tiumen, to terminate on the shores of the Pacific at Vladivostok; Omsk is situated somewhat to the south of the old postal-road, at the point where the Trans-Siberian Railway crosses the Irtysh; Tobolsk, the old capital of Siberia, which has greatly declined in our day, is built at the meeting of the Irtysh and the Tobol, and also close to the junction of the two great highroads. Barnaoul, on the Upper Obi, is the only Siberian town of any importance which is not within easy reach of either the railway or the postal-road, but then it has the advantage of being situated in the centre of the most highly cultivated part of the country. There exist, also, a number of other small towns, situated on the two main arteries and in the more fertile valleys. All of them are centres for the distribution of manufactured articles imported from Europe, and also depots whence the products cultivated in their neighbourhoods are collected and expedited. All these towns are seats both of administration and commerce, and the local capitals are always, with the sole exception of Tobolsk, the biggest towns in the district, and contain the dwellings of the officials and other functionaries, which add greatly to their handsome appearance. In the region of the Amur and the Littoral garrisons have been introduced, which lend considerable animation to the place. At Vladivostok in 1895 the Russian population consisted of 2,780 civil servants, 189 exiles, 555 functionaries and priests (including their wives and children), and 10,087 officers and soldiers with their families. At Khabarofsk the official element is still more preponderating. With the exception of Blagovyeshchensk, situated at the meeting of the Amur and the Zeya, which owes its prosperity to the neighbouring gold-mines, the towns of Eastern Siberia are nothing more or less than camps or huge villages like Chita or Nertchinsk, with very low isbas, or wooden houses, prodigiously broad streets, vast open spaces, the whole dominated generally by the enormous white mass of some official edifice or other.

In the west, however, between the Ural and Lake Baikal, towns exist in the European sense of the word. It cannot be said, however, that they are remarkable for their monumental beauty, but they possess a certain measure of picturesqueness, and bear a striking resemblance to the provincial towns of Russia proper, such as Saratof or Samara, or some quarters of Moscow itself. The houses are nearly all built of black wood like those peppered all over the country, and are built on either side of the long streets at a little distance one from another, and rarely, if ever, embellished by a garden or any attempt at external decoration. The streets cross each other at right angles, and are made as wide as possible, on account of the numerous fires, against which every precaution has to be taken, and people are actually requested not to smoke on the great wooden bridge which crosses the Angara at Irkutsk. In certain wealthier quarters of the towns a story is usually added to the houses, which are painted white, gray, or some other conspicuous colour. Occasionally one comes across a stone building two or three stories high, usually either the shop of some rich merchant or official, or else a museum, hospital, gymnasium, college for boys or school for girls, or sometimes an immense barracks.

The appearance of these dwellings when grouped together on the hill-tops, as at Omsk, is agreeable, especially so as they are interspersed with the bright-coloured cupolas of the churches. As to the latter, they are innumerable. There is literally one at every corner. Standing at the centre of the cathedral square at Irkutsk, I was able to see no less than seven at a glance. They are all exactly alike, usually painted blue or rose-colour, surmounted by one big cupola, and surrounded by a lot of smaller ones brightly gilt or silvered, and produce an excellent effect in the sun or on a clear moonlight night. Internally they possess all the barbaric splendour of Russian churches, and are a blaze of gilt icons and crystal chandeliers.

Take them for all in all, Siberian towns are far pleasanter to visit than one might imagine. The streets, as a rule, possess a wooden pavement, but after a heavy rain they are very apt to become impassable. A gentleman at Tomsk once assured me that on one occasion when the snow melted a bullock was drowned in the surging mass of water rolling past his door. But, after all, the streets of Chicago and New Orleans are not very well kept, and where the climatic variations are so extreme, it is doubtless almost an impossibility to keep the streets in anything like proper order. Otherwise, the telephone is to be found in all the more important towns, and when the visitor looks up and sees such an amazing number of wires stretching across the streets from pole to pole, he might readily imagine himself in America. The electric light has also been introduced even at Tomsk and Irkutsk. Means of locomotion have by no means been neglected, and you can hire a quick-going little Russian cabriolet for twenty kopecks, or sixpence the fare! What astonishes one most, however, is that, as in Russia, there is scarcely any movement in the streets of these towns, notwithstanding that they are centres of a very active commerce.

Education has made considerable progress in the towns of Siberia, and the wealthier classes are not behindhand in assisting the Government in this direction. At Tomsk a University has recently been established in an immense and very handsome edifice, which contains at present some 500 students. Admission has been wisely rendered much more easy than it is in Russia, and it is expected that before long a faculty of Law will be established, in which the students will be able to study the new legal reforms which Alexander II. introduced some years ago into the judicial system of Russia. Other professorial chairs will be introduced before long in addition to that of Medicine, which is already very well attended. The library contains over 200,000 volumes, the greater part gifts from private benefactors, and not a few of the rarer editions of French and English classics must have originally belonged to libraries dispersed at the time of the French Revolution. A number of comfortable houses have been built in the park attached to the University (only a very short time ago virgin forest) for the benefit of students, who can there receive board and lodging at a very moderate price. In addition to the University, another huge educational establishment, an Institute of Technology, is in progress of construction. Tomsk, although it is somewhat out of the way for commercial purposes, appears to me destined to become before long the intellectual centre of Siberia.

All the Siberian towns possess a theatre. The one at Tomsk was built by a rich merchant some years ago, and during the winter months two permanent troupes give on alternate nights representations of opera and drama. Troupes of Russian actors occasionally visit Siberia, and I remember once seeing two artists, who enjoy great popularity at Moscow, give at Krasnoyarsk a representation in Russian of Shakespeare’s ‘Taming of the Shrew,’ and on the following evening an excellent performance of ‘Madame Sans-GÊne.’ These plays were attended by large and highly appreciative audiences. At Irkutsk there is a really magnificent theatre capable of accommodating a thousand persons, the erection of which cost not less than £32,000. It was built entirely by public subscription, at the head of the list being the Governor. The prices of admission are—stalls 6s. 8d. in the front row; 2s. 2d. in the back seats; 1s. in the first row of the second gallery, and 6d. in the third. These latter are the cheapest seats in the house. Unfortunately, of late years, the wealthier classes show a distinct tendency, thanks to facilities of travel, to spend their money in Russia, and even in Paris, and the rich merchants are no longer inclined to dazzle the Siberians by a somewhat barbaric display of their wealth. At Moscow and Petersburg, doubtless, they find a greater variety of amusements, and no need, in order to spend their money, to follow the example of a certain Siberian millionaire who used to wash his chamber-floor with champagne. Other times, other manners. If the principals go to St. Petersburg, their representatives remain behind, and although they are unable to make any very ostentatious display, nevertheless, they contrive to live comfortably. The position also of the officials, owing probably to the increased facilities of communication and the spread of education, has lost a good deal of its former importance, and governors of provinces, who were in days of yore kings or demigods, are no longer looked upon with any sense of awe, everybody being aware that they receive their daily orders by telegraph from St. Petersburg. Irkutsk, which in former times was the capital, is now only a large provincial city. The grand old Siberian hospitality is disappearing rapidly, and there are not wanting, even in Siberia, old-fashioned people who curse the Trans-Siberian Railway, which is destined sooner or later to revolutionize the manners and customs of Northern Asia.

Causes of Russian emigration to Siberia—Its increasing importance—Absolute necessity for State intervention in the colonization of Asiatic Russia—Roads followed by the emigrants—Land concessions—Provinces towards which they direct themselves—Colonization of the Province of the Amur and the Littoral—Vladivostok—Chinese, Koreans and Japanese—Exiles and convicts—Conditions for the development of Siberia—Favourable and unfavourable elements—Necessity of employing foreign capital.

The immigrants who arrive in Siberia are almost without exception peasants. According to the census taken last January, there were in Russian Europe, exclusive of Finland and Poland, whose inhabitants rarely, if ever, emigrate, only 94,000,000 inhabitants scattered over a surface of 1,875,000 square miles, that is to say, fifty inhabitants per square mile. One would imagine, therefore, that there was ample space for all the subjects of the Tsar in his European territories; but the great northern Governments of Arkhangelsk, Vologda, and Olonetz, which occupy over a quarter of this area, and in which agriculture is almost impossible, do not contain more than 2,000,000 inhabitants in 540,560 square miles. Then, again, a great number of the Governments situated to the north of Moscow consist of only very inferior marshlands, and are but poorly populated, and, what is more, seem unlikely ever to improve. The majority of the inhabitants of the empire are therefore concentrated in the south, where the population is relatively dense, especially in the Governments of Kursk, Penza, Tambof, Orel, Voronej, and notably so in Little Russia, which is all the more remarkable when we consider that these regions are exclusively agricultural, and that the methods of farming are still very primitive. Notwithstanding, however, the rapid development of industry in Russia, many years will pass before these regions will be capable of supporting a population equal to that of Central or Western Europe, where the natural conditions are more or less identical. It is not therefore very surprising that a fraction of the population of Russia should go in search of better climes, and direct itself towards Southern Siberia, a more attractive and fertile country than Northern Russia.

