THE REAL SIBERIA
John Foster Fraser
A Collision - We arrive at Blagovestchensk - The New York of Siberia - Twenty Years ago a Cossack Outpost - A Military Stronghold of the Future - The Crime of 1900 - How the Chinese were "Expelled"
FOR hundreds of miles the broad, shallow, but swift Arnur river curved and swept eastwards among the hills - the left bank Russian, the right bank Chinese. Then it made long stretches to the south. Never the site of a hut was there on the Chinese side, but at long intervals a ragged grey patch on the Russian slopes told of a village.
To the eye it was an exceeding fair land. Yet, as I have pointed out, the Siberian is no agriculturist, and the lethargy of the Tartar makes him mentally rheumatic. He won't work to-day because it is a saint's day; he can't work to-morrow because it is Sunday; then comes Monday, and everybody knows it is unlucky to commence anything on a Monday. So the crops fail.
The winter months stretch from September to May, when the land lies frozen. There is no spring. In three days, or a week at the outside, winter disappears and blazing summer comes. All nature strives to make up for lost time. Everything grows with a rapidity that is amazing.
Then, the Siberian has no eye for opportunity. He sows his corn when it is too late, and he does not think of reaping till the wheat is full ripe and half rotten in the August rains.
Twice a day the little steamer Admiral Tschchatoff - called after a former Minister of Marine who never rose, to popularity, chiefly, I fancy, owing to the unpronounceability of his name - would drop anchor near one of these villages to take on passengers. At every place were slither-limbed, pale-faced Chinamen, who had no money and wanted a cheap passage. Some of these Celestials were in their native attire, blue-bloused, baggy-breeched, with greasy little skull-caps and their scanty pigtails elongated with pieces of black cord. Some, however, had met, civilisation half-way. There was one skinny fellow with parchment face who had on a Russian cap much too large for him, so he held his head far back and squinted down his nose to look under the brim. Also he wore a huge pair of Russian top-boots, far too large for him. So in walking he made a clatter like a small son, aged three, who has a liking for his father's shoes. There was a long-shanked Chinaman, whose nether garments were truly Chinese. But for jacket he wore a red and black striped "blazer," and for hat an old English straw with a dirty yellow and blue band.
Their tales were voluble, and their countenances melancholy, and so they got their free passage and grinned triumphantly.
The captain of the Admiral Tschchachoff was a smart young man, quite the sailor, blue-eyed, with flaxen, torpedo beard, and clad in the conventional navy blue, with gold braid.
Along with him was a pilot, a hulking Muscovite, who wore an enormous fur coat and a great fur cap through all the heat of the day.
It didn't take loner to work up admiration for the Amur pilots. The river is full of trips, and the channel must he sought even in broad sheets of water. Now and then there was a jar and a quivering as the vessel touched and scoured the river bed. The captain said that often he had to land all his passengers to lighten the ship so that he could force it to go bumping over the rocks for five or six versts.
If there was no fog the steamer journeyed through the night. We had starlight, but the deep shadows of the enclosing hills seemed to bulge out banks where there were no banks. But always there were the twinkling little oil lamps for guidance - blinking white on Russian soil, dim ruby on the Chinese - and by steering from light to light there was a four certainty of being in the channel.
Yet I should not tise the word "always." On the second night we were in the Amur there was missing a red lamp on the China side. The consequence was that going full steam from white light to white light our ship just at "the witching hour" climbed with a crash on a bank of shingle. Then was excitement. The engines were reversed and the steamer dragged herself off. But she was tugging the convict barge I have already mentioned, and this barge, with considerable way on, came tilting her nose right into the stern of the steamer.
There was a crunch of broken wood and ripped iron plates.
In the darkness no one could see what had happened. The convict ship, however, swung off. The captain of the steamer gave orders for the helm to be put over on the starboard side, and the engines to go full steam. The engines did go full steam. But alas! the rudder had gone, and this was not known till the steamer, as a sort of revenge, went furiously into the convict ship, which she did not injure, though she smashed in her own bow.
We had a really lively quarter of an hour.
It was pitch dark, and the lamps on the ship accentuated the darkness. Everything was at sixes and sevens, and everybody shouted orders and cursed the captain, and the women wailed and were certain drowning was their lot. The two boats, however, got alongside the Russian bank, and there we hung till morning light came.
