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
YOU will not find on a map the cluster of wooden huts called Mindenken, where the Manchurian railway, on Saturday, October 19th, 1901, came to a sudden stop. But you may easily find the Hingan mountains, breaking north-east between Mongolia and Manchuria, and if you draw a line from Hilar, spelt sometime Chailar, in the land of the Mongols, to Sitsikar, spelt sometimes Tsitsihar, in the land of the Manchus, you may suppose Mindenken to lie within the eastern shadow of the Hingan range.
I have said that on that Saturday the railway stopped suddenly at Mindenken. On the Sunday it would stop further west, and on Monday further west still; whilst all the time, on the other side of the hills, the line was creeping south. So within a fortnight after I had passed that way the two sections would have joined, and the dream of travellers to make a journey from Paris to Pekin by rail be complete.
For never since man has been able to wield a spade has any work been pushed on with such rapidity as this eastern Chinese railway.
I took a walk several miles up the line to where the building was in progress. Towards a great cleft in the mountain a track was staked over the barren plain. Three thousand Chinese coolies were doing nothing else but shovel the adjoining earth into baskets, swing two baskets at the end of a pole across their shoulders, carry it to between the stakes, and build a bank some two or three feet above the level. They worked slowly and carried paltry amounts of earth, and dawdled on their way back for another load.
Yet what a lot of blue ants they were, surging to and fro and gradually, at the shout of the Russian overseer, moving further along the plain.
On the new bank marched men, levelling the earth where it humped. Stacked near by were piles of sleepers. Coolies seized these and flung them across the track, not always straight, and at distances sometimes a foot, sometimes three feet apart.
Not many yards behind where the rails were being laid came a trolley. On this were other rails. A dozen men on one side, a dozen men on the other, caught two rails, ran forward with them, thumped on the sleepers, and then - with a Russian foreman holding a stick to measure the exact distance they should be kept apart - there came the clang of hammers and the driving of clamps. That finished, there was possibly a levering up of a sleeper, and the shovelling under of earth to get something approximate to evenness. Then the trolley rumbled forward a few yards, and other two rails were seized and laid.
Behind all was a long goods train, filled with railway building material, crawling in the wake of the workmen and feeding them with sleepers, and rails, and bolts.
I walked over the section built on the Friday. It was humpy; the two rails were like the first effort of a child to draw parallel lines; in some places the rail was holding the sleeper end from the ground instead of resting on it.
But here was the great fact: the railway was being built, trains could run over it, and troops be carried. And the laying of that line was at the extraordinary rate of three English miles a day!
That day, a distance of 40 miles (60 versts) separated the two sections of the line working towards one another. This I was to cover in a tarantass. For the convenience of engineers and officers, and British journalists, there was a post station, rather like a cowhouse, exceedingly dirty, and when I looked at the roof, not more than six inches above my head, I shuddered at finding it simply heaving with bugs.
The peasant Russians have a superstition about these creatures. They won't kill them. Indeed, when they build a new house they fill a hat full of bugs from the old residence and turn them loose in the new one, for a house without bugs is an unlucky house. The things kept falling on the floor and the table, and on my person.
I had a bowl of cabbage soup, but, while eating it, it was necessary to hold my hat over the dish like a lid to avoid accidents.
With much patience, I got three horses and the tarantass. A few kopecks led to a double quantity of hay being thrown in the bottom of the tarantass so I might be more comfortable. The horses - one in the middle with a big wooden arch, painted green, red, and yellow over it, and with jangling bells, and one on either side - were sturdy animals. The driver was a lean Tartar who had taken to Russian dress. With him on the front of the car sat a sharp-faced Russian soldier, whom it was thought necessary to send with me in case a few Boxers threatened attack.
There was no road as we Britishers understand a road, only a well-marked track into the mountains.
There was a low wind blowing, so that at times we were enveloped in dust. The day, however, although bitterly cold, was fine, with the bluest of skies.
And what a joy it was to escape from the evil-smelling, jolting train, and sit at one's ease behind three horses that were racing like the wind! The intoxication of motion settled on me, and the ride was delightful.
There was nothing impressive about the mountains. They were old mountains, rounded with age, the valleys all filled in and as level as plains. We took great sweeps up a mountain side, but once over the ridge, there stretched another filled-up valley, with here and there the head of a rock sticking forth as though refusing to be buried.
Twice we passed halting caravans in charge of Mongols, who looked at us drowsily as the sweating horses scampered by.
