THE REAL SIBERIA
John Foster Fraser
In Search of Adventure - My Russian Kit - My Fellow-Travellers - Some Ugly Incidents
IT was at Vladivostok, after I had traversed the entire length of the trans-Asian Railway, that a particular idea began to ferment in my mind.
Crossing the mountains east of Baikal many of my companions had been officers, with green facings upon their uniforms. The green braid indicated they belonged to that part of the Russian army which guards the frontiers of the Czar's dominions. And one night while I was asleep, they disappeared at a station in the hills, called Katiska Rasiez. They had gone to Manchuria, which, for the peace of the world, has come under "temporary occupation" by Russian forces.
At Vladivostok I heard much about what Russia was doing in Manchuria, how 150,000 Cossack troops were in possession, carrying dread punishment to any bands of Chinese that resented the invasion, and how, under the name of the Eastern Chinese Railway, ostensibly Chinese, with a Chinese chairman of the board of directors, and the money largely provided by the Russo-Chinese Bank - though every penny comes out of the Russian exchequer, and nobody has a voice in the route, or the building, or the control, but Russians - the Muscovites were rapidly laying a line across Manchuria to Port Arthur and Vladivostok, with a junction at Harbin, so that, in case of war, military legions could be hastened to Pekin.
I heard stories of how the Russian cities wore springing up in a way that outstripped the mushroom growth of "boom towns" in Western America, how money was being made, and, above all, how night and day hundreds of thousands of men were working on the railway, and laying it at the phenomenal speed of three miles a day.
It is the policy of Russia to keep everything dark about what she is doing with her "temporary occupation" of Manchuria. She publishes nothing about the number of troops or how they are engaged, nothing about the Russian settlements, nothing about the railway. A strict watch is maintained that no prying foreigners should see what is being done. An English colonel, after serving in Pokin, proposed to return to England by way of Manchuria and Siberia. He got into Manchuria, but at Mukden was arrested in the politest manner, detained for a fortnight, and then, because it would be so dangerous for him to travel through a country so unsettled, he was, again very politely, though to his own chagrin, conducted to the frontier, and invited to return to his native land some other way. A brilliant war correspondent made a dash for it, got as far as Harbin, and was then turned back. I heard of other correspondents who had applied to the authorities for permission to cross Manchuria, and in every case were refused.
My journey across Siberia, from Moscow to Vladivostok, had lacked incident. And as a love of adventure first suggested a trip to Siberia, and as I had been disappointed in this, the thought of a plunge into the forbidden land of Manchuria laid hold on me.
I knew that if I sought official permission I would be refused. I decided not to ask but just start off and take chances.
At the last moment, just as an indication where I had gone, should anything untoward happen to me, I confided my intention to one or two English-men and Americans in Vladivostok. They smiled.
"Well, goodbye," they said, "and good luck; but you will be back here under arrest within a week."
On Thursday morning, October 10th, I went to the Vladivostok station, ostensibly to return to Khabarovsk and thence make my way up the waters of the Amur and the Shilka to Streitinsk, where I would strike the Siberian line. But I was equipped for another route.
I was dressed like a Russian. I wore a curly woollen Astrakhan hat, a great sheepskin coat, no cloth but the skin outside and the inside soft and warm - comfortable, though heavy, and giving off a stench like a tanyard - and I donned a pair of long-legged Russian boots. Further, I had a hamper packed with tinned provisions, meats, fish, jams, tea and sugtr, for while I expected to get hot water and bread on the way, I had my doubts about anything else.
In the Khabarovsk train I travelled about eighty versts to the military town of Nokolsk, which bristled with soldiers.
It was with just a tinge of regret and foreboding I then saw my train slowly puff away northwards, leaving me to my own devices.
It was a dull, chill afternoon, with the wind sighing drearily over the sandy wastes and making the air brown and thick with dust.
There would be no difficulty, I knew, about getting as far as Grodikoff, a Cossack town founded last year on the branch line that turns off to Manchuria and Port Arthur. So I bought my ticket, and rejoiced in the information I would not get there till dark.
We trundled through low-lying land, all dun and dismal, for though there was no snow, winter had stricken the land and it lay dead and bare. The sky was low and grey, suggesting a snowstorm, and the gale whistled about the crawling train as a storm sings in the rigging of a ship.
There were not many passengers. My few companions were officials - military men or engineers, or men having to do with the telegraphs.
I got into conversation with a chubby young Cossack officer who was proceeding to Mukden for two years' service, and did not seem to enjoy the prospect. In the dusk I pulled out my pipe-case intending to smoke.
"Ah!" he said, "I've got one of those," and he whipped out a loaded revolver from his hip pocket. He laughed when I showed him only a pipe.
"But what revolver are you carrying?" he asked, :a Colt or a Smith-Wesson?"