Emigration, it must be borne in mind, is but a small item in the natural causes of the increase of the Russian population. The annual excess of births over deaths rises to about 1,500,000 in the whole of the Empire, and is from 1,100,000 to 1,200,000 in European Russia (Poland and Finland always excepted). The emigration towards Asia has up to 1895 scarcely exceeded a tenth of this figure, and does not even now reach more than a fifth or a sixth. According to an official work published at the end of 1896, the ‘Statesman’s Handbook to Russia,’ we find that during 1887–95, 94,000 families, forming an aggregate total of 467,000 persons, established themselves in Siberia. The average therefore would be about 52,000 souls per annum, but the last few years have witnessed a visible increase. The above figures do not apparently include emigrants who are destined for Central Asia (general Government of the Steppes and Turkestan), to which the total rarely exceeds 10,000 per annum. According to information received direct from Siberia, about 63,000 emigrants arrived in 1894 over the Ural from European Russia. On the other hand, 3,495 entered Siberia by sea, landing in the great Littoral Province on the Pacific. Lately the emigration movement has become much more active, and we should not be far out of our reckoning if we estimated the number of emigrants into Siberia for the years 1897 and 1898 as about 200,000 for each year. The number of persons who seek permission to leave Russia for Siberia is becoming greater every year. Many, however, are discouraged and even refused the necessary papers, so as to avoid burdening the newly-settled country with a superfluity of people who generally arrive without a penny in their pockets. It is natural in a country where the peasantry are still so primitive and ignorant as in Russia that the Government should closely watch the movements of emigrants, who might, on finding exaggerated promises and illusions dispelled, become troublesome and even dangerous. The following is the manner in which these matters are generally organized in European Russia. When several families belonging to a volost express a wish to emigrate they are requested to determine in what part of Siberia they desire to establish themselves. If the applicants are deemed suitable, two of their number, selected as delegates, visit the parcel of land which has been allotted to them, and on returning they are able to inform their friends as to the exact nature of the place to which they are destined. Formerly, the emigrants were allowed to choose their own land, which, as they were almost invariably very inexperienced, was usually quite unsuited to their requirements, and they either went further afield or, disgusted, returned home. In order, therefore, to prevent a recurrence of this unsatisfactory state of affairs, the sensible system of sending on two delegates or pioneers has been established.

The method selected by emigrants entering Siberia was, until quite recently, to ascend the Kama, and take the Ural Railway at Perm for Tiumen; thence, at this terminus, they embarked either on the Tobol, the Irtysh, or the Obi for Tobolsk, which used to be a great rendezvous for the emigrants. In 1893 the Siberian Railway had not reached Omsk, and out of 63,000 emigrants, 56,500 had entered Asia by the Tiumen, and 6,500 only had taken the Trans-Siberian Railway to Kurgan. Among the first, 36,500 followed the waterway which I have just described, and 20,000 performed the journey in carts. To-day the greater number are transported by the railway to the station nearest to the town selected for their future residence, or to the extreme limit of the line, if they are going farther east. There they are obliged to take the telega, a sort of Russian cart, shaped like a trough, on four wheels. I have often met on the highroads in Siberia long lines of these carts, each containing several persons, men, women and children, with their labouring tools and household belongings. The scene is very picturesque, especially towards evening, when the worthy folk encamp on the highroad: the men unsaddling the horses, the women going to the well for water, and the children playing about, whilst some old man, seated on the wayside, reads the Bible out aloud to a group of eager listeners. Sometimes the journey exhausts the resources of the family, and I have seen in Trans-Baikalia a caravan of Little Russians come to a full-stop for want of money, and the good people, encamped on the highway, quietly awaiting the arrival of the district Immigration Agent, to obtain from him the supplies necessary to enable them to continue the journey. Emigrants who travel by telega from their old home in Europe to the new one in Asia often consume as much as a whole year in the journey from Little Russia to the Amur, albeit the travellers frequently spend as many as three months at a time working on the railway, in order to add a little to their scanty supply of cash.

The majority of the emigrants arrive in spring. In the principal towns on the route refuges have been organized for their shelter. A number of these are to be found at Cheliabinsk at the foot of the Ural. I visited that at Kansk, the centre of a much-frequented region in the Government of Yenissei. Twenty iourdis, or enormous huts, built on the model of those used by the Kirghiz and from ten to twelve feet in diameter and nine feet in height, with an extinguisher shaped roof covered with camel’s hide, were here erected for destitute emigrants. A spacious hospital, kitchens and a Russian bath were at the time nearly completed. A winter habitation with an immense stove had also been erected, but there are not many emigrants travelling during the worst months of the year. All these buildings are of wood, after the fashion of most Russian houses, and seemed fairly comfortable. Three young women from the town acted as voluntary nurses attached to the hospital.

Emigrants who come from the same district in European Russia are as a rule grouped together in the same village, and, as far as possible, everything is done to prevent the crowding together of people who come from divergent provinces, which might give rise to trouble. Thus, the officials always endeavour to avoid mixing the ‘Little Russians’ with the ‘Great Russians,’ and never to introduce new-comers into villages already inhabited by old Siberians, who do not look upon emigration in a very favourable light, for the simple reason that formerly they could occupy as much land as they liked and redeem as much of it as they chose, whenever their own fields became exhausted, and they could, moreover, even tramp off in another direction in quest of better land if the spirit moved them so to do. The arrival of a great number of new people has naturally put an end to these irresponsible movements, and consequently given rise to a great deal of discontent.

The following are a few rules which have been adopted recently for the formation of fresh settlements, on the mir system of Russian collective communal proprietorship, which the Government has decided to introduce into Siberia. Fifteen dessiatines (37 acres) are given gratuitously to each man, and a sum of 30 roubles (about £3 1s. 8d.) can, if necessary, be advanced to each family immediately. Formerly it was necessary to await authorization from the Government at St. Petersburg, even for this small amount, before it could be paid, but, now, happily, it has been decided to leave the matter in the hands of the functionary who is placed at the head of the Immigration Bureau of the district, whereby a great deal of trouble and misery is avoided. Other sums of money can be advanced from time to time up to £9 10s. if the applicant is deemed worthy. Theoretically this money ought to be repaid at the end of ten years, which, needless to say, it rarely, if ever, is.

Of the 63,000 persons who arrived in Siberia from over the Ural in 1894, the majority, 38,000, settled in the Government of Tomsk, 17,000 proceeded to the Amur, 3,800 to the Steppes, 2,100 to the eastern Governments of Yenissei and Irkutsk, and 2,100 to the Government of Tobolsk. These figures do not include the 3,495 who entered the Littoral Province by sea. The region which appears to attract the most emigrants is that of the Upper Obi and its affluents, including the regions of Barnaoul, Biisk, and Kuznetsk in the Government of Tomsk. In these sheltered valleys, which descend from the Altai range, the climate is relatively mild and the land excellent. After this comes the region of the Amur, where the emigrants are almost exclusively Little Russians, who generally established themselves in the region extending along the Lower Zeya to the east of Blagovyeshchensk and the Bureya. The climate, however, is much colder than in the Government of Tomsk, and although the richest part of the Amur has been selected for the principal centre of colonization, the damp is excessive on account of its proximity to the great water and to the very thick forests which cover almost the whole country. The valleys, even on the borders of the Amur and its affluents, are often inundated, and always marshy, and have, moreover, up to the present resisted all attempts at cultivation. The plateaux to the north of the Stanovoi Mountains possess a better kind of soil, and form a more favourable zone, although even here cereals have a tendency to produce, much to their detriment, a superabundance of weeds. The Government, which, for political reasons easily understood, has hitherto assisted colonization in the basin of the Amur, has refused until quite lately to extend the movement to the region of the Yenissei, being possibly under the impression that an excessive scattering of the new population ought as much as possible to be avoided. Now that a considerable part of the richer lands of Tomsk is occupied, it has been deemed advisable to make an advance towards the east; therefore, in 1896 19,000 colonists were settled in the Government of the Yenissei, notably in the districts of Minusinsk, on the upper river, which enjoys nearly the same advantages as the Upper Obi, and Kansk more to the east, which is now the most active centre of settlement. The Government of Irkutsk, which apparently contains a lesser supply of likely land, will doubtless attract official attention later on.

Settlers who have been for some considerable time in Siberia appear generally satisfied with their lot, and although they may not endorse the optimistic affirmations of the official world, the majority of their villages appear more prosperous than those they abandoned in Russian Europe. It could hardly be otherwise if they worked hard, since they are allotted abundance of good land and a small pecuniary advance to assist them with preliminary expenses. Nevertheless, a number of them return to Europe every year. In 1894 as many as 4,500 went back, and, I fancy, if the truth were known, a great many more. I once asked an official in charge of the emigrants at Kansk, a very amiable, well-informed man, who takes a great interest in his duties, why so many of these good people wanted to go home again. He replied that not a few peasants emigrated into Siberia under the illusion that they would be much better off, and not have to work so hard, but when they found that they had to labour as hard as ever, they soon got tired, packed up their traps, and returned home. Others complain of the climate, not so much, as we might imagine, of the winter as of the summer, when the mosquitoes are a perfect plague. Some suffer from home-sickness, especially the women, who regret their former surroundings, and who by incessant complaints and lamentations end by worrying their husbands to return. This, however, is not peculiar to Siberia or to the Russians, for it has even been noticed in the United States, where young colonists are often obliged to give up their farms because their wives find an isolated country life insupportable.

