THE REAL SIBERIA
John Foster Fraser
Siberian Russians and Russians Proper - "Only Chinamen" - In Sight of the Pacific - Vladivostok Station - Wanted! A British Consul - The Wrong Sort of Consul - Vladivostok Harbour - Russia's Achievements in the East
IT was necessary to rise early at Khabarovsk - when a chill grey dawn was crawling from the Pacific and lifting the mist from the Manchurian hills - in order to catch the train from Vladivostok.
This was the last section of the great trans-Asian line, and exactly thirty-two hours was taken to cover the 483 miles.
Of course the railway station was three miles from the town, and the roadway was just a network of tracks among a tangle of undergrowth, all decaying and colourless beneath the first breathing of winter. I had to grip tight the little droshki or the violent thuds against tree stumps and the sudden lurches into holes would have pitched me out a dozen times. The two horses were sturdy, energetic little brutes - one running in the shaft and the other running at the side, like the hitching of an extra tram horse to help the car up the hill: the approved method of driving a pair in Siberia - and rattled along in good style.
The station itself was all bustle and noise. The entrance hall was packed with Chinamen shouting gutturally and bumping about with loads, while meek, white-robed, and quaint-featured Koreans squatted on their heels in corners. Russians, chiefly officials in their greys and blues, gilt epaulettes, white-peaked caps, and top boots of pliable leather, took possession of the buffet with their bundles.
Here was constant tea-drinking and the dipping of long rolls into the tea and eating them m a soppy state. These rolls are sprinkled with little seeds that make the food look as though it was fly-blown. Indeed, as every mirror and candlestick and picture in Siberia is speckled by industrious flies, I have an idea that the seed is sprinkled on the cakes to deceive the eater who cannot tell by eyesight whether the spots are seeds or fly-marks.
Half an hour before the train started there was the clang of the bell, the doors were thrown open, and a pell-mell rush to the platform and carriages took place. The scene was one that had a close comparison to that you see in India. Instead, however, of British officers walking up and down with the confident stride of superiority while the Hindus and Mohammedans gave way acknowledging inferiority, there were Russian officers clean and smart promenading the platform while the slithering, cowering Chinese and the cringing, frightened Koreans made room for them.
I strolled about watching the scene. There was little that was arrogant in the demeanour of the Russians, save the consciousness of importance that every man shows more or less when in uniform. But marked was the dominance of character displayed by the Russians and the recognition of it by the Chinese and the Koreans.
The Russian has a strong streak of the East in his nature. But this is covered and hidden by ready adaptation of Western civilisation. The Russian, as you see him in Petersburg or in Moscow in direct contact with other civilisations, often gives indications of his Tartar origin. These traits, though they remain, fail, however, to strike you when you see the Russian in the far east of his empire, the master of a hundred races. There he is the white, civilised Westerner, whose stride is that of a conqueror. The Mongolians, who once scourged the world, now bustle and make an avenue to let pass a young lieutenant with eight brass buttons on his coat, gold epaulettes on his shoulders, and a black scabbarded sword at his side.
In earlier chapters I rather dwelt upon the free and easy, almost democratic life of the Siberians, largely due to the fact that the genuine Siberian was never a serf as the Russian was. He, therefore, shows hardly any servility in his disposition, and is free to talk about his government as no man dare speak in Petersburg. I noticed this as soon as I crossed the Urals, and was impressed with the fact by the time I got to Irkutsk.
But at Irkutsk there ended the great stretch of Siberia that had been inhabited by Russian settlers and political exiles. Eastwards beyond Lake Baikal reared a mountainous territory, undeveloped, unfavourable to settlers, with scanty, decaying Buriat tribes in the valleys, and occasional gangs of convicts or adventurers working for gold and silver in the hills. All through the trans-Baikal and Amur provinces, however, with the thinnest of population, consisting of immigrants from Russia, who had not come under the influence of the Siberian freedom, this democratic aspect was missing. Troops of Cossack soldiers on the banks of the Shilka and Amur rivers were the directors of policy, and bayonets the arguments.
At Khabarovsk and down to Vladivostok I found myself in another stratum. Not one in ten of the Russians had come here through Siberia. The great majority had travelled round from Odessa by sea. They were Russians proper, and all the severe, rigid, official discipline was in evidence. Everything was in accordance with regulation.
For instance, I went out on the gangway between the railway coaches to admire the scenery. "That is against the rules; you must not stand there; it is strictly forbidden," said the conductor.