Meanwhile a horse had been got from somewhere, and a man was sent off a thirty-mile ride to a telegraph station, to wire up the river to cheek a tugboat we had passed, and bring it back to take us in tow. This caused a delay of thirty-six hours.
Personally, I didn't regret it. We were struck in a pretty curve, with the distance lost in a purple haze and the river widening out like a bit of scenery in the "Lake District." Two hundred yards away was China, and the thick trees were a mass of saffron and ruddy tints. On our side stretched a plain dotted with leafless birch, the bare boughs stretching like grey antlers, and a couple of miles off reared bluff crags.
The morning gave me opportunity, for which there was no provision on board ship, to have a bath. I took a walk some miles up stream through long and tufted grass, and there had the luxury of a swim.
The day was warm. There was no sound of bird or of animal. Even the river flowed with a strange stillness. The silence played curiously on the nerves. I sat for an hour, a sort of amateur Robinson Crusoe, fairly certain that no other man hid over before been there, musing on the scene.
There was a rustle among the trees, coming nearer and nearer. A graceful antelope sprang out not twenty yards from me. For nearly a minute we looked at each other, neither moving. Then it tripped down to the brink and swam the river.
In the afternoon I took a tramp inland - rough going, for the ground was broken, reedy, and swampy - and had a stify climb among the pines till I got on the hilltop. As far as eye could reach was a land of wooded hills all splashed with autumnal hues. The river stretched far away like a streak of silver.
At night, as dusk was falling, fires were lit on the bank, and here the peasant passengers cooked their meals, making picturesque figures in the glow of the flames. Then many of them sang. They were untutored folk, but instinctively they seemed to take up different parts, and with winning, soothing cadence they sang their Slavonic songs far into the hushful night.
In the morning the tugboat had arrived. We were tethered to it, and side by side we went our way without further mishap.
The Amur became deeper and broader until indeed it was a magnificent river. We passed other boats going up-stream, stem-wheelers, two-deckers, with long, thin chimney-stacks - exactly the kind of boats to be seen on the American rivers. The hills fell away to undulating pasture land.
At one place there was a heave, and the hillside presented a sandy face. High up could easily be traced a black streak of antediluvian vegetation 'twixt sand and sand. The Russians called this "the smoking mountain." There had been spontaneous combustion in the vegetation, and in places smoke was oozing. Without attention being called to the real cause, you might imagine the smoke was from smouldering fires left by wandering peasants.
On the afternoon of Saturday, September 21st, we reached Blagovestchensk, the principal town between Irkutsk and the waters of the Pacific.
Half a dozen steamers lay moored to floating wharfs, a large one flying the mail flag, leaving in a couple of hours for Khabarovsk, a three days'journey further down the river. Through passengers having to make a hurried transit, I bade bon voyage to my acquaintances, the Russian and French ladies, who were getting a little tired of Siberia and eager for the prettiness of lauded Japan. They went on. I decided to stay in Blagovestchensk five days, till the next post boat went down-stream.
Therefore I piled my belongings on a droshki and told the hairy-faced driver to take me to the "Grand Hotel," with much misgiving about the kind of place it would turn out to be. And as I have grumbled about other hotels I will give this its due. It was excellent. Its front was tawdry, blue and white stucco, much like the French hotels you find over-looking Swiss lakes, but it was clean, well furnished, electric lighted, and its manager, a Frenchman, could appreciate a Britisher's desire for water and plenty of it.
Blagovestchensk was the briskest Siberian town I had yet come across. It was proud of its position, and as it is the fashion to compare this new land with older lands, it has dubbed itself "The New York of Siberia." It wasn't that. But again and again I was struck with its likeness to an American town.
It is laid out on the T-square plan, every street running at right angles. The houses are of wood, mostly single-storeyed, and yet in the middle of these stand great three-storeyed public buildings, which you would cross the street to look at if you saw them in Moscow or Petersburg. The roads are in quite a transatlantic neglected state, but fringed with wooden side walks, and the main streets are festooned with wires for electric lighting, telegraph, and telephone. The shops are "stores" selling everything from cigarettes to reaping machines. All these stores are in the hands of Germans or Russians from the Baltic.
The droshki is old-fashioned in Blagovestchensk - all right for slow-moving, slumbrous old Russia, but behindhand for a bustling Siberian city. A light American rig, three parts spring, with a horse that can "move," is the proper thing.
The youths are keen cyclists, and whizz along on German and American machines. Just outside the town are athletic grounds, with a well banked-up cycle track.