In the greater part of Siberia the population, as we have already observed, is exclusively Russian. The native element may almost be described as non-existent. From the ethnological point of view, the region from the Obi to the Yenissei is already, and tends to become more and more so, a prolongation of European Russia. In the government of the Amur it is, however, otherwise, for the Russians have to face a native population, and the colonists who have come from the European dominions of the Tsar find themselves obliged to compete with a rather formidable Asiatic contingent. On this side the centre of Russian influence is at Vladivostok, a town which was only founded about forty years ago, but which the Trans-Siberian line will eventually lift to extreme importance. The only shadow in the picture is that during three or four winter months the harbour is covered with ice. The noble bay, which the English formerly named after Queen Victoria, and which the Russians have now placed under the patronage of Peter the Great, is one of the most magnificent in the world, in which the whole Russian fleet could easily find shelter; but, unfortunately, although it is in the same latitude as Toulon, it freezes very easily.^[10] For this reason Vladivostok may suffer considerably from the greater attractions of Port Arthur, which is even better placed at the head of the line of communication towards the Celestial Empire, and is, moreover, free from ice the whole year round. Nevertheless, the town will remain the seat of many important military establishments, which are already in existence, and which it would be exceedingly expensive, and by no means easy, to remove elsewhere.

Splendidly situated at the head of a peninsula about twelve miles long, separating two deep bays, whose shores, however, are absolutely sterile, Vladivostok faces the principal and the more eastern of the two ports, which happens, also, to be the safest. The town contains a number of stone houses several stories high, built on the rather steep sides of the hills, and presents quite an imposing appearance, especially after the little wooden-housed towns in the interior of Siberia. Although it lacks the extraordinary animation of its contemporaries, Vancouver, Tacoma, and Seattle, for instance, on the other side of the Pacific, its streets are the liveliest I have seen between Moscow and Nagasaki. It soon becomes evident that one is in the Far East here. The streets are crowded with pigtailed Chinese in blue, with Koreans in white, and Japanese in their national costumes. Among these Asiatics move soldiers and sailors, so that the European civilian costume is scarcely represented at all, and the majority of those who do wear it are Japanese. The day after my arrival happened to be the feast of St. Alexander Nevsky, one of the great Russian holidays, which coincided with a Chinese festival, so that the whole place was a blaze of Celestial bunting, gold-edged yellow triangular shaped flags, emblazoned with heraldic dragons, far out-numbering those of the Russians. Figures confirm the impressions of experience, and the following show the manner in which the population of Vladivostok was subdivided in 1895:

In 1895 the population had considerably increased, mainly in consequence of the barracks and of the increase of Russian and Asiatic emigration. It has been observed that since the Chino-Japanese War the Koreans have developed a distinct tendency to establish themselves on Russian soil.

As in California and Australia, the Chinese who arrive in Vladivostok do so without bringing their wives. They are mainly engaged as workmen, domestic servants, boatmen, etc. When they have amassed a small fortune they return home. Many of them, indeed, pass the winter in Shan-tung, in the neighbourhood of Chi-fu, of which latter place they are nearly all natives. The Japanese are, likewise, engaged in petty trade, and a considerable number of them are hairdressers. It is also whispered abroad, and pretty freely, too, that not a few of them are spies. A high code of morals would condemn the manner in which the majority of the Japanese here gain their livelihood. As to the Koreans, being very strong, they are better adapted for hard work, and have supplied a number of hands on the railway. They are more numerous in the environs of Vladivostok than in the town itself—and they are highly appreciated by their employers, the administration affording them small allotments on account of their industrious and peaceful habits.

It is not only at Vladivostok that the influence of the Far East appears, but throughout the entire government of the Amur. From the moment one enters Trans-Baikalia one is brought into immediate contact with the Mongol tribe of the Buriats. As already stated elsewhere, the Yellow Race predominates in this region, and throughout Trans-Baikalia the followers of Buddhism form about a third of the population—in 1895, 190,003 out of 610,604. Advancing towards the East, and leaving aside the older Russian possessions in order to enter the provinces annexed in 1857, we find that the territory of the Amur contains 21,000 Manchu Buddhists out of a population of 112,000 according to the census of 1897. These Manchus were about the only occupants of the country at the time of its annexation, and not a few have remained subjects of the Chinese Empire. Opposite to Blagovyeshchensk there is a large Chinese village, whence almost every morning a number of people bring fruit and vegetables to the Russian town.

In the territory of the Littoral, in that broad zone which extends from 42° to 70° north, it was estimated in 1895 that the Russians exceeded 110,000 in a population of 152,000, the rest being composed of 23,000 natives, 18,000 Chinese, Koreans and Japanese, and about 1,000 Jews. According to the census taken in 1897, the population has very considerably increased. It records 214,940 inhabitants, but these have not been subdivided into classes, and, moreover, the European immigration has not been very considerable in the last two years. A curious observation has been made as to the preponderance of the male sex over the female, there being 147,669 men as against 67,261 women. The reason for this is not far to seek, and is mainly due to the fact that the Russian immigrants generally arrive with their families, whereas the military element, exceeding 40,000 in the Littoral Province, and the Chinese are not encumbered with women-folk. Khabarofsk, essentially a garrison town, and the capital of the government, has out of a population of 14,932 only 3,259 women. Its appearance is, therefore, quite martial, and its picturesqueness is considerably improved by the presence of a number of Chinese junks in the harbour, that, as is the case at Blagovyeshchensk, Sydney and Melbourne, bring excellent vegetables from the fertile kingdom of the Son of Heaven. Apart from the troops, the Koreans, the Chinese and the Japanese form at least a quarter of the population of the Littoral, and, combined with the natives, reach a total which is only slightly overtopped by the Russians. There are not wanting those who disapprove of this high proportion of the Yellow Race in the three territories forming the Government of the Amur, but without any justifiable reason. The Buriats, for instance, are by no means a decreasing element in the population, and the Russians are distinctly prolific, whereas the Chinese immigration, if it ever takes place on any considerable scale, will have to cross the Desert of Gobi, an obstacle which will delay it for a long time to come. In the other two territories, the indigenous population, mostly fishermen and hunters of a very primitive sort, is undoubtedly visibly diminishing, excepting in the ice-bound regions of the Okhotsk and Behring Straits, whither, too, Manchus, Chinese and Koreans are flocking in considerable numbers. All these Asiatics are hard-working, live upon less than the Russians, and are much more industrious and often hire from the European immigrants strips of land which they cultivate with much better results. The small trade of the towns is almost entirely in the hands of the Yellow Race. Although the Chinese immigration is more or less of an ephemeral nature, it is very likely to become exceedingly numerous, especially in the towns and their suburbs, and might in the course of time render the competition of the Whites extremely difficult, and necessitate interference on the part of the Russian Government to limit the sphere of Chinese labour. In any case, it is quite certain that if Manchuria, as a consequence of the introduction of the railway, ever comes under the dominion of the Tsar, it is highly improbable that its so doing will increase the immigration of the Russians, mainly on account of the surprising activity of the Chinese in colonizing this part of their empire. At the present time the Government is more preoccupied with the European than with the Asiatic immigration, and, whereas it never refuses a grant of land to the Koreans, it very frequently does so to the Europeans, excepting by special and exceptional favour. I am obliged to admit that the Government has, as a rule, been very indulgent towards the French, several of whom have obtained grants at Blagovyeshchensk, although a refusal was given to a Frenchman to buy land notwithstanding that he had lived in the country for over thirty years. As to the gold mines, their exploitation is only granted to Russian subjects. The whole country east of Baikalia, that is to say, the Government of the Amur, is at present freed from paying Customs duties, excepting on spirits, tobacco, sugar and other articles which in Russia pay excise duty. This part of Siberia is never likely to become attractive to Europeans of other nationality than the Russians. On the other hand, undoubtedly, in the course of time, European capital will be much employed in this part, and some enterprising merchants and engineers may even eventually establish themselves in the country, which will surely prove to its interest, and not to its detriment.