Later on he came to my compartment, where the back of one of the seats was raised to allow the lower seat to be broader to make a bed. "You must please let me alter that seat to its usual state for daytime," he said.
"But I want it to remain as it is," I replied, "because I may desire to lie down and sleep."
"But the regulations!" he urged.
"Never mind the regulations," I answered, "that is going to remain." He brought a superior, who, however, only shrugged his shoulders, and let the foreigner have his way.
All the officers on the train by paying third-class fare were able to travel second-class, which is almost as good as the first. There was not room for all, however, and many were obliged to actually travel third. But the third-class coaches were already heaving hives of Chinese and Chinamen's multifarious bundles. From one of these carriages the Chinamen and their belongings were ignominiously ejected. They went like cattle. An ordinary goods van, without seats or windows, and with sliding panels for doors, was in the rear of the train, and into this as many Chinamen as possible scrambled, filling it till there seemed to be only standing room. Still other Chinamen attempted to struggle in, but were driven back.
"Are you going to put on another waggon for them?" I inquired.
"Oh, no, they are only Chinamen, and they will have to wait till to-morrow's train."
The night was bitterly, bitingly cold. We first-class passengers were comfortable enough with our double windows and hot-air pipes. But those shivering Chinamen! I heard a hubbub at a wayside station in the darkness of the night and jumped out. There were a few flickering lamplights piercing the blackness.
"What's the matter?" I asked an official.
"Oh, those Chinamen in the waggon want to have the doors closed because they say it is cold."
"Poor devils! and so it is," I said. "Why can't they have the place closed up, and so keep themselves a little warm?"
"Well, it is against the regulations for them to be shut up so that the conductor can't see what they are doing."
On the train was a first-class restaurant car. At one end was a buffet where all sorts of snacks were on sale, and a white-bloused, white-capped chef presided. There were, however, no regulation hours for meals. You had what you liked, when you liked. In the morning when I had my coffee, there was a telegraph official, yellow braided, sitting next me drinking vodka, and opposite was an engineer, green braided, noisily slithering soup into his mouth; and a little up the table was a military officer, gold and red braided, drinking tea and eating cakes.
The country we ran through in that two days' journey was first over a stretch of country wooded with thin-limbed trees, but mountainous in the hazy distance. At places the ground was ripped with torrents. There were stretches of dreary, drab-coloured grass a yard high.
Compared with the railway journey between Moscow and Streitinsk, this Ussuri section of the trans-Siberian line was badly laid. It was jolt and jerk and bump all day and all night long. I felt at times that if only the engine managed to get off the metals the running might have been easier.
Long sweeps of the line were under repair, fresh metals being put down and better ballasting provided. All the work was done by soldiers, well-built young fellows, with their shirts open at the throat, their braces hanging loose, and a little yellow-banded cap stuck on the back of their heads.
On the second day we ran through a wild country, with huge, round-shouldered hills and shadowy dells reminiscent of wildest Scotland if, instead of heather hues, you can conceive sides bunched with rich variegated undergrowth.
Somebody shouted something.
On the right, far off, like the gleam of a sword blade, was the glitter of the Pacific Ocean. I had travelled far since I saw the sea before. And then the sunset! I have a weakness for sunsets, and this one was wonderful; a mass of gold and blood, like a great cauldron into which other worlds were thrown, banking up the heavens behind a mass of clouds.
The train reached the edge of the sea and hastened along, between cleft rocks, shrieking its progress, and the echoes came back from the hills. A few Chinese junks were stranded on the shore. We began to run by a suburb of shanties. Then we stopped beneath a hill.
What place was this? Well, this was the original Vladivostok station, and you had to drive by droshki a few versts over the hill to the town. This was in strict accordance with the planting of Siberian stations.
The train grunted on up an incline and round an elbow of rock. Dusk was closing in. I stood at the window. There was the Pacific, smooth and now as dull as a sheet of lead. By the line tramped soldiers who had ceased work for the day. There was a little log-built, drab-painted hut. Before it stood a man holding a green flag. I am sure it was his brother I saw at the first signal-hut out of Moscow nearly two months before. He was wearing a beard like him, and his peaked cap was pulled well over his eyes. His red shirt was hanging just outside his trousers just in the old way. And the green flag was wrapped round the little stick in umbrella folds, just as it was a verst east of Moscow.