The country was desolation: long, rank grass with patches of swamp on the hillsides, ragged sheets of black marking the range of summer fires. Not a tree was anywhere. It was a barren region. And yet when the horses stood panting after a long climb there was satisfaction in looking at this corner of the world, so far from the bustling, active West, and watching the heave of the hills till they faded in a purple haze.
In the middle of a plain we came upon a newly built hut, half a dozen low-roofed felt tents, and a fenced yard with horses and tarantasses about. This was Yackshi Kosatshi, where horses were to be changed.
The postmaster was a pock-marked, red-whiskered, surly rascal, who gruffly told me he had no horse.
I pointed him out thirty.
Well, those had just come in and were dead tired, and he couldn't let them go out under four hours!
Next I pointed out that twenty of the horses had not been out all day, judging from their appearance.
Oh, well, he expected some officials along.
Of course he was lying. He was simply wanting to be bribed into doing his duty as a special favour. I gave him two roubles and told him I would expect three of his best horses to be ready in half an hour. Then I crawled into one of the tents where some moudjiks were eating, made myself tea, and ate a hunk of bread. Coming out I found the horses waiting.
I've never seen horses in my life that could go like those three.
The driver was a wiry old man, with tiny, twinkling eyes, and a huge flowing beard. And the pride he took in the pace of his horses! Standing up, he swung the loose end of the reins round his head and gave a yell. The horses bolted. There was no fear of collision with anything except a mountain. With practically no weight for three horses to draw the animals tore along, their heads in the air. I gripped the side of that tarantass, enjoying it immensely, but with a little wonder at the back of my head what exactly would happen if something gave way. Russians love their horses to go fast, and frequently the old fellow would turn round and grin and ask me if the ride was good.
A steep hill with the uneven track hugging its side, reduced the horses to a walk. I got out and walked also.
The day was just beginning to soften to grey when I stood on the top of the Hingan Mountains, Manchuria behind and Mongolia in front. There was a pile of stones close by, accumulated through the ages. Every traveller, Mongol, Manchu, Chinese, Russian, or wandering Britisher, is expected to contribute to the pile. I roamed till I found a loose stone, threw it on the heap, had one last look at Manchuria, and, climbing into the tarantass, was carried at a breakneck speed down upon a corner of the great Gobi desert. It was all a wild waste, with the wind sobbing fitfully.
There was something, however, that attracted my attention It was a rude wooden cross. Some way-farer had fallen, and here had been buried, and friends had raised this rough emblem of his faith.
Mad hallooing on the part of my driver, and spurring on of the horses, that should have been spent, but were not, symbolised our arrival at Bolshei Yackshi. It was a lanky Russian village, crouching in the shelter of a hill as though it would escape the sweeping sandstorm that roared along from the Gobi. The houses were of logs, but, with the exception of a little passage for the doorway and a little aperture for the window, every house was like a pile of earth, for sods had been planted over to help in resisting the winter cold.
We drove some versts beyond, out to the plain again, bumped over a railway crossing, saw workmen's tents and pulled up at a wooden house, which was the station. The dust had given me the face of a collier fresh from the pit.
The first thing I did was to hunt up the station-master, a youngish, anaemic man, shivering from the cold, and asked about a train to the frontier.
"Next morning, at daybreak," said he sourly, and he pointed out the cars a long way off, and told me I would find a fourth-class carriage. So off I trudged.
The fourth-class carriage was under the charge of a poor, cringing wisp of a man, who had the place heated with a stove to an absolutely unbearable temperature. But he was willing to do anything to oblige. So the windows were soon open, and he tramped off to get a pail of water from somewhere. Then, with him holding a lantern and my converting the carriage step into a dressing table, I stood out on the desert and had my first wash for two days.
Next, in Saturday cleanliness, I went away back to the station to hunt for food, because the successful progress of a journalist, like that of an army, largely depends on the stomach. In a dirty hovel of a place I got a man to sell me a tin of sardines for 4s. Bread was cheaper, and I got a two-pound chunk for ten-pence. When I returned with my provisions the train attendant had boiling water, and soon tea was ready. That carriage was full of the odours of blistered paint.
Therefore I preferred to sit on the railway bank, while my wisp of a man rummaged round and gathered chips from sleepers to keep a fire going.
The next morning, Sunday, October 20th, no engine put in its appearance.
"When would it?" I inquired.
"Ce chas"! At nine o'clock; at midday ; certainly in two hours; without doubt at five o'clock!"
It was a raw, drear Sunday.
I was the only person waiting for a lift, and it was lonely. The man was, of course, a sort of companion, but he had a smirking Uriah Heep way of raising his shoulders and rubbing his hands that was irritating.