I told him I was a sufficiently experienced traveller not to carry a revolver at all. Thereupon he gave a not very appetising account of the things likely to happen to a man foolish enough to go into Manchuria without a revolver - about train thieves and marauding bands of Chinese. He knew, of course, I was a Britisher, but never once did he inquire if I had permission to cross Manchuria.
Rain was falling pitifully through pitch darkness when we reached Grodikoff. I saw nothing of the town. The station was just a barn place, with two wheezy oil lamps blinking in the wind. I got hold of two jaundiced Chinamen to carry my baggage and dump it down at an outhouse that served as a restaurant. Here a Tartar provided a supper of shashlik - bits of skewered mutton cooked over the ashes of a wood fire - a tender and juicy dish.
At ten o'clock came a scramble to the train, for we heard the snort of an engine that came along with goods waggon and open platforms and one third-class carriage.
This train would go on to Pogranitsa, the frontier station over the Manchurian border and twelve miles away. There were no tickets to be bought. It was just a train for the military, and if a civilian travelled by it he was supposed to have received military permission.
Those Russians who were not warriors made for the goods waggons, into which the ordinary soldiers climbed. The officers climbed into the third-class carriage.
I knew that if I went into the goods waggons suspicion would be aroused. So I just joined the officers and made friends at once. They offered their cigarettes and tea, and were laughingly indulgent over my execrable Russian. Instead of resenting my presence, they were delighted, and two of them insisted on using their baggage as seats, so that I might have one of the benches to lie on if I desired sleep.
However, I was in no mood for sleep. I had still to pass the frontier, and it was possible I might there be checked.
It took the train two hours covering the twelve miles between Grodikoff and Pogranitsa, over badly laid metals, dipping and rolling not unlike a ship in a troubled sea, and now and then giving a lurch with a thud as though she had been hit by a monstrous wave.
It was midnight, and rain was falling, when a few jerking lights and the groaning of the train to a standstill proclaimed we were at Pogranitsa and in Manchuria.
So far so good. We all tumbled out upon a soaked bank, slippery with slush. There were folks already waiting for the goods train that would be going on to Harbin and Port Arthur, including women and children, and all rather like bundles of clothes squatting in the darkness.
It was bitterly cold. Some of the soldiers got wood, however, and soon there were fires blazing.
The anxiety about being stopped soon passed from my mind. The only thing I was anxious about was for the coming of the train that would let us get out of the cold and wet.
It appeared a waiting of many hours, though it was just half-past one when, like a glaring-eyed dragon, a train appeared from I don't know where. There was one third-class carriage again, and the women and children got into that. There were three covered vans with sliding doors, a great deal less comfortable than any goods car in England. But they afforded shelter, and there was a wild fight in the darkness to get inside, because they were high perched, and there were no steps, and it required an acrobat to twist to mount.
Cumbered as I was with baggage, I was among the vanquished. But there was plenty of room on the platforms used for carrying rails and sleepers, although it was not cheerful being obliged to spend a night there. Anyway, I found myself among some rails and rolls of telegraph wire.
Rain had ceased; but as the boards were damp I spread my mackintosh on the floor, put my felt-lined goloshes over my boots, charged my pipe, wrapped myself in my sheepskins, and, with a coil of telegraph wire as a pillow, settled down to be comfortable.
At the other end of the platform I noticed a heaving mass. Presently two men emerged, and crawling to me, asked if there would be much trouble with the officials, because neither of them had passes to enter Manchuria.
I was obliged to laugh at finding others travelling under much the same condition as myself, save that they were Russians and I was a foreigner.
Indeed, to my amusement, later on, although at times there must have been a hundred and fifty passengers, including Chinese coolies and moudjiks, not half a dozen in the whole crowd had formal authority.
These goods trains were moving up and down the line irregularly, working to no time-table, really carrying no passengers, for no fares were demanded, yet free to anybody who cared to take rough luck, and who were not particular to a week or ten days.
It was a means of progress that suited me admirably. If successful in getting through the country, I would be able to form a very good idea about that "temporary occupation" of which we have heard so much.
One of my companions was an elderly, grizzle-bearded man, a better class trader, who wanted to see if he could open a store at Harbin, or Hingan, or at Hilar, the three towns in close touch with the railway. The other was an excitable little Jew from Moscow, travelling with cheap jewellery, and the possessor of a revolver, which he was always taking out and unloading and loading, and carrying first in this pocket and then in that, and once dropping it, so that, high-handedly, I threatened that if he didn't put the thing away and keep it away I would pitch it as far as my arm would throw.
In the midst of our talk a braided official with a lantern came along, and climbed upon the platform. I was huddled and apparently asleep when he flashed the light on me and wanted to see my permit.
I blinked and yawned "Nitchevo," at the same time sticking a couple of roubles into his hand, and then burying myself in my wraps drowsily.
That was the end of it. He went away, and I supposed generally gathered roubles from everybody without a pass.
