THE REAL SIBERIA
John Foster Fraser
Mindenken - The Making of the Railway - Three Miles of Line a Day - A Day among the Mountains - Hilar - A Walled City - Back in Siberia
FOR a whole day, Tuesday, October 15th, the goods train in which I journeyed trundled the Sungari plain, called the eastern Gobi desert.
The eye ranged across a sea of dun-coloured, rank grass. A bleak wind whistled mournfully.
The only excitement was when the train got off the line, which it did thrice in the day. Then as my waggon was cold and my limbs ached, I was able to get out and run to stimulate warmth. I never saw a village, though there were plenty of Cossack guard stations.
My quarters in the van were wretched, but they were better than those of the other passengers - may-be twenty, excluding Chinese coolies - for they were in open trucks, and looked blue with cold. A big, black-bearded Russian, and the little Jew I met near the frontier, came and asked permission to travel with me. As far as I had any authority they were welcome enough, and they showed their gratitude by boiling water for me whenever I showed a disposition towards tea-drinking. I would not like to hazard a guess how much tea I did drink. It had the merit of providing warmth.
There was a closed waggon under the guard of eight Cossacks. Two young fellows jumped out at one of our many halts, and we got into conversation round a wood fire. They were Russians, but one of them spoke English like a Britisher. He had lived for some years at Shanghai. He and his companion were in the employ of the Russo-Chinese Bank, and were taking along something approaching a million roubles to open a branch of the bank at Hilar, in Mongolia.
The line was too unsteady for night travelling, and so the train pulled up at dusk, and remained stationary till morning.
I was out in the open before daylight to watch the break of day, just a leaden streak, then a gleam of silver, then a crimson flush, and then the sun, like a great pear, climbing over the edge of the world. Fires had been blazing all night, with Cossacks lying around, or sitting chatting, or making ready the eternal tea.
Once more we went on, and by nine o'clock we were at the station of Tsitsikar, a flourishing Chinese city, but twenty-five versts from the railway. So I saw nothing of it. We had a long wait, for what nobody knew, except that when my Russian banking friend and I went into a little inn where we miqht get some soup, we found the engine driver very drunk, and still drinking. In the afternoon he was willing to take the train on, and though the driving was reckless and we were banged till we were sore, the fates were kind and we did not leave the metals.
What I saw that evening will long remain in memory.
We were beyond sleet and rain, and sundown came over the land majestically. Far off was a prairie fire, and the last rays of the sun, catching the volumed smoke, illuminated it like a purple mantle, while the dreary, drab grass was burnished into old gold. The ground was marshy with a hundred lakes dotted with islands, and broken by peninsulas, and millions of wild fowl cluttered over the water and screeched at our coming. So night fell.
Suddenly, straight ahead, as though the palace of a genii had been lit up, there blazed a hundred lights. Electric lamps!
Yes, electric lamps, so that the Russians might see for the building of their great iron bridge over the Nuni river, which is really the parent of the Sungari. The train came to a standstill under the glare of those lamps alongside other tracks laden with waggons and cars. Russian officials were moving about with lanterns, and growing hoarse yelling orders to hordes of Chinese coolies.
The electric light gives a blue, pale, eerie look to the human countenance in the streets of an English town; but here, away in middle Manchuria, the light pouring down on heavily clad and top-booted Russians, and wild-featured, sheepskin-hatted Cossacks, and the lean, shining-faced Chinese all screaming, and with glint of the electric light flashing to you from their slit eyes-well, it was a curious scene!
Great wooden sheds reared at intervals across the river. These were built about the foundations, already laid, and the clang of iron smote the ear. For there are two thousand Russians and five thousand Chinese working night and day, seven days and seven nights in the week, pressing on with the building of that bridge.
When I looked upon that spectacle of iron shafts being reared, heard the snort of steam cranes swinging girders into place, and beheld how everybody seemed animated with an almost demoniac haste, I understood what the Russians can do when they are really determined.
Alongside this rearing structure was a creaking temporary wooden bridge laid with metals. No engine dare attempt to cross it, but it can bear two or three waggons at a time. The waggons of our train were uncoupled. Some fifty or sixty Chinese surrounded them and started to push and sing.
The singing was a low, melodious monotone, such as I have heard from the Yang-tze boatmen in Western China. One man had the solo, and the rest was a rich chorus. When the waggons yielded to the pushing and ran easily, the singing became more catchy, sprightly, and the chorus was a series of short gleeful barks at every step taken.
I stood on an open platform while we went across the huge, clanging bridgework on the left, with great electric eyes looking down on us, and half lighting the sallow faces of the Chinese, and on the right the black waters of the slothful Nuni.
A village of workshops and huts, called Falardi, is on the north side of the river, and here the Russians live, and have a rough and ready restaurant, where I was able to get my first honest meal for a week.