Independently of voluntary immigrants, Siberia used to receive annually a great number of political and other exiles and convicts. By a ukaz, issued in 1899, Tsar Nicholas II. put a stop to the old and cruel system of exiling suspects and convicts into Siberia,^[11] which ought undoubtedly to result in much good; for when a country begins to be thickly peopled with free immigrants it is unwise to continue to use it as a penal settlement. These exiles may be divided into two principal groups: firstly, political, often very honest and amiable people, such as students who have taken part in a manifestation hostile to the Government; Poles, compromised in recent insurrections; Catholics and Protestants who have displayed too much zeal in the affirmation of their religious opinions; and Raskolniks, whose peculiar theological opinions have already been described. The second category includes less estimable people: youths of good family of by no means irreproachable character, who have been sent to meditate on their shortcomings for a certain number of years, and repent of their follies at their leisure on the pleasant banks of the Obi or the Yenissei; and certain functionaries of good family who have been guilty of appropriating money officially entrusted to them. Of these unfortunate people, those who have been guilty of minor offences are sent to Western Siberia, where they often obtain employment as servants and coachmen. On the other hand, those who have committed graver offences, and who have been condemned to hard labour, undergo their punishment in Eastern Siberia, in Irkutsk, Yenissei, or in Trans-Baikalia, and must remain there. Inveterate criminals, murderers, and escaped galley-slaves, are sent to the island of Sakhalin, opposite the mouth of the Amur, where, even at the expiration of their terms, they are obliged to end their lives. Those political exiles who are not punished for grave offences are also relegated to the west, where the climate is fairly temperate. The graver the charge and the heavier the sentence, the farther are they sent eastward, even to the icy territories of Yakutsk, Verkhoyansk, Nijne Kolymsk, and Ust-Yansk. To these regions are also relegated the members of the strange sect of Eunuchs. The majority of these people, unless indeed they are very gravely compromised, after being obliged to reside three, or even ten, years in a village, are allowed to settle in a town, to go freely all over Siberia, and even at the expiration of a certain number of years to return to Russia. They not infrequently make themselves extremely useful. Many Poles become innkeepers, and I know of one at least who is a Doctor of Law, and who speaks excellent French. At Irkutsk one can get good beer, a beverage elsewhere execrable, a boon entirely due to the enterprise of an exile from the Baltic provinces. In the extreme north not a few exiles employ their time with scientific and meteorological studies. Here I may observe that I have never seen any of the exiles in Siberia ill-treated, and even the chain which some of them are obliged to wear did not seem to me very heavy. The great prison of Alexandrofsk, near Irkutsk, is admirably managed, its rules being very mild. Nevertheless, I must confess that I only visited what the officials chose to show me. All I can say is that, according to my experience, if there are exiles who are habitually badly treated, they must be very few in number. Of course, I can say nothing in extenuation of the system of transporting a young man or even a young woman to languish in a dreary village buried in the depths of a forest or the Tundra, merely because they happen to have taken an over-prominent part in some political or students’ demonstration.

One curious fact connected with this system of Russian transportation is that the wives and children of the exiles are often authorized to follow the condemned man, which they very frequently do, although in some cases the law considers the marriage bond annulled by the mere act of condemnation, the unfortunate exiles being considered civilly dead. The families of these poor people often endure such terrible privations that local committees have been founded, under the patronage of the authorities, to assist them. In 1894, in the five Governments of Tobolsk, Tomsk, Yenissei, Irkutsk, and Yakutsk, 15,000 exiles and their families arrived.

In a single and not particularly favourable year, the population of Siberia was increased by about 85,000 persons, of whom about 66,495 were free immigrants. The natural increase was almost equally great, rising, according to the statistics, to 78,000, exclusive of the Littoral Province, which, if taken into account, ought to raise the population by 80,000. On a population which we may estimate at 5,300,000 at this period, there must have been about 250,000 births, that is 47·5 per 1,000, and 172,000 deaths, or 32·4 per 1,000. The birth-rate, therefore, is exceedingly high, and the death-rate, when the conditions of the country are considered, certainly not abnormal. In 1898 the immigration, owing to the opening of the railway, was greatly increased, to the extent even of 200,000 souls. It is not therefore a lack of population which is ever likely to affect the future of Siberia. The natural resources of the country can be justly compared with Canada, which it exceeds in size, and also, to a slight extent, in population; but the difference between the two countries, in point of economic development, is very great. What is wanted in Siberia is less the creation of a great number of complex industries, for which the country is not yet ripe, than the introduction, as already stated elsewhere, of up-to-date methods of exploiting the natural resources of the country, which can only be borrowed from foreign countries, and it will only be by opening wide its doors and by receiving strangers without jealousy or unwarranted suspicion that Russia will ever be able to obtain from her gigantic enterprise in Trans-Siberia a return worthy of the great wealth of a country which must eventually be placed on the same footing as any other in point of civilization and progress.

Absolute insufficiency of the present means of transport—Coaches and sleighs—The tarantass: price, length and conditions of travelling by this means of locomotion—Navigation—Scheme for penetrating into Siberia by the Arctic Ocean and its recent success—Absolute necessity of more railways.

In order to form a fair idea of the revolution which the Trans-Siberian Railway is likely to bring about in the economical and political conditions of Northern Asia, it will be as well to glance at the actual conditions of the present means of travel and transport in the country. The most rapid means of locomotion at the disposal of travellers only yesterday, as it were, was in summer the stage-coach, and in winter the sleigh. Twenty years ago, to go to Vladivostok (6,000 miles distant) the traveller took the coach at Kazan, on the Volga, the journey occupying not less than two months in the more favourable season, when a coat of snow, as solid as marble and as smooth as velvet, replaces the usual mud and slush on the Siberian roads. Later on, with the progress of navigation and the construction of a railway across the Urals, the starting-point for this journey was removed further on to the most eastern point touched by the steamboats, in the basin of the Obi at Tomsk. In summer this route shortened the journey vi Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk, and Chita about 1,875 miles, at the end of which one reached the Amur, where navigation recommenced. Since 1896 the Trans-Siberian has passed Tomsk, and now the starting-point of the road journey has gone gradually farther afield, and is now daily receding more to the east.

In the summer of 1897 the railway had already reached the little town of Kansk, about 160 miles beyond the Yenissei, and it was here, or at the Kluchi station, some 65 miles further on, that one hired a coach. It is, however, wiser to buy one’s tarantass, in order to avoid the trouble of unloading luggage at each stage, and, again, the coaches hired out by the postmasters are much less comfortable.

The station-master at Kluchi, to whom I had been recommended, like many other subordinate officials in Siberia, was an exile, who in better days had been a captain in the artillery, and, moreover, the cashier of his regiment. One fine day, in a fit of over-generosity, he unluckily lent a sum of money, abstracted from the cash-box, to a comrade who had lost very considerably at the gaming-tables. Fate avenged the regiment in the shape of an inspector, who inopportunely arrived upon the scene, examined into affairs, and forthwith ended the military career of the unlucky officer. After fourteen years’ exile in Siberia this indiscriminately good-natured individual has become chief inspector of a little railway-station, and adds to his small income by letting out tarantasses to travellers. He sold me for £18 the best of his vehicles, which, I was assured, had recently been used by a distinguished official, but, nevertheless, I had to get rid of it, when I took the steamer on the Amur two months later, for about £7.

Jules Verne, in ‘Michael Strogoff,’ has introduced and popularized the tarantass. It is a vehicle without springs, with a body about six feet long, like a trough supported on three broad planks of wood, and mounted upon two very low axles nine to ten feet apart. An immense hood protects the back part of the carriage from the rain, and by buttoning the leathern apron fixed to the front, one can keep one’s self almost hermetically screened from the weather. The tarantass, if it is not particularly comfortable, has the advantage of being very strong. It possesses nothing in the shape of a seat, and one is obliged to lie full-length on a litter of hay or upon the luggage, unless, indeed, from time to time, in order to change position, one cares to sit on the edge of the vehicle or else alongside the coachman. The horses are supplied by the postmasters at the rate of three kopecks, or three farthings, per verst for each horse, and, moreover, one has to pay a fixed tax of about fivepence per horse at each relay. The team consists usually of three horses, and the relays are found at a distance of about sixteen miles apart. The expenses, therefore, for this short distance amount to about five shillings, inclusive of a tip to the coachman, so that there is not much to complain of in that respect. The same tariff applies in winter, but in the intermediary seasons, from March 5 to May 15, and from September 15 to December 1, when the thaw sets in and the roads are very heavy, a fourth horse is needed, and the expense is increased about one quarter. I used frequently to ask Siberians how many miles could be performed in this sort of vehicle. Of course, almost everybody gave me a different answer. One high official in Tomsk informed me that it could undertake as many as 400 versts in twenty-four hours. ‘Do not imagine you can go more than from sixty-five to eighty,’ said the station-master, and as it was he who had sold me my tarantass, I came to the conclusion that his rather dismal prognostic was the true one. As a matter of fact, everything depends upon the condition of the roads, and also as to whether the traveller has supplied himself with a podorojne, an official document usually granted to Imperial couriers and to high officials, and which enables its possessor to avoid being detained at the various stations on the road. Fortunately, as I had one of these documents, I was able to make between 90 and 120 miles in twenty-four hours.

I cannot describe the scenery by the way as particularly interesting. The road cuts through the forests of pines and larches, and is, as a rule, fairly well kept, and about as broad as the best of our national routes in France. From time to time the wall of verdure opens out to give way to a clearing, along which one perceives rows of wooden houses, indicating the existence of some village or other, the name of which is printed on a post, that also supplies information as to the number of inhabitants of each sex. One soon gets tired of the beauty of the trees, and, to be truthful, also of the rather monotonous convoys of telegas loaded with merchandise, waggons with gold, escorted by soldiers, and of the interminable caravans of emigrants. As one passes the Baikal the road becomes less and less frequented, and more and more monotonous and dreary, especially in the dismal steppe, with its stunted growth, through which flows the Vitim, an affluent of the Lena. The road now meanders through marshy prairies, and is merely indicated by the line of gray telegraph-posts stretching off towards the horizon.