I walked up and down for an hour or two for exercise, and he sat watching me as though I were some animal that amused him, yet which he wanted to please.
In the afternoon some Mongols came along on camels and driving a herd of sheep. They camped for the night and killed a sheep. I bought part of it. It was something to do, for while the man made a fire, I cut up the meat for soup, and when the blaze had gone out and nothing remained but glowing embers, I threaded bits of the mutton on a wooden skewer and cooked them over the glowing wood.
That is what is called shashlik. I don't know what it would be like in an English dining-room, but eaten on the Gobi Desert, though it did taste of the skewer, and there were ashes on it, it was one of the daintiest and most luscious dishes imaginable.
No signs of any incoming train that night! No signs either in the morning! At noon, however, there was a put of smoke on the horizon, and in about two hours in crawled a train.
What had been the delay? There had been three trucks off the line! But in two hours, when the engine-driver had fed, he would take back our train.
Two hours, four hours, six hours went, and the engine, which had gone on with material for railway building some twelve versts further, did not return. Why? The same three tracks had gene off the line a second time!
So another day went.
The wind never ceased blowing from the desert, bringing with it a haze of sand which gave the sun a dull, bronzed hue. Night came in an angry mood, and the gale hissed and spat around my dreary habitation. Far in the night, however, there was a bump and a jerk. It was impossible to sleep, but I didn't mind, for the train was going on at last.
What a morning!
The sky dark and lowering, the train staggering over a world widowed of all beauty! There was snow and sleet and rain.
In a hurricane of the elements we reached Hilar, a great Mongol city. When I jumped from the train and felt the full blast of the cold, it was as though I had been shot with a thousand needles. There were new-built Russian houses about, but no evidence of the Mongol city.
Rubbing up acquaintance with a Russian, I learnt the city was two miles away, and we set out to see it together. On the way we came to a Chinese temple with low, fluted roof, curled up at the corners in the customary Chinese temple style.
We had hardly stepped over the threshold when a Russian soldier dashed at us with fixed bayonet, and threatened nasty consequences if we didn't get out. It is unwise to argue with a man holding a fixed bayonet, and accordingly we went out.
My Russian companion was indignant. We sought the colonel who in turn was wroth with the over-zealous warrior, and himself offered to show us the temple. In the courtyard were a number of quaint old Chinese cannon, mounted on wooden wheels and studded with iron nails, captured by the Russians during last year's disturbances. Soldiers were loading into a cart a quantity of flint-locks. The temple itself was in disorder. The Russian troops had run riot. The chief god, a big, brown-featured monster, had been battered with sticks, and one eye had disappeared. His nose was a pulp, and altogether he had a very dissipated air. Another god was pock-marked with revolver shots.
About half a mile off was Hilar itself, a walled city, entered by a double gate surmounted by a picturesque turret. It was like going into a place that had been stricken with some foul disease. The city consisted of one long street with Chinese houses on either side, but many of them were in ruin, and there wasn't a Chinaman to be seen.
The town was in possession of Russian troops, and the Russian flag fluttered in a dozen places. I asked the colonel if there had been any fighting here.
"No" he said, "all the Chinese fled on the approach of the Russians."
The principal building was now used as an Orthodox Greek Church, and three bells from the pagan temple were utilised in calling Christians to worship. Buildings had been demolished in the centre of the town, the space cleared, and in the centre stood a cross.
"That," explained the colonel, "is the site for our new church."
The train halted for nine hours at Hilar, till another train from the opposite direction came in. It brought a crowd of oflicers and their wives and children, all on their way to Manchuria. On we went again.
The line improved, and without a mishap we trundled a whole day through a featureless plain.
There were no villages, although there were stations at intervals, and many little settlements of Cossacks to guard the line. We began to pick up officers on their way home for a holiday. Then late on the Wednesday night we reached the frontier.
Here the Eastern Chinese railway ended, and my free trip came to an end also. There was a branch line of the Siberian railway running third-class carriages to the main line. The price was some ten shillings for over a day's ride. We sped through a snow-smothered country to Katiska Rasiez.
I was back in Siberia, at a spot I had passed two months before. From there I returned to Irkutsk, crossing Lake Baikal in a storm, the ship's side a mass of ice and the thermometer registering 44 degrees of frost, Fahrenheit. It was Sunday evening, October 27th.
I drove through the snow-slashed streets of "the Paris of Siberia," just a little sorry my adventure of crossing the forbidden land of Manchuria was over.
But the delight it was to remove one's clothes, have a bath, and sleep in a bed - for the first time in seventeen days - is not to be described in words.
Chapter XXII: A Cold Drive to a Great Prison
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