On the river front is a promenade with a double row of trees and seats beneath them, where you can rest and watch the setting of the sun over the shoulder of China.
It is what the Americans call "quite a town."
Till twenty years ago it was little more than a Cossack outpost. Now it has a population of nearly forty thousand. There is a public library with ten thousand volumes, a little museum, not much to speak of, however, two newspapers, one daily and the other weekly, four banks, two large ironworks, seven tanneries, two soap factories, three breweries, three steam flour mills, three saw mills, and two rope yards. Also there is a medical and charitable society, which maintains a hospital for the poor, two dispensary rooms, and a home for the aged, cripples, and orphans. A fine brick-built club-house has a hall adapted for theatricals.
Blagovestchensk is rather too far out of the general world for touring dramatic companies to call though last winter a touring operatic company settled in the town, and three nights a week performed, more or less successfully, all the well-known operas. There is an amateur theatrical society and an amateur orchestral society.
It is a great military centre, and young officers in Blagovestchensk, being like young officers anywhere else, make the town anything but the dead-and-alive place you might imagine if you know no more about it than a spot on the map of Eastern Siberia.
Educationally there is what is called a "classical gymnasium," really a secondary school - but Siberians, like Western Americans, who call barber shops "tonsorial parlors," are fond of high-sounding names; a gymnasium for girls, three public schools for boys and one for girls, a number of church parish schools - even in Siberia the church schools and board schools are often in conflict - and a special school where "grown-ups" neglected in their youth have the opportunity of receiving instruction.
There is a good deal to be seen. In the first place the people struck me as moving with a sharper, more decided stop than was discernible in towns further west.
With the exception of the peasant class the clothing worn is European in style, barring, of course, the officials, who axe as numerous here as elsewhere, and march about with full appreciation of their dignity in all the glory of many-coloured braids.
The manual labour of the town is chiefly done by Chinese coolies. When John Chinaman has some spare kopecks it is his delight to get into a droshki, loll back, and have a Russian under his orders to drive him about. Indeed, that Saturday evening, when I went out to stroll I saw crowds of droshkis sweep by, all laden with grinning Chinamen, their pig-tails flapping about them and in some danger of being caught by the wheel-spokes.
Rich gold-mining is in the hills within a hundred miles of Blagovestchensk, and there are plenty of miners in the town - Koreans, as a rule, but of a distinctly better type than the coolies. They are men who have taken to the miners' dress: loose shirts, open to the throat, thick belts, and big slouching Californian hats, and, judging from the way they swaggered along, full of the Korean equivalent for picturesque though unprintable Californian oaths.
Like all gold centres, the cost of living in Blagovestchensk is expensive - quite three times as much as in London. I am a man of few wants, but my hotel bill was over £2 a day. A cup of coffee cost a shilling.
On the Sunday morning, when all the church bells wore clanging and good Blagovestchensk folk were hastening, armed with prayer-books, to worship, I took a solitary walk along the Amur side.
On the way I passed throuch the camp where are stationed some 3,000 soldiers. It was well situated near a wood. The officers' quarters were of timber, painted white, and there were scraggy gardens in front. There were great long sheds for the troops, but most of the men were under canvas. Their tents were pitched on quite a different plan to that adopted by British troops. There was first built up a square of sods, not unlike a sportsman's shelter you see on the moors at home, with an entrance on one side. On the top of this was fixed the tent, which was really a sort of square canvas lid which would throw the rain beyond the bank. In each were six beds, and there was plentv of room to stand up. At every point was a soldier on guard, bugles were continuously sounding, officers and their orderlies were galloping about.
"Foreigner" was, of course, stamped all over me, and, although I received many curious glances, I strolled where I please, with never a word of hindrance.
These Russian white-bloused Tommies were just as "larky" as their redd-jacketed friends at Aldershot. In one or two places men wore out on parade, but most of them were spending their Sunday as they pleased. From some of the tents came the bleat of accordions, and young fellows were laughing and singing. Then I came across a group having wrestling marches; next some young fellows were testing their jumping powers; then groups squatted in the shade of the trees smoking and gossiping. I must say they were all sturdy, well-set, and healthy men, clean and neat, and quite happy.