In order to break the intolerable monotony of these very long journeys, it is usual to invite one or two other travellers to share expenses, and these are not difficult to find, for the Russians are naturally sociable and quite free from stiffness or conventionality. I was rather surprised on one occasion to find the wife of an official in Trans-Baikalia who, to join her husband, had performed the journey from Vladikavkaz, 4,000 miles by rail and 1,000 miles by road, in the company of an officer with whom she was only slightly acquainted. The Russians were not more astonished at this than Americans would have been. The general insecurity of the country is probably responsible for the ease with which people make acquaintances. Those who like to deal in horrors are by no means behindhand in relating appalling stories of travellers who have been waylaid by escaped convicts and murdered in the heart of the forest. ‘Have you your revolvers?’ asked the postmaster, on the evening of my first journey in my tarantass, and just as we were about to start. ‘Three travellers were assassinated on this relay only fifteen days ago,’ continued he, and then he gave us a horribly detailed account of the circumstances. I had no revolver with me, and never had any reason to need one, and I rather doubted the authenticity of these gruesome stories. The real danger which travellers in Siberia have to encounter is that of having the rope which attaches their luggage to the back of the tarantass artfully cut and their portmanteaus carried off. Accidents are rare, as the tarantass is generally very strongly built. It is somewhat alarming, however, when at the head of a steep incline, to watch the coachman exciting his horses into a gallop by the wildest gesticulations, but one soon learns that the danger in this case is merely apparent.

Considerable patience is certainly needed on these Siberian journeys, for the roads are often appallingly bad, especially when the inundations set in after a thaw, when even the bridges are carried off by the torrents. Then, again, what is particularly exasperating is the passive air of resignation assumed by all concerned, postmaster and coachman, and even by one’s travelling companions. Accustomed as these people are to live in a climate in which the forces of Nature defy the ingenuity of man, they are very apt, especially as they have nothing on earth else to do, to shrug their shoulders at the inevitable, and to avoid with supreme skill troubling themselves about the ways and means of bettering things. I remember on one occasion, after having been assured at Kiakhta and Chita that if I persisted in continuing my journey I was exposing my life, being landed in a ford into which one of the wheels of the tarantass stuck. To extricate it, we had to work for over an hour in the cold water and in the dim dawn, and even then we were only able to do so with the help of two Buriats who were passing that way, and who lent us their horses to assist us in getting out of this unpleasant fix. With the sole exception of this mishap I had very little to complain of. It is in the post-stations, however, that one’s patience is put to the test and that one realizes the force of a truism made by a certain English author, who began a book on Siberia with the following singular aphorism: ‘In Siberia time is not money.’ One crosses the threshold of these rather doleful-looking houses, which become more and more lugubrious as one advances eastward, with a feeling akin to dread.

The postmaster is almost invariably to be found seated in front of a very dirty register, and generally grunts out his answers to your inquiries as to whether he has any horses ready, ‘You will have to wait two or three hours, possibly until the next morning,’ after which pleasant piece of information you pass into the common waiting-room, usually furnished with a few chairs, two or three tables and one or two old sofas. On the wall hang an ikon or so, the inevitable portraits of their Majesties, and a few frames with the usual printed instructions and regulations. Then comes a sort of glorified bill-of-fare, from a perusal of which you learn the names of a number of succulent dishes, but, unfortunately, the last line informs you that the postmaster is only obliged to supply you with black bread and hot water, the last article being intended to make tea, with which, together with sugar, every traveller supplies himself before starting. Nearly always, however, one finds excellent eggs and milk. It is wise in travelling in Trans-Baikalia to take a supply of preserves, which you can procure in any large Siberian town.

The travellers, however, whom one meets in these resorts are generally exceedingly friendly, very willing and even eager to share their provisions. Seated round the great copper samovar, conversation becomes cordial and intimate, everybody calling each other, regardless of age or sex, by their Christian names, ‘Nicholas Petrovitch,’ ‘Paul Ivanovitch,’ ‘Elisabeth Alexandrovna,’ and so forth. Constantly, when on the journey, one often falls in with the same people, and thus acquaintance soon ripens into intimacy. But, although these gatherings round the samovar are very agreeable, and enable one to study the pleasanter qualities of the Russian people, it is not advisable to pass the night in any of the hostelries along the road, for all the insecticide powders ever invented will not insure a quiet night.

However interesting, therefore, a cross-country journey through Siberia may be, it is not exactly of the kind one would recommend for a pleasure trip, although many Russian ladies, even of the highest rank, frequently undertake it, but I do not recommend it to delicate people. When supplied with a podorojne and the weather is fine the journey is pleasant enough, but it must not be forgotten that it takes seven weeks to go from the Ural to Vladivostok. In winter the journey by sleigh from the Volga takes two months, but if it takes so long for a traveller, what must it be for merchandise! Commerce, therefore, on account of the backward condition of the land routes, is obliged in Siberia to make use of the splendid watercourses, but even these are paralyzed during seven months of the year by thick coatings of ice, and, what is still worse, they all flow towards an ocean eternally blocked by icebergs.

Recently some very hardy experiments, crowned so far with partial success, have been made to penetrate to the heart of Siberia by the Polar Sea when navigation is free during certain weeks of the year. It will be remembered that it was by the White Sea that European commerce, represented by an Englishman named Chancellor, first entered Russia in the sixteenth century. It is therefore not to be wondered at that attempts have been made to penetrate into Siberia by the mouths of the Obi and the Yenissei, which are situated at no greater distance than 1,000 to 1,200 miles from the northernmost part of Norway, where the sea is always free from ice. M. Sidorov, a Russian gentleman of ample fortune, in the middle of the present century, devoted himself to carrying out this scheme, and notwithstanding that he was discouraged by the leading scientists of the day, who considered it impracticable, he promised a very ample reward to the captain of the first ship which should enter the Yenissei. Two expeditions, attempted in 1862 and 1869, failed; but in 1874 an Englishman named Wiggins, captain of the Diana, succeeded in passing the Straits of Kara, which separate Novaya Zemlya from the continent, on the frontiers of Europe and Asia, and thus was able to effect a passage into the estuary of the Yenissei. More successful attempts were made in the following years, and in 1878 iron, groceries, machinery, and other articles, were landed at the mouths of the Obi and the Yenissei. In 1887 an English company was formed to carry on a regular service at the close of each summer between England and the North of Siberia, but unfortunately the first year was not successful, the goods not being of a profitable character. On the succeeding voyage the vessel could not pass the Straits of Kara, and had to return home. Subsequently a new company was formed, but with disastrous results. These ineffectual attempts, however, did not discourage the English, and the scheme for navigating the Arctic Ocean was reassumed on a larger basis in 1896, when three steamers entered the Yenissei and ascended that river to Turukhansk, about 600 miles from its estuary, where their goods were transferred to large barges and conveyed to Krasnoyarsk. The merchandise, which included seven steam-engines, was sold for a fair profit. This English company has now installed an agency at Krasnoyarsk, and the Russian Government, in consideration of the great services which it has rendered at great risk in attempting to create a regular service through the Arctic Ocean into Western and Central Siberia, has reduced the customs duties on all goods introduced by it by one-half, and indeed has completely abandoned its claims on a number of articles such as grocery and machinery. Moreover, so pleased has the Russian Government been by this courageous attempt that it has granted some very valuable mining concessions on this river. In 1897 six English steamers returned to Turukhansk, and quite a fleet of them was directed to the mouth of the Obi, hitherto somewhat neglected on account of the shallowness of the water. Moreover, an attempt has recently been made to create an export trade between Siberia and England, and a cargo of corn brought by the company’s barges to the point where their ships are anchored was soon afterwards happily transported to Europe. In 1898 the same company met with identical success. Thus far this enterprise has been very fortunate. Needless to say, the Kara Sea and the straits which border upon it are, up to the beginning of August, blocked with ice, concentrated there by the different currents, and the season during which navigation is possible lasts only from six weeks to two months, between August and September. The ships used in this particular service must leave Europe a little beforehand, so as to await at the Straits of Kara a favourable opportunity to penetrate to the mouth of the rivers, ascend them, discharge and recharge, and start again as quickly as possible. The time is exceedingly limited during which the barges can transport their cargoes into the interior and reascend the Siberian rivers ere these are frozen over, and this especially is the case on the Yenissei, whose currents, even at Krasnoyarsk, are not more than six miles an hour, attaining, however, twelve miles between Krasnoyarsk and Yenissei. Therefore it is impossible to perform more than seventy to eighty miles a day, and it must be remembered that between Turukhansk and Krasnoyarsk the distance is about 1,000 miles, and that in the beginning of October navigation is suspended. Under these conditions it is not likely that more than one service a year can ever be organized, although possibly, when the peculiarities of the icy regions of the Kara Sea are better known, it might be otherwise. It should also be mentioned that the vessels engaged in this particular trade have not been built expressly for it, but are ordinary cargo-boats, which can be engaged during the rest of the year trading in pleasanter climes. If the present company establishes itself definitely it will be extremely fortunate, not only for the town of Krasnoyarsk, but for the whole of Siberia, which will thus be able to export, by a very cheap route, the excess of its harvests and perhaps also some of its superb wood, and receive in exchange from Western Europe manufactured articles and machinery, hitherto exclusively supplied from Moscow. Therefore the opening of the Trans-Siberian Railway, combined with the passage of navigation through the Arctic Sea, will necessarily benefit Asiatic Russia very considerably, and help that country to obtain freer communication with the rest of the world, and thereby enable it eventually to become completely modernized.