Those signalmen and those green flags I had seen all the way, save on the Shilka and Amur rivers, and there the signals wore red and white posts.
The back yards of rows of houses crept into view just as they do when you are introduced to an English town by rail. Then came the crossing of a broad street, and the iron barriers were checking a surge of traffic - carts and carriages, uniformed Russians, white-smocked Koreans, blue-shirted Chinese.
We were in Vladivostok station, the end of the great trans-Siberian railway line, and it was the only station from Petersburg to the Pacific that was right in the town. As I jumped from the carriage, my eye was attracted by a big board on which, in massive letters, was inscribed: "Vladivostok to St. Petersburg, 9,877 versts." It was five o'clock in the evening of Wednesday, October 2nd, but nine o'clock in the morning by Greenwich time.
Most of us take to towns as we do to persons at the first blush or not at all. I felt attracted to Vladivostok before I had been in it ten minutes.
About the station was vigorous, energetic life. A porter seized my baggage, and instead of slouching ran so that I might secure a carriage. He was the first Russian I had ever seen in a hurry.
The drivers were alive, and swung up their horses with a crack. Most of these men were fair-whiskered and light-eyed, picturesquely clad in cloaks of blue velvet and with red shirt sleeves sticking through the armholes. On their heads were curly astrakhan hats.
The carriage rattled over the stones of a strongly paved street. On the right was the harbour, a fine fifty-acre kind of lake, hill locked. In strong array were anchored in line eight Russian men-o'-war ships, all painted white, and apparently ready for business. Little launches puffed and snorted.
On the quay side wore two passenger steamers, one in that morning from Japan. The singing of the Chinese gangs as they tro 'tted along under the weight of bales was heard above the clatter of wildly driven droshkies - and all the carriages in Vladivostok tear along as though there was a chariot race, so that, as there is no rule of the road, you are on the brink of a newspaper paragraph whenever you go out - while little bunches of sailors went rolling by rather drunken, and with their arms round each other's necks.
On the other side of the street reared huge white painted balustraded and ostentatious stores, as big as the shops in Regent Street, but not so continuous.
Building was everywhere, a big hotel here, a colossal magasin there, a block of offices somewhere else, everything telling of a new town in the throes of development - a broad asphalted pavement at one place, planks broken and uneven in another.
On the slope of a hill I saw the stars and stripes of America waving over a house. I looked about for the Union Jack but could not see it.
When I had settled in my hotel, run on the American plan - so much a day for room and board, and you pay whether you have it or not - I went out to visit the English Consul. There wasn't one. So I cabled upon the American representative, Mr. Theodore Greener, whose position is that of Commercial Agent for the United States. I found him in a neat office, with walls decorated with stars and stripes, the book-cases full of reports on trade, and all odd corners filled with catalogues of American firms who want to open up a business connection with Eastern Siberia.
"And there isn't a British Consul or British representative here?" I moaned with patriotism in the dust.
"No. There are commercial representatives of France and Germany and America, Holland and Japan, but no British representative. One or two of the Britishers here have been worrying your Foreign Office this last year or two, but they don't take much notice. Guess you Britishers don't want trade. We Americans and the Germans have the most of it. Still this would be a chance for England. America and Russia have a tariff war on now, and there is a 40 per cent. duty on American goods."
"And that had crippled American imports?" I asked.
"Yes, quite considerable. But the war will soon be over."
"Do many commercial men come here opening up business?"
"Oh, yes, but not many Britishers; they're chiefly Americans. My commercial reports are published by the State Department, and every mail brings me a letter from firms all over the States asking if I'd distribute a few of their circulars. Of course I would. I tell them to send plenty right along. That's what I'm here for. Quite a few American business men - maybe paying a visit to Japan - run up here just to see if there are any dollars about. Well, I take them about, introduce them to men who are likely to do import trade, and explain to them Russian methods. Vladivostok looks out of the world on a map, but it is going to he a great place for trade in a year or two."
All my investigations during a stay of over a week in Vladivostok were, I confess, not particularly appetising to my nationality. There is one English firm working a coal mine, some little distance out of the town, and making it pay; the same firm send a steamer once a year up to Kamschatka, and barter rice and cheap guns for skins; also, they hope to have the concession to illuminate Vladivostok with electricity and run electric cars. But apart from this firm little is done by English folk.
The impression left on my mind, after inquiring into the foreign import trade all through Siberia, is that Germany comes first, America makes a good second, while Great Britain is a very bad third, with France and Austria on her heels.