Sometime in the night we went on again, but after an hour we stopped; then a few more versts on, and then stopped again, and then at a place called Bukarto we pulled up for what seemed the better part of the day. In thirty hours we had travelled eight miles.
Some of the time I had as companion a fine stalwart Russian officer of the frontier guard. The only word of English he knew was "Shocking!" That one word he made do good service. The line was " shockeeng! "the condition of our waggon was "shockeeng!" the delay was "shockeeng!" I gathered that he learnt the word by the fact that English characters in Russian novels most frequently use it!
Bukarto consisted of not more than a dozen log-houses, spread over about ten acres of shingled hill-side. Near at hand were low hills with black knuckles of rock protruding. A gusty wind swept up from the Gobi, and made eyes ache with sand. A caravan of dromedaries, maybe sixty of them, came out of the wilderness with slouching foot-pats, and disappeared away into the wilderness again.
Round an elbow of hill was a Cossack encampment, and as I was told the line was being re-metalled some dozen miles on, and the train might be delayed two, three, or four days, possibly a week, I went roaming the camp.
There was none of the smartness generally associated with military camps. The huts were of wheezy boards. There was no furniture except rude tables and rude stools. The beds were sheepskins thrown on the floor. All the cooking was done over log fires, out of doors, and the food chiefly consisted of black bread and tea.
The Cossacks, rough and dark-featured, lounged round or squatted on the ground cleaning their rifles.
Strolling back a Cossack came to me and said something gruffly. I told him I didn't understand what he was talking about, and went on. He followed me to the train. I jumped into the waggon. Two other Cossacks came along, and the three climbed in beside me.
They wanted me to do something, but I couldn't make out a word they were saying. The first soldier showed a disposition to throw my property out of the waggon.
Then the Britisher in me got uppermost, and I snatched my bag out of his grasp and told him to clear out. After a while he and his friends went. But in a quarter of an hour they came back, accompanied by an officer. We exchanged respectful salutations, and speaking in German he said I was not a Russian, and he wanted to know to what country I belonged.
I told him I was a Britisher, and a journalist.
Then he must ask me to accompany him to see the colonel of the guard!
I confess I had some misgiving. Here I was, checked at last, without any authority to go through Manchuria, and liable to uncomfortable treatment. I had come so far without any trouble, and I felt chagrined. I was practically under arrest, for as I walked along with the officer the three Cossacks fell in behind with fixed bayonets.
We marched to a bare-looking building, and I was left in custody of the soldiers while the officer went inside. I sat on a log with these grim Cossacks close by, ready to bring me down if I attempted to escape. So I put the best face on it I could, lit my pipe, and smoked.
In ten minutes the officer invited me to enter the building, which I did.
It was a bare kind of room with accoutrements hanging on the walls, an oleograph of the Czar, and some official papers. The colonel of the guard, a well-set, iron-haired man, rose as I entered, and we exchanged bows. He was very polite, and said he was sorry to trouble me, but as I was a foreigner he must know what I was doing in Manchuria.
I explained I had been across Siberia to Vladivostok, and was now on my way home.
But why, he asked, did I not return the ordinary route by the Amur and Shilka rivers?
Because, I said, the ice had stopped the steamers.
Ah, of course; but was I a military man?
I laughed and let him understand I hardly knew one end of a gun from the other; I was just a journalist travelling, and writing about what I saw.
So, then, I probably had papers explaining who I was?
Of course; and I produced my passport, and also my letters from St. Petersburg, recommending me to the courtesy of the Russian officials in Siberia. I knew there wasn't a word in them about Manchuria, and I stood patiently awaiting my fate.
Very slowly he went through those papers; then he carefully folded them and handed them back to me with a bow.
Yes, he said, they wore all right, and he was sorry to have put me to inconvenience. Would I join him at dinner?
I accepted, though my inclination was to laugh. To be arrested as a spy and the arrest to lead to an invitation to dinner had something decidedly humorous about it.
Over the dinner it came out that the train was likely to be delayed at least four days owing to the relaying of the line. I grumbled mildly.
"But," said my host, "the line is all right at Hingan, twenty versts on. I'll give you tarantass and horses, and you can get on there in a couple of hours, and I will telegraph to the station-master you are coming."
I was infinitely obliged.
So the very Cossacks who had worried me and followed me with fixed bayonets were sent as porters to bring my baggage from the train.
And just as dusk was falling two tarantasses, uncomfortable-looking carts, each drawn by three horses, pulled up; my goods and chattels were thrown into one; I climbed into the other, settled down among the hay, pulled my skins about me, received wishes for a good voyage from the officers, and so, with the bells on the harness jangling merrily, set off over the hills.
It was a long and cold drive. I lay at the bottom of the tarantass, with furs piled about me, and was cosy. There was no road - just a track, and all round were low black hills. Here and there were tufts of drifted snow. Twice we crossed streams, and the wheels crunched ice. Much of the way was through swampy woods. The earth was frozen hard.