Origin of the Trans-Siberian Railway—At first considered only from the strategic and political point of view—Completion of the Ural Railway—Project of utilizing the navigable routes to unite Russia to the Amur—Difficulties encountered owing to the severity of the climate—Alexander III. in 1891 decides to lay a line between the Ural and the Pacific, and determines the conditions of its construction—The various sections of the line and its deviations across Manchuria—Condition of the works in 1892, and the speed with which it has been constructed—Russia now possesses (1900) a line of mixed communication by train and boat passing from the Ural to the Pacific, and in 1904 a complete line will pass directly from the Ural to Port Arthur, a distance of over 4,130 miles—The monster ferry-boats in course of construction to convey passengers across Lake Baikal—The success of the enterprise.

The idea of making an overland road from Russia to the Far East and the Pacific probably germinated in the fertile brain of Voltaire, who, in a letter to Count Schuvarof, dated Ferney, June 11, 1761, said ‘that it ought to be possible to travel from Russia direct to China without having to cross any considerable mountain pass, just as one can go from St. Petersburg to Paris without leaving the plain.’ The matter was even more practically defined, nearer our own time, by Count Mouravief-Amurski, who, after he had annexed the province of the Amur to Russia, favoured the idea of building a Trans-Siberian railway, and, in the meantime, encouraged the creation of a postal highroad from the Urals to the Amur, which, he considered, would greatly strengthen Russian prestige on the shores of the Pacific.

The Trans-Siberian Railway, it may be remarked, was not originally designed merely in the interests of Siberia, but as a means of uniting Europe with the rich countries of the Far East, in such a manner as to avoid the necessity of passing any length of time in the rude and sparsely-peopled intermediary territories. Even after the project was definitely accepted by Alexander III., the political and strategical considerations of the problem were deemed of far greater importance than the commercial; but presently it transpired that Siberia was not quite the forlorn country hitherto imagined, but that it possessed certain resources of great value, which might easily be developed, provided rapid communication with the rest of the empire was organized.

The first step in the right direction was the construction of the Ural Railway, opened in 1880, which united Perm on the Kama with Tiumen on the Tobol, a river flowing into the Irtysh. The increasing necessity of developing the important gold and iron mines in the Urals was doubtless the principal motive why this line was completed; but presently it proved to be of vast importance to the rest of Siberia, since, by combining the river with the land routes, it became possible, at least during five or six months of the year, to reach Tomsk in a relatively short period.

At that time it was thought the opening of this trunk line would be detrimental to the scheme of a complete Trans-Siberian railway, for once the junction of the navigable tributaries of the Obi with those of the Volga was accomplished, it was deemed desirable to connect Russia with its possessions in the Far East by uniting in the same manner the basin of the Obi with that of the Yenissei, and finally the latter with the affluents of the Amur, and so with the Pacific. A railway from the Obi to the Yenissei was not thought necessary, a canal being all that was required. In 1882, therefore, the construction of a canal was undertaken between the Ket, a tributary of the Obi, and the Kass, an affluent of the Yenissei, the distance not being more than 126 miles. The canal in question, which traverses a series of virgin forests, when completed, unfortunately, however, did not realize expectation. To the east of the Yenissei its promoters encountered formidable obstacles from the ice and from the numerous rapids that disturb the current of the Angara, and all attempts to ascend that river have hitherto failed.

Notwithstanding these difficulties, the enterprising engineers hoped to the last to be able to modify some of them, but have not succeeded in so doing. Thus, it soon became evident that if any practical means of communication was to exist between Russia and the Pacific, it could only be by some method independent of climatic irregularity. The late Tsar, Alexander III., very readily understood that the mixed rail and river system, with its many inconveniences of loading and unloading, and its ice blockades, was, comparatively speaking, useless. Hence the great encouragement and assistance which his Imperial Majesty gave to the creation of the Trans-Siberian Railway, in which he took the deepest interest, being quite of opinion that its completion was of vital importance to the improvement and well-being of an immense section of his Empire. In less than eight years from the day he signed the Imperial decree authorizing its immediate execution trains began to run over 3,300 miles, uniting the upper region of the Amur with Europe and the lower section of that river with the Pacific. Without entering into further particulars of the various routes proposed and subsequently given up, suffice it to say that at present the excellent idea of creating a line running along the shores of Lake Baikal from Irkutsk to Misofsk has been temporarily abandoned, and that a short line of forty-four miles between Irkutsk and Listvenitchnaya now runs to the western shores of that lake, where the trains will ere long be shunted directly on board ferry-boats built on the well-known American system, and thus travellers will be able to continue their journey to the Far East without leaving the train.

The Trans-Siberian Railway between Cheliabinsk and Vladivostok now includes a main line some 4,125 miles in length, plus two branch lines, one 104 miles and the other 410 miles in length, which unite with the Upper and Lower Amur.

The Western Siberian Railway was finished in 1895; the Central Siberian and the section between Irkutsk and Baikal in 1898. Trains can now run over 2,152 miles of rail. The 478 miles of the Ussuri line, of which 67 miles belong to the trunk line, were not opened until 1897. The many difficulties of the Trans-Baikalian line, which somewhat retarded its completion, having been overcome, it was inaugurated quite recently, whereby 2,814 miles out of the total 4,125 miles were rendered free for traffic. The line to Ussuri was finished three years ago, and the rail having been laid between Onon and Stretensk, the Russians have now (1900) a complete land and river system of intercommunication to the Pacific.

For some years past a number of Russian officers and engineers have been quietly exploring Manchuria, with very interesting results. In 1895 the Chinese Government, after the Chino-Japanese War, accorded, as a token of gratitude to Russia for her share in the combined intervention with France and Germany in her favour, the privilege to build a railway through this important province, and, moreover, to occupy the country during its construction, the better to protect both works and workmen. This circumstance brought about a great modification in the original route of the Trans-Siberian line. The section in the Amur from Stretensk to Khabarofsk was abandoned and replaced by a Trans-Manchurian Railway which leaves the station at Onon, 104 miles east of Stretensk, to rejoin the original line at Nikolsk, about 67 miles from Vladivostok, and thus has a mixed route of rail and river been created which brings Europe and the Pacific into direct communication during the summer months. The train now conveys travellers from the Ural to Stretensk; thence by boat to Khabarofsk, whence the line continues uninterruptedly to Vladivostok. As to the great Manchurian line, it cannot be completed, even according to the letter of the concession, before 1904, so numerous and so very great are the natural and other obstacles which have to be overcome. A notable modification has, however, already been made in the original plan. Vladivostok is now no longer to be the main terminus, which will be transferred to Port Arthur, 530 miles further south. The advantages to commerce to be derived from this project will doubtless soon and amply compensate for the extra labour and expense.

The great difficulties of constructing the Trans-Siberian Railway were mainly due to its abnormal length. Whereas the Americans had only 2,000 miles to cut in creating their line between the Mississippi and the Pacific, the Russians thirty years later had to lay down more than 4,000 miles of rail in order to reach the same ocean from the Ural. Otherwise their difficulties were very much less formidable than those which at times nearly baffled even the ingenuity of the Americans. Happily there are no Rocky Mountains or Sierra Nevada in Siberia to traverse at a great height, but only comparatively low ranges like the Yablonovoi, or ‘Apple-Tree Mountains,’ so-called from their rather dumpy shapes. Then, again, although Siberia is at present not more densely inhabited than was the Far West from 1860 to 1870, it contains no such desolate regions as the plateaus of Utah and Nevada. It may, therefore, be safely affirmed that from the engineering point of view the task was a comparatively easy one, although the line has to pass over an exceedingly varied country after leaving the Ural, and through interminable plains, to reach the undulating regions between the Obi and the Yenissei, where it ascends a chain of hills at an altitude of not less than 2,000 feet on the road from the Yenissei to Irkutsk. On the eastern shore of the Baikal the railway gradually ascends to an altitude of not less than 3,500 feet above the level of the water, whence it descends in rapid zigzag into the valleys of the Ingoda and the Chilka, cuts the abrupt spurs of some very high mountains, and passes into marshlands where, by the way, the engineers have had to overcome their greatest obstruction, mainly due to the unstable condition of the soil. When, therefore, we take into consideration that between the Amur and the Ural there is not a single tunnel, we may safely conclude that, if it were not for its enormous length, this now famous line has not been from the engineering point of view as arduous an undertaking even as have been, for instance, some of the much shorter lines nearer home, across the Alps and the Cevennes.

The bridges, on the other hand, are very remarkable and numerous, and some of them required great skill in their construction, since they span the more important rivers of Siberia, which, with the exception of those in the basin of the Amur, invariably flow due north. There are four principal bridges, of which two cross the Irtysh and the Obi respectively, each 2,750 feet in length; the other two span the Yenissei and the Selenga, and are about 3,000 feet in length. These four bridges were exceedingly costly, necessitating the erection of stone piles of prodigious strength, capable of resisting the shock of the enormous masses of floating ice. The minor bridges, some of them 700 to 900 feet in length, are very numerous, but, beyond the difficulty of fixing them firmly a great distance on either side of the rivers, owing to the marshy nature of the soil on the immediate banks, it needed no superlative skill on the part of the engineers who superintended their erection.