So at last I was fairly embarked on my adventure. As the train slowly jerked its uneven way through the black night, and I lay looking at the stars, I was happier than I had been for a long time. The train surged among scant plantations, nothing but thin bare poles.
Now and then, however, blazed a log fire, and tired workers were lying round or squatting and drinking tea and chatting.
Maybe for a couple of hours I slept, but woke in the raw dawn shivering with the cold. Heavy rime lay on everything.
The train had come to a standstill at a siding. There were tents about, and Cossacks with sheepskin hats hanging shaggily over their eyes, giving them a sinister look, were moving up and down, heavily cloaked and with guns slung across their shoulders.
A Cossack was boiling his kettle over a log fire, and I followed the example of half a dozen other travellers by getting out my kettle, jumping from the train - how one's limbs ache after a night's exposure - and boiling water for the ever-good Russian tea. I asked a soldier if he could sell me some bread. No; he had none. But an officer standing by said he could lot me have some. He sawed me off about two pounds from a ton-pound loaf. I asked him what I should pay, but he laughed at the question.
Then, hunting out a tin of sardines and asking him to join me in eating them, I sat on a log and had a frugal but hearty breakfast, just as the young day was peeping over the land.
All day we jogged along fitfully, never travelling faster than five or six miles an hour, and halting often and long. The track was like a couple of lines drawn by a palsied hand. There was little or no banking up. As far as possible the ordinary earth surface was used. The metals, however, were heavy, of the same weight as those general in England, and much stronger than anywhere on the trans-Siberian stretch. There was evidence that this line had been thrown down with haste. It was nothing more than a makeshift line.
What, however, was not a makeshift line was the permanent way in course of construction, either on one side or the other.
Here were thousands of Chinamen at work. Proper levellings were being made, banks built up, cuttings delved, everything indicating that the new line will be for heavy traffic.
The Chinamen swarmed the banks like ants, though with a less show of industry. They were all going about their work in a slow, leisurely way. So the joke of the Russians was to shout, "Hello, tortoises!" whenever a dawdling group was passed.
The Chinese used silly little shovels with big, thick shafts, and all the earth, whether to bank up or to clear a cutting, was carried in baskets certainly not holding more than six pounds' weight of soil.
Along the way were sleepers and piles of rails, telegraph poles, coils of telegraph wire, and a hundred things necessary m railway building, but ill lying about apparently in utmost confusion. Heavy engines were snorting over the new line in places - all American, built by Baldwin of Philadelphia - and in one place, where the bank had slipped under the weight, and on its side, among a mass of wrecked trucks, was one of these fine machines.
Though very cold the day was bright, and, as there was plenty to see, the ride was by no means unenjoyable. All along the route were Cossack guards. In places the railway workers were not Chinese but Manchus, and in other places groups of gentle-featured, white-garbed Koreans were labouring with Russian overseers.
We began to climb great sweeps of upland covered with rustling, bleached grass until our altitude was 1,915 feet. There was little to indicate that we had gone up a mountain. The descent on the other side, however, was sharp and quick. In about four years' time a tunnel, being made by a firm of Hungarian contractors, will be completed, and then there will not be the long curves to the top nor the sudden zigzags to the bottom They were real zigzags. A Baldwin engine was fastened to the back of the train, and held the trucks in cheek while the leading engine slid down the mountain side until she ran into a cul-de-sac, and there stopped. Then the engine that had been in the rear went first on the other track. So the train zigzagged down the mountain. From its height the view was impressive. The valley below lay in black shadow. But the eye could range over the knuckles of neighbouring hills, flushed with sunshine, to mountains in the far distance that reared like masses of purple haze.
We halted at decrepit, dirty villages, half Manchu, half Russian, with everything opposite to the picturesque about them, many of the houses sloping from top to ground, all roof as it were. Any cooking was done outside. At each station was flying a Chinese flag of yellow, showing the contorted, spiteful dragon. But one corner of the yellow was cut away, and there was inserted the red, blue, and white of Russia.
That afternoon we pulled up near three shanties on a woodside, and a gang of Chinese - all squabbling and making noises like dogs growling over bones - fought with one another to get on a platform, where a boiler, made by a New York firm, was chained. There was a scuffle. One Chinese was pushed back-wards and fell. His head hit the metals and cracked like a nut. He gave a wriggle and died. The Russians who saw the accident were affected. The Chinese laughed. He lay for an hour in the sun until I undid his sleeping rug and spread it over his face.
He was soon forgotten. A Chinese threw some hot water over a growling dog and made it howl. At this there were shrieks of mirth. The engine puffed and groaned and jerked the waggons into progress. The last I saw of this spot was two Chinamen pitching mud at the same dog to keep it from sniffing at the body of the dead.
Chapter XIX: A Manchurian "Boom" Town
Return to Main Page