Still, hardly a tithe of the barracks was occupied. There were rows of buildings with not a soul to be seen; also plenty of sheltering for horses, but no horses. After traversing a mile of rough country road, I came to another camp, barracks, and officers' houses, but all forsaken and neglected. The windows were smashed, the doors were broken away from their hinges, rank grass grew around. For an hour I sauntered here, and never saw a soldier. It was as though I had come upon a city of the dead. Yet a few days would put all these buildings into habitable condition. In a straggling way the camp covers some three miles, and there is accommodation for quite a hundred thousand troops. Russia has an eye on future possibilities in this great military provision.
I had sauntered out to this spot with a particular object. It was a beautiful, fresh Sunday morning, and I sat down on the banks of the Amur, with the river racing at my feet, and a couple of stones' throw away the reed-fringed boundary of Manchuria. The place had an eerie attraction, for here in July of 1900 was perpetrated one of the greatest crimes.
In the spring of that year there was in Blagovestchensk a Chinese population of from eight to nine thousand people. Seven of the largest stores of the town belonged to Chinese merchants: there were smaller dealers, and a great crowd of labourers. When the siege of the Pekin Legations began, Blagovestchensk, like the rest of the world, imagined all the Europeans in Pekin had been massacred. They themselves were far from help, and on the other side of the river drums began to beat and banners waved, and then bullets came dropping into the Blagovestchensk streets. The only Russian troops in the town were some sixty Cossack soldiers - not a large force if the place were attacked. The Chinese in Blagovestchensk, however, remained in their homes, absolutely quiet.
Fear, however, was in the heart of the governor. He issued an order that all Chinese must pass over to Manchurian territory before twenty-four hours.
"Yes," replied the Chinese, "we will go; but how are we to get across the river if we have no boats?"
The twenty-four hours passed.
"Why have you not gone across the river?" demanded the governor.
"We have no boats. Give us boats and we will go," urged the Chinese.
The only answer was that the Cossacks, with fixed bayonets, surrounded a hundred Chinamen.
"Now march!" said they, and they marched, weeping, pleading, round the back of the town, along the dusty country road, till they came to the very spot where I sat solitary, smoking my pipe on this Sunday morning.
"Across the river you get!" and the bayonet points pressed the Chinese into the water, up to their waists, further still up to their necks, and then further still.
When they were all drowned, back marched the Cossacks to the town for another batch of Chinamen. These, too, were driven to the same place, where the same fate awaited them. Backwards and forwards came and went the Cossacks.
At the end of two days there was not a single Chinanian in Blagovestchensk. The authorities admit that 4,500 were drowned. Probably there were more.
For days there floated down the Amur, past the full stretch of the town, a sorry, silent procession of the dead. Now and then, like a tangle of weeds, bodies massed against the wharves and between moored vessels and the shore. Men were employed with long poles to push the corpses into the stream again.
Then the Chinese on the Manchurian side began to poster Blagovestchensk with rifles. A few windows were broken, but not a single person was injured, though I believe official accounts state forty were killed. Presently troops began to arrive from Russia and Western Siberia. There was instantly an expedition into Manchuria, whereupon the Chinese scattered like the wind. But their towns and villages and farmsteads and crops for fifty miles round, including the great Chinese city of Aigun, were laid waste by fire.
The drowning of these poor defenceless Chinamen has fixed a brand on Blagovestchensk never to be forgotten. The people don't like to talk about it. They know it was a barbarous act, and they are ashamed. Those, however, who spoke to us freely and openly, were stirred with indignation. The man who gave the fiendish order was still governor of the town, and no one can understand why the Czar, one of the most humane of men, has not banished the offender, to show reprobation of an act which has placed indelible stain on a young and flourishing city.*
Well, there was no trace of the crime that Sunday morning, as I - a wandering Britisher - sat and listened to the distant ringing of the church bells and thought of the death cries that had gone up from this spot. The river was like burnished steel, and flocks of birds made the trees musical.
Then I heard the clatter of hoofs and young laughter. Along the country road, through a veil of dust, came half a dozen droshkies. In the first sat a bride, radiant as the sunshine, reclining in the arms of her husband. In the other droshkis were friends, the gayest of village throngs, off to the town for the marriage feast.
It was well they had no remembrance just then for the place that will be pointed at with a shudder when they and their joys have passed out of all knowledge.
Then I re-filled my pipe and strolled back to Blagovestchensk.
*I have since learnt that the offending governor, General Chitchegoff, has been degraded and moved to a minor post near Archangel. Chapter XVI: Some Companions and Some Tales
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