Altogether the most remarkable feature of the line will be the manner in which the trains are eventually to be transported across the Baikal, the largest lake in Asia. In America and in Denmark the system of running a train on to a monster ferry-boat, crossing considerable expanses of water, has now been in practical use for many years; but the distances hitherto have never exceeded seventy miles. The Toledo, Ann Harbour, and Northern Michigan Railroad possesses a service of ferry-boats that convey the trains across Lake Michigan, a distance of about seventy miles. The PÈre Marquette, the biggest ferry-boat in the world, so-called in honour of the celebrated Jesuit missionary and explorer, is 344 feet in length by 54 feet in width, and possesses four lines, whereby it can carry thirty freight cars and sixteen very up-to-date passenger corridor carriages. The difficulties to be surmounted with respect to Lake Baikal are happily less than those to be encountered on Lake Michigan. The distance from shore to shore, to begin with, is considerably less. Between Listvenitchnaya, otherwise the ‘Larches,’ to Misofsk is only forty miles. Notwithstanding the excessive cold, the Baikal does not freeze until quite late in January, on account of its great depth, 4,200 feet, of which 2,900 feet are below the level of the sea, forming a prodigious volume of water which takes a very long time to freeze, and an almost equally long time to thaw, for its temperature rarely rises, even in summer, above 5° C. During eight months of the year Lake Baikal is free and navigable, and it is believed that two crossings a day, always in the same channel, may eventually reduce the thickness of the ice in winter.

The building of these enormous ferry-boats has been entrusted to a well-known American firm.^[12] They are to be larger than the PÈre Marquette, and provided with special contrivances for cutting the ice as they force their passage through it, and they are, moreover, intended to go at the rate of thirteen and a half knots an hour in free water, and four knots when cutting through the ice. The passage will take nine hours in winter and about two and a half hours in summer. Unfortunately, storms are very sudden and frequent on Lake Baikal, and, moreover, in summer travelling is often impeded by dense fogs, and it occasionally happens that boats are detained for hours and even days at a time before they dare venture across. It will certainly be very unpleasant for the passengers to be kept for many hours at Listvenitchnaya or Misofsk waiting for the weather to clear. However, they can take heart of grace; for not so very long ago they might have been detained for days at some out-of-the-way post-house, in company with a regiment of most unpleasant and unnameable bedfellows!

The difficulties of obtaining workmen for building this railway were not so great as might have been expected, thanks to the nomadic habits of the Russians, who think very little of leaving their wives and belongings at home, and going hundreds, even thousands, of miles away in search of employment. Then, again, there were already a considerable number of workpeople to be obtained on the line itself; for, as already stated, the population of Siberia is concentrated on the old postal-road, which runs in many points parallel to the railway. Convict labour was not greatly used, and when it was it proved unsatisfactory, and was soon more or less abandoned. The line, however, has taken an unusually long time to finish, because the only season during which work can be carried on in Siberia lasts but six months; but this probably proved attractive to the Russian and Asiatic workmen, as it gave them ample time, when the ground was thickly covered with snow, to return to their cabins and indulge in those day-dreams so dear to them and to all Orientals.

It is difficult to estimate the exact cost of the line, but it was at first reckoned at over £40,000,000 sterling,^[13] of which unfortunately a considerable percentage was absolutely wasted, if not worse. Grave charges have been brought against a great number of people in connection with this line, and doubtless with reason; for it must not be forgotten that the notions of honesty entertained in Asiatic Russia are apt even now to be distinctly Byzantine. However, be this as it may, Russia can be congratulated upon having completed a brilliant achievement, which no other nation, except perhaps England or America, would have dared to undertake, especially in so short a time.

Concessions granted by China to construct the Manchurian Railway—The East Chinese Railway Company and its statutes—Method of construction and utilization of the waterways—Military and political advantages—Branch to Port Arthur—Rapid progress already made.

The completion of the Manchurian Railway will take place in a few years, and if there has been an apparent delay in its construction, it must not be forgotten that the harder work had already been finished on the Trans-Siberian line when the plans for the Chinese scheme were only just drawn up, and also that the obstacles to be overcome in Manchuria are infinitely greater than any that presented themselves in Siberia. These obstacles are mainly the result of the natural formation of the soil. As to the alleged political difficulties, they are very unimportant, although the line does pass through a Chinese province.

Notwithstanding that it was nominally conceded to an anonymous society, the line is absolutely in the hands of the Russian Government, to confirm which statement we have only to study the statutes of the East China Railway Company, which were drawn up by the chief promoter, M. de Witte, and formulated by the Russo-Chinese Bank between August 26 and September 8, 1896, after the signing of the Convention between the Russian and the Chinese Governments. According to these statutes, which were approved of by the Russian Government on December 4 to 16, 1896, and published in the Messager Officiel de l’Empire, ‘the shareholders must be either Russians or Chinese. The concession lapses at the end of eighty years from the day of the opening of the completed line. The bonds can only be issued on demand, and then only with the consent of the Russian Minister of Finance. The Russian Government guarantees payment of the interest and the redemption of the bonds. The company is managed by a committee, comprising a President and nine members, of whom one is Vice-President, divided between Peking and St. Petersburg. The President is chosen by the Chinese Government only; the other members of the committee are usually elected at a general meeting of the shareholders. The chief duty of the President is to watch over the interests of the Chinese Government. The Vice-President is supposed to interest himself exclusively in the management of the company. The Russian Government has a right to superintend the progress and development of the works, both during the period of construction and of exploitation. The Russian Minister of Finance has, moreover, the right to ratify the nominations of the Vice-President, chief engineer, and of all other officials, and to approve or otherwise of any modifications which may be suggested during the construction of the line.

These and other regulations, to which we need only allude, prove the preponderating influence of Russia in the undertaking, and we should, moreover, remember that the majority of the shares are in the hands of the Russian Government. It is therefore obvious that the Chinese President is but a mere figurehead, and that the whole enterprise is exclusively Russian. As a matter of fact, the only important reservation made in the interests of China is the following: ‘After a lapse of thirty-six years from the date of the completion of the line, the Chinese Government will have the right to repurchase it, and to assume all the responsibilities of the said company.’ If China does not avail herself of this right of repurchase, she will not enter into possession of the line and its dependencies until the conclusion of the eighty years from the date of its inauguration originally stipulated, under which circumstance she will certainly have a very long time to wait. The statutes also declare that the works must begin not later than August 16 to 28, 1897, and that they must be finished in six years, that is to say, in 1903, but, as a matter of fact, it is not likely that everything will be ready by that time, owing to the many obstacles the engineers have to overcome.

According to a project accepted in 1897, the Manchurian line from Onon to Nikolsk will be 1,200 miles in length, of which 890 miles will pass through the Celestial Empire, and 310 miles through Russian territory. The total distance by rail from Cheliabinsk to Vladivostok will be 4,072 miles instead of 4,640, as stated in the original scheme, including the 40 miles across Lake Baikal.

Chinese Manchuria is composed of the two basins of the Sungari, the great affluent of the Amur, which joins this river between Blagovyeshchensk and Khabarofsk, and of the Liao-ho, which flows into the treaty port of Niu-chwang in the Government of Pe-chi-li. Between these two basins lies a zone of steppes, quite destitute of water, an eastern prolongation of the great Desert of Gobi, and 130 miles in width. To the east of the north and north-west of Manchuria rises a chain of lofty mountains, which separate the valleys of the Amur and its tributaries, the Argun and the Ussuri, from the great inland and very marshy plain watered by the Sungari and its tributary rivers.

The new line will, after leaving Onon, have to cross a lofty chain of mountains south of Trans-Baikalia, 265 miles in length, at a height of over 3,000 feet, and then descend into the valley of the Argun, to finally enter an absolutely deserted mountainous region, unexplored until the arrival of the engineering mission, some 130 miles long. Thence it will have to be carried over a height exceeding even the 3,000 feet above mentioned, and for another 330 miles will run at a height varying between 300 to 600 feet above the level of the Sungari plain, to again rise to 1,950 feet in order to cross another lofty range before redescending to Nikolsk, which is 130 feet above the level of the sea. To the difficulties thrown in the way of rapid progress by the great height and precipitous nature of the Manchurian Mountains must be added those created by the unstable condition of the soil, which, according to some travellers of my acquaintance who have explored this district, consists of one immense lake of mud. Fortunately, however, it seems that at about three or four feet below this objectionable surface exists a solid bed of gravel, which may afford an excellent foundation for the line. These unfavourable conditions were at first deemed so insurmountable that at one time many pessimists were of opinion that it would be wiser to abandon the Manchurian scheme altogether, and return to the original plan of passing through the valley of the Amur. The Tsar, however, held firm to his purpose, and the order was promulgated by His Majesty in 1898 to forthwith undertake the construction of that portion of the line between Onon and the Argun situated in his own territory. The waterways in Chinese territory have been utilized precisely as those in Siberia. In order to ascend the Sungari a number of flat steam-tugs were ordered from Newcastle-on-Tyne. They are unusually shallow, only drawing two feet of water, are supplied with engines of 500 horse-power, and intended to convey the rails. These are brought from Europe, vi Vladivostok, over the Ussuri line. I remember in September being at Iman, where the Vladivostok line reaches the Ussuri, and watching with great interest one of these immense boats in process of reconstruction. I cannot help thinking, however, that the Argun would be better for the transport of heavy railway material than the shallow Sungari.