A heavy, sombre stillness was on the world, broken only by the tinkling bells and the clatter of the cart. Now and then we met Manchus journeying in their quaint vehicles - long, and covered with matting, so that they looked like casks, and all lined with skins, making them warm, and the driver, slit-eyed, with high cheek-bones, sitting well inside so that he could hardly be seen.
In time we got back to the railway, and the road track ran alongside it. Beneath the trees fires blazed luridly. Gangs of coolies were cooking the evening meal. We struck a defile in the hills, and wound about them following the trail of a stream.
Hingan town was a long, straggling, distorted place, the houses new and built higgledy-piggledy, as like a Western American "boom" town as can be imagined.
It was not till I reached here that I discovered the drivers of my two carts were a couple of lymphatic Tartars, whose knowledge of Russian was as limited as my own. They did not know the way to the station.
So I jumped out at a drinking saloon and found myself among a number of Pole overseers in charge of the four thousand coolies working on the two miles of line under repair. They said the station was some versts on, up a hillside.
Off we set, slowly climbing zigzag a lean, dark mountain, with a few trees blasted and dead by the way. We stopped to give the horses breath, and then the only sound was the bark of dogs down in the town below. A thin sprinkling of snow was on the ground, and the air was biting with frost.
We reached the top, and there was a canvas camp, with again many fires lighting up the gloom, and with Chinamen flitting everywhere like shadows. It took half an hour winding among tree stumps before the station was reached - a barn of a building.
I was so cold I had hardly strength to push open the door. I found myself in a big room packed with piles of baggage and folks squatting on the floor. Russians don't like fresh air, and the place was fetid with the odour of unwashed bodies. It was a mixed crowd - soldiers, traders, moudjiks, women and children, some curled up asleep, but most sprawling in awkward attitudes. I got a man to pull my sheepskin coat from me, and sighting a samovar in the corner, I drank tea till I thawed.
It was not a savoury spot to spend a night in. The nostrils, however, soon got acclimatised, and the place was warm, which was the principal thing.
Presently in came the station-master, a thin slip of a man, extremely nervous, and anxious to do anything. He gave me his office to sleep in, and helped in arranging skins on the floor as a make-shift bed.
Inquiries about a train in the direction of Hilar brought out that there would not be one till six the next evening, I shrugged my shoulders, and was resigned to wait till then.
"But," said the station-master, "an engine and some trucks are going along to Mindenken, some sixty versts from here, and you can go by it, and it will start any time to suit you."
I was in luck's way again.
Five o'clock in the morning, I suggested. Yes, five o'clock in the morning for certain, and as there was a fourth-class carriage about, he would have it put on for me.
I woke myself at half-past four in the morning, and went out to see if the train was about.
Not a sign. It was pitch dark, save for a few blinking stars. It was so cold that hear lay on the boards half an inch thick.
On the other side of the line some Chinese were making tea. I went to their fire to warm myself. They offered me a cup, and delightful it was, though muddy. Then I went back to the station, and entered the room where the crowd of poor folks were.
Everybody was asleep, and the lamp flickered on upturned faces, unshaven soldiers, rough and thick-lipped peasants, plain women with the sadness of long patience on their faces, tiny mites of children dead tired, sleeping open-mouthed across the mothers' knees, and the little chubby fists hanging carelessly. They all, poor souls, were coming to this land of Manchuria from Siberia to labour and to earn their bread. I shut the door gently, not wanting to break the sleep that shutters care.
It was eight o'clock, a bright morning, but with cold that out like a wolf's tooth, when the engine came.
There was a grey-painted fourth-class carriage, bare and dirty, with a broken window, but still a carriage. There was shunting to get some trucks to go along.
The news spread that this was a train bound Siberia-wards. Then the trucks were besieged by an army of men who sprang from beneath the trees where they had been sleeping, men clad in woollen garments, with velvet breeches, huge felt leggings, sheepskin hats, but with the hair inside, making them look as though they had stewpots on their heads, great bundles swung behind them, and most of their beards a mass of icicles. They were labourers from Little Russia, in the south, with their work now over, returning home as best they could, and snatching the opportunity of a lift. With their padded clothes and great bundles they were hampered in their acrobatic efforts to clamber into those three trucks. However, they all got on, though they were wedged as tight as sardines.
Away dashed the train with its light load. The soil was stony, and so the ballast was good.
The country, however, was a featureless plain, but with the shoulders of hills heaving in the distance. I was nearing the terminus of the line, so far finished on the Manchurian side of the Hingan mountains.
There were stations by the way. One had been opened two days before and consisted of a single goods waggon.
With a shriek and a long whistle the train stopped opposite a few huts. This was Mindenken, the last spot to which trains that day ran.
So I had my belongings thrown on the bank, and set about finding means to take me over the mountains into Mongolia.
Chapter XXI: In a Corner of Mongolia
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