Vladivostok certainly needs a British Commercial Agent. A university man is not necessary, but a man who understands trade, who is not above finding out the price of candles in local stores, who will keep his eyes on things in demand, and knows how cheaply they can be made in England, would be invaluable.
One day I lunched with the representative of the Vienna Chamber of Commerce, who was travelling through Siberia looking where there were openings for Austrian wares. He was spending five weeks in Vladivostok alone. He was acquainted with the manufactures of his own country. He bought samples of Russian goods, sent them off to Vienna, reported the general price and gave a list of Russian firms who would be likely to buy Austrian articles.
Another day I met a Britisher from Shanghai who was half despondent and half blasphemous about British trade not holding its own.
Personally I know the majority of British Consuls in the East are capable men. But he was furious against the whole tribe. He gave me what he called an instance of how the British Consul is "too big for his job." He went into a consulate recently and asked:
"Could you, please, give me a list of all the merchants in this town who are in such-and-such a line?"
"Who are you?" asked the Consul.
"Well, I'm travelling to push this particular line in the East."
"Look here," said the Consul, "you musn't think I'm here as a sort of directory to help men who have got something to sell."
"Then what are you here for?" asked the traveller.
"Your manner is rather rude," said the Consul.
"Please tell me what you are here for, if it is not to help the British firms who want to develop trade, and I will apologise," said the traveller.
"You quite misunderstand a Consul's duties," replied Great Britain's representative.
"Now," continued this wrathful Englishman to me, "I went straight to the German Consulate and asked as politely as I could if he had a list of firms who dealt in so-and-so. Of course he had; he told me all about the local prices and who would be likely to do business with me. And all this very kindly to a Britisher not a Dutchman, whereas that -" then came a purple-worded description of the Consul.
The first idea I got of Vladivostok remained during my stay. It is a busy and lively town. It hugs the side of billowy hills and at the same time clings to the harbour side. This harbour is made by nature, not large but deep, absolutely shut off from the Pacific and guarded by a row of fortress teeth. Once or twice I went roaming with my camera, but everywhere on the hills around I was checked with a notice to keep off forbidden ground. All the hills overlooking the channel way from the ocean to the harbour - where all the navies of the world could be smuggled away and nobody find them by searching the coast line - seem burrowed with forts. Every day one or more of the eight warships in harboar went out and did target practice. I climbed a mound behind the town, about as high as Arthur's Seat at Edinburgh, and obtained a fine view of the town and harbour.
The Russians are very proud of the way they have guarded Vladivostok against attack. Yet friendship to other navies is always outstretched. A couple of Italian men-of-war ships came in during my visit, and there was firing of salutes, dinner parties and junketings, whilst the Russian and Italian sailors fraternised and drove about in droshkies, generally five in a droshki that can really carry two; and the Russian sailor was affectionate to his visitor, put his arm round his neck, and kissed him.
Only two foreign battleships are allowed in Vladivostok harbour at once. This is a regulation the British squadron on the Chinese station is responsible for. A few years ago, when one of the many fogs was hanging over the harbour, some ten British warships came in quietly, dropped anchor in position facing the town, and made all the Russians gasp the next morning when the fog lifted. They did more than gasp; they were furious. Hence the regulation.
You cannot exhaust the sights of Vladivostok in an afternoon as you can most Siberian towns. There is much to be seen. Most attractive to me were the street scenes, the officials, military and naval, the business men really moving and not dawdling the day away, which most Russians do, to the tantalisation of all brisk Westerners; the gangs of Chinese labourers, who work from sundown to sundown, and are always happy; the perky little Japanese, aping European costume, whilst their womankind keep to their winsome Nipponese garb, and go clattering about on wooden shoes; and the Koreans, all in white and with features so soft that you mistake them for women: a polyglot crowd indeed, all helping to make the town prosperous.
No man can come through Siberia to such a place as Vladivostok and give a thought to what Russia has done in the generation without being amazed. He may criticise Russian manners and growl at Russian diplomacy, and wonder how people can live under an autocratic government! But Russia has laid hold on the East.
I went a walk one evening in the public gardens. There was a statue fronting the Pacific to General Nevelskof, who laboured long and successfully for Russian dominion. On the plinth are inscribed his own words: "When a Russian flag is once hoisted it must never be lowered!"
Chapter XVIII: A Plunge into the Forbidden Land of Manchuria
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