If the Russian Government so promptly determined to carry out the construction of the Manchurian Railway, it was rather on account of important political considerations than of any shortening of the route. This railway, it must be borne in mind, passes at less than 330 miles from the extreme north of the Gulf of Pe-chi-li, whereas by the Amur line the distance is double, and even then, after arriving at Vladivostok in order to reach Pe-chi-li, an unexplored and uninhabited mountainous district which extends north of the Korean Frontier would have to be passed. From the plain of the Sungari Russia can easily send troops to Mukden and Niu-chwang, and if necessary even to Peking, whereas from Vladivostok she would find it very difficult, if not absolutely impossible, to transport them by land, and, moreover, there she is by no means complete mistress of the sea.

Vladivostok already contains a number of important maritime establishments, the harbour is excellent, and in case of a war with Japan it would be a most important point of vantage. Russia, however, calculates that by means of the Manchurian Railway she will be able to transfer the Trans-Siberian terminus five degrees south of Vladivostok, to Port Arthur, whereby she dominates the Gulf of Pe-chi-li and both the land and sea routes leading to the Chinese capital. This scheme has been absolutely decided upon since 1898. The branch lines which unite the harbours of Port Arthur and Talien-wan to the nearest point of the East Chinese Railway, close to the town of Kirin, are being pushed on as actively as possible. Thousands of tons of rail, as well as a number of railway-engines, have already arrived from France and America at Port Arthur and Niu-chwang, and another branch of the Russian Railway is being laid in the direction of this last-named port. The branch from Port Arthur is about 530 miles, so that the total length of the Trans-Siberian line will not be greatly increased by this deviation, which will bring it to a full-stop at the extremity of the peninsula of Liao-tung, on the shores of a sea which is always free of ice. The total increase in the expenditure will not exceed £5,000,000.

The distance between Europe and the Far East by the Trans-Siberian—Diminution of the time and expense of the sea-route—China and Japan within two weeks of Paris and London—Luxury and comfort on board the Far East express—The difficulty of transporting merchandise, which must remain much more expensive than by the sea-route—Importance of the Trans-Siberian Railway as a means of diffusing civilization in the Far East.

As already stated, between 1904 and 1905 at the latest, a continuous railroad will bring Europe in touch with the shores of the Pacific. The distances between Paris, Berlin, and London, and Vladivostok and Port Arthur are as follows:

European expresses would traverse the longest of these distances in one week; but it must be remembered that it is not at present possible for trains to run over the Siberian Railway at such high speeds as from forty to fifty miles an hour. These are only possible upon the very substantial lines of Western Europe, and are indeed much in excess of what is achieved by the American Trans-Continental trains, once they cross the Mississippi, or by the Canadian Pacific, the speed on which between Montreal and Vancouver rarely exceeds twenty-five miles, and even this relatively low rate cannot be expected at first on the Trans-Siberian Railway. The rails are very light, especially on the first or western sections, and the whole railroad is, in many places, as is often the case in America, rather primitively constructed. It is therefore calculated that the Far East express, the weekly train-de-luxe, which is to be organized as soon as the line is completely finished,^[14] will take not less than twelve days to perform the journey between London or Paris and Vladivostok and Port Arthur, which will not necessitate a greater speed than twenty miles an hour over the Siberian lines. When, however, the system is better managed and placed on the same footing as that of the Canadian Pacific, the journey may possibly be performed in a few hours under eleven days. The Trans-Siberian route will, once it is opened, be incomparably the shortest route between Europe and the Far East. It takes from Vladivostok to the Japanese ports of Nawoyetsu and Niigata on the Japanese Sea, a distance of about 480 miles, about forty hours by steamer. From thence, about 280 miles of rail, traversed in fifteen hours, will bring the capital of the Mikado within two and a half days from Vladivostok, and about fifteen days from Paris. On the other hand, the Chinese line, which is now being reorganized by an English company between Peking and Tien-tsin, and from thence to Shan-hai-kwan at the foot of the Great Wall, is being extended to Niu-chwang, where it will join the Russian lines, and thus the journey from Paris and London to Peking can be performed in between thirteen and fifteen days. Shanghai, the principal port of China, is distant 575 miles from Port Arthur, and can be reached in two days, and thus Hong-Kong will be only seventeen days’ journey from London. It now takes thirty-four days at least to get from Paris or London to Yokohama vi the Suez Canal, and twenty-one vi Canada, and certainly not less than twenty-eight days to reach Shanghai by either route. Twenty-five days are required to get to Hong-Kong vi Suez, and thirty vi America, and although this port is situated in the tropics, it could be reached much more expeditiously vi Siberia than round by India. The Marseilles steamers touch at Saigon after a voyage of twenty-three days, but it is not probable that they will be able to compete in the matter of speed with the Trans-Siberian Railway. The capital of Cochin China, however, marks the extreme limit of this sphere; but all places situated to its north and east—Japan, Tonkin, China, and the Philippines—can be brought immeasurably nearer to Europe than was certainly ever imagined by Voltaire when he wrote his letter to Count Schuvarof. It is therefore evident that, even if the maritime companies do their utmost to increase the speed of their boats, they will never be able to convey travellers to Peking, Hong-Kong, Shanghai, Tokio or Manila, in anything like the short space of time taken by the Trans-Siberian.

Another great advantage of the Trans-Siberian line is the diminution of the expense, which will be considerably less than that charged by the steamers. The price of a first-class passage from Marseilles to Hong-Kong, Shanghai, or to one of the Japanese ports, is uniformly about £70, to which must be added another £5 for travelling expenses from London to the starting-point. Vi Canada the expense is about the same, whereas by crossing Siberia it will cost something like half. The Russian tariff is an extremely reasonable one, especially for great distances, and it is calculated that the prices from the German frontier to Vladivostok or Port Arthur will be by the ordinary trains about 11 guineas first class, and £5 third. By the train-de-luxe from the Russian frontier to the end of the journey it will be £18. To these expenses must, however, be added those which are always inclusive on board ships, but never on the trains—such as food, service, etc., which, however, are never alarmingly high on the German or Russian lines. If we add to the above the price of the ticket from Port Arthur to Shanghai, £6, to Hong-Kong, £12, it is clear that the cost of the journey will be about £32 from Paris to North China and Japan, and £40 to Southern China—in a word, half what is charged at present.

A rather alarming question arises as to how people will be able to endure the inevitable fatigue of passing twelve days continuously in a railway-carriage. Habit is second nature, and although there is no other line in the world of such great length, nevertheless countless Americans think nothing of spending a week or ten days constantly travelling by train. It must be remembered, too, that the carriages intended for this line will be built expressly, and contain every conceivable comfort and modern improvement. A long corridor down the centre of the compartments will enable passengers to take exercise; and, needless to say, everything will be arranged for the comfort of the sleeping department, and for the heating of the carriages in winter. Already those lines which have been opened in Siberia are supplied with restaurants providing very good food, and usually under the management of a Japanese, whose head cook is well skilled in the concoction of cosmopolitan dishes, and whose waiters leave nothing to be desired in point of cleanliness and civility. Even now, in out-of-the-way stations, where, a few years ago, the foot of man had never trod, travellers who have exhausted their store of novels may find a bookstall fairly well supplied with current fiction and guide-books.

The Russian Government, however, in its zeal for the comfort of Trans-Siberian travellers, has made arrangements for the installation of a super-excellent restaurant, a well-stocked library, and, in short, of all those many luxuries hitherto which are the joy and boast of Americans. One cannot expect the comfort of a first-class liner in a narrow, box-like train; but then we must remember that the passengers on board these floating palaces have to endure many miseries in the shape of sea-sickness and the numerous ills which invariably accompany a journey through the Torrid Zone. There can be no question as to the superiority of the Trans-Siberian route to the Pacific over the Canadian, inasmuch as the latter includes two long sea-journeys. In summer the Trans-Siberian line will be undoubtedly very pleasant, and even in winter the carriages can be kept warm, and, moreover, there need be no fear of an unexpected visitation from an avalanche as there is in Canada. And thus, in the course of a few years, the irrepressible globetrotters of the two worlds, as well as the business man, to whom ‘time is money,’ will find a new and rapid means to reach countries which distance and the difficulties of travel have hitherto placed beyond the reach of only the most enterprising or of those who do not mind a very long sea-voyage. From the purely commercial side of the question, however, there can be no doubt that a very long time may elapse before the Trans-Siberian Railway can compete with the sea route in transporting heavy merchandise to and from the Far East, and the great commercial centres of Europe and Asia. Still, certain lighter articles—silk and tea, for instance—can certainly be brought in fair quantities, vi the Siberian line, at a reasonable price. One of the great advantages of the line will be the facilities it offers for forwarding letters to and from China, Japan, etc., in considerably less than half the time now taken.

As to the social transformation which must inevitably result from the constant passage of so many people belonging to the highly civilized nations of the west, through a country hitherto so backward as Siberia, it may well be summed up as incalculable. That Russia will specially benefit by the creation of a line which she has built at an enormous cost is but just, and, moreover, surely the reward for her courage and enterprise. At the same time, civilization will also find a common interest in the amazing difference which so important a factor must inevitably create in the history of progress in